Space, in brief

SpaceX is due to launch a robot cargo ship called Dragon to the International Space Station on Tuesday 13 October at 10:33 UTC, from Cape Canaveral in Florida. [1][2]

The flight is called CRS-35, because it is SpaceX's 35th supply run under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contract, the deal under which NASA pays companies to carry cargo to the station. [1][2]

It carries about 2,860 kg of cargo. [1][3]

In its open back section ride the last two iROSA solar arrays, panels that roll out flat, designed by Redwire, a space-parts maker, and built by Boeing. [3]

Six are already fitted, each making 20 to 28 kilowatts. [3] NASASpaceflight, a spaceflight news site, says the station will get 20 to 30% more power once the last two are on. [3]

The extra power matters because the station's original solar wings, launched with it, are old and make less power than they did. [3]

The arrays still have to be fitted during spacewalks, and no date has been given for those. [3]

Dragon also carries a foam case to bring home a broken joint from Canadarm2, the station's big robot arm, so engineers can find out why it failed. [2][3]

Astronauts took that joint off the arm on a spacewalk on 30 June. [2]

One experiment, LambdaVision-1, will build artificial retinas one thin layer at a time, in the hope that weightlessness makes the layers more even. [3]

Others will grow small models of human heart tissue, make glass from unusual ingredients, and study brain cells linked to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. [1][3]

Dragon is the only cargo ship that can bring things back down, so it will also return a spacesuit for repair and parts of the station's water system. [1][3]

If all goes well it docks on Thursday 15 October at about 15:00 UTC, at the port left empty when the Crew-12 astronauts flew home on 8 October. [2][3]

Why it matters. The next steps are Tuesday's launch and Thursday's docking; after that, the station's power gain depends on spacewalks to fit the arrays, which have not been given a date. [3]

NASA has opened a $150,000 contest, the Lunar Grounding Challenge, for ways to stop static electricity building up on astronauts on the Moon. [4] Its computer models suggest charge can build up on spacesuits when they rub against things and from charged gas around them. [4] The problem gets much worse in craters the Sun never reaches. [4] A charged astronaut touching the lander could make a spark that damages a suit or starts a fire in the cabin's oxygen. [4] Entries are due on 15 January. [4]

Why it matters. NASA hopes to land astronauts near the Moon's south pole in 2028, on its fourth or fifth Artemis Moon mission. [4] The fix has to be small and light, and work through four moonwalks over ten days. [4]

Astronomers led by Sarah Ketchum of the University of Michigan found that a giant black hole flared in X-rays in February 2023, its strongest flare on record. [5] The black hole sits at the centre of the galaxy NGC 1275, the brightest in the Perseus cluster of thousands of galaxies. [5] The team pulled its X-ray light out of 18 years of readings from NASA's Swift satellite. [5] They found signs that its radio jets brightened about 300 days after the flare. [5]

Why it matters. The delay would be the time hot charged gas takes to travel out along the jet, and that helps show how black holes affect star-making in their galaxies. [5] Ketchum calls the evidence tentative, because Swift checked this galaxy only now and then. [5]

A team led by Karl Hasenstein of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette has published how water behaves in Moon-strength gravity, in the journal Microgravity Science and Technology. [6] Their test flew in February 2025 on an uncrewed New Shepard capsule from Blue Origin, a US rocket company, which spun itself to make Moon gravity for about two minutes. [6] In 18 small chambers, water, salty water and a glycerol mix climbed higher up the walls than they would on Earth. [6] The glycerol mix spread best, so it might help wet dry Moon soil. [6]

Why it matters. Moon soil pushes water away at the top and drains it away lower down, which can leave plant roots either dry or sitting in stale water. [6] The researchers estimate a crew of six would need 650 square metres of crops. [6]

A Canadian student team flew three small grinding machines on parabolic flights, plane flights that give about 20 seconds of Moon-strength gravity at a time. [7] The flights were on a National Research Council of Canada jet, and the results were published on 9 October in npj Space Exploration. [7] Two of the machines ground a Moon-like test soil into finer powder, but did less of it in Moon gravity than on the ground. [7] The third, a blade mill, made no real difference in either. [7]

Why it matters. Fine powder is needed to pull oxygen and metal out of Moon soil and to build with it, so a Moon base must plan for slower grinding. [7] The authors say it is the first such test, with only two samples per machine and a test soil, not real Moon soil. [7]

The LBT YP Project, a team using the Large Binocular Telescope, has published a new count of the helium made in the Big Bang. [8] It measured gas in 54 galaxies with very few heavy elements, because stars add helium over time and these galaxies show little sign of that. [8] It found helium was 24.58% of the first matter by weight. [8] Measurements of the Big Bang's leftover glow by the Planck satellite gave 24.67%. [8]

Why it matters. Two different ways of measuring giving almost the same answer is strong support for the Big Bang model. [8] The team also worked out that about 90% of the helium around today is from the Big Bang and 10% was made later in stars. [8]

Nishikant Dubey, a member of India's ruling BJP who chairs a parliamentary committee, said on 11 October that his committee had studied the security challenges Starlink poses. [9] He said India does not change its security policy under pressure from social media, after Elon Musk attacked the delay. [9] Dubey did not say what the risks were. [9] Starlink, SpaceX's satellite internet service, got its Indian licences in 2025 but still cannot start selling. [9]

Why it matters. India's communications ministry says security checks on all three licensed satellite operators are still under way. [9] Reliance Jio, an Indian phone company that signed a deal to sell Starlink, says it is also building its own satellite internet system. [9]

SpaceX launched 27 Starlink internet satellites from Vandenberg in California on Monday evening, US time, at 00:28 UTC on Tuesday. [10] The rocket's first stage, booster B1088, was flying for the 20th time. [10] It landed on a ship at sea about eight and a half minutes after launch. [10] The satellites were to be released into an orbit about 266 km up. [10]

Why it matters. By NASASpaceflight's count, today's cargo flight will be the 113th Falcon 9 launch of 2026. [3] Its booster is on its eighth flight. [2]

The Southern Taurids, a meteor shower, are due to peak around 14 October, with about five meteors an hour in a dark sky. [11] A second branch, the Northern Taurids, starts on 20 October. [11] Both come from dust and rock around Comet Encke, a comet about 4.8 km wide that circles the Sun every 3.25 years. [11] Their meteors are slow and sometimes very bright, which is why they are called the Halloween fireballs. [11]

Why it matters. The best chance of a fireball is the night of 4 to 5 November, when the Moon will barely be in the sky. [11] Years with many fireballs came in 2008, 2015 and 2022, and the next one is not expected until 2032. [11]