All articles
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Missions
Tianwen-2 Reaches Kamoʻoalewa: China's Sample-Return Probe Begins Its Close Study of Earth's Quasi-Moon
After a 13-month, roughly 1-billion-kilometer chase, China's Tianwen-2 has closed to within 20 km of quasi-moon Kamoʻoalewa, kicking off nine months of study before it attempts to grab a piece of what may be a lunar fragment.
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Science & Discovery
A Warm, Wildly Eccentric Jupiter Just Showed Up in the Gap Where Few Giant Planets Are Found
NGTS-39 b, a 58-day, wildly eccentric Jupiter-mass world spotted by TESS and confirmed by NGTS, fills in a notoriously empty stretch of exoplanet demographics — and hints at a hidden companion tugging its orbit.
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Military Space
VICTUS HAZE: How a 16-Hour Launch and a 61-Hour Chase Just Rewrote the Rules of Space Warfare
Over the July 4th weekend, Rocket Lab launched a Space Force satellite in 16 hours 42 minutes, then True Anomaly's autonomous JACKAL-0004 found and imaged it in 61 hours — the first commercial orbital intercept in history.
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Science & Discovery
A New Earth-Sized Neighbor: Astronomers Refine GJ 3378b's Mass in the Habitable Zone
A UC Irvine-led team cut the mass estimate for nearby exoplanet GJ 3378b roughly in half, from about 5 to 2.3 Earth masses, bolstering the case that it's a rocky, potentially habitable world just 25 light-years away.
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Missions
Hayabusa2 Threads the Needle: A 5-Kilometer-Per-Second Flyby of Asteroid Torifune
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.
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Stargazing
Mars and Uranus Just Had Their Closest Meeting Until 2053
Before dawn on July 4, 2026, Mars and Uranus squeezed to just 0.1° apart in Taurus — their tightest conjunction until 2053 — with bright Mars acting as a signpost to the far dimmer ice giant.
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Commercial
NASA's $30 Million Gambit to Save the Falling Swift Observatory
A commercial spacecraft built in nine months just launched to catch a decaying NASA telescope before it burns up — the first attempt ever to dock with a government satellite never designed for servicing.
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Missions
In the Land of the Polygons: Curiosity Hunts Nickel-Rich 'Meteorite' Candidates in a Martian Honeycomb
Curiosity is picking through a honeycomb-textured slice of Gale Crater, probing dark, nickel-bearing rocks that might be meteorites, distant impact debris, or just weird Mars rock.
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Astronomy
Webb Catches Baby Stars Feeding in Fits and Starts: New Evidence for Episodic Accretion in FS Tau
A new Webb infrared image of the FS Tau protostar system reveals gaps in its gas outflows — evidence that young stars gain mass in sudden bursts rather than a steady stream.
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NASA & Agencies
Europe Sets the Media Call for MTG-I2: The Satellite That Will Watch 80% of Earth for Lightning
ESA and EUMETSAT have opened media accreditation for the late-August 2026 Ariane 6 launch of MTG-I2, a geostationary weather satellite whose Lightning Imager will watch storms form across 80% of the planet in real time.
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NASA & Agencies
Congress Presses NASA and NOAA on Space Weather Readiness as Solar Cycle 25 Peaks
Lawmakers grilled NASA's and NOAA's top space weather officials on grid, GPS, and communications risks the same week an X1.1 flare and G3 storms lit up July 4th skies with aurora.
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Military Space
GAO Watchdog: Pentagon Weapons Now Take 12 Years to Deliver, and Space Programs Are Feeling It Too
A July 2, 2026 GAO report finds Pentagon weapons now take over 12 years to field on average, with a missile-warning satellite delay and Space Force staffing shortages among the warning signs.
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