Episode Details

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Today's topics:

SpaceX Starlink 10-38 launch - SpaceX kicked off May 2026 with another high-cadence Falcon 9 flight, sending 29 Starlink V2 Mini satellites to low Earth orbit and adding momentum to the global satellite internet buildout. The mission also showcased reuse at scale, with booster B1069 notching its 31st flight and landing on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas.

CAS500-2 rideshare to SSO - A pre-dawn Falcon 9 mission from Vandenberg lofted South Korea’s CAS500-2 Earth-observation satellite alongside 44 additional payloads, highlighting how rideshare services are reshaping access to space. Exolaunch-managed deployments and a complex sun-synchronous orbit profile underscored the growing sophistication of multi-payload commercial launches.

ISS resupply and crew schedule - NASA and partners adjusted near-term ISS traffic, including a CRS-34 cargo run targeted for mid-May and a quicker turn toward Crew-13 in September. The updates also reflect continuing reviews of Boeing Starliner’s path forward after issues traced back to the 2024 crew flight test.

May 2026 skywatching highlights - From the Eta Aquariid meteor shower—Halley’s Comet debris—through a rare calendar Blue Moon on May 31, May 2026 offers major naked-eye events for stargazers. Add in Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury’s rapidly improving evening appearance, and the month becomes a prime window for casual astronomy.

Breakthroughs across modern astrophysics - New results span the solar system to the edge of the observable universe: Curiosity’s detection of diverse organics on Mars, a puzzling black-hole merger tied to a gamma-ray burst, NICER hints about neutron-star compactness, and provocative dark-energy analyses that reopen debates about the universe’s ultimate fate.

Episode Transcript

SpaceX Starlink 10-38 launch
SpaceX opened May with the Starlink 10-38 mission on May 1, launching 29 Starlink V2 Mini satellites from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40. Liftoff came at 2:06 p.m. Eastern, and the flight continued the rapid buildout of a Starlink constellation now described as having more than 10,000 operational satellites delivering broadband service worldwide. The mission also underlined how routine reusability has become for Falcon 9: booster B1069 flew for the 31st time and landed about eight and a half minutes after launch on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas—counted as the 607th overall booster landing for SpaceX.

CAS500-2 rideshare to SSO
Just two days later, SpaceX flew another Falcon 9—this time from Vandenberg—on the CAS500-2 mission, placing South Korea’s Compact Advanced Satellite 500-2 into a sun-synchronous orbit for high-resolution Earth imaging in panchromatic and multispectral modes. The headline, though, was scale: the launch carried 45 payloads in total, a showcase for rideshare economics and deployment logistics. Exolaunch managed multiple deployment sequences, with batches released roughly one hour and sixteen minutes after liftoff and again around two h