SpaceX filed its S-1 registration statement with the SEC on May 20, targeting an IPO on the Nasdaq by mid-June at a reported valuation of around $2 trillion, with plans to raise up to $80 billion. The filing reveals 2025 revenue of $18.7 billion, driven largely by Starlink's $11.4 billion contribution and 10.3 million subscribers as of Q1 2026—double the count from a year earlier. The company spent $3 billion on Starship development in 2025 alone and expects the vehicle to begin launching satellites in the second half of this year. The most striking disclosure is the AI segment, created through SpaceX's February acquisition of xAI, which consumed $12.7 billion in R&D spending in 2025 despite generating losses—underpinned by plans to deploy orbital data centers as early as 2028. Share count and pricing were not included in the initial filing, as is standard practice.

↗ Source: SpaceNews

SpaceX is targeting a 6:30 p.m. EDT Thursday liftoff from Starbase, Texas, for Flight 12 — the debut of its Version 3 Starship, a 407-foot two-stage rocket that follows five Version 2 flights and two test-stand explosions that destroyed a booster and an upper stage. Because it's a new block variant, Booster 19 will splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico rather than attempt a tower catch; Ship 39 will end its suborbital arc in the Indian Ocean. The flight will deploy 20 Starlink simulator satellites and test a heat-shield imaging system using two modified Starlinks. A single Raptor engine relight roughly 39 minutes in will rehearse the deorbit burns needed for future orbital missions. SpaceX has disclosed more than $15 billion invested in Starship development and says Version 3 is eventually designed to carry 100 metric tons to orbit.

↗ Source: Spaceflight Now

Two JWST/NIRCam observations taken in February 2026 have resolved the threat posed by asteroid 2024 YR4, a roughly 60-meter near-Earth object that briefly carried a non-zero probability of striking the Moon in December 2032. The updated orbital solution places the asteroid's closest lunar approach at 22,900 ± 800 km — well clear of an impact. The observations also set a record for the faintest near-Earth object detection to date, reaching magnitude ~30.5, far beyond the ~27 limit of ground-based telescopes. That depth matters beyond this single case: next-generation sky surveys are finding decameter-scale objects faster than ground observatories can track them, meaning hazard assessments may increasingly depend on space-based follow-up. The paper, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, argues JWST-class observations can advance impact probability assessments by roughly two years compared to waiting for ground-based recovery windows.

↗ Source: arXiv astro-ph / The Astrophysical Journal Letters

On May 15, NASA's Psyche spacecraft passed within 2,864 miles of Mars, using the planet's gravity to gain speed and shift its orbital plane without burning any onboard propellant — a maneuver that sets up its arrival at the metal-rich asteroid Psyche in August 2029. During the approach, the spacecraft's multispectral imager captured color images of the Martian surface, including the double-ring crater Huygens. Once in orbit around the asteroid, the mission will attempt to determine whether it represents the exposed metallic core of an ancient rocky body, which would give scientists a rare look at the kind of interior structure normally locked inside planets like Earth.

↗ Source: NASA Press Releases

NASA has opened the Robotically Manipulated Payload Challenge, the fifth TechLeap Prize competition, inviting teams to design payloads that can be handled by a robotic arm in low Earth orbit. Up to three winners will each receive as much as $500,000 across three development phases, moving from concept to flight-ready hardware in roughly 12 months. Winning payloads would launch in early 2028 aboard a spacecraft that rendezvous with the Fly Foundational Robots platform, which is targeting a late 2027 launch. Phase 1 registration closes July 29, with full applications due August 12.

↗ Source: NASA Press Releases

Scaling LEO constellations are exposing a structural limit in ground system design: traditional databases buckle when forced to handle millions of distinct telemetry streams tagged with spacecraft ID, subsystem, orbit segment, and other metadata. Each unique combination creates a separate high-cardinality stream, and as indexes multiply, systems spend more time maintaining them than processing incoming data. Loft Orbital hit this wall at 500 million measurements per day before migrating to a time-series architecture. As constellations grow and operators store decades of telemetry for anomaly investigation and predictive modeling, the gap between legacy infrastructure and operational demand will keep widening.

↗ Source: SpaceNews

A reanalysis of 14 years of Hubble Space Telescope data has sharply weakened the case for water vapor plumes erupting from Europa. Dr. Lorenz Roth of KTH Royal Institute of Technology, who led the original 2014 detection, now says confidence in those plumes has dropped from 99.9% to below 90%—insufficient to support the original claim. The earlier signals, attributed to hydrogen and oxygen emissions consistent with 200-km-high plumes, appear to stem instead from Europa's hydrogen exosphere and positioning uncertainty within Hubble images. The finding matters for Europa Clipper, which arrives at the Jovian system in 2031 specifically equipped to sample such plumes if they exist.

↗ Source: Universe Today

NASA will hold a press conference on May 26 at 2 p.m. EDT to detail progress on Moon Base, its long-term lunar infrastructure initiative targeting a sustained human presence at the lunar South Pole. Administrator Jared Isaacman will participate alongside senior exploration leadership, with the agenda covering new industry partnerships and mission plans. Moon Base is framed as a precursor to eventual crewed Mars missions, combining scientific, commercial, and exploration objectives. The briefing will stream live on NASA+ and YouTube, with one-on-one interviews available afterward for credentialed media.

↗ Source: NASA Press Releases

A House Select Committee on China report released Thursday identifies hundreds of NASA-supported scientific collaborations since 2015 that may have involved Chinese researchers, potentially violating the Wolf Amendment — a 2011 law barring NASA from working with Chinese entities without explicit congressional and FBI approval. Some co-authored research allegedly included institutions on U.S. government national-security watchlists tied to China's defense sector. The report calls for a DOJ and NASA Inspector General task force to investigate violations and recommends suspensions or debarments for universities that repeatedly breach the amendment. NASA has since built a research security office and is updating its compliance monitoring, which the committee acknowledged as a constructive response to identified gaps.

↗ Source: Payload Space

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told an industry audience at the ASCEND conference on May 19 that China will likely send taikonauts around the moon in 2027 — before any American crew reaches lunar distance again. China has not publicly confirmed such a mission, though reports suggest a roadmap toward a crewed lunar landing before 2030. Isaacman has repeatedly invoked the China timeline to justify restructuring Artemis, shifting the first landing attempt to 2028 on Artemis 4.

↗ Source: SpaceNews

Roscosmos began selling advertising space on its rockets and spacecraft in January 2026, with six branded placements already appearing this year — including a bank, a restaurant chain, and the Russian Olympic Committee. Russian sources estimate the program will generate only a few million dollars annually, a fraction of the roughly $2.5 billion in lost launch revenue attributed to Western sanctions since 2022. Russia's annual launch count has fallen to 17, the lowest outside the pandemic year since Yuri Gagarin's 1961 flight.

↗ Source: Ars Technica – Space

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