space

The most advanced Spanish military satellite suffered an impact in space more than a week ago. There are still no clear explanations

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For years, Spain has invested millions of euros in building a space communications system designed for extreme scenarios, from military operations to international emergencies. One of its pillars, the satellite SpainSat NG II, It took off in October with everything as planned and within a program presented as the most ambitious in Spanish space history. However, something happened very soon during its transfer to its orbital position. More than a week after an incident was acknowledged, what surrounds the satellite’s true status is a combination of minimal data and silence that leaves many questions open. An aging statement. The only thing confirmed so far comes from a statement released by Indra January 2, 2026in which it is recognized that the satellite suffered the “impact of a space particle” during its transfer to the final orbit. The incident occurred about 50,000 kilometers from Earth, still an intermediate phase of the journey to its geostationary position. Since then, the technical team is analyzing the available data to determine the extent of the damage, but no assessment of its operational status or the actual consequences of the impact has been made public. The launch of SpainSat NG II took place on the night of October 23 in the United States, already in the early hours of the 24th in Spain, aboard a Falcon 9 bound for a geostationary transfer orbit. From there, the satellite had to complete a journey of several months until reaching its final position about 36,000 kilometers from Earth, a process that, according to the CEO of Hisdesat told Euronews, usually takes between five and six months. The impact recognized by Indra occurred in that intermediate phase of the journey, when the satellite had not yet reached its final operational orbit. The reaction. In that same statement, Indra explained that Hisdesat, operator and owner of the satellite, had activated a contingency plan to guarantee that the committed services are not affected. The formulation fits with the logic of a two-satellite system, which seeks to ensure continuity of service even in the event of unforeseen incidents. However, the specific measures adopted and the current degree of dependence on the affected satellite within the program as a whole have not been detailed, which limits the ability to evaluate the real scope of this response. Twin units. SpainSat NG II is not an isolated satellite, but one of the two central pieces of a system conceived as a long-term strategic infrastructure. Along with his twin, the SpainSat NG Iis part of a program promoted by the Ministry of Defense with an investment of more than 2,000 million eurosintended to provide Spain with its own secure communications. The first satellite has already been operational since the summer, while the second was to complete the system, a context that explains the attention that any anomaly in its deployment has generated. The secrets of the satellite. From a technical point of view, SpainSat NG II represents a notable leap over previous generations of government communications satellites. Built by Airbus on the Eurostar Neo platformthe satellite has dimensions close to seven meters and a mass of around six tons. Its payload incorporates an X-band active antenna system that, according to Airbus, offers the equivalent functionality of 16 traditional antennas and allows coverage to be dynamically adapted up to 1,000 times per second, a capacity designed for changing and demanding operating scenarios. More questions than answers. With the information available, the range of scenarios remains wide. An impact from a space particle can result in minor damage without operational consequences, but also in a more serious impact that forces the functions to be limited or the deployment of the satellite to be reconsidered. Indra has even left open the option of a replacement if necessary, and maintains that, in that case, the satellite would be replaced as soon as possible. The absence of specific technical data makes it impossible to know whether this is a controlled incident or a problem with deeper implications. Given the lack of public updates, from Xataka we have contacted Indra to find out if there was any news about the status of the satellite. The company’s press office has responded to us that, for now, they have no details to share about what happened. That silence prolongs the uncertainty around a strategic system that has not yet entered service and leaves open key questions about the real scope of the impact. Images | Airbus (1, 2) | Thales In Xataka | We already have an official date for the United States’ return to the Moon: it is imminent and mired in a sea of ​​doubts

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, is building a huge space telescope. The question is not how, but why

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If someone today wanted to build something like a new Hubble, it would make sense to think of years of reports, reviews and committees before the first piece of hardware is even manufactured. However, that logic has just been broken with an unexpected announcement: Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, and his wife Wendy have put on the table his own money to power not one, but four telescopes, including a large-scale space observatory. The move not only challenges the sector’s inertia, but raises a question deeper than budget or technology: what exactly is a former Silicon Valley executive pursuing by wading into the heart of modern astronomy. This is a project promoted by the Schmidt Observatory System, it seeks to cover everything from the deep sky to the detailed study of transient phenomena. A change of model. Currently, telescopes are generally in the hands of public agencies and academic consortia. Building ever-larger mirrors and then putting instruments into orbit turned astronomy into a matter of national budgets. The Schmidts’ entry into this arena suggests that, with new technologies and another way to finance risk, that historic balance could be starting to shift again. Risk, speed and open science. The approach behind the observatory system is not to compete with space agencies, but to cover the space left by their own processes, which are long, conservative and highly conditioned by public budgets. The Schmidts seek to finance concepts that have already been imagined by the scientific community, but that rarely overcome the barrier of official financing due to their level of risk or the deadlines they require. The piece that gives meaning to the whole and that really makes the difference is Lazulithe only one of the four projects that will leave Earth. It aims to cover a wide range of science, from transient events lasting minutes or hours to the detailed study of exoplanets, with a level of flexibility that large public observatories cannot always offer. Further, more agile. One of the clearest breaks between Lazuli and Hubble is where it will operate and how. While NASA’s telescope orbits about 500 kilometers from Earth, Lazuli will be placed much further away, in an elliptical orbit that should give it a clearer view and allow for fast and continuous data linking. Lazuli Space Observatory In the official description, Schmidt Sciences frames this operation in a “lunar-resonant” orbit. Added to this is a larger mirror, 3.1 meters compared to Hubble’s 2.4 meters, and an observation philosophy designed to react quickly to unexpected phenomena. One platform, several instruments. Lazuli is designed as a unique platform that integrates three instruments designed to cover everything from wide-field observations to the detailed study of exoplanets and transient phenomena. Wide-field optical imager with high cadence for photometric time series, 30′×15′ field of view and filters between 300 and 1000 nm Integral field spectrograph continuously covering 400–1700 nm, optimized for stable spectrophotometry and rapid sorting High contrast coronagraph to directly observe exoplanets and circumstellar environments, with contrasts of 10⁻⁸ and up to 10⁻⁹ after processing The era of array telescopes. Argus, DSA and LFAST They are not traditional telescopes, but rather distributed systems that take advantage of recent advances in computing, storage, and automated analysis. Instead of concentrating everything in a single structure, they distribute the collection of light or radio signals among tens or thousands of modules that are then digitally synchronized. This modularity aims to accelerate deployments and opens the door to observing the sky almost in real time, something fundamental for the astronomy of fleeting events. Render of the Argus Array (left), Deep Synoptic Array (right) Argus Array will bring together 1,200 optical telescopes in Texas to observe the northern sky almost continuously, with the idea of ​​being able to “rewind” what happened minutes or hours before an event such as a supernova. DSA, in Nevada and under the direction of Caltech, will deploy 1,600 radio antennas to map more than a billion sources and update its view of the sky every fifteen minutes. LFAST, for its part, will be installed in Arizona as a system of 20 80-centimeter mirrors aimed at large-aperture spectroscopy and the search for biosignatures, with a prototype planned for mid-2026. What the Schmidts have launched is, at its core, an experiment on the scientific system itself. Lazuli and his three colleagues on land aim to show that it is possible to build large-scale observatories more quickly and with an openness of data that does not always fit into traditional models. Whether that vision materializes will depend on factors yet to be determined, such as the final contractors, real costs or the feasibility of the schedules, but if it goes well, the impact will not only be measured in new discoveries, but in a new way of deciding what science is done. Images | Village Global | Schmidt Observatory System In Xataka | China has just resolved one of the biggest doubts about going to Mars with the birth of six space mice

China has just resolved one of the biggest doubts about going to Mars with the birth of six space mice

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For years, the great doubt of space biology It has not been whether we can have tomatoes and lettuce in orbit to be able to populate other planets, but whether our bodies will remain functional after returning from the vacuum of space. Something that above all interests us in order to reproduce. And in order to solve it, China sent a mouse who was in the Tiangong station to see if she was later capable of having babies and if they came with any serious alteration. Some babies for history. The result of this trip to Tiangong Station The truth is that it has been a successsince on December 10, 2025, a laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) witnessed an apparently everyday but scientifically extraordinary event: the birth of nine baby mice. The special thing, logically, was not the birth, but the fact that his mother had been in space for several weeks (although with some problems) subjected to microgravity and cosmic radiation. Now, six of these babies have survived and are growing normally. It was not without incident. The experiment was a priori quite simple: launch four mice (two males and two females) into space on October 31 and leave them there for two weeks. All this accompanied by adequate food for the duration of the mission. But in the end there were major problems that forced extend the stay in space. And this was a huge inconvenience, since the critical shortage of solid food for the mice could literally cause the mice to die and the mission to be a disaster. And that is why on Earth they began to look for the most suitable food to feed these animals and the result was liquid soy milk, which was the only thing available at the station. Completely monitored. In order to have good traceability of what the mice do in space, scientists kept the mice monitored with artificial intelligence at all times. In this way, it was possible to know at the moment what they ate and even the stress patterns they presented, circadian rhythms and possible anomalies in real time. And everything was taken care of in detail, to the point that the soy milk was supplied with a negative pressure pumping system to prevent liquid bubbles from floating around the cabin. The progression. Once this problem was resolved, on November 14, 2025, the animals returned to earth and natural conception occurred. The result was that 9 calves were born and only six survived in good health. The problem of microgravity. Until this experiment, there was a well-founded fear in the scientific community: that ionizing radiation and the absence of gravity would “break” something in the hormonal axis or in the integrity of the DNA of the gametes. Something that would prevent us from reproducing normally, which would prevent, for example, the colonization of Mars. Precisely, cosmic radiation acts as a shower of high-energy particles that can cause double-strand breaks in DNA. On Earth, our atmosphere protects us, but at 400 km altitude, mice (and humans) are exposed to a much higher dose. Researcher Wang Hongmei highlights that the fact that the offspring are viable suggests that the cellular repair mechanisms of mammals are capable of compensating for the damage suffered during short-duration flights. A competition. As with everything related to space, there is a great rivalry between the United States and China. In this way, if we look back we see that China He had already managed to partially develop mouse embryos in space in 2020. Subsequently, NASA in 2019 conducted researchers on the International Space Station to analyze the bone density loss and muscle in space. What’s next. The experiment does not end with childbirth. Now, scientists monitor what they call “second-generation effects.” The aim is to determine if these six mice will develop health problems in the medium term or if their fertility will be affected when they reach maturity. In this way, if these mice do not present infertility, we can see that space travel is not a sentence of sterility. China’s next big step will be to attempt the reproductive cycle in orbit: conception, gestation and birth without setting foot on Earth. Something that will be fundamental for to be able to understand if humans in space can have some kind of possibility of reproducing without the protection of our beloved atmosphere. Images | Frenjamin Benklin POT In Xataka | Thinking that we are alone in the universe is arrogant. The question is why the aliens haven’t contacted us yet

Spotify killed the record and the industry pivoted to concerts. Netflix killed cinema and the industry was left with a “space crisis”

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Never in history have we seen so many movies: the streaming It allows us to see several a week but, nevertheless, the movie theaters are empty. Literally emptier than ever in decades. We consume audiovisual content en masse, but not where we historically enjoyed it. Meanwhile, concerts have become the leisure alternative par excellence. Why do we pay hundreds of euros to go to a stadium with 50,000 other people, but not fifteen to see a blockbuster on the big screen? The answer lies in how we value physical space in the experience economy. Some figures. Let’s look at some box office figures: the summer of 2025, traditionally the most lucrative season in the industry, has been the most disastrous since 1981 adjusted for inflation. There is no dream of returning to pre-COVID figures: in October 2025 in the US, only 445 million dollars were raised, less than half of last October before the pandemicwhich exceeded one billion. The average viewer attended only 2.31 times to theaters in 2024, a drop of 33% compared to the 3.5 annual visits in 2019. In Spain, theThe 2025 data is equally dark: The total box office falls by 14% (almost 30 million less), and Spanish cinema itself declines by 2.5-3%. The author of this last study, Pau Brunet, expressly says that “the Hollywood fantasy is crumbling.” And the erosion is constant: Spain had more than 105 million viewers in 2019, which represents a loss of a third of its volume in five years: we are now at 71 million. Windows that don’t perform. The problem is so multifactorial that it is ridiculous to focus only on the drop in the box office to explain it. For example, we have the collapse of display windows: The pre-pandemic standard was 90-120 days in theaters, three or four weeks later in digital sales and then home formats and streaming. After the pandemic, these windows were reduced by more than 60%, and although they now vary depending on the studio, Universal and Warner leave a 45-day window for their most sought-after productions (it can be reduced to 17 days), with the exception of Disney, which operates them for 60 days. In any case, the rest of the windows have been shortened or disappeared, and it is common to watch a movie in streaming just a month and a half after its release in theaters. It is one of the main reasons why people have left the theaters: even blockbusters like ‘Wicked’ can be seen streaming just 40 days after their release in theaters. Even China. A few years ago, China was the market that seemed destined to save Hollywood accountsbut experienced its own collapse in 2024: the box office fell 23% to 42.5 billion yen ($5.8 billion), returning to figures from a decade ago. Attendance fell by more than 200 million viewers compared to ten years ago. One of the main reasons is the degradation of the theatrical experience: cinemas without air conditioning and without customer service staff beyond the bar, a characteristic that has been spreading to theaters around the world for years. The crisis has been going on for a long time. In reality, this fall does not have its roots in the streaming not even in the pandemic. The attendance of the American public had been falling since the sixtiesgoing from one visit per person every two or three months to just twice a year before the pandemic. The real price of admission (adjusted for inflation) has remained stable since the 1980s, but consumers have decided that they no longer want to go to theaters. The problem, as this Bain & Company study states The thing is that, for decades, the industry has placed all the emphasis of its production on pure content, but the films have ended up arriving home in a few weeks. Meanwhile, music has come to understand something fundamental: the value is not in the recorded content, but in the unique, unrepeatable event. The triumph of music. He Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour It closed in December 2024 after 149 concerts in 51 cities, ggenerating gross revenues of 2,077 million dollars. That is, more than the annual film box office receipts of entire countries (compare with the pyrrhic 71 million box office receipts in Spain in 2024). AND We’re not just talking about the concerts.: The average expense per attendee ranged between $1,300 and $1,500, including transportation, accommodation, merchandising and dinners. More than fans, they are tourists generating systemic economic impact. “Swiftonomics“has ceased to be a metaphor and has become a real analytical category in government economic reports. Beyond Taylor. Swift is not an anomaly. The global live music market generated $28.1 billion in 2023 and projections place it at $79.7 billion by 2030. That growth is equivalent to tripling the size of the market in seven years, while cinema struggles to recover the levels of a decade ago. What does live music have that cinema has lost? The term “funflation“: Consumers prioritize spending on memorable experiences even during periods of high inflation Festivals have capitalized on this logic: They sell identity, belonging and experiences that are impossible to replicate at home. Just the opposite of cinema: a film is exactly identical all over the world and once seen, the incentive to repeat it in theaters is minimal, especially knowing that it will be in streaming in 45 days. Reinvention is required. The cinema crisis is not a death sentence, but it is a demand for reinvention. Because the physical space of entertainment is not dying, it is being reformulated. The path that the music industry has followed by completely pivoting its business model with the disappearance of physical formats is the one that cinema has to follow. At the moment, theaters have not gotten the premium experiences right (sophisticated restoration, more comfortable rooms, improvements in image and sound quality), but that is because they still do not differentiate themselves enough from the domestic experience. Cinema needs its own Taylor … Read more

Poland and Spain are the European countries that have increased their contribution to space the most. For very different reasons

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“Europe wants to get its act together in space matters and become independent from States, so in 2025 it has launched the ambitious 15-year plan.”Strategy 2040: Elevating Europe’s future“, ha merged its largest companies and has approved a historic budget of more than 22,000 million euros. In this new budget of the European Space Agency, there are two countries that have taken a step forward in investment: Poland and Spain. Spain and Poland take a step forward. With a contribution of 1,854 million euros, the Spanish state goes from fifth to fourth positiononly behind Germany, France and Italy. Since 2022 it has surpassed the United Kingdom, the only member state that has been reducing its contribution since 2022. Poland has gone from twelfth place to become the eighth largest contributor. Although the objective of Spain and Poland is the same, their motivations are different: while the former’s priority is to support its industrial base, for the latter security and autonomy are essential. The success of ESA’s budget request lies in the programs it houses and how each country and its priorities can influence the general space spending trends of the old continent. The jewel in the crown: EOGS-ESA. One of the great engines is Earth Observation Governmental Service (Government Earth Observation Service), a key program of the European Space Agency focused on Earth observation with satellite data, but not only for science or climate, but also for defense and security in what they call dual use, civil and military. The economic injection from Poland and Spain was significant: 325 million euros for the Spanish state and 109 million euros for the Eastern country, more than half of what it put in 2022. But both financed different components of the project that align with their interests. Each country has its reasons. Thus, Poland was allocated to shared European systems and resilience networks (services that work even if there are failures or sabotage), which fits with its concern for national security, the protection of strategic infrastructures and obviously, the context of the war in Ukraine. For its part, Spain opted for a part of the most tangible project: building satellites, more specifically the “Atlantic Constellation“, a constellation of small satellites shared with Portugal to observe the Atlantic. Missing launchers. In Europe, traditionally the launching countries have been France, Germany and Italy through Ariane and Vega, but in recent years the panorama has become more complicated. On the one hand, the success of SpaceX has overshadowed European work and on the other, the gap in launches that has existed in recent years, as a result of Ariane 6 delaysthe breaking of collaborations with Russia and the stoppage of Vega-C. So other countries with less tradition have taken a step forward, improving competitiveness. In the case of Spain, it has allocated 169 million to miuraa reusable small satellite launcher from the company PLD Space. Poland has increased its contribution to the Future Launcher Preparatory Programme, an ESA program focused on new innovative launcher technologies. From 2022 to 2025 it has gone from providing three million to 48. Bringing historic programs to life. Although they had not previously been a priority for both countries, Poland and Spain have set their sights on older programs such as ‘Celeste’ or ‘Iris2’. ‘Celeste’ is an ESA mission based on low orbit satellites that reinforces Galileo in achieving more precise and difficult to interfere navigation, with a scope of application in the development of autonomous vehicles, drones and critical infrastructures. Poland has made its debut with a contribution of 10 million and Spain has tripled its investment. ‘Iris2‘ is something like the European Starlink, made up of a network of about 300 satellites that will provide secure, fast and resilient communications to EU governments and companies. With supervision from ESA, the objective is to guarantee European digital sovereignty. Its first launch is scheduled for 2029. In this mission, Spain has emerged by contributing much more than any other member state to Element 3, which focuses on user terminals, new services and missions, with 140 million euros. More R + D + i. Likewise, both states have gained weight in FutureEOESA’s R&D program for Earth observation focused on climate change, ecosystem collapse, human health and the impact of resource consumption. Thus, Poland and Spain went from 8.5 and 20 million respectively in 2022 to 35 and 110 million in this new budget. Poland’s space exploration. Poland has risen from 12.5 million to 61 million euros in just three years, with more than half of that increase (30 million) allocated to lunar exploration. However, they have just send its first astronaut in decades: Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, on an Ignis trade mission. The pioneer was Mirosław Hermaszewski, in 1978. In Xataka | “Elon Musk can monopolize everything,” warns Arianespace, which has been launching all of Europe’s satellites for 40 years In Xataka | A space war looms over our heads and Europe is the power that invests the least in defense technology Cover | Image from freepik

Space reuse seemed like a SpaceX thing. China is already trying to replicate the formula with LandSpace

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For decades, access to space was conditioned by a simple and very expensive logic: each launch was an almost unrepeatable operation, with rockets designed to be used only once. That model turned cost per kilo into a structural barrier for the entire industry. Reuse broke that inertia and changed the rules of the game, not as an incremental improvement, but as a different way of thinking about launches. Today, that idea has become the bar for who can compete in the new space economy. The trajectory that is currently taken as a model was not born from a comfortable position. In 2008, SpaceX faced a sequence of technical failures with the Falcon 1 that left the company with no financial margin. Elon Musk even admitted that a fourth explosion would have meant the end of the project. The turning point came first with a successful launch to orbit and, almost three months later, with a NASA contract to transport cargo to the International Space Station. That combination gave oxygen to a company that was still far from demonstrating sustained reliability. When launching is no longer the most expensive. The traditional model assumed that launch was the most expensive and risky part of any orbital mission. NASA analyzes place Historical costs in a typical range of between $10,000 and more than $20,000 per kilo in low orbit, with an average cost around $18,500/kg. The drop in prices associated with reuse altered that balance: with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, the cost per kilo fell into the range of $3,000 to $1,500. By reducing the cost of travel, the door was opened to launch more often and rethink the scale of projects. Why LandSpace is coming into the picture now. In this new scenario of more frequent and scale-oriented launches appears LandSpace. Founded in 2015, a few years after China opened the space sector to private capital, the company has positioned itself as a player focused on building a complete chain from design and manufacturing to launch. Its program aims to recover and reuse the first stage, and in parallel it is committed to liquid oxygen and methane launchers, a combination linked in the industry to cost reduction strategies. This approach fits with China’s need to deploy large satellite constellations in the coming decades. Zhuque-3 from LandSpace With the Zhuque-3LandSpace proposed something unprecedented in China for an orbital-class launcher: attempting to recover the first stage in a real flight. The launch made this vehicle the largest Chinese commercial launcher ever flown and the first by a private company in the country to attempt a vertical landing after completing its primary mission. The profile was carefully planned, with a recovery area built specifically for it in the Gobi Desert. LandSpace has not given figures on the probability of success, and the flight was functioning as a recovery test in real conditions. Zhuque-3 from LandSpace Similar to Falcon 9, with nods to Starship. The comparison with SpaceX is not a rhetorical device, it is in the design itself. Zhuque-3 adopts a very recognizable pattern: nine engines in the first stage, return maneuver, aerodynamic control with grid ends and legs for a vertical landing. At the same time, it is not a carbon copy of the Falcon 9. The rocket is built of stainless steel and uses methane and liquid oxygen as propellants, two features associated with the development of Starship. SpaceX Falcon 9 The December attempt did not end as LandSpace had planned. After takeoff, the Zhuque-3 completed its initial phase of flight, but the first stage failed to execute the final landing maneuver. According to Reutersthe booster had to start its engines about three kilometers from the ground to stop the descent and carry out a controlled landing, something that did not occur. The result was an impact rather than a vertical landing. The design of the test itself assumed that risk: it was a reuse test, not a complete operational mission. Reuse and risk tolerance. The commitment to reusable rockets forces us to review how risk is understood within the Chinese space sector. The aforementioned agency highlights that the local industry has historically been dominated by state companies reluctant to see visible failures. The entry of private companies like LandSpace is introducing another logic, closer to controlled experimentation. The fact that failed attempts are documented and publicly explained suggests that the priority is beginning to shift from immediate success to the accumulation of experience, a necessary condition for reuse to be more than a promise. Images | LandSpace | SpaceX In Xataka | While Silicon Valley dreams of servers in orbit, Russia prepares a nuclear reactor on lunar soil

A Russian family lived isolated in Siberia for more than 40 years. He didn’t know about World War II or the space race.

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In the cold, vast and desolate siberian taiga one would expect to find spruce trees, maples, streams and acres covered in frozen silt. Maybe (hopefully) some lone pso or wolf. What no one would include on that list is what he discovered around mid 1978 an expedition that flew over a mountain located more than 240 km from any human trace. There, in the middle of the Abakan mountain rangea group of geologists came across a family that had been isolated for 42 years. Its story still fascinates today. And that cabin? Such a question must have been asked 47 years ago by a group of Soviet geologists flying over the Siberian taiga, an area rich in oil, gas and mineral reserves. He ran summer of 1978 and the team, led by Galina Pismenskaya, was traveling by helicopter in a region of Siberia located 160 km from the border with Mongolia when the pilot saw something between the trees. Something unexpected. A rudimentary cabin with a small garden. In most parts of the planet, such an image would be of little interest, but Pismenskaya’s team was supposedly in an unpopulated area. In fact, the Soviet authorities were not aware that anyone lived there. The nearest houses were supposed to be more than 200 kilometers away, so the question was obvious… What the hell was that shack doing there, built next to a stream, among trees? They were so intrigued that geologists decided to land. “We come to visit”. The impressions of Pismenskaya and her colleagues when approaching the hut we know them thanks to Vasily Peskova Russian journalist and traveler who would later interview the protagonists of that story to collect it in a book. Upon landing, the researchers found a hut made with the little that the taiga offered: bark, branches, trunks and pieces of wood blackened by humidity. On one side there was a tiny window. On the other side there was a door through which an old man appeared. “Like something out of a fairy tale”, would relate some time later Pismenskaya, who recalled that the man was barefoot, was wearing a patched shirt and pants and sported a scraggly beard. “He seemed scared. We had to say something, so I started: ‘Greetings, Grandpa! We’ve come to see you.’” The fact is that that old man was not alone. When they entered the hut with him, the geologists discovered that he lived with his four children. They all shared that wooden construction without rooms, blackened by smoke, cold and with the floor covered in shells. Upon seeing the new arrivals, one of the young women began to pray, scared. Another, hidden behind a post, ended up collapsing from suffocation. Logical. The family had not seen another human for four decades. Dating back to 1936. The old man in question was called Karp Osipovich Lykov and the fact that he lived there, in conditions almost medieval people, hundreds of kilometers from any hint of civilization and surrounded only by his children, is explained in light of what happened in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. Just like his Karp family was an old believera member of a church split from Orthodox Christianity that embraced the ancient liturgy and ecclesiastical canons. The path of Karp’s coreligionists had diverged from the Russian Orthodox already in the 17th century, after Nikon’s reformwhich made them outcasts. This had happened in times of Peter I…and with the Bolsheviks. This harassment affected the Lykov family directly. Around 1936, a patrol shot his brother on the outskirts of the village where they lived, so Karp made a radical decision: he gathered his wife Akulina and the two children they had at the time (Savin, nine years old, and Natalia, two) and escaped into the forest. Literally. He walked away as far as he could. Without looking back and with light luggage that included just a handful of seeds, a rudimentary spinning wheel, a couple of jugs to boil water and the clothes they were wearing. Once in the taiga, the family built a cabin with what they had on hand, set up a garden and continued with a life marked by isolation, their beliefs and deprivation. In 1940 the couple had their third son, Dmitry; and four years later the fourth and last daughter, Agafia, was born. Back to history. The Lykovs continued with that life until Osipovich’s helicopter located them in the summer of 1978. It may sound strange, but the family had settled in a particularly inhospitable place. No one saw them before because no one looked there. The marriage moved as he encountered difficulties, moving further and further away from the villages and towns, until settling at a point located more than 240 km of the nearest settlement. Not even the Soviet authorities were aware of the existence of that family. The consequences of that isolation are obvious. For the Lykovs, time, politics, science… stopped dead in 1936. The family did not know that Europe had been shaken by World War II, nor that man had stepped on the Moon in 1969, nor was it aware of the space race, the name Kennedy or the Beatles did not ring a bell… Some family members marveled at seeing a television or items as seemingly simple as matches or a roll of transparent cellophane. Fascinating yes, bucolic no. The Lykovs’ 42 years of isolation were, however, hardly bucolic. Their cabin was built next to a stream and the forest offered them wood, fruit and even game, but the harsh conditions of the taiga subjected them to a constant test. Especially the first years. Agafia even told how towards the end of the 1950s the family faced their peculiar “years of hunger”, during which they had to decide whether to eat the little they harvested or save some of the seeds to grow them the following year. “We were hungry all the time,” he admits. Years later the family suffered a frost … Read more

The European Space Agency has always launched rockets from South America. Norway is very close to changing that

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The Arctic is no longer just that vast ice desert at the end of the world, but it has become a strategic point for many countries that they do not want to waste. And Europe does not want to let him escape, now opting to migrate the launch of part of your rockets from South America to this new location, something that has a great geopolitical strategy behind it. An agreement. The European Space Agency (ESA) and Norway recently signed an agreement to promote the creation of a new research center in the north of our planet: the ESA Arctic Space Center in Tromso. But it is not just another research center, but rather it is Europe’s response to ensure its autonomy in observation, navigation and communications in a region where it is already Russia and China is deploying its own infrastructure. The location. Choosing Tromsø as the city where to locate this new launch zone is not something chosen at random. If we go to a map, we can locate it far above the Arctic Circle, already being a city that has become a vibrant ecosystem of satellite data. Looking back, Tromsø already hosts mission control Arctic Weather Satellite, a satellite launched in 2024 that tried to demonstrate how a polar constellation can save lives through very accurate weather forecasts. But it also has a large number of institutions that make it a true Silicon Valley of the cold, housing the Secretariat of the Arctic Council and the Norwegian Polar Institute. A greater amount of data. The agreement signed between ESA and the Norwegian agency NOSA establishes a working group that will define the details before the end of 2026. This center is defined as an opportunity to monitor the melting of the Arctic, which warming four times faster than the global averagewhich gives us data on what will happen in the rest of the planet. It also entails an important national security reason, since today maritime traffic in the Northeast Passage does not stop increasing, and this means having signs of Galileo It allows you to have better control of everything that happens here. That is why, more than science, we are facing a critical center for civil security, search and rescue. The change of location. Until now, our gateway to space was French Guiana for a reason of basic physics: its proximity to the equator allows us to take advantage of the “impulse” of the Earth’s rotation to launch heavy satellites. However, the center of Tromsø and the new Nordic ports respond to a different need: polar orbit. That is why while from South America it is ideal to launch television satellites that remain “fixed” on the equator, the Arctic is the perfect balcony for satellites that must monitor melting ice or borders. Launching from the Pole, the satellite enters directly onto a North-South path that allows it to scan every corner of the planet as the Earth rotates below. In addition, being on the axis of rotation, rockets do not have to “fight” against the Earth’s lateral spin, which makes observation missions much more efficient and cheaper. Geopolitics. Beyond science, in this case there is a reading of territorial sovereigntysince while China invests in the “Polar Silk Road” and Russia increases its infrastructure in Siberia, Europe needs its own eyes in the north. In this way, while from South America it is ideal to launch television satellites that remain “fixed” on the equator, the Arctic is the perfect balcony for satellites that must monitor melting ice or borders. In this way, the Tromsø–Svalbard axis, added to the new spaceports of Andøya (Norway) and Kiruna (Sweden), consolidates northern Europe as the main gateway to space on the continent. This decision reduces dependence on external infrastructure as occurred in South America and obviously guarantees that all data remains in European territory. What’s next now. Norway, a member of ESA since 1987, brings its network of polar stations and its unique experience in polar orbit operations that are undoubtedly crucial in the current situation. From now on, the working group that has been formed has two years to design the governance and calendar of a center that promises to be “the control tower” of the European future in the Arctic. Images | riya rohewal In Xataka | In January a SpaceX rocket exploded. Today we know the danger that an Iberia plane was in with 450 passengers in the air

NASA captures the unusual trail of the “twin” tornadoes in Mississippi from space

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If we look at the Mississippi from 700 kilometers above sea level, the landscape we usually see is a green carpet of forests and agricultural fields. However, last March this carpet was ‘torn’, as NASA could see through the Landsat 8 satellite. The images obtained revealed something extremely strange: “scars”, which are nothing more than traces of total destruction that reveal the trajectory of one of the most violent tornado outbreaks in the last decade. The surprising thing. It is not the magnitude of the damage that the passage of these could have generated. tornadoes down the Mississippi, but the geometry it has. And in Walthall County, satellites have immortalized an extremely rare phenomenon: two perfectly parallel scars. Something that represents a “mute” testimony of two tornadoes that advanced hand in hand, wreaking chaos. Paths of destruction. The tornado outbreak in question occurred between March 14 and 16, 2025, and the truth is that it will be remembered for how aggressive it was. Specifically, data from NASA’s Earth Observatory and the National Weather Service (NWS) suggest that they were developed a total of 113 tornadoes in just three days, which affected 14 states. But it was precisely in Mississippi where the atmosphere decided to leave a unique visual signature. Landsat images show these two almost parallel tracks, like train tracks, near Tylertown. Your description. The first of these traces indicates that it arose due to the tornado EF4which had a journey of 90 km with estimated winds of 274 km/h. The second trace, which is shorter, but just as destructive, has a distance of 15 km, and was generated by a different tornado that followed an almost identical path. This phenomenon of “twin tornadoes” leaving parallel trails is a statistical rarity that allows meteorologists to study how supercells interact with each other under conditions of extreme instability. An ‘X’ of disaster. Not only were these parallel trails recorded in Mississippi, but in Covington County researchers they found also another quite unusual pattern: two scars that intersect almost at right angles forming a large ‘X’ over a wooded area. As if a great pirate treasure could be found underneath. And it was not a sensor error, since according to the data, two different tornadoes crossed their paths in an interval of just 40 minutes. For families in the area, it was a statistical nightmare: being hit by a natural disaster and, before an hour had passed, watching another large funnel pass through the rubble of what the first one had just destroyed. A violent 2025. This year’s March has certainly shattered weather records with a total of 299 tornadoes in a single month, and experts point to ‘The Girl‘ as responsible for all this. This climate phenomenon has altered the Pacific jet stream over North America, creating a perfect breeding ground for supercells! By moving the humidity of the Gulf of Mexico to the north and encountering very persistent cold air, everything necessary was in place to have a true meteorological war. And it is no wonder, since at least 1,000 homes were damaged by this phenomenon. Its usefulness. Beyond the photography of scars, science seeks to anticipate the disaster. Researchers at NASA Langley Research Center They are using these satellite images and data on cloud patterns to refine prediction models that allow the population to be warned with a little margin (but not much). The objective right now is to gain 10 minutes’ notice of tornado warnings so that the population can be protected. And it is no wonder, since a scenario where an EF4 can erase a neighborhood in seconds, having 600 extra seconds is the difference between life and death for those who find themselves in the path of this scar. Images | POT In Xataka | What is a tornado and how it forms: the perfect recipe for the most destructive phenomenon on the planet

The real reason why Musk, Bezos and Pichai want to build data centers in space: bypass regulation

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The construction of data centers is proliferating so much that although the largest in the world They are in Kolos (Norway), in The Cidatel (United States) and China, you can find them now even in Botorritain the province of Zaragoza. The limit is the sky. Or well, not even that: because Silicon Valley has been put between eyebrows set up data centers in space. And the main big tech companies are making moves to achieve this. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt bought rocket company Relativity Space with that objective. Nvidia has supported the startup Starcloud in its project to launch the first NVIDIA H100 GPU into space a few weeks ago and Elon Musk has even condensed how he would do it in a tweet: “It will be enough to scale the Starlink V3 satellites, which have high-speed laser links.” He when Jeff Bezos slipped it in a prediction at the Italian Tech Week: We will see “giant training clusters” of AI in orbit in the next 10 to 20 years. The moon is a gift from the universe The next question would be “why?”. The reality is that there is no shortage of reasons. AI is a real energy guzzler and as demand does not stop growingspace offers a couple of differential advantages over Earth: almost unlimited energy and free cooling. On the one hand, in space we have a sun-synchronous orbit where solar panels receive energy almost continuously. On the other hand, you can install a radiator so large that the space functions as a kind of ‘infinite heat sink at -270°C’. The enormous amounts of water essential for cooling on Earth would not be needed. Let’s face it, today there are no plans to have data centers in space. But not too far away: University of Central Florida research professor and former NASA member Phil Metzger esteem that perhaps within a decade it could be economically viable. But its viability is so clear that it considers that taking AI servers into space are “the first real business case that will give way to many more“in the face of a future human migration beyond Earth. So for now, they try it on Earth. Consequence: that Donald Trump declare an energy emergency due to the enormous electricity demand expected for the coming years. As the power grid catches up (or tries to), AI companies have decided to move from a passive to a proactive position: Meta is going to become an electricity marketer. xAI by Elon Musk is using gas turbines as energy sources temporary. OpenAI is pushing to the United States government to lend a hand to electricity companies to add 100 gigawatts per year. That figure doesn’t say much, but it is astronomical: what OpenAI is asking for is that The United States built almost an entire Spain (around 145 GWh considering the 129 GW consolidated at the end of 2024 plus the solar and wind deployment of 2025) every year and a half in terms of infrastructure. AI is growing faster than electrical bureaucracy is advancing How could the Trump Administration help? With the eternal bureaucracy. Because on Earth they face great technical challenges, but they also face a legislative wall. To have more energy, the simplest and most immediate step is to build new power plants, but that means successfully going through the tangle of procedures that slow down the process. There is only one small problem: that in the United States depending on technology, it can take five to ten years… if you’re lucky. Interconnection to the grid alone can take six years, successfully overcoming an interconnection queue with more than 2,000 GW in projects who are already in line. Then, up to four years of federal and environmental permits to end in another couple of years for state and local licenses that must come to fruition. ‘Permit Stack’ they call it. And the journey does not end here: they must also avoid andthe citizen movementNot in my backyard‘ (not in my backyard, kind of like “yes, but not in my house”), which has already backed down the Battle Born Solar Project (Nevada), which was going to be the largest solar plant in the United States, or Danskammer gas station (New York), among others. This can delay the operation even further as rights of way must be negotiated with individual owners who may refuse, going through the courts again. The never ending story. To avoid processes NIMBY that last fifteen years or more, companies like OpenAI or Microsoft are buying plants that already exist, such as Three Mile Island, which is going to reopen only for Microsoftinstead of trying to build new ones from scratch. Amazon has also signed infrastructure that is already on the network like the Talen Energy Campus and it has partnered with Dominion Energy and X-energy to develop mini reactors (SMR). SMRs are also Google’s solution, in this case thanks to an agreement with Kairos Power. Everything is to avoid that tangle of ‘Permit stack’ procedures that in practice and according to estimates, makes it is faster to opt for the space route to build a power plant on the old, familiar Earth. At the end of the day for AI companies “The moon is a gift from the universe”, as already Jeff Bezos glimpsed. In Xataka | Musk has created the perfect circle: Tesla’s megabatteries power the AI ​​that will define its next cars In Xataka | Researchers have dismantled the batteries of Tesla and BYD. You already know which one performs better and is much cheaper. Cover | İsmail Enes Ayhan and NASA

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