From Deep Space to Forest Floors: Science Tracks Carbon, Life, and Extreme Environments

Physics & Space

• SpaceX is scheduled to launch Starship Flight 13 on Thursday, July 16, from its Starbase facility in South Texas, with liftoff targeted for no earlier than 6:45 p.m. EDT (2245 GMT) [2]. This suborbital test flight will be the second use of SpaceX's new Version 3 (V3) hardware and aims to deploy 20 Starlink V3 satellites for the first time, testing the rocket’s payload deployment capabilities [2, 43, 55]. The mission will also continue testing upgraded components, including a primary goal of achieving Raptor engine reignition in space and demonstrating the Super Heavy booster's controlled splashdown [43, 55]. ^[2][43][55]
• NASA selected 41 technology proposals from 37 American companies through its 2025 Announcement of Collaboration Opportunity (ACO) to accelerate innovations for future Moon and Mars missions [10]. These partnerships, which focus on areas like propulsion components, landing technologies, and in-space servicing, allow commercial industry partners to develop key capabilities while NASA provides resources such as facilities and technical expertise [10]. For instance, Lockheed Martin will advance a modular power system designed for the Moon's permanently shadowed regions, and Moonprint Solutions is developing flexible protective covers to shield equipment from abrasive lunar dust, technologies that could benefit both future exploration and the commercial space sector [10]. ^[10]
• Using data from the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes (JWST), astronomers have successfully identified the first of an estimated 10,000 'missing' stellar-mass black holes within the Omega Centauri globular cluster [28]. A team led by Matthew Whitaker sifted through over 20 years of Hubble observations, supplemented by JWST data, to track a star orbiting a dark object called oMEGACat BH-2 [28]. This object was determined to have a mass of 4.46 times that of the sun—a measurement too massive to be a neutron star, confirming it as a black hole [28]. The discovery is significant because not only does Omega Centauri contain about 10 million stars and is suspected to be the core of a dwarf galaxy [28], but finding this specific black hole helps fill a void in gravitational-wave detections, as its mass falls between the theoretical limit for neutron stars (2.5 solar masses) and five solar masses [28]. ^[28]