International launches… China, which attempted 92 orbital launches in 2025, is second, followed by Russia, with 17 launches last year, and Europe with eight. Rounding out the 2025 orbital launch manifest were five orbital launch attempts from India, four from Japan, two from South Korea, and one each from Israel, Iran, and Australia, the analysis ..
Tag : space
NASA officials said Thursday they have decided to bring home four of the seven crew members on the International Space Station after one of them experienced a “medical situation” earlier this week. The space agency has said little about the incident, and officials have not identified which crew member suffered the medical issue. James “JD” ..
Prior to World War II the vast majority of telescopes built around the world were funded by wealthy people with an interest in the heavens above. However, after the war, two significant developments in the mid-20th century caused the burden of funding large astronomical instruments to largely shift to the government and academic institutions. First, ..
Someone on the International Space Station suffered an unspecified “medical situation” Wednesday, prompting the postponement of a planned spacewalk and raising the possibility of an early return for a portion of the lab’s seven-person crew, NASA said in a statement. NASA has never ordered a medical evacuation from space before, but the option has always ..
Last year delivered doses of drama and excitement in the space business, with a record number of launches, breathtaking vistas of other worlds, and a multitude of breakthroughs and setbacks. 2026 is shaping up to be another thrilling year in the cosmos. For the first time in more than 54 years, astronauts are training to ..
If you are a student of space history or tracked the space industry before billionaires and venture capital changed it forever, you probably know the name Rocketdyne. A half-century ago, Rocketdyne manufactured almost all of the large liquid-fueled rocket engines in the United States. The Saturn V rocket that boosted astronauts toward the Moon relied ..
In June, the White House released a budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 that slashed funding for NASA’s science programs by nearly 50 percent. Then, in July, the Trump administration began telling the leaders of dozens of space science missions to prepare “closeout” plans for their spacecraft. Things looked pretty grim for a while, but ..
Which US rocket companies achieved the most during 2025? Once again, Ars Technica is here to provide some answers in the form of our annual power ranking of US launch companies. We began doing this in 2022 and have since put out a top-10 list every year (see 2023 and 2024). Our intent, as always, ..
The year 2025 ended with more than 14,000 active satellites from all nations zooming around the Earth. One-third of them will soon move to lower altitudes. The maneuvers will be undertaken by SpaceX, the owner of the largest satellite fleet in orbit. About 4,400 of the company’s Starlink Internet satellites will move from an altitude ..
A small section of the International Space Station that has experienced persistent leaks for years appears to have stopped venting atmosphere into space. The leaks were caused by microscopic structural cracks inside the small PrK module on the Russian segment of the space station, which lies between a Progress spacecraft airlock and the Zvezda module. ..
