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🚀 Space Pulse · 2026-08-13 22:01 UTC

SPACE PULSE

Thursday, August 13, 2026 — Evening Edition

⚡ TL;DR

Yesterday's total solar eclipse swept across Greenland, Iceland, northern Russia, the Atlantic, and Spain, with NASA and ESA both capturing stunning imagery of the Moon's shadow over the Iberian Peninsula. [1] [2] [3]

A busy 24 hours rounds out with strong arXiv paper flow (60 submissions), two Perseid-peak sky events, and four upcoming Falcon 9 launches on the board. [4] [5]

🚀 LAUNCHES

LONG MARCH 2C — UNKNOWN PAYLOAD

  • China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation has a Falcon Go-for-Launch window opening August 17 at 03:00 UTC for an undisclosed payload. [6]

FALCON 9 BLOCK 5 — STARLINK GROUP 15-20

  • SpaceX targets August 22 at 07:25 UTC (TBC) for a 27-satellite Starlink batch, part of the Group 15 shell build-out. [7]

FALCON 9 BLOCK 5 — STARLINK GROUP 10-49

  • A Go-for-Launch Falcon 9 is slated for August 25 at 11:00 UTC carrying 29 Starlink satellites. [8]

FALCON 9 BLOCK 5 — STARLINK GROUP 15-22

  • A second August 25 Starlink flight (16:44 UTC, TBC) would loft another 27 satellites the same day as Group 10-49. [9]

🔭 DISCOVERIES

2026 TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE — IBERIAN PENINSULA

  • On August 12, a total solar eclipse crossed parts of Spain (totality observed from San Millán de los Caballeros), with the path also covering Greenland, Iceland, and northern Russia. [3] [10]
  • ESA's Meteosat Third Generation Imager satellite MTG-I1 captured the Moon's dark shadow moving across Earth's surface between 20:26 and 20:34 CEST. [1]
  • NASA named the eclipse its Astronomy Picture of the Day for August 13, 2026. [2]

PERSEIDS METEOR SHOWER — PEAK ACTIVITY

  • The Perseids reached peak activity around August 12-13, with NASA imagery showing meteors framing the constellation Orion; the shower continues through end of August. [4] [5]

BETELGEUSE HAS A COMPANION — ESO CONFIRMATION

  • ESO's Very Large Telescope obtained the clearest image yet of a probable companion to Betelgeuse, providing the strongest evidence to date that the famous red supergiant is not a solitary star.

ISS IMAGES WILDFIRE SMOKE OVER CASCADE VOLCANOES

  • Astronauts aboard the International Space Station photographed Mount Hood and Mount Rainier shrouded in wildfire smoke spreading across the Pacific Northwest in summer 2026.

🛰️ MISSIONS

MIKE FINCKE DEPARTS NASA AFTER 30 YEARS

  • Veteran astronaut Mike Fincke officially left NASA on August 12 after 4 spaceflights, 549 days in space, and 9 spacewalks, all in support of the ISS program.

NASA VERTICAL MOTION SIMULATOR — AMES UPGRADES

  • NASA's Ames Research Center completed upgrades to the world's largest Vertical Motion Simulator, expanding its capabilities for spacecraft, lunar landing, and next-generation air taxi training scenarios.

NASA LUNAR DATA FOR COMMERCIAL RESOURCE PLANNING

  • Lunar Station Corp. is using NASA datasets to map water, iron, and titanium deposits on the Moon, supporting commercial in-situ resource utilization planning.

BISONNG — SOLAR OBSERVATORY MODERNIZATION

  • The Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network is upgrading legacy sites at Observatorio del Teide (Tenerife) and Mount Wilson Observatory (USA) with the new BiSON:NG automated platform for continuous helioseismology radial-velocity monitoring.

☀️ SPACE WEATHER

NOAA SPACE WEATHER — BACKGROUND NOTE

  • The most recent NOAA SWPC alerts on record in today's feed are from July 13-22, 2026, showing two K-index-4 (G1 Minor geomagnetic storm threshold) alert-and-warning cycles; no active alerts are flagged for the current date of August 13.
  • Observers at high latitudes should remain aware that Perseid peak nights coincide with seasonally elevated auroral watch periods; check SWPC for any new G-scale activity.

📄 RESEARCH

27 NEW ROTATING RADIO TRANSIENTS — MEERKAT

  • The MeerTRAP commensal program at MeerKAT discovered 27 new Galactic rotating radio transients, localizing 14 to arcsecond precision via dedicated transient-buffer imaging — a significant expansion of this poorly understood neutron star population.

FIRST GLOBULAR CLUSTER STELLAR STREAM BEYOND THE MILKY WAY

  • Researchers report evidence for the first tidal stellar stream from a globular cluster detected outside the Milky Way, offering a new method to constrain the dark matter content of ultra-diffuse galaxies through stream dynamics.

WANDERING 35,000-SOLAR-MASS BLACK HOLE

  • A new study identifies an intermediate-mass black hole of approximately 35,000 solar masses displaced from its galactic nucleus and being fueled by a gravitational wake — supporting the idea that such objects are seeds of supermassive black holes still wandering from hierarchical mergers.

LARGE-SCALE DIFFUSE GAMMA-RAY STRUCTURE IN SOUTHERN GALACTIC HEMISPHERE

  • Using 17 years of Fermi-LAT data, researchers identified and characterized a new large-scale diffuse gamma-ray structure in the Southern Galactic Hemisphere, distinct from the known Fermi Bubbles; its origin is under investigation.

MEERKAT REVEALS RADIO MEGAHALO AT GHz FREQUENCY

  • MeerKAT L-band (1.28 GHz) observations of massive galaxy cluster RXC J0528.9-3927 reveal faint diffuse emission extending beyond its known central radio halo — the first detection of a radio megahalo at GHz frequencies, previously seen only with LOFAR at lower frequencies.

SNR 0509-67.5 — DOUBLE DEGENERATE MERGER CONFIRMED

  • Deep MUSE observations of supernova remnant SNR 0509-67.5 in the Large Magellanic Cloud reveal two-component coronal iron-line emission consistent with a double degenerate (white dwarf merger) progenitor, using a supervised neural network to disentangle the ejecta velocity structure.

That's your Space Pulse for August 13, 2026. Clear skies — the Perseids are still running. Back tomorrow at 22:00 UTC.

📎 Sources

  1. MTG-I1 captures eclipse path of totality over Europe — ESA Top News
  2. APOD: 2026 August 13 – Total Solar Eclipse Over Spain — NASA News Releases
  3. 2026 Total Solar Eclipse in Spain — NASA News Releases
  4. Perseids Meteor Shower — NASA News Releases
  5. Perseids Meteor Shower — NASA Science
  6. Long March 2C | Unknown Payload — Launch Library 2
  7. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 15-20 — Launch Library 2
  8. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 10-49 — Launch Library 2
  9. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 15-22 — Launch Library 2
  10. 2026 Total Solar Eclipse in Spain — NASA Science

Curated from official sources — NASA/ESA/JAXA/ESO/NOAA/arXiv/Launch Library. Informational only.
Serial 20260813-22-v55 · 2026-08-13 22:01 UTC · pulse.uzylab.com

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