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
NASA Wants Volunteers to Spend a Year Pretending to Fly to the Moon and Mars
NASA has opened a volunteer call for a roughly yearlong ground analog at Johnson Space Center that, for the first time, fuses its HERA "spacecraft" and CHAPEA "base" into one integrated Moon-and-Mars mission starting no earlier than August 2027.
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NASA & Agencies
China Refreshes Its Ocean-Watching Fleet: Haiyang-2E Reaches Orbit on the 654th Long March
China orbited the 1,500-kg Haiyang-2E marine-monitoring satellite on a Long March 4B from Jiuquan, replacing the aging HY-2B and rounding out an operational ocean-observation constellation on the family's 654th flight.
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NASA & Agencies
Asteroid Day 2026: As Hera Closes In on Dimorphos, Planetary Defense Gets Its Moment
On June 30, 2026, the UN-sanctioned Asteroid Day arrives at a hinge point: DART proved we can nudge an asteroid, and ESA's Hera spacecraft is due at Didymos-Dimorphos by year's end to inspect the wreckage.
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NASA & Agencies
NASA and the SBA Sign a Deal to Funnel Small Businesses Into the Space Economy
NASA and the Small Business Administration signed a memorandum of agreement on June 29, 2026, launching an interagency initiative to grow the American space economy under President Trump's National Space Policy.
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NASA & Agencies
Spacewalk 95: Two NASA Astronauts Head Outside to Give Canadarm2 a New Wrist
On June 30, NASA astronauts Chris Williams and Jessica Meir will spend roughly six and a half hours outside the ISS replacing a malfunctioning wrist roll joint on the 25-year-old Canadarm2, the robotic arm that captures and berths visiting cargo ships.
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NASA & Agencies
Botswana Signs the Artemis Accords, Becoming the 68th Nation and Sixth African Member
Botswana signed the Artemis Accords on June 25, 2026, becoming the 68th signatory and sixth African nation to join the U.S.-led framework — the ninth country to sign this year alone.
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NASA & Agencies
Behind Closed Doors: ESA's 347th Council Sets the Table for Europe's 2026 Ministerial
ESA's governing Council wrapped its 347th meeting on 16-17 June 2026 with decisions on agency governance, programmes and international partnerships, feeding directly into preparations for the CM26 ministerial later this year.
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NASA & Agencies
NASA's Billion-Dollar Graveyard: How Canceled Exploration Projects Burned the Budget
A new accounting of canceled NASA exploration programs documents billions in combined cost overruns before termination, reigniting pointed questions about project management reform as the agency presses forward with new lunar ambitions.
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NASA & Agencies
America's Spaceports Are Running Out of Runway: NASA's Inspector General Sounds the Alarm
NASA's Inspector General warns US launch sites are nearing capacity as record commercial and government launch cadence strains America's spaceport infrastructure.
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NASA & Agencies
India's Jio Unveils Sovereign LEO Constellation Plan as $10–15 Billion Bet on Connecting India From the Skies
Jio Platforms filed IPO papers alongside plans for a 1,600-satellite sovereign broadband constellation, challenging Starlink and OneWeb in India's increasingly contested orbital market.
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NASA & Agencies
How Do You Become a NASA Astronaut? The Process, the Odds, and What They Actually Look For
NASA selects roughly a dozen astronauts from thousands of applicants each cycle. The qualifications, the grueling two-year training pipeline, what actually disqualifies you, and why the evolving selection criteria signal the future of human spaceflight.
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NASA & Agencies
NASA Just Handed 14 Companies a $476 Million Contract to Watch the Earth
NASA expanded its Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition program with 8 new vendors and 6 returning ones, pushing the contract ceiling to $476M through 2028.
