Space · Thursday, 22 October 2026

01 Briefing what happened

A panel NASA paid for names four Moon sites away from the south pole where astronauts could learn the most

The US National Academies picked Bhabha Crater, Mons Hadley, the Orientale Basin and the Aristarchus Plateau, while NASA's own Moon base aims at the ice at the south pole and still has no money of its own from the US Congress.

places away from the Moon's south pole that the panel wants astronauts to visit

one, Bhabha Crater, is on the far side, hidden from Earth's radio noise [1]

$20bn

NASA's estimate for building its Moon base over seven years

no regular budget bill has funded it as its own programme yet [5]

2028

the year NASA aims to land astronauts on the Moon again, on Artemis IV

China is aiming to land its own crew by 2030 [1]

The lead story — what happened

A panel of the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has named four places away from the Moon's south pole where astronauts should go. [1][2]
The four are Bhabha Crater, Mons Hadley, the Orientale Basin and the Aristarchus Plateau. [1] NASA paid for the report. [1]
NASA's own plan points at the south pole, where ice under the ground could support people and be turned into rocket fuel. [3]
Bhabha Crater is on the Moon's far side, which always faces away from Earth. [1] Telescopes there would be shielded from Earth's radio noise, and crews could reach rock from the Moon's oldest known preserved impact basin. [1]
Mons Hadley, part of which Apollo 15's crew explored, could hold a station watching the Sun's weather. [1] Crews could also test whether piled-up Moon soil keeps out harmful radiation. [1]
The Orientale Basin is one of the largest and best-kept ringed craters in the solar system, and samples from it could show how it formed. [1] The Aristarchus Plateau is old volcanic ground. [1]
The panel also calls the Moon a practice ground for keeping Earth's germs off other worlds, and any life from them away from Earth, before people go to Mars. [1]
Clive Neal, a panel member, says the report is meant to help NASA's Moon programme, not distract it, and backs a base spread over several linked sites. [1]
NASA's Moon Base runs in three phases: getting crews there reliably until 2029, then power including nuclear, then homes and mining from 2032. [3]
NASA's Nujoud Merancy says the scarcest thing on the Moon is not water or sunlight but astronauts' time, because getting crews there is so hard. [3]
Artemis III, due between July and September 2027, will test both companies' landers in orbit near Earth, and Artemis IV aims to land people in 2028. [4] China aims to land people by 2030. [1]
The US Congress has not yet funded the Moon base as a programme of its own, though NASA puts its cost at about $20bn over seven years. [5]

1Artemis III tests landers near Earth2,028
2Artemis IV lands people2,028
3Moon Base phase 2: power2,029
4China aims to land people2,030
5Moon Base phase 3: homes, mining2,032

The dates NASA and China have set for the Moon. The four sites in the new report sit on no schedule yet.

Who is involved

The National Academies' panel

US experts who advise the US government on science; NASA asked them which Moon sites outside the south pole matter most
James Day and Daniel Dumbacher

the panel's two co-chairs, a geologist in California and an engineer at Purdue University
NASA

the US space agency; it is planning a Moon base at the south pole and pays for the report
Nujoud Merancy

chief architect of NASA's Moon Base; she says crew time is the scarcest thing on the Moon
China

the other country aiming crews at the Moon's south pole, by 2030

How it unfolded

24 Mar NASA unveils its Moon Base plan, partly over worry that China gets there first [3]
14 Oct NASA officials lay out the base's three phases in Atlanta [3]
21 Oct the panel's four non-polar sites are reported [1][2]
Jul-Sep 2027 Artemis III tests both landers in orbit near Earth [4]
2028 Artemis IV aims to land astronauts near the south pole [1][4]

Where this points

Watch whether NASA adds any of the four sites to its Moon Base plans, and whether the US Congress funds the base after the US elections on 3 November. [1][5]

Signals on this beat

The bar and the word are our reading of how hard each one is pushing, and the arrow is where it is heading.

US science agencies waiting for a budget High↑

The US government is funded only until 11 December, and the US Congress has not passed a new NASA law or a full-year NASA budget. [5] The acting head of the National Science Foundation, a US science funder, retires on 31 December, and the US Senate has not yet heard the nominee to replace him. [10]

Demand for data from orbit Building↑

Novaspace, a consulting firm, expects data to rise from 26% of satellite service income to 68% by 2035. [17] China's two big satellite internet networks are getting ready to sell service at home. [6] A Wi-Fi link between two spacecraft sent more than 2,300 files to NASA in about 30 minutes. [16]

Military money in space Building↑

DARPA, the US military's research agency, is paying SpaceNukes to ground-test a small reactor that controls itself. [15] SpaceX's work on spy and military satellites could bring hard checks on any merger with Tesla, Reuters reports. [7] Novaspace counts military satellite links among the fastest-growing parts of the market. [17]

Old science puzzles getting answers Steady→

Dated stars show the Milky Way's disk flattened fast for about 2 billion years, then slowly. [14] A Solar Orbiter crossing in 2022 traced a kink in the solar wind back to the Sun's hot outer layer. [13] A month-long hold on one antimatter particle opens a new test of why the universe is made of matter. [11]

The rest of the day

14 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
China gets ready to fly a used booster

China expects the first stage of a Long March 10B rocket, caught in a net on a ship on 10 July, to become its first big booster to fly twice, NASASpaceflight reports. [6] The first stage is the large bottom part of a rocket. A Long March 12A will try to land its own first stage no earlier than 3 November, after one engine failed to restart last time. [6] Two cheaper cargo ships for China's Tiangong space station are also coming: Qingzhou from January 2027, and Haolong, a winged craft built to land on a runway. [6]

Why it matters — A booster that flies again only has to be built once, so each extra flight costs less than a new rocket. [6] An engineer at Haolong's maker said it could fly ten times, as an example of how its building cost would be shared out. [6]
03
China's satellite internet nears service

China's two big satellite internet networks are getting close to selling service at home, NASASpaceflight reports. [6] Guowang, backed by the Chinese state, had 222 satellites in orbit after a launch on 9 October. [6] Shanghai Spacesail, which runs Qianfan, plans to start service in China by the end of the year and has ground stations in Brazil and Malaysia. [6] Both networks are planned at about 13,000 satellites or more. [6] BeiDou, China's version of GPS, also finished a 140-day upgrade in orbit without stopping service. [6]

Why it matters — These networks would give China its own rivals to SpaceX's Starlink, which has launched about 13,000 satellites. [6] A Starlink engineer asked Chinese operators to share more data on where their satellites are, so others can steer clear. [6]
04
A Tesla-SpaceX merger meets a China question

Elon Musk, who runs both Tesla and SpaceX, said on Tuesday that committees at the two companies are studying a merger. [9] On Wednesday's Tesla call he said he had nothing to add. [8] Reuters reported on Thursday that regulators in the US and in China would likely both look hard at any deal. [7] SpaceX builds military and spy satellites for the US Defense Department, while Tesla's factory in Shanghai makes more than half of Tesla's cars. [7] China also makes Tesla keep data from Chinese drivers inside China. [7]

Why it matters — Experts told Reuters the joined company might need a strict wall between Tesla's China arm and the rest, or might sell or spin off that arm. [7] At least half of Tesla's shareholders would have to approve any deal. [9]
05
US elections leave NASA's plans unsettled

The Planetary Society, a group that campaigns for space science, says the US Congress is likely to leave three NASA questions open before the US midterm elections on 3 November. [5] They are a new law setting NASA's direction, a full-year budget, and a proposed overhaul of science grants. [5] The US government is funded only until 11 December, which holds NASA at $24.4bn, well above the $18.8bn the Trump administration asked for. [5] About 20 working days are left this year. [5]

Why it matters — A House bill would cut NASA science from $7.3bn to $6bn while adding to human spaceflight. [5] At least 90 new members join the US Congress in January, so much of the work may have to start again. [5]
06
US science funder loses its acting head

Brian Stone, acting head of the US National Science Foundation, will retire on 31 December, according to a staff memo reported by Scientific American. [10] The foundation hands out about $9bn a year for research. [10] President Trump's pick to lead it, James O'Neill, has not yet had a hearing in the US Senate. [10] Stone took over in April 2025, and in April this year the Trump administration fired all 22 members of the foundation's science advisory board. [10]

Why it matters — No new advisers have been named, so the foundation may enter 2027 with neither a confirmed head nor the board that helps decide its grants. [10] A spokesperson appeared to confirm that Stone is retiring but not the date. [10]
07
One antimatter particle held for a month

Physicists led by Gerald Gabrielse at Northwestern University, in the US, kept a single positron in a trap for a month, they reported on Wednesday in Physical Review Letters. [11] A positron is the antimatter twin of the electron, and when it touches ordinary matter the two destroy each other. [11] The team slowed positrons in cold tungsten, then held one in a vacuum near absolute zero using electric and magnetic fields. [11] Next they will measure its magnetism. [11]

Why it matters — Physics predicts a positron's magnetism is the exact opposite of an electron's. [11] A difference could help explain why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter. [11]
08
Water ice changes shape under huge pressure

Scientists led by Ashkan Salamat at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas squeezed water ice to more than 222 gigapascals, over two million times the air pressure at Earth's surface, Universe Today reports. [12] They used a diamond anvil cell, a device that presses tiny samples to extreme pressures. [12] Ice usually gets more orderly as it is squeezed. Above that point it became less symmetrical, a new form. [12] The study is in Communications Chemistry. [12]

Why it matters — Pressures like this exist inside Uranus and Neptune, where the icy layer may reach 700 gigapascals. [12] So the water inside those planets may not behave the way models assume. [12]
09
A kink in the solar wind traced to the Sun

A study in Nature Astronomy traced a switchback, a sharp kink in the Sun's magnetic field carried along by the solar wind, back to where it began. [13] The Solar Orbiter spacecraft flew through one for about an hour and a half on 2 March 2022. [13] It was about 2.75 million km long. [13] Its carbon and oxygen had been heated above a million degrees, which points to the corona, the Sun's hot outer layer. [13]

Why it matters — The solar wind is the stream of charged particles from the Sun that reaches Earth. Knowing where switchbacks start helps explain how that wind is pushed out into space. [13]
10
How the Milky Way's disk got thin

Astronomers led by David Mirabal at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias dated stars using data from Gaia, a star-mapping spacecraft, Universe Today reports. [14] They found the Milky Way's disk of stars flattened fast at first, from about 4,100 to 1,600 light-years thick in about 2 billion years. [14] After a break about 10.8 billion years ago, it thinned slowly, to about 400 light-years. [14] The study is in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. [14]

Early disk4,100 light-years
10.8bn years ago1,600 light-years
Youngest stars400 light-years
How thick the Milky Way's disk of stars was at three ages: a fast drop first, then a slow one.

Why it matters — It means the oldest stars in the galaxy's thick outer layer were born there, not pushed there later. [14] Mirabal calls it the first clear evidence for one of two rival ideas. [14]
11
DARPA pays for a self-steering reactor test

DARPA, the US military's research agency, has given Space Nuclear Power Corporation, or SpaceNukes, an agreement to ground-test a small reactor that runs itself, the company said on 21 October. [15] Its team ran KRUSTY in 2018, the only full-power ground test of a new US space reactor in five decades. [15] The new test, with Los Alamos National Laboratory, adds control rods that move to change the power, a step beyond the 2018 design. [15]

Why it matters — A reactor gives steady power where sunlight is weak or absent. NASA plans nuclear power for its Moon base from 2029. [3]
12
Wi-Fi links two spacecraft in orbit

Solstar Space, a US start-up, said on 20 October that its Wi-Fi link joined a small NASA satellite with Momentus's Vigoride-7 spacecraft while the two flew close together. [16] In about 30 minutes it sent more than 2,300 files of camera, infrared and laser-ranging data. [16] The files reached NASA's Johnson Space Center through Iridium, a satellite phone network. [16] Momentus is a US company that flies spacecraft to move and service others. [16]

Why it matters — Spacecraft that repair or refuel others will need to talk to each other up close. NASA also wants the data to train software to fly such missions on its own. [16]
13
Satellite data set to outgrow satellite TV

Novaspace, a European space consulting firm, forecasts that income from satellite services will grow 44% to $145bn by 2035. [17] Data, such as internet from space, would rise from 26% of that income to 68%. [17] TV is the biggest earner today, but by 2035 it would be 3% of what satellite operators earn from selling capacity. [17] Orders for big satellites in high, fixed orbits went from six in 2024 to 10 in 2025, and 14 by mid-September 2026. [17]

Data's share today26%
Data's share in 203568%
Data's share of satellite service income, now and in Novaspace's forecast for 2035.

Why it matters — Military satellite links are among the fastest-growing parts, adding about $19.2bn. [17] It is a forecast, not a count of money already spent.
14
US leaders hand the Starlink question to Musk

US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he was not involved in last week's slowdown of SpaceX's satellite internet for Ukraine's forces, and did not know who ordered it. [18] Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the same day that Ukraine's access is up to SpaceX and Elon Musk, under a private commercial contract. [19] The Wall Street Journal had reported on Tuesday that Musk ordered the slowdown of Starshield, the military version of Starlink. [18][19] Musk has said the US military and president set those limits. [19]

Why it matters — Ukraine uses the link to steer drones that shoot down Russian drones, and a speed cap of 160 km/h disrupted a number of missions. [19] Zelensky said he had discussed new satellite links for Ukraine's troops with Norway's defence minister. [18]
15
Space shares rise after SpaceX's results

SpaceX shares rose 7.8% on Wednesday, the day after its results, adding $155bn to the company's value, Fortune reports. [21] CNBC put the rise at 10% during the day. [20] SpaceX had reported $14.6bn in revenue for July to September, 161% more than a year earlier. [20] It forecast $33bn to $37bn for the first three months of 2027. [20] Shares in Rocket Lab, a rocket maker, and in Intuitive Machines and AST SpaceMobile, two other space companies, also rose. [20]

Why it matters — Fortune warns that a Tesla merger could cost SpaceX shareholders, because paying a usual 30% premium for Tesla would mean issuing new shares equal to about 92% of those SpaceX has now. [21] Tesla shares rose 3.4% the same day. [21]

02 Lesson why it matters

Why some delicate work needs a wall between it and the world

Radio noise, radiation and ordinary matter can each spoil something delicate, so scientists put a barrier in the way: the Moon itself, piled-up soil, or empty space.

The twist

A radio telescope on the Moon's far side would hear faint signals because the whole Moon stands between it and Earth's radio noise. The barrier does the work, not a better telescope.

The picture

Earthradio noise

The Moon's rockblocks it

Far-side telescopequiet

Earth sends out radio noise all the time. On the Moon's far side the Moon itself is in the way, so a telescope there can hear faint signals.

How it works

Something delicate is spoiled by what is around it
The source cannot be switched off
So something is put in between that the harm cannot cross
The barrier can be rock, soil, or empty space held by fields
Behind it, the delicate thing lasts or can be measured

The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.

One antimatter particle held for a month

A positron is destroyed by touching any matter, so the Northwestern team holds it in empty space with electric and magnetic fields and no walls at all.

Where you've seen this

Hospital X-ray rooms

lead in the walls keeps the radiation inside the room

Recording studios

thick walls keep traffic noise off the microphone

Chip factories

filtered air keeps specks of dust off chips being made

The catch

A barrier blocks only what it was built for. The Moon's rock stops Earth's radio noise, but radiation from the Sun needs a different shield, such as the piled-up soil the panel wants tested.

And the whole of it

The radio noise a far-side telescope would hide from comes from ordinary life on Earth: radio, TV and radar. Everyone who uses them adds a little to that noise. A telescope would have to go behind the Moon to get away from all of us.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

NASA is building its Moon plans around the south pole, where the ice is, and a panel NASA paid for now says four other places could be even more valuable for science. [1][3] The US Congress has not yet funded the south-pole base as a programme of its own, so for now the base is a plan without its own money. [5]

Why it works on us — A race with China makes the first place to land feel like the only place worth landing, and NASA's Moon base was announced partly out of worry that China would get there first. [1][3]

Who gains

Scientists who study the Moon's history and volcanoes — A panel NASA paid for backs sending crews to the craters and volcanic plains they want to sample. [1]
SpaceNukes and Los Alamos National Laboratory — DARPA's agreement pays them to build and test a self-controlling reactor, extending the work their team did in 2018. [15]
Shanghai Spacesail and China's state-backed Guowang network — They plan to sell satellite internet in China, Qianfan by the end of the year, and Qianfan already has ground stations in Brazil and Malaysia. [6]
Elon Musk — A merger would give him more voting control over the joined company than he has at Tesla, the BBC reports. [8]
Companies selling data links from orbit — Novaspace expects data to grow from 26% to 68% of satellite service income by 2035. [17]

Who pays

Scientists paid by NASA research grants — A House bill would cut NASA science from $7.3bn to $6bn, and openly competed research grants feel cuts first, the Planetary Society says. [5]
Researchers who apply to the National Science Foundation — The board that helps decide how about $9bn a year is shared out was fired in April and has not been replaced. [10]
Tesla shareholders — A merger would leave them a smaller slice of a much larger and more complex company, an analyst told the BBC. [8]
Tesla's business in China — Regulators could demand a wall around it or a sale, and a UCLA professor says China will use the deal as leverage. [7]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

Whether NASA will add any of the four sites to its Moon plans.

The panel recommends them and a member says they can feed into the Moon base, but none of our sources reports NASA's answer. [1][2]
02

Whether the US Congress pays for the Moon base at all.

The US government is funded only until 11 December, and no regular budget bill has funded the base as its own programme. [5]
03

Who runs the National Science Foundation from 1 January.

The acting head retires on 31 December, the nominee has had no hearing in the US Senate, and a spokesperson did not confirm the date. [10]
04

When China's caught booster flies again, and on which rocket.

It is expected to fly on the first launch from a new pad before the end of the year, but that has not been officially confirmed. [6]
05

Whether a Tesla-SpaceX merger could pass regulators in both the US and China.

The committees have agreed no terms, and experts disagree on whether a wall around Tesla's China arm would satisfy both governments. [7][9]
06

Whether a positron's magnetism really is the exact opposite of an electron's.

The trap that makes the test possible has just been shown to work; the measurement itself has not been made. [11]
07

How water behaves at the far higher pressures deep inside Uranus.

The lab test went just past 222 gigapascals, while Uranus's icy layer may reach 700. [12]
08

Whether one switchback tells us where all of them start.

The finding rests on a single crossing by Solar Orbiter in March 2022. [13]

04 Hope carry this

Physicists at Northwestern University held a single positron, the antimatter twin of the electron, in a trap for a month.

Also true today

China's BeiDou navigation satellites finished a 140-day upgrade in orbit without stopping service for the people who use them.
A Wi-Fi link between two spacecraft flying close together sent more than 2,300 files to NASA's Johnson Space Center in about 30 minutes.