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MMX Lifts Off for Phobos, Perseverance Breaks Records & Russia's Orbital Provocation
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Space exploration news heats up as Japan's MMX spacecraft launches toward Phobos for the first-ever Martian moon sample return, while Russia's Kosmos 2612 makes an unauthorised close approach to a commercial satellite. Plus Perseverance smashes a Mars driving record, OSIRIS-REx closes, Webb challenges cosmology, and the Orionids peak tonight.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Japan just launched its most ambitious deep-space mission ever. On October nineteenth, JAXA's Martian Moons eXploration spacecraft, MMX, lifted off toward the Mars system with a goal no one has attempted before: land on Phobos, collect samples, and bring them home.
While MMX heads outward, a milestone was quietly crossed on Mars itself. On October eleventh, NASA's Perseverance rover surpassed Opportunity's total driving distance of twenty-eight point zero six miles, and did it in just five and a half years.
NASA formally closed the books on OSIRIS-REx this week, ending the mission that returned pristine samples from asteroid Bennu to Earth. The closure is administrative, but the science is far from done.
One story that deserves sharper attention: between October fifteenth and nineteenth, Russia's Kosmos 2612 satellite maneuvered within meters of a commercial radar satellite called ICEYE-X36. No consent was given.
SpaceX outlined its Starship roadmap this week, with Elon Musk targeting weekly launch cadence by the first half of twenty twenty-seven. The plan depends on rapid turnaround between flights, something no orbital-class rocket has achieved consistently.
Tonight, the Orionid meteor shower peaks. This is debris from Halley's Comet, burning up in Earth's atmosphere at roughly ten to twenty meteors per hour at its best.
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