ESA’s reusable rocket test stand appears to be cursed. The European Space Agency’s director of space transportation, Géraldine Naja, said on October 22 that she was unsure whether the agency would be able to complete the first flight of its Themis reusable rocket demonstrator before the end of the year, European Spaceflight reports. The single-stage rocket hopper has completed two countdown rehearsals at the Esrange Space Center in Sweden, but the harsh Scandinavian winter could keep Themis from flying this year.
Missed schedules … ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said in January that the first hop test of the Themis rocket would take place in the first quarter of 2026. Delays are nothing new for Themis. Officials initially expected the rocket’s first low-altitude jump test to take place in 2022. The rocket is powered by a reusable methane-fueled Prometheus engine. ArianeGroup, the company behind Europe’s Ariane family of rockets, is the prime contractor on Themis, which will test technologies for an eventual reusable replacement for the expendable Ariane 6.
Cowboy Space introduces new rocket. Cowboy Space released the first details on Monday about the launch vehicle, which is scheduled to launch before the end of 2028, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The rocket, called Big Iron, will be 282 feet (86 meters) tall and about 15 feet (4.7 meters) in diameter. Cowboy Space is developing a methane-powered engine called the Clydesdale. Nine of these will power the first stage and the second stage will fly a single Clydesdale. Big Iron’s payload capacity will be up to 18 tons (39,700 pounds) in low Earth orbit.
Let the horses run … Baiju Bhatt, the billionaire co-founder of Robinhood, founded his space company, originally called Aetherflux, in 2024. Earlier this year, he renamed the company Cowboy Space. Bhatt is tracking the space-based AI market led by SpaceX. Once launched into orbit, the Big Iron rocket’s upper stage will form the core of Cowboy Space’s data center spacecraft, with five GPU racks, six intersatellite laser links, and solar arrays spanning the length of one and a half football fields.
More good news for Stoke Space. The Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital announced a conditional commitment Monday to provide a $150 million loan to Stoke Space to build a second launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, GeekWire reports. Stoke Space is well underway with construction of its first launch pad at Cape Canaveral for its reusable medium-lift Nova rocket. The second pad would accommodate an improved Nova Block 2 vehicle for heavier payloads.
