September 13, 2025

New Study Complicates Enceladus (Source: Space.com)
Enceladus, one of Saturn's small icy moons, spans just 300 miles (500 kilometers) — yet despite its modest size, it has become a star in the search for life beyond Earth. From cracks near its south pole, the moon blasts towering geysers of water vapor, ice and organic molecules into space, which are tantalizing hints of a hidden ocean that could, in theory, be habitable.

But new research presented this week at a planetary science conference in Finland shows that many of the organic molecules detected in these plumes could also form right on the moon's surface, driven by relentless radiation from Saturn's magnetic field. The results cast doubt on whether the plumes truly carry whispers of alien life, or merely echoes of lifeless chemistry on the frozen shell. (9/12)

Sidus Space Plans Another Public Offering (Source: Sidus Space)
Sidus Space intends to offer to sell shares of its Class A common stock in a best-efforts public offering. The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the offering for working capital and general corporate purposes. (9/12)

How China Is Transforming Space Power (Source: The Diplomat)
Space is crucial for national strength, global influence, and future industrial development. Today, Beijing is building an integrated space infrastructure, including reusable launch vehicles, orbital refueling and logistics, satellite mass production, and lunar industrialization. These interconnected capabilities aim to establish a strategic presence in Earth orbit, cislunar space, and on the Moon.

Why should the world care? Because space is becoming the “strategic high ground” of the 21st century. Whoever controls it will influence global communications, access to resources, scientific progress, planetary defense, and military security. Chinese space power is evolving in three areas, and it’s a rapid shift, especially concerning its impact on policy, doctrine, and strategy. These areas include reusable rockets; logistics, refueling, and in-orbit manufacturing; and ultimately, a base on the Moon. (9/12)

Fishermen and Surfers Oppose Starship Impacts in Florida (Source: SPACErePORT)
Local commercial fishermen working out of Port Canaveral say the fish they target (Pompano, Bluefish, King and Spanish Mackerel) disappear for 4-5 days after every Falcon 9 launch. The launches are happening so often now, they did not have a Spanish Mackerel season at all this year. The Spanish Mackerel never returned close to the beach and may have taken off for the Carolinas. Mexican fishermen also report declining fish stocks near the Boca Chica launch site.

"We are losing our commercial fishermen to the Carolinas and South Florida because they can no longer make a living fishing off the Cape." Meanwhile, I'm told groups like the Surfrider Foundation have voiced their concerns about Starship's local environmental impacts. (9/12)

NASA Workers Plan 3rd Protest at D.C. Headquarters on Sep. 15 to Decry Trump's Science Funding Cuts (Source: Space.com)
NASA employees are once again taking to the streets to raise awareness about deep science cuts and layoffs at the space agency. A third "Save NASA" protest is set for Monday, Sept. 15, outside the agency's Washington, D.C. headquarters. The demonstration is being organized by NASA Needs Help — a group formed by employees and supporters at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and endorsed by the Goddard Engineers, Scientists and Technicians Association (GESTA). (9/12)

NASA Awards Third Glenn Facility and Engineering Services Contract (Source: NASA)
NASA has selected Troy Sierra JV, LLC of Huntsville, Alabama, to provide engineering, research, and scientific support at the agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. The Test Facility Operations, Maintenance, and Engineering Services III contract is a cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a maximum potential value of approximately $388.3 million. (9/12)

Soyuz Rocket Launches Russian Military Satellite (Source: TASS)
he combat crew of the Aerospace Forces launched a Soyuz-2.1b medium-class carrier rocket carrying a Russian Defense Ministry’s spacecraft and the Mozhaets-6 training and research spacecraft from the Plesetsk spaceport in the Arkhangelsk Region. (9/13)

AI and Other Trends in Technology are Starting to Supercharge the Space Industry (Source: Geekwire)
Artificial intelligence and other technological trends are smoothing the way for commercial space ventures ranging from multibillion-dollar companies to a new wave of startups. It probably comes as no surprise that Blue Origin, the space company created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is taking advantage of AI.

But other AI-fueled applications might raise an eyebrow. For example, Rebel Space is helping satellite companies generate synthetic data that could point to a potential valve failure long before the spacecraft is launched. Click here. (9/12)

Maxar Executive Warns Budget Cuts Threaten Commercial Remote Sensing Industry (Source: Space News)
A Maxar Intelligence executive warned that the U.S. government risks undermining battlefield operations by cutting funding for commercial satellite imagery, renewing industry concerns raised in a June letter to Congress. Maxar executive Susanne Hake pressed the case that commercial firms can deliver faster and for less cost than bespoke government satellites, but need predictable funding and contracts to keep investing. (9/12)

Carrying Enough Water to Make Return-Trip Propellant Simplifies a Starship Mission to Mars (Source: Space News)
The idea of a human mission to explore Mars has been studied repeatedly over the past 75 years. More than 1,000 piloted Mars mission studies were conducted inside and outside NASA between about 1950 and 2000. Many were the product of NASA and industry study teams, while others were the work of committed individuals or private organizations. I compiled a history of human mission studies through 2023. Essentially all of these mission design concepts were deemed impractical but now, if the SpaceX Starship proves flightworthy, new possibilities could finally emerge as the constraints on space travel change. (9/12)

Two Billionaires Have Very Different — and Equally Wild — Visions of a Future in Space. Is Either Possible? (Source: CNN)
Musk and Bezos have different ideas of what humans’ future in space should look like, and their visions are not mutually exclusive. But each presents its own challenges — technically, financially, politically and ethically. Musk has long made known his singular focus on Mars, envisioning a day in which the red planet hosts a sprawling settlement of people.

Meanwhile, Bezos, whose influence in the space industry has been somewhat tempered by his rocket company’s slower pace, has kept his focus a bit closer to home. He has touted a vision of moving “heavy industry and polluting industry off Earth” — perhaps onto spinning spaceborne laboratories where colonies of humans live and work full time. In Bezos’ imagined future, Earth is reserved for living and vacationing, perhaps preserved indefinitely as a national park.

Musk and Bezos have billed their extraterrestrial pursuits as philanthropic, saying that off-Earth colonies are a form of life insurance that will guarantee humanity’s survival if a natural or human-made catastrophe leaves our home planet uninhabitable. But there are significant differences between their ideas of cosmic habitation. Click here. (9/12)

House Appropriators Approve FY2026 Budget for NASA (Source: Spacce Policy Online)
The House Appropriations Committee approved the FY2026 Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill last evening including funding for NASA. The committee disagreed with the Trump Administration’s proposal to cut NASA’s budget by 24.3 percent and instead keeps the agency at roughly the same level as FY2025 — $24.8 billion. The House committee has a stronger emphasis on human exploration than its Senate counterpart, but the agency fares much better on both sides of Capitol Hill than it did in the president’s request. (9/11)

FOSAI Acquired by Pasteur Labs (Source: Cornell Chronicle)
FOSAI, an aerospace and defense technology company led by Gregory Falco, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell, has been acquired by Pasteur Labs, a developer of artificial intelligence–driven physics simulation tools.
The acquisition merges FOSAI’s expertise in defense and aerospace with Pasteur’s “Simulation Intelligence” platform. This integration can speed up research and development in the aerospace, automotive and energy sectors. (9/12)

NASA Regains Contact with TRACERS Spacecraft (Source: The Register)
After a month of receiving the silent treatment, controllers have regained contact with a TRACERS spacecraft that went offline shortly after launch. The mission operations team has regained contact with Space Vehicle 1 (SV1) and is working to recover the spacecraft and establish science operations. The two TRACERS (Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites) were launched on July 23. (9/11)

Xplore Shows Off a Hyperspectral View of North Korea, Captured by XCUBE-1 (Source: GeekWire)
Nine months after the launch of its first satellite, Xplore is sharing a hyperspectral view of North Korean territory as seen from orbit. The image, captured in visible and near-infrared wavelengths by Xplore’s XCUBE-1 satellite, was unveiled today at the Seattle Space Superiority Summit at the Museum of Flight. Xplore’s co-founder and chief operating officer, Lisa Rich, said the picture shows “semi-submerged farms that are likely rice paddies,” plus fish farms and salt flats. (9/11)

British Woman Among Crew Training for Mars Simulation Mission (Source: The Guardian)
It sounds like the premise of a new reality show: take four strangers, isolate them in a 3D-printed Martian habitat for more than a year, and watch them tackle equipment failures, communication delays and attempts to grow vegetables. In fact, it is a scientific simulation – and for the first time a British pilot is among those training for the mission.

Laura Marie, who was born in the UK and is now a pilot for a regional airline in the US, beat about 8,000 applicants to become one of six research volunteers who are preparing to spend 378 days inside the 1,700 sq ft Mars Dune Alpha habitat at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. (9/13)

NASA Finds Signs of Mars Life, Trump Wants to Cancel Sample Return Mission (Source: Futurism)
While we're still far from a definitive conclusion about current or ancient life on Mars, it was an exciting finding, with a sampled rock containing minerals closely associated with Earth-based microbial life. The only problem? The Trump administration has made it clear that it's not interested in returning the samples taken by NASA's Perseverance rover back to Earth for laboratory analysis.

The agency's Mars Sample Return mission had been a hot-button topic for years, with lawmakers balking at the proposed plan's astronomical price tag of $11 billion. But the Trump administration wants to nix the mission altogether in its potentially devastating 2026 budget proposal, alongside dozens of other planetary science missions. (9/12)

Boeing Defense Workers Reject Contract, Strike Continues (Source: Reuters)
Striking workers at Boeing Defense rejected the company's latest contract offer on Friday, sending the stoppage toward its seventh week. The roughly 3,200 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 837 went on strike on August 4 after rejecting the company's previous offer. (9/12)

Webb Detects Methane Gas on Dwarf Planet Makemake (Source: Sci News)
Using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have found evidence for gaseous methane on the distant dwarf planet Makemake. This discovery challenges the traditional view of Makemake as a quiescent, frozen body and makes it only the second trans-Neptunian object, after Pluto, where the presence of gas has been confirmed. (9/9)

Judge Allows Trump to Cut More Than $1 Billion in National Science Foundation Grants (Source: The Guardian)
The Trump administration can go ahead and purge more than 1,600 research grants issued by National Science Foundation (NSF) worth more than $1bn, after a judge declined to grant a preliminary injunction in a case brought by a coalition of organizations representing thousands of scientists. The NSF is the premier federal investor in basic and cutting-edge science and engineering, which until Trump’s second term enjoyed bipartisan support, with the agency’s independent review process revered globally as the gold standard. (9/10)

US Missile Strikes UFO in Video (Source: CBS)
A newly released video captured by a U.S. reaper drone shows a glowing orb off the coast of Yemen. Then in the video, a Hellfire missile suddenly struck the unidentified object and bounced off it. Rep. Eric Burlison, a Republican from Missouri, shared the video at a House Oversight hearing on Tuesday.

The video, dated Oct. 30, 2024, was provided by a whistleblower and when slowed down, the missile can be seen continuing on its own path after striking the orb. A recent government report revealed that it had received more than 750 new UAP sightings between May 2023 and June 2024, leaving lawmakers digging into the mystery and national security concerns posed by the objects. (9/10)

For Too Long, Colonial Language has Dominated Space Exploration. There is a Better Way (Source: The Conversation)
At an internal staff briefing last week, acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy declared the United States has a “manifest destiny to the stars”, linking this to the need to win the “space race”. The phrasing invokes US nationalism that’s historically been used to justify colonial expansion and empire-building.

Language matters. How we talk about space exploration shapes the futures we imagine and build. As two space governance specialists working together – one non-Indigenous, one Indigenous – we see an urgent need for a different way to view space. An Indigenous-inspired lens can help us envision and build a future with stewardship and shared responsibility, not competition and conquest. (9/11)

Kazakhstan Reimagines Soviet-Era Space Sites as Tourist Getaways (Source: Euro News)
Kazakhstan is transforming launch sites at the world’s first cosmodrome into a tourism hub, aiming to attract 50,000 visitors by 2029 with glamping, hotels, and a children’s camp at the birthplace of human spaceflight. While Russia continues to lease Baikonur Cosmodrome, it has so far returned over 50 decommissioned facilities to Kazakhstan, which the government plans to convert to a year-round tourism facility to attract visitors – not just for rocket launches.

Visitor infrastructure is in the works around iconic sites like Gagarin’s launchpad – the oldest and most famous launch pad at Baikonur, where the world's first human spaceflight took place in 1961 – with immersive experiences, hotels, glamping facilities, and a children’s camp. (9/10)

Musk Says Buying Verizon is "not Out of the Question" (Source: Phone Arena)
If Verizon ever decides to sell itself, it's sure to have one potential customer: Elon Musk. Musk is already involved in the carrier business through his company SpaceX's partnership with T-Mobile. SpaceX relies on T-Mobile's mid-band PCS spectrum to bring connectivity to areas with no terrestrial towers using its Starlink satellites. That calculus has somewhat changed because SpaceX has agreed to buy spectrum from EchoStar for nearly $17 billion. (9/11)

Can Houston Remain “Space City”? (Source: Texas Monthly)
After massive budget cuts at NASA, Johnson Space Center—and the private companies that rely on it—needs a little help from Congress to stay the center of the crewed space flight universe. For decades, Houston has remained the preeminent spot for crewed spaceflight—the central hub of the Apollo moon shot, Space Shuttle missions, and operations on the ISS. Generations of astronauts have trained at JSC.

But as NASA increasingly weaves commercial enterprises into its exploration plans, Houston leaders are adapting to accommodate a privatized space industry. If the city doesn’t, there are places in Florida, Colorado, and California that appear happy to cater to companies like Axiom. (9/11)

Lebanon Licenses Starlink (Source: AP)
Lebanon has granted a license to Elon Musk’s Starlink to provide satellite internet services in the crisis-hit country known for its crumbling infrastructure. Starlink will provide internet services throughout Lebanon via satellites operated by Musk’s SpaceX. (9/12)

AST SpaceMobile Jabs SpaceX for Overloading Earth's Orbit With Satellites (Source: PC Mag)
SpaceX's approach to satellite cellular connectivity is facing criticism from rival AST SpaceMobile, which claims it can achieve the same results without flooding Earth’s orbit with “thousands” of satellites. Texas-based AST threw the subtle shade in a Tuesday post that touted its “commitment to responsible space operations,” which includes keeping the skies clear of satellite debris.

The company didn’t name SpaceX, but it did allude to the home broadband-focused Starlink constellation, which currently spans over 8,000 satellites and could one day reach 30,000, if SpaceX receives regulatory approval. In contrast, AST says its own satellite system promises to be a leaner alternative. (9/11)

Protestors in Mexico Oppose Impact of Bigger SpaceX Launches (Source: Texas Standard)
This really exploded on the southern side of the border about two or three SpaceX launches ago when they started finding large pieces of debris on the Mexican beaches... Big carbon composite cylinders used for high-pressure gas storage. But also “millions of pieces of plastic” that have been spread on the beach that they’re really concerned about in terms of the ecosystem.

And also because of the noise, I mean, that’s also gotten a lot louder. About 900 endangered turtles have been found dead. What they’re finding is that the sand above their underground nest is being compacted by some of these explosions at Starbase. This is something that they’ve been looking at.

Federal officials in Mexico, including Mexico’s president, has talked about this, and they floated the idea of taking legal action against SpaceX based on some of the impacts we’ve been detailing here. (9/11)

Westminster Knocks Out Scotland’s Rocket Launch (Source: Business for Scotland)
Scotland’s chance to lead Europe in small-satellite launch is under threat. The Scottish Affairs Committee couldn’t have put it plainer this week: our “first-mover advantage” is being knocked back by a UK Government that won’t match the sector’s pace with sustained, strategic backing.

This is a sector of innovation and energy - but Westminster has little attention to spare for Scotland. As always, we have to wait patiently for crumbs from England’s table. Meanwhile Norway is moving to take the opportunity to get into the lead. What’s so frustrating is that we have such a strong base to build on if only Scotland held the purse strings and the decision-making power to do it. (9/11)