SpaceX is aiming for a September 22 launch of its monstrous Starship rocket on a 10-hour mission to deliver 26 Starlink V3 satellites into orbit. The flight, set to launch at 1215 UTC if all goes to plan and the authorities give the green light, will be the first time Starship has gone into orbit, and the mission is planned to fly at an altitude of approximately 275 km. The mission aims for six orbits, followed by a deorbit burn using a single Raptor engine while. The engineers are then planning a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile. The Super Heavy Booster will be ditched in the Gulf of Mexico, hopefully under better control this time. On flight 13, the booster made a "hard splashdown," as SpaceX delicately put it, after only eight of the planned 13 engines reignited. The booster used all 33 engines for its boostback burn, but according to SpaceX, "the three center engines showed signs of ice clogging which triggered an early end to the maneuver." In true iterative style, SpaceX tweaked the hardware to improve filtering and updated the software to "enhance relight reliability." SpaceX has also changed Starship's heatshield, including adding curved tiles to reduce heating in tile gaps and "additional retention mechanisms added to tiles in areas deemed to be at highest risk of falling off during ascent." It is also reusing a pair of tiles recovered from the previous flight test. If Starship is to become truly reusable, these tiles will need to fly over and over again. Getting to orbit is by no means guaranteed. The SpaceX team will only command a final burn to enter orbit if there is sufficient hardware redundancy to perform a deorbit burn when the time comes. After all, nobody wants something the size of Starship making an uncontrolled reentry after its orbit eventually decays. Starship has had an eventful test program. Some missions were spectacularly successful, and several boosters returned to be caught by arms on the launch tower. Others were impressive failures. The vehicle is critical to SpaceX's future; it can loft far greater payloads than the company's workhorse Falcon 9 and is an essential part of NASA's Artemis program. For Artemis III, planned for 2027, SpaceX is expected to launch a Starship equipped with the docking apparatus planned for the lunar variant. Reaching orbit is therefore a critical step. ®
The US Department of Energy has selected a new participant for a program aimed at expanding the domestic supply of fuel for next-generation nuclear reactors. However, we shouldn't expect that to mean the US' ever-growing fleet of datacenters will be powered by low-carbon nuclear energy any time soon. Utah-based Nusano announced on Monday that the DoE had selected it for its Nuclear Energy Launch Pad Program designed to help companies commercialize their nuclear power concepts. In this case, Nusano is working on a new method of creating high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, fuel that’s required for most next-generation nuclear reactors, like small modular reactors (SMRs) and molten salt reactors. HALEU is defined as uranium enay, low-riched to between 5 and 20 weight percent of U-235, the primary fissile isotope that nuclear reactors use to generate power. Traditional nuclear reactors use low-enriched uranium of under five percent. The higher enrichment is needed for smaller, more efficient reactor designs that are currently under development. Several advanced reactor demonstrations in the US have reached zero-power criticality, but none is yet operating commercially. The US has been without a steady commercial-scale supply of HALEU for years, with Russia historically the main commercial supplier and China also possessing HALEU enrichment capability. As of 2026, there’s only a single company in the US actively producing HALEU, and it’s not Nusano. The DoE has signed agreements with several others to produce more HALEU and related fuel products, but those firms are still establishing their facilities, and production remains minuscule. Centrus, the only American company producing HALEU, has generated less than two metric tons since it signed a contract with the government in 2019. The competition heats up Nusano expects to blow Centrus’ meager fuel generation out of the water with its HALEU enrichment design. That said, the company’s design hasn’t actually been realized yet. Nusano didn’t answer a question about whether it had built a functional demonstration HALEU enrichment unit, and when asked whether it had produced any HALEU, the company said that prototype development is still under way. “Nusano expects each unit will produce 5.9 metric tons (MT) of HALEU per year, with the first unit scheduled to be operational in 2031,” Nusano comms boss Scott Larrivee told The Register in an email. “Nusano’s Launch Pad application includes a well-developed, practical plan to move from proof-of-concept to commercial implementation.” As for what that’ll look like, Nusano describes a method that’s completely different from other forms of HALEU production. Whereas other HALEU refiners use gas centrifuges to produce HALEU, spinning uranium hexafluoride gas at high speeds to increase U-235 concentration, Nusano’s method ditches gas entirely. “The method is complex, costly, and potentially hazardous,” Larrivee explained. “If released, uranium hexafluoride reacts with moisture in air or human tissue to form highly toxic, corrosive hydrogen fluoride and uranyl fluoride.” Those gases, Larrivee said, can cause potentially fatal injuries like chemical burns and lung and kidney damage. Nusano is proposing a method that uses uranium feedstock that’s converted to metal prior to enrichment. Unspecified “proprietary separation techniques” are then used to enrich the metal and separate out U-235. The HALEU output of Nusano’s design is metal. “The Nusano process is metal in, metal out. No deconversion. No gaseous fluorine chemistry anywhere,” Larrivee added. Nusano’s current design only requires 1,200 square feet per HALEU unit, and the company anticipates its production cost will be lower than those of gas-centrifuge enrichment. That said, a lot of Nusano units will be needed to meet expected American demand. According to the DoE, HALEU demand could reach 50 metric tons per year by 2035, and Nusano is only expecting to get its first 5.9 MT/year unit up and running by 2031. It’s also not clear if Nusano’s current promises will still be the same if and when its HALEU units are up and running. In June 2025, the company said it had achieved a breakthrough that would allow a single HALEU unit to produce 50 metric tons annually and enable it to scale production to 350 metric tons per year by 2029. Search the company website for that announcement today, and it’s gone. We were only able to see it by pulling up an archived copy. Larrivee said that announcement was out of date, developed under prior company leadership, and that the numbers in the latest release were reflective of current development plans. A number of datacenter operators have promised to embrace SMRs and other next-gen nuclear when the technology is available. With HALEU output still low and commercial-scale production years away, it's unclear when those promises will be realized. Meanwhile, the Trump administration's Environmental Protection Agency has just scrapped Biden-era emissions regulations for coal and gas power plants, which it said means coal generation in the US could increase by more than ten times current levels. In other words, next-gen nuclear is, as ever, still on the horizon while bit barns crank up the fossil fuel turbines, now with even less regard to environmental impacts. ®
The US Space Force has deployed "space control weapons" into orbit, although it stopped short of explaining what they are and how it got there. US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink reportedly spoke at the Air and Space Forces Association conference and said the US had deployed weaponry around Earth. There is no word on the nature of the weaponry, nor on how and when it was launched. There have been plenty of classified launches, and the US also has the X-37 program. There are two uncrewed X-37B spaceplanes, which can loiter in orbit for years performing classified activities. The Register asked officials about the weaponry, but we have not yet received a reply. Something that could jam satellite communications is possible, or a device that could fire a pulse to disable electronics. Another possibility is something more ballistic or kinetic, although the potential for destruction to create debris doesn't bear thinking about. One wag on social media dubbed the consequences of an ill-thought-out ballistic weapon as "Mutually Assured Kessler Syndrome." Kessler Syndrome is a theoretical situation in which space around Earth becomes so crowded that collisions between objects cause a cascade of debris, eventually making orbital space inaccessible. A ballistic weapon that could generate a cloud of space junk is therefore less than ideal. The Outer Space Treaty, which forbids weapons of mass destruction in space, went into force in 1967, but the superpowers have found ways to work around it over the years. The Soviet Union, for example, fitted Salyut 3 with a self-defense gun. The station was launched in 1974. There was also the US's Strategic Defense Initiative (also known as Star Wars), which was intended to be used to intercept ballistic missiles. The current Golden Dome plan, espoused by the current US administration, calls for a constellation of satellites with detection and interception capabilities. Other nations have reacted with alarm to the news. A China foreign ministry spokesperson reportedly said, "We urge the US side to stop expanding its military capabilities and preparing for war in outer space." Shortly before Meink made his statement, the BRICS nations called for the "prevention of an arms race in outer space (PAROS) and of its weaponization, as well as the threats or use of force against outer space objects" in the New Delhi Declaration. The Register spoke to Dr Bleddyn Bowen, Associate Professor in Astropolitics at Durham University and author of Original Sin: Power, Technology and War in Outer Space, who reckoned weapons in space were nothing new, even if the public pronouncements and confirmations from the US were. In the absence of clarity from the US, Bowen speculated on what the weaponry might be, pondering if it might be a close-inspector satellite, or perhaps something with a dedicated electronic warfare capability. "If I was putting any money down, that's probably what it is…" Bowen also noted the importance of the weaponry's location. "The Americans, of course, really don't want any more debris in space," he said, so doing something kinetic in geostationary orbits is unlikely. But, "if you're putting this stuff at very low orbits, then you know you might be more inclined to take a chance with debris-generating stuff." Without detail, Bowen said the US acknowledgment could serve a public relations function. "I can see the rationale for saying this to say in public 'we're not sitting on our hands.'" "Of course, the trade-off then is you have experts like me who think, 'Well, tell us a bit more because we can't do anything with that information,' and the Chinese and Russians will also use it at the United Nations by saying, 'See, they admit it. The Americans are weaponizing space,' even though they are doing it themselves anyway." ®
Britain killed off its national digital ID scheme this summer, but from today you can use a digital ID to prove you're old enough to buy a pint. New rules taking effect on Tuesday allow pubs, bars, restaurants, music venues and shops in England and Wales to accept digital proof of age when selling alcohol, meaning customers can use an app on their phone instead of digging around for a driving license or passport. The change is voluntary. Businesses don't have to accept digital proof of age, customers don't have to use it, and the government admits the technology will take time to gain wide support. So anyone planning to leave their wallet at home tonight may want to check with the pub first. Still, it gives digital identity technology a conspicuously everyday new job just two months after Prime Minister Andy Burnham pulled the plug on his predecessor's much grander national Digital ID scheme. That project, announced under Keir Starmer, would have created a government-backed digital credential and eventually made digital right-to-work checks mandatory. Burnham ditched the scheme in July, with his government saying the money and resources earmarked for it would be redirected elsewhere. Digital identity itself, however, wasn't buried with it. The new alcohol rules rely on the UK's existing Digital Verification Services (DVS) framework. To be accepted for booze purchases, digital proof of age must be provided through a DVS certified against the government's trust framework and listed on its statutory register. The government confirmed earlier this month that while the national Digital ID program announced under Starmer has been binned, GOV.UK One Login, GOV.UK Wallet and the existing framework for private-sector digital verification services will continue. The DVS framework predates Starmer's national Digital ID plan. The government is also keeping its planned digital driving license alive. It says GOV.UK Wallet and the digital driving license are separate from the digital proof-of-age services becoming usable today, although the wallet is expected eventually to offer another way for people to prove their age when buying alcohol. For now, third-party providers get first crack at the bar. Yoti says its Yoti ID and Post Office EasyID apps can now be used as proof of age where businesses choose to accept them, while Luciditi says its ID verification service is being integrated into point-of-sale and Challenge 25 systems. This isn't simply a case of waving a phone at whoever happens to be behind the bar. Businesses accepting digital proof must use a registered DVS, rather than relying on someone eyeballing an app or, worse, a screenshot of somebody else's ID. The ID must meet at least a "medium level of confidence," and providers need a way to check it belongs to the person holding the phone. How they do that is largely up to them. In practice, the government reckons the experience could be as simple as showing a QR code for staff to scan or tapping a phone against a compatible reader. Rather than handing over a driving license containing a name, address and date of birth, the customer can share confirmation that they're over 18. There are limits. Facial age estimation and other age-assurance technologies aren't covered by the change and can't substitute for a registered DVS when carrying out a digital alcohol age check. Digital proof can be used at self-service checkouts, but retailers still need humans around to deal with such stubbornly analog problems as drunk customers and adults buying booze for children. So Britain's grand national Digital ID may have joined the long list of government technology projects that didn't make it to the finish line, but the infrastructure around it is still finding its way into daily life. Starting with the important stuff: getting served. ®
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