Beat
Launches, missions, and the cosmos — the science and the systems, explained.
A working space telescope is falling out of the sky — so NASA is sending a robot to catch it →
A $30 million rescue craft launches June 27 to grab a $500 million observatory that was never built to save itself. Plus a record European launch, a beloved Mars orbiter laid to rest, and a planet where it rains rubies.
NASA shelves its $1.1 billion Moon-station module — and it may have nowhere else to go →
A pressurized habitat built for a lunar orbiting station has lost its purpose, and unlike its sister module, it can't be repurposed. Plus a record Ariane 6 launch and a new path for Mars science.
A small upgrade put a record load of Amazon satellites into orbit — while the flashy new rockets keep slipping →
Europe's Ariane 6 bolted bigger boosters onto a proven rocket and set a new cargo record, as Blue Origin and ULA's newer vehicles stall. Plus a Moon lander heads for testing, a planet where it rains gemstones, and a beloved Mars orbiter goes quiet.
A Chinese rocket broke apart in orbit — and the debris it left can't be called back →
A spent upper stage shattered into roughly 100 to 150 fragments in a crowded part of low-Earth orbit, near the space station and Starlink. Plus a record European launch, a retired Mars orbiter, and a Chinese probe closing on an asteroid.
China's asteroid probe went quiet — so amateurs in Germany listened in and worked out what it was doing →
China's space agency has said nothing about Tianwen-2's final approach to a tiny asteroid. A 20-metre dish in Bochum, run by volunteers, read the spacecraft's signal anyway — and caught it firing its engine.
The solar system just got 100 new moons — and they rewrite a story we thought was finished →
A hidden swarm of tiny, dark moons is coming into view around the giant planets, and they hint the outer solar system is still being violently reshaped. Plus a "galaxy-killing" wind caught in the act, Japan's rocket back in flight, and the cracks on the space station finally sealed.
China is copying SpaceX's playbook — and finding out the playbook isn't the point →
SpaceX's record $75 billion IPO has set off a wave of Chinese space listings chasing the same goals. But the numbers, and the structure underneath them, show how far the copy still is from the original.
SpaceX plans to fill orbit with AI data centers — and astronomers say the night sky is the bill →
SpaceX confirmed it will launch the first orbital AI computing satellites in 2027, part of a filing for up to a million spacecraft. Astronomers warn the swarm could brighten the night sky to half-moon glare — a cost they never agreed to pay.
The space industry is booming — and the insurers who cover it are watching their best business disappear →
Operators are cancelling the giant satellites that bankroll space insurance and pivoting to cheap swarms that mostly aren't insured at all. The week's $75 billion SpaceX IPO is the same shift, seen from the winning side.
A regulator just moved a deadline it set for Amazon — and the cost lands on whoever's in line →
The FCC waived Amazon's July deadline to launch half its broadband satellites after it managed only 331 of 1,616. The reprieve isn't free: Amazon temporarily loses its place in the orbital queue. A British rival is asking for the same mercy, while China's rival constellation just blew past 200 satellites.
NASA named a Moon crew this week — for a mission that won't reach the Moon →
Artemis III got astronauts, a launch target, and 'most ambitious mission ever' billing. It also got quietly downgraded from a landing to a docking test in Earth orbit.
Astronomers spent seven hours listening to a comet for aliens — and the "no" was the whole point →
A radio search of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS found no sign of alien technology, just as expected. The same week, SETI scientists published a new rulebook for how to confirm a real signal in an age of deepfakes — and a student traced one "mysterious signal" to a dying star.
The biggest IPO in history is a rocket company — and most people will own a piece without choosing to →
SpaceX goes public Friday at a $1.77 trillion valuation, raising $75 billion in the largest stock offering ever. A wave of money is flooding into space, and a Mars orbiter quietly died after 11 years.
Astronomers just measured something they can never see — by watching what it does to the wind →
This week's strongest space result wasn't a launch or a crash. It was the first solid evidence that planets far beyond our solar system have magnetic fields — found not by looking at the fields, which is impossible, but by reading the marks they leave on a planet's winds.
A leaking space station, an exploded rocket, and $76 billion chasing orbit →
NASA sent ISS astronauts to shelter in a SpaceX capsule over a worsening air leak, Blue Origin's biggest rocket blew up on the pad, and money is pouring into space like never before — from a record SpaceX share sale to half-billion-dollar startup rounds.
An air leak sent the space station's crew to their lifeboat →
A worsening leak in the aging station's Russian section forced astronauts into their docked capsule this week — a reminder the ISS is nearing its end, just as a flood of money races to build what replaces it.
Blue Origin's rocket explodes on its only pad — and the ripples reach the Moon →
A New Glenn rocket blew up during an engine test, destroying the single pad built to fly it and casting doubt over NASA's lunar timetable. The same week, SpaceX banked a $4.16 billion defense contract and China brought home a record-setting crew in a borrowed spacecraft.
The black hole that arrived before its galaxy →
The James Webb telescope found a giant black hole that seems to have formed before the galaxy around it — backwards from how we thought the universe built itself. Plus: a dead Mars orbiter and a batch of distant worlds together explain why Earth still has air, a Chinese crew comes home in a borrowed spacecraft, and an explosion dents the road back to the Moon.
A pad explosion reshuffles the launch map while billions pour into orbit →
Blue Origin lost its only New Glenn launch pad, China kept launching hard, money flooded commercial space, and astronomers found magnetic fields on distant worlds.