 | Top Stories
SpaceX launched its fifth Starship/Super Heavy mission Sunday, successfully "catching" the booster back at the launch site on the company's first attempt. The vehicle lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase site at Boca Chica, Texas, at 8:25 a.m. Eastern. The Super Heavy booster, after deploying the Starship upper stage, flew back to the launch pad, where a pair of mechanical arms attached to the launch tower captured the stage seven minutes after liftoff. The catch is a key part of SpaceX's plans to rapidly reuse the booster, enabling turnaround times of days or even hours. The Starship upper stage flew a suborbital trajectory, landing at the targeted site in the Indian Ocean about 65 minutes after liftoff. The launch took place less than 24 hours after the FAA granted an updated launch license required for the mission. [SpaceNews]
NASA and SpaceX are ready to launch the Europa Clipper mission later today. Liftoff of the Falcon Heavy from the Kennedy Space Center is scheduled for 12:06 p.m. Eastern, with a 95% chance of acceptable weather. The rocket will send Europa Clipper on a trajectory that will allow it to arrive at Jupiter in April 2030, performing dozens of close approaches to Europa, an icy moon that may have a habitable subsurface ocean. NASA and SpaceX said they resolved any concerns with the performance of a Falcon 9 upper stage engine on a deorbit burn two weeks ago before proceeding with this launch. [SpaceNews]
French startup Constellation Technologies & Operations has secured a seed round of funding for a very low Earth orbit (VLEO) constellation. The two-year-old company said France's state-backed Expansion Ventures invested about $10 million, allowing the company to complete engineering studies for its first two satellites, slated to launch in 2026. the company is proposing a constellation of up to 1,500 VLEO satellites to provide 5G broadband services. [SpaceNews]
Defense tech firm Anduril Industries is partnering with Impulse Space to develop advanced in-space maneuvering capabilities. The companies plan to pursue military and defense contracts for space missions that involve complex orbital maneuvers, Anduril announced. Anduril will integrate its Lattice AI-enabled software platform to operate Impulse's Mira orbital trasfer vehicle, allowing a single operator to control and maneuver multiple spacecraft simultaneously. Anduril will equip those spacecraft with its own payloads as well as those from customers. [SpaceNews]
Vast unveiled details about the commercial space station it will propose to NASA. The Haven-2 station will start with a single module, a stretched version of its Haven-1 station, launching in 2028 on Falcon Heavy. Three more identical modules will follow, docked together in line. A second phase includes four more modules and a large core module that would launch on Starship, completing the station in 2032. Vast is offering Haven-2 to NASA for its Commercial LEO Destinations program to suport development of commercial stations to succeed the ISS. The announcement of Haven-2 comes days after the company disclosed design details for Haven-1. [SpaceNews]
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| Other News
The FAA has cleared the return to flight of Falcon 9. The agency said late Friday it is allowing SpaceX to resume all launches of the rocket after approving a single launch last week of ESA's Hera mission. The rocket had been grounded since an anomaly on a deorbit burn of the second stage at the end of the Crew-9 mission Sept. 28. A SpaceX official said at a briefing Sunday that the upper-stage engine on that flight burned half a second longer than planned, causing the upper stage to deorbit outside its designated region in the South Pacific. [SpaceNews]
Boeing expects to take more charges against earnings to its commercial crew program. The company said Friday it will take $2 billion in charges in the third quarter on four programs in its defense and space unit, with up to $400 million going to Starliner. The company did not disclose a specific figure but will release its full third quarter results later this month. Boeing also announced it will lay off about 17,000 employees, or 10% of its overall workforce, but did not disclose how many people working on space programs would be affected. [SpaceNews]
Blue Origin postponed a second attempt to launch a new suborbital vehicle Sunday. The company called off the New Shepard launch on the uncrewed NS-27 mission, citing a "GPS issue." The company postponed a launch attempt last Monday because of unspecified technical issues, and did not announce a new launch date after this latest scrub. The flight will be the first for a new model of New Shepard for crewed flights, which Blue Origin said it built to meet growing demand. [Space.com]
Estonia is the latest country to sign the Artemis Accords. NASA announced Sunday that Estonia signed the accords in Milan ahead of this week's International Astronautical Congress (IAC) there. Estonia is the 45th nation to sign the Accords and the second in less than a week. Nations who signed the Accords will meet at IAC this week to discuss topics related to safe and sustainable space exploration. [NASA]
NATO is working on its own commercial space policy. Maj. Gen. Devin Pepper, deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and policy at NATO's Allied Command Transformation, said last week that the policy, to be released next year, will resemble the Defense Department's own strategy published earlier this year in terms of what capabilities industry could provide. Pepper said the NATO policy may have some differences regarding specific commercial space capabilities, but will broadly include communications, space domain awareness, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Most of NATO's current space capabilities come from the United States. [DefenseOne]
| |  | The Week Ahead
Monday: - Kennedy Space Center, Fla.: Scheduled launch of NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft on a Falcon Heavy at 12:06 p.m. Eastern.
- Jiuquan, China: Anticipated launch of a Long March 4C carrying an unidentified payload at 7:40 p.m. Eastern.
Monday-Friday: Tuesday: - Cape Canaveral, Fla.: Scheduled launch of a Falcon 9 carrying Starlink satellites at 1:34 a.m. Eastern.
- Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif.: Scheduled launch of a Falcon 9 carrying Starlink satellites at 4:07 a.m. Eastern.
- Taiyuan, China: Anticipated launch of a Long March 6A carrying an unidentified payload at 7:23 a.m. Eastern.
- Greenbelt, Md.: Elsayed Talaat, director of the office of space weather observations at NOAA NESDIS, speaks at a Maryland Space Business Roundtable luncheon.
- Online: NASA holds a Planetary Science Research Programs Town Hall at 3 p.m. Eastern.
Wednesday-Friday: Thursday: Saturday: - Tanegashima, Japan: Scheduled launch of an H3 rocket carrying the DSN-3 military communications satellite at 2:44 a.m. Eastern.
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