🚀 Did NASA Downplay Starliner?

🛰️ Starliner safety panel speaks

🚀 China's reusable rocket leap

🌌 JWST spots black hole recoil

✨ VERITAS maps cosmic source

🔭 ASKAP reveals galaxy outflow

NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) criticized the agency’s handling of Boeing's Starliner anomalies, which left two astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) for nine months last year.

The panel highlighted persistent helium leaks and maneuvering thruster failures that caused a temporary loss of vehicle control during docking, creating a significant risk to the crew and vehicle.

Panel member Charlie Precourt stated the lack of a formal "mishap" declaration created workforce stress and unclear decision-making authority, recommending unambiguous criteria for future in-flight safety events.

China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) launched its new Long March 12A rocket, marking the nation's second attempt at a reusable booster system within a single month.

The methane-fueled first stage successfully propelled the upper stage to a predetermined orbit but failed its braking burn, impacting 200 miles downrange instead of landing at its target zone.

According to CASC, this test provides critical flight data for optimizing recovery plans, advancing China's goal of lower-cost, high-cadence launches to compete with Western reusable launch vehicle providers.

Astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics analyzed data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), investigating the core of the active galaxy Zwicky 229-015.

JWST's MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) detected periodic spectral line shifts and a double-peaked emission profile from ionized iron, indicating two supermassive black holes orbiting at a separation of just 0.1 parsecs.

This observation provides the strongest evidence yet for a sub-parsec binary black hole system, offering a unique laboratory for testing gravitational wave predictions before their eventual merger, according to the study's authors.

The VERITAS (Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System) collaboration published new findings on the blazar 1ES 1215+303, a distant galaxy powered by a supermassive black hole.

The array's four 12-meter telescopes detected very-high-energy gamma-ray emissions above 100 GeV, revealing a rapid flux variability on a timescale of just three minutes during a major flare event.

This rapid variability constrains the size of the emission region to be smaller than the black hole's event horizon, challenging standard jet emission models and suggesting more compact acceleration sites.

A team from Australia's CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) used the ASKAP radio telescope to map neutral hydrogen gas in the nearby starburst galaxy NGC 1313.

ASKAP's phased array feed receivers mapped a massive, cold gas outflow extending 20 kiloparsecs from the galactic disk, containing 1.5 billion solar masses of hydrogen moving at 150 km/s.

The sheer mass and low temperature of the outflow contradict models where supernova feedback drives hot, diffuse gas, implying cosmic ray pressure may be a more dominant galactic feedback mechanism.