Space and Astronomy News for the 15th of November 2025

Blue Origin's New Glenn mega rocket has a second launch

This time it's sending twin probes to Mars!

We've mentioned SpaceX's Starship rocket in this blog over the last couple of years as it progresses through to a fully operational launch vehicle.  While Starship remains the largest craft even flown by humanity, New Glenn from Blue Origin is also in the class of "mega rocket".

It's had one flight in January of this year when it successfully launched a prototype satellite into orbit.  The second flight of New Glenn was delayed this week due to weather, a cruise ship straying into the launch zone and even by the same weather condition a couple of days ago that caused the spectacular aurora seen across Australia on Wednesday night. However, when Blue Origin "lit the wick" yesterday morning Sydney time, New Glenn successfully launched and carried out two major mission objectives. 

New Glenn launch yesterday Sydney time. Image via Blue Origin

Firstly, Blue Origin has now become the second company after SpaceX to successfully return a large space launch vehicle safely to Earth so it can be flown again. 

New Glenn 2 touching down on the Jacklyn landing platform ship

It also carried two NASA spacecraft, ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers), destined for Mars where they will spend several years studying the extreme outer regions of the red planet's atmosphere. 

The two ESCAPADE spacecraft during final testing onboard New Glenn ahead of its launch this coming week. Image via Blue Origin

These twin probes, known Blue and Gold, are test probes design to highlight how comparatively low-cost planetary spacecraft can make valuable contribution to science. They will study the magnetosphere or Mars and investigate the role of the Solar wind in depleting the red planet's atmosphere over the life of the Solar System. We know the Mars once had large regions of surface water and why this disappeared is an ongoing area of active research. 

What's "Launch and Linger"?

ESCAPADE is now in an elongated Earth orbit where it will remain until late 2026 when it will execute a single burn to commence its journey to Mars when the window for the quickest route for spacecraft to transfer to between the two planets opens. It will arrive there in 2028. This lingering in orbit around Earth means that spacecraft can be launched to Mars when it's economical to hitch a ride on commercial vehicles as opposed to needing to head to orbit to meet up with transfer windows.  An interesting approach to help bring down the costs of deep-space mission!

More to the Pleiades than meets the eye

One of the most beautiful open clusters in the night sky is the Pleiades (M45).

The Pleiades taken by Damir Makšan and posted to The BINTEL Society Facebook Group.

This is a famous open cluster in the constellation of Taurus known since ancient times and a favourite of astronomers around the world. 

Now astronomers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have discovered the Pleiades that is about 20 times larger than previously thought.  They combined data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope and found thousands of other members which now combine into a region they're now calling The Greater Pleiades Complex.

“This study changes how we see the Pleiades—not just seven bright stars, but thousands of long-lost siblings scattered across the whole sky,” said Andrew Boyle, lead author and graduate student in physics and astronomy at UNC-Chapel Hill.

“We’re realizing that many stars near the Sun are part of massive extended stellar families with complex structures,” said Andrew Mann, co-author and professor of physics and astronomy at UNC-Chapel Hill. “Our work provides a new way to uncover these hidden relationships.”

These newly identified members are likely to be beyond the reach of amateur telescopes, although you'll be able to gaze at at Pleiades this summer knowing that what you're seeing is only part of vast stellar structure.

Check out more at the UNC news website here.

We talked about open clusters in a blog post earlier in the year that you can read here. While our Sun was formed along with other stars in a nebulae, there's still a search for our stellar siblings.

Could exoplanets also have aurora?

This past week has seen the Earth whacked by a massive release of charged particles from the Sun. Apart from interfering with communications and space launches, it produced a stunning series of aurora seen across large parts of Australia. 

This is caused by a CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) from the Sun.

Artist's impression of a large red giant star emitting a stream of energised particles. Credit: Olena Shmahalo/Callingham et al.

Despite extensive searches, no other star has been found sending matter into space like our Sun does on a regular basis.

Now for the first time astronomers have now observed an explosive CME on another star, one so large that it could not only cause aurora planets orbiting it, but possibly even strip away a nearby planet's atmosphere!

“Astronomers have wanted to spot a CME on another star for decades,” says Joe Callingham of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), author of the new research published in Nature. “Previous findings have inferred that they exist, or hinted at their presence, but haven’t actually confirmed that material has definitively escaped out into space. We’ve now managed to do this for the first time.”

Read more here.

Cheers,

Earl White

BINTEL 

15th November 2025