🚀 The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is safely away — Anna and Avery recap Sunday's clean Falcon Heavy launch, what happens next on the road to L2, and a surprise Australian link in the mission. Then: Elon Musk signals the eventual retirement of Falcon 9, two Nobel laureates defend an accelerating universe against a slowing-expansion claim, a single ancient asteroid strike solves two mysteries on Mars's moon Deimos, and everything worth looking up at tonight, wherever you are. Chapters / topics: Roman Space Telescope's clean launch • What happens next (L2 cruise & commissioning) • Roman's science mission explained • SpaceX signals Falcon 9's eventual retirement • The universe is still speeding up (dark energy rebuttal) • One asteroid strike solves two Deimos mysteries • Tonight's sky (both hemispheres) 🔔 Subscribe for daily space and astronomy news. Full show notes and links at astronomydaily.io. #AstronomyDaily 

Links & sources: Space.com — Liftoff! NASA's Roman Space Telescope soars to the stars on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in spectacular launch (video) NASA Science (Roman blog) — NASA's Roman Space Telescope Launches NASA Science (Roman blog) — NASA Concludes Roman Space Telescope Launch Coverage Space.com — What time will SpaceX launch NASA's Roman Space Telescope? (Full mission timeline) Space.com — Goodbye, Falcon 9: SpaceX planning to retire workhorse launcher when Starship is up and running Teslarati — Elon Musk just set a condition that could end Falcon 9 as we know it ScienceDaily — The universe is still speeding up, but nobody knows why University of Bern (media relations) — Asteroid impact shaped the appearance of Mars' moon Deimos Nature Astronomy — Raducan, Agrusa, Asphaug et al. (2026), DOI 10.1038/s41550-026-02956-w When The Curves Line Up — 2026, August 31: Venus Nears Spica TelescopeAdvisor — Night Sky in September 2026: Saturn Approaching Opposition Follow us: @AstroDailyPod

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Today's episode — S05E180, Saturday August 29, 2026, The Weekend Wrap: Main story: The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches tomorrow, Sunday August 30, with a primary window opening 7:26am EDT (11:26 UTC / 9:26pm AEST Sunday night in Sydney) on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center; backup window Monday August 31 at 7:22am EDT. Total ascent to spacecraft deployment is about 31 minutes 31 seconds, with Falcon Heavy's side boosters landing back at Cape Canaveral roughly 7 minutes 40 seconds after liftoff. Named for NASA's first chief astronomer Nancy Grace Roman (the "mother of Hubble"), the telescope shares Hubble's 2.4-metre primary mirror but pairs it with a Wide Field Instrument boasting a field of view roughly 100 times larger at similar resolution. Its major science campaigns: the High Latitude Wide Area Survey, mapping ~2 billion galaxies to probe dark matter and dark energy; a companion supernova time-domain survey; and the Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey, a gravitational-microlensing exoplanet hunt expected to find on the order of 100,000 new worlds, including free-floating rogue planets. A Coronagraph Instrument will demonstrate direct exoplanet imaging technology. After deployment, Roman heads for the Sun-Earth L2 point (~1.5 million km out), a month-long cruise followed by months of commissioning. The mission closes out three threads covered this week: its clearance for launch nine months early (S05E176), its Cold War spy-satellite origin story (S05E178), and its narrow escape from budget cancellation (S05E179). The week in review: ●        Chang'e-7's delay, revisited: Monday's episode (S05E175) reported China's Chang'e-7 lunar south pole mission scrubbing on August 24 due to Tropical Storm Narra, with the next window estimated at about a month out. Since then, reporting has split — some outlets still cite a mid-September window, while others report a slip to February or March 2027, citing the mission's roughly 100-days-per-year favorable lighting geometry at Shackleton Crater. China's Manned Space Agency has not issued a firm new date as of this recording; we're flagging the uncertainty rather than picking a side. ●        Betelgeuse's bubbling surface: ALMA's most detailed image yet of the red supergiant's actual surface shows a corrugated, hot-spotted texture, with one hot spot persisting for over seven years — possibly stirred by a newly confirmed companion star (S05E177). ●        Diamond rain, decoded: A Lawrence Livermore experiment recreated Neptune- and Uranus-like interior pressures, settling a 20-year dispute over diamond's melting point and pointing toward roughly triple the energy gain in certain fusion reactor configurations (S05E178). ●        The space-mirror fight: US startup Reflect Orbital has FCC approval for its first demonstration mirror satellite; a new peer-reviewed study (Kocifaj, Bakos & Kundracik) finds the planned full-scale mirrors would appear roughly 40 times brighter than the full Moon to anyone in their beam — "worse than big cities like London," per Princeton's Gáspár Bakos (S05E179). ●        Starship's Ship 40 is actually heading home: hours after Friday's episode aired, Ship 40 was loaded onto the heavy-lift vessel Forte and departed Christmas Island on the ~20,000km voyage back to Starbase, Texas, expected to take several weeks. Flight 14 remains targeted no-earlier-than September 15, with Booster 21's static-fire testing now complete. Links & sources: ●        Space.com — What time will SpaceX launch NASA's Roman Space Telescope on Aug. 30? (Full mission timeline) ●        NASA Science — Roman Launch Countdown ●        Engadget — How to watch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope's launch ●        Scientific American — China delays ambitious Chang'e 7 moon mission until 2027 ●        SpaceNews — China delays Chang'e-7 lunar south pole landing mission launch ●        CGTN — Explainer: Why Chang'e-7 can't simply launch a few days later ●        Space.com — The bubbling surface of doomed supergiant star Betelgeuse has been revealed like never before ●        ScienceDaily — Scientists crushed diamond beyond Neptune-like pressures — and solved a 20-year mystery ●        Gizmodo — Scientists recreate the melting "diamond rain" of Neptune and Uranus. It may help fusion power ●        Space.com — Massive space mirrors could be 40 times brighter than the full moon, astronomers warn ●        ABC News (Australia) — SpaceX rocket begins journey back to Texas from Christmas Island ●        NASASpaceFlight.com — Ship 40 arrives at Christmas Island, plans return to Starbase Follow us: @AstroDailyPod

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Today's episode — S05E179, Friday August 28, 2026:   Feature story: US startup Reflect Orbital has FCC approval for Eärendil-1, a demonstration satellite carrying a 60-foot mirror, the first step toward a planned constellation of 50,000-plus orbital mirrors beaming reflected sunlight to Earth on demand. A new peer-reviewed study (Kocifaj, Bakos and Kundracik, accepted at The Astrophysical Journal Letters) finds a full-scale, 174-foot operational mirror would appear about 40 times brighter than the full Moon to anyone standing in its roughly 3.4-mile beam, with measurable sky-glow extending 20-34 km further — astronomer Gáspár Bakos says it would be "worse than big cities like London," warning "you would not see any stars if you were in the beam."   The rest of the news:   Starship update: Ship 40 — the Flight 13 upper stage that survived an intact splashdown on July 24 — has been loaded onto a heavy-lift transport vessel off Christmas Island and is now heading home to Starbase, Texas, a journey expected to take several months. Meanwhile Flight 14 has quietly slipped to no-earlier-than September 15, per internal SpaceX/FAA planning documents, with Booster 21's static fire testing now the pacing item.   A hot, watery world on borrowed time: astronomers led by Sylvain Breton (INAF) have characterised HD 176071 b, an exoplanet 335 light-years away that's roughly 50% water by mass, orbiting so close to its star (a 14-hour year) that it's expected to eventually be consumed by tidal forces. Found via a reflected-light technique applied to archival Kepler data.   Roman Space Telescope: two days from its Sunday, August 30 launch (7:26am ET, Falcon Heavy), with today's Launch Readiness Review still underway as we record. We trace the mission's near-cancellation in leaked 2025 budget documents proposing a 24% NASA funding cut — and how Roman's team responded to Congress restoring funding by pulling the launch forward eight months, finishing under budget.   Tonight's Sky: the G2 geomagnetic storm NOAA forecast for today is playing out now — aurora chances improve at northern latitudes, unlikely to reach much past Tasmania locally. Venus and Saturn remain the reliable local targets, under a near-full Moon.   Links & sources: Space.com — Massive space mirrors could be 40 times brighter than the full moon, astronomers warn arXiv — Atmospheric Light Pollution by Proposed Reflect Orbital Space Mirrors (Kocifaj, Bakos & Kundracik) Space.com — The FCC just gave Reflect Orbital permission to launch its 1st space mirror to orbit Space.com — Starship is coming home: SpaceX loads floating spacecraft onto huge ship in the Indian Ocean Space.com — Astronomers discover hot watery exoplanet destined to be swallowed by its star Space.com — Trump tried to scrap NASA's Roman Space Telescope last year. Now it's ready to launch Watchers.news — M6.9 solar flare produces Earth-directed CME, G2 geomagnetic storm watch issued for August 28   Follow us: @AstronomyDailyPod

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Today's episode — S05E178, Thursday August 27, 2026:
Feature story: Physicists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, led by Marius Millot, used the Omega Laser Facility at the University of Rochester to shock-compress diamond samples to about 1 terapascal — roughly three times Earth's core pressure — and temperatures hotter than the Sun's surface, recreating conditions found deep inside Neptune and Uranus. The results resolve a 20-year, ~1,000-degree disagreement between lab measurements and quantum simulations over diamond's actual melting point, confirming the simulations were right. The team also found diamond stays in its normal crystal structure right up until it melts — no intermediate phase — and confirmed solid diamond floats in liquid carbon, the same basic physics as ice floating on water. Published in Nature Physics, the corrected melting-point data could help triple energy gain in inertial confinement fusion reactors by allowing gentler, more efficient laser compression of diamond-shelled fuel capsules.
The rest of the news:

• Roman Space Telescope's strange origin: three days out from its Sunday, August 30 launch (7:26am ET, Falcon Heavy), we trace how Roman's core optics began life inside the National Reconnaissance Office's canceled "Future Imagery Architecture" spy-satellite program, donated to NASA in 2012 after the program's spectacular 2005 collapse. The telescope is currently being mated to its Falcon Heavy at LC-39A, with a Launch Readiness Review Friday, August 28.

 

• NOAA storm watch: the Space Weather Prediction Center has issued an official G2 (moderate) geomagnetic storm watch for Friday, August 28, following Tuesday's M6.9 solar flare — aurora chances improve for northern-tier US states, the UK and similar latitudes; minor storming isn't expected to reach much past Tasmania locally.

 

• AI solar storm detection: NJIT researchers have built a Transformer-based AI model, EarlyDetect, that spots hidden precursor signals of solar active regions forming roughly 9.24 hours before they're visible — not yet ready for real-time forecasting, but a promising extension of the warning window.

 

• SpaceX Starbase Louisiana: a $100 billion, five-complex, ten-pad second Starbase announced for Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, alongside Governor Jeff Landry — construction targeted for 2027, first launch aimed at 2029.

 

• Tonight's Sky: a 96%-partial lunar eclipse peaks at 4:13 UTC / 12:13am ET August 28 — spectacular from the Americas, broad daylight in Sydney (~2:13pm AEST). Venus and Saturn remain the reliable local targets.

Links & sources:

• ScienceDaily — Scientists crushed diamond beyond Neptune-like pressures — and solved a 20-year mystery

 

• Gizmodo — Scientists Recreate the Melting "Diamond Rain" of Neptune and Uranus. It May Help Fusion Power

 

• Space.com — From spy satellite to space telescope: the unlikely origins of NASA's Roman Space Telescope

 

• Space.com — Nancy Grace Roman Telescope live updates: NASA readies Roman for launch

 

• Watchers.news — M6.9 solar flare produces Earth-directed CME, G2 geomagnetic storm watch issued for August 28

 

• Universe Today — AI Spots Hidden Solar Storm Signs 9 Hours Early

 

• EurekAlert / NJIT — New AI model detects hidden signs of solar eruptions hours before they emerge

 

• Space.com — Starbase Louisiana: SpaceX announces enormous $100 billion Starbase launch site

 

• SpaceNews — SpaceX to develop Starship launch site in Louisiana

 

• EarthSky — Partial lunar eclipse of the August 27-28, 2026

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Today's episode — S05E177, Wednesday August 26, 2026:
Feature story: Astronomers using the ALMA array in Chile, led by Bill Dent (European Southern Observatory), have released the most detailed picture yet of the actual surface of Betelgeuse, the red supergiant marking Orion's shoulder — a corrugated, irregular surface with bright convective hot spots, some nearly 1,000°F hotter than the surrounding plasma. One hot spot in the northeastern region has persisted for more than seven years, far longer than current models predict, and its orientation lines up with the position of Betelgeuse B — a companion star imaged for the first time in July by a separate VLT/SPHERE study — raising the possibility the companion is influencing the giant star's surface. Betelgeuse is one of the closest stars to us expected to eventually go supernova (on a timescale of roughly the next 100,000 years); Dent notes the imagery builds a crucial "before" baseline for whenever that happens.
The rest of the news:

• ISS Spacewalk 98: NASA's Anil Menon and ESA's Sophie Adenot finished replacing a Space-to-Ground antenna on the station, six and a half hours outside, restoring communications redundancy that had been running on a backup since November. Adenot's spacewalk record as the first French woman to conduct an EVA is now backed by two completed outings.
• Solar flare/CME: The Sun fired an M6.9 flare from sunspot region 4513, triggering radio blackouts over Africa, Europe and the Arctic; a slow-moving CME is due to graze Earth around Friday, August 28, with an outside chance of minor geomagnetic storming — mostly a Northern Hemisphere aurora story.
• Falcon 9 reuse record: SpaceX's booster B1067 flew for the 37th time — a new single-booster reuse record — on the company's 100th Falcon 9 launch of 2026.
• Tonight's Sky: A 96%-partial lunar eclipse falls the night of August 27-28, spectacular from the Americas but invisible from Australia and the rest of Asia-Pacific (broad daylight here). Venus and Saturn remain good evening/overnight targets locally.

Links & sources:

• Space.com — The bubbling surface of doomed supergiant star Betelgeuse has been revealed like never before
• Space.com — Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse! Astronomers capture clearest image yet of famous star's elusive companion
• Space.com — "You just saved the video dish": Two astronauts complete spacewalk to replace ISS antenna
• NASA — NASA, ESA Spacewalkers Finish Installing High-Speed Antenna
• Space.com — Sun fires powerful M6.9 solar flare and CME toward Earth
• Space.com — SpaceX sets rocket-reuse record on 100th Falcon 9 launch of the year
• Space.com — Partial lunar eclipse Aug. 27-28: stages and visibility

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Today's episode — S05E176, Tuesday August 25, 2026:
Feature story: NASA's Roman Space Telescope is fully encapsulated inside its Falcon Heavy fairing and cleared to launch no earlier than 7:26 a.m. ET this Sunday, August 30 — about nine months ahead of its original schedule, a rarity for a NASA flagship mission. Roman is headed to Sun-Earth L2 for a five-year mission mapping dark energy and dark matter and hunting exoplanets with a starlight-cancelling coronagraph. Its wide-field camera surveys roughly a hundred times faster than Hubble at comparable image sharpness. Named for NASA's first chief astronomer, Nancy Grace Roman — the "mother of Hubble" — the mission is a formal ESA partnership; some of its data will come down through a new ESA antenna at New Norcia, Western Australia.
The rest of the news:

• ISS Spacewalk 98: NASA's Anil Menon and ESA's Sophie Adenot are outside the station today finishing a Space-to-Ground antenna replacement and, time permitting, installing a new docking retroreflector — their third spacewalk together in under a month.
• Milky Way merger scar: A Hubble-based study (the ARMA project, led by Davide Massari) has found evidence of a ~500-million-solar-mass dwarf galaxy, dubbed Low-energy-Kraken-Heracles, absorbed by the Milky Way roughly 12 billion years ago — the earliest documented merger in our galaxy's history.
• Perseids 2028 watch: Jupiter's gravity may nudge Perseid debris closer to Earth's path in 2028, potentially producing an outburst of 200-300 meteors/hour under favorable dark-sky conditions — though modelers caution the forecast is an "educated guess."
• Tonight's Sky: A 96%-partial lunar eclipse falls the night of August 27-28 — spectacular from the Americas and parts of Europe/Africa, but invisible from Australia and the rest of Asia-Pacific, where it happens in broad daylight. Venus and Saturn remain good evening targets locally in the meantime.

Links & sources:

• NASA Science — Roman Launch Countdown
• NASA Roman Blog — Roman Telescope Enclosed in Falcon Heavy Fairing
• Space.com — The Roman Space Telescope is ready to launch Aug. 30
• JPL — NASA Telescope Named for "Mother of Hubble" Nancy Grace Roman
• ESA — Roman factsheet
• NASA — NASA to Cover Three US Spacewalks
• Space.com — The earliest galaxy "swallowed" by the cannibal Milky Way left a scar at its heart
• Space.com — Could Jupiter supercharge the Perseids in 2028?
• Space.com — Partial lunar eclipse Aug. 27-28: stages and visibility

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Today's episode — S05E175, Monday August 24, 2026:
Main story: China delays Chang'e-7's launch by about a month. The Chang'e-7 lunar south pole mission's launch window opened today, August 24, but a tropical system (reported as Tropical Depression/Storm Narra) over the Gulf of Tonkin, alongside a cited safety and reliability review, forced a scrub with no immediate new date. Because the mission's landing site — the rim of Shackleton Crater — requires specific solar illumination geometry on top of standard orbital mechanics, its launch windows recur only about once a month for roughly a week at a time, unlike China's earlier equatorial lunar missions. Independent trajectory analysis puts the next viable opportunity around mid-to-late September.
The rest of the news:

• LandSpace / Zhuque-3 follow-up: Thursday's celebrated first-ever leg-landing of an orbital-class Chinese booster had a coda — residual methane and oxygen ignited near the booster's base after touchdown, damaging a landing leg and toppling the vehicle. The landing itself (four legs, near dead-center, ~390km downrange in Gansu) still stands as the achievement it was reported as; the post-landing fire is a separate, and not unprecedented, engineering challenge — SpaceX's own Falcon 9 booster B1086 suffered a near-identical fire and tip-over in March 2025.
• SpaceX's 100th launch of 2026: A Falcon 9 carrying 27 Starlink satellites lifted off from Vandenberg on August 22, SpaceX's 100th orbital mission of the year (99 Falcon 9 flights plus one Falcon Heavy). The booster landed on its ninth flight; Starlink has passed 11,000 operational satellites.
• Tonight's Sky: Comet 220P/McNaught is in outburst — roughly 20,000 times brighter than normal — and observable with binoculars rather than requiring a telescope, at least until it fades after an October close pass. Also: a reminder that a 96%-partial lunar eclipse falls the night of August 27–28.

Links & sources:

• NASASpaceFlight.com — LandSpace's Zhuque-3 Topples After Landing
• Space.com — Bad weather delays launch of China's historic Chang'e 7 mission to moon's south pole
• SCMP — China puts Chang'e-7 mission to lunar south pole on hold
• SpaceNews — China delays Chang'e-7 lunar south pole landing mission launch
• China in Space — Chang'e 7 Moon Mission Delayed by One Month
• CNN — China postpones launch of unprecedented water-hunting moon mission amid space race
• Space.com — SpaceX sends 27 Starlink satellites to orbit on 100th Falcon rocket launch of the year
• APOD — Comet 220P in Outburst (August 24, 2026)

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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 landing in China, NASA pinpointing exactly where a Falcon 9 hit the Moon, and the failed rescue mission for NASA's Swift telescope.   Full show notes:   Today's episode — S05E174, Saturday August 22, 2026, our second "Weekend Wrap":   Main story: China's Chang'e-7 targets the most ambitious lunar mission ever. China's Long March 5 Y14 rocket rolled out to the pad at Wenchang Space Launch Site on August 19, ahead of a launch window running August 24–31. Chang'e-7 comprises four vehicles — an orbiter, a lander built for up to eight years of surface operations, a rover, and a six-legged, thruster-powered hopper capable of 15km leaps — targeting the rim of Shackleton Crater at the lunar south pole, with landing expected near year's end. The mission's primary goal is the first landed, direct search for water ice in the Moon's permanently shadowed craters. Brown University planetary scientist James Head called it "the most ambitious, comprehensive, and complex robotic lunar mission ever attempted by any nation or entity." The mission carries international instruments from Russia, Italy, Thailand, Switzerland, Bahrain, Egypt, and a University of Hong Kong/International Lunar Observatory Association telescope. It precedes Chang'e-8 (~2028) and China's targeted crewed lunar landing by 2030.   The week in review:   -       Starship's Ship 40: After Tuesday's episode reported recovery as complete, fuller reporting showed the ship was towed further than first known, arriving August 18 off Christmas Island (not a mainland port) after 24 days adrift and 400+ km of drift. SpaceX has no announced plan yet for the final leg to Starbase, Texas — at its current tow pace that trip would take over a year. Separately, Elon Musk said August 20 that a Starship tower-catch attempt is now "probably... in a few months" rather than on Flight 14 as earlier hoped; Flight 14 is targeted no earlier than August 28 and will attempt Starship's first-ever full orbital flight. -       LandSpace / Zhuque-3: On August 19, Chinese commercial company LandSpace became the first private Chinese company to land an orbital-class rocket booster, recovering Zhuque-3's first stage in Gansu Province on the rocket's second flight (the first, in December 2025, reached orbit but failed its landing attempt). -       SpaceX Moon impact site: NASA and South Korea's Danuri orbiter pinpointed and imaged the crater left by a spent Falcon 9 upper stage that struck the Moon on August 5 — a 60-foot-wide, sub-10-foot-deep crater at 19.4759°N, 266.7138°E, with ejecta rays revealing space-weathering data. -       Swift telescope rescue fails: NASA confirmed on August 19 that the LINK rescue spacecraft's attitude-control failure (two of three reaction wheels down, plus a thruster malfunction) ended the rescue attempt for the aging Swift Observatory, which will now reenter uncontrolled later this year — not expected before October per early reporting, though NASA hasn't confirmed a date.   Links & sources:   -       Space.com — China's Chang'e 7 moon probe will launch this weekend on the most ambitious lunar mission in history -       Scientific American — China is about to launch its most ambitious moon mission yet -       Al Jazeera — China's new moon mission could unlock secret of lunar ice: Why that matters -       China in Space — Chang'e 7 Rolls Out Ahead of Moon Launch From Wenchang -       NASASpaceFlight.com — Ship 40 arrives at Christmas Island, plans return to Starbase -       Starlust — SpaceX finally hauls Starship's Ship 40 to Christmas Island after 24 days lost at sea -       Space.com — SpaceX will try for 1st Starship tower catch 'in a few months,' Elon Musk says -       Spaceflight Now — LandSpace becomes first commercial Chinese company to land an orbital-class booster -       NASA Science — NASA's LRO Images Falcon 9 Crater on Moon, Learns New Details -       Nature World News — NASA Says Swift Observatory Will Likely Reenter Earth's Atmosphere This Year After Commercial Boost Mission Ends -       CBS News — NASA's Swift telescope will plunge toward Earth after rescue mission called off   Follow us: @AstronomyDailyPod

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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:   Today's episode — S05E173, Friday August 21, 2026:   Main story: NASA finds the crater a SpaceX rocket left on the Moon. A spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage struck the Moon's surface on August 5, 2026, at 19.4759°N, 266.7138°E. South Korea's Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (Danuri) imaged the impact site within hours using its LUTI camera, confirming the predicted location to within 0.6 miles and passing refined coordinates to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team. LRO's Narrow-Angle Camera imaged the site on August 11–12, revealing a crater roughly 60 feet wide and less than 10 feet deep, with dark rays of space-weathered material excavated from about 1.5 feet down and brighter rays of fresh, unweathered material from deeper still. NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (Planetary Defense program) refined the original impact prediction using data from independent astronomers.   Swift telescope rescue mission fails. NASA's Swift Observatory, losing altitude faster than expected due to heightened solar activity, was the target of a $30 million rescue attempt by Arizona-based Katalyst Space Technologies. Their LINK spacecraft launched July 3 on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket but suffered an attitude-control failure roughly three weeks later, spinning uncontrollably before it could dock with and boost Swift. NASA confirmed the mission's failure on August 19; Swift is now expected to reenter the atmosphere uncontrolled before the end of 2026. LINK will still attempt a proximity flyby to gather data for future servicing missions. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman: "This is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting."   Dark matter may be magnifying a black hole's jet. A team led by Silke Britzen at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, combining data from the VLBA, the Fermi gamma-ray telescope, and NASA's Swift X-ray instrument, found that the plasma jet from blazar PKS 2233-148 shows an unexpected deviation consistent with gravitational lensing by an unseen dark matter clump — a potential first detection of dark matter substructure lensing a blazar jet. The result could also help confirm blazars as sources of high-energy cosmic neutrinos. Published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, July 31.   Rocket Lab launches a new radar satellite for Japan. Rocket Lab launched SUSANOO-II, a synthetic aperture radar Earth-observation satellite, for Tokyo-based iQPS on an Electron rocket from New Zealand (mission: "The Lightning God Defends"). It's Rocket Lab's ninth launch for iQPS, part of a planned 36-satellite constellation, and marks the company's 14th flight of 2026 and 93rd Electron mission overall.   Tonight's sky: the Moon is a waxing gibbous, about 63% illuminated. With a telescope, find the Ring Nebula (M57) in Lyra — look for bright star Vega overhead, then the small parallelogram of stars just below it. Mark your calendars for a 96%-partial lunar eclipse on August 27–28, nearly total — full viewing details to come.   Links & sources:   -       NASA Science — NASA's LRO Images Falcon 9 Crater on Moon, Learns New Details -       Universe Today — NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Images Falcon 9 Crater on Moon, With Some Help From a Korean Spacecraft -       Space.com — Private mission to save NASA's Swift space telescope fails -       Live Science — 'This is not the outcome we were working towards': $30 million mission to save NASA's Swift telescope fails -       Space.com — Dark matter could magnify the jets of a ravenously feeding supermassive black hole -       Space.com — Rocket Lab launches private Japanese Earth-observing satellite to orbit -       Space.com — Night sky August 2026: what you can see tonight -       TheSkyLive — Moon Phase on August 21, 2026   Follow us: search astrodailypod on your favorite platform · astronomydaily.io

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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 early universe's galaxies were hiding roughly four times more mass than we thought.   Full show notes:   Today's episode — S05E172, Thursday August 20, 2026:   Main story: China's private spaceflight sector sticks the landing. On August 19, Chinese commercial launch company LandSpace successfully recovered the first stage of its Zhuque-3 (ZQ-3) rocket after liftoff from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone in northwestern China — the first time any Chinese commercial company has landed an orbital-class booster. The 76.6-metre, stainless-steel, methane-fueled rocket (taller than a Falcon 9) touched down on four legs roughly 390km downrange in Gansu Province about eight minutes after liftoff, running on a single Tianque-12 engine. It's ZQ-3's second flight — the first, in December 2025, reached orbit but couldn't stick the recovery. The landing puts LandSpace among a very small club of companies with proven booster-reuse technology and marks, in the company's words, a shift "toward the engineering application phase of reusability."   A "mega-Earth" that shouldn't be this dense. Astronomers led by Max Kroft (University of Wisconsin–Madison) have identified GJ 523b, a rocky exoplanet 23.5 times more massive than Earth but only 2.5 times its width — extraordinarily dense for its size. Standard planet-formation models say a planet this massive, orbiting its star every 17.75 days in a system just 170 million years old, should have pulled in a thick hydrogen-helium envelope; instead it's stayed almost entirely rocky. Found by TESS and confirmed with the WIYN 3.5-metre telescope at Kitt Peak; submitted to The Astronomical Journal, not yet peer-reviewed.   The star that could reveal a black hole's spin. A newly identified star, S301, is orbiting our galaxy's central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, closer and faster than any star found before it — passing within 12 astronomical units at roughly 25,000 kilometres per second and completing a full orbit in just 8.7 years. Led by K. Abd El Dayem (Paris Observatory) with Nobel laureate Reinhard Genzel's group, researchers expect to use S301's orbit to directly measure the black hole's spin within a decade — a first for any supermassive black hole, and a real-world test of Einstein's general relativity.   JWST finds the early universe's galaxies were hiding their mass. A team led by Chloe Cheng (Leiden University), using JWST's NIRSpec instrument alongside data from the VLT's LEGA-C survey, found that ancient "quiescent" galaxies contain far more faint, low-mass stars than previously accounted for — potentially raising their true mass estimates by a factor of four. The hidden stars had simply been outshone by brighter ones in the same galaxies. Published in Nature Astronomy; the finding deepens existing tension with current galaxy-formation models.   Tonight's sky: the Moon is about 56% illuminated and well-placed for lunar observing — look along the sunrise terminator for the crater Theophilus and its dramatic, shadowed walls. Venus is still blazing at magnitude -4.1 low in the western sky after sunset, and Saturn continues its predawn "moon parade" in the south-southeast for early risers.   Links & sources:   -       Spaceflight Now — LandSpace becomes first commercial Chinese company to land an orbital-class booster -       Space.com — Touchdown! Private Chinese rocket aces landing on 2nd-ever flight -       NASASpaceFlight.com — Zhuque-3 Completes Second Flight with Successful First-Stage Landing -       Space.com — Astronomers discover a giant, rocky 'mega-Earth' 23 times more massive than our planet -       Phys.org — Mega-Earth GJ 523b is 23 times as massive as our planet—but only 2.5 times as wide -       Universe Today — The Fastest Star in the Milky Way Will Test Relativity -       Universe Today — Whoa! The JWST's Ancient Galaxies Are Much More Massive Than Thought -       Space.com — Night sky August 2026: what you can see tonight   Follow us: @AstronomyDailyPod

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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:
Today's episode — S05E171, Wednesday August 19, 2026:
Main story: First Frenchwoman to spacewalk. ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot became the first French woman ever to conduct a spacewalk on August 18, working alongside NASA's Anil Menon (on his second EVA, delayed from August 13 after a carbon dioxide sensor flag on his first spacewalk August 6). The pair set out to replace one of the station's space-to-ground antennas, but the job took longer than planned — after 6 hours and 23 minutes (the station's 282nd spacewalk overall), controllers called it before the swap was fully complete. The old antenna is secured but not stowed; the new one remains on its storage platform. Another spacewalk is scheduled for next Tuesday to finish the job. France's first-ever spacewalk was performed by Jean-Loup Chrétien on Mir in 1988.
A trillion-mile river of gas explains tilted planets. Astronomers led by Maria Galloway-Sprietsma (University of Florida), with advisor Jaehan Bae and international collaborators, used the ALMA telescope in Chile to trace a gas streamer roughly 1.2 trillion miles (0.2 light-years) long feeding into the young triple-star system GW Orionis, 1,300 light-years away in Orion. The streamer's infall angle closely matches the tilt of the system's warped outer disk ring, offering a mechanism for why some planetary systems end up with misaligned or even retrograde orbits. Published August 6 in The Astronomical Journal.
Correction/update: Ship 40's journey continues. Last episode we reported Starship's Ship 40 recovery as complete after its intact splashdown and tow toward Western Australia. Fuller reporting since shows the ship was towed further and arrived, as of August 18, in sheltered waters off Christmas Island after 24 days and 400+ km adrift — with SpaceX now planning to transport it back to Starbase, Texas, for full inspection. Musk has cited the intact recovery as strengthening the case for attempting a tower catch of a returning ship as early as Flight 14.
SpaceX quietly passes 11,000 satellites. Tuesday night's Starlink 17-50 launch from Vandenberg — SpaceX's 100th mission of 2026 overall (97th Falcon 9 flight of the year) — added 24 more satellites, pushing the Starlink constellation to nearly 11,000 operational satellites. Booster B1097 flew for the 12th time, targeting a droneship landing in the Pacific.
Tonight's sky (well, tomorrow's predawn sky): Saturn is showing off a "moon parade" before dawn, its unusually narrow, shallowly tilted rings (7.5°) lining up major moons — Titan, Rhea, Tethys, Dione and, in larger scopes, Iapetus and Enceladus — almost in a straight row. This evening, catch a waxing crescent Moon.
Links & sources:

• Space.com — Watch European astronaut make history during spacewalk today
• Spaceflight Now — Astronauts remove failed antenna; run out of time to install a spare
• France 24 — Sophie Adenot set to become first French female astronaut to venture outside ISS
• Space.com — A 'river' of cosmic gas 1 trillion miles long sent planets in the Orion constellation into tilted orbits
• University of Florida News — Cosmic river of gas may have tilted a young planetary system in Orion constellation
• ALMA Observatory — ALMA Captures a Trillion-Mile Stream Feeding the Triple-Star System GW Orionis
• NASASpaceFlight.com — Ship 40 arrives at Christmas Island, plans return to Starbase
• Space.com — Starship lives! SpaceX craft arrives at Christmas Island after 24-day ocean ordeal
• Space.com — SpaceX launches its 100th mission of the year, sends Starlink satellites to orbit
• Spaceflight Now — Live coverage: SpaceX to send Starlink satellites to orbit with Tuesday night launch from California
• Space.com — Night sky August 2026: what you can see tonight

Follow us: @AstronomyDailyPod

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