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• Jeff Foust
Uzbekistan signed the Artemis Accords on Oct. 19, becoming the 77th country to join the framework. The country pledged to support the peaceful exploration and use of space, adding another national commitment to the accords’ principles for space activity.
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Uzbekistan signed the Artemis Accords on Oct. 19, becoming the 77th country to join the framework. The country pledged to support the peaceful exploration and use of space, adding another national commitment to the accords’ principles for space activity.
NASA formally concluded its OSIRIS-REx asteroid-sampling mission on Sept. 30, 2026, after the spacecraft returned pieces of an asteroid to Earth. The mission’s operational close does not end its scientific work: researchers expect to study the returned material for decades.
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.
The Moon has contracted by about 45 meters as its interior cools, and NASA scientists have mapped more than 10,000 faults across its surface to assess the effects. The findings connect a long-term change inside the Moon with geological features visible at the surface.
Astronomers used NASA’s SPHEREx spacecraft to study brown dwarfs—objects that do not become stars and drift through space alone. The observations offer a closer look at these poorly understood objects and demonstrate the mission’s use in investigating the composition and properties of the universe.
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Engineering studies found that Orion’s heat shield performed as expected during the Artemis 2 mission, with none of the erosion seen on Artemis 1. The result addresses a key concern for the spacecraft’s crewed lunar flight, though the report provides no further technical details.
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JAXA’s Martian Moons eXploration mission launched aboard an H3 rocket to study Phobos and Deimos, with a plan to collect material from Phobos and return it to Earth. The mission could also capture dust originating from Mars, offering clues to the moons’ origins and the Red Planet’s history.
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JAXA’s Martian Moon eXploration mission will investigate Phobos and Deimos to help resolve competing theories about how the moons formed. It is also designed to return samples to Earth from the vicinity of Mars, a first for a spacecraft operating in orbit of the Red Planet.
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