Russia's state space corporation will begin parachute drop tests of its next-generation crewed spacecraft this autumn, Ars Technica reported on 30 September, with a first crewed launch still pencilled in for 2028 or 2029.
Blood samples from 52 astronauts suggest gut bacteria start fermenting protein within weeks of arriving in orbit, according to University of Copenhagen research published on 28 September. On 1 October, the first Google TPUs headed for orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9.
Google's tensor processing units launched toward orbit on a SpaceX Falcon 9 on Thursday, marking the first in-orbit test of Alphabet's Project Suncatcher. On the same day, Sunnyvale and Nairobi-based Satlyt announced it raised an $8 million seed round to run AI on satellites.
Japanese startup Helical Fusion expects to begin preliminary power-on tests at its Helix HARUKA demonstration reactor in 2027, the company said on Tuesday, with construction of the first spiral coil at the National Institute for Fusion Science in Toki now largely complete.
Japan's Helical Fusion says it will start preliminary power-on tests at its Helix HARUKA pilot reactor in 2027, the company said on Tuesday, as reported by The Asahi Shimbun on 30 September. That is a first-stage milestone, not a power plant: commercial operation, CEO Takaya Taguchi told reporters, is targeted for the 2040s at the earliest.
Europe's launch plans took a concrete step on Thursday 1 October when PLD Space and France's CNES said they will study a second launch pad at the Guiana Space Centre, while Ars Technica reported on 30 September that Russia's long-delayed crewed spacecraft is now targeting a debut flight in 2028 or 2029.
SpaceX launched four astronauts toward the International Space Station on Thursday 1 October, as new research from the University of Copenhagen and NASA offered a possible explanation for a long-standing complaint among crews: constipation in orbit.
Japanese startup Helical Fusion says it will begin preliminary power-on tests at its Helix HARUKA demonstration reactor in 2027. The first spiral coil is now largely finished at the National Institute for Fusion Science site in Toki, Gifu Prefecture.
Quantum Space announced on 30 September that it has executed a spacecraft processing work order with All Points Logistics for its Prime pathfinder mission. The launch is targeted for the second half of 2027 from Vandenberg Space Force Base.
A machine learning pipeline developed at Microsoft Research can warn grid operators 30 to 60 minutes before space weather threatens individual substations, according to a company research post published on 30 September.
The European-Chinese Smile mission was cleared to begin science operations on 23 September, ESA said, ending a commissioning period that began when the spacecraft reached its target orbit on 20 June.
Google's DeepMind team published research on Wednesday 30 September describing SynthIDBio, a variant of its SynthID watermarking technology. The method steers the amino acid choices made by the AI protein design tool ProteinMPNN, without breaking the resulting protein's function.
Google's DeepMind team published a protein watermarking method on Wednesday, 30 September, that marks AI-generated protein sequences without changing how they fold, Ars Technica reported the same day.
Japan's Helical Fusion expects to start preliminary power-on tests at its Helix HARUKA pilot reactor in 2027, the company said on 29 September, while a UK machine's 59 megajoule shot remains the benchmark for fusion output.
Roscosmos chief Dmitry Bakanov said on Tuesday that parachute drop tests of Russia's long-delayed next-generation crewed spacecraft will begin this fall in the Far East, according to Interfax comments translated for Ars Technica.
Anthropic says its molecular biology lab, staffed by Claude agents, made its first discovery earlier this year. The claim, announced on 28 September, has drawn fire from biologists who argue that spotting a pattern is not the same as working out what it does.