ESA’s reusable rocket testbed seems cursed. The European Space Agency’s Director of Space Transportation, Géraldine Naja, said on October 22 that she was uncertain 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 Esrange Space Center in Sweden, but the harsh Scandinavian winter may prevent Themis from taking flight this year.
Missed schedules … ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said in January that the Themis rocket’s first hop test would happen in the first quarter of 2026. Delays are nothing new for Themis. Officials originally expected the rocket’s first low-altitude hop test to occur in 2022. The rocket is powered by a reusable methane-fueled Prometheus engine. ArianeGroup, the company behind Europe’s Ariane rocket family, is the main contractor on Themis, which is supposed to test technologies for an eventual reusable replacement for the expendable Ariane 6.
Cowboy Space unveils new rocket. Cowboy Space on Monday released the first details about the launcher that it plans to loft before the end of 2028, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The rocket, named Big Iron, will be 282 feet (86 meters) tall and about 15 feet (4.7 meters) in diameter. Cowboy Space is developing a methane-fueled engine named Clydesdale. Nine of them will power the first stage, and the second stage will fly a single Clydesdale. Big Iron’s payload capacity will be up to 18 metric tons (39,700 pounds) to low-Earth orbit.
Let the horses run … Baiju Bhatt, the billionaire co-founder of Robinhood, started his space company, originally named Aetherflux, in 2024. He rebranded the company as Cowboy Space earlier this year. Bhatt is chasing the market for space-based AI led by SpaceX. After launching into orbit, the upper stage of the Big Iron rocket will form the core of Cowboy Space’s data center spacecraft, with five racks of GPUs, six inter-satellite laser links, and solar arrays stretching the length of one-and-a-half football fields.
More good news for Stoke Space. The Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital announced Monday a conditional commitment to provide a $150 million loan to Stoke Space for construction of a second launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, GeekWire reports. Stoke Space is well along in construction of its first launch pad at Cape Canaveral for its reusable medium-lift Nova rocket. The second pad would accommodate an upgraded Nova Block 2 vehicle for heavier payloads.
