NASA and SpaceX still appear to be pushing to meet the 2024 deadline to land astronauts back on the Moon first set by the Trump administration.
The big picture: In its first 100 days, the Biden administration undid many of the Trump administration's policies but President Biden has largely hewed closely to Trump-era space policies.
Astronomer Jill Tarter wants the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) to be taken seriously.
Why it matters: SETI as a scientific field has long played second fiddle to other, well-funded searches for direct and indirect signs of life — like NASA’s Mars program and the hunt for alien planets around distant stars.
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is challenging NASA's decision to award SpaceX the sole contract to build a human lander system for the space agency's return to the Moon.
Why it matters: These types of big government contracts are hugely important as a source of funding for Blue Origin and SpaceX.
U.S. Air Force researchers are partnering with a quantum computing company to use its machine learning algorithms, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: Quantum is the next generation of computing, and its growing adoption by the military shows the progress of the technology as it gradually moves out of the lab and into the real world.
Companies and governments around the world are racing to figure out how to clean up human-made junk that is cluttering space.
Why it matters: Trackers are seeing more and more close calls between satellites, as companies work to deploy constellations of hundreds to thousands of smallspacecraft, adding to fears that those small satellites could become junk themselves.
Marine scientists announced Monday they've uncovered at a former industrial waste site off the Southern California coast some 25,000 barrels that their research indicates contain the toxic chemical DDT.
Why it matters: Scientists had previously detected in the area near Santa Catalina Island "high levels of DDT in marine mammals including dolphins and sea lions," with exposure to DDT and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, per a statement from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday signaled its intention to rescind Trump-era policies blocking California from setting its own vehicle carbon emissions rules.
Why it matters: The move would restore California's ability to be an environmental regulator after former President Trump stripped the state of that right.
Sanofi announced Monday it will manufacture up to 200 million doses of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine at its site in Ridgefield, New Jersey, from September.
Why it matters: The agreement between Sanofi and Moderna should not only boost the U.S. coronavirus vaccine rollout, it should also help global efforts as the doses will likely be exported.
The Biden administration has pledged to send vital resources and supplies to India, as the country set a new global daily COVID-19 cases record for a fifth straight day Monday.
The big picture: As hospitals continued to be overwhelmed with coronavirus patients amid a widespread oxygen shortage, India's health ministry reported 352,991 more infections, taking the total past 17 million. A record 2,812 deaths were confirmed Monday, taking the total to 195,123 since the pandemic began.
