Space News for Saturday, April 04, 2026

In this episode, we aggregate and summarize today's top space news stories. Enjoy!(00:10) Podcast Introduction(00:23) Artemis 2 in good shape cruising towards the moon(00:50) Italy’s Argotec plans to scale Florida satellite facility to meet rising US demand(01:27) SpaceX and Amazon spar over satellite deployments(02:22) Europe’s strategic autonomy in space will define its role in the ‘second space age’(03:00) ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket launches its heaviest payload ever with fifth Amazon Leo mission(03:29) The Downlink Deficit: The Pentagon’s Optical Mesh Network and the Terrestrial Bottleneck(04:07) NASA Sets Coverage for Northrop Grumman’s CRS-24 Resupply Launch(04:40) Meet NASA’s New Artemis II Science Officers(05:21) Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom(05:38) Hello, World(06:05) White House Requests $18.8B FY27 Budget for NASA(06:16) Insurance is Commercial Space Nuclear’s Biggest Headache(06:56) Charts Defining the Space Industry in Q1 2026(07:25) Artemis 2 astronauts are now headed to the moon. Why has it taken humanity so long to go back?(08:15) It's official: NASA's Artemis 2 moon mission will break humanity's all-time distance record(09:02) Astronauts on the ISS watched NASA's historic Artemis 2 launch from space(09:52) 1st results from Blue Ghost lunar lander reveal how much we still don't know about the moon(10:40) Trump proposes steep cut to NASA budget as astronauts head for the Moon