All articles
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Science & Discovery
Cornell's Free-Flying Lightsail Worked: Gram-Scale ChipSats Fly Solo in Orbit
Cornell's Alpha CubeSat released a 57.5 cm lightsail carrying four ChipSats that detached from the host and sent complete data packets to the ground, a first for a spacecraft this small and a step toward Breakthrough Starshot-style concepts.
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Missions
Crew-13 Heads to the Space Station: A Second Flight for Watkins and Three Rookies
SpaceX Crew-13 launches at 11:10 a.m. EDT Oct. 1 from SLC-40 with Jessica Watkins, Luke Delaney, Joshua Kutryk and Sergey Teteryatnikov for about six months on Expedition 75, after an oxidizer-leak delay from Sept. 12.
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Commercial
NASA Opens Its Launch Catalog to Blue Origin's Super-Heavy New Glenn 9x4
NASA added Blue Origin's New Glenn 9x4 to its NLS II launch contract on Sept. 29, 2026. It makes the rocket eligible to compete for missions, but no mission, first-flight date or orbital demo has been announced.
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Science & Discovery
CHIME Detects Hydrogen's Faint Glow From 5 Billion Years Ago Using Only Its Own Data
The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment has made its first standalone detection of the cosmological 21 cm signal at z~1 (12.5 sigma, 94 nights of 2019 data), a step toward cheaper dark energy studies without galaxy-survey cross-correlation.
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Missions
Smile Is Cleared for Science, but Its X-Ray Camera Still Has a Stray-Light Problem
The joint ESA-CAS Smile mission was approved for science operations on Sept. 23; its UV imager already films the full auroral oval for 45 hours at a stretch, while the X-ray camera waits for stray light to fade in mid-October.
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Stargazing
Saturn at Opposition, Then the Moon Swallows Jupiter: A Double Header for Early October
Saturn reaches opposition on Oct. 4 at magnitude 0.3, and two mornings later a waning crescent Moon passes in front of Jupiter across eastern North America, the best-placed Jupiter occultation of 2026.
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Commercial
Starship Reaches Orbit at Last, Drops 26 Starlink V3 Satellites, and Comes Home Early
On its 14th flight, Starship finally reached orbit despite early engine shutdowns on both stages, deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, and splashed down north of Hawaii about three hours after liftoff.
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Astronomy
Webb's 'Cosmic House of Mirrors' Catches a Rare Lensing Trick Twice in One Cluster
ESA/Webb's September Picture of the Month shows MACS J0454.1-0300, where cluster gravity warps and multiplies distant galaxies. The rare four-plus-image arrangement appears twice, a first, with clumps magnified more than 300 times.
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Stargazing
A Filament Let Go on the Sun, and a Glancing CME Is Headed for Earth
A filament eruption on Sept. 28 launched a two-part partial halo CME, and NOAA has posted a G1 (minor) geomagnetic storm watch for Oct. 2, with a flanking blow that could bring aurora to high latitudes.
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NASA & Agencies
FCC Set to Vote on Declaring Satellite and Launch Operations Outside NEPA Review
On Sept. 30 the FCC is set to vote on an order finding that launching, deploying and operating space stations are not major federal actions, which would take satellite licensing outside NEPA environmental review.
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Missions
Juice Skims Earth's Atmosphere Region and Bends Its Path Toward Jupiter
ESA's Juice swept 8,640 km above the Indian Ocean on Sept 28, 2026, turning 20 degrees and gaining 3.5 km/s with almost no propellant, and is now better aimed for its July 2031 arrival at Jupiter.
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Science & Discovery
Mars Has a Hot Spot Under Its Southern Highlands, and Orbiter Tracking Data Found It
Sixteen years of tracking data from three Mars orbiters, analyzed with tidal tomography, point to a 200-400 C warm region in the mantle beneath the southern highlands, lining up with the planet's crustal dichotomy.
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