Space · Thursday, 10 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

The US military moved real satellites close to each other in orbit. It says it had never run that exercise with live spacecraft before.

US Space Command finished an exercise called Apollo Maneuvers, flying its own satellites through practice encounters in low, medium and geosynchronous orbit. Its commander says the side that can keep moving will set the pace up there.

orbit heights the exercise used at once, from low orbit to the 36,000 km ring

Space Command says it used actual spacecraft rather than running the drill on computers [2]

$50m

the US Space Force is putting behind one startup's way of moving small satellites

the money goes to sending small spacecraft out from a larger vehicle already in orbit [4]

1 of 4

of the crew who flew around the Moon in April still on NASA's active astronaut list

Christina Koch is the one; the other three have left or retired since [7]

faint icy bodies beyond Neptune newly found by Hubble and Webb together

the smallest is about 5 km across, five times smaller than ground telescopes can pick out [13]

The lead story — what happened

US Space Command says it has finished its first exercise built around moving military satellites more freely in orbit. [2]
It used actual spacecraft across low, medium and geosynchronous orbits, not a computer model. [2]
Geosynchronous orbit is the high ring about 36,000 km up, where a satellite circles once a day and so appears to hang over one spot on Earth. [2]
The exercise was called Apollo Maneuvers 2026, and international partners took part, according to a Space Command statement. [1]
Space Command has not said which satellites flew in it, or how many. [1]
General Stephen Whiting, who commands it, told reporters last month the aim was to move for advantage, not only to move when an orbit has to be corrected. [1]
Whiting also said the side that can keep manoeuvring, again and again and at scale, will set the pace of events in orbit. [1]
The US Space Force's second-ranking officer, General Michael Guetlein, has described spacecraft circling in and out and around each other under control as dogfighting in space. [1]
He used the phrase in 2025, about Chinese satellite movements watched in 2024. [1]
A satellite carries every drop of its manoeuvring fuel from the launch pad, and nothing in orbit tops it up.
Space.com reports that US Space Force leaders say they still lack much of the hardware a real fight in orbit would need, including what Whiting calls orbital interceptors. [1]
In June a Rocket Lab Puma satellite met a True Anomaly Jackal in orbit, and the two flew close together to rehearse an encounter for the Space Force. [1]

Who is involved

US Space Command

the American military body that runs operations in orbit, drawing people from every armed service; it ran the exercise
General Stephen Whiting

the officer who commands US Space Command; he said the exercise was about moving for advantage rather than only correcting an orbit
General Michael Guetlein

second-in-command of the US Space Force, the American military service for space; he coined the phrase dogfighting in space
General Douglas Schiess

took over on 3 September as the US Space Force's most senior officer; he says the job is deterrence, not confrontation

How it unfolded

2024 US officers say they watched Chinese satellites practise moving close to one another [1]
2025 Guetlein calls that kind of close manoeuvring dogfighting in space [1]
June 2026 a Rocket Lab Puma satellite meets a True Anomaly Jackal in orbit and the two fly close together for the US Space Force [1]
Last month Whiting tells reporters the coming exercise will use existing satellites and foreign partners [1]
This week Space Command says Apollo Maneuvers is complete [2]

Where this points

Watch whether the US Space Force turns the exercise into a funded order for spacecraft built to manoeuvre hard, which is what would take this past a drill.

What is pushing on the whole day

The bar and the word are our reading of how hard each one is pushing today. The arrow is where it is heading. The evidence is in the stories below.

Military money going into orbit High↑

The US Space Force put $50 million behind one startup's way of moving small satellites [4], and a classified Space Force payload launches from California today [3]

Agencies buying from companies Building↑

NASA added Relativity Space's Terran R to the contract it buys launches through [12] and asked industry to develop lunar power and oxygen equipment [14]; Greece's first astronaut will fly on a private mission [11]

Secrecy about what is up there Steady→

What USSF-153 carries has not been published [3], and Space Command will not say which satellites flew in the exercise [1]

Losing the people who have done it Building↑

Three of the four who flew around the Moon in April are off the active astronaut list [7], and a RAND report says the United States lacks the workforce to rebuild military satellites after an attack [6]

The rest of the day

13 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
Artemis II's commander and pilot leave the astronaut list

NASA said on Wednesday that Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover are moving to emeritus status this month, so neither is an active astronaut any more. [8][7] The two flew Artemis II in April, a ten-day loop around the Moon with Christina Koch and Canada's Jeremy Hansen, and the first flight to test the Orion capsule's air and water systems with people aboard. [9] Hansen retired from the Canadian Space Agency in July, leaving Koch as the only one of the four still on the active list. [7] Glover started a leadership job at California Polytechnic State University on 1 September, the day he retired from the US Navy. [7]

Why it matters — Four people flew around the Moon five months ago and three of them are now out of the rotation, so the agency's next lunar crews will be flown largely by people who have not been. The crew visited NASA's Marshall centre in Alabama on 1 September to pass on what the flight was like. [10]
03
SpaceX flies a secret Space Force payload today

A Falcon 9 rocket is due to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California in a three-hour window opening at 11:37 a.m. New York time on Thursday, carrying a mission called USSF-153. [3] The payload is classified, so what it is and where it is going have not been published, and the webcast is expected to cut off once the booster is down. [3] The first stage will land on a drone ship in the Pacific about eight and a half minutes after lift-off. [3]

Why it matters — It lands on the same day the military is talking openly about manoeuvring in orbit: the exercise is described in detail and the actual hardware going up is not described at all.
04
Space Force puts $50m into a new way to move satellites

The US Space Force is backing a startup with $50 million to develop an unusual way of sending small spacecraft out from a larger vehicle already in orbit, SpaceNews reported on Sunday. [4] Today most small satellites either ride to their final position on the rocket that launched them or spend their own limited fuel getting there. [4] SpaceNews does not name the company in the part of its report that is open to read.

Why it matters — It is money aimed at the same problem as the exercise above: getting a spacecraft where you want it, without burning through the fuel it needs to stay useful.
05
New leaders take over US military space

General Douglas Schiess became the US Space Force's most senior officer on 3 September, succeeding General Chance Saltzman, and told the ceremony in Maryland that the purpose is deterrence rather than confrontation. [6] A wider change of leadership has followed across the American national security space organisations, while the US government pours billions into new capabilities. [5] A report published last week by RAND, an American research institute, said the United States does not have the workforce to rebuild military satellites quickly if they are destroyed. [6]

Why it matters — The exercise above practises what to do in a fight in orbit. The report is about the morning after one, and says the people who would have to rebuild are not there.
06
Greece books its first astronaut on a private flight

Adrianos Golemis will become the first Greek astronaut to reach orbit, flying to the International Space Station in 2027 on a private mission run by the American company Vast, SpaceNews reported on Thursday. [11] The announcement was made at the International Space Summit with the Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the French president Emmanuel Macron watching, alongside the French astronaut Thomas Pesquet. [11] It lands while Europe is still arguing about whether to build a crew spacecraft of its own. [11]

Why it matters — A European country that wants a citizen in orbit is buying the seat from an American company, because Europe has no way of launching people itself.
07
NASA adds Relativity's rocket to its launch list

NASA has added Relativity Space's Terran R rocket to its NLS II launch contract, the standing arrangement it uses to buy rides for science and exploration missions. [12] The contract lets new rocket makers join once a year through what NASA calls an on-ramp, and it runs for orders until June 2030 and for flights until December 2032. [12] Being on the list is not an order for a launch; it means Relativity may now bid when NASA has a mission to fly. [12] NASA can also buy launches for other American agencies under it. [12]

Why it matters — It widens the field NASA can pick from, which matters on a beat where most missions currently go up on the same company's rockets.
08
Two telescopes together find 27 tiny worlds past Neptune

Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope were pointed at the same patch of sky and together picked out 27 newly discovered icy bodies orbiting beyond Neptune, in two papers published on Tuesday in The Astronomical Journal. [13] The smallest is about 5 km across, five times smaller than the best ground telescopes can detect. [13] The teams expected these small bodies to look battered and chemically altered by collisions. They do not: their colours match their much larger relatives, as if the surfaces have barely changed since the solar system formed. [13]

Why it matters — These objects are leftovers from the stage when dust and pebbles first clumped into city-sized lumps and then stopped, so their surfaces are a record of how planets started. There are also fewer small ones than the formation models predicted. [13]
09
NASA asks companies to make power and air on the Moon

NASA opened a call on Tuesday for industry proposals to develop the equipment a Moon base would need at the lunar south pole, naming power generation, pulling oxygen out of the ground and making building materials on site. [14] The solicitation is called NextSTEP-3 Appendix A, and it is open to American companies, universities and non-profits, with foreign partners allowed inside US-led teams. [14] Greg Stover, who runs NASA's advanced research and technology division, said partnering with industry strengthens the American supplier base. [14]

Why it matters — Everything a Moon base uses has to be either launched from Earth or made on the spot, and launching it is the expensive half. NASA is asking companies to work out the second option.
10
A startup unveils three satellites that fold flat

Eclipse Space, founded by former SpaceX engineers, revealed three satellite designs on Tuesday: CitraSat for connecting ordinary mobile phones, SliceSat for high-speed broadband, and SurgeSat, built to run computing in orbit. [15] All three fold flat, so more of them fit inside a rocket's nose cone on each launch. [15] SurgeSat's solar wings would make up to 100 kilowatts, and it carries a 400 square metre radiator to throw the waste heat away. [15] The company also announced a power system partnership with the French firm Gama, and its first demonstration flight has slipped from 2027 to 2028. [15]

Why it matters — Chief executive Derek Huerta told Payload that customers ask for a Starlink without realising Starlink is a whole system, so Eclipse is selling the system rather than the spacecraft. Unlike most space startups it says it is steering clear of US government work. [15]
11
This week on the space station: vein scans and a floating furnace

The Expedition 75 crew spent Wednesday on medicine and physics aboard the International Space Station. [17] Jessica Meir scanned the veins of Anil Menon and the Russian cosmonauts Anna Kikina and Pyotr Dubrov with an ultrasound device, while doctors on the ground guided her by voice, to see how weightlessness changes blood flow. [17] Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency cleaned the Electrostatic Levitation Furnace in Kibo, the Japanese laboratory, which holds a sample in mid-air with electric fields and heats it past 2,000C with lasers. [17]

Why it matters — Because the sample floats, nothing touches it, so a molten metal can be measured without a container changing the answer. The health work feeds straight into planning longer flights to the Moon and Mars. [17]
12
Roman should find about a thousand new moons of Jupiter

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched at the end of August on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. [20] It is heading for a point about 1.5 million km from Earth, where the pull of the Sun and Earth lets a spacecraft sit in step with our planet. [20] Its main job is dark matter, dark energy and planets around other stars. [20] The Planetary Society notes it should also turn up roughly 1,000 unknown moons of Jupiter, 200 of Saturn, 100 of Uranus and 5 of Neptune along the way. [20]

Why it matters — A survey telescope sweeps wide fields rather than staring at one target, so small nearby objects fall into the pictures whether or not anyone was looking for them.
13
NASA funds ten early instrument ideas

NASA's science directorate has funded ten researchers under PICASSO, a programme for planetary instrument concepts so early that nothing has been built yet. [16] One will develop a compact chemical sniffer light enough for a drone, to hunt for organic molecules in Martian caves and lava tubes. [16] Another will build a small nuclear power source using curium-244, an isotope chosen because it excites the elements in surface soil without contaminating the sample it is reading. [16] The awards cover targets from the hot surface of Mercury to the icy worlds at the edge of the solar system. [16]

Why it matters — Instruments take a decade or more to get from an idea onto a spacecraft, so what is funded now decides what missions in the late 2030s can look for.
14
A Starfleet badge in the station's window

Sophie Adenot took a small golden Starfleet badge from the series Strange New Worlds up to the International Space Station. [19] She wore it for a video the European Space Agency posted to mark 60 years of Star Trek. [19] The agency also photographed the badge floating in front of the Cupola, the station's seven-window dome that looks down at Earth. [19] Adenot launched on a SpaceX Dragon capsule on NASA's Crew-12 mission on 13 February and is a flight engineer on Expedition 75. [19]

Why it matters — Star Trek's crews were written in the 1960s, when only a handful of people had ever left the ground. The badge went up with a working flight engineer, on a station that has been lived in without a break for twenty-five years.

02 Lesson why it matters

A satellite carries all the fuel it will ever have

Nobody can refill a satellite once it is in orbit. So every turn it makes today is a turn it cannot make later.

The twist

A satellite that manoeuvres for advantage today runs dry years earlier, and after that it cannot even hold its own orbit.

How it works

A satellite launches with a fixed load of fuel
Nothing in orbit can top it up
Every turn, dodge or climb burns some of it
An empty tank does not switch the satellite off
It simply cannot move or hold its place any more
So a move made today is time taken off the end

The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.

The $50m for moving small satellites

same first step, paid around: a small satellite that flies itself into position spends its own fuel doing it, so the Space Force is buying a way to be dropped off instead
NASA's call for lunar power and oxygen

same limit, further out: a Moon base can only use what was launched with it, so NASA is asking companies to make air and power on the spot rather than ship them
Eclipse Space's fold-flat satellites

the fixed load again, at the design stage: the rocket's nose cone holds what it holds, so the satellites are folded to fit rather than the ride being made bigger

Where you've seen this

A long walk in hot country

you drink from the bottle you carried in, and every detour comes out of the same bottle

A phone at a festival

nothing charges it until you get home, so a bright screen at noon is a dead phone by six

Driving across a desert

the tank you filled at the last town decides how far you can wander from the road

The catch

Refuelling and repair in orbit are being tried, and if either works properly the tank stops being the clock.

And the whole of it

Every satellite above you is running down a tank nobody can reach. Your map app, the timing signal inside a card machine and tomorrow's forecast all come off machines with a fixed amount of moving in them, and only the teams flying them know how much is gone.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

The US military is building the ability to move satellites around each other as a way of fighting, and it is buying most of that ability from companies. This week it said it had practised with real satellites, launched a payload it will not describe, and put $50 million into a startup that moves small spacecraft.

Why it works on us — The word dogfighting borrows a picture everybody already has, of two fighter planes turning hard, and it makes a slow business run on a fuel tank that cannot be refilled sound fast and cheap.

Who gains

US Space Command and General Stephen Whiting — An exercise flown with real spacecraft is evidence for the hardware they have been asking for, including what Whiting calls orbital interceptors. [1]
Companies that build spacecraft to manoeuvre and service others — The US Space Force has put $50 million into one startup's way of moving small satellites, and the exercise is an argument for buying more of that. [4][1]
Relativity Space — Terran R is now on NASA's launch contract, so it can bid for NASA missions without waiting for the next annual opening. [12]
Vast — Greece is buying a seat on its private station mission, which turns a company flight into something a government has signed up to. [11]
Victor Glover — He keeps a NASA title as an emeritus astronaut while starting a leadership job at the university he graduated from. [7][8]
American lunar suppliers — NASA's call for Moon-base power and oxygen equipment is written for US-led teams, with foreign partners allowed only inside them. [14]

Who pays

Anyone outside the US government trying to know what is now in orbit — The classified launch publishes no payload, no orbit and no purpose, and the exercise publishes no satellite list. [3][1]
NASA's astronaut office — Three of the four people who have actually flown around the Moon are off the active list five months later. [7]
The US military's ability to recover from an attack in orbit — A RAND report says the workforce to rebuild destroyed military satellites quickly does not exist. [6]
The planet-formation models — They predicted more small bodies beyond Neptune than Webb found, and predicted battered surfaces that are not there. [13]
The argument for a European crew spacecraft — Greece's first astronaut is flying on an American company's mission while Europe is still discussing building its own. [11]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

Which satellites flew in the exercise, and how many.

Space Command's own statement does not say, and neither does the reporting on it. [1][2]
02

What USSF-153 is carrying and what orbit it is going to.

The mission is classified and the launch webcast is expected to end once the booster lands. [3]
03

Which company got the $50 million for moving small satellites, and how its system works.

SpaceNews names neither in the opening paragraph, and the rest of its report is behind a paywall. [4]
04

Why the small bodies beyond Neptune still have the colours they were born with.

The teams say collisions may be rarer out there than assumed, or the surfaces may somehow survive them, and they cannot yet tell which. [13]
05

Why there are fewer very small bodies out there than the planet-formation models predict.

Webb found fewer than expected and the papers do not explain the gap. [13]
06

When Terran R will actually fly for NASA.

NASA's release adds the rocket to the contract it buys launches through, but names no mission and no date. [12]
07

What Reid Wiseman will do next.

NASA says he will support Artemis III preparation; AP reports his plans were otherwise not disclosed. [8][7]
08

Which companies will bid for NASA's lunar power and oxygen work, and what NASA will pay for it.

The call names five capability areas and no budget. [14]
09

When in 2027 the Greek astronaut actually flies.

The announcement gives a year and no date, and the mission depends on Vast's own schedule. [11]

04 Hope carry this

Hubble and the James Webb telescope were pointed at the same patch of sky and picked out 27 icy bodies past Neptune that nobody had seen before. The smallest is about five kilometres across, five times smaller than the best telescopes on the ground can detect.

Also true today

Victor Glover started work on 1 September at California Polytechnic State University, where he graduated in 1999 and where three of his daughters are studying now.
Sophie Adenot carried a small golden Starfleet badge up to the space station and filmed it floating in front of the Cupola windows, sixty years after Star Trek first aired.