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: A parking lot stood in for the moon on Thursday (Nov. 7), as a lunar rover took its first public drive. Intuitive Machines revealed its lunar terrain vehicle for NASA's Artemis program at Space Center Houston. Moon RACER (Reusable Autonomous Crewed Exploration Rover) features a Roush chassis, satellite relay and direct communications, Michelin tires and the sign off (literally) by two of the six Apollo astronauts to drive a car on the moon.
: A large, spinning NASA logo outside of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex inspired the cake for this year's "Taste of Space" culinary evening on Saturday (Nov. 2). Duff Goldman and his team at Charm City Cakes made the half-NASA "cake-ball" so the opposite side of the sphere resembled the moon for the 55th anniversary of the lunar landing. The rotating cake also had a chocolate astronaut and pulled-sugar nebulae.
: Taikonauts Cai Xuzhe, Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze are on their way to spending six months on the Tiangong space station after launching on board China's Shenzhou-19 spacecraft on Tuesday (Oct. 29). Cai previously flew on Shenzhou-14 in 2022; his two crewmates are first-time fliers. Wang is the only female flight engineer currently in the taikonaut corps and she is the third Chinese woman to launch into space.
: When Edgar Mitchell lifted off for the moon on Apollo 14 in 1971, he wore his NASA-issued Omega Speedmaster atop his spacesuit and below it, a personal Rolex GMT-Master chronometer. The latter sold for a record $2.2 million at RR Auction on Thursday (Oct. 24). The watch, which can be seen in imagery from the mission, is one of only two moon-flown Rolexes to have been sold and commanded the most paid for an astronaut timepiece.
: NASA's first dexterous humanoid robot to fly into space is now on public display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia. Robonaut 2 (R2) demonstrated its ability to assist and take over tasks from astronauts before short circuiting and being returned to Earth for repairs. R2 is exhibited opposite its 2011 ride to orbit, space shuttle Discovery, as a static but intact robot.
: The public can now see the moment when spaceflight and snack history was made: the first crunch of a Doritos chip in space. The new imagery from the Polaris Dawn mission and an interview with mission specialist and medical officer Anna Menon reveal how the chips performed ("It was awesome!" says Menon). Doritos also arranged for a collectSPACE taste test of the "Zero-G Cool Ranch" chips as compared to their Earth equivalents.
On Monday (Nov. 4), the U.S. Space Force released the details of its new exhibit of a Centaur III propellant tank and RL-10 engine outside of the headquarters of Space Systems Command at Los Angeles Air Force Base in California. The upper stage components were dedicated at an Oct. 18 ceremony, which hailed the donation by United Launch Alliance and the Centaur's role in launching both U.S. military and civilian space missions.
: Swatch found the inspiration for its latest addition to its Omega collaboration in the photographs taken by the Apollo astronauts. The new MoonSwatch "Mission to Earthphase" features both moon and Earth phase indicators, a first in watchmaking history. The open-edition $325 Bioceramic watch displays both the phase of the moon as it appears from Earth and Earth as it appears if viewed from the lunar surface at the same time.
How good are you at recognizing astronauts? Would you be able to tell a real space traveler from an actor if the person in question was wearing a costume spacesuit? What if they were in a TV commercial, but never named? Have you seen Capital One's ad about a school's Career Day? Did you see former shuttle and space station astronaut Karen Nyberg standing next to baseball star Derek Jeter? "What's in your wallet?"
: After almost three weeks of weather waive offs atop an already extended mission, Crew-8 is back on Earth after 235 days in space. Matthew Dominick, Michael Barrett and Jeanette Epps of NASA and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Pensacola, on Friday (Oct. 25). The mission was almost a month longer than the longest time a SpaceX Dragon has been in space.
: Blue Origin's 27th New Shepard mission to cross the boundary between Earth and space was the first flight of the RSS Kármán Line, the company's 2nd human-rated capsule. The suborbital launch Wednesday (Oct. 23) lofted 12 payloads, including a small stack of miniature monoliths modeled after the monuments in "2001: A Space Odyssey." The flown black slabs will be mounted on the covers of a new deluxe edition of the book.
: A large, early piece of space shuttle history embarked on a short road trip in California on Thursday (Oct. 17). The mock orbiter "Inspiration" was delivered to a facility for its restoration. The model was built in 1972 to sell NASA on Rockwell's design concept for the spacecraft and then used to fit check payloads flying on the shuttle into space. When ready for display, "Inspiration" will go to the Columbia Memorial Space Center in Downey.
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