European Spaceflight
• Andrew Parsonson
Airbus Netherlands has shipped the first lightweight Vulcain Aft Bay for Ariane 6, part of the rocket’s final Block 2 upgrades. The aft bay is a structural component, and its reduced weight supports the upgraded launcher’s performance goals.
ESA
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Solar Orbiter observations have traced giant magnetic switchbacks directly back to the Sun, connecting the structures to their source. The finding comes amid a surge of solar-physics data as new spacecraft begin actively observing the Sun.
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Airbus Netherlands has shipped the first lightweight Vulcain Aft Bay for Ariane 6, part of the rocket’s final Block 2 upgrades. The aft bay is a structural component, and its reduced weight supports the upgraded launcher’s performance goals.
High activity
A sea-launched Ceres-1 placed the first satellite for a Guangzhou-backed, low-inclination Wuyang remote-sensing constellation in orbit. Separately, ICEYE launched four SAR satellites on SpaceX’s Bandwagon-5 rideshare, while SES began a NASA-linked relay demonstration using Planet’s Pelican satellite.
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The European Space Agency said a full-scale test model of its Space Rider reusable space vehicle was lost earlier this month after an anomaly during parafoil deployment in a drop test. The loss underscores a setback in testing the recovery system, though the available report provides no further detail on the anomaly or program schedule.
OHB has won a European Space Agency contract to study infrastructure for the Moon. The award signals another step in planning the systems and services needed to support future lunar activity, though the available report provides no contract value, schedule or technical details.
The European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope spotted the previously unknown comet C/2026 S1 (Euclid) in images taken Sept. 16–24, 2026, while observing the Euclid Deep Field North. The discovery came from a mission designed to survey billions of galaxies and investigate dark matter and dark energy.
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The UK Space Agency has opened a public competition to name its planned 2029 active debris-removal mission. The spacecraft is intended to capture two defunct satellites in orbit, making the mission a practical demonstration of efforts to remove debris from Earth orbit.
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