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Space

🚀 Space Pulse · 2026-08-05 22:01 UTC

SPACE PULSE

Wednesday, August 6, 2026

⚡ TL;DR

New Horizons data reveals liquid nitrogen is actively rising to Pluto's surface through cracks at Sputnik Planitia's northern edge, rewriting our picture of the dwarf planet's geology. [1] A busy week ahead: Artemis III hardware is stacking, a Falcon 9 upper stage hit the Moon today, and four launches are queued before Aug 13. [2] [3]

🚀 LAUNCHES

RECENT

  • SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 successfully launched AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird 11-13 (Block 2 satellites 6-8) on Aug 5 at 07:49 UTC, delivering up to 10x the bandwidth of Block 1 for 24/7 US cellular broadband coverage. [4]

UPCOMING

  • Rocket Lab Electron "The Grain Goddess Provides" is set for Aug 6 at 09:00 UTC, carrying a synthetic aperture radar Earth-observation satellite for Japanese imaging company iQPS (iQPS Launch 7). [5]
  • SpaceX Falcon 9 will launch 24 Starlink Group 17-38 satellites on Aug 8 at 14:00 UTC. [6]
  • LandSpace Zhuque-3 Flight 2, the second test of China's ZQ-3 rocket with undisclosed payload, targets Aug 10 at 23:45 UTC. [7]
  • SpaceX Falcon 9 will launch 29 Starlink Group 10-19 satellites on Aug 10 at 14:49 UTC. [8]
  • SpaceX Falcon 9 will launch 24 Starlink Group 17-49 satellites on Aug 12 at 02:00 UTC. [9]

🔭 DISCOVERIES

  • NASA's New Horizons 2015 flyby data, re-analyzed, shows liquid nitrogen welling up through fractures at the northern edge of Sputnik Planitia on Pluto, marking the first evidence of active near-surface liquid on the dwarf planet. [1]
  • ESO's Very Large Telescope has provided the strongest evidence yet that Betelgeuse has a stellar companion, with Miguel Montargès's team capturing the clearest image to date of the candidate companion object. [10]
  • NASA's Perseverance rover captured the first-ever images of Earth occulted by Phobos, with Earth appearing as a point of light disappearing behind the crescent of Mars's larger moon.
  • A used SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage impacted the Moon today near the Einstein and Bell craters; NASA and SpaceX tracked it with ground- and space-based assets and are now collecting science data from the event. [3]
  • NASA's PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission successfully predicted the near-Earth arrival of a solar eruption to within 30 minutes in its first proof-of-concept forecasting test, presented at the COSPAR Scientific Assembly.
  • The Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Early Data Preview 2 enabled discovery of Aquarius IV (Rubin J2201-0234), an ultra-faint Milky Way satellite detected at ~8-sigma significance — the first such system found with Rubin data.
  • JWST's aperture masking interferometry mode has demonstrated high-angular-resolution imaging capability well beyond the telescope's already-sharp standard mode, opening new science on compact celestial objects.
  • ESA satellite data show European forests have been losing more biomass than previously measured since 2018, with drought and pest disturbances driving increasingly large losses from some of the continent's oldest forests.

🛰️ MISSIONS

  • Artemis III Orion crew and service modules were physically joined on July 30 inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy Space Center, with crew module set to carry astronauts Randy Bresnik, Andre Douglas, Frank Rubio, and ESA's representative for the crewed lunar mission. [2]
  • NASA reports Artemis III hardware integration is outpacing the Artemis II timeline, with SLS rocket hardware also advancing toward the planned low Earth orbit demonstration mission next year.
  • NASA engineers at JPL executed "The Big Bang" power-saving operation on Voyager 2, simultaneously switching off certain devices and substituting lower-power alternatives, successfully extending the spacecraft's capacity to conduct science.
  • NASA's ISS Expedition 75 crew installed advanced Earth imaging hardware and continued preparing for a spacewalk scheduled for Thursday to augment the station's power system.
  • Redwire's ADvanced Space Experiment Processors (ADSEPs) are automating multi-hour experiments aboard the ISS, reducing demand on astronaut time across hundreds of concurrent science payloads.
  • ESA's Hera asteroid mission is offering European researchers and companies a rare opportunity to run their software in deep space aboard the spacecraft, millions of kilometres from Earth.
  • A commemorative plaque honoring Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, NASA's first chief astronomer, was installed on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on July 28; launch is imminent.
  • NASA updated progress on Moon Base cargo lander development, with commercial partners Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, and Intuitive Machines advancing lunar surface infrastructure near the Moon's South Pole.
  • A total solar eclipse will cross Europe on Aug 12; ESA will livestream from León, Spain starting at 19:30 CEST, with the agency also hosting public events with the University of León.

☀️ SPACE WEATHER

  • Space weather activity in the data window is dated to mid-to-late July; most recent alerts show no current major storm, but the period saw elevated activity. No current watches or warnings are in effect as of today's edition.
  • In mid-July, NOAA issued a G1 Minor geomagnetic storm warning (K-index of 5) on July 12, confirmed by an alert when the threshold was reached at 14:59 UTC; the warning was subsequently cancelled at 21:01 UTC on July 12 after the period expired.
  • A Type II radio emission (estimated CME velocity 678 km/s) and Type IV radio emission were recorded on July 12, associated with the same solar activity period.
  • Elevated 2MeV electron flux exceeded 1,000 pfu continuously from July 10 through at least July 13, peaking at 4,620 pfu on July 12.
  • G4-level or higher activity is not indicated in the current data; operators of HF radio and satellite systems should note residual flux elevated above baseline from recent active periods.

📄 RESEARCH

  • PLUTO AND LIQUID NITROGEN: A new analysis (grounded in NASA source item 53 above) is the headline, but on arXiv, researchers using the SCRIPT model showed that 21-cm hydrogen fluctuations can distinguish between competing galaxy-formation models at redshifts above 10, complementing JWST's surprise finding of unexpectedly abundant bright early galaxies.
  • BETELGEUSE COMPANION CONTEXT: A separate arXiv paper revisited XMM-Newton X-ray observations of microquasar SS 433, finding implications for the origin of the ultra-high-energy (greater than 100 TeV) gamma-ray emission detected by LHAASO, strengthening the case that SS 433 embedded in the W50 nebula is a genuine Galactic PeVatron particle accelerator.
  • MARS ATMOSPHERE LOSS MECHANISM FOUND: Using simultaneous multi-spacecraft observations in Mars orbit, researchers identified Kelvin-Helmholtz instability as the driver of bulk atmospheric ion escape events — plasma clouds that carry large fluxes of Martian ions away from the planet, resolving a long-standing question about episodic atmospheric loss.
  • JWST LOCATES FAST X-RAY TRANSIENT HOST AT Z=3.2: JWST and HST observations pinpointed the host galaxy of Einstein Probe fast X-ray transient EP250207b at redshift 3.2, ruling out a previously suspected nearby galaxy and showing a collapsar (massive-star collapse) origin is fully viable.
  • RUBIN FINDS NEW MILKY WAY SATELLITE: The discovery paper for Aquarius IV, detected in Rubin Observatory Early Data Preview 2 photometry at roughly 8-sigma significance and independently confirmed, establishes Rubin's first ultra-faint dwarf galaxy find and previews the satellite census that LSST will deliver over its 10-year run.
  • POTENTIALLY HAZARDOUS ASTEROID PROFILED AHEAD OF 2028 FLYBY: A study of asteroid (153814) 2001 WN5, which will pass inside the lunar distance on June 26, 2028, constrained its rotation state, shape, visible colors, and geometric albedo in advance of the rare kilometer-scale close approach opportunity.

📎 Sources

  1. NASA’s New Horizons Finds Evidence of Recent Liquid on Pluto’s… — NASA Science
  2. Artemis III Orion Crew and Service Models Joined — NASA News Releases
  3. NASA Will Attempt to Observe Rocket Part’s Lunar Impact — NASA News Releases
  4. Falcon 9 Block 5 | BlueBird 11-13 (Block 2 #6-8) — Launch Library 2
  5. Electron | The Grain Goddess Provides (iQPS Launch 7) — Launch Library 2
  6. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 17-38 — Launch Library 2
  7. Zhuque-3 | Flight 2 — Launch Library 2
  8. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 10-19 — Launch Library 2
  9. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 17-49 — Launch Library 2
  10. Astronomers find strongest evidence yet that Betelgeuse has a … — ESO

Curated from official sources — NASA/ESA/JAXA/ESO/NOAA/arXiv/Launch Library. Informational only.
Serial 20260805-22-v49 · 2026-08-05 22:01 UTC · pulse.uzylab.com

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