Rocket Report: NASA validates new engine design; Chinese firm tests mini Starship

Enlarge / United Launch Alliance hoists its Vulcan Cert-1 booster into the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral. (credit: United Launch Alliance)

Welcome to Edition 5.23 of the Rocket Report! This has been a really fun week for US rockets: Electron made a smashing debut in a launch from Virginia, Vulcan went vertical in Florida, and Starship passed a key test en route to its first orbital launch. I'm looking forward to more great leaps in launch later this year.

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.

Rocket Lab makes successful US debut. For years, the Electron rocket and the company behind it had been stuck in limbo at the Virginia launch site, waiting on various approvals—for regulatory agencies to share enough paperwork with each other to convince everyone that the launch was safe. Then weather and the end-of-year holidays kept pushing the launch back. But on Tuesday, everything went as smoothly as it is possible to imagine, and the Electron shot to orbit almost as soon as the launch window opened, Ars reports.