The Overview · your week in space

From The Decisional Pass

Thirteen Starships have flown, and not one of them has gone all the way around the planet. That could change Monday. Also this week: NASA picked a new kind of mission to look at the universe in light nobody has seen since 2013, its administrator told staff Artemis III is about 90 days behind, and the spacecraft sent to rescue a 22-year-old telescope came home without it.

🚀 Starship is stacked for its first trip to orbit

Early Wednesday, SpaceX set Ship 41 on top of Super Heavy Booster 21 at Starbase. The stack stands 124 meters tall, and it's the Block 3 version of the vehicle. The target is 7:15 a.m. CDT on Monday, September 28, which would make Flight 14 the first Starship to reach orbit. The plan runs nearly 10 hours and deploys 26 Version 3 Starlink satellites along the way.

Here's the detail worth getting right. Flight 13 in July already released 20 V3 Starlinks. But that flight was suborbital by design, so they were always going to fall back and burn up. The new thing Monday is the path, not the payload. Get to orbit, stay there for hours, then bring the ship home on purpose.

One catch: as of Friday the FAA license hadn't been issued, and a temporary flight restriction is on file through October 7. It's already slipped more than once this month, so treat Monday as a target. Follow it on our Starship page.

References: Spaceflight Now (Sept. 23) · AIAA (Sept. 24) · Spaceflight Now on Flight 13 (July 25)

🔭 NASA picked a telescope for light we haven't seen in 13 years

On September 23 NASA chose PRIMA, the PRobe far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics, as the first mission in a new "Probe" class. That class sits between the small Explorers and the flagships like Webb, with a cost cap of $1.2 billion not counting launch. PRIMA carries a 1.8-meter (5.9-foot) telescope and targets a 2033 launch for a five-year mission, run out of JPL.

Far-infrared is where cold dust and gas glow, the stuff that hides stars being born and galaxies being built. Nobody has had a working telescope there since ESA's Herschel ran out of coolant in 2013. It's also a crowd: CNES, ASI, DLR, CSA, KASA, JAXA and the UK Space Agency are all partners. Next stop is preliminary design.

References: NASA (Sept. 23) · Caltech (Sept. 23)

🌕 Artemis III is running about 90 days late

In a long note to staff published September 20, Administrator Jared Isaacman wrote that NASA is "~90 days broken against the Artemis III schedule." The goal is still summer 2027. Artemis III is now the low Earth orbit docking demo, Orion practicing with the commercial landers before anyone tries the Moon. He wants to keep "as many as two opportunities for lunar landings in 2028."

I like that he put a number on it. Ninety days is a real, trackable slip, and saying it out loud is how you get it back. Three days later at a conference in Houston he said NASA "dodged a bullet" when China pushed Chang'e 7 out of August. You can watch the whole race on our lunar dashboard.

References: NASA Watch (Sept. 21) · SpaceNews (Sept. 24)

🛰️ The Swift rescuer came home alone

Last month I wrote that Katalyst and NASA had called off the reboost of the Swift observatory. On Friday the rescuer itself, Katalyst's three-armed Link, reentered the atmosphere, closing out a $30 million attempt that launched July 3. Two of its three reaction wheels failed, then a stuck valve sent it spinning, and by the time the team had it back under control there wasn't enough fuel left to finish the job.

It still got closer than you'd think: within about 7 to 9 miles of Swift, and the arms deployed and worked. Swift is now expected to reenter in early November, after 22 years of chasing gamma-ray bursts. "We knew this boost effort would be worthwhile either way," said NASA's Shawn Domagal-Goldman. I agree. Grabbing a satellite that was never built to be grabbed is hard, and now somebody has the flight data.

References: AP via ClickOrlando (Sept. 25) · SpacePolicyOnline (Sept. 23)

⚡ Quick hits

• Crew-13 has a date. Jessica Watkins, Luke Delaney, CSA's Joshua Kutryk and cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov are set to launch on Crew Dragon at 11:10 a.m. EDT on October 1, docking to the station about nine hours later. (NASA, Sept. 22)
• Three Artemis Accords signers in four days. Albania on the 21st, Croatia on the 23rd and Côte d'Ivoire on the 24th, which brings the count to 75. (NASA, Sept. 24)
• Juice swings past Earth Monday at 11:45 UTC, 8,640 km up, picking up 3.5 km/s for free. Tuesday's Deep Space issue has the full story. (ESA, Sept. 21)

Space stocks — 7-day movers

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References

• Spaceflight Now, "SpaceX stacks Starship and Super Heavy for first orbital flight," Sept. 23, 2026
• AIAA, "Starship Flight 14 fully stacked ahead of possible Monday launch," Sept. 24, 2026
• Spaceflight Now, Starship Flight 13 recap, July 25, 2026
• NASA, "NASA Selects Far-Infrared Telescope as First in New Mission Class," Sept. 23, 2026
• Caltech, PRIMA mission roles, Sept. 23, 2026
• NASA Watch, note from Jared Isaacman to NASA staff, Sept. 21, 2026
• SpaceNews, "Isaacman says NASA 'dodged a bullet' with Chinese lunar mission delay," Sept. 24, 2026
• AP via ClickOrlando, Link reentry, Sept. 25, 2026
• SpacePolicyOnline, Swift rescue mission, Sept. 23, 2026
• NASA, Crew-13 prelaunch update, Sept. 22, 2026
• NASA, Côte d'Ivoire signs the Artemis Accords, Sept. 24, 2026
• ESA, Juice's third gravity assist, Sept. 21, 2026

Track it all live — who's in orbit right now, the lunar race, and every agency and company on the map — at Orbital Roster.

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