NASA
Every Cosmic Herald story on NASA — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
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NASA & Agencies
NASA is being asked to do less with less. What actually gets cut first?
NASA faces its most constrained budget environment in a generation. When the money tightens, choices have to be made — and understanding which missions survive and which get cancelled reveals a great deal about the agency's priorities, its politics, and the tradeoffs built into human versus robotic exploration.
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Missions
OSIRIS-APEX is racing toward Apophis, and 2029 is going to be extraordinary
The spacecraft formerly known as OSIRIS-REx is en route to Apophis, the asteroid that will pass closer to Earth than our own satellites in April 2029. After a successful Earth gravity assist in September 2025, OSIRIS-APEX is on track to arrive at Apophis months before the historic close approach — where it will watch how Earth's gravity reshapes the rock in real time.
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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.
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Missions
The metal world Psyche is stranger than anyone expected
NASA's Psyche spacecraft has been orbiting the asteroid 16 Psyche — once thought to be the exposed iron core of a broken planet — and the early results are upending assumptions. The asteroid may not be what planetary scientists thought at all.
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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.
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Commercial
Space tourism in 2026: who's actually going, and what it costs them
A few years after the first wave of commercial passengers reached space, the market has settled into something more defined. The flights are still rare and the prices are still very high, but the customer base has grown beyond billionaires and the competitive dynamics are shifting.
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Commercial
Starship made it to orbit. What that actually means for space access.
SpaceX's Starship — the largest rocket ever built — has now completed an orbital test flight with both stages recovered. The implications for what space access could cost over the next decade are difficult to overstate, and the aerospace industry is quietly reorganizing around that possibility.
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Commercial
ULA's Vulcan rocket is flying. What it means for the launch market.
United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur has completed its certification flights and is entering regular commercial service. The rocket is designed to handle everything ULA's Atlas V and Delta IV carried — and it's arriving at a moment when the launch market is more competitive than it has ever been.
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Commercial
New Glenn flew. Now Blue Origin has to prove it can do it again.
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket reached orbit on its first attempt — a significant achievement for a company that spent years being compared unfavorably to SpaceX. But a single successful launch is a beginning, not a business. What comes next will define whether New Glenn becomes a serious player.
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Stargazing
Jupiter is at its biggest and brightest of the year. How to make the most of it.
Every thirteen months, Earth laps Jupiter in their orbits around the Sun, bringing the giant planet to opposition — closest approach, fully illuminated, visible all night. Jupiter's 2026 opposition puts it in a favorable position for northern observers, and a modest telescope will show you cloud bands, the Great Red Spot, and four moons that.
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Commercial
A startup is building a space station. Haven-1 is closer than most people realize.
Vast Space is developing Haven-1, a small commercial space station aimed at hosting private astronauts and eventually science payloads. SpaceX is launching it. The timeline is aggressive and the company is a newcomer, but the hardware is real and the contracts are signed.
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Missions
Artemis II keeps slipping. Here's what's actually holding it back.
NASA's crewed lunar flyby mission has been delayed again. The reasons are technical, financial, and organizational — and understanding them reveals how difficult it is to run a government human spaceflight program in 2026.
