NASA & Agencies
Space agency and policy news from Cosmic Herald — NASA, ESA, ISRO, China's CNSA, budgets, and the politics of spaceflight.
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NASA & Agencies
ISRO and JAXA Lock Down the Handshake Between Chandrayaan-5's Lander and Its Japanese Rover
At a Bengaluru meeting in late July, Indian and Japanese engineers finalized how their lander and rover will talk to and power each other on the Chandrayaan-5/LUPEX mission to hunt for lunar water ice.
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NASA & Agencies
NASA Cuts the Ribbon on Its First New Wind Tunnel in 40 Years
NASA opened the Flight Dynamics Research Facility at Langley on July 31, 2026 — its first newly built wind tunnel in over four decades, aimed at aircraft, autonomous flight, and Artemis-era spacecraft testing.
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NASA & Agencies
Five University Teams Are Flying Balloons Into an Eclipse's Shadow for NASA
NASA has set its coverage plan for the August 12, 2026 total solar eclipse over Greenland, Iceland and Spain, while five NASA-funded university teams launch roughly 80 balloons into the eclipse shadow to study how the atmosphere reacts when the Moon briefly cuts off the Sun.
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NASA & Agencies
NASA Astronaut, Two Cosmonauts Land in Kazakhstan After 241-Day Mission
Soyuz MS-28 parachuted onto the Kazakh steppe on July 26, closing out a 241-day Expedition 73/74 stint that carried NASA's Chris Williams and two Roscosmos cosmonauts more than 102 million miles around Earth.
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NASA & Agencies
Two New Galileo Satellites Officially Join Europe's Navigation Constellation
SAT 33 and SAT 34 — the final pair of first-generation Galileo satellites — have officially entered service, with SAT 34 cleared on July 23, 2026, as Europe's aging satnav fleet heads toward a heavier, electric-propulsion successor.
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NASA & Agencies
ESA Opens Launch Campaign for FLEX, the First Satellite Built to Watch Plants Glow
ESA is preparing FLEX, the first satellite dedicated to measuring the faint fluorescence plants emit during photosynthesis, for a September 2026 Vega-C launch alongside Copernicus Sentinel-3C from Kourou.
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NASA & Agencies
Wildfires Force NASA to Evacuate Its Madrid Deep Space Station, Shifting Voyager Tracking to California
Wildfires near Madrid forced NASA to evacuate one of only three Deep Space Network complexes on Friday; all 90 workers got out safely and mission support, including the Voyager 1 downlink, shifted seamlessly to Goldstone in California.
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NASA & Agencies
'A Quick Path to Yes': Commerce Starts Certifying the Space Missions Nobody Was Regulating
The Office of Space Commerce is moving its Space Commerce Certification program from proposal to practice, offering a voluntary 120-day "presumption of approval" for satellite servicing, commercial stations and debris removal — the missions Congress has never assigned to any regulator.
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NASA & Agencies
NASA Lost 4,000 Civil Servants Last Year. GAO Says 25 of Its 36 Biggest Projects Are Already Feeling It
GAO's annual NASA project assessment is usually a story about hardware. This year it's a story about people: a 22 percent workforce cut, Goddard down 34 percent, Psyche delayed a year, and a proposed FY2027 budget that would cut another 20 percent.
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NASA & Agencies
Mauritius Signs the Artemis Accords, and Talks About the Ocean Instead of the Moon
Mauritius became the 70th Artemis Accords signatory on July 17, 2026 — the seventh African nation and the 11th country to sign this year — and framed its accession around protecting oceans and coastlines rather than lunar exploration.
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NASA & Agencies
Serbia Signs the Artemis Accords, Becoming the 69th Nation — and the Latest to Straddle Two Rival Lunar Camps
Serbia became the 69th Artemis Accords signatory on July 16, 2026, and the 10th nation to join this year — while also holding membership in China's rival lunar station program, a growing pattern of dual participation.
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NASA & Agencies
ISRO Clears Three Critical Gaganyaan Crew Module Safety Tests
ISRO validated the cold-gas uprighting system, umbilical separation mechanism, and apex cover structure for Gaganyaan's crew module, clearing a key hurdle before India's first crewed spaceflight.
