NASA
Every Cosmic Herald story on NASA — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
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Military Space
SpaceX Sends Classified NRO Payload to Orbit, Cementing Its Role as America's Go-To Military Launch Provider
A Falcon 9 launched intelligence-gathering satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office on June 18, underscoring how deeply the U.S. intelligence community now depends on commercial rockets.
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Stargazing
Your First Telescope: What to Buy, What to Skip, and What to Look at First
Aperture matters more than magnification, Dobsonians beat department-store refractors, and the Moon is the best first target. A no-nonsense buying guide for your first serious look at the night sky.
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NASA & Agencies
A European at the Controls: ESA's Parmitano Named Artemis III Pilot as NASA and ESA Sign New Climate and Lunar Deals
NASA named ESA's Luca Parmitano pilot of Artemis III, ESA committed a third European Service Module, and the two agencies signed Earth-science and Lunar Pathfinder agreements around ESA's 347th Council in Noordwijk.
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Stargazing
Solstice Week 2026: A Daytime Venus Occultation, the Longest Day, and a Strawberry Moon
Late June 2026 packs three marquee events into one stretch of sky: the summer solstice, a rare daytime occultation of Venus by the Moon on June 17, and the June 29 Strawberry Moon — plus a western planet lineup and the rising Milky Way.
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Missions
Roman Is Launching Eight Months Early. Here's What 100,000 Planets and a Census of Rogue Worlds Actually Looks Like.
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has been moved to an August 30, 2026 launch — eight months ahead of its previous schedule. Its Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey will hunt for 100,000 exoplanets by transit and thousands more via microlensing, including the first statistical census of free-floating rogue planets.
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NASA & Agencies
America's Lunar Economic Frontier: The Quiet Revolution in How We Plan to Use the Moon
The Moon sits 240,000 miles away — and Washington increasingly sees it not as a scientific destination but as the next great economic frontier, with commercial partners leading the charge.
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Astronomy
JWST Watches an Exoplanet Get Flash-Fried on the Universe's Most Eccentric Orbit
Webb's infrared eye tracked HD 80606 b as it swung past its star, catching a 1,100°F temperature spike and sniffing out methane and CO₂ in its tortured atmosphere.
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Science & Discovery
NASA Enlists the Public to Hunt for Faint Objects Hiding in the Sun's Cosmic Backyard
NASA's new citizen science project invites volunteers to search archival data for undiscovered brown dwarfs and dim objects lurking within a few dozen light-years of the Sun.
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Missions
NASA Bets on Private Sector to Crack Mars: Inside the Agency's New Public-Private Partnership
NASA is reshaping its Mars exploration strategy with a new public-private partnership, signaling a fundamental shift in how the agency plans to tackle the Red Planet's biggest scientific questions.
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Commercial
Relativity Space Wants to Build a Mars Orbiter — And It's Not Waiting for NASA to Ask
Relativity Space announces plans to privately develop a Mars orbiter, signaling that commercial ambitions in deep space are no longer theoretical.
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Astronomy
Chandra's Deep Look at NGC 6540: How a Mysterious X-Ray Flare Became Three Distinct Sources
A catastrophic X-ray flare from globular cluster NGC 6540 that blazed for just 300 seconds in 2005 has finally been resolved into three separate sources. Chandra's improved sensitivity revealed what decades of earlier observations missed—but the flare's true origin remains elusive.
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Science & Discovery
NASA's Cold Atom Lab Gets Its Fourth Major Upgrade to Study Quantum Gases in Space
NASA activated an upgraded Cold Atom Lab aboard the ISS with new magnetic systems and electronics, cooling atoms below -459°F to create Bose-Einstein condensates and test quantum technologies in microgravity.
