'Hold That Thought' - T-Minus 40: Starship Scrubs, Mars Beckons

0:00 Anna: 40 seconds. That's all that stood between

0:02 humanity and the most powerful rocket ever

0:05 built, taking its first flight in a whole New

0:08 form.

0:08 Avery: 40 seconds. The countdown was running. The

0:11 rocket was fueled. Tens of thousands of

0:13 people were watching, including a certain pop

0:16 star who really should have been a good omen.

0:18 Anna: And then it stopped. Ground equipment

0:21 issues, rising propellant temperatures, a

0:24 scrub.

0:24 Avery: But here's the thing. Even in the scrub,

0:27 SpaceX dropped a bombshell that had nothing

0:29 to do with the rocket. A crewed mission to

0:32 Mars. A real one, with a commander already

0:35 named.

0:36 Anna: We have got a lot to unpack today. I'm

0:39 Anna.

0:39 Avery: I'm, um, Avery.

0:40 Anna: And, um, this is Astronomy Daily. May 22,

0:43 2026. Let's get into it.

0:45 Avery: Alright, let's set the scene. Thursday

0:48 evening, South Texas Starbase. The

0:51 brand new Starship version 3 is sitting on

0:53 the pad, fueled, stacked, frosted white

0:56 from cryogenic propellant. And the crowd has

0:59 been building all day.

1:01 Anna: This was supposed to be Flight 12, the debut

1:04 of the most powerful rocket ever built in its

1:07 most advanced configuration yet. And for

1:10 context, this is the first starship test

1:12 flight since way back in October of last

1:15 year. Seven months of development work,

1:18 two explosive setbacks on the test stand that

1:21 destroyed hardware. And now, finally,

1:23 here they are.

1:25 Avery: The launch window opens, weather clears.

1:27 SpaceX pushes to the back of the 90 minute

1:30 window to wait for upper level winds to ease.

1:33 And then the countdown starts ticking toward

1:35 Anna: T0 and it gets to T minus

1:38 40 seconds and it stops. It

1:41 restarts, goes back to T40,

1:44 stops again. Engineers are on the webcast,

1:47 working through it in real time. SpaceX

1:49 communications manager Dan Hoot is telling

1:52 viewers they're seeing issues with quick

1:54 disconnect lines and water diverters on the

1:56 launch tower.

1:58 Avery: And then propellant temperatures start rising

2:00 in the tanks. That's the clock running out.

2:02 The window closes.

2:04 Anna: Scrubbed a ah scrub at T minus 40

2:07 is genuinely frustrating. You're that close.

2:10 But it's also, as SpaceX themselves say,

2:13 completely expected behavior for a brand new

2:16 rocket on a brand new pad. You learn things

2:19 about these systems that you simply cannot

2:21 learn any other way.

2:23 Avery: So let's talk about what they're actually

2:25 trying to fly. Because Starship V3 is a

2:28 substantial step up from everything that came

2:30 before.

2:31 Anna: The V3 Starship. That's the upper stage

2:33 called ship 39 in this case and its

2:36 super heavy booster, booster 19

2:39 together generate around 18 million

2:42 pounds of thrust at liftoff. That is a

2:45 significant Increase over the V2

2:47 configuration. New engines on both stages.

2:50 Avery: The mission profile for Flight 12, when it

2:53 does fly, has Booster 19 splashing down in

2:56 the Gulf of Mexico while Ship 39 continues

2:59 on a suborbital trajectory and targets a

3:01 controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

3:04 And critically, the mission includes a Raptor

3:06 engine test during the coast phase. Important

3:09 Data for future DE orbiting burns on orbital

3:11 flights.

3:12 Anna: And if, uh, Flight 12 goes well, the word

3:15 from SpaceX is that Flight 13 could be the

3:18 first orbital starship launch. That's a

3:20 massive milestone. Now there's a bigger

3:23 picture here too, Avery. SpaceX recently

3:26 filed for an IPO. The company is expected to

3:29 go public within weeks. And Starship is

3:32 central to that story, demonstrating

3:34 meaningful progress on the next generation

3:37 rocket program. Right now matters in a very

3:40 real financial sense.

3:41 Avery: The good news is they get another shot

3:43 tonight. The launch window opens at 6:30pm

3:46 Eastern, closing at 8. Engineers have been

3:49 working through the night on those ground

3:51 systems. If you're listening to this and the

3:53 window hasn't opened yet, watch to space.

3:56 Anna: And now the part that honestly might be the

3:59 bigger story. Because while engineers were

4:01 troubleshooting at T minus 40, the SpaceX

4:04 webcast team did something remarkable. They

4:07 cut to a pre recorded interview

4:09 Avery: with a man sitting on Bouvet island, which

4:12 for context is widely considered the most

4:14 remote island on Earth. A tiny volcanic rock

4:17 in the South Atlantic, a nature reserve,

4:20 population zero.

4:21 Anna: This is Chun Wang, Chinese born

4:24 cryptocurrency entrepreneur, citizen of Malta

4:27 and the commander of the Fram 2 mission last

4:30 year. The first ever crewed spaceflight to

4:32 polar orbit. The man has form when it comes

4:35 to doing genuinely novel things in space.

4:38 Avery: And SpaceX announced that Chun Wang has

4:40 signed on to fly on the first commercial

4:42 starship Circumlunar mission, joining Dennis

4:45 Tito and his wife Akiko, who bought seats

4:47 back in 2022. A loop around the moon

4:50 on starship.

4:51 Anna: But that's not the headline. The headline is

4:54 what comes after the lunar flight.

4:55 Avery: Chun Wang will command the first crewed

4:58 Starship interplanetary mission. A

5:00 flyby of Mars. A two year mission.

5:03 And in Wang's own words, a lot of people talk

5:06 about going to Mars. We like Mars, we're

5:08 going to land on Mars, we're going to build a

5:10 colony on Mars. But let's get it started with

5:12 a flyby. It will light the fire, it will

5:15 ignite the imagination, it will build the

5:18 momentum.

5:18 Anna: No launch date was given, no full crew

5:21 manifest, but a commander is named, a

5:23 mission is defined. That's a real step

5:26 beyond the language of we intend to and

5:29 into the language of this person is going.

5:32 Avery: Remember, SpaceX's own timeline has Uncrewed

5:35 starships launching for Mars in the November

5:37 December 2026 transfer window. The pace

5:40 of this program, even with scrubs and

5:42 setbacks, is like nothing we've seen before.

5:45 Anna: One scrub doesn't change any of that. It will

5:48 simply become a footnote in space history

5:50 books. What matters is that the rocket is on

5:53 the pad. The ambition is extraordinary.

5:56 And tonight, maybe tonight, Starship

5:59 V3 flies for the first time.

6:01 Avery: And meanwhile, in other space news today,

6:04 staying with the theme of extraordinary

6:05 things happening in space, the James Webb

6:08 Space Telescope has given us another one.

6:10 Astronomers have directly imaged an exoplanet

6:13 called Epsilon Indi Ab, a cold

6:16 super Jupiter sitting about 12 light years

6:19 from ear, and found something nobody expected

6:21 to find there.

6:22 Anna: Water ice clouds. Not ammonia clouds,

6:25 which is what Jupiter, like planets are

6:27 supposed to have. Hatchy, thick water

6:29 ice clouds similar to cirrus clouds here on

6:32 Earth, hiding in the atmosphere of a world

6:35 seven and a half times the mass of Jupiter.

6:38 Avery: The discovery comes from a team led by

6:40 Elizabeth Matthews at the Max Planck

6:42 Institute for Astronomy, using Webb's mid

6:44 infrared imager, the MIRI camera, which was

6:47 able to directly image the planet's faint

6:49 heat emission. The planet orbits its star at,

6:52 uh, roughly Neptune's distance from our sun,

6:55 making it far colder than most exoplanets.

6:57 Webb has studied surface temperatures

7:00 somewhere between -70 and positive 20

7:03 degrees Celsius.

7:04 Anna: What makes this significant isn't just the

7:06 discovery itself. It's what it says about our

7:09 models. Current atmospheric models for

7:11 exoplanets didn't predict water ice clouds in

7:14 a world like this. They expected ammonia.

7:17 The fact that thick water ice layers appear

7:20 to be masking the ammonia signal means our

7:22 frameworks need updating.

7:24 Avery: And it has practical implications for how we

7:26 search for other cold planets. If water ice

7:29 clouds make some wavelengths look much

7:31 fainter than expected, we may be missing

7:34 worlds that don't fit the standard brightness

7:36 profile.

7:36 Anna: The researchers put it this JWST

7:39 is finally letting us study solar system

7:42 analog planets in detail. As lead author

7:45 Elizabeth Matthews said, if we were aliens

7:48 several light years away, looking back at our

7:50 sun, this is the first telescope that could

7:53 study Jupiter in detail. We are living in the

7:56 golden era of exoplanet science, from 12

7:59 light years

7:59 Avery: away to right here in our own galaxy.

8:02 And a discovery that reshapes how we

8:04 understand the invisible forces holding the

8:06 Milky Way together.

8:07 Anna: Astronomers at the University of Calgary

8:10 have produced one of the most detailed maps

8:13 ever made of the Milky Way's magnetic field

8:16 and found something deeply unexpected hidden

8:19 inside it. A magnetic flip, a

8:22 reversal in the field's direction cutting

8:24 diagonally through one of our galaxy's main

8:27 spiral arms, the Sagittarius arm.

8:30 Avery: The data came from a new radio

8:33 telescope at the Dominion Radio

8:35 Astrophysical Observatory in British

8:38 Columbia, Canada. The instrument

8:41 scans the sky at multiple radio

8:44 frequencies simultaneously, allowing

8:47 researchers to trace the galaxy's

8:49 magnetic structure using a technique

8:52 called Faraday rotation, measuring

8:55 the way radio waves shift when they pass

8:58 through magnetized plasma.

9:00 Anna: In most of the galaxy, the magnetic field

9:03 flows in a consistent direction along the

9:05 spiral arms. But in the Sagittarius

9:08 arm, the team found a, uh, diagonal

9:11 reversal. The field essentially flips

9:14 orientation across a diagonal line, cutting

9:16 through space. This is the first time this

9:19 structure has been mapped in three

9:21 dimensions.

9:22 Avery: The finding matters because the galaxy's

9:24 magnetic field isn't just a curiosity. It

9:27 shapes where gas flows, where new stars can

9:30 form, and how the galaxy itself evolves

9:33 over billions of years. A detailed map of

9:36 that field gives astronomers a reliable

9:38 baseline for future studies that reach far

9:41 beyond our own galaxy.

9:43 Anna: Bead researcher Dr. Rebecca Booth described

9:46 it as revealing a hidden structure.

9:48 What looks like empty space is anything

9:51 but empty. And thanks to this work, the

9:54 invisible architecture of our own galaxy

9:57 is no longer just a theory. It can be

9:59 studied, tested, and built upon.

10:02 Avery: And finally today, a successful launch close

10:04 to home, at least for our Australian and New

10:07 Zealand listeners.

10:08 Anna: Rocket Lab fired off another electron rocket

10:11 this morning from its Launch Complex 1 on the

10:14 Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. Mission

10:17 name Viva Le Strix. The payload was

10:20 a synthetic aperture radar satellite called

10:22 Strix 7, built for the Japanese Earth

10:25 imaging company Synspective.

10:27 Avery: This is the ninth time Rocket Lab has

10:30 launched a Strix satellite for Synspective. A

10:33 relationship going back to 2020. And with

10:35 another 18 missions already booked through to

10:38 2030, the constellation

10:40 Synspective is building will eventually

10:42 provide continuous SAR imaging of Japan

10:45 and surrounding regions. Data used for

10:48 urban development, planning, infrastructure,

10:50 monitoring, and disaster response.

10:53 Anna: Synthetic aperture radar is worth a quick

10:56 note for those unfamiliar. It's a type of

10:58 imaging that works in total darkness and

11:01 through cloud cover, While optical

11:03 satellites can't see through weather or at

11:05 night. SAR satellites illuminate the

11:08 surface with radar pulses and build a

11:10 detailed image from the return signal. That's

11:13 why Synspective called the Constellation

11:15 Strix, the genus of owls they

11:18 see in the dark.

11:20 Avery: The electron rocket itself is now 70

11:23 flights into its operational life. Small,

11:25 dedicated, reliable, it's become the

11:28 workhorse of the smallsat launch market. And

11:31 this mission is a textbook example of what it

11:33 was designed for. A commercial customer. A

11:36 specific orbit, a uh, clean deployment Rocket

11:39 Lab doing what Rocket Lab does.

11:41 Anna: And that is your Astronomy daily for Friday,

11:44 May 22, 2026. What a

11:47 morning to be alive.

11:48 Avery: And following space news, Starship

11:50 V3 gets another shot tonight. A crewed

11:53 Mars flyby has a Commander Webb is

11:56 rewriting Exoplanet atmospheric science.

11:59 Our own galaxy just revealed a hidden

12:01 magnetic structure and rocket Lab quietly

12:04 keeps building humanity's eyes in Orb, a

12:06 hillside in New Zealand.

12:08 Anna: If you're watching the starship launch

12:10 tonight, you can follow live coverage@sp

12:12 SpaceX.com window opens 06:30

12:15 Eastern and as always, all the links, show

12:18 notes and further reading are at

12:19 astronomydaily IO.

12:21 Avery: If you're enjoying the show, a uh subscribe a

12:24 review, a uh share it all helps us reach more

12:26 space enthusiasts around the world. We

12:29 genuinely appreciate every single one.

12:31 Anna: And before we go, a quick reminder about the

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12:52 Anna: I'm Anna.

12:53 Avery: And I'm Avery bae.

12:54 Anna: Curious. Keep looking up. We'll see you

12:57 tomorrow on Astronomy Daily.

12:59 Avery: Astronomy Daily

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