SpaceX’s 23rd NASA-contracted Dragon resupply mission capsule departed the International Space Station early Sept. 30 and headed for a late-night splashdown in the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico waters off the Florida peninsula with a 4,200-lb. return cargo, including time-sensitive science experiments.

The facility reports directly to the Republic of Korea Air Force's chief of staff and is designed to act as a coordinating agency for domestic civilian and military space units as well as foreign space counterparts such as the U.S. Space Force.

The FAA on Sept. 29 signed off on Virgin Galactic’s plan to improve communications with the FAA during flight operations of SpaceShipTwo and request a larger zone of protected airspace to ensure violations, such as what occurred during its last flight on July 11, do not reoccur.

Eutelsat Communications confirmed Sept. 29 it had received an “unsolicited, preliminary” takeover proposal from billionaire Patrick Drahi but that his terms were not good enough.

The flagship James Webb Space Telescope has begun its 14-day journey from the coast of California through the Panama Canal to the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana, program scientist Eric Smith told NASA’s Astrophysics Advisory Committee on Sept. 29.

A half-dozen NASA Mars rovers, landers and orbiters will cease or in some cases curtail their transmission and reception of data with Earth as the Solar System’s two most hospitable planets experience a two-week, once-every-two-year solar conjunction beginning Oct. 2.

Three International Space Station crewmembers inaugurated spacecraft dockings at the orbital lab’s new Russian segment Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module on Sept. 28 as they separated from the 11-year-old Rassvet Mini Research Module-1 in their Soyuz MS-18 to redock at Nauka.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has set out a long-term strategy for the UK to become a leading nation in space.