NASA Awards SpaceX $946 Million

🚀 SpaceX scores $946M NASA deal

🌑 Venus may have devoured its moon

🛰️ Hubble marks 200,000 orbits

🔴 Complex water systems on early Mars

🌌 Weird early galaxies finally explained

NASA awarded SpaceX a $946 million contract modification to fly three additional crewed missions to the ISS (International Space Station), extending their partnership through 2030.

The contract brings SpaceX's total CCtCap (Commercial Crew Transportation Capability) missions to 17, with total contract value reaching $5.92 billion; the company has completed 11 operational Crew Dragon flights since November 2020 certification.

SpaceX plans to retire Crew Dragon around 2030, according to Ars Technica, transitioning astronaut transport duties to its fully reusable Starship megarocket as commercial space stations replace the aging ISS.

University of California, Riverside astrophysicist Steven Kane led research investigating why Venus lacks a moon despite having nearly identical mass, size, and structure to Earth, which possesses one.

Computer simulations tested hypothetical moons ranging from 0.01 to 10 times Earth's lunar mass, revealing Venus' 243-Earth-day rotation period would gravitationally drag satellites inward until they fragmented and collapsed onto the planet.

Kane suggests swallowing a moon would have imparted enormous energy and angular momentum to Venus, potentially shifting its rotation, geology, and climate in ways that could explain its current inhospitable conditions.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope completed its 200,000th orbit around Earth on September 19, 2025, continuing observations that have transformed astronomical understanding over its remarkable 36-year operational lifetime in low Earth orbit.

Hubble has traveled over 5 billion miles, exceeding 1.7 million total observations; its 200,000th orbit observation targeted gravitationally lensed supernova Athena behind galaxy cluster MACS J0417 to measure cosmic expansion rates.

Demand for Hubble observing time remains exceptionally high, with astronomers requesting approximately seven times more observing time than available annually, complementing NASA's James Webb and upcoming Roman Space Telescopes' infrared capabilities.

NASA's Perseverance rover team, led by Purdue University research scientist Candice Bedford, analyzed the Margin Unit along Jezero Crater's ancient lakeshore, discovering unexpected igneous rock instead of anticipated sedimentary formations.

SuperCam's laser analyzed over 185 bedrock targets across 870 feet of elevation, detecting olivine, carbonate, silica, calcium sulfate, and fluorite indicating hot water circulation through volcanic rocks during at least three separate water events.

Bedford notes Jezero Crater sits within one of Mars' largest carbonate exposures, meaning these findings about complex aqueous history and potential habitability extend well beyond this single crater to reshape planetary water models.

University of Utah assistant professor Grace Telford led the TEMPOS (Treasury of Extremely Metal-Poor O Stars) survey, using Hubble's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph to study massive stars in nearby dwarf galaxies analogous to early universe conditions.

The survey observed 29 massive stars across six dwarf galaxies with metallicities below one-fifth solar, requiring up to 35 hours of Hubble time per star; UV spectra revealed stellar wind speeds drop sharply below 10% solar metallicity.

Telford states these findings will help astronomers build better massive star models essential for interpreting James Webb Space Telescope observations of early galaxies, which exhibit unexpectedly strange properties requiring new theoretical frameworks.