Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic suborbital space plane program has announced a higher fee for per person spaceflight. Michael Colglazier, CEO of Virgin Galactic, said that the company’s tranche of spaceflight expeditions priced at $750,000 “was oversubscribed and booked out ahead of schedule.” While Colglazier said that demonstrated strong demand from a wide range of […]

Katalyst Space successfully uploaded a flight software update for its LINK spacecraft, which is set to boost NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to a higher orbit. That observatory is designed to study gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe, and other cosmic objects and events. Launched on July 3, the LINK servicing spacecraft […]

Here’s a wait-a-minute question: What’s the frequency, Kenneth Arnold? Admittedly, I borrowed and bent that R.E.M. song line. But it came to me in reading the latest outpouring of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) documents, videos and illustrations by the Department of War on August 7. Those files are part of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System […]

Taking LEO Off the Board: Russian Thinking About Anti-Satellite Warfare is authored by Aaron Stein, President of the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). “The Soviet Union and Russia have invested in anti-satellite weapons to ensure that their nuclear deterrent remains credible. For both the Soviet Union and Russia, the destruction of American satellites was (and is) […]

The Department of War has published the fifth release of data regarding Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).  Chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, said: “Today, the Department of War is publishing the fifth release of declassified and historical Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) files as part of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE). The […]

  A Chinese research team has completed an updated geologic map of the entire Moon featuring a scale of 1:5 million. China’s Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences (IGCAGS) detailed the geologic map on August 6. Beyond its scientific data, the 2.8-by-1.2-meter map introduces a proprietary cartographic standard that identifies over 13,500 impact […]

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is testing ground-penetrating radar technology to look for subsurface frozen water on Mars. Red Planet rotorcraft would be outfitted a flexible, fabric-based antenna that extends below the aircraft without interfering with landings or breaking at touchdown. SkyFall is project to be released from NASA’s Space Reactor-1 Freedom in late 2028. Each […]

The dispersion of launch costs has shrunk over the years. A new paper noted that three effects could be causing this phenomenon. Historically it has been documented how there is a high degree of trial and error in the early application of technologies, leading to a wide dispersion in productivity outcomes. Space exploration began in […]

  The Korea Aerospace Administration (KASA) has released the lunar impact observation data acquired by the country’s Moon-orbiting Danuri spacecraft. Danuri captured images of the pre-hit scene and after the impact of the roughly 4 ton upper stage of a SpaceX rocket. The upper stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket struck the area near […]

  The Rolling Stones: Lyrics from “Foreign Tongues” (2026) “Mr Charm”     When I was oh-so-young, I used to want to go to Mars And burn the rubber on the road And drive around in fancy cars When who would take you into space? Who would you really trust? Is it Boeing, is it […]

Scientists at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona report they detected a plume from the impact August 5 from that errant SpaceX rocket stage. “We can safely say that we measured a response from the rocket stage impact as a sodium and lithium gas plume a few 10’s of kilometers in size lasting between 5 […]

Planting boots on Mars is hard enough. But getting “breathing room” on the Red Planet without inhaling toxic dust is yet another issue. Given the outlook that future human crews will strut their right stuff across the Red Planet, NASA assembled earlier this year a Martian Dust Limit Working Group. Their task was to review […]

The Moon is in the cross-hairs of a SpaceX rocket stage, slamming into our celestial neighbor on August 5 at roughly 2:35:37.5 AM (US) Eastern Daylight Time reports astronomer, Bill Gray of Project Pluto. That high-speed impact “may produce potential observables,” according to research led by Benjamin Fernando at Los Alamos National Laboratory. — The […]

Meet the Neighbors – Life on Mars and How to Find It by Steven A. Benner; Allen Lane, (an imprint of Penguin Books); July 2026; 416 pages (Hardcover); $40.99 (Amazon). Talk about a “cold case” – nothing like dealing with life on Mars where the temperature can drop like a rock to roughly – 89°C at […]

What’s shaking about water ice deposits on the Moon? Turns out that assessing how seismic waves propagate on the Moon could be used to locate and map ice buried beneath the lunar surface. A new study by geologists at the University of Maryland (UMD), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Hawaii shows that […]

Dig this! An expansion of a partnership is expected to help establish a Moon Base by delivering autonomous mobility and heavy-duty excavation tools for a permanent settlement on the lunar surface. Interlune, a Seattle-based group, and the Vermeer Corporation of Pella, Iowa, have detailed the plan for development and delivery of subscale prototypes of lunar […]

Next week, Earth’s moon is due for a human-made, high-speed thumping of an identified flying object – a spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage. The event is a literal “dust up” on the lunar landscape. That Falcon 9 upper stage is a leftover from the launch that sent Firefly’s Blue Ghost-1 lander to the moon […]

If you have a dim view of the future, take a look at a new batch of NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program awards – all 18 of them But heads up – one of the bright idea awardees is suggesting how best to dim the Sun using a controllable dust cloud to reduce solar […]

It came from outer space, exploding high above the South Atlantic off the coast of Argentina. That incoming meteor — also termed as a bolide — was observed by a pair of civilian lightning imagers aboard geostationary weather satellites, thereby supplementing the use of space-based military surveillance satellites. The April 1 event was viewed by […]

That impending smash hit on the Moon next month of a SpaceX rocket stage has been reviewed by an international research team. The researchers put to question whether observers on Earth will see anything. Also, will the impact loft a sunlit plume and if so, how much lunar material will be purged, how high could […]