Space
A newly published application describes a satellite ground system that swaps its upstream channels between contention-based and scheduled access on the fly, driven by measured — and machine-learning-predicted — traffic load.
Space
A granted Boeing patent describes a missile seeker with two rigidly fixed, uncooled cameras and no gimbal. When the target leaves both fields of view, the vehicle rolls its whole body to reacquire it.
Space
A newly published application describes a bandwidth allocator that hands a satellite link's leftover capacity to the terminals that will actually use it, ranked by demand, traffic priority and past behavior, rather than spreading it evenly. It is one of a cluster of satellite-communication filings in this week's publication drop.
Space
Through Commercial Lunar Payload Services, NASA pays private companies to deliver its science and technology payloads to the Moon. Here is how the contracting model works and what it has bought so far.
Space
Artemis is NASA's program to send astronauts back to the lunar surface and build toward crewed missions to Mars. Here are the missions, the hardware, and the international framework behind it.
Space
Before a reusable suborbital vehicle earns a full license, a developer can fly it for research and crew training under an FAA experimental permit. Here is what 14 CFR Part 437 requires.
Space
An FCC space-station license is not the whole story. Behind it sits an international filing process at the ITU that determines whether a system is protected from interference.
Space
When multiple companies want to operate non-geostationary satellite systems in the same band, the FCC groups their applications into a processing round under 14 CFR 25.157. Here is how it works.
Space
A U.S. company that operates a private Earth-imaging satellite needs a NOAA license. The rule sorts each system into one of three tiers based on whether comparable data is already available.
Space
FCC rules now require most low-Earth-orbit satellites to deorbit no later than five years after the end of mission. Here is what the regulation says and how it defines "end of mission."
Space
Under 14 CFR Part 450, a single FAA vehicle operator license authorizes launches and reentries of one vehicle or family of vehicles. Here is what the rule requires an applicant to obtain before flight.
Space
A nine-author team reports that two JWST transits of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-121 b are asymmetric because the planet rotates while crossing its star, with CO absorption rising and water absorption easing as hotter gas turns into view.
Space
A 37-author team reports the confirmation and characterization of two Jupiter-sized planets on eccentric 14.5- and 26.2-day orbits, combining TESS photometry with ground-based imaging and radial velocities from the MaHPS spectrograph.
Space
A newly published application describes a tube that thins a coating with a gas jet while reading its thickness in real time, through an optical beam running down the same nozzle. It published as one of a pair of fluid-metrology filings from a national-security space R&D institution.
Space
A January 2026 Federal Register notice records the FAA declining to pursue a proposed rule that would have required commercial launch upper stages to clear orbit within 25 years - pending further review of public comments.
Space
An April 2026 Federal Register notice records the FAA imposing licensing and permitting user fees on commercial launch and reentry - a statutory shift in how the regulator funds its oversight of a booming launch cadence.
Space
A new catalog of transit timing variations across 175 multi-planet TESS systems turns up 20 with significant TTVs - and a pile-up at the 2:1 resonance that breaks from Kepler's 3:2 pattern.
Space
Simultaneous g-, r- and i-band high-cadence imaging on the 3.8 m Seimei Telescope nailed rotation periods as short as 8.8 seconds for three sub-100-meter asteroids - and read their surface colors at the same time.
Space
A preprint proposes that tidally driven fracturing of Enceladus's core could generate the molecular hydrogen Cassini detected in the moon's plume - possibly outpacing serpentinization or radiolysis.
Space
A preprint posted to arXiv contends the two outer planets are better modeled as supercritical, hydrogen-rich magma oceans under H2 envelopes, with origins parallel to sub-Neptunes.
Space
A May 2025 FCC final action establishes the mechanism and qualifying criteria for selecting the Space Launch Frequency Coordinator, a linchpin of the Commission's new Space Launch Service.
Space
A May 2025 FAA notice explains that operators launching from commercial sites on federally owned land, where the federal site provides ground-safety oversight, may demonstrate an equivalent level of safety to FAA ground-safety requirements.
Space
The August 2025 presidential document 'Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry' sets a whole-of-government posture treating launch and licensing speed as an industrial-competitiveness input.
Space
The FAA has pulled the orbital-debris NPRM (RIN 2120-AK81) that would have required commercial launch upper stages to clear orbit within 25 years, citing the need to further weigh the comments it received.
