Category: Space Exploration

Space News Roundup: July 2025 The New Space Race: Commercialization, Constellations, and Billion-Dollar Markets The 21st-century space race is no longer a duel between superpowers—it’s a global, multi-actor sprint, with commercial giants, startups, and governments vying for dominance beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Over 75% of the sector is now commercial, with satellite internet, direct-to-smartphone connectivity, and…
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Key take‑aways In the early hours of 5 July 2025 (09:07 UT), amateur astronomer Mario Rana recorded a brief, white flare on Saturn’s western limb. Within hours, the Planetary Virtual Observatory & Laboratory (PVOL) issued an international “all‑points bulletin,” asking observers to scour their own images for corroboration. So far, no second detection has surfaced, but a growing body of data and expert…
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Key take‑aways (one‑paragraph executive summary) In early July 2025 astronomers using the NASA‑funded ATLAS telescope in Chile discovered a hyper‑fast object now designated 3I/ATLAS (C/2025 N1)—only the third confirmed interstellar body to enter our Solar System after ’Oumuamua (2017) and Borisov (2019). Follow‑up astrometry shows an inbound velocity of ≈58 km s⁻¹ and an orbital eccentricity of ≈6.1, values far in…
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Space News Roundup: July 2025 China’s Bold Advances: Space-Based AI, Deep Space Ambitions, and Satellite Networks The ‘Three-Body Computing Constellation’: Space-Based AI Supercomputing China has launched the Three-Body Computing Constellation, a new class of satellites designed to perform advanced in-orbit data processing and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Each satellite in this constellation boasts a staggering…
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Space Science in July 2025: Breakthroughs, Setbacks, and the Expanding Frontier The first week of July 2025 has delivered a torrent of space news, ranging from awe-inspiring celestial discoveries to sobering technical failures and policy debates. This article synthesizes the latest developments in astronomy, satellite technology, planetary science, and the business and politics of space,…
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The newly confirmed comet 3I/ATLAS (C/2025 N1) is the third identified interstellar object after 1I/ʻOumuamua (2017) and 2I/Borisov (2019). Discovered on 1 July 2025 by the NASA‑funded ATLAS telescope in Chile, it is racing through the solar system on an extremely hyperbolic path at ∼68 km s⁻¹, will reach perihelion just inside Mars’s orbit on 29 October 2025, and poses no threat to Earth. Early…
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Relentless Launch Cadence and Doubleheader Missions SpaceX’s launch tempo shows no sign of slowing. In one day, the company pulled off back-to-back Falcon 9 launches from opposite U.S. coasts space.com. In the early hours of June 28, a Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida with 27 Starlink internet satellites, followed by another Falcon…
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The U.S. Space Force has tapped SpaceX for a $81.6 million National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 Lane 1 task order to loft the Weather System Follow-on–Microwave 2 (WSF-M2) satellite and a rideshare stack of small DoD spacecraft (the BLAZE-2 mission) in the first half of fiscal 2027. The award—designated mission USSF-178—marks SpaceX’s third…
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June 2025 Space News: Breakthroughs, Missions, and the Expanding Frontier Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. Space Exploration and Human Spaceflight – Axiom-4: India’s Return to Human Spaceflight – ISS Operations Amidst Air Leak Concerns – Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-33 Launch 3. Satellite Technology and Earth Observation – ESA’s Biomass and Forest Carbon Monitoring…
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Exoplanet Research Breakthroughs Webb Directly Images a Saturn-Mass Exoplanet: For the first time, the James Webb Space Telescope has discovered an exoplanet previously unknown – a young gas giant roughly the mass of Saturn orbiting the star TWA 7 science.nasa.gov reuters.com. This object, dubbed TWA 7 b, is about 50 AU from its star and…
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