🚀 Space Pulse · 2026-07-10 22:01 UTC
SPACE PULSE
July 10, 2026 | Evening Edition
⚡ TL;DR
Katalyst's LINK servicing spacecraft is actively commissioning on orbit ahead of its planned boost of NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, marking a rare commercial in-space servicing milestone. [1] Alongside that, fresh exoplanet confirmations, a new interstellar comet dataset from ESA's JUICE, and a busy solar-activity backdrop keep the pace brisk tonight. [2] [3]
🚀 LAUNCHES
UPCOMING — Soyuz MS-29 will carry NASA astronaut Anil Menon alongside Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina to the ISS on Tuesday, July 14, joining the Expedition 74 crew. [4]
UPCOMING — SpaceX Falcon 9 is targeting July 18 at 14:00 UTC for Starlink Group 17-39, delivering a batch of 24 broadband satellites for the constellation. [5]
UPCOMING — A second Falcon 9 Starlink mission, Group 17-51 (24 satellites), is manifested for July 23 at 14:00 UTC; both are listed Go for Launch. [6]
UPCOMING — Rocket Lab Electron will orbit Synspective's StriX Launch 11 synthetic aperture radar satellite and iQPS's SAR satellite (iQPS Launch 7, "The Grain Goddess Provides") from separate pads, both currently set for July 31. [7] [8]
🔭 DISCOVERIES
EXOPLANETS — NASA confirmed three new worlds this week: TOI-6019 b, a half-Jupiter-mass gas giant orbiting a Sun-like G-star every 14.5 days at 0.12 AU; TOI-2147 b, a 0.36-Jupiter-mass planet around an F-star with a 26.2-day orbit at 0.17 AU; and Beta Pictoris d, a 2.4-Jupiter-mass giant sitting 26 AU from its A-type host on a roughly 91-year orbit — all announced in 2026. [3] [9] [10]
LIGHTHOUSE PULSAR — For the first time, NASA's IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) has directly mapped the magnetic fields of PSR J1101-6101 inside the Lighthouse Nebula, revealing new details about the extreme structure of pulsar wind nebulae.
INTERSTELLAR COMET — ESA's JUICE spacecraft used its MAJIS spectrometer to observe interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS in the 0.5-5.56 micron range between November 2-25, 2025, shortly after perihelion, reporting fluorescence emission data on the comet's near-perihelion activity and composition. [2]
ROMAN TELESCOPE — With fewer than two months to launch, engineers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center have completed a crane lift of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility as launch preparations advance.
DRAGONFLY MILESTONE — NASA's Dragonfly Titan rotorcraft passed key integration tests at Johns Hopkins APL on June 29, with the spacecraft now visually resembling the finished vehicle that will eventually fly across Saturn's moon Titan.
NISAR EARTHQUAKE MAPPING — Radar data from NASA's NISAR satellite captured significant ground displacement at La Guaira, Venezuela, and surrounding areas resulting from the June 2026 earthquake sequence.
PAH IN STAR-FORMING CORE — Researchers detected the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon phenalene (C13H10) in the very low luminosity protostellar object MC27/L1521F, extending the known distribution of PAHs beyond the well-studied TMC-1 CP starless core in Taurus.
SWIFT SERVICING — Katalyst's robotic servicing spacecraft LINK is currently undergoing on-orbit checkout procedures with the mission objective of reboosting NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to a higher, longer-lived orbit. [1]
AUGUST ECLIPSE PREVIEW — ESA released a primer on the August 12, 2026 total solar eclipse, highlighting the path of totality, Baily's beads, and the rare sunset-geometry viewing conditions, featuring ESA Reserve Astronaut Sara Garcia Alonso and Astronaut Candidate Pablo Alvarez Fernandez.
🛰️ MISSIONS
SWIFT — Katalyst LINK spacecraft commissioning is confirmed in progress on orbit; the reboost is designed to extend Swift's operational lifetime significantly beyond its current decaying trajectory. [1]
ROMAN — Kennedy Space Center teams have physically lifted and repositioned the Roman Space Telescope during pre-launch processing; launch remains less than two months away.
DRAGONFLY — The Dragonfly mission cleared a key structural integration milestone June 29 at APL; the rotorcraft is taking final shape ahead of its eventual launch toward Titan.
MARS STRIDE — NASA selected seven companies for contract awards under the STRIDE (Science Transport and Robotic Innovation for Deployment and Exploration) initiative to develop next-generation Mars surface mobility technology.
SENTINEL-1 ANTARCTIC ICE — ESA temporarily repositioned two Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar satellites into a tandem formation replicating the original ERS-1/ERS-2 tandem mission, generating a new 30-year baseline dataset on Antarctic ice flow.
NISAR EARTH SCIENCE — NASA released Principal Investigator and Quality Assessment reports evaluating commercial Umbra SAR data for Earth science use, expanding documentation of commercial data contributions to agency research programs.
CURIOSITY — NASA's Curiosity rover imagery of sulfur crystals crushed beneath its wheels on May 30, 2024 — the first sulfur crystals ever observed on Mars — is being highlighted this week as a close-up camera image feature.
☀️ SPACE WEATHER
TODAY — NOAA SWPC issued a G1 (Minor) Geomagnetic Storm Watch at 19:46 UTC today (July 10), forecasting the highest activity on July 12; July 11 and July 13 are expected to remain below G1 threshold.
TODAY — GOES-19 registered an Electron 2 MeV Integral Flux alert (ALTEF3) at 11:26 UTC this morning, exceeding the 1,000 pfu threshold; yesterday's maximum was 767 pfu, indicating a rising energetic particle environment.
ONGOING — A K-index of 4 warning (WARK04) has been extended through July 11 at 03:00 UTC, citing persistence since July 9 at 11:19 UTC.
LOOK BACK — Earlier this week the Sun produced an M8.5 flare on July 1 (peaking 23:09 UTC, location S07W25), rated R2 Moderate, which drove a G2 Moderate geomagnetic storm watch for July 3-4.
LOOK BACK — A stronger X1.1 flare erupted June 30 at 20:50 UTC from N18W18, rated R3 Strong, accompanied by Type II radio emission (CME shock velocity ~1,496 km/s) and a Type IV continuum burst.
📄 RESEARCH
INTERSTELLAR COMET 3I/ATLAS COMPOSITION — JUICE/MAJIS visible-to-infrared spectroscopy of 3I/ATLAS near perihelion (November 2025) provides the first direct compositional data on this interstellar visitor, with fluorescence emission detectable across 0.5-5.56 microns; results speak directly to the chemistry of material from another stellar system. [2]
GALACTIC DARK MATTER HINT — An independent pixel-level analysis of 15 years of Fermi-LAT data confirms a spherically symmetric, halo-like gamma-ray excess peaking near 20 GeV in the Galactic diffuse emission, finding it consistent with sub-TeV WIMP annihilation; the pixel-level approach adds statistical robustness beyond earlier cell-aggregated results.
FAST PULSAR DETECTION — China's FAST radio telescope recorded the first radio pulsations (P = 162.77 ms) from PSR J2238+5903, a gamma-ray pulsar spatially coincident with TeV source 1LHAASO J2238+5900, providing a dispersion measure distance anchor to probe whether the TeV halo is powered by this pulsar.
DESI DARK ENERGY — A new analysis of DESI DR2 BAO measurements combined with SDSS data re-examines today's cosmic acceleration, finding the DESI Bright Galaxy Survey tomography may need finer redshift binning to sharpen constraints on whether dark energy is truly evolving with time.
SKAO EARLY UNIVERSE — A new review paper outlines how the Square Kilometre Array Observatory will probe beyond the standard cosmological model (Lambda-CDM) to investigate inflationary signals, primordial gravitational waves, and the physics of the early universe beyond what Planck has accessed.
MAISIE'S GALAXY SPECTROSCOPY — Deep JWST Cycle 3 NIRSpec G395M spectroscopy of Maisie's Galaxy, one of the earliest z greater than 10 galaxies discovered, finds it to be a relatively typical early-universe galaxy rather than one requiring extreme star formation or AGN activity, tempering some earlier headline claims about ultra-bright z greater than 10 sources.
📎 Sources
- On-Orbit Checkouts in Progress for Mission to Boost NASA’s Swift — NASA Science
- Near-perihelion activity and composition of 3I/ATLAS from JUIC… — arXiv astro-ph
- TOI-6019 b — NASA Science
- NASA Sets Coverage for Astronaut Anil Menon Launch to Space St… — NASA News Releases
- Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 17-39 — Launch Library 2
- Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 17-51 — Launch Library 2
- Electron | StriX Launch 11 — Launch Library 2
- Electron | The Grain Goddess Provides (iQPS Launch 7) — Launch Library 2
- TOI-2147 b — NASA Science
- Beta Pictoris d — NASA Science
Curated from official sources — NASA/ESA/JAXA/ESO/NOAA/arXiv/Launch Library. Informational only.
Serial 20260710-22-v23 · 2026-07-10 22:01 UTC · pulse.uzylab.com