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K2-18b Confirmed Signal, Starship's Orbital Debut & Blue Origin Mars Contract
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
A second Webb observation has confirmed dimethyl sulfide on exoplanet K2-18b — the strongest biosignature signal yet — while SpaceX targets September 28 for Starship's first true orbital flight. From China's four-launches-in-44-hours to a $700M NASA Mars telecom contract, this is the biggest space news of the day.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
A second independent observation of exoplanet K2-18b has now confirmed a signal for dimethyl sulfide in its atmosphere. That's the gas produced, on Earth, almost exclusively by living organisms.
SpaceX has set September twenty-eighth as the target for Starship Flight fourteen, and this one is categorically different from the previous thirteen. Every prior Starship test was suborbital.
Webb is also producing findings that are harder to explain than K2-18b. Observations of nine ancient galaxies are showing unexpectedly dense populations of small, dim stars, proportions that exceed anything seen in modern galaxies.
Elsewhere, the pace of commercial spaceflight is becoming its own story. SpaceX's Falcon nine booster fleet crossed seven hundred total launches, with a single booster completing its twenty-ninth flight.
Blue Origin has been selected for a seven-hundred-million-dollar NASA contract to build a Mars telecommunications network spacecraft. Rocket Lab filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office.
The clearest watchpoints from here: whether the FAA clears Starship Flight fourteen before the end of September, and whether any research team produces a credible abiotic explanation for the K2-18b DMS signal. Those two developments, one operational, one scientific, will do the most to define where this field stands heading into the final quarter of the year.
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