Astronomy Daily: Latest Space News

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

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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-to-back launches.
Full show notes:
Today's episode — S05E170, Tuesday August 18, 2026:
Main story: Starship's Ship 40 makes it home. SpaceX has completed recovery of Ship 40, the Starship Flight 13 upper stage that survived an unprecedented soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean on July 24. After drifting over 400km and a difficult multi-week tow through rough seas (prediction markets had given it ~18% odds as of mid-August), recovery vessels including the Normand Ranger brought the ship in to Western Australia this week. SpaceX had already secured the imagery it needed from the heat shield and engines regardless of outcome; Ship 41 and Flight 14 (targeting ~August 20) are already in the pipeline.
A dead star shows us our Sun's future. A Yale-led team studying the Helix Nebula's white dwarf found 22 bow-shock structures in its outer halo — the first direct observation of a dead star's ejected material dispersing back into the galaxy. It's a preview of what our own Sun will undergo in roughly 5 billion years. Published August 12 in Nature.
The collision that built the Milky Way. Hubble and Gaia data revealed a previously unknown ancient dwarf galaxy, "LKH," which merged with the Milky Way 11.8 billion years ago — predating the well-known Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus merger by 1.8 billion years. Published August 17 in Nature Astronomy.
China bounces back from a rocket failure. After an August 10 Long March 7A failure destroyed a communications satellite, China launched twice within 23 hours on August 16 — a Long March 12 from Wenchang and a Long March 2C from Taiyuan — demonstrating operational resilience across two rocket types and launch sites.
Tonight's sky: the waxing crescent Moon pairs with a brilliant Venus (magnitude -4.1) low in the western sky, about 45 minutes after sunset.
Links & sources:

NASASpaceFlight.com — While SpaceX recovers Ship 40, Ship 41 prepares for testing ahead of Flight 14
MarineRadar — SpaceX recovers Starship from Indian Ocean after three-week tow
CNN — Satellite imagery captures race to recover 170-foot SpaceX Starship in the Indian Ocean
Space.com — Scientists find dead star that predicts our Sun's future
Space.com — How an ancient collision with another galaxy transformed the Milky Way
Space.com — China bounces back from Long March rocket explosion with back-to-back launches
Space.com — Night sky August 2026: what you can see tonight

Follow us: @AstronomyDailyPod

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