The archive

News archive

Every dispatch, feature and dossier published by the Space Exploration .IN newsroom.

Diagram of MMX travelling from Earth to Mars, operating around Phobos and returning to Earth through fiscal 2031

Mars exploration

JAXA sets October 20 launch date for Phobos sample-return mission

MMX is scheduled to leave Tanegashima on H3 Flight 10 at 04:41:03 JST. Launch would begin a five-year mission; arrival, landing, sampling and Earth return all remain ahead.

21 August 20264 min read

A roof-mounted air-quality sensor above central Addis Ababa with city buildings behind it

Earth science

NASA-backed 2022–2025 study attributes most Addis Ababa black carbon to fossil fuels

Ten monitors tracked fine particles across Ethiopia’s capital, while black-carbon instruments at two sites resolved traffic, wet-season and holiday pollution patterns.

20 August 20265 min read

Diagram showing All Points and three other providers added to NASA’s SPOC pool, with the shared $100 million ceiling, ordering period and mission details still unannounced

Commercial launch infrastructure

All Points joins NASA’s spacecraft-processing contract pool

The August 4 on-ramp makes All Points eligible to support future prelaunch work. It does not assign the company NASA’s $100 million vehicle ceiling, and neither NASA nor All Points named a mission-specific task order.

20 August 20265 min read

Side-by-side telescope images showing a bright blue transient near a faint galaxy before it faded

Science

AT2024wpp points to a black hole shredding a massive star—not a confirmed survivor

Whippet’s fast rise, extreme energy and X-ray-driven wind favour black-hole accretion; its late hydrogen and helium lines leave several possible structures, not proof that the disrupted star survived.

20 August 20265 min read

International Space Station silhouetted against a partially eclipsed Sun behind thin clouds

Solar science

ISS, Proba-3 and weather satellites reveal different sides of August’s eclipse

NASA’s WB-57 followed the corona, an astronaut saw 18% coverage, Proba-3 caught a double eclipse, and MTG-I1 and GOES-19 tracked the Moon’s shadow across Earth.

20 August 20266 min read

Diagram linking one already-compromised cFS application in NOS3 to five tested paths: control of a peer app, misleading sender identity, a command to unrelated simulated hardware, an action that looks legitimate in operator data, and altered behaviour that resumes after reset

Space cybersecurity

Security preprint tests five cFS privilege-abuse paths in NASA simulator

Researchers used a malicious onboard component in NOS3 to restart peer apps, spoof identity, command unrelated hardware, blur operator attribution and resume altered behaviour after reset. The study reports a controlled experiment, not an operational spacecraft breach.

20 August 20266 min read

Three Landsat views compare the full Elephant Butte Reservoir in 1994 with its much smaller footprint in 2013 and 2026

Earth science

Elephant Butte Reservoir falls to 1.4% as Landsat maps the retreat

A July 27 image captured New Mexico’s largest reservoir near a late-July trough; Reclamation records put its storage at the lowest level since 1971.

20 August 20265 min read

Black-and-white Galileo mosaic showing overlapping high-resolution strips of fractured and ridged ice on Europa

Planetary science

Broad Europa radar survey points to a leading-trailing hemisphere difference

The August 18 preprint combines 33 observations from 2011–2024, supporting coherent backscatter while leaving the source of the hemispheric pattern unsettled.

20 August 20266 min read

Editorial data graphic comparing about 33,000 exposed hosts in Starlink’s autonomous system with a 1.78 million-host non-Starlink sample, highlighting ninefold and sixfold operating-system vulnerability gaps in Haiti and Colombia and regional weak-protocol clusters

Space cybersecurity

Preprint finds regional security gaps among exposed Starlink-connected hosts

A Censys snapshot tied about 33,000 exposed IPs inside Starlink’s network to higher operating-system vulnerability and legacy-protocol rates in several regions, but it did not test Starlink infrastructure, prove exploitability or establish cause.

20 August 20265 min read

Commercial launch

FAA’s 4,288-operation high case is not a US launch count

The agency’s upper scenario covers commercial launches and re-entries through fiscal 2036, including US-licensed activity abroad. It still points to heavier work for licensing teams, busy ranges and shared airspace.

20 August 20267 min read

Radius-density chart placing GJ 523b among dense mega-Earths above the sub-Neptune population

Science

GJ 523b packs 23.5 Earth masses into a proposed ‘mega-Earth’ class

A submitted TESS–NEID analysis places the young, dense planet between familiar size and composition categories; its gas-poor interior and likely polar orbit remain inferences awaiting further observations.

20 August 20265 min read

Timeline shows total operator-satellite partnerships rising from 170 in August 2025 to 275 in April 2026 and 283 in June, while satellite-to-cellphone launches rise from 12 to 21 to 23; a bar splits June's 123 phone partnerships into 23 launched, 27 trialling and 73 planned

Satellite communications

GSA counts 283 operator–satellite partnerships; 23 phone services have launched

The June snapshot puts satellite-to-cellphone activity at 123 announced partnerships: 23 launched, 27 trialling and 73 planned. The figures show commercial movement, but announcements still dominate.

20 August 20265 min read