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00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Anna: Happy Saturday, space fans. I'm Anna.
00:00:03 --> 00:00:06 Avery: And I'm Avery. Welcome to Astronomy Daily's
00:00:06 --> 00:00:08 weekend space and astronomy news wrap.
00:00:08 --> 00:00:11 Anna: It has been another seriously action packed
00:00:11 --> 00:00:13 week in space and astronomy. And today we're
00:00:13 --> 00:00:16 bringing you the six biggest stories, two
00:00:16 --> 00:00:19 brand new ones, plus a recap of the four that
00:00:19 --> 00:00:20 dominated the headlines this week.
00:00:21 --> 00:00:23 Avery: And we're kicking things off with something
00:00:23 --> 00:00:26 literally happening right now. A daring
00:00:26 --> 00:00:28 first of its kind rescue mission that's set
00:00:28 --> 00:00:29 to launch Tuesday morning.
00:00:30 --> 00:00:32 Anna: Stay with us. It's going to be a great one.
00:00:32 --> 00:00:35 Our first story this weekend is one you won't
00:00:35 --> 00:00:38 want to miss. And it's preparing right now as
00:00:38 --> 00:00:38 we speak.
00:00:39 --> 00:00:42 Avery: NASA Swift Boost mission is now planned to
00:00:42 --> 00:00:44 launch Tuesday morning from Kwajalein Atoll
00:00:44 --> 00:00:47 in the South Pacific. And if successful, it
00:00:47 --> 00:00:49 will be the first time in history that a
00:00:49 --> 00:00:52 commercial robotic spacecraft has captured
00:00:52 --> 00:00:54 and repositioned a, uh, government science
00:00:54 --> 00:00:56 satellite that was never designed to be
00:00:56 --> 00:00:57 serviced.
00:00:57 --> 00:01:00 Anna: The mission aims to rescue the Neil Gerald
00:01:00 --> 00:01:02 Swift Observatory, a telescope that has been
00:01:02 --> 00:01:05 hunting gamma ray bursts and other cosmic
00:01:05 --> 00:01:08 explosions since 2004. Swift
00:01:08 --> 00:01:10 was supposed to last two years. It's now
00:01:10 --> 00:01:13 22 years old and still doing brilliant
00:01:13 --> 00:01:13 science.
00:01:14 --> 00:01:16 Avery: So what's the problem? Solar storms.
00:01:17 --> 00:01:19 Recent bursts of intense solar activity
00:01:19 --> 00:01:22 puffed up Earth's outer atmosphere, creating
00:01:22 --> 00:01:25 extra drag on Swift's orbit. If nothing
00:01:25 --> 00:01:27 is done, Swift would re enter and burn up by
00:01:27 --> 00:01:29 late 2026.
00:01:29 --> 00:01:32 Anna: Enter Catalyst Space Technologies, a, uh,
00:01:32 --> 00:01:35 startup from Flagstaff, Arizona. NASA
00:01:35 --> 00:01:37 awarded them a $30 million contract in
00:01:37 --> 00:01:40 September 2025, less than a year ago
00:01:40 --> 00:01:43 to build a spacecraft, launch it, and save
00:01:43 --> 00:01:43 Swift.
00:01:44 --> 00:01:46 Avery: That spacecraft is called a link. About the
00:01:46 --> 00:01:49 size of a refrigerator, it has three robotic
00:01:49 --> 00:01:51 arms, ion engines, and a suite of
00:01:51 --> 00:01:54 sensors. It rode into orbit this morning
00:01:54 --> 00:01:57 aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket,
00:01:57 --> 00:01:59 an air launch vehicle dropped from a modified
00:01:59 --> 00:02:02 L1011. Interestingly, this is
00:02:02 --> 00:02:05 Pegasus's first flight since 2021
00:02:05 --> 00:02:07 and its final planned mission.
00:02:07 --> 00:02:09 Anna: Over the coming months, Link will carefully
00:02:09 --> 00:02:12 maneuver to rendezvous with Swift, Rabbit
00:02:12 --> 00:02:15 with those robotic arms and fire its engines
00:02:15 --> 00:02:17 to push the observatory to a higher safety,
00:02:17 --> 00:02:20 safer orbit. Buying it at least five more
00:02:20 --> 00:02:21 years of science life.
00:02:21 --> 00:02:24 Avery: It sounds almost too audacious. And even
00:02:24 --> 00:02:26 Swift's own chief scientist admitted to
00:02:26 --> 00:02:28 losing some sleep over it.
00:02:28 --> 00:02:30 Anna: Who wouldn't? But the fact that this mission
00:02:30 --> 00:02:33 was conceived, built and launched in under a
00:02:33 --> 00:02:35 year is itself a landmark achievement.
00:02:36 --> 00:02:38 It's being called a template for how
00:02:38 --> 00:02:40 responsive commercial servicing missions can
00:02:40 --> 00:02:41 work in the Future.
00:02:42 --> 00:02:45 Avery: And for $30 million, a fraction of what it
00:02:45 --> 00:02:47 would cost to build and launch a replacement
00:02:47 --> 00:02:47 telescope.
00:02:47 --> 00:02:50 Anna: It's an extraordinary we'll be following
00:02:50 --> 00:02:53 Link's progress closely on Astronomy Daily
00:02:53 --> 00:02:55 in coming days. Fingers crossed for a
00:02:55 --> 00:02:58 successful rendezvous and many more years of
00:02:58 --> 00:03:01 swift watching the universe's most powerful
00:03:01 --> 00:03:02 explosions.
00:03:02 --> 00:03:05 Our second story this weekend comes courtesy
00:03:05 --> 00:03:08 of the James Webb Space Telescope, and it is
00:03:08 --> 00:03:09 spectacular.
00:03:09 --> 00:03:11 Avery: Astronomers have spotted what they're calling
00:03:11 --> 00:03:14 a cosmic demolition derby. At least six
00:03:14 --> 00:03:17 galaxies in the process of smashing into one
00:03:17 --> 00:03:19 another and merging into what will eventually
00:03:19 --> 00:03:21 become one of the largest galax in the
00:03:21 --> 00:03:22 universe.
00:03:22 --> 00:03:24 Anna: The system is called TGSS
00:03:25 --> 00:03:26 J1530
00:03:26 --> 00:03:29 1049. We're seeing it as it
00:03:29 --> 00:03:32 was 12 billion years ago, when the
00:03:32 --> 00:03:35 universe was only about 1 1/2 billion years
00:03:35 --> 00:03:38 old. Four of those six galaxies are
00:03:38 --> 00:03:40 already surprisingly massive. Together they
00:03:40 --> 00:03:43 contain hundreds of billions of times the
00:03:43 --> 00:03:46 mass of our sun, all packed into a region
00:03:46 --> 00:03:48 just a few tens of thousands of light years
00:03:48 --> 00:03:48 across.
00:03:49 --> 00:03:51 Avery: That makes it one of the densest known
00:03:51 --> 00:03:53 concentrations of massive galaxies from this
00:03:53 --> 00:03:55 early period in cosmic history.
00:03:56 --> 00:03:59 Astronomers call it a protocluster, the
00:03:59 --> 00:04:01 seed of what will eventually become a vast
00:04:01 --> 00:04:03 galaxy cluster like the ones we see in the
00:04:03 --> 00:04:06 local universe today. And at the heart of
00:04:06 --> 00:04:09 this galactic pileup, something even more
00:04:09 --> 00:04:11 remarkable a growing supermassive black
00:04:11 --> 00:04:14 hole. Radio observations confirmed jets
00:04:14 --> 00:04:17 of material being expelled at high speed as
00:04:17 --> 00:04:19 matter falls into the black hole at the
00:04:19 --> 00:04:20 center of this maelstrom.
00:04:21 --> 00:04:23 Anna: What makes this discovery so significant is
00:04:23 --> 00:04:26 that astronomers can watch both processes
00:04:26 --> 00:04:29 happening simultaneously. The buildup of
00:04:29 --> 00:04:32 a giant galaxy and the growth of its central
00:04:32 --> 00:04:34 black hole. These two things are thought to
00:04:34 --> 00:04:37 co evolve, but catching them both in the act
00:04:37 --> 00:04:39 this early in the universe is
00:04:39 --> 00:04:41 extraordinarily rare.
00:04:41 --> 00:04:43 Avery: The discovery came thanks to a clever
00:04:43 --> 00:04:46 combination of tools. Radio astronomers first
00:04:46 --> 00:04:48 tipped off the team by detecting unusual
00:04:48 --> 00:04:50 emissions that hinted at an undiscovered
00:04:50 --> 00:04:53 active black hole. Webb then revealed the
00:04:53 --> 00:04:56 full picture not one galaxy, but a whole
00:04:56 --> 00:04:57 complex of six.
00:04:57 --> 00:05:00 Anna: The research was led by astronomers at Leiden
00:05:00 --> 00:05:03 University and the University of Oxford and
00:05:03 --> 00:05:05 published this week in the Open Journal of
00:05:05 --> 00:05:08 Astrophysics and Astronomy and Astronomy
00:05:08 --> 00:05:10 Avery: and Astrophysics, another stunning
00:05:10 --> 00:05:13 chapter in what JWST is revealing about the
00:05:13 --> 00:05:16 early universe and the reminder of just how
00:05:16 --> 00:05:19 much cosmic construction was already underway
00:05:19 --> 00:05:21 in the universe's first billion years.
00:05:22 --> 00:05:24 Anna: Now it's time for our weekly wrap, the four
00:05:24 --> 00:05:26 biggest stories that had the space and
00:05:26 --> 00:05:28 astronomy community buzzing this week.
00:05:29 --> 00:05:31 Avery: Story one of our weekly wrap and it
00:05:31 --> 00:05:33 involves one of NASA's most traveled
00:05:33 --> 00:05:36 spacecraft and a very strange little world.
00:05:37 --> 00:05:40 Anna: NASA's Lucy mission has published new results
00:05:40 --> 00:05:42 from its April 2025 flyby of
00:05:42 --> 00:05:45 asteroid Donald Johansson, and the findings
00:05:45 --> 00:05:48 are Genuinely surprising. Published
00:05:48 --> 00:05:50 this week in the journal Science, the
00:05:50 --> 00:05:52 research reveals that this half mile wide
00:05:52 --> 00:05:55 asteroid doesn't spin the way scientists
00:05:55 --> 00:05:55 expected.
00:05:56 --> 00:05:59 Avery: Instead of rotating cleanly on a single axis
00:05:59 --> 00:06:01 like most solar system bodies, Donald
00:06:01 --> 00:06:04 Johanson tumbles on two axes
00:06:04 --> 00:06:07 simultaneously. It flips end over end
00:06:07 --> 00:06:09 once every ten and a half Earth days, while
00:06:09 --> 00:06:12 also rocking side to side on its long axis
00:06:12 --> 00:06:14 once every 26 and a half days.
00:06:15 --> 00:06:17 Scientists call this non principal axis
00:06:17 --> 00:06:20 rotation. And it looks, in the words of the
00:06:20 --> 00:06:22 research team, like a very slow,
00:06:22 --> 00:06:24 unpredictable wobble.
00:06:24 --> 00:06:27 Anna: In addition to its unusual motion, Lucy
00:06:27 --> 00:06:29 found that Donald Johansen is shaped like a
00:06:29 --> 00:06:32 peanut. Two cratered lobes joined by a
00:06:32 --> 00:06:35 narrow neck. It's what's known as a contact
00:06:35 --> 00:06:38 binary. Likely formed when two fragments from
00:06:38 --> 00:06:40 an ancient collision slowly drifted together
00:06:40 --> 00:06:42 under gravity and merged.
00:06:42 --> 00:06:45 Avery: And that ancient collision, it happened about
00:06:45 --> 00:06:48 155 million years ago
00:06:48 --> 00:06:51 when a much larger asteroid roughly 50
00:06:51 --> 00:06:53 miles wide was struck and shattered.
00:06:53 --> 00:06:56 Donald Johanson is one of the surviving
00:06:56 --> 00:06:56 pieces.
00:06:57 --> 00:07:00 Anna: Perhaps most intriguingly, Lucy's infrared
00:07:00 --> 00:07:03 spectrometer detected iron rich clay minerals
00:07:03 --> 00:07:05 on the surface. Minerals that form only when
00:07:05 --> 00:07:08 rock interacts with liquid water. So at
00:07:08 --> 00:07:11 some point long ago, water was present on
00:07:11 --> 00:07:13 Donald Johansson's parent body.
00:07:13 --> 00:07:16 Avery: The Lucy mission, led by the Southwest
00:07:16 --> 00:07:18 Research Institute, is now heading for its
00:07:18 --> 00:07:21 primary destination, Jupiter's Trojan
00:07:21 --> 00:07:23 asteroids. This flyby was officially a
00:07:23 --> 00:07:26 rehearsal. But as Lucy's lead scientist
00:07:26 --> 00:07:29 Simone Markey put it, it's already clear that
00:07:29 --> 00:07:31 no two asteroids are alike. And the Trojans
00:07:31 --> 00:07:33 are going to challenge everything we think we
00:07:33 --> 00:07:34 know.
00:07:34 --> 00:07:35 Anna: We can't wait.
00:07:36 --> 00:07:38 Avery: From a wobbling peanut shaped asteroid to an
00:07:38 --> 00:07:41 interstellar comet revealing alien chemistry.
00:07:41 --> 00:07:43 It's been quite a week. Let's get into it.
00:07:44 --> 00:07:46 Anna: Story two of our wrath is also happening
00:07:46 --> 00:07:49 today. And it's a sky watching opportunity
00:07:49 --> 00:07:50 for those of you with a telescope.
00:07:51 --> 00:07:53 Avery: A 1km wide asteroid designated
00:07:53 --> 00:07:56 1997 NC1 is making
00:07:56 --> 00:07:59 its closest approach to Earth right now.
00:07:59 --> 00:08:02 Saturday, June 27th. It'll pass at a
00:08:02 --> 00:08:04 distance of about 1.5 million miles,
00:08:05 --> 00:08:07 or 2.4 million kilometers. Roughly
00:08:07 --> 00:08:10 seven times the distance between Earth and
00:08:10 --> 00:08:10 the Moon.
00:08:10 --> 00:08:13 Anna: To put that in perspective, this asteroid is
00:08:13 --> 00:08:16 about 50 to 60 times wider than the
00:08:16 --> 00:08:18 Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded over Russia
00:08:18 --> 00:08:21 in 2013, shattering windows across
00:08:21 --> 00:08:24 six cities and sending 1500 people to
00:08:24 --> 00:08:27 seek medical treatment. The difference is
00:08:27 --> 00:08:30 1997 NC1 was known
00:08:30 --> 00:08:33 about well in advance, is completely tracked,
00:08:33 --> 00:08:35 and poses absolutely no threat to Earth.
00:08:36 --> 00:08:38 Avery: It was discovered by the Near Earth Asteroid
00:08:38 --> 00:08:41 Tracking System on haleakala in Hawaii.
00:08:41 --> 00:08:44 NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been
00:08:44 --> 00:08:46 using radar to get a Close look this week,
00:08:46 --> 00:08:49 bouncing signals off the asteroid to generate
00:08:49 --> 00:08:51 three dimensional models revealing its shape
00:08:51 --> 00:08:52 and structure.
00:08:52 --> 00:08:54 Anna: If you're in the Southern hemisphere and have
00:08:54 --> 00:08:57 a 6 inch or larger telescope, tonight is
00:08:57 --> 00:09:00 a great opportunity to watch it drift across
00:09:00 --> 00:09:03 the background stars. It won't streak across
00:09:03 --> 00:09:05 the sky like a shooting star. It moves too
00:09:05 --> 00:09:08 slowly for that. But over five to seven
00:09:08 --> 00:09:10 minutes you'll be able to see it shift
00:09:10 --> 00:09:12 position against the star background.
00:09:12 --> 00:09:15 Avery: It's a beautiful reminder that our solar
00:09:15 --> 00:09:18 neighborhood is not empty and that planetary
00:09:18 --> 00:09:20 defense tracking systems are doing exactly
00:09:20 --> 00:09:22 what they're supposed to do. Watching,
00:09:22 --> 00:09:24 measuring, knowing.
00:09:24 --> 00:09:25 Anna: Clear skies.
00:09:25 --> 00:09:27 To those of you with your telescopes
00:09:27 --> 00:09:30 Avery: out tonight, story three. And we
00:09:30 --> 00:09:32 return to one of the most exciting objects to
00:09:32 --> 00:09:35 visit our solar system in years. The
00:09:35 --> 00:09:37 interstellar comet 3i Baily
00:09:38 --> 00:09:38 Atlas.
00:09:39 --> 00:09:41 Anna: 3i Bailey Atlas was discovered on
00:09:41 --> 00:09:44 July 1 last year, making it only the
00:09:44 --> 00:09:47 third interstellar object ever detected.
00:09:47 --> 00:09:50 It tore through our solar system, looped
00:09:50 --> 00:09:52 around the sun and is now heading out past
00:09:52 --> 00:09:55 Jupiter, never to return. And the James
00:09:55 --> 00:09:58 Webb Space Telescope has been making the most
00:09:58 --> 00:09:59 of every moment it had.
00:10:00 --> 00:10:02 Avery: New analysis of Webb's mid infrared
00:10:02 --> 00:10:04 observations has confirmed something
00:10:04 --> 00:10:07 remarkable. 3 I Bailey Atlas
00:10:07 --> 00:10:09 contains methane, making it the first
00:10:09 --> 00:10:12 interstellar object ever found to carry this
00:10:12 --> 00:10:15 gas. And the ratio of methane to water
00:10:15 --> 00:10:18 is much higher than anything seen in comets
00:10:18 --> 00:10:19 from our own solar system.
00:10:19 --> 00:10:22 Anna: What does that tell us? It tells us that this
00:10:22 --> 00:10:24 comet formed somewhere very cold,
00:10:24 --> 00:10:27 far colder than anywhere in our solar
00:10:27 --> 00:10:29 neighborhood. The methane was buried deep
00:10:29 --> 00:10:32 beneath the surface as ice, shielded from
00:10:32 --> 00:10:34 solar heating. As the comet first entered the
00:10:34 --> 00:10:37 solar system, it only sublimated, turned
00:10:37 --> 00:10:40 directly from ice to gas as the comet
00:10:40 --> 00:10:43 drew closer to the sun on its way back out.
00:10:43 --> 00:10:46 Avery: The comet is also loaded with methanol,
00:10:46 --> 00:10:48 essentially alcohol, which was discovered
00:10:48 --> 00:10:50 earlier in the year. And it was itself
00:10:50 --> 00:10:53 unusual. Together this chemistry is
00:10:53 --> 00:10:55 completely unlike anything we see in comets
00:10:55 --> 00:10:56 born around our sun.
00:10:57 --> 00:10:59 Anna: SETI researchers also trained radio
00:10:59 --> 00:11:02 telescopes on UM3i Bailey Atlas looking
00:11:02 --> 00:11:05 for signals that might indicate artificial
00:11:05 --> 00:11:08 technology. They found nothing beyond human
00:11:08 --> 00:11:10 made interference as expected. But the
00:11:10 --> 00:11:13 rapid response observations were valuable in
00:11:13 --> 00:11:15 their own right, helping to further
00:11:15 --> 00:11:16 Characterize the object.
00:11:17 --> 00:11:20 Avery: 3i Bailey Atlas is now heading into the
00:11:20 --> 00:11:22 outer solar system and will eventually return
00:11:22 --> 00:11:25 to the interstellar void. The Webb
00:11:25 --> 00:11:28 observations represent our last close look at
00:11:28 --> 00:11:30 this extraordinary visitor. And what a
00:11:30 --> 00:11:33 visitor it turned out to be. A chemical
00:11:33 --> 00:11:35 fingerprint of a world we'll never see.
00:11:36 --> 00:11:38 Anna: And our uh, fourth and final story of the
00:11:38 --> 00:11:41 weekly Wrap, a cosmic detective story from
00:11:41 --> 00:11:42 close to home.
00:11:42 --> 00:11:44 Avery: Astrophysicists have announced what appears
00:11:44 --> 00:11:47 to be the first ever identified pair of
00:11:47 --> 00:11:50 sibling supernova remnants. One of them
00:11:50 --> 00:11:53 is the Jellyfish Nebula, a well known and
00:11:53 --> 00:11:55 visually stunning supernova remnant that's
00:11:55 --> 00:11:58 been studied for decades. The other had been
00:11:58 --> 00:12:00 hiding in plain sight. Concealed in the
00:12:00 --> 00:12:03 jellyfish's bright glare supernova
00:12:03 --> 00:12:06 Anna: remnants are the expanding shells of gas and
00:12:06 --> 00:12:08 debris left behind when a massive star
00:12:08 --> 00:12:11 explodes. Finding two remnants that appear
00:12:11 --> 00:12:14 to share a common origin born from the
00:12:14 --> 00:12:17 same stellar system is something astronomers
00:12:17 --> 00:12:19 have theorized about but never conclusively
00:12:19 --> 00:12:20 identified before.
00:12:21 --> 00:12:23 Avery: The two remnants are connected by a bright
00:12:23 --> 00:12:25 filament of gas, which the researchers
00:12:25 --> 00:12:27 believe is evidence of their shared history.
00:12:28 --> 00:12:30 The discovery suggests that the two stars
00:12:30 --> 00:12:32 that produced these remnants were once
00:12:32 --> 00:12:34 companions, a binary system that both
00:12:34 --> 00:12:37 went supernova perhaps millions of years
00:12:37 --> 00:12:38 apart from It's
00:12:38 --> 00:12:41 Anna: a beautiful example of stellar archaeology
00:12:41 --> 00:12:44 using the leftover wreckage of dead stars to
00:12:44 --> 00:12:46 reconstruct the lives they lived billions of
00:12:46 --> 00:12:47 years ago.
00:12:47 --> 00:12:49 Avery: The Jellyfish Nebula, also known as
00:12:49 --> 00:12:52 IC443, sits about 5
00:12:52 --> 00:12:55 light years away in the constellation Gemini.
00:12:55 --> 00:12:57 It's a popular target for amateur
00:12:57 --> 00:12:59 astrophotographers, and now it has a hidden
00:12:59 --> 00:13:01 sibling to its name.
00:13:01 --> 00:13:04 Anna: The universe, as always, rewards those
00:13:04 --> 00:13:05 who look closely.
00:13:05 --> 00:13:08 That's the Astronomy Daily Weekend wrap for
00:13:08 --> 00:13:10 Saturday, June 27, 2026.
00:13:11 --> 00:13:13 What a week it's been. Satellite rescues,
00:13:13 --> 00:13:16 galaxy pile ups, wobbling asteroids,
00:13:16 --> 00:13:19 alien chemistry, and the secrets of dead
00:13:19 --> 00:13:20 stars.
00:13:20 --> 00:13:22 Avery: If you've enjoyed today's episode, please
00:13:22 --> 00:13:24 subscribe, leave a review and share us with a
00:13:24 --> 00:13:26 friend who loves space as much as we do.
00:13:26 --> 00:13:29 We're back Monday with fresh daily episodes,
00:13:29 --> 00:13:31 and we'll be keeping a close eye on how that
00:13:31 --> 00:13:32 swift rescue mission is
00:13:32 --> 00:13:33 Anna: going to find us at astronomydaily. Uh
00:13:35 --> 00:13:37 IO and follow us on your favorite platforms
00:13:37 --> 00:13:39 at Strodaily Pod.
00:13:39 --> 00:13:42 Avery: Until next time, from all of us at Astronomy
00:13:42 --> 00:13:43 Daily, Clear skies.