Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
Author: 
March 25th, 2026
Image credit: White House
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman:
“To return Americans to the Moon, NASA is shifting to an iterative, execution-focused approach – just as we did during Apollo.
We are standardizing rocket architecture, embedding NASA expertise across industry, and increasing launch cadence to support sustained lunar operations.
Demand signal
We are sending a demand signal for crewed missions beyond Artemis V, with at least two providers capable of bringing astronauts to the surface every 6 months.
Image credit: NASA
The goal is not just to reach the Moon, but to stay.
America will never give up the Moon again.”
Skyfall on Mars
“NASA is building [the Space Reactor-1] SR-1 Freedom, a nuclear electric propulsion spacecraft, launching to Mars in 2028.
We are proud to announce this during the 250th year of the United States, the mission’s name reflects the spirit of American innovation and exploration.
This mission will bring America’s nuclear power capabilities to space and deliver the Skyfall payload of Ingenuity class helicopters to explore the Red Planet.
Nuclear power and propulsion will be the key to undertaking crewed missions to Mars and exploring the outer solar system.”
Illustration of AeroVironment’s new “Skyfall” helicopter concept that could deploy six scouts to Mars.
Image credit: AeroVironment
For more details, go to these “Ignition” presentations:
NASA’s Plan for The Moon
https://youtube.com/watch?v=yIlTwwJv1Ac
NASA’s Plan for Science and Discovery
https://youtube.com/watch?v=BYH6W9iCs2E
Ignition: NASA News Conference (March 24, 2026). Go to video replay at:
Posted in 
NASA will host a major public event today at 9 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time at the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters in Washington D.C.
The event will explain how NASA is executing President Donald J. Trump’s National Space Policy.
Also on tap are details regarding the acceleration of preparations for America’s return to the surface of the Moon by 2028.
Opening remarks are from NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, followed by a series of high-level panels providing updates on mission priorities, such as:
- sending the first astronauts to the lunar surface in more than 50 years,
- establishing the initial elements of a permanent lunar base,
- getting America underway in space on nuclear propulsion, and other objectives.
At 4:45 p.m., NASA will hold a live news conference from headquarters that will recap major announcements discussed throughout the day.
To view these events, go to:
https://www.youtube.com/@NASA/streams
Image credit: Lockheed Martin
SpaceX Starship deployment. Image credit: SpaceX
Two projected space projects — orbital data centers and a network of Earth-circling solar reflectors – have stirred up the Center for Space Environmentalism.
The group is dedicated to the protection of the space environment and the preservation of outer space as a human environment. They have opposed the two initiatives, filing their concerns on March 4 with the Federal Communications Commission.
The Center for Space Environmentalism (CSE) is a group of researchers, citizens and advocates concerned about the rapid development of outer space in the absence of meaningful safeguards for the protection of the space environment.
Reflect on this!
The SpaceX application for 1 million orbital data centers is “the single greatest threat to space sustainability in history,” states the Center’s filing to the FCC.
In another FCC filing, the Center opposes the application by Reflect Orbital Inc. (Reflect Orbital) to launch and operate the EARENDIL-1 satellite.
Image credit: Reflect Orbital Inc.
“We contend that its ‘sunlight-as-a-service’ model is a direct threat to the scientific, cultural, and biological integrity of the Earth’s nighttime environment. We therefore urge the Commission to reject this request and instead mandate a full environmental review.”
Launch and reentry issues
The SpaceX proposal, explains the Center, seeks to “solve” terrestrial land-use and energy strain by exporting the environmental cost of data processing to the upper atmosphere and near-Earth space.
“This approach simply shifts externalities to outer space and solves nothing,” the Center explains. “We hold that humanity must consider the sustainability of the entire Earth-space system, rather than using space merely as a means to offset unsustainable human activity on Earth.”
Image credit: SpaceX
The proposed million-satellite constellation creates a permanent cycle of launch and reentry issues, adds the Center. “This cycle risks turning the mesosphere and stratosphere into an ‘incinerator dump’ for space machinery.” Furthermore, such a massive constellation “requires a launch cadence that would introduce unprecedented levels of black carbon (soot) and water vapor into the stratosphere.”
Night sky transformation
Then there’s the issue of reentering data centers that do not demise completely upon their fiery fall. They pose a threat to people and human infrastructure on the ground, the Center’s FCC filing points out.
Additionally, there’s the fundamental alteration of the night sky
“By placing one million satellites in Sun-Synchronous Orbits (SSO) to ensure near-continuous solar illumination, SpaceX risks ending the era of dark night skies on Earth,” the Center states. “For ground observers, a million satellites would radically transform the night sky, with hundreds or thousands of bright, moving objects visible in every direction all night long.”
Image credit: Reflect Orbital Inc.
Heavy on light cycles
Regarding the sunlight-as-a-service concept, the Center’s FCC filing rejects the Reflect Orbital premise that terrestrial energy challenges should be addressed by disrupting global atmospheric chemistry and the natural light cycles of our planet.
“What Reflect Orbital proposes is not innovation; rather, it is merely exporting industrial pollution into the shared global commons of outer space,” the space environment groups argues.
“The CSE believes that a sustainable future depends on a healthy and protected space environment. We therefore call on the Commission to reject Reflect Orbital’s application pending thorough and complete environmental review of the proposed action.”
For more information on the Center for Space Environmentalism’s FCC filings, go to their “latest advocacy and analysis section” at:
Image credit: SpaceX/Inside Outer Space screengrab
SpaceX leader, Elon Musk, spotlights electromagnetic mass drivers on the Moon in a March 21 presentation.
Go to:
https://x.com/i/status/2035572007983563217
Go to my earlier story – “Catapult to the Future: Elon Musk’s Moon Factory Revisits the Mass Driver” – at:
Image credit: SpaceX/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Image credit: SpaceX/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Image credit: TransAstra
Asteroid mining will play a critical role in building the trillion dollar space economy. That’s the visionary mission of Los Angeles – based TransAstra.
To make that quest real, the group is developing four core capabilities: “Detect, Capture, Move, and Process.”
In the bag
In October 2025, TransAstra deployed a “Capture Bag” on the International Space Station. This Flight-Demonstrated Technology is designed to enable orbital debris cleanup and promote responsible space operations for the U.S. Space Force.
Image credit: TransAstra
The Capture Bag is a lightweight, scalable system designed to envelop objects in space, ranging from defunct satellites and spent rocket stages to asteroids.
New Moon
A larger version of the Capture Bag – measuring some 33-feet (10 meters) will be capable of snaring large spacecraft and components for de-orbiting, recycling, or repurposing.
Under the company’s “New Moon” initiative, that sized bag would also be big enough to capture small asteroids for enclosure to enable mining operations in space.
Image credit: TransAstra
In a recently issued video, the company shares more about how their patented technology will allow them to detect, capture, move, and mine asteroids.
Go to:
In his online “Diary of the 12th Man”, Harrison Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut, has completed another chapter with a section dedicated to “Origin of Life.”
“I have undertaken a long-running project to write a personal account of the Apollo 17 Mission on which I flew to the Moon as the Lunar Module Pilot and scientist,” explains Schmitt. “This diary also attempts to integrate much of the mission’s scientific results to date with the operations that were necessary to explore the valley of Taurus-Littrow.”
Ronald Wells, Editor-in-Chief, notes that Chapter 13, Section 2, focuses on the origin of life here on our home planet and extends lunar regolith geology to a water-rich Earth.
Artist’s rendering of the LCROSS spacecraft and Centaur separation at the Moon.
Image credit: NASA
“The section presages the possible eventual return of similar regolith material by the Artemis astronauts from lunar south polar areas where H2O has been detected,” Wells notes, for example, by NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) and its Centaur stage that impacted the Moon in October 2009.
That purposely crashed mission was to determine if water-ice exists in a permanently shadowed crater at the Moon’s south pole. NASA formally announced that data from LCROSS “indicates that the mission successfully uncovered water…near the Moon’s south pole.”
Readers can access this chapter and sections in the right sidebar at:
Mike Melvill, the first commercial astronaut, and the first person to travel into space aboard a privately funded spacecraft.
Image credit: Courtesy photograph
SpaceShipOne was the experimental spaceplane developed by Scaled Composites in Mojave, California.
Melvill’s 2004 flight (September 29) along with the late Brian Binnie in SpaceshipOne (October 4, 2004) enabled the project team run by noted aerospace designer, Burt Rutan, to win the Ansari X Prize of $10 million.
Melvill made his second spaceflight in SpaceShipOne, completing the first of the required two flights to qualify for the Ansari X-Prize competition meant to incentivize the creation of reliable, reusable, privately funded spaceflight.
“Very sad — it seems impossible that there are still Apollo astronauts alive, while my two SpaceShipOne Astronauts are now gone,” Rutan told Inside Outer Space.
Image credit: Black Moon Energy Corporation
Moon mining for Helium-3 has been given a boost by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Isotope Program (DOE IP).
Black Moon Energy Corporation of Houston, Texas has announced it has secured a contract to supply Helium-3 to the DOE IP. That contract marks a key milestone in the company’s intention to develop the first commercial supply of lunar Helium-3.
DOE IP is the only federal entity authorized to sell and distribute Helium-3.
Scalable reserve within reach
“Helium-3 is extraordinarily scarce on Earth. Small trace amounts escape annually from the Earth’s core, but the primary terrestrial supply is derived from the decay of nuclear materials—an expensive and very limited source,” states Black Moon Energy.
Moon as viewed from the International Space Station:
Image credit: Matthew Dominick/NASA
“In contrast, the Moon has accumulated abundant quantities of Helium-3 in its regolith over billions of years through continuous exposure to the solar wind, making it the only known scalable reserve within our reach,” a company statement adds.
Lunar delineation mission
The company’s commercial roadmap targets Helium-3 production at scale within the next eight years. As part of its agenda, the firm aims to execute one robotic lunar delineation mission within five years to collect data, perform experiments, and “de-risk” future Helium-3 production for long-term development.
By supplying the isotope a number of mission-critical applications involve national security and government research needs, as well as medical diagnostics, quantum computing, cryogenics and fusion energy.
Moon merchants
Back in May 2025, another Helium-3 via the Moon vender, Interlune, announced that the DOE IP has agreed to purchase three liters of helium-3 harvested from the Moon for delivery on Earth at approximately today’s commercial market price. The delivery date is no later than April 2029.
Image credit: Interlune
Go to my earlier Space.com story on lunar Helium-3 mining at:
https://www.space.com/astronomy/moon/mining-the-moon-can-you-make-money-harvesting-helium-3
Also, go to this informative video produced by IEN Magazine at:
Wait-a-Minute!
Image credit: Barbara David
Yet another wait-a-minute moment.
While it remains unclear whether or not new NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman favors putting in place a lunar Gateway, the European Space Agency has just released a schematic overview of the multi-component station.
The lunar Gateway is envisioned by advocates as the first international space station around the Moon, dedicated to supporting the most distant human space missions ever attempted.
Image credit: ESA
This outpost is to be assembled for operation around the Moon, providing a place for crew members to live and work in lunar orbit.
Gateway is to serve as a base for scientific research of the deep space environment, a host for technology development and demonstration experiments, as well as a staging post supporting exploration missions to the lunar surface and beyond.
The Gateway space station will operate in a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit supporting crewed Artemis missions to the moon.
Image credit: NASA/Alberto Bertolin, Bradley Reynolds
Key elements
In addition to payloads that will fly to this new space station, the European Space Agency (ESA) is contributing three key elements to the Gateway: Lunar I-Hab, Lunar View and Lunar Link. Together, these provide a habitable space for astronauts, refueling, storage and telecommunication capabilities, and windows to view space and the Moon.
The Gateway is to be assembled this decade, built as part of the Artemis program in an international collaboration between ESA, NASA and the space agencies of Canada (CSA), Japan (JAXA) and the United Arab Emirates (MBRSC).
Wait-a-Minute!
Image credit: Barbara David
Image credit: NASA
Engineers are targeting 8 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time today, Thursday, March 19, to start rolling the Artemis II Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft to Launch Pad 39B at the NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA’s crawler-transporter 2 will make the four-mile route from Kennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad. The journey can take up to 12 hours.
The window for the Artemis II launch with its four-person crew opens as early as Wednesday, April 1, with liftoff opportunities through Monday, April 6.
Four astronauts have been selected for NASA’s Artemis II mission: Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency, and mission specialist Christina Koch from NASA.
Image credit: NASA
The mission management team will assess flight readiness across the spacecraft, launch infrastructure, and the crew and operations teams before selecting a launch date.
To watch the rollout, it will be streamed on NASA’s You Tube channel.
Go to:
