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Starship Flight 15 Ready, ISS Power Upgrade & China's Spaceplane Revealed
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
SpaceX clears all hardware tests for Starship Flight 15 as the FAA becomes the final hurdle, while two critical spacewalks stand between NASA and a fully upgraded ISS. Plus: China's Shenlong spaceplane imaged from orbit, 27 new exoplanet targets, and a rocket startup betting on 20,000 AI satellites.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Two spacewalks stand between NASA and the completion of a five-year effort to keep the International Space Station alive. Astronaut Menon and Canadian astronaut Kutryk are scheduled to install the seventh and eighth IROSA solar arrays on October twenty-ninth and November fifth.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has cleared the final major testing hurdles for Starship Flight Fifteen. Super Heavy Booster Twenty-Two completed a successful thirty-three-engine static fire.
On the science side, a privately-funded observatory called the Lazuli Space Telescope has published a peer-reviewed target list of twenty-seven giant exoplanets selected for direct atmospheric imaging. The technique it uses is reflected starlight, not thermal emission.
The U.S. military has released high-resolution satellite imagery of China's Shenlong spaceplane, photographed from orbit at roughly fifty-six miles distance. The images show the vehicle docked in orbit with its payload bay doors open.
Two other commercial developments are worth tracking. Cowboy Space, founded by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, revealed a two hundred eighty-two-foot rocket called Big Iron, designed to launch twenty thousand AI data center satellites to low Earth orbit with a first flight target of late twenty twenty-eight.
One more: NASA's Curiosity rover has captured a panorama of unusual wind-carved cliffs on Mount Sharp, showing tilted layers and distinctive coloring that scientists think may indicate ancient volcanic ash deposits. The formation mechanism is still unresolved.
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