Space, in brief

The FAA, the US regulator that licenses rocket launches, cleared SpaceX's Starship Flight 14 on 26 September and announced it the next day. [1]

Spaceflight Now noted before the decision that it would be the first orbital licence the FAA has given for anything as big as Starship's 52-metre upper stage. [5]

Liftoff from Starbase in south Texas is set for 12:15 GMT on Monday 28 September, in a 75-minute window. [3]

All 13 earlier Starship flights followed paths planned to fall back to Earth. Flight 14 is its first try at orbit. [2][4]

The ship's own engines fire from 2 minutes 22 seconds to 8 minutes 11 seconds after liftoff. [3] It is then on the same safe path as earlier flights, heading for the Indian Ocean, while controllers check its health. [1]

It will fire into orbit only once controllers are sure the parts it needs to come back down have working back-ups. [2]

That burn starts 25 minutes 17 seconds after liftoff and lasts 19 seconds. It should leave the ship circling about 275 km up. [1][3]

Ten minutes later it is to start releasing 26 of SpaceX's new Starlink V3 internet satellites. [1] SpaceX says together they add ten times the capacity of one Falcon 9 launch of its older ones. [3]

Twenty V3 satellites flew on Flight 13 in July, but on a falling path, so they soon came back down. [1][6]

After six orbits, one engine fires for 11 seconds to bring the ship down into the Pacific off Chile, a first for Starship, about 10 hours after launch. [1][6]

If the ship could not make that burn, it could fall out of control, and its heat shield and size could let large pieces reach the ground, Spaceflight Now reported. [5]

NASA hired SpaceX in 2021 to land astronauts on the Moon with Starship, and a crewed landing is planned for 2028. [1][2]

Why it matters. Watch for the 19-second burn about 25 minutes after liftoff: if the checks before it fail, the ship stays on its old path and falls into the Indian Ocean. [1]

Two Pakistani pilots, Zeeshan Ali and Khurram Daud, have trained for months at China's astronaut centre in Beijing, Pakistan's space agency told Reuters. [8] One will fly to Tiangong, China's space station, as the first foreigner China has carried. [8] The stay will be about a week, against roughly six months for China's own crews. [8] China has not said who or when, and a final choice is expected in mid-to-late October. [8] Chinese institutes picked four Pakistani experiments, on food and climate, from more than 300 proposals. [8]

Why it matters. Pakistan has no rocket or crew capsule of its own, so its astronaut rides a Chinese craft, trained by Chinese instructors, and speaks Mandarin in orbit. [8] Citizens of about 50 countries have flown in space, but only Russia, the US and China have launched their own crews. [8]

The FCC, the US regulator that licenses satellites' radio signals, votes on 30 September on a draft order about environmental reviews, Payload reports. [11] The order says space operations are not 'major federal actions'. [11] That phrase is what triggers a review under NEPA, a US law that makes agencies study a project's effects before approving it. [11] Satellite licences have been exempt from FCC environmental review since 1986, and the order would put them outside the law entirely. [11] The FCC argues that because no country can own space, effects there fall outside the law. [11]

Why it matters. The FAA proposed in July to waive NEPA and 12 other laws, including the Endangered Species Act, for commercial launch licences, and received more than 3,200 comments. [11] Payload notes the effects of that rule would fall mostly on private sites such as SpaceX's Starbase. [11]

Juice, the European Space Agency's probe to Jupiter's icy moons, passes 8,640 km above Earth on Monday 28 September, closest at 13:45 central European summer time. [10] Earth's pull will change its speed and bend its path, setting up one last Earth flyby in January 2029. [10] It launched in 2023, then swung past the Moon and Earth in 2024 and Venus in 2025. [9] It is due at Jupiter in July 2031. [10] Only one small course correction, four weeks out, was needed to line up this pass. [10]

Why it matters. The team will use the pass to calibrate Juice's instruments on Earth and the Moon before they are needed at Jupiter. [10] For about 21 hours it runs through Earth's shadow on battery power, so some instruments are switched off. [10]

Starlink, SpaceX's internet satellite network, moved its satellites nearly 35,000 times a month to dodge possible crashes in the period to May 2026, Ars Technica reports. [12] That is one move every 75 seconds, up from about 500 a month five years ago. [12] A move does not mean a near miss: SpaceX moves when the chance of a crash reaches 3 in 10 million, against NASA's standard of 1 in 10,000. [12] About 17,000 working satellites are now in orbit, some 11,000 of them Starlink's. [12]

Why it matters. The European Space Agency's yearly report on space junk, released this month, projects crashes in orbit rising faster and faster if launches keep growing, even if operators follow good practice. [12] Ars expects working in orbit to cost more, in dodging equipment, staff and fuel. [12]

Scientists led by Maria Schonbachler at ETH Zurich in Switzerland measured iron, titanium and chromium in half a gram of the asteroid Bennu. [13] It came from the 120 grams NASA's OSIRIS-REx brought back in 2023. [13] The iron and titanium were evenly mixed, which points to fine dust rather than lumps. [13] Water-bearing minerals suggest Bennu's parent formed near the line where water froze, around where Jupiter is now. [13] The study was published on 23 September in Science Advances. [13]

Why it matters. Bennu's make-up matches Ryugu, the asteroid Japan's Hayabusa2 mission sampled, and a rare kind of meteorite, so all three may share a birthplace. [13] Schonbachler said Bennu may offer the best glimpse yet of the mix the rocky planets were built from. [13]

The Daytime Sextantids meteor shower is active from 22 September to 13 October, as Earth passes through a trail of dust whose source has not been pinned down. [14] Its meteors seem to come from a point about 30 degrees from the Sun, so most are lost in daylight and are easier to catch by radio. [14] Up to five may be seen in the hour before dawn around the peak. [14] Forecasts of the peak differ: 27 September in one listing, and 30 September to 4 October from Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society. [14]

Why it matters. Lunsford says the meteors that are seen skim the top of the air and leave trails lasting several seconds. [14] A bright Moon will hide the faintest of them. [14]