SpaceTRC / Space News
What happened in space this week?
First, the week’s highlights, checked against their sources and summarised by SpaceTRC; then a live feed of news arriving minute by minute from NASA, ESA, SpaceNews, Spaceflight Now and dozens of other outlets.
Highlights are checked against primary sources by SpaceTRC and updated weekly. The live feed comes automatically from the free and open Spaceflight News API; headlines and summaries appear as each outlet published them.
Week: 26 October – 2 November 2026
This week’s highlights
Six stories, with their sources
30 October 2026
Türkiye’s first Moon mission, TLM-1, targets April 2027
The roughly 3.6-tonne orbiter built by TÜBİTAK UZAY will launch on a Falcon 9 in an April–June 2027 window. Its hybrid main engine (nitrous oxide with a solid polymer fuel), which will carry it to the Moon, was developed domestically by DeltaV. Designed to operate for at least five months in a 100 km polar lunar orbit, it carries four science instruments plus three camera and navigation systems; 56 of its 65 main elements are made in Türkiye. The spacecraft is now starting thermal vacuum testing. At the end of the mission, leftover propellant will be used for a controlled impact on the Moon, a rehearsal for the lander planned for the second mission.
23 October – 1 November 2026
Artemis III: a docking rehearsal in Earth orbit in summer 2027
Under the plan outlined by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, Orion will dock in Earth orbit with SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander. The crew will stay docked to Blue Moon for two days, and the Starship test will last about two hours. The first Moon landing is planned for Artemis IV in 2028.
30 October 2026
Starship Flight 15 is ready, and will try to catch the ship too
Ship 42 and Booster 22 have completed their static fires. On the flight, targeted for November, SpaceX plans, pending approval, to catch both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage with the launch tower’s arms. The booster has been caught three times before; a ship catch would be a first.
29 October 2026
The 100th US spacewalk from the station
NASA’s Anil Menon and the Canadian Space Agency’s Joshua Kutryk installed the seventh of eight new solar arrays (iROSA) during a 7-hour-11-minute spacewalk. Together with the older arrays it raises station power by 20–30 per cent. The last one is due to be installed on 5 November.
29 October 2026
NASA seeks commercial ideas to save Hubble
Hubble has no propulsion and is slowly sinking under atmospheric drag, with re-entry expected in 2033–2034. NASA is asking companies, by 30 November, how they could boost it higher, service it or bring it down safely. This is a request for information, not a contract.
29 October 2026
A 4.1-billion-year-old Martian meteorite: Teghaza 001
Found in the Sahara in 2022 and weighing about 800 grams, it is one of the oldest Martian meteorites known. A study in Science dates its zircon crystals grain by grain, shows how water altered rocks in Mars’s early crust and identifies 13 possible places it came from.
Picture of the day
NASA’s astronomy picture for today
Live · News feed
Space news from around the world, newest first
Pick a topic or search. Stories open on the site that published them.
Find upcoming launches in the launch schedule and what is happening in space right now on the Live Observatory page.
- Live feed: The Space Devs, Spaceflight News API (an open, free news aggregation service). Rights to each story belong to its publisher.
- Highlights: the linked stories from Spaceflight Now, Bay News 9, NASASpaceflight, Space.com and NASA.
- Picture of the day: NASA, Astronomy Picture of the Day.
Last updated: 2 November 2026