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Space

🚀 Space Pulse · 2026-09-01 22:01 UTC

SPACE PULSE

Tuesday, September 2, 2026

⚡ TL;DR

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, launched August 30 aboard a Falcon Heavy, is rapidly checking out: its antenna and sunshade deployed today and the Coronagraph Instrument has powered on for the first time. A busy 24 hours also brought an ESA Cluster satellite reentry, a fresh ISS spacewalk, and a pipeline of upcoming launches and papers.

🚀 LAUNCHES

UPCOMING THIS WEEK

  • Falcon 9 Block 5 carrying Starlink Group 15-23 (27 satellites) is GO for launch by SpaceX on September 2 at 07:46 UTC. [1]
  • Soyuz 2.1b will lift off September 9 at 16:15 UTC carrying Progress MS-35 (96P), a Roscosmos cargo resupply flight to the ISS. [2]
  • Falcon 9 Block 5 carrying the classified USSF "R-2" mission, likely a batch of Starshield-bus satellites for a US government entity, is TO BE CONFIRMED for September 10 at 15:37 UTC. [3]
  • Falcon 9 Block 5 will carry Starlink Group 15-24 (27 satellites) GO for launch September 6 at 10:59 UTC. [4]

ON THE HORIZON

  • SpaceX Crew-13, the thirteenth operational Crew Dragon flight to the ISS under NASA's Commercial Crew Program, is currently targeted for no earlier than September 30, 2026. [5]

🔭 DISCOVERIES

ROMAN TELESCOPE MILESTONES IN RAPID SUCCESSION

  • NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope successfully deployed its 5.6-foot-wide, 24-pound high-gain antenna on September 1, enabling the highest data downlink volume of any NASA astrophysics mission to date. [6]
  • Roman's Coronagraph Instrument, designed to block starlight and directly image planets and dusty disks around nearby stars, powered on September 1 and now begins monthslong calibration. [7]
  • Roman completed its first mid-course correction burn on August 31 at 12:02 p.m. EDT, a roughly 3-minute maneuver setting its trajectory toward the L2 Lagrange point; a second burn is available later this week if needed. [8]

CLUSTER SATELLITE SAMBA REENTERS

  • ESA's Samba, third of the four Cluster satellites, reentered Earth's atmosphere on August 31 at 21:39:38 UTC in a precision targeted reentry over the South Pacific Ocean, with aircraft flying from Tonga to observe the fireball. [9]

INTERSTELLAR COMET 3I/ATLAS

  • ESO's VLT obtained the first chemical fingerprint measurements ever taken of a comet formed outside our solar system, finding 3I/ATLAS is the brightest interstellar object ever seen and its composition predates our Sun. [10]

HAYABUSA2 AT ASTEROID TORIFUNE

  • JAXA's Hayabusa2 spacecraft successfully conducted a flyby of asteroid Torifune in July 2026 and captured close-up images of the target body.

ISS SPACEWALK EVA-99

  • NASA astronaut Jessica Meir and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot began spacewalk EVA-99 at 8:40 a.m. EDT on September 1, replacing a retroreflector, installing jumper cables, preparing the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer for future maintenance, and replacing a high-definition camera.
  • EVA-99 is Adenot's third spacewalk, following EVA-97 on August 18 and EVA-98 on August 25.

PETERMANN GLACIER ICEBERG

  • A substantial iceberg calved from Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland in summer 2026, rapidly drifted into Nares Strait, and survived a collision with Joe Island, tracked by NASA satellite imagery.

TURKEY JOINS ARTEMIS ACCORDS

  • The Republic of Turkiye signed the Artemis Accords on August 31 during a ceremony hosted by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman at NASA headquarters in Washington, expanding the international coalition for peaceful lunar exploration.

🛰️ MISSIONS

ARTEMIS III HARDWARE MILESTONE

  • On August 24, technicians at NASA's Kennedy Space Center began installing four RS-25 engines into the core stage of the SLS rocket designated for Artemis III, the crewed lunar landing mission currently planned for 2027.

BEPICOLOMBO MERCURY APPROACH

  • ESA and JAXA held a press briefing on August 31 focused on the forthcoming separation of the Mercury Transfer Module as BepiColombo progresses toward Mercury orbit insertion.

EARTHCARE DATA OPERATIONAL

  • JAXA's EarthCARE satellite (Hakuryu) data entered operational use at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), marking a milestone in cloud and aerosol science data delivery.

MICHIBIKI QZS-7 RESCHEDULED

  • JAXA rescheduled the launch of Michibiki No. 7 (QZS-7) aboard H3 flight No. 9, with the updated date announced August 7, 2026; the satellite will augment Japan's Quasi-Zenith navigation system.

CLPS IM-4 LUNAR DELIVERY UPCOMING

  • NASA's CLPS program lists Intuitive Machines IM-4 as an upcoming lunar surface delivery mission under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.

☀️ SPACE WEATHER

ELEVATED ENERGETIC ELECTRON ENVIRONMENT

  • NOAA SWPC issued a continued alert on September 1 at 07:37 UTC: 2 MeV integral electron flux has been exceeding 1,000 pfu continuously since August 31 at 11:46 UTC, with a maximum of 1,030 pfu recorded at 07:30 UTC on September 1 (serial 3732).
  • This is the latest continuation of an elevated electron environment that has persisted since August 21, with the prior alert on August 25 also logging a daily maximum of 1,030 pfu.

RECENT SOLAR FLARE ACTIVITY

  • Region 4513 produced an M6.9 X-ray flare on August 25 (peak 10:02 UTC, R2 Moderate radio blackout), accompanied by a Type II radio burst at an estimated shock velocity of 603 km/s and a 160 sfu 10-cm radio burst lasting 10 minutes.
  • A separate Type II burst was detected on August 17 at an estimated velocity of 825 km/s, linked to activity earlier that day.

PRIOR GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCHES (NOW PAST)

  • A G2 Moderate geomagnetic storm was predicted by NOAA for August 28, with a G1 Minor storm possible August 27; a K-index of 4 was confirmed on August 17.

📄 RESEARCH

GRAVITATIONALLY LENSED SUPERLUMINOUS SUPERNOVA SN 2025wny - FIVE PAPERS

  • A five-paper series reports space-based follow-up of SN 2025wny, a hydrogen-poor superluminous supernova at z=2.015 split into five resolved images by two foreground galaxies at z=0.376; it is the first strongly lensed SLSN ever discovered.
  • Papers III through V extract gravitational time delays between images using spectroscopy and photometry, offering an independent measurement of the Hubble constant uncorrelated with the cosmic distance ladder.

BEKENSTEIN-HOD BOUND CONFIRMED WITH GRAVITATIONAL WAVES

  • A new arXiv paper reports a 3.3-sigma observational confirmation of the Bekenstein-Hod bound, a fundamental limit linking black hole thermodynamics and relaxation timescales, using the gravitational wave event GW250114.

CMB LENSING FROM SPT-3G D1 DATASET

  • The SPT-3G collaboration presents a CMB lensing potential map reconstructed from 2019-2020 observations covering 1,500 square degrees (the D1 field), delivering new cosmological constraints from gravitational lensing of the microwave background.

COSMIC DIPOLE TENSION TESTED WITH DESI DR1

  • Using the first DESI data release catalogs, researchers measure the solar system's peculiar velocity via large-scale structure number-count dipoles and compare it against the CMB dipole, directly targeting the so-called cosmic dipole tension challenge to the Cosmological Principle.

ROMAN CORONAGRAPH AND HABITABLE WORLDS OBSERVATORY PLANNING

  • A paper on JWST in-flight telemetry quantifies the technology gap between JWST and the proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory needed to reach 10^-10 raw contrast for imaging Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars.
  • A companion tool, pyEDITH, is introduced as a Python-based coronagraphic exposure time calculator tailored for the Habitable Worlds Observatory mission concept.

SLYSH HALOS: A COLD TECHNOSIGNATURE PROPOSAL

  • Researchers propose that computation-dominated civilizations may radiate waste heat at temperatures far below 100 K rather than in the mid-infrared, producing a submillimetre technosignature they call a Slysh halo, missed by all current Dyson sphere searches.

📎 Sources

  1. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 15-23 — Launch Library 2
  2. Soyuz 2.1b | Progress MS-35 (96P) — Launch Library 2
  3. Falcon 9 Block 5 | USSF-xxx ("R-2") — Launch Library 2
  4. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 15-24 — Launch Library 2
  5. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Crew-13 — Launch Library 2
  6. NASA Roman Space Telescope’s Antenna, ‘Visor’ Deployed — NASA Science
  7. NASA Roman’s Planet Imager Has Powered On — NASA Science
  8. NASA’s Roman Completes First Mid-Course Correction Burn — NASA Science
  9. Samba’s fiery farewell recorded — ESA Top News
  10. Older than the Sun: Astronomers find new clues to the origin o… — ESO

Curated from official sources — NASA/ESA/JAXA/ESO/NOAA/arXiv/Launch Library. Informational only.
Serial 20260901-22-v69 · 2026-09-01 22:01 UTC · pulse.uzylab.com

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