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By 2025, SpaceX is aiming to launch at a record pace: 170 orbital missions, nearly one every other day. Should we hit our goal, it would best the company’s annual record of 134 launches set in 2023. Anne Mason, SpaceX’s director of national security space launch, announced the ambitious goal during a media call on May 28. Mason emphasised the growing normalcy of this rapid cadence while previewing the upcoming GPS III SV08 satellite mission for the U.S. Space Force, currently slated for liftoff on Friday, May 30.

As per a Space.com report, Mason noted that in 2020, SpaceX had launched just 25 times — a monthly average of two. The step to a flying cadence on at least a virtually daily basis emphasises the impact of operational efficiency and reusability of Falcon rockets. With the bigger and more powerful Falcon Heavy making the other two launches, the Falcon 9 executed 132 of 134 launches in 2023. Both rely on reusable first stages that have become central to SpaceX’s high-volume, low-cost access to orbit.

Mason pointed out that SpaceX currently produces an expendable Falcon upper stage every two and a half days, a crucial factor in sustaining high output. Roughly two-thirds of the company’s orbital flights in 2024 supported Starlink, its low Earth orbit satellite internet constellation, which now includes over 7,500 active spacecraft. This year, 48 of the 64 launches already completed — all via Falcon 9 — were Starlink deployments.

SpaceX will have to increase its daily launch rate from 0.43 to about 0.47 if it is to meet the 170-launch target. The number does not include suborbital Starship test flights, which are not regarded as orbital missions. The company has flown three such Starship tests in 2025 so far, with four conducted last year. Starship remains under development for long-term Mars colonisation goals and future deep space missions.

The continued growth of SpaceX’s launch rate reflects the company’s dominance in commercial and government spaceflight. Mason credited the milestone not only to technological advances but also to the team’s consistent performance. “This cadence was unimaginable five years ago,” she mentioned, “and yet, here we are.”

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Webb Telescope Uncovers Hidden Active Galactic Nuclei

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May 31, 2025

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Webb Telescope Uncovers Hidden Active Galactic Nuclei

An obscured population of huge and massive black holes has been revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope. This discovery could bridge the gap between quasars and the Little Red Dots. These are active galactic nuclei galaxies (AGNs), overlapped or blurred by active blackholes, occupied by dust. Their bright nature makes them detectable in spite of the dust surrounding them. However, during December 2022, astronomers found a new type of AGN that they called Little Red Dots, because they appear as tiny, fat red spots.

Connection of AGN with Quasars is Still a Mystery

For more than a decade, the study has been led by Dale Kocevski, an astronomer at Colby College. Their team includes scientists like Jorryt Matthee, an astrophysicist at the Institute of Science and Technology, who contributed to the understanding of little dots and their connection with quasars. Their connection is still a mystery that prompts them to find the objects with properties in between.

The Old Universe Abundantly Occupied by Hidden Quasars

In a new study Yoshiki Matsuoka, associate professor at the Research Center for Space, told Live Science, the scientists are surprised to find that the not-so-clear quasars had occupied a large portion of the early universe. Out of 13 galaxies, 9 were found to have clear signs of active supermassive blackholes in connection with the heavy dust that hides them.

Findings Can Give Insights into the Study of Universe Evolution

Jorryt Matthee, the head of the old research, said that although there are abundant new objects found in the universe, the gap between the two known populations found by JWST is too high, and thus, there is a possibility that these belong to that missing population lying in between the known ones, providing fresh insights into how these giants formed and evolved in the early universe. The findings were reported on May 7, 2025, in the preprint database arXiv.

Future Study Scopes to Unveil the Nature of LRD

The team is planning to observe 30 more objects from the sample of the Subaru Telescope. This can reveal that the behaviour of the hidden quasars aligns with Little Red Dots. Furthermore, the gases that surround them can reveal the mysterious nature of LRD.

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SpaceX Starship Flight 9 Reuses Booster, Gathers Key Data Despite Loss

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May 31, 2025

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SpaceX Starship Flight 9 Reuses Booster, Gathers Key Data Despite Loss

SpaceX launched its ninth Starship test flight on May 27 that featured the first-ever significant reuse of Starship hardware. As planned on Flight 9, Starship’s two stages separated successfully, and the upper stage even reached space. However, both were ultimately lost before completing their objectives. Despite these setbacks, the mission yielded valuable data which inspires SpaceX’s iterative approach to innovation as it aims to create a fully reusable launch system for space missions. This test flight exhibited successful reuse of a Super Heavy booster and aimed to demonstrate improved hardware performance.

Previous test flights

According to official site of SpaceX, Starship’s two stages are one giant booster called Super Heavy and a 171-foot-tall (52 meters) upper-stage spacecraft known as Starship, or simply “Ship.” Both are powered by SpaceX’s new Raptor engine — 33 of them for Super Heavy and six for Ship.

On Flight 7 and Flight 8 the Super Heavy performed flawlessly, acing its engine burn and then returning to Starbase for a catch by the launch tower’s “chopstick” arms. But Ship had problems: It exploded less than 10 minutes after launch on both missions, raining debris down on the Turks and Caicos Islands and The Bahamas, respectively.

Advancements in flight 9

In flight 9, SpaceX reused a Super Heavy booster for the first time, swapping out just four of its 33 Raptor engines after its initial flight in January. The booster also conducted a new atmospheric entry experiment, entering at a higher angle to collect data on aerodynamic control. Meanwhile, Ship (the upper stage) was tasked with deploying eight dummy Starlink satellites.

Despite the promising advances, Flight 9 encountered several failures. Super Heavy broke apart roughly six minutes after launch during its return burn, and Ship lost control due to a fuel tank leak. The upper stage began tumbling, which prevented a planned in-space engine relight and led to a destructive reentry over the Indian Ocean. Still, SpaceX gained critical data, particularly on tile performance and active cooling systems.

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7,100-Year-Old Skeleton Reveals Unknown Human Lineage in China

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May 31, 2025

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7,100-Year-Old Skeleton Reveals Unknown Human Lineage in China

A new study on a 7,100-year-old skeleton from China has revealed a “ghost” lineage that only existed in theories until now. Skeleton of the early Neolithic woman, known as Xingyi_EN, unearthed at the Xingyi archaeological site in southwestern China’s Yunnan province. Her DNA links her to a deeply divergent human population that may have contributed to the ancestry of modern Tibetans. This study also reveals a distinct Central Yunnan ancestry connected to early Austroasiatic-speaking groups. This discovery makes Yunnan as a key region to understand the ancient genetic history of East and Southeast Asia. The detailed analysis of 127 human genomes from southwestern China is published in a study in the journal Science.

According to the study, radiocarbon dating indicates Xingyi_EN lived around 7,100 years ago and isotope analysis suggests she lived as a hunter-gatherer. Genetic sequencing revealed her ancestry from a deeply diverged human lineage—now named the Basal Asian Xingyi lineage. This lineage diverged from other modern human groups over 40,000 years ago and remained isolated for thousands of years without mixing with other populations.

This “ghost” lineage does not match DNA from Neanderthals or Denisovans but appears to have later contributed to the ancestry of some modern Tibetans. Xingyi_EN represents the first physical evidence of this previously unknown population.

Yunnan’s significance as a reservoir of deep human diversity

Most of the skeletons that the researchers sampled were dated between 1,400 and 7,150 years ago and came from Yunnan province, which today has the highest ethnic and linguistic diversity in all of China.

“Ancient humans that lived in this region may be key to addressing several remaining questions on the prehistoric populations of East and Southeast Asia,” the researchers wrote in the study. Those unanswered questions include the origins of people who live on the Tibetan Plateau, as previous studies have shown that Tibetans have northern East Asian ancestry.

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