Space digest — 2026-10-24
Top line: NASA's revised 2028 Artemis Moon-landing plan keeps the landing on a 2028 track and adds a structural change: both the SpaceX Starship and Blue Origin Moon landers will be docked to Orion in Earth orbit before any crewed landing, and the agency will only pick between the two once those test results are in. Off the Moon beat, SpaceX's Falcon 9 cadence is showing strain from the Starship pivot — the first Starlink launch in 11 days lifted from California on October 23.
1. NASA's revised 2028 Artemis campaign: no lander pick until both are tested
What happened: NASA published its October Artemis update in the early hours of October 24 (12:20–12:25 AM ET), laying out the revised campaign toward a 2028 Moon landing. The agency's plan now has Orion docking with test versions of both the SpaceX Starship and Blue Origin Moon landers in Earth orbit before any lunar landing, and per MSN's relay of the campaign outline, NASA will not decide which lander to use until those flight tests show which one is ready. NASASpaceflight's write-up of the same "Artemis Acceleration" media event (published 12:25 AM ET) adds the SLS stacking status, details on the new "Sortie" EVA spacesuit, and the "dual 2028 paths" strategic frame. Around Prague's write-up corroborates the dual-lander Earth-orbit test plan.
What's genuinely new: Two things. First, the lander selection is now explicitly open — the choice between Starship HLS and the Blue Origin lander is gated on test results, not on a pre-committed lane, which reshapes what "2028" means in practice. Second, NASASpaceflight's rundown adds SLS stacking status and the "Sortie" EVA-suit details alongside the dual-path framing already circulating from the October 23 Kennedy briefing.
Watch: the year-end tanking test; whether the summer 2027 Artemis III window survives the added dual-docking choreography; the early-2028 uncrewed-landing targets both providers carry; and the unresolved Starship-refueling count dispute (NASA advisers' "around 22" vs Musk's "6 to 8").
Links: MSN · NASASpaceflight.com · Around Prague
Brief
- Falcon 9's Starlink cadence is slowing — SpaceX sent 27 more Starlink broadband satellites to orbit from California on October 23, its first Starlink launch in 11 days (MSN). The Artemis storyline's lander context is where the launch-cadence trade is most visible, but the slowdown itself is the fact here: the F9 line is now feeding Starlink on a noticeably longer gap.
Dropped
- "Elon Musk's controversial influence on space exploration" (MSN): commentary/feature, not a news development — no new facts beyond the already-tracked SpaceX-in-Ukraine storyline, and MSN's own syndication layer doesn't name the original outlet.
- "[Subscribers Only] 39A from the air today" and "[Subscribers Only] SpaceX Masseys, Ship 43 (Flight 15)" (NASASpaceflight on X): paywalled content with no publicly readable facts in the window.
- "Very on topic for today. Starbase and the Moon." (NASASpaceflight on X): a pointer tweet with no factual content of its own.
- "Overview of the major updates from NASA's Artemis Acceleration media event" (NASASpaceflight on X): a link to the NSF article already cited as the lead story's source.
- RT Ryan Caton on Artemis problems: a video commentary pointing at the same briefing; no new facts beyond what the NSF piece and the newsfeed's own deltas already carry.