What happened
Blue Origin has fired its 98 metre-long New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral, sending Nasa’s twin Escapade spacecraft on a 22-month journey to Mars. Several days of weather-related delays, including cloudy skies and a geomagnetic storm, pushed the launch time back. The mission marks a major achievement for the company as the rocket’s reusable first stage separated cleanly and returned to land on an Atlantic barge.

Who said what
Jeff Bezos watched from launch control, celebrating alongside engineers as the booster touched down. Cheers filled the room when confirmation came that the upper stage had completed its objective.

The launch is a “major step forward for Jeff Bezos’s rocket company as it seeks to catch up with Elon Musk’s SpaceX”, said Aaron Gregg in The Washington Post. This is a “shot across the bow”, said Scientific American, and a “major step forward in its bid to rival SpaceX as a reliable provider of reusable rockets”.

What next?
The two probes, known as Blue and Gold, are expected to reach Mars in 2027, entering co-ordinated elliptical orbits for an 11-month study of how solar winds interact with the planet’s weak magnetic field and thin atmosphere.

What happened
More than 40 A-list musicians – including Dua Lipa, Coldplay and Sam Fender – have signed a letter to Keir Starmer asking him to fulfil his election promise to “stop touts from fleecing fans”, said the BBC. According to findings by the Competition and Market Authority, tickets are typically marked up by more than 50% when sold on the resale market.

Who said what
The statement calls on the government to fix the “extortionate and pernicious secondary ticketing market” that benefits touts, which is “preventing genuine fans from accessing the music, theatre and sports they love”.

Dan Smith, lead singer of Bastille, said the industry wanted to reach a point where people no longer got “ripped off by touts” and “genuine” fans could resell unwanted tickets for their original price”. A spokesperson for the Department for Culture said the government was “fully committed to clamping down on touts and is going further to put fans back at the heart of live events”.

What next?
Seven months after an initial government consultation closed, there has been “no indication of when legislation might be introduced”, according to the BBC.

The Spanish prime minister and a Catalan bishop are both fans of avant-garde singer Rosalía’s new album “Lux”, “perhaps surprisingly for an artist who sings an ode to the Berlin techno club Berghain”, said The Times.

Featuring an image of the Catalan singer adorned with a white nun’s veil and a rosary on its cover, the album exudes “religiosity” despite its sometimes explicit lyrics. It is also part of a wider trend across Spain: a “growing return to the Catholic faith”.

What’s more, the new release “has already made Spotify history”, said Rolling Stone. With more than 42 million streams in just one day, “Lux” broke the platform’s record for a female Spanish-language artist.

Rosalía fans think she is “somewhat of a saint, worthy of candlelit ‘altars’”, added The Times, and “Lux” has quickly become a smash hit. A “fusion of faith, flamenco and rock opera”, with lyrics from 14 languages, it has “cemented Rosalía’s place among innovators in contemporary pop music”. The album includes collaborations with the likes of Björk, Yves Tumor and Escolanía de Montserrat – a choir “regarded as the region’s beacon of Catholic faith”.

“Lux” “seems to be making everything related to nuns trendy … even the wimple”. Rosalía “is neither the first nor the only celebrity to seek answers to the modern world within the walls of the convent”. But the album does coincide with many other signs that nuns are “making a comeback”.

Sociologists have also identified a “parallel revival of the Catholic faith” among those under 35. The craze may just be a “seasonal spike”, but for now Spain – “long caught between its Catholic heritage and a secular present” – seems to be “enthralled” by all things nun.