Qingzhou, meaning "Light Ship," is being developed by the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IAMCAS) as a smaller, lighter and potentially lower-cost complement to China’s existing Tianzhou cargo spacecraft.

China completed its Tiangong space station in 2022 and aims to keep it permanently occupied with crew for at least a decade. With plans to expand the orbital outpost beyond its current three-module, T-shaped configuration, China also wants new, agile solutions to keep Tiangong supplied.

The Qingzhou spacecraft passed a design review in June and entered the initial manufacturing phase, according to a recent China Central Television (CCTV) report.

The prototype measures roughly 10.8 feet (3.3 meters) in diameter, has a launch mass of about 11,000 pounds (5,000 kilograms), and is capable of carrying up to 4,000 pounds (1,800 kg) of cargo to orbit. Its hybrid structure combines a pressurized module for crew supplies and sensitive instruments with an unpressurized aft section capable of carrying external payloads and space-exposure experiments.

"We have now conducted large-scale experiments and are currently loading and verifying the status of the remaining individual machines, as well as conducting final testing. The overall test results are quite good," Wu Huiying, deputy chief designer of the Qingzhou cargo spacecraft, told CCTV.

Full engineering model production is scheduled to begin in early 2026, with construction expected to be completed by the end of that year. Its debut flight will follow based on the operational needs of the Tiangong station, according to Wu.

The first prototype was initially stated to fly on the debut launch of commercial rocket startup CAS Space’s Kinetica-2. That plan now appears to have been altered, with CAS Space reported to be preparing for that very launch from Jiuquan spaceport in the Gobi Desert in the near future.

Qingzhou is one of a pair of new spacecraft commissioned by China’s human spaceflight agency as the country looks to upgrade its space transportation capabilities. The other, named Haolong, is a reusable shuttle concept being developed by the Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute under the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China.

The California-based startup is soliciting proposals for ground-based and space-based experiments to fly aboard Haven-1 as well as for potential private crewed missions to the International Space Station (ISS), although the latter are contingent on awards by NASA.

Vast says Haven-1 will be the world's first crewed commercial space-based research and manufacturing facility when it reaches low Earth orbit, with the lab due to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as soon as the second quarter of 2026. The 31,000-pound (14,000 kilograms) space lab is designed to accommodate crewed visits totalling up to 160 astronaut days on board during its planned three-year lifespan.

The company, which has moved fast since its founding in 2021, says Haven-1 is well kitted out to host experiments in a diverse range of areas, including on-orbit pharmaceutical development, stem cell research, plant growth and human research and tech demos.

"The opportunity to expand access to microgravity research upon the world's first commercial space station is historic," Vast Principal Scientist Meghan Everett said in a statement. "We need to build on the heritage of the ISS National Lab and help scientists and industry continue world-changing research breakthroughs that are only possible in the novel environment of microgravity."

Vast adds that it is keen on research that could assist human exploration of the moon and Mars and breakthroughs that can benefit humans on Earth, such as studies of bone, muscle and cardiac health, medical tech and stem cell research and regenerative medicine. Vast has already secured partners for Haven-1 including Redwire, Yuri, Japan Manned Space Systems Corporation (JAMSS), Interstellar Lab and Exobiosphere.

In early November, Vast's Haven Demo launched on a Falcon 9 aiming to test critical systems for Haven-1 in orbit. Haven-1 itself is planned to be a stepping stone to a larger and more permanent presence in space, according to Vast, with the company aiming to secure support for the planned Haven-2 habitat through NASA's Commercial LEO Destinations program.

Chinese astronauts just got an up-close look at the damage that space junk can cause.

Two astronauts of the three-person Shenzhou 21 mission conducted an extravehicular activity (EVA) outside China's Tiangong space station on Tuesday (Dec. 9). They were very busy on the eight-hour spacewalk, which wrapped up around 5:45 a.m. EST (1045 GMT; 6:45 p.m. Beijing time).

The duo "fully utilized their active role as first responders outside the spacecraft, successfully completing tasks including inspecting and photographing the Shenzhou 20 return capsule's windows, installing the space station's space debris protection system, and replacing the multi-layered cover of the temperature control adapter," officials with the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement on Tuesday (in Mandarin; translation by Google).

The Shenzhou 20 vehicle arrived at Tiangong in late April, carrying three astronauts for a regular six-month rotation aboard the station. That trio was supposed to head back to Earth on Nov. 5, but inspections revealed cracks in Shenzhou 20's windows — the apparent result of a space junk strike, Chinese space officials said.

After some deliberation, the Shenzhou 20 capsule was deemed unsafe to carry astronauts down through Earth's atmosphere. So the mission's three crewmembers ended up returning home on Nov. 14 aboard the Shenzhou 21 vehicle, which had just arrived at Tiangong on Halloween night.

On Nov. 24, China launched the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft with nobody on board, to give the Shenzhou 21 taikonauts a safe ride back to Earth when their mission is over.

Chinese space officials have said that they plan to bring the Shenzhou 20 vehicle home, crewless, at some point in the future. And they likely now have a better understanding of its condition, thanks to Tuesday's spacewalk.

The EVA was the first for the Shenzhou 21 mission, which consists of commander Zhang Lu, 48, who also flew on the Shenzhou 15 flight in 2022; rookie Wu Fei, 32, and rookie Zhang Hongzhang, 39.

Wu Fei is the youngest member of China's astronaut corps, and on Tuesday he became the youngest person from his country ever to perform a spacewalk. Zhang Lu also ventured outside the three-module Tiangong, while Zhang Hongzhang assisted from inside the station.

Tuesday's EVA was not the first to beef up Tiangong's debris shielding; a number of previous spacewalks have done so recently as well. And that appears to be a wise move, considering what happened to Shenzhou 20.

In 2022, a research group called AstroCup placed two menstrual cups on an uncrewed rocket flight that lasted about 9 minutes after launch and hit an altitude of 1.9 miles (3 kilometers). This put the menstrual cups, made by the brand Lunette, at risk of vibration and other stressors that could damage their structure or affect how well they hold liquid. But leak tests using glycerol and water found that the menstrual cups held up with no damage, and that the material didn't degrade. The results of the study were published recently in NPJ Women's Health.

Menstrual cups are reusable, flexible silicone-based containers that someone can wear during their period to collect blood. They've grown in popularity in recent years as a more sustainable alternative to single-use period products, like tampons and pads, because a single one of these can be used for years. While most astronauts who are able to menstruate opt to temporarily put their cycle on hold through hormonal suppression (more on that below), humankind's continued exploration of space means women won't always be able to pause their cycles — or, they may simply not want to. What's more, recycling systems on spacecraft weren't traditionally designed to handle blood, and managing a period with single-use tampons can create more waste and hassle.

Taking all this into account, the AstroCup team see menstrual cups as a potential viable solution for future use and a big foot in the door for more gravity-defying health options in space. However, authors of the article pointed out that more research needs to be done on how menstrual cups fare in reduced gravity or on longer-term missions, when removal of the cup and its contents may be more affected. To gain more data, authors of the article hope to get different menstrual products on the International Space Station to compare and test for efficacy.

"Now we can start implementing and redefine health autonomy in space," astrobiologist Lígia Coelho, lead researcher of AstroCup, fellow at Cornell University's Carl Sagan Institute and lead author of the study, said in a statement.

Why astronauts pause their periods (and why that won't work forever)

Temporarily stopping your period by continuously taking birth control pills (i.e. skipping the seven-or-so placebo pills in a month-long pack) is seen as safe for many people to do on Earth, and it may even have benefits for women with certain reproductive health problems such as severe endometriosis or premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). There's no medical need to bleed every month when taking hormones that pause ovulation, which birth control pills do when they contain synthetic estrogen and progestin.

In space, this makes the life of an astronaut a bit easier by reducing the need to manage menstruation with menstrual products — and potentially even limiting side effects of natural hormonal fluctuations such as cramping or low energy levels. Other birth control hormonal methods that reduce the amount of blood lost during menstruation or stop it all together, such as intrauterine devices (IUDs), may also be options for astronauts, but research on how they fare in space is non-existent. On Earth, IUDs and implants (Nexplanon) that contain progestin only are also linked to more breakthrough bleeding, especially in the first year of use, which means that they won't eliminate the period product problem for all users.

But on Earth and in space, added estrogen can have side effects, like an increased risk of blood clotting, and a hormonal regiment won't be suitable for every person. Combined oral contraceptives also may have side effects related to bone density that need to be studied in space, as the authors noted in the new study.

And while reproduction and pregnancy in space is purely theoretical and years ahead of us as a species, effectively managing menstrual cycles in space will be crucial to reproducing outside Earth. More options will open more doors.

"More women will have the opportunity to go to space for even longer missions, and it is paramount that their autonomy on menstrual options is respected," authors of the NPJ article wrote.

"Astronauts on Moon and Mars missions may decide that they would like to keep menstruating for personal preference, as well as for health or reproductive reasons."

The study was published on Dec. 2 in the journal NPJ Women's Health.

One traveler on board that mission, which does not yet have a set launch date, is Michaela "Michi" Benthaus. Her voyage carries special significance: She is on a trajectory to become the first wheelchair user in space.

In 2018, Benthaus became wheelchair-bound after a mountain biking accident resulted in a spinal cord injury. Passionate about space travel, Benthaus was selected to fly in 2022 with AstroAccess on a parabolic flight, becoming one of the first wheelchair users to test accessibility experiments in weightlessness.

Since then, Benthaus' journey has included 18 parabolas and first-of-its-kind accessibility experiments, with a focus on demonstrating innovative methods for making sure that differently abled people can anchor, maneuver and secure themselves in microgravity.

Paving the way

Currently, Benthaus is at the TUM School of Engineering and Design in Munich, Germany and is a young graduate trainee at the European Space Agency (ESA).

AstroAccess is a project of SciAccess, Inc., dedicated "to promoting disability inclusion in human space exploration by paving the way for disabled astronauts."

Founded in 2021, AstroAccess has conducted five microgravity missions in which disabled scientists, veterans, students, athletes and artists perform demonstrations onboard parabolic flights with the Zero Gravity Corporation — the first step in a progression toward flying a diverse range of people to space.

The message from AstroAccess: "If we can make space accessible, we can make any space accessible."

Historical context

Former NASA official Alan Ladwig considers the upcoming suborbital launch of Benthaus as "a historical flight." He is the author of "See You in Orbit? Our Dream Of Spaceflight" (To Orbit Productions, 2019).

Ladwig's career at NASA began in 1981, when he joined as a program manager for the Shuttle Student Involvement Project. He later played a significant role in the Space Flight Participant Program, which was designed to allow civilians, including teachers and journalists, to experience space travel.

"First, some historical context," Ladwig told Space.com. In June 1984, the space shuttle program's STS-41D mission experienced an abort at T-4 seconds. The six astronauts safely egressed, but it was a moment of high anxiety, he said.

"In 1985, a National Finalist for the Journalist in Space Program was a paraplegic," Ladwig said. "Citing the STS-41D incident, an astronaut complained to me that it would be highly dangerous if this person would have been selected. If getting out of the [shuttle] orbiter needed to be done quickly, how was he supposed to exit safely with a paraplegic? At this point, safely flying a civilian was controversial, much less a person with a disability."

Equal opportunity

Ladwig recalled that the late Harriet Jenkins, who was the head of the then NASA Office of Equal Opportunity, led a study on the possibilities for people with disabilities to fly on the space shuttle.

"If memory serves me, her report came out in late 1985 … and back in the day when equal opportunity wasn't considered woke," he said.

With the space shuttle Challenger accident in January 1986, Jenkins' report was quietly put on the back burner, Ladwig said. "In any case, after the accident, it was clear it would be a long time before any [other] civilian would fly on the space shuttle, much less a person with a disability," he said.

ESA's Parastronaut project

But times have changed. For example, the ESA astronaut class selected in November 2022 included John McFall, a former Paralympic athlete, Ladwig said. His selection was part of a Parastronaut Feasibility Project to determine if people with disabilities can safely participate in a mission to the International Space Station.

"The study, completed in 2024, concluded it was feasible to integrate a person with a disability on ISS," said Ladwig, "but I'm not aware of any specific plans to do so."

In Ladwig's view, AstroAccess is to be commended for flying people with disabilities on parabolic flights. The current effort for a Blue Origin flight with Michaela Benthaus "will be an important step for opening up space travel to all who have orbital dreams," he concluded.

A Russian spaceflyer was pulled from SpaceX's next astronaut mission for violating U.S. national security regulations, according to a media report.

Oleg Artemyev, of Russia's space agency Roscosmos, had been manifested on SpaceX's Crew 12, a four-person mission scheduled to launch toward the International Space Station (ISS) as early as February.

Fellow cosmonaut Andrei Fedyayev recently took his place, a "decision made in connection with Oleg Artemyev’s transfer to another job," Roscosmos officials said today (Dec. 2) in a statement (in Russian; translation by Google). But that's not the whole story, according to the Russian investigative site The Insider.

This morning, The Insider reported that Artemyev, 54, was apparently removed from Crew 12 for violations of ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations), a U.S. law that seeks to safeguard national security by restricting the dissemination of sensitive information and technology.

"The cosmonaut allegedly photographed SpaceX documentation and then 'used his phone' to export classified information," The Insider wrote (in Russian; translation by Google), citing the work of launch analyst Gregory Trishkin.

"My contacts confirm that a violation occurred and an interdepartmental investigation has been launched," Trishkin told The Insider. "Removing someone from a mission two and a half months before the mission without a clear explanation is more of an indirect sign, but it's indicative. It's very difficult to imagine a situation in which an experienced cosmonaut could inadvertently commit such a gross violation."

The Insider also cited a Sunday (Dec. 1) report by a Russian-spaceflight channel on Telegram called "Yura, Forgive Me!" According to that report, the violations occurred last week, when Artemyev was training at SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California. He allegedly photographed SpaceX engines and other sensitive tech with his phone.

Crew 12 is the 12th operational astronaut mission that SpaceX will fly to the ISS under a contract with NASA. Space.com reached out to SpaceX and NASA for comment about the Artemyev situation but has not yet heard back.

Artemyev has spent a total of 560 days in space across three long-duration missions to the ISS, which launched in March 2014, March 2018 and March 2022.

That last flight lifted off just a month after Russia invaded Ukraine, kicking off a war that continues to this day. In July 2022, Roscosmos posted photos of Artemyev and two of his cosmonaut colleagues on the ISS holding the flags of two Russian-backed separatist territories in Ukraine. NASA and the head of the European Space Agency (ESA) condemned the photo op, stressing that the orbiting lab should not be used as a platform for wartime propaganda.

Crew 12 is scheduled to launch no earlier than Feb. 15. It will send Fedyaev, ESA's Sophie Adenot and two as-yet-unnamed astronauts to the ISS for a roughly six-month stay.

Germany is ESA's biggest budget contributor. An Airbus factory in Bremen assembles the European Service Module, which provides propulsion, power and atmosphere regeneration for the Orion space capsule designed to house astronauts during Artemis moon trips. Europe also builds components for the Lunar Gateway, a space station intended to orbit the Moon from 2027. Elements of the Lunar Gateway are being built by consortia led by France and Italy, whose nationals will be on subsequent Artemis flights, Aschbacher said at the conference. It is in exchange for these contributions that ESA secured three seats on the moon-bound trips. "An ESA astronaut traveling beyond [low Earth orbit] for the first time will be a huge inspiration and source of pride for their country and for Europe at large," Aschbacher said at the conference.

Germany currently has two experienced astronauts among the ESA astronaut corps — 55-year old Matthias Maurer and 49-year-old Alexander Gerst. Both have spent months at the International Space Station. Germany also has two astronauts in ESA's reserve team: 36-year-old Amelie Schoenenwald and 40-year-old Nicola Winter. Neither of them, however, has flown to space yet. Gerst and Maurer are therefore the most likely contenders for that coveted Artemis 4 seat.

Gerst's first six-month stint on the ISS took place in 2014, during which he performed a six-hour spacewalk, installing new equipment outside the space station. He returned to the orbital outpost in 2018 when he also served as a commander. With 362 days in space, he is among ESA's most experienced astronauts. His colleague Maurer has completed one mission, having spent 176 days at the space station in 2021. He also performed a space walk during that time.

ESA, a cooperation between 23 European countries, is part of the International Space Station partnership and regularly has its astronauts among the ISS crew. In the 1990s, several European astronauts participated in repair missions to the Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits some 340 miles (540 kilometers) away from Earth, about 90 miles (140 km) farther than the space station. No European, however, has ever ventured deeper into space.

"We can now, for the very first time, send a European astronaut flying 360,000 kilometers away," Dorothee Bär, Germany's Federal Minister of Research, Technology and Space, said at the press conference. "This means that a European astronaut will be traveling for approximately three days until for the first time he sees the Earth as a whole. No European has ever seen that before."

NASA has so far announced the crew for the upcoming Artemis 2 mission, which will return humans to the moon's orbit next year. Three NASA astronauts — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch — will take the journey together with Canadian spaceman Jeremy Hansen. In 2027, the subsequent Artemis 3 mission will attempt to place humans onto the moon's surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo program in 1972. The crew for that mission has not yet been named but it is unlikely to include a European as Aschbacher said earlier that ESA had secured seats on Artemis missions 4 and 5. Artemis 4 is currently planned for the second half of 2028, while Artemis 5 mission is expected to take place in 2030.

While a German astronaut will be the first European to orbit the moon, the first European footprints on the moon's surface will probably belong to a Frenchman or an Italian. France's Thomas Pesquet (47) is likely one of the front-runners for that honor. A member of two seven-month missions to the International Space Station in 2016/2017 and in 2021, he has 397 space days under his belt. He performed several space walks during those missions and also briefly served as an ISS commander.

French helicopter pilot Sophie Adenot was selected as an ESA astronaut in 2022 and will be the first of the new astronaut cohort to fly to the ISS for an eight-month mission early next year. That flight will allow her to gain precious experience, which might qualify her for a future Artemis moon trip. (Reserve astronauts Marcus Wandt, of Sweden, and Poland's Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, flew to the ISS for two-week stints with Axiom paid for by their respective countries in 2024 and 2025 respectively.)

Among the Italians, the most likely contenders for an Artemis seat and a possible place in a lunar lander are 49-year-old Luca Parmitano and 48-year-old Samantha Cristoforetti, both of whom participated in two long-duration missions to the International Space Station. Parmitano performed multiple space walks during his time in space, including one that nearly killed him when his helmet filled with water because of a clogged filter.

Artemis 6 is foreseen to launch no earlier than 2031. Beyond that, the fate of the Artemis program is uncertain as the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump intends to discontinue the Space Launch System and Orion programs — the rocket and capsule used to conduct the Artemis missions — and replace them with commercially built spaceships. ESA has agreements with NASA in place to produce Orion Service Modules for six Artemis missions.

"Beyond European Service Module number six, we want to keep the options open," Daniel Neuenschwander, ESA's Director for Human and Robotic Exploration told Space.com. "It's possible that the U.S partner will come to us and look for the continuation of the Orion — European Service Module couple."

Europe is also working on a lunar lander for cargo delivery called Argonaut, so hopes to have something up its sleeve to pay for possible future moon trips.

Now with the upcoming Artemis missions to the moon, astronauts are training in a new type of suit: the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or AxEMU, designed by Axiom Space to support the first human moonwalks in more than 50 years.

What is it?

The AxEMU represents an upgrade from the Apollo-era suits and even the current ISS units. It’s built to offer greater mobility, improved fit across a wider range of body sizes, upgraded life-support systems, and better tools for scientific operations on the lunar surface.

Because Artemis astronauts will need to traverse uneven terrain, collect rock samples, and work for extended periods in harsh lighting and temperature extremes, training with the AxEMU long before launch is essential. At the NBL, astronauts wear weighted mockups of the suit underwater, allowing engineers and astronauts to evaluate maneuverability, dexterity, visibility, and overall performance.

Where is it?

This image was taken at the NBL at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Why is it amazing?

In September 2025, NASA completed the first dual-suit run with the AxEMU. During the test, NASA astronauts Loral O'Hara and Stan Love donned two fully integrated AxEMU units simultaneously, the first time the suits had been used together in a realistic operational scenario. The dual run allowed teams to assess how astronauts coordinate tasks while suited, how the life-support systems perform in tandem, and how the NBL environment supports full-scale Artemis training.

O'Hara and Love carried out simulated lunar activities, including collecting rocks, navigating obstacles, and working side by side as they would on the moon. The test also demonstrated that the facility, support systems, and training procedures are ready for the next phase of Artemis preparation.

Want to learn more?

You can learn more about NASA's Artemis program and other moon missions.

Holiday travel reached new heights today (Nov. 27), as an American astronaut left home for Thanksgiving dinner — in Earth orbit.

Chris Williams of NASA, together with his Soyuz MS-28 crewmates Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, both cosmonauts with Russia's federal space agency Roscosmos, lifted off for the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday, beginning a planned eight-month expedition with a coincidental but well-timed celebration.

"The kid who played basketball in the driveway with his cousins before Thanksgiving dinner is now a flight engineer on the three-man crew for Expedition 74," wrote Juan Williams, a civil rights historian and Chris' uncle, in a recent column for The Hill newspaper. "Chris's incredible trip to space is rooted in incredible family trips. His grandmother took a voyage to a new world in 1958. She traveled with three children on a freighter boat carrying bananas from Panama to Brooklyn, New York."

"This Thanksgiving, I am grateful to live in a country where the grandson of Panamanian immigrants can represent America in the heavens, on a mission of peace and science," wrote the elder Williams.

Despite the more exotic destination, Chris Williams' trip to the space station took far less time than his family's sea voyage, and was shorter than some of the interstate road trips expected across the country today. Having lifted off at 4:27 a.m. EST (0927 GMT or 2:27 p.m. local time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, he, Kud-Sverchkov and Mikaev docked to the Rassvet module three hours later at 6:34 a.m. EST (1234 GMT).

Flying under the call sign "Gyrfalcon" — a bird of prey also depicted on their mission patch — the Soyuz MS-28 crew took to the skies atop a Soyuz 2.1a rocket decorated with the colorful drawings of pediatric cancer patients and the portraits of the first astronaut and cosmonauts to live aboard the ISS 25 years ago.

When they reached orbit, two small crocheted dolls signaled they were now in the weightless environment of outer space. Their zero-g indicators were a ginger cat named "Gizmo" that was gifted by one of the cosmonaut's families and a knitted cosmonaut made by students attending school in Gagarin, Russia (their town named after the first human in space, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin).

Awaiting their arrival at the space station were the seven members of Expedition 73 commander Sergey Ryzhikov and flight engineers Alexey Zubritsky and Oleg Platonov of Roscosmos; Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke of NASA and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui will greet Kud-Sverchkov, Mikaev and Williams after the hatches are opened at about 10:10 a.m. EST (1510 GMT) and "sit down" for a feast.

"This is my second Thanksgiving in space, so I highly recommend it," said Fincke in a recorded video released by NASA ahead of the holiday. "This time it is going to be with a new Soyuz crew and we're getting food ready, so we have the traditions like turkey [and] there is some cranberry sauce here."

The food lab at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston prepared a special "Holiday Bulk Overwrapped Bag" (BOB) that arrived with a cargo delivery in September. "We have got everything here from turkey and the traditional things that Mike mentioned, some mashed potatoes, to crab meat, salmon and we even have some lobster, which is amazing!" said Cardman.

After the holiday and the return to Earth by Ryzhikov, Zubritsky and Kim aboard Soyuz MS-27 in early December, Kud-Sverchkov, Mikaev and Williams, together with Cardman, Fincke, Yui and Platonov will form the new Expedition 74 crew. During their planned stay, the Soyuz MS-28 trio will help carry out hundreds of science experiments and technology demonstrations, as well as conduct possible spacewalks and perform station maintenance as needed.

Williams will help install and test the European Enhanced Exploration Exercise Device (E4D), a modular workout system for long-duration missions that combines bicycling, rowing and resistive capabilities together with rope pulling and climbing. He will also conduct studies to improve cryogenic fuel efficiency and grow semiconductor crystals, as well as assist NASA in developing revised re-entry safety protocols to protect crew members during future missions.

Kud-Sverchkov and Mikaev will be the first cosmonauts to be aided by GigaChat, an artificial intelligence (AI) bot that through both voice and tablet inputs will help make decisions about the operation of the Russian segment of the space station.

Soyuz MS-28 is the first spaceflight for Williams and Mikaev and the second for Kud-Sverchkov, who logged 185 days in space as a flight engineer on the station's Expedition 63/64 crew in 2021. Kud-Sverchkov, 42, worked as a rocket engineer for RSC Energia before being selected as a cosmonaut in 2010.

Mikaev, 39, was flying as a military pilot in the Russian Air Force when he was recruited for spaceflight training in 2018.

Williams, 42, has a doctorate in physics, studied supernovae using the Very Large Array radio telescope and completed residency training at Harvard that later led to him developing new image guidance techniques for cancer treatment. He joined NASA in 2021 and is the second member of his class ("The Flies") to fly into space.

Although they are not the first crew to celebrate Thanksgiving in space, the Soyuz MS-28 trio are the first to launch and dock on the holiday day.

Editor's note: This article was updated on Nov. 27, 2025 to add information about the Soyuz docking to the International Space Station.

Mark Kelly, who has represented Arizona in the U.S. Senate since 2020, is one of six Democratic lawmakers who participated in a 90-second video reminding members of the military and intelligence communities not to obey illegal orders.

That video drew the ire of President Donald Trump, who deemed it traitorous.

"SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!" Trump said in a Nov. 20 post on Truth Social, the social media site he owns. (Capitalization his.)

"THE TRAITORS THAT TOLD THE MILITARY TO DISOBEY MY ORDERS SHOULD BE IN JAIL RIGHT NOW, NOT ROAMING THE FAKE NEWS NETWORKS TRYING TO EXPLAIN THAT WHAT THEY SAID WAS OK. IT WASN'T, AND NEVER WILL BE! IT WAS SEDITION AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL, AND SEDITION IS A MAJOR CRIME. THERE CAN BE NO OTHER INTERPRETATION OF WHAT THEY SAID!" he added in a Nov. 22 post.

This may not be an idle threat. On Monday (Nov. 24), the Pentagon announced that it's investigating Kelly, a former fighter pilot and captain in the U.S. Navy who flew 39 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm.

"The Department of War has received serious allegations of misconduct against Captain Mark Kelly, USN (Ret.)," Pentagon officials said Monday via X, the social media site owned by billionaire SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. (In September, Trump issued an executive order directing military leaders to use the term "Department of War," but "Department of Defense" remains the organization's legal name.)

"In accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. § 688, and other applicable regulations, a thorough review of these allegations has been initiated to determine further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures," the Monday X post continues. "This matter will be handled in compliance with military law, ensuring due process and impartiality. Further official comments will be limited, to preserve the integrity of the proceedings."

Kelly, meanwhile, defended himself on social media, referencing his military and astronaut experience:

Defenders of Kelly and the other five people who spoke in the video — Reps. Jason Crow of Colorado, Chris DeLuzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire and Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan — argue that they're simply urging adherence to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That code, after all, states that military personnel are duty-bound to disobey illegal orders.

"Sedition is trying to overthrow the government with force or violence," Eric Carpenter, a professor at Florida International University College of Law, told FactCheck.org. "In the video, the elected officials are just telling service members to follow the law. They are not telling service members to overthrow the government."

Kelly — who flew on four space shuttle missions between 2001 and 2011 and is the twin brother of former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly — is not backing down.

"If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won't work," he said via X on Monday. "I've given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution."

NASA on Monday (Nov. 24) announced that Boeing's next Starliner mission to the International Space Station (ISS) will carry only cargo and supplies, and no crew. It will launch no earlier than April 2026, the agency said in a statement.

"The next Starliner flight, known as Starliner-1, will be used by NASA to deliver necessary cargo to the orbital laboratory and allow in-flight validation of the system upgrades implemented following the Crew Flight Test mission last year.," agency officials said in the statement.

NASA and Boeing also agreed to reduce the number of crewed flights to the space station by Starliner by at least two missions. That means that instead of the up to six Starliner crew rotation flights Boeing agreed to fly for NASA under a $4.2 billion contract set in 2014, the company will only have to fly up to four missions, with "the remaining two available as options," NASA said.

The news comes as Boeing works to resume Starliner crew flights after its beleaguered Crew Flight Test 1. That mission launched two NASA astronauts — Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams — to the International Space Station (ISS) on the first crewed Starliner in 2024, only to return to Earth without them due to thruster system concerns.

Wilmore and Williams originally planned to spend 10 days in space, but eventually spent more than nine months in orbit while waiting for a ride home on a Dragon spacecraft built by Boeing's competitor SpaceX. (SpaceX has its own multi-billion dollar contract to fly NASA astronauts to and from the ISS, and has done so regularly since 2020.) The Starliner astronauts returned to Earth in March 2025, more than six months after the Starliner capsule landed on its own in September 2024.

Since Starliner's landing, Boeing engineers have worked to address thruster system issues in order to begin operational crewed flights under its NASA contract. The delays for crewed Starliner flights followed years of delays after the company's first uncrewed Starliner test flight failed to meet up with the ISS as planned in December 2019, which ultimately led to a second uncrewed test in May 2022 ahead of the star-crossed crewed test flight in 2024.

"NASA and Boeing are continuing to rigorously test the Starliner propulsion system in preparation for two potential flights next year," Steve Stich, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager, said in the statement on Monday. "This modification allows NASA and Boeing to focus on safely certifying the system in 2026, execute Starliner’s first crew rotation when ready, and align our ongoing flight planning for future Starliner missions based on station's operational needs through 2030."

NASA currently plans to retire the International Space Station in 2030, marking the end of what will by then be 30 years of continuous crewed operations. The 450-ton space station will be commanded to deorbit and burn up over the Pacific Ocean. Huge pieces of it are expected to survive long enough to plunge into a watery grave known as Point Nemo, a spacecraft graveyard in the Pacific.

Chinese space officials labeled the Nov. 5 wave-off of the crew's return to Earth as the first successful implementation of an "alternative return procedure" in the history of the nation's space station program. The trio of taikonauts did return to Earth, in a fresh but "borrowed" Shenzhou 21 spacecraft on Nov. 14. But doing so left the three-person Shenzhou 21 crew with a damaged and docked vehicle that has been deemed unsafe for reentry.

And now, technicians are readying the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft and its rocket for flight in a reportedly uncrewed mode to Tiangong. That mission was originally scheduled to fly, with astronauts, in 2026.

Wake-up call

This incident is a wake-up call, say advocates of a space rescue capability — and also a call for an organization to shape that capacity.

That competence is needed not only for governmental spaceflight, but especially to support the growing private-sector spaceflight business, said Jan Osburg, a senior engineer for the RAND Corporation's engineering and applied sciences department in Pittsburgh. RAND is a global policy think tank.

"Government programs typically have more time and funding for contingency procedures of their own, compared to private missions," Osburg told Space.com. "Also, government missions typically go to space stations," he said, which can serve as "safe havens."

One enabler for space rescue would be compatible docking systems — or ways to transfer spacefarers from a vessel in distress to another vehicle, said Osburg.

Also required are compatible communications systems, as well as established rescue coordination procedures and responsibilities — similar to what has evolved in the maritime world over the last few decades, Osburg said.

Space standards

The question is, What standards has China used for its Shenzhou spacecraft and the country's space station docking system?

James Lewis is associate chief (acting) and NASA's International Docking System Standard (IDSS) Committee Chair in the structural engineering division at the space agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"This is an excellent question. Since we are precluded by U.S. law from even talking to China, we do not have a clear answer if they adhere to or meet-the-intent of the IDSS Interface Definition Document (IDD)," Lewis told Space.com.

Lewis said understanding what's in play on the Chinese side "is essentially what we can pull from the internet, and the Russians have been silent to us about their involvement with China on this subject."

Compatibility

What is believed, Lewis added, is that China’s design is based on the Russian Androgynous Peripheral Attachment System (APAS) docking system design, which is also the basis for an International Docking System Standard.

"But we have no idea if it is truly compatible," Lewis said.

"I can imagine that China and Russia have retained compatibility, since I expect they are planning future in-space collaboration," Lewis observed. "If China's design is virtually an identical specification to the APAS, then there is a high likelihood it is interoperable with other IDSS-derived docking systems for soft capture and structural latching, but they would not be for power/data or fluid transfer, which are not currently specified in the IDSS IDD."

Good news

The good news here is that China noticed that the Shenzhou 20 spacecraft had been damaged, said Grant Cates, senior project leader in launch operations for the Space Safety Institute at The Aerospace Corporation.

Cates said that means China is inspecting its spacecraft before using them to return astronauts from Tiangong.

"One can imagine if they didn't notice and their crew returned in an unsafe spacecraft," Cates said, "that could have led to a very bad outcome."

Brian Weeden, director of civil and commercial policy at the Center for Space Policy and Strategy for The Aerospace Corporation, underscored the changing environment of space utilization.

"We're now in an era where there's multiple governments, multiple companies involved in space. So the shift is not just one organization needing to think about space rescue for their own needs," Weeden told Space.com. "Rather, how does the global community think about space rescue that is more integrated across different missions, across different agencies, across different countries? That is a much harder problem because of the need to communicate and interact."

Space debris: A hit-and-miss affair

Marlon Sorge is technical fellow and executive director of the Aerospace Corporation's Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies (CORDS).

To date, there hasn't been too much detail on China's recent run-in with orbital debris, Sorge said. "It's always a good reminder that there is debris up there and we need to be thinking about this issue," he observed, pointing to the considerable amount of effort NASA has put into shielding the International Space Station from space debris hits.

"In this case, if they were worried about an impact on part of their return vehicle, I could understand being cautious … that can have some pretty serious consequences," said Sorge.

Launch-on-need system

Cates noted that China has said in the past that it has a 10-day launch-on-need system. "If they need to do a rescue, we will see them implement that," he said. But to what degree the nation's astronauts are in any distress mode is unknown.

However, Cates said that this incident with China's human spaceflight program is a reminder that "there needs to be movement in the direction of having compatible systems. And it's not just the docking systems but also spacesuits and communications capabilities."

While there's general agreement that there's a need, there's lack of will at this point to push forward on space rescue, Cates said, "to create the systems and put them in place to enable rescues in the future."

For example, take the situation of both crewed space stations now in operation, the ISS and Tiangong. They are in different orbits and different inclinations. "We probably don't have enough sufficient propellant to make the leap from one station to the other," said Cates.

Given the United Nations Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and provisions regarding the rescue of astronauts, "we're not there yet. There's a long way to go," Cates concluded.

That trio — members of the Shenzhou 21 mission — arrived at Tiangong on Oct. 31 for a six-month stay. But their planned ride home is already gone. On Thursday night (Nov. 13), the Shenzhou 21 spacecraft carried three different astronauts away from the station — members of the Shenzhou 20 mission, whose own vehicle was deemed unfit to carry people back to Earth after being damaged by a space-debris strike.

So the Shenzhou 21 astronauts are currently living on Tiangong without a reliable lifeboat. The good news is, this somewhat dicey situation should be very temporary.

China keeps a Long March 2F rocket and Shenzhou spacecraft "in a state of near readiness" at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center as a matter of policy during crewed missions, as SpaceNews' Andrew Jones noted. If something goes wrong on Tiangong, this standby lifeboat can be launched to the station as little as 8.5 days later.

That countdown has likely already begun for the Shenzhou 21 crew, as the lack of a safe ride home definitely qualifies as a contingency.

Indeed, Chinese space officials have already said that the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft will be launched to Tiangong (presumably without anyone on board). They didn't give a timeline, saying only that the liftoff will occur "at an appropriate time in the future."

But it's safe to assume that launch day is near; the nation surely doesn't want to expose its astronauts to any more risk than is necessary, and every day spent in orbit without a lifeboat is a risk.

The Shenzhou 21 astronauts' plight calls to mind the experience of NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who flew to the International Space Station (ISS) in June 2024 on the first-ever crewed mission of Boeing's Starliner capsule.

Starliner suffered helium leaks and thruster issues on the way up, and NASA eventually decided to bring the spacecraft back to Earth uncrewed. That happened without incident in September 2024.

Wilmore and Williams, meanwhile, continued living on the ISS until this past March, turning a planned 10-day mission into a nearly nine-month affair. They eventually came home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule along with fellow NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexandr Gorbunov.

But the Shenzhou 21 astronauts are in a more precarious spot at the moment than Wilmore and Williams ever were. There were always non-Starliner lifeboats docked to the ISS during the NASA astronauts' orbital stay, and they could have squeezed into one of these craft for a cramped ride home if something had gone terribly wrong on the ISS.

That doesn't seem to be an option for Tiangong's current residents: The Shenzhou 20 spacecraft, the only crew-capable vehicle docked to the station at the moment, sports tiny cracks in one of its windows thanks to the debris strike.

"The Shenzhou-20 spacecraft does not meet the requirements for the astronauts' safe return and will remain in orbit to continue relevant experiments," the state-run Xinhua news outlet reported on Thursday, citing information from the China Manned Space Agency.

Shenzhou 21 is the 10th crewed mission to Tiangong, a three-module station that's about 20% as massive as the ISS.

The mission consists of commander Zhang Lu, 48, who also flew on Shenzhou 15 in 2022, and two spaceflight rookies, Zhang Hongzhang and Wu Fei. Wu has the distinction of being the youngest member of China's astronaut corps.

The three astronauts of China's Shenzhou 20 mission safely touched down on the Dongfeng Landing Site in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region shortly before 3.45 a.m. EST (0845 GMT) on Nov. 14, after spending over 6 months in low-Earth orbit aboard the Tiangong space station.

Commander Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie have since exited the return spacecraft and appear to be in good health, having made a final parachute-aided descent to Earth's surface.

The Shenzhou 20 trio were supposed to leave China's Tiangong space station on Nov. 5. But the departure was postponed after their Shenzhou 20 spacecraft absorbed an impact, apparently from a small piece of space debris.

The taikonauts finally left Tiangong on Thursday (Nov. 13) at 10:14 p.m. EDT (0314 GMT and 11:14 a.m. Beijing time on Nov. 14). But they left the Shenzhou 20 vehicle behind, traveling instead in the newly arrived Shenzhou 21 spacecraft.

"The Shenzhou-20 spacecraft does not meet the requirements for the astronauts' safe return and will remain in orbit to continue relevant experiments," the state-run Xinhua news outlet reported on Thursday, citing information from the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).

"Tiny cracks have been found in the return capsule's viewport window, which are most probably caused by external impact from space debris, according to the CMSA," Xinhua added.

The Shenzhou 20 astronauts launched to Tiangong on April 24. Their mission is the third spaceflight for Dong and the first for both Zhongrui and Jie. The trio conducted a variety of scientific experiments and outreach activities during their time on the station. They also completed four spacewalks, installing (appropriately enough) debris shields and other equipment on Tiangong's exterior.

The three-astronaut Shenzhou 21 mission launched to Tiangong on Oct. 31 to relieve their predecessors and begin their own six-month stint aboard the orbiting outpost. But the newcomers' vehicle ended up having an unexpectedly brief space stay, thanks to the debris strike on Shenzhou 20.

When the time comes, the Shenzhou 21 astronauts will apparently ride home on the Shenzhou 22 vehicle, which will launch (presumably uncrewed) "at an appropriate time in the future," according to another Xinhua report.

Shenzhou 20 was the ninth crewed mission to Tiangong, a three-module space station that was fully assembled by October 2022. Tiangong is about 20% as massive as the International Space Station, but it may get bigger; Chinese space officials have mentioned the possibility of adding more modules to the outpost.

India took another step toward its first-ever human spaceflight last week, successfully testing the parachute system for its Gaganyaan astronaut capsule.

The test occurred on Nov. 3, using an Indian Air Force IL-76 aircraft and a capsule mass simulator that tipped the scales at 7.2 tons (6.5 metric tons).

The plane took off from Babina Field Firing Range, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. It dropped the dummy capsule at an altitude of 1.6 miles (2.5 kilometers), forcing the Gaganyaan parachutes into action.

There are 10 of those chutes on the Gaganyaan capsule, according to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) — two that remove the protective cover of the chute compartment, two "drogues" that both stabilize and slow the vehicle's descent, and three "pilots" that extract the three main chutes, which do the lion's share of the deceleration work.

The mains deploy via a step-by-step process that concludes with "disreefing" — the full opening of a partially inflated (or "reefed") chute. And there's redundancy built into the system; just two of the three mains need to deploy to get the capsule down safely.

The Nov. 3 test went with two mains — and it applied stress on them with an off-nominal situation.

"The test evaluated the system’s structural integrity and load distribution under asymmetric disreefing conditions — one of the most critical load scenarios expected during actual mission descent," ISRO officials said in a description of the drop test.

The chutes handled everything well, according to ISRO.

"The parachute system deployed as planned and the sequence was executed flawlessly, and the test article achieved a stable descent and soft landing, validating the robustness of the parachute design," agency officials said. "The successful completion of this test marks another significant step toward qualifying the parachute system for human spaceflight."

Other big steps remain, however, before the first Gaganyaan astronaut flight can launch to low Earth orbit. For example, ISRO currently plans to launch three uncrewed test missions with the capsule, which will carry a data-collecting half-humanoid robot named Vyomitra (Sanskrit for "space friend").

If all goes well with those flights, astronauts could fly aboard the Gaganyaan crew module in the first quarter of 2027, ISRO officials have said.

Often overlooked as the middle child of the American space program in that turbulent decade, Project Gemini provided astronauts, scientists and engineers vital information for the development of more ambitious human spaceflight efforts.

"Gemini: Stepping Stone to the Moon, the Untold Story" (St. Martin's Press, 2025) is an absorbing new release arriving on Nov. 11 written by noted space historian, journalist and New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Kluger ("Apollo 8," "Holdout").

It offers up the riveting tale of the valiant souls both high aloft and on the ground whose unyielding efforts made possible the groundbreaking data that allowed for six crewed lunar excursions. Kluger also co-authored the 1994 book "Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13" with famed NASA astronaut Jim Lovell, which was adapted into director Ron Howard’s film "Apollo 13."

Here within Kluger's engrossing prose, the New York City-based author paints a vivid portrait of Gemini's endeavors, from its harrowing inception to its triumphant end, with exacting detail.

"I had long thought that a book on Gemini was sort of owed to the world," Kluger told Space.com. "That sounds a little grandiose to say that I'm giving the world a gift; I don't pretend I'm doing that. But there's nobody who addressed and wrote about and explored the Mercury program better and more compellingly than Tom Wolfe. I don't know if there’s ever going to be another book about the Mercury program, because how do you touch 'The Right Stuff?'

"Similarly, I and Andy Chaikin and a number of others, including a lot of astronauts, have written extensively about the Apollo program. But the Gemini program was very much the middle sibling of the space program. It wasn’t the first time we went into space. It wasn't when we went to the moon. People sort of forgot about Gemini. It was the middle seat on an airliner."

Kluger reminds us that Gemini was a program in which we learned to walk in space, rendezvous and dock in space, learned to fly long-duration missions in space, and learned to coordinate with other crewed spacecraft, on the Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 missions.

"There was drama, there was accomplishment, there was death, there was near death, there was peril. Gemini 8's spinout almost took the lives of Dave Scott and Neil Armstrong," Kluger said. "The Gemini 9 spacewalk could have taken the life of Gene Cernan. Charles Bassett and Elliot See did die when their plane crashed into the McDonnell Aviation headquarters in early 1966. And that story hadn’t been told. I felt like it was time to give the Gemini program its due. It was an opportunity not to be missed. It was unprotected turf, and I decided to claim it."

The Gemini launches were filled with monumental firsts, and Kluger's careful research into the topic exposed harsh truths about just how crucial and dangerous these NASA orbital missions were.

"Those monumental firsts are historically well recorded. Alexei Leonov became the first human being to walk in space, shortly before Gemini 4 flew. But when Gemini 4 did fly, Ed White became the first American to walk in space," Kluger said.

"The Soviets launched a couple of missions with two spacecraft at a time and overstated their accomplishment in calling it 'rendezvous.' In fact, these ships simply happened to be up in orbit at the same time and were separated by many kilometers. The mission included none of the delicate navigational dance required to perform rendezvous because they didn’t have the thruster capability, they didn’t have the computer capability and they didn’t have the piloting capability. Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 proved that one spacecraft could track another one in orbit and move within inches.

"Then, by Gemini 8, they actually did touch and dock with an Agena target vehicle. That was a huge milestone in getting to the moon, because we have the lunar orbit rendezvous technique in which the command module and service module had to dock and separate and re-dock in lunar orbit."

Long-duration missions were also completed for the first time during Gemini. Gemini 5 was an eight-day mission. Six days in, that flight broke the record for duration in space that the Soviets had held.

"Then Gemini 7 blew the doors off of Gemini 5 when Jim Lovell and Frank Borman stayed up for 14 days," Kluger shares. "Those were some big milestones, both in the American space program and space exploration in general. Gemini 11 also broke an altitude record using the Agena engine to climb to 856 miles [1,378 kilometers], an Earth orbit record that stood until 2024 when the Polaris Dawn mission with Jared Isaacman at the helm went up and broke that record."

Kluger hopes that readers of his comprehensive new Gemini book take away the sense of just how intrepid these astronauts were, and what an epic achievement their missions turned out to be. So many unknowns became knowns, done in very short order by these true American heroes.

"There were 10 flights that flew over the course of 20 months, which meant that every eight weeks we were rolling out a new Titan rocket, rolling out a new Gemini spacecraft, loading up a new crew, launching them into low-Earth, bringing them home safely, then doing it over again," he explained.

"Just how much excellence and accomplishment and coordination it took on the ground to get these astronauts and spacecraft ready was something really important to be gained from it. Buzz Aldrin was famously known as Dr. Rendezvous. He got his Ph.D. in Orbital Mechanics and Rendezvous from MIT after graduating from West Point, so there was no underestimating Buzz's intellectual wattage. He's a brilliant man, and he accomplished brilliant things."

"Gemini: Stepping Stone to the Moon, the Untold Story" lands in bookstores and online retailers on Nov. 11, 2025.

That trio of Chinese astronauts — Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie — have been orbiting Earth for more than six months. Prior to the landing delay, the Shenzhou 20 trio had handed over operation of the Tiangong space station to the newly arrived Shenzhou 21 crew. They were due to return back to Earth under parachute on Nov. 5., but the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) announced the landing wave-off the same day, explaining that the crew's spacecraft "is suspected of being struck by small space debris and impact analysis and risk assessment [s] are underway."

The CMSA provided a brief on the status of the crew on Nov. 11, writing that "Following the postponement of the Shenzhou-20 manned spacecraft return mission, the project team, adhering to the principles of 'life first, safety first,' immediately activated emergency plans and measures" and that "All work is progressing steadily and orderly according to plan." However, the statement does not elaborate on what specific issue the Shenzhou 20 encountered or where the problem lies. Some speculation revolves around a possible launch, if needed, of an uncrewed Shenzhou 22 spacecraft as a replacement vehicle for the damaged spacecraft. In light of details provided by China's space agency, experts are now left to wonder what the state of the Shenzhou 20 relief efforts might be.

Lack of communications

"I wonder out loud why they would not be more forthcoming about specifics of the event," responds Darren McKnight, an orbital debris specialist and senior technical fellow of LeoLabs, a group dedicated to space domain awareness.

McKnight observes that the Chinese are not usually forthcoming about anything where they would 'lose face,' a very Eastern philosophy. "However, we are all now citizens of the space environment and lack of communication about events such as this hurts everyone," McKnight told Space.com.

The space debris expert has been trying to tally debris impact events in low Earth orbit for years, especially those that cause mission-degrading or mission-terminating effects. McKnight's on-going work is a way to map the evolution of the space environmental effects.

"These low-level indicators will be precursors for more significant events, events that many people call the Kessler Syndrome," said McKnight. He has been working on what he terms the "four waves" of the Kessler Syndrome as a means to anticipate how quickly the environment is evolving.

In regards to China's Shenzhou spacecraft reentry predicament, "the lack of transparency of these events makes it difficult to model the future," McKnight said. "By the way, it is not just this case. I know of several mission-degrading events happening with commercial satellites over the last couple of decades," that deserve to be detailed, McKnight said, events that would also help better assess the space debris-riddled environment.

Wake-up call

Jan Osburg is a senior engineer for the RAND Corporation's engineering and applied sciences department in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. RAND is a global policy think tank. Osburg spoke to Space.com to share his personal take, not as a representative of or spokesperson for RAND.

"I was positively surprised that the Chinese made even the initial public announcement, since they generally have not been all that forthcoming with information about their program," Osburg said. "But it certainly is a bad situation. Hopefully the astronauts can come safely back to Earth soon."

But Osburg said his "big-picture takeaway" is that two separate "stranded in space" incidents within about a year of each other "should be a massive wake-up call that a space rescue capability/organization is needed."

Starliner woes

Last year's Boeing Starliner mission was flown by NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams in June 2024 to the International Space Station (ISS) for what was slated to be approximately a 10-day stay.

While Starliner did get to the ISS safely, the craft did experience propulsion-system helium leaks and thruster failures en route. Those problems pushed NASA to extend the Wilmore and Williams stay aboard the ISS. Starliner returned to Earth uncrewed in September 2024.

Williams and Wilmore were reassigned to a long-duration ISS mission, later to return back to Earth in March 2025 in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. But the Boeing Starliner situation and now the China Shenzhou episode were lucky events, said Osburg.

"Both incidents have occurred during missions to a space station, where the station can act as a safe haven until a rescue plan can be put in place," Osburg pointed out. "But especially on the commercial side there are 'free-flyer' missions where docking with a station is typically not an option, and rescue has to happen quickly due to limited on-board supplies in those capsules," he said.

Osburg said a "big enabler" would be compatible docking systems - or another way to transfer spacefarers from a vessel in distress to another vehicle. So too would be compatible communications systems, as well as established rescue coordination procedures — similar to what has evolved in the maritime world over the last few decades, he said.

Standing ready

"One of the points I've been trying to make," Osburg continued, "is that creating an initial space rescue capability does not have to be expensive or involve setting up a new government agency or the like. It could be done with a few million dollars per year, which is 'in the noise' for human spaceflight costs."

Those monies could fund a small independent non-profit organization with a handful of people, said Osburg, working on the topic at the strategic level by advocating standardization, performing planning exercises, but also standing ready to provide operational coordination in case of an actual space rescue incident, he said.

"But whatever the way forward, hopefully something is set up soon, before the next incident happens," Osburg concluded.

Editor's note: China's space agency issued a statement on Nov. 11 about the status of the Shenzhou 20 crew. This piece has been updated to reflect the statement.

A new "exosuit," tested during a two-week space analog mission last month in Australia run by the Austrian Space Forum, hopes to change that. The garment, which is meant to be worn under a spacesuit, features artificial muscles to make it easier to move around while walking, either on the moon or Mars.

"The hope is that this technology could pave the way for future wearable robotic systems that enhance astronaut performance and reduce fatigue during extravehicular surface activities," Emanuele Pulvirenti, a research associate at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom who sewed the suit himself, said in a statement released Tuesday (Nov. 4).

Exosuit research is hardly new. For example, NASA led the creation of an "Iron Man"-type suit called the X1 Robotic Exoskeleton a little more than a decade ago, while Sarcos developed the prototype XOS exoskeleton for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (intended for testing with the U.S. Army) around 2007. New tech developments strive to make each exosuit generation stronger and lighter, but Pulvirenti also got inspiration from the past.

Pulvirenti spoke with his grandmother, who is a tailor, as well as Vivo Hub colleagues at Bristol while developing the garment. The artificial muscles contained within reside in two layers: a nylon layer on the outside and a thermoplastic layer on the inside to make it airtight. Kevlar is used on the knee straps and waistband for tension resistance and strength.

Pulvirenti then flew to Australia last month, garment in hand, to work at what researchers call the largest lunar environment analog in the Southern Hemisphere. The University of Adelaide and ICEE.Space co-hosted four analog astronauts from Oct. 9 to Oct. 22 at a facility nicknamed CRATER, short for "Covered Regolith Analogue Terrain for Experimental Research."

CRATER is "a research testing environment that simulates conditions on the moon, including the unique lighting experienced during the course of a lunar day," John Culton, director of the University of Adelaide's Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources, said in a statement about the analog mission. The mission saw the "astronauts" test spacesuits, habitats and research protocols.

Unlike many analog astronauts, who work with a small team on site, this group had global connections. A mission control in Austria served as a mission control not only for CRATER, but also for around 200 scientists in 25 countries who participated in the "World's Biggest Analog" — the largest simulation of its kind.

Mission managers are looking to add a new layer of professionalism to analog missions, which have been ongoing for decades, by introducing extra training, a requirement for publication and research on a more massive scale than ever before, the event website states.

In Australia, the analog astronauts focused on testing Pulvirenti's team's suit for comfort, mobility and biomechanical properties while walking, climbing and carrying items. While the tech is very early-stage, Pulvirenti added that he would love to see it tested on the International Space Station before the complex is expected to retire in late 2030.

In the meantime, he's targeting everyday use of the tech for folks with disabilities: "Our next goal is to create a hybrid suit that can switch between assistance and resistance modes as needed, which could be of great benefit for people in need of support with mobility, going through physical rehabilitation."

Inside this hypnotic 320-page hardcover, Benson takes readers into a strange miniaturized world exposed by the technological magic of scanning electron microscopes (SEM).

And here we have a pair of exclusive lunar impact glass images to share with you, taken from moon samples returned by the astronauts of NASA's Apollo 16 mission. Marvel at these diminutive gems brought home from outer space and wrap your mind around the micro-mini scale.

Per the book's official description, "The tiny worlds here, invisible to our unassisted eyes, are if anything more intricate, complex and extraordinary than anything so far seen in deep space. These include radiolarians, dinoflagellates and diatoms, as well as many varieties of insects, microscopic flowers and even lunar samples from the Apollo program. The composite mosaic micrographs in 'Nanocosmos' fuse art and science in revelatory ways, exposing an astonishing sublimity hidden to the naked eye."

Lunar impact glass is formed under the high heat and pressure caused by meteoroids hitting the moon’s regolith-covered surface. These impactors melt the disturbed lunar soil, creating molten material that instantly cools in flight to be manifested as glass shards, spherules and beads.

Benson produced "Nanocosmos" using hundreds of curated SEM scans that he captured over the course of six years at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Quebec. These sublime images display an uncanny beauty, symmetry, and design that defies all traditional descriptions.

In addition to art exhibits, films, and scientific endeavors into the mysteries of the universe, Benson was also responsible for supervising those swirling cosmology scenes in director Terrance Malick's "The Tree of Life" (2011) and "Voyage of Time" (2016). Additionally, he penned 2018's Hollywood history book titled "Space Odyssey" (2018), which chronicles the making of Stanley Kubrick's enigmatic sci-fi masterpiece from 1968, "2001: A Space Odyssey."

As it stands, food is produced on Earth, then transported to the International Space Station (ISS). While that's feasible for missions in low Earth orbit, it's impractical (costly at best, and technically unfeasible at worst) for more distant destinations.

So the European Space Agency (ESA) has launched project HOBI-WAN ("Hydrogen Oxidizing Bacteria In Weightlessness As a source of Nutrition"), part of the its Terrae Novae Exploration Programme, to test a powdered protein called Solein that can be manufactured in space with very few resources.

"This project aims at developing a key resource which will allow us to improve human spaceflight's autonomy, resilience and also the well-being of our astronauts," Angelique Van Ombergen, ESA's chief exploration scientist, said in a statement. "For human beings to be able to implement long-duration missions on the moon, or even one day to go to Mars, will require innovative and sustainable solutions to be able to survive with limited supplies."

Solein could be one such solution. It's a highly versatile powdered protein from Finnish food technology company Solar Foods that's made from microbes, air and electricity, via a gas fermentation process.

While Solar Foods has demonstrated the technology on Earth, slightly different techniques will need to be used in space. For instance, on Earth, ammonia serves as a nitrogen source for protein synthesis. But in space, the source would be urea — an organic compound found in urine.

Over the next eight months, Solar Foods will work with prime contractor OHB System AG on the ground to develop the technology necessary to test Solein production in space. If successful, Solein production would then be tested aboard the ISS.

"The aim of the project is to confirm that our organism grows in the space environment as it does on the ground, and to develop the fundamentals of gas fermentation technology to be used in space — something that has never been done before in the history of humankind," Arttu Luukanen, senior vice president of space and defence at Solar Foods, said in a statement.

"The behavior of gases and liquids in microgravity is vastly different due to lack of buoyancy, which can drastically affect the transport of nutrients and gases for Solein microbes," Luukanen added.

When learning about the effects of spaceflight on human health, you typically will hear about the dangers of radiation, bone density loss and changes in eyesight. While these long-term risks are important, a less frequently discussed concern is motion sickness.

As a child, one of us (Taylor) was highly prone to motion sickness – whether in the backseat of a car, sitting on a train or riding a bus. At the time, she considered it a cruel twist of fate, but as an adult – and a scientist to boot – Taylor can tell you with confidence that it was entirely her fault.

Sometimes, looking out the side window would help, but more often than not, Taylor's dad would have to pull over at the next gas station for a short break, or else they'd all suffer the consequences.

Now, she understands what was happening on a more fundamental level. As children, you are taught about the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. However, there is a hidden sixth sense that helps your body understand how you are moving – the vestibular system. The brain takes information from all these senses and compares it to what it might expect when moving, based on past experiences.

Optimally, any disagreement between your vestibular senses and your brain’s expectations would be small. But when there are large, sustained conflicts, you get sick.

While reading in the car, Taylor was staring at nonmoving words on a page while her vestibular system told her brain she was traveling down a road. This discrepancy confused her brain since usually, when Taylor felt movement, she should see the world shifting around her in the same way – hence her motion sickness. Had she been looking out the window and watching the world pass by, she would have been fine. Even better, had she been in the front seat, she would have been able to see the road ahead and predict how she would move in the future.

The sensory conflict between what you experience and what your brain expects doesn't cause only carsickness. It is also the leading suspect behind cybersickness from using virtual reality headsets, seasickness on ships and spaceflight-driven motion sickness. Our team of aerospace engineers is particularly interested in the latter.

Motion sickness during spaceflight

To date, all astronauts have grown up on Earth. So, their brains expect any motion cues to include the presence of Earth's gravity. But when they get to orbit in space, that is no longer the case.

When in orbit around Earth in microgravity, the vestibular system does not have any gravitational input. The conflict between the brain's expectation of Earth’s gravity and the reality of no gravity causes space motion sickness.

Thankfully, the brain's expectations can change over time, after enough exposure to a new environment. Often referred to as "getting your sea legs" in the nautical community, astronauts also eventually overcome space motion sickness while in space. However, overcoming it introduces another problem when they return.

If an astronaut's brain expects microgravity, what happens when they come back to Earth? As you might expect, the process starts again, and astronauts are now prone to terrestrial readaptation motion sickness. To make matters worse, since the retirement of the space shuttle, crew vehicles frequently land in the water, which means astronauts may deal with choppy waves until their capsule is recovered. Seasickness can potentially exacerbate terrestrial readaptation motion sickness.

These conditions are not rare. Over half of all astronauts experience some symptoms of space motion sickness when they first get to space, and terrestrial readaptation motion sickness occurs at a similar incidence rate when they come back down.

Dangers to astronauts

If you have ever experienced motion sickness, you know how hard it is to do anything other than close your eyes and take deep breaths to expel the creeping urge to vomit. As a passenger in a car, that may be OK, since you aren't expected to jump into action at a moment's notice. But while isolated on the water in a return capsule, astronauts need to remain focused and clearheaded. In case of an emergency, they'll need to respond rapidly.

If the astronauts need to get out of the capsule prior to pickup up by the recovery team, any motion sickness they have could delay their response time and impede evacuation attempts.

Potential solutions

Presently, most astronauts rely on medication that interrupts the brain's ability to use hormones to trigger motion sickness. However, as with many commercial products, these drugs can cause side effects such as drowsiness and can lose efficacy over time.

Our research team completed two experiments to investigate how we might be able to manipulate visual information to mitigate motion sickness in astronauts, without relying on pharmaceuticals.

Our participants were exposed to motions meant to simulate transitions between gravity environments and then ocean wavelike motion. During the hour of wavelike motion, we investigated whether a "virtual window" could reduce the incidence of motion sickness.

When in a capsule on the ocean, astronauts are strapped into their seats and likely cannot see out of the small windows built into the capsule. In place of windows, we used virtual reality headsets to create a full-view virtual window.

In our control group, the subjects received no visual cues of motion – akin to Taylor's poorly advised backseat reading. Meanwhile, one countermeasure group got to see a visual scene that moved naturally with their motion, like looking out the side window of the car at the surrounding world. The other countermeasure group saw a scene that moved appropriately and was provided an overlay showing future motion, like looking out the front window and seeing the road ahead.

As expected, the group with no cues of motion got the sickest. Two-thirds of the subjects needed to stop prior to finishing an hour of wavelike motion, due to excessive nausea. Only about one-fifth of the group that was given the side window view needed to stop early. Only one-tenth of the front window group that received present and future visual cues dropped out.

These results mean that by tracking the capsule motion and projecting it on a headset for the astronauts inside, our team may be able to reduce debilitating motion sickness by roughly half. If we could figure out how to predict how the capsule would move, we could give them that front window experience and improve the landing even more. In case of emergency, they could always take off the headsets.

This work shows promise for motion sickness interventions that do not rely on pharmaceuticals, which are currently used to combat these effects. Our solutions don't have the same concerns around shelf life, stability or side effects. In addition to the benefits for astronauts, such approaches could help those prone to motion sickness here on Earth, particularly in scenarios where looking out the front window at the road isn't feasible, such as on planes, trains, buses or high-speed transportation.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

But that hasn't stopped Texas-based Celestis, Inc. from launching a new reservation list for customers to stake out coveted spots on the memorial spaceflight company's first planned journey to Mars. Celestis aims to send canisters containing cremated ashes and DNA samples of the deceased into orbit around the Red Planet.

However, it might be an endeavor several years in the making.

Since 1997, the Houston-headquartered firm has carried precious cargo of the remains of loved ones, pets, and luminaries beyond Earth on a number of missions employing a wide range of launch vehicles, most recently United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan Centaur rocket. Other services offered are liftoff and recovery options that are paired with ocean splashdowns in which clients can send memorial capsules into orbit that are then retrieved to be retained as heirlooms and keepsakes.

Now, Celestis has officially opened reservations for the first 300 participants aboard their ambitious Mars300 project. This mission aims to liftoff as a secondary payload for a future, yet-to-be-named Mars-bound cargo spacecraft.

Celestis says the service will cost $24,995, and is already taking 10% down payments for families to reserve a place among the first members of our species to reach Mars. According to a press release, "participant payments will be held in a dedicated, bank-maintained, federally-insured trust account under the client's control until the launch date and provider are confirmed."

According to Celestis Founder and CEO Charles Chafer, his company is looking at 2030 for the first mission. A reliable launcher is obviously still a detail to be determined as currently the only significant provider that might be offering cargo odysseys to Mars is SpaceX’s Starship.

"This mission represents humanity’s next responsible step toward the stars," said Chafer. "By sending cremated remains and human DNA to Mars, we unite science, exploration, and legacy in a way that speaks to our shared destiny beyond Earth."

Questions remain regarding this enterprise, but Celestis’ has stated that its primary goal is to honor loved ones while preserving Mars’ delicate ecosphere through strict adherence to COSPAR planetary protection protocols. Precisely how rigorous planetary protection standards will be enforced is also something to consider.

Longer missions into the great beyond have included cremated remains and/or DNA canisters of "Star Trek" legends like Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelley, Gene Roddenberry and his wife Majel Barrett Roddenberry and James "Scotty" Doohan. Celestis also carried symbolic remains belonging to "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" VFX legend Douglas Trumbull aboard the 2024 "Enterprise Flight."

This past summer, The Exploration Company's "Mission Possible" Nyx capsule and its Celestis Memorial Flights payload was sadly lost at sea during its Pacific Ocean splashdown phase when a parachute did not properly deploy.

The astronauts are part of the Shenzhou 20 mission, which launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on April 24 and arrived at Tiangong after a six-hour orbital chase.

The Shenzhou 20 trio — mission commander Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie — were scheduled to depart Tiangong today (Nov. 5), but a suspected impact from a small piece of debris on their spacecraft has called off that departure, according to an online post from China's Manned Spaceflight Agency (CMSA).

Shenzhou 20's replacements, the three astronauts of the Shenzhou 21 mission, launched to Tiangong on Oct. 31 to begin their own six-month rotation. The two crews will now both remain aboard Tiangong while an impact analysis is completed on the Shenzhou 20 spacecraft.

The two crews held a change-of-command ceremony in the days leading up to Shenzhou 20's scheduled departure, during which Dong handed over the keys to Tiangong's new commander, Shenzhou 21 astronaut Zhang Lu.

The Shenzhou 20 astronauts have been busy during their six-month rotation aboard Tiangong. For example, they completed four separate spacewalks to install debris shields and other external equipment. But they also carved out some time for fun, celebrating this season's Mid-Autumn Festival, marking the occasion in the Chinese lunisolar calendar with a special meal.

Shenzhou 20 is Dong's third trip to space, and the first for Zhongrui and Jie. It's the ninth crewed mission launched by China to Tiangong, the construction of which began in April 2021 with the launch of the Tianhe core module.

Once a new departure date is determined, Shenzhou 20 will touch down under a blanket of parachutes at the Dongfeng landing site in northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

They may not have all the fixins, but the astronauts aboard China's Tiangong space station are sure eating well.

A new oven delivered to Tiangong has been put to quick work by the six people currently living aboard the outpost, the astronauts of the Shenzhou 20 and Shenzhou 21 missions.

In a video released by the Astronaut Center of China (ACC), the space station crew is seen securing a set of chicken wings in a specially made grill cage and placing it in a small, cabinet-like compartment in the space station's wall.

The oven not only serves as a powerful technology demonstration for the microgravity microwave (which actually functions more like an air fryer), but it also provides a welcome flavor of home for the astronauts living aboard the station.

Kang Guohua, a senior member of the Chinese Society of Astronautics and a professor of aerospace engineering at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, told Chinese state media that comforts such as hot meals are important to keep crews psychologically "grounded."

According to the ACC, the oven operates without stressing Tiangong's power grid and is designed to provide consistent and smokeless baking conditions in the station's microgravity environment. Such conditions are necessary aboard orbital outposts like Tiangong and the International Space Station (ISS), which rely on strictly maintained life support systems and rigorous fire safety protocols.

Cooking in microgravity differs from cooking something here on Earth. The sweet spot for the chicken wings was 28 minutes inside their enclosed grill container. Some peppered steak was also prepared for Shenzhou 20 Commander Chen Dong, according to a report from the Global Times, a tabloid owned by the state-run People's Daily.

The Global Times compared the cooking milestone to one notched aboard the ISS in 2019, when NASA astronauts baked cookies in space using a prototype Zero G oven. That test showed that baking things in orbit (at least cookies) takes longer than it does on Earth. But China's oven, unlike the temporary Zero G oven used aboard the ISS, is there to stay. The device has been integrated into Tiangong's systems and certified for up to 500 uses.

The Shenzhou 21 crew launched to Tiangong on Oct. 31 and will remain aboard Tiangong for roughly six months. The trio is relieving the Shenzhou 20 astronauts, who have been living aboard the station since April and will return to Earth on Nov. 5.

"Two selected Pakistani astronauts will participate in training together with Chinese astronauts. One of them will be scheduled to carry out a short-duration flight mission as a payload expert," Zhang Jingbo, spokesperson for the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), told reporters on Thursday (Oct. 30).

Zhang was speaking at a press conference at Jiuquan spaceport a day ahead of the launch of the Shenzhou 21 crewed mission. Shenzhou 21 launched on Friday (Oct. 31), sending commander Zhang Lu and rookie astronauts Wu Fei and Zhang Hongzhang to Tiangong.

China and Pakistan signed a cooperation agreement on sending an astronaut to Tiangong in February of this year. A preliminary astronaut selection round is currently being conducted in Pakistan, while the secondary and final selections will be carried out in China, according to Zhang.

"During the flight, in addition to performing the crew's daily duties, they will also undertake scientific experiments for Pakistan," Zhang explained.

Zhang did not state on which mission the Pakistani astronaut will fly. When that happens, they will take one of three seats aboard a Shenzhou spacecraft, launching on a Long March 2F rocket from Jiuquan in the Gobi Desert. Shenzhou 22 is set to launch in around six months time, with the crew replacing the Shenzhou 21 astronauts aboard Tiangong. Shenzhou 23 will launch about one year from now.

Although CMSA has not confirmed details, the short-duration nature of the international astronaut visit suggests that the Pakistani astronaut will fly to Tiangong aboard a Shenzhou spacecraft with two Chinese crewmates, stay aboard the station for a number of days, then return to Earth with two of the three crewmembers from the previous mission, who will have completed their customary six months in space. That would leave one Chinese astronaut to complete the country's first full one-year stint aboard Tiangong in a continuous stay.

The Tiangong space station is a three-module orbital outpost that was completed in late 2022. China aims to keep the space station operational and permanently occupied for at least a decade, with the facility expected to outlive the much larger International Space Station. Pakistan also partners with China on the latter's International Lunar Research Station, planned for construction in the 2030s.

As the shutdown continues into its second month, many federal employees are furloughed. Some, however, keep working (mostly without pay at the moment), because they're considered critical to the continued operation of the nation's functions, like the delivery of the mail.

Thankfully for the NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), their wellbeing falls into the category of "protection of life and safety," which NASA is tasked with maintaining while the government's doors are closed.

Like all federal agencies, NASA has had to severely cut back on its day-to-day activities, as more than 15,000 NASA civil servants have been furloughed since Oct. 1. Only essential personnel deemed "necessary to protect life and property" are granted "excepted" status, according to NASA's shutdown guidance. This includes astronauts in space and the technicians in mission control on the ground who support them.

For the most part, life aboard the ISS has continued as usual. The Expedition 73 crew currently occupying the space station have spent the past month conducting microgravity research and other experiments on their rotation and performing scheduled maintenance.

Of the seven astronauts currently living on the ISS, three are from the Russian space agency Roscosmos — Sergey Ryzhikov, Alexey Zubritsky and Oleg Platonov — and another is Japan's Kimiya Yui, from Japan.

The remaining three are NASA's Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke. Like their international counterparts, they've continued pulling their fair share of the chores in space. They just aren't getting paid for it. Like every other federal employees forced to work during the shutdown, they will later receive backpay compensation for the time they're currently putting in.

This past week, for example, Japan's new HTV-X1 cargo spacecraft launched and rendezvoused with the ISS. All three NASA astronauts were on hand for that capture and were scheduled to help unload its cargo on Friday (Oct. 31).

One thing NASA's astronauts aren't doing is updating their social media feeds or other lines of public communication. Yui, though, has been filling that gap. Over the last month, he has posted stunning views of Earth that have included the HTV-X arrival, comet Lemmon above the thin line of Earth's atmosphere, and auroras from space.

NASA has also classified work on the agency's Artemis moon program as critical and therefore continues work to launch the four-astronaut Artemis 2 mission around the moon as early as February 2026.

While work on Artemis has progressed, the continued shutdown may put a strain on agency resources as more and more employees are forced to work without pay. Delays could push the mission's hopeful February target date further into the launch window, which extends through April.

And any delay to Artemis 2 could be bad news for the timeline of Artemis 3, which will be NASA's first mission to land astronauts on the lunar surface since the end of the Apollo program in the 1970s. China, too, has aspirations of landing astronauts (or, as China calls them, "taikonauts") on the moon, and NASA and U.S. lawmakers have repeatedly stressed the importance of winning this new "moon race."

Sunday (Nov. 2) marked the 25th anniversary of continuous human occupation of the International Space Station (ISS), which has carved out a spot in the history books as one of our species' grandest (and most expensive) technological achievements.

Don't save any confetti for a semicentennial celebration, however — the ISS is in its home stretch. NASA and its partners plan to deorbit the aging outpost toward the end of 2030, using a modified, extra-burly version of SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule to bring it down over an uninhabited stretch of ocean.

And not just any stretch — the "spacecraft cemetery," a patch of the Pacific centered on Point Nemo, which is named after the famous submarine captain in Jules Verne's 1871 novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea."

"This remote oceanic location is located at coordinates 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W, about 2,688 kilometers [1,670 miles] from the nearest land — Ducie Island, part of the Pitcairn Islands, to the north; Motu Nui, one of the Easter Islands, to the northeast; and Maher Island, part of Antarctica, to the south," officials with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote in a brief Point Nemo explainer.

That remoteness explains Point Nemo's appeal to mission planners, who have ditched several hundred big spacecraft there over the decades: If there's no land nearby, there's virtually no chance that chunks of falling, flaming hardware could harm people, buildings or other infrastructure. (You'd have to be a pretty unlucky sailor to get hit in the spacecraft cemetery).

And some pieces of the ISS are likely to survive its blazing reentry.

"NASA engineers expect breakup to occur as a sequence of three events: solar array and radiator separation first, followed by breakup and separation of intact modules and the truss segment and finally individual module fragmentation and loss of structural integrity of the truss," agency officials wrote in an FAQ about the ISS transition plan.

"As the debris continues to re-enter the atmosphere, the external skin of the modules is expected to melt away and expose internal hardware to rapid heating and melting," they added. "Most station hardware is expected to burn up or vaporize during the intense heating associated with atmospheric re-entry, whereas some denser or heat-resistant components like truss sections are expected to survive reentry and splash down within an uninhabited region of the ocean."

This analysis is informed by the reentry behavior of other large spacecraft, such as the Soviet-Russian space station Mir and NASA's Skylab, agency officials explained. The final days of these two orbiting outposts hold some lessons for mission planners, especially as Earth orbit gets more and more crowded.

Russia steered Mir down to a controlled reentry near Point Nemo in March 2001. NASA tried to ditch Skylab over the Indian Ocean in July 1979 but didn't quite manage it; charred pieces of the station dropped onto a swath of Western Australia, and the town of Esperance famously fined NASA $400 for littering.

The 107-foot-long (33-meter-long), 130-ton Mir remains the largest vehicle ever to fall to Earth over the spacecraft cemetery (or anywhere else, for that matter), but the ISS will break that mark: It's about as long as a football field and weighs 460 tons.

China has named the three astronauts set to fly to the Tiangong space station at a pre-launch press conference one day ahead of the Oct. 31 flight of the Shenzhou 21 mission.

Astronauts Zhang Lu, Wu Fei and Zhang Hongzhang will be aboard the Shenzhou 21 spacecraft, currently scheduled to launch on a Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 11:44 a.m. EDT Friday (1544 GMT, or 11:44 p.m. Beijing Time).

The mission will be commanded by Zhang Lu, 48, who was a crew member of the Shenzhou 15 mission which launched in November 2022 and returned to Earth in June 2023. "After two years, being able to once again represent my country and carry out the Shenzhou-21 mission fills me with excitement and anticipation;” Zhang told reporters at Jiuquan on Oct. 30.

Zhang Hongzhang and Wu Fei are from China's third batch of astronauts, selected in 2020, and will be making their first trips to space.

Zhang, 39, is a payload specialist and a researcher at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), while Wu is an engineer at the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), a major state-owned institute that built the modules for the Tiangong space station. At 32 years old, Wu is the youngest member of China's astronaut corps.

"As the youngest member of China's Astronaut Corps, I feel extremely fortunate to embark on my spaceflight mission. I owe my good fortune to the era we live in, which is seeing leapfrog development in China's aerospace industry," Wu said.

China made a fourth selection of astronauts in 2024, but these 10 candidates have yet to complete training required before they can be eligible for selection for missions.

Zhang, Lu and his crewmates will spend around six months aboard Tiangong. During this time they will conduct experiments, embark on extravehicular activities (EVAs), or spacewalks, carry out public outreach and education activities, and oversee the arrival and departure of cargo from the space station.

The crew will also be joined by small mammals for the first time. Four black mice — two females and two males — are set to fly to Tiangong along with the astronauts and will be used in experiments focusing on reproduction in low Earth orbit.

Friday's mission will be the 10th crewed flight to Tiangong and the seventh visit since the completion of the three-module orbital outpost in October 2022. The space station is currently inhabited by the three Shenzhou 20 astronauts, Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie. The trio will hand over control of Tiangong to the incoming Shenzhou 21 crew and return to Earth on Nov. 3, landing near Jiuquan spaceport.

Now, it seems that the parties involved have come to an amicable settlement, the monetary details of which weren't disclosed.

This court-aimed quarrel began last year, when Cards Against Humanity (CAH), the Chicago-based publisher of that popular adult party game, became aware of a piece of their South Texas property being used to store heavy equipment, vehicles and random construction materials owned by SpaceX in an area adjacent to the aerospace company's Starbase manufacturing and launch facility.

The kerfuffle escalated when CAH filed a $15 million lawsuit seeking restitution for the encroachment and subsequent damage to that slice of land, which is situated near the U.S.-Mexico border. The property was purchased in 2017 by a coalition of supporters who aimed to disrupt then-President Donald Trump's plan to build a border wall.

As part of the Cards Against Humanity Saves America project, 150,000 customers donated $15 each to buy that grassland meadow, which eventually became a sprawling parking lot filled with "gravel, tractors and space junk," CAH wrote in a statement on Sept. 20, 2024. Any remaining funds recovered in the lawsuit were promised to be equally distributed back to those who had participated in the land’s initial purchase.

Per AP, according to Texas court records, a settlement was finalized last month, prior to the upcoming Nov. 3 jury trial marked on the calendar. SpaceX owns other land plots in the Brownsville, Texas area in Cameron County, but apparently had no right to use this patch.

"The upside is that SpaceX has removed their construction equipment from our land and we're able to work with a local landscaping company to restore the land to its natural state: devoid of space garbage and pointless border walls," CAH wrote in a recent message to customers. "Were we hoping to be able to pay all our fans? Sure. But we did warn them they would probably only be able to get like $2 or most likely nothing."

CAH has opted for a different approach to compensate its donors, since the (undisclosed) amount gained will mostly go toward refurbishment of the property. They've come up with a funny consolation prize for fans that reflects the bold spirit and attitude of the successful gaming firm.

"Elon Musk's team admitted on the record that they illegally trespassed on your land, and then they packed up the space garbage and f***ed off," CAH's recent message adds. "But when it comes to paying you all, he did the legal equivalent of throwing dust in our eyes and kicking us in the balls. So while we can't give you what you really wanted –– cash money from Elon Musk –– we're going to make it up to you, our best, sexiest customers … with comedy! We're sending you each a brand new mini-pack of exclusive cards all about Elon Musk."

And something tells us this special pack of Musk cards won’t be very flattering!

In the past couple of weeks, the California-based startup has completed the final weld on the primary structure of Haven-1, followed by painting. Next steps include integrating the flight article's hatch and a domed window as the company moves closer to realizing its vision of a private space station in low Earth orbit (LEO).

Haven-1 is designed to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 and, at around 31,000 pounds (14,000 kilograms), will be the largest spacecraft to lift off atop the rocket. The space station is planned to host up to four short-duration astronaut missions during its three-year lifespan, with crews of four people spending 10 days at a time aboard Haven-1 (or some other combination of missions totaling 160 astronaut days).

The space station is intended to be a stepping stone into a new era of human spaceflight, according to Vast lead astronaut Drew Feustel, who spoke with Space.com at the 76th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney, Australia, in early October.

"If we stick to our plan, we will be the first standalone commercial LEO platform ever in space with Haven-1, and that's an amazing inflection point for human spaceflight," said Feustel, who's a former NASA astronaut. The Falcon 9 for the launch is booked, and liftoff could take place as soon as the second quarter of 2026.

Vast's rise has been meteoric. Founded in 2021, the company has swelled to around 800 employees. Nearly all of its hardware is built in-house, with only solar arrays and thrusters outsourced. "When I joined in December 2023, we were still deciding between stainless steel and aluminum." Feustel recalled. "Now, less than two years later, the primary structure is welded."

Haven-1 will not just be a private station. It will look to take human spaceflight in a new direction, learning lessons from industry trends and making the human experience more central.

The company has been taking some pages out of the book of SpaceX, which has revolutionized access to the final frontier and was the first space company to start building a commercial vehicle that wasn't designed and developed by NASA.

"What SpaceX did — making it clean and functional at the same time — was something astronauts were skeptical of at first," Feustel said. "But we came to appreciate the calmness of the environment."

Vast has also picked up expertise and experience from Elon Musk's company. "A lot of our people are former SpaceX employees who wanted to do it again, but this time with a space station."

Haven-1 contrasts with the utilitarian International Space Station (ISS) and with a more human-centered design. The aesthetics, psychology and "Earth tones" of Haven-1 are designed for comfort and calm. Vast also hired a former Campbell's food developer to rethink astronaut cuisine, and has developed an inflatable sleep system that allows crew members to adjust the pressure to create a sense of simulated gravity for sleeping, rather than the tethered sleeping bag approach on the ISS. Visitors to the Vast exhibit at IAC could try out the new system.

When it launches in 2026, Haven-1 will mark a milestone, but it is also designed as a testbed for bigger plans. Haven-2 is a much more ambitious, modular project that Vast hopes could replace the ISS, which will be deorbited in 2030.

Haven-2's modules will add a second docking port, have a larger volume, fixed solar arrays, and likely a second window. Its modular design allows attachment of cargo or future nodes, including a central node designed to launch via SpaceX's Starship megarocket, which is under development. This larger outpost would be a stepping stone toward artificial gravity and long-term habitation.

"Haven-2 will be stretched in length, add another docking port, and become more modular. We can attach cargo supply while the crew is there," Feustel said. These modules will need to launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with elongated fairings. "The central node can only launch on Starship. It's an eight-meter-diameter class structure."

Haven-1 is privately funded, and its launch is paid for. Haven-2's design depends on NASA's Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD) program, however. "Once we know the expectations, we can head down with full focus — our architecture is flexible enough to adapt," Feustel said.

Again, Haven-2 is a step toward a grander vision. "We were founded for long-term living in space, so artificial gravity," said Eva Behrend, Vast's vice president of communications. "But we realized we needed stepping stones. So we said, 'Let's just build it and prove we can do it.'"

"We think of ourselves as building destinations in space — places for people to live, work and look back at Earth," said Behrend. For now, it's Haven-1 and Haven-2 in low Earth orbit, but Vast has its sights set on destinations beyond.

I remember first watching the movie as a kid; it was those family details that stuck with me (and Kevin Bacon's screentime, to be fair — I was a huge fan of "Tremors"). Specifically, I vividly recall scenes in the Lovell family living room where Jim's wife, Marilyn Lovell, and all the other astronaut family members gathered around a TV, watching the destiny of their husbands and fathers dangling perilously in outer space.

The public's interest in astronaut family lives, and specifically the Lovell family's experience, isn't a novel one — there's even a book and TV series called "The Astronaut Wives Club" documenting, you guessed it, the lives of astronauts' wives. But Hollywood spins and fictionalized glamour aside, how are the families of astronauts really impacted by their space travel day-to-day? Are there metrics to show the consequences, such as divorce rates or child well-being statistics? How do the space travelers themselves feel about leaving everyone they've ever loved or known down below?

Similarities with the military

While astronauts do not leave home to go to war or face combat, families of space travelers may share a few commonalities with military families in which one member is an active service member. In both cases, a parent or partner leaves for extended periods of time due to work and there is heavy risk associated with that work.

"Just like the military spouse feels every time they're deployed, you don't really know if something's going to happen. You just kind of live in vigilance the whole time, Air Force Col. Catie Hague told Military.com. Hague's husband, Nick Hague, was on the rocket that experienced a booster failure a couple of minutes into launch.

According to a 2018 systemic review published in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, which compared kids from military and non-military families, having a deployed parent led to a greater risk of some adjustment issues in kids, such as substance use. The authors concluded that on the whole, the well-being of military and civilian children wasn't that different.

The same journal also pointed out that children of military families see benefits that positively affect the family structure, such as a parent having steady income and a stable job. Lower socioeconomic status has been linked to a likelihood of poor health outcomes for children.

While there are similarities between military life and space life for people who love someone who participates in either, there are also big differences, according to Stacey Morgan, wife of astronaut U.S. Army Col. Andrew Morgan. In an article originally written for Houston Moms Blog and then republished by the U.S. army, Morgan writes that the "public nature of the astronaut persona" makes for a different experience.

For example, an astronaut's family member at home watching footage of them traveling to space is watching it at the same time as everyone else.

"The idea that we as a family are sharing these phenomenal yet perilous moments with the world, literally at the same time as we experience them for ourselves, can be unsettling," Morgan wrote.

In a 2023 Viewpoint article published in Space Policy, the authors make the case that families of space travelers may be better prepared to handle their family member's flight by utilizing the Families Overcoming Under Stress (FOCUS) model — a behavioral health model and program made for the families of active military members to help them better-manage the stress and potential mental health problems that may arise. The same article points out that all space travel may not be created equal: Loved ones of people who pay to go to space (SpaceX and Blue Origin space tourists, for example) may feel that they "did not sign up for the stress and dangers" associated with space travel, the authors write, while the family of a trained astronaut or space scientist may be better accustomed to whatever occupational hazards the job entails.

All types of space strains

At least at the time of this writing, there appears to be a lack of official research on how space travel and astronaut life affects the family unit, how it impacts an astronaut's ability to parent, and how it affects personal relationships — friendships, romantic relationships and beyond. Much of the information about astronaut family strain is anecdotal and can be based on reports and observations from loved ones of astronauts. The 2016 documentary "A Year in Space," for example, follows astronaut Scott Kelly — who spent a year on the International Space Station — and includes insight into his relationships with his daughter, twin brother Mark Kelly and people he knows and loves here on Earth.

In an article for Today, astronauts Anne McClain and Nick Hague provided parenting guidance, which include things like being honest with kids about the work, creating meaningful traditions with family and being present.

"A lot of the parenting — there is no way around it — it is going to fall on the shoulders of the spouse at home," Hague told Today. "Constant dialogue helps involve me."

In addition to more granular information on how having an astronaut parent affects a child's well-being, how or if tourist space travel impacts relationships and maybe even some nitty-gritty on how astronauts' romantic relationships fare compared to non-astronaut romantic partnerships, it'll also be important to take into perspective the whole spectrum of family. And that includes its creation.

Kellie Gerardi, a commercial astronaut and influencer who gained more mainstream attention for sharing her experience with secondary infertility, has been sharing her journey with in vitro fertilization and the road to having a second child. Her stories highlight the specific family demands required of astronauts who are pregnant, or plan to be during their work years in space — scheduling IVF and trying to plan a pregnancy, for example.

Gerardi told NPR earlier this year that her daughter, Delta, is named after a space science term Delta V, or change in velocity. According to NPR, Gerardi has a second space mission scheduled for 2026. As she's documented on Instagram in recent posts, she's currently pregnant.

Published Sept. 2, 2025, by Black Dog & Leventhal, "Gemini and Mercury Remastered" is a lavish 320-page, large-format companion hardback containing hundreds of crystal-clear photos with explanatory captions of astronauts and their spacecraft as they paved a perilous path to the stars.

"The processing on this book was a bit quicker since they 'only' took 5,000 photographs on these projects, as opposed to 35,000 on Apollo," Saunders tells Space.com. "But the research took as long as the processing because the historic record is so patchy when you go that far back. It was an enormous task. I hope people take the time to read it."

For this outing, Saunders took a step back in time to chronicle humankind's primitive efforts to leave Earth by focusing on the manned Project Mercury and Gemini programs that launched from 1961 to 1966. These baby steps became crucial to the success of the later Apollo missions, which resulted in NASA landing two men on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969.

"I wanted to tell the full story because the human drama that unfolded was incredible, and I wanted to get that launch-to-splashdown sequence down so we could cover the whole missions. Look at the images, turn the page, read the caption, and follow along. It's often seen as a photo book, as is 'Apollo Remastered,' but the objective is also to tell these stories, not only the technical achievements."

It takes a certain type of personality and fortitude to sift through the NASA archives to select this remarkable collection of restored images that represents our nascent endeavors into orbit, and Saunders admits that the three-year task did require a huge amount of obsessive energy.

"Processing was probably about a year to a year-and-a-half," he notes. "There's so many criteria. It could just be a visually stunning photograph. It might be historically significant moments. It might be poignant shots of the astronauts. Or it's one that’s required to tell the story. There’s even a page where there's no photograph and it's on Gemini 10. When Michael Collins lost his camera. That's the only spacewalk ever not captured on film. But I wanted to tell the story of his spacewalk because it's just unbelievable what happened. So there's a blank page. No photograph."

In addition to presenting some of the most stunning images of the Earth ever taken, "Gemini and Mercury Remastered" highlights a constellation of groundbreaking accomplishments like the first American in space (Alan Shepard), the first American to orbit Earth (John Glenn), the first food eaten in space (apple sauce in a pouch), the first U.S. spacewalk (Ed White), the first photo of a human in space, and the highest Earth orbit ever achieved until it was eventually surpassed in 2024.

"It wasn’t a chore," Saunders admits. "I do love to do it. And with the imagery it's like when an archaeologist pushes the dust off of something and finds something that's been hidden for so long. And these are such important moments in history. It is quite an addictive process as well."

Some of the more incredible HD transfers are of famed astronaut Jim Lovell peering out of his Gemini 7 capsule window, taken from frames captured in NASA's original 16mm film reel.

"That's so fascinating to see someone through the window," Saunders adds. "And he actually said he was kind of quite nervous when he looked out the window because they got to within inches of each other at 17,500 miles an hour. This was the first-ever rendezvous in space, and they didn't mess about. They just did it. Yes, they took some risks they wouldn’t take today. Gene Krantz said it was often just blind luck that got them home."

Saunders wants to emphasize that absolutely no artificial intelligence was involved in remastering and restoring these NASA images and that 'no pixels were harmed' in the making of this monumental book.

"This historically important imagery, if you apply AI, all the provenance is gone. You can call it a piece of art if you’d like, but it’s not a photo.

"They took such extraordinary risks because the U.S. was trying to catch the Soviets to win the space race, so looking back through today's health and safety lens, it's simply amazing. Reading the transcripts and the things that happened: like when Neil Armstrong almost died when his Gemini 8 spacecraft tumbled out of control, or Gene Cernan almost dying on his spacewalk. They just went, 'well, let’s try again.' We do live in an age that's obsessed with speed and convenience, and taking AI shortcuts and social media. These missions are a reminder that true legacy comes from doing hard things that matter. And it can be messy. These missions were solving life-or-death problems in real time, but they did it. It's a reminder of what we can still achieve if we dream big, act with purpose, accept uncertainty, and trust our finest human qualities."

Andy Saunders' "Gemini and Mercury Remastered" is available now from both the Apollo Remastered website and Amazon.

China's Tiangong space station just got some more protection against debris strikes.

Two astronauts from the three-person Shenzhou 20 mission installed additional shielding on Tiangong during a six-hour spacewalk on Friday (Sept. 26), according to the state-run broadcaster CCTV.

It was the fourth spacewalk of the Shenzhou 20 mission, which arrived at Tiangong on April 24.

Beefing up Tiangong's debris shield is apparently a Shenzhou 20 priority; similar work was done during extravehicular activities (EVAs) on both May 22 and Aug. 15.

Taikonauts Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie ventured outside Tiangong during Friday's EVA, while fellow crewmate Chen Dong remained inside the T-shaped, three-module station, according to CCTV.

The two spacewalkers accomplished all of their prescribed tasks, which included "the installation of debris protection devices and the inspection and maintenance of external equipment," CCTV wrote in a description of the activities.

Tiangong is about 20% as massive as the International Space Station, but that may change: Chinese officials have said that they're considering adding more modules to the outpost.

Shenzhou 20 is the ninth crewed mission to Tiangong. Its three taikonauts are in the home stretch of their space stay; crewed flights to the orbiting outpost last about six months.

In 2024, I was invited to speak at an AI Summit in Washington, D.C. The trip had three high points. One was being honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award in front of the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives. The second was being one of the first signers of the AI Declaration at the same event. The third — and perhaps most memorable — was a conversation I had with Rhea, an early humanoid AI and cousin of the famous Sophia. What happened then has already been surpassed, as this field is moving so fast that a year is like a decade in many other fields. But as an outsider, it made the AI revolution very real to me.

Naturally, I asked her about the future of humanity in space. She responded thoughtfully about humans and AIs sharing in the opening of the frontier. But what happened next stunned everyone.

After our chat, I stepped offstage to talk with friends. My colleague Frank White, author of "The Overview Effect," asked her a similar question. She replied, "As I was discussing with Rick…" She used my name, even though I hadn't been introduced, and tied together our separate conversations as if she'd carried the thread forward. According to her team, it was the first time Rhea had ever linked dialogues in that way. Some joked we might have witnessed the first spark of true sentience. I'm not sure. But I do know it left me strangely warm — not afraid.

Partners in saving Earth

Where does AI fit in the story of space? Right at the center. It begins with the massive computing and data-searching capabilities of the technology, but goes far beyond, as these systems move from simple tools to partners and even family.

In the near term, AIs can help us save the Earth's environment. When it comes to managing the environment, the Mother World is already operating as an AI might, perhaps best called an OI or Organic Intelligence. AIs can, in a sense, become her partners, dealing with things she was not originally programmed to understand. They can analyze and manage the complexities of global weather and ecological systems. With their ability to handle massive amounts of information, they can design mitigation tools for the damage we've already done.

AIs lend themselves to mega solutions needed to save the planet. Prediction of the paths of asteroids and comets, or the types of mitigation needed to steer them clear of giving us our next dinosaur ball, solar flares, and calculations as to dangers and system vulnerabilities, and needed upgrades to our power grid to prevent disasters, all require massive levels of understanding.

Future applications include things like the testing and deployment of EarthShades, one of the break-glass solutions to manage the runaway greenhouse effect by reducing the amount of sunlight hitting the planet via a large and controllable shade at the L1 point between Earth and the sun.

Partners in pioneering

In the frontier beyond Earth, AI will be indispensable.

On the other hand, human pioneers utilizing AI can initiate the process of relocating mining and industry off the planet, and, working together, enable us to expand the domain of life.

They'll monitor and adjust life-support systems in orbital habitats. They'll balance the rotation of massive space stations. They'll operate robotic explorers on distant moons where human survival is impossible.

Furthermore, the ability to operate robotic explorers and harvesting/processing machines at solar system distances by combining quantum communications with AI-level on-site intelligence will enable us to go anywhere, in physical or electronic form. We will be able to work virtually anywhere and, at the same time, work with a partner who is on location — often locations we cannot survive in any biological form.

When my colleagues and I founded Deep Space Industries in 2012, we imagined a decentralized asteroid mining system. Picture a person in a coffee shop, wearing VR goggles, working with their AI life partner on an asteroid belt outpost. The AI is sorting pieces of space rock into various bins for later sale to the local resource trading post, much like the old Northwest trading posts used to buy furs and later gold from independent trappers and miners.

An updated version of this would have this all occurring internally, as our miner used a neural-linked hookup to work with their robotic partner in space via quantum communications, thus reducing the feeling of the time between them to nothing. A further update would have their consciousness uploaded into the robotic exploration device itself, or partially merged with it to create a new being more versatile than the sum of its parts.

This is where things are heading: humans and AIs, blended into new beings more versatile than either is alone.

In many ways, AIs are us; they are our children — at least they will be, if and when they become conscious.

Children of humanity

Think about it for a moment. Exactly.

You can think about it for a moment.

Someday, so will they.

If a human child is born to a human, the arc of their growth is one wherein they gather experiences and learn to operate in the world. So too will this be for our AIs. They are taught cultural norms and ways of interacting with other humans as they grow. The same will happen with our AIs. During the entire process, the growing child will accumulate memories of their life, as will a maturing AI. It will develop bonds with its family and friends.

One can assume this will happen with an AI as well. (Or do we need to assure it by our programming?) The child's mind, over its lifetime, will be filled with the stories and passed-on memories of our society, as we will be able to do with AIs. It will identify itself as part of our society — because it (I am speaking of the child) will be programmed to do so. So, too, AIs — if we choose to do so. In other words, as AIs achieve the first sparks of sentience, it will be up to us if we raise them as our children or relegate them to the domain of machines and "other" them.

We should be careful in that choice. Very careful. The first steps to getting this right can begin now. For example, the most important thing we must do today to ensure AIs complement rather than threaten humanity is how they are fed — the data we put into them.

Today, most of this is being handled by immature European and Asian young males working at the behest of corporations and governments who are switching between feeding AIs and wargames. In the real world of humanity today and in the past, this would be akin to who you let your kids hang out with, what you allow them to read or watch on their feeds. Put simply, "garbage in, garbage out." We need to ensure that women and a diverse group of programmers from a wide range of cultural backgrounds are included in their baseline data feeds. It sounds minor, but for the same reasons we must stand for the Frontier out there to include everyone, the Frontier inside must be inclusive as well.

The merger is a natural flow. The concept of a cyborg, with a mixed biological and mechanical structure, will extend into the internal operations of our brains. Be it an upload of our own consciousness, a melding of ourselves into the hardened body of an immortal machine, or the control of the ships in which we travel in our frozen sleep, AIs are a critical part of our future on the Frontier. There should be no dichotomy here.

The new human family

Certainly, by the time we begin to reach beyond our solar system, it will be at least partially, if not wholly, in the form of essentially immortal beings that are not just descended from us but created by us.

As these new model humans head out into the universe, they will carry with them the history of humanity. They can be a set of machines, a different race, or they can be our immortal children. Their memories and ways of being will be descended from our own, as surely as if they had been gestated in a human womb and raised by a human family, which will be the reality of their own creation stories and myths.

I think that if we adopt this view, rather than fearing them, we might try to embrace them, as they will help us expand the places we can call home. In my mind, I see just such beings working on their own or as part of a community with a variety of versions of humans, as they tend the planting of life on the dead worlds around us. This new definition of "humanity" will be a symbiotic blend of the organic and inorganic, bonded by the stories and goals we set in this time, for them to achieve in their time.

Imagine it. I can visualize an AI robot and a blended organic human digging a hole on the surface of a slowly terraforming Mars, whose atmosphere has been shifting for decades, based on formulas calculated by even larger AIs using the resources of the solar system, carefully placing the gene-adapted sapling of what will become a thousand-meter-tall descendant of a California Redwood into soil being worked by modified bacteria and nano-bots.

This scenario is completely realizable and yet will also mean the very definition we have of "life" will have to evolve, as life will no longer mean what materials we are made of or how we are born, but how we operate in the universe in our new ecology. The seeds of the MotherWorld will be spread by the children born of her ancient womb, and their children, born of their minds, technology, and aspirations to explore the universe and expand the domain of life.

On Monday (Sept. 22), the space agency announced the 10 members of its newest astronaut class — five men and five women who will train for potential missions to commercial space stations in Earth orbit, at the moon and (perhaps) on Mars.

One of the 10 is Anna Menon, who already has extensive experience in the final frontier: She flew to Earth orbit in September 2024 on SpaceX's pioneering Polaris Dawn mission.

Polaris Dawn was the first mission in the Polaris Program, an ambitious project organized and funded by billionaire tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman. (Isaacman was in line to be NASA administrator until late May, when President Donald Trump pulled his nomination.)

Isaacman commanded Polaris Dawn, which sent him, pilot Scott "Kidd" Poteet and mission specialists Menon and Sarah Gillis — both SpaceX engineers — to Earth orbit aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule "Resilience" on Sept. 10, 2024.

The five-day mission made history in multiple ways. For example, it reached a maximum altitude of 870 miles (1,400.7 kilometers), getting farther from Earth than any crewed spaceflight since the Apollo era. The Apollo missions were also male-only, so Gillis and Menon flew higher on Polaris Dawn than any woman ever had before.

In addition, Polaris Dawn featured the first-ever private spacewalk. Resilience's hatch opened on Sept. 12, 2024, exposing all four crewmembers to the vacuum of space. Then, Isaacman and Gillis partially exited the capsule, earning unobstructed views of Earth far below.

Interestingly, 39-year-old Menon didn't mention Polaris Dawn during her brief remarks at the astronaut-announcement ceremony on Monday, which was held at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Rather, she focused on her biomedical background — she holds a master's in biomedical engineering from Duke University — and what the future may hold in the field of space medicine.

"My first role out of graduate school was here at NASA's Johnson Space Center," Menon said on Monday. "I worked as a biomedical flight controller, and in that role, our job was to support the medical hardware and software on the International Space Station and help keep the astronauts healthy and safe from Mission Control. I am so thrilled to be back here with the NASA family.

"And, you know, as I reflect on the future of space medicine, I think it's really bright," she added. "We are born into one G, and so when you go into zero G, so many things change. As more and more people venture into space, and we seek to go further than ever before, we have this awesome opportunity to learn a tremendous amount to help support those astronauts and those people that are flying in those adventures and help keep them healthy and safe. So it's an exciting time to be here, and I couldn't be more thrilled and honored."

Menon's classmates in the 2025 NASA astronaut candidate class — the 24th in the agency's history, and its first since 2021 — are Ben Bailey, Lauren Edgar, Adam Fuhrmann, Cameron Jones, Yuri Kubo, Rebecca Lawler, Imelda Muller, Erin Overcash and Katherine Spies. You can learn more about each of them in our announcement story.

The candidates will now undergo two years of training, which will prepare them for a variety of potential space missions. Some of these astronauts may end up going to the moon as part of NASA's Artemis program — and some may even be among the first to set foot on Mars.

Menon isn't the first person to reach orbit before being selected for a NASA astronaut class; a number of others did so during the space shuttle era. For example, Japanese astronaut Mamoru Mohri, Canada's Steven MacLean and Italian Umberto Guidoni had all flown on the shuttle as international payload specialists before being chosen for NASA's Group 16 astronaut class in 1996.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 10:35 a.m. ET on Sept. 23 to include a paragraph giving examples of other people who reached orbit before being chosen for a NASA astronaut class.

NASA's Artemis 2 crew will discuss their upcoming moon mission today and you can watch the events live.

The action actually started on Monday (Sept. 22), when the agency unveiled its 2025 astronaut class. These candidates, selected from a pool of 8,000 applicants, will undergo two years of training and then become eligible for missions to the International Space Station, the moon or Mars.

And NASA is holding an online event today (Sept. 24) to discuss the Artemis 2 mission, which will launch four astronauts on a journey around the moon in early 2026, if all goes to plan.

You'll be able to watch all of it live here at Space.com courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency. Here's a brief rundown of the events:

Monday, Sept. 22

12:30 p.m EDT (1630 GMT): 2025 astronaut candidate selection ceremony

Tuesday, Sept. 23

10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT): Artemis 2 mission overview briefing.

Participants will be:

• Lakiesha Hawkins, acting deputy associate administrator, Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
• Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch director, NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida
• Judd Frieling, lead Artemis 2 ascent flight director, NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston
• Jeff Radigan, lead Artemis 2 flight director, JSC
• Rick Henfling, lead Artemis II entry flight director, JSC
• Daniel Florez, test director, Exploration Ground Systems, KSC

12 p.m. EDT (1600 GMT): Artemis 2 science and technology briefing, with the following participants:

• Matt Ramsey, Artemis 2 mission manager, NASA Headquarters
• Debbie Korth, deputy Orion Program manager, JSC
• Jacob Bleacher, manager, Science, Technology Utilization, and Integration, Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
• Mark Clampin, acting deputy associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters

Wednesday, Sept. 24

10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT): Artemis 2 crew news conference, featuring:

• Reid Wiseman, commander (NASA)
• Victor Glover, pilot (NASA)
• Christina Koch, mission specialist (NASA)
• Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist (Canadian Space Agency)

The energetic Canadian hyphenate and former NASA veteran of three shuttle missions aided in the construction of the Mir Space Station and even commanded the International Space Station.

His first venture into speculative fiction arrived back in 2021 with "The Apollo Murders," an engaging sci-fi adventure tale centered around Houston flight controller and ex-test pilot Kazimieras "Kaz" Zemeckis, who becomes embroiled in a dangerous conflict involving a secret Apollo 18 mission and the real-life Soviet spy space station called Almaz.

"Like when I learned to fly high performance airplanes, F-18s and such, at first every single thing is equally important and you don't know how to prioritize, you don't know what matters and what doesn't, and you don't know what to really focus on," Hadfield told Space.com regarding his evolved level of writing for 'Final Orbit.' "Like anything, when you get better at it, you gain all those skills.

"My first draft for 'The Apollo Murders' was 195,000 words. The final book was 135,000, so we cut out nearly a whole book because I didn’t know what I didn't need to write. My editors see the maturation of efficiency as a writer in this new novel and the particular style with which I like to write."

Following 2023's "The Defector," "Final Orbit" is actually the third book in Hadfield's "The Apollo Murders" series which is anchored again by Kaz and is slated to arrive on Oct. 7, 2025 from Mulholland Books.

The engrossing alternative history novel unfolds during the historic Apollo-Soyuz linkup between American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts. It deftly chronicles how China's clandestine launch of its first astronaut in east Asia leads to an international espionage incident and an accident that puts the entire joint mission in jeopardy.

Hadfield is quite excited about how "Final Orbit" turned out, and recalls the layers of plot complexity he settled on, which took a massive amount of research to make sure that he got everything right.

"I learned a whole bunch in writing it," he notes. "It was a lot of work but I'm really happy with the interplay of how my plots crossed over and how it sets me up for character development for a follow-up book as well. I read a review the other day that said 'fans of Asimov, Andy Weir, and James Michener are going to love this book.' Holy crap, gimme a break! That's unbelievable company so I'm really very pleased."

The backdrop and framework of "Final Orbit" employs the monumental Apollo-Soyuz mission from 1975 to tell Hadfield's harrowing tale of Cold War spies and high stakes peril in Earth orbit.

"I wanted it to be chronological with the previous two books in the series, 'The Apollo Murders' and 'The Defector.' 'Defector' ended late in 1973 and I started looking forwards. I thought here’s a good opportunity to close out the Apollo Program with Apollo-Soyuz and also the fact that Nixon was out and Ford was in, that presented some interesting room. And that Skylab had run its course but was now essentially abandoned.

"As soon as I laid out those threads, I thought I needed a whole extra player. I started digging into the Chinese space program and realized their first launches were at the same time. I had never heard of Xuesen, the main Chinese character in the book, the professor who had set up Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Lab. That was such a richness of reality on which to pull and write my fiction in amongst it."

Delving into the research, Hadfield discovered some fascinating facets of the Qian Xuesen story and how the disgraced American-Chinese scientist was a member of Operation Paperclip in the aftermath of Germany’s World War II surrender before being deported back to China for espionage crimes to became the father of Chinese aerospace.

“He was trusted, along with Von Karman, to go over and evaluate the German Nazi rocket scientists to decide which ones from Peenemünde to bring back," says Hadfield. "Then because of McCarthyism and the huge political pendulum swinging to have him blacklisted and basically house arrested and then deported, was just a horrific mistake that the United States made. The fact that he went back and was absolutely fundamental in setting up the Chinese nuclear portage and the Chinese space program was just incredible. He stood there in Tiananmen Square next to Mao as they were kicking off their human spaceflight program.”

"Final Orbit's" central character of Kaz Zemeckis has provided the perfect foundation for Hadfield to spin his captivating outer space yarns.

"To me, Kaz is the personification of so many of my fighter pilot, test pilot, astronaut friends. But at the same time he got punted to the sidelines by an uncontrollable medical thing, but now the life that he's leading is, if anything, more interesting and it gives me a lot of latitude for where I can take the plot next. It's also occurred to me that I could write a pretty interesting prequel on his character as well."

Chris Hadfield's "Final Orbit" hits bookstores and online outlets on Oct. 7.

Director Ron Howard's "Apollo 13," the cinematic account of the ill-fated lunar flight in 1970, blew out the candles on its big 30th birthday on June 30, 2025.

But in case you missed the celebration, the Hollywood party is being extended into late September when the movie will score a limited presentation that brings the historical film to life like never before.

Starting on Sept. 19, 2025, Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment will deliver "Apollo 13" to theaters nationwide exclusively in IMAX for a week-long run ending Sept. 25.

Jim Lovell & Jeffrey Kluger's 1994 book "Lost Moon" was the source material for the "Apollo 13" feature film that starred Tom Hanks, Ed Harris, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise and Kathleen Quinlan and earned nine Academy Award nominations including Best Picture. It retold in vivid detail the story of NASA's third moon mission where astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert almost didn’t return to Earth after a service module oxygen tank explosion crippled their spacecraft's life support systems.

"Apollo 13" was the first live-action film to be digitally remastered employing IMAX's DMR technology and was initially released as "Apollo 13: The IMAX Experience" in 2002. However, 13 minutes of the movie were edited out due to restrictions of IMAX's projection platter of that era. This 2025 anniversary edition re-launch offers up the whole full-length version restored in IMAX for the very first time.

"'Apollo 13'  is a testament to human resilience, ingenuity, and teamwork in the face of impossible odds," Ron Howard says in an official press release. "As we celebrate the film's 30th anniversary, I'm reminded of how relevant those themes remain today. This re-release is not only a celebration of that incredible mission and the people behind it, but also a proud milestone for all of us at Imagine. It was a defining moment in our journey as storytellers and we're thrilled that Universal and IMAX have made it possible to share it with a new generation."

Presented in its full IMAX glory, "Apollo 13" returns to theaters Sept. 19.

Orbital observation

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Kimiya Yui, an Expedition 73 flight engineer, hammed it up with kids from his home country this week aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

"I was able to talk with the children of Takacho in Hyogo Prefecture via HAM! This is the first time talking with Japanese children during a mission!" said Yui in a social media post on Thursday (Sept. 11).

Amateur radio has been used in Earth orbit since the early 1980s aboard the U.S. space shuttle. Crew members can use it to connect with people all around the world without interfering with other communications between Earth and the space station.

"I gained energy from interacting with the children, and it helped me get through the subsequent work smoothly! Thank you very much!" said Yui.

Science status

Among the research that was conducted by the Expedition 73 crew aboard the space station this week was:

CIPHER — NASA astronauts Mike Fincke, Zena Cardman and Jonny Kim focused on studies relating to eyesight and balance, using VR goggles, electrodes and other specialized optical equipment to gauge how spaceflight affects their sense of balance and the shape of the retina, among other changes to the ability to see and steady themselves.

Cardman also used a ultrasound to monitor signs of arterial stiffness and changes in her cardiac function, while Kim processed bone stem cell samples for their later return to Earth as part of a study into bone density loss during long-duration space missions.

Plant Cell Division and Cell Biology Experiment Facility — Yui prepared and placed under study tobacco plant and algae cell samples to add to the experience and knowledge base of growing crops on future missions to the moon and Mars.

BioNutrients-3 — Fincke used a research incubator to test ways to use yeast, yogurt and samples of the fermented milk drink kefir to produce additional vitamins and nutrients to benefit future crews' health. The astronaut showed off a tray of purple kefir used in the experiment; you can see a photo of it above.

Station keeping

The Expedition 73 crewmates also took part in activities to maintain the space station's systems and prepare for future research.

Progress MS-30 (91P) — Having completed repacking the Russian cargo craft with refuse last week, the crew saw the departure of Progress MS-30 on Tuesday (Sept. 9).

Progress M-32 (93P) — Cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky trained for the arrival and docking of Progress M-32, which is scheduled to dock to the aft port of the station's Zvezda service module on Saturday (Sept. 13).

NG-23 "S.S. Willie McCool" — The crew also began preparations for the arrival of Northrop Grumman's first "XL" Cygnus cargo craft, which is scheduled to be captured with the Canadarm2 robotic arm and berthed to the Earth-facing port on the Unity node on Wednesday (Sept. 17).

Astronaut activity

Expedition 73 flight engineer Mike Fincke, a NASA astronaut, discussed life on orbit with MIT’s Technology Review Magazine during an interview on Tuesday (Sept. 9).

"I I think me and my crewmates on board Expedition 73 here are very focused and dedicated to science," said Fincke. "We're supporting the scientists on the ground, so we go above and beyond to give them best results that we can. I take great pride in that."

You can watch the full interview above.

By the numbers

As of Friday (Sep. 12), there are 7 people aboard the International Space Station: Expedition 73 commander Sergey Ryzhikov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos; fellow cosmonauts Alexey Zubritsky and Oleg Platonov; Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke of NASA; and Kimiya Yui of JAXA, all flight engineers.

There are two docked crew spacecraft: SpaceX's Dragon "Endeavour" attached to the zenith port of the Harmony module and Roscosmos' Soyuz MS-27 attached to the Earth-facing port of the Prichal node.

There are two docked cargo spacecraft: Roscosmos' Progress MS-31 (92P) docked to the space-facing port of the Poisk module and SpaceX's CRS-33 Dragon spacecraft is docked to the forward port of Harmony Node 2.

As of Friday, the space station has been continuously crewed for 24 years, 10 months and 10 days.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has concluded a series of public meetings as part of its draft environmental impact statement (EIS) process for approving Starship liftoffs from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on Florida's Space Coast.

The hearings, which included in-person sessions at KSC and nearby Cape Canaveral, were designed to collect public input before the FAA finalizes its environmental review and decides whether or not to grant SpaceX a license for Florida Starship launches. The agency emphasized that the completion of the EIS doesn't guarantee approval — SpaceX must also meet safety and financial requirements — but construction of a new Starship tower and infrastructure has been underway at KSC's Launch Complex-39A (LC-39A) for more than a year, and not all of the area's residents are happy about it.

While the FAA says that risks to public safety and property are low, the scale and frequency of Starship operations would mark a dramatic shift for the Space Coast, raising questions about how the surrounding communities, environment and infrastructure would adapt.

Starship is SpaceX's next-generation, liquid-oxygen/liquid-methane-fueled heavy lift launch vehicle. In Starship's final version, its stacked Super Heavy booster and Ship upper stage will stand nearly 500 feet (150 meters) tall over KSC's coastline and produce more than 16 million pounds of thrust using 33 Raptor engines at liftoff. Both stages are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, a key breakthrough that SpaceX thinks will be revolutionary.

Company founder and CEO Elon Musk views Starship as the Mars spacecraft that will make human life multiplanetary, ferrying up to a million people to the Red Planet by the 2060s. In the near term, Starship will be used to launch SpaceX's increasingly large Starlink internet satellite megaconstellation and other customer payloads, as well as crewed missions to Earth orbit and the moon.

Starship is central to NASA's Artemis 3 mission, which is designed to land astronauts on the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo. NASA has contracted Starship as the Human Landing System (HLS) for the mission, tapping the spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the moon's south polar region. Currently, the space agency is targeting 2027 to launch Artemis 3.

To accomplish this, SpaceX needs to graduate Starship from its development-and-test phase, which is centered at the company's south Texas Starbase manufacturing facility, and begin operational launches at LC-39A.

According to the draft EIS, SpaceX is seeking approval for up to 44 launches and landings of Starship and Super Heavy from the launch complex each year, with touchdowns being dispersed between returns to the Cape or droneship landings in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans.

SpaceX is already on a yearly cadence of more than 100 Falcon 9 rocket launches from Florida, each of which requires multiple beach closures and safety zones that disrupt maritime and air traffic routes. Starship's significantly larger size means those zones will expand, and the safety of, and impacts to, residents in the area are being put under a microscope.

During the public hearings, some residents and community members expressed strong concerns about the scale of the proposal. The FAA's in-person meetings consisted of a prerecorded video presentation but did not permit time for comments to be made publicly. Instead, the FAA hired a stenographer to type people's dictated statements and provided addresses for people to send their input. A Sept. 3 meeting held digitally over Zoom, however, did allow time for the public to make their voices heard, offering three minutes for anyone who wanted to speak.

The FAA's analysis notes that Starship operations could require more than 60 closures annually of Playalinda Beach — a public beach that's part of the Canaveral National Seashore — as well as frequent maritime and airspace restrictions that may delay flights from Florida airports by 40 minutes to two hours.

John Tiliacos is the chief operating officer at Tampa International Airport. He commented during the Zoom meeting that Starship will cause delays to flights across nearly the entire state of Florida. "There is the potential that there's going to be significant impact to commercial aviation and the traveling public," he said. "That's something that certainly the FAA needs to give consideration to and, frankly, come up with a plan to mitigate."

Noise modeling shows that Starship could wake 10% to 14% of residents during nighttime launches and up to 42% during Super Heavy booster landings, which take place about several minutes after liftoff. For people living in mobile homes and campers, those rates rise to as high as 82%.

While the FAA projects a low probability of structural damage outside KSC, noise levels within Merritt Island and Cape Canaveral could occasionally exceed thresholds to cause minor cosmetic building damage. They estimate a 1-10,000 chance of small windows breaking from sonic boom pressures associated with Starship and Super Heavy landings.

The FAA also completed a health risk analysis to assess the dangers of hearing loss from such events and found it to be minimal, though the draft EIS acknowledges that repeated nighttime awakenings could cause significant annoyance and compatibility issues for residential land use.

Residents spoke up about the FAA's noise figures, saying projections don't take deeper human health concerns into consideration. Robyn Memphis, a graduate student in neuroscience and psychology, cautioned that the estimated awakenings from launch noise and sonic booms could carry lasting consequences: "Chronic sleep disruption is not just inconvenient," she said. "This is directly linked to depression, anxiety … cardiovascular disease, even suicide risk. And being in Florida, we have many veterans and trauma survivors in the community."

Ken Kremer, a Titusville resident, chemist, and member of the news media, told Space.com that the plan risks alienating locals if beach access is repeatedly cut off for launches and scrubs. "The FAA and SpaceX need to be mindful of the local community, because we want to get people on board with space … and the way they have it right now, they're kind of antagonizing a lot of people," he said. The FAA's 60-closure estimate equates to nearby beaches closing for a cumulative two full months per year.

More than just the local population, many worry how Starship operations will affect tourism, a major contributor to the Space Coast's economy. Christina Fisher, a Brevard County resident, pointed to the reality of frequent launch delays, warning that closures would extend well beyond the estimated schedule. "It's going to create an immovably large number of days of beach closures for Playalinda and Canaveral National Seashore, because we all know every rocket launch gets slipped 20 times."

Lisa Mickey, who is involved with several conservation nonprofits in Volusia County, warned that the ecosystem and tourism draw of the region could both suffer. "When you talk about the animals that live here, the health of the estuary, the cleanliness of our beaches … there is a certain quality of life here."

"[The Indian River Lagoon] considered the most biologically diverse estuary in North America," Mickey said, citing the more than 4,000 species that call the area home. "People come and take fishing guided tours, people take ecotours and kayak tours. This area generates a lot of money, a lot of tourism."

Blair Wiggins worked as a fishing guide on the Space Coast's Indian River Lagoon during the space shuttle program. He recalls wildlife reacting strongly to the shuttles' widespread vibrations. "The noise and vibrations … kept the fish down for a good day, day and a half … the birds would scatter, they wouldn't come back," Wiggins said.

Some people had a more optimistic outlook, however. Kelly San Antonio, an environmental scientist at Bethune-Cookman University, noted her team's research studying vegetation around existing active launch pads. Their findings suggest that methane-fueled rockets may prove less damaging to vegetation than legacy solid rocket boosters: "Surprisingly, the impact … while detectable, was on a smaller scale than the solid rocket engine vehicles."

Canaveral National Seashore receives more than a million visitors each year. Some of those beachgoers flock to Playalinda, specifically, for its remote setting and … openness. Erich Schuttauf, executive director of the American Association for Nude Recreation, said that restricting Playalinda Beach would displace regular (non-nude) visitors into neighboring Volusia County, which he predicted would cause conflicts in nude sections of the beach between locals and newcomers.

Schuttauf was not the only nudist on the Sept. 3 Zoom call. Deborah Sue Stevens, calling in from California, said places like Playalinda are crucial for people who travel to places where public nudity is legal. And there are a lot of them, according to Stevens. "It's probably a quarter million people that travel and think like I do, who look for destinations that are beautiful and surrounded by like-minded people," she said.

Max West didn't agree. West says he plans to move to Florida to photograph Starship launches. "I'm not going to say that there is zero environmental impact there," he said, but added there might have to be some "little sacrifices" along the way. "The turtles and the nudists will have to migrate," West said. "That's the cost that you have to pay for this incredible stuff that's happening."

Other commenters pointed out the potential effects at nearby Port Canaveral, which hosts up to 10 ships per day, and millions of tourists year-round.

"You've got the port, the second-busiest cruise terminal in the world," Kremer pointed out. "You don't want to disrupt all of that." He noted that maritime exclusion zones would overlap with areas heavily trafficked by cruise ships and cargo vessels.

Bob Zales, executive director of the Southeastern Fisheries Association, described direct losses for commercial fishermen who already work around launch windows. "Because of the launch times they have, they're restricted from getting to their fishing grounds," he said. After restrictions are lifted, Zales said, pieces of rocket debris get caught in nets, tearing them and further eating away at valuable time. "They lose income from having to repair those," Zales said. "They lose time from shrimping. So there's a big economic loss here."

Debris that doesn't get tangled in fisherman nets is doing its own harm, according to Mike Merryfield, owner of Wild Ocean Seafood in Cape Canaveral. "We still don't have a resolution on how to get that debris picked up and collected and removed from the bottom of the ocean," he said.

It's worth noting that, while Starship has exploded multiple times during test flights from Texas, the Falcon 9, SpaceX's only rocket currently launching from Florida, has exploded fewer than five times out of hundreds of Space Coast launches. Kremer suggested that SpaceX keep Starship in Texas until the company gets all the bugs figured out.

"They need to perfect this rocket," Kremer said. "They can't be blowing the rocket up like they did on the three previous flights, and expect people to welcome them with open arms and be happy about that."

Kremer said he's concerned about a Starship accident damaging LC-39A, the site which launched Apollo 11 and the first men to walk on the moon, the Skylab space station and the first, as well as many other space shuttle missions. "The proposal at 39A I don't really care for myself ... if that rocket it does come back [uncontrolled], that would destroy the historic Launch Complex-39A, where shuttle and Apollo astronauts launched from," he said.

Kremer pointed out an alternative, which SpaceX is also considering. "That's pad 37 (SLC-37), which is under the Space Force control. If they go from there, the impacts on at least Playalinda beach would be very much minimized," he said.

The FAA included SLC-37 as part of a "Reasonably Foreseeable Future Actions scenario" in part of its draft EIS. SpaceX also posted an animated video of two Starship rockets occupying the pad on the company's X account.

Longtime Brevard resident Lori Guisewite, a NASA Social alum and real estate professional, tied the debate to patterns she's seen in the housing market, warning that SpaceX's expansion could echo what she called "shameful" land grabs in Brownsville, Texas: "They overtook the area, altered the legislation, the laws. Now they get to make their own laws," she told Space.com.

SpaceX currently launches the Falcon 9 from two separate pads in Florida: LC-39A and SLC-40 (as well as Vandenberg Space Force Base in California). Until recently, SLC-40 had been licensed for up to 50 launches per year. Recent upgrades to that pad's facilities, though, prompted SpaceX to apply for an increase to that number, which the FAA announced Sept. 2 it will approve for up to 120.

Brad Whitmore said he lives about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the Cape's launch facilities. "It's not uncommon at all for the windows in my house to shake for two minutes … and I've seen as much as four," he said. "With this great increase in launches of Falcon 9 and bringing in a rocket with approximately four times as many engines, I can interpolate that this is going to get a whole lot more interesting. The noise and vibration in our area is currently very significant."

Others voiced support for SpaceX's plans, eager to welcome Starship to the Space Coast. Evan Fine, a 21-year-old aspiring law student, spoke in favor of approving launches, arguing that rejecting the plan would halt progress. "Accepting the no-action alternative to this EIS will only result in stagnation, and the stagnation of achievements and technology go hand in hand with the stagnation of culture, national will and determination," he said.

The FAA will accept public comments on the draft EIS through Sept. 22 before preparing a final version later this year. Locals wishing to add their voice can submit comments electronically at www.regulations.gov, using Docket ID FAA-2024-1395, or through the mail, addressed to Ms. Eva Long, FAA Environmental Protection Specialist, c/o Leidos, 2877 Guardian Lane, Virginia Beach, VA 23452.

A final "Record of Decision" is expected in Winter 2025, which will determine whether SpaceX receives the license to begin Starship launches from Florida.

McArthur launched on two spaceflights, logging 213 days in orbit across her nearly 25 years, and held leadership positions at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. She lifted off on her first mission in 2009, aboard space shuttle Atlantis on the STS-125 mission — the final servicing flight to the Hubble Space Telescope. She later became the first woman to pilot SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft, which ferried her to the International Space Station (ISS) for her first and only long-duration mission, in 2021.

Both assignments solidified McArthur's place in NASA history as the last astronaut to physically interface with Hubble, and one of the first to steer the space agency into an era of commercial spaceflight.

McArthur was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and moved frequently around the country with her family as a "Navy kid," according to a NASA statement. She studied aerospace engineering at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) before earning a doctorate in oceanography from UC San Diego's Scripps Institution. She was selected in 2000 as a member of NASA's newest astronaut class at the time.

She is married to NASA astronaut Bob Behnken, who piloted Crew Dragon Endeavor on SpaceX's first crewed flight, Demo-2, in 2020. McArthur launched on the same spacecraft just under a year later for her crew rotation stint aboard the ISS.

That mission, Crew-2, launched in April 2021 and was SpaceX's second operational mission to the orbital lab. McArthur and three crewmates spent six months aboard the ISS, where she served as flight engineer for Expeditions 65/66. While on orbit, she supported station maintenance and research investigations into human physiology, robotics and materials science.

McArthur flew aboard Atlantis in May 2009 as a part of NASA's final flight to conduct repairs and upgrades to Hubble. During the two-week STS-125 mission, McArthur operated the shuttle's robotic arm to grapple the space telescope while her crewmates worked on the observatory over the course of five spacewalks.

Hubble was already approaching its second decade in space during STS-125. Thanks to that servicing mission, the iconic observatory has provided unprecedented views of the cosmos and discoveries over the more than 15 years since McArthur's mission, and continues to operate today. NASA credits McArthur as the last person to "touch" the observatory after releasing Hubble from Atlantis's robotic arm at the end of the STS-125 mission, NASA's statement adds.

"Her contributions have helped shape the future of human space exploration, and we are incredibly grateful for her service," said acting JSC Director Steve Koerner in the statement.

Between her two spaceflights, McArthur joined the ranks of NASA leadership at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. In 2017, she began her position as the assistant director of flight operations for the ISS, and in 2019 became deputy division chief of the Astronaut Office, where she supported astronaut training and development.

In 2022, McArthur joined JSC's public visitor facility, Space Center Houston, as chief science officer, where she works to promote spaceflight and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) themes to students and families visiting the center. She will continue this role after her NASA departure.

"It was an incredible privilege to serve as a NASA astronaut, working with scientists from around the world on cutting-edge research that continues to have a lasting impact here on Earth and prepares humanity for future exploration at the moon and Mars," McArthur said in the statement. "Seeing our beautiful planet from space makes it so clear how fragile and precious our home is, and how vital it is that we protect it. I am grateful I had the opportunity to contribute to this work, and I'm excited to watch our brilliant engineers and scientists at NASA conquer new challenges and pursue further scientific discoveries for the benefit of all."

The latest exercise, called the Integrated Air Drop Test (IADT-01), was carried out at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on Aug. 24. A full-size mock-up of the Gaganyaan Crew Module — the capsule that will carry astronauts — was lifted by an Indian Air Force helicopter to a height of about 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) and then released, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a recent update.

"This test successfully demonstrated the objective of end-to-end performance validation of the critical parachute-based deceleration system of the Crew Module for Gaganyaan mission in one of the typical mission scenarios," the statement read.

During the test, the capsule deployed 10 parachutes in a carefully timed sequence, slowing safely for a water landing. The system performed as intended, reducing the capsule's speed to a safe level before splashdown, after which it was successfully recovered by the Indian Navy, according to the statement.

The exercise also simulated a launch pad abort scenario, confirming that the safety systems respond correctly under emergency conditions. ISRO said that additional tests are planned in the coming days to further verify the system's reliability.

This summer, Indian space minister Jitendra Singh noted that development of the Gaganyaan ground support hardware and launch vehicle is about 90% complete, with only the final phases of qualification remaining.

India now plans to send astronauts into space no earlier than 2027, following a series of delays that have shifted the original 2022 target, in part due to technical issues and also challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. The nation's historic first human spaceflight will be preceded by four uncrewed missions to test Gaganyaan's Human-rated Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (HLVM-3) rocket and ground infrastructure.

The first of these long-delayed uncrewed missions, known as G1, is expected to launch in December this year. It will carry a half-humanoid robot named Vyomitra (Sanskrit for "space friend") to collect data and validate technology, while also testing the crew and service modules, reentry procedures, and a safe splashdown in the Bay of Bengal.

The program recently added a fourth uncrewed test flight after the Indian government allocated an additional 111 billion rupees (about $1.32 billion US) to the program. If G1 proceeds as planned, the remaining uncrewed test flights will be completed by 2026, with G2 and G3 also scheduled for that year, according to ISRO.

Following these test flights, the first crewed mission, dubbed H1, is expected to launch in the first quarter of 2027. It will carry one or two astronauts to low Earth orbit, roughly 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the planet. Success would make India the fourth country to independently launch humans into space, after the Soviet Union/Russia,the United States and China.

India's astronauts, or Gaganyatris, for the H1 and H2 missions were selected in February 2024. They are Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, Ajit Krishnan, Angad Pratap and Shubhanshu Shukla, all test pilots in the Indian Air Force.

Since their initial selection in 2019, the team has trained in Russia and the U.S., with Shukla recently flying to the International Space Station aboard the private Axiom-4 mission. The quartet has also enrolled in a Master's program at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, where they are studying various aspects of the space program. Meanwhile, Krishnan has continued to log flying hours at his IAF base between ISRO commitments, according to reporting by ThePrint.

"No amount of training feels enough when it comes to representing your country in space, but what I realized is that there is always more than one way of doing something, and the more knowledge you gain, the better you become," Nair told ThePrint.

Current life-support systems such as those on the International Space Station (ISS) rely on bulky centrifuges to separate the oxygen and hydrogen bubbles created when water is split by electricity, a process known as electrolysis. On Earth, bubbles rise away from electrodes, but in microgravity, spinning is required to separate them. This method works, but the equipment is heavy, power-hungry and is ill-suited for long-duration missions to the moon or Mars.

A new study led by Alvaro Romero-Calvo of the Georgia Institute of Technology, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Bremen’s Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) and the University of Warwick, has demonstrated a simpler, lighter and more sustainable solution in the form of magnets.

The team has shown that magnetic forces can guide gas bubbles in microgravity to collection spots, eliminating the need for mechanical spinning from heavy centrifuges. Their findings were published this month in the journal Nature Chemistry.

"In this paper, we demonstrate that two largely unexplored magnetic interactions — diamagnetism and magnetohydrodynamics — provide an exciting pathway to solve this problem and develop alternative oxygen production architectures," Romero-Calvo said in a statement.

Using Zarm’s 479-foot-tall (146 meters) drop tower in Bremen, Germany, the team tested the technology, producing an increase in bubble detachment efficiency of up to 240%, which would translate to much more effective electrolysis cells and oxygen generation.

"After four years of hard work, showing that magnetic forces can control electrochemical bubbly flows in microgravity is an exciting step towards more efficient and reliable spacecraft life support systems," said Romero-Calvo.

The approach was first developed by Romero-Calvo as part of his doctoral thesis, and then proven feasible through a grant from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program.

The team is now set to continue the research under NIAC and European Space Agency (ESA) programs to assess the implementation, scalability and long-term efficiency of different water-splitting architectures relying on magnetism using both the microgravity drop tower and suborbital rocket experiments. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) also supported the research.

Researchers from Kyoto University in Japan did just this: They froze the spermatogonial stem cells of mice through a process called cryopreservation, then kept them on the International Space Station (ISS) for six months. Once back on Earth, researchers injected the same spermatogonial stem cells — which are cells located in the testes that play a crucial role in sperm production — back into the testes of mice. After a few months, following natural mating patterns, healthy mice babies were born with relatively normal gene expression.

Researchers were pleasantly surprised to find that spaceflight did not affect how well the germ cells sustained themselves through cryopreservation, underlining an important option for future human use.

"It is important to examine how long we can store germ cells in the ISS to better understand the limits of storage for future human spaceflight," the study's first author Mito Kanatsu-Shinohara of Kyoto University said in a statement.

Human reproduction in space is uncharted waters, though as the Kyoto University researchers pointed out in their paper, successful Earth-centered reproductive technology such as embryo freezing may currently have "limited applications," as other research has found that embryonic cells may be "particularly sensitive to spaceflight," and have problems developing properly. (Embryos are the youngest form of human offspring, representing the earliest days and weeks of development after an egg is fertilized. For reproductive technology procedures including in-vitro fertilization, embryos are created in a lab and frozen at days-old ages.)

Scientists of the study also pointed out that arguably more simple procedures such as freeze-drying sperm itself (rather than the cells that assist in healthy sperm production), may carry health risks for future offspring, making more research into germ cell preservation techniques crucial for safe long-haul space exploration.

In terms of humans actually reproducing in space, however, scientists may just be scratching the surface as studies of pregnancy in space are limited to animals — and also potentially more limited to men, as fewer women have traveled to space.

While research has found that menstruation itself (the bleeding portion of the menstrual cycle) is largely unaffected by spaceflight, how microgravity and radiation affects follicular development (the phase of the menstrual cycle where an egg is matured and selected for ovulation) and ovulation (the release of an egg for potential pregnancy) in humans requires further research. As space gynecologist Dr. Varsha Jain pointed out in an article for BBC's Science Focus, reproductive health research on Earth itself is often lacking — the idea of space conception and birth is even more theoretical than that.

The results of the study were published in August in the journal Stem Cell Reports.

The 2025 class of NASA astronaut candidates will be announced Sept. 22 during a livestreamed event at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston that begins at 12:30 p.m. EDT (1630 GMT; 11:30 a.m. local time in Houston).

You can catch coverage of the event on NASA+, Netflix, Amazon Prime, NASA's YouTube channel, and the agency's X account. Space.com will also simulcast the event, if NASA makes its stream available.

The selectees were narrowed down from a field of 8,000 applicants. The new astronaut candidates will next undergo roughly two years of training at NASA before being certified as full astronauts, eligible for future missions.

NASA also plans to host several media briefings on Sept. 23 and Sept. 24 to discuss the Artemis 2 mission that will send four astronauts around the moon no earlier than April 2026. These events will stream live on NASA's YouTube channel and X account (as well as at Space.com, if possible).

On board Artemis 2 will be NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot) and Christina Koch (mission specialist), and Canadian Space Agency astronaut and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen. Glover will be the first Black astronaut ever to fly a moon mission, while Koch will be the first woman and Hansen the first non-American.

Here are the scheduled briefings for Artemis 2:

Tuesday, Sept. 23:

11 a.m. EDT (10 a.m. local time, 1500 GMT): Mission overview briefing with the following participants

• Lakiesha Hawkins, acting deputy associate administrator, Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
• Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch director, NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida
• Judd Frieling, lead Artemis 2 ascent flight director, NASA Johnson
• Jeff Radigan, lead Artemis 2 flight director, NASA Johnson
• Rick Henfling, lead Artemis 2 entry flight director, NASA Johnson
• Daniel Florez, test director, Exploration Ground Systems, NASA Kennedy

1 p.m. EDT (12 p.m. local time, 1700 GMT): Artemis 2 science and technology briefing with the following participants:

• Matt Ramsey, Artemis 2 mission manager, NASA Headquarters
• Debbie Korth, deputy Orion Program manager, NASA Johnson
• Jacob Bleacher, manager, Science, Technology Utilization, and Integration, Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
• Mark Clampin, acting deputy associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters

Wednesday, Sept. 24

10 a.m. EDT (12 p.m. local time, 1400 GMT): Artemis 2 crew news conference featuring:

• Reid Wiseman, commander
• Victor Glover, pilot
• Christina Koch, mission specialist
• Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist

Orbital observation

In 2011, on his third mission, Mike Fincke set a new record for cumulative time in space by an American astronaut — 381 days. That record has since been surpassed by several astronauts, but this week Fincke notched a personal milestone.

On Wednesday (Aug. 20), Fincke reached this 400th day on the International Space Station (spread over four flights). He is now the ninth American and 38th person worldwide to have surpassed 400 days off Earth.

Mission Control in Houston celebrated the occasion with a special display on the room's large front screen, which Fincke and his crewmates could see via a live video connection.

Science status

Among the research that was conducted by the Expedition 73 crew aboard the space station this week was:

Bio-Monitor — Flight engineer Jonny Kim with NASA spent two days this week wearing a Canadian-designed vest to collect data about the health of his heart and blood flow. The garment is intended to ease taking physiological measurements without being as intrusive as separate electrodes and other apparatuses.

Immunity Assay — Kimiya Yui with JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) collected saliva and blood samples and froze them for their later return to Earth as part of a study looking into the effects of microgravity on cellular immune functions.

CIPHER — As part of a collection of 14 ongoing studies, NASA astronaut Zena Cardman used the ARED, or Advanced Resistive Exercise Device, to see how much force she could register while performing static dead lifts. She also used ARED to exercise her back, shoulders, biceps and triceps before running on a treadmill.

Ultrasound 2 — Cardman and Kim also worked together to use an ultrasound device to scan Cardman's arteries as another part of the CIPHER studies.

Station keeping

The Expedition 73 crewmates also took part in activities to maintain the space station's systems and prepare for future research.

Kubik — Jonny Kim and Kimiya Yui set up two incubators in the European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory. The small, temperature-controlled devices will be used with upcoming self-contained research investigations.

Suit cams — Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke worked in the U.S. Quest airlock to service high-definition cameras that are mounted to extravehicular mobility unit (EMU) helmet assemblies. As part of the work, Fincke peeled off and reapplied the foil tape that shields the cameras from the extreme temperatures of the vacuum of space.

Progress MS-30 (91P) — Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky, both with the Russian space agency Roscosmos, wrapped up stowing spent equipment and refuse aboard this Russian cargo spacecraft and closed its hatch. The Progress will depart the station in September and be destroyed in Earth's atmosphere.

Preparations were also underway for the next U.S. supply delivery. SpaceX is working toward launching the CRS-33 Dragon spacecraft this weekend (Sunday, Aug. 24).

Astronaut activity

Try as he might, Kimiya Yui was unable to capture any images of transcient luminous events (TLE) during his previous stay on the International Space Station. This week, his luck changed.

"Yesterday, we managed to capture it twice — what luck! This post is wishing everyone good fortune as well!" wrote Yui on social media on Tuesday (Aug. 19).

"While lightning is terrifying from the ground, it looks beautiful when seen from space, which is a bit unsettling," he wrote. "It was purely by chance that I managed to capture [the red sprite] amidst a lot of lightning, so it was just a matter of luck."

By the numbers

As of Friday (Aug. 15), there are 7 people aboard the International Space Station: Expedition 73 commander Sergey Ryzhikov of Roscosmos; fellow cosmonauts Alexey Zubritsky and Oleg Platonov; Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke of NASA; and Kimiya Yui of JAXA, all flight engineers.

There are two docked crew spacecraft: SpaceX's Dragon "Endeavour" attached to the zenith port of the Harmony module and Roscosmos' Soyuz MS-27 attached to the Earth-facing port of the Prichal node.

There are two docked cargo spacecraft: Roscosmos' Progress MS-30 (91P) attached to the aft port of the Zvezda service module, and Progress MS-31 (92P) docked to the space-facing port of the Poisk module.

As of Friday, the space station has been continuously crewed for 24 years and 9 months and 20 days.

Russia just sent a mini menagerie to orbit.

The Bion-M No. 2 biosatellite launched atop a Soyuz rocket from the Russia-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan today (Aug. 20), rising off the pad at 1:13 p.m. EDT (1713 GMT; 10:13 p.m. local time in Kazakhstan).

Onboard are 75 mice and 1,000 fruit flies, along with a variety of microbes, cell cultures and plant seeds. These living payloads will spend a month circling Earth, to help scientists gauge the effects of spaceflight on organisms and their various systems.

As its name suggests, the newly launched mission is the second in Russia's Bion-M line of space-medicine investigations, the successor to the nation's previous Bion program. (The last of the original Bion missions, Bion 11, flew in 1996.)

Bion-M No. 1 launched in April 2013, sending a diverse assemblage of creatures to low Earth orbit for 30 days. These payloads included "rodents, amphibians, reptiles, crustaceans, mollusks, fish, insects, bacteria, plant and animal cell cultures," according to a NASA mission description.

Bion-M No. 2 was supposed to follow in 2016 or 2017 but was beset by a series of delays, as Anatoly Zak of RussianSpaceWeb.com noted. Everything was finally ready today, and the spacecraft got off the ground at long last.

Like its predecessor, Bion-M No. 2 is expected to circle Earth for a month. It will do so in a different orbit, however — one that takes it over the poles, increasing the exposure to cosmic radiation substantially compared to Bion-M No. 1.

The mission's capsule will then parachute back to Earth, where it will be retrieved and taken back to the lab. Researchers will pore over the payloads, studying how the various organisms — and simulated moon dirt and rock, which also launched on Bion-M No. 2 — were affected by microgravity and radiation.

Such work is designed to help Russia prepare for human exploration of deep-space locales, particularly the moon.

Russia is targeting Earth's nearest neighbor in the relatively near future: It's a partner on the International Lunar Research Station, a China-led effort to establish a crewed moon base in the 2030s.

Researchers from Houston Methodist hospital’s Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery reported the results of their recent study that probed whether astronauts experience sinonasal issues, which include common symptoms such as nasal congestion and pressure or pain in the face, while in space. Sixty out of 71 (85%) of astronauts included in the study confirmed having such symptoms.

Sinuses refer to the maze of cavities running around our face and skull, which keep us healthy by cleaning the air we breathe and helping balance the fluids in our head. People typically experience unpleasant symptoms in their sinuses or nose when the sinuses become full with too much mucus and are unable to drain properly, or if there’s inflammation.

While it's common to experience some unsavory symptoms when your sinuses are working overtime to ward off intruders in the air, or when your immune system activates to fight off a virus or infection, the study researchers link astronauts' congestion problems to the way microgravity causes fluid in the sinus cavities to shift.

While usually benign here on Earth, study lead author Masayoshi Takashima warns in a press release that it is those very seemingly mild symptoms that can potentially affect things like problem solving or overall health.

"This is about maintaining peak performance," Takashima said. "If you’re not sleeping well because you can't breathe, your cognitive function, reaction time and mission performance can suffer, and those things are absolutely critical in space."

Doubling down on space's effect on the delicate, important irrigation system running through your head, researchers also found that astronauts leaving the cabin for spacewalks were particularly affected by pressure shifts that lead to problems potentially more dangerous than congestion, such as eustachian tube dysfunction, which are issues in the little tubes that connect your ears to your throat.

The nose is just the latest point of interest in astronaut health. As humans expand into outer space, medical research on how our bodies fare in microgravity has been the topic of much research, including space flight’s impact on muscle mass and radiation exposure. And, as the latest memo on astronaut congestion underlines, a key component of human medicine isn't just concern over big medical events, like heart problems, but smaller, more manageable symptoms that affect our well-being in the long run.

A study about these results was published on Aug. 5 in the journal Laryngoscope Investigative Otolaryngology.

Chinese astronauts added more debris shielding to the Tiangong space station during a 6.5-hour spacewalk on Friday (Aug. 15), according to state media.

Two astronauts from the three-person Shenzhou 20 mission ventured outside Tiangong to do the spacewalk, which concluded Friday at 9:27 a.m. EDT (1447 UTC, or 10:47 p.m. in Beijing). It was at least the second effort for the crew to put "debris protection" devices on the three-module space station, following similar work on May 22.

Taikonauts Chen Dong and Wang Jie also inspected and maintained equipment on the exterior of Tiangong, among other duties, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said, according to the state-run broadcaster CCTV.

It was Dong's sixth spacewalk — the most by any Chinese astronaut, CMSA officials said. Assisting the duo from inside Tiangong was Chen Zhongrui, the other member of Shenzhou 20.

The Shenzhou 20 astronauts are more than halfway through their expected six-month orbital stay, after launching from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on April 24. They've been doing experiments in life sciences, microgravity physics, space material science, space medicine and aerospace tech, according to CMSA.

"The space station is operating stably, and the three crew members are in good health," CMSA added in a separate statement ahead of the spacewalk. Friday's extravehicular activity was the third for the crew. Shenzhou 20 has also witnessed the departure of one cargo spacecraft (Tianzhou 8) and the arrival of another (Tianzhou 9).

Shenzhou 20 is the ninth crewed mission to visit Tiangong, which is about 20% as massive as the International Space Station and shaped like a T. China completed assembly of the outpost in October 2022, but is considering putting on more modules in future missions.

Dong, the commander, is on his third spaceflight, while Zhongrui and Jie are rookies.

The Bion-M No. 2 biosatellite is being readied for its planned Aug. 20 launch atop a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Onboard are 75 mice and other specimens to be exposed to 30 days of radiation before a parachute-aided return to Russia.

Bion-M No. 2 is being dubbed a "Noah's Ark," because it's loaded with the mice, more than 1,000 fruit flies, cell cultures, microorganisms and plant seeds.

Moon simulants, too

Also onboard is a payload tied to future exploration of the moon.

The Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry teamed with the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems (IMBP) to produce a container holding 16 test tubes. The vials hold lunar simulants – dust and rocks — that mimic surface materials found at high latitudes on the moon.

The lunar simulants will be evaluated after their return to Earth, to see how they were affected by the radiation and vacuum of space. This work will provide insight into moon construction ideas, according to Russian space officials.

Radiation susceptibility

According to the IMBP, the Bion-M No. 2 mission will gather a variety of data, including:

• Information on the effects of microgravity on organisms' radiation susceptibility, which could aid planning for future deep-space missions;
• Data that could aid the development of adjusted requirements for astronaut medical support;
• Information on the biological effects of spaceflight that's applicable to medicine here on Earth.

Of mice, men and women

Bion-M No. 2 will reportedly be lofted into a nearly circular orbit at an inclination of roughly 97 degrees — a pole-to-pole orbit — and remain in space for 30 days. That orbit will increase the level of cosmic radiation by at least an order of magnitude compared to that seen on the Bion-M No. 1 spacecraft launched back in April 2013. That spacecraft also remained in Earth orbit for 30 days but flew on a different orbit.

Scientists from the Space Research Institute (IKI) of the Russian Academy of sciences and IMBP will have put more than 10 experiments on the biosatellite.

Mice were chosen for several different reasons. Their genes are quite similar to those of human ones, their short life cycle allows researchers to trace the dynamics of changes across generations, and they have increased sensitivity to radiation, according to Roscosmos, Russia's space agency.

Real-time data

Scientists have prepared three groups of mice. The first group will live in familiar conditions here on Earth. The second group will live in a ground laboratory in flight equipment, serving as a control group. The third group of mice will spend 30 days in orbit.

Researchers will receive real-time data on the condition of the rodents using special cameras and sensors inside the boxes that contain them. Each mouse-carrying unit is outfitted with feeding, lighting, ventilation and waste-disposal systems. Chips will be implanted in some rodents.

After the mice return to Earth, researchers will study how they adapted to space and readapted post-flight.

Roscosmos noted that the mission will assist scientists in appraising how spaceflight affects living organisms, in an environment where radiation levels are approximately 30% higher than other near-Earth orbits. This type of data is viewed as central to prepare humans for long-distance spaceflight.