Washington DC (UPI) Aug 4, 2025
NASA's Lunar Trailblazer mission to the moon ended in failure after the government agency lost contact with the spacecraft one day after the launch in February and never regained communication despite extensive efforts. The mission ended Friday, NASA said Monday in a news release. On Feb. 26, the satellite was part of the IM-2 mission by Intuitive Machines aboard a SpaceX Falcon

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Aug 05, 2025
Intuitive Machines has secured a $9.8 million government contract to progress its Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV) through Critical Design Review, the final engineering phase before manufacturing begins. This Phase Two award expands the company's government work beyond lunar surface delivery and strengthens its role in the growing market for orbital mobility solutions. The award is not affil

Tokyo Japan (SPX) Aug 05, 2025
ispace, inc. has signed an agreement with Bridgestone Corporation to jointly develop and evaluate tires for future small and medium-sized lunar rovers. The initiative aims to accelerate practical deployment of these tires for surface missions by the end of this decade. Under the agreement, Bridgestone's soft, elastic tires - engineered with thin metal spokes for both durability and flexibi

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Aug 05, 2025
China has approved the ninth round of lunar sample lending applications, distributing over 30 grams of moon material to 32 research teams across 25 institutions. These samples, retrieved by the Chang'e 5 and Chang'e 6 missions, will support a broad spectrum of scientific studies. According to the Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center, 30,881.8 milligrams of lunar samples will be s

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Aug 05, 2025
Black holes, the most gravitationally extreme objects in the universe, emit space-time ripples called quasinormal modes when disturbed - vibrations that can be detected as gravitational waves. These signals offer critical insight into a black hole's mass and structure, but precisely modeling the rapidly fading ones has remained elusive. In a breakthrough study, Kyoto University researchers

Paris, France (SPX) Aug 05, 2025
Webb has returned to the iconic Hubble Ultra Deep Field, providing astronomers with an unprecedented mid-infrared perspective of one of the most studied regions in the sky. Using nearly 100 hours of observation time with its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has delivered its deepest extragalactic view in a single filter to date. This area, known a

Skyrora has become the first British company to secure a launch license from the U.K.

NASA has formally ended a lunar orbiter smallsat mission more than five months after losing contact with it, another blow to the agency’s efforts at low-cost planetary missions.