July 14, 2025

Earth May Have at Least 6 'Minimoons' at Any Given Time (Source: Space.com)
Half a dozen fragments of the moon may briefly orbit Earth at any given time, before moving on to circle the sun, new research suggests — but the minimoons' small size and quick pace make them challenging to spot. When objects collide with the moon, they send up a shower of material, some of which manages to escape into space. Although there may be an occasional large chunk, most are fast-moving and smaller than 6.5 feet (2 meters) in diameter. (7/13)

SpaceX Launches Israeli Satellite at Florida Spaceport (Source: Spaceflight Now)
SpaceX launched an Israeli government communications satellite early Sunday. A Falcon 9 lifted off at 1:04 a.m. Eastern from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission SpaceX designated only as “Commercial GTO-1.” The payload was Dror-1, a satellite built by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) for the Israeli government. SpaceX did not disclose the name of the satellite or other details about the payload during the launch webcast, although the rocket had a large IAI logo on its payload fairing. Dror-1 will provide a “national strategic capability” for Israel in satellite communications, IAI said after the launch. (7/14)

Industry Doubts Effectiveness of New Launch Licensing Fees (Source: Space News)
The FAA’s new ability to charge launch licenses fees may not do much to help a budget-constrained office. A provision in the budget reconciliation bill passed earlier this month directs the FAA to charge launch and reentry license fees. The fees are intended to provide an additional revenue stream for the FAA’s commercial spaceflight office, known as AST. However, some note that fees would generate only a tiny fraction of the AST’s budget and thus would do little to address industry concerns that AST lacks resources to keep up with growing launch activity. A House spending bill released Sunday would keep AST’s budget flat at just under $42 million in fiscal year 2026. (7/14)

Taiwan's VP01 Suborbital Launch Fails at Japanese Spaceport (Source: Taipei Times)
A launch of a Taiwanese suborbital rocket from a Japanese site failed on Saturday. The VP01 rocket lifted off from the Hokkaido Spaceport but malfunctioned around separation of the first stage. The upper stage lost control but its engine continued to fire, causing the vehicle to tumble until the engine shut down and the stage fell back to earth. The rocket was developed by Taiwanese company TiSpace through a Japanese subsidiary, jtSPACE, with the goal of reaching an altitude of 100 kilometers. TiSpace had previously, and unsuccessfully, attempted launches from Australia. (7/14)

Killing TraCSS (Source: Moriba Jah)
The DoD will “take over” the civil SSA mission. But the DoD is not a civil agency. Its mission is defense, not transparency. They won’t answer to international operators or build systems designed for multilateral trust. They won’t welcome researchers, humanitarians, or commercial actors who operate outside strategic alliances. Their very structure is incompatible with the public stewardship of space.

And on the commercial side? The sharks are circling. SSA vendors claiming they can do it all, detect, track, predict, coordinate. Some have partial data. Some have none. But nearly all have pitch decks. And if you ask them whether they’re ready to manage global space traffic? They’ll say yes. Enthusiastically. Delusionally.

This is how collapse begins: not with fire, but with institutional gaslighting. Programs get starved, then blamed for underperforming. Responsibility gets handed to entities that are structurally incapable of fulfilling the mission. And all the while, orbital space becomes a casino of unaccountable actors making bets on a commons they don’t own and can’t control. We would never manage air traffic this way. Or maritime shipping. Or rail. But in orbit? Somehow it’s acceptable. (7/2)

The Biggest Piece of Mars on Earth is Up for Auction in New York (Source: ABC News)
For sale: A 54-pound (25-kilogram) rock. Estimated auction price: $2 million to $4 million. Why so expensive? It's the largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth. Sotheby's in New York will be auctioning what's known as NWA 16788 on Wednesday as part of a natural history-themed sale that also includes a juvenile Ceratosaurus dinosaur skeleton that's more than 6 feet (2 meters) tall and nearly 11 feet (3 meters) long. (7/13)

SASC Advances Defense Bill with Launch Safety, Spectrum Provisions (Source: Space News)
The Senate Armed Services Committee has advanced a defense bill that includes provisions on space launch safety protocols, spectrum protection and homeland missile defense. The committee voted 26-1 to send its version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2026 to the full Senate. The NDAA sets policy direction and outlines congressional priorities for the Department of Defense.

Among its provisions, the bill directs the Air Force to conduct a comprehensive study of future heavy and super heavy space launch capacity, reflecting concerns about ensuring adequate access to space as national security launch requirements expand. It also requires the Air Force to publish a blast damage assessment guide tailored to liquid oxygen and methane propellants, which are being more widely used but pose issues about their explosive potential. The bill supports work on the Golden Dome missile defense system and directs the Defense Department not to give up radio-frequency spectrum for commercial applications unless it can guarantee it won’t impact military systems. (7/14)

HASC Bill to Include Satellite Imagery Provision (Source: Space News)
The House, meanwhile, is expected to direct the Pentagon to maintain a commercial satellite imagery program. The House Armed Services Committee is expected to include language in its version of the NDAA directing the Pentagon to establish the Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Tracking (TacSRT) program as a “program of record” with annual budget funding.

The move comes after the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2026 defense budget proposal omitted funding for TacSRT, despite the Space Force touting the program as critical for filling military demands for faster access to space-based intelligence in rapidly evolving situations. Under TacSRT, companies offer unclassified analytical products derived from satellites to U.S. and allied military commanders delivered within hours of requests. (7/14)

SpaceX to Invest in xAI (Source: Wall Street Journal)
SpaceX is reportedly investing $2 billion in another Elon Musk venture, xAI. According to a report, SpaceX is providing $2 billion of capital toward a $5 billion round being raised by xAI to help that company catch up with market leaders in the artificial intelligence field like OpenAI. SpaceX currently uses xAI to power customer support services for Starlink, with the potential for additional, unspecified, partnerships between the companies in the future. (7/14)

China Accelerates Starlink Competition (Source: Space News)
China’s effort to compete with Starlink is accelerating. China’s Spacesail has deployed about 90 of a planned 14,000 satellites for its Qianfan constellation since August 2024, but the operator is counting on a sharp increase in launch cadence to add roughly 500 more satellites this year, enabling at least a limited degree of services. Unlike Starlink, Qianfan is not initially targeting mass-market consumers.

Instead, the constellation is being positioned as a state-backed space backbone, focused on telecom operators, government clients and enterprise users. In December, the country began deploying a far more secretive constellation dubbed Guowang that is projected to include 13,000 satellites. The lack of transparency surrounding Guowang has fueled speculation that it carries dual-use or national security payloads, drawing comparisons to SpaceX’s Starshield. (7/14)

Tackling Export Loopholes in Space Tech (Source: Space News)
Outer space, the new high ground, is no longer the solitary domain of state powers. The growing participation of the private sector alongside government initiatives signals a dramatic transformation in the space ecosystem. This democratization brings tremendous opportunity but, with it, alarming vulnerabilities. The growing proliferation of sensitive technologies across borders, often without proper oversight, constitutes a significant and growing risk to international stability, fueling conflict, cyberattacks and an alarming potential lack of accountability. (7/14)

Space Rider Nose Cone Passes Key Milestone (Source: European Spaceflight)
The Italian Aerospace Research Centre (CIRA) has completed the structural dynamic qualification testing campaign of the Space Rider nose cone, marking a key milestone in the development of the vehicle’s Thermal Protection System. Space Rider consists of two main sections: the expendable Service Module and the reusable Re-entry Module. The latter is designed to fly up to six missions with only minimal refurbishment between flights.

The Re-entry Module’s multi-element Thermal Protection System, a key enabler of its reusability, shields the vehicle from extreme heat and mechanical stress during atmospheric re-entry. With the structural design now validated, CIRA will move ahead with the production of the first flight-ready nose cone. (7/14)

Could Asteroid Mining Actually Work? Maybe If We Start with Impact Sites on the Moon (Source: Space.com)
In increasing number, probes are being dispatched by multiple countries that can plumb the depths of deliverables from space rocks. Metallic asteroids are made up mostly of iron and nickel, and also contain platinum group metals, or PGMs for short. Similarly, carbonaceous asteroids are known to contain hydrated minerals. AstroForge, a company based in California, sees mining asteroids as the next trillion-dollar industry and is fully engaged in trying to make space mining a real, "pick-action ready" business.

While asteroids have diverse resources, including some not found on the moon, they alone likely cannot support industrial self-sufficiency due to scarcity, dispersion, and technical complexity, Alex Ellery thinks. "If a lunar industry is able to collect deposits of asteroid-sourced materials, it would have both bulk and rare resources that would enable a closed industry in cislunar space," Ellery observes. It may be more advantageous, and therefore more lucrative, to mine asteroids that have impacted the moon rather than the ones that are zipping through space. (7/12)

TOI-1846 B Features Potential Oceans (Source: Earth.com)
TOI‑1846 is a Red Dwarf star about 40 percent the Sun’s size and mass. It glows a warm 6,000 F, making its habitable zone far closer in. Because the star is faint, each transit of exoplanet TOI‑1846 b subtracts only a few hundredths of a percent of its light. Yet TESS’s four wide‑field cameras and 30‑minute cadence keep such shallow events from slipping past. Observations suggest the planet is almost twice as wide as Earth and about four times heavier. That size and weight combination gives it a density lighter than solid rock but heavier than planets with thick, gassy envelopes. Based on this, scientists think the planet may have a layer of dense ice underneath, topped by a thin atmosphere or maybe even a shallow ocean. (7/12)

SpaceX Breaks Ground on New Mega Factory at its South Texas Starbase Site (Sources: KHOU, Austin-American Statesman)
The 30-story structure, known as a “Gigabay” in SpaceX parlance, will provide 700,000 square feet of space and is expected to be completed by the end of next year, according to a new filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. It will speed up SpaceX’s assembly, maintenance and refurbishment of Starships as the company races to launch as many as 25 a year from Starbase. (7/12)

Smithsonian Pushing Back on Plans to Relocate Space Shuttle (Source: Flying)
There is a battle brewing over ownership of a retired NASA space shuttle. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump at the White House last week, sets aside $85 million to relocate the space shuttle Discovery from its current home at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia to the NASA-run Johnson Space Center in Houston.

But the Smithsonian Institution, which operates the National Air and Space Museum, is fighting to keep the spacecraft. In a message sent to Congress, the organization said it would be “unprecedented” for the federal government to remove an object from its collection and send it somewhere else. “The space shuttle Discovery is not on loan to the Smithsonian from NASA,” the message read. “Ownership was transferred to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.” (7/11)

Lockheed Martin Offers to Rescue Mars Mission From Budget Death (Source: New Atlas)
NASA's beleaguered Mars Sample Return mission may get a reprieve from an unexpected source. Lockheed Martin has proposed a streamlined, lower-cost alternative that could slash the mission’s price tag by more than half. Lockheed Martin claims that it can use its experience with previous planetary exploration missions to complete the mission for less than $3 billion on a fixed-price contract where Lockheed offers to eat any cost overruns. (7/6)

Our Universe's Origin is Indeed a Black Hole and Not the Big Bang (Source: Neowin)
A new study published in Physical Review D challenges the common idea that the Big Bang was the start of everything. Instead, researchers suggest it might have been a rebound—a bounce—after a huge gravitational collapse forming a black hole.

This “black hole universe” idea uses everyday physics to rethink cosmic origins. Instead of starting with expansion and tracing back to a mysterious singularity, the model looks at what happens when a large mass collapses under gravity, similar to how stars become black holes. But unlike the sharp singularities predicted by classical physics, this model uses quantum mechanics to show that the collapse doesn’t go on forever.

The bounce is driven by the quantum exclusion principle, which prevents identical particles, such as fermions, from being squeezed into the same quantum state. As a result, the collapse hits a limit and then reverses, causing an outward bounce. According to the research team, “the bounce is not only possible – it’s inevitable under the right conditions.” (7/12)

NASA Uses Spectrometers to Map Minerals in Nevada (Source: Military & Aerospace Electronics)
NASA is testing imaging spectroscopy technology in Cuprite, Nevada, to map minerals and understand geology. The effort involves the AVIRIS-Classic and AVIRIS-5 spectrometers, which are flown on the ER-2 aircraft. The ability to detect and map mineral deposits with precision is crucial for finding domestic sources of materials such as lithium and rare earth elements. (7/14)

Space Coast Looks to Reap Benefits of Spaceport Tax Exempt Financing (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
The nation’s spaceports can now take advantage of tax-free bonds for the first time after Trump signed the “Big, Beautiful Bill” last week, and the Space Coast looks to benefit. U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody on Friday detailed what it means for Florida from the headquarters of Space Florida, the state’s aerospace finance and development authority,

“This will apply to all spaceports, but we know that this one is the busiest and the most important,” she said of the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. “After we got this passed, we have already heard from private business entities that want to get in, that want to help, that want to be a part of the growth right here at space on the Space Coast.” The provision unlocks long-term investment tools that could help finance things such as roads and buildings that could then attract customers.

The state officially has three designated spaceports. KSC and CCSFS make up one known as Cape Canaveral Spaceport, while in nearby Titusville is the Space Coast Regional Airport and Spaceport and in Jacksonville is the Cecil Spaceport. The state also has potential future spaceports from the Panhandle to the Keys. (7/12)