The average temperature in the cave during the training was eight degrees Celsius with humidity at about ninety-nine percent.

The crew conducted psychological and behavioral research using testing software to assess emergency decision-making abilities.

Rocket Factory Augsburg worked to return to the launch pad after losing its first flight article in a pad fire.

MaiaSpace secured its first commercial launch contract with Exotrail for missions starting in 2027.

HyImpulse secured €45 million in funding in 2025, raising its total capital to approximately €74 million.

Avio secured €181 million in funding from the Italian government for its Space Transportation System programme.

Skyrora received a licence from the UK Civil Aviation Authority to conduct flights of its Skylark L suborbital rocket.

Latitude announced that it received French government funding to construct a new rocket factory in Reims, expected to open in 2026.

Toni Tolker-Nielsen stated that the launch rate for Ariane 6 is expected to double in 2026 with eight flights planned.

HyPrSpace secured €21 million in funding to support its development of hybrid propulsion-based launch systems.

Ariane 6 completed four successful flights in 2025, carrying payloads for CNES, EUMETSAT, and the European Space Agency.

Arianespace completed its last veGA C flight in 2025, with Avio taking full responsibility for future launches.

Avio plans to introduce its Vega Next rocket in the 2030s, aiming to develop reusable launch technologies.

Orbex secured a £20 million investment from the UK government and a launch services agreement with D-Orbit.

The European Space Agency committed a total of €902.16 million to support five companies in the European Launcher Challenge.

Themis reusable rocket booster was shipped to Esrange Space Centre in Sweden for low-altitude hop tests.

Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket failed to reach orbit, exploding in a fireball less than a minute after launch.

PLD Space is progressing towards the inaugural flight of its Miura 5 rocket, expected in 2026 from the Guiana Space Centre.

ArianeGroup completed the inaugural flight of its SyLEx suborbital vehicle in 2025 under a contract with France's Directorate General of Armaments.

ArianeGroup entered 2025 having completed just a single flight of its Ariane 6 rocket following an anomaly during its inaugural flight.

The Blue Moon MK1 offers a significantly reduced risk profile for early-stage lunar infrastructure compared to the human-rated Starship, which requires upwards of a dozen refueling launches to reach the Moon.

Blue Origin is expected to conduct a full-duration hot-fire test of the BE-7 engine integrated with the MK1 flight tanks in Q2 2026 at its test facility in Huntsville, Alabama.

Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1) lander is designed to deliver up to 3 metric tons of payload to any location on the lunar surface.

The MK1 is a major contender for future Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) task orders due to its large payload bay that can carry significant international scientific instruments and commercial mining equipment.

The Blue Moon MK1 is a single-launch cargo lander optimized for use with the New Glenn launch vehicle.

The Blue Moon MK1 could serve as a critical bridge for NASA to build out a lunar basecamp by autonomously landing heavy cargo like habitats, rovers, and power systems if crewed landings are delayed past 2028.

The cargo-first strategy of the MK1 mirrors China's Chang’e program, which has landed multiple robotic missions to gain operational experience before crewed landings.

The upgrades are designed to replace aging, fragmented systems with a scalable architecture that provides reliable connectivity for both classified and unclassified data.

CACI International Inc has been awarded a five-year task order valued at up to $212 million to modernize the network infrastructure of the U.S. Space Force.

$212 million investment indicates that resilient digital infrastructure is critical to space superiority.

CACI will implement software-defined networking to unify fragmented legacy systems across 14 Space Force installations.

CACI’s contract represents approximately 2.4% of the company’s annual revenue.

CACI is planning a $2.6 billion acquisition of ARKA Group to deepen its expertise in space-based sensing and optics.

CACI is charged with transforming and unifying legacy network infrastructures across 14 Space Force installations.

The work will be performed under the United States Air Force Base Infrastructure Modernization contract vehicle.

The upgrades will provide high-bandwidth connectivity across all security classifications.

The contract requires CACI to deliver a software-defined, enterprise-level overhaul of the U.S. Space Force's base area networks to support high-security operations.

Congress allocated $650 million to the Mars Sample Return mission, which is higher than the administration’s proposed $300 million budget.

The Artemis program is proposed to receive $7.6 billion for the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate.

The budget also includes continued support for the Human Landing System (HLS) and the development of the Lunar Gateway.

The proposed NASA budget of $24.4 billion represents a $1.1 billion increase over the FY2025 enacted level.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson welcomed the proposed budget, expressing gratitude for bipartisan recognition of NASA's value to the nation.

The House Appropriations Committee released its Fiscal Year 2026 spending bill on January 5, 2026, proposing $24.4 billion for NASA.

The budget includes full funding for the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion spacecraft.

The Trump administration sought to reduce NASA's topline budget to under $22 billion by targeting Earth Science and long-duration exploration missions.

If the $24.4 billion figure holds through reconciliation, it will mark the fourth consecutive year of budget growth for NASA.

The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite is a joint mission between NASA and the French space agency CNES.

SWOT revealed that tsunami waves following the Kamchatka earthquake were trapped along the continental shelf, known as 'edge waves'.

SWOT captured high-resolution data of a tsunami that challenged existing scientific models following a magnitude 7.0 earthquake off the coast of Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula in late 2025.

The SWOT mission is supported by partners like the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency.