SpaceX's military satellite service stopped working on Ukraine's fast drones overnight, and Musk says the US government decides its limits

The rest of the day

14 more stories on this beat.

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

1. 02

   NASA's two Venus missions are back on track

   NASA's DAVINCI probe is now due to launch in December 2030, a year earlier than planned, scientists said at a meeting of Venus researchers last week. [18] DAVINCI will drop a probe through Venus's thick air and send back the first pictures of its ground since 1982. [18] VERITAS, an orbiter that will map Venus by radar, now has money and a launch date of November 2032. [18] Both had faced budget cuts and delays. [18]

   12

   2,0302,0322,033

   1. 1DAVINCI launches (Dec 2030)2,031
   2. 2VERITAS launches (Nov 2032)2,033

   Why it matters — Cancelling Mars Sample Return and ending NASA's part in Europe's Envision orbiter freed the money for both. [18] Venus scientists gain two missions, and Europe now builds Envision's radar itself. [18]

2. 03

   Artemis III's rocket is nearly stacked

   Workers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida finished stacking both side boosters for Artemis III on 30 September, NASASpaceflight reports. [20] All four main engines are now fitted to the rocket's core stage, which will be joined to the boosters in the coming weeks. [20] The partly built rocket will then roll to the pad for a fuelling test, and the four astronauts will rehearse launch day there. [20]

   Why it matters — Artemis III, due no earlier than June 2027, will test docking with SpaceX's and Blue Origin's Moon landers in Earth orbit. [20] It is the last practice step before NASA tries to land people on the Moon on Artemis IV. [20]

3. 04

   Christina Koch leaves the astronaut corps for an engineering job

   NASA said on Tuesday that astronaut Christina Koch will become its acting deputy chief engineer from 1 November. [19] Koch flew around the Moon on Artemis II this year, and earlier spent 328 days on the space station, the longest flight by a woman. [19] The move means she will not fly in space again. [19] Her three Artemis II crewmates have also moved to jobs with no flight planned soon. [19]

   Why it matters — None of the four people who flew around the Moon this year has another flight planned. [19] Koch takes over from Katherine Van Hooser, who retires on 21 October after more than 35 years at NASA. [19]

4. 05

   A mirror-satellite company books two Indian rockets

   Reflect Orbital, a US start-up that wants satellites with mirrors to shine sunlight onto the ground at night, bought two launches from Skyroot Aerospace of India on Wednesday, Payload reports. [21] One is on Skyroot's Vikram-1, which first flew in July and carries about 350 kg. [21] The other is on the bigger Vikram-1U, due to fly early next year. [21] Neither the price nor the dates were given. [21]

   Vikram-1350 kg

   Vikram-1U550 kg

   Why it matters — SpaceX has stopped taking bookings for its shared rides to orbit after 2029, so some small companies are buying whole rockets. [21] Reflect Orbital plans about 50,000 mirrors, to send sunlight to solar farms after dark. [21]

5. 06

   Japan's Phobos mission is days from launch

   Japan's MMX spacecraft is due to launch on 19 October US time to land on Phobos, a moon of Mars, and bring a sample home. [30] One of its two samplers puffs nitrogen gas to blow dust into a container, like a reverse vacuum cleaner. [30] The Planetary Society, a non-profit space group, helped pay to test that tool on a rocket in 2018. [30] MMX should return its samples to Australia in 2031. [30]

   Why it matters — It would be the first sample from a moon of Mars, and it could show whether Phobos is a captured asteroid or a piece knocked off Mars. [30] A cheap sampler that works would make sample trips to other worlds cheaper. [30]

6. 07

   A reentry start-up turns to spacecraft software

   In Orbit Aerospace, a California start-up founded in 2020 to build capsules that return cargo from space, has switched to writing software that flies spacecraft on its own, Payload reports. [22] Its founders said they were slightly too late to the capsule market. [22] NASA and the US Space Force have given it small research contracts. [22] The software is due to fly first in early 2027 on a test mission. [22]

   Why it matters — Satellite fleets are growing too big for people on the ground to watch each craft, the company argues. [22] Software that decides on board moves people from flying each craft to setting its goals. [22]

7. 08

   Hypernovas may never have happened

   Hypernovas, explosions thought to be ten times stronger than an ordinary supernova, may not happen at all, a team at University College London says. [24] They were proposed to explain old stars with an unusual mix of metals. [24] Ordinary supernovas throw out their material unevenly. [24] The team found that this alone can make those same mixes. [24] 'All the evidence we see for hypernovae is suddenly gone,' said team leader Anmol Aggarwal. [24]

   Why it matters — Astronomers read a star's family history from its metals, so the explosion they blame changes the history they tell. [24] The team says scientists still do not know how well a supernova's material mixes before new stars form. [24]

8. 09

   An amateur and AI find a likely planet

   Pavel Rabtsevich, a product manager in Spain who studies space as a hobby, used AI programs to find a likely planet in open data from TESS, NASA's planet-hunting telescope. [23] The star, 116 light years away, dims for two hours every three days. [23] The planet would be about 1.4 times as wide as Earth. [23] Some dips in 2018 came when TESS fired its thrusters, so it is not confirmed. [23]

   Why it matters — TESS will look at the star again in November. [23] A member of the TESS team says the signal only became clear this year, and the official search would likely have caught it within months. [23]

9. 10

   Mars-level radiation scarred rats' hearts

   Researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin gave rats doses of radiation like those in deep space, Universe Today reports. [27] They also held the rats' back legs off the ground to copy weightlessness. [27] A dose like the total of a three-year Mars trip left 83% of the rats with scar tissue around their heart's blood vessels a year later. [27] The scarring did not show at first. [27]

   83 of 100

   rats with heart scarring a year after a Mars-sized dose

   Why it matters — If people respond the same way, Mars crews could face heart trouble decades after they return. [27] The study was on rats on the ground, and the weightlessness copy had almost no effect on the heart. [27]

10. 11

    Magnetic dead stars can pass a famous limit

    In the 1930s Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar showed that a white dwarf, the core left when a star like the Sun dies, cannot weigh more than about 1.44 Suns. [26] A new study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters says a strong magnetic field can let one grow heavier, in theory to nearly 3 Suns. [26] Its computer models found that an ordinary star can end up as such a magnetic white dwarf. [26]

    12

    0 Suns1.5 Suns3 Suns

    1. 1Chandrasekhar's limit1.44 Suns
    2. 2A strongly magnetic white dwarf, in theory3 Suns

    Why it matters — Astronomers use some supernovas as measuring sticks because they assumed white dwarfs blow up at one fixed weight. [26] Heavier magnetic white dwarfs could explain supernovas since 2003 that seemed to break the limit. [26]

11. 12

    A star that blew up in 1181 shows chains of knots

    In 1181, watchers in China and Japan recorded a 'guest star' that shone for six months. [25] Its remains, a cloud called Pa 30, have now been photographed in new detail by the Gemini North telescope. [25] The pictures show ten times more threads than before, made of chains of knots, not smooth streaks. [25] The dead star at its centre may weigh about 1.5 Suns. [25]

    Why it matters — The knots show the gas the blast ran into was lumpy. [25] A central star that heavy would itself pass Chandrasekhar's 1.44-Sun limit. [25][26]

12. 13

    A year of the Sun's outer air, on video

    NASA's PUNCH mission, four satellites that block the Sun's disc to watch its thin outer layer, released a video of a full year of its pictures. [28] At first the glare of sunlight bouncing off Earth swamped the faint signal, said lead scientist Craig DeForest. [28] The team removed that glare with clever processing and saved the whole year. [28]

    Why it matters — The video shows the Sun's outer air changing all the time, pushed by the solar wind and big bursts of charged gas. [28] Recovering the data means a year of observations was not lost. [28]

13. 14

    The dim edges of 31 stars, measured

    The CHARA Array, a group of linked telescopes, measured how much dimmer the edges of 31 nearby stars are than their centres. [29] Edges look dim because their light crosses more of the star's outer gas. [29] The dimming was about 38% weaker at one infrared colour than another. [29] Models of the stars' outer layers predicted about 20%. [29]

    What models predicted20%

    What CHARA measured38%

    Why it matters — Until now this edge-dimming was easy to see only on the Sun and a few giant stars. [29] The gap means models of how stars' outer layers work are somewhat wrong. [29]

14. 15

    Curiosity sees giant wind-carved ridges

    NASA's Curiosity rover sent back a sunrise panorama from the slopes of Mount Sharp on Mars, Universe Today reports. [31] It shows yardangs, long ridges of rock carved by wind, in a layer about 16 km across. [31] A NASA scientist says the layer is probably about three billion years old and may be made of volcanic ash. [31] Curiosity should reach it in 2027 or 2028. [31]

    Why it matters — If the layer is ash, Curiosity could learn about volcanoes on early Mars. [31] The rover has already climbed a full kilometre, more than any other rover. [31]