Browsing: Space
Space covers exploration, astronomy, and the growing commercial space industry. Articles here span rocket launches, satellites, missions to the Moon and Mars, telescopes, and the companies and agencies pushing beyond Earth. Follow this tag for the latest discoveries and milestones in space.
NASA’s Moon Base Challenge offers US high school and college teams a share of $1 million. Eligibility, the six topics, key deadlines and how judging works.
NASA’s next astronaut class could live and work on a Moon base. Applications close December 3, the pay is $164,395, and the requirements changed. Here’s the full checklist and your real odds.
NASA holds its “Artemis Acceleration” briefing at 2 p.m. EDT today. Here is where Artemis III and IV stand, why the landers are the real bottleneck, and what to listen for.
SpaceX has agreed to buy Grain Management’s nationwide 800MHz spectrum portfolio, up to 14MHz paired, and says it will build the world’s most advanced mobile network and become a major US carrier. The low band fills the one gap mid band cannot cover, but analysts point out that reliable indoor coverage in cities still needs a terrestrial network SpaceX has not started building.
NASA’s Goddard Instrument Field Team spent part of the summer hiking tidal cliffs in the north-west Scottish Highlands with instruments on their backs. The reason is a set of grey-green spots in Martian rock that could be the residue of ancient life, or could be ordinary chemistry. The rocks at Stoer are 1.2 billion years old and they contain the same spots, which makes them the control group.
A $30 million commercial rescue mission could not reach NASA’s Swift Observatory, so NASA switched its main instrument back on and accepted the cost. The telescope is at 200 miles and sinking, and NASA expects it to stop doing science within weeks.
On September 9, Apple quietly gave iPhone 14, 15 and 16 owners another free year of satellite features. That is the second extension of a promise that originally ran two years, and Apple has still never published a price for what happens when the free period ends. The reason is sitting on the Android side of the aisle.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter found a 222-meter crater carved by an impact in spring 2024 that nobody on Earth detected. It is the largest fresh lunar crater ever recorded, and the ejecta math now feeds straight into planning for a crewed Moon base.
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink told a conference audience the Space Force has on-orbit space control weapons. It is the first time a Pentagon official has confirmed it. What he refused to say next is the part arms control analysts are worried about.
Astra is the first OpenAI model to hit the Critical cybersecurity threshold under the Preparedness Framework, finding two zero day vulnerabilities on its own during testing. Its strongest cyber capabilities stay restricted to OpenAI’s vetted Daybreak coalition.