Space Stories: Blue Origin Brings Satellite to Wrong Orbit, Space Force Preparing for Moon Base, and Japan Refocuses After Deletion of Lunar Gateway

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Image (Credit): NG-3 mission patch. (Blue Origin)

Here are some recent space-related stories.

—Associated Press: “Blue Origin’s New Glenn Rocket is Grounded After Launching Satellite into the Wrong Orbit“

Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, blamed a bad engine Monday for a failed weekend launch that left a satellite in the wrong orbit, dooming it. Launches of the huge New Glenn rocket are grounded until Blue Origin and the Federal Aviation Administration complete their investigation.The rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Sunday. The recycled first-stage booster performed well, landing on an ocean barge several minutes into the flight. But the upper stage was unable to put the satellite into a high enough orbit to begin operations.

—Breaking Defense: “With Eyes on Future NASA Moon Base, Space Force Launches Cislunar Acquisition Task Force“

The Space Force is launching a new acquisition task force to study how the Defense Department should move into cislunar space as it looks to support a planned NASA moon base, according to Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, senior advisor to Air Force Secretary Troy Mink for space acquisition. “We’re going to stand up a Cislunar Coordination Office on the Space Force acquisition side,” he told the annual Space Symposium here on April 15, who said the new office will bring together program managers and engineers to “build road maps” for “acquiring the necessary technology and a schedule for action.”

—South China Morning Post: “Japan to Focus on Lunar Rover After US Halts Moon Space Station“

A US move to freeze the Lunar Gateway orbiting space station could render Japan’s new technologies redundant – but its space agency is expected to be diplomatic in its response. The Lunar Gateway project was initially planned as an installation that would orbit the moon as part of the United States’ Artemis programme, which recently made headlines for a record-breaking journey that went deeper into space than anyone had ever flown before…On March 24, however, Nasa announced it was freezing the project to focus on the construction of a base on the lunar surface, with future crewed missions to Mars in mind…The agency is now expected to focus all its attention on the third element of its collaboration with Nasa, the pressurised lunar rover that is being developed with Toyota to allow astronauts to drive on the moon.

Space Stories: Cygnus XL Cargo Craft Arrives at ISS, China Further Along Than US with Moon Lander, and a Martian Hopper Mission

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Image (Credit): The International Space Station’s (ISS) robotic arm reaching out to the Cygnus XL cargo spacecraft as it arrives on April 13, 2026. (NASA)

Here are some recent space-related stories.

—NASA: “Canadarm2 Reaches Out and Captures Cygnus XL Cargo Craft“

At 1:20 p.m. EDT, NASA astronaut Chris Williams, with assistance from NASA astronaut Jack Hathaway, captured Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL spacecraft using the International Space Station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm…NASA’s Northrop Grumman Commercial Resupply Services 24 mission launched at 7:41 a.m. on April 11 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying more than 11,000 pounds of scientific investigations and cargo to the orbiting laboratory.

—Scientific American: “How China Could Still Win the New Moon Race“

China is not yet ready to perform a crewed circumlunar mission like the U.S., which began development of the Orion spacecraft in the 2000s and redesigned it to go with the SLS rocket in the early 2010s. But China is progressing on all the necessary hardware to reach the moon, with a stated goal of a crewed landing before 2030. Notably, the nation has already tested a key component that the U.S. is still working to bring online: the landing hardware. Last year China demonstrated its Lanyue crewed lunar lander, performing a propulsive lunar landing and lunar launch tests in simulated moon gravity conditions. In the U.S. SpaceX and Blue Origin are both working on NASA-funded lander concepts needed to make a 2028 Artemis landing possible.

—Universe Today: “Meet Orpheus – A Hopper Mission Built To Hunt For Life In Martian Volcanoes“

We’ve spent decades scratching the surface of Mars trying to uncover life there. But we’ve been searching a barren wasteland bombarded by radiation and bathed in toxic perchlorates. The entire time, it’s likely that it’s been too hostile to harbor extant life. So if we want a better shot at finding currently living life on Mars, we need to go underground. That is exactly the purpose of Orpheus, a proposed Mars vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) hopper mission put forth by Connor Bunn and Pascal Lee of the SETI Institute at the 57th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC).

Space Stories: A New Type of Telescope to Spot Exoplanets, Walking Martian Robots, and Terraforming Mars in 15 Years

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Image (Credit): An artist’s rendering of the ExoLife Finder telescope. (Astronomy.com)

Here are some recent space-related stories.

—Astronomy.com: “Could this Telescope Find Life on Alien Worlds?“

The ExoLife Finder (ELF) looks like no telescope ever built. A spectacular crown of 15 five-meter mirrors perches atop a sprawling metal lattice, resembling petals on a 10-story-tall mechanical flower — more sculpture than observatory. It is a fundamentally new type of telescope, one that its designers say could discover life on Earth-like planets beyond our solar system. The radical design is the brainchild of astrophysicist Jeff Kuhn of the University of Hawai‘i. For now, it exists only in renderings. To build it, Kuhn and the team he’s assembled must first develop and perfect techniques and technologies never before used in astronomy.

—EarthSky: “Walking Robots on Mars Could Speed Up Life Search“

Robotic rovers have become the go-to way to explore our neighbor planet, Mars. And they’ve been super successful. But they’re also big, heavy and slow. They have to move carefully across the rocky and sandy terrain of Mars. Plus, communication delays between the rovers and Earth – and data transfer limitations – also affect their missions. Is there a better way? On March 31, 2026, researchers in Switzerland and the Netherlands announced a new idea: walking Mars robots. The research team said these robotic explorers would be semi-autonomous. This means they wouldn’t need regular assistance from humans back on Earth. And, their makers say, they could explore their surroundings – on both Mars or the moon – faster than rovers.

—The Times of India: “Mars Could be Warm Enough for Humans in 15 Years; A Discovery that Changes Everything“

Mars has been viewed as a multi-millennial effort to terraform since the inception of the term, but there is new evidence that the time frame has changed dramatically. A published study in Science Advances gives new hope to those wishing to terraform Mars through nanoscopic engineered aerosol-like dust particles made from iron and aluminium found abundantly in the soils of Mars. Specifically, scientists feel that if we inject these engineered aerogels into the atmosphere, the resulting greenhouse effect will raise Mars’ surface temperature by over 50 degrees Fahrenheit in only 15 years.

Space Stories: Stories from Apollo 8, Dealing with Space Weather, and a Militarized Moon

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Here are some recent stories related to the upcoming Artemis II launch.

—Associated Press: “Apollo vs. Artemis: What to Know about NASA’s Return to the Moon“

NASA’s Apollo moonshots are a tough act to follow, even after all this time. As four astronauts get set to blast off on humanity’s first trip to the moon in more than half a century, comparisons between Apollo and NASA’s new Artemis program are inevitable. The world’s first lunar visitors orbited the moon on Apollo 8. The Artemis II crew will play it safe and zip around the moon in an out-and-back slingshot. Another key difference: Artemis reflects more of society, with a woman, person of color and Canadian rocketing away.

—Scientific American: “How NASA Will Keep the Artemis II Astronauts Safe from Space Weather“

The hazards that the Artemis II crew must navigate during their 10-day flight are plentiful, starting from the second they launch aboard the most powerful rocket to ever carry humans and continuing all the way through their return to Earth nestled inside the Orion capsule. Many threats the crew will face are obvious, but not all of them are. Take, for example, radiation, which with moderate exposures can increase an astronaut’s long-term risk of cancer and with heavy doses can cause acute sickness. The Artemis II crew will be the first humans in decades to travel beyond low-Earth orbit, fully discarding the protection of Earth’s magnetic field. And while most aspects of cosmic radiation are straightforward to plan for, the outlier is space weather.

—Ars Technica: “NASA is Leading the Way to the Moon, But the Military Won’t Be Far Behind“

Today, potential conflict zones in space are limited to a region between low-Earth orbit and geosynchronous orbit, from a few hundred miles altitude up to 22,000 miles. The Space Force is in the final stages of developing a roadmap for the next 15 years, identifying where the service needs to grow and evolve to respond to changing threats and priorities. The document hasn’t been released publicly, but Pentagon officials have said it will address the possibility of the the Moon or cislunar space, the region of space around the Moon, becoming a theater for military operations.

Space Stories: The Fate of Juno, the End of a NASA Probe, and “Extragalactic Archeology”

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Jupiter’s North Pole at minimum emission angle as captured by the Juno spacecraft. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Thomas Thomopoulos)

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—Ars Technica: “A Mission NASA Might Kill is Still Returning Fascinating Science from Jupiter“

Jupiter’s colossal storms generate lightning flashes at least 100 times more powerful than those on Earth, according to scientists analyzing data from NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The findings were published March 20 in the journal AGU Advances. Researchers used data recorded by Juno in 2021 and 2022, after NASA granted an extension to the spacecraft’s operations upon completing a five-year science campaign at Jupiter. Juno remains in good health, but NASA officials have not said if they will approve another extension for the mission. The issue is money.

—Astronomy.com: “NASA’s Van Allen Probe A Burns Up Over the Pacific after 14 Years in Space“

NASA’s Van Allen Probe A re-entered Earth’s atmosphere on Wednesday, March 11, at 6:37 a.m. EDT, marking the final chapter for a spacecraft that reshaped scientists’ understanding of the radiation environment around our planet. The U.S. Space Force confirmed the spacecraft came down over the eastern Pacific Ocean. NASA said most of the 1,300-pound (600 kilograms) probe burned up during reentry, though some pieces may have reached the surface. Its twin, Probe B, remains in orbit and is not expected to re-enter before 2030. The twin probes launched together on Aug. 30, 2012, on what was supposed to be a two-year mission. They operated for nearly seven years instead, circling Earth inside the Van Allen radiation belts — zones of high-energy charged particles held in place by the planet’s magnetic field. 

—Carnegie Science: ““Extragalactic Archeology” Reveals Nearby Galaxy’s Evolution“

A team of astronomers, including Carnegie Science’s Jeff Rich and other former Carnegie Observatories astronomers, have for the first time traced the history of a galaxy outside our own Milky way by studying chemical fingerprints in deep space, a new approach they are calling “extragalactic archeology.” Their findings are published in Nature Astronomy. “This is the first time that a chemical archaeology method has been used with such fine detail outside our own galaxy,” said lead author Lisa Kewley of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and Smithsonian.