Space

A telescope in Chile just started a 10-year movie of the entire southern sky →

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory began the largest astronomical survey ever attempted, scanning the whole southern sky every few nights for a decade — while NASA weighs sending a spare Mars rover to the Moon and astronauts repair the space station's robotic arm.

NASA is sending a robot to grab a dying telescope it never built to be saved →

A $30 million rescue mission launches to tow the 21-year-old Swift telescope back to a safe orbit, because Swift was built without the thrusters to save itself. Plus $600M for four Moon landers, a plan for 100,000 data-center satellites, and a spacewalk to fix the station's robotic arm.

Rocket Lab is paying $8 billion to stop being a rocket company →

A launch company is buying a 2.5-million-customer satellite network — a bet that the real money in space is in selling services, not rides to orbit.

NASA spent $5.9 billion on moon hardware it is now throwing away →

An inspector general's audit found four canceled Artemis projects had more than doubled in cost and slipped years behind. Plus a six-galaxy pileup in the early universe, a new Starship breathes fire, and a Japanese probe lines up an asteroid flyby.

The Sun could knock out the grid the AI boom is built on — and almost no one is planning for it →

A solar storm severe enough to damage the grid is overdue, and the data centers powering AI can't ride one out. Plus the loudest black-hole crash ever heard, Euclid's stunning Milky Way core, and a repair spacewalk that says a lot about a tired space station.

Two planets the size of Jupiter, lighter than cotton candy →

Astronomers found a pair of 'super-puff' worlds 1,110 light-years away — Jupiter-sized but so faint in mass that Jupiter itself is up to 35 times denser. Plus a planet that brushes magnetic fields with its star, and a new tool to triage the search for life.

A rocket reached orbit 16 hours after the order — and that clock is the whole point →

Rocket Lab launched a US Space Force satellite less than 17 hours after getting the go-ahead, a new record for "responsive" space. Plus a six-galaxy pileup caught mid-merge, a comet older than the Sun, and the lightest gas planets ever found.

A NASA rover found carbon on Mars that life can make — and so can lifeless rock →

Perseverance detected complex carbon in an ancient Martian riverbed. It is the strongest hint yet of past life — and still not proof, because the same molecules form without any life at all.

A quiet race begins to bring things back down from space →

For 70 years space was a one-way trip up. This week SpaceX flew its first "Starfall" return capsule and a Japanese startup raised $40 million — both betting that coming back down is the next big business.

A satellite mapped GPS jamming from orbit — and the interference is worse than expected →

An experimental spacecraft measured how badly GPS is being scrambled across Europe and the Middle East, revealing that even satellites high above the jammers are losing the signal.

NASA's next Mars orbiter won't be built by NASA — a private company will own it →

Relativity Space will build and fly the next Mars orbiter in 2028, with NASA contributing instruments and buying the data. It's a different model — and it lands the same week NASA retires MAVEN, its old fully-owned orbiter.

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.