NASA on Friday released a much-anticipated "request" to the US commercial space industry to develop private space stations that, as early as 2030, will succeed the International Space Station as a place for astronauts to live in low-Earth orbit.

In a cover letter accompanying the 360-page "request for proposals," NASA stated its plan: "This will ensure NASA has a sustained human presence in LEO for crew members to perform science and exploration." Several private companies that have worked for years on designing and developing such stations have been keen to learn exactly what capabilities NASA is seeking. These new documents finally provide some answers.

NASA's solicitation can be found here. Industry responses are due back to NASA on December 8. NASA said it plans to select "two or more" contractors in this phase of the competition and intends to make a final decision in April.

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Welcome to Edition 9.14 of the Rocket Report! The big news this week, from our perspective, is that United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket appears to be close to launching. We've seen a no-earlier-than launch date for the return to flight mission of October 29 (an Amazon Leo flight), and the next rocket up after that, also an Amazon Leo mission, is also planned for this year. Assuming the solid rocket boosters work, Vulcan could be poised for a major breakthrough next year in cadence.

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.

Nuri rocket notches another success. South Korea successfully deployed five satellites for its first domestically launched microsatellite constellation during the fifth flight of its homegrown Nuri rocket Wednesday, Yonhap News Agency reports. In addition to the primary payload of five New-space Earth Observation Satellite Constellation for National Safety microsatellites, nine of the rocket's 10 CubeSat secondary payloads were released as planned, according to the Korea AeroSpace Administration. PERSAT-02, developed by South Korean startup Quaternion, failed to separate from the rocket.

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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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