LOS ANGELES — The space shuttle Endeavour is absolutely breathtaking in its 20-story new home at the California Science Center's brand-new Air & Space Center, which is set to open on Nov. 13, the museum announced on Wednesday (June 24).

After over three decades of ideation, development and construction, the California Science Center has officially announced an opening date for its brand-new Samuel Oschin Air & Space Center, which will feature the space shuttle Endeavour. On Wednesday, I got to peek behind the curtain to see Endeavour's new home inside the center, where it stands in a "ready to launch" position, towering at nearly 200 feet (61 meters) tall — a truly spectacular focal point. The shuttle is even complete with real solid rocket boosters and the last flight-qualified external fuel tank (ET-94).

"It's been a lot of years to get here, and it's a dream come true," Lynda Oschin, the chairman of the board and secretary of the Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Oschin Family Foundation, told Space.com about this massive exhibition finally coming together.

"They're going to be in tears, they're going to be shaking, and they're going to be proud," Oschin added, referring to how she expects guests to react to Endeavour in its new home. And having just seen it for the first time in all its glory, standing upright with its fuel tank and rocket boosters seemingly ready to launch, I can attest: She is absolutely right.

Before you even step foot into the shuttle room, there is a short video that is played that takes you through the history of the shuttle program while bringing to life the fiery excitement of a shuttle launch. In a dramatic cloud of smoke, the shuttle room is revealed and there isn't a single person who isn't in absolute awe. Endeavour is hypnotizing. With the boosters and fuel tank, its already massive stature becomes almost larger than life.

A walkway takes you all the way around the shuttle, which is open on one side so you can clearly peer into its many layers, seeing wires and other details. You can also walk down to a lower floor, where you can stand underneath the shuttle and inspect it from every angle you might want. And surrounding the shuttle itself are a variety of interactive exhibits like a shuttle landing simulator (good luck), the tires from Endeavour's final landing, and more.

"I'm a child of the Apollo era, and I remember having a plastic Apollo Saturn V rocket that I carried with me everywhere, and that was after going to Johnson Space Center, visiting the space center there," retired NASA astronaut John "Danny" Olivas told Space.com. "inspiration happens through exposure, and there's nothing, I think, more impressive than standing next to the space shuttle stacked the way that they've done here at the California Science Center."

And Endeavour is special in this respect: No other museum has a space shuttle orbiter that's mounted vertically, in the launch position.

One aspect of the California Science Center that stands out is its accessibility, as the museum (including the brand-new air and space center) is entirely free to the public — and it's on the metro line, which kids in L.A. can ride for free. Many museums and similar institutions strive for and value accessibility, and this center really takes that to heart, keeping even new installations like the shuttle free to visit. "California Science Center has opened up accessibility for inspiration to the next generation of space explorers," Olivas said.

And while NASA moves forward with its Artemis moon program, Olivas, who flew on two shuttle missions (STS-128 and STS 117), is confident that the lessons and history of the space shuttle program will carry on in inspiring that next generation.

"One of the things that really touches my heart about the space shuttle program is that it ushered in an age of diversity in space exploration that we had not seen prior," Olivas said. "We got an opportunity to see so many firsts — so many firsts of Americans being able to see themselves in the astronauts that flew in space, and that opened the door to so many people like myself, recognizing that wow, yeah, I can become an astronaut."

The new Air & Space Center was first imagined as part of a museum expansion plan all the way back in 1993. Over 30 years later, the futuristic building stands a whopping 20 stories tall to accommodate the towering Endeavour, which immediately grabs the focus of anyone walking into the building.

After NASA's space shuttle program ended in 2011, the agency worked to turn itsretired shuttles into museum attractions. Endeavour first arrived at the California Science Center in October of 2012. Thousands watched as the spacecraft rolled through the streets of Los Angeles on the back of a slow-crawling transporter, a 12-mile (19 kilometers) trek from Los Angeles International Airport to the California Science Center that took the craft 68 hours.

Four years later, in 2016, ET-94, the shuttle's external fuel tank, arrived. And seven years after that, in 2023, two solid rocket boosters arrived and the shuttle was taken off display, where it had sat for over a decade, as preparations began for its new home in the Air & Space Center.

"Now, with the stunning display of Endeavour in launch configuration, the Samuel Oschin Air & Space Center will give us a clear, greater platform than ever before to accomplish our mission to stimulate curiosity and inspire science learning in everyone," said Jeffrey Rudolph, president and CEO of the California Science Center. This "will be the only place in the world to see a complete space shuttle system, with the flown orbiter Endeavour mated to real solid rocket boosters and the only remaining flight-qualified external tank, ET-94."

While Endeavour is the clear centerpiece of the building, the Samuel Oschin Air & Space Center will be chock-full of a wide variety of other space artifacts. The building is split into three sections that guests will be able to explore: air, space and shuttle. Relics from throughout spaceflight history, interactive exhibits, and immersive, educational experiences fill the space. Currently, 1.6 million people visit the California Science Center each year, so even if this number were to remain the same, this building has to be ready for a big and diverse crowd from around the world.

Once again, SpaceX has looked to the stars for naming inspiration.

Elon Musk confirmed on Tuesday (June 23) that SpaceX will call its planned AI satellite megaconstellation "Starmind".

The choice should come as no surprise, as it continues the company's long-running stellar naming theme. Here's a rundown:

• Starship: SpaceX's next-generation launch vehicle, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. Starship is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, a breakthrough that Musk thinks will make Mars settlement economically feasible
• Starbase: The company's facility in South Texas, which serves as Starship's manufacturing and launch hub. In May 2025, Starbase became an incorporated city.
• Starlink: SpaceX's broadband network in low Earth orbit. Starlink is by far the biggest satellite constellation ever assembled; it currently consists of nearly 10,700 active units, and the number is growing all the time.
• Starshield: A modified version of the Starlink satellite that flies national security missions for the U.S. government, focusing on Earth observation, communications and payload-hosting tasks.
• Starfall: SpaceX's newly unveiled uncrewed return capsule, which is designed to carry materials from orbit safely down to Earth.
• Starfactory: The huge Starship production facility at Starbase, which covers about 1 million square feet (93,000 square meters).

Starmind is perhaps the most ambitious of all of these stellar projects. If everything goes according to plan, the megaconstellation will be about 100 times bigger than the current version of Starlink.

"By directly harnessing near-constant solar power with little operating or maintenance costs, these satellites will transform our ability to scale compute," Musk wrote in a February 2026 update about the company's planned AI network.

"It's always sunny in space!" he added. "Launching a constellation of a million satellites that operate as orbital data centers is a first step towards becoming a Kardashev II-level civilization, one that can harness the sun's full power, while supporting AI-driven applications for billions of people today and ensuring humanity's multi-planetary future."

The "star" theme has apparently supplanted a previous SpaceX nomenclature convention. The company named its original rocket line "Falcon" after the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo's ship in the "Star Wars" universe, then followed this same birds-of-prey theme for the vehicles' engines ("Merlin" and "Kestrel"). The company's next-gen engine, the one that gets Starship off the ground, still follows this older custom: it's called "Raptor."

NASA's plan to return astronauts to the moon and bolster a rapidly growing commercial space industry is facing an infrastructure obstacle.

A new report from NASA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) warns that launch facilities at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida and Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia are approaching capacity as demand accelerates across the agency and the private sector. Support infrastructure — such as roads, electricity, and gas and fuel pipelines that laid the foundation for KSC's network of launch pads built to support the Apollo program in the 1960s — are being increasingly stretched by the demands of NASA's Artemis missions, SpaceX, Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance (ULA) and other users.

"Based on current launch projections, Kennedy and Wallops are expected to operate near capacity in the 2028 to 2029 time frame," states the report, which was released on Monday (June 22). Though it credits NASA for already taking steps to address these issues, agency officials estimate it will take at least $1 billion to complete all the necessary upgrades, of which only $250 million was provided as part of NASA's funds allocated in last year's 2025 H.R.1 reconciliation bill.

On Florida's Space Coast, the assessment encompasses launch facilities at KSC as well as Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS), which saw an increase of NASA-supported launches from 31 in 2020 to 109 in 2025, according to the report. Wallops, where there are fewer and smaller launch pads, doesn't traditionally see as many missions compared to KSC. But the Virginia site has experienced an even sharper jump, percentage-wise, over the same timeframe — from three launches in 2020 to 17 in 2025 (a 467% rise). By 2030, NASA expects traffic at both sites to increase by another 150% or so. And NASA officials told auditors that raw launch counts don't fully capture the strain on infrastructure, because launch campaigns require days or weeks of support activity before liftoff.

The report outlines launch infrastructure shortcomings at both facilities, but notes that Wallops' challenges have been partially mitigated by recent upgrades across its seven active launch sites. Wallops generally hosts small and medium-lift launch vehicles, like Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket and Rocket Lab's Electron, but has taken steps to support Rocket Lab's upcoming Neutron, as well as Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket, which is expected to launch from the site sometime this year.

The major launch pads in question at KSC and CCSFS include Launch Complex-39A (LC-39A) and LC-39B, used by SpaceX and NASA, respectively; Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40), also used by SpaceX; SLC-41, used by ULA's Atlas and Vulcan rockets; and SLC-36, used by Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket.

SpaceX has transitioned to launching its Falcon 9 rocket primarily from SLC-40 and has reserved LC-39A for Falcon Heavy launches while construction of the first Florida launch tower for its Starship rocket is underway at the same pad. SpaceX hopes to start launching Starship from this pad before the end of 2026.

The company also has plans for a second Space Coast pad for Starship, at SLC-37. Once Starship, which is still under development at SpaceX's Starbase, Texas, facility, becomes fully operational, the company expects up to 44 launches a year from KSC, with an additional 76 launches per year projected from SLC-37 at CCSFS. That equals about one Starship launch every eight days for LC-39A, but a higher cadence will be needed to successfully support NASA's Artemis program.

Artemis missions utilize NASA's Orion spacecraft to transport astronauts from the Earth to the moon, and the agency has contracted Starship, as well as Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander, to be the program's crewed lunar landers. All of these vehicles require heavy-lift rockets.

Orion launches on NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket from LC-39B. For Artemis 4, currently scheduled for 2028, NASA plans to dock Orion with Starship in Earth orbit, and use Starship to propel the two spacecraft to orbit around the moon. Starship will then undock from Orion, carry a set of astronauts down to the lunar surface, and then launch them back to orbit around the moon to rendezvous and dock again with Orion.

To accomplish this, Starship will require at least 15 refueling flights to top off its tanks before its initial burn for the moon, which would fly in addition to the company's projected eight-day launch cadence, according to the report.

Growing demand for heavy-lift rockets is also increasing pressure to find additional launch sites. Blue Moon is designed to launch on New Glenn, and will also require refueling launches to reach the moon. Setting aside the fact that New Glenn recently exploded during a fueling test that severely damaged SLC-36, the report indicates that Blue Origin officials have told NASA that the pad alone may not provide sufficient long-term capacity and resiliency for the company's future plans, and noted that the constraints have already forced the company to delay launches.

Much of the infrastructure between KSC and CCSFS facilities is considered "common-use," the report says, which puts added stress on available resources shared across different launch providers. That includes a massive electrical grid; 231 miles (372 kilometers) of roadway, much of which was paved in the 1960s without consideration for the weight and frequency of super heavy rocket stages being transported to and from launch pads; and more than 40 miles (64 km) of gaseous pipeline supporting nitrogen (GN2) and helium distribution, which is unable to supply high-flow operations from multiple users in its current state.

"This issue created a major scheduling challenge during preparation for the New Glenn-1 mission that launched in January 2025," the report says. It also anticipates further Artemis mission launch constraints if the issue is not addressed.

Artemis 3, targeted for 2027, will require launches of SLS, New Glenn and multiple Starships all within a small handful of days. The mission will see both private landers — if they're both ready — rendezvous with Orion to practice docking maneuvers in low Earth orbit over the course of about two weeks, but the OIG report calls the feasibility of those back-to-back launches into question.

"Kennedy will be unable to provide GN2 for future Space Launch System launches for Artemis from LC 39B while simultaneously supporting Blue Origin's New Glenn launch vehicle launching from Space Launch Complex 36 at CCSFS," the report says. It projects a possible one- to two-month blackout period of GN2 availability as a result of future SLS launches.

The report further found that NASA has struggled to maintain and modernize its launch infrastructure, partially due to declining maintenance budgets and poor funding structures that prevent an equitable recoupment of costs from commercial providers leasing the launch facilities. "Significant statutory funding barriers prevent the Agency from receiving money directly from commercial partners for use of the Agency’s launch infrastructure," the report says. And, as it currently stands, any commercial investment in NASA's infrastructure is deducted from the agency's budget appropriation, in addition to being a violation of the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits the agency from spending federal funds without Congressional approval.

Ultimately, the report recommends prioritizing improvements to NASA's transportation networks, utility systems and resource distribution infrastructure while exploring additional funding mechanisms to support future upgrades. It also suggests three key action items for the space agency:

1. Perform an assessment and create a mitigation strategy to address roadway degradation caused by the increased traffic from heavy-lift launch vehicle transportation and commercial providers.
2. Prioritize the allocation of available funds for the maintenance of common-use launch infrastructure, including roads, electricity distribution, and gaseous pipelines and resource reserves.
3. Explore alternative funding mechanisms and evaluate commercial partnership policies to charge an "Other Approved Indirect Rate" to contribute to upgrades necessary to maintain the aforementioned infrastructure.

"While NASA’s goal is to renew — replace, repair, or upgrade — its infrastructure every 66 years, the current renewal rate, based on the available budget, is over 260 years," the report says.

SpaceX launched another batch of its Starlink satellites from California's central coast on Wednesday night (June 24).

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Wednesday at 11:30 p.m. EDT (8:30 p.m. local time; 0330 GMT on June 25), carrying 24 of the broadband spacecraft to low Earth orbit (LEO).

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth about 8.5 minutes after launch as planned, touching down in the Pacific Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You."

According to a company mission description, it was the 25th flight for this particular booster, which is known as B1081.

The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, continued hauling the 24 satellites to LEO. The spacecraft were deployed there on schedule, just under 62 minutes into flight, according to SpaceX.

Wednesday's launch was the 74th Falcon 9 liftoff of the year, and the 59th of 2026 devoted to building out the Starlink megaconstellation. Starlink is by far the biggest satellite network ever assembled; it currently consists of nearly 10,700 active units, and the number goes up all the time.

SpaceX has launched two non-Falcon 9 missions this year as well. On April 29, a Falcon Heavy lofted the Viasat-3 F3 telecom satellite. And the company's Starship megarocket launched on its 12th-ever test flight on May 22.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 2:40 a.m. ET on June 25 with news of successful launch, rocket landing and satellite deployment.

Astronauts on the ISS had an epic microgravity kickoff with a FIFA soccer ball, as the agency highlighted how soccer balls are influenced by space research.

NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) astronauts got the official FIFA World Cup ball rolling, zero-G style, in the Kibo module of the International Space Station. The impromptu match, published on X June 20, formed part of NASA's push to explain how space relates to soccer.

As NASA explains, soccer has been studied scientifically on the ISS. The orbital laboratory has hosted "studies that improve understanding of the aerodynamics and physics involved in soccer ball flight," the agency stated in a June 8 release about soccer tech. An example study in 2019 examined how the mass of a soccer ball influences the rotation, stability and motion of the sphere. NASA did not name the study, but the date lines up with the Adidas OS SPIN experiment that ran between 2019 and 2021, as described in an agency database of ISS experiments.

Adidas has put electronics in official match balls since 2022, NASA noted, which allows broadcasters and officiators to monitor speed, position and contactor. "But those sensors also add mass in specific locations inside the ball, and uneven mass distribution can affect how a ball moves through the air," the agency pointed out.

Watching soccer ball movements in microgravity can therefore lead to better design to account for the sensors, the agency noted. "The findings have improved understanding of how embedded technologies, including match-ball sensors, can influence performance during play," NASA stated. "The research contributed to studies used in the development and evaluation of soccer balls for major international tournaments, including FIFA World Cup competition."

More recently, ISS astronaut Jessica Meir showed students how soccer ball mass and spin works in microgravity. "What you see here is a soccer ball that passes one of the most important tests in sports engineering: balanced mass distribution," the Expedition 74 NASA astronaut said, floating alongside a spinning ball, in a YouTube video posted last month.

The agency has also studied soccer balls on the ground. At NASA's Ames Research Center in California, researchers examined Adidas' Brazuca ball in a wind tunnel. They particularly examined a phenomenon known as "knuckling", which happens when the airflow on the seams makes the ball move unexpectedly in mid-air.

"NASA engineers measured the speeds and flow conditions where this effect was most pronounced," the agency stated of the Brazuca ball, which was used in the 2014 world cup. "Adjustments in panel shape, seam depth, and surface texture can influence flight consistency, helping determine whether a ball curves, dips, or holds its line during play."

NASA has showed up a lot at the celebrations already. On June 20, Artemis 2 moon astronauts Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover delivered the ball for a Netherlands-Sweden match in Houston (nearby NASA's Johnson Space Center for astronaut training).

This year's world cup is jointly hosted by the U.S., Mexico and Canada and will wrap up on July 19. On June 11, NASA held an exhibit at Fan Festival Houston about FIFA, pledging to open the event during every tournament match held in Houston's east downtown.

The head of the European Space Agency has issued a wakeup call to decision makers amid partners cancelling missions and geopolitical changes affecting the space sector, calling for Europeans to be pilots rather than passengers.

In a LinkedIn post published last month, European Space Agency (ESA) Director General Josef Aschbacher stated that recent decisions taken by the United States to pause the lunar Gateway station and cancel the Mars Sample Return mission campaign — both major projects with deep ESA commitments — have revealed how dependent the agency is on outside actions.

"Europe has become too exposed to decisions beyond its control," Aschbacher wrote, before laying out the challenge the continent faces. "The choice before Europe is clear: Do we pilot, or are we merely passengers?"

The situation for ESA and its 23 member states is complex, requiring Europe to both develop agency and autonomy while balancing this with fruitful collaboration, Aschbacher noted.

"The current environment demands both diversified international partnerships and strengthened autonomous capabilities," he wrote. "Only under these conditions can Europe decide when to act independently and when to cooperate globally, protecting our investments and our industrial base amid geopolitical uncertainty."

With trust in the U.S. as a reliable partner taking a hit, collaboration with other space actors such as Japan, South Korea and Australia could grow, while Europe also pursues its own capabilities.

Human spaceflight is one area Aschbacher is keen to push Europe forward, describing it as a necessity rather than a luxury, and one needed to secure ESA's freedom to unlock the "scientific, economic, strategic and geopolitical benefits of space and to inspire a new generation to shape Europe's future."

The question is not new — it has long been debated by European policy makers and the space sector — but recent events and Aschbacher's comments have brought the issue to the fore. And there is clear support and grounds for greater European autonomy in space.

"The disruption brought by the Trump administration has made this question more pressing," said Marco Aliberti, associate manager and lead on international engagement at the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI) in Vienna, an independent think tank that advises European space policymakers. "There is a realization in Europe that so far we have not been pursuing autonomy."

Europe, Aliberti argued, has built genuine technical capacity, including the ability to build and operate world-class space systems, but, at the same time, has consistently failed to secure the political autonomy to decide how and with whom those capabilities are deployed.

"Participation without agency is yet another form of dependency dressed up as ambition," he said. In other words, Europe has built the capacity to execute in space, but not the autonomy to decide its own agenda.

Aliberti pointed out that this is not the first time Europe has needed to move to acquire greater autonomy. The birth of Europe's Ariane rocket in the 1970s was a response to an asymmetric relationship. The United States refused to launch the Franco-German Symphonie communications satellite unless Europe agreed to forgo commercial use, with the aim of protecting American dominance in commercial communications. European governments concluded they had no choice but to build their own launch capability.

Aliberti went on to point out that history could, potentially, repeat itself, this time in the lunar realm, as a European partner dependent on U.S. transportation could face unacceptable conditions. "The U.S. may tell us: I will continue bringing you to the lunar surface, provided that you do not engage in commercial activity," he said. "We do not see the risks that being a passenger entails."

And investment in space can bring huge payoffs. For example, NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contracts in the 2000s gave early funding to SpaceX, enabling the development of the company's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, and ultimately, the rise of its Starlink broadband megaconstellation.

"It was the billions that NASA gave to SpaceX that enabled the birth and growth of SpaceX," Aliberti stated. "Let's not neglect the impact that space exploration investment has across other parts of the ecosystem."

ESA's DG has signaled the need for action and its urgency, although he admitted it will take years to build autonomous capability. "If not now, then when? If not ESA, then who?" Aschbacher asked.

What comes next is unclear. Institutionally, Aschbacher sees opportunities in a convergence of key meetings and milestones, including an ESA Council in mid-June, a ministerial focused specifically on exploration scheduled for December, and the crucial once-every-three-years ESA Ministerial Council in 2028. At the same time, the European Union, with a growing interest in space separate to ESA, is drafting its Multiannual Financial Framework for 2028-2034.

Aliberti warned that, if ESA cannot act promptly, its member states could move to act alone to address shorter-term needs. He cited the recent development of the French government reaching an agreement to send a pair of its astronauts on missions with U.S. space station firm Vast.

As confidence in the partnership with the U.S. government erodes, individual European nations may look to explore bilateral arrangements with commercial American providers, meaning less interest in investing into joint European efforts. The window for collective European action is open, but perhaps not for long.

"If we take decisions by the Ministerial Council in 2028, we will be able to play a role and be pilots in 10 years," Aliberti says. "If not, it may become too late."

A lot has changed since NASA last sent astronauts to the moon — including the attitudes of those space explorers.

That's the view of Victor Glover, the NASA astronaut who served as pilot on the Artemis 2 mission around the moon's far side this past April.

"When you look back on the Apollo missions, there was a lot more competition back in the office. Everybody wanted to be the first, and then everybody wanted to be the next," Glover told Angels Broadcast Television on June 12, shortly before he threw out the first pitch before a baseball game between the Los Angeles Angels and the Tampa Bay Rays.

"I think our office learned a lot from them," he added. "There are some good things about that. It makes you work really hard, but it also can create some unnecessary conflict. And so my office really wants to support everybody — wants you to be the guy that does it, and somebody just gets picked to do it, and that's OK."

Glover and his Artemis 2 crewmates — NASA's Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — did indeed seem to forge a very strong bond during their training and their time in space.

For example, shortly before Artemis 2's April 1 launch, Glover, Koch and Hansen came up with a plan to name a crater on the moon after Wiseman's wife Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020.

"They said the three of them had talked, and they would like to do this," Wiseman said on April 6, the day Artemis 2 looped around the moon and got farther from Earth than any crewed mission ever had. "That was an emotional moment for me. And I just thought that was just a total treasure, that they had thought through this, and they had offered this."

Wiseman, Artemis 2's commander, said he broke down when Hansen radioed mission control with the naming request. In fact, all four astronauts were overcome with emotion at that moment.

"That was, I think, where the four of us were the most forged, the most bonded, and we came out of that really focused on that day ahead," Wiseman said.

The atmosphere was a bit different during the 1960s and early 1970s, as Glover noted; undercurrents of competition and rivalry reportedly ran through the Apollo crews.

For example, multiple people, including Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan, have said that Buzz Aldrin lobbied to be the first person to set foot on the moon, an honor that eventually went to Apollo 11 crewmate Neil Armstrong. (Aldrin has disputed this version of events, saying he didn't want to be the first-ever moonwalker.)

There are other big differences between Artemis and Apollo, of course. Apollo was designed to get people to the moon before the Soviet Union could do so, a goal that was regarded as a national security imperative because it would demonstrate American technological supremacy. As a result of this need for speed, Apollo did not build anything permanent on the moon, leaving behind only flags, footprints and defunct spacecraft.

Artemis, on the other hand, aims to establish a permanent and sustainable presence on Earth's nearest neighbor. If all goes to plan, NASA will build one or more moon bases near the lunar south pole, then use the skills and knowledge gained from this endeavor to get astronauts even farther afield — to Mars.

SpaceX just launched a brand-new return capsule that it has been developing in the dark.

That vehicle, called Starfall, lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket this morning (June 23), on a test mission designed to show that it can fly in a controlled fashion and survive the fiery trip down through Earth's atmosphere.

The demonstration flight may have caught some space fans by surprise, for SpaceX has revealed little about Starfall to date. And that air of secrecy extended through today's launch; the company cut off its webcast about 10 minutes after liftoff, a practice usually associated with national security missions.

SpaceX provided a very brief overview of Starfall today, saying via X that the new vehicle "will enable affordable, routine access to the microgravity environment for scientific research and in-space manufacturing."

Details about the vehicle are harder to come by — but we have some, thanks to an environmental assessment published by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last month. That report looked at the potential environmental impact of two Starfall demonstration reentries, one or both of which was set in motion by today's launch. (It's unclear how many Starfall vehicles the Falcon 9 lofted on this initial flight.)

According to the FAA document, Starfall is a disk-shaped spacecraft that stands about 2.5 feet (0.75 meters) tall, with a diameter of 10.2 feet (3.1 m). It weighs roughly 4,600 pounds (2,100 kilograms) and can carry about 2,200 pounds (1,000 kg) of payload. The vehicle can launch on both the workhorse Falcon 9 and Starship, the megarocket SpaceX is developing to help humanity settle the moon and Mars, among other tasks.

Starfall consists of two parts: an aluminum "top plate" that weighs about 3,090 pounds (1,400 kg) and a detachable carbon-fiber heat shield. Cargo rides in the top plate, which features a payload bay 8.2 feet long, 4.9 feet wide and 1.6 feet tall (2.5 by 1.5 by 0.5 m).

For comparison, SpaceX's Dragon capsule, which routinely flies people and cargo to and from the International Space Station, stands about 14.7 feet (4.5 m) tall, with a diameter of 13.0 feet (4.0 m). Dragon can haul about 13,230 pounds (6,000 kg) to low Earth orbit and bring 6,600 pounds (3,000 kg) back down, according to its SpaceX specifications page.

Starfall is not capable of carrying astronauts. And, in another departure from Dragon, the newly debuted return vehicle does not have a traditional propulsion system.

It has only "an attitude control system which uses compressed inert gas (for example, compressed nitrogen gas) to perform small attitude control maneuvers, such as pointing the capsule's heat shield in the correct direction to safely reenter Earth's atmosphere," the FAA's assessment reads.

"Capsules do not have the ability to de-orbit themselves and can only control their attitude," it adds. "Individual capsules would reenter Earth's atmosphere on a pre-planned trajectory and splash down with the assistance of parachutes."

That splashdown — at least of the first two Starfall vehicles — will take place in the open Pacific Ocean, about 700 nautical miles (1,300 kilometers) off the west coast of the United States. Starfall, and its cargo, will then be collected by recovery boats.

SpaceX has two main goals for Starfall, according to the FAA document. The vehicle will "enable point-to-point delivery of critical cargo through space on rapid timelines" and also "create a self-sustaining commercial in-space manufacturing market by offering access to microgravity and vacuum, loiter on orbit, and safe return from orbit as a service at scale."

SpaceX isn't alone in pursuing these opportunities. For example, the California-based company Varda Space has already launched and landed five of its 650-pound (300 kg) "W-series" spacecraft, which are designed to be both orbital mini-factories and return capsules.

And another California outfit, Outpost Space, is developing a line of "CarryAll" return vehicles that can get very large payloads — those weighing up to 22,000 pounds (10,000 kg) — down from space with pinpoint accuracy, within 80 feet (25 m) of a target anywhere on Earth.

The CarryAll Block 3 will be a "flagship vehicle for in-space manufacturing and warehousing, Earth return, military resilience and humanitarian aid," Outpost's website states.

So SpaceX is not breaking new ground with Starfall. But the company is poised to play a leading role in the nascent Earth-return field, thanks to its launch dominance and vertical integration.

The Falcon 9 flew a whopping 165 times in 2025, after all, and SpaceX envisions launching Starship thousands of times per year when that massive rocket comes fully online. So it shouldn't be too difficult for SpaceX to send hundreds of Starfall vehicles up and then back down again, delivering space-made pharmaceuticals and other high-value goods to customers around the world.

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Rocket Lab has successfully launched the second spacecraft for the U.S. Space Force's Victus Haze Tactically Responsive Space (TacRS) mission, setting a new readiness record in the process.

Only 16 hours and 42 minutes passed between Rocket Lab receiving the Notice To Launch from the Space Force's Space Safari Program Office and liftoff of the company's Electron launch vehicle, beating the previous TacRS record set by Firefly Aerospace on the September 2023 Victus Nox mission by more than 10 hours.

Liftoff occurred on Friday (June 19) at 6:19 a.m. EDT (1019 GMT, 10:19 p.m., local time), from Rocket Lab's Launch Complex-1, in New Zealand, beginning a rapid-response demonstration designed to simulate a real-world orbital threat scenario.

Electron delivered a Rocket Lab-built Pioneer spacecraft to low Earth orbit (LEO), where it has begun pursuit of another Victus Haze spacecraft that was launched by SpaceX in May and serves as the target vehicle for the demonstration — True Anomaly's Jackal satellite. According to a June 22 Rocket Lab statement, "[Pioneer] is now fully commissioned and conducting complex orbital maneuvers to chase down another spacecraft on orbit and conduct Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO)."

Victus Haze is a TacRS mission managed by Space Systems Command's Space Safari Program Office, with the objective of demonstrating the rapid acquisition, launch and operation of spacecraft in response to orbital threats and "non-compliant satellites," the Rocket Lab release said.

"Rendezvous and Proximity Operations on such short timelines are certainly not trivial, especially in a crisis or conflict scenario, but this demonstration of our ability to commission a complex and capable space vehicle within less than 72 hours, and immediately begin an RPO scenario thereafter, shows that we can field capability to deny adversaries first-mover advantage into novel orbits,” said Lt. Col. Lincoln Miller, Space Safari system program manager, in the statement.

Rocket Lab and True Anomaly teams are now managing their respective spacecraft in orbit. They will soon enter the RPO phase of Victus Haze, conducting space domain awareness (SDA) threat-response scenarios and "dynamic engagements with the other," according to a separate statement from the U.S. Space Force (USSF).

Space Force officials have increasingly looked to commercial providers to develop new capabilities and technologies to address potential conflicts in space. “Victus Haze is primed to further demonstrate our readiness to lean on our commercial partners to deny, disrupt, and counter any adversarial advantage — no matter where they try to operate in space,” acting Space Force portfolio acquisition executive Col. Bryon McClain said in the USSF statement.

With its Electron rocket and Pioneer spacecraft both vertically integrated into Rocket Lab's manufacturing processes, this Victus Haze launch marks the first TacRS mission to be carried out by a single prime contractor, providing the spacecraft, launch vehicle and on-orbit operations.

"This is what modern space power looks like: the ability to reinforce and reimagine national security space architecture at will," said Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck. "We’re proud to be providing the nation with those next-generation space capabilities, today.”

China's Shenlong space plane appears to have released a mystery object while in orbit, according to a private space surveillance firm.

Shenlong launched on its fourth mission on Feb. 6, 2026 atop a Long March 2F rocket that lifted off from China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert. As with previous flights, the objectives of this mission were not disclosed to the public. But according to recent observations by the commercial orbital intelligence company LeoLabs, one part of Shenlong's latest mission appears to involve releasing an unknown object.

"At 02:30 UTC on 22 June 2026, LeoLabs detected an unknown object in the vicinity of the Chinese Shenlong reusable space plane," LeoLabs posted to X. "This object did not correlate to any other object in our catalog. It was first observed by our Tracker radar in New Zealand."

"Following additional observations across our global network and analysis via LeoLabs Delta, we have independently cataloged this object and assessed with high confidence that it was released from the Chinese space plane," the company added in the post. "This activity is consistent with sub-satellite deployments conducted by the space plane in previous missions."

Space tracker Jonathan McDowell noted on X that the object has now been catalogued by the U.S. Space Force.

Shenlong, or "Divine Dragon," is a reusable space plane that launches atop a rocket but lands on a runway like an aircraft. Its overall design is believed to be similar to the United States Space Force's X-37B, or somewhat like NASA's storied space shuttle. Exact specifications are difficult to come by, given how secretive China's space program remains about Shenlong.

Very few images exist of Shenlong, and most of what we have seen of the space plane are telescopic images of the vehicle taken from ground-based telescopes.

This isn't the first time that Shenlong has appeared to release objects while in orbit. In June 2024, observers noticed that the space plane may have released a subsatellite or ejected an unnecessary piece of hardware as it approached the end of its mission.

Six months earlier, observers believed the space plane had ejected six objects at once, but those were later determined to be debris left over from launch.

Observers on the ground have also noticed what appear to be solar arrays extending from Shenlong, based on analysis of telescope imagery.

On previous missions, Shenlong has appeared to conduct what are known as rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO), meaning it tested the capability to maneuver close to other objects in space, according to SpaceNews.

White these RPOs can be conducted for peaceful purposes such as repairing or refueling other spacecraft, it might also be the case that space superpowers such as China and Russia are developing these capabilities to potentially tamper with adversary satellites should warfare ever make it to space. In May, two Russian satellites came within 10 feet (3 meters) of one another in orbit, following a pattern of the country testing the capabilities of these so-called "inspector" spacecraft.

There's no reason to believe the United States isn't developing its own RPO capabilities for similar reasons, and the nation has released official artwork suggesting as much.

NASA's plan to deorbit the International Space Station in coming years has fallen under the scrutiny of a government watchdog group and stirred up a wave of reaction by a leading ocean conservation organization.

As presently blueprinted by NASA, the International Space Station will be de-orbited via a series of actions. Firstly, in early to mid-2028, the ISS will start to be lowered through a combination of Earth's natural atmospheric drag and the execution of re-entry maneuvers by the ISS's Russian segment. Then, in mid-2029, NASA plans to launch a SpaceX-supplied, government paid for, U.S. Deorbit Vehicle (USDV) and attach that craft to the ISS, which will fire its 46 Draco thrusters and push the station down to a watery grave.

But there's one issue that has ecology experts concerned. The Ocean Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-headquartered group with a mission to improve global ocean health and the human relationship with the sea via carefully chosen strategies and projects, says the planned deorbit of the International Space Station "raises serious concerns for ocean health that the space community has not adequately grappled with," according to Mark Spalding, president of the foundation.

A troubling gap

A just-issued U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report has focused on issues related to NASA's plan to bring down the International Space Station (ISS) and transition from the ISS to commercial space stations, namely NASA's concern about having a "gap" in continuous human presence in low Earth orbit.

The GAO report explains that, at the end of 2030 or early 2031, the USDV is to perform a re-entry burn. That would push the ISS through the Earth's atmosphere and into a pre-determined spot – an ocean zone called Point Nemo.

"As part of the reentry process, NASA expects portions of the ISS and deorbit vehicle to break up and fall into the remote part of the ocean to minimize the risk to populated areas," states the GAO report.

But as for using Point Nemo or any part of the ocean as a convenient dumping ground, Spalding told Space.com that "there is a troubling structural gap in international law that the ISS de-orbit throws into sharp relief."

Under the Space Liability Convention of 1972, if space debris falls on another nation's territory or damages property, Spalding said, the launching nation owes compensation - absolutely and without needing to prove fault. "But no equivalent protection exists for the ocean," he said.

"As a result, when space agencies have control over where debris falls, they aim for the high seas, and in doing so, they incur no legal obligation to pay for cleanup or environmental remediation," said Spalding.

The Ocean Foundation leader said he understood the legitimate safety rationale for targeting Point Nemo, the point on Earth farthest from any populated area. "But the ocean's remoteness from human infrastructure should not be mistaken for a lack of value or vulnerability," Spalding said. "The ocean and its creatures deserve the same protection that international law affords to national territories."

Concerning the ocean's ecosystems, Spalding asks what happens to the marine ecosystems and creatures on the seafloor where the ISS leftovers land?

"The honest answer is, we don't fully know. That is deeply troubling for a structure the size of a football field. We do know that not everything burns up on reentry. Denser components will survive and reach the seafloor," Spalding added.

The problem: uncertainty

What denser, specific materials from the ISS re-entry will be, and what harm they may cause to marine life, Spalding said, "has not been adequately studied or disclosed. That uncertainty is itself the problem."

Additionally, what environmental harm may begin before the debris hits the water is worrisome. As the largest reentry in history, the cumulative atmospheric impact of down-falling ISS hardware deserves serious study, he said.

For one, Spalding flagged a newly negotiated High Seas Treaty (BBNJ Agreement) that is relevant to downing the ISS. It requires parties to conduct environmental impact assessments for activities that may affect the marine environment beyond national jurisdiction when effects are unknown or poorly understood.

"It is fair to ask whether the ISS deorbit  — the largest such reentry in history, targeting the high seas  — should trigger that obligation," Spalding said.

Position statement

As for the Ocean Foundation's position on the ISS deliberate crashing into the Pacific Ocean, the group believes that discussion points prior to the ISS downing include:

• A full environmental impact assessment of the anticipated seafloor debris field and atmospheric effects;
• Public disclosure of all materials that will survive reentry and reach the ocean floor;
• A rigorous legal analysis of obligations under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS,) the London Protocol of 1996 that provides an international standard and framework for countries to individually and collectively protect and preserve our oceans from pollution caused by the dumping of wastes and other matter into the ocean, along with the BBNJ Agreement.

The high seas have no sovereign who can demand accountability, concluded Spalding. "We believe this gap in international law needs to be closed, and the ISS de-orbit is a vivid illustration of why."

SpaceX's Cargo Dragon capsule shines in the sunlight over Earth as it departs from the International Space Station in a new image snapped from onboard the station.

What is it?

Peering through the window of the International Space Station (ISS), NASA astronaut Jessica Meir snapped a striking photo as she watched a SpaceX Cargo Dragon capsule depart from the station.

With sunbeams gleaming downward, reflecting off of the spacecraft's hull, the Dragon can be seen backing away from the station mere moments after undocking from the port on the station's Harmony module. The undocking is so recent that you can clearly see both the docking port and the hatch of the Dragon where the two connected.

The Dragon disconnected from the space station on June 16, and just one day later, parachuted into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California where it was retrieved, chock-full of cargo and finished science experiments.

Why is it incredible?

The space station has been in orbit since 1998 and continuously occupied since November, 2000. With decades of work in orbit, it can be easy to take for granted the incredible transport system that supports cutting-edge research hundreds of miles above Earth's surface.

The work done on the station is impressive, but this system is just as mind-boggling. In addition to launching and returning astronauts who perform critical maintenance and repair work on the station on top of their research duties, cargo missions keep the station stocked.

From food and clothing to medical equipment and intricate science experiments, these missions are essential for both keeping astronauts safe and healthy on station as well as continuing the progression of science in-orbit. This back-and-forth between Earth and the space station is an impressive feat, and this photo shows the system fully in-motion.

A new planetary habitability model could make the search for aliens more efficient by quickly identifying rocky worlds unlikely to sustain the atmospheres needed for life as we know it.

The software, called the Smaller Than Earth Habitability Model (STEHM), allows astronomers to screen exoplanets before committing valuable telescope time to detailed observations. Developed by researchers at Stanford University, the model assesses whether a rocky planet can build and retain an atmosphere over billions of years — a prerequisite for life as we know it, according to a statement from the university.

Astronomers searching for life beyond Earth face a daunting challenge: thousands of exoplanets have already been discovered, and billions more are thought to exist throughout the Milky Way — roughly one for every star in the galaxy. As powerful new telescopes come online, researchers increasingly need ways to identify which worlds are worth closer study.

"The only way that we're going to ever find out if there are signatures of life out there is by observing the atmosphere of these planets," Michelle Hill, lead author of the study who developed STEHM, said in the statement.

Traditionally, scientists have focused on whether a planet lies within its star's habitable zone, the region where temperatures may allow liquid water to exist on the surface. But location alone does not guarantee habitability. A planet without a substantial atmosphere may be unable to maintain stable temperatures, shield itself from radiation or support surface water, the researchers said.

STEHM adds a second layer to this assessment by estimating whether small rocky planets can generate and retain atmospheres over geologic timescales. The model links a planet's size to its ability to hold onto atmospheric gases, helping identify a lower size threshold for potentially habitable worlds.

To build STEHM, Hill used the ExoPlex planetary simulation code to model six rocky worlds ranging from half Earth's size to Earth-size, testing how planetary structure, volcanic activity, internal heat and stellar radiation affect atmospheric survival. The model was validated using Venus and Mars, correctly reproducing Venus's thick carbon dioxide atmosphere and Mars's long-term atmospheric loss.

The results suggest that rocky planets at least 80% the size of Earth can retain atmospheres for 10 billion years or more when orbiting within habitable zones around sun-like stars. Smaller planets generally lose their atmospheres more quickly, though worlds around 70% of Earth's size may still be habitable under favorable conditions. Atmospheric longevity also depends strongly on initial carbon content and heat-producing elements that drive volcanic activity, allowing STEHM to serve as a size-based filter for identifying the most promising habitable worlds.

"Maybe there's life on other planets under the ground, but we are never going to be able to see it because we can't send something to those exoplanets," Hill said in the statement. "The best chance we've got is looking for signs of life by analyzing atmospheres from afar."

By narrowing the field of candidates, STEHM could help astronomers focus on the most promising planets for life while avoiding wasting resources on unlikely targets. The approach may be especially useful as next-generation missions, such as the European Space Agency's PLATO space telescope, expand the catalog of rocky exoplanets around nearby stars. Researchers hope the model will help prioritize which of these planets merit follow-up observations.

STEHM not only addresses where life beyond Earth could occur, but when it might, by modeling whether exoplanets can actually hold onto atmospheres over geologic timescales — a key prerequisite for life to take hold in the first place.

"Maybe the answer to why we haven't found any life yet is that we're so early in the grand scheme of what has been created through the lives and deaths of stars," Hill said in the statement. "Maybe we're one of the first."

Their findings were published June 4 in the Planetary Science Journal.

SpaceX's newest spaceflight tech has to launched to the final frontier for the first time.

The company's Starfall capsule took to the skies on its debut mission today (June 23), following SpaceX's application with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for two reentry vehicle landings. The mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 6:52 a.m. EDT (1052 GMT).

Starfall is a cargo transportation vehicle designed to carry payloads to low Earth orbit (LEO) and beyond, aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, and also return materials safely back to Earth. The platform isn't designed to fly human passengers; it's geared toward the support of research or other payloads that require retrieval after a stint in space, such as pharmaceuticals and other products of orbital manufacturing.

The concept has already been put into practice by Varda Space, which has landed five of its 3-foot-wide (0.9 meters), roughly 650-pound (300 kilograms) conical "W-series" capsules to date, one of which returned a payload for the U.S. Air Force after more than eight weeks on orbit. Starfall is more than three times as large, measuring 10 feet (3.1 m) across and 2.5 feet (0.75 m) tall. The SpaceX vehicle can carry up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kg) of payload.

Starfall has two primary sections, which separate after reentry: a top plate for payload storage and attitude control components, and a carbon fiber heat shield that stores compressed gas to power attitude control maneuvers needed for precise reentries and landings, heat shield jettison and parachute deployment, according to SpaceX's FAA filing.

SpaceX plans to launch Starfall on suborbital missions, in addition to the longer-term stretches it will be able to spend in LEO. The capsule lacks a propulsion system and is incapable of deorbiting itself. The FAA document is unclear about how this will be accomplished, but it's likely that this launch will use Falcon 9's second stage to bring the demo capsule back to Earth.

In the event that Starfall experiences some sort of issue in space or during reentry, SpaceX has designed the spacecraft for safe expendability. "Capsules use nonhazardous inert cold gas (nitrogen) for attitude control and contain no liquid propellants or hazardous substances. All pressurized systems would be vented prior to splashdown, therefore, no propellants would be released into the ocean," the company says in the FAA document.

SpaceX has not yet specified how long it plans to keep the test Starfall vehicle in orbit on this debut mission, and did not broadcast views of the Falcon 9 second stage after separation from the rocket's booster. When the Starfall payload returns, SpaceX is targeting an area in the Pacific Ocean for splashdown, about 700 nautical miles (1,300 km) off the United States West Coast.

On the opposite side of the U.S., the Falcon 9 rocket that launched the Starfall demo mission headed for a return in the Atlantic Ocean. It was the 29th flight for this particular booster, tail number 1078, whose previous experience includes NASA's Crew-6 launch to the International Space Station, a Space Force mission and 23 Starlink launches, among others. Following stage separation, about 2.5 minutes after liftoff, Booster 1078 fine-tune its trajectory for a landing burn and touchdown on the SpaceX autonomous droneship "A Shortfall of Gravitas" downrange in the Atlantic, touching down about T+9 minutes.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 7:10 a.m. EDT to reflect the successful launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Starfall demonstration mission.

The heavy hitters in space telescopes are about to be joined by a new contender.

NASA's Nancy Roman Grace Space Telescope arrived at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), in Florida, on Sunday (June 21), for final tests ahead of launching later this summer. Roman was shipped to KSC from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, riding the agency's Pegasus barge from Baltimore to the Space Coast.

KSC is Roman's final stop before launching to space aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket where it will join other flagship observatories like Hubble, Webb, Chandra and Spitzer. NASA is currently targeting an Aug. 30 liftoff — eight weeks ahead of its original schedule. Before that date arrives, Roman will undergo tests inside KSC's Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility (PHSF), where upgrades were recently completed to prepare for the telescope's arrival.

Roman, inside a specialized, environmentally-controlled protective container used to encapsulate the telescope at the start of its journey from Goddard, was transported to the exterior of the PHSF building following its KSC arrival, where teams began a decontamination and cleaning process to ready the container for opening today (June 22) inside the PHSF airlock, followed by the unboxing and transportation of the roughly 18,000-pound (8,200-kilogram) spacecraft to the high bay clean room for prelaunch preparations.

Roman's work platform inside the PHSF, which NASA refers to as "the Pantheon" will allow engineers to perform final checkouts on the spacecraft, including tests of the telescope's six solar panels, insulation, and heat management components. Technicians will also load Roman with about 290 gallons (1,100 liters) of hypergolic hydrazine fuel, which will power the satellite's thrusters for delivery to its final orbit and small positional adjustments during the ten or more years the propellant is expected to last.

Roman is headed to Sun-Earth Lagrange point two (L2), a station-keeping point about 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) beyond Earth on the side opposite the sun. Lagrange points are regions of space similar to where the gravitational influence of two or more bodies is equal, allowing spacecraft to be "parked" and remain in place without needing to fire their thrusters and expend fuel. Once it settles in at L2, Roman's mission is set to last for at least five years, with the option for NASA to extend the telescope's use as long as its fuel lasts and instruments perform as needed.

Using its 7.9-foot-wide (2.4 meters) primary mirror, combined with a 300-megapixel camera and coronograph, Roman's primary mission will be hunting down the elusive mysteries of dark energy and the accelerating expansion of the universe through the discovery of "billions of galaxies, hundreds of thousands of new exoplanets, hundreds of blackholes, and … vast volumes of daily data for astronomers to study," according to NASA.

SpaceX just notched a remarkable launch-dominance milestone.

Elon Musk's company has now lofted more spacecraft than the rest of humanity combined — and its lead is likely to grow over the coming months and years.

Investor and former space-industry executive Christian Keil highlighted the achievement in a June 12 X post, which noted that SpaceX had launched 15,262 satellites as of that date. The combined total for all other companies and organizations since the dawn of the space age in 1957 was 15,138, according to Keil.

Musk founded SpaceX in 2002. The company was not an instant success; its first three launches, with the homegrown Falcon 1 rocket, were failures. SpaceX finally broke through with a Falcon 1 success in 2008. A fourth straight failure probably would have been the end of the company, Musk has said.

SpaceX soon moved on to the Falcon 9 rocket, which debuted in 2010 and remains the company's workhorse; it flew a whopping 165 times in 2025.

Most of those launches — nearly 75% of them, in fact — were devoted to building out Starlink, the broadband megaconstellation SpaceX has assembled in low Earth orbit (LEO).

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of objects that SpaceX has launched to date are Starlink satellites. As of June 18, the company has sent 12,318 of the internet spacecraft to LEO, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.

That number will continue growing far into the future, as Starlink could someday have 40,000 or more satellites.

And SpaceX is dreaming even bigger than that. Musk recently announced that he wants to operate a million data centers in space, as part of SpaceX's transition from a pure launch concern to a company focused heavily on artificial intelligence.

These spacecraft will be lofted by SpaceX's Starship megarocket, which is still in the test flight phase. Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, and it's designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.

SpaceX has teased a future that features thousands of Starship flights every year as the company helps humanity settle the moon and Mars, among other ambitious tasks. So, it's safe to say that SpaceX doesn't plan to relinquish its launch lead anytime soon.

SpaceX added 24 satellites to its Starlink megaconstellation on Sunday (June 21) with a launch from California.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 12:39 p.m. EDT (1639 GMT or 9:39 a.m. PDT local time) from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base. SpaceX confirmed deployment of the Starlink batch (Group 17-28) about an hour after their launch.

The Falcon 9 rocket's first stage (Booster 1063) completed its 33rd launch by landing on the autonomous droneship "Of Course I Still Love You" stationed in the Pacific Ocean. The stage is just two flights shy of the current Falcon 9 reuse record of 35 launches.

The Starlink network now has more than 10,600 active satellites, according to tracker Jonathan McDowell. The service provides worldwide internet access, as well as inflight wifi and direct to cell connections for select providers.

Sunday;s launch was SpaceX's 72nd Falcon 9 mission of the year out of a total history 655 missions.

GOLDEN, Colorado – Here on Earth, centuries of accumulated engineering knowhow, hard-learned lessons, and societal evolution have shaped a robust framework of building standards that govern how we build and maintain buildings today.

But now, as humanity prepares to put in place a "sustained presence" on the moon, how do we guarantee the safety and integrity of structures built in an environment for which no such tradition exists?

At the 26th Space Resources Roundtable held June 2-5 on the campus of the Colorado School of Mines, one expert says what's needed is a lunar building code, the development of specific design criteria for the moon.

What's shaking?

Both NASA and China's space agency are planning to build habitats, landing pads, equipment shelters, and tall towers on the moon. But all that construction could be off to a shaky start, suggests Nerma Caluk, an engineer and lunar specialist for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, an architecture and structural engineering firm in San Francisco, California.

Caluk said there's a need to leverage terrestrial building experiences.

"On Earth, structural systems rely on strong gravitational acceleration to resist seismic lateral forces through both foundation friction and overturning stability. However, on the moon, the gravitational field strength is reduced to just one-sixth of Earth's surface gravity," Caluk told Space.com.

Because seismic inertial forces are governed purely by a structure's mass rather than its weight, the lateral demand on a structure remains fully active while its gravitational restoring capacity is substantially diminished, Caluk added.

"Low-profile surface structures risk translational sliding across poorly characterized regolith interfaces, while taller vertical structures face significant overturning vulnerability, as the moon provides only a fraction of the gravitational restoring moment available in a terrestrial seismic environment," said Caluk.

Here on Earth, structural engineers routinely design typical building systems to yield, crack, and sustain permanent inelastic deformation during a design-level seismic event.

They intentionally leverage "inelastic energy dissipation" as the primary mechanism for managing seismic demand, Caluk said. But this design philosophy is fundamentally incompatible with a crewed lunar environment, she said.

Take for example a hatch distortion or pressure seal misalignment. They constitute a mission-critical failure, and any structural breach risks catastrophic depressurization, said Caluk.

A group taking on the challenge of shaping guidelines on the building of lunar infrastructure is the aerospace division of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The group's technical committee on space engineering and construction has crafted "Infrastructure Engineering, Design, Analysis, and Construction (LIEDAC) guidelines" for the moon, Caluk said, to tackle seismic issues imposed by moonquakes.

The LIEDAC guidelines, Caluk said, characterize the unique lunar hazard environment, classify operational consequences through a risk-categorization hierarchy, and establish target performance objectives "so that safe commercial development can proceed on a defensible technical basis."

Inherent uncertainties

Caluk also outlined a "Response Spectrum Analysis" supported by NASA Small Business Technology Transfer funding that looked at the inherent uncertainties of the lunar subsurface.

The output of the analysis has developed criteria emphasizing the necessity of a local geotechnical site investigation for all structures, regardless of their seismic design category.

"These investigations are critical for identifying and mitigating risks such as seismic slope stability, seismically induced total and differential settlement, and other geotechnical hazards that may be triggered or amplified by moonquake ground motions," she reported here at the School of Mines gathering.

Moreover, the framework that Caluk and her associates have pulled together, acknowledges that lunar site conditions are not yet fully understood on a global scale.

Design practices

Not knowing ahead of time what lunar explorers may face is an unsure, shuddering proposition.

"Therefore, responsible design practices must account for this uncertainty through rigorous subsurface investigation whenever feasible," Caluk added. "By prioritizing localized data collection, engineers can ensure that structural foundations are robust enough to handle the unique physical properties of the lunar regolith and the specific seismic demands of the deployment site."

Caluk and her team members looked at the maximum considered moonquake, representing a more severe shaking level, to verify collapse prevention and ensure overall structural integrity under extreme lunar seismic events.

"NASA's deep institutional knowledge of human spaceflight operations and crewed mission safety," Caluk concluded, "provides the critical foundation upon which structural performance criteria for lunar infrastructure can now be formally established, with terrestrial engineering precedent offering a proven methodology for doing so even under evolving geotechnical and seismic data conditions."

NASA has announced a new commercial partnership for the next satellite headed to the Red Planet.

California-based Relativity Space will design, build and launch the spacecraft that carries NASA's Aeolus instrument suite to orbit around Mars, where the probe will be the first to provide daily measurements of the planet's global environment. Aeolus will collect data on Martian dust and cloud cover, winds and temperatures, according to a NASA release.

"Public-private partnerships like this are a force multiplier for science," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement on Wednesday (June 17).

The newly announced relationship, and others between NASA and private industry, is designed to allow the agency to concentrate its resources on important science discovery. "By pairing NASA’s world‑class instruments with commercial innovation and investment, we can deliver more science, more often, and reduce the time it takes to get essential data into the hands of researchers preparing for future human missions to Mars," Isaacman said.

Aeolus consists of four instruments, designed to work in tandem to create a complete picture of the Martian atmosphere and its behavior. In addition to refining scientific models for the Martian environment, NASA plans to use the data to reduce risks to future robotic and crewed missions landing on Mars' surface.

The science suite includes the Doppler Wind and Temperature Sounder (DWTS‑Ozone), in collaboration with GATS, designed to measure wind speeds and temperatures present up to 37 miles (60 kilometers) above the ground. The Thermal Limb Sounder (TLS), designed with Xiomas Technologies, will create vertical temperature profiles and provide data on atmospheric dust and cloud cover, while the Surface Radiometric Sensor Package (SuRSeP) collects compositional data on those clouds and dust, and tracks how the Martian surface absorbs, stores and releases energy, like heat. Finally, Aeolus' Wide‑Field Context Camera (WFCC) will take daily images to assess atmospheric activity across the whole of Mars.

NASA is targeting 2028 for the launch of the Aeolus mission, which will be designed and built at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, where it will also be integrated on Relativity's spacecraft for testing ahead of launch. NASA has committed to support Aeolus' scientific operations for at least one Martian year (approximately 687 Earth days). However, the agency has historically extended its missions to Mars, when able.

NASA was recently forced to end operations of its MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) probe around Mars, after an anomaly led to a loss of communications with the satellite, but the spacecraft ran for more than a decade beyond its original one-year mission. The agency's only two active satellites orbiting the Red Planet are the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and Mars Odyssey, which are both operating nearly two decades or more, respectively, beyond their initial mission timelines.

For its part, Relativity will be in charge of designing the Mars-bound spacecraft and will also be responsible for launch and for satellite operations in space. The company's pathfinder launch vehicle, the Terran 1 rocket, lifted off for the first and only time in March 2023, but it failed to reach orbit. The company then pivoted to development of the bigger, partially reusable Terran R rocket, which is expected to debut sometime later this year. Eric Schmidt, who served as Google CEO from 2001 to 2011, was appointed to lead Relativity in March 2025.

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. — For over 20 years, NASA's Swift space observatory has been conducting prolific science in orbit, hunting for signs of gamma-ray bursts — the most powerful explosions in the universe. Now, it's falling to Earth, doomed to a fiery death by the end of the year as its orbit decays.

But maybe not.

NASA, it turns out, has a daring rescue mission in the works, something never before attempted in space: the Swift Boost mission. The endeavor calls for an untested spacecraft built by the Arizona company Katalyst Space Technologies to rendezvous and dock with Swift — something the observatory was never designed to do — before the observatory falls back to Earth.

If all goes well, Katalyst's space tug (it's called Link) will lift the Swift observatory into a higher, safer orbit — one that will add years of life to the aging space telescope's mission. Liftoff is officially set for June 27, with Link launching on the last-ever Pegasus XL rocket, an air-launched booster built by Northrop Grumman.

"Frankly, I have to be honest: No one thought it was going to be possible," Shawn Domagal-Goldman, NASA's Astrophysics Division director, told reporters here on Wednesday (June 17). "No one thought we would get as far as we've already gotten today."

What stands out most is how quickly the mission came together.

It was just in September 2025 that NASA picked Katalyst to build a spacecraft capable of boosting Swift on a budget of $30 million. That was nine months ago. And now, the finished Link spacecraft — with its three robotic arms, three main Hall thrusters and a suite of other instruments — is packed aboard its Pegasus XL rocket and tucked on the belly of its L-1011 Stargazer carrier plane for a trip to its launch site in the South Pacific's Kwajalein Atoll.

"In the last nine months, we have gone from a clean sheet to a spacecraft that is currently integrated on a rocket on an airplane, ready to go to Kwaj for launch," said Kieran Wilson, Link's principal investigator at Katalyst Space, on Wednesday. "This is an absolutely unprecedented development timeline for this program."

Yet that "swift" timeline, if you will, is essential if NASA is to rescue the Swift space observatory.

NASA originally launched Swift (its full name is the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, after its late principal investigator) in 2004 on a $250 million mission to search the sky for gamma-ray bursts and other high-energy astrophysics phenomena in the cosmos. From its original orbit about 375 miles (600 kilometers) above Earth, Swift was a silent sentinel, ready to quickly pivot to new targets with unprecedented speed.

"Swift was designed to study gamma-ray bursts, short-lived flashes of high-energy light that release more energy in just a few seconds than the sun will in its entire lifetime," Swift principal investigator Brad Cenko told reporters Wednesday. "It's been extremely successful in this regard, detecting over 2,000 of these sources all the way out to the edge of the visible universe."

It was Swift that helped scientists confirm without a doubt that the heaviest elements we know of, including the shiny gold and platinum in the jewelry you're wearing right now, were forged by these explosive cosmic events, Cenko said. Swift was expected to last two years in orbit. It's well into its second decade now, and still in good health — well, except for that "falling out of space" part.

You see, Swift doesn't have thrusters, or a propulsion system of any kind. And over the years, an increase in solar activity — space weather from the sun — has puffed up Earth's atmosphere to create more drag on Swift than expected, pulling it down from its initial orbit.

Last year, the Swift mission team realized the space telescope was falling faster than expected. Without a rescue mission, Swift would crash to Earth by the end of this summer.

"It was okay for a generic spacecraft to come out of orbit," Domagal-Goldman said. "But this was not just any spacecraft. This is an observatory with unique capabilities for astrophysics … It is a swift observatory that can quickly pivot across the night sky to find things that go boom in the night."

"So we decided, yeah, we want to go save this one this time because of how special it is," he added.

A lot has to go right for Katalyst's Link spacecraft to rescue Swift.

The 937-pound (425-kilogram) spacecraft will launch into an initial testing orbit on June 27 and perform a series of checkouts to ensure that its basic systems (three main engines, 16 reaction control thrusters, solar arrays, robotic arms) are all working properly.

"We'll have a commissioning period of a few weeks, after which we will begin maneuvers in order to approach Swift," Wilson said.

Once Link reaches Swift's orbit, it will perform a series of proximity operations, dock, and then raise the space observatory to its initial orbit over the period of a several months. If that goes to plan, Swift could be back to performing science by this fall, Cenko said. (The telescope has been in a low-power mode to preserve what orbit it can since February.)

If Link is successful, Swift could get another five or more years of life in space. Link, meanwhile, will detach and be intentionally deorbited (meaning it will fall to Earth on purpose) to end its mission.

"All this is challenging and risky," Wilson said. "There's a lot of spacecraft that have had far longer development cycles with far more funding behind them that have failed for mundane reasons."

A lot of simple things can go wrong.

For example, the solar arrays on Link might malfunction, Wilson said. Swift has been in orbit for so long, its protective insulation blankets may be as brittle as glass and break when Link's robotic arms grab on, he added.

And then there's the sun. It was increased solar activity that put Swift in its perilous situation. That activity is ongoing. In fact, Swift may be one big solar storm away from doom if the sun fires off a major storm before Katalyst's Link can reach it.

Swift is on track to fall below an altitude of 186 miles (300 km) by October. At that point, it may be too low for Link to reach the observatory. A surprise solar storm could accelerate that fall, but NASA remains hopeful.

"At the moment, we think we have several months where Swift will be at a sufficiently high altitude to give Katalyst folks a great chance to capture and boost us," Cenko said.

Katalyst is banking on the future need for spacecraft servicing and life extension in space. This week, the company raised $12 million in funding to develop an even more capable spacecraft called Nexus, which it plans to "expand satellite servicing to multi-orbit, multi-mission operations."

"Over the last decade or so, we've gotten very good at launching things into space," said Robert Lamontagne, Katalyst's vice president for strategic partnerships. "Katalyst is here really to kind of demark the end of that throwaway model, and the start of a new model."

The first test flight of a Nexus mission could launch in 2027. Its target: a U.S. Space Force satellite called Rooster in geostationary orbit 22,236 miles (35,786 km) above Earth, much higher than the Swift observatory. That Nexus-1 mission will launch atop an Ariane 6 rocket next year.

One new mission is setting out to study menstruation in microgravity for the first time ever.

Forty-six years ago, NASA engineers asked Sally Ride if 100 tampons was the right amount to send with her for a six-day spaceflight. Though people laugh at that fact today, there has still never been any scientific study dedicated to studying menstruation in space. But a non-profit called Operation Period aims to change that. Led by Gen-Z researchers, this non-profit works to provide what its founder Manju Bangalore calls "menstrual freedom," which she says would mean everyone can have easy access to menstrual products. Meanwhile, the organization also aims to tackle the wider issues that leave people without such access in the first place. With its upcoming suborbital mission Operation Period-01 (OP-01), this ambitious team is taking their cause into microgravity. On OP-01, the mission's founder will launch to space to conduct the research themselves on a Virgin Galactic suborbital flight in 2027.

In conducting their work here on Earth, Operation Period found that "there were still some of those same gaps in spaceflight medicine," Manju Bangalore, the founder and executive director of Operation Period and research astronaut in training for OP-01, told Space.com. " I want all menstruators to be able to live life with their full dignity and reach their fullest potential, and that includes astronauts."

With a background in physics and astronomical engineering as well as with training in bioastronautics and having spent time working at NASA, Bangalore brings her love of space to this cause. She and Priya Abiram, the Director of Research at Operation Period's Redshift Lab, feel so strongly about their message, even 9 years since the pair founded their non-profit; in fact, with this mission, the two will become some of the youngest South Asian women to travel to space.

"On a personal level, I've always been fascinated by space and human space exploration. It's what's always excited me as a child, and I've kept that curiosity going," Bangalore said. "I didn't think those two missions would ever combine into this. It wasn't something I ever planned, but I'm very grateful to lead this historic mission to advance menstrual health in this way."

And just as this team is excited to bring their research into a suborbital environment, Virgin Galactic is excited to be expanding the range of microgravity science the non-profit supports. "This mission with Operation Period is a powerful example of how Virgin Galactic can continue to support real-time, in-flight scientific investigation into long-overlooked areas of human health, helping advance more inclusive and innovative exploration that delivers insight for both space and life on Earth," Virgin Galactic director of system analysis & research Amber Favaregh said in an emailed statement.

Recently, Operation Period expanded to include a research wing, and this mission will be conducted under that umbrella. The team was not yet able to share specific details on the exact protocol that will be conducted during the mission, information they said will be shared at a date closer to launch, but they did share the current issues that this research aims to begin to address.

Currently, astronauts typically choose to fully suppress their periods during their spaceflights, through hormonal IUDs or oral contraceptive pills. While that is a choice astronauts might continue to make in the future, without data to show the reality of dealing with a period in space, astronauts are left with fewer choices with their own bodies. Comprehensive data on menstruation in space will also be important if astronauts are to complete longer spaceflights or even extended stays on the moon. While the mission has not yet revealed its priorities and exactly what data it will collect, with such limited data on menstruation in space, there is a lot of knowledge to be gained.

While "the data that we have, although limited, says that it is generally safe to menstruate, in terms of long duration missions, we don't have quantitative data," Bangalore said. "We don't have enough data to continue to assist with patient resource allocation for mission planners."

Historic missteps like the "100 questions" moment with Sally Ride highlight an issue that could have big effects on future, longer-term missions. Sure, having a ridiculous number of backup products would ensure that there is no need unaddressed, mass considerations for spaceflight are extremely serious and future missions will need to have better data to know what will be needed in a microgravity environment.

And just like with other science in space, the research conducted in microgravity will also be used on Earth. The pair aim to collect menstruation data that will benefit astronauts as well as people back on our home planet. .

"I think on Earth, there's a lot of gaps right now in menstrual health research," Bangalore said. As just one example, she cited recent findings that menstrual product companies were reporting incorrect absorbency of their products because they were testing products with saline, which is very different from menstrual blood. "This was potentially leading to doctors to underdiagnosed heavy menstrual bleeding, which right now the stats say affects 20% of American menstruators," Bangalore said.

With this being the first mission of its kind, OP-01 will not answer every question that remains about menstruation and space, but it will bring data to a conversation decades in the making. "Our hope is to continue to iterate this research so that we can do future suborbital flights, as well as orbital flights, to continue to create larger data sets," Bangalore said. "I think the point of preliminary studies is to be able to know what questions to ask in the future, so we don't expect that this suborbital flight will solve everything or create all the data that we need, right, but we hope that this will be a good stepping stone."

Momentum for this research was actually sparked by many millions of views on a viral social media video in which Bangalore conducted an early version of a menstrual fluid dynamic experiment in a low-gravity environment aboard a parabolic flight.

This viral moment "ended up being a really cool kind of 'in' to continue talking about destigmatizing periods," she said. "Through that, I got to talk more about the gaps in spaceflight medicine, in terms of menstrual health."

It's Juneteenth in the U.S. today (June 19), a federal holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in America.

Though the Civil War ended in April of 1865, it wasn't until June 19 that same year when Union soldiers officially enforced the law that all enslaved people would be free. But the end of slavery was only the beginning of the challenges soon to follow; for one, segregation between Black and white people in the U.S., both systemic and informal, persisted for years. And we still live in a time when active racism, and the consequences of prior racism, trickle into many aspects of society.

It indeed affected NASA; Black women at the agency were once discriminated against despite making serious contributions to the space program. Our image of the day today celebrates the accomplishments of one such woman, Annie Easley.

Who is Annie Easley?

In 1955, Annie Easley started working for NASA's predecessor organization, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Her job was to serve as a "human computer," which was a position unique to the time. (NACA was dissolved in 1958, and its duties and personnel were taken on by the newly created NASA.)

Human computers at NACA and NASA were women who worked as basically early versions of computer programmers. To be a human computer, you had to be extremely good at mathematics, performing reliable calculations on a consistent basis to aid space missions.

Eventually, though, NASA moved toward the use of machine computers more often; Easley transitioned along with the space agency, ultimately becoming a full-fledged computer programmer.

As NASA explains, Easley's career shifted once again as it progressed. After some time, she took a position as the space agency's EEO, or Equal Employment Opportunity, counselor. She worked with NACA/NASA for 34 years before retiring in 1989. She passed away in 2011.

The importance of NASA's human computers

Like Easley, many of NASA's human computers became computer programmers once the agency made the transition to relying more heavily on machine computers. They together performed hundreds of thousands of calculations for the space program.

Easley alone was able to develop code that was crucial in research of energy-conversion systems, which paved the way for hybrid vehicles like the Centaur upper-stage rocket. Down the line, this work of hers contributed to the 1997 launch of the Cassini spacecraft that headed to Saturn.

However, the story wasn't as golden as it sounds retrospectively. Though NACA started hiring white women as "computers" in 1935, the agency didn't begin allowing Black women to enter the workforce until 1943. And that was only due to a shortage of professionals because of World War 2. In fact, human computers at the agency were not called professionals but rather "subprofessionals," and they were regularly talked down to by men who worked at the organization.

Black women had it particularly bad: They had to jump through hoops imposed by both racism and sexism.

Easley was one of just four African Americans out of 2,500 employees at NACA when she was hired.

In a 2001 interview, Easley recalled her mother saying to her: "'You can be anything you want to. It doesn't matter what you look like, what your size is, what your color is. You can be anything you want to, but you do have to work at it.'"

"I still believe that," she said.

SpaceX launched the latest batch of spy satellites for the U.S. government early Friday morning (June 19).

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base on Friday, at 4:50 a.m. EDT (0850 GMT; 1:50 a.m. local California time).

The launch kicked off a mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) called NROL-179.

The NRO operates the United States' fleet of spy satellites. NROL-179 was the 14th mission dedicated to building out a new part of that fleet — a network the NRO calls its "proliferated architecture."

"To stay ahead of the competition and ensure it can continue to operate in a heightened threat environment, the NRO is modernizing its architecture in space and on the ground — delivering more capability faster with increased resilience," agency officials wrote in the NROL-179 press kit.

"A greater number of satellites — large and small, government and commercial, in multiple orbits — will deliver an order of magnitude more signals and images than is available today," they added.

SpaceX and Northrop Grumman build the "proliferated architecture" satellites. Information about the spacecraft is hard to come by; the NRO has not released details about their activities or orbits.

All of these satellites have reached orbit atop Falcon 9s flying out of Vandenberg, on California's central coast, with the first such mission launching in May 2024.

To plan, the Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth a little less than eight minutes after liftoff on Friday, touching down at Vandenberg's Landing Zone 4. It was the third flight for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.

NROL-179 was the 71st Falcon 9 mission of 2026. Fifty-seven of the rocket's launches this year to date have been devoted to building out SpaceX's Starlink broadband megaconstellation in low Earth orbit.

Editor's note: This story was updated on June 19 with news of successful launch.

An experimental satellite has mapped the scale of GPS jamming across Europe and the Middle East from space for the first time.

The data surprised the team behind the project and indicated that satellites orbiting far from Earth aren't the only ones that experience degradation of their positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) signals, which could affect their performance and the safety of their operations.

The new measurements were made by Pulsar-0, the first satellite of the novel Pulsar navigation constellation developed by California-based Xona Space Systems. The experimental satellite orbits 310 miles (500 kilometers) above Earth, testing Xona's technology before the company begins deploying its navigation constellation of 300 spacecraft in low Earth orbit (LEO) later this year.

The purpose of the Pulsar constellation is to provide a more resilient PNT service compared to the United State's GPS network and other global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), such as Europe's Galileo or China's Beidou. The PNT signals distributed by GNSS satellites underpin many systems that our civilization relies on in everyday life, including the operation of power grids, finance operations and oil drilling.

But because GNSS satellites orbit quite far from Earth — at altitudes abve 12,000 miles (19,000 km) — the signal that ground-based receivers detect is weak and can be easily jammed.

GNSS jamming (the overpowering of GNSS signals with noise) and spoofing (which involves overriding the original signals with false ones carrying incorrect coordinates), have become almost a global emergency over the past five years.

For example, Russian jammers have been disrupting GNSS signals along Russia's western borders, officially to protect the country from Ukrainian drone attacks. Every month, this interference affects tens of thousands of flights that cruise over the region. The warring parties in the Middle East, too, use jamming and spoofing to deflect drone attacks and hide the positions of illegal ships at sea.

Xona's satellites will use a similar signal, but one that's 100 times stronger, to offer greater resiliency against such deliberate interference. But the Pulsar-0 spacecraft also carries a GPS receiver to make sure the two systems will be able to work together. When the Xona team first turned on that receiver a few months after Pulsar-0's launch last year, they were shocked by the scale of signal degradation the receiver was reporting above Europe and parts of the Middle East.

"When we fly over North America, for example, we see a beautiful signal all the time," Kaz Gunning, Xona's co-founder, told Space.com. "But as soon as we started doing any operations above Europe, we noticed that there was really something going on there. We thought we were going to see some jamming, but it's quite a bit more than we expected."

In the hardest-hit areas, the strength of the GPS signals at the satellite's altitude dropped from the regular 40 decibels to as little as 10 decibels.

Gunning says that, due to the altitude of the Pulsar-0 satellite, the map may not truthfully reflect where jamming is worst for users on the ground. The data, however, revealed that satellites in heavily used LEO suffer from some degree of GPS signal disruption all the way from France in the west to the borders of Pakistan in the east.

The measurements mean that satellites in LEO are not out of the reach of ground-based jammers, and that the PNT signals those satellites need to time-sync their operations and determine their position in space can't always be relied upon.

"You lose the GPS capability as soon as you pass over these regions," said Gunning. "That may be a problem for imaging satellites that are trying to position themselves to take images of a certain region. You can't do altitude determination, you can't do the positioning without the GPS signal. You can't even accurately point at your telecommand antenna on the ground. That's generally going to disrupt satellite operations."

Satellite constellations such as SpaceX Starlink also rely on GPS to avoid collisions with other spacecraft.

It's not just deliberate jamming and spoofing that can wreak havoc with the precious PNT signal. Severe solar storms, too, can cause serious disruptions. The Gannon superstorm in May 2024, for example, distorted the GNSS signal so much that precision farming machinery in parts of the U.S. couldn't operate for days. Technologists are therefore racing to find backup solutions to transmit the PNT signal to everyone who needs it whenever GNSS is down.

Xona hopes that the Pulsar constellation, once up and running, will make the lives of those dependent on GNSS much easier.

Gunning says that, with the superior strength of the PNT signal transmitted by the company's planned LEO constellation, existing jammers would only be able to affect about 5% of the area they can currently disrupt.

"The effect of the jamming is going to be reduced to a smaller radius," Gunning said. "The degradation area will go down, and the full lock-out radius will also go down."

Xona plans to launch a batch of six satellites in October and begin ramping up production shortly thereafter. The company raised $170 million in a "Series C" funding round this March and hopes to begin delivering basic service in early 2027.

"We expect early customers in timekeeping to begin utilizing Pulsar at the end of this year with intermittent coverage," Max Eunice, Xona's head of communications, told Space.com. "Pulsar's capability will increase with every subsequent launch, unlocking new advantages for new customer segments as our constellation fills out."

Earth got some of the key ingredients for life from asteroids in the inner solar system – with a little help from the solar system's largest planet, Jupiter, according to a recent study.

To figure out why we’re all here, and whether anyone else might be out there in the universe, scientists have to start with a more basic question: how did Earth get its supply of the chemicals that make up living cells?

According to Rice University planetary scientist Rajdeep Dasgupta and his colleagues, Earth’s stockpile of phosphorus and nitrogen, two chemical elements essential to life, came mostly from chunks of rock that formed in the inner solar system. And that process might not have happened without Jupiter looming just outside the asteroid belt.

"For our own solar system, Jupiter's presence and growth history indeed seem to have played a critical role in determining the distribution of the basic chemical ingredients necessary for habitable worlds," said Dasgupta in a NASA press release. "It remains an open question whether a life-essential elements budget similar to Earth's can be estimated without a Jupiter-like planet in the population."

Jupiter scores an assist

Dasgupta and his colleagues combined lab experiments and computer simulations to map the proportions of nitrogen and phosphorus, two chemical elements essential to life, in the early solar system. Life as we know it is literally built on these two elements; you can't build amino acids without nitrogen, and you can’t build DNA or RNA without phosphorus.

Other elements are also essential: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur, but how Earth got its phosphorus, in particular, has gotten less attention from researchers so far.

When scientists are investigating how Earth might have received the ingredients for life, one big clue is the ratio of each element to the others. Those proportions can form sort of a chemical fingerprint pointing back to the elements’ original source. In this case, looking at the ratio of phosphorus to nitrogen in present-day Earth’s rocky bulk could shed some light on where Earth’s phosphorus came from.

In the lab, the researchers simulated how different elements sort into layers as a newly formed asteroid cools, causing molten rock to crystallize. They also used computer simulations to model how different groups of planetesimals, clumps of metal and rock that coalesced out of the swirling disk of dust around the newborn sun, became the seeds of potential planets, formed and moved around the early solar system – moving phosphorus and nitrogen with them.

It turns out that present-day Earth contains phosphorus and nitrogen in about the same proportions as rocky planetesimals that formed in the inner solar system, the area between Jupiter and the Sun, around 4.3 to 4.2 million years ago.

Dasgupta and his colleagues’ models suggest that these chunks of rock, part of our solar system’s second generation of planetesimals, probably brought their shares of phosphorus and nitrogen to Earth as our planet was still forming. In a lot of cases, Earth’s gravity probably captured these objects and pulled them in, adding them to its growing bulk. Others got flung toward the accreting planet by collisions or close encounters with other objects, and Jupiter played a key role in that process.

Jupiter formed before Earth, and its tremendous gravitational influence shaped how material flowed through the disk of gas and dust that orbited the young sun.

Before Jupiter loomed onto the scene, material in the disk tended to flow outward, carrying its stores of phosphorus and nitrogen with them. However, Jupiter's hulking presence blocked most of that flow, keeping more of that rock, dust, and gas trapped in the inner solar system.

As the second generation of planetesimals was forged in the inner solar system around 4.3 to 4.2 million years ago, with Jupiter presiding, they formed with a higher ratio of phosphorus to nitrogen than their older siblings out beyond Jupiter's orbit.

Thus, the solar system's most massive world played a key role in distributing elements throughout the solar system, including those vital to life that were later delivered to Earth by asteroids that impacted our planet in its infancy.

Dasgupta and his colleagues published their work in the journal Science Advances.

A bold telescope-rescue mission is set to launch later this month, and you can learn all about it today (June 17).

That mission will be conducted by Link, a robotic servicing spacecraft built and operated by the Arizona-based company Katalyst Space Technologies. Link will meet up with NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in the final frontier, raising the telescope's orbit to give it more time to study the heavens.

NASA and Katalyst representatives will discuss the plan today, during a press conference that starts at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT). You can listen live here or directly via NASA.

Participants will be:

• Shawn Domagal-Goldman, division director, Astrophysics, NASA Headquarters in Washington
• Brad Cenko, principal investigator, Swift, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland
• Kieran Wilson, principal investigator, LINK, Katalyst Space
• Robert Lamontagne, vice president, strategic partnerships, Katalyst Space
• Wes Collier, vice president, launch systems, Northrop Grumman

Swift launched to low Earth orbit in 2004 to hunt for gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe. The telescope is still perfectly capable of doing this important job, but Earth's atmosphere is dragging it down toward a fiery death.

Swift doesn't have a propulsion system to fight this downward pull, so it needs some help — which is where Katalyst comes in. Last fall, NASA announced it had tapped the company to raise Swift's orbit.

It's an unprecedented ask: No private spacecraft has ever linked up with a robotic U.S. government satellite. And time is of the essence; some models predicted the observatory could come back to Earth as soon as this summer.

Katalyst has acted fast, getting Link ready for a launch later this month from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific. (NASA has not yet announced a target date). Link will fly aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket, an air-launched vehicle that will be carried aloft by a plane.

A European rocket lifted off with a record-breaking load on Wednesday morning (June 17).

An Ariane 6 rocket launched from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on Wednesday, lifting off at 8:21 a.m. EDT (1221 GMT; 9:21 a.m. local Kourou time).

The rocket was topped with 36 Amazon Leo broadband satellites, which together weigh more than any payload ever lofted by an Ariane vehicle.

Amazon Leo, previously known as Project Kuiper, is the broadband megaconstellation that Amazon is assembling in low Earth orbit (LEO). It will eventually consist of more than 3,200 satellites, which will be lofted over the course of more than 80 launches by a variety of different rockets. Today's launch delivered to 100th LEO satellite to LEO.

That's a lot of satellites, but Amazon Leo's scope is dwarfed by that of SpaceX's Starlink, a competitor network that's already up and running in LEO. Starlink currently consists of more than 10,500 spacecraft, and that number is growing all the time.

Wednesday's mission was the 14th Amazon Leo launch overall (counting the flight of two prototype spacecraft in October 2023), and the third performed by an Ariane 6. But this one broke new ground; the first two Ariane 6 Amazon Leo flights carried 32 satellites apiece, while Wednesday's sent up 36 of them.

The mission is therefore "the biggest stack configuration and heaviest payload ever launched by an Ariane launcher," representatives of Arianespace, the French company that operates the Ariane 6, wrote in the flight's press kit, which you can find here.

The press kit doesn't say exactly how heavy that payload was. But we know from other documentation that 29 Amazon Leo satellites tip the scales at 37,000 pounds (16,800 kilograms), yielding a per-spacecraft weight of about 1,275 pounds (578 kg). So 36 of them weigh roughly 45,900 pounds (20,820 kg).

The Ariane 6 got some extra oomph on this flight from four strap-on, solid-propellant P160C boosters. The rocket has flown with four solid rocket boosters before, but Wednesday's launch marked the debut of this particular, more powerful SRB variant.

"The P160C upgrade will increase Ariane 6 payload capacity to low Earth orbit (LEO) by more than two tons, supporting the deployment and early orbit operations of large satellite constellations," Arianespace representatives wrote in the press kit. "It also delivers substantial performance improvements for geostationary, scientific, and exploration missions, expanding the range of missions that Ariane 6 can serve."

If all goes according to plan, the Ariane 6 will deploy the Amazon Leo satellites about 289 miles (465 kilometers) above Earth. All 36 should be flying freely by one hour and 51 minutes after liftoff, according to the press kit.

Wednesday's launch was the eighth overall for the powerful, long-delayed Ariane 6. The heavy lifter was originally supposed to debut in 2020, but it didn't get off the ground until July 2024 on a test flight that was mostly successful. (The rocket reached orbit and deployed nine cubesats as planned, but its upper stage failed to complete a final engine burn that would have set up the deployment of two experimental reentry capsules.) All of its missions since then have been fully successful.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 8:40 a.m. EDT on June 17 with news of successful launch.

For better or for worse, the world has its first trillionaire: Elon Musk.

On Friday (June 12), Musk's rocket company SpaceX made its debut on the Nasdaq, marking the largest IPO in history. With a staggering $1.78 trillion dollar valuation, it made Musk the first-ever trillionaire during the first 20 minutes or so of trading.

And to mark the occasion, SpaceX's giant Starship rocket was broadcast on the side of a skyscraper in New York City. On another skyscraper just to the left, Musk himself was featured.

What is it?

SpaceX's tremendous IPO started trading at around $150 a share on opening day, ultimately closing that same day at $160.95 a share. It has since been a big topic of discussion among financial experts and amateur traders alike.

The 19.2% gain that SpaceX's stock (trading under the ticker symbol SPCX) experienced on opening day took the company to a $2.1 trillion market capitalization, according to Yahoo Finance.

SpaceX, however, isn't alone in getting past a trillion in market cap this year. Also according to Yahoo Finance, Walmart (WMT) did the same on Feb. 3, as did Micron Technology (MU) on May 26. Meanwhile, Apple (AAPL) was the first company ever to top a trillion in market cap, doing so in August of 2018.

Still, Musk is the first person to have a net worth above a trillion (though, to be clear, most of that money remains in his stock holdings).

Why is it noteworthy?

It's fitting that Starship was the chosen vehicle to be broadcast in celebration of the SpaceX IPO instead of, perhaps, the company's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which has sent astronauts to the International Space Station time and again.

Starship is analogous to the larger-than-life dreams of Musk, and it's key to SpaceX's future. Unlike the tried-and-trusted Falcon 9, the 408-foot-tall (124 meters) Starship is still in development. It's being built to bring humans to the moon — no, the pun isn't lost on me — and Mars someday. Settling Mars has been a longtime goal of Musk, with the entrepreneur even suggesting he'd like to die on the Red Planet one day.

SpaceX has been continually building and flying iterations of Starship while unafraid of failure, in keeping with the company's philosophy. The idea is to find and fix issues via flight testing, a strategy that SpaceX thinks works well over the long haul. This method has led to some stunning images and also some environmental hazards. To illustrate his grandiose thinking, a few years ago, Musk said he hopes to send fleets of 1,000 Starships to Mars every 26 months. More recently, he said he hopes to put up to one million AI satellites in Earth orbit.

"It is certainly hard to believe that a little company that started in a warehouse in El Segundo is now going public with the largest IPO ever," Musk said during an opening ceremony broadcast by Nasdaq on the day of the IPO. "I gave SpaceX less than a 10% chance of succeeding at all, to be clear."

SpaceX launched three giant direct-to-cell satellites from Florida's Space Coast this morning (June 17).

A Falcon 9 rocket topped with three of AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 2:39 a.m. EDT (0639 GMT).

The rocket's first stage returned to Earth about 8.5 minutes later, touching down in the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas." It was the 29th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.

Everything went according to plan after that as well. The Falcon 9's upper stage deployed the three BlueBirds into low Earth orbit (LEO) about an hour after liftoff, SpaceX confirmed via X.

AST SpaceMobile is building a constellation in LEO that beams internet service directly to cell phones. Before today, the company had launched seven spacecraft, most recently on April 19, when BlueBird 7 took to the skies on the third-ever flight of Blue Origin's powerful New Glenn rocket.

Things didn't go according to plan that day, however: New Glenn deployed BlueBird 7 in the wrong orbit after suffering an anomaly, and the satellite was lost.

BlueBird 7 was the second of AST SpaceMobile's "next-generation" spacecraft to launch, after BlueBird 6, which reached LEO successfully atop an Indian LVM3 rocket in December 2025.

The next-gen satellites have antennas that cover nearly 2,400 square feet (223 square meters) when unfurled — larger than any other commercial communications arrays ever deployed in space. (The original BlueBirds were no slouches in this department; their arrays covered 693 square feet, or 64.4 square meters).

Today's liftoff sent BlueBird 8, BlueBird 9 and BlueBird 10 aloft, quadrupling the number of next-gen satellites in LEO.

"Our upcoming launch marks another important milestone as we continue advancing the deployment of our space-based cellular broadband network," Scott Wisniewski, president of AST SpaceMobile, said in a June 9 statement.

"Each BlueBird satellite launched expands our ability to support seamless space-based broadband mobile connectivity directly to everyday smartphones," he added.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 2:50 a.m. ET on June 17 with news of successful launch and rocket landing, then again at 12:40 p.m. ET with news of satellite deploy.

A SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft is back on Earth.

The robotic Dragon undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday (June 16) at 12:25 p.m. EDT (1625 GMT), while the two spacecraft were flying about 260 miles (418 kilometers) above the northern Pacific Ocean.

The freighter's trip home was relatively brief: It splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the Southern California city of Oceanside today (June 17) at 8:11 a.m. EDT (1211 GMT; 5:11 a.m. local time), NASA officials said in an update.

The Dragon launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on May 15, kicking off CRS-34, the company's 34th commercial resupply services flight for NASA. It was the sixth such mission for this particular capsule, according to a SpaceX mission description.

The capsule arrived at the ISS two days later, delivering nearly 6,500 pounds (2,950 kilograms) of food, scientific hardware and other equipment to the astronauts aboard the orbiting lab.

The freighter hauled thousands of pounds of cargo back home as well, "carrying samples that could shape future space exploration and life on Earth," NASA officials wrote in a June 12 media advisory.

"Research returning includes bioprinted organ and cartilage tissue, data on improving cryogenic fuel storage for future space missions, and DNA‑inspired materials to develop new cancer treatments," they added. "The returning hardware includes an ocular imaging device used to monitor crew members' eye health, an absorbent bed that filters trace contaminants from cabin air, and a separator pump from the waste and hygiene compartment."

Dragon is the only operational ISS cargo spacrecraft that can survive the fiery downward trip through Earth's atmosphere.

The other active freighters — Northrop Grumman's Cygnus, Russia's Progress and Japan's HTV-X — are all expendable, burning up in our air at the end of their missions.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:30 p.m. ET on June 16 with news of undocking from the ISS, then again at 11:15 a.m. ET on June 17 with news of splashdown.

The next robotic lander to launch to the moon was revealed today (June 15) by Pittsburgh-based company Astrobotic.

NASA chose Astrobotic's Griffin vehicle to be the lander for its Moon Base II mission, part of the first phase of the agency's efforts to establish a permanent lunar outpost. Astrobotic is targeting late 2026 to launch Griffin Mission One (Griffin-1), which will lift off on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The lander is contracted to deliver several research and technology demonstrations to the surface of the moon as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, including the FLIP (Flex Lunar Innovation Platform) rover from California-based company Astrolab.

"This is the first infrastructure-class lander going to the surface of the moon," Astrobotic CEO John Thornton said during today's event. "This lander will be part of the cornerstone of building the moon base on the surface of the moon, so I'm just so excited for it to be here today, and to wish it good travels as it heads out to JPL [NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory] for environmental testing,"

Integration at the company's headquarters is expected to wrap up this week, with a number of payloads already incorporated onto the lander. Those payloads include Astrobotic's own BEACON CubeRover, in coordination with Mission Control Space Services, and the European Space Agency's LandCam-X, designed to help improve lunar landing precision and reliability on future missions.

Griffin-1 is scheduled for transportation to JPL in California next week for environmental testing, ahead of its delivery to Florida in the coming months, where the FLIP rover will be integrated into the lander prior to launch.

The mission will be the second from Astrobotic that shoots for the moon, after the debut of the company's smaller Peregrine lunar lander in January 2024. Peregrine experienced a propellant leak shortly after deploying into space, however, and never reached its destination.

In addition to being the company's first lander, Peregrine Mission One was the first-ever NASA CLPS flight. Through CLPS, NASA is partnering with commercial companies to provide lunar landers to deliver technology demonstrations and other payloads to the surface of the moon. The program aims to support NASA's Artemis program, through which the agency plans to establish a lunar base and eventual sustained human presence on the surface.

Griffin is considerably larger than Peregrine. Though both landers stand roughly 6 feet (2 meters) tall, Griffin is nearly twice as wide, measuring nearly 15 feet (4.5 meters) across. Astrobotic advertises the big lander's payload capacity to the lunar surface at 1,377 pounds (625 kilograms), with a cost of $544,000 per pound ($1.2 million per kilogram).

In total, Griffin-1 will carry 10 payloads from six separate nations, with four additional NASA payloads aboard FLIP. Some of the smaller payloads on the Griffin lander include a plaque from the Nippon Travel Agency, with messages collected from children in Japan to send to the moon; the Galactic Library to Preserve Humanity from Nanofiche that's carrying a super miniaturized repository of literature and art; and a MoonBox capsule that will deliver items from around the world submitted to the Tokyo-based company Astrobotic on micro SD cards.

"So, this is going to be chock full of interesting science and data that's going to be coming back from the moon, and some of the best imagery we have seen yet coming back from the surface," Thornton said.

SpaceX sent 24 Starlink satellites to orbit on Monday (June 15) — a number that nearly matched the percentage-point jump the company's stock has taken on its first day of trading after going public on Friday (June 12).

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California today at 11:34 a.m. EDT (1534 GMT; 8:34 a.m. PDT local time).

SpaceX, which now trades under the ticker symbol SPCX on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, confirmed a successful satellite deployment about an hour after the launch.

About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9's first stage (Booster B1093) landed on the autonomous drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You" positioned in the Pacific Ocean. It was the 14th flight for the booster.

The satellites (known as Group 17-54) raised the Starlink megaconstellation to 10,660 active units, according to tracker Jonathan McDowell. The network provides broadband internet access around the world, powers some airlines' inflight wifi and enables direct cell-to-satellite access for select providers.

SpaceX's IPO (initial public offering) on Friday was the largest in history, valuing the company at $1.77 trillion and making founder and CEO Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire. More than 4,400 of the company's past and present employers are estimated to have become millionaires thanks to the move.

The stock was trading at more than $180 per share at the time this article was published.

Monday's launch was SpaceX's 69th Falcon 9 mission of the year. More than 80% of those flights have been Starlink missions.

HOUSTON — Ever had a mysterious meeting with management show up on your work calendar? Unannounced and unprompted? With invitees from parts of the company you don't normally sit in on meetings with?

That kind of calendar event might send spikes of panic down the spines of some recipients, but it's not always the dreaded meeting with HR you may fear. In this case at NASA, the unsuspecting attendees were not handed their pink slips and shown the door. Quite the opposite. They were gathered to learn the crew assignments for Artemis 3, the agency's next mission progressing its efforts to return astronauts to the moon. Turns out, the five astronauts sitting in the room that day were to become the primary and backup crew for Artemis 3.

"Historically, I think most of us have been told in the past individually," Artemis 3 backup crew member NASA astronaut Bob Hines told Space.com. "There was some fake meeting name that showed up on a calendar, and we all ended up in a room together," he said.

NASA announced the Artemis 3 crew to the public during a reveal ceremony at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) on June 9. It includes NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik as mission commander, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano from the European Space Agency as pilot, NASA's Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas as mission specialists, and Hines as backup.

The quartet will lift off aboard an Orion spacecraft on NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and spend about two weeks in low Earth orbit. There, Orion will rendezvous and dock with two different lunar lander designs to test the vehicles' compatibility in space. It's the follow-on mission to NASA's Artemis 2, which flew Orion and a crew of four on a 10-day mission around the moon in April, and the precursor to the Artemis program's first planned lunar landing mission, Artemis 4.

Near the end of Artemis 2, NASA associate administrator Amit Kshatriya told reporters the Artemis 3 crew announcement would come "soon" — and now that the picks have been revealed to the public, we're also gaining a little more insight into how the astronauts found out the news themselves.

Sitting together around a table in a room at JSC about two weeks before the public announcement, not knowing why they had been called in, NASA's chief astronaut Scott Tingle told the group: "'Look around. This is your Artemis 3 crew,'" Hines said. "That was a really, really cool way to find out."

"We know that there's a cast of thousands that make it happen," he said. "There are a lot of astronauts that are qualified and capable of doing it, and it is an incredible responsibility that not just the astronaut office or NASA, but that the country bestows upon us."

NASA announced a group of 18 astronauts up for consideration for Artemis mission assignments in 2020. Since then, however, the eligibility pool has grown as NASA's broader astronaut cadre has gained more experience, widening the possibilities leading up to the Artemis 3 crew selection. The commander for Artemis 2, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, was one of those from outside the original 18 — and now, only one astronaut from the original list, Rubio, wound up being assigned to Artemis 3.

Even though he is designated as the mission's backup, Hines and his Artemis 3 colleagues see themselves as a single group. "We're really looking at it as a crew of five and making sure that everybody's ready to go come launch," Hines said. In fact, as the sole backup astronaut for the Artemis 3 crew, Hines' training will cover the needed skills for each mission crew member, rather than the individualized responsibilities of any one of them.

"The intent is that I can substitute in for anybody if they drop out at any time," Hines said. "So, as you can imagine, that's a lot of things to cover."

Now that the Artemis 3 crew selection has been made, the group will begin training for their mission ahead. NASA is targeting the latter half of 2027 to launch Artemis 3, putting the astronauts on a time crunch leading up to liftoff.

By comparison, NASA announced the astronauts for Artemis 2 in 2023. Their three years of training will be cut in half for the Artemis 3 crew, if it launches on schedule, and for a much more complex mission than its predecessor.

Both lunar lander vehicles for the Artemis program, SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander, have faced significant development delays, and neither has yet made it to orbit. So, for NASA to launch Orion to rendezvous, dock and perform maneuvers with two unproven spacecraft makes Artemis 3 one of the agency's most complicated missions it's ever taken on.

For his part, Hines doesn't mind being the backup for Artemis 3's primary crew, even if it means not getting to fly to space as a part of the mission. "We all are really excited to play any role in it," he said. And his role on Artemis 3 gives him a potential advantage when NASA chooses the crew for Artemis 4.

Prior to his selection as mission specialist for Artemis 3, Douglas served as the backup astronaut for Artemis 2. So Hines could very well be positioned for an upcoming lunar landing.

"I think any astronaut is lying to you if they say they don't hope they're not on the next mission," Hines said. "The best mission is the current mission, and the next best mission is the next mission … Certainly, everybody would like to have a role in upcoming missions, and so that's an exciting thing to look forward to. And whether or not my name is on it, if I can contribute to making it successful, that's the most important thing. Because there's certainly an urgency in getting NASA back to the moon — getting America back to the moon — and trying to do that as soon as we can, as successfully as we can, is really important."

SpaceX made history today (June 12) with the largest IPO in history, but for its launch team in Florida, it was business as usual.

Just over an hour (8:17 a.m. EDT or 1217 GMT on Friday) before the company's stock went public on the Nasdaq exchange —quickly making founder Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire — a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 29 Starlink satellites lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The broadband relay satellites (Group 10-54) were deployed into low Earth orbit at just about the same time trading of SpaceX stock began.

"$SPCX. Now trading on Nasdaq," the exchange posted and SpaceX re-shared on social media. As the market closed, SpaceX's stock price sat at just over $161 a share, up from $155 when it debuted. The company is now valued at just over $2.1 trillion, according to the New York Times.

Meanwhile, as the company's value soared, the Falcon 9's first stage (B1080) completed its 27th flight, touching down on its four landing legs atop the autonomous droneship "A Shortfall of Gravitas" stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Starlink megaconstellation has more than 10,600 active satellites, according to tracker Jonathan McDowell. The network provides access to the internet from locations around the world, in-flight on airliners and direct-to-cell on select providers.

The launch on Friday was SpaceX's 68th Falcon 9 mission of the year.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, has successfully launched its H3 rocket on its first flight since a failure of the vehicle last December, which resulted in the loss of its payload.

Liftoff occurred on Thursday (June 11), just before 8:54 p.m. EDT (0054 GMT), from the Tanegashima Space Center on the southeastern tip of Japan. It was H3's eighth-ever liftoff, and the first flight of the rocket's three-engine configuration, which delivered all six of its payloads to their respective orbits, according to a JAXA release.

H3 failed to deliver its payload, the Michibiki 5 satellite, during its last mission. The cause was ruled to be a damaged payload adapter, according to a JAXA investigation earlier this year, which led to the loss of the satellite and damage to the second stage's propellant tanks, causing ignition problems with the vehicle's engine. H3's first launch of 2026 went much smoother.

"The rocket flew as planned, successfully placing the second stage into its designated orbit, and separating PETREL and STARS-X approximately 16 minutes and 4 seconds after launch," the JAXA release said, and also confirmed the nominal separation of the BRO-22, VERTECS, HORN-L and HORN-R payloads.

H3 is a two-stage rocket designed as the successor to JAXA's H-2A, which was retired last year. It was developed by JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and is powered by LE-9 engines.

Yesterday's JAXA launch was the first H3 rocket to fly three of those engines, as opposed to the two-engined configuration it has relied on for previous launches. H3 had a rough start after its debut. H3 launched five successful missions before its mishap last December, but failed during its first-ever launch in March 2023.

The rocket's success on this most recent flight hopefully put the vehicle back on course for more nominal missions ahead.

"Thank you for your support and cheers," Tanegashima Space Center said in a post on X after the mission. "Please continue to cheer for the H3 Rocket going forward."

The U.S. military is looking into putting "orbital warehouses" into orbit around Earth where fuel and other materials could be stored for easy pickup by future spacecraft on satellite servicing missions.

A new U.S. military challenge aims to "accelerate operational logistics" to help the U.S. Space Force keep its satellites active and respond in a timely fashion to threats. The challenge was created amid repeated warnings that China and Russia are actively maneuvering their own satellites close to U.S. spacecraft in orbit and launching new types of orbital weaponry.

"An orbital warehouse will have the same functionality as a terrestrial warehouse: to receive, store, inspect, and cross-load supplies, while offering protection of those supplies from the environment," a Space Systems Command (SSC) spokesperson told Space.com via email. "The orbital transfer vehicles would transport the supplies to and from the orbital warehouse, or other location of interest."

The challenge, led by the SSC and SpaceWERX (the Space Force's innovation arm), is asking companies to offer fundable ideas for orbital warehouses and orbital "transfer vehicles" that can haul fuel and supplies to and from these depots, as well insight on the best orbits in which to put the depots and vehicles, and how to manage fuel and reusability for longer-term missions. A call-out this summer will offer more details.

There's no timeline available on when these orbital warehouses (or other assets) will be operationally ready, although the SSC spokesperson added that the work is linked with the new "Objective Force 2040" planning document released in April by the Space Force, defining where the branch of the U.S. military hopes to be in the next 15 years.

SSC stated that the capabilities it is looking for include in-space servicing, propulsion, orbital mechanics, robotics, autonomy, metrology (measurement tools), materials and cryogenics, ground-to-space logistics, and mission analysis.

Planning is already underway for two funded on-orbit demonstrations in 2027 to help inform the requirements of the challenge.

"Starfish Space will build and launch the US-Otter 1, which will demonstrate rendezvous and proximity operations and docking with a client vehicle in near geosynchronous orbit," the SSC spokesperson said in an email. (Geosynchronous orbit is 22,236 miles or 35,786 kilometers, above our planet, and allows a spacecraft to remain above a fixed location on Earth.)

Additionally, Astroscale U.S. plans to build and launch its Provisioner spacecraft (previously known as Astroscale Prototype Servicer–Refueler, or APS-R) in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), and two directorates of SSC. The demonstration will use fuel from DIU, stored on a commercial Orbit Fab depot. Provisioner would then be used to refuel satellites owned by the government: AFRL Tetra-5, and so-far undisclosed SDA satellites.

SSC, the spokesperson stated, fully expects warehouses will be key to future missions using capabilities like those demonstrated by Astroscale U.S. (the American subsidiary of Tokyo-based Astroscale) and Starfish Space.

A broad sweep of entities can participate in the challenge: anything from startups and small businesses, to larger companies, academia and research labs.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:45 p.m. ET on June 15 to clarify that Astroscale U.S. (rather than Astroscale) is involved in this project, and that the company's spacecraft is now known as Provisioner.

NASA is fast-tracking a mission to launch a spacecraft that will attempt to boost another one of the agency's science satellites into a higher orbit before it falls to a fiery death in Earth's atmosphere. The spacecraft was recently prepped for encapsulation inside its rocket at one of NASA's launch facilities.

What is it?

This photo shows Katalyst Space's LINK robotic servicing satellite awaiting encapsulation inside the fairing of Northrop Grumman's Pegasus XL rocket at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Pegasus XL is an air-launched rocket that is carried to around 39,000 feet (12,000 meters) by a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar mothership aircraft, known as Stargazer. Once at altitude, the aircraft releases the rocket, which then ignites its motor to send its payload to space.

In this case, that payload is the LINK servicing satellite, which will attempt to rendezvous with NASA's $500 million Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, or Swift. The satellite's orbit has decayed from an initial 373 miles (600 kilometers) to about 249 miles (400 km), but NASA wants to save it by using LINK to boost it back up to a healthy orbit.

Why is it incredible?

NASA's mission to boost Swift is an ambitious one, not only because it will involve using one spacecraft to rendezvous with and boost another, but because NASA is still attempting to predict where Swift will be when LINK meets up with it.

The mission is incredible, too, in that it will involve four separate vehicles: the Stargazer mothership, the Pegasus XL rocket, Katalyst Space's Link spacecraft, and NASA's Swift observatory.

Swift launched on Nov. 20, 2004, on a planned two-year mission to study gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe.

One of the space station's robot arms, crucial for catching cargo ships and doing a share of maintenance duties, is offline for at least a few weeks for repairs.

Canadarm2, which just passed 25 years of service in April on the International Space Station (ISS), will require a spacewalk to fix an apparently broken part that seized up during routine work on May 27, NASA said in a blog post Wednesday (June 10).

The arm is in a stable spot, but it is awaiting help from spacewalking astronauts on June 30 — the day before Canada Day, a national holiday in that country. "The system demonstrated an elevated motor current in a wrist joint, and arm motion did not occur as expected," NASA officials wrote of the issue. Consultation with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), which funds the arm and supports its operations with MDA Space, showed a spacewalk will be needed to replace the affected joint. Luckily, a spare is already on station.

"Canadarm2 was designed with these kinds of potential issues in mind: it is made up of several segments that can be pulled out and replaced in space," the CSA wrote in a Wednesday update on its website. "Knowing that parts would eventually have to be replaced, the CSA planned shipments of key spares to the station well in advance. In 2017, a similar repair happened with one of the robotic arm's 'hands' after it started to show signs of normal wear and tear."

NASA plans a news conference at a to-be-announced date to discuss the spacewalk and to share more about the assigned spacewalkers. The two astronauts will likely be drawn from the Expedition 74 crew on the U.S. side of the station, which include NASA's Chris Williams, Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, and the European Space Agency's Sophie Adenot.

Getting Canadarm2 back online will be critical to berth some cargo ships at the space station, which carry food, equipment and other supplies to the astronauts, as well as to perform a share of maintenance on the orbiting complex. The last Canadarm2 berthing took place in April with Williams controlling the arm, and Hathaway supporting, to pick up the arriving Northrop Grumman Cygnus XL spacecraft.

Notably, Canadarm2 was not originally designed for ship arrivals (it flew to station in 2001, long before the rise of commercial spacecraft), but it made a milestone 50th "cosmic catch" in 2024 and has kept going despite being now 10 years past its design life as of this year.

Moreover, tasks over the decades have increasingly transferred to the ground, both at NASA in Houston and at the CSA headquarters near Montreal, Quebec. Controllers in Canada alone support more than 100 days of work a year for Canadarm2 and other Canadian ISS robotics (including the Dextre "hand"), which includes picking up equipment, transferring experiments, and performing other duties that don't require precious astronaut time.

The CSA's robotics on station represent its share of the ISS funding arrangement, allowing CSA astronauts and science to fly. The next CSA astronaut to go there will be Josh Kutryk, flying aboard SpaceX Crew-13 no earlier than September; the last was David Saint-Jacques in 2018-19.

Canadarm2 forms part of a long line of Canadian space robotic arms, originating in part with Canada's National Research Council technology that underlay early satellite antennas and the "legs" of Apollo lunar landers.

The first Canadarm made its debut flight on the second space shuttle mission in 1981. Canadarm2 helped build the ISS and supports station activities, and Canadarm3 is a next-generation arm being constructed to support the Artemis program, which saw CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen fly around the moon on Artemis 2 in April.

One of Canadarm2's biggest moments in history was a near-emergency repair of a torn solar array in 2007, which required NASA spacewalker Scott Parzaynski to ride on the arm and a Canadian robotic "boom" extension to reach the faraway, live solar panel part for a fix.

With the launch of SpaceX into the IPO frontier today, the space industry has its newest publicly traded juggernaut.

SpaceX's initial public offering, or IPO, went live for trading on the Nasdaq today (June 12), riding on what you could call the "Elon factor" — the high anticipation to grab stock in a company that once aimed for Mars, but now seems to be aiming at everything else, too.

Last May, SpaceX filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission key documentation that signaled an initial public offering (IPO) of stock. Talk of SpaceX, which billionaire Elon Musk founded in 2002 to find a way to Mars, going public had been rampant since late 2025, when the first hints arose of its possibility.

And this week, the long-anticipated IPO hit the streets, becoming the largest IPO in history, a $1.77 trillion dollar valuation. SpaceX anticipated a $75 billion initial offering, with shares valued at $135 each, a dollar number that SpaceX can modify on its own.

But today, as the NASDAQ trading began, SpaceX stock began trading at $155 a share, ultimately closing at just above $161 a share. Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire in the first 20 minutes of trading, according to the New York Times.

Musk was not in New York City as trading began, choosing to celebrate at the company's Starbase, Texas facility with around 5,000 supporters.

"It is certainly hard to believe that little company that started in a warehouse in El Segundo is now going public with the largest IPO ever," Musk said during an opening ceremony broadcast by Nasdaq. "I gave SpaceX less than a 10% chance of succeeding at all, to be clear."

SpaceX transitioning to a publicly traded company is a big deal, not only cash wise but may well power the future and potency of commercial space overall.

Market appetite

Shaun Davies is an associate professor of finance at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder. He thinks the SpaceX IPO will absolutely provide investors, entrepreneurs, and bankers with valuable information about the market's appetite for space-related companies.

"That said, I would be careful about viewing SpaceX as a pure test of the space startup sector," Davies told Space.com.

SpaceX today, Davies said, is much more than a launch company. Investors are evaluating a combination of commercial space operations, Starlink's global broadband network, and increasingly its artificial intelligence (AI) related ambitions through xAI, founded by Musk in 2023.

In many ways, SpaceX resembles a diversified technology and infrastructure company as much as a traditional aerospace company, Davies said.

"If the IPO is successful, I do think it could create momentum for other aerospace and advanced transportation companies. Firms pursuing next-generation aviation technologies, including companies such as Boom Supersonic, could benefit from increased investor interest in frontier transportation and aerospace businesses," he added. "However, many of those companies are still several years away from being public-market ready."

As for the big picture, if SpaceX raises approximately $75 billion as currently expected, Davies said it would comfortably be the largest IPO in history and would raise more capital than all U.S. IPOs raised during the peak year of the dot-com boom.

"That's a remarkable milestone in itself," Davies said, observing that the IPO raise is different from the value of the SpaceX, which is roughly $2 trillion. “What's perhaps even more interesting is that SpaceX may not hold the record for very long.”

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell rang the opening bell in at Nasdaq's Marketsite in New York surrounded by supporters, friends and family. Confetti rained down as trading began.

"I am so proud of this team," Shotwell said as she recounted the company's successes from its first orbital launch to rocket reuse, to launching astronauts for NASA, developing its Starship megarocket and to expanding into artificial intelligence and more.

"Elon founded this company in 2002 initially to build rockets and spaceships that will take humans to Mars, the moon, and even beyond," Shotwell said. "We've not quite gotten to Mars, we're almost at the moon."

Before trading even began, SpaceX celebrated with a rocket launch, a Falcon 9 mission that sent 29 satellites into orbit. It may have been a risky move for some companies to launch on IPO day, but Falcon 9 launches seem routine now, flying multiple times a week (there was one yesterday, too).

"What company would do such a thing on the day that they open in the public market?" Shotwell asked. "SpaceX, right?"

New wave of IPOs?

Davies said that investors are already looking ahead to companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have achieved extraordinary private-market valuations. It is certainly possible that one or both could eventually pursue offerings that rival or even exceed the size of the SpaceX transaction, he said.

"More broadly, this could mark the beginning of a new wave of large-scale technology IPOs. For years, many of the most valuable technology companies stayed private longer than ever before," Davies said."We may now be entering a period where some of those companies finally access public markets."

All this said, market conditions still matter, he added.

Over the past several trading sessions there has been some reassessment of valuations among high-flying technology stocks, including a recent sharp pullback in the NASDAQ, the marketplace where investors can buy and sell shares of publicly traded companies

"If investors become more cautious toward growth-oriented companies, that could make it more challenging for future IPO candidates," Davies said. "The opportunity is clearly there, but the market still has to be willing to support these valuations."

Watershed moment

"SpaceX’s IPO is a watershed moment for both the industry and the financial markets," said Jeffrey Manber, special representative to the chairman and CEO of Voyager Technologies, a defense and space technology firm.

"Though the public SpaceX is far more than a rocket company and far more than a space company, it nonetheless is as impactful a moment as what Microsoft was to software and Google to the internet," Manber said.

Manber seemed struck on how far private space endeavors have come.

"One of my favorite expressions in the early 90s was 'remember, no one has gotten rich from commercial space,'" he told Space.com.

Scaling to cosmic heights

What makes Manber most optimistic is that there is a straight line from the 2008 NASA cargo contract to the International Space Station and the SpaceX Starlink internet satellite constellation.

"But at the time doubters kept saying there is no demand for low Earth orbit transportation and that SpaceX would remain dependent on NASA funding forever." Manber said. What Elon Musk did, he added, was show that, with the government as a customer, the commercial markets are scalable to incredible heights.

"So, too, we'll see this again with the commercial [low Earth orbit] destinations space station marketplace," Manber added. "The killer market demand will emerge once we have commercially run orbiting platforms."

Prediction and a revisit of history

According to Manber, space is now its own asset class.

There are specialized investment vehicles just for commercial space services. Investors can support companies focused on everything from launch services to Earth observation to lunar services, and even to new spaceports, he said.

And the mind-boggling amount of wealth created by the SpaceX IPO — about 4,400 current and former SpaceX employees are expected to become millionaires, according to the New York Times — has led Manber to make a pretty safe prediction.

"One of the unanticipated impacts of the SpaceX IPO will be the literally dozens and dozens of newly minted commercial space entrepreneurs who will self-fund their own companies," he said. "A true explosion in commercial space services is about to be realized, thanks to the transfer of wealth to hundreds of SpaceX employees."

The moment reminded Manber of another key IPO in history.

"I'm reminded that the world's first IPO was for the Dutch East India Company in 1602 to pay for their spice trading voyagers which were both years in the making and technically difficult to achieve," Manber said. "This time investors are supporting what could be the first voyagers to the planet Mars. Never underestimate the power of the commercial marketplace and its role in commercial exploration."

While SpaceX has evolved into more than just a space company over the last 24 years, Musk maintains that his long-term goal of making humanity a mutiplanetary species remains the same.

"That's what SpaceX is all about, is to take the fiction out of science fiction and create an exciting, inspiring future for everyone," Musk said as trading began today. "We want to be able to take anyone who wants to go to the moon, anyone who wants to go to Mars, or anywhere in the solar system, and maybe beyond the solar system."

Editor's note: This story was updated at 4:30 pm ET to include details of SpaceX's IPO success at the close of trading.

SpaceX continued its almost continuous delivery of Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit on Thursday (June 11), with its latest launch from California.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 24 of the internet broadband relays (Group 17-44) launched at 11:05 a.m. EDT (1505 GMT or 8:05 a.m. PDT local time) from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. About an hour later, SpaceX confirmed the satellites were successfully deployed.

The flight's first stage booster (B1071) completed its 34th mission, touching down on its four landing legs atop the autonomous droneship "Of Course I Still Love You," which was prestaged in the Pacific Ocean. The booster is one flight shy of tying the reuse record set by Booster 1067 on June 8.

The launch came the same week as SpaceX's highly anticipated IPO (Initial Public Offering) on the NASDAQ stock market. This could have been the last SpaceX launch before it goes public, but another Starlink launch is currently targeted for Friday morning in Florida, before the market opens.

IPO aside, the launch did increase the population of the Starlink megaconstellation to more than 10,600 satellites, according to tracker Jonathan McDowell.

Thursday's launch was SpaceX's 67th Falcon 9 launch of the year and 660th completed mission since 2008.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk outlined more details for his company’s planned data centers in space ahead of a widely anticipated IPO on Friday (June 12) expected to make him a trillionaire.

A new half-hour video offers a typical Elon Musk fireside chat about where the billionaire founder of SpaceX wants to be taking his technology next. In the video posted on X on Monday (June 8), Musk described launching AI satellites, with "a lot of solar cells", as well as radiators and high-speed optical (laser) links for communication. SpaceX also expects to launch an AI-satellite-focused production facility by the end of next year, to be "operating at some reasonable volume," Musk said. "So, if anybody wants to work on AI satellites, this is kind of going to become the hub of that."

The common pitch among these companies is that space is necessary to generate AI capabilities because data centers on Earth are running out of physical space to host them, as well as lacking community support out of concerns about significant power and water usage by these big computing hubs. The challenge is that orbital data centers are mostly notional, and not actually demonstrated by operating tech — at least yet. But SpaceX is confident it can develop the necessary technologies to make an AI data center constellation a reality.

The next generation of Starlink satellites SpaceX is developing already possess a lot of the tech needed to advance to AI centers, according to Musk. "A lot of this technology, we've already made for the Starlink V3 satellites," he said. "Basically, we don't think this is a super-hard problem, compared to things we already do."

Musk described "racks of compute" (referring to the banks of computer chips on each satellite) that would connect with each other through laser links between the AI satellites, as well as with Starlinks. The data could be sent to the ground using antennas, or laser links at "not a particularly high latency" (meaning, high speed).

Each AI satellite, Musk said, would generate 150 kW of power at peak, and 120 kW consistently, and would launch aboard SpaceX's heavy-lift Super Heavy and Starship vehicles the company is still testing out every few months for eventual mission operations.

The SpaceX CEO also appeared to wave off concerns about overcrowding low Earth orbit, even after numerous reports have emerged about Starlink satellites having to maneuver away from each other or from other spacecraft. (SpaceX's Starlink constellation is currently at 10,000-plus operational members, according to analyst Jonathan McDowell.)

"There's a lot of space up there, and so even when you're talking thousands, or even — you know — up to a million satellites, yeah, you got plenty of room to move around up there. Space is really big, so it's not like space is going to get crowded," Musk said in the video.

Pointing to the growth of Starlink, Musk said SpaceX is uniquely positioned to be the company delivering on orbital data centers. "We've got a pretty good idea of how to operate, just really large constellations, and do it safely now, right? We are the only operator that has any experience of that scale."

Musk periodically offers these sorts of chats for Starship and the company's Mars plans, often (as with this video) mixing in musings about where he sees "civilization" and "humanity" going next. But lately, there’s been financial incentive to add AI into the planning for SpaceX.

When the IPO drops, SpaceX plans to list its shares at $135 apiece for a value of more than $1.75 trillion — and it is heavily betting on its company xAI, and orbital data centers in space to generate AI capabilities, in its pitch to investors.

SpaceX is also in a race to attract attention from space investors, who are watching other orbital data center plans from entities ranging from big players like Google and Blue Origin and Microsoft, to smaller companies like Cowboy Space Corp. (formerly Aetherflux) and Starcloud.

Correction 6/12: The SpaceX IPO was announced on Friday (June 12) not Thursday (June 11).

The four astronauts comprising the Artemis 3 crew announced this week are all male, but NASA officials emphasized they were selected based on qualifications and not to exclude any genders. The selectees, announced yesterday (June 9), were NASA's Randy Bresnik (commander), the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Luca Parmitano (pilot), and NASA mission specialists Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio. NASA's Bob Hines, a past SpaceX pilot and ISS astronaut, is backup.

All-male crews are a rarity these days. Out of the 37 active NASA astronauts, 15 are women, or around 40%. With the exception of the SpaceX Crew-6 mission in 2023 and the half-empty Crew-9 'rescue mission' in 2024, there has always been at least one woman on NASA missions to the International Space Station (ISS) since SpaceX began flying NASA crews to the ISS in 2021. 11 of the 15 active NASA female astronauts have flown to space in the past five years, according to a Space.com analysis.

In the wake of NASA's announcement, several science communicators (such as Emily Calandrelli, who was a passenger on Blue Origin tourist rocket launch, as well as Camille Bergin, a space marketing professional posting on a personal account) have criticized the lack of women on the crew. Another commenter was Sian Proctor, who flew with NASA administrator Jared Isaacman aboard the Inspiration4 mission in 2021. "Your success will pave the way for the all-women Artemis 4 crew!" Proctor posted to Instagram.

With regard to choosing the Artemis 3 astronauts, Isaacman praised NASA's Astronaut Office, as well as Norm Knight (who heads the agency's flight operations directorate that oversees astronaut training), for together choosing what he described as the best astronauts to complete the Artemis 3 mission.

"I don't think anyone should be reading into this," Isaacman told reporters at a press gaggle following the crew announcement. "Our last astronaut candidate class was greater than 50% female. We'll assemble the best astronauts to undertake and complete the objectives."

On Wednesday (June 10), Isaacman wrote a longer rationale on X in response to what he said was "reactions ranging from disappointment to outrage." The billionaire cited spaceflights he has paid for and commanded, noting he flew twice on SpaceX with crews that are 50% female (Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn). NASA crew selection has no political appointees, he added, and leadership in agency centers and mission directorates is nearly 50% female.

"The Astronaut Office assigns the crew that gives the mission the best chance of meeting its objectives, taking into account many factors, including the background and expertise of the astronauts, such as test pilot experience, development work on specific programs, and availability," Isaacman wrote in the post. "For example, those raising this concern may not be aware of the pipeline of crews already preparing to launch to the Space Station, or those who have been undergoing lunar-specific training that would be a better fit for a future surface mission."

The prime crew has significant space-related experience between them. Bresnik is a past shuttle and ISS astronaut as well as NASA manager, Parmitano and Bresnik were commanders of the ISS, Rubio set a 371-day U.S. record on a single ISS spaceflight, and Douglas (on his first mission) was backup for Artemis 2.

At least two of them overcame significant obstacles in space, as well: Parmitano survived water coming into his spacesuit during a 2013 spacewalk, and Rubio saw his six-month ISS mission unexpectedly double in 2022-23 after his first ride home was canceled due to a spacecraft coolant leak.

Hines told Space.com's Josh Dinner during on-site interviews at this week's crew reveal event that in general, based on past crew selections he has witnessed, the agency prioritizes capabilities in making the selection — but noted that diversity is important.

"I know that they look and they try and find the best capabilities of people that we have available in the [Astronaut] Office in order to accomplish the mission," Hines said in an exclusive interview on Tuesday, following the crew announcement.

While Hines did not get into specifics about crew qualifications, Artemis 3 is heavily a test-piloting mission as the astronauts may be meeting with both SpaceX and Blue Origin moon landers to get the machines ready for the real deal. That may be why all four Artemis 3 astronauts are drawn from the military, with considerable flying experience between them.

That said, Hines also noted the Artemis 3 crew includes a variety of backgrounds, other than gender. While again, he did not discuss in what way, the crew biographies show Bresnik has Slovenian ancestry, Parmitano is Italian, Rubio has Salvadorian parents and Douglas is African-American.

"You know, diversity comes in a lot of forms," Hines said. "If you look at this crew, it's a pretty diverse crew, and if you look at the Astronaut Office, it is an incredibly diverse astronaut office that absolutely represents the diversity of America, and that's just the way it fell out on this one."

A complex selection process

NASA's first astronauts in the 1960s and 1970s were drawn from the U.S. military, simply put, for security requirements — which limited the gender and the ethnicity of the astronaut pool. Adding scientists to the corps in the late 1960s, and deliberately recruiting women and Black astronauts in the 1970s, were widely hailed as steps the agency was taking back then towards diversity. The agency also gradually opened the door to international astronaut participation during the space shuttle era, further widening the pool of people who could be considered.

Early in the newer Trump administration, officials ordered U.S. agencies (including NASA) to end initiatives related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.

NASA also removed Biden-era references on its website to landing the first person of color and the first woman on the moon, among other measures, although the agency told Space.com in March 2025 that "it is important to note that the change in language does not indicate a change in crew assignments."

Crew selection involves a complex range of factors — most of them not discussed with the public to protect the privacy of the process and of all astronauts being considered for a mission. The astronauts must be unassigned to other missions, available for flights (for example, by not being on parental leave or on a military assignment), not in a management position precluding their participation, and in the presence of skills relevant to the mission, among other things.

An early ISS "crew criteria" document, for example, set out various general requirements considered in selecting the space station crews, which goes before a multilateral crew operations panel composed of the ISS partners. Astronaut conduct, behavior, medical history, and ability to speak English (and presumably, Russian) were some of the factors cited in 2002.

Additionally, international partners on the ISS are assigned based on their member contributions —Europe and Japan relatively frequently, for example, with smaller funders like Canada about every five or six years. The Artemis program, like the ISS, is an international partnership and as such, the input of other countries would be included in selection. Canada was the first non-NASA partner to select an Artemis astronaut, with the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen flying on Artemis 2.

NASA astronaut Christina Koch, who was the only woman to fly on the moon-circling Artemis 2 and the first woman to leave low Earth orbit, repeatedly said in interviews that the astronaut corps is made up of diversity. When asked by Harper's Bazaar in 2023 about why it took several extra decades to get a woman on a moon mission (after the all-male, mostly military astronauts who made up the Apollo corps in the 1960s and 1970s), Koch said Apollo was "a very different time."

"But I'm happy to say that long ago, NASA made the decision that it was important to represent all of humanity when we answer humanity's call to explore," she continued. "And now, the astronaut core looks like all of humanity. So it was pretty clear that no matter what kind of crew you picked for this mission, it was gonna have that characteristic — and I'm happy to say that it does."

HOUSTON — When you get down to brass tacks, NASA's Artemis 3 mission in 2027 looks to be one of agency's most complicated missions ever — one that relies on not one but three giant rockets and a pair of private moon lander prototypes that haven't even been built yet.

If NASA's schedule holds, four Artemis 3 astronauts will launch aboard an Orion spacecraft sometime in the second half of next year. Once in Earth orbit, they'll test Orion's capability to fly and function with two Artemis moon lander designs. NASA introduced that crew on Tuesday (June 9) during a ceremony here at the Johnson Space Center that also included new details on how the Artemis 3 mission will work.

"Artemis 3 is an incredibly exciting, complicated, and highly coordinated multi-launch campaign," NASA Artemis program manager Jeremy Parsons said Tuesday. "It's going to happen in a short period of time with three of the world's most powerful rockets."

Artemis 3 will be commanded by NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, with the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano as pilot. Mission specialists Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas, both of NASA, round out the crew. They will fly Orion's longest crewed flight yet, and move NASA's Artemis program one step closer to returning astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2028.

Here's what we knew before Tuesday's mission update:

NASA planned to launch Orion to orbit to rendezvous and dock with at least one of the commercial lunar lander vehicles contracted for Artemis. SpaceX's Starship, and Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander have each faced development delays, with explosive accidents for both companies occurring within the last year. The agency had previously suggested Orion would fly with whichever lander was ready when the time came to launch the mission, even if that meant leaving one behind.

Now, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman says both landers will fly with Orion on Artemis 3.

"Additional powerful rockets will launch to place the Blue Origin and SpaceX Starship landers into orbit throughout the duration of the Artemis 3 mission," he said during Tuesday's ceremony. Isaacman said NAS will coordinate Artemis 3 with launches of SpaceX's massive Starship rocket and Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket that will launch their respective landers after NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) launches Orion.

"We're not going to launch if we don't feel like we can get enough out of it in order to ensure a follow-on lunar landing is successful," Isaacman said to members of the media afterward. NASA plans to land astronauts on the moon on Artemis 4, sometime in 2028.

Other new information delivered Tuesday includes an update on the Artemis spacesuits. A spacesuit prototype built by Axiom Space will launch aboard Blue Moon on Artemis 3, and will then be tested out by Artemis 3 astronauts once Orion docks with the lander. That was also a new piece of info — NASA expects Blue Moon to launch with the ability to sustain astronauts onboard.

"On this mission, NASA and Blue Origin will demonstrate rendezvous, docking, hatch operations, ingress, and life support systems in low Earth orbit," said John Coulouris, Blue Origin's senior vice president of lunar permanence, on Tuesday. "This will allow the crew to gain familiarity with our lunar module and practice operations, such as suit donning and zero gravity." Construction of that Blue Moon Mark 2 spacecraft (Mark 1 will be an uncrewed moon lander slated to launch later this year) is well underway, he added.

Starship will apparently only launch with docking hardware, and no crew cabin for the astronauts to enter.

"Next year we'll support Artemis 3 and the planned rendezvous and docking with Orion in low Earth orbit," said Jessica Jensen, SpaceX's vice president of customer operations and intergration. "For that mission, we're going to be using a V3 vehicle off the line with an added docking adapter." V3, or Version 3, is SpaceX's latest Starship design, which the company launched on its first test flight in May.

Jensen said SpaceX aims to launch two Starships to conduct an in-flight refueling demonstration by the end of the year. "We're also actively building our first flight fidelity Starship HLS [Human Landing System] cabin at Starbase," Jensen said. "The primary structure is assembled and prepared to be outfitted with key functional systems like avionics, power, life support systems, and more to come in the next few months." SpaceX unveiled the Starship crew cabin design last year.

Axiom plans to include an Artemis spacesuit in a launch to the International Space Station in 2027, sometime before the Artemis 3 mission, for longer term testing on orbit. The prototype on Artemis 3 will be a "mass simulator" and allow for the testing of hardware interface checkouts, NASA and Axiom officials have said.

The mission timeline was also clarified during the crew announcement ceremony.

"In total, we expect the mission to last around two weeks," Parsons said.

The mission will begin with Blue Origin's launch of the Blue Moon moon lander on a New Glenn rocket. The Artemis 3 crew will launch next and dock their Orion spacecraft with Blue Moon for tests. They'll stay connected for about two days for technology demonstrations and tests inside the new spacecraft.

"After docked operations, Orion will detach and await Starship," Parsons said. "SpaceX's Starship lander test article will launch and meet up with Orion and our crew." They'll stay docked for about a day before the Artemis 3 crew undocks and prepares for landing.

After the end of their two-week orbital stay, Orion will splashdown in the Pacific Ocean for a similar recovery operation that was performed when Artemis 2 astronauts returned from their trip around the moon in April.

"The complexity of our integrated operations across multiple launches, spacecraft, rendezvous, docking, is greater in many ways than Artemis 2," Parsons said. "Human spaceflight is not for those who want to chart an easy course, but every decision we make about Artemis 3 will be informed about how it can help us ensure our mission success for the lunar surface."

NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory is the agency's next flagship space telescope, designed to do something no previous instrument has managed: directly image Earth-like planets around nearby stars and analyze the light reflecting off their atmospheres for signs of life.

The mission is still years from launch. But the design choices being made right now will determine what it can actually detect. A new paper posted to the arXiv preprint server tackles one of the most consequential of those choices: spectral resolution.

The authors of the study ran a careful analysis of how finely the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) would need to slice up the light from a distant Earth to confidently spot biosignatures in its atmosphere. The question matters more than you might think.

Spectral resolution is how well a telescope can distinguish between adjacent colors of light. Higher resolution means a more detailed atmospheric fingerprint, but it also means longer exposure times, more detector noise, and trickier engineering. Push too high and you blow the mission's observing schedule. Push too low and you can't tell the difference between an inhabited planet and a barren one.

To estimate what type of spectral resolution would be needed to detect biological signatures on our planet in its infancy, the team modeled what HWO would see when staring at versions of Earth through geological time.

Earth's atmosphere has changed dramatically over its history. The Archean Earth, before plants and cyanobacteria got going, had almost no oxygen. The Proterozoic Earth had some, but not much. The Phanerozoic Earth, the one we know, hit roughly 20 percent oxygen once complex life took hold. Each leaves a different spectral signature, and HWO will need to recognize all three.

The headline numbers are surprisingly modest. To detect molecular oxygen, the gold-standard biosignature on a planet like our own, HWO needs a visible-light resolving power of about 140. Ozone shows up at a much lower resolving power of around 7 in the ultraviolet. Those numbers are well within what current optical designs can deliver.

The infrared is harder. Carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have spectral features that overlap, and if HWO can't tell them apart, it could mistake a volcanically active dead planet for a living one. The team found that a near-infrared resolving power of at least 40 is the minimum needed to break that degeneracy. To characterize an atmosphere through Earth's entire geological history, they recommend a nominal infrared resolving power of about 70.

How did they arrive at those numbers? They generated synthetic HWO observations across resolving powers from 20 to 5,000, then ran each simulated spectrum through retrieval algorithms to see what could actually be inferred about the underlying atmosphere. They factored in detector noise, exposure time, and anti-biosignatures (atmospheric features that would argue against the presence of life).

There are real engineering limits in play. The dark current of HWO's detectors, the tiny background hum of electrons that any detector generates even with no light hitting it, sets a hard floor on what fine resolution can buy you. Pushing oxygen detection significantly further than the baseline would require reducing that dark current by roughly a factor of ten. And pushing to higher resolution for oxygen would roughly double the exposure time needed for water vapor.

The authors are careful about the limits of their analysis. Their absolute exposure times could be off by around 20 percent. And the more philosophical caveat is the one that has always shadowed this work: even a confident detection of oxygen, ozone, methane, and water in an exoplanet atmosphere is not the same as a confident detection of life.

The universe has non-biological ways to make any one of those gases. HWO's job isn't to declare victory on its own: it's to find the candidates worth following up on.

What this paper provides is a clear, quantitative target for the engineers building the instrument. A resolving power of 140 in the visible, 7 in the ultraviolet, and 70 in the near-infrared, with low enough dark current to make oxygen detection routine. That is the spec sheet for a telescope that could, in principle, find signs of life on another world.

Now we just have to build it.

HOUSTON — NASA has announced the astronauts who will launch to space on the Artemis 3 mission next year.

The international crew consists of three spaceflight veterans and one first-time spaceflyer, all with backgrounds specially suited for their upcoming mission. The three NASA astronauts and one European Space Agency astronaut of Artemis 3 include commander Randy Bresnik of NASA, ESA's Luca Parmitano as pilot, and NASA astronauts Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio as mission specialists. All were present at the announcement ceremony today (June 9) here at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

"You carry the fire of exploration from generations past, the confidence of this agency, and the support of this nation, and the dreams of millions who will be cheering you on, knowing that what others believe to be impossible happens to be what we do best here at NASA," said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman during the proceedings.

Each Artemis 3 astronaut comes from a unique background, with expertise that will contribute to the mission's success, and an array of experiences in aerospace engineering, piloting, EVAs and spacecraft development.

Here's a quick look at the newly announced Artemis 3 crew:

The diverse group was chosen from a wide range of possible candidates, including NASA's original 2020 Artemis astronaut cadre and a number of potential picks from more recent astronaut classes.

Today's announcement comes just two months after the end of Artemis 2, which flew NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a 10-day mission around the moon's far side and back to Earth. Artemis 2 was the first mission with astronauts aboard NASA's Orion capsule. It flew farther from Earth than any crewed spaceflight in history.

During today's ceremony, the three NASA astronauts of the Artemis 2 crew passed the (literal) Artemis baton to the new crew.

"I know all of us are very touched by the thoughtful symbolism of the passing of the baton, but I think now, after your mission, you're passing us something far greater," Bresnik said. "The world watched your mission, and over the course of those 10 days, we saw how you inspired people worldwide. You saw how something was ignited within people. It was ignited within all of us by watching your mission."

"We, the Artemis 3 crew, are honored to be able to carry this torch forward, to be able to execute our mission, to make that flame burn brighter and pass that flame on to the next crew," Bresnik added.

NASA is targeting mid- to late 2027 for Artemis 3, which will fly a very different mission that will last longer than Artemis 2 while remaining much closer to home. The ultimate goal of the Artemis program is to return astronauts to the surface of the moon, where NASA intends to establish a permanent base.

Artemis 3 will be a significant stepping stone toward that endeavor, but won't fly beyond low Earth orbit (LEO). If all goes according to plan the four newly assigned astronauts of Artemis 3 will rendezvous and dock the Orion spacecraft with one or both landers NASA is developing, and lay the groundwork for future Artemis missions to the moon that will follow. Ultimately, the mission will allow NASA to test out much of the most cutting-edge hardware in the American spaceflight portfolio.

"Artemis 3 will be an extraordinary demonstration of what is possible when the greatest aerospace companies across the United States, alongside our European partners come together to showcase the technological might and ambition of the free world," Isaacman said during the event. "This seems like the beginning of the future that we imagined as children. This seems like the very beginning of Earth's first Starfleet to me"

Artemis 3's Orion crew capsule will launch on NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket into LEO, where it will rendezvous with Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander (which will launch on one of the company's New Glenn rockets) and SpaceX's Starship. "Artemis 3 is an incredibly exciting, complicated, and highly coordinated multi-launch campaign. It's going to happen in a short period of time with three of the world's most powerful rockets," NASA's Jeremy Parsons, Artemis Program Manager, said during today's event.

The goal will be to practice docking maneuvers and operations between the vehicles. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin were awarded contracts through NASA's Human Landing System (HLS) program, but each has faced developmental delays that have prompted NASA's willingness to fly Artemis 3 with either or both landers, depending on their availability.

Blue Origin, in particular, faced a significant setback in May 2026 when its New Glenn rocket exploded spectacularly on the launch pad during a test. "We've redoubled our efforts and are moving forward," Blue Origin's John Couluris said during today's event. "We will measure ourselves not only by our successes, but how we respond to setbacks."

If Blue Origin can in fact recover from the damage to its launch infrastructure in time, the company will launch its Blue Moon lunar lander atop one of its New Glenn rockets. Once Blue Moon is in low Earth orbit, the Artemis 3 crew will dock its Orion spacecraft with the lander in low Earth orbit for two days. While docked, the crew will open the hatch into the lander and test its systems including life support.

From there, the crew will undock from Blue Moon and begin rendezvous maneuvers with SpaceX's Starship. Orion will meet up with Starship for one day, testing docking procedures. There will be no crew cabin on the Artemis 3 Starship lander, only docking hardware.

Another goal of Artemis 3 is to have the astronauts test out new spacesuits built for extravehicular activities (EVAs) on the lunar surface. Whether or not Artemis 3 will actually include an EVA while in Earth orbit is yet to be determined. Artemis' EVA suits are being designed by the Houston company Axiom Space and have faced their own delays. The suit tests performed during Artemis 3 could potentially use a prototype not yet ready for use in the vacuum of space, though any data gathered from use of the suit in zero-g will be valuable for its development.

Now that the quartet is formed, the Artemis 3 crew will begin transitioning from the roles in which they've been serving to training for their upcoming mission. The four astronauts will spend the next 1.5 years or more practicing procedures and real-time scenarios aboard the Orion simulator at JSC, as well as the recently installed Blue Moon training mockup.

Other prep work for Artemis 3 is well underway. For example, elements of the mission's SLS rocket are already taking shape at NASA centers and commercial partner facilities. The main stage propellant tank arrived at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida in April, and the final segments of the launch vehicle's solid rocket boosters recently departed Northrop Grumman's manufacturing facility on a train ride to KSC for stacking and SLS integration. Orion is also at KSC, undergoing final assembly and testing inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building.

NASA officials have voiced confidence in their ability to ready SLS in time for a 2027 Artemis 3 liftoff. The agency already had to shift that target from "early 2027," to "late 2027," as a result of development delays for Starship and Blue Moon (though Isaacman recently stressed that NASA is targeting mid-2027) . Whether that date slips further will depend on each lander's readiness, and could result in one of the two getting left behind.

If that happens, whichever lander launches with Artemis 3 will very likely be the one that delivers astronauts to the lunar surface for the program's first moon landing on Artemis 4, which NASA is hoping to launch in 2028. Should neither lander be ready to launch by NASA's 2027 window for the upcoming mission, a moon landing the following year would be unlikely, and would probably shift NASA's entire timeline for establishing a permanent lunar base at the turn of the decade further into the 2030s.

The White House has proposed massive changes to the scientific process in the U.S. which, if passed, could make science funding dependent on the whims of political appointees.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposed a new rule called "Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance" on May 28. This rule would give political appointees the power to change, limit, or even fully overturn support and funding for scientific grants. Not only would political appointees have authority over science funding — and therefore the science that gets done — but the decisions they make could also depend on whether scientists' social media and personal lives align with the values of the current political party.

To clarify, political appointees are government employees who are given those positions by elected officials. Their position is not dependent on educational background, expertise, or experience. "This is an insidious set of proposals put forward through the most dry and uninteresting sounding processes that you can imagine," Casey Dreier, Chief of Space Policy at The Planetary Society, told Space.com.

Breaking it down: What is being proposed? And what does it mean?

If finalized, this proposed rule would allow political appointees the power to change science funding no matter what has been decided through the traditional peer review scientific process. The rule states that scientific peer review "remains advisory and does not replace agency discretion."

"You replace merit review, peer review, with partisan political review," Dreier said.

What this means is the appointees could make the choice to go against peer review decisions based on their evaluation of the science itself — as well as whether or not they think that the personal lives of the scientists involved are aligned with the current political party.

"If you are part of a peaceful protest, if you post something on social media saying you disagree with the policy of the administration," Dreier said, that "can be actually used against you. [They can] just quietly deny you, your graduate students, [or] your staff access to scientific research money that you otherwise would have earned by merit."

And while this rule is being proposed by the current Trump administration, Dreier warns that even those who align with the current political party in charge should be concerned.

"Even if you are sympathetic to the political perspectives at play here, you are giving and centralizing control ... you are opening up for a future Democratic administration to impose their partisan tests on what gets funded and not," Dreier said. "You're handing [over] incredible amounts of centralized control and restrictions on free speech, free associations, [and] free inquiry."

While we have not seen attempted control over science funding in the U.S. like this before, Dreier draws a direct parallel to political decisions in China: "For an administration that says it wants to compete with China, this is actually taking a page out of the Communist Party playbook and saying, 'what if we actually impose a partisan political test on these things?'"

And this rule wouldn't just grant political appointees this power — it would also make it mandatory that every grant is reviewed by a political appointee. Furthermore, the rule would build on a 2025 executive order that ordered federal agencies to award grants that "advance the President's policy priorities."

It would also mean scientists working at federal agencies like NASA wouldn't be able to use funding to publish their science in journals or in open access publications, and forbids scientists from participating in professional scientific societies if those organizations do what could be seen as "issue advocacy," Dreier says.

So, why is this happening? According to the proposed rule, this is a response to a lack of "transparency, accountability, and proper oversight" in U.S. science between 2021 and 2024. There are also several criticisms of science handling during the previous presidential administration's tenure.

The proposal elaborates, saying: "Federal awards were often used during those years to promote a 'woke' policy agenda that did not reflect the values of the vast majority of the American public." The proposal further references what it describes as "unlawful DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] practices, various anti-American ideologies in American education."

What about space?

If finalized, this rule would affect all science in the U.S.

Looking at space science in particular, we can see not just how individual research grants might be affected, but also how large-scale research at NASA might be upended, changing how science (and which science) is funded at the agency.

For example, if you are a scientist working at NASA whose lifelong expertise is in Venus, and you apply for funding for research on Venus — and even if "maybe it's profound, or maybe it's very important research [or] it's rated very highly by your peers," Drier explains, you may run into an issue. "An assigned political appointee at NASA says, 'you know, actually the President doesn't care about Venus anymore, he only cares about the moon,' so [they] reject it," Dreier said.

He added that political appointees will be able to make these funding changes even if Congress has specifically allocated that money for that exact Venus research.

"This is a way to functionally impound resources," Dreier said.

"NASA's success depends on world-leading scientific capabilities. The nation's scientific workforce, working closely with their international collaborators, has enabled historic discoveries such as past water on Mars, the accelerating Cosmos, the existence of exoplanets, and more," The Planetary Society said about what's at stake with this proposed rule in a statement.

But even beyond NASA, this proposed rule, which would include new limitations on collaboration with other countries, could jeopardize the position the U.S. has maintained as an authority in space science for decades.

"New restrictions on international activities would effectively decouple the United States from the rest of the world while introducing new security risks," Cole Donovan, the director of policy at Stand Up for Science, told Space.com. "It would limit U.S. presence in international conferences, make it harder to publish information, and bog down what are currently routine transfers of information between international communities."

Donovan added that this rule would also prevent astronomers from accessing certain observatories or facilities. Besides disconnecting space science communities, that could also introduce serious risks in orbit.

Under this proposed rule, "satellite operators can't contact Chinese operators if there's a risk of collision," Donovan said. "This isn't a hypothetical — there are dozens of these types of emergency notifications involving a U.S. and a Chinese satellite generated every day."

The backlash

Science advocacy groups like The Planetary Society and Stand Up for Science have been quick to speak out about the proposed rule and the disruptive effects it could have on science in the U.S.

"The United States cannot be first in space if it is second in science. And the nation cannot lead the world in science if the systems are driven by politics rather than merit," The Planetary Society said in a statement speaking out against the proposal. "The U.S. would cede the next generation of discoveries in space to other nations — including the potential detection of biosignatures or even life beyond Earth — if these rules are implemented."

"We warned of this exact form of government overreach in science a year ago," Colette Delawalla, founder of Stand Up for Science, told Scientific American. "It replaces expertise with political appointees, globally decouples the U.S. and completely guts our scientific ecosystem."

With these concerns in mind, this proposed rule is not finalized, and it will not be finalized until public input has been completed. And not only is the government legally obligated to allow for comments on the rule, they are also obliged to respond.

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir captured a breathtaking view of auroras on Earth from orbit while sheltering with her fellow astronauts in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft as a pair of cosmonauts attempted to fix a concerning air leak on the International Space Station.

What is it?

Last week on Friday, June 5, the four Crew-12 astronauts on the ISS took shelter in the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft that carried them to the station. They did this as a precaution as cosmonauts attempted to fix a leak in a tunnel leading to a Russian module.

But Meir made good use of her temporary surroundings, capturing truly incredible images (and even video) of auroras over Earth from the Dragon.

"There is a lot going on right now on the @Space_Station, but fortunately we are all safe and witnessed a spectacular southern aurora show yesterday thanks to a recent solar event," Meir said in a post on X.

Why is it incredible?

While these images, and the video that Meir shared are stunning on their own, the context behind their capture is fascinating. Meir wasn't just in the Dragon capsule for fun, her and the rest of the Crew-12 astronauts were told to shelter in the capsule as the cosmonauts, Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, attempted to fix an ongoing leak on the station.

They hunkered down "out of an abundance of caution," according to NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens, while two cosmonauts went out on a spacewalk to attempt to fix an air leak on the station.

This has been a persistent, ongoing leak caused by cracks in the PrK transfer tunnel which connects to the Russian Zvezda service module. But while Russia's space agency Roscosmos manages the leak with occasional repairs, according to Stevens, the leak started presenting as more of an issue recently.

The International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) has ratified protocols advising what an astronomer should do if they discover evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence in our modern global world of social media, AI deep fakes and misinformation.

Referred to as the "Declaration of Principles Concerning the Conduct of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)," the post-detection protocols cover everything from handling the evidence, and how the discovery should be communicated to the world to the challenge of what comes after the discovery. In a world where an AI hoax could easily be promulgated across social media, or in which conspiracy theorists would likely attack a real discovery, the protocols are intended to encourage best practice and safeguard astronomers when the media spotlight falls on them.

And despite how this summer's Steven Spielberg blockbuster, "Disclosure Day," presents the discovery of extraterrestrial life as a grand conspiracy to be disclosed, transparency is a top priority in the Declaration of Principles.

"There is no secret file on aliens," Michael Garrett, who is the Sir Bernard Lovell Chair of Astrophysics at the University of Manchester, told Space.com.

Garrett also chairs the IAA's Permanent SETI Committee and is the lead author of the updated Declaration, along with anthropologist Kathryn Denning of York University in Toronto, Arizona law expert Leslie Tennen and science-communication expert Carol Oliver from the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

"If we ever find a credible signal, the public will know; it won’t be hidden away in some government vault," continued Garrett. "The new protocols commit us to openness — every dataset, every line of analysis code, every step of the verification process will be made public once a discovery is confirmed. The challenge is not secrecy but ensuring that we're telling the public something that's true. As Carl Sagan would say, 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.'"

Given the large-scale astronomical surveys currently in operation, such as the one taking place at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, or which are coming online soon, such as the Square Kilometer Array, it is very possible the astronomer who discovers evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence won't actually be a SETI astronomer.

"More than likely it's not going to be a SETI scientist who is going to make this discovery, it's going to be someone who's looking for something else in the astronomical data but who finds some kind of anomaly that doesn't quite add up," said Garrett.

In this case, they might not be familiar with the protocol of how to handle the discovery, Garrett suggests. They might not necessarily run to the newspapers, but they might declare their discovery on social media before their discovery can be independently verified — and while that could be very exciting, it could also be very daunting. How do they make sure their discovery is accurate and not a mistake? How do they announce this momentous finding to the world? How do they deal with the social media landscape that will judge and question them the minute their words hit the public eye? And what happens after the discovery has been made?

Hence, the eight protocols described in the Declaration of Principles. They have been written to guide the unwitting discoverer through this minefield.

How to handle an alien discovery

The first task in the Declaration of Principles is to verify the discovery is a real one, and not a misidentification.

No astronomer wants to be the boy who cried wolf and declare they've discovered aliens only to have to retract the discovery. Not only would this embarrass them, it would ultimately mislead the public and erode trust. So, verification is the only stage in which the proper protocol is to be circumspect, rather than go straight to the newspapers.

This certainly seems to be easier said than done. "We’ve seen that keeping these discoveries secret, even in a small group, is quite difficult," said Garrett. "The first gravitational-wave discovery leaked before it was published; even BLC-1 [a candidate SETI signal that turned out to be terrestrial radio interference] ended up in The Guardian before it was in Nature, so it’s quite hard to keep control of these things."

Verification could be as simple as having another, independent observatory confirm the detection and the details be peer-reviewed.

Once that is done, then the protocols state that the news be made public, either by the astronomers who made the discovery, or by an institution they are connected to — and that they liaise fully with the media. The findings also have to be reported in detail to the rest of the scientific community and the Secretary General of the United Nations.

Some technical aspects then need to be taken care of, such as protecting the radio frequency on which the discovery was found from terrestrial interference (if it is a radio signal that's been discovered, of course), plus continued monitoring of the signal and careful archiving of evidence, if only to avoid people in the future claiming it to be a hoax.

However, the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence will open up a can of worms, especially in regards to how society and governments will react, which will depend on the type of alien discovery that has been made — direct contact through a radio signal or a probe in the solar system would probably elicit a much stronger reaction than the discovery of an inscrutable Dyson swarm a thousand light-years away. To better understand how society might react requires the input of academics and experts from many disciplines beyond astronomy.

"I think astronomers need to keep to what we do well, which is look for the evidence," said Garrett. "But then it becomes a societal question; once we’ve made that discovery, what do we do afterwards? I don't think scientists are better placed than anyone else to be able to decide what that should be."

What happens after we finally find aliens?

There are already several inter-disciplinary groups considering the societal implications of an extraterrestrial discovery, including the SETI Post-Detection Hub at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and the IAA's SETI Permanent Committee, which originally introduced the first version of the Declaration of Principles back in the late 1980s under the stewardship of Michael Michaud. The protocols state that the IAA will maintain a post-detection sub-committee drawing international representation from the scientific, legal, ethics, social science, humanities and communications professions. Their job will be to help advise the public, the scientific community, governments and the United Nations on how to deal with any societal implications, should they ask for that advice.

What the Declaration does not recommend is sending messages to aliens in reply, at least not without international agreement through the U.N.

Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence, known as METI, has long been a thorny subject leading to acrimonious debates. While the protocols do not forbid METI (nor do they have any legal standing to forbid anything), they do state that SETI practitioners should participate in international consultations debating the merits of sending a message to the aliens and that no reply should be sent until a decision has been made through the U.N. via various international organizations.

"I'm pretty sure that the IAA SETI committee would say, 'don't reply' and that METI isn't actually a very useful thing," said Garrett. "I've no doubt that is what this committee would decide."

Another thorny subject is UFOs, the focus of Spielberg's Disclosure Day. Garrett says the IAA committee actually discussed whether to include them in the Declaration or not. While most on the committee were against including them on the basis that claims of their existence are not scientifically rigorous, some, including controversial scientist Avi Loeb, argued that they should be.

In the end, Garrett took the decision to only include phenomena detected above the Kármán Line (the official boundary between Earth and space, 62 miles, or 100 kilometers, above the ground) in the protocols.

Not only is this in keeping with the IAA's astronautical remit, but it also recognizes the fact that "the expertise of the committee is in searching for the signatures of intelligence beyond Earth’s atmosphere," said Garrett.

So, while the Declaration does not cover claimed observations of objects appearing to be UFOs in Earth's atmosphere, it would include the detection of alien probes in our solar system, or spacecraft passing through.

"I think there's a subset of our community and committee who can contribute to UAP research," said Garrett. "If UAP research becomes really scientific in the future — which I haven't seen it do so far — but if it does then why not at least have a look at what’s in the protocols and see if it can also be applied to things that are a bit closer to home in terms of phenomena that we don’t understand?"

Would the discovery change our lives?

Ultimately, no one really knows how the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence will affect humanity. The implications range from there being a huge panic and crisis of confidence in society, as well as in political and religious institutions, to the largest shrug of the shoulders ever as people just get on with their everyday lives.

Garrett questions whether any international organization or institution is really ready to cope with the societal and scientific challenges of the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence, especially if it is direct contact as opposed to finding a distant technosignature far beyond our solar system.

"Maybe no one can do that, but a professionalization in those kinds of areas would be really useful," he said. To that end, the protocols aim to encourage the development of best practice, so that we would at least have some well-studied guidelines to help us.

"We would really like to get to a place where we can point to a repository of best practice in a number of different areas — the whole range that this topic touches on, which is enormous," said Garrett. "This is why the protocols were originally set-up, and it’s why they have been re-drafted, because we think it is important that there’s a level of responsibility in the kind of things that we do."

The discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence could happen tomorrow, next week, next year, or never. When and if such a momentous discovery is made, however, rest assured that the real disclosure day would happen soon afterwards and that no one would be kept in the dark.

The revised protocols will be officially presented to the scientific community at the International Astronautical Congress in Antalya in Türkiye in October. In the meantime, they are available for anyone to read on the IAA website.

A former Paralympic athlete could end up breaking some records in the final frontier.

The U.K. government and the California company Vast have signed an agreement that aims to get John McFall, a reserve astronaut with the European Space Agency (ESA), on a research mission aboard Vast's Haven-1 space station.

McFall, 45, is a surgeon with the United Kingdom's National Health Service who lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident when he was 19. He won a bronze medal in the 100-meter dash at the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing.

Vast is developing a line of Haven outposts, and Haven-1 is set to be the first in low Earth orbit (LEO). It will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as soon as next year.

The newly signed memorandum of understanding is not a guarantee that McFall will fly to Haven-1. Rather, it "will see the U.K. Space Agency support Vast to secure sponsorships to fund a spaceflight for John," U.K. officials wrote in a June 2 statement announcing the agreement.

If McFall does indeed get to fly, he will work on research related to physiology, as well as prosthetics and movement in space. The U.K. government noted that his work could directly benefit millions of people, and also further ESA's goal of expanding access to space, as well as Europe's role in enabling private interests to work in LEO.

"The findings could have significant benefits for disabled people here on Earth, such as the design of lighter, more adaptable prosthetics on Earth," U.K. officials wrote in the statement. "They could also deepen our understanding of conditions like osteoporosis or muscle wastage that affect many disabled people and provide new insights into rehabilitation techniques for amputees."

"Signing this agreement with Vast is incredibly exciting," McFall said in the announcement. "If we can make this mission happen, it won't just be a milestone for human spaceflight, it will send a powerful message about what people with disabilities are capable of, and that there should be no limit to what you can achieve — on Earth or in space."

U.K. Space Minister Liz Lloyd said that McFall's history of accomplishments in sports, medicine and science show his extraordinary determination.

"The UK is committed to being at the forefront of inclusive human spaceflight," Lloyd said in the same announcement. "This builds on the groundbreaking work John has already done and opens the door to a genuine flight opportunity. I look forward to seeing what we can achieve together."

Vast also made some other news recently: The company signed a two-mission deal with the government of France, to fly one French astronaut to the ISS and another to Haven-1.