NASA Spaceflight
• Bastiaan Vellekoop, Chris Bergin
SpaceX has completed cryogenic proof and initial pad-2 testing of Booster 19 and Ship 39, clearing major hardware checks ahead of Starship Flight 12 and the Version 3 debut. The company is targeting an early‑April 2026 launch as Starbase's second orbital pad nears commissioning.
Space.com
• Robert Z Pearlman
By Space.com: Jessica Meir and Chris Williams spent 7 hours and 2 minutes on EVA today (March 18).
Universe Today
• Matthew Williams
By Universe Today: With the first images from the spacecraft now in hand, the team behind NASA’s Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS) is ready to begin charting the energetic lives of the galaxy’s most common stars to help answer one of humanity’s most profound questions: Which distant worlds beyond our solar system might be habitable?.
Via Satellite
• Rachel Jewett
By Via Satellite: In a new filing to the FCC, Ligado defended its request to host an L-band payload on AST SpaceMobile satellites, saying the proposal will work within Ligado’s existing L-band coordination agreements and the FCC rules.
Via Satellite
• Rachel Jewett
By Via Satellite: Satellogic detailed plans for its next-generation ‘Merlin’ satellites, designed to provide one-meter resolution. The company said that Merlin will be differentiated by its ability to provide daily mapping of the entire planet, with one-meter spatial resolution.
Ars Technica
• Eric Berger
By Ars Technica: Company has previously tested its technology on the International Space Station.
Space.com
• Andrew Jones
By Space.com: It was the second spacewalk of the Shenzhou 21 mission.
Bloomberg
• Isabelle Lee, Lu Wang
By Bloomberg: For decades, the path into America’s most important stock benchmarks followed a predictable rhythm: go public, prove yourself, wait your turn. Now the three firms that control those benchmarks are considering whether to rewrite the rules to absorb trillion-dollar IPOs from SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic.
SpaceNews.com
• Christina Lucas, Natalia Szlarb, Tatiana Sainati
SpaceWatch Global
• Joshua Faleti
SpaceWatch Global
• Joshua Faleti