NASA and Boeing to brief on Starliner; USSF-385 fires up at 14:00 UTC today; Iridium shareholders clear the Rocket Lab takeover

No launches to report since yesterday — but the manifest moved. Nothing flew overnight, and the only Starship-adjacent item is a paperwork shuffle: SpaceX's Transporter 18 rideshare mission is now firm for Thursday, October 1 at 18:18 UTC, with the window closing at 19:16 UTC and status Go. Transporter 18 is worth marking anyway: it is expected to carry the first full Starfish Space Otter servicing vehicle (see News), which makes a routine rideshare batch more interesting than usual. The net time shifted ten minutes later, from 18:08 UTC, and the status went from to-be-confirmed to Go on Friday. Space Launch Now

Ariane 6 slips an Amazon Leo launch by three weeks. The fourth Amazon Leo constellation launch on an Ariane 64 has moved from October 7 to NET Saturday, October 31. Amazon's broadband constellation has a strict deployment schedule, and a slip on the European side tightens the launch cadence Amazon needs from Arianespace in the back half of the year. The NET date moved from 2026-10-07 to 2026-10-31, with no new window published. Space Launch Now

Space Development Agency batch pulled forward by weeks. A Falcon 9 carrying the SDA (Space Development Agency) Tranche 1 Transport Layer A satellites has been moved up from the end of October to Monday, October 5 at 08:06 UTC, and its status ticked up from TBD to to-be-confirmed. The Transport Layer is the communications backbone of the Pentagon's proliferated constellation, and pulling a launch forward this far usually means the satellites and the range are both ready early. The NET date moved from October 31 to October 5, 2026 at 08:06 UTC. Space Launch Now

A new SDA Tranche 1 Tracking Layer C mission appears. A Falcon 9 mission listed as SDA Tranche 1 Tracking Layer C has been added to the launch schedule — the missile-tracking half of the Tranche 1 build-out. New SDA launches surfacing on the manifest are worth a bookmark: this is the layer that would spot hypersonic and ballistic threats, and each batch launch is a chunk of the constellation going operational. The new listing appeared on Saturday with no date or window yet. Space Launch Now

Falcon Heavy NROL-97 locks in a Friday slot. The Falcon Heavy launch of the classified NROL-97 payload for the National Reconnaissance Office now has a precise slot: NET Friday, October 2 at 03:53 UTC, window closing 04:42 UTC, status Go. This is the mission that was pulled forward a month, and a firm time plus a Go status means the range and vehicle are aligned — an overnight alarm for Europe and a late-night watch for the Americas. Launch is set for Friday, October 2 at 03:53 UTC with a 49-minute window. Space Launch Now

Crew-13 astronauts head to Kennedy ahead of Thursday launch. NASA says the Crew-13 astronauts will arrive at Kennedy Space Center on Saturday, September 26, the standard fly-in ahead of a commercial crew launch. The mission is set to lift off on a Falcon 9 NET Thursday, October 1 at 15:10 UTC, status Go. This is the next International Space Station crew rotation, and the fly-in is the last routine milestone before launch week begins in earnest — with the Crew-14 assignments already published behind it. Launch is set for Thursday, October 1 at 15:10 UTC with status Go, per the launch listing. NASA

Cygnus XL finishes a station reboost. NASA and Northrop Grumman have completed a reboost of the International Space Station using a Cygnus XL cargo vehicle — firing the spacecraft's engine to raise the station's orbit while still docked. Cygnus is currently the only visiting vehicle that can raise the station's altitude, and every reboost matters for phasing the station's orbit ahead of crew arrivals and departures like Crew-13 next week. NASA confirmed the completed reboost in a blog post published Thursday, September 25 at 16:18 UTC. NASA

Iridium shareholders hand Rocket Lab its takeover, 99.6% in favour. Iridium's shareholders voted overwhelmingly to approve Rocket Lab's acquisition of the satellite-communications operator, and Rocket Lab's chief financial officer said more acquisitions are on the table. This is the biggest consolidation move by a small-launch company into satellite operations, and the CFO's framing — that this is about offering more than L-band communications, not just buying a network — signals Rocket Lab wants to be a full space-systems prime rather than a launch provider. The vote passed with 99.6% in favour; the deal, at roughly $54 per Iridium share in cash and stock, is expected to close in mid-2027. Payload

“We're not stopping at L-band communications with Iridium. We're rather building on that to be able to offer more and more to the market.”

Starfish Space's first full Otter flies next month. Starfish Space, founded in 2019 by two former Blue Origin engineers, is sending its first full Otter servicing spacecraft to orbit on a Falcon 9 rideshare next month, under a NASA-funded demonstration called SSPICY that will inspect defunct American satellites up close. This is the first commercial debris-inspection mission NASA has paid for, and it is the step before the things everyone actually wants from servicing: docking, life extension and deorbiting dead satellites. If it works, in-space servicing stops being a slide deck. The first Otter weighs about 350 kg with a bus the size of a large washing machine, and NASA is paying $15 million for the demonstration; the precursor, Otter Pup 2, has already closed to within 1 km of a target in low-Earth orbit with docking planned in the coming months. Ars Technica

NASA greenlights PRIMA, a $1.2 billion far-infrared telescope for 2033. NASA confirmed it will proceed with PRIMA, the first of its Probe Explorer mid-size science missions: a far-infrared space telescope with a hard cost cap of $1.2 billion, excluding launch, targeted for 2033. This is the spacecraft story in NASA's astrophysics pipeline between the Roman Space Telescope and the Habitable Worlds Observatory, and the headline is schedule: NASA is trying to build a billion-dollar observatory in record time, led by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and operating from the Sun-Earth L2 point. PRIMA was the sole finalist after NASA disqualified the competing X-ray mission, AXIS; it will reuse a spare James Webb cryocooler, modified for helium-3, cooling its optics to 4.5 Kelvin. Ars Technica

San Marino signs the Artemis Accords. San Marino has signed the Artemis Accords, NASA's non-binding set of principles for responsible lunar exploration. A small but steady widening of the coalition — every new signatory is another voice at the table as Isaacman pushes signatories to commit hardware for the lunar surface. NASA announced the signing on Friday, September 25. NASA