The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency successfully launch the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission this afternoon EDT. MMX will not land on Mars, but instead explore its two moons, Phobos and Deimos, returning samples of Phobos to Earth in 2031. Japan and the U.S. have returned samples of asteroids, but this will be the first from a moon other than our own and could solve the mystery of whether Phobos is an asteroid captured by Mars’s gravity or a piece of Mars ejected by a collision.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of October 18-24, 2026 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess, except for pro forma sessions, until after the midterm elections.

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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is getting ready to launch its Martian Moons eXploration mission early next week. The spacecraft will collect samples of Phobos, one of the moons of Mars, and return them to Earth in 2031. Today NASA highlighted its role in the MMX mission, including two scientific instruments, MEGANE and P-Sampler, that will help determine whether Phobos and its companion, Deimos, are captured asteroids or remnants of a collision.

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The Starship second stage of SpaceX’s Integrated Flight Test-13 is back at Starbase, TX after surprisingly surviving splashdown in the Indian Ocean in July. To date, it is the only Starship not to explode after reaching the water and tipping over, with residual fuel usually causing an explosion. SpaceX was delighted to get post-recovery data especially about performance of the tiles, but returning it to Texas was no easy task. Meanwhile, the FAA is opening a public comment period on SpaceX’s request to significantly increase the number of launches and landings at Starbase.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of October 11-17, 2026 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess, except for pro forma sessions, until after the midterm elections.

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NASA’s Crew-12 mission splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California this morning, bringing the 237-day mission to an end. Their replacements on Crew-13 arrived a week ago and the busy cadence on the International Space Station continues with a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ship departing tomorrow and a SpaceX Cargo Dragon arriving next week.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of October 4-10, 2026 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess until after the midterm elections, except for pro forma sessions.

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NASA’s 13th operational Crew Dragon mission arrived at the International Space Station today about 8 hours after launch. That’s the fastest trip on a SpaceX Dragon thanks to an opportune orbital alignment between the launch pad and the ISS after a recent reboost. Crew-12 will depart as soon as October 5, weather permitting, after a short handover. By coincidence, today is the 68th anniversary of NASA opening its doors.

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U.S. Space Force Lieutenant General David Miller, Jr. has been nominated as the next Commander of U.S. Space Command, succeeding Gen. Stephen Whiting who will retire early next year.

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Two years after Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft landed in the New Mexico desert without NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, Boeing and NASA said today it will not be ready to fly astronauts again until 2028. An uncrewed flight test is expected no sooner than the end of this year, but they want another year or more to evaluate those results before putting people aboard.

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