The energy debate around AI keeps anchoring on the watt-hours behind a single prompt. The figure that actually matters is the 415 terawatt-hours the world's data centres used in 2024, and the IEA's projection that demand will roughly double by 2030.

The number that gets quoted most about AI's energy use is the one attached to a single prompt.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · Jun 4, 2026

Latest

When Soviet engineers launched the N1 moon rocket from Baikonur in July 1969, it climbed about 200 metres before falling back onto Site 110 and exploding with an estimated seven kilotons of energy, destroying a launch pad in a disaster the USSR kept hidden for two decades

On July 3, 1969, at 23:18 Moscow time, the Soviet Union’s N1 moon rocket lifted off from Site 110 at Baikonur, climbed roughly 200 metres, tilted, and fell back onto the launch complex it had just left.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · Jun 4, 2026

Aerospace

It is impossible to burp in space, because in microgravity the human stomach cannot separate gas from the liquid and partially digested food it sits inside, and any attempt to burp expels a mixture of all three directly into the astronaut's mouth.

The mechanism behind a burp on Earth is something most humans do not stop to think about.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · Jun 4, 2026

Constellations

In December 1970, the Soviet Venera 7 probe became the first spacecraft to transmit from another planet, sending 23 minutes of faint temperature data from Venus after a torn parachute tipped it onto its side and buried its signal in what engineers first dismissed as tape noise

On 15 December 1970, a reinforced Soviet capsule hit Venus at roughly highway speed, tipped onto its side, and kept whispering through the heat.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · Jun 4, 2026

Flora And Fauna

A 2015 study put the planet's tree count at more than three trillion, while the Milky Way holds perhaps 100 to 400 billion stars. The same study carried a sting, though: we have roughly halved the world's trees since farming began.

The comparison sounds hard to believe but the numbers back it up. Earth carries more individual trees than the Milky Way carries stars, and the gap is wide.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · Jun 4, 2026

Constellations

In 2025, NASA quietly opened the commander's seat on private missions to the International Space Station to astronauts who never wore its patch, and the first man in line is Thomas Pesquet, a Frenchman who has commanded the station before and will return in 2027 flying for a California startup

Thomas Pesquet has spent close to 400 days in space across two missions, run the International Space Station as its commander, and logged more spacewalk time than any other European.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · Jun 4, 2026

What’s up in

Mind & Meaning

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

Science

A tongue-eating louse called Cymothoa exigua swims into a fish's gills, latches onto its tongue, drinks the blood until the tongue withers and falls off, and then spends the rest of its life acting as a functional replacement tongue the fish uses normally to eat.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Science

One of the earliest great extinctions in Earth's history may have been caused not by an asteroid or a volcano but by oxygen itself, when tiny photosynthetic microbes slowly filled the air with a gas that was poison to much of the anaerobic life that ruled the planet long before us

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Science

The Pacific Ocean is so large that all the world’s land could fit inside it, and there would still be room left over, which is why calling Earth a “blue planet” is almost an understatement

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Science

The asteroid that ended the dinosaurs did not just leave a crater, it turned the sky into a weapon, and the worst damage may have come after the impact itself was already over

By Space Daily Editorial Team

What’s up in

Science

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

Aerospace

It is impossible to burp in space, because in microgravity the human stomach cannot separate gas from the liquid and partially digested food it sits inside, and any attempt to burp expels a mixture of all three directly into the astronaut's mouth.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Science

Scientists say the gold in wedding rings, teeth, and family heirlooms was forged in cosmic catastrophes long before our sun existed

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Earth Observation

The Pacific Ocean is so vast that every continent, every island, and every desert on Earth could fit inside it with room to spare, which is why calling our planet blue is almost an understatement

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Science

Scientists say the oxygen you just breathed in was once the deadliest poison on the planet, released by tiny microbes that accidentally wiped out most of the life around them in what geologists call the Great Oxidation Event

By Space Daily Editorial Team

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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The energy debate around AI keeps anchoring on the watt-hours behind a single prompt. The figure that actually matters is the 415 terawatt-hours the world's data centres used in 2024, and the IEA's projection that demand will roughly double by 2030.

When Soviet engineers launched the N1 moon rocket from Baikonur in July 1969, it climbed about 200 metres before falling back onto Site 110 and exploding with an estimated seven kilotons of energy, destroying a launch pad in a disaster the USSR kept hidden for two decades

It is impossible to burp in space, because in microgravity the human stomach cannot separate gas from the liquid and partially digested food it sits inside, and any attempt to burp expels a mixture of all three directly into the astronaut's mouth.

In December 1970, the Soviet Venera 7 probe became the first spacecraft to transmit from another planet, sending 23 minutes of faint temperature data from Venus after a torn parachute tipped it onto its side and buried its signal in what engineers first dismissed as tape noise

A 2015 study put the planet's tree count at more than three trillion, while the Milky Way holds perhaps 100 to 400 billion stars. The same study carried a sting, though: we have roughly halved the world's trees since farming began.

In 2025, NASA quietly opened the commander's seat on private missions to the International Space Station to astronauts who never wore its patch, and the first man in line is Thomas Pesquet, a Frenchman who has commanded the station before and will return in 2027 flying for a California startup

A tongue-eating louse called Cymothoa exigua swims into a fish's gills, latches onto its tongue, drinks the blood until the tongue withers and falls off, and then spends the rest of its life acting as a functional replacement tongue the fish uses normally to eat.

One of the earliest great extinctions in Earth's history may have been caused not by an asteroid or a volcano but by oxygen itself, when tiny photosynthetic microbes slowly filled the air with a gas that was poison to much of the anaerobic life that ruled the planet long before us

The Pacific Ocean is so large that all the world’s land could fit inside it, and there would still be room left over, which is why calling Earth a “blue planet” is almost an understatement

The asteroid that ended the dinosaurs did not just leave a crater, it turned the sky into a weapon, and the worst damage may have come after the impact itself was already over

It is impossible to burp in space, because in microgravity the human stomach cannot separate gas from the liquid and partially digested food it sits inside, and any attempt to burp expels a mixture of all three directly into the astronaut's mouth.

Scientists say the gold in wedding rings, teeth, and family heirlooms was forged in cosmic catastrophes long before our sun existed

The Pacific Ocean is so vast that every continent, every island, and every desert on Earth could fit inside it with room to spare, which is why calling our planet blue is almost an understatement

Scientists say the oxygen you just breathed in was once the deadliest poison on the planet, released by tiny microbes that accidentally wiped out most of the life around them in what geologists call the Great Oxidation Event

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