Space News Weekly

  ARTEMIS II EXPLAINED: Artemis II is NASA’s mission to the moon launching in early 2026. It will be the first time humans will visit the moon in over 50 years. It is, however, closer to a test flight—four astronauts will fly around the far side of the moon over a 10-day journey. The rocket they will fly on is nothing short of astonishing, the most powerful manned rocket to date—the SLS. THE SPACECRAFT: It is this rocket I want to dive a little bit deeper into, as it is a really interesting and super cool piece of machinery. The whole spacecraft the crew will be launching on is the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and the Orion spacecraft. The SLS consists of two solid rocket boosters and one orange core stage in the middle. The next stage is called the interim cryogenic propulsion stage (ICPS), and above that is the uppermost stage—Orion. Orion is really the star of the show, as it is the newest and most technically advanced way we have to get to outer space. The SLS is mostly mad...

  EARTH AT PERIHELION: On Saturday, January 3, 2026, the center of the Earth will be at its closest distance to the center of the Sun during the entire calendar year. This distance is approximately 147 million km. Astronomers call this moment perihelion. Despite this, it is still winter in the Northern Hemisphere at this time. The reason is simple — Earth’s rotational axis is tilted, not perpendicular to the plane of its orbit. It is tilted by about 26,5 degrees. This means that during the Northern Hemisphere winter the hemisphere is tilted away from the sun, which means the sunlight hits the surface at a low angle, spreading the same amount of energy over a larger area. The Sun also stays above the horizon for a much shorter time, which prevents sufficient warming of the atmosphere. PEAK OF THE QUADRANTID METEOR SHOWER: One of the year’s most intense annual meteor showers, the Quadrantids, reached its peak activity during the past week. Its origin is from the debris left behind by...

 Europe’s path to space was very different from the better-known U.S. and NASA. Whilst the U.S. created a single national agency (NASA) in 1958 to be funded by the government into a single civil space program, Europe relied on cooperation. After the Second World War, many brilliant scientists fled to America, leaving even the biggest nations in Europe lacking. European nations, therefore, concluded that the only way to make a space program work is to pool resources across all nations and work together. This logic produced study groups and, by the early 1960s, two separate organizations: ESRO for spacecraft development and science, and ELDO for launcher development. Other organizations that are the technical footprint of ESRO and ELDO soon followed, with ESTEC for engineering, ESOC for operations, and ESRIN for Earth-observation data. This long-established infrastructure is still the backbone of ESA today. There was still, however, a big distinction between ESRO and ELDO; they were ...

  BLUE ORIGIN NEW GLENN UPDATES: After New Glenn’s second flight, Blue Origin has successfully recovered the first-stage booster. The damage that is shown is mostly cosmetic—paint loss and some thermal protection wear. This means that only minor upgrades are necessary to make the booster fully reusable. Reusability is Blue’s main focus for making their flights cheaper. They also plan to raise the combined liftoff thrust of the engines from around 17.2 MN to around 19.9 MN. This is being done by performance tuning and propellant subcooling (they make the LOX and CH₄ denser so the same tanks can carry more mass). This means that without any structural upgrades, New Glenn can carry more payload or increase its ΔV. In the short term, the upgrades to the first stage should reduce the time between launches and the cost per launch. They could be implemented and tested in the next few flights. Long term, if pursued to flight, 9x4 is essentially a new family member. It introduces a structur...