Rockets, satellites, deep-space missions, and the new space economy taking off.
104 articles
Google confirmed its first Project Suncatcher prototype satellite, built with Planet and carrying four TPUs, reached orbit on SpaceX's Transporter-18 and is operating as expected.
The Crew 13 mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral on October 1, 2026, carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station on a planned 7 hour 50 minute transit that NASA says is the fastest by a U.S. spacecraft.
Two Pakistani pilots are training in Beijing for a one-week Shenzhou-24 mission to China's Tiangong station, with SUPARCO set to choose the first foreign astronaut in October.
NASA will fly an uncrewed Starliner as early as December 2026 and has named astronaut Woody Hoburg to command the first operational crew mission no sooner than mid 2028.
On September 28, 2026, SpaceX's Starship reached orbit for the first time on Flight 14, deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites and marking a major step toward NASA's Artemis moon missions.
A Harvard-led team using South Africa's MeerKAT array has detected auroral radio bursts from Beta Pictoris b, marking the first direct measurement of an exoplanet's magnetic field at 1,250 gauss.
The $30 million robotic mission to boost NASA's aging Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory ended with the Link spacecraft burning up in Earth's atmosphere after 85 days, leaving the telescope to reenter in November.
The $1.2 billion far-infrared observatory, managed by JPL with Caltech's IPAC as science centre, will survey cold dust and early galaxies from Lagrange point L2 starting in 2033.
NASA has approved the PRIMA far-infrared observatory for preliminary design, a $1.2 billion mission to study planet formation and cosmic history with a 2033 launch target.
After replacing a faulty oxidizer valve on the Dragon spacecraft, NASA and SpaceX have rescheduled the Crew 13 mission to the International Space Station for October 1, 2026, with a four-person crew.
The Balkan nation signs at a Washington ceremony, extending a 2020 lunar cooperation framework to 73 countries weeks before a gathering of signatories in Turkiye.
Astronomers using China's Einstein Probe satellite and the LHAASO observatory have traced a 42 light-year X-ray trail from a middle-aged pulsar, the longest such tail ever seen.
The modified Commercial Crew contract adds Crew-15, Crew-16 and Crew-17 to SpaceX's manifest, pushing the company's total to 17 missions and $5.92 billion through 2030.
A Nature Astronomy study finds supermassive black holes fire delayed radio jets when accretion falls to about 2 percent of the Eddington limit, matching stellar mass black holes.
A Jupiter-mass world still embedded in its natal disk has been confirmed at under one million years old, settling a decade of debate over a gap seen by ALMA.
SpaceX moved Starship Flight 14 to September 28, 2026, setting up the megarocket's first orbital insertion and the debut deployment of 26 larger Starlink V3 satellites.
A new Nature study led by Sunmyon Chon uses the ATERUI III supercomputer to show that James Webb Space Telescope little red dots are rapidly growing black holes formed from heavy seeds in the early universe.
NASA says its 300-megapixel Wide Field Instrument captured first starlight while the Coronagraph passed checkout, with the first science images expected in early 2027.
The European Space Agency and Avio launched the FLEX Earth Explorer and Copernicus Sentinel-3C on a single Vega C rocket from French Guiana, with both satellites confirmed in orbit after separate deployments.
The September 13, 2026 mission from Cape Canaveral delivered the final three O3b mPOWER satellites, finishing a 13 spacecraft medium Earth orbit network for SES and marking a reusable rocket milestone for SpaceX.
Federal air traffic planners have reserved a two hour window on September 18, 2026 for a Starship mission that would fly about 20 Starlink V3 satellites and, per SpaceX's finance chief, bring in revenue.