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Moon's South Pole Ice Race, Europe's Launch Crisis & Starlink Reschedule | Aug 11
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
China's Chang'e-7 drills for lunar water ice as the US-China south pole race heats up with no legal framework to resolve competing claims. Plus Europe's launch capacity crunch, a NASA gravity hoax debunked, and AST SpaceMobile's military deal.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
China is launching a drilling mission to the moon's south pole this month, and the resource it's after could determine who builds the first permanent human base beyond Earth. The mission is Chang'e-7.
The United States has the same target. NASA's Artemis program is working toward a crewed lunar landing, currently projected for around twenty twenty-eight, with both SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon in the plan.
A separate pressure point is developing in Europe. The European Space Agency has formally acknowledged a launch capacity shortage arriving around twenty thirty.
On the operational side, SpaceX scrubbed Monday's Starlink ten-nineteen launch from Cape Canaveral and rescheduled for Tuesday, August eleventh, at ten twenty-six in the morning Eastern time. Weather forecast sits at eighty-five percent favorable.
NASA also had to spend time this week correcting a viral claim circulating under the name "Project Anchor," which alleged that Earth would lose gravity for seven seconds on August twelfth during the solar eclipse. NASA's position is unambiguous: it won't happen, the theory is unfounded, and the eclipse is a legitimate scientific event, not a cover for anything.
Two other developments worth tracking. AST SpaceMobile now has thirteen BlueBird satellites in orbit and is targeting non-commercial beta service in select markets by the end of twenty twenty-six, with three thousand digital cells activated across the continental US.
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