Spaceflight Daily Report, Wednesday 28th October 2026

Eve and Apeiron in flight. Image credit: Virgin Galactic.

International Space Station Activities

Pyotr Dubrov (MS-29, Roscosmos), Anna Kikina (MS-29, Roscosmos), and Sergey Teteryatnikov (Crew-13, Roscosmos) had a light duty day, during which they familiarised themselves with the procedures for tomorrow's NASA/CSA spacewalk. Anil Menon (MS-29, NASA) and Joshua Kutryk (Crew-13, CSA) also spent today preparing for their spacewalk, inspecting their spacesuits and calling engineers on the ground for final reviews of procedures. Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney (both Crew-13, NASA) also finalised preparations for their parts in the spacewalk, where they will assist the spacewalkers and operate the Canadarm2 robotic arm from inside the station. [Source: NASA]

Virgin Galactic Announce Spaceship Name

Following a public vote, Virgin Galactic have announced that their first Delta-class Spaceship will be named Apeiron, a Greek word meaning "boundless". They seem to have dropped the VSS prefix they liked to use with their previous vehicles. Today, Apeiron was mated to the carrier aircraft Eve and flown from the company's factory in Arizona to Spaceport America in New Mexico. The company says that the first commercial spaceflights have slipped to early Q2 2027. [Source: Virgin Galactic]

Other notes

• The launch of Amazon Leo LV-01 aboard a Vulcan Centaur has been scheduled for no earlier than 13th November. This is Vulcan's return to flight after being grounded in February by a recurring issue with its SRBs. [Source: ULA]
• Vietnam have become the 78th country to join the Artemis Accords. [Source: US Department of State]
• The second stage and thrust module of Rocket Lab's Neutron rocket have arrived at Wallops in Virginia for testing ahead of its first flight, currently aiming for 2027. [Source: Rocket Lab]
• The launches of Starlink Group 15-18, USSF-432, and Starlink Group 15-21 aboard Falcon 9 rockets have each been pushed into the early mornings of the days following their original launch windows, to 31st October, 3rd November, and 6th November respectively. [Source: SpaceX]
• The second launch of Kinetica 2 is expected no earlier than 3rd November. [Source: Next Spaceflight]
• The launch of South Korea's military rocket, normally transliterated as "Mir", has been scheduled for no earlier than 4th November. Its previous launch attempt in June was called off. [Source: JTBC]
• The second launch attempt of the Ceres 2 has been scheduled for no earlier than 4th November. The previous attempt in January ended in failure. [Source: Next Spaceflight]
• UPDATE: A Russian sub-orbital missile test was launched on this day. See 29th October for details.