Spaceflight Daily Report, Friday 2nd October 2026

Crew-12 pose for a portrait ahead of their departure next week. Image credit: NASA/Anil Menon

International Space Station Activities

The crew of the SpaceX Crew-13 mission, having docked to the forward port of the International Space Station's Harmony module late last night, opened the hatch and joined the rest of the station's crew at 0119 UTC this morning. Jessica Watkins, Luke Delaney, Joshua Kutryk, and Sergey Teteryatnikov are expected to spend around five months aboard the station. The station's crew were off duty for most of today, as they will be working over the weekend. With the arrival of Crew-13, the preceding Crew-12 mission (Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, Sophie Adenot, and Andrey Fedyaev) will make preparations to head back to Earth, possibly as soon as Monday. The crew of the Soyuz MS-29 mission (Pyotr Dubrov, Anna Kikina, and Anil Menon) will remain on the station along with Crew-13. Meir is expected to pass command of the station to Dubrov on Sunday. [Source: NASA]

Launch of NROL-97

SpaceX launched a Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 0354 UTC, or 2354 local time (EDT). This mission was designated NROL-97, and it was carrying a classified payload for the United States National Reconnaissance Office. This was the 14th flight of the Falcon Heavy. It was the 2nd and 4th flight of side boosters B1104 and B1072, which each performed a boostback burn and returned to land at Cape Canaveral's landing zones 1 and 2. It was the first and only flight of the expendable central booster, B1106. [Source: SpaceX]

UPDATE: North Korea launched a ballistic missile that reached space on this day. See 13th October 2026 for details.

UPDATE: UARX Space's OSSIE satellite deployed three payloads into orbit on this day. See 13th October 2026 for details.