Episode Details

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Today's topics:

New circumbinary planets from TESS - Astronomers report 27 new circumbinary planet candidates using a purpose-built TESS data-mining method that can handle non-periodic transits in eclipsing binaries. If confirmed, the find could more than double the known population of “two-sun” worlds and reshape exoplanet demographics.

Starship V3 Flight 12 slips - SpaceX’s first upgraded Starship V3 test, Flight 12, has moved to a no-earlier-than May 21 window as final readiness and coordination continue. The delay highlights the difficulty—and potential payoff—of achieving fully reusable super-heavy launch capability.

Quiet Sun, low blackout risk - NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center says solar activity is currently low, with only minor R1 radio-blackout potential in the near-term forecast. Even in quiet periods, constant monitoring remains essential as satellite fleets and space-based services keep growing.

Roman to weigh neutron stars - Studies suggest NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could discover and measure masses of otherwise invisible isolated neutron stars via microlensing. Roman’s precise photometry and astrometry may turn gravitational lensing into a large-scale census of compact objects.

JWST, Mars, and LEO shifts - A rapid-fire set of updates spans JWST discoveries of dusty early galaxies and extreme black holes, surprising corundum “ruby and sapphire” grains detected by Perseverance on Mars, and big strategic shifts in low-Earth orbit—from ISS cargo science to Artemis III’s redesigned docking-focused mission and the push toward commercial stations.

Episode Transcript

New circumbinary planets from TESS
Astronomers have identified twenty-seven new candidate circumbinary planets—worlds that orbit two stars—using a new semi-automated search pipeline applied to NASA’s TESS data. The method, designed specifically for eclipsing binary systems, first models and subtracts the deep binary eclipses, then searches for transit-like dips without requiring strict periodicity, which is crucial because circumbinary transits can shift in timing and depth as orbits precess. If follow-up observations confirm most of these candidates, the known sample of circumbinary planets would more than double, turning a rare category into a statistically meaningful population and forcing planet-formation models to better account for the complex disks and gravitational dynamics around binary stars.

Starship V3 Flight 12 slips
On the launch side, SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12—set to be the first test of the upgraded Starship V3 configuration—has slipped again, now targeting no earlier than May 21. The plan remains a suborbital-style mission: the Ship aims for a partial lap of Earth with splashdown in the Indian Ocean, while the Super Heavy booster attempts a controlled descent into the Gulf of Mexico, and the flight is also tied to validating a newly prepared Pad 2 at Starbase. These short, repeated delays are typical of n