Space News and Discussions

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Only Two Spacecraft Have Breached the Solar System’s Edge – Now We're About to Find Out Its True Shape
By Dr. Alfredo Carpineti
January 30, 2026

Introduction:

(IFL Science) The boundary of the Solar System remains somewhat poorly understood. We know we are within it, in a region of space called the heliosphere, where particles released by the Sun dominate. Beyond it, the flow of particles from interstellar space rules. Between the two, where the heliosphere meets interstellar space, are the heliopause and the bow shock. A new NASA mission is set to provide crucial insight into both.

Launched last September, it’s called the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), and just a couple of weeks ago it reached its final location, a region in space called Lagrange point 1 (L1). This is about 1.5 million kilometers (just under 1 million miles) from Earth, directly towards the Sun. It’s the location where the Sun and Earth’s gravity cancel out, so that the telescope will move around our star in one year.

Close to the center of the Solar System might seem like a peculiar location to study its edges, but the secret of IMAP is that it is designed to study the radiation coming from the heliopause and bow shock.

When the solar wind slams into particles from the interstellar medium, it produces energetic neutral atoms (ENAs). By studying these atoms, IMAP can tell us things about the region and its variability, such as how its shape changes with the activity of the Sun.

From L1, IMAP has a 360-degree view of the heliosphere and also an unobstructed view of the Sun. The mission will also monitor space weather and can provide a 30-minute warning if harmful radiation from the Sun is coming our way.

Read more here: https://www.iflscience.com/only-two-sp ... ape-82399

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A Plan B for Space? On the Risks of Concentrating National Space Power in Private Hands
By Svetla Ben-Itzhak
March 3, 2026

Introduction:

(The Conversation) Private companies are no longer peripheral participants in U.S. space activities. They provide key services, including launching and deploying satellites, transporting cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station, and even sending landers to the Moon.
Commercial integration is now embedded in U.S. space policy and shapes national space strategy. As someone who studies space and international security, I have watched the extraordinary rise of commercial space with awe – and with growing concerns about the structural vulnerabilities it creates.

Access to space, particularly for crewed missions, remains heavily concentrated in one company, SpaceX. While the United States has begun developing alternatives, in operational reality that concentration gives the company disproportionate leverage. If private power and public strategy were to diverge, would Washington have a credible Plan B?

Commercial integration is now official policy

On Feb. 4, the House Science Committee approved the NASA Reauthorization Act of 2026, directing the agency to partner with American commercial providers for operations in low-Earth orbit, lunar landings and the transition beyond the International Space Station. In critical areas such as lunar landers, the bill requires NASA to work with at least two commercial providers – a deliberate effort to avoid dependence on a single company.

President Donald Trump’s December 2025 executive order expressed similar preference for prioritizing commercial solutions in federal space activities and set a goal of attracting at least US$50 billion in additional private investment in space by 2028. The U.S. Space Force’s 2024 Commercial Space Strategy also emphasizes speed and innovation through private partnerships.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/a-plan-b-f ... ds-275618

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Arinna raises $4M seed round to solve the space power problem

March 25, 2026

The space ambitions of nation states and billionaires alike demand better sources of power, and a new startup founded by two Stanford PhDs may have the answer.

Arinna, founded by CEO Koosha Nazif and CTO Alex Shearer, said Wednesday that it had raised a $4 million seed round to build ultrathin solar panels from a brand new material developed during their doctoral research.

The capital raise was led by SpaceCadet Ventures, with participation from Anorak Capital and Breakthrough Energy Foundation; the company declined to share its valuation.

Arinna, named for the Hittite god of the sun and pronounced like arena, expects to have its first products being tested on orbit before the end of this year. After qualifying their photovoltaics in space, the company hopes to build a facility that can mass produce the stuff at megawatt scale in 2028.

“We are building qualification panels to send to our first customers that will demonstrate that these two dimensional photovoltaics have the efficiency and the durability to survive space,” Shearer said. “We’re going to prove that out at a larger scale over this next year, and in doing so, we are refining the processes necessary to make every single layer of our photovoltaic to produce these in a roll to roll fashion.”

https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/25/arinn ... r-problem/



A rendering of a space data center powered by arinna’s Solar Panels.

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Lift off for first manned Moon mission in 53 years
By David Szondy
April 01, 2026

Humanity took its first step back to the Moon after 53 years as the US Artemis II circumlunar mission lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39B in Florida at 6:35 PM EDT with four astronauts aboard.

The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, with the Orion spacecraft carrying NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, cleared the tower without incident, reaching the point of maximum dynamic pressure at the one-minute, 10-second mark. This was followed by separation of the solid rocket boosters, and then the core stage separation from the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) at eight minutes and 15 seconds.

With the ICPS still attached to the Orion spacecraft, the spacecraft made a pair of orbital correction burns, the first at 51 minutes into the flight and the second at the two-hour mark. At three hours and 23 minutes, Orion separated from the ICPS and will remain in a circular orbit around the Earth while a number of system checks are carried out.

https://newatlas.com/space-systems/lift ... r-mission/

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