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Centaurus A Stars, NASA's 2029 Station Deadline & Exoplanet Magnetic Field
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Space news breaks fast: Webb maps millions of stars in Centaurus A, NASA sets a hard 2029 crewed station deadline, and researchers confirm the strongest exoplanet magnetic field ever detected. Plus the first commercial nuclear CubeSat, a TESS microlensing planet, ESA's Rosalind Franklin drill test, and Europe's first orbital launch attempt.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The James Webb Space Telescope has done something extraordinary. It's peered through the dense dust lanes surrounding Centaurus A, one of the closest active galaxies to Earth, and pulled out a portrait of millions of individual stars clustered around a supermassive black hole in furious activity.
Closer to home, NASA has released a draft request for proposals that sets a hard deadline. Any company wanting to replace the International Space Station must demonstrate crewed orbital capability by twenty twenty-nine.
Tuesday marked a regulatory and technological first. City Labs launched a satellite called BOHR on a SpaceX rideshare, making it the first commercial nuclear-powered CubeSat to reach orbit.
A detection method rarely associated with space telescopes has now yielded a confirmed result. TESS, designed to find planets via transit dimming, has identified a Jupiter-like world called Gaia twenty-three bra b through gravitational microlensing.
A separate exoplanet finding carries its own significance. Researchers have found the strongest evidence yet of a magnetic field on an exoplanet, a world called GJ four-three-six b.
ESA's Rosalind Franklin rover, targeting Mars in twenty thirty, has passed a key ground test. Its onboard instrument successfully separated two chiral molecules from a meteorite sample, distinguishing left-handed from right-handed versions of the same organic compound.
Two further developments round out the picture. Rocket Factory Augsburg is targeting August tenth for the first orbital launch from UK soil, flying its RFA ONE rocket from Shetland's SaxaVord spaceport.
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