The Shifting Sands of Space Procurement The $700 million contract NASA awarded Blue Origin for a Mars telecommunications spacecraft isn’t just a win for Jeff Bezos’s ambitions; it’s a bellwether for an alarming Read More
NASA’s Sudden Shift from Rovers to Rotorcraft For an agency whose planetary exploration strategy has long been defined by the methodical crawl of rovers and the stationary vigil of landers, NASA’s latest pivot Read More
The Perpetual Postponement of Proof NASA’s Perseverance rover recently deployed its SHERLOC instrument to detect complex macromolecular carbon on a rock surface at the Bright Angel site within Jezero Crater, a finding described by Read More
An Unceremonious Exit from 200 Million Miles Away Two hundred million miles away, a workhorse went silent. On December 6, a NASA spacecraft named MAVEN, tasked with studying the Martian atmosphere, performed a routine orbital maneuver, an Read More
The Quiet Resource Race Begins A recent gravitational assist from Mars, executed by NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, was more than just a routine orbital maneuver. While the Jet Propulsion Laboratory navigators celebrated a precise trajectory Read More
The Illusory Open Door of Space Procurement The whispers around NASA’s latest Mars spacecraft solicitation are louder than any thruster burn, suggesting that the agency’s promise of a “full and open competition” is Read More