The ten stories that mattered most, and the news from your own country, each with its source and our take.
Issue 40 · Sep 29 2026 · World · Your country
Ten stories, ranked by how much they change what happens next.
SpaceX’s IFT-14 left Starbase on 28 September, released 26 Starlink V3 satellites and splashed down in the North Pacific after 3 h 8 min instead of the planned ten or so hours; the ship lost one of its three vacuum engines on the way up. Our take: orbit is the milestone. The test that matters for NASA’s Moon plans, refuelling in orbit, is still ahead.
Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney (NASA), Joshua Kutryk (Canada) and Sergey Teteryatnikov (Roscosmos) are due to launch no earlier than 15:10 UTC on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral, in the Dragon capsule “Grace”. Their lab work includes heart and brain tissue grown from stem cells to study disease. Tip: the station is one of the brightest things in the night sky, and our sky map shows when it passes over you.
NASA and Boeing plan an uncrewed Starliner-1 flight in December or January to check fixes to the thrusters that ran outside their limits on the 2024 crewed test; astronauts return on Starliner-2 “by 2028”. Our take: until then, SpaceX’s Dragon remains America’s only ride to the station, which is exactly the single point of failure NASA wanted two capsules to avoid.
ESA’s Juice skimmed 8,640 km above the Indian Ocean on 28 September. Earth’s gravity bent its path by 20° and added 3.5 km/s for almost no fuel. One more Earth flyby in January 2029, then Jupiter in 2031 and 35 passes of Ganymede, Europa and Callisto. Our take: this is how deep space is done on a budget, borrowing speed from planets instead of burning it.
PRIMA opens NASA’s new “Probe” class of missions, with a cost cap of $1.2 billion, a 1.8 m mirror and five years of planned observing, led by JPL with partners including CNES, ASI and DLR. It sees the far-infrared light that sits between what Webb and radio dishes pick up: cold dust, forming planets, growing galaxies. Our take: this is the part of the sky Webb cannot see.
Croatia signed as number 74 on 23 September, Côte d’Ivoire as 75 the next day and San Marino as 76 on 25 September. The accords set shared rules for exploring the Moon peacefully and openly: share data, help each other, keep out of each other’s way. Portugal joined as 60th in January, Türkiye as 71st on 31 August. Our take: the Moon is getting a rulebook before it gets crowded.
With the ISS heading for retirement, ESA has two industrial teams, led by Airbus Defence and Space and by OHB, running nine-month feasibility studies (started in June) for a European-led outpost in low Earth orbit. Europe already built the Columbus lab and Orion’s service module. Our take: the real question after the ISS is whether Europe wants to be a tenant on someone else’s station or a landlord on its own.
Katalyst Space’s LINK robot launched in July on a Pegasus XL to push NASA’s 2004 Swift observatory into a higher orbit. Communication dropouts and pointing problems turned the mission into a technology test instead; LINK re-entered on 25 September and Swift is expected to follow by the end of the year. Our take: satellite servicing works on paper and in demos, but it is not routine yet.
On 12 September the Arctic ice cover shrank to 4.6 million km², tied for the 10th-lowest minimum since satellite records began in 1978. The 20 lowest minimums all fall between 2007 and 2026; scientists describe a plateau, still far below the early record. Our take: only satellites can measure a whole ocean every day, and that record is one of the clearest things space does for us.
On 5 September Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rocket lifted off from Andøya in Norway and delivered five CubeSats to orbit, the first successful orbital launch from continental Europe and the first by a privately funded European rocket. It came after a year of scrubs, from a valve problem to a boat in the exclusion zone. Our take: with Ariane 6 delayed, a second European ride to orbit arrives at exactly the right moment.
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The 77th International Astronautical Congress runs 5–9 October at the Antalya Nest Convention Center, hosted by the Turkish Space Agency with more than 10,000 engineers, scientists and students expected. Our take: for one week the space world comes to Türkiye, a chance to turn a young programme into partnerships.
Built with more than 80% domestic parts, the 3.5-tonne spacecraft has finished assembly and moved to TUSAŞ’s test centre to be shaken and heated like on a launch. It targets early 2027 from Kennedy, a two-month trip and a 100 km polar orbit around the Moon to study solar wind, water formation and radiation. Our take: testing is where schedules slip or hold; this is the step to watch.
Industry and Technology Minister Mehmet Fatih Kacır signed at NASA headquarters in Washington on 31 August. The accords commit signatories to peaceful, transparent lunar exploration and open the door to Turkish instruments and technology on future Moon missions. Our take: a signature does not fly anything, but it puts Türkiye at the table where Moon rides are shared out.
The rubidium clock built by TÜBİTAK’s National Metrology Institute launched on SpaceX’s Transporter-17 on 7 July and sent its first signal on 15 July. It will be tested for at least a year as a building block for a regional positioning and timing system. Our take: every navigation satellite is really a flying clock, and this is the part countries usually have to buy abroad.
The Turkish Space Agency held the national final of its Astro Hackathon in Ankara on 10 September, where student teams build space-themed software and hardware ideas against the clock. Our take: rockets make headlines, but a space programme lives or dies on the engineers it grows at home.
Reid 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 a free public event at the University of Houston. They will be honoured for beating Apollo 13’s distance record. Our take: the next crew to go that far is meant to land.
NISAR, built by NASA’s JPL (L-band radar) and India’s ISRO (S-band), turned its images of Krasheninnikov in Kamchatka, erupting for the first time in nearly 500 years, into a time-lapse from December 2025 to August 2026. It sees through cloud and darkness and revisits each spot every 12 days. Our take: radar is how you watch the ground move when no one can stand on it.
The Deep Space Food Challenge asked for a full food system for 15 people over 500 Martian days. First prize ($300,000) went to Chinyere Ukeje of Philadelphia for a design mixing farming, fermentation and fungi that grows half the crew’s food on site. Our take: Mars is as much a kitchen problem as a rocket problem.
SpaceX scheduled the USSF-385 mission for the US Space Force from Vandenberg on the West Coast, one of a growing number of national-security flights now handled by commercial rockets. Payload details are secret. Our take: from the ground the launch looks like any other, and the numbers on our launch board show how routine these flights have become.
Starfish Space’s first full-scale Otter, an electric-propulsion servicer that can grab flat surfaces without a docking fixture, flies no earlier than October on SpaceX’s Transporter-18. From 2027 it will approach defunct US satellites for NASA’s $15 million SSPICY mission, the agency’s first paid commercial debris inspection. Our take: before anyone can clean up space junk, someone has to find out how it tumbles.
DLR has finished testing Callisto’s nose cone and is shipping it to CNES in France. The German–French–Japanese demonstrator will make eight increasingly demanding hops and two final flights over about eight months from 2027, from a pad in French Guiana. Our take: landing rockets is no longer exotic, but Europe still has to learn it for itself.
The German Aerospace Center’s suborbital MAPHEUS-17 mission is set to launch as early as 1 October. Rockets like this give experiments a few minutes of weightlessness for a fraction of the cost of an orbital flight. Our take: much of the science that later flies to the space station is first tried on flights like this one.
The German launch start-up, which builds rockets burning paraffin and liquid oxygen, extended its Series A round by €50 million on 2 September. The money arrived days before Isar Aerospace proved a German-built rocket can reach orbit. Our take: investors are now betting that Europe has room for more than one small launcher.
Project-S, a Munich company working on space situational awareness, tracking what orbits where and how it behaves, came out of stealth on 4 September. Our take: with tens of thousands of objects in orbit and new constellations every month, knowing where things are is turning into its own industry.
Both industrial teams ESA picked to study a European-led orbital outpost are led by companies with big German sites, Airbus Defence and Space and Bremen’s OHB, each with six further partners, over nine months. Our take: whoever designs the concept usually builds the hardware, so this is quietly a big moment for Germany’s space industry.
On 12 August Europe saw its first total solar eclipse in more than two decades, with the path of totality crossing northern Spain after Greenland and Iceland; ESA broadcast live from the Javalambre observatory in Teruel. Our take: the next total eclipse over Spain comes on 2 August 2027, and our sky pages will count down to it.
Spain offered up to €1 billion to move the Thirty Meter Telescope from Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, blocked by protests since 2014, to La Palma in the Canary Islands, its alternative site since 2016. The US science foundation has leaned toward the rival Giant Magellan Telescope. Our take: if it lands, the Canaries would host one of the sharpest eyes on the sky for decades.
ESA picked Spain’s EMXYS to build the €10 million lander, which will try to set down on asteroid Apophis in April 2029, when it passes just 32,000 km from Earth, closer than many satellites. Its three instruments will record gravity, magnetism and quakes as Earth’s pull tugs on the rock. Our take: a rare free experiment, courtesy of celestial mechanics.
Spain will allocate between €1.6 and 2 billion for national military communications as part of IRIS², the EU’s planned secure satellite constellation. Days later, Airbus and Thales won an order to replace one of the SpainSat satellites. Our take: secure links from orbit have moved from nice-to-have to budget line.
In July, fires near Madrid emptied the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex, one of only three sites worldwide that talk to NASA’s distant probes; an ESA ground station in Spain was also threatened. Both returned to service without major damage. Our take: every signal from Mars or Juice passes through a handful of dishes on the ground, and this summer showed how exposed they are.
A turbopump anomaly found in ground tests in August means only one or two more Ariane 6 launches this year instead of three or four, ESA confirmed on 21 September; ArianeGroup is checking the production line. The goal of 9 to 10 flights a year from 2027 stands. Our take: Europe’s heavy rocket works, but cadence is now its weak spot, just as customers look for alternatives to SpaceX.
The second Meteosat Third Generation imager, MTG-I2, launched on Ariane 6 flight VA270 from Kourou, completing Europe’s latest trio of geostationary weather satellites. Our take: the forecast on your phone starts 36,000 km up, and much of Europe’s now comes from satellites launched from French Guiana.
ESA published a view of the French capital taken from space by French ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot, the Seine curling through the city. Our take: astronaut photos are more than postcards; they show a country its own place on the planet.
Sirius Space Services test-fired a complete prototype of its STAR-1 rocket engine for the first time. In the same week, fellow French start-up HyPrSpace pushed the first flight of its Baguette One rocket to 2027. Our take: France’s small-launcher scene is growing up, one engine test and one delay at a time.
France’s space agency issued a call for automated optical tracking turrets at the Guiana Space Centre, the cameras that follow rockets after liftoff. Our take: with Callisto, Vega C, Ariane 6 and new start-ups all heading to Kourou, the spaceport is preparing for far more traffic than it was built for.
On 20 September 35 young people, 25 from Portugal and 10 from Estonia, flew 15 parabolas on Novespace’s Airbus A310, each giving about 20 seconds of weightlessness; 60% were girls. That brings the Portuguese total to 146 since 2022. Our take: cheap, joyful and memorable, the kind of outreach that turns into engineers ten years later.
Portugal has joined AgData, a European partnership aimed at putting data, including satellite observations, to work for farming. Our take: for a country of vineyards, orchards and increasingly dry summers, knowing soil moisture and crop health from orbit is not abstract science, it is next season’s harvest.
The Portuguese Space Agency’s PROSSE programme is funding five projects, from making oxygen out of Martian CO₂ to turning a Lisbon stairwell into a 2.5-second free-fall tower. Sixteen proposals came in, up from two funded projects in 2025. Our take: small grants, big ideas, and a stairwell drop tower is exactly the kind of hack that gets students hooked.
A Novaspace study for the Portuguese Space Agency found the sector contributed €1.2 billion to GDP between 2019 and 2024, about 4,500 jobs a year and €2.17 of value for every euro invested. New companies now appear at 4.8 a year, up from 1.9. Our take: still only about 0.1% of GDP, but growing from a very small base.
Brazil’s space research institute INPE has contracted a launch of its Amazonia-1B Earth-observation satellite aboard Vega C, the same rocket that flew two climate satellites this month. Our take: the Amazon is one of the places where watching from orbit matters most, and it is good to see Brazil’s own eyes getting a ride.
Funded through the Greece 2.0 recovery plan and developed with ESA, the programme pays for very-high-resolution Earth-observation satellites, thermal cameras to spot wildfires, secure satellite links, space surveillance and support for universities and start-ups. Our take: after summers of fires, satellites that see heat from orbit are among the most practical things a space budget can buy.
The Hellenic Space Center will hold an info day on 9 October for companies and researchers who want to take part in the new national space programme. Our take: the money is announced; this is the moment when Greek labs and start-ups find out how to get their share.
Dr Anezina Solomonidou of the Hellenic Space Center led an international team that found four depressions on Ganymede that may be ice volcanoes, where water-rich material once erupted. Juice’s MAJIS spectrometer and JANUS camera will check them after 2031. Our take: this week’s Earth flyby brought Juice a step closer to the targets Greek scientists chose.
In May, thirteen European satellites reached orbit on a single rideshare launch, adding capabilities to Italian and Greek monitoring programmes. Our take: rideshares are how smaller space nations get into orbit affordably, and Greece is using them well.
ESA reported in February that the teams behind Greece’s MICE-1 and PHASMA satellites had contacted all spacecraft and were commissioning them. The national small-satellite programme has seven missions, with ERMIS, OptiSat, PeakSat and Hellenic Space Dawn planned for 2026. Our take: seven small missions teach more engineers than one big one.
Italy has committed more than $5 billion to the Multi-Purpose Habitat, a 15-tonne, 6-metre pressurised module built by Thales Alenia Space for NASA’s Moon base, in exchange for two seats for Italian astronauts on future landings. The module passed its requirements review in May and targets a 2033 launch. Our take: this is the most direct path any European country has found to put its own citizens on the Moon.
Flight VV30 from Kourou carried ESA’s FLEX, which measures the faint glow plants give off while photosynthesising, and Copernicus Sentinel-3C for oceans and land. It was the second Vega C launch run entirely by Italy’s Avio. Our take: Europe’s small launcher is quietly finding its rhythm while the bigger Ariane 6 stumbles.
Avio has completed integration of FD1, a flight demonstrator that will test technology for its future rockets on a suborbital hop from Sardinia, according to environmental filings. Our take: after years of flying rockets designed for ESA, Avio is now testing hardware on its own terms.
After three board members resigned and the board was dissolved, career diplomat Mario Cospito was appointed extraordinary commissioner of ASI. Our take: the timing is delicate, with Italy funding a Moon habitat and flying Vega C; a steady hand at the agency matters as much as the rockets.
ESA assigned Italy’s Luca Parmitano to its first Artemis crew slot, a departure from the order agreed in November 2025, citing his test-pilot experience. Our take: together with the habitat deal, Italy now holds Europe’s strongest hand for the Moon.
Every week we read the space agencies and specialist press, pick the stories, and write our own headline and short commentary. We never copy articles: each story links to the original. Numbers in the charts come from the linked source.