From Rogue Planets to Lunar Missions: Your Daily Space Update

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Welcome to astronomy daily the podcast that brings you the latest happenings from across the cosmos. I'm your host Anna and I'm Avery

It's great to be with you. We have a packed show today covering everything from newborn planets and rogue worlds to a major upgrade for one of Earth's most powerful

Telescopes

That's right Avery. We'll also be looking at what makes an interstellar visitor so familiar

And peering into the very exciting future of spaceflight. So let's get started

First up an update from low Earth orbit. Starlink has announced plans to adjust its satellite constellation in 2026

Primarily for space safety reasons

Right this is a significant move

They're planning to lower the entire constellation from its current altitude of about

550 kilometers down to 480 kilometers and this isn't just a random adjustment

It follows a recent incident where a starlink satellite broke up creating a small but notable amount of space debris

This move is a direct response to mitigate future risks

Exactly a lower orbit has a key advantage

Atmospheric drag is stronger so if a satellite fails it will de-orbit and burn up in the atmosphere much faster

In a few years instead of decades this drastically reduces the long-term risk of collisions

It's a proactive step towards managing the increasingly crowded environments in low Earth orbit

A responsible move for a company with such a massive presence up there

From our crowded orbital backyard to the nurseries of distant stars

Gaya space telescope has given us an unprecedented look at planets in the process of being born

This is incredible news

Gaya has found compelling evidence of planet formation in 31 different young stellar systems

We're talking about seeing the very first stages of planetary life

It really is and the method is just as brilliant as the discovery itself

Gaya isn't seeing the planets directly

Instead it's detecting the tiny gravitational wobble that these forming planets exert on their host stars

That gravitational wobble, it's the same principle behind many exoplanet discoveries

But applying it to these incredibly young chaotic systems is a huge breakthrough

It allows astronomers to study these systems in their infancy on a large scale for the first time

We're moving from theoretical models to direct observation of how solar systems like our own might have formed

It's a whole new window into planetary science

Speaking of new windows, how about this?

Astronomers have successfully weighed a rogue planet for the first time

And for our listeners, a rogue planet is one that drifts through space untethered to any star

They're incredibly difficult to find, let alone study

Exactly, this one is about the size of Saturn

And it was likely ejected from its home solar system billions of years ago

Using a technique called micro-lensing, scientists were able to measure not just its mass but its distance from us as well

And the secret ingredient here was parallax

They observed the micro-lensing event where the rogue planet's gravity bent the light of a background star from two places at once

Earth and the Gaia space telescope, which is about a million miles away

That different perspective gave them the data they needed to calculate the planet's properties

It's a fantastic proof of concept for a new way to study these isolated wandering worlds

It makes you wonder how many are out there

From wandering worlds to interstellar visitors

Our third confirmed guest from another star system, comet 3i-slash-ATLS, has been revealing some more fascinating secrets

It certainly has

As the comet was moving away from the Sun, the Soho spacecraft observed it producing an absolutely massive amount of water

Right, the solar wind was breaking down that water vapor into hydrogen and oxygen

Soho's SWAN instrument, which is designed to look for hydrogen, detected this huge hydrogen glow surrounding the comet

And what's so significant about that?

Well, it means this interstellar comet is behaving in a way that's very similar to comets from our own solar system

They also release large amounts of water as they are heated by the Sun

So it's a piece of another solar system but it's made of the same stuff as ours

That's a profoundly important clue about the composition of planetary systems beyond our own

It suggests the building blocks for worlds like Earth could be quite common across the galaxy

That it does, and it shows that 3i-ATLS has untold stories to tell us as it heads on out of our solar system

Let's shift our gaze from the distant past to the very near future

2026 is shaping up to be an absolutely massive year for space exploration

So I am so excited for this. The headline mission, of course, is NASA's Artemis II

Or finally sending astronauts back to the moon, or at least on a trip around it

It will be the first time humans have been in deep space since the Apollo program

A huge milestone, but it's not just NASA, the commercial sector is also making big moves

We're expecting that they view of new commercial space stations and the next generation of private lunar landers

And we'll be getting new eyes on the universe too

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch

Its wide field view will be revolutionary for studying dark energy and finding exoplanets

That's right, and not to be outdone China's launching its own powerful space telescope Suntien

Which will have a field of view 300 times larger than Hubble's

It's going to be a year of incredible advancements across the board

Finally, let's come back down to Earth for our last story

The Otakama large millimeters slash sub millimeter array in Chile, better known as ALMA, has just completed a major upgrade

ALMA is already one of the most powerful radial telescopes on the planet

What did this upgrade involve?

Engineers installed 145 brand new low noise amplifiers across the array of antennas

In simple terms, this will massively increase the telescope's sensitivity

It's like giving a giant ear a state of the art hearing aid

Wow, so it will be able to pick up even fainter signals from space

What kind of science will that enable?

It's going to give us a much clearer view of the cold universe

ALMA excels at observing things like the dusty disks where planets are forming

The cold gas of the inner stellar medium and even complex organic molecules in distant galaxies

With this upgrade, those views will be sharper and deeper than ever before

I love all this new science we have to look forward to

It's a powerful testament to how this new telescope is not just confirming old theories

But actively rewriting the first chapters of cosmic history right before our eyes

It's a true revolution in our understanding of the early universe

And that's a wrap for our news today

From managing our orbital highways to discovering newborn planets and gearing up for humanity's return to deep space

It's been an incredible tour of the cosmos

It certainly has

Thanks so much for tuning in to Astronomy Daily

We hope you'll join us next time for another look at the universe around us

For more space and astronomy news, follow us on social media

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And if you visit our YouTube channel, please give us a thumbs up and the follow

It really helps with the algorithm recommending us to other space enthusiasts

Until tomorrow, keep looking up

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