On Oct. 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier for the first time!

Chuck Yeager was a test pilot for the U.S. Air Force who made history by flying an aircraft faster than the speed of sound.

Yeager made his historic flight in a Bell X-1 rocket plane that he named "Glamorous Glennis" after his wife. Yeager had broken two ribs the night before when he fell off a horse, but that didn't stop him!

His aircraft was dropped from a Boeing B-29 bomber before accelerating to a speed of Mach 1.07, which is about 821 mph (1,321 km/h). The speed of sound, Mach 1, is about 760 mph (1,223 km/h).

Why it mattered

Before Yeager made his daring Bell X-1 flight, piloted supersonic flight was only a concept.

The Bell X-1 began its life as the XS-1, a cooperative project between NASA's predecessor the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and the U.S. Army Forces, which would evolve later into the U.S. Air Force. Bell Aircraft won the contract to build the experimental plane in March 1945 and was delivered in December of that year.

The final vehicle was a single-piloted aircraft that was just over 30 feet (nearly 11 meters) long, had a wingspan of about 28 feet (8.5 m) and powered by a rocket engine using liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol in water as propellant. Yeager's historic flight followed a series of unpowered glide tests, incuding three by Yeager himself in August of 1947, followed by ever faster subsonic powered flights.

"The first generation X-1 aircraft changed aviation history in numerous ways, and not simply because they were the first aircraft to fly faster than the speed of sound," NASA wrote in an overview. "Rather, they established the concept of the research aircraft, built solely for experimental purposes, and unhampered by any military or commercial requirements."

According to NASA, Yeager's history-making flight wasn't immediately known to the public, a departure from the agency's X-plane tests today.

"Yeager reached a speed of Mach 1.06 at 43,000 feet, becoming the first man to fly supersonic. Air Force officials designated the flight and all data as Top Secret two hours later," NASA wrote. "Not until December 1947 would word leak of the achievement, and it was not until March 1948 that the U.S. Air Force officially confirmed the achievement."

Yeager's flight and the X-1 program laid the foundation for an ever-more-ambitious X-plane program that continues at NASA and in the U.S. military today.

NASA's latest X-plane is the X-59 supersonic plane, which is designed to test supersonic flight with quieter sonic booms as way to open up supersonic travel over land for wider commercial use.

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Don't expect any of the Artemis II moon astronauts to fly again soon.

On Tuesday (Oct. 13), NASA announced that Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch will become the agency’s acting deputy chief engineer, effective Nov. 1.

"With this appointment, Koch will transition to management astronaut status and will no longer be eligible for future spaceflight assignments," NASA officials wrote in a statement on Tuesday.

Her three Artemis II crewmates had already shared their next moves, none of which put another spaceflight in play in the near future.

Mission commander Reid Wiseman and pilot Victor Glover, both of NASA, became "emeritus" astronauts last month, a role that seems to include planning, advising and mentoring duties but no flights into the final frontier. Glover will also work full-time at his alma mater, the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo.

"I'm grateful they will continue sharing what they learned with our astronauts, flight controllers and engineers as we prepare for Artemis III in 2027 and the missions that follow," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said of Wiseman and Glover in a Sept. 9 statement.

The fourth Artemis II astronaut, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, announced a change of his own in July: He planned to become a reservist in the Royal Canadian Air Force, where he's also a colonel. That move became official last month as well.

Artemis II sent the four astronauts on a 10-day trip around the moon in an Orion capsule. It was the first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis program and the first human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) since Apollo 17 in 1972.

As Isaacman mentioned, the next mission in the program is Artemis III, a docking test in LEO scheduled to launch next year. The Artemis III crew, which was announced in June, consists of NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik (commander), Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio (mission specialists) and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency (pilot).

If all goes according to plan, Artemis IV will land astronauts near the moon's south pole in 2028. We don't yet know who will fly on that historic mission.

Koch will succeed current NASA Deputy Chief Engineer Katherine Van Hooser, who will retire on Oct. 21 after more than 35 years of work for the space agency.

"In her new role, Koch will help lead NASA's engineering community, supporting technical oversight, mission readiness, and engineering excellence across the agency's programs and projects," agency officials said in Tuesday's statement.

Koch is a natural choice for the job, given her education and experience. She holds bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and physics and a master's in electrical engineering, and she began her NASA career as an electrical engineer at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

NASA selected Koch as an astronaut candidate in 2013. She has two spaceflights under her belt: Artemis II and a 328-day-flight to the International Space Station that launched in March 2019. That's the longest space mission ever conducted by a woman, and it featured the first three all-female spacewalks, which Koch conducted with fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir.

"Christina has seen NASA engineering from both sides of the equation: developing complex systems on the ground and trusting them with her life in space," Isaacman said in the Tuesday statement.

"After spending nearly a year living and working aboard the International Space Station and helping lead America back around the moon on Artemis II this year, she brings an extraordinary combination of technical expertise, operational experience, and judgment to this role," he added. "I am excited to see the impact she will have across NASA as we return Americans to the lunar surface, build the Moon Base, get underway on nuclear power in space, and develop the capabilities that will ultimately take us on to Mars."

Did you see a gigantic, glowing jellyfish in the night sky early on Tuesday morning (Oct. 13)? If so, it's not an alien invasion (sorry); it was SpaceX launching its latest mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

What is it?

Just before dawn on Tuesday (Oct. 13), a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying to space a robotic Dragon capsule filled with thousands of pounds of cargo.

The liftoff kicked off CRS-35, the 35th mission that SpaceX is flying to the ISS as part of the company's Commercial Resupply Services agreement with NASA. Under the CRS contract, SpaceX has been sending cargo including medical supplies, food, clothing, scientific experiments and more to the space station.

It will take Dragon a couple of days to reach the orbiting lab. If all goes to plan, the capsule will autonomously dock with the ISS' Harmony module around 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) on Thursday (Oct. 15).

Why is it incredible?

Imagine you wake up early in the morning. Perhaps you're rushing to get ready for work, or maybe you're just having a quiet moment with your coffee in the pre-dawn twilight. Then imagine you look out the window and see what looks like a gigantic, glowing jellyfish made up of orange and blue light and gas stretching across much of the slowly brightening sky.

If you're not expecting such a sight, or it's your first time seeing the remnants of a rocket launch, this would probably catch you off-guard. But don't worry; there isn't anything dangerous about this sight.

This "jellyfish" is created by the water vapor and carbon dioxide that are expelled by the rocket after takeoff. In the cold upper skies, those gases start to freeze into ice crystals, flowing off of and behind the rocket. If a launch occurs around dusk or dawn, sunlight hits this flowing plume of frozen gases while the ground and skies remain mostly dark, resulting in a uniquely spectacular (albeit, unusual) view.

Nearly three months after surviving its launch to space and a tumultuous trial at sea, the first Starship spacecraft to survive its ocean splashdown has returned to Starbase.

SpaceX shared new photos and video of Ship 40, the Starship upper stage that launched on the developing vehicle's 13th flight test, as it completed the final stretch of its journey back to the company's South Texas facility. Now, the towering spacecraft is upright inside Starbase's Megabay hangar alongside a trio of its successor spacecraft, themselves bound for space, but not before an evaluation of Ship 40 can lend SpaceX engineers some valuable insights.

Ship 40 is the first Starship upper stage to return to its launch site after flying in space, offering SpaceX engineers an unprecedented opportunity to study hardware that survived the intense conditions of atmospheric reentry. "It will provide first-of-its-kind data on a flown Starship heatshield, Raptor engines, avionics, and more," SpaceX wrote in a post on X Oct. 13.

The spacecraft launched atop SpaceX's Super Heavy Booster 20 on July 24, and completed a suborbital flight that ended with a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Unlike previous Ship splashdowns, though, which have exploded after tipping over into the water, Ship 40 remained largely intact and afloat.

That unexpected survival prompted SpaceX to engage in an ambitious recovery effort that included towing the 171-foot (52 meter) stage though rough seas over the course of 24 days. At the time, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk expressed doubts that the company's recovery efforts would be successful. Despite the challenging conditions, Ship arrived off the shores of Australia's Christmas Island in August.

Once in the calmer Christmas waters, SpaceX engineers took time to perform a vehicle inspection and collect a number of heat shield samples from the spacecraft's belly. From there, Ship 40 was loaded onto "Forte," a massive, semi-submersible transport ship for the long seaward journey back to Texas.

Forte arrived at the Port of Brownsville on Oct. 7, wrapping up the longest stretch of Ship 40's return nearly two months after its liftoff. The spacecraft was subsequently transported over land back to Starbase and positioned for reorientation outside the Megabay. It has since been lifted to a vertical position and moved inside the bay alongside three other Ship upper stages still under assembly.

While SpaceX has successfully recovered a trio of Super Heavy boosters using the mechanical arms of its Starbase launch tower, the company has yet to return a Starship upper stage to its launch site under its own power. The return of Ship 40 will give SpaceX engineers the opportunity to study the vehicle from top to bottom as they fine-tune the systems needed to do just that. Its return marks a milestone in SpaceX's efforts to develop Starship as a rapidly reusable launch vehicle, with lessons from the recovered spacecraft potentially informing future vehicle designs and recovery operations.

Ship 40's immediate successor, Ship 41, launched on Flight 14 before 40's return to Starbase. Although 41 didn't survive its splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, the mission marked Starship's first orbital flight, and included the successful deployment of 26 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites.

Musk has said Starship's next launch, Flight 15, could feature the first attempt to catch the Ship upper stage using the same chopstick-like arms on the vehicle's launch tower, provided the spacecraft meets the necessary conditions for a safe return. SpaceX has not announced an official launch date for Starship's next flight, but, based on the testing progress of the Ship and Super Heavy in line for the mission, it is likely to fly within the next month or so.

NASA's DART mission made a cosmic mess four years ago — and now a new spacecraft is ready to scout out exactly what the first-of-its-kind collision accomplished.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft slammed into a small space rock called Dimorphos on Sept. 26, 2022, in humanity's first test of planetary defense. That's the field dedicated to protecting Earth from the possibility of a calamitous asteroid impact, and DART mimicked how humans could change the orbit of a threatening space rock, taking it off its collision course.

The mission definitely succeeded, shortening the little asteroid's orbit around a larger rock called Didymos by about 33 minutes. But in order to make the most of the experiment, scientists ensured a second spacecraft would follow DART at a more leisurely pace. That decision will pay off this month with the arrival of a European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft dubbed Hera, which launched in October 2024, two years after DART's impact.

"Hera wants to be the detective, like Inspector Colombo, going back to the crash scene," said Patrick Michel, a planetary scientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and principal investigator of the Hera mission.

Scientists have been able to do limited monitoring of the Didymos system over the years with telescopes both on the ground and in space. That's how they calculated the basic change to the orbit, and they've built a basic sketch of what happened.

"We know that there was a lot of material kicked up," said Angela Stickle, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory affiliated with both missions. "We know that we probably left a pretty significant mark on Dimorphos."

But the story isn't over and scientists are far from satisfied. No one knows how big a crater the impact left, or whether it completely rearranged all the asteroid's boulders. There are hints Dimorphos is now tumbling, and material may have moved between it and the larger Didymos.

Even the change to the orbit is complicated, said Cristina Thomas, a planetary astronomer at Northern Arizona University affiliated with both missions: The time Dimorphos took to circle Didymos was still changing some six months after impact, for reasons that aren't clear. "This thing that we thought was going to be very cut and dry turned out to be really interesting and complicated," Thomas said.

That's where Hera comes in, with its first arrival maneuver scheduled for Oct. 15. During three careful braking maneuvers, the spacecraft will slow down and approach the space rocks. Assuming everything goes smoothly, by early November, the spacecraft will come within 20 miles (30 kilometers) of the two rocks and begin its early science observations, then move even closer in early December.

Mission personnel can't wait for their first glimpses of Dimorphos — the first time scientists will visit someplace they've seen before without knowing what they'll find. "For us, it's like a new world," Michel said. "The new image won't have anything to do with the previous one, so that's really exciting."

In addition to mapping the two asteroids and seeing what kind of crater the impact left, scientists will also have their eyes peeled for any pieces of the DART spacecraft, although they don't expect to find anything. "We were coming in really fast, so typically, the whole spacecraft you would expect to just kind of shatter or melt," Stickle said. The only sliver of possibility is that part of the two long solar panels stretching off the spacecraft may have snapped off and survived. (The appendages may also have turned the crater shape into an oval.)

In January, once Hera has settled in, it will release two tiny companions that have piggybacked out to Dimorphos. One, called Milani, will identify the composition of materials on and around Dimorphos. The other, Juventas, will use radar to peer inside Dimorphos — the first time scientists have ever been able to study the interior of a space rock directly. Juventas will end its mission by landing on the small asteroid, and Milani may attempt a landing as well.

The trio of spacecraft will operate in tandem throughout early 2027, and the main spacecraft will operate at least through September 2027. All told, they will give scientists an unprecedented look at the pair of asteroids — the first binary asteroid a spacecraft has ever studied in detail. And the Didymos–Dimorphos duo is a good one to visit first. "It's very ordinary, and I mean that in the best possible way," Thomas said.

Ordinary except, of course, for that time humans punched it, opening the door for the Hera mission to explore the previously unremarkable rocks. And finally, that moment is just around the corner.

"Nothing really worries me," Michel said of the spacecraft's arrival. "It's really just excitement now."

On Oct. 13, 1773, a French astronomer named Charles Messier discovered the "Whirlpool Galaxy," also known as Messier 51, or M51.

Charles Messier was scanning the sky for objects that could confuse comet hunters when he catalogued the galaxy as M51. However, Messier wasn't able to see the spiral structure, and he didn't identify it as a galaxy.

Seventy-two years later, another astronomer named William Parsons saw the whirlpool shape, but he thought it was a spiral nebula. Eventually, Edwin Hubble found out that M51 and other features like it were actually galaxies.

Why it mattered

The Whirlpool Galaxy is located about 31 million light-years from Earth and just might be the textbook case of a spiral galaxy. But in 1773, it was just one of 51 (at the time of its discovery) of "comet-like 'objects to avoid'" in the night sky.

The Whirlpool Galaxy's designation as M51 marks it as the 51st non-comet object catalogued by Messier, who was the chief astronomer of the Marine Observatory in Paris dedicated to studying comets. According to a NASA account, Messier stumbled across his first non-comet object, M1 (also known as the Crab Nebula), while studying a comet in 1758. The objects looked like fuzzy blobs like comets, but didn't move like a comet. By 1773, at the time he first spotted M51, he had catalogued over four dozen such objects to help prevent astronomers from mistaking them for comets.

The Whirlpool Galaxy appears as a dazzling spiral in images by the Hubble Space Telescope, and has a magnitude of 8.4 on the brightness scale used by astronomers. That means it can be observed through a small telescope ("most easily during May," NASA says) in the constellation Venatici (the Hunting Dogs) in the northern sky, just below the handle of the Big Dipper star pattern.

Scientists suspsect the Whirpool Galaxy gets is striking spiral shape from a close interaction with its neighbor galaxy NGC 5195, which may have passed through M51's main disk about 500 million years ago, scientists with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have said.

"This gravitational tug of war may also have triggered an increased level of star formation in M51," they added in a statement. "The companion galaxy's pull would be inducing extra starbirth by compressing gas, jump-starting the process by which stars form."

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Rockets are launching to space on a near-daily basis these days, but short of livestreaming a liftoff from the comfort of your Wi-Fi router, relatively few spectators are in the right place and time to see one with their own eyes.

That wasn't the case Tuesday morning (Oct. 13), when SpaceX launched the CRS-35 mission for NASA. A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 6:35 a.m. EDT (1035 GMT), carrying a cargo variant of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft on the company's 35th commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Following the northward path of the space station's orbit at the time, the rocket flew a trajectory along the United States' East Coast.

Falcon 9's expanding engine plume grew substantially wider than the rocket itself as it climbed in altitude into thinner, less dense air, and was illuminated by the early dawn light, making the sight visible to millions. "You can imagine my surprise when I opened my back door to let the dogs out this morning," Ellen Alence told Space.com. She snapped a pic of the rocket from her farm Colbert, Georgia.

"Many of you are talking about the 'space jellyfish' following this morning's launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida," NASA's Kennedy Space Center wrote in a post on X. The post explains the "jellyfish" phenomenon that is sometimes visible during dawn and dusk launches, and included additional photos of the launch.

"A jellyfish happens near sunrise or sunset when the exhaust plume from the rocket becomes brightly illuminated, creating a glowing shape resembling a jellyfish," the post said.

Further up the coast, Richard Mack Wilson-Leigh spotted the flight from Durham, North Carolina. His view of the rocket came just seconds before the vehicle's stage separation, which was followed immediately by the rocket's main booster performing an engine burn to right its trajectory for landing back at the Cape. Wilson-Leigh said that part caught him off guard more than the initial site of the rocket. "I thought it blew up at first," he jokingly told Space.com.

"At first, I thought it was a comet," Wilson-Leigh said. "My mind jumped between two thoughts: that is just beautiful beyond belief, and it is the end of the world.”

That stage separation came about 2.5 minutes after liftoff, and put on a dazzling display for those awake to see it this morning. As Falcon 9's booster began the journey to its landing zone, the rocket's second stage continued onward to orbit with Dragon and the capsule's 6,300 pounds (2,860 kilograms) of cargo for the ISS.

The spacecraft will spend roughly two days catching up to the ISS, where a recent personnel rotation swapped the astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission with those of Crew-13. The latter arrived aboard the orbital laboratory Oct. 1, which was followed several days later by the return of Crew-12 to Earth on Oct. 8.

The Dragon carrying the contents of CRS-35's manifest will arrive at the station Thursday morning (Oct. 15), and will autonomously dock to the space-facing port of the Harmony module at around 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT). Coverage of the arrival here at Space.com beginning at 9:15 a.m. EDT (1315 GMT).

Reentry and orbital-manufacturing provider Varda Space Industries is operating two spacecraft in orbit right now, with another expected to launch "in the coming days" and seven more next year.

The Los Angeles-area startup, which bills itself as one of just two companies that can currently do commercial reentry from space, successfully launched its latest two refrigerator-sized spacecraft aboard SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare mission on Oct. 1.

"It's humanity's first time launching multiple commercial reentry vehicles simultaneously," Varda CEO Will Bruey told Space.com on Tuesday (Oct. 7) of the Transporter-18 launch.

The payloads on the Transporter-18 Varda craft ranged from pharmaceuticals to demo navigation systems to exterior thermal-protection materials. The company bills its spacecraft as mini-factories, which can host the orbital production of valuable goods such as pharmaceuticals and then bring them safely down to Earth.

Another Varda vehicle is scheduled to follow them into space later this month. Assuming the third spacecraft launches nominally, all three will come down before Christmas in the Koonibba Test Range in the South Australian Outback, through coordination with Varda's long-time space-mission service provider, Southern Launch. And things are scheduled to ramp up quickly: Varda aims to fly seven more missions in 2027: two in Quarter 1 (Q1), two in Q2 and three in Q3 (the latter three being all on the same rocket).

"As we scale up, we care about our ability to fly and fly regularly," Bruey said, emphasizing that the company is now treating its missions less as one-offs and more as a series. "It is, first and foremost, taking that unique [spacecraft] technology and moving into a fleet mentality, rather than a space mission mentality."

Like any startup finding its footing, Varda's challenges in the coming months will be scaling safely and efficiently. But the company says it is well-capitalized to do so, and has a big hiring campaign underway. It also has been spending money on slight upgrades and improvements to its vehicles, as well as mission operations and other infrastructure to run several missions at the same time, with more funds having just arrived.

In September, Varda announced it had raised $251 million in "Series D" investment funding and will be hiring 100 people by the end of 2027, boosting its current 286-employee base by more than a third. Most of the employees work out of El Segundo, California, with a few in sales offices in Washington, D.C. and Huntsville, Alabama (where U.S. Space Command is gradually moving, along with some defense contractors, from Colorado Springs).

In the further future, Bruey said, the goal is to fly Varda vehicles into space daily, using a "standardized product" that would be put together on an assembly line. But to get to that point, like other companies in the industry, Varda will need to get through an anticipated rocket shortage beginning in about 2029.

SpaceX is by far the most active launcher these days, and it has been the dominant provider for companies like Varda via its Transporter and Bandwagon rideshare programs. But SpaceX is readying to retire its Falcon 9 rocket as it transitions more resources into Starship, the fully reusable megarocket the company sees as its workhorse of the future. Media reports suggest that SpaceX is pretty much out of capacity for Falcon 9 rockets flying through the end of service in 2028 or 2029, although slots are still available through third-party bookers.

There are a slew of newer rockets under production (such as Blue Origin's New Glenn and Relativity Space's Terran R), though they are far less mature and in some cases, even unflown. This is creating uncertainty about how much capacity there will be in the industry in the short term, but Varda said it is planning well ahead for that moment — and so too are its customers.

"We're stacked with launches from now through that 2029 time frame," Bruey said. The company's current generation of vehicles is "launch-agnostic," although the next generation is aiming to be even more so to nab opportunities from small rockets up to Starship.

The company said that, as long as Varda and its customers have access to microgravity, the shipping methodology — much like shipping on Earth — should not matter, and Varda aims to make the experience that seamless for its customers. But in the meantime, the company says it will fly as much as possible and (like everyone else) do what it can to secure slots on launching rockets after Falcon 9 retires.

In a milestone achievement, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has broken the record for most miles driven on a world beyond Earth.

On Oct. 11, Perseverance hit 28.10 miles (45.22 kilometers) traveled on Mars, breaking the record previously held by NASA's Opportunity rover which went 28.06 miles (45.16 km). It took Oppy 14 years to cover all that ground; Perseverance, by contrast, has been on Mars for just 5.5 years.

The new record is far from the end of Perseverance's journey, however; the mission team thinks the rover could eventually more than double the distance it's already traveled.

"Our original design was only planned to last for [about] 20 kilometers of driving," Mark Maimone, a rover driver at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, told Space.com.

"We've more than doubled that already … and we're looking really good to go for up to 100 kilometers total," added Maimone, who works as a designated principal in autonomous planetary rover navigation on Perseverance and helped to develop the autonomous driving systems on NASA's previous Mars rovers.

"So we could double what we've done so far," he said. "And we have great expectations that [Perseverance] can continue its mission of exploring and collecting really useful and beneficial samples that will tell us so much more about the history of Mars."

Indeed, Perseverance remains in great shape, mission team members stressed.

"We are very fortunate that all of Perseverance's original capabilities are more or less intact, especially for the science instruments," JPL's Vivian Sun, the mission's deputy project scientist, told Space.com.

Perseverance landed on the floor of Mars' 28-mile-wide (46 km) Jezero Crater in February 2021. It was far from the first robot to traverse the planet's surface; the Perseverance team built on years of experience with the Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers.

Through the triumphs and missteps of these previous craft, NASA learned how to better explore another planet with a rover operated from millions of miles away. Perseverance saw massive improvements made to everything from its specialty wheels to its autonomous driving system and onboard tools and instruments.

This "could not have been done without the previous missions that we've sent to Mars," Sun said.

"Five years later [after landing], we're definitely a very well oiled machine," she added. "There's a lot of technical advancements on Perseverance that are the result of many people, many engineers, working on this new technology year after year for decades now."

And, according to both Sun and Maimone, this teamwork is the real secret behind Perseverance's endurance and success.

"The magic sauce for our operations team is how cohesively we work together," Sun said. The engineers, rover drivers and science team all work together and keep each other's work in mind as they make decisions on everything from driving speed to science targets, she added.

"I'm just super appreciative of all the people that have and still work on the mission. They're really what makes the mission special," Sun said.

What's next for Perseverance

As the team mentioned, Perseverance is nowhere near done on Mars. The rover could keep driving for many more miles on the Red Planet, and the scientists and engineers at NASA have big plans and high hopes for its future.

"We are currently planning to continue down south on the crater rim," Sun said. "There's a whole diversity of different rocks along this crater rim going south that we want to investigate and figure out how it indicates conditions from early Mars."

Jezero is a giant crater created by an impact from an asteroid or comet billions of years ago. Perseverance's work has shown that Jezero hosted a lake for long stretches billions of years ago. Scientists are therefore eager to continue exploring the site, searching for clues about what the planet looked like in the ancient past, and if it could have possibly hosted life.

"There are huge chunks of pre-Jezero crust that were embedded in the stratigraphy or got thrown up by the impact, and they're now incorporated onto the crater rim," Sun said. "These are our chance to probe like really old rocks that don't really exist in any other form on the surface anymore."

As part of Perseverance's next steps south on the crater rim, the team is heading toward an area called "Rainbow Falls."

Sun said that the Rainbow Falls area is thought to have kaolinite, a clay mineral that forms when water interacts with rock. By studying these types of minerals, mission scientists might be able to get a better idea of the conditions on Mars all of those billions of years ago, when water filled Jezero Crater.

"Whenever we are looking at clay minerals, I think the question of habitability and the search for potential biosignatures is always on the table," Sun said. "So that is very much the case when we get to Rainbow Falls, or even when we see kaolinite."

SpaceX just broke an uncharacteristically long Starlink launch drought.

The company sent 27 of its Starlink internet satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO) today (Oct. 12), launching them atop a Falcon 9 rocket from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base at 8:28 p.m. EDT (5:28 p.m. local time; 0028 GMT on Oct. 13)

It was the first Starlink mission for a Falcon 9 since Sept. 19, which was another 27-satellite liftoff from Vandenberg. For some perspective on this recent gap: Between Aug. 19 and Sept. 6, a span of 19 days, SpaceX launched seven Starlink missions with Falcon 9s.

SpaceX did loft a batch of Starlinks after that, but it wasn't aboard a Falcon 9. The company's Starship megarocket carried 26 next-gen Starlink V3 craft on its 14th test flight, which took place on Sept. 28.

Starship reached orbit for the first time ever on Flight 14, and it deployed the Starlinks successfully as well. This will happen many more times going forward, if all goes to plan: The Starlink V3 constellation will eventually consist of about 100,000 satellites, all of which will fly on Starship, Elon Musk has said.

Indeed, SpaceX plans to sunset the Falcon 9 and its cousin, the Falcon Heavy, in the next few years, shifting their duties over to the fully reusable, far more powerful Starship, which remains in the test-flight phase.

That shift will be a big one for the spaceflight community, for the Falcon 9 is the workhorse rocket of its generation. In 2025, for example, it flew 165 times — roughly the same number as the rest of the world's orbital launchers combined. Nearly three-quarters of those Falcon 9 launches were Starlink missions.

Things have slowed down a bit in 2026. Today's flight was the 112th Falcon 9 liftoff of the year, and the 82nd in service of the Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of more than 11,100 active satellites.

All went according to plan on today's launch. The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth as planned, touching down about 8.5 minutes after launch on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You," which was stationed in the Pacific Ocean. It was the 20th launch and landing for this particular booster, which is designated B1088.

The rocket's expendable upper stage, meanwhile, delivered the 27 spacecraft to LEO, deploying them there 62 minutes after liftoff, SpaceX announced via X.

SpaceX launched its latest cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday morning (Oct. 13).

A Falcon 9 rocket launched a robotic Dragon capsule to the orbiting lab from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Tuesday at 6:35 a.m. EDT (1035 GMT).

The launch kicks off the CRS-35 mission, so named because it will be the 35th that SpaceX flies under a Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.

If all goes according to plan, Dragon will reach the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday (Oct. 15), docking autonomously to the space-facing port of its Harmony module at around 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT). You can watch the arrival here at Space.com as well; coverage will start at 9:15 a.m. EDT (1315 GMT).

CRS-35 will deliver 6,300 pounds (2,860 kilograms) of supplies to the astronauts aboard the orbiting lab, including the final set of International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays (iROSAs), which will boost the orbiting lab's energy budget.

There's also quite a bit of scientific gear heading up on the flight.

Dragon "will deliver hardware to manufacture artificial retinas in microgravity to help restore vision on Earth and 3D heart tissue models to advance large‑scale drug testing on future missions," NASA officials wrote in a CRS-35 launch preview on Oct. 7.

"The spacecraft will carry materials to study how a new type of glass forms in microgravity and brain organoids that could reveal treatment targets for neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis," they added.

Dragon will stay attached to the ISS for about a month, then head back down to Earth with scientific experiments and other hardware. It will splash down safely under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast.

SpaceX's Dragon is the only currently operational freighter that can carry cargo in the downward direction. The other three — Russia's Progress, Japan's HTV-X and Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL — are all expendable, burning up in Earth's atmosphere after their time at the ISS is done.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 6:59 a.m. EDT on Oct. 13 with news of a successful launch.

On Oct. 12, 1964, the Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1, a 24-hour crewed mission that achieved several "firsts" for human spaceflight. This was the first time that a spacecraft carried more than one person into orbit, with three cosmonauts packed inside the spacecraft.

Only two cosmonauts were originally supposed to fly on this mission, but Soviet politicians pressured the Russian space program to add one more. This left no room for spacesuits on board, so this also became the first spaceflight without spacesuits.

Two of the crewmembers, an engineer and a doctor, became the first civilians to go to space.

Why it mattered

Voskhod 1 served as yet another first for the Soviet Union during a space race kicked off by the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957 and followed up by the first human spaceflight with Yuri Gagarin in 1961. And while the United States did follow up with its one human spaceflights, until Oct. 12, 1964, every mission had one person on board.

That changed with Voskhod 1, which crammed three man into a spacecraft not much larger than the Soviet Union's one-person Vostok spacecraft. At the time, NASA was develoing the two-person Gemini spacecraft, which prompted the Soviet Union's then leader to push for an edge.

"Soviet leader [Nikita] Khrushchev contacted Korolev and ordered him to convert the Vostok spacecraft into a vehicle capable of carrying not two, but three cosmonauts," according to space historian Asif Siddiqi, referring to Sergei Korolev, chief designer of the Soviet space program.

In order to fit a three people inside, the Voskhod 1 cosmonauts - commander Vladimir Komarov and his crew Konstantin Feoktistov and Boris Yegorov - did not wear spacesuits traditionally used for launch and landing, adding substantial risk to the flight. They also stayed inside their spacecraft when it landed, unlike Vostok crews like Gagarin, who parachuted out of them after reentry.

The Voskhod 1 mission lasted just over 24 hours, during which its crew performed experimented with the behavior of liquids and gases in microgravity and photographed the Earth.

NASA's first multi-crew mission, Gemini 3, would launch about six month later on March 23, 1965.

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On. Oct. 11, 1968, Apollo 7 launched into space with NASA astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham. This was the first mission of the Apollo program that carried a crew into space.

Apollo 7 rebooted the Apollo program after a fire killed three astronauts during a launch rehearsal 20 months earlier.

NASA needed to prove that their Apollo spacecraft worked with this mission, which was really more of a test flight. Though the spacecraft seemed to work alright, the crew got a little snippy during their 11 days in space. First they suffered from motion sickness after launch, then Schirra came down with a cold, and the crew was constantly arguing with mission control and each other. None of the Apollo 7 astronauts went back to space after that.

Why it mattered

Had Apollo 7 not succeeded, the chances of NASA being able to fulfill President John F. Kennedy's 1961 goal, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth" would be called into question — not just because the clock was ticking down, but because of increasing political pressure to shut down the expensive moon program.

In the wake of the January 1967 Apollo 1 fire, NASA and North American Aviation, the prime contractor for the Apollo command module, needed to overhaul the spacecraft to make it safe for crews to fly in space. Apollo 7 provided a "shakedown cruise" for the vehicle, to confirm the fixes worked and that the command module was space worthy.

"In its day, the Apollo command module was the most complex machine ever built by man to be operated by man," said Walt Cunningham, Apollo 7 pilot, on the 40th anniversary of the flight in 2008. "We launched on the longest and most ambitious engineering test flight in history, testing the spacecraft systems, verifying the operating procedures, checking out the worldwide tracking network, and that's not to mention testing our crew."

Apollo 7 was deemed by NASA to a 101% success, setting up the first lunar landing in July 1969.

"All of us in the flights that followed were dependent on the Apollo 7 crew doing their job," said Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 commander. "So thanks Walt and Wally and Donn."

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On Oct. 10, 1967, the international Outer Space Treaty was ratified. This treaty established a set of rules regulating how different countries can explore and use outer space.

Specifically, it says "the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind."

The treaty dictates that no one can claim territory in outer space and that other celestial bodies must be used "exclusively for peaceful purposes." More than 100 countries have ratified the treaty today.

Why it mattered

Considered the "cornerstone" for modern space law, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 (formally, the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies) has provided more than a theoretical framework for future activities, but has been put to use and enforced for modern spaceflight activities.

The treaty's primary focus is on the peaceful use of space.

"First, it contains an undertaking not to place in orbit around the Earth, install on the moon or any other celestial body, or otherwise station in outer space, nuclear or any other weapons of mass destruction. Second, it limits the use of the moon and other celestial bodies exclusively to peaceful purposes and expressly prohibits their use for establishing military bases, installation, or fortifications; testing weapons of any kind; or conducting military maneuvers," reads a summary prepared by the U.S. State Department.

Beyond that, the treaty addresses the ownership of spacecraft and satellites, whether they are in space, on the surface of another celestial body or on Earth; lays the foundation for restrictions on off-Earth property rights; and calls for parties to the treaty to provide aide when needed to astronauts, whether they are in space or encounter problems during their landings.

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SpaceX just sent another batch of satellites to orbit for the U.S. military.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today (Oct. 10) at 3:39 a.m. EDT (0739 GMT; 12:39 a.m. local time), hauling 21 "data transport" satellites to orbit for the U.S. Space Force's Space Development Agency (SDA).

That was five days later than originally planned. SpaceX tried to launch the mission on Monday (Oct. 5), but the Falcon 9 aborted that attempt in the countdown's final minute, for reasons that the company has not disclosed.

Today's launch helps build out the SDA's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), which SpaceX describes as "a mesh network of optically connected satellites in low Earth orbit [LEO] that enable global military tactical communications and missile warning, indication and tracking capabilities."

The liftoff was the fourth of nine that SpaceX will conduct to help assemble the architecture's Tranche 1 — the "initial warfighting capability tranche," according to the SDA.

Tranche 1 will eventually consist of 154 operational satellites in LEO — 126 data-transport spacecraft and 28 missile-tracking vehicles. There will also be four missile-defense test satellites, which will sport a "higher fidelity" infrared sensor than their tracking counterparts, SDA officials wrote. (Missile-tracking satellites generally hunt for the heat signatures these weapons produce during flight).

Eighty-four of the 126 data-transport satellites have now launched to date, all of them on Falcon 9s, which lifted off from Vandenberg in September 2025, October 2025, July of this year and today.

And, as its name suggests, Tranche 1 will be just the beginning, if all goes according to plan.

"SDA leverages spiral development to deploy and proliferate new capability into a new generation of the PWSA every two years, called a 'tranche,' to continually increase capability used by the warfighter," SDA officials wrote in a Tranche 1 fact sheet.

Everything seemed to go well on today's launch. The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Vandenberg for a landing a little over seven minutes after liftoff. It was the sixth mission for this particular booster, which is designated 1103. Its most recent flight was the July Tranche 1 mission for the SDA.

SpaceX ended its webcast shortly after booster touchdown, at the request of the SDA, so we did not get to see satellite deployment. But that's the norm for national security launches.

The satellites were successfully deployed in their target orbit, according to an Oct. 10 announcement by their builder, aerospace giant Northrop Grumman. The 21 spacecraft "will provide secure, resilient, low-latency communications and data transport in low Earth orbit," helping to connect warfighters with missile-tracking satellites, the company wrote.

Today's mission was the 111th Falcon 9 flight of the year. The vast majority of these — more than 70% — have helped build out SpaceX's Starlink broadband megaconstellation, which currently consists of more than 11,000 satellites.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:45 p.m. ET on Oct. 10 with news of successful satellite deployment.

On Oct. 9, 1992, a space rock the size of a bowling ball fell out of space and crash landed on a woman's Chevy Malibu in Peekskill, New York.

Thousands of people along the U.S. East Coast witnessed the Peekskill meteorite blazing through the skies over Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania before it hit the parked car. Eighteen-year-old Michelle Knapp was sitting at home when she thought she heard a car crash outside.

When Knapp went to look, she found a hole in the trunk of her car and a smoking-hot meteorite beneath it. She had just bought the car for $300, and after it was damaged, she sold it for $10,000.

Why it mattered

Earth is no stranger to space rock impacts (farewell, dinosaurs), but it is pretty rare to see a meteorite fall as strange as the Peekskill meteorite car crash.

The meteor that ultimately led to the Peekskill meteorite was visible from Kentucky to New York, appearing as a "fragmenting fireball" at about 7:50 p.m EDT, according to the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute. The meteorite, which weighed 12.37 kilograms, crashed through the right rear edge of the trunk of Knapp's 1980 Chevrolet Malibu and left a dent in the driveway below.

The Peekskill meteorite fall captivated scientists and the public alike due to the high amount of film and photo coverage of its meteor descent.

"Video cameras trained on Friday night high-school football games turned skyward to capture the rocketing fireball. As a result, several scientific investigations were able to track the meteorite's flight path to Earth — including its orbit around the Sun," University of Alaska Fairbanks officials wrote.

Because of such a prolific amount of film coverage, which stretched from West Virginia to New York, scientists were able to calculate the meteor's flight path before impact. It crashed into the car at a speed of about 179 mph, they said.

"This is only the fourth recovered meteorite for which detailed data exist on its trajectory," the University of Alaska Fairbanks officials wrote.

A slice of the Peekskill meteorite sold for $4,375 in a Christies auction in 2021. You can see a large piece of the meteorite on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City today. Even Knapp's car has its own website, and is sometimes put on display.

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Military officials in the U.S. and other nations have increasingly warned about the potential for conflict in space in the coming years. While many would perceive the current push to militarize space as a concern primarily for modern military thinkers, there is a far deeper — and at times, a surprising — history of warfare technologies developed for use in outer space.

At the height of the Cold War, one particularly unusual early application for space warfare was pursued by the Soviet Union, which involved mounting a rapid-fire cannon aboard a secret military space station. The weapon was reportedly developed for the Soviet-era Almaz military space station program, an ambitious Cold War-era initiative that sought to leverage cutting-edge orbital technologies of the day to enhance Moscow's military reconnaissance capabilities.

At the time, Soviet officials were concerned that the United States was already developing spacecraft that could approach, investigate, and either capture or disable Moscow's sensitive satellites. The natural response to such concerns was to develop defense systems capable of neutralizing such threats — and the result became legendary in some circles as one of the strangest weapons of the Space Race. But was this Soviet "space cannon" ever successfully fired in orbit?

What do we know?

Images of a Cold War oddity come to light

The short answer is yes, according to historian Anatoly Zak, who manages the long-running site Russian Space Web, an online hub for information about orbital pursuits in the USSR.

However, for many years, the appearance of the mysterious orbital cannon remained shrouded in mystery. In an email, Zak told Space that while the existence of this curious weapon of yesteryear had been known for decades, it was not until images were broadcast by the Russian military television program "Voennaya Priemka" that he was able to reassemble the most complete picture of how the weapon actually looked.

"This particular cannon was known since the 1990s, but that propaganda show of the Russian military TV channel showed the hardware from different directions," Zak said.

After examining this rare historical imagery, Zak said it enabled him "to build a detailed 3D reconstruction."

"This is a pretty routine method for historians and I've been doing it for more than two decades," Zak said, and images of his reconstruction, along with details about the cannon and its history, can be seen on his website.

The secret history of the Soviet Union's "space cannon"

Originally developed under weapons designer Aleksandr Nudelman for the Moscow-based KB Tochmash design bureau, inspiration for the space cannon came from aircraft gun technology designed by Aron Rikhter, builder of the famous Rikhter R-23. This gas-operated revolver automatic cannon was first developed by Rikhter in the 1950s, and adapting the weapon to the unusual demands of orbital combat led to the development of what is sometimes identified as the R-23M Kartech.

Details about the precise specifications of this orbital variant of Rikhter's famous weapon vary. In some historical accounts, the weapon is described as a modified 23-millimeter cannon, although according to Zak, it was a 14.5-millimeter cannon developed by Nudelman and his team. Estimates for its firing rate vary anywhere from 950 to several thousand rounds per minute, with some sources claiming the weapon could fire shells at a velocity of 1,500 miles per hour.

Engineers who worked with the Almaz project later claimed that during ground tests, Nudelman's orbital version of the famous Rikhter autocannon successfully pierced a metal target (a gasoline canister was reportedly used for this) from a mile away — a clear demonstration of the weapon's capabilities.

Firing an autocannon in orbit

Despite the successful ground tests, taking technology like this to orbit presented unique new problems for the Almaz project team.

As opposed to mounting the weapon on a turret, it was reportedly attached directly to the Almaz station itself. In this way, cosmonauts were able to use an optical sight for aiming, although this also required the entire 20-ton space station to be oriented toward the intended target—in essence, the entire station served as a massive orbital gun mount.

The Almaz program was concealed behind the Soviet Union's more widely known Salyut space station program. Although presented publicly as civilian technologies, some of the Salyut spacecraft were secretly developed and deployed as reconnaissance platforms equipped with state-of-the-art cameras and other intelligence collection utilities. In 1974, it was aboard one of these "civilian" spacecraft — Salyut 3 — that the cannon was carried to orbit.

Based on the available historical information, the weapon is believed to have only been fired in space on one occasion, which took place on Jan. 24, 1975. At this time, Salyut 3's crew had already returned to Earth, and the station was scheduled for deliberate deorbiting within hours of the planned test of the weapon.

One obvious reason for this had been that officials weren't entirely certain what the effects of firing the cannon might be on the spacecraft, such as the weapon's recoil on the station while fired in a microgravity environment. To overcome this, the station's maneuvering thrusters were reportedly fired at the time the weapon was fired in order to overcome problems resulting from recoil.

Here again, accounts differ, although an estimated 20 rounds were fired during the test, either at once or in a series of bursts. Each of the projectiles subsequently entered Earth's atmosphere and is believed to have burned up during reentry.

What remains unknown?

Today, it remains unclear what, if anything, the Soviet engineers learned during these tests. No detailed results of the experiment were ever released — at least not publicly.

Altogether, it seems likely that Soviet officials considered the weapon impractical, and plans for later Soviet space stations reportedly looked at the use of interceptor missiles as their primary means of defense.

Meanwhile, the Soviet military was steadily embracing more efficient orbital technologies: uncrewed reconnaissance satellites. The appeal of using low-cost satellites for reconnaissance won out in the end, and an upgraded version of the Almaz station, which had initially been slated for launch later that decade, never made its way to orbit.

The mystery continues

Arguably, the story represents one of the more unusual chapters in Cold War military experimentation, and while many details remain obscured in the shadows of Cold War-era Soviet history, enough is known today to confirm that the Almaz project's tests represent the only known case where a conventional firearm was deliberately fired in orbit.

The world's richest man just got some more hardware for his trophy room.

During a ceremony at the White House on Thursday (Oct. 8), President Donald Trump gave SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk the National Medal of Science, the highest honor the U.S. can bestow on a scientist or engineer.

Musk was recognized "for engineering achievements of extraordinary ambition and scale that have pushed the frontiers of space exploration, intelligence systems, communications and beyond, renewing American technological leadership and opening a new chapter in American manufacturing," an announcer said during the ceremony.

A little bit more about those achievements and that ambition: Musk also leads the electric carmaker Tesla and owns the social media platform X. And he founded the Boring Company, which is drilling tunnels beneath cities to potentially ease traffic congestion; Neuralink, which builds implantable brain-computer interfaces; and xAI, which makes the chatbot Grok, among other things.

Musk wasn't today's only honoree. Trump also handed out science medals to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Lisa Su, CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, a leading semiconductor designer.

The president also awarded the slightly different National Medal of Technology and Innovation to two other tech CEOs — Michael Dell of Dell Technologies and Microsoft's Satya Nadella for contributions in their fields.

Congress established the National Medal of Science in 1959. Honorees are chosen for their "outstanding contributions to knowledge in the physical, biological, mathematical, engineering or social and behavioral sciences, in service to the nation," according to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).

"These broad areas include such disciplines as astronomy, chemistry, computer and information science and engineering, geoscience, materials research, and research on STEM education," NSF officials added.

The first National Medal of Science was awarded in 1963, to Theodore von Kármán, a mathematician, physicist and aerospace engineer who worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. He was a pioneer of the early space age; the widely recognized, 62-mile-high (100 kilometers) boundary where outer space begins is known as the Kármán line.

Before today, 529 people had received the medal, according to the NSF.

The National Medal of Technology and Innovation is a newer prize; Congress created it in 1980. There have been more than 240 laureates in the award's history.

Today did not mark Musk's introduction to the Trump administration. For example, in late 2024, the president tapped the tech billionaire to help lead the "Department of Government Efficiency," which aimed to slash regulations and costs across the federal government.

More recently, the Pentagon named Musk, former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey co-leaders of Project Meridian, a four-month study that aims to help the U.S. get ready for future wars.

Northrop Grumman's robotic Cygnus XL spacecraft departed the International Space Station today (Oct. 9) after a six-month stay.

Northrop Grumman's uncrewed Cygnus XL freighter was released by the station's huge Canadarm2 robotic arm today at 12:44 p.m. EDT (1644 GMT), while the duo flew 260 miles (418 kilometers) above the Pacific Ocean.

The departing vehicle is the second of Northrop Grumman's "Cygnus XL" line of freighters but the 24th Cygnus of any type to fly cargo to the orbiting lab. The company named it the S.S. Steven R. Nagel, after a NASA astronaut who flew four space shuttle missions in the 1980s and 1990s.

The S.S. Steven R. Nagel launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on April 11, carrying 11,000 pounds (4,990 kilograms) of science gear and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). It's carrying some stuff down as well — thousands of pounds of trash, which will burn up along with the Cygnus when it reenters Earth's atmosphere on Sunday (Oct. 11).

That's the usual fate for three of the four robotic ISS resupply vehicles in operation today — Cygnus XL, Russia's Progress and Japan's HTV-X. Only SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule is reusable; it wraps up its orbital flights with parachute-aided ocean splashdowns.

Cygnus XL is different than Dragon in another way as well: The Northrop Grumman vehicle does not dock to the ISS on its own. Rather, it's grappled by Canadarm2, which berths it to the station and moves it around in other ways as necessary.

During today's operation, which was commanded from the ground, Canadarm2 detached the S.S. Steven R. Nagel from the Earth-facing port of the ISS' Unity module and then maneuvered it into position for release at 12:45 p.m. NASA astronaut Luke Delaney monitored these activities from the ISS.

"We're just really excited to have had the S.S. Stephen R. Nagel on board, and all the science and research, critical hardware," Delaney said shortly after the Cygnus was released.

"Appreciate all the teams that came together to make this complex operation a success, from assembly, launching, docking and now the undock," he added. "Thanks for continuing to push the boundaries of human knowledge and experiments on board, to include the research during this deorbit phase. These true are the building blocks of the future of space exploration."

And about that deorbit science: The S.S. Stephen R. Nagel is carrying heat shield prototypes that will get a test during the freighter's fiery reentry.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 1 p.m. ET on Oct. 9 with news of the Cygnus XL's departure from the ISS.

Kellie Gerardi is preparing for her second spaceflight. And the secret tool up her sleeve? Motherhood.

Nearly three years ago, space researcher, online STEM creator and author Kellie Gerardi flew to suborbital space on a Virgin Galactic tourist flight. With this flight, she not only became a private astronaut, but one of the first 100 women to fly to space. Today, she's preparing to leave Earth once again with her second flight. And as Gerardi prepares to fly and conduct new research in microgravity, she sat down with Space.com to discuss space, motherhood and how much we have left to learn.

"I think motherhood eventually has to become a bigger part of the conversation if we're serious when we talk about humanity having a sustained presence beyond Earth," Gerardi told Space.com. "If we're talking about people living and working in space for longer periods, then reproductive health, pregnancy, postpartum physiology, childcare, and family life aren't just peripheral issues anymore."

Space and motherhood

Gerardi has been a serious player and public figure in the space industry for a number of years. From overseeing mission operations at Palantir Technologies to working as a payload specialist and bioastronautics researcher for the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS), she has been conducting experiments in microgravity and working across the industry for quite some time. And over the years, she has also developed an expansive online community with whom she shares STEM videos and content about her daily life.

But while Gerardi has posted a number of fun-loving videos with her two daughters, she doesn't just share the big wins and highlights. Across social media platforms, she has also been incredibly candid with the public about her struggles with motherhood, loss, infertility and IVF (in-vitro fertilization). Among her videos discussing her life as an astronaut and researcher, she has shared incredibly personal details, bringing the public along with her as she undergoes incredibly challenging moments.

"I just remember thinking about how so many of us navigate this entire fertility odyssey invisibly while handling their careers, their families, and everything else, and I just wanted to make that a little more visible and hopefully destigmatize the topic a little bit," Gerardi shared.

"Science teaches you that a disappointing result is information, not identity. You look at the data, change variables, adjust the protocol, and try again. That doesn't mean I was able to intellectualize my way out of grief, but I do feel like I was able to borrow a little bit of the same mindset when it came time to put one foot in front of the other again, and to try to look a bit more dispassionately at the odds and our options going forward," she added.

As Gerardi prepares to return to space with her second Virgin Galactic flight, she is part of the "Mom, and More" campaign from the brand Momcozy. The campaign, which also includes Olympian Allyson Felix and Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code, "celebrates the idea that motherhood can expand what's possible for us while still leaving room for all the other passions or ambitions that make us who we are," Gerardi said.

Preparing for the future of human spaceflight

Gerardi's candid videos about her struggles have also sparked a larger conversation about motherhood as well as space exploration, especially as we look to the future. Longer-term space travel will require serious conversations about motherhood, family and health. Whether it's a long-term mission to the moon or a lifelong mission to Mars, future women astronauts will have to consider everything from menstrual cycles (which astronauts today already handle), pregnancy, motherhood, menopause and other aspects of their health.

But even in the near future, there is so much we have yet to learn about the intersection between motherhood and human spaceflight. In fact, one research team planning to study menstruation in space will be the first to ever conduct a dedicated study on the subject.

"If we're serious about building a future where more people can live and work in space, then we'll need data that reflects a much broader range of human bodies and experiences," Gerardi said. "My own experiences in motherhood have made me even more interested in questions around women's health and reproductive health in particular. There's still so much we simply don't know yet, and there's a lot of meaningful research ahead of us, and I find that really exciting!"

Pumping in zero-G

Gerardi is part of that movement to improve our understanding. From her first spaceflight to her continuing work with microgravity experiments through IIAS, she is pushing this science forward. In fact, in June of this year, she became the first person to pump breast milk in microgravity. While this was "quite the unique experience," as she put it, this was also an incredible learning moment that can help our growing understanding of the human body in microgravity.

At eight weeks postpartum, Gerardi flew on a microgravity research campaign and "given the timing of that research campaign in relation to my recent delivery, we were also curious about the postpartum body, lactation, and breastmilk expression in microgravity," she said.

"There really wasn't an evidence base for whether commercially available wearable pumps would function normally, whether milk could be safely contained, and whether altered gravity would affect comfort or milk expression, or even whether it could affect the composition of breast milk," Gerardi said.

"Scientifically, it made for interesting studies that we'll be submitting for publication, and personally, it was one of those moments where I just remember thinking that women's bodies are incredible, and there's still so much we have to learn about them in the context of altered gravity and spaceflight. And yes, I was able to bring the 'microgravity milk' home to my baby, which made it even more special," she added.

Learning from motherhood

There is still so much to be learned about the human body as it relates to human spaceflight, and we do not yet know how motherhood will be considered in longer-term space travel. But as mothers have been flying to space since Anna Lee Fisher became the first in 1984, there is much that we can learn from their experiences. Gerardi shared some of the important lessons that she's learned as a mother that have come in handy as an astronaut.

"I think there are probably more parallels between motherhood and operational environments than people realize. Honestly, adaptability is probably at the top of my list. Motherhood is a constant exercise in making plans, fighting reality, and then rapidly reprioritizing without losing your mind," she said.

"Motherhood has made me much better at constantly reassessing priorities," she added." I've moved mountains for work obligations that I later realized weren't that fragile after all. Motherhood gives me a lot of practice at making those assessments in real time. That translates pretty well to research operations. You prepare as best you can, you prioritize and adapt in real-time, and you get comfortable operating without perfect control of all the variables. Those are all pretty useful qualities in life generally."

And in addition to the many lessons that can be learned from being a mother and an astronaut, Gerardi has also found how powerful the representation of seeing a woman like herself achieve her dreams can be for the next generation.

"As a society, I feel like we tell little girls that they can grow up to be anything. We give them astronaut Barbies and American Girl dolls and tell them to dream big, but then when those same little girls grow up and become mothers themselves, suddenly there's often a different expectation around how much space their own ambitions should occupy," Gerardi said. "I don't feel guilty for pursuing my dreams. Becoming their mom made my dreams bolder and my sense of purpose deeper. I feel grateful that I can set an example for my daughters to probe the farthest boundaries of their own potential in this one precious life they get."

An old Soviet satellite has fragmented into multiple pieces in low Earth orbit, the latest in a string of recent breakup events that suggest satellites may be facing an increased risk of debris impacts.

The space domain awareness company LeoLabs detected a "debris generating event" in the known orbital location of the Soviet-era Meteor 2-7 weather satellite as it passed over one of their sites in Western Australia. The company said that an estimated "tens of fragments" were detected in the vicinity of the spacecraft, which launched in 1981.

The breakup of Meteor 2-7 follows on the heels of several other satellite fragmentation events in recent months, including that of the U.S. Cold-War-era spy satellite USA 32, which was confirmed to have disintegrated in September 2026. "This is the latest in a series of events we've seen over the last 6 months, LeoLabs wrote on X. "Together, they point to a worrying trend for space safety and security, and underscore the critical need for persistent sensing."

Orbital debris expert Jim Shell pointed out on X that Meteor 2-7 previously broke apart in March 2004. Shell added that the event occurred at an altitude of around 530 miles (855 kilometers), where, he said, "debris spatial density is highest."

Aside from the September breakup of USA 32, a Chinese rocket body also disintegrated in low Earth orbit (LEO) in late August 2026, according to LeoLabs. A SpaceX Starlink satellite experienced a fragmentation event just over four months earlier.

And in January 2026, a Russian "inspector" satellite disintegrated, although in a much higher geostationary orbit.

For years, experts have been warning that the ever-increasing numbers of satellites being placed into orbit are raising the risk of collisions and fragmentation events, which could have a cascading effect; as more satellites break up, they create more pieces of debris, which can then put other spacecraft at risk.

And data support those warnings. In 2005, the European Space Agency (ESA) reported it was tracking about 16,000 pieces of debris in Earth's orbit. By the time it reported the same data in 2026, ESA was tracking more than 44,000, an increase of about 180%. Even though the majority of those fragments are tiny, the high velocities at which they orbit mean they carry a lot of energy, making them capable of causing serious damage if and when they impact spacecraft.

It's not only debris that poses a risk, however. Satellites frequently have to dodge other satellites, particularly as LEO becomes ever more crowded. According to disclosures made by SpaceX in a semiannual report to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission earlier this year, each Starlink satellite performed over 40 avoidance maneuvers per year between June 1, 2025 and May 31, 2026 to get out of the way of debris or other spacecraft.

And some experts say it's only a matter of time before one of those maneuvers is unsuccessful. "I think we're heading towards a situation where there will be a collision involving an operational satellite in the constellation," Hugh Lewis, a space sustainability expert and professor of astronautics at the University of Birmingham in the U.K., previously told Space.com. "And it will not be for the lack of trying to avoid those things. It will be in spite of all those maneuvers."

Despite the increasingly worrying data and warnings from experts, however, private companies and governments worldwide continue planning to launch tens of thousands of more satellites each year in vast megaconstellations. SpaceX has repeatedly said it wants to put 1 million data center satellites in orbit, for example.

And we've already seen that the increasing amount of orbital space debris is putting astronauts at risk.

In February 2026, China experienced a brief emergency aboard its Tiangong space station when the "lifeboat" spacecraft for three of its astronauts was damaged by a piece of debris, rendering it unsafe for a return voyage. Three of the nation's astronauts (or taikonauts) were left without a lifeboat for 10 days.

We have our first look at the science from Artemis II, and it's as amazing as we might have hoped.

This past April, four astronauts strapped in for a flyby around the moon and back to Earth. The first mission to the moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972, this success marked an incredible historic milestone. The Artemis II crew also conducted groundbreaking science, observing parts of the moon no human had ever laid eyes on before. And now, we have our first look at some of the science from the mission.

"It's the science community's job now to take these data and go do magical things with it," David Hollibaugh Baker, a member of the Artemis II Lunar Science Team, said during a Wednesday (10/7) press conference that announced the mission's initial science results.

This is just the first batch of data from the mission, but it includes a whopping 996 new images, 814 GB of observations and 521 minutes of audio from the crew that has never been heard before. Everything from that astronauts' handwritten notes and drawings to photographs and verbal observations have revealed exciting new information — about impact flashes on the moon, for example, as well as the terminator line between the lunar "day" and "night" sides and a whole range of lunar colors and observations from beyond the mysterious far side.

Let's take a quick look at some of the highlights.

Impact flashes

"Dude, no way!" Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman of NASA exclaimed in newly released mission audio.

"It's just like a 'bloop!'" mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency added as the flashes appeared on the lunar surface. .

As Artemis II's Orion capsule flew by the moon, the four astronauts onboard — Wiseman, Hansen and NASA astronauts Victor Glover (mission pilot) and Christina Koch (mission specialist)— started seeing flashes of light on the lunar surface. These were impact flashes caused by small rocks hitting the lunar surface and vaporizing in the impact.

"We have seen three impact flashes so far," Wiseman said to Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "It was not sun glint off a particulate from the thrusters or the purge tanks. It was definitely impact flashes on the moon."

"Amazing news," Mission Control responded. "I literally just looked over at the SER [Science Evaluation Room], and they were jumping up and down, literally."

In total, the crew saw five impact flashes on the moon's surface, which the mission's science team was able to confirm didn't come from other sources.

While the Artemis II crew was equipped with cameras, they were also trained to make observations with the unaided eye. And impact flashes happen too quickly to photograph them, so — as you can see above — the crew used a tablet to make annotations and describe their observations.

"We wanted them to look visually, so there are not camera images of that, but we have their annotations of when they saw them," Jennifer Heldmen, science theme lead for the Artemis II mission, said during the briefing.

A rainbow moon

In addition to seeing impact flashes across the lunar surface, the Artemis II crew observed a wide range of colors on the moon.

Looking up in the night sky, it might seem that the moon is just shades of gray. But as the astronauts saw during their flyby, the moon is gray, black, brown, tan, white, green and even blue. This muted rainbow of colors was not only visually striking, as the astronauts' photos show, but it can also help scientists determine what types of rocks and minerals might be found in different regions across the moon's surface.

"The crew reported greens and yellowish hues on top of Aristarchus Plateau, signaling they were seeing remnants of different styles and epochs of volcanic activity, and the crew contrasted those colors to nearby browns and grays of adjacent volcanic plains," Ariel Deutsch, a member of the Artemis II Lunar Science Team, said during the briefing, givingone example of these colorful observations.

"To me, it's primarily like a brownish-green glass, and then if I went up into the mares [dark volcanic deposits] to the north of Aristarchus, I would give that a very muted brown," Wiseman said in mission recordings shared in this release.

"It's like a jaundiced cheek of the moon," Koch remarked in mission audio, describing yellowish colors on the moon.

And while the crew took some amazing photographs of the moon, in this data release we can also see their handwritten notes annotating the colors they saw on the moon.

The far side of the moon

As the moon is tidally locked to Earth, it has one "day side" that always faces us and one far or "night side" that is always facing away. When the Artemis II astronauts flew by the moon, they flew around the entire object, even around the far side. During their flyby, they were able to see a part of the far sidethat has never been observed up close like this before.

"The Artemis II crew were the first people to see this section of the moon illuminated in all of human history," Alex Stoken, a member of the Crew Lunar Observations team, said during the briefing.

When they approached the moon's far side, the crew also came upon the terminator line, or the boundary between the day and night sides of the moon.

At the terminator, the team was able to view the incredible contrasting shadows and textures of the lunar surface, revealing sharp details about the moon's topography.

"The terminator is the most striking thing that I’ve seen so far," Glover said as the crew flew by.

As they rounded the moon's far side, the moon was backlit by the sun, essentially eclipsing it. This allowed for incredibly unique and sharp views of the moon.

"You’ve got to be kidding me," Koch said in the capsule. "You can actually see mountains."

These are just a few highlights from this incredibly thorough and detailed data release. As we dig deeper into this initial science, you can take a dive through the data yourself here and here.

On Oct. 8, 1992, NASA's Pioneer 12 spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere of Venus.

Pioneer 12, also known as the Pioneer Venus Orbiter, spent 14 years orbiting Venus and studying the planet's atmosphere. It also investigated how the planet's ionosphere and magnetic field interact with charged particles from the sun called solar wind.

Pioneer 12 even got to check out Halley's Comet while it was in orbit around Venus.

When Pioneer 12 ran out of propellant, its orbit naturally started to decay, and it disintegrated in Venus's atmosphere.

Why it matters

Pioneer 12, also known at NASA as Pioneer Venus or Pioneer Venus 1 mission, was the first-ever American spacecraft to enter orbit around Venus. It launched on May 20, 1978 and arrived in orbit around Venus on Dec. 4 of that year.

The mission was part of a tag-team flight to Venus (a second probe, Pioneer Venus 2, would launch in August 1978), but as its name suggests, Pioneer Venus 1 was first, launching on an Atlas Centaur rocket from Launch Complex 36A at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

PIoneer Venus 1 carried 16 different instruments to study Venus from an orbit of about 99 miles (160 kilometers), with the probe taking just over 23 hours to circle the planet, according to a NASA overview.

The probe's instruments mapped most of the surface of Venus between the latitudes of 73 degrees north and 63 degrees south, at a resolution of 47 miles (75 km). Its data revealed a planet much rounder and smoother than Earth, with its highest point - called Maxwell Montes - rising 6.5 miles (10.8 km) above the surface. It had a peak higher than Mt. Everest and a canyon deeper than the Grand Canyon on Earth, NASA said.

"Cameras also detected almost continuous lightning in the atmosphere. The spacecraft confirmed that Venus has little if any magnetic field," NASA wrote.

By March 19, 1981, Pioneer Venus had mapped 93% of the area within sight of its instruments, so NASA switched its mapping radar off. But in 1991, the probe could then see new parts of the southern Venus area, leading NASA to reactivate the mapping radar a full 13 years after launch to glean more data from the probe.

Halley's Comet was also not the only comet Pioneer Venus observed. The probe managed to study comets Encke in 1984, Giacobini-Zinner in 1985, comet Wilson in 1987, and comets NTT and McNaught (both in 1987).

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The great views of Starship's first orbital flight keep on coming.

The megarocket circled our planet for the first time ever on Sept. 28, its 14th liftoff to date. And Starship deployed some payloads when it got up there — 26 of the company's next-gen Starlink satellites, the first members of a broadband constellation that will eventually consist of 100,000 spacecraft, if all goes to plan.

SpaceX already released still imagery of that historic deployment, which was captured by cameras on a few of the Starlink satellites. But on Tuesday, the company gave us something even better, releasing gorgeous video of Starlink craft popping out of the Starship upper stage's "Pez dispenser" slot.

"Constant communication is what makes autonomy like this safe," representatives of Starlink, which is a SpaceX subsidiary, said in a Tuesday X post that featured the deployment video.

"Early contact lets us take maneuvering responsibility, publish ephemeris faster than ground radar can catalog the object, and deorbit and keep commanding through demise if needed," they added. "We treat early communications as a requirement, not a nice-to-have."

A few days earlier, on Oct. 2, SpaceX posted three short videos of another important Flight 14 milestone — stage separation, when the megarocket's 171-foot-tall (52 meters) Ship spacecraft began flying independently of its Super Heavy booster.

The footage captured the farewell from both perspectives. One video showed Super Heavy falling back toward Earth, while the other two revealed Ship powering its way toward orbit, its six Raptor engines glowing yellow-orange with the effort.

Super Heavy came down relatively quickly, steering itself to a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about seven minutes after liftoff. Ship stayed up for another three hours, circling Earth multiple times (and deploying those Starlink satellites) before meeting its own watery end in the northern Pacific Ocean.

Despite Flight 14's successes, Starship remains in the development phase and needs to tick a few other important boxes before it's fully operational.

For example, SpaceX still needs to demonstrate in-space refueling of Ship, which will be necessary on all Starship missions that venture beyond Earth orbit. And crewed versions of the vehicle will need a life-support system, which has yet to fly on any of the test missions to date.

The first Starship launch from Florida may be just a few months away.

All 14 of the SpaceX megarocket's test flights to date have lifted off from the company's Starbase site in South Texas — including the most recent, on Sept. 28, which saw Starship reach orbit for the first time.

But SpaceX is working hard to get three pads on Florida's Space Coast ready for Starship. And one of them, historic Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), is nearly there, according to the company.

"Things are going super well at 39A," Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA science and Dragon programs at SpaceX, said during a briefing on Oct. 1 that primarily discussed that day's launch of the Crew-13 astronaut mission to the International Space Station.

The pad's new Starship launch tower is nearly complete, as is most other essential construction at the site, according to Scheiman.

"We've essentially done a lot of the initial build of the structures and the systems needed for launching Starship, and we're beginning to step into the sort of acceptance testing and operational testing prior to activation," she said. "So, we're kind of through the main construction and going into the proofing, testing — activation testing."

The work at Pad 39A began in late 2021. The fact that it's taken so long shouldn't be surprising, for Starship requires some very specialized infrastructure. After all, it's the biggest rocket ever built, standing about 408 feet (124 meters) tall. For comparison, SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy vehicles — the only rockets that have flown out of Pad 39A since SpaceX started leasing it from NASA in 2014 — are both about 230 feet (70 m) tall.

Starship is also designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, and its recovery operations are very different than those of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. The first stages of those two rockets touch down either on a ship at sea or on a designated landing pad close to the launch site. But Starship's two stages — its Super Heavy booster and Ship spacecraft — are designed to come back to the launch pad, where they will be caught by the giant tower's "chopstick" arms. So finishing construction of Pad 39A's new Starship tower will be a very big deal.

Starship also employs different engines than the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy — Raptors rather than Merlins. Raptors burn liquid methane and liquid oxygen (LOX), rather than rocket-grade kerosene and LOX like Merlins, so the new Starship-friendly 39A needs a new tank farm to feed in this different mix of propellant.

SpaceX plans to launch at least one more Starship test flight from Starbase before flying the megarocket out of KSC, Scheiman said on Oct. 1 — meaning the first Florida Starship launch come come as soon as Flight 16.

The company has not yet announced target dates for upcoming Starship launches, but provisional planning documents identify Oct. 19 and Oct. 30 as possible "no earlier than" dates for Flight 15 and Flight 16, respectively. Those dates may be a bit aspirational, but they suggest that SpaceX aims to fly Starship again soon, and to launch two missions in relatively quick succession. (For perspective: Starship has flown three times so far this year — on May 22, July 24 and Sept. 28.)

Whenever Starship breaks in the new Pad 39A, it will be something of a blast from the past. The launch complex was originally built in the 1960s to host launches of a different megarocket — NASA's Saturn V, which sent the Apollo moon missions skyward. Pad 39A was the jumping-off point for some of the most iconic Apollo flights, including Apollo 8 in December 1968 and Apollo 11 in July 1969.

This tradition will continue, if all goes according to plan: NASA picked Starship's Ship upper stage to be the first crewed lunar lander for its Artemis program, which aims to build a base near the moon's south pole over the next five years or so.

Ship is scheduled to fly for the Artemis program for the first time on Artemis III, a planned 2027 docking test in Earth orbit between the vehicle and NASA's Orion capsule. And that Ship liftoff will take place from Pad 39A, Scheiman said.

There's more pad work going on in Florida as well. Late last year, the U.S. Air Force gave SpaceX permission to fly Starship from two pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, which is next-door to KSC. Those two pads — SLC (Space Launch Complex)-37A and SLC-37B — could eventually host 76 Starship liftoffs per year between them.

SpaceX has already made considerable progress on SLC-37A and SLC-37B, according to Scheiman. "If you look towards Launch Complex 37, you can see the beginnings of that Starship tower," she said on Oct. 1.

And SpaceX plans to break ground next year on an even bigger Starship launch site — the $100 billion, 12-pad Starbase Louisiana complex. Twelve new pads seems like overkill, unless you know that SpaceX aims to launch more than 10,000 Starship missions per year by 2030.

The vast majority of those liftoffs will serve to assemble two SpaceX megaprojects in Earth orbit: the next-gen Starlink broadband network, which will consist of about 100,000 satellites, and Starmind, an AI data center constellation that will feature a million spacecraft, according to Elon Musk.

On Oct. 7, 2002, the space shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-112. This mission brought the Starboard 1 (S1) truss segment to the International Space Station.

The S1 truss is part of the backbone of the space station, and it provides structural support for the thermal control system. During the launch, a chunk of insulating foam broke off of the external tank and hit the bottom of the rocket booster, leaving a huge dent.

Luckily this didn't pose any problems for STS-112, but this was the same thing that caused the Columbia shuttle disaster just three months later. NASA later redesigned the shuttle to prevent this problem.

Why it mattered

The 11-day mission of NASA's STS-112 flight aboard the shuttle Atlantis delievered a key component of the International Space Station as well as critical cart for astronauts spacewalking outside the orbiting lab.

The primary goal of STS-112 was to deliver the 28,000-pound S1 truss to the station so it could be attached to the right side of the station's central S0 truss, the core of its 360-foot (110-meter) truss backbone.

The Boeing-built S1 truss contains a large ammonia-cooled radiator used to keep the station from overheating (its twin is on the opposite side's Port 1 truss), and is about 45 feet (13.7 m) It's made mostly out of aluminum and also carries power and cooling lines between truss segments.

NASA astronaut Jeffrey Ashby commanded the STS-112 mission, with Pamela Melroy as pilot. NASA mission specialists Sandy Magnus, David Wolf, Piers Sellers and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin rounded out the crew.

The astronauts performed three spacewalks on the mission to install the S1 truss, attach the plumbing lines for its radiators and install a so-called CETA cart (short for Crew Equipment Translation Aid) on the truss rail system so future spacewalkers could use it to move gear around.

The mission also delivered about 1,800 pounds of cargo to the station and returned about the same amount of stuff back to Earth.

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South Korea just launched its first orbital mission of the year.

The milestone came on Tuesday night (Oct. 6), when the homegrown Nuri rocket lifted off from the nation's Naro Space Center, carrying 15 satellites skyward.

Liftoff occurred at 11:25 p.m. EDT (0325 GMT and 12:25 p.m. local time on Oct. 7). Almost everything went well: All but one of the payloads was successfully delivered to low Earth orbit as planned, according to the state-run Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI).

Five of those payloads are microsatellites for South Korea's nascent New-space Earth Observation Satellite Constellation for National Safety (NEONSAT) network.

"Each NEONSAT weighs less than 100 kilograms [220 pounds] and carries an electro-optical camera capable of distinguishing objects as small as 1 meter [3.3 feet] in black-and-white images and 4 meters [13.1 feet] in color images," South Korea's Yonhap news agency wrote in a prelaunch preview.

"The satellites will monitor the Korean Peninsula and surrounding areas for national security and disaster response," Yonhap added.

Two NEONSAT satellites had launched before today, both aboard Rocket Lab Electron vehicles. The first went up in April 2024, and the second flew in January of this year. Five more will launch atop a Nuri next year, rounding out the constellation, according to Yonhap.

The other 10 satellites that went up tonight are cubesats, which were provided by a variety of operators. And it was one of these cubesats that experienced difficulty on Tuesday night: PERSAT02, which was developed by the South Korean company Quaternion, failed to deploy, KARI wrote in an X post about two hours after launch.

The 155-foot-tall (47 meters) Nuri, also known as KSLV-II (Korean Space Launch Vehicle-II), is South Korea's first fully homegrown orbital launcher. It is jointly operated by KARI and the company Hanwha Aerospace.

The three-stage rocket failed during its debut mission in October 2021 but is now riding a streak of four straight successes.

"Through this 5th launch, we have further elevated the Nuri rocket's capability to perform space transportation missions by precisely deploying multiple satellites into orbit in a single launch," KARI wrote in the same X post. "We sincerely thank all citizens for your warm interest and support for the successful flight of the Nuri rocket."

On Oct. 6, 1992, the United States and Russia signed an agreement to share astronauts and cosmonauts on human spaceflight missions.

Known as the Agreement on Human Spaceflight Cooperation, this plan laid out the details for the joint Shuttle-Mir Program. Under this program, NASA's space shuttles would fly to Russia's Mir space station and carry Russian cosmonauts on board.

Meanwhile, American astronauts started flying in the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which still carries international crews to the International Space Station to this day.

Why it mattered

The signing of the Agreement on Human Spaceflight Cooperation between the United States and Russia set the stage for what has become over 30 years of international cooperation in space between not just the two countries, but over a dozen others as well.

At the time, the agreement was aimed solely at the Shuttle-Mir program, which sent seven American astronauts to the Mir space station between 1994 and 1998. During those years, 10 NASA space shuttle missions visited Mir.

Mir would eventually host 125 cosmonauts and astronauts from 12 different countries throughout its 13 years in orbit. Mir was deorbited on March 23, 2001, when it fell from space to burn up in Earth's atmosphere, with any surviving debris falling into the Pacific Ocean.

In 1993, one year after the U.S.-Russia space agreement went into effect, Russia joined NASA in what would become the International Space Station, a cooperative project to build the largest single crewed spacecraft ever in orbit. NASA, Russia's Roscosmos and three other space agencies (from Japan, Canada and Europe), oversee a group of more than 15 countries working on the ISS.

Russia even launched the first component of the International Space Station in 1998.

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World Space Week 2026 is off to a great start, and everyone's favorite daily pop culture animation has joined the celebration.

Today's Google Doodle (Oct. 6) features the tech company's logo over a sparkling view of the Rosebud Nebula. The image was captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), with stars that shimmer periodically on the search engine's home page.

This year's World Space Week runs from Oct. 4 through Oct. 10. The theme, "Rocket Revolution," highlights the leaps in accomplishments humanity has achieved over the past decade and more of spaceflight, with the goal of uniting industry leaders, agencies, educational institutions, students and enthusiasts for space-related activities and celebrations around the globe.

"This World Space Week 2026 Doodle celebrates the technology behind awe-inspiring astrophotography," it says on the Oct. 6 Google Doodle page, which shares a brief description of the Rosebud Nebula:

"Located 3,300 light-years away, this reflection nebula is home to over 130 young stars. Its clouds of gas and dust form a physical shape resembling an unopened, blooming rosebud, glowing rosy-pink from dust heated by these stars."

World Space Week was officially established by the United Nations in 1999. It marks the dual observance of launch of Earth's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, on Oct. 4, 1957, and the 1967 signing of the Outer Space Treaty on Oct. 10, which solidified the basic principles for peaceful exploration of the cosmos.

Read more about what's happening during World Space Week 2026

The four astronauts of SpaceX’s Crew-12 mission returned to Earth this morning (Oct. 8) after nearly eight months in space.

Crew-12's Crew Dragon capsule, named "Freedom," undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday morning (Oct. 7), beginning a roughly 27-hour trip back to its home planet.

Everything went well during the journey: Freedom splashed down as planned in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Los Angeles today at 11:34 a.m. EDT (1534 GMT). Not long after that, the four astronauts were safely extracted from the capsule aboard a recovery ship. They'll be taken to terra firma for standard medical examinations and to begin the 45-day-long postflight conditioning process, which will help their bodies readjust to life with gravity.

"The crew is doing well. They were all smiles exiting the capsule," Bill Spetch, deputy manager of commercial, NASA’s Low Earth Orbit Program, said during a post-splashdown press conference today. "It's great to have them back after 237 days in space, 235 of those on the space station."

The Crew-12 astronauts are Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway of NASA, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Sophie Adenot, and Andrey Fedyaev of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. Meir and Fedyaev had each been to space once before, while Crew-12 was the first mission for Hathaway and Adenot.

The quartet launched to the ISS atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Feb. 13. Their arrival brought the station up to its normal complement of seven crewmembers. It had been operating with a skeleton crew of three since Jan. 15, when SpaceX's Crew-11 mission headed home a month early to deal with a medical issue experienced by one of its astronauts, NASA's Mike Fincke.

That was the first medical evacuation in the long history of the ISS. But it was not an emergency situation, NASA officials stressed at the time, and Fincke is doing fine now here on terra firma. (He retired in August with a total of 549 days in space, the fourth-most ever for a NASA astronaut.)

Crew-12, in turn, was relieved by the four-person Crew-13, which arrived at the ISS last Thursday (Oct. 1). Crew-13 made it to the station less than eight hours after launch — the quickest-ever ISS trip for an American spacecraft. (The world record is just over three hours, by a Russian Soyuz crewed vehicle.)

Crew-13 was originally supposed to launch on Sept. 12. However, an issue with the propulsion system on its Crew Dragon capsule, named "Grace," pushed things back, giving Crew-12 a few extra weeks in orbit.

The Crew-12 astronauts were very busy during their nearly 10 months off Earth, performing a variety of maintenance work and dozens of scientific experiments.

Then there were the spacewalks. Meir performed four of them, bringing her lifetime total to seven. And on Aug. 18, Adenot stepped outside the ISS, becoming the first French woman ever to walk in space. She did two more over the next two weeks, including one with Meir, which was just the sixth all-female extravehicular activity in the station's history.

Adenot also set a record on Crew-12, spending more time in space continuously (237 days) than any other ESA astronaut ever had. Luca Parmitano set the previous record of 201 days back in 2019-2020.

The Crew-12 astronauts felt a mix of emotions about their homecoming, as big transitions are always bittersweet. Indeed, Meir gave us a sense of this a few weeks back.

"What I'm looking forward to most is seeing my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter,” Meir said during a Sept. 16 call with reporters from the station.

"I'm so looking forward to seeing nature again," she added, "feeling the breeze on my face, the wind rustling through the leaves, experiencing all those things that we don't have up here. But I will very, very much miss being weightless all the time and the incredible views that we have."

Splashdown didn't wrap up all Crew-12 activities today. NASA and SpaceX will talk about the mission this afternoon, during a press conference scheduled to start at 1:15 p.m. EDT (1715 GMT). The briefing will also discuss the planned Oct. 13 launch of SpaceX's robotic CRS-35 cargo mission to the ISS. Participants are:

• Bill Spetch, deputy manager of Commercial, NASA's Low Earth Orbit Program
• Dr. Liz Warren, deputy chief scientist, NASA's Low Earth Orbit Program
• Lee Echerd, senior mission manager, Customer Operations and Integration, SpaceX
• Andreas Mogensen, leader, Human Exploration Group, (ESA)

Editor's note: This story was updated at 8:30 a.m. ET on Oct. 7 with news of successful undocking. It was updated again at 6 p.m. ET that day to correct its headline, which previously said the Crew-12 astronauts have spent nearly 10 months in space. It was updated again at noon ET on Oct. 8 with news of successful splashdown.

On. Oct. 5, 1962, the European Southern Observatory was born!

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is an intergovernmental research organization made up of 16 nations that work together to study the southern sky. Before ESO, all the major ground-based telescopes in the world were in the Northern Hemisphere. So ESO built some really big and really awesome telescopes in Chile.

With these telescopes, scientists have discovered exoplanets like Proxima b, they've found the oldest star in the Milky Way, and they've shown that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.

Why it mattered

The European Southern Observatory is an oasis of astronomy in the high Atacama desert of Chile, allowing pristine views of the night sky from altitudes that range from 7.900 feet to 16,700 feet (2,400 to 5,100 meters) above sea level.

ESO, as it's known today (it was formerly called the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere), is actually a group of large observatories - each including multiple telescopes - that are supported by more than a dozen countries for astronomical research. ESO has pioneered the use of adaptive optics, deformable mirrors that change shape to account for atmospheric interference, as laser guide-stars for telescope observations.

ESO's observatories include the Paranal Observatory - which contains the Very Large Telescope and the VISTA telescope for visible and infrared astronomy. Other ESO sites include the La Silla Observatory (which has two ESO telescopes and hosts others from member states), and the Chajnantor plateau, which is home to the giant Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope. The first ESO telescope opened at the La Silla site in 1966, and today the group averages about 1,800 proposals for telescope time each year.

When complete, the Extremely Large Telescope at Cerro Armazones will be the largest visible and infrared light ground telescope on Earth. It will have a 128-foot (39-meter) main mirror to study exoplanets and search for potentially habitable worlds. "It will also probe the furthest reaches of the cosmos, revealing the properties of the very earliest galaxies and the nature of the dark Universe," ESO officials have said.

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Getting to space is no longer just a matter of building a rocket and launching it once. Reusable boosters, new launch vehicles and a growing commercial space industry are reshaping the path to orbit — a transformation that will take center stage during this year's World Space Week.

World Space Week (WSW) 2026 runs from Oct. 4 through Oct. 10, with this year's theme, "Rocket Revolution," highlighting the technologies and organizations changing how humanity reaches and uses space. The global celebration brings together space agencies, companies, educators, students, museums, astronomy clubs and space enthusiasts for events and activities around the world.

The annual celebration of WSW is tied to two important milestones in spaceflight history. Oct. 4 marks the anniversary of the 1957 launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth, while Oct. 10 marks the signing of the Outer Space Treaty in 1967, which established principles for the peaceful exploration and use of outer space. The United Nations General Assembly established WSW as an annual observance in 1999.

This year's theme "recognizes how increased space access and falling launch prices have stimulated the space ecosystem and exciting new space applications," Dennis Stone, WSW Association president, said in a statement from the organization, adding that the theme is also intended to inspire student interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM.

For decades, reaching orbit required enormous amounts of hardware, fuel and infrastructure — and rockets were generally designed to fly only once. That model has increasingly begun to change.

Reusable rockets have demonstrated that portions of a launch vehicle can return to Earth and fly again, while a growing number of commercial companies and countries are developing new ways to put satellites, spacecraft and other payloads into orbit.

The change is about more than simply building bigger or more powerful rockets. Reusability and new launch architectures could alter the economics and cadence of spaceflight, while smaller launch vehicles are opening additional options for organizations looking to send spacecraft into orbit.

The result is a space industry with more participants and a wider range of missions — from communications and Earth-observation satellites to scientific spacecraft and human spaceflight. Just last month, SpaceX's Starship reached orbit for the first time during its Sept. 28 test flight, successfully deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites in a major milestone for the vehicle's development. The mission was ultimately cut short after an engine issue, but achieved its primary objectives of reaching orbit and deploying its payload.

More frequent and diverse access to orbit supports an expanding ecosystem of satellites and spacecraft that already plays a role in everyday life. Space-based systems provide communications, navigation, weather information and Earth-observation data, while satellites are increasingly used for environmental monitoring, disaster response and connectivity. That broader impact is part of what WSW aims to highlight.

This year's rocket theme also comes with educational resources designed to bring the subject into classrooms and homes. Estes Education partnered with WSW to develop a Rocket Revolution Toolkit, with activities for classrooms, families and clubs that encourage students to explore rocket science and engineering — including the challenges of designing reusable launch vehicles, according to a statement.

WSW events are expected to take place across 100 nations this week, with activities ranging from talks and exhibitions to classroom activities, movie nights, astronomy events and hands-on STEM projects.

Among the activities planned for 2026 are events from major space organizations and companies. The European Space Agency (ESA) and The Pokémon Company International are teaming up on a Europe-wide space-themed exhibition and Pokémon GO event, while the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida will host a WSW Expo on Oct. 9 featuring NASA and industry partners.

The rocket theme will also take a hands-on approach, with students and rocket clubs encouraged to launch model rockets using equipment provided by United Launch Alliance and Estes. The BBC StoryWorks Commercial Productions will also launch an exclusive online "Space Renaissance" event, featuring the world premiere of the series' first film and a discussion on how storytelling can bring space closer to global audiences. A full list of events, both local and virtual, can be found online.

For those who can't make it to an organized event, the night sky offers plenty of ways to mark the week, with Saturn at opposition on Oct. 4, the moon near Mars on Oct. 5, the moon near Jupiter on Oct. 6, the Draconid meteor shower peaking around Oct. 8-9, and a New Moon on Oct. 10.

So while "Rocket Revolution" is focused on the technology carrying humanity beyond Earth, celebrating WSW doesn't require a launchpad, a laboratory or even a telescope — you can simply step outside after dark. Be sure to check back here over the coming days for our WSW coverage of global events.

This past Thursday (Oct. 1), four brave souls launched off our planet, headed to an orbiting laboratory where they will spend the next six months living and working.

What is it?

SpaceX's Crew-13 mission for NASA launched last week, sending four astronauts on a journey from Earth to the International Space Station (ISS). They lifted off on a Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket.

The crew consists of NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. Watkins is commanding the mission, and it is her second time to space. Crew-13 is the first mission for the other three.

Crew-13 was originally supposed to launch on Sept. 12, but an issue with its Crew Dragon delayed things a bit. The mission launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, reaching orbit just 10 minutes later and the ISS in less than eight hours. No American spacecraft had ever chased down the orbiting lab in less time.

This photograph shows the moment of launch in striking black and white infrared, which really highlights the intense heat and power coming from the rocket.

Why is it incredible?

This image captures the drama and power of spaceflight. With smoke billowing out from under the rocket's fiery engines, it is incredible to think that in the tiny capsule on the very top of the rocket sit four human beings, strapped in, leaving our planet behind.

Rocket launches are exciting, but there is something especially amazing about sending people to outer space that separates these events from the others.

And, like other crewed missions, these astronauts have a big job ahead of them. They'll work alongside the other astronauts on the ISS on a variety of science experiments and perform maintenance on the station itself.

Could unidentified anomalous phenomena — a new catch-all term for unidentified objects in the sky, oceans or space — be pushing the United States towards another "Sputnik Moment"?

That's the belief of NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who compared the uptick in reported unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) sightings in recent years to the Cold War paranoia stirred up when the former Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to circle Earth in 1957.

Isaacman made the comments in a recent interview with Blake Burman, host of NewsNation's "The Hill" broadcast on Sept. 25 that touched upon a range of space-related issues. And one of those was probing the space agency chief about he thinks UAP might be.

Flight characteristics

Burman made note of pilot reports and videos released of objects with flight characteristics unlike anything previously seen.

"When you watch these videos," Burman asked Isaacman, "do you believe that anything that we've seen in any of this is potentially extraterrestrial. Is it military? What is it?"

Isaacman said that NASA has had "a seat at the table" since U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this year called for releasing Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) and UAP files. That call is now officially known as the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE).

"My position going into every one of these: one, be open-minded. I mean, it is kind of our job to go out and try to answer the question 'are we alone?' And I said look, if it's aliens, I think NASA should have a seat at the table in this for sure," Isaacman said.

The NASA Administrator also said that, "if it's a Sputnik moment, we did really well the last time that happened. Which means, is this potentially red technology? Is this an adversary that's testing some next generation propulsion? It's certainly in the realm of the possible." (In military exercises, adversary forces are generally referred to as "red.")

TV host Burman then asked Isaacman, "but what does your gut tell you?"

"I would say I would lean toward it's either some phenomenon that can happen," Isaacman responded. "There are things that can happen just like natural phenomena that can be observed. I also think there's a good chance that there could be a Sputnik Moment that's happening and people are testing new stealthy or next generation type technologies," he said.

Our own backyard

Isaacman continued by noting that space missions have barely explored our own backyard.

"Do you know there are moons out there […] Saturn's moon Enceladus has an ocean. Europa has an ocean. It has complex chemistry. We couldn't tell you conclusively that there isn't life in our own backyard let alone the billions of other stars in the Milky Way galaxy, or the two trillion other galaxies out there. It's why NASA's mission is so important," Isaacman concluded.

Whistleblower woes

In a related UAP side saga, in early September, the U.S. Department of War issued a "legal waiver" for those wishing to disclose information regarding UAP, a hybrid term also linked to Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).

Military service members, civilian personnel, and contractors are purportedly green-lighted to disclose once protected information, such as under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

What's old news is that this waiver is not really new, said Robert Powell, an executive board member for the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies in Austin, Texas. This same protection was provided to whistleblowers if they reported UAP information to the U.S. government's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).

"This was established via the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which stated that, 'Individuals with current or previous access to UAP-related information subject to a U.S. government NDA are authorized to provide that information to AARO representatives.' This waiver simply adds a second agency that can collect information," Powell told Space.

PURSUE and release

It is important to note that this is not permission for a whistleblower to talk to the press, a researcher, or the public," said Powell. "The same is true of this latest whistleblower waiver."

The new waiver states, "This waiver removes those barriers by explicitly authorizing covered disclosures to PURSUE representatives without triggering breach-of-agreement penalties or standard NDA violations."

"The NDA relaxation is only if the whistleblower reports their information to PURSUE representatives," said Powell.

"However, the waiver does not state how a whistleblower can identify the PURSUE representatives or how to reach them. So will anything change? It will take a year or two to determine if any whistleblower stories are made public or if a whistleblower realizes that an individual's story will go no farther than the PURSUE representative," Powell said.

He said/she said

Furthermore, Powell points out, this new waiver does not clearly waive criminal statutes, for example Espionage Act/unauthorized disclosure of classified information.

"How does a whistleblower know if their information violates criminal statutes versus civil statutes? The new waiver does not protect a whistleblower from an NDA with a civilian corporation," said Powell.

Let's assume someone comes forth and says that they know that there is an alien spacecraft being held at Edwards Air Force Base in California, said Powell. How is that claim verified?

"If it is not verified then there is little value in the efforts put forth by the whistleblower. To date, Congress has not seemed willing to use its subpoena powers to force a military branch to provide information, concluded Powell, and until Congress is willing to push the point and investigate claims, "it just remains 'he said, she said.'"

On Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the satellite that started the Space Race.

Sputnik 1 was the first human-made object to orbit the Earth, and it set off a wave of fear and anxiety across the U.S. now known as the "Sputnik crisis." Sputnik was a metal sphere roughly 2 feet (58 cm) in diameter with four long radio antennas. These antennas transmitted little beeping pulses down to Earth that even amateur radio operators could hear.

• Sputnik 1, Earth's First Artificial Satellite in Photos

The satellite spent 21 days in orbit before it burned up in Earth's atmosphere.

Why it mattered

The launch of Sputnik 1 changed the world for ever, kicking of a new Space Age and a Space Race of one upsmanship that ultimately led to the creation of NASA and the landing of American astronauts on the moon on the Apollo 11 mission in 1969.

The small satellite (it was about the size of a beach ball) took 98 minutes to orbit the Earth and weighed just 184 pounds (nearly 84 kg). But despite its relativity diminutive size, it was already larger than the 3.5-pound payload the United States hoped to launch with the first Vanguard rocket launch (which ultimately failed on Dec. 6, 1957).

Sputnik 1 surprised the world, and U.S. officials in particular, becuase of fears that Soviet rocket technology could be adapted into ballistic missiles to threaten other countries.

And Sputnik 1 wasn't alone. A month later, on Nov. 3, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 2, which sent the dog Laika into space as the first living creature in orbit. The first U.S. satellite, Explorer 1, would not launch until Jan. 31, 1958.

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On Oct. 3, 1942, Germany performed the first-ever successful test launch of a ballistic missile.

This missile was officially named Aggregat 4 (A4) but is more commonly known as the V-2. The V-2 was designed by the famous German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, and it proved to be a deadly weapon during World War II.

During the landmark test, the rocket launched from an island off the Baltic coast of Germany called Peenemünde. It reached an altitude of 52.5 miles (84.5 kilometers) — just short of the Kármán Line, the widely recognized boundary of outer space at 62 miles (100 km) up — before landing on target 118 miles (190 km) away.

Why it mattered

The V-2 matters first of all as an instrument of death and terror, and it dealt plenty of both during World War II. The 46-foot-tall (14 meters) rocket introduced a new element to the battlefield: ultrafast weapon delivery.

The V-2 traveled at up to 3,400 mph (5,470 kph) and could carry a 2,200-pound (1,000 kilograms) warhead to a target up to 200 miles (320 km) away. Nazi Germany launched its first V-2 in combat on Sept. 6, 1944 and continued using the rockets through March 1945, just a month before the regime surrendered.

The Nazis employed the V-2 heavily during this time, but the rocket was not terribly accurate. So V-2s did not tend to lay waste to entire cities like plane-based bombing raids did during the war.

"The Army and Waffen-SS launched over 3,000 rockets, primarily against London and Antwerp, but the ones that actually reached a populated target only killed about 5,000 people," the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum wrote about the V-2.

"Against that total must be put the 10-20,000 concentration-camp prisoners who died in the SS camps connected to V-2 manufacturing," the museum added. "That makes it a rare and peculiar weapon — more than twice as many people died as the result of making it than did being hit by it."

The V-2 also helped usher the world into the space age, by showing what rockets are capable of.

"The V-2 was a revolutionary technological device," the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum wrote. "The space launch vehicles and the intercontinental ballistic missiles of the world virtually all trace their origin, one way or another, to this rocket."

That's particularly true of American launch vehicles, for von Braun — who was a member of the Nazi Party and a junior SS officer — and more than 100 members of his V-2 team came to the United States after the war as part of Project Paperclip. These scientists and engineers were first put to work at Fort Bliss in West Texas but moved to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama in 1950.

Once there, the German group "became the heart of the Army’s nuclear-armed ballistic missile development," the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum wrote in a description of Project Paperclip.

"Soon after the Soviets launched Sputnik in October 1957, [von Braun] and his German-led group, now numbering in the thousands (almost all native-born Americans), helped launch the first United States satellite, Explorer I," the museum added. "In 1960, von Braun’s division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency was transferred to a new civilian space agency, NASA. The Huntsville Germans, most naturalized in 1954-1955, went on to lead the development of the Saturn rockets that put Americans on the moon in 1969."

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Earth is the only home we know, but it was not always one we could live in.

The oxygen we depend on with every breath was essentially absent when Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago. It wasn't until about 2.4 billion years ago, when our planet was nearly half its present age, that the gas became a lasting feature of its atmosphere in a transformation known as the Great Oxidation Event. For scientists, the harder question has been how oxygen stayed abundant for millions of years afterward — long enough, as ancient rocks suggest, to set the stage for the emergence of increasingly complex life. The answer may lie in the chemistry of ancient seas, according to a new study.

The research, led by Lewis Alcott, a biogeochemist at the University of Bristol in the U.K., describes a self-sustaining cycle in which phosphorus — a fundamental building block of all known life — was recycled in the oceans, helping maintain elevated oxygen levels after they first rose.

"Living things cannot grow or function properly without phosphorus," study co-author Andrey Bekker, a professor of geology at the University of California, Riverside, said in a statement.

A hidden period of Earth's history

The new study offers a clearer view of a period of Earth's history that has been difficult to reconstruct, according to the scientists. Until now, scientists could measure the total phosphorus preserved in ancient rocks, but determining the share that was actually available to marine life remained challenging.

Alcott, Bekker, and their colleagues got around that limitation with a new technique that separates phosphorus according to the type of mineral it is bound to. Analyzing ancient rocks from South Africa, the team dissolved each mineral type one at a time to determine whether the phosphorus had been available to living organisms or tied up in forms that made it unusable.

"We can now separate the phosphorus that was available to organisms from phosphorus that was essentially locked away," Bekker said in the statement. "That gives us a much clearer picture of nutrient levels in ancient oceans than we had before."

"A side effect of that process is that more oxygen continued to be released into the atmosphere," Bekker said.

Beyond shedding light on the history of our own planet, understanding how oxygen, nutrients and life evolved together on Earth could also help scientists recognize similar conditions on ocean-bearing worlds elsewhere, the researchers added.

"Earth's history shows that oxygen, nutrients, and life evolved together," Bekker said. "Understanding those connections gives us a more nuanced perspective on our own planet's future and what we might look for on other planets."

This research is described in a paper published on Aug. 27 in the journal Nature Communications.

On Oct. 2, 2015, the United Launch Alliance launched its 100th rocket! The United Launch Alliance (ULA) is a private spaceflight company that was born in 2006 as a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

For its 100th mission, ULA launched a Mexican communication satellite named Morelos-3 on an Atlas V rocket.

This wasn't just the 100th successful mission for the United Launch Alliance, but it was also the company's 100th attempt to launch a rocket. ULA hereby continued its 100% launch success rate.

Why it mattered

The 100th launch of United Launch Alliance may seem like a quaint milestone in this day and age. (After all, SpaceX alone has launched 116 rockets just this year, including 3 in one day on Oct. 1.) But ULA, as a partnership between two aerospace juggernauts in Boeing and Lockheed Martin, reaching that marker was an admirable feat.

ULA is an odd collaboration between two aerospace rivals that merged their individual rocket launch services into a single entity in order to better bid for contracts and offer more reliable service.

"The DOD endorsed the transaction on the ground that the joint venture would increase launch reliability by concentrating production and launch services in a single team rather than subdividing a declining amount of launch vehicle production and launch preparation activities between two firms," analyst William Kovacic wrote of the ULA's birth in his analysis "Competition Policy Retrospective: The Formation of The United Launch Alliance and the Ascent of SpaceX."

In the space of its first nine years, ULA launched 100 successful missions (which seemed like a lot back then), using its Delta and Atlas rocket families. The final Delta rocket, a Delta IV Heavy, launched in 2024 and ULA is now winding down its Atlas V program. The most recent ULA launch was on July 2 of this year, when an Atlas V launched 26 Amazon Leo broadband satellites.

The company has, however, developed a new Vulcan Centaur rocket, which it aims to be a new launch workhorse for the company. That rocket has made its debut in 2024 and has flown four times.

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SpaceX's latest astronaut launch just set a new space record.

The company's Crew-13 mission for NASA arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) today (Oct. 1) at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT), 7 hours and 55 minutes after it launched from Florida's Space Coast.

That's the fastest any American spacecraft has ever reached the orbiting lab, NASA officials said.

The previous record was 12 hours and 33 minutes, set in November 2024 by SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule during the robotic CRS-31 resupply flight. The fastest that astronauts had made the trip in a U.S. vehicle was 14 hours and 43 minutes, which was achieved by the Crew-11 mission in August 2025.

"We got lucky this time," Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA science and Dragon programs at SpaceX, said during Crew-13's post-launch press conference today.

"The space station was in an opportune spot in space, and the orbital mechanics, the physics of it all, worked out for it to be the shortest launch-to-docking time we've had to date," she said, adding that "this is close to the fastest it could be."

Crew-13 didn't set the overall speed record to the ISS, however — not even close. In May 2020, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying three astronauts reached the orbiting lab just 3 hours and 3 minutes after lifting off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz caught up to the ISS after just two orbits of Earth.

The Soyuz isn't faster or more powerful than a cargo or crew-carrying Dragon capsule. Rather, the difference in chase-down times comes down primarily to choices made by mission controllers; Russia tends to target more aggressive "fast-track" trajectories.

Crew-13 delivered four astronauts to the orbiting lab: NASA's Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency and Sergey Teteryatnikov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. The quartet will live and work in space for the next six months.

They'll relieve the four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission, which launched in mid-February. Those spaceflyers — NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, the European Space Agency's Sophie Adenot and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev — could return to Earth in their Crew Dragon capsule as soon as Monday (Oct. 5), according to NASA officials.

On Oct. 1, 1958, NASA was born! The space agency officially opened for business on this day. President Eisenhower had signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act into law two months earlier in response to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik.

The U.S. didn't want to get left behind in the space race, so Congress created NASA as an organized effort to advance space research and technology.

NASA absorbed the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) along with its 8,000 employees and three laboratories.

Why it mattered

When NASA officially opened its doors on Oct. 1, 1958, it opened a new era of space exploration for the United States.

At the time, the U.S. was on the back foot racing to catch up to the Soviet Union after the launch of Sputnik and show the country's technological prowess on the world stage. NASA's existence began as the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which then President Dwight Eisenhower signed on July 29, 1958 after the act's passage by Congress.

It was Eisenhower who pushed for a civilian-led space agency, which - as mentioned above - found its roots in the existing National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA.

"Although a former military commander, Eisenhower believed a civilian agency would be more effective than assigning space to the military, where inter-service rivalries had already demonstrated a lack of results in launching a satellite," NASA wrote in a history account for the agency's 65th anniversary.

The first successful U.S. satellite launch actually predated NASA's creation (Explorer 1 launch on Jan. 31, 1958). NASA led U.S. efforts in the Space Race with the Soviet Union to be the first to land astronauts on the moon (a race NASA and the U.S. won in July 1969 with the Apollo 11 moon landing).

NASA ultimately opened its doors to international cooperation with the joint U.S.-Soviet mission Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, leading to joint operations at Russia's Mir Space Station and a more international collaboration on the still-flying International Space Station.

Human spaceflight aside, NASA has also maintained a robust planetary exploration (including the first rovers on Mars) progarm, Earth observation missions and astrophysics probes, including ever-more-advanced space telescopes.

On Oct. 1, 2026, NASA's 68th anniversary, a commercial SpaceX rocket launched four Crew-13 astronauts, including two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station alongside crewmates from Canada and Russia, in a well-timed celebration of the space agency's history.

"Well Happy Birthday to NASA," said NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, who provided live commentary for the launch. "What a great day to light a candle."

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SpaceX just launched NASA's first mission numbered "13" in more than 50 years.

Crew-13, the 13th flight of the company's Crew Dragon capsule flying under the agency's commercial crew contract, lifted off at 11:10 a.m. EDT (1510 GMT) on Thursday (Oct. 1) from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Commander Jessica Watkins and pilot Luke Delaney of NASA, mission specialist Joshua Kutryk with the Canadian Space Agency and mission specialist Sergey Teteryatnikov of Roscosmos are on their way to a rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station, beginning their planned five-and-a-half-month expedition.

Their time on the orbiting outpost will begin with a brief handover period with the outgoing Crew-12 astronauts, as would be expected for anyone familiar with the normal procession of numbers. But that was not always the case throughout NASA's history.

Triskaidekaphobia

NASA's first human space program to reach a 13th numbered flight was Apollo. The April 1970 mission was planned to be the third time U.S. astronauts landed on the moon, but as now is famously known, Apollo 13 was derailed by an inflight explosion that made the flight's primary goal returning Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise safely to Earth.

Both before and after the flight, the crew had little concern about their mission being numbered 13. They were aware of the superstition — that "13" was an unlucky number — but if they paid any attention to it, it was to make a joke.

"I never thought of it in a superstitious sense, that we would have a problem on 13," said Haise, the mission's lunar module pilot, in a 50th anniversary interview with collectSPACE.com in 2020. "I had no sense at all, nor do I relate to the launch time [13:13 CST] and all the other thirteens that people have tried to tie to things as being connected with the flight."

Jim Beggs reportedly felt differently. The NASA administrator when the agency reached its next 13th numbered mission in 1984, Beggs was against tempting fate.

"'There's not going to be [another] Apollo 13 or a Shuttle 13," he said, according to Bob Crippen, commander of the space shuttle's STS-41C mission, in a NASA oral history interview.

Giving in to triskaidekaphobia — the fear of the number 13 — Beggs ordered NASA to adopt a new but convoluted numbering system for all shuttle missions after STS-9.

"Hence, what would have been STS-13 became STS-41-C, where the '4' was the fiscal year [1984], the '1' was the launch site [Kennedy Space Center in Florida] and 'C' the order of launch [C was the third planned flight of the year]," said Crippen.

Beggs left office after the Challenger tragedy in 1986 and with him went the complex number and letter system. The first mission to return the space shuttle to flight — the 26th in the program's history — was designated STS-26.

It comes after 12

Before SpaceX's Crew-13, the closest NASA had come to having to consider the question was Expedition 13, the 13th crew to take up residency on the ISS. It was not, however, a solely American crew, with only a NASA astronaut, a Russian commander and German flight engineer aboard.

Other missions were not strictly the 13th, such as STS-113, which flew to the International Space Station in 2002, or were not American and so were not NASA's to decide. Russia's Soyuz TMA-13M and Soyuz MS-13 flew without so much as a black cat getting in their way.

"We were joking a lot about being number 113," Ken Bowersox, STS-113 commander, told the press at the time. To play it safe, though, the crew's mission patch used the Roman numerals (CXIII) instead.

As for Crew-13 astronauts, they seem be unfazed by reintroducing "13" to the order of U.S. missions, going so far as to style their official crew insignia after the emblem worn by the Apollo 13 astronauts.

"We took a lot of inspiration from the Apollo 13 crew as Crew-13," said Watkins, answering a question from the press gathered for their pre-launch arrival at the Kennedy Space Center. "We have a couple of nods in terms of just the Roman numerals, the golden color [and] the dragon looking upward."

"We really wanted to honor their legacy, honor their resilience and their grit and bring a little bit of that with us on our crew," she said. "We stand on the shoulders of giants."

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — After a more than two-week delay, NASA's next astronaut crew is finally in orbit.

SpaceX launched its Crew-13 astronaut mission for NASA today (Oct. 1) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station here on Florida's Space Coast on a flight to the International Space Station (ISS) that will last about 8 hours — the fastest Crew Dragon flight ever to the orbiting lab.

"It was an incredible launch," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said during a post-launch press conference today. "This is an absolutely great start to Crew 13. We will be watching very closely, cheering them on throughout their great expedition."

Crew-13's Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 11:10 a.m. EDT (1510 GMT) from Launch Complex-40, carrying the astronaut quartet into low Earth orbit (LEO) aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon "Grace." It's the second launch for Grace, which also ferried the crew of the private Axiom-4 mission to the ISS last summer. It's also the second mission for Crew-13's commander, NASA's Jessica Watkins, who is, coincidentally, the first NASA astronaut to launch aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft for a second time.

Watson is joined by three spaceflight rookies: Crew-13 mission pilot Luke Delaney of NASA and mission specialists Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency and Sergey Teteryatnikov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

Their trip to LEO took less than 10 minutes. About 2.5 minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9's second stage separated from its booster, known as B1101, and, in short succession, began executing its orbital insertion burn. Meanwhile, B1101 performed a simultaneous boostback burn to reset its trajectory for a return and touchdown at the landing zone adjacent to LC-40. An entry and landing burn followed, with a successful touchdown about 7 minutes and 40 seconds after liftoff. This was the third launch and recovery of B1101.

The second-stage engine burn ended about a minute later, wrapping up an orbital insertion maneuver that lasted roughly six minutes. Grace was released another a minute afterward to begin its chase of the ISS.

"Thanks for an amazing ride," Watkins told Mission Control shortly after that milestone was reached.

"They say that courage is grace under pressure, and the incredible teams that got us to orbit today truly embody that," she added. "Thank you for your hard work, perseverance, and courageous commitment to ensuring Grace was ready and safe to fly. We carry with us on this journey all of you who have supported us along the way, and we hope to make you proud."

Crew-13 won't have to wait long to begin rendezvous and docking procedures.

Typical Crew Dragon missions take 15 to 24 hours to catch up to the space station. For comparison, Russian launch profiles deliver the Soyuz crew capsule to the ISS anywhere between three hours to two days after liftoff. Grace will only have about 7 hours, 50 minutes on orbit before docking with the ISS, setting a new speed record for an American spacecraft.

"We got lucky this time," Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA science and dragon programs at SpaceX, said in the post-launch briefing. "The space station was in an opportune spot in space, and the orbital mechanics, the physics of it all, worked out for it to be the the shortest launch to docking time we've had to date."

The Crew-13 spaceflyers will call the ISS home for roughly six months. During their stint, they will take over ongoing station maintenance and research investigations, many of which focus on astronaut health and the long-term effects of microgravity on the human body. Other experiments on the Crew-13 docket include studies into stem-cell derived tissues to treat Parkinson's and heart disease, as well as the harvesting of produce in zero-g.

The astronauts' time aboard the ISS is expected to wrap up sometime next year, around February or March, when SpaceX launches NASA's Crew-14 astronauts to replace them. Similarly, Crew-13 will relieve the four Crew-12 astronauts. Crew-13's arrival will signal the beginning of departure preparations for the members of Crew-12, who launched to the ISS about 7.5 months ago — a slightly longer stay than originally anticipated.

Crew-12 was expected to return to Earth last month, but a delay in Crew-13 extended their mission by a few weeks. An oxidizer leak in Grace's propulsion system was discovered in August, prompting NASA and SpaceX to allot more time for prelaunch checkouts and tests.

NASA's Crew-13 coverage is scheduled to continue at 5:20 p.m. EDT (2020 GMT), with docking expected around 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT). Grace will dock with the forward-facing port on the station's Harmony module, where it will remain for the duration of the Crew-13 mission. Hatch opening is scheduled for 8:25 p.m. EDT (0025 GMT, Oct. 2), with short welcoming remarks by the crews to follow. You can watch all of this action here at Space.com.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 2:05 p.m. ET on Oct. 1 with quotes from the post-launch press conference.

SpaceX launched a reconnaissance mission for the U.S. government on Thursday night (Oct. 1), the third liftoff for the company in less than 13 hours.

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday at 11:54 p.m. EDT (0354 GMT on Oct. 2), on a mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) called NROL-97.

The launch rounded out a tripleheader for SpaceX, which also sent the Crew-13 astronaut mission to the International Space Station on Thursday morning and lofted the 130-satellite Transporter-18 rideshare flight that afternoon. Both of those earlier missions flew on Falcon 9 rockets.

SpaceX has launched three missions in such a short timeframe just once before — in March 2025, when the company sent up three Falcon 9 rockets in a 12.5-hour span.

The Falcon Heavy consists of three modified, strapped-together first stages of the workhorse Falcon 9. The heavy lifter debuted in February 2018 and now has 14 flights under its belt to date, all of them successful (provided NROL-97 goes to plan).

NROL-97 is the first Falcon Heavy mission for the NRO, which operates the United States' fleet of spy satellites. We don't know much about NROL-97, which isn't surprising; NRO missions tend to be classified. But the fact that a Falcon Heavy was the rocket of choice suggests that the payload(s) that went up on Thursday night are quite heavy, and/or are headed for a relatively distant destination. (SpaceX didn't tell us what orbit the Falcon Heavy targeted.)

The NROL-97 mission patch, for what it's worth, features the phrase "Orbem mundi mutandum conservare," which is Latin for "to preserve a changing world" or "to preserve the world by transforming it." The emblem also memorializes the lives lost during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"The lighthouse characterizes enduring strength and the ability to provide information to those in need, even in difficult times," NRO officials wrote in a description of the patch. "The endpoints of the light beam align to the locations of 9 and 11 on a clock face in honor of the 25th anniversary of 9/11. Four prominent stars represent the four aircraft lost on 9/11, and the moon phase is shown as it appeared on September 11, 2026."

The launch webcast didn't shed much light on NROL-97. At the request of the NRO, it ended shortly after the Falcon Heavy's two side boosters come back to Earth for a landing, which occurred at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station a little less than eight minutes after liftoff.

NROL-97 was the second and fourth flight for those two boosters, respectively, according to SpaceX's mission page. The Falcon Heavy's central booster was not recovered.

SpaceX also launched the 14th test flight of its next-gen Starship megarocket on Monday (Sept. 28). So all three of the company's currently-flying rockets just lifted off within a three-day span.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:10 a.m. ET on Oct. 2 with news of successful launch and booster landings.

SpaceX launched 130 payloads to orbit today (Oct. 1), including a prototype Google AI satellite, on the second leg of a planned spaceflight tripleheader.

The rideshare mission, called Transporter-18, lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 2:32 p.m. EDT (1832 GMT; 11:32 a.m. local California time), rising through the fog that typically blankets this scenic coastal site.

Everything went according to plan on the flight. The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Vandenberg for a landing about 7.5 minutes after liftoff, completing its 25th flight to date. And the rocket's upper stage powered its way to low Earth orbit (LEO), where it deployed the 130 payloads over a roughly 11-minute stretch starting 54.5 minutes after launch.

The highest-profile payload it carried up is a pathfinder spacecraft for Project Suncatcher, the AI constellation that Google plans to build and operate in LEO.

This satellite will help the project team determine how tensor processing units (TPUs) — Google chips that are core Suncatcher hardware — perform in the space environment. Of particular importance are how the TPUs withstand space radiation, and how efficiently the heat they generate is dissipated.

Another company with AI data center ambitions flew on Transporter-18 as well: Cowboy Space put its Reason-1 satellite on the Falcon 9.

"Its job is to prove out power beaming: using a high-power laser to transfer energy from low Earth orbit to a receiver on the ground," Cowboy Space said of Reason-1 in a Sept. 28 X post. "If you want to build data centers in space, you have to master the optical systems between orbit and Earth. This is where that journey begins."

Transporter-18 also launched Starfish Space's first Otter servicing satellite.

"This is a big moment for Starfish Space," the Washington-based company said via X on Sept. 24. "We've spent years developing, iterating, and proving out the key technologies required for affordable, available satellite servicing. Now we’re launching Otters, putting our satellite servicing vehicles to work for customers in orbit."

The rest of the 130 payloads were a diverse lot, consisting of "cubesats, microsats, hosted payloads and two spacecraft with reentry vehicles and four orbital transfer vehicles carrying 41 of those payloads to be deployed at a later time," SpaceX wrote in its Transporter-18 mission description.

Transporter-18 didn't set a record for most payloads launched at once, but it came close. The current mark is 143, sent on SpaceX's Transporter-1 mission in January 2021.

Transporter-18 was part of a very busy day for SpaceX. The company also launched the Crew-13 astronaut mission for NASA this morning, and it aims to loft the NROL-97 flight for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office late tonight, both of them from Florida's Space Coast. Crew-13 flew on a Falcon 9, and NROL-97 will ride a Falcon Heavy to orbit.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 2:50 p.m. EDT on Oct. 1 with news of successful launch and rocket landing, then again at 4:35 p.m. EDT with news of payload deployment.

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.

Next up is the Transporter-18 rideshare mission, which will send 130 payloads to orbit, including a prototype satellite for Google's Project Suncatcher AI constellation.

Transporter-18 will fly on a Falcon 9 from the West Coast, lifting off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base during a 58-minute window that opens at 2:18 p.m. EDT (1818 GMT; 11:18 a.m. local California time).

The action shifts back to Florida's Space Coast for the final leg of the tripleheader. If all goes to plan, a Falcon Heavy rocket will launch the classified NROL-97 mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office from NASA's Kennedy Space Center tonight at 11:53 p.m. EDT (0353 GMT on Oct. 2).

You can watch all of these launches live. Space.com will stream the Crew-13 launch, courtesy of NASA, and SpaceX will webcast Transporter-18 and NROL-97 on its website.

The only other time that SpaceX has launched three missions in such a short timeframe was March 14-15 of 2025, when three Falcon 9 rockets launched in a 12.5-hour span.

The first two rockets lofted the Crew-10 astronaut mission and the Transporter-13 rideshare flight. The final Falcon 9 sent 23 of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites to low Earth orbit.

Today's missions, by the way, come on the heels of the 14th test flight of SpaceX's Starship megarocket, which saw the vehicle reach Earth orbit for the first time ever. So the company is giving all of its active rockets a workout this week, if current schedules hold.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX and NASA officials are feeling good about tomorrow morning's launch of four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), provided Mother Nature cooperates.

Crew-13 is scheduled to lift off Thursday (Oct. 1) on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex-40 here at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS). The mission is targeting an instantaneous launch window at 11:10 a.m. EDT (1510 GMT), with docking planned for just under eight hours later. You can watch all of the action here at Space.com when the time comes.

And all of the hardware is ready for an on-time launch, we learned today (Sept. 30).

"Right now, everything is 'go,'" Lori Glaze, associate administrator for NASA's Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate, said during a prelaunch press briefing this evening.

But the weather has to be good as well, she added — and that's not a sure thing. Current forecasts predict a 45% chance of a weather violation, meaning there's a 55% chance the mission will get the green light for liftoff.

When Crew-13 launches, SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule "Grace" will ferry the astronauts to low Earth orbit (LEO), led by commander Jessica Watkins, who is poised to become the first NASA astronaut to launch aboard a Crew Dragon for a second time. Her three crewmates, all astronaut rookies, are NASA's Luke Delaney (Crew-13 pilot), Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. The latter two serve as mission specialists.

The Crew-13 astronauts will live and work aboard the ISS for roughly six months as part of ISS Expedition 75. During their time on orbit, they will continue regular station upkeep and maintenance and contribute to a range of ongoing research experiments and scientific studies.

Many on-orbit investigations are focused on astronaut health and examining the effects of long-term spaceflight on the human body, which can have rippling effects for medical innovations back on Earth. Crew-13 will also conduct trials to better understand in-space food production.

"The crew will help researchers treat heart disease and Parkinson's disease by studying human stem-cell derived tissues that can help improve medicine, disease modeling and pharmaceutical testing," said Dana Weigel, NASA's LEO program manager, in a Sept. 28 NASA statement.

"They also will explore crop production, which is important for longer-duration spaceflight missions, help us better understand blood flow abnormalities that we see in space and test new diagnostic medical equipment for monitoring crew health," she added.

Crew-13's arrival at the orbital laboratory will also signal the beginning of the end of the Crew-12 mission. SpaceX launched Crew-12 in February, and those four astronauts have been wrapping up their time on the ISS as their mission has approached its conclusion. They ended up having a couple of extra weeks in space: Crew-13 had been targeted to launch on Sept. 12, but a leak in Grace's propulsion system, discovered during pre-mission checkouts, pushed the launch back. Now, mission managers and officials at NASA and SpaceX have cleared Grace for flight.

If Thursday's launch is scrubbed due to weather or other delays, a backup opportunity exists on Friday (Oct. 2), with a liftoff that day scheduled for 10:47 a.m. EDT (1447 GMT).

On Sept. 30, 2016, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft purposely crashed into a comet.

The Rosetta spacecraft launched in 2004 and spent 10 years chasing down Comet 67P, a rubber-duck-shaped space rock that orbits the sun between Earth and Jupiter.

Rosetta spent the next two years tagging along with the comet as it traveled through the solar system. When it was time for the mission to end, Rosetta gently crashed into the comet.

Why it mattered

The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission to a comet was a first-of-its-kind mission.

Not only was it the first spacecraft ever to orbit a comet, but it was the first to follow its comet target as the icy object approached the sun, watching the comet evolve as it warmed up during its journey across the solar system.

ESA launched Rosetta in March 2004, with the probe taking a full decade to reach its target: Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, an icy remnant left over from the birth of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.

The 1.3 billion-euro ($1.46 billion) Rosetta probe reached comet 67P in August 2014 and spent two years orbiting the comet, capturing stunning photos and studying its composition and changes over time.

Perhaps the most memorable moment during Rosetta's time at comet 67P was the landing of Philae, a tiny lander released by Rosetta that bounced several times before coming to rest at a strange angle on the comet's surface. The lander's batteries ran out after a few hours (since its solar arrays couldn't face the sun), but the landing itself was considered mostly a success.

Like a silent sentinel, Rosetta continued its observation of comet 67p, and even rediscovered Philae (which had disappeared from view after landing), just weeks before the orbiter crashed into comet 67P.

You may be wondering why, if Rosetta was still functioning, ESA opted to crash it into comet 67P.

The Rosetta probe followed comet 67P as it flew through the inner solar system and looped around the sun. By September 2016, comet 67P was headed back out to the outer solar system in the direction of Jupiter and Rosetta's solar panels would not be able to generate enough power to keep pace with the comet so far out.

It took 14 hours for Rosetta to make its slow-motion crash landing on comet 67P as mission scientists watched from a control center in Darmstadt, Germany. It hit the comet at leisurely walking pace of about 2 mph (3.2 kph).

The impact Rosetta's mission had on comet science, as well as our understanding of the the early composition of the solar system, is still being felt to this day.

"I can announce the full success of this historic descent," Patrick Martin, Rosetta mission manager, said at the time as he declared mission operations ended. "Farewell Rosetta, you've done the job. That was pure science at its best."

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.

The report estimates that the casualty risk from reentering rocket upper stages alone was over four percent in 2024, having doubled since 2020, points out space environment specialist, Ewan Wright from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. About 124 rocket stages reentered the atmosphere uncontrolled in 2024; over two per week, Wright told Space.com. "If that level is sustained for the next decade, the risk of someone somewhere being killed by rocket debris alone is 33 percent," he said.

Wright said that the casualty risk from satellites is also increasing, up to one percent in 2024. "The chance of an aircraft being struck, or airspace being closed due to a reentry, is also increasing as more objects reenter the atmosphere."

In Wright's view, these are avoidable risks. "All rockets should be required to do controlled reentries into the ocean, away from people and aircraft, to mitigate the risk entirely," he said.

Heavily congested

Earth's orbital environment is a finite resource. Too many satellites remain in heavily congested orbits at the end of their lives, creating a growing collision risk. Additionally, more than three intact satellites or rocket bodies are reentering Earth's atmosphere every day on average. At the same time, ten new payloads are launched daily.

One facet of using space that is quickly gaining in relevance is the concern about atmospheric pollution generated by reentries of space hardware. An ESA statement linked to the report suggests that a first task is to collect data on the extent and details of such pollution "to ensure a sound scientific basis for any mitigation measures, if needed."

Significant changes

Since the first issue of this report in 2016, there have been significant changes when it comes to humanity's usage of the space environment.

For the better, there has been a significant increase in the ability of space surveillance networks to reliably catalogue objects both in near geostationary orbits, as well as tagging launch traffic into low Earth orbit.

However, an increasing trend is the number of objects in orbit with an "unidentified" classification. That development reflects a growing gap between detected and catalogued "known origin" fragments.

This situation highlights the increasing complexity of the space environment, the report stresses, and the need for improved monitoring and space traffic management capabilities to be able to avoid collisions and fragmentations.

Health index

The ESA Environment Report 2026 is rife with key takeaways. And among them is a new trend they've added. That trend's bottom line: the casualty risk on the ground from fragments that survive atmospheric reentry is growing.

"Even though the numbers are low compared to everyday risks in life, the chance of a casualty increased in recent years due to increased traffic," the report notes.

This realization of what goes up can rain down is an outcome of more launches, more satellites in Earth orbit and more reentries into Earth's atmosphere of rocket stages and other space hardware.

An "ESA Space Environment Health Index" indicates that, in 2025, the long-term effect of current activities in space over time got an order of magnitude worse in just one year.

High price to pay

Active debris removal, the ESA report observes, is required to stop the growth of the number of objects over time that is caused by space debris causing new debris on their own through speedy smash ups, known as the Kessler syndrome.

"Some indicators show that the interest in and adherence to space debris mitigation measures is on the rise," the report points out, "but we need to be faster, more consistent and reliable. Without it, we are saddling future generations with a high price to pay for any activities in space."

To that point, even if no new satellites were launched, the debris population would continue to increase "because fragmentation events generate debris faster than they can naturally reenter the atmosphere." That means, the report adds, over time, this could make some orbital regions increasingly unsafe and potentially unusable.

Underscored in the report is that the greatest long-term threat is not simply the addition of new objects through launching more, but the self-sustaining cycle of collisions creating fragments that trigger further collisions.

'What would be desirable'

Is it fair to say this most recent appraisal by ESA best captures the situation compared to earlier studies?

In response, Stijn Lemmens, ESA's new Head of the Space Debris Office, told Space.com "yes it is." The report Lemmens said, "aims to aggregate all available and observable data in systematic and neutral fashion, providing year-on-year updates on trends."

This means modifications can occur between reports and elements, such as the future environment, Lemmens added, "are based on extrapolating how we behave now instead of what would be desirable."

Circular economy

ESA's long-term ambition, as reviewed in the report, is creating a circular economy in space through in-orbit servicing.

To do so means refueling, maintaining and repairing spacecraft in space, as well as recycling and reusing resources when manufacturing directly in space.

The paradigm change from "disposable" satellite to reuse and in-orbit servicing equates to a "seismic shift" throughout the space sector, the new report concludes.

Update for 11:30 am ET: SpaceX has successfully launched the Crew-13 astronauts to the International Space Station on a Falcon 9 rocket and the Crew Dragon Grace. You can see live Crew-13 launch updates here. Read our launch wrap and see awesome Crew-13 video.

SpaceX is just one day way from launching its next astronaut crew to the International Space Station for NASA, and if you're hoping to watch the day-long mission live online, we've got you covered.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch four astronauts to the ISS on the Crew-13 mission as early as Thursday, Oct. 1, from one of the company's pads at Cape Canveral Space Force Station in Florida. Liftoff is set for 11:10 a.m. EDT (1510 GMT), but that could change due to weather or technical glitches. You'll be able to watch it all live on this page and our YouTube channel at launch time.

The SpaceX Crew-13 mission will launch NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins, Luke Delaney and crewmates Joshua Kutryk (of Canada) and cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov to the ISS for a six-month stay. They will join three other crewmates as part of the Expedition 75 crew. Here's a look at when and how to tune in.

What time will SpaceX launch Crew-13?

SpaceX and NASA currently plan to launch the Crew-13 astronaut mission to the ISS on Thursday, Oct. 1, at 11:10 a.m. EDT (1510 GMT) from SpaceX's pad at Space Launch Complex 40 of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

That launch time could change if SpaceX has to delay a day or two due to weather. (There is currently a 60% chance of favorable conditions for liftoff on Oct. 1.) If the launch does slip a day or two, the launch time would occur earlier on each subsequent day.

The launch has been delayed since September due to issues with SpaceX's Dragon capsule.

Can I watch SpaceX's Crew-13 launch online?

Yes, you'll be able to watch SpaceX's Crew-13 launch online, but exactly where is up to you.

Here at Space.com, we'll carry a simulcast of NASA's Crew-13 launch livestream, which will begin Thursday at 9:20 a.m. EDT (1320 GMT). That launch will be followed by a post-launch press conference at 12:45 p.m. EDT (1645 GMT).

While you can watch all of that on this page, you can also follow the launch directly from NASA via YouTube, NASA+ or the agency's social media channels. SpaceX is also expected to host its own launch webcast on its Crew-13 mission page and X social media page

You'll also be able to see live views of SpaceX's Crew-13 rocket on the pad about 6 hours before launch via the Kennedy Space Center Newsroom YouTube page here.

There are a series of other Crew-13 live TV events you should be aware of aside from the launch. Here's a look.

Sept. 30: Crew-13 prelaunch briefing

One day before launch, on Wednesday, Sept. 30, NASA will hold a prelaunch briefing to discuss the details of the Crew-13 launch to the ISS. That briefing will begin at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) and be held at the Kennedy Space Center. Here's a look at the speakers:

• Dr. Lori Glaze, associate administrator, Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
• Dana Weigel, manager, Low Earth Orbit Program, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston
• Mathieu Caron, director, Astronauts, Life Sciences, and Space Medicine, CSA
• William Gerstenmaier, vice president, Build and Flight Reliability, SpaceX
• Arlena Moses, launch weather officer, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s 45th Weather Squadron

Oct. 1: Crew-13 launch day

As we mentioned above, NASA's launch webcast for Crew-13 will begin at 9:20 a.m. EDT on Thursday, Oct. 1. That's just under 2 hours before launch, with the livestream continuing until spacecraft separation.

Crew-13 will fly a short trajectory to the ISS that should take just under 8 hours. So there are several more events to follow beyond liftoff.

12:45 p.m. EDT: Post-lanch press conference

NASA will hold a press conference to celebrate the Crew-13 launch, with NASA's Administrator Jared Isaacman expected to lead the event. It should last up to an hour, with the speakers below attending.

• NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman
• Dr. Lori Glaze, associate administrator, Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
• Dana Weigel, manager, Low Earth Orbit Program, NASA Johnson
• Mathieu Caron, director, Astronauts, Life Sciences, and Space Medicine, CSA
• Julianna Scheiman, director, NASA Science and Dragon Programs, SpaceX

5:20 p.m. EDT: Crew-13 docking coverage

NASA's docking coverage for the SpaceX Crew Dragon mission will begin at 5:20 p.m. EDT (2120 GMT) and last through approach and docking, which is scheduled for 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT).

A separate livestream will be available on NASA's YouTube channel and NASA+ for the rendezvous.

Depending on timing, NASA may also host a separate livestream for the welcome ceremony and hatch opening, when the two crews become one, which is scheduled for 8:45 p.m. EDT (0045 GMT).

Who is launching on SpaceX's Crew-13 mission?

The four-person crew of SpaceX's Crew-13 mission for NASA is a mix of space travelers, three of whom are rookies. The mission is commanded by NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins. Her fellow NASA astronaut Luke Delaney serves as pilot.

Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Teteryanikov round out the crew as mission specialists. Here's a snapshot of each of the Crew-13 astronauts as they begin their Expedition 75 mission to the ISS.

How long is SpaceX's Crew-13 flight to the ISS?

SpaceX's Crew-13 mission (at least its launch and docking phase) is expected to last about 7 hours and 50 minutes. That's how long it will take the Crew Dragon Grace spacecraft to reach the ISS. The spacecraft is making its second flight after flying four private astronauts to the station on the Ax-4 commercial flight for Axiom Space.

After launch, Grace will carry Watkins and her crew around Earth in a series of orbits to meet up with the ISS. The capsule will dock itself at the ISS at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) at a forward-facing port on the station's U.S.-built Harmony module. You can watch it live here at 5:20 p.m. EDT (2120 GMT).

After docking, the Crew-13 astronauts will formally join the station's Expedition 75 crew in a hatch opening and welcome ceremony that is scheduled for 8:45 p.m. EDT (0045 Oct. 2 GMT).

Here's SpaceX's rundown of the launch schedule to plan your watch session.

What if SpaceX can't launch Crew-13 on Oct. 1?

If SpaceX is unable to launch the Crew-13 astronauts for NASA on Oct. 1, the company can try again on Friday, Oct. 2.

A launch on Oct. 2 would occur at 10:47 a.m. EDT (1447 GMT) in order to place the Crew Dragon capsule on track to reach the International Space Station later that day.

Any additional launch windows will likely depend on the nature of the delay, as well as availability on the Eastern Range used by Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

Visit Space.com com on Oct. 1 for live launch coverage of SpaceX's Crew-13 astronaut launch for NASA.