Themis hop slips again and the EU buys three months; Cygnus XL leaves the ISS Friday; 7,500 NASA contractors become civil servants

Firewall — an ESA and DLR campaign that sampled a launch plume directly rather than modelling it. On 1 October, DLR's Falcon 20E research aircraft took off about twenty minutes ahead of the Mapheus-17 sounding rocket at Esrange and flew through the drifting exhaust between 2 and 6 km, while a container of instruments at the pad and NASA carbon-dioxide sensors measured from the ground. Emissions and reentry burn-up are quietly becoming a regulatory argument in Europe, and this is the first real data behind it rather than simulation. Mapheus-17 flew almost 300 km up and came down 16 minutes after liftoff, about 70 km downrange; its Red Kite solid first stage is expected to produce hydrochloric acid, aluminium oxide, carbon dioxide and soot. ESA

Antalya Declaration — a Turkish-led text adopted on Sunday by senior figures from 21 countries at the congress's ministers and parliamentarians meeting, committing them to peaceful and cooperative behaviour in space; the signatory list is not public. Erdoğan used his opening speech to condemn the weaponisation of space, one of the first NATO leaders to do so since Washington admitted last month that it fields space-control weapons. Turkey is positioning itself between the Artemis and ILRS camps, which is the interesting part of this year's host country. It signed the Artemis Accords in August as the 71st nation, and its roughly 3.5-tonne Moon spacecraft, over 80% domestically built, is in testing for a launch targeted in early 2027. Payload

“According to Industry and Technology Minister Mehmet Fatih Kacır, the declaration commits signatories to peace, responsibility, and cooperation in space.”

Curiosity — still working up Mount Sharp after fourteen years, and NASA has released a six-image Mastcam panorama taken on 11 August, on the mission's 4,982nd Martian day, showing the wind-carved cliffs called yardangs in early morning light with no white balancing applied. A rover that is still setting its own records is a running spacecraft story, and this is the terrain it will actually drive into next. The rover has now gained 0.6 miles, one kilometre, of elevation, the most ever climbed on Mars; the yardang layer runs about 10 miles across Mount Sharp's northwestern side, and one theory is that it is ash from ancient volcanoes. NASA