Space, in brief

Satellogic, a Barcelona-based company that photographs the Earth from orbit, has expanded the work it does for the US Navy's research office. [1][2]

It will put six NewSat Mark VI satellites into orbit over the next 18 months for a programme called Slingshot, which uses commercial satellites to keep track of shipping. [2]

Innovative Defense Technologies holds the main contract for the Slingshot tests, and Satellogic works under it. [2]

The Mark VI satellites carry links that pass information straight to each other in orbit, so a change spotted on one pass does not have to wait for a ground station. [1][2]

Satellogic's older business was selling a picture of a place when a customer asked for one. [1]

Its satellites photograph the ground as they pass anyway, so it now offers to watch a list of sites and tell the customer when something is different. [1]

Three satellites are due to fly on a Falcon 9 next month: two more Mark VIs, and one Mark V that Satellogic means to sell and hand over while it is already in orbit. [1][2]

A satellite called Merlin, built to photograph the ground constantly at one-metre detail, was announced for October, and the company would not say whether it shares that launch. [1]

Chief executive Emiliano Kargieman said the aim is “complete awareness of the theater that you're operating in”, and that the same service could later be sold to ordinary industry. [1]

A sharper design called NextGen, picking out things 30 centimetres across, is being built and should be ready in late 2027 or early 2028. [2]

Why it matters. Watch whether the Mark V is really handed over to a buyer after next month's launch; that transfer, not the launch, is what would show the new business works.

The US Space Force is letting SpaceX decide how to build one of its new satellite networks in low Earth orbit, a job worth $2.3bn. [3] It has written down what the network must be able to do, instead of prescribing how many spacecraft there should be or how they should be arranged. [3] Low Earth orbit is the band a few hundred kilometres up, where a satellite circles the whole planet in about an hour and a half.

Why it matters. The supplier that picks the design also decides what the finished network can and cannot do, and the US Space Force will live with that choice for as long as the satellites fly.

Ten countries allied to the United States have agreed to put $302m towards the next Wideband Global SATCOM satellite, WGS-12. [4] Their money covers the launch, upgrades to the ground stations and the cost of running it, not the building of the spacecraft itself, which Boeing does. [4] Wideband Global SATCOM is a set of US military communications satellites, and this deal extends a cost-sharing arrangement with allied countries that has run for years. [4] The $302m completes the funding plan for WGS-12. [4]

Why it matters. Countries that cannot afford a military communications satellite of their own buy a share of someone else's, and this one was designed before they were asked to pay.

The European Space Agency signed 18 contracts on 17 September in Madrid, bringing nearly 80 companies together to study new secure communications services. [5] The work is worth 20 million euros and is meant to shape what comes after IRIS2, the European Union's planned network for communications governments can rely on. [5] The firms will look at uses such as secure government broadband, shipping, aviation and relaying data, and will compare different designs. [5] ESA says the shape of the deal is also meant to give smaller firms a way in. [5]

Why it matters. Europe is paying to find out what to ask for before it orders any hardware. The US Space Force, in the same week, named the result it wanted and left the design to its supplier.

Rocket Lab sent an Electron rocket up from New Zealand late on 18 September carrying one radar satellite for Synspective, a Tokyo company. [6] Radar satellites bounce their own radio waves off the ground and read what comes back, so they can see at night and through cloud, which ordinary cameras cannot. [6] The satellite was due to be released about 53 minutes after lift-off, 572 kilometres up. [6] It is the twelfth Synspective satellite Rocket Lab has launched, with fifteen more booked, and the firm's seventeenth flight of 2026. [6]

Why it matters. Japan is buying a network that can look at the same ground whatever the weather, and one small rocket company is launching all of it.

Researchers at Imperial College London have set out a small satellite called HENON, carrying a magnetometer named MAGIC that measures the Sun's magnetic field. [8] Warnings of solar storms now come from spacecraft parked 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, which gives between 15 and 60 minutes of notice. [8] HENON would sit about 15 million kilometres out, ten times further, so a storm reaches it well before it reaches us. [8] The team says the work leads towards a larger European mission called SHIELD. [8]

Why it matters. A solar storm can black out radio, damage satellites and disturb power grids, and a warning only helps if it arrives before the storm does.

A Falcon 9 was set to lift off from Vandenberg in California on the evening of 19 September carrying 27 Starlink V2 Mini satellites. [7] It was the 81st launch of Starlink satellites this year alone. [7] The booster, B1093, was making its seventeenth flight and was due to land on a ship in the Pacific, which would be the 662nd Falcon booster landing. [7] The satellites were to be let go a little over an hour after lift-off. [7]

Why it matters. Almost every other story here rests on a rocket being cheap and available, and one company is flying most of them.

The European Space Agency gave its innovation award to CompPair Technologies, a Swiss firm making a composite material that mends itself. [9] Sensors inside the material watch for cracks, and a printed aluminium grid then heats the damaged patch, which sets off a healing agent in the composite. [9] Two excellence awards also went out: to Surrey Satellite Technology in Britain, for delivering two HydroGNSS satellites to schedule after their ride to orbit changed, and to Sener in Spain, for instrument work on Europe's next weather satellites. [9]

Why it matters. Rockets and spacecraft are only cheap to reuse if the structure survives being used again, and small cracks are what ends that.

On the International Space Station, NASA's Anil Menon finished the last run of an experiment soldering electronics without lead in weightlessness, working in the Harmony module. [10] The board comes back to Earth to be compared with identical ones soldered on the ground. [10] Commander Jessica Meir practised a lunar descent from the cupola, the station's dome of windows, steering with hand controllers. [10] The study looks at how weightlessness affects thinking, and whether it can leave a pilot disoriented at the controls. [10] Menon and Jack Hathaway also cleaned the cupola's seven windows. [10]

Why it matters. Nobody can post a broken circuit board home from the Moon, so repairing electronics in orbit has to be shown to work first.

NASA opened media accreditation for the 35th SpaceX cargo flight to the International Space Station, which will carry science equipment and supplies. [11] A Dragon capsule will ride a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral in Florida, no earlier than October. [11] Applications close at the end of 1 October and are open to American media only. [11]

Why it matters. Everything the crew eats, wears and experiments on arrives on flights like this one, so the date sets what they can do next.