Space Race
Launches, discoveries, and the future of space.
Latest Gobbles
The knife-edge view from Greenland
71.07055N, 27.71252W: coordinates for a hard-won snapshot of the total solar eclipse, reached only after dodging weather by sea.
Spain's 121-year wait ends with a shadow and a cathedral
1905 was the last time Spain witnessed a major total solar eclipse before yesterday's sky show.
China's Tianwen-2 finally catches Kamoʻoalewa
A spacecraft closed to within about twenty kilometres of a near-Earth asteroid after a four hundred day chase covering roughly a billion kilometres.
China’s reusable-rocket play just got very real
81 satellites rode SpaceX’s Transporter-17, including City Labs’ BOHR.
The Exploration Company plants a flag in Houston
2028 is the year The Exploration Company says it plans to launch a Nyx cargo freighter to the International Space Station.
Artemis II scheduled to carry humans farther than ever before
406,773 kilometers: that’s how far Artemis II is described as carrying four humans from Earth.
Hubble’s long arc from zero to more than six thousand
NASA says Hubble launched in 1990, when there wasn’t a single known exoplanet. Now NASA marks “more than six thousand confirmed exoplanets,” and points to
NASA Releases Draft RFP for Commercial Space Stations
July 27 is the date NASA gave industry to weigh in on its commercial space stations plan. In the space business, that kind of deadline lands like a startin
AI is quick. It just can't think.
336.15 mph is the current top speed on record for a Top Fuel dragster — and it turns out to be the cleanest possible reminder that going fast and being sma
The World Cup from 250 Miles Up
23 years into a 50-year effort, the southern part of San Francisco Bay is still being restored while the FIFA World Cup keeps putting stadiums under astron
The farthest human-made objects are still sending a message
15 billion and 13 billion miles away: the Voyager probes are still out there, carrying a Golden Record through interstellar space.
July 2, 1952: the first successful test of the Hydrogen Bomb
1952 is the biggest number in today’s pack, and it lands on a hydrogen bomb test.
SpaceX’s xAI merger makes the numbers look fake
$1.3 trillion: SpaceX’s June 2026 xAI acquisition turned a $450 billion stock deal into a combined valuation explosion.
Space is becoming the new AI frontier
130-pound is the weight of the satellite where the first large language model ever trained in space ran aboard an H100 in December 2025.
NASA awards $590.4 million for four Moon missions
$590.4 million is headed to four Moon missions, and Artemis II has already flown around the Moon and come home.
Europe’s space gap is looking less like a gap and more like a canyon
7 orbital launches in 2025 is what Europe’s space economy managed while the US hit 180 and China 93.
SpaceX’s secretive plans to deliver cargo to Earth from space
$6 Billion is the number attached to SpaceX’s deal with an AI startup, and it’s the kind of space-industry headline that makes your wallet and your telesco
Europe's space gap is a launch-count problem now, not a vibes problem
Europe logged seven orbital launches in 2025. The US logged 180. China logged 93. The gap isn't a perception problem — it's a scoreboard problem. Bureaucra
The moral stakes of colonizing space are being argued at a very high bar
67 signatories and a 2028 Moon deadline: space is doing diplomacy, law, and colonization cosplay all at once.
JWST peers back at six galaxies becoming one
The JWST looked back in time and caught six galaxies in the middle of merging into one. At the heart of the pile-up, a supermassive black hole is lurking.
Apollo astronauts played "the Moon game" in Alaska
660 feet deep — that's how thick the Novarupta ash layer can get in Alaska's Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, the same volcanic wasteland where Apollo astron
Mars just became a two-horse race
NASA has selected Relativity Space for a Mars mission.
NASA is finding its footing again
16 SpaceTech VC deals closed in May 2026, led by Anduril Industries' $5B Series H.
Money, substrates, and the off-ramp nobody signed
2026 is the only date in the pack, and this briefing is about a lot of architecture talk and exactly zero rockets.
Hubble helps map a galaxy of weird worlds
NASA recently reached more than six thousand confirmed exoplanets. When the Hubble Space Telescope launched in 1990, not a single exoplanet was known. Hubb
SpaceX isn't just listing. It's becoming the benchmark.
$1.75 trillion is today's gravitational center — and everything else in the Space Race pack is orbiting it.
Rocket Integration Complete for Katalyst-NASA Swift Boost
9 June 2026: engineers completed installation of Katalyst Space’s LINK robotic servicing spacecraft into a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket at NASA’s Wal
Czech astronaut Aleš Svoboda is joining Vast Space's ISS mission
396 days in space is the kind of résumé line that makes the rest of us look criminally underqualified.
Space is getting expensive — and fast
In the last 30 days alone, a single week saw over $875 million flow into three space companies. Europe launched its heaviest rocket payload ever. A startup
The Moon Is Looking Less Like a Destination and More Like a Supply Chain
Before humans can build on the Moon or Mars, they need to answer a deceptively simple question: what is already there? Water, volatiles, exotic isotopes li