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Starship V3 Success, Shenzhou 23 & ISS Leak Crisis | May 22-24
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Starship V3 nails its first fully successful flight as the world's most powerful rocket, while China launches a year-long Moon-race mission and the ISS springs a dangerous new pressure leak. Six major stories in under 15 minutes.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Starship V3 just became the most powerful rocket ever flown. SpaceX launched the third-generation vehicle on May twenty-second, and for the first time, it did exactly what it was supposed to do.
While SpaceX was making noise over the Atlantic, China quietly launched Shenzhou twenty-three on May twenty-fourth. Three astronauts are now aboard Tiangong station, and one of them is committed to a twelve-month stay to study how the human body adapts to long-duration spaceflight.
On May fifteenth, NASA's Psyche spacecraft flew within two thousand, eight hundred and sixty-four miles of Mars. That close pass was a gravity assist, using the planet's pull to bend the probe's trajectory and add speed without burning extra fuel.
The International Space Station has a new problem. A fresh pressure leak has been detected in the Russian module segment.
One more finding worth flagging. The James Webb Space Telescope has produced new data revealing detailed atmospheric weather systems on a distant exoplanet, along with fresh observations offering clues to how Neptune's moons formed.
The metrics that matter coming out of this cycle are straightforward. On Starship, watch the booster reignition data and whether SpaceX moves toward in-orbit refueling tests in the next flight window.
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