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Astronomy Daily • S05E107 • Wednesday 21 May 2026 Starship V3 is on the pad and counting down for Thursday's debut launch — we bring you the full update including technical objectives, the Artemis stakes, and a sober note about a worker fatality at Starbase. Plus: a NIST proposal to build GPS for the Moon using lasers inside permanently frozen polar craters; space station startup Vast enters the satellite market; JWST finally has an explanation for the universe's impossibly large early black holes; the Roman Space Telescope locks in a September 2026 launch; and interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS gives up two remarkable new secrets — alien water thirty times richer in heavy hydrogen than anything in our solar system, and pre-discovery images that show it was spotted before anyone knew it was there. Stories This Episode • STORY 1 — Starship V3 Flight 12: Launch window opens Thursday 21 May at 6:30 PM EDT (8:30 AM AEST Friday 22 May). Splashdown of upper stage in Indian Ocean off Western Australia ~65 min after liftoff. First flight of Starship V3, first use of Starbase Pad 2. Key objectives: Raptor 3 engines, heat shield imaging by modified Starlink sats, 22 dummy Starlink deployments, Raptor relight in space. Worker fatality at Starbase 15 May under OSHA investigation. • STORY 2 — Lunar GPS via NIST: Proposal to place ultrastable silicon optical cavity lasers in permanently shadowed craters near lunar south pole (~16K, near-perfect vacuum). Could enable lunar GPS network, atomic timekeeping on Moon, precise satellite ranging, gravitational wave detection. • STORY 3 — Vast Corporation: Space station builder announces new line of high-power satellites, expanding beyond Haven-1 into commercial satellite manufacturing. Announced 19 May 2026. • STORY 4 — JWST Black Holes: New arXiv paper proposes 'episodic super-Eddington accretion' in gas-rich dark matter-dominated early galaxies explains overmassive black holes found by JWST. Identifies them as 'missing link' between heavy seeds and luminous quasars. • STORY 5 — Roman Space Telescope: Launch now confirmed as early as September 2026 — 8 months ahead of schedule, under budget. 100x Hubble's field of view, 1,000x survey speed. Targets dark energy, dark matter, exoplanets. Coronagraph for direct exoplanet imaging. • STORY 6 — 3I/ATLAS: Pre-discovery images found in Rubin Observatory data from 21 June–2 July 2025, over a week before official ATLAS discovery. Water deuterium ratio at least 30x higher than any solar system comet (ALMA/U of Michigan/Nature Astronomy). Comet estimated ~12 billion years old. Key Links • SpaceX Starship Flight 12 livestream: spacex.com • Flight 12 timeline (Space.com): space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/what-time-is-spacex-starship-v3-launch-starship-flight-12-timeline • Starbase worker death (Space.com): space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/worker-dies-at-spacexs-starbase-in-leadup-to-starship-v3-megarocket-launch • Lunar laser GPS (NIST): nist.gov/news-events/news/2026/05/shooting-moon-ultrastable-lasers-dark-craters-could-enable-lunar-navigation • Vast satellite announcement: space.com (19 May 2026) • Roman Space Telescope launch update: nasa.gov • 3I/ATLAS pre-discovery images: space.com/astronomy/comets • 3I/ATLAS water chemistry (ALMA): almaobservatory.org
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