Latest / Space News Today / Starship V3 Flight 12: A Giant Leap for SpaceX | Neptune’s Moon Mystery Unveiled

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Starship V3 Flight 12: A Giant Leap for SpaceX | Neptune’s Moon Mystery Unveiled · Space News Today

0:00
The world's biggest rocket is sitting on
0:02
a launchpad in South Texas right now.
0:05
And tonight, for the first time ever,
0:07
it's going to fly.
0:09
>> Starship version 3, Flight 12. And it is
0:12
absolutely the biggest story in space
0:14
flight today.
0:15
>> We've also got a deep solar system
0:18
mystery wrapped up by the James Webb
0:20
Space Telescope and some genuinely
0:22
unsettling news about what the galaxy
0:25
may be full of.
0:26
>> Spoiler, not very many Earths. I'm Anna.
0:30
>> And I'm Avery. This is Astronomy Daily.
0:32
Today's space news from the universe to
0:34
you.
0:35
>> We've been tracking the Starship V3
0:37
story for a couple of days now. The
0:39
delays, the wet trust rehearsal, the
0:42
OSHA investigation, and today is finally
0:45
the day. The launch window opens at 5:30
0:48
this afternoon, Texas time, and SpaceX
0:50
is going for it. This is flight 12 in
0:53
the Starship program overall, but it's
0:56
the first flight of the V3 design, which
0:58
is by some measures an almost entirely
1:01
new rocket. Elon Musk himself said that
1:04
nearly every part has been redesigned
1:06
compared to V2. The rocket now stands
1:10
124.4 m tall. That's just over 400 ft,
1:14
making it officially the tallest rocket
1:16
humanity has ever built.
1:18
>> And it's not just bigger for the sake of
1:20
it. The big structural change on this
1:23
version is that Starship V3 is designed
1:25
for inorbit refueling for the first
1:27
time. That's the capability that unlocks
1:30
deep space missions to the moon and
1:32
eventually Mars.
1:34
>> NASA is counting on exactly that.
1:36
Starship has been selected as the human
1:39
landing system for the Aremis program.
1:41
The current plan is for a docking test
1:43
in low Earth orbit as early as 2027 with
1:47
a moon surface landing targeted for the
1:49
Aremis 4 mission in 2028. But there's a
1:53
mountain to climb before any of that.
1:55
SpaceX still hasn't sent Starship into
1:57
full orbit. The program has seen
1:59
explosions, delays, and last week a
2:02
contractor working at Starbase in Texas
2:05
died in a fall. The US Occupational
2:07
Safety and Health Administration has
2:09
opened an investigation.
2:11
>> Today's flight profile is suborbital,
2:13
similar to recent missions. The plan is
2:16
to deploy 20 Starlink simulator
2:18
satellites, attempt a single Raptor
2:20
engine relight in space, and test the
2:23
heat shield by deliberately removing one
2:25
tile to measure aerodynamic load on
2:28
neighboring tiles during re-entry.
2:30
>> That tile experiment is actually quite
2:32
clever. You need to understand the
2:34
failure modes before you can fix them.
2:36
>> Weather is sitting around 55% favorable
2:39
right now. Not ideal, but workable. And
2:42
there is a lot writing on this beyond
2:44
engineering pride. SpaceX's planned IPO,
2:47
which could value the company at up to
2:49
$1.75 trillion, would be the largest
2:53
public offering in history. Today's test
2:56
flight is very much in the shop window.
2:59
>> No pressure then.
3:00
>> None whatsoever. We'll have the result
3:02
in tomorrow's episode. Whatever happens
3:04
tonight, it's a pivotal moment for the
3:06
program and for the future of human
3:08
space flight.
3:09
>> Next up today, billions of years ago,
3:12
Neptune had a tidy family of moons.
3:15
Then, a rogue intruder arrived and tore
3:17
everything apart. New research published
3:19
in the journal Science Advances suggests
3:22
that one moon survived the chaos, and
3:24
we've known about it since 1949.
3:27
That moon is Nared, Neptune's third
3:30
largest satellite and one of the
3:32
strangest orbits in the solar system. It
3:34
swings as close as 1.4 million km to
3:38
Neptune and as far away as 9.6 million.
3:42
For comparison, our moon is a pretty
3:44
consistent 384,000
3:47
km from Earth.
3:48
>> For decades, astronomers have known that
3:50
Nared's extreme elliptical orbit was
3:53
unusual, but they couldn't agree on why.
3:56
The leading theory was that it was a
3:57
captured object, something that drifted
3:59
in from the outer solar system and got
4:01
gravitationally trapped. But this new
4:04
study led by Matthew Belellikoff at the
4:06
California Institute of Technology
4:08
strongly rules that out. The team used
4:11
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to
4:14
study Nari in detail and what they found
4:16
changes the story significantly. Their
4:19
observations are consistent with Narid
4:22
being an original moon of Neptune, one
4:24
that formed right alongside the planet,
4:27
but was thrown into its wild orbit when
4:29
Neptune captured its largest moon,
4:32
Triton.
4:33
>> And Trion's story is quite the tale
4:35
itself. Tryion is thought to have
4:37
originated in the Kyper belt, the frigid
4:39
region beyond Neptune, where objects
4:41
like Pluto live. At some point, Triton
4:44
was captured by Neptune's gravity, and
4:46
the gravitational chaos of that event
4:48
scattered Neptune's original moons onto
4:51
collision courses with each other. Both
4:53
were destroyed.
4:54
>> Neptune's innermost moons are thought to
4:56
be the shattered remnants of those
4:58
originals. Rubble that coalesed after
5:01
Triton's arrival. Married, according to
5:04
this new research, escaped that fate by
5:06
being thrown into its current extreme
5:09
orbit. far enough out to survive, but
5:12
close enough to still be bound to
5:14
Neptune.
5:15
>> As Belellikov puts it, it takes a long
5:18
time to do science. This mystery began
5:20
with Merid's discovery in 1949, and we
5:23
may finally have some answers in 2026,
5:26
thanks to Web. The researchers note that
5:28
this work would simply not be possible
5:30
with any previous telescope. It really
5:32
is a testament to what Web continues to
5:34
deliver. A survivor of 4 billion years
5:38
of cosmic chaos. Not a bad story for a
5:41
Thursday.
5:42
>> Here's a number that should give you
5:43
pause. In 2005, the European Space
5:46
Agency was tracking around 16,000 pieces
5:49
of debris in orbit. By 2026, that number
5:53
has grown to more than 44,000, an
5:56
increase of roughly 180%. And that's
5:59
only what we can track. The vast
6:01
majority of debris is too small to track
6:04
at all. Estimates there are millions of
6:07
fragments out there. Paint flex, bolt
6:09
fragments, shards from old rocket
6:11
stages. Moving at orbital velocities.
6:14
Even something tiny can cause
6:16
catastrophic damage.
6:18
>> But new research is drawing attention to
6:20
a consequence that gets less coverage
6:22
than the collision risk. The scientific
6:24
cost. A study looking at NASA's Earth
6:27
observing satellites, specifically Aqua,
6:30
Terra, and Aura, found that since 2005,
6:33
this fleet has had to execute avoidance
6:36
maneuvers at least 32 times to dodge
6:38
debris.
6:39
>> And those maneuvers aren't free. Not in
6:42
terms of fuel and possibly not in terms
6:44
of data, according to records from the
6:47
land data products evaluations
6:49
assessment. Some of those avoidance
6:51
burns may have corrupted climate data
6:53
during the collection window. You move
6:55
the satellite, the instruments point
6:57
somewhere different, and the record has
6:59
a gap or an artifact.
7:01
>> These satellites were not designed with
7:03
this level of debris in mind. Aqua, for
7:06
instance, has lasted 18 years longer
7:08
than its original design life. It's been
7:10
incredibly productive, but it only has
7:13
so much fuel left. Every avoidance
7:15
maneuver burns some of that reserve. And
7:17
as one insurance analyst put it to
7:19
space.com, even without collisions,
7:22
space debris has an economic cost. Each
7:25
time a satellite has to maneuver to
7:27
avoid a potential collision, it uses
7:30
fuel, which is a finite and precious
7:32
resource. The headline quote from
7:34
researchers is blunt. Things will get
7:36
worse before they get better.
7:39
>> The good news is that two companies have
7:41
announced plans to begin active debris
7:43
removal from orbit in 2027. The
7:46
technology exists, the will and the
7:48
regulation need to catch up quickly.
7:51
>> Next on today's agenda, over the past
7:54
year or so, results from the dark energy
7:57
spectroscopic instrument, DESI, have
8:00
been causing excitement and
8:02
consternation in equal measure. The data
8:04
appeared to hint that dark energy, the
8:07
mysterious force driving the
8:09
accelerating expansion of the universe,
8:12
might be evolving over time, changing in
8:15
strength as the cosmos ages,
8:18
>> which if true would be a genuinely
8:20
enormous deal. The standard cosmological
8:22
model treats dark energy as a fixed
8:25
cosmological constant. If it's changing,
8:27
the model needs to be rebuilt from the
8:29
ground up.
8:30
>> Exactly. But new research published in
8:33
physical reviewd is urging caution.
8:36
Scientists at the Tatada Institute of
8:38
Fundamental Research in Mumbai have
8:41
found something subtle. A small but
8:43
significant mismatch between two key
8:46
data sets used to measure dark energies
8:49
properties. Supernova brightness data
8:51
and Barryon acoustic oscillations which
8:54
are essentially ripples in the
8:57
distribution of galaxies across the
8:59
universe. And the mismatch matters
9:01
because the DEESI results that pointed
9:03
to evolving dark energy relied on
9:05
combining those two data sets. If they
9:08
aren't mutually consistent, if there's a
9:10
small but real discrepancy in what
9:12
they're measuring, then the apparent
9:13
signal of evolving dark energy could be
9:15
a systematic artifact rather than a
9:18
genuine physical phenomenon. The
9:20
researchers traced the mismatch back to
9:22
a potential violation of what's called
9:25
the cosmic distance duality relation, a
9:28
fundamental geometric relationship that
9:31
underpins how we calculate distances in
9:33
the universe. If that relation is being
9:36
violated or if there are subtle
9:38
calibration errors in the data sets,
9:41
then the apparent evolution of dark
9:43
energy may simply disappear.
9:45
>> What does this mean in practical terms?
9:47
It means we don't know yet. This paper
9:50
doesn't prove dark energy is constant.
9:53
It just raises a serious methodological
9:55
flag. Science is working exactly as it
9:59
should. Extraordinary claims get
10:01
extraordinary scrutiny. More data from
10:04
Desi's third release and from Uklid
10:06
mission should help clarify things later
10:09
this year.
10:10
>> The universe remains stubbornly
10:11
mysterious,
10:13
>> which is honestly what keeps us in a
10:15
job. Now, here's a question that sounds
10:17
simple, but turns out to be
10:19
extraordinarily complex. What's the most
10:21
efficient way to get from Earth to the
10:23
moon?
10:24
>> I mean, you point the rocket at it.
10:26
>> You'd think, right? But no, because in
10:28
space flight, the most direct path is
10:31
almost never the most efficient one. And
10:33
the new study published in the journal
10:34
Astronamics has found the trajectory to
10:36
the moon that is better than any route
10:38
previously described in the scientific
10:40
literature.
10:41
>> How much better?
10:42
>> The new route uses 58.8 8 m/s less fuel,
10:46
what engineers call delta V, compared to
10:49
the previous best known path. That might
10:51
sound tiny, but consider the total fuel
10:53
budget for an Earth to moon transfer is
10:55
around 3,343
10:57
m/s. Shave nearly 60 off that and you've
11:01
made a real difference. Every meter/s
11:03
saved is, as the researchers put it, a
11:06
massive amount of fuel consumption.
11:08
>> So, how did they find it? The team from
11:10
the universities of Kolimbra, Porto and
11:13
Evora in Portugal and the University of
11:15
Sa Paulo in Brazil used a mathematical
11:17
approach called the theory of functional
11:19
connections. It dramatically reduces the
11:21
computing power needed to simulate
11:23
trajectories which let them test around
11:25
30 million different routes. Previous
11:28
studies had managed around 280,000.
11:31
>> That's an enormous leap in the search
11:33
space.
11:34
>> And it paid off. The most efficient
11:36
route they found is counterintuitive.
11:38
Instead of heading more or less directly
11:40
toward the moon, the spacecraft first
11:42
swings toward a point called the L1
11:44
Lrange plane, the gravitational balance
11:46
point between Earth and the moon about
11:48
85% of the way there. It enters a stable
11:51
orbital pathway around L1, then departs
11:54
on an unstable pathway that transitions
11:56
it into lunar orbit,
11:58
>> essentially using the moon's own gravity
12:00
as part of the propulsion system.
12:03
>> Exactly. The team also notes that the L1
12:05
point maintains constant line of sight
12:07
with Earth, which means communication is
12:09
uninterrupted throughout the journey.
12:11
And crucially, this method can be
12:13
adapted. You could use it for any planet
12:15
moon system or any orbital transfer
12:17
problem. As a researcher say, the
12:19
systematic analysis they developed could
12:21
be adopted much more widely going
12:23
forward.
12:24
>> Small savings scaled across dozens of
12:27
future Artemis missions. That adds up to
12:30
a lot of rocket fuel
12:32
>> and a lot of money.
12:34
>> Speaking of money, here's a way you can
12:36
save heaps and secure your online life.
12:38
Simply do what we did and get NordVPN.
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To take advantage of our very special
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offer, just look for the link in the
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>> Stay safe online and away from prying
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eyes. Get NordVPN.
12:50
>> All right, on to our next story. And
12:53
this one will surprise many. If you've
12:55
ever looked up at the night sky and felt
12:58
reassured that the galaxy must be full
13:01
of Earth's worlds with oceans,
13:03
atmospheres, and the potential for life.
13:07
New research from the European
13:08
Geocsciences Union Conference in Vienna
13:11
may give you pause.
13:13
>> That's not the most comforting preamble.
13:15
Preliminary results presented by Shaun
13:18
Jordan, a post-doal researcher at
13:20
ETHZurich, suggest that our galaxy may
13:23
be filled with a far greater number of
13:25
Venuslike worlds than true Earth
13:28
analoges, and that this might simply be
13:30
how rocky planet formation works.
13:33
>> Walk us through the science.
13:34
>> When a rocky planet forms, it goes
13:36
through what's called a magma ocean
13:38
phase. Essentially, the entire surface
13:41
is molten. As it cools, the atmosphere
13:44
it develops heavily depends on its
13:46
chemistry and its distance from its
13:48
star. Jordan and colleagues argue that
13:51
it's actually quite straightforward to
13:53
end up with a carbon dioxide dominated
13:55
atmosphere. Thick, hot, crushing Venus
13:59
style after that cooling phase. Getting
14:01
to an Earthlike nitrogen oxygen
14:03
atmosphere is harder.
14:05
>> Meaning a Venus outcome might be the
14:07
path of least resistance.
14:09
>> That's the implication. And there's a
14:11
philosophical reframe buried in here,
14:13
too. Jordan suggests that Venus may not
14:16
have gone wrong. It may simply have been
14:18
born that way. A planet that came out of
14:21
its magma ocean phase looking exactly
14:24
like Venus does today without ever
14:26
having oceans or a temperate climate.
14:28
>> How many exenus candidates are we
14:31
actually talking about?
14:32
>> At least a few dozen rocky exoplanets
14:35
are considered potential Venus analoges,
14:37
though none have been confirmed as such.
14:40
We don't yet have the atmospheric
14:41
characterization tools to be certain.
14:44
The challenge is that a Venuslike
14:46
atmosphere, all those sulfuric acid
14:48
clouds, looks very similar to a
14:50
featureless atmosphere in our current
14:52
observations.
14:53
>> There's a telling phrase in the coverage
14:55
of this research that our own Venus has
14:58
been described as criminally
14:59
underexplored. Only one mission has sent
15:02
a lander since the Soviet program in the
15:04
80s.
15:05
>> That's the awkward irony. We are looking
15:07
for Venus twins across the galaxy while
15:10
barely understanding the one we have
15:12
next door. ESA's Envision mission and
15:15
NASA's Da Vinci program are both in
15:18
development, and they can't come soon
15:20
enough. Our nearest twin, the cautionary
15:23
tale, deserves a much closer look.
15:26
>> From a habitable paradise candidate to
15:28
the galaxy's most common world, quite
15:30
the demotion.
15:32
>> Science rarely flatters our assumptions.
15:34
Before we head out, a quick look at the
15:36
sky for our southern hemisphere
15:38
listeners, particularly in Australia and
15:41
New Zealand. This week is a beautiful
15:43
time to watch the evening sky. Jupiter
15:46
is blazing brightly in the west after
15:48
sunset, and the waxing moon is sliding
15:50
past it over the next couple of nights.
15:52
Tonight, they're particularly close
15:54
together, making for a stunning naked
15:57
eye pairing.
15:58
>> No equipment needed. Just step outside
16:00
about 30 to 45 minutes after sunset.
16:02
Look west and you'll see the moon and
16:04
the brightest star near it. That's
16:06
Jupiter. It's one of those simple
16:08
wonderful reminders that the solar
16:10
system is right there every clear night.
16:13
>> Cloud-free skies to all of you.
16:15
>> That is Astronomy Daily for Thursday,
16:17
May 21st, 2026. Six stories from the
16:20
launchpad in Texas to the farthest
16:22
reaches of Neptune's battered moon
16:24
system.
16:24
>> And the Starship result, whatever it is,
16:27
we'll have it for you tomorrow. If you
16:29
enjoyed the show, please take a moment
16:30
to subscribe and leave a rating wherever
16:32
you get your podcast. It genuinely makes
16:34
a difference.
16:35
>> You can find us at astronomyaily.io
16:39
and on socials at astroaily pod. We're
16:43
part of the byes.com podcast network.
16:47
>> Until tomorrow, keep looking up.
16:49
>> Clear skies.
16:54
told
17:02
stories told
17:10
stories