Jeremy Hansen Calls for Space Sector Collaboration at SpaceBound

Jeremy Hansen Urges Space Sector Unity

Jeremy Hansen, the first Canadian to fly around the Moon, told Canada’s space industry Monday night that his Artemis II crew became a real team only after agreeing to “launch as friends” and “land as friends,” and he asked the sector to find a common goal of its own.

Hansen, who left the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) in September, spoke at the opening reception of Space Canada’s SpaceBound conference in Ottawa, after an introduction by Brian Gallant, Space Canada’s chief executive.

His remarks came as the sector gathers for SpaceBound.

Canadian Astronaut Joshua Kutryk Prepares for First Spacewalk

NASA astronaut and Expedition 75 flight engineer Anil Menon smiles for a portrait while conducting spacesuit maintenance inside the International Space Station's Quest airlock. Menon cleaned the… | Source: NASA

Spacewalk preparations kicked off the week aboard the International Space Station as two astronauts get ready to install a roll-out solar array at the end of October. Flight engineers Anil Menon of NASA and Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency are gearing up for the first of two spacewalks to install roll-out solar arrays on the station’s truss structure.

The first spacewalk is scheduled for Oct. 29 when Menon will go on his fourth excursion and Kutryk will go on his first to install a roll-out solar array on the truss structure’s port side. The second spacewalk will take place on Nov. 5 when the duo will install the station’s eighth and final roll-out solar array on the truss structure’s starboard side.

Menon worked inside the Quest airlock on Monday and cleaned cooling loops in a pair of spacesuits that keep the suits thermally conditioned and astronauts comfortable during a spacewalk. Afterward, Kutryk filled the spacesuit tanks and liquid cooling and ventilation garments with clean water. The pair also joined NASA flight engineers Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins and called down to mission controllers for a pre-spacewalk conference.

NASA managers will discuss the upcoming spacewalks during a news conference from Johnson Space Center at 2 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, Oct. 20.

JAXA’s MMX Mission Launches to Mars’s Moon Phobos

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… | Source: SpacePolicyOnline

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency successfully launched the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission on Monday, October 19, 2026. MMX lifted off on a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H3 rocket at 3:41 pm EDT (4:41 am JST on October 20) from the Tanegashima launch site.

MMX will not land on Mars, but instead explore its two moons, Phobos and Deimos, returning samples of Phobos to Earth in 2031. This will be the first sample return 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.

MMX is headed to Mars, but instead of landing it will enter a Quasi-Satellite Orbit or QSO. That will enable it to study the moons Phobos and Deimos including a landing on Phobos to collect samples for return to Earth. The larger of the two, Phobos, is just 22 kilometers (14 miles) in diameter. Deimos is even smaller, 12 km (7.5 mi).

Monday’s launch was just the first leg of the journey, which will last five years. MMX will arrive at Mars in August 2027 and descend to land on Phobos no earlier than December 2028. The samples will come back to Earth in 2031, landing in Australia just like JAXA’s two previous asteroid sample missions, Hayabusa from Itokawa in 2010 and Hayabusa2 from Ryugu in 2020.

MMX is led by JAXA, in collaboration with NASA, the French space agency (CNES), the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the European Space Agency (ESA). The mission carries 13 scientific instruments, including two from NASA: the Mars-moon Exploration with GAmma rays and NEutrons (MEGANE) spectroscopy instrument developed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, and the Pneumatic collection mechanism (P-Sampler) from Honeybee Robotics, part of Blue Origin.

Citations

Jeremy Hansen asks space sector to work like his Moon crew — spaceq.ca
Spacewalk Preps and Advanced Biomedical Research Begin Week — nasa.gov
MMX lifts off to Mars’s moon Phobos — esa.int
JAXA’s MMX Enroute to Mars To Return Samples of Phobos — spacepolicyonline.com

Starlink Group 15-15

Provider: SpaceX
Date: October 20, 2026
Time: 11:10 PM UTC
Vehicle: Falcon 9

A batch of 27 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation – SpaceX’s project for space-based Internet communication system.

Unknown Payload

Provider: Galactic Energy
Date: October 21, 2026
Time: 3:35 AM UTC
Vehicle: Ceres-1S

Details TBD.

We’re Not Hawking Around (3x HawkEye 360)

Provider: Rocket Lab
Date: October 21, 2026
Time: 7:00 AM UTC
Vehicle: Electron

HawkEye 360 is a a space-based civil global intelligence satellite network using radio frequency (RF) technology to help monitor transportation across air, land and sea and assist with emergencies, and to provide civil SIGINT (Signal Intelligence) mission.

The constellation of small satellites (named Hawk ) will collect information on specific radio signals worldwide to provide high-precision radio frequency mapping and analytics from Low Earth orbit (LEO).