The astronauts of NASA's Artemis III mission visited the Oval Office on Thursday (Oct. 28) and posed for a few photos with the president.

Their visit came nearly six months to the day after that of the Artemis II crew, who stopped by the White House on April 29, 19 days after the end of their historic flight around the moon.

The Artemis III astronauts are NASA's Randy Bresnik (commander), Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio (mission specialists) and the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano (pilot). All four — plus backup crewmate Bob Hines of NASA, and agency chief Jared Isaacman — made the White House trip.

"It was a great day at the White House with President Trump and the talented crew of Artemis III," Isaacman wrote via X on Thursday.

Artemis III will launch to low Earth orbit in the summer of 2027, if all goes according to plan. The roughly two-week-long mission will aim to dock NASA's Orion capsule with SpaceX's Starship vehicle and/or Blue Origin's Blue Moon.

NASA selected Starship and Blue Moon to be the crewed lunar landers for the Artemis program, so Artemis III will provide valuable practice: On moon-landing missions, astronauts will launch aboard Orion and then meet up with either Starship or Blue Moon, which will carry them to the lunar surface and back up again.

That's slated to happen for the first time on Artemis IV, which NASA plans to launch in 2028.

We don't yet know which private lander(s) will launch on Artemis III; NASA would like to fly both of them, but it's unclear if both will be ready when the time comes.

That uncertainty applies to Artemis IV as well. We'll have to wait a bit before we know which spacecraft will have the honor of putting astronauts down on the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972.

SpaceX just checked another big box on the path to its 15th Starship test flight, which promises to be pretty epic.

The company conducted static-fire tests with Starship's Ship upper stage on Monday (Oct. 26) and Tuesday (Oct. 27), igniting its Raptor engines while the vehicle, known as Ship 42, remained anchored to the ground.

"Ship 42 static fires complete. The Starship preparing for Flight 15 performed a full duration, six-engine static fire, and fired a single Raptor engine to simulate a deorbit burn," SpaceX said in a Wednesday (Oct. 28) X post that shared video of the tests.

The Ship 42 tests come on the heels of a successful 33-engine static fire with Booster 22, the Starship Super Heavy first stage that will conduct Flight 15. Everything therefore appears to remain on track for Flight 15, which SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said is targeted for sometime in November.

All Starship launches are worth watching, but this one should be particularly exciting. Musk said last week that SpaceX will try to catch both Ship and Super Heavy during Flight 15, provided the company can get regulatory approval to do so.

These catches are performed by the "chopstick" arms of the launch tower at Starbase, SpaceX's Starship launch and manufacturing hub in South Texas. The company has snagged Super Heavy on three Starship test flights to date but has not yet attempted a Ship capture.

Double chopstick catches will be the norm on operational Starship launches, if all goes to plan. This recovery strategy will reduce the time needed to get Super Heavy and Ship ready for reflight, significantly boosting launch cadences, according to SpaceX. (Starship is designed to be fully reusable, unlike SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, whose upper stages are expendable.)

SpaceX is already riding a historic success with Starship: The megarocket reached orbit for the first time ever on Flight 14, which took place on Sept. 28.

And Ship deployed 26 of the company's next-gen Starlink V3 satellites during that flight, starting the assembly of a new broadband constellation that Musk has said will eventually consist of 100,000 spacecraft.

Starlink V3 missions will therefore make up a significant percentage of Starship launches for the foreseeable future. But SpaceX also plans to use the megarocket to build an even bigger constellation in Earth orbit — Starmind, which could harbor one million of the company's AI data center satellites.

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) completed a point-to-point rocket cargo delivery test using the secretive uncrewed reentry vehicle, confirming on social media its recovery of the package in the Pacific Ocean. "With support from SpaceX, the AFRL agile cargo pods were recovered after splashdown," the AFRL wrote in an X post on Oct. 26.

The Starfall capsule launched on a Falcon 9 rocket as a part of SpaceX's Bandwagon-5 mission, which lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Oct. 20. Starfall carried a number of AFRL-developed cargo pods designed to transport military equipment through space and back to Earth. The successful recovery of the pods marks a big step forward in the Air Force's effort to examine the viability of point-to-point (P2D) rocket cargo missions.

"This was a critical achievement to demonstrate the potential of Rocket Cargo delivery for point-to-point rapid global mobility for the Future Force," said AFRL Technology Transition Office director Adam Remaly in a press release on Oct. 20.

Photos included in the AFRL social media post show military personnel unpacking a recovered cargo pod for inspection. Each pod contained sensors to monitor temperature conditions through launch, reentry and splashdown, as well as to measure the shock and vibration forces exerted on its cargo.

For its first Starfall mission, AFRL packed its cargo pods with representative items like medical equipment, food ration packs and other military kit that might be helpful for surviving an emergency somewhere that's tough to reach via conventional transportation. To that end, AFRL said it also conducted a fit check of a UNI-PAC III life raft inside Starfall, which could potentially be included in future tests.

"Researchers paid special attention to the electronics equipment and survival gear, including a SATCOM-enabled tracker, batteries, a reverse osmosis desalinator, survival gear and emergency medical equipment," AFRL said in its release.

SpaceX's disk-shaped Starfall capsule made a quiet debut on a Falcon 9 launch in June, and the company has remained relatively quiet about the vehicle to date. Most of what we do know comes from a Federal Aviation Administration environmental assessment published earlier this year.

The hockey-puck-looking vehicle measures approximately 10.2 feet (3.1 meters) across and can return up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of cargo from orbit, according to that report. And it sports a carbon fiber heat shield and compressed gas thrusters for attitude control during reentry, as well as a parachute system for precision landings.

AFRL will assess the data recovered from the Oct. 20 mission to contribute to its broader Rocket Cargo initiative, which the Air Force hopes can evolve to the transportation of tens of tons of cargo per launch. That would exceed Starfall's mass capacity, but Starfall isn't the only vehicle the military has considered for its Rocket Cargo program.

SpaceX's much larger Starship rocket, which is still under development, was a likely candidate for tests at Johnston Atoll, a remote Pacific bird sanctuary where the Air Force proposed building a pair of landing pads for cargo delivery tests. However, those plans were suspended in July 2025 amid environmental concerns, and the status of the search for an alternative site is unclear.

The California-based company, which is run by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, intends to operate a constellation of 20,000 AI data centers in low Earth orbit (LEO). It will build those satellites in house and launch them on a homegrown rocket — a vehicle Cowboy Space unveiled here on Monday night (Oct. 26), at an event it called "Big Sky Rising."

"It's a fundamentally novel approach to rocketry in the modern era, in our opinion," Bhatt said during the event. "The idea is that you have a two-stage rocket where the upper stage of the rocket itself transforms into the satellite."

That rocket is called Big Iron, Bhatt told us on Monday night. And so is the data-center satellite, as both are considered to be part of the same system.

The stainless-steel rocket will be 282 feet (86 meters) tall and 15.4 feet (4.7 m) wide. It will be powered by Cowboy Space's Clydesdale engines — nine in the first stage and one in the upper stage, the same configuration employed by SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. And, like the Raptor engines that power another SpaceX launcher, the giant Starship, Clydesdale will burn liquid oxygen and liquid methane, a combo known as methalox.

Big Iron's first stage will be reusable; an animation Bhatt showed during "Big Sky Rising" showed the booster coming down for a landing on a ship at sea, as Falcon 9 first stages often do these days.

The upper stage, meanwhile, will stay in orbit as a Big Iron satellite. The spacecraft will tip the scales here on Earth at about 33,000 pounds (15,000 kilograms), and, after unfurling its solar panels, it will be about 433 feet (132 m) long.

The payload fairing that protected the satellite during launch will morph into a radiator, which will dump into space the prodigious heat generated by Big Iron's GPUs (general processing units). And there will be a lot of GPUs: Each satellite will carry five racks of them, Bhatt said, which will provide about 1 megawatt of compute payload.

Big Iron will therefore be much larger than an "imperial-class satellite" — Bhatt's term for SpaceX's planned Starmind AI data center spacecraft, each of which will have a solar wingspan of 246 feet (75 m) and boast about 250 kW of compute payload.

Cowboy Space plans to operate about 20,000 Big Iron satellites in LEO, a constellation it calls Stampede. Each rocket will carry just one of these satellites to orbit, so it will take 20,000 launches to build Stampede — and, likely, several thousand more every year to maintain it at that number.

Cowboy Space therefore intends to launch very often — multiple times per day, from launch complexes it calls Trailheads. The company has not yet announced where these complexes will be, but each one will likely feature four active launch mounts, Bhatt said on Monday night.

And not all of these launches will serve Stampede. Toward the end of "Big Sky Rising," Bhatt announced that Big Iron will also launch payloads for customers, a service that Cowboy Space calls Big Iron Express.

The first flights of this new rocket are a few years away. Cowboy Space — which was founded in 2024 as the power-beaming company Aetherflux — is still building and testing its Clydesdale engine and says it aims to launch Big Iron for the first time in December 2028.

"Now, a lot of things have to go right for that to happen; it's not a guarantee," Bhatt said. "I think it's ambitious. But if it wasn't ambitious, I wouldn't be an entrepreneur."

Cowboy Space is operating one piece of space hardware at the moment, by the way — a satellite called Reason-1, which launched on SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare mission on Oct. 1.

"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 via X on Sept. 28. "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."

A new stack of Starlink satellites is now in orbit following an early morning SpaceX launch from California.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 3:25 a.m. EDT (0725 GMT) on Oct. 27, from from Pad 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base. The rocket delivered the 27 satellites of Starlink Group 15-16 to low Earth orbit (LEO), and successfully executed its first stage booster landing.

The mission's booster, B1082, cut its engines and disengaged from Falcon 9's upper stage approximately 2.5 minutes into flight, and adjusted its trajectory for a touchdown on SpaceX's Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) droneship in the Pacific Ocean.

B1082 successfullly landed on OCISLY at T+8:23, seconds before Falcon 9's second stage completed its first engine burn. The return of B1082 marks the booster's 21st Starlink mission, and 26th overall flight, the others of which include USSF-62, OneWeb Launch 20, NROL-145, Transporter-18.

Falcon 9's upper stage ignited its engine for a second time about 53 minutes after liftoff, circularizing its orbit with a burn that lasted a very short 3 seconds. That was followed several minutes later by the deployment of the rocket's Starlink payloads.

SpaceX's Starlink network consists of more than 11,000 active spacecraft. The speed with which the company is delivering them to orbit in bulk, however, has slowed somewhat.

As SpaceX shifts focus to its larger, more powerful Starship rocket under development, plans to retire Falcon 9 have already begun. Part of that process included ending Starlink launches from Florida earlier this year.

Today's mission was the 117th Falcon 9 launch of 2026, so far. About three-quarters of those were dedicated to Starlink.

SpaceX is shooting for new heights with its upcoming Starship test flight, and the booster tapped for the mission is in its final stretch of preparations before the mission.

The Super Heavy booster for Flight Test 15, Booster 22, underwent a static test fire on Sunday (Oct. 25), igniting all of its Raptor 3 engines for about 15 seconds. "Full duration 33-engine static fire for the Super Heavy booster preparing for Flight 15," SpaceX said in a post on X.

The test is a beginning of final checks on the first-stage vehicle, which will be mated with the Flight 15 upper stage, Ship 42, ahead of launch, but not before the spacecraft completes some tests of its own.

Ship 42 will also complete a series of tests as the next Starship launch approaches, including a static engine fire and final systems checks. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has stated that SpaceX will attempt the first launch tower catch of a ship upper stage on Flight 15, which, if successful, would be a significant step forward for the company's goal to mature Starship to full reusability.

SpaceX's confidence in its ability to catch both the Super Heavy and Ship stages has been building this year, following three launches so far in 2026. Its most recent (Sept. 28) mission, Flight 14, reached orbit for the first time and performed the successful deployment of 26 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites, marking the first operational payloads delivered to orbit by the spacecraft. Starlink V3 satellites are too big to fit aboard the company's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.

Flight 14 wasn't without setbacks, however. An upper-stage Raptor engine shut down prematurely during ascent, prompting SpaceX to cut the planned 10-hour mission short. Ship, nevertheless, completed a controlled reentry and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean about three hours after liftoff.

Flight 15 could carry another batch of V3 Starlinks, though SpaceX has not officially confirmed a payload. Beginning to upgrade its global network with the fast V3 satellites, however, is a major reason SpaceX is pushing to bring Starship into regular service.

Starship's development also has implications for NASA's Artemis program, which has contracted SpaceX to develop a modified Ship upper stage capable of landing astronauts on the surface of the moon.

NASA recently updated the timeline of milestones SpaceX needs to accomplish with Starship before a lunar lander version will qualify to carry crews, with a significant demonstration mission coming up next summer on Artemis III.

The next Artemis mission will launch astronauts to Earth orbit aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft, which will dock with both lunar lander vehicles over the course of about two weeks (in addition to Starship, NASA contracted Blue Origin's Blue Moon spacecraft as a another lunar lander for the program).

SpaceX is also working toward an uncrewed lunar landing demonstration ahead of NASA's planned return of astronauts to the moon on Artemis IV, targeted for 2028. Which lander will be chosen for that mission is still undetermined, and SpaceX and Blue Origin are both still vying for the first crewed Artemis landing.

Beyond Flight 15, SpaceX hopes to demonstrate additional milestones before the end of 2026, including Starship's first launch from Florida and potentially the first re-flight of an upgraded V3 Super Heavy booster.

Booster 22's engine test marks the beginning in a series of tests leading up Flight 15, which, if recent Starship campaigns are any example, could lift off sometime in mid-to-late November.

SpaceX launched its newest batch of Starlink broadband internet satellites today (Oct. 23) from the California coast.

The spacecraft, Starlink Group 15-15, were stacked 27 high inside the payload fairing of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which lifted off from Pad 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 6:48 p.m. EDT (2248 GMT; 3:48 p.m. local time in California).

The rocket's first stage booster, designated B1063, executed its main engine cutoff and stage separation about 2.5 minutes into flight, sending the second stage to continue onward to low Earth orbit (LEO). The vehicle's two-piece protective payload fairing was jettisoned just before T+3 minutes.

The booster, meanwhile, reoriented for its descent back to Earth. As the mission clock passed 8 minutes, B1063 began its landing burn, and it touched down about 20 seconds later on SpaceX's droneship "Of Course I Still Love You." This was the 36th launch and landing for B1063, which notably launched NASA's DART asteroid-smashing mission in November 2021.

The Falcon 9's upper stage completed its first engine burn shortly after B1063 landed and will coast for about 45 minutes before initiating a second and final orbital insertion burn. Following that burn's execution, deployment of the vehicle's 27 satellites into LEO is scheduled to begin 62 minutes after launch.

Today's Starlink liftoff adds to SpaceX's growing constellation of more than 11,000 active spacecraft. But Starlinks aren't launching quite as often as they used to, as SpaceX shifts its focus from the Falcon 9 to its bigger and more powerful Starship rocket.

Starship is designed for full reusability and is equipped with a payload bay outfitted to accommodate SpaceX's upgraded Version 3 Starlink satellites, which are too large for the workhorse Falcon 9. Starship is still under development, but once the rocket begins operational flights (and that day is getting closer), SpaceX plans to phase out the Falcon 9 and its Falcon Heavy variant almost entirely.

Falcon 9's 100th launch of 2026 was the Starlink 10-49 group from SpaceX's pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, which was later revealed to be the final Falcon 9 Starlink mission that would fly from Florida's Space Coast. The same might soon be true for Starlink launches from the West Coast as well.

The reduction in missions lifting off from Florida has slowed Falcon 9's Starlink launch cadence considerably. At their peak, these missions were flying every two to three days. But the most recent one before today lifted off 11 days ago, and that launch itself was the first Starlink mission in more than three weeks.

Today's launch was the 116th Falcon 9 flight so far in 2026, with about three-quarters of those being dedicated to Starlink. The reduced cadence will likely solidify 2025 as the Falcon 9's busiest year ever, with 165 launches completed. At its current rate, the Falcon 9 is expected to fly just under 150 missions by the end of this year.

The agency laid out a detailed concept of operations for Artemis III today (Oct. 23) during a press conference at Kennedy Space Center, stressing how important the flight is to its moon plans and how challenging it will be to make everything go right.

"We're launching three of the most powerful rockets in the world, and undertaking what is likely the most complicated launch campaign ever undertaken," Jeremy Parsons, NASA’s Artemis program manager, said during today's event, which lasted more than two hours.

Those three rockets are NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's New Glenn, all of which will fly from Florida's Space Coast.

If all goes according to plan, New Glenn will lift off first, carrying Blue Origin's Blue Moon lunar lander to low Earth orbit (LEO). SLS will go next, launching the Artemis III astronauts — NASA's Randy Bresnik, Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio, and the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano — aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft.

SLS will deploy Orion into a highly elliptical orbit, one that gets as close to Earth as 18 miles (29 kilometers) and as far away as 1,122 miles (1,806 km), according to Parsons. The capsule will then maneuver itself into an orbit with an altitude of about 345 miles (555 km).

"That's really about getting thermal stability," Parsons said. "Orion was built as a deep-space vehicle, and so we're going to have to really manage the thermal environments, which are higher in a low Earth orbit."

The Artemis III crew will spend two days checking out Orion and its systems in LEO before meeting up with Blue Moon, which will take place on Flight Day 3 at an altitude of 273 miles (439 km).

"Over the next two days, the crew will conduct operations docked with Blue Moon," Parsons said. "They're going to open up the hatch. They're going to enter the lander. They're going to evaluate the environmental controls, the life support systems. We'll confirm that the spacecraft can maintain the right atmospheric pressure, and we're also going to test emergency scenarios, dual vehicle control, and we're going to put our Mission Control teams through their paces."

After those operations are complete — likely on Flight Day 6 or thereabouts — Starship will launch, with a specially built docking adapter on its nose.

The SpaceX vehicle — the 171-foot-tall (52 meters) upper stage of its fully reusable Starship megarocket — will meet up with Orion in LEO on Flight Day 8, at an altitude of about 237 miles (381 km). But this will be a very different encounter than the rendezvous with Blue Moon.

"The demonstration with Starship is shorter, about two hours," Parsons said. "The crew will not enter the Starship during the mission, but it gives us critical data and allows us to really understand the forces of docking, how we're going to push, how we're going to work together."

Artemis III will continue for another six to nine days after Orion undocks from Starship before finally heading back down to Earth for a parachute-aided ocean splashdown. (The nominal mission length is 14 days, Parsons said, but it could last as long as 17 days.)

During that time, the crew will evaluate their survival suits — something that didn't get done during the 10-day Artemis II flight around the moon this past April — and do a variety of other work as well, from detailed health assessments to scientific experiments and technology demonstrations. The main goal is to keep everything on track for Artemis IV, which will land astronauts near the moon's south pole in 2028, if all goes to plan.

"Everything we do on Artemis III is designed to reduce risk for our future lunar landing missions," Parsons said. "We're teaching these teams how to work together, how to make critical real-time mission decisions, all in an environment that is low Earth orbit, where if something goes wrong, we can come home much more quickly."

It's unclear at the moment which of these two privately developed landers — Blue Moon or Starship — will fly on Artemis IV, pulling off the first crewed lunar touchdown since Apollo 17 in 1972.

NASA is still preserving optionality, "to give both of our lunar landing partners the greatest opportunity for readiness in advance of astronauts landing on the moon in 2028," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said during today's event.

"We have no intention of surrendering a viable path to the surface before the data and schedule compels us to do so," he added.

No matter what decision NASA makes for Artemis IV, both Blue Moon and Starship should hit the gray dirt relatively soon, according to Parsons. "Regardless of who goes first, both providers are planning for lunar landing missions in 2028," he said.

And those missions will be quite different from each other. For example, on Blue Origin touchdowns, Orion will meet up with Blue Moon in lunar orbit. On SpaceX landings, however, Starship will likely dock with the NASA capsule in Earth orbit and propel it to the moon, Parsons said — the "push" he referred to above.

It remains unclear when exactly Artemis III will launch. NASA is targeting the summer of next year but may find it tough to meet that timeline: Last month, in an internal memo, Isaacman told agency employees that Artemis III was about 90 days behind schedule.

Some of the biggest challenges have involved the supply chain for the mission's lunar landers, Parsons said during today's event. But he and Isaacman both stressed that NASA is confident in its ability to work through such issues.

"We're moving with real speed and purpose right now," Isaacman said.

The commercialization of space is well underway, and as a result, Earth’s orbit is becoming ever more congested. The current number of active satellites in orbit stands at around 16,000, according to the European Space Agency( ESA), and this number is expected to jump close to 60,000 by 2035, Novaspace projects. While it’s not always given the recognition it deserves, space has fast become a critical infrastructure layer, underpinning nearly all systems that enable modern life as we know it. Therefore, it’s critical that a safe and clean operating landscape is maintained.

Yet this is becoming increasingly challenging, particularly given that, alongside the rapid increase in space traffic, there are also more than 1.2 million pieces of debris over 1 centimeter (0.4 inches) cm in Earth’s orbit, each of which could damage satellites and spacecraft and potentially cause disastrous consequences. With the number of active satellites and debris objects in space continuing to increase, the space environment is under growing pressure.

Balancing expansion with sustainability

Space was once the sole domain of nation states, but this is no longer the case. As technology has advanced, launch costs have decreased, and satellites have become more efficient, smaller and cheaper to build. These changes have democratized space, resulting in a massive increase in space traffic, not least constellations in low Earth orbit (LEO) that comprise thousands of satellites.

Plans are underway to further expand these constellations, and new and even bigger constellations are also expected to launch in the coming years. Added to that, we’re also likely to see the first space-based data centers within the next few years, which may well mark the start of the wholesale shift of data centers from Earth to space, which will further add to the congestion already being felt.

To ensure that space continues to meet our current and future needs, this continued expansion must happen in a sustainable way. Maintaining a safe and clean landscape is more important than ever before, and mitigating the impact of space debris is critical to that effort.

Maintaining a safe environment

Mitigating the impact of debris involves a multipronged approach. Whether intentional or unintentional, the creation of new space debris by future space missions must be minimized as much as possible. This applies during launch, operation, and end of life phases, and satellites and other spacecraft need to be designed with this in mind. Additionally, satellites that are no longer active should not remain in orbit for extended periods, because this only increases the chance of collision events which would create new debris. The standard rule has been 25 years, but there are recommendations now that this should be lowered to five years.

Also critical is the prevention of in-orbit collisions between active satellites and other objects. This is only achievable through effective Space Situational Awareness (SSA) and Space Traffic Coordination (STC) systems. SSA maps out and characterizes objects in space (both satellites and debris), determining their location, trajectory and velocity, while STC actively manages the space traffic identified through SSA to prevent collisions. When a conjunction is probable, SSA/STC service providers alert the operators involved, who then decide whether to undertake a collision-avoidance maneuver.

Extending the operational life of satellites is another important aspect of debris mitigation because it reduces the need for so many new launches, thereby reducing the likelihood of more debris being created. Innovations such as electric propulsion systems that allow for greater maneuverability and extended mission durations are part of the solution, as is in-orbit servicing, maintenance and refuelling.

While these strategies focus on preventing new debris from being created, we also need effective methods for removing existing pieces of debris. This is a rapidly growing sector attracting much investment. Debris-removal technology being developed ranges from physical capture and tethered deorbit to destruction with ground and space-based laser ablation and plasma systems, as well as the emerging concept of mining debris to extract metals and gases for in-orbit processing to feed into the circular space economy.

How stakeholders are responding

The UN views space safety and space sustainability as urgent priorities. Its treaties and agreements focus on preserving the peaceful, safe, and sustainable use of outer space, preventing collisions, managing space debris, and ensuring responsible operations. Governments, space agencies and international organizations are also strengthening their focus on space sustainability.

ESA has launched its Zero Debris strategy, which is aimed at achieving a debris-neutral orbital environment by 2030. As part of this approach, ESA has updated its debris mitigation requirements and standards that will govern how its missions are designed, built, flown and disposed of. It also sets requirements for any company or institution that works with ESA on its missions.

In the U.K., the UK Space Agency is also taking a proactive role in space safety and sustainability through its Active Debris Removal (ADR) program and through the development of space sustainability standards in partnership with industry. It is also in the process of developing a space sustainability strategy to ensure a coordinated approach to sustainable practices in space.

On the other side of the pond, NASA’s Space Sustainability Strategy identifies five key challenges that are felt nationally but also within the wider space community. These include the absence of a single framework for space sustainability that has been accepted by the space community and the fact that space sustainability may be in tension with other mission interests. The strategy defines six goals that are intended to address each of the challenges alongside corresponding objectives to guide NASA’s achievements of the goals.

The U.S. is also building on the National Orbital Debris Mitigation Plan, which was released in 2022, with the Orbital Sustainability (ORBITS) Act. The Act, which has been introduced to the Senate but not yet been enacted into law, seeks to establish a program for the active remediation of orbital debris as well as requiring the development of uniform orbital debris standard practices. The Office of Space Commerce has also developed TraCSS (Traffic Coordination System for Space) to provide basic SSA data and services to civil and private space operators in support of spaceflight safety, although the system is currently in beta mode.

The International Standard Organisation (ISO) is also working on a standard for STC (Space Traffic Coordination) so that SSA activities can be standardized. Titled Space Systems — Space Traffic Coordination (STC), the standard is moving toward final publication, and its core focus is on establishing baseline protocols, data exchange formats and operational requirements for space safety, on-orbit conjunction assessment and collision avoidance.

Beyond today

While these strategies are certainly moving the industry in the right direction, there is a real need to act quickly. Success will rely not only on speed, but also on sustained and collaborative effort, as well as engagement from all space users. The decisions made and actions undertaken over the next decade will shape the space environment for generations to come.

As to whether sustainability becomes a core principle rather than an afterthought, that remains to be seen. There is, however, reason to be optimistic.

The Ukrainian military just signed a letter of intent with two Finnish companies — the telecom giant Nokia and satellite maker ICEYE — to look into developing a sovereign satellite-communications network for Ukraine.

"Ukraine needs secure, sovereign and high-performance satellite communications systems that it controls," ICEYE cofounder and CEO Rafal Modrzewski said in a statement today (Oct. 22). "We have a proven track record of delivering sovereign missions at speed to help build that capability. ICEYE has proudly supported Ukraine since 2022, and we remain committed to continuing that support today."

Ukraine relies heavily on satellite-based communications and data to defend itself from Russia, which invaded the nation in February 2022 and continues to attack it with ground troops, missiles and drone strikes.

But Ukraine does not own those satellites. It primarily uses the services provided by SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation in low Earth orbit (LEO) and Starshield, a military-grade, jamming-resistant version of Starlink employed by the U.S. government and its allies.

Starshield in particular is crucial to Ukraine, as it allows the nation to operate fast-moving drones over large distances in war zones. Ukraine has gotten very good at drone warfare, employing these little robots both in offensive and defensive capacities.

On Oct. 14, however, Ukrainian soldiers and officials reported a severe throttling of their access to Starshield services — a speed limit on terminal-carrying drones, which caused many of them to fall out of the sky.

It's not entirely clear who's behind the throttling. Some U.S. officials have apparently said the order came from Elon Musk, but the billionaire SpaceX founder and CEO put the ultimate responsibility on the Trump administration.

"Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS," Musk said on Oct. 14 via X, the social media platform he owns.

Whoever made the call, it certainly wasn't Ukraine. And the Starshield throttling — which apparently is still in effect — has doubtless reinforced the nation's desire to control its own satellite-communications infrastructure.

"Nations need communications they can rely on in every situation. Satellite networks extend and protect connectivity when networks on the ground are disrupted," Mikko Hautala, Nokia's chief geopolitical and government relations officer and chairman of Nokia Defense, said in the same statement.

"This makes them a key part of any secure communications system," he added. "Through this Letter of Intent, together with Ukraine and ICEYE, we will explore how trusted, sovereign satellite communications can strengthen Ukraine's resilience and give it control over the connectivity it depends on."

Nokia and ICEYE announced on Oct. 1 that they plan to work together to help nations develop such sovereign satcom systems. The partnership with Ukraine follows on from that earlier agreement.

ICEYE has already been aiding the Ukrainian defense effort. The Finnish company and its U.S. subsidiary jointly operate a fleet of Earth-observing satellites in LEO, which study our planet using synthetic aperture radar. Ukraine uses data from the ICEYE constellation for intelligence and planning purposes.

This relationship has put ICEYE — or one of its satellites, at least — in Russia's crosshairs. A Russian inspector satellite called Kosmos 2612 recently made an extremely close approach to ICEYE-X36, which is operated by ICEYE US.

The goal of the unsanctioned rendezvous is unclear. Russia may have wanted to assess the satellite's capabilities or interfere with it in some way. Or perhaps the nation simply wanted to send a message, letting ICEYE (and Ukraine) know that it could mess with satellites if it wanted to.

During an Oct. 5 presentation at the Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Antalya, Türkiye, Steve Creech, acting manager of NASA's Human Landing System (HLS) Program, laid out development timelines for both spacecraft, with key demonstrations planned through early 2028 that include orbital refueling and uncrewed lunar landing tests to qualify the vehicles to fly astronauts to the surface of the moon.

A more pressing deadline, however, is NASA's Artemis III mission, which is targeted for the third quarter (Q3) of 2027. Artemis III will launch four astronauts aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft to low Earth orbit (LEO), where they will rendezvous and dock with test versions of both companies' landers for interoperability checkouts. Those demonstrations will help inform NASA's determination about which lander the agency will choose to carry astronauts to the moon's surface on Artemis IV, targeted for early 2028.

SpaceX and Blue Origin were both awarded NASA contracts to develop HLS vehicles — Starship and Blue Moon, respectively — and have spent the past several years refining their respective lunar lander designs and dealing with various delays along the way. In the face of those delays, and in an effort to better structure its mission progression for success, NASA overhauled its Artemis program architecture in February to maintain its goal of landing astronauts on the moon by the end of 2028 and establish a more regular cadence of uncrewed landings in the meantime.

As part of that shakeup, Artemis III, previously the program's first crewed lunar landing mission, was moved up a year and repurposed for the lunar lander vehicle tests the agency is preparing to fly to LEO next year. The program's first moon landing remains scheduled for 2028, but was shifted to the manifest for Artemis IV.

Between now and then, both SpaceX and Blue Origin have more than a dozen test demonstrations and vehicle milestones to achieve, including success during Artemis III and flights afterward. This will all lead up to a key decision NASA must make: Which vehicle will carry out the first crewed landing on the surface of the moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972?

Starship reached for the first time on its most recent test flight, which occurred on Sept. 28 from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas. NASA lists several other important goals for the vehicle to achieve in 2026, including (in the order listed during the IAC presentation) the first return and catch of the rocket's upgraded Version 3 (V3) booster at its launch pad; the first-ever return and catch of a Ship upper stage; the first Starship launch from one of SpaceX's launch pads still under construction on Florida's Space Coast; and, possibly, the first V3 booster reflight.

NASA also expects SpaceX to complete the initial build of the crew cabin for its lunar lander Starship variant. SpaceX released renders of Starship's interior last year, as well as images of the test elevator astronauts are using to train for Starship egress on the lunar surface, but little else has been made public about the progress the company has made on the cabin's design.

Should the cabin's initial build wrap up by the end of the year, as NASA's presentation suggested, SpaceX will use Q1 2027 to complete integration of the systems that Starship will need to communicate with Orion during Artemis III, and deliver a cabin simulator for astronauts to train on leading up to the mission. SpaceX plans to continue Starship test flights through Q2 of next year, complete a landing leg demonstration and begin crew cabin airlock tests.

Blue Origin's lunar lander mockup is ready for NASA Artemis astronaut training

For Artemis III, SpaceX plans to fly one of its existing V3 Starship upper stages, with some slight modifications. Starship and Orion will dock as part of Artemis III but the SpaceX vehicle won't be equipped with a crew cabin for the mission's astronauts to enter. Between the end of this year and the beginning of the next, SpaceX is expected to complete the addition of a docking system and nosecone cover to the Artemis III Starship vehicle, which, NASA documents suggest, has already completed its mechanical fit checks.

Other notches on SpaceX's checklist leading up to Artemis III include the first propellant transfer demonstration with Starship in orbit. As the first-ever launch vehicle and spacecraft designed for full reusability, Starship's fuel constraints require that its tanks be topped off in order to fly beyond LEO. For a moon landing mission, this could mean up to a dozen launches of SpaceX's Starship "tanker" spacecraft to an orbiting fuel depot, which the moon-bound Starship will visit. To pull that off, though, SpaceX has to show it can successfully transfer those cryogenic fuels on orbit, and also store them effectively enough to prevent too much boil-off.

Starship won't require any refueling flights to complete its objectives for Artemis III, but SpaceX is expected to launch its first Starship tanker vehicle within a few months of that mission as it gears up for the Artemis IV moon landing mission. To that end, a launch of an uncrewed Starship lunar lander variant is targeted sometime toward the end of Q3/beginning of Q4, with an uncrewed lunar landing mission carried out before the end of 2027.

Blue Origin, meanwhile, has its own set of milestones to meet as it develops its Blue Moon Mark 2 (MK2) lander — a 52-foot-tall (16 meters) spacecraft powered by three BE-7 engines. Unlike the bare-bones V3 Starship that SpaceX will launch on Artemis III, Blue Origin plans to fly a completed test vehicle, incorporating the crew cabin, partial life-support, flight software and other systems needed to allow astronauts to enter the lander from Orion during their time docked in LEO. Astronauts will be able to enter Blue Moon from Orion to get a feel for the lander in zero-g and test some of its systems.

NASA's timeline shows the company working to complete a series of manufacturing and testing milestones in the last few months of 2026, including continued BE-7 testing and qualification of Blue Moon's BT-7 maneuvering thrusters. The company also faces its Artemis III interim design review and a critical design review for an upcoming landing demonstration mission in 2028.

Blue Origin is also working to restore its pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Launch Complex-36 (LC-36) to operation and return its New Glenn rocket to flight, following an explosion of the rocket in May that caused extensive damage to the facility. NASA's presentation places that milestone in Q4 2026, a timeline the company has also been very vocal about maintaining. A recent Reuters report, however, suggests that may not happen until early 2027.

By early 2027, the company expects to complete the spacecraft's communications systems and finalize its flight software, with assembly, integration and testing continuing into Q2. Q1 2027 is also when Blue Origin's Blue Moon MK1 lander (a smaller, uncrewed version of its MK2 successor) will launch to the lunar surface as a part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program of robotic moon missions.

During Q2 2027, as the Artemis III mission approaches, Blue Origin is expected to complete integration of its test lander with New Glenn and conclude qualification of its BE-7 engine. Throughout next year, the company plans to continue construction and refurbishments at its launch facilities and hopes to have a new launch pad ready to support the upgraded, more powerful New Glenn 9x4 rocket l by the end of Q3. The first flight of that rocket variant is scheduled for Q4 2027, alongside a second MK1 lunar mission and the launch of an uncrewed MK2 demonstration lander.

That spacecraft is expected to attempt its own uncrewed lunar landing in Q1 2028, around the same time Blue Origin has scheduled a third MK1 flight. Like SpaceX, Blue Origin will need to demonstrate that its lander can safely reach the moon's surface,operate there and return to lunar orbit before NASA clears it to carry astronauts on a future Artemis mission.

NASA's overall timeline remains the same as it has been since the February revamp, with Artemis III expected to launch in mid-2027, followed by a crewed lunar landing on Artemis IV in 2028, and possibly another on Artemis V that same year. There may be changes on the horizon, though. NASA will host a press conference on Friday (Oct. 23) with Administrator Jared Isaacman and Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya, as well as Artemis program director Jeremy Parsons. During the event, which you'll be able to watch here at Space.com, they will discuss the status of the upcoming moon missions and an "Artemis acceleration."

SpaceX and Blue Origin still face tight schedules to complete their respective uncrewed landing demonstrations before Artemis IV. With SpaceX targeting Q4 2027 and Blue Origin Q1 2028, both are pushing the margins against NASA's hopes to return astronauts to the lunar surface that same year. Which company ultimately gets the green light for that first landing mission will depend on the progress each makes between now and then, and whether their landers can demonstrate the readiness that NASA requires to safely carry astronauts to the surface of the moon and back again.

SpaceX will soon notch a huge spaceflight milestone, if all goes according to plan.

The company will try to catch both stages of its Starship megarocket during the vehicle's next test flight, which is targeted for next month, founder and CEO Elon Musk announced during SpaceX's quarter 3 (Q3) earnings call today (Oct. 20).

If SpaceX succeeds, this "will be the first time that an orbital launch vehicle has been fully recovered," Musk said. "The only way that we can extend consciousness beyond Earth on a sustained basis is with a fully reusable orbital launch vehicle. So this is, I think, a profound technology milestone in the history of civilization and consciousness."

Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, standing more than 400 feet (122 meters) tall when fully stacked.

As Musk noted, both of its stages — the Super Heavy booster and Ship spacecraft — are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, a breakthrough that SpaceX thinks will make Mars settlement and other grand exploration feats economically feasible.

Starship's recovery strategy is different than that for SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, which are partially reusable. (The latter two rockets have expendable upper stages). Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters come back to Earth on landing pads near the launch site or on ships at sea downrange. Super Heavy and Ship, however, will steer themselves directly back to their launch tower, which will capture each vehicle with its "chopstick" arms.

This will allow SpaceX to inspect, refurbish and refly Starship at an accelerated rate, which is a priority for the company: Musk has said he envisions launching Starship more than 10,000 times per year by 2030.

Starship has conducted 14 test flights to date, and SpaceX has pulled off chopstick catches with Super Heavy on three of them. The company has not yet tried to catch Ship, which is a more difficult proposition, as the upper stage travels higher, farther and faster than the booster does.

Still, Musk is confident that SpaceX will pull off a Ship catch on the first try. (He did not give a specific target date for Flight 15, saying only that it was expected next month.)

"I'd say it's more likely than not that this succeeds next flight," he said. "And if not, we have a steady stream of Starship flight attempts through the end of this year, and and then accelerating next year."

Success would mean back-to-back Starship flights with huge milestones. On Flight 14, which occurred on Sept. 28, Ship reached orbit for the first time ever. It also deployed 26 of SpaceX's Starlink Version 3 satellites — the first 26 members of a next-gen broadband constellation in low Earth orbit that will eventually consist of about 100,000 spacecraft.

The Starship Flight 15 preview was something of an aside during today's call. The event primarily served to announce SpaceX's financial performance during Q3, the three-month stretch that ended on Sept. 30.

And that performance was strong, company representatives said. SpaceX recorded revenues of $14.6 billion during Q3, an increase of 161% from the $5.6 billion earned during Q3 of 2025. The company had a net income of $4.4 billion during Q3, $5.5 billion better than the result from the same stretch last year, when SpaceX lost $1.1 billion.

Just $1.8 billion of 2026 Q3 revenue came from SpaceX's launch division. The vast majority was generated by two other segments — connectivity (services provided by its Starlink megaconstellation) and artificial intelligence (or, as the Trump administration has recently rebranded it, "superintelligence").

SpaceX thinks these latter two segments will continue to boom. That's why it's building the infrastructure to support thousands of Starship launches per year — to loft lots of Starlink satellites and AI data centers to Earth orbit. And the company believes that it's positioned to really start raking in the cash, starting as soon as next year.

"In a nutshell, what this implies for SpaceX annual recurring revenue by the end of '27 is somewhere between 500 billion [dollars] and a trillion," Musk said.

Jeff Bezos, the founder and former CEO of Amazon, recently said that Blue Origin, his space technology company, is likely to go public in the coming years. The announcement has (unsurprisingly) attracted considerable attention, not least because Bezos has spent more than two decades financing the company largely from his personal wealth. He has invested billions of dollars in developing rockets, spacecraft and other forms of technology, often with very little prospect of an immediate return. But although Bezos has now raised the possibility of an initial public offering, he has given no firm indication of when one might happen. He may be right to keep his options open.

Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000. Because he has financed so much of its development by himself, the company has been able to pursue ambitious engineering projects without the financial pressures that publicly listed businesses typically face. But developing reusable rockets, manufacturing spacecraft and building the infrastructure needed for future lunar missions requires extraordinary amounts of capital: These projects can take decades to complete, and even the wealthiest investors must think hard about how best to finance them over the long term. Bezos, then, has good reasons to seek additional sources of investment — particularly as Blue Origin prepares to expand its commercial operations.

An IPO would give Blue Origin the means to raise substantial capital from public investors and reduce its dependence on Bezos's personal wealth. The company could then use that money to expand manufacturing, develop new technology and compete for a greater share of the growing space market. Public ownership would also give existing investors the power to sell some of their holdings and could make it easier for Blue Origin to finance acquisitions. But the company would also have to meet the expectations of shareholders, who would expect to see regular evidence of commercial progress. This, I suspect, is why Bezos wants to establish a stronger business before committing to a listing.

It might have much to prove commercially, but Blue Origin’s technical progress has been remarkable. In January 2025, its New Glenn rocket reached orbit for the first time — a significant achievement for a vehicle built to compete in the heavy-lift launch market. The company has also secured government and commercial contracts and continued developing its lunar capabilities. But it will eventually have to demonstrate that it can launch New Glenn frequently, reliably and at a commercially competitive cost, and it is still some way away from that point.

Some will be asking whether Bezos wants to raise money to accelerate growth or simply to reduce the amount he himself must invest. Such doubts could affect the company's valuation and make it harder to attract investors who share its long-term ambitions. But again, this suggests Bezos is playing the long game. And given the enthusiasm that has surrounded some billionaire-led space ventures, this is sensible. Investors have sometimes attached extraordinary valuations to companies with ambitious plans but limited commercial experience. Space businesses certainly require ambition: engineers will often spend years developing technology before they can sell it. But investors have to distinguish between technical achievement and commercial performance. At the end of the day, they are seeking a strong rate of return.

What’s also worth considering is how Blue Origin's progress could benefit the wider space industry, particularly the specialist companies that supply technology to larger manufacturers and operators. SpaceX has achieved remarkable success in part by developing and manufacturing much of its technology internally. This includes its rockets, spacecraft and satellites. Blue Origin also does something similar, undertaking substantial engineering and manufacturing work itself, but it is not quite so vertically integrated, and thus may have greater scope to work with external suppliers as it expands. It already buys parts, equipment and services from hundreds of businesses. If it can successfully increase its production and launch activity, these suppliers could receive more orders and gain opportunities to develop new technologies. That’s to the good of the sector as a whole.

Why? Because a successful space industry needs more than a handful of large launch providers. It needs companies specializing in satellite communications, propulsion, electronics, software and other areas. Such businesses may have developed highly sophisticated products, but they need bigger customers and predictable demand to expand and produce more. Blue Origin could become an important customer for some of these, particularly if it chooses to buy specialist technology rather than make everything internally. Greater competition between the bigger space companies could translate to more potential customers for suppliers and fewer dependent commercial relationships.

Investors would benefit. There’s real potential in businesses that provide the technology and services on which larger space companies depend — the ‘picks and shovels.’ These can sometimes serve several customers and markets, making them less dependent on the success of a single program. A growing Blue Origin would create more opportunities for companies like these — although, of course, much will depend on how Bezos chooses to organize its supply chain. We shouldn’t assume that Blue Origin will become more open to external suppliers than its competitors, but the possibility is at least worth entertaining.

As it is, Bezos still faces substantial challenges. Blue Origin is not yet a commercially mature business. The company must increase its launch activity; it must demonstrate its reliability; and it must compete for customers in the public and private sectors. It must also decide how much technology to manufacture internally and whether and where third parties can provide better products or products at a lower cost. Bezos has the resources to give the company time to answer these questions, and he appears to be willing to use them. If he continues to prioritize commercial performance before pursuing an IPO, then Blue Origin could eventually enter the public markets in a much stronger position.

For years, space sustainability experts have warned that the growing number of satellites in orbit and the quantity of dead metal left behind threatens to trigger a dangerous cascade of collisions known as the Kessler Syndrome. Predicted in the 1970s by NASA physicist Donald Kessler, this chain of orbital smashups could make the space around Earth unusable and unsafe.

The dangerous tipping might be nearer than some think. Humankind's utilization of space is at an inflection point, as companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin and Amazon plan to launch constellations of hundreds of thousands of telecommunication satellites and orbiting data centers in the coming years.

"Low Earth orbit looks like lots of other resources that we have trashed as economic actors," Daniel Kaffine, a professor of environmental and resource economics at University of Colorado Boulder, told Space.com.

"Waiting until it gets really, really bad to start implementing any of these types of policy interventions has historically been what we have done," Kaffine added. "But maybe we can think about things we can do right now."

In a paper published last month in the journal Nature Communications, Kaffine and his collaborators propose a scheme that would require satellite operators to post a bond of $200,000 before launch, refundable with interest upon the completion of a successful deorbit. Companies that fail to remove their junk would lose the money, which could go toward a shared pool funding active debris-removal missions, the researchers said.

"You could possibly raise billions of dollars by that," said Kaffine. "We think it's a very neat policy that doesn't require international coordination."

International bodies, such as the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, ask satellite operators to remove their spacecraft from orbit within 25 years after the mission's end. The American Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imposes an even stricter standard — a five-year requirement for satellites in low Earth orbit. Still, a staggering 60% of satellites remain in place when their propellant runs out, the researchers say, as no consequences ensue if they fail to deorbit.

Solving the problem on the international level would be difficult, as international bodies have no powers to enforce compliance. Moreover, the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), which sets down rules for the peaceful exploration of outer space, requires the unanimous support of every member state to pass new regulations, which is nearly impossible to achieve.

"The policy we propose could be implemented on a national level, which is why we think it's interesting," Indigo Brownhall, a space sustainability researcher at University College London and the paper's lead author, told Space.com. "Any country in Europe can request satellites registered with them to follow this bond policy."

To put it simply, no satellite registered in a given country gets to space before putting the money into the kitty. The researchers acknowledge that it might be hard to persuade major players historically averse to regulations, such as the U.S., to roll out such a scheme. But they say a more environmentally conscious block, like the European Union (EU), could enforce compliance by limiting market access to those who observe their rules.

"The consumer market in Europe is massive, like 300 to 400 million people," Brownhall said. "And the EU can request anyone who wants to sell space data or any products in the EU to follow their rules. They did this with GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation]. And you can imagine that somebody like Starlink [SpaceX's satellite-internet subsidiary] surely wants to sell Starlink terminals to Europeans."

The authors estimate that, even if the scheme only covered 20% of global satellite launches, it would reduce the number of derelict satellites careening around the planet by 18%.

Currently, more than 57,000 pieces of space debris larger than 4 inches (10 centimeters) hurtle around Earth completely out of control, according to estimates by the European Space Agency. That's double the figure from less than 10 years ago. Most of these fragments were generated by explosions and orbital collisions that shattered satellites and used rocket stages into clouds of dangerous debris.

"Leaving big satellites that no longer work up there is like a ticking time bomb," Brownhall said. "Active satellites can move out of the way, but when two derelict satellites are going to hit each other, there is nothing you can do but watch it."

Kaffine said the policy could be modelled on U.S. oil operators' bond scheme, in place since the 1960s, which ensures that oil giants plug used oil wells after ceasing extraction.

"If the oil operators clean up after completing the oil production job, they get the money back," said Kaffine. "If they don't, the money goes into a fund, which the government then uses to clean up orphan wells. It's quite an analogous situation to what we see in space."

In the meantime, evidence of the worsening orbital situation is coming thick and fast. Space situational awareness companies such as U.S.-based LeoLabs, which use networks of ground-based radars and telescopes to monitor traffic in space, report increasing numbers of disintegration events — incidents involving either an explosion or a collision between old satellites, fragments and rocket bodies. In the past six months, LeoLabs has reported at least four fragmentation events in space, which together created hundreds of new pieces of space debris.

SpaceX just launched its mysterious "Starfall" return capsule for the second time ever.

Starfall was one of 32 payloads on the company's Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission, which launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket at 7:04 a.m. EDT (1104 GMT) today (Oct. 20) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

SpaceX has been relatively quiet about Starfall, which debuted this past June on a Falcon 9 launch from the Cape.

That June 23 flight was a dedicated demonstration mission for Starfall, designed to show that the capsule can fly in a controlled fashion and survive the harrowing downward trip through Earth's atmosphere.

And those will be Starfall's main jobs. The vehicle "will enable affordable, routine access to the microgravity environment for scientific research and in-space manufacturing," SpaceX in a June 23 X post, one of the few public statements the company has made about Starfall.

Indeed, most of the details that we have about the capsule come from an environmental assessment that was published by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration in May.

According to that document, the disk-shaped Starfall is roughly 2.5 feet (0.75 meters) tall and 10.2 feet (3.1 m) wide. It weighs about 4,600 pounds (2,100 kilograms) and can bring 2,200 pounds (1,000 kg) of payload back down to Earth.

Starfall wasn't the only return capsule that went up on Bandwagon-5. Among the other 31 payloads on the flight was W-Series 7, the latest orbital "mini-factory" built and operated by the California company Varda Space Industries.

The W-Series capsules are designed to both host the production of valuable goods such as pharmaceuticals and bring them safely down to Earth, Varda has said.

The other payloads on Bandwagon-5 are a mix of "cubesats and microsats," according to SpaceX's mission description. Among the latter is Pelican-12, a sharp-eyed Earth-observation satellite built by the San Francisco company Planet.

The 32 payloads were deployed over a two-hour span beginning about 57 minutes after launch. Starfall will be the last to separate, releasing from the Falcon 9's upper stage two hours and 48 minutes post-liftoff.

The Falcon 9's first stage, meanwhile, came back to Earth as planned on Bandwagon-5. It touched down about nine minutes after launch, coming down in the Atlantic Ocean atop the SpaceX drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas." It was the 19th mission for this particular booster, according to the company.

Bandwagon is one of two SpaceX rideshare programs. The other, known as Transporter, has been busier, flying 18 missions to date.

The first Transporter mission, which lifted off in January 2021, delivered 143 payloads to Earth orbit, a single-launch record that still stands.

Well, that was a memorable debut.

Tesla unveiled its highly anticipated new Roadster last night (Oct. 16) with a spectacular stunt, using SpaceX thrusters to make the vehicle "fly."

"This is not necessarily a safety-optimized car, OK?" Elon Musk, who runs both companies, said during the livestreamed reveal, which was held at SpaceX's rocket-testing facility in McGregor, Texas. "But it takes the the fun meter to 11 out of 10."

Tesla first announced the next-gen Roadster in 2017, saying at the time that it would be released in 2020. In 2018, Musk announced that the new car would incorporate some SpaceX tech.

"SpaceX option package for new Tesla Roadster will include ~10 small rocket thrusters arranged seamlessly around car. These rocket engines dramatically improve acceleration, top speed, braking & cornering. Maybe they will even allow a Tesla to fly…" he wrote on Twitter in June of that year. (In 2022, Musk bought Twitter, which he subsequently renamed X.)

So last night's demonstration didn't come entirely out of left field — but it was still eye-popping. The show began with the Roadster driving up a ramp that quickly became a vertical wall and then an overhanging ledge. The Roadster clung to the surface, hanging upside-down from the ledge like a gecko on a ceiling thanks to a special fan suction system on its chassis.

"I mean, this car really sucks, OK?" Musk said, channeling his inner stand-up comedian. "This car could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. It could suck a tennis ball through a hose pipe."

The suction feature is not just a novelty, he added: It will help the Roadster stay connected to the ground during high-speed turns, allowing drivers to corner incredibly well.

And the sucking was just an opening act. The Tesla soon launched itself from its position beneath the ramp's nearly horizontal ledge, executed a barrel roll in midair, and landed softly, all thanks to its SpaceX cold-gas thrusters.

"A friend of mine, Peter Thiel, once said that the future promised us flying cars, but instead we got 140 characters," Musk said after the Roadster touched down. "Well, not anymore."

The car has main thrusters in the rear, he explained, as well as attitude-control thrusters that control its orientation.

"So it can basically fly like a rocket, and it could do rolls," Musk said. "It could do, like, crazy gymnastics — whatever you want, really."

The Roadster has a total of 10 thrusters, which are fed by 600 liters — about 250 kilograms (550 pounds) — of compressed air, Tesla Engineering Vice President Lars Moravy said during last night's event. That air is housed in carbon fiber overwrapped pressure vessels, which fill "every usable void in the car," Tesla said via X last night.

The Tesla team put those thrusters to work multiple times during the presentation, at one point launching the Roadster over a line of six vehicles, including a Tesla semi-truck cab.

Nobody was behind the wheel during these stunts — nobody with a pulse, anyway. The driver's seat was occupied by a mannequin clad in a black-and-white SpaceX spacesuit.

This was a nod to "Starman," the dummy behind the wheel of Musk's cherry-red first-gen Roadster, which launched into orbit around the sun in February 2018 on the first-ever flight of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket.

Starman and his Roadster are still in space, by the way, and will be for a while. Modeling work suggests the duo will keep orbiting our star for millions of years before ultimately slamming into either Earth or Venus.

Last night's Roadster demo was something of a tease, for the car is not yet in showrooms. Musk said Tesla aims to begin producing it in 2028.

And don't expect to see the "flying" version on the road then, or anytime; it's hard to imagine regulators certifying that vehicle for everyday use. It will likely be a status symbol for a few wealthy and connected folks, locked away in spacious and well-appointed garages.

Indeed, you can't put down on a deposit for the "Rocket" version of the new Roadster on Tesla's website; purchase of that vehicle is by invite only.

Two other Roadster versions are for sale — "Performance" and "Thrust." Tesla's website describes the Performance variant as "road ready," with "active aero and a multi-mode suction system." Thrust, by contrast, is "race ready." It has active aero and suction "plus acceleration thrusters."

It costs $50,000 to reserve a Performance vehicle and $250,000 to reserve a Thrust. Tesla has not yet revealed the total cost of any of the new Roadster variants.

SpaceX launched a classified mission for the U.S. Space Force from California this evening (Oct. 15).

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 8:01 p.m. EDT (5:01 p.m. local time; 0001 GMT on Oct. 16), rising into clear blue skies above the Golden State's central coast.

Such visibly striking launches are far from guaranteed; Vandenberg and its scenic surroundings are often blanketed by fog, making rocket watching in the area a dicey proposition.

This evening's launch kicked off the USSF-481 mission, which is delivering mysterious payloads to an undisclosed location in the final frontier.

SpaceX didn't provide much more info during its launch webcast; it ended just after the Falcon 9 first stage's landing, which occurred as planned about 8.5 minutes after launch on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You," which was stationed in the Pacific Ocean.

USSF-481 was the 28th flight for this particular booster, which is designated 1081. Sixteen of its previous 27 launches were devoted to building out SpaceX's Starlink broadband megaconstellation in low Earth orbit, according to a SpaceX mission description.

USSF-481 was the 114th Falcon 9 mission of the year. The vast majority of the rocket's flights in 2026 — more than 70% of them — have been Starlink missions.

SpaceX has also launched its Falcon Heavy and Starship rockets three times so far this year. Falcon Heavy is an operational vehicle, but the fully reusable Starship remains in the test-flight phase. It reached orbit for the first time on its most recent launch, which occurred on Sept. 28.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 8:30 p.m. ET on Oct. 15 with news of successful launch and rocket landing.

The company has requested permission to launch Starship from its Starbase site in South Texas up to 456 times per year. That's a big jump from the currently allowed cadence of 25.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is in the early stages of reviewing the request. Today (Oct. 14), the agency announced "its intent to prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, open a public scoping period and hold public scoping meetings for SpaceX’s proposal."

Starship, which stands more than 400 feet (122 meters) tall, is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. It's also designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, a breakthrough that SpaceX believes will revolutionize spaceflight.

The megarocket has flown 14 times to date, all of them test flights from Starbase, which is near the Texas border city of Brownsville. On the most recent jaunt, which lifted off on Sept. 28, Starship reached orbit for the first time and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites — the first members of a new broadband constellation that could eventually consist of 100,000 spacecraft.

Assembling that network will require a lot of Starship launches. And even more will be needed to build SpaceX's planned Starmind AI megaconstellation, which Elon Musk has said will harbor a million satellites. Indeed, the world's richest man has said that SpaceX is targeting more than 10,000 Starship liftoffs per year by 2030.

Not all of those flights will originate from Starbase, which hosts two orbital pads. SpaceX is working to get three Starship pads up and running on Florida's Space Coast, and the company aims to break ground on a $100 billion, 12-pad complex in Louisiana next year.

Each operational Starship launch will also feature two landings. Both of the vehicle's elements — the Super Heavy booster and Ship upper stage — are designed to return to the pad after liftoff, where they will be caught by the tower's "chopstick" arms. So SpaceX's proposal for 456 launches from Starbase per year includes a request for approval for 912 landings.

SpaceX plans to work up to this cadence in two phases, according to the FAA. Phase 1 "would include up to 100 annual launches and up to 200 annual landings (100 of Starship and 100 of Super Heavy)," the agency wrote. "Launches and landings could occur any day or time of the week."

Phase 2 covers 456 launches and 912 landings, which would occur only Monday through Friday, though at any time on those days.

The FAA will hold five "public scoping meetings" about the proposal next month, four of them in person in the Starbase area and one of them virtual.

There will be two in-person meetings on Nov. 17 at Texas Southmost College, one from 1-3 p.m. local (Central) time and the other from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Two in-person meetings will follow on Nov. 19, at the same two times but at a different location: the Port Isabel Event & Cultural Center.

The virtual meeting will be held Nov. 18, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Central time. Registration is required for all of these meetings, even the virtual one. You can register here.

A Dragon has settled into its nest after a more than two-day-long orbital pursuit.

SpaceX's cargo Dragon, flying the CRS-35 (35th Commercial Resupply Services) mission for NASA, rendezvoused with the International Space Station (ISS) this morning (Oct. 15), delivering fresh food, long-term provisions, research and hardware to the orbital lab and its crew.

Coverage of Dragon's arrival at the ISS began at 9:00 a.m. EDT (1315 GMT), as the spacecraft approached from approximately 2.3 miles (3.6 km) away. NASA astronaut Anil Menon served as the station's prime crew member this morning, responsible for monitoring Dragon's approach and autonomous procedures. Docking occurred with the space-face port of the station's Harmony module at 10:27 a.m. EDT (1427 GMT), as the ISS flew about 250 miles (400 km) above South Africa, traveling around 17,500 mph (28,000 kph).

Dragon's arrival brings more than 6,300 pounds (2,860 kilograms) of food, research equipment and other supplies, including flight support equipment to replace components on the Canadarm2, a toilet dose pump, a toilet pretreat quality sensor, a robot micro-conical tool used for station maintenance and the very last of eight upgraded solar panels designed to augment the station's power capabilities.

In addition to the usual provisions carried on this mission, Dragon also brought a special suprise for Menon, who is celebrating his 50th birthday today, according to NASA's broadcast spokesperson.

CRS-35 launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the company's pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Tuesday (Oct. 13). Liftoff occurred at 6:35 a.m. EDT (1035 GMT), and the Falcon 9's upper stage deployed the Dragon in low Earth orbit (LEO) a short 10 minutes later. Thanks to the trajectory of the space station's orbit and the near-dawn hour of the launch, the Falcon 9's ascent to orbit was viewed by millions up and down the U.S. East Coast, who witnessed a rare "space jellyfish" phenomenon from the rocket's exhaust plume.

The supplies delivered on CRS-35 will largely support the station's newest astronaut inhabitants, the members of SpaceX's Crew-13 mission for NASA. The four-person crew arrived aboard the ISS on Oct. 1, relieving the members of Crew-12, who returned to Earth a week later.

Crew-12 astronauts will address the media this afternoon (Oct. 15) to discuss their mission and their return after nearly eight months on orbit. A live broadcast of that event will also be available to stream on Space.com's homepage beginning at 3:30 p.m. EDT (1930 GMT).

Cargo Dragon's nominal orbital insertion on Tuesday placed it on course to catch up with the ISS after a 51-hour LEO chase. After rendezvous this morning, Dragon will autonomously dock to the zenith port on the station's Harmony module. It will remain docked with the ISS for about a month before being packed with supplies, waste and research for its return, safe splashdown and recovery on Earth.

Ten years ago, Elon Musk stood on stage at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Guadalajara, Mexico, and unveiled plans for a giant spaceship to carry people to Mars. This past Sept. 28 — a decade and a day later — the descendant of that vehicle reached orbit for the first time, on Starship's 14th-ever test flight.

The designs and hardware evolved greatly over those 10 years. For example, the 2016 design, called the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), employed carbon fiber, but this gave way to the stainless-steel Starship, which SpaceX began testing in 2019 with short hops from its Texas site. Prototypes flew to high altitude and landed, and some exploded, until SN15 stuck a landing in May 2021. That same year, NASA selected Starship as the first astronaut lander for its Artemis lunar missions.

The full Starship stack — a Super Heavy booster with a Ship upper stage on top — first flew in April 2023 and failed within minutes. Three flights followed in less than a year, each reaching space, and each ending with Ship lost on reentry. During a 2024 test flight, SpaceX moved liquid oxygen between two tanks inside one Ship, the closest it has come to the propellant transfer that any mission to the moon or Mars will require. In June of that year, the company brought both stages down in controlled splashdowns, and that October the launch tower's mechanical arms caught a returning Super Heavy booster for the first time.

Progress wasn't linear, however. After a booster catch in January 2025, a string of Ship failures followed, and one upper stage exploded during ground testing that June. A clean flight in August 2025 helped break the streak, and by that October, SpaceX flew the last of the older design. The first Starship V3 launched in May 2026. Another went up in July, and Flight 14 followed on Sept. 28.

'A different beast'

"ITS was definitely a different beast," said Matija Renčelj of the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI). "Yet, we have to acknowledge two trends that both attest to SpaceX's agility and increasingly market-first rather than vision-first outlook."

"The gap between ITS and Starship is real, but I would not consider that a failure," he said.

In his view, the rocket is mainly a business tool. "The rocket is the means, not the end," Renčelj said, adding that its main role now is cutting Starlink deployment costs. SpaceX currently operates a constellation of more than 11,000 Starlink broadband satellites, almost all of which were launched by its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. But Starship Flight 14 lofted the first members of the next-gen Starlink V3 constellation, which will eventually consist of 100,000 spacecraft, if all goes to plan. Starlink V3 satellites are bigger and heavier than their predecessors and can only be launched efficiently by Starship.

Renčelj said the moon focus reflects Washington's priorities and SpaceX's interest in staying central to NASA's Artemis program, and in reassuring investors after the company's acquisition of xAI this past February and its IPO, which occurred in June.

Joseph Gonzalez, a University of Illinois Grainger College of Engineering aerospace professor who spent about a decade working on Artemis, sees it differently.

"I think SpaceX is still very much targeting Mars," he said. "SpaceX continues to stress making humanity multiplanetary and establishing a self-sufficient city on Mars as long-term objectives." Gonzalez sees the moon as a proving ground rather than a replacement. Just days away from Earth, the moon lets engineers find problems "before committing humans to a Mars mission."

"Space exploration takes time, especially when you are developing a human spaceflight system with this level of complexity," Gonzalez said. "They build, fly, learn, make changes and fly again. That creates very visible successes and failures, but it also allows engineers to accumulate flight experience and data quickly."

Challenges remain

Reaching Earth orbit isn't the hard part for Starship. Gonzalez said that the most underrated gap is the large-scale cryogenic propellant transfer between vehicles once in orbit. SpaceX has moved propellant between tanks in one Ship before, but its architecture requires numerous transfers involving tanker ships to refill a fuel depot, which a Ship must visit in order to make journeys to the moon or Mars. Gonzalez described this depot as a gas station in space, but there are challenges typical gas stations don't face. The fuel is extremely cold, for example, and it needs to be moved in microgravity conditions.

That milestone is yet to happen, and the timeline for an attempt is not clear. It could potentially come with Flight 15 and 16. These were aspirationally scheduled for no earlier than mid and late October, respectively, but have now apparently slipped to mid-to-late November (though there has been no public confirmation of any firm target date).

In 2025, Musk said there was a "50/50" chance of Starship making a run for Mars in 2026. However, with the once-every-26-months Mars launch window — which lasts a few weeks, opening in late October — and no propellant transfer demonstration yet in the books, that is off the table. The next such low-energy orbital transfer opportunity for the Red Planet opens in late 2028, running into early 2029. At the same time, NASA is currently targeting late 2028 for its Artemis IV mission — which involves Starship — to return humans to the lunar surface after an absence of more than 50 years, giving SpaceX a challenging deadline toward which to work. The company will need to dedicate key resources to meet that timeline, including developing life support systems for crew.

For now, Starship's most immediate role is hauling Starlink satellites in orbit. Renčelj noted that startups raising billions are betting on Starship delivering low super-launch prices along with Falcon 9-like reliability. "Their business models are underpinned by what might be a single point of failure," he said.

"Starship still has major capabilities to demonstrate before it can perform the complete missions envisioned for the moon and Mars," said Gonzalez.

"So I would say the timelines are comparable considering the ambition of the vehicles," he added. "The bigger difference isn't necessarily how many years they have taken, but it's where and how each program chooses to learn during those years."

Musk has repeatedly talked of getting thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of people on Mars "to make life multiplanetary." Most immediately, SpaceX has a number of business goals and lunar commitments to adhere to ahead of a first uncrewed visit to Mars. Late 2028 appears to be the next real opportunity.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A recent gathering in Italy of the International Scientific Committee on Aerospace Heritage (ISCAH) looked at protecting lunar heritage with an eye toward developing guidelines for spacecraft deorbiting onto the moon's surface.

Particular attention was paid to the risks posed by the impacts of deorbited satellites and rocket stages, recently highlighted by the crash of a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage into the moon last August.

As pointed out in the meeting, as lunar traffic increases, controlled crash landings of moon orbiters and rocket stages are becoming an attractive end-of-mission disposal strategy.

And that's a problem.

Limited knowledge

There is limited knowledge regarding ejecta modeling and the effects produced by these impacts, said Luca Forassiepi. He spoke at the Sept. 14 meeting in Piza, which was called "Protecting Lunar Heritage: Developing Guidelines and Recommendations for Controlled Lunar Deorbiting."

"These effects have only been observed, and only partially, in a handful of historical cases. As a result, much of our current understanding relies on simulations, which necessarily involve a number of simplifications compared with reality," Forassiepi told Space.com.

Strong incentive

"Because the moon is an airless world, any movement on the surface is going to stir up sticky, abrasive dust that erodes human materials," pointed out associate professor Alice Gorman, an Australian archaeologist and heritage consultant at Flinders University.

"This is a problem for cultural heritage sites," Gorman said. "Imagine the iconic Apollo 11 landing module, the Eagle, being worn away until it crumbles into dust itself."

"It's also going to be a problem for habitation and mining installations," she added. "So there is a strong incentive for [the] space industry to minimize the impacts of rocket and satellite crashes, protecting both heritage places and new surface missions."

End-of-life planning

Gorman pointed to 51 hard spacecraft impacts on the moon to date, a number that includes nine rocket bodies and 19 lunar orbiters.

"We've reached an inflection point where spacecraft craters aren't just new archaeological sites, they're an environmental hazard that may cause irreversible damage," Gorman told Space.com.

Under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, Gorman observed, nations are liable for any damage their space hardware causes to the property of other nations. "We could be looking at a situation where a state could demand compensation for a rocket body crash harming its cultural heritage. End-of-life planning is going to become critical."

Cultural landscape

Also taking part in the meeting was Beth O'Leary, a cultural anthropology and archaeology specialist and college professor emerita at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.

"The moon is part of the cultural landscape of Earth," she said. As such, its environment and heritage deserve international attention.

It's now been more than 60 years since the first successful soft landing on the moon, that of the Soviet Union's Luna 9 spacecraft in February 1966. And lunar traffic is poised to increase greatly in the coming years, as both the United States and China aim to build bases near the moon's south pole.

Given this landscape, "we seek to address the challenges of lunar traffic from crashes, deorbiting spacecraft, and intentional landings and to understand those risks to our aerospace heritage. Our committee attempts to estimate the real consequences of the impacts," O'Leary said.

With global experts in planetary geoarchaeology, site formation processes and heritage management, ISCAH is analyzing and increasing the knowledge base that could prevent the irreversible destruction of the significant historic cultural resources on the lunar surface.

Far-reaching consequences

"Our recommendations should inform consensus-based decisions and support international best practices and policies," said O'Leary.

The ongoing work of the group provides the best opportunities for lunar preservation and protection by and for humanity, she added.

"In our short three years," O'Leary said, "we will have had three conferences, created a mission statement, received World Monuments Fund listing, and will continue as a delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space."

O'Leary told Space.com that all these issues are complex scientifically and legally, "but it is so important to rely on excellent research and proven heritage management principles in order to make good decisions about preservation which have far-reaching consequences."

Planetary geoarchaeology

One goal the group is addressing is a "post-mission gap," particularly regarding lunar projects.

That is, what happens to lunar heritage following the completion of a successful mission and in the decades that follow?

Also, what are the appropriate end-of-mission practices, and how can we ensure the long-term protection of spacecraft, robotics and other material remains associated with these missions?

Those questions are being deliberated by Justin Holcomb, an assistant research professor with the Kansas Geological Survey, a research unit of the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

Planetary geoarchaeology provides one way to address this issue, by identifying the natural (geological) and anthropogenic (human) processes operating within these environments "that may threaten lunar heritage, while also identifying environmental settings that are more conducive to its long-term preservation," Holcomb told Space.com.

Lunar practices

Forassiepi said that future points of action are on the agenda.

"There is certainly ongoing and continuous work by the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Aerospace Heritage on this aspect," said Forassiepi.

ICOMOS is the International Council on Monuments and Sites, a non-governmental organization working to conserve and protect cultural heritage sites on our planet — and off it as well.

"In active collaboration with the World Monuments Fund, we will further refine our research into the potential risks associated with deorbiting and crash landings," Forassiepi noted.

Over the coming months, Forassiepi said, the group will move into a second phase focused on listening and dialogue with all relevant stakeholders in the sector, from space agencies and the scientific community to private actors, heritage experts and communities with social and religious values associated with the moon that could be affected or disrupted by certain lunar practices.

Ultimate goal

"The aim is to initiate an open dialogue and exchange among all these different actors, with a view to collectively developing guidelines based on broad consensus," Forassiepi said.

These will then be presented in the context of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in 2027, with the hope that, over time, they may evolve into "internationally recognized standards of behavior" and be adopted and followed by all space actors, Forassiepi added.

"The ultimate goal is to build a lunar future that is sustainable not only from an operational perspective, but also in terms of scientific research and the protection of the earliest traces of human presence in the history of space," he stressed. "These are two irreplaceable forms of heritage, and their damage would represent an enormous loss for future generations."

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.

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.

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.

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.

SpaceX succesfully launched its Crew-13 astronaut crew for NASA today at 11:10 a.m. EDT (1510 GMT) on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026 on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Docking occurred at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT), with the crew entering the ISS at 9:43 p.m. EDT (0143 GMT on Oct. 2), about 25 minutes after the hatches opened between the station's Harmony module and their Crew Dragon capsule, "Grace.".

Four Crew-13 astronauts make SpaceX's fastest ever trip the ISS on a Falcon 9 rocket and the Crew Dragon, which were docked only eight hours after liftoff. Grace and its crew will remain aboard the ISS for a roughly six-month mission before their return to Earth around February or March 2027.

Rewatch the Crew-13 launch | SpaceX | Falcon 9 | ISS

October 1, 2026 – 11:11 AM

LIFTOFF! SpaceX launches Crew-13 astronauts to ISS

LIFTOFF! SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket carrying four Crew-13 astronauts on the Crew Dragon Grace lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on time at 11:10 a.m. EDT (1510 GMT).

October 1, 2026 – 12:11 PM

NASA, SpaceX to hold Crew-13 post-launch briefing @ 1:10 pm ET

With the succesful launch of NASA's Crew-13 astronauts on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule, NASA and SpaceX are now preparing to hold a post-launch press briefing. However, the timing has changed. While we wait, check out the amazing Crew-13 launch photos and Falcon 9 landing view from Space.com's Josh Dinner! You can see video of the launch at the top of this page, too.

SpaceX and NASA will now hold the press conference at 1:10 p.m. EDT (1810 GMT), about 25 minutes later than planned. You'll be able to watch it live here at start time. Here's a look at who will be speaking during the briefing:

We'll be back at 1 p.m. ET for the briefing and thanks for tuning in!

• NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman
• 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
• Julianna Scheiman, director, NASA Science and Dragon Programs, SpaceX

The SpaceX megarocket — the biggest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built — reached orbit for the first time ever on Monday (Sept. 28), during its 14th test flight to date. Starship also deployed 26 of SpaceX's Starlink V3 broadband satellites on Flight 14, kicking off construction of a constellation that will eventually harbor 100,000 spacecraft, if all goes to plan.

These were big successes, but they didn't vault Starship into full technological maturity; the rocket will have to clear a few more hurdles to get there. Here's a brief rundown of the most important ones.

Catching the Ship upper stage

Both of Starship's stages — the Super Heavy booster and Ship upper-stage spacecraft — are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. During operational flights, SpaceX plans to bring both of these vehicles back to the launch pad, where they will be caught by the tower's "chopstick" arms.

SpaceX thinks this recovery strategy will enable fast and efficient reuse, allowing the company to achieve seemingly outrageous launch cadences. Indeed, the company is targeting 10,000 Starship liftoffs per year by 2030, Elon Musk has said.

SpaceX has already pulled off chopstick catches with Super Heavy, doing so on three Starship test flights to date. But the company has yet to attempt one with the 171-foot-tall (52 meters) Ship, which has always targeted an ocean splashdown to wrap up its missions.

That could change very soon. During an appearance at the All-In Summit on Sept. 14, Musk said that SpaceX may try to catch Ship on Flight 15, provided that Flight 14 went well.

The company has not laid out a mission profile for Flight 15, but Monday's success would seem to keep a Ship catch in play. We don't have an official launch date for the upcoming mission, either, but provisional planning documents peg Oct. 19 as the earliest possible target.

And another note about that launch cadence: SpaceX aims to achieve it by expanding launch operations of Starship, which has previously flown from just two pads at the company's Starbase site in South Texas. SpaceX is currently building three Starship pads on Florida's Space Coast, and it plans to break ground on the $100 billion, 12-pad Starship Louisiana complex in 2027. So that work will be going in the background of each upcoming Starship flight.

Off-Earth propellant transfer

Most Starship missions will stay in Earth orbit, deploying satellites for the Starlink V3 constellation and the company's even bigger "Starmind" data center network, which will consist of about a million satellites, if all goes to plan.

But some of the megarocket launches will send Ship farther afield — to the moon and Mars, for example. Indeed, NASA picked Starship's upper stage to be the first crewed lander for its Artemis program, which aims to build a base near the moon's south pole over the next decade or so.

Deep-space Starship missions will be more complicated than orbital ones, because they require more propellant. Ship cannot launch with much fuel onboard — doing so would make it too heavy — so each Ship bound for the moon or Mars will need to visit an off-Earth fuel depot, which itself will be a Ship variant.

This depot will need to be fueled up by special Ship "tanker" vehicles. It's unclear how many tanker flights will be required for each deep-space Ship mission, but the number is not negligible. For example, estimates for a Ship lunar-landing campaign range from eight tanker missions on the low end to 15 or 20 on the high end.

So in-space fueling is a key capability that Starship must demonstrate. SpaceX has taken some baby steps to this end already, successfully transferring propellant from one internal tank to another on Ship during Flight 3 back in March 2024.

But the company has not yet moved propellant from one vehicle to another in space. SpaceX may decide to try this as soon as Flight 15, but that's just speculation; we need to wait for an official mission description.

Getting Starship ready for astronauts

Starship was always envisioned to be a crew-carrying spacecraft. When Musk introduced it to the world back in September 2016, he framed the megarocket — then known as the Interplanetary Transport System — as the key breakthrough that would make Mars settlement feasible.

So SpaceX will need to incorporate a suite of life-support technologies into Starship and test them extensively before putting any people on board. And the clock is ticking on this task, thanks to the timeline that NASA has laid out for Artemis.

The agency plans to launch the crewed Artemis III mission in mid-2027, sending its Orion crew capsule to dock with Ship in Earth orbit. It's unclear if Ship will need to be crew-capable by then — the Artemis III astronauts may not enter Ship — but it will definitely have to be people-friendly by the time Artemis IV rolls around in 2028. That mission will land astronauts near the lunar south pole, in the first crewed moon touchdown since Apollo 17 in 1972.

And the timeline isn't the only driver for SpaceX. There's also competition for these flights; NASA has said it may fly Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander on Artemis III and/or Artemis IV if Ship isn't ready.

SpaceX won't be starting from scratch with its life-support tech; it can (and probably already has begun to) scale up the systems it has used on its Crew Dragon capsule, which has flown 20 astronaut missions to low Earth orbit to date.

As this partial list shows, the next few Starship missions should be just as exciting as Flight 14, if not more so. There will likely be a lot riding on each one.

If all goes according to plan, Starliner will conduct an uncrewed test flight to the International Space Station (ISS) this coming December or January, then carry astronauts up sometime in 2028, NASA announced in an update today (Sept. 28).

It's a vote of confidence for a vehicle that has experienced some serious setbacks on its three test flights to date.

Starliner lifted off for the first time in December 2019, on an uncrewed mission to the ISS called Orbital Flight Test (OFT). The capsule failed to meet up with the orbiting lab, however; it got stranded in the wrong orbit after suffering problems with its onboard timing system.

Starliner made it to the ISS on the uncrewed OFT-2, which launched in May 2022. But it wasn't a perfectly smooth ride: The Boeing vehicle overcame the failure of two of its orbital maneuvering and attitude control thrusters while it chased down the station.

Then came Crew Flight Test (CFT), Starliner's first-ever astronaut mission. CFT launched in June 2024, sending NASA's Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the ISS for a planned 10-day stay. Shortly after Starliner deployed from its rocket, however, some issues cropped up — namely, helium leaks and the failure of five of Starliner's 28 reaction control system (RCS) thrusters.

As on OFT-2, Starliner powered through and made it safely to the ISS. But NASA eventually decided not to risk sending Williams and Wilmore back down to Earth on the vehicle. Starliner returned uncrewed in September 2024, and the two astronauts stayed on the ISS for six months beyond that, finally riding home in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule the following March.

Starliner has been grounded ever since, while SpaceX continues to rack up astronaut missions for NASA. The agency gave commercial crew contracts to both companies in 2014. SpaceX successfully flew its version of CFT in 2020 and is now wrapping up its 12th operational astronaut flight to the ISS for NASA; that mission will end shortly after SpaceX's Crew-13 launches this coming Thursday (Oct. 1).

NASA has long stressed the importance of having more than one private astronaut taxi up and running, however, so it has remained invested in Starliner's success — even after declaring CFT a "Type A mishap," the most serious kind, this past February.

And a joint Boeing-NASA team has addressed the issues that beset CFT, agency officials told us today. For example, the company traced the helium leaks to valve problems — specifically, degradation that occurred after exposure to nitrogen tetroxide, the oxidizer in Starliner's propulsion system.

"That is why the material of the seal was changed," Dana Weigel, manager, of NASA's Low Earth Orbit Program, said during a press conference today.

"We also realized we needed to select seals that were on the larger side of the tolerance spectrum," she added. "Boeing has implemented all of those changes on the Starliner-1 spacecraft already."

Starliner-1 is the upcoming uncrewed test flight to the ISS. Starliner-2 is the crewed mission that's targeted to lift off in 2028 — likely in the middle of that year, Boeing representatives said today.

Engineers have also taken steps to ensure that a CFT-like thruster anomaly doesn't afflict future Starliner flights.

"We determined that the crew module thruster anomaly is the result of corrosion," Weigel said.

"This is created by residual hydrazine propellant combined with atmospheric exposure — specifically, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — and so Boeing has put in place procedures to flush out the hydrazine, and also to flow a continuous purge to isolate those thrusters from the environment," she added.

Not all of these changes will be tested on Starliner-1, which explains why there will be such a long gap between it and Starliner-2.

"Following the flight [Starliner-1], NASA and Boeing will complete the service module thruster valve design modification," agency officials said in a statement today.

"Boeing also will implement other improvements across the spacecraft, including installation of new crew module thrusters, batteries and minor modifications to the parachute system for increased performance and reliability in support of system certification," they added.

We already know one person who's flying on Starliner-2: NASA announced today that veteran agency astronaut Woody Hoburg will command the mission. (There's no word yet on his crewmates.)

Hoburg expressed confidence in Starliner and the Boeing-NASA teams that will be working on the vehicle in the leadup to Starliner-2.

"I've flown a lot of types of aircraft, and let me tell you, Starliner is a pilot's spacecraft," he said during today's press conference. "Starliner gives the crew real capabilities to respond to off-nominal events. These were exercised during CFT, and along with our expert flight control team, the manual control capabilities on Starliner were critical to achieving a safe docking despite numerous thruster failures."

Boeing's commercial crew contract currently runs through Starliner-6. Starliner-1 through Starliner-4 will launch atop United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rockets, as OFT, OFT-2 and CFT all did. But the venerable Atlas V is out of production and on the road to retirement, so Starliner-5 and Starliner-6 will have a different rocket ride — ULA's new Vulcan Centaur.

Vulcan still hasn't been certified to launch crewed missions, however, so some work will be required on that end as well. And NASA will be footing some of the bill.

"So, both the spacecraft upgrades — including the thrusters and everything you've heard summarized today — plus the Vulcan certification, that is $359 million [dollars]," Weigel said during the press conference.

Today's Starliner update came on the heels of some other commercial crew news. On Sept. 19, NASA announced that it has awarded SpaceX $946 million to fly three additional ISS astronaut missions: Crew-15, Crew 16 and Crew-17, which are all expected to launch by 2030.

SpaceX plans to retire Crew Dragon and its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket around that same time. The company thinks its fully reusable Starship megarocket will be humming along by then, taking care of all its spaceflight needs.

That may well be the case: Starship reached orbit for the first time ever today, deploying the first 26 satellites for SpaceX's planned 100,000-strong Starlink V3 megaconstellation.

Construction of SpaceX's next-gen Starlink satellite megaconstellation is officially underway.

The milestone occurred today (Sept. 28), during the 14th test flight of the company's Starship megarocket. The 407-foot-tall (124 meters) Starship reached orbit for the first time ever on Flight 14 — and it did something productive while it was up there.

Starship's upper stage, known as Ship, successfully delivered 26 of SpaceX's Starlink Version 3 (V3) Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO) today. And we got great views of the deployment, from cameras aboard Ship and on the satellites.

SpaceX currently operates more than 11,000 Starlink satellites in LEO — by far the largest spacecraft network ever assembled. But the Starlink V3 megaconstellation will be a completely different animal.

For starters, Starlink V3 satellites are about twice as heavy as their predecessors, tipping the scales here on Earth at roughly 4,400 pounds (2,000 kilograms). They can fly efficiently only on the ultrapowerful Starship; they're too big to launch aboard SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which built the original Starlink constellation.

The new Starlinks are also far more capable.

"The Starlink V3 satellite is designed to support 1 Tbps [terabytes per second] of downlink and 160 Gbps [gigabytes per second] of uplink capacity. That's an ~10x improvement in downlink capacity and an ~22x increase in uplink capacity from the Starlink V2 satellite," SpaceX representatives wrote in a description of the technology.

"The V3 satellite's antennas support both 2,048 downlink and uplink beams," they added. "For comparison, Starlink V2 satellite's phased arrays supported 192 downlink and 144 uplink beams."

Thanks to these and other enhancements, "we'll be able to deploy ~20x the capacity per Starship launch into the constellation as compared to a Falcon 9 launch of V2 satellites," SpaceX wrote.

And there will be a lot of Starship Starlink launches in the coming months and years, if all goes according to plan.

The Starlink V3 constellation will eventually consist of about 100,000 satellites, according to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. Starship can carry up about 60 Starlink V3s on each mission, so just getting to 100,000 will require nearly 1,700 liftoffs. More will be needed to maintain the constellation, of course; Starlink satellites have an operational lifetime of about five years, so they'll have to be replaced regularly.

But Starship could fly even more frequently in service of another megaconstellation — one that's bigger by an order of magnitude. SpaceX intends to operate a million of its "Starmind" AI data centers in Earth orbit, and all of them will ride on Starship's back.

Indeed, SpaceX aims to launch Starship 10,000 times per year by 2030, Musk has said — an outrageous cadence that the company thinks is possible because the vehicle is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. For perspective: the Falcon 9 flew 165 times in 2025, which was a company record and represented half of all orbital missions worldwide for that year.

SpaceX took a big step toward meeting those ambitious goals with today's success, but Starship still has some boxes to check. For example, missions to the moon and Mars — which are definitely in the cards, according to SpaceX — will require Ship to be fueled up in Earth orbit, something that the company has not yet demonstrated.

And Ship will start carrying humans into the final frontier in the near future, if all goes to plan. So SpaceX will need to install a life-support system in Ship, and launch some test flights to demonstrate that it works.

SpaceX has considerable experience in this regard, having flown 20 astronaut missions aboard its Crew Dragon capsule to date. But Starship and Dragon, which generally carries just four people per flight, are very different vehicles, so some scale-up will be required.

Starship just went where it had never gone before.

SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy megarocket — the biggest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built — reached orbit today (Sept. 28), notching a huge milestone on the road to operational flight. But the launch, from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas, was not without high drama.

During liftoff, one of the six engines on Starship's Ship upper stage went out, raising doubt about whether SpaceX would attempt to reach orbit after all. SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot even announced it was called off, only to reverse course as flight controllers decided to press ahead.

"We are not giving up yet," Huot said. "We will continue to hang out."

And the call came just a few minutes later: Starship was "go" for orbit. About 25 minutes after liftoff, Ship fired a single Raptor engine briefly to enter orbit. It was the primary goal of SpaceX's Starship Flight 14 launch test: Reach orbit for the first time and deploy 26 Starlink satellites into an operational orbit.

"Starship is orbital," mission control confirmed, eliciting cheers from the SpaceX employees watching the launch live at Starbase.

"First orbital flight of Starship successful!" SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on SpaceX's X platform.

• SpaceX Starship Flight 14 live updates: Starship is in orbit!

The rocket of the future

Starship stands 407 feet (124 meters) tall and can haul more than 110 tons (100 metric tons) to Earth orbit, according to its SpaceX specs page. The rocket's Super Heavy booster and Ship upper stage are both designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.

SpaceX thinks this combination of power and reflight will be transformative, allowing humanity to expand its footprint into the final frontier like never before. For example, Elon Musk has repeatedly cited Starship's potential to make Mars settlement economically feasible.

NASA is invested in this vision as well. The space agency picked Starship to be the first crewed lander for its Artemis program, which aims to build a base near the moon's south pole over the next five years or so.

If all goes according to plan, Starship's Ship upper stage will fly on the crewed Artemis III mission to low Earth orbit in mid-2027 and put astronauts down near the moon's south pole a year later with Artemis IV. (According to SpaceX's plan, anyway; NASA also selected Blue Origin to supply Artemis crewed landers, and it's unclear at the moment which vehicle will fly Artemis IV.)

A busy and ambitious test flight

Starship lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas today at 8:48 a.m. EDT (1248 GMT; 7:48 a.m. local Texas time), kicking off its 14th test flight to date.

Flight 14 is the third Starship launch to feature Version 3 of the vehicle, a relatively mature iteration that's capable of deploying satellites and reaching the moon and Mars, among other tasks.

Everything went according to plan initially. Super Heavy did what it was supposed to do, coming back down to Earth for a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about seven minutes after liftoff. It appeared to experience several engine shutdowns during flight, but nothing serious enough to affect the landing. Meanwhile, Ship continued on its upward ascent, inserting into low Earth orbit (LEO) about a half-hour into the flight.

But SpaceX wasn't content with just getting to LEO. Ship carried 26 of the company's next-gen Starlink V3 broadband satellites, which it successfully deployed over a 30-minute stretch starting at about T+34 minutes. These are the first members of a megaconstellation that will eventually consist of about 100,000 satellites, according to Musk. (Ship deployed V3 Starlinks on Flight 13 in July, but they were on a suborbital trajectory and soon fell back to Earth.)

Three of the 26 Starlinks were outfitted with cameras, which they used to scan Ship. SpaceX engineers will study this imagery to see if they can improve Ship's heat shield, which allows the vehicle to survive the fiery trip down through Earth's atmosphere at the end of its missions.

Ship kept circling Earth for a while after deploying the Starlink satellites — though not nearly as long as originally planned. SpaceX wanted Ship to complete about six orbits and splash down off the coast of Chile 9 hours and 50 minutes after launch, but mission controllers decided to shave nearly seven hours off that flight time.

Ship started reentering our planet's atmosphere about two hours and 40 minutes after launch and went subsonic — breaking the sound barrier, in the fast-to-slow direction — 26 minutes later. The vehicle splashed down intact in the northern Pacific Ocean three hours and eight minutes after liftoff, causing another eruption of cheers from the folks gathered at Starbase.

Ship then toppled over and exploded when it hit the waves, providing a dramatic capper to a very exciting day for SpaceX.

Despite all of today's successes, SpaceX still has some work to do to get Starship fully up and running.

For example, the company plans to bring Super Heavy and Ship down on the launch pad at the end of each mission, catching both vehicles with the launch tower's "chopstick" arms — a recovery strategy meant to make reuse quicker and more efficient. SpaceX has pulled off tower catches of Super Heavy on three test flights to date but has yet to try one with Ship.

And Starship missions that go to the moon or Mars will require multiple launches of "tanker" spacecraft to fuel up Ship in Earth orbit. SpaceX has not yet demonstrated off-Earth refueling, so that will be another big box to check.

SpaceX will also need to install life-support systems ahead of crewed missions like Artemis IV — and it will doubtless fly Starship successfully many times before putting an astronaut on it. So stay tuned: There will probably be a lot more Starship action in the coming weeks and months.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:15 p.m. EDT with news of successful satellite deployment and Ship splashdown.

Update for Sept. 28, 12 p.m. ET: SpaceX successfully launched a Starship into orbit for the first time today, deploying 26 Starlink satellites before making a splashdown in the Northern Pacific Ocean. See our full Starship Flight 14 launch story with amazing videos and photos. Plus, don't miss these stunning views of Starship in orbit as seen by Starlink.

SpaceX's Starship megarocket will attempt to go orbital for the first time ever on Monday morning (Sept. 28), and you can watch the historic action live.

Starship is scheduled to launch from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas Monday during a 75-minute window that opens at 8:15 a.m. EDT (1215 GMT; 7:15 a.m. local Texas time).

You can watch it in the window above, courtesy of SpaceX. Coverage will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff.

Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, standing a towering 407 feet (124 meters) tall when fully stacked. Both of its stages — the Super Heavy booster and Ship upper-stage spacecraft — are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, a breakthrough that SpaceX has called the "holy grail of rocketry."

The company believes that Starship will open the heavens like never before, allowing humanity to settle the moon and Mars, and perhaps venture even farther afield. But the rocket is not yet ready for such world-changing work; it's still in the flight-test phase.

Starship debuted in April 2023 and now has 13 missions under its belt, all of them suborbital. That figures to change on Monday, however, when the giant vehicle launches for the 14th time.

Flight 14 will send the 171-foot-tall (52 m) Ship to Earth orbit, where it will deploy 26 of SpaceX's next-gen Starlink Version 3 internet satellites. These will be the first members of a new megaconstellation in low Earth orbit (LEO), which Elon Musk has said will eventually consist of 100,000 spacecraft. (SpaceX currently operates about 11,000 Starlink satellites in LEO).

Ship will circle our planet six times, then head home for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean of the coast of Chile nearly 10 hours after launch. This will be quite a departure from Starship's suborbital flights, which lasted a maximum of 65 minutes and targeted the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Western Australia.

Super Heavy won't stay up for nearly so long; it's scheduled to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico about seven minutes after liftoff, as it has on previous flights.

During operational flights, SpaceX plans to bring both Super Heavy and Ship back to the launch pad, where they'll be caught by the tower's "chopstick" arms. The company has already done this three times with Super Heavy but has not yet attempted it with Ship.

That box will be checked on another flight. And Starship will have other hurdles to clear as well, even if today's flight goes perfectly. For example, each Starship mission beyond Earth orbit will require multiple rendezvous with "tanker" Ships to fuel up the voyaging spacecraft. SpaceX has yet to demonstrate off-Earth propellant transfer, so we will doubtless see that milestone on an upcoming test flight.

Ship will also have to be outfitted with a life-support system ahead of crewed missions, which could be coming relatively soon. For example, NASA picked Ship to the be the first crewed lunar lander for its Artemis program, which aims to land people on the moon for the first time in 2028 on the Artemis IV mission.

For the third time this month, SpaceX has sent a national security mission to orbit.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the USSF-385 mission for the U.S. Space Force launched from California's foggy Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT; 7:00 a.m. local California time).

The rocket's first stage came back to Earth as planned 8.5 minutes later, touching down in the Pacific Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You." It was the 10th launch and landing for this particular booster, which is designated 1100.

We don't know much about USSF-385; its payloads, and their activities, are classified. We don't even know exactly where it's headed. SpaceX cut off its launch webcast shortly after booster touchdown, as it usually does on national security missions. (Generally, the company keeps its streams going through payload deployment.)

This was the third Space Force flight in the past 16 days for SpaceX. Falcon 9s also launched the classified USSF-153 and USSF-259 missions from Vandenberg on Sept. 10 and Sept. 16, respectively.

The Falcon 9 has now flown 108 times in 2026. The vast majority of these missions — 75% of them — have been dedicated to building out SpaceX's Starlink broadband constellation, which currently consists of more than 11,000 satellites in low Earth orbit.

SpaceX has also launched two flights apiece of its Falcon Heavy and Starship rockets so far this year. And it's gearing up for the third Starship launch of 2026, which is scheduled to take place Monday morning (Sept. 28) during a 75-minute window that opens at 8:15 a.m. EDT (1215 GMT).

This test flight, which you can watch here at Space.com, is a big one for the Starship program and for SpaceX overall. Starship will attempt to reach orbit, something the megarocket has never done before.

Update for Sept. 28, 12 p.m. ET: SpaceX successfully launched a Starship into orbit for the first time today, deploying 26 Starlink satellites before making a splashdown in the Northern Pacific Ocean. See our full Starship Flight 14 launch story with amazing videos and photos. Plus, don't miss these stunning views of Starship in orbit as seen by Starlink.

SpaceX has already built the world's largest rocket with its Starship and will attempt to put that giant vehicle in orbit for the first time today (Sept. 28). But if you're hoping to watch the history-making launch yourself, you'll need to know exactly where and when to tune in. We've got all the details you need below.

The first-ever orbital Starship launch, SpaceX's Flight 14 test flight, is scheduled to launch from the company's Starbase proving ground in South Texas no earlier than Sept. 28. Liftoff is set for 8:48 a.m. EDT (1248 GMT). You can follow the mission live on our Starship Flight 14 launch updates page.

Flight 14 will mark the 14th Starship test flight for SpaceX and the third Starship flight this year. It follows SpaceX's success of Starship Flight 13 in July, which the company touted as its softest Ship upper-stage landing ever — so soft, in fact, that the Ship splashed down and floated for weeks, allowing SpaceX to recover it from the sea for study at Starbase.

But now it's time for the more than 400-foot-tall (121 meters) Starship to reach orbit, a feat SpaceX must achieve if it is to land NASA's Artemis astronauts on the moon with a Ship by 2028. Here's what to know.

What time is SpaceX's Starship Flight 14 launch?

SpaceX is now aiming to launch Starship Flight 14 no earlier than 8:48 a.m. EDT (1248 GMT) on Monday, Sept. 28. But it is possible the launch may occur up to over an hour later, depending on conditions at the Starbase pad.

Starship Flight 14 actually has a 75-minute window in which to launch, and it opens at 8:15 a.m. EDT (1215 GMT), so the exact timing could shift a bit later if bad weather or a technical glitch delays the countdown. That means the launch could occur anytime between 8:15 a.m. EDT and 9:30 a.m. EDT (1215-1330 GMT). SpaceX's official livestream of the launch will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff.

NOTE: Unlike past Starship flights, which have lasted about an hour, Flight 14 will run nearly 10 hours due to its orbital nature.

SpaceX may also have up to two backup days for launch, on Sept. 29 and Sept. 30, but the launch times for those days are expected to be the same.

Related: Read our SpaceX Starship and Super Heavy guide for a detailed look at the megarocket.

Can I watch SpaceX's Starship Flight 14 launch?

Yes, of course you'll be able to watch SpaceX launch its Starship Flight 14 orbital test flight. The company will host a live webcast of the launch, but you can also pick your venue on where to watch.

SpaceX's own livestream begins 30 minutes before liftoff (as mentioned above) and will be available via the SpaceX X account and the official Flight 14 mission page. If everything is on time, that livestream will begin at about 8:16 a.m. EDT (1216 GMT).

Space.com will simulcast the SpaceX Flight 14 launch webcast on this page, as well as an our homepage and YouTube channel.

A prelaunch show

If you can't wait until Sept. 28 to see live views of Starship Flight 14, you can tune in right now at NASASpaceflight, which has 24/7 live views of SpaceX's Starship pads at Starbase.

The NASASpaceflight Flight 14 launch webcast will begin on Sept. 28 at 4:15 a.m. EDT (0815 GMT), about four hours before launch. NASASpaceflight has many cameras in position around Starbase, and the company typically shares up-close video views and live commentary for preflight activities.

In-person launch options

As I've shared in past Starship launch guides, SpaceX does not have an official Starship launch viewing site near Starbase, but there are several places where you can see the liftoff in person.

For first-time spectators, I've always recommended watching a Starship launch from the rocky beach near the Cameron County Amphitheater at Isla Blanca Park on South Padre Island. The park is across the bay from Starbase and draws a good crowd, offering a view of ships on the bay that frame the towering Starship launch pad. It's 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the launch site as the crow flies, and the park has bathrooms.

Traffic getting onto South Padre Island can be heavy on launch days if you're not staying at a hotel on the island (which is easier in my experience). If that's your situation, you may opt for watching from around Port Isabel. And you can always grab a bite at Hopper Haus, a SpaceX-themed bar that makes a mean burger.

There is also a shoreline stretch of Highway 48 between Brownsville and Port Isabel, from 6 to 8 miles (10 to 13 km) from the launch site, where you can pull up for the day to watch the launch. It's just the side of the highway, so you won't find amenities like bathrooms there. You can learn more about that here: SpaceLaunchSchedule.com.

If you want a closer view(and have cash for a $200 ticket, though kids under 17 are $40), you can camp at the Rocket Ranch. The campground is 3.8 miles (6.1 km) from the Starbase launch site, and your ticket allows you to camp there for one day and night. It has two viewing locations available, with its "Outpost" one offering the closest view and "unmatched media service," so you can stay connected. The other location is a bit farther away on the campground itself. The ticket includes bus transportation from the ranch campground to a viewing site and back for one launch attempt. I haven't visited this ranch, but I've been including it here as an option in case you want to try it. (If you do, let us know!) Longer, four-day camping packages are also available.

Be sure to read the full Rocket Ranch FAQ for details on the site.

How long is SpaceX's Starship Flight 14?

SpaceX's Starship Flight 14 orbital test flight will last just over 9 hours and 50 minutes and will mark the first time a Starship has reached orbit, if all goes to plan. It will also be the third flight of SpaceX's new Starship Version 3.

"Flight tests until this point have intentionally flown passively safe suborbital trajectories to maximize public safety while allowing for maximum learning," SpaceX wrote in a mission overview. "By going to orbit, the next phase of developing Starship to be fully and rapidly reusable can begin."

Starship Flight 14 will launch from SpaceX's newer Pad 2 at Starbase on a path that should deliver it into an orbit nearly 171 miles (275 kilometers) above Earth. If all goes well, SpaceX hopes to orbit Earth six times with Starship before attempting a water landing.

Starship's Flight 13 test in July deployed Starlink V3 internet satellites, but on a suborbital trajectory, so they soon reentered Earth's atmosphere. Flight 14 will carry the first operational Starlink V3 satellites to be deployed in orbit.

"Starship will deliver 26 Starlink V3 satellites to orbit for the first time, which aim to greatly expand the network's capacity and user speeds," SpaceX wrote. "Each Starlink V3 satellite will add 1 Tbps of capacity to the constellation, for a total of 26 Tbps of capacity added on this mission alone. That’s ~10x the capacity compared to a single launch of V2 mini Starlink satellites on Falcon 9."

Flight 14's Ship upper stage is expected to deploy the Starlink satellites through a Pez dispenser-like door starting about 34 minutes after liftoff. The entire process should take about 30 minutes.

SpaceX will not try to catch either the giant Starship Super Heavy booster or the Ship upper stage on this flight. The Super Heavy first stage is expected to make a soft water landing in the Gulf of Mexico while the Ship upper stage splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Chile. That is a departure from past flights, which have had the Ship upper stage splash down in the Indian Ocean.

What if Starship Flight 14 can't launch on Sept. 28?

As with every launch, there is a chance that something may come up the day of launch and prevent liftoff. In that event, SpaceX appears to have at least two backup days in case it is unable to launch on Sept. 28.

Officials say there are alternate launch dates available on Tuesday, Sept. 29 and Wednesday, Sept. 30, if needed. Those dates are alternate beach closure dates for Boca Chica Beach, which is a beach near Starbase, and a good indicator of when SpaceX plans to fly.

You'll be able to follow SpaceX's Starship Flight 14 mission on Space.com as it happens. Be sure to come back on launch day for complete Starship Flight 14 coverage.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect SpaceX's new launch time for Starship Flight 14.

SpaceX is targeting Sept. 28 for Starship’s Flight 14, the next liftoff of its industry-shaking launch vehicle, and is planning to fly the towering spacecraft farther and longer than it has ever flown, with a very specific destination in mind: orbit. Of the baker’s-dozen launches so far under its belt, Starship has only ever flown suborbitally. Succeeding in its first orbital endeavor will serve as a huge milestone for the rocket, which is still in development.

Liftoff on Sept. 28 is scheduled during a 75-minute window that opens at 8:15 a.m. EDT (1215 GMT). With orbit as the goal, the mission is expected to last much longer than previous Starship launches — about 10 hours from liftoff to splashdown of the rocket’s Ship upper stage, compared to past suborbital flights that have each only lasted about an hour. Rather than its previous arching trajectories above the reaches of Earth’s atmosphere, Starship will soar to an altitude of approximately 170 miles (275 kilometers), where it will circle the planet around six times before executing a deorbit burn to initiate its return.

SpaceX is taking the opportunity to load Starship with a stack of 26 operational Starlink Version 3 (V3) satellites for deployment in low Earth orbit (LEO). This batch will be the first of more than 100,000 upgraded Starlink spacecraft designed to expand the company’s wireless satellite internet services. SpaceX has deployed sets of Starlink V3 test payloads on previous Starship launches, but due to their suborbital trajectory, all of them quickly came back down to Earth. Three of the V3 Starlinks going up on Flight 14 are equipped with cameras for peering back at Starship after their deployment to inspect the spacecraft’s heat-shield tiles — an essential component to the success of Starship’s ultimate purpose.

SpaceX is designing Starship as the world’s first fully reusable launch vehicle — what the company calls “The Holy Grail of Rocketry” (which is also the title of SpaceX’s latest documentary-style episode chronicling the rocket’s development). Starship’s Super Heavy first-stage booster and Ship upper stage are being designed with the capability to perform deceleration and landing burns for a return to their launch site, where they will be caught mid-air using massive chopstick-like arms on a pair of adjacent “Mechazilla” launch towers for refurbishment and reflight.

As the company has worked toward that goal, it has crossed several milestones off Starship’s list of technical feats needed to realize the rocket’s eventual rapid reusability. For example, SpaceX has made three successful catches of Super Heavy back at SpaceX’s Starbase, Texas, launch facility, and has executed a handful of Raptor 3 single-engine relights on Ship while in space.

SpaceX hasn’t attempted a Super Heavy return to launch site and catch since introducing the most recent Starship design upgrade, Version 3, which lifted off for the first time on Flight 12 in May. None of Starship’s launches have yet attempted a return and catch of the rocket’s Ship upper stage. Instead, the two Starship V3 vehicles that have launched this year targeted soft splashdowns at sea for Ship and Super Heavy, in order to fine-tune landing burn procedures without risking damage to the major launch infrastructure at Starbase. That will be the case for Flight 14 as well.

SpaceX has made “several modifications” to Super Heavy’s hardware to address issues discovered during previous flights, according to the company's Flight 14 mission page, and will send at least one more of the Starship boosters to a watery grave to ensure those modifications are all working as expected. Flight 14's Super Heavy (Booster 21, for those keeping track) will follow a similar trajectory to its previous flights, with its primary objectives after stage separation being a successful boostback burn, followed by a landing burn and splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ship (Ship 41, if you’re counting), on the other hand, will fly a very new mission compared to its previous jaunts in space. Its initial trajectory after stage separation will put the spacecraft on the same course as previous flights, arching toward a reentry and splashdown in the Indian Ocean. But it will then head for orbit, if all systems are “go.” SpaceX clarified its criteria for entering orbit on the Flight 14 page, stating, “Starship will only execute a burn to enter orbit after the flight control team has ensured there is sufficient redundancy on hardware critical to doing the subsequent deorbit burn at the end of the mission.”

Approximately 25 minutes after liftoff, the spacecraft will fire one or more of its three vacuum-optimized Raptor 3 engines for an orbital insertion maneuver, which is expected to last only about 20 seconds. SpaceX has included splashdown contingency locations in case the need for an early deorbit arises, and plans to be “intentionally conservative” in its abort criteria to ensure flight safety. Should that phase of flight execute nominally, however, SpaceX has slated the half-hour-long Starlink deployment procedure to begin about 10 minutes later. Then the coast phase of the mission will begin.

SpaceX is planning for Starship to complete six orbits of Earth over the course of about eight hours, during which the company hopes to stream live views of the planet from Ship’s onboard cameras. At the end of its coast phase, the spacecraft will fire a single-engine deorbit burn using one of its sea-level Raptor 3s for a targeted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, wrapping up the Flight 14 mission approximately 10 hours after launch.

Orbit is a big step for Starship, provided SpaceX can pull it off. If the Flight 14 launch date remains on Sept. 28, it will mark exactly 10 years and one day from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s initial unveiling of the company’s Starship design (then dubbed the Interplanetary Transport System, or ITS) at the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 2016.

Since then, the ambitious launch vehicle, the largest and most powerful in history, has undergone a decade of modifications, ground tests and increasingly complex launch profiles, with progress marked by a mixture of achievements and setbacks along the way. But the pressure to get Starship operational is mounting.

NASA is counting on a lunar lander version of the vehicle for its Artemis program architecture, which includes an uncrewed article for docking tests in Earth orbit with NASA’s Orion spacecraft and Artemis III crew in mid-2027, and a crewed lunar landing mission in 2028 on Artemis IV. SpaceX is also eager for Starship’s massive payload capacity to begin deploying its much larger Starlink V3s at scale and, eventually, help assemble an even larger constellation of orbital AI data centers that Musk envisions. That constellation will consist of a million spacecraft, if SpaceX gets regulatory approval.

Still, Starship has more feats to master before it can pull off all SpaceX has billed it for. At 407 feet tall (124 meters), Starship V3's Super Heavy is powered by 33 Raptor 3s, which provide about 18.1 million pounds of thrust at liftoff — enough to deliver up to 100 tons to orbit. SpaceX says that later Starship generations are being designed to double that payload capacity to around 200 tons. But realizing those design goals is contingent on SpaceX’s ability to mature Starship much further.

For Starship to follow through on SpaceX’s promises, the company still needs to tackle technological hurdles like on-orbit fuel transfers and long-term cryogenic propellant storage in space, both of which Starship needs in order to fly beyond LEO. On Artemis IV, for example, NASA estimates the Starship lunar lander will need up to a dozen refueling launches to top off its tanks enough to carry out its mission of delivering astronauts to the surface of the moon, where it's expected to remain for up to a week before then launching its crew back to lunar orbit to rendezvous with Orion.

Those capabilities, though, lie farther (but presumably not too far) down Starship’s developmental timeline. Orbit is Flight 14’s primary focus, and only by achieving that milestone can SpaceX move on to clear the rocket’s remaining hurdles.

Google announced today (Sept. 24) that a prototype satellite for its planned Project Suncatcher AI constellation will fly on SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare mission, which is currently scheduled to launch on Oct. 1.

The main goal is to see how core Suncatcher hardware — Google chips known as tensor processing units (TPUs) — perform in the final frontier, according to the company.

The satellite going up on Transporter-18 was built by the San Francisco-based Earth-imaging company Planet, which has partnered with Google on Project Suncatcher.

The prototype spacecraft carries four TPUs and will operate in Earth orbit for a year, if all goes to plan, according to The New York Times. During that time, Google will keep close tabs on the TPUs, noting, among other things, how they're affected by space radiation and how effectively the heat they generate is dissipated.

Indeed, cooling is regarded as one of the major challengers for operators of orbital data centers, as there is no airflow in space to carry away heat.

"We're working on a number of different approaches for this, including a combination of heat pipes and radiators to cool the chips," Google wrote in today's Project Suncatcher update.

"So far, our team has tested the technology in a thermal vacuum chamber that simulates both the thermal and vacuum environment in space," the company added. "We'll see how our new TPU cooling system works in space and refine our designs as we learn more."

The lessons will keep coming. Up next is a course in laser communication, a core capability that the Project Suncatcher satellites — which will operate in clusters of dozens of spacecraft — will need to possess.

"Maintaining the necessary connection requires extraordinary precision, similar to hitting a coin-size target from miles away while both points are in motion," Google wrote. "We'll test our work on this in 2027 when we put two satellites in orbit."

Those two spacecraft will be built by Planet as well, according to The New York Times.

Many other companies are eyeing orbital data-center constellations these days, drawn by the promise of continuously available power (from the sun) and the lack of neighbors to make NIMBY protests. SpaceX, for example, aims to operate a million-member megaconstellation of its Starmind AI satellites in Earth orbit, and to start building it as soon as next year.

It's unclear which, if any, of these off-Earth AI plans will come to pass. But the Transporter-18 launch could be a hinge point, teaching Google a lot more about its own prospects.

Starship just cleared a major hurdle ahead of its first orbital flight.

SpaceX announced this afternoon (Sept. 24) that it has completed a wet dress rehearsal (WDR) for the next flight of Starship, the huge, fully reusable rocket it's developing to help humanity settle the moon and Mars.

During a WDR, mission teams fuel up a vehicle and go through all of the major steps they will take on launch day, without actually igniting the engines. With this key test in the books, Starship remains on track to launch Monday morning (Sept. 28) on its 14th-ever test flight, which will take the 407-foot-tall (124-meter-tall) vehicle farther than it has ever gone before.

Starship debuted in April 2023. That launch, and the next 12 that followed, all sent Starship's upper-stage spacecraft, known as Ship, on a suborbital trajectory.

On Flight 14, however, the 171-foot-tall (52-m-tall) Ship will go fast enough to enter orbit. Once up there, it will deploy 26 of SpaceX's next-gen Starlink Version 3 satellites — the first members of a constellation that Elon Musk has said will eventually consist of 100,000 spacecraft.

Ship will stay up for a while, if all goes to plan; it will circle Earth six times before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile. (That splashdown zone is new as well; previous Starship flights targeted the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Western Australia.)

Starship's first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, will make a splashdown of its own in the Gulf of Mexico. This will occur about seven minutes after launch.

That will not be the end game on operational Starship flights, however. SpaceX wants to catch both Ship and Super Heavy back at the pad, using the launch tower's "chopstick" arms. The company has already done this with Super Heavy on three previous flights but has not yet tried to do so with Ship.

Starship Flight 14 is scheduled to launch from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas on Monday during a 75-minute window that opens at 8:15 a.m. EDT (1215 GMT; 7:15 a.m. local Texas time).

You can watch all the action live here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX. And there should be a lot to watch: The company has said it aims to keep the stream going for all six of Ship's orbits around Earth and its splashdown.

SpaceX has completed assembly of the Starship rocket slated to launch the test vehicle’s most ambitious mission to date.

Flight 14, the 14th full-stack launch of Starship’s test campaign, is slated to lift off during a 75-minute window that opens at 8:15 a.m. EDT (1215 GMT) on Sept. 28. The Super Heavy first stage for Flight 14, Booster 21, was transported to Starbase’s Pad 2 earlier this week, and its upper-stage Ship (Ship 41) joined its counterpart at the pad overnight on Wednesday (Sept. 23).

The two were stacked before the sun rose on the South Texas launch facility and are undergoing final checkouts before SpaceX performs a key fueling test known as a wet dress rehearsal, which is expected sometime Thursday (Sept. 24).

Flight 14 will be Starship’s first attempt at reaching orbit, and a major milestone for the launch vehicle that has now been in development for 10 years. If all goes according to plan, Flight 14 will also see the first deployment of SpaceX’s upgraded Starlink Version 3 (V3) high-speed internet satellites. Starship has carried small batches of V3 Starlinks on previous launches, but those missions’ suborbital trajectories meant the satellites burned up in Earth’s atmosphere rather than remaining in orbit.

Ship 41 has been loaded with 26 Starlink V3s, which, if successfully deployed, will be the very first in a constellation that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hopes to grow to more than 100,000. The larger, more powerful Starlink V3s will eventually completely replace the existing Starlink network and, according to Musk, will occupy low Earth orbit (LEO) alongside an even larger network of more than 1 million AI data center satellites, if SpaceX gets regulatory approval.

Deploying these first V3 Starlinks will depend on Starship reaching orbit, a feat the rocket has yet to attempt. Starship’s first 13 flights all flew suborbital trajectories by design, as SpaceX fine-tuned the launch vehicle’s design. Like the Starlink satellites it’s carrying, Starship is also in its V3 design iteration. SpaceX is confident that the V3 Starship can carry out the elementary components of its immediate missions ahead: chiefly, reaching orbit, deploying its payload and returning safely to Earth.

Much beyond that requires clearing a few technological hurdles SpaceX has yet to tackle, such as orbital refueling and storing cryogenic propellants in space. For Starship to deliver payloads beyond LEO will require supplemental Starship “tanker” launches to replenish a primary Ship’s propellant. And SpaceX will need to overcome those obstacles to Starship’s full operational status soon.

In addition to SpaceX’s own eagerness to begin launching the Starlink V3 megaconstellation, NASA has also contracted the vehicle as a lunar lander for the Artemis program. NASA is expecting an orbital spacecraft capable of docking with the agency’s Orion spacecraft in time for Artemis III in mid-2027, and a crew-certified vehicle to land astronauts on the moon on Artemis IV, in 2028.

If everything goes smoothly during Thursday’s wet dress rehearsal, SpaceX will be free to proceed toward Flight 14’s Sept. 28 launch target, pending regulatory approval from the Federal Aviation Administration . Unlike previous suborbital flights that have lasted only about an hour, Flight 14’s orbital jaunt is expected to last about 10 hours from liftoff to splashdown of Ship 41 in the Pacific Ocean.