Space

710 Articles

GOES-19 Goes Down, NOAA Investigating

July 16, 2026 by 17 Comments

Some breaking news from geostationary orbit, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has announced that its newest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) satellite unexpectedly went offline last night, and as of this morning, remains stuck in safe mode.

Launched in June of 2024, GOES-19 is one of four operational weather satellites that NOAA operates to provide forecast data and severe weather monitoring for the entire Western Hemisphere. The satellite is specifically responsible for covering the continental United States, Central and South America, as well as the Atlantic Ocean. This makes it a particularly critical asset even under normal circumstances, but the fact that it’s gone blind during the Atlantic hurricane season and while smoke from the raging Canadian wildfires is drifting over the Northeast and making the skies over Boston and New York City look like Mars is something of a worst-case scenario.

The good news is that two of the four satellites operate as orbital spares — the satellite that GOES-19 replaced in 2024, GOES-16, is still operational and can stand in as a backup for its coverage area. Obviously, it’s quite a bit older, having launched back in 2016, but it’s of the same design as GOES-19, and in good health, so there should be no degradation of service.

Still, getting GOES-19 back online will be critical for NOAA and the National Weather Service, and we expect they’ll be providing regular updates as the situation develops. Stay tuned.

Hayabusa2’s Next Target Is A Tiny 11 Meter Asteroid

July 15, 2026 by 8 Comments

Launched in 2014, Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft completed its primary asteroid sample return mission all the way back in 2020. But with the main spacecraft still healthy, the intrepid little probe was assigned new missions — such as its future investigation of asteroid 1998 KY26, a rather unassuming 11 meter diameter rock.

Artist impression of Hayabusa2 firing its ion thrusters. (Credit: DLR, Wikimedia)
Artist impression of Hayabusa2 firing its ion thrusters. (Credit: DLR, Wikimedia)

Earlier this month Hayabusa2 flew by the 450 meter 98943 Torifune at a distance of 800 meters, close enough to get an up-close look of its surface of mostly silicate minerals. With the spacecraft flying past at around 5 km/s, this posed some challenges with tracking, especially since its systems and instruments were not designed for high-speed tracking.

With that mission now complete, 1998 KY26 – first discovered in 1998 – is next on the menu, though this will have to wait a while. Currently it’s estimated that the two will not meet until July 2031.

Once they do meet up, after Hayabusa2 zips twice more past Earth, it’ll be another major challenge for the by now rather degraded spacecraft. Its sensors have suffered radiation and other types of damage, while its ion engines are quite depleted. The goal at this target asteroid is to enter orbit, deploy its last target marker and projectile, before attempting a landing, probably at one of its poles.

As likely the final mission for this spacecraft it’ll be very educational in many ways, not the least of which is that of planetary defense, but also that of deepening our understanding of these asteroids and the many varieties that we share space with.

An In-Browser Visualizer For GPS Satellites

June 18, 2026 by 9 Comments

Billions of people use GPS on a daily basis, along with the various other satellite navigation systems available today. But few of us spend much time contemplating the fleet of satellites above us that actually makes the system work. [Robert Wolf] has, though, and he’s built a simple visualizer that displays just what those space birds are doing at any given time.

The visualizer runs right in the browser, and displays a cluster of GPS satellites in a 3D view around the Earth. The tool also offers a list of satellites and related data, including signal-to-noise ratio of the received signals from each one, and the ability to play back satellite positions from previous days. The satellite positions are captured from a GPS receiver that [Robert] operates in the UK.

The view isn’t global or complete, since the receiver can only see a certain number of satellites from its location, but it nevertheless gives an idea of where a subset of GPS satellites are flying above the globe. Depending on the selected view, it’s possible to see the satellites superimposed over the world map itself — or from a distant observer’s perspective, as if looking at the Earth from a distance, among other options.

If you’ve ever wanted an intuitive idea about where the GPS satellites live, this tool is a great way to understand it. We’ve also previously discussed the wide range of GPS alternatives that have been developed over the years. If you’ve got your own GPS hacks brewing in the home lab, don’t hesitate to let us know on the tipsline.

What Happens If Russia Shuts The Door On Their Leaky ISS Module?

June 18, 2026 by 29 Comments

There was a particularly tense moment aboard the International Space Station earlier this month, with NASA directing their astronauts to secure themselves in the Dragon capsule and prepare for a potential return to Earth while their Russian counterparts engaged in what we now know to have been some impromptu demolition work on their side of the orbiting complex.

Despite objections from their American partners, Roscosmos had given their cosmonauts the go-ahead to drill and cut into the walls of the Zvezda module — one of the core components of the ISS which has been in orbit since 2000 — to try and identify and ultimately repair persistent leaks that have been venting the Station’s atmosphere out into space for several years. We may never know the exact nature of the behind-the-scenes communication that went on between the two space agencies, but in the end the Russians abandoned their plan and NASA’s personnel were told to resume their normal duties.

But where do things go from here? Although it’s true the International Space Station is entering its final years, the mission isn’t over yet, and that means the two countries need to continue to work together if they hope to get any science done in the time they have left.

At this point there hasn’t been any official word from either agency, but sources that wish to remain anonymous have been dropping hints, and that’s got the rumors swirling. With the understanding that anything is still possible, at this point it looks like Russia is going to abandon any further attempts to repair the leak and instead seal off the crippled compartment of the Zvezda module. This won’t solve all the problems, and in fact will create some new ones. But if that’s what it will take to keep the peace with NASA until Station operations wind down, it’s apparently a bargain they’re willing to make.

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Figure showing the simulated path of gas released in GEO to the magentosheath.

An Orbital StormWall Could Mitigate The Next Carrington Event

June 17, 2026 by 40 Comments

The Carrington Event was the most intense geomagnetic storm ever recorded. In September 1859, auroras were visible as close to the equator as Columbia and some telegraph stations were severely damaged by current induced in the lines. If a similar event occurred today, with a lot more more wiring to pick up current than just an embryonic telegraph network, the results would almost certainly be cataclysmic.

Various modifications to the grid have been proposed to avoid another storm of that magnitude bringing on a new dark age, but a recent paper in the journal Space Weather proposes a more radical solution: using the sun’s energy to create a massive barricade in space.

Time evolution of a simulated geomagnetic storm, with and without the StormWall.

While the authors of the paper refer to this concept by the compelling name StormWall, it’s not a physical wall. It’s actually just gas, likely of alkali metal atoms, to be deployed by solar-powered satellites.

To oversimplify, the proposal is to release lots and lots of neutral gas in Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO), in what the researchers call “artificial mass loading” — the neutral gas would of course be ionized by the storm, but in so doing could absorb up to 50% of the incoming energy of the geomagnetic storm, frustrating its coupling to Earth’s magnetosphere. As a bonus, it would protect not just terrestrial assets like the power grid, but everything in a lower orbit than the mass load: everything from communication satellites in GEO to the International Space Station. Assuming its hasn’t been reduced to debris laying at the bottom of Point Nemo by then, anyway.

In simulations, the StormWall required 384,048 kg of gas, which is not exactly trivial. But even accounting for tanking, the researchers estimate that would only take about six launches of SpaceX’s Starship. Though that does assume its GEO capabilities end up being roughly equivalent to the massive vehicle’s projected 100-tons-to-Mars payload capacity.

It’s certainly an interesting hack to solve a problem that has caused a lot of worry these past decades. If you’re interested in learning more about the record-setting geomagnetic storm, we have a piece about the 1859 Carrington Event that should give you plenty of anxiety about the frailty of our modern infrastructure.

An image of the surface of Europa. The top half of the sphere is illuminated with the bottom half dark. The surface is traced with lineae, long lines across its surface of various hues of grey, white, and brown. The surface is a brown-grey, somewhat like Earth's Moon with the highest brightness areas appearing white.

Evidence For Water Vapor Plumes On Europa Vanishes In Re-Analysis

June 11, 2026 by 19 Comments

Unlike on Mars where for decades we have had dozens of orbital and ground-based platforms zipping and scurrying about to prod at every bit of emitted radiation, rock type and twitch of dust devils in its thin atmosphere, for other planets and their moons we have to do a lot more speculative interpretation of data. Such was the case with the presumed existence of water plumes on Jupiter’s moon Europa. These now appear to have been a statistical fluke, per research by [L. Roth] et al. in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

As succinctly summarized in the article on this by [Javier Barbuzano] of Sky and Telescope, the original 2013 finding of said water plumes by the same team was based on faint UV emissions from Europa’s southern hemisphere as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. However, in more recent captures these emissions were not detected again, leading them to reexamine their original analysis of the 2013 data.

One of the main flaws was in the assumption of where Europe was located on Hubble’s 1,000 x 1,000 resolution detector, with the re-analysis showing that they were off by a couple of pixels. A second flaw was quite understandable as since 2013 we have learned that Europa has a thin hydrogen exosphere which interacts with the Sun’s UV radiation. The resulting scattering induces a UV glow which could be mistaken for UV radiation emanating from the moon’s surface.

Even with this one intriguing feature turning out to be a mirage, it doesn’t make Europa any less interesting as it’s still assumed to have vast liquid water oceans. Along with Uranus’ moon Miranda this makes it very worth it to experience more of the sights and sounds of these alien worlds, whether in person or via our robotic friends.

NASA Announces Artemis III Crew And Ambitious Goals

June 10, 2026 by 46 Comments

When the Artemis lunar program was first conceived, the third mission would have seen astronauts step foot on the Moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. But as hard as getting into space is, a sojourn to our nearest celestial neighbor is even more mindbogglingly complex, and so earlier this year it was announced that actually landing on the Moon would be pushed out to the fourth mission.

In turn Artemis III would take a page out of the Apollo 9 playbook and test out rendezvous and docking procedures with commercial landers while operating in the relative safety of low Earth orbit. Moving the target date for the landing a few years down the road gave all involved parties a little more breathing room, but it also provided a valuable opportunity to gain insight into the performance of the vehicles and systems ahead of the critical moment. In the original timeline, the first time Orion would attempt to dock with the lander would have been just before descending to the lunar surface — leaving precious little time to troubleshoot should anything go wrong.

Yesterday NASA held a press conference to update the public on their progress towards the planned 2027 launch of Artemis III, which included the long-awaited announcement of the crew that will kick the tires on the next-generation lunar landers being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin

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