Starship Set for Launch, First Black Hole Found in Omega Centauri, and X-Rays in Space

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Anna: The world's biggest rocket has a launch date,

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a clean bill of health from the regulators,

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and finally an explanation for what went

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wrong last time.

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Avery: Plus, a, uh, globular cluster hanging in your

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southern sky right now has just given up the

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first of its 10,000 missing black holes.

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And astronauts have taken the first ever

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medical X rays in space. With four hours of

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training, all that,

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Anna: A, uh, brand new crew on the space station,

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dead stars hiding next door, and the darkest

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skies of the month. This is Astronomy Daily.

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Avery: Hello and welcome to Astronomy daily. It's

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Wednesday the 15th of July, 2026.

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This is series five, episode 141.

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And I'm Avery.

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Anna: And I'm Anna. We've got a packed one today.

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Two big spaceflight stories, two genuinely

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lovely deep sky discoveries, a, uh, first in

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space medicine, and a sky watching window you

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do not want to waste. Shall we get into it?

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Avery: Let's do it.

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Anna: So Avery, on Monday we previewed Starship

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Flight 13 and told you it was penciled in for

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today, Wednesday the 15th. Well,

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the pencil has moved.

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Avery: It has. SpaceX is now targeting Thursday

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July 16th with a 90 minute launch

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window opening at 6:45 in the evening

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Eastern time, which for us here in Australia

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is Friday morning, 8:45am on the

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east Coast. So set your alarms for Friday

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breakfast viewing.

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Anna: But honestly, the launch date isn't even the

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biggest news in this story because on Monday

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the Federal Aviation Administration formally

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closed its investigation into what went wrong

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on Flight 12. And for the first time we got

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the full picture.

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Avery: And um, it's fascinating. Remember, Flight 12

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back in May was the debut of the big version

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three vehicle. And it mostly went well,

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except the super heavy booster never made its

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controlled splashdown in the Gulf. It just

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didn't get there.

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Anna: And now we know why. It comes down to

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hot staging. That maneuver where the upper

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stage lights its engines while it's still

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attached to the booster. SpaceX changed the

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ignition sequence of ship's engines on this

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flight and that change pushed the Booster

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into a 90 degree orientation error

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right after separation.

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Avery: So the booster comes out of staging pointing

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the wrong way. And then to make matters

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worse, when it tries its boost back burn,

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five of its 33 raptor engines fail to

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relight.

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Anna: The FAA's report boiled it down to two

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root causes heat effects on propulsion

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components during ascent. And I love this

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phrase, erroneous engine alarm settings.

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Essentially the alarm thresholds were tuned

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wrong for the multi engine flight

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environment. Though engines were being shut

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down that could have kept burning.

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Avery: And SpaceX's fixed list covers all of it A,

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uh, modified startup sequence for ship,

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hardware updates on the booster and retuned

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engine alarms and abort settings. The FAA has

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accepted the corrective actions, so the

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regulatory road is clear.

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Anna: Which brings us to what Flight 13 actually

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has to do. It's essentially a rerun of

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Flight 12's objectives, but this time with

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real cargo. 20 functional Starlink

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V3 satellites, the first of their kind ever

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to fly.

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Avery: And these aren't the mass simulators from

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Flight 12. These are working satellites.

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They'll deploy solar arrays and antennas and

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attempt to connect with a ground station in

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South Africa and and with other starlinks.

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Six of them even carry cameras to inspect

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ship's heat shield from the outside.

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Anna: The catch being it's a suborbital flight, so

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those satellites get about 20 minutes of

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glory before they re enter and burn up. It's

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a test, not a delivery.

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Avery: There's also an in space Raptor relight on

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the checklist, which matters enormously for

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the lunar Lander version of Starship that

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NASA's Artemis program is counting on. And if

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all of this goes to plan, Flight 14 could

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see SpaceX attempt a first V3 catch

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back at the

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Anna: tower Friday morning, Australian time.

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We'll have the full wrap on Saturday's show.

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Either way.

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Avery: From a rocket that's about to launch to one

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that just did. On Tuesday. A Soyuz

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2 1A lifted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome

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in Kazakhstan carrying NASA astronaut Anil

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Menon and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov

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and Anna Kikina.

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Anna: And this was the express service, A two orbit

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fast rendezvous. They docked with the

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International Space Station's Pritchell

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module just over three hours after liftoff.

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Compare that to the two day chases of the old

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days.

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Avery: The 3O joins Expedition

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7475 for a roughly an eight

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month stay coming home in April 2027.

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It's the second flight for both Dubrov and

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Kikina, but the very first for Menin. And his

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backstory is wonderful, it really is.

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Anna: He's a physician, a former Air Force flight

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surgeon who flew over a hundred sorties and

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F15s, worked as a first responder after the

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Haiti and Nepal earthquakes, and was actually

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SpaceX's first ever flight surgeon before

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NASA selected him as an astronaut in 2021.

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Avery: And here's the bit I love. His wife, Anna

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Menon, has already been to space. She flew on

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the Polaris dawn mission in 2024, the one

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with the first commercial spacewalk. So

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they're now officially a two astronaut

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Anna: household with two kids who presumably win

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every what do your parents do? Conversation

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at school. Forever.

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Avery: Forever. And there was a diplomatic first

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at the launch, too. NASA administrator Jared

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Isaacman was at Baikonur in person, meeting

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Roscosmos chief Dmitry Bakanov face to face

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for the first time. Isaacman and Menon are

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close friends. Annamin flew on Isaacman's own

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Polaris dawn mission.

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Anna: As for the work, Menon's eight months are

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heavy on the science that suits a doctor.

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They'll be refining in space production of

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semiconductor crystals. And this ties

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beautifully into our next but one story

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performing ultrasound using augmented reality

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and AI techniques that could remove the need

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for medical support from Earth on deep space

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missions.

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Avery: A doctor testing the Future of Space

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Medicine launched the same week the first

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space X rays are published.

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Anna: Hold that thought now, Avery.

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If you step outside tonight, anywhere in

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Australia or New Zealand, and look up at the

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constellation Centaurus riding high in our

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winter sky, there's a soft, fuzzy star you

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can see with your naked eye from a dark

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sight.

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Avery: That's Omega Centauri, the greatest

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globular cluster in the sky. 10 million

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stars packed into a ball about 18,000

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light years away. And an object that has

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puzzled astronomers for decades because,

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according to the models, it should be teeming

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with black holes. Around 10,000 stellar

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mass black holes left behind by exploded

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stars.

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Anna: And until this week, astronomers had found

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none of them. Evidence for an intermediate

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mass black hole lurking at the center? Yes.

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But that missing population of 10,000 smaller

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ones? Silence.

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Avery: Until now. In a paper published Monday in the

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Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team led by

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Matthew Whitaker at the University of Utah

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announced the first first stellar mass black

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hole ever detected in Omega Centauri. It's

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been dubbed Omega Cat BH2, and

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Anna: the way they found it is the real star of

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this story. Not X rays, not radio emission

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astronomy measuring the positions of stars

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so precisely over such a long time that you

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can watch one being swung around by something

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invisible.

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Avery: They sifted through nearly 20 years of

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Hubble archival data observations running

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from 2003 to 2023, and

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added recent James Webb data to sharpen the

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measure. It was a star with about

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78% the mass of our sun, orbiting

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something massive and utterly dark.

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Anna: The team said, uh, the precision comes down

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to a fraction of a pixel on Hubble and Webb's

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detectors. It simply would not have been

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possible without both telescopes working

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together.

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Avery: And BH2 turns out to be a rule

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breaker. Its mass is lower than expected, and

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the star that orbits it takes 94 years

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to go around, which Makes this the widest,

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longest period stellar mass black hole binary

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ever found.

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Anna: One black hole down, roughly

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9,999 to go.

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But the astronomers suspect this first

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detection opens the floodgates. Now they

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know exactly what signature to look for.

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Avery: And for our southern listeners, that cluster

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is up there right now in your July evening

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sky. Ten million stars, an

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intermediate mass black hole at the middle,

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and at least one newly unmasked stellar mass

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black hole. Go out and look at it tonight.

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You'll never see it the same way again. Okay,

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Anna.

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Space uh, medicine. As promised, the

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Radiological Society of North America has

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just published results confirming a genuine

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first diagnostic X ray images taken

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in orbit.

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Anna: And the mission behind it was Fram 2, the

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private SpaceX crew Dragon flight from

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March 2025. The first crew ever

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to fly a polar orbit. Four first time

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astronauts, none of them medical experts.

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Three and a half days in space before launch.

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Avery: They got just four hours of training on a

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commercial off the shelf portable X ray

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system. Then in orbit with no guidance from

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ground control, they X rayed a calibration

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phantom. A smartwatch, a hand, a

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forearm, an abdomen, a pelvis and a

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chest.

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Anna: And here's the result that matters. Back on

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Earth, three independent medical experts

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compared the in flight images with X rays

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taken before launch. The ground images were

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better quality, but the space images were

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good enough to diagnose injuries like broken

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bones.

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Avery: Which is a conceit Buster, as Dr. Shaina

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Gifford of the Mayo Clinic put it. The

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assumption has always been that because

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everything in space is constantly moving,

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getting a diagnostic image in orbit was just

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too technically challenging.

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Anna: Not anymore. And the applications go well

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beyond broken bones. That smartwatch X

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ray was the proof of concept for non

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destructive testing. Inspecting spacecraft,

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hardware, satellites, even spacesuits for

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hidden damage without taking anything apart.

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Avery: And think about where humanity is headed. A

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lunar outpost is days from a hospital. Mars

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is months. If you're going to break an arm

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240,000 miles from the nearest radiology

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department, you want the radiology department

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to come with you.

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Anna: The device even survived the trip home.

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Superficial scuffs on the exterior internals.

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Fine. As Dr. Gifford put it, the sky

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is not the limit when it comes to X rays in

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space.

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Now for a story about the neighbors we never

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knew we had. Astronomers at the University

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of Warwick and the University of Colorado

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Boulder have found four white dwarfs hiding

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within 65 light years of Earth.

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Avery: Which sounds impossible, doesn't it? We've

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been surveying the solar neighborhood in

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exhaustive detail for decades. How do you

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miss four entire dead Stars on your own

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street.

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Anna: Because they had accomplices. Each of these

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four white dwarfs orbits a, ah, red dwarf

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companion, a, uh, bigger, brighter star whose

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glare completely drowned them out in visible

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light. To every survey, these looked like

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perfectly ordinary single stars.

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Avery: The giveaway was the wobble. Each red dwarf

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showed a substantial radio wobble, the

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telltale sign of a massive unseen companion

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tugging on it. So the team went hunting with

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the Hubble Space Telescope's imaging

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spectrograph in near ultraviolet light, where

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white dwarfs shine and red dwarfs fade.

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Anna: And there they were, four hidden white dwarfs

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unmasked. Lead author Dr. Mayrey O'

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Brien put it beautifully. It's a reminder

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that even in our own cosmic neighborhood, we

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can still find surprises if we look in the

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right way at the right wavelength.

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Avery: The headliner of the four is a system called

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G203 47, only

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about 25 light years away, which makes its

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white dwarf the ninth closest known to the

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Sun. And finding it closed a mystery that had

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been open for 27 years, ever since that

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unexplained wobble was first spotted.

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Anna: But G2O3 47

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replaces one mystery with another. The

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red dwarf orbits its white dwarf every

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14.9 days, but rotates on

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its axis only once every 100 plus days.

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In systems like this, tides should have

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locked those two motions together long ago.

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The M way. The Moon always shows Earth the

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same

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Avery: face, so the fact that it isn't locked

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tells us these four binaries had very

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different life stories. Some went through

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violent, prolonged interactions that

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synchronized them. While

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G20347 seems to have

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had a gentler, briefer encounter.

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Anna: Four new entries in the local census

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published in the monthly notices of the Royal

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Astronomical Society. And a strong hint

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there are more dead stars hiding in plain

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sight around familiar stars.

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Avery: And so to the sky itself. Anna

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uh, the Moon hit New Moon on Tuesday, which

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means right now we're in the darkest skies of

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the month.

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Anna: And for those of us in Australia and New

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Zealand, mid July New Moon is as good

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as it gets. The Milky Way core,

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Sagittarius Scorpiusthat great

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glowing heart of the galaxy is essentially

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overhead in the evening. If you've been

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meaning to get out of the city for a proper

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dark sky night, this week is the week.

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Avery: It's also the week to hunt a Comet. Comet

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10P Tempel 2 is brightening as it heads

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towards perihelion in early August, currently

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sitting around magnitude 7. 8 in the evening

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sky.

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Anna: Now, that's not naked eye territory. You'll

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want binoculars at minimum. Ideally a

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telescope. Look for a soft, fuzzy,

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grayish patch the comet's glowing

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coma. And here's the nice bit for us

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Southern Hemisphere observers get a slightly

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higher altitude view than our northern

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friends, a

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Avery: dark sky, the galactic core overhead,

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and a comet on the rise. Sometimes the

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universe just hands you the itinerary.

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Anna: And for the early risers, Mars is currently

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drifting through Taurus near the red giant

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Aldebaran. In the pre dawn sky, two

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red beacons side by side. Worth a look with

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your morning cuppa.

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Avery: Uh, and that's our journey around the cosmos

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for today. Starship cleared and counting down

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to Friday morning our time, a new crew

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safely aboard the station, a black hole

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unmasked in Omega Centauri, the first

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X rays in orbit, four hidden white dwarfs

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and a dark sky waiting for you tonight.

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Anna: If you enjoyed the show, share it with a

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fellow Stargazer. It genuinely helps.

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All our episodes show notes and links are at

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astronomydaily IO and you'll find

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us on all the Socials astrodaily

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Pod.

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Avery: We'll be back tomorrow with more space and

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astronomy news. Until then, I'm Avery.

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Anna: And I'm Anna. Thanks for listening and as

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always, keep looking up.

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Avery: Clear skies, everyone.