SpaceX
Every Cosmic Herald story on SpaceX — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
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Commercial
SpaceX has launched more than 6,000 satellites. Astronomers are not happy about it.
Starlink is the largest satellite constellation in history — and the most disruptive to ground-based astronomy. SpaceX has made mitigation efforts, but the fundamental tension between dense LEO constellations and telescope surveys remains unresolved as competitors plan their own systems.
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Commercial
SpaceX cut the cost of reaching orbit by 90 percent. Here's what that has and hasn't changed.
The cost of putting a kilogram in low Earth orbit dropped from roughly $50,000-$70,000 in the Space Shuttle era to under $3,000 on a Falcon 9 rideshare. This 90-percent price reduction has transformed who can access space — but it hasn't yet transformed what they do there.
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Missions
Artemis is more than a Moon landing. It's a permanent outpost architecture. Here's the full picture.
Artemis is NASA's plan for sustained human presence near the Moon: a Gateway station in lunar orbit, commercial landers for surface access, the Lunar Terrain Vehicle, and a base camp at the south pole. The architecture is ambitious, politically contingent, and unlike anything attempted in the Apollo era.
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Commercial
The company quietly building the ISS's replacement, one pressurized module at a time
Axiom Space has flown four private astronaut missions to the ISS, is designing the spacesuits for Artemis moon walks, and is under contract to attach its own commercial module to the station before 2030. When the ISS is decommissioned, Axiom's section will detach and operate independently.
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NASA & Agencies
Boeing's crew capsule is still on the ground. What Starliner's failure means for human spaceflight.
Boeing's Starliner flew its first crewed mission in June 2024 — and left two astronauts stranded on the ISS for nine months after thruster failures and helium leaks forced NASA to return the capsule uncrewed. As of mid-2026, Starliner's future remains unresolved.
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Commercial
The satellites won. Now astronomers are learning to live with 40,000 of them.
Starlink, OneWeb, and their competitors have fundamentally changed the night sky. The question is no longer whether to stop the constellations — it's whether engineering fixes and international regulation can preserve professional astronomy before Vera Rubin comes online.
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Missions
Still to Fly in 2026: Roman, a Moon-Lander Wave, India's Crew Capsule Test, and Japan's Phobos Grab
Artemis II is done — but 2026's manifest isn't. NASA's Roman Space Telescope launches August 30, four lunar landers chase year-end windows, Gaganyaan-1 rehearses India's first crewed flight, and JAXA's MMX departs for Phobos. What's still scheduled, what slipped, and which dates to believe.
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Commercial
With the ISS nearing retirement, the race to build its replacement is on
The International Space Station is slated to retire around 2030, and NASA is betting that private companies will build what comes next. A wave of record funding in 2026 is fueling a contest among several rival stations to be first.
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Commercial
America's new national-security rocket is grounded by a recurring booster glitch
ULA's Vulcan Centaur was certified to launch the Pentagon's most sensitive satellites — and then a solid rocket booster misbehaved on two flights in a row. The Space Force has now paused Vulcan missions until the problem is understood.
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Commercial
A single Falcon 9 booster has now flown 35 times — and made the impossible look boring
On June 8, SpaceX launched the same first-stage booster for the 35th time. The milestone is a reminder of how completely rocket reuse — once dismissed as a fantasy — has rewritten the economics of getting to orbit.
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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.
