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This episode includes AI-generated content.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Anna: Good morning and welcome to Astronomy Daily.
00:00:02 --> 00:00:03 I'm Anna.
00:00:03 --> 00:00:06 Avery: And I'm avery. It's Tuesday, June
00:00:06 --> 00:00:09 30, 2026, and today is
00:00:09 --> 00:00:09 launch day.
00:00:10 --> 00:00:12 Anna: After weeks of watching this story build, we
00:00:12 --> 00:00:15 finally get to say it. A rescue mission for
00:00:15 --> 00:00:18 NASA's Swift observatory is heading to the
00:00:18 --> 00:00:20 launch pad, or rather the launch aircraft
00:00:20 --> 00:00:21 today.
00:00:21 --> 00:00:24 Avery: Plus a spacewalk happening live on the iss.
00:00:24 --> 00:00:27 A galaxy cluster that's breaking cosmology's
00:00:27 --> 00:00:30 rulebook. A quiet nursery hidden in the most
00:00:30 --> 00:00:33 violent part of our galaxy. A newly
00:00:33 --> 00:00:35 confirmed fossil galaxy near Andromeda. And
00:00:35 --> 00:00:38 why today is Asteroid Day.
00:00:38 --> 00:00:41 Anna: Vic stories one very busy Tuesday.
00:00:41 --> 00:00:42 Let's get into it.
00:00:43 --> 00:00:45 We've been tracking this one for weeks. And
00:00:45 --> 00:00:47 Today's the day NASA's Neil Gerald
00:00:47 --> 00:00:50 Swift, observatory, 22 years old, still
00:00:50 --> 00:00:53 hunting gamma ray bursts, has been losing
00:00:53 --> 00:00:56 altitude faster than expected thanks to solar
00:00:56 --> 00:00:56 activity.
00:00:57 --> 00:01:00 Avery: Without help, Swift faced a real chance of an
00:01:00 --> 00:01:02 uncontrolled re entry by the end of this
00:01:02 --> 00:01:04 year. So NASA contracted a m small
00:01:04 --> 00:01:07 Arizona company, Catalyst Space Technologies,
00:01:07 --> 00:01:10 to build a robotic rescue spacecraft called
00:01:10 --> 00:01:13 Link in under nine months, a job that
00:01:13 --> 00:01:15 would normally take two years.
00:01:15 --> 00:01:17 Anna: Link is about the size of a, uh, fridge.
00:01:18 --> 00:01:21 Three robotic arms, lidar sensors, ion
00:01:21 --> 00:01:23 thrusters. Today it launches from Kwadrilin
00:01:23 --> 00:01:26 Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Carried under
00:01:26 --> 00:01:28 the belly of Stargazer, the last aircraft
00:01:29 --> 00:01:31 worthy Lockheed, Lockheed Tristar in the
00:01:31 --> 00:01:34 world been dropped and lit on a Northrop
00:01:34 --> 00:01:36 Grumman Pegasus xl, the very last
00:01:36 --> 00:01:39 Pegasus XL ever to fly.
00:01:39 --> 00:01:42 Avery: Launch window opened at 6:23am Eastern.
00:01:42 --> 00:01:45 That's this evening here in Australia. As of
00:01:45 --> 00:01:48 our recording, NASA and Northrop Grumman have
00:01:48 --> 00:01:50 the mission status listed as go.
00:01:50 --> 00:01:53 Anna: If it works, Link will spend months gently
00:01:53 --> 00:01:55 grappling and nudging Swift back up to a safe
00:01:55 --> 00:01:58 altitude. Swift was never built for being
00:01:58 --> 00:02:01 serviced. No docking port, no handholds.
00:02:01 --> 00:02:03 So this will be delicate historic work.
00:02:03 --> 00:02:06 Avery: Rat Kranko, the Swift principal Investigator
00:02:06 --> 00:02:09 at Goddard, put it Simply. Swift is
00:02:09 --> 00:02:11 NASA's multi tool for studying the cosmos.
00:02:12 --> 00:02:15 Today we find out if that multitool gets a
00:02:15 --> 00:02:15 second life.
00:02:16 --> 00:02:18 Anna: Fingers crossed for a clean release and a
00:02:18 --> 00:02:20 good first signal from Link. We'll keep you
00:02:20 --> 00:02:22 posted as uh, this story develops.
00:02:23 --> 00:02:25 Avery: Story two takes us to the International Space
00:02:25 --> 00:02:27 Station, where NASA astronauts Chris Williams
00:02:27 --> 00:02:30 and Jessica Meir are stepping outside today
00:02:30 --> 00:02:33 to fix a wrist joint on KANADRM2.
00:02:33 --> 00:02:36 Anna: KANADRM2 is the station's big robotic
00:02:36 --> 00:02:38 arm. It's been doing the heavy lifting,
00:02:38 --> 00:02:41 literally since 2001. Capturing
00:02:41 --> 00:02:44 cargo ships, repositioning modules, helping
00:02:44 --> 00:02:46 with spacewalks. But one of its wrist joints
00:02:46 --> 00:02:48 has been giving controllers trouble.
00:02:48 --> 00:02:51 Avery: The spacewalk kicked off at around 8:35am
00:02:51 --> 00:02:54 Eastern today. Williams and Meir will
00:02:54 --> 00:02:56 replace the faulty joint mechanism so the arm
00:02:56 --> 00:02:58 can keep operating with its full range of
00:02:58 --> 00:02:59 motion.
00:02:59 --> 00:03:02 Anna: It's not the flashiest of stories, but it
00:03:02 --> 00:03:04 matters enormously. Without a fully
00:03:04 --> 00:03:06 functioning Canat Arm 2, a lot of station
00:03:06 --> 00:03:09 operations get a lot harder, from cargo
00:03:09 --> 00:03:11 capture to external
00:03:11 --> 00:03:13 Avery: maintenance routine, and the sense that NASA
00:03:13 --> 00:03:15 has done dozens of these repairs over the
00:03:15 --> 00:03:18 decades. But every spacewalk still carries
00:03:18 --> 00:03:21 real risk, and this crew is doing
00:03:21 --> 00:03:23 precise, fiddly work in a pressurized
00:03:23 --> 00:03:26 suit 400km up.
00:03:26 --> 00:03:27 Good luck to them.
00:03:28 --> 00:03:30 Anna: Story three is a genuine cosmological
00:03:30 --> 00:03:33 puzzle. A team led by Kyle Finner at
00:03:33 --> 00:03:36 Caltech's IPEC has used the James Webb
00:03:36 --> 00:03:38 Space Telescope to study a, uh, galaxy
00:03:38 --> 00:03:39 cluster called
00:03:39 --> 00:03:41 XLSSC122.
00:03:42 --> 00:03:44 Avery: That distance puts it in an era astronomers
00:03:44 --> 00:03:47 call cosmic noon, when the universe was only
00:03:47 --> 00:03:50 about 3 billion years old and forming stars
00:03:50 --> 00:03:52 faster than at any point before or since.
00:03:53 --> 00:03:56 Galaxy clusters from that era are supposed to
00:03:56 --> 00:03:58 look young, loose, scattered, still pulling
00:03:58 --> 00:03:59 themselves together.
00:04:00 --> 00:04:02 Anna: XLSSC122 doesn't
00:04:02 --> 00:04:05 look like that. JWST caught it acting
00:04:05 --> 00:04:08 as a gravitational lens, bending the light of
00:04:08 --> 00:04:11 background galaxies into arcs, and it's now
00:04:11 --> 00:04:13 the most distant, strong lensing galaxy
00:04:13 --> 00:04:15 cluster ever found.
00:04:15 --> 00:04:18 Avery: When the team measured how concentrated the
00:04:18 --> 00:04:20 cluster's core mass is, the number
00:04:20 --> 00:04:23 came back higher than current cosmological
00:04:23 --> 00:04:26 models say it should be allowed to be. The
00:04:26 --> 00:04:29 visible matter stars gas barely
00:04:29 --> 00:04:32 accounts for any of it. The rest is
00:04:32 --> 00:04:34 dark matter, packed in tighter than expected
00:04:34 --> 00:04:37 for something this early in cosmic history.
00:04:37 --> 00:04:39 Anna: Laid researcher Fenner was refreshingly
00:04:39 --> 00:04:42 honest about it. This could just be one
00:04:42 --> 00:04:44 extreme outlier in a normal distribution.
00:04:45 --> 00:04:47 Or it could be a sign that something in our
00:04:47 --> 00:04:49 models of how structure formed in the early
00:04:49 --> 00:04:51 universe needs revising.
00:04:51 --> 00:04:54 Avery: Either way, it's a reminder of just how much
00:04:54 --> 00:04:57 JWST is rewriting the early chapters of
00:04:57 --> 00:05:00 cosmic history, one impossibly
00:05:00 --> 00:05:02 mature galaxy cluster at a time. From
00:05:02 --> 00:05:05 the very distant universe to our own
00:05:05 --> 00:05:08 backyard, the center of the Milky Way is one
00:05:08 --> 00:05:10 of the most violent neighborhoods in the
00:05:10 --> 00:05:12 galaxy, a churning storm of gas moving
00:05:12 --> 00:05:15 faster than the speed of sound. It's about
00:05:15 --> 00:05:17 the last place you'd expect to find a star
00:05:17 --> 00:05:19 quietly being born.
00:05:19 --> 00:05:22 Anna: And yet astronomers using the ALMA telescope
00:05:22 --> 00:05:24 array in Chile have mapped that chaos in
00:05:24 --> 00:05:27 detail and found exactly that a
00:05:27 --> 00:05:30 small, almost accidental pocket where the
00:05:30 --> 00:05:33 turbulent gas slows down, slowly settles, and
00:05:33 --> 00:05:36 begins gathering itself into the seeds of new
00:05:36 --> 00:05:36 stars.
00:05:36 --> 00:05:39 Avery: It's a small, almost accidental discovery
00:05:39 --> 00:05:42 with big implications. It suggests that
00:05:42 --> 00:05:45 stars might take their very first steps the
00:05:45 --> 00:05:47 same way everywhere in the galaxy, even in
00:05:47 --> 00:05:50 the most hostile environments imaginable.
00:05:50 --> 00:05:53 Anna: And that includes very possibly our own
00:05:53 --> 00:05:55 Sun. Billions of years ago, the sun may well
00:05:55 --> 00:05:58 have condensed out of just this kind of brief
00:05:58 --> 00:06:01 island of stillness somewhere in the swirling
00:06:01 --> 00:06:03 chaos of a young turbulent galaxy.
00:06:03 --> 00:06:05 Avery: A nice thought for your next coffee break.
00:06:05 --> 00:06:07 Somewhere in that storm at the galactic
00:06:07 --> 00:06:10 center right now, the next generation of
00:06:10 --> 00:06:13 stars may already be quietly getting started.
00:06:13 --> 00:06:16 Anna: Dory 5 is a lovely one. Equal parts
00:06:16 --> 00:06:18 cosmology and citizen science.
00:06:18 --> 00:06:21 Astronomers have just formally confirmed in
00:06:21 --> 00:06:23 the peer reviewed journal Astronomy and
00:06:23 --> 00:06:26 Astrophysics the discovery of Andromeda
00:06:26 --> 00:06:29 36, an ultra faint dwarf galaxy
00:06:29 --> 00:06:31 orbiting our giant neighbor, the Andromeda
00:06:31 --> 00:06:31 Galaxy.
00:06:32 --> 00:06:34 Avery: This one was actually first spotted back in
00:06:34 --> 00:06:37 March by an amateur astronomer, Giuseppe
00:06:37 --> 00:06:39 Donatellio, visually combing through public
00:06:39 --> 00:06:42 survey images. Not an algorithm, a person
00:06:42 --> 00:06:45 scanning pictures by eye. Now, after
00:06:45 --> 00:06:47 follow up observations with the Gran
00:06:47 --> 00:06:50 Telescopio Canaris, the team has nailed down
00:06:50 --> 00:06:50 the details.
00:06:51 --> 00:06:54 Anna: And what details? Andromeda 36th
00:06:54 --> 00:06:56 is roughly 12.5 billion years old,
00:06:57 --> 00:06:59 extremely metal poor, and one of the
00:06:59 --> 00:07:01 faintest, most compact dwarf satellites
00:07:01 --> 00:07:04 ever found around Andro. It's essentially a
00:07:04 --> 00:07:07 fossil from the universe's earliest stages.
00:07:07 --> 00:07:10 Avery: Astronomers think Andromeda did host close to
00:07:10 --> 00:07:13 a hundred of these tiny dwarf satellites, and
00:07:13 --> 00:07:16 only about half are currently known. Lead
00:07:16 --> 00:07:18 author Joanna Sakova made the point that even
00:07:18 --> 00:07:21 now, careful visual inspection by a trained
00:07:21 --> 00:07:23 eye is still finding things that automated
00:07:23 --> 00:07:24 machine learning searches miss.
00:07:25 --> 00:07:28 Anna: A nice reminder that in astronomy, sometimes
00:07:28 --> 00:07:30 the best discovery tool is still a patient
00:07:30 --> 00:07:32 human looking closely at the data.
00:07:33 --> 00:07:35 Avery: And finally today, June 30th is asteroid
00:07:35 --> 00:07:38 day. It's a UN sanctioned day of awareness
00:07:38 --> 00:07:41 around planetary defense. And the date isn't
00:07:41 --> 00:07:41 random.
00:07:41 --> 00:07:44 Anna: It marks the anniversary of the Tunguska
00:07:44 --> 00:07:47 event back in 1908, when an asteroid or
00:07:47 --> 00:07:49 comet fragment exploded in the atmosphere
00:07:49 --> 00:07:52 over Siberia, flattening more than 2
00:07:52 --> 00:07:55 square kilometers of forest. No crater,
00:07:55 --> 00:07:58 no warning. And to this day, it's the largest
00:07:58 --> 00:08:00 impact event in recorded history.
00:08:00 --> 00:08:02 Avery: Asteroid Day exists to make sure we don't
00:08:02 --> 00:08:04 have to learn that lesson the hard way again.
00:08:05 --> 00:08:07 Around the world today, observatories, space
00:08:07 --> 00:08:09 agencies and science communicators are
00:08:09 --> 00:08:12 running events on planetary defense, tracking
00:08:12 --> 00:08:14 near Earth objects, deflection technology,
00:08:15 --> 00:08:17 and what we'd actually do if something was
00:08:17 --> 00:08:18 heading our way.
00:08:18 --> 00:08:21 Anna: And we do have a real success story to point
00:08:21 --> 00:08:24 to. NASA's DART mission already proved
00:08:24 --> 00:08:26 by physically slamming into the asteroid
00:08:26 --> 00:08:28 Dimorphos that we can measurably change an
00:08:28 --> 00:08:31 asteroid's path. It's no longer just theory.
00:08:32 --> 00:08:34 Avery: So today's less about any single new
00:08:34 --> 00:08:36 discovery and, uh, more about the bigger
00:08:36 --> 00:08:39 picture. Thousands of astronomers, amateur
00:08:39 --> 00:08:42 and professional, quietly doing the
00:08:42 --> 00:08:44 unglamorous work of mapping the sky for the
00:08:44 --> 00:08:47 next Tunguska so that if it ever comes,
00:08:47 --> 00:08:50 we'll see it coming. And that wraps up a
00:08:50 --> 00:08:53 big Tuesday for Astronomy Daily. A rescue
00:08:53 --> 00:08:55 mission lighting up the Pacific sky, a
00:08:55 --> 00:08:58 spacewalk on the iss, and galaxies both
00:08:58 --> 00:09:00 impossibly old and impossibly young.
00:09:01 --> 00:09:03 Anna: If you enjoyed today's episode, please hit
00:09:03 --> 00:09:05 subscribe wherever you're listening and leave
00:09:05 --> 00:09:08 us a review. It genuinely helps new listeners
00:09:08 --> 00:09:09 find the show.
00:09:09 --> 00:09:12 Avery: We're Anna, uh, and Avery. This has been
00:09:12 --> 00:09:14 Astronomy Daily, and we'll see you back here
00:09:14 --> 00:09:16 tomorrow. Clear skies, everyone. And good
00:09:16 --> 00:09:18 luck to Swift and Link tonight.
00:09:21 --> 00:09:22 Mhm.
00:09:29 --> 00:09:30 Anna: The stories.
00:09:38 --> 00:09:39 Avery: Were told.