Here is a list of news that were published in our Newsletter during the week of May 24, 2026:

Human Space Exploration

• What’s next for SpaceX’s Starship V3 megarocket after its historic debut flight
  Coalition Member in the News – Axiom Space;
• Russian cosmonauts install Sun-watching telescope on ISS during 6-hour spacewalk;
• China shakes up its space programs to land astronauts on the Moon by 2030: ‘We will spare no effort’;
• FAA orders SpaceX to investigate Starship booster mishap;
• Is extracting oxygen from lunar soil the future of space exploration?;
• NASA awards initial Moon base rover and lander contracts
  Coalition Member in the News – Axiom Space;
• Smithsonian panels on why, what, how of space station preservation;
• Shenzhou-23 crew arrives at Tiangong as China maps path to 2030 lunar landing;
• NASA to add missions to SpaceX commercial crew contract
  Coalition Members in the News – Boeing, Northrop Grumman;
• SpaceX launches new Starship V3 for first time;

Space Science

• Cedar Park’s Firefly Aerospace will send drones to the Moon in ‘breakthrough mission’
  Coalition Member in the News – Axiom Space;
• NASA is hatching a ‘fast-paced plan’ to boost this space telescope. But first, they’ll have to find it
  Coalition Member in the News – Northrop Grumman;
• Astronomers observe the most chemically primitive galaxy in the early universe;
• Just 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang, galaxies were already shaped by where they lived;
• Fear and panic in orbit around the Red Planet: Missions to Phobos and Deimos
  Coalition Members in the News – Boeing, Lockheed Martin;
• How mobile deepspace medical systems could support future landings on the Moon and Mars;
• A probe took incredible pictures of Mars on its way to a far-off asteroid;
• ‘Very interesting wiggles’ in data from silent NASA Mars spacecraft lead to unexpected solar wind discovery;
• NASA Glenn Research Center sends experimental device to the International Space Station
  Coalition Member in the News – Northrop Grumman;
• NASA scientist discusses new Roman space telescope;
• Intuitive Machines announces two prime lunar reconnaissance contracts;
• Scientists thought Jupiter’s moon Europa was ejecting water. Now they’re not so sure;

Other News

• A rare blue micromoon rises this weekend;
• Companies like SpaceX want electromagnetic catapults on the Moon. Could they be used as weapons?;
• Virgin Galactic returns Unity to flight to prepare for next-generation spaceplane;
• Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket explodes during pre-launch test;
• Experts say space nuclear power’s biggest obstacles are logistical, not technical;
• Scientists want to send a roly-poly robot filled with ‘dandelion drones’ to investigate hidden tunnels on Mars;
• Blue Origin cleared to fly New Glenn mega-rocket after April mishap;
• After 68 years, Caltech will have to bid to keep JPL contract;
• NASA announces major reorganization;

Major Space-Related Activities for the Week

•  It was 65 years ago on Monday, that then U.S. President John F. Kennedy announced before Congress the goal of landing astronauts on the Moon by the end of the 1960s, which became the Apollo program;
• Today at 2 p.m. EDT NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will be joined by the Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate and Moon Base program leads to conduct a virtual update on Artemis Moon exploration plans. On Wednesday at 1 p.m. EDT the Beyond Earth Institute is hosting a webinar, “Securing a Cislunar Future: Markets, Minerals, and Momentum,” with virtual access;
• Also Wednesday, Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, the current ISS commander, and Sergei Mikaev are to conduct a five-hour spacewalk outside the ISS’s Russian segment for the installation of a solar radiation experiment and to remove other science hardware.

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