Space

Flight 11 staged cleanly, flew more than an hour, and ended with two guided splashdowns. The next prototype adds refueling hardware and tougher tiles, setting up a 2026 demo that could pull Artemis work forward.

On October 1, 2025, asteroid 2025 TF skimmed just 428 kilometers above Antarctica, the second closest flyby ever recorded. The scare exposes how small near‑Earth objects evade detection and previews the sensors, radar, and drills that will close the gap.

{"excerpt":"XRISM has opened its first vault of Performance Verification data, and Resolve’s microcalorimeter is translating X-ray spectra into maps of motion, temperature, and turbulence. Here is what the release unlocks and what to watch as the Kyoto meeting begins."}

Nokia’s IM-2 payload briefly brought 4G LTE to the lunar surface, validating a shoebox base station that powered on and sent telemetry before the lander lost sunlight. Here is what worked, what failed, and a practical 2026 to 2029 roadmap for building a usable lunar internet.

Launched March 12, 2025 UTC and now scanning in 102 infrared colors, SPHEREx has moved from first light into weekly public data drops. See what to watch next and how to tap the data for inflation tests, a Milky Way ice census, and target lists for Webb and Roman.

NASA began 2025 by advancing two rival landing architectures and a radioisotope‑powered, simplified lander for Mars Sample Return. Here is what changed, why a dual path can cut risk and cost, and the milestones leading to a 2026 downselect.

China’s Tianwen-2 launched in May 2025 to sample Kamoʻoalewa, a tiny quasi-moon that may be lunar ejecta. The probe aims to rendezvous in 2026, return samples in 2027, and then slingshot onward to study active asteroid 311P. Here is why that changes the game.

NASA restored the VIPER rover in September 2025 with a conditional ride on Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK1. If the demo lander touches down by late 2025, VIPER heads for a late 2027 south pole delivery to drill for accessible lunar water ice.

Blue Origin is preparing New Glenn for a late‑2025 science run with NASA’s twin ESCAPADE probes. If the schedule holds, the mission could turn Mars space weather from research into operations, feeding forecasts for entry, comms, and radiation risk.

Fresh off a shared ride to L1 with NOAA’s SWFO‑L1 and NASA’s Carruthers observatory, IMAP kicks off continuous mapping of the heliosphere. The payoff is practical: earlier radiation alerts for Artemis crews and smarter routes for deep‑space missions.

Rubin’s first images and Data Preview 1 turned the sky into a stream. Here is what changes in fall 2025, how one‑minute alerts will work, and the concrete steps teams can take now to be ready for the 2026 discovery wave.

Flight 11 hit its marks and brought both stages down under control, clearing the runway for the first in‑orbit propellant transfers. Here is what refueling really takes, what to watch next, and how it could pull NASA’s Artemis timeline left.

After a precision Earth flyby on September 23, 2025, NASA's OSIRIS-APEX is racing toward Apophis to turn a safe 2029 close pass into a full-scale planetary defense rehearsal. Here is the four-year plan and why it matters.

Announced on June 25, 2025, JWST’s MIRI coronagraph revealed a likely Saturn-mass companion in TWA 7’s disk, potentially Webb’s first directly imaged planet. The result lowers the mass floor for space-based direct imaging and sets up a wave of discoveries through 2028.

Peer‑reviewed results from Chang’e 6 are rewriting assumptions: the lunar farside runs cooler and carries fewer volatiles, with a drier mantle. Here is how that should reshape south pole sites, ISRU bets, and mission priorities through 2027.

Firefly’s Blue Ghost touched down on March 2, 2025, ran for more than 14 days, and enabled the first lunar GNSS fix hours later. When NASA expanded its data purchase on September 22, 2025, the signal was unmistakable: the Moon’s next phase is commercial, autonomous, and moving fast.

As Solar Cycle 25 peaks in late 2025, Parker Solar Probe is flying inside the Sun’s corona and capturing the earliest signatures of flares, CMEs, and particle storms. Here is how those in-corona measurements can tighten arrival-time forecasts, safeguard Artemis crews, and fortify power grids.

Observations of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS revealed unexpected early water activity and a carbon dioxide dominated coma. Here is why that changes our assumptions about planet formation and how to build an always on response before the next visitor arrives.