Category: Universe Today

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Universe Today

NASA faces another shift in its leadership — and its vision

An artist's conception shows astronauts on the moon with SpaceX's Starship lander in the background. (Credit: NASA)

NASA is facing increasingly sharp challenges as it pursues its goal of landing astronauts on the moon again before this decade is out — and as the space agency braces for another leadership change, it’s clear that the year ahead will also bring further challenges. How will NASA fare?

“There’s a lot left up in the air, though the signs are more positive than I would have said a couple of months ago,” Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the nonprofit Planetary Society, said this week at the ScienceWriters2025 conference in Chicago.

One of the big issues left up in the air has to do with who’ll be at the helm at the world’s leading space agency. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump chose tech billionaire Jared Isaacman to become NASA’s administrator. In May, Trump withdrew the nomination in the midst of a spat with SpaceX founder Elon Musk — but just this month, Isaacman’s nomination was revived.

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Universe Today

Super-quiet X-59 supersonic jet makes first test flight

X-59 aircraft flying over Mojave Desert with mountains in background
The X-59 low-boom supersonic aircraft flies over California's Mojave Desert. (Credit: Lockheed Martin)

In partnership with NASA, Lockheed Martin Skunk Works has executed the first test flight of the X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft. This week’s first flight was subsonic, but eventually the plane will demonstrate technologies aimed at reducing sonic booms to gentle thumps.

“We are thrilled to achieve the first flight of the X-59,” OJ Sanchez, Skunk Works’ vice president and general manager, said in a news release. “This aircraft is a testament to the innovation and expertise of our joint team, and we are proud to be at the forefront of quiet supersonic technology development.”

Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy called the X-59 “a symbol of American ingenuity.”

“The American spirit knows no bounds. It’s part of our DNA – the desire to go farther, faster and even quieter than anyone has ever gone before,” he said. “This work sustains America’s place as the leader in aviation and has the potential to change the way the public flies.”

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Universe Today

Impulse Space lays out its plan for deliveries to the moon

Illustration: Impulse Space lunar lander heading for the moon
An artist's conception shows Impulse Space's lunar lander leaving Earth orbit as a payload on a Helios kick stage. (Credit: Impulse Space)

Impulse Space, the California-based venture founded by veteran SpaceX engineer Tom Mueller, today unveiled its proposed architecture for delivering medium-sized payloads to the moon by as early as 2028.

In a blog posting, Mueller said the plan would fill a “critical gap in lunar cargo delivery capabilities.”

Mueller was Employee No. 1 at Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and is widely credited as the rocket scientist behind SpaceX’s success. He left the company in 2020 to found Impulse Space, which is focusing on ways to improve mobility in space.

Impulse’s Mira space tug already has demonstrated its capabilities in two LEO Express missions that took place in low Earth orbit in 2023 and 2025. The company is also developing a kick stage known as Helios, which would be capable of sending payloads to higher orbits.

“So far, Impulse’s mission has unfolded in the orbits closest to Earth, but our work to improve in-space mobility doesn’t end at geostationary orbit,” Mueller wrote. “That’s why we’re unveiling some of our initial plans for the next stages of our roadmap, starting with the moon.”

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Universe Today

SpaceX flies Starship to get ready for the next generation

Starship rising from launch pad, as seen from drone
SpaceX's Starship rises up from its launch pad in South Texas. (SpaceX via YouTube)

SpaceX closed out a dramatic chapter in the development of its super-heavy-lift Starship launch system today with a successful flight test that mostly followed the script for the previous flight test.

The 11th test flight began with the ascent of Starship’s Super Heavy booster from SpaceX’s Starbase launch pad in South Texas at 6:23 p.m. CT (4:23 p.m. PT). It was that particular pad’s last liftoff. An upgraded Pad 2 is being prepared to accommodate a more powerful Starship Version 3, with the first launch expected next year.

Starship V3 will feature an upgraded version of SpaceX’s methane-fueled Raptor engines and larger propellant tanks that are capable of in-orbit refueling.

The Super Heavy booster and its second stage, known as Ship, are being designed for missions in Earth orbit and beyond — and V3 is the version that’s meant to get SpaceX to that level.

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Universe Today

SpaceX’s Starship goes the distance in 10th test flight

Starship liftoff from Texas launch pad
SpaceX's Starship rocket rises from its launch pad at Starbase, Texas. (Credit: SpaceX via YouTube)

SpaceX executed the most successful flight test of its super-powerful Starship launch system to date, featuring Starship’s first-ever payload deployment and a thrilling Indian Ocean splashdown. Today’s 10th test flight followed three earlier missions that fell short of full success.

Starship’s Super Heavy booster rose from SpaceX’s Starbase launch pad in South Texas at 6:30 p.m. CT (4:30 p.m. PT) after a trouble-free countdown. The first launch attempt had to be called off on Aug. 24 due to a leaky hose in the ground support system, and a second attempt was scrubbed on Aug. 25 because of unacceptable weather.

During today’s liftoff, all 33 of the booster’s methane-fueled Raptor engines lit up to send the upper stage, known as Ship 37, to a height of more than 110 miles (180 kilometers). After stage separation, Ship’s six Raptor engines took over, and Super Heavy conducted a series of test maneuvers before sinking into the Gulf of Mexico.

“Incredible flight for booster today,” SpaceX engineer Amanda Lee said during today’s webcast.

Halfway through its not-quite-orbital trip, Ship 37 opened a slot to deploy eight thin Starlink satellite simulators, in a manner reminiscent of cranking out candies from a Pez dispenser. Hundreds of SpaceX employees cheered as they watched space-to-ground video feeds at Starbase and at the company’s HQ in California. The dummy satellites were designed to burn up during atmospheric re-entry.

Today’s successful deployment buoyed SpaceX’s confidence that in the future, each Starship mission will be able to deploy scores of next-generation satellites for the Starlink broadband data constellation.

The end of today’s test mission came when Ship made a blazing descent through the atmosphere. At one point, a webcam picked up a view of debris flying off from the skirt around the engines at the bottom of the rocket ship. Yet another shot showed red-hot material being blasted away from Ship 37’s control flaps.

“We’re kind of being mean to this Starship,” SpaceX launch commentator Dan Huot said. “We’re really trying to see what are its limits. … We are pushing it beyond essentially what we think we’ll have to fly at.”

Despite the damage, Ship 37 was able to relight its rocket engines, flip around and splash down into the Indian Ocean. Then it exploded into flames. The whole test flight took just a little more than an hour.

“We promised maximum excitement. Starship delivered,” Huot said.

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Universe Today

A plan to manage asteroid mining wins Schweickart Prize

Illustration: Mining spacecraft on asteroid with Earth in background
An artist's conception shows an asteroid mining operation with Earth in the background. (Credit: NASA)

The $10,000 Schweickart Prize is awarded every June to mark Asteroid Day and draw attention to risks from above — and this year’s prize is going to a team of students who are proposing a panel to focus on what could happen when we start tinkering with asteroids.

The winning proposal calls for the creation of a Panel on Asteroid Orbit Alteration, which would address the risks posed by unintended asteroid orbit changes. Such changes could crop up during asteroid mining operations, research missions to asteroids, or even when a spacecraft malfunctions and kicks an asteroid onto a perilous path.

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Universe Today

After awesome launch, Starship spins out of control

Starship liftoff
SpaceX's Starship rocket lifts off from its Texas launch pad. (Credit: SpaceX via X)

SpaceX’s Starship super-rocket got off to a great start today for its ninth flight test, but the second stage ran into a host of issues and made an uncontrolled re-entry.

The 400-foot-tall rocket’s first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, rose from its Starbase launch pad in Texas just after 6:30 p.m. CT (4:30 p.m. PT) with all 33 methane-fueled engines blazing. Cheers erupted from SpaceX’s teams in Texas and at the company’s HQ in California.

But the second stage, known as Ship, wasn’t able to open its payload doors for what would have been Starship’s first-ever payload deployment. The plan had called for Ship to send a set of eight Starlink satellite simulators into space. Instead, the experiment was scrubbed.

Minutes later, the Starship team got worse news: As the Ship headed toward a planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean, it began spinning uncontrollably. SpaceX commentator Dan Huot said the second stage lost attitude control, apparently due to propellant leaks.

“Not looking great with a lot of our on-orbit objectives today,” he said. Ship broke up as it descended over a wide swath of open ocean that had been cleared for the splashdown.

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Dazzling pictures celebrate Hubble’s 35 years in orbit

Four pictures from Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope's 35th-birthday presents include pictures of Mars, the Rosette Nebula, planetary nebula NGC 2899 and the barred spiral galaxy NGC 5335. Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

This week brings the Hubble Space Telescope’s 35th birthday — but instead of getting presents, the Hubble team is giving out presents in the form of four views of the cosmos, ranging from a glimpse of Mars to a glittering picture of a far-out galaxy.

It’s the latest observance of a tradition that goes back decades, in which NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute release pictures to celebrate the anniversary of Hubble’s launch into Earth orbit aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990.

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Lucy probe snaps closeup of weirdly shaped asteroid

Closeup of asteroid Donaldjohanson
NASA's Lucy probe captured this view of the asteroid Donaldjohanson from about 660 miles away. (NASA / Goddard / SwRI / JHUAPL / NOIRLab)

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft made a successful flyby of the second asteroid on its must-see list over the weekend, and sent back imagery documenting the elongated object’s bizarre double-lobed shape.

It turns out that asteroid Donaldjohanson — which was named after the anthropologist who discovered the fossils of a human ancestor called Lucy — is what’s known as a contact binary, with a couple of ridges in its narrow neck. In today’s image advisory, NASA compares the ridged structure to a pair of nested ice cream cones.

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Fresh findings revive debate about life on alien planet

Illustration: K2-18 b planet
An artist's conception shows the planet K2-18 b and its host star. (ESA / Hubble / M. Kornmesser)

Two new studies have sparked fresh debate about a faraway planet with a weird atmosphere. One of the studies claims additional evidence for the presence of life on the planet K2-18 b, based on chemical clues. The other study argues that such clues can be produced on a lifeless world covered with hot magma.

The hubbub illustrates how tricky it can be to determine whether life exists beyond Earth by looking for “biosignatures” with powerful telescopes — in this case, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. It also illustrates the potential pitfalls of reporting provocative results.

A study published today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters attracted widespread attention when it reported that the chemical signatures of dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide had been found in the atmosphere of K2-18 b, which orbits a red dwarf star 124 light-years away from Earth. The findings were a follow-up to an earlier study published by the same researchers, which detected carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

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