Spaceflight Daily Report, Monday 28th September 2026

Starship Flight 14 lifts off. Image credit: SpaceX.

Launch of Starship Flight 14

SpaceX launched a Starship from Starbase in Texas at 1248 UTC, or 0748 local time (CDT). This was the 14th flight of Starship, the company's fully reusable super-heavy launch vehicle, though neither the booster stage nor the upper stage were due to be recovered today. This was the first Starship flight to achieve a full, non-transatmospheric orbit, despite several engine failures. The booster stage lost one engine on ascent and one engine during boostback, before making a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico and self-destructing. The upper stage "ship" also lost one engine, causing mission control to briefly call off the orbital insertion burn, but that decision was reversed and the ship achieved orbit with its five remaining engines. Once in orbit, the ship deployed Starlink Group 31-1, a batch of 26 new, larger V3 satellites for the constellation. The ship also began shedding heat shield tiles in orbit, posing a potential debris risk, and for undisclosed reasons SpaceX decided to de-orbit it after just three hours rather than the planned ten. It survived orbital re-entry and made a controlled splashdown in the Pacific Ocean before self-destructing. [Source: SpaceX]

Juice Earth Flyby

The European Space Agency's Juice probe (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) performed a gravity assist manoeuvre around Earth today, making its closest approach at 1145 UTC at a distance of 8640km. This is the mission's second flyby of Earth, and it will encounter our planet once more in January 2029 in order to build up enough velocity to reach Jupiter in mid-2031. It will then tour the Jovian system for three years before settling into an orbit around Ganymede. [Source: ESA]

International Space Station Activities

The crew of the Crew-12 mission (Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, Sophie Adenot, and Andrey Fedyaev), who are returning to Earth next week, tested specialised suits for reacclimatising their circulatory systems to Earth's gravity; this is a different suit to the one Fedyaev has been testing for the past few days, which he also continued testing today. Meir, Hathaway, and Anil Menon performed blood and medical research. Adenot performed exercise research and taught Menon how to use the new European exercise machine. Pyotr Dubrov performed semiconductor research and Anna Kikina took photographs of the Earth. [Source: NASA]

Boeing Starliner Updates

As rumoured a couple of weeks ago, NASA have provided some updates on Boeing Starliner. Four crewed missions to the International Space Station are planned using the spacecraft, though the agency has not committed to a fifth and sixth just yet. The first uncrewed test flight of Starliner since the failure of the CFT-1 mission in 2024 is expected no earlier than December 2026, and will be called Starliner-1. The following crewed mission, called Starliner-2, is aiming to launch in mid 2028 and will be commanded by NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg. The reason for the significant delay is related to certifying the redesigned thrusters for human spaceflight; the most severe and life-threatening malfunctions during the CFT-1 mission were the failures of multiple thrusters. This will be a regular ISS crew rotation rather than a test flight, with the three other crew members to be announced at a later date. Since the Atlas V rocket is no longer in production, Starliner will be certified for launch aboard United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur rocket, though there are still a handful of Atlas V rockets in storage and one of those will be used for the Starliner-1 mission. NASA is not currently planning to extend their fleet of crewed ISS vehicles to any other companies beyond SpaceX and Boeing. [Source: NASA]

Spaceflight Daily Report, Saturday 5th September 2026

Image credit: Isar Aerospace

Launch of "Onward and Upward"

Isar Aerospace launched a Spectrum rocket from Andøya in Norway at 2012 UTC, or 2212 local time (CEST). This mission, named "Onward and Upward", was the second test flight of the German two-stage small-lift vehicle after the failure of the first attempt back in March 2025 and a series of delays. This time, the flight was successful, making Spectrum the first rocket to reach orbit from geographic Europe (except Russia), and also the first such rocket developed by a European private company. The flight delivered five CubeSats to polar orbit; CyBEEsat for TU Berlin (Germany), TriSat-S for the University of Maribor (Slovenia), Platform6 for EnduroSat (Bulgaria), FramSat-1 for NTNU (Norway), and SpaceTeamSat1 for TU Wien (Austria). There was also an actuator demonstration for German company DCubed, which remained attached to the second stage as it de-orbited itself. [Source: Isar Aerospace]

New Blue Moon Renders

Blue Origin have released new renders of their Blue Moon Mark 1 and Mark 2 landers, updated with the current designs. [Source: Blue Origin]

Spaceflight Daily Report, Tuesday 1st September 2026

Image credit: NASA

US Spacewalk 99

American astronaut Jessica Meir and French astronaut Sophie Adenot performed a spacewalk today from the International Space Station, supported from inside the station by fellow astronauts Jack Hathaway and Anil Menon, and supported from the ground by Tess Caswell and Mark Vande Hei. The spacewalk began at 1240 UTC and concluded at 1929 UTC, lasting 6 hours 49 minutes. The procedure was nicknamed "triple-jump" by the astronauts, as it consisted of three main maintenance tasks on three different parts of the station. First, they installed a new retroreflector on the forward port of the Harmony module to support spacecraft navigation during rendezvous and docking. Second, they replaced a camera on the truss segment. And third, they prepared for the replacement of the radiator on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a science experiment for detecting antimatter in cosmic rays. Additionally, they swabbed various parts of the outside of the station to check for microbial leaks and installed jumper cables. It was a packed schedule and Adenot was having trouble with one of the arms on her spacesuit, so some of the radiator preparation and jumper cables have been deferred to a later spacewalk. This was Jessica Meir's 7th spacewalk, bringing her up to 49 hours 22 minutes of EVA time. It was Sophie Adenot's 3rd spacewalk, bringing her up to 19 hours 42 minutes of EVA time. It was the 4th spacewalk of Expedition 75 and overall the 284th spacewalk from the International Space Station. [Source: NASA]

Debut Launch of Pallas-1

Galactic Energy launched a Pallas-1 (Zhishenxing-1) from Jiuquan in Gansu at 0200 UTC, or 1000 local time (CST). This was the maiden flight of the rocket, a medium-lift two-stage launch vehicle which successfully delivered a dummy payload to orbit. The rocket's first stage is designed to be reusable, but no recovery was attempted during this debut flight, with the company stating it is taking a phased approach to reusability. The company has plans for a triple-core configuration of the rocket with a much greater payload capacity, like a scaled-down Falcon Heavy, and also intends to develop a heavy-lift launch vehicle called Pallas-2. [Source: Galactic Energy]

UPDATE: Satellite tracking catalogues are not tracking this mission's upper stage or payload, meaning the mission's success is not confirmed. See 3rd September for more details.

Roman Space Telescope Commissioning

Two days after the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, NASA have released its aperture cover, deployed its main antenna, and powered up its Coronagraph Instrument. Its instruments will undergo a series of tests and calibrations while the spacecraft spends the next three months coasting to the Sun-Earth L2 point. [Source: NASA]

Blue Origin Awarded Mars Mission Contract

NASA have awarded Blue Origin up to $700 million USD to build, launch, and operate the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter (MTO), a relay satellite for communicating with future Mars missions, beating out rival proposals from Rocket Lab and Lockheed Martin. Blue Origin will base the spacecraft on their Blue Ring satellite bus. It is currently aiming to launch in 2028 and enter service around Mars in 2030. [Source: NASA]

Starcloud CEO Proposes Alpha Centauri Mission

A handful of space and AI entrepeneurs, including Starcloud co-founder Philip Johnston, have founded a new company aiming to launch a probe called Fermi Explorer towards the Alpha Centauri system. The probe will rely on existing technology and aim to get there within 80,000 years, with the philosophical goal of disproving the difficulty of interstellar travel as an explanation for the Fermi paradox, hence the name. It is described as a "minimum viable product" of an insterstellar mission, though it lacks the critical capability to return data back to Earth so it is scientifically worthless and doesn't actually prove its philosophical point. The mission is aiming to launch in 2029 with a budget of $15 million USD. [Source: Fermi Explorer]

Death of Toyohiro Akiyama

Japanese cosmonaut Toyohiro Akiyama passed away today at the age of 84. He spent seven days aboard the Soviet Union's Mir space station in 1990 as part of the Soyuz TM-11 mission, becoming the first Japanese person in space and overall the 238th human to orbit the Earth (239th above 100km, 245th above 50mi). Akiyama was a journalist with Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), who sponsored his trip. This also made him the first journalist to report from space and the second commercially sponsored space traveller. [Source: JAXA]

Spaceflight Daily Report, Wednesday 19th August 2026

Image credit: NASA

Swift Boost Mission Ends in Failure

NASA have called off the Swift Boost mission to reboost the Neils Gehrels Swift Observatory after the LINK spacecraft, built and operated by private American company Katalyst Space, lost attitude control and could not be fully recovered. LINK will still demonstrate a rendezvous with the Swift Observatory, but will not attempt to grab it and push it to a higher orbit as initially planned. Swift is expected to fall into the atmosphere and be destroyed within the next few months. [Source: NASA]

Launch of Starlink Group 17-50

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg in California at 0401 UTC, or 2101 Tuesday evening local time (PDT). This was carrying Starlink Group 17-50, a batch of 24 satellites for the constellation. It was the 680th flight of the Falcon 9, and the 12th flight of booster B1097, which successfully landed on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean. [Source: SpaceX]

International Space Station Activities

The crew of the International Space Station cleared up after yesterday's spacewalk and performed routine research and maintenance. [Source: NASA]

Failure of Sebit

Innospace launched a suborbital Sebit rocket from Alcântara in Maranhão, Brazil at 1930 UTC, or 1630 local time (BRT). This was the first test flight of the rocket. The launch failed and the rocket was destroyed. This is the second failure for the South Korean private company after their orbital Hanbit-Nano rocket also failed during its debut launch in 2025. [Source: Innospace]

Ship 41 Static Fire Test

Ship 41, which will fly on Starship Flight 14, the first orbital test of SpaceX's full reusable rocket, underwent a single engine static fire test today. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk indicated that Flight 14 is unlikely to involve a catch of the ship. [Source: NSF, Elon Musk]

Firefly to Land Radioisotope Demo on Moon

Firefly Aerospace have announced that their fourth Blue Ghost lunar landing mission, which was recently announced by NASA, will carry a radioisotope generator built by Zeno Power to the Moon's surface. This will demonstrate survivability during the long cold lunar night. The mission is currently aiming to launch in late 2028. Firefly became the first private company to successfully land on the Moon in 2025, and are scheduled to make their second attempt in 2027. [Source: Firefly Aerospace]

Spaceflight Daily Report, Saturday 18th July 2026

Image credit: Skyroot Aerospace

Debut Launch of Vikram-1

Skyroot Aerospace launched a Vikram-1 from Satish Dhawan in Andhra Pradesh at 0635 UTC, or 1205 local time (IST). The mission was called "Aagaman" and it was the maiden flight of the rocket, a four-stage small-lift launch vehicle, which succesfully delivered two satellites and a collection of attached payloads to orbit. This makes it the first orbital rocket developed by an Indian private company, and the first developed by any private company outside the United States and China. The two satellites were SCOPE, operated by Skyroot themselves, and Solaras S3 operated by Grahaa Space (also an Indian company). The payloads that remained attached to the fourth stage were a prototype robotic arm made by Cosmoserve Space (India), a demonstrator for DCubed (Germany), a small diamond sculpture called Cosmic Bloom, and a set of micro-sculptures depicting key figures from the development of India's space programme. [Source: ISRO]

Spaceflight Daily Report, Friday 10th July 2026

Image credit: Xinhua

Launch of Long March 10B Demo

CASC/CALT launched a Long March 10B (Chang Zheng 10B) from Wenchang in Hainan at 0415 UTC, or 1215 local time (CST). This was the maiden flight of the Long March 10B, a medium-lift launch vehicle which includes a reusable first stage. The first stage made a re-entry burn and a landing burn and was successfully caught by a system of steel cables aboard the droneship Linghangzhe in the South China Sea. This makes the state-owned China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) the third organisation ever to propulsively recover an orbital-class first stage booster, and the first outside the United States. The next milestone will be the re-use of the booster, which CALT wants to achieve before the end of 2026. Meanwhile, the upper stage of the rocket successfully delivered an experimental communications satellite named Chuangxin-26 to orbit. The Long March 10B is a variant of the planned Long March 10, which will include a third stage and side boosters and could eventually become the launch vehicle of China's crewed lunar missions. Another variant, the 10A, also had its maiden flight in February, making today's launch the 2nd flight of the Long March 10 family overall. [Source: CALT]

RV-X Hop Test

JAXA performed a successful 40 second test hop of their RV-X rocket today, a prototype reusable first stage booster. The agency is hoping to develop this into a reusable successor to its H3 rocket by the early 2030s. [Source: NVS Live]

Super Heavy Booster 20 Static Fire

SpaceX performed a static fire test of Super Heavy Booster 20 today ahead of the planned launch of Starship Flight 13 some time in the next couple of weeks. SpaceX will not attempt a recovery of the booster or of Starship itself on this flight. The booster will attempt a controlled water landing in the Gulf of Mexico and the ship will attempt a controlled water landing in the Indian Ocean. Flight 14 is then expected to be the first attempt to get Starship into orbit. [Source: NSF]

International Space Station Activities

The crew of the International Space Station carried out routine research and maintenance, and prepared for the arrival of the Soyuz MS-29 crew next week. [Source: NASA]