Starship Set for Launch, First Black Hole Found in Omega Centauri, and X-Rays in Space

About this episode

The episode covers significant space news including the upcoming Starship launch, the discovery of a black hole in Omega Centauri, and the first medical X-rays taken in space.

Astronomy Daily — S05E141 | Wednesday 15 July 2026 Anna and Avery bring you the biggest space and astronomy news of the day: Starship Flight 13 is cleared for Thursday after the FAA closes its Flight 12 investigation and SpaceX reveals exactly what went wrong; NASA astronaut Anil Menon rides a Soyuz to the ISS on his first flight; astronomers finally find the first of Omega Centauri’s 10,000 "missing" black holes; the first-ever medical X-rays taken in space are published; four white dwarfs are found hiding within 65 light-years of Earth; and a new-moon dark-sky window opens with Comet 10P/Tempel 2 on the rise. In this episode • Starship Flight 13 — FAA closes the Flight 12 mishap investigation (July 13); root causes revealed: hot-staging ignition sequence caused a 90° booster orientation error, five Raptors failed to relight, alarm settings shut engines down early. Launch window opens Thursday July 16, 6:45pm EDT (Friday 8:45am AEST) with the first 20 functional Starlink V3 satellites and an in-space Raptor relight. • Soyuz MS-29 — NASA’s Anil Menon with cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina launched from Baikonur July 14, docking three hours later for an eight-month stay…

People in this episode

Hosts: Anna Menon, Avery

Topics covered

• SpaceX
• Black Holes
• Astronomy News
• NASA Missions
• X-Rays in Space
• Starship Launch

Keywords

• Starship
• Black Hole
• Omega Centauri
• NASA
• SpaceX
• X-Rays
• Astronomy
• Soyuz
• Comet

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: NASA, SpaceX, FAA

Places: Omega Centauri

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