Every Cosmic Herald story on JAXA — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Starship, New Glenn, Vulcan Centaur, Neutron, Ariane 6, and six more launch vehicles compared on payload, cost per launch, and reusability, including China's Long March 10B, which on July 10 became just the third rocket in history to catch its own booster.
Read the story →JAXA and Singapore's brand-new National Space Agency signed a memorandum in Tokyo covering quantum satellite links and industrial cooperation — NSAS's first international agreement, three months after it was founded.
On July 5, 2026, JAXA's Hayabusa2 extended mission buzzed near-Earth asteroid Torifune from roughly a kilometer away at 5 km/s, testing precision-guidance tech relevant to planetary defense ahead of its 2031 rendezvous with tiny asteroid 1998 KY26.
ESA and JAXA's joint BepiColombo mission spent six years threading through the inner solar system. Its arrival at Mercury orbit will answer questions about the planet's magnetic field and mysterious dark surface that MESSENGER couldn't fully resolve.
Japan's Martian Moons eXploration mission is designed to land on Phobos, collect a sample, and bring it back to Earth. The mission is also a test case for a new kind of planetary science — studying small, dark bodies that may preserve material from the early solar system.
ESA and JAXA's BepiColombo mission spent seven years threading gravity assists around Earth, Venus, and Mercury before finally entering Mercury orbit in late 2025. Now its two orbiters are mapping the innermost planet's magnetic field, geology, and interior with unprecedented precision.
Years after returning samples from Ryugu, Japan's Hayabusa2 is still flying — and on July 5 it will scream past a 450-meter asteroid called Torifune at five kilometers per second, a rehearsal for the planetary-defense techniques of the future.
Spaceflight is now a multipolar, increasingly commercial enterprise, structured as much by alliances as by rockets. A guide to the major agencies — their specialities, their constraints, and the strategic fault lines forming between them.
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