January 2, 2026

China's Landspace Targets $1 Billion for Reusable Rockets as IPO Application Accepted (Source: Space News)
Landspace, one of China’s leading launch startups, has had its application for an initial public offering accepted by the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s STAR Market. The Shanghai Stock Exchange website showed the IPO status for Landspace Technology Co., Ltd. had changed to “accepted,” Chinese media reported Dec. 31. Landspace, which recently made China’s first-ever attempt at recovering an orbital booster, is seeking to raise around $1 billion (7.5 billion yuan), according to its prospectus, to support its drive to develop and scale reusable launch services. (12/31)

GPS is Key to the Global Economy. It’s Also Surprisingly Easy to Attack (Source: Washington Post)
Recent disruptions stoked fear about the security vulnerabilities of GPS, a satellite network relied on daily by 6 billion people, businesses and governments. Over the past two years, interference with the U.S. Global Positioning System has grown dramatically, threatening a network that is highly vulnerable to attack in a conflict. The danger could be posed by enemy or rogue nation-states — or even just hobbyists with commercially available equipment. (12/31)

After Missing Multiple Deadlines, Gaganyaan’s First Uncrewed Mission Likely to Lift-off by March (Source: Indian Express)
The timeline for India’s human spaceflight program has been a moving target — with another year passing without the first of three uncrewed missions taking off despite a revised deadline. Now, as per the new timeline, the first uncrewed mission — HLVM3 G1/ OM1 — is likely before March this year. This mission will use an unpressurised crew module to demonstrate the complete mission — the human-rated launch vehicle will put the spacecraft in a low earth orbit, ensure re-entry of the crew module, a smooth splashdown and recovery of the module. (1/2)

Data Centers in Space: A Brilliant Idea — If You Ignore Physics, Economics, and Time (Source: Andreas Bergweiler)
It sounds elegant. It sounds futuristic. It also sounds like someone skipped several chapters of physics, logistics, and basic accounting. Let’s talk about data centers in space — not as fantasy, but as a systems problem. And let’s be honest enough to separate what might work someday from what absolutely does not work now. The idea persists because real problems are colliding: AI workloads are exploding exponentially; terrestrial grids hitting limits; water scarcity is turning cooling into a political issue; land use conflicts and zoning hell; and carbon accounting is becoming non-optional.

Modern space-grade solar arrays deliver roughly 200–300 W/m² at the beginning of life, but this decreases over time. A single hyperscale data center on Earth consumes 50–100 MW. Do the math: 100 MW ÷ 250 W/m² ≈ 400,000 m² of solar arrays. That’s not a panel — that’s a flying solar farm. Plus structure, pointing, wiring, redundancy, and radiation hardening present challenges.

And cooling? This is where the idea usually collapses. Space is cold, but space is also a vacuum. There is no convection. Heat leaves only via radiation. Radiative cooling is governed by the Stefan–Boltzmann law, not vibes. To radiate 1 MW of waste heat, you need thousands of square meters of radiator area, depending on temperature and emissivity. A 50 MW data center? Congratulations—you just designed a heat rejection system larger than the ISS for a single facility. [So orbiting data centers are like Golden Dome, a grandiose idea that will attract a ton of overspending (private and public) despite real concerns about feasibility.] (12/30)

An Engineer Says He’s Found a Way to Overcome Earth’s Gravity (Source: Popular Mechanics)
While at NASA, Charles Buhler helped establish the Electrostatics and Surface Physics Laboratory at Kennedy Space Center in Florida—a very important lab that basically ensures rockets don’t explode. Now, as co-founder of the space company Exodus Propulsion Technologies, Buhler told the website The Debrief that they’ve created a drive powered by a “New Force” outside our current known laws of physics, giving the propellant-less drive enough boost to overcome gravity.

“The most important message to convey to the public is that a major discovery occurred,” Buhler told The Debrief. “This discovery of a New Force is fundamental in that electric fields alone can generate a sustainable force onto an object and allow center-of-mass translation of said object without expelling mass.” Buhler stressed that this work is unaffiliated with NASA. He says his team—made up of people from NASA, Blue Origin, and the Air Force—investigated propellant-less drives for decades before arriving at electrostatics.

For years, their devices produced negligible thrust, but saw increases with each new iteration. This culminated in 2023, when this “New Force”-powered drive generated enough thrust to overcome Earth’s gravity. “Essentially, what we’ve discovered is that systems that contain an asymmetry in either electrostatic pressure or some kind of electrostatic divergent field can give a system of a center of mass a non-zero force component,” Buhler told The Debrief. “So, what that basically means is that there’s some underlying physics that can essentially place force on an object should those two constraints be met.” (1/1)

Misfiring Spaceport Puts £31 Million Dent in Fortunes of Scotland's Richest Man (Source: Daily Mail)
He is worth around £10 billion so these results are perhaps in the realm of loose change to him. But a misfiring spaceport has helped put a £31 million dent in the fortunes of Scotland’s richest man, documents reveal. Highland magnate Anders Povlsen is at the forefront of efforts to restore and decommercialize the north of the country. But the latest accounts of his company, Wildland Ltd, suggest it’s not a straightforward task. (1/1)

Planetary Society Warns of Upcoming Deep NASA Cuts (Source: KING5)
Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, said the White House has proposed cutting NASA's Science Mission Directorate by 47% for fiscal year 2026 — the largest single-year reduction in the agency's history. The cuts would represent a $156 million loss for Washington state, which currently receives an average of $623 million annually in NASA contracts and grants. Dreier warned the reductions could eliminate more than 1,500 aerospace jobs in Washington and terminate 41 active or planned NASA missions nationwide. "This is actually the largest single year proposed cut for NASA ever in its history," Dreier said. (1/1)

China Warns Elon Musk’s Starlink Satellites Pose ‘Safety and Security’ Risk (Source: Independent)
Beijing has warned the United Nations that the rapid expansion of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite constellations in low-Earth orbit pose “pronounced safety and security” concerns globally. “With the rapid expansion of commercial space activities, the unchecked proliferation of commercial satellite constellations by a certain country, in the absence of effective regulation, has given rise to pronounced safety and security challenges,” a Chinese representative said at an informal UN Security Council event. The Beijing representative cited several incidents, including near collisions between Starlink satellites and the Chinese space station in 2021. (1/2)

Starlink Plans to Lower Satellite Orbit to Enhance Safety in 2026 (Source: Reuters)
Starlink will begin a reconfiguration of its satellite constellation by lowering all of its satellites orbiting at around 550 km (342 miles) to 480 km over the course of 2026, said Michael Nicolls, SpaceX's vice president of Starlink engineering. The company is looking to increase space safety by lowering the satellites' orbit.

This comes after Starlink said in December that one of its satellites experienced an anomaly in space, creating a "small" amount of debris and cutting off communications with the spacecraft at 418 km in altitude, a rare kinetic accident in orbit for the satellite internet giant. The company had said the satellite, one of nearly 10,000 in space for its broadband internet network, quickly fell four kilometers in altitude, suggesting some kind of explosion occurred on board. (1/1)

Denmark’s First Mission to the Moon Gets ESA Greenlight (Source: European Spaceflight)
The European Space Agency has selected to proceed with a Danish-led satellite mission as one of a number of small, relatively inexpensive missions to the Moon. Called Máni, after the Norse personification of the Moon, the mission is expected to be launched in 2029 and will conduct high-resolution mapping of the lunar surface.

ESA published a call for ideas for small, cost-effective missions to the Moon in late 2023. The aim of the project was to enable more frequent and lower-risk lunar exploration by supporting missions that could be developed and launched quickly, allowing the agency to adapt to swiftly evolving scientific priorities and technological capabilities. Under this program, proposed missions are required not to exceed a development cost of €50 million and to be ready to launch within four and a half years. (1/2)

Starship Barge Identified Ahead of Starbase to KSC Transports (Source: NSF)
SpaceX is gearing up for a new chapter in its ambitious Starship program, with the company confirming the successful trial run of a specialized transport barge for moving massive Starship vehicles from its Starbase facility in Texas to launch sites on Florida’s Space Coast. The development follows months of speculation after SpaceX's Kiko Dontchev first outlined the company’s transportation strategy in September. That information was part of a plan conceived years ago, requiring Elon Musk to confirm the initial Starbase-to-KSC shipping plan after enthusiasts initially claimed vehicles could not be transported horizontally, which is the only viable procedure for shipping a 237-foot-tall booster.

Dontchev also clarified that both the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage would be tilted to a horizontal position for maritime transit, in response to an artist’s rendering of a Starship traveling vertically aboard a vessel. “Initial deliveries are a single booster or ship per trip, with the plan to move to multiple vehicles per transit sooner than later,” he wrote. (1/1)

Who is Responsible for Commercial Satellites Crucial to National Security? (Source: Washington Times)
This scenario seems highly likely in a major 21st-century conflict: An adversary destroys some of the commercial space satellites on which the U.S. military relies. Will the U.S. government cover the costs of replacing those satellites, given their vital role in national security? Will each company with such assets in orbit be treated the same by an across-the-board federal policy or a new law? Or will individual firms negotiate with the Pentagon on their own terms of financial protection and wartime reimbursement, depending on how badly the government needs the specific capability that only they can provide?

Those questions are a priority inside the Defense Department and in the C-suites of leading U.S. defense companies. In many ways, they represent a uniquely American problem. The thin lines between government and industry in communist China, for example, erase any uncertainty about who is ultimately responsible for defense-related assets in space. (12/30)

The Future of Space Exploration Depends on Better Biology (Source: The Economist)
The typical number of people in space at any given time is currently ten: seven on the International Space Station shared by the space agencies of America, Canada, Europe, Japan and Russia, and three on China’s Tiangong. Jeff Bezos, a celebrity bridegroom and former bookseller, believes that in the coming decades this number will increase by five orders of magnitude to a million or so. Elon Musk, a carmaker and social-media provocateur, suggests similar numbers could soon be settling on Mars. Even if you think such predictions are outlandish, the two tycoons are clearly right about one thing. The number is set to rise. Click here. (12/30)

Turkey Begins First Phase of Somali Spaceport (Source: Nanafn)
Türkiye has finalized feasibility assessments and design preparations for a spaceport it plans to build in Somalia, with the initial stage of construction now underway, according to official statements made on Tuesday. Earlier the same day, Türkiye’s president publicly outlined the spaceport initiative during a joint appearance with Somalia’s president in Istanbul, drawing attention to the project as a key element of bilateral cooperation. Speaking to reports about the details, the industry and technology minister said the launch facility is being developed on land granted to Türkiye in Somalia under a bilateral cooperation agreement signed by the two countries.

According to the minister, the spaceport will primarily enable Türkiye to independently launch domestically developed satellite launch vehicles, while also fostering a sustainable and competitive national industrial base for launch technologies. He underlined that this ecosystem—spanning critical fields such as rocket engines, fuel systems, propulsion technologies, advanced materials, avionics, and ground support infrastructure—will ensure lasting technological progress and reduce reliance on external actors. The spaceport is also expected to serve international commercial demand. (12/31)

GomSpace Secures 50MSEK Contract with Leading European Defense Firm (Source: Spacewatch Global)
GomSpace has announced securing a contract from a leading European Defense company for a Space R&D program. This contract, for a total value of EUR 4.6 million (50MSEK), will notably comprise the design, integration and delivery of a configured microsatellite platform that will be tentatively fully executed by the summer of 2027. (1/2)

Gargantuan Black Hole May Be a Remnant From the Dawn of the Universe (Source: New Scientist)
An unusually massive black hole in the very early universe may be a kind of exotic, star-less black hole first theorized by Stephen Hawking. In August, Boyuan Liu at the University of Cambridge and his colleagues spotted a strange galaxy from 13 billion years ago, called Abell 2744-QSO1, with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The galaxy appeared to host an enormous black hole, around 50 million times the mass of the sun, but it was almost entirely devoid of stars. (1/2)

Rare Saturn-Sized Rogue Planet is First to Have its Mass Measured (Source: New Scientist)
Nearly 10,000 light years away, a planet the size of Saturn is floating all on its own through empty space. In a stroke of luck, researchers were able to spot this strange, dark world using both ground-based telescopes and the Gaia space telescope, allowing them to measure the mass of a free-floating, or rogue, exoplanet for the first time.

Most rogue worlds that have been found are either more massive than Jupiter or lighter than Neptune, leaving in the middle a gap in size that researchers refer to as the “Einstein desert”. This has generally been attributed to the idea that lighter-than-Neptune worlds are relatively easy to eject from pre-existing orbits around stars, whereas planets more massive than Jupiter don’t have to form inside traditional planetary systems, but can sometimes form similarly to stars in free space. (1/1)

Europe Is Losing the Space Race. More Rules Won't Help (Source: Bloomberg)
As space rapidly becomes an essential battlefield, Europe risks being left behind. Its current approach to the new space race — regulate first, compete later — is unlikely to help. Ukraine’s dependence on SpaceX’s Starlink for military communications has exposed a strategic vulnerability that the European Union is now struggling to address. In its war with Russia, Ukraine has coordinated strikes and battlefield logistics through a single American company’s 8,000-plus satellite constellation — a scale and capability Europe can’t currently match. (1/2)

Muon Space Secures Direct to Phase II Award for SDA Missile Warning and Tracking Mission (Source: Space Daily)
Muon Space has secured a Direct to Phase II award to support the Space Development Agency's missile warning and tracking mission, advancing the company's role in developing space based sensing capabilities for national defense. The award enables Muon Space to continue development of its QuickBeam multispectral electro optical and infrared payload technology, which is designed to provide persistent sensing and tracking of advanced missile threats from low Earth orbit. The payload combines multiple spectral bands to improve detection sensitivity and tracking accuracy across a range of operational conditions. (1/1)

The Sticky Problem of Lunar Dust Gets a Mathematical Solution (Source: Universe Today)
Apollo astronauts discovered an unexpected enemy on the Moon. Fine dust, kicked up by their movements and attracted by static electricity, coated everything. It found its way through seals, scratched visors, and clung to suits despite vigorous brushing. Eugene Cernan described it as one of the most aggravating aspects of lunar operations. More than five decades later, as humanity prepares to return to the Moon with increasingly sophisticated equipment, solving the lunar dust problem has become critical.

Researchers from the Beijing Institute of Technology, China Academy of Space Technology, and Chinese Academy of Sciences have now developed a detailed theoretical model that explains precisely how charged dust particles interact with spacecraft surfaces during low velocity collisions. (12/31)

Gaia Spots Worlds Being Born (Source: Universe Today)
Planets form inside swirling discs of gas and dust surrounding newborn stars, hidden that make them extraordinarily difficult to detect. Astronomers know these protoplanetary discs contain the raw ingredients for planetary systems because our own Solar System condensed from such a disc 4.6 billion years ago, but actually spotting planets while they’re still forming has remained one of astronomy’s great challenges. Until now, very few planets have been confirmed around stars that are still in their infancy.

ESA’s Gaia space telescope has changed that equation. A team led by Miguel Vioque at the European Southern Observatory used Gaia to study 98 young stellar systems, and found evidence for unseen companions in 31 of them. The breakthrough came from Gaia’s extraordinary precision in measuring stellar positions and motions. Even planets too small and faint to see directly exert gravitational tugs on their host stars, causing them to wobble slightly. Gaia detects these wobbles by tracking how stars move against the background sky with unprecedented accuracy. (1/1)