NASA's EVE exoplanet mission & NASA shifts space station strategy - Space News (Jun 11, 2026)

Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Lindy is your ultimate AI assistant that proactively manages your inbox - https://try.lindy.ai/tad - KrispCall: Agentic Cloud Telephony - https://try.krispcall.com/tad - Invest Like the Pros with StockMVP - https://www.stock-mvp.com/?via=ron Support The Automated Daily directly: Buy me a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/theautomateddaily Today's topics: NASA's EVE exoplanet mission - NASA is studying a proposed EVE mission to probe the mysterious exoplanet 'radius valley,' where planets between Earth and Neptune size are strangely rare, by tracking how stellar radiation strips planetary atmospheres. Keywords: NASA, EVE mission, exoplanets, radius valley, atmospheric escape.[6][14][26] NASA shifts space station strategy - A new analysis of NASA's Ignition strategy shows the agency pivoting to build its own core space station module and inviting companies to attach commercial segments, reshaping plans for life in low Earth orbit after the ISS retires. Keywords: NASA Ignition, commercial space stations, low Earth orbit, ISS transition, space policy.[44][33] MAVEN Mars orbiter declared lost - NASA has officially ended the MAVEN Mars mission after determining the aging orbiter is unrecoverable following a loss of contact, closing an 11-year campaign that transformed our understanding of how Mars lost much of its atmosphere. Keywords: MAVEN, Mars atmosphere, mission end, NASA, planetary climate.[31][31] ISS Crew-11 returns early - The four-person Crew-11 team has returned from the International Space Station about a month earlier than planned due to a medical concern with one astronaut, with officials stressing that everyone appears in good condition. Keywords: Crew-11, ISS, medical issue, early return, NASA.[13][13][16] Solar storm heading toward Earth - A new coronal mass ejection launched from the Sun on June 11 is expected to give Earth a glancing blow around June 14, potentially boosting auroral activity but unlikely to cause major disruptions. Keywords: solar flare, coronal mass ejection, space weather, aurora, geomagnetic storm.[37][47][48] Episode Transcript NASA's EVE exoplanet mission First up, that mystery about the missing planets. Astronomers have noticed for years that when you look at the thousands of planets we have discovered around other stars, there is a puzzling gap in sizes between about one and a half and two times the radius of Earth, a pattern known as the exoplanet “radius valley.”[6][14][26] We see plenty of rocky worlds a bit larger than Earth and many mini-Neptunes wrapped in thick gas, but far fewer in the middle than models originally predicted.[14][26] A new piece at Universe Today highlights NASA’s proposed Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer, or EVE, a mission concept designed to attack this problem head-on by watching how high-energy radiation from stars can strip away the atmospheres of close-orbiting planets over time.[6] The idea is that some planets may have started out as small Neptunes but had their gaseous envelopes blasted off by intense stellar ultraviolet light, leaving behind bare rocky cores that end up looking more like super-Earths.[6][14] By precisely measuring the extreme ultraviolet output of many stars, EVE would help scientists estimate how aggressively those stars erode planetary atmospheres, and therefore how planets migrate from one category into another over billions of years.[6][26] This matters because it ties directly into which planets might retain temperate, life-friendly atmospheres and which lose them, shaping our search for habitable worlds in a very practical way.[14] With more than six thousand confirmed exoplanets already cataloged, having a mission dedicated to the radiation environment that sculpts them could finally turn the “radius valley” from a mystery into a well-understood feature of planetary evolution.[14][26][6] NASA shifts space station strategy From exoplanets, we pivot to low Earth orbit and the future of space stations closer to home. A new analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies digs into NASA’s recently announced Ignition strategy, which lays out how the agency wants to maintain a long-term human presence in low Earth orbit once the International Space Station is retired around 2030.[44] For several years, NASA has encouraged companies to design fully independent commercial stations that would take over many of the ISS roles, from research and technology testing to hosting private astronauts.[44] The fresh twist described in this analysis is that NASA no longer plans to rely solely on stand-alone private stations, but instead wants to build its own government-owned core module, initially attached to the ISS, and then have commercial partners dock their modules to that core.[44] Under this updated vision, the NASA module would eventually detach from the ISS with the attached commercial segments to become a new, free-flying complex in its own right, blend