A Russian Progress cargo ship undocked from the International Space Station on Sept. 8, wrapping up a resupply run that began when it launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in March 2026 carrying about three tons of food, fuel and supplies for the station’s crew. Progress 94 backed away from the station’s Poisk module at 11:18 a.m. EDT and, according to a NASA mission update, burned up in a planned, destructive re-entry over the South Pacific later that day.
Canadian connection
There was no fresh word this week on Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk’s Crew-13 launch, which had been pushed to no earlier than late September after an oxidizer leak turned up in the Dragon spacecraft’s propulsion system in late August. Kutryk is assigned to join NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov for a roughly six-month stay aboard the station once the flight does launch, the Canadian Space Agency said in a Sept. 2 update. SpaceQ has more on that delay and on last week’s spacewalk.
Science and technology experiments
NASA reported that station commander Jessica Meir passed a personal milestone this week, surpassing 400 cumulative days in space across two missions to the outpost — a total her crewmates marked with a commemorative patch on Aug. 28. Days later, Meir operated an ultrasound device called Ultrasound 3 while flight surgeons on the ground watched in real time to see how weightlessness changes blood flow in the body, and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot tended the Electrostatic Levitation Furnace, a Japanese facility in the Kibo module that uses lasers to heat floating, container-free samples past 2,000 degrees Celsius to study how they behave.
Earlier in the week, NASA said Adenot and Meir worked through PhysioTool, a battery of tests tracking an astronaut’s blood flow, mental state and sleep quality; Meir also wore a research smartwatch for a separate sleep investigation called RelaxPro, while flight engineer Jack Hathaway measured Adenot’s muscles and tendons for the Myotones study.
Meir also set up NEMO, a biology microscope loaded with tissue samples in the Destiny lab module, and helped inspect and stow tethers left over from four spacewalks conducted between Aug. 6 and Sept. 1, while Adenot filmed narrated tours of the station’s modules in French and English for students back on Earth, the space agency noted in its Sept. 10 mission update.
By week’s end, the crew had also tested a new European Enhanced Exploration Exercise Device that engineers are evaluating for future long-duration missions, drawn blood samples for a study of electrical muscle stimulation as a way to counter space-caused muscle loss, and flown a pair of free-flying Astrobee robots through autonomous test runs inside the Kibo module — activities detailed in NASA’s Sept. 11 mission recap.
Looking ahead
NASA and SpaceX still have not announced a firm new launch date for Crew-13, saying only that they continue to target no earlier than late September while engineers finish testing tied to the propulsion leak. Both agencies have said a specific date will follow once one is confirmed.
Also on the schedule: Progress 96, the resupply ship set to take over the Poisk port Progress 94 vacated, is now targeting no earlier than Sept. 16-18 after its original Sept. 9 launch attempt was delayed over an issue with the rocket’s third stage, according to Spaceflight Now’s launch schedule.