Varda raises $250m to make medicines in orbit, and flies two capsules at once for the first time

The rest of the day

11 more stories on this beat.

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

1. 02

   NASA loosens its Mars germ rules

   NASA's chief, Jared Isaacman, told staff the agency is loosening its rules for keeping Earth germs off Mars. [4] Two watchdog websites obtained and shared the message on 29 September. [4] In 1964 COSPAR, an international science committee, asked each mission to keep the chance of leaving hardy Earth life on such a world below one in ten thousand. [4] COSPAR made the rules stricter in 1969, when many Mars missions, some with crews, were expected. [4] NASA now goes straight back to the 1964 limit, and a review due in December may loosen it further. [4]

   Why it matters — Earth germs that survive on Mars could spoil any later search for life that started there. Isaacman says the change lets NASA explore faster and prepare to send people. [4]

2. 03

   SpaceX plans three launches in 13 hours

   SpaceX plans to launch three rockets within 13 hours today. [3] First, at 15:10 GMT, a Falcon 9 is due to carry the four astronauts of Crew-13 to the International Space Station. [3][5] One NASA forecast gave the weather a 60% chance of allowing it, and the evening briefing gave 55%. [5][6] Transporter-18 follows from California at 18:18 GMT with 130 payloads. [3] At 03:53 GMT on 2 October a Falcon Heavy is due to launch NROL-97, a secret satellite for the US National Reconnaissance Office. [3]

   15:10 GMTCrew-13

   ++

   18:18 GMTTransporter-18

   ++

   03:53 GMTNROL-97

   Why it matters — Crew-13 relieves Crew-12, whose four astronauts stayed weeks longer in orbit after a leak in the capsule delayed this flight from 12 September. If the weather says no, the next try is on Friday. [5]

3. 04

   First picture of gas swirling round a newborn planet

   Astronomers using ALMA, a set of 66 radio dishes in Chile, have imaged gas swirling around a planet that is still forming. [7][8] The planet, WISPIT 2b, is about five times the mass of Jupiter and about 430 light-years away. [7][8] Computer models had predicted those swirls, but nobody had seen them before, said Myriam Benisty of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. [7][8] A second young planet, WISPIT 2c, orbits closer in, at 15 times Earth's distance from the Sun, and has cleared a hole in the same disc of gas and dust. [7]

   WISPIT 2c15

   WISPIT 2b57

   Why it matters — It lets astronomers watch a planet grow instead of only modelling it. WISPIT 2b gathers material 57 times as far from its star as Earth is from the Sun, wider than almost any known planet. [8]

4. 05

   Astronomers want a world court to weigh in on satellites

   Astronomers led by the Outer Space Institute, a research group, want the United Nations to ask its top court, the International Court of Justice, for an opinion on crowded orbits. [9] SpaceX, Google and Starcloud have announced plans for hundreds of thousands of data-centre satellites, which astronomers say could erase stars from the night sky. [9] The UN's space committee works only when every country agrees, and an earlier plan for an expert group on light pollution stalled there. [9] A request to the court needs only a simple majority of the UN General Assembly. [9]

   UN space committeeall must agree

   vsvs

   UN General Assemblyhalf plus one

   Why it matters — The court would explain the 1967 Outer Space Treaty's rule that countries act with due regard for others. Its opinions cannot be enforced, but campaigners used an earlier climate opinion to win a Paris case ordering TotalEnergies to disclose climate risks. [9]

5. 06

   Starship's next flight could try a catch

   Starship, SpaceX's giant new rocket, reached orbit for the first time on 28 September. [16] Its next test, Flight 15, could come on 19 October at the earliest, according to planning papers. [16] Elon Musk has said SpaceX may try to catch the upper stage with the launch tower's arms on that flight. [16] SpaceX has caught the lower stage, Super Heavy, three times but never the upper one. [16] It has also never moved fuel from one ship to another in orbit. [16]

   Why it matters — Moon landings need that fuel transfer, and estimates run from eight to about twenty tanker flights for each one. NASA picked Starship as the lander for its crewed Moon missions, and Artemis IV is meant to land people in 2028. [16]

6. 07

   Russia's new crew ship to drop-test its parachutes

   Roscosmos, Russia's state space company, says it will drop-test the parachutes of its next crew spacecraft this autumn in Russia's Far East. [10] Its chief, Dmitry Bakanov, told the Interfax news agency about the plan. [10] Interfax also reported a test of the ship's launch-pad escape system later this year. [10] The project has run for nearly 20 years under several names, including Eagle, and officials now aim for a first crewed flight in 2028 or 2029. [10]

   Why it matters — The ship is meant to replace Soyuz for carrying cosmonauts to orbit, and to be able to reach the Moon. Ars Technica says it is unclear whether the tests will use real flight hardware or mock-ups. [10]

7. 08

   The first planets were mostly melted rock

   A team led by Damanveer Grewal of Yale University studied iron meteorites, broken off the earliest small worlds by violent crashes. [11] Their sulphur and iron chemistry suggests those worlds held only 8% to 17% of the fluffy, icy dust that later built comets. [11] The rest was chondrules: millimetre-sized beads of rock that melted in violent heating and then cooled fast. [11] So in its first million years or so, the solar system probably built its first small worlds mostly from these melted beads. [11]

   Why it matters — Almost no untouched rock survives from that time, because a radioactive form of aluminium melted the early worlds from inside. That is why the team read the story from meteorites instead. [11]

8. 09

   Hop Aero raises $11m for rocket delivery

   Hop Aero, a seven-person start-up, raised $11m to build small rockets that would carry cargo up through space and down somewhere far away. [12] Its rocket, Rook, has never flown untethered, and the bigger Rook 2 is due to fly in mid-2027. [12] At the Oklahoma Spaceport it test-fired four engine designs, from cautious to likely-to-explode, and none blew up. [12] It still has to show it can land intact and on target after a very fast fall through the air. [12]

   Why it matters — The company says its strongest demand is from militaries that want swarms of drones carried hundreds of miles into contested areas. Landing on target is the problem that has kept rocket cargo delivery on the drawing board for years. [12]

9. 10

   A Lithuanian start-up raises money for a docking kit

   Blackswan Space, a Lithuanian start-up known for mission-planning software, raised EUR 2.5m, about $2.8m, in a round led by Iron Wolf Capital. [13] The money pays for the first space test of its RPO Kit, which lets one satellite approach another and dock with it. [13] The test is due in late 2027, riding on a partner's satellite. [13] Orbit Fab, a company that wants to refuel satellites in orbit, picked the kit for its ESA-funded ASTRAL mission in 2028. [13]

   Why it matters — Blackswan's chief calls docking probably the hardest thing to do in orbit. The company is betting that servicing firms would rather buy that ability than build it. [13]

10. 11

    Europe picks its own cloud firms for satellite data

    The European Space Agency, ESA, hired OVHcloud and CGI to build a system to store and process Europe's Earth-watching satellite data. [14] OVHcloud is Europe's largest cloud computing company, and CGI, a consulting firm, will design and connect the system. [14] ESA expects to hold more than 500 petabytes of such data by 2035; a petabyte is a million gigabytes. [14] The 30-month contract is worth several million euros, and ESA gave no exact figure. [14]

    Why it matters — It follows a European Commission push to keep important computing work with European companies. The system will feed Copernicus, the EU's Earth-watching programme. [14]

11. 12

    Artemis Accords countries to meet on Moon debris

    Countries that signed the Artemis Accords, a US-led set of principles for exploring the Moon, will meet next week at a space conference in Turkey. [15] They will discuss how to share advice on limiting debris on the Moon, and how to help countries starting out in space. [15] Seventeen countries signed this year, the most since 2024, and African members rose from four to nine. [15] NASA's deputy chief, Matt Anderson, and the head of Peru's space agency will lead the meeting. [15]

    Why it matters — The advice is being written as more countries plan Moon missions. Isaacman says at least half of the signatories have committed experiments to the lunar surface. [15]