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Launch, orbit, stations, lunar and Mars missions, and the plumbing that makes them work.
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ESA introduced NovaMoon, a mission that puts a navigation and timing station on the Moon's south pole so rovers, landers and astronauts can know exactly where they are, with sub meter accuracy.
Pune startup Muks Robotics says ISRO picked it to build SPACEO Prime, a two legged humanoid robot meant to do space work. No mission, timeline or specs have been shared yet.
Blue Origin asked the FAA to raise its New Glenn cap at Cape Canaveral from 12 launches a year to 50. The FAA's draft review says no big environmental impact, and the public gets to weigh in until Oct. 30.
Sierra Space dropped its 10-ton Ghost reentry vehicle from 68,500 feet over Utah with a radio and a bottle of whiskey inside. Both came back fine, and it landed within 100 meters of its target.
NASA released its final call for private space stations to succeed the ISS. Proposals are due Dec. 8, NASA plans to pick two or more companies, the contract guarantees at least $100 million, and its ceiling is over $34 billion.
NASA just dumped more than 800 GB of Artemis II data online, with 11,000+ photos and videos and 8.5 hours of crew audio. The headline: the crew saw five tiny impact flashes on the far side of the Moon, likely the faintest ever seen with the naked eye.
SpaceX agreed to buy nationwide 800 MHz spectrum from Grain Management, a deal the WSJ put at $8 billion. The low band signal goes through walls, and Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile stocks fell 10 to 13 percent on Friday.
Speaking at X Takeover at Giga Texas on Saturday, Elon Musk said Starship Flight 15 is hopefully 4 to 6 weeks out, likely before Thanksgiving, and will try to catch the upper stage for the first full recovery of an orbital class rocket.
Five days after a last-minute abort, Falcon 9 launched 21 Northrop Grumman satellites for the Space Development Agency early Oct. 10. That makes 84 of 126 Tranche 1 data satellites now in orbit.
NASA and SpaceX are targeting 6:33 a.m. ET Tuesday, Oct. 13, for CRS-35. Dragon carries more than 6,300 pounds to the space station, including the last pair of new solar arrays and experiments that build artificial retinas, heart tissue, and brain organoids in orbit.
At a White House science summit on Oct. 8, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the first Moon Base element launches in December, years ahead of the 2030 policy goal, with near-monthly robotic missions starting in early 2027. NASA also signed a space nuclear pact with the Energy Department.
JAXA's Martian Moons eXploration spacecraft is set to launch on an H3 rocket at 3:41 p.m. ET on Oct. 19. The plan: drop a rover on Phobos, land twice, and bring more than 10 grams of it back to Earth in 2031.
Star Catcher's Protostar launched Oct. 1 on SpaceX's Transporter-18. Over the next few months it will release a CubeSat and try to beam power with light onto its solar panels, which Star Catcher says would be a first.
NASA is targeting no earlier than 8:05 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 7, for Crew-12 to leave the station. Splashdown off California is about 11:34 a.m. EDT Thursday. The crew has been up since Feb. 14.
NASA says Dragon docked to Harmony's forward port at 7:05 p.m. EDT on Oct. 1. The hatch opened at 9:19 p.m. EDT. That trip is the fastest U.S. launch-to-docking in station history.
KASA chief Oh Tae-seok said Sept. 30 that the fifth Nuri launch is still on for Oct. 7 at Naro. The rocket carries five NEONSAT satellites and 10 CubeSats. The window KASA set in August is 12:23 to 1:23 p.m. Korea time.
SpaceX lists SDA's fourth Tranche 1 data transport mission for 1:17 a.m. PT Oct. 5 from Vandenberg. The backup is 1:08 a.m. PT Oct. 6. Falcon 9 is set to put 21 satellites into the fourth orbital plane.
SpaceX still lists NROL-97 for 11:53 p.m. ET on Oct. 1 from Kennedy LC-39A. The backup is 11:48 p.m. ET on Oct. 2. The two side boosters are planned to land at LZ-1 and LZ-2.
SpaceX's own writeup says a Raptor vacuum engine quit on the way up, all 26 Starlink V3 satellites checked in, and Ship did its first deorbit burn before a three-engine splashdown.
On Sept. 30 Firefly said Starcloud's SC-1L processor will fly on Elytra around the Moon. The mission is no earlier than 2028, on Firefly's third lunar flight.
Flight 14 put Starship in orbit for the first time on Sept. 28, deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, and splashed down north of Hawaii a little over three hours after liftoff.
The Owlright Owlright Owlright mission put Synspective's 13th StriX radar satellite into a 559 km orbit from New Zealand on Sept. 26 local time.
Project Suncatcher's first test satellite, MVP, carries four Google TPUs and rides SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare from Vandenberg. It will run Gemini in 15-minute bursts.
The FAA license for Starship's first orbital attempt was reported issued late Saturday. Here's the Monday window at Pad 2, and the booster and heat shield fixes SpaceX is actually testing.
Vast announced a Lunar Programs division on Sept. 23, led by Haven-1 veteran Colin Smith. It pitches a power station, an airlock, a habitat, and a relay constellation. No NASA contract yet.
Blue Origin won the Mars Telecommunications Network contract; Rocket Lab’s Sept. 11 GAO protest triggered an automatic stay. Decision due around mid-December on a 2028 delivery clock.
NASA and SpaceX polled go on Sept. 25: Falcon 9 from SLC-40 no earlier than 11:10 a.m. EDT Oct. 1, with Watkins, Delaney, Kutryk, and Teteryatnikov.
Mid-September reporting: NASA preparing more Boeing Starliner crewed missions, thruster-fix support, and a path off retiring Atlas V — because one crew ride is not enough into the 2030s.
A Sept. 17 FONSI lets the FAA move toward a Terran R operator license — up to 24 launches a year analyzed, late-2026 first flight still a company target.
SpaceX retargeted its first orbital Starship attempt to as early as Monday, Sept. 28 — still pending regulatory approval. What that phrase means in the week before the window.
SpaceX is aiming Starship at Earth orbit for the first time — ~275 km, ~6 orbits, 26 Starlink V3 — with the FAA license still the gate and the window now sliding toward Sept. 28.
As the ISS winds down, drugmakers are lining up commercial stations and return capsules — and talking to regulators about medicine made in orbit.
Icarus flew its ISS-bound free-flyer on parabolic flights in Canada — ~22 minutes of microgravity total. Practice is the bottleneck, and the U.S. barely has the planes.
ASTRA field tests: weigh the science payoff against the risk in real time. Outer-planet missions need judgment, not just scripts.
Aug. 27: SpaceX finished inspecting Flight 13’s Ship 40 off Christmas Island, bagged heatshield samples, and loaded the scorched ship onto a semi-submersible for a months-long crawl back to Texas.
Rockets get the hype. Ground stations, debris rules, and refueling decide who compounds.