Europe's Hera planetary defense spacecraft is closing in on the binary asteroid system targeted by NASA's DART deflection test, and can now tell the two rocky bodies apart.
Hera is nearing the end of its voyage to the Didymos asteroid system, having launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in October 2024. The spacecraft snapped the image of Didymos and the smaller Dimorphos on Oct. 18 from a distance of 795 miles (1280 kilometers) from the pair, which are currently about 122 million miles (197 million km) from Earth.
"With this image, the smaller Dimorphos asteroid becomes visible for the first time," Michael Kueppers, Hera project scientist at the European Space Agency (ESA), said in a statement. "Before this acquisition, the spacecraft was still resolving the Didymos system as a single dot. But now, even though Dimorphos is made up of only around one pixel in this initial image, it is clearly well separated from its parent body."
Hera performed braking maneuvers earlier in October to slow its approach and put it on course to rendezvous with the binary system. The spacecraft is designed to make follow-up observations of the asteroids using 12 payloads, providing new insights that will prove valuable for planetary defense efforts. The mission also carries a pair of cubesats for a closer look and eventual landing on the 495-foot-wide (151 meters) Dimorphos.
A series of images captured by the DART spacecraft as it sped to impact the asteroid Dimorphos on Sept. 26, 2022. (Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL)
For now, Hera is continuing its approach and preparing for arrival, with a big reveal expected to occur later this month.
"Our views will grow much sharper as Hera comes closer," said ESA's mission manager Ian Carnelli. "We will unveil the first detailed images of Dimorphos — the first object in the solar system to have had its orbit measurably shifted by human action — on 25 November."
SpaceX is building and operating two satellite networks at the moment, Starlink and Starshield. What’s the difference between the two, and who uses them?
For more than a week in October 2026, Ukrainian drone operators found their high-speed satellite links shut off. Officials in Kyiv said that terminals for SpaceX’s Starshield network stopped working at speeds of above 160 kilometers per hour (100 miles per hour) from Oct. 14, hampering efforts to conduct defensive operations and intercept Russian drones. Full connectivity was restored on Oct. 24, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The arguments over who did what continue, but the affair highlighted how little is publicly understood about Starshield — what it is, how it relates to Starlink, and how it is operated.
What is Starlink?
Starlink is SpaceX’s commercial, mass-market satellite internet service. The company says it now has more than 11,000 Starlink broadband and mobile satellites in orbit, operating approximately 342 miles (550 kilometers) above Earth. This follows years of deployment using the company's Falcon 9 rocket..
The network serves consumers, enterprises and government customers across more than 160 countries. It is owned and operated by SpaceX. Anyone from a rural household to an airline can buy a terminal and a service plan.
Governments are also customers, with public agencies using Starlink for a range of purposes including connectivity, disaster response and national security, notably in the case of Ukraine in the wake of the invasion by Russia, which began in February 2022 and is ongoing.
What is Starshield?
Starshield is SpaceX’s network for serving national security customers. The company announced the program in December 2022, stating it would apply Starlink technology and SpaceX's launch capability to government needs, initially in three areas: Earth observation, communications and hosted payloads.
"They are using the same satellite buses," says Bleddyn Bowen, associate professor of astropolitics at Durham University in the U.K. “They look the same, but they have a lot more kit on them that allows them to do more things. They provide similar broadband internet, but with more secure hardware and software and hardened systems.”
Some Starshield satellites may also carry sensors for intelligence and surveillance. But much about Starshield is secretive, with its finances not revealed and launches often classified.
Starshield makeup
Starshield is made up of a range of different assets, including spy satellites, military data satellites, and secure communications for ground users.
The spy satellites are sent into orbit in launches for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), for a "proliferated architecture" of spy satellites, including electro-optical, radar and relay spacecraft. The NRO does not use the Starshield name, but said earlier this year that it had launched more than 200 satellites in recent years, many of which are for its proliferated architecture.
Then there is the Space Data Network Backbone. The U.S. Space Force awarded SpaceX a $2.29 billion fixed-price contract to build the network, previously known as MILNET, using Starshield satellites. It is meant to move data quickly between missile-warning sensors and interceptors as part of the Trump administration's Golden Dome missile defense plan. A prototype is due by the end of 2027. A Space Force official has described MILNET as government-owned and operated by SpaceX as a contractor, under Space Force oversight.
Starshield provides encrypted connectivity for military users through terminals. These can be dedicated Starshield terminals, or Starlink terminals for Starshield services.
Crucially, the networks overlap. "Those Starshield satellites are physically separate from Starlink satellites, but the Starshield satellites can use the Starlink network if they need to," Bowen said. That interoperability is available to U.S. national security users, he added, "but not if you're a commercial user of Starlink."
Use restrictions differ, too. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said that Starlink's terms of service bar its use for offensive drone strikes, while decisions about Starshield use rest with the U.S. government.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches the NROL-172 mission from California on May 11, 2026. NROL-172 is believed to have launched Starshield satellites for the U.S. government. (Image credit: SpaceX)
Who controls Starshield is a question that entered the public consciousness in the wake of the Ukraine Starshield speed limit affair. The U.S. government is the customer, and also in some cases the owner, but SpaceX builds the satellites, operates the underlying Starlink network on which some Starshield services run and, in some arrangements, operates the Starshield satellites themselves. How this command is divided between the government and SpaceX is unclear.
Bowen compared it to the U.K.’s Skynet military satellite system, in which contractor Babcock operates the satellites. "The actual button punching is done by the contractors, but the military and government are in the room and are calling the shots,” he said.
That question matters, because it determines whether SpaceX can act on its own or only with government oversight and approval.
What’s next?
Starshield appears set to become more central to U.S. military space. The Space Data Network Backbone prototype is expected next year, while NRO launches will continue, according to contracts. With SpaceX now a public company, quarterly reports could provide more insight into the system. For now, however, much remains classified.
Earth almost always has more than one moon. The others are just very small, and they never stay long — but they could provide accessible and unique insights into the solar system.
Temporary satellites, or mini-moons, are small asteroids that wander into Earth’s neighborhood and get captured briefly by our planet’s gravity. A typical one stays about nine months and circles Earth roughly three times before escaping back into orbit around the sun, Grigori Fedorets of Finland's University of Helsinki said in a presentation at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2026 in The Hague in September.
Fedorets' modeling suggests that the largest mini-moon around Earth at any given moment is typically only about 75 centimeters (30 inches) across. An asteroid about 3 meters (10 feet) wide should be captured every 10 to 20 years.
"This is not just a theoretical construct. There is observational evidence," Fedorets said. Only two mini-moons have been confirmed to date, however — 2006 RH120 and 2020 CD3, both discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona. Two fireballs, seen over the Czech Republic in 2013 and Australia in 2016, were traced back to objects that had been in geocentric orbits. Two more asteroids, 2022 NX1 and 2024 PT5, were captured only briefly, without completing a full orbit.
Fedorets noted a potential third mini-moon — the recently detected Sar2901, which could also be an artificial object. Sar2901 has since faded from view but should be observable again around mid-to-late November, according to the Minor Planet Center.
Small rocks, big questions
Mini-moons are so small that scientists know little about them. For objects between 1 and 10 meters (3.3 to 33 feet) across, models of the near-Earth asteroid population disagree with the numbers suggested by records of fireballs in Earth's atmosphere. Mini-moons sit right in that gap, so finding more of them should show which picture is right.
They may also reveal how much of the material in Earth’s neighborhood traces its origin back to our moon, as some small asteroids may be chunks of the lunar surface blasted into space by impacts. During the temporary flyby of asteroid 2024 PT5, for example, scientists found its spectrum to be closer to lunar rock than to typical asteroids, according to a 2025 study led by Theodore Kareta, which Fedorets described as the strongest evidence yet for lunar ejecta among Earth's small neighbors.
Kamo’oalewa, a much larger asteroid and quasi-moon of Earth, at which China’s Tianwen-2 mission arrived in July, has been the subject of debate over possible lunar or asteroidal origins.
Rubin game-changer and budget sample returns
The transformative Vera C. Rubin Observatory's 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) should find many more mini-moons, though further work will be needed. On its own, Fedorets estimates, the survey should catch a mini-moon about once every two years.
Fedorets and colleagues are setting up a dedicated system running on a virtual server at Finland's Center for Scientific Computing, to sift Rubin's alerts through the ANTARES real-time astronomical data broker to flag potential mini-moons for follow-up observations, which could raise detections to two or three per year.
Making regular discoveries could open doors for future missions, providing targets for relatively easy, low-cost asteroid sample-return missions. Mini-moons’ proximity to Earth, and their low relative speeds, means less rocket propellant is needed to get out to these diminutive targets and back to Earth.
Initially, Fedorets envisions cubesat tech demo missions, which would pave the way for mid-sized missions that could collect samples. He sees the Tianwen-2 low-energy sample mission as a potential stepping stone to resource utilization, while also noting that, at the higher end of the scale, there have been programs such as NASA’s cancelled Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) and plans by, for example, TransAstra to put a 100-ton asteroid into a stable orbit around Earth.
"This is not sci-fi," Fedorets said. "These people are actually thinking about this kind of stuff."
The short warning times and instability of the orbits of mini-moons dictates potential mission profiles. A spacecraft could wait in Earth-moon space, ready to head for a newly found mini-moon, similar to how ESA's Comet Interceptor will launch and then wait for a suitable comet to study. Asteroids could also be nudged into more stable orbits, allowing more extensive future missions.
"LSST is now online, and over the next 10 years, we are expected to find many more of these temporary moons," Fedorets said. Regular discoveries could pave the way for exploration in the early 2030s and sampling missions later in the decade.
Starship just reached orbit for the first time, carrying satellites for SpaceX's Starlink program. Analysts disagree on whether that's a detour or the destination — and what of the company's plans for the Red Planet?
Ten years ago, Elon Musk stood on stage at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Guadalajara, Mexico, and unveiled plans for a giant spaceship to carry people to Mars. This past Sept. 28 — a decade and a day later — the descendant of that vehicle reached orbit for the first time, on Starship's 14th-ever test flight.
The designs and hardware evolved greatly over those 10 years. For example, the 2016 design, called the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), employed carbon fiber, but this gave way to the stainless-steel Starship, which SpaceX began testing in 2019 with short hops from its Texas site. Prototypes flew to high altitude and landed, and some exploded, until SN15 stuck a landing in May 2021. That same year, NASA selected Starship as the first astronaut lander for its Artemis lunar missions.
The full Starship stack — a Super Heavy booster with a Ship upper stage on top — first flew in April 2023 and failed within minutes. Three flights followed in less than a year, each reaching space, and each ending with Ship lost on reentry. During a 2024 test flight, SpaceX moved liquid oxygen between two tanks inside one Ship, the closest it has come to the propellant transfer that any mission to the moon or Mars will require. In June of that year, the company brought both stages down in controlled splashdowns, and that October the launch tower's mechanical arms caught a returning Super Heavy booster for the first time.
Progress wasn't linear, however. After a booster catch in January 2025, a string of Ship failures followed, and one upper stage exploded during ground testing that June. A clean flight in August 2025 helped break the streak, and by that October, SpaceX flew the last of the older design. The first Starship V3 launched in May 2026. Another went up in July, and Flight 14 followed on Sept. 28.
Composite photo showing the Super Heavy booster of SpaceX's Starship megarocket coming in for a landing on the launch mount on Oct. 13, 2024. (Image credit: SpaceX via X)
'A different beast'
"ITS was definitely a different beast," said Matija Renčelj of the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI). "Yet, we have to acknowledge two trends that both attest to SpaceX's agility and increasingly market-first rather than vision-first outlook."
"The gap between ITS and Starship is real, but I would not consider that a failure," he said.
In his view, the rocket is mainly a business tool. "The rocket is the means, not the end," Renčelj said, adding that its main role now is cutting Starlink deployment costs. SpaceX currently operates a constellation of more than 11,000 Starlink broadband satellites, almost all of which were launched by its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. But Starship Flight 14 lofted the first members of the next-gen Starlink V3 constellation, which will eventually consist of 100,000 spacecraft, if all goes to plan. Starlink V3 satellites are bigger and heavier than their predecessors and can only be launched efficiently by Starship.
Renčelj said the moon focus reflects Washington's priorities and SpaceX's interest in staying central to NASA's Artemis program, and in reassuring investors after the company's acquisition of xAI this past February and its IPO, which occurred in June.
Joseph Gonzalez, a University of Illinois Grainger College of Engineering aerospace professor who spent about a decade working on Artemis, sees it differently.
"I think SpaceX is still very much targeting Mars," he said. "SpaceX continues to stress making humanity multiplanetary and establishing a self-sufficient city on Mars as long-term objectives." Gonzalez sees the moon as a proving ground rather than a replacement. Just days away from Earth, the moon lets engineers find problems "before committing humans to a Mars mission."
"Space exploration takes time, especially when you are developing a human spaceflight system with this level of complexity," Gonzalez said. "They build, fly, learn, make changes and fly again. That creates very visible successes and failures, but it also allows engineers to accumulate flight experience and data quickly."
Challenges remain
Reaching Earth orbit isn't the hard part for Starship. Gonzalez said that the most underrated gap is the large-scale cryogenic propellant transfer between vehicles once in orbit. SpaceX has moved propellant between tanks in one Ship before, but its architecture requires numerous transfers involving tanker ships to refill a fuel depot, which a Ship must visit in order to make journeys to the moon or Mars. Gonzalez described this depot as a gas station in space, but there are challenges typical gas stations don't face. The fuel is extremely cold, for example, and it needs to be moved in microgravity conditions.
That milestone is yet to happen, and the timeline for an attempt is not clear. It could potentially come with Flight 15 and 16. These were aspirationally scheduled for no earlier than mid and late October, respectively, but have now apparently slipped to mid-to-late November (though there has been no public confirmation of any firm target date).
In 2025, Musk said there was a "50/50" chance of Starship making a run for Mars in 2026. However, with the once-every-26-months Mars launch window — which lasts a few weeks, opening in late October — and no propellant transfer demonstration yet in the books, that is off the table. The next such low-energy orbital transfer opportunity for the Red Planet opens in late 2028, running into early 2029. At the same time, NASA is currently targeting late 2028 for its Artemis IV mission — which involves Starship — to return humans to the lunar surface after an absence of more than 50 years, giving SpaceX a challenging deadline toward which to work. The company will need to dedicate key resources to meet that timeline, including developing life support systems for crew.
For now, Starship's most immediate role is hauling Starlink satellites in orbit. Renčelj noted that startups raising billions are betting on Starship delivering low super-launch prices along with Falcon 9-like reliability. "Their business models are underpinned by what might be a single point of failure," he said.
"Starship still has major capabilities to demonstrate before it can perform the complete missions envisioned for the moon and Mars," said Gonzalez.
"So I would say the timelines are comparable considering the ambition of the vehicles," he added. "The bigger difference isn't necessarily how many years they have taken, but it's where and how each program chooses to learn during those years."
Musk has repeatedly talked of getting thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of people on Mars "to make life multiplanetary." Most immediately, SpaceX has a number of business goals and lunar commitments to adhere to ahead of a first uncrewed visit to Mars. Late 2028 appears to be the next real opportunity.
Chinese researchers have presented a new map of the moon, updating a previous edition based on new scientific findings and recalibrating the moon's ancient geologic eras.
The comprehensive map of the moon, with a scale of 1:5 million, was unveiled by the Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences (IGCAGS) on Aug. 6. The map is an update of a 2024 edition and puts forward new boundaries for the ancient Aitkenian, Nectarian and Imbrian lunar periods. (The researchers use the term Aitkenian, whereas the term pre-Nectarian is often used to describe the lunar geologic period from roughly around 4.5 billion to 3.9 billion years ago.)
The map also uses reprocessed spectral data to update areas of KREEP terrane, which features crustal material enriched in potassium (K), rare-earth elements (REE), and phosphorus (P), and is found to be more continuous and abundant than previously estimated.
Chinese researchers released a super-detailed new map of the moon on Aug. 6, 2026. (Image credit: CCTV/IGCAGS)
"The lunar geologic history has indeed been rewritten — more precisely, refined and systematized," the state-run outlet Xinhua quoted Yang Zhiming, director of the IGCAGS, as saying.
Both the United States, through the Apollo missions, and the Soviet Union delivered lunar samples to Earth more than 50 years ago, greatly shaping research on and understanding of the moon. China's own robotic sample return missions, Chang'e 5 and Chang'e 6, launched in 2020 and 2024, respectively, have provided fresh materials and new insights.
Chang'e 6 was the first sample-return mission to the lunar far side. Chinese researchers say the returned material will provide a new starting point for scientific discussions on the nature of that hemisphere of the moon, which is hidden from view on Earth.
The map "introduces a proprietary cartographic standard," according to Xinhua, amid a wider, Chinese government-driven initiative to influence global standards. In terms of space, aspects of the map such as the color scheme, geologic logic and an aesthetic "lighter for younger, darker for older" principle will be applied more broadly as China looks to expand its exploration beyond the moon and into the outer solar system.
"This goes beyond showcasing technological soft power. This standard will be extended to future planetary geologic mapping, establishing an independent intellectual property framework for China's deep space exploration," Yang said.
Both China and the United States have interests in setting standards as humanity renews its interest in exploring the moon. While on Earth everyone agrees on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the two countries currently disagree about what time it is on the moon, where clocks run faster due to weaker gravity. This suggests that leadership in space will be contested not just through missions and firsts, but via whose technical standards are followed, with China's new map playing into these efforts.
The Chinese commercial launch company Landspace is set for a second attempt at catching an orbital booster.
The startup launched its first Zhuque-3 rocket in December 2025, in what was a milestone for Chinese rocket reusability efforts. While the Zhuque-3 second stage successfully reached orbit, the first stage exploded in a dramatic fireball during its final powered descent toward the landing pad.
Now, Landspace is poised for a second attempt at liftoff and landing, with airspace closure notices indicating that launch is scheduled from the Dongfeng commercial space innovation pilot zone at Jiuquan spaceport, in northwest China, at around 7:45 p.m. EDT on Aug. 10 (23:45 GMT, or 7:45 a.m. Beijing time, Aug. 11).
UPDATE | ZhuQue-3 Y2 Reusable Launch Vehicle Completed Static Fire TestOn June 29, 2026, LandSpace's ZhuQue-3 Y2 reusable launch vehicle successfully completed a static fire test at the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone.The test comprehensively verified the… pic.twitter.com/G9EzZbnyqBJune 29, 2026
The company conducted a successful static fire test on June 29 in preparation for the launch.
"All systems operated normally, and test data and results met expectations, validating the correctness and coordination of system operations and laying a solid foundation for upcoming flight missions," Landspace stated in a post that day on the social media platform X.
Zhuque-3 is a 216-foot (66-meter) stainless steel rocket powered by methane-liquid oxygen engines. It's similar in capabilities to SpaceX's Falcon 9, and is capable of sending 40,350 pounds (18,300 kilograms) of payload to low Earth orbit (LEO).
The Aug. 10 launch will be China's fourth orbital booster recovery attempt. The first was the Zhuque-3 launch in December 2025; the second was the debut, just days later, of the Long March 12A, which also reached orbit but with a first-stage recovery attempt ending in flames. The third try, using the Long March 10B, took place on July 10. That one was successful: China made history, becoming just the second country to land an orbital booster, in this case using a vessel equipped with a net-capture system.
Landspace, when it makes its expected second attempt next week, will use a powered descent and landing legs, similar to the Falcon 9.
Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft returned spectacular images of a near-Earth asteroid following a super-close flyby on July 5, but heated debate was needed before teams signed off on the daring attempt.
When images of the asteroid Torifune arrived on the morning of July 6 Japan time, Makoto Yoshikawa and his team at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) got two surprises at once. Torifune turned out to be a contact binary, in which two chunks of rock have come together under gravity, and the returned images were also larger than hoped.
"We did not imagine such a contact binary," Yoshikawa, former mission manager of Hayabusa2, told scientists gathered at the Asteroids, Comets and Meteors conference in Poznan, Poland, on July 10. "Originally, we didn't think we could have such a very big image. Maybe we will take a very small one, but the image was much larger than we expected."
The asteroid Torifune as seen by Hayabusa2's Mid-Infrared Camera during the July 5 flyby. (Image credit: JAXA)
The double surprise was the payoff of months of debate between science and engineering teams, and a last-minute proposal that alarmed some of the scientists it was meant to serve. In the end, the flyby was so close as to be at the very edge of what the aging spacecraft was designed to conduct.
Hayabusa2 launched in December 2014 and rendezvoused with the asteroid Ryugu four years later. The spacecraft collected samples and delivered them to Earth in 2020, completing its primary objectives. JAXA then made plans for an asteroid flyby and a rendezvous with the tiny asteroid 1998 KY26 in 2031.
Usually for flybys, the closest distance is 100 kilometers (62 miles), Yoshikawa said, but in Hayabusa2's case this would not be close enough to gather good images. Hayabusa2 was designed for rendezvous and proximity operations, including hovering, correcting and landing — not for a high-speed pass at 5.3 kilometers per second (3.3 miles per second). Its cameras were also not designed for high-speed slewing.
According to Yoshikawa, science team members pushed back. At a distance of 100 kilometers, Hayabusa2's cameras would barely resolve the asteroid's global shape. Engineering responded with a proposal of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). Science said that was acceptable, but the team kept pushing. Eventually, engineers confirmed they could get to within 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) of the asteroid's center. "Science people were very happy, because they could have a nice photo," Yoshikawa said.
Then, just one month before the flyby, extended mission team leader Yuya Mimasu proposed going even closer. "Yuya Mimasu said the closest distance should be 800 meters," Yoshikawa recounted. "Some science people said 'No, it's too dangerous,' and a very heated discussion started."
One major issue was the unknown size and dimensions of Torifune and the safety of the spacecraft. The team had assumed a worst-case asteroid size of 1,400 meters by 400 meters (4,600 by 1,300 feet) based on ground-based observations. A pass 800 meters (2,625 feet) from the center of the target would sit just outside that exclusion zone. The spacecraft's optics had also been affected by dust from sampling Ryugu. The final navigation analysis put the targeting error ellipse at around 200 meters (656 feet). "The distance fixed is 800 meters," Yoshikawa said, "but this is quite a big challenge for us."
Hayabusa2 detected Torifune on June 19. The spacecraft used ground-based guidance up to three hours before the flyby, before switching to onboard guidance. "This is quite new," Yoshikawa said. "We developed software for this, and we sent it to the spacecraft."
The result was the stunning, up-close imagery of the dual-lobed Torifune, captured by the probe's Optical Navigation Camera Telescope (ONC-T). But all four of Hayabusa2's science instruments returned data. The Thermal Infrared Imager (TIR) captured nine seconds of thermal imaging between 09:29:50 and 09:29:59 GMT on July 5, just a second before closest approach, independently confirming the contact binary structure in heat emission.
A size comparison between asteroid Ryugu, which was visited by Hayabusa2 in 2020, and its next target, 1998 KY26. (Image credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser. Asteroid models: T. Santana-Ros, JAXA/University of Aizu/Kobe University)
The Near Infrared Spectrometer (NIRS3) and laser altimeter (LIDAR) also got data, with the latter delivering what Yoshikawa described as possibly the first successful LIDAR ranging measurement during an asteroid flyby. But while the most urgent 25 MB of data was downlinked, teams will need to wait months for the rest of the 300 MB of total science data. Hayabusa2's ion engine system restarted on July 9 to begin the cruise toward two Earth flybys in 2027 and 2028 and will fire for around four months. Only after this can the rest of the data be sent to Earth.
Yoshikawa explained that the Torifune flyby was more than just a bonus milestone and photo and science op. The successful super-close flyby means that "JAXA has acquired the technology to collide spacecraft with a small celestial body," he said in his closing remarks at ACM, drawing a parallel to NASA's DART mission. "This flyby mission can be said to serve as a demonstration of the fast reconnaissance concept in planetary defense," verifying the ability to characterize an unknown asteroid rapidly — a capability that could provide crucial information ahead of an impactor mission.
This is not the end for Hayabusa2. The ultimate destination for the spacecraft's extended mission is the tiny asteroid 1998 KY26, a roughly 36-foot-wide (11 m), rapidly rotating rock with which it is scheduled to rendezvous in 2031.
China has announced that it wants to develop a "space-ground" asteroid early-warning network, while providing few details on what it could look like. But recent papers and presentations to the United Nations provide clues as to what the country has in mind for planetary defense.
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) made the announcement on June 30 — International Asteroid Day — stating plans to construct a coordinated ground-and-space monitoring system for near-Earth asteroids. Li Mingtao, chief scientist at CNSA's Asteroid Monitoring and Early Warning Research Center, told state media that China is studying the feasibility of an asteroid defense system, with the ground-space monitoring network as its core.
"No asteroid has so far been identified that will definitely collide with Earth in the foreseeable future, but concerns over impact risks are not unfounded. Many near-Earth asteroids remain undetected," the state-run media outlet Xinhua quoted Li as saying in a report by Science and Technology Daily.
Li added that China will deploy multiple large-aperture optical telescopes at carefully chosen sites in order to be able to survey the sky, while adding a space-based monitoring constellation, free from atmospheric disruption and day-night constraints, with a particular focus on threats from the sunward direction, which are, from the ground, lost in the glare of the sun. The meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, approached roughly from a sunward direction and was only detected once it entered the atmosphere.
Li told Science and Technology Daily that more than 40,000 near-Earth asteroids have been discovered so far, including over 95% of asteroids at least 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) wide, which are capable of causing a globally catastrophic impact. However, only around 45% of asteroids in the 140-meter (460-foot) class have been detected, which are large enough to devastate a small country.
The June 30 reports and CNSA statements were vague on what China's actual plans for its monitoring network may be. However, recent journal papers and a 2025 presentation to the U.N.'s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) give more detail on the country's thinking.
For example, a paper published in the Journal of Deep Space Exploration in June 2026, co-authored by Wu Weiren, chief designer of China's lunar exploration program and a leading voice on the country's asteroid defense plans, lays out the options under study.
For the space-based component, the paper names four candidate orbital positions for a monitoring network: the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point, an Earth-leading or trailing orbit, a Venus-like heliocentric orbit, and an Earth-companion distant retrograde orbit (DRO). The paper also describes ongoing research into each option's monitoring effectiveness.
In 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits a larger asteroid named Didymos, and changed the binary system's orbit around the sun. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)
A similar outline was found in a 2025 technical presentation to COPUOS by Chinese researcher Chen Yongcai. A "basic model" would consist of a single satellite at Sun-Earth L1, an orbit about 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) inside that of Earth, paired with northern and southern ground stations. An "extended model" includes spacecraft in the three additional orbits stated in the Wu Weiren paper. The Venus-like option in particular closely tracks an earlier proposal known as CROWN, a constellation of small satellites in Venus-like orbits designed to survey the sunward sky and use its favorable geometry to track other populations of near-Earth asteroids.
The status and timelines of these plans are unclear, but they do indicate a clear interest in and commitment to planetary defense by China. The country's 15th Five-Year Plan, approved in March, states that an asteroid defense engineering project is under study, while China is developing a kinetic-impact and observation demonstration mission, similar to NASA's DART mission and the European Space Agency's (ESA) follow-on Hera project, which is scheduled to launch in 2027.
While China's apparent plans are not unique, they could augment global efforts. Anne Virkki, an asteroid researcher at the University of Helsinki who's familiar with international monitoring efforts, noted that NASA and ESA have plans to send missions to Sun-Earth L1 to search for asteroids in infrared light — NEO Surveyor and NEOMIR respectively.
"If China launches a similar mission, hopefully it has some capability that the other two do not, and that it shares the data internationally and not only for Chinese scientists," Virkki said.
Virkki noted that asteroids approaching from the sun's direction aren't physically unusual, but they are simply harder to track, which statistically makes them more likely to produce a surprise. She also pointed to the persistent, less-discussed gap in radar tracking capacity. That capacity took a serious hit with the 2020 collapse of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, with no U.S. successor in the works.
China has discussed building its own radar capability, which Virkki said would be a welcome addition, provided the data is shared openly. China has built the "China Compound Eye" or Fuyan project near Chongqing in the country's southwest, which can be used for near-Earth asteroid monitoring. Wu's paper also notes ground-based radar in the proposal for asteroid monitoring.
"Hopefully, as China's planetary defense plans become more specific, we'll see telescopes and space telescopes that complement the existing or planned capabilities of other countries, rather than repeat redundantly, and contribute data openly and collaboratively," Virkki said. She noted that there are likely about 100,000 near-Earth asteroids that could cause significant local damage if they hit Earth, and we know the orbits of less than half of all such space rocks.
2029 will mark the International Year of Planetary Defense, when the infamous asteroid Apophis will fly past the Earth just within the orbit of geostationary satellites. "There is a lot of work left to do, and international collaboration is crucial," said Virkki.
Japan's Hayabusa2 sample-return spacecraft is on target to make one of the closest ever flybys of a near-Earth asteroid in early July, as part of its extended mission campaign.
Hayabusa2 launched in December 2014 and rendezvoused with the asteroid Ryugu four years later. The spacecraft collected samples and delivered them to Earth in 2020, completing its primary objectives. But the hardy spacecraft still has bold plans to deliver new and exciting science data.
The spacecraft has been operating well, despite needing to briefly enter a protective safe mode last year, and now is set to make a flyby of the asteroid Torifune on July 5, Satoshi Tanaka of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said in a presentation on Hayabusa2 during the 35th Meeting of the NASA Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG) on June 11.
The flyby will see Hayabusa2 get within 1 to 10 kilometers (0.62 to 6.2 miles) of Torifune, using its instrument suite to study the roughly 450-meter-wide (1,476 feet) asteroid as it whizzes past at 5.3 kilometers per second (3.3 miles per second).
"This is one of the closest asteroid encounters ever attempted by a mission of this class," Tanaka said. "By combining advanced navigation techniques and the engineering capabilities of Hayabusa2, we have made it possible to achieve a flyby at a distance of only about 1 kilometer."
Torifune was first given the designation 2001 CC21 before being named for a deity from Japanese mythology. Tanaka says the asteroid is somewhat similar to Itokawa — the target of Japan's first Hayabusa mission — but little is known for sure about Torifune, adding a level of uncertainty to this extended mission objective.
"It's still a risky operation, because they had not planned for this," Patrick Michel, the principal investigator for the European Space Agency's Hera asteroid mission and part of the Hayabusa2 science team, told Space.com. "The second thing is that we have a high uncertainty on the size of the object," he added, with the dimensions of the asteroid unknown.
The asteroid could, for example, be a contact binary, according to Michel, in which two separate bodies came together at low velocities. Known contact binary small bodies include the Kuiper belt object Arrokoth, imaged by NASA's New Horizons, and comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, described as a "rubber duck" when visited by ESA's Rosetta spacecraft.
"We're going to discover what it looks like. And each time we have seen a new asteroid, we've been surprised," Michel said. "We're going to discover another beast to put in the zoo of asteroids."
The very high velocity of the flyby means there will be limited time to collect images and other data on the asteroid, but the rapid encounter will also provide a useful test for planetary defense, as well as adding to planetary science.
The flyby, using advanced navigation techniques to guide and control the spacecraft, will be a useful test of a rapid reconnaissance concept that could be used to determine the physical properties of an asteroid. Such reconnaissance could provide vital information before intercepting a threatening asteroid with a kinetic impact, as demonstrated by NASA's DART mission in 2022.
Tanaka said that Hayabusa2 has been busy during its deep space cruise phase, including making observations of the zodiacal light and exoplanets, and the Torifune flyby will, hopefully, not be its final act. The ultimate goal of the Hayabusa2 extended mission is to visit the tiny asteroid 1998 KY26 in 2031, which would be the smallest asteroid ever visited. The spacecraft could even attempt to land on the miniscule world, which is just 11 meters (36 feet) wide.
China is set to expand its space station from three to six modules in the coming years and add a co-orbiting Hubble-class space observatory, even as the International Space Station approaches the end of its lifetime.
The three-module, T-shaped Tiangong space station was assembled in orbit across 2021 and 2022 and has hosted numerous three-astronaut Shenzhou crews, but China is now set to expand the orbital outpost with new modules, citing growing research demands and more frequent crew and cargo missions. As previously reported by Space.com, the planned expansion will see Tiangong grow into a "double-T" shape, with the addition of the multipurpose module and two new experiment modules, and allow China to extend the scale of operations aboard the station.
"This expansion has always been part of the original plan," Qian Hang, a researcher with China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), told Chinese media. State media Xinhua reported that the first phase of the expansion will see the launch of a new 20-ton-class multifunctional module, which will dock with Tiangong's Tianhe core module.
Additional docking ports on the new modules will allow Tiangong to welcome more spacecraft and provide greater operational flexibility when needed. "If the missions get more intensive, we risk 'queuing' for docking ports and lack sufficient emergency buffer space," Qian said.
China is developing new, low-cost cargo options for Tiangong, while its new Mengzhou spacecraft, which could debut later this year, can carry seven astronauts to low Earth orbit. The Shenzhou spacecraft, which is currently used for China's crewed missions, can carry three astronauts to Tiangong.
Before the arrival of a new module, however, the first new addition to Tiangong is expected to be Xuntian, a bus-sized space observatory with a 2-meter (6.6 feet) diameter primary mirror, slightly smaller than that of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Xuntian is scheduled for launch in 2027 and boasts a field of view around 300 times larger than that of Hubble, meaning it will be able to study and map around 40% of the heavens during its planned 10-year lifetime using its 2.5-billion-pixel camera. Xuntian will share a similar orbit with Tiangong, meaning it will be able to dock with the space station for maintenance, refueling, repairs and potentially upgrades.
Screenshot from an animation showing Chinese astronauts servicing the Xuntian Space Telescope outside the Tiangong Space Station. (Image credit: CCTV)
While the U.S. is mulling a variety of plans for commercial stations that host astronauts in orbit after the ISS is retired, China would have the largest permanent outpost in orbit with Tiangong. According to Yang Hong, chief designer of the space station system, the planned expansion would take Tiangong from a mass of 90 tons to 180 tons.
