Rocket Report: Vulcan "many months" from flying; Falcon 9 extends reuse milestone
Welcome to Edition 8.31 of the Rocket Report! We have some late-breaking news this week with an update Thursday afternoon from Rocket Lab on the timing of its much-anticipated Neutron rocket. Following the failure of a first stage tank during testing, the company is pushing the medium-lift rocket's debut into the fourth quarter of this year. Effectively that probably means 2027 for the booster, which is disappointing because we all very much want to see another reusable rocket take flight.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
The ghost of Vector lives on. Tucson, Arizona-based satellite and rocket developer Phantom Space, co-founded by Jim Cantrell in 2019, has acquired the remnants of Vector Launch, Space News reports. The announcement is notable because Cantrell left Vector as its finances deteriorated in 2019. Cantrell said some of the assets, comprising flight-proven design elements, engineering data, and other technology originally developed for Vector, will be immediately integrated into Phantom’s Daytona vehicle architecture to reduce development risk.