Now Playing
Isar Reaches Orbit, Crew-13 Leak & Chang'e-7 Postponed | Sep 7-8
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Europe makes history as Isar Aerospace becomes the first company to reach orbit from European soil, while SpaceX grounds Crew-13 over a propulsion leak and China delays its lunar south pole mission. Plus: Perseverance finds organic carbon on Mars and a dark matter detector logs a tantalising signal.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Isar Aerospace just did something no European company has ever done. On September seventh, the German startup launched its Spectrum rocket from Andøya Space in Norway and reached orbit, making it the first orbital launch from European soil by a European vehicle.
While Europe was opening a new chapter, SpaceX hit a setback. NASA and SpaceX postponed the Crew-13 mission after detecting an oxidizer leak in the Dragon capsule's propulsion system during pre-flight checks on September first.
On the more optimistic end of the SpaceX ledger, Starship Flight fourteen is targeting September fifteenth. Ship forty-one and Booster twenty-one have both cleared engine testing, including a thirty-three-engine static fire.
China's Chang'e-7 lunar mission was postponed on September eighth, even after the Long March Five launch vehicle was already on the pad at Wenchang. The official explanation cited prudence.
From Mars, Perseverance has returned its most chemically suggestive finding yet. Organic carbon compounds have been identified in ancient river rocks from Jezero Crater, published in Science Advances.
Finally, the LUX-ZEPLIN dark matter detector has reported one nuclear recoil event at two hundred and forty-eight kiloelectronvolts, with a statistical significance of two point six sigma. That's below the five-sigma threshold required for a discovery claim.
Chapter summary auto-generated from the verified script. Listen to the full episode for the complete content.