Editorial Team

Space Daily Editorial Team

Editorial Team

The Space Daily Editorial Team produces content across our two editorial pillars: space industry news and Mind & Meaning. We cover launches, missions, satellites, defense, and the technology of getting humans to space, alongside the psychology of ambition, isolation, and meaning under extremes. Articles reflect our team's collective editorial process, source verification, drafting, technical review, and editing, rather than a single writer's work. Space Daily takes editorial responsibility for content under this byline. For more on how we work, see our editorial policy.

Science

For much of the past century, scientists believed dinosaurs were already in decline when the asteroid struck 66 million years ago — but a 2025 study published in Science found fossils in New Mexico showing they were flourishing in diverse, thriving ecosystems right up until the moment of impact

For much of the past century, many scientists believed the dinosaurs were already in decline when the asteroid struck 66 million years ago, a group past its prime that a cosmic accident merely finished off.

Jul 5, 2026

Science

Cooling a data centre on Earth can consume 10 to 30 per cent of its energy budget and millions of litres of water; in orbit, there is no air, no cooling towers, and no river to dump heat into — only vast radiator panels bleeding waste heat away as infrared light into the blackness of space

Keeping a data centre cool on Earth is a surprisingly large part of the job. Cooling can swallow anywhere from a tenth to a third of a facility's entire energy budget, and the thirstiest sites drink millions of litres of water to do it.

Jul 5, 2026

Science

The debate over how many Earth-like planets exist has a wide range — from one, if the Rare Earth hypothesis is right, to something approaching a hundred quintillion, if Milky Way rates hold across the universe’s roughly two trillion galaxies — and both answers are supported by serious researchers

Ask how many Earth-like planets there are, and the honest answer is that serious researchers give estimates spanning more than twenty orders of magnitude.

Jul 5, 2026

Science

Saturn used to be listed with 83 moons. Then astronomers looked harder, found dozens more, and by 2026 the count had exploded to 285 — so many that Saturn now has nearly three times as many confirmed moons as Jupiter.

A few years ago, Saturn was listed with 83 moons. Then astronomers looked harder, began finding them dozens at a time, and by 2026 the tally had reached 285, so many that Saturn now has nearly three times as many confirmed moons as Jupiter.

Jul 5, 2026

Science

If microbial life is ever confirmed on Mars, on Europa, or in the plumes of Enceladus, it will be the most consequential discovery in the history of science — not because aliens exist, but because it would mean life is ordinary, and the universe is full of it

If microbial life is ever confirmed beyond Earth, on Mars, in the hidden ocean of Europa, or in the icy plumes of Enceladus, it would rank among the most consequential discoveries in the history of science.

Jul 4, 2026

Science

NASA tested a nuclear rocket engine dozens of times in the 1960s, proved it could work, then shelved it before it ever flew — and now the same basic idea is being revived because it could make the trip to Mars far shorter than chemical rockets allow.

In the 1960s, NASA and the Atomic Energy Commission built nuclear rocket engines and test-fired them dozens of times in the Nevada desert.

Jul 4, 2026

Science

The footprints left by Apollo astronauts on the lunar surface will remain there, undisturbed, for at least ten million years — there is no wind, no rain, and almost nothing to erase them

The bootprints that Apollo astronauts pressed into the lunar dust between 1969 and 1972 are still there, and they will stay for a very long time.

Jul 4, 2026

Science

The largest known volcano in the solar system is on Mars, and it is so wide that if you stood on its summit, you might not realise you were on a volcano at all — Olympus Mons rises from a base roughly the size of New Mexico, with slopes so gentle they would barely feel like a mountain.

The largest known volcano in the solar system is on Mars, and it is so vast that if you stood on its summit you might not realise you were on a volcano, or even a mountain, at all.

Jul 4, 2026

Science

Saturn’s rings may be far younger than the planet itself — Cassini-era estimates have placed their age anywhere from about 10 million to a few hundred million years, meaning the rings we see today may not have existed for most of the age of dinosaurs.

Saturn looks like the solar system's old monument, a pale gas giant encircled by rings that seem as permanent as the planet itself.

Jul 4, 2026

Science

In 1995, astronomers pointed Hubble at a patch of sky so dark it looked empty and held it there for ten days. The image that came back contained roughly 3,000 galaxies — not stars, but galaxies — many holding billions of stars of their own.

In December 1995, Hubble did something that sounded almost like a misuse of a great telescope.

Jul 4, 2026

Science

In April 2025, four private astronauts on SpaceX’s Fram2 mission became the first humans ever to circle Earth in a true polar orbit, flying directly over both poles — a route no government crewed space program had taken in more than six decades of human spaceflight.

Human spaceflight had crossed oceans, docked with stations, circled the Moon and lived in orbit for more than a year before anyone did something deceptively simple: fly people straight over both poles of Earth.

Jul 4, 2026

Aerospace

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft used Mars as a free slingshot on 15 May 2026, gaining 1,000 miles per hour in speed and tilting its orbital plane by one degree, all without firing a thruster, to put it on course for a metal world that may be a planet’s exposed iron core

On 15 May 2026, NASA's Psyche spacecraft passed within 2,864 miles, or 4,609 kilometres, of Mars and left the encounter on a better path than the one it arrived on.

Jul 4, 2026

Technology

AI did not just demand more electricity — it demanded water. By 2025, U.S. data centres, increasingly expanded for AI workloads, were consuming nearly one trillion litres of water a year, much of it used in cooling systems that shed heat by evaporating water into the air.

The public argument about artificial intelligence has mostly been an argument about electricity.

Jul 4, 2026

Science

In 1610, Galileo spotted a small, smooth moon circling Jupiter and wrote it down; four hundred years later, scientists confirmed it likely holds the largest ocean in the solar system, buried under ice and never once touched by sunlight

In January 1610, Galileo Galilei turned a small telescope toward Jupiter and noticed something that should not have been there: tiny points of light close to the planet, changing position from night to night.

Jul 4, 2026

Science

Solar storms puffed up Earth’s upper atmosphere enough to drag a $500 million NASA space telescope toward destruction, so engineers built a $30 million robotic rescuer in less than a year and launched it to grab the telescope before it burns up.

The Sun has been so active lately that it puffed up the top of Earth's atmosphere and began dragging a NASA space telescope down toward a fiery reentry.

Jul 4, 2026

Science

The oldest known image of the cosmos is a Bronze Age disc of bronze and gold, dug from a German hilltop by looters and recovered three years later in a Swiss police sting

Buried around 1600 BC, looted in 1999 and seized in a Basel sting in 2002, the Nebra sky disc carries what one research team calls the earliest concrete picture of the night sky. How firmly the bronze can prove that is still argued.

Jul 4, 2026