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Technical milestones · last 90 days

1. 14 Oct 2026Rocket Lab moves Neutron’s expected inaugural launch to 2027. source
2. 13 Oct 2026NASA confirms completion of Artemis III booster stacking and installation of all four RS-25 engines. Core-stage integration and tanking tests are still to come. source
3. 1 Oct 2026Google's first Project Suncatcher prototype satellite, built with Planet to test machine learning hardware in space, reached orbit on SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare; Google confirmed contact and says it is operating as expected. source
4. 1 Oct 2026NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 docked to the ISS at 23:05 UTC, 7 hours 55 minutes after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, which NASA calls the fastest launch-to-docking of a US spacecraft in the station's history. source
5. 28 Sep 2026Starship Flight 14 became the first orbital Starship flight: it lifted off from Starbase at 12:48 UTC, deployed all 26 Starlink V3 satellites, flew the first deorbit burn and splashed down on target in the northern Pacific. source
6. 28 Sep 2026ESA's Juice flew 8,640 km above the Indian Ocean at 11:45 UTC; the Earth gravity assist turned its path by 20° and added 3.5 km/s on the way to Jupiter. source
7. 26 Sep 2026Rocket Lab flew its 97th Electron from Mahia at 00:39 UTC, placing Synspective's 13th StriX radar satellite directly into a 559 km orbit; it was Rocket Lab's 18th launch of 2026. source
8. 25 Sep 2026NASA's Crew-13 Flight Readiness Review polled go, clearing four crew for launch to the ISS on a Falcon 9 at 11:10 EDT (15:10 UTC) on 1 October from Cape Canaveral. source
9. 23 Sep 2026Smile, ESA's mission with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was declared ready for science after commissioning since its 19 May launch; its UVI camera records the northern lights for up to 45 hours at a time. source
10. 23 Sep 2026NASA selected PRIMA, a far-infrared space telescope, as the first mission in its new Probe Explorers class; if confirmed, its project cost is capped at $1.2bn excluding launch, with launch targeted for 2033. source
11. 11 Sep 2026NASA activated the Roman Space Telescope's Wide Field Instrument, the 300-megapixel primary camera, en route to L2; the Coronagraph's components checked out and entered a 30-day decontamination process. source
12. 5 Sep 2026Isar Aerospace's Spectrum reached orbit on its second flight, lifting off from Andøya Spaceport in Norway at 20:12 UTC; ESA calls it the first launch to orbit from continental Europe. source
13. 30 Aug 2026Falcon Heavy launched NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from LC-39A at 11:26 UTC, sending the observatory on its way to the Sun-Earth L2 point. It is the second Falcon Heavy flight of 2026. source
14. 27 Aug 2026Arianespace flew MTG-I2, EUMETSAT's second Meteosat Third Generation imaging satellite, from Kourou at 20:11 UTC on flight VA270: Ariane 6's first mission to geostationary transfer orbit and its fourth flight of the year. Separation came 36 minutes after liftoff. source
15. 16 Aug 2026SpaceX flew two Falcon 9s 38 minutes apart from opposite coasts, Globalstar 2-R from Cape Canaveral at 01:12 UTC and the classified USSF-366 from Vandenberg at 01:50 UTC, on the liftoff times SpaceX publishes for each mission. SpaceX makes no record claim for the gap, so neither do we. source
16. 5 Aug 2026AST SpaceMobile's Block 2 BlueBirds reach orbit: up to roughly 200 Mbps from a satellite direct to an unmodified phone, double the first generation. source
17. 30 Jul 2026NASA joined the Orion crew and service modules for Artemis III at Kennedy; all four SLS engines are in the assembly building. source
18. 24 Jul 2026Starship Flight 13: the first deployment of next-generation Starlink V3 satellites from Starship, an in-space Raptor relight, and the ship's first intact splashdown, coming to rest whole in the Indian Ocean. source