Elon Musk Is Out to Rule Space. With SpaceX and Starlink, Elon Musk controls more than half the world's rocket launches and thousands of internet satellites. Just off the Jimmy Buffett Memorial Highway, the hotel's rooftop bar is open late. The bartender passes out shots and turns Ozzy up. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket takes off, its orange plume glowing bright, about 12 miles due north up the Banana River. The "Iron Man" riff starts to blast. When we hear the thud of the sonic boom, most everyone lets out some kind of hoot. This is SpaceX's 95th launch of the year, one nearly every other day. That's more liftoffs than the rest of the world gets into space, combined. For our politics issue, WIRED examines the state of tech's influence on governmental power--and the people who will change everything in the future. On this particular night, this Falcon 9 took 28 Starlink internet satellites to orbit. Starlink, of course, is another Musk space venture that dominates its competitors.

Earth's orbit is getting crowded. Last year, a record 2,409 objects were sent to orbit, the bulk of which were satellites settling into the increasingly cluttered region 1,200 miles above our planet's surface known as low Earth orbit. Another 2,000-plus satellites have joined them so far this year, according to the UN's Online Index of Objects Launched into Outer Space. As the presence of artificial objects in orbit grows, so too does the accumulation of debris, or space junk -- and the risk of collisions. Dealing with existing waste and preventing its unchecked growth has become imperative, but it's a problem that doesn't have one simple solution. Currently, the US Department of Defense's Space Surveillance Network tracks more than 25,000 objects larger than 4 inches wide, most of which are concentrated in low Earth orbit, and there are an estimated millions of smaller objects still that are trickier to pinpoint.

The world is in a climate crisis. With average global temperatures increasing every year, the threat of seasonal forest fires is becoming increasingly worse. In places like the Pacific Northwest, wildfire season causes extensive damage to woodlands, rural communities, and townships, destroying farmlands and infrastructure and forcing hundreds of thousands of residents to flee their homes. These fires also lead to terrible air quality in cities located hundreds (or even thousands) of miles away. For instance, in September of 2022, the city of Vancouver (British Columbia) was ranked as having the worst air quality in the world - per the Air Quality Index (AQI).

China plans to open its new space station up to'tourism' within the next decade - sparking what the country hopes is a race to compete with the likes of private American space tourists such as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson. China launched its Tiangong space station in 2021 - its first long-term space station project - with the final modules set to launch later this year. The country's announcement also comes as China continues to produce new billionaires at a blistering pace - much faster than any other nation on Earth. While there were no specific details included to determine what the future of space tourism in China will look like, officials have said it is likely that people without formal astronaut training could be launched into orbit'relatively soon.' Yang Liwei, who became the first Chinese astronaut back in 2003, said tourists visiting Tiangong'is not a matter of technology but of demand.' China is also thought to be working on a more tourist-friendly reusable spacecraft that could take up to seven astronauts at a time into space.

Space biology research aims to understand fundamental effects of spaceflight on organisms, develop foundational knowledge to support deep space exploration, and ultimately bioengineer spacecraft and habitats to stabilize the ecosystem of plants, crops, microbes, animals, and humans for sustained multi-planetary life. To advance these aims, the field leverages experiments, platforms, data, and model organisms from both spaceborne and ground-analog studies. As research is extended beyond low Earth orbit, experiments and platforms must be maximally autonomous, light, agile, and intelligent to expedite knowledge discovery. Here we present a summary of recommendations from a workshop organized by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and modeling applications which offer key solutions toward these space biology challenges. In the next decade, the synthesis of artificial intelligence into the field of space biology will deepen the biological understanding of spaceflight effects, facilitate predictive modeling and analytics, support maximally autonomous and reproducible experiments, and efficiently manage spaceborne data and metadata, all with the goal to enable life to thrive in deep space.

Of the hundreds of millions of pieces of debris floating in space, a significant portion could wind up forming a'ring' around the Earth, similar to the solar system's gas giants, a University of Utah professor has warned. The debris is likely to give Earth'its own rings' made of'space junk,' University of Utah researcher Jake Abbott said in a recent interview with the Salt Lake Tribune. However, Abbott and his team are working on a way to clean up the debris, putting a magnet posted at the end of a robotic arm and using the magnet's eddy currents to collect the space trash. NASA estimates there are at least 23,000 pieces of debris that enter low-Earth orbit (LEO) larger than a softball in orbit, but there are probably 500,000 pieces between 0.4 inches and four inches. It's possible there are 170 million pieces of space debris that are smaller than 0.4 inches, the European Space Agency added.

A robotic arm attached to the outside of the International Space Station has been hit with space junk and visibly damaged, according to the Canadian Space Agency. In a blog post, the CSA notes that'a small section of the arm boom and thermal blanket' of Canadarm2 was hit. The space agency first noticed the incident'during a routine inspection' on May 12. 'Despite the impact, results of the ongoing analysis indicate that the arm's performance remains unaffected,' CSA wrote in the post, adding that the robotic arm is'continuing to conduct its planned operations.' A robotic arm attached to the outside of the International Space Station has been hit with space junk and visibly damaged, according to the Canadian Space Agency. According to the US space agency, more than 27,000 pieces of space junk are tracked.

On Earth, avoiding collisions is a key priority for traffic cops, air traffic controllers, and the parents of toddlers. It is no different in space--and perhaps even more critical--given that objects orbiting the Earth are moving at more than 17,000 m.p.h., which means that even very small objects less than a centimeter in diameter have caused damage to the International Space Station, the Space Shuttle, and satellites. In fact, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) estimates there are more than 500,000 such objects orbiting the Earth that are larger than a marble, and at least a million smaller pieces of debris that cannot be tracked. Based on the growing number of commercial and government launches of spacecraft, satellites, and even space stations, the number of objects that will need to be catalogued, tracked, and managed is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. And the solutions to this issue are fraught with both technical and political challenges.

The world is heading for a'wild west' free for all in space that could lead to disaster as firms fight for every scrap of resource in low Earth orbit, an expert has warned. Paul Kostek, a space policy specialist from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), says global agreement is'highly unlikely' anytime soon. As the commercial space sector continues to grow at a rapid rate, firms are vying to launch constellations of satellites and new experimental craft into low Earth orbit. This has left astronomers frustrated and struggling due to'blots in the sky' that make observations harder and less accurate, as well as concerns over space junk. The need for regulation has become more pressing after satellites from OneWeb and SpaceX Starlink came close to hitting each other last week.

Work is due to start on the world's first'space hotel' in low Earth orbit in 2025 - and it will come equipped with restaurants, a cinema, spa and rooms for 400 people. Developed by the Orbital Assembly Corporation (OAC), the Voyager Station could be operational as early as 2027, with the infrastructure built in orbit around the Earth. The space station will be a large circle and rotate to generate artificial gravity that will be set at a similar level to the gravity found on the surface of the Moon. Voyager Station's hotel will include many of the features you might expect from a cruise ship, including themed restaurants, a health spa and a cinema. It will feature a series of pods attached to the outside of the rotating ring and some of these pods could be sold to the likes of NASA and ESA for space research.