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Vast to complete Haven-1 primary structure in July 2025, ahead of target May 2026 launch date – Spaceflight Now

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SpaceX

Vast to complete Haven-1 primary structure in July 2025, ahead of target May 2026 launch date – Spaceflight Now

A model of the final version of Vast’s Haven-1 space station is shown with a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked. The model was on display at the 40th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado in April 2025. Image: Will Robinson-Smith/Spaceflight Now Space habitation company, Vast, is now one year away from being able to stake its claim as the first commercial space station in history. The company based in Long Beach, California, aims to launch its single-module Haven-1 space station on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in May 2026. To that end, it completed both its primary structure and qualification article and is moving into manufacturing the flight version. “We’ve locked the design, we’ve released those drawings to our manufacturing CNC shop and we are welding it with a view to start integrati...

From Earthrise to Action: A Celebration of Our Planet

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NASA

From Earthrise to Action: A Celebration of Our Planet

Space Center Houston’s annual Planet Earth Celebration brings people and space together to recognize how extraordinary our planet is—and to explore simple, meaningful ways to protect it. The origins of Planet Earth Celebration The Planet Earth Celebration traces its roots to the iconic Earthrise photo taken by Apollo 8 astronauts in 1968, showing our planet rising above the Moon’s horizon. This striking image—the first color photo of Earth from space—inspired a sense of global unity and urgency around protecting our fragile planet. It played a pivotal role in launching the environmental movement and led to the first Earth Day in 1970, when millions of people rallied for change. Today, the celebration continues to raise awareness and inspire action to preserve Earth’s uni...

The ‘impossible’ particle hinting at the universe’s biggest secrets

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Science

The ‘impossible’ particle hinting at the universe’s biggest secrets

For over a decade, floating cranes have been lowering a strange cargo some 3000 metres under the Mediterranean Sea. The objects look otherworldly: large, shiny spheres crammed with electronics. They are, in fact, detectors for a machine called KM3NeT, designed to search for one of the most mysterious fundamental particles. The machine is still several years from completion, so Paschal Coyle got quite a shock when, in 2023, he spotted a dramatic signal in its preliminary data. It was a neutrino, as expected, but one unlike anything ever seen before. “When I first tried looking at this event, my program crashed,” says Coyle, a physicist at the Centre for Particle Physics of Marseille, France. KM3NeT had detected a neutrino from space that had about 35 times more en...

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Science

Lamont-Doherty Mourns IT Exec and Entrepreneur Edward Botwinick BS’58 – State of the Planet

Columbia mourns the loss of Edward Botwinick ’56CC, BS’58 and emeritus member of the LDEO Board, who passed away Jan. 24, 2025. Botwinick was an IT entrepreneur, a pioneer in the area of time-division multiplexing and a strong supporter of Columbia University and Columbia Football. Botwinick received his BA in physics from Columbia College in 1956 and his BS in electrical engineering in 1958. He began his career working for US Semiconductor in 1958 and co-founded Silicon Transistor Corp. in 1960. From 1963 to 1967, he served as president and principal shareholder of Quantum Inc., a tape drive and scalable file storage manufacturer. In 1969, Botwinick helped found the data communications firm Timeplex, Inc., which became a leading provider of T1-based networks. For decades, T-1 ba...

NASA — Artemis Astronauts Have Drills, Too!

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NASA

NASA — Artemis Astronauts Have Drills, Too!

Choose your player! As we gear up for our Artemis I mission to the Moon — the mission that will prepare us to send the first woman and the first person of color to the lunar surface — we have an important task for you (yes, you!). Artemis I will be the first integrated test flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion crew capsule. Although there won’t be any humans aboard Orion, there will be a very important crewmember: the Moonikin! The Moonikin is a manikin, or anatomical human model, that will be used to gather data on the vibrations that human crewmembers will experience during future Artemis missions. But the Moonikin is currently missing something incredibly important — a name! There are eight names in the running, and each one reflects an important piece of NASA...