Space

SpaceX is planning to go public at a valuation that would make it the biggest listing of all time, Bloomberg reports. “The Elon Musk-led company is targeting a valuation of about $1.5 trillion for the entire company” and while they’re saying they plan for next year, it’s a Musk company so you know what that means: “the timing could slip until 2027.” SpaceX expects $15 billion in 2025 revenue, and $22 billion to $24 billion in 2026, mostly due to Starlink.

In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that launching solar-powered satellites like Project Suncatcher into space in a bid to alleviate power consumption concerns will be viewed as “a more normal way” to build AI data centers within the next decade or so.

The moss isn’t quite as hardy as the reigning king of extremophiles, the tardigrade, but it put up an impressive showing in an experiment where scientists exposed sporophytes (the reproductive structures that produce spores) to the harsh vacuum of space for 283 days. After crunching the numbers, they believe the moss could survive for around 5,600 days, or a little over 15 years in space and still survive and reproduce. According to the press release:

Hot on the heels of a second successful launch — and first successful landing — Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has announced the next version of its rocket. The New Glenn 9x4 — named for its number of engines — should operate alongside the existing 7x2, and could compete more closely with SpaceX’s Starship.

The new trailer for Amazon MGM’s adaptation of Alex Weir’s novel Project Hail Mary teases a bit more of the catastrophe that’s imperiling Earth, but it’s mostly about the friendship that’s going to develop between astronaut Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) and an alien that looks like a pile of rocks.

“Sentinel-6B will ensure that we continue to collect the high-precision data needed to understand our changing climate,” ESA’s director of earth observation programmes, Simonetta Cheli said in a press release.

SpaceX has been on a tear with launches, having boosted over 10,000 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. Now it’s celebrating a new milestone that’s become so automatic we just expect it.

Here’s Jeff Bezos’ video of the landing, which took place after a planned launch was scrubbed earlier this week. Check out CNN’s story for more about the launch.

The second launch of Blue Origin’s megarocket was initially scheduled for Sunday, but was postponed until today due to poor weather conditions. Now it’s been pushed back again until the sun chills out a little, with no ETA on a new launch window.

Operation Space Station will air on November 5th and 12th, with the first part, High-Risk Build, focusing on the engineering and construction of the ISS. Part two, Science and Survival, will tell the stories of the astronauts who worked on the station and the challenges they faced, including several incidents that were nearly catastrophic.

Former Real World cast member and current Transportation Secretary / acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy recently said SpaceX was “behind” on its contract for Artemis III and proposed reopening it. (Elon Musk responded with a predictable slew of insults.)

O2 Satellite won’t launch until the first half of 2026, and only with messaging and data for maps and location services at first, but it’s expected to expand. O2 customers can register their interest now, though pricing is still to come.

November 2nd will mark 25 years of continuous human occupation aboard the International Space Station, and Ars Technica points out this new ISS in Real Time website lets you revisit each and every day.

The US is falling behind China, according to former space agency officials.

Airbus, Leonardo, and Thales are planning to pool their space services, systems manufacturing, and satellite activities into a new company that “could be operational in 2027.” Eutelsat’s OneWeb network is notably absent from this team-up, and other attempts to make a European SpaceX and Starlink rival have yet to take off.

The reduction — in the works before the government shutdown — comes from its Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Reuters reports is “NASA’s only federally funded research and development center.” The layoffs affect roughly a tenth of the JPL’s workforce, who will find out if they’re affected or not today.

Most supermassive black holes don’t just swallow up matter, they eject it, sometimes in spectacular jets of super heated plasma. Sagittarius A* at the center of our galaxy has seemed oddly quiet, though. But scientists believe they’ve finally found evidence this plasma wind, in the form of a cone-shaped gap in the gas surrounding the black hole. It’s not quite as dramatic as Centaurus A, but it has it’s own galactic charm.

In unsealed testimony, SpaceX investor Iqbaljit Kahlon says that some Chinese investors are “directly on the cap table.” This may raise some national security concerns, depending on how much information about SpaceX — which is deeply involved with the US defense department — gives to its investors.

We’ve grown so accustomed to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets launching and landing after deploying Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit, or sending real astronauts and cargo to the ISS, that it’s almost become dial tone — you just expect it.

After four explosions (flight tests seven, eight, and nine, as well as one on the ground), SpaceX successfully launched another prototype vehicle Tuesday night. This time, the Super Heavy booster rocket splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico as planned, as Starship deployed Starlink simulator satellites, then splashed down under control in the Indian Ocean.

Footage captured by ones of Sen’s 4K SpaceTV-1 streaming cameras installed on Airbus’ ISS Bartolomeo platform reveals the truly staggering scale of Hurricane Erin. According to the National Hurricane Center today, Erin “remains a sprawling hurricane, with its tropical-storm-force winds extending nearly 500 n mi across.”

The exceptionally bright meteor was spotted last night at around 11pm local time.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) hasn’t given it a name yet, but NASA has announced that astronomers discovered a new moon orbiting Uranus using images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope’s near-infrared camera last February.

The New York Times has the story.

The agency was already working on designing a reactor that might one day provide people with electricity on the moon. The Trump administration wants to try to speed things up and build a bigger reactor, Politico reports.

NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation plan to launch the satellite on July 30th. The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission is supposed to track ice melt and land deformation, helping scientists better understand the impacts of flooding, earthquakes, and more.