Astronomy Daily: The Latest Space News

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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