Francis Halzen wins the Nobel Prize in Physics for IceCube, a cubic kilometre of South Pole ice that catches ghost particles from distant galaxies

The rest of the day

12 more stories on this beat.

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

1. 02

   NASA moves 7,500 contract jobs inside

   NASA, the US space agency, is turning 7,500 contract jobs into jobs on its own staff this year, Ars Technica reports. [12] Before the change NASA had about 40,000 contract workers and 14,000 staff of its own; it now has about 21,000 staff. [12] Most contract workers came from three firms, Amentum, Jacobs and KBR. [12] NASA's chief, Jared Isaacman, says early trials found over $100 million in savings, which could pass $1 billion. [12] The firms say their extra charge is only 2 to 3% of a worker's pay. [12]

   Contract workers, before40,000 people

   NASA staff, before14,000 people

   NASA staff, now21,000 people

   Why it matters — Isaacman wants NASA's own people in the core jobs on launches and missions. [12] One engineer said NASA controllers at the Artemis II launch could only see a rocket's ground-system drawings through a contractor's video call. [12]

2. 03

   NASA stacks its next Moon rocket

   NASA has stacked the middle sections of both side boosters for Artemis III on their launch platform in Florida. [13] Artemis III will carry four astronauts and test Moon-landing craft, though it will not go to the Moon; it is due no earlier than June 2027. [13] Its Orion crew capsule was powered up through its link to the European-built service module for the first time. [13] The fuel tank for a later rocket, for Artemis IV in 2028, passed its pressure test in September. [13]

   Why it matters — NASA plans to hand crew flights to commercial rockets after Artemis V. [13] It has still started parts for a sixth core stage, the rocket's main body, in case those rockets are not ready. [13]

3. 04

   21 countries sign Turkey's space peace pledge

   The International Astronautical Congress, the yearly meeting of the world's space agencies and companies, is being held this week in Antalya, Turkey. [17] On Sunday leaders from 21 countries adopted the Antalya Declaration, which Turkey says commits them to peace and cooperation in space. [17] Its full text and its signers have not been published. [17] Two Turkish companies, Turkish Aerospace and Roketsan, signed a contract for HURSAT-2, an Earth-imaging satellite to fly on Roketsan's own rocket. [17]

   Why it matters — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke against arming space. [17] He is one of the first leaders of a NATO country to do so since the US said last month it runs weapons for use in space. [17] Turkey's first Moon spacecraft, more than 80% made at home, is in testing for early 2027. [17]

4. 05

   Crew-12 leaves the space station

   The four astronauts of Crew-12 were due to undock from the International Space Station at 12:05 GMT on Wednesday, 7 October, in SpaceX's Dragon capsule Freedom. [14][15] They are Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway of NASA, Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency and Andrey Fedyaev of Russia's space agency. [15] They launched on 13 February. [14] They stayed weeks longer because a fault on the next crew's capsule delayed their replacements. [15] The capsule is due to splash down in the Pacific off California on Thursday. [14][15]

   Why it matters — On board they grew crystals of cancer drugs to study their shape, and made clouds of atoms colder than labs on Earth make them. [14] Meir made four spacewalks during the stay. [15]

5. 06

   A satellite company listens to other satellites

   HawkEye 360, a US company whose satellites pick up radio signals from the ground, has pointed them at other satellites instead. [16] Under a contract worth about $1.2 million from the US Air Force's research lab, it caught radio signals from satellites in low, middle and high orbits. [16] Low satellites were hardest, because they move fast and pass by quickly. [16] The company published its results this week. [16]

   Why it matters — Knowing where a satellite is does not say what it is doing; its radio can show whether it is talking, to which ground station, and whether its habits have changed. [16] The US military wants to know more about what is happening in orbit. [16]

6. 07

   Rival US cities team up on a missile shield

   Colorado Springs in Colorado and Huntsville in Alabama have fought since January 2021 over which city hosts US Space Command, the military's space headquarters. [18] This week officials from both cities met to plan work together on Golden Dome, the Trump administration's planned missile-defence shield. [18] Huntsville is home to the US Missile Defense Agency; Colorado Springs is home to NORAD, which watches the skies over North America. [18] 'We find the threat. Huntsville stops the threat,' said Jeff Crank, a US congressman from Colorado. [18]

   Why it matters — Crank says Golden Dome will create tens of thousands of jobs, against the 1,200 that follow Space Command. [18] Those numbers are his own estimate. [18]

7. 08

   A buried volcano shows the Moon had a magnetic field

   Researchers at ETH Zurich and Germany's space agency, DLR, studied the Dewar swirl, a bright marking on the far side of the Moon. [20] Gravity maps from orbit show a dense buried body under it, about 60 km wide, and magnetic maps show a strong magnetic patch in the same place. [20] Together they point to an old volcano buried under layers of debris. [20] Its rock was magnetised over hundreds of thousands of years, which an asteroid impact cannot do, so the Moon must once have had a working magnetic core. [20]

   123

   4.14.224.35

   bn years ago

   1. 1Layer below the volcano forms4.32 bn years ago
   2. 2Magnetic field recorded4.22 bn years ago
   3. 3Layer on top forms4.14 bn years ago

   Why it matters — The rock sits between layers dated to 4.32 and 4.14 billion years ago, so the field was there about 4.22 billion years ago. [20] It was about 11 microteslas, roughly a fifth of Earth's field today. [20]

8. 09

   Moon satellites could stop GPS drifting

   Navigation satellites like GPS need ground stations to keep their positions right. [19] Links between the satellites measure only how far apart they are, so the whole group can slowly turn out of place unnoticed. [19] A team at the Shanghai Engineering Center for Microsatellites ran a 60-day computer test with real data from 24 of China's BeiDou navigation satellites. [19] With no ground help, positions drifted 7.85 metres. [19] Forecasting the orbits cut that to 0.6 metres, and adding four satellites around the Moon cut it to 0.35. [19]

   Why it matters — Ground stations can be knocked out by blackouts, disasters or hackers. [19] The same Moon satellites would also help astronauts find their way near the Moon's south pole. [19]

9. 10

   The first likely microblazar

   Astronomers in Spain, the Netherlands and Argentina report the best candidate yet for a microblazar, a kind of object predicted long ago but never seen. [21] It is IRAS 18293-0941, a black hole circling a giant star every 11 days, about 12,000 light-years away in our galaxy. [21] The black hole pulls matter off the star and fires two jets, and one of them points at Earth. [21] It shows every expected sign except fast changes in brightness. [21]

   Why it matters — Finding microblazars would give astronomers a closer view of how black holes fire jets. [21] The team thinks thick gas around it may smooth out the flicker, and is still checking. [21]

10. 11

    Black holes that wander

    A team at Yale University led by Emma Jane Weller used ASTRID, a computer simulation of the universe over 12.6 billion years. [22] It lets black holes move under gravity instead of fixing them at the centres of galaxies. [22] The team explored whether some drifting black holes started at galaxy centres and were knocked loose when galaxies merged. [22] Black holes wandered most in small galaxies, whose weaker gravity holds them less tightly. [22]

    Why it matters — Where a black hole sits today keeps a record of its galaxy's past crashes, the team says. [22] X-rays, starlight, radio and flares from torn-apart stars would each find a different part of the wandering group. [22]

11. 12

    Rooftop-style solar cells for satellites

    Source Energy, a US company in Colorado, makes satellite solar panels from the ordinary silicon cells used on Earth. [24] Many satellites use costlier cells made of rarer materials. [24] Its factory line is due to make 10 megawatts of panels a year by the end of 2026, and 30 by mid-2027. [24] It sells them for $5 to $8 a watt and aims for under $3. [24] Tests by Fraunhofer, a German research institute, say they keep 76% of their power after seven years in orbit. [24]

    Why it matters — Most buyers are building satellite fleets for communications, Earth pictures and defence. [24] The company says many in the industry think data centres in space need launch prices to fall well below about $7,000 a kilogram first. [24]

12. 13

    Two meteor showers this month

    The Draconid meteor shower peaks on the night of 8 October, and the Orionids on 21 October, according to NASA. [23] Meteors are bits of dust and ice left behind by comets, burning up as Earth passes through the trail. [23] The Draconids come from Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, about 2 km across, and NASA expects only a few meteors an hour. [23] The Orionids come from Halley's Comet. [23]

    8 OctDraconids peak

    ++

    21 OctOrionids peak

    Why it matters — The Draconids begin soon after dark, so nobody has to stay up late to look. [23] The Orionids are best before dawn, after the Moon has set. [23]