April 25, 2026

UCF Students Dig Up Native Artifacts, Pottery at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Florida Today)
Hidden underground for centuries, the spinal column of a large shark eaten by Native Americans poked from the ink-black dirt wall of an archaeological test pit, evidence that hunter-gatherers roamed Cape Canaveral Space Force Station long before the age of missiles and rockets. This Indigenous refuse-dumping site — loaded with discarded shells, broken pottery and wildlife bones — lies roughly 200 feet from the serene Banana River shoreline within the DeSoto Grove archaeological zone in a thickly vegetated, rarely glimpsed corner of the military installation. (4/24)

ESA Sheds Light on NASA Administrator’s Claims on Gateway Modules (Source: European Spaceflight)
ESA has provided details in response to claims made by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman regarding the condition of Gateway space station modules already delivered to the agency. During a hearing on 22 April, Isaacman testified that the two habitable volumes delivered were "corroded” and would delay the program “beyond 2030.” He was likely referring to the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) and the International Habitation Module (I-HAB).

While HALO was part of NASA’s contribution to the station, with its construction led by Northrop Grumman, its primary structure was manufactured in Italy by Thales Alenia Space. ESA confirmed that the HALO module, delivered to Northrop Grumman in April 2025, had arrived with signs of corrosion. While ESA confirmed that I-HAB had a similar but less severe issue, it clarified that the module had not yet been shipped to NASA.

"Based on the investigation and available data, the corrosion issue was understood to be technically manageable and did not constitute a showstopper for I-Hab, which was, in any case, in better condition than HALO from a corrosion point of view.” ESA said these elements were far from the only factors contributing to delays in the station’s development. US items like the life support system and the thermal control pump, "were also experiencing notable delays and technical complexity,” the ESA spokesperson said. (4/24)

SpaceX Lowers Price of Starlink Aviation Plans to Win Back Small Plane Owners (Source: PC Mag)
SpaceX is lowering the prices and changing the names of Starlink plans for small plane owners, but it might not be enough to win back the aviation community. A new email blast titled "More Data. Lower Price" touts Starlink's Aviation 300MPH plan, which SpaceX introduced in March for $250 per month alongside a $1,000 Aviation 450MPH plan.

Previously, aviators could use the $165-per-month Starlink Roam plan on their aircraft, but as its name suggests, Aviation 300MPH capped the in-motion internet access at 300mph, so Roam was no longer an option on planes. It also swapped unlimited data for 20GB per month, and charged $10 for every extra GB used. (4/24)

The Governance Gap: Why Orbital Data Centers Need Certification Before They Scale (Source: Space News)
More companies around the world are forging ahead with plans for orbital data center constellations. But those plans will be stymied by a lack of shared architectures and standards, argues John David Callison, a global strategic sourcing executive and advisor at Abelian Security Council, and Joseph Minafra, lead of innovation and technical partnerships for the NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute.

"The absence of shared standards does more than slow progress; it distorts the economics," they wrote. "Investors price uncertainty, and in today’s environment, every orbital data center is effectively a first-of-its-kind system. That means unquantifiable technical risk, limited comparables and ultimately a higher cost of capital. Until interoperability and certification frameworks exist, financing will remain constrained not by ambition but by avoidable uncertainty." (4/25)

Astrobotic’s Detonation Engine Fires 4,000 Pounds of Thrust in Wild Test (Source: Gizmodo)
Space startup Astrobotic put its rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) to the test for the first time, demonstrating a potentially groundbreaking technology that generates thrust by supersonic combustion. Astrobotic completed a series of hot-fire tests on two engine prototypes at Marshall Space Flight Center. Each engine produced more than 4,000 pounds of thrust (1,800 kilograms) for a combined 470 seconds of total runtime, including a single 300-second burn. The recent demonstration brings the private space industry one step closer to a more efficient rocket propulsion system that could allow crewed landers to travel to deep space destinations such as the Moon and Mars. (4/24)

Gilmour Space Concluded Investigation into the Debut Flight Failure of Australia’s First Orbital Rocket (Source: Douglas Messier)
Gilmour's Eris TestFlight1 lifted off from the Bowen Orbital Spaceport on 30 July 2025, marking a major step forward for Australia’s sovereign space capability. The vehicle subsequently experienced an in-flight anomaly, resulting in the vehicle being lost within the designated safety area. Our investigation found that approximately nine seconds after ignition, one of the four first-stage hybrid rocket motors experienced a loss of thrust. A second motor exhibited similar behavior at around 17 seconds, reducing vehicle performance and bringing the mission to an early end.

Analysis identified two independent failure modes originating from the oxidizer pump subsystem. Electrical and thermal faults were observed in the electric pump motors and associated inverters, including components sourced from an external supplier. We now have a clearer understanding of the underlying causes. Based on the findings of the investigation, design, qualification, and process improvements are being evaluated and implemented. (4/24)

Golden Dome Dreams Face Harsh Budget Reality (Source: Politico)
Top Pentagon officials gathered Thursday in a hangar at a Navy base here surrounded by air defense hardware to declare that President Donald Trump’s hugely ambitious Golden Dome homeland air defense effort was moving forward. But that is an increasingly hard sell.

Gen. Mike Guetlein, the man leading the effort for the Pentagon, touted the progress made over the past 10 months and pledged to get the first key piece of sensor technology up and running by 2028 — a timeline that needs an alarmingly large number of things to go right in short order. Trump’s signature missile defense shield faces technical hurdles, funding questions and — perhaps most problematically — a Republican Congress that seems increasingly unlikely to provide the program with the tens of billions it needs to fully get off the ground.

The Trump administration envisions funding the program next year almost entirely through a party-line reconciliation bill. But top Republicans are already sounding skeptical, given GOP reluctance to embrace a bruising congressional budget battle ahead of this year’s high-stakes midterm elections. (4/23)

SpaceX Says Unproven AI Space Data Centers May Not Be Commercially Viable, Filing Shows (Source: Reuters)
SpaceX warned investors that its ambitions to build space-based artificial intelligence data ‌centers, as well as human settlements on the moon and Mars, rely on unproven technologies and may not become commercially viable, according to a company filing. The business risks laid out in SpaceX's pre-IPO filing, which have not been previously reported, present a far ​more cautious assessment of the rocket maker's future than the vision laid out publicly by ​Elon Musk in recent weeks. (4/21)

Space Force Awards Up To $3.2 billion for Golden Dome Interceptor Prototypes (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Space Force has awarded agreements worth up to $3.2 billion to a group of 12 companies to develop prototypes for space-based interceptors for the Golden Dome missile defense program, following an open solicitation from September 2025. Agreements were signed with Anduril Industries, Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics Mission Systems, GITAI USA, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Quindar, Raytheon, Sci-Tec, SpaceX, True Anomaly and Turion Space. (4/24)

Central Florida Astronaut Luke Delaney Chosen for 1st NASA Spaceflight (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Central Florida’s Luke Delaney is headed to space. The astronaut who was raised in Volusia County received his first spaceflight assignment Thursday from NASA to be part of this September’s Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station. (4/24)

Test Time for These Moon Drills (Source: Aerospace America)
A South Dakota company is preparing for trials with its devices for retrieving and transporting lunar regolith. For future moon outposts, scientists expect to get water, oxygen and hydrogen from lunar regolith. But first, that soil would need to be excavated and delivered from the bottom of permanently shadowed craters to rovers or to feed tall processing plants. (4/24)

25 Years of the International Space Station: Legacy, Science, and the Road Ahead (Source: AIAA)
In November 2025, the ISS marked 25 years of uninterrupted crewed operations – a record unmatched in human spaceflight. In January, a panel of experts at the AIAA SciTech Forum HUB stage discussed the station’s legacy and future of humanity in space, and underscored how the station’s engineering triumphs, international partnership, and scientific output have shaped today’s space agenda and will influence the transition to commercial platforms and deep space missions. (4/24)

Japan's Audacious Sample-Return Mission to the Mars Moon Phobos has Made it to the Launch Pad (Source: Space.com)
Japan's Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) spacecraft has arrived at the Tanegashima spaceport ahead of launch, which will kick off an audacious mission to bag samples from Mars' moon Phobos and deliver them to Earth. MMX recently completed its journey to the spaceport on Tanegashima island on March 31, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced recently on the social media platform X, and will now be prepared for a launch late this year. (4/24)

The Exploration Company Signs Agreement for Nyx Separation System (Source: European Spaceflight)
European in-space logistics startup The Exploration Company has signed a memorandum of understanding with Spain’s OCCAM Space to develop a customized variant of its KISS-XL clampband. The clampband will handle the separation of The Exploration Company’s Nyx capsule from its launch vehicle once in orbit. (4/24)

NASA's TESS Spacecraft Discovers a Weird System of Exoplanets Unlike Anything Seen Before (Source: Space.com)
Using NASA's exoplanet-hunting spacecraft TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and Antarctic Search for Transiting ExoPlanets (ASTEP) on the Antarctic Plateau, astronomers have discovered a rare and uniquely weird planetary system. The extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, that swirl around the star TOI-201 have orbits that are changing so rapidly that astronomers can see the changes in real time. The behavior of the system, located around 370 light-years from Earth, is something scientists have never seen before. (4/22)