NASA is delaying its return to the Moon with the Artemis program. "To give Artemis teams more time to work through the challenges with first-time developments, operation and integration, we're gonna give more time on Artemis 2 and 3," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told reporters on a call.

As such, Artemis 2, which had been scheduled for a November 2024 launch, is now targeting September 2025. That four-person mission is set to fly around the Moon, in a similar fashion to the uncrewed Artemis 1. As for Artemis 3, which will take humans back to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972, that's now targeted for September 2026, marking a nine-month delay.

Those are the only delays NASA has announced for now. Nelson said "Artemis 4 remains on track for September 2028." Along with a lunar landing, that mission will mark the delivery of a habitat module to the Lunar Gateway, a space station that's planned for lunar orbit.

The delays are for safety reasons. "For Artemis 2, there are new capabilities being on-ramped for the mission," Amit Kshatriya, deputy associate administrator of the Moon to Mars Program said. Those include propellant loading, crew loading and egress and fresh abort and life support systems.

Kshatriya said NASA is learning from both the data it obtained from Artemis 1 and the production of components for future missions. "From the test flight in particular, we had one major finding that we need a little bit more time to work [on] and that is the performance of the thermal protection system on the spacecraft, on the heat shield," Kshatriya said.

While the heat shield performed well overall during the Artemis 1 landing in terms of thermal protection, it experienced "some unexpected phenomena we need to make sure we understand perfectly," namely some charred material. NASA doesn't want to leave anything to chance when it comes to astronauts' safety and it spent "the bulk of 2023 investigating" that concern, Kshatriya noted. NASA hopes to identify the root cause of the issue in the spring.

Meanwhile, among other concerns, NASA encountered some issues with the life support system. "During the acceptance of some components for Artemis 3, we noticed a failure in some motor valve circuitry," Kshatriya said. "These components passed acceptance testing for Artemis 2, but did not pass them for Artemis 3. That gave us pause to stop and look at that circuit in a more detailed way." As such, NASA found a design flaw in the circuit. 

Given its importance to the life support system, the agency deemed the system unacceptable as is. "We have to replace it to guarantee the safety of the crew," Kshatriya said. It's likely to take quite some time to resolve the issue as NASA will have to carefully test every change, but Kshatriya added the agency knows how to solve the problem. 

The Artemis delays follow the failure of a mission that sought to transport the first US commercial payload to the Moon. Astrobotic had hoped to make a soft landing on the lunar surface with its Peregrine lander. However, due to some post-launch issues (in particular, a propellant leak) the soft landing is no longer possible.

"Given the propellant leak, there is, unfortunately, no chance of a soft landing on the moon. However, we do still have enough propellant to continue to operate the vehicle as a spacecraft," Astrobotic wrote on X. "The team continues to work to find ways to extend Peregrine's operational life."

The Peregrine spacecraft has experienced an ‘anomaly’ that could endanger its planned moon landing, as reported by the BBC. Astrobotic, the private company behind the project, says this anomaly prevents the spacecraft from pointing its solar panels at the sun. In other words, the vehicle can’t charge its battery. Without power, the planned lunar landing for February might have to be canceled.

Astrobotic engineers are working the problem and will provide updates as they become available. The launch itself went off without a hitch early this morning, as the issue popped up during post-launch checks after communications had been established. The team behind the launch suggest the most likely cause of the anomaly is a problem with propulsion. Unfortunately, the engineers have a limited window of time to troubleshoot and fix the issue, as the spacecraft’s battery is currently “reaching operationally low levels.” There was a short comms breakdown, but it looks like that issue has been resolved.

The company has also stated that the propulsion issue led to a "critical loss of propellant." Astrobotic has planned for a wide variety of fault scenarios and could get everything squared away before too long, but it's looking less likely by the minute. The company says it's still trying to stabilize the propellant loss, but is investigating "alternative mission profiles" and trying to save as much science and data as it can. 

Peregrine is supposed to be the first American lunar lander to visit the moon in over 50 years. The United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket carried the craft out of the atmosphere. If it manages to touch down on the moon, Peregrine will become the first commercial craft to land on any planetary body outside of Earth.

Though not directly affiliated with NASA, the Peregrine launch is part of the space agency’s new Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. To that end, it’s supposed to deliver five payloads to the moon for NASA to help prepare for the upcoming Artemis missions. It’s also carrying a number of payloads for commercial clients at a cost of $1.2 million per kilogram. This cargo includes everything from mini rovers and science instruments to art collections and physical representations of cryptocurrency.

There’s also human remains on board, including the DNA of science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. Peregrine is scheduled to land on the moon’s nearside, which faces Earth, on February 23, though that timeframe could change or disappear altogether. Ahead of the launch, CLPS Program Manager Chris Culbert acknowledged that a lunar landing was not guaranteed, stating that “landing on the moon is extremely difficult.”

Hours before sunrise on Monday morning, United Launch Alliance’s brand spankin’ new Vulcan Centaur rocket is scheduled to make its maiden flight carrying a historic passenger: Peregrine, the first American lunar lander to be sent to the moon in over 50 years. And its mission could mark a turning point in humankind’s exploration of the cosmos. Peregrine is not a NASA spacecraft, but one developed by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic, a private company. If it survives touchdown, Peregrine will be the first commercial craft to successfully land on the moon — or any planetary body outside of Earth, for that matter.

Astrobotic is among a small group of companies that have been selected to carry out lunar deliveries for the space agency over the next few years as part of NASA’s new Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Peregrine Mission 1, expected to launch January 8 at 2:18AM ET, is the first of these operations under a $79.5 million contract with the space agency. But it’s a wholly commercial endeavor, and alongside the five payloads it’ll deliver for NASA to support the upcoming Artemis missions, Peregrine will have cargo for other clients on board too, at a cost of $1.2 million per kilogram (roughly 2.2 pounds). That includes mini rovers and science instruments, collections of art and archival material, a physical “bitcoin” and, controversially, human remains.

Peregrine is headed for the moon’s nearside, the hemisphere that is always facing Earth. The 6-foot-tall, 8-foot-wide lander will (hopefully) touch down softly in a region named Sinus Viscositatis — the “Bay of Stickiness” — for the mysterious domes there that are thought to have been formed long ago by thick silicic lava. These peculiar features, called Gruithuisen Domes, don’t match up with the surrounding basaltic terrain, nor is the moon home to the ingredients so far known to give rise to silicic volcanoes.

Astrobotic

“The formation of the domes is a scientific mystery we are still working to understand,” said CLPS project scientist Paul Niles in a briefing on Thursday ahead of the launch. Peregrine will land near the domes on a patch of lunar mare, or the dark features created by hardened basaltic lava flows that we can see from Earth. The NASA payloads on board consist of a Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA), Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS), Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS), Near InfraRed Volatiles Spectrometer System (NIRVSS) and Peregrine Ion-Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS). These instruments will gather data to help characterize the local environment.

“Three of our instruments will collect data on lunar volatiles using different techniques,” Niles said. “Two instruments will provide perspectives on the radiation environment at the lunar surface, helping us better prepare to send crewed missions back to the moon. We'll also learn information about the composition of the surface by evaluating its mineralogy.” Later, NASA will send another suite of instruments to the summit of Gruithuisen Domes.

As far as science deliveries are concerned, Peregrine will also carry a payload for Agencia Espacial Mexicana (AEM), the Mexican Space Agency. Its fleet of five mini rovers, each measuring just shy of 5 inches wide, will be the first Latin American science instruments to make it to the surface of the moon, according to Astrobotic. Carnegie Mellon University’s 4-pound Iris rover is hitching a ride on Peregrine too, with plans to snap photos that it’ll send back home. And the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is sending its M-42 radiation detector, which is intended to measure how much radiation a human would be exposed to on a roundtrip mission to the moon.

Among the non-science payloads, ULA’s Vulcan Centaur and Peregrine will be ferrying small portions of human remains for the space memorial companies Celestis and Elysium Space. Celestis has two separate memorial destinations planned for the trip: one, “Tranquility,” will land on the moon with Peregrine, while another, “Enterprise,” will continue on to deep space with the Centaur upper stage after it separates from the lunar lander. Flights like these that go beyond Earth’s immediate vicinity start at just under $13,000, and potential clients are given the option to send up symbolic amounts of either human ashes or DNA.

Astrobotic/ULA

One of the luminaries whose DNA is headed to the lunar surface will be 2001: A Space Odyssey co-writer and science fiction author, Arthur C. Clarke. On the Enterprise flight are the remains of several key figures from the Star Trek franchise, including series creator Gene Roddenberry, his wife, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, and their son Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, plus Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura of the original series) and her son, Kyle Johnson. Elysium has been less forthcoming about whose remains it’ll be sending.

There’s been some backlash about the idea of turning the moon into a memorial site. Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren spoke out against the upcoming mission after hearing about the plan, calling it “tantamount to desecration” for the many cultures who consider the moon to be sacred, Arizona Public Radio reported.

In response to questioning led by Reuters’ Joey Roulette during the NASA briefing on Thursday, members of the space agency repeatedly reiterated that the decision of which payloads to fly fell solely on Astrobotic. “They don't have to clear those payloads with us,” CLPS Program Manager Chris Culbert said. “These are truly commercial missions. It's up to them to sell what they can sell.”

The issue highlights one of the potential downsides to relying on contractors, and it’ll undoubtedly rear its head again as NASA leans more heavily on the commercial industry for future missions. While NASA may not be in the position to approve what payloads are included alongside its own on commercial missions, Culbert added that the teams “obviously have a lot of discussions about how the payloads fit together.”

The rest of the 20 total payloads are a mix of mementos and items representing Earth and the achievements of humanity. Astrobotic partnered with DHL to curate a “moonbox” of keepsakes that will fly with Peregrine, including items such as photographs, literature and even a chunk of Mount Everest. Hungary’s Puli Space Technologies and the UK’s SpaceBit are sending plaques to the lunar surface, while the Japanese space company Astroscale has filled a “Lunar Dream Capsule” with “185,872 messages from children from around the world.”

In addition to its rover, Carnegie Mellon created what it’s calling the “first museum on the moon.” The University’s MoonArk project, a small cylinder made up of four chambers that contain “hundreds of images, poems, music, nano-objects, mechanisms and samples from Earth,” will remain on the Peregrine lander where it can be appreciated by future visitors along with the other stationary objects on board. Similarly, Peregrine will carry the Arch Mission Foundation’s Lunar Library 2, which it calls “an ultra-durable archive of humanity.” Wikipedia is in there, as well as other major collections of Earthly information and human languages.

And, there are two bitcoin projects going to the moon with Peregrine because crypto is, apparently, inescapable: a physical bitcoin engraved with its private key, from the Seychelles cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX; and US-based BTC Inc.’s Bitcoin Magazine Genesis Plate, which includes a copy of the first block of bitcoin ever mined.

Once Peregrine reaches lunar orbit, it’ll remain there for a few weeks before making its attempt to land on the surface. That’s expected to happen on February 23. Considering the US hasn’t put a lander on the moon since the days of the Apollo mission, it’s a pretty big deal. But, it’s risky business. When it comes to moon landings, there have been far more unsuccessful attempts than successful ones. “Landing on the moon is extremely difficult,” Culbert said during NASA’s briefing. “We recognize that success cannot be ensured.”

Regardless, NASA and its commercial partners aim to keep trying, and in close succession at that. Peregrine Mission 1 will be followed by the second of NASA’s CLPS missions in February, led by Intuitive Machines. After that, there are plans for at least four more CLPS lunar launches before the end of 2024.

A few weeks ago, NASA’s robotic Mars explorers were given some time off from hard work while the agency waited out Mars solar conjunction, a natural phenomenon that could interfere with their communications. Leading up to the pause, the Curiosity rover was put in park — but its Hazard-Avoidance Cameras (Hazcams) kept snapping away. In a first for the rover, Curiosity recorded the passage of a Martian day over 12 hours from its stationary position, capturing its own shifting shadow on the landscape as the sun moves from dawn to dusk. It held onto the images until after the conjunction ended on November 25.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Curiosity was given instructions to record the 12-hour sequences a few days before the conjunction began in mid-November, according to NASA. The idea was to see if it could catch any weather events that might crop up. That didn’t end up happening, but the images Curiosity snapped on November 8 are still pretty enchanting. They’ve been pieced together in two videos showing the view from its front and rear Hazcams.

Curiosity’s Hazcams are normally used to help drivers avoid terrain that could be dangerous to the rover. But with the rover parked ahead of its pause in duties from November 11 to November 25, the cameras were freed up for a bit of sight-seeing. Curiosity recorded from its position at the base of Mars’ Mount Sharp from 5:30AM to 5:30PM. It and the other Mars explorers have since resumed their normal activities.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s campaign to gather names for a sort of “message in a bottle” that will fly with its upcoming Europa Clipper mission closes after this weekend, so if you were hoping to participate but haven’t yet made your submission, you’d better hurry up and do so. The signatures will accompany a poem written for Europa by US Poet Laureate Ada Limón, which will be engraved in Limón’s handwriting on a metal plate attached to the spacecraft. Europa, one of Jupiter’s largest moons, is thought to have a deep saltwater ocean beneath its icy crust — and there, the conditions could be suitable for microbial life.

To enter the Message in a Bottle campaign, you just need to go to NASA’s website and fill out a short signup form. The deadline is tomorrow, December 31. So far, more than 2.4 million people have added their names. According to NASA, the names of everyone who participated will be stenciled in tiny, tiny letters onto microchips using an electron beam that can create lines of text smaller than 1/1000th the width of a human hair. These microchips will be affixed to the plate containing the poem.

The Europa Clipper spacecraft is scheduled to launch in October 2024, and it’ll be another six years from then before it reaches Jupiter’s orbit. Once there, it’ll investigate Europa’s potential habitability through a series of close flybys. Europa is one of an estimated 95 moons circling Jupiter and among the longest known to humanity. 

Researchers from Linköping University in Sweden developed a ‘bioelectronic soil’ that can speed up the growth of plants in hydroponic spaces, or farms that grow plants without soil in environments made up of mostly water and a place for roots to attach. After integrating the engineered ‘eSoil’ into the framework where seedlings grow, researchers discovered that sending electrical signals through the soil made plants grow 50 percent more on average. 

The eSoil is made up of organic substances mixed with a conductive polymer called PEDOT, which can be found in things like sensors and OLED displays. Eleni Stavrinidou, the supervisor of the study, told Engadget that the soil’s conductivity was necessary for stimulating the plant roots. In this particular study, the researchers examined the effect of sending signals to barley seedlings over the span of 15 days before harvesting them for analysis. Applying a voltage as small as 0.5V on the eSoil electrically stimulates the roots, Stavrinidou explained. This, in turn, resulted in a recordable increase in the biomass of the electrically stimulated plants when compared to the non-stimulated seedings.

The stimulation’s effect on the barley seedlings was described as “steady” and “transient.” Stavrinidou told Engadget that nitrogen, one of the main nutrients involved in plant growth, was processed more efficiently through the stimulation. "We found that the stimulated plants could process the nutrients more efficiently however we don't understand how the stimulation is affecting this process,” Stavrindou explained, adding that the reason behind the growth process will be a focus of future studies.

PNAS

While hydroponic techniques are mainly used to grow vegetables, leafy greens and some vegetables like cucumbers and tomatoes, the eSoil could offer a solution to create new ways to increase crop yields in commercial settings and especially in places where environmental conditions impact plant growth. The study highlights that this technique could minimize the use of fertilizers in farming.

The opportunity for technological innovation in farming is huge considering the number of US farms has steadily declined since 1982, according to the Department of Agriculture. Last year, the number of US farms reached 2 million, down from 2.2 million in 2007. Not only are farms on the decline, but the US is losing acres of land due to a host of reasons that range from climate change to worsening economic outlook for farmers due to inflation, making farming in controlled environments more popular.

But beyond improving crop yield, the implementation of eSoil to hydroponic farms could make it more energy-conscious. While traditional hydroponic farms use up less water, they require more energy to run. “The eSoil consumes very little power in the microwatt range,” Stavrinidou said. Before this technology can be applied to large-scale agriculture and other types of crops, more studies need to be conducted to observe how electrical stimulation can impact the whole growth cycle of a plant throughout its entire lifespan and not just in the early stages of seedling maturation. Stavrinidou also said that her team plans on studying how the technique affects the growth of other plant species.

In a successful demonstration of new laser communications capabilities, NASA beamed an ultra-high definition video across 19 million miles of space from its Psyche spacecraft to Earth earlier this month. It’s the first time a UHD streaming video has been sent from deep space via laser. The history-making video? A 15-second clip of an orange cat named Taters chasing a laser dot.

The signal from the video, sent on December 11, made it to Earth in 101 seconds from Psyche’s location at the time, which was about 80 times as far as the distance between Earth and the moon. It was uploaded before the mission launched, and sent back home by a flight laser transceiver aboard Psyche at a rate of 267Mbps. The spacecraft, which set off on its journey in October, is on its way to study a metal-rich asteroid in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

“Despite transmitting from millions of miles away, it was able to send the video faster than most broadband internet connections,” said Ryan Rogalin, the receiver electronics lead for the project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. “In fact, after receiving the video at Palomar, it was sent to JPL over the internet, and that connection was slower than the signal coming from deep space.”

It’s been a busy year for spaceflight — the busiest ever, in fact. This fall, space companies once again broke the record for successful orbital launches in a single year with 2023’s 180th flight — Starlink satellites sent up by SpaceX on November 22, according to Ars Technica. The number has since climbed to 200.

That pace has been driven in no small part by Elon Musk’s aerospace venture, which set a goal of hitting 100 launches in 2023 and is nearly there, with 92 as of December 7. Private companies have become key players in the new space race, not only vying to serve as launch providers for science and communications missions but also ushering in the era of space tourism (for anyone rich enough to nab a ticket). But spaceflight is hard, especially if you’re trying to change the game with design innovations, and for all the wins in 2023, there have been plenty of hiccups. Here’s a look at how some of the leading private space companies made out this year.

SpaceX

REUTERS / Reuters

SpaceX seemingly didn’t stop once to catch its breath in 2023. The company managed a record-setting run of orbital launches with its reusable Falcon 9 and partially reusable Falcon Heavy rockets, with the lion’s share dedicated to delivering its Starlink internet satellites to orbit (there are now more than 5,000 of them circling Earth). SpaceX also delivered payloads for other entities, including NASA, and carried out multiple crewed flights with its Dragon capsule. Four astronauts arrived at the International Space Station in March aboard a Crew Dragon, and Axiom Space contracted SpaceX for a private astronaut mission that flew to the ISS in May.

As for its experimental Starship flights, things were expectedly a bit more volatile. Starship is the biggest and most powerful launch vehicle built to date, and is designed to support future human spaceflight missions, including NASA’s return to the moon as soon as 2025. The spacecraft itself is 165 feet tall, and when stacked on top of the Super Heavy rocket, the two tower at a combined 397 feet. Both Starship and Super Heavy are planned to be fully reusable. It’s all still in development, and after a few years of suborbital flight tests without Super Heavy — Starship has six of its own Raptor engines that enable flight — the vehicle advanced to orbital tests in 2023.

SpaceX launched Starship for the first time in an integrated flight with its Super Heavy rocket on April 20, and there were problems from the moment liftoff began. Multiple engines failed, and when Starship started its flip maneuver that allows for stage separation about 3 minutes in, it just kept spinning. It was eventually given the command to self-destruct, ending the test with an explosion.

The launch left behind a lot of damage on the ground, too, tearing up the launchpad at SpaceX’s Boca Chica test site, creating a sizable crater and starting a 3.5 acre fire on the grounds of a protected wildlife refuge. But for SpaceX, it was still considered a success — its goal was just to clear the tower. Starship made it to an altitude of about 24 miles before it got caught in that uncontrolled spin. Nevertheless, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded Starship after the destructive test, and ordered the company to complete dozens of corrective actions before it could fly again.

Starship did fly again before the end of 2023, and again Starship exploded. This time, though, Starship officially made it to space, climbing to about 92 miles above Earth. It also performed SpaceX’s first attempt at hot staging — where the upper stage begins to fire its engines while still attached to its lower stage — and was able to complete separation from the Super Heavy booster. It fell well short of the planned 90-minute flight, lasting only around eight minutes, but it demonstrated hot staging was possible.

Blue Origin

Blue Origin

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin had a strong run between late 2021 and 2022 with its reusable New Shepard suborbital booster and capsule, completing six crewed flights to the edge of space following years of tests and payload missions for industry clients including NASA. But in September 2022, one of its rockets suffered a main engine failure during an uncrewed research mission, and New Shepard spent a subsequent 15 months grounded.

After investigations into the cause of the event, the company’s then-CEO Bob Smith — who is stepping down in the new year — said in June 2023 that New Shepard would again “be ready to go fly within the next few weeks” pending FAA approval. The FAA closed its investigation at the end of September and gave Blue Origin 21 corrective actions to complete before New Shepard could take to the skies again. Around that time, Ars Technica reported that sources close to the matter said Blue Origin was targeting an October return to flight, but that window came and went with no liftoff or further updates. While it was starting to look like Blue Origin wouldn’t fly at all in 2023, the company finally announced New Shepard’s return in mid-December, and pulled off a successful suborbital payload flight on December 19.

It’s mostly been crickets for Blue Origin’s still-in-development New Glenn, as the company races to get it ready for its debut. New Glenn, a partially reusable heavy lift vehicle, is expected to make its inaugural flight sometime in 2024. It’s already been tapped by NASA to send a pair of small satellites to Mars later that year, but the timeline keeps slipping. It was originally supposed to launch in 2020, but was later rescheduled to 2021, then 2022 and now 2024. The company shared some photos of the rocket’s first and second stage being assembled at its Florida factory over the summer, and confirmed to the Orlando Sentinel that it was still shooting for next year.

Blue Origin has also been busy building engines for another launch provider, United Launch Alliance, which will be used for ULA’s heavy-lift Vulcan Centaur rocket. Both New Glenn and Vulcan will rely on Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine, and have faced delays tied to its development. Most recently, in July, CNBC reported that one of these engines exploded during testing at Blue Origin’s West Texas facility.

United Launch Alliance

REUTERS / Reuters

ULA had a quiet year as well, carrying out only three launches in 2023 with its Atlas V and Delta IV Heavy rockets — down from eight the year before. Both rockets are in the process of winding down their operations ahead of their official retirement. Delta IV Heavy has just one flight left, which is expected to take place in 2024, and all of Atlas V’s remaining flights have been sold and scheduled out over the next several years. One of ULA’s few 2023 launches was the first flight in its partnership with Amazon, and an Atlas V rocket successfully delivered two of the company’s prototype Project Kuiper internet satellites to orbit.

Most of ULA’s attention right now is focused on putting the final touches on Vulcan ahead of its maiden flight. Vulcan has been in development for roughly a decade, and it, too, has faced years of delays. There was some hope it would finally launch in the first half of 2023, with the company targeting liftoff in May, but after the explosion of a Centaur upper stage during tests, it pushed this target to the end of the year. In October, ULA had said it was planning to launch Vulcan for the first time on Christmas Eve from Cape Canaveral, Florida. But, in an update posted this week, the company confirmed Vulcan wouldn't be flying in 2023 after all. 

The rocket completed some critical tests in December, and is now scheduled to fly on January 8, 2024. Vulcan’s first flight, dubbed Certification-1, will send Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander to the moon. Once Vulcan is in operation, ULA will start ramping up flights again. It’s already got a contract with Amazon for 38 Project Kuiper launches on Vulcan. It just needs to get off the ground first.

Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab

Over the last few years, Rocket Lab has risen as a company to watch in the launch sector. In the first few months of 2023, it seemed on track to beat its 2022 record of nine orbital launches in one year with its Electron rocket. The company told SpaceFlight Now it was targeting 15 launches this time around. It made it to seven by the end of August, but in September, a problem with the rocket’s upper stage resulted in its failure to reach orbit. Rocket Lab has at least three dozen successful Electron flights under its belt, and only a handful of failures, but the latest is the third such failure in as many years.

Whether or not it proves to be a major setback has yet to be seen. The FAA in October cleared Rocket Lab to resume flights following the finalization of its investigation into the issue, which wrapped up in November. According to Rocket Lab, the problem was caused by “the rare interaction” of “three rare conditions” in the low-pressure space environment that created “an unexpected electrical arc” within the power supply system for the engine’s motor controllers, “shorting the battery packs that provide power to the launch vehicle’s second stage.” The company was still able to return to flight before the end of the year. On December 15, an Electron rocket delivered a Japanese satellite to orbit in a mission dubbed “The Moon God Awakens.”

Rocket Lab has been experimenting with different ways to recover its Electron boosters after flight —including mid-air catch attempts via helicopter — as it works toward rocket reusability. It’s also developing a medium-lift, partially reusable launch vehicle, Neutron, that’s expected to be completed in 2024.

Virgin Galactic & Virgin Orbit

Virgin Orbit

Virgin Galactic, founded by Richard Branson, managed a steady cadence of flights this year with its VSS Unity suborbital spaceplane. The rocket-powered craft made six flights in six months in 2023, including its first ever space tourism trip in August. In addition to research missions, it’s now completed a total of four flights with paying tourists on board, all of them completed between this summer and fall.

The company took a bit of a hit on the stock market in December, though, after Branson said he wouldn’t be putting any more of his own money into it. Speaking to the Financial Times, Branson said, “We don’t have the deepest pockets after COVID, and Virgin Galactic has got $1 billion, or nearly. It should, I believe, have sufficient funds to do its job on its own.” Following his comments, shares took a nosedive. But, they’ve since climbed back up.

Virgin Orbit, on the other hand, didn’t fare so well in 2023. Branson’s Virgin Galactic spinoff announced in May that it was shutting down a month after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company was formed in 2017 with the intention of becoming a launch provider for small satellite missions. It had a unique approach to getting payloads to space; Virgin Orbit used a modified Boeing 747 plane to launch its rocket, LauncherOne, from the air. 

But it struggled to keep up with the competition, and in January, it suffered a failure during what was the first ever orbital launch from the UK. As a result, the satellites it had been commissioned by the UK and US governments to deliver didn’t make it to orbit. It was the company’s second failure out of a total of just six missions, and it proved unable to rebound.

Newcomers hit hurdles

California-based Relativity Space has been working for years to build the first fully 3D-printed reusable rockets, with plans for an eventual medium-to-heavy-lift vehicle that could send missions to the moon and Mars. Its first rocket, Terran 1, had its inaugural launch in March this year, but it failed not long after liftoff. It hit some key milestones, though, making it through Max-Q (the point of maximum dynamic pressure on a spaceship during flight) and stage separation. Now, Relativity Space is turning its attention to its larger vehicle, Terran 2, which it plans to have ready for launch in 2026 from Cape Canaveral.

ABL Space, also based in California, conducted its own first flight in 2023 with the launch of its RS1 rocket. Shortly after liftoff, all nine of RS1’s engines shut down, causing the vehicle to crash back down to Earth. In a Substack post at the end of October, CEO Harry O’Hanley detailed some of the work the company has been doing in the months since the first flight to prepare for its second launch, but no date for Flight 2 has been announced just yet.

More to come in 2024

David Ducros/ ESA/ Arianespace

In many ways, 2023 has felt like a primer for what’s to come in 2024, which is shaping up to be a big year for spaceflight based on the timelines of current projects, both private and government-sponsored. SpaceX has already said it’s planning to hit 12 launches a month in 2024, which would bring it to 144 by the end of the year.

This year marked the end of the road for Arianespace’s long-running Ariane 5 rocket, which has become the leading launch vehicle in Europe for heavy missions over its 27 years of service. Ariane 5 had its final flight in July, leaving the continent with few launch options for big missions until the release of its successor, Ariane 6. Like others, though, Ariane 6 has been hit by delay after delay over the years, pushing it way behind its originally targeted 2020 debut. The rocket, which Arianespace is developing for the European Space Agency, is expected to make its first flight in summer 2024.

NASA and Boeing are planning the first crewed flight of the Starliner reusable spacecraft capsule, which after being back for the umpteenth time this year, is now slated to be ready around March 2024. NASA also plans to launch the next phase of its moon mission, Artemis II, as early as November 2024. It will be the second flight for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and will have four astronauts aboard the Orion capsule for a lunar flyby. But as always, it’d be reasonable to expect some delays.

2023 was an important year for patients with sickle cell disease. Prior to CRISPR, the only cure for the life-long ailment was a bone marrow transplant, which is notoriously dangerous and costly. This month, the FDA approved Vertex’s “Casgevy,” a CRISPR-based therapy for the treatment of sickle cell disease in patients 12 and older. The landmark approval made the therapeutic the first genetically edited therapy to reach the general market.

Casgevy, which also received the greenlight from regulators in the UK for another blood disorder called beta thalassemia, works by being administered in a single-infusion of genetically modified stem cells to a patient. Clinical study participants that took Casgevy were free from symptoms associated with sickle cell disease, like periodic episodes of extreme pain due to blocked blood flow through vessels, for up to a year.

CRISPR, which modifies precise regions of a human’s DNA strands, was once thought to be a far off scientific innovation. Human cells were first modified using CRISPR in clinical trials in China back in 2016. Less than a decade later, these landmark approvals have set the stage for future nods by regulators for other CRISPR-based therapies that can treat things like HIV, cancers and high blood pressure. “Gene therapy holds the promise of delivering more targeted and effective treatments,” Nicole Verdun, director of the Office of Therapeutic Products within the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research said in a recent press release.

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CRISPR-based gene editing can be designed as a therapeutic for a number of diseases. A scientist can either delete, disrupt or insert segments of DNA to treat conditions by either targeting specific genes or engineering new cell therapies. The editing process can occur ex vivo (outside the body), in the same way Casgevy does, or in vivo (inside the body). Using CRISPR, sickle cell patients’ blood stem cells are modified in a lab before they are re-infused via a single-dose infusion as part of a hematopoietic transplant.

Neville Sanjana, a core faculty member at the New York Genome Center and associate professor in the Department of Biology at New York University, runs the Sanjana lab, which develops gene therapies for complex diseases like autism and cancer. “One of the really fundamental characteristics of CRISPR is its programmability,” Sanjana told Engadget. While working at the Zhang lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Sanjana says he helped design the “guide RNA” that became the blueprint for Vertex’s Casgevy. “CRISPR screens can be powerful tools for understanding any disease or genetic trait,” Sanjana said. Right now, he said biomedical folks are focused on applying CRISPR-based therapies for really serious inheritable diseases.

While it does “set a precedent” to have these first CRISPR-based gene therapies out there, it could also mean that regulators and the general public will regard future innovations in the space as “less novel,” Katie Hasson, a researcher with the Center for Genetics and Society (CGS) told Engadget. The CGS is a public interest and social justice organization that is focused on making sure gene editing is developed and distributed for good. Hasson explained, it doesn't mean that because one got approved that all other innovative therapies to come after it will not get as much scrutiny.

Beyond therapeutics, gene editing has very broad applications for the discovery and understanding of diseases. Scientists can use CRISPR to explore the origins of things like cancer and pave paths for therapeutics and incurable diagnoses, but that's not all there is to it. Scientists still need to conduct “considerable experimental research” when it comes to bringing an actual therapeutic to fruition, Sanjana said. “When we focus on therapeutic activity at a particular site in the genome, we need to make sure that there will not be any unintended consequences in other parts of the genome.”

Still, the spotlight will always shine a brighter light on the flashy developments of CRISPR from a therapeutic standpoint. Currently, a new gene editing method is being developed to target specific cells in a process called “cancer shredding“ for difficult-to-treat brain cancer. Scientists have even discovered a pathway to engineer bacteria to discover tumorous cells. However, there are barriers to using CRISPR in clinical practice due to the lack of “safe delivery systems to target the tissues and cells.”

“Maybe by curing one disease, you might give them a different disease — especially if you think of cancer. We call that a secondary malignancy,” Sanjana said. While there is strong reason for concern, one cure creating a pathway for other diseases or cancers is not unique to CRISPR. For example, CAR T cell therapy, which uses an entirely different approach to cell-based gene therapy and is not reflective of CRISPR, is a lifesaving cancer treatment that the FDA discovered can, in certain situations, cause cancer.

“We definitely don't want any unintended consequences. There are bits of the genome that if you edit them by mistake, it's probably no big deal but then there are other genes that are vitally important,” Sanjana said. Direct assessment of “off-target effects” or events in which a gene edit incorrectly edits another point on a DNA strand in vivo is challenging.

The FDA recommends that after a clinical trials’ period of investigatory study looking at the efficacy of a gene editing-based therapy, there needs to be a 15-year long term follow up after product administration. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said that the agency’s approval of Casgevy follows “rigorous evaluations of the scientific and clinical data.” Right now, researchers are focused on improving the precision and accuracy of gene editing and having the proper follow up is absolutely well merited, Sanjana explained. “The process right now is a careful one.”

Hasson believes that the 15-year recommendation is a good start. “I know that there is a big problem overall with pharmaceutical companies actually following through and doing those long term post-market studies.”

That’s where new approaches come into play. Base editing, a CRISPR-derived genome editing method that makes targeted changes to DNA sequences, has been around since 2016. Drugs that use base editing have already made headway in the scientific community. Verve Therapeutics developed a gene edited therapy that can lower cholesterol in patients with a single infusion. At higher doses, Verve said the treatment has the potential to reduce proteins associated with bad cholesterol for 2.5 years. Base editing, like CRISPR, has many potential applications for treatment and discovery. For example, base editing could repair a gene mutation that causes childhood blindness. Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine also found base editing could help understand what genetic changes influence a patient’s response to cancer therapies.

Base editors use CRISPR to bring another functional element to a specific place in the genome. “But it doesn't matter whether it's CRISPR cutting or base editing… any time you're modifying DNA…you would want to know what the off target effects are and you can bet that the FDA wants to know that too. You're going to need to collect data using standard models like cell culture, or animal models to show there are zero or near zero off-target impacts,” Sanjana said.

CRISPR-based therapies already show high therapeutic potential for conditions beyond sickle cell disease. From blood based treatments, to edited allogeneic immune cells for cancers, there are a number of human clinical trials underway or expected to start next year. Trials for gene-edited therapies that target certain cells for cancer and autoimmune diseases are expected to begin in 2024.

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It won't be until 2025 before we get a better understanding of how Excision BioTherapeutics’ CRISPR-based therapy works to treat HIV. The application of gene editing as a therapeutic for Alzhiemer’s is still in the early stages, with mice at the forefront of research. Similarly, University College London researchers proved that CRISPR has promise as a potential therapeutic for treatment-resistant forms of childhood epilepsy. In a recent study, a gene edited therapy developed in the lab was shown to reduce seizures in mice.

But the clinical process of getting CRISPR to safely and effectively work as it's intended isn’t the only hurdle. The pricing of CRISPR and related therapies in general will be a huge barrier to access. The Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), a research group that hopes to advance ethical use of these gene editing in medicine, estimates that the average CRISPR-based therapy can cost between $500,000 and $2 million per patient. The IGI has built out an “Affordability Task Force” to tackle the issue of expanding access to these novel therapies. Vertex’s sickle cell treatment costs a cool $2.2 million per treatment, before hospital costs. David Altshuler, the chief scientific officer at Vertex, told MIT Tech Review that wants to innovate the delivery of the therapeutic and make it more accessible to patients. “I think the goal will be achieved sooner by finding another modality, like a pill that can be distributed much more effectively,” Altshuler said.

“Access is a huge issue and it's a huge equity issue,” the CGS’ Hasson told Engadget. “I think we would also like to look at equity here even more broadly. It's not just about who gets access to the medication once it comes on the market but really how can we prioritize equity in the research that's leading to these treatments.” The US already does a poor job of providing equitable healthcare access as it is, Hasson explained, which is why it's important for organizations like CGS to pose roundtable discussions about implementing guardrails that value ethical considerations. “If you support people having access to healthcare, it should encompass these cutting edge treatments as well.”

Blue Origin’s 24th mission is officially a success. The New Shepard rocket took off as planned this morning and the booster and crew capsule safely separated mid-flight and landed back on this great blue marble we call Earth.

This was an uncrewed mission, but it carried 33 science payloads into low orbit, more than half of them from NASA. The launch allowed for a few minutes of zero gravity in which researchers conducted remote studies on these payloads. For instance, a payload from Honeybee Robotics studied the strength of planetary soils under differing gravity conditions. The manifest also included 38,000 student postcards from the Club for the Future initiative.

To those following this mission, the original launch was scrapped on Monday due to a ground system issue that was, obviously, handled. There were no issues reported regarding today’s flight, though there was a slight holdup of a few minutes added to the countdown.

This mission was basically a do-over of a flight from last year that ended prematurely due to a malfunction of the New Shepard booster’s hydrogen-based rocket engine. This anomaly led to the suspension of Blue Origin launches until an investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was completed.

The FAA’s investigation ended in September, freeing up Blue Origin for more launches once it handled a suite of corrective actions mandated by the agency. This included a redesign of the booster’s engine and nozzle as well as some procedural changes. The company hasn’t announced any official plans for future crewed flights, but recently installed an elevator at the launch tower. This is to make future launches “more accessible to people with disabilities, and more people in general,” launch commentator Erika Wagner said during today’s livestream.

To that end, Blue Origin has begun ramping up promotions to attract customers for crewed flights. You can also apply to add a payload to a future launch.