News & Map

Building empires in the sky: Effectuating off-Earth territorial expansion using existing legal frameworks

The Outer Space Treaty makes clear that countries cannot claim territory on the Moon or other celestial bodies. Camisha ...

Safe passage in the stars: The next Bretton Woods

On Earth, control of the seas and thus of trade helped create the current financial system dominated by the US dollar. A...

The Isaacman era begins at NASA

Jared Isaacman became NASA administrator last month, ending a convoluted confirmation process that lasted just over a ye...

Innovative, affordable, and expedited

One of big challenges facing Isaacman is how to speed up a human return to the Moon, or at least keep it from falling fu...

Houston deserves a Space Shuttle, but not like this

A provision in last year's budget reconciliation bill effectively directed the transfer of the Space Shuttle Discovery f...

The Artemis Accords at five

This fall marked five years since eight countries, including the United States, announced that they were signing the new...

State-owned enterprises and commercial space in China

The Chinese space ecosystem now includes many startups that emulate American entrepreneurial space companies. Owen Chban...

SpaceX, orbital data centers, and the journey to Mars

After years of saying the company was not planning an initial public offering of stock, SpaceX now appears to be moving ...

"Sovereign capacity" of private and public space programs

Countries are increasingly seeing the strategic value of space capabilities. Alexander Wallace Watson examines the ways ...

NASA Goddard and the dawn of international cooperation in space

NASA cooperated with other nations on space science missions from the agency's earliest days. Trevor Williams examines t...

The long arm of a European space law

The European Commission released earlier this year a draft of a space law for the European Union intended to harmonize r...

Beyond launch: How in-space propulsion markets will determine winners in the $1 trillion space economy

Launch has long been seen as the bottleneck for a growing space economy, but it is not the only factor. Malik Farkhadov ...

A big win for European space

The member states of the European Space Agency met in Germany last week to decide on agency funding levels for the next ...

Burning Falcon: the death of a Russian laser ASAT plane

Last week, Ukrainian drones and missiles struck a Russian air base. Among the planes destroyed there, Dwayne Day discuss...

Mapping the dark side of the world (part 3): Replacing ARGON, the SAMOS E-4, and mapping the Moon

In the conclusion of his examination of satellite mapping programs in the early Cold War, Dwayne Day examines revised ca...

Our best energy and efforts

Delays in the development of SpaceX's Starship have promoted calls for potential changes in NASA's Artemis lunar landing...

Chandrayaan-3 successfully undertakes lunar flybys

Two years after carrying out its prime mission of delivering a lander to the Moon, part of India's Chandrayaan-3 spacecr...

Revisiting the Wolf Amendment after 15 years

It's been nearly 15 years since Congress passed legislation with a provision sharply restricting bilateral cooperation b...

Mapping the dark side of the world (part 2): supplementing, and supplanting, the ARGON geodetic satellite program

In the early 1960s the US flew several satellite mapping missions, with mixed success. Dwayne Day describes how an alter...

Space is the front line and not the final frontier: The United States should prioritize developing proactive norms of space warfare

Space is increasingly seen as a domain of warfare alongside air, land, and sea. Magdalena Bogacz argues that means the U...

How AI is making spacecraft propulsion more efficient

A desire to go further and faster in space is driving interest in advanced propulsion technologies, such as nuclear syst...

Mapping the dark side of the world (part 1): The KH-5 ARGON geodetic satellite

As important as high-resolution satellite imagery in the early Space Age was development of wide-area imagery needed for...

DARPA's real lunar opportunity: Build the operating system, not the outpost

DARPA has supported studies on lunar development recently, including establishing lunar infrastructure. Michael Stennick...

Japan's mission to Mars moon Phobos: 5 things to know