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🚀 Space Pulse · 2026-07-23 22:01 UTC

SPACE PULSE

Thursday, July 24, 2026 | Edition 204

⚡ TL;DR

SpaceX Starship Flight 13 lifts off tomorrow evening — the first Starship mission to deploy real payload, 20 V3 Starlink satellites — making it the most operationally significant test yet. [1] A busy 24 hours: Io gets its first subsurface heat map, Mars auroras get explained, a geomagnetic storm brushed Earth tonight, and an ISS crew is hours from splashdown. [2] [3] [4]

🚀 LAUNCHES

STARSHIP FLIGHT 13 - SpaceX, NET July 24 at 22:45 UTC

  • Second flight of Starship V3 will carry 20 V3 Starlink satellites — the first actual payload ever flown on Starship — with antennas and solar arrays to deploy and attempt contact with ground stations in South Africa. [1]

LONG MARCH 3B/E - CASC, July 23 at 12:00 UTC (today, already attempted)

  • China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation had a Go for Launch status on an undisclosed payload aboard the Long March 3B/E. [5]

LONG MARCH 7A - CASC, Go for Launch, NET July 29 at 11:50 UTC

  • Another undisclosed CASC payload aboard the Long March 7A, details withheld. [6]

LONG MARCH 6A - CASC, Go for Launch, NET July 30 at 01:00 UTC

  • Third CASC launch within eight days; payload details again undisclosed. [7]

SOYUZ 2.1b/FREGAT | GLONASS-K1 No. 19 - Russian Space Forces, NET July 31

  • Third-generation GLONASS navigation satellite launch, improving accuracy and power efficiency over prior generations. [8]

ROCKET LAB ELECTRON | LOXSAT 1 - Rocket Lab, NET July 31

  • Eta Space's LOXSAT 1 will demonstrate a complete cryogenic liquid-oxygen fluid management system in orbit, sponsored by NASA's Tipping Point program on a Photon-LEO bus. [9]

FALCON 9 | STARLINK GROUP 17-53 - SpaceX, NET August 1 at 14:00 UTC

  • Standard batch of 24 Starlink satellites for SpaceX's broadband mega-constellation. [10]

LONG MARCH 8A - CASC, To Be Confirmed, NET August 4 at 11:00 UTC

  • Payload details TBD.

ISAR AEROSPACE SPECTRUM | ONWARD AND UPWARD - Isar Aerospace, NET August 6

  • Second test flight of Spectrum carries five ESA Boost! cubesats including CyBEEsat (TU Berlin) and TriSat-S (University of Maribor), plus one non-separable experiment.

🔭 DISCOVERIES

IO SUBSURFACE HEAT - NASA Juno

  • Juno's Microwave Radiometer has produced the first-ever temperature measurements below the surface of Jupiter's moon Io, revealing intense shallow subsurface heating across the most volcanically active world in the solar system. [3]
  • Data from two close flybys show most volcanic heating is concentrated in Io's shallow subsurface, not deep interior, with MWR footprints mapped across Perijove 57 on Dec. 30, 2023.

MARS AURORAS EXPLAINED - NASA MAVEN

  • MAVEN scientists have confirmed that certain Martian auroras form by the same mechanism as Earth's auroras, a key puzzle piece published Thursday in Nature Communications. [2]
  • This is the first time the Earth-analog aurora formation process has been firmly identified at Mars, deepening understanding of how planetary magnetic environments shape upper atmospheres. [2]

EXOMOON THAT IS NOT A MOON - ESO VLT

  • ESO's VLT found evidence for a moon-sized object in the CD-35 2722 system that orbits a brown dwarf rather than a planet, challenging how astronomers define and label such bodies.
  • The object sits in a category between planet and moon, prompting debate about cosmic classification at the boundary of planetary science.

BETA PICTORIS d IMAGED - ESO

  • A third planet, Beta Pictoris d, has been directly imaged after more than a decade of searching; it is 100 times fainter than Beta Pictoris b and among the lightest exoplanets ever imaged from the ground.

MAGNETIC EXOPLANETS - ESO VLT and Gemini North

  • Anomalous wind speeds measured on seven hot Jupiter-class exoplanets using ESO's VLT and Gemini North provide the strongest evidence yet that some exoplanets host global magnetic fields.

MESSIER 94 IN X-RAYS - NASA Chandra

  • Chandra's new imaging of NGC 4736 (Messier 94) shows its starburst ring in X-rays, with star formation apparently driven by gas funneled inward by the galaxy's unusual oval-shaped structure.

ROBOTIC SATELLITE SERVICING UNDERWAY

  • The Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV) carrying NASA's RSGS payload launched July 21 on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral and is now en route to geosynchronous orbit, where it will demonstrate robotic satellite servicing and repair.

MILKY WAY CHEMISTRY MAPPED - ALMA

  • ALMA has produced its largest image to date of the Milky Way's central region, revealing a complex network of gas filaments in unprecedented detail and unlocking new data on the Galaxy's hidden chemistry.

🛰️ MISSIONS

ISS SOYUZ MS-28 RETURN

  • NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev will undock from the ISS Rassvet module at 3:02 a.m. EDT Sunday July 26 (07:02 UTC), closing out a 241-day Expedition 74 mission.
  • During his stay Williams contributed to cancer treatment research and advanced production of materials for electronics and computers.

ARTEMIS IV TANK MOVE

  • At NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, crews transported the 130-foot-tall Artemis IV liquid hydrogen tank out of its production cell into a separate test building on May 15, 2026.

JAXA H3 F9 / QZS-7 RESCHEDULED

  • JAXA has rescheduled the launch of MICHIBIKI No. 7, the seventh Quasi-Zenith Satellite System satellite, aboard H3 Flight No. 9, with an added reserved launch period announced July 8.

JWST CYCLE 6 PROPOSALS OPEN

  • NASA has issued the Cycle 6 Call for Proposals for JWST General Observer, Survey, and Archival Research programs; proposals are due September 30, 2026.

LISA PREPARATORY SCIENCE BRIEFED

  • NASA LISA Project Scientist Ira Thorpe and Deputy Project Scientist Ann Hornschemeier Cardiff presented a GW SIG Seminar today, July 23, on LISA preparatory science and identified science gaps ahead of the mission.

TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE - ESA

  • ESA joined the City of León and University of León to observe and broadcast the total solar eclipse visible over Europe today, July 23, with scientists presenting eclipse science opportunities.

☀️ SPACE WEATHER

GEOMAGNETIC STORM - ACTIVE NOW, G1-G2

  • NOAA issued a G1 Minor geomagnetic storm warning at 16:20 UTC today (July 23) with K-index reaching 5 by 16:21 UTC; conditions escalated with a G2 Moderate warning issued at 16:40 UTC as K-index of 6 was forecast.
  • The G1 alert was confirmed reached again at 20:07 UTC (K-index 5, synoptic period 1800-2100), with active warning still in effect as of edition close at 22:00 UTC. [4]
  • A G1 storm watch had been issued July 22 at 19:25 UTC predicting possible G1 conditions for July 24; the storm arrived roughly a day early.
  • Possible effects at G2 level include voltage alerts on power grids at higher latitudes, satellite orientation corrections, and auroras visible as far south as New York or northern Germany.

10CM RADIO BURST - YESTERDAY

  • A 10cm radio burst peaking at 150 sfu was recorded July 22 at 15:52 UTC, lasting approximately 1 minute; the Penticton noon flux was also 149 sfu, indicating elevated solar radio activity preceding today's storm.

📄 RESEARCH

GWTC-5.0 TESTS OF GENERAL RELATIVITY - arXiv 2607.19293

  • The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration presents seven tests of GR using all binary signals in the fifth Gravitational Wave Transient Catalog, finding no statistically significant deviations from Einstein's theory in the strong-field dynamical regime.

MOLECULAR GAS HIDDEN IN THE EARLY UNIVERSE - arXiv 2607.18974

  • Researchers using ESO VLT/X-shooter discovered an extreme molecular gas absorber at redshift 4.1 in front of quasar SDSS J080023.02+305101.22, hidden unnoticed in archival data for roughly two decades; the H2 absorption reveals a chemically rich system just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang.

JWST SPOTS POSSIBLE TYPE Ia SUPERNOVA AT z~4.3 - arXiv 2607.18972

  • JWST data on transient beacon_1420-5253_4770, initially flagged as a z~14 galaxy candidate, is reinterpreted as a Type Ia supernova at z~4.3, demonstrating how high-redshift supernova interlopers can contaminate searches for the earliest galaxies.

EUCLID PROBES STAR-FORMATION HISTORY VIA COSMIC INFRARED BACKGROUND - arXiv 2607.19290

  • A new study uses Euclid cross-correlations of photometric clustering and gravitational shear with cosmic infrared background maps to reconstruct the history of dust-enshrouded star formation across cosmic time, exploiting Euclid's combination of wide field and depth.

DESI BRIGHT GALAXY SURVEY PHYSICAL PROPERTIES - arXiv 2607.19162

  • Full spectral fitting of approximately 6.7 million galaxy spectra from DESI Data Release 1 delivers a comprehensive catalog of stellar masses, star-formation rates, and metallicities, constituting one of the largest uniform galaxy property surveys ever published.

LIFE MISSION NULLING INTERFEROMETRY PROGRESS - arXiv 2607.20154

  • A status report on broadband spatial filtering for the LIFE mid-infrared space interferometer details progress on the Asgard/NOTT visitor instrument for the VLTI, which will serve as a ground-based testbed for the exoplanet-characterizing technology LIFE will ultimately deploy in space.

BlueMUSE CONCEPTUAL DESIGN COMPLETE - arXiv 2607.20182

  • ESO's blue-optimized integral field spectrograph BlueMUSE for the VLT has completed its Phase A conceptual design, offering transmission down to 350 nm and spectral resolution R~3500, opening a new window on hot stars, reionization-era galaxies, and stellar populations.

📎 Sources

  1. Starship | Flight 13 — Launch Library 2
  2. NASA’s MAVEN Illuminates New Understanding of Auroras at Mars — NASA News Releases
  3. NASA’s Juno Takes Temperature of Jupiter’s Fiery Moon Io — NASA News Releases
  4. Space Weather Message Code: ALTK05 — NOAA SWPC Alerts
  5. Long March 3B/E | Unknown Payload — Launch Library 2
  6. Long March 7A | Unknown Payload — Launch Library 2
  7. Long March 6A | Unknown Payload — Launch Library 2
  8. Soyuz 2.1b/Fregat | Glonass-K1 No. 19 — Launch Library 2
  9. Electron | LOXSAT 1 — Launch Library 2
  10. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 17-53 — Launch Library 2

Curated from official sources — NASA/ESA/JAXA/ESO/NOAA/arXiv/Launch Library. Informational only.
Serial 20260723-22-v36 · 2026-07-23 22:01 UTC · pulse.uzylab.com

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