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A busy cycle in orbit and beyond. Let's get into it.

The LVK collaboration has published GWTC-5, adding 161 new gravitational wave signals detected between April 2024 and January 2025 and bringing the total catalog to 390 events. The detectors, now picking up three to four signals per week, are sensitive enough to capture mergers billions of light-years away. Three findings stand out: evidence for second-generation black holes (formed when a merger remnant itself later collides), the tightest sky localization ever achieved for a gravitational wave source at just 6 square degrees, and the first measurement of three distinct vibrational modes of a black hole after merger. The expanded dataset also gives cosmologists more gravitational wave events to use in independent measurements of the Hubble constant, the expansion rate of the universe that remains a source of tension between different measurement methods.

↗Source: Phys.org – Space

NASA has awarded its first Moon Base contracts to four companies, targeting rover and drone delivery to the lunar surface ahead of the Artemis 4 crewed landing in 2028. Astrolab receives $219 million for its CLV-1 rover and Lunar Outpost receives $220 million for its Pegasus rover, both scaled-down designs from the earlier Lunar Terrain Vehicle program. Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 lander, backed by a $188 million base award plus $280 million in options, will carry both rovers to the surface after its first two scheduled missions in late 2026 and 2027. Firefly Aerospace was separately selected to deliver JPL-designed hopping scout drones through the MoonFall program. Intuitive Machines, the third LTV competitor, was not selected, sending its stock down nearly 9% on the day, though the company says it remains eligible for later task orders.

↗Source: SpaceNews

NASA will reveal the four astronauts assigned to Artemis III during a live event at Johnson Space Center on June 9 at 11 a.m. EDT, streaming on NASA+ and YouTube. The mission will fly the crew to lunar orbit aboard Orion on the SLS rocket, then test the rendezvous and docking procedures needed to transfer astronauts to a commercial lander for the actual surface descent. Artemis II, a crewed lunar flyby, completed successfully in April and serves as the direct precursor. Artemis III is the first mission in the program designed to put boots on the Moon, making the crew announcement one of the more consequential personnel reveals NASA has made in decades. Media interview requests are due June 4.

↗Source: NASA Press Releases

SpaceX flew the Starship V3 for the first time Friday, the twelfth test flight overall, lifting off from a newly built pad at Starbase, Texas. The upper stage hit most milestones, deploying 20 Starlink simulators and two imaging satellites via an upgraded payload dispenser. The Super Heavy booster failed to ignite all 33 engines, cut short its boost-back burn, and came down in the Gulf of Mexico. Key V3 changes include larger three-fin grid fins with catch points, a redesigned fuel-transfer tube, expanded propellant tanks, and new docking ports for future in-space refueling. Dedicated Starlink missions on Starship are targeted to begin in mid-2027.

↗Source: Payload Space

A NASA review board cleared Italy's Multi-Purpose Habitation module on 19 May, completing a combined System Definition and System Requirements Review that allows ASI and Thales Alenia Space to proceed toward a Preliminary Design Review in 2027. That PDR will determine whether the module's design is mature enough to move into detailed engineering and hardware work. The MPH gained new prominence after NASA shifted its lunar strategy in March 2026, pivoting from the Gateway space station toward a surface base where Italian habitation modules are now a central element. Under a related agreement, Italy also secured at least one astronaut seat on a future Artemis mission. The first MPH module is currently targeted for launch in 2033.

↗Source: European Spaceflight

The Space Force awarded SpaceX a $2.29 billion contract to build the Space Data Network Backbone, a low Earth orbit constellation that routes military targeting, sensor, and command data between spacecraft and weapons platforms without relying on ground stations. Built on Starshield, SpaceX's national security variant of Starlink, the system must reach operational prototype status by end of 2027. The contract consolidates significant procurement under a single vendor, a shift from the earlier Transport Layer program that spread awards across multiple companies. The FY2027 budget includes another $3.88 billion to expand the broader network, partly tied to the Pentagon's Golden Dome missile defense initiative.

↗Source: SpaceNews

American Airlines will install Starlink across more than 500 narrowbody jets, including the A321neo and A321XLR, beginning in Q1 2027. The deal gives SpaceX in-flight connectivity on three of the four largest U.S. carriers, alongside United and Southwest. The lone holdout is Delta, which signed with Amazon's Project Kuiper service instead, with CEO Ed Bastian citing better bandwidth at a lower price point. Delta's Amazon installations are not scheduled to begin until 2028, leaving the two competing low-Earth-orbit networks on a direct collision course for airline market share.

↗Source: Teslarati

Using all six years of data from the Dark Energy Survey, combining supernova distances, baryon acoustic oscillations, weak gravitational lensing, and galaxy clustering, the DES collaboration finds the tightest constraints on dark energy behavior ever produced by a single survey. The results show a 2.2-sigma departure from a cosmological constant, meaning dark energy may not be the fixed quantity assumed by the standard model of cosmology. When DES data is combined with DESI's baryon acoustic oscillation measurements and cosmic microwave background observations, the tension with a constant dark energy rises to 3.0 sigma. That threshold is not yet the 5-sigma standard for a confirmed discovery, but the signal holds across multiple independent probe combinations, including one that excludes supernovae entirely, reducing concerns about calibration systematics.

↗Source: arXiv astro-ph

China launched 93 rockets in 2025, second only to the United States, but analysts say the country is not following established norms for disposing of spent upper stages, the multi-ton metal bodies that push payloads into orbit and then remain there. Russia holds the worst historical record, with roughly 800 metric tons of rocket bodies in orbits between 600 and 2,000 km altitude, but that number is slowly declining. China's count is rising as launch cadence accelerates across both state-owned and private operators. Uncontrolled upper stages are considered the most hazardous debris category because their mass makes collisions catastrophic and their orbits can persist for decades.

↗Source: Ars Technica – Space

Xi'an-based Mega Engine Technology logged 1,000 seconds of continuous run time on its "Chi" kerolox engine in a single test, with total program accumulation reaching 2,000 seconds. The oxygen-rich staged-combustion engine produces 35–75 tons of throttleable sea-level thrust and is designed for reuse with multiple restarts. Staged combustion at this pressure has historically been confined to state-owned propulsion institutes in China, suggesting the founding team carries direct experience from that sector. A 200-ton-class follow-on engine, "Yan," is targeted for 2026.

↗Source: SpaceNews

The SPHERE infrared exoplanet survey has published a complete characterization of all 460 stars it observed at ESO's VLT from 2015 to 2023, making it the second-largest direct imaging campaign on record. Direct imaging probes planetary orbits between 5 and 300 AU, a range that transit and radial velocity methods largely miss. The team also identified a cleaner subsample of 333 young, single stars to anchor the survey's final statistical analysis of how common giant planets are at wide separations.

↗Source: arXiv astro-ph

Until next time — keep looking up,

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