Space

Japan's H3 rocket flew its new 24L variant for the first time, sending the MMX probe toward Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos. After about a year in transit, it will land on Phobos, collect roughly 10 grams of soil and bring it back to Earth in 2031.

— via NASASpaceFlight.com, Joe Kangas

Seventy-one French MPs want to give Dassault's VORTEX spaceplane exactly €1 in the 2027 budget, moved from an existing defence support programme. The token sum is a tactic to force the government to explain how it will pay for the project and how much Germany is involved, given the collapse of the Franco-German SCAF fighter programme in June 2026.

— via European Spaceflight, Andrew Parsonson

ESA lost its full-scale Space Rider test model this month when the parafoil failed to deploy as expected during a drop test. It's the second anomaly in this final test campaign this year, and ESA has not said whether it needs a replacement model or when testing could resume.

— via European Spaceflight, Andrew Parsonson

A Polish deputy minister says NASA's Artemis programme lacks financial transparency, carries "very high costs" and offers limited access to outside partners. Poland's lunar priority is now ESA's Argonaut lander, which the agency is targeting for a first launch in 2030.

— via European Spaceflight, Andrew Parsonson

Japan's MMX probe is set to lift off Oct. 19 on an H3-24L from Tanegashima, carrying 13 instruments and a 4,480 kg spacecraft toward Mars with arrival in August 2027. Because Phobos's gravity is only 1/1700th of Earth's, MMX will sit in a quasi-satellite orbit that follows the moon rather than circling it.

— via NASASpaceFlight.com, Justin Davenport

PLD Space now aims to fly Miura 5 for the first time in the first half of 2027 from Kourou, French Guiana, and a fully integrated second stage is entering system-level testing in Teruel. The Spanish company is building three vehicles in parallel, two qualification units and the first flight article, so test lessons can feed straight into flight hardware.

— via NASASpaceFlight.com, Chris Bergin

SpaceX is aiming to try catching both the Super Heavy booster and the Ship on Flight 15, targeted for November 8 at the earliest. Flight 16 in December could be the first Starship launch from Launch Complex 39A, which would leave 2026 with only five launches as SpaceX moves from Block 2 to Block 3 vehicles.

— via NASASpaceFlight.com, Chris Bergin and Arran Reid

The UK's £25 million space radar contract has already flip-flopped on its national security exemption twice in two months, with no explanation for the latest reversal. Due in July 2027, the system must track objects as small as five centimetres from 1,000 kilometres away.

— via European Spaceflight, Andrew Parsonson

Neutron's first-stage tank has ruptured once under hydrostatic testing and now shown void defects after a manufacturing switch meant to fix that failure. The culprit both times: carbon fibre, a material prized for shaving mass but brutal to cure correctly at scale.

— via NASASpaceFlight.com, Ryan Caton

Ariane 6's return to flight slips to 23 November after a liquid hydrogen turbopump problem pushed the schedule back nearly seven weeks. ArianeGroup won't confirm the anomaly directly, but the delay already looks set to shrink 2026's launch count to six, down from the seven or eight once planned.

— via European Spaceflight, Andrew Parsonson

Boosters are fully stacked, all four RS-25 engines are on the Core Stage, and NASA is weeks from mating them into a short stack for a pad tanking test. The Artemis III crew will use that rollout for their first full launch-day rehearsal, suits, drive, and emergency exit route included.

— via NASASpaceFlight.com, Chris Bergin

Spain just shuffled €65.8 million forward in its PAZ 2 spy satellite loan, swelling 2026 funding to €245.6 million while trimming 2029 to cover it. Hisdesat says the original schedule was creating cash management headaches as Airbus builds the two radar satellites, due in orbit by 2031.

— via European Spaceflight, Andrew Parsonson

Norway's government has earmarked NOK 323.3 million for a second launch pad at Andøya Spaceport in 2027, with most of the money coming from the Ministry of Defence. The budget also hands the Armed Forces responsibility for securing the site, following parliamentary questions about gaps in police coverage during a recent Isar Aerospace launch attempt.

— via European Spaceflight, Andrew Parsonson

Three Falcon 9s, a cargo run to the ISS, a secret Space Force payload and more Starlink satellites fill an otherwise quiet week. One mission brings up the final two iROSA solar arrays and a clamshell rig built to haul home a failed Canadarm2 joint.

— via NASASpaceFlight.com, John Sharp

A booster flying its eighth mission just delivered the ISS's final iROSA solar arrays, cargo that's expected to boost station power by 20 to 30% once installed. Also aboard: artificial retinas grown layer by layer in microgravity and heart tissue built to test drugs.

— via NASASpaceFlight.com, Justin Davenport

A galaxy 55 million light-years away is spinning with its core rotating perpendicular to the rest of its disk, and Hubble thinks it knows why. New Webb images push deeper, revealing a star five to eight times the Sun's mass carving a 3.5-light-year gold cavity in a stellar nursery 3,300 light-years off.

— via NASASpaceFlight.com, Haygen Warren