Starship Reaches Orbit for First Time
SpaceX’s Starship completed its first orbital flight on 28 September 2026 during its 14th integrated test. The vehicle launched from Starbase, Texas, reached a roughly 275 km orbit despite an early Raptor engine shutdown on the upper stage, deployed 26 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites, and returned after about three hours instead of the planned multi-orbit, 10-hour mission, splashing down north of Hawaii.
Previous flights remained suborbital. Achieving stable orbit and operational payload deployment marks a critical engineering step for a fully reusable heavy-lift system intended for lunar and Mars missions, including NASA Artemis support. The Super Heavy booster performed its planned splashdown, while the Ship executed an insertion burn after controllers cleared the remaining engines.
Key uncertainties remain around engine reliability under full orbital loads, heat-shield performance during higher-energy reentries, and the timeline for rapid reuse and tower catch. The shortened flight limited long-duration systems testing, leaving open questions about sustained orbital operations and full payload capacity demonstration.
Sources: New Atlas, Reuters, TechCrunch, Spaceflight Now, Ars Technica.
CosmoCube Targets Cosmic Dark Ages Signal
A UK-led team has detailed CosmoCube, a suitcase-sized satellite designed to detect the 21-cm hydrogen line from the universe’s dark ages—the ~150 million years after recombination and before the first stars. ScienceDaily highlighted the concept on 28 September; the mission would orbit the Moon and use its far side as a radio shield against terrestrial interference for ~40 minutes per two-hour orbit, aiming for ~1,000 hours of data over two years.
Ground-based observations below ~45–50 MHz are blocked by the ionosphere and flooded by human radio noise. CosmoCube’s compact radiometer, using RF systems-on-chip and continuous Dicke-switched calibration, targets 10–50 MHz frequencies inaccessible from Earth. The platform is under development by Surrey Space Technology Ltd with UK Space Agency support; launch is hoped for within five years at relatively low cost.
Uncertainties include the extreme faintness of the signal relative to galactic foregrounds, the precision required to subtract spacecraft self-noise, and competition for the quiet lunar far-side spectrum as other nations plan similar missions. Success would open a direct window on dark-matter’s role in early structure formation, but the measurement remains technically demanding.
Sources: ScienceDaily, Nature Astronomy, University of Cambridge.
JWST Maps Gas Escape in Planet-Forming Disks
JWST observations of 72 young Sun-like stars show that protoplanetary disks lose their planet-building gas through evolving combinations of magnetically driven jets, molecular winds, and later photoevaporative atomic outflows. The study, reported 28 September, finds the dominant loss mechanism shifts as systems age, imposing a strict time limit on giant-planet formation.
In the youngest disks, powerful jets and broad molecular-hydrogen winds remove material and angular momentum. As accretion declines, high-energy stellar radiation increasingly drives photoevaporation. Extended molecular hydrogen and ionized neon emissions appear in most systems, confirming earlier predictions that molecular winds can shield disks early on.
The findings establish disk dispersal as a fundamental clock: gas giants must assemble atmospheres before the reservoir vanishes. Remaining questions concern exact mass-loss rates, the radial origins of the winds within disks, and how these processes vary with stellar mass and environment—data needed to refine models of planetary system architectures.
Sources: ScienceDaily, SETI Institute, The Astronomical Journal.