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PLATO Launch-Ready, ISS Power Upgrade Done & Webb's Treasure Chest | Aug 6
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
ESA's PLATO telescope clears its final qualification test ahead of a 2027 launch, while the ISS completes a five-year power modernisation and Webb reveals a hidden star cluster in the Carina Nebula. Today's daily space briefing covers four major stories shaping the week in space and astronomy.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
ESA's PLATO space telescope has passed its final qualification test, clearing the last major technical hurdle before a spring twenty twenty-seven launch. That's the lead this morning, and it matters because PLATO isn't just another observatory.
While PLATO was being cleared on the ground, the International Space Station wrapped up something five years in the making. Spacewalk ninety-six on August sixth installed mounting hardware for the seventh iROSA solar wing, completing the station's power modernization program. iROSA stands for Roll-Out Solar Array.
Elsewhere, the James Webb Space Telescope released new imagery this week of a structure called the Treasure Chest, a cometary globule sitting inside the Carina Nebula. What Webb found there is a young stellar cluster of approximately seventy stars, hidden behind layers of cosmic dust that optical telescopes simply can't penetrate.
One more item worth a clear-eyed look. A three-hundred-meter asteroid designated twenty nineteen NY two makes its closest approach to Earth on August tenth.
Three things are worth tracking from here. PLATO's schedule adherence through integration will be the clearest signal of whether spring twenty twenty-seven holds.
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