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On today's signal, we lead with ESA adopts Arrakihs mission and also cover Webb Cracks Little Red Dots. You'll find more across Missions & Launches, Business, Policy & Defense, and Global Roundup.

ESA's Science Programme Committee has officially adopted Arrakihs, committing the agency to building and flying a mission designed to image the faint stellar haloes surrounding nearby galaxies. Adoption means the feasibility study is complete and hardware development can begin. The spacecraft will carry four cameras spanning near-ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths, built by a European consortium led by Spain, and will survey at least 80 Milky Way-scale galaxies. Galaxy haloes are so dim that current surveys lack the sample size to properly test models of how galaxies grow through mergers, and Arrakihs aims to close that gap by mapping stellar streams left behind when smaller galaxies were absorbed. Selected in November 2022 as ESA's second F-class mission, it is on track to launch before the end of 2030.

Source: ESA Top News

Astronomers using very long baseline interferometry have detected a two-sided radio jet from the supermassive black hole at the center of NGC 4649, a nearby elliptical galaxy whose black hole is accreting at roughly one hundred-millionth of its theoretical maximum rate. That Eddington ratio of 10⁻⁸ places it among the least active known black holes, a regime where jet formation was thought unlikely. The jet's unusually steep radio spectrum and a precise measurement placing the central engine just ten Schwarzschild radii upstream of the radio core both point to a magnetically dominated launch region that does not match standard jet models. General relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations reproduce the observations, suggesting magnetic fields can sustain structured outflows even when accretion has nearly stopped. The result gives researchers a nearby, well-characterized system to test jet physics at the extreme low end of black hole activity, a regime that includes the Milky Way's own Sgr A*.

Source: arXiv astro-ph

A University of Florida team has completed a DARPA-funded study on laser forming, a process that uses concentrated infrared heat to bend materials into shapes without molds or heavy machinery. The team successfully bent glass made from lunar regolith simulant, a proof of concept for fabricating building components directly on the Moon rather than launching prefabricated structures from Earth. The approach fits within the broader in-situ resource utilization strategy that NASA and other agencies are counting on to make long-duration lunar stays practical. Next steps include expanding the material range and eventually testing the process under space-like conditions.

Source: Universe Today

Upcoming Launches

ESA awarded Thales Alenia Space a €700 million contract to build two Sentinel-1 Next Generation satellites, covering only the first tranche of the full program. The new satellites will improve radar resolution fourfold, from 5x20 metres to 5x5 metres, and extend coverage to polar regions. Airbus Defence and Space in Germany will supply the C-band synthetic aperture radar instruments. The contract was delayed from an expected 2023 start, which has likely pushed the first launch beyond the original 2032 target. The current first-generation constellation, Sentinel-1C and 1D, carries enough fuel to operate into the late 2030s, giving ESA some buffer.

Source: European Spaceflight

Los Angeles startup Orbital has closed a $5 million pre-seed round to fund a 2027 in-orbit computing demonstration and begin work on Orbital-1, a purpose-built compute satellite targeting a 2028 launch. The company claims each production satellite will deliver 100 kW of compute power, well above the 20–30 kW typical of today's commercial satellites. Orbital's longer-term vision of 100,000-plus satellites puts it alongside Starcloud, which has raised roughly $200 million for a similar constellation, and SpaceX, which is developing its own orbital data center hardware through Starlink infrastructure.

Source: SpaceNews

A 30-hour Webb spectrum of GLIMPSE-17775, boosted to the equivalent of 80 hours by gravitational lensing from galaxy cluster Abell S1063, has produced the most detailed view yet of a little red dot. The University of Texas at Austin team extracted more than 40 spectral lines, and multiple independent indicators, including electron scattering signatures, an "iron forest" of 16 lines, and helium fluorescence, all point to the same explanation: a rapidly accreting black hole wrapped in a dense, partially ionized gas cocoon. The result is the strongest observational support to date for the black hole star model, which also explains why most little red dots appear faint in X-rays.

Source: NASA Press Releases

Spire Global and German defense contractor Diehl Defence have signed a memorandum of understanding to explore using Spire's low-Earth-orbit constellation for ballistic and hypersonic missile detection. No contract or funding is attached yet, but the agreement positions both companies for Europe's growing market for sovereign missile-warning infrastructure. Hypersonic weapons are particularly difficult to track because they maneuver at speeds above Mach 5, and Europe currently depends heavily on U.S. Space Force satellite networks for that capability. The deal builds on Spire's existing footprint in Germany, where the company recently expanded a satellite manufacturing facility in Munich.

Source: SpaceNews

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano will serve as pilot on Artemis III alongside commander Randy Bresnik, with the crew rounded out by Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio. The 2027 mission will fly near Earth to test two lunar modules before any crewed lunar landing attempt. Parmitano, a veteran of two ISS missions, noted that NASA selecting a European as pilot signals genuine confidence in ESA's technical contributions, since Europe builds part of the Orion spacecraft. Douglas will be making his first spaceflight.

Source: Phys.org – Space

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