Each year, SpaceNews selects the people, programs and technologies that have most influenced the direction of the space industry in the past year.

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Dec 03, 2025
For the first time in the history of the International Space Station, all eight of its docking ports are occupied following the reinstallation of Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL cargo spacecraft on the Earth-facing port of the Unity module. The visiting vehicles now attached are two SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, the Cygnus XL cargo ship, JAXA's HTV-X1 cargo vehicle, two Roscosmos Soyuz crew spacecraft,

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Dec 03, 2025
NASA's Perseverance rover identified light-colored rocks in Jezero crater that consist of white, aluminum-rich kaolinite clay. These rocks formed after prolonged exposure to water leached other minerals from parent rocks and sediments. The process required millions of years of rainfall in a humid environment. Perseverance's SuperCam and Mastcam-Z instruments analyzed the kaolinite fragment