No human had ever sat inside the moon’s shadow. When Artemis II’s Orion capsule rounded the lunar far side on April 1, 2026, its four-person crew became the first, witnessing 54 minutes of totality from a vantage point that no Earth-bound observer could match in duration, scale, or perspective. The geometry of Orion’s free-return trajectory […]

The post Why Artemis II’s Eclipse Footage Matters More Than Its Engineering appeared first on Space Daily.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has selected Benchmark Space Systems, Quantum Space, and Revolution Space to develop competing concepts for a small lunar orbiter capable of hunting water ice from altitudes most spacecraft cannot survive. The agency confirmed the three Phase 1 awards on April 30 for its Lunar Assay via Small Satellite Orbiter […]

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NASA is planning to increase the total value of a contract for robotic lunar lander missions to support a proposed surge in flights for the agency’s moon base plans.

Investor attention is starting to shift toward ventures that could be enabled by orbital data centers, even as the massive computing networks proposed by SpaceX and others remain years from reality.

Starcloud is looking to raise at least $200 million in a deal that would double the two-year-old orbital data center startup’s valuation to about $2.2 billion, a source close to the situation confirmed.

Career space operator would succeed Gen. Chance Saltzman atop military space branch

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded contracts to three companies to study concepts for a lunar mission to search for water ice in very low orbits.

The Copernicus Sentinel-1D satellite, launched last November, is now fully operational after successfully completing its critical in-orbit commissioning phase.

With all four Sentinel-1 satellites having now been deployed, this achievement marks a major milestone for this flagship radar mission – a journey that began more than a decade ago and that has helped pave the way for the future of Earth observation.

The Pentagon wants to kill a missile-warning satellite program just as its prime contractor finishes building the hardware. Northrop Grumman delivered a missile-warning sensor for the Next-Gen OPIR Polar program, days before the Defense Department’s fiscal year 2027 budget request proposed terminating the effort entirely. The timing captures something essential about how big defense programs […]

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York Space Systems will pay roughly $355 million to acquire UK-based satellite communications terminal maker All.Space, the Denver satellite manufacturer announced April 30, marking its second acquisition since going public and its most aggressive move yet to assemble a vertically integrated satcom business spanning spacecraft, ground stations, and user terminals. The deal, structured as $155 […]

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