🚀 Space Pulse · 2026-07-16 22:01 UTC

SPACE PULSE

Thursday, 17 July 2026 — Edition 155

⚡ TL;DR

Starship Flight 13 lifts off tonight carrying 20 V3 Starlink satellites in its first-ever payload delivery, while Perseverance rewrites Martian geology with a 3.9-billion-year impact record at Jezero Crater's rim.

A busy 24 hours blends historic human spaceflight, deep planetary science, an imminent Starship milestone, and fresh JWST imagery of the early universe.

🚀 LAUNCHES

STARSHIP FLIGHT 13 — IMMINENT TONIGHT

• SpaceX Starship (second V3 flight) is Go for Launch at 22:45 UTC tonight, 16 July 2026, from Boca Chica. ^[1]
• For the first time, Starship will carry a payload: 20 V3 Starlink satellites that will attempt to deploy solar arrays, extend antennas, and contact ground stations in South Africa. ^[1]

SDA TRANCHE 1 TRANSPORT LAYER E — JUST LAUNCHED

• A SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 lifted off at 20:32 UTC on 16 July 2026 carrying a U.S. Space Force Space Development Agency (SDA) batch for the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) Tranche 1 Transport Layer resilient military comms constellation. ^[2]

UPCOMING — LATE JULY / EARLY AUGUST

• SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 will loft 24 Starlink Group 17-52 satellites on 28 July 2026 at 02:00 UTC. ^[3]
• ISRO GSLV Mk II is scheduled to launch GISAT-1A (EOS-05), a geostationary Earth-imaging satellite for continuous Indian subcontinent monitoring, no earlier than 31 July 2026. ^[4]
• SpaceX Falcon 9 is also manifested for nine Globalstar 2-R Mission 1 satellites, targeting 31 July 2026. ^[5]
• Orienspace Technology's Gravity-1 vehicle has an unknown payload targeted for 31 July 2026. ^[6]

ESA FLEX AND SENTINEL-3C CAMPAIGN BEGINS

• ESA's FLEX (fluorescence mapper) and Copernicus Sentinel-3C have arrived at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana; liftoff is scheduled for September 2026 after pre-launch checkout. ^[7]

🔭 DISCOVERIES

JWST PEERS 4.4 BILLION YEARS BACK AT MERGING CLUSTER

• NASA's James Webb Space Telescope imaged young galaxy cluster MACS J0553.4-3342 on 3 July 2026, showing two actively merging sub-clusters of roughly equal mass, each anchored by an immensely bright massive elliptical galaxy. ^{[8] [9]}

PERSEVERANCE FINDS 3.9-BILLION-YEAR IMPACT ARCHIVE AT JEZERO RIM

• NASA's Perseverance rover has documented a 245-foot-thick (75-meter) stack of layered bedrock at the "Broom Point member" on Jezero Crater's rim, built by repeated asteroid impacts and estimated to be more than 3.9 billion years old. ^[10]
• The rover's orbital track to Broom Point is mapped from its 18 February 2021 Jezero Crater landing through more than 1,500 sols of traverse.

CURIOSITY IMAGES ANCIENT MARTIAN SANDSTORM RECORD

• NASA's Curiosity rover photographed multilayered rocks in Gale Crater that preserve sediment ripples from an hours-long sandstorm billions of years ago, with climbing ripple structures indicating extreme wind intensity.

PRISTINE METEORITE STUDY ILLUMINATES EARLY SOLAR SYSTEM WATER

• A meteorite recovered immediately on impact on 16 July 2024 is yielding NASA clues about ancient water, primitive asteroid chemistry, and prebiotic ingredients relevant to early solar system habitability.

🛰️ MISSIONS

SOYUZ DELIVERS MENON, DUBROV, AND KIKINA TO ISS

• NASA astronaut Anil Menon, Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina launched aboard a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on Tuesday 14 July 2026, now en route to the International Space Station.

ROMAN TELESCOPE SOLAR PANELS PASS PRE-LAUNCH INSPECTION

• NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope had its solar panels cleaned and inspected on 8 July 2026 at the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility, Kennedy Space Center, keeping the pre-launch campaign on track.

SWIFT OBSERVATORY SERVICING SPACECRAFT ON TRACK

• A robotic servicing spacecraft designed to boost NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to a higher orbit continues progressing through in-orbit commissioning checks as of 15 July 2026.

ARTEMIS III DEMO MISSION PLANNING UNDERWAY FOR 2027

• NASA confirmed the Artemis III demonstration mission will occur in 2027 to rehearse rendezvous and docking between commercial human landing systems and the Orion spacecraft; crewed lunar landing remains targeted for 2028.

HAYABUSA2 FLYBY OF ASTEROID TORIFUNE — TIMING CONFIRMED

• JAXA determined the precise date and time for asteroid explorer Hayabusa2's flyby of asteroid Torifune (announcement dated 9 June 2026), continuing the spacecraft's extended mission.

JAXA MICHIBIKI-7 / QZS-7 LAUNCH RESCHEDULED

• JAXA rescheduled the launch of MICHIBIKI No. 7 (Quasi-Zenith Satellite System QZS-7) aboard H3 Launch Vehicle Flight No. 9 (H3 F9); a reserved launch period was added as of 8 July 2026.

JAXA AMSR3 WATER CYCLE DATA NOW PUBLICLY AVAILABLE

• JAXA began distributing standard data products from the AMSR3 instrument for water cycle monitoring as of 30 June 2026.

VIKING ANNIVERSARY APPROACHES — 50 YEARS ON MARS

• On 20 July 2026, NASA marks the 50th anniversary of Viking 1's 1976 touchdown, the first U.S. mission to return surface images from Mars; Viking 2 followed 3 September 1976.

ESA TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE SCIENCE BRIEFING

• ESA held an online media briefing on 15 July 2026, replayed publicly, covering eclipse science opportunities and visibility; ESA scientists outlined key observational goals for the event.

☀️ SPACE WEATHER

CURRENT CONDITIONS — QUIET TO UNSETTLED

• No active NOAA alerts are in the current 24-hour window; the most recent geomagnetic disturbance was a K-index 4 (active level, G0/below-storm threshold) warning issued 9 July 2026, valid through 10 July 12:00 UTC.
• Earlier in July, on 7 July 2026, NOAA detected a Type II radio emission with an estimated CME shock velocity of 1,441 km/s, indicating an energetic solar eruption, though no associated geomagnetic storm alert followed in the data window.
• A K-index 4 warning was also issued 8 July 2026 from 05:28 UTC, tied to that same solar activity period.

RECENT NOTABLE EVENTS FOR CONTEXT

• On 30 June 2026, an M5.8 solar flare (NOAA R2 Moderate radio blackout) peaked at 12:57 UTC from region S07W55; a brief S1 Minor solar energetic particle warning was issued then promptly cancelled.
• An M6.8 flare (R2 Moderate) erupted 21 June 2026 at 19:29 UTC from S07E55, accompanied by a Type II radio emission at 380 km/s indicating a CME.

📄 RESEARCH

SUPER-EARTH ATMOSPHERES CAN "REINFLATE" FROM THE INSIDE

• A new arXiv paper introduces "reflation": on highly irradiated, geochemically reduced super-Earths, mantle redox chemistry can drive sudden bursts of atmospheric re-inflation via outgassing of CHONS volatiles, potentially creating transient thick atmospheres detectable by telescopes.

SMBH MERGER TIMESCALES IN SMALL GALAXIES MATTER FOR LISA

• The RABBITS IV simulation study finds stellar feedback strongly influences how long it takes supermassive black hole pairs to merge after their host galaxies collide in the sub-Milky Way mass regime, directly shaping the predicted event rates for the future LISA millihertz gravitational-wave observatory.

LHAASO DETECTS MULTI-TeV GAMMA RAYS FROM UNIDENTIFIED SOURCE

• Researchers modeled ultra-high-energy gamma-ray emission from LHAASO J0341+5258, an unassociated LHAASO source, explaining the signal as cosmic rays from a nearby accelerator illuminating surrounding molecular clouds, offering a new handle on PeV particle accelerators in the Milky Way.

TRANSITIONAL PULSAR SHOWS GAMMA-RAY MODE SWITCHING

• Using stacked Fermi data, astronomers report the first detection of gamma-ray mode switching in the transitional millisecond pulsar PSR J1023+0038, directly linking its X-ray mode transitions to changes in high-energy emission during its sub-luminous disk state.

COSMOLOGICAL DISTANCE DATA HINTS AT LATE-TIME EXPANSION ANOMALY

• A model-independent spline reconstruction using the latest DESI DR2 baryon acoustic oscillation measurements combined with the DES Dovekie Type Ia supernova compilation reveals a localized anomaly in the Universe's late-time expansion history that deviates from standard Lambda-CDM expectations.

HAWKING RADIATION IN COSMOLOGICALLY COUPLED BLACK HOLES

• A paper examines cosmologically coupled black holes (CCBHs), whose masses grow with cosmic expansion, and finds that including Hawking radiation modifies their evolution non-trivially, addressing a gap in prior purely classical treatments of these theoretically and observationally interesting objects.

End of today's SPACE PULSE. Next edition: 17 July 2026 22:00 UTC.

📎 Sources

1. Starship | Flight 13 — Launch Library 2
2. Falcon 9 Block 5 | SDA Tranche 1 Transport Layer E — Launch Library 2
3. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 17-52 — Launch Library 2
4. GSLV Mk II | GISAT-1A (EOS-05) — Launch Library 2
5. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Globalstar 2-R Mission 1 (x 9) — Launch Library 2
6. Gravity-1 | Unknown Payload — Launch Library 2
7. FLEX and Sentinel-3C arrive at Europe’s Spaceport — ESA Top News
8. Young Galaxy Cluster — NASA News Releases
9. Young Galaxy Cluster — NASA Science
10. NASA’s Perseverance Rover Reads Record of Ancient Mars Impacts — NASA News Releases

Curated from official sources — NASA/ESA/JAXA/ESO/NOAA/arXiv/Launch Library. Informational only.
Serial 20260716-22-v29 · 2026-07-16 22:01 UTC · pulse.uzylab.com