Space News for Thursday, August 20, 2026

In this episode, we aggregate and summarize today's top space news stories. Enjoy!(00:10) Podcast Introduction(00:23) Hypersonic missile startup Castelion raises $1 billion(01:02) Eartheye Space forges strategic partnership with IN2(01:24) Katalyst Space and NASA abandon plans for Swift reboost(02:03) LandSpace becomes first commercial Chinese company to land an orbital-class booster(02:47) Elve Achieves TRL-8 Space Qualification for 100 W mmWave Space TWTA Platform(03:27) Silicon Valley Space Week Speaker Focus: Phil Carrai, Kratos(03:41) Moog Expands METEORITE Satellite Bus Capacity with High Delta-V Configuration for Agile Orbital Missions(04:18) NASA TechLeap Prize: Orbital Clarity Challenge(04:46) NASA Updates Next Steps for Commercial Swift Boost Mission(05:12) Ancient Milky Way Merger(05:44) Stoke Space conducts second stage fit checks, completes first stage engines ahead of Nova debut(06:39) White House Publishes S&T Strategy for National Security(07:08) Zeno Power Books its First Nuclear Mission to the Moon(07:35) Watch Rocket Lab launch a private Japanese Earth-observing satellite to orbit today(07:52) Scientists just found the fastest known star in the Milky Way. It zooms around our black hole at 15,500 miles per second(08:35) Private mission to save NASA's Swift space telescope fails(09:19) Scientists create 'laundry gun' for astronauts to clean their clothes by shooting out plasma(09:39) Dark matter could magnify the jets of a ravenously feeding supermassive black hole(10:13) Scientists find closest star to the Milky Way's central black hole