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Space
Where it stands
NASA's next Artemis mission, Artemis III, is planned for 2027 as a 14-day crewed flight in low Earth orbit in which Orion is to dock with test versions of Blue Origin's Blue Moon and SpaceX's Starship landers. NASA is aiming for crewed landings near the Moon's south pole in 2028 on Artemis IV and V. At an Oct. 23 briefing, agency leaders said that schedule still holds; the day before, NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel had raised concerns about lander readiness and about relying on one uncrewed test landing per company.
SpaceX's Starship reached orbit for the first time on Sept. 28 and released 26 Starlink V3 satellites, though the flight was cut short after one of the ship's six engines failed during ascent. On the International Space Station, a crew of seven is preparing for a Nov. 5 spacewalk to install the last of eight roll-out solar arrays, which NASA says will raise the station's power capacity from 160 to about 215 kilowatts.
China's Shenzhou-23 crew, launched in May, includes an astronaut scheduled to spend a year aboard the Tiangong station, and China is working toward a crewed Moon landing by 2030. In late August, China postponed its Chang'e-7 lunar south pole mission after the rocket had already been moved to the launch area, saying it could not fly during this year's planned window.
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Latest developments
India's GSLV-F18 places NVS-03 navigation satellite in orbit
ISRO's GSLV-F18 lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre shortly before midnight India time on Oct. 30 and put the NVS-03 satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit. It is the third of India's next-generation navigation satellites, which continue the IRNSS regional service and add an L1 signal to the existing L5 and S-band signals.
Spacewalk installs the seventh of eight new solar arrays on the ISS
NASA's Anil Menon and the Canadian Space Agency's Joshua Kutryk spent 7 hours 11 minutes outside the station installing a roll-out solar array on the port truss, the seventh of eight. NASA designated the outing U.S. spacewalk 100 and said that with all eight arrays the station's power capacity will rise from 160 to about 215 kilowatts.
NASA(Primary source)
NASA keeps Artemis III Earth-orbit test in 2027 and lunar landings in 2028
NASA leaders said Artemis III remains planned as a 14-day mission in low Earth orbit in 2027, with Orion docking to test versions of Blue Origin's Blue Moon and SpaceX's Starship, ahead of crewed landings near the lunar south pole planned for 2028 on Artemis IV and V. The briefing came a day after NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel raised concerns about lander readiness and the plan for a single uncrewed test landing per provider.
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Roman Space Telescope enters its final commissioning phase
NASA said the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, launched Aug. 30, has moved into science commissioning after checkouts showed the observatory can guide, take exposures, send data and slew between targets. Before science operations start, the team will use test observations to measure the observatory's performance, calibrate its instruments and improve image quality.
Japan launches MMX probe to collect samples from Mars's moon Phobos
An H3 rocket launched JAXA's Martian Moons eXploration spacecraft from Tanegashima at 4:41 a.m. Japan time, the evening of Oct. 19 in Europe. The mission aims to be the first to orbit Phobos, take samples from its surface and return them to Earth; it carries the Idefix rover, designed and built by France's CNES with Germany's DLR, and ESA expects it to arrive at Mars in summer 2027.
Cargo Dragon delivers final set of roll-out solar arrays to the ISS
SpaceX's 35th resupply mission for NASA, launched Oct. 13 from Florida, docked to the station's Harmony module carrying more than 6,300 pounds of food, equipment and other supplies, along with the final set of roll-out solar arrays. NASA said the capsule is scheduled to stay until mid-November and then splash down off California.
NASA(Primary source)
Crew-12 splashes down off California after 237 days at the station
NASA's Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA's Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev returned in their Dragon capsule, splashing down off the coast of Los Angeles after 237 days at the ISS. NASA said the crew carried out four spacewalks and that Meir's career total of 440 days in space puts her among the agency's top 10.
NASA(Primary source)
NASA releases Artemis II lunar science data and crew images
NASA added more than 800 gigabytes of Artemis II lunar science data to its Planetary Data System, including over 11,000 full-resolution images and videos and 8.5 hours of crew audio from the April flight around the Moon, along with a preliminary science report. The agency described it as the first planetary science dataset gathered mainly by people in more than 50 years.
NASA(Primary source)
Crew-13 launches to the space station and docks in under eight hours
A Falcon 9 lifted NASA's Crew-13 from Cape Canaveral, carrying NASA's Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, the Canadian Space Agency's Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov in the Dragon capsule Grace. It docked 7 hours 55 minutes after launch, the quickest Dragon trip so far according to SpacePolicyOnline. The flight had slipped from mid-September after an oxidizer leak was found on the spacecraft.
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Twin solid rocket boosters for Artemis III fully stacked at Kennedy
NASA crews at Kennedy Space Center finished stacking both solid rocket boosters for the Artemis III Space Launch System inside the Vehicle Assembly Building. The agency said the core stage, now fitted with all four RS-25 engines, is to be joined to the boosters in the coming weeks to form what NASA calls the short stack, which is to roll to Launch Pad 39B for a tanking test in the coming months.
NASA(Primary source)
Starship reaches orbit for the first time and deploys 26 Starlink satellites
SpaceX's Starship Flight 14 launched from Starbase, Texas, and became the first Starship to reach orbit, releasing 26 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites. After one of the ship's six engines failed during ascent, SpaceX cut the planned 10-hour flight to three hours; the ship splashed down north of Hawaii, and the Super Heavy booster made a simulated landing in the Gulf of Mexico rather than returning to be caught by the launch tower.
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BepiColombo drops its transfer module as Mercury arrival begins
ESA confirmed that BepiColombo's Mercury Transfer Module had separated from the spacecraft stack and said telemetry showed all systems nominal. The joint ESA-JAXA mission is due to enter orbit around Mercury on Nov. 21; its two orbiters, ESA's MPO and JAXA's Mio, are to separate from each other on Dec. 9-10, and its science phase is to begin in April 2027.
ESA(Primary source)