Three European space start-ups raised about $1bn in two weeks, and Impulse Space added $308m in the US

The rest of the day

21 more stories on this beat.

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

1. 02

   NASA buys three more SpaceX crew flights

   NASA, the US space agency, is paying SpaceX $946m for three more astronaut flights to the International Space Station, Crew-15, Crew-16 and Crew-17. [9] The deal runs to 2030, and it brings SpaceX's total to 17 flights worth $5.92bn. [9] NASA added them to the old contract without a new competition. [9] Boeing's Starliner capsule, the other US crew ship, had problems on its 2024 test flight, and its two astronauts came home on a SpaceX Dragon. [10] The next SpaceX crew, Crew-13, is due to launch in early October. [29]

   $946m3 new crew flights

   vs

   $5.92bnAll 17 flights

   Why it matters — The price includes keeping each Dragon docked at the station as a lifeboat. [9] Reuters reports that NASA still wants Boeing flying too, so one company's problem cannot stop US astronauts reaching the station. [10]

2. 03

   SpaceX stops selling Falcon 9 rides

   SpaceX has told several would-be customers in recent months that it is no longer taking new orders for commercial Falcon 9 launches, Ars Technica reports. [8] Avio, the Italian company that builds the Vega-C rocket, says those customers are now calling it. [8] Avio's chief executive, Giulio Ranzo, said so on a call with investors on 10 September. [8] Some of them asked European institutions for money to cover the higher cost of a European launch. [8]

   Why it matters — A turned-away customer has to use a smaller or dearer rocket, and Ars estimates a Vega-C launch costs about $60m. [8] It is part of why Europe's launch firms are finding customers now.

3. 04

   Impulse Space's round grows to $808m

   Impulse Space raised $308m more on 16 September, on top of $500m in June. [5][6] It builds Mira, a small spacecraft that moves satellites around in orbit, and Helios, a stage meant to carry them much higher, first launching in 2027. [6] The company has sold out its shared Helios flights for 2028. [6] It has more than 600 staff and says the money goes mainly on hiring and building. [5]

   June$500m

   16 September$308m

   Why it matters — Its value rose within three months, and Reuters links the easier fundraising directly to SpaceX's June share sale. [5] Impulse also hired a new finance chief as it tries to turn its orders into income. [5]

4. 05

   Space firms list through shell companies

   Young defence and space companies are going onto the stock market through SPACs, Reuters reports. A SPAC is a shell company that raises money first and then merges with a private firm to take it public. [7] Six defence and space firms have agreed SPAC mergers so far this year, about a tenth of all such deals. [7] Rocket-engine maker Ursa Major agreed one worth $2.3bn last month. [7]

   Why it matters — A SPAC lets a company agree its value in private before it lists. [7] Firms that depend on government contracts use this to avoid waiting for a good week on the stock market. [7]

5. 06

   ESA picks two teams to plan Europe's spy satellites

   The European Space Agency, which runs Europe's joint space programmes, signed contracts with ICEYE and Leonardo at a Paris space meeting. [11] ICEYE is a Finnish firm whose satellites take pictures with radar, and Leonardo is an Italian defence group. [4][11] Each will lead a team that designs, in parallel, a European government service for security pictures from space. [11] The European Commission pays for the work, and the service itself is planned to begin in 2028. [11]

   Why it matters — The EU would own part of the system itself and buy the rest from companies. [11] A start-up leading one of the two design teams shows Europe's governments now trust young firms with defence work. [4]

6. 07

   Two operators plan a shared satellite network

   Viasat, an American satellite company, and Space42, a satellite company from the United Arab Emirates, agreed on Monday to set up Equatys. [12] It is one network of satellites that several phone companies would share, the way they share phone masts on the ground. [12] The two will each put in $400m once it is formed, and up to $1bn in all. [12] The first stage uses fewer than 200 satellites, with service aimed for the end of 2029. [12]

   $400mViasat puts in

   +

   $400mSpace42 puts in

   Why it matters — Phones that talk straight to satellites need a very expensive network, so splitting one spreads the cost across several phone companies. No phone company has been named as a customer yet. [12]

7. 08

   A $300m lease for computers in orbit

   Sophia Space, a start-up that wants to put computers in orbit, and SLI, a company that leases space equipment, set terms for a $300m deal. [13] SLI would pay to build ten of Sophia's satellites, own them once they work in orbit, and rent them to Sophia's customers. [13] It is a letter of support, not a contract. [13] It only goes ahead once Sophia raises its final funding round, and no customer has signed yet. [13]

   Why it matters — Sophia says it is borrowing the leasing tools that airlines and shipping firms already use. [13] A customer could then rent a satellite's computing without paying to build one first. [13]

8. 09

   China launches four rockets in 44 hours

   China launched four rockets between Tuesday 15 September and Thursday, from its Jiuquan and Hainan launch sites and from a ship in the East China Sea. [14] They were LandSpace's Zhuque-2E, Orienspace's Gravity-1, a Long March 12 from China's state rocket makers and ExPace's Kuaizhou-11. [8] Three of the four came from companies separate from China's government rocket makers. [8] The Zhuque-2E carried satellites for Qianfan, a Chinese internet network in orbit. [14]

   Why it matters — Ars Technica reads it as a sign that China's satellite networks will no longer depend only on the Long March rockets built by China's state space industry. [8] Its companies are moving quickly from test flights to paid missions. [8]

9. 10

   The delayed secret Space Force launch flew

   SpaceX launched USSF-259, a classified mission for the US Space Force, from California on the evening of 16 September. [16][15] It had been called off the night before for an issue nobody has explained. [16] It was SpaceX's third Space Force launch in a month under the same contract, after missions on 15 August and 10 September. [16] The Space Force has not said what any of them carried. [16]

   Why it matters — Public papers give the earlier two missions 23 satellites each, and another, R-3, is set for 27 September. [16] It was SpaceX's 110th launch of 2026. [15]

10. 11

    Navigation backup kept alive by Congress

    The US Space Force says it will soon give new contracts to Astranis, L3Harris and Sierra Space to keep working on Resilient GPS. [17] That is a plan for small navigation satellites that would work alongside the GPS fleet. [17] Congress had added $15m last year, and that money is keeping the work going. [17] The Space Force left the next phase out of its own 2027 budget request. [17]

    Why it matters — GPS now guides drones and other spacecraft as well as phones and planes, and the Space Force is designing its next GPS system. [17] The new contracts cover the riskiest parts first, such as secure codes that can be changed in orbit. [17]

11. 12

    A squadron for tracking moving targets

    The US Space Force has set up the 77th Space Surveillance Squadron, its first unit for satellites that track moving targets, a general said on 16 September. [18] The first satellites that follow aircraft are due to launch this month. [18] Satellites that follow vehicles on the ground, being built by Northrop Grumman, should follow within two years. [18]

    Why it matters — The National Reconnaissance Office, which runs US spy satellites, already helps with this work using more than 200 satellites. [18] At least 13 companies, including SpaceX, Blue Origin and Rocket Lab, are in the group allowed to bid to build the aircraft-tracking satellites. [18]

12. 13

    StarBurst gets a ride for 2028

    NASA picked SpaceX to launch StarBurst, a small satellite that will look for short bursts of gamma rays, the most energetic kind of light. [19] Those bursts come when two dead stars called neutron stars crash together. [19] StarBurst will share a Falcon 9 with other satellites from Florida no earlier than 2028. [19]

    Why it matters — StarBurst will watch almost all the sky that Earth does not block. [19] Its readings can be matched with detectors on the ground that pick up ripples in space from the same crashes. [19]

13. 14

    Hydrosat shows off heat-sensing satellites

    Hydrosat, a company whose satellites photograph heat, unveiled a new group of satellites called Osiris in Paris. [20] Each will carry five sensors, so it can see both sharper detail and a wider strip of ground than its two satellites in orbit now. [20] The first two are due to launch next year. [20] Hydrosat says about 40% of its income is from private companies. [20]

    4 of 10

    About 4 in 10 from companies

    Why it matters — Heat pictures work at night, so military customers already use Hydrosat's data to watch movement after dark. [20] It has also agreed with Kazakhstan's government to put its sensor on a government satellite. [20]

14. 15

    An X-ray telescope sees a dead star feeding

    XRISM, an X-ray telescope in orbit run by Japan with NASA, watched gas from a giant star fall onto a pulsar, the spinning core of a dead star. [21] The pair, BP Crucis, is 13,000 light-years away. [21] The giant is about 40 times the Sun's mass, and the gas was moving at about 540,000km an hour. [21] The results came out on Friday in the journal Science Advances. [21]

    Why it matters — Astronomers had never clearly seen a star's wind falling onto such an object before. [21] The team says it can now test its ideas about how these pairs feed in much more detail. [21]

15. 16

    Webb finds tiny failed stars

    The James Webb Space Telescope searched IC 348, a young cluster of about 400 stars 1,000 light-years away. [22][23] It found brown dwarfs, objects too small to burn like stars, weighing only about twice as much as Jupiter. [23] Their light shows a carbon compound nobody predicted, and the team proposes a new class for them, called H. [23] Two of the new ones have discs of material around them. [23]

    Why it matters — Finding how small a brown dwarf can be shows where star-making stops. [23] A disc means one of these tiny objects could have planets of its own. [23]

16. 17

    Strange pits on Mars

    NASA's Curiosity rover, driving on Mars for 14 years, has found broad, shallow pits in the rock of Mount Sharp. [24] Its team says they are unlike anything seen before on Mars. [24] Unlike earlier small pits, nothing seems to have sat inside them. [24] The material in them looks chemically different from the rock around it. [24]

    Why it matters — Nobody yet knows how the pits formed or how old they are. [24] Curiosity is the older of NASA's two working rovers, and it keeps finding new things after 14 years. [24]

17. 18

    Nearly 50 faint galaxies found

    Astronomers using the VLT Survey Telescope found 47 very faint small galaxies around three bigger galaxies, up to 100 million light-years away. [25] Only four had been seen before. [25] The team found them by checking the pictures by eye instead of with software. [25] The results were published on 11 September. [25]

    Why it matters — Theories of how galaxies grow predict how many small ones should circle a big one, and counts have come out both too low and too high. [25] Europe's Euclid telescope will now look again to confirm them. [25]

18. 19

    Europe's first astronaut suit tried in orbit

    Sophie Adenot, a French astronaut for the European Space Agency, tried on EuroSuit on the space station. [26] It is a European suit for launch and landing, not for spacewalks, meant to go on in under two minutes. [26] She said it still needs a lot of work. [26] Adenot and her three crewmates, there since February, are preparing to come home. [27]

    Why it matters — France's space agency says the suit is part of Europe building its own human spaceflight. [26] Their return depends on Crew-13, now due in early October. [29]

19. 20

    Making rocket fuel from Mars air

    Researchers led from the University of Mississippi report a way to turn carbon dioxide, which makes up most of Mars' air, into methane pure enough to burn as rocket fuel. [28] The method uses electricity to split water and join its parts to the carbon dioxide. [28] It is a study, not a machine working on Mars. [28]

    Why it matters — Every kilogram carried from Earth costs a lot to launch. [28] A crew that could make its own fuel on Mars would need to bring much less for the trip home. [28]

20. 21

    A Chinese engine that looks like SpaceX's

    Space Pioneer, a Chinese rocket start-up that has raised nearly $1bn, showed a design for its Tianhuo-21 engine this week. [8] It burns methane, looks strikingly like SpaceX's newest Raptor 3 engine, and has almost the same thrust. [8] SpaceX's owner, Elon Musk, said the inside is very hard to make and advised new companies against trying. [8]

    Why it matters — Its thrust, 2,450 kilonewtons at sea level, is almost the same as Raptor 3's. [8] What was shown is a design, not an engine firing. [8]

21. 22

    A French start-up fires its engine

    Sirius Space Services, a French rocket start-up, test-fired a complete prototype of its STAR-1 engine for the first time, at a test site in southern England. [8] The tests ran all the engine's main parts together, including its pumps and control software. [8] Nine of these engines would power the core of each of its planned rockets. [8]

    Why it matters — The engine burns liquid oxygen and methane and is meant to push with 55 kilonewtons. [8] It is one more European launch start-up moving towards a first flight. [8]