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Space

🚀 Space Pulse · 2026-07-28 22:01 UTC

SPACE PULSE

Tuesday, July 29, 2026 — Morning Edition

⚡ TL;DR

ESO's Very Large Telescope has delivered the strongest evidence yet that Betelgeuse harbors a companion star, reshaping how we understand one of the sky's most iconic red supergiants. [1] A busy week ahead: a classified NRO payload launches Thursday, Roman gets fueled for August, and Swift faces a servicing snag — the cadence is high and the headlines are bigger than usual.

🚀 LAUNCHES

UPCOMING - NROL-95 (CLASSIFIED NRO PAYLOAD)

  • SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 is go for launch carrying a classified National Reconnaissance Office payload, targeted for July 30 at 07:09 UTC. [2]

UPCOMING - MIR DEMO FLIGHT (SOUTH KOREA)

  • South Korea's Agency for Defense Development targets July 31 for the first full orbital launch of the Mir small-satellite vehicle, following two sub-orbital stage tests in 2022 and one earlier orbital test flight. [3]

UPCOMING - AST SPACEMOBILE BLUEBIRD BLOCK 2

  • SpaceX Falcon 9 will loft three BlueBird Block 2 satellites for AST SpaceMobile on August 5 at 07:42 UTC; the Block 2 design delivers up to 10x the bandwidth of Block 1 to support 24/7 US broadband coverage. [4]

UPCOMING - STARLINK GROUP 17-38

  • SpaceX Falcon 9 will deploy 24 Starlink satellites on August 7 at 14:00 UTC as part of the ongoing mega-constellation build-out. [5]

UPCOMING - STARLINK GROUP 10-19 AND 17-49

  • Two further Falcon 9 Starlink missions are scheduled August 10 (29 satellites) and August 11 (24 satellites), maintaining SpaceX's heavy launch cadence through mid-month. [6] [7]

🔭 DISCOVERIES

BETELGEUSE HAS A COMPANION — STRONGEST EVIDENCE YET

  • ESO's Very Large Telescope, led by researcher Miguel Montargès, has produced the clearest image to date of what is likely a companion star to Betelgeuse, the famous red supergiant in Orion. [1]
  • The find transforms Betelgeuse from an isolated star into what may be a binary system, with implications for models of its famous dimming episodes and eventual supernova fate. [1]

WANDERING BLACK HOLE SHREDS A STAR FAR FROM ANY GALAXY CORE

  • NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory caught a rare tidal disruption event caused by an "orphan" supermassive black hole devouring a star in the extreme outskirts of a distant galaxy — the first such event ever seen so far from a galaxy's nucleus. [8] [9]

HUBBLE FINDS ANDROMEDA'S STAR FORMATION IN LONG DECLINE

  • NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals that star formation in the Andromeda galaxy has been winding down continuously for roughly 500 million years, offering a benchmark for understanding how large spiral galaxies age. [10]

JWST IMAGES LARGEST KNOWN M-DWARF DEBRIS DISK

  • JWST NIRCam observations of the TW Hydra association reveal that TWA 10 hosts what is now the largest known debris disk around an M-dwarf star, detected in both the F200W and F444W filters; the TWA 25 disk was also re-imaged.

SENTINEL-1 REVEALS LARGER-THAN-EXPECTED GROUND SHIFT FROM VENEZUELA QUAKES

  • More than a month after the catastrophic twin earthquakes in northern Venezuela on June 24, 2026, ESA Sentinel-1 radar data show ground displacement was greater than initial estimates suggested.

🛰️ MISSIONS

ROMAN SPACE TELESCOPE FUELED FOR LATE AUGUST LAUNCH

  • Technicians at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility loaded 290 gallons of hydrazine propellant into the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on July 25, a key pre-launch milestone ahead of a late August liftoff.

SWIFT SERVICING SPACECRAFT HITS ATTITUDE CONTROL SNAG

  • Katalyst Space Technologies' LINK servicing spacecraft, designed to boost NASA's Swift Observatory, experienced attitude control issues over the weekend during commissioning; NASA is monitoring the situation.

ARTEMIS II CREW VISITS ESTEC POST-FLIGHT

  • The four Artemis II astronauts visited ESA's ESTEC technical center in the Netherlands on July 13 for the first stop in a series of post-mission visits to European teams, including a session at the Eagle mission control room.

ISS ASTRONAUT CHRIS WILLIAMS RETURNS HOME

  • NASA astronaut Chris Williams landed in Kazakhstan on July 26 alongside Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, completing an eight-month stay aboard the ISS as part of Expedition 74; it was Williams' first spaceflight.

THREE ISS SPACEWALKS PLANNED FOR AUGUST

  • NASA will conduct three US spacewalks in August to upgrade solar arrays, replace a communications antenna, and connect power and data cables on the International Space Station; a preview news conference is scheduled.

AUGUST 12 TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE — NASA SCIENCE CAMPAIGN

  • NASA is preparing science observations for the August 12 total solar eclipse, which will provide a brief window to study the Sun's corona and its influence on Earth during totality.

ARIANE 6 TAKES FLIGHT — ESA IMAGE RELEASE

  • ESA released imagery of a new Ariane 6 vertical liftoff dated July 28, documenting the rocket's continued operational flights.

HWO PRECURSOR SCIENCE PROGRAM OPENS

  • NASA released ROSES-2025 Amendment 68 on July 28, opening the new D.8 Habitable Worlds Observatory Precursor Science Investigations opportunity, funding work toward the future large UV/visible/NIR flagship recommended by the Astro2020 decadal survey.

☀️ SPACE WEATHER

CURRENT CONDITIONS — QUIET

  • No active geomagnetic alerts are in effect as of July 28-29; the most recent K-index warnings expired July 22, and conditions are currently sub-storm level.

RECENT ACTIVITY SUMMARY (PAST 4 WEEKS)

  • July 21-22: NOAA issued K-index 4 warnings (Active level, below G1) that were extended through July 22 at 06:00 UTC due to persistent conditions.
  • July 13-14: A K-index 4 geomagnetic onset warning was issued July 13 at 23:49 UTC and confirmed by threshold alert shortly after midnight July 14.
  • July 12: A K-index 5 warning (G1 Minor storm) was issued and later cancelled; a G1 Minor storm was briefly confirmed July 12 at 14:59 UTC before the warning was rescinded as expired.
  • July 10-13: High-energy electron flux (2 MeV) exceeded 1,000 pfu continuously from July 10, peaking at 4,620 pfu on July 12 — a sign of elevated radiation belt activity.
  • July 3: An M6.7 solar flare peaking at 18:11 UTC at location N17W66 produced an R2 Moderate radio blackout; an associated Type II radio emission indicated a CME shock velocity of approximately 1,831 km/s.
  • July 3: A G2 Moderate geomagnetic storm watch was issued for July 3-4 following a sudden impulse detected at 11:20 UTC; peak conditions reached G2.
  • July 1: An M8.5 X-ray flare at S07W25 peaked at 23:09 UTC producing an R2 Moderate radio blackout, preceding the early-July active period.

📄 RESEARCH

HUBBLE CONSTANT REFINED WITH CORRECTED SUPERNOVA DATA

  • A new arXiv study applies the DES-DOVEKIE supernova dataset for the first time to a distance-ladder Hubble constant measurement, combining it with corrected Pantheon+ data to reach 1.1% precision on H0; the work responds to recent concerns about systematic errors in Type Ia supernova samples.

COSMIC RAYS MAY CHOKE OFF GAS SUPPLY TO MASSIVE GALAXIES

  • Researchers show that cosmic rays from cosmic-web filaments can heat cold gas streams feeding massive galaxies during cosmic noon, potentially throttling the gas inflow that drives galaxy growth — a process newly motivated by observational detections of CRs in cosmic filaments.

NEUTRON STAR SPIN INSTABILITY COULD POWER PECULIAR LONG GAMMA-RAY BURSTS

  • A new unified model for long GRBs like 211211A and 230307A proposes they originate in neutron star-white dwarf mergers that form a magnetar; giant flares from that magnetar drive r-process nucleosynthesis and produce the observed kilonova signal alongside the long-duration prompt emission and X-ray plateau.

CALVERA NEUTRON STAR TRACKED FROM BIRTH TO POSSIBLE PULSAR DESCENDANTS

  • Calvera (1RXS J141256.0+792204), newly confirmed as a central compact object associated with supernova remnant candidate G118.4+37.0, is modeled through its long-term evolution; results suggest what class of isolated pulsars such CCOs eventually become.

AUGER OBSERVATORY PROBES PARTICLE PHYSICS AT 100 TeV — AND DEEPENS MUON MYSTERY

  • Pierre Auger Observatory hybrid measurements show that current hadronic interaction models underestimate the average shower maximum depth at a center-of-mass energy of approximately 97.7 TeV, while also connecting this discrepancy to the long-standing Muon Puzzle in ultra-high-energy cosmic ray physics.

ROMAN-ERA ROGUE PLANET SCIENCE TAKES SHAPE

  • NASA Science published a feature on rogue planets — free-floating worlds that outnumber stars in the Milky Way — as the Roman Space Telescope's microlensing survey, now weeks from launch, is expected to dramatically expand the known rogue planet census.

Space Pulse is compiled from NASA, ESA, JAXA official releases, ESO, NOAA SWPC, Launch Library 2, and arXiv astro-ph preprints. All times UTC.

📎 Sources

  1. Astronomers find strongest evidence yet that Betelgeuse has a … — ESO
  2. Falcon 9 Block 5 | NROL-95 — Launch Library 2
  3. Mir | Demo Flight — Launch Library 2
  4. Falcon 9 Block 5 | BlueBird Block 2 #6-8 — Launch Library 2
  5. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 17-38 — Launch Library 2
  6. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 10-19 — Launch Library 2
  7. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 17-49 — Launch Library 2
  8. NASA’s Swift Sees ‘Wandering’ Mega Black Hole Shredding Star — NASA News Releases
  9. NASA’s Swift Sees ‘Wandering’ Mega Black Hole Shredding Star — NASA Science
  10. NASA’s Hubble Shows Star Formation in Andromeda Galaxy Winding… — NASA News Releases

Curated from official sources — NASA/ESA/JAXA/ESO/NOAA/arXiv/Launch Library. Informational only.
Serial 20260728-22-v41 · 2026-07-28 22:01 UTC · pulse.uzylab.com

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