On July 14, 2026, NASA approved Revision F of NASA-STD-3001, Volume 2, adding a dedicated Martian Dust Contamination requirement to the agency’s human-system standard. As of August 19, 2026, Revision F is the published version available through NASA’s standards program. Its new requirement, V2 6253, tells designers to keep Martian dust particles smaller than 10 μm in habitable air below a…
More than 50 years of robotic missions have changed Mars from a telescopic mystery into the most closely studied planet beyond Earth. The combined record from orbiters, landers, rovers, atmospheric probes, and radar instruments shows that Mars once had rivers, lakes, groundwater systems, volcanoes, impact basins, polar ice, dust storms, weather, and chemical environments that could have supported…
Amazon Web Services generated $42.2 billion of sales and $16.6 billion of operating income during the quarter ended June 30, 2026. For the trailing 12 months, AWS produced $148.4 billion of revenue and $54.7 billion of operating income, according to Amazon’s Q2 2026 results. That made AWS far more financially significant to Amazon than its share of corporate revenue might suggest. AWS accounted…
On May 18, 2026, Space: Science & Technology published the Wang et al. study, a research paper that puts nuclear asteroid defense at the center of a specific engineering problem: what can be done if a large near-Earth asteroid is discovered too late for slow deflection methods. The authors, led by Xiaowei Wang of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, study targets with equivalent…
On August 19, 2026, Tom’s Hardware drew attention to a striking feature of the White House’s new technology strategy: several technologies that had appeared explicitly on the federal Critical and Emerging Technologies list in 2024 no longer appear in its 2026 successor. Advanced cloud services, high-performance data storage and data centers, batteries, grid-integration technologies, advanced gas…
In January 2023, a student-led team working with Breakthrough Listen data reported eight candidate technosignature signals found through a deep-learning search of 820 nearby stars observed with the Green Bank Telescope. The candidates did not repeat when researchers tried follow-up observations, so they did not become evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. The finding still showed why…
On February 13, 2026, the UK government published a 94-page study examining whether smaller space-based solar power systems could begin commercial deployment during the 2030s. The study followed a 2021 UK assessment and moved the discussion beyond gigawatt-scale concepts by examining an intermediate system capable of delivering power measured in megawatts. The small-scale SBSP feasibility study…
In August 2026, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy placed space alongside undersea capabilities and artificial intelligence and autonomy among three priority areas for U.S. battlefield dominance and power projection. The new National Security Science and Technology Strategy (NSSTS) ties federally supported research and development to the objectives of the 2025 National…
On June 15, 2026, SpaceX completed its initial public offering, issuing 638,888,888 Class A shares at $135 per share and generating $85.675 billion in net proceeds after underwriting commissions and offering costs. The transaction placed one of the world’s largest launch, satellite communications, and space technology companies directly inside public capital markets on a scale rarely associated…
The U.S. Space Force entered 2026 with a fiscal year 2027 funding request large enough to change the scale of a military service created less than seven years earlier. The August 10, 2026 Congressional Research Service primer calculates a $71.3 billion total request, consisting of $59.2 billion in discretionary funding and $12.1 billion in anticipated mandatory funding. The Department of the Air…