Space, in brief

Skyrora, a British rocket start-up, is now tentatively aiming to reach orbit in 2030. [1] A year ago it told Payload, a space-business news site, that it might try as early as late 2026. [1]

This week it fired a smaller test version of its first-stage engine for 45 seconds. [1] The data will help it design the full-size engine, which pushes with 70 kN, about the weight of seven tonnes. [1]

Its second suborbital rocket, Skylark L2, has been ready to fly since 2022. [1] A suborbital rocket goes up to space and falls straight back, without circling the Earth.

Skyrora has held a UK launch licence since August 2025, but it says the problem is launch pads. [1] SaxaVord, the spaceport being built in northern Scotland, is still not finished. [1]

SaxaVord has opened its doors to two German rocket start-ups, HyImpulse and Rocket Factory Augsburg, and both are setting up there. [1]

HyImpulse says it now holds its UK launch operator licence. [3] It aims to fly its SR75 suborbital rocket from SaxaVord next spring, and to try for orbit later. [3]

Skyrora's chief operating officer, Jack-James Marlow, says the slow pace is deliberate. [1] The company is keeping its number of staff fixed and stretching its timeline instead. [1]

Marlow says the British government and British investors now have less appetite for paying for a home-grown rocket. [1]

Skyrora has raised about $65.9m since 2017, according to PitchBook, a company-data firm. [1] It expects to need about double that to reach orbit. [1]

It pays part of its way by selling parts it makes, renting out its test stands and offering its 3D printers to other industries. [1]

Skyrora wants to avoid what happened to Orbex and Virgin Orbit, an earlier launch company. [1] Both raised large sums, grew past their own income, and went bankrupt. [1]

Orbex, a Scottish rocket maker that collapsed earlier this year, has now been bought by Omnidea, a Portuguese company that makes rocket parts. [2] Omnidea gets Orbex's factory in Scotland, its designs and an initial team of its former staff. [2]

Orbex's own rocket, Prime, never got near a launch pad, and Omnidea is not reviving it. [2] It plans to use the Scottish site to build rocket structures and electronics. [2]

Isar Aerospace, a German start-up founded a year after Skyrora, reached orbit for the first time in September. [1]

Why it matters. Watch whether HyImpulse flies from SaxaVord next spring, and whether Skyrora gets a launch pad there before its money for the 2030 attempt is raised. [1][3]

Blue Origin, a US rocket company, has asked the US aviation regulator, the FAA, to let it launch its big New Glenn rocket up to 50 times a year. [2] Its pad at Cape Canaveral in Florida is now allowed 12. [2] The request is in a draft environmental study released this week. [2] It covers 50 landings of the first stage on a ship in the Atlantic and up to 100 engine test firings. [2] New Glenn has flown three times, and one exploded on the pad in May. [2]

Why it matters. On 1 October SpaceX flew three rockets in under 13 hours from pads in Florida and California. [2] A second company able to fly often from one pad would give satellite makers another way up.

The European Space Agency has chosen two teams, led by Airbus Defence and Space and by OHB, to run separate studies of a future European-led space station. [7] It would circle the Earth in low orbit. [7] The International Space Station has had people aboard since 2000. [19]

Why it matters. NASA and its partners plan to run the ISS until at least 2030, so these studies are about what comes after it. [19][7] Two studies side by side let the agency compare designs before it pays for one.

The US government has picked Lt Gen David Miller of the US Space Force to lead US Space Command, the US military's command for space. [8] Miller is now the Space Force's deputy in charge of strategy, plans and requirements, and would get a fourth star. [8] SpaceNews had reported, citing unnamed sources, that he was expected to be chosen. [9] The US Senate has received the nomination and must confirm him before he takes over. [8]

Why it matters. Space Command, set up in 2019, was the last new US military command until the US Defense Department announced one for drones and robots on 30 September. [20] Its new leader cannot take over until the US Senate votes. [8]

Rheinmetall, a German defence company, and Argotec, an Italian space company, have launched the first satellite built under a new partnership between them. [14] It is designed to help armed forces spot activity on the ground that could signal an air attack is coming. [14]

Why it matters. Here a German defence company and an Italian space company are building military satellites themselves. [14] It sits alongside a European station study and a Polish radar satellite this week. [7][15]

In February 2023 a detector called KM3NeT, still being built off the coast of Sicily, caught a neutrino about 35 times more energetic than any seen before. [4] A neutrino is a tiny particle that passes through almost anything. A paper published on 28 September says it may have come from a tiny black hole exploding inside a fifth dimension. [4] Co-author Dieter Lust says this would explain why no light arrived with it. [4] Ignacio Taboada of Georgia Tech says that is a lot to hang on one neutrino. [4]

Why it matters. Such tiny black holes, if they exist, could explain some of the dark matter that holds galaxies together. [4] For now there is one particle and several competing ideas, including a more ordinary one from cosmic rays. [4]

MEGATRON, the most detailed computer model yet of the early universe, has produced its first major results, published in four papers in the Open Journal of Astrophysics. [6] It follows a young galaxy from clean hydrogen and helium gas as its first stars form and die. [6] Those first stars made heavier elements such as carbon and oxygen and scattered them when they exploded. [6] The model links what the James Webb Space Telescope sees in very early galaxies with traces of those elements in ancient stars in our own galaxy. [6]

Why it matters. The results suggest some simpler models underestimate how much starlight and changing gas shape young galaxies. [6] Martin Rey of the University of Bath says the model lets scientists test competing ideas about the first stars. [6]

Pioneer Labs, a nonprofit start-up, said last month it had engineered the first microbe for Mars, a changed version of a bacterium called Cupriavidus necator. [5] Its chief, Erika DeBenedictis, called it a first step towards making Mars more like Earth, and her post was viewed more than two million times. [5] Scientific American asked researchers, and Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center said the microbe is not very new. [5] He said it can only grow in a sealed tank, where it would turn Martian soil, water and carbon dioxide into plastic for 3D-printed houses. [5]

Why it matters. Two other researchers called the science good but said the Mars claim goes beyond what was shown. [5] Any release on Mars would also need approval under rules meant to keep Earth life off other planets. [5]

The US Department of Energy announced $400m for basic research in energy science, fusion and nuclear physics. [21] It comes a year after the Trump administration cut or paused hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants. [21] The money is for work on Earth, but it covers nuclear physics that space projects also draw on, Payload notes. [21] At a Payload event in Houston last week, NASA's chief Jared Isaacman said NASA should put billions a year into nuclear power. [21]

Why it matters. Isaacman wants nuclear work funded on the same scale as NASA's spending on chemical rockets. [21] Grants for work on Earth do not pay for that by themselves. [21]

NorthStar Earth and Space, a start-up whose satellites watch other objects in orbit so operators can avoid crashes, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on 2 October. [10] Its share price fell straight away. [10] It got onto the exchange late on 1 October by merging with Viking, a company already listed there for that purpose. [10]

Why it matters. A young company that sells shares to pay for its work needs buyers who will pay more, not less. A price that falls on day one makes the next sale of shares harder.

Momentus, a US space company, says its Vigoride-7 spacecraft flew up close to another spacecraft on its own in a test. [11] It found its way using low-cost sensors, in sunlight and in shadow. [11][12] A small NASA test satellite, R5-S10, photographed Vigoride-7 during the trials. [12] Momentus says the sensors are meant for future missions that service satellites in orbit. [12]

Why it matters. Every job on a satellite in orbit, such as a repair, starts by flying close to it without crashing. Cheaper sensors would make that kind of work cheaper to offer.

The United Arab Emirates aims to finish testing its asteroid probe this month. [13] The probe, built at the Technology Innovation Institute, is meant to travel to the asteroid belt and land on an asteroid called 269 Justitia. [13] It has passed its shaking tests, which copy the violence of a launch, and is now being heated and cooled again and again as it would be in space. [13] Full performance tests come next. [13]

Why it matters. A fault found in these tests can still be fixed on the ground. Once the probe is in space, nobody can reach it.

Eycore, a Polish space company, has shown the first pictures of the Earth's surface taken by its main satellite, EYCORE-1. [15] The satellite uses radar, which bounces radio waves off the ground, so it can see at night and through cloud. [15] The company says the images show its radar works as designed. [15]

Why it matters. A Polish company now has its own radar satellite in orbit. [15] It is one of several European companies this week showing hardware of their own. [14][15]

Space Network, a US start-up, says it has a $50m binding order from a company in the Philippines that builds renewable-energy projects. [16] The buyer is paying for internet capacity from a network of satellites Space Network plans to build. [16] The satellites in that network are to be owned by different investors rather than by one company. [16]

Why it matters. A binding order is a promise of money the start-up can point to before any satellite is built. The buyer, in turn, is waiting for a service that does not exist yet. [16]

Quantum Space, a US company building spacecraft that can move around in orbit for military and business customers, has hired All Points Logistics to prepare its first one for launch. [17] All Points will provide clean rooms, fuelling help and transport to the rocket at Vandenberg, a launch base in California. [17] The craft, called Prime, has passed a design review and is due to launch in the second half of 2027. [17]

Why it matters. Prime is a test for two later designs, Ranger and Scout. [17] It will test how well the spacecraft moves, carries other customers' instruments and collects data. [17]

Viridian Space, a California start-up, won a $225,000 NASA contract announced on 30 September. [18] With the University of Washington it will improve how fins and flaps are designed for satellites flying in very low orbits. [18] Down there, the thin air still pushes on a satellite, so surfaces like an aircraft's can help steer it. [18]

Why it matters. The contract is small, but it is NASA paying to learn how to fly lower. [18] Lower satellites sit closer to what they photograph, and the thin air there slowly drags them down.