NASA is likely to require another test flight from Boeing, a private lunar mission wraps up, India ramps up its Moon ambitions, galaxies appear to be aging faster than expected, and a wild new way to win a ticket to Mars. This Week in Space.
The Future of Boeing’s Spacecraft
The American astronauts who were delayed in space for several long months have safely returned to Earth on March 18. Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore, along with their crewmates Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, splashed down off the coast of Florida aboard the Dragon spacecraft Freedom, concluding a 17-hour journey from the International Space Station (ISS).
Williams and Wilmore were the crew of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft during its first crewed test flight in June 2024. However, due to multiple malfunctions—most notably helium leaks from several of the spacecraft’s maneuvering thrusters—NASA decided they would not return aboard Starliner. The spacecraft eventually returned to Earth autonomously, without a crew, in September 2024. Meanwhile, the two astronauts remained aboard the ISS and were incorporated into the station’s ongoing crew rotation—the ninth to launch to the ISS since SpaceX began flying crew members in 2020. Initially scheduled to stay for just eight days, they ultimately spent nine months in orbit.
The future of Boeing’s spacecraft now remains uncertain. The Starliner project has already resulted in significant financial losses for the company. Following the crewed test flight, Boeing was expected to begin routine missions to the ISS alongside SpaceX. However, NASA is now likely to require another test flight before granting certification—though it remains unclear whether that flight will carry a crew.
The primary issue involved widespread helium leaks in the Starliner’s thrusters. Each spacecraft is equipped with 48 thrusters—20 larger ones for trajectory changes and other maneuvers, and 28 smaller ones for precise orientation control, such as during docking. Five thrusters failed during the flight to the ISS. While four were successfully brought back online through collaborative efforts by NASA and Boeing, the root cause of the problem—believed to be related to valve overheating—has yet to be definitively identified.
“We're certainly looking at Starliner very carefully. We've got some candidate seals that we're going to replace. We'll get into some testing here over the summer timeframe,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, at a press conference following the return of the ninth crew. He added that NASA has not yet decided whether the coming Starliner flight will carry astronauts or not. But even if the mission is uncrewed, the agency wants it to be crew-capable - "to have all the systems in place that we could fly a crew with," he emphasized.
Stich emphasized that NASA is eager to certify Starliner for long-duration astronaut missions to the ISS following the next test flight—provided it goes well. “We need to bring Boeing into the crew transport rotation,” he added. “The return of Butch and Suni (Wilmore and Williams) aboard Dragon really drove home for me how important it is to have two different spacecraft for crewed missions, how important Starliner is, and how essential the redundancy we’re building is for low Earth orbit operations and the emerging space economy.”
Stich stressed that NASA remains committed to certifying Starliner for long-duration astronaut missions to the ISS—assuming the next test flight proceeds smoothly. “We really need to get Boeing into a crewed rotation,” he said. “Butch and Suni's [Wilmore and Williams’] return on Dragon, to me, shows how important it is to have two different crew transportation systems, the importance of Starliner and the redundancy that we're building into human spaceflight for our low Earth orbit economy.”
A smooth return. Watch the landing of the Dragon Freedom spacecraft with the ninth crew in the Gulf of Mexico:
Left Alone in the Dark
The American company Firefly announced earlier this week that its lunar lander Blue Ghost has completed its mission as planned and met all its objectives. Blue Ghost landed on the Moon earlier this month, marking the first smooth landing of a private spacecraft on the lunar surface. After operating for 346 hours—approximately 14.5 Earth days—the lander sent its final transmission, making full use of the lunar daylight period, which lasts about two Earth weeks. Remarkably, it continued functioning for a few hours after the Sun set below the lunar horizon, and managed to capture the first-ever footage of such a sunset.
In its official statement, the company reported that the spacecraft transmitted 119 gigabytes of data—nearly half of it produced by ten scientific instruments and experiments primarily focused on studying lunar dust. Among them was a drill used to measure subsurface temperatures at depths of several meters. Toward the end of its mission, the lander also captured a rare lunar solar eclipse, in which Earth obscures most of the Sun as seen from the Moon.
“We’re incredibly proud of the demonstrations Blue Ghost enabled from tracking GPS signals on the Moon for the first time to robotically drilling and collecting science deeper into the lunar surface than ever before” said CEO of Firefly Aerospae Jason Kim. NASA also congratulated the company on its successful mission, carried out under the CLPS program, which funds private lunar missions that incorporate the agency’s scientific experiments.
As part of this program, two more Firefly lander missions are planned: next year, the company intends to land Blue Ghost 2 on the far side of the Moon, and in 2028, Blue Ghost 3 is set to return to the near side, this time carrying a small lunar rover.
Excuse me, you're blocking my sunlight.The solar eclipse captured by Blue Ghost from the Moon, with Earth obscuring most of the Sun | Source: Firefly
India Returns to the Moon
The Indian government has approved the Chandrayaan-5 mission, under which the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), in collaboration with Japan, plans to land an especially large rover near the Moon’s south pole. ISRO’s incoming director, V. Narayanan, announced a week ago that the mission had received government approval just days earlier, though he did not provide further details regarding its scope, budget, or timeline.
According to earlier reports, the mission is not expected to launch before 2028. The Chandrayaan-5 lander is intended to deliver to the lunar surface an uncrewed rover weighing approximately 250 kilograms—larger than any of its predecessors. For comparison, the lunar rovers used during the later Apollo missions weighed around 210 kilograms without passengers. The rover will be equipped with an array of scientific instruments, primarily focused on the search for frozen water beneath the surface. These include a drill for collecting subsurface samples, as well as tools for analyzing their composition, such as spectrometers and ground-penetrating radar.
India has several advanced space missions planned for the coming years. In the summer of 2023, it became the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon—during the Chandrayaan-3 mission—and the first to land a spacecraft near the lunar south pole. In 2027, ISRO is expected to launch Chandrayaan-4, which will land not far from the Chandrayaan-3 site and is intended to return soil samples from the Moon’s south pole to Earth for the first time.
Alongside its lunar missions, India is also developing its crewed spaceflight program, Gaganyaan (meaning "Sky Vehicle" in Sanskrit). Designed to carry up to three astronauts, the spacecraft has been in development for many years. Although an uncrewed prototype was launched on a test flight over a decade ago, the crewed mission has faced repeated delays and is now scheduled for 2026. Looking ahead, India plans to equip the spacecraft with docking adapters that will allow it to connect with the International Space Station or private space stations, as part of a broader push toward international collaboration in space.
The Pragyan lunar rover traveling near the Vikram lander during the Chandrayaan-3 mission. India’s next step: a rover ten times the size.
Pragyan rover roams around Shiv Shakti Point in pursuit of lunar secrets at the South Pole 🌗! pic.twitter.com/1g5gQsgrjM
— ISRO (@isro) August 26, 2023
Oxygen at the Edge of the Universe
Last year, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) identified the most distant known galaxy to date. The light from galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0 took roughly 13.4 billion years to reach Earth—meaning we see it as it was just 300 million years after the Big Bang. Now, new observations with the giant ALMA radio telescope in Chile have detected oxygen in this galaxy, suggesting its development occurred much faster than scientists previously believed possible.
Stars are formed primarily from the lightest elements—hydrogen and helium. Over the course of their lives, especially in their final stages, they begin to produce heavier elements. When a massive star ends its life in an explosion, those elements are scattered into space, where some eventually become part of new stars or smaller celestial bodies. Until now, researchers believed that 300 million years was not enough time for galaxies to develop a significant amount of elements heavier than helium. However, two independent studies have found that the level of oxygen in the galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0 is ten times higher than expected.
“It’s like finding an adolescent in a place where you’d only expect to find babies,” said Sander Schouws of Leiden University in the Netherlands, who led one of the studies. “The results show that the galaxy formed really rapidly and is also maturing fast, which contributes to the mounting suspicion that the first galaxies formed much faster than expected.”
“The evidence that a galaxy is already mature in the infant Universe raises questions about when and how galaxies formed,” added Stefano Carniani of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, lead author of the second study.
The detection of oxygen also allowed astronomers to measure the galaxy’s distance with remarkable precision—accurate to within five thousandths of a percent. These findings are expected to challenge and refine existing models of galaxy formation and evolution, offering new insights into how the early universe developed.
Back to basics. Close-up of galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0 set against its location in the sky—a tiny speck in the constellation Fornax ("The Furnace") | Source: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/S. Carniani et al./S. Schouws et al./JWST: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Brant Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), Ben Johnson (CfA), Sandro Tacchella (Cambridge), Phill Cargile (CfA)
Basketball On The Way To Mars
SpaceX’s Starship may still be far from operational—with its last two test flights ending in explosions—but that hasn’t stopped CEO Elon Musk from offering a future flight to Mars as the prize in a sports betting challenge run through another of his companies: the social media platform X.
The challenge is tied to the upcoming NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, one of the biggest sporting events in the U.S. Known as March Madness, the tournament features 63 games—and the challenge riffs on that name with a space-themed twist: Mars Madness.
To win the prize—a flight to Mars—participants must correctly predict the winner of every single game, from the early rounds all the way to the championship. The odds of winning are extremely low; no one has ever come close. The record was set in 2019, when a basketball fan from Ohio correctly predicted 49 games.
The challenge offers a flight to Mars to anyone who correctly predicts the winner of every single game—from the early rounds all the way to the championship. The odds of winning are extremely low, as no one has ever come close. The current record was set in 2019, when a basketball fan from Ohio correctly predicted the outcomes of 49 games. The contest was open only to legal U.S. residents aged 18 and over, with brackets to be submitted exclusively on the X platform by March 20—the day before the tournament tipped off.
Musk has repeatedly claimed in recent months that Starship could reach Mars as early as the 2028 launch window. Even if it’s an uncrewed, one-way mission for now, that vision still seems far off—especially considering that as of 2025, after two years and eight test flights, Starship has yet to reach Earth orbit. Crewed missions to Mars are likely still a long way off, meaning that even if someone would have won the basketball challenge, they would have needed a great deal of patience before they could claim their prize.
A shot at Mars for one exceptional basketball fan. Starship on the launch pad | Photo: SpaceX