On June 17, 2025, a team led by Prof. Wu Jian (Peking University of Posts & Telecommunications) and Dr. Liu Chao (Chinese Academy of Sciences) achieved a 1 Gbps downlink from a geostationary satellite using a 2-watt optical laser. The GEO satellite was parked about 36,705 km above Earth and beamed data to a ground…
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Liftoff occurred at 2:31 a.m. EDT (06:31 UTC) on 25 June 2025 from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, and the Falcon 9 booster landed at LZ-1 eight minutes later. Dragon C213, the fifth and final production Crew Dragon, was named Grace by Commander Peggy Whitson moments after orbital insertion. The two‑week Ax‑4 mission…
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On June 25 at 08:31 CEST, SpaceX Crew Dragon “Grace” launched from Pad 39A with four astronauts on Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4). Peggy Whitson (USA) commands Ax-4 and is on her fifth spaceflight, with a U.S. orbital record of 675 days. Shubhanshu Shukla (India) is Pilot for Ax-4, becoming the first Indian in space since…
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SpaceX’s Transporter-14 rideshare lofted 70 payloads, including memorial capsules, ICEYE and Capella radar sats, and York Space Systems’ Dragoon Tranche-1 12-satellite demo. The first Dragoon craft launched Monday on Transporter-14 is now on orbit, with SDA citing a four-month schedule cut to accelerate capabilities. Shijian-21 rendezvoused with Shijian-25 at about 22,236 miles, rehearsing refueling and…
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QUICK³ is a 3U CubeSat weighing 4 kg, led by Germany’s Technical University of Munich, and it launched on 23 June 2025 aboard SpaceX’s Transporter‑14 from Vandenberg SFB. It carries the first true single-photon source flown, a laser-pumped hexagonal boron nitride chip on a 10 × 10 × 15 cm photonic chip. True single photons…
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In June 2025, Texas approved a provision granting Starbase authority to close State Highway 4 and Boca Chica Beach during launches, transferring that power from county authorities to SpaceX-aligned Starbase officials. The FAA raised SpaceX’s Starbase launch-permit cap from 5 to 25 launches per year. On June 16, 2025, a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg (VSFB)…
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On 22 June at 02:14 a.m. local time, B-2 bombers released at least a dozen 30,000-lb GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs targeting Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. By noon on 22 June, Planet Labs Skysat imagery showed a pale-grey haze over Fordow and two dark impact scars at the vehicle and personnel tunnel portals. Fordow lies…
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The global space economy was valued at around $630 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $1.8 trillion by 2035. SpaceX revolutionized orbital launch with reusable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets and operates the Starlink broadband satellite constellation. OneWeb has deployed a Low Earth Orbit broadband constellation of about 648 small satellites for…
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In 2024, Rocket Lab surged over 360%, Intuitive Machines jumped 720%, and Redwire climbed 436% amid a wave of small-cap space-stock rallies. By early 2025, many space stocks retraced 40–60% from their 2024 highs as investors reassessed profitability and valuations. Rocket Lab USA (NASDAQ: RKLB) reported Q1 2025 revenue of $122.6 million, up 32% year…
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MILNET is a secret Space Force project that will be a government-owned, contractor-operated LEO satcom constellation of about 480 satellites, announced in June 2025. On June 18, 2025, Breaking Defense revealed that Space Force is funding MILNET in partnership with SpaceX, with SpaceX building and flying the satellites while Space Force Delta 8 oversees operations…
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