Astronomy Daily: Latest Space News

Astronomy Daily: Latest Space News

Join hosts Anna and Avery for daily Space & Astronomy news, insights, and discoveries. Give us 20 minutes and we'll give you the Universe! For more visit, our website and sign up for the free daily newsletter and check out our continually updated newsfeed. http://astronomydaily.io. Follow us on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, YouTube and TikTok ...just search for AstroDailyPod. Enjoy! Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.

Episodes

China's About to Attempt the Most Ambitious Moon Mission Ever

August 23, 2026 • 16 mins
Anna and Avery cover China's Chang'e-7 mission — a four-vehicle lunar south pole expedition, including a leaping hopper robot, that a Brown University scientist calls the most ambitious robotic Moon mission any nation has ever attempted, with its launch window opening Monday. Then: this week's biggest hardware stories, catching up on Starship's Ship 40 (still marooned off Christmas Island), LandSpace's historic private rocket...
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NASA Finds the Crater a SpaceX Rocket Left on the Moon

August 21, 2026 • 12 mins
Anna and Avery cover how NASA, working with South Korea's Danuri orbiter, pinpointed and imaged the exact crater left by a SpaceX Falcon 9 stage that struck the Moon on August 5th. Plus: the private rescue mission for NASA's ailing Swift telescope has officially failed, astronomers may have caught dark matter bending a black hole's jet, and Rocket Lab launches its ninth radar satellite for Japan's iQPS.   Full show notes: &nbs...
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LandSpace Nails It: China's First Private Booster Recovery

August 20, 2026 • 14 mins
Anna and Avery cover LandSpace becoming the first Chinese commercial company to land an orbital-class rocket booster — a big step for the country's private space sector. Plus: astronomers find a "mega-Earth" 23 times more massive than our planet that shouldn't be able to exist, a star weaving impossibly close to our galaxy's supermassive black hole that could reveal its spin within a decade, and new JWST data showing the earl...
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First Frenchwoman in Space Steps Outside

August 19, 2026 • 12 mins
Anna and Avery cover Sophie Adenot becoming the first French woman ever to conduct a spacewalk — a historic EVA that ran into some antenna trouble along the way. Plus: a trillion-mile river of gas that explains why some planetary systems end up tilted, an honest update on Starship's Ship 40 as it turns out the recovery saga wasn't quite finished, and SpaceX quietly closing in on 11,000 satellites in orbit.
Full show notes:...
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    Starship's Ship 40 Makes It Home

    August 18, 2026 • 14 mins
    Anna and Avery close out a three-week saga: SpaceX has recovered Starship's Ship 40 from the Indian Ocean after a soft splashdown, a difficult tow, and a moment where recovery odds looked as low as 18%. Plus: a dead star in the Helix Nebula previews our own Sun's five-billion-years-from-now fate, new evidence the Milky Way was built in part by an ancient galactic collision, and China's fast recovery from a rocket failure with back-...
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    Tiny Robots, Alien Caves: NASA's Plan for Titan

    August 17, 2026 • 18 mins
    Anna and Avery cover NASA's newly funded concept for spherical, propeller-free "aerobots" that could one day explore the methane-carved cave systems of Saturn's moon Titan. Plus: SpaceX breaks its own launch-turnaround record with two Falcon 9 missions 38 minutes apart, Rocket Lab lands its biggest-ever defense contract to build "Flatellites" for the U.S. Space Force, and a geomagnetic storm arriving today could bring aurora to hig...
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    Is Empty Space Really Empty? A 90-Year-Old Mystery Gets Its Answer (S05E168 — The Weekend Wrap)

    August 15, 2026 • 15 mins
    Today's episode — S05E168, Saturday August 15, 2026, our "Weekend Wrap":
    **Main story: a magnetar confirms 90-year-old vacuum birefringence prediction.** A team led by Rachael Stewart (George Washington University), using NASA's IXPE spacecraft, found the strongest evidence yet that extreme magnetic fields polarize light passing through empty space — confirming a 1936 prediction by Werner Heisenberg and Hans Euler. T...
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    The Black Hole Wrapped in a Star: JWST's Cosmic Dawn Discovery

    August 14, 2026 • 16 mins
    Anna and Avery break down JWST's discovery of MoM-BH*-1, the earliest known "black hole star" — a black hole shrouded in dense gas, glowing from just 660 million years after the Big Bang, that might explain how supermassive black holes grow so fast. Plus: the Perseid meteor shower's spectacular overnight peak, a new satellite built to watch other satellites in geostationary orbit, and veteran NASA astronaut Mike Fincke's reti...
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    Two Minutes of Totality: Inside the August 12 Eclipse

    August 13, 2026 • 15 mins
    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 l...
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    Eclipse 2026: Where, When & How to Watch (Both Hemispheres)

    August 12, 2026 • 16 mins
    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 NAS...
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    Eclipse Eve: Totality Returns to Europe

    August 11, 2026 • 17 mins
    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 an...
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    SpaceX Starship Lost at Sea? Plus China’s Landing Attempt & Uranus “Breathing”

    August 10, 2026 • 16 mins
    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 ...
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    Whirlpools Found on the Sun’s Surface for the First Time

    August 8, 2026 • 17 mins
    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 moonle...
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    The Colour of Empty Space

    August 7, 2026 • 17 mins
    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-r...
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    A Rocket Just Hit the Moon — And Telescopes Caught It

    August 6, 2026 • 14 mins
    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 ...
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    Voyager 2’s “Big Bang” Rescue: One More Year in Deep Space

    August 5, 2026 • 16 mins
    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 simu...
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    The Crater Makers: Falcon 9 Hits the Moon Tomorrow | Today’s Space News

    August 4, 2026 • 20 mins
    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 d...
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    The Largest Galaxy in the Universe, Measured at Last

    August 3, 2026 • 17 mins
    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...
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    The First “Self-Driving” Telescope Goes Stargazing (SkAI )

    August 1, 2026 • 13 mins
    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. •  &nb...
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    Three of a Kind

    July 31, 2026 • 16 mins
    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...
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