Tag: Space
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Trump official to Katy Perry and Bezos’ fiancée: “You cannot identify as an astronaut”
This week’s flight of the New Shepard spacecraft, NS-31, and its all-female crew has stirred up a mess of coverage, from tabloids to high-brow journalism outlets. And why not? Six women, led by superstar Katy Perry, were flying into space! By contrast, Ars Technica has been largely silent. Why? Because yet another suborbital flight on…
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Trump official to Katy Perry and Bezos’ fiancée: “You cannot identify as an astronaut”
This week’s flight of the New Shepard spacecraft, NS-31, and its all-female crew has stirred up a mess of coverage, from tabloids to high-brow journalism outlets. And why not? Six women, led by superstar Katy Perry, were flying into space! By contrast, Ars Technica has been largely silent. Why? Because yet another suborbital flight on…
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Rocket Report: Daytona rocket delayed again; Bahamas tells SpaceX to hold up
Welcome to Edition 7.40 of the Rocket Report! One of the biggest spaceflight questions in my mind right now is when Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket will fly again. The company has been saying “late spring.” Today, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel said they were told June. Several officials have suggested to Ars that the…
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Rocket Report: Daytona rocket delayed again; Bahamas tells SpaceX to hold up
Welcome to Edition 7.40 of the Rocket Report! One of the biggest spaceflight questions in my mind right now is when Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket will fly again. The company has been saying “late spring.” Today, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel said they were told June. Several officials have suggested to Ars that the…
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Tuesday Telescope: Is the James Webb Space Telescope worth $10 billion?
Welcome to the Tuesday Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light—a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’ll take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is…
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Should we settle Mars, or is it a dumb idea for humans to live off world?
Mars is back on the agenda. During his address to a joint session of Congress in March, President Donald Trump said the United States “will pursue our Manifest Destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.” What does this mean? Manifest destiny is the belief, which…
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Trump White House budget proposal eviscerates science funding at NASA
This week, as part of the process to develop a budget for fiscal-year 2026, the Trump White House shared the draft version of its budget request for NASA with the space agency. This initial version of the administration’s budget request calls for an approximately 20 percent overall cut to the agency’s budget across the board,…
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“What the hell are you doing?” How I learned to interview astronauts, scientists, and billionaires
I recently wrote a story about the wild ride of the Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station last summer. It was based largely on an interview with the commander of the mission, NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore. His account of Starliner’s thruster failures—and his desperate efforts to keep the vehicle flying on course—was riveting. In…
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NASA nominee asks why lunar return has taken so long, and why it costs so much
WASHINGTON, DC—Over the course of a nearly three-hour committee hearing Wednesday, the nominee to lead NASA for the Trump administration faced difficult questions from US senators who sought commitments to specific projects. However, maneuvering like a pilot with more than 7,000 hours in jets and ex-military aircraft, entrepreneur and private astronaut Jared Isaacman dodged most…
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SpinLaunch—yes, the centrifuge rocket company—is making a hard pivot to satellites
Outside of several mentions in the Rocket Report newsletter dating back to 2018, Ars Technica has not devoted too much attention to covering a novel California space company named SpinLaunch. That’s because the premise is so outlandish as to almost not feel real. The company aims to build a kinetic launch system that spins a…