China's crewed Moon landing program
China says it aims to land taikonauts on the Moon by 2030, using a plan that calls for two launches and a rendezvous in lunar orbit. The Long March-10 rocket, the Mengzhou crew spacecraft and the…
Space threads
NASA reopens the commercial Hubble servicing mission
NASA has asked industry for ideas on a commercial mission to service and possibly boost the Hubble Space Telescope; no bidder, mission scope or funding is known. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman…
Rocket Lab Electron
Rocket Lab's Electron has now flown 99 missions: the 98th, 'We're Not Hawking Around,' placed HawkEye 360's Cluster 16 and all three satellites in orbit, and the 99th, 'The Sea God Surveys,' launched…
Starship
Starship Flight 15 is now targeted for no earlier than November 12, after Booster 22 and Ship 42 completed static-fire tests; it is meant to attempt the first catch of both stages. SpaceX is also…
Artemis III
NASA has stacked the Artemis III core stage between its boosters and still aims for a summer 2027 launch. The 14-day Earth-orbit mission would dock Orion with both SpaceX and Blue Origin prototype…
Orbital data centers / space compute (Starmind lineage)
Google's Suncatcher prototype, launched October 1, booted four TPUs in orbit and ran its Gemma 4 model, returning a generated answer. A rival Indian orbital data center and a power-beaming prototype…
Starlink in Ukraine
Ukrainian officials say SpaceX slowed Starlink service used by military drones, with the order reported to come from the White House, and Ukrainian forces temporarily lost some access to Starshield,…
Falcon 9 retirement
SpaceX is winding down commercial Falcon 9 launches as Starship takes over, closing new commercial reservations and ending retail Transporter and Bandwagon rideshare bookings after the 2028 manifest,…
Amazon Leo: Ariane 6 consolidation + India market entry
Amazon Leo has produced over 1,000 satellites but has only about 400 in orbit, short of the 1,616 the FCC required by July, and regulators stripped its spectrum priority as a penalty. It has won…
Dream Chaser's FAA re-entry license for a Vandenberg return
The FAA has licensed Sierra Space's Dream Chaser to re-enter Earth's atmosphere and return to Vandenberg Space Force Base. The license covers only the return; the craft still has to launch, and no…
Anthropic is SpaceX's largest customer — 34.5% of the Q3 10-Q's $14.6B quarter
SpaceX's mystery "Customer B" is Anthropic, which accounted for 34.5% of the company's $14.6 billion in Q3 2026 revenue and became its largest customer. That quarter's revenue was up 161% from 2025,…
New Glenn
Blue Origin's only New Glenn launch pad was wrecked by a May 28 static-fire explosion, and its rebuilt launch tower is now fully stacked again. The company says the pad should activate in…
Russia's Starlink alternative: Putin calls Musk a "genius" and discloses "close contact"
Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly called Elon Musk a genius and said the two are in close contact, as Russia develops its own alternative to Starlink. The backdrop is the…
Starbase Louisiana: SpaceX's $100B Gulf Coast spaceport
SpaceX plans a $100 billion, ten-pad Starship launch site on roughly 125,000 acres in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, targeting construction in 2027 and a first launch in 2029, though the realistic date…
Rocket Lab–Iridium merger
Rocket Lab's roughly $8 billion acquisition of Iridium is still pending, after shareholder approval and with FCC license review, a Ligado objection and a GAO protest unresolved. Separately, Neutron's…
Starfall: SpaceX's commercial reentry/manufacturing service
SpaceX's Starfall reentry capsule is building a customer manifest for returning manufactured payloads from orbit, with Exolaunch and Space Cargo Unlimited booking Starship missions in 2028 and 2029.…
Starlink Mobile
SpaceX has FCC approval for Starlink Mobile covering up to 15,000 next-generation satellites, plus a waiver to serve phones without a traditional wireless carrier, and it has bought about $8 billion…
SpaceX earnings and financing
SpaceX, listed since June, reported third-quarter revenue up 161% on October 20 and a $4.4 billion net profit, with AI-compute revenue of $7.6 billion passing Starlink's. Musk says SpaceX has closed…
Artemis IV
NASA is still assembling Artemis IV hardware, with its 130-foot liquid-hydrogen tank moved to the vertical assembly building at Michoud for roll-ring attachment and priming. The revised plan targets…
Korean space startups turn Nuri-era tech into business
Korean space startups are turning launch vehicles, AI satellite imagery, and orbital drug research into businesses after the Nuri launch. The story is just starting, and the next things to watch are…
Moon-base logistics: NASA's $30B permanent lunar base + bulk launch procurement
NASA is moving toward a $30 billion permanent lunar base, a program that would buy launch capacity in bulk and send up to 60 tons of equipment to the Moon's surface starting 2029. It is weighing…
PLD Space Miura 5
PLD Space has begun system-level testing of Miura 5, with the first three vehicles in manufacturing. It now aims for the rocket's first orbital launch in the first half of 2027, after dropping an…
JAXA's MMX: Phobos mission launched, ride on the H3
JAXA's MMX probe launched from Tanegashima Space Center aboard an H3 rocket on October 20 local time (October 19 Eastern), bound for Mars's moon Phobos. JAXA then reported that the mission completed…
Rocket Lab's ESCAPADE pair and the Earth-swingby Mars maneuver
Rocket Lab's Blue and Gold spacecraft, NASA's ESCAPADE Mars orbiters, are heading back toward Earth for a gravity assist. Each is to fire its main engine for a burn in November that sets course for…
Starlink for rural schools: Bolivia's 85 La Paz municipalities
Bolivia's Aula Conectada has signed Starlink agreements to bring satellite internet to schools in 85 La Paz municipalities, part of a wider push for satellite education across Latin America. The…
Artemis Accords
Uzbekistan became the 77th signatory to the Artemis Accords on 19 October 2026, signing alongside US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The cooperation covers NASA collaboration, specialist training,…
Musk's pledge to give every US child one SpaceX share in 2027
Elon Musk pledged on October 19 to give one of his SpaceX shares to every child in America next year, calling it the first of many and saying shares given directly to people are stakes in the future…
Proximity operations: K2612 stationkeeping near ICEYE X36
K2612 maneuvered on October 16 and is stationkeeping within 5 km or less of ICEYE X36. That would be the first low Earth orbit rendezvous of two active satellites without one owner's approval, though…
Blue Origin financing
Blue Origin's first outside round in 25 years came in at about ten billion dollars against a ~140-billion valuation, with Bezos adding his own billions and floating an IPO within a few years; a…
Stoke Space: $1B raise, Nova Block 2 unveiled
ISS endgame: 2030 deorbit and the successor race
Commercial crew: Dragon retirement planning
ESA: European-led station and crew transport (the €10B fork)
FAA environmental-waiver rulemaking (EO 14335)
High-resolution EO supply chain
Mars Telecommunications Network: Blue Origin's $700M award, Rocket Lab's GAO protest
The Exploration Company Nyx
US Space Academy: EO 14423, the commission, and the state site race
AI-enabled imaging constellations: Loft Orbital/Marlan $1B
ESA European Launcher Challenge
Quiet threads
Rocket Lab HASTE: the hypersonic test-flight business
Nuclear NASA: the DOE MOU
Isar Aerospace Spectrum
Closed threads
Artemis III astronauts meet Trump; NASA chief says "I'll be fired" if China wins the Moon race
The Artemis III crew met President Trump in the Oval Office and presented him with a Moon rock as a reminder of where the program is going. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman framed the Moon race as a…