NASA Grappling with Planetary Science Funding Shortfall
NASA’s planetary science division received $2.54 billion for FY 2026, about $200 million less than the $2.72 billion allocated in the two prior years. The shortfall forces the agency to make "strategic choices" about which missions can continue, with particular uncertainty around the Venus program and extended Mars missions. While flagship projects like Dragonfly and NEO Surveyor remain funded, the timeline for the next New Frontiers and Discovery calls has been pushed back. NASA also continues to assess the likely loss of the MAVEN orbiter, complicating Mars communications.
UK Deepens Ties with Ukraine Space Sector
The UK Space Agency and Ukraine’s State Space Agency have signed a memorandum of understanding, marking the first agency‑to‑agency space agreement between the two nations. The MoU commits both parties to collaborate on civil and commercial space projects, supporting the...
ESA Impact: Our Story so Far This Year
In the first quarter of 2026 ESA demonstrated Europe’s autonomous heavy‑lift capability with the successful four‑booster Ariane 6 launch. Copernicus‑3 radar monitored severe flooding in Bordeaux, while astronaut Sophie Adenot joined the International Space Station. A student team prepared a CubeSat...
OHB Sweden to Build Sterna Weather Constellation
The European Space Agency awarded OHB Sweden a contract to build 20 satellites for the EPS‑Sterna weather constellation, with six operational units at any time and two spares. The first six satellites are targeted for launch in 2029, and the...
NASA Successfully Tests 3D Printed Spring Mechanism in Low Earth Orbit
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory successfully tested the Additive Compliant Canister (JACC), a 3‑D‑printed titanium spring mechanism, aboard Proteus Space’s Mercury One satellite in low Earth orbit. The compact device unfolded from a one‑inch stowed height to six inches, demonstrating that...
Iran’s Space Research Centre Destroyed in Israeli Air Strikes
Israeli forces struck Iran’s primary Space Research Centre in Tehran on March 13, part of a broader wave of attacks on the capital. The centre, which oversees satellite design, propulsion and high‑resolution imaging, is a cornerstone of Iran’s dual‑use space...
Watch Live Today: NASA Astronauts Conducting Spacewalk Delayed by ISS Medical Evacuation
NASA postponed a long‑delayed EVA after the International Space Station’s first medical evacuation forced a reshuffle of crew assignments. Astronauts Jessica Meir and Chris Williams will now perform a 6.5‑hour spacewalk on March 18, marking the first EVAs of 2026 and...
What Is Fractional Orbital Bombardment, and Why Is It Important?
The Soviet Union deployed a fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS) using the R‑36O missile from 1969 until the early 1980s, fielding a single regiment of 18 silos. Its chief value was geometric: delivering a nuclear warhead from unexpected southern azimuths...
Telesat’s Lightspeed Service Launch Slips to 2028
Telesat announced that its Lightspeed low‑Earth‑orbit satellite service will now enter commercial operation in the first quarter of 2028, slipping from the end‑2027 target due to delays in the ASIC chips supplied by SatixFy. The first batch of satellites is...
Lite Coms Executives Talk Multi-Orbit Innovation and the Future of Tactical VSAT
Lite Coms, a seven‑year‑old satcom firm, has deployed almost 1,000 tactical VSAT terminals for U.S. and allied forces. Its core strategy centers on multi‑orbit, constellation‑agnostic terminals that operate across GEO, MEO and LEO networks, highlighted by the upcoming 2026 Ku/Ka...
China’s Space Program Past, Present, and Future
China’s space program has transformed into a full‑spectrum state system by March 2026, operating the Tiangong space station, a growing satellite‑internet fleet, and advanced lunar and deep‑space missions. Recent milestones include Chang’e‑6’s far‑side sample return and Tianwen‑2’s asteroid‑return flight, while reusable...
What Specifications Does a Space Telescope Need to See the Earliest Light in the Universe
Detecting the universe’s first light demands a cold, space‑based infrared telescope with a large aperture. JWST’s 6.5‑m mirror and 0.6‑28 µm coverage have already revealed galaxies at redshift > 14, but its sensitivity limits studies beyond z ≈ 16. Future concepts call for 12‑15 m mirrors, sub‑40 K...
Ursa Major Company Profile
Ursa Major has shifted from a launch‑engine startup to a diversified propulsion supplier focused on defense and hypersonics. Its Hadley engine achieved repeated Mach‑5 reusable flights with Stratolaunch and secured a $32.9 million follow‑on contract, while the Draper storable liquid engine...
Space Force Overhauls Buying Structure with New Mission Portfolios
The U.S. Space Force is introducing Portfolio Acquisition Executives (PAEs) to manage groups of systems tied to specific missions rather than individual programs. Four initial portfolios—infrastructure, battle management, satellite communications/positioning, navigation and timing, and missile warning and tracking—will give PAEs...
Samples From Asteroid Ryugu Contain All Five Nucleobases
In December 2020 Hayabusa2 returned 20 mg of Ryugu dust to Earth, and a Japanese‑U.S. team has now identified all five DNA/RNA nucleobases in the material. Using a refined extraction protocol and high‑resolution mass spectrometry, the researchers detected adenine, guanine, cytosine,...
Office of Space Commerce Weighing Options for TraCSS User Fees
The Office of Space Commerce is weighing user‑fee options for the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS) after a December executive order stripped the “free of direct user fees” language from Space Policy Directive 3. Officials say no decision has been...
Voyager-2’s only Close-Up Image of Uranus’s Moon Umbriel
Voyager‑2’s 1986 flyby produced the sole close‑up photograph of Uranus’s moon Umbriel, captured from 346,000 miles away with roughly 6‑mile resolution. The image reveals a heavily cratered, ultra‑dark surface that reflects only 16% of sunlight, similar to lunar highlands. A...
Why Novaspace Says In-Orbit Refuelling Is Vital for Space Superiority
Novaspace’s new white paper argues that the United States and Europe must prioritize in‑orbit satellite refuelling to secure space superiority. The paper, based on a 2025 conference of defense, commercial and investment leaders, warns that current propellant limits constrain satellite...
The First Artemis Lunar Landings Might Not Go to the Moon’s South Pole
NASA is reconsidering the south‑pole for Artemis’s first crewed landing, exploring alternative sites to reduce risk and accelerate timelines. Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said performance specs are being opened to allow different lunar orbits and constraints. Administrator Jared Isaacman pushes...
ISPTech Raises €5.5M Seed Round to Redefine How Spacecraft Manoeuvre in Orbit
ISPTech, a German spin‑off from the DLR, announced a €5.5 million seed round led by Join Capital and backed by several European venture funds. The capital will fund expanded manufacturing, critical‑infrastructure testing, and the commercial rollout of its non‑toxic propulsion suites,...
The Rise of the Orbital Data Center: Solving the Space Data Bottleneck
On March 16, 2026 Kepler Communications launched the first commercially operational Orbital Cloud, turning its satellite constellation into an in‑orbit data center. By embedding NVIDIA‑powered edge GPUs and optical inter‑satellite links, the Orbital Data Center (ODC) can run AI models...
Saudi Arabia Takes Indian Startup’s Help for Satellite Images
Saudi Arabia has partnered with Bengaluru‑based space startup Pixxel to embed its hyperspectral satellite data into the national UP42 geospatial platform. Pixxel’s Firefly constellation of 18 satellites captures imagery across more than 135 spectral bands, enabling detailed surface analysis. The...
SpaceX Completes Two Launches Since Yesterday
SpaceX completed two Starlink missions within 24 hours, launching 25 satellites from Vandenberg and 29 from Cape Canaveral. Both Falcon 9 first stages were recovered, marking the 14th and 11th flights of the boosters after turn‑arounds of 32 and 27 days....
South Korean Rocket Startup Innospace Pinpoints the Cause of Its First Launch Failure
South Korean rocket startup Innospace released its investigation into the Hanbit‑Nano maiden‑flight failure on December 22, 2025. The probe identified a rupture in the first‑stage combustion‑chamber assembly 33 seconds after liftoff, caused by a leakage from improperly sealed components. The leakage stemmed...
Solving Asteroid Bennu’s Mysteries
NASA released X‑ray computed tomography scans of asteroid Bennu samples on March 17, 2026, revealing intricate crack networks inside the material. The scans show that Bennu’s boulders are highly porous, a property that accounts for the low thermal inertia measured...
How Congress Can Grow the Space Supply Chain
Demand for satellite constellations, lunar missions and private launches is surging, but the space supply chain lags behind, creating costly delays. The Aerospace Industries Association and PwC released a report outlining gaps and policy fixes, including a two‑way demand‑signaling system...
March 17, 1958: Vanguard 1 Blasts Off
On March 17, 1958 the United States launched Vanguard 1, its second satellite and the world’s first solar‑powered spacecraft. The 3‑pound metal sphere, only 6.5 inches across, entered a high‑altitude orbit that has kept it aloft for more than six decades, making...
Amazon Knocks on DoT's Door to Get Satcom Nod Fast
Amazon’s Project Kuiper has written repeatedly to India’s Department of Telecommunications seeking an expedited satcom permit, as the company lags far behind its 3,200‑satellite launch schedule, having placed only about 200 LEO units to date. The firm hopes the clearance...
Telesat Corp (TSAT) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript
AST SpaceMobile reported full‑year 2025 revenue of $70.9 million, hitting the top of its guidance, and disclosed a $1.2 billion minimum‑committed revenue backlog anchored by a $175 million prepayment from Saudi Arabia’s STC Group. The company raised over $3.5 billion, boosting cash to $3.9 billion,...
China Space Station Spacewalk: New Tasks Completed
China’s Shenzhou‑21 crew completed a second seven‑hour EVA, installing a new space‑debris protection device on the Tiangong station. Astronauts Zhang Lu and Wu Fei performed the walk with assistance from the station’s robotic arm and fellow crew member Zhang Hongzhan. The mission also...
March 16, 2026 Quick Space Links
A tweet‑sourced report claims that the Shahroud Space Center in northeastern Iran was heavily damaged by U.S. and Israeli air strikes, with 27 sites hit and roughly 70% of its facilities destroyed. Another tweet alleges that the Soviet Union’s 1974...
Europe’s Spectrum Rocket Returns to the Skies with Onward and Upward
German startup Isar Aerospace is set for the second flight of its Spectrum launch vehicle, dubbed “Onward and Upward,” from Andøya Space in Norway on March 19. The mission marks the rocket’s first customer payload flight, carrying five CubeSats and a...
Chinese Space Station Astronauts Harvest Space Tomatoes
Chinese astronauts aboard the Tiangong space station have harvested a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes grown in a small aeroponic cultivation system. The system uses a nutrient mist and full‑spectrum LEDs, enabling water‑efficient plant growth in micro‑gravity. This marks the...
Space Tech Expo USA 2026 Moves to Anaheim: A New Era
Space Tech Expo USA announced its relocation to the Anaheim Convention Center for its 14th edition, scheduled for June 2‑4, 2026. The move to the West Coast’s largest venue aims to accommodate a larger footprint, with more than 350 exhibitors...
The Asteroid Ryugu Has All of the Main Ingredients for Life
Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft retrieved Ryugu asteroid samples in 2020 after impacting the surface in 2018. Laboratory analysis has now identified all five nucleobase precursors needed for DNA and RNA within the debris. The discovery strengthens the hypothesis that asteroids delivered...
Inside Sir Peter Beck and Rocket Lab’s Sub-$17 Million Mission to Find Life Above Venus
Rocket Lab’s Venus Life Finder (VLF) mission aims to drop a sub‑kilogram probe into the clouds of Venus for a brief 210‑second sampling window, targeting possible biosignatures. The entire venture is slated to cost under $17 million, dramatically cheaper than historic...
Canada Leases Space Port in Bid to Break Reliance on US Rockets Like Musk’s SpaceX
Canada's federal government has signed a ten‑year, C$200 million lease for a private launch facility on the east coast, aiming to develop an independent satellite launch capability. The agreement with Maritime Launch Services will give Canada direct access to sub‑orbital and...
Artemis II Crew ‘Primed’ to Contribute to Scientific Knowledge of Moon, NASA Scientist Says
NASA's Artemis II mission, slated for early April, will send four astronauts on a ten‑day lunar flyby, becoming the first humans to view the Moon’s far side since Apollo. The crew will operate within 6,400‑9,000 km of the surface, capturing wide‑angle imagery,...
L3Harris Honors Goddard Centennial with Advances in Nuclear and Electric Propulsion
L3Harris Technologies commemorated Robert Goddard’s 100‑year rocket milestone by accelerating next‑generation propulsion, including 3D‑printed RS‑25 engines, advanced electric thrusters, and nuclear thermal concepts. The company is hot‑fire testing new RS‑25 units that cut production costs by 30 percent while delivering...
NESC Develops Method for Estimating Risk When Reducing NDE
The NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) created a probabilistic method to estimate the risk of reducing nondestructive evaluation (NDE) inspections on spaceflight hardware. Using a historic database of 33,630 bolt‑hole inspections that yielded six crack‑like findings, the team derived...
Feature Specification for “OVERWATCH”: A Service for Emerging Economies Defense, Security, and Intelligence Organizations
The Overwatch specification describes a defense‑focused service built on a reusable satellite‑imagery change‑detection platform. The platform consists of five modular layers—data acquisition, preprocessing, detection/classification, alert management, and reporting—allowing the same core engine to be re‑configured for multiple markets. The paper...
AIAA Celebrates 100 Years of Rocketry on Anniversary of First Rocket Launch
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) unveiled a free, curated collection of 100 technical papers on rocket propulsion to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Robert H. Goddard’s first liquid‑fuel rocket test in 1926. The anthology pulls from AIAA’s...
If China Returns to the Moon First, Will Americans Care?
China is targeting a crewed lunar landing by 2030, positioning itself to be the first nation on the Moon since Apollo. The United States, under the Artemis program, has pledged to beat that deadline but still lacks an operational lander...
The Next Phase of Space Ambitions in Texas
In 2023 Texas earmarked $350 million for its space sector, allocating $150 million through the Texas Space Commission to 24 projects and awarding a final $14.15 million grant to Rice University’s Space Institute for a lunar‑technology center. The state also invested $200 million in...
Artemis via the ISS? A Breakout Opportunity for Kickstarting a Sustainable Cislunar Economy
NASA’s new administrator is exploring an “Artemis via ISS” strategy that uses the International Space Station as a low‑Earth‑orbit staging point for lunar missions. By capitalizing on the ISS’s proven habitat, docking, and orbital alignment, the plan reduces reliance on...
Golden Domes, Fragile Firms: The Business Risks of AI-Enabled Space Infrastructure
AI‑driven routing is turning satellite constellations into real‑time, autonomous utilities that allocate bandwidth, imagery and sensing data in milliseconds. While this autonomy makes megaconstellations economically viable, it also embeds opaque decision‑making into models that can prioritize one user over another...
Space ETFs in the Spotlight as Potential SpaceX IPO Looms
Space-focused exchange‑traded funds are gaining momentum as rumors swirl around a potential SpaceX initial public offering that could price the company at roughly $1.75 trillion. The Procure Space ETF, billed as the first pure‑play space fund, has delivered a 100.7% gain...
Sweden Opens Esrange to Military Orbital Launches
On March 16, 2026 SSC Space signed a SEK 209 million agreement with Sweden’s Defense Materiel Administration to build a military satellite launch capability at Esrange. The contract includes infrastructure, tracking, security and a launch control centre, targeting operational status by 2028....
Planning Titan Entry? New Lab Tests Flag Nitrogen-Driven Heat Shield Debris Risks
University of Illinois researchers using the Plasmatron X hypersonic wind tunnel discovered that nitrogen‑rich atmospheres cause unsteady, violent spallation of the Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA) heat shield, unlike the steady particle ejection seen in oxygen‑containing air. High‑speed imaging showed intermittent...
China Completes Two Launches Today
China launched two missions today from separate interior spaceports. A Long March 6A lifted a military remote‑sensing satellite from Taiyuan, while a Kuaizhou‑11 placed eight satellites into orbit from Jiuquan. State media gave no details on the payloads or where the...
