NASA just put a 30-day clock on a $700 million Mars contract, and the deadline tells you everything about how scared the agency is of losing its relay orbiters before astronauts arrive

NASA's Mars relay infrastructure is dying, and the agency just put a 30-day clock on finding a replacement.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · May 16, 2026

Latest

Greenland sharks can live for more than 400 years — meaning some of the ones swimming the North Atlantic today were alive when Isaac Newton was — and almost all of them spend those centuries functionally blind, navigating the deep ocean with parasites permanently attached to their eyes.

The Greenland shark has become a fixture of popular science writing in the way of a small number of charismatic creatures: the immortal jellyfish, the deep-sea tube worm, the bristlecone pine.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · May 17, 2026

Constellations

The two Voyager probes are slowly running out of power, and the engineers keeping them alive are now making the hardest decisions of the mission: which scientific instruments to switch off next, knowing each command may silence a piece of interstellar science forever.

Both Voyager spacecraft are now operating with the smallest sets of active science instruments in their nearly 49-year history.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · May 17, 2026

Constellations

Apollo 11’s guidance software couldn’t be patched at the last minute. It was woven with copper wire by women at Raytheon, where one mistake could mean starting again

Apollo 11 launched on 16 July 1969 with a 70-pound guidance computer and a flight program that was already physically committed to copper wire.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · May 16, 2026

Human Behaviour

Europe launches a new mission to image Earth's magnetic shield in 2026 while the operational satellite warning of solar storms is a 1995 spacecraft running 28 years past retirement — the gap between discovery science and operational continuity within a single agency

In a clean room in French Guiana, technicians are preparing a spacecraft called Smile — the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer — for launch.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · May 16, 2026

Psychology

Psychology suggests stargazing might be better for us than we realize

Step outside on a clear night in rural Ireland and the sky is just there. No app to open, no announcement, no preamble.

By Mal James · May 16, 2026

What’s up in

Space

Industry news, exploration, and the engineering of getting humans and machines beyond Earth.

Constellations

What Mars Express just photographed in Shalbatana Vallis isn't just an ancient flood channel — it's the strongest topographic argument yet that Mars once held a real ocean

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Constellations

A solar radio burst that should have faded in days kept screaming for three weeks — and the structure feeding it rewrites what counts as a transient event on the Sun

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Constellations

A trajectory study suggests spacecraft may not need to meet Earth-moon L1 exactly — and that small mathematical shortcut could matter for the next decade of lunar logistics

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Constellations

Iridium just bought out the company tracking 190,000 flights a day, and the $367 million price tag is really a bet that GPS is quietly becoming unreliable

By Space Daily Editorial Team

What’s up in

Mind & Meaning

The psychology of ambition, isolation, and meaning under extremes — and what frontier life teaches us about being human.

Human Behaviour

Europe launches a new mission to image Earth's magnetic shield in 2026 while the operational satellite warning of solar storms is a 1995 spacecraft running 28 years past retirement — the gap between discovery science and operational continuity within a single agency

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Human Behaviour

Forty years and multi-tonne xenon detectors have brought dark-matter searches to the 'neutrino fog' without a signal, while a tentative hint surfaces in LIGO data built to listen for colliding black holes — and the pattern of paradigms exhausting themselves into adjacent instruments is older than physics admits

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Human Behaviour

A joint European-Chinese magnetosphere mission launches in 2026 — the same year Brussels closes most of its €93.5 billion Horizon Europe programme to Chinese institutions, and the carve-out reveals which knowledge Europe still classifies as 'merely curious'

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Human Behaviour

Intuitive Machines is buying a global ground-station network for $49.6 million after landing two probes on their sides — and the sequencing tells you which moats the CLPS contracting model rewards first

By Space Daily Editorial Team

What’s up in

Science

Physics, climate, planetary science, and the research that shapes how we understand the universe.

Climate Science

Abandoned coal mines may be releasing hidden carbon into the air, but researchers think the same drainage could also point toward a cheaper kind of climate fix

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Science

Greenland sharks can live for more than 400 years — meaning some of the ones swimming the North Atlantic today were alive when Isaac Newton was — and almost all of them spend those centuries functionally blind, navigating the deep ocean with parasites permanently attached to their eyes.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Psychology

Psychology suggests stargazing might be better for us than we realize

By Mal James

Psychology

Quote by Carl Sagan: “Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let them live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another”

By Daniel Moran

About Space Daily

Space, science, and the human side of the frontier. Since 1995.

Space Daily is an independent publication covering three connected beats: the space industry, the science behind it, and the psychology of ambition, isolation, and meaning under extremes. Founded in Tokyo in 1995, we’ve built a thirty-year archive of rigorous reporting on the people, missions, and ideas pushing humanity outward — and on the human dynamics shaped by frontier life. The same ambitions, pressures, and patterns of mind that drive humanity to the stars also shape how we live on Earth. We employ modern AI technologies to support our editorial workflows; every published piece is editorially directed and reviewed.

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NASA just put a 30-day clock on a $700 million Mars contract, and the deadline tells you everything about how scared the agency is of losing its relay orbiters before astronauts arrive

Greenland sharks can live for more than 400 years — meaning some of the ones swimming the North Atlantic today were alive when Isaac Newton was — and almost all of them spend those centuries functionally blind, navigating the deep ocean with parasites permanently attached to their eyes.

The two Voyager probes are slowly running out of power, and the engineers keeping them alive are now making the hardest decisions of the mission: which scientific instruments to switch off next, knowing each command may silence a piece of interstellar science forever.

Apollo 11’s guidance software couldn’t be patched at the last minute. It was woven with copper wire by women at Raytheon, where one mistake could mean starting again

Europe launches a new mission to image Earth's magnetic shield in 2026 while the operational satellite warning of solar storms is a 1995 spacecraft running 28 years past retirement — the gap between discovery science and operational continuity within a single agency

Psychology suggests stargazing might be better for us than we realize

What Mars Express just photographed in Shalbatana Vallis isn't just an ancient flood channel — it's the strongest topographic argument yet that Mars once held a real ocean

A solar radio burst that should have faded in days kept screaming for three weeks — and the structure feeding it rewrites what counts as a transient event on the Sun

A trajectory study suggests spacecraft may not need to meet Earth-moon L1 exactly — and that small mathematical shortcut could matter for the next decade of lunar logistics

Iridium just bought out the company tracking 190,000 flights a day, and the $367 million price tag is really a bet that GPS is quietly becoming unreliable

Europe launches a new mission to image Earth's magnetic shield in 2026 while the operational satellite warning of solar storms is a 1995 spacecraft running 28 years past retirement — the gap between discovery science and operational continuity within a single agency

A joint European-Chinese magnetosphere mission launches in 2026 — the same year Brussels closes most of its €93.5 billion Horizon Europe programme to Chinese institutions, and the carve-out reveals which knowledge Europe still classifies as 'merely curious'

Intuitive Machines is buying a global ground-station network for $49.6 million after landing two probes on their sides — and the sequencing tells you which moats the CLPS contracting model rewards first

Abandoned coal mines may be releasing hidden carbon into the air, but researchers think the same drainage could also point toward a cheaper kind of climate fix

Greenland sharks can live for more than 400 years — meaning some of the ones swimming the North Atlantic today were alive when Isaac Newton was — and almost all of them spend those centuries functionally blind, navigating the deep ocean with parasites permanently attached to their eyes.

Psychology suggests stargazing might be better for us than we realize

Quote by Carl Sagan: “Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let them live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another”

About Space Daily

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