Enlarge / Four kerosene-fueled Reaver engines power Firefly's Alpha rocket off the pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. (credit: Firefly Aerospace )

Welcome to Edition 7.01 of the Rocket Report! We're compiling this week's report a day later than usual due to the Independence Day holiday. Ars is beginning its seventh year publishing this weekly roundup of rocket news, and there's a lot of it this week despite the holiday here in the United States. Worldwide, there were 122 launches that flew into Earth orbit or beyond in the first half of 2024, up from 91 in the same period last 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.

Firefly launches its fifth Alpha flight. Firefly Aerospace placed eight CubeSats into orbit on a mission funded by NASA on the first flight of the company’s Alpha rocket since an upper stage malfunction more than half a year ago, Space News reports . The two-stage Alpha rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California late Wednesday, two days after an issue with ground equipment aborted liftoff just before engine ignition. The eight CubeSats come from NASA centers and universities for a range of educational, research, and technology demonstration missions. This was the fifth flight of Firefly's Alpha rocket, capable of placing about a metric ton of payload into low-Earth orbit.

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Yamanashi prefecture brings in modest hiking fee to stop ‘bullet climbing’ and address safety concerns

A crowd-control gate has been installed halfway up Mount Fuji before the start of this year’s climbing season on 1 July, but the governor of Yamanashi, one of the two prefectures that are home to the mountain, said additional measures were needed to control overcrowding on its lower slopes .

The gate was completed on Monday as part of a set of measures being introduced this year to address growing safety, environmental and overcrowding problems on Japan’s highest and best-known mountain.

Politicians and planners are allowing the Thames to become an urban canyon – greed always seems to win out

A Japanese developer has announced it will demolish a new tower of luxury flats in Tokyo it was weeks from completing. The reason? The 10-storey development was blocking beautiful views of Mount Fuji. The idea a developer would reach such a decision in Britain is inconceivable. In London, flats are usually built to make a profit. If they have a beautiful view, good luck to those buying them. To hell with anyone else’s beauty.

One of what we assume was the Sunak government’s last decisions was Michael Gove’s greenlighting of a huge 20-storey concrete slab that is about to rise on the banks of the Thames next to the National Theatre. It is hideous, and will dominate the once-glorious view of St Paul’s cathedral from Waterloo Bridge. Paradoxically, its developer is the Mitsubishi Corporation.

Appealing superhero film saddles a kaiju fighter with an orphaned infant, who brings challenges to test supernanny’s domestic mettle

In this family superhero animation with a twist, the monster that must be grappled with by our hero is parenthood – and specifically baby-care. We open in Odaiba, Japan, with a flashback to the childhood of Ken Sato, whose dad is passionate about kaiju , the giant monsters of Japanese pop culture (of which Godzilla is probably the best known in the west). Twenty years later, Ken is a baseball star by day and gigantic kaiju fighter Ultraman by night (or indeed, whenever the kaiju show up) though like his father before him, it’s more about protecting people and monsters from each other than a standard slay-the-beast trajectory.

Things get complicated when he finds himself unexpectedly landed with an orphaned baby kaiju to look after. Ken is not prepared for single parenthood, and is duly rushed off his feet managing the competing demands of work and adopted infant, getting covered in bodily fluids in the process, and making all sorts of delightful discoveries about the limits of his own knowledge. “Babies get acid reflux?” he exclaims despairingly at one point, in a line that feels rooted in lived experience. Mind you, this baby is 35ft tall and breathes fire, so, you know, a challenge even for Supernanny.

US wants show of strength with planned sanctions for helping Russia, but group will also discuss migration, the Middle East and AI

A dramatic expansion of entities exposed to US sanctions for helping the Russian economy and an EU-led $50bn loan to ease the financial burden on Ukraine will be at the centre of discussions at a summit of the leaders of wealthy G7 nations in Puglia, Italy, starting on Thursday.

The leaders, facing unprecedented challenges from discontented electorates, will be under heightened pressure to provide concrete results as their three days of discussion range across an interlinked agenda encompassing the war in Ukraine, migration, Africa, the Middle East, the climate crisis and harnessing artificial intelligence (AI).

A developer in Japan just built a 10-storey apartment block in Tokyo but then decided to tear it down. What is going on?

Japanese artist Hokusai famously produced a series of woodblock prints titled Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, and centuries later, the majestic mountain still captures the imagination. However, now that translates into record numbers of tourists eager to commemorate their visit with painstakingly staged photos.

An unencumbered view of Fuji is something to treasure – so much so that a real estate developer this week agreed to tear down a nearly completed apartment block in western Tokyo because it blocked residents’ view of the mountain. Developer Sekisui House said it decided to take down the 10-storey building due to “insufficient consideration for the impact on the scenery”.

Biochemist found cholesterol-lowering compound in 1973 and the heart drugs have prolonged millions of lives

The scientist whose work led to the creation of statins, a chemical that prevents heart attacks and strokes, has died aged 90.

Akira Endo found the first cholesterol-lowering compound in 1973 in a lab in Tokyo. The Japanese biochemist was said to have been inspired by Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin in 1928, which lead him to study mould or fungi in order to develop medicines.

Meme-worthy content appears in short supply, at least initially, as world’s oldest royal family embarks on its social media journey

The rarefied world of Japan ’s imperial family has entered the age of social media, but fans expecting selfies, emojis and casual shots of the emperor and empress, or princes and princesses away from the limelight may be disappointed.

Far from photographs of sunrises, sunsets or moments of mindfulness that form the stock in trade of many Instagram profiles, the initial images released followed a steady course favoured by other royal families around the world. They featured a dignified attendance at a medical awards ceremony, a bonsai exhibition and a meeting with the president and first lady of Kenya. Another post features them with the crown prince and princess of Brunei.

People in Hiroshima react to first screening of the film, which was delayed after outrage at ‘Barbenheimer’ memes

It is hard to think of a more emotionally charged venue than Hatchoza for the first screening in Japan of the Academy Award-winning film Oppenheimer. The cinema in Hiroshima is located less than a kilometre from the hypocentre of the first atomic bombing in history – the devastating culmination of the American physicist’s work.

The film finally premiered in Japan on Friday, more than eight months after it opened in the US, to reviews that ranged from praise for its portrayal of J Robert Oppenheimer – the “father of the atomic bomb” – to criticism that it omitted to show the human misery it caused in Hiroshima and, days later, Nagasaki, in the final days of the Pacific war.