Space & Physics: The great Texas space shuttle heist

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October 16 —  This week, we've got hints of a hypervolcanic exomoon, NASA's necessity for any U.S. win in a new space race, the final, near-flawless test flight of SpaceX's Starship for 2025, and more. Enjoy! —Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Space and Physics

Top Stories

SpaceX's Starship Succeeds in Final Test Flight of 2025 With the successful 11th test flight of its Starship megarocket, SpaceX is on the cusp of a new era in spaceflight Lee Billings

The Strange Saga of the Great Texas Space Shuttle Heist Texas lawmakers want to move the Smithsonian's retired space shuttle to Houston. It's "a vanity project that is apt to destroy a near-priceless American treasure," one historian says Dan Vergano

Have Astronomers Finally Found an Exomoon? Data from the James Webb Space Telescope and other observatories suggests a supervolcanic exomoon may lurk around the giant exoplanet WASP-39b Nola Taylor Tillman

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The Sordid Mystery of a Somalian Meteorite Smuggled into China How a space rock vanished from Africa and showed up for sale across an ocean Dan Vergano

The U.S. Won't Win the New Space Race by Defunding NASA The U.S. wants to remain a superpower in space. It can't without supporting NASA The Editors

Government Shutdown Leaves Scientists in Limbo Hundreds of people at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have received layoff notices, and work at many federal laboratories has been suspended Jenna Ahart, Dan Garisto, Max Kozlov, Heidi Ledford, Jeff Tollefson, Traci Watson, Alexandra Witze, Nature magazine

Economics Nobel Honors Work Linking Scientific Research to Prosperity Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt share the Nobel economics prize for work that underlines the importance of investing in research and development Philip Ball, Nature magazine

How to See the Earth and Moon from Mars If you pick the right time, our home world and our moon could be easily visible from the Red Planet Phil Plait

Birds Went Silent during the Great North American Eclipse—Here's What Researchers Discovered The "Great North American Eclipse" of April 2024 was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study how birds and other wildlife respond to total solar eclipses Humberto Basilio

The Math That Predicted the New Pope A decades-old technique from network science saw something in the papal conclave that AI missed Jack Murtagh

A Mathematical Paradox Shows How Combining Losing Strategies Can Create a Win In certain circumstances, losses create a sure path to victory, an idea with implications for biology and cancer therapy Manon Bischoff

What We're Reading

One of SpaceX's earliest employees is going to space—via Blue Origin. | Ars Technica Physicists have been in a 30-year fight over how many numbers we need to describe reality. | New Scientist A C.I.A. cryptographic secret kept for 35 years is found in the Smithsonian's vault. | New York Times

From the Archive

Why Elon Musk's 'Fork in the Road' Is Really a Dead End Elon Musk's Fork in the Road isn't just a sculpture—it's a monument to the tech world's obsession with civilizational survival, which has its roots in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence Rebecca Charbonneau

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