Space

Every major technology gets cheaper with scale. Solar panels dropped by a factor of 100 over four decades. Computer memory fell even faster. But few industries have matched the trajectory of rocketry: the cost of lifting one kilogram into orbit has fallen 96 percent since 1960, and a new analysis suggests the decline is nowhere […]

The standard view of Antarctica from space is monotone: white ice, blue sky, the occasional brown rock poking through. But the surface tells only part of the story. Beneath the snow, moving ice carries stresses that optical cameras cannot detect, cracks, internal layers, and flow patterns that contain clues about how the continent’s glaciers are […]

Astronomers map an entire galaxy cluster’s magnetic field for the first time For the first time, scientists have reconstructed the magnetic field of an entire galaxy cluster, from its dense core to its diffuse outer halo, revealing how invisible forces shape the largest structures in the universe. The achievement came from the deepest-ever radio observations […]

SpaceX launches orbital repair robot on veteran Falcon 9’s final ride to geosynchronous orbit A Falcon 9 rocket roared off Cape Canaveral’s SLC-40 on Tuesday evening, carrying a spacecraft designed to do something no commercial mission has attempted at this scale: grab aging satellites in geosynchronous orbit and give them a new lease on life. […]

Europe’s planet-hunting telescope passes final pre-launch electrical tests ESA’s PLATO mission has cleared its last major ground test before shipment to the launch site, completing a round of electromagnetic compatibility checks inside a specialized chamber that mimics the silence and isolation of space. The tests took place inside the Maxwell Test Chamber at ESTEC, ESA’s […]

Pentagon launch budget balloons past $30 billion as Space Force demand surges The U.S. Space Force has tripled the ceiling on its main commercial launch contract to $17 billion, pushing the military’s total launch procurement past $30 billion as the Pentagon races to deploy new satellite constellations for missile defense, surveillance, and data relay. The […]

Four astronauts, 3 spacecraft, 2 weeks in orbit: Artemis III will be NASA’s most complicated mission ever NASA has never flown a mission quite like Artemis III. The agency this week laid out the full architecture for what will be the most complex human spaceflight operation in its history: a two-week orbital ballet involving four […]

Making Progress: Relativity’s Terran R, Rocket Lab’s Neutron, and PLD Space’s Miura 5 While Starship’s test program has dominated headlines, three other launch vehicle developers, Relativity Space, Rocket Lab, and PLD Space, have quietly announced significant testing milestones as they race toward debut flights later this year. Relativity Space: Terran R moves into qualification Relativity […]

Laura Grego, a physicist and research director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, has spent years thinking about the intersection of space and security. In a wide-ranging interview with The Guardian, she delivered a stark warning: the systems we have built in space have created a doomsday machine that most […]

Scientists discover mystery molecule on Pluto and Saturn’s moon Titan: ‘We cannot say what it is’ The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has detected an identical, unexplained chemical signature on two distinctly different worlds, Saturn’s smoggy moon Titan and the dwarf planet Pluto, and scientists cannot yet identify what is causing it. “It’s rather mysterious,” […]