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TOI-199b's Methane Shock, Starship V3 & Psyche's Mars Flyby
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
JWST detects methane on a temperate Saturn-sized exoplanet, rewriting planetary formation models — while Starship V3 completes its maiden flight with a booster anomaly. Plus SpaceX's trillion-dollar IPO filing, Psyche's Mars gravity assist, and the Artemis III lander timeline.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
A Saturn-sized world three hundred thirty light-years away just forced planetary scientists to revise what they thought they knew about how atmospheres form and survive. The planet is called TOI-199b.
While that discovery was being processed, SpaceX launched the tallest rocket ever built. Starship V3 lifted off from the new Texas Starbase pad on May twenty-second.
SpaceX also moved from rumor to reality on the financial side this week. The company filed an S-1 prospectus with the SEC targeting a valuation of one point seven five trillion dollars.
On the science side, NASA's Psyche spacecraft completed its Mars gravity assist on May fifteenth. The spacecraft passed within two thousand eight hundred sixty-four miles of Mars, used the planet's gravity to gain velocity without burning additional fuel, and captured detailed imagery of the Huygens crater during the approach.
NASA administrator Jared Isaacman attended the Starship V3 launch and used the occasion to confirm that an Earth orbit docking test is planned for Artemis III next year, involving Starship and possibly Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander. That test is a critical gate.
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