TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
September 22, 2026
Chance Triple Alignment: Plane, Space Station, Sun
This shot captured an unexpected silhouette. Which is it? It isn't the sunspots, the small dark regions caused by concentrated magnetic fields visible around the Sun's bright disk. Sunspots typically last for weeks and were expected, since these spots were seen previously. It isn’t the International Space Station (ISS), the small dark structure on the middle left. This is because the featured picture was planned with sub-second timing to record the iconic structure passing before the Sun. It is the airplane. Just as this exposure was taking place in June, from Prasek in the Czech Republic, an airplane began its own miniature partial eclipse. The result is this triply aligned image of our Sun. The photographer estimates that the chance of any random Sun image containing silhouettes of both a space station and an airplane, from that location, is about 30 million to one.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze0QFqIZeGU
Ozone Hole Breaks Record Again, Solar Airplane Risk | S0 News and frens
Sep.22.2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19vwyUGVwO0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8RYnWwM1Bg (Tamitha Skov: Our Sun Flirts with a Spotless Day & Fast Wind Comes | Space Weather Spotlight 21 September 2026)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7i7A6SLs9U (Stefan Burns: A State of Emergency Has Been Declared For California…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk1EbLm6WtY (Max Velocity: This Has NEVER Happened In Our Lifetime…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_UUQo5jAk8 (Mr Weatherman: Developing System brings impacts to the East Coast USA…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDyGcVjerf4 (EarthMaster: Earthquakes continue to increase around the Philippine Plate. Northern California activity)
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solar
https://www.spaceweather.gov/news/solar-wind-and-goes-data-outages
https://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/73325/20260922/sunspot-ar4534-develops-complex-magnetic-structure-days-after-sun-went-spotless.htm
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wildfires
https://bnonews.com/index.php/2026/09/minnesota-man-charged-with-shooting-firefighting-aircraft-during-wildfire-mission/
https://www.thv11.com/article/sports/outdoors/wildfire-task-force-teams-arkansas-dry-conditions/91-1bcf8589-59de-43a8-a37e-1f37e9c70a72
https://www.itij.com/latest/news/colombia-wildfire-forces-evacuations-near-villa-de-leyva
storms and floods
https://www.wlbt.com/video/2026/09/22/lightning-strikes-knock-out-communications-frying-pan-shoals-light-station/
https://ema.alabama.gov/15143/isolated-strong-to-severe-storms-again-today-with-noticeably-cooler-temperatures-beginning-thursday/
https://www.wfp.org/stories/nepal-floods-where-roads-stop-humanitarian-cargo-drones-deliver
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hurricanes and frens
https://www.accuweather.com/en/hurricane/atlantic-goes-without-a-hurricane-through-sept-21-breaking-112-year-record/1932278
https://earthsky.org/earth/hurricane-polo-mexico-sept-2026/
https://www.pennlive.com/weather/2026/09/dangerous-category-5-hurricane-nears-mexico-threatens-floods-and-mudslides.html
https://www.accuweather.com/en/hurricane/tropical-storm-fay-spins-over-the-atlantic-forecasters-watching-two-more-areas/1935940
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/09/22/japan/japan-typhoon-dujuan-damages-update/
https://www.dagens.com/weather/5-dead-hundreds-of-flights-grounded-typhoon-dujuan-paralyzes-japan
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earthquakes
https://www.gbnews.com/news/silverdale-earthquake-houses-shake-uk-town-strong-explosion
https://dtinews.dantri.com.vn/vietnam-today/eight-earthquakes-strike-central-vietnam-in-two-days-20260922135844984.htm
https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2026/09/22/magnitude-44-earthquake-detected-off-batu-pahat-tremors-felt-onshore/236134
https://qna.org.qa/en/news/news-details?id=magnitude-45-earthquake-strikes-coast-of-japans-fukushima-prefecture&date=22/09/2026
https://www.24newshd.tv/22-Sep-2026/4-9-magnitude-earthquake-jolts-islamabad-surrounding-areas
https://cedarnews.net/newstasks/1000432/earthquake-magnitude-5-strikes-southwest-ishqoshim/
https://www.capetownetc.com/world/earthquake-south-of-africa-farther/
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volcanoes
https://go.kompas.com/read/2026/09/22/121819574/bmkg-monitors-volcanic-ash-from-4-volcanoes-including-mount-ibus-recent-eruption
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dailys
https://schumannresonance.today/
https://www.weather.gov/
https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/nfn
https://www.americanforests.org/wildfire-map/
https://www.tornadohq.com/
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/earthquakes-volcanoes/news/362187/Volcano-earthquake-report-2026-09-22.html
https://www.spaceweather.gov/
https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=22&month=09&year=2026
https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/planets/mars/nasa-discovery-reveals-complex-water-systems-on-early-mars/
moar
https://science.nasa.gov/photojournal/perseverances-view-of-turquoise-bay/
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-astronaut-reid-wiseman-attends-ravens-vs-saints-game/
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2026/09/21/crew-biology-research-spacecraft-cargo-jobs-kick-off-week-on-station/
https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/nasa-astronaut-to-answer-questions-from-new-hampshire-students/
NASA Discovery Reveals Complex Water Systems on Early Mars
Sep 21, 2026
When NASA’s Perseverance rover reached the inner edge of Mars’ Jezero Crater in September 2023, mission scientists were surprised by what they found.
Called the “Margin Unit,” the geologic area stretches along the shoreline of an ancient Martian lake, so they expected sedimentary rocks, which would have formed as layers of sand piled on top of each other over millennia.
Composed of clay and silt, sedimentary rocks on Earth are good at preserving past microbial life. The scientists were especially intrigued by strong signals of carbonate minerals detected by Mars orbiters.
On Earth, carbonates frequently form in shallow ocean and lake environments capable of supporting life.
Instead, the rover team found igneous rock, which can form deep underground from magma or from volcanic activity at the surface. Igneous rocks are excellent record-keepers, particularly because mineral crystals within them preserve details about the precise moment they formed.
In this case, they preserved an astonishingly complex record of water activity on early Mars. In fact, these rocks showed signs of having interacted with water on at least three separate occasions, with each encounter further altering their chemistry and appearance.
The findings were published Monday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.
The instrument behind the findings is SuperCam, which perches on the rover’s mast and determines the mineralogy of geologic features based on the light they reflect.
When the science team spots an intriguing rock, they can send commands for SuperCam to fire its laser up to 21 feet (6.5 meters) away. The spectrum of the resulting plasma reveals the target’s chemistry.
Perseverance has analyzed more than 185 bedrock targets across the unit this way.
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“Before we arrived at the Margin Unit, the main hypothesis — derived from orbital observations — was that the carbonate seen from orbit formed from interaction with the lake that existed in Jezero Crater,” said Candice Bedford, a research scientist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the study’s lead author.
“But now we know that this location became a sort of crossroads for aqueous systems. The Margin Unit findings are important because Jezero Crater sits inside one of the largest exposures of carbonate on Mars, so what we learn here reaches well beyond this crater.”
Slow-cooling underground
Perseverance explored the Margin Unit across approximately 870 feet (265 meters) of elevation.
At higher elevations, it found rock that was coarse-grained and crystalline — hallmarks of the mineral olivine — with almost no sign that water had ever touched it.
Made of magnesium and iron, the area’s olivine unit formed in a body of magma deep underground, cooling slowly enough for its grains to grow large, and reached the surface only after the ground above it eroded away.
Lower in the unit, on the lakebed, the rock looks transformed, as the olivine grains were fractured with silica between them.
Carbonate and silica minerals are an important signpost in the search for ancient life.
When water interacts with olivine on Earth, the reaction can release hydrogen, which can be a food source for some microbes, and it leaves behind carbonate and silica, two minerals that lock in traces of the past existence of those microbes.
Multiple episodes
The Perseverance team can determine the sequence of the Margin Unit’s interactions with water, but not their age.
On the first occasion water reached the rocks of the Margin Unit, carbon-dioxide-rich groundwater reacted with olivine, resulting in ridges of carbonate that run through the fractures in bedrock at low elevations.
Today, these carbonate-filled fractures are left standing as the softer rock around them wears away.
The second time water reached the rocks may have been related to the lake that once existed in the crater.
“Some of the Margin Unit rocks also contain silica,” said Eleni Ravanis, a planetary scientist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and a coauthor of the study.
“Turning olivine into carbonate can leave silica behind, and we see more of that silica in rocks that sat below the water line.”
Last came a water event that generated mineral veins at one location in the eastern part of the Margin Unit, about 10 inches (25 centimeters) thick, creating minerals like calcium sulfate and fluorite.
Finding fluorite is an important clue because it typically forms when hot water circulates through volcanic rocks, revealing that this area experienced a later, heated underground-water event.
“If there is one thing I have learned after 10 years working with Mars rovers, it is that Mars constantly throws surprises at you,” said Bedford. “It is very rare that things are as we expect them to be from orbital data.
I hope this work helps reshape how scientists view the history of water in Jezero Crater and across Mars. Ultimately, I hope it helps planetary scientists reconstruct the changing climate and habitability of early Mars.”
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NASA Kicks Off Nationwide Effort to Prepare Tomorrow’s Space Workforce
Sep 21, 2026
NASA kicked off its State Hubs for Skilled Technical Workforce initiative Sept. 15, 2026 with awardees at Space Center Houston.
Agency leadership convened State Hub partners to align strategy and build momentum while focusing on partnerships, small business engagement, and next steps.
“The NASA State Hubs initiative is a top priority for the agency, because we know the space economy is really accelerating across the country,” said Elaine Ho, associate administrator for NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
“It’s energizing to watch our partners come together to put real plans into action to help students advance into well paying, rewarding technical jobs. I am excited about what’s ahead.”
NASA State Hubs project leaders and agency, state, and federal partners gathered in Houston to connect with peers, hear presentations from each State Hub, and explore workforce needs, skillsets, credentials, and hiring trends.
In August, the agency selected seven projects representing states across the country: California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Texas, and Utah.
Each Hub will offer programs tailored to its state’s unique aerospace industry and workforce priorities, ensuring students get opportunities that meet those needs.
During the meeting, NASA leadership and awardees discussed challenges impacting the STEM workforce pipeline, including limited coordination between industry, community colleges, and state economic development entities, difficulty scaling job programs, and misconceptions about manufacturing jobs.
In the coming months, NASA State Hub awardees will finalize approaches and begin delivering programming, tools, and resources that connect students across their state with the technical skills and hands-on experiences that prepare them to join the aerospace workforce.
Together, NASA and its State Hubs partners are mapping out the path to a future aerospace landscape powered by career ready workers who can build what comes next, advance NASA’s missions, and sustain America’s leadership in space.
https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/nasa-kicks-off-nationwide-effort-to-prepare-tomorrows-space-workforce/
https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/nasa-state-hubs/
moar
https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/an-epic-view-of-the-seasons/
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasas-chandra-finds-unusual-objects-in-pinwheel-galaxy/
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasa-webb-explores-family-tree-of-newly-discovered-distant-objects/
https://www.nasa.gov/organizations/oiir/nasa-welcomes-albania-as-newest-artemis-accords-signatory/
NASA History Office
@NASAhistory
At NASA, we're celebrating the first day of fall, and "sweater weather" in the days ahead.
Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt sported layers during their 1971 trip to Flagstaff, AZ, where they trained for their Moon landing mission using "Grover," the "Geologic Rover."
7:48 AM · Sep 22, 2026
https://x.com/NASAhistory/status/2102409691942863117
moar
https://x.com/NASA/status/2102425682286412261
https://x.com/NASAArtemis/status/2102144166520049733
https://x.com/NASAGoddard/status/2102405055114526827
https://x.com/NASAUniverse/status/2102427984405610943
https://nasawatch.com/2026/09/21/lengthy-note-from-jared-isaacman-to-nasa/
moar
https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2102375011885490686
https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2102399513730093554
https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2102119160968831263
https://x.com/FireflySpace/status/2102436170575548708
“Lengthy Note” From Jared Isaacman To NASA
September 21, 2026
NASA Team,
It has been a pleasure getting around to so many of our Centers and visiting with all of you.
At this point, I have been to most Centers at least twice, and I try to host a town hall and congratulate you on your contributions, recognize top performers, take questions, and receive feedback.
Those conversations are beyond helpful, and I am grateful for the time, the honest feedback, and everything you are doing to deliver on our world-changing missions.
And what a year of progress it has been. You have all been working incredibly hard, adapting to change, and putting wins on the board.
There is so much excitement out there… from the President calling into a science mission press conference, to bipartisan support from Congress, and the public getting energized by our rockets, our missions, airshows, and the latest inspirational engagement at NFL games.
On human spaceflight, we brought Crew-11 home early, pulled Crew-12 forward, and we would have made our roughly six-month turnaround goal if not for a prop system issue that had to be addressed.
We are now less than two weeks from watching Commander Jessica Watkins and Crew-13 get underway.
When it comes to Artemis, you all captivated the world with Artemis II, so much so that President Trump presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the crew and delivered a message of appreciation to the NASA workforce, contractors, and partners who made it happen.
But we did not slow down after Artemis II. We accelerated, quickly turning ML-1, standardizing where we can, and I am sure you have seen the progress updates and pictures as Artemis III comes together ahead of a year-end tanking test.
The Artemis III crew has, of course, been named, is in training, and is already visiting the sites where their mission hardware is being assembled.
We have also been committed to driving outcomes to meet timelines.
That means getting our NASA teams into the field, and Matt, Amit, Jeremy and I are out there putting pressure on the suppliers, the subcontractors, getting the valves and TVC actuators we need back on schedule.
We are accelerating OME production, even building components ourselves when necessary, lining up laser comms for A‑III, helping rebuild the Blue Origin pad and working their anomaly investigation, and making sure both test landers are ready to support Artemis III in mid-2027.
We are not sitting on our hands waiting for others to deliver; we have the talent and expertise to make things happen!
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In parallel, we are making sure that when America returns to the Moon, we can actually stay. You pivoted remarkably quickly from Gateway to Moon Base, and that urgency matters and those resources now matter.
Had we stayed the course with Gateway, China was positioned to advance landers equipped with rovers and hopper drones, drone capabilities we ourselves did not have in development until recently, and potentially deny access to the most desirable locations on the surface.
We now have the resources, talent, and industry focused on delivering CLPS landers, LTV rovers, and drones into one of the most important regions of the Lunar South Pole for science, volatiles, and ultimately mastering the skills necessary to live and work on another world before continuing on to Mars.
Because of your effort, Moon Base hardware and missions are coming together for an incredibly busy 2027. And along the way, we are once again bringing the world along with us.
There are now 72 Artemis Accords signatories (more to sign in the weeks ahead), with opportunities for our partners to contribute scientific payloads and technology demonstrations to future Moon Base missions.
You have embraced not a new way of doing things, but an old way–the way of so many of NASA’s past successes.
We will take Moon Base in phases, put hardware on the surface, learn from it, improve it, add capability, increase complexity, and build toward extraordinary, hard outcomes that permit long-term surface habitability.
That iterative approach is how we should attack any of our near-impossible objectives, just as we did during the first space race.
On that note, we are making progress on SR‑1 Freedom, America’s first nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft.
When the mission launches in late 2028, she will carry the first U.S. space reactor since 1965, and it will be an imperfect spacecraft akin to USS Nautilus, and that is okay!
We will learn from the mission as we give birth to a “Nuclear NASA,” with SR‑2, SR‑3, and many more missions to follow that will mature the technology, increase capability, and take us farther, and when we get there, we can do more.
We will explore the moons of the outer solar system under fission power and continue building toward the day when NASA and American industry can take that next giant leap and put astronauts on Mars–and bring them back safely to tell us about it.
The Nuclear NASA is so important because it answers the question of what comes next and ensures the third space race is never in question. NASA, our people, and our Centers should always be working on problems that few, if any, other organizations or nations are capable of solving.
This fission-powered effort can and should grow from barely being funded into one measured in the billions–enough to support NEP, NTP, bimodal and chemically augmented designs, leverage our Centers and people, and extend American leadership much farther into space.
And we are still doing the other things. We are getting our X‑planes going again, and X‑59 is just the start. We are rebuilding the X‑plane portfolio to fly faster and higher than we have in decades. Goddard, with the help of many other Centers, launched Nancy Grace Roman.
The great telescope is healthy, and what we have already received from the startup process has been incredible to observe. There are more flagship-like missions to come with Dragonfly, MoonFall, SkyFall, NEO Surveyor, and what I hope will become an exciting pursuit of life and great discovery in the outer solar system under fission power.
Through all of this, you have continuously adapted as we pivot, consolidate, and flatten the organization, rebuild core competencies, and get our swagger back at NASA, and I am grateful.
We are making big decisions that affect tens of thousands of people, and we will not get every detail perfect on the first attempt, but I believe what emerges will be a better model.
For example, every Center should have funding to sustain the capabilities where it is truly excellent, and across the agency there should always be organic expertise to design, test, build, and operate real hardware, whether that means rockets, spacecraft, ECLSS, valves, propulsion, flight test, mission operations, specialty materials, or the next flagship science mission.
Ideally, you are excited to finish whatever great project you are working on today, like Dragonfly, because you know with certainty what comes next will be even more incredible and inspiring.
2/3
During some of my recent Center visits, I encountered a few questions about the pivots happening and why there is uncertainty around some of our plans.
A lot of those questions came in the context of Artemis IV, the lunar landing, so I wanted to take the opportunity to address some of it directly.
First, we have a best-case scenario to launch Artemis III in the summer of 2027 and preserve as many as two opportunities for lunar landings in 2028.
It is certainly possible we launch Artemis III and only Artemis IV in 2028, if that is what gives us the best chance of success, but we are going to fight every day to protect those timelines because we should push hard, because our culture requires it, because we are capable, and because we do not know today that we, alongside the rest of our partners, cannot be ready.
Right now, we are ~90 days broken against the Artemis III schedule, but there are still a lot of decisions to be made, problems to solve, and opportunities for the schedule to recover.
We will never launch until we are ready, but where we are sitting today is far better than where most imagined we would be even a few months ago.
Second, some have assumed the changes we are implementing are simply designed to make up for schedule issues with the landers. I would invite you to speak with civil servant leadership across the organization.
Early this year, very little was on schedule–be that core stage, Orion, suits, or landers, for that matter. But unless people are simply looking for acknowledgement, what should matter we have been doing about it.
As I said many times, we are not going to sit idly by, sit on our hands, and wait for others to deliver. We will get in a rhythm, assemble and launch our big rocket as often as possible, solve problems and drive outcomes that reduce risk and help achieve our national space policy objectives safely, affordably, and on schedule. That is why we are working alongside our partners to ensure readiness of the lunar suit and advancing the ‘sortie suit’. It is why we pivoted EUS to Centaur V alongside an expanded tank size, that benefits SLS, benefits Vulcan, that will enhance performance for crewed missions, Moon Base build-out, and other national objectives. A high-performance Centaur V will have a lot of customers, and that is a good thing for NASA programs and for the nation.
Third, we will preserve optionality right up until the point where we cannot. We are in a real space race. Schedules can slip, setbacks can happen. So if that means preserving an ICPS option while driving Centaur V in parallel, we will do so.
If it means having ML‑1 pad modification hardware ready to move immediately after Artemis III launches, we will do that too. If there are parallel paths that give America another way to accomplish the mission, we should preserve them until the data tell us otherwise.
The pioneers who came before us understood this. Apollo 8 was pivoted into a lunar mission with months of notice. NASA launched 12 uncrewed and crewed Gemini missions in roughly the same span of time between Artemis I and Artemis II.
They used the time and ingredients available, made the decisions that needed to be made, and so shall we.
We will use every bit of time available to us, the full resources of our budget, and the additional $10 billion provided to NASA under the WFTCA. We will preserve options and execute, because perpetuating the status quo is not an achievable strategy in this race.
There is simply too much on the line: the scientific potential of the Moon, Mars, and the worlds beyond; the economic opportunity; America’s leadership in technology and the standards the world will follow; the confidence of our allies and partners alongside the broader national security implications; and the inspiration of the next generation—the children who will someday have a United States Space Academy waiting for them and missions worthy of their talents when they graduate.
This is what the public expects of the world’s greatest space agency. We have extraordinary people, facilities, industry, and capabilities built over generations.
If we concentrate that talent on the major objectives ahead, maintain a bias toward action, and refuse to accept that difficult means impossible, there is no question we can deliver.
We have a lot of work ahead of us, but look at what you have already accomplished this year.
Keep pushing, don’t let a problem slip to tomorrow that could be solved today, keep putting wins on the board, and never stop believing.
We are going.
Jared Isaacman
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Intelligence Support Squadron welcomes new leader
Sept. 21, 2026
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio – Members of the Intelligence Support Squadron welcomed new leadership during an assumption of command ceremony at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center on Aug. 28, 2026.
Lt. Col. Solomon Sonya, ISS commander, assumed command of the squadron, succeeding Lt. Col. Tor Langehaug, outgoing ISS commander.
Col. Tyson Wetzel, NASIC commander, presided over the ceremony and passed the organizational guidon to Sonya, marking the transition.
The ISS implements mission-focused services to the members of NASIC – the largest sensitive, compartmented information facility in the U.S. Air Force.
https://www.nasic.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4607638/intelligence-support-squadron-welcomes-new-leader/
moar Space Force
https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4608593/cmssf-visits-vandenberg-sfb/
https://x.com/USSpaceForce/status/2102156009087066558
https://x.com/USSpaceForce/status/2102021343629722009
https://x.com/SLDelta45/status/2102383143885930723
FCC to Vote on Waiving NEPA Review for Space Ops
September 22, 2026
With summer winding down, the environmental heat is turning back to regulations.
The FCC will vote Sept. 30 on whether to overhaul its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) rules—narrowing which commission activities face environmental review, and streamlining the process for the ones that require assessment.
The draft order would find that space-based operations are not “major federal actions,” which is the legal trigger for NEPA review.
Satellite licensing has been categorically excluded from FCC environmental review since 1986, but the new rule goes a step further by solidifying those operations as outside NEPA’s reach entirely, rather than just excusing applicants from paperwork within it.
The paperwork, briefly: NEPA doesn’t actually set environmental standards. Instead, it requires agencies to study and disclose the environmental effects of what they approve, before they approve it.
Two terms doing the heavy lifting:
Major federal actions are the threshold for review. Congress codified the definition and wrote in exclusions, including “extraterritorial activities,” meaning effects located entirely outside US jurisdiction.
Categorical exclusions are a class of actions an agency has predetermined to carry no significant impact. Commercial satellite licensing has been categorically excluded for decades.
How we got here: In January 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order revoking a Carter-era order that granted the Council on Environmental Quality authority to issue government-wide NEPA regulations.
As a result, agencies now write their own NEPA procedures. The change set off a wave of rule-making over what needs the scrutiny of added paperwork, and what doesn’t.
Above the pay grade: There are two main arguments in the FCC’s case that space operations fall outside NEPA:
Extraterritorial jurisdiction: The commission points to the Outer Space Treaty’s provision that space cannot be claimed as sovereign territory. If space isn’t US territory, any impacts up there are “extraterritorial,” and outside NEPA by definition.
Not a major federal action: Beyond jurisdiction, the FCC argues a spectrum license doesn’t give it control over how an operator builds, flies, or disposes of a satellite, so licensing isn’t the kind of action NEPA covers.
When it comes to atmospheric activity, the FCC defers to the FAA, which regulates launches and reentries.
Speaking of…: The FAA is getting in on the deregulation fun as well. In July, the agency proposed waiving NEPA and 12 additional statues for commercial space licenses and permits. Comments on the proposed rule closed Aug. 31, with over 3,200 received.
Some of the 13 statutes that would be waived:
Endangered Species Act,
Clean Water Act,
Clear Air Act,
Noise Control Act.
The FAA’s filing concedes that waiving NEPA shifts the responsibility to other agencies rather than eliminating it, since federal site operators like the Space Force still run their own reviews.
This means that the effects of the FAA rule would be felt mostly at private sites like SpaceX’s Starbase, rather than federal ranges such as the Cape and Vandenberg.
Supporting cast: The FCC and the FAA are not the only agencies making moves.
NASA replaced its NEPA rules on July 1, borrowing 19 categorical exclusions from other agencies. Only one area drew tighter scrutiny: launching spacecraft with nuclear systems will now typically require an environmental assessment.
The Space Force is still producing full environmental impact statements for launch infrastructure—including a December 2025 statement that approved up to 76 annual Starship launches and 152 landings at Cape Canaveral.
Into the unknown: By volume, the environmental impact of space is a rounding error next to aviation, even at the National Space Transportation Policy‘s target of more than 1,000 launches and reentries a year by 2030.
Yet, there are still a number of unknown environmental impacts from space activity, including the extent of the atmospheric impact of so many launches and reentries. How these impacts will scale is a question requiring further research.
https://payloadspace.com/fcc-to-vote-on-waiving-nepa-review-for-space-ops/
SpaceX rolls giant Super Heavy booster to pad ahead of Starship's 1st orbital flight (photos)
September 21, 2026
Starship Flight 14 is targeted for Sept. 28.
SpaceX is gearing up for the first orbital flight of its Starship megarocket, which is now just a week away.
Starship's huge first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, was rolled out to the pad at SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas, the company revealed in an X post today (Sept. 21).
The booster will be paired with its Ship upper stage on the launch mount soon. I'f all goes according to plan, the duo will lift off on Sept. 28, on Starship's most ambitious flight to date.
The upcoming test mission will be Starship's 14th to date but the first to go orbital.
The flight plan calls for Super Heavy to make a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about seven minutes after liftoff. Ship, meanwhile, will power its way to low Earth orbit, where it will deploy 26 of SpaceX's next-gen Starlink V3 satellites.
Flight 14 will therefore begin assembly of the Starlink V3 broadband megaconstellation, which SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said will eventually consist of about 100,000 satellites. (Ship deployed 20 V3 Starlinks two months ago on Flight 13, but they were on a suborbital trajectory and quickly came back down to Earth.)
Ship will stay in orbit for a while, circling our planet about six times before returning for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile roughly 10 hours after launch.
This will be a new landing locale for Ship; its suborbital missions came down in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia.
Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. Its current iteration stands 408 feet (124 meters) tall, and future versions will be even larger, Musk has said.
In addition, both of its stages are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable — the "holy grail of rocketry," according to SpaceX. The company thinks Starship will revolutionize spaceflight, making settlement of the moon and Mars economically feasible at long last.
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/spacex-rolls-giant-super-heavy-booster-to-pad-ahead-of-starships-1st-orbital-flight-photos
https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-14
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/2102055366724866456
A call to boost European space exploration
22/09/2026
The Call sets out a shared vision for strengthening Europe's role in human and robotic space exploration and provides political guidance for preparations ahead of the Intermediate Ministerial Meeting in Rome on 15 December.
On 9 September, at the International Space Summit held in Paris, ESA Member States endorsed 'A call to boost European space exploration'.
The Call outlines a common ambition for Europe's future in space exploration and provides political guidance for ESA's efforts to translate that ambition into concrete proposals for Member States.
ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said: "The International Space Summit marked an important step in shaping a common European vision for space exploration.
Europe has now started a course towards greater autonomy in low Earth orbit, a stronger role in lunar exploration, and a more competitive European space sector, while remaining a reliable partner in international exploration efforts."
The document recognises space as a strategic domain for scientific discovery, economic prosperity, technological leadership, and international influence.
It highlights the growing importance of exploration in an increasingly competitive global environment and calls for sustained political commitment, coordinated investment, and a long-term vision to develop and advance critical exploration capabilities.
At its core, the Call focuses on three priorities: securing Europe's access to and presence in low Earth orbit in the post-International Space Station era; strengthening Europe's presence on and around the Moon through a combination of international cooperation and targeted autonomy; and using low Earth orbit and the Moon as stepping stones towards future exploration of Mars.
Following the guidance provided at the Summit, ESA is preparing options for consideration by Member States at the Intermediate Ministerial Meeting in Rome on 15 December.
These options will translate the ambition set out in the Call into concrete and sustained action for Europe’s future in exploration.
https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Corporate_news/A_call_to_boost_European_space_exploration
https://esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/corporate/A-call-to-boost-European-space-exploration.pdf
moar ESA
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Juice/Juice_to_fly_past_Earth_for_third_gravity_assist
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/ESA_awards_contracts_for_Europe_s_EOGS_blueprint
https://x.com/esa/status/2102313146849615894
https://x.com/Soph_astro/status/2102432951258534205
Russia encircles key Ukrainian defense hub – MOD
22 Sep, 2026 16:01 | Updated 22 Sep, 2026 17:05
Dobropolye sits on the southwestern flank of the last heavily fortified stronghold in the Ukrainian-held part of Donbass
Russian forces have completed the encirclement of Dobropolye, a major Ukrainian defensive hub in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the Defense Ministry in Moscow has announced.
In a statement on Tuesday, the ministry said that units from Russia’s ‘Center’ group had surrounded the town and were now moving toward the settlement of Aleksandrovka.
The advance is part of a broader Russian push toward the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, a string of cities in the northwest of DPR and the last heavily fortified Ukrainian stronghold in the region.
The agglomeration has remained under Kiev’s control for over a decade since the early stage of the conflict in then-Ukrainian Donbass, prompted by the 2014 Maidan coup.
Capturing Dobropolye could facilitate a Russian advance toward the agglomeration from the southwest while threatening Ukrainian supply and reinforcement routes.
Aleksandrovka is significant in this respect, as Russian military sources have described the western route running through the settlement as one of the last remaining supply arteries for Ukrainian forces in the area.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in June that Ukraine had spent almost a decade constructing a strategic defensive line encompassing the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk area and extending southwest toward Dobropolye.
The cities were transformed into a single fortified zone by a vast system of reinforced trenches, bunkers, and tunnels.
He added that Russian troops had breached a three-tier line of fortifications on the approaches to Dobropolye and claimed that Kiev had no comparable prepared defenses immediately to its north, forcing Ukrainian troops to hastily construct local strongpoints.
The Russian Defense Ministry also said that troops from Ukraine’s 4th and 15th National Guard brigades and the 425th Separate Assault Regiment, known as “Skala” or “Skelya,” were among those trapped in the town.
“Operations are underway to eliminate” the surrounded Ukrainian forces, it added.
“Skala” came under scrutiny earlier this year after Ukrainian media reported torture and abuse at its training facilities, as well as 25 non-combat deaths among recruits.
Ukrainian authorities subsequently opened an investigation and suspended the regiment’s commander.
As Russian forces continue to advance in Donbass, Moscow has accused Kiev of intensifying attacks on civilian targets, repeatedly describing such strikes as acts of terrorism.
The Defense Ministry has warned that the targeting of civilian facilities would be met by intensified precision strikes on military targets in Kiev.
On Tuesday, a major Ukrainian drone raid on the Samara Region left one person dead and four injured, according to Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev. He said private homes and vehicles were also damaged.
https://www.rt.com/russia/646089-russia-encircles-dobropolye-mod/
moar RT
https://www.rt.com/russia/646088-ukraine-attacks-radiation-zaporozhye/
https://www.rt.com/news/646086-nato-eu-conflict-marsden/
https://www.rt.com/news/646079-zelensky-trump-card-bluff-un/
https://www.rt.com/news/646103-hungary-ukraine-magyar-zelensky-carpathian/