The future leaves
signals in time.

A commercial lander from Voyager Technologies has passed a series of critical tests at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, simulating extreme temperatures, vacuum, and intense shaking. The lander is intended to support NASA's efforts to establish a Moon base, described as humanity's first lunar outpost.

NASA experiments on human and plant health and drug-resistant organisms will travel to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX's 35th Commercial Resupply Services mission, launching from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The research aims to support astronaut health during long-duration missions and benefit life on Earth.

The Monte Verde sites in Chile have been the source of arguments among archaeologists for decades. Columnist Michael Marshall finds the row is heating up again and could change our understanding of the first peoples in the Americas.

Jena-Optronik announced a partnership with MDA Space, which will use Jena-Optronik's ASTRO HP star sensor on a low Earth orbit (LEO) mission — the first mission for ASTRO HP. MDA Space is described as a global leader in communications satellites, Earth and space observation, space exploration and infrastructure.

Today's edition of MIT Technology Review's weekday newsletter The Download covers "moon city problems" and drone traffic controllers. It notes the US and China are racing to build bases on the moon, with NASA hoping to establish a small (source text truncated at this point).

MIT Technology Review describes a 'second space race': where the Soviet Union and the United States once competed to plant flags, America and China—alongside a host of varyingly friendly and rival nations—are now sprinting to the lunar surface. The piece notes Mars may be a hellhole, but the moon is not far behind.

NASA reports that Antarctic sea ice has grown to its 2026 maximum extent, which was the third-lowest maximum since satellite observations began.

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2026 October 10 features the lunar farside, with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. The supplied explanation text is truncated, so further details are not available in this feed.

NASA has issued a long-awaited call to industry for private space stations. A quoted statement says NASA has made clear it will never give up its presence in low Earth orbit; further details are not provided in the supplied context.

NASA has released nearly 1 TB of Artemis II data to the public, including photographs, audio, video, and astronauts' notes. The data will be used to study the moon and prepare for future human missions.

NASA released its final Request for Proposals inviting US industry to submit plans for next-generation commercial space stations, described as a next step toward commercial stations leading in low Earth orbit. Source: NASA.

NASA is demonstrating next-generation heat shield technologies, intended to keep astronauts safe returning from Moon and Mars missions, in an unusual way: by taking out the trash. Northrop Grumman's 24th cargo resupply mission undocked from the International Space Station carrying 12 small experimental capsules.

NASA's SPHEREx space telescope is shedding light on brown dwarfs, objects that blur the line between stars and exoplanets. New findings published in The Astrophysical Journal show these dark, cloudy worlds have chemically rich atmospheres.

NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy say they are jointly advancing safe, reliable next-generation nuclear technologies for space, aiming to accelerate civil space exploration, enable scientific discovery, and strengthen American leadership in space nuclear power and propulsion.

NASA's Artemis II, described as the first crewed lunar mission in more than half a century, returned over 800 gigabytes of data covering colorful craters, flashing meteoroids and more. Its images are reported to boost NASA's moon-base plans.

In this episode, a panel of industry experts discussed what is needed to build a moon base during a live event at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center, with leaders from companies including Astrolab and Firefly. The supplied context is truncated, so further details are not available.

The ESA-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft flew through an S-shaped kink, or 'switchback', in the solar wind's magnetic field. By fingerprinting the elusive particles within the switchback, it traced the feature's origin back to the Sun's surface and revealed more about solar magnetism, described as the unruly instigator of dangerous solar storms.