When Zhang Chenxing, who holds a PhD from MIT, co-founded Mega Engine Technology in Xi'an in early 2024, China's high-pressure oxygen-rich staged-combustion know-how sat almost entirely inside state propulsion houses — and by May 2026 his startup had logged 1,000 seconds of accumulated test time on a closed-cycle kerolox engine

Roughly two years after it opened its doors, a Xi'an commercial startup called Mega Engine Technology has announced that a single high-pressure oxygen-rich staged-combustion kerolox engine accumulated 1,000 seconds of run time at rated…

By Space Daily Editorial Team · May 31, 2026

Latest

All articles →

Constellations

The leading explanation for how the Moon was born is that a world the size of Mars called Theia slammed into the young Earth and flung out the debris that became the Moon, and recent research suggests Theia itself never fully left, with two continent-sized blobs buried near our planet's core possibly being the last remains of the world that struck us.

The leading account of where the Moon came from is a collision. Early in the Solar System's history, a young planet roughly the size of Mars, given the name Theia, is thought to have struck the proto-Earth a glancing blow.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · May 31, 2026

Science

Earth's magnetic field has flipped hundreds of times, swapping magnetic north and south in a switch locked into ancient rock, and it happens on no fixed schedule, yet nothing in the record suggests a single flip ever wiped out life.

Magnetic reversals are real and common over geological time, but they do not run on a neat schedule.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · May 31, 2026

Earth Observation

Zealandia, the submerged continent geologists confirmed in 2017, is 94 percent underwater and stretches nearly two million square miles beneath the South Pacific, yet its modern name was quietly proposed by geophysicist Bruce Luyendyk in 1995

The Interislander ferry between Wellington and Picton carries tourists, freight trucks, and commuters across a stretch of the Cook Strait most of them assume is just water between two New Zealand islands.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · May 31, 2026

Earth Observation

New Zealand and New Caledonia are the only large fragments of Zealandia still poking above the ocean, meaning the country most travellers think of as a pair of islands is actually the exposed mountain peaks of a continent five times their size.

Stand on Piha Beach west of Auckland at low tide. The black sand stretches toward the Tasman, the surf rolls in, and the horizon looks like the edge of the world.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · May 31, 2026

Science

A rainbow is not actually located in any specific place in the sky — every person watching the same rainbow is seeing a slightly different one, formed by different raindrops, and if two people stood next to each other looking at the same rainbow, the rainbows they are seeing would be technically different, with no two viewers in the world ever sharing the exact same rainbow

A rainbow looks like an object in the sky. It appears to have a definite location: starting somewhere over the trees, arcing across the field, ending somewhere near the horizon.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · May 31, 2026

What’s up in

Mind & Meaning

The psychology of ambition, isolation, and meaning under extremes — and what frontier life teaches us about being human.

Constellations

The leading explanation for how the Moon was born is that a world the size of Mars called Theia slammed into the young Earth and flung out the debris that became the Moon, and recent research suggests Theia itself never fully left, with two continent-sized blobs buried near our planet's core possibly being the last remains of the world that struck us.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Science

Earth's magnetic field has flipped hundreds of times, swapping magnetic north and south in a switch locked into ancient rock, and it happens on no fixed schedule, yet nothing in the record suggests a single flip ever wiped out life.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Constellations

The Moon is stealing time from the Earth, and it has been getting away with it for billions of years. Our planet spins so much slower than it once did that a single day has stretched from just 19 hours to the 24 we live by, and the Moon is still creeping away from us right now.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Science

There are more trees on Earth than stars in the Milky Way. A major global estimate put the planet’s tree count at about three trillion, while NASA gives the Milky Way’s star count as roughly 100 to 400 billion.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

What’s up in

Science

Physics, climate, planetary science, and the research that shapes how we understand the universe.

Science

Earth's magnetic field has flipped hundreds of times, swapping magnetic north and south in a switch locked into ancient rock, and it happens on no fixed schedule, yet nothing in the record suggests a single flip ever wiped out life.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Earth Observation

Zealandia, the submerged continent geologists confirmed in 2017, is 94 percent underwater and stretches nearly two million square miles beneath the South Pacific, yet its modern name was quietly proposed by geophysicist Bruce Luyendyk in 1995

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Earth Observation

New Zealand and New Caledonia are the only large fragments of Zealandia still poking above the ocean, meaning the country most travellers think of as a pair of islands is actually the exposed mountain peaks of a continent five times their size.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Science

A rainbow is not actually located in any specific place in the sky — every person watching the same rainbow is seeing a slightly different one, formed by different raindrops, and if two people stood next to each other looking at the same rainbow, the rainbows they are seeing would be technically different, with no two viewers in the world ever sharing the exact same rainbow

By Space Daily Editorial Team

About Space Daily

Space, science, and the human side of the frontier. Since 1995.

Space Daily is an independent publication covering three connected beats: the space industry, the science behind it, and the psychology of ambition, isolation, and meaning under extremes. Founded in Tokyo in 1995, we’ve built a thirty-year archive of rigorous reporting on the people, missions, and ideas pushing humanity outward — and on the human dynamics shaped by frontier life. The same ambitions, pressures, and patterns of mind that drive humanity to the stars also shape how we live on Earth. We employ modern AI technologies to support our editorial workflows; every published piece is editorially directed and reviewed.

More about us →

Earth's magnetic field has flipped hundreds of times, swapping magnetic north and south in a switch locked into ancient rock, and it happens on no fixed schedule, yet nothing in the record suggests a single flip ever wiped out life.

Zealandia, the submerged continent geologists confirmed in 2017, is 94 percent underwater and stretches nearly two million square miles beneath the South Pacific, yet its modern name was quietly proposed by geophysicist Bruce Luyendyk in 1995

New Zealand and New Caledonia are the only large fragments of Zealandia still poking above the ocean, meaning the country most travellers think of as a pair of islands is actually the exposed mountain peaks of a continent five times their size.

Earth's magnetic field has flipped hundreds of times, swapping magnetic north and south in a switch locked into ancient rock, and it happens on no fixed schedule, yet nothing in the record suggests a single flip ever wiped out life.

The Moon is stealing time from the Earth, and it has been getting away with it for billions of years. Our planet spins so much slower than it once did that a single day has stretched from just 19 hours to the 24 we live by, and the Moon is still creeping away from us right now.

There are more trees on Earth than stars in the Milky Way. A major global estimate put the planet’s tree count at about three trillion, while NASA gives the Milky Way’s star count as roughly 100 to 400 billion.

Earth's magnetic field has flipped hundreds of times, swapping magnetic north and south in a switch locked into ancient rock, and it happens on no fixed schedule, yet nothing in the record suggests a single flip ever wiped out life.

Zealandia, the submerged continent geologists confirmed in 2017, is 94 percent underwater and stretches nearly two million square miles beneath the South Pacific, yet its modern name was quietly proposed by geophysicist Bruce Luyendyk in 1995

New Zealand and New Caledonia are the only large fragments of Zealandia still poking above the ocean, meaning the country most travellers think of as a pair of islands is actually the exposed mountain peaks of a continent five times their size.

About Space Daily

The Space Daily Newsletter