Rocket Lab announced Wednesday that its Neutron launch vehicle won't fly until 2027, citing an issue discovered during manufacturing of the rocket's carbon composite structures.

The announcement was public confirmation of what nearly everyone inside Rocket Lab and the wider space industry already knew. The most recent official update from Rocket Lab in August suggested the company still held hope of delivering the first Neutron rocket to its launch pad at Wallops Island, Virginia, before the end of this year, a schedule that would have almost certainly pushed the first flight into 2027.

But Rocket Lab's statement Wednesday about Neutron's schedule suggests the company is still struggling with manufacturing the rocket's large booster stage. Neutron's reusable first stage is made of carbon composite structures, which offer low weight, high strength, and corrosion resistance. But carbon composites in aerospace are generally harder to manufacture than metallic structures.

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Most planetary scientists will tell you the heyday of Venus exploration was more than a generation ago. That is about to change.

Two NASA missions are on track to launch to Venus in the early 2030s. The first, known as the Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging (DAVINCI), is now scheduled for launch in December 2030, a year earlier than previously planned. DAVINCI will send a parachute-assisted descent probe through the atmosphere of Venus, returning the first direct images of the planet's surface since 1982. A second mission, Venus Emissivity, Radio science, InSAR, Topography, And Spectroscopy (VERITAS), will follow with a launch in November 2032 to map the Venusian surface by radar from orbit.

The European Space Agency is building another orbiter, Envision, for launch to Venus in 2032. The Venus armada might get started as soon as next year, when Rocket Lab aims to launch a privately funded probe to search for signs of organic material in the planet's clouds.

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Space has plenty of room for more megaconstellations, but only if all operators are willing to share information about where their satellites are and where they're going, a top executive at SpaceX and its AI subsidiary said this week.

Michael Nicolls, SpaceX's vice president for Starlink and president of Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, used a presentation Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress in Turkey as a clarion call for improved data-sharing among satellite operators.

SpaceX's Starlink constellation now has more than 11,000 satellites, about two-thirds of all active spacecraft in low-Earth orbit. Radars and telescopes routinely track thousands more pieces of space junk.

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It's no surprise that NASA's new tack toward foreign partnerships—good deals only, please—is challenging preconceived notions of international cooperation in space.

Without a massive budget hike, the US space agency's emphasis on building a Moon Base and winning a competition for lunar real estate and resources with China will inevitably leave lesser priorities behind.

Gone is the Lunar Gateway, a space station that was to be assembled in orbit around the Moon. For the United States, Gateway was an unnecessary distraction and expense as NASA goes all-in on placing a surface station near the Moon's south pole.

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