Stories in Science
Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL cargo craft, which delivered over 11,000 pounds of supplies and experiments to the space station, was scheduled to depart Oct. 9 and re-enter Earth's atmosphere Oct. 12, NASA said.
The hatch between the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and the International Space Station closed at 6:05 a.m. EDT, NASA said on Oct. 7, 2026, beginning Crew-12 return operations ahead of a planned undocking.
The Dragon spacecraft carrying four astronauts completed its deorbit burn as expected, NASA said. Parachute deployment and splashdown were set to follow.
In its Oct. 14, 2026, announcement, NASA outlined spacewalks planned for Oct. 29 and Nov. 5 to install the station's final roll-out solar arrays, with a preview briefing planned for Oct. 20.
NASA published an annotated tablet screenshot showing where Artemis II astronauts spotted faint light bursts on the Moon, alongside the full lunar science dataset from their April 2026 journey.
NASA Earth Observatory revealed that its October 2026 satellite puzzler showed Spider Crater in Western Australia, captured by Landsat 9, and credited the first reader to identify the location.
NASA's Oct. 7, 2026, overview planned SpaceX's 35th resupply launch no earlier than Oct. 13, with more than 6,300 pounds of supplies and experiments aboard Dragon.
In its Oct. 7, 2026, report, NASA described planned Dragon hatch closure and undocking for Crew-12, followed by a roughly 27-hour journey home and a splashdown targeted for Oct. 8.
NASA reported that the four astronauts of SpaceX Crew-12 were about an hour from splashdown, with the deorbit burn scheduled around 10:46 a.m. EDT and splashdown targeted for about 11:34 a.m.
Stickney Crater is more than 9 kilometers across, nearly half the diameter of Phobos, and the enhanced-color view was captured by the HiRISE camera in March 2008.
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has gathered evidence suggesting that a radio-wave formation resembling a treble clef was likely produced by an outburst from a supermassive black hole followed by a collision between two galaxy clusters, the agency reported.
NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy signed a memorandum of understanding on space nuclear power and propulsion, effective Nov. 1, covering research, fuel production, testing and launch operations.
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