We are mere days away from the launch of Googlebooks, the long-awaited Android laptops that Google hopes will compete with macOS and Windows. But what of Chromebooks? There have been hints that Google plans to sunset its web-first ChromeOS platform, and a new support page lays out some of the specifics.

The support page, spotted by 9to5Google, aims to explain the role of Googlebooks to Chrome Enterprise and Education customers. The page starts off by noting that Googlebook OS, which is Android even if Google doesn't like to say that, will offer an enhanced experience with deeper system capabilities and lots of AI.

Like Chromebooks, Googlebooks are guaranteed 10 years of software support. However, the latest Chromebook models won't get that in the traditional way. Google's support page says that it plans to continue ChromeOS support through "mid-2034," so there are already devices with support windows beyond that.

This 2034 timeline was previously mentioned in a court filing, so this is not something Google has just decided to do. However, putting it on a support page is different than including it on page 18 of a 30-page legal document. Even if Googlebooks are aimed mainly at consumers right now, Google plans to make it a replacement for the Chromebooks used by its business and education customers.

Rather than get into a Windows XP situation in which it had to keep extending update support, the support page says that Google intends to upgrade newer Chromebooks to the Googlebook OS. It doesn't have specifics on the timeline or which models will be included, but the company does note that, in many cases, this will be a "direct migration."

Googlebooks are launching at much higher prices than Chromebooks. Credit: HP

It's understandable that Google doesn't want to make this more clear—Chromebooks may not have caught on for consumers, but they're big in schools and business. Googlebooks won't have comparable management tools for a year or more, according to the support page. If Google is more open about ditching ChromeOS, its Chromebook business could take a dive before Googlebooks are even theoretically in a position to take over.

In its public statements, Google representatives have only said that Chromebooks will continue to exist. However, this guidance certainly makes it sounds like the platform's days are numbered. That may present issues for organizations like schools that became accustomed to getting capable, easily managed PCs for dirt cheap. As Google has explained on numerous occasions, Googlebooks are intended to be a premium product.

Maybe Google's partners will explore budget-friendly Googlebooks eventually, but the initial lineup starts at $899. It's impossible to spend that kind of money on a Chromebook today.

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The cost of healthcare in general is a debilitating, pre-existing condition for Americans. But the high prices of prescription drugs usually stand out as a pain point. While there are many insidious reasons why Americans pay more—often far more—for their medicines than people in peer countries, exploitation of the US patent system is an obvious one.

A study published Monday in JAMA highlights just how much patent exploitation has grown since 1990. In that time, researchers found that the number of patents on small-molecule drugs has more than tripled, going from an average of 2.1 patents per drug approved in 1990 to 6.9 for those approved in 2019.

Most of the growth was in "nonprimary" patents—patents that generally aren't related to a drug's active ingredient, but are instead for things like minor tweaks to a drug's nonactive ingredients, updates to the way the drug is used, or the design of specialty delivery devices, such as auto-injectors. Together, those extra patents on an individual drug can create what's called a "patent thicket," which delays the release of affordable generics on the market, keeping drug prices higher for longer without actual clinical advancements.

The study—led by S. Sean Tu, an expert in drug and patent law at the University of Alabama—found that the increase in patents per drug extended the time in which a drug was patented from an average of two years in 1990 to an average of 6.1 years in 2019.

"Because patent protection typically determines how long brand-name firms can charge monopoly prices, the rapid growth of nonprimary patents may contribute to limited price competition that benefits patients and the health care system by helping avoid unnecessary spending," Tu and colleagues write.

Patent overgrowth

For the study, Tu and colleagues used publicly available data to look at small-molecule drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration and the patents filed on those drugs. (Other types of approved drugs, like biologics, are not systematically listed by the FDA in a publicly available database.) The researchers categorized the types of patents associated with each drug and how they affected the term in which the drug remained under patent. The researchers focused on drugs granted FDA approval between 1990 to 2019, giving a five-year follow-up period for patents. Still, this likely underestimates the current sizes of patent thickets, as patent activity is now extending up to nine years after FDA approval, the authors write.

Between 1990 and 2019, Americans saw their spending on prescription drugs soar. According to a Peterson-KFF analysis, the per capita, inflation-adjusted spending on prescription drugs in the US was $291 in 1990. By 2019, spending had risen to $1,084. Earlier this year, an analysis by the Commonwealth Fund found that Americans spent nearly twice as much on prescription drugs as the average spending of other high-income countries.

During the study period, "primary patents" on drugs—those usually related to the active ingredient—changed little. But nonprimary patents more than tripled. Overall, the FDA approved 1,981 small-molecule drugs between 1990 and 2019. For those 1,981 drugs, there were 10,940 patents total. Nonprimary patents made up 84 percent of them.

A key limitation of the study is that it didn't look directly at delays to the availability of generic drugs, which are likely linked to patent thicket growth. Tu and colleagues note that drug makers often argue that additional patents don't delay generic drugs. But the examples often used in those arguments are drugs approved before 2010, when patent thicket growth was lower than it is today.

The authors call for various reforms to cut back patent thickets, including more scrutiny by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), as well as laws that could limit minor add-on patents. They also suggest allowing courts to force disgorgement of drug companies found to have abused patents.

Without regulatory reforms soon, this boom in patent thickets "will likely entrench extended exclusivity periods that are disconnected from meaningful therapeutic innovation and continue to complicate and delay generic entry," Tu and colleagues write.

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SpaceX's Starship rocket thundered into the sky over South Texas early Monday. It was the 14th test flight of the world's most powerful launch vehicle. This time, however, the rocket's massive upper stage squeezed out some extra oomph from its Raptor engines and accelerated to orbital velocity.

On all of Starship's previous flights, SpaceX intentionally dialed back the full capability of the rocket to fly a suborbital trajectory, slow enough for Earth's gravity to pull the vehicle back into the atmosphere before it could complete a full lap around the planet. After several successful suborbital flights in a row, SpaceX officials decided this launch should go all the way to low-Earth orbit. And it did.

What's more, SpaceX packed 26 of the company's newest generation of Starlink broadband satellites into the rocket's cargo bay. One by one, the flat-packed satellites—too large to fit inside SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket—were released from Starship's payload deployer using a system of pulleys and cables to eject the satellites overboard like a Pez dispenser spits out candy.

A dramatic morning

Starship Flight 14 began with a booming sendoff from Starbase, Texas, at 8:49 am EDT (7:49 am local time; 12:49 UTC) as 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines pushed the 407-foot-tall (124-meter) rocket off its launch pad. The engines generated up to 18 million pounds of thrust to propel the fuel-laden rocket into the sky over Starbase, SpaceX's private spaceport just north of the US-Mexico border.

Heading east from South Texas, the rocket powered through the speed of sound and soared into the stratosphere before its Super Heavy booster stage detached from Starship's upper stage. The booster executed a rapid high-altitude turnaround to begin thrusting back toward the Texas coast. Several minutes later, the Super Heavy first stage made a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico just off the coast of Starbase.

The upper stage continued its climb into space before shutting off its Raptor engines a little more than eight minutes into the fight. Up to this point, the rocket followed a similar trajectory as SpaceX's previous Starship test flights.

The company's flight control team had a few minutes to decide whether to proceed with the next phase of the flight: a restart of one of Starship's Raptor engines to add the final bit of speed required to reach orbital velocity. For a brief period, it appeared as if SpaceX was going to forego the orbital flight and allow Starship to continue coasting toward a reentry over the Indian Ocean, as it had done many times before.

The question of what to do next centered on the performance of the rocket's Raptor engines. One of the six Raptors on Starship shut down prematurely during its ascent burn, and the five others burned longer to compensate for the malfunction. Less of a worry for Starship's orbital flight, but still a concern for future launches, was the apparent failure of two of the 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster—one during launch and another during the booster's return maneuvers.

Dan Huot, a SpaceX commentator providing live updates on the company's webcast of Monday's flight, initially reported that mission managers were going to abort the orbit insertion burn. Officials ultimately decided to proceed. The failed Raptor engine was not the same one that needed to fire to place the rocket into low-Earth orbit and steer it toward reentry and splashdown at the end of the flight.

A view inside the engine bay of the Starship rocket, with three "sea level" Raptor engines in the middle and three "vacuum" Raptor engines in the outer ring. One of the steerable center engines was used for the orbit insertion and de-orbit burns. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX engineers were being "extremely conservative" in their planning for Monday's flight, Huot said. A worst-case scenario for the first orbital flight of Starship would have been a failure that stranded the 100-ton vehicle in orbit. That could have caused it to fall back to Earth in an uncontrolled manner, creating a potential risk to public safety.

"We were only going to go if we were very confident in the core systems that have to work to get you out of orbit once you're up there," Huot said. "We took some extra time, added some extra drama, but we were able to clear the ... three center engines and do our first ever orbital insertion burn. So that was a huge success."

The Raptor engine selected for the insertion burn performed flawlessly, reigniting for 19 seconds to give Starship the nudge it needed to overcome the pull of Earth's gravity. The maneuver added approximately 204 mph to Starship's speed, a little more than 1 percent of the rocket's overall velocity, to reach a stable orbit at an altitude of about 171 miles (276 kilometers).

Delivering for Starlink

Achieving orbit meant SpaceX could continue with the next phase of the mission. This involved the first deployment of commercial-grade Starlink V3 satellites for the company's global broadband network. SpaceX launched a batch of Starlink V3s on the previous Starship flight in July, but that mission was suborbital, and the satellites quickly burned up as they fell back into the atmosphere.

The Starlink V3s will bring significant upgrades to the Starlink constellation. The satellites can only launch on Starship. They're too large to fit inside the payload fairing of the Falcon 9 rocket, which SpaceX has used to deploy more than 12,000 Starlinks since 2019. The Starlink V3s, each weighing about 2 metric tons (4,400 pounds) at launch, are fitted with larger power-generating solar arrays and improved antennas.

The changes enable each Starlink V3 platform to add 1 Tbps of capacity to the Starlink network, 10 times more than the older satellites launching on Falcon 9, according to SpaceX. There were 26 Starlink satellites aboard Monday's launch. Future Starships could deliver up to 60 Starlink V3s to orbit on a single flight. On its website, SpaceX wrote that Starlink V3s will "greatly expand the network's capacity and user speeds."

Upgraded Starlink satellites will also improve the network's performance for direct-to-device connectivity. Future Starlink V3s could also be used for SpaceX's Starshield service for the US military. SpaceX reported that its satellite team established contact with all 26 Starlink V3s after separating from Starship.

The satellites launched Monday were initially deployed into a low-inclination orbit, ranging about 30 degrees north and south of the equator, due to strict range safety rules restricting overflight of populated areas during launch. SpaceX is expected to launch Starship into higher-inclination orbits as it gains flight experience with Starship and debuts new launch pads in Florida and Louisiana.

One of SpaceX's Starlink V3 satellites is seen exiting the rocket's Pez deployer as the vehicle soared over South Africa. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX's first Starlink V3s had to wait a while for a ride to space, but Monday's flight showed Starship is up to the task. SpaceX started phasing out Starlink launches on the Falcon 9 earlier this year. There are no more Falcon 9 launches for Starlink on SpaceX's schedule at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Falcon 9 launches to place older-generation Starlink satellites into polar orbit will continue from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, at least for a while longer.

Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space, expects SpaceX to work on integrating the new capabilities of Starlink V3s into the Starlink network in the coming months. More already-built Starlink V3s will likely be on most of SpaceX's next series of Starship flights.

"They just sat at a warehouse in Texas, as I understand it, because the satellites were finished well ahead of the launch vehicle," Henry said in a live broadcast of Monday's Starship flight hosted by Spaceflight Now (the author of this story was also a guest).

SpaceX said before Monday's flight that this group of Starlink V3 satellites will be integrated into the broader constellation. They should begin serving customers as soon as a few weeks after launch, according to SpaceX, but it will likely take many more launches for Starlink customers to notice a difference in their service.

"It's great that they have the capacity onboard in orbit, but until there is a meaningful number of V3 satellites launched, they won't be the spacecraft that defines the user experience just yet," Henry said.

Calling it a day

Soon after completing the satellite deployment sequence, SpaceX officials decided to bring Starship home earlier than planned, giving up on a chance to test the vehicle's long-duration endurance in orbit.

"Out of an abundance of caution given the engine issue experienced during ascent, the flight control team decided to limit the duration spent on orbit and proceeded with de-orbiting Starship to a splashdown location in the northern Pacific Ocean," SpaceX wrote in a recap of Monday's test flight. "This area was one of two pre-coordinated landing zones identified before launch that was cleared of sea and air traffic."

The de-orbit burn went off without a hitch, and Starship plunged back into the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean, guiding itself toward a splashdown north of Hawaii, one of multiple backup return sites mapped out in advance of Monday's flight. The reentry was uneventful, and Starship's heat shield appeared to hold up well against temperatures up to 2,600° Fahrenheit (1,430° Celsius) as the vehicle streaked over the remote Pacific.

A bird's-eye view of Starship in orbit captured by a camera on one of the Starlink V3 satellites. Credit: SpaceX

Like its most recent flights, Starship dropped belly-first through scattered clouds before turning upright for a final landing burn. The splashdown was right on target, with the final moments of descent in view of a buoy prepositioned at the backup landing zone.

Splashdown occurred at 11:57 am EDT (15:57 UTC), a little more than three hours after liftoff, three times longer than Starship's previous suborbital flights. The original flight plan called for a mission lasting nearly 10 hours.

As expected, the vehicle tipped over and broke apart in a fireball upon reaching the ocean, and was unable to replicate the serendipitous intact splashdown on Starship's last flight in July. SpaceX anticipates most of Starship's water landings to have fiery endings, but the days of Starship splashdowns may be nearing their end.

"Most importantly, Starship made it to orbit," Huot said after splashdown. "We did our first ever orbital insertion burn. We kept the drama up a little bit as we were going through that coast time making sure everything was good. We were only going do all this stuff today if we were really, really sure that those sea level engines on Starship were going to perform because we needed to do that de-orbit burn.

"We were able to get there," Huot said. "We got on orbit. Teams continued to look at it. We were going to get the data that we wanted, so we made the call due to this earlier reentry to [near] Hawaii."

What's next for Starship?

SpaceX has a steady stream of Starships and Super Heavy boosters in production and testing at Starbase, setting up for an increasing cadence of flights in the coming months. The company has not announced any official launch dates, but a schedule of "upcoming high-profile missions" released by the Federal Aviation Administration's Air Traffic Control System Command Center this week indicated the next Starship flight could take off from Starbase in October.

Ground crews are moving into testing and activation of a new Starship launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with an eye toward hosting a Starship launch there before the end of the year. A cavernous new Starship factory is also taking shape at Kennedy. SpaceX is expected to transport Super Heavy and Starship rockets to the Florida launch base from its factory in Texas until the new on-site production facility is complete.

The results from Monday's test flight suggest that SpaceX still has work to do on the latest iteration of its Raptor engine. The Raptor 3 engine variant uses a lighter, streamlined design, combining a lower part count with higher thrust.

A family portrait of SpaceX's Raptor engines. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX has now encountered engine problems on each of the three Starship flights that have used Raptor 3s. During a May flight, one Raptor engine shut down prematurely on the Super Heavy booster, and another stopped running on Starship's upper stage a few minutes later. Multiple Raptor engines failed to ignite on the launch pad for the next flight in July, prompting a last-second abort. SpaceX swapped out two of the engines before proceeding with a successful launch a week later.

Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, wrote on his social media platform X that the changes introduced with the Raptor 3 engine "greatly reduces mass and leak paths, but makes it harder to replace some parts."

"While deleting parts sounds easy in theory, it is actually very difficult to figure out how to do so in practice and requires many iterations," Musk continued. The inside of the Raptor 3 engine "has very complex geometry that can only be manufactured using highly modified 3D metal printing," he wrote in another post.

Although the Raptor 3 is still a work in progress, the propulsion issues have not stopped SpaceX from making headway with Starship, and it's unlikely the engine problems on Monday's flight will delay the next Starship launch.

The FAA is also giving SpaceX the all-clear on Monday's flight. The regulatory agency will not require SpaceX to conduct a formal mishap investigation. An FAA spokesperson told Ars: "All flight events for both the Starship vehicle and the Super Heavy booster occurred within the scope of planned and FAA authorized activities."

Next on SpaceX's to-do list will likely be an attempt to bring Starship back to Starbase for a catch by the launch pad's giant mechanical arms, repeating a feat engineers have already accomplished with Super Heavy booster. Returning Starship to the launch site will require a reentry over land, necessitating additional safety reviews to ensure no undue risk to populated areas as the vehicle approaches Starbase. Eventually, SpaceX aims to make these landings routine enough to enable full and rapid reuse of Super Heavy and Starship.

Other near-term objectives for Starship include longer-duration orbital flights and then the first demonstration of in-orbit refueling, a prerequisite for future missions to land astronauts on the Moon under the auspices of NASA's Artemis program.

In the meantime, expect Starship to launch many more Starlink satellites. Commercial and government demand for Starlink services, along with SpaceX's longer-term plans for orbital data centers, will keep Starship plenty busy as engineers bring the rocket's more advanced capabilities online.

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Last month, we shared word of a Stanford University study that found entry-level employment in so-called "AI-impacted" occupations lagging well behind that in other fields. Now, a new working paper from economics researchers at Munich's CESifo finds the opposite, arguing point blank that "there is no evidence of any significant, widespread displacement or reduction in hiring of recent college graduates in absolute or relative levels."

In "The Early Impacts of AI on Employment Among Recent College Graduates," researchers Robert Fairlie and Jane Wu said they decided to focus on recent graduates "because changes in labor demand may first appear through reductions in hiring." As AI gets good enough to at least perform the "relatively standardized tasks" in many entry-level office jobs, they argue, firms could reduce new hiring for simpler roles rather than laying off more experienced long-term employees.

There's some reason to believe 2026's graduating job seekers might be more at risk of AI displacement than those graduating just a year or two prior. The CESifo researchers point to a recent sharp increase in the number of firms "replacing a large number of employee tasks with AI" in a Census survey, as well as broad increases in AI spending per employee and ChatGPT Enterprise token use in the last 12 months.

Anecdotally, some major names also think that this is the year AI is finally capable enough to start replacing the jobs of some recent graduates. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said earlier this year that "AI literally until December [2025] was not actually good enough to do any of the jobs that they’re actually cutting." And BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said in March that "the speed at which AI is changing" led him to worry that "when this year's college graduates enter the workforce, we could see the highest unemployment rate among them in years—even without a recession."

Nothing to see here (yet)

To determine if those kinds of worries were valid, the CESifo researchers looked at detailed microdata from the US Census' Current Population Survey to determine unemployment trends among recent college graduates (i.e., Bachelor's degree recipients 22 to 25 years old who aren't pursuing higher degrees). Since these unemployment numbers predictably spike as fresh graduates enter the job market in the summer months, the researchers looked at year-over-year and seasonal trends going back to 2022 (which is both the year employment returned to pre-pandemic levels and the year ChatGPT was released).

The 2026 jobs market looks incredibly normal for recent graduates. Credit: CESifo

At a base level, the summer unemployment rate for those young college graduates in 2026 (7.3 percent) was well within the range seen in previous years (from 6.3 percent in 2022 to 7.8 percent in 2024). The 2026 numbers were similarly unremarkable when expanded to include graduates who told the CPS survey they "want a job" even though they weren't actively looking for one (and thus don't officially count as part of the official "unemployed" labor force).

To test the robustness of these findings, the researchers created statistical tests to compare the recent college graduates both with non-college graduates in the same age range and with older college graduates (aged 30 to 49). They also broke down employment by potential "AI exposure" based on a 2023 study of which job roles AI systems were best equipped for.

In almost all of the comparisons, any trend differences between the groups in the 2022 to 2026 time frame studied were not statistically significant. Overall, the data “tell a consistent story in which unemployment among recent college graduates in summer 2026 was not unusually high relative to earlier summers” across comparison groups, the researchers wrote.

So how does this analysis square with the recent Stanford study that found an almost completely opposite result? Well, Stanford’s study was based on payroll data from HR firm ADP, which covers a decent cross-section of the economy but might miss some elements of a wider Census survey. The ADP data also looks at the total supply of jobs in various fields, while the unemployment rate being studied here also takes into account the aggregate demand for those jobs. That demand could easily shift even if the supply of jobs in certain fields starts contracting due to AI.

Overall, the CESifo researchers conclude that the Summer 2026 unemployment data serves as a “useful first test” of how accelerating AI usage is—or, as the data show, is not—impacting the current US job market. But current trends do not imply future performance, of course, and the researchers warn that “if the intensity of AI use in the workplace continues to increase, the graduating classes of 2027 and later might be more affected than the class of 2026, and additional years of data will be needed to hone in on whether effects emerge as workplace use of AI deepens.”

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The World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai in July. China and the United States are locked in an A.I. race that both sides see as decisive to gaining the upper hand militarily, technologically and economically.

NASA must be more selective in the way it forges international partnerships as the race to the Moon transforms from a battle for national prestige between the United States and China into a high-stakes competition for extraterrestrial real estate and resources, the agency's administrator said.

Jared Isaacman, now in his 10th month at the helm of the world's largest civilian space agency, told a gathering of military leaders and defense contractors last week near Washington, DC, that the 21st-century race to the Moon is more than a battle of ideologies. The sweet spot for a Moon base, Isaacman said, is a relatively small region near the lunar south pole, and there are tangible implications for who gets there first.

The Moon's south pole harbors substantial quantities of water ice concentrated on the floors of craters away from the reach of sublimating rays of sunlight. The ice inside these eternally dark craters could be used to supply water, air, and rocket fuel for a Moon base, supporting a permanent settlement and providing a springboard for future expeditions to Mars.

"It's a big Moon, with the surface area of Africa," Isaacman said Wednesday at the Air & Space Forces Association's Air, Space & Cyber Conference. "The south pole is more akin to Washington, DC, when there are only so many roads and so many good parking spots that you're going to want to occupy."

The best parking spots aren't just those close to the Moon's water ice bound up in deep craters. A few select crater ridges extending high above the ice deposits provide access to near-continuous sunlight for power generation.

"We want to go there to master the skills for Mars," Isaacman said. "And when you realize there are only limited parking spots that get us access to that training environment, it creates an urgency, and we must [go fast] because the Chinese are going to the exact same locations. They are partnered with the Russians. They are going to put a nuclear reactor there, and they could potentially deny this training environment that is a necessity for America's space ambitions."

Isaacman said this means NASA must make better decisions on when and how to work with international partners. Other nations have a place in NASA's programs, but only if they can meaningfully contribute to the mission, he said.

"I will tell you, though, and this is right from the top from the president of the United States: We're only doing good deals, and we haven't always done good deals," Isaacman said. "There was absolutely a time where we were trying [to] make everyone happy. Let's get a lot of flags together for a great press release, and it can [be], and absolutely has been, at times, a drag on the mission instead of accelerating it. You can't do that, and we've changed that now, and as a result, good deals are happening."

The rim crest and upper part of the rim of Shackleton Crater, as viewed by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The Moon's south pole is located on the rim near the upper-right corner of the image. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

What's a good deal?

Isaacman singled out as a good deal NASA's agreement with the Italian government in March for the development of living quarters for astronauts on the Moon.

"They're committing over $5 billion to building one of the first habitation modules," Isaacman said. "It likely will be the first real habitation module that makes its way to the lunar surface. And as a result, you're going to see two Italian astronauts on the surface of the Moon."

Japan, too, is coming in clutch for NASA, Isaacman said, with a multibillion-dollar commitment to develop a pressurized rover to ferry astronauts across the Moon. In exchange, Japan will likewise get two tickets to the Moon for the country's astronauts. The US and Japanese governments signed the agreement on the pressurized rover in 2024.

"That is the expectation we set for everyone," Isaacman said. "You're not just going to bring us a list and say, 'I will do this regardless if it helps the mission or competes with US industry and what US industry is trying to accomplish on the Moon.' That is not going to work. We need meaningful contributions now. The game has changed."

The role of the European Space Agency, perhaps NASA's most enduring international partner, on the Moon Base program remains undefined. ESA signed up to provide elements for a habitation module, a refueling module, and deep space communications hardware for the planned Gateway mini-space station in orbit around the Moon.

NASA announced the cancellation of Gateway in March in a strategic shift to focus on a permanent presence on the lunar surface, where China has set its sights. It didn't help that Gateway's first pressurized module was corroded.

Canada, too, is weighing its potential contribution to the Moon Base program. The Canadian Space Agency was on the hook to build a robotic arm for the Gateway outpost, improving on the Canadian robotics systems used on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. The design and use case for a robotic arm on the surface of the Moon, where it must operate in partial gravity, is different from that in microgravity. It doesn't help that the Trump administration is currently engaged in a trade war with Canada, erecting a hurdle for any potential bilateral agreements.

ESA and Canada received guarantees from NASA for lunar flight opportunities for their astronauts through their agreements on Gateway. ESA also provides service modules for NASA's Orion spacecraft, the ship that carries astronauts between the Earth and the Moon. Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen took Canada's first seat on an Artemis mission with the flight of Artemis II around the Moon earlier this year.

NASA announced in June that ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, a colonel in the Italian Air Force, will serve as pilot on the Artemis III mission to test lunar landers and the Orion spacecraft in low-Earth orbit in 2027.

Rule by committee

ESA's director general, Josef Aschbacher, told reporters in June that he is eager to secure seats for the agency's astronaut corps to land on the Moon. A "meaningful" contribution to the Moon Base program would pay the fare, but it hasn't been easy to find agreement on what that might look like.

NASA's agreement with Italy, an ESA member state, was directly negotiated between the two countries outside the halls of ESA. The European Space Agency has 23 member states, which provide funding in three-year increments, offering a modicum of stability for ESA's programs at the expense of agility.

Italy's commitment to build a habitation module and Japan's contribution of a pressurized rover offer something new to NASA, which didn't have contracts with US companies to do that work. Those are the kinds of partnerships Isaacman said he is looking for.

ESA's Argonaut would include elements from across Europe. Credit: European Space Agency

"We had one partner that said, 'Look, I'll give you a lander, a robotic lander, that'll go to Shackleton Crater by the mid-2030s," Isaacman said in a question-and-answer session at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference last week. "I was like, 'The Chinese are launching there in two months (with Chang'e 7, a mission now delayed to early 2027). What good is that to us then? There will be no landing spots available at that point in time.'"

Isaacman did not identify which partner he was talking about, but it almost certainly was ESA, which is seeking a role for its Argonaut cargo lander in NASA's Moon Base program. The problem from NASA's perspective is that Argonaut would replicate much of what US companies are well along in developing.

Each Argonaut lander could deliver to the lunar surface up to 1.5 metric tons (3,300 pounds) of cargo, such as crew provisions, science instruments, and infrastructure, according to ESA. That is half of the payload capacity of Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 lander, set to make its first flight to the Shackleton Connecting Ridge near the Moon's south pole next year and far below the cargo capability of larger human-rated landers like Blue Moon Mark 2 or SpaceX's Starship.

"We've got to get in touch with reality and make meaningful contributions to what NASA and the free world are trying to achieve with our space ambitions," Isaacman said.

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