Tag: space

U.S. Space Command Warns Russia Planning ‘Space Pearl Harbor’ With Nuclear Weapon in Orbit 

Russia is reportedly developing a nuclear weapon designed to be deployed in space that could cripple global communications and cause widespread disruption.

General Stephen Whiting, head of U.S. Space Command, has admitted that Washington is “very concerned” about plans to place a nuclear anti-satellite weapon into orbit.

“They are thinking about placing in orbit a nuclear anti-satellite weapon that would hold at risk everyone’s satellites in low Earth orbit, and that would be an outcome that we just couldn’t tolerate,” Whiting said.

The weapon could be used to destroy large numbers of satellites in low Earth orbit, potentially taking out communications systems, GPS networks and parts of the global internet.

A detonation in orbit could damage or destroy up to 10,000 satellites, roughly 80 percent of those currently in space.

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Stellar Artemis II photos taken with old-model Nikon worth about $1,000: ‘Proven technology’

Most of the out-of-this-world photos being beamed home from Artemis II were taken with an old-model Nikon camera that can be bought for about $1,000.

NASA traded in the legendary Hasselblad model it used on Apollo missions years ago for the Nikon D5 DSLR — a classic digital single-lens-reflex camera first released in 2016.

The Nikon was carefully selected for its proven track record as a workhorse space camera, as well as its extraordinary ability to pick up detail even in extreme darkness, Nikon’s top NASA consultant told The Post on Tuesday.

“It’s been tested for years,” said Mike Corrado, the senior manager of Nikon Pro Services who has spent more than four decades training NASA astronauts how to become photographers for missions.

“It’s proven technology.”

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Mystery surrounds death of NINTH scientist tied to US secrets as disturbing pattern grows

Another scientist with ties to America’s space program has now joined the growing list of deaths and disappearances around the US. 

Michael David Hicks, a research scientist at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), passed away on July 30, 2023 at the age of 59, but the cause of death was never made public, and no record of an autopsy being performed could be found. 

Hicks, who worked at JPL from 1998 to 2022, was credited with publishing over 80 scientific papers and was part of multiple teams helping NASA understand the physical properties of comets and asteroids.

Specifically, Hicks was involved with the DART Project, NASA’s test to see if humans could deflect dangerous asteroids away from Earth. He also worked on the Deep Space 1 Mission, which tested new spacecraft technology that flew by a comet in 2001.

While there have been no public allegations of foul play, Hicks’ case marks the ninth person with ties to America’s space or nuclear secrets who has died or mysteriously vanished in recent years, which has set off alarm bells among US national security experts.

Moreover, three of these scientists had close ties to Hicks, as all of them worked at the Jet Propulsion Lab or participated in NASA missions there. Monica Reza, JPL’s new Director of the Materials Processing Group, vanished without a trace in June 2025, just months after beginning her tenure at the NASA lab.

Two other men with deep ties to JPL died recently, including a long-time coworker of Hicks, Frank Maiwald, who died in July 2024 at age 61, with even less public acknowledgement of his untimely passing.

Meanwhile, astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, 67, was murdered on the front porch of his home on February 16, 2026. The California Institute of Technology researcher’s work was heavily supported by NASA’s JPL, and Grillmair was personally involved with major space telescope missions led by NASA.

The Daily Mail has reached out to NASA, Hicks’ alma mater at the University of Arizona, and the scientist’s friends and colleagues for comment on the circumstances surrounding his death. 

Strangely, a series of online obituaries dedicated to Hicks did not mention any health issues before the 59-year-old’s death, which appeared to happen suddenly, roughly one year after leaving NASA JPL.

A similar situation unfolded after Maiwald’s death on July 4, 2024, when the prominent JPL researcher died in Los Angeles from unknown circumstances. 

Despite Maiwald being a JPL Principal – an award given to scientists ‘making outstanding individual contributions’ in their fields – there were no public comments from authorities after the esteemed scientist’s death, and the only public record marking his passing was a single obituary posted online.

NASA and JPL have not commented on the deaths of Maiwald or Hicks, and did not reply to Daily Mail’s inquiries into the nature of the scientists’ work before their deaths.

In June 2023, just 13 months before his death, Maiwald was the lead researcher on a breakthrough that could help future space missions detect clear signs of life on other worlds in the solar system and beyond.

As for the other JPL-connected scientist, Grillmair had contributed to the discovery of water on a distant planet, with colleagues calling his work ‘ingenious’ and adding that the research could point to signs of life less than 160 light-years from Earth.

According to his Caltech profile, he also worked on the NEOWISE and NEO Surveyor, infrared space telescopes that track asteroids. However, experts have also expressed concern that this technology has also been used in advanced missile designs.

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New NASA video spurs hoax that Artemis II mission is staged: ‘Pure green screen bulls–t’

Conspiracy theorists are going bonkers over a new NASA video that they claim “proves” the Artemis II mission to the moon is staged in front of a green screen.

The brave crew gave a live interview over the weekend to CNN, discussing their journey to the moon while a plush toy named Rise floated around the capsule as a sign of zero gravity.

But a clip of the interview filmed by a cellphone from the TV allegedly shows visual distortions and flickers of text, including the letters “TAN” and “OW” across the toy’s body and head.

Conspiracists quickly seized on the clip as supposed “proof” that the entire mission was staged.

“Pure green screen bulls–t. Same exact fabric they use on movie sets. Artemis? Fake as hell. They never went up there. Whole thing’s a staged circus and we’re the idiots paying for it. Truth’s buried under layers of CGI and lies. Wake up, man,” a second X user added.

“Over 50 million dollars a day to give us green screen BS,” wrote a third X user.

However, the more likely explanation appears to be that the clip was recorded from a TV display with chromakey overlay processing active.

Chromakey, also known as green-screen or blue-screen effect, is commonly used by broadcasters to insert captions, graphics and lower-third text into live footage.

Live interviews often include graphic overlays such as captions, logos, and name banners, which are digitally layered in real time over the video.

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Why Is Everyone Suddenly Talking About Putting Data Centers in Space?

Data centers present sprawling engineering and political problems, with ravenous appetites for land and resources. Building them on Earth has proven problematic enough — so why is everyone suddenly talking about launching them into space?

Data centers are giant warehouses for computer chips that run continuously, with up to hundreds of thousands of processors packed closely together taking up a mammoth footprint: An Indiana data center complex run by Amazon, for example, takes up more real estate than seven football stadiums. To operate nonstop, they consume immense amounts of electricity, which in turn is converted to intense heat, requiring constant cooling with fans and pumped-in water.

Fueled by the ongoing boom in artificial intelligence, Big Tech is so desperate to power its data centers that Microsoft successfully convinced the Trump administration to restart operations at the benighted Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.

The data center surge has spawned a backlash, as communities grow skeptical about their environmental toll and ultimate utility of the machine learning systems they serve.

It’s in this climate that technologists, investors, and the world’s richest humans are now talking about bypassing Earth and its logistical hurdles by putting data centers in space. And if you take at face value the words of tech barons whose wealth in no small part relies on overstating what their companies may someday achieve, they’re not just novel but inevitable. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Jeff Bezos’s space launch firm Blue Origin has been working on an orbital data center project for over a year. Elon Musk, not known for accurate predictions, has publicly committed SpaceX to putting AI data centers in orbit. “There’s no doubt to me that a decade or so away we’ll be viewing it as a more normal way to build data centers,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently told Fox News.

The prospect of taking a trillion-dollar industry that is already experiencing a historic boom and literally shooting it toward the moon has understandably created a frenzy within a frenzy.

But large questions remain: Is it even possible? And if it is, why bother?

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Artemis II’s titanium toilet cost taxpayers $23M — the 2nd most expensive potty in history

Flushed.

The malfunctioning toilet on board the Artemis II, the second most expensive commode ever built, cost American taxpayers $23 million.

NASA scientists took six years to create two of the 3D-printed titanium thrones, officially named the Upper Waste Management System.

The first model, which cost $11.5 million, was installed on the International Space Station in 2020.

The lavish loo improved upon less hygienic designs of previous spaceships, replacing plastic bags with a suction system that keeps waste stored safely and cleanly.

Despite its pricetag, the urine hose of the Upper Waste Management System malfunctioned after take-off on Tuesday.

The problem was quickly addressed by the astronauts on board.

The moon-destined crapper falls just a little short of being the most expensive toilet system ever constructed.

The Space Shuttle Endeavour’s Waste Collection System, which debuted in 1992, cost roughly $30 million to create and install, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

Adjusted for inflation, that would be just under $70 million in 2026.

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NASA’s Artemis Program Is a Monument to Government Waste. It Can Only Go Up From Here.

If the pending Artemis II mission is successful, it will not just send Americans around the moon and back for the first time in more than half a century—it will send them further than any human being has traveled into space. If the rest of the Artemis program proceeds on schedule, astronauts will return to the lunar surface by the end of the decade.

That’s been a long time coming. The government has been working to get Americans back on the moon since the Bush administration created the Constellation program in the mid-2000s. Wondering why it’s taking so long, given that the original moon mission required only seven years? The answer involves the familiar forces of government inefficiency and pork barrel congressional politics.

How We Got Here

After the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated while reentering the atmosphere in 2003, the Bush administration decided to shift the space program away from the Space Shuttle program. The result was the more targeted, purpose-driven Constellation program, which focused on completing the International Space Station and laying the groundwork for a “return to the Moon no later than 2020.” This, officials hoped, would be a stepping stone toward a crewed mission to Mars not long afterward.

By the time President Barack Obama took office, the Constellation program was already on the way to cancellation; the new administration declared the program “over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation.” When the Shuttle program retired in 2011, no vehicle was set to take its place. So in 2010, Congress mandated that several legacy aerospace companies create the Space Launch System (SLS), both to take over the missions that the shuttle had been servicing and to provide for future space missions.

As development began on the rocket, the projected budget cost through 2017 was $18 billion, a number that would soon start growing. Early in development, each launch was projected to cost $500 million, a number very optimistic in hindsight: According to the White House’s 2026 budget proposal, an SLS launch costs about $4 billion. Through last year, the total cost of the program has exceeded $60 billion.

The SLS program isn’t just way over budget. It’s way behind schedule too. Congress told it to fly by 2016, but the first launch didn’t come until 2022. The second launch will be Artemis II.

When the first Trump administration started the Artemis program in 2017, the vision was to send Americans to the moon and then Mars. As the program developed, officials set a goal of having humans on the moon again by 2024. In April 2021, SpaceX won the bidding process to build the Human Landing System—the lunar lander that would deliver the astronauts to the moon’s surface. Blue Origin then sued NASA over losing out to SpaceX, and NASA had to pause work until the lawsuit ended. The suit was resolved in November, at which point SpaceX and NASA returned to work. 

Infrastructure issues plagued Artemis, with repairs spanning months. Rocket launches require good weather, and launch windows can be tight, so a few days of bad weather can postpone a launch by weeks or months.

After Jared Isaacman became NASA administrator last year, the Artemis mission schedule underwent substantial structural changes. Artemis III, which had been set to be the mission that would send astronauts to our satellite’s surface, has now become Artemis IV, scheduled for 2028; the new Artemis III will test on-orbit capabilities but will stay in low Earth orbit. Further missions down the line are supposed to begin assembly of a U.S. lunar base. The current slate of missions run through Artemis X, projected to have a 2035 launch date.

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BACK TO THE MOON: Crewed Lunar Mission Artemis II Confirmed for Wednesday as NASA Says It’s ‘Ready’ for Historic Launch

In two days, Space exploration goes larger-than-life again.

While the MSM is doing its best not to acknowledge how historic the Artemis II mission will be, the day when humans return to the moon is upon us.

NASA is confirming Wednesday, April 1st, as the target date for the launch of the lunar mission.

The technical teams have found ‘zero technical issues’ leading up to the liftoff that will fly astronauts around the moon and back.

Space.com reported:

“That Artemis 2 launch window opens on Wednesday at 6:24 p.m. EDT (2324 GMT) and extends for two hours. If the launch is delayed or scrubbed for any reason, there are more opportunities for liftoff through April 6. But still, NASA officials are voicing a high degree of confidence in the mission’s chances of launching on the agency’s massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on time. Notably, NASA completed a flight readiness review for the mission ahead of SLS’ rollout to the pad on March 20, and has since flagged no issues or risk acceptances that need closing before clearing Artemis 2 to launch.”

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NASA Partially Lifts Redactions in James Webb Briefing Records Following Appeal

A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case involving congressional briefings on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has yielded additional records following a successful appeal, but the newly released material continues to be heavily redacted, leaving key portions of the briefing content concealed.

The case, labeled as 25-00860-F-HQ, stems from a September 22, 2024, FOIA request seeking “all briefings about the James Webb telescope and program, made for Congress,” including both classified and unclassified material related to discoveries made by the observatory. The request was originally denied with a “no records” determination, a conclusion later overturned on appeal.

As previously reported, NASA ultimately acknowledged that responsive records did exist and released a set of briefing slides in August 2025. However, those materials were almost entirely redacted under FOIA Exemption (b)(5), which protects pre-decisional and deliberative communications within government agencies.

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NASA Officials Investigating Cause of Mystery Condition That Suddenly Left an Astronaut Unable to Speak

NASA is reportedly reviewing the medical information of its astronauts following an unusual incident that left one of them unable to speak while aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The incident, which occurred earlier this year, led to the first-ever evacuation of the ISS following a medical incident.

It was later revealed that 59-year-old Mike Fincke, a retired Air Force colonel and veteran astronaut who had served on multiple past missions, had been the crew member who experienced the condition that prompted the emergency action, although at that time, NASA officials had not revealed any further details about the nature of the medical concern.

Now, Fincke has revealed that on January 7, what began as a normal dinner break with his fellow crew members suddenly took an alarming turn when he found himself unable to speak.

“It was completely out of the blue,” Fincke recently told the Associated Press of the strange situation. “It was just amazingly quick.”

The crew had been in preparation for a planned spacewalk scheduled for the following day when the incident occurred. Although Fincke said he experienced no pain or other severe discomfort, the sudden onset of the mystery condition did cause alarm among other members of his crew, who immediately notified officials back on Earth about the situation.

“My crewmates definitely saw that I was in distress,” Fincke recalled of the situation. “It was all hands on deck within just a matter of seconds.”

For the next twenty minutes, Fincke said the odd condition persisted, which struck like a “very fast lightning bolt.” Gradually, his ability to speak returned, and Fincke said that he had never experienced anything like this in the past, nor since returning to Earth.

Although NASA did not reveal which astronaut had experienced the medical emergency, Fincke voluntarily came forward because of public speculation about what specifically caused the incident.

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