Verge Science is here to bring you the most up-to-date space news and analysis, whether it’s about the latest findings from NASA or comprehensive coverage of the next SpaceX rocket launch to the International Space Station. We’ll take you inside the discoveries of new exoplanets, space weather, space policy, and the booming commercial space industry.
Operation Space Station will air on November 5th and 12th, with the first part, High-Risk Build, focusing on the engineering and construction of the ISS. Part two, Science and Survival, will tell the stories of the astronauts who worked on the station and the challenges they faced, including several incidents that were nearly catastrophic.
Former Real World cast member and current Transportation Secretary / acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy recently said SpaceX was “behind” on its contract for Artemis III and proposed reopening it. (Elon Musk responded with a predictable slew of insults.)
Now SpaceX has a response, but its blog post is missing one thing: the details of this “simplified” approach.
In response to the latest calls, we’ve shared and are formally assessing a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations that we believe will result in a faster return to the Moon while simultaneously improving crew safety.
O2 Satellite won’t launch until the first half of 2026, and only with messaging and data for maps and location services at first, but it’s expected to expand. O2 customers can register their interest now, though pricing is still to come.
Starlink provides similar satellite service for T-Mobile in the US.
November 2nd will mark 25 years of continuous human occupation aboard the International Space Station, and Ars Technica points out this new ISS in Real Time website lets you revisit each and every day.
You can see crew rosters, camera footage, the astronauts’ schedule, and even listen to recorded announcements.
[ISS in Real Time]
The US is falling behind China, according to former space agency officials.
[Scientific American]
Airbus, Leonardo, and Thales are planning to pool their space services, systems manufacturing, and satellite activities into a new company that “could be operational in 2027.” Eutelsat’s OneWeb network is notably absent from this team-up, and other attempts to make a European SpaceX and Starlink rival have yet to take off.
The reduction — in the works before the government shutdown — comes from its Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Reuters reports is “NASA’s only federally funded research and development center.” The layoffs affect roughly a tenth of the JPL’s workforce, who will find out if they’re affected or not today.
[NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)]
Most supermassive black holes don’t just swallow up matter, they eject it, sometimes in spectacular jets of super heated plasma. Sagittarius A* at the center of our galaxy has seemed oddly quiet, though. But scientists believe they’ve finally found evidence this plasma wind, in the form of a cone-shaped gap in the gas surrounding the black hole. It’s not quite as dramatic as Centaurus A, but it has it’s own galactic charm.
In unsealed testimony, SpaceX investor Iqbaljit Kahlon says that some Chinese investors are “directly on the cap table.” This may raise some national security concerns, depending on how much information about SpaceX — which is deeply involved with the US defense department — gives to its investors.
We’ve grown so accustomed to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets launching and landing after deploying Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit, or sending real astronauts and cargo to the ISS, that it’s almost become dial tone — you just expect it.
After four explosions (flight tests seven, eight, and nine, as well as one on the ground), SpaceX successfully launched another prototype vehicle Tuesday night. This time, the Super Heavy booster rocket splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico as planned, as Starship deployed Starlink simulator satellites, then splashed down under control in the Indian Ocean.
Footage captured by ones of Sen’s 4K SpaceTV-1 streaming cameras installed on Airbus’ ISS Bartolomeo platform reveals the truly staggering scale of Hurricane Erin. According to the National Hurricane Center today, Erin “remains a sprawling hurricane, with its tropical-storm-force winds extending nearly 500 n mi across.”
The exceptionally bright meteor was spotted last night at around 11pm local time.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) hasn’t given it a name yet, but NASA has announced that astronomers discovered a new moon orbiting Uranus using images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope’s near-infrared camera last February.
Currently designated S/2025 U1, the tiny moon’s estimated to be around six miles in diameter which is potentially why it wasn’t previously spotted by Voyager 2 or other telescopes. It’s located about 35,000 miles from the center of Uranus in an orbit between Ophelia and Bianca.
[The New York Times]
The agency was already working on designing a reactor that might one day provide people with electricity on the moon. The Trump administration wants to try to speed things up and build a bigger reactor, Politico reports.
[politico.com]
NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation plan to launch the satellite on July 30th. The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission is supposed to track ice melt and land deformation, helping scientists better understand the impacts of flooding, earthquakes, and more.
[science.nasa.gov]
Amazon’s third batch of Project Kuiper satellites has launched into space on Elon Musk’s Falcon 9 rocket. The deployment of 24 Kuiper satellites comes just three hours after 26 Starlink satellites were deployed. Jeff Bezos plans to light up his space Internet service later this year with help from launch partners ULA, Arianespace, and yes, his own Blue Origin. The Kuiper constellation will eventually consist of more than 3,200 satellites, less than half of what Starlink already has operating, with more competitors to come.
“Each one of these new satellites is designed to provide over a terabit per second of downlink capacity (> 1,000 Gbps) and over 200 Gbps of uplink capacity to customers on the ground,” Starlink says. “This is more than 10 times the downlink and 24 times the uplink capacity of the second-generation satellites.”
Starlink is also touting how speed and latency have “radically improved.”
After years of working as NASA’s film liaison, Bert Ulrich is reportedly heading to Space 11 Corp — a studio focused on making cinematic projects about and sometimes set in outer space — where he will serve as executive vice president of production development and communications.
It’s bleeding senior-level talent with at least 2,145 employees taking buyouts, deferred resignations, and early retirement offers, Politico reports.
The Trump administration wants to cut thousands more jobs at NASA as part of its efforts to decimate the federal workforce. The Supreme Court just issued a decision yesterday that allows Trump to move forward with mass layoffs while a lawsuit challenging that plan plays out in lower courts.
Apparently following through on his threat to challenge Republicans who supported Donald Trump’s budget bill, Musk tweeted, “Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.” He also said it will be ready next year -- a “consistently proven wrong” theme for Musk.
“One way to execute on this would be to laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts,” to hold a deciding vote on “contentious laws,” said Musk on Friday.
The H.R.1 spending bill Trump signed Friday that expands mass deportations, cuts social services, and stalls clean energy projects also includes a requirement for a “Space Vehicle Transfer.”
The target is Space Shuttle Discovery, which Texas senators are attempting to snatch from the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian estimates moving it could cost more than $300 million, and there’s the small detail that the modified Boeing 747 used to transport the shuttles is no longer available.
Jenna Shumway, a former manager at SpaceX, accuses the company of failing to pay her as much as her male counterparts for similar work, as reported by TechCrunch.
In the lawsuit, Shumway also claims that one of her superiors, Daniel Collins, fostered a hostile work environment by beginning “a campaign of harassment and retaliation,” while also making “concerted efforts to terminate” her employment.
Another batch of Jeff Bezos’ Kuiper broadband satellites are now operating in low Earth orbit as Amazon prepares to light up its high-speed low-latency Starlink competitor later this year. It comes almost two months after Kuiper’s inaugural launch of 27 satellites on April 28th.
For those keeping score: that other billionaire is launching a few dozen broadband satellites every two days.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has released the first images taken by its Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) camera — the largest digital camera ever made — ahead of starting its 10-year survey of the southern sky. You can read up on details about these shots in PetaPixel’s report, and more images and video will be released later today following a Rubin Observatory livestream at 11AM ET.
