🚀 Space Pulse · 2026-06-28 22:03 UTC
SPACE PULSE
Sunday, June 29, 2026 — Edition 365
Your daily briefing on everything above the atmosphere.
⚡ TL;DR
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has arrived at Kennedy Space Center and is being processed for its late-summer launch, the single biggest near-term milestone in astrophysics. A packed week ahead: Swift Boost, South Korea's first orbital solid-fuel military rocket, and a Moon Base progress briefing all converge before July.
🚀 LAUNCHES
SWIFT BOOST MISSION — Pegasus XL, Northrop Grumman/Katalyst Space Technologies, contracted by NASA; Katalyst's LINK servicing spacecraft will rendezvous with the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to re-boost its orbit; launch window opens June 30. [1] [2] [3]
SOUTH KOREAN ADD SOLID-FUEL SLV DEMO — South Korea's Agency for Defense Development Go-for-Launch; this is the first full orbital version flight of the military small-satellite launcher, following two sub-orbital stage tests in 2022 and one prior orbital test; targeted for June 29 at 05:00 UTC. [4]
LONG MARCH 4C — CASC Go-for-Launch; payload details TBD; targeted July 1 at 23:45 UTC. [5]
LONG MARCH 8 — CASC To Be Confirmed; payload details TBD; targeted July 2. [6]
LONG MARCH 6A — CASC Go-for-Launch; payload details TBD; targeted July 4. [7]
STARLINK GROUP 17-48 — Falcon 9 Block 5, SpaceX; 24 Starlink satellites; targeted July 6 at 14:00 UTC. [8]
STARLINK GROUP 10-42 — Falcon 9 Block 5, SpaceX; 29 Starlink satellites; targeted July 9. [9]
LONG MARCH 10B DEMO — CASC To Be Confirmed; first test launch of this new rocket; targeted around July 10. [10]
ROCKET LAB SELECTED FOR POLSIR AND TSIS-2 — NASA chose Rocket Lab under its VADR contract to launch both the Polarized Submillimeter Ice-cloud Radiometer and the Total and Spectral Solar Irradiance Sensor-2 missions; dates TBD.
🔭 DISCOVERIES
ROMAN TELESCOPE AT KENNEDY — NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope arrived at Kennedy Space Center on June 21 aboard the Pegasus barge and is now in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility ahead of its targeted late-summer launch.
EUCLID GALACTIC BULGE SURVEY — ESA's Euclid released Q2 quick data from its Galactic Bulge Survey, covering 4.8 square degrees of the inner Milky Way bulge observed over 24 hours in March 2025 with the VIS instrument; the region overlaps with Roman's planned core survey, giving astronomers an early preview.
TESS FINDS PUFFIEST PLANETS EVER — NASA's TESS mission revealed two new Jupiter-sized "super-puff" worlds with densities comparable to cotton candy, the lowest-density planets yet recorded.
WEBB SEES CIGAR GALAXY IN NEW DETAIL — JWST observed edge-on starburst galaxy Messier 82, combining new infrared data with archival Hubble imagery to produce the most complete view yet of this star-forming powerhouse.
PERSEVERANCE RUNS A MARATHON — NASA's HiRISE camera captured Perseverance rover as a green speck on the Martian surface on June 13, 2026, one day before the rover completed a full marathon distance of 26.2 miles (42.195 km) after five years on Mars.
HUBBLE CAPTURES NGC 6723 — Hubble imaged globular cluster NGC 6723, sometimes called the Chandelier Cluster, showcasing tens of thousands to millions of stars bound by gravity within the Milky Way's halo.
EARTHCARE DATA NOW IN OPERATIONAL FORECASTS — ESA/JAXA's EarthCARE satellite cloud and aerosol measurements have entered operational use at ECMWF, the first time a research Earth-observation mission has directly sharpened global numerical weather forecasts.
SILICATE CLOUDS ON ULTRA-HOT NEPTUNE LTT9779b — A new study using the GIANO-B spectrograph reports evidence for glossy silicate clouds on the dayside of LTT9779b, the only known ultra-hot Neptune, helping explain its anomalously high geometric albedo.
JWST RESOLVES JET-DRIVEN OUTFLOWS IN 3C305 — JWST MIRI and NIRSpec observations of radio galaxy 3C305 resolved multiphase gas outflows driven by its compact jet, using H2, mid-infrared fine-structure lines, and PAH emission across the MIRI MRS spectrum.
PACE SATELLITE TRACKS WILDFIRE SMOKE — With a record North American fire season underway, NASA's PACE satellite is using all three instruments to observe vegetation fire precursors, smoke plumes, and aerosol transport.
BOTSWANA JOINS ARTEMIS ACCORDS — The Republic of Botswana signed the Artemis Accords on June 25, becoming the 68th signatory and the sixth African nation to commit to peaceful space exploration.
🛰️ MISSIONS
ROMAN TELESCOPE PROCESSING BEGINS — Roman is now undergoing pre-launch processing at Kennedy's Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility following its June 21 arrival; launch is targeted for later this summer.
SWIFT ORBIT BOOST IMMINENT — The Swift Boost Mission launching June 30 will attach Katalyst's LINK spacecraft to the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to demonstrate in-space servicing and extend the 20-year-old X-ray/UV telescope's life. [1] [3] [2]
MOON BASE UPDATE JUNE 30 — NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will host a virtual briefing at 2:30 p.m. EDT on June 30, announcing the next set of awards for NASA's Moon Base program; Program Manager Carlos Garcia-Galan will present alongside him.
ISS EXPEDITION 74 SPACEWALK PREP — Four Expedition 74 crew members took an off-duty recovery day on June 26 ahead of a robotics repair spacewalk planned for next week; the remaining crew conducted AI and VR studies aboard ISS.
JAXA LEV-2 LUNAR ROVER PAPER — JAXA published Science Robotics research on the LEV-2 transformable lunar rover, which demonstrated shape-shifting locomotion during SLIM's January 2024 lunar landing.
EUCLID SMILE REACHES SCIENCE ORBIT — ESA's SMILE (Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) spacecraft reached its science orbit, enabling coordinated solar wind-magnetosphere observations.
NASA IN-SPACE REFUELING NOZZLE TESTED — NASA tested a new cryogenic fluid management coupling device, a specialized nozzle concept for filling spacecraft with propellant in Earth orbit before deep-space departures.
SPACE REACTOR-1 FREEDOM — NASA is advancing SR-1 Freedom, a fission surface power demonstration mission that is the first step toward the Lunar Reactor-1 (LR-1) system designed to power a future Moon Base through periods of lunar darkness.
NASA SELECTS 41 TECH COLLABORATION PROPOSALS — From its 2025 Announcement of Collaboration Opportunity, NASA selected 41 proposals from 37 companies to mature technologies supporting a long-term lunar presence and eventual human Mars exploration.
ARTEMIS II LESSONS INFORM MOON-TO-MARS PLANNING — Seven weeks after Orion returned four astronauts from the first crewed lunar flyby since Apollo, Artemis II Orion Vehicle Manager Branelle Rodriguez outlined how mission data is shaping lunar surface and Mars architecture.
☀️ SPACE WEATHER
G1 STORM WATCH FOR JUNE 29-30 — NOAA SWPC issued Watch WATA20 (Serial 1114) on June 28 at 10:41 UTC predicting G1 Minor geomagnetic storm conditions on both June 29 and June 30; June 28 itself is forecast below G1.
ELEVATED ELECTRON FLUX CONTINUING — NOAA GOES-19 has been tracking an ongoing high-energy electron event: 2 MeV integral flux has exceeded 1,000 pfu since June 26 at 13:45 UTC, with a peak of 3,793 pfu recorded on June 27; the alert (Serial 3706) was still active as of June 28 at 05:07 UTC.
K-INDEX 4-5 ACTIVITY EARLIER THIS WEEK — NOAA issued a K-index 5 alert (G1 scale) from June 25 starting at 03:43 UTC, extended through June 25; a K-index 4 warning persisted through June 26 at 12:00 UTC, indicating a moderately disturbed geomagnetic environment heading into the current watch period.
📄 RESEARCH
EUCLID Q2 GALACTIC BULGE SURVEY (arXiv 2606.25883) — The Euclid Quick Release Q2 paper presents an unprecedented deep, wide-field, high-resolution view of 4.8 square degrees of the inner Galactic bulge in optical light, a region to be revisited by Roman; the data will enable microlensing and stellar population studies impossible from the ground.
GLOSSY SILICATE CLOUDS ON LTT9779b (arXiv 2606.26075) — Researchers report that the high reflectivity of ultra-hot Neptune LTT9779b, discovered deep inside the Neptunian desert, is best explained by silicate cloud decks on its scorched dayside, offering a new window into extreme atmospheric chemistry.
LITTLE RED DOTS FOUND IN SDSS (arXiv 2606.26098) — A study identifies a population of JWST-style "Little Red Dot" compact, red, broad-line quasars already lurking in Sloan Digital Sky Survey data at lower redshift, suggesting these objects are not exclusively a high-z JWST phenomenon.
JWST MULTIPHASE JET OUTFLOWS IN 3C305 (arXiv 2606.25856) — Using JWST MIRI MRS and NIRSpec, researchers resolved both warm molecular hydrogen and ionized gas outflows driven by a compact jet confined within radio galaxy 3C305, providing the clearest view yet of jet-ISM feedback at galaxy scales.
EHT CAMPAIGN ON BLAZAR 3C279 (arXiv 2606.25868) — A new paper presents broadband multiwavelength properties of archetypal blazar 3C279 during the April 2017 Event Horizon Telescope campaign, combining EHT imaging with one of the most extensive quasi-simultaneous multiwavelength datasets ever assembled for a blazar.
PLUTO'S NITROGEN ICE BASAL FLOW (arXiv 2606.27200) — Analysis of New Horizons data finds geomorphological evidence in the northern reaches of Sputnik Planitia consistent with flowing nitrogen ice at the base of the one-million-square-kilometer basin, analogous to subglacial flow on Earth.
Space Pulse is compiled from NASA, ESA, JAXA, NOAA SWPC, arXiv astro-ph, and Launch Library 2.
Next edition: Monday, June 29, 2026 22:00 UTC.
📎 Sources
- Partners, NASA Ready for June Launch of Swift Boost Mission — NASA News Releases
- Pegasus XL | Swift Boost Mission — Launch Library 2
- Partners, NASA Ready for June Launch of Swift Boost Mission — NASA Science
- South Korean ADD Solid-Fuel SLV | Demo Flight — Launch Library 2
- Long March 4C | Unknown Payload — Launch Library 2
- Long March 8 | Unknown Payload — Launch Library 2
- Long March 6A | Unknown Payload — Launch Library 2
- Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 17-48 — Launch Library 2
- Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 10-42 — Launch Library 2
- Long March 10B | Demo Flight — Launch Library 2
Curated from official sources — NASA/ESA/JAXA/ESO/NOAA/arXiv/Launch Library. Informational only.
Serial 20260628-22-v15 · 2026-06-28 22:03 UTC