https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/isro-gslv-f17-eos-05-launch-september-4-2026-2986214-2026-09-04

ISRO’s GSLV-F17 successfully lifted off today, September 4, 2026, carrying EOS-05, an advanced Earth-observation satellite. The launch took place at 2:55 AM IST from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, and the mission successfully placed EOS-05 into its intended orbit.

What makes this mission especially interesting is that EOS-05 is India’s first imaging satellite from geosynchronous orbit, opening up new possibilities for Earth observation and high-resolution imaging.

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The description on Wikipedia simply says "624 Hektor and its moon Skamandrios as imaged by the Keck Observatory in 2006."

I'm assuming the circled object is Skamandrios and the glowing bit in the center is Hektor, but what is the black circle behind it and the orange glow behind that? It almost looks like an eclipse but Hektor is an asteroid near Jupiter and from Earth's perspective Jupiter is never between us and the Sun so it can't be Jupiter blocking the Sun.

I feel like this should be obvious but it's bothering me way more than it should.

Next month, NASA’s New Horizons mission plans to shut off two instruments that study the solar wind because of a lack of funding from the agency, mission scientists say. The move comes even as the spacecraft nears the outer edge of the Solar System, following a different route than its far-out predecessors, Voyager 1 and 2.

Shutting off these instruments “would be an incalculable loss,” says Gary Zank, a space physicist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Unlike the Voyager missions, New Horizons can directly measure “pickup ions,” neutral atoms from interstellar space that become charged inside the heliosphere and get swept up by the solar wind. These particles sap energy from the solar wind and play a role in what happens at the termination shock, where the supersonic solar wind abruptly slows.

New Horizons is currently 66 times farther from the Sun than Earth and twice as far away as Pluto. It could cross the termination shock in the next few years. The spacecraft is in perfect health and could operate until 2050, Stern says. Such longevity would allow it to eventually cross the heliopause into interstellar space, enabling insights into how that boundary—which marks the edge of the Sun’s bubble—can shrink and grow over time, says James Green, NASA’s former chief scientist, who organized a petition to keep the instruments running. “This is a unique opportunity that we’re not going to get very often.”

The agency announced the decision during an internal meeting this week as it seeks to accelerate its program to land humans at the south pole of the Moon as early as 2028. At the direction of Artemis Program Manager Jeremy Parsons, NASA will work with Axiom Space to develop a “Sortie Suit” variant of the planned spacesuit for the lunar surface.

Sources said the Sortie Suit will be used for the initial landing missions flown on landers developed both by SpaceX and Blue Origin. Among the goals of the initiative are to lower the mass of the spacesuit, reduce its complexity, and simplify interfaces between the spacesuits and lunar landers.

I am building a team for the ESA ISAM Innovation Sprint and need 3-4 people.

ESA opened an OSIP campaign on In-Space Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing.

Winners get a fully funded Cooperative Agreement for 6 months.
The sprint itself is 5 days at ESTEC in Noordwijk, end of November.

Deadline to apply: 14 September. Yes, that's soon.

I have a concept for one of the use cases, a working financial model, and two people already on board.

What's missing:

Launcher / upper stage engineer.
Someone who knows residual propellant, passivation, stage design.

Propulsion or fluid transfer engineer.
Refueling mechanics, interfaces.

Someone from the demand side.
Satellite operator, space insurer, or space economist.

Space law.
Outer Space Treaty Art. VIII, Liability Convention. Advisor role is fine here.

Two ways to join:

Core team.
You co-author the submission, come to ESTEC in November, and get a share of the agreement if we win.

Advisor.
A few hours of review before 14 September, your name in the proposal, no travel.

Requirements: you're a national of an ESA Member State or resident in one, you're not already on another team in this campaign, and you can sign a short NDA.

Being upfront: no pay before the win, and travel to ESTEC is self-funded. If we win, that changes.

Interested? Reply here or DM me. I'll send a 5 minute screening form and we take it from there.

I wanted a simple place to check on Roman's progress, so I built this little app. It's a live 3D view of the ~100-day cruise from Earth to Sun–Earth L2: the launch date, Roman's position/speed, and the Moon's position are all real, pulled live from JPL Horizons, with an analytic model (fit to that same real data) filling in wherever live data doesn't reach yet.

Distances are log-compressed so Earth, the Moon, L2, and the Sun can all fit on screen at once - there's a tab in the app breaking down exactly how that compression works.

roman-telescope-tracker.pages.dev - feedback welcome.