Astronomers imaged a weird circle in space in high-definition for the first time as they try to figure out how these mysterious structures form. 

Known as “odd radio circles” (ORCs), the enigmatic shapes were first spotted in 2019 in images from the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope. Consisting of 36 colossal dishes located in Western Australia, ASKAP images the entire night sky in radio waves, began seeing circles in various spots.

The industry has ambitions goals that it can accomplish, “but getting the manpower and getting people with the right niche talents into our companies to execute on these ideas is a huge challenge right now,” Cara Sindir, Airbus U.S. Space and Defense chief operations officer, said at the Satellite 2022 conference. “The other part of that challenge is obviously the inflation of salaries. How can we all afford all of these people and how does that play into our business cases?”

WASHINGTON — SpaceX has raised prices for both its Starlink broadband service and for dedicated and rideshare launches, in some cases by up to 20%, citing inflation.

The US omnibus spending bill for fiscal year 2022, passed by the House late March 9 and scheduled to be taken up by the Senate in the next few days, trimmed spending for development of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather satellites, from the requested level of $1.68 billion to $1.29 billion.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission launched in November and will arrive at its destination in late September. If all goes well, the impact will change the orbit of a small asteroid, Dimorphos, around a larger asteroid called Didymos. But just how much the orbit will change is difficult to predict. Leading up to the mission, scientists used samples collected from two different space rocks to test in an attempt to understand the future impact.

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea, at least for now, is pushing forward with its planned launch of two satellites on Russian rockets this year. Still, it doesn’t rule out the possibility that the missions could be delayed due to sanctions imposed on Russia for invading Ukraine.

WASHINGTON — Bahrain became the latest country to join the Artemis Accords as the agreement regarding principles for cooperation in space exploration continues to expand beyond traditional spacefaring nations.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced March 11 that Ingenuity completed its 21st flight on the planet, traveling 370 meters during the 129-second flight. The helicopter has now traveled more than 4.6 kilometers since its first flight in April 2021.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Missile Defense Agency decommissioned two missile-tracking satellites that have operated in low Earth orbit for more than 12 years, MDA said March 14.

“When our space station is completed and running, we will actively encourage the private sector to engage in space through various ways,” Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China’s human spaceflight program, told China Central Television March 9.

More than a dozen former Soyuz satellite missions need new rides after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, raising questions over how fast the launch market can absorb the loss of the workhorse rocket.

NASA’s Mark Vande Hei and cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov have long been scheduled to come home from the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on March 30. And that remains the plan, despite the strain that Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has placed on Russia’s many space partnerships.

In just a few days, NASA’s immense Crawler-Transporter 2 vehicle will carry the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket and Orion spacecraft on a 4-mile (6.4 kilometers) journey to Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This rollout will deliver the rocket and Orion to the pad where they will prepare to launch on a moonbound mission, currently set for no earlier than May of this year.

Close-up pictures from NASA’s Dawn mission that orbited Ceres between 2015 and 2018 revealed salt deposits in a crater known as Urvara, spotted for the first time in a new study. The salt deposits may be associated with icy volcanoes, the research team says, whose brine rose to the surface over time.

Ghost-like particles called neutrinos hardly ever interact with normal matter, giving the teensy apparitions supreme hiding powers. They are so elusive that, in the decades since their initial discovery, physicists still haven’t pinned down their mass. But recently, by plopping them onto a 200-ton “neutrino scale,” scientists have put a new limit on the neutrino’s mass.

WASHINGTON — The Russian rocket engines that United Launch Alliance needs to complete the remaining launches of the Atlas 5 are stored in the United States. The company said the operation of the vehicle will not be affected by the economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the Biden administration in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.