Launch Vehicles

China showed off its ambitions for space in the 21st century as its first reusable heavy booster, the ZhuQue-3 (ZQ-3) Y1 from the Landspace company, conducted its first static firing at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China.

The Alexeyev/Sukhoi Albatros launch system, proposed in 1974, would have launched a Soviet space shuttle on the back of a carrier spaceplane, launched off the back of a hydrofoiling barge. It never happened, but here's what it would've looked like.

Back in 2021, we heard how the Mk-II Aurora suborbital spaceplane had made its first test flights … but it was using surrogate jet engines. Now, however, the vehicle has made its first flights using an actual rocket engine.

Equipmake says it's got the lightest and most power-dense electric motor on the market, and if there's one place where weight is critical, it's on a launch pad. The company has developed an ultra-lightweight motor for Australia's first rocket launch.

SpinLaunch has released on-board footage from its eighth suborbital flight test, giving us a unique opportunity to imagine what it'd be like to be hurled skyward out of a centrifugal accelerator at more than a thousand miles per hour.

Green Launch says it can fire a space vehicle skywards three times faster than SpinLaunch's kinetic launch system. Its huge hydrogen gas cannon can produce hypersonic launch velocities upwards of Mach 17, enabling orbital altitudes up to 1,000 km.

NASA has signed up to test SpinLaunch's extraordinary whirl 'n' hurl space launch technology, which accelerates a launch vehicle to hypersonic speeds using an electric centrifuge arm instead of a rocket, hurling it skyward like a space discus.

A new company has entered the commercial space race. Startup Radian Aerospace has emerged from stealth to announce it has secured US$27.5 million in seed funding to develop a single-stage to orbit (SSTO) spaceplane designed to lift and land horizontally.

Hypersonix Launch Systems is looking to make the delivery of satellites into orbit cheaper, more accessible, and greener by developing a reusable launch system powered by green hydrogen – and is eyeing off hypersonic airliners further down the line.

Rocket Lab has unveiled its concept for a new reusable launch vehicle called Neutron. Looking like something a Bond villain would deploy, it carries its second stage inside a permanently attached captive “Hungry Hippo” fairing design.

The new technologies Honda plans to pursue in the coming decades include an eVTOL for inter-city transport, a robot that will act as an avatar for users to perform tasks remotely, and a renewable energy system for the Moon.

Startup Rocket Lab is pressing ahead with its ambitions to turn its Electron booster into a reusable orbital launch vehicle for small satellites, with plans this weekend to recover the rocket's first stage that will have an upgraded heat shield.