Every lunar lander slips to 2027; DIA publishes China's spaceplane photo; FCC clears Amazon Leo–Globalstar

China's reusable spaceplane — finally has a public portrait. A Vantor (then Maxar) imaging satellite caught the winged vehicle in 2024, and the Pentagon put the full-resolution frame out on Monday inside an unclassified Defense Intelligence Agency threat assessment. Four missions have flown since 2020, some lasting up to nine months, and the current one has been playing catch with its own sub-satellite. It is the best look yet at a vehicle the beat has only tracked by orbital elements, and it shows commercial imagers can now inspect other people's spacecraft. Jonathan McDowell's tracking analysis has the spaceplane releasing a sub-satellite in June and recapturing it in July, then repeating the trick in August and September. Ars Technica

SLC-36 Vehicle Access Tower — is back together at Cape Canaveral, the last segment of the 430-ft structure now in place, and Blue Origin says pad operations resume in November. The tower was wrecked along with the rest of the complex in the New Glenn pad explosion. This is the gate that has been holding up New Glenn's return, and with it Blue Moon Mark 1, the lunar lander that was once first in the CLPS queue. CEO Dave Limp posted the status on 24 October, saying every module had been repaired and reinstalled. Aviation Week

D1 — the first newly built Delta class spaceplane, is being ferried on Wednesday 28 October from the Mesa, Arizona factory to Spaceport America, slung under the four-engine carrier aircraft Eve. Flight testing starts later this year, with paying flights targeted for early in the second quarter of 2027. Suborbital has been quiet since the old ship retired; this is the first hardware movement that puts a date back on the calendar. Eve releases the spaceplane from about 45,000 ft, and flew to Arizona on 25 October to collect it. Aviation Week

Galileo Second Generation — grows to a planned 16 spacecraft after ESA, buying for the European Commission, exercised options with Airbus Defence and Space in Germany and Thales Alenia Space in Italy, two satellites each. Delivery is set for 2031, behind the first dozen, which start flying on Ariane 6 in 2028. It is another block of Ariane 6 payloads booked at a time when ESA is openly worried about having enough rockets to fly them. The 2021 order for the first 12 was worth €1.47 billion; neither side would say what the four extras cost. Aviation Week

Nova Block 2 — gets its own pad at Cape Canaveral, funded in part by a conditional $150 million loan guarantee the Defense Department's Office of Strategic Capital announced on Monday 26 October. The fully reusable vehicle is sized for 15 tonnes to low Earth orbit and is scheduled to debut in 2029. Washington lending rather than buying is a new way to fund launch infrastructure, and Stoke is the test case. The guarantee is conditional on due diligence; Stoke closed a $1 billion round in September, taking private capital raised to $2.3 billion. SatNews

Amazon Leo and Globalstar — cleared the last American regulatory hurdle on 27 October, when the FCC approved the roughly $11.57 billion deal and the transfer of about 25 MHz of internationally coordinated mobile satellite spectrum. It hands Amazon a direct-to-phone business and the spectrum behind Apple's emergency messaging, squarely against SpaceX's own direct-to-cell push. Globalstar's two dozen or so satellites join a network of more than 200; Amazon has launched over 300 since April 2025 and wants about 3,200 up by 2029. SatNet News

Thaicom 9 — is late, and its operator has petitioned the ITU to push the deadline for bringing the satellite into service at 119.5 degrees East out to 30 September 2027. The cause is at the factory: Astranis found a power-system fault in March 2026 on one of five MicroGEO spacecraft and slowed the whole line to chase the root cause. Slot deadlines are the hard edge of satellite regulation; miss one and the spectrum priority can go to someone else. All five of those MicroGEO satellites were booked to ride a single Falcon 9 together; the Radio Regulations Board takes the case this quarter. SatNews

Obria Nano — is being checked out on orbit by Ukraine's Himera and Denmark's GomSpace, who said on 27 October that the experimental communications satellite is under test. The results are meant to shape a constellation covering Ukraine, eventually with satellites and ground terminals built locally. It is the second European-backed move this month towards comms Kyiv controls itself, after the Starlink and Starshield restrictions bit; neither will replace Starlink's reach. Iceye and Nokia signed a letter of intent with Ukraine's defence ministry five days earlier on a sovereign broadband network. SpaceNews

Pecan Island spaceport — is now the subject of a lawsuit, though not against SpaceX. Residents and a local group are suing two parish bodies in the 15th Judicial District Court, alleging eight breaches of Louisiana's open meetings law and asking a judge to annul the industrial development board's approval of the deal, voted hours before the governor announced the project. Boca Chica showed how long procedural fights can shadow a new launch site; this is the first one aimed at SpaceX's Louisiana plans. Behind The Black

Skyfall — NASA's Mars mission carrying three helicopters, has placed another piece of its descent chain: JPL picked Karman Space & Defense to design the mortar that shoots out the parachute during entry. The helicopters are to study Martian weather and hunt for buried ice once they are released. The contract list is the story here: a 2028 launch assembled from a long chain of separate suppliers, which is the pattern that historically eats schedule. The Department of Energy is building the Space Reactor-1 Freedom nuclear stage that carries the helicopters, and Firefly is making the descent heat shield. Behind The Black

NVS-03 — flies on a GSLV Mk II from Satish Dhawan on Friday, the third of five second-generation satellites for NavIC, India's regional navigation system. The predecessor, NVS-02, never reached its intended orbit after a thruster problem in January 2025. A working NavIC needs four healthy satellites to provide its positioning service, and this launch is what restores that floor. Liftoff is set for 18:21 UTC on Friday 30 October from Sriharikota. Astronomy

Expedition 75 — spent Tuesday on two jobs: Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney photographed the failed Canadarm2 wrist joint, wrapped it and loaded it into a Dragon cargo ship, while Anil Menon and Joshua Kutryk laid out tools in the Quest airlock and printed the cuff checklists for Thursday's spacewalk to install a roll-out solar array on the port truss. The arm's failure has been the station's running fault all autumn, and getting the joint onto the ground is how engineers find out what actually broke. That joint was replaced during a spacewalk on 30 June and comes home aboard Dragon in November. NASA