June 5, 2026

Unseenlabs’ BRO-22 to Become the First Foreign Private Satellite Launched Aboard Japan’s H3 (Source: Unseenlabs)
Unseenlabs announces the upcoming launch of BRO-22, the first satellite from a foreign private company to fly aboard Japan’s H3 Launch Vehicle (H3 rocket). Scheduled for June 10, the launch will take place from the Yoshinobu Launch Complex at Tanegashima Space Center. The satellite will be integrated by Space BD. BRO-22 will strengthen Unseenlabs’ space-based RF detection constellation dedicated to maritime surveillance. (6/4)

Pesquet to Command 2027 Vast Mission to ISS (Source: Space Daily)
Frenchman Thomas Pesquet has spent close to 400 days in space across two missions, run the International Space Station as its commander, and logged more spacewalk time than any other European. In 2027 he is set to go back — not on a NASA rotation or an ESA barter flight, but at the helm of a private mission sold to the French government by California-based Vast. (6/4)

Raptor Failures Cloud Starship Readiness (Source: Space Daily)
SpaceX’s Raptor 3 engine — the powerplant the company has spent the better part of two years marketing as a simpler, more reliable replacement for the troubled Raptor 2 — failed multiple times in its maiden flight during exactly the kind of high-stress maneuver it was designed to handle. The Super Heavy booster’s engines began dropping offline seconds into a planned boostback burn, the stage lost the thrust needed to reverse course, and it fell back through the atmosphere and struck the Gulf at high speed. The FAA has now grounded Starship pending a mishap investigation.

The most-watched new rocket engine in the world failed in its debut, and it failed in the precise scenario SpaceX needs it to survive for Starship to ever become operational. The stage came down inside an FAA-activated Debris Response Area, and the agency confirmed the debris fell inside the hazard zone with no reports of public injury or damage to public property. In its own post-flight statement, the FAA reported that the event caused six departure delays and five airborne holding events, with no diversions — the kind of secondary disruption that has become a recurring concern as Starship cadence grows.

The booster failure was not the only Raptor anomaly of the day. One of the 33 Raptor engines on Super Heavy shut down roughly a minute and 42 seconds into ascent, and one of the six engines on the upper stage also cut out before its planned duration. The FAA’s determination formally classifies the incident as a mishap, triggering a federally supervised root-cause review that SpaceX must complete and have approved before another Starship lifts off from Starbase, Texas. (6/3)

The Steady Hand at SpaceX Is Not Elon Musk (Source: New York Times)
Elon Musk has dined with President Trump at the White House, lost a flashy trial where he testified against his rival Sam Altman and accompanied Mr. Trump to China for a major diplomatic summit. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, has had a different itinerary over the last six months. She spoke at a telecom trade show in Barcelona, Spain, to boost SpaceX’s satellite internet service, Starlink; mingled with politicians in India, a potentially large market for the company; and appeared with tech executives at the White House to pledge that their data centers would not increase energy prices for Americans.

For 24 years, Ms. Shotwell has played the adult-in-the-room foil to Mr. Musk at SpaceX. While he was advising Mr. Trump and running his other companies, such as the electric carmaker Tesla, she was singularly focused on developing SpaceX’s business as the rocket and satellite maker grew into a more than $1 trillion company. That work — and her ultimate loyalty to Mr. Musk — has made her one of the world’s most powerful female executives, who is now being thrust into the spotlight as SpaceX prepares for a blockbuster initial public offering this month. Unlike Mr. Musk, Ms. Shotwell, 62, has long kept a low profile. She rarely posts on social media — usually in service of SpaceX, when she does — and makes just the occasional public appearance. (6/4)

Starship Flight 12: Damage Spotted at Starbase Integration Tower (Source: Basenor)
Post-flight inspections at Starbase are turning up an unexpected detail: what appears to be the only significant damage at the launch complex after Starship Flight 12 is localized to a single structure — one that may house the primary control system for the integration tower. Analyst Zack Golden of @CSI_Starbase flagged the finding, noting the damage pattern suggests a high-energy event occurred inside the structure rather than surface-level blast or debris impact.

The newly identified damage to the internal structure near the integration tower adds a layer of complexity to the post-flight picture. Golden stopped short of a definitive conclusion — the tweet was cut off mid-sentence — but the framing raises a real question about whether ground support systems sustained meaningful damage beyond the visible perimeter. SpaceX has not yet commented publicly on this specific finding. As the mishap investigation continues, the condition of the integration tower's control infrastructure will likely factor into the timeline for returning Pad 2 to operational status. (6/1)

Inside the Race to Build a Moon Base (Source: Politico)
NASA envisions a sprawling lunar outpost outfitted with moon buggies, drones, and landers — and a lot of those high-tech gizmos are slated to be ready before the end of President Donald Trump’s term. Those ambitions face some harsh realities: NASA, so far, doesn't have the money to pay for it all. One of the rockets NASA was banking on using to land on the moon just blew up.

And the lunar surface itself presents engineering challenges that industry is still grappling with. Here’s one of NASA’s top officials on the challenges ahead: “When you think about the lunar surface and the endeavor of building a moon base, it’s going to be extremely hard and it dawns on us every day how little we know about the lunar surface,” Carlos Garcia-Galan, NASA’s Moon Base program manager, said during a Tuesday briefing. (6/29)

NASA's Moon Base Starts Taking Shape with Rovers, Landers, and Drones (Source: Earth.com)
Three phases will structure the build, running from now through 2032 and beyond and leading toward routine crew rotations. The first phase, running through 2029, focuses on scouting and testing. NASA wants as many as 25 missions in that window, most of them robotic, hauling roughly four tons of gear to the surface to learn what survives and what fails.

Two American companies have won the job of building the first lunar vehicles. NASA awarded Astrolab $219 million and Lunar Outpost $220 million to deliver the first lunar rovers astronauts will steer across the Moon’s surface. Both teams have 18 months to finalize their designs, conduct crewed evaluations, and qualify their machines for flight. Deploying both rovers early will give NASA valuable terrain data before any astronaut steps off a lander, supporting the agency’s goal of achieving crewed surface mobility by 2028.

Getting those rovers to the South Pole falls to a separate set of landers. NASA handed Blue Origin $188 million, with an option worth another $280 million, to haul the hardware to the surface before any boots arrive. Three early flights have already been identified. The first, targeted for fall 2026 at the earliest, will use a Blue Origin lander to touch down near Shackleton Crater and measure how rocket exhaust disturbs the lunar surface. (6/3)

Physicists Propose That Our Universe May Contain Three Dimensions of Time (Source: Bright Side)
Space and time looked settled, at least in broad outline. Einstein’s special relativity gave physics a durable framework for describing motion, and for more than a century one boundary seemed firm: light speed marked the edge of what any observer could cross. A new proposal asks what happens if that edge is not treated as a hard ban. Now physicists argue that special relativity can be extended to include observers moving faster than light.

The idea does not claim such observers have been found in nature. But it does suggest that throwing them out of the theory may have hidden something important, namely a possible link between relativity and the strange rules of quantum mechanics. Their latest study, “Relativity of superluminal observers in 1 + 3 spacetime,” keeps mathematical terms that are usually discarded because they describe superluminal motion.

Those terms, the authors say, do not merely add an exotic option to relativity. They change the picture of what a particle is. They argue that the underlying mathematics contains both subluminal and superluminal branches. Usually, the faster-than-light branch is dismissed as physically meaningless. But if it is kept, they write, “the notion of a particle moving along a single path must be abandoned and replaced by a propagation along many paths, exactly like in quantum theory.” (6/3)

Honeywell to Lay Off 60 Workers Ahead of Aerospace Spinoff (Source: ABC15)
Honeywell International is cutting jobs in Arizona ahead of a planned spinoff of its aerospace division, slated for later this month. Honeywell on May 27 filed a WARN — or Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification — with Arizona’s Department of Economic Security stating it will cut 60 jobs at its Chandler facility. (6/3)

HASC Saves Next-Gen OPIR Polar (Source: Space News)
The House Armed Services Committee moved to save a Space Force missile warning satellite program planned for cancellation. The committee approved its 2027 National Defense Authorization Act after a markup Thursday, sending the bill to the full House. The bill includes language preserving Next-Gen OPIR Polar, a Northrop Grumman program under development since 2018 to provide missile-warning coverage over polar regions.

The Space Force proposed canceling the program in its 2027 budget request because satellite constellations in low and medium Earth orbits could carry out the work of Next-Gen OPIR Polar, but the committee concluded it remains a critical capability and authorized $415 million for it. The committee also raised questions about the Space Force's recent procurement contract awards for the Protected Tactical SATCOM-Global secure communications program while expressing frustration with the Pentagon's management of its positioning, navigation and timing enterprise. (6/5)

Apex Raises $200 Million to Expand in California (Source: Space News)
Satellite manufacturer Apex raised an additional $200 million. The company announced Friday a new funding round that values Apex at $2.3 billion, nearly double its previous valuation. The company, which has now raised more than $700 million, said its new round was not driven by an immediate need for capital but was instead based on interest in the company and its line of satellite buses. The funds will allow Apex to expand office space at its Los Angeles factory. (6/5)

Axiom Raises $175 Million for Space Station and Space Suit Work (Source: Space News)
Axiom Space has added more than $175 million to a funding round from earlier this year. The company said Thursday it made a final close of that funding round at more than $525 million, up from the $350 million it announced in February. The additional funding comes from existing investors as well as MUFG Bank Ltd., Japan's largest bank. The additional funds, the company said, will support work on its space station and spacesuit programs as well as its broader space infrastructure and technology advancement roadmap. (6/5)

AstroForge Completes Asteroid Probe (Source: Space News)
AstroForge announced Thursday it completed assembly of its next asteroid mission. The DeepSpace-2 spacecraft is set to launch later this year as a rideshare payload on the Falcon 9 launch of the Intuitive Machines IM-3 lunar lander mission. The spacecraft will fly by a near Earth asteroid the company will select closer to launch. DeepSpace-2 incorporates lessons learned from Odin, a spacecraft it launched last year but which malfunctioned shortly after deployment. The low-cost spacecraft is designed to support AstroForge's future asteroid mining missions as well as scientific missions. (6/5)

China Launches Qianfan Satellites on Long March 6A (Source: Space News)
A pair of Chinese launches deployed satellites for the Qianfan constellation. A Long March 6A lifted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center at 7:39 a.m. Eastern Thursday, followed by a Long March 8 Friday from the Wenchang spaceport. Each launch carried 18 Qianfan satellites, bringing the total number of satellites in orbit for the broadband constellation to more than 200. (6/5)

NASA Considers Different Launcher for Blue Moon Landers (Source: Spaceflight Now)
NASA is considering other launch options for Blue Origin's Blue Moon landers. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a Fox Business TV interview Thursday that NASA was "decoupling the lander from the launch vehicle" after the pad explosion of a New Glenn rocket this week. That would mean considering options other than New Glenn for the Blue Moon Mark 1 and Mark 2 landers, intended for robotic and crewed missions respectively. Moving the lander to another vehicle would require extensive engineering analysis and potentially changes to infrastructure at the alternative rocket's launch site to allow Blue Moon to be fueled with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen on the pad before launch. (6/5)

Paper Claims the “Asteroid” Japan’s Probe Is Approaching Is Actually a Derelict Spacecraft (Source: Futurism)
After successfully rendezvousing with near-Earth asteroid Ryugu in June 2018 and sending a sampled cache of rocks back to Earth, Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft is now making its long journey to its next destination, a tiny and rapidly spinning asteroid dubbed 1998 KY26. The spacecraft is expected to reach the mysterious space rock by July 2031, giving scientists plenty of time to come up with theories as to what it could find once it gets there.

But according to Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who has spent years pondering the nature of ‘Oumuamua and its unusual behavior, 1998 KY26 could be something else entirely. As detailed in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, Loeb and his colleagues suggest the object could instead be a long-lost relic of the Soviet space program. “In particular, we identify it as potentially a relic of a historical Russian mission to Mars, the Phobos 1 probe, which suffered a failure 2 months after the launch in July 1988, due to upload of a faulty command,” Loeb explained. (6/2)

SpaceX Conducting Third Mishap Investigation Since January 2025 (Source: MyRGV)
paceX has landed Super Heavy boosters back at the launch site on three occasions, as well as in the Gulf of Mexico, following launch and stage separation from Starship minutes into the flight. Super Heavy B19, the first Version 3 (V3) of the booster, did not manage a Gulf splashdown on May 22 as part of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12. Instead, the vehicle lost its engines prematurely, preventing a planned soft splashdown, and slammed into the waves at a high rate of speed.

“Looks like booster’s coming in hot,” noted a SpaceX live-stream commentator shortly before contact was lost with the booster. It’s not clear whether the booster self-destructed before hitting the water or did so intact. By Federal Aviation Administration standards, the incident was serious enough to warrant an investigation into why Super Heavy failed. (6/2)

Greece’s HellasSat Operator: With Diverse Revenue Base, GovSatCom and Future Optical, We’re Profitable & Debt-Free (Source: Space Intel Report)
Greece’s HellasSat telecom satellite fleet operator, once considered a clear target for consolidation and ultimately purchased by Arabsat for $280 million, now finds itself in the thick of Europe’s sovereignty-focused space picture. HellasSat, which has exclusive use of Greece’s satellite spectrum from the 39 degrees east slot, is providing HellaSat-2 and -3 capacity for the EU’s GovSatCom program alongside government satellites from France, Italy, Luxembourg and Spain. GovSatCom service began in January. (6/2)

Hatcher Takes Command at Space Forces Korea (Source: AFNS)
Leadership of U.S. Space Forces - Korea, the theater space component assigned to U.S. Space Forces Indo-Pacific, was passed June 2 from Col. John D. Patrick to Col. Dorian C. Hatcher at a change of command ceremony held at Osan Air Base. (6/3)

Space Force to Build New Colorado Facility, Move Acquisition Unit and Expand Officer Training (Source: Aerospace America)
As the Space Force prepares for rapid growth in the coming years, it wants to build a new operations center in Colorado Springs to support the Golden Dome program and “a lot of space testing,” according to the lawmaker representing the district. (6/4)

SSC Expands Other Transaction Authority Use By 470% (Source: Aviation Week)
Space Systems Command (SSC) is now leaning heavily on other transaction authorities (OTAs) to award key contracts, the command’s deputy chief said June 3. The U.S. Space Force’s acquisition field command has increased the number of OTA contracts it has awarded by 470% over the past year, SSC Deputy Commander Col. Andrew Menschner said. (6/3)

The Exploration Company Completes Nyx Drop Test (Source: European Spaceflight)
The Exploration Company has completed a key milestone in the development of its Nyx spacecraft after successfully conducting a drop test designed to validate the performance of its recovery system. Nyx is designed as a reusable space capsule that will be used to transport cargo and, potentially, crew to low Earth orbit. The company is currently working toward an initial demonstration of Nyx in 2028 with support from the European Space Agency. (6/4)

NRO Could Increase Commercial Satellite Buys, Nominee Says (Source: Defense Daily)
Roger Mason, nominee for director of the National Reconnaissance Office, has told Congress that the NRO might increase purchases of commercial satellites. The NRO has launched hundreds of low-Earth-orbit satellites in the past two years to supplement expensive high-end systems. "We have to look differently at our requirements," Mason says. (6/3)
 
NASA, UAH Team Up on Nuclear Propulsion (Source: Axios)
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the University of Alabama in Huntsville are partnering to advance nuclear thermal propulsion technology for space exploration. "We've got to scale that up big time," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman says of nuclear propulsion, which he calls "the next 'giant leap' technology." (6/2)

SpaceX Now Targets $75 Billion IPO Raise (Source: Space News)
SpaceX plans to raise at least $75 billion in an IPO that would value the company at more than $1.75 trillion. The company released an updated prospectus for its initial public offering on Wednesday, disclosing it will sell more than 555.5 million shares at $135 per share. The offering includes an option to sell 83.3 million additional shares in the 30 days after the IPO, bringing the total raised to more than $86 billion. SpaceX said the proceeds would go toward various initiatives aimed at improvements in launch, satellite constellations and artificial intelligence, but with few details. The documents also showed that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will hold more than 80% of the voting power of the company's shares, giving him control over any matters requiring shareholder approval. Shares are expected to begin trading at the end of next week. (6/4)

NASA Wants to Streamline Nuclear Propulsion Demo (Source: Space News)
NASA wants to streamline the management of a nuclear propulsion demo mission the agency hopes to launch in just two and a half years. NASA announced the Space Reactor 1 (SR-1) Freedom mission at the Ignition event in March to test nuclear electric propulsion technologies on a mission to Mars scheduled to launch at the end of 2028. Agency officials said they are working to streamline management processes to meet a timeline they acknowledge is "ambitious," but noted SR-1 Freedom will use some existing hardware, like the Power and Propulsion Element for the lunar Gateway. NASA has not disclosed a cost estimate for SR-1 Freedom, which was not included in the agency's 2027 budget request. (6/4)

Measured Pace for More ESA/China Collaboration (Source: Space News)
Prospects for future scientific collaboration between the European Space Agency and China look distant despite the successful launch of a joint mission. The Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer, or SMILE, spacecraft lifted off on a Vega C rocket last month to study the Earth's magnetosphere and solar wind. SMILE was a joint mission of ESA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. However, after the launch senior officials representing both organizations stopped short of committing to more and deeper cooperation in the future, despite parallel and overlapping interests and activities. They committed only to modest "organic collaboration" between missions being independently developed by Europe and China. (6/4)

Japan's Murata Considers Xona Positioning/Timing Tech (Source: Space News)
A Japanese electronics manufacturer is considering using a commercial space-based timing service being developed by Xona Space Systems. Murata Manufacturing signed an agreement with Xona to explore the use of the startup's satellite-based positioning and timing service in telecommunications, data centers, financial networks and other industries that depend on precise timing signals. Xona is developing a positioning, navigation and timing  service known as Pulsar through a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit as an alternative or backup to GPS. Murata will evaluate applications for Xona's service in data centers and financial institutions that require highly accurate timing synchronization. (6/4)

Space Florida Supports Seagate Ocean Launch Platform Effort (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Seagate Space, a startup developing ocean-based launch platforms, won support from Space Florida. The state space development agency approved this week an equipment purchase and leaseback agreement with Seagate for hardware the company will use for its offshore launch platform. Seagate recently announced it is working with Firefly Aerospace to explore the use of that platform for Firefly's Alpha rocket. (6/4)

Orbital Airbag Concept Could Shield From Solar Storms (Source: Science)
An "orbital airbag" could shield the Earth from solar storms. A concept by researchers published this week proposes to deploy a constellation of satellites called StormWall that would release hundreds of tons of gas into high Earth orbits just before a solar storm reaches the Earth. The gas would turn to plasma that would act as a shield, reducing the strength of a severe geomagnetic storm by up to two-thirds. That could protect both spacecraft and terrestrial electrical grids from the worst effects of such storms. (6/4)

SpaceX Launches California and Florida Starlink Missions (Source: Spaceflight Now)
SpaceX performed a pair of Starlink launches within the last 24 hours. One Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California Wednesday, placing 24 Starlink satellites into orbit. A second Falcon 9 lifted off Thursday from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport in Florida, carrying 29 Starlink satellites. The Florida launch was scheduled for Wednesday morning but postponed by weather. (6/4)

China Aims to Enable Space-Based Computing (Source: Space News)
China is establishing an industrial policy framework to support a push to build space-based computing infrastructure. The Space Computing Working Committee of the China Computer Industry Association held its inaugural meeting Wednesday. The committee, established under the guidance of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's (MIIT) Electronic Information Department, says it has received applications from more than 100 organizations involved in space-based computing technologies who want to join. It is the second such committee formed in 2026, following the establishment of the Space Computing Power Professional Committee in April with a focus on standards and applications. (6/4)

NASA Advances Roman Telescope Launch to Aug. 30 (Source: NASA)
NASA has moved up the launch date for the Roman Space Telescope. The agency said Wednesday that the space telescope is now set to launch Aug. 30 on a Falcon Heavy from the Kennedy Space Center. NASA had earlier set a September launch for the mission. Roman is scheduled to ship by barge this month from the Goddard Space Flight Center to KSC for final launch preparations. (6/4)

Space Force Responded Immediately After New Glenn Blast (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
“I had just gotten home and sat down in the living room, talking to my kids and wife, and looked out the window and saw the explosion,” said Space Launch Delta 45 Commander Col. Brian Chatman, who lives about 10 miles south on Patrick Space Force Base.

“Saw the explosion and called over to the fire team and activated the EOC (Emergency Operations Center),” Chatman said. “From there, I ended up heading up to the Cape, joining the emergency operations center as the personnel started coming in, and then we started making real-time decisions on what the next steps were.”

The explosion came at 9 p.m., the EOC activated by 9:05 p.m., and it was fully up and running by 9:19 p.m., he said. “By 9:30 (p.m.) we had 100% accountability of all personnel in and around the areas. What we saw was from the conservative safety measures that we employ with each and every hazardous activity we do out here, from the blast damage assessment roadblocks that we had put in place, we had no casualties, no injuries associated with this this anomalous event,” he said. (6/4)

Space Force Conducts Blast Damage Assessment (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Space Launch Delta 45 Commander Col. Brian Chatman said they had found debris as far as 1/2 mile from the launch site, and the over-pressure damage hit surrounding facilities at the Space Force station. The blast damage assessment (BDA) for the incident expands to 7,172 feet in diameter from the site.

“We just dropped that BDA, and my teams are just going out now to take a look at some of the other facilities,” Chatman said. We do know from an overpressure perspective, we did have damage over the Hangar C where some of the windows were blown out in that area.” He expects the data from the explosion will help refine the safety zones for launch support of these larger rockets.

“We can feed back into our models and really fine tune the models that we have. We know we have a conservative approach to lox-methane,” he said. “We know that we will be able to bring in that BDA, that blast damage area, to some level.” For Starship, that blast damage area at launch will be even larger at 12,000 feet, which is more than 2 miles. (6/4)

Meteorite Found in Sahara Desert May Be 1st Evidence of Lost Solar System World (Source: Space.com)
A rare meteorite recovered from the Sahara Desert contains the first definitive evidence of a long-lost world that may have rivaled the moon in size and existed just a few million years after the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago, according to a new study.

The meteorite, known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 12774, is a roughly one-pound (454-gram) rock discovered in the Sahara Desert in 2019. Scientists classify it as an angrite, a rare type of meteorite that ranks among the oldest volcanic rocks in the solar system. This particular chunk of space rock, known as NWA 12774, preserves an unusual chemical signature that suggests some of the solar system's earliest worlds developed differently from other rocky planets, researchers say. (6/4)
US to quadruple size of Space Force command at air base in Japan

US to Quadruple Size of Space Force Command at Air Base in Japan (Source: Stars and Stripes)
U.S. Space Forces Japan is getting its own headquarters and another 60 guardians over the next year, according to its new commander. Col. John Patrick took over the organization Wednesday morning from Col. Ryan Laughton during a ceremony at Yokota’s Enlisted Club. The unit, established in December 2024, is focused on communications, space resilience, navigation and missile defense. (6/3)

SpaceX Mounts Surprise Push for 180-Day Phone Unlocking Rule (Source: PC Mag)
A new effort to require US carriers to unlock their phones is emerging with SpaceX surprisingly backing the effort. Last Thursday, the company joined three other industry groups, including the Rural Wireless Association, in calling the Federal Communications Commission to adopt a nationwide policy to automatically unlock phones tied to a carrier’s network 180 days after activation. (6/1)

HD 189733b Not Earthlike, Temperature Reaches 2,000 Degrees and Winds Scream (Source: Space Daily)
Point the right instrument at HD 189733b and the color that comes back is a deep cobalt blue, the kind of blue a person who grew up with photographs of Earth from orbit would recognize in an instant. Astronomers determined the color in 2013 using the Hubble Space Telescope, and the resemblance to a pale blue dot is almost uncanny. It is also a trap.

The assumption underneath that blue, that a blue world is a watery world and therefore something like home, is exactly what HD 189733b dismantles. The blue does not come from water. HD 189733b is a hot Jupiter, with no ocean to reflect a sky. The color comes from the atmosphere itself. NASA describes it this way: “The cobalt blue color comes not from the reflection of a tropical ocean, as on Earth, but rather a hazy, blow-torched atmosphere containing high clouds laced with silicate particles.” (6/1)