This is a sample issue — this is what the newsletter looks like: one main story about the money behind space and a few short notes on the month's key developments.

NavIC: India launches NVS-03 to revive its own GPS as solar storms expose how fragile navigation is

In May 2024, farmers in Nebraska and Kansas parked their tractors at the edge of their fields and waited. The strongest geomagnetic storm in two decades had scrambled the GPS signal, and a John Deere dealer was advising customers to switch off RTK corrections because accuracy had been seriously compromised. Tractors that normally plant rows with centimetre precision suddenly had no idea where they were. That story (solar storm GPS accuracy disruption, as people search for it on Google) comes to mind every time a country decides it doesn't want to depend solely on American satellites.

India is exactly such a country. Around mid-October the rocket

is due to lift off from the second launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota carrying the NVS-03 navigation satellite (also known as IRNSS-1L). Notices to airmen (NOTAMs) point to 13 October at 17:00 UTC, or 20:00 Bulgarian time, but Indian media are talking about a window between 15 and 20 October, so the date is not yet final.

Read the full analysis →

In brief

Transporter-18: 130 satellites, one Falcon 9 and the question of what happens when Starship ends cheap rides to orbit
Falcon 9 is carrying 130 payloads, many of them European, on its latest rideshare mission. But if Starship replaces Falcon 9 after 2028, small operators may lose their cheap, regular ride. Read →

MMX: Japan heads to Phobos for a handful of dust that could rewrite Mars' history
JAXA's MMX probe launches on an H3 on 20 October to bring more than 10 g of Phobos samples home by 2031. The $345m mission could show whether Mars's moons are debris from the planet itself. Read →

Crew-13 versus the number 13: Dragon returns to crew duty after an oxidiser leak
After a two-week delay caused by a propulsion leak, Dragon Grace is due to fly four astronauts to the ISS on 1 October. Watkins will become the first NASA astronaut to fly Dragon twice. Read →

Until next month,
Stanislav Milchev
Editor, SpaceCAPEX