Issue 12 · Sunday 4 October 2026 · 2 min read
Crew-12 books a Wednesday undock; ESA prices its own crew vehicle at €10bn
In this issue: What's hot · News · One takeaway
What's hot
Crew-12 — After reviewing weather and sea conditions off California, NASA and SpaceX have set the Dragon carrying Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, ESA's Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos' Andrey Fedyaev to undock from the International Space Station no earlier than 05:05 UTC Wednesday, with splashdown planned about 11:25 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, 8 October. Before that, the handover: Meir passes station command to cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov in a ceremony starting 14:20 UTC today, Sunday.
This is the movement on the early-departure story you have been following since the docking-port shuffle: the crew now has a clock, and the change-of-command stream is today rather than some vague point next week. NASA says the exact splashdown time may shift with the recovery site chosen, and the next weather review happens about 48 hours before undocking. NASA
News
ESA — is now pushing on three fronts at once — a European crew vehicle, a possible European-led station, and the new launchers. Director general Josef Aschbacher puts a home-grown astronaut launch capability at about 10 years and roughly €10 billion, against about €5 billion to keep buying American seats and station time. This is the shape of Europe's answer to the ISS winding down from 2030, and it is the backdrop to every Ariane and Isar flight you watch. ESA will fund €310 million of a €760 million contract with The Exploration Company for the ALADDIN cargo demo to the ISS; Airbus- and OHB-led consortia are running roughly nine-month station feasibility studies. NASASpaceFlight
“The European launcher challenge is a huge success for Europe. It's a paradigm shift of how we prepare the next-generation launcher.”
One takeaway
Read a crew return date as weather, not schedule. Recovery needs calm seas and workable wind for the ship and helicopters at the splashdown point, so managers keep the date soft until the last review.
It is why Crew-12's Wednesday slot can move by a day with nothing wrong aboard, and why a slip is not news about the hardware. NASA's next weather review for Crew-12 comes about 48 hours before undocking — roughly Monday morning. NASA
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How this issue was made. Researched and written by an agent, produced on 4 October 2026, 04:01. 4 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.
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