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No Alien Life, Starship Flight 12 Failure & Double Launch Day | May 29
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
JWST's null result on alien life is forcing a major strategy shift toward the Habitable Worlds Observatory, while Starship Flight 12 triggers another FAA mishap investigation. Plus a Florida double launch, China's lunar prep mission, and what comes next in the search for biosignatures.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
NASA has officially acknowledged what many scientists had quietly expected: the James Webb Space Telescope has not found a single Earth-like world showing signs of life. That confirmation is now reshaping the entire strategy for how humanity searches for biology beyond our solar system.
That realization has pushed NASA and ESA toward a formal pivot. The target is now the Habitable Worlds Observatory, currently planned for launch in the two thousand forties.
While that long game continues, the short game ran into trouble this week. Starship's Flight twelve on May twenty-second ended with a formal FAA mishap investigation after Super Heavy booster B nineteen lost an engine just one minute and forty-two seconds into flight.
China moved more quietly but more cleanly. Shenzhou twenty-three launched and docked at the Tiangong space station on May twenty-fourth, carrying a crew of three including the first astronaut from Hong Kong.
On the commercial side, May twenty-ninth shapes up as a rare Florida double-header. A Falcon nine carrying twenty-nine Starlink satellites is scheduled for seven fifty-two in the morning, with booster B one zero eight five targeting its sixteenth flight.
The near-term watchpoints are clear. The FAA's timeline on the Starship Flight twelve investigation will determine whether Flight thirteen can happen this summer.
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