Space News Oct 2, 2026: Alberta Astronaut Reaches ISS
Happy Friday, space fans, and welcome to your daily space update from Alberta Radio! It's been a huge couple of days up there: an Alberta-born astronaut just moved into the International Space Station, SpaceX flew three rockets in under a day, astronomers heard radio signals from a far-off planet, and there's a shot at northern lights this weekend. Let's get into it.
1. Alberta's Own Joshua Kutryk Reaches the Space Station in Record Time
Big one for us here in Alberta! Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, who was born in Fort Saskatchewan and raised on a cattle farm in eastern Alberta, is now living aboard the International Space Station. Kutryk launched with NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 mission on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral at 9:10 a.m. MT on Thursday, Oct. 1, after a delay of about three weeks to fix a leak in the Dragon capsule's propulsion system.
The Dragon docked to the station's Harmony module at 5:05 p.m. MT, just 7 hours and 55 minutes after liftoff. NASA says that's the fastest launch-to-docking of any U.S. spacecraft in the station's history. The hatch opened at 7:19 p.m. MT, and the crew joined Expedition 75. Kutryk, a Royal Canadian Air Force colonel and test pilot, is flying with NASA commander Jessica Watkins, NASA pilot Luke Delaney and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. He's the first CSA astronaut to fly under NASA's Commercial Crew Program, and the crew will spend about six months in orbit.
Sources: NASA | Canadian Space Agency | Space.com
2. SpaceX's Triple-Header: Falcon Heavy Flies for the NRO
SpaceX was busy Thursday. After Crew-13, a Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 12:32 p.m. MT on the Transporter-18 rideshare mission, carrying 130 payloads to a Sun-synchronous orbit. Then at 9:54 p.m. MT, a Falcon Heavy launched from Kennedy Space Center's pad 39A on NROL-97, a classified mission and the first time the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office has flown on Falcon Heavy. It was the 14th Falcon Heavy flight ever.
SpaceX says its teams pulled off three launches, four first-stage landings at four landing zones in Florida and California, and the Crew-13 docking, all in under 13 hours. That comes just days after Starship Flight 14 reached orbit for the first time on Sept. 28 and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites.
Sources: Spaceflight Now | SpaceX: Starship Flight 14
3. NASA's Three Small Satellites Hitch a Ride on Transporter-18
Three NASA-supported small spacecraft were aboard that Transporter-18 launch. The ASCENT Propulsion Dual Mode CubeSat will test a chemical thruster and four electrospray thrusters that share one supply of ASCENT, a low-toxicity propellant. SPRITE, built by the University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, is about the size of a shoebox and will be NASA's first astrophysics CubeSat to detect a specific range of ultraviolet light that can't be observed from the ground. Its mission is planned to last one year.
Rounding it out is SSPICY. For that mission, Starfish Space will fly its Otter 24C spacecraft to inspect up to four inactive U.S. satellites in low Earth orbit. It's expected to operate for about two years, with inspections starting in 2027, and it's a step toward someday servicing or cleaning up old satellites.
Source: NASA
4. First-Ever Radio Signal Detected From a Planet Beyond Our Solar System
Astronomers report they've directly detected radio emission from an exoplanet for the first time. The source is Beta Pictoris b, a young gas giant about 63 light-years away. Using the MeerKAT radio telescope array in South Africa, the team picked up rapid, repeating, highly polarized radio bursts at frequencies from 0.85 to 3.5 GHz.
And no, it's not aliens! The researchers identify it as auroral radio emission, the same kind of signal Jupiter gives off, and it points to a magnetic field of at least 1.25 kilogauss. That would be the first direct measurement of a magnetic field strength on a planet outside our solar system. The study is a preprint, so it hasn't been peer-reviewed yet.
Sources: arXiv preprint | WIRED
5. Hayabusa2 Loses Its Last Working Ion Engine, but JAXA Isn't Giving Up
Japan's Hayabusa2 asteroid probe, which returned samples of asteroid Ryugu to Earth in December 2020, has hit a snag on its extended mission. According to Jiji Press, the spacecraft's only working ion engine (engine B) broke down in mid-August, and JAXA's attempts to fix it didn't work. Engineers found that engine B's ion source failed but its neutralizer still works, so JAXA plans to pair it with the working ion source from engine D. The first Hayabusa used that same trick to make it home.
JAXA hopes to restart the engine as early as the second half of October. Whether Hayabusa2 can still reach its new target, asteroid 1998 KY26, in 2031 is unclear. The probe launched in December 2014 and is well past its design life.
Source: The Japan Times / Jiji
6. Aurora Watch: Northern Lights Chances for Alberta This Weekend
Skywatchers, take note! NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center says G1 (minor) geomagnetic storms are likely on Oct. 2, from a glancing blow by a Sept. 28 coronal mass ejection, and again on Oct. 4 as a high-speed solar wind stream arrives. Friday's G1 window falls mostly in our daytime. NOAA's latest forecast, issued at 4:05 p.m. MT Friday, has activity peaking near Kp 4.67 from roughly 9 p.m. to midnight MT on Saturday night.
Your best odds are in northern Alberta, under dark, clear skies away from city lights. Space weather forecasts change fast, so check before you head out.
Source: NOAA SWPC 3-Day Forecast
That's your daily space update from Alberta Radio! A big congratulations to Joshua Kutryk on representing Alberta in orbit. Keep looking up, and we'll catch you tomorrow with more news from the final frontier.
