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On May 26, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman stood at agency headquarters in Washington and gave the lunar program something it hasn’t had before: a name with “base” in it. The program is called Moon Base. Three uncrewed landers are targeting the lunar south pole before the end of 2026. Behind them, $440 million in contracts for two crewed rovers. Behind that, a phased timeline stretching into the 2030s for power grids, hopping drones, and eventually semi-permanent crew presence. ...

At 03:52 UTC this morning, a Vega-C rocket lifted off from Kourou carrying SMILE — the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer — into a 707 km circular parking orbit. ESA’s New Norcia ground station in Western Australia picked up the spacecraft’s first signal at 04:48 UTC. Solar panels deployed one minute later. The first mission designed to X-ray Earth’s entire magnetosphere in real time is alive and drawing power. I covered the science in detail two weeks ago, before the launch window opened. Now that the spacecraft is actually flying, here’s what happens between today and the first X-ray image of Earth’s magnetic shield — and when the data starts mattering for aurora forecasts. ...

In twelve days, a Vega-C rocket lifts off from Kourou carrying the first spacecraft designed to image Earth’s entire magnetosphere in soft X-rays while simultaneously filming the aurora in ultraviolet. ESA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ SMILE mission (Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) will watch, in real time, how Earth’s magnetic shield deforms under solar wind pressure and trace that energy all the way down to the auroral oval. ...