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NASA faces a pivotal test of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft this year, according to reporting on the agency's crew transport plans. The report states that SpaceX's Crew Dragon is set to be retired, leaving NASA with fewer alternatives for ferrying astronauts to orbit.
SpaceX's 14th Starship test flight reached orbit for the first time on Monday, deploying 26 functioning Starlink satellites and completing a controlled splashdown of its Super Heavy booster. However, engine failures—one on the booster during ascent and descent, and one on the upper stage during ascent—forced SpaceX to cut the planned 10-hour, six-orbit mission short, returning the ship to Earth after about three hours before it exploded on Pacific splashdown.
Satellite imagery shows NASA removed SR-71A Tail No. 844 from its static display pole at Armstrong Flight Research Center earlier this year and moved it into a hangar at Edwards Air Force Base for inspection and work by ground crews. Former SR-71A test engineers, including retiree Mike Relja, say NASA recently offered them consulting roles on the project, coordinated by special projects director David Ash, though Relja expressed doubt the aircraft could actually fly again given the lack of specialized support equipment.
NASA announced it will exercise options for two additional crewed Starliner missions and provide Boeing $359 million to rebuild overheating reaction control thrusters and certify ULA's Vulcan rocket for astronaut flights. The funding comes on top of $5.1 billion already paid under the fixed-price Commercial Crew contract, after Starliner's 2024 crewed test flight nearly ended in disaster due to thruster failures.
NASA confirmed this week it will proceed with PRIMA, the Probe far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics, as the inaugural mission in its new Probe Explorer category. PRIMA became the sole candidate after NASA disqualified a rival X-ray observatory concept, AXIS, earlier this year for failing to meet schedule and budget requirements. The mission will be led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with a target launch in the early 2030s.
NASA is testing the X-59, an experimental supersonic aircraft with an elongated nose designed to flatten sonic booms into quieter thumps rather than sharp cracks. Program manager Peter Coen says the plane continues NASA's 80-year 'X-plane' tradition, dating back to the 1947 Bell X-1, of building single-purpose aircraft to test one specific technical goal cheaply.
Astronauts on NASA's Artemis II mission used Nikon DSLR and mirrorless cameras, GoPro Hero4s for interior and exterior video, and iPhone 17 Pro Max phones to document the flight around the moon. Nikon senior manager Michael Corrado described the certification process required for equipment to fly in space and explained why much of the gear astronauts use is years old.
Former NASA Administrator Bill Nelson criticizes China's space ambitions in his memoir 'Space Odyssey,' set for a January 2027 release by Harper Horizon. He recounts NASA's involvement in the 2023 Chinese spy balloon incident, framing it as a signal of an intensifying space race with China, which he says has higher stakes than the Cold War.
NASA launched Artemis 2, sending astronauts on a lunar flyby mission using the Orion spacecraft for its first crewed flight. The mission was designed to test Orion's life-support, navigation, and other systems with humans aboard after previous uncrewed testing.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the agency will be selective about which countries it partners with in lunar exploration, prioritizing only what he called 'good deals.' Speaking at a defense conference near Washington, he framed the race to the Moon's south pole as a contest for limited prime real estate rich in water ice and near-constant sunlight, rather than a purely symbolic contest.
NASA's Curiosity rover team identified organic compounds in ancient clay deposits on Mars that resemble molecules thought to have contributed to life's origins on Earth. The discovery earned the mission's chemistry lab team recognition at the Gizmodo Science Fair for providing strong chemical evidence of Mars's past potential habitability.
An investigation by Futurism found that Space Daily, a decades-old space news site now owned by Brown Brothers Media, published articles under invented bylines like 'Dr. Katherine Chen' and 'Dr. James Whitfield,' who were falsely credited with careers at NASA's JPL and the European Space Agency. Neither agency has any record of these people existing, and after being contacted by reporters, Brown Brothers Media began deleting large numbers of articles and the fake author profiles themselves.