Rocket Report: Russia’s new spacecraft; is the US sabotaging Iranian rockets?

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base. (credit: Aurich Lawson/SpaceX)

Welcome to Edition 1.36 of the Rocket Report! Lots of news this week on smaller rockets and the spaceports around the world that aspire to launch them. There's also an interesting report that may explain, at least in part, why recent Iranian attempts to launch rockets have ended in failure. And so much more...

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and 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.

Firefly targeting late 2019 launch. As part of a feature, Ars explores the factors that led to the dissolution of Firefly in 2016 and the investments by Max Polyakov that brought the company back in 2017. The company's first attempt at its Alpha rocket strove for idealism (with aspects such as an aerospike engine design) that might ultimately have cut costs but required more time and development funds to realize. Eventually, both of those resources ran out.

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