https://phys.org/space-news/space-exploration/ en-us Space exploration news and updates. Space missions and science news. Planet exploration and more. Jupiter's moon Europa has become high-value real estate for astrobiologists and the search for life beyond Earth. This is because the small moon, which is slightly smaller than Earth's moon, boasts a massive subsurface ocean of liquid water that scientists estimate contains about double the amount of water in all Earth's oceans combined. As seen on Earth, water equals life, so scientists are eager to continue exploring Europa in any way possible to determine if it could harbor life as we know it, or even as we don't know it. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-europa-ice-shell-secrets-ground.html Space Exploration Mon, 29 Jun 2026 11:20:01 EDT news701945984 NASA is racing to save an aging telescope from falling back to Earth with a daring rescue mission. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nasa-swift-telescope-falling-earth.html Space Exploration Sun, 28 Jun 2026 11:23:34 EDT news701864592 A mission to raise the orbit of NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is poised for launch no earlier than Tuesday, June 30, at 6:23 a.m. EDT (10:23 p.m. UTC+12), from Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-pegasus-deploy-link-monthslong-orbit.html Astronomy Fri, 26 Jun 2026 16:00:03 EDT news701700302 How do you teach someone to look at the moon? Not glance at it, the way we all have on a clear night, but truly read it, the way a geologist reads a hillside. That was the challenge NASA set itself before Artemis II, because when Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen swung around the far side of the moon this April, the first humans to make the journey in more than 50 years, their most valuable scientific instrument was not a camera or a sensor. It was the trained human eye. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nasa-taught-astronauts-moon.html Space Exploration Fri, 26 Jun 2026 13:20:05 EDT news701685901 Greece is planning "a first historic mission" to send a Greek astronaut to the International Space Station, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' office announced Friday. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-greece-historic-iss-space-mission.html Space Exploration Fri, 26 Jun 2026 12:00:07 EDT news701692001 The NASA Artemis program, now supported by 67 countries under the Artemis Accords, plans to return humans to the moon by 2028. A recent White House Executive Order has gone further, directing NASA to establish a permanent lunar outpost by 2030. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-china-moon-bases-life-earth.html Space Exploration Fri, 26 Jun 2026 08:40:05 EDT news701674081 The European-Chinese Smile mission reached its designated science orbit on June 20, 2026. The team is now embarking on a two-month campaign to commission the spacecraft, which involves switching on and testing its toolbox of science instruments. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-spacecraft-science-orbit.html Space Exploration Thu, 25 Jun 2026 13:40:02 EDT news701604773 The space shuttle Endeavour, which took astronauts into orbit 25 times, went on display at the California Science Center on its final mission Wednesday. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-space-shuttle-ready-mission-california.html Space Exploration Thu, 25 Jun 2026 04:50:01 EDT news701580098 On a bleak stretch of the Colorado Desert in Southern California, a compact four-wheeled rover recently trundled 16 miles (26 kilometers) with minimal intervention from the team of engineers trailing it. Called ERNEST (Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain), this prototype is being used by NASA to advance both robotic autonomy and the ability to traverse challenging landscapes. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nasa-advanced-capabilities-moon-mars-1.html Space Exploration Sun, 21 Jun 2026 13:00:01 EDT news701074935 A biocontainment facility designed to protect Earth from potentially hazardous biotic contaminants from space should be part of a planned NASA base on the moon, a policy paper maintains. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nasa-biocontainment-facility-moon-earth.html Space Exploration Fri, 19 Jun 2026 11:20:04 EDT news701086270 A prototype four-wheel rover developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory with advanced mobility and robotic autonomy capabilities trundled across the Colorado Desert near Plaster City, California, during a field test in March 2026. Called ERNEST (Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain), the rover served here as a test bed for autonomy software developed for a potential lunar mission requiring higher speeds and much greater mileage than can be achieved with current planetary rovers. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-field-nasa-advanced-rover-prototype.html Space Exploration Fri, 19 Jun 2026 07:20:01 EDT news701067841 NASA selected a mission concept to research how space weather and dynamics within Earth's atmosphere influence the space environment and help improve prediction capabilities for impacts on crucial technology, such as GPS and low Earth orbit satellites, as well as astronauts in space. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nasa-mission-space-weather-impacts.html Space Exploration Fri, 19 Jun 2026 07:00:01 EDT news701067721 Researchers from Texas A&M AgriLife are sending hundreds of grape seeds to the International Space Station, where the seeds will spend approximately six months exposed to cosmic radiation before returning to Earth for planting and study. The project could produce what researchers believe to be the first wine made from grapes grown from seeds that traveled through space. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-texas-wine-grapes-space-mission.html Space Exploration Thu, 18 Jun 2026 07:20:03 EDT news700980662 Whether it's to the moon or Mars, a NASA mission requires some essential preparations: designing and developing the spacecraft, astronaut training and safety checks, clear goals, and strategies and procedures for maintaining communication between crews on Earth and in space. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-mars-mission-simulations-reveal-key.html Space Exploration Wed, 17 Jun 2026 16:00:01 EDT news700917601 US astronaut Christina Koch, the first woman to take part in a lunar mission, was named Wednesday the winner of a top Spanish prize for having "helped extend the frontiers of humanity." https://phys.org/news/2026-06-groundbreaking-astronaut-christina-koch-spanish.html Space Exploration Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:40:01 EDT news700915302 SpaceX shares surged again Tuesday, lifting Elon Musk's rocket company into the world's top five in market value for most of the session as a record-breaking IPO gave way to a torrid buying frenzy. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-sessions-spacex-world-valuable-companies.html Space Exploration Wed, 17 Jun 2026 04:30:04 EDT news700888224 NASA's "rapid-response" space telescope is slowly falling out of orbit, but a daring mission this summer could allow the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to continue scanning the sky for many more years to come. In the first mission of its kind, a spacecraft will launch from Earth and rendezvous with Swift to boost it to a higher altitude and extend its life. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-qa-boosting-nasa-swift-observatory.html Astronomy Tue, 16 Jun 2026 20:20:01 EDT news700818481 Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have switched on NASA's newly upgraded Cold Atom Lab, a one-of-a-kind facility designed to improve how scientists explore the fundamental workings of matter and develop new quantum technologies. By leveraging the unique environment of microgravity in space, the lab can accomplish cutting-edge science impossible to do anywhere else. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-quantum-lab-aboard-space-station.html Space Exploration Tue, 16 Jun 2026 18:20:06 EDT news700837742 We think of atomic clocks as the definitive timekeepers. They are famous for being accurate down to the picosecond. Unfortunately, they are still subject to general relativity, so if you put them on a different planet, they will track time slightly faster or slower than on Earth, depending on the planet's gravity. In Mars' case, an atomic clock on its surface is sitting in a slightly shallower gravity well, meaning that time moves slightly faster there. Therefore, as we begin to expand our technological footprint on the red planet, we will need a way to standardize how time is measured there. Dr. Slava Turyshev, a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, proposes just such a framework in a new paper available on the arXiv preprint server. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-future-martian-colonists-relativistic-clock.html Space Exploration Tue, 16 Jun 2026 15:40:02 EDT news700831681 Scientists await a big splash in the Pacific Ocean as one of the most research-packed Dragon spacecraft to date returns, completing the 34th SpaceX commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station for NASA. Biological and materials samples, along with tested hardware, are heading back to research teams on Earth for further analysis, advancing NASA's work to prepare humans for exploration beyond low Earth orbit and to deliver benefits back home. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nasa-spacex-crs-dragon-space.html Space Exploration Tue, 16 Jun 2026 13:00:01 EDT news700823435 SpaceX shares shot 20% higher Monday as the company said it raised a record-breaking $85.7 billion. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-spacex-skyrocket-money-billion.html Space Exploration Tue, 16 Jun 2026 05:20:01 EDT news700801407 The UK Space Agency has announced an agreement with Vast—a US commercial space company—that could send British astronaut John McFall into orbit as early as 2027. If the mission goes ahead, he would become the first person with a physical disability to live and work in space. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-extraordinary-physiological-amputee-john-mcfall.html Space Exploration Sun, 14 Jun 2026 20:30:04 EDT news700145681 If we're to reach another star, chemical propulsion will not get us there in any reasonable time frame. We're going to need a different propulsion technology, and one of the most promising seems to be a solar sail. These giant reflective surfaces form the basis of many interstellar mission concepts. Combined with giant lasers pushing them, they can be accelerated to speeds unreachable by any other current technologies. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-hidden-physics-complicating-interstellar-lightsails.html Space Exploration Sun, 14 Jun 2026 14:00:01 EDT news700146150 More than 20 years after its founding, SpaceX made history Friday with its record-high stock market debut, crowning a unique journey marked by dazzling successes but also catastrophic failures and unfulfilled promises. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-spacex-key-moments-starship-megarocket.html Space Exploration Sat, 13 Jun 2026 06:14:54 EDT news700550056 SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket loaded with Starlink satellites Friday less than an hour before Elon Musk's company was set to lift off for what would be the largest IPO in Wall Street history. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-spacex-falcon-rocket-minutes-ipo.html Space Exploration Fri, 12 Jun 2026 10:40:06 EDT news700479387 Elon Musk's SpaceX began its first day as a public company on Wall Street on Friday after the biggest initial public offering in history, with the polarizing entrepreneur promising he will take humanity to Mars. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-spacex-wall-street-debut.html Space Exploration Fri, 12 Jun 2026 10:37:59 EDT news700479276 The United States government's recent release of hundreds of previously classified unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) cases spanning the 1940s to the present, along with the new Steven Spielberg movie, "Disclosure Day," about extraterrestrial life, has fueled the idea that aliens are visiting Earth. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-aliens-theyre.html Space Exploration Fri, 12 Jun 2026 10:00:08 EDT news700475161 Elon Musk's SpaceX was set to begin trading on the Nasdaq exchange Friday, with the biggest initial public offering in history expected to make the polarizing entrepreneur the world's first trillionaire. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-spacex-ipo-liftoff-debut.html Space Exploration Fri, 12 Jun 2026 04:10:01 EDT news700455479 Elon Musk's SpaceX has made awe-inspiring achievements since its founding more than two decades ago and has big ideas—colonies on Mars, orbital AI data centers, rapidly reusable rockets—for the future. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-science-fiction-musk-lofty-spacex.html Space Exploration Fri, 12 Jun 2026 03:58:26 EDT news700455433 Elon Musk is all about big numbers—millions, billions, even trillions—and there are plenty of them associated with SpaceX and Musk's plans to take the rocket maker public. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-spacex-ipo.html Space Exploration Thu, 11 Jun 2026 19:40:04 EDT news700404214