The Decisional Pass · Crew-12 home after 237 days
The Decisional Pass · your week in space, every Friday
From Orbital Roster
Four people came home this week. Crew-12's Dragon Freedom splashed down off Los Angeles at 11:34 a.m. EDT on Thursday, after 237 days in space, with Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, ESA's Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos's Andrey Fedyaev aboard. Also inside: green spots on Scottish sea cliffs, a telescope whose first picture was noisy on purpose, and a young star that blew a hole in its own nursery.
📰 This week on Orbital Roster
The star that cleared the room
Stellar Saturdays · Friday, October 9
Webb's new picture of the stellar nursery NGC 7129 shows a young star, still contracting toward adulthood, that has carved out a gold cavity about 3.5 light-years across. Right next to it, a tangle of red outflows from even younger protostars. It's this week's stellar image, more on it below.
Its first picture was meant to be noisy
Deep Space Tuesdays · Tuesday, October 6
Roman's planet-imaging coronagraph looked at the sky for the first time on September 22, with its detectors deliberately held warm so outgassing wouldn't freeze onto them. The same month, the telescope proved it can hold as steady as a laser on a dime 150 miles away, and found it has fuel for at least 22 years.
To read Mars, they went to Scotland
Moon & Mars Mondays · Monday, October 5
Perseverance found little green spots in red Martian rock, and nobody can yet say what made them. So NASA scientists climbed Scottish sea cliffs between tides to study the same kind of spots in 1.2-billion-year-old rock where life is known to have been. It's the science version of rehearsing in the Mars Yard.
Quick hits
- Artemis II's Moon data is public. NASA put more than 800 GB of lunar science data into the Planetary Data System, including more than 11,000 full-resolution images and video and 8.5 hours of the crew's spoken observations from the April 6 flyby. (NASA, Oct. 7)
- Nuri flew a fifth time. South Korea's rocket launched from Naro on October 7 and put 14 of 15 satellites into a 570 km orbit, including all five NEONSAT smallsats; one CubeSat didn't separate. (Korea Times, Oct. 7)
- NASA's next Moon delivery contract slips. The CLPS 2.0 award is now planned for November 7, per NASA's procurement page, updated October 6. (NASA, Oct. 6)
- Starlink Mobile gets a green light. The FCC approved SpaceX's 15,000-satellite direct-to-device system, with half required in operation by 2032. (Broadband Breakfast, Oct. 7)
🚀 Launches, the next 7 days
- Unannounced payload · Long March 12 · Wenchang Commercial LC-2 · NET Oct 9, 19:25 UTC.
- SDA Tranche 1 Transport Layer A · Falcon 9 · Vandenberg SLC-4E · NET Oct 10, 07:39 UTC. More satellites for the Space Development Agency's military data-relay layer. (profile)
- CRS-35 · Falcon 9 · Cape Canaveral SLC-40 · NET Oct 13, 10:33 UTC. A Cargo Dragon with science, supplies and hardware for the station.
- USSF-481 · Falcon 9 · Vandenberg SLC-4E · NET Oct 15, 23:44 UTC. A U.S. Space Force mission.
- +1 Starlink batch from Vandenberg.
📈 Space stocks, the last 7 days
A rough week for the launch and lunar names. GuruFocus tied Intuitive Machines' October 7 drop to NASA pushing the CLPS 2.0 award to November 7, and named Firefly among the other bidders affected. 24/7 Wall St. called that day's slide sector-wide selling, noting Rocket Lab and Intuitive Machines had been "quiet on the news front." I couldn't find a sourced reason for the Satellogic and Spire declines, so I won't guess.
Space stocks — 7-day movers
| Ticker | Sector | 7-day |
|---|---|---|
| VSAT — Viasat | Ground & comms | ▲ +2.3% |
| LDOS — Leidos | Defense | ▲ +1.4% |
| NOC — Northrop Grumman Space Systems | Spacecraft & components | ▲ +1.2% |
| RTX — RTX (Raytheon) | Defense | ▲ +1.0% |
| LMT — Lockheed Martin | Spacecraft & components | ▲ +0.3% |
| FLY — Firefly Aerospace | Launch | ▼ -12.5% |
| LUNR — Intuitive Machines | Spacecraft & components | ▼ -7.9% |
| RKLB — Rocket Lab | Launch | ▼ -7.7% |
| SATL — Satellogic | Satellites & data | ▼ -7.7% |
| SPIR — Spire Global | Satellites & data | ▼ -6.6% |
Delayed market data via Yahoo Finance — for information only, not investment advice.
🔭 Stellar image of the week
The star with the big spikes is LkHα 234, about 5 to 8 times the Sun's mass and not yet fusing hydrogen, and the gold cavity beside it is the room it cleared. Now look right: that red mess is younger protostars blasting outflows into the gas around them.
References
- NASA's SpaceX Crew-12 Dragon Splashes Down at 11:34 a.m. EDT — NASA, October 8, 2026
- Crew-12 Returns to Earth — NASA, October 8, 2026
- NASA Releases Artemis II Lunar Science Data, Images — NASA, October 7, 2026
- Nuri rocket lifts off in 5th launch — Korea Times, October 7, 2026
- CLPS 2.0 procurement page, change log 10/06/2026 — NASA
- FCC approves SpaceX request for 15,000 direct-to-device satellites — Broadband Breakfast, October 7, 2026
- NASA's SpaceX CRS-35 — NASA, updated October 8, 2026
- Intuitive Machines (LUNR) Shares Drop After NASA Lunar Contract Delay — GuruFocus, October 7, 2026
- Redwire falls 5% as space stocks sell off together — 24/7 Wall St., October 7, 2026
- Webb captures commotion from nebula's stellar jets — ESA/Webb, October 6, 2026
Everything above lives at Orbital Roster: who's in orbit right now, the lunar race, and every agency and company on the map. See you next Friday.
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