Space Explored

While the White House may or may not be working towards canceling or drastically changing the Artemis Program, NASA is working on keeping it moving. While December’s Artemis 2 delay sounded like a “no earlier than” date, it now sounds like it’s more a “no later than” date.

One of the crazy ideas that have been floated by President Trump in his second term has been to annex Greenland as the nation’s 51st state. The nation hosts a key Space Force Base that deals with early warning missiles coming from Russia or China.

In just a few months, Axiom-4 will launch on its Falcon 9 rocket to send the fourth private astronaut mission to the ISS. It plans to stay on station for two to three weeks. With it will come the return of human spaceflight from the nations of Poland and Hungary since the 1970s and 1980s.

Last month, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched a small commercial lunar lander toward the Moon. Among its payloads is a retroreflector designed to enable precise measurements of the distance to Earth’s nearest celestial body while also testing Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

SpaceX is still working towards a new expanded Starship presence at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Part of that will be a massive new structure that will rival NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building on the space coast horizon, called GigaBay.

Tuesday morning, Boom Supersonic made its supersonic flight debut with its XB-1 test aircraft. The flight featured the first civil supersonic flight from a jet-powered aircraft made in America and was live-streamed for all to see. Using SpaceX’s Starlink and an iPhone, aviation enthusiasts were treated to some of the best in-flight views ever.

You might have thought our discussion of Starliner‘s crew was over, at least until the crew returned home on SpaceX’s Crew-9 Dragon. However, it seems like President Trump and Elon Musk are looking to make Boeing’s issue a political matter by calling for their return “as soon as possible.” Even though they are safe and have had no issues staying up on the station for an extended mission.

Boom Supersonic is working on bringing supersonic commercial air travel back. To do this, they have been working on their subscale XB-1 aircraft to test the systems needed to achieve supersonic flight. Today, the company is attempting its first supersonic flight.

A recent Space Capital report states that the massive defense primes of Boeing and Airbus could divest themselves of space entirely. Given the new administration’s wish to potentially sack SLS, could companies like Boeing be out of space entirely?

Check out this week’s podcast.

SpaceX has begun the process of installing new catch arms on its second Starship launch pad down in Starbase, Texas. The company has made a large number of changes to the previous tower design as it continues to learn more about what is needed for a rapidly usable rocket.

According to Reuters, SpaceX lobbyists might have successfully convinced the newly sworn-in President Trump to shutter the National Space Council. SpaceX seems to believe the council was a “waste of time,” and the White House might think it’s too much bureaucracy.

Last week, SpaceX launched its seventh Starship rocket on a test flight that didn’t go nearly as far as many had hoped. So what’s the progress on Starship Flight 8, and how will 7’s shortcomings affect its timeline?

With President Trump’s swearing-in yesterday at noon, the government has switched hands and will now be run by a completely new list of politicians and political agents who have gained favor in Trump’s eyes. Anyone who was previously in charge is out, and that includes Administrator Bill Nelson and his deputy Pam Melroy. Nelson marked the occasion with a letter, praising those who make NASA what it is and slightly hoping that his replacement keeps Artemis around.

The Australian airliner Qantas has reported that it has had to delay flights between Johannesburg and Sydney when SpaceX launches its rockets. This has caused hours of delays as SpaceX continues to ramp up its launch cadence.

In 2017 President Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1, setting NASA on a mission to return its astronauts to the surface of the Moon using the already in development Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft. It has come a long way, survived one transition of power, but is likely to be taken to battle in Congress.

President Trump, now the 47th President of the United States, mentioned space only once during his address, and it had nothing to do with Artemis and everything to do with a destination a tad bit further away: Mars.

Last week SpaceX launched its seventh flight test of its Starship rocket. The mission was supposed to be an iterative improvement in Starship capabilities, and while the booster saw success, the upper stage ship’s mission concluded early. Now debris is showing up on island shores.

We finally saw the debut launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket last week. We also saw the first of many Starship flights of 2025. While both were considered flight data-gathering missions, one seems a little more successful than the other, and spoiler, it wasn’t SpaceX.

Checkout the podcast version of Terminal Count here.

Utah might open a study to see if the state should open its own spaceport, a rather interesting idea given the state has no open oceans on either side of itself but does host a large number of aerospace professionals. Is there a way for this to make sense?

Former JPL employee turned YouTuber, Mark Rober, launched his very own satellites to space on the recent SpaceX Transporter-12 mission. The purpose was to snap a photo of a Google Pixel showing a selfie sent by his fans.

For the first time in the Starship program, SpaceX ran into what looks more like a setback than a step forward. So what went wrong?

Oh AI, you love it or you hate it. It, alongside being the local weatherman, is the only thing that can be completely wrong and everyone gives it a break. Last year Apple rolled out its version of AI called “Apple Intelligence.” One of its features is to summarize notifications so you don’t have to. Unless it gets it wrong, which it does a lot.

In a bittersweet launch, SpaceX was able to successfully launch its seventh Starship rocket from Starbase, Texas. The flight ended with a little bit of déjà vu, with the ship’s upper stage running into an anomaly just before ascent was over.