Astronomy Daily: Latest Space News

Today's episode — S05E183, Wednesday September 2, 2026: Main story: A thermal anomaly beneath Mars's south pole. Writing in Nature on August 27, a team led by Alexander Berne (Caltech PhD '26, now University of Arizona) reports that the interior of Mars's southern hemisphere is 200–400 °C hotter than the northern hemisphere and partially molten. The team used tidal tomography — measuring how much the solid body of Mars flexes under the Sun's tidal pull by tracking minute velocity changes in three orbiters (Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) across roughly 25 years of radio tracking data. Hotter, softer rock deforms more, so the degree of flex reveals interior temperature. The result offers a deep-interior explanation for the Martian crustal dichotomy — the sharp division between the smooth low northern plains and the ancient, thickly crusted southern highlands, unexplained since the Viking era — and also accounts for the concentration of crustal magnetic anomalies in the south and the unexpectedly strong seismic-wave damping seen by InSight. The cause of the asymmetry remains open: a giant early impact, lopsided mantle convection, or a heat-trapping compositional layer. Co-authors span Brown University, NASA Goddard, the University of Arizona, Academia Sinica, the University of Rome, TU Delft, UCLA, UT Austin, CU Boulder and UC Santa Cruz. Crew-13 stands down. NASA and SpaceX announced on August 29 that an oxidizer leak had been found in the Dragon spacecraft's propulsion system during standard prelaunch processing, delaying the Crew-13 launch from its September 12 target. Teams are performing additional tests and data review and will complete any necessary rework before flight; a new target date will be announced once available. The crew is commander Jessica Watkins (NASA), pilot Luke Delaney (NASA), and mission specialists Joshua Kutryk (CSA) and Sergey Teteryatnikov (Roscosmos), flying an approximately seven-month increment with significant station maintenance and several spacewalks planned. Swift is observing again. NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory restarted science operations on August 26, with two of its three instruments back online and the third expected within weeks. Swift's telescopes had been powered down progressively — the ultraviolet/optical and X-ray telescopes in February, the Burst Alert Telescope in April — to reduce power draw and atmospheric drag while awaiting a boost from Katalyst Space's LINK spacecraft, launched in July. NASA announced on August 19 that LINK would not attempt the capture after developing attitude-control problems. With no rescue coming, NASA has restarted the instruments to extract as much science as possible. NASA expects Swift to fall below roughly 300 km (185 miles) — where telescope operations become impractical — within the next one to two months. Katalyst will still fly proximity operations to demonstrate in-orbit servicing techniques. An 80,000-year mission to Alpha Centauri. The Seattle-area nonprofit Fermi Explorer Mission announced plans to launch a 100–200 kg probe toward Alpha Centauri (4.4 light-years away) at the end of 2029, most likely on a SpaceX rideshare. Solar electric propulsion plus repeated perihelion pumping manoeuvres would build a cruise speed of 24.2 km/s (about 54,000 mph) — faster than New Horizons at Pluto — for a journey of roughly 80,000 years: 12 years of active operations followed by around 79,500 years of coasting. Budget is under $15 million, with $10 million verbally pledged. Payload is at least 1 kg in a shielded 10 cm cube, including a digitised Voyager Golden Record, messages from children worldwide, and cosmic-ray detectors. Co-founders Philip Johnston, Ezra Feilden and Adi Oltean are behind the space computing company Starcloud; the advisory board includes Rob Meyerson (former Blue Origin president) and Jeff Thornburg (former SpaceX propulsion lead). Johnston: "We'll be the first to leave, and the last to arrive." It would be the first spacecraft deliberately aimed at a specific star. Tonight's sky and the month ahead: Five naked-eye planets are in play through September. Venus dominates the early evening, low in the west/west-southwest about 14° up an hour after sunset (Sydney sunset ≈ 5:34pm AEST), still close to Spica after last night's conjunction, and building to maximum brilliance on September 18 — with a thin crescent Moon alongside on the 14th. Saturn is up most of the night at magnitude +0.4 with its rings tilted just 8° from edge-on, the narrowest in about a dozen years, and rides far higher for Southern Hemisphere observers than for northern ones. Mars rises around 1:40am and is slowly brightening; Jupiter rises east-northeast around 3:50am, and on September 8 the Moon occults Jupiter for much of North America. Mercury appears low in evening twilight in the final week, about 1° above Spica on the 25th. The Moon is a waning gibbous heading to last quarter on September 4. Also this month: International Observe the Moon Night on the 19th, the equinox on the 22nd, and a Harvest Moon near Saturn on the 26th. Standing reminder: any solar filter must be certified to ISO 12312-2.   Links & sources: Caltech — Thermal Anomaly Discovered Below Mars's South Pole (Aug 28) Nature — "Tidal Tomography Reveals a Thermal Anomaly Beneath Mars's Crustal Dichotomy", Berne et al. (Aug 27) Phys.org — Thermal anomaly discovered below Mars' south pole Space.com — Scientists discover massive underground 'thermal anomaly' on Mars NASA Space Station Blog — NASA, SpaceX Adjust Crew-13 Launch Date (Aug 29) Space.com — SpaceX, NASA delay next astronaut launch to ISS due to leak on Dragon spacecraft NASA Swift Blog — NASA's Swift Restarts Science Observations (Aug 28) Space.com — NASA's Swift space telescope resumes observations after failed orbital rescue attempt (Aug 31) GeekWire — Fermi Explorer team plans 80,000-year trip to Alpha Centauri (Sept 1) Space.com — Nonprofit wants to launch 80,000-year mission to Alpha Centauri in 2029 (Sept 1) MIT Technology Review — How AI plotted an interstellar journey to Alpha Centauri (Sept 1) NASA Science — What's Up: September 2026 Skywatching Tips Space.com — 5 planets will light up the September sky Follow us: @AstroDailyPod  

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.

Sponsor Details:
Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!

Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmail

Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click Here

This episode includes AI-generated content.

Today's episode — S05E182, Tuesday September 1, 2026: Main story: SpaceX cleared Booster 21's static fire at Starbase's Pad 2 on August 30, the last major milestone before Starship Flight 14 — the third flight of the Starship V3 design. Ship 41 had already completed its own static fire campaign at Massey's Test Site. Flight 14 will attempt something no Starship flight has done before: catching the ship itself, not just the Super Heavy booster, with the launch tower's upgraded "chopstick" arms. Pad 2 received expanded propellant storage, additional pumps and faster-moving catch hardware ahead of the attempt. The flight follows directly on from Flight 13's Ship 40, which survived a dramatic, unplanned float in the Indian Ocean after splashdown before finally beginning its journey home to Starbase on August 30. A firm Flight 14 launch date is still pending FAA and range approvals, with current expectation pointing to sometime in September. Chang'e-7 slips to early 2027. China's four-vehicle lunar south pole mission — rolled back to the vehicle assembly building on August 24, hours before its scheduled launch — has now been retargeted to early 2027 (February–March windows), a far bigger delay than the "about a month" first reported. Chinese authorities have not disclosed a technical cause beyond an approaching storm; multiple outlets report a separate issue was likely found during final on-pad testing, with reviews continuing into whether the launch vehicle or the spacecraft itself is at fault. A very busy month at the space station. NASA's Jessica Meir (her 7th spacewalk) and ESA's Sophie Adenot (her 3rd, following her historic first-French-woman EVA a few weeks ago) began a roughly six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk at 7:30am EDT on September 1 — the ISS's 284th since 1998, and Expedition 75's fourth in a single month. Tasks include replacing a spacecraft navigational aid, prepping a cosmic particle detector for a future upgrade, and installing data-relay jumper cables. NASA's Anil Menon supported from inside on Canadarm2, with Jack Hathaway on safety watch. Planet formation is a "race against time." A team led by Naman Bajaj (University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, with the SETI Institute) published in The Astronomical Journal on August 27, using archival JWST MIRI data on 72 young, Sun-like stars to show protoplanetary disk dispersal happens in two distinct phases — magnetically driven jets and winds early on (roughly the first 1–10 million years), then photoevaporative winds taking over as the star matures. Gas giant planets must form before that gas is gone. Türkiye joins the Artemis Accords. Turkish Minister of Industry and Technology Mehmet Fatih Kacır signed on August 31 at NASA Headquarters, hosted by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman — Türkiye is the 71st country to sign. Türkiye sent its first astronaut to the ISS in 2024 and is preparing its first lunar mission, AYAP-1; it hosts the International Astronautical Congress in October. Tonight's sky: Venus is in a tight conjunction with Spica, under 2° apart, low in the west/west-southwest about 45 minutes after sunset (Sydney sunset ≈ 5:33pm AEST), setting roughly 90 minutes later. Saturn now rises near sunset and is up most of the night in Aquarius, building toward an October 4 opposition with rings tilted a photogenic angle. Jupiter has returned to the pre-dawn sky (best 4–6am), with Mars still visible nearby but fading. The Moon is a waning gibbous heading to last quarter on September 4. The weak Aurigid meteor shower peaked overnight but is Northern Hemisphere-favoured and moonlight-affected — not worth chasing from the Southern Hemisphere. Links & sources: KeepTrack — SpaceX Brief, Aug 30 2026: Super Heavy Static Fire Clears Starship Flight 14 Basenor — Starship Flight 14: 5 Details That Matter Right Now Space.com — SpaceX test-fires Starship Super Heavy booster ahead of critical Flight 14 Tesla Oracle — Starship 40 begins its journey from the Indian Ocean back home to Starbase, Texas China-in-Space.com — Chang'e 7 Moon Launch Moved to Early 2027 (Aug 31) South China Morning Post — Could the delay to China's moon mission ease pressure on Nasa? (Aug 26) NASA Space Station Blog — Expedition 75 is Go for Tuesday's Navigation and Science Maintenance Spacewalk (Aug 31) NASA — NASA Sets Spacewalk for Station Maintenance, Live Coverage Planned (Sept 1) Universe Today — Planets Hurry To Form Before the Protoplanetary Disk Dissipates University of Arizona News — Planet formation is a 'race against time,' according to new U of A research SETI Institute — JWST Reveals a Race Against Time for Forming Planets NASA — NASA Welcomes Türkiye as Newest Artemis Accords Signatory (Aug 31) When The Curves Line Up — 2026, September 1: Venus and Spica Conjunction Tonight Follow us: @AstroDailyPod

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.

Sponsor Details:
Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!

Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmail

Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click Here

This episode includes AI-generated content.

🚀 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

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.

Sponsor Details:
Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!

Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmail

Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click Here

This episode includes AI-generated content.

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

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.

Sponsor Details:
Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!

Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmail

Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click Here

This episode includes AI-generated content.

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

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.

Sponsor Details:
Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!

Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmail

Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click Here

This episode includes AI-generated content.