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Rocket Lab announced a new agreement with Japanese radar-imaging company Synspective covering 20 additional Electron launches, its largest single launch services agreement to date. This extends Synspective's total bookings with Rocket Lab to 47 missions, including 13 already flown since 2020 carrying the company's StriX radar satellites. The deal follows Rocket Lab's most recent Synspective launch on September 25.
NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said SpaceX intends to phase out its Falcon and Dragon systems as it focuses on Starship, prompting NASA to consider purchasing two additional crewed launches from Boeing's Starliner. NASA also announced it will spend $359 million to help Boeing rebuild the reaction control thrusters blamed for problems on Starliner's last mission.
Google has launched a prototype satellite for its Project Suncatcher initiative, built with partner Planet, aboard SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare mission. The company confirmed contact with the satellite and says it is functioning normally. A peer-reviewed paper detailing the underlying research has been published in the journal Joule.
A Falcon 9 rocket launched SpaceX's Crew-13 mission from Cape Canaveral, sending four astronauts to the International Space Station for a six-month stay. The launch, originally planned for mid-September, was delayed so SpaceX could cut into a propellant line and replace a faulty valve in the Dragon spacecraft's propulsion system.
Google sent a prototype orbital compute satellite, built by Planet Labs, aboard a SpaceX rocket from California, marking the first time one of its Tensor Processing Units has flown in space. The test will check whether the chip can sustain a kilowatt of continuous power, manage heat, and run AI models in short bursts without failure. Google's Travis Beals, who leads the effort called Project Suncatcher, said a more advanced two-satellite demo with laser communication links is planned for next year.
xAI has released Grok for Intune, a standalone version of its Grok AI assistant app designed for organizations using Microsoft Intune to manage devices. The app supports Intune Mobile Application Management, enforces company app protection policies, and requires sign-in with a work email. It is now available on the App Store and includes Grok's standard features like chat, image and video generation, voice mode, and live camera analysis.
Satlyt, a startup co-founded by former Google and SpaceX engineer Rama Afullo, has raised an $8 million seed round to develop software that lets multiple satellites share AI computing workloads in orbit. Unlike rivals such as SpaceX, Google and Starcloud, Satlyt does not build its own spacecraft; instead it aims to supply software that runs across other companies' satellites. The company's software is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX rocket alongside Google's first Project Suncatcher prototype.
Alphabet is sending its tensor processing units to space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of the Transporter-18 mission launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The flight carries Planet Labs satellites, including a solar-powered prototype fitted with Google's AI chips, marking the first in-orbit test of Google's Project Suncatcher initiative first announced in November 2025.
NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 mission is set to launch October 1 at 11:10AM ET from Cape Canaveral, carrying commander Jessica Watkins, pilot Luke Delaney, CSA astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov to the ISS. The crew will relieve Crew-12, who briefly sheltered in their capsule in June after an air leak was detected on the station, and NASA says the docking will be the fastest in US space station history at seven hours and 50 minutes.
SpaceX has told NASA and private space station developers including Axiom Space, Voyager Space, and Vast Space that it intends to stop flying Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 missions to low-Earth orbit after supporting the International Space Station through 2030. The move threatens the crew transportation backbone for NASA's two-decade effort to build a commercial human spaceflight market in orbit.
xAI's Grokipedia, an AI-generated encyclopedia, has begun updating and fact-checking articles again after reportedly stalling since April. The Verge found recent 'fact-checked by Grok' timestamps on pages like Barack Obama and Elon Musk, though other entries such as Honolulu still show scans from months ago. The site also appears to be processing user-submitted edit suggestions, including one about a video game release date that was accepted within minutes.
NASA faces a pivotal test of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft this year, according to reporting on the agency's crew transport plans. The report states that SpaceX's Crew Dragon is set to be retired, leaving NASA with fewer alternatives for ferrying astronauts to orbit.