NASA Spaceflight
• Eleanor Day
NASA has formally integrated a Blue Origin Blue Moon Mark 2 test article into the revised Artemis III low-Earth-orbit flight profile. The move comes as Blue Origin works toward a potential return to flight by late 2026 and seeks selection for Artemis IV.
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NASA has formally integrated a Blue Origin Blue Moon Mark 2 test article into the revised Artemis III low-Earth-orbit flight profile. The move comes as Blue Origin works toward a potential return to flight by late 2026 and seeks selection for Artemis IV.
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NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk spent seven hours and 11 minutes outside the International Space Station installing and unfurling its seventh new roll-out solar array. The upgrade is intended to support the outpost’s power needs through its planned retirement in 2030; the EVA also marked the 100th U.S. ISS spacewalk under the stated counting method.
NASA has set an ambitious timetable for its lunar program, with Artemis III potentially flying in summer 2027 and two crewed landings planned for 2028. The mission’s rocket assembly has reached a major milestone, while its astronauts met President Donald Trump as they train for a critical test flight of the lunar lander.
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Virgin Galactic has named its updated Delta-class suborbital spaceplane Apeiron and moved the vehicle to Spaceport America, where it is expected to begin test flights ahead of commercial service. The company now expects commercial flights to start in the second quarter of 2027.
Joshua Kutryk is scheduled to venture outside the International Space Station on Oct. 29, marking the first spacewalk by a Canadian astronaut in more than seven years. The event will be broadcast live, according to the report.
Four volunteers who spent more than a year living and working in a simulated Mars mission are due to leave their habitat on Saturday, Oct. Separately, analog astronaut Michaela Musilova led low-visibility underwater “spacewalks” to test astronaut safety and communications protocols—using terrestrial simulations to examine challenges crews may face during space missions.
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Voyager will manage Interstellar Lab’s BioPod EDEN ISS experiment, which will study plant growth in microgravity. The work is intended to inform future space agriculture, linking an ISS research project with technologies for growing plants beyond Earth.
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