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Cloud Cycles on WASP-94A b, Mars Organics & Starship V3 Test
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
James Webb has tracked repeating cloud cycles on a hot Jupiter 700 light-years away — the first time weather patterns have been watched play out in real time on another world. Today's episode also covers Curiosity's DNA-adjacent organic finds on Mars, Perseverance's 65-km terrain mosaic, Starship V3's test flight, and a $500M Impulse Space funding round.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
James Webb has done something that wasn't possible even two years ago. It's watched clouds form on a planet seven hundred light-years away, tracked them through a full day-night cycle, and confirmed they're repeating.
Meanwhile, closer to home, the news from Mars is the kind that demands careful framing. Curiosity's SAM instrument suite has identified more than twenty organic compounds in ancient Martian clay, including a nitrogen-containing structure that resembles a DNA building block.
Perseverance is adding a different layer to the Mars picture. The rover has captured a mosaic called the Falbreen composite, built from ninety-six images, showing ancient Martian terrain stretching sixty-five kilometres into the distance.
On the commercial side, SpaceX has conducted a Starship V3 test flight from Starbase in Texas. The vehicle generates eighteen million pounds of thrust and carried mock Starlink satellites aboard, testing payload integration ahead of operational missions.
Impulse Space has closed a five-hundred-million-dollar Series D, bringing its total funding past one billion dollars. The company was founded by Tom Mueller, the engineer behind SpaceX's Merlin engines, and it's building in-space propulsion systems designed to move satellites rapidly between orbits.
One more operational note. A Falcon 9 launched twenty-nine Starlink broadband satellites from Cape Canaveral, with booster B1090 targeting its hundred and fifty-third landing.
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