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Space

🚀 Space Pulse · 2026-06-29 22:01 UTC

⚡ TL;DR

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano is named pilot of NASA's Artemis III while Ariane 6 sets a new European launch record, headlining a busy June for human and robotic spaceflight. The week runs hot across launches, ISS ops, space weather, and a flood of SKA-focused research papers.

🚀 LAUNCHES

SIRIUS SXM-11 AIRBORNE

  • SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 lifted Sirius SXM-11 on June 29 at 02:25 UTC, the 12th high-powered digital audio radio satellite built by Lantéris Space on the IM-1300 platform for SiriusXM. [1]

TRANSPORTER 17 ON DECK

  • SpaceX has a Falcon 9 dedicated sun-synchronous rideshare, Transporter 17, carrying dozens of micro- and nanosatellites for commercial and government customers, currently To Be Confirmed for July 7 at 06:51 UTC. [2]

STARLINK GROUP 15-14 AHEAD

  • A Falcon 9 is Go for Launch carrying 24 Starlink satellites for SpaceX's broadband mega-constellation, scheduled for July 12 at 08:00 UTC. [3]

🔭 DISCOVERIES

SENTINEL-1 MAPS VENEZUELA EARTHQUAKE DAMAGE

  • ESA's Sentinel-1 radar satellite produced an interferogram comparing data from June 18 (before the earthquakes) and June 25 (one day after), revealing ground displacement patterns across the affected region. [4]

ESA DETECTS EARLY EL NINO SIGNS

  • ESA's June 2026 roundup confirms that ESA satellites have detected early signs of El Niño development, adding to a month that also saw Proba-3 return to operations and Euclid unveil new results. [5]

JWST SUPPORTS JITTERING-JETS SUPERNOVA MODEL

  • Published JWST observations of core-collapse supernova remnant SNR 0540-69.3 in the Large Magellanic Cloud reveal a point-symmetric morphology in its inner ejecta, interpreted as evidence that jittering jets shaped the explosion rather than the neutrino-convection mechanism alone. [6]

JWST CATCHES DUST FLYING OUT OF QUASARS

  • JWST MIRI spectra of five type 2 quasars at redshift ~0.1 from the QSOFEED sample show polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) dust features with kinematics indicating active dusty outflows driven by AGN, the first direct kinematic measurement of dust in such objects. [7]

ASKAP CATALOGUES 131 ULTRA-COMPACT RADIO SOURCES

  • Using interplanetary scintillation at 823 MHz across a 35-square-degree field with all 36 phased-array-feed beams, ASKAP identified 131 sources smaller than 0.1 arcseconds, a new benchmark catalogue for compact radio emitters. [8]

🛰️ MISSIONS

ARTEMIS III CREW TAKES SHAPE

  • ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano has been named pilot of NASA's Artemis III lunar landing mission, one of the headline milestones in ESA's June 2026 summary. [5]

ISS SPACEWALK PREP UNDERWAY

  • NASA flight engineer Chris Williams fitted and tested his spacesuit in the Quest airlock on June 23, with ESA flight engineer Sophie Adenot assisting; Williams is preparing for an upcoming ISS spacewalk. [9]

NASA PUSHES LUNAR SURFACE TECH FORWARD

  • NASA issued a draft Broad Agency Announcement on June 29 under NextSTEP-3 Appendix A, soliciting industry concepts to advance technological readiness of critical lunar surface systems ahead of sustained human presence. [10]

EXOPLANETS 6 CONFERENCE OPENS

  • The Exoplanets 6 international science conference opened June 29 in Porto, Portugal, running through July 3, 2026, bringing together the global exoplanet research community.

☀️ SPACE WEATHER

ELEVATED ELECTRON FLUX PERSISTS AT HIGH-ENERGY THRESHOLD

  • NOAA SWPC issued a continued ALTEF3 alert (Serial 3707) at 05:02 UTC June 29: the 2 MeV integral electron flux has exceeded 1,000 pfu since June 26 at 13:45 UTC, peaking at 2,637 pfu on June 28, posing elevated risk to satellite electronics in high-radiation orbits.

📄 RESEARCH

SKA WILL RESOLVE HOW PLANETS ARE BORN FROM DUST

  • A new study argues that SKAO's centimetre-wave sensitivity will probe grain growth from micron-sized dust to planetary cores in planet-forming disks, filling a major gap left even by ALMA's decade of high-resolution imaging.

DARK ENERGY LEAVES ITS FINGERPRINT ON COSMIC VOIDS

  • Using 10 cosmological models from the AbacusSummit simulation suite, researchers find that faster cosmic acceleration causes galactic halos on void surfaces to align more strongly perpendicular to void centers, offering a new large-scale-structure test of dark energy.

GAS ACCRETION COULD EXPLAIN HEAVIEST GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE SOURCES

  • A continuity-equation framework treating gas accretion as a mass-space transport process shows compact objects in gas-rich environments can migrate to higher masses, providing a natural pathway to the oversized black holes seen in some LIGO-Virgo events.

PLANCK, ACT DR6, AND DESI DR2 TIGHTEN INFLATION CONSTRAINTS

  • A combined analysis of Planck, ACT DR6 CMB data, and DESI DR2 baryon acoustic oscillation measurements places new limits on oscillatory features in the primordial power spectrum, constraining exotic inflationary particle-production scenarios.

NEUTRON STAR RADIUS MEASUREMENTS MAY MISLEAD EQUATION-OF-STATE INFERENCE

  • Bayesian simulations using mock 1.4 solar-mass neutron star radius measurements show that improving observational precision can actually shift inferred equation-of-state parameters rather than merely narrowing uncertainties, a systematic effect the community must account for with NICER and future missions.

📎 Sources

  1. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Sirius SXM-11 — Launch Library 2
  2. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Transporter 17 (Dedicated SSO Rideshare) — Launch Library 2
  3. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 15-14 — Launch Library 2
  4. Sentinel-1 shows ground displacement after Venezuela earthquakes — ESA Top News
  5. This Month at ESA: June 2026 — ESA Top News
  6. JWST observations support the jittering-jets explosion mechanism (JJEM) for the core-collapse supernova remnant SNR 0540 — arXiv astro-ph
  7. Kinematic detection of dusty outflows from AGN: PAH kinematics of type 2 quasars with JWST/MIRI spectroscopy — arXiv astro-ph
  8. First results of sub-arcsecond scale objects identified with ASKAP using interplanetary scintillation — arXiv astro-ph
  9. NASA Astronaut Chris Williams Preps for Spacewalk — NASA News Releases
  10. NASA Seeks Industry Input to Accelerate Lunar Surface Technologies — NASA News Releases

Curated from official sources — NASA/ESA/JAXA/ESO/NOAA/arXiv/Launch Library. Informational only.
Serial 20260629-22-v16 · 2026-06-29 22:01 UTC

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