Space News for Tuesday, August 04, 2026

In this episode, we aggregate and summarize today's top space news stories. Enjoy!(00:10) Podcast Introduction(00:22) Rocketdyne reemerges as standalone space company(00:49) Kreios Space to fly VLEO demonstration in NanoAvionics bus(01:29) NASA, SpaceX studying how to prevent future upper stage lunar collisions(01:41) Hughes files for bankruptcy after GEO business loses ground to Starlink(02:29) Xona secures spectrum approval for satellite navigation network(03:20) Planet Labs Secures Seven-Figure Agricultural Data Contract with Scottish Government(03:46) FCC Authorizes Xona Space Systems for Full Commercial Pulsar LEO Constellation Deployment(04:10) Nilesat Secures Tier 4 WTA Certification for Cairo Teleport Infrastructure(04:46) KMM Precision Measuring Commercializes High-Precision Displacement Sensors for Extreme Aerospace Environments(05:22) Louisiana Students Loft Payloads from NASA Balloon Facility in Texas(06:08) Guinea-Bissau Tidal Waters(06:48) NASA Delivers Navigation System for Commercial Lunar Relay(07:26) Ike Theriot Helps Prepare Astronauts to Work on the Moon(08:10) Launch Preview: Starlink, AST SpaceMobile, and Chinese missions fill launch manifest(08:23) True Anomaly Chases an Evading Target(09:07) A SpaceX rocket will crash into the moon this week. Why is it on a collision course?(09:45) 3 moons of Neptune may be remnants of ice worlds shattered in a catastrophic crash(10:35) The 1st 'three-headed' asteroid | Space photo of the day for Aug. 3, 2026(11:15) On this day in space! Aug. 3, 2004: NASA launches MESSENGER spacecraft to orbit Mercury