My telescope, set up for astrophotography in my light-polluted San Diego backyard, was pointed at a galaxy unfathomably far from Earth. My wife, Cristina, walked up just as the first space photo streamed to my tablet. It sparkled on the screen in front of us.

“That’s the Pinwheel galaxy,” I said. The name is derived from its shape—albeit this pinwheel contains about a trillion stars.

The light from the Pinwheel traveled for 25 million years across the universe—about 150 quintillion miles—to get to my telescope.

WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic says production of its new suborbital spaceplanes remains on track to allow commercial flights to begin in the middle of next year as it contemplates restarting ticket sales.

The company spent much of a May 15 earnings call talking about the technical progress it has made in the assembly of its first Delta-class vehicles, or SpaceShips, in areas such as structures, propulsion and avionics.

“An enormous amount of work is taking place across our company as well as our key suppliers,” said Michael Colglazier, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, in the call. Earlier in the day, the company released a video highlighting current progress on the vehicle, and Colglazier said the company would start a regular series of updates on assembly in June.

WASHINGTON — Norway signed the Artemis Accords May 15, a sign that the new administration continues to advance the document outlining best practices for responsible space exploration.

Cecilie Myrseth, Norway’s minister for trade and industry, signed the Accords during an event at the headquarters of the Norwegian Space Agency in Oslo, attended by the head of the agency as well as the chargé d’affaires of the U.S. embassy there.

“This is an important step for enabling Norway to contribute to broader international cooperation to ensure the peaceful exploration and use of outer space,” Myrseth said in a statement.

Voyager 1, the furthest spacecraft from Earth that has been out there for nearly half a century, simply refuses to die.

Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California have revived a set of thrusters aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft that had been considered inoperable since 2004. Fixing the thrusters required creativity and risk, but the team wants to have them available as a backup to a set of active thrusters whose fuel tubes are experiencing a buildup of residue that could cause them to stop working as early as this fall.

In addition, the mission needed to ensure the availability of the long-dormant thrusters before May 4, when the Earth-bound antenna that sends commands to Voyager 1 and its twin Voyager 2 went offline for months of upgrades.