🚀 Space Pulse · 2026-07-24 22:01 UTC

SPACE PULSE

Friday, 25 July 2026 — Edition 148

⚡ TL;DR

Starship Flight 13 is set to launch tonight carrying 20 V3 Starlink satellites in its first-ever payload delivery, while a G2-class geomagnetic storm swept Earth yesterday and lingered into this morning.

It is a busy 24 hours: ISS prepares a commander swap and crew return, NASA unveils CAPSTONE 02, and the arXiv drops fresh takes on the Hubble tension and cosmic-ray mysteries.

🚀 LAUNCHES

STARSHIP FLIGHT 13 — TONIGHT

• SpaceX Starship Flight 13 (second flight of V3 configuration) is go for launch tonight at 22:45 UTC from Boca Chica; for the first time the vehicle will carry a live payload: 20 V3 Starlink satellites that will attempt to deploy solar arrays, extend antennas, and contact ground stations in South Africa. ^[1]

UPCOMING THIS WEEK

• SpaceX Falcon 9 will loft Starlink Group 17-52 (24 satellites) on 29 July at 02:00 UTC, continuing the mega-constellation build-out. ^[2]
• China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation is targeting 30 July 01:00 UTC for a Long March 6A mission carrying an undisclosed payload. ^[3]
• SpaceX Falcon 9 follows with Starlink Group 17-53 (24 satellites) on 1 August at 14:00 UTC. ^[4]

EARLY AUGUST

• Isar Aerospace's Spectrum vehicle will make its second test flight ("Onward and Upward") no earlier than 6 August, carrying five ESA Boost! cubesats including CyBEEsat (TU Berlin) and TriSat-S (University of Maribor). ^[5]
• Mitsubishi Heavy Industries targets 6 August 19:30 UTC for H3-22 carrying Michibiki No. 7 (QZS-7), the latest navigation satellite for Japan's Quasi-Zenith Satellite System. ^{[6] [7]}

🔭 DISCOVERIES

MAVEN CRACKS MARTIAN AURORA MYSTERY

• NASA's MAVEN spacecraft has shown that certain Martian auroras form via the same mechanism as Earth's auroras, a finding published this week in Nature Communications. ^{[8] [9]}

HUBBLE'S ONE-SIDED SPIRAL

• The Hubble Space Telescope has released a striking image of NGC 4654, a spiral galaxy 72 million light-years away in Virgo whose asymmetric structure hints at ram-pressure stripping or gravitational interaction. ^[10]

ESCAPADE EARTH-MOON PORTRAIT

• On 3 July, one of NASA's two ESCAPADE Mars-bound spacecraft captured visible and thermal infrared images of Earth and the Moon from 363,250 miles (584,600 km) out, the first family portrait from the mission.

TWO NEW GALILEO SATELLITES IN SERVICE

• ESA confirmed two additional Galileo First Generation satellites have formally entered service, strengthening the European navigation constellation's resilience; four more remain to be launched, with the next pair slated for end of year.

🛰️ MISSIONS

ISS EXPEDITION 74/75 TRANSITION

• Expedition 74 flight engineers Anna Kikina and Pyotr Dubrov (Roscosmos) and Anil Menon (NASA) arrived at ISS on 14 July; the station swaps commanders Saturday before those three depart Sunday aboard Soyuz MS-28.
• Expedition 75 formally begins 26 July 2026 and runs through spring 2027; the crew will welcome SpaceX Crew-13 in late summer and conduct bioprinting, augmented-reality health checks, and in-space manufacturing research.
• NASA astronaut Chris Williams is closing out eight months on ISS, during which he contributed to cancer-treatment research and materials science for electronics.

ARTEMIS IV HARDWARE MILESTONE

• At NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, teams moved the 130-foot Artemis IV liquid hydrogen tank from its production cell to a dedicated test building on 15 May 2026, a key fabrication step for the SLS core stage.

CAPSTONE 02 ANNOUNCED

• NASA has contracted Advanced Space for CAPSTONE 02, a cislunar technology demonstration that will test rendezvous and proximity operations in the near-rectilinear halo orbit, advancing infrastructure for Artemis and Moon Base concepts.

NEW GLENN ENGINE TESTING AT STENNIS

• NASA and Blue Origin signed an annex to a reimbursable Space Act Agreement to conduct New Glenn second-stage hot fire testing on the B-2 stand at Stennis Space Center, supporting Artemis mission readiness.

CURIOSITY SOL 4954-4960

• Mars rover Curiosity's APXS team filed sols 4954-4960 planning notes dated 27 July 2026, continuing surface chemistry measurements and celebrating rover engineers.

ESA FLEX AND SENTINEL-3C LAUNCH CAMPAIGN

• ESA's FLEX (fluorescence Earth explorer) and Copernicus Sentinel-3C satellites have arrived at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana ahead of a September liftoff; pre-launch campaigns are underway.

☀️ SPACE WEATHER

G2 STORM HITS — STILL ACTIVE

• NOAA SWPC issued a G2 (Moderate) geomagnetic storm warning at 16:40 UTC on 23 July as the K-index reached 6; high-latitude power grids, HF radio, and satellite drag were at elevated risk.
• A G1 (Minor) K-index 5 alert fired at 16:21 UTC on 23 July and was extended through 06:00 UTC on 24 July, with activity persisting via a follow-on K-index 5 alert at 20:15 UTC.
• A further K-index 4 extended warning remained valid until 15:00 UTC today (24 July), indicating the disturbance has been long-duration.

ENERGETIC ELECTRON CONTEXT

• On 17 July GOES-18 recorded a 2 MeV electron integral flux of 1,382 pfu (threshold 1,000 pfu), flagged as an ALTEF3 alert, consistent with elevated solar wind driving conditions that preceded this week's storm.

📄 RESEARCH

HUBBLE TENSION — NEW ANGLES

• A pair of arXiv papers this week dissect the Hubble tension from different directions: one argues BAO data create a "shape wall" that blocks late-time solutions just as effectively as the well-known normalization constraint, while a companion short review surveys the full landscape of theoretical fixes to the H0 discrepancy.
• A third paper tests whether living inside a local cosmic void can shift low-redshift H0 measurements upward in w0waCDM cosmologies, finding modest but non-negligible void-induced Hubble shifts.

LARGE MAGELLANIC CLOUD GAMMA-RAY DEFICIT SOLVED

• A new arXiv study shows that cosmic rays are being advectively swept from the LMC into the Milky Way's circumgalactic medium, explaining why models consistently overpredict the LMC's gamma-ray luminosity; the paper dubs this process "spirited away."

CME 3D EXPANSION MAPPED IN DETAIL

• Researchers used stereoscopic observations to track fast and slow coronal mass ejections in true 3D, finding significant asymmetries in radial versus lateral expansion that affect Earth-impact probability estimates — directly relevant to forecasting storms like this week's.

TITAN'S BENZENE CLOUD PHYSICS PINNED DOWN

• Laboratory measurements of benzene ice nucleation on Titan tholins have been fed into microphysical models of Titan's south polar benzene cloud first detected by Cassini CIRS after the 2009 northern spring equinox, improving altitude and mixing-ratio predictions.

FAST INFERENCE FOR TRANSIENT ASTRONOMY

• A trans-dimensional flow-matching framework can now perform rapid Bayesian pulse decomposition on gamma-ray bursts, magnetar bursts, fast radio bursts, and solar flares, slashing the compute time needed to extract timing and amplitude parameters from space-telescope light curves.

SPACE PULSE is compiled from NASA, ESA, JAXA, NOAA SWPC, ESO, NRAO, Launch Library 2, and arXiv astro-ph. Next edition: 25 July 2026.

📎 Sources

1. Starship | Flight 13 — Launch Library 2
2. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 17-52 — Launch Library 2
3. Long March 6A | Unknown Payload — Launch Library 2
4. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 17-53 — Launch Library 2
5. Spectrum | Onward and Upward — Launch Library 2
6. H3-22 | Michibiki 7 (QZS-7) — Launch Library 2
7. [release] Launch Schedule of MICHIBIKI No. 7, Quasi-Zenith Sat… — JAXA Press
8. NASA’s MAVEN Illuminates New Understanding of Auroras at Mars — NASA News Releases
9. NASA’s MAVEN Illuminates New Understanding of Auroras at Mars — NASA Science
10. Hubble Spies One-Sided Spiral — NASA News Releases

Curated from official sources — NASA/ESA/JAXA/ESO/NOAA/arXiv/Launch Library. Informational only.
Serial 20260724-22-v37 · 2026-07-24 22:01 UTC · pulse.uzylab.com