Deep Space Extra

Here is a list of news that were published in our Newsletter during the week of Jan 05, 2026:

Human Space Exploration

• NASA decides to bring Crew-11 home early, but not an emergency;
• NASA weighs an earlier end to the Crew-11 mission after a ‘medical situation’ with an ISS crew member postpones first spacewalk of 2026;
• NASA may be 1 month away from historic Artemis II astronaut launch around the Moon;
• The Isaacman era begins at NASA
  Coalition president & CEO Allen Cutler and Coalition Member Axiom Space in the News;
• China’s next Moonshot: Chang’e 7 could search the lunar south pole for water this year;
• Great news for NASA in the House-Senate FY2026 appropriations report;
• After five years, Russia’s space station segment finally stops leaking;
• Forging a human-machine partnership to power the next era of space exploration;

Space Science

• Europa’s ocean floor is surprisingly calm, new modeling study suggests;
• NASA’s Mars Sample Return is dead, paving the way for China;
• Former CEO of Google spearheads 4 next-gen telescopes 3 on Earth and 1 in space;
• How the evidence for alien life on K2-18 b evaporated;
• Vera C. Rubin Observatory spots record-breaking asteroid in pre-survey observations;
• Lunar spacecraft exhaust could obscure clues to origins of life;
• NASA seeks to accelerate development of Habitable Worlds Observatory
  Coalition Members in the News – L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman;
• Astronomers discover never-before-seen celestial object: “Cloud 9”;
• Inside the massive radio search of our newest interstellar guest;
• NASA’s Curiosity rover sends stunning new panorama from high on Mars’ Mount Sharp;
• Winning the Red Planet race: Returning Mars samples before China should be a top U.S. priority, experts say;
• The universe may be lopsided, new research says;
• Max Space looks to Kennedy Space Center to manufacture space habitats;
• Moon rush: These private spacecraft will attempt lunar landings in 2026;
• Live long and loiter: Why NASA’s ESCAPADE probes will wait a year in space before heading to Mars;
• Space mice come home and start families;
• Astronomers detect rare ‘free floating’ exoplanet 10,000 light-years from Earth;

Other News

• Meet the 2026 U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame inductees;
• SpaceOps: Global orbital launch rate jumped 25% In 2025
  Coalition Member in the News – Boeing;
• January belongs to Jupiter: See the king of planets in the night sky this month;
• The next great space race: Building data centers in orbit;
• Space warfare in 2026: A pivotal year for U.S. readiness;
• NASA begins infrastructure overhaul under Isaacman as Trump pushes ambitious space exploration goals;
• The risk of falling space junk hitting airplanes is on the rise, experts warn;
• Space Force requests launch provider interest in Cape and Vandenberg pads
  Coalition Member in the News – Lockheed Martin;

Major Space-Related Activities for the Week

• The U.S. House and Senate return this week with much left to do to appropriate a budget for the 2026 fiscal year that began October 1. The current budget continuing resolution expires January 30. NASA is among the majority of federal agencies whose 2026 budget has not been appropriated.
• NASA astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman are scheduled for a spacewalk on Thursday to continue the installation of a power generating Roll Out Solar Array on the ISS. A NASA news briefing is planned for Tuesday at 2 p.m. ET to preview the spacewalk activities and will be aired on YouTube.
• The American Astronautical Society is meeting from Sunday through Thursday in Phoenix, Arizona, with discussion topics that include the analysis of samples returned to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission.
• The NASA Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) meets Tuesday through Thursday at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland with a virtual option and the Artemis program among the topics.

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