🚀 Space Pulse · 2026-09-18 22:01 UTC
SPACE PULSE
Friday, September 19, 2026 — Daily Space & Astronomy Briefing
⚡ TL;DR
NASA has awarded SpaceX three additional crewed ISS flights while Crew-13 enters quarantine ahead of an early-October launch, cementing SpaceX's dominance in human spaceflight. [1] [2]
The week closes with a packed manifest: two Rocket Lab Electrons, a ULA Vulcan, a Chinese Long March, and a classified SpaceX mission already flown, all within a tight 10-day window. [3] [4] [5] [6]
🚀 LAUNCHES
RECENT
USSF-259 — SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 lifted off successfully on September 17 at 01:07 UTC carrying a classified United States Space Force payload, likely a batch of LEO satellites on the Starshield bus consistent with SDA Transport Layer ascent profiles. [6]
UPCOMING
LONG MARCH 6A — China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation has a "Go for Launch" status for an unspecified payload, window opens September 24 at 08:45 UTC. [7]
ELECTRON — Rocket Lab targeting September 30 for two separate missions: BlackSky Gen-3 Earth-imaging satellite number 6, and a cluster of six HawkEye 360 RF-intelligence satellites. [3] [4]
VULCAN VC6L — United Launch Alliance targeting September 30 for Amazon Leo (LV-01), the first Vulcan-manifested batch of Amazon's Project Kuiper broadband mega-constellation. [5]
SOYUZ 2.1b/FREGAT — Russian Space Forces targeting September 30 for an unspecified classified military satellite; vehicle and payload identity noted as highly uncertain. [8]
FALCON 9 — SpaceX Crew-13 targeting October 1 at 15:10 UTC; thirteenth operational Crew Dragon flight to ISS under NASA's Commercial Crew Program; crew is now in quarantine at Johnson Space Center. [9] [2]
SR75 — HyImpulse targeting October 5 for the second test flight of the SR75 sounding rocket. [10]
🔭 DISCOVERIES
NGC 4698 POLAR DISK — The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged spiral galaxy NGC 4698, located approximately 55 million light-years away in the Virgo Cluster, revealing it harbors a disk that spins at a perpendicular angle to its main stellar body — a rare "out-of-sync" polar-disk structure.
WISE 0855 BROWN DWARF — JWST/NIRSpec time-series spectroscopy at resolution R~1000 of WISE 0855 (effective temperature ~265 K), the coldest known brown dwarf, has disentangled the effects of water clouds, chemistry, and condensates on its atmosphere in unprecedented detail.
GIANT PLANET AROUND M-DWARF — The JWST Sub-Jupiters Survey reports the direct imaging discovery of RX J0534.0-0221 b, a giant planet orbiting a young M-dwarf in the Beta Pictoris moving group, detected at signal-to-noise ~17.5 in the F444W filter at ~0.41 arcseconds separation; a debris disk is also detected around the host star.
VY CANIS MAJORIS SHELL — SPHEREx data reveal a large, nearly circular shell — projected as a ring on the sky — surrounding the red hypergiant VY Canis Majoris, offering new insight into its extreme mass-loss history.
LENSED SUPERLUMINOUS SUPERNOVA — Follow-up work on SN 2025wny, a Type I superluminous supernova at redshift z=2.015 multiply imaged by two foreground galaxies at z=0.375, confirms it as the first known strongly lensed SLSN-I and the highest-redshift multiply imaged supernova in a galaxy-scale lens configuration.
INTERSTELLAR COMET 3I/ATLAS — ESO's Very Large Telescope measured specific chemical fingerprints of 3I/ATLAS, the brightest interstellar object ever seen; the composition indicates it is older than the Sun and formed outside the Solar System, marking the first such chemical characterization of an interstellar comet.
🛰️ MISSIONS
CREW-13 — NASA astronauts entered pre-launch quarantine at Johnson Space Center on September 17; mission targets early October for an ISS flight under NASA's Commercial Crew Program with SpaceX. [2] [9]
NASA / SPACEX CONTRACT EXPANSION — NASA has awarded SpaceX three additional crewed ISS missions through a contract modification, ensuring continued crew transportation continuity to the station. [1]
COSI — UC Berkeley engineers have completed assembly of the detector unit for NASA's COSI (Compton Spectrometer and Imager) gamma-ray telescope, photographed on July 8, 2026; flex circuits connecting detectors to electronics are confirmed integrated.
STARBURST — NASA has selected SpaceX to launch the StarBurst small satellite mission on a Falcon 9 Bandwagon rideshare from Space Launch Complex 40; StarBurst will investigate neutron star mergers and the origins of short gamma-ray bursts.
ISS EXPEDITION 75 — Crew wrapped up the week completing a lead-free soldering experiment, conducting lunar landing simulations, and performing exercise-based research; they are preparing for the arrival of SpaceX's 35th commercial resupply mission.
BEPICOLUMBO/BELA — An arXiv study models realistic laser return pulse shapes for the BepiColombo Laser Altimeter (BELA), projecting its performance in measuring Mercury surface roughness and reflectance alongside topography once the spacecraft arrives at Mercury.
HAYABUSA2 — JAXA confirmed in July 2026 that Hayabusa2 successfully conducted a flyby and captured images of asteroid Torifune during its extended mission.
IRIS2 — ESA has signed 18 consolidation contracts with nearly 80 companies to study mission concepts and connectivity services supporting the EU's IRIS2 secure satellite constellation, initiating its Low-LEO evolution phase.
ROMAN CORONAGRAPH — The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope's Coronagraph Community Participation Program (CPP) has assembled seven US-based teams to plan and execute technology demonstration observations ahead of Roman's operational phase.
☀️ SPACE WEATHER
ELECTRON FLUX ELEVATED — NOAA/GOES-19 recorded a continuation alert (ALTEF3) on September 10-11, with 2 MeV electron integral flux peaking at 3,080 pfu on September 10 at 17:45 UTC — well above the 1,000 pfu alert threshold — posing elevated risk to satellite electronics in high-inclination and deep-space orbits.
EARLIER FLARE ACTIVITY — On August 25, NOAA registered an M6.9 solar flare from Region 4513 at N04E04, peaking at 10:02 UTC and producing an R2 (Moderate) radio blackout, a Type II radio emission from a CME moving at approximately 603 km/s, and a 10-cm radio burst peaking at 160 sfu.
G2 WATCH CONTEXT — A G2 (Moderate) geomagnetic storm watch issued August 25 for August 28 has since expired; a subsequent G2 watch issued September 8 was formally cancelled on September 9, with conditions falling below G1.
CURRENT CONDITIONS — The most recent electron flux alert (September 11 continuation) remains the last high-energy particle event on record in this data window; no active storm watches are currently in force.
📄 RESEARCH
GIANT PLANET DIRECT IMAGING — JWST's Sub-Jupiters Survey detected RX J0534.0-0221 b around a young M-dwarf in the Beta Pictoris moving group using NIRCam's F444W filter, demonstrating JWST's power for finding giant planets around low-mass stars at wide separations.
EPSILON ERIDANI b UPDATE — An updated self-consistent orbital and atmospheric model of Epsilon Eridani b, the nearest known Jupiter analog, incorporates RV, absolute astrometry, and JWST/NIRCam upper limits, and evaluates the planet's detectability prospects with the Roman Space Telescope Coronagraph.
MASSIVE GALAXY DARK MATTER DEFICIT — Combining MaNGA stellar kinematics, ALFALFA HI dynamics, and independently calibrated halo masses, a new study finds that inner dark matter fractions in massive galaxy halos are systematically lower than predicted by standard cosmological models.
COLDEST BROWN DWARF ATMOSPHERE — Medium-resolution JWST/NIRSpec time-series spectra of WISE 0855 at 265 K disentangle water cloud variability, chemical modulations, and condensate opacity — the first such decomposition for an object approaching planetary temperatures.
RYUGU FORMATION BEYOND CO2 SNOW LINE — Thermal evolution modeling of the Hayabusa2 sample-return target asteroid Ryugu's parent body shows it formed beyond the CO2 snow line from millimeter- to centimeter-scale pebbles, contrasting with the water snow-line formation expected for hydrated carbonaceous bodies.
PARKER SOLAR PROBE SWITCHBACKS — A case study of two closely spaced magnetic switchbacks observed by Parker Solar Probe near the Sun reveals markedly different internal plasma structures and heating signatures in each, suggesting that even adjacent switchbacks are physically distinct phenomena.
PEV GAMMA-RAY SOURCE AS MICROQUASAR REMNANT — An arXiv study proposes that LHAASO J2108+5157, a mysterious Galactic ultra-high-energy gamma-ray source detected to hundreds of TeV without a clear lower-frequency counterpart, may be the remnant of a microquasar system based on multi-wavelength modeling including Fermi-LAT GeV detections.
That is your Space Pulse for September 18, 2026. Next edition tomorrow.
📎 Sources
- NASA Awards SpaceX Three Crew Flights to Space Station — NASA News Releases
- NASA, SpaceX Continue Crew‑13 Prep as Crew Enters Quarantine — NASA Science
- Electron | BlackSky Gen-3 6 — Launch Library 2
- Electron | 6x HawkEye 360 — Launch Library 2
- Vulcan VC6L | Amazon Leo (LV-01) — Launch Library 2
- Falcon 9 Block 5 | USSF-259 — Launch Library 2
- Long March 6A | Unknown Payload — Launch Library 2
- Soyuz 2.1b/Fregat | Kosmos (Unknown Payload) — Launch Library 2
- Falcon 9 Block 5 | Crew-13 — Launch Library 2
- SR75 | Flight 2 — Launch Library 2
Curated from official sources — NASA/ESA/JAXA/ESO/NOAA/arXiv/Launch Library. Informational only.
Serial 20260918-22-v85 · 2026-09-18 22:01 UTC · pulse.uzylab.com