Artemis II Looms as NASA Reorients Moon Plans and Rockets Face Setbacks

The Rocket Report this week centers on NASA’s pivot from a lunar station toward a Moon base and a nuclear-electric propulsion demo (Space Reactor-1) as Artemis II nears its circumlunar flight. The piece also tracks launch cadence and bottlenecks: Isar’s Spectrum launch delay, Amazon Leo’s accelerated target despite ULA’s Vulcan grounding, and the Space Force moving more missions to alternative providers; Cape Canaveral saw a mysterious missile test, while Russia advanced Baikonur operations and the Starlink-style Rassvet satellites. In the background, ULA’s Vulcan grounding spurs talk of shifting national-security launches to SpaceX, Site 31 at Baikonur is back online, Progress MS-33 docked manually, and cyber defenses expand to protect launches.}