NASA announced last week it was cancelling VIPER, a robotic lunar rover mission, a move that took some by surprise given that the rover was virtually complete after spending nearly half a billion dollars. Jeff Foust reports on why NASA is walking away from the mission and its implications for commercial lunar landers.

There is growing concern about the effect of jamming of GPS signals on sectors like aviation. Lauren Miller describes how those concerns can be mitigated by the use of backup systems even as some countries consider doing away with terrestrial alternatives to satellite-based navigation.

Both China and Russia have invested in new signals intelligence, or SIGINT, satellites to eavesdrop on Western communications and specifically for naval reconnaissance. Matthew Mowthorpe examines what is known about those satellites.

The Challenger disaster is a familiar tale for those in the space community, a warning about both technology and institutions. Jeff Foust reviews a new book that is less about uncovering new details about the accident than about putting the failures that led to the tragedy in perspective.

After more than 300 consecutive successful launches, a Falcon 9 suffered an in-flight anomaly last week, dooming its payload of Starlink satellites. Jeff Foust reports on the failure and its implications for a space industry that had become increasingly reliant on that vehicle.

Starting in the 1960s, US spy satellites took images of American aircraft carriers as a test of its ability to track Soviet ships. Dwayne Day examines some of those images have have been released from government archives.