Madison WI (SPX) Jul 25, 2025
When a multimillion-dollar extraterrestrial vehicle gets stuck in soft sand or gravel - as did the Mars rover Spirit in 2009 - Earth-based engineers take over like a virtual tow truck, issuing a series of commands that move its wheels or reverse its course in a delicate, time-consuming effort to free it and continue its exploratory mission. While Spirit remained permanently stuck, in the

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jul 25, 2025
AST SpaceMobile has announced a $500 million private offering of convertible senior notes due 2032, with an effective conversion price of $72.07 per share and capped at $120.12 per share. These 2.375% notes were priced at a 20% premium to the company's stock price as of July 24, 2025. Settlement of the offering is expected by July 29, subject to standard closing conditions. As part of the

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jul 25, 2025
Sidus Space, a provider of space and defense technologies, announced plans to conduct a best-efforts public offering of its Class A common stock or pre-funded warrants. The company will sell all shares or warrants issued through the offering. ThinkEquity will serve as the sole placement agent. Proceeds from the offering are expected to support sales and marketing initiatives, operational c

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jul 25, 2025
Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing Company, has started the on-orbit commissioning phase for NASA's Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites (TRACERS) following their successful launch on July 23. The company designed, built, and tested the two identical TRACERS spacecraft at its El Segundo facility and is now managing mission operations from its internal Miss

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jul 25, 2025
BAE Systems has completed the delivery of two advanced satellites from its Boulder, Colorado facility to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft-NASA's Carruthers Geocorona Observatory and NOAA's Space Weather Follow On - L1 (SWFO-L1)-are slated for joint launch this fall. Developed to enhance scientific and forecasting capabilities, both missions will operate from Lagrange

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jul 25, 2025
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a team led by Abubakar Fadul from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) has detected 17 complex organic molecules in the protoplanetary disc of the protostar V883 Orionis. Among them are ethylene glycol and glycolonitrile-molecules regarded as precursors to amino acids and nucleobases-marking their first tentative detection i

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Jul 25, 2025
China is preparing to push deeper into the solar system with an ambitious new phase in its deep space exploration program, including a Mars sample-return mission and a journey to Jupiter. Now, Chinese scientists are setting their sights even farther-toward the ice giants Uranus and Neptune. These remote, largely unexplored planets contain clues to the solar system's origins, according to Y

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jul 25, 2025
The Moon's fragile exosphere, a sparse envelope of gas surrounding the lunar body, is mainly generated by interactions between the Moon's surface and external forces. Until now, scientists believed the solar wind played a major role in this process. But new research led by Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) challenges that assumption. Using original lunar rock from NASA's Apollo 16

Merritt Island FL (SPX) Jul 25, 2025
Sidus Space has introduced LunarLizzie, its most advanced 800kg-class spacecraft engineered specifically for lunar and cislunar missions. Equipped with onboard AI, LiDAR, and hyperspectral imaging, the platform aims to deliver near real-time intelligence on lunar terrain and environmental conditions without ground-based dependency. Designed for both government and commercial missions, Luna

Beijing (XNA) Jul 25, 2025
China's first Mars sample-return mission, Tianwen 3, is scheduled for launch around 2028, with the goal of returning no less than 500 grams of Martian samples to Earth by around 2031, according to the mission's chief scientist. Hou Zengqian, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and chief scientist of the Tianwen 3 mission, together with his collaborators, recently published an