Tag: NASA
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SpaceX Pushes First Starship Tower Catch Attempt to Later This Year as Reusability Campaign Advances
SpaceX is now targeting its first attempt to catch a returning Starship upper stage with the launch tower “chopstick” arms within the next few months, a shift from earlier expectations that the milestone could occur on the vehicle’s next flight. The updated timeline came from CEO Elon Musk, who said the company’s first Starship tower-catch…
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Starcloud Secures $250 Million to Expand Orbital Data Center Ambitions Amid Growing Launch Capacity Crunch
Starcloud has raised a $250 million extension to its Series A financing round, giving the orbital computing startup fresh capital as it races to deploy space-based AI infrastructure in an increasingly competitive launch market. The new funding values the company at approximately $2.3 billion and comes just months after Starcloud achieved unicorn status with a…
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Trump Sets 1,000-Plus Annual Launch Target as White House Rewrites U.S. Space Transportation Policy
The White House is targeting more than 1,000 space launches and reentries from U.S. soil every year by 2030 under a new national space transportation policy signed by President Donald Trump on Aug. 20, 2026. The National Security Presidential Memorandum replaces the previous National Space Transportation Policy issued in 2013 and establishes a commercial-first framework…
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China Moves Chang’e-7 to Launch Pad for High-Stakes Lunar South Pole Mission
China has moved the Chang’e-7 lunar probe and its Long March-5 Y14 rocket to the launch area at the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Hainan, bringing one of the country’s most ambitious lunar exploration missions to the final stage before liftoff. The vertical transfer took place on Aug. 19, 2026, after the spacecraft and launcher…
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Intuitive Machines’ Maxar Acquisition Gains Momentum With $600 Million Satellite Order and Orbital Data Center Ambitions
Intuitive Machines’ decision to acquire the former Maxar satellite manufacturing business is beginning to look less like a bet on traditional spacecraft production and more like a strategy to build a vertically integrated space infrastructure company. The clearest evidence came in August 2026, when Intuitive Machines disclosed that it had secured a commercial contract worth…
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NASA Ends Swift Telescope Rescue After Private Servicer Loses Attitude Control
NASA has called off the effort to save the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory after the private spacecraft sent to raise the aging telescope’s orbit failed to overcome persistent attitude-control problems. The Swift Boost mission was intended to demonstrate a new model for satellite servicing: instead of replacing an aging spacecraft, a relatively small commercial vehicle…
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Intuitive Machines Posts Record $206 Million Quarter as Backlog Swells to $1.8 Billion
The quarter capped a stretch of aggressive expansion across commercial, civil, and national security markets. Backlog rose $1.5 billion from year-end 2025, driven by what the company described as record levels of diverse awards. In August, the company closed its acquisition of Goonhilly Earth Station and COMSAT to expand its space-to-ground data services network configured…
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We’ve flown a radiation-blocking vest to the Moon and back, and it worked
Solar storms, like the one in August 1972 that hit during the gap between the Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 missions, throw bursts of protons intense enough to raise an astronaut’s cancer risk or even cause radiation sickness. Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field absorb this radiation, but crews heading to the Moon or Mars won’t…
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NASA Finishes First Astronaut-Deployed Lunar Instrument Since Apollo
LEMS builds on a legacy of lunar seismic tracking that began with Apollo. Astronauts deployed a network of seismometers on the Moon’s nearside equatorial region between 1969 and 1972, and those instruments operated until 1977, recording about 13,000 moonquakes and other ground vibrations that helped scientists begin to understand the composition of the Moon’s interior.…
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NASA Invites India to Join Lunar Moon Base Programme
The meeting was attended by US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor and ISRO Chairman V Narayanan, who discussed existing and future avenues of collaboration in the space sector. The US Embassy shared a press release on the meeting on Wednesday. The discussions referenced the TRUST Initiative, launched jointly by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US…