Historic Splashdowns, Lunar Leaps & Billion-Dollar Space Deals (Aug 8–9, 2025)
NASA’s Crew-10 astronauts Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers, Takuya Onishi, and Kirill Peskov completed a 146-day mission with a splashdown off the California coast at 11:33 a.m. ET on Aug. 9, 2025, the first crewed West Coast splashdown under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. China completed the first full-scale test of the Lanyue (“Embrace the Moon”) crewed lunar lander in Hebei on Aug. 6, 2025, validating its ascent and descent engines ahead of a 2030 lunar mission. ULA’s Vulcan rocket is slated for its first national-security launch with mission USSF-106 as early as Aug. 12, 2025, marking Vulcan’s inaugural national-security and Post-Certification
