The launches include Starlink of Vandenberg, including the 700th Falcon 9 overall on the 31st, plus a couple of Electrons from Mahia and a run of Chinese vehicles. Galactic Energy put the first pathfinder for a low-inclination remote-sensing constellation up on a Ceres-1S from an offshore barge, while CAS Space flew the second Kinetica-2 (the liquid RP-1/LOX tri-core version) with another batch of Qianfan satellites. ISRO’s GSLV got NVS-03 into geosynchronous transfer orbit after the previous one’s failure, and Rocket Lab’s 99th Electron carried an iQPS SAR bird.
On the bigger picture side, NASA laid out the Artemis Acceleration plan at a 23 October briefing. Artemis III stays an Earth-orbit rehearsal next summer; the first landing is still aimed at 2028 on Artemis IV, with both SpaceX’s Starship HLS and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon kept open as dual paths that no longer have to stop at a Gateway. Same window, China publicly sketched its two-launch lunar-orbit rendezvous plan for a crewed landing before 2030. Starship Flight 15 hardware ran its static fires on Booster 22 and Ship 42, and Virgin Galactic rolled out its first Delta-class vehicle, Apeiron.
AFRL recovered the Starfall cargo pods after Bandwagon-5, the leaking Zvezda PrK compartment on the ISS is being permanently sealed off, Vera Rubin found a dwarf-planet candidate with an observational arc going back to the 1930s, and Starfish Space’s first full-scale Otter servicing vehicle was written off after a bus fault-protection error. The period closed with a short White House proclamation restating U.S. leadership in space exploration and settlement.
