NASA's DAVINCI Probe Can Stand the Heat
2 Oct 2026

An engineering model of NASA’s DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) descent probe passed a key test that ran from Aug. 28 to Sept. 10, showing it can survive the extreme temperatures of Venus.

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 Launches
1 Oct 2026

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Dragon spacecraft is launched on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov aboard, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Asteroid Bennu Has an Identity Crisis, and Jupiter Might Be to Blame
Posted on: 2 Oct 2026

Asteroid sample return missions have brought well preserved samples of the early solar system (that hadn’t been roasted in a fireball) back to Earth for the first time. But those samples, like the OSIRIS-REx sample from asteroid (101955) Bennu, sometimes provide more questions than answers. A new paper, published in Science Advances from researchers at ETH Zurich and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, highlights one of those questions - why Bennu appears to have been born in both the inner and outer solar system - and a possible answer to it.

NASA's First Selection for a New Class of Mission: The PRIMA Far-Infrared Telescope
Posted on: 1 Oct 2026

NASA announced Wednesday a mission to explore the history and evolution of the universe, PRIMA (PRobe far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics), is advancing to the next phase of development. This space telescope is the first in a new class of NASA astrophysics missions, called Probe Explorers, within the agency’s longstanding Explorers Program.