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XLSSC 122 Mystery, Starship Recovery & Japan's Phobos Mission
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
JWST maps a galaxy cluster that defies cosmic formation models, SpaceX lands its first intact Starship upper stage, and Japan counts down to a historic Phobos sample return. Five stories shaping the frontier of space science today.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Astronomers have found a galaxy cluster that shouldn't exist the way it does. Not yet.
While JWST was busy challenging formation models, it also picked up something else. A mysterious light emission in the direction of the Fornax constellation.
Moving to reusable hardware, SpaceX has something it's never had before: a flown Starship upper stage back on the ground in one piece. Ship forty returned to Starbase after a twenty-four-day recovery operation in the Indian Ocean.
Blue Origin is moving fast on the manufacturing side. The company has announced a three hundred thirty million dollar expansion of its Florida facility, targeting production of up to one hundred fifty New Glenn upper stages annually by summer twenty twenty-seven.
Japan's MMX spacecraft is targeting October nineteenth for launch toward Phobos, the larger of Mars' two moons. The mission carries a nitrogen gas sampler designed to collect roughly ten grams of surface material.
The threads worth tracking from here: whether JWST finds more early-dense clusters that match XLSSC 122's profile, because one anomaly is a puzzle but a pattern is a model problem. Whether the Fornax signal gets a spectroscopic follow-up that narrows the source candidates.
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