Space, in brief

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the US military's own spy agency, published an open report on threats to the United States in space on Monday, 26 October. [1]

It says China already has several lasers on the ground that can disrupt, weaken or damage satellites in low orbit. [1] Low orbit is the band of space below about 2,000 km. [2]

By the late 2020s, the DIA says, China may put directed-energy weapons, beams such as lasers, in space itself. [1] It may also build stronger ones on the ground that can reach satellites much higher up. [1]

The DIA says China's military likely sees these beams as ideal weapons against satellites, because they can switch one off for a while or for good. [1] One use is to dazzle a satellite's camera so it cannot see. [1]

The report also carries the first sharp public picture of China's robot spaceplane. [1] A US-owned imaging satellite, run by the company then called Maxar and now called Vantor, took it in 2024; the DIA did not say when or from how far. [1]

The spaceplane looks much like the X-37B, a small robot shuttle flown by the US Space Force, with wings, cargo doors and a dark heat shield. [1] China has flown four missions since 2020, the longest about nine months, and the fourth has been up since February. [1]

Tracking data studied by Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer who keeps a public record of spaceflights, show the spaceplane let a small satellite go in June and caught it again in July. [1] It did the same again in August and September. [1]

The DIA also lists a Chinese robotic arm that could pull a spacecraft out of orbit, and TJS, a growing fleet of Chinese satellites that routinely move close to foreign ones. [1] China refuelled a satellite last year about 36,000 km up, which no other country has done above low orbit. [1]

On Russia, US intelligence officials say it wants to put a nuclear weapon in space. [1] Its Nivelir system is designed to fire objects from one satellite into another, and Russia's military simulated an attack with it in 2020. [1]

Earlier this month a Russian satellite came within tens of metres of a radar satellite owned by ICEYE, a Finnish company whose pictures help Ukraine, US officials said. [1][2]

The United States has such tools too. [1] Its Space Force flies inspector satellites high above Earth, and last month the Air Force Secretary, Troy Meink, said the US Defense Department has weapons in space, the first country to say so. [1]

Why it matters. The next marker is the landing of China's fourth spaceplane, in orbit since February, which will show whether its flights are growing past the nine months of the longest so far. [1]

Astronomers at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a new telescope that photographs the whole southern sky, announced a likely dwarf planet on Tuesday, called 2026 ED138. [4] A search program by Matthew Holman and Kevin Napier of the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics found it among billions of Rubin measurements. [4] It is about 46 times as far from the Sun as Earth, beyond Pluto at about 40. [4] It is 600 to 1,500 km across, and older pictures going back to 2016 helped trace its path. [4]

Why it matters. Only five dwarf planets are recognised now: Pluto, Ceres, Eris, Haumea and Makemake. [4] To join them it must be shown to be round, which needs more observations, and it stayed hidden because it sits in a patch of sky crowded with stars. [4]

Astroscale, a Japanese company that builds craft to catch space junk, says the same tools could guard important satellites from attack. [2] Alex Godfrey, its head of defence, told Space.com a guard craft could be ready to launch in under three years. [2] He said one would cost about 1% of the value of a fleet like Skynet, the UK's 8.4 billion pound military communications satellites. [2] He wants European countries to share a patrol, each guarding allies' satellites near its own. [2]

Why it matters. Astroscale has signed no contract for it yet, and the UK government promises money for this kind of work only from 2030. [2] The pitch follows the Russian satellite's close pass at ICEYE's in the lead story. [2]

The European Defence Fund chose OSMOS X, a French start-up, to lead a study of how to answer threats in orbit. [3] The study runs 30 months, is worth about 4.5 million euros, and joins seven groups, including ones from France, Germany, Poland and Italy. [3] The goal is a craft that can approach a hostile satellite, grab it and weld on a jammer or an engine, without making debris. [3] It ends with a design on paper; nothing flies under it. [3]

Why it matters. OSMOS X has not flown anything yet, and its first test flight is due before the end of next year. [3] Its chief says four such craft could reach any spot on the high ring of satellites over the equator within two days. [3]

Himera, a Ukrainian maker of military radios, and GomSpace, a Danish satellite builder, said on 27 October that their Obria Nano satellite is working in orbit and being tested. [5] It launched on 1 October on SpaceX's Transporter-18 shared ride. [5] The pair plan a network of satellites giving Ukraine communications under its own control. [5] Five days earlier ICEYE and Nokia signed a letter with Ukraine's defence ministry to explore a national satellite internet network. [5]

Why it matters. Ukraine's forces lost drone links this month when Starlink, SpaceX's satellite internet, and Starshield, its military version, were limited. [5] Neither European project is expected to replace Starlink, and Himera and GomSpace gave no size, cost or satellite count. [5]

Virgin Galactic, a US space-tourism company, planned to fly D1, the first of its new Delta spaceplanes, from its factory in Arizona to Spaceport America in New Mexico on 28 October. [6] D1 rides under Eve, a four-engine carrier plane that releases the spaceplane at about 45,000 feet, or 13.7 km. [6] Flight tests start later this year. [6] The company now aims to begin paid flights with D1 early in the April-to-June quarter of 2027. [6]

Why it matters. A second spaceplane should start paid flights around the middle of 2027. [6] The company says its new timetable leaves extra time to test the spaceplanes' flight software. [6]

MP Space, an Australian start-up set up in 2024 by two former Tesla engineers, raised 23 million Australian dollars, about 16.1 million US dollars. [7] Its batteries flew for the first time last week on SpaceX's Bandwagon-5 shared launch, and it says it has orders for more than 500 spacecraft. [7] It says they cost a fifth to a third less than most others. [7] It plans to make about 5,000 parts a year by the end of next year. [7]

Why it matters. Satellite makers now mostly choose between slow, costly suppliers and building their own power systems, the company says. [7] It also wants to make power parts about ten times bigger for the larger satellites that Starship, SpaceX's giant new rocket, would carry. [7]

A new study in The Astrophysical Journal, led by Claire Williams of UCLA, suggests crashes between stars could explain why giant black holes appear so early. [8] The James Webb Space Telescope has found some only 400 to 500 million years after the Big Bang, sooner than theory expects. [8] In the team's computer runs of crowded young star clusters, stars merged again and again into one huge star. [8] Such a star may collapse into a big black hole when it dies. [8]

Why it matters. The study also links the crashes to Little Red Dots, small, red objects Webb sees in the early universe that may be black holes hidden in gas. [8] It is one proposed answer, and no explanation is widely agreed yet. [8]

Astronomers led by Nicola Gentile Fusillo of the University of Trieste found two separate rings of gas around WD J1328-1450, a white dwarf. [9] A white dwarf is the small, dense core left when a star like the Sun dies. [9] The rings are split by a gap and spin at different speeds. [9] They are probably shaped by two bodies, one a few kilometres wide and one perhaps the size of Pluto or the Moon. [9]

Why it matters. The inner body must be very strong inside, or the dead star's pull would tear it apart. [9] One of the team says the system is a glimpse of what planets like ours may look like after their star dies. [9]

Sunita Williams, a US astronaut, spent 286 days on the International Space Station after Boeing's Starliner capsule had technical failures on what was meant to be an eight-day test flight in 2024. [10] Speaking in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, she said recovering from that trip took almost two years. [10] After an earlier mission it took one. [10] She now advises Vast, a US company that plans to launch Haven-1, a private space station, in early 2027. [10]

Why it matters. She said she was about ten years older than on her previous flight, and getting used to gravity again was tough. [10] The space station is due to close in 2030 or 2031, and companies like Vast want to replace it. [10]