Space News

NASA has selected seven companies to provide construction, revitalization, and infrastructure improvements at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The Johnson Space Center Multiple Award Construction Contract supports up to $300 million in upgrades to mission‑support facilities, utilities,

NASA will host a public event featuring three crew members from the agency’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission at 11 a.m. EDT Monday, June 1. The event, which takes place during the crew’s standard postflight visit, will be held in the Webb Auditorium at NASA Headquarters in the Mary W. Jackson building, 300 E

Engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, have completed their final inspection of a key element for the agency’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope: the primary mirror. This 7.9-foot (2.4-meter) mirror will collect and focus light from cosmic objects near and far, helpi

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image released on May 27, 2026, features the dwarf irregular galaxy ESO 490-017, roughly 12,000 light-years in diameter and some 23 million light-years away in the constellation Canis Major. The galaxy’s low surface brightness makes it appear as a fain

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features the active spiral galaxy Messier 88 (M88), located about 63 million light-years away.

Radar data from an agricultural area in South Africa, shown in a vivid color palette, reveal crop types and how they changed during the Southern Hemisphere’s growing season.

NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft is preparing for some of its most significant flights yet. The X-plane is about to begin a new block of test flights that will include its first time flying faster than the speed of sound and other mission-critical objectives. “What comes next is the fi

Listen to this audio excerpt from Daniel Stubbs, NASA aerospace engineer: If you’ve driven through a cloud of dust and dirt that temporarily obscured your view, you’ve gotten a partial picture of a potential problem that NASA’s human landing systems for Artemis will face when they land on the Moon.

Written by Abigail Fraeman, Deputy Project Scientist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology Earth planning date: Friday, May 22, 2026 I spent this past weekend eagerly awaiting the downlink from Mars that would show us the results of Curiosity’s drill attempt at “Campo Mart

Scientists analyzed 20 Martian samples collected by NASA’s Curiosity Rover and found that differences in hematite crystallite size at varying elevations could serve as a new mineralogical marker for understanding Mars’ ancient climate.

The low-orbit satellite constellation is intended to track aircraft, cruise missiles and other airborne threats The post Space Force awards SpaceX $4.16 billion to build satellite network for airborne target tracking appeared first on SpaceNews.

COMSO chief Col. Tim Trimailo says transparency, patience and a clear military value proposition matter as much as technical innovation The post Space Force’s commercial gatekeeper offers a playbook for startups seeking defense business appeared first on SpaceNews.

South Korean optical payload developer TelePIX and Indian propulsion specialist Bellatrix Aerospace have teamed up on a very low Earth orbit geospatial demonstration mission slated for 2028. The post Bellatrix and TelePIX plan 2028 air-breathing VLEO imaging demonstration appeared first on SpaceNews

We are in the geospatial era of warfare in which information derived from satellites is as strategically critical as territorial control. The progressive dissolution of the distinction between the civil […] The post Spatial data has become a weapon of war in the US-Iran war appeared first on S

A number of new Chinese state-led and commercial rockets are set for debuts and fresh first stage recovery attempts in the coming weeks and months. The post China’s latest batch of new and reusable rockets are close to launch appeared first on SpaceNews.

A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket exploded on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, during a May 28 hotfire test, destroying the rocket and causing extensive pad damage. The post New Glenn rocket explodes on Cape Canaveral pad appeared first on SpaceNews.

These facilities are intended to ensure military space missions can continue during wartime when installations could come under attack The post Space Force plans nationwide network of ‘resilient operations centers’ appeared first on SpaceNews.

Observable Space, a company that develops optical systems for laser communications and space domain awareness, has raised $90 million and secured a U.S. Space Force contract. The post Observable Space raises $90 million and wins Space Force contract for optical systems appeared first on SpaceNews.

In December 1972, Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent 75 hours on the lunar surface during Apollo 17. They drove a rover, conducted three spacewalks and collected samples across the […] The post Setting up a permanent lunar presence needs investment in biology appeared first on SpaceNews.

WARSAW, Poland — The Italian-Dutch company Revolv Space has announced that French in-orbit services provider Infinite Orbits has selected its Solar Array Drive Assemblies (SADAs), the devices used to manage […] The post Revolv Space enters in-orbit servicing market with Infinite Orbits deal ap

AMSTERDAM — A senior German military official said Europe needs a coordinated approach to military space operations and proposed the creation of a European Space Component Command hosted by Germany […] The post Germany pushes European military space command initiative appeared first on SpaceNe

In this episode of Space Minds, David Ariosto talks with Lux Aeterna CEO Brian Taylor about the problems with disposable satellites and the use for on-orbit servicing. Sponsored by Arcfield […] The post CEO Series: Lux Aeterna’s Brian Taylor on what’s next for on-orbit servicing appeared first

Missile defense has traditionally been framed around detection, tracking and interception. Golden Dome changes that calculus, broadening the focus to the entire distributed infrastructure enabling the architecture, placing propulsion front […] The post The Propulsion Imperative Behind Golden D

At most major European space summits, the sovereignty debate has long been overshadowed by talk of launchers, constellations and the symbolism of a national presence. On the sidelines, however, the […] The post Europe’s biggest space opportunity comes after launch appeared first on SpaceNews.

The Virgin Galactic spaceplane used for the company’s first commercial flights has returned to service to train its pilots for its next-generation spacecraft. The post Virgin Galactic returns Unity to flight to prepare for next-generation spaceplane appeared first on SpaceNews.

Bundle up for our frigid trek behind the Iron Curtain in this new 'For All Mankind' spinoff

China's Shenzhou 21 astronauts returned to Earth on Friday (May 29), wrapping up a record-breaking, and very eventful, space mission.

Prepare for a spectacular sight, as the second full moon of May meets the red star Antares this weekend.

Stories of NASA and Apollo have passed into folklore, but the equivalent stories from the other side of the Iron Curtain have often been shrouded in secrecy.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket launched 29 Amazon Leo internet satellites to orbit on Friday night (May 28).

Blue Origin's powerful New Glenn rocket exploded during testing Thursday night, May 28, blasting flames and debris high into the sky in a display visible across wide swaths of Florida.

SpaceX launched 29 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Friday (May 29), about 12 hours after Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket exploded on a different pad at the site.

Even the satellites are seeing red.

Maverick director Nicolas Roeg delivered a surreal sci-fi classic in 1976 that still resonates today.

Astronomers have discovered the first evidence that tiny red dwarf stars can devour their own planets.

New research suggests the moons of Jupiter and Uranus may hint that our planetary neighborhood once had a third ice giant.

Blue Origin's fourth New Glenn rocket exploded during a prelaunch engine test on Thursday night (May 28). It could be a big setback for the company and for NASA's moon ambitions.

A new report stresses the strategic and security implications of placing mass drivers on the moon by arguing that these launchers could serve as valuable first strike weapons systems.

Before 'Project Hail Mary,' Weir wrote the quintessential space saga now being given a stunning makeover

NASA is working hard to predict where in Earth orbit its Swift space telescope will be this fall, so that a private spacecraft can meet up with the observatory and boost its altitude.

Which comes first, the galaxy or the black hole? We don't know, but scientists have long thought it could be the galaxy: Large stars within an existing galaxy consume their fuel and collapse to form black holes, which can gobble up surrounding material and merge over time to form more massive e

Think about a census. You could photograph every house in the country and produce a beautiful map, but without knocking on doors and asking questions, you'd know almost nothing about the people living in them.

Astronomers may have uncovered a hidden supermassive black hole inside the famous Antennae galaxies NGC 4038/4039, a pair of colliding galaxies best known for their spectacular bursts of star formation. The paper outlining the findings was posted to the arXiv preprint server on May 21.

The universe is full of fascinating structures, and some of the most striking take shape inside the giant clouds where stars are born. There, streams of gas appear to converge from all directions toward a dense central hub, like spokes meeting at the center of a wheel.

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is poised to make a major leap in the hunt for worlds outside our solar system, known as exoplanets. Scientists expect the mission to reveal around 100,000 worlds—a staggering leap compared to the nearly 6,300 found so far thanks to NASA missions working

On the night of 18 December 2019, a star in our satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, briefly got brighter. Not dramatically nor explosively, just a smooth symmetrical rise and fall in brightness lasting about an hour, as though something had passed in front of it and bent its light toward u

Astronomical observations show that the most massive galaxies in the early universe formed approximately three to four billion years after the Big Bang and stopped producing stars very early in cosmic history, around one billion years after their formation. This strange behavior has puzzled experts

The proton sharks showed up on a Friday. In a routine data calibration meeting for NASA's Parker Solar Probe in 2020, a small group of scientists were scrolling through visualizations of their data showing solar winds. Suddenly, a weird shape flashed on the screen: Instead of the usual rounded

Mathematicians are challenging the idea that dark energy is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe. In a new paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, mathematicians from the University of California, Davis, provide mathematical proof that instabilities inherent in t

On the moon, the lack of atmosphere and accompanying features such as biological activity, oxygen-rich air, flowing water and rain, wind, and most erosion allows the lunar regolith to preserve a long-term record of surface processes in the space environment.

A team of astronomers, led by University of Warwick in collaboration with researchers at MIT and McMaster, have developed a novel method to use the properties of dust rings around stars to estimate the masses of newborn planets. Published in The Astrophysical Journal, this research offers astronomer

Internal changes due to the sun's "active biorhythm" have become increasingly "skin-deep" over the past four solar activity cycles, according to a new study.

Astrophysicists think that black hole masses are hierarchical. The largest are supermassive black holes (SMBH) like the one at the center of the Milky Way and other galaxies. Stellar mass black holes are born of collapsing stars, and are smaller. The smallest of all are the theoretical primordial bl

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features the dwarf irregular galaxy ESO 490-017, roughly 12,000 light-years in diameter and some 23 million light-years away in the constellation Canis Major. The galaxy's low surface brightness makes it appear as a faint, starry swarm behind brighter fore

Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation from the sun's surface, which can wreak havoc on Earth's power grids, damage orbiting satellites, and pose serious radiation risks to astronauts. Yet despite decades of study, the processes that trigger these eruptions remain poorly understood.