Anil Menon, a NASA flight surgeon, felt crushed nine years ago as his hopes and aspirations collapsed around him.

For the fourth time, he had diligently applied to become an astronaut at the US space agency, seeking to fulfill a lifelong dream. Although he made it to the final round, NASA had once again rejected his application at the end of the grueling process.

“I was so sad, and I admitted defeat,” Menon said. “I just did not see a pathway forward. So I pretty much, at that point in time, gave up on being an astronaut. I thought there was a zero percent chance.”

He was 39 years old. In 2017, Menon was already half a decade older than the average age of those selected to become astronaut candidates. He felt a door closing, and looking for a new one to open, devoted time to thinking deeply about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

His life was not without adventure up to that point—far from it. An emergency physician by training, Menon had practiced medicine on Mount Everest, provided relief in Port-au-Prince after a devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010, and flown search-and-rescue missions with the US military in Afghanistan.

As he considered what should come next, Menon journaled daily about his passions, purpose, and principles. Eventually, he settled on space medicine. If he could not go to space, he would help others do so. And collectively, humanity would advance. “I needed that to be crystal clear in my mind,” Menon said.

It had to be, because Menon and his wife Anna were about to make some momentous decisions. Decisions that would ultimately culminate in not one of them, but both, going to space.

Facing a difficult decision

After spending his childhood years in the Midwest, Menon studied at Harvard University (neurobiology) before attending Stanford University to obtain a degree in mechanical engineering and, in 2006, a medical degree. He worked as an emergency physician in Los Angeles. He also joined the Air National Guard, became a pilot, and worked as a physician on search-and-rescue helicopters in Afghanistan.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/a-most-improbable-astronaut-just-went-to-space/

SpaceX has pinned the bulk of its future value on orbital data centers. Not rockets. Not spacecraft.

Instead, it envisions launching and maintaining a constellation of 1 million satellites capable of generating 120 GW to power tens of millions—and potentially up to 100 million—frontier-class GPUs for data center services.

The company’s founder, Elon Musk, revealed plans for this massive constellation months ago, but until recently, the scope of the individual satellites was largely unknown. That changed in June, when Musk and Ian Dahl, director of satellite engineering for SpaceX, spoke in a promotional video about the company’s plans to develop the first iteration of an orbital data center, called an AI1 satellite. The video finally provided the company’s numbers about the satellite’s size and power capabilities.

“There’s not some magic that’s necessary that doesn’t exist,” Musk said during the video, reflecting on the challenge of building AI1 satellites. “A lot of this is technology we’ve already made for Starlink V3 satellites. Basically, we don’t think this is a super hard problem.”

As Ars wrote in part 1 of this series, the physics of orbital data centers are indeed non-magical. But the economics are, to put it mildly, challenging.

This subject has sparked a broad debate about the near-term viability of this technology, both in terms of feasibility and whether it’s all hype now that SpaceX is a publicly traded company.

SpaceX’s design for its AI1 satellite.

Credit: SpaceX

Iridium Communications chief executive Matt Desch, a long-time, level-headed satellite industry executive, was asked during an earnings call earlier this year what he thought about the concept.

“It’s a hot, hot area right now of discussion, mainly because of Starlink’s announcement and some others,” Desch replied. “It looks like a problem that can be solved in space… (But) there’s massive technical challenges to overcome.”

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/how-hard-is-it-to-build-orbital-data-centers-actually/

But flat-packed, stackable satellites allow operators to deliver more capability to orbit faster. Starship will take this to the next level with its capacity to launch SpaceX’s more powerful Starlink V3s.

“On a Falcon 9, they can only launch 27 of these V2s,” Jones said. “The Starship can launch 60 of these larger V3s. What this means is bandwidth per launch amounts to 61,000 gigabits per second on Starship versus 2,600 gigabits per second for V2s on Falcon 9. In other words, almost 24 times as much bandwidth can be deployed per launch on Starship versus the Falcon 9 and the V2 satellites. That’s huge.”

Of course, costs are not the same as prices. SpaceX charges commercial customers $74 million for a dedicated Falcon 9 launch, about five times the internal launch cost. This still makes Falcon 9 the most affordable and reliable launch option in the Western world. It’s too early to know where or when SpaceX will set Starship launch prices. Part of the calculation will hinge on the progress of SpaceX’s competitors, such as Blue Origin.

“Certainly, that’s what the industry wants to see, is two equal players,” Jones said. “It absolutely contributes to the economics in terms of price per kilogram.”

“We’ve got these two rocket companies vying for positions,” Jones said in an interview. “I think it’s going to be important that we have competition here, and one company seems to be ahead right now, but whether you’re first to market or a fast follower, I think we would all benefit from seeing this competition between these two companies, Blue Origin and SpaceX. I think that’s critical.”

Some economists believe Starship is simply too big to fulfill all of SpaceX’s lofty goals, but Jones doesn’t buy it.

“Sometimes, when you increase the size of any type of transportation system, it creates something called diseconomies of scale, where the marginal costs start to increase,” Jones said. “Now, I think Starship is going to prove a new price point, but some think that when you get too big, kind of like the [Airbus] A380 airplane that tried to compete with the [Boeing] 747, it created all sorts of demands and types of maintenance.

“Could the Starship follow that path and become not relevant? I don’t really believe it,” she said. “I think that they’re going to have to prove it. They’re going to have to prove over time that they can fly the Starship and continue to see marginal costs decrease, and hopefully the space sector will discover a new sweet spot, but right now it’s the Falcon 9.”

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/rocket-developers-used-to-chase-satellite-trends-is-the-inverse-now-true/

The proliferation of nuclear power in space got a little more real Tuesday with the launch of a small satellite developed by a Florida-based company specializing in nuclear micro-power technology.

It’s a long way from launching a bona fide nuclear reactor, a breakthrough that could help power a permanent Moon base and efficiently drive rockets throughout the Solar System. But you have to start somewhere.

The satellite from Miami-based City Labs is named BOHR, short for Betavoltaic Orbital High-Reliability, and it launched on a SpaceX rideshare mission Tuesday alongside 80 other payloads. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket released the BOHR satellite into an orbit between 350 and 400 miles (nearly 600 km) in altitude.

Starting small

City Labs bills the BOHR mission as “the world’s first commercial nuclear-powered satellite and first nuclear CubeSat.” CubeSats are modest in scale, and images released by City Labs suggest BOHR is built on a “1U” CubeSat platform, a cubical design measuring about the same size as a softball. BOHR’s power source is a nuclear betavoltaic battery that generates electricity from the decay of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen.

“This is a historic step for commercial nuclear power in space,” said Peter Cabauy, CEO of City Labs, in a statement. “BOHR demonstrates that safe, compact, and regulatory-approved nuclear power systems are ready for routine commercial deployment. This capability enables persistent, always-on payload operations that are not constrained by sunlight or battery life.”

City Labs will use its experimental NanoTritium power generator in demonstration mode to supply electricity to a payload onboard the BOHR CubeSat. The spacecraft itself uses conventional solar power for regular operations, the company said. Betavoltaic batteries are best suited for low-power applications that require a reliable, long-duration source of electricity. These use cases include remote terrestrial sensors—such as in undersea or polar locations—and instrumentation for secure communications. City Labs is also studying the use of its NanoTritium technology to power implantable medical devices.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/miami-based-city-labs-achieves-a-first-for-commercial-nuclear-power-in-space/

Written by Thomas Jefferson in 1801 while he was serving as vice president (and therefore the head of the Senate), the manual influenced both houses of Congress as to how to approach order and decorum.

Glenn also took with him a 13-star flag that was used to identify General George Washington on the battlefield. Believed to be inspired by the details on the general’s uniform in 1777, Washington’s Headquarters Flag (also known as the Commander-in-Chief standard) flew with Glenn in the lead-up to the bicentennial commemorations of Washington’s death in 1799.

John Glenn flew a replica of General George Washington’s 1777 Headquarters Flag aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1998, in the then-lead-up to the bicentennial commemorations of Washington’s death in 1799.

Credit: Museum of the American Revolution

Both the flag and the manual, though, were reproductions. The originals are in museums and deemed too fragile and irreplaceable to risk being launched into space. The copy that Glenn flew was a 1993 reprint, and the flag was made for Glenn to fly in 1998.

Another replica flag steeped in American history was aboard the International Space Station from November 2014 through June 2015. NASA astronaut Terry Virts was provided the 15-star flag by Fort McHenry in Maryland, after it was flown over the historic site for Flag Day during the bicentennial year of the Battle of Baltimore. The original of that flag was seen by Francis Scott Key to “yet wave,” leading him to write a poem that became the US anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, in 1814.

Nailing down the (possible) oldest

In May 1869, a 17.6-karat gold spike was used to ceremonially complete the First Transcontinental Railroad at Promontory Summit in the then-Utah Territory. Today, the site is a National Historical Park located near where Northrop Grumman builds and tests solid rocket motors for space launch vehicles.

Ninety-six years later, a replica of the Golden Spike was launched on Atlantis with the STS-38 crew.

It was another spike, however, that is believed to be the oldest Americana artifact to have flown into space.

Is this the oldest piece of Americana to fly into space? This copper spike was an original component of the hull of the USS Constitution, dating back to 1787. It was flown aboard Atlantis on the first space shuttle mission to dock with the Russian space station Mir in 1995.

Credit: USS Constitution Museum

“In honor of the 200th anniversary of the commissioning of the USS Constitution, ‘Old Ironsides,’ this copper spike, an original component of the hull of the USS Constitution, [was] flown on the United States space shuttle,” a plaque presenting the nail reads.

The spike, which was removed from the ship in 1992 and dates back to 1797, was aboard Atlantis for the entirety of the STS-71 mission, from June 27 through July 7, 1995. The mission marked the first rendezvous and docking between a NASA shuttle and the former Russian space station, Mir.

Another Constitution piece, a fragment of wood of similar age, was launched into orbit with the Hubble Space Telescope on STS-31. The piece was on loan at the US Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Maryland.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/whats-the-oldest-americana-flown-in-space/

NASA has a clear interest in saving the Swift mission. The $500 million observatory’s primary mission is detecting gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the known Universe. Despite its age, astrophysicists still rely on Swift’s multi-wavelength instruments to identify and locate gamma-ray bursts for follow-up observations by other observatories.

But part of the reason for launching a rescue mission to Swift is simply to see if it can be done. NASA launched Space Shuttles to service and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, but those missions required hands-on work from spacewalking astronauts. A safer, cheaper robotic servicing platform would have a broader set of applications.

“This is a historic mission,” said Robert Lamontagne, vice president of strategic partnerships at Katalyst. “Some would call it the first of its kind, a robotic spacecraft that can go and capture an unprepared satellite. It’s a commercial mission, first and foremost. It’s doing an operational, real-world objective. It’s not just a demonstration. We’re doing this as a service.

“At Katalyst, we are very passionate about the idea of dynamic space operations,” Lamontagne said. “What I mean by that is, for years and years, folks have thought about space as something where you build a satellite, you launch a satellite, it does its mission, and at the end of the mission, it gets disposed of, either it re-enters, or it goes to a graveyard orbit. That’s a throwaway type of model.

“We think the spacecraft operator should no longer be constrained by the silly decisions that we made before launch,” he said. “You should be able to refuel, reposition, repurpose, repair, and even upgrade satellites, even if they were never prepared for it, and that’s where Katalyst is trying to change everyone’s mindset.”

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/katalysts-satellite-rescue-mission-is-now-in-pursuit-of-nasas-swift/

As the United States of America celebrated its 250th birthday on terra firma with fireworks displays this weekend, two Asian countries made some splashes of their own farther from Earth.

On Sunday, an aging Japanese spacecraft named Hayabusa2, which completed its initial sample-return objective more than half a decade ago, found success with an extended mission that saw the vehicle fly by a peanut-shaped asteroid named Torifune.

Hours later, the Chinese space agency released images from a spacecraft, Tianwen-2, arriving at its target asteroid following a journey of 1 billion km. At this small asteroid, the Chinese spacecraft will attempt to retrieve samples and return them to Earth late next year.

Torifune flyby

The Japanese space agency’s Hayabusa2 mission launched back in December 2014 and made a rendezvous with a near-Earth asteroid named 162173 Ryugu in June 2018. After gathering samples, the spacecraft burned its ion propulsion engines to return to Earth, and during a flyby in late 2020 it released a small return capsule. Scientists recovered 5.4 grams of asteroid material from the capsule.

By this point, however, Hayabusa2’s efficient propulsion system still had nearly half of its xenon propellant remaining—approximately 30 kg of the 66 kg it began its mission with.

So Japanese engineers and scientists plotted out an operations plan that would extend over the next decade and visit two more asteroids. It flew by the first of these on Sunday, a 450-meter-long asteroid designated as 98943 Torifune. Observations began about two weeks ago and culminated in a flyby during which the spacecraft passed within about 800 meters of the asteroid.

“These observations continued until immediately before the closest approach to Torifune but could not be conducted after the spacecraft had passed the asteroid,” JAXA, the Japanese space agency, said in a news release early Monday. “At present, only part of the data acquired by the scientific instruments has been transmitted to Earth. The remaining data will be transmitted to the ground during future operations.”

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/there-were-not-one-but-two-asteroid-encounters-this-weekend/

Refurbishment over production… The production of 1,000 Merlin 1D engines is a remarkable milestone for any rocket engine, but it’s important to note that the Merlin 1D is reusable. The Merlin 1D has logged more than 6,000 engine flights with 1,000 units. “With Falcon’s reusability, recovering these engines has enabled continued reliability enhancements, making Merlin one of the most reliable rocket engines ever manufactured,” SpaceX wrote on X. Another highly reliable, but single-use, rocket engine with similar thrust is Russia’s RD-107/108. Five of those have powered each variant of Russia’s R-7 rocket family since the 1950s, a legacy now carried on by the Soyuz launch vehicle. With more than 2,000 flights by Soyuz and its kin, that amounts to more than 10,000 RD-107 and 108 engines produced at a plant in Samara, Russia.

SpaceX launches rare GEO mission. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched Sunday carrying a multi-ton radio broadcasting satellite for SiriusXM to replace two aging satellites in geostationary Earth orbit, Spaceflight Now reports. The SXM-11 satellite is a behemoth as far as spacecraft go, with a launch mass of about roughly 7 metric tons (15,000 pounds). The satellite is destined for a position over the equator at an altitude of more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers), where its velocity will match the Earth’s rotation to provide continuous radio broadcast coverage over the United States.

Still in business… Of SpaceX’s 78 launches of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy this year, this was just the third carrying a payload heading for geostationary orbit, once the preferred destination for nearly all commercial communications satellites. Today, the trend is decidedly bending toward low-Earth orbit with megaconstellations like Starlink. But SiriusXM remains in business, as does the manufacturer of the SXM-11 satellite: Lanteris Space Systems, a subsidiary of Texas-based Intuitive Machines. The company, formerly branded as Maxar, was acquired by Intuitive Machines in January 2026 for about $800 million.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/rocket-report-indian-startup-nears-first-launch-spacexs-millenary-milestone/

This week Ars hosted a live discussion with two space industry experts about the aftermath of the catastrophic explosion of the New Glenn rocket in late May.

Along with Ars Technica Space Editor Eric Berger; the director of research at Quilty Space, Caleb Henry; and the host of the Main Engine Cut Off podcast, Anthony Colangelo, spoke about various topics. Chief among them was the implications of this failure for NASA’s attempt to land humans on the Moon for the Artemis IV mission. Blue Origin and SpaceX are both building landers to support this goal and the rockets to deliver them to the Moon.

During the conversation, Berger reported that the current Blue Origin “architecture” for a human mission would require four launches of new variant of the New Glenn rocket, known as 9×4, because it has nine first stage engines, and four upper stage engines. This is a more powerful version than the “7×2″ variant that exploded a little more than a month ago. Blue Origin has not set a target date for the 9×4 rocket’s debut, but some sources have indicated the company is targeting late 2027 or early 2028.

How realistic is this, especially after the destruction of Launch Complex 36A? Caleb Henry said he was not optimistic.

I have not seen anyone put out a date for a new rocket, and actually hit it. Going back in the archives, when Blue Origin shifted New Glenn from a three-stage vehicle to a two-stage vehicle, and made a couple other changes in mid-2018 time period, those were stated as being needed to accelerate the path to launch. They had yet to make a first flight, and they were doing these architectural changes so that they could speed up that timeline. I think the 9×4 is really to enable them to do new missions. I think adding engines makes it more complicated, not less. I don’t have a sense of exactly where they’ll land relative to what they’ve put out there, but I think 1.5 is usually a good rule, so a year and a half at least.

Colangelo said it would not surprise him if the development of the 9×4 variant of New Glenn slipped into the 2030s. So if that’s the case, how is NASA going to get its astronauts to the Moon this decade, if that’s to happen at all?

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/ars-live-recap-when-are-the-big-rockets-nasa-desperately-needs-going-to-be-ready/

Perseverance launched to Mars in July 2020, and its predecessor, the similarly sized Curiosity rover, launched to the red planet in November 2011.

“It makes sense, early on, when we’ve got a problem that we might want to test it out here before we upload it to Mars,” Isaacman said. “But we’ve had years now of experience operating the two rovers on the surface of Mars, and we’ve got this hardware that the taxpayers invested a lot in. So the question was posed, what if we sent it to the Moon?”

Although the Mars rovers were designed to operate on the surface of Mars, the JPL engineers said Promise could be modified to work on the Moon. NASA will also need to make some adjustments to the scientific instruments aboard the vehicle, but Isaacman said this represents a creative way to advance the agency’s interests in understanding the environment where it wants to establish a long-term human presence.

“We’ve got the hardware, and this is exactly what we should be trying to do to put wins on the board, getting a capability like Promise to the surface of the Moon,” he said.

Could do a lot of useful science

There are many useful scientific and exploration objectives a rover like this could accomplish. NASA studied these questions less than a decade ago with an “Endurance” rover proposal that would have traveled nearly 2,000 km across the South Pole-Aitken basin on the far side of the Moon (see this large PDF file for more information). It was never built.

This decision is not final, and NASA is still assessing the feasibility of using Promise as a mainstay of its lunar fleet. However, the announcement on Tuesday underscores that Isaacman and his team are scouring NASA for hardware and other tools to advance the agency’s mandate to return to the Moon and to build a surface base.

The space agency is effectively on a wartime footing as it seeks to accelerate plans to land humans on the Moon’s south pole before China and to explore the most interesting terrain there first. Mars is not a near-term priority.

“It’s quite symbolic, in a way, the harvesting up what’s left of the Mars program and shipping it to the Moon,” said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy for The Planetary Society.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/06/nasa-may-send-a-backup-nuclear-powered-mars-rover-to-the-moon/