NASA
• Gerelle Q. Dodson
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover are stepping away from spaceflight and entering NASA’s emeritus program after leading the Artemis II mission. The crew, which includes Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, recently received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and visited NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
NASA
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NASA’s Roman Space Telescope is expected to directly image exoplanets, while a next-generation observatory in early development could analyze reflected light from their surfaces. Detecting signatures such as ocean glint and rainbows would provide potentially important evidence in the search for habitable worlds and life beyond Earth.
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NASA has added Relativity Space’s Terran R to its NLS II launch-services contract, while Amazon ordered six additional Ariane 6 launches and ICEYE signed an agreement to evaluate Ariane 6 for sovereign synthetic-aperture-radar missions. The announcements underscore growing commercial and institutional competition among launch providers.
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NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover are stepping away from spaceflight and entering NASA’s emeritus program after leading the Artemis II mission. The crew, which includes Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, recently received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and visited NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
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NASA teams at Kennedy Space Center have stacked another pair of Artemis III Space Launch System solid-rocket-booster segments, while continuing Core Stage-3 engine work and early Artemis IV processing. Orion test results also confirmed a trajectory correction, providing additional progress across the Artemis hardware pipeline.
NASA has added a new antenna to its Deep Space Network in the California desert, increasing communications capacity as a growing number of deep-space missions place greater demands on the agency’s ground infrastructure. The expansion is intended to support more reliable links with spacecraft operating far beyond Earth.
Katalyst Space is wrapping up operations on a spacecraft intended to reboost NASA’s Swift observatory. Although the mission did not achieve its original objective, the vehicle became a technology demonstration for satellite servicing, offering an operational data point for emerging commercial in-space support capabilities.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has successfully launched, beginning a mission designed to advance space science and exploration. The project reflects both the scientific ambition behind a groundbreaking observatory and the political dynamics that shaped its development, funding and execution.
A private spacecraft came within nine miles of NASA’s Swift Observatory, an aging mission described as doomed, and captured images during an attempt to assess or enable a rescue. The close approach marks a rare effort to intervene with an operational scientific spacecraft in distress.
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