The top 80% of the core stage for NASA’s next Space Launch System rocket arrived at Kennedy Space Center on April 27, 2026, locking in hardware for an Artemis 3 mission that has now slipped from mid-2027 to late 2027 and shed its original ambition of putting boots on the moon. The 212-foot-tall stage rolled […]

The post Artemis 3’s Quiet Pivot: When the Rocket Is Ready but the Lander Isn’t appeared first on Space Daily.

A manufacturing defect at a single European supplier has corroded structural modules destined for both NASA’s lunar Gateway and Axiom Space’s commercial station. The defect, traced to forging and surface treatment work performed by Thales Alenia Space at facilities in Italy, has now become one of the official justifications for NASA’s decision to suspend Gateway […]

The post How a Welding Defect in Italy Gave NASA the Excuse It Needed to Kill Gateway appeared first on Space Daily.

There’s a moment that hits me pretty often when I’m out riding my bike through Saigon at night. I’ll glance up at the sky between the buildings, catch a smear of stars, and feel my chest do something strange. A quiet kind of recognition. We’re floating. But most of the time, I forget. We all […]

The post It would take 177 years to drive to the Sun at highway speeds — and 4 other comparisons that put space in perspective appeared first on Space Daily.

For seventy years, every spacecraft NASA sent to another world either landed in one place and stayed there, or rolled slowly across the surface on wheels. Then in April 2021, a four-pound helicopter called Ingenuity lifted ten feet off the floor of Mars’s Jezero Crater, hovered for thirty seconds, and changed the rules. Five years […]

The post NASA flew a four-pound helicopter on Mars. The follow-up weighs nearly a ton and is going to Saturn appeared first on Space Daily.

More than $8 billion is requested in 2027 to field space-based systems to track both ground and airborne targets

Mars has been the answer for as long as humans have been able to look up at it. Domed cities. Brave settlers tilling the rust-coloured soil. A second chance for our species after we’ve finished wrecking the first one. The reality is something else. Mars is not a frontier waiting patiently for us. Mars is, […]

The post The brutal reality of trying to build a home on Mars appeared first on Space Daily.

Picture this. You’re above Earth, strapped into the International Space Station. You glance out the window and there it is. Our planet. A swirling blue marble suspended in nothing. No borders. No politics. No to-do list. Just a fragile sphere holding everything that has ever mattered to you. Astronauts who experience this often describe a […]

The post Astronauts call it the “overview effect” — but you don’t need to leave Earth to feel it appeared first on Space Daily.

In 2006, the International Astronomical Union held a meeting in Prague and voted to demote Pluto. Roughly 424 members were in the room when the vote happened. The world’s planetary scientists, the people who actually study planets for a living, were not consulted in any binding way. Within hours, textbooks were rewritten, classroom posters were […]

The post Pluto has glaciers, an atmosphere, and probably an ocean. Why isn’t it a planet? appeared first on Space Daily.

SAN FRANCISCO – Silicon Valley startup EraDrive is working with Northrop Grumman to enhance spacecraft autonomy with artificial intelligence.

Mark Zuckerberg’s company just made one of the most unusual energy deals in tech history. On April 27, Meta announced a first-of-its-kind agreement to source up to one gigawatt of electricity from satellites in geosynchronous orbit, energy that will eventually flow to the AI data centers that increasingly define its business. The partner is Overview […]

The post AI is so power-hungry that Meta is now buying electricity from space appeared first on Space Daily.