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Swift's Final Fall, Hubble's SOS & Starship's Double Catch
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
NASA's Swift Observatory tumbles to Earth after 22 years as Hubble faces the same fate — and SpaceX prepares to catch both Starship stages simultaneously. Today's space news covers China's crewed lunar roadmap, an ISS power milestone, and a Mars analog crew stepping back into sunlight.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
China just told the world exactly how it plans to land astronauts on the Moon, and the timeline is tighter than most people expected. The full four-mission sequence is now public.
While that competition plays out over years, something far more immediate is happening this week. NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is reentering Earth's atmosphere.
Swift's story is a preview of a problem NASA is now racing to avoid with Hubble. The Hubble Space Telescope is at risk of the same fate within the next decade.
There's a more concrete milestone coming Thursday. Astronauts Kutryk and Menon are set for a seven-hour spacewalk to install the eighth and final roll-out solar array on the International Space Station.
SpaceX is planning something more ambitious for late November. Starship Flight Fifteen is targeting the first simultaneous mechanical tower catch of both the booster and the upper stage.
One quieter result worth noting. The four-person crew that spent three hundred seventy-eight days inside a Mars analog habitat at Johnson Space Center has now exited.
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