Space, in brief

Link, a robot spacecraft built by the company Katalyst Space Technologies, fell back into the atmosphere on 25 September. [1][2]

Its job was to catch NASA's Swift telescope and push it into a higher orbit, where it could keep working for longer. [1]

NASA paid about $30m for the attempt. Swift itself cost $364m and launched in 2004. [1]

Swift was built to swing round quickly and catch sudden explosions in space, like exploding stars. It then points other telescopes at them. [1]

A busy Sun had made Swift sink faster than engineers expected. NASA paused its observations early this year and turned it to cut the drag of the thin air up there. [1]

Link was put together in under a year. It launched on 3 July. [1]

Soon after launch, two of the three spinning wheels Link used to turn itself failed. Then a bad valve sent it into a fast spin. [1]

Engineers got it back under control, but it no longer had enough fuel for the job, and the rescue was called off in August. [1]

In its last weeks Katalyst practised with Link's three robot arms, each about 1 metre long. It flew Link to within 12 to 15 km of Swift, close enough to take pictures. [1]

NASA and Katalyst say the lessons will go into future missions to repair or move satellites. [1][3]

Swift is expected to fall in early November. It is back to scanning the sky for the month or so it has left. [1]

NASA is working out how to fill the gap Swift leaves. [1]

Why it matters. Watch whether NASA names a way to cover Swift's job of spotting sudden explosions for other telescopes before Swift falls in early November. [1]

The four astronauts of Crew-13, NASA's next SpaceX flight to the International Space Station, landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday afternoon. [4] They are Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney of NASA, Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency and Sergey Teteryatnikov of Russia's space agency. [4][5] They were due to fly on 12 September, until a leaking valve in their Dragon capsule was found on the ground and replaced. [4] NASA and SpaceX held a readiness review on Friday, and launch is set for 11:10 a.m. US Eastern time on 1 October. [4]

Why it matters. Crew-13 will take over from Crew-12, whose four astronauts have lived on the station since mid-February and will fly home after a few days together. [5] Watkins, the commander, is the only one of the four who has been to space before. [4]

Ariane 6, Europe's big rocket, will not reach its goal of eight launches this year, according to Space Intel Report, a trade newsletter, as reported by Ars Technica. [9] A fault in its turbopumps, the pumps that force fuel into the engines, was found in ground tests in August. [9] Repairs may be possible at the launch site in French Guiana. [9] The European Space Agency acknowledged the problem and said it would adjust this year's launch plan. [9]

Why it matters. Amazon had been counting on Ariane 6 to launch its Amazon Leo internet satellites, because its other big rockets, New Glenn and Vulcan, also have technical problems. [9] European spacecraft waiting for a ride will be delayed too. [9]

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched a classified mission called USSF-385 for the US Space Force from Vandenberg in California on 26 September. [7] Its first stage landed on a ship in the Pacific about eight and a half minutes later, on its tenth flight. [7] The mission is thought to carry the third batch of Starshield satellites, a government version of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites. [8] The Space Force listed 23 satellites in orbit after each of the first two batches, which went up on 15 August and 10 September. [8]

Why it matters. It was SpaceX's third Space Force launch in 16 days, and Falcon 9 has now flown 108 times this year. [7] Its cargo is classified and its orbit is not public. SpaceX cut its video after the landing, as it usually does for these missions. [7]

Michael Creech of Firefly Aerospace, a rocket company, said in Paris that customers got used to low launch prices that did not support the companies selling them. [9] He said the industry will reset over the next six months to two years, as SpaceX plans to wind down its Falcon 9 rocket. [9] Rocket makers told Aviation Week that launch had been a race to the bottom on price per kilogram. [10] Blue Origin is rebuilding its launch pad after a test accident and aims to fly its New Glenn rocket again by year-end. [10]

Why it matters. Creech called what is happening now a shortage of launches, and satellite companies are scrambling for rides. [9][10]

Private investors put $23bn into space companies worldwide in the year to June, more than double the $9.7bn of a year earlier. [11] The figures come from a report by Relm Insurance and Seraphim, a British investment firm. [11] It says SpaceX's stock-market listing in June drew new investors in. [11] Money is going to firms that already sell working services, such as satellite pictures and what they show. [11] Making things in orbit is still at an early stage, held back by the few ways to launch and bring products home. [11]

Why it matters. Relm's Andrew Bonwick said customers do not buy space as such: they buy answers, like where their ships are or when to plant crops. [11]

Hubble Network, a Seattle company whose satellites pick up signals from ordinary Bluetooth chips, raised $200m at a value of $1.6bn, it said on 23 September. [12][13] It also opened its tracking service to all customers after a closed test. [12][13] It flies six satellites today and plans 54 more by the end of 2029, each able to track more than ten million devices. [13] A Bluetooth chip can cost under 50 cents, against up to $50 for a tracking chip that uses mobile phone networks. [13]

Why it matters. Cheap chips whose batteries last for years could let companies track goods anywhere, with satellites covering remote places and ground receivers covering cities. [13] The next satellites are also meant to report conditions such as heat, smoke and moisture, not only location. [13]

Google plans to launch a test satellite called MVP on 1 October, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg in California. [14] It carries enough computing power to answer simple AI questions from orbit. [14] It is the first step in Project Suncatcher, Google's plan to run AI data centres in space on power from the Sun. [14] The fridge-sized satellite, built at Planet Labs in San Francisco, passed a shaking test meant to copy a launch. [14]

Why it matters. Google's research chief James Manyika called the ground tests great, but said he still wondered what would happen in space. [14] The New York Times says it would be the first step towards space data centres by a major tech company. [14]

NASA named the four astronauts for Crew-14, the SpaceX flight after next to the International Space Station. [6] They are Kayla Barron and Chris Birch of NASA, Makoto Suwa of Japan's space agency and Arutyun Kiviryan of Russia's space agency. [6] The flight is planned for no earlier than spring 2027. [6] They will work on the station during its 75th and 76th long stays, which NASA calls expeditions. [6]

Why it matters. Crew-14 has more than a year to get ready. Crew-13's commander said her crew had trained together for over a year before this week. [4][6]

Outpost Technologies, a start-up building capsules the size of a shipping container that return to Earth, announced a service called Space Factories on 23 September. [15] Customers would rent a standard module to make things in orbit, such as medicines, chip materials and crystals, and get them back soon after. [15] Outpost will be its first user, making an optical fibre called StarFiber on a mission no earlier than 2028. [15] Fibre made in orbit can have fewer flaws caused by gravity and lose less signal, the company says. [15]

Why it matters. Outpost's president Amir Blachman said no company should have to build a spacecraft just to find out whether its product is better made in space. [15] He expects the first customers to be drug and life-science companies. [15]

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope found gas rich in oxygen, carbon and silicon flowing out of three galaxies seen as they were about 13.3 billion years ago. [17] At that time the universe was about 3% of its present age. [17] The team, led by Yongda Zhu of the University of Arizona, used each galaxy's own light as it shone through the gas around it. [17] The study was published on 24 September in the journal Nature Astronomy. [17]

Why it matters. It may explain why nobody has found the very first stars. Astronomers looked for them lighting clean hydrogen gas, and that gas was mixed with heavier elements sooner than they thought. [17]

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope finished its 200,000th trip around Earth on 19 September, more than 36 years after the space shuttle Discovery carried it up in April 1990. [18] It was designed to work for 15 years. [18] It has travelled more than 8 billion km and made more than 1.7 million observations. [18] At the milestone it was watching a galaxy cluster for a supernova whose light is bent by gravity on its way to Earth. [18]

Why it matters. No astronaut has repaired Hubble since 2009, and no visit is planned. [18] NASA expects it to keep working into the next decade, and it should not fall back into the atmosphere before the mid-2030s. [18]

Astra, a rocket company run by Chris Kemp, now aims to return to flight in early 2027 with its new Rocket 4.0, Kemp told the news site The Debrief. [9] The 18.9-metre rocket is meant to carry up to one tonne to low orbit, and Kemp says Astra will make hundreds a year. [9] In France, the start-up HyPrSpace pushed the first flight of its Baguette One from 2026 to 2027. [9] Baguette One is a 10-metre rocket that goes up and falls back without reaching orbit. [9]

Why it matters. Both slips come while satellite makers are short of rockets, as Firefly's warning shows. [9]

A launch site planned at Whalers Way, on the Eyre Peninsula in southern Australia, may not go ahead, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports. [9] The Native Vegetation Council refused to change a heritage agreement that has protected the land since 1987. [9] Southern Launch, the company behind the plan, has faced long opposition from conservation groups. [9] Birdlife Australia says the site is home to two endangered bird species, including the mallee whipbird. [9]

Why it matters. Southern Launch hoped to build an orbital launch complex there, so its plan now depends on land that a conservation agreement protects. [9]

Space Epoch, a Beijing rocket start-up, finished a funding round that brings what it raised in six months to more than 2.3 billion yuan, about $343m, Satnews reports. [9] The money will pay to test and assemble its Yuanxingzhe-1, a medium-sized rocket. [9] It can lift up to 13.8 tonnes to low orbit if nothing is recovered, and its first stage is designed to land upright. [9] A test vehicle landed upright at sea in May 2025, and a first orbital flight could come before the end of this year. [9]

Why it matters. A first stage that lands can be flown again, so if Yuanxingzhe-1 works, China gains another rocket that does not have to be thrown away after each launch. [9]

FUSE, a venture fund started in Seattle in 2020 to back software firms, led a seed round for Pluto Aerospace, an Indiana company building a reusable rocket for quick test flights. [16] It is FUSE's eighth space investment, and together they are worth more than $45m. [16] A quarter of the fund's money now goes to space, robotics and data-centre companies. [16] Its first space deal, in January 2024, was a $6m round for Quindar, which makes software to run spacecraft. [16]

Why it matters. FUSE's partners say its space companies help each other, for example Portal Space Systems talking to Starcloud about protecting data centres in orbit. [16]

Researchers at Empa, a Swiss materials lab, and the space supplier Beyond Gravity built a new mount that holds a satellite on top of a rocket. [19] Normal mounts are stiff, so they pass the rocket's up-and-down shaking straight into the satellite. [19] The new one turns sharp up-and-down shocks into spinning in a set of loose aluminium rings, which soaks up the energy. [19] It has passed computer and lab tests, and Beyond Gravity has applied for a patent. [19]

Why it matters. A satellite that is shaken less needs less strengthening, which saves weight and could let more fragile instruments fly. [19] It may be a while before it is in regular use. [19]

An asteroid found in 1981 in the belt between Mars and Jupiter is now called Alyankovic, after the comic singer 'Weird Al' Yankovic. [20] The name was in a notice from the International Astronomical Union on 9 September. [20] Planetary scientist Allison McGraw, who backed the nomination, gave Yankovic a plaque backstage in Tucson on 20 September. [20] He joins Elvis, Freddie Mercury, Aretha Franklin and Dolly Parton, who all have asteroids named after them. [20]

Why it matters. Asteroid names have traditionally come from myths, astronomers and other scientists. [20] A growing list now honours musicians, including all four Beatles. [20]