株式会社アストロスケール received a contract from the Ministry of Defense for researching satellite monitoring and defense technologies on January 5, 2026.

The project will develop a gripping mechanism and a general gripping system necessary for docking auxiliary satellites used for inspecting and continuing operations of domestic satellites in orbit.

Space Forge announced on December 31, 2025, that its satellite ForgeStar-1 successfully demonstrated plasma generation technology.

株式会社WHERE aims to acquire off-market real estate information, improve data accuracy, build a signal model to prioritize approaches, enhance project management capabilities, and implement a transaction reward model for the Deal Tech initiative.

Space Forge aims to realize a hybrid manufacturing model where crystals produced in space are processed on Earth.

株式会社WHERE announced the launch of its deal support initiative called 'Deal Tech' on January 5, 2026.

'Deal Tech' will handle negotiations and contract processes with landowners identified through the WHERE real estate exploration service.

Space Forge confirmed that it can generate and control extreme environments necessary for crystal growth aboard an autonomous platform in low Earth orbit.

The funding round for Photonic was led by the U.K.’s Planet First Partners.

Photonic is a Vancouver-based quantum technology startup.

The funding round for Photonic includes first-time investors Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and TELUS.

Photonic has raised $180 million in its latest funding round.

Space Concordia is co-hosting the Canadian CubeSat Conference.

SEDS Canada is organizing the Canadian CubeSat Conference.

Tellus signed a joint research contract with the Graduate School of Advanced Studies, University of Tokyo on December 1, 2025, aimed at developing foundational technologies for AI agents that realize autonomous information extraction and decision support in satellite data analysis.

Tellus plans to utilize its service 'Tellus AI Playground' to develop and verify AI models based on satellite data, enabling automatic recognition, interactive analysis, and task generation from satellite images.

Tellus currently handles 44 types of satellite data and 2 types of ground data from both government and commercial sources.

As of the end of November 2025, Tellus had 42,845 registered users and had exceeded annual downloads of 530,000 scenes.

Tellus aims to support the creation of new businesses based on satellite data and expand the domestic and international space information industry market, with a goal of establishing space industry as a key industry.

If light emission from the object is observed, it could suggest that it is an anomalous ultracompact dwarf galaxy.

Simona Vegetti, from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, described the task of separating mass components from a distant, low-mass object as extremely challenging yet exciting.

The gravitational lensing phenomenon was used to study the universe as predicted by general relativity.

The body has a mass of approximately one million solar masses and is located 6.5 billion light-years away.

Giulia Despali, a co-author and researcher at the University of Bologna, indicated that the models of cold and warm dark matter could not explain the observed object.

New observations with the James Webb Space Telescope may provide further insights into the nature of the object.

Gravitational lensing can amplify signals from distant sources by enlarging their images.

The presence of the body was revealed only by gravitational effects, making it invisible otherwise.

All three recorded cases display properties that do not easily fit the standard model of dark matter, highlighting the need for more examples to understand if they are anomalies or indicators of new physics.

The object's profile is particularly dense at the center but extends significantly, suggesting it is not uniformly distributed.

Researchers reconstructed the density profile of the mysterious object to understand how its mass is distributed in space.

The gravitational lensing in the Jvas B1938+666 system is produced mainly by a massive elliptical galaxy.

Radio telescopes, including the Green Bank Telescope and VLBA and EVN networks, collected amplified signals from a source approximately 11 billion light-years away.

Researchers analyzed the deformations of the signal emitted by the distant source to reconstruct details of the lens itself.

Multiple mass components acted as lenses, with the focus on a small object of one million solar masses.

The central region of the object is consistent with a black hole or a dense stellar core, which makes up about one-quarter of its total mass.

This discovery marks the third object of its kind identified through gravitational imaging, being the smallest in mass and characterized with high precision.

An elusive celestial body was discovered in October 2022, which is the smallest object ever detected at cosmological distances solely by gravitational effects.

The leaves of the astronaut tree turn fiery red in autumn, which visually evokes the flames of a rocket.

ESA emphasizes the importance of the human factor in space exploration through initiatives like the astronaut tree planting.

Sophie Adenot is a member of the ESA astronaut corps preparing for her first space mission.

Astronaut Sophie Adenot planted an astronaut tree at the European Astronaut Centre to symbolize the start of her first mission, εpsilon.

The planting of the astronaut tree accompanies the concrete preparations for a space mission.

The epsilon mission represents a significant achievement for Sophie Adenot and for the continuity of European contributions to human flight.

The epsilon mission is part of a long-term strategy to strengthen European competencies in astronautics while maintaining a cultural connection to Earth.

The planting of the astronaut tree is a long-standing tradition within the European human spaceflight program.

Each astronaut plants a tree before their mission as a symbol of growth, continuity, and connection to Earth.

The epsilon mission by ESA entered its preliminary phase on January 5, 2026.

Desired research areas for Haven-1 Lab include safe human exploration to the Moon and Mars, discoveries in physical and biological sciences, and materials science breakthroughs.

Existing partners for Haven-1 Lab include Redwire, Yuri, Japan Manned Space Systems Corporation (JAMSS), Interstellar Lab, and Exobiosphere.

More than 4,000 scientific journal publications have been based on experiments conducted on the ISS.