New data analysis indicates that NASA and its partners could have more cost-effective methods for dealing with the growing issue of orbital debris than previously thought.

A new report from NASA's Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy provides agency leadership with new insight about how to measure the risks presented by orbital debris.

"Growing activity in Earth's orbit has brought us everything from faster terrestrial communications to a better understanding of our changing climate," said Charity Weeden, who leads NASA's OTPS. "These blossoming opportunities are resulting in a more crowded space environment. This study is part of NASA's work to rapidly improve our understanding of that environment as outlined in NASA's recently released Space Sustainability Strategy, by applying an economic lens to this critical issue.

NASA and Boeing need more time to make sure a helium leak on its CST-100 Starliner is low enough risk to send humans into space.

So the launch of NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams has now been pushed to May 25 targeting a 3:09 p.m. liftoff atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Space Launch Complex 41.

The duo were sitting in the capsule on the pad with about two hours left on the countdown clock on May 6 when a problem with a fluttering valve on the upper stage of the Atlas V forced mission managers to scrub.

After rolling the rocket back to ULA's Vertical Integration Facility near the pad and switching out the valve, managers found a second issue with a small helium leak on the Starliner's service module.

The source of the leak was traced to a flange on a reaction control thruster, and teams performed pressure tests that showed the leak was "stable and would not pose a risk at that level during the flight," according to a NASA press release.

After a nearly two-year hiatus, Blue Origin flew adventurers to space on Sunday, including a former Air Force pilot who was denied the chance to be the United States' first Black astronaut decades ago.

It was the first crewed launch for the enterprise owned and founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos since a rocket mishap in 2022 left rival Virgin Galactic as the sole operator in the fledgling suborbital tourism market.

Six people including the sculptor Ed Dwight, who was on track to become NASA's first ever astronaut of color in the 1960s before being controversially spurned, launched around 09:36 am local time (1436 GMT) from the Launch Site One base in west Texas, a live feed showed.

Blue Origin is set to fly adventurers to the final frontier on Sunday for the first time in nearly two years, reigniting competition in the space tourism market after a rocket mishap put its crewed operations on hold.

Six people including Black sculptor and former Air Force pilot Ed Dwight, who was controversially spurned by NASA's astronaut corps in the 1960s, will blast off at 8:52 am local time (1352 GMT) from the Launch Site One base in west Texas, the company said on social media.

Dwight—at 90 years, 8 months and 10 days—is set to become the oldest person to go to space, narrowly pipping Star Trek actor William Shatner, who was almost two months younger when he launched with Blue Origin in 2021.