NASA
Every Cosmic Herald story on NASA — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
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Science & Discovery
Curiosity found the richest haul of organic molecules yet on Mars — and a careful reason not to call it life
A rock the rover drilled in 2020 has yielded the most diverse set of carbon-bearing molecules ever detected on Mars, preserved for billions of years in clay that once held water. It's a tantalizing result — and a case study in scientific restraint.
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Missions
Four years after we punched an asteroid, a spacecraft is arriving to read the bruise
In 2022, NASA's DART probe slammed into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos and changed its orbit. We know it worked — but not precisely why. ESA's Hera reaches the scene in November to turn a one-off stunt into a measured, repeatable technique.
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Astronomy
NASA's next great observatory is ahead of schedule — and built to see wide, not just deep
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is finished, packed, and now aiming for a launch around the end of August — months early. Its trick isn't sharper vision than Hubble's. It's a field of view about a hundred times larger, and what that does to astronomy.
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Commercial
The first privately owned space station is almost ready — and the clock behind it is the ISS
Vast's Haven-1 is on track to become the first commercial space station in orbit, a single module flying on a Falcon 9. It's a modest first step with an outsized purpose: proving private outposts can exist before the International Space Station comes down in 2030.
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Commercial
New Glenn blew up on the pad. Now NASA is decoupling its Moon plans from Blue Origin's rocket.
A static-fire explosion on 28 May wrecked Blue Origin's launch pad and put its New Glenn rocket on the sidelines. With a Blue Moon lunar lander waiting on that rocket, NASA is quietly rearranging the dependencies in its Artemis architecture.
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NASA & Agencies
A familiar crack: why the station's crew spent an afternoon inside a Dragon
On 5 June the International Space Station's crew suited up and retreated into a docked Crew Dragon as an old leak on the Russian segment worsened. The scare passed within hours — but the fault behind it has resisted six years of repairs.
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Missions
The race to bring Mars home — and why the U.S. might not win it
NASA has already cached the rocks; it just can't agree on how to retrieve them. China, meanwhile, has set a date. The contest to return the first samples from Mars has quietly become a two-horse race with the favorite stumbling.
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NASA & Agencies
NASA science is staring down a 47% cut — again. Here's where it actually stands.
The White House's 2027 request would gut NASA's science directorate and cancel roughly half its missions. It is also the second year in a row Congress has signaled it won't go along. Untangling the proposal from the likely outcome.
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Commercial
Starship's V3 debut: a working ship, a wrecked booster, and a grounded fleet
Flight 12 introduced the larger Starship V3 and got further than the headlines suggest — the ship flew its mission. But the booster crashed, the FAA has ordered a mishap investigation, and the capability Artemis is waiting for still hasn't been shown.
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Missions
An airplane, a robot, and a falling telescope: the strangest rescue NASA has ever attempted
NASA's Swift observatory is sinking toward reentry. The plan to save it involves a robotic spacecraft, a rocket dropped from a jet over the Pacific — and the last flight of a launcher that ends an entire category of spaceflight.
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Commercial
A New Glenn explosion rattles Blue Origin — and NASA's Moon plans
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket detonated during a test on May 28, gutting its launch pad. The company vows to fly again this year; NASA warns the pad itself may not recover until 2028 — with consequences for Artemis.
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Missions
The largest planetary spacecraft NASA ever built is bound for an ocean world
Europa Clipper, launched in 2024, is cruising toward a 2030 arrival at Jupiter, where it will make nearly 50 flybys of the icy moon Europa to judge whether its hidden ocean could support life.
