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Salt Clouds, Swift Rescue & Orbital AI Data Centers
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
JWST confirms salt clouds on exoplanet GJ504b, validating a 15-year-old theory, while a Pegasus-XL rocket prepares to rescue NASA's Swift Observatory from reentry. Plus: SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Google race to put AI compute in orbit.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The James Webb Space Telescope has confirmed salt clouds in the atmosphere of a distant exoplanet, and that's not a headline anyone expected to write this week. The finding validates a theoretical prediction that sat untested for fifteen years, and it opens a genuinely new chapter in how we study cold, dim worlds beyond our solar system.
Closer to home, a very different kind of mission is days away from launch. The Katalyst LINK spacecraft is integrated on a Pegasus-XL rocket and targeting a Saturday window.
The commercial space sector has a different kind of ambition running in parallel. SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Google are all moving to put AI compute infrastructure into orbit.
Artemis II astronauts Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover appeared at a World Cup match in Houston on June twenty-first, continuing what's become a deliberate public outreach campaign following their April lunar flyby. The appearances aren't incidental.
Two institutional developments round out the picture. SpaceX's first-ever public earnings report is expected in late July or early August, and it will draw immediate scrutiny.
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