SpaceX is done with Dragon after 2030, Starliner slips to 2028 — and Crew-13 goes Thursday at 15:10 UTC

Nothing flew overnight; ISRO's next navigation satellite moves two days earlier. No orbital launch attempts to report since yesterday's issue. The one manifest movement worth a line: GSLV Mk II with IRNSS-1L, the NVS-03 navigation satellite, has shifted from 15 October to NET Tuesday 13 October at 17:00 UTC, and its status went from TBD (to be determined) to TBC (to be confirmed). Slips normally go the other way, and a date firming up rather than sliding is the first sign ISRO is converging on a real launch window after the PSLV-C62 third-stage trouble earlier this month. New no-earlier-than time: Tuesday 13 October, 17:00 UTC, status TBC. Space Launch Now

Starliner's next crew will not fly until 2028, and the thruster fix is only half designed. NASA and Boeing put numbers on the return to flight: Starliner-1 uncrewed, carrying cargo only, NET December this year; Starliner-2 with astronauts not before 2028, with Boeing aiming at mid-2028 and Woody Hoburg named to command it. The cause of the 2024 crew flight test failures is now understood as valve poppets deforming out of position under heat and load. Yesterday you had the news that an update was coming; this is the update, and it puts a hard date on the gap Berger's Dragon piece is worried about — Starliner is the designated second provider, and it is at least two years from carrying anyone. Five of the 28 reaction control system valves failed during Starliner's one-day trip up in 2024; Boeing has added thermal shunts and barriers, but the mechanical part of the problem needs a redesigned poppet that has only just started, and NASA is reinstating two flights with a $359 million contract modification. SpacePolicyOnline.com

New Glenn 9×4 is now on NASA's launch services menu. NASA has on-ramped Blue Origin's New Glenn in its 9×4 configuration to the NASA Launch Services II contract, the standing arrangement the Launch Services Program uses to buy rides for science and other missions. It does not come with a mission attached; it means the vehicle can now be competed for one. This is the paperwork step that turns a rocket into a NASA option, and it is how the agency starts building an alternative to Falcon for robotic payloads — relevant the same week SpaceX is telling NASA it wants out of parts of the business. NLS II runs with an ordering period through June 2030 and performance through December 2032, with an on-ramp window opening once a year for new providers. NASA

Artemis Accords signatories will talk lunar debris in Turkey next week. The accords' principals meet at the International Astronautical Congress, co-led by NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson and the head of Peru's space agency, with two items: helping newer space nations get established in orbit, and circulating recommendations on keeping junk off and around the Moon. It also shows how big the bloc has become since San Marino signed last week. Membership is now 76 countries — 40% of the world's nations — after Albania, Croatia, Côte d'Ivoire and San Marino joined; 17 signed in 2026, the most since 2024's 19. Payload

Isaacman signs a planetary protection directive with Mars crews in mind. NASA Watch has published the text of a directive from the NASA administrator on planetary protection — the rules that keep Earth microbes off other worlds and alien material out of Earth's biosphere. It says the contamination framework has to track current science and the actual flight plans of both robotic and crewed missions. Planetary protection rules are what constrain where landers may go and how clean they must be, and rewriting them with human Mars missions as the reference case is a change that will show up years from now in mission design and in what the science community is willing to sign off on. The published text is short and sets direction rather than specifics; no revised categories or cleanliness limits have been released with it. NASA Watch

“NASA aims to expand science across every world we visit, and human exploration of Mars in particular offers an enormous opportunity in the near future.”