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Space News from SpaceDaily.Com brings the space industry professional daily news from the frontier, with contract, bid, launch and on-orbit satellite news as it happens.
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- Jun 15, 2026earliest in window
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A Breakthrough Listen survey was thought to have covered about 288,000 stars catalogued by Gaia. But a new simulation of the Milky Way estimates that more than 6.18 million stars actually fell within its radio-telescope beams—millions of potential worlds too faint or distant for Gaia to catalogue reliably, yet still within range if they were transmitting strongly enough.
10+ hour, 40+ min ago (1228+ words) A Besançon Galaxy Model reanalysis expands Breakthrough Listen's stellar bycatch to 6,182,364 simulated objects, while strong transmitter limits remain conditional on distance, power and duty cycle....
On 5 September 1977 Voyager 1 left Cape Canaveral at 721.9 kg; as of 21 August 2024 it was 164.7 AU from Earth, moving about 38,027 mph relative to the Sun and still returning data
19+ hour, 41+ min ago (177+ words) Nearly five decades after launch, humanity's most distant emissary continues whispering back from the edge of the solar system, defying every expectation of how long a machine can survive in the void....
After more than 50 years, a solar telescope in New Mexico is being pulled down, after liquid mercury from the bearing that let its 250-ton optical system turn was found inside the tower. Crews found the metal on January 5.
2+ day, 2+ hour ago (575+ words) By The Daily Orbit Published September 11, 2026 · How we edit A solar telescope in New Mexico is being torn down, and the reason is a pool of liquid mercury hidden inside it. The mercury was the clever trick that made the…...
Opportunity’s solar panels were mysteriously getting cleaner long before the rover ever saw the suspected culprit: it did not photograph its first Martian dust devil until six and a half years after landing.
2+ day, 5+ hour ago (1267+ words) Opportunity’s changing power output recorded repeated wind-cleaning events years before its camera caught a dust devil. The six-and-a-half-year gap reveals the difference between detecting an effect and identifying its cause. By Mission Notes · Edited by Lachlan Brown Published September 10, 2026 · How…...
NASA lost a $125 million spacecraft at Mars because one engineering team used English units while another expected metric — the mismatch quietly pushed the orbiter onto the wrong trajectory after nine months in space
2+ day, 12+ hour ago (231+ words) A decade of planning and a quarter-billion dollars in funding vanished in seconds when two teams speaking different measurement languages sent a spacecraft crashing into Mars....
Olympus Mons grew so massive that parts of its lower flanks catastrophically collapsed, sending broken rock sliding hundreds of kilometres across the Martian plains—possibly lubricated when hot lava melted buried ice.
3+ day, 8+ hour ago (718+ words) Orbital evidence links Olympus Mons's aureole to immense flank failures. Water or ice may explain the long runout, but lava-driven melting remains one proposed mechanism....
In 1962, Canada’s first satellite went into orbit with a planned life of 1 year — Alouette sent useful data for more than 10 years, carrying long antennas that had been packed for launch by rolling the metal strips up like a carpenter’s measuring tape.
3+ day, 10+ hour ago (529+ words) Alouette I exceeded its one-year design life and used antennas that unrolled from compact coils into long tubular structures. Its radio observations left an enduring archive....
On 28 October 1971, a British Black Arrow rocket put Prospero into orbit from the Australian desert — Parliament had been told on 29 July that the programme would end after this flight, leaving the next rocket to become an unflown museum exhibit.
3+ day, 16+ hour ago (611+ words) Black Arrow launched Prospero after Parliament had been told the programme would end. The unflown R4 rocket preserved the next step that never happened....
In 1996, astronauts paid out 19.7 kilometres of cable from the shuttle Columbia to test electricity generation in orbit — the system reached 3,500 volts before an electrical arc burned through the tether and sent the satellite drifting away from its ship.
3+ day, 19+ hour ago (673+ words) Columbia’s TSS-1R experiment deployed 19.7 kilometres of tether before electrical arcing caused a break. The lost satellite still left useful data about electricity generation in orbit....
In 1965, MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory launched LES-1, which stopped transmitting two years later — but in 2012 amateurs heard it again at 237 MHz, and its builders now record the old satellite as it passes overhead in sunlight, using a rooftop antenna.
3+ day, 23+ hour ago (968+ words) After decades of silence, LES-1 was heard again in 2012. Lincoln Laboratory now records its sunlight-powered radio tone from a rooftop antenna. By Mission Notes · Edited by Lachlan Brown Published September 9, 2026 · How we edit LES-1 stopped transmitting after two years of…...