New Space Economy

The International Space Station completes one orbit roughly every 90 minutes at an altitude near 250 miles, so its structure repeatedly passes through sunlight, darkness, vacuum, atomic oxygen, radiation, and high-speed particles. That operating rhythm explains how space affects metals used in the ISS structure: metal does not simply sit in space like a beam in a warehouse. It e...

The International Space Station has hosted more than 20 years of continuous human research in orbit, giving scientists access to a laboratory where gravity no longer dominates flames, fluids, plants, cells, crystals, and human physiology. The most interesting International Space Station experiments are not interesting only because they happen in space. They are interesting becau...

NASA’s planned end-of-life disposal of the International Space Station depends on keeping a very large, aging orbital complex controllable long enough to aim its reentry into a remote ocean area. If the ISS breaks apart during deorbit burn operations, the result would depend on timing, altitude, vehicle attitude, how much of the planned velocity change had already been delivered...

September 2019 marked the first detection of the long-running air leak associated with the Russian segment of the International Space Station. ISS module cracking later became tied to the PrK transfer tunnel, a small pressurized passage in the aft end of the Russian Zvezda Service Module. The issue has drawn attention because air leakage can be patched, measured, and operational...

FAA commercial launch user fees became an operational reality after the Federal Aviation Administration published an April 22, 2026 Federal Register notice announcing that commercial launch and reentry operators must pay new licensing and permitting fees. The policy follows a 2025 statutory change that added section 50924 to Title 51 of the United States Code and directed the Se...