Rocket Report: Russia reopens gateway to ISS; Cape Canaveral hosts missile test

The US Space Force might move additional payloads off of ULA’s grounded Vulcan rocket. Welcome to Edition 8.35 of the Rocket Report! The headlines this week are again dominated by the big changes afoot in NASA’s exploration program, with the announcement of a Moon base and a nuclear-powered rocket to Mars. The shakeups come as the agency is just a week away from launching Artemis II, a circumlunar flight carrying a crew of four around the Moon. The Ars space team will be writing extensively about this mission in the days ahead, and we may skip the Rocket Report next week to focus on our Artemis II coverage. As always, we welcome reader submissions. 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. NASA announces nuclear rocket demo. NASA’s announcement Tuesday that it will “pause” work on a lunar space station and focus on building a surface base on the Moon was no big surprise to anyone paying attention to the Trump administration’s space poli