What's Happening in Space: October 2025
- 2nd Oct 2025
- Author: Dhara Patel
A summary of space events through the month
Our very own Space Expert Dhara Patel is here with the latest news on events happening this month in the space sector!
Throughout October – Spot the International Space Station
From Leicester, there may be sightings throughout October to spot the International Space Station (ISS) moving across the sky. Download NASA’s Spot the Station app using the App Store or Google Play to find out when and where to spot the largest artificial satellite overhead from your location. It’ll look like a bright star moving relatively quickly across the sky (generally from west to east) and will be visible to the naked eye.
Throughout October – Stargazing challenges / National Space Centre - Space NOW! podcast
Each month, we'll be sharing a trio of stargazing challenges for everyone to have a go at. From spotting the Moon and familiar star patterns, to catching meteor showers and some deep sky objects. Check out our Stargazing Challenges - October 2025 blog for more details.
And we’ll be going beyond the headlines unpacking some of the current space news stories and science in our podcast, so tune into Space NOW! to explore to new and previous episodes. watch on YouTube or listen on Spotify – and please rate the show!
6th October – Moon and Saturn close in the sky
Look for the waxing gibbous moon near Saturn during the evening of 6 October in the southern sky. The Moon will be in conjunction (sharing the same right ascension – coordinate) with Saturn in the early hours of the morning before sunrise but will appear closest together shortly after midnight – so that’s the best time to spot them. The Moon will appear diagonally up and to the right of Saturn, and the ringed planet will appear as a point of light visible to the naked eye. They’ll be relatively high in the sky so shouldn’t be blocked by tall buildings and trees that sit along the horizon.
In the early evening, they’ll be close to the horizon. If you fancy a challenge and have a telescope to hand, you might also be able to spot Neptune sitting nearby the Moon and Saturn, but it will be very difficult to observe with the bright moonlight so close by. Find out more about close approaches and conjunctions in our astronomical phenomena blog written by David Southworth in the National Space Centre Education team.
7th October – Full moon (4:47)
Known as the Hunter’s moon (according to the old Farmers’ Almanac), this full moon is named to mark the best time of the year to hunt, as animals would be plump from abundant food throughout the summer. Check out the Full Moon: Full Facts blog written by Mike Darch in our Education team to find out more.
8th October – New Shepard | NS-36 launch
NS-36 will be the fifteenth crewed sub-orbital spaceflight mission, operated by Blue Origin. The crew will launch on a New Shepard rocket from Launch Site One in West Texas. The crew are yet to be named. Scheduled for launch at 13:30 (UK time) on 8 October, the NS-36 crew will fly to just above the Kármán line at 100km altitude – considered the boundary of space. The reusable booster and crew capsule flying the passengers will operate autonomously without the need for pilots. The flight will last about 11 minutes (launch to landing) and during that time, the crew will experience around four minutes of weightlessness along with panoramic views of Earth's curvature and the blackness of space above.
8th/9th October – Peak of the Draconid meteor shower
A relatively weak meteor shower with up to 10 meteors per hour at its peak, it’s produced by dust left behind by Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner. Active between 6-10 October, the shower peaks on the evening of 8 October into the early morning of 9 October. And with the Moon having just passed its full moon phase, the bright moonlight will prevent us from having darker viewing conditions throughout the night, but it’s still worth viewing from as dark a location as possible as in rare instances, this meteor shower has been known to produce many hundreds of meteors in a single hour! The radiant will appear high in the north-west falling closer to the northern horizon as the night unfolds. Find an open location with clear views facing north and look away from the radiant in the constellation of Draco to scan the entire starry canvas above, as meteors can appear anywhere in the sky. Find out more in our Draconid meteor shower 2025 blog.
14th October – Moon and Jupiter close in the sky
The waning crescent moon will be observable near Jupiter during the early morning of 14 October before sunrise in the eastern sky. The Moon will be in conjunction (sharing the same right ascension – coordinate) with Jupiter just before midnight when the duo begins rising above the horizon, so they’ll be tricky to spot. But they’ll appear closest together around 1:00 with Jupiter appearing to the right of the Moon and both visible to the naked eye. So, the best time to spot the pair together is from after midnight through to sunrise, though they’ll begin to move further apart as daylight arrives. Check out the astronomical phenomena blog linked above to find out more about close approaches and conjunctions.
14th October – Starship flight 11
Starship is made up of the Super Heavy booster – a first stage rocket with 33 of SpaceX’s raptor engines, and on top of that sits the upper stage - rather confusingly also called Starship (which hosts 6 engines). And when its fully developed, this launch vehicle will be a completely reusable rocket – both first and second stages. A modified version of Starship is also currently planned to land astronauts on the Moon with the Artemis 3 mission. Starship is due to launch on its eleventh test flight with a launch window beginning 00:15 on 14 October from SpaceX’s launch facility, Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, United States.
The flight profile is expected to be alike to the previous two flights – a suborbital flight of a new, upgraded version of the upper stage of the rocket – the Block 2 Starship vehicle, with the current Block 1 Super Heavy booster vehicle underneath. It will fly and test a more complete heat shield and may fly some functional Starlink satellites instead of simulators as used on the previous few launches. This launch will be the last flight of version 2 of Starship and the final flight from Starbase Pad 1 in its current configuration. A new Block 3 Starship prototype will be used at the currently under-construction second launch pad at the Starbase site for the twelfth flight. Find out more about Starship and SpaceX’s other rocketry achievements in our SpaceX – the world’s rocket giant blog by Ed Kellond-Turner in our Education team.
19th October – Moon and Venus close in the sky
The Moon will be in conjunction (sharing the same right ascension – coordinate) with Venus during the late hours of 19 October, but they’ll have set below the western horizon at that time. Instead look to the east around 6:30 (an hour before sunrise) to spot Venus with the very thin waning crescent moon lying to its right – both visible to the naked eye. As the Sun rises its light will drown out Venus and because they’ll be relatively close to the horizon, make sure to have clear views of the east without tall buildings of trees that may block your view. Check out the astronomical phenomena blog linked above to find out more about occultations and other astronomical phenomena.
21st October - new moon (13:25)
The new moon will occur in the constellation of Virgo. The lack of moonlight interference provides a great time to try and view deep sky objects (especially with the aid of binoculars and telescopes). We have a blog on Moon phases written by Mike Darch in our Education team.
21st/22nd October – peak of the Orionid meteor shower
An average meteor shower with ~ 20 meteors per hour at its peak, produced by dust left behind by Halley’s Comet. This year, the shower peaks on the evening of 21 October into the early morning of 22 October. The moon will be in its new moon phase providing ideal viewing conditions throughout the night, without moonlight interference to contend with. Even still, you should find a dark location to view from away from urban light sources. The radiant will appear low in the east rising higher into the south-east as the night unfolds – so the meteor shower is best viewed after midnight and into the early hours of 22 October. Find an open location with clear views facing east and look away from the radiant in the constellation of Orion to scan the entire starry canvas above, as meteors can appear anywhere in the sky. Find out more in our Orionid Meteor Shower 2025 blog.
26th October – daylight savings ends (revert from BST to GMT/UTC)
To make better use of the daylight available in the UK between March and October, an hour of daylight is borrowed from the morning and added to the end of the day, so during those months we follow BST – British Summer Time. As we head into winter we revert to GMT / UTC (Greenwich Mean Time / Coordinated Universal Time) to allow the sunrise to arrive earlier and again make better use of the shorter daylight hours. At 2:00am on Sunday 26 October the clocks will go back to 1:00am – yay, to an extra hour of sleep!
October? – EscaPADE mission launch
Initially scheduled for no earlier than 29 September, the launch of the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (EscaPADE) mission is now expected in late October / early November. This mission is designed to study the interaction between the Martian atmosphere and solar wind and how this contributed to the planet's atmospheric loss. The twin spacecraft were originally scheduled to launch on the Psyche mission in 2022 but were removed when the Psyche mission was delayed (eventually launching in October 2023), as it would no longer swing past Mars. EscaPADE will now launch on a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket which made its debut at the beginning of this year, and on this second flight it will attempt to land the first stage reusable booster on its sea-based landing platform, ‘Jacklyn’ (something it didn’t manage on its first flight). EscaPADE is part of the NASA Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program and is set to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida (time tbc).
Please note: As this summary is created at the end of the month before, dates (especially launch dates) can often change or be updated, so this content may become outdated - we always recommend checking on the relevant organisation's pages.