Key Facts:

• Martian Biosignature Hint: NASA researchers revealed that a Martian rock sample nicknamed “Sapphire Canyon” contains organic compounds and unusual mineral patterns, suggesting a potential biosignature – ancient microbial life may have left its mark gizmodo.com. A high-profile press briefing on Sept. 10 featured NASA’s acting administrator and top scientists to discuss the find gizmodo.com.
• Exoplanet Atmosphere Breakthrough: New James Webb Space Telescope data on Earth-sized exoplanet TRAPPIST-1e showed no signs of a primordial hydrogen-helium atmosphere, but hints the planet might possess a denser “secondary” atmosphere (e.g. nitrogen-rich) – or possibly none at all space.com. “TRAPPIST-1e has long been considered one of the best habitable zone planets to search for an atmosphere,” said team member Ryan MacDonald. “Our initial observations cannot yet rule out a bare rock with no atmosphere” space.com space.com.
• SpaceX Launch Doubleheader: SpaceX prepared for two Falcon 9 launches in 24 hours. On Sept. 9, a Falcon 9 was finally set to loft Indonesia’s Nusantara Lima broadband satellite after multiple weather scrubs nasaspaceflight.com nasaspaceflight.com. Less than a day later on Sept. 10, another Falcon 9 launched 21 Tranche 1 military satellites from California for the U.S. Space Development Agency’s new “Proliferated Warfighter” network nasaspaceflight.com.
• ISS Cargo Ships Come & Go: On Sept. 9, Russia’s Progress 91 freighter undocked from the ISS loaded with trash, burning up on reentry to free a docking port nasa.gov. Hot on its heels, a fresh Progress 93 was rolled out for launch from Baikonur on Sept. 11, carrying 2.8 tons of food, fuel and supplies to the Station nasa.gov. Meanwhile, NASA and Northrop Grumman unveiled the new Cygnus XL cargo ship – a stretched supply module set to launch Sept. 14 on a Falcon 9, after its predecessor was damaged in transit nasaspaceflight.com.
• Global Launch Roundup: China’s space program notched another success, launching a Long March 7A rocket on Sept. 9 (Beijing time) with the Yaogan-45 reconnaissance satellite for medium Earth orbit nasaspaceflight.com. The mission – China’s 4th CZ-7A flight this year – underscores the country’s brisk launch cadence. And while no European or Indian launches occurred these two days, New Zealand-American firm Rocket Lab did inaugurate a new launch pad at Wallops, Virginia, signaling growth in commercial launch capacity nasaspaceflight.com.
• Space Policy Shifts and Tensions: In Washington, a fight over NASA’s future heated up. The White House’s FY2026 budget proposal seeks to cancel the SLS megarocket, Orion capsule and the planned Gateway lunar station after Artemis III spacepolicyonline.com – a radical shift to rely on commercial rockets – but Congress is pushing back hard. Lawmakers from both parties moved to block the cuts, preserving NASA’s funding near $24.8 billion and even adding funds to keep SLS/Orion through Artemis V and beyond spacepolicyonline.com spacepolicyonline.com. Globally, China announced plans to make Guangdong a high-tech commercial space hub, Sweden’s Esrange spaceport emerged as a cornerstone of Europe’s launch plans, and India declared space a key pillar of its national security strategy akingump.com.

Launches & Satellite Missions

SpaceX’s 24-Hour Launch Blitz – and a Scrub: SpaceX lined up two Falcon 9 launches on back-to-back days, showcasing the company’s rapid cadence. In Florida, a Falcon 9 was slated to carry Nusantara Lima, a 4.5-ton Indonesian telecom satellite, to orbit. After stormy weather caused two last-minute scrubs on Sept. 8–9 (with countdowns halted in the final minute) nasaspaceflight.com, teams targeted a Wednesday night launch from Cape Canaveral. The mission aims to deploy Nusantara Lima to a geostationary orbit, replacing a satellite lost in 2020 due to a launch failure nasaspaceflight.com. The well-traveled booster (B1078) is scheduled to land on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas downrange nasaspaceflight.com. If successful, Nusantara Lima will significantly expand broadband coverage for Indonesia and Southeast Asia.

Meanwhile on the U.S. West Coast, SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Sept. 10, delivering 21 Tranche 1 Transport Layer satellites into polar orbit for the Space Development Agency (SDA) nasaspaceflight.com. This marks the first operational launch of the Pentagon’s new “Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture,” a planned mesh network of hundreds of small satellites providing global secure communications and missile-tracking spaceflightnow.com spaceflightnow.com. “This mission is the first of six Tranche 1 flights… providing assured, resilient, low-latency military data and connectivity worldwide,” SDA deputy director Gurpatap “GP” Sandhoo noted before launch nasaspaceflight.com spaceflightnow.com. The Falcon 9’s first stage (B1093) landed safely on drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific, its sixth flight to date spaceflightnow.com. Deployment of the 21 defense satellites was staggered over ~1 hour after liftoff, due to the need to space out orbital insertions spaceflightnow.com. Sandhoo highlighted that these spacecraft – the first of a 126-satellite tranche – will act as relay nodes extending tactical communication links “beyond line-of-sight” for U.S. forces spaceflightnow.com spaceflightnow.com. “We can use space to go from Hawaii out to Guam… using a space layer as a relay,” he explained, contrasting it with current radio range limits spaceflightnow.com.

Chinese Long March Launch: Not to be outdone, China conducted a predawn launch on Sept. 9, lofting a classified Yaogan-45 remote-sensing satellite. A three-stage Long March 7A rocket lifted off at 02:00 UTC from Wenchang Spaceport, Hainan, arcing east over the Pacific nasaspaceflight.com. Chinese officials disclosed few details, as Yaogan spacecraft are believed to serve military imaging and signals intelligence roles. This was China’s fourth CZ-7A mission of 2025, underscoring an aggressive launch schedule. It also highlights Beijing’s expanding space infrastructure: the 60-meter tall Long March 7A – equipped with four liquid-fueled boosters – can haul sizable payloads to geostationary transfer and medium Earth orbits nasaspaceflight.com. With multiple launches per month (including commercial light rockets and sea-based missions), China’s state and private space sector continues to surge.

ISS Resupply Traffic: The International Space Station saw traffic jams of its own. On Sept. 9, Russia’s Progress MS-31 cargo ship (NASA designation Progress 91P) undocked from the ISS after a six-month stay. Loaded with rubbish and obsolete equipment, the craft was commanded to reenter the atmosphere over the Pacific, where it burned up safely nasa.gov. Just two days later, Russia rolled out the next freighter – Progress MS-32 (93P) – to the launch pad at Baikonur. Carrying about 2.8 metric tons of food, fuel and supplies, Progress 93P is scheduled to launch at 11:54 a.m. EDT on Sept. 11 and dock autonomously to the Station’s Zvezda module on Sept. 13 nasa.gov nasa.gov. Cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky spent the week training on manual rendezvous systems as a backup, in case the Progress’s autopilot needs assistance during final approach nasa.gov.

On the U.S. side, NASA is preparing for a milestone commercial resupply mission. Northrop Grumman’s upgraded Cygnus XL cargo vehicle will launch no earlier than Sept. 14 not on Northrop’s own rocket, but on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral nasa.gov. This unusual arrangement comes after Northrop’s Antares launcher was retired (and a subsequent Cygnus module was damaged in transit). The Cygnus NG-23 mission will debut the stretched “XL” version of the freighter, boosting capacity by 1,300 kg. Packed with over 11,000 pounds of experiments and hardware – from medical research to plant-growth studies – Cygnus XL is set to be captured by the ISS robotic arm on Sept. 17 nasa.gov. NASA notes the spacecraft is named after the late astronaut William “Willie” McCool, and it will remain berthed for about six months of on-orbit operations nasaspaceflight.com. With two uncrewed cargo ships (one Russian, one American) arriving days apart, ISS crews are in for a busy unloading schedule.

Science & Exploration Highlights

Possible Life Clue on Mars: “We might have just found hints of ancient life on Mars” – that’s the tantalizing implication of a new finding from NASA’s Perseverance rover. At a Sept. 10 press conference, NASA scientists unveiled analysis of a Martian rock core dubbed “Sapphire Canyon,” drilled from Jezero Crater last year nasa.gov. The sample’s host rock, nicknamed “Cheyava Falls,” contains an intriguing mosaic of “tiny black poppy seeds” and larger leopard-like spots in its mineral structure gizmodo.com. Crucially, Perseverance’s instruments detected organic molecules associated with those spots gizmodo.com. Organics are the carbon-based building blocks of life, and their presence – alongside the rock’s unusual texture – suggests this could be a “potential biosignature,” evidence of possible past microbial life gizmodo.com. Dr. Lindsay Hays, NASA’s Mars senior scientist, cautioned that non-biological processes might also explain the chemistry, so it’s not proof of life yet gizmodo.com. Still, the agency deemed the results significant enough to invite the press – indicating just how big a deal this could be gizmodo.com. As NASA’s acting administrator Sean Duffy noted, “finding signs that Mars once harbored life is a central goal of this mission.” The discovery comes as NASA and ESA grapple with delays to the Mars Sample Return project that would eventually bring such rock cores to Earth for definitive analysis. (The MSR mission’s future is uncertain after a U.S. budget proposal to cancel it, which Congress is debating reversing gizmodo.com.) In the meantime, Perseverance’s onboard labs are providing tantalizing hints from 140 million miles away, keeping astrobiologists on the edge of their seats.

Webb Explores a “Second Earth” (Maybe): Is the nearby exoplanet TRAPPIST-1e habitable? New findings with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) brought us one step closer to an answer – and it’s a mix of good news/bad news. TRAPPIST-1e is an Earth-sized world orbiting in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star just 40 light-years away, long considered one of the best chances to find an Earth-like atmosphere space.com. Webb’s instruments conducted four observations as the planet transited its star, seeking the spectral fingerprints of an atmosphere science.nasa.gov space.com. According to two papers published Sept. 8 in Astrophysical Journal Letters, the data show no evidence of a light, hydrogen-rich “primary” atmosphere (the kind of thick envelope TRAPPIST-1e might have formed with, or a Venus-like blanket) science.nasa.gov space.com. That likely means intense stellar flares stripped away any such atmosphere long ago. However, all hope is not lost – the JWST measurements are consistent with a heavier, secondary atmosphere, perhaps composed of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, or other molecules more akin to Earth’s air space.com. “We are seeing two possible explanations,” said astronomer Ryan MacDonald of the University of St Andrews. “The most exciting possibility is that TRAPPIST-1e could have a secondary atmosphere… But our initial observations cannot yet rule out a bare rock with no atmosphere.” space.com

The distinction is huge: a substantial atmosphere could mean liquid water and conditions friendly to life; no atmosphere would leave TRAPPIST-1e airless and barren. To nail down the answer, scientists need more data. “In the coming years, we will go from four JWST observations of TRAPPIST-1e to nearly 20,” MacDonald noted, stressing the team’s plans to continue the search space.com. “We finally have the telescope and tools to search for habitable conditions in other star systems, which makes today one of the most exciting times for astronomy.” space.com Each additional transit observation will refine the exoplanet’s transmission spectrum, potentially detecting gases like oxygen or methane – or confirming a complete lack thereof. Beyond TRAPPIST-1e, Webb’s exoplanet surveys are laying groundwork in the quest to find life beyond the solar system. It’s a long game, but as one researcher put it, the fact we can even ask these questions now is extraordinary.

More Cosmic News Briefs:

• Jupiter’s Flashing Auroras: In other science updates, NASA’s Juno probe spotted the last missing piece of Jupiter’s auroral puzzle – emissions triggered by the volcanic moon Io. The discovery, announced Sept. 9, confirms how Io’s plasma torus contributes to Jupiter’s dazzling polar light shows nasa.gov.
• Asteroid Deflection Caution: European (ESA) scientists warned that deflecting an asteroid requires extreme precision. A report on Sept. 9 noted that a slightly off-target nudge could inadvertently send an asteroid into a gravitational “keyhole,” altering its orbit toward Earth sciencedaily.com. The findings come as NASA and ESA plan follow-up tests after last year’s successful DART mission.
• Galactic Photo Op: The Hubble Space Telescope delivered a stunning new image of a peculiar “mirror-image” spiral galaxy, posted Sept. 8. The galaxy, 120 million light-years distant, appears to have symmetrical arm structures – an eye-catching cosmic oddity nasa.gov.

Space Policy & Industry

Artemis Program Showdown: A major space policy rift opened in the U.S. over the future of the Moon-to-Mars program. President Trump’s administration is proposing to terminate NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion crew capsule after the Artemis III Moon landing in 2027, and to scrap the planned Gateway lunar space station entirely spacepolicyonline.com. Instead, the White House advocates relying on commercial rockets and landers for subsequent lunar missions – a dramatic change in direction, given SLS/Orion’s central role in Artemis to date. This proposal met fierce bipartisan resistance in Congress. Lawmakers note that no commercial human-rated lunar vehicle is flight-ready yet, and that international partners (ESA, Canada, Japan, etc.) have heavily invested in Gateway. “Commercial alternatives to SLS/Orion don’t exist yet – we can’t abandon our only crew-rated Moon hardware,” argued Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in a Sept. 10 oversight hearing spacepolicyonline.com. Cruz and colleagues moved to block the cuts by inserting language into budget bills that mandates funding SLS, Orion and Gateway through at least Artemis V spacepolicyonline.com. Indeed, on Sept. 10 the House Appropriations Committee marked up NASA’s FY2026 funding, flatly rejecting the White House’s 24% NASA budget cut spacepolicyonline.com. Both House and Senate draft budgets would keep NASA spending near current levels (≈$25 billion) – preserving science and exploration programs that the administration’s proposal would have slashed spacepolicyonline.com. Final decisions will shake out in the coming weeks, but for now Congress is signaling a firm course-correction on U.S. human spaceflight policy.

International and Commercial Initiatives: Around the world, the space sector is buzzing with new plans. In China, officials announced an initiative to transform the southern province of Guangdong into a commercial space hub, supporting private rocket startups and satellite manufacturers as part of China’s burgeoning NewSpace industry akingump.com. The move dovetails with China’s broader strategy to encourage innovation and compete globally in satellite internet, Earth imaging, and launch services.

In Europe, momentum is growing to launch rockets from European soil. Sweden’s Esrange Space Center – a long-running suborbital sounding rocket range above the Arctic Circle – is now being developed as a full-fledged orbital launch site akingump.com. With new launch pads and integration facilities, Esrange hosted its first small orbital rocket test in 2023, and several European startups (from Germany, France and beyond) aim to lift off from there in 2024–2025. The European Space Agency and EU officials see Esrange, along with proposed spaceports in Norway, the U.K. and Portugal, as critical to independent European access to space, especially as the Ariane 6 rocket’s debut has been delayed to 2024.

Meanwhile, India is explicitly making space a pillar of its defense and security policy. The Indian government declared its intent to integrate space capabilities into national security strategy akingump.com – including surveillance satellites, secure communications, and a focus on space deterrence. This follows India’s 2019 anti-satellite test and the establishment of a Defense Space Agency, underscoring New Delhi’s determination to be a major space power in both the civil and military domains.

On the commercial front, companies are forging ahead. Rocket Lab opened a new launch pad at Wallops Island, Virginia, expanding its U.S. presence nasaspaceflight.com. The pad (Launch Complex 3) will support Responsive Space missions for the U.S. government and complement Rocket Lab’s primary site in New Zealand. Blue Origin, for its part, is in the late stages of testing its much-anticipated New Glenn heavy-lift rocket (expected to debut in 2025) and continues to fly New Shepard suborbital missions for research and tourism. And in satellite mega-constellations: SpaceX’s Starlink network quietly surpassed 2,000 satellites launched in 2025 alone spaceflightnow.com as of this week, even amid a frenetic launch schedule, and rival Amazon is preparing to launch its first Project Kuiper satellites later this month ts2.tech.

Quotable: Summing up this whirlwind week, European space analyst Isabelle Sourbès-Verger mused, “We are in a new space race – not just between nations but also companies. The events of these two days – from possible Martian biosignatures to dueling mega-constellations – show how fast things are changing”. Indeed, with breakthroughs and launches coming almost daily, the final frontier’s news cycle is as dynamic as the cosmos itself.

Sources: NASA; Spaceflight Now; SpaceNews; Gizmodo; Space.com; Reuters; SpacePolicyOnline nasa.gov gizmodo.com nasaspaceflight.com nasaspaceflight.com space.com spacepolicyonline.com.