Of 1,380 Marine-Protected Areas (MPAs) focused on in a new study, 78.5% had no commercial fishing activity at all, according to the satellite images, which are able to record fishing trawlers that are running "dark."

"The ocean is no longer too big to watch," Juan Mayorga, who is a scientist with National Geographic Pristine Seas and a co-author of the study, said in a statement. "With cutting-edge satellites and AI, we're making illegal fishing visible and proving that strong marine protections work."

Intensive fishing is hugely damaging to ocean ecosystems, with many fish stocks beginning to dwindle. In an effort to save some of these ecosystems, more than 16,600 MPAs have been established around the world. Those in territorial waters are managed by the governments of those territories, while those in international waters are maintained either by collaborations between nations, or by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

Different MPAs operate under different rules depending upon which nation they belong to. Some ban fishing all year around, while others prohibit it at certain times of year such as breeding times, or permit fishing just for local communities rather than commercial trawling.

Now, the new data shows that MPAs are doing the job that they were designed to do.

"We found that MPAs with strict legal fishing bans work better than critics claim," study lead author Jennifer Raynor, a professor of natural resource economics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said in another statement.

Ships are meant to be detectable by a GPS-based transponder, which is monitored by Automatic Identification Systems, or AIS. However, the AIS service is not 100% reliable; for example, there are areas of poor reception in Southeast Asia, while vessels conducting illegal fishing will often run dark with their transponder switched off.

Enter the satellite imagery, principally from the European Space Agency's family of Sentinel 1 Earth-observation satellites. These satellites are armed with synthetic aperture radar, which means that they can cover large swathes of the surface relatively quickly. By analyzing the satellite images with AI algorithms developed by the non-profit Global Fishing Watch, Raynor and her team were able to identify any sea vessel larger than 15 meters (49 feet).

The researchers found that MPAs are successfully deterring illegal fishing. Of the 1,380 MPAs included in the study, 78.5% experienced no commercial fishing activity, and where illegal fishing was detected, it averaged less than 24 hours per year for 82% of MPAs.

The bad news is that some MPAs are still being heavily fished. These include the Chagos Marine Reserve in the Indian Ocean and the MPA around the South Georgia and South Sandwich islands, which is managed by the United Kingdom. Sadly, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park off the coast of Australia is also still heavily fished. Each of these MPAs suffered approximately 900 hours of illegal fishing every year.

The study found that the AIS system was missing 90% of this illegal fishing, and it was only the use of satellite imagery and AI that identified how much illegal fishing was ongoing in these regions.

"No single dataset can solve the challenge of monitoring fishing activity at sea; each has its blind spots," said Mayorga. "But when we combine them, their power emerges. By fusing AIS tracking with satellite radar imagery and AI, we are now much closer to the full picture of human activity across the ocean. That's especially important in the crown jewels of the ocean — the world's most strongly protected areas — where the stakes for enforcement and biodiversity are highest."

The combined information from AIS and Sentinel-1 can better help law enforcement track down illegal fishing by targeting ships running dark in MPAs.

"This is critical for reaching the Global Biodiversity Framework's 30 by 30 target, which aims to protect 30% of oceans by 2030," said Raynor. "MPAs can help regenerate fish populations, which creates strong incentives for illegal fishing, and yet that activity was mostly absent. This is good news for marine conservation."

The study was published on July 24 in the journal Science.

U.S. Space Force General Michael Guetlein, Vice Chief of Space Operations, was tapped by President Trump to lead the Golden Dome project on May 20 and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on July 17. His role will be to oversee the development and procurement of technologies for Golden Dome, a planned missile defense system that can shoot down incoming hypersonic, cruise and ballistic missiles from space.

At least, that's the plan. Such a system has never before been developed or deployed, but has been envisioned as far back as 1983 when President Ronald Reagan introduced a similar idea known as the Strategic Defense Initiative. At the time, Reagan's was criticized for sounding outlandish, but according to Guetlein, the capabilities needed for such a system are already here. "I firmly believe that the technology that we need to deliver Golden Dome exists today," Guetlein said during his fireside chat at the Space Foundation's Innovate Space: Global Economic Summit held on July 22. "It has just never brought been brought to bear on this problem set to protect the homeland, nor has it been brought to bear on this form factor."

The summit was held at Amazon's corporate headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.

Guetlein said that while the capabilities of making the imagined ballistic missile system already exist, one major challenge will be changing the organizational culture that exists throughout the U.S. military and its associated contractors to make room for the new idea. "How do I take capabilities that were built in stove pipes for different mission areas, amongst different services, different agencies, bring those together as an integrated architecture?" Guetlein asked the crowd.

The Space Force general described the culture during his time in the U.S. Air Force, saying military leaders were wary of trusting private contractors or telling them sensitive information. But as Space Force turns more to commercial industry for new technologies needed to fight a potential conflict in space, military leaders are rethinking that culture. "Space is too big for the Space Force to go it alone," Guetlein said.

Other Space Force leaders have made similar comments in recent months. In April 2025, at the Space Foundation's Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, U.S. Chief of Space Operations General Chance B. Saltzman told attendees the service "must harness the benefits of technological innovation and emerging capabilities if we're going to be able to out-compete our competitors," and that, historically, "military success has hinged on support from commercial industry."

In fact, private aerospace contractors already do appear to be testing technologies that would be required to build a system like Golden Dome. Kathy Warden, CEO of Northrop Grumman, told investors the company is already testing Golden-Dome-related technologies during a quarterly earnings call on July 22, according to The War Zone.

Aside from current capabilities like radar systems and other classified projects, Warden said Golden Dome will "include new innovation, like space-based interceptors, which we're testing now.”

Such technologies are crucial for the development of a space-based missile defense system like Golden Dome, Guetlein said during the summit this week, but emphasized that several necessary capabilities have already been developed for the project. "I think the real technical challenge will be building of the space-based interceptor. That technology exists, I believe. I believe we have proven every element of the physics, that we can make it work," Guetlein said.

But that doesn't mean other challenges don't remain. "What we have not proven is, first, can I do it economically, and then second, can I do it at scale?" Guetlein added. "Can I build enough satellites to get after the threat? Can I expand the industrial base fast enough to build those satellites? Do I have enough raw materials, et cetera?"

The U.S. Space Force general also underscored the need for Golden Dome by describing a few of the weapon capabilities that potential adversaries like Russia and China have been developing —  capabilities in which the U.S. still lags far behind, according to statements from military leaders in recent years.

China and Russia have been "building hypersonic missiles capable of traveling in excess of 6,000 miles an hour and maneuvering in endgame," Guetlein said during the summit. "They've been building satellites or weapons that look like satellites on launch, fly around the Earth, and it can navigate into any point on the Earth that they want.

"And the list of threats keeps going on."

NASA's Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites, or TRACERS for short, mission represents a pair of satellites that will fly in a sun-synchronous orbit — meaning they are always over the dayside of the Earth — and pass through the polar cusps. The cusps are, in essence, two holes in Earth's magnetosphere, where the field lines dip down onto the magnetic poles.

When an influx of solar wind particles slam into Earth's magnetosphere, they can overload the magnetic-field lines, causing them to snap, disconnect and then reconnect. Magnetic reconnection, as the process is called, can release energy that accelerates charged particles down the funnel-shaped cusps and into our atmosphere, where they collide with molecules and, if a solar storm is intense enough, generate auroral lights.

When TRACERS launches — expected to be no earlier than late July — it will seek to learn more about the magnetic-reconnection process and how space weather affects our planet.

"What we'll learn from TRACERS is critical for understanding, and eventually predicting, how energy from our sun impacts not only the Earth, but also our space- and ground-based assets, whether it be GPS or communications signals, power grids, space assets or our astronauts working in space," said Joe Westlake, Director of NASA's Heliophysics Division, in a NASA teleconference.

Historically, the problem in studying magnetic reconnection has been that when a satellite flies through the region of reconnection and captures data, all it sees is a snapshot. Then, 90 minutes or so later on its next orbit, it takes another snapshot. In that elapsed time, the region may have changed, but it's impossible to tell from those snapshots why it's different. It could be because the system itself is changing, or the magnetic-reconnection coupling process between the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere is moving about — or maybe it is switching on and off.

"These are fundamental things that we need to understand," said TRACERS' principal investigator, David Miles of the University of Iowa, in the same teleconference.

That's why TRACERS is important, because it is two satellites working in tandem rather than being a lone magnetic explorer.

"They're going to follow each other at a very close separation," said Miles. "So, one spacecraft goes through, and within two minutes the second spacecraft comes through, and that gives us two closely spaced measurements."

Together, the twin spacecraft will measure the magnetic- and electric-field strengths where magnetic reconnection is taking place, as well as what the local ions and electrons trapped in the magnetosphere are doing.

"What TRACERS is going to study is how the output of the sun couples to near-Earth space," said Miles. "What we're looking to understand is how the coupling between those systems changes in space and in time."

TRACERS will not be alone out there, and will be able to work with other missions already in operation, such as NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMM), that studies reconnection from farther afield than TRACERS' low-Earth orbit 590 kilometers above our heads. There's also NASA's Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission, and the Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE), which both study solar-wind interactions with our planet from low-Earth orbit.

"TRACERS joins the fleet of current heliophysics missions that are actively increasing our understanding of the sun, space weather, and how to mitigate its impacts," said Westlake.

The $170 million TRACERS is set to launch no earlier than the end of July on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will be carrying several other small missions into orbit at the same time. The answers that TRACERS could provide about how magnetic reconnection works will allow scientists to better protect critical infrastructure for when solar storms hit.

"It's going to help us keep our way of life safe here on Earth," said Westlake.

The exercise, known as Resolute Space 2025, will see over 700 Space Force Guardians train alongside international counterparts and personnel from the U.S. Joint Force, which consists of units from the other branches of the nation's military.

Resolute Space will see Space Force Guardians practice space-based capabilities such as "electromagnetic warfare, space domain awareness, orbital warfare, and navigational warfare," according to a Space Force statement. The exercise will combine live warfighting training (using real space-based assets) alongside virtual and "synthetic" environments, which combine real elements alongside simulated ones to provide a realistic training experience.

Space domain awareness, or SDA, refers to the service's ability to locate, identify and track objects in space. But the types of space-based and space-enabled warfare listed in the statement are still somewhat being refined and defined by the U.S. Space Force and other militaries.

Electromagnetic warfare consists of using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio frequencies, microwaves, visible light such as lasers, etc.) to disrupt or deny adversary spacecraft operations. Such operations include jamming spacecraft transmissions or using lasers to blind the optical sensors on spy satellites. Navigational warfare involves disrupting signals from systems like GPS or other position and timing services, while orbital warfare remains slightly less defined.

Space Force has conducted "simulated on-orbit combat training" in the past, but just what these exercises entailed isn't well known; Space Force and the U.S. Department of Defense reveal few details about their orbital arsenal and its capabilities.

In a 2022 exercise known as Space Flag 22-3, Space Force and joint personnel tested "complex astrodynamics while maneuvering and operating during simulated on-orbit combat engagements" in a "contested, degraded and operationally limited environment." What types of spacecraft might have been involved are unknown.

Despite the lack of details, Space Force is touting its preparedness to fight in space. In the statement about Resolute Space 2025, U.S. Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said the exercise will send a "clear message" that Space Force is "prepared to fight and win in space shoulder to shoulder with our joint and allied partners" and proves the service's commitment to "deliver peace through strength in the face of any challenge."

Resolute Space will be held as part of a larger training event that began on July 8 and involves the whole Department of the Air Force, under which the Space Force is organized.

That Department-Level Exercise, or DLE, combines Resolute Space with four other large-scale training events. Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink called the DLE the "first of its kind since the Cold War" in a Space Force statement.

The exercises will take place at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, Peterson, Schriever, and Buckley Space Force Bases, and across locations in the Indo-Pacific region, an area where geopolitical tensions are being felt as China continues to bolster its military strength both on the ground and in space.

MethaneSAT, built and operated by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), was launched in March of 2024 as part of SpaceX's Transporter-10 mission. The spacecraft was designed to pinpoint methane hotspots across the globe — specifically, those created by oil and gas production — and provide freely accessible data analytics about specific emission sources.

Now, after a year of collecting that data, the satellite is no longer operational. "On Friday, June 20, the MethaneSAT mission operations lost contact with MethaneSAT. After pursuing all options to restore communications, we learned this morning that the satellite has lost power, and that it is likely not recoverable," EDF said in a statement on Tuesday (July 1).

Though invisible, methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases. Methane molecules absorb infrared radiation very efficiently, trapping 20 to 30 times more heat in Earth's atmosphere when compared to carbon dioxide. Fossil fuel production and industrial waste are some of the highest human-related contributors of methane into the atmosphere. That methane then hovers in Earth's troposphere — about five to nine miles (eight to 15 kilometers) in altitude — like a warm coat around the planet.

MethaneSAT was designed as a sort of check against commercial climate measurements in order to help policymakers independently verify industry emissions reports. "MethaneSAT is specifically designed to catalyze methane reductions by creating unprecedented transparency," the mission's website states.

EDF lists 10 mission partners credited with bringing the $88 million satellite to fruition, including BAE Systems, Harvard University, the New Zealand Space Agency, Bezos Earth Fund, Google and more. Though MethaneSAT is now out of service, mission operators say they're still committed to turning the data they were able to collect into actionable results.

"We will continue to process data that we have retrieved from the satellite and will be releasing additional scenes of global oil and gas production region-scale emissions over the coming months," EDT officials said. "To solve the climate challenge requires bold action and risk-taking and this satellite was at the leading edge of science, technology and advocacy. "

What is it?

According to NOIRLab, both Gemini Telescopes have four imagers and spectrographs that view in both optical and infrared wavelengths simultaneously, which are mounted on the back of the telescopes. These instruments work in sync with the telescopes' guidance systems in order to be able to look deep into the universe.

The Gemini North Telescope is one of several near the summit of Mauna Kea and it and its twin are two of only a select few observatories that can be operated fully remotely.

Where is it?

At 13,825 feet (4,214 meters) in altitude on a long-dormant volcano, the Gemini North Telescope is above clouds and light pollution that could interfere with its analysis.

Why is it amazing?

While the Gemini North Telescope may be at a high enough elevation to avoid light pollution, it has another issue that might interfere with its readings: satellite streaks. Because there are more satellites in low-Earth orbit than ever before, it can be challenging for astronomers to avoid them when pointing sensors towards the sky. In this image, the long exposure shows three satellites streaking across the sky to form a triangle shape.

Researchers are working to find ways to track these satellites in hopes of making it easier for astronomers to peer into our universe and study the many celestial objects that are there.

Want to learn more?

You can read more about the Gemini Observatory and satellite activity as astronomers continue to use powerful telescopes to look at our night skies.

Operators confirmed the destruction of the Intelsat-33e satellite two days later. There was a bright flash as the satellite's fuel ignited, followed by the flickering of the debris cloud as it fragmented into at least 20 pieces. Those satellite parts are now zooming around Earth, along with around 14,000 tonnes of space debris. The satellite wasn't insured.

As space junk increases, more operators are choosing to launch without any insurance at all. To compensate, companies are cutting back on the cost of satellites and launching more of them at faster rates, thus creating a feedback loop as the cheaper satellites break up more easily and add to the problem.

"I don't think it's sustainable," said Massimiliano Vasile, an aerospace engineer and professor at the University of Strathclyde Glasgow.

Behind the predicament are two vectors moving in opposite directions: The cost of launching satellites is falling, while the cost of insuring them continues to soar.

Even as record-low-cost launches are improving internet coverage and cell service, they're worsening the space junk problem. Low Earth orbit, where most communications satellites are circling, is becoming increasingly crowded.

Satellite insurance, meanwhile, has never been more expensive. 2023 was likely the worst ever for the market, with reports suggesting satellite insurers faced loss claims of more than $500 million. 2024 may have been even worse, according to Insurance Insider.

Satellite operators are responding predictably, by foregoing coverage. There are 12,787 satellites above the Earth as of the time of publication, according to the website Orbiting Now, which tracks active satellites, but only about 300 are actually insured for in-orbit accidents, David Wade, an underwriter at Atrium Space Insurance Consortium, told Data Center Dynamics.

European and UK operators are legally required to insure their satellites, which puts them at a cost disadvantage compared with India, China, Russia and the U.S. American companies such as SpaceX have also been able to reduce launch costs because of reusable rocket parts. Europe’s upcoming Ariane 6 rocket program, for example, is expected to cost between $80-120 million per launch, compared with SpaceX’s Starship program which is anticipated to cost between $2-10 million per launch because of its reusable rockets.

In the U.S., launchers are required by law to procure liability insurance for launch, but once the satellite is in orbit, insurance is no longer needed. SpaceX, for example, is self-insured, meaning it seeks third-party insurance for almost none of its Starlink satellites.

"Typically, the launch cover is literally just for that [launch] stage, and once a satellite gets into orbit, you are off risk," said Steve Evans, owner of insurance data provider Artemis (which is unaffiliated with NASA's lunar program of the same name). The satellite "either makes it, or it doesn't," he told Space.com.

The space insurance market began in 1965, when Lloyds Bank insured Intelsat I, which broadcast the Apollo 11 moon landing. The first known satellite failures occurred in 1984, though some later recovered, including the $87 million Intelsat 5 ($2.82 billion in today’s money).

The industry has generally hovered around a 5% failure rate since 2000, with Data Center Dynamics reporting that there have been only 165 claims for more than $10 million across the history of the industry.

The 2019 failure of a military observation satellite for the United Arab Emirates, called the Vega rocket, led to $411 million in claims — the largest such loss in history, Reuters reported. That year, total satellite insurance losses became greater than insurance premiums for the first time, according to Bloomberg. Insurers were hoping to claw that money back in following years, but Reuters reported in 2021 that Assure Space and AmTrust Financial were both stopping insurance due to collisions.

Insurers were looking for a payout in 2023, but instead, that year saw close to $1 billion in claims and some $500 million in losses. For many long-standing insurers, it was the last straw; Brit, AGCS, AIG, Swiss Re, Allianz and Aspen Re all exited the space insurance market. Canopius, a specialist space insurance provider acquired by Lloyds in 2019, told Space.com via email that it was no longer underwriting space business.

Of the satellites in Earth orbit, around 42% are inactive, according to Seradata. The number of active satellites increased by 68% from 2020 to 2021 and by more than 200% from 2016 to 2021. Much of space insurance is modeled off the aviation industry, but space premiums are 10 to 20 times aviation premiums, Reuters reported in 2021.

A satellite in low Earth orbit typically needs $500,000 to $1 million of coverage, whereas a satellite in geostationary orbit requires $200 million to $300 million, according to the same report.

Behind the rush to exit the satellite insurance industry is a fundamental problem with satellite insurance: There's usually no way to determine who was at fault. When a house burns down or a car crashes, insurers often send investigators to verify a claim before approving a payout. But in the dark reaches of space, they can't operate that way.

"In the event of a loss and a claim by the insured, it is almost impossible, if not entirely impossible, for insurers to investigate the cause of the loss, whether total or partial, and thus determine the amount to compensate the insured," José Luis Torres Chacón, a professor in the department of economic theory and history at the University of Málaga in Spain, told Space.com. "I think this is where the root of the problem lies."

Liability insurance is problematic for satellites, too, since it's extremely difficult to tell whether a satellite broke up because of an internal explosion or because of a collision with someone else's space junk. And if the latter, it's very hard to identify where the debris came from.

"At the moment, it's not possible to say it was actually a fragment from that original explosion or collision that damaged the satellite," Vasile said. "So, in terms of insurance, it's a bit of a nightmare.”

Vasile believes the market is moving toward legal liability for any operator responsible for creating space debris at all. "I think the government needs to set the rules, precisely as the government sets the rules for road traffic or shipping," he said.

But a switch to stricter liability could create big problems for an increasing number of launch companies that are moving to cubesats — cheaper, short-duration satellites that are eventually abandoned by their operators as gravity slowly pulls them into Earth's atmosphere.

Some climate satellites are in danger of colliding with space junk. Analysis of data from NASA's Land Data operation Products Evaluation, which tracks research satellite maneuvers, reveals at least seven occasions where NASA’s Terra and Aqua climate satellites lost data while having to avoid space debris.

Spacecraft in low-earth orbit are already under continuous threat. On Nov. 19, 2024, the International Space Station shifted its orbit to avoid another piece of space debris — this time, from a destroyed meteorological satellite. "Even a speck of paint is enough to destroy a satellite," Jakub Drmola, who studies the politics of satellite and missile defense systems at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic, told Space.com.

The worst-case scenario is Kessler syndrome, a chain reaction in which the breakup of a few satellites cascades into a wipeout of everything in orbit. Some researchers think Kessler syndrome is already happening, only very slowly, and that we've already reached the stage where the cost of cleaning up space far outstrips the benefits.

"The world has now begun to depend on space in ways that we never thought were going to be possible," said Gen. C. Robert Kehler, former head of Air Force Strategic Command, speaking to reporters at the 2024 Outrider Nuclear Reporting Summit in Washington DC. He favors introducing a regulatory system similar to air traffic control. "We need rules of the road," he said.

The problem isn't staying above our heads. On March 8, 2024, a discarded piece of hardware from the International Space Station fell through the Florida home of Alejandro Otero, shaking the whole house. His 19-year-old son was inside. NASA had jettisoned the spare battery carrier, assuming it would either burn up or land in the Gulf of Mexico. But the agency's calculations were wrong.

If the debris had landed just a few feet away, someone likely would have been seriously hurt or killed, according to Mica Nguyen Worthy, an attorney who is now litigating the first-ever case of property damage from space debris against NASA.

Nguyen Worthy described space debris litigation as the “next frontier” of outer space law. Without a clear set of rules, she said, future satellites launches and space travel itself could become impossible. “I think it's important for the space community, and why they do take it so seriously, because they don't want there to be a situation where we have trapped ourselves on Earth, [and] we can't get out."

SpaceX just launched another big fleet of satellites to the final frontier.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 70 payloads for a variety of customers lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today (June 23) at 5:25 p.m. EDT (2125 GMT; 2:25 p.m. local California time), on a rideshare mission known as Transporter 14.

Transporter 14 is lofting microsats, cubesats and reentry capsules, including one that's carrying cremated remains and human DNA on a memorial mission.

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth today as planned, touching down on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You" in the Pacific Ocean about 8.5 minutes after liftoff.

It was the 26th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. That's close to the company's reusability record, which currently stands at 28 flights.

The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, continued powering its way to low Earth orbit, where it has a lot of work to do: It will deploy the menagerie of payloads over a nearly two-hour span that begins roughly 54 minutes after launch.

Those payloads include private Earth-observing satellites, such as Capella Space's Capella-17 synthetic aperture radar craft, and Starfish Space's Otter Pup 2, which will attempt to perform the first-ever commercial docking in LEO later this year.

Transporter 14 is also carrying the fourth reentry capsule for California company Varda Space, which is working to manufacture pharmaceuticals and other goods in space and return them to Earth.

Also aboard the Falcon 9 upper stage is The Exploration Company's new Nyx reusable spacecraft, which is flying a memorial mission in cooperation with the space-burial company Celestis.

Nyx — the final payload to be deployed today — is carrying cremated remains and/or DNA from about 150 people. If all goes to plan, the spacecraft will circle Earth two or three times and then be recovered.

As its name suggests, Transporter 14 is the 14th mission in SpaceX's rideshare series. The first of these, Transporter 1 back in January 2021, set a single-launch record, sending a whopping 143 satellites to orbit.

The company also operates another rideshare program called Bandwagon, which has three missions under its belt to date.

China's Shijian-21 and Shijian-25 satellites had been moving toward each other in geosynchronous orbit, around 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above the equator, Spacenews reported on June 6. And now the pair appear to have had a brief first encounter, according to observations from the ground.

Optical tracking by the space situational awareness firm s2a systems shows a close approach between the two on June 14, with the pair, at times, virtually unresolvable from the other. This suggests that Shijian-21 and Shijian-25 made at least a test-run close approach and may have even performed a docking and undocking test.

Tracking from s2a indicates that the two spacecraft made very close approaches on both June 13 and June 14.

The test aims to demonstrate on-orbit refueling and mission extension capabilities, helping to improve the sustainability of space operations.

Shijian-25 launched in January to demonstrate on-orbit refueling and satellite servicing, while Shijian-21 launched in 2021 and towed a dead satellite out of geosynchronous orbit and into a higher, "graveyard" orbit.

Both spacecraft were developed by China's state-owned Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST). SpaceNews also reported that U.S. surveillance spacecraft USA 270 and USA 271 were nearby, to the east and west of the two Chinese spacecraft, and likely to observe the activity.

The U.S., through the aerospace giant Northrop Grumman, has already tested life-extension services for satellites in geosynchronous orbit with its Mission Extension Vehicle-1 and Mission Extension Vehicle-2 spacecraft, while Tokyo-based company Astroscale aims to carry out its own complex refueling tests as soon as next year.

One of these, the internet-beaming Starlink constellation, has been a matter of controversy since the launch of the first batch of its satellites in 2019. The constellation's thousands of spacecraft orbit so low that the sunlight they reflect outshines many stars from our perspective on Earth. And while the sight of a Starlink satellite train might thrill skywatchers, it's a true nightmare to astronomers worldwide.

When the $1.9 billion Vera Rubin Observatory opens its telescopic eyes to the sky later this month, astronomers expect that up to 40% of its images will be degraded or completely ruined by satellite streaks. It's a costly problem that will only become more serious as the number of satellites in orbit is expected to grow to tens of thousands within the next few years. But a new paint being developed in conjunction with astronomers might help. The paint, called Vantablack 310, could reduce the amount of light reflected by satellites in orbit down to just 2% of what is reflected by uncoated satellites, virtually erasing the pesky streaks from telescope images.

According to Noelia Noël, an astrophysicist at the University of Surrey, these satellite streaks will significantly reduce the scientific return on investment that the taxpayer-funded Vera Rubin telescope represents. Noël, who is expected to take part in Rubin's ten-year mission to map the sky in unprecedented detail, has been concerned about the loss of the pristine dark sky for years.

A native of Argentina, Noël grew up in awe of the star-studded southern sky and has been painfully aware of its deterioration. Those concerns led her to establishing a partnership with a University of Surrey spin-off, Surrey NanoSystems, who has been developing ultra black coatings for scientific instruments on satellites. The partnership has now produced a new type of blacker-than-black space paint, which reflects less light than available alternatives and can be easily applied by satellite makers in their clean rooms.

"Over the past five years, humankind has launched more satellites into space than it has done over the previous 60 years," Noël told Space.com. "It's a real problem for astronomy, especially for telescopes like Vera Rubin, which had to significantly change its observing strategy to avoid satellite clusters. So, I wanted to do something about it."

Surrey NanoSystems' previous coatings, although exquisite at reflecting light (the flagship Vantablack High Performance coating absorbs 99.9% of incoming sunrays), were based on delicate nanotechnology that required a technically complicated application process. Once applied, the coating couldn't be touched by a human hand or it would lose its anti-reflective properties.

"The previous coating was based on a carbon nanotube structure that can't be touched because it would collapse," Kieran Clifford, a materials scientist at Surrey NanoSystems, told Space.com. "We needed something that can be easily handled by engineers at their own facilities."

The new coating is based on a proprietary blend of carbon black, a soot-like form of carbon, mixed with special binders that make the paint resistant against the harsh conditions in near-Earth space. In tests, the new coating outperformed other similar paints currently on the market not just in terms of its light absorption ability but also durability in space, Clifford said.

"We conducted tests that simulated three years in orbit and our coating withstood it with negligible changes whereas other types of space paints completely eroded," said Clifford. "Our coating also offers a better optical performance. Where competitor coatings reflect about 5% of the incoming light, the Vantablack 310 coating only reflects 2% of the light across the visible and near infrared spectrum."

SpaceX has previously experimented with dark paint to reduce the brightness of its satellites, but those experiments provided mixed results. In some cases, the satellites began to overheat due to the amount of absorbed light. The new paint should not cause such problems, Clifford believes, and will make the satellites much less visible than the current Starlinks.

"We know from some simulations that we have done that our coating should make satellites invisible to the naked eye," Clifford said. "That's about magnitude 7 in terms of brightness while Starlink satellites range from magnitude 3 to magnitude 5."

Magnitude is a measure of luminosity of astronomical objects, which is inverse to the object's actual brightness. The lower the magnitude number, the brighter the object is. The magnitude scale is logarithmic, meaning the observed brightness increases exponentially with the decreasing magnitude number.

Surrey NanoSystems and the University of Surrey will test the Vantablack 310 coating in space on the student satellite Jovian 1, which will carry a range of payloads built by British universities to low Earth orbit next year.

"The rear of the satellite's deployable solar panel will be coated with Vantablack 310, and we will be rotating the satellite while making ground-based measurements to observe the changes in brightness," Clifford said.

The company is already in talks with satellite manufacturers. They hope that the ease of the paint's application, its exquisite durability and ability to reduce brightness will inspire them to use it on their satellites in the future.

"I don't want to be too optimistic, but I hope that with this new solution, we might be able to inspire some policy changes," Noël said. "Satellites are an amazing technology, but we also want to make sure that the sky remains accessible to everyone. Large telescopes represent a huge investment, and we want to make sure that it doesn't go to waste."

The disposable approach worries some researchers, as too much aluminum is burning up in the atmosphere these days, threatening to cause a new kind of environmental disaster in the decades to come. But what can we do? Should we roll back the space revolution and put a cap on what we can do in space? Or could a circular economy, life extension, recycling and reuse be the solution to the space industry's dirty side effects?

Proponents of in-orbit servicing and refueling laud the technology's potential. But most analysts remain cautious: Without strict environmental regulations, the expected cost of in-orbit servicing may not entice satellite operators to switch to reusable technology en masse.

Dave Barnhart, chief executive officer of the California-based aerospace company Arkisys, first began developing concepts of recyclable satellite technology some 15 years ago as part of a project he oversaw at DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). He and his colleagues investigated how to set up a satellite recycling facility in geostationary orbit — the region about 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above Earth's surface where satellites appear fixed above one spot above the equator.

"We wanted to know whether we can use parts from old geo satellites to recreate new ones, because the mass is already there," Barnhart told Space.com.

The geostationary ring is home to some of the largest and most expensive satellites. On top of that, the long distance between Earth and this orbit makes geo missions inherently costly, as they require the most powerful rockets with a lot of fuel to reach their destination.

Yet, Arkisys, the company Barnhart cofounded in 2015, is focusing on low Earth orbit (LEO) — the buzzing region closest to Earth up to altitudes of about 1,200 miles (2,000 km). Arkisyshopes to set up an in-orbit servicing and refueling depot called the Port in LEO. The main goal is to spearhead a green revolution in this region, which gives rise to thousands of tons of dangerous space debris every year.

"To date, everything we have ever designed to go into space has been one mission, one life," Barnhart told Space.com. "It's sort of crazy. Every other domain on Earth, we maintain, we sustain, we grow. Not in space."

In 2023, Arkisys secured a $1.6 million deal from the U.S. Space Force to test satellite assembly in orbit using the Port demo module — a basic building block of a scalable orbiting garage and gas station. The company wants to launch the first component of this orbital depot next year — a last-mile transportation device called the Cutter, which is designed to help satellites to dock with the garage.

In 2027, the main Port module, a hexagonal structure about 9 feet (3 meters) wide, will join the Cutter in orbit to test how the mechanical interfaces of the two work together in space. The Port, in addition to serving as a fuel depot, will arrive with a supply of components and payloads that could be attached to worn-out satellites to give them a new lease on life.

"Today, everything on a satellite is done on the ground, and the satellite is launched with an end date," Barnhart said. "We want to shift that to allow extensions of both — life and business — post-launch. We want to be able to add new revenue streams post-launch. You can do that if you can add something, change something in orbit, or even sell that satellite to somebody else who could make it part of a larger platform."

Cameras or antennas could be replaced with more powerful ones once those get developed, worn-out batteries could be swapped for brand-new ones, and fuel tanks would get refilled.

It all makes sense on paper, but Dafni Christodoulopoulou, space industry analyst at the consultancy company Analysis Mason, warns that whether satellite operators would be inclined to ditch their disposable ways will come down to the cost of the in-orbit maintenance services. LEO is currently dominated by small, relatively cheap satellites, she says, which can be replaced more cheaply than they can be serviced and maintained.

"Right now, we expect in-orbit services to come at a cost that might be quite high for operators of small satellites," Christodoulopoulou told Space.com. "The operators might not be interested in those services, because the price of building a new satellite might not be higher than that of a servicing mission."

Barnhart agrees that the fledgling in-orbit servicing industry is likely to face resistance not just from operators but also from satellite manufacturers, who might feel threatened by the idea of reusability and life extension.

"Every time you want to make a big shift like this, it's going to be a threat," Barnhart said. "Satellite manufacturers make money by building more satellites to throw away. It might take some time for them to see that by fitting satellites with interfaces that allow them to be serviced, they could actually add some cool functionality to them after launch."

Still, Christodoulopoulou thinks that in-orbit servicing will eventually make a difference to how things are done in space, and also to the state of the orbital environment.

"The number of satellite launches is not expected to go down, so there will be a high need for constellation management, flexibility, disposal and life extension," she said. "I think in-orbit services can definitely help prevent the buildup of space debris and maintain long-term sustainability in orbit."

The U.S. government certainly appears to think that life extension is the way forward. In addition to funding the Arkisys experiment, the Space Force also funds the Tetra-5 and Tetra-6 missions to test in-orbit refueling technologies in space. The two missions, designed to test hardware developed by Orbit Fab, Astroscale and Northrop Grumman, are set to launch in 2026 and 2027, respectively.

In addition, intensifying geopolitical tensions are increasing the need for quick deployment of new systems in space, which, Barnhart says, could be more speedily addressed with servicing systems such as the Port, than by building new spacecraft from scratch on Earth.

"If there is a new threat that has been identified, you might need a new type of sensor or a new payload to observe it," Barnhart said. "If we can augment the satellites that the government has already put up and provide them with a new capability, a new sensor, we can address those threats much faster."

Christodoulopoulou thinks that new regulations designed to protect the environment and curb the air pollution related to satellite reentries could further help move the needle toward a less throwaway culture in space utilization.

"There need to be a few changes," Christodoulopoulou said. "There needs to be more awareness among satellite operators to understand that in-orbit servicing offers a value in the long term. But also on the government side, there need to be more regulations to support the in-orbit servicing providers."

Research funding for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is set to be cut by an estimated $1.52 billion with funding covering climate science to be hit the hardest, according to Science.

These cuts are expected to include funding for NOAA's Office of Atmospheric Research, which has overseen multiple research projects assessing the impact of rocket and satellite air pollution on Earth's atmosphere, The Guardian reported.

Samantha Lawler, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Regina in Canada, who has previously campaigned for stricter regulations of satellite megaconstellations, told Space.com that the cancellation of the NOAA research comes at a critical point in human history. Over the past fifteen years the number of satellites orbiting Earth has increased tenfold. With that, the quantity of space junk spiraling back and burning up in the atmosphere is quickly rising.

"Just last month, we've averaged three Starlink re-entries per day," Lawler told Space.com. "That's a lot of metal being added to the upper atmosphere. Right now is a very sensitive time to cut this research. The re-entries are really rising quickly. If we stop measuring what is happening in the atmosphere right now, we could be way beyond the point where we can stop the damage that's being done."

Satellites are mostly made of aluminum, which is not naturally found in noticeable quantities in meteorites that enter Earth's atmosphere. Satellites also contain lithium and other materials that don't naturally occur in the higher atmospheric layers. Scientists are particularly concerned about the effects of aluminum incineration as aluminum oxides produced during the high-altitude burn-up are known to cause ozone depletion.

These particles could also affect the atmosphere's thermal balance. So could soot particles emitted in rocket exhaust. Scientists worry that all these human-made chemicals entering the otherwise pristine layers of the upper stratosphere and mesosphere could lead to further climate disruptions and exacerbate the carbon-related climate change that is already underway.

Over the past few years, researchers from all over the world have begun untangling the effects of this elusive air pollution, hoping to understand the chemical reactions it triggers in the hard-to-reach upper atmospheric layers. NOAA's work has provided an indispensable backbone and a benchmark for this research, which cannot be easily replaced.

"The absence of NOAA projects would be a devastating loss to this emergent research field," Eloise Marais, an atmospheric chemistry professor at University College London whose team develops inventories of rocket and satellite air pollution, told Space.com in an email.

"NOAA expertise and measurement capabilities add an important dimension of observational evidence of environmental impact of rocket launches and re-entry ablation pollution that can't simply be replaced without serious delays during a time of rapid growth in space sector activities when this research is crucial," Marais added.

NOAA is the only research organization in the world that has been able to charter NASA's high-altitude plane to hunt for satellite air pollution particles in the stratosphere above the Arctic. That research, published in 2023, rendered disconcerting results as it detected aluminum and other "exotic" metals embedded in aerosol particles in the atmosphere in measurable concentrations.

The administration's supercomputers are also uniquely suited to model the evolution of the atmosphere's response to the rising concentrations of satellite air pollution particles, as well as compounds found in rocket engine exhaust.

"It's incredibly short-sighted to not do this research right now," said Lawler. "We need to know what is coming to prepare for it and mitigate it by, perhaps, changing our actions."

Both Lawler and Marais warn that even if funding is reinstated after the end of Donald Trump's term, the field will not be able to bounce back quickly enough. NOAA also provides funding for other institutions and commercial entities to cooperate with on research projects and expert training, all of which will now come to a halt.

"It won't simply be a four-year pause," said Marais. "It will take much longer than that to rebuild what Trump is destroying."

Lawler warned that any pause in training of the next generation of atmospheric researchers specializing in the nascent field of satellite air pollution effects will have repercussions for decades to come.

"Nobody will be trained to step in and do the next-generation work of science," said Lawler. "Even a one-year pause would have incredibly detrimental effects on what research is done and what research can be done in the future."

Marais thinks the only chance to salvage the emerging science field at this crucial time is through European countries stepping up to the plate, creating "opportunities to relocate displaced scientists."

The European Space Agency (ESA), which has a strong sustainability agenda and itself funds research into effects of satellite air pollution, refused to comment on the situation.

Timothy Whitehouse, Executive Director of the non-profit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, who previously discussed the situation with the Guardian, told Space.com that when exactly the "cuts would come into force is hard to tell."

"This administration has not been transparent in spending the money that Congress has authorized," Whitehouse wrote in an email. "Our sources tell us this is happening now and is a big problem for this program."

NOAA didn't respond to Space.com's request for comment.

The Golden Dome project aims to see the United States design and deploy a next-generation missile defense shield over the entire continental U.S. that will be able to detect, track and intercept hypersonic missiles and other advanced aerial threats. What makes Golden Dome unique is that it will feature space-based interceptors: spacecraft in Earth orbit capable of shooting down missile threats mid-flight.

On Tuesday (May 20), Trump and U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth held a press conference in the White House during which they announced that U.S. Space Force General Michael Guetlein, Vice Chief of Space Operations, would lead the program. "It is time that we change that equation and start doubling down on the protection of the homeland," Guetlein said during the press conference.

Hegseth issued a statement on May 20 that states the Department of Defense is requesting an initial $25 billion of funding as part of Trump's "One, Big, Beautiful Bill" legislation that includes tax cuts and changes to spending.

"We look forward to continuing that work with Congress to secure funding for critical capabilities necessary in the FY26 budget request," Hegseth's statement added. "Golden Dome ensures that the American homeland is not left exposed while adversaries develop more advanced and lethal long-range weapons."

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published a report on May 5 that estimates the cost to deploy a constellation of space-based interceptors similar to what Trump has outlined in his vision for Golden Dome. According to the CBO, the lowest estimates for developing and deploying such a system are around $161 billion, which sits below Trump's projected costs. The CBO's higher estimates suggest the cost could reach $542 billion, or over half a trillion dollars.

In reality, the final price tag could be even higher.

During a security summit hosted by Politico this month, U.S. Space Force's Chief of Space Operations General B. Chance Saltzman explained his cost estimates. "I'm 34 years in this business; I've never seen an early estimate that was too high," Saltzman said, according to Air and Space Forces Magazine. "My gut tells me there's going to be some additional funding that's necessary."

While Golden Dome is described as a purely defensive system meant to protect the contiguous United States, other nations are already questioning the intention behind the program.

China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters today (May 21) that the Golden Dome program will "expand the U.S. arsenal of means for combat operations in outer space" and has "a strong offensive nature" that "violates the principle of peaceful use in the Outer Space Treaty."

While Russia initially criticized the initiative, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday (May 20) that Golden Dome is "a sovereign matter for the United States" and that the U.S. should be able to build missile defenses if it perceives a threat, according to the Moscow Times.

Golden Dome takes its inspiration, at least in name, from Israel's Iron Dome, a missile shield system that has been used since 2011 by the Israel Defense Forces to intercept rockets and artillery weapons. It consists of radar systems that detect and track threats, missile launchers, and a control center that coordinates between the two.

Golden Dome also has its roots in an earlier missile defense program proposed by President Ronald Reagan, known as the Strategic Defense Initiative. Reagan introduced the idea in a March 1983 televised address in which he implored the scientific community to help the United States develop space-based defense weaponry that could render the threat from nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete."

The SDI program was given the nickname "Star Wars" by the media due to how outlandish it sounded at the time. But that was before Earth's orbit became militarized, launch costs plunged exponentially thanks to reusable rocket technology, and countries began deploying space-based weapons the likes of which were only found in science fiction when Reagan gave his address.

Fast forward four decades and Trump says the Golden Dome project could finally see Reagan's vision become a reality.

"We will truly be completing the job that President Regan started forty years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland," Trump said.

On Tuesday (May 20), the Seattle-based startup unveiled the outline of the groundbreaking flight, which is called Otter Pup 2. It will send one of Starfish's small Otter satellite-servicing vehicles to low Earth orbit (LEO) on SpaceX's Transporter 14 mission, which is scheduled to lift off in June.

If all goes to plan, the Otter will link up with a second private spacecraft later this year, performing the first-ever commercial satellite docking in LEO. (Commercial satellites have docked while circling Earth before, but much higher up — in geostationary orbit.)

"If successful, this mission will further validate our unique approach to satellite servicing: taking complex problems that were traditionally solved with hardware and instead solving them with software," Starfish co-founder Trevor Bennett said in a statement on Tuesday.

"This allows us to make Otters an order of magnitude smaller than other servicing vehicles — making them faster to build, faster to launch, and finally closing the business case for satellite servicing to scale across the space industry," he added.

The target satellite for Otter Pup 2 is an ION spacecraft, operated by the Italian company D-Orbit. The ION vehicle — which will also launch on Transporter 14, according to SpaceNews — has not been prepped for docking.

It shares that trait with virtually all other satellites circling Earth today. So Otter Pup 2 will be an instructive test for Starfish Space, which aims to provide a variety of services with Otters — for example, refueling some satellites to extend their operational lives and de-orbiting others to reduce the space junk population.

And that will be just the beginning, according to the company.

"We envision our technology having far-reaching implications and massive impact: performing in-space inspection, orbital relocation, and logistics services, as well as conducting repairs, component upgrades, and in-space assembly and manufacturing," Starfish Space's website reads.

Starfish's first mission, Otter Pup 1, launched on SpaceX's Transporter 8 rideshare flight in June 2023, on board a space tug operated by the California company Launcher.

That tug experienced an anomaly, however, which resulted in the Otter and other payloads being deployed earlier than planned. That, in turn, scuttled the main objective of the mission — having the Otter rendezvous with the Launcher tug down the road.

But Starfish pivoted, managing to maneuver the Otter to within 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) of a different spacecraft — an D-Orbit ION vehicle — in April 2024.

A pair of spacecraft have demonstrated ultra-precise formation flying in orbit for the first time, marking a milestone with major implications for both science and future space missions.

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Proba-3 mission, consisting of two spacecraft called the Occulter and the Coronagraph, flew in perfect formation at a distance of 150 meters (492 feet) from each other with millimeter precision, the agency announced in a May 8 statement.

The pair autonomously maintained their relative position for several hours thanks to a series of sensors, including the Fine Lateral and Longitudinal Sensor (FLLS) laser instrument, a shadow position sensor, and camera-based systems, in combination with onboard software and small cold gas thrusters.

"We are talking about millimetric accuracy in range, and sub-millimetric in the lateral position," Damien Galano, Proba-3 project manager, said in the ESA statement.

The successful test paves the way for the spacecraft to carry out their science objective: using the Occulter to block the sun to create a total solar eclipse and allow the Coronagraph to study the sun in this unique state only occasionally seen from Earth.

Scientists aim to use these artificial eclipses to unravel a number of mysteries, such as why the sun's corona, or outer atmosphere, is so hot, what accelerates the solar wind, and how the sun flings material out into space during coronal mass ejections.

But the breakthrough in demonstrating such exquisite levels of formation flying may well have bigger implications for future science and space applications beyond studying the sun. The precision formation technology could be used for enhancing Earth observation, docking spacecraft, using an occulter and observatory to search for exoplanets, and space-based gravitational wave detection.

The two Proba-3 spacecraft were launched by an Indian PSLV rocket in December into a highly elliptical orbit, which takes them as close as 373 miles (600 kilometers) to Earth and as distant as 37,612 miles (60,530 km). The pair form up as they move toward their farthest point from Earth, when the effects of Earth's gravitational pull is smaller, meaning formation flying can be maintained with very little propellant.

Next, the challenge will be getting the spacecraft's payloads ready and then aligning the pair with the sun to create total solar eclipses.

"We can't wait to see the completion of the instrument calibration and the first processed image of the sun's corona," Galano said.

The drifting Antarctic iceberg A-23A came to a sudden stop in late February off the coast of South Georgia Island — a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic Ocean and the largest of nine islands that make up the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands.

Measuring 1,240 square miles (3,460 square kilometers), A-23a is twice the size of Greater London and nearly the same size as the entire South Georgia island, which is only 1,362 square miles (3,528 square km). The massive iceberg is believed to be snagged on a shallow underwater shelf off the coast of the island, according to a statement from the European Space Agency (ESA).

The Ocean and Land Colour Instrument on ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite captured a new image of A-23a on April 5, showing the unmoving iceberg 45 miles (73 km) from the remote island, parts of which can be seen beneath thick cloud cover.

A-23A has traveled more than 1,200 miles (2,000 km) north from its home in the Southern Weddell Sea, where it calved from Antarctica's Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in 1986. In the early 2020s, the iceberg broke away from the seafloor and began to drift. Since stranding near South Georgia Island, several small blocks of ice have fallen off A-23A and can be seen floating in the dark blue ocean, just north of the iceberg in the new satellite image.

"The disintegration is typical of icebergs that reach this far north and is caused by the warmer sea temperatures and weather conditions," ESA officials said in the statement.

Satellites will continue to monitor the iceberg’s activity and disintegration, as this introduces fresh water that could affect the island's biodiversity.

Space Force's Space Systems Command (SSC), in conjunction with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), conducted its first integrated tests of the entire propulsion system that will be used on the planned Oracle-M (Oracle-Mobility) spacecraft.

These spacecraft will be used for space situational awareness, or SSA, which refers to the locating and tracking of objects in space. The Oracle-M spacecraft are specifically designed to keep watch on cislunar space, the vast area of space between Earth and the moon that includes lunar orbit.

When it launches, the Oracle-M mission will "provide persistent situational awareness in cislunar space, demonstrating new tracking and navigation capabilities essential for future space operations" and "define the future of space operation and U.S. national security beyond Earth's orbit," Space Systems Command said in a statement.

Space Systems Command is an organization within the U.S. Space Force responsible for acquiring new technologies and spacecraft to help the U.S. military project its influence in space.

The Oracle-M propulsion system uses Hall effect thrusters, which utilize electrical currents to ionize a neutral gas, in this case xenon, and create plasma. Electrical fields then propel that ionized gas outward, generating thrust. For that reason, these thrusters are sometimes called "ion thrusters."

The tests were conducted at Edwards Air Force Base in March 2025 and marked the first time the entire propulsion system had been fired along with its propellant and power units.

Oracle-M is part of a "family of systems" that also includes the Oracle-Prime, or Oracle-P spacecraft, also being developed by AFRL. As its name implies, Oracle-M is aimed primarily at demonstrating mobility or maneuverability, but will also conduct experiments in which it tracks known objects in cislunar space, AFRL said in a statement.

Oracle-P, meanwhile, will test new techniques to keep tabs on objects traveling through cislunar space and use "innovative on-board image processing techniques" to "discover and maintain custody of objects operating within this region."

Space Force and the U.S. military have been preparing for operations in cislunar space in recent years. As more commercial and U.S. government missions head to the moon and the area around it, Space Force has been studying ways to keep tabs on and protect this vast region of space.

Some military leaders consider cislunar space the new ultimate "high ground" from which military assets and surveillance systems can surprise adversaries operating at lower orbits.

China, along with the United States, has also been expanding its presence in cislunar space, which has made some experts concerned about any potential advantages that the region could offer the Chinese military.

"Cislunar space offers a vast maneuver space that is difficult to surveil and from which surprises can then emerge, analogous to deep-sea submarine warfare. The People's Republic of China's military-run space program is positioning itself in cislunar space. We are behind, and we must catch up," Peter Garretson, a retired U.S. Air Force officer and independent strategy consultant who focuses on space and defense, told Space.com in 2019. "Cislunar space is already the high ground, and the U.S. is already far behind China in its position and its planning."

Oracle-M does not yet have a firm launch date. Space Systems Command completed ground systems testing in April 2025, and will begin launch readiness reviews once all testing is completed.

Using satellite-based radar measurements, a team of researchers from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University developed high-resolution maps of sinking land, or subsidence, across major U.S. cities. In each of the 28 cities studied, at least 20% of the city was sinking; in 25 of the cities, at least 65% of the land was sinking.

Cities across Texas show the greatest rates of subsidence, with Houston taking the lead. There, some 40% of the city is sinking at more than 5 millimeters (0.2 inches) per year, while 12% of the city is sinking at 10 millimeters (0.4 inches) per year.

"Even slight downward shifts in land can significantly compromise the structural integrity of buildings, roads, bridges, and railways over time," Leonard Ohenhen, a former Virginia Tech graduate student and the study’s lead author, said in a statement.

Land subsidence isn't uncommon around the world, with many areas subsiding due to natural geological processes. However, the Virginia Tech team concluded that 80% of urban subsidence in the U.S. is caused by groundwater removal for human use. And, as cities grow, this problem may be further exacerbated.

While subsidence certainly poses a risk for coastal cities, which are also under threat of sea level rise exacerbated by human-driven climate change, it also endangers inland cities, making them more prone to flooding. Plus, uneven subsidence across a city can destabilize buildings and infrastructure.

"The latent nature of this risk means that infrastructure can be silently compromised over time with damage only becoming evident when it is severe or potentially catastrophic," Manoochehr Shirzaei, associate professor at Virginia Tech's Earth Observation and Innovation Lab, said in the statement.

While we can't entirely stop land subsidence under urban areas, we can work on mitigating it. According to the study, potential steps to take include improving land subsidence monitoring, revised groundwater management policies, and infrastructure resilience planning.

The study was published on May 8 in the journal Nature Cities.

To help honor the spirit of ongoing efforts to explore the cosmos, a new 12-minute U.S. Space Force documentary called "Always Above" will be featured in planetariums throughout the country beginning on Friday, May 2, 2025. Its title is taken from the English translation of Space Force's Latin motto, "Semper supra."

Produced by Scholar and GSD&M in partnership with the U.S. Space Force, and distributed by BIG & Digital, LLC, "Always Above" was conceived as an inspiring educational tool to teach stargazers and space enthusiasts more about the goals and aspirations of this newest branch of the U.S. Armed Forces formed in 2019 that believes in "keeping space safe and accessible to all."

"Space has always been a source of wonder and immense interest for the American people, but the new challenges we face, and the extent to which our daily lives now rely on the domain, require us to think about it differently," said U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations General Chance Saltzman in a statement. "The Space Force's mission is to secure our nation's interests in, from, and to space. Our Guardians can’t do that without public understanding and support, which is why efforts like this — those that inform and inspire — are important."

With the global space economy growing at exponential rates, this illuminating documentary aims to delve into the relationship between Earth's citizens and our vast network of orbiting satellites providing vital links to everyday communication, meteorological, and entertainment needs. Protecting, tracking, and defending America's essential assets is just one of Space Force's main priorities.

This short film whisks viewers on a breathtaking trips from the bottom of the ocean to the inky blackness of outer space to explain the differences between satellite models and their orbital pathways as they circle the globe, monitored around the clock by Space Force Guardians.

"'Always Above' is an outstanding example of how we can inspire and educate the next generation of innovators, problem solvers and dreamers about the critical role space plays in our daily lives," adds Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna in the official press release. "As Guardians of the Space Force, we are proud to protect and defend American interests in space, ensuring that our nation has the ability to harness the power of space whenever and wherever needed. This film is an excellent opportunity to showcase the importance of our mission and the incredible work of our military and civilian Guardians who work tirelessly to ensure unfettered access to the space domain."

For more info on "Always Above" and planetarium showtimes visit the film's website.

In early September last year, a team of European scientists boarded a rented business jet on Easter Island to trace the atmospheric reentry of Salsa, one of the European Space Agency's (ESA) four identical Cluster satellites. The aircraft was fitted with 26 cameras to capture the brief occurrence in different wavelengths of light.

The first results from the unique observation campaign were released in early April at the European Conference on Space Debris in Bonn, Germany.

The satellite burn-up, a meteor-like event lasting less than 50 seconds, took place above the Pacific Ocean shortly before noon local time on Sept. 8, 2024. Bright daylight complicated the observations and prevented the use of more powerful instruments, which would have provided more detailed views. Still, the team managed to gain new insights into satellite incineration, something that is little understood and hard to study.

"The event was rather faint, fainter than we expected," Stefan Löhle, a researcher at the Institute of Space Systems at the University of Stuttgart in Germany, told Space.com. "We think that it might mean that the breakup of the satellite produced fragments that were much slower than the main object and produced less radiation."

Following the initial breakup at an altitude of about 50 miles (80 kilometers), the researchers were able to record the fragmentation for about 25 seconds. They lost track of the fading streak of fragments at an altitude of about 25 miles (40 km). Using filters of different colors, the team was able to detect the release of various chemical compounds during the burn-up, which provides hints about the nature of the air pollution that arises during the satellite incineration process

"We detected lithium, potassium and aluminum," Löhle said. "But at this stage, we don't know how much of it ends up in the atmosphere as long-term air pollution and how much falls down to Earth in the form of tiny droplets."

Satellite reentries are a growing concern for the global atmospheric science community. Satellites are made of aluminum, the incineration of which produces aluminum oxide, also known as alumina. Scientists know that alumina can trigger ozone depletion and alter Earth's ability to reflect sunlight, which, in turn, could alter the atmosphere's thermal balance.

With the increase in satellite launches, many more satellites are falling back to Earth. Whatever byproducts arise during the atmospheric burn-up will likely keep accumulating high above Earth in the coming years. The effects of this satellite air pollution, however, are not well understood. The altitudes at which satellites disintegrate are too high for meteorological balloons to reach but too low for satellites to sample.

Aircraft chases, such as the one that traced the Cluster Salsa reentry last year, provide the best chance to gather accurate data on the chemical processes unfolding during those events. Such campaigns, however, are rather costly and difficult to execute. So far, only five spacecraft reentries have been tracked from the air; the previous cases included an Ariane rocket stage and three International Space Station resupply vehicles.

"Right now, researchers that model these events don't really know what happens during the satellite fragmentation," said Löhle. "That's the first thing we need to answer. We want to make sure that nothing falls on people's heads. Then we need to find out how harmful this stuff is for Earth's atmosphere."

The data captured by Löhle and his colleagues suggest that the titanium fuel tanks from the 1,200-pound (550 kilograms) Cluster Salsa may have survived the reentry and likely splashed into the Pacific Ocean. This is an important piece of information. On average, three satellites fall back to Earth every day, according to a report released by ESA last month.

Most of these satellites belong to SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation. While the first generation of Starlinks weighed only about 570 pounds (260 kg) each, the current "V2 mini" variant of the satellite has a mass of about 1,760 pounds (800 kg). The planned V2 version will be even larger, weighing 2,750 pounds (1,250 kg). Although SpaceX claims the satellites are designed to burn up completely, the company previously acknowledged that some remnants might occasionally make it all the way down to Earth's surface.

The European team continues analyzing the data and hopes to align their observations with computer models, which could provide further insights into the progression of events during satellite fragmentation and subsequent incineration.

"We are comparing what we have seen with models of satellite fragmentation to understand how much mass is being lost at what stage," Jiří Šilha, CEO of Slovakia-based Astros Solutions, which coordinated the observation campaign, told Space.com. "Once we have an alignment between those models and our observations, we may be able to start modelling how the melting metal interacts with the atmosphere."

Löhle explained that researchers so far have too little understanding of the incineration process to be able to estimate how much satellite reentries affect the atmosphere. The disintegrating aluminum body of a reentering satellite melts, forming large droplets of molten metal. Some of these droplets vaporize into aluminum oxide aerosol, while others scatter and cool down, eventually drifting to the ground in the form of nano- and micrometer-sized bits of aluminum. The aluminum that turns into aerosol is what then triggers the ozone depletion and other climate effects.

"We don't have the data yet to be able to say how much of it turns into the aerosol," Löhle said. "We hope that, at some point, we will be able to recreate a fragmentation sequence and say how much aluminum each of the subsequent explosions released into the upper atmosphere."

The researchers hope to gather more data when Cluster Salsa's three siblings — Rumba, Tango and Samba — reenter in 2025 and 2026. The satellite quartet has circled Earth since 2000, measuring the planet's magnetic field and its interactions with the solar wind.

All those reentries, however, will also happen during daytime, which means the researchers won't be able to obtain spectroscopy measurements, which could reveal the chemical processes in the fragmentation cloud in better detail. Spectroscopy is an observation method that breaks incoming light into individual wavelengths. The signal from a reentering spacecraft, however, is too weak and gets drowned out by the bright solar light.

From the late 1960s almost until the end of the 1990s, a bloody war between communist groups and democracy defenders raged, with a few short breaks, in the jungles and on the rice fields of Cambodia. The conflict left behind a hidden legacy that keeps increasing the war's death toll to this day.

Over 10 million anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines and other explosives may have been scattered across Cambodia's land during the decades of fighting. Over half of them may still lurk in the ground, waiting for unlucky people or vehicles to set them off. Since the war's end in 1998, over 20,000 people have been killed and 45,000 injured in mine accidents in Cambodia. The toll is still rising.

"There were over 50 accidents last year," Tobias Hewitt, the country director for Cambodia at the HALO Trust, a de-mining non-governmental organization (NGO), told Space.com. "The number is steadily decreasing, but it's still a huge problem."

Related: SpaceX launches secret US spy satellite on 19th anniversary of company's 1st-ever liftoff (video, photos)

The HALO Trust has been working in Cambodia since the 1990s, helping to scour hundreds of square miles of contaminated land. The work is tedious, and progress is slow. It requires teams of technicians with mine detectors to comb the land square foot by square foot. The problem is, they don't always know where to look.

"During the Cambodian conflict, a lot of the information was never recorded," Hewitt said. "Mines were put there, people left and have forgotten about it."

The HALO Trust team has been relying on satellite images for years to look for suspect areas. But the landscape has changed since the war's end. Jungle has grown, villages have been abandoned and roads have stopped being used. Last year, the de-miners decided to search for clues in images captured by U.S. military satellites in the 1970s and 1980s.

The images were captured by the HEXAGON fleet of satellites operated by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office. The satellites used old-fashioned film to take their snaps. The film spools would be sent in sturdy return capsules to Earth, where the images would be developed. The data was kept secret for decades. But in 2011, nearly 30,000 images were declassified and made available to the public through the Department of State.

The HALO Trust team found thousands of images of regions in the west of Cambodia, where most of the suspected mine fields are located. It's been a game-changer.

"We were able to overlay those old images on regular Google Earth images and find old roads, for example," said Hewitt. "That's a huge help, because that's where most mines would be put in the ground. We would not be able to know about them otherwise."

Cambodian society has changed since the war. Many people have moved into cities. Those who lived through the conflict are dying. New farmers begin to work the land, oblivious to the hidden danger.

"If they don't know that there used to be a road, they just assume it's farmland and plough it," said Hewitt. "Unfortunately, accidents happen."

In recent years, as Cambodia's economy began to grow, farmers have started abandoning traditional manual farming methods and began purchasing tractors and other machinery. That, Hewitt said, opened up a new can of worms.

"There are two types of land mines in Cambodia," said Hewitt. "Anti-personnel mines, which only need a very small amount of pressure to explode, and anti-vehicle mines. The anti-vehicle mines may have been buried in the ground for decades. You can walk over them and nothing happens. But now, with the mechanization of agriculture, you are setting off those mines that have been dormant for decades."

The old military satellite images are helping to speed up the clearance. However, Hewitt, said that the process is still time-consuming and laborious.

"We have to manually sync those images with our existing maps and then go over them inch by inch looking for old roads," Hewitt said. "Then, once we have an area where we think there used to be a road, a team will go there and try to confirm that information through ground survey work."

In the few months since the project started, the HALO Trust team has analyzed all the suspected areas in western Cambodia and identified several high-priority areas where mines are likely present. With the vast amount of land remaining to be cleared, zooming in quickly on the most dangerous zones could save lives.

"You don't have the luxury to clear everything," said Hewitt. "You need to focus on the highest priority. With these additional assets and different information points, we can better prioritize what we are doing and do it in the most efficient way possible."

Since the 1990s, Cambodia has cleared about 1,200 square miles (3,100 square kilometers) of mine-contaminated land. According to estimates, some 180 square miles (470 square km) remains to be cleared. The country hopes to be rid of land mines completely by 2030.

The assembly of Amazon's big new satellite-internet constellation is underway.

A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today (April 28) at 7:01 p.m. EDT (2301 GMT), carrying 27 of Amazon's "Project Kuiper" broadband spacecraft toward low Earth orbit (LEO).

It was the first of more than 80 planned launches to build out the Project Kuiper megaconstellation, which will eventually harbor more than 3,200 spacecraft.

That's a big number, but it won't set a record; SpaceX's Starlink broadband network, which already beams service down to customers around the world, currently consists of more than 7,200 operational spacecraft.

And Starlink — perhaps Project Kuiper's biggest competitor — is growing all the time: SpaceX has launched 31 Starlink missions so far this year, with many more on the docket. In fact, there was a Starlink launch less than three hours before today's Atlas V launch, with another planned for less than four hours after.

Related: Starlink satellites: Facts, tracking and impact on astronomy

If all goes according to plan today, the Atlas V will deploy the 27 Project Kuiper satellites 280 miles (450 kilometers) above Earth. The spacecraft will then make their own way to their operational altitude of 392 miles (630 km).

"While the satellites complete the orbit-raising process, we will look ahead to our ultimate mission objective: providing end-to-end network connectivity," Amazon representatives wrote in a prelaunch statement.

"This involves sending data from the internet, through our ground infrastructure, up to the satellites, and down to customer terminal antennas, and then repeating the journey in the other direction," they added.

Project Kuiper is expected to begin providing coverage to customers later this year, according to Amazon.

Today's launch was the second overall for the Project Kuiper program. An Atlas V sent two prototype satellites to orbit in October 2023, on a test mission designed to prove out the company's technology and inform the design of the constellation's operational craft.

And there are considerable differences between those pioneering satellites and the ones that went up today.

"We have improved the performance of every system and subsystem on board, including phased array antennas, processors, solar arrays, propulsion systems and optical inter-satellite links," Amazon representatives said in the same statement.

"In addition, the satellites are coated in a dielectric mirror film unique to Kuiper that scatters reflected sunlight to help make them less visible to ground-based astronomers," they added.

Most of the remaining 80-plus launches will be performed by the Atlas V and its successor, ULA's new Vulcan Centaur rocket. Amazon has also signed launch deals with Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, SpaceX and France-based Arianespace.

Today's launch was originally scheduled for April 9, but bad weather scuttled that try. ULA and Amazon then had to wait for a launch slot to open up on the Eastern Range, the Florida spaceport and testing site operated by the U.S. Space Force.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched South Korea's 425Sat-3 satellite on Monday (April 21) along with two other spacecraft on the Bandwagon-3 rideshare mission. 425Sat-3 is a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite, a type of Earth-observation platform that can provide high-resolution imagery even at night or when cloud cover is present.

The satellite will boost South Korea's "surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities against North Korea by securing additional reconnaissance satellites," the nation's Ministry of National Defense said in a statement (in Korean; translation by Google). The ministry added that the satellite will also "strengthen kill chain abilities" (the ability to locate, identify and strike targets such as missiles) by allowing for more timely and accurate observations of North Korean military activity.

South Korea and North Korea have been launching more satellites into orbit in recent years, to keep tabs on one another following decades of tense military standoff.

North Korea claims to have placed its first satellite in orbit in November 2023 and vowed to launch more. An attempt in May 2024 ended in failure when one of its rockets exploded with a satellite onboard.

After relying on U.S. space-based surveillance capabilities for decades, South Korea launched its first spy satellite in December 2023 atop a Falcon 9, just weeks after the North's first successful launch. The nation has a contract to launch a total of five satellites with SpaceX.

Once its five-satellite constellation is complete, the South Korean military will be able to surveil its neighbor to the north every two hours, Yonhap News reports.

South Korea's own Nuri rocket launched eight satellites to orbit in May 2023, and another flight is expected this year, but the country is already looking ahead to the upcoming KSLV-III rocket, which will be much more capable.

The nation stood up its own space agency in 2024, with the goal of landing on Mars by 2045.

For years, Space Force has been training units to conduct orbital warfare, calling upon American industries to develop new spacecraft and weaponry as well as creating international partnerships to maintain peaceful norms in space. Now, the United States' newest military branch has an official "Space Warfighting" framework that outlines how Space Force leadership can train and prepare units for a war in space.

The document "establishes a common lexicon for counterspace operations" and lays out a "range of responsible offensive and defensive actions Guardians may employ to maintain control of space" and ensure the success of the U.S. military, according to a Space Force statement accompanying its release.

The Space Force's warfighting framework describes both offensive and defensive operations and largely focuses on space superiority, which "may involve seeking out and destroying an enemy's spacecraft", the document notes. Space superiority, like air superiority, broadly defines a military's ability to project military power in space in order to protect its satellites or other assets in orbit, or to use that power to deny an adversary the use of their own spacecraft.

The service's new warfighting framework notes that, unlike warfare in other domains, combat in space will involve highly automated systems that "filter or reduce human decision making" due to the fact that spacecraft operate at high speeds over long distances in orbits that are often crowded with other satellites. "Detailed analysis must help us characterize how and when humans interact with these systems," the report notes.

War in space will actually take place across three different mission areas: orbital warfare that takes place between spacecraft, electromagnetic warfare which aims to control the electromagnetic spectrum (such as radiofrequency jamming), and cyberspace warfare, which involves targeting an adversary's computer networks.

The new document concludes by noting that there are no set rules for fighting a war in space  — or anywhere, for that matter  — and adds that U.S. Space Force personnel "must understand the principles and, when necessary, break the rules to uncover the military genius in spacepower."

The Mission Extension Vehicle-1 (MEV-1), developed by Northrop Grumman Corporation’s Space Logistics LLC, docked with Intelsat’s IS-901 communications satellite in 2020 in a graveyard orbit, a few hundred miles above geosynchronous orbit (GEO), an orbital belt 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above Earth.

MEV-1, which launched atop a Russian Proton rocket in October 2019 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, then brought IS-901 back to GEO and allowed it to restart its operations. But now, after extending the life of IS-901 for five years, the mission has come to an end.

IS-901 has been taken back into the GEO graveyard — where decommissioned satellites are positioned to remove them safely from the active GEO belt — by MEV-1. There, the two spacecraft undocked. Just as the 2020 rendezvous was the first docking between commercial spacecraft in GEO, this marks the first such commercial undocking.

Related: Watch Northrop Grumman's MEV-1 dock with Intelsat 901!

This is not the end for MEV-1, however, as the spacecraft is currently relocating to the next servicing mission, according to Northrop Grumman. This is all part of the company’s plans to provide life-extension services for satellites in GEO.

"The first-of-its kind technology that extended a satellite’s life is paving the way for an entire infrastructure of future on-orbit satellite servicing missions for a variety of customers," Rob Hauge, president of Northrop Grumman Space Logistics, said in an April 9 statement. "We are continuing to invest in next-generation capabilities to deliver the most technologically advanced servicing capabilities to support and maintain new and existing space-based assets."

MEV-1 is not the only player in the satellite life-extension game. Northrop Grumman Space Logistics’ follow-on spacecraft, MEV-2, is currently docked to Intelsat 10-02 and will continue providing life-extension services for an additional four years.

The U.S. Space Force also recently tapped Northrop Grumman for the Elixir refueling payload program, which will "enable the Space Force to refine tactics and procedures for rendezvous and proximity operations, docking, refueling, and undocking of on-orbit vehicles," according to a different Northrop Grumman statement.

Meanwhile, Astroscale U.S. will attempt to refuel a pair of Space Force spacecraft in 2026, following an announcement at the 40th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs earlier this month. Elsewhere, China launched its own experimental refueling spacecraft, Shijian 25, in January this year.

Countries and companies are pursuing life extension and satellite-servicing capabilities for a range of uses and reasons, including reducing space debris, potential cost savings and enabling flexible and sustainable satellite operations.

Germany's military, or Bundeswehr, is looking to build at least one constellation of hundreds of satellites to provide communications services and possibly other applications, including remote sensing, according to a report from the German media outlet Handelsblatt.

The constellation is to be constructed by around 2029, though it is not clear if this refers to starting or completing the project.

Handelsblatt confirmed the plans with a German Ministry of Defense spokesperson, but details such as cost and design could not be shared due to national security. It was stated that various deployment options are being explored to meet growing demand using domestic capabilities.

The importance of satellites for providing communications in wartime has been highlighted by the role of SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation in Ukraine's response to the ongoing Russian invasion, which began in February 2022. Recent reports suggest that Russia and China are looking at ways of countering the constellation.

The Handelsblatt report states that Germany has so far relied on satellite systems from allies, but that geopolitical uncertainty has made the country look to develop its own, autonomous capabilities.

The constellation for the Bundeswehr would also be separate from the European Union's planned IRIS 2 (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite) constellation. IRIS2 aims to provide sovereign high-speed internet broadband for the continent.

Germany is also host to a number of new launch companies that are aiming to reach orbit in the near future. These include HyImpulse, Rocket Factory Augsburg and Isar Aerospace, which recently made its first orbital launch attempt from Andøya Spaceport in Norway. These could be involved in launching satellites for the Bundeswehr.

These companies and more across the continent are likely to compete in the European Launcher Challenge to support the development of new launch vehicles and boost Europe's access to space.

And experts warn that the number of objects returning from space is set to increase, a possible concern for the health of Earth's atmosphere and for the safety of humans on the ground.

The Space Environment Report, released by the European Space Agency (ESA) on April 1, found that some 1,200 "intact objects" reentered the atmosphere in 2024, in addition to countless space debris fragments.

Despite this incessant rain of junk battering the atmosphere, the amount of space debris increased over the course of 2024, with an estimated 45,700 objects larger than 3 inches (10 centimeters) now orbiting the planet. Some of the new junk consists of satellites that naturally reached the end of their lives.

Related: Kessler Syndrome and the space debris problem

But on top of that, several orbital collisions and explosions added at least 3,000 new trackable fragments over the course of 2024. In addition to that, there are currently about 9,300 active spacecraft circling Earth, and further launches continue to add more.

The new report "underlines that space activity has now increased to the point where we are having a real effect on the environment both in space and in the upper atmosphere," astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, perhaps the world's leading expert on space debris, told Space.com.

McDowell was not a part of the team that compiled the report. The astrophysicist, who keeps close tabs on orbital traffic, said that on the day of the interview (April 4), at least three objects had returned from space — two of SpaceX's Starlink broadband satellites and a 43-year-old Russian spy satellite called Kosmos 1340. Starlink satellites, according to McDowell, make up the majority of stuff that falls back to Earth these days, and their numbers are only going to grow.

"If SpaceX continues with their plans to expand their Starlink constellation to 30,000 satellites, then we'll be looking at 15 reentries per day," McDowell said. "In addition to that, Amazon is about to start deploying its Kuiper constellation. We're also seeing Chinese megaconstellation projects starting to go up. So, in the next five to 10 years, we will see a corresponding increase in the number of satellites being retired."

Constellation operators tend to replace their satellites with newer models every five years or so. To prevent further accumulation of space debris, they strive to remove every low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite from its position within five years from its mission's end.

As a result of these reentries, however, the amount of space junk burning up in the upper layers of the atmosphere is increasing, which worries some atmospheric scientists. Satellites are mostly made of aluminum, which produces aluminum oxide when burned. Scientists have long known that aluminum oxide can accelerate ozone depletion and contribute to thermal changes in the upper atmosphere.

Eloise Marais, a professor in atmospheric chemistry at University College London, described the three-a-day reentry rate as "an unchartered territory" and an "alarming" trend.

"The impact on the atmosphere is inevitably greater than it has ever been, as more ozone-destroying pollutants, including aluminum oxide, other metal oxides, and gas-phase nitrogen oxides are being added to the atmosphere than ever before," said Marais, who leads a team of scientists that's developing an inventory of emissions from satellite reentries and rocket launches.

In addition to the potential environmental impacts, the growing number of reentering satellites may increase the risk that some residual debris crashes on Earth, threatening property and human life. McDowell said that, although the risk to humans is currently very low, it will rise with the growing numbers of reentries.

"Most satellites burn up entirely," McDowell said. "Starlinks are specifically designed to completely melt unless they reenter in a non-standard way. But, for example, the Russian Kosmos 1340, which weighed about 2 and a half tons, probably left behind a few chunks reaching the surface of Earth."

Related: Burned-up space junk pollutes Earth's upper atmosphere, NASA planes find

As most of Earth's surface is either covered with ocean or uninhabited land, the chances of a piece of junk landing on somebody's head are slim. Still, pieces of debris have previously been found close to human settlements.

In February of this year, for instance, charred fragments from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket scattered across parts of Poland and Ukraine. And in March 2024, a 4-inch (10 centimeters) shrapnel of melted metal pierced through the roof of a Florida home. The space projectile was later identified as a remnant of a battery pallet thrown out of the International Space Station three years earlier.

"We're rolling the dice every time we have a reentry," McDowell said. "Eventually we're going to get unlucky, and someone is going to get hurt by falling space debris."

The ESA report stated that, despite efforts to promptly remove old satellites from orbit, there are still too many objects being left behind, creating collision risk. Even if 90% of spacecraft are successfully removed, the number of space debris objects will continue to grow, ESA said in the report.

In some parts of LEO, the number of functional satellites now approaches the quantity of space debris objects, the report stated. In addition to the objects larger than 4 inches, which can be tracked from Earth using radars and telescopes, there are about 1.1 million fragments between 0.4 and 4 inches in size and a further 130 million tiny bits smaller than 0.4 inches, according to ESA.

The mission, announced at the 40th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs on Tuesday (April 8), aims to pave the way for scalable refueling services in space and bring "added agility and operational flexibility for dynamic space operations" for the Space Force, Astroscale said in a statement.

Launch is scheduled for summer 2026. Astroscale's 660-pound (300 kilograms) APS-R Refueler spacecraft will head for the geostationary belt (GEO), around 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above Earth's equator.

Positioned slightly above GEO, it will target one of two U.S. Space Force Tetra-5 satellites due to be launched next year, and attempt to dock with the spacecraft. The Refueler will then transfer hydrazine propellant to the target satellite from a refillable tank.

Related: Wow! Private space-junk probe snaps historic photo of discarded rocket in orbit

Both spacecraft will be traveling around 6,870 mph (11,050 kph) in orbit, requiring exquisite guidance, propulsion and sensor systems to safely approach and dock.

That's not all. The mission includes a partnership with startup Orbit Fab. The Tetra-5 satellites will carry Orbit Fab's Rapidly Attachable Fluid Transfer Interface (RAFTI), which will facilitate refueling. After docking with and refueling a Tetra-5 spacecraft, APS-R will back off, scan for leaks, then head to an Orbit Fab fuel depot to collect more propellant. APS-R will then travel to a second, currently undisclosed spacecraft for another rendezvous, docking and refueling test.

"We're changing the reality of what's possible," Ron Lopez, president of Astroscale U.S., said in the statement. "This mission proves that in-space logistics does not have to be years away. We're a focused team with one goal: deliver and operate an operational prototype spacecraft for the Space Force."

Astroscale is also making strides in active debris removal with the ADRAS-J orbital inspection mission, which last year got up close to a spent rocket stage. The company also launched the ELSA-d mission in 2021.

Astroscale's APS-R Refueler will not be the first spacecraft to attempt to dock with and extend the life of another spacecraft. Northrop Grumman has tested life-extension services for satellites with its Mission Extension Vehicle-1 and Mission Extension Vehicle-2 flights in recent years. China meanwhile launched its own Shijian 25 test refueler and mission extension spacecraft in January.

Such missions could lead to a change in how satellites are designed, such as being readily serviceable. This could lead to extended missions and help reduce space debris.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket attempted to launch 27 of Amazon's first Project Kuiper internet satellites to orbit from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on April 9, but persistent clouds near the pad violated launch rules, ULA officials said.

"It is confirmed that we will not continue with the Amazon Project Kuiper 1 launch activities today," ULA launch commentator Caleb Weiss said during a livestream. "We will work with our partners at the U.S. Space Force Space Launch Delta 45 for the timing of our next launch opportunity."

Bad weather plagued ULA's launch attempt Amazon throughout a two-hour flight window that opened at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT). Launch controllers worked through some technical glitches, but were primarily concerned thick cumulus clouds and rain within 10 miles of the pad, which violated launch weather rules, ULA officials said.

Project Kuiper is Amazon's answer to SpaceX's megaconstellation of Starlink satellites to provide high-speed internet around the world. Amazon hopes to build a constellation of 3,200 broadband satellites in the years ahead to cement a foothold on the space-based internet market.

While ULA is launching these first Kuiper satellites, Amazon has tapped a wide range of launch services for the project, including flights on ULA's brand-new Vulcan Centaur rocket, Arianespace boosters, Blue Origin's New Glenn and SpaceX's Falcon rocket family.

In October 2023, Amazon launched two prototype Kuiper satellites on a test flight, paving the way to this first fave of the first operational satellite launches.

Amazon's first big batch of Project Kuiper broadband satellites will take flight today (April 28) after weeks of delay due to weather, and you can watch the action live.

A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket is scheduled to launch 27 Project Kuiper satellites from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today during a two-hour window that opens at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT). You can watch the liftoff live here at Space.com courtesy of ULA or directly via the company. Coverage will start at 6:35 p.m. EDT (2235 GMT).

An attempted launch on April 9 was scrubbed due to weather concerns, and launch range availability pushed the flight back even further.

"We are back on the Range with the Mighty Atlas in its Bruiser configuration for Amazon’s KA01 mission," ULA CEO Tory Bruno wrote on social media today, using a nickname for the Atlas V rocket's launch configuration, which will use five solid rocket boosters to assist the liftoff. "Working no issues. Weather [percent go] is 75%."

Related: Atlas V rocket launches Amazon's 1st 2 internet satellites to orbit (video)

Project Kuiper is Amazon's planned broadband megaconstellation in low Earth orbit. The initial network will consist of about 3,200 satellites, Amazon representatives have said.

Amazon will assemble that big constellation over more than 80 launches, the majority of them performed by the Atlas V and its successor, ULA's new Vulcan Centaur. Amazon has also procured launches from Arianespace, Blue Origin and SpaceX.

Today's launch will be the first to send fully operational Kuiper craft skyward and the second of any type for the program: An Atlas V lofted two prototype Kuiper satellites in October 2023.

Editor's note: This story, originally posted on April 9 for ULA's first launch attempt, has been updated for the company's ne wApril 28 launch attempt.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on April 4 confirmed that its PSLV Orbital Experimental Module 4 (or POEM-4) was intentionally destroyed to mark the end of its successful mission.

The experiment platform launched into space on Dec. 30 on an ISRO Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle as part of the country's Space Docking Experiment mission, also known as SPADEX.

"During its mission life, POEM-4 hosted altogether 24 payloads (14 payloads from ISRO and 10 from various [non-government entities]) and all payloads worked as expected yielding valuable science data," ISRO officials wrote in a statement. The Space Docking Experiment mission, which demonstrated India's first-ever autonomous docking in space, was also a success.

ISRO deorbited the POEM-4 module, which was attached to the upper stage of its PSLV rocket, so it didn't become a space debris hazard in orbit. Flight controllers directed the rocket stage to maneuver into a collision course with the Indian Ocean, then vent off any remaining propellant to avoid an accidental explosion or breakup during reentry. It officially fell out of space at 8:03 a.m. Indian Standard Time on April 4 (0233 GMT; 9:33 p.m. April 3 EDT).

"The safe reentry of POEM-4 is yet another accomplishment to ISRO’s commitment to contain the growth of space debris, reaffirming the prominent role of ISRO in the long-term sustainability of outer space environment and Debris Free Space Mission," ISRO officials said.

On Dec. 25 of last year, an Azerbaijani plane headed for the Chechnyan capital Grozny crash-landed in Kazakhstan after flying into a GPS jamming bubble. Later reports claimed that the plane had been hit by Russian shrapnel targeting Ukrainian drones, but the aircraft had already been struggling before the hit, having flown into a cloud of thick fog while losing satellite positioning data.

According to Clémence Poirier, a cybersecurity researcher at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, the incident, which killed 38 people, is just the tip of an increasingly frightening iceberg. Some 310,000 flights were affected by GPS interference in 2024, with most cases taking place around Russia and the Middle East. For example, civilian flights to Estonia's Tartu Airport were suspended for months in 2024 because approaching aircraft couldn't safely land due to GPS interference.

The situation prompted the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to issue a statement on March 25 calling for states to "urgently enhance their protection" of critical frequency bands to prevent disruptions in "aviation, maritime and telecommunication services."

Related: How Russia's GPS satellite signal jamming works, and what we can do about it

"Radio navigation satellite service interference can impact aircraft operations far beyond the immediate affected area, creating potential safety risks across multiple flight regions," ICAO Secretary General Juan Carlos Salazar said in the statement. "ICAO is fully committed to working closely with member states to implement these protective measures through existing aviation safety frameworks and standards."

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the U.N. International Maritime Organization (IMO) joined the call.

Poirer told Space.com that satellite navigation is not the only space-based service vulnerable to disruption. In April 2024, Russian hackers hijacked the Walt Disney BabyTV channel, which was broadcast across Europe via geostationary satellites of the French satcom provider Eutelsat. Instead of its usual jolly cartoons, the channel began broadcasting footage of Russian military parades accompanied by music of the Russian nationalist singer Oleg Gazmanov. Multiple satellite TV channels in Ukraine also got hacked.

Since then, eight European countries, including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Finland and France, filed complaints to the ITU against Russia's interference with European satellite communications systems.

According to Porier, satellite operators will have to up their game to secure their services, which for years they considered inherently safe.

"Satellite operators and TV broadcasters will both have to increase security against electronic interference," Porier said. "As internet broadband is now becoming commonplace in flight and at sea, interference against satellite communication is likely going to become more prevalent."

GPS ubiquitous

Services provided by the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) and other global navigation satellite systems have, in particular, been taken for granted. Their precise location and timing signals underpin much more of today's everyday technologies than just your Google maps navigation. They also synchronize banking operations all over the world, guide oil-drilling heads at offshore rigs and assist with power grid management, for example.

"The world has all been based on GPS," Mario Paniccia, CEO of California-based ANELLO Photonics, told Space.com. "But what happens when you lose it? How do you navigate?"

ANELLO Photonics is among a flurry of companies that have emerged in recent years, trying to find cost-effective and speedy solutions to the GPS vulnerability problem.

ANELLO's idea is a chip-based inertial navigation system that can augment a GPS navigation unit and take over when the satellite signal is jammed or spoofed (that is, altered by a cyber attacker to mislead the user.)

"The military has had these systems for a long time, but they are very high-end, very costly and large," Paniccia said. "An inertial navigation system for a military submarine can cost a couple million dollars and be the size of your desk."

ANELLO managed to produce an inertial navigation system that is accurate enough and so small that it fits on a chip. The system's software uses input from lasers and accelerometers to calculate the path travelled from a starting point or detect deviations from GPS data to alert to spoofing.

In tests with land vehicles, ANELLO covered a 60-mile (100 kilometers) track, reaching its destination with an error of only 330 feet (100 meters).

Other GPS backups rely on low-frequency radio waves, such as the eLoran system developed by the U.S. Navy, or fleets of satellites in low Earth orbit that offer a stronger signal then the traditional GNSS systems that operate much higher up, at around 12,000 miles (20,000 km) above Earth's surface. Defense tech innovators have also increasingly begun fitting drones with AI-based navigation technology that can follow a path by comparing landmarks spotted in the landscape below with onboard satellite images and maps.

Related: GPS: Everything you need to know about the space-based technology keeping us on track

Comms disruption

Operators of telecommunication satellites, too, need to pay more attention to the security of their signals. Military and governmental telecom satellites have long been protected by encryption and special waveforms that are resistant to jamming and interception. But the BabyTV hacking shows that even harmless TV programs are at risk of being targeted.

"Operators and broadcasters can use spectrum monitoring to detect and locate interference," said Poirer. "In the satellite manufacturing process, directional antennas, phased array antennas or hardened components can be integrated."

In a report released last year, the aviation professionals organization OPS Group estimated that incidents of GPS spoofing affecting aviation had increased by 400% over the previous three years, with up to 1,350 flights affected per day in 2024 compared to the daily average of 200 in 2021. Statistical data on disruption of satellite services in other sectors are hard to find, but experts seem to agree that things are bound to get worse.

The stakes are high. A 2023 report by the U.K. Space Agency estimated that a seven-day GNSS disruption affecting the country would cost the nation's economy some £7.6 billion (around $9.8 billion US at current exchange rates), affecting sectors including maritime and aviation, road transportation, agriculture, energy and finance.

The Colorado-based startup, which aims to make space a safer and more sustainable realm for the U.S. government and its partners and allies, revealed today (April 3) that it plans to send its Jackal satellites to geosynchronous orbit (GEO) and cislunar (Earth-moon) space in 2026.

"Beyond LEO [low Earth orbit], GEO and cislunar are obvious extensions of the Jackal platform and represent critical domains within the space superiority mission set," True Anomaly CEO and co-founder Even Rogers said in a statement today.

True Anomaly, which was founded in 2022, bills Jackal as an autonomous orbital vehicle — "a multi-role spacecraft with a modular architecture that delivers cost-effective, scalable performance and maximum operational flexibility," according to the statement.

Related: Startup True Anomaly snags $100 million for space security work

Jackal's designers "set out to define an entirely new category of spacecraft — one that sets the performance benchmark for space superiority," the statement continues.

That performance is achieved, among other things, by high-maneuverability propulsion and an intelligent operating system that together allow for complex operations, such as the close approach and observation of other spacecraft.

Jackal has been to space already: The company sent two of the satellites to LEO in March 2024, on SpaceX's Transporter-10 rideshare mission. Both satellites deployed their solar panels and successfully generated power, but they were not able to conduct a rendezvous test as planned.

A third Jackal launched in December on Bandwagon-2, another SpaceX rideshare effort. True Anomaly has notched a number of milestones with that mission, which may still be active.

And another Jackal is scheduled to launch later this year: One of the satellites will ride a Firefly Aerospace Alpha rocket to orbit, for a rapid-response U.S. Space Force mission called Victus Haze.

True Anomaly's release does not discuss the planned missions to GEO and cislunar space in detail. But it does stress why these off-Earth realms are so important to U.S. national security.

GEO, for example, is a favored spot for spy satellites, because it's the altitude (22,236 miles, or 35,786 kilometers) at which orbital velocity matches the speed of Earth's rotation. Spacecraft in GEO therefore "hover" over the same patch of the planet, allowing continuous observation.

And U.S. officials have repeatedly said that the country is engaged in a space race with China, with the moon as the destination. Both nations aim to establish bases near the lunar south pole, which is thought to be rich in water ice.

"As global lunar activities increase, threats in cislunar orbits will quickly follow," True Anomaly said in today's statement. "No future lunar economy can exist without a robust lunar satellite infrastructure, and by investing in cislunar today, True Anomaly is developing scalable, cost-effective solutions that will help safeguard lunar operations and defense capabilities well into the future."

The three satellites, designated Kosmos 2581, 2582 and 2583, launched on a Soyuz-2.1V rocket from Plesetsk cosmodrome early on Feb. 2 (GMT). Since then, the satellites, whose purpose is unknown, have displayed interesting behavior, while in a near-polar orbit roughly 364 miles (585 kilometers) above Earth.

In March, the satellites appeared to be conducting potential proximity operations, or maneuvering close to other objects in space, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and spaceflight activity tracker.

Following this, the U.S. Space Force cataloged a new object in orbit, which was possibly released by Kosmos 2581 on March 18.

Russia has provided no details about the satellites and their mission. Many Kosmos missions are classified.

The released object could be used for a number of objectives, including military experiments, such as satellite inspection or target practice, testing technology for docking or formation flying. It may also be a scientific payload or even the result of an unintentional fragmentation, though this would usually result in numerous pieces of debris.

Related: Pentagon space chief condemns 'irresponsible' launch of Russian inspector satellite

The Kosmos (or Cosmos) designation has been used by the Soviet Union and later Russia for a very wide range of military and scientific satellites since 1962. The satellites have covered a range of apparent uses, some of which are experimental, secret, or part of military programs, including early ASAT (anti-satellite) tests and satellite inspection, reconnaissance and electronic intelligence.

Satellite trios flying in formation in orbit is not unusual. Both the United States (for example, the Naval Ocean Surveillance System) and China (Yaogan) have launched numerous sets of satellite triplets, many of which are thought to be for electronic intelligence purposes, along with other satellite series.

However, it remains to be seen what the three Kosmos satellites and their new companion will get up to in orbit.

A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket is scheduled to send 27 Project Kuiper satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO) on April 9, Amazon announced today (April 2).

The Atlas V will lift off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station during a three-hour window that opens at 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT). You'll be able to watch it live when the time comes.

This will be the second Project Kuiper launch to date; an Atlas V lofted two test versions of the satellites back in October 2023.

Related: Atlas V rocket launches Amazon's 1st 2 internet satellites to orbit (video)

"We've done extensive testing on the ground to prepare for this first mission, but there are some things you can only learn in flight, and this will be the first time we've flown our final satellite design and the first time we've deployed so many satellites at once," Rajeev Badyal, vice president of Project Kuiper, said in an Amazon statement today.

"No matter how the mission unfolds, this is just the start of our journey, and we have all the pieces in place to learn and adapt as we prepare to launch again and again over the coming years," Badyal added.

The initial Project Kuiper constellation will consist of about 3,200 satellites in LEO, according to Amazon. The network will provide internet service to customers around the world, just as SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation already does. (Elon Musk's company currently operates more than 7,100 Starlink satellites in LEO and launches more of them every week.)

The April 9 launch will be the first of the year for ULA. The 27 Project Kuiper satellites will comprise the heaviest payload that the venerable Atlas V has ever flown, according to Amazon.

The company will build out the Project Kuiper constellation over the coming years with seven more Atlas V launches and 38 involving the rocket's successor, ULA's new Vulcan Centaur.

"An additional 30-plus launches are planned across our other launch providers: Arianespace, Blue Origin and SpaceX," Amazon wrote in today's statement.

Scientists have known since the 1990s that complex processes taking place in Earth's atmosphere because of climate change could reduce the density of the upper layers of the planet's gaseous shroud. When the upper atmosphere becomes thinner, satellites and old space junk encounter less drag as they hurtle around the planet. They therefore stay afloat longer, and the lower regions of space become more cluttered. Over the past decade, studies have emerged estimating how much exactly these atmospheric changes affect those satellites.

A team of aerospace engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has now taken a deeper dive into the problem and estimated the knock-on effects of this reduced drag on safety of orbital traffic. The results are astounding: By the end of this century, some orbital regions might be able to safely carry up to 66% fewer satellites than they do today because of the increasing amount of space junk.

The discovery comes at an important juncture in humankind's use of space. With the proliferation of large satellite constellations such as SpaceX's Starlink or Amazon's Project Kuiper, the quantity of satellites in orbit is set to skyrocket. Yet, what the scientists call the "satellite carrying capacity" of low Earth orbit will dwindle, unless greenhouse gas emissions are significantly curbed.

Related: The Kessler Syndrome and the space debris problem

"The megaconstellation is a new trend, and we're showing, because of climate change, we're going to have a reduced capacity in orbit," study co-author Richard Linares, associate professor in MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), said in a statement. "And in local regions, we're close to approaching this capacity value today."

The researchers analyzed individual orbital altitudes and found that some of these shells are already reaching the limits of their carrying capacity, threatening to spawn local runaway space debris collision cascades. Such cascades would produce further fragment clouds that would further decrease the safety of orbital traffic.

All is not lost, however: Humankind has a chance to thwart the trend by making sure greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere stop rising.

"Our behavior with greenhouse gases here on Earth over the past 100 years is having an effect on how we operate satellites over the next 100 years," Linares said.

The study's lead author, William Parker, a graduate student at AeroAstro, added: "The upper atmosphere is in a fragile state as climate change disrupts the status quo. At the same time, there's been a massive increase in the number of satellites launched, especially for delivering broadband internet from space. If we don't manage this activity carefully and work to reduce our emissions, space could become too crowded, leading to more collisions and debris."

The study was published in the journal Nature Sustainability on Monday (March 10).

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched 74 satellites from central California early Saturday morning (March 15), then came back to Earth for a landmark touchdown.

The Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Saturday on a rideshare mission called Transporter 13. Launch occurred at 2:43 a.m. EDT (0643 GMT; 11:43 p.m. on March 14 local California time).

The rocket's first stage returned to Earth 7.5 minutes after launch as planned, making a vertical, powered touchdown back at Vandenberg. It was the 13th landing for this particular booster and the 400th for a Falcon 9 first stage overall, according to SpaceX.

The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, continued hauling the 74 payloads to orbit. They were deployed over a roughly 90-minute stretch that begins about 54 minutes after liftoff according to plan, SpaceX announced via X.

Those 74 payloads include "cubesats, micosats, hosted payloads, a reentry capsule and an orbital transfer vehicle carrying 11 of those payloads to be deployed at a later time," SpaceX wrote in a Transporter 13 mission description.

The reentry capsule is the W-3 vehicle from California-based Varda Space Industries. Varda has already launched and returned two such capsules, prototypes of its planned orbital mini-factories. The second such return occurred just two weeks ago.

Related: SpaceX launches 131 satellites on Transporter 12 rideshare mission (video)

As its name suggests, Transporter 13 is the 13th mission in SpaceX's Transporter series. The company also runs another rideshare program called Bandwagon, which has two missions under its belt to date. SpaceX has launched more than 1,200 payloads for about 130 customers across both of these programs, according to the company.

The very first Transporter mission, which launched in January 2021, sent 143 payloads to orbit, a record that still stands today.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 2:55 a.m. ET on March 15 with news of launch and booster landing, then again at 12:50 p.m. ET with news of payload deployment.

Measuring 1,240 square miles (3,460 square kilometers), the Antarctic iceberg A-23A has come to a grinding halt after a long and winding journey across the Scotia Sea, also known as "iceberg alley."

Satellite images taken at the beginning of March show the iceberg parked on a shallow underwater shelf off the coast of South Georgia Island, which is a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic Ocean and the largest of nine islands that make up the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands.

The new images of A-23A were taken by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite. Earlier observations suggest the iceberg's northward drift slowed suddenly in late February, according to a statement from NASA's Earth Observatory.

Related: Satellites watch world's largest iceberg on crash course with Antarctic penguin island (photo/video)

"I think the big question now is whether the strong current will trap it there as it melts and breaks up or whether it will spin around to the south of the island like previous bergs," Josh Willis, an oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in the statement. "Time will tell."

Ocean currents have carried other notable icebergs to this same region, including the trillion-ton A-68A, which was even bigger than A23A, measuring 2,200 square miles (5698 square km) at its largest. Initially stranded in December 2020, A-68A quickly broke into two main pieces that continued to fracture and eventually disintegrated over the course of three months, adding 152 billion metric tons of fresh water to the northern Scotia Sea around South Georgia.

A-23A has travelled more than 1,200 miles (2,000 km) north from its home in the Southern Weddell Sea, where it calved from Antarctica's Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in 1986. After several decades, the iceberg broke away from the seafloor and began to drift in the early 2020s. Since stranding near South Georgia Island, several small ice fragments have already chipped away from A-23A, as seen in the new satellite images.

"When icebergs make it this far north, they eventually succumb to the warmer waters, winds and currents that make this ocean area a challenge for all seafarers," NASA officials said in the statement.

While there is no permanent human population on the remote island, South Georgia supports abundant life, from seals and penguins to tiny phytoplankton. Fresh water melting from the bottom of the iceberg could affect the local ocean environment and flora and fauna along the island's shoreline. Satellites will continue to monitor the iceberg and any ice fragments that break off into the ocean.

"Astronomy is facing an existential crisis," said Jonathan Pober of Brown University, Rhode Island, USA, in a statement.

Satellites, for instance, crowd the sky. The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs counted 11,330 satellites in Earth orbit as of June 2023, and many more have been launched since then. Most of these satellites are designed to relay various communications over radio wavelengths. This has presented the astronomy community with a problem.

"There is growing concern — and even some reports — that astronomers may soon be unable to carry out high-quality radio observations as we know it, due to interference from satellite constellations," said Pober.

The issue is especially relevant for telescopes such as the Murchison Wide-field Array (MWA) in western Australia, on which Pober is the U.S. science lead. The MWA consists of 4,096 antennas designed to detect low-frequency radio waves between 70 and 300 MHz that carry information from the universe's epoch of reionization, when the first stars and galaxies were forming. Because the MWA observes the entire sky all at once, however, "there's no way to point our telescopes away from satellites," said Pober.

Because of the randomness of RFI and the difficulty in tracking such signals back to their sources, modeling the interference so that it can be filtered out has turned out to be a next-to-impossible task. Typically, datasets contaminated with RFI are simply thrown out — but that leads to a lot of data being lost.

However, the case of a stray television signal has given astronomers hope that there may be a way to save some of that data.

The MWA sits inside a 186-mile-wide (300-kilometer-wide) radio quiet zone, yet the telescope has consistently been picking up television broadcasts that shouldn't be transmitted in the quiet zone. The origin of these broadcasts had been a puzzle. "It then hit us," said Pober. "We said, 'I bet the signal is reflecting off an airplane.'"

Teaming up with Ph.D. student Jade Ducharme, also from Brown University, Pober set about proving the airplane hypothesis. To do so, they combined two techniques for tracking down the origin of RFI — using "near-field corrections" that involves focusing the radio telescope on nearby interference-producing objects, and "beamforming" that essentially allows the telescope to sharpen its focus on a desired object.

Through a combination of these two techniques, Pober and Ducharme were able to track a television signal back to an airplane traveling at 38,400 feet (11.7 kilometers) in altitude and at a velocity of 492 mile per hour (792 kilometers per hour). They even found that the television signal was on the frequency band used by Australian digital TV channel 7. This signal was being broadcast somewhere outside the radio quiet zone and being reflected off the hull of the airplane.

Identifying the source of the RFI opens the door to the interference being modeled so that its pattern can be recognized and ultimately filtered out, keeping the data usable to astronomers.

"This is a key step toward making it possible to subtract human-made interference from the data," said Pober. "By accurately identifying and removing only the sources of interference, astronomers can preserve more of their observations, reduce frustrating data loss and increase the chances of making important discoveries."

Tracking the source of the RFI back to a passing airplane was just the first step, however. The next step is to learn how to remove similar signals from the astronomical data — then, after that, the goal is to expand the technique to not just identify and remove television signals bouncing off airplanes, but also to remove signals from satellites overhead too. However, given the huge numbers of satellites, that is a much heftier task.

Nevertheless, in Pober's view it is a task signal refinement is going to be essential if radio astronomy is to survive.

"We have no choice but to invest in better data analysis techniques to identify and remove human-generated interference," he said.

Pober and Ducharme's analysis of how they tracked the stray television signal back to the airplane was published on Feb. 12 in a paper in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.

The technology would allow scientists to provide earlier warnings of space weather events such as geomagnetic storms, which have the potential to disrupt technological systems on Earth.

"A lot of us have experienced sailing; it's exactly like that," Irfan Azeem, division chief of the Research to Operations and Project Planning Division at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Office of Space Weather Observations, told Space.com in an interview here at the American Meteorological Society's (AMS) annual meeting in January. "Now, instead of using the air, we're actually using the photons, the light that is emitted by the sun, to sail our satellites."

"This is a very novel technology," he added. "We have traditionally relied on propulsion to take satellites from one place to another, and solar sail is providing a new way of traveling in space in a very cost-effective manner."

Related: Solar-sailing probes may soon get their moment in the sun

NOAA's Office of Space Weather Observations oversees the agency's operational satellite systems in space, which provide crucial data from observing points between Earth and the sun. The information collected from the wide variety of instruments aboard the satellites goes into the production of space weather forecasts. The data helps space weather forecasters issue watches and warnings if a solar flare has the potential to affect Earth, other space technology or astronauts.

Sailing ahead

Some of the current space missions that provide measurements of what's happening on the sun include NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer and NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory, which monitor the solar wind. Unlike the breeze that blows here on Earth, this wind is made up of electrons and protons from the sun's corona. It's important to keep an eye on the solar wind, because when it comes into contact with our planet, it can interact with Earth's magnetic field, creating auroras near the polar regions and, if strong enough, geomagnetic storms.

Although storm alerts are issued before this happens, there's still a need for a longer lead time if there's a chance of impacts to different types of technological systems, including power grids, GPS, farming and air traffic. Through NOAA's Space Weather Next program, scientists continue to work on how future satellite missions will assist in providing more advance notice of geomagnetic storms. That means they need to find ways to get information shortly after solar flares, with measurements closer to the sun.

That's where the solar sails come in.

"A solar sail enables us to go beyond the Lagrange One Point (L1), which is the current state-of-the-art location with more efficiency," Azeem said. "Right now, L1 provides a semistable orbit for getting persistent and unobstructed views of the sun. But if you want to go further up, you have to utilize chemical rockets. Solar sails provide us a cost-effective way to go upstream of that L1 point."

L1 is a location between the sun and Earth roughly 932,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from our planet. In this location, spacecraft can be in a stationary spot to take observations of the sun's activity. But the closer researchers can get satellites to the sun, the quicker they will be able to get data as it comes in before, during and after space weather events.

By using solar sails, spacecraft can navigate further upstream of the solar wind, which, in turn, can increase lead times for alerts by 50%, Azeem explained. This would also be in a different location than the one that's been used for the past 45 years.

At the AMS' annual meeting, NOAA shared updates on the progress of this project. Construction is underway for a full-scale version of NOAA's solar sail, which is part of the Solar Cruiser project in collaboration with NASA. Once deployed, the sail will encompass 17,793 square feet (1,653 square meters).

In addition to having a spacecraft in the center with spools and a sail deployment system, it will include four sails, which are being built in individual quadrants, with all of them scheduled to be finished in February 2026. If everything stays on track, NOAA hopes to have a rideshare launch available in 2029.

"I'm most excited about the sheer complexity bringing different disciplines together," Azeem said. "To see the new advances in the material science and other disciplines, how that is helping us in the space weather community to make the advances that we need, I think that's really exciting."

Almost everyone.

Despite the last vestiges of its battery having been drained, suddenly, from somewhere, there was a spark of life. As a failsafe, its computer was tasked with rebooting the spacecraft once the battery was empty — there was always more energy to garner from its solar arrays. Suddenly, the small satellite's various sub-systems began waking up. The flight computer reactivated, reaction wheels began spinning, instruments began sensing and its radio antenna began broadcasting once more.

CIRBE (Colorado Inner Radiation Belt Electron Experiment) was a 3-unit cubesat thatlaunched in April 2023 to monitor charged particles in the inner Van Allen radiation belt. It was so successful that NASA granted it an extension after its nominal 4-month mission ended, but on April 15 something happened to the little satellite as it circled 316 miles (509 kilometers) above our heads.

It went dark. And that, everybody thought, was that.

“We were all disappointed – we could only think positively that our high-energy resolution measurements had provided a lot of high-quality data," Xinlin Li, CIRBE’s lead investigator at the University of Colorado at the time, told Space.com in an interview.

Then the May 2024 solar storms erupted from the sun, a torrent of charged particles slamming into the Earth’s magnetic field to generatean almighty geomagnetic storm and modify the Van Allen belts, which was just the kind of thing CIRBE had been designed to measure. And yet, CIRBE wasn't around. As auroral lights shimmered across skies all over the world on the night of May 10, Li’s friends and colleagues ventured outside to view the celestial light show.

But not Li.

CIRBE rides again

Knowing what they were missing from not having CIRBE around to monitor the storm’s effects, Li felt his spirits drop. "I just wasn't in the mood to go and watch the aurora," he said.

Instead, every day he checked the SatNog website that provided live satellite telemetry, willing CIRBE back to life. His hopes were not completely unfounded. CIRBE’s sister mission from the decade prior was CSSWE, the Colorado Student Space Weather Experiment. It launched in 2012 before falling silent on March 13, 2013 for three months before coming back to life. In the case of CSSWE, however, it was a known problem in its communication system that caused the radio blackout, and a built-in "Phoenix mode" allowed it to reboot once the battery had drained.

However, whatever ailment had afflicted CIRBE was, and still is, a mystery. Li's best guess is that it was some kind of corruption in the spacecraft’s flash memory, and Li could only hope that the satellite would reboot. Then, on May 23, out of the blue Li saw a signal from CIRBE.

"It came back to life for two-and-a-half days before falling silent again,"Li said. "We still don't know why."

Li wasn’t giving up hope, and on June 10 CIRBE phoned home once more, and this time it was back to stay. Well, that is until its orbit decayed and it reentered the atmosphere on Oct. 4, burning up in a blaze of glory.

"We were all jubilant!" said Li of CIRBE’s return to active duty. "It was a miracle."

Alas, the miracle could not last. The solar storms were heating Earth's upper atmosphere, causing it to inflate and increase the atmospheric drag on the cubesat. This is what eventually spelled its doom — the very thing that CIRBE was sent up there to study.

"Every time we encountered an intense magnetic storm it was a bittersweet feeling," said Li. "We observed dynamic features in the radiation belts and captured new phenomena, but at the same time we watched as CIRBE's altitude dipped quickly during each storm."

An 'IMAGE' to keep

At least CIRBE came back from the dead quickly enough to discover two new and temporary radiation belts formed by an influx of charged particles from the solar storms, located in the "slot" region between the two Van Allen belts. Some missions have been known to spend years hovering between life and death before reactivating.

Take NASA's Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) spacecraft launched in 2000. Like CIRBE, IMAGE was designed to study the effect of solar storms on Earth's magnetosphere. For five years it provided superb data until one day in December 2005, it just stopped.

With IMAGE presumed dead, its mission team moved onto other projects. Then many years later, in January 2018, something extraordinary happened: IMAGE came back.

Its signal was picked up purely by chance by amateur radio astronomer named Scott Tilley, who at the time was searching for a lost U.S. military satellite. He contacted Richard Burley, IMAGE's mission director at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, who was astounded by the news.

Burley and his team at NASA set about reestablishing contact to confirm that it was indeed IMAGE, and identified the signal code to be IMAGE’s ID of 166. Regaining control of the spacecraft, they discovered something remarkable: electronics that had been damaged in 2004 by a cosmic ray strike — or what Burley says NASA call a "Single Event Upset," or SEU.

IMAGE's power distribution unit, or PDU, had two sides, an A and a B side. "It was about IMAGE's only redundant part," Burley told Space.com.

The SEU knocked out the PDU's A-side, forcing technicians to swap to its B-side. Yet when contact was re-established in 2018, the PDU was back onto its fully operational A-side. This could only have happened if IMAGE had rebooted its systems. As it turned out, it had been doing that a lot.

After close investigation, Burley and the IMAGE team were able to work out what had happened. The cosmic ray strike had damaged the PDU to the point that it began to think that power was still going to its radio transponder, when in actuality it was not. This is what caused the initial blackout back in 2005.

"Spacecraft have a 'command watchdog timeout,'" Burley said. "This is designed into the computer so that if it receives no commands in a pre-programmed amount of time it will reboot the spacecraft’s computer."

For IMAGE, this pre-programmed amount of time was 72 hours. However, the reboot doesn't reset the PDU, so each time IMAGE rebooted it thought that its transponder was still working when it wasn't.

Because it was'’t receiving any communications from Earth, where everybody thought IMAGE was dead, the spacecraft kept rebooting every 72 hours for 13 long years and not getting anywhere with it, like it was trapped in some kind of hellish purgatory, a spacecraft Groundhog Day.

Somewhere along the line, the PDU reset itself, switched itself back to its A-side in the process, and power started to flow once more to the transponder so that it could finally call home. In a way it was like the victim of a stroke losing the ability to move half their body or to speak, only to regain that ability much later.

Burley states that cosmic ray strikes on spacecraft are common events, and usually the on-board error detection and correction protocols can fix single bit errors, such as a 0 being flipped to a 1 or vice versa. "Multi-bit errors are more problematic,” said Burley, and that's what had happened to IMAGE.

"It turns out that two other NASA Goddard spacecraft suffered similar anomalies in their SSPCs [solid state power controllers, which are part of their PDUs]," said Burley. Fortunately in the other two cases, the damage had not knocked out their transponders, so communication to diagnose and fix the resulting problems was still possible. All the affected SSPCs came from the same batch that was sufficiently radiation-hardened to protect against cosmic-ray strikes.

As for IMAGE, all that time alone in space had done it no favors. On Feb. 24, 2018, NASA lost contact with IMAGE again, and when it was picked up its signal was weak. This lasted until May 2018, when it began broadcasting loudly once more, but was not accepting all the commands sent via mission control. There were also problems finding the hardware to run computer programs written at the turn of the century that could allow greater control of the spacecraft and analyze its telemetry. The last time that IMAGE was heard from was Aug. 28, 2018.

The long sleep in space

The examples of CIRBE and IMAGE are of unplanned switch-offs, but increasingly frequently spacecraft are being deliberately placed into hibernation. This is done mainly to conserve power and function during a long voyage — for example, the European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer will spend much of its eight-year voyage to Jupiter in hibernation, whereupon arrival it will be resurrected to study the giant planet's frozen moons of Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

The first ever spacecraft to be placed in hibernation was the European Space Agency's Giotto mission. After its historic rendezvous with comet Halley in 1986, Giotto was switched off to save it for a planned rendezvous with another comet, called Grigg–Skjellerup. Giotto was reawakened on July 2, 1990 to fly past Earth and gain a gravitational slingshot to send it to the double-barreled comet, which it encountered on July 10, 1992. Thirteen days later, Giotto was switched off again, and was finally allowed to rest.

Staying WISE

Sometimes, spacecraft are deliberately but unexpectedly raised from the dead. Take NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. Launched in 2009 to survey the entire sky in infrared light, it required coolant to keep its instruments cold and prevent thermal noise from the spacecraft drowning out the faint infrared photons that fell on its optics. When its coolant ran out in September 2010, NASA kept WISE going for a few months in a new guise — NEOWISE — to hunt for near-Earth objects (NEOs) that are visible at the warmer infrared wavelengths that didn't require coolant for the spacecraft to detect them. NEOWISE was shut down in February 2011.

The Chelyabinsk airburst, caused when a small asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere and exploded over a Russian city in February 2013, rattled many astronomers, space agencies and governments, and partly in response to this dramatic event, NASA reactivated NEOWISE in September 2013. NEOWISE subsequently spent 11 years successfully hunting down asteroids and comets, including 2020's bright naked-eye comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE.

NEOWISE finally ended its second tour of duty in August 2024 and was left to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere on Nov. 1, 2024.

The tale of ISEE-3

Not all spacecraft awake from hibernation as successfully as NEOWISE or Giotto. All the way back in 1978 NASA launched the ISEE-3 spacecraft, subsequently renamed as the International Cometary Explorer. Its main claim to fame is being the first spacecraft to fly close to a comet, passing within 4,800 miles (7,800 km) of the nucleus of comet Giacobini–Zinner and passing through its plasma tail and taking readings in September 1985. It carried on through to 1997; NASA checked in on it again briefly in 1999 and 2008 before leaving it be.

Then in 2014, an independent group of space enthusiasts were awarded permission by NASA to reactivate the spacecraft and, on May 29 that year they reestablished two-way communications with it. They managed to fire some of its thrusters, but soon enough those thruster firings began to fail as a result of falling nitrogen pressure in the on board fuel tanks. Final contact was on Sept. 16, 2014.

It was a good idea — if it had worked it might have opened the door to resuscitating other retired satellites, but it just goes to show that being a spacecraft necromancer is not an easy thing. And as CIRBE and IMAGE proved, sometimes it is the spacecraft itself that casts its own spells.

The satellite, called CroCube, is a 1U cubesat 3.3 by 3.3 by 3.3 inches (10 x 10 x 10 centimeters) in size. It launched to space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in late December on the company's Bandwagon-2 rideshare mission.

The debut image, released via the mission's Facebook page on Jan. 31, shows a cloud-covered outline of the Mediterranean country famous for its crystal blue sea and scenic coast.

"Although our land is partly clouded, we have identified the outlines of land and mountain ranges through them," the team behind the mission said in the Facebook post. "Most importantly — Croatia is now among the countries that have their own pictures taken from orbit."

The satellite also sent home a short video and another image showing Bulgaria, which lies further to the east on the Black Sea coast.

The crowd-funded mission was put together by the Croatian Society for Education Outside the Box and Czech company Spacemanic.

The $124,000 project aims to encourage interest in astronomy and space in Croatia and gather data using a set of onboard sensors.

Space enthusiasts will be able to interact with CroCube's data and images via a mobile app that will display freshly downloaded images.

The first set of images was captured on Jan 28, a little over a month after CroCube's launch. The satellite circles Earth at the altitude of 317 miles (510 kilometers) and will remain in orbit for about 5 years, gradually spiraling back toward the planet. At the end of its mission, it will burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

The Lunar Trailblazer is slated to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than Feb. 26 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It will fly as a "rideshare" along with the primary payload — the Athena lunar lander, built by Houston company Intuitive Machines.

Here within a Lockheed Martin clean room, where it underwent final grooming ahead of shipping to Cape Canaveral, Lunar Trailblazer utilized the aerospace company's new Curio platform. Curio is a novel and scalable smallsat spacecraft architecture, designed to aid deep-space exploration and to probe scientific questions in a cost-efficient way.

Lunar Trailblazer is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and led by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. Bethany Ehlmann, professor of planetary science at Caltech, is the mission's principal investigator.

Lockheed Martin developed and built the roughly 440-pound (200 kilograms) spacecraft, as well as integrated the craft's science instruments. The probe is outfitted with two deployable solar arrays.

Related: Private Athena moon lander arrives in Florida ahead of SpaceX launch on Feb. 26

Water signature

Lunar Trailblazer instruments will peer into the moon's permanently shadowed regions to spot micro-cold traps less than a football field in size. Furthermore, the pole-to-pole probe will collect measurements at multiple times of day over sunlit regions, helping researchers decipher whether water signatures on the illuminated surface change as the lunar surface temperature changes by hundreds of degrees over the course of a lunar day.

"Lunar Trailblazer shares a good bit of heritage with the GRAIL spacecraft that explored lunar gravity," said Bronson Collins, Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft chief engineer.

NASA's GRAIL ("Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory") mission launched twin spacecraft dubbed "Ebb" and "Flow" to lunar orbit in 2011. The GRAIL probes were also designed and built by Lockheed Martin.

Launch window

Lunar Trailblazer is part of NASA's Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program, targeted to gather science data as it circuits the moon. The spacecraft will be operated by both Caltech and Pasadena City College students at the Caltech-based Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC).

During my Jan. 23 clean room look at the spacecraft, Collins pointed out the two Lunar Trailblazer science instruments: the JPL-provided High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM3) and the Lunar Thermal Mapper (LTM), from the University of Oxford in England.

"All of the science mission is really done by those two instruments," Collins said. They are mounted on the Curio platform that incorporates a large spherical propellant tank. "It will consume a lot of that propellant at the start of the mission to get to the moon," he told Space.com.

Depending on the launch window day, Lunar Trailblazer will arrive at the moon four to seven months after liftoff. Once on duty in lunar orbit, the mission is slated to last a year or more. When Lunar Trailblazer wraps up its scientific sleuthing, it will be purposely crashed into the moon. That end-of-life route is labeled "surface disposal," said Collins.

Related: Missions to the moon: Past, present and future

Raising risk, saving dollars

"This is the first in our Curio line of spacecraft, and we learned a lot," said Ryan Pfeiffer, Lockheed Martin program manager for Lunar Trailblazer. "That product line is intended to enable lower-cost, faster access to space. We hope it's the first of many."

As a low-cost mission, "our risk posture is a little bit greater here to try and conserve some budget," Pfeiffer said. That tradeoff between raising risk and saving dollars means Lunar Trailblazer embodies "single string spacecraft architecture."

In other words, the probe doesn't have redundancy in its computers or other key parts of the flight system. In addition, Lunar Trailblazer also uses commercial off-the-shelf parts and systems, not custom-designed hardware.

Water works

Scientists are eager to understand just how water and water-like products are freezing, thawing, moving and evaporating on the moon, Pfeiffer said. "They are interested in all those conditions to try and understand how water works on the moon," he said.

Here on Earth, we understand the water cycle fairly well, Pfeiffer added.

"But only recently has there been a glimmer of hope that there is water on the moon," he said. "It has now been confirmed, but we have no idea how it works, why it's there and how it got there."

Fast-paced prep time

Here at Lockheed Martin, the Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft team took the fully assembled spacecraft through its environmental testing, said Pfeiffer, including shake and vibration simulation that mimics what the moon-bound orbiter will experience during launch.

"The lunar environment is really challenging to fly in," Pfeiffer said, given the spacecraft's exposure to solar radiation, along with reflection and emission of radiation from the moon itself. "And if you're in an eclipse, now it gets really cold."

Lunar Trailblazer has now reached Cape Canaveral. It's set to undergo a minimum and fast-paced prep time, a final pre-launch power-up and power-down, a charging of batteries and a loading of propellant, followed by integration with the Falcon 9 rideshare adapter.

Moon to Mars

Whitley Poyser, director of deep space exploration at Lockheed Martin, said that Lunar Trailblazer will conduct a "more informed" type of exploration. "It's important for us to know how our solar system has evolved over time," she said, "and how our Earth-moon system evolved."

Appraising the moon's potential wellspring of water can provide the ability to utilize that resource "and know how best to use it," Poyser added. Such work could enable the growth of a sustained human presence on the moon, something NASA aims to achieve via its Artemis program.

Beyond the moon, human travel to Mars is within reach. "There is so much that we will learn being at the moon, to help us know how to effectively live at Mars," Poyser said.

SpaceX launched two Earth-imaging satellites today (Feb. 4), further building out Maxar Technologies' sharp-eyed WorldView Legion constellation.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the WorldView Legion 5 and 6 satellites lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida today at 6:13 p.m. EST (2313 GMT).

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth about eight minutes after launch as planned, touching down at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, which is next door to KSC.

It was the fourth launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.

The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, carried the two satellites to orbit. It deploy WorldView Legion 5 about 49 minutes after launch and WorldView Legion 6 roughly an hour after that as planned.

Related: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 2 Maxar satellites on record-tying 20th flight (video)

"The launch of these two satellites will complete the first block of Maxar’s next-generation WorldView Legion satellites," Maxar representatives said in a prelaunch statement.

"It will also be a major milestone in Maxar's efforts to significantly increase its very high-resolution 30 cm-class satellite imagery collection capacity, bolstering its ability to support customer needs for near real-time insights," they added.

As that description notes, the WorldView Legion spacecraft are capable of resolving features as small as 12 inches (30 centimeters) on Earth's surface. SpaceX also launched the first four members of the constellation, sending WorldView Legion 1 and 2 up in May 2024 and lofting WorldView Legion 3 and 4 in August that same year.

The WorldView Legion 5 and 6 launch was SpaceX's second of the day. Elon Musk's company also lofted a batch of its Starlink internet satellites early this morning.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 6:30 p.m. ET on Feb. 4 with news of successful launch and rocket landing, then again at 8:15 p.m. ET with news of satellite deployment.

The rocket's upper stage blew up at an altitude of around 90 miles (146 kilometers) according to astronomer and space debris expert Jonathan McDowell, and weighed some 85 tons without propellant. Its plunge back to Earth through the atmosphere may have generated 45.5 metric tons of metal oxides and 40 metric tons of nitrogen oxides, according to University College London atmospheric chemistry researcher Connor Barker. Nitrogen oxides in particular are known for their potential to damage Earth's protective ozone layer.

Barker, who had recently published an inventory of rocket emissions and pollutants from satellite re-entries in the journal Nature, posted the estimates on his LinkedIn profile shortly after the mishap. He, however, stressed in an email to Space.com that the numbers are a rough, preliminary estimate rather than an accurate calculation of the accident's environmental impact.

In Barker's LinkedIn post, however, the scientist said that the amount of metallic air pollution potentially produced in the accident equals that generated by one third of meteorite material that burns up in Earth's atmosphere every year.

Exactly how much pollution the Starship mishap produced in the higher atmosphere is hard to tell. Scientists, for example, are also not sure how much of the megarocket's mass burned up and how much of it fell to Earth.

McDowell told Space.com that "many tons" likely splashed down into the ocean.

Fortunately, the Starship upper stage is made of stainless steel and not aluminum like satellites and upper stages of many other rockets including SpaceX's Falcon 9. The incineration of aluminum is what worries many scientists. When aluminum burns at high temperatures during a satellite re-entry, it produces aluminum oxides, or alumina, a white powdery substance known for its potential to damage ozone and change the reflectiveness of Earth's atmosphere.

In recent years, the number of satellites orbiting Earth and that of subsequent atmospheric re-entries has been rising fast. With that the amount of alumina released into the mesosphere and upper stratosphere — the otherwise pristine middle layers of the atmosphere — has been skyrocketing. Air pollution in the mesosphere and upper stratosphere concerns scientists as the high altitudes at which it arises mean the pollutants remain in the air for a very long time.

Scientists think that the quantity of alumina from incinerated satellites is already approaching the same levels that result from the atmospheric demise of natural space rocks such as asteroids or meteoroids, which contain only trace amounts of aluminum. The amount of nitrogen oxides produced during re-entries is also nearing that generated by natural space rocks.

Nitrogen oxides arise as space rocks or space debris fragments, travelling at hyper-sonic speeds, compress the surrounding air as they fall to Earth. The atoms of nitrogen heat up and react with oxygen, creating the harmful oxides.

With the expected increase in rocket launches and the growth of satellite fleets and the subsequent frequency of re-entries, concentrations of these damaging gases and particles could quickly rise. The pollutants could thwart the recovery of the planet's ozone layer, worsening the damage caused by ozone-depleting substances used in aerosol sprays and refrigerators in the past. The air pollution from incinerated satellites could also change how much heat the Earth's atmosphere retains, leading to possibly serious consequences on the planet's climate.

San Francisco-based Planet announced today (Jan. 29) that it has signed a $230 million contract with an unnamed commercial partner in the Asia-Pacific region to build and deliver a fleet of its new, sharp-eyed Pelican satellites.

"This agreement represents a significant milestone for Planet; it is our largest contract to date and is a major step forward in what we see as a very large market opportunity," Planet CEO and Co-founder Will Marshall said in an emailed statement. "These types of partnerships are a win-win: Our partners gain critical satellite capabilities and priority access to leading-edge technology, while they help Planet accelerate key space programs and create synergistic benefits for all our customers," Marshall added.

Planet, which was founded in 2010, operates the world's largest network of Earth-imaging satellites. The most numerous and well-known of these are the SuperDoves, shoebox-sized cubesats whose photos have a resolution of about 10 feet (3 meters) per pixel.

Related: Planet's photos of Earth from space (gallery)

Also in Planet's stable are larger and sharper-eyed SkySats, which feature a resolution of about 1.6 feet (0.5 m) per pixel and can be actively trained on targets below. (The SuperDoves observe passively.)

The Pelican line is an evolved, more capable version of SkySat; the Pelicans will have a resolution of about 1 foot (0.3 m) per pixel and boast other advantages as well.

"Additionally, Planet has collaborated with NVIDIA to equip Pelican-2 with the NVIDIA Jetson platform for edge AI and robotics to power on-orbit computing — with the aim of vastly reducing the time between data capture and its availability for customers," Planet wrote in a December 2024 statement about the Pelican-2 satellite, which launched to orbit on Jan. 15 on SpaceX's Transporter 12 rideshare mission along with 36 SuperDoves and nearly 100 other payloads. (Pelican-1 was a technology demonstrator that launched in November 2023, on SpaceX's Transporter 9.)

"Pelican-2 is designed to rapidly convert precise spatial data into near-real-time insights by utilizing AI-powered solutions for use cases including object detection, vegetation and crop type classification, and disaster response," Planet added in the December statement.

Planet also built and operates a hyperspectral satellite called Tanager-1, which launched with 36 SuperDoves on Transporter 11 in August of last year. Tanager-1 studies Earth in more than 400 bands of light, including wavelengths invisible to the human eye.

The newly announced contract is the third "strategic space systems partnership" that Planet has signed in the last four years, the company said in today's announcement.

"Pursuant to the agreement, Planet will build and deliver a fleet constellation of new Pelican high-resolution satellites, securing certain capacity on the satellites for the partner, in addition to providing operational services," the company wrote in the emailed statement. "Furthermore, Planet will leverage the increased capacity of the expanded fleet to serve its own government and commercial customers around the world."

"Our trusted partners have long expressed interest in our proprietary space systems technology, and we’re proud to be able to fulfill their needs with our satellites and services," James Mason, Planet’s chief space officer, said in the same statement. "Our vertical integration and agile aerospace capabilities enable us to scale to customer and partner demand."

This massive block of ice, about the size of Rhode Island, poses a significant threat to the delicate ecosystem of the island, home to penguins and seals.

Satellite images, including recent data captured by NOAA's GOES East satellite on Jan. 22, 2025, are closely monitoring the iceberg's slow journey through the Southern Ocean, where it could soon reach the shallow waters surrounding South Georgia.

Breaking free

Iceberg A23a has been a concern for scientists since it broke away from the Antarctic ice shelf in 1986. After remaining immobile for over three decades, the iceberg finally broke free in 2020 and began drifting northward.

Measuring roughly 1,350 square miles (3,500 square kilometers) across, A23a is the world's largest and oldest iceberg according to AFP News. Its imposing size and slow, steady movement have captivated oceanographers and researchers alike, though predicting its exact path has proven difficult due to the unpredictable forces of ocean currents.

Unlike many previous "megabergs" that crumble into smaller chunks, A23a has shown little sign of breaking apart, which has only intensified concerns over its collision with South Georgia Island.

According to Andrew Meijers, a physical oceanographer at the British Antarctic Survey, the iceberg is currently moving northeastward, but prevailing currents suggest that it could strike the shallow continental shelf around South Georgia in two to four weeks. If it does, the consequences could be dire for the island's wildlife Meijers told AFP News.

Potential impact

The potential impact on South Georgia Island's ecosystem is worrying. Penguins, seals, and other marine animals depend on the island's surrounding waters for food and breeding. If A23a grounds itself on the continental shelf or disrupts the currents, it could block access to essential feeding areas.

Meijers warned that icebergs have previously grounded near the island, causing significant mortality among penguin chicks and seal pups, particularly when their feeding grounds were cut off by the ice. Such a scenario could hinder the survival of these already vulnerable species, especially during the crucial breeding season.

Hit or miss?

Despite these concerns, there is still a degree of uncertainty surrounding the iceberg's path. It's possible that A23a could avoid the shelf and drift into open water, bypassing South Georgia altogether.

Alternatively, the iceberg could become stuck for months or break apart into smaller pieces, both of which could seriously impede seals and penguins trying to feed and raise young on the island, according to Meijers.

Raul Cordero from Chile's University of Santiago and part of the National Antarctic Research Committee said he was confident the iceberg would not impact South Georgia.

"The island acts as an obstacle for ocean currents and therefore usually diverts the water long before it reaches the island," Cordero told AFP News.

"The iceberg is moved by that water flow, so the chances of it hitting are not that high," though chunks could, Cordero said.

Glaciologist Soledad Tiranti, who is currently part of an Argentinian exploration mission in Antarctica, explained that icebergs like A23a are so massive that they typically become grounded on the seabed before reaching an island or the mainland, according to AFP News.

The situation remains fluid, and scientists are keeping a close eye on the iceberg's progress with regular satellite imagery and ocean monitoring.

A Chinese commercial space launch company is continuing its success with a small solid rocket ahead of a more ambitious launch later this year.

The Ceres-1 four-stage solid propellant rocket lifted off at 5:11 a.m. EST on Jan. 20 (1011 GMT; or 8:11 p.m. local time) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, northwest China. Galactic Energy, the Ceres-1 manufacturer and operator, announced in a statement that five satellites had been successfully inserted into preplanned orbits.

Aboard the flight were four Yunyao-1 commercial meteorological satellites (satellites 37-40) and the Jitianxing A-05 satellite for K-Space Aerospace Technology based in Sichuan Province. The Yunyao-1 satellites feature GNSS occultation (GNSS-RO) payloads which discern weather data by detecting changes in signals from GPS and Beidou satellites as they pass through the atmosphere. The Jitianxing A-05 satellite carries a hyperspectral camera to capture remote sensing imagery of the Earth.

Galactic Energy is one of the early successes from China's commercial space sector, with a launch record which stands at 17 launch attempts and 16 successes.

The company also plans to launch its first, more complex liquid propellant launch vehicle later this year. The Pallas-1 rocket—like Ceres-1 it is also named after a major planetary body in the main asteroid belt—uses a kerosene-liquid oxygen propellant mix and will eventually be adapted so that the first stage can be recovered and reused.

While the 62-foot-tall (19 meters), four-stage Ceres-1 can send 880 pounds (400 kilograms) to low Earth orbit (LEO), the 138-ft-tall (42 m) Pallas-1 will be capable of sending up to 17,630 pounds (8,000 kg) to LEO.

Monday’s mission was China’s fourth orbital launch of 2025, following launches that sent a satellite refueling test spacecraft, navigation enhancement satellite and an Earth observation satellite for Pakistan into orbit.

The Solar Wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) is a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) which aims to study the interaction between the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere. The mission aims to shed light on space weather processes and their effects on Earth.

SMILE is now set to launch on a Vega-C rocket from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, according to ESA director general Josef Aschbacher, speaking during an annual press briefing on Jan. 9. "The launch itself is most likely happening next year. We are negotiating right now the launch slot on the Vega-C, but it will be ready as of the end of this year," Aschbacher said.

The 5,070-pound (2,300 kilograms) SMILE spacecraft will observe charged particles streaming out from the sun and study how these interact with the space around our planet. Its science instruments are a light ion analyzer, a magnetometer, a soft X-ray imager and an ultraviolet aurora imager.

Key questions SMILE will aim to address include what happens where the solar wind meets Earth's magnetic shield, what causes magnetic glitches on the dark side of Earth, and how can the most dangerous space weather threats be predicted in advance. Its findings could improve our understanding of space weather and protect both space-based technology and the lives of any humans in orbit around the Earth.

ESA is providing the payload module, launch vehicle, and one of the scientific instruments for SMILE, while CAS is responsible for three scientific instruments and the mission and science operations.

SMILE was selected in 2015 from among 13 joint European-Chinese proposals. The mission was originally targeted to launch in 2021, but SMILE has faced a series of delays, including technical difficulties and the impacts of the COVID pandemic.

Meanwhile, China appears to be developing some of the proposals beaten out by SMILE, such as a mission to put a constellation of small satellites in orbit around the moon to detect faint signals from the early universe. The mission would use the moon to shield the satellites from electromagnetic interference from the Earth, allowing the satellites to pick up long wavelength signals.

The researchers — led by experts from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of Plymouth in the U.K. and the University of Texas at Austin — think that adding space to the U.N.'s Agenda for Sustainable Development would strengthen the case for space protection, which has become a pressing topic in recent years.

The advent of megaconstellations — fleets of hundreds or thousands of small satellites that provide internet connectivity or monitor the planet from above — has led to an exponential rise in satellite numbers. Some 15 years ago, barely a thousand satellites orbited the planet. That number has increased more than tenfold since and is expected to continue growing. As satellites reach the ends of their missions, they turn into dangerous debris that could collide with other orbiting objects, thus creating masses of debris fragments.

"Adding a Sustainable Development Goal [SDG] specifically for space would be a transformative step in safeguarding one of Earth's most vital environments," Melissa Quinn, general manager at space situational awareness company Slingshot Aerospace, who is part of the initiative, told Space.com. "Space is no longer a limitless frontier; it is a finite resource under increasing pressure from human activity."

In the nearly 70 years since the launch of history's first satellite — Russia's Sputnik — humankind has come to rely on space technology in many aspects of modern life, including TV broadcasts, internet connectivity and satellite navigation.

"This isn't just about protecting space for its own sake," Quinn said. "It's about ensuring that the systems we rely on daily remain resilient, equitable and accessible for generations to come. A dedicated SDG would catalyze the global cooperation needed to meet this challenge head-on."

Related: How often does the International Space Station have to dodge space debris?

The U.N.'s Agenda for Sustainable Development, formulated in 2015, includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals. These include ending hunger and poverty; improving health care and education access for the global population; ensuring gender equality, access to clean water and sanitation; and protecting the climate.

The researchers think one of the existing goals, in particular, is relevant to the space problem. SDG No. 14 focuses on the protection of marine life and covers the contamination of the world's oceans with plastic pollution. This hard-to-solve ecological problem resembles the growing issue of space debris.

The researchers think that lessons learned from marine debris management could help prevent "another planetary crisis before it is too late," they said in a statement.

"Not so long ago, our oceans were regarded as infinite resources to plunder and infinite sinks for our waste," Thomas Dowling, a lecturer in remote sensing and geospatial science at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, said in the statement. "We now know that view was grossly mistaken — many marine environments are now barren wastelands, and more than eight million tons of plastic debris is estimated to enter the ocean every year."

For years, space sustainability experts have been sounding alarm bells over the growing quantities of space debris hurtling around Earth. According to the European Space Agency, there are currently around 40,500 out-of-control space junk fragments larger than 4 inches (10 centimeters), up to 1.1 million pieces between 0.4 and 4 inches (1 to 10 cm), and an additional 130 million fragments smaller than 0.4 inches (1 cm).

These fragments circle the planet at nearly 5 miles per second (8 kilometers per second), threatening to demolish everything in their way. Some experts are already warning that a dangerous phenomenon known as "Kessler syndrome" — an unstoppable cascade of collisions in which every smashup produces fragments that damage further spacecraft — is already underway.

"The rapid rise in satellite deployments has led to an increasing risk of collisions and debris," Quinn said. "In 2024, we saw a 17% year-over-year spike in the average number of close approaches in low Earth orbit per satellite. With over 12,500 spacecraft now orbiting our planet, including more than 3,300 inactive satellites, we need urgent, coordinated global action to ensure space is safe, sustainable, and secure."

In addition to the space debris problem, atmospheric researchers are concerned about the potential effects of satellite reentries on Earth's atmosphere. The atmospheric burn-up of satellites during their fall to Earth produces aluminum oxide, which can destroy atmospheric ozone and alter Earth's albedo — its ability to reflect sunlight. Some think that, if left unmitigated, satellite air pollution could, decades from now, undermine the good work done by the ozone-protecting Montreal Protocol and exacerbate ongoing climate change.