The week on Astrometrik in one page: 21 new stories, 4 launches, 3 asteroids passing Earth and the best night to look up from New York.
This week’s news
From the United States
Three new science payloads for NASA’s Moon BaseNASA picked three investigations to ride commercial landers: a long-term station to monitor the environment at the lunar south pole, a search for underground lava tubes at the Marius Hills pit, and…
September 30, 2026 · NASA
NASA orders a 5G network for the MoonModulate Space Corporation won a contract of about $38 million, run from NASA Glenn in Cleveland, to combine 5G and Wi-Fi 6 for surface operations at the planned Moon Base: first a “network in a box” tested in…
September 30, 2026 · NASA
Roman’s coronagraph takes its first lookAfter guidance-system tests on 15–21 September, NASA’s Roman Space Telescope pointed its Coronagraph Instrument at a faint star in the Large Magellanic Cloud on 22 September, then again on 27 September with…
September 30, 2026 · NASA Science
Artemis II crew in Houston on 30 SeptemberReid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen, who flew around the Moon from 1 to 10 April and went 252,756 miles (406,772 km) from Earth, the farthest humans have ever travelled, hold…
September 28, 2026 · NASA
From around the world
Mars’s north polar cap is far cleaner than we thoughtA study led by Aditya Khuller of the University of Washington, using data from the OMEGA and CRISM instruments and the Phoenix lander, finds the cap is about 3% dust by mass, not the roughly 25% assumed…
October 1, 2026 · Universe Today
Rocket Lab signs its biggest Electron deal yet: 20 launchesJapan’s Synspective booked 20 Electron launches for its StriX radar satellites, launching every year from 2028 to 2031, bringing its total to 47 missions, more than any other Rocket Lab customer. The company’s…
September 30, 2026 · Rocket Lab
Signs of life on Enceladus may be easier to spot than fearedTwo papers in Science Advances by Frank Postberg, Vanessa Helmbrecht and colleagues at Freie Universität Berlin and LMU Munich find that ocean spray freezes slowly inside the ice cracks, concentrating salts…
September 30, 2026 · Universe Today
Twin planets caught forming, with gas swirling around one of themUsing the ALMA radio telescope, astronomers from the University of Milan and Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Astronomy imaged the young WISPIT 2 system, roughly 430 light-years away, with two growing…
September 30, 2026 · Space.com
Smile, Europe and China’s space-weather watcher, starts its scienceThe joint ESA–Chinese Academy of Sciences mission launched on 19 May, reached its final orbit on 20 June and was cleared for science on 23 September. Its four instruments will image how the solar wind hits…
September 30, 2026 · ESA
The sky over New York
The Moon is waning gibbous (82% lit). Full moon on October 27, 2026, new moon on October 12, 2026. Planets above the horizon around 21:00: Saturn (east, 24°).
Best night to look up: October 8, 2026. Tonight’s sky map for wherever you are →
Next meteor shower
The Draconid peak on the night of October 8, 2026: up to 10 meteors an hour under a dark sky, 7 days from now. Meteor shower calendar →
Launches
4 launches in the last 7 days, 4 of them reached orbit.
Coming up
- October 1, 2026 at 6:32 PM UTCTransporter 18 (Dedicated SSO Rideshare) · Falcon 9 Block 5 · Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA
- October 2, 2026 at 3:53 AM UTCNROL-97 · Falcon Heavy · Kennedy Space Center, FL, USA
- October 5, 2026 at 8:16 AM UTCSDA Tranche 1 Transport Layer A · Falcon 9 Block 5 · Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA
- October 7, 2026 at 3:23 AM UTCNeonSat-2 to 6 · Nuri · Naro Space Center, South Korea
Asteroids passing Earth
Space weather
Solar wind right now: 303 km/s. Space weather and aurora →
Events near you
- October 1, 2026 · 19:30Lovell Lecture: Inside the ObservatoryLower Withington, Cheshire · Jodrell Bank Centre for Engagement
- October 1, 2026 · 20:00Origins of the UniverseKielder, Northumberland · Kielder Observatory
- October 2, 2026 · 19:00The Secret Lives of StarsKielder, Northumberland · Kielder Observatory
- October 10, 2026Legendary Telescope TourArmagh · Armagh Observatory and Planetarium
About these numbers
Astrometrik measures these things itself, every hour, from NOAA, NASA, CelesTrak and Launch Library data. The sky map shows tonight from wherever you are, with visible ISS passes and the best observing nights; the launch board lists every rocket like an airport departure board; space weather tracks the solar wind and the aurora. This bulletin is the week, written down.
Sources
Launches: Launch Library 2 (The Space Devs). Asteroids: NASA/JPL via NeoWs. Space weather: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center. ISS orbit: CelesTrak. Cloud forecast: MET Norway. Headlines: Spaceflight News API, each linked to its original publisher.