NASA
Every Cosmic Herald story on NASA — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
-
Science & Discovery
SpaceX Launches Secretive 'Starfall' Reentry Demo — What the Silence Signals
SpaceX flew a Falcon 9 mission called Starfall — described only as a reentry capsule demonstration — and disclosed almost nothing about it. The deliberate operational security around a clearly serious program may signal something significant ahead.
-
Science & Discovery
Trump Executive Order Pushes NASA Toward Quantum-Secured Space Communications
A new executive order directs NASA to plan quantum communication and sensing infrastructure in orbit, accelerating the push toward theoretically unhackable satellite links.
-
Science & Discovery
Webb and Hubble Team Up to Reveal an Ancient Relic of the Milky Way's Formation
Terzan 5 isn't a globular cluster after all. Webb and Hubble data reveal four generations of stars spanning 10 billion years, reclassifying it as a rare 'bulge fossil fragment' that survived the Milky Way's chaotic assembly.
-
Science & Discovery
The MEO Durability Crisis: Why LEO-Designed Hardware Will Fail the New Orbital Economy
Satellites built with LEO-grade components face premature failure in medium Earth orbit's punishing radiation belt, threatening the economics of planned MEO constellations and servicing hubs.
-
Science & Discovery
From Cold Gas to Nuclear Fire: NASA Maps Every Step of How Stars Ignite
A new NASA visualization traces star formation from the first gravitational stirrings in a molecular cloud all the way to main-sequence ignition — a single diagram synthesizing decades of multi-mission observations.
-
Science & Discovery
NASA Enlists the Public to Hunt for Faint Objects Hiding in the Sun's Cosmic Backyard
NASA's new citizen science project invites volunteers to search archival data for undiscovered brown dwarfs and dim objects lurking within a few dozen light-years of the Sun.
-
Science & Discovery
NASA's Cold Atom Lab Gets Its Fourth Major Upgrade to Study Quantum Gases in Space
NASA activated an upgraded Cold Atom Lab aboard the ISS with new magnetic systems and electronics, cooling atoms below -459°F to create Bose-Einstein condensates and test quantum technologies in microgravity.
-
Science & Discovery
The CNO Cycle: How Massive Stars Burn Hydrogen Differently Than the Sun
The Sun fuses hydrogen through the proton-proton chain. Stars more than twice as massive use a completely different nuclear pathway — one that uses carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen as catalysts and burns hotter, faster, and far more violently.
-
Science & Discovery
Life on icy moons: what extremophiles on Earth are teaching us to look for
The search for life beyond Earth is increasingly focused on the subsurface oceans of moons like Europa and Enceladus. Understanding what that search requires means understanding life's extremes here first — and Earth's most extreme environments keep revealing biology that expands the definition of habitable.
-
Science & Discovery
Mars had an ocean. New evidence is filling in how long it lasted.
Decades of Mars exploration have assembled strong evidence that the northern lowlands once held a vast ocean of liquid water. New analysis of orbital data and rover measurements is sharpening our picture of when that ocean existed, how deep it ran, and when it disappeared — which narrows the window when life might have been possible.
-
Science & Discovery
Phosphine on Venus: four years later, what the research actually says
The 2020 claim that phosphine — a potential biosignature gas — had been detected in Venus's atmosphere sparked one of the most contentious debates in recent planetary science. Years of follow-up observations and analysis have clarified the picture, though not fully resolved it.
-
Science & Discovery
The Sun is at its most active in two decades. What solar maximum actually means.
Solar Cycle 25 has been more active than forecasters predicted, delivering some of the strongest geomagnetic storms in years and producing aurora visible at unusually low latitudes. What solar maximum means for technology, satellites, and power grids — and how we prepare — is more relevant now than it has been in a generation.
