Space

ESA’s Moonlight and NASA’s LunaNet standards are converging into a shared lunar communications and navigation backbone. The result: precision landings, real-time EVA support, and scalable rover swarms shifting from bespoke to routine between 2026 and 2030.

On November 12, 2025, Blue Origin’s New Glenn lifted NASA’s twin ESCAPADE probes and a new playbook for planetary science. Compact Mars orbiters paired with commercial heavy lift and L2 staging promise faster, cheaper missions that reduce risk for future crews.

Launched in late May 2025, Tianwen-2 is racing toward Earth’s quasi-moon Kamoʻoalewa for a fast-turn sample return by late 2027, then pressing on to active asteroid 311P. Here is why this two-target, solar-electric mission could reset small-body science and planetary defense.

As the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA network wraps its extended O4 run in mid November, a flood of detections is reshaping multimessenger astronomy. Here is what upgrades land before O5, what the 2030s megadetectors will add, and why discovery rates are set to jump again.

In 2025 JWST delivered two breakthroughs: direct imaging of a Saturn-mass planet and the first 3D eclipse map of an alien atmosphere. Here is why that matters and what comes next.

NASA’s 2025 reset opened fixed-price competition and Starship-class ideas, turning Mars Sample Return from one mega-plan into a sprint. What changed, who is bidding, how ESA’s orbiter anchors the mission, and why speed now matters.

Four landmark 2025 studies from Chang'e-6's first farside samples upend assumptions about lunar water, volcanism, magnetism, and mantle temperature, and they reset the next decade of landing sites, ISRU, and radio astronomy.

Fresh off first-light images, NASA’s SPHEREx has begun a 102-color, all-sky infrared survey that repeats every six months. Here is what that milestone unlocks next and how open data can speed discoveries for researchers and advanced amateurs alike.

ESA’s Proba-3 flies two small spacecraft as one precision instrument to manufacture hours-long solar eclipses on demand. The result is continuous, high-contrast views of the Sun’s inner corona and faster, sharper space‑weather nowcasts.

On March 19, 2025, Euclid’s first public Q1 dataset arrived: 63 square degrees and roughly 26 million detections. Here is what is inside, why it already matters for weak lensing and lens hunting, and how to get started today.

Two March 2025 touchdowns turned promise into process. Firefly’s Blue Ghost executed a clean surface sprint, while Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 reached the south polar highlands and revealed hard lessons in stability, power, and polar lighting.

As interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS sweeps through the inner Solar System, Mars orbiters, JUICE, Hera, Europa Clipper, and Earth telescopes are coordinating to read its ion tail like a lab experiment. Here is how a distributed observatory can decode an alien birthplace and why a rapid response interceptor should be next.

With NASA's OSIRIS-APEX funded and ESA's Ramses accelerating, Apophis's April 13, 2029 Earth flyby becomes a live planetary defense drill. Here is what will change, what to measure, and what must be funded on the ground and in space.

On its second flight, New Glenn aims to send NASA’s twin ESCAPADE probes toward Sun-Earth L2 to wait for the right Mars alignment. If it works, launch day becomes a flexible starting point for cheaper, more resilient interplanetary missions.

Launched September 24, 2025, NASA’s IMAP is cruising to L1 to turn solar maximum into a live map of the heliosphere and deliver earlier, sharper space‑weather alerts for Artemis crews and satellites.

In June 2025, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory released its first LSST images, opening a survey that will issue millions of nightly alerts. Here is how that firehose will accelerate discoveries of near‑Earth asteroids, kilonovae, and supernovae.

NASA’s Psyche-borne DSOC wrapped in 2025 and showed that laser light can carry science across hundreds of millions of miles. Here is how optical links become the backbone of space data this decade and who turns them on first.

Chang'e 6 returned the first farside samples from South Pole-Aitken and they upend expectations: the mantle source looks far drier than near-side equivalents, and tiny clasts record a magnetic field that pulsed back around 2.8 billion years ago. Here is what that means for water prospecting, Artemis site choices, and a buildable farside lab.