8 SPACE MISSIONS TO WATCH IN OCTOBER: STARSHIP, AMAZON KUIPER, BLUE ORIGIN’S MOON LANDER - With the first weeks of the fall season underway, October is already shaping up to be an eventful month in space. Alongside satellite launches from Amazon, SpaceX and United Launch Alliance (ULA), this month will also see milestones in NASA’s Artemis program—a series of lunar missions designed to prepare for eventual human journeys to Mars—with contributions from SpaceX and Blue Origin. More (Source: Observer - Oct 3)
NASA CLOSES DOORS TO 15,000 EMPLOYEES AS US GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN BEGINS - More than 15,000 NASA civil servants have been furloughed as the U.S. federal government enters a shutdown. The grinding halt forces NASA and other agencies to scale back nearly all of their day-to-day operations after lawmakers in Washington D.C. failed to pass a government funding bill by the deadline. Only a fraction of NASA's workforce remains on duty, assigned to missions that cannot be paused without risking astronaut safety, critical hardware, or the Trump administration’s highest priorities. More (Source: Space.com - Oct 2)
DO ROCKETS STILL LAUNCH DURING A GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN? HOW NASA COULD FEEL THE EFFECTS - Is it time for NASA to hang up those spacesuits and power down those rockets? NASA is far from immune to the effects of a looming government shutdown if congressional leaders fail to reach an agreement before midnight Oct. 1 to prevent one. At stake for the U.S. space agency if the federal government grinds to a halt? The progress of many of its science missions and access to its public outreach arm. More (Source: USA Today - Oct 2)
VIASAT-3 F2 SATELLITE ARRIVES IN FLORIDA AHEAD OF LATE OCTOBER LAUNCH - The ViaSat-3 Flight 2 spacecraft, the next geostationary satellite for communications company Viasat, arrived in Florida in the early morning hours of Tuesday. This six-ton (more than 13,000 lbs) satellite is the second in a three-vehicle series for the ViaSat-3 network. Its planned launch in late October onboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 551 rocket comes roughly a year-and-a-half after the ViaSat-3 F1 launch. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 2)
SPACEX TARGETING OCT. 13 FOR NEXT STARSHIP MEGAROCKET LAUNCH - SpaceX's Starship megarocket will fly again less than two weeks from now, if all goes according to plan. SpaceX announced on Monday (Sept. 29) that it's targeting Oct. 13 for Starship Flight 11, which will be the final launch of the vehicle's current "Version 2" iteration. Liftoff will occur from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas. The window on Oct. 13 will open at 7:15 p.m. EDT (2315 GMT; 6:15 p.m. local Texas time), SpaceX wrote in an update on Monday. The company will webcast the action, beginning 30 minutes before liftoff. More (Source: Space.com - Oct 1)
CHINA SENDS EXPERIMENTAL SHIYAN-30 SATELLITES INTO ORBIT AS LAUNCH CADENCE INTENSIFIES - A Long March 2D rocket sent a new set of experimental satellites into orbit late Sunday, capping an intense month of Chinese launch activities. The Long March 2D lifted off at 11:00 p.m. Eastern Sept. 28 (0300 UTC, Sept. 29) from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China, with the launch vehicle climbing into dense clouds above the forested hill surrounding the spaceport. More (Source: SpaceNews - Oct 1)
GROUND TESTING ANOMALY DESTROYS FIREFLY AEROSPACE’S ALPHA BOOSTER INTENDED FOR NEXT FLIGHT - Firefly Aerospace suffered a setback on its road to resuming launches with its Alpha rocket. During acceptance testing at its facility in Briggs, Texas, on Monday, the booster designated for Alpha Flight 7 “experienced an event that resulted in a loss of the stage,” the company said in a statement. A spokesperson for Firefly said this acceptance test was taking place prior to the company shipping the booster to Vandenberg Space Force Base ahead of conducting a final static fire test and preparing for launch. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 30)
CHINESE ASTRONAUTS ADD DEBRIS SHIELDING TO TIANGONG SPACE STATION DURING 6-HOUR SPACEWALK - China's Tiangong space station just got some more protection against debris strikes. Two astronauts from the three-person Shenzhou 20 mission installed additional shielding on Tiangong during a six-hour spacewalk on Friday (Sept. 26), according to the state-run broadcaster CCTV. It was the fourth spacewalk of the Shenzhou 20 mission, which arrived at Tiangong on April 24. More (Source: Space.com - Sep 30)
CHINA LAUNCHES LOW EARTH ORBIT SATELLITE GROUP - China successfully launched a new batch of low Earth orbit satellites from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in northern Shanxi Province on Saturday, marking the 597th mission of the Long March carrier rockets. More (Source: CGTN - Sep 29)
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