STATION CREW EXPANDS AS NASA’S SPACEX CREW-12 PREPARES TO DEPART - The Expedition 75 crew slept in Friday and spent the rest of the day relaxing following the Oct. 1 arrival of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission. The four new crew members, who arrived after a record-setting 7-hour, 55-minute Dragon spacecraft flight from Florida, bring the number of people living aboard the International Space Station to 11. More (Source: NASA - Oct 3)
FALCON HEAVY FLIES ITS FIRST MISSION FOR U.S. SPY SATELLITE AGENCY - A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launched from Florida Thursday night on a classified mission for the National Reconnaissance Office, America’s spy satellite agency. Codenamed NROL-97, the mission blasted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 11:54 p.m. EDT (0354 UTC). It took a north-easterly trajectory on departure from Florida’s Space Coast. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 3)
SPACE FORCE PICKS TWO COMPANIES TO BUILD NEW ‘SPACE-TO-SPACE’ SATELLITES BY 2028 - The Space Force and the Pentagon have commissioned two companies to build new reconnaissance satellites capable of delivering high-resolution “space-to-space imagery” of objects more than 22,000 miles above Earth. Space Systems Command awarded the prototype contracts to Northrop Grumman and True Anomaly under the Geosynchronous High-Resolution Optical Space-Based Tactical Reconnaissance program, or GHOST-R, on Sept. 18. More (Source: Defense News - Oct 2)
NOKIA AND ICEYE TO MAKE LOW-ORBIT SATELLITE SYSTEMS FOR DEFENCE, SECURITY - Nokia opens new tab and Iceye will develop satellite communications systems for governments and defence contractors, supporting missions from military and border security to emergency services and disaster response, the companies said on Thursday. The partnership will deliver secure, sovereign and high-performance broadband low Earth orbit (LEO) communications systems, with the first satellites expected to be launched in 2028, the companies said in a statement. More (Source: Reuters - Oct 2)
THE RISK OF SPACE DEBRIS FALLING TO EARTH AND CAUSING DEATHS AND IS GROWING, EXPERTS SAY - Today's scenery in space is not a pretty picture. With the rate at which orbital launches are now occurring, some Earth orbits are so crowded and carry so many potentially dangerous, high-velocity pieces of defunct satellite litter and spent rocket stages that they could jeopardize humanity's future in space. That's the output from experts at the European Space Agency (ESA), waving a number of cautionary flags in its new Space Environment Report 2026. In brief, this disquieting appraisal from ESA points out that the number and scale of commercial satellite constellations continues to increase each year. More (Source: Space.com - Oct 2)
STATION PREPARES TO WELCOME CREW-13 WHILE CONTINUING SPACE RESEARCH - Expedition 75 is getting the International Space Station ready for the arrival of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission scheduled to launch and dock to the orbital outpost on Thursday, Oct. 1. In the meantime, space research and lab maintenance rounded out the schedule keeping the astronauts and cosmonauts busy on Wednesday. Crew-13 commander Jessica Watkins and pilot Luke Delaney, both NASA astronauts, along with mission specialists Johsua Kutryk of CSA (Canadian Space Agency) and Sergey Teteryatnikov of Roscosmos will launch aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft atop the Falcon 9 rocket at 11:10 a.m. EDT on Thursday. NASA+ begins its live launch coverage at 9:20 a.m. from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Pad 40 in Florida. More (Source: NASA - Oct 2)
FRESH CREW TAKES OFF FOR SIX-MONTH STAY ABOARD SPACE STATION - A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off on a flight to the International Space Station Thursday carrying two NASA astronauts, a cosmonaut and a Canadian whose wife plans a launch of her own later this year, giving birth to the couple’s third child while her husband is away in space. Strapped into a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, Crew 13 commander Jessica Watkins, pilot Luke Delaney, Russian cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov and Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk blasted off from pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 11:10 a.m. EDT. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 2)
LAUNCH TRIPLEHEADER! SPACEX TO FLY 3 ROCKETS IN 13 HOURS TODAY - SpaceX has a very big day planned. Elon Musk's company is scheduled to launch three missions in a 13-hour span today (Oct. 1), a feat it has accomplished just once before. The action will start at 11:10 a.m. EDT (1510 GMT) with the launch of the Crew-13 astronaut mission for NASA, which will head toward the International Space Station atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. More (Source: Space.com - Oct 1)
NASA PLANS UNPILOTED STARLINER TEST FLIGHT AT END OF YEAR - NASA is working with Boeing to launch an unpiloted Starliner capsule in the December-January time frame to test upgrades and improvements ordered in the wake of a 2024 mission that suffered multiple propulsion system failures, stranding two astronauts on the space station for more than nine months. If the unpiloted test flight goes well, NASA and Boeing hope to launch a piloted Starliner flight in mid 2028, officials said Monday, incorporating redesigned propulsion system valves, more robust subsystems and other modifications expected to prevent the sort of failures that occurred in 2024. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 1)
Previous Next
