Standards
Editorial standards
Last updated 2026-09-23
SpaceNexus publishes data, trackers, briefs and analysis about the space industry. These are the rules we hold that work to, and how to tell us when we get something wrong. Who writes our analysis, and the desk's stated priors, are on the SpaceNexus Desk page.
Independence
- No advertiser, sponsor or partner pays for coverage, sees an article or report before it publishes, or has a say in what we cover or conclude.
- Money never changes our data, a Space Score, a tracker, a ranking, a fact-check or the order of search, directory or job results. Paid items are labelled in words — “Advertisement”, “Sponsored”, “Partner content”, “Featured”, “Presented by”, “Enhanced listing — paid” — before the content. The full rules are in the advertising policy.
- Sponsored articles (partner content) are not journalism. They are fact-checked, labelled, and kept out of our news, feeds, search and AI-drafted products.
Sourcing
- Our standard is that every figure carries a source and an as-of date. Where a number on the site is missing either, that is an error — report it and we will fix it.
- We prefer primary sources: regulators' filings, agency data, company disclosures, Launch Library 2 for launches, SEC filings for public companies, and official procurement records. The data sources page lists what we ingest.
- Estimates are labelled as estimates, and say what they are based on. We do not publish invented or placeholder numbers; where data is missing we say so instead of filling the gap.
- Launch dates move. We record the move rather than silently replacing the old date (see the Launch Slip Index).
How we use AI, and how it is labelled
SpaceNexus uses Anthropic's Claude models to draft some content. Anything AI-drafted is labelled as such, and is built from inputs that exclude advertising, sponsor messages and partner content. What is true today:
- AI insights carry the byline “SpaceNexus Desk”, which names a process, not a person. The pipeline:
- Selection. A daily job at 01:00 UTC (retried at 07:00 UTC) reads the last 24 hours of the aggregated news pool plus our own structured data — launch records, hiring snapshots, funding rounds, regulatory filings — and picks the stories worth an analysis piece. Titles published in the previous 14 days, including ones that were rejected, are shown to the selector so killed stories stay killed.
- Drafting. Claude Sonnet writes the draft against the selected sources. It is given the source articles and our data; it is not given a house line to argue.
- Fact-check. A second, separate model pass checks every claim in the draft against the cited sources and returns one of three verdicts: pass, minor issues, or major issues.
- Publication gate. Pass and minor-issues drafts publish automatically. Major-issues drafts are held as pending_review and emailed to the founder, who approves or rejects each one by hand. Nothing with a major-issues verdict reaches the site unread by a person.
- Sourcing. Every published piece lists the sources it was written from, and each carries a confidence badge derived from how many independent sources it stands on.
- The weekly lunar article is drafted by AI from the SpaceNexus lunar database and the news sources it lists, fact-checked by a second, independent AI pass against those same inputs, and published only after the editor approves it.
- Mission debriefs are drafted by AI from Launch Library 2 event data and news coverage. The outcome (success, failure, partial) is taken from Launch Library 2's confirmed status, never from the model, and a debrief that contradicts it is taken down. Drafts that pass automated quality checks publish without a person reading them first, and each one says so.
- SpaceNexus AM, the weekday email: the headline and the why-it-matters line for each story are drafted by AI; links, sources and dates come from the underlying articles. An issue that fails its automated checks is withheld.
- The Monday/Thursday digest includes AI-drafted analysis, labelled “AI-drafted analysis” in the email.
- Data briefs — State of the Space Economy, Who's Hiring in Space, the Hiring Index and the Launch Slip Index — are computed from our database. No AI writes them.
Corrections
To report an error, use the corrections form or the “Report a correction” link on an article. This applies to sponsored content too: we fact-check partner articles before they publish and correct them after.
- Tell us what is wrong and, if you can, what the right figure or date is and where it comes from.
- Factual errors are fixed in place and the piece gets a dated correction note at the foot. We do not quietly re-edit a claim out of existence.
- If a piece is wrong in its premise rather than its details, it is withdrawn and the URL says so instead of 404ing.
- Corrections are handled by the founder directly, not by the pipeline that wrote the piece.
SpaceNexus is a one-person company. Jay Griffiths, the founder, is the responsible editor: he receives the held-article queue, approves or rejects every major-issues draft, and answers corrections.
Conflicts of interest
- We do not accept payment, gifts or favours for coverage, and we do not accept payment to promote a security.
- A company that advertises with us, sponsors a report or buys an enhanced listing is covered, scored and ranked exactly as it would be otherwise. Its paid relationship is shown by the label on the paid item.
- Where SpaceNexus or its editor has a financial interest in a company a piece is about, the piece says so.
- Nothing on SpaceNexus is investment advice.
Questions about these standards: contact us.