Space

Mr. 420 hopes to raise $50 billion by taking SpaceX public with the largest initial public offering in history. The target date is mid-June, near Elon Musk’s 55th birthday on June 28th, and June 8th and 9th “when Jupiter and Venus will appear very close together, known as a conjunction, for the first time in more than three years.”

Astronomers captured this image of a stunning shock wave around a dead star — a shock wave that, according to all known mechanisms, “shouldn’t be there.”

The Wall Street Journal has a profile of Gwynne Shotwell, the longtime president of SpaceX, ahead of its potential IPO. It covers her “unusual relationship” with Elon Musk where she often plays the role of “Musk translator” and defender. But make no mistake, she’s in charge:

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said in a press conference that “a single crew member on board the [ISS] experienced a medical situation and is now stable,” but NASA is playing it safe and bringing Crew-11 home early.

A group of scientists says their “Collision Realization and Significant Harm (CRASH) Clock” estimates satellites in low Earth orbit have only 5.5 days before colliding or nearly missing another object, as of June 2025, compared to 164 days in January 2018.

SpaceX is planning to go public at a valuation that would make it the biggest listing of all time, Bloomberg reports. “The Elon Musk-led company is targeting a valuation of about $1.5 trillion for the entire company” and while they’re saying they plan for next year, it’s a Musk company so you know what that means: “the timing could slip until 2027.” SpaceX expects $15 billion in 2025 revenue, and $22 billion to $24 billion in 2026, mostly due to Starlink.

In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that launching solar-powered satellites like Project Suncatcher into space in a bid to alleviate power consumption concerns will be viewed as “a more normal way” to build AI data centers within the next decade or so.

The moss isn’t quite as hardy as the reigning king of extremophiles, the tardigrade, but it put up an impressive showing in an experiment where scientists exposed sporophytes (the reproductive structures that produce spores) to the harsh vacuum of space for 283 days. After crunching the numbers, they believe the moss could survive for around 5,600 days, or a little over 15 years in space and still survive and reproduce. According to the press release:

Hot on the heels of a second successful launch — and first successful landing — Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has announced the next version of its rocket. The New Glenn 9x4 — named for its number of engines — should operate alongside the existing 7x2, and could compete more closely with SpaceX’s Starship.

The new trailer for Amazon MGM’s adaptation of Alex Weir’s novel Project Hail Mary teases a bit more of the catastrophe that’s imperiling Earth, but it’s mostly about the friendship that’s going to develop between astronaut Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) and an alien that looks like a pile of rocks.

“Sentinel-6B will ensure that we continue to collect the high-precision data needed to understand our changing climate,” ESA’s director of earth observation programmes, Simonetta Cheli said in a press release.

SpaceX has been on a tear with launches, having boosted over 10,000 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. Now it’s celebrating a new milestone that’s become so automatic we just expect it.

Here’s Jeff Bezos’ video of the landing, which took place after a planned launch was scrubbed earlier this week. Check out CNN’s story for more about the launch.

The second launch of Blue Origin’s megarocket was initially scheduled for Sunday, but was postponed until today due to poor weather conditions. Now it’s been pushed back again until the sun chills out a little, with no ETA on a new launch window.

Operation Space Station will air on November 5th and 12th, with the first part, High-Risk Build, focusing on the engineering and construction of the ISS. Part two, Science and Survival, will tell the stories of the astronauts who worked on the station and the challenges they faced, including several incidents that were nearly catastrophic.

Former Real World cast member and current Transportation Secretary / acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy recently said SpaceX was “behind” on its contract for Artemis III and proposed reopening it. (Elon Musk responded with a predictable slew of insults.)

O2 Satellite won’t launch until the first half of 2026, and only with messaging and data for maps and location services at first, but it’s expected to expand. O2 customers can register their interest now, though pricing is still to come.

November 2nd will mark 25 years of continuous human occupation aboard the International Space Station, and Ars Technica points out this new ISS in Real Time website lets you revisit each and every day.

The US is falling behind China, according to former space agency officials.

Airbus, Leonardo, and Thales are planning to pool their space services, systems manufacturing, and satellite activities into a new company that “could be operational in 2027.” Eutelsat’s OneWeb network is notably absent from this team-up, and other attempts to make a European SpaceX and Starlink rival have yet to take off.