SpaceFlight Now

• H3 rocket suffers upper stage anomaly, fails to correctly deploy navigation satellite

  The Dec. 22 launch was the fourth and final flight of an H3 rocket in 2025.

• Tory Bruno steps down as President, CEO of ULA

  The announcement was made by Robert Lightfoot, the ULA Lockheed Martin Board Chair, in a statement on Monday. The board now begins a search for his permanent replacement.

• Astronauts, launch teams practice Artemis 2 countdown

  The run-through simulated day-of-launch activities, included suit up, ingress into the Orion spacecraft and a countdown that stopped just shy of T-0.

• Space Development Agency awards roughly $3.5 billion to 4 companies for 72 missile tracking and warning satellites

  This batch of satellites will populate what the SDA calls the Tracking Layer of its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) constellation in low Earth orbit. The work will be divided evenly, with each company building 18 spacecraft.

• Rocket Lab launches 4 novel DiskSat satellites for U.S. Space Force, NASA

  The STP-S30 mission was moved up five months on the launch manifest for Rocket Lab. This was the 20th launch of an Electron rocket in 2025.