SpaceX’s Starship completed its 13th integrated test flight on July 24 at 5:51 p.m. CDT from Starbase, Texas. The upper stage reached space, deployed 20 Starlink V3 satellites, and landed in the Indian Ocean, while the Super Heavy booster did not achieve a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

The flight followed a suborbital profile similar to the twelfth test conducted in May and earlier missions. As with previous flights, the mission carried the upgraded satellites to orbit for a brief period before reentry.

After engine cutoff, the Starship deployed the satellites, which reentered the atmosphere minutes later. The Super Heavy booster’s boostback burn ended early, preventing relighting of enough engines for a safe splashdown. The company’s shares fell 3.5% in the week after the flight.

The S‑1 filing indicates that a Starship launch could carry up to 60 V3 Starlink satellites, delivering about 20 times the capacity of a Falcon 9 launch of current satellites. In Q1 2026, the connectivity business generated roughly five times the revenue of the space business.

The merger with xAI in February gave SpaceX control of xAI’s data centers, the Grok chatbot, and the X social media platform. Contracts with Anthropic and Google provide about $1 billion per month for use of the data centers. The AI segment’s revenue already exceeded that of the space segment in Q1 2026, and SpaceX expects AI to become its largest business, targeting a total addressable market of $28.5 trillion.

SpaceX plans to launch up to one million AI satellites in low‑Earth orbit, using solar power in sun‑synchronous orbits to address concerns about terrestrial data centers. The proposal has generated more than a thousand public comments to the FCC, including a filing by Amazon that raised concerns about light pollution and orbital congestion. Critics note that high launch costs and thermal and radiation challenges could limit the economic viability of space‑based compute.

The launch coincided with several new AI model releases. SpaceX announced Grok 4.5 on July 8, which initially ranked fourth on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index but dropped to seventh after OpenAI’s ChatGPT‑5.6 and Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 surpassed it. Independent analysis placed Grok behind Anthropic’s Fable 5, Opus 4.8, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT‑5.5.

Morgan Stanley analysts have suggested that the share price could fall toward $100, a level that would assign minimal value to the AI business, while another report set a $300 price target. Pre‑IPO valuations from Morningstar indicated a share price of $63.

The test flight provides the most concrete evidence to date that Starship may be approaching operational readiness, though full reusability and orbital capability remain unproven.

Xona Space Systems announced that the Federal Communications Commission has granted conditional approval to broadcast commercial navigation signals from a planned constellation of more than 250 satellites, removing a regulatory obstacle for deployment. The authorization expands a prior license for the Pulsar-0 demonstration satellite to cover the full constellation and permits transmission of Pulsar signals in the L‑band adjacent to GPS L1 and L5 frequencies, without using the same channels. The FCC required Xona to demonstrate that the signals could be stronger while avoiding interference with existing GPS, aviation and other authorized users. The license includes conditions that the company must obtain further approval based on an updated orbital‑debris assessment before launching additional satellites, place half of the constellation in orbit by July 2032 and complete the full deployment by July 2035, and cease transmissions immediately if interference is detected. Xona’s only satellite currently in orbit, Pulsar-0, launched in June 2025 and has completed over 350 transmission passes across four continents. The company plans to launch six satellites in October on a SpaceX rideshare, including the first two buses built at its Burlingame, California manufacturing facility. A $170 million funding round in March will support deployment of the Pulsar network and expansion of satellite production. The service is intended for applications that require precise timing, such as telecommunications, financial transactions and data‑center synchronization, with broader navigation coverage expected once a sufficient number of satellites are operational.

SpaceX and NASA are examining a projected collision of a Falcon 9 upper stage with the Moon on August 5 at 2:35 a.m. Eastern, which was first reported by astronomer Bill Gray in April.

The upper stage, launched on January 15 2025 with lunar landers from Firefly Aerospace and ispace, is on a trajectory that will strike near the crater Einstein on the Moon’s western limb. The estimated energy of the impact is equivalent to two to three tons of TNT. The collision is unintentional, resulting from solar activity and gravitational forces, according to NASA science and Dragon programs director Julianna Scheiman at an August 3 briefing.

SpaceX said it followed passivation procedures required for high‑energy trajectories and could not deorbit the stage, which is standard for missions to low Earth orbit. This will not be the first unintentional upper‑stage impact; a 2022 Long March 3B upper stage created a double crater after the Chang’e‑5 T1 mission, and a 2009 Atlas 5 Centaur stage was deliberately crashed into Cabeus crater to study water ice. During the Apollo program, Saturn 5 third stages were also sent to impact the Moon to aid seismic analysis.

Officials have expressed concern that future unintentional impacts could pose a small risk to lunar assets or astronauts. Scheiman said SpaceX is working with NASA and other agencies to determine optimal disposal methods for high‑energy missions in the sun‑Earth‑Moon system, though specifics were not disclosed.

NASA plans to observe the impact site with its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, while South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter will also attempt to capture data. The impact itself is not expected to be visible from Earth, but telescopes may detect a plume.

Nine Louisiana university teams and St. Joseph's Academy launched 11 scientific payloads from NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, on May 19, marking the 74th and 75th launches of the LaACES program.

LaACES, a program of the Louisiana Space Grant Consortium funded by NASA's National Space Grant College and Fellowship program, provides undergraduate students with hands‑on experience in scientific balloon operations. Since its inception, the program has supported more than 500 students at 13 institutions, conducting over 60 balloon flights and 135 unique payloads.

Students spent months designing and building their experiments, which addressed topics such as atmospheric science, cosmic ray detection, thermal management, ultraviolet characterization, stratospheric wind analysis, and solar cell performance. After completing design reviews that followed NASA's engineering lifecycle, each team prepared its payload for launch. The LaACES campaign, consisting of 11 payloads, was carried by balloons capable of supporting 7- to 9-pound instruments. At dawn on May 19, the first two flights, designated LACES-74 and LACES-75, ascended to near-space altitudes and were monitored by telemetry systems. Both flights completed successfully and were recovered about 60 miles north of the launch site near Ben Wheeler, Texas.

The recovery teams retrieved the payloads and returned the sensor data to the facility for analysis. Savannah Matlock, a student at Louisiana State University, said that reviewing the data after the flight confirmed that the experiment met its objectives. Hugo Franco, operations manager at the balloon facility, said the program supports students' launches and seeks to foster interest in ballooning.

The LaACES initiative mirrors NASA's broader Scientific Balloon Program, which operates large balloons capable of carrying advanced research instruments to the edge of space for studies in astrophysics, atmospheric science, planetary research, and technology demonstrations. By placing students in this environment, the program connects academic learning with national research operations, potentially influencing future career paths in aerospace and academia.

The program, funded through NASA's Space Grant Consortium, continues to provide opportunities for Louisiana students to engage in high-altitude research as NASA advances scientific discovery.

Ike Theriot, a Flight Operations Surface Testing Lead at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, is transitioning to a role focused on mission development, astronaut training, and execution for upcoming lunar landings. Theriot integrates flight operations testing needs across the Artemis program, ensuring that data, procedures and experience are ready for lunar surface operations. He oversees simulated moonwalk exercises at NASA facilities and field sites in the United States and abroad, and contributed to the development of the Lunar Grid Reference System, now used in flight control systems. Theriot conducts testing in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory and the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility, often serving as a suited test subject and training others to lead test activities. He has supported evaluations of NASA’s Exploration Spacesuit design and the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit, using the Active Response Gravity Offload System to practice geologic sampling under lunar‑gravity conditions. Theriot also assesses lighting configurations during suited test runs to improve safety and task execution in simulated lunar environments. In addition to his work on lunar preparations, Theriot is a certified flight controller for International Space Station spacewalks and has begun training as a capsule communicator (capcom) for low‑Earth‑orbit communications. He participated in a field campaign at Kamestastin Crater in Labrador, Canada, where Artemis II crew members received geology training on terrain resembling the Moon. Theriot’s interest in space began during his U.S. Army service in Iraq, where a failed satellite transceiver prompted him to study engineering online, and continued during his deployment in Afghanistan. After earning a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Houston, he joined Johnson Space Center as an intern in 2016 and became a full‑time employee in 2019, shortly after NASA announced the Artemis lunar return plan. Theriot created the Field Navigation Exercise at Challenger 7 Memorial Park in Houston to improve lunar navigation skills and has mentored personnel who now lead the exercise and major lunar spacesuit test series. He served as test conductor for a major lunar spacesuit test series in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, coordinating teams and refining procedures. ‘Each day presents a new and interesting challenge, and I can feel myself growing to meet those challenges,’ Theriot said. ‘Through the Artemis missions, like the Apollo missions, I hope we can all show the world that impossible things can happen.’

A bright meteor streak briefly appeared and vanished in a long exposure photograph of the Great Lacerta Nebula taken on July 2026 from Death Valley Observatories in Nevada, USA. The meteor vaporized, leaving wind‑blown gas and dust whose colors indicate its composition. The image was captured by Tom Burnett as part of NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day series and was published on August 3, 2026. Three meteor showers are currently active, with the Perseid shower expected to peak in about ten days after the Moon dims, while a bright gibbous Moon currently competes with the nebula’s glow. The meteoroid, likely a small pebble, heated the surrounding atmosphere and then vaporized, producing a short‑lived glow. Its resulting gas and dust provide clues to its composition. The explanation was written by APOD editors Robert Nemiroff, Jerry Bonnell, Cecilia Chirenti, and Keighley Rockliff. The Perseid meteor shower will reach its peak near a new Moon in about ten days, offering optimal viewing conditions for similar events.

Satellite imagery taken on November 28, 2025 shows the Bijagós Archipelago in Guinea-Bissau, where tides rise and fall twice daily through a network of sandy channels, mudflats and mangrove forests. The ebb and flow expose intertidal mudflats and sandflats, causing the visible size of the islands to expand at low tide and contract at high tide. The image, credited to NASA and Lauren Dauphin of the USGS, captures the landscape changes that occur as the water recedes and advances across the 88 islands and islets. This daily cycle illustrates the dynamic nature of the archipelago’s coastline.