January 29, 2026

Electrically Powered Lunar Surface-to-Orbit Logistics: Power, Cadence, and Site Selection (Source: Gregg Koumbis)
Chemical rockets are unmatched for leaving Earth, but they may be poorly suited for routine lunar logistics. An Electromagnetic Rail Lunar Launch System (EMRLLS), a surface-based electromagnetic launch architecture, reframes lunar transport as an energy-storage and infrastructure problem rather than a propellant one. Payloads would be electromagnetically accelerated from the lunar surface into low lunar orbit (LLO), where they could be captured by an uncrewed grappler vehicle and transported to an orbital staging platform (e.g., Gateway or a future lunar logistics node).

In effect, EMRLLS functions as a lunar “freight elevator,” trading propellant mass for infrastructure and power. Initial MATLAB-based computations and system-level modeling indicate that the EMRLLS architecture is energetically plausible rather than speculative. Energy is accumulated gradually and buffered in supercapacitors and batteries, then released in short, high-power bursts during launch events. (1/28)

China’s Electromagnetic Sledge Goes Supersonic After US, USSR Efforts Fell Short (Source: Interesting Engineering)
In 2023, China’s ‘electromagnetic sledge’ system became the first large-scale electromagnetic launcher to break the sound barrier. During initial test runs, it accelerated test vehicles weighing one ton at speeds faster than Mach 1. With the system now operating in the eastern Chinese city of Jinan for over two years, scientists have provided new insight into the technologies making it possible.

With the new electromagnetic rail system, engineers overcame a persistent barrier to reliable supersonic performance. Namely, the sonic boom China’s electromagnetic sledge generates at ground level is powerful enough to destroy traditional sensors, the SCMP report states. At supersonic speeds, this is incredibly problematic. Even a tiny miscalculation due to missing data could mean disaster. (1/26)

Enlisted Soldiers Have Until April 30 to Apply for New Army space Operations Specialty (Source: Stars and Stripes)
Enlisted soldiers have until April 30 to apply for a new space operations specialty, the Army announced this week. The new career field, known as 40D tactical space operations specialist, is expected to be in place by Oct. 1. The specialty is open to Army active duty, National Guard and Reserve component soldiers, the Army said in a statement. “The establishment of 40D [Military Occupational Specialty] will alleviate the burden on other Army branches who are lending their soldiers to space operations,” said Lt. Gen. Sean A. Gainey. (1/28)

Time Flows Differently on the Red Planet, Forcing Future Space Missions to Adapt (Source: GeorgeVSheldon)
On Earth, sunset is just sunset. On Mars, it’s a scientific stopwatch. Inside mission control, engineers sit with two clocks on their screens: one ticking Earth seconds, the other sliding forward in Martian time, a “sol” that refuses to fit our neat 24-hour box. They joke about being “jet-lagged by a planet”, but the math behind their fatigue is brutal and precise.

Einstein said time would bend with gravity and motion. Mars has just turned that abstract idea into a daily, stubborn reality. A Martian day is 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds long. On paper, that looks harmless, just a line in a mission brief. Up close, it’s a slow, grinding shift that pulls you out of sync with your own planet. NASA teams working on Mars rovers talk about “living on Mars time”, going to bed at 6 a.m., waking up at noon, eating lunch in the dark. Every sol, their schedule drifts by those extra 39 minutes. (1/29)

The United States Bets on a Rotating Detonation Engine to Make its Hypersonic Missiles More Reliable (Source: KPubs)
GE Aerospace and Lockheed Martin have teamed up to design a rotating detonation ramjet for the US military. The goal is straightforward: build a compact, robust engine that gives hypersonic cruise missiles more range, higher speed and greater agility, without turning them into maintenance nightmares.

Traditional jet engines burn fuel in a smooth, continuous way, a bit like a steady campfire. A rotating detonation engine (RDE) behaves more like a spinning chain of tiny explosions, racing around a circular chamber tens of thousands of times per second. In this new US effort, the RDE is combined with a ramjet configuration, which uses the missile’s own forward speed to compress incoming air instead of relying on compressor blades. (1/28)

China’s Humanoid Robot Becomes World’s First to Connect with Orbiting Satellite (Source: Interesting Engineering)
X-Humanoid’s “Embodied Tien Kung” robot became the “world’s first” humanoid to establish a direct link with a low Earth orbit satellite. The robot allegedly achieved this feat at the 3rd Beijing Commercial Space Industry High-Quality Development Promotion Conference on January 23. The humanoid reportedly established a connection with GalaxySpace’s new wing-array integrated internet satellite and transmitted visual data in real time. (1/27)

York Space Starts Trading at $38 Per Share as CEO Touts ‘Golden Dome’ Potential (Source: CNBC)
York Space Systems opened on the New York Stock Exchange at $38 on Thursday, up 11.7% from its $34 IPO price. CEO Dirk Wallinger said the space and defense company’s integrated systems will help space defense development move faster at a lower cost.
Wallinger said the company is positioned to be a key contributor to President Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ missile defense project. (1/29)

Russian Scientists Build Plasma Engine That Could Reach Mars in 30 Days, Leaving Spacex’s Starship Looking Obsolete (Source: India Defense Review)
Russia is quietly testing a new space engine that could change everything about how we reach Mars. Early results suggest a leap in speed and tech no one saw coming, and it’s not coming from NASA or SpaceX. Russian researchers are testing a new plasma propulsion system that may accelerate future missions to Mars, reducing travel time from months to just one or two. The engine, developed by Rosatom’s Troitsk Institute, is now in ground-based trials and could be space-ready by 2030. (1/24)

Troubled Sentinel ICBM Program Still Being Restructured Nearly Two Years After Cost Breach (Source: TWZ)
The U.S. Air Force general who oversees America’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force sees a long future ahead for the new LGM-35A Sentinel after it eventually enters service. At the same time, he has acknowledged challenges surrounding the Sentinel program, which is still being restructured nearly two years after huge cost overruns triggered a full review. Northrop Grumman, the prime contractor for the missile, says it is now working with the Air Force to try to re-accelerate the program, which is now years, if not decades, behind schedule. (1/27)

A Possible Ice-Cold Earth Discovered in the Archives of the Retired Kepler Space Telescope (Source: Phys.org)
Scientists continue to mine data gathered by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, retired in 2018, and continue to turn up surprises. A new paper reveals the latest: a possible rocky planet slightly larger than Earth, orbiting a sun-like star about 146 light-years away. The candidate planet, HD 137010 b, might be remarkably similar to Earth, but it has one potentially big difference: It could be colder than perpetually frozen Mars. (1/28)

Earth Observation’s Adoption Gap is a Supply Design Problem (Source: Space News)
For more than a decade, the Earth observation industry has insisted that commercial adoption is just around the corner. Yet adoption outside defense remains limited, uneven, and difficult to sustain. The question is no longer whether EO is valuable, but whether the industry is delivering it in a form commercial users can actually use. The commercial EO market hasn’t scaled because supply was designed for a different kind of user, not because demand is missing. (1/28)

Super-Earth Exoplanets May Have Built-in Magnetic Protection From Churning Magma — and That's Good News for Life (Source: Space.com)
"Super-Earth" exoplanets may have an in-built way to protect themselves from harmful radiation, giving any potential life on such worlds a better chance of surviving, according to recent research. Super-Earths, worlds larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, are among the most commonly detected types of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, in the Milky Way.

Because many have been found within their stars' habitable zones — regions where liquid water could exist and, thus, potentially support life — scientists have increasingly focused on whether these planets can sustain life-friendly conditions over billions of years. The new study suggests that many super-Earths may be able to generate powerful magnetic fields from molten rock not in their cores, like Earth does, but in a layer sandwiched between the core and mantle. (1/26)

Rocket Lab's 'Hungry Hippo' Neutron Fairing Arrives at Spaceport in Virginia (Source: Space.com)
Rocket Lab's new "Hungry Hippo" payload fairing has been safely delivered to the company's integration facilities at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), in Virginia. The novel rocket topper will cap Rocket Lab's Neutron launch vehicle, which is still currently under development. The company had previously been progressing toward a Q1 2026 debut of the new medium-lift rocket, but a failure in the rocket's main stage during a recent pressure test has put Neutron on a more uncertain timeline. (1/28)

Space Force Program Office Turns to New Acquisition Tools to Leverage Commercial (Source: Air and Space Forces)
Space Force leaders have been saying for months that they are uniquely prepared among the services to embrace the Trump administration’s acquisition reforms. Now, officials from the Program Executive Office for Battle Management, Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence, or BMC3I, are implementing some of those reforms through a Commercial Solutions Opening—a contract vehicle that can be used to buy a wide range of innovative off-the-shelf technologies. (1/27)

Starship Overland Flights Planned (Source: Douglas Messier)
Things are about to get a lot more interesting as SpaceX attempts to launch Starship into orbit and recover it for reuse. The launch cadence will increase as well. The FAA has raised the number of Starship launches that SpaceX can conduct in a year from Starbase from five to 25. [And launches from Florida are anticipated before the end of 2026.]

The reliability of Starship looms large as SpaceX attempts to land Starship back at Starbase. The trajectory will take Starship over Baja California and northern Mexico. A repeat of what happened over the Caribbean Sea could result in injuries, deaths or property damage on the ground.

SpaceX has also proposed new launch trajectories. One would fly across northern Florida. The other trajectory goes west of Cuba and northeast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The FAA has determined that these trajectories would not cause significant impacts on air travel. (1/28)

Space Force to Select Vendors for Commercial Reserve Fleet (Source: Defense Scoop)
The Space Force aims to select vendors for the initial Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve cohort by the end of the fiscal year, following a successful pilot. The Commercial Space Office aims to contract commercial companies for space domain awareness by September 2026. CASR seeks to create a commercial vendor list to support military operations during crises, similar to the Air Force's Civil Reserve Air Fleet and the Navy's National Defense Reserve Fleet. (1/27)

Space-Focused SPAC Goes Public After Pricing $200 Million IPO (Sources: Space News, IPOScoop)
A shell company chaired by venture capitalist Raphael Roettgen began trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange Jan. 28 after raising $200 million to pursue a merger with a space-related business. Mr. Roettgen has lectured on space entrepreneurship and finance at several universities, authored the introductory space economy book To Infinity, and hosted the Space Business Podcast. Mr. Roettgen is also the Co-Founder, acting Chief Executive Officer and sole director of Prometheus Life Technologies AG, a Swiss space biotech startup, a role he has held since November 2022. (1/28)

Space Command to Bring Commercial Firms Into Classified Wargame on Nuclear Threats in Space (Source: Space News)
U.S. Space Command will, for the first time, invite representatives from commercial space companies to take part in classified wargames focused on sensitive national security scenarios, underscoring the increased integration between military and commercial space infrastructure. (1/28)

SpaceX Sends List of Demands to US States Giving Broadband Grants to Starlink (Source: Ars Technica)
SpaceX has made a new set of demands on state governments that would ensure Starlink receives federal grant money even when residents don’t purchase Starlink broadband service. SpaceX said it will provide “all necessary equipment” to receive broadband “at no cost to subscribers requesting service,” which will apparently eliminate the up-front hardware fee for Starlink equipment.

But SpaceX isn’t promising lower-than-usual monthly prices to consumers in those subsidized areas. SpaceX pledged to make broadband available for $80 or less a month, plus taxes and fees, to people with low incomes in the subsidized areas. For comparison, the normal Starlink residential prices advertised on its website range from $50 to $120 a month. (1/28)

EU Space Agency Signs Contract to Launch Galileo Satellites with Ariane 6 (Source: Reuters)
The European Union Agency for the Space Program (EUSPA) has announced the signing of a new contract to launch second-generation Galileo satellites with Europe's Ariane 6 rocket launcher. Under the contract, announced on Tuesday, the Ariane 6 system - which completed its first mission last year - will be used to launch two Galileo L18 satellites. The EU has previously been using SpaceX to launch strategic satellites such as those in the Galileo constellation. (1/28)

Terran Orbital to Deliver Nebula Bus for Mitsubishi Electric LEO Demo Mission (Source: Space News)
Terran Orbital announces the Mitsubishi Electric LEO Demo Mission, a collaboration with Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and Mitsubishi Electric US. The mission will feature the Nebula platform, equipped with a Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and Optical Terminal payload, provided by a Japanese team comprising members of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Mitsubishi Electric, and other Japanese partners. (1/28)

NASA Exoplanet Probe Tracks Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS to Gauge its Spin (Source: Space.com)
NASA's planet-hunting TESS spacecraft recently caught a view of a very different kind of cosmic object: interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. During a special observation run from Jan. 15 to Jan. 22, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) repeatedly observed comet 3I/ATLAS as it headed out of our solar system. With its wide field of view, TESS recorded the comet as a bright, fast-moving dot dragging a faint tail across a crowded starfield. (1/28)

Space Command’s Case for Orbital Logistics: Why the Pentagon is Being Urged to Think Beyond Launch (Source: Space News)
The Pentagon for decades has treated launch as the central logistical problem of military space. Once a satellite reaches orbit, it is expected to operate with the fuel it carries from Earth until it fails or runs dry. That model, Gen. Stephen Whiting argues, is no longer sufficient for a domain that the U.S. military now views as contested and potentially hostile.

Future operations demand that satellites can be refueled and repaired in space to maintain strategic advantage, particularly in critical areas like geosynchronous orbit (GEO).
Operational Parity: By adopting, at-sea-like replenishment, the space domain can mirror the logistical support utilized by the Navy, Army, and Air Force. (1/28)

China Set for Crewed Lunar Tests, Record Launches, Moon Mission and Reusable Rockets in 2026 (Source: Space News)
China is positioned for a record-setting 2026, aiming to accelerate its launch cadence while conducting critical tests for its 2030 crewed lunar landing goal, including Lanyue lander integrated tests and Mengzhou capsule abort tests. Major missions include further development of the Tiangong space station and preparations for deep space exploration. (1/28)

OQ Technology Plots Smartphone Test amid SpaceX’s C-band D2D Push (Source: Space News)
Luxembourg-based OQ Technology is preparing to deploy a small satellite to test using C-band to connect smartphones from low Earth orbit, joining SpaceX in a push to repurpose part of the spectrum for direct-to-device (D2D) services. (1/28)