23-member international body advancing space exploration and European aerospace collaboration
Isar Aerospace has reached orbit with Spectrum, marking Europe’s first fully commercial launch vehicle to do so. The company plans rapid production scale and a broader launch network to meet surging demand, signaling a shift toward sovereign European access to space.
NASA has named Randy Bresnik, Luca Parmitano, Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas as the Artemis III crew for a mid‑2027, two‑week Earth‑orbit test flight to practice docking with prototype lunar landers from Blue Origin and SpaceX. The all‑male selection has drawn online criticism and questions about whether Blue Origin’s May New Glenn explosion will delay the program.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has begun the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, a 10-year program that will image the southern sky every few nights. The telescope has started regular operations from its Chilean mountaintop site and is already returning new detections, including thousands of asteroids and transient views such as Comet 3I/ATLAS.
Astronaut Anil Menon has completed an eight‑month stay aboard the International Space Station alongside Russian and NASA crewmates. The mission follows a history of tense US‑Russia space cooperation and signals ongoing collaboration on ISS operations amid geopolitical strains.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage has struck the Moon near Einstein Crater at about 5,400 mph, carving a new crater and launching a dust plume. South Korea’s Danuri orbiter has photographed the site and released images. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is scheduled to image the impact next week while scientists begin analysing ejecta and crater formation.
A total solar eclipse has swept from the Arctic through Greenland and Iceland to parts of Spain and a sliver of Portugal, while much of western Europe, Canada and the northern US has seen a dramatic partial eclipse. Crowds have flocked to Spain and Iceland for minutes of totality; scientists and space agencies have run live coverage and field experiments.
Satellite imagery shows the oil spill from the Caroline Bezengi has expanded dramatically off Oman’s Dhofar coast, reaching Qibliyah Island and the Arabian Sea reserve. Authorities are monitoring the situation as Greenpeace Germany and others warn of escalating environmental damage.
Scientists have captured the Sun’s surface at unprecedented resolution with the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope and other instruments and have identified widespread Kelvin–Helmholtz vortices—500–2,000km spirals of magnetised plasma. The team has linked these instabilities to how magnetic energy cascades to smaller scales and feeds flares and coronal mass ejections that produce space weather.
The UK has faced a fifth heatwave this summer, with record highs in several locations. A cooler spell is moving in over the weekend, bringing rain to some drought-affected areas. Health alerts remain in place as authorities monitor ongoing drought and heat-related pressures.
Tech giants and startups envisage a future where data centers orbit Earth. Insurers question pricing and risk; space debris and regulatory hurdles loom as hundreds of billions of dollars in hardware move into space.
SpaceX has pledged $100 billion to build a 125,000‑acre Starbase in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, that it says will support thousands of Starship launches a year, add about 3,000 direct jobs and include propellant production, power generation and deep‑water shipping. Construction is scheduled to start in 2027; SpaceX targets initial launches by 2029 while state officials give a 2030 timeline.
NASA has launched the $4–4.3 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. The observatory has separated cleanly and is heading to Lagrange Point 2, about one million miles from Earth, for a five‑year primary mission to map billions of galaxies, search for exoplanets and study dark matter and dark energy.
NASA has launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope aboard a Falcon Heavy, with a field-of-view more than 100 times wider than Hubble. The bus-sized telescope is heading to a point roughly 1 million miles from Earth to study dark energy, dark matter, and thousands of new worlds, while working with Webb and other observatories. It will take months to reach its destination and will begin rapid, wide-area observations.
French president Emmanuel Macron has opened a two-day International Space Summit in Paris that has gathered officials, astronauts, researchers and industry leaders from about 120 countries to press Europe to build sovereign space capabilities, debate regulation and seek commercial deals. U.S. companies SpaceX and Blue Origin are absent after White House concerns over the event’s framing.
Independent reports NASA and ESA push two major space initiatives: Envision aims to map Venus at unprecedented radar resolution to probe active volcanism; BepiColombo edges toward Mercury with a dramatic orbit insertion after nine gravity assists and separation of its propulsion module.
Europe’s private space sector is scaling up amid a surge in funding and launches. Amazon’s Leo order and new European entrants highlight momentum, but political divisions and the push for sovereign capability complicate the path to a robust, independent European launch capability.
Europe is pushing to strengthen its sovereign space capabilities amid a growing U.S.-China-American competition. The International Space Summit in Paris has highlighted calls for shared governance and new investments, with Macron outlining a plan to boost Europe’s space industry and reduce reliance on U.S. technology.
Mercury’s diameter has been shrinking faster than previously believed, up to 30% more quickly. New maps and data from MESSENGER, combined with upcoming BepiColombo observations, are refining estimates of how internal cooling contracts the planet’s core and crust, offering a clearer window into Mercury’s evolution.