Good morning. It's Wednesday, March 25th, 2026. Here's what's happening in science, space, and technology.

**Rocket Lab launches Europe's first navigation constellation.** This morning, Rocket Lab's Electron rocket lifted off from New Zealand's Māhia Peninsula carrying the first two satellites for Europe's Celeste navigation system — a mission called "Daughter of the Stars." These are the initial pathfinders for what could eventually become a European alternative to GPS, and ESA was on a tight timeline: they had to get frequency allocations into operation at the ITU before a May 2026 deadline or lose them permanently. With European launchers fully booked, Rocket Lab got the call. The two satellites — one from GMV in Spain, one from Thales Alenia Space in France — arrived in New Zealand between February and early March for final testing. If you're keeping score at home, European space sovereignty just got a quiet but meaningful boost this morning.

**NASA unveils a nuclear-powered Mars spacecraft.** At an event called "Ignition" yesterday, NASA pulled back the curtain on some ambitious new plans. The headline: a robotic spacecraft called Space Reactor-1 Freedom, powered by nuclear fission, targeting Mars by 2028. The vehicle will demonstrate nuclear electric propulsion in deep space — a technology that could eventually unlock high-power missions to the outer solar system. NASA is repurposing hardware from the Gateway lunar station's power and propulsion element for this mission, which is a clever bit of program jigsaw-puzzling. Separately, the Ignition event confirmed the Artemis II human moon mission is still tracking a launch no earlier than April 1st — next Wednesday — with no technical issues outstanding. The SLS rocket and Orion capsule are on Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center. For the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972, humans may be heading to the vicinity of the moon within the week. The nuclear propulsion angle is the longer-range story though — fission-powered deep space travel has been a goal for decades, and this would be the first real hardware demonstration.

**Google bets on two quantum computing technologies at once.** Google Quantum AI announced yesterday it's expanding its research roadmap beyond superconducting qubits to add neutral atom quantum computing as a second modality. That's a significant strategic shift. Google has been the dominant force in superconducting qubits — they achieved quantum supremacy on that platform back in 2019, and their Willow chip made headlines. But neutral atoms have their own advantages: they can be more easily scaled into large arrays, and entanglement fidelity is improving rapidly. Rather than picking a winner, Google is now running a two-track program led by physicist Adam Kaufman, who they've tapped to set up a new neutral atom team in Boulder, Colorado. The move puts Google in direct competition with companies like QuEra and Atom Computing, which have been building the neutral atom ecosystem for years. The strategic read: Google thinks the path to commercially useful quantum computing may require both approaches, and they have the resources to pursue both simultaneously.

**Anthropic and the Pentagon wait for a judge's verdict.** Monday's courtroom showdown in San Francisco delivered some pointed commentary from the bench. Judge Rita Lin called the Pentagon's blacklisting of Anthropic an "attempt to cripple" the company, questioned whether the "supply chain risk" designation was really being used as punishment for refusing to drop safety guardrails, and told government lawyers the bar for that label seemed "pretty low." Her ruling on Anthropic's request for a preliminary injunction is expected within the next few days. If granted, it would temporarily lift the ban while the broader case proceeds. The implications extend well beyond Anthropic — this case is essentially asking whether the federal government can blacklist American AI companies for maintaining safety policies the administration disagrees with. OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft all filed in support of Anthropic. The decision could set a precedent for how AI companies navigate government contracts in an era of rapidly shifting policy.

That's your Wednesday morning briefing. We're one week from a potential moon mission and one court ruling away from a major AI policy inflection point. Stay tuned — it's shaping up to be an interesting week.