NASA
Every Cosmic Herald story on NASA — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
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Commercial
Rocket Launch Vehicles Compared: Payload, Cost, and Reusability in 2026
Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Starship, New Glenn, Vulcan Centaur, Neutron, Ariane 6, and six more launch vehicles compared on payload, cost per launch, and reusability, including China's Long March 10B, which on July 10 became just the third rocket in history to catch its own booster.
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Astronomy
Euclid Doubles the Known Sample of the Universe's Most Ancient Quasars
ESA's Euclid telescope has found 31 new quasars from the cosmic dawn, including two record-breakers at redshifts 7.77 and 7.69, more than doubling the known sample from that era.
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Science & Discovery
Beta Pictoris Gains a Third Confirmed World, Joining an Elite Club of Directly Imaged Systems
NASA's Exoplanet Archive confirmed Beta Pictoris d in its July 9 update, making Beta Pictoris only the second directly imaged system known to host more than two planets.
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Commercial
Katalyst's LINK Spacecraft Begins Checkouts Ahead of Historic Rescue Docking With NASA's Swift Observatory
Katalyst's LINK servicer is testing its xenon thrusters in orbit ahead of an unprecedented docking attempt meant to save NASA's decaying Swift Observatory from reentry.
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Missions
New Horizons Wakes From Its Longest-Ever Hibernation, 5.9 Billion Miles From Earth
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has woken from a record 321-day hibernation nearly 6 billion miles out, reporting all-green status as it resumes Kuiper Belt science ahead of exiting the solar system's edge by 2028-2029.
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Missions
Three Months After Circling the Moon, the Artemis II Crew Comes Home to Kennedy
Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen returned to Kennedy Space Center on July 8 for the first time since their record-breaking lunar flyby, and used the visit to start handing off lessons to the Artemis III crew.
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Science & Discovery
Inside the Sun's 'Impossible' Thin Layer: NASA's COFFIES Center Cracks the Tachocline Mystery
A NASA-funded supercomputer study finds the Sun's razor-thin tachocline stays thin because it and the solar magnetic field are locked in a mutual feedback loop, resolving a decades-old puzzle tied to space weather forecasting.
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Astronomy
A Whisper of Radio Waves Pins Down the Distance to a Mysterious Gamma-Ray Halo
China's FAST telescope caught a microjansky-faint radio pulse from a gamma-ray pulsar, finally giving astronomers a distance estimate that helps explain the puzzling TeV source it may be powering.
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Commercial
A Rocket Engine With No Moving Turbopumps Just Landed $91 Million
Houston's Venus Aerospace raised a $91 million Series B on July 8, 2026, to scale its rotating detonation rocket engine from prototype toward production, with NASA Marshall already testing the same architecture.
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NASA & Agencies
Former SpaceX Flight Surgeon Anil Menon Set for First Launch — on a Russian Soyuz
NASA confirms astronaut Anil Menon, a former SpaceX flight surgeon and Space Force colonel, will make his first spaceflight July 14 aboard Soyuz MS-29, pending a critical spacewalk to fix the ISS robotic arm.
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Commercial
A German Space Capsule Startup Just Planted Its Flag Next to NASA Johnson — With a Full-Scale Nyx Crew Mockup
The Exploration Company opened a Houston lab with a full-scale Nyx Crew mockup and formed TEC Federal to chase U.S. government contracts, backed by ESA's LEO Cargo Return funding.
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Missions
Roman Space Telescope Stands Up at Kennedy as August 30 Launch Nears
Technicians rotated the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to vertical at Kennedy Space Center on June 25, clearing the way for final testing ahead of an August 30 Falcon Heavy launch nine months early.
