Space News for Saturday, February 28, 2026

In this episode, we aggregate and summarize today's top space news stories. Enjoy!(00:10) Podcast Introduction(00:23) NASA revises plans for future Artemis missions, cancels upgrades to SLS(00:48) Rocket Lab delays Neutron debut to late 2026(01:38) NASA announces major overhaul of Artemis moon program: “We’ve got to get back to basics”(02:03) NASA Overhauls Artemis Program: Scraps SLS Upgrades, Adds 2027 LEO Test Mission(02:21) U.S. Space Force Pivots to Hemispheric Security with SPACEFOR-NORTH Activation(03:10) Space Systems Command Awards $44.9M Systems Engineering Contract to LinQuest(03:30) Amazon Leo and Vanu Partner to Extend Mobile Broadband Across Rural Africa(04:27) Intuitive Machines Secures $175M Strategic Investment to Scale Space Infrastructure(05:27) Harnessing the Sun to Extract Oxygen on the Moon(06:10) NASA’s Home for Experimental Flight Advances Aeronautics Mission(06:28) NASA Adds Mission to Artemis Lunar Program, Updates Architecture(07:14) Flight 12: Ship 39 rolls out to Masseys to begin testing(08:04) NASA Pushes Crewed Moon Landing to Artemis IV(08:47) Neutron’s First Launch Slips to Q4(09:18) 'Pushing this competition': SpaceX's Starship might not fly on NASA's newly revamped Artemis 3 mission(09:32) February finale: SpaceX wraps up month with three Starlink launches this week(10:31) Apollo moon rocks may have finally solved an old lunar mystery(11:09) The US Air Force's latest X-plane looks like a missile  —  that shoots other missiles(11:35) NASA's Artemis 3 astronauts won't land on the moon after all. 'This is just not the right pathway forward.'(12:24) Photons that aren't actually there influence superconductivity