China's latest crewed mission made it to the Tiangong space station after a Friday (Oct. 31) launch from the Gobi Desert.

A Long March 2F rocket topped with the Shenzhou 21 spacecraft lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China Friday at 11:44 a.m. EDT (1544 GMT, or 11:44 p.m. Beijing time).

The spacecraft docked with the front port of the Tianhe core module of the Tiangong space station on schedule around 3.5 hours after liftoff, adopting a fast automated rendezvous and docking mode that shaves around three hours off the time for the Shenzhou 20 mission.

Shenzhou 21 is carrying commander Zhang Lu, 48, a veteran of the 2022 Shenzhou 15 mission, and two rookie astronauts, Wu Fei and Zhang Hongzhang, who were chosen from China's third batch of astronauts, selected in 2020.

"After two years, being able to once again represent my country and carry out the Shenzhou 21 mission fills me with excitement and anticipation;” Zhang Lu told reporters at a press conference at Jiuquan on Thursday (Oct. 30).

At 32 years old, Wu is the youngest member of China's astronaut corps, and was an engineer at the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST). Zhang, 39, is a payload specialist and a researcher at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Zhang Lu and his crewmates were greeted aboard the three-module Tiangong space station by Chen Dong, commander of the Shenzhou 20 mission, and his two crewmates, Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie.

Chen Dong recently became the first Chinese astronaut to accumulate 400 days in orbit, but he and his crew will soon depart Tiangong; they're scheduled to touch down back on Earth on Nov. 3. Shenzhou 20 launched on April 24.

Shenzhou 21 is also carrying six types of experimental samples and four black mice for experiments related to reproduction in low Earth orbit. The robotic Tianzhou 10 cargo spacecraft is also scheduled to arrive at Tiangong during the six-month-long Shenzhou 21 mission.

The Shenzhou spacecraft is similar to, but also slightly larger than, Russia's Soyuz crew spacecraft. China is also developing the Mengzhou crew spacecraft, which will not only be partially reusable and serve Tiangong but also be capable of sending astronauts to the moon.

China has now launched 16 crewed missions. Shenzhou 21 is the 10th astronaut flight to Tiangong and the seventh since the completion of the three-module orbital outpost in late 2022.

The country aims to keep Tiangong, which is about 20% as massive as the International Space Station, permanently inhabited for at least a decade. China is also planning to expand the space station with new modules and considering opening the outpost to commercial activities.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 7:05 p.m. ET on Oct. 31 with news of Shenzhou 21's successful docking with the Tiangong space station.

China will launch three astronauts toward its Tiangong space station today (Oct. 31), and you can watch the action live.

A Long March 2F rocket is scheduled to launch the Shenzhou 21 mission from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert today at 11:44 a.m. EDT (1544 GMT; 11:44 p.m. Beijing Time).

You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of CCTV, or directly via the network.

Shenzhou 21 will send three astronauts — Zhang Lu, Zhang Hongzhang and Wu Fei — to China's Tiangong space station in low Earth orbit.

Zhang Lu, 48, will command the mission. He's an off-Earth veteran, having also flown to Tiangong on the Shenzhou 15 mission in November 2022. Zhang Hongzhang, 39, and Wu, 32, will be making their spaceflight debuts.

Wu will make history today, becoming the youngest Chinese astronaut ever to reach space.

"As the youngest member of China's Astronaut Corps, I feel extremely fortunate to embark on my spaceflight mission," Wu said during a press conference at Jiuquan on Thursday (Oct. 30). "I owe my good fortune to the era we live in, which is seeing leapfrog development in China's aerospace industry."

The three astronauts will spend about six months aboard Tiangong — the usual stint for visitors to China's orbiting outpost.

They'll conduct a variety of scientific experiments during that stretch, including research with mice. That will be a first for China, which has never sent rodents to Tiangong before. The trio will also perform spacewalks and conduct public outreach activities, among other tasks.

Shenzhou 21 will be the 10th crewed flight to Tiangong, a three-module station that China finished building in October 2022. The mission will take over for Shenzhou 20, whose three astronauts are scheduled to come back to Earth on Nov. 3.

Throughout the summer of 2025, Space.com interviewed nearly a dozen current and former NASA workers and reviewed several internal agency communications in an investigation into allegations of unlawful activity by NASA leadership — allegations supported in a recent report by the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. The conclusion: NASA has been prematurely and illegally implementing the President's 2026 budget request before Congress finalizes funding. Space agency officials vehemently dispute this claim.

The workforce at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Maryland, say this has put groundbreaking missions at risk, and is degrading roadblocks designed to safeguard human lives. Now, under the cloak of a closed U.S. government, nearly half the GSFC campus — the hub of NASA science — is marked for abandonment.

Shifting policies on diversity, science and education that began at the start of Trump's second term have hit Goddard especially hard. Priorities outlined in the White House's fiscal year 2026 (FY26) budget request in May, which has yet to be approved by Congress, were embraced as if it were already law by GSFC leadership, who have been preemptively reorganizing center staff and facilities since its release.

Goddard has a target on its back

Goddard has worked on some of NASA's most iconic space science missions, including the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, which continue to provide groundbreaking astronomical discoveries, and OSIRIS-REx, NASA's first asteroid sample-return mission. It's also where NASA is tackling ambitious new missions like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) to detect gravitational waves and measure ripples in space-time, and the Venus atmospheric probe DAVINCI.

GSFC hosts the largest single concentration of researchers in the NASA workforce, encompassing the agency's Science Mission Directorate (SMD) and Engineering and Technology Directorate (ETD). Nearly 10,000 scientists and engineers work at Goddard in total, around 7,000 of whom are employed through NASA contractors. Center staff said they felt what they perceived as the new administration's vitriol for science early on.

"The atmosphere, from my perspective, at least, has been incredibly dark and depressing," Goddard astrophysicist Casey McGrath told Space.com, clarifying that he was not speaking on behalf of NASA or his agency contract employer. "I feel like the people I work with, myself included, have just been demoralized, exhausted, terrified, frustrated and angry, for months and months on end with no pause whatsoever."

The internal cultures of NASA centers across the country have evolved to align, at least in part, with the political leanings of their respective locales. With Goddard based in a Democratic state under a Republican administration, many there feel as though the space center is being singled out.

Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the space science and exploration advocacy nonprofit The Planetary Society, explained the divide during a Sept. 18 livestream about NASA's ongoing budget saga.

"There's been a really notable divergence and concentration within NASA, almost purely by a historical accident of its major internal directorates and responsibilities, where human spaceflight NASA centers have become very solidly Republican represented, at least at the state level, and NASA science centers have become very Democratic represented at the state level," Dreier said.

It's a perception shared by many Goddard employees. "Claire," who asked that her real name remain anonymous for fear of retribution, is a climate scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) — a branch of the Maryland campus that, until earlier this year, occupied a building on the Columbia University campus in New York City. While her primary focus is on climate science, Claire's official title is Research Physical Scientist. She referred to "climate" as the "c-word," and a term she and her colleagues constantly felt the need to talk around, rather than say outright.

"It does feel like there is an overlap between the political party in charge of your NASA center and how your NASA center is faring right now," Claire said. "Goddard is a science-based center with a lot of engineers, and a lot of their missions are canceled out (in the President's budget request). It's taking a huge hit to the civil service workforce. It does feel like Goddard is now being singled out."

In response to this article, NASA officials denied this claim, insisting the agency remains apolitical when considering things like resource allocations across different centers.

In January 2025, former NASA Administrator Bill Nelson stepped down from the position ahead of Trump's inauguration, making way for the appointment of Kennedy Space Center Director Janet Petro as the agency's acting administrator. Petro was tasked with steering NASA's early transition period.

At Goddard, Segrid Harris was appointed ETD director in January and began enforcing rigid expectations that many staff saw as a cultural break from NASA norms.

After that, "the mood started changing almost immediately," Rose Ferreira, a former Goddard spaceflight analyst who was abruptly laid off during SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's early DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) sweep through the federal workforce, told Space.com. "The language that was being used in some of our internal emails was so aggressive. I've never seen anything like this from NASA," Ferreira said at the time.

"[Harris] was brought in from the Air Force, and she is very strict on the chain of command, and basically is implementing what center management is telling her to do," said "Wendy," a Goddard spacecraft engineer who also spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, in an interview.

"When we had DOGE coming on site, we had some supervisors saying that if DOGE asks you for access to your laptop, you should give it to them. Basically, just hand over the keys," Wendy said. "That direction was implied to come from Engineering management, but not put in writing."

"It's really hard for us to get anything in writing from Engineering management, because I think they know that what they're doing shouldn't be put in writing," she added.

Another GSFC civil servant who asked to remain anonymous, "Peter," said that's by design. "Goddard management is very good at obfuscating its intentions directly, either through refusal to put any directives in writing or by working through chain of command, such that decisions don't necessarily reflect back on the individual who ultimately made them." Peter spoke with Space.com about ongoing building closures taking place at Goddard's Greenbelt campus, but months before, GISS was identified as the first in a chain of dominos to be knocked down.

GISS: The first to fall

By March, NASA was implementing workforce reductions and closing offices (such as the Office of the Chief Scientist and the Office of Technology, Policy & Strategy). Internal speculation about NASA's future painted a bleak picture for Goddard and its programs. Meanwhile, the vulnerability of NASA's climate science programs was being underscored nationally, as former agency leadership raised the alarm.

"The first person that was fired at NASA … was the Chief Scientist and Chief Climate Officer," Nelson said during an event in Washington, D.C. in April. "I think we need to be concerned about that."

That concern, it seems, was warranted. Later that month, GISS employees were ordered to vacate their Columbia University building (which many may recognize as the one with the corner diner in the show Seinfeld). Since then, they've been forced to work remotely — at a time when the government was doling out return-to-office mandates — preventing access to labs and crippling the center's mission of embedding NASA climate scientists within international academia. Though the closure came as a shock, the reasoning behind it seemed obvious to those on the ground.

"We have one of the original models for climate simulation," Claire explained. GISS develops and maintains research on atmospheric composition and long-term climate change, and manages NASA's global surface temperature record — one of the world's key climate datasets.

"We have the ignoble distinction now of being the second NASA center ever closed down," Claire said. NASA's Electronics Research Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was the first, shuttered in 1970 due to budget cuts during the restructuring of the Apollo program.

Jim Green, a former NASA Chief Scientist who retired in 2022 after 42 years at the agency, told Space.com that stewardship of that climate research requires a significant undertaking.

"The huge Earth science workforce at Goddard analyzes an enormous amount of Earth science data that comes in … That requires quite a cadre of very knowledgeable people," Green said. "Not only the project scientists and the scientists analyzing the data coming from those missions, but also the scientists that are managing multi-mission analysis. That's particularly true in Earth science."

Green said climate and Earth science have a big footprint at NASA. "Earth science in particular has a huge, huge infrastructure analyzing our Earth satellites. So I think they, of course, have been hit disproportionately because of the approach the administration is taking," he said.

The move out of the GISS building was chaotic. Equipment for one NASA mission, PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) — a satellite launched in February 2024 that measures the health of Earth's oceans — had to be hurriedly moved between agency sites to avoid program setbacks.

"There was about, I don't know, a million dollars worth of [PACE] equipment," Claire estimated. "They told us to get out of the building … So the PI (principal investigator) rented a car, and he put all of the stuff in the car and drove through the night to put it on another NASA facility so that it'd be safe."

GISS's position on a university campus allowed for a unique relationship between the facility and academia. Only about a third of the people who work at GISS are federal employees or federal contractors. The other two-thirds work for Columbia and other universities. "They are those soft-money scientists who are totally supported by those federal research grants," Claire said.

"They didn't fire us, but they didn't have to fire us," Claire said. "All they have to do is stop putting money into federal research grants, and it will have the same impact without any of the stop measures that you have for the federal civil service. Those do not exist in the academic community for the federal research grants."

While they still have work to do, their ability to do it is being siloed. "When it comes to doing cutting-edge science, having a little bit of face time goes a really long way," Claire explained. "The cross talk, the back-and-forth that you cannot have during Zoom meetings — during face-to-face meetings, you can. You actually make a lot of progress," she said. "That's all gone. And so this piece of our mission, which was to be integrated into the academic community — we've been cut off at our knees."

Claire used Climate Week NYC, an event celebrated at the end of September, as an example of opportunities missed as a result of the new constraints. "There are people coming to New York City from across the world," she said at the time. "If we still had our facility and that was happening, we would have dozens of meetings leveraging our conference centers on site, so that we could be true to our mission … Now, we're scrambling just to find a space."

Closing GISS may have also violated NASA's agreement with Claire's employee union. Claire is a member of GESTA, the Goddard Engineers, Scientists and Technicians Association. GESTA operates under the umbrella of IFPTE, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, and advocates for NASA employees' rights, working conditions and policies.

"As a civil servant, I had a collective bargaining agreement that said certain things had to happen before there could be a change in working conditions," Claire said. "My collective bargaining agreement was totally ignored when they kicked us out of our building with just a month's notice."

Today, the GISS building presumably still sits empty, with NASA apparently continuing to foot the bill.

"The super has told us the building is not rented out," Claire said. "He thinks it's still being paid for. They're not showing it off to anyone else."

In retrospect, Claire wondered if GISS was a test case for closures at Goddard that came months later, and are happening now.

"They are closing down a significant part of the Goddard campus, and so I think that we [at GISS] were singled out to be the first one to get poked," she said. "In general, Goddard is not a favorite amongst the NASA centers."

NASA's budget eviscerated

Days after GISS employees were given notice to vacate their building, the White House released the FY26 Presidential Budget Request (PBR). It proposed a historic 24% cut to overall NASA funding and slashed the money for space agency science programs by 47%.

Experts called the cuts catastrophic, saying they waste billions in federal investments and gut groundbreaking missions.

"Three words that we've been using to describe this: unprecedented, unstrategic and wasteful — wasteful of the taxpayers' investment," Jack Kiraly, director of government relations at the Planetary Society, said during the Sept. 18 livestream. The Planetary Society has lobbied to restore NASA's budget in Congress's appropriations bill since the budget request's publication, which cancels 41 planned or already active science missions, including functioning spacecraft operating in Earth orbit and beyond.

Dreier called it an "extinction-level event."

"This isn't just poor policy — it's fundamentally wasteful and inefficient, exactly what this Administration is saying it does not want," Dreier told Space.com in June. "When you abruptly terminate projects that are already in development, or well-functioning projects operating for pennies on the proverbial dollar, you're essentially throwing away all the previous investment while gaining nothing in return."

"The operating missions cancellations alone represent over $12 billion of invested taxpayer value. And once they're gone, they're gone. It would take years and many millions more to replace them," he added.

Another casualty of the FY26 budget request was NASA's Office of STEM Engagement (OSTEM), which was completely eliminated from the space agency's portfolio. OSTEM was responsible for NASA's educational outreach and student involvement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs.

"That not only has an effect on what we do at NASA in terms of workforce development, but also kids across the entire country," said Julie, an agency employee who did not wish to give her last name, told Space.com during a worker-organized demonstration to protest agency science cuts in July. She was not authorized to speak on behalf of NASA.

Julie listed programs like grad school scholarships and teacher training initiatives that will be lost in OSTEM's absence. "If that's something that goes away completely, it's going to impact the entire next generation of students," she said.

Since the FY26 budget request's release, pushback has been sharp. Employees at Goddard under the banner NASA Needs Help organized three public protests over the summer, and have joined organizations like the Planetary Society and lawmakers to call on Congress to restore NASA's funding.

At an Oct. 5 day of action on Capitol Hill hosted by the Planetary Society, CEO Bill Nye outlined the stakes. "Fully functioning spacecraft summarily turned off, development work on virtually every future science mission summarily halted. We're not talking about delays in scientific exploration. We're talking about the end of it," he said.

To his relief and others, Congress is pushing back on the proposed cuts.

The Senate Appropriations Committee advanced a measure to fund NASA at a level comparable to fiscal year 2025, and there is bipartisan support for maintaining the space agency's science programs. But many who protested over the summer worry that irreparable damage has already occurred, and is being accelerated by the government shutdown.

Part of that fear is due to the perception that whatever Congress signs into law won't matter. Employees assume the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will illegally impound funds anyway. Some think it's already happening. "People expect that to continue," said Wendy, the Goddard engineer. "So they don't trust that Congress's budget will actually be implemented even after it's passed."

Lawmakers, too, have voiced skepticism about OMB's actions. In an op-ed published Aug. 5, Republican Representative Brian Babin, of Texas's 36th district, wrote, "Although Congress is working to ensure NASA has what it needs, the Office of Management and Budget’s proposed budget doesn't align with Mr. Trump's directives. To be blunt: OMB needs to start rowing in the same direction. We don't have time for budget games."

Kiraly, with the Planetary Society, thinks there's a deeper motivation behind OMB fighting the tide: OMB Director Russell Vought.

"This is not the President's budget. This is not Congress's budget. This isn't even secretary Sean Duffy's, who's serving as the acting Administrator of NASA (since replacing Petro in July). This is Russ Vought's budget," Kiraly said during the Planetary Society livestream.

Vought, Kiraly said, has it out for NASA. "He is somebody that historically has not seen a lot of value in space science … who does not believe that the government should be investing in space exploration or space science," he said. "And we know that because just a couple years ago, he very much wrote this exact thing. He wants to propose a 50% reduction to NASA Science."

Dreier agreed. "The problem with the OMB," he said, "is not just that they can control the flow of money. They control the rate of spending in addition to preparing these budget requests. So even if you provide them the money, they can throw in a decent number of internal bureaucratic hurdles or slow-walk the pace at which this goes out."

Early enforcement

NASA officials are adamant that there has been no implementation of the President's budget request, but the debate over the budget and implementation legalities is still taking place months later. Very quickly after the FY26 budget request's release, however, NASA leadership started sending messages to staff about reshaping the agency in that image. They announced organization restructurings, impending reductions in force (RIFs) and encouraged space agency employees to take advantage of Deferred Resignation Programs (DRPs).

In a June 9 email obtained by Space.com, Petro instructed staff to start implementing changes to reflect "the Administration's priorities."

"While it is moving through the legislative process, the proposed funding requires action now," the email states. In bold, Petro listed three different programs available to employees who wanted to do their part in thinning NASA's workforce: the agency's DRP, Voluntary Early Retirement (VERA) and a Voluntary Separation Incentive Program (VSIP).

"We're already seeing the agency is moving to put in motion things that are laid out in the President's budget request, even though Congress hasn't weighed in yet, because they think it's clear that that is the direction we're ultimately going to be heading in," McGrath said in July.

That observation was shared by others at Goddard. "The reason a lot of management says that we have to plan for the President's budget request, as opposed to Congress's budget, is because they believe that the President will impound the funds even if Congress passes a budget," Wendy said.

U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, said what's happening at NASA is illegal. A Democratic staff report released by Cantwell and the Committee on Sept. 29, titled "The Destruction of NASA's Mission," says NASA's preemptive compliance with the PBR is an "unconstitutional plot to gut the agency" and circumvents Congress's authority.

"The President's proposed budget … carries no force of law, cannot override existing spending laws, and has no legal impact on funding appropriated by Congress," the report says.

"Losing hundreds of NASA scientists and experts with irreplaceable experience — especially at Goddard — as well as permanently shuttering labs, one-of-a-kind equipment and entire buildings, causes irreversible disruptions to core scientific research that will last far into the future and undermine the United States’ global leadership position," Cantwell told Space.com in a statement.

"We will not win the space race in the long run without fully funding NASA's science mission," she added.

Duffy named Amit Kshatriya as NASA associate administrator Sept. 3. After the report's release, Kshatriya unequivocally denied its claims.

"This report is false," Kshatriya said in a statement to Space.com. "NASA has communicated openly and transparently with Congress that we continue to execute our available appropriated funding in accordance with established fiscal policies which respect congressional authorities."

"NASA will never compromise on safety. The President’s budget request stands with Congress at this point, and NASA will enact the budget appropriated to us," Kshatriya added.

NASA Press Secretary Bethany Stevens said that the publication of the Senate report was strategic, and politically motivated.

"The intentionally timed release of this inflammatory, false report is nothing more than a distraction tactic from Senate Democrats. As Democrats push to shut our government down, they’re attempting to divert attention," she told Space.com in a statement.

The Senate's report supports Space.com's findings, stating, "as early as June 2025, NASA began 'implementing immediately' certain 'institutional changes' to align with the President's proposed budget," and asserts that NASA Chief of Staff Brian Hughes is conspiring with OMB to "actively implement the President's FY26 budget request."

In an internal NASA email obtained for the report, space agency leadership was told, "PBR is the direction. Discretionary funds can be impounded per the Impoundment Act of 1974. If there is a CR (continuing resolution), impoundment is likely going to get on the table as a mechanism to get to the PBR."

One of the report's key findings concluded that "OMB Director Russell Vought's budgetary end game is to use impoundment to illegally implement the President's proposed budget at NASA, while ignoring congressional funding levels."

Over the past several months at Goddard, this has been an open secret. "There is just a general acknowledgement that a lot of what is happening is illegal," Wendy said, "but people have been told to do it, and so they feel like they have to do it. That's especially true for management, because they're getting directives from people above them, and if they don't comply, they will lose their jobs."

Reduction in force

Through June and July, leadership continued to push DRPs and signaled looming RIFs. Morale at Goddard sank as losses mounted, and the future of different missions hung in limbo.

"We are seeing more and more people taking [the DRP] now while the window is still open. I think that's kind of because we don't know what will happen after that window closes, and it might be a worse scenario than the current one," McGrath said earlier this summer.

Employees in programs that lost their funding in the budget request are preparing to shut off functioning spacecraft. Some of those active missions marked for termination include the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which studies high-energy X-ray sources like black holes, the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) orbiter studying the Martian atmosphere, the Juno probe orbiting Jupiter, which has at least another three years of life in it, and New Horizons, which became the first spacecraft to fly by Pluto in 2015 and is now exploring the Kuiper Belt beyond.

"Mission leads are being told to plan for their missions to be shut down if they were zeroed out in the President's budget request, and this includes missions that are already in space and sending back data and have very minimal upkeep. They just want to turn them off," Wendy said. Meanwhile, NASA leadership tightened their embrace of the budget request.

"The President's FY 2026 Budget Request for NASA is NASA's budget request," Petro wrote in a June 27 email to employees obtained by Space.com. She acknowledges an ultimate budget has yet to be finalized by Congress, but that NASA needs "to begin preparing to align our workforce and resources now to meet the mission priorities [the budget request] outlines."

The directive was again echoed down the chain of command in a July 9 email to Goddard engineers obtained by Space.com, which says ETD reorganization plans in development prior to Trump's second term would be shifted to fit "the vision put forward within the President's Budget Request for NASA."

McGrath's work in astrophysics supports one of the missions zeroed out in the FY26 budget request. After its release, his contract employer wrote to inform him they were unable to guarantee his job past the end of the fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30.

"I received an email from my direct employer just acknowledging that elephant in the room," McGrath said earlier this year. "My NASA sponsor told them I am in a high-risk position right now, and they can't guarantee anything beyond September 30."

Before that date passed, McGrath's contractor was able to extend his position through the end of 2025. Now, the government shutdown has put him and thousands of other contract employees in the awkward position of having to sign on remotely for work, but without many of their coworkers and resources needed to do their jobs.

"I can't really communicate with my civil servant colleagues and bosses since they are all furloughed," McGrath said in October. "My weekly meetings are canceled or underattended." It has continued this way for McGrath and many other contract employees since the shutdown began on Oct. 1.

As some contract employers attempted to be as transparent as possible, NASA's communication efforts with its own workforce shrank over the course of the year.

A July 17 email obtained by Space.com, sent from one lab chief in a "First Line Supervisor" position, explained that division town halls would be canceled indefinitely and to expect department-wide group chat channels to be disabled. The lab chief said that these changes were made in an effort to funnel information to employees through First Line Supervisors, but was unable to say definitively since official reasoning had not been communicated to that level of management, according to the email.

"In normal times, all agency GSFC [department] town halls were officially recorded, but that was discontinued some months ago, and later most such meetings were stopped entirely," Marshall Finch, a contract systems administrator at Goddard, told Space.com. He was not authorized to speak on behalf of NASA or his direct employer.

At the same time, word about the uneasiness within the United States' scientific community had spread worldwide, and many Goddard scientists and engineers began receiving recruitment emails from European research institutions.

Before GSFC town halls ended in the spring, Lystrup mentioned the notion of scientists being recruited for positions overseas to employees on at least one occasion. "With grants drying up, there is going to be less soft money for people to survive on as well," she said in a June 16 town hall, adding, suggestively, according to Wendy, "I know that there are a number of countries that are actively recruiting US scientists and putting money behind recruiting US scientists to go abroad."

Speculation circulated that the reason town halls stopped had to do with something Lystrup said that NASA higher-ups didn't like. Lystrup ended up resigning as GSFC director on July 22.

One group was told they were not allowed to talk to HR or any higher levels of management without first contacting their supervisor. Another email obtained by Space.com reads, in part, "We must do this because: 1) management is directing us to communicate this way."

Finch said the changes in communication have been "chilling."

"I have spoken to people afraid to put comments and directives in writing. I know people afraid to dissent, or afraid to do so in writing," Finch said. "Some people feel more vulnerable than others, so we lose their voices as they silence themselves. The result is lost safety and lost productivity."

As the window to volunteer for a deferred resignation neared its end, NASA employees were forced to make hard decisions about their future. "Because our management is telling us that we have to align to the President's budget request, people are using it to predict whether or not they will have a job in the next year, and deciding to leave based on that," Wendy said.

The deadline for NASA employees to opt into the agency's DRP was July 25. By that time, more than 4,000 people at the space agency had signed up to leave, reducing NASA's employee pool by over 20%. At Goddard, GESTA reported that 447 people chose the DRP route, equating to roughly one in six GSFC civil servants — about 17% of the center’s workforce, totaling more than 11% of NASA's voluntary departures across its 10 major facilities nationwide — the largest of any agency center.

During a Goddard Retirees & Alumni Association (GRAA) event with Lystrup in August, the former center director told attendees that GSFC's total losses through DRPs and other reorganizations were closer to one thousand, which would total about 32% of Goddard's federal employees.

No one Wendy spoke with who took the DRP actually wanted to leave NASA. "Prior to this year, they really enjoyed their jobs," she said.

Loss of science and safety

Unpredictable losses from voluntary departures left many Goddard programs with holes in their expertise, growing safety concerns and, in some cases, fractured mission teams that may lack the resources to continue regardless of what final budget is passed.

"Because of our own management reassigning people to other projects, we won't have enough people on the projects to keep them going, regardless of the funding," Wendy said.

Former NASA astronaut Terry Virts joined the space agency in 2000. He has flown to space twice, served as commander of the International Space Station and spent a cumulative 213 days in orbit. He retired in 2016 but still maintains a residence in Houston, near NASA's Johnson Space Center, where he keeps in close contact with his past NASA community. Virts is currently running as a Democrat for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas.

"Once the hardware is canceled, once the scientists are gone, you can't just start [those missions] up again," Virts told Space.com in an interview. "Solar system probes require engineers to understand very technical things to work for years on a program. Once you let someone go, you're not just going to get them back."

"Anytime you're doing something as complicated as launching rockets and operating spacecraft in space, you don't want turmoil and angst and people quitting on the ground," Virts said. "The things that are happening are safety issues for NASA, but they're also safety issues for the other 330 million Americans."

Virts said that implementing these kinds of cuts to science at NASA and other federal agencies has "absolutely" already cost human lives. He pointed to the July 4 Hill Country floods in Texas, when more than 130 people died from the catastrophically rapid rise of the Guadalupe River, which overtook entire communities.

"The one person who was supposed to warn everybody was gone, thanks to this administration's disastrous cuts," Virts asserted. Some reports have speculated that the National Weather Service office in Austin lacked a warning coordination meteorologist due to an early retirement tied to federal cuts, and that the person in that position could have potentially activated an earlier alert system for affected residents.

On June 24, just before the Hill Country floods became the latest example of the effects of climate change and natural disasters, scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado received word they would no longer have access to data provided by satellites that form the US Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. The NSIDC has long used this critical information to measure sea ice in real time to inform the sea-ice index, which monitors the amount of ice coverage around Earth's poles.

The Department of Defense uses those measurements for planning things like ship deployment, but it has long been integrated into NASA's own Earth science programs, with algorithms developed at Goddard forming the backbone of the sea-ice concentration datasets. GSFC scientists routinely processed the data to monitor polar climate trends. When access to those feeds was suspended, it didn't just cut off NSIDC, it also cut off Goddard's ability to update the global datasets it maintains for NASA's climate missions, effectively blinding parts of the agency’s environmental monitoring network.

By then, workers at NASA saw the writing on the wall and began to organize. "A lot of people are starting to realize that the risk to the whole agency is getting greater and greater," McGrath said in June. "Time is running out. If we don't say something now, then there's not going to be much opportunity left going forward."

In addition to the NASA Needs Help demonstrations over the summer, nearly 300 current and former NASA employees signed the "Voyager Declaration," which they published on July 21. Its signatories included astronauts, scientists and engineers protesting the preemptive funding cuts and employee losses, which, they said, "threaten to waste public resources, compromise human safety, weaken national security, and undermine the core NASA mission."

The letter invoked "Technical Authority," an established process put in place following investigations into the Columbia and Challenger space shuttle accidents, which establishes employee protections if they speak out against something they view as unsafe.

Goddard's arm of NASA's Office of Safety and Mission Assurance was hit particularly hard by position losses, according to employees. The department is responsible for ensuring safety protocols are followed through every stage of spacecraft development and testing, and when scientists and engineers interface with potential hazards like high-pressure procedures, vacuum chambers, radioactive materials and heavyweight hardware.

Julie, who attended a July 20 NASA Needs Help "Moon Day" demonstration, worried about the effects on NASA's Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer. "That was set up after Columbia and Challenger to make sure that we were passing any lessons learned on to the entire community," she said. "I can see another Challenger, another Columbia happening down the road as a result of this, and it will ultimately be blamed back on us."

"We build very specific things," George, a NASA employee who did not wish to provide his last name, told Space.com at the protest. He feared the deterioration of critical expertise and the consequences that could come with it. "If we lose that, we lose that, it's gone. Where are we going to learn how to do that again? Are we going to have to have another Challenger moment to learn how to do that again? Maybe."

Employees fear that long-standing safety guardrails are being eroded. "It feels like a lot of the leadership at NASA is undoing a lot of good progress that we've made over the past years and decades," McGrath said. "We're getting real close, I think, to that moment where it might be too late to undo some of the changes that could happen."

Duffy briefly touched on these concerns during a Sept. 4 all-agency town hall livestream. He acknowledged employee feedback about insufficient personnel, but downplayed fears over science losses and safety. "We have Congressionally mandated science, which we're going to do," he said, "but we also have a lot of science that is going to drive human exploration, that's going to drive our mission to the moon. We are going to lean into that science as well."

"Do we have the human resources available? … As of right now, I think we do," he said, adding that he was open to reevaluating if an assessment was needed.

"We are safety driven, and we should be safety driven," Duffy said. "But sometimes we can't let safety be the enemy of making progress. We have to be able to take some leaps. We have to be able to jump forward in our innovation and drive this mission. And there's always a balance to that."

For all the cuts in the FY26 budget request, the Trump administration is doing all it can to bolster human spaceflight programs like Artemis, NASA's effort to return astronauts to the moon. But without a robust scientific portfolio, some at NASA wonder how astronauts will occupy their time during such missions.

"It turns us away from those quests that give our astronauts something to do when they're doing the exploration, and keeps them safe while they're doing it. Science enables exploration," Barbara Cohen, a NASA planetary scientist, said to attendees of a Sept. 15 protest outside the agency's Washington, D.C. headquarters. "We need science to drive the innovation."

NASA seems to be driving in the opposite direction.

Campus closures begin

Over the last few months, notices have trickled down through supervisors to inform employees at Goddard of several facility closures. A July 1 email to managers, obtained by Space.com, announced the impending closures of the staff fitness facility on the main GSFC campus — marked for Nov. 30 — and the health facilities at both the Greenbelt campus and at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, which operates under Goddard's umbrella.

Goddard's health services are in place to address injuries specific to the types of hazards NASA scientists and engineers may face, like exposure to radiation or hypergolic fuels. They also provide physicals and medical assessments required by people's jobs at the center. "Anticipated budget reductions in Fiscal Year 2026," was the reason given for the closures in the email. Both health units were scheduled to close Oct. 31.

On Aug. 4, in another internal email obtained by Space.com, managers were notified of more closures — a list that includes buildings, services and employee socialization hubs across Goddard and Wallops. Effective Oct. 1, both centers were set to close their employee cafeteria and motor pool services, as well as vending services and the recreation center at the Greenbelt campus.

Like the face-to-face collaboration benefits lost at GISS, employees fear shutting down Goddard's cafeteria will be stifling. "Being able to meet with colleagues and build relationships over lunch has a big impact," Wendy said. "That will be a hit to our ability to do our jobs."

NASA officials say maintaining the cafeteria has been a strain on the center's budget. To compensate, Goddard administration arranged for food trucks on campus as an alternative option for employees.

Most alarming on the email's list were both facilities' visitor centers. Closing the visitor centers at Goddard and Wallops would cut off the only public-facing arms of NASA in their areas and eliminate the communities' primary way of interacting with the space agency.

Union fights back

Amid the turmoil over facilities closures, the union representing Goddard workers took action. A GESTA press release on Aug. 15 opposed the decisions, and speculated that the closures might be targeted.

"There is growing concern that the closure may be more than a budgetary decision … GESTA has yet to receive any indications of other NASA Centers closing their Visitor Centers," the release said, adding that the decisions were being "perceived by some employees as purposefully punitive, seemingly designed to inflict maximum institutional pain on remaining employees who chose not to voluntarily separate or resign during recent agency downsizing and restructuring."

"It does feel to me, and to a lot of people that I've talked to, that this is all part of making life miserable so that people leave," Wendy said at the time.

Goddard leadership declined Space.com's request for an interview. In an email sent Sept. 16 in response to that request, Goddard News Chief Rob Garner said the GSFC officials were "reviewing functions and capabilities as the center works to close out Fiscal Year 2025 and look ahead." He added that Goddard officials were "exploring a number of actions, including some that may involve closure of facilities," and that "no decisions have been made."

Beyond the view of the public, more closures were taking place. Employees received instructions to relocate from several buildings on Goddard's campus over the summer. They were moved from workspaces, like labs with specialized spacecraft testing equipment and infrastructure, to "windowless cubicle farms," Wendy said. One group was moved into a new building that lacked adequate lab space, another into a lab that lacked a functional climate control system. GESTA quickly stepped into negotiations about the change in working conditions.

The union filed bargaining proposals over the office and lab relocations, citing Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) precedent, and several moves were paused. In an email to union members, GESTA identified ETD Deputy Director for Planning and Business Management Matt Ritsko as the one who orchestrated the reassignments, "in concert with [top level] Management" to create a cost-savings option for center leadership. This was "driven," the email said, by "anticipated reductions in the upcoming fiscal year."

Ritsko serves just under Harris at the top of the Engineering department, which reports directly to Goddard's Office of the Director and, since Lystrup's resignation, acting Goddard Director Cynthia Simmons.

Unions eliminated

As negotiations between GESTA and Goddard management continued, the union had the proverbial rug pulled out from under it. In late August, an executive order by Trump reclassified NASA as one of the federal agencies excluded from the requirement to offer employees the right to collective bargaining under Chapter 71 of Title 5 of the FLRA Management Relations Statute, banning unions at the space agency on the grounds of “national security.”

"That's supposed to make us work more efficiently? That's just going to make all of us less safe," Monica Gorman, a GESTA area VP, said to protesters outside NASA's D.C. headquarters on Sept. 15. "It's going to put NASA's missions at risk, and it's going to put NASA's people at risk."

At that same demonstration, representatives from GESTA's parent body came to show their support. IFPTE President Matthew Biggs told those gathered that the union was already in the process of challenging the order in court. "It's a lot easier to do RIFs if there's no labor unions there to challenge them," he said. "So we are going to challenge it in the courts, and we're challenging it on Capitol Hill, and we're going nowhere."

Even if the unions have a case, the system is built against them, said Mark Gaston Pearce, who served as chairman of the National Labor Relations Board in the Obama administration from 2011 to 2017, and is the former executive director of, and currently a senior advisor at, Georgetown University's Workers' Rights Institute.

"There will probably be causes of actions that can be pursued, but the practical nature of these circumstances is such that these employees will need to continue to keep working," Pearce said. "Funding these lawsuits are not a simple matter, and even if that is achievable, the time that would be taken for all of this to take place will be so, so long in the future that the immediate harm suffered could be insurmountable for many of the employees."

Negotiations end, cuts accelerate

Trump's executive order freed Goddard leadership of their obligation to debate with GESTA about facility closures and anything else. The union was given 48 hours' notice to clear their resources from the conference room previously dedicated for their use, and employees were barred from congregating there during off hours.

Negotiations with GESTA stopped, and center leadership kicked their reorganization efforts into overdrive.

Despite media reports indicating that Acting Administrator Duffy directed NASA to begin working toward the budget outlined in the House Appropriations Committee’s bill for the coming fiscal year, which restored much of the science programs initially cut in the PBR, that direction was not one communicated through Goddard's management levels to employees.

"There was certainly no widespread communication broadly disseminated to the workforce informing them that we would now be following the House budget request instead of the President's budget request at Goddard," said Peter, the GSFC civil servant. "That is unlike activities that I have seen through other centers."

NASA officials maintain they provided appropriate guidance to agency centers and mission directorates, instructing each to spend according to anticipated budget appropriations in alignment with presidential priorities, and that the agency remains in full compliance with Section 505 Appropriations reporting requirements. Duffy and other agency leadership have repeatedly assured critics they intend to follow the law, and adhere to whatever Congress ultimately passes. He even said as much directly to lawmakers at the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure’s hearing on July 17, promising to "follow the will of Congress."

"The Engineering and Technology Directorate, in particular, seemed like it was ignoring that guidance from headquarters and instead continuing to plan to the Presidential budget request," Peter said. This would stand in direct contradiction to guidance passed down from NASA's top leadership, Space.com has learned.

The "cost savings" closures initiated by Ritsko to align with Trump's budget proposal expanded to include Goddard's 20-year Master Plan, a vision for the center that began in 2017 and outlines upgrades, renovations and other changes to GSFC's 1,270-acre (514-hectare) campus, including the demolition of older facilities and the construction of new buildings through 2037. It includes reducing the campus's footprint by nearly 50%.

On Sept. 22, as worries over a looming government shutdown mounted in the face of deadlocked negotiations in Washington, Goddard Associate Center Director Raymond Rubilotta announced a rapid acceleration of the Master Plan from 20 years to six months.

"Beginning Wednesday, Sept. 24, we will initiate a series of moves at both campuses that will reduce our footprint into fewer buildings," Rubilotta said in an email to Goddard employees, obtained by Space.com. "All planned moves will take place over the next several months and will be completed by March of 2026."

Over the week that followed, employees described hectic disorganization. "People are being told to relocate offices on short notice, often chaotically with little planning. They are being told to highly prioritize the moves," Wendy said.

There were instances of employees being assigned workspaces already occupied by others and unable to return to their original offices, buildings being emptied of personnel with no current plan to recover or relocate potentially millions of dollars of equipment left behind, employees told Space.com. "It's crazy," said Finch, the systems admin.

The long-term plans for Goddard's main campus included the construction of nine new facilities, the renovation of 10 facilities and "divestment or partial divestment of 12 facilities, and the demolition of 61 facilities." In this case, "facilities" encompasses everything from land, utilities, buildings and really any structure on NASA's property.

While there is no current work underway to begin construction on any of the new facilities shown in the plans, almost half of the largest buildings marked for future divestment or demolition have been listed for abandonment by the March deadline — nearly everything west of Goddard Road (the red line), on this map provided to Space.com.

The slides below highlight which of the buildings planned for demolition by 2037 have been accelerated to the March 2026 timeline, and where planned constructions overlap.

For NASA, the staffing decrease as result of the DRP was one of the motivations behind ramping up building consolidations, which the agency assured are being methodically carried out in order to preserve the science and resources needed across projects. The buildings being vacated were apparently already 40% unoccupied, and a burdensome cost on center resources.

According to Wendy, if GSFC leadership is using the smaller workforce to justify the downsizing, the numbers don't add up. "They basically want to move everybody out of half of the buildings on campus. Half of the physical footprint of Goddard. But we only lost about a third of our employees to DRP and attrition," she said.

More than just a logistical challenge of physical space, the moves themselves seem to ignore the impact of what's being left behind. "They're being implemented in inept ways that do not properly account for how unique the technical work that has been done at Goddard truly is," Peter said. "It seems that there is a lack of understanding in Goddard management in general as to what technical capabilities we have, and what's actually important to retain them."

Government shutdown

Days after Rubilotta’s Master Plan notice, OMB issued a memo, first reported by Politico, directing agencies to consider reduction in force notices during a shutdown for programs not aligned with the "President's priorities."

On Sept. 29, NASA updated the agency's shutdown guidance to add a similar "presidential priorities" phrase, heightening employee fears that the administration would use the government shutdown as an excuse for further layoffs and project cuts.

Goddard's leadership did not provide employees any center-specific shutdown instructions, according to employees. "They didn’t hold a single town hall — other [NASA] centers did — and didn't send any guidance on what to do during a shutdown," Wendy said. What they did send was "a big new re-organization email," which came at 5 p.m. on the evening before the shutdown began.

Some groups received instructions to pack their work and equipment — in some cases, massive testing hardware — and were told to stand by for a notice with a 48-hour window to relocate.

"Active research and mission development has been greatly disrupted as some labs have been told to leave their buildings immediately," McGrath said. "A very hard task to do when you have extremely sensitive equipment that isn't just meant to be moved on a whim. So we are shutting down center capabilities with no plan to replace them in other lab facilities."

While the government was closing its doors for business, Goddard's management laid the groundwork to make sure theirs were deadbolted. "Raymond Rubilotta (Associate Center Director) and Segrid Harris (Director for the Engineering and Technology Directorate) are continuing to push the disassembly of Goddard Center at a rapid pace, even while the government is shut down," McGrath said.

On Oct. 1, the first day of the shutdown, some staff were still being told to come pack their offices as part of their "orderly shutdown procedure," according to an email sent that morning, obtained by Space.com, and that movers would relocate the contents if and when new workspaces were assigned. "Normally, the orderly shutdown activities are limited to things like getting your work into a safe state, setting automatic replies on your emails, and clearing out your fridge," Wendy said.

As the shutdown continued into multiple weeks, Goddard leadership began designating select employees with part-time excepted status, deeming the consolidation of "technical work and employees" as a priority, and reinstating their furlough once their offices are packed.

For federal workers during the government shutdown, an “exemption” differs from an “exception.” Contracted movers paid from pre-obligated funds, for example, could be considered exempt, but federal civil servants would not. An exception, by contrast, allows employees to continue certain unfunded activities because they are necessary to protect life or property.

Only two exceptions have been approved for facility relocations during the shutdown so far at Goddard, Space.com has learned, and no office spaces were submitted as part of those requests. In fact, over 100 office space moves were put on hold specifically because of the government shutdown. However, employees needing to relocate their workspaces as a result of their laboratory spaces being moved did fall into the excepted category.

"It's unclear what activity is really taking place under any officially approved status from headquarters at this point," Peter said.

"It's being done essentially in secret, on compressed timelines," he added, "and it seems to be that the justification for doing so is under false pretenses, and the activities themselves may also be illegal due to Anti Deficiency Act violations of recalling civil servants from furlough."

"The expectation will be to report onsite no later than Thursday October 16th to conduct packing of your office materials and any lab preparations," Ritsko wrote in an Oct. 14 email to employees, obtained by Space.com. Employees in Building 19 were given three business days to do so, according to the email, and informed that, once packed, their offices' contents would be moved to "offices and labs as they are ready."

"I think one of the intents of the master plan was to move people out of buildings that were falling apart, but we have not built new buildings to move those people into, and we don't have lab spaces available," Wendy said.

Employees on some teams were told that if they were unable to complete evaluations of their lab equipment, whatever wasn't designated give-away or keep would be thrown out. "All items not marked in labs by COB Monday 10/20 will be excessed," an Oct. 16 email, obtained by Space.com, said.

"There's equipment that is being planned to just be abandoned in place," Wendy said.

All that hardware adds up. Peter said losses will include "tens of millions of dollars and decades' worth of investment in these facilities that historically have been considered core to Goddard's capabilities."

Take, for instance, Building 19, which houses the Goddard Electro-Magnetic Anechoic Chamber for testing antennas and other microwave devices used on spacecraft, communications laboratories, hardware assembly rooms and the avionics laboratory, among others.

Of Building 19's infrastructure, at least eight laboratories have been completely divested without replacement, with some still needed to support critical functions for ongoing or upcoming missions, according to Peter.

So far, at least four sites on Goddard's campus have already been impacted, including Buildings 20, 30 and 32, as well as Building 19, which, as of Oct. 24, was "emptied of all government and personal property and is being locked and made inaccessible," Peter said. There is speculation about which will be next, he added.

The cost of moving

Many scientists and engineers track their time and workload according to the projects that work is associated with, including missions based out of other NASA centers. This allows NASA to track costs across multiple missions, funding sources and facilities nationwide. Employee hours are tracked under a different "charge code" during a government shutdown, however.

For employees packing up and moving their offices during the shutdown, though, "they're being told to charge their projects," Wendy said. According to her, this could lead to a situation where a mission based out of Johnson Space Center, for example, is paying for part of Goddard's employee relocation efforts, making the actual cost of work being done during the shutdown harder to track.

"If there's ever a cost-benefit analysis of how much money we're saving, versus how much money we're spending and losing by throwing stuff out, that won't be tracked accurately," Wendy said.

Marking those hours under certain mission costs like this will hit some harder than others.

"Some of these are independent research projects that people have worked really hard to propose funding for," Wendy said. "It's a very limited pot of money that they have … and they're being asked to spend that money on moving their lab."

An uncertain future

The feeling that Goddard is being targeted has been hard to shake for those working within its walls. "Seems like Goddard is giving up on its future, whether that is being forced by headquarters, OMB and the White House, versus management not doing a good job protecting it. Some people are speculating that NASA is using Goddard as a sacrifice to preserve the rest of the agency," Wendy said.

Green, who worked at NASA through several administrations before becoming Chief Scientist, says the space agency has weathered turbulent times before. "NASA has gone through, in my 42 years as a civil servant, huge changes. We've had many buyouts. We've had huge hiring freezes. We have had RIFs," Green said, and offered advice to the NASA employees currently riding out the storm:

"Stay the course. Keep doing what you're doing. Don't anticipate you won't be doing it tomorrow, until you're told you won't be doing it tomorrow, but then also be flexible … If you're not taking that knowledge and connecting it to something else that you can go to, that's a problem."

That course may now be much more difficult to navigate as employees steer the murky waters of a management hierarchy they feel doesn't support them. And, whatever Congress ultimately passes may indeed no longer matter. The damage at Goddard is already being felt in lost expertise, dismantled facilities and the quiet unraveling of the center's safety infrastructure.

With projects bracing for termination, mission teams broken apart and safety protocols weakened, the guardrails that once kept NASA from repeating its worst tragedies are being stripped away in real time. Labs are being shuttered faster than they can be reestablished, institutional knowledge is walking out the door faster than it can be replaced and the foundation that once made Goddard the center of NASA’s scientific excellence may never regain the depth of comprehension and capability it once held.

As Goddard is hollowed from within, center scientists and engineers like Wendy and Peter can't help but feel deflated.

"Regardless of how priorities may shift at Goddard in terms of what kinds of work we support, what is an absolute certainty at this point is that we as a center will be incapable of supporting as many types of work as we have historically," Peter said.

Wendy sees implications beyond just Goddard and NASA.

"I think it just kind of speaks to the atmosphere of the agency and the nation," she said, "where people are like, 'Well, laws don't matter for the people at the top anymore.'"

Editor's note: This story was updated at 1:00 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT) on Oct. 31 to clarify the stance of top NASA officials, who contend that "the destruction of NASA" is false and that there has been no implementation of the President's FY 2026 budget request to date.

When scientists dream of exploring the hidden oceans beneath the icy crusts of moons like Jupiter's Europa or Saturn's Enceladus — or other icy regions, such as permanently shadowed lunar craters or ice-bearing soils near the Martian poles — one major problem stands in the way: drilling through the ice.

Traditional drills and melting probes are heavy, complex and consume vast amounts of power. Now, researchers at the Institute of Aerospace Engineering at Technische Universität Dresden in Germany have developed a promising new solution — a laser-based ice drill that can bore deep, narrow channels into ice while keeping both mass and energy requirements low.

"We've created a laser drill that enables deep, narrow and energy-efficient access to ice without increasing instrument mass — something mechanical drills and melting probes cannot achieve," Martin Koßagk, lead author of the study, told Space.com in an email.

Mechanical drills become heavier with depth as they extend rods downward, and melting probes rely on long, power-hungry cables. The laser drill sidesteps both problems by keeping all instruments at the surface. This tech sends a concentrated beam into the ice, vaporizing it rather than melting it — a process known as sublimation.

The resulting vapor escapes upward through a narrow borehole just wide enough for gas and dust samples to be collected. Instruments on the surface can then analyze these samples for chemical composition and density, providing valuable clues about the thermal properties and formation history of the cosmic body being explored.

While lasers aren't the most energy-efficient tools, the beam vaporizes a mere pinhole of ice, meaning the drill uses far less total power than electric heaters. It also works faster in dust-rich layers that slow traditional melting probes, allowing it to bore much deeper without added mass or energy.

Therefore, a laser-based instrument "makes subsurface exploration of icy moons more realistic, allowing high-resolution analysis of ice composition and density, improving models of heat transport and ocean depth on bodies like Europa and Enceladus, and supporting studies of crust formation," Koßagk said. "On the moon or Mars, the laser drill can also extract subsurface material such as dust from ice-bearing craters or soils, enabling geological reconstruction beyond the surface layers."

The team's laser drill concept operates at roughly 150 watts (W), with a projected mass of about 9 pounds (4 kilograms), remaining constant regardless of depth — whether 33 feet (10 meters) or 6 miles (10 kilometers). However, Koßagk noted that a mass spectrometer for analyzing the gas and instruments for dust separation and analysis would increase the power requirement and mass.

Early tests show promise. The prototype drilled through ice samples about 8 inches (20 centimeters) long under vacuum and cryogenic conditions during laboratory experiments, and at greater depths in field tests in the Alps and Arctic, reaching depths of more than a meter in snow. In tests with 20 watts of laser power, the system reached drilling speeds near 1 meter per hour, and up to 3 meters per hour in loose or dusty ice.

A laser-based concept is not without limitations. In stone or layers of dust in which there is no ice that could be vaporized, the drilling process would be stopped. And, in those cases, a new borehole would need to be drilled from the surface that bypasses the obstacle.

"It is therefore important to operate the laser drill in conjunction with other measuring instruments," Koßagk told Space.com. "Radar instruments could look into the ice and locate larger obstacles, which the laser drill could then drill past."

Water-filled crevasses would also pose a challenge. When one is drilled into, the laser drill would have to pump out water as it flows in before it could continue to drill deeper. However, drilling into these areas could help to identify the chemistry of potential habitats for past or present microbial life. If bacteria ever existed, their remains might be detectable in the samples collected from a laser-drilled borehole.

To make this type of laser drill possible, next steps would be miniaturizing the system, developing a dust-separation unit and completing space-qualification tests. A compact payload version could one day ride aboard a lander to an icy moon, bringing scientists closer to decoding the secrets frozen beneath alien surfaces, Koßagk said.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, the same tool could even help predict avalanches. Field tests in cooperation with the Austrian Research Centre for Forests and Department of Natural Hazards in the Alps and the Arctic showed that the laser drill can measure snow density without digging a pit — and, mounted on a drone, it could collect data from dangerous slopes where humans can't safely go, Koßagk said.

Whether on Earth or in deep space, the goal is the same: to look beneath the surface and understand what's hidden in the ice.

The team's initial findings were published Sept. 8 in the journal Acta Astronautica.

The company holds a contract to put NASA astronauts down near the lunar south pole on the Artemis 3 mission, which is expected to launch in 2028, if all goes according to plan. SpaceX will use a modified upper stage of its Starship megarocket — the biggest and most powerful launcher ever built — for this very high-profile job.

Or will it? Last week, NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy said the agency will reopen the Artemis 3 landing contract to competition, citing concerns with the pace of Starship's development. The rocket has flown 11 uncrewed test flights to date, the last two of them completely successful, but has yet to reach Earth orbit or demonstrate key moon-critical milestones such as in-space propellant transfer. (Each Starship vehicle will need to be refueled multiple times in Earth orbit before it can reach the moon.)

"I love SpaceX; it's an amazing company. The problem is, they're behind. They've pushed their timelines out, and we're in a race against China," Duffy said on Oct. 20 during an appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box." (China plans to land astronauts on the moon by 2030 and has been making steady progress toward this goal.)

This announcement did not sit well with SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. He attacked Duffy via social media repeatedly over the following few days, calling the acting NASA chief "Sean Dummy" and claiming that he "is trying to kill NASA."

Now, more than a week later, SpaceX has formulated a more substantive response. On Thursday (Oct. 30), the company posted an update called "To the Moon and Beyond," which summarizes the progress that SpaceX has made with Starship to date and lays out the vehicle's potential to make NASA's lunar ambitions a reality.

"Starship provides unmatched capability to explore the moon, thanks to its large size and ability to refill propellant in space," the blog post reads. "One single Starship has a pressurized habitable volume of more than 600 cubic meters, which is roughly two-thirds the pressurized volume of the entire International Space Station, and is complete with a cabin that can be scaled for large numbers of explorers and dual airlocks for surface exploration."

SpaceX stressed in the update that it's working in parallel along two Starship paths, developing the "core" megarocket (which will help humanity colonize Mars, among other tasks) as well as the Artemis-specific moon-lander upper stage. SpaceX is self-funding the core path, and its contract for the Artemis lander is of the fixed-price variety, "ensuring that the company is only paid after the successful completion of progress milestones, and American taxpayers are not on the hook for increased SpaceX costs," the company wrote.

According to Thursday's update, SpaceX has already completed 49 such milestones for the Artemis lander, including testing of micrometeoroid and space debris shielding and demonstrations of "lunar environmental control and life support and thermal control" systems. And the company plans to make even more progress soon, sending a Starship upper stage to Earth orbit and completing an in-space fueling test with the vehicle in 2026, if all goes to plan.

SpaceX affirmed in the blog post that it shares NASA's goal to return astronauts to the moon "as expeditiously as possible" and wants to be "a core enabler" of the Artemis program's overriding ambition — to establish a permanent and sustained human presence on the moon, rather than mount a flags-and-footprints retread of Apollo. And the company said it's willing to be flexible to help make all of this happen.

"Since the contract was awarded, we have been consistently responsive to NASA as requirements for Artemis 3 have changed and have shared ideas on how to simplify the mission to align with national priorities," reads the update, which also features a new render of the interior of a crewed Starship moon lander. "In response to the latest calls, we’ve shared and are formally assessing a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations that we believe will result in a faster return to the moon while simultaneously improving crew safety."

The current Artemis 3 plan calls for its four astronauts to lift off atop a NASA Space Launch System rocket, then ride an Orion capsule to lunar orbit, where they'll meet up with the Starship upper stage. The astronauts will move into Starship, which will take them to and from the lunar surface.

SpaceX's new blog post doesn't provide any details about the possible "simplified" Artemis 3 architecture. But Musk may have given us a clue on Oct. 20, in one of his many Duffy reaction posts. "SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry," the billionaire wrote. "Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole moon mission. Mark my words."

The White House announced its plan to move Space Command headquarters to Alabama at a press event in September 2025. During the event, Trump stated that Colorado's mail-in ballot policy played into his decision to relocate Space Command to Alabama. "The problem I had with Colorado, one of the big problems, they do mail-in voting, they went to all mail-in voting, so they have automatically crooked elections," Trump said. Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Kamala Harris won Colorado by 11% in the 2024 presidential election.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser announced his decision to sue the administration on Wednesday (Oct. 29), citing Trump's justification. "This decision was not based on any formal criteria. It didn't follow the statutorily required evaluation process, didn't have any studies, reviews, or notice. It didn't offer validation or justification," Weiser said, according to Colorado Public Radio. "The Constitution does not permit the Executive Branch to punish or retaliate against states for lawfully exercising powers reserved for them, such as the power to regulate elections," Weiser added, according to Reuters.

U.S. Space Command (SPACECOM) is responsible for overseeing and distributing space-based capabilities throughout the entire U.S. military.

The U.S. Space Force is its own branch of the U.S. Armed Forces that trains and equips personnel to "secure our national interests in, from, and to space," and some Space Force personnel are assigned to serve in Space Command alongside members of other branches of the U.S. military serving in space-facing units.

Space Command has been headquartered at Peterson Space Force Base (formerly Peterson Air Force Base) in Colorado Springs since its creation in 1982. Colorado Springs is also home to Schriever Space Force Base and the U.S. Air Force Academy, which serves as the officer training corps for the Space Force.

The U.S. Air Force selected Huntsville as the permanent home for U.S. Space Command in 2021 during Trump's first term, which drew criticism from Colorado lawmakers as being a political move.

Former President Joe Biden reversed that decision in 2023, citing the head of Space Command at the time, Gen. James Dickinson, who told Biden the move would "jeopardize military readiness," according to the Associated Press. That decision, too, was cited as being politically motivated. Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville said Biden's reversal "looks like blatant patronage politics."

And it looks like the relocation of U.S. Space Command continues to be a political tug-of-war. During the September press conference announcing the move, Trump also insinuated that the relocation was influenced by 2024's election results.

"I am thrilled to report that the U.S. Space Command headquarters will move to the beautiful locale of a place called Huntsville, Alabama, forever to be known from this point forward as 'Rocket City,'" Trump said during the announcement on Sept. 2. "We love Alabama. I only won it by about 47 points. I don't think that influenced my decision, right?"

China has named the three astronauts set to fly to the Tiangong space station at a pre-launch press conference one day ahead of the Oct. 31 flight of the Shenzhou 21 mission.

Astronauts Zhang Lu, Wu Fei and Zhang Hongzhang will be aboard the Shenzhou 21 spacecraft, currently scheduled to launch on a Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 11:44 a.m. EDT Friday (1544 GMT, or 11:44 p.m. Beijing Time).

The mission will be commanded by Zhang Lu, 48, who was a crew member of the Shenzhou 15 mission which launched in November 2022 and returned to Earth in June 2023. "After two years, being able to once again represent my country and carry out the Shenzhou-21 mission fills me with excitement and anticipation;” Zhang told reporters at Jiuquan on Oct. 30.

Zhang Hongzhang and Wu Fei are from China's third batch of astronauts, selected in 2020, and will be making their first trips to space.

Zhang, 39, is a payload specialist and a researcher at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), while Wu is an engineer at the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), a major state-owned institute that built the modules for the Tiangong space station. At 32 years old, Wu is the youngest member of China's astronaut corps.

"As the youngest member of China's Astronaut Corps, I feel extremely fortunate to embark on my spaceflight mission. I owe my good fortune to the era we live in, which is seeing leapfrog development in China's aerospace industry," Wu said.

China made a fourth selection of astronauts in 2024, but these 10 candidates have yet to complete training required before they can be eligible for selection for missions.

Zhang, Lu and his crewmates will spend around six months aboard Tiangong. During this time they will conduct experiments, embark on extravehicular activities (EVAs), or spacewalks, carry out public outreach and education activities, and oversee the arrival and departure of cargo from the space station.

The crew will also be joined by small mammals for the first time. Four black mice — two females and two males — are set to fly to Tiangong along with the astronauts and will be used in experiments focusing on reproduction in low Earth orbit.

Friday's mission will be the 10th crewed flight to Tiangong and the seventh visit since the completion of the three-module orbital outpost in October 2022. The space station is currently inhabited by the three Shenzhou 20 astronauts, Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie. The trio will hand over control of Tiangong to the incoming Shenzhou 21 crew and return to Earth on Nov. 3, landing near Jiuquan spaceport.

Young stars can be much more tumultuous than older stars. Stellar physics predicts that in our sun's formative years it was throwing off flares of radiation and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) far more powerful and more frequent than what the sun can manage today.

Yet no one had actually seen a young sun-like star being so energetic — until now.

A coronal mass ejection and its accompanying flare occur when taut magnetic field lines on the sun or another star snap, releasing a huge burst of energy before the field lines reconnect. This energy manifests as a brightening on the surface of the sun or star, while it can lift a huge plume of plasma straight from the corona, which is the ultra-hot outer layer of a star's atmosphere.

We're familiar with observing CMEs on our sun, but extraterrestrial CMEs are more difficult to spot. Nevertheless, ground-based telescopes observing at the hydrogen-alpha wavelength have detected cool, lower-energy plasma being burped off young stars during CMEs. The next step was to search for the higher-energy release of energy that stellar physicists believe characterizes the frequent CMEs from young stars.

To that end, a multi-national team of astronomers led by Kosuke Namekata of Kyoto University in Japan have made a breakthrough by targeting the young sun-like star EK Draconis, which is 112 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Draco, the Dragon. The star is thought to be 50 million to 125 million years old, which is considered very young for a star that will exist for billions of years, and has a mass (0.95 solar masses), radius (0.94 solar radii) and surface temperature (5,560 to 5,700 kelvin) that are very close to the values for our sun.

"What inspired us most was the long-standing mystery of how the young sun's violent activity influenced the nascent Earth," said Namekata in a statement. "By combining space- and ground-based facilities across Japan, Korea and the United States, we were able to reconstruct what may have happened billions of years ago in our own solar system."

Namekata's team performed simultaneous observations of EK Draconis with the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and three ground-based telescopes in Japan and Korea. The Hubble observations were in ultraviolet light, which enabled the detection of the higher-energy components of a CME, while the ground-based telescopes tracked the cooler plasma via its hydrogen-alpha emission and TESS watched for brightening caused by the accompanying flare.

Together, Hubble and the ground-based telescopes detected the spectral lines from the emission of a CME on EK Draconis. Hubble's ultraviolet vision detected a cloud of hot plasma with a temperature of 100,000 kelvin (180,000 degrees Fahrenheit). The amount of Doppler shifting in the ultraviolet spectral lines from the star indicated that the hot plasma had been ejected at a velocity of 300 to 550 kilometers per second (670,000 to 1.2 million mph). Ten minutes later, a plume of cooler gas at 10,000 kelvin (18,000 degrees Fahrenheit) appeared, moving more slowly at 70 kilometers per second (157,000 mph). Together, the hot and fast component and cool and slow component were both two sides of the same CME.

The hot component of the CME carried much more energy than the cooler plasma. This much energy released on a regular basis, researchers said, would be significant enough to drive chemical reactions in a planetary atmosphere, producing greenhouse gases that could keep a planet warm, as well as breaking atmospheric molecules apart so they can reform as complex organic molecules that could potentially act as the building blocks of life. (No exoplanets have been detected orbiting EK Draconis yet, but it does have a probable red dwarf companion star.)

The observations therefore are a rare insight into the role that stars can play in the origin of life, a role that our sun may have played 4.5 billion years ago and which other stars may be doing today.

The findings were published on Oct. 27 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 28 of SpaceX's Starlink broadband satellites lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 4:41 p.m. EDT (2041 GMT; 1:41 p.m. local California time).

Starlink, SpaceX's internet-beaming network in low Earth orbit (LEO), is by far the largest satellite constellation ever assembled. The company has lofted more than 10,000 Starlink spacecraft to date, and nearly 8,800 of them are active today.

Most of SpaceX's launches these days go toward building out Starlink even further: The company has flown 138 Falcon 9 missions so far in 2025, and 99 have been Starlink efforts.

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth about 8.5 minutes after launch, touching down in the Pacific Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You."

It was the 29th flight for this particular booster, which is designated 1063. That's close to the Falcon 9 reuse record, which currently stands at 31 flights.

Meanwhile, the Falcon 9's upper stage will continue hauling the 29 Starlink satellites to LEO, where they'll be deployed about an hour after liftoff.

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) declared its Akatsuki spacecraft dead on Tuesday (Oct. 28), more than a year after the Venus climate probe failed to respond to calls from mission control.

"This was a mission that changed our view of our Earth-sized neighbor, and laid the path for new discoveries about what it takes to become heaven or hell," JAXA officials stated of the mission, referring to the notoriously high-pressure and high-temperature surface of Venus in comparison to Earth.

JAXA noted that the Akatsuki mission produced 178 journal papers and counting, and that it tripled its 4.5-year design lifetime — even though the probe missed its first shot at orbiting Venus.

The $300 million spacecraft, also known as the Venus Climate Orbiter, launched in 2010 and experienced a failure of its main engine along the way, missing the chance for a crucial burn to enter orbit. Incredibly, however, the mission survived long enough for a second try at orbital insertion in 2015, when Akatsuki drew close to Venus after five years of orbiting the sun.

"With the main rocket engine damaged, the team were forced to get creative," JAXA wrote in the statement. "The spacecraft would have to attempt capture using the less powerful thrusters that were designed for the tasks of attitude control and fine adjustments. Orbit insertion had never previously been achieved with such a method, but exploration has always been about redefining the impossible."

Akatsuki not only made it but persisted in its exploration of Venus for nearly a decade. JAXA announced it had lost contact with the spacecraft on May 29, 2024 after about a month of communication issues.

Akatsuki aimed to learn more about the climate of Venus, which has surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead, alongside crushing pressure that has destroyed past landing missions in minutes. As an orbiter, Akatsuki focused on the cloud bank of Venus that is about 30 to 43 miles (50 to 70 kilometers) above the surface.

"In this region, winds whip at speeds that approach the Shinkansen bullet trains, 60 times faster than the planet rotation — a phenomenon that is known as 'super rotation,'" JAXA wrote. While Venusian clouds whip around the planet in about four Earth days on average, Venus' extremely slow rotation means a single Venusian day lasts the equivalent of 243 days on our planet.

Akatsuki made progress in learning about super rotation. "As Akatsuki gazed steadily at the Venusian surface, researchers mapped the clouds between hundreds of images, measuring their speed as they slid around the globe," JAXA stated. "This analysis revealed that the acceleration of the clouds depended on the local solar time, suggesting that the incredible rotation speeds were being maintained by solar heating."

The finding has implications for life beyond Earth, the agency added. Venus orbits the sun in just 225 days, a shorter duration than its rotation. This means the planet is nearly tidally locked, which would be the case if its surface perpetually had one hemisphere facing the sun (just like Earth's moon, whose near side constantly faces our planet.)

"Many of the extrasolar planets discovered may be in tidal lock, and there is an ongoing debate as to whether this impedes their chances of habitability," JAXA wrote. "Without a mechanism to redistribute heat, air on the nightside of a tidally locked world would freeze and cause global atmospheric collapse. However, if Venus's rapid atmosphere rotation is driven by thermal input from the star, then this could be a common mechanism that would redistribute the heat fast enough on tidally locked worlds to save their air."

Akatsuki initially launched with six instruments, all of which were still working when it entered the orbit of Venus in 2015. Two infrared cameras stopped working about a year after orbital insertion, but the last four instruments were believed to still be healthy when Akatsuki stopped communicating in 2024.

The mission made some other discoveries as well, JAXA said. Scientists spotted a bow-like feature in the atmosphere that lasted for at least four Earth days, which researchers suggested was due to mountains on Venus allowing lower-atmosphere gas to move higher as a "gravity wave" to a greater extent than observed on Earth. But learning more will require new Venus missions, JAXA said.

And there are some in the planning stages. For example, NASA is working on a mission called DAVINCI, which is designed to penetrate the atmosphere, and another one called VERITAS, which will orbit the planet in search of information about its surface and interior. And the European Space Agency is developing EnVision, an orbiter that will study the atmosphere, interior and surface of Venus.

Both DAVINCI and VERITAS, however, are at threat of losing funding in President Donald Trump's 2026 NASA budget request, which slashes agency funding by 24% and cancels dozens of science missions. What happens next is still being debated by politicians during the ongoing U.S. government shutdown that started on Oct. 1, when funding was not agreed to for the new fiscal year.

For the past few years, astronomers including Beatriz Villarroel, of Nordita, Stockholm University, have been scrutinizing photographic plates exposed in the years before the Space Age began, as part of the Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) project. The aim of VASCO is to use archival data, now digitized, to search for new astrophysical transients, which are objects that brighten or fade, sometimes dramatically. These objects can appear as a spot of light in one image of the sky or space, only to vanish in the next.

Villarroel and study co-author Stephen Bruehl, a professor of anesthesiology from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, say their data show a statistical correlation between these flashes of light and reported sightings of unidentified objects. “We speculate that some transients could potentially be UAP in Earth orbit that, if descending into the atmosphere, might provide the stimulus for some UAP sightings,” they write in one of the new studies.

When VASCO launched, it had the stated aim of looking for stars that had vanished, which could for example signal a massive star collapsing into black hole without exploding as a supernova. VASCO could potentially also reveal new types of variable stars, active galactic nuclei, stellar flares or even brand new phenomena.

Sometimes the transients VASCO studies are unexplained, which has previously led Villarroel to a startling conclusion: that some of the objects detected on the plates are metallic objects in high Earth-orbit, before the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957.

“Today we know that short flashes of light are often solar reflections from flat, highly reflective objects in orbit around the Earth, such as satellites and space debris, but the photographic plates analyzed in VASCO were taken before humans had satellites in space,” Villarroel said in a statement.

VASCO researchers analyzed 106,000 transients that look like stars that appeared and swiftly disappeared in a single exposure between the years 1951 and 1957. In particular, the appearance of the unidentified transients were 68% more likely to occur the day after a nuclear weapons test in Earth’s atmosphere than on other day, Bruehl added in the statement.

“The magnitude of the association between these flashes of light and nuclear tests was surprising, as was the very specific time at which they most often occurred – namely, the day after a test,” said Bruehl. “What they might represent is a very fascinating question that needs further investigation.”

In their study, Villarroel and Bruehl also found that the transients captured by the photographic plates increased by an average of 8.5% for each UAP sighting that was reported.

In a second study, which also included researchers from Algeria, India, Nigeria, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United States, they found that one anomalous transient coincided with a cluster of flying saucer sightings over Washington, D.C., on 27 July 1952. This particular transient, along with several others, was an instance where multiple flashes of light were seen along a narrow band. This, says Villarroel, suggests flat, reflective objects in motion high above Earth that were reflecting sunlight – a hypothesis supported by the fact that the number of mystery transients drops off in parts of the sky in Earth’s shadow, where sunlight can’t reach.

“You don’t get those kinds of solar reflections from round objects like asteroids or dust grains in space, which leave streaks during a 50-minute exposure, but only if something is very flat and very reflective and reflects the sunlight with a short flash,” said Villarroel.

Villarroel and Bruehl propose another possible explanation, however: that nuclear weapons tests triggered some unknown atmospheric phenomenon that went unnoticed at the time. But Villarroel and Bruehl are skeptical that such a phenomenon would stand still in the atmosphere for 24 hours between the weapons test and when the plate was exposed at Palomar in California. The transients do not seem to be particles of nuclear fallout that have drifted down onto the photographic plate either, since such particles would produce foggy, diffuse spots, not pinpoint, star-like objects.

The explanation Villarroel and Bruehl focus on most in their papers is that these transients are UAP of some kind. Their study connects the nuclear tests to sightings, which have been reported in the vicinity of nuclear sites for decades. "Significantly more UAP sightings were reported within nuclear weapons testing windows (test date + /- 1 day) than outside of testing windows," they report in their study.

There are, of course, many caveats. Critics have claimed that the transients could be photographic defects, or contamination, especially as the plates are quite old and were stored away for many decades before being digitized.

Villarroel and Bruehl perhaps also give too much credit to reports of UFO sightings. Their reported correlation of 8.5% between the appearance of the transients and flying saucer sightings is only relevant if it can be assumed those UAP sightings are credible in the first place. There may also be an observation bias – the 1950s were the heyday of UFO sightings, so it is perhaps not too surprising that there were sightings coinciding with the appearance of transients, since UAP sightings were reported on many different days.

Ultimately, correlation does not necessarily mean causation, and Villarroel and Bruehl do acknowledge this in their study.

In SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, researchers tend to assume that any unexplained phenomena isn’t aliens, and to exhaust every possible natural explanation before invoking an extraterrestrial one. This approach would be helpful here, although what those alternative explanations might be are not yet certain.

Because of the nuclear test-ban treaty there is, quite rightly, no way to test the hypothesis that the transients are related to atmospheric phenomena caused by nuclear explosions, of which there were at least 124 above the ground between 1951 and 1957.

For now, the discovery of the transients remains an intriguing puzzle. One possible way forward that has been suggested is to try and repeat the observations on the modern day sky. If geosynchronous satellites that we know about produce similar patterns of transients on photographic plates, then that would strengthen the hypothesis that the transients on the Palomar plates could depict metallic objects reflecting sunlight in high orbit.

The two studies are published in Scientific Reports and Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 12:35 a.m. EDT (1635 GMT).

The Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth as planned about 8.5 minutes later, pulling off a pinpoint touchdown in the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "Just Read the Instructions."

It was the 15th flight for this particular booster, which carries the designation 1082, and some of its previous missions were pretty high-profile. For example, this same first stage also launched the Crew-8 astronaut mission to the International Space Station for NASA and Polaris Dawn, a crewed flight to Earth orbit that featured the first-ever private spacewalk.

The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, continued carrying the 29 Starlink satellites toward low Earth orbit today. They'll be deployed there about 64 minutes after launch, if all goes according to plan.

Today's liftoff was the 138th orbital launch of the year for SpaceX, extending the company's cadence record. The previous mark was 134, set in 2024.

Ninety-nine of this year's missions have been devoted to building out the Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of more than 8,700 active satellites.

Japan's new HTV-X cargo spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station for the first time ever today (Oct. 28), delivering thousands of pounds of payloads and supplies to astronauts aboard.

The robotic HTV-X was captured by the station's Canadarm2 robotic arm — operated by NASA astronaut Zena Cardman and Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) — today at 11:58 p.m. EDT (1558 GMT), as the station flew 260 miles ( kilometers) over the south Atlantic Ocean.

The HTV-X is the successor to Japan's H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV), which flew nine missions — all of them successful — to the International Space Station (ISS) between September 2009 and May 2020.

Like its predecessor, the HTV-X can carry about 13,200 pounds (6,000 kilograms) of payload to low Earth orbit. It's hauling about 9,000 pounds (4,080 kg) of food and supplies on this mission, which began with a launch atop an H3 rocket on Saturday (Oct. 25).

Upon its rendezvous with the ISS, HTV-X carried out a series of test maneuvers, including a retreat-from-station procedure and systems checks ahead of spacecraft capture.

The new freighter is expendable, just like the HTV (which was also known as Kounotori, Japanese for "White Stork"). But the HTV-X can stay up for considerably longer stretches.

"HTV-X enhances transportation capabilities and adds the capability to provide various users with on-orbit demonstration opportunities for up to 1.5 years after leaving ISS until reentry," Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which builds the HTV-X for JAXA, wrote in a description of the vehicle.

HTV-X joins three other vehicles in the stable of robotic ISS cargo craft. The other freighters that currently service the station are Russia's Progress vehicle as well as Cygnus and Dragon, which are built by the American companies Northrop Grumman and SpaceX, respectively.

All are expendable except Dragon, which splashes down in the ocean for recovery and reuse. Dragon can therefore also haul scientific experiments and other materials down to Earth from the station.

Expedition 73 commander Sergey Ryzhikov and flight engineer Alexey Zubritsky, both of the federal space corporation Roscosmos, were back in the vacuum of space on Tuesday (Oct. 28) to continue and expand on the work they began during an extravehicular activity (EVA) on Oct. 16. During this most recent outing, they spent 6 hours and 54 minutes mounting, relocating and cleaning hardware on the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module (MLM).

This EVA, like the one two weeks ago, began with Ryzhikov and Zubritsky opening the hatch on the Poisk Mini-Research Module-2, this time at 10:18 a.m. EDT (1418 GMT). After gathering their tools, the cosmonauts used a telescoping crane, called the Strela boom, to trasverse to their first worksite on the Nauka MLM.

There they tackled their first major task of the day, attaching a two-part apparatus to support a pulse plasma (Impuls) experiment and research into the effect that spacecraft have on Earth's ionosphere (IPI-500, by the NPO IT company in Moscow). The Impuls study will test the potential for jet engines to work in space.

Between running connectors and moving on to the next installation, Ryzhikov also cleaned a window on the Nauka module. Shutters that protect the pane when it's not in use were opened to allow the cleaning. When done, the shutters were closed again.

Ryzhikov and Zubritsky then returned to an experiment they installed during the earlier spacewalk two weeks ago. Ekran-M, or the Molecular Beam Epitaxy experiment, is designed to produce very thin materials for use in semiconductors. After discovering a loose gasket in the device's chamber, Ryzhikov and Zubritsky were instructed by mission control to carefully extract it using tweezers.

The spacewalkers then inserted a replacement cassette into the Ekran-M and, despite having to use wire ties to hold it in place, mission control reported getting good data. The older cassette will be returned to Earth for analysis.

Ryzhikov and Zubritsky wrapped up their time outside by relocating an exterior control panel for the European Robotic Arm (ERA), a manipulator that is used to access and service different areas of the Russian segment of the space station.

Russian EVAs often save for their final task the jettison of no-longer-needed equipment that has been gathered during the cosmonauts' work. With the pending arrival, however, of Japan's new robotic cargo vehicle, the HTV-X, on Wednesday morning (Oct. 29), it was decided to avoid any risk from the debris.

The spacewalk ended at 5:12 p.m. EDT (2112 GMT) with Ryzhikov and Zubritsky safely back inside the Poisk airlock.

Tuesday's EVA was the third for Expedition 73 and the 277th in support of the International Space Station's assembly and maintenance since 1998. It was Zubritsky's second spacewalk, bringing his total time outside to 13 hours and 3 minutes, and the third for Ryzhikov, who now has logged a total of 19 hours and 51 minutes in the vacuum of space.

Astrobotic's Griffin-1 lunar lander, carrying NASA and commercial payloads that include rovers from Astrobotic and Astrolab, will wait just a little longer before its planned excursion to the moon. The mission had previously targeted a launch at the end of 2025, but will apparently miss that deadline, according to an Astrobotic update posted on Oct. 24.

The mission will mark Astrobotic’s second attempt at a lunar landing after its Peregrine Mission One in January 2024 failed to reach the moon after experiencing a propellant leak shortly after launch. Griffin is undergoing payload integration and software testing at the Pennsylvania company's facility, where propulsion testing and avionics validations are currently underway.

Like Peregrine, Griffin is being developed under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which funds private missions to the moon to deliver payloads in support of the Artemis program — NASA push to return astronauts to the lunar surface.

NASA originally planned to fly its Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) aboard Griffin, but that mission was canceled in 2024, leading Astrobotic to repurpose its payload spot for a commercial rover: Astrolab's FLIP (FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform) rover. (VIPER was recently un-canceled, and added to the manifest of a Blue Origin lunar mission targeted for 2027.)

In addition to FLIP, Griffin will carry Astrobotic's own CubeRover, and several smaller payloads including the Nippon Travel Agency plaque sending messages collected from children in Japan to the moon, the Galactic Library to Preserve Humanity from Nanofiche and the MoonBox capsule that will deliver "items from around the world" to the lunar surface, according to Astrobotic's update.

The company said it has nearly completed assembly of Griffin's core structure, with critical components like thrusters, pressure tanks, solar panels and payload ramps already successfully fitted to the vehicle. The lander awaits the installation of four propellant tanks, which Astrobotic will ready the vehicle for environmental acceptance testing to simulate various stages of the mission, like launch, spaceflight and exploring the surface of the moon. Simultaneously, Astrobotic said it is also performing engine qualification testing ahead of final integration.

NASA's CLPS program aims to stimulate the commercial lunar economy while giving the agency access to low-cost delivery services to the moon. Setbacks and early failures in the program, like Peregrine's mishap or Intuitive Machines' landers both toppling over and ending their mission early, have drawn scrutiny, and Astrobotic's ability to recover with Griffin will be a critical test for both the company as well as the CLPS program.

With integration milestones converging and major payloads on track for delivery and testing, Astrobotic said it is targeting the next viable launch window, which opens next July. The launch will be the 12th for SpaceX's Falcon Heavy launch vehicle, which utilizes three modified Falcon 9 boosters through liftoff and the first stage of flight. Previous flights have successfully returned Falcon Heavy's side boosters to SpaceX's landing zones on Florida's Space Coast, but none have yet successfully landed the rocket's core stage.

Over centuries, this curiosity evolved into a scientific pursuit, blending astronomy, biology, chemistry, and philosophy into a single, thrilling endeavor: to find life elsewhere in the cosmos.

From Galileo's telescope to the James Webb Space Telescope, each technological leap has brought us closer to answering that age-old question. We've sent probes to Mars, listened for alien signals through SETI, and discovered thousands of exoplanets orbiting distant stars. Along the way, we've refined our understanding of what life is, how it might arise, and where it could thrive — even in the most extreme environments.

This quiz explores the milestones, theories, and missions that have defined the search for extraterrestrial life.

Whether you're a space science enthusiast or just curious about the universe's biggest mystery, this challenge will stretch your mind across time and space.

Try it out below and see how well you score!

A pair of cosmonauts will work outside the International Space Station today (Oct. 28), and you can watch the off-Earth action live.

Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritskiy, of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, will conduct a roughly six-hour spacewalk today, starting at around 10:20 a.m. EDT (1420 GMT).

You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the agency. Coverage will begin at 9:45 a.m. EDT (1345 GMT).

The duo "will install experiment hardware on the Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module, and relocate a control panel for the European robotic arm attached to Nauka," NASA News Chief Cheryl Warner wrote in an emailed statement on Monday (Oct. 27).

Most of NASA's activities are on hold due to the ongoing government shutdown, but the agency will stream today's spacewalk "and provide minimal technical commentary as this activity relates to excepted mission operations," Warner wrote.

This will be the second spacewalk in less than two weeks for Ryzhikov, who commands the International Space Station's current Expedition 73, and flight engineer Zubritsky. The duo also performed an extravehicular activity on Oct. 16, installing a semiconductor experiment on the orbiting lab and jettisoning an old HDTV camera.

Today's spacewalk will be the third for Ryzhikov, who will wear a spacesuit with red stripes, and the second for for Zubritsky, whose suit will have blue stripes, according to Warner.

It will be the 277th overall spacewalk in the history of the ISS, which has hosted rotating astronaut crews continuously since Nov. 2, 2000.

A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 28 Starlink craft lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 8:43 p.m. EDT (5:43 p.m. local California time; 0043 GMT on Oct. 28).

The rocket's first stage came back to Earth as planned about 8.5 minutes later, landing in the Pacific Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You." It was the 17th flight for this particular booster, which carries the designation 1082.

The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, continued hauling the 28 Starlink satellites toward low Earth orbit (LEO), where they will be deployed about an hour after launch.

Today's launch was the 137th Falcon 9 mission of the year and the third in the last three days. Ninety-eight of those flights have been devoted to building out the Starlink megaconstellation, by far the largest satellite network ever assembled.

SpaceX has launched more than 10,000 Starlink spacecraft to date, and nearly 8,750 of them remain active in LEO. The megaconstellation will get considerably bigger, however, adding perhaps another 30,000 satellites or so over the coming years.

SpaceX extends its single-year launch record with every liftoff these days. The company's previous mark for orbital launches was 134, set in 2024.

Now, it seems that the parties involved have come to an amicable settlement, the monetary details of which weren't disclosed.

This court-aimed quarrel began last year, when Cards Against Humanity (CAH), the Chicago-based publisher of that popular adult party game, became aware of a piece of their South Texas property being used to store heavy equipment, vehicles and random construction materials owned by SpaceX in an area adjacent to the aerospace company's Starbase manufacturing and launch facility.

The kerfuffle escalated when CAH filed a $15 million lawsuit seeking restitution for the encroachment and subsequent damage to that slice of land, which is situated near the U.S.-Mexico border. The property was purchased in 2017 by a coalition of supporters who aimed to disrupt then-President Donald Trump's plan to build a border wall.

As part of the Cards Against Humanity Saves America project, 150,000 customers donated $15 each to buy that grassland meadow, which eventually became a sprawling parking lot filled with "gravel, tractors and space junk," CAH wrote in a statement on Sept. 20, 2024. Any remaining funds recovered in the lawsuit were promised to be equally distributed back to those who had participated in the land’s initial purchase.

Per AP, according to Texas court records, a settlement was finalized last month, prior to the upcoming Nov. 3 jury trial marked on the calendar. SpaceX owns other land plots in the Brownsville, Texas area in Cameron County, but apparently had no right to use this patch.

"The upside is that SpaceX has removed their construction equipment from our land and we're able to work with a local landscaping company to restore the land to its natural state: devoid of space garbage and pointless border walls," CAH wrote in a recent message to customers. "Were we hoping to be able to pay all our fans? Sure. But we did warn them they would probably only be able to get like $2 or most likely nothing."

CAH has opted for a different approach to compensate its donors, since the (undisclosed) amount gained will mostly go toward refurbishment of the property. They've come up with a funny consolation prize for fans that reflects the bold spirit and attitude of the successful gaming firm.

"Elon Musk's team admitted on the record that they illegally trespassed on your land, and then they packed up the space garbage and f***ed off," CAH's recent message adds. "But when it comes to paying you all, he did the legal equivalent of throwing dust in our eyes and kicking us in the balls. So while we can't give you what you really wanted –– cash money from Elon Musk –– we're going to make it up to you, our best, sexiest customers … with comedy! We're sending you each a brand new mini-pack of exclusive cards all about Elon Musk."

And something tells us this special pack of Musk cards won’t be very flattering!

HEO, also known as HEO Robotics, has made a splash with sensational images of spacecraft in low Earth orbit (LEO) that were taken by other spacecraft, or "non-Earth imaging" (NEI). Prominent examples include closeups of the International Space Station (ISS) and China's Tiangong space station, as well as photos of the European Space Agency's ERS-2 satellite as it tumbled into Earth's atmosphere in February 2024. Such images are taken during calculated close approaches to spacecraft of interest by partner satellites.

While these photos are striking, clients can also obtain images they need for anomaly detection, operational awareness and risk mitigation, as well as more general space domain awareness, or the ability to track, identify and understand the behavior of satellites and space debris.

Will Crowe, co-founder and chief executive of HEO, spoke with Space.com at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney in early October, describing the company's plans to deliver images of spacecraft and more even farther away from Earth.

HEO, founded in 2019, began as an asteroid-mining venture but quickly pivoted to find a business case. It started pushing boundaries as soon as it began imaging spacecraft, though what was possible or not was not immediately clear.

"The national security establishment has already been doing this for five decades but thought that no one could replicate it, so they made it highly classified," Crowe said.

"No one without a classification knew it was possible because it was just very secretive," he added, laughing. "But we didn't know we shouldn't know that, so we just started playing, and there was no one to stop us, because we're here in Australia."

The company is now looking to advance to providing images of spacecraft in geostationary orbit (GEO), a special orbit at which satellites orbit at a speed that keeps them effectively fixed over a spot on the equator 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) below. GEO is inhabited by, among other craft, high-value communications and weather satellites.

HEO does not operate its own satellites. In terms of acquiring images, HEO partners with a range of Earth-imaging companies such as Blacksky and Satellogic and makes use of the satellites when they are not active — for example, when they're passing over the oceans. But GEO, unlike LEO, has a scarcity of satellites with cameras. This means HEO will be looking to get its own imagers and sensors and required software on satellites getting ready for the trip to GEO.

"Getting to GEO is going to be very challenging, so we're focused on that right now," Crowe said. "Huge revenue unlock for us, huge capability unlock for our customers. So that's our main technical goal over the next 12 months."

The company also signed a three-year memorandum of understanding with satellite servicing and orbital sustainability firm Astroscale at IAC in Sydney, deepening cooperation on monitoring, assessing and ultimately servicing allied defense, government and commercial assets.

Notably, Astroscale has performed a fly-around of a spent rocket stage in orbit, as part of its plans to start deorbiting pieces of space junk. HEO can help with such operations, Crowe explained. "It's just good practice to have outside eyes looking in. Issues can happen to a sensor on board, but also you can get a different perspective." The agreement between HEO and Astroscale also covers extending cooperation into GEO and geostationary transfer orbits.

HEO also recently received the first National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Tier-3 license for a commercial optical camera operating in high LEO (above 800 kilometers, or 500 miles), a sign of growing official recognition of non-Earth imaging as part of space safety infrastructure.

This expansion to a higher Earth orbit is, however, just another step in a broader plan. The long term vision? "The solar system on demand," said Crowe. "If you want to go see an asteroid, we will enable that mission."

"We're starting with just the asteroids that are coming through the Earth-moon system," he added. "But there's no reason why we can't enable it for everything: the asteroid belt or all the other various asteroid classes. It should be possible. You just need enough cameras and enough interesting orbits such that they can always achieve the mission."

HEO is already normalizing non-Earth imagery, and the leap from Earth orbit to more distant destinations may well follow, repurposing and reimagining what is possible in space.

Over the past year, Ukraine dispatched thousands of wheeled ground robots to its frontline military units to help deliver supplies, evacuate the wounded and, in some cases, attack the intruding Russians troops and push them out without risking the lives of Ukrainian soldiers. But the limited bandwidth SpaceX's satellites can provide means that individual terminals mounted on the UGVs have to make do with as little as 10 megabits per second, which results in poor quality of the video feed used to control the UGVs.

"If you want to drive fast, you need a frame rate of at least 30 frames per second to be able to control the robot," Vadym Burukin, technologist and CEO of drone start-up Huless, told Space.com. "If you only have ten frames per second and you are moving fast, there is a huge chance that you're going to end up in a minefield or in a tree."

SpaceX's internet-beaming Starlink megaconstellation has been indispensable for Ukraine since the early days of the war. Its terminals keep troops connected on the battlefield but also help guide FPV drones, marine robots and unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) beyond the reach of radio links. According to sources with links to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, as many as 200,000 Starlink terminals are active in Ukraine, making the former Soviet republic by far the biggest user of Starlink services in Europe.

But the high number of devices, especially along the frontlines, means the robots can only travel at meager speeds of about 6 miles per hour (10 kilometres), Andriy Dovbenko, Ukrainian entrepreneur and CEO of the Ukrainian Tech Exchange network, told Space.com. Due to that slow speed, the ground robots need up to two hours to cross the 12-mile-wide (20-kilometer) grey zone, where troops and equipment are in constant danger of being destroyed by Russian first-person-view (FPV) drones. "It's quite slow for [unmanned ground vehicles]," Dovbenko said. "You want to have at least 20 kilometres per hour [24 miles]."

Starlink terminals, Burukin added, also tend to get buggy due to the vibrations of the UGV rolling over rugged terrain. Clouds, rain and even tree canopy overhead can further degrade the signal.

In response, Ukrainian tech innovators are looking for alternatives that would enable the robots to drive faster to increase their chances of completing their missions before they get spotted and bombed by Russian kamikaze drones.

To solve the problem, Burukin and his colleagues have developed tethered drones that rise 500 feet high (150 meters), carrying signal repeaters that amplify the weak radio signals to increase their reach.

"For ground-to-ground communication [the radio signal range] is just a couple of kilometers," said Burukin. "With a repeater in the air, this range extends to 40 plus kilometers (25 miles)."

Flying drones can fly even further thanks to the airborne repeaters, up to 48 miles (80 kilometers) from their controllers hidden away from the enemy drones' reach.

This allows Ukrainian soldiers to conduct bold exploratory missions deep into the territory now controlled by Russia while not worrying about losing their Starlink signal.

"Recently, we were able to get all the way to the Donbas arena, a big stadium in the center of Donetsk, flying drones using our repeating equipment," said Burukin.

Donetsk, some 30 miles (50 km) from the current frontline, has been controlled by Russian separatists since 2014.

Still, Starlink remains indispensable for Ukraine, Dovbenko insists.

"There are many uses for Starlink in the war, but it's not been developed specifically as a military technology, so it has its limitations," Dovbenko said. "It would be good to have alternatives. But can we really produce an alternative to Starlink at scale? Probably not."

AI-powered autonomous navigation systems further assist the military robots to overcome signal problems due to deliberate jamming and other disruptions. In the next few years, AI is set to take over most activities along the frontline, the Ukrainian innovators hope. Autonomous war machines will not need any real-time human oversight, thus being immune to radio jamming and Starlink signal loss.

Although killer robots are unlikely to completely replace human soldiers, they will help reduce the number of people needed in the most vulnerable and dangerous locations along the frontline.

New laboratory research suggests that some organic molecules previously detected in plumes erupting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus may be products of natural radiation, rather than originating from the moon’s subsurface ocean. This discovery complicates the assessment of the astrobiological relevance of these compounds.

Enceladus hides a global ocean buried beneath its frozen crust. Material from this liquid reservoir is ejected into space from cracks in the ice near the south pole, forming plumes of dust-sized ice particles that extend for hundreds of kilometers. While most of this material falls back onto the surface, some remains in orbit, becoming part of Saturn’s E ring, the planet’s outermost and widest ring.

Between 2005 and 2015, NASA's Cassini spacecraft flew repeatedly through these plumes and detected a variety of organic molecules. The detection was viewed as evidence of a chemically rich and potentially habitable environment under the ice, where molecules essential to life could be available. However, the new study offers an explanation in which radiation, not biology, is behind the presence of at least some of these organic molecules.

To test the role of space radiation, a team of researchers led by planetary scientist Grace Richards, a postdoc at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome, simulated conditions near Enceladus's surface by creating a mixture of water, carbon dioxide, methane, and ammonia, the main expected components of surface ice on Enceladus. They cooled the concoction to −200°C inside a vacuum chamber and then bombarded it with water ions, which are an important component of the radiation environment that surrounds the moon.

The radiation induced a series of chemical reactions that produced a cocktail of molecules, including carbon monoxide, cyanate, ammonium, and various alcohols, as well as molecular precursors to amino acids such as formamide, acetylene, and acetaldehyde. The presence of these simple molecules indicates that radiation could induce similar reactions on Enceladus.

Richards presented these findings at the Europlanet Science Congress–Division for Planetary Sciences Joint Meeting (EPSC-DPS 2025) in Helsinki, Finland. She and her coauthors also published a detailed report in Planetary and Space Science.

Enceladus and beyond

The new research raises the question of whether the organic molecules detected in Enceladus's plumes truly come from the moon's buried ocean, whether they are formed in space, or whether they form close to the surface after the plumes leave the Enceladean interior.

While the finding doesn't exclude the possibility of a habitable ocean on Enceladus, Richards urges caution in assuming a direct link between the presence of these molecules in the plumes, their origin, and their possible role as precursors to biochemistry.

"I don’t necessarily think that my experiments discredit anything to do with Enceladus's habitability," Richards said.

However, she added, "when you're trying to infer this ocean composition from what you’re seeing in space, it's important to understand all the processes that go into modifying this material." Apart from radiation, these processes include phase changes, interactions with the moon's ice walls, and interactions with the space environment.

"We need a lot of experiments of that type," said planetary scientist Alexis Bouquet, a French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) researcher at L'Université d’Aix-Marseille who wasn't involved in the study. "They demonstrated that you can produce a certain variety of species in conditions that are relevant to the south pole of Enceladus."

Bouquet highlighted the importance of simulating these environments in a lab for planning future missions to Enceladus and for interpreting the much-anticipated data from current missions to Jupiter's icy moons. These missions are NASA's Europa Clipper, which will explore Europa, and the European Space Agency's (ESA) JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer), which will visit all three of the giant planet's moons with subsurface oceans: Ganymede, Calisto, and also Europa.

The intense radiation around Jupiter makes these experiments especially relevant. "Radiation chemistry for Europa or the Jovian moons in general [is] a big deal, a bigger deal than in Enceladus," Bouquet says.

Another Story Completely

As Richards's work questions the origin of organic compounds around Enceladus, researchers keep adding more molecules to the puzzle.

After a new analysis of data gathered during one of Cassini's close approaches to Enceladus in 2008, researchers led by planetary scientist Nozair Khawaja at the Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Stuttgart reported the discovery of new types of organic molecules, seemingly emanating from the icy vents. They include ester and ether groups and chains and cyclic species containing double bonds of oxygen and nitrogen.

On Earth, these molecules are essential links in a series of chemical reactions that ultimately produce complex compounds needed for life. And while these molecules could have an inorganic origin, "they increase the habitability potential of Enceladus,"
Khawaja said. The findings appeared in Nature Astronomy.

Khawaja's team's analysis suggests that complex organic molecules are present in fresh ice grains just expelled from the vents. During its last flyby, Cassini got as close as 28 kilometers to the moon's surface.

After modeling the plumes and the icy grains' residence times in space, they think that the ice grains sampled by Cassini did not spend a lot of time in space, likely just "a few minutes," Khawaja said. "It is fresh."

This short duration in space questions whether space radiation had enough time to produce the organic molecules Khawaja detected. Just a few minutes would not be long enough for such complex chemistry to take place, even in a high-radiation environment.

"Big grains coming from the surface full of organics? That is much harder to explain through radiation chemistry," Bouquet said.

While the types of experiments performed by Richards "are valuable and take the science to the next level," Khawaja said, "our results tell the other story completely."

Back to Enceladus

Both studies reinforce the complexity of Enceladus's chemistry, upholding it as a prime target in the search for extraterrestrial life, or at least life's building blocks. Enceladus has all three prerequisites for life: liquid water, an energy source, and a rich cocktail of chemical elements and molecules. Even if the subsurface ocean is out of reach—it lies at least a few kilometers beneath the ice close to the poles—the plumes offer the only known opportunity to sample an extraterrestrial liquid ocean.

Studies for a potential ESA mission dedicated to Enceladus are already underway, with plans that include high-speed flybys through the plumes and, potentially, a lander on the south pole. The insights from both recent studies will help researchers design the instrumentation and guide the interpretation of future results.

"There is no better place to look for [life] than Enceladus," Khawaja said.

One of the company's Falcon 9 rockets lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today (Oct. 25) at 10:20 a.m. EDT (1420 GMT; 7:20 a.m. local time), carrying 28 Starlink internet satellites toward low Earth orbit (LEO).

It was the 135th orbital launch of the year for SpaceX, breaking a mark the company set in 2024.

All of SpaceX's orbital flights this year have been performed by Falcon 9s, which have now launched as many missions in the past 11 months as NASA's space shuttle flew in its 30-year history.

SpaceX has also launched five suborbital test flights of its Starship megarocket so far this year. In 2024, the company launched 132 Falcon 9 missions, two flights of the more powerful Falcon Heavy, and four Starship suborbital tests.

On today's flight, the Falcon 9 came back to Earth as planned, landing in the Pacific Ocean on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You" about 8.5 minutes after liftoff. It was the 19th launch and touchdown for this particular booster, which is designated 1081.

The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, continued carrying the 28 Starlink satellites toward LEO, where they will be deployed about an hour after liftoff.

SpaceX has notched a number of important milestones in the past week or so. For example, one recent mission launched the 10,000th Starlink satellite to orbit, and another was the record-breaking 31st flight of the Falcon 9 booster known as 1067.

And the Oct. 23 launch of the Spainsat NG-2 satellite was the 139th overall liftoff of the year for SpaceX, also a new record.

Japan's new HTV-X cargo spacecraft launched on its first-ever mission to the International Space Station on Saturday (Oct. 25).

The robotic HTV-X lifted off atop an H3 rocket from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center at 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT and 9 a.m local Japan time on Oct. 26).

It is expected to arrive at the station for its capture and berthing on Wednesday (Oct. 29) at about 11:50 a.m. EDT (1550 GMT).

The HTV-X is the successor to JAXA's H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV), also known as Kounotori (Japanese for "White Stork"), which flew nine missions to the International Space Station (ISS) between September 2009 and May 2020.

At 26.2 feet (8 meters) long, the new freighter is about 4 feet (1.2 m) shorter than its predecessor, but it can loft roughly the same payload mass to low Earth orbit (about 13,200 pounds, or 6,000 kilograms). The HTV-X also offers other advantages.

"HTV-X enhances transportation capabilities and adds the capability to provide various users with on-orbit demonstration opportunities for up to 1.5 years after leaving ISS until reentry," Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which builds the HTV-X for JAXA, wrote in a description of the vehicle.

The HTV-X's potential uses also extend beyond the ISS, according to JAXA. The agency envisions it aiding "post-ISS human space activities in low Earth orbit" as well as possibly flying cargo to Gateway, the space station NASA may build in lunar orbit as part of its Artemis program.

HTV-X's debut increases the stable of ISS cargo craft by one-third. The currently operational freighters are Russia's Progress vehicle and Cygnus and Dragon, spacecraft built by the American companies Northrop Grumman and SpaceX, respectively. Only Dragon is reusable; the others (including HTV-X) are designed to burn up in Earth's atmosphere when their missions are over.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 8:15 p.m. ET on Oct. 25 with news of successful liftoff.

The two Texas Senators trying to mandate the relocation of Discovery from the Smithsonian Institution's Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia to Texas, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, and joined by Texas Representative Randy Weber, are urging the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate the Smithsonian for violations of the Anti Lobbying Act.

In a letter sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate on Oct. 22, the lawmakers allege the Smithsonian has improperly used federal funds to oppose President Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," (OBBBA) which orders the transfer of Discovery to Houston, the home of NASA's Johnson Space Center. They accuse the Smithsonian of lobbying Senate and House committee staff, coordinating with journalists to generate coverage in favor of keeping the shuttle within the Smithsonian's collection and circulating inflated estimates of relocation costs.

The dispute traces back to the "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act," introduced by the Senators in April. It failed in committee, but was later included as part of Trump's "big beautiful bill". New language didn't specify Discovery, exactly, but instead directs the transfer of a human-flown "space vehicle" to a NASA center "involved in the administration of the Commercial Crew Program." When the bill was signed on July 4, it set a deadline for the NASA administrator to select a vehicle, and laid out an 18-month window for the vehicle's relocation to Houston.

In their letter, lawmakers describe Houston as "the cornerstone of America’s human space exploration program," and say the city is "honored" to welcome Discovery. However, the Smithsonian asserts it owns the space shuttle outright, and has raised serious concerns about the legalities of removing an artifact from the stewardship of the museum's national collection, not to mention the logistics and costs of physically moving the 122-foot-long (37-meter) orbiter across the country.

In a letter to Congress earlier this month, the Smithsonian said both it and NASA have determined that Discovery's relocation would require partial disassembly of the vehicle and that the minimum cost to do so could range from $120 million to $150 million — far higher than the $85 million allocated (but not yet appropriated) in the OBBA. That estimate also doesn't include the cost of constructing a new facility in Houston to serve as the space shuttle's new home.

The Smithsonian was chosen as Discovery's final home more than 10 years ago. In a nationwide competition to determine where the remaining space shuttles would reside after the retirement of the fleet in 2011, educational institutions, museums, science facilities and space center complexes all submitted bids for consideration, including the Smithsonian and Johnson Space Center.

In the end, Atlantis was given to the Kennedy Space Visitors Center, in Florida, Endeavour to the California Science Center and Discovery to the Smithsonian. According to the Institution, NASA handed over "all rights, title, interest and ownership" of Discovery to the museum in 2012. With that paperwork in hand, the Smithsonian has stressed that it has the legal responsibility for the conservation and long-term stewardship over the shuttle.

Texas lawmakers rejected both the Smithsonian's cost estimates of transporting Discovery and the museum's legal claim of ownership. Their letter to the DOJ cites "industry experts" that estimate the true cost to be more than 10 times less than the Smithsonian's projections, and disputes the position that the Institution is not a government entity.

Historically, the Smithsonian is recognized as a "trust instrumentality," an entity created by Congress to serve a public purpose, but one that operates outside the traditional structure of federal agencies. The Institution receives two-thirds of its funding from the government, but operates independently in the care of its national collection, which is held in trust for the American public to protect its artifacts as a permanent, publicly owned legacy.

In their letter, Cornyn, Cruz and Weber ask the DOJ to determine whether Smithsonian personnel or funds were spent as a part of Institution efforts to obstruct implementation of the law.

"These activities raise significant concerns under the Anti-Lobbying Act, which prohibits the use of appropriated funds for communications intended to influence members of the public to pressure Congress regarding legislation or appropriations matters. The Act also places limits on direct or indirect lobbying efforts funded by federal appropriations," the letter reads.

The lawmakers also expand their complaint to criticize Smithsonian leadership and the museum's exhibits for being part of "a politicized agenda that undermines its responsibilities as a federal government entity," over the Institution's depictions of slavery in American history and its inclusion of transgender women in the upcoming American Women's History Museum.

"This is a silly attempt to silence the Smithsonian from publicly defending their full and permanent 'right, title and interest' of Discovery," Joe Stief, founder of KeeptheShuttle.org, an independent group opposing the relocation, told Space.com in an Oct. 22 email.

The Smithsonian is governed by a Board of Regents. The board's chancellor is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who presides over the Vice President of the United States, three members of the U.S. House of Representatives and three from the Senate, as well as nine citizen regents.

Stief said the lawmakers' complaint mirrors an earlier appeal to Chancellor and Chief Justice John Roberts in August, which drew no public response. "While the Chancellor did not publicly take any actions after the August statement, it appears that Sen. Cornyn is hoping to find a more receptive audience at the Department of Justice," Stief said.

The lawmakers' own letter to the DOJ itself cites multiple court decisions recognizing the Smithsonian as a federal government entity — “a government institution through and through” — which is, "subject to federal law and entitled to government immunities." With that distinction in mind, though, the Smithsonian's communications with Congress might not be considered lobbying, as the lawmakers' letter accuses.

According to guidance from the DOJ and the Government Accountability Office on the Anti-Lobbying Act, direct communications between federal entities and Congress about official business are treated as intragovernmental coordination, not lobbying, since the law targets public-pressure campaigns, not agency correspondence.

Still, whether a formal DOJ review in this instance would support the Texas lawmakers' views is unknown. Such a review could test the authority of the Anti-Lobbying Act over hybrid Institutions, like the Smithsonian, that rely on a combination of federal and trust funding. The Smithsonian has not commented on the lawmakers’ letter, and is unable to respond during the government shutdown.

Gilmour Space launched its first Eris rocket on July 29 from the Bowen Orbital Spaceport in coastal Queensland, but the rocket fell to Earth just 14 seconds after liftoff.

Despite the setback, the TestFlight1 mission laid the foundation for sovereign launch from Australian soil, according to Adam Gilmour, CEO and co-founder of Gilmour Space Technologies, speaking at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney, Australia, on Oct. 3.

"We had 14 seconds of flight time, 23 seconds of engine burn time. And we have obviously gotten a lot of data out of it, a lot of information, and we were pretty happy with it," Gilmour said. He added that, on average, it takes a rocket company an average of three launch attempts to get to orbit successfully.

Behind July's brief flight lay years of groundwork. The journey to the pad involved challenges and hurdles in terms of engineering, financing, regulations and licensing — including 24 different permits from Queensland, along with environmental and airspace approvals — as well as finding a location for a launch pad.

"We drove 2,000 kilometers [1,240 miles] out into the middle of Australia, into an area that I think is very similar to what the surface of Mars looks like," Gilmour said. "When we did the launch, a lot of the media said Gilmour launched a rocket in a cow paddock. I got offended — but then you go down there, and you do see cows."

Now, with infrastructure in place, and having worked with regulators, the company is plotting its return to flight for 2026.

"We are going to be launching again next year," Gilmour said. "We're going to be doing more launch attempts, so we're not going to give up."

This, he added, is the start of what could be a bright future for the Australian space sector. "I think the future looks fantastic … If you look at all the building blocks of what the country's done, we now have rules and regulations that permit orbital launches.

"I think there's at least four or five companies in Australia that have satellites operationally working in space, which is really, really good," Gilmour said. "And we are well capitalized. So I think in the next five years, you're going to see more launches out of Australia."

SpaceX launched its record-setting 139th mission of the year today (Oct. 23).

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 9:30 p.m. EDT (0130 GMT on Oct. 24), lofting the second and final satellite for the Spainsat Next Generation (NG) constellation.

The two Spainsat NG spacecraft will provide "military-grade secure communications to the Spanish Armed Forces and its partners," according to SatNews.

SpaceX also launched the first Spainsat NG satellite, which lifted off atop a Falcon 9 this past January.

If all goes to plan today, the Falcon 9's upper stage will deploy the Spainsat NG-2 satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit about 36 minutes after liftoff.

The rocket's first stage, meanwhile, did not come back to Earth for a safe touchdown today — a rarity these days for Falcon 9 missions. The booster was in expendable mode "due to the additional performance required to deliver this payload to orbit," SpaceX wrote in a mission description.

This mission was the 22nd for this booster, the company added.

Today's flight was the 139th of 2025 for SpaceX, setting a new mark for the company. SpaceX has now launched 134 Falcon 9 missions this year — also a record — and five suborbital test flights of its Starship megarocket.

In 2024, SpaceX performed 132 Falcon 9 flights, four Starship test launches and two liftoffs of its powerful Falcon Heavy rocket.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 9:45 p.m. ET on Oct. 23 with news of successful launch.

The SpaceX founder and CEO has hammered Duffy repeatedly on social media over the past few days, calling him "Sean Dummy" (which he later amended to "Sean 'Dangerously Stupid' Dummy") and claiming that Duffy "is trying to kill NASA."

Musk also posted the following poll question on X: "Should someone whose biggest claim to fame is climbing trees be running America's space program?" That's a nod to Duffy's lumberjack past; he was active in timber sports in his youth and held two world speed-climbing titles by the age of 30.

This barrage didn't come out of left field. It followed on the heels of Duffy's announcement that NASA will reopen competition for the Artemis 3 moon-landing contract, which SpaceX won in April 2021. The company plans to use a modified upper stage of its Starship megarocket for that mission, which will put astronauts down on the lunar surface for the first time since 1972. The current plan calls for Artemis 3 astronauts to launch atop a NASA Space Launch System rocket, then ride an Orion capsule to lunar orbit, where they'll meet up with Starship for the trip down.

Duffy, however, voiced concerns that Starship may not be ready on NASA's desired Artemis 3 timeline, which now features a 2028 launch target.

"I love SpaceX; it's an amazing company. The problem is, they're behind. They've pushed their timelines out, and we're in a race against China," Duffy said on Monday (Oct. 20) during an appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

"The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term, so I'm gonna open up the contract," he added. "I'm gonna let other space companies compete with SpaceX, like Blue Origin."

Musk did not seem happy about that. He responded by noting that Blue Origin has never delivered a "useful payload" to Earth orbit — something SpaceX has done hundreds of times — and then made a prediction: "SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry. Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole moon mission. Mark my words."

Musk also responded in another, less substantive way, posting a meme on X asking Duffy why he is "gae."

Musk's beef with Duffy appears to extend beyond the Artemis 3 contract issue, however. The SpaceX chief has long backed fellow billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacman for NASA administrator — a post Isaacman was poised to secure until President Trump abruptly withdrew his nomination on May 31.

Trump himself nominated Isaacman but had a change of heart very late in the game, citing the tech entrepreneur's past donations to Democratic politicians and alleged close relationship with Musk. That decision resulted in Duffy taking the agency over in an acting capacity.

In a twist, Isaacman now appears to be back in the mix as a candidate for the top NASA job. But Duffy is keen to hold onto the position, according to both The Wall Street Journal and Ars Technica.

Both outlets also reported that Duffy may seek to fold NASA into the Department of Transportation, an agency also led by the former lumberjack and reality TV star. (Duffy was on the sixth season of MTV's "The Real World," which aired in 1997.)

Musk thinks this is a bad idea: He replied with the "100" emoji to a post by AstroForge CEO and founder Matt Gialich that reads, "No one wants this to happen. This would mark the beginning of the end for our nation's dominance in space."

And, in a post this morning (Oct. 22), Musk took the fight directly to Duffy yet again: "Having a NASA Administrator who knows literally ZERO about rockets & spacecraft undermines the American space program and endangers our astronauts."

The obvious but unsaid point of comparison is Isaacman, who funded, organized and commanded two private missions to Earth orbit, using SpaceX rockets and capsules. (Musk did distance himself from this comparison in another X post today, however, saying, "At this point, I am not advocating any particular candidate for NASA Administrator. I am just desperate for someone with a 3 digit IQ.")

Will Trump re-up Isaacman's nomination? Will Duffy get to take the "acting" modifier off his NASA job title? And how will Musk respond to any of these eventualities? Stay tuned; there could be much more drama ahead.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:28 p.m. ET on Oct. 22 to include a new X post from Musk, which reads, in part, "I am just desperate for someone with a 3 digit IQ."

Discovery — the crown jewel of the Smithsonian Institution's Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia — is the subject of a political battle over whether the shuttle should remain part of the National Air and Space Museum's collection or be relocated to Houston, home to NASA's Johnson Space Center. New correspondence between the space agency, Congress and the Smithsonian shows both the progress and struggles of those efforts taking place behind the scenes.

In a letter to Congress, museum officials have warned the shuttle may need to be partially disassembled in order to be transferred, risking irreversible damage to one of the most meticulously preserved pieces of spaceflight history.

The push to move Discovery began with a failed state-level effort by U.S. Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz (both R-Texas). Language from their "Bring the Shuttle Home Act" submitted to Congress was later folded into President Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill," and signed into law on July 4.

The Smithsonian recently confirmed that NASA and the museum have been directed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) "to prepare to move the Discovery space shuttle to Houston, TX, within the 18 months specified in the reconciliation bill," according to a letter sent to congressional committees.

However, both NASA and the Smithsonian have concluded that Discovery "will have to undergo significant disassembly to be moved," the letter said, warning that doing so would "destroy its historical value."

The Smithsonian's letter estimates the move would cost $120–$150 million, not including the costs of constructing a new facility in Texas for the shuttle's display. That total far exceeds the $85 million allocated in the bill.

Joe Stief is the organizer for KeepTheShuttle.org, a self-described group of "long-time supporters" attempting to raise awareness and advocate to stop Discovery's relocation. He and the organization are not affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, but feel it's important the vehicle remains in the museum's possession.

"It's very alarming," Stief told Space.com, "because the shuttle wasn't designed to be disassembled. It's not something that NASA ever contemplated doing. You would have to break the shuttle into at least six major component parts, probably more."

Breaking down the shuttle, even into its largest component pieces — the wings, payload bay, cockpit, etc. — would cause catastrophic structural damage, according to Stief.

"You would have to be taking off hundreds, probably thousands, of the thermal tiles. You would have to be taking off the white thermal blankets (a textile that covers a lot of the white exterior of the shuttle). You would have to be cutting up all these connectors in the shuttle, which has miles and miles of wiring and tubes and different things," Stief explained. "They specifically preserved Discovery to keep all that intact, so that future researchers and engineers could study and learn from the shuttle."

Stief said his organization has had more than 3,500 sign-ups in support of keeping Discovery at the Smithsonian, and that the group has been trying to raise the alarm to other lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

In a Sept. 23 letter to U.S. Senators Susan Collins and Patty Murray, Chair and Vice Chair of the Committee on Appropriations, respectively, Senators Mark Kelly, Mark Warner, Tim Kaine and Richard Durbin urged the committee to block the transfer.

"Houston’s disappointment in not being selected is wholly understandable, but removing an item from the National Collection is not a viable solution," they wrote, referencing the 2011 competition that ultimately determined the space shuttle orbiters' final homes, for which Houston was not chosen.

The letter states that revisiting the nearly 15-year-old decision now, and forcing the removal of a Smithsonian artifact from its collection, "invites ambiguity, public distrust and the erosion of institutional commitments."

Two weeks later, Cornyn and Cruz shot back, accusing the Smithsonian of a "frivolous misinformation campaign," and potentially violating the Anti-Lobbying Act. The Senators disputed claims that Discovery would need to undergo disassembly, citing their own independently consulted industry experts, and cast doubts about the Smithsonian's relocation cost numbers, saying their estimate was "more than 10 times higher than quotes from experienced private-sector logistics firms."

For its part, the Smithsonian maintains that it owns Discovery, and that NASA transferred "all rights, title, interest and ownership," to the museum in 2012. The museum also raises the question of whether the shuttle's government-ordered relocation has any legal backing.

The letter from Cornyn and Cruz, however, pushes back on that narrative. "The Smithsonian claims it is not a government entity. However, the Institution is fundamentally a creation of Congress," it said.

"The United States Department of the Treasury holds and manages the Smithsonian’s original trust fund. Two-thirds of the Smithsonian’s budget derives from federal appropriations, and its employees are federal employees," their letter asserts. "The Comptroller General has concluded that funds appropriated to the Smithsonian must be used in accordance with federal law."

That perspective is worrisome for the Smithsonian, which is recognized as a public trust created by Congress, but distinct from federal agencies — known as a "trust instrumentality." This hybrid public-private organizational structure allows the Smithsonian to operate independently. Legal precedent also states that artifacts donated to the Institution become Smithsonian property, not federal property.

"We remain concerned about the unprecedented nature of a removal of an object from the national collection,” the Institution wrote, warning that such a move could "cause damage to the most intact orbiter from the space shuttle program."

Stief said there’s "some real question as to exactly how far the Smithsonian could push back on it, legally," noting that the Department of Justice would be the ones representing the museum.

"Even if the letter of the law is, and it probably is, in their favor," he said, "the legal angle is not something we feel we can rely on."

The outcome could set a new standard for how federal law treats artifacts in the Smithsonian’s care — and whether executive interpretation can override institutional independence.

Congress remains in a partial government shutdown, with the fate of Discovery now tied up in stalled negotiations over the fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill, which includes competing provisions that could either halt or enforce the shuttle's relocation once funding resumes.

"Even if you had an unlimited budget," Stief said, "this wouldn’t be the right thing to do."

SpaceX has broken its own record for number of rocket launches in a year, and is showing no signs of slowing down.

A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 28 of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today (Oct. 22) at 10:16 a.m. EDT (1416 GMT; 7:16 a.m. local California time). It was the 133rd Falcon 9 flight of 2025, breaking the mark set by the rocket last year.

The satellites will add to SpaceX's growing megaconstellation in low Earth orbit (LEO), which provides wireless internet services to Starlink customer's across the globe.

Today's launch will be the 138th overall of 2025 for SpaceX, tying the record the company set in 2024.

Last year, SpaceX launched 132 Falcon 9 flights, two missions of the more powerful Falcon Heavy and four suborbital trials of its Starship megarocket. The Falcon Heavy has not flown yet in 2025; SpaceX's other five missions this year have been Starship test flights.

Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth about 8.5 minutes after liftoff, landing in the Pacific Ocean on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You."

It was be the 21st launch and touchdown for this particular booster, which is designated B1075. The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, will continue carrying the Starlink satellites to LEO, deploying them there an hour after launch.

Today's launch will be the latest in a series of milestones that SpaceX has notched recently. For example, the company launched two Falcon 9 missions on Sunday (Oct. 19); one sent the 10,000th Starlink satellite to LEO, and the other was the record-breaking 31st flight for that particular Falcon 9's first stage.

China's first reusable rocket just took a big step toward flight.

The Chinese company LandSpace conducted a static-fire test with its stainless steel Zhuque-3 launcher on Monday (Oct. 20), keeping the rocket on track for a debut expected to occur before the end of the year.

The static fire — a common prelaunch trial in which a rocket fires its engines while remaining anchored to the pad — capped the three-day "first phase" of Zhuque-3's maiden flight campaign, according to LandSpace.

That phase also included a fueling test, which, like the static fire, took place in the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone in northwestern China.

"The vehicle will next proceed with planned vertical integration rehearsal, before returning to the technical zone for inspection and maintenance in preparation for its upcoming orbital launch and first-stage recovery," LandSpace said via X on Monday.

Zhuque-3 looks a lot like SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which also features a reusable first stage and an expendable upper stage. Like the Falcon 9, Zhuque-3's booster is powered by nine engines — in this case, Tianque-12As, which LandSpace developed in house.

The Tianque-12A employs liquid methane and liquid oxygen (LOX) propellants — a key difference with the Falcon 9, whose Merlin engines burn LOX and rocket-grade kerosene. (SpaceX's next-gen Raptor engine, which powers its Starship megarocket, uses LOX and liquid methane.)

The 217-foot-tall (66 meters) Zhuque-3 can haul about 40,350 pounds (18,300 kilograms) to low Earth orbit (LEO). That's in roughly the same ballpark as the Falcon 9, whose LEO payload capacity is 50,265 pounds (22,800 kg).

Monday's static fire was the latest in a series of significant milestones for the Zhuque-3. For example, LandSpace performed low-altitude launch and landing tests with the vehicle last year, and it conducted a static fire this past June.

Beijing-based LandSpace, which was founded in 2015, also flies the expendable Zhuque-2. In July 2023, that rocket became the first LOX-methane vehicle to reach Earth orbit. That debut kicked off a string of four consecutive successes for Zhuque-2, but the rocket failed on its most recent liftoff this past August.

Beyond the race for scientific, commercial and military purposes, there is another space race of a more curious sort. A race to be the first to send various objects up there. But why?

In December 2024, Buddhist monks from Japan attempted unsuccessfully to send a small temple on board a satellite into orbit. The rocket did make it more than 110km from Earth, making it the first time the Dainichi Nyorai (the Buddha of the Cosmos) and the mandala were transported into outer space. The monks hope to try again in the future.

The space temple is only about the size of a medium Amazon delivery box, and covered in protective gold tinted foil. Buddha sits in a special compartment on top. The idea is that, with a growing number of Japanese people living outside of Japan, prayers for departed loved ones could be beamed up to the Buddha as he passes overhead.

Being the first matters. Humans appear to have an innate preference for being first, even being more likely to pick the first options in a list. It is tempting to explain this by appeal to what the Austrian medical doctor Alfred Adler called the "inferiority complex" – a need to keep proving ourselves.

Yet it may simply be an evolutionary trait of a sort which was genuinely useful in the past but has spilled over into more curious modern preferences, such as expecting more of a first born child or voting for the first candidate on the list.

What's more, through what the biologist Ernst Mayr called the "founder effect", first movers exercise a disproportionate influence on what happens later on.

Mayr's original idea was about population genetics and how founders of a population of organisms can restrict later diversity. But the idea has since been applied more broadly to explain why those who arrive or act first tend to have a disproportionate influence on later agents.

Seen in that light, it makes perfect sense that people want to be the first to send something into space. But the choice of objects sent is not always so obvious. Or rather, there is a sliding scale that runs from understandable to downright odd.

Immortality, nostalgia and aliens

At the understandable end of the scale, we have the remains of humans, pets and even dinosaurs. Not large pieces, just bits of hair or ashes.

A company called Celestis has been sending ashes and DNA into space since 1994. In 1997, it sent the fragmentary cremated remains of 24 people, including Star Trek creator Gene Roddenbery, on what was called the "Founders Flight". It was the first memorial flight into space.

Five years later, the remains unintentionally de-orbited. Yet even with this accidental burn-up, relatives may feel that their loved ones have achieved an immortality of sorts. After all, they were the first.

Something similar applies to pets. A failed launch in January 2024 included more of Gene Roddenberry and partial remains of a dog called Indica-Noodle Fabiano.

Memorializing the dead in space is particularly popular. Even the Apollo 15 mission left a fallen astronauts memorial plaque at Hadley Rille on the moon in 1971.

Similarly, we have, on several occasions, sent dinosaur bones temporarily into orbit. Inclusion of a T.rex fragment on a 2014 NASA Orion flight was justified "as a reminder of how much life Earth had seen during its existence".

This reveals a deeper, more emotional reason for why we want to send stuff to space. Coupled with the quest of being first, such items can be proxies for immortality.

They can also be born out of nostalgia. Why else would we want past life on Earth to leave a continuing trace?

Other items are harder to understand. In December, a company called beingAI is planning on having a nickel disk delivered to the moon. The disk will be imprinted with a digital image of a trainee AI Buddhist priest called Emi Jido.

There aren't just Buddhist messages in space. For example, the Russian segment of the International Space Station contains all manner of Orthodox religious iconography

But what's the point of having religious messages in space when there's no-one there to read them? This reveals yet another intention: we hope that eventually a message will travel far enough to reach another life form.

Making a mark

Similarly, there is little obvious sense in the transmission of Poetica Vaginal, a weak signal of converted vaginal contractions transmitted in the direction of the Eridanis constellation by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1986. The US Air Force, which was in control of the ground facility, quickly intervened before a stronger transmission could be sent.

And it is frankly odd that an invitation to a performance of Klingon opera was sent to Arcturus in the Boötes constellation in 2010, with the invitation written in Klingon (a fictional language from Star Trek). Rather than a representative message from our culture, this came close to cosmic misinformation.

In the best-known case of strange objects sent to space, Elon Musk launched his cherry-red Tesla Roadster sports car in 2018, complete with a mannequin in the driver's seat, and David Bowie's Space Oddity blaring on the car radio. Currently, it is around 248 million km from Earth.

These things may reveal yet another reason for why we send stuff to space that is less about immortality, nostalgia, communicating with aliens, or being first. Objects which appear pointless in their own right are still a statement of intent. It is like someone putting a towel on a deckchair that you are not ready to use, but will return to later.

Space infrastructure will ultimately depend on mining the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. And the orbit of Musk's Roadster crosses and recrosses the orbit of Mars as it travels around the sun.

Indeed, we know that the moon, Mars and some little distance beyond could be important parts of humanity's near future. Not just for science, commerce and military applications, but also for our civilisation as a whole.

We haven't quite figured out what we are going to do with all of this space, and how we will eventually fill it with our humanity. The curious objects that we send can also be seen as a statement of intent to use the locations where they end up, even if the use remains unspecified.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Since its founding, the agency has transformed from a scrappy collection of engineers into the world’s most iconic space organization. But how well do you really know NASA's story?

This quiz will take you on a journey through NASA's greatest hits — and a few lesser-known moments too. From the Mercury and Gemini missions to the drama of Apollo 13, the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, and the robotic explorers roaming Mars, NASA's history is packed with daring feats and scientific firsts.

Whether you're a space buff or just curious about what goes on behind the launchpad, this quiz will challenge your cosmic IQ.

Try it out below and see how well you score!

The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket being stacked for the Artemis 2 mission has its final piece. Integrity, the Orion spacecraft that will fly NASA's Artemis 2 crew around the moon as early as February 2026, was recently transported across NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and hoisted atop SLS, completing the rocket's assembly ahead of launch.

It's a major milestone for the mission, which has been marked a priority and exempt from NASA's widespread shuttering during the ongoing government shutdown. Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy announced the milestone in a social media post on Monday (Oct. 20), saying, "We are one step closer to mission complete!"

Artemis 2 is NASA's second mission in the Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent human presence on the moon, and eventually lay the foundation for astronaut trips to Mars. It will be the first crewed mission of the program, and will fly four NASA astronauts on a loop around the moon and back — the first crewed lunar mission since the Apollo program ended in 1972.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will fly Integrity on a free-return trajectory, circling once around the lunar far side before heading back to Earth.

Their 10-day mission is currently targeted for as early as Feb. 5, 2026, with launch windows available through the end of April. Its predecessor, Artemis 1, launched in November 2022, and carried several sensors but no life support systems or astronauts. Artemis 2 will be the first crewed test of Orion and will pave the way for Artemis 3, which will land a crew on the moon's surface in 2027 or 2028.

Delays have been a familiar occurrence for the Artemis program, however. Issues with Orion's heat shield during reentry through Earth's atmosphere at the end of Artemis 1 created a more than three year gap between Artemis's first and second launches. Now, as the program is beginning to pick up some momentum, concerns about the readiness of SpaceX's Starship, which is contracted as the Artemis 3 lunar lander, are pushing a lunar landing even further.

NASA was targeting mid-2027 for Artemis 3, though that date appears to be slipping, despite Artemis 2 remaining on track for a launch in early 2026. In an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday, Duffy suggested that Artemis 3 will likely launch sometime in 2028, and the space agency is considering other landing options.

What is it?

Cubesats, compact spacecraft usually no bigger than a shoebox, have helped transform the landscape of space research in the past 20 years. Originally invented in 1999 by professors from Stanford University and California Polytechnic State University, the cubesat format was designed to lower the barriers to space for universities, small organizations and companies.

By following a shared design standard and using off-the-shelf components, teams can build and launch fully functional satellites in months rather than years, and at a fraction of the cost of traditional spacecraft.

Where is it?

This image was taken at the ISS's Kibo module in low-Earth orbit around 248 miles (400 kilometers) above our planet.

Why is it amazing?

While cubesats are used in a variety of space research, the three recently deployed by JAXA are focused specifically on auroral activity and the understanding of space weather. The YOTSUBA-KULOVER cubesat was developed by the Kyushu Institute of Technology, while the e-kagaku-1 was built by students in the e-kagaku Association and BOTAN was constructed by the Chiba Institute of Technology.

All three will look at specific factors around space weather and auroras, including volcanic pumice and solar activity.

Want to learn more?

You can learn more about cubesats and the International Space Station.

According to the company's application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Reflect Orbital wants to fly its demonstration satellite EARENDIL-1 next year, with an expected launch date in April. Once in orbit, the satellite will unfold a mirror that measures 60 by 60 feet (18 by 18 meters) in order to demonstrate its ability to direct sunlight down onto targets on Earth. The company, which won a $1.25 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract from the U.S. Air Force in May, says its future constellation will deliver light on demand after sunset and before sunrise to paying customers on Earth, effectively extending the daytime hours.

But the project, which promises to help increase clean energy generation during peak-use morning and evening hours, has alarmed astronomers and biodiversity experts who are concerned about the effects of light pollution the constellation is going to produce.

Reflect Orbital claims on its website that its constellation will enable solar power generation at night, make crops grow better and stronger, possibly replace urban lighting, provide emergency illumination in disaster zones and enable people to work into the night.

Reflect Orbital's spokesperson told Space.com in an email that by 2030, the company envisions a constellation of 4,000 of such satellites, circling Earth in a sun-synchronous orbit following the boundary between day and night. (Satellites in a sun-synchronous orbit circle the planet from pole to pole and pass over a given spot on Earth at the same solar time each day.)

The firm said in its FCC license application the proposition had "generated significant interest from commercial and government partners," had already secured full funding for the demonstration mission and received "over 250,000 applications for service."

Astronomers and biodiversity experts, however, are voicing concerns about the development, calling for an environmental review of the space mirrors' effects on life on Earth.

"The reflectors will be directing their light [even after they pass their target] because obviously they can't shut that off," John Berentine, an astronomer at the Silverado Hills Observatory in Tucson Arizona and consultant at Dark Sky Consulting, told Space.com. "The beam reflected by these satellites is very intense, four times brighter than the full moon, and they will be flying multiple satellites in a formation. That will have an effect on wildlife in the directly illuminated area, but also, through atmospheric scattering, on the surrounding areas as well."

Robert Massey, Deputy Executive Director at the U.K.'s Royal Astronomical Society said the astronomical community was "seriously concerned about the development, its impact and the precedent it sets."

"The central goal of this project is to light up the sky and extend daylight and obviously, from an astronomical perspective, that's pretty catastrophic," Massey told Space.com.

Reflect Orbital said the company is taking such concerns seriously and wants to use the upcoming demonstration mission to limit possible negative effects of the reflected light.

"Our service is highly localized," the spokesperson wrote. "Each reflection covers a defined 5-kilometer area for a finite period of time rather than providing continuous or widespread illumination."

Once the satellite passes the target region, the mirror will tilt away from the planet's surface, the spokesperson explained.

"During the 2026 demonstration, observers at designated test sites will see the reflection as a bright moving star," the spokesperson wrote. "The illuminated area on the ground will be a soft, moonlike glow."

Astronomers, together with biodiversity experts have been waging a war against light pollution for years. Data show that since the advent of LED lights, light pollution levels globally have been rising by around 10 percent per year, virtually erasing stars from the night sky. Where some 18 years ago, one would see 250 stars at night, only around a hundred could be found today. But rising light pollution levels have also been linked to the decline of insect populations and the rising incidence of sleep disorders and depression in humans.

"Light pollution fundamentally disrupts the natural day-night cycle that has governed life on Earth for billions of years," David Smith, advocacy and social change manager at invertebrate charity BugLife, told Space.com in an email. "By effectively extending daylight hours through artificial light and blurring the boundaries between day and night, light pollution interferes with the circadian rhythms, the physiology and the behavioural patterns of countless species."

Astronomers have also been concerned about the effects of the rising numbers of satellites on their observations. SpaceX's Starlink, in particular, has been a subject of controversy as its thousands of spacecraft, flying at a low altitude of 340 miles (550 kilometers), leave streaks in their images.

AST SpaceMobile, developing a constellation of giant space antennas beaming broadband internet directly to smartphone users on Earth, has, too, been under fire for the harm its fleets do to astronomy.

But Massey said that neither of these projects has a goal of reflecting bright sunlight back to Earth, unlike Reflect Orbital. In fact, astronomers have commended SpaceX for its continued attempts to reduce the reflectiveness of its spacecraft either through the application of light-absorbing paints or visors.

"The satellite constellations that we've been dealing with create light pollution as an incidental byproduct," Massey said. "It's something that we hope can be managed and mitigated. But with this project, the brightening of the sky is the central premise."

Berentine said that outside of the directly illuminated areas, at distances of up to a hundred kilometers, the space mirrors will appear in the sky as very bright stars. These artificial stars, moving across the sky in a quick succession, will mar astronomical observation but potentially also confuse migratory birds.

He added that although Reflect Orbital has discussed the development with the astronomy community, many questions remain unanswered.

Reflect Orbital's spokesperson said the company intended to conduct an environmental impact assessment before building up the constellation and hopes to use the demonstration mission next year to "collaborate with experts to better understand ecological sensitivities at each service site."

On Saturday (Oct. 18), mine workers found a mysterious smoking slab sitting near a remote access road some 19 miles (30 kilometers) east of Newman, Western Australia. The Western Australia Police Force visited the site and took note of the incident, as did the Australian Space Agency, which explained that it will carry out "further technical analysis to identify its origin."

But an early look at the mysterious debris suggests that it is made of carbon fiber, and is perhaps part of a rocket.

In a blog post on Monday (Oct. 20), space analyst Marco Langbroek said that the object resembles a composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV). COPVs hold high-pressure gases and liquids inside rockets and often survive reentry through Earth's atmosphere.

"It reportedly was burning when found, which is unusual and against expectations for space debris," Langbroek wrote in Monday's update. This suggests a very recent impact, if it was indeed space junk, he added.

Langbroek thinks it likely is orbital debris, and he named a promising source candidate — the upper stage of a Chinese Jielong 3 (also known as Smart Dragon 3) rocket, which fell back to Earth on Oct. 18.

"It could actually be (a significant part of) the upper stage itself, given the large size that the photos suggest (and also given that the Jielong 3 upper stage is reportedly a solid fuel stage)," wrote Langbroek, a specialist on astrodynamics and space missions who's on the faculty of aerospace engineering at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

He sifted through a handful of candidate space objects that could be tied to the detritus.

"Of these, only one was in an orbit that would match passing close to Newman in the early hours of October 18, the Chinese Jielong 3 stage in a 97.6 degree inclined polar orbit," he wrote. He added that the rocket stage approached from the north-northeast moving toward the south-southwest.

"Not much information is known about the Jielong 3 components in terms of size and mass," Langbroek stated, but he stressed that this object is a good contender for the source of the Outback object.

In April 2021, NASA awarded Elon Musk's company a $2.9 billion contract to provide the first crewed lunar lander for the agency's Artemis program. That vehicle, a modified upper stage of SpaceX's Starship megarocket, is supposed to land astronauts on the moon for the first time on the upcoming Artemis 3 mission.

But NASA isn't satisfied with the pace of Starship's development and is therefore shaking things up, acting agency chief Sean Duffy announced on Monday (Oct. 20).

"I love SpaceX; it's an amazing company. The problem is, they're behind. They've pushed their timelines out, and we're in a race against China," Duffy said on Monday morning, during an appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

"The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term, so I'm gonna open up the contract," he added. "I'm gonna let other space companies compete with SpaceX, like Blue Origin."

Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, won an Artemis Human Landing System contract of its own in 2023, an award worth $3.4 billion. The company plans to fulfill that deal with its Blue Moon lander, which was originally expected to make its crewed lunar debut on the Artemis 5 mission.

Musk voiced skepticism that Blue Origin could speed up its timeline enough to be ready for a crewed moon mission before SpaceX.

"Blue Origin has never delivered a payload to orbit, let alone the moon," the world's richest person said via X on Monday, qualifying that to "useful payload" in a follow-up post. (Blue Origin's huge New Glenn rocket carried a prototype of the company's Blue Ring spacecraft to Earth orbit on its first — and so far, only — launch this past January.)

Artemis 3's timeline has shifted to the right several times over the past few years, and not just because Starship is still in the testing phase; issues with spacesuits, NASA's Orion capsule and other tech have also played a role. (Orion will carry Artemis astronauts to lunar orbit, where they'll meet up with the lander that will deliver them to the surface.)

The launch date was originally targeted for late 2024 but was pushed back to 2025, September 2026 and then mid-2027.

And NASA is now apparently eyeing an even later timeline: In Monday's "Squawk Box" interview, Duffy suggests that 2028 is the target for Artemis 3.

The Artemis program has one launch under its belt — that of Artemis 1, which successfully sent an uncrewed Orion to and from lunar orbit in late 2022.

NASA is now gearing up for Artemis 2, which will launch four people on a 10-day journey around the moon next year. That mission remains on track to launch as early as February, Duffy said on Monday.

SpaceX's Starship, meanwhile, has launched on 11 suborbital test flights to date. The most recent two liftoffs, which took place on Aug. 26 and Oct. 13, respectively, were fully successful.

As Duffy noted, China has moon plans of its own: The nation plans to land astronauts on Earth's nearest neighbor by 2030 and is making serious progress toward achieving that goal. No humans have touched the lunar surface since NASA's Apollo 17 astronauts did so in December 1972.

Anti-satellite technologies (ASATs) are becoming the new military "must-have" for spacefaring nations — like China, Russia, India, as well as the United States. U.S. military leaders have openly stated that the nation needs space-based weaponry "to deter a space conflict and to be successful if we end up in such a fight." The Chief of Space Operations for the U.S. Space Force stated earlier this year that the service must " harness the benefits of technological innovation and emerging capabilities if we're going to be able to out-compete our competitors."

But what exactly is at stake in orbit, what's up there to strike, and why? Those are issues being thrashed out as countries appear to be investing in capabilities that can take out or disrupt other spacecraft.

Soft-kill

"The Russians and the Chinese are demonstrating more sophisticated orbital maneuvering abilities. There's no denying that," said Bleddyn Bowen, associate professor in Astropolitics and co-director of the Space Research Center at Durham University's school of Government and International Affairs in the United Kingdom.

"Whether they are actual ASAT platforms or not isn't as clear-cut," Bowen told Space.com. "But if you were going to develop those kinds of co-orbital ASATs, they are showing many of the techniques and capabilities that you need," he said.

Bowen said that destroying a spacecraft via a direct-hit, kinetic-kill measure is only one aspect within the ASAT vernacular. Count in "soft-kill" ideas.

"It includes electronic warfare, computer network operations, hitting a country's ground station, sabotaging terminals, even sinking ships that have terminals. Those are all things you can include in terms of "counterspace," or ASATs," said Bowen.

Interference

Are we already witnessing ASAT techniques in regular use?

"They are happening right now with Ukraine," Bowen noted, pointing to commercial satellite providers, like the SpaceX Starlink system, that have experienced jamming and cyber attacks on their in-orbit hardware.

Similarly, GPS signal interference is front and center, traced back to Russia.

"What you're seeing is the normalization of attacking satellites within war plans. It's becoming a more mainstream aspect of military operations," said Bowen.

But stepping back, Bowen sees a larger worry.

"There are much worse problems on our own planet right now. Authoritarian tendencies … the collapse of ecological systems … a deteriorating climate. That's what really keeps me worried," Bowen said. "Those are all things that are already ruining everything for us. And space is a symptom of it," he said.

Indiscriminate weapons

The past is prologue for space, suggests Bruce McClintock, lead of the RAND Space Enterprise Initiative and a senior policy researcher for the organization, and a professor at the RAND School of Public Policy.

"In the early space-era, the Soviet Union and the U.S. extensively tested a variety of different technologies for ASAT weapons, up to and including nuclear detonation tests in orbit," McClintock told Space.com.

While agreements were inked to stop such tests, the Russians are reportedly revisiting the concept and have started developing a system. "That is incredibly concerning," said McClintock.

"There are enough indicators from enough nations that this is not just posturing," advised McClintock. "A lot of people are talking about Russia doing this. It's an indiscriminate weapon. It can't just target certain satellites. It would have short to long-term effects for everybody," he said.

Dependent on space

McClintock said Russia is, in general, minimally dependent on space. On the other hand, the United States is maximally dependent on space for its economy and for warfighting. China is growing more and more dependent on space, as evidenced by their nearly day-by-day launch rate, he said.

"Therefore, it's in Russia's interest to develop what I call a 'sword of Damocles-like capability' to hang over the heads of not just the U.S., but everybody," McClintock said.

Exasperating the situation, in some ways, is the on-going development of devices to "clean up" outer space by de-cluttering the cosmos. "One person's debris removal system is another person's ASAT weapon," said McClintock. Similarly, efforts to use spacecraft to refuel, repair, or modify in-orbit spacecraft are gaining traction.

Golden Dome

One new project that is literally looming on the horizon is the U.S. Golden Dome — U.S. President Trump's quest for a layered missile defense shield for America.

Golden Dome is, in large measure, a replay of President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") plan announced in 1983.

But fast forward to now. Given micro-miniaturization advancements, communications, processing capabilities, low-cost launch and other factors, the 2025 model, like its predecessor, includes space-based assets to defend the homeland from current bad-day scenarios.

"The Strategic Defense Initiative and Golden Dome are the same in that they revolve around space-based weapons," observes Durham University's Bowen. His view is that the Golden Dome system cannot work as a nuclear missile shield. "That's a non-starter, but as a space-based interceptor or counterspace system against satellites, yes, there's a lot of potential there," he said.

That doesn't mean it's the right policy choice, said Bowen, "but it's technically feasible."

Topic for conversation

RAND's McClintock agrees that many of the technology challenges of the older Star Wars program have been overcome. "But space-based interceptors are still an incredibly complex concept. It's going to be very difficult to develop, test and field on a rapid time line," he said, "but hypothetically yes, there is a potential role for space-based interceptors as ASATs.

McClintock feels that an important topic for conversation is the need for greater transparency in space. "It's not impossible. It's incredibly difficult to hide what somebody's doing on-orbit. I think increased transparency is something that needs to be pursued," he said.

While forecasting the future is crystal-ball gazing to be sure, McClintock said he is cautiously optimistic.

"I see the incredible potential of space for the benefit of humanity. I want to keep that optimism because there's so much potential that is presently untapped," said McClintock. At present, however, "space is a contested environment in the same way that every other domain is contested. Nations want and will, and are going to use space to pursue their national interests," he concluded.

Counterspace capabilities

Can ASATs be construed as a "security blanket" for spacefaring nations?

"I wouldn't necessarily say that, but more countries are investing into counterspace capabilities because they are perceived partially as ways in which to ensure access to and use of space," responded Victoria Samson, chief director of Space Security and Stability at the Secure World Foundation that promotes cooperative solutions for space sustainability.

Continuing, Samson said nations pursuing counterspace capabilities also do so out of concern of being left behind competitors and rivals or at least not being seen as keeping up with others.

For example, U.S. Space Force officials talked a lot this past spring, Samson said, about a series of rendezvous and proximity operations (RPOs) repeatedly done by Chinese satellites throughout 2024, calling it "dog-fighting in space," a phrase that is extremely inaccurate, she said.

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) had been conducting a docking procedure and officials proclaimed that they can now "dog-fight" in space as well, "which again is inaccurate," Samson said.

Strategic stability

Samson said that while she doesn't see kinetic ASATs as being particularly useful, "we're seeing the line blurred between satellites conducting Space Situational Awareness (SSA) and those that are doing RPOs," she told Space.com.

SSA means keeping an eye on objects in orbit and forecasting where they will be at any given time.

"This can be a challenge because ostensibly more information about activities and objects in orbit should be a stabilizing factor," Samson said. "But if it's being collected in a manner that is deemed to be threatening or concerning, it might itself result in escalation and upend strategic stability," she concluded.

Regarding the U.S. President Trump support of Golden Dome that contains a space-based interceptor layer, or SBI. "I have a lot of questions about its feasibility as a boost phase interceptor, but SBIs would be great ASAT weapons," said Samson.

The Secure World Foundation's 2025 Global Counterspace Capabilities Report is available online.

SpaceX notched a big milestone on a Falcon 9 rocket launch today (Oct. 19).

A Falcon 9 carrying 28 of SpaceX's Starlink broadband satellites lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 1:39 p.m. EDT (1639 GMT).

It was the record-breaking 31st mission for this Falcon 9's first stage, a booster designated 1067.

Booster 1067 came back to Earth about 8.5 minutes after liftoff as planned today, wrapping up its 31st flight with a pinpoint landing in the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas."

Such extensive rocket reuse is a core part of SpaceX's plan to lower the cost of spaceflight and increase its efficiency.

That already-successful strategy could take a big leap forward soon; the company is developing a giant, fully reusable rocket called Starship, which is designed to help humanity settle Mars. (The Falcon 9 and its close cousin the Falcon Heavy are only partially reusable; their upper stages are expendable.)

The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, hauled the 28 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit today, deploying them as planned about 64 minutes after launch.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 1:49 p.m. EDT on Oct. 19 with news of successful launch and rocket landing. It was updated again at 5 p.m. ET with news of satellite deploy, and to correct an earlier version that claimed that this flight lofted the 10,000th Starlink satellite to space. That milestone actually came on SpaceX's second Starlink launch of the day, which launched from California.

SpaceX notched two big milestones on a single Falcon 9 liftoff today (Oct. 19).

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 28 Starlink internet satellites lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 3:24 p.m. EDT (1924 GMT; 12:24 p.m. local California time).

Those 28 included the 10,000th Starlink spacecraft ever to reach orbit, which a SpaceX employee noted on the company's launch webcast: "From Tintin to 10,000! Go Starlink, go Falcon, go SpaceX!"

It was also the 132nd Falcon 9 liftoff of the year, equaling the mark set by the rocket last year — and there are still nearly 2.5 months to go in 2025.

SpaceX launched its first two Starlink prototypes — known as Tintin A and Tintin B — to low Earth orbit (LEO) in February 2018, then began building the megaconstellation in earnest 15 months later. The company offered Starlink service for the first time with a public beta test in October 2020 and started a commercial rollout the next year.

Starlink now provides service to millions of customers around the world, and SpaceX continues to beef up that product by sending more and more satellites to the final frontier.

The pace has reached extraordinary levels lately: SpaceX launched 89 Starlink missions in 2024 and has already exceeded that number this year. And don't expect it to stop anytime soon: SpaceX already has permission to loft 12,000 Starlink satellites, and the megaconstellation could eventually consist of more than 30,000 spacecraft.

Most of the Starlink satellites that SpaceX has launched remain active — 8,608 are currently operational, according to satellite tracker and astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. Most of the others have been deorbited, guided down to burn up in Earth's atmosphere. (Each Starlink satellite has an operational life of about five years.)

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth as planned today about 8.5 minutes after liftoff, landing in the Pacific Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You." It was the 11th launch and touchdown for this particular booster, which carries the designation 1088.

The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, deployed the Starlink satellites on schedule an hour after liftoff.

This launch was the second of the day for SpaceX; less than two hours earlier, another Falcon 9 sent 28 more Starlink satellites up from Florida's Space Coast. That earlier liftoff was the 31st for that Falcon 9's first stage, setting a new reuse record.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:35 p.m. ET on Oct. 19 with news of successful launch and rocket landing, then again at 5:05 p.m. ET with news of satellite deploy and to note that this mission carried the 10,000th Starlink satellite to reach orbit.

Orbital observation

"Isn't this one of the top five stunning views among all the photos taken from the 'Kibo' window? Self-praise here..." wrote Kimiya Yui, an Expedition 73 flight engineer, with a laugh from on board the International Space Station.

"The ISS took on a different posture than usual, so the view from the window changed as well," explained Yui.

That post actually features two shots. In both, a band of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is seen above Earth's horizon, with the space station's solar arrays and the Kibo exposed facility in the foreground. One image also shows dancing green and red auroras, while the other captures a darker night sky.

"[It was a] special view that I wanted everyone to see, so I pushed through my work early to make time and took this photo," said Yui.

Astronaut activity

JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui has spent this week preparing for the arrival and capture of his country's first next-generation HTV-X cargo vehicle. Liftoff is targeted for Monday (Oct. 20).

"I'm waiting for you! I'll catch you gently, so don't worry!" wrote Yui to the resupply ship still on Earth on Friday (Oct. 17).

Yui will use the space station's Canadarm2 robotic arm to grab hold of the HTV-X1 spacecraft once it is in proximity of the manipulator's reach.

By the numbers

As of Friday (Oct. 17), there are 7 people aboard the International Space Station: Expedition 73 commander Sergey Ryzhikov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos; fellow cosmonauts Alexey Zubritsky and Oleg Platonov; Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke of NASA; and Kimiya Yui of JAXA, all flight engineers.

There are two docked crew spacecraft: SpaceX's Dragon "Endeavour" attached to the zenith port of the Harmony module and Roscosmos' Soyuz MS-27 attached to the Earth-facing port of the Prichal node.

There are four docked cargo spacecraft: Roscosmos' Progress MS-31 (92P) docked to the space-facing port of the Poisk module and Progress M-32 (93P) docked to the aft port of the Zvezda service module, SpaceX's CRS-33 Dragon spacecraft docked to the forward port of Harmony Node 2 and Northrop Grumman's NG-23 Cygnus XL, the "SS William C. 'Willie' McCool," berthed to the Unity node.

As of Friday, the space station has been continuously crewed for 24 years, 11 months and 15 days.

On Oct. 10, the Department of the Air Force approved SpaceX's proposal to launch up to 100 missions annually from Vandenberg Space Force Base, which sits on the Golden State's rugged, beautiful and cloudy central coast.

SpaceX had been cleared to launch just 50 times per year from the site.

The newly announced record of decision (ROD) came after the Air Force released a final environmental impact statement about SpaceX's proposed ramp-up of activities at Vandenberg.

To date, the only SpaceX rocket that has ever flown from Vandenberg is the company's workhorse Falcon 9 — and all of its liftoffs there have been from Space Launch Complex 4-East (SLC-4E).

But the Air Force approval opens Vandenberg to launches of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy as well, from Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6). That pad has not hosted a liftoff since 2022; it will be modified to support both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions, according to an Air Force statement issued on Tuesday (Oct. 14).

The newly granted approval authorizes up to five Falcon Heavy launches per year from SLC-6. But the heavy lifter likely won't actually use 5% of SpaceX's 100-flight quota; the Falcon Heavy hasn't flown in over a year, and SpaceX is working to get an even more powerful rocket online — Starship, a giant, fully reusable vehicle designed to help humanity settle Mars.

The Air Force approval is not the final word on the matter, however. The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial launches, "will issue an independent ROD based on its conclusions," Air Force officials wrote in Tuesday's statement.

SpaceX currently launches rockets from four sites — Vandenberg, Starbase in South Texas, and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center, which are next door to each other on Florida's Space Coast.

Starbase is the center of Starship manufacturing and testing; it has hosted all 11 of the megarocket's test flights to date. Vandenberg generally supports launches to polar orbits, which are popular for Earth-observation missions. Because Earth rotates in a west-to-east direction, satellites that circle it from north to south eventually see almost all of the planet's surface.

China's Long March rocket family now has 600 flights under its belt.

A Long March 8A lifted off on Wednesday (Oct. 15) from Wenchang Space Launch Center on the island of Hainan at 9:33 p.m. EDT (0133 GMT and 9:33 a.m. local time on Oct. 16).

The mission, which successfully lofted a batch of satellites for the Guowang broadband network, was the 600th ever for a Long March rocket.

The first Long March liftoff occurred on April 24, 1970, when a Long March 1 sent China's first satellite, called Dong Fang Hong 1, to orbit.

Over the ensuing 55 years, the nation has developed more than 20 different types of Long March rockets, 16 of which are active today, according to China Daily. And China's launch cadence has accelerated considerably over that span.

"It took 37 years for the Long March family to complete its first 100 launches," China Daily wrote on Thursday (Oct. 16). "The second 100 were achieved in 7.5 years. The third 100 launches took just over four years, the fourth 100 took two years and nine months, and the fifth 100 missions were completed in two years. The most recent 100 launches were accomplished in one year and 10 months."

The fleet's success rate overall is about 97%, the outlet added.

The Long March isn't the most-flown rocket family of all time; that distinction goes to the Soviet/Russian Soyuz line, which has completed more than 1,700 missions since debuting in November 1966.

The Soviet Union's Kosmos family and the American Atlas series have hit the 600 mark as well. And SpaceX's Falcon line, consisting of the Falcon 1 (which was retired in 2009), Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, will get there soon. Falcons have flown more than 570 times to date, and they're rocketing off the pad at unprecedented rates; SpaceX has already conducted 130 Falcon 9 launches so far this year alone.

Guowang ("national network") is a nascent broadband megaconstellation in low Earth orbit (LEO) that will be operated by the state-run company China Satnet. The network will eventually consist of about 13,000 satellites, if all goes to plan.

Wednesday's launch lofted the 12th group of Guowang satellites. Each batch is thought to consist of eight to 10 spacecraft.

Another Chinese internet constellation, called Qianfan ("Thousand Sails"), will have about the same number of spacecraft. Both networks are following in the footsteps of SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of more than 8,600 operational spacecraft and is growing all the time. (About 70% of this year's Falcon 9 launches have been Starlink missions.)

Expedition 73 commander Sergey Ryzhikov and flight engineer Alexey Zubritsky, both with Russia's federal space corporation Roscosmos, marked the end of their first extravehicular activity (EVA) together at 7:19 p.m. EDT (2319 GMT) on Thursday (Oct. 16). The two cosmonauts reentered the Poisk module's airlock and closed the hatch behind them, 6 hours and 9 minutes after they began the spacewalk at 1:10 p.m. EDT (1710 GMT).

After configuring their tools, the two crewmates made their way to their first worksite, outside of the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module. Ryzhikov held onto the Ekran-M, or Molecular Beam Epitaxy experiment, while riding at the end of the European Robotic Arm (ERA), which was driven by cosmonaut Oleg Platonov from a workstation inside the space station.

Ryzhikov and Zubritsky installed the drum-shaped unit, ran power cables and mounted a swappable cassette. The experiment is intended to demonstrate the ability to produce very thin materials — too thin to be made reliably on Earth — that can go from the microgravity environment of outer space to being used in semiconductors.

Their primary task completed, Ryzhikov and Zubritsky then made their way to the Zvezda service module to remove and dispose of a high-definition television system that was originally a part of a Canadian commercial payload. Zubritsky then stood a the end of the European Robotic Arm and tossed the camera overboard, toward the rear of the space station, ensuring it would not come back in contact with the outpost.

"It is going so well," radioed Zubritsky as the camera disappeared into the shadow of Earth. "Jettison is complete."

Given its relatively small mass (180 pounds, or 82 kilograms) and volume (2 by 4.6 by 2.3 feet, or 0.6 by 1.4 by 0.7 meters), the jettisoned equipment will fall back to Earth and be destroyed during its reentry into the atmosphere.

Ryzhikov and Zubritsky also cleaned a window on the service module before heading back to the Poisk module, picking up an exposed material samples experiment to bring back with them into the space station.

Thursday's spacewalk was the second for Expedition 73 and the 276th in support of the International Space Station's assembly and maintenance since 1998. It was Zubritsky's first EVA and the second for Ryzhikov, who now has logged a total of 12 hours and 57 minutes on his two spacewalks.

Spectacular footage from Starship's recent test launch shows the final seconds of the spacecraft's booster before touching down in the rich, blue waters of the Gulf.

SpaceX launched the 11th test flight of its giant Starship rocket on Oct. 12 and achieved all of its objectives. The vehicle, currently under development, consists of its "Ship" upper stage, and the Super Heavy booster, both of which are reusable. Together, they stand nearly 400 feet tall (122 meters), though SpaceX plans to launch a taller, upgraded version three (V3) iteration of the vehicle moving forward.

Starship V2, which launched Monday (Oct. 13) from SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas, has plagued the company over the past year of test flights, but Flight Test 11 and its predecessor have redeemed the rocket in its final flights. To drive that point home, SpaceX has released video from the booster's thrilling last moments before it dived into its new home at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

Flight Test 11 achieved all of its mission goals, and SpaceX seemed to have improved issues seen on Flight Test 10, which saw visible structural damage on Ship as the upper stage returned through Earth's atmosphere.

Ship's descent and soft landing in the Indian Ocean created a picture perfect curtain call to wrap up V2's final flight about an hour after its liftoff, but its Super Heavy booster sang its swan song only about 6.5 minutes into the mission. This was the second flight of this particular Super Heavy booster, and only the second booster to be reflown as part of SpaceX's efforts to make Starship completely reusable.

Starship is the rocket SpaceX envisions will establish a permanent human presence on Mars — an effort company CEO Elon Musk estimates will take over a thousand launches, and one reliant on the vehicle's ability to land and launch again and again.

NASA has also tapped Starship as the lunar lander for the agency's upcoming Artemis 3 mission, which aims to put astronauts' boots on the moon for the first time since the Apollo missions of the 1960s and '70s. NASA hopes to launch that mission sometime in 2027, putting pressure on SpaceX's timeline to make Starship operationally ready.

In addition of the soft splashdowns of Ship and Super Heavy, Flight 11's success included deployment of Starlink mass simulator satellites, a relighting of Ship's Raptor engines while in space and a new engine burn initiation sequence for Super Heavy during the booster's deceleration and landing burn.

Both Super Heavy and Ship are designed to return to Starbase for quick turnarounds to reflight, though neither stage did so for this mission. SpaceX has caught Super Heavy three times using giant mechanical arms attached to the rocket's launch tower, referred to as the "Mechazilla" chopstick arms. The Ship upper stage is also designed to be caught by the launch tower's arms, though Musk has stated SpaceX's first attempt to do so will take place in early 2026.

A squat and brawny Chinese rocket just aced its second-ever liftoff.

Orienspace's Gravity-1, the world's most powerful solid-fuel rocket, launched from the deck of a ship in the Yellow Sea on Oct. 10 at 10:20 p.m. EDT (0420 GMT and 10:20 a.m. Beijing time on Oct. 11).

The dramatic liftoff, which was caught on video, sent two huge plumes of exhaust into the hazy sky.

The 100-foot-tall (30-meter-tall) Gravity-1 consists of three stages and four strap-on boosters, all of which employ solid-fuel rocket motors. The vehicle is capable of lofting about 14,300 pounds (6,500 kilograms) of payload to low Earth orbit (LEO).

The Oct. 10 launch was successful, sending one wide-field satellite and two experimental spacecraft to their designated orbits, according to the state-run Chinese broadcaster CCTV.

Gravity-1 also lofted some satellites — three Yunyao-1 commercial weather spacecraft — on its first flight, which launched in January 2024 from the deck of this same barge.

Orienspace is developing two larger and more powerful rockets, known as Gravity-2 and Gravity-3.

Gravity-2 will feature a liquid-fuel core stage and solid rocket boosters as well as be capable of sending about 25.6 tons to LEO, Andrew Jones reported in SpaceNews last year.

Gravity-3 will employ three Gravity-2 core stages, much as SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket uses three strapped-together Falcon 9 boosters, according to Jones. Gravity-3's payload capacity will be about 5 tons greater than that of Gravity-2.

In the past couple of weeks, the California-based startup has completed the final weld on the primary structure of Haven-1, followed by painting. Next steps include integrating the flight article's hatch and a domed window as the company moves closer to realizing its vision of a private space station in low Earth orbit (LEO).

Haven-1 is designed to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 and, at around 31,000 pounds (14,000 kilograms), will be the largest spacecraft to lift off atop the rocket. The space station is planned to host up to four short-duration astronaut missions during its three-year lifespan, with crews of four people spending 10 days at a time aboard Haven-1 (or some other combination of missions totaling 160 astronaut days).

The space station is intended to be a stepping stone into a new era of human spaceflight, according to Vast lead astronaut Drew Feustel, who spoke with Space.com at the 76th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney, Australia, in early October.

"If we stick to our plan, we will be the first standalone commercial LEO platform ever in space with Haven-1, and that's an amazing inflection point for human spaceflight," said Feustel, who's a former NASA astronaut. The Falcon 9 for the launch is booked, and liftoff could take place as soon as the second quarter of 2026.

Vast's rise has been meteoric. Founded in 2021, the company has swelled to around 800 employees. Nearly all of its hardware is built in-house, with only solar arrays and thrusters outsourced. "When I joined in December 2023, we were still deciding between stainless steel and aluminum." Feustel recalled. "Now, less than two years later, the primary structure is welded."

Haven-1 will not just be a private station. It will look to take human spaceflight in a new direction, learning lessons from industry trends and making the human experience more central.

The company has been taking some pages out of the book of SpaceX, which has revolutionized access to the final frontier and was the first space company to start building a commercial vehicle that wasn't designed and developed by NASA.

"What SpaceX did — making it clean and functional at the same time — was something astronauts were skeptical of at first," Feustel said. "But we came to appreciate the calmness of the environment."

Vast has also picked up expertise and experience from Elon Musk's company. "A lot of our people are former SpaceX employees who wanted to do it again, but this time with a space station."

Haven-1 contrasts with the utilitarian International Space Station (ISS) and with a more human-centered design. The aesthetics, psychology and "Earth tones" of Haven-1 are designed for comfort and calm. Vast also hired a former Campbell's food developer to rethink astronaut cuisine, and has developed an inflatable sleep system that allows crew members to adjust the pressure to create a sense of simulated gravity for sleeping, rather than the tethered sleeping bag approach on the ISS. Visitors to the Vast exhibit at IAC could try out the new system.

When it launches in 2026, Haven-1 will mark a milestone, but it is also designed as a testbed for bigger plans. Haven-2 is a much more ambitious, modular project that Vast hopes could replace the ISS, which will be deorbited in 2030.

Haven-2's modules will add a second docking port, have a larger volume, fixed solar arrays, and likely a second window. Its modular design allows attachment of cargo or future nodes, including a central node designed to launch via SpaceX's Starship megarocket, which is under development. This larger outpost would be a stepping stone toward artificial gravity and long-term habitation.

"Haven-2 will be stretched in length, add another docking port, and become more modular. We can attach cargo supply while the crew is there," Feustel said. These modules will need to launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with elongated fairings. "The central node can only launch on Starship. It's an eight-meter-diameter class structure."

Haven-1 is privately funded, and its launch is paid for. Haven-2's design depends on NASA's Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD) program, however. "Once we know the expectations, we can head down with full focus — our architecture is flexible enough to adapt," Feustel said.

Again, Haven-2 is a step toward a grander vision. "We were founded for long-term living in space, so artificial gravity," said Eva Behrend, Vast's vice president of communications. "But we realized we needed stepping stones. So we said, 'Let's just build it and prove we can do it.'"

"We think of ourselves as building destinations in space — places for people to live, work and look back at Earth," said Behrend. For now, it's Haven-1 and Haven-2 in low Earth orbit, but Vast has its sights set on destinations beyond.

Europe's next planet-hunting spacecraft just spread its "wings" in preparation for launch.

PLATO's twin solar panels, which will power the Planetary Transits and Oscillations of Stars spacecraft's search for Earth-like exoplanets, spread out successfully during engineering tests last month in a European Space Agency (ESA) clean lab.

That's a big deal, as "PLATO is on track for the final key tests to confirm that it is fit for launch," ESA officials wrote in a statement Thursday (Oct. 9). If all goes to plan, PLATO will fly to space in December on board an Arianespace Ariane 6 rocket to search for strange new worlds.

The 4-billion-Euro ($4.62-billion USD) mission is being put through its paces in a Netherlands clean room, after engineers bolted together the back of the spacecraft with a module combining the sunshield and solar panels. As the panels collect power to generate electricity, the sunshield will shadow the scientific equipment prone to overheating in the sun's glare.

Since the panels need to wrap up tight to the spacecraft during launch before spreading in space, engineers tested the panels' deployment in the lab to make sure all was well. Like wings, the left and the right side were carefully unfurled in separate tests on Sept. 16 and Sept. 22, respectively.

"The deployment test must be carried out as if gravity were absent, and the panels were weightless," ESA officials wrote. "For this, the panels were suspended from a supporting frame, with a system of pulleys that moved along as the panels smoothly unfolded."

Engineers then verified the power was working by using a "special lamp to simulate the effect of sunlight." Next up comes prelaunch testing: shaking and noise-blasting PLATO to simulate the rocket's liftoff, and then putting the spacecraft in a large chamber to simulate the vacuum of space.

Once PLATO gets through launch and its commissioning tests, next comes a long search for other Earths. It will use 26 cameras to gaze at more than 150,000 bright strs simultaneously, seeking small changes in starlight. The goal is to catch exoplanets slightly dimming their parent stars' brightness as the little worlds pass across the face of these stars.

"To achieve the necessary high sensitivity, the cameras must be kept cool, so that each camera is kept at its best-focus temperature around -80 degrees Celsius [-112 degrees Fahrenheit]," ESA officials wrote.

PLATO is slated to last at least four years according to a mission website, although the observatory could persist longer with funding and a healthy spacecraft.

Space Armor is made via a proprietary fiber-to-resin manufacturing method courtesy of the company Atomic-6, which is based in Marietta, Georgia.

"Satellites and astronauts are constantly threatened by millions of untrackable, hypervelocity particles in orbit," states Atomic-6, which unveiled the new tech today (Oct. 16). "Like a loose pebble hitting your windshield on the highway, orbital debris can strike at any time to do significant damage to spacecraft."

But unlike the highway pebble, human-made debris can hit at speeds of 16,000 mph (25,750 kph) or more. If you're in the way of that ultra-speedy object, it can mess up your day by penetrating fuel tanks, ripping apart batteries and other structures.

Product design

Composites have long been anticipated as a solution for lightweight micrometeoroid and orbital debris (MMOD) shielding protection, said Trevor Smith, CEO of Atomic-6.

"Everyone has known that composite materials can make potentially lighter, stronger MMOD shields," Smith said. Atomic-6 has made that vision a reality with its Space Armor tile, thanks to a combination of product design and composite skills.

Space Armor™'s fiber-to-resin manufacturing method also provides another benefit: An enclosure using the tiles not only can protect communication gear, it also offers communications transparency. That means the system can safeguard mission-critical radio communications to and from the satellite as well.

Taking the shot

"It has taken around 18 months to take Space Armor™ tiles from an idea to a final product. So we took the shot at making a tile, and were blown away by the test results," Smith told Space.com. "We offer Space Armor™ in simple hex tiles, but we can technically make Space Armor™ into most any shape you want."

Over the decades, a "Whipple Shield" came into wide use for mitigating space debris impacts. This structure was introduced by American astronomer Fred Whipple back in the 1940s and is still in use today. In simple terms, a Whipple Shield is a sacrificial bumper on a satellite, usually made of aluminum, that absorbs the initial impact.

However, because Whipple Shields are made of metal, they generate fragments when taking a hit. Fragmentation leftovers become harmful secondary rubble that can go on to strike other satellites or astronauts.

Space Armor™ has undergone extensive hypervelocity testing here on Earth, making use of projectile-firing "guns" used to simulate high-speed run-ins with space debris on a small scale.

Smith said that Atomic-6 will be sending Space Armor™ tiles to orbit with satellite customers next year.

"The orbital environment has surprisingly high amounts of debris already," he said, "so we would effectively be testing the tiles using 'natural analogues' of hypervelocity guns. The orbital debris is already up there."