🚀 Space Pulse · 2026-09-02 22:01 UTC
SPACE PULSE
Wednesday, 2 September 2026 | 22:00 UTC
⚡ TL;DR
NASA has awarded Blue Origin a firm-fixed-price contract to build the Mars Telecommunications Network, a high-bandwidth relay system for current and future Mars missions. A busy week of solar activity, lunar milestones, and ESA hardware news keeps the pace high.
🚀 LAUNCHES
UPCOMING: Soyuz 2.1b carrying Progress MS-35 (96P), a Roscosmos ISS resupply mission, is go for launch on 9 September at 16:15 UTC. [1]
UPCOMING: Long March 2D/YZ-3 carrying an undisclosed payload for China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation is go for launch on 9 September at 09:00 UTC. [2]
UPCOMING: Falcon 9 Block 5 carrying USSF-xxx ("R-2"), a classified US Space Force mission possibly involving Starshield-based LEO satellites, is to be confirmed for 10 September at 15:37 UTC. [3]
UPCOMING: Vega-C carrying ESA's Sentinel-3C ocean and land monitoring satellite plus the Fluorescence Explorer (FLEX) Earth Explorer science satellite is go for launch on 15 September at 01:21 UTC. [4]
ON THE HORIZON: SpaceX Crew-13, the thirteenth crewed Crew Dragon flight to the International Space Station under NASA's Commercial Crew Program, is tentatively scheduled for 30 September. [5]
🔭 DISCOVERIES
A NASA sounding rocket has returned the first simultaneous multi-point measurements from inside sporadic E layers, the patchy metallic plasma clouds at the edge of space formed from meteor ablation that disrupt HF radio communications. [6] [7]
On 28 August 2026, the Moon passed 96.3% into Earth's umbral shadow, producing a deep partial lunar eclipse visible widely across the Americas and captured in striking images over Louisiana. [8] [9]
ESA and ispace-Europe signed an implementation agreement in Copenhagen for MAGPIE, set to become the first European rover on the Moon, flying aboard an ispace commercial lander. [10]
NASA skywatching highlights for September 2026 flag brilliant Venus at high brightness, the autumnal equinox, and a Harvest Moon appearing near Saturn and Neptune.
🛰️ MISSIONS
ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot and NASA astronaut Jessica Meir completed US EVA-99 on 1 September at 21:29 CEST, a navigation and science spacewalk lasting several hours outside the ISS — Adenot's third EVA and the 33rd ever by a European astronaut.
ESA's Cluster mission reached its true end as the final spacecraft, Tango, reentered the atmosphere on 1 September at 23:30:31 CEST, completing a four-satellite targeted reentry campaign that demonstrated a repeatable, safe end-of-life disposal method.
NASA's Artemis III SLS core stage reached a milestone on 24 August as technicians at Kennedy Space Center began installing all four RS-25 engines, each with unique serial numbers tracing heritage flights; the rocket is targeted to carry crew to lunar orbit in 2027.
JAXA's GOSAT-GW (IBUKI-GW) satellite hit an operational milestone: Japan's Meteorological Agency has begun routine use of data from the AMSR3 microwave sensor aboard the spacecraft.
NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program has Intuitive Machines IM-4 on the upcoming manifest.
Blue Origin has been awarded a NASA firm-fixed-price contract to develop the Mars Telecommunications Network, providing high-bandwidth communications and navigation services for all current and future Mars missions.
☀️ SPACE WEATHER
MOST RECENT ACTIVITY TODAY: NOAA SWPC issued a Type II radio emission alert at 19:45 UTC today (2 September), with the shock-associated radio burst beginning at 19:19 UTC and an estimated CME velocity of 1,181 km/s — notably fast and suggesting an Earth-directed component is possible.
A Type IV radio emission alert followed minutes later at 19:55 UTC today, with the continuous broadband emission beginning at 19:20 UTC, indicating a significant ongoing solar energetic particle event.
Energetic electrons have been elevated all week: a continued alert for 2 MeV integral electron flux exceeding 1,000 pfu has been in force since 31 August, with the daily maximum reaching 1,201 pfu on 2 September at 10:00 UTC.
EARLIER THIS WEEK: On 26 August, a 10 cm radio burst peaked at 140 sfu at 06:32 UTC, alongside a Type II emission indicating a CME shock at 930 km/s; a G2 geomagnetic storm watch was subsequently issued for 28 August.
On 25 August, an M5-class X-ray flare triggered an R2 (Moderate) radio blackout alert at 09:59 UTC.
📄 RESEARCH
MARS HABITABILITY: A new paper models how hygroscopic salts on the Martian surface — including calcium perchlorate, NaCl, and MgSO4 — could absorb water vapor and form transient liquid brines during warm daytime periods, creating micro-habitats that could in principle support microorganisms; the authors identify specific surface environments where this mechanism is most plausible.
JWST DEEP GALAXY SURVEY: A study using JWST NIRSpec spectra of 1,889 star-forming galaxies from redshift 3.5 to 7.0 finds that key emission-line ratios (H-alpha/H-beta and [OIII]/H-beta) remain surprisingly constant across more than four orders of magnitude in stellar mass, suggesting a uniform physical environment in early galaxies driven by bursty star formation.
COSMIC STAR FORMATION INTO REIONIZATION: The JWST Emission Line Survey (JELS) presents the first narrow-band H-alpha luminosity function extending into the Epoch of Reionization, providing a direct measure of cosmic star formation rates at the Universe's earliest illuminated epochs.
GRAVITATIONAL LENSING COSMOLOGY: The SPT-3G D1 dataset from the South Pole Telescope's third-generation camera delivers a new CMB lensing potential map covering 1,500 square degrees from 2019-2020 observations, enabling tight new cosmological constraints via quadratic estimator reconstruction.
TNO SURFACE CHEMISTRY FROM JWST: A new empirical framework uses JWST near-infrared spectra of trans-Neptunian objects to quantitatively map the relationship between broadband optical colors and full NIR spectra, enabling cheap color observations to serve as compressed spectral proxies for surface composition across the Kuiper Belt.
TECHNOSIGNATURE CONCEPT: A speculative but peer-submitted paper proposes that computation-dominated technological civilisations would radiate waste heat at very low temperatures, producing a submillimetre excess — dubbed "Slysh halos" — that would be distinct from mid-infrared Dyson sphere searches and potentially detectable with next-generation radio/submillimetre facilities.
End of today's SPACE PULSE. Next edition at 22:00 UTC Thursday, 3 September 2026.
📎 Sources
- Soyuz 2.1b | Progress MS-35 (96P) — Launch Library 2
- Long March 2D/YZ-3 | Unknown Payload — Launch Library 2
- Falcon 9 Block 5 | USSF-xxx ("R-2") — Launch Library 2
- Vega-C | Sentinel-3C & FLEX — Launch Library 2
- Falcon 9 Block 5 | Crew-13 — Launch Library 2
- NASA Rocket Takes First Multi-Point Look Inside Radio-Disrupti… — NASA News Releases
- NASA Rocket Takes First Multi-Point Look Inside Radio-Disrupti… — NASA Science
- Rising Over Louisiana — NASA News Releases
- Rising Over Louisiana — NASA Science
- ESA’s first lunar rover rolls forward — ESA Top News
Curated from official sources — NASA/ESA/JAXA/ESO/NOAA/arXiv/Launch Library. Informational only.
Serial 20260902-22-v70 · 2026-09-02 22:01 UTC · pulse.uzylab.com