Space Explored

iSpace will soon be making its next lunar landing attempt after its Hakuto-R lander took the long way to arrive at the Moon. The lander completed a major milestone this week by entering the Moon’s orbit after a long, multi-month trip.

This week, the FAA approved SpaceX‘s request to increase its Starship launch limit from Starbase from five launches to 25. A great step towards full operation, but will SpaceX even reach that goal this year?

Friday, President Trump released his “skinny” budget request for the U.S. Government’s Fiscal Year 2026; included for NASA is $18.8 billion in proposed funding. This is down 25% from what the agency received in FY2025. Here’s what programs are safe and in trouble.

After years of building up the local area, moving countless SpaceX employees, and employing thousands, SpaceX’s Starbase facility now resides in the city of Starbase, Texas. The incorporation became official after about 300 eligible voters voted yes to create the city, most of whom work for SpaceX.

Boosters, stacked. Core Stage, stacked. Launch Vehicle Stage Adaptor, stacked. NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) team has now stacked Artemis 2’s upper stage. The Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) is SLS’s second stage. It will carry Artemis 2’s crew into high Earth orbit. Once finished, the stage will be jettisoned and used for a docking test with Orion. After this, Orion will fire its AJ-10 rocket engine. Sending it on a journey around the moon and back to Earth. The mission is presently set for February 2026.

Currently, there are four reusable spaceplanes either operational or under development around the world. However, the leaders in the industry have switched back to space capsules, so are spaceplanes back or not?

Apple TV’s For All Mankind original series portrayed an alternative timeline of our own: what if the Soviets made it to the Moon first? That simple question, with storytelling rooted in actual science, was supposed to have fun at a time that could have been, but might have actually precluded a real-world reality.

Wednesday morning, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation voted to submit Jared Isaacman‘s nomination for NASA Administrator favorably to the full Senate. This is the final step before Isaacman can be confirmed as the new administrator.

Monday, Amazon launched its first batch of operational Project Kuiper satellites as it begins the build-out of its satellite internet constellation. However, the start has been delayed, and reports show the company might not meet the FCC deadline that is fast approaching.

SpaceX has been the go-to launcher for both commercial and government satellites for a few years running now. Their Silicon Valley thinking and reusability innovation were supposed to spur an era of low-cost launches, something that has yet to come to NASA missions as of yet.

It what normally doesn’t happen often, former Republican politicians have called out President Trump’s over-the-top NASA budget cuts as “reckless” and would cede space dominance to China. This is only the latest in a small but growing list of former and current party members that are going against their sitting president on this matter.

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation will vote on Jared Isaacman‘s confirmation as NASA’s next Administrator on Wednesday. Both the Committee’s Republicans and Democrats released Isaacman’s written questions, so here’s what he thinks about some of the key issues facing NASA right now.

Since Elon Musk‘s endorsement of President Trump last year, the CEO of SpaceX has spent more time in politics than worrying about his companies, including Tesla. With Tesla’s Q1 earnings out this week, Elon announced he would be stepping back from his time at the White House to focus on the company.

MDA Space, a leading Canadian aerospace company with a legacy in robotic systems, introduced its next-generation robotics platform – MDA Skymaker – at the 2024 Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. Built on the company’s flight-proven Canadarm heritage, Skymaker is a modular suite of robotics technologies designed to support a wide array of commercial and governmental space missions.

A new space telescope that is 87% paid for, on schedule, and on budget, could be completely canned if President Trump’s proposed budget makes it law for NASA. That wouldn’t be the only thing of NASA’s that would be going away either.

With NASA‘s DC headquarters’ lease up in 2028, the space agency is looking for a new home and suitors are already lining up. While it sounds crazy that you would take a government agency out of the political center of the US, some states think it’s possible.

Forget laser interlinks, Boeing is working on a new form of in-space communications that may be just as fast and infinitely secure. The company, alongside its partnership with HRL Laboratories, hit a milestone in creating its first satellites for its quantum communications demo in 2026.

After a seven-month stay in space, NASA astronaut Don Pettit returned Saturday on the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft in Kazakhstan. While in space, Pettit wowed the world with a constant stream of photos taken outside the windows of the ISS. Here are some of our favorites.

SpaceX is a leading bidder for the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense platform, according to Reuters. The project will join SpaceX alongside software company Palantir and drone manufacturer Anduril in a project that could oust traditional defense primes from one of the DoD’s biggest new defense projects.

The multi-administration long battle over the location of the US Space Command’s permanent headquarters may finally come to an end this month. Following the release of the Inspector General’s report on President Biden’s decision not to move the HQ to Huntsville, Alabama, Congressman Mike Rogers states President Trump’s decision could come soon.

This week Blue Origin launched its NS-31 mission carrying a crew of six above the Karman Line for a short 11-minute flight. The flight was historic for being the first all-female spaceflight since 1963 and was marketed as a feminist movement, but some have doubts it did anything. So, are PR stunt suborbital spaceflights getting old? Or is it just Blue Origin’s take on them?

For the last few weeks, SpaceX has been clearing land for its next massive project in Starbase, Texas: GigaBay. In its way was the old Stargate facility and High Bay, both of which are in various stages of demolition. In its place will be Starbase’s largest structure, a processing facility that will be able to process as many as a dozen Starships at a time.

Vast Space is accelerating toward its goal of building a thriving commercial presence in low Earth orbit with the announcement of three new research payload partners for its Haven-1 space station. Japan Manned Space Systems Corporation (JAMSS), Interstellar Lab, and Exobiosphere are all expected to deploy experiments aboard the single-module space station, slated to launch no earlier than May 2026 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9. 

NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) team moves quickly to prepare Artemis 2 for launch in early 2026. In March, EGS successfully stacked the Space Launch System (SLS) core stage onto the mobile launcher between the two solid rocket boosters (SRBs). The Launch Vehicle Stage Adapter (LVSA) is now part of the core stage. Alongside core stage integration, NASA has steadily progressed on the Orion spacecraft, preparing it for its first crewed mission around the Moon and back.