Issue 13 · Monday 5 October 2026 · 3 min read
SMILE starts science with a full UV aurora ring; SDA's 21-satellite batch goes at 08:17 UTC; Crew-12 hands over command
In this issue: What's hot · Flew · News (3) · One takeaway
What's hot
SMILE — The joint ESA–Chinese Academy of Sciences magnetosphere mission, launched in May, has finished commissioning and been formally approved to start science. To mark it, the teams released the first pictures from its ultraviolet camera: a complete ring of aurora around the north pole. The X-ray instrument, SXI, is the problem child — pointed at Earth it picks up far too much stray light, and the team is tweaking settings and uploading new software.
A European spacecraft flying Chinese instruments is a rare thing to watch at all, and this is the moment it stops being a test article and starts working. The stray-light fix is the status change to follow: mid-October is when we find out whether SXI can actually image the magnetopause. The UV Imager took that full auroral ring on 24 July, the first such image since 2008, and will now stare at the aurora for 45 hours at a stretch. NASASpaceflight
“SMILE is now approved to begin science operations. This is a very important milestone – a true pleasure to announce”
Flew
Falcon 9 | Cygnus CRS-2 NG-25 — The cargo flight's placeholder date has shifted earlier, from 31 December to NET 30 November.
News
T1TL-A — Falcon 9 is due off Space Launch Complex 4 East at 08:17 UTC on Monday with 21 Northrop Grumman-built data-relay satellites for the Space Development Agency, flying south. Booster B1103 is on its sixth trip and comes back to Landing Zone 4 less than seven and a half minutes after liftoff. It is the one thing on the pad as you read this, and Spaceflight Now is streaming from about half an hour before the clock runs out. If the booster sticks it, that is landing number 37 at LZ-4. Sixty-three Tranche 1 satellites are already in orbit from three earlier launches; the satellites for this one arrived at Vandenberg on 28 September. Spaceflight Now
ISS change of command — Jessica Meir, who had been station commander since 25 July, handed over to Roscosmos cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov of Soyuz MS-29 on Sunday, with all eleven people aboard crowded into the ceremony. Meir and the rest of Crew-12 undock very early Wednesday and splash down Thursday. The handover is the reliable sign that a departure is genuinely days away rather than notional, and it leaves Soyuz MS-29 and the freshly arrived Crew-13 running the place. Crew-12 is Meir, Jack Hathaway, Sophie Adenot and Andrey Fedyaev; splashdown is off the California coast. SpacePolicyOnline
Artemis II lunar data release — At a virtual Lunar Surface Science Workshop on 7 October, NASA will release all of the lunar science data gathered during April's crewed flight around the Moon, presented by Artemis II lunar science lead Kelsey Young. Artemis II has been a picture show so far; this is the first time the measurements behind it are open to anyone who wants to dig. If you followed the mission live in April, this is the receipt. The date is chosen deliberately: 67 years to the day after Luna 3 returned humanity's first images of the lunar far side. SpacePolicyOnline
One takeaway
Don't read the SDA's letters as a schedule. Tranche 1 of the military's Transport Layer is split into lettered batches, each built by a different contractor, and they fly whenever a batch is ready rather than in alphabetical order. B went up in September 2025, C in October 2025, E in July — and A only this morning. So a late letter is not a slipped mission.
It saves you reading delay into a manifest that was never sequential. Tranche 1 needs 126 Transport Layer satellites before service starts in 2027; today's 21 bring the flown total past a third of that. Spaceflight Now
Share this issue
How this issue was made. Researched and written by an agent, produced on 5 October 2026, 04:02. 6 sources read, 0 unreachable. Every link above goes to the primary source. A person sets the brief and steers it; no person edited this text before it was sent.
Every issue
- 29 OctArtemis III core stage joins its boosters; Vulcan returns NET 13 Nov; the seventh IROSA walk today at 12:00 UTC
- 28 OctEvery lunar lander slips to 2027; DIA publishes China's spaceplane photo; FCC clears Amazon Leo–Globalstar
- 27 OctBooster 22 fires 33 engines for Flight 15; Swift's mission ends; Lijian-2 rolls to the pad
- 26 OctRoberts Road could triple; Starbase static fire Sunday; PhilSA flags Long March 8A debris zones
- 25 OctArtemis III laid out day by day, Long March 8A away, Vulcan's Amazon Leo slips to November
- 24 OctNASA redraws the Artemis architecture; Electron's 98th; three Chinese launches overnight; Swift ends
- 23 OctASAP says 22 tankers for an HLS landing, Musk says 6-8; Space Force moves six launches off Vulcan; Xona raises $250M
- 22 OctStarship Flight 15 to catch both stages; Ceres-1S sea launch; NASA's station RFP clock starts
- 21 OctSpace Rider test model destroyed in drop test; Bandwagon-5 flies; SpaceX books a profit and floats a Tesla merger
- 20 OctMMX away to Phobos, Starship Flight 15 NET 8 November, and a Chinese upper stage in a Minnesota cornfield
- 19 OctKosmos 2612 reported within 1-2 km of ICEYE X36; MMX flies today at 19:41:03 UTC
- 18 OctBeijing pools its state launch sales arms; Tiangong's year of near-misses; MMX flies Monday 19:41:03 UTC
- 17 OctBlue Origin plans 100+ Florida flights a year; MMX flies Monday; a new pad at Taiyuan
- 16 OctNeutron slips to 2027 over composite voids; Dragon docked; Ariane 6 back NET 23 Nov
- 15 OctFAA opens the door to 456 Starship launches a year; Zhuque-2E flies; NASA's Venus pair revived
- 14 OctShip 40 is home at Starbase; CRS-35 up and docking Thursday; Artemis III boosters stacked
- 13 OctCRS-35 flies this morning at 10:33:44 UTC with brain models and sick crops aboard
- 12 OctBlue Origin restacks LC-36 and confirms a crew ship; CRS-35 flies Tuesday at 10:33:44 UTC
- 11 OctSDA Tranche 1 batch reaches orbit; Blue Ring-1 appears on New Glenn's book; CRS-35 has an instantaneous window Tuesday
- 10 OctNASA's ISS-successor RFP is out; Cygnus XL lets go; SDA Falcon 9 resets for 07:39 UTC Saturday
- 9 OctMargaret Hamilton dies at 90; SpaceX asks rivals to share ephemeris; Crew-12 home; Part 450 rewrite proposed
- 8 OctCrew-12 splashes down 15:34 UTC today; Nuri flies 15 satellites; Artemis II data goes public
- 7 OctThemis hop slips again and the EU buys three months; Cygnus XL leaves the ISS Friday; 7,500 NASA contractors become civil servants
- 6 OctHyImpulse's SaxaVord flight slides to spring 2027; SDA batch slips a day; Crew-12 undocks Wednesday
- 5 OctSMILE starts science with a full UV aurora ring; SDA's 21-satellite batch goes at 08:17 UTC; Crew-12 hands over command
- 4 OctCrew-12 books a Wednesday undock; ESA prices its own crew vehicle at €10bn
- 3 OctOrbex rises again as Portugal's Omnidea; NROL-97 flies; Skyrora now aims at 2030
- 2 OctCrew-13 flies after valve surgery on a fuelled Dragon; Transporter-18 up; Flight 15 waits on paperwork
- 1 OctCrew-13 goes today at 15:10 UTC; Transporter-18 the same evening, NROL-97 Friday morning
- 30 SepSpaceX is done with Dragon after 2030, Starliner slips to 2028 — and Crew-13 goes Thursday at 15:10 UTC
- 29 SepStarship reaches orbit and comes home; NASA buys two more Starliner flights
- 28 SepThe FAA licence is in: Starship Flight 14 goes for orbit today at 12:15 UTC
- 27 SepNothing new worth your time
- 26 SepNASA and Boeing to brief on Starliner; USSF-385 fires up at 14:00 UTC today; Iridium shareholders clear the Rocket Lab takeover
- 25 SepLong March 6A flies clean overnight, Starship Flight 14 gets a window, and a European rover books a Blue Moon ride
- 24 SepStarship stacked for its first orbital shot; ExoMars lander passes backshell tests
- 23 SepPSLV-C62's third-stage anomaly, the CE20 hot-fired at 22 tonnes for LVM3 M7, and EOS-05's climb to geostationary finished