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From Orbital Roster

Four more people moved into orbit this week. Crew-13 launched on October 1 and docked 7 hours 55 minutes later, the fastest launch-to-docking of a U.S. spacecraft in the station's history, which puts 14 people off Earth right now (meet them). Also inside: Starship finally made orbit, Webb found a cosmic house of mirrors, and a rough week for space stocks.

📰 This week on Orbital Roster

Point it at something you already know

Deep Space Tuesdays · Tuesday, September 29

ESA's Jupiter-bound Juice swung past Earth at 8,640 kilometers, left 3.5 km/s faster, and needed just one of six planned course corrections. The part I loved: Earth and the Moon are calibration targets you can't buy, so this is when you find out whether your instruments are lying. Plus, a half-gram of asteroid Bennu turns out to be a hybrid.

Read it on Orbital Roster →

They were there all along

Stellar Saturdays · Friday, October 2

Webb's new picture of galaxy cluster MACS J0454.1-0300 caught a rare four-image lens twice in one frame, a first for a single cluster. And next to Hubble's 2014 view of the same spot, it shows hundreds of galaxies nobody could see before. More on it below.

Read it on Orbital Roster →

Quick hits

• Crew-13 is aboard. Jessica Watkins, Luke Delaney, CSA's Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos's Sergey Teteryatnikov docked Dragon Grace to Harmony at 7:05 p.m. EDT on October 1. (NASA, Oct. 1)
• Starship made orbit. Flight 14 reached orbit on September 28 and deployed 26 third-generation Starlink satellites, despite one upper-stage engine shutting down early, then splashed down north of Hawaii about three hours after launch. (Spaceflight Now, Sept. 28)
• Falcon Heavy flew for the NRO. NROL-97 lifted off from 39A at 03:54 UTC on October 2, the spy agency's first Falcon Heavy mission, and both side boosters landed back at the Cape. (Spaceflight Now, Oct. 1)
• 130 payloads on one rideshare. Transporter-18 carried a Planet and Google prototype testing Google's TPU chips in space, Starfish Space's first Otter servicer, and a power-beaming demo. (Via Satellite, Oct. 1)
• Starliner's next steps. NASA plans an uncrewed Starliner flight around December or January; a crewed one could follow in mid-2028, with Woody Hoburg commanding. (Spaceflight Now, Sept. 29)

🚀 Launches, the next 7 days

• SDA Tranche 1 Transport Layer A · Falcon 9 · Vandenberg SLC-4E · NET Oct 5, 08:17 UTC. More of the Space Development Agency's military data-relay layer. (profile)
• NeonSat-2 to 6 · Nuri · Naro Space Center, South Korea · NET Oct 7, 03:23 UTC. Five Earth-observation smallsats on Korea's homegrown rocket. (profile)
• Unannounced payload · Long March 12 · Wenchang Commercial LC-2 · NET Oct 9, 19:25 UTC.

📈 Space stocks, the last 7 days

A rough week: only two of the 21 companies we track went up, and five fell 9% or more. I couldn't find a source tying any of those five drops to company news, so I'm not going to guess. Two of them did make news: Satellogic flew four imaging satellites on Transporter-18, and SkyFi named BlackSky the first imagery provider for its new Robinhood app.

Space stocks — 7-day movers

Delayed market data via Yahoo Finance — for information only, not investment advice.

🔭 Stellar image of the week

The golden galaxies are the cluster; the smeared orange ones are far behind it, their light bent on its way to us. Look closely and you'll find tiny red galaxies bent into arcs right out to the edges.

The full story →

References

• Dragon Docks, Bringing SpaceX Crew-13 to Station — NASA, October 1, 2026
• NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 Launches to International Space Station — NASA, October 1, 2026
• Starship returns to Earth, rocket splashes down north of Hawaii after three-hour flight — Spaceflight Now, September 28, 2026
• Falcon Heavy to fly its first mission for U.S. spy satellite agency — Spaceflight Now, October 1, 2026
• The first-mission milestones onboard SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare launch — Via Satellite, October 1, 2026
• NASA plans unpiloted Starliner test flight at end of year — Spaceflight Now, September 29, 2026
• SkyFi Announces 'Satellite Intelligence,' a Robinhood Agent App — SkyFi via PR Newswire, September 30, 2026
• Galaxies in a cosmic house of mirrors — ESA/Webb, September 29, 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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