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Atmosphere Confirmed on Rocky Exoplanet & Starship Scrubbed at T-Zero
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
LHS 1140 b becomes the first habitable-zone rocky exoplanet with a confirmed atmosphere, while a second rocky world gets reclassified as potentially habitable — and Starship Flight 13 aborts at T-zero with four engines out. Today's daily space briefing covers both exoplanet breakthroughs plus what the Raptor reliability problem means for Artemis.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Two separate exoplanet discoveries landed within twenty-four hours of each other, and together they mark a real shift in what we can actually observe about potentially habitable worlds. One planet got reclassified.
The second discovery is arguably the more significant one near-term. LHS 1140 b, a rocky world also in a habitable zone, now has a confirmed atmosphere.
Both planets orbit red dwarf stars, which is where the tradeoff sits. Red dwarfs are smaller and cooler, which pushes the habitable zone much closer in, making these planets easier to detect and study.
Meanwhile, SpaceX had a rough July sixteenth. Starship Flight Thirteen aborted at T-zero when four of thirty-three Raptor engines failed to ignite.
The near-term watchpoints are clear. Does Starship lift off on July twentieth, and does the engine sequence hold this time.
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