Tag: space

Mystery Shrouds Destruction Of US Spy Satellite

A mysterious breakup of a decades-old American spy satellite has sent debris hurtling through low-Earth orbit, with the U.S. Space Force now tracking the fragments for potential threats to other spacecraft, according to Space-Track.

The satellite, known as USA 32, came apart on September 13 at approximately 5:13 p.m. ET, according to U.S. Space Forces-Space. Officials have not publicly determined what caused the nearly 40-year-old spacecraft to suddenly fragment.

“All tracked debris are being incorporated into routine conjunction assessment screenings to support spaceflight safety,” U.S. Space Forces-Space said in a notice. “No immediate threats have been identified; further analysis is ongoing.”

USA 32 had been circling Earth since the final years of the Cold War.

The National Reconnaissance Office satellite blasted into space aboard a Titan II rocket on September 5, 1988. Public records identify the spacecraft as an electronic and signals intelligence satellite designed to collect information from orbit.

USA 32 has also been identified as FARRAH III, part of a secretive family of American intelligence satellites whose name was inspired by actress Farrah Fawcett.

The satellite was traveling in an orbit roughly 480 miles above Earth when it broke apart. Officials have yet to disclose how many fragments were produced.

That uncertainty matters because debris traveling at orbital speeds can pose a hazard to functioning satellites even when the individual pieces are relatively small. Space Force tracking systems routinely monitor objects around Earth and screen their trajectories for possible collisions.

Exactly what happened to USA 32 remains a mystery.

A collision with an untracked object is one possible explanation for an unexpected satellite breakup. Aging spacecraft can also fragment because of failures involving batteries, pressurized tanks or other components. There is currently no public evidence establishing any of those scenarios as the cause of USA 32’s demise.

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Pentagon reveals secret space weapons are already in orbit — but won’t say what they do

The U.S. has weapons orbiting Earth that can be used to defend American forces from attacks in space, the Air Force secretary revealed this week in a rare public acknowledgment of capabilities the Pentagon has largely kept secret.

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said Monday that the Space Force now has “on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action,” but declined to say what the weapons are, how they work or when they were deployed.

The carefully worded disclosure marks a shift in how openly the U.S. military talks about weapons in orbit as China and Russia develop their own capabilities to disrupt, disable or destroy satellites.

“Is there any question in the room, by anybody, about whether or not the Chinese or Russians have been developing these sorts of weapons?” Meink told reporters after his remarks at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland — right outside of Washington, D.C.

“For over a decade, we’ve been talking about the fact, and we have expressed concern, that the Chinese and Russians were developing weapons for space,” he continued. “We need to focus on making sure we can protect ourselves operating in that environment.”

Exactly what the U.S. has put into orbit remains a mystery.

The U.S. has previously discussed placing weapons in space, including plans to deploy space-based interceptors capable of destroying incoming missiles as part of President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense system.

But Meink’s disclosure goes a step further: The Space Force already has weapons in orbit for “space control,” a mission aimed at protecting U.S. access to space and, if necessary, denying an adversary the ability to use it.

The Pentagon has historically revealed little about the weapons developed for that mission, with publicly known U.S. counter-space capabilities largely based on the ground.

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America Now Has Weapons In Space — And Just Said So Out Loud

The US Space Force finally confirmed something that the national-security establishment has been hinting at for years: it has put “military weapons” in orbit around the Earth, Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink confirmed at the Air and Space Forces Association’s annual Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Monday.

“Today we are more ready than ever to face new challenges and we continue to ensure that we are doing our best to counter threats that are evolving, that are located anywhere in the world,” Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said in prepared remarks at the National Harbor event. “This is why the United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”

He declined to offer any information about the on-orbit space control weapons now being deployed, including how many are involved and how long it will take for them to be deployed. He said that revealing too much information would not help to further deterrence. “Me talking about the details of what we’re doing would actually not benefit deterrence. So we’re not going to talk about the specifics of what we’re doing, whether we’ve tested it, not tested it, etc.”

The disclosure of the existence of US space control weapons in orbit marks a significant shift in US policy regarding warfare in space. For years senior Pentagon officials refused to confirm the existence of offensive and/or defensive systems in space. In recent years China and Russia have been actively testing out a range of anti-satellite systems including inspectors, ground launched ASATs and maneuvering spacecraft designed to seek out and destroy enemy satellites in orbit.

Recently Space Force leaders have detailed a growing array of defensive tools such as countermeasures, satellite-hardening techniques and ground-based systems capable of directing powerful energy at hostile spacecraft. Earlier this year the Space Force activated its first ground-based electromagnetic warfare (EMW) station, called Meadowlands, which will target enemy satellites in space.

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COSMIC FLOP? Macron’s International Space Summit Not Going According to Plan After SpaceX and Blue Origin Pull Out of Event

A poorly coordinated event may become another Macron failure.

As we previously reported here on TGP, French President Emmanuel Macron’s failing international space summit is NOT going according to plan, with industry leaders like SpaceX and Blue Origin canceling their participation.

Yesterday, the French tried to downplay the American firms’ decision, but reports say the summit is a ‘poorly coordinated event with an unclear outcome’.

Politico reported:

“The U.S. snub is only one of several challenges facing the gathering on Wednesday and Thursday in the French capital. About 120 international delegations have been invited, with Chinese officials expected to attend.

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How in the Actual Hell Can We Be Running Out of Space Rockets?

America’s la peur du jour — online tools assures me that’s French for “fear of the day” — isn’t the Iran War, AI stealing our jobs, or even Rep. Nancy Mace demands that we not ogle the sleeve tats she demands that we ogle.

If she doesn’t want us to stare at her tats, maybe she should switch back to scoop-neck tops? I dunno.

As it turns out, what bedevils our fine nation today is a satellite operations industry “in panic,” as Quality Space research chief Caleb Henry told Ars Technica over a looming rocket shortage.

It seems crazy. We live in the Golden Age of Rocketry.

SpaceX keeps humming along, setting one Falcon 9 record after another while also working even harder to make Falcon 9 obsolete.

Blue Origin’s reusable New Glenn rocket should get back to work early next year, and Northrop Grumman will eventually work out the kinks with the solid fuel boosters for ULA’s Vulcan rocket. I mean, you would certainly hope so. And then there are innovative launch solutions coming down soon from upstart rivals like Stoke Space, Rocket Lab, and Relativity Space. And those are just the up-and-coming American firms. 

Governments and private equity around the world continue dropping serious coin into innovative launch tech. 

Speaking of innovation, we can’t leave out SpaceX’s Starship, which will likely enter full service before the end of the year. If all goes to plan, as the program matures, each Starship launch will lift more than five times as much stuff to orbit as Falcon 9, while costing less per kilogram. A lot less.

So with all this going on, how could we possibly run out of launch capacity?

It’s all in the timing… and the pricing… and where the money really is.

And it ain’t in launch.

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A California startup won approval to launch a 59-foot mirror into orbit that beams sunlight to a chosen spot on Earth, helping crews work after dark

ight falls, solar panels stop producing, and emergency crews often turn to fuel-powered generators and floodlights. A California startup now wants to offer another option by redirecting sunlight from orbit to a chosen place on Earth for a few minutes.

On July 9, 2026, the Federal Communications Commission authorized Reflect Orbital to deploy and operate Earendil-1, one experimental satellite carrying a reflector about 59 feet by 59 feet. From an orbit roughly 388 miles above Earth, the spacecraft is intended to create a moonlike patch of light about 3.1 miles wide while testing whether that footprint can be aimed and controlled accurately.

A mirror that follows the Sun

Earendil-1 will not make electricity or store solar energy. Its thin reflective film will act like a giant heliostat in space, turning so it can intercept sunlight while the satellite remains sunlit and redirect that light toward a location that has already entered darkness.

Because it moves quickly through low Earth orbit, a single pass would illuminate a target only briefly. Reflect Orbital says its planned 2026 demonstration is designed to provide around 0.1 lux for up to five minutes, equal to roughly 0.009 foot-candles and comparable to a clear night under a full moon.

The light can be removed from the ground by changing the spacecraft’s orientation. That steering ability is at the heart of the mission, since the test must show that the reflector can unfold, point accurately, hold its footprint, and turn away when service ends.

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NASA reveals it has captured UFO imagery as space agency chief admits ‘there’s life everywhere’

NASA‘s chief administrator confirmed in a bombshell interview that the space agency has taken images of objects which can only be described as UFOs. 

Jared Isaacman, who took over as leader of NASA in December 2025, said real imagery captured from space could not be explained away as a comet or other natural phenomenon.

While Isaacman stopped short of calling it proof of alien life, he was confident that the ultimate conclusion would be that the universe is full of extraterrestrial life, which humans have not yet discovered.

The NASA Administrator told podcast host Jack Gordon: ‘We have captured imagery, and this is what President Trump is very forward-leaning about, that based on the data that we have within that imagery, we don’t know what it is.’

‘I think there’s a very real possibility we’re going to arrive at a conclusion in our lifetime that perhaps there’s life everywhere out there and that it isn’t as infrequent as we might think it to possibly be,’ he continued.

While Isaacman admitted the space agency was in possession of photos that appear to show unexplainable things near Earth, he added that he has never seen evidence of crashed UFOs or alien bodies recovered by the US government.

NASA has long maintained that it does not possess or maintain evidence any alien life or bodies, just as the White House and Pentagon have continuously stated that there is no physical proof.

However, Isaacman noted that NASA may already have the proof in its possession, but that evidence is currently stuck on Mars – roughly 200 million miles away right now.

‘We got samples on Mars right now. If we bring them back, there is a very high probability that they will point to, at some point, microbial life at least on Mars,’ he said during the June 30 interview with Gordon.

NASA had previously announced the discovery of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet last September, but the mission to collect those samples from the Perseverance rover was dropped from NASA’s Mars plans over funding issues.

The comments follow President Donald Trump’s order to disclose all files related to UFOs.

Thousands of pages of NASA records, audio interviews and photos have been released as part of the Pentagon’s disclosure rollout this year, but nothing to this point has provided definitive proof of life on other worlds. 

Isaacman was appointed to run NASA just before Congress approved a new budget, supported by President Donald Trump, which focused on sending a manned mission to Mars by the end of the decade.

The NASA administrator, who is a self-made billionaire entrepreneur, accomplished pilot and civilian astronaut who went into orbit with SpaceX, added that UFOs have been a key focus behind NASA’s renewed push to explore the solar system.

‘I can’t hate the subject. In fact, I’m incredibly fascinated about it because that is at the heart of what we’re trying to do at NASA – answer the question, are we alone?’

Despite saying that the universe is likely teeming with life, Isaacman pushed back when asked if humans would therefore be ‘invading’ other worlds by continuing to explore space now and in the distant future.

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO Spurs Momentum for Orbital AI Data Centers

The concept of building AI data centers in orbit has gained renewed momentum following SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO that raised over $85 billion and valued the company in the trillions. Elon Musk’s success and the massive pushback against AI data centers in rural and suburban communities has spurred competitors including Jeff Bezos to develop their own plans for space-based data centers

CNBC reports that the successful public debut of SpaceX, which raised $85 billion and made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, has brought the once far-fetched idea of space-based AI data centers into the realm of plausibility. While significant skepticism remains about the economic viability of the concept, industry experts and investors suggest the massive capital infusion could accelerate development of orbital computing infrastructure.

SpaceX now possesses several key components necessary for space-based data centers, including reliable reusable Falcon rockets, plans for more powerful launch vehicles, its xAI division with substantial computing needs, and the upgradeable Starlink satellite network. The company’s interconnected operations now have billions in new capital to potentially integrate these elements and serve both internal AI operations and commercial customers such as Anthropic.

Breitbart News previously reported that Musk unveiled his plans for orbital AI data centers shortly before the SpaceX IPO:

The AI data center satellite, which Musk characterized as a preliminary version of the final design, will stand 20 meters tall with an expansive wingspan of 70 meters. These dimensions make it the largest satellite SpaceX has ever attempted to launch. The structure features a rack of AI chips flanked by extensive solar panels and liquid radiators for thermal management.

Musk described the current design as a draft iteration of what will become the operational version. He noted that the satellite is considerably less complex than SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, which the company has been deploying since 2019. Much of the technology draws from systems already developed for the satellite internet service.

“We don’t think this is a super hard problem, compared to things we already do,” said Musk.

Duncan Davidson, a partner at Bullpen Capital, stated on CNBC’s The Exchange that “The company comes down to data centers in space. That is the big, long-term play.” Davidson noted that while engineering and technical challenges are being addressed, the economics remain marginal at present. However, he expressed optimism about the long-term business case as launch costs decrease while terrestrial data center expenses continue rising.

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