Space Current Affairs August 2026

European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot became the first French woman to perform a spacewalk on 18 August 2026, carrying out US Spacewalk 97 outside the International Space Station with NASA's Anil Menon over 6 hours and 23 minutes. The pair set out to replace a failed Space-to-Ground Antenna (SGANT) on the ISS Z1 truss, which carries high-speed data between the station and Mission Control in Houston. Stuck bolts and electrical cabling forced them to secure the failed unit with a tie-down instead. It was the 282nd spacewalk in ISS history; EVA-98 is scheduled for 25 August 2026 to finish the installation.

NASA has invited the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to join its Moon Base programme under the framework of the Artemis Accords. The discussions focus on lunar cooperation and open scientific data sharing, deepening India-US space collaboration. India signed the Artemis Accords in 2023, and ISRO-NASA ties have grown through joint projects such as the NISAR Earth-observation satellite. India's roadmap includes the Gaganyaan human spaceflight programme and a planned space station.

ISRO completed three major qualification tests for the Gaganyaan crew module, advancing key human-rating milestones. The tests qualified the flotation (up-righting) system that turns the capsule upright after a sea landing, the clean separation of the crew and service modules, and the structure''s load-bearing capacity when the parachute cover is jettisoned. Development of all propulsion stages of the Human-Rated LVM3 (HLVM3), the ECLSS engineering model, deceleration system, Thermal Protection System and end-to-end avionics is complete. The first uncrewed test flight carrying the half-humanoid robot ''Vyommitra'' is targeted for Q4 2026, ahead of India''s first crewed spaceflight.

India''s first human spaceflight mission, Gaganyaan, completed major development and validation milestones for its human-rating systems, announced by the Union Minister of State for Science & Technology on 6 August 2026. Human-rating certifies launch vehicles and spacecraft as safe to carry humans; the programme has included uncrewed test flights and Crew Escape System trials, aiming to send Indian gaganyatris to low-Earth orbit aboard the human-rated LVM3 (HLVM3).

Astrobase Space Technologies Pvt Ltd unveiled 'EVEREST', India's first privately developed 800 kilonewton (kN) Full-Flow Staged Combustion (FFSC) rocket engine, in Bengaluru, Karnataka. It is designed for reusable medium-lift launch vehicles and advanced orbital missions. EVEREST is a Liquid Oxygen (LOX)-Methane engine delivering 800 kN thrust, 50%-110% throttle, roughly 340 seconds specific impulse, and supports multiple restarts. Astrobase completed sub-scale and turbopump tests in 2025-26, plans around 20 engines, and targets full-scale hot-fire testing in 2026, with its first launch targeted for December 2028. Founded in 2024 and led by CEO Neeraj Khandelwal, the startup was selected under the Technology Adoption Fund (TAF) in June 2026.

Astronomers confirmed GJ 523b, a roughly 170-million-year-old exoplanet so dense it has been classed as a new planetary type — a 'mega-Earth'. Weighing about 23 times Earth's mass yet only 2.55 times its radius, it has a bulk density near 7.8 g/cm³, implying an almost entirely rocky body with a surprisingly thin atmosphere that standard planet-formation models struggle to explain. First flagged by NASA's TESS, it was confirmed using the WIYN 3.5-metre Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, Arizona. It circles an orange K-dwarf star about 87 light years away every 17.75 days on a steeply tilted, likely polar orbit.

China scheduled its Chang'e-7 lunar mission for launch on 24 August 2026 from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Hainan aboard a Long March 5 Y14 rocket. The China National Space Administration describes the spacecraft as a "four-in-one" system combining an orbiter, lander, rover and a hopping probe, all aimed at the lunar south pole. The lander will attempt a touchdown near the edge of Shackleton Crater to hunt for water ice, while the hopping probe uses active shock-absorption to leap into permanently shadowed craters and analyse water molecules. Six payloads from six countries ride along, relayed by the Queqiao-2 satellite launched in March 2024.

Beijing-based private space startup LandSpace launched its 66-metre Zhuque-3 Y2 rocket on 19 August 2026 and successfully landed its first-stage booster vertically — China's first land recovery of an orbital-class rocket booster. The mission also placed the Honghu-3 commercial internet satellite into its designated orbit. Zhuque-3 is a stainless-steel, liquid-oxygen-and-methane launch vehicle designed to carry up to 14.2 tonnes to low Earth orbit and to be reused up to 20 times. It lifted off at 7:35 a.m. Beijing time from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone in northwest China, with the booster landing about 390 km away in Minqin County, Gansu province, using landing legs. This was China's second orbital booster recovery overall — the first, by state-owned CASC on 10 July 2026, used a sea-based net-capture system for a Long March 10B booster. LandSpace becomes the fourth entity globally to recover an orbital-class booster, after SpaceX and Blue Origin (private) and now CASC (state-owned) domestically. The company is separately seeking to raise 7.5 billion yuan via an IPO on Shanghai's STAR Market.