🚀 Space Pulse · 2026-09-29 22:01 UTC
SPACE PULSE
Tuesday, September 30, 2026 — Morning Edition
⚡ TL;DR
NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 is on the pad and counting, targeting liftoff at 15:10 UTC tomorrow with four crew bound for the ISS, making it the dominant story this cycle. [1] [2] [3]
A busy 48 hours rounds out with ESA's Juice completing an Earth gravity-assist flyby, a G1 geomagnetic storm watch active for Oct 2, and a wave of fresh arXiv papers. [4] [5]
🚀 LAUNCHES
CREW-13 — IMMINENT: SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 carrying Dragon Crew-13 stands vertical at Space Launch Complex 40, Cape Canaveral, targeting liftoff no earlier than Oct 1 at 15:10 UTC as the 13th operational Commercial Crew flight to the ISS. [1] [2] [6]
- Crew aboard: NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, plus two additional crewmates from CSA; the mission will conduct research, technology demonstrations, and station maintenance. [2] [3] [7]
NURI / NEONSAT-2 TO 6 — GO: South Korea's KARI Nuri rocket is cleared for launch on Oct 7 at 03:23 UTC, carrying five NeonSat Earth observation micro-satellites as part of the government's new-space constellation programme. [8]
SR75 FLIGHT 2: German firm HyImpulse plans the second test flight of its SR75 sounding rocket around Oct 5; exact time is still to be determined. [9]
AMAZON LEO DOUBLE-HEADER — LATER IN OCTOBER: Both ULA's Vulcan VC6L and Arianespace's Ariane 64 Block 2 are manifested for Amazon Kuiper LEO broadband constellation batches (LV-01 and LE-04 respectively), both targeting no earlier than Oct 31. [10]
🔭 DISCOVERIES
WEBB PICTURE OF THE MONTH — GRAVITATIONAL LENS: JWST imaged galaxy cluster MACS J0454.1-0300, revealing background galaxies warped and multiplied into arc-like mirror images by the cluster's gravitational field, the latest showcase of strong lensing science.
JUICE EARTH FLYBY SUCCESS: ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer skimmed the top of Earth's atmosphere on Sept 28, using the planet's gravity to bend its trajectory toward Jupiter while consuming minimal fuel — a key milestone on the mission's route to the Jovian system. [4]
SWIFT REBOOST LESSONS: A commercial in-space servicing attempt to raise NASA's Swift observatory's orbit concluded without achieving the orbital boost, but NASA and the vendor extracted lessons that will shape future servicing programmes.
ARTEMIS II CREW PUBLIC EVENT: The four Artemis II astronauts who flew around the Moon aboard Orion are meeting the public at the University of Houston — their first post-lunar community event in Houston.
MARS NEW YEAR: Sept 30 at 11:43 UTC marks the start of a new Martian year as Mars begins a fresh orbit of the Sun; NASA's Perseverance rover continues active operations on the surface.
ARTEMIS ACCORDS — 76 NATIONS: NASA welcomed Albania, Croatia, Cote d'Ivoire, and San Marino, pushing total Artemis Accords signatories past 75 to 76 countries committed to peaceful space exploration principles.
🛰️ MISSIONS
CREW-13 HARDWARE READY: The Falcon 9 and Dragon were rolled to SLC-40 on Sept 27 and raised vertical, with all pad operations proceeding ahead of the Oct 1 launch. [6] [2]
STARLINER UPDATE: NASA and Boeing jointly announced updated Commercial Starliner development plans, including additional crewed missions and certification of a new rocket for crew transport to low Earth orbit.
PERSEVERANCE RESUMES UPDATES: After a period without public dispatches, the Perseverance rover blog has resumed regular updates; the rover has been active on the Martian surface throughout the hiatus.
JAXA HAYABUSA2 ASTEROID FLYBY: JAXA's Hayabusa2 successfully imaged asteroid Torifune during a flyby in July 2026, continuing the extended mission's solar system exploration campaign.
EARTHCARE OPERATIONAL: JAXA's EarthCARE satellite (Hakuryu) data entered operational use at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), marking a key milestone for the joint ESA-JAXA climate mission.
NASA MOON MATERIAL: Engineers at NASA's Glenn Research Center have developed a new crystalline material that could be manufactured directly on the Moon or Mars, reducing the need to launch production stock from Earth.
SWIFT BOOST DEBRIEF: Though the orbit-raise failed, NASA characterised the mission as a valuable data point for in-space servicing industry development.
ARMSTRONG FLIGHT CENTER — 80 YEARS: NASA Armstrong marks 80 years of flight innovation from Muroc Army Airfield, where NACA engineers first pursued supersonic flight in 1946, leading to the X-1 breaking the sound barrier.
☀️ SPACE WEATHER
G1 STORM WATCH — OCT 2: NOAA SWPC issued Watch WATA20 (Serial 1127) on Sept 29 at 13:01 UTC, predicting a minor G1 geomagnetic storm for Oct 2; conditions expected to stay below G1 on Sept 30 and Oct 1. [5]
- Operators of LEO spacecraft, GPS systems, and power grid managers in high-latitude regions should note the Oct 2 G1 window; aurora may be visible at high latitudes. [5]
HIGH-ENERGY ELECTRONS ONGOING: NOAA ALTEF3 Serial 3748 (issued Sept 29) reports the 2 MeV electron integral flux has been continuously above the 1,000 pfu threshold since Sept 26, with yesterday's peak reaching 4,128 pfu at 14:40 UTC on Sept 28 — the highest level in this current alert series.
- Earlier in the month, a separate ALTEF3 episode peaked at 3,080 pfu on Sept 10 (Serial 3740), indicating a pattern of elevated relativistic electron flux over recent weeks.
📄 RESEARCH
JWST REVEALS DUST-SHROUDED SUPERNOVA IN A GAMMA-RAY BURST HOST: A new paper investigates GRB 240825A at redshift z=0.659, whose long-duration prompt emission was ambiguous under the traditional duration classification scheme. JWST observations uncovered an associated supernova hidden behind optically thick dust — directly confirming a massive-star collapsar origin and demonstrating that JWST is essential for resolving GRB progenitor ambiguity.
LISA AS A HUBBLE-TENSION TIEBREAKER: A theoretical study argues that gravitational waves from massive black hole binaries detected by the future LISA mission will deliver precision luminosity distances with no astrophysical calibration needed, potentially distinguishing between competing cosmological models currently at odds over the Hubble constant value — going beyond simply fitting one fiducial universe.
JWST SUB-NEPTUNE ATMOSPHERES IN TOI-125 SYSTEM: Using JWST NIRSpec G395H transmission spectroscopy, astronomers compared two similar sub-Neptunes in the same planetary system, leveraging the shared formation environment to isolate differences in atmospheric chemistry and cloud properties that challenge current planetary models.
LUX-ZEPLIN DARK MATTER EVENT — GAIA WEIGHS IN: Two independent arXiv papers examine the single nuclear-recoil candidate event LZ230616 (248 keV) reported by the LZ experiment. One explores inelastic dark matter in a two-state halo model; the other uses Gaia stellar kinematics to constrain the high-velocity tail of the local dark matter distribution that governs the event rate, finding the interpretation is sensitive to that tail.
FERMI 16-YEAR HARD-SOURCE CATALOG: After 16 years of observations, the Fermi LAT team releases the Fourth Catalog of Hard Fermi-LAT Sources (4FHL), listing 673 objects detected above 50 GeV up to 2 TeV — the most comprehensive census yet of the extreme gamma-ray sky.
FRB PERSISTENT RADIO SOURCE TRILOGY: A three-paper series from the uGMRT and archival data examines the population of fast radio burst persistent radio sources. Paper I presents 1.26 GHz observations of 24 FRBs and a catalog of 75 sources; Paper II reports a candidate faint persistent source associated with the nearby repeater FRB 20181030A; Paper III establishes a statistical relationship between persistent source luminosity and FRB rotation measure, consistent with a highly magnetized nebula surrounding a flaring magnetar.
📎 Sources
- Falcon 9 Block 5 | Crew-13 — Launch Library 2
- Crew-13 Rocket and Spacecraft at Launch Pad — NASA News Releases
- What You Need to Know About NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 Mission — NASA News Releases
- Successful Earth flyby improves Juice’s course to Jupiter — ESA Top News
- Space Weather Message Code: WATA20 — NOAA SWPC Alerts
- NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 Rocket Arrives at Launch Pad — NASA Science
- What You Need to Know About NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 Mission — NASA Science
- Nuri | NeonSat-2 to 6 — Launch Library 2
- SR75 | Flight 2 — Launch Library 2
- Vulcan VC6L | Amazon Leo (LV-01) — Launch Library 2
Curated from official sources — NASA/ESA/JAXA/ESO/NOAA/arXiv/Launch Library. Informational only.
Serial 20260929-22-v95 · 2026-09-29 22:01 UTC · pulse.uzylab.com