Space Stories: Earth Gives Extra Juice, Starship’s First Orbit, Starliner Returns, and the Missing Moon

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of the Juice spacecraft with Jupiter in the background. (ESA)

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—European Space Agency: “Successful Earth Flyby Improves Juice’s Course to Jupiter”

The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) skimmed the very outer edge of Earth’s atmosphere on 28 September, using the gravity of our home planet to alter its route to Jupiter using very little fuel. The flyby deflected Juice by an angle of 20° compared to its pre-flyby path and increased its velocity by 3.5 km/s. In the four weeks before the flyby, spacecraft operators only had to give Juice one tiny nudge (out of six opportunities set aside) to put it on exactly the right approach trajectory to make the most of Earth’s gravity. They have been tracking the spacecraft extra carefully since 17 August, and will continue to do so until 10 October.

—Fox Business News: “SpaceX Launches Starship Into Orbit for First Time Ever But Cuts Mission Short“

SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket blasted off from Texas Monday morning on its most ambitious test flight yet, aiming for a roughly 10-hour mission that would have sent the spacecraft around Earth six times, though the company ultimately decided to end the flight earlier than planned…The launch marks Starship’s 14th test flight and its first attempt to reach orbit, a major step beyond previous suborbital missions that ended with splashdowns about an hour after liftoff.

—CBS News: “NASA Plans Unpiloted Starliner Test Flight After Astronauts Got Stuck at Space Station in 2024“

NASA is working with Boeing to launch an unpiloted Starliner capsule in the December-to-January time frame to test upgrades and improvements ordered in the wake of a 2024 mission that suffered multiple propulsion system failures, stranding two astronauts on the space station for more than nine months. If the unpiloted test flight goes well, NASA and Boeing hope to launch a piloted Starliner flight in the mid-2028 time frame, officials said Monday, incorporating redesigned propulsion system valves, more robust subsystems and other modifications expected to prevent the sort of failures that occurred in 2024. Veteran astronaut Warren “Woody” Hoburg will command the mission.

—Sky & Telescope: “Did Venus Swallow Its Moon?“

It’s a question that has perplexed planetary astronomers for decades: Why does Venus — so similar in size to Earth and not all that far from Earth’s orbit — have no moon, while our planet has such a relatively large one? Earth’s Moon likely formed after a massive collision early in solar system history. But according to calculations, Venus should have been even more likely than Earth to have experienced such a catastrophic crash during its formative years. Yet today it has no moon at all. Now, a series of simulations published in the September 20th Astrophysical Journal, have demonstrated that Venus might once have had a moon — but the planet’s relative proximity to the Sun and its massive atmosphere both created conditions under which no moon could have survived. If there ever was a moon, it would have disintegrated and fallen back to the surface long ago.

Note: Here is the podcast version of this post.

Study Findings: Early Metal-enriched Baryon Cycling Before the Midpoint of Cosmic Reionization

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The James Webb Space Telescope’s deep field image of Galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 showing thousands of galaxies. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)

Nature Astronomy abstract of study findings:

Models predict that chemical enrichment and gas redistribution should begin rapidly once star formation starts, but direct constraints at the earliest epochs have been scarce. Here we show that metal-enriched gas in multiple ionic phases was already present around galaxies before the midpoint of cosmic reionization. Using JWST/NIRSpec rest-frame ultraviolet spectroscopy from SPURS, we detect blueshifted metal absorption in three galaxies at 7.2 < z < 9.3. The detected transitions span neutral, low-ionization and high-ionization species, including O I, Si II, C II, Si IV and C IV, with velocity offsets of ∣Δv∣ ≈ 50–250 km s−1 relative to nebular systemic redshifts. The ionic coexistence, overlapping velocity structure and equivalent-width ratios are consistent with outflowing or otherwise kinematically disturbed galaxy-associated gas, implying rapid metal enrichment. These results show that key conditions for baryon cycling were established in at least a subset of luminous galaxies within the first several hundred million years of cosmic time, well before the completion of reionization.

Citation: Zhu, Y., Ji, Z., Becker, G.D. et al. Early metal-enriched baryon cycling before the midpoint of cosmic reionization. Nat Astron (2026).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-026-02988-2

Study-related stories:

EurekAlert! – “JWST Finds Early Galaxies Were Already Seeding the Universe with Heavy Elements”

Cornell Chronicle – “Astronomers Discover Metal-rich Galaxies in Early Universe”

Astro Current – “JWST Finds Early Galaxies Seeded the Infant Universe with Heavy Elements”

Study Findings: New Lunar Crater Reveals Extensive Distal Regolith Modification

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Image (Credit): A zoomed-in view of McGetchin crater, circled on the left, next to a “before” image on the right. (NASA Goddard/Intuitive Machines/Robert Wagner)

Sciences Advances abstract of study findings:

A new ∼222-meter-diameter impact crater formed on the Moon in spring 2024. Discovered in repeat Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera images, it provides a unique opportunity to study surface modification by a pristine impact, prior to subsequent fading. Nighttime temperatures measured by the Diviner instrument reveal an ∼7-kilometer-wide cold spot that is 8 to 9 kelvin cooler than its surroundings, consistent with decompaction of the upper centimeters to decimeters of regolith. We investigate all newly formed craters >20 meters identified to date and find that all craters larger than ∼30 meters produce detectable cold spots, indicating that cold spot formation is a common consequence of fresh lunar impacts. Cold spot temperature anomaly increases with crater size, implying deeper regolith modification around larger craters. This scaling suggests that the cumulative effect of cold spot formation may modify the shallow regolith at rates comparable to impact gardening by primary craters, making them a substantial driver of regolith evolution on regolith-covered airless bodies.

Citation: T. M. Powell, B. T. Greenhagen, T. Horvath, et al. New lunar crater reveals extensive distal regolith modification. Science Advances, Vol 12, Issue 38 (2026).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aeh9568

Study-related stories:

Discover Magazine – “Newly Discovered ‘Once-in-a-Century’ Moon Crater Larger Than Two Football Field”

Phys.org – “NASA Spacecraft Discovers a Huge New Crater on the Moon”

CNN – “Lunar Orbiter Spots ‘Once-in-a-Lifetime’ New Crater on the Moon”

Study Findings: Deimos’s Shape and Geology Explained by a Subcatastrophic Impact

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Image of Mars (left), Phobos (center), and Deimos (right). (NASA)

Nature Astronomy abstract of study findings:

Small planetary bodies record the processes that shaped the Solar System, but their surfaces and interiors often evolve in unexpected ways. Deimos, the potato-shaped, 12-km-diameter outer satellite of Mars, has a strikingly smooth surface covered by fine regolith, in contrast to its heavily cratered and grooved sibling, 22-km-diameter Phobos. Moreover, Deimos’s topography is dominated by a single large south-polar depression, whose formation we simulate to constrain the moon’s interior and surface geomechanical properties and to explain the origin and distribution of its regolith. Here we find that an oblique impact by a 320-m-diameter projectile can quantitatively account for this depression, the global regolith layer and surface features such as bright streaks and crater infill. Our results show that Deimos’s upper layers are extremely weak and that its interior is highly porous and dissipative, resembling the recently visited rubble-pile asteroids rather than lunar regolith. This suggests that small dark moons and asteroids, despite their specific histories, may converge on similar physical states.

Citation: Raducan, S.D., Agrusa, H.F., Asphaug, E. et al. Deimos’s shape and geology explained by a subcatastrophic impact. Nat Astron (2026).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-026-02956-w

Study-related stories:

Science Daily – “One Asteroid Strike May Explain Two Mysteries of Mars’ Moon Deimos”

Phys.org – “A Single Asteroid Impact May Explain the Appearance of Mars’ Moon Deimos”

Universe Today– “Mars’s Funky Moon Deimos was Shaped by an Impact”

Space Stories: Dragon Delays, Odd Black Holes, and Surprising Martian Warmth

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): SpaceX Dragon capsule. (SpaceX)

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—Space.com: “SpaceX, NASA Delay Next Astronaut Launch to ISS Due To Leak on Dragon Spacecraft”

SpaceX’s next astronaut mission to the International Space Station won’t launch on Sept. 12 after all. That flight, known as Crew-13, has been delayed due to an oxidizer leak in the propulsion system of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, NASA announced on Saturday (Aug. 29). Joint NASA and SpaceX teams are performing additional tests and data review and will complete any necessary rework prior to launch,” NASA officials wrote in an update on Saturday. “A new target date will be announced once available.”

—Earth.com: “Giant Black Holes Appeared Too soon After the Big Bang, and Astronomers May Know Why“

Nearly every large galaxy keeps a giant black hole at its center. Some of those giants already weighed a billion Suns when the universe was less than 700 million years old. Astronomers have struggled for decades to explain how anything grew that heavy that fast. A new study built on James Webb Space Telescope observations suggests one possible answer. The researchers describe a young black hole wrapped in gas so dense that the whole object shines like a single enormous star. Astronomers call objects like it black hole stars. The light from this one has been traveling for 13 billion years, since a moment just 660 million years after the Big Bang, and no earlier example has been found.

—Caltech: “Thermal Anomaly Discovered Below Mars’s South Pole“

Based on gravitational measurements that give clues to the Red Planet’s interior structure, Mars’s interior southern hemisphere is around 200 to 400 degrees Celsius warmer than the northern half of the planet and partially molten. The surprising finding adds additional context to Martian history and the periods of time in which it may have hosted conditions favorable for life. The research was led by Caltech alumnus Alexander Berne (PhD ’26), who is now a postdoctoral associate at the University of Arizona. The findings are reported in a paper appearing in the journal Nature on August 27.

Note: Here is the podcast version of this post.