Space · Friday, 16 October 2026

01 Briefing what happened

Rocket Lab delays its Neutron rocket to 2027 after air pockets turn up in the carbon-fibre domes of its fuel tanks

Rocket Lab says its new mid-size Neutron rocket will not fly before 2027, after inspectors found air pockets inside a fuel-tank dome. In the same week SpaceX asked to fly Starship up to 456 times a year from Texas, and the UK picked ClearSpace to pull two dead satellites out of orbit.

2027

the earliest Neutron can now make its first flight

it was announced in 2021 with a first flight planned for 2024 [1]

13,000 kg

of cargo Neutron is built to lift to low orbit

Electron lifts about 300 kg, so a kilo saved there is a much bigger share [1][2]

flights so far by Electron, Rocket Lab's small carbon-fibre rocket

the first carbon-fibre rocket to reach orbit, in 2018 [1][2]

The lead story — what happened

Rocket Lab said on Wednesday 14 October that Neutron, its new reusable rocket, will not make its first flight until 2027. [1]
Rocket Lab is the company behind Electron, a small rocket that has flown 97 times, the last 56 of them without a failure. [1]
Neutron is much bigger: 7 metres across against Electron's 1.2 metres, and built to lift about 13,000 kg to low orbit. [1]
Both rockets are made of carbon fibre, thin sheets of fibre laid in layers and set hard with glue-like resin. [1][2]
Kilo for kilo, carbon fibre is stronger than steel or aluminium, so a lighter rocket body leaves more room for cargo. [2]
Inspectors found tiny air pockets, called voids, between the layers of a newly made dome at the end of a first-stage fuel tank. [1][2]
The voids sat in sections Rocket Lab had made thicker after a test tank burst on 21 January while being filled with water under pressure. [1][2]
Thick layers are harder to set cleanly, because heat and pressure must push the resin through and squeeze the air out. [2]
Founder Peter Beck said the voids do not necessarily mean a dome would fail in flight, but Rocket Lab only flies with safety margins it trusts. [1]
An end dome made with a changed process has passed inspection, and Beck said: 'We've solved the problem.' [1]
Next, Rocket Lab builds a new front dome and a new tank, and tests it the way the burst tank was tested, in early 2027. [2]
SpaceX once planned Starship in carbon fibre and switched to steel, which is cheaper, easier to repair and stronger when very cold. [2]

1.2 m wideElectron

7 m wideNeutron

Both rockets are carbon fibre. Neutron's tanks are far wider, and Beck calls its first stage the largest carbon structure ever made to hold pressure.

Who is involved

Rocket Lab

the company that builds the small Electron rocket; it is building Neutron to compete for bigger launches
Peter Beck

Rocket Lab's founder and chief executive; he announced the delay in a video
SpaceX

the biggest launch company; it plans to retire Falcon 9 from commercial work and move to Starship
Relativity Space, Stoke Space and Firefly Aerospace

other companies building mid-size rockets for the same customers

How it unfolded

2021 Rocket Lab announces Neutron, aiming for a first flight in 2024 [1]
21 Jan 2026 a test tank made by hand by an outside firm bursts under water pressure [2]
After January Rocket Lab moves to its own fibre-laying machine and thickens parts of the domes [1][2]
14 Oct Rocket Lab says voids turned up in a new front dome, and moves the first flight to 2027 [1]
Early 2027 a new tank is assembled and pressure-tested [2]

Where this points

The next test is the new first-stage tank in early 2027: Rocket Lab says more detail on the launch date will come only after that tank passes the test January's tank failed. [2]

What is pushing on the whole day

The bar and the word are our reading of how hard each one is pushing today. The arrow is where it is heading. The evidence is in the stories below.

Demand for more rockets High↑

Rocket Lab wants Neutron to carry satellite fleets as SpaceX plans to retire Falcon 9 from commercial work. [1] SpaceX has asked to fly Starship from Texas up to 456 times a year, against 25 allowed now. [3] Seraphim, a British space investor, cites forecasts of 100,000 satellites in orbit by 2030. [12]

Cameras turned on satellites Building↑

HEO, an Australian company, renewed a deal to photograph other spacecraft with BlackSky's sharper new cameras. [11] The UK Space Agency is paying ClearSpace to inspect two dead British satellites up close and then grab them. [4]

Star models meeting sharper data Building↑

SPHEREx, a NASA sky-mapping telescope, measured 33 failed stars in 102 colours, and none of five leading models matched. [17] A form of methanol around a young star turned up about 100 times more often than models predict. [16]

NASA's Moon base plans Building→

NASA's chief architect for its Moon base set out three phases, with a Japanese rover due in the second, from 2029. [9] JAXA, Japan's space agency, hired ArkEdge Space to study a navigation receiver for that rover. [10]

The rest of the day

13 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
SpaceX asks to fly Starship 456 times a year

SpaceX has asked the US aviation regulator, the FAA, to let it launch Starship up to 456 times a year from Starbase, its site in south Texas. [3] It is allowed 25 now. [3] Starship is the largest rocket ever built, and it reached orbit for the first time on 28 September. [3] The FAA said on 14 October it will write a full study of the effects on the area and hold five public meetings in November. [3]

25 a yearAllowed now
456 a yearSpaceX's request
The launches a year Starship may fly from south Texas today, and the number SpaceX has asked for.

Why it matters — Every launch also brings two landings, so the request covers 912 landings a year, and the first phase would allow 100 launches on any day, at any hour. [3] Four of the five meetings are in person near Starbase, which sits beside Brownsville, a Texas border city. [3]
03
UK hires ClearSpace to remove two dead satellites

The UK Space Agency has picked ClearSpace, a company that services satellites in orbit, to lead Britain's first mission to remove space junk. [4] The contract is worth about £61 million. [4] ClearSpace will try to grab two dead British satellites in low orbit with robot claws, launching no earlier than 2029. [4] The firm must first show it can inspect, approach and catch objects never built to be caught. [4]

Why it matters — Nobody has yet removed a piece of junk from orbit, and every new satellite adds to the crowd. [4] The UK also hopes the same skills will sell as servicing work on satellites that still work. [4]
04
Timekeepers vote to end the leap second

Scientists and officials voted at a meeting in Versailles, France, to stop adding leap seconds to the world's standard time. [5] A leap second has been added 27 times since 1972, to keep atomic-clock time in step with Earth's slightly uneven spin. [5] From 20 May 2027 the clock will run without them. [5] The two times may now drift up to an hour apart, and a leap hour is not expected for over 1,000 years. [5]

Leap secondevery few years
Leap hour1,000+ years
The old fix kept clocks within a second of Earth's spin. The new rule lets them drift up to an hour before any change.

Why it matters — Phones, planes, satellites and GPS all run on this time, and a sudden jump can crash computer systems. [5] Earth's spin has sped up since the mid-2010s, so a second taken away could have been needed as early as 2029, which engineers compared to a 'mini Y2K'. [5]
05
NASA sets out its Moon base in three phases

Nujoud Merancy, chief architect of NASA's Moon base, described its three phases at a meeting in Atlanta on 14 October. [9] Phase 1, until 2029, makes sure crews and cargo can reach the Moon's south pole and come back. [9] Phase 2, from 2029 to 2032, adds power, radio links and a pressurised rover from JAXA, Japan's space agency. [9] Phase 3, from 2032, adds real living quarters and starts mining the Moon. [9]

Why it matters — Merancy said the scarcest thing on the Moon is crew time, not water or sunlight, so NASA wants robots doing the upkeep. [9] She called the whole base a project of a decade or more, which has to survive changes of US government. [9]
06
SpaceX launches a secret US Space Force satellite

A Falcon 9 rocket launched a classified mission called USSF-481 for the US Space Force from California at 00:01 GMT on 16 October. [6][7] Warning notices suggest it went to a low orbit tilted about 80 degrees from the equator. [7] Its booster was flying for the 28th time and landed on a ship in the Pacific. [6][7] It is the second mission called TH, after USSF-259 in September. [7]

Why it matters — It was the 114th Falcon 9 launch of the year, and more than 70% of them carried SpaceX's own Starlink satellites. [6] Spaceflight Now asked the US Air Force what it carries and had no answer at launch. [7]
07
Last new solar wings reach the space station

A SpaceX Cargo Dragon docked at the International Space Station at 14:27 GMT on 15 October with more than 2,860 kg of food, tools and experiments. [8] In its open back section are the fourth and final pair of new roll-out solar wings. [8][18] Each is built to give more than 20 kW for over ten years. [18] NASA has been preparing spacewalks to fit them. [18]

Why it matters — The wings add power to the station, which runs every experiment on board. [8][18] Dragon stays about a month and then brings research and waste back to Earth. [8]
08
NASA plans where three Mars helicopters fly

NASA is hurrying three helicopters called SkyFall, due to launch to Mars in 2028 on a nuclear-powered spacecraft. [13] They build on Ingenuity, the first Mars helicopter, which flew 72 times after being designed for five. [13] SkyFall will be dropped straight into the Martian air and land on its own, with no rover. [13] Workshops to choose landing sites start early next year. [13]

Why it matters — Each helicopter carries a radar that can find ice just under the ground, which future crews could use. [13] Each can fly every other Martian day, so flights covering 200 to 300 km in all are possible. [13]
09
HEO renews its deal to photograph satellites

BlackSky, a US company that photographs Earth from small satellites, extended a seven-figure deal with HEO, an Australian firm, for another year. [11] HEO uses other companies' cameras in orbit to take close-up pictures of spacecraft. [11] It now gets BlackSky's newest cameras, which see details 35 cm across instead of one metre. [11] It takes the pictures when the cameras would sit idle, over oceans or Earth's night side. [11]

Why it matters — Radar on the ground can say where a satellite is, but not what is broken on it. [11] Militaries and satellite firms buy these pictures to spot damage and changes. [11]
10
JAXA hires ArkEdge for Moon navigation work

JAXA, Japan's space agency, gave ArkEdge Space, a Japanese start-up, two jobs to help people find their way on the Moon. [10] The first is a study of fitting a navigation receiver, a kind of Moon GPS, to the crew rover Japan is building for NASA's Artemis programme. [10] The second builds a receiver for signals from Japan's test navigation satellite. [10] Neither price was given. [10]

Why it matters — There is no GPS at the Moon, so crews and rovers need their own signals to know where they are. [10] ArkEdge is building its test receiver to pick up NASA and European signals too. [10]
11
A British space fund doubles in value

Seraphim Space Investment Trust, a British fund that buys stakes in space companies, published yearly accounts valuing it at £605.5 million. [12] That is more than double its value in June 2025. [12] Over half sits in ICEYE, a Finnish firm whose satellites take pictures with radar. [12] ICEYE won a €1.7 billion contract with Germany's armed forces in December. [12]

Why it matters — Its biggest holding grew on military orders, as governments spend more on space. [12] Seraphim says it avoids rocket makers and backs firms that sell data and services from orbit. [12]
12
Failed stars beat every model tested

A team led by Zafar Rustamkulov at Caltech used SPHEREx, a NASA telescope that maps the whole sky in 102 colours of infrared light, to study 33 brown dwarfs. [17] Brown dwarfs are too big to be planets and too small to burn like stars. [17] The team tested five leading computer models of their air, and none matched well. [17] Some models got the objects' sizes wrong by 20 to 50%. [17]

Why it matters — One model did match one change: below about 1,000 kelvin, carbon monoxide gives way to methane. [17] Until the models improve, it will be hard to use them on planets around other stars. [17] SPHEREx is now listing thousands more brown dwarfs. [17]
13
Heavy methanol found around a young star

ALMA, a set of radio dishes in Chile, studied 11 young stars like the Sun, and found an unusual methanol around one, IRAS 4A2, 1,000 light years away. [15][16] In this methanol, every hydrogen atom is the heavier kind, called deuterium. [16] It is about 100 times more common than chemistry models predict. [16] The team also found natural microwave lasers, called masers, around over half of the 11 stars. [15]

Why it matters — Methanol is a building block for the larger molecules that form planets and perhaps life, so the gap points to a process the models miss. [15][16] The results fill seven papers, and the full analysis will take years. [15]
14
A dead star that would look green

Astronomers at the University of Warwick worked out the real colours of white dwarfs, the dense cores left when stars like the Sun die. [14] Most are white. [14] But one, WD J1330+6435, 326 light years away, has pulled in rock from its planets, and sodium in its air takes out orange light. [14] The team's model says that leaves it green, making it the first known green star. [14]

Why it matters — A star's colour usually tells its temperature, and these results show a dead star's colour can also show what it ate. [14] Only five of the 151 white dwarfs near Earth have unusual colours. [14]

02 Lesson why it matters

Why a carbon-fibre rocket tank can look perfect and still be weak

Carbon fibre is built up in layers, and an air pocket trapped between them weakens the wall from inside, where nobody looking at it can see.

The twist

A carbon-fibre tank can look perfect and still be weak, because its worst flaw is a bubble of air between layers, inside the wall, where no one can see it.

The picture

Test tank, JanuaryBurst

Thicker front domeAir pockets

Changed end domePassed

Three Neutron tank parts in a row. The first failed a water-pressure test, the second failed inspection, and the third passed inspection.

How it works

Carbon fibre is laid in thin layers and set hard with resin
Air trapped between layers weakens the part from inside
The outside surface can look perfect over the gap
So each new part is inspected, and test tanks are filled with water under pressure
A change in how the part is made needs the checks again

The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.

HEO renews its deal to photograph satellites

Radar on the ground shows where a satellite is but not what is broken, so HEO pays for close-up pictures to see faults a distant look misses.
UK hires ClearSpace to remove two dead satellites

Before grabbing a dead satellite, ClearSpace must inspect it up close, because its real state cannot be known from the ground.

Where you've seen this

Bicycle frames

a carbon frame with a hidden crack can look fine and snap in a crash

Aircraft wings

planes made of layered parts are scanned for gaps inside, not just looked at

Baking bread

a loaf can look perfect and hide a big air hole until you cut it

The catch

Not every air pocket matters: Beck said these voids would not necessarily have failed in flight, and only testing shows how big a flaw has to be before it does.

And the whole of it

Rocket Lab's customers only see the launch date move. Most of us trust things we cannot see inside, from a bike frame to an aeroplane wing, because somebody else did the checking.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

Rocket Lab told the public on 14 October that Neutron will not fly before 2027, a slip Ars Technica says most of the industry already expected. In the same week SpaceX asked to fly Starship up to 456 times a year from Texas, and SpaceX plans to retire Falcon 9, the rocket many satellite companies now rely on, from commercial work. [1][3]

Why it works on us — A firm new year sounds like news, but 'no earlier than 2027' sets only the first possible date, and more detail is expected only after a tank test in early 2027. [2]

Who gains

Relativity Space, Stoke Space and Firefly Aerospace — They are building mid-size rockets for the same satellite customers, and Neutron's slip leaves them a longer start. [1]
ClearSpace — A contract of about £61 million pays it to learn to catch satellites, which it can then sell as servicing work. [4]
HEO — It gets BlackSky's sharper cameras for its close-up pictures of satellites without building a spacecraft of its own. [11]
Seraphim Space Investment Trust's shareholders — The fund's value more than doubled to £605.5 million, led by ICEYE's military radar contract. [12]
People who run computer systems that keep time — Ending the leap second removes a sudden jump in the clock that can crash software. [5]

Who pays

Satellite companies waiting for a mid-size reusable rocket — Neutron was meant to fly in 2024, and its schedule has now doubled as SpaceX moves away from Falcon 9. [1]
People living near Starbase in south Texas — The first phase of SpaceX's request allows up to 100 launches and 200 landings a year on any day, at any hour. [3]
UK taxpayers — The UK Space Agency is spending about £61 million on a first try at removing two of its own dead satellites. [4]
Anyone who tells time by the sky — Clock time may now drift up to an hour away from Earth's spin before anything is done. [5]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

When in 2027 Neutron will actually fly.

More detail is expected only after a new tank is built and pressure-tested in early 2027, and the engines have not finished their qualifying tests. [1][2]
02

Whether the changed process works on the front dome.

An end dome made the new way passed inspection, but the front dome that had the voids has not yet been rebuilt. [1][2]
03

How many Starship launches a year the FAA will allow from Texas, and what they would do to the area.

The FAA has only just opened its study, and the public meetings are not until November. [3]
04

What the USSF-481 satellite does.

The mission is classified, and Spaceflight Now had no answer from the US Air Force at launch. [7]
05

Whether anyone can grab a dead satellite that was never built to be caught.

Nobody has yet removed a piece of junk from orbit, and ClearSpace's mission flies no earlier than 2029. [4]
06

What JAXA is paying ArkEdge.

ArkEdge did not reveal the value of either job. [10]
07

Why so much heavy methanol sits around the young star IRAS 4A2.

It is about 100 times more common than chemistry models predict, and the process that makes it is unknown. [16]
08

Whether WD J1330+6435 would really look green to an eye.

The colour comes from the team's model, and no white dwarf is close enough for telescopes on Earth to show its true colour. [14]
09

Which brown dwarf model is closest to right.

None of the five tested matched SPHEREx's data well, and some got the objects' sizes wrong by 20 to 50%. [17]

04 Hope carry this

A cargo ship docked at the International Space Station carrying the last pair of new solar wings, each built to give more than 20 kilowatts for over ten years.

Also true today

After about 30 years of argument, the world's timekeepers voted in Versailles to stop adding leap seconds, so clocks in phones, planes and satellites will no longer have to jump.
Astronomers at the University of Warwick found that WD J1330+6435, a dead star 326 light years away, should glow green, the first green star anyone knows of.