March 9, 2026

Avio Lands $65 Million Deal Days After Shareholders Approve New Bylaws (Source: European Spaceflight)
Italian rocket builder Avio announced on 6 March that it had secured a $65 million contract from US-based Defense Systems and Solutions for the development, qualification, and initial production of solid rocket motors. The announcement came just days after the company’s shareholders approved amendments to its bylaws aimed at streamlining its management structure, in part to address its growing exposure to the US market.

The contract covers the “development, qualification and initial production of a solid rocket motor for air defense applications.” It covers a three-year period and will initially leverage the company’s existing development and production facilities in Colleferro, Italy. However, Avio added that full series production, expected to begin in 2029, may take place at its new facility in Hurt, Virginia. (3/9)

Living in Space Can Change Where Your Brain Sits in Your Skull (Source: Space.com)
Going to space is harsh on the human body, and as a new study finds, the brain shifts upward and backward and deforms inside the skull after spaceflight. The extent of these changes was greater for those who spent longer in space. As NASA plans longer space missions, and space travel expands beyond professional astronauts, these findings will become more relevant. (3/7)

Stormy Space Weather May be Garbling Messages From Aliens (Source: The Guardian)
Earth’s leading alien hunters believe extraterrestrials could be out there, they’re just having a hard time getting through to us because it’s stormy in space. Reminiscent of ET’s struggles to “phone home” in Steven Spielberg’s 1982 blockbuster movie, new research by the Silicon Valley-based SETI Institute suggests tempestuous space weather makes radio signals from the distant cosmos harder to detect.

“If a signal gets broadened by its own star’s environment, it can slip below our detection thresholds, even if it’s there, potentially helping explain some of the radio silence we’ve seen in technosignature searches,” SETI astronomer Vishal Gajjar said. The new research highlights an “overlooked complication”: even if an extraterrestrial transmitter produces a perfectly narrow signal, it may not remain narrow by the time it leaves its home system. (3/8)

How Jagged Moon Dust Could Support Future Astronauts (Source: Universe Today)
Simulants can’t really do the real thing justice, and there simply isn’t enough true lunar regolith on Earth to give unlimited samples to every interested researcher. Performing some of the testing also destroys the sample, which makes them unusable for other research later on, so the authors came up with an alternative - do non-destructive testing, and then run a simulation. They settled on the Discrete Element Method (DEM) for the model. This mathematical approach simulates the behavior of bulk materials by calculating the physical interactions, friction, and collisions of millions of individual particles.

The far side sample has fewer large, coarse particles than near-side samples, but also that those particles have low “sphericity”, which measures how close to a true sphere a particle is. After plugging this dataset into their DEM program, the authors found the regolith is exceptionally strong, sitting at the upper bounds of measurements from Apollo-era samples. This is primarily driven by a high internal friction angle and dust cohesion.

Most likely the jaggedness of the particles, which makes them so frustrating when on machines or in human lungs, is actually helpful in the context of increasing their mechanical properties on the ground. In addition, the samples’ mechanical strength was boosted by “cementation” caused by glassy agglutinates, most likely caused by a micrometeoroid impact. These make up roughly 30% of the sample, acting as a cement to hold the rest of the particles together. To build large infrastructure, such as a future Artemis habitat, or the International Lunar Research Station, understanding the underpinnings of the ground is key. (3/9)

China's 1st Moon Astronauts Could Land in Rimae Bode, a 'Geological Museum' on the Lunar Nearside (Source: Space.com)
A diverse volcanic region on the moon's near side could become the landing site for China's first crewed lunar mission, according to a new study. China aims to land its first astronauts on the moon before the end of the decade. Over the last year, the nation has been testing hardware for this ambitious endeavor, including lunar landing and launch simulations and crew spacecraft abort and rocket tests. Now, a team of scientists has conducted a detailed assessment of a priority candidate landing area, providing fresh insights into the planning for the historic mission — and its potential scientific payoff.

Rimae Bode is located near the Sinus Aestuum volcanic plains on the near side of the moon, not far north of the lunar equator, and is one of 14 potential astronaut-touchdown sites selected from an initial 106 candidates. These needed to meet engineering constraints for a safe lunar landing, including being on the near side for communications purposes, relatively flat terrain, and being at a low latitude so as to ensure enough power from the sun. According to the researchers, the Rimae Bode region also provides access to multiple types of lunar material within a relatively small area. (3/9)

Chinese Scientists Map Chemical Composition of the Moon’s Far Side Using AI Model (Source: Global Times)
Chinese scientists have achieved a major breakthrough in mapping the Moon's chemical composition by building an AI-based model using the measured data from the first sample collected on the Moon's far side by the Chang'e-6 mission. The model, for the first time, integrates ground-truth information from the Moon's far side into a global chemical composition map, offering new insights into the Moon's asymmetry and the evolution of the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the Science and Technology Daily reported on Sunday, citing the Deep Space Exploration Lab. (3/8)

Laser-Based 3D Printing Could Build Future Bases on the Moon (Source: IEEE Spectrum)
Scientists use two types of lunar regolith for their experiments and research: Lunar Highlands Simulant (LHS-1) and Lunar Mare Simulant (LMS-1). As part of their research, the team used LHS-1, which is rich in basaltic minerals, similar to rock samples obtained by the Apollo missions. They melted this regolith with a laser to produce layers of material and fused them onto a base surface of stainless steel or glass. To assess how well these objects would fare in the lunar environment, the team tested their fabrication process under a range of different environmental conditions.

One thing they noticed was that the fused regolith adhered well to alumina-silicate ceramic, possibly because the two compounds form crystals that enhance heat resistance and mechanical strength. This revealed that the overall quality of the printed material is largely dependent on the surface onto which the regolith is printed. Other environmental factors, such as atmospheric oxygen levels, laser power, and printing speed, also affected the stability of the printed material. (3/7)

NASA Will Need to Abandon Gateway to Accelerate Artemis (Source: Space,com)
For Artemis 4, NASA planned to upgrade to the SLS Block 1B, which features a design powerful enough to launch elements of the Gateway space station intended for lunar orbit. Beginning with Artemis 4, NASA aimed to use the Gateway outpost around the moon for deep-space science and as an orbital layover stop where Orion and the program's lunar lander could dock to transfer crews headed down to the surface. Gateway, however, is nowhere to be found in any of NASA's recent Artemis updates.

If Gateway is on the chopping block, as seems likely, there is potential for its existing hardware to be repurposed for use in a possible base on the lunar surface, which has been a longstanding component of the Artemis program's goals and NASA's vision for a sustained human presence on the moon. One of the revisions in the authorization bill even grants the NASA administrator the freedom to "repurpose, reprogram, reconfigure, or reassign existing programs, platforms, modules, or hardware originally developed for other programs" in order to ensure that the space agency's Artemis goals are successful. (3/6)

With Gateway Likely Gone, Where Will Lunar Landers Rendezvous with Orion? (Source: Ars Technica)
To reach the Moon, an Artemis lander must dock with the Orion spacecraft. That may sound routine, but Orion is saddled with thousands of requirements, and virtually every decision point regarding docking must be signed off on by the lander company—SpaceX or Blue Origin—as well as NASA, Orion’s contractor Lockheed Martin, and the European service module contractor Airbus. Additionally, Orion has a lot of sensitive elements to work around, such as the plumes of its thrusters, and engineers have spent a lot of time working on issues such as ensuring consistent cabin pressures between vehicles. It gets complicated fast.

One way NASA is helping the lander companies is by no longer requiring them to dock with Orion in a near-rectilinear halo orbit, an elliptical orbit that comes as close as 3,000 km to the surface of the Moon and as far as 70,000 km. This is where NASA planned to construct the Lunar Gateway space station, which is now likely to be canceled. It’s a boon for lunar landers since it required more energy to first stop there before dropping down to the surface.

Why not simply have Orion meet the landers in a low-lunar orbit, similar to the Apollo Program? This would allow the landers to consume less propellant on the way down and back up from the Moon. The reason is that, due to a number of poor decisions over the last 15 years, the Orion spacecraft’s service module does not have the performance needed to reach low-lunar orbit and then return safely to Earth. Hence the use of a near-rectilinear halo orbit. (3/6)

Israel Strikes Iran's Space Headquarters (Source: Jerusalem Post)
The IDF on Sunday attacked Iran’s Aerospace Headquarters, used for launching satellites, which could potentially be incorporated in future attempts to develop nuclear weapons that could be fired into space and hit the US. The headquarters had been used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps  to promote its aerospace efforts, including the 2022 launch of the Khayyam satellite, which was successfully launched by Iran using a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. (3/8)

Centaur Will Power Artemis Missions as SLS Upper Stage (Source: Space News)
NASA has picked ULA's Centaur upper stage for future flights of the Space Launch System. In a procurement filing Friday, NASA said it would use Centaur as the SLS upper stage on the Artemis 4 and 5 missions, replacing the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) originally planned as part of upgrades to the vehicle. NASA announced in late February it was canceling those upgrades to standardize on a "near Block 1" version of SLS to increase its flight rate. NASA said the only other option to replace the EUS besides Centaur was the second stage of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket, but concluded Centaur was more mature and would require fewer modifications to adapt it for SLS. (3/9)

Voyager to Invest in Space Coast-Based Max Space (Source: Space News)
Voyager Technologies is investing in expandable module developer Max Space. The companies announced Monday that Voyager will make an investment in the "low eight figures" in Max Space to accelerate that startup's development of inflatable modules. The companies announced last month they would partner to combine their capabilities to offer lunar habitats to NASA as the agency begins plans for a lunar base. (3/9)

SpaceX Pushes Next Starship Mission Back (Source: Space News)
SpaceX is pushing back the first flight of the next version of Starship. Elon Musk said last Saturday the next Starship launch would be in four weeks, or early April. He said in late January that SpaceX was then six weeks away from a first launch, which would have been in early March. Neither Musk nor SpaceX disclosed reasons for the slip, although the recent pace of development of the next Starship vehicle suggested a launch was not imminent. This will be the first launch of version 3 of Starship, with upgrades to improve performance. SpaceX plans to use this version of Starship for Artemis lunar landings and other missions. NASA requested both SpaceX and Blue Origin, the two companies with contracts to develop Artemis crewed lunar landers, to provide plans to accelerate their work, but neither the agency nor the companies have yet released details about those plans. (3/9)

China Considers Neptune Orbiter (Source: Space News)
A senior Chinese space scientist and delegate to the country's national congress wants China to develop a Neptune orbiter mission. Wang Wei, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and a researcher at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), made the proposal to prioritize a Neptune orbiter mission as a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC). Wang is now calling for China to seize a historic opportunity to conduct a world-first orbital study of Neptune, building on the country's recent advances in deep space exploration capabilities and progress in space nuclear power technologies. The most recent planetary science decadal survey in the United States placed as its top priority for a flagship-class mission a Uranus orbiter, but NASA has been slow to implement that recommendation. (3/9)

SpaceX Launches Sunday Starlink Mission From Vandenberg (Source: Space.com)
SpaceX launched more Starlink satellites early Sunday. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California Sunday, putting 25 Starlink satellites into orbit. SpaceX now has more than 9,900 Starlink satellites in orbit with this latest launch. (3/9)

Germany's RFA Plans Summertime Launch at SaxaVord Spaceport (Source: Space News)
German launch startup Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) says it is planning its first launch this summer. The company said Friday the lower two stages of its RFA ONE rocket have arrived at the launch site at SaxaVord Spaceport in the Shetland Islands, although the engines for the first stage are still undergoing acceptance testing in Sweden. The company said it is projecting a launch this summer but did not offer a more precise launch date. RFA is one of several European launch startups seeking to make their first orbital launches in the next year. (3/9)

HawkEye 360 Adds $23 Million to December's $150 Million Investment (Source: HawkEye 360)
HawkEye 360 has added money to its latest funding round. The company announced last week it added $23 million to a $150 million Series E round announced in December. Three new investors and one existing investor contributed to the additional funding. HawkEye 360, which operates a constellation of satellites to collect radio-frequency intelligence data, said the Series E round would support the acquisition of Innovative Signal Analysis and other strategic growth priorities. (3/9)

Eternal Sunshine of the Virgin Mind (Source: Douglas Messier)
Richard Branson remotely attended the Space-Comm Europe conference last week, where he promised Virgin Galactic would do great things when the company returns to suborbital flight later this year. You probably remember Branson from such promises as, ‘we’ll be flying tourists to space by 2007,’ and ‘we’ll fly 50,000 people in the first 10 years from Spaceport America.’ Needless to say, none of that came remotely close to happening. But, Branson’s optimism remains as eternal as his credibility is low.

Virgin Galactic completed seven suborbital flights with 23 paying passengers before retiring its only operational SpaceShipTwo, VSS Unity, in June 2024. The company still had around 800 ticket holders waiting for flights at the time. Virgin Galactic’s future rests on a fleet of second generation Delta-class SpaceShipTwo vehicles that are designed to fly up to two times per week with six passengers instead of four. The new rocket planes are being assembled at a facility in Arizona.

In November, company officials said they were on track to begin flight tests of the first Delta-class ship in the third quarter of 2026. These flights would be followed in the fourth quarter by a commercial mission with scientific payloads aboard. The first flights with paying tourists would follow six to eight weeks later. (3/9)

Why Boeing Built A Real-Life Star Wars X-Wing Starfighter (Source: BGR)
Science fiction is littered with iconic vehicles and starships, but few are more recognizable than the X-wing. The X-wing is so synonymous with "Star Wars" that Boeing once built not one but two "real-life" X-wing starfighters. In 2019, Boeing partnered with Walt Disney to commemorate the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge in Walt Disney World. For its contribution,

Boeing dressed up two CV2 Cargo Air Vehicles (CAVs) as X-wings and flew them over the heads of attendees. Of course, the CAVs could only slowly hover; they couldn't jump to lightspeed, and their wings were non-functional and stuck in the recognizable X-shaped attack position. Oh, and Disney's imagineers set up ultraviolet spotlights to mask the drones and only illuminate the X-wing shells. (3/8)

How NASA Contractors Are Pressing On To Bring Humans to the Moon With Artemis (Source: The Guardian)
Justin Cyrus’s company, Lunar Outpost, epitomizes the many private contractors of the space agency working on a myriad of projects crucial to the Artemis program that seeks to return humans to the moon, so anything Isaacman had to say about it was naturally of interest to him. What he didn’t expect was the stunning announcement that NASA was restructuring its entire strategy for the first human lunar landing.

But in the best traditions of decades of challenging human spaceflight, Cyrus saw opportunity from adversity. Barring further delays or rethinking by NASA’s senior managers, the company’s Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) rover, a small but mighty technology-packed vehicle crucial to the agency’s plans for future long-term habitation on the moon, will now journey alongside the Artemis IV astronauts. Its largest project, the in-development Eagle lunar terrain vehicle (LTV), is billed as “the most capable crewed and cargo transport ever built” for human spaceflight.

MAPP, meanwhile, has not enjoyed much luck to date. The rugged, much smaller rover, which was set to examine dust and soil at the moon’s south pole last year, and provide vital research for a possible human moon base, did make it to the lunar surface in March, becoming the first commercial exploration vehicle to touch down. But the spacecraft on which it made the eight-day journey from Earth – the Athena lander, made by another private space operation, Texas-based Intuitive Machines – toppled on landing and trapped the rover inside. (3/9)

A Call for a Reliable Space Rescue Capability (Source: Space News)
One of the first considerations around space rescue is how quickly one would need to be launched. In the case of SpaceX Crew 11, the medical issue was identified eight days before the crew's return. In this specific situation, this timeline worked because of the level of emergency, but that may not be the case during a more urgent emergency in the future.

To be effective and reliable, a future space rescue capability would need to be on standby, ready to launch in a given window of time much the way Naval aircraft are positioned. It would not be in a matter of minutes like the ready 5, but there would need to be a rocket, specific supplies, a crew and fuel that could be quickly consolidated for a rescue mission. (3/4)

The Supply Chain Bottleneck Facing Space-Based Data Centers (Source: Space News)
Space-based infrastructure is increasingly presented as the solution to the staggering energy and water costs of running data centers on Earth. And while this represents a significant engineering challenge, the real bottleneck for space-based data centers is logistics, and especially building out a space-rated supply chain.

Terrestrial data centers work because they have an assumed standardization and interoperability that space systems haven't yet fleshed out, the authors argue. This lack of interoperability will likely make orbital and lunar data centers several times more expensive than those on Earth.

To stave off the issue, industry players and regulators need to collaborate on a unified bill of materials for data centers with required interoperability, space-rated qualification standards, and a procurement framework that's aligned with realistic launch cadences. (3/5)

DCS Acquires ARCTOS (Source: DCS)
DCS Corp. has acquired ARCTOS, bringing together two companies with decades of success delivering innovative solutions to the aerospace and defense science and technology sector. Based in Dayton, Ohio, ARCTOS Technology Solutions is an engineering and technical services firm conducting research and development and delivering engineering and technical solutions in the areas of aerospace and space launch safety and risk analysis, advanced manufacturing technology, and technology transition and workforce development. (3/5)