Washington, United States (AFP) Jan 8, 2026
NASA crewmembers at the International Space Station will return to Earth within days after an astronaut suffered a health issue, the US space agency said Thursday, the first such medical evacuation in the orbital lab's history. Officials did not provide details of the medical event but said the unidentified crewmember is stable. They said it did not result from any kind of injury onboard or

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jan 07, 2026
Trimble has agreed to provide positioning technology that will feed navigation and driver assistance systems in the Lucid Gravity electric vehicle, delivering centimeter-level accuracy in conditions where conventional GPS often loses reliability, such as tunnels, parking structures and dense urban corridors. The system combines Trimble RTX corrections with the ProPoint Go positioning engin

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Jan 09, 2026
Chinese astronauts and ground-based science teams completed 86 new scientific and technological tasks on the Tiangong space station in 2025, underscoring the outpost's expanding role in research, according to the China Manned Space Agency. The agency said that in 2025 a total of 1,179 kilograms of experimental instruments, materials, and other necessities for science and technology mission

St. Louis MO (SPX) Jan 08, 2026
Mars, often depicted as a barren red planet, is far from lifeless. With its thin atmosphere and dusty surface, it is an energetic and electrically charged environment where dust storms and dust devils continually reshape the landscape, creating dynamic processes that have intrigued scientists.

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Jan 09, 2026
China's space sector completed 93 orbital launch missions in 2025, the highest annual total the nation has recorded. China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC), the main State-owned contractor, closed out the year on Dec 31 with a Long March 7A launch from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan that placed two technology demonstration satellites into orbit. The company conducte

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jan 09, 2026
Research led by Daniel Ivanov, a physics and astronomy graduate student in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, has identified a contender for one of the earliest known spiral galaxies containing a stellar bar, a structure that plays a role in how galaxies evolve. The system, designated COSMOS-74706, appears as a barred spiral galaxy from a time wh

Video: 00:06:21

As a new year begins, let’s take a look at what’s ahead for the European Space Agency in 2026. From Earth to the farthest reaches of the Solar System, 2026 marks a year of firsts that continue to shape the future of space.

Video: 01:30:00

Josef Aschbacher, Director General of the European Space Agency, briefed journalists on the main milestones for 2026, such as the launch of Smile, a mission that will give humankind its first complete look at how Earth reacts to streams of particles and bursts of radiation from the Sun. Later in 2026 should also see the arrival of BepiColombo at Mercury after its eight-year trip, where it will gather data to answer many perplexing questions about the least-explored planet of the inner Solar System. Many more exciting missions are expected, with ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot launching for the

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Jan 03, 2026
As rivals deploy operational hypersonic vehicles, analysts describe a new Sputnik moment for U.S. tactical space access, with the Pentagon directing more than $6.9 billion toward hypersonic weapons programs for fiscal 2025 and the hypersonic technology market projected at about $8.46 billion this year. The shift away from chasing the lowest launch price toward speed and responsiveness underpins