Astronomy Daily - The Podcast

Anna and Avery break down yesterday's total solar eclipse — a 182-mile-wide shadow that swept from the Arctic through Greenland and Iceland to northern Spain, giving millions of people up to 2 minutes 18 seconds of totality. Plus: astronomers find three supermassive black holes sharing one distant galaxy (two are about to merge), Virgin Galactic pushes commercial spaceflight back to February 2027, and Rocket Lab signs a new launch customer for Neutron even as the rocket's debut slips further.**Full show notes:**Today's episode — S05E166, Thursday August 13, 2026:**Main story: The August 12 total solar eclipse.** The Moon's shadow crossed the Arctic Ocean, eastern Greenland, western Iceland, northern Spain, the Balearic Islands and out into the Mediterranean. Longest totality on land: 2 minutes 18 seconds at Látrabjarg, Iceland. Millions gathered across northern Spain, with the path also crossing A Coruña, Bilbao, Zaragoza, Valencia and Palma (Madrid and Barcelona were just outside the path). Observers reported seeing the solar corona, a prominence, and Jupiter, Mercury and Venus during totality. Spain gets another total eclipse on August 2, 2027.**Three supermassive black holes, one galaxy.** Astronomers led by Hannah Übler (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics) used JWST to confirm three actively feeding supermassive black holes in galaxy J0148-4214, 12.5 billion light-years away — the first such triple system ever confirmed. Two of the three are on course to merge.**Virgin Galactic delays commercial flights to 2027.** The company's upgraded Delta-class spaceplane will now begin commercial service in February 2027, pushed back from Q4 2026, to complete avionics and systems installation. Shares fell 12% after-hours. $750,000 seat packages were oversubscribed.**Rocket Lab's Neutron: delay and deal.** Rocket Lab is hedging on a 2026 debut for its Neutron rocket, with the window potentially slipping into 2027 — even as the company signs a new five-launch deal with Kepler Communications.**Links & sources:**- [Space.com — Total solar eclipse live updates](https://www.space.com/news/live/total-solar-eclipse-today-aug-12-2026-live-updates)- [Space.com — Total solar eclipse 2026 thrills millions (photos, video)](https://www.space.com/stargazing/solar-eclipses/total-solar-eclipse-2026-thrills-millions-with-a-stunning-cosmic-spectacle-photos-video)- [CNN — Photos: Total solar eclipse 2026](https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/12/science/gallery/photos-total-solar-eclipse)- [Wikipedia — Solar eclipse of August 12, 2026](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_August_12,_2026)- [Max Planck Institute — Three supermassive black holes discovered in a single galaxy](https://www.mpg.de/26904239/three-black-holes-discovered-in-a-young-galaxy)- [SpaceNews — Virgin Galactic delays resumption of commercial flights to 2027](https://spacenews.com/virgin-galactic-delays-resumption-of-commercial-flights-to-2027/)- [Spaceflight Now — Window for 2026 Neutron debut is narrowing](https://spaceflightnow.com/2026/08/10/window-for-2026-launch-debut-of-rocket-labs-neutron-rocket-is-narrowing-as-development-continues/)- [Rocket Lab — Neutron launch deal with Kepler Communications](https://rocketlabcorp.com/updates/rocket-lab-inks-neutron-launch-deal-with-kepler-communications/)Follow us: @AstronomyDailyPodBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

In this episode •      Shadow Day: the only total solar eclipse of 2026 crosses Arctic Russia, Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain today — the first total eclipse over western mainland Europe since 1999 (Spain's first since 1905, Iceland's since 1954). Max totality ~2 min 18 s. Reykjavík ~17:48 UT; northern Spain ~18:27–18:33 UT (Sun very low, ~4–10° up). Live via NASA, timeanddate and the Exploratorium. •      Where you are: North America gets an afternoon partial (Nova Scotia ~33%, N. Maine ~28%, Montreal ~18%, Boston ~16%, NYC ~9–10%, Toronto ~8%, DC ~10%; Fairbanks ~37% in the morning) — no totality anywhere on the continent, glasses on throughout. Europe outside the path sees a deep evening partial (London ~91%). Australia/SH: not visible directly — watch the streams (~1:30–6:00 am AEST Thu). •      Chasing the shadow: NASA's WB-57 jet flies the path at ~50,000 ft (~740 km/h), extending totality to nearly 3 minutes with four visible/IR cameras (SCIFI) to probe coronal heating, prominences and the solar wind (PI Amir Caspi, SwRI). The Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (A. Des Jardins, Montana State) launches ~86 balloons from Iceland and Spain to measure atmospheric changes. •      A star-building magnetic field: ALMA captures the first direct high-resolution image of a twisted, toroidal magnetic field wrapped around a protostellar jet in NGC 1333 IRAS 4A (~960 ly, Perseus cloud), confirming a decades-old prediction of how young stars launch jets and shed spin — the same physics that scales up to black-hole jets (Ching et al., Nature Communications 2026; NSF NRAO/ALMA). •      Why worlds turn hellish: UC Riverside's Stephen Kane argues planetary rotation is an overlooked driver of climate and habitability — slow spin may help tip a world into a Venus-style runaway greenhouse. Measuring true spin is hard because winds can masquerade as rotation; ESA's PLATO (launch March 2027) could test the idea across hundreds of Venus-like planets (Astronomical Journal, accepted). •      Skywatch — both hemispheres: the Perseids peak overnight 12–13 Aug under a genuinely moonless sky (best midnight–dawn; NH-favoured). Southern Hemisphere: evening Venus (mag −4.4, just past dichotomy), the pre-dawn planet line-up, and Comet 10P/Tempel 2. ISO 12312-2 eye-safety line included.   Sources •      NASA Science — Total Solar Eclipse on August 12, 2026; “NASA Science Soars During August Total Solar Eclipse” •      timeanddate; Eclipsophile; NationalEclipse.com; azmth.space — path, contact times, magnitudes •      Astronomy.com; Forbes; CBS News — North American partial times & percentages •      Space.com; Smithsonian — WB-57 SCIFI campaign & Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project •      NSF NRAO / phys.org — Ching et al., “Unveiling dominant toroidal magnetic fields in a protostellar outflow,” Nature Communications (2026) •      UC Riverside (news.ucr.edu) / phys.org — S. Kane, planetary rotation & runaway greenhouse (Astronomical Journal, accepted) •      EarthSky; Astronomy.com — Perseid peak (moonless), Venus dichotomyBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily · S05E164 “Eclipse Eve” · Tuesday 11 August 2026. Sources are primary/agency where possible; aggregator dates were checked against originals. In this episode •    LEAD — The 12 August total solar eclipse: the only total eclipse of 2026 and the first over mainland Europe since 1999. Totality arcs from Siberia over the North Pole to eastern Greenland, western Iceland, northern Spain and a sliver of Portugal; maximum totality ~2 min 18 s. Partial for much of North America near sunset; not visible from Australia. ESA livestreams from the Javalambre Observatory, Spain. •    MIDDLE 1 — A state CASC Long March 7A exploded ~85 seconds after lifting off from Wenchang on 10 August, a total loss (payload reported as the Zhongxing-4B communications satellite). Separately, Landspace's private Zhuque-3 was on the same-night manifest from Jiuquan for its second propulsive landing-legs recovery attempt — outcome unconfirmed at recording. China's first orbital-booster landing (net-capture, Long March 10B) already succeeded on 10 July. •    MIDDLE 2 — The Perseids peak overnight 12–13 August under a New Moon — the darkest conditions in roughly two decades. Parent comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. Realistic ~30–50 meteors/hr from dark sites (nominal ~100), with a slim chance of a dust-trail boost; the next confidently forecast outburst is 2028. •    MIDDLE 3 — Japan's H3 launched Michibiki No. 7 (QZS-7) from Tanegashima, bringing the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System up to the strength Japan needs to run it as a standalone service — a regional navigation layer that keeps a satellite near the zenith over Japan/Asia-Pacific, reinforcing GPS and building navigation resilience. The satellite also hosts a US Space Force space-surveillance sensor (SACHI). •    CLOSER — Both-hemispheres skywatch: eclipse viewing times (totality window ~16:58–18:34 UT, greatest ~17:46 UT) and the ISO 12312-2 eye-safety rule; Perseid how-to for the North (best 2 a.m.–dawn); and Southern-Hemisphere content — pre-dawn planets, evening Venus, Comet 10P/Tempel 2. Eye safety •    A partial eclipse is never safe to view with the naked eye. Use ISO 12312-2 certified eclipse glasses/viewers, or indirect projection (pinhole). Direct viewing is only safe during true totality, and only inside the path (Greenland, Iceland, Spain). Links •    astronomydaily.io — full back-catalogue, daily news feed, listener reviews, newsletter sign-up, contact form •    @AstroDailyPod on your platform of choiceBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily · S05E163 · “The Long Way Home” · Monday 10 August 2026. Sources verified against primary / institutional outlets. Starship “lost at sea” (Flight 13) •    Flight 13 launched 24 July 2026 from Starbase, South Texas; the upper stage (“Ship,” Ship 40, ~52 m) made the softest Starship water landing yet in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia — and, in a program first, survived intact and afloat. •    SpaceX had not planned to recover it. Musk confirmed the salvage attempt on 28 July (“We're sending a ship out to recover Starship”); recovery ship Go Australis was joined by Norwegian tugs Normand Ranger and Skimmer Tide, with a tow line to the nose. •    On 7 August, Musk said recovery is “not looking good right now” in rough seas — but the team had already obtained close-up photos of critical heat-shield and engine regions for future upgrades. A saltwater-soaked Ship was never going to be reflown. •    Heat shield: on SpaceX's first quarterly earnings call (4 August) Musk said he'd “consider the heat-shield problem solved,” long the biggest hurdle to full reuse. •    The flight also deployed 20 next-gen Starlink V3 satellites; the Super Heavy booster had engine trouble and was lost in the Gulf of Mexico. Stacked, Starship stands ~124 m. Flight 14 is targeted for late August — its first attempt at operational orbit with production Starlink. •    Sources: SpaceX / @elonmusk on X (7 Aug); Space.com (Mike Wall, 7 Aug); CNN (3 Aug). Landspace Zhuque-3, second landing attempt •    Landspace (private, Beijing, founded 2015) targets liftoff ~7:45 p.m. EDT Mon 10 Aug (23:45 UTC / ≈9:45 a.m. AEST Tue 11 Aug) from Jiuquan, aiming for a propulsive first-stage recovery on legs (Falcon 9-style), landing downrange in Gansu. •    The methalox, stainless-steel Zhuque-3 (~66 m) is broadly a Falcon 9 rival. Its Dec 2025 maiden flight reached orbit but the first stage failed its landing burn and crashed. •    Accuracy note: this is China's fourth orbital-class recovery attempt. A Long March 10B already landed via net-capture on 10 July (China became the 2nd nation to land an orbital booster) — so tonight would make Landspace the first Chinese company to attempt a propulsive/landing-legs recovery, not “China's first.” •    Sources: Space.com (7 Aug); Yahoo/Space (7 Aug); launch trackers (NOTAM-based). Uranus's “breathing” bow shock •    New multifluid-MHD modelling shows Uranus's bow shock expands and contracts over a single ~17-hour Uranian day — driven by the planet's own extreme rotation and tilted, offset magnetic field, not by changes in the solar wind. •    The model is constrained by Voyager 2's 1986 flyby — still the only direct measurements ever taken inside the Uranian system (a nice callback to E159's Voyager 2 “Big Bang” lead). •    Implications for future ice-giant missions and for the many ice-giant exoplanets now being found. Cao et al., AGU Advances; surfaced via an Eos research spotlight this week. (Framed as newly-spotlighted rather than newly-published.) •    Sources: AGU Advances (Cao et al.); Eos research spotlight; phys.org (7 Aug). Total solar eclipse — 12 August 2026 •    The only total solar eclipse of 2026. Unusual over-the-pole path: Arctic Siberia → eastern Greenland → western Iceland → northern Spain (clipping NE Portugal) → the Balearics at sunset. •    Greatest eclipse ≈17:46 UTC; max totality 2 min 18 s just off Iceland's west coast, with the Sun only ~26° high. Iceland's first total eclipse since 1954 (Reykjavik's first in 593 years); Spain's first since 1905. •    North America sees a partial across the northern tier (Alaska to North Carolina) and most of Canada — deepest in the far north, a shallow bite (

This weekend on Astronomy Daily: the Inouye Solar Telescope reveals whirlpools on the Sun's surface for the first time, a Falcon 9 upper stage carves a fresh crater on the Moon, Voyager 2 pulls off a daring "Big Bang" power swap 21 billion kilometres away, and the LINK spacecraft wins its de-spin battle in the race to save NASA's Swift. Plus your both-hemispheres guide to the 12 August total solar eclipse and the moonless Perseid peak. In this episode ●        (01:20) LEAD — First-ever sighting of Kelvin–Helmholtz vortices on the Sun (Nature, 5 Aug; Inouye Solar Telescope / NSO / MPS) ●        (09:00) Falcon 9 upper stage 2025-010D impacts the Moon near Einstein Crater ●        (12:15) Voyager 2's "Big Bang" power swap buys another year of interstellar science ●        (15:30) LINK spins down from 9°/s to 1.47°/s — software update next in the Swift rescue ●        (18:45) Skywatch: 12 Aug total solar eclipse + Perseid peak — both hemispheres, with eye-safety Links & sources ●        Nature: Kuridze et al., "Ubiquitous Kelvin–Helmholtz instabilities driving plasma mixing on the Sun" (5 Aug 2026) ●        NSO / NSF and Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research press releases (5 Aug 2026) ●        NASA/JPL Voyager blog: "NASA Engineers Help Prolong Voyager 2's Science Mission" (4 Aug 2026) ●        NASA Science Swift blog: LINK stabilisation update; ESA & NASA eclipse pages for 12 Aug 2026Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily · S05E161 · “The Colour of Empty Space” · Friday 7 August 2026. Hosts: Anna & Avery. astronomydaily.io · @AstroDailyPod ① Vacuum birefringence: reading a magnetar ●        NASA's IXPE, with NICER and the Parkes/Murriyang radio telescope (NSW), measured the polarised X-rays of magnetar 1E 1547.0−5408. ●        Result: soft X-ray polarisation ~65% at 2 keV, rising to nearly 80% at some rotation phases — the strongest signal yet of vacuum birefringence, a QED effect predicted by Heisenberg in 1936. ●        The team calls it the “most definitive signal to date,” not a confirmed detection; an April 2026 analysis disputes it under different geometry. Co-leads: Rachael Stewart; Hoa Dinh Thi (Rice); with Marcus Lower (Swinburne). ●        Source: Stewart et al., Nature, 5 Aug 2026 (DOI 10.1038/s41586-026-10859-z); NASA IXPE release. ② Gateway HALO hardware → Lunar Infrastructure Demos ●        NASA and Northrop Grumman are repurposing the HALO module's power, data and avionics into three surface missions — LID-1, LID-2, LID-3. ●        Goal: “survive-the-night” power and thermal tech for the lunar South Pole, where night lasts ~14 Earth days and temperatures plunge below −200 °C. ●        Part of a wider Moon-base update in which four commercial landers reached final qualification testing at once. ●        Source: NASA & Northrop Grumman releases, 4 Aug 2026; Spaceflight Now. ③ New Glenn: the cause is a valve ●        Blue Origin traced the 28 May New Glenn booster explosion (during a pad hot-fire at Cape Canaveral) to the main oxygen valve on one of the seven BE-4 engines. ●        Fix: small, retrofittable valve modifications; return to flight still targeted by year's end. The BE-4 also powers ULA's Vulcan. ●        Source: Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp, 5 Aug 2026; SpaceNews. ④ LINK's de-spin: the fight to save Swift ●        Katalyst Space's LINK robot — tasked with boosting NASA's ageing Swift observatory before re-entry — hit a multi-axis tumble when two of three reaction wheels failed. ●        Using gimballed electric-propulsion thrusters, the team cut the spin from ~9°/s to ~1.47°/s on under 100 g of propellant. A flight-software update is next; rendezvous slips to ~end of August. ●        Source: NASA Swift blog, 6 Aug 2026; Katalyst mission updates. ⑤ Skywatch: eclipse + Perseids ●        12 Aug total solar eclipse — totality across Greenland, Iceland, northern Spain; afternoon partial for eastern Canada and the NE United States (>10% only NE of the NYC–Rochester line; ~50% in Atlantic Canada). NASA live from 1:15 pm EDT. ●        Perseid peak the night of 12–13 Aug under a New Moon — up to ~100/hr from dark rural sites. ●        Southern Hemisphere: eclipse not visible; Perseids barely clear the horizon. Sydney: pre-dawn planet line-up + Venus + winter Milky Way. ●        EYE SAFETY: use only ISO 12312-2 eclipse glasses for every partial phase; never combine them with a camera, telescope or binoculars.  Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily · S05E160 · 6 August 2026. In this episode: a Falcon 9 upper stage confirmed to have struck the Moon; a live ISS spacewalk; supernova SN 2026gzf caught at first light; SpaceX Crew-13 previewed; and a both-hemispheres guide to the 12 August eclipse and Perseids. FALCON 9 LUNAR IMPACT (LEAD) ●        Spent upper stage 2025-010D struck near Einstein Crater (~19.4°N, 93.3°W) at ~06:35 UTC, 5 Aug 2026 — matching Bill Gray / Project Pluto predictions. ●        ESO's Very Large Telescope (Paranal) detected sodium and lithium in the impact plume for ~5–10 minutes — sodium from lunar soil, lithium likely from the rocket. ●        NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter holds a pre-impact baseline and will image the fresh crater, giving a rare before-and-after dataset to validate hollow-body impact models for future landers. ●        Origin: Falcon 9 launched 15 Jan 2025 with Firefly Blue Ghost 1 and ispace Resilience; the stage was left adrift and returned unplanned via solar activity and gravity. ●        Sources: NASA; ESO / VLT; CNN; Project Pluto (projectpluto.com); Fernando et al., arXiv:2607.14625. ISS SPACEWALK — U.S. EVA 96 ●        NASA's Jessica Meir (Expedition 75 commander) and Anil Menon; ~6.5 h EVA beginning ~08:35 EDT, 6 Aug; live on NASA+. ●        Task: reconfigure the 3B power channel to accept a seventh roll-out solar array later in 2026 — part of station upkeep ahead of the planned 2030 deorbit. ●        Menon's first spacewalk; two further EVAs scheduled 13 and 25 Aug. ●        Sources: NASA / NASA+ ; NASA ISS blog. SUPERNOVA SN 2026GZF ●        X-ray “shock breakout” (EP260321a) detected by China's Einstein Probe on 21 Mar 2026 from a galaxy ~500 million light-years away; follow-up revealed a broad-lined Type Ic supernova. ●        Unusually, no gamma-ray burst and no lasting relativistic jet — and the faintest shock breakout yet linked to this class; a possible missing link between ordinary and GRB-producing supernovae. ●        Follow-up used NSF NOIRLab facilities including DECam and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Two teams: O'Connor et al. (CMU) and Rastinejad et al. (UMD), in ApJL. ●        Sources: NSF NOIRLab; Carnegie Mellon University; The Astrophysical Journal Letters. SPACEX CREW-13 ●        Targeting NET 12 Sep 2026 aboard Crew Dragon Grace from SLC-40, Cape Canaveral. ●        Crew: Jessica Watkins (NASA, cmdr — first NASA astronaut to fly Dragon twice), Luke Delaney (NASA, pilot), Joshua Kutryk (CSA), Sergey Teteryatnikov (Roscosmos). 180-day stay; moved up from November. ●        Sources: NASA; SpaceX; Houston Public Media. SKYWATCH — 12 AUGUST & BEYOND ●        Total solar eclipse 12 Aug: totality across E Greenland, W Iceland, N Spain and NE Portugal (max 2m18s). Partial across northern US (Alaska–N Carolina), most of Canada, much of Europe and NW Africa. NASA livestream from 1:15 pm EDT. ●        US partial highlights: Presque Isle ME ~29% (contiguous-US max); NYC ~9% from ~1:07 pm EDT; Boston ~16%; Toronto ~8%; Montreal ~18%; St John's ~53%. ●        Perseids peak 12–13 Aug under a new Moon (northern-favoured, up to ~100/hr from dark northern sites). ●        Southern Hemisphere: pre-dawn planet parade (Saturn best, near opposition; Mars, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune), brilliant Venus in the evening west, and the winter Milky Way high overhead. ●        Look-ahead: deep partial lunar eclipse 28 Aug (96% umbral), favouring the Americas. ●        SAFETY: use only ISO 12312-2 certified eclipse glasses / solar filters during any partial phase. ●        Sources: NASA; ESA; Sky & Telescope; BBC Sky at Night; EarthSky; timeanddate.com; The Planetary Society.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily S05E159 — Wednesday, 5 August 2026. In this episode: a power-saving “Big Bang” keeps Voyager 2 doing science, direct-to-phone satellites reach orbit, Curiosity finds a vast honeycomb field on its 14th Martian anniversary, and NASA's Aspera prepares to hunt the universe's missing gas. ① Voyager 2's “Big Bang” power save •   JPL engineers freed up power by simultaneously switching off certain devices and substituting lower-power alternatives, while keeping the spacecraft warm enough to operate. •   The Voyagers run on radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) and lose ~4 watts per year as their plutonium decays; after nearly 50 years, power margins are razor-thin. •   The move keeps three instruments — magnetometer, plasma wave subsystem and cosmic ray subsystem — running at least a year longer; the same swap is planned for Voyager 1. •   Voyager 2 crossed the heliopause in Nov 2018 and is now >13 billion miles (21 billion km) from Earth; its southerly path means it is commanded via the Canberra Deep Space Network dish. Source: NASA/JPL Voyager blog, 4 Aug 2026 · science.nasa.gov/blogs/voyager ② AST SpaceMobile BlueBird 11–13 •   Three next-generation direct-to-smartphone satellites launched on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral (liftoff targeted 3:42 a.m. EDT, 5 Aug; backup 5:10 a.m.). •   Their phased-array antennas span ~2,400 sq ft — the largest commercial arrays ever deployed in low Earth orbit — and connect to standard, unmodified phones. •   They deliver nearly double the peak download speed of the first-generation BlueBirds (which hit ~98.9 Mbps to a phone); the company targets beta service later in 2026. Source: AST SpaceMobile / Space.com, Aug 2026 · confirm deployment before publish ③ Curiosity's “sea of polygons” + 14 years •   Curiosity found its largest-ever field of honeycomb-like polygonal fractures (each ~4–8 cm across) in a valley nicknamed “Valle Grande” on Mount Sharp. •   The 360° panorama was captured on 19–20 June from 340 images; the polygons wrap around a ~6 m butte nicknamed “Miraflores.” •   Such patterns point to ancient water — drying mud, wet–dry cycles, or compaction — consistent with lakes and streams once present on Mount Sharp's foothills. •   Today, 5 August, is Curiosity's 14th landing anniversary (landed 5 Aug 2012). Source: NASA/JPL, announced ~29 Jul 2026 · jpl.nasa.gov ④ NASA's Aspera (mission preview) •   Aspera is a shoebox-sized NASA Pioneers smallsat launching NET 15 Aug on a Rocket Lab Electron from Mahia, New Zealand. •   It is the first NASA astrophysics mission to map the circumgalactic medium — hot gas around galaxies — in ultraviolet light, tracing the “missing baryons.” •   Led by Carlos Vargas at the University of Arizona, one of the youngest principal investigators in NASA history. Source: NASA Pioneers / Rocket Lab, 2026 · rocketlabcorp.com ⑤ Skywatch •   Tonight (5 Aug): Last Quarter Moon; Mars forms a triangle with Elnath and cluster M35 (binoculars help). •   12 Aug: total solar eclipse (Arctic–Greenland–Iceland–northern Spain; partial for parts of the US) — not visible from Australia; use ISO 12312-2 eclipse glasses. •   12–13 Aug: Perseid peak under a New Moon (NH-favoured); plus a six-planet pre-dawn alignment. •   SH targets: eta-Eridanids peak 7 Aug; Sagittarius star fields; deep partial lunar eclipse 27–28 Aug (Americas + parts of Europe/Africa). Source: NASA Skywatching “What's Up” Aug 2026; Sky & Telescope; timeanddate.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

S05E158 — “The Crater Makers” · Tuesday 4 August 2026. Four stories on cosmic impacts — and a new map of the X-ray sky — plus a both-hemispheres skywatch. ① A dead Falcon 9 is about to crater the Moon ●        A spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage (catalogued 2025-010D) is predicted to strike the Moon near Einstein Crater on 5 Aug 2026 at ~06:35 UTC — the second documented uncontrolled rocket impact on the Moon. ●        The stage launched Firefly's Blue Ghost and ispace's Resilience landers in Jan 2025, then was stranded in a chaotic Earth orbit for ~18 months. Impact speed ~2.4 km/s (~5,400 mph); expected crater ~17–27 m across. ●        Prediction by Bill Gray (Project Pluto). NASA's LRO can image the site before and after; a ~two-dozen-author campaign is coordinating observers to chase the ejecta plume. ●        Governance angle: no international framework governs cislunar debris — a growing hazard as lunar traffic increases (callback to E154's distant-retrograde-orbit debris study). Sources: Space.com / Forbes / Reuters (Cris Tolomia) — impact preview, 31 Jul–3 Aug 2026  ·  Project Pluto (Bill Gray) — 2025-010D impact page  ·  ZME Science — impact timing, 3 Aug 2026 ② Neptune's inner moons: shrapnel of a shattered world ●        JWST NIRSpec spectroscopy of Neptune's inner moons Larissa, Galatea and Proteus (Caltech; lead author Ryleigh Davis, Mike Brown's group) detected magnesium-rich phyllosilicates — clay minerals that require liquid water and had never been seen beyond Jupiter. ●        The clays imply the material came from much larger, water-bearing worlds — evidence that Neptune's original regular moon system was destroyed when Triton (a captured Kuiper Belt object) arrived. ●        Proteus, the largest of the three, lacks the clays — possibly re-heated and reprocessed after re-forming, hiding its history. Sources: Davis et al., Science Advances, 29 July 2026  ·  Caltech / phys.org press coverage, 29 Jul–3 Aug 2026  ·  Space.com (Charles Q. Choi), 3 Aug 2026 ③ “Charbroiled within hours”: impact dust and the dinosaurs ●        New modelling (Brandon Johnson et al., Purdue) argues ultrafine impact dust from Chicxulub acted as an insulating blanket, raising surface heating ~3.5× above the spherule-only estimate — enough to ignite global wildfires and kill exposed animals within hours. ●        The same dust then blocked sunlight for years — so the model adds a ferocious opening act to the established “impact winter,” rather than replacing it. Sheltering underground or underwater aided survival. ●        Caveat: the strongest physical wildfire evidence is so far confined to North America (per UCL's Alfio Chiarenza, not involved in the study); a truly global fire record remains unconfirmed. Sources: Johnson, Johnson, Wakita & Robertson, JGR: Biogeosciences, 2026  ·  Popular Science / Space.com / ZME Science, 28 Jul–2 Aug 2026 ④ eROSITA DR2 — the X-ray sky doubles ●        The eROSITA telescope (SRG mission) released its second data set (DR2) on 31 July 2026: ~1.9 million pointlike and ~64,000 extended X-ray sources from the first three all-sky scans — nearly doubling the previously released eROSITA catalogue. ●        For scale: ROSAT catalogued ~130,000 sources in the 1990s and was the benchmark for 30 years. Lead author: Miriam Ramos-Ceja (MPE). ●        DR2 delivers the first direct census of cataclysmic-variable binaries sufficient to explain the decades-old Galactic Ridge X-ray Emission. It coincides with SDSS DR20 (Black Hole Mapper), enabling 3D mapping of active black holes. Sources: Ramos-Ceja et al. (eROSITA-DE), arXiv:2607.27772; DR2 release  ·  Max Planck Society press release, 29 July 2026  ·  phys.org, 31 Jul 2026 Skywatch — both hemispheres ●        Falcon 9 impact (5 Aug, ~06:35 UTC): not naked-eye; ejecta plume a long shot for advanced amateurs in the Americas near the western limb (~2:35 a.m. EDT). Sydney: Moon below horizon — watch for LRO after-images. ●        Comet 10P/Tempel 2: perihelion 2 Aug, closest to Earth 3 Aug (~0.41 AU); ~mag 8–9 near M30 in Capricornus. Best return of the century; Southern-Hemisphere-favoured; Northern viewers low on the southern horizon. Darkest window ~7–8 Aug. ●        This evening: Venus threads between Regulus (Leo) and Spica (Virgo) in the west — both hemispheres, no equipment. Mercury at its best morning showing (greatest western elongation 2 Aug), low in the pre-dawn east. ●        Diary — 12 Aug: total solar eclipse (Greenland/Iceland/Spain), moonless Perseid peak, six-planet alignment. Always use certified ISO 12312-2 eclipse glasses / solar filters except during totality.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily · S05E157 · “The Edge of Everything” · Monday 3 August 2026 In this episode •      The largest galaxy, measured at last. Ultra-deep imaging of IC 1101 in the Abell 2029 cluster has traced its outer edge for the first time: an edge radius of ~260 kpc, a diameter near 520 kpc (~1.7 million light-years), and ~3.4 trillion solar masses in stars — about 17× the width of the Milky Way. Faint outer structures aligned with cluster X-ray disturbances show it is still accreting. Source: Marrero-de la Rosa et al., “How large can galaxies be? Ultra-deep imaging of IC 1101”, accepted A&A (arXiv:2607.15340, 16 Jul 2026); phys.org, 31 Jul 2026; The Debrief, 1 Aug 2026. •      Hayabusa2's record asteroid flyby. JAXA confirmed (press conference 30 Jul) that its Hayabusa2 probe passed just 400 m from the surface of near-Earth asteroid Torifune on 5 July — 744 m from centre at >18,000 km/h — the closest asteroid flyby by any mission, plus the first-ever laser ranging of an asteroid during a flyby. Torifune proved to be a contact binary. Source: JAXA press conference, 30 Jul 2026; phys.org / Japan Today (AFP), 31 Jul 2026; autoevolution, 1 Aug 2026. •      UK's first orbital launch on hold. Rocket Factory Augsburg de-stacked its RFA One at SaxaVord Spaceport (Unst, Shetland) after finding a vehicle issue during hot-fire test prep (announced 28 Jul). The certified launch window opens 10 August; a successful flight would be the first orbital launch from UK soil. Source: RFA statement (X), 28 Jul 2026; Space.com, 1 Aug 2026; Shetland Times, 28 Jul 2026. •      Andromeda is winding down. A new Hubble study mapping ~200 million stars across two-thirds of Andromeda's disk finds star formation has declined over ~500 million years (from ~1 to ~0.2 solar masses/year), with the steepest drop in the last 40 million years — possibly linked to an interaction with satellite galaxy M32. Source: Williams et al., The Astrophysical Journal, 27 Jul 2026; NASA/STScI release, 27 Jul 2026. Skywatch — both hemispheres •      Comet 10P/Tempel 2 — perihelion 2 Aug; closest approach to Earth tonight (3 Aug). Binoculars/small scope, dark skies. Best pre-dawn from the Southern Hemisphere; ~9:30–10:30 pm local for mid-northern latitudes before moonrise. •      Moon near Saturn tonight (3 Aug) — naked-eye pairing, both hemispheres, up into dawn. •      Mercury at greatest western elongation (2 Aug) — low eastern horizon ~1 hr before sunrise, toward Gemini; Mars higher. Better placed for northern observers. •      Diary (2 days out): Falcon 9 upper stage (2025-010D) lunar impact near Einstein Crater, 5 Aug ~06:35 UTC — ~2:35 am EDT / 11:35 pm PDT (4 Aug); North America best-timed on the dark limb. Southern Hemisphere: ~4:35 pm AEST (daylight) — await orbiter after-images. •      Looking ahead: 12 Aug total solar eclipse (Greenland/Iceland/Spain) + moonless Perseid peak + six-planet dawn alignment. View partial phases only through certified ISO 12312-2 filters. Links & follow •      Website, back catalogue, news feed & newsletter: astronomydaily.io •      Social: @AstroDailyPod  ·  Part of the Bitesz.com Podcast NetworkBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily S05E156 — Weekend Space & Astronomy News Wrap. Saturday, 1 August 2026. In this episode •    The first “self-driving” telescope — a SkAI deep-learning system (Northwestern / UChicago / Fermilab) schedules and re-plans observations in real time on the Dark Energy Camera at the Blanco 4-m, Cerro Tololo, Chile — matching human schedulers across two runs. •    Betelgeuse's companion imaged — ESO's VLT delivers the clearest view yet of likely “Betelgeuse B,” ending a century-long search (recap, E153). •    (44) Nysa — first known three-lobed (trilobate) asteroid, plus a ~1 km moon, from LBT + VLT high-contrast imaging (recap, E155). •    A black hole's 300,000-light-year reach — XRISM traces quasar-driven winds from H1821+643 reshaping an entire galaxy cluster (recap, E154). •    August skywatch — Comet 10P/Tempel 2 at perihelion (2 Aug); total solar eclipse crossing Greenland, Iceland, Spain & Portugal (12 Aug) paired with a moonless Perseid peak (12–13 Aug); a six-planet line-up through the month.   Sources •    SkAI / self-driving telescope: Northwestern University news release, 31 July 2026; phys.org, 31 July 2026 (Blanco 4-m / DECam / Cerro Tololo). •    Betelgeuse companion: ESO / VLT; Montargès et al., Astronomy & Astrophysics (covered in E153). •    (44) Nysa: Large Binocular Telescope (SHARK-VIS) + VLT high-contrast imaging; Lowell Observatory release (covered in E155). •    Black-hole feedback: XRISM observations of quasar H1821+643 (covered in E154). •    Skywatch: timeanddate.com and Space.com August 2026 sky guides; Royal Observatory Greenwich 2026 highlights (eclipse path and Perseid peak details).   astronomydaily.io · @AstroDailyPod · Part of the Bitesz.com Podcast NetworkBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

S05E155 · Friday 31 July 2026 · Astronomy Daily with Anna & Avery. Four stories and a both-hemispheres skywatch. Australian English. ① Asteroid (44) Nysa — the first three-lobed world, and its hidden moon ●        trilobate body — three lobes joined by two narrow necks; a candidate “first” of its kind. ●        A new ~1 km moon, S/2026 (44) 1, was found orbiting ≥170 km out — spotted using high-contrast imaging borrowed from exoplanet work, and confirmed moving across two observing runs. ●        The moon lets astronomers weigh Nysa (mass → density), which should help decide between a genuine contact-trinary and a single, deeply indented body. ●        Nysa is a bright, main-belt E-type (enstatite-rich) asteroid, ~75 km across, known since 1857. ●        Source: Lowell Observatory / University of Arizona press release, 29 Jul 2026; study “Unmasking (44) Nysa: Evidence for a Trilobate Structure” (Minker et al.). Coverage: Space.com, Gizmodo, 29–30 Jul 2026. ② Mapping Alien Continents — a NASA concept to image an exoplanet's surface ●        NASA's 2026 NIAC round funds 18 early-stage “visionary” concepts (~$175k each, 9 months). These are seed studies, not missions. ●        Paul Stankus (Brookhaven) proposes “Mapping Alien Continents”: resolve the surface of an Earth-like exoplanet — continents, oceans — in visible light. ●        Method: a novel “dynamic hierarchical nulling” interferometer to suppress starlight at 10¹⁰-to-1 contrast, then combine beams from two spacecraft ~100 km apart (optical VLBI-style imaging). ●        Source: NASA “2026 Innovative Technology Concepts” release and NIAC selections (posted 21 Jul; consolidated release ~29 Jul 2026); Universe Today feature, 30 Jul 2026. ③ Solar-storm watch — CMEs inbound, minor-storm and aurora potential ●        Two faint coronal mass ejections, plus coronal-hole solar wind, are set to give Earth glancing blows; forecasters flag possible G1 (minor) geomagnetic storms and auroras over the coming days. ●        G1 means little grid impact but aurora visible at somewhat lower latitudes than usual — see the skywatch for where to look, both hemispheres. ●        Source: NOAA SWPC (WSA-ENLIL model); EarthSky / The Sun Today, 30 Jul 2026. ④ ESCAPADE's family portrait of Earth and the Moon ●        NASA's twin Mars orbiters (“Blue” and “Gold,” built by Rocket Lab) imaged Earth and the Moon as thin crescents in visible and thermal-infrared light from a loiter orbit near Sun–Earth L2. ●        In infrared, Earth's night side glows with its own heat; the Moon's shadowed half is far colder — a calibration check before Mars. ●        ESCAPADE's science goal (arrival Sept 2027): measure how the solar wind strips Mars's unshielded atmosphere — the payoff of today's solar-wind thread. ●        Source: NASA (Goddard) image feature, ~25 Jul 2026 (images captured 3 Jul); NAU / phys.org; Universe Today, 29 Jul 2026. Skywatch — both hemispheres ●        Bright waning-gibbous Moon (post-Buck-Moon, 29 Jul) washes out faint targets. ●        Southern Delta Aquariids + Alpha Capricornids just past peak (SH-favoured; Moon-hampered). Perseids build to a near-moonless peak on the night of 12–13 Aug — prime for North America, low in the north for the SH. ●        12 Aug total solar eclipse: totality across Greenland / Iceland / Spain; partial for parts of northern North America and Europe. ISO 12312-2 eye protection required for any partial phase. ●        Pre-dawn planets low in the east (Sydney and North American framing). Aurora watch for high latitudes both hemispheres if the storms land. ●        Diary: a spent Falcon 9 upper stage (2025-010D) is predicted to hit the Moon near Einstein Crater on 5 Aug 2026, ~06:35 UTC (~2:34 a.m. ET). North America best-timed; telescope needed, Moon ~56% lit, target the limb dust plume. From Sydney the Moon is down at impact — rely on LRO after-images. Callback to E125/E147. Source: Fernando et al., arXiv 2607.14625.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily S05E154 — “The Reach of a Giant.” Thursday, 30 July 2026. Hosted by Anna and Avery. In this episode •    A supermassive black hole caught heating and stirring an entire galaxy cluster — turbulence reaching ~300,000 light-years, about 100× more energetic than expected (XRISM / quasar H1821+643). •    Why some “clean” white dwarfs are secretly feasting: magnetic fields funnel shredded planetary debris to the poles, aurora-style, hiding the meal. •    NASA's Psyche used its Mars flyby as a dress rehearsal — spotting Phobos and Deimos from afar to practise for its 2029 moonlet hunt at asteroid 16 Psyche. •    A new study on keeping the road to the Moon clear: modelling how debris disperses in Distant Retrograde Orbits as cislunar traffic climbs. •    Skywatch: tonight's double meteor shower — the Southern Delta Aquariids and Alpha Capricornids — with both-hemispheres viewing details and local times. Sources •    Yamada, S. et al., “Vigorous turbulence driven by quasar-mode feedback in a cluster core,” Nature Astronomy, 28 July 2026 (DOI 10.1038/s41550-026-02939-x; arXiv 2607.24911). Tohoku University release. •    “White Dwarfs Eat More Planetary Debris Than Thought, But Magnetic Fields Hide It,” Universe Today, 29 July 2026 (Pham et al., arXiv 2607.20747). •    “NASA's Psyche Spacecraft Aces Mars Flyby,” NASA JPL / ScienceDaily, 28 July 2026. •    “The Risks of Debris Between the Earth and the Moon for Future Exploration,” Universe Today, 29 July 2026 (Chinese Academy of Sciences DRO study). •    Double meteor shower peak: American Meteor Society; NASA; Scientific American; CNN; National Geographic, 28–30 July 2026. Correction / caveat desk •    Skywatch numbers assume the ~98% waning Buck Moon (full 29 Jul). Faint Delta Aquariids will be washed out; the Alpha Capricornid fireballs are the reliable catch tonight.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily · S05E153 · Wednesday 29 July 2026. Four stories from the frontier of space and astronomy, plus a both-hemispheres look at the sky — and news of our brand-new website. In this episode •  Betelgeuse is not alone. ESO's VLT/SPHERE has captured the clearest direct image yet of Betelgeuse B, the long-suspected companion to the famous red supergiant — ending a roughly century-long search. Published 28 July 2026 in Astronomy & Astrophysics (Montargès, Boccaletti et al.). The companion is more massive than predicted (≈2–3 solar masses), likely paces Betelgeuse's ~6-year brightness cycle, and may eventually spiral into the supergiant. •  Swift catches a wandering black hole. TDE 2025abcr — the most off-centre tidal disruption event ever seen — reveals a ~1-million-solar-mass “wandering” black hole ~30,000 light-years from its galaxy's core, ~750 million light-years away. First flagged by the Zwicky Transient Facility (Nov 2025) and pinned down with NASA's Swift; an AI sifted ~500,000 nightly flashes to find it. Published 27 July 2026 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters (Stein et al.; Carney et al.). •  Roman is fuelled for launch. NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope completed fuelling on 25 July (≈290 gallons of hydrazine) and holds its mission-preview briefing today — one month from a 30 August launch, roughly eight months ahead of schedule. Roman will survey ~50× as much sky as Hubble in five years, probe dark energy, and is expected to find 100,000+ exoplanets via microlensing. •  Swift's rescue mission is in trouble. Katalyst's LINK servicing spacecraft — launched 3 July to boost the decaying Swift observatory — began spinning over the weekend; two of three reaction wheels are non-operable, with some cold-gas thruster degradation. LINK remains powered and in contact; the team is using its electric (xenon) thrusters to arrest the spin before deciding, with NASA, whether to proceed. Developing story — details accurate as of recording. •  Skywatch. Full Buck Moon tonight (29 July); Jupiter at solar conjunction; Southern Delta Aquariids favour the Southern Hemisphere but are washed out by the Moon this year; Alpha Capricornid fireballs are the pick for both hemispheres; the Perseids peak on the moonless night of 12–13 August alongside a total solar eclipse (Greenland/Iceland/Spain; partial for parts of Europe and North America). Never view the partial phases without ISO 12312-2 eclipse glasses. Sources •  ESO release eso2611 & Astronomy & Astrophysics, Montargès, Boccaletti et al., “VLT/SPHERE imaging of the candidate companion of Betelgeuse” (28 Jul 2026). •  NASA Swift / The Astrophysical Journal Letters — TDE 2025abcr wandering-black-hole discovery (27 Jul 2026); UNC-Chapel Hill release. •  NASA — Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope fuelling & launch-preview updates (25–29 Jul 2026). •  NASA Swift blog — “Commissioning Update for Spacecraft to Boost NASA's Swift” (28 Jul 2026); Katalyst Space Technologies. •  EarthSky, NASA, American Meteor Society, timeanddate — meteor showers, Buck Moon, Jupiter conjunction, 12 Aug eclipse. New — astronomydaily.io Our new website is live: full back catalogue, a continuously-updating space-news feed, listener reviews (read and leave your own), and a daily newsletter sign-up. Got a question or a story tip? Drop us a note — and tell us what you think of the new site.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily S05E152 — “Reading the Heat” · Tuesday 28 July 2026. Hosts Anna & Avery. NASA's Juno spacecraft has taken the first-ever temperature reading beneath the surface of Io, Jupiter's volcanic moon — and the technique behind it could reshape how we study icy ocean moons and even volcanoes on Earth. We also look at why JWST's “Little Red Dots” might be globular clusters being born, the first SETI search built from archived ALMA data (and its six-million-star surprise), and a live burst of space weather feeding into a meteor-filled — if Moon-washed — skywatch. In this episode ●        Juno reads Io's subsurface temperature for the first time — >20°C rise within a few metres, heat flow up to ~30× Earth's average, and a remarkably smooth, low-density surface. ●        Why the method matters: a multi-depth microwave thermometer that works from orbit — promising for Europa, Enceladus, and terrestrial volcanology. ●        JWST's “Little Red Dots” may be globular clusters in formation, powered by a short-lived supermassive star — linking two long-standing mysteries. ●        The first SETI survey of archived ALMA data opens the millimetre band — and reveals “stellar bycatch” of 6.1 million background stars. ●        Live space weather: an M3.2 flare from region AR4494 and a glancing CME, with G1–G2 storms and possible aurorae, north and south. ●        Skywatch: meteor week under the full Buck Moon (29 July), the Alpha Capricornid fireball tip, evening Venus, pre-dawn Saturn/Mars/Mercury — and Jupiter vanishing behind the Sun. Sources ●        NASA/JPL — “NASA's Juno Takes Temperature of Jupiter's Fiery Moon Io” (22 July 2026); Brown et al., J. Geophys. Res.: Planets, DOI 10.1029/2025JE009622. ●        Chisholm et al., “Little Red Dots as Globular Clusters in Formation,” Astrophysical Journal Letters (press cycle 20 July 2026; UT Austin / McDonald Observatory). ●        L. Mason (University of Manchester), first ALMA-archive SETI survey, RAS National Astronomy Meeting 2026. ●        Space-weather status: EarthSky Sun news / NOAA SWPC (M3.2 flare AR4494, 26 July; 24 July CME; G1–G2 outlook, 27–28 July). ●        Skywatch data: EarthSky, Star Walk, American Meteor Society, NASA — Southern Delta Aquariids (peak ~30 July), Alpha Capricornids (30–31 July), full Buck Moon 29 July, Jupiter solar conjunction 29 July.  Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily · S05E151 · “The Faint Little World Has Its Day” · Monday 27 July 2026 · Hosts Anna & Avery. Pluto has its brightest night of the year — so we go deep on the world nobody can agree how to label. Then a crew comes home after 241 days, the galaxy's most common planet turns out to maybe hide oceans of molten rock, and the first black hole ever photographed gets a sharper, two-colour read. In this episode LEAD — PLUTO AT OPPOSITION •    Tonight Pluto sits opposite the Sun in Capricornus, near its closest point to Earth (~34.5 AU) and at its brightest for the year — yet still only magnitude ~15. •    The full arc: Percival Lowell's “Planet X,” Clyde Tombaugh's 1930 discovery by blink comparator, and the name suggested by 11-year-old Venetia Burney. •    The 2006 IAU reclassification to “dwarf planet” (the “clearing the neighbourhood” rule) — and the still-live debate between dynamical and geophysical definitions of a planet. •    What New Horizons found in 2015: the nitrogen-ice plain of Sputnik Planitia, the famous “heart,” water-ice mountains, a hazy atmosphere, and a possible subsurface ocean. STORY 2 — HOME AFTER 241 DAYS •    Soyuz MS-28 lands in Kazakhstan with NASA's Chris Williams and cosmonauts Kud-Sverchkov and Mikaev; ~3,856 orbits, 102M+ miles; Expedition 74→75 handover to Jessica Meir. STORY 3 — SUB-NEPTUNES •    New ASU modelling: deep clouds of vaporised rock and salt can act as a thermal blanket, potentially sustaining a hidden magma ocean and reshaping how we read JWST spectra. STORY 4 — M87 IN TWO COLOURS •    A Shanghai Astronomical Observatory-led team builds the first spatially-resolved dual-frequency spectral map of M87* (1.3 mm + 3.5 mm, EHT + GMVA), linking the famous ring to the real physics of plasma at the event horizon. SKYWATCH — BOTH HEMISPHERES •    South: Southern Delta Aquariids peaking (ZHR ~25) + Comet 10P/Tempel improving into August. North: Mu Cephei, Herschel's Garnet Star, high in Cepheus. Both: Pluto at opposition, Saturn after midnight in Pisces. Caveat: a ~95% Moon washes out faint targets this week. Sources •    NASA — “Astronaut Chris Williams, Crewmates Return from Space Station.” •    ASU News / The Astrophysical Journal Letters — Mukherjee et al., clouds and the interiors of sub-Neptunes. •    The Astrophysical Journal Letters — Zhao et al., “Spatially Resolved Spectral Properties of M87* on Event Horizon Scales” (DOI 10.3847/2041-8213/ae84ca). •    Explore Scientific / Star Walk / astronomy.com — July 2026 observing notes (Pluto opposition, Southern Delta Aquariids, Comet 10P/Tempel, Mu Cephei).Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily · S05E150 · “Lucky Thirteen” · Saturday 25 July 2026. Your Weekend Wrap: Starship Flight 13 finally flies and floats, the strongest exomoon candidate yet, a robotic satellite-servicer on its way to GEO, and what the Moon's far side reveals about Earth — plus a both-hemispheres skywatch. In this episode Chapter Segment 00:00 Cold open & headlines 01:30 LEAD: Starship Flight 13 flies — softest splashdown yet, first real Starlink V3 deploy 09:00 Exo-satellite at CD-35 2722 — strongest exomoon candidate yet (Nature) 11:45 Northrop Grumman MRV-MEP — a mechanic for the geostationary belt 14:30 Chang'e-6 — the Moon's far side records Earth's magnetosphere (Nature Geoscience) 17:15 Skywatch — Buck Moon, Delta Aquariids, the 12 Aug Perseids + total solar eclipse 20:45 Sign-off Sources & further reading STARSHIP FLIGHT 13 •     Space.com — Starship's “softest splashdown” yet after Flight 13 — https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/spacexs-starship-megarocket-makes-the-softest-splashdown-ever-after-launching-next-gen-starlink-satellites-in-flight-13-test-video •     UPI — Starship successful flight test, splashes down in Indian Ocean — https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2026/07/24/Starship-has-successful-flight-test-splash-down-in-Indian-Ocean/3791784840519/ •     CNN — Starship hits key milestones in “Lucky 13” test flight — https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/24/science/live-news/spacex-starship-flight-13-launch EXO-SATELLITE CD-35 2722 •     ESO — New “exomoon” detection challenges cosmic labels — https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2610/ •     Nature (paper) — Planetary-mass exosatellite around a substellar companion — https://www.nature.com/ •     Phys.org — Jupiter-mass “exomoon” orbiting a brown dwarf — https://phys.org/news/2026-07-jupiter-mass-exomoon-orbiting-brown.html MRV-MEP SATELLITE SERVICING •     Northrop Grumman — MRV launches, ushering in a new era of in-space servicing — https://news.northropgrumman.com/launch/northrop-grummans-mission-robotic-vehicle-launches-ushering-in-a-new-era-of-in-space-servicing •     Spaceflight Now — Novel geosynchronous robotic servicing satellite launch — https://spaceflightnow.com/2026/07/21/live-coverage-spacex-to-launch-novel-geosynchronous-robotic-servicing-satellite-on-decade-long-mission/ CHANG'E-6 FAR-SIDE SOLAR WIND •     Nature Geoscience — Deeper solar wind penetration on the Moon's far side — https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-026-02042-w •     EurekAlert! / CAS — Chang'e-6 samples reveal how Earth slows the solar wind — https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1136535 SKYWATCH •     EarthSky — Delta Aquariid meteor shower 2026 — https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/everything-you-need-to-know-delta-aquarid-meteor-shower/ •     EarthSky — Visible planets & night-sky guide / 12 Aug total solar eclipse — https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/visible-planets-tonight-mars-jupiter-venus-saturn-mercury/ Astronomy Daily is part of the Bitesz.com Podcast Network. Follow @AstroDailyPod and find every episode at astronomydaily.io.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomers have confirmed the first moon-like object beyond our solar system — and immediately discovered our vocabulary cannot handle it. A Jupiter-mass world orbits a brown dwarf, which orbits a red dwarf, seventy light-years away. Is it a moon? A planet? Something we have not named yet? Also on today's show: the Milky Way's most powerful particle accelerator is confirmed in the direction of Altair, out-punching the Large Hadron Collider by a factor of a hundred. Chandra catches a black hole starving a galaxy it does not even live in. China flies the world's largest solid rocket from the open ocean for the first time. Starship Flight 13 gets another window. And the Moon meets the heart of the Scorpion. Chapters Time Chapter 00:00 Cold open — what is a moon, exactly? 00:35 Welcome and headlines 01:15 The first exo-satellite — CD-35 2722 05:55 The galaxy's most powerful particle accelerator 10:00 The Red Potato galaxy and its hostile neighbour 13:35 Gravity-1 launches from the open sea 16:55 Starship Flight 13 — when and where to watch 19:10 Skywatch — the Moon and Antares 22:30 Sign-off Story sources 1. First confirmed exo-satellite •      Hoy, K., Zurlo, A., Peña R, P.A. et al. “Planetary-mass exosatellite detected around the substellar companion of a star.” Nature 655, 865–869 (2026). •      European Southern Observatory release eso2610a, 23 July 2026. •      Observations from ESO's Very Large Telescope, Cerro Paranal, Chile. 2. Proton PeVatron confirmed •      Mizuno, T., Sano, H., Murase, T., Oka, T., Suzuki, H., Nakahara, N. “Hadronic Scenario for Galactic PeVatron LHAASO J1912+1014u Supported by Fermi-LAT Gamma-Ray Data and FUGIN CO Data.” The Astrophysical Journal, 16 July 2026. •      Hiroshima University news release; instruments: Fermi-LAT, Nobeyama 45 m / FUGIN survey, Chandra X-ray Observatory. 3. The Red Potato galaxy •      NASA / Chandra X-ray Observatory news release, July 2026. Wang, W., Cantalupo, S., Travascio, A. et al., University of Milano-Bicocca. •      Galaxy designation MQN01 J004131.9-493704, redshift approximately 3.25. Original JWST identification announced January 2026; the Chandra jet result is the new element. 4. Gravity-1 open-sea launch •      Orienspace Gravity-1 Y4, third flight. Liftoff 0254 UTC, 22 July 2026, from a launch service ship approximately 170 km east of Shanghai. •      Reporting via SpaceNews, CGTN and Space.com. Nine payloads including six Huantian constellation satellites. 5. Starship Flight 13 •      SpaceX; live coverage via Spaceflight Now and Space.com. Booster 20 / Ship 40, second flight of Starship V3. •      Launch window opens 24 July 2026 at 6:45 p.m. EDT (2245 UTC). Payload: 20 Starlink V3 satellites. 6. Skywatch •      Astronomy.com Sky This Week; timeanddate.com Moon guide; EarthSky visible planets guide. •      Moon 0.6° south of Antares, 6:00 p.m. EDT 24 July. Full Buck Moon 29 July, 14:36 UTC, in Capricornus. Astronomy Daily is part of the Bitesz.com Podcast Network. Find us at astronomydaily.io and at @AstroDailyPod.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily S05E148 — "Far Side" Thursday 23 July 2026 Starship gets a second shot at Flight 13 — with a schedule caveat worth knowing about. The first far-side lunar samples reveal that Earth has been quietly shielding the side of the Moon that faces us. Astronomers debate whether the lunar far side should be closed to industry. The Milky Way's only helium nova finally steps out from behind twenty-five years of dust. And the case that our entire galaxy once turned over. Plus a skywatch closer with a straightforward piece of advice about the Delta Aquariids: do not wait for the peak.In this episode Starship Flight 13 ●        Window opens 6:45pm EDT / 2245 GMT Thursday 23 July — 8:45am AEST and 10:45am NZST Friday 24 July. ●        Schedule is not locked: Starbase road and beach closure notices point to further Pad 2 testing. ●        The 16 July attempt aborted at T-0 when four of 33 Raptors missed start parameters; the limit is three. ●        Two Raptors were removed and replaced before this attempt. ●        First-ever Starship deployment of V3 Starlink satellites — 20 of them. ●        Super Heavy splashes down in the Gulf at ~7 minutes; Ship targets the Indian Ocean off Western Australia at ~65 minutes. No catch attempts. Chang'e-6 and the solar wind ●        Published in Nature Geoscience by a team at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Geology and Geophysics. ●        Based on 1,935 grams of regolith returned from the South Pole–Aitken basin on the lunar far side. ●        First direct laboratory comparison of solar wind implantation between the near and far sides. ●        Far-side soil records faster, deeper-penetrating particles; the neon isotope ratio sits below every near-side sample measured. ●        About a quarter of the solar wind exposure at the Chang'e-5 near-side site involved wind decelerated by Earth's magnetosphere. The far-side site shows none. ●        Opens the possibility of using lunar noble gases as a fossil record of Earth's magnetic field over deep time. The far side debate — NAM 2026 ●        Held Tuesday 21 July at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting, University of Birmingham. Convened by Prof Martin Ward. ●        For the motion: Prof Joe Silk (Johns Hopkins) and Dr Jonathan McDowell (Durham Space Research Centre). ●        Against: Dr Nikita Chiu (Durham) and Dr Manuel Salvoldi (aerospace engineer and educator). ●        For: the far side is the only radio-quiet site near Earth — critical for detecting the cosmic dark ages, and an exceptional platform for gravitational wave detection. ●        Against: commercial investment is what makes lunar exploration sustainable, and governance can let science and industry coexist. ●        Audience support for the motion rose from 68% to 76% across the debate. V445 Puppis ●        Presented at NAM 2026 by John Mills, University of Warwick. ●        The only confirmed helium nova in the Milky Way. Erupted in late 2000, then vanished behind its own dust for over twenty years. ●        Now confirmed as a white dwarf accreting from a rare stripped helium star — only a few thousand such stars are thought to exist in the entire galaxy. ●        Orbital period of 3.7 days, roughly double previous estimates. Mass transfer has resumed. ●        Unexplained high-speed "bullets" of possibly oxygen-rich gas travelling up to 20 million mph (~9,000 km/s) — never seen in any other nova. ●        Data from ESO's Very Large Telescope, Hubble, the Southern African Large Telescope and TESS. ●        Helium novae may be one pathway to Type Ia supernovae, the standard candles used to measure cosmic expansion. The Milky Way disc flip ●        Presented at NAM 2026 by Kirill Batrakov, Durham University. ●        Based on 25 Milky Way-like galaxies in the Auriga simulation suite, followed across roughly 11 billion years. ●        Galaxies with the most slowly rotating stellar haloes shared a major head-on merger and a disc reorientation greater than 90 degrees. ●        Our stellar halo rotates at only 10–20 km/s; the disc moves at around 220 km/s. ●        The Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus collision roughly 10 billion years ago is the candidate trigger. ●        Batrakov describes a disc flip as likely rather than confirmed, and is looking for independent signatures. ●        Separate 2026 work led by Ling Zhu, using 600,000+ giant stars from Gaia and LAMOST, found the outer dark matter halo oriented almost vertically to the stellar disc — consistent with the disc having tilted. Skywatch ●        Southern Delta Aquariids are active now, running into late August, with maximum around 30 July. ●        Full Moon on 29 July means peak night is close to 98% illuminated — the worst conditions of the run. ●        Best window: the pre-dawn mornings from now until roughly 27 July, after moonset. ●        Radiant near Skat in Aquarius. Use Fomalhaut and the Great Square of Pegasus to locate it. ●        Australia and New Zealand: radiant climbs near overhead. Best from around 2am to first light. ●        North America: radiant sits low in the south — fewer meteors, but a better chance of long-trailed earthgrazers. Same 2am-to-dawn window, local time. ●        Sunspot region AR4493 has grown rapidly to beta-gamma-delta complexity — the highest classification — and has already fired three M-class flares in a day. Worth watching aurora alerts. Sources ●        SpaceX / Space.com — Starship Flight 13 mission details and timing ●        Nature Geoscience — noble gas analysis of Chang'e-6 regolith (Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Geology and Geophysics) ●        Royal Astronomical Society — NAM 2026 far side governance debate ●        Royal Astronomical Society — NAM 2026, V445 Puppis (John Mills, University of Warwick) ●        Royal Astronomical Society — NAM 2026, Milky Way disc flip (Kirill Batrakov, Durham University) ●        EarthSky and the American Meteor Society — Delta Aquariid observing guidance ●        NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center / EarthSky Sun News — AR4493 activityBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily — S05E147: "Space Mechanic" Wednesday 22 July 2026 A spacecraft with robotic arms is on its way to geostationary orbit to keep other satellites alive. A discarded rocket stage is two weeks out from hitting the Moon, and twenty-three astronomers have just asked the world to watch. Plus the first binary star system where both stars exploded, the first complete magnetic map of a galaxy cluster, and the asteroid breakup that may have bombarded three worlds while Earth froze. In This Episode ●      The Space Mechanic Launches — Northrop Grumman's Mission Robotic Vehicle lifted off from Cape Canaveral on 21 July carrying three Mission Extension Pods. With two 3-metre robotic arms built by the US Naval Research Laboratory, it is designed to inspect, relocate, repair and refuel satellites in geostationary orbit. Each pod can give a 2,000 kg satellite up to eight more years of life. ●      UPDATE — The Rocket Aimed at the Moon — A new arXiv preprint signed by 23 astronomers calls for a coordinated observing campaign when Falcon 9 upper stage 2025-010D strikes the Moon near Einstein crater on 5 August. North America has the best seat: 2:34am EDT, with the paper naming observers in the Americas as the ideal group. Refined impact time, predicted crater size, and why the ejecta plume may be visible even if the flash is not. ●      Sibling Supernovae — Sixteen years of Fermi data reveal a faint supernova remnant hiding in the glare of the Jellyfish Nebula. The two may be the first known pair of remnants traced back to a single binary star system. ●      Mapping a Cluster's Magnetic Field — Using the deepest radio observations ever made with LOFAR, astronomers have reconstructed the magnetic field of galaxy cluster Abell 2255 from nucleus to outer edge for the first time. ●      The Eulalia Bombardment — A new Planetary Science Journal paper links the breakup of a main-belt asteroid to an impact shower that battered the Moon, Earth and Mars 800 million years ago — and may connect to a global freeze. ●      Skywatch, Both Hemispheres — Why this week beats peak night for the Delta Aquariids wherever you are, how to catch them from the southern US and Mediterranean, and what's coming on 12 August: a total solar eclipse across Iceland and Spain, a North American partial, and the best Perseid peak in years on a new Moon.Sources & Further Reading ●      Space.com — SpaceX launches satellite repair drone with 10-foot robotic arms to Earth orbit ●      NASASpaceflight.com — Falcon 9 to launch MRV-1 robotic servicing spacecraft for Northrop Grumman ●      Northrop Grumman SpaceLogistics — Mission Robotic Vehicle and Mission Extension Pod fact sheets ●      Scientific American — A SpaceX rocket is about to crash into the moon; scientists will be watching ●      Phys.org — When a SpaceX rocket crashes into the moon, scientists will be watching (arXiv preprint) ●      Project Pluto (Bill Gray) — Upper stage impacting the moon on 2026 August 5 ●      Stanford University — Researchers uncover evidence for sibling supernovas (Michailidis et al., Nature Communications) ●      Reuters — Scientists spot evidence of two huge companion stars that blew up ●      Space.com — Galaxy cluster's magnetic field reconstructed for 1st time with record-breaking astronomy map (Botteon et al., INAF, A&A) ●      Southwest Research Institute — SwRI-led research connects asteroid collision to impact showers 800 million years ago ●      The Planetary Science Journal — Bottke, Vokrouhlický, Dykhuis & Zellner, "An 800 Myr-old Impact Shower on the Terrestrial Planets from the Breakup of the Eulalia Parent Body" ●      EarthSky — Delta Aquariid meteor shower: all you need to know in 2026 ●      NASA Science — Total Solar Eclipse on August 12, 2026 (path, partial visibility and safety guidance) ●      BBC Sky at Night Magazine — August 12, 2026 solar eclipse: USA and Canada guide   Connect ●      Website: astronomydaily.io ●      Socials: @AstroDailyPod ●      Part of the Bitesz.com Podcast NetworkBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily · S05E146 · “Postcards from Mars” · Tuesday 21 July 2026 NASA's Psyche probe phones home from its Mars flyby — data and a spellbinding month-long time-lapse — as Europe's Plato planet-hunter clears its final test. From the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting: a CubeSat that could give us hours of solar-storm warning, and a new way to forecast the Sun's next active spell. Plus the first pieces of the giant ngVLA radio array, and a Southern Hemisphere meteor shower to catch this week.Story notes & sources 1 · Psyche phones home NASA's Psyche spacecraft (launched 2023; arriving metal asteroid 16 Psyche in 2029) used a 15 May Mars gravity assist to test its instruments. The neutron spectrometer detected the anticipated count-rate enhancement near closest approach; the gamma-ray/neutron spectrometer, magnetometer and imager all performed well. Data and a month-long Mars time-lapse were released this week. ●        NASA/JPL — “Psyche Mission Delivers Mars Flyby Data, Time-lapse Video” (17 Jul 2026) ●        Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — LLNL-built gamma-ray sensor's first planetary measurements (17 Jul 2026) 2 · Plato clears its final exam ESA's Plato — 26 cameras hunting Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars — passed electromagnetic compatibility testing in the Maxwell chamber at ESTEC, its last major qualification hurdle. It's bound for Sun-Earth L2 aboard an Ariane 6 (current target 2027). ●        ESA — “Plato's electronics ready for space” (20 Jul 2026) 3 · HENON space-weather CubeSat Presented at NAM 2026: HENON, a deep-space CubeSat that would sit ~15 million km upstream of Earth (10× farther than L1), potentially extending severe geomagnetic-storm warning from ~15 minutes to 2–3 hours. It carries the UK-built MAGIC magnetometer (Imperial College London) plus instruments from the Czech Republic and Finland, paving the way for a future European early-warning mission. ●        Royal Astronomical Society / NAM 2026 — “From 15 minutes to 3 hours” (20 Jul 2026) 4 · The Sun's “sleep” precursor Also at NAM 2026: a newly identified precursor in the solar cycle's declining phase that could help predict the next maximum's sunspot number. After the Sun's active phase “switches off,” storms weaken and track a 27-day (solar-rotation) rhythm — pointing to co-rotating fast-wind streams rather than coronal mass ejections. ●        Royal Astronomical Society / NAM 2026 — “How the Sun goes to ‘sleep'…” (20 Jul 2026) 5 · Building the ngVLA The US National Science Foundation, NSF NRAO and the US Naval Observatory are partnering on a pathfinder for the next-generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) — the ~266-antenna successor to the iconic VLA. The focus is very long baseline interferometry for ultra-sharp imaging and for maintaining the International Celestial Reference Frame. Construction/early operations are expected before the end of the decade. ●        NSF NRAO / US Naval Observatory — ngVLA pathfinder partnership (17 Jul 2026) 6 · Skywatch: Southern Delta Aquariids Active mid-July to late August, peaking 29–30 July, with a radiant near Skat (δ Aquarii) — high overhead for Southern Hemisphere observers. ~15–20 faint, graceful meteors/hour under dark skies; suspected parent comet 96P/Machholz. A near-full Buck Moon spoils the peak, so the moon-free pre-dawn hours this week are the best window. Bright, slow Alpha Capricornid fireballs join in toward month's end. ●        Scientific American / EarthSky / American Meteor Society — Delta Aquariids 2026 Astronomy Daily is part of the Bitesz.com Podcast Network. Find every episode and the full show notes at astronomydaily.io, and follow @AstroDailyPod. Clear skies.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily S05E145 — “Arrival” — Monday, 20 July 2026. On the 57th anniversary of Apollo 11, we cover a first-of-its-kind launch, a Mars flyby science haul, a four-billion-year-old Martian record, a habitable-zone world with a likely atmosphere, shrimp feeding in simulated microgravity, and the new science of listening to black holes ring. In This Episode (01:30) India goes private in orbit —  Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1 aces its debut “Mission Aagaman,” making India the third nation with a private orbital launch capability. Plus a Starship Flight 13 update (NET 23–24 July). (05:30) Psyche's Mars gift —  NASA/JPL releases the science haul from Psyche's 15 May Mars gravity assist, including the magnetometer's first measurement of another body. (08:30) Mars keeps the receipts —  Perseverance examines the “Broom Point member” on Jezero's rim — some of the oldest terrain any rover has studied, recording ~4 billion years of impacts. (11:30) A world holding its breath —  A Science paper detects escaping helium at LHS 1140b, pointing to a replenished, substantial atmosphere on a habitable-zone super-Earth. (A different planet from Friday's story!) (15:00) Space shrimp —  Okayama University of Science shows crustaceans can feed under simulated microgravity — a step toward closed-loop space food systems. (17:30) The bells of spacetime —  A major review shows black-hole “spectroscopy” — reading ringdown gravitational waves — is becoming a real test of Einstein, ahead of the Einstein Telescope, Cosmic Explorer and LISA. (20:30) Skywatch —  A coronal-hole solar wind stream brings a chance of minor aurora australis for far-southern latitudes around 21–22 July. Story Sources ●        Vikram-1 / Mission Aagaman — Space.com; Skyroot Aerospace; ESA/Manorama coverage (18 July 2026). ●        Psyche Mars flyby data — NASA/JPL release (17 July 2026). ●        Perseverance “Broom Point member” — Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, Imperial College London-led. ●        LHS 1140b helium escape — Science, Harvard-led (16 July 2026); Magellan Clay telescope. ●        Space shrimp — Microgravity Science and Technology; Okayama University of Science Space Aquaculture Project. ●        Black-hole spectroscopy — Classical and Quantum Gravity review (Birmingham / Johns Hopkins / Lisbon). ●        Skywatch — EarthSky Sun news; UK Met Office & Australian BOM space weather (19 July 2026). Astronomy Daily is part of the Bitesz.com Podcast Network. Web: astronomydaily.io — Social: @AstroDailyPodBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily — The Weekend Space and Astronomy News Wrap | Saturday 18 July 2026 | S05E144 Anna and Avery wrap the biggest week in space news this year: brand-new research warning that extreme solar storms may hit harder than our models assume, and the delightful news that South African rooibos tea seeds are headed for the International Space Station — plus the four stories that defined the week, from the first atmosphere ever found on a rocky habitable-zone world to Starship's dramatic T-0 abort and Monday's retry. Story Sources •       Solar storms underestimated — Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10757-4); phys.org; Space.com •       Rooibos in Space — South African Rooibos Council / MaxIQ Space / SANSA announcement; phys.org; News24 •       LHS 1140 b atmosphere — Science; Space.com (as covered S05E143) •       Starship Flight 13 — SpaceX / Space.com launch coverage (arc across S05E139–E143; retry NET 20 July) •       Omega Centauri black hole — Hubble/JWST astrometry study (as covered S05E141) •       Pluto landslides & Charon tectonics — New Horizons imagery studies (as covered S05E142) Visit astronomydaily.io for our full archive. Follow @AstroDailyPod. Astronomy Daily is part of the Bitesz.com Podcast Network.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily — S05E143 | Friday 17 July 2026 | "A World With Air" Anna and Avery bring you a genuine milestone: the first atmosphere ever detected on a rocky planet in the habitable zone of another star. Plus Starship's last-second launch abort, the New Jersey bedroom meteorite carrying life's ingredients, the earliest galaxy-building ever seen, metallic dunes on Mars, and a Moon–Venus meeting in tonight's sky. In this episode 01:45 — A world with air. Astronomers detect helium escaping from LHS 1140 b, a super-Earth 48 light-years away — the first confirmed atmosphere on a rocky, habitable-zone exoplanet. Published in Science. 07:00 — Starship Flight 13 aborts at T-0. Several Raptor engines failed to ignite at the moment of launch; two engines will be replaced, with a retry expected early next week. 10:15 — The Hillsborough meteorite. The rock that crashed through a New Jersey bedroom in July 2024 is a rare, ultra-pristine CM1/2 carbonaceous chondrite laced with amino acids and salts — evidence for the delivery of life's ingredients to early Earth. Published in Science Advances. 14:00 — Galaxies growing up fast. Durham University astronomers using JWST find the most distant nuclear disk ever seen — a star-forming core structure more than nine billion years back in time. Published in MNRAS. 17:00 — Metallic waves on Mars. ESA's Mars Express images the frost-tipped mega-dunes of Kaiser Crater. 19:00 — Southern skywatch. The crescent Moon meets Venus and Regulus tonight; dark-sky weekend for the Milky Way core; one month until the 12 August total solar eclipse. Sources LHS 1140 b atmosphere — Science (Cherubim et al.); coverage via Space.com, ScienceAlert, Harvard FAS. Starship Flight 13 abort — SpaceNews, Space.com, CNN live coverage. Hillsborough meteorite — Science Advances; SETI Institute release; coverage via Space.com, CNN, Popular Science, Smithsonian. Durham nuclear disk — Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society; Durham University release; Phys.org. Kaiser Crater dunes — ESA Mars Express image release, 15 July 2026. Astronomy Daily is part of the Bitesz.com Podcast Network. Visit astronomydaily.io for every episode, and find us on all platforms @AstroDailyPod.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Anna and Avery kick off with a decade-long game of cosmic hide-and-seek that has finally ended: Beta Pictoris d, the faintest exoplanet ever directly imaged from Earth, found lurking in more than ten years of archival images — and orbiting a star in the southern constellation Pictor. Then it's the completion of VLASS, the sharpest radio map of the whole sky ever made, arriving just as the Rubin Observatory's optical survey switches on. The James Webb Space Telescope has caught a supermassive black hole feeding itself in the Centaurus Cluster — the missing link in a decades-old mystery. A Pluto system double bill follows: the first landslides ever identified on Pluto, and evidence written in Charon's mountains that the big moon once spun more than ten times faster than it does today — both delivered by New Horizons data from 2015. Finally, SpaceX's latest FCC filing reveals Starlink satellites made over 355,000 collision-avoidance manoeuvres in the past year — nearly one dodge per satellite per week — and experts are warning about where the trend leads. Plus dark-sky Southern Hemisphere stargazing and a Starship Flight 13 launch reminder. Chapters •       00:00 — Intro & billboard •       01:30 — Beta Pictoris d: the faintest exoplanet ever imaged from Earth •       05:30 — VLASS complete: the sharpest radio map of the sky •       08:45 — JWST reveals how supermassive black holes feed •       12:15 — Pluto has landslides (Pluto double, part 1) •       15:00 — Charon's slowing spin (Pluto double, part 2) •       17:45 — Starlink's 355,000 collision dodges in a year •       20:45 — Southern Hemisphere skywatch + Starship Flight 13 reminder •       22:30 — Outro Story sources •       Beta Pictoris d: ESO release eso2609 (eso.org) · The Astrophysical Journal Letters · space.com · phys.org •       VLASS completion: NRAO release (public.nrao.edu/news/vlass-observations-complete) · phys.org •       JWST / NGC 4696: Université de Montréal · The Astrophysical Journal Letters · phys.org / EurekAlert •       Pluto landslides: Icarus (Discenza et al. 2026) · phys.org · Discover Magazine · Science News •       Charon despinning: Nature Communications (Chen et al. 2026, DOI 10.1038/s41467-026-75069-7) · phys.org · Gizmodo •       Starlink manoeuvres: SpaceX semiannual FCC constellation status report, via space.com Boilerplate Astronomy Daily is part of the Bitesz.com Podcast Network. Show notes, links and the full back catalogue at astronomydaily.io. Follow @AstroDailyPod on X, Instagram, TikTok and Tumblr. New episodes every day.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

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. Menon and wife Anna Menon (Polaris Dawn) become a two-astronaut household; NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman attended in person. •       Omega Centauri's first stellar-mass black hole — oMEGACat BH-2, found via astrometry in 20+ years of Hubble data plus Webb observations (ApJL, July 13). Lower-than-expected mass; its companion star's 94-year orbit makes it the longest-period black hole binary known. The cluster is naked-eye visible in southern winter skies right now. •       First medical X-rays in space — RSNA publishes results from the Fram2 Crew Dragon mission: crew with 4 hours' training produced diagnostic-quality X-rays in orbit, opening the door to space radiology and non-destructive hardware testing on Moon and Mars missions. •       Four hidden white dwarfs — Warwick/Colorado Boulder team unmasks four white dwarfs within 65 light-years using Hubble near-UV spectroscopy (MNRAS). G 203-47, ~25 light-years away, is now the ninth-closest known white dwarf and closes a 27-year-old wobble mystery. •       Skywatch — New Moon (July 14) dark skies, Milky Way core season for the Southern Hemisphere, Comet 10P/Tempel 2 at magnitude 7–8 brightening toward early-August perihelion, and Mars near Aldebaran pre-dawn. Resources & further reading •       Starship Flight 13: spacenews.com | space.com Starship live blog •       Soyuz MS-29: nasa.gov ISS blog | nasaspaceflight.com •       Omega Centauri black hole: science.nasa.gov | esahubble.org (heic2610) | ApJL •       Space X-rays: rsna.org/news | space.com •       Hidden white dwarfs: warwick.ac.uk | phys.org | MNRAS Visit astronomydaily.io for all episodes and our constantly updating newsfeed. Follow us @AstroDailyPod. Astronomy Daily is part of the Bitesz.com Podcast Network.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily — S05E140 | Tuesday 14 July 2026 | Hosts: Anna & Avery Space mirrors are officially cleared for launch — and astronomers are sounding the alarm. In today's episode, Anna and Avery unpack the FCC's approval of Reflect Orbital's Eärendil-1, the first of a proposed constellation of sunlight-reflecting satellites, and what tens of thousands of orbital mirrors could mean for the night sky. Then it's off to the geostationary belt, where astronomers using clever image-stacking — with help from Siding Spring Observatory and the ANU — have revealed a minefield of invisible debris, most of it in no public catalogue. Also on the show: physicists in New York recreate black hole energy extraction on a benchtop, validating a 50-year-old Penrose prediction with 'synthetic rotation'; the Extremely Large Telescope in Chile turns on its axis for the very first time — 3,500 tonnes floating on 80 microns of oil; and University of Sydney's Dr Manisha Caleb and colleagues lay out how the Square Kilometre Array will turn fast radio bursts into a survey tool for the invisible universe. Plus a quick Starship Flight 13 update (now NET Thursday 16 July after a full 33-engine static fire), the story of Avi Loeb's appointment to chair the White House UAP Science Advisory Council, and a skywatch built around tonight's super new Moon. Stories & sources •       01. FCC approves Reflect Orbital Eärendil-1 space mirror — SpaceNews / Space.com / Engadget •       02. Faint debris "minefield" in geosynchronous orbit (DebrisWatch II, Journal of the Astronautical Sciences) — University of Warwick / Phys.org / Space.com •       03. Penrose superradiance via synthetic rotation (Nature) — CUNY ASRC / EurekAlert / Phys.org •       04. ELT completes first full rotation of its 3,500-tonne structure — ESO Picture of the Week / Space.com •       05. Fast radio bursts as cosmological probes with the SKA (Caleb et al.) — Universe Today / arXiv •       06. Starship Flight 13 slips to NET 16 July; full 33-engine static fire complete — Space.com •       07. Avi Loeb appointed chair of White House UAP Science Advisory Council — Space.com / AP coverage Skywatch highlights •       Tonight (14 July): super new Moon — darkest skies of the month; Milky Way core overhead for southern observers •       Evenings: Venus blazing in the west in Leo; crescent Moon joins Regulus & Venus on 16–17 July •       Pre-dawn: Saturn high with rings tilted ~9°; Mars passes 5° north of Aldebaran on 14 July Visit astronomydaily.io for all episodes and the free newsletter. Follow @AstroDailyPod. Astronomy Daily is part of the Bitesz.com Podcast Network.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily S05E139 — Monday, 13 July 2026   Starship could fly again as soon as Wednesday — carrying its first-ever real payload. Japan quietly joins the reusable rocket club just a day after China. SpaceX asks regulators for a jaw-dropping 100,000 satellites. Physicists may have heard the accumulated whispers of every star that ever exploded. Isar Aerospace signs a $150 million deal to launch from Canada. And a ravenous black hole just 1.8 billion light-years away is giving astronomers — including teams from CSIRO and the University of Sydney — a window into the dawn of time.   In this episode •         Starship Flight 13: Booster 20's 33-engine static fire complete; launch NET Wednesday (AEST); first deployment of 20 Starlink V3 satellites; in-space Raptor relight and Indian Ocean splashdown planned. •         JAXA's RV-X reusable rocket completes its first hop at Noshiro — about 40 seconds, 10–11 metres up, landing upright — one day after China's Long March 10B sea recovery. •         SpaceX files with the FCC for a 100,000-satellite Gen3 constellation in very low Earth orbit, pitched at multi-gigabit AI-era connectivity — and entirely dependent on Starship. •         Super-Kamiokande reports the first indication of the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background from nearly 5,000 days of data — the accumulated neutrinos of every core-collapse supernova in cosmic history. •         Isar Aerospace signs a 10-year deal with Maritime Launch Services for a dedicated complex at Spaceport Nova Scotia — first orbital launches targeted for 2028, up to 40 per year by 2029. •         Galaxy SDSS J110546.07+145202.4: a lightweight, ferociously fast-growing black hole behaving like the early universe's titans, shining 20-fold brighter in radio for eight-plus years — with CSIRO's ATCA among the follow-up telescopes. •         Skywatching: New Moon Tuesday evening (7:44pm AEST / 9:44pm NZST); prime Milky Way core viewing; Venus brilliant in the west; Mars near Aldebaran pre-dawn; Comet 10P/Tempel 2 favours southern observers.   Sources & further reading •         Space.com — Starship Flight 13 static fire & launch outlook; Starlink Gen3 filing; Isar/MLS deal; ravenous black hole; supernova neutrino whispers •         AP / Japan Times / RTÉ — JAXA RV-X first test flight •         Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy press release; Komossa et al., The Astrophysical Journal (2026) •         Tohoku University / phys.org — Super-Kamiokande DSNB indication (Neutrino 2026 conference) •         CBC / The Globe and Mail / SpaceQ — Isar Aerospace & Maritime Launch Services agreement details •         NASA JPL What's Up July 2026; EarthSky; Space.com night sky guide — skywatchingBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily S05E138 — Weekend Space and Astronomy News Wrap — Saturday, 11 July 2026   China nets a rocket booster from the sea for the first time ever, we remember space pioneer Wally Funk, and we recap the week's four biggest stories: Euclid's 31 ancient quasars, mystery metal spheres on a Queensland beach, JWST's unexplained substance on Titan and Pluto, and New Horizons waking from hibernation at the solar system's edge.   In This Episode •          China's Long March 10B rocket achieves the world's first-ever sea-net booster recovery, on its maiden flight •          Remembering Wally Funk (1939–2026), the oldest woman ever to fly to space •          Euclid space telescope uncovers 31 ancient quasars, including two new distance records •          Mystery metal spheres wash up on a Queensland beach — identified as rocket debris •          JWST finds a mysterious, unidentified substance on both Titan and Pluto •          New Horizons wakes from 321-day hibernation, 5.9 billion miles from Earth •          Skywatching: the Moon, Mars and the Pleiades line up before dawn  Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

S05E137: Euclid uncovers 31 ancient quasars including the two most distant ever observed, Roman Space Telescope reaches a major pre-launch milestone at Kennedy Space Center, China details its plans for a sunward asteroid early-warning network, Hayabusa2 reveals asteroid Torifune is a two-lobed “snowman” contact binary, NASA's GRITSS CubeSat launches to sharpen global positioning precision, and we close with tonight's Moon-free skywatching window. Sources •          Euclid Consortium / ESA — “Euclid discovers the most ancient quasars in the Universe,” Astronomy & Astrophysics, July 6, 2026 •          NASA Science — “NASA's Roman Launch Preparations Proceed,” science.nasa.gov/blogs/roman, July 9, 2026 •          Space.com — “China announces plan to build early-warning system for dangerous asteroids,” July 9, 2026 •          JAXA — “Hayabusa2 captures images of asteroid Torifune,” global.jaxa.jp, July 6, 2026 •          NASA / SatNews — “NASA and ISISPACE Deploy GRITSS CubeSat to Advance Orbital Reference Frame Precision,” July 9, 2026 •          Astronomy.com — “The Sky This Week, July 10–17, 2026”Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily S05E136 — Thursday, 9 July 2026   An MIT physicist proposes a shoebox-sized satellite that could catch a hidden nuclear weapon in orbit, NASA's New Horizons wakes up after its longest hibernation ever nearly six billion miles from home, an Antarctic telescope catalogues over seven thousand galaxy clusters, Japan's ispace books cargo space on a SpaceX Starship Moon mission, a Falcon 9 booster breaks its own reuse record for a thirty-sixth flight, and we close with tonight's Venus–Regulus conjunction.   In This Episode •          A shoebox-sized satellite that could catch a hidden nuclear weapon in orbit •          New Horizons wakes up after its longest hibernation, 5.9 billion miles from Earth •          An Antarctic telescope catalogues over 7,000 galaxy clusters •          Japan's ispace books cargo space on a SpaceX Starship Moon mission •          SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster B1067 breaks its own reuse record — 36 flights •          Tonight's sky: Venus cosies up to Regulus  Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily — S05E135 — Wednesday, July 8, 2026 1. World's First Commercial Nuclear-Powered Satellite Reaches Orbit SpaceX's Transporter-17 rideshare mission carried City Labs' BOHR CubeSat to orbit on July 7, the first commercially built satellite to fly a nuclear-powered payload — a tritium betavoltaic cell that generates electricity continuously, day or night, regardless of sunlight. Key points •      Launched July 7, 2026 at 3:12am EDT from Vandenberg Space Force Base aboard a Falcon 9, part of the 81-payload Transporter-17 rideshare mission. •      BOHR (Betavoltaic Orbital High-Reliability) CubeSat built by City Labs, a Miami/Florida-based company. •      Uses a 'NanoTritium' betavoltaic device — converts beta particles from the radioactive decay of tritium directly into electricity via a semiconductor. •      Power output is tiny (micro-to-milliwatt range) but continuous — unaffected by eclipse periods or solar panel orientation. •      Tritium's 12.3-year half-life means the power source stays effective for two decades before decaying to harmless helium-3. •      FAA authorised the launch after finding public radiation exposure would stay below one millirem under conservative assumptions. 2. New Zealand's Fuel-Free Thruster Passes First Orbital Test Auckland-based Zenno Astronautics has successfully tested its 'Supertorquer' — an attitude-control thruster that uses superconducting magnets to push against Earth's own magnetic field, generating thrust with no propellant at all. Key points •      Zenno Astronautics is a spin-off from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. •      The system, called 'Supertorquer', completed its first in-orbit test in early July 2026. •      Superconducting magnets, powered by solar panels, interact with Earth's magnetic field to generate torque and maintain a satellite's orientation — no propellant is consumed. •      Until recently this kind of superconducting hardware was too large and complex to fit aboard a small satellite; miniaturisation has now made it practical. •      Because it needs no fuel, the technology could in principle keep a satellite maneuvering indefinitely, as long as it has sunlight for power. •      Zenno co-founder/company messaging: 'We are essentially looking to remove all reliance on Earth's resources so that we can build a sustainable industry in space.' 3. Tianwen-2 Arrives at Quasi-Moon Kamo'oalewa — And Upends the 'Piece of the Moon' Theory China's Tianwen-2 sample-return spacecraft has arrived at near-Earth asteroid Kamo'oalewa after a 400-day, 1-billion-kilometre journey, beaming back the first close-up image — just as new JWST data throws serious doubt on the leading theory of where this strange little world came from. Key points •      Tianwen-2 launched May 29, 2025, and reached Kamo'oalewa on July 6, 2026, arriving at a station-keeping distance of about 20 km. •      China National Space Administration (CNSA) publicly announced the arrival July 6, releasing the first close-up image via Xinhua. •      Kamo'oalewa (asteroid 2016 HO3) is one of only seven known 'quasi-satellites' of Earth — it orbits the Sun but stays in a stable dance alongside our planet, and has done so for roughly 100 years, with about 300 more to go. •      The image reveals a small, asymmetrical rock roughly 20-30 metres across. •      Long-standing hypothesis (since 2021): Kamo'oalewa is a fragment blasted off the Moon's far side by the impact that created the Giordano Bruno crater, 1-10 million years ago — based on its reflectance spectrum resembling space-weathered lunar soil. •      New twist: a July 1 JWST preprint (Sharkey et al.) models Kamo'oalewa's albedo (reflectivity) at around 0.59 — far higher than the Moon's ~0.12 — which is incompatible with a lunar origin and points instead toward a rare E-type silicate asteroid. 4. Jeremy Hansen Steps Back From Active Astronaut Duty Jeremy Hansen, the Canadian Space Agency astronaut who became the first Canadian to fly around the Moon aboard Artemis II in April, announced July 6 that he's stepping back from full-time astronaut service this September. Key points •      Hansen flew as mission specialist on Artemis II in April 2026, alongside NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch — the first crewed lunar mission in over 50 years. •      He becomes the first Canadian to travel beyond low Earth orbit / around the Moon. •      Announced via social media and a Canadian Space Agency statement on July 6, 2026. •      Transition takes effect this September, after 32 years of military service and 17 years as a CSA astronaut. •      He will continue serving as a reservist with the Royal Canadian Air Force and says he remains committed to Canada's space program in a new capacity. •      Joined CSA in the 2009 astronaut recruitment campaign after a career as a Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot. 5. Aurora Alert: G1 Geomagnetic Storm Possible July 9 Space weather forecasters are watching a combination of a fast coronal mass ejection and an Earth-facing coronal hole that could combine to produce a minor (G1-class) geomagnetic storm on July 9 — with aurora potentially visible across the northern United States, Canada, and parts of northern Europe. Key points •      A fast CME launched from the Sun on July 5 has a modelled arrival time around 6 UTC on July 9. •      Separately, a coronal hole — a region of open magnetic field letting fast solar wind escape — is rotating into an Earth-facing position and its high-speed stream is expected to arrive around the same time. •      Combined, NOAA/space weather forecasters say these two effects could produce G1 (minor) geomagnetic storm conditions. •      Possible aurora visibility zones: Seattle, Edinburgh, and the northern tier of the United States and Canada. •      Context: last week's monster sunspot active regions have now rotated to the Sun's far side after putting on a dramatic show of flares and prominences as they departed. •      Solar activity has otherwise dropped to low levels — mostly common C-class flares — with active region AR4482 now the main feature on the Earth-facing side of the Sun. 6. Chinese Researchers Model the Best Way to 'Nuke' a Killer Asteroid A new peer-reviewed study models two different ways a nuclear device could be used to deflect a threatening asteroid — a straightforward surface impact detonation, or a 'pre-excavation' approach that digs a crater first before delivering a deeper, more effective blast — and finds the right choice depends heavily on how much warning time we have. Key points •      Published July 7, 2026 in the journal Space: Science & Technology. •      Compares two nuclear deflection modes: (1) 'impact detonation' — a simple, shallow-crater surface blast, and (2) 'pre-excavation detonation' — using a penetrator device to dig a deeper crater first, then detonating a warhead to achieve 'deep detonation' inside the asteroid. •      Researchers modelled launch vehicle energy, impactor spacecraft velocity, and the resulting change in the asteroid's velocity for both modes. •      Both modes were tested against a 'virtual threat asteroid database' assuming warning times ranging from one year to twenty years. •      Headline finding: given enough warning time, the deeper 'pre-excavation' detonation is markedly more efficient at deflecting an asteroid than a simple surface blast — but a straightforward impact detonation may still be the only option when warning time is short. •      Context: no known asteroid currently poses an imminent threat to Earth — Apophis, once considered a risk for its 2029 and 2068 close approaches, has been ruled out as a hazard for the foreseeable future.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily S05E134 — Tuesday, 7 July 2026   Mysterious metal spheres wash up on a Queensland beach and turn out to be re-entered rocket debris, Hayabusa2 beams home stunning close-ups of asteroid Torifune, new VLT chemistry reveals interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS may be one of the oldest objects ever studied, TESS finds its first exoplanet using Einstein's gravitational microlensing, JWST spots six galaxies merging into one twelve billion years ago, and New Horizons charts the solar wind's fade at the true edge of the solar system.   In This Episode •          Mystery metal spheres wash up on a Queensland beach — identified as rocket debris •          Hayabusa2's flyby of asteroid Torifune returns stunning new images •          3I/ATLAS's ancient birthplace revealed by new VLT chemical fingerprint study •          TESS discovers its first exoplanet using gravitational microlensing •          JWST spots a rare six-galaxy mega-merger, 12 billion years in the past •          New Horizons tracks the solar wind's slowdown at the solar system's edgeBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Today on Astronomy Daily: Japan's Hayabusa2 pulls off a nail-biting high-speed asteroid flyby, James Webb finds the same unexplained chemical mystery on Titan AND Pluto, a neutrino detector may have caught the universe's oldest supernova echo, a wild new theory tries to solve the black hole information paradox, we wrap up the weekend's aurora action, and we look at when NASA's New Horizons might finally cross into interstellar space.Monday, July 6, 2026 1. Hayabusa2's Flyby of Asteroid Torifune •        JAXA's Hayabusa2 spacecraft flew within ~800 metres of near-Earth asteroid (98943) Torifune on July 5, 2026, at a relative speed of about 5.25 km/s (~18,000 km/h). •        This is an extended-mission flyby, not a sample return — Hayabusa2 already delivered Ryugu samples to Earth in December 2020. •        Purpose: engineering demonstration of high-precision navigation relevant to planetary defense (asteroid deflection technology). •        Torifune is roughly 450 metres across. Next stop for Hayabusa2: rendezvous with asteroid 1998 KY26 in 2031. •        Source: JAXA/ISAS, Nikkei Asia, phys.org (July 5, 2026). 2. Mystery Molecule Found on Both Titan and Pluto •        James Webb Space Telescope data reveals an unexplained absorption feature at ~5.11 micrometres on the surfaces of Titan (Saturn's largest moon) and Pluto. •        Evidence points to a surface origin rather than atmospheric origin, based on limb-vs-disc-center comparison on Titan. •        Candidate compounds include allenes, but no confirmed identification yet. •        Pluto's absorption line is roughly three times broader than Titan's at the same central wavelength. •        Study led by Dr. Bruno Bézard's team (Paris Observatory); posted to arXiv June 11, 2026 — not yet peer-reviewed. 3. Super-Kamiokande's Hint of the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background •        Super-Kamiokande collaboration presented results at Neutrino 2026 (UC Irvine) after analyzing ~5,000 days of data. •        Found a statistically significant excess of events between 13.3–81.3 MeV — consistent with the long-predicted Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background (DSNB). •        Significance: 2.6-sigma (~99.5% confidence) — below the 5-sigma discovery threshold, so described as an 'indication,' not a confirmed detection. •        If confirmed, DSNB would offer a new way to study the cosmic history of core-collapse supernovae via neutrinos rather than light. 4. A Theoretical Fix for the Black Hole Information Paradox •        New theoretical study proposes black holes stop evaporating just before vanishing completely, leaving a stable Planck-scale remnant (~9×10⁻⁴¹ kg). •        Mechanism: a repulsive force from spacetime torsion in a 7-dimensional Einstein-Cartan model, active at extreme (Planckian) densities. •        Proposal: quantum information is preserved via long-lived 'vibrations' in the remnant's internal torsion field. •        This is a theoretical/mathematical proposal, not an observational result. Researchers: Pinčák, Pigazzini, Pudlák, Bartoš. 5. Weekend Geomagnetic Storm / Aurora Wrap-Up •        X1.1 solar flare (June 30) and associated CME triggered a G3 (strong) geomagnetic storm around July 3–4, 2026. •        Aurora borealis visible as far south as Utah, Colorado, and Nevada in the continental US. •        NOAA SWPC reports conditions easing to unsettled/G1 levels through July 6 as CME effects wane. 6. Forecasting New Horizons' Crossing Into Interstellar Space •        SwRI researchers (lead: Dr. Jonathan Gasser) combined solar wind forecasting with heliosphere models to predict New Horizons' termination shock crossing. •        Forecast window: 2029–2040, with possible multiple crossings as the heliosphere expands/contracts with the solar cycle. •        New Horizons is currently ~66 AU from the Sun. Voyager 2 crossed its termination shock at 84 AU in 2007, with a 46% solar wind speed drop. •        New Horizons would become only the third spacecraft (after Voyager 1 and 2) to cross this boundary. •        Two papers: Advances in Space Research and The Astrophysical Journal (SwRI, 2026).Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily — S05E132 — Weekend Space and Astronomy News Wrap — Saturday, July 4, 2026 It's the Fourth of July weekend edition of Astronomy Daily! This week's wrap covers the successful launch of the Swift rescue mission after a week of delays, the historic start of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's decade-long sky survey, an aurora-triggering geomagnetic storm timed for the holiday weekend, a promising nearby habitable-zone super-Earth, a brand new James Webb 'cosmic fireworks' image released for America's 250th birthday, and a rare ultra-close conjunction between Mars and Uranus visible before dawn today. In this episode: •          Swift Boost mission: LINK spacecraft launches successfully on the final flight of Pegasus XL •          Vera C. Rubin Observatory begins its 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time from Chile •          G2–G3 geomagnetic storm watch brings aurora chances for the July 4 weekend •          Recap: GJ 3378 b, a potentially habitable super-Earth just 25 light-years away •          JWST releases new 'cosmic fireworks' image of the FS Tau star system for America 250 •          Mars and Uranus in an extremely close conjunction, visible before dawn today Links & sources: •          science.nasa.gov/blogs/swift — Swift Boost mission updates •          rubinobservatory.org — Vera C. Rubin Observatory LSST •          swpc.noaa.gov — NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center aurora forecasts •          science.nasa.gov/missions/webb — James Webb Space Telescope FS Tau image release •          space.com/stargazing — Mars-Uranus conjunction viewing guideBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily S05E131 — Friday, July 3, 2026   1. Swift Rescue Mission — Grounded Mid-Flight •    Katalyst Space Technologies' LINK spacecraft was set to launch aboard a Pegasus XL rocket, air-launched from Northrop Grumman's Stargazer aircraft over Kwajalein Atoll. •    Thursday's attempt (July 2) got airborne after two prior weather scrubs, but was aborted mid-flight when engineers spotted an unexplained warning. •    No new launch date has been set. Swift faces uncontrolled reentry by October 2026 without a successful reboost. 2. Solar Storm Watch — G2 Geomagnetic Storm Active Today •    X1.1 flare (June 30) plus 10 M-class flares in 24 hours from sunspot region AR4479. •    NOAA SWPC G2 (moderate) geomagnetic storm watch in effect for July 3, easing July 4. •    Aurora borealis potential as far south as Idaho/New York (US); aurora australis potential for Tasmania and southern NZ/VIC under clear, dark skies. 3. TESS's First Microlensing Exoplanet — Gaia23bra b •    Super-Jupiter (~1.63 Jupiter masses) orbiting an orange dwarf ~40,000 light-years away, discovered via gravitational microlensing — a first for TESS. •    Originally flagged by ESA's Gaia mission in 2023; confirmed using archival TESS data. •    Published July 1, 2026 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, led by Mallory Harris (University of New Mexico). 4. GJ 3378b — Revised Habitable-Zone Super-Earth, 25 Light-Years Away •    UC Irvine team revised the planet's mass down to 2.3 Earth masses (rocky super-Earth, not mini-Neptune) and orbital period to 21.45 days. •    Receives ~90% of the stellar radiation Earth receives from the Sun — squarely in the habitable zone. •    Atmosphere unknown; planet does not transit, so JWST transit spectroscopy isn't possible. Published in The Astrophysical Journal, led by Paul Robertson (UC Irvine). 5. ESO Study: 1.7 Million Planned Satellites 'Devastating' for Astronomy •    Study led by ESO astronomer Olivier Hainaut, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. •    Modelled impact of proposed constellations (SpaceX ~1M for space data centres, Reflect Orbital 50,000 mirror satellites) on ESO's VLT and the Vera Rubin Observatory. •    Recommends a hard cap of 100,000 satellites, all fainter than naked-eye visibility. Decision pending from the US FCC. 6. JWST Solves the WD 1856b Mystery •    Gas giant (4–11 Jupiter masses) orbits a white dwarf every 34 hours, blocking 56% of its star's light during transit. •    New JWST atmospheric data shows the planet is ~240K hotter than expected — evidence it migrated inward 3–5.5 billion years after the star's death, rather than surviving the red giant phase in place. •    Published July 1, 2026 in Nature, led by Ryan MacDonald with Northwestern's Christopher O'Connor.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily S05E130 — Thursday, July 2, 2026   A quick update on Swift's third launch scrub, a solar flare that could spark aurora for July 4th weekend, a hot Jupiter breaking the rules of physics, Amazon Leo's final Atlas V flight, patriotic Chandra imagery, a look back at a third galaxy missing its dark matter, and NASA's cheeky World Cup wager involving the Moon.   In This Episode ●        Swift/LINK rescue mission scrubbed again, third attempt targeted for today ●        X1.1 solar flare triggers G2 geomagnetic storm watch for July 3 ●        CoRoT-2 b: the hot Jupiter that isn't tidally locked ●        Amazon Leo's 8th and final Atlas V launch — LA-08 ●        NASA's Chandra reveals four cosmic images for America's 250th ●        Circling back: DF9, the third dark matter-free galaxy ●        NASA pledges a soccer ball to the Moon if the US wins the World Cup   Links & Sources ●        NASA Swift Blog — science.nasa.gov/blogs/swift ●        Space.com — Sun unleashes X1.1 flare, CME could spark aurora for July 4 ●        Space.com — This weird 'hot Jupiter' exoplanet has a hotspot in the wrong place ●        Space.com — Watch Atlas V launch 29 Amazon Leo satellites ●        NASA Chandra — Red, White, Blue Universe for US 250th ●        Yale News / Keck Observatory — Third time's the charm for a row of faint galaxies without dark matter ●        Space.com — NASA will send a soccer ball to the Moon if the US wins the World CupBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

A landmark day in space news: the Vera Rubin Observatory officially begins its ten-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time, NASA reveals it may send a spare nuclear-powered Mars rover to the Moon's south pole, Blue Origin shows off its rebuilt launch pad a month after the New Glenn explosion, Rocket Lab strikes an $8 billion deal to acquire Iridium, a brief Swift/LINK scrub update, and scientists hold the first-ever summit on sending humans to Titan. 1. Rubin Observatory Begins Its Ten-Year Cosmic Movie The NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory officially began the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) on June 30, 2026, following a months-long commissioning process after handover from construction to operations last October. Rubin's 8.4-metre Simonyi Survey Telescope, fitted with the largest digital camera ever built (3,200 megapixels), will scan the entire southern sky every few nights for the next decade, producing a new image roughly every 40 seconds. Each area of sky will be revisited around 800 times over the survey's ten years, generating up to 7 million nightly alerts and around 10 terabytes of data per night. The final dataset is expected to contain billions of objects. Source: NOIRLab / SLAC / Rubin Observatory press release, June 30, 2026   2. Swift/LINK: Scrubbed, Retargeted for Tonight The launch of Katalyst Space's LINK servicing spacecraft — riding the final Pegasus XL rocket to rendezvous with NASA's Swift Observatory — was scrubbed Tuesday, June 30, due to unfavourable weather over Kwajalein Atoll. The next attempt is targeted for July 1 at 9:43 p.m. local Kwajalein time (5:43 a.m. EDT). Source: NASA Science blog, June 30, 2026   3. NASA's Moon Base Update: PROMISE Rover & New Lander Contracts NASA awarded roughly $590 million across Astrobotic, Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines for four new CLPS lander missions targeted for late 2028, delivering science and technology demonstration payloads to the Moon. NASA is also considering repurposing an engineering development unit of its Mars Perseverance/Curiosity rovers as a new lunar rover named PROMISE (Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Situ Exploration), powered by a radioisotope generator for operation in permanently shadowed polar craters. Source: NASA news release and briefing, June 30, 2026   4. Blue Origin Reveals Its Rebuilt Launch Pad One month after a New Glenn rocket exploded during a static-fire test at Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 36A on May 28, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp announced the company will rebuild the pad in a new 'horizontal/vertical hybrid' configuration rather than recreating the original. Reconstruction has begun, with Blue Origin targeting a return to flight before the end of 2026. Early analysis points to the aft section of the first stage as the source of the anomaly, though the investigation continues. Source: Blue Origin company statement / SpaceNews / CNBC, June 30, 2026   5. Rocket Lab's $8 Billion Bid for Iridium Rocket Lab announced a definitive agreement to acquire satellite communications operator Iridium Communications in a cash-and-stock deal valued at approximately $8 billion — $54 per share, a 24.1% premium. The deal combines Rocket Lab's launch and satellite manufacturing business with Iridium's 66-satellite L-band constellation and 2.5 million-plus subscriber base, aiming to create a vertically integrated space company. The transaction is expected to close in mid-2027. Source: Rocket Lab / Iridium joint announcement, June 29, 2026   6. Mapping Humanity's Next Giant Leap — to Titan The first-ever Humans to Titan Summit was held June 11–12 in Boulder, Colorado, gathering planetary scientists and engineers to explore the concept of a future crewed mission to Saturn's largest moon. Organised by Amanda Hendrix of the Planetary Science Institute and hosted by the Southwest Research Institute, the summit addressed spacesuits, habitats, transportation and Titan's extreme cold, ahead of NASA's robotic Dragonfly mission, targeted to launch no earlier than 2028. Source: Space.com / Leonard David, June 30, 2026Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily S05E128 | Tuesday, June 30, 2026 Hosts: Anna & Avery | astronomydaily.io | @AstroDailyPod In today's episode:

Astronomy Daily S05E127 | Monday, June 29, 2026 Hosts: Anna & Avery | astronomydaily.io | @AstroDailyPod   In today's episode:   RAD-BAARG — The Bow-and-Arrow Galaxy A citizen scientist scanning LOFAR radio telescope data spotted a galaxy like nothing seen in 25 years — RAD-BAARG stretches 1.8 million light-years and shows what may be the clearest radio signature of a giant cosmic bow shock ever observed. Published June 22 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.   Hayabusa2 Flyby — One Week Away Japan's Hayabusa2# spacecraft is set to fly past asteroid Torifune (2001 CC21) on July 5 at a distance of just 1–10 km — one of the closest asteroid encounters ever attempted. The spacecraft already delivered Ryugu samples to Earth in 2020.   Mars Magmatic Systems — Oxford/Nature Astronomy A University of Oxford-led study published June 26 in Nature Astronomy reveals seismic evidence that Mars once hosted vast, Earth-like transcrustal magmatic systems spanning potentially thousands of kilometres — without plate tectonics. Based on NASA InSight seismic data.   Skywatching — Strawberry Moon & Mercury Retrograde The full Strawberry Moon peaks at 23:58 UTC tonight in Sagittarius near the Teapot asterism. Mercury also begins retrograde motion today. Southern Hemisphere viewers have good conditions for lunar viewing in winter skies.   ESA Juice & 3I/ATLAS — Five New Findings ESA has published early results from Juice's November 2025 observations of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. Key findings: 2,000 kg of water vapour per second at perihelion; comet behaviour resembling solar system comets; novel trajectory data from NavCam; and confirmation of Juice's instrument readiness for the Jupiter mission.   NASA Artemis Audit — $5.9 Billion in Cancelled Contracts A NASA Inspector General memo finds the total value of cancelled Artemis programme hardware contracts reached $5.9 billion, reflecting cost increases and timeline extensions prior to programme restructuring. Artemis III lunar landing remains targeted for 2027.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Weekend Space & Astronomy News Wrap | Saturday, June 27, 2026   It's our Saturday wrap — and what a week it's been for space and astronomy! Join Anna and Avery for two brand-new stories plus the four biggest headlines from the past five days.   THIS WEEK'S STORIES  

In this episode of Astronomy Daily (S05E125), hosts Anna and Avery cover six major stories from the frontiers of space science and astronomy, including the most detailed image ever taken of the Milky Way's core, a Hubble discovery that solves a decades-old cosmological mystery, the oldest confirmed asteroid impact crater on Earth, a pair of impossibly light exoplanets, an impending lunar impact from a SpaceX rocket stage, and a live solar weather alert for Southern Hemisphere aurora watchers.   Stories Covered Story 1 — Euclid's Record Milky Way Galactic Bulge Image: ESA's Euclid telescope releases the largest, highest-resolution visible-light image ever made of the Milky Way's central bulge, containing more than 60 million stars. The image serves as a baseline for NASA's upcoming Roman Space Telescope's microlensing survey. (ESA / NASA, June 24–25 2026) Story 2 — Hubble Catches Galaxy Clearing the Cosmic Fog: Galaxy MXDFz4.4, observed 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang, has been caught emitting ionising ultraviolet light — direct evidence of how the early universe's hydrogen fog was cleared. Published in The Astrophysical Journal, June 23 2026. Story 3 — Earth's Oldest Asteroid Crater Dated to 3 Billion Years: Curtin University researchers precisely date the North Pole Dome impact structure in Western Australia's Pilbara region to 3.024 billion years ago — the oldest known impact crater on Earth, beating the next oldest by ~800 million years. Published in Geology, June 23 2026. Story 4 — Super-Puff Planets Lighter Than Cotton Candy: An Oxford-led international team confirms TOI-791 b and c — two Jupiter-sized exoplanets with densities lower than cotton candy (0.038 and 0.047 g/cm³), making them the lowest-density giant planets ever found. Published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, June 26 2026. Story 5 — SpaceX Falcon 9 Upper Stage to Impact Moon on August 5: A spent Falcon 9 upper stage from the January 2025 Blue Ghost / Hakuto-R launch is on course to strike the Moon near Einstein Crater on August 5 2026. Visibility from Earth is uncertain, but NASA's LRO will image the resulting crater. NASA SSERVI, June 2026. Skywatching — A G1 geomagnetic storm struck overnight June 25, with further unsettled conditions expected June 26–27 as coronal hole streams strengthen and new sunspot region AR4478 rotates into Earth view. Aurora possible for Tasmania, New Zealand's South Island and southern Australia tonight.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.