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SpaceX wants to dramatically increase its launch schedule from Vandenberg Space Force Base, setting up a direct conflict with the California Coastal Commission. The commission, tasked with protecting the state's coast, has raised alarms about the impact on wildlife and residents. This has sparked a legal battle over a fundamental question: are SpaceX's launches a private commercial venture, or a federal activity exempt from state oversight?

Four astronauts—NASA's Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan's Takuya Onishi, and Russia's Kirill Peskov—parachuted into the Pacific on Saturday after a five-month stint on the International Space Station. Their mission was anything but routine, beginning as an urgent replacement for the two NASA test pilots of Boeing's Starliner, who ended up stranded in orbit for over nine months.

Astrophysicist Cosimo Bambi has outlined a bold blueprint for a mission that could, within our lifetimes, launch a tiny probe to a nearby black hole. The goal: to return data that could completely alter our understanding of general relativity and the fabric of space-time. It hinges on technology that is just on the horizon and finding a target that is currently invisible.

US astronaut Jim Lovell, the commander of the Apollo 13 Moon mission which nearly ended in disaster in 1970, has died at the age of 97. The former Navy pilot, immortalized by Tom Hanks in the 1995 movie "Apollo 13," is being remembered as one of the greats of the US space program—a man who traveled to the Moon twice and, through his composed leadership, rescued a mission from the brink of catastrophe as the world watched in suspense.

In a "first-of-its-kind" deal, SpaceX has agreed to carry scientific experiments for the Italian Space Agency (ASI) on its future Starship trips to Mars. "Italy is going to Mars!" ASI president Teodoro Valente announced on X (formerly Twitter). SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell echoed the excitement, posting, "Get on board! We are going to Mars!" The deal comes as Elon Musk dreams of colonizing the red planet, even as his massive rocket faces significant technical setbacks.

If humanity is to colonize Mars, they'll need to eat. Temidayo Oniosun, founder of the Lagos-based firm Space in Africa, thinks a helping of Egusi soup might just hit the spot. His company is expecting its Egusi melon seeds to splash down in the Pacific Ocean Saturday after a trip to the International Space Station. It's the first food native to West Africa to be sent to space, and as Oniosun says, it's a sign that space exploration is becoming a truly global mission.

One of the biggest mysteries in science is how the "Dark Ages" of the universe ended. This period, beginning 370,000 years after the Big Bang, had no stars and no light. It ended when the first Population III (Pop III) stars ignited, forged from pure hydrogen and helium. Observing these stars is functionally impossible, so scientists must rely on supercomputer simulations.

The United States is accelerating its plan to deploy nuclear reactors on the Moon and Mars. A new NASA directive, signed July 31 by acting chief Sean Duffy, calls for appointing a "nuclear power czar" to select two commercial proposals within six months. The memo frames the push as a critical race against a joint Chinese-Russian effort, warning that the first country to place a reactor on the Moon "could potentially declare a keep-out zone," inhibiting U.S. Artemis plans.

As NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft soared past Mars in March, it conducted a critical test that was impossible on Earth. Mission scientists have now declared a complete success: the REASON radar instrument performed just as expected, perfectly bouncing and receiving signals off the Red Planet's equator. This "dry run" confirms the instrument is ready for its ultimate goal: to peer beneath the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa and find the ocean hidden within.

Accurately classifying stars, galaxies, and quasars is crucial for understanding the universe. Spectroscopic observations are the "gold standard" but are incredibly slow. Using images (photometry) is much faster, but it's plagued by ambiguity. Now, researchers from the Yunnan Observatories have developed a new neural network that tackles this problem with remarkable accuracy.

Earth is surrounded by intriguing, invisible bands of radiation known as the Van Allen Belts. These belts trap high-energy particles, shielding our planet, but they aren't static. Occasionally, cosmic forces trigger a release of these particles into our atmosphere. A new CubeSat mission named REAL (Relativistic Electron Atmospheric Loss) is poised to find out exactly what causes this release.