Space Atlas

The story, in seven chapters

33 stories, in an order that builds: how the program began, how anything gets to orbit, life in orbit, the satellites that serve Earth, the return to the Moon, the science, and who builds and pays for it. Read straight through, or open the chapter you care about — each stands on its own.

  1. 1How it began4 stories
  2. 2Getting to orbit6 stories
  3. 3Living in orbit4 stories
  4. 4Serving Earth4 stories
  5. 5Return to the Moon8 stories
  6. 6Reading the universe4 stories
  7. 7Who builds it, who pays3 stories

Chapter 1

How it began

How did the United States learn to fly in space?

Everything the United States flies today rests on decisions made since 1958: a civilian agency assembled in a hurry from laboratories that already existed, a lunar program that at its peak took more than four cents of every federal dollar, a reusable spaceplane that flew for thirty years, and a station that has been occupied without a break since November 2000.

  1. 1How Sputnik turned an aeronautics committee into NASAIn the year after Sputnik, Congress and President Eisenhower built a civilian space agency on the NACA’s laboratories, then gave it a Navy satellite, an Army rocket team and, by 1961, the Moon.History, about 12 minutes
  2. 2Sixteen crewed flights that taught NASA how to work in orbitMercury’s six flights showed a person could ride to orbit and come home. Gemini’s ten taught maneuvering, rendezvous, docking, spacewalks and two-week flights—at about double the first estimate.History, about 9 minutes
  3. 3Apollo spent $25.4 billion to put twelve people on the MoonKennedy’s 1961 goal became a program of 400,000 people and more than 500 contractors. It chose a risky route to the Moon, survived a fire on the pad, and landed six crews before Congress ended it.History, about 11 minutes
  4. 4Promised as routine transport, the Shuttle flew 135 times in 30 yearsNixon approved a $5.5 billion reusable spaceplane in 1972 to make spaceflight routine and cheap. It repaired Hubble and built a space station, lost two crews, and never flew more than nine times in a year.Story and 3D model, about 9 minutes

Chapter 2

Getting to orbit

How does anything get to space, and who builds the rockets?

Nothing else in this atlas happens without a launch. Reaching low Earth orbit means accelerating to about 17,500 miles per hour, and the machines that do it are mostly propellant tanks with engines at the bottom.

  1. 1Why reaching orbit is a problem of speed, and rockets are mostly propellantOrbit means moving sideways at about 17,500 mph. The rocket equation explains why that speed costs so much propellant, why rockets drop stages, and why a Moon lander must be refilled in orbit.Explainer, about 7 minutes
  2. 2From a $278 million NASA cargo agreement to America’s workhorse rocketNASA paid for milestones, not a rocket of its own design. The result now flies half the world’s launches and every American crew to orbit.Story and 3D model, about 11 minutes
  3. 3Starship reached orbit on its 14th flight; refilling in orbit comes nextSpaceX built the largest rocket ever flown by launching prototypes and fixing what broke. NASA’s Moon landings depend on the step it has not yet taken: moving propellant between ships.Story and 3D model, about 7 minutes
  4. 4The Moon rocket Congress ordered from Shuttle parts in 2010Congress wrote SLS into law in 2010, with Shuttle engines and boosters and a 2016 goal. It first flew in 2022, at an estimated $4.1 billion a launch with Orion, and in 2026 NASA stopped upgrading it.Story and 3D model, about 8 minutes
  5. 5Two new heavy rockets share one engine, and both were grounded in 2026Blue Origin’s BE-4 powers its own New Glenn and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan. Both entered service in 2024–2025; by mid-2026 neither could fly, for different reasons.Story, about 6 minutes
  6. 6How America’s launch sites work, from the Cape to StarbaseFor decades most American rockets have left from one stretch of Florida coast, chosen in the late 1940s. The assembly building, crawlers and pads NASA built there for Apollo still set the pattern for how the biggest rockets fly.Explainer, about 7 minutes

Chapter 3

Living in orbit

What do people do in orbit, and what happens after the Space Station?

Since November 2000 there have always been people in orbit aboard the International Space Station, about 250 miles up and circling Earth every 90 minutes. Getting them there, supplying them and bringing them home is now bought from companies rather than done with NASA’s own vehicles.

  1. 1Built in orbit over thirteen years, occupied without a break since 2000How five space agencies assembled the largest structure ever flown, what it has cost the United States, why its oldest Russian tunnel leaks, and how NASA plans to bring it down after 2030.Story and 3D model, about 10 minutes
  2. 2How seven people sleep, eat, exercise and work aboard the space stationTwenty-five years of continuous occupation have given the station a daily routine: private sleep stations, a pantry without a refrigerator, two and a half hours of exercise, recycled water, spacewalks and experiments on the crew.Story, about 10 minutes
  3. 3Commercial crew: $9.8 billion, one certified spacecraft, one still in testingHow NASA stopped owning its crew vehicles and started buying rides, why SpaceX’s Dragon has flown every rotation since 2020, and what still stands between Boeing’s Starliner and its first crew.Story, about 8 minutes
  4. 4After the ISS: NASA’s plan to rent space on commercial stationsSince 2020 NASA has paid companies to design stations it could rent after 2030. In 2025 and 2026 the plan changed three times, the money stayed short, and GAO warned of a gap in U.S. crew presence.Story, about 12 minutes

Chapter 4

Serving Earth

What do satellites do for people on the ground?

Most of the space program that touches daily life never leaves Earth orbit. GPS timing signals tell phones where they are; weather satellites feed every forecast; Landsat has photographed every place on the planet, again and again, since 1972.

  1. 1Why the station, Landsat, GPS, GOES and Webb fly where they doHeight sets a satellite’s speed; tilt and shape set what it sees. Five neighborhoods, from the station about 400 km up to Webb 1.5 million km away, and the work each one makes possible.Story, about 11 minutes
  2. 2How GPS turns atomic time into position, and who keeps it runningA receiver finds itself by timing signals from four satellites. The Space Force runs the system, finished GPS III in April 2026, and canceled the ground system that was meant to replace the old one.Story, about 12 minutes
  3. 3NOAA’s weather satellites: how they watch storms, and what replaces themTwo GOES satellites stare at the Americas from 22,236 miles up while polar orbiters circle the globe. NASA builds them, NOAA flies them, and Congress is deciding how much of the next generation to pay for.Story, about 12 minutes
  4. 4Landsat: 54 years of watching the land, and what comes after Landsat 9Since 1972 Landsat satellites have recorded Earth’s land, and since 2008 anyone can download the record free. NASA builds them and the USGS runs them; the next one has been redesigned, and its budget is in dispute.Story, about 10 minutes

Chapter 5

Return to the Moon

How is NASA going back to the Moon, and who is building the pieces?

Artemis is not one spacecraft but a chain of them. A NASA rocket launches a NASA capsule; commercial landers built by SpaceX and Blue Origin carry the crew to the surface; and each lander has to be refilled with propellant in orbit before it can make the trip.

  1. 1Artemis: how NASA’s plan to land on the Moon was built and rebuiltA rocket, a capsule, two commercial landers, new suits and propellant refilled in orbit: who builds each piece, what it costs, and how a 2024 landing became Artemis IV in 2028.Story, about 11 minutes
  2. 2Artemis II: the first crewed flight around the Moon since 1972From April 1 to 10, 2026, four astronauts flew Orion around the far side of the Moon and farther from Earth than anyone before them. What the flight tested, day by day, and what NASA found afterward.Story, about 8 minutes
  3. 3Orion: the capsule built to bring a crew home from the MoonLockheed Martin builds the capsule, Europe builds the module that keeps it alive, and its heat shield must survive a return at nearly 25,000 mph. How Orion was developed, how it works, and what its first crewed flight showed.Story and 3D model, about 9 minutes
  4. 4How SpaceX won NASA’s first Moon lander, and what it must still proveIn 2021 NASA chose a version of Starship, refueled in Earth orbit by a fleet of tankers, to land its astronauts. The contract is now worth about $4.5 billion; the refueling has not yet flown.Story and 3D model, about 11 minutes
  5. 5Blue Moon: NASA’s second crew lander and the cargo lander that goes firstIn May 2023 NASA awarded Blue Origin a $3.4 billion contract for a second way to land astronauts. The smaller robotic Blue Moon, Mark 1, is built and tested, and is waiting for New Glenn to fly again.Story and 3D model, about 8 minutes
  6. 6Refilling in orbit, the untested step both Moon landers depend onBoth of NASA’s crew landers reach the Moon only after tankers refill them in Earth orbit. Why that is, how the transfer is meant to work, why super-cold propellant fights back, and where the first test stands.Explainer, about 6 minutes
  7. 7Gateway: a station for lunar orbit, paused while its first modules were being builtA small international station that was to circle the Moon once a week. Its power module was nearly built when NASA paused it in March 2026; the hardware is being turned to a nuclear Mars spacecraft and Moon Base tests.Story, about 8 minutes
  8. 8NASA’s robotic Moon deliveries: four attempts, one lander uprightSince 2018 NASA has bought rides to the Moon for its instruments instead of building landers. Of four attempts so far, one landed upright. A $6 billion second round is meant to supply a Moon Base.Story, about 6 minutes

Chapter 6

Reading the universe

What are the observatories and probes for, and what have they found?

A large share of NASA’s budget pays for instruments that people will never visit: telescopes at a gravitational balance point a million miles away, rovers on Mars, probes past Pluto and through the outer atmosphere of the Sun.

  1. 1Hubble, Webb and Roman: three telescopes, and why none replaces anotherA 1990 telescope that astronauts rebuilt five times, a $9.7 billion infrared observatory a million miles out, and a survey telescope launched in August 2026: what each one sees, what each cost, and why NASA flies them together.Story, about 12 minutes
  2. 2Mars: two rovers, a helicopter and samples with no ride homeCuriosity has climbed a kilometer up Mount Sharp; Perseverance has used 33 of its 43 sample tubes, one holding a potential biosignature. The $8–11 billion mission to bring them home was shut down in January 2026.Story, about 7 minutes
  3. 3Voyager to Dragonfly: fifty years of flying to the outer solar systemTwo 1977 probes beyond the Sun’s bubble, New Horizons past Pluto, Juno at Jupiter, Europa Clipper en route and a rotorcraft being built for Titan: what each found or seeks, what each cost, where each stands in October 2026.Story, about 9 minutes
  4. 4Parker Solar Probe and the Sun’s weather: flying through a star’s atmosphereA probe conceived in 1958 now passes 3.8 million miles from the Sun every three months: what it is learning about the solar wind, how solar storms reach power grids and satellites, and what a proposed 52 percent cut would mean.Story, about 7 minutes

Chapter 7

Who builds it, who pays

Where does the money come from, and which companies do the work?

NASA spends about $25 billion a year, and most of it leaves the agency as contracts. Some companies build hardware that NASA owns; others sell NASA a service, such as a seat to orbit or a delivery to the Moon, and keep the vehicle.

  1. 1Who builds NASA’s spacecraft, and how the contracts pay themNASA has always spent most of its money outside its own walls. From Apollo’s 500 contractors to SpaceX and Blue Origin, the question that shapes every program is who carries the risk when costs grow.Story, about 7 minutes
  2. 2NASA’s budget: from 4.4 percent of federal spending to 0.35 percentIn 1966 NASA spent 4.4 cents of every federal dollar; today about a third of a cent. Where its roughly $25 billion a year goes, how it is decided, and why Congress keeps rejecting an $18.8 billion request.Explainer, about 5 minutes
  3. 3Control rooms and antennas: how NASA keeps in touch with its spacecraftEvery NASA mission depends on a control room and a chain of antennas. Built for Mercury in 1961, the networks now serve more than 100 missions, and the deep-space antennas are booked beyond their capacity.Explainer, about 7 minutes