Atmosphere Found on Rocky Exoplanet, Starship Drama Unfolds, and Meteorite Treasure Trove

Anna: Welcome to Astronomy Daily, your daily

dose of the latest space and astronomy news.

I'm Anna.

Avery: And I'm avery. It's Friday the 17th

of July, 2026, and honestly,

if you only listen to one episode of this

show all month, make it this one.

Anna: No pressure then, but Avery's not

exaggerating. Today we're leading with a

genuine milestone in the search for life

beyond Earth. The first atmosphere ever

detected on a rocky temperate planet

sitting in the habitable zone of.

Avery: We've also got last night's starship drama.

And there was drama, just not the kind

anyone had scripted. Plus, the meteorite

that smashed through a New Jersey bedroom

ceiling and turned out to be carrying the

chemical ingredients of life itself.

Anna: And later, the earliest evidence yet of a

galaxy building itself from the inside out.

Some gloriously strange metallic waves on

Mars. And as always, we'll close with what to

look for in tonight's southern skies. And

trust me, tonight you'll actually want to

step outside, buckle um in.

Avery: Let's get into it.

Anna: Avery.

Every so often a result comes along that

future textbooks will point back to. This

might be one of those. Astronomers have

detected an atmosphere around a rocky

temperate planet called LHS 1140

b. And that makes it the first rocky world in

a habitable zone anywhere beyond our solar

system confirmed to have air.

Avery: Lets set, uh, the scene, because context is

everything here. LHS 1140

B sits about 48 light years away,

orbiting a small, cool red dwarf star.

It's what we call a super Earth. Roughly five

and a half times the mass of our planet. And

crucially, it orbits inside the habitable

zone. That's the region where temperatures

allow liquid water to exist on a planet's

surface.

Anna: Now, detecting atmospheres on exoplanets

isn't new. We've been doing it for more than

two decades. But until now, essentially

every confirmed atmosphere belonged to big

gas, bloated giants, hot Jupiters,

planets. Nothing like our own. Small,

rocky planets are so much dimmer and smaller

than their stars that teasing out an

atmospheric signal has been fiendishly

difficult.

Avery: Which is what makes this such a big deal. The

team led by Colin Cherubim, who did this work

as a PhD student at Harvard, found a

signature of helium escaping from the

planet's atmosphere. The result has just been

published in the journal Science.

Anna: Helium might sound like an odd headline.

Gas. Nobody is imagining alien birthday

balloons. But it tells us something profound.

This planet has held onto an atmosphere

despite orbiting a red dwarf. And red

dwarfs are famously nasty neighbors. They

blast their planets with X rays and

ultraviolet Radiation that tends to strip

atmospheres entirely.

Avery: The modeling suggests

LHS1140B

is far enough from its star that it's managed

to keep a good chunk of the primordial helium

it gathered when it formed. And the

researchers think there's more to this world

than helium. Its density suggests

it's rocky, likely with an iron core.

And it probably holds a lot of water, too.

Anna: And here's the tantalizing bit. If the

atmosphere provides even a modest greenhouse

effect, and we now know there is an

atmosphere, then conditions on this planet

could plausibly support liquid water. A

rocky planet, an atmosphere, the right

temperature. That's the trifecta, uh,

astrobiologists have been chasing for 30

years now.

Avery: The discipline. The lead author has been very

clear that nobody is claiming this planet has

life. What they are claiming, and it's

remarkable enough, is the first direct

evidence that a rocky habitable zone planet

can hold an atmosphere at all. That's a

foundational question answered.

Anna: There's also a lovely thought buried in this

work. Researchers suspect that the very early

Earth might have gone through a phase with a

primordial atmosphere a bit like this one.

So in studying

HLS1140B, we

might be looking at an echo of our own

planet's infancy.

Avery: Expect a stampede of follow up observations.

Astronomers will want to know what else is in

that atmosphere and whether there's water.

LHS1140B just

became one of the most important addresses in

the galaxy.

Anna: 48 light years away, a small world is

holding its breath. Well, holding its

atmosphere. And for the first time, we can

say that with evidence from a world

Avery: with air to a rocket that never left the

ground.

Regular listeners know we've been tracking

Starship Flight 13 all week, and last

night was supposed to be the night.

Anna: Quick refresher for anyone just joining the

Ark. Flight 13 is the second outing for

Starship's version 3 hardware. And its

headline task is deploying 20 real

Starlink V3 satellites. Actual

functioning spacecraft, not the mass

simulators of earlier flights.

Avery: So Thursday evening, Texas time, the

countdown ran all the way down. The Raptor

engines on the super heavy booster began

igniting. And then everything stopped.

Several engines failed to start, and the

vehicle's automated systems triggered a

launch abort at T0.

Anna: Which, let's be clear, is the system doing

exactly what it's designed to do. An abort at

ignition is undramatic by design. The

vehicle is safe, the pad is safe, and

everyone gets to try again.

Avery: Elon Musk weighed in shortly Afterwards,

confirming that some engines didn't start and

the automatic abort kicked in. And the fix is

already defined. Two Raptor engines will be

removed and replaced with the most likely new

launch window early next week.

Anna: And it's worth remembering the stakes riding

on this one. The FAA only closed out its

Flight 12 mishap investigation last week.

That flight lost the booster during its

landing burn and dropped an engine on ascent.

Flight 13 carries the fixes for all of

that, plus that first real payload

deployment.

Avery: And the bigger picture. SpaceX has filed

plans for a next Gener Starlink

constellation of up to 100,000 V3

satellites. A network that only works if

Starship becomes a reliable, high cadence

workhorse. Every one of these test flights is

a stepping stone toward that and toward

NASA's Artemis lunar landings, which depend

on Starship too.

Anna: So, a, uh, frustrating night at Starbase, but

a recoverable one. Two engines out. Two

engines in and we go again. We'll bring you

the launch, the actual launch. Fingers

crossed, as soon as it happens.

Now for my favorite story of the day. Cast

your mind back to 16th July,

2024. Two years ago this week, a

daytime fireball streaked across the skies of

the US East Coast. A sonic boom rattled

New York City. And in the town of

Hillsborough, New Jersey, a rock from space

punched straight through the roof of a house

and into a bedroom.

Avery: Imagine coming home to that, a hole in your

ceiling and sitting there among the

insulation, a stone reeking of sulfur.

That was quite recently in interplanetary

space.

Anna: And here's where the homeowner becomes the

hero of the story. Rather than putting it on

the mantelpiece, they acted fast, gathering

the fragments, sealing them in glass jars and

quickly contacting the American Meteor

Society. That speed mattered enormously

because meteorites start reacting with

Earth's moist atmosphere the moment they

land.

Avery: Two years of laboratory work later, the

results have just been published in Science

Advances, and the Hillsborough meteorite has

turned out to be a, uh, genuine treasure.

It's a carbonaceous chondrite, the carbon

rich family of meteorites that preserves

primitive material from before the planets

even finished forming. More than 4 1/2

billion years old.

Anna: But it gets rarer. CM M type

meteorites are usually classed as CM M1 or

CM M2, depending on how much ancient

water altered them while they were still part

of their parent. Hillsborough sits

right in between a cm um 1,

2. And it's only the second meteorite of

that intermediate type ever seen falling to

Earth. Thanks to that quick thinking

homeowner, it's the most pristine example we

have.

Avery: And the chemistry inside is the real

prize. The analysis found amino, uh,

acids, the building blocks of proteins, along

with carboxylic acids and a whole inventory

of organic compounds. Researchers at

NASA Goddard's astrobiology lab concluded

these molecules likely formed inside the

parent AstroDailyPod along by briny,

salty fluids.

Anna: Salty is the operative word. The team

found tiny salt rich fragments suggesting

this rock came from near the surface of its

parent asteroid, where liquid water

evaporated and concentrated salts,

essentially an asteroid with brine deposits.

They're now comparing those salts directly

with the samples returned from asteroids

Ryugu and Bennu.

Avery: And the big picture takeaway this

strengthens the idea that meteorites just

like this one delivered organic molecules,

the raw ingredients for life's chemistry, to

the early Earth. The stuff of

biology arriving by special

Anna: delivery fragments are now being curated at

the American Museum of Natural History in New

York City. And one of the scientists made the

point that if a meteorite ever visits your

house, you're not unlucky. You've been handed

a treasure. So maybe check your roof

insurance policy.

Avery: All the same, yesterday we looked at how

supermassive black holes feed themselves

today. A related question from the other

how do galaxies build their centers in the

first place? Astronomers at Durham University

have just found the earliest example of that

construction in action.

Anna: Using the James Webb Space Telescope, the

Durham led team studied a galaxy as it

appeared more than 9 billion years ago, when

the universe was well under half its current

age. And at its center they found something

never before seen at that distancea nuclear

Avery: disk, a nuclear disk being

and I love that astronomy makes this sound

more alarming than it is a compact,

dense rotating disk of stars right at a

galaxy's core. They're common in mature

galaxies near us today, but nobody had ever

caught one this far back in cosmic history.

Anna: And this one is busy. It's compact,

rich in young stars, and showing all the

signs of organized, orderly growth. The

galaxy also hosts a long stellar bar,

one of those elongated structures of stars

that rotate as a single unit, which is

thought to funnel gas inward and feed the

disk's construction. The paper is out in the

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical

Society.

Avery: The lead author, Zoe Leconte, called it a

remarkable and unexpected find, one that

will push astronomers to rethink galaxy

evolution and the role of stellar bars in the

early universe. It's another entry in what's

becoming Webb's signature discovery.

Mature looking galaxies showing up far

earlier than anyone predicted.

Anna: And there's a black hole connection here,

too. Nuclear disks are Believed to act

as reservoirs, storing gas that can

eventually spiral down to feed a, uh,

galaxy's central supermassive black hole.

So finding 1,9 billion years back may

help explain how black holes bulked up during

the universe's most hyperactive era.

Avery: The team's next step is follow up

observations to map how the stars and gas

actually move within this distant galaxy.

Watch this space, quite literally.

Anna: Next up, time for something purely

gloriously visual. The European

Space Agency has released a new image

from its veteran Mars Express

orbiter. And it shows what looks for all

the world like an ocean of frozen metal

on the Red planet.

Avery: The scene is Keizer Crater, a huge impact

basin about 180km across

and a couple of kilometers deep, sitting in

Noassus Terra, one of the oldest, most

battered landscapes on Mars, pummeled by

impacts for the past 4 billion years.

Anna: And across the crater floor, waves

dark, sinuous, almost shiny ridges

that genuinely look carved from polished

metal. They're sand dunes,

enormous ones, some towering more than a

hundred meters above the surrounding terrain.

That's a dune taller than a 30 story

building.

Avery: The metallic sheen has a lovely explanation.

Bright frost deposits clinging to the dune's

south facing slopes, catching the light. Dark

volcanic sand below. Glittering frost on

top. Mars doing its best impression of a

sculpture garden.

Anna: The winds in this region blow predominantly

from the west, herding the sand into those

distinctive crests. Some standing alone,

others merging into a continuous dune field

stretching for kilometers. It's a reminder

that Mars is not a static museum piece.

It's a working windy world where landscapes

are still being shaped today.

Avery: The image comes from the orbiter's high

resolution stereo camera, captured last

October and released this week. Mars Express,

remember, has been at Mars since 2003.

23 years of service and still sending

back postcards like this. We'll pop the link

in the show notes. It's worth a proper look

on a big screen.

And so to the skies above us and tonight's

Southern hemisphere friends, you get the good

stuff. Without even staying up late, head out

Anna: just after sunset and look to the western

sky. There you'll find a beautifully

thin crescent moon, only a few days

past noon, hanging near brilliant

Venus, with the bright star Regulus, the

heart of Leo the lion, completing the trio.

Avery: This is the meeting we flagged earlier in the

week, and tonight's the night. A crescent

moon and Venus together in twilight is one of

the most photogenic sights in all of sky

watching. No telescope required, though.

Binoculars will show you Earthshine glowing

softly on the moon's nightside.

Anna: And because the Moon is still such a slim

crescent, dark sky conditions continue this

weekend from southern latitudes. The Milky

Way core is riding gloriously high in the

evening. Sagittarius and Scorpius

overhead, dust lanes and star clouds on

full display. If you can get away from city

lights, this is prime time.

Avery: One diary note before we go. Exactly one

month from now, on the 12th of August, a

total solar eclipse sweeps across the Arctic,

Greenland, Iceland and northern Spain. It's

a Northern Hemisphere show this time, but if

you're one of our listeners traveling for it,

safe journeys, pack your eclipse glasses and

we want a full report.

Anna: Dallas, of the eclipse chasers. But tonight's

Moon Venus pairing is our consolation price.

And it's a lovely one.

Avery: And that's Astronomy Daily for Friday,

17 July. A first atmosphere

on a habitable zone. Rocky world starship

stopped at zero. A bedroom meteorite

carrying life's ingredients. A, uh, galaxy

growing up fast. Metal waves on Mars and

a date with the Moon and Venus tonight.

Anna: Not a bad Friday. For all of today's stories

and links, head to astronomydaily

IO and find us everywhere.

AstroDailyPod if today's

lead story gave you goosebumps, share the

episode with someone who needs goosebumps,

too.

Avery: The weekend news wrap is tomorrow, and if a

certain rocket flies early next week, you

know where to hear about it first. Until

then, I'm Avery.

Anna: And I'm Anna. Thanks for listening. And as

always, clear skies Astronomy

Day stories.

Love.

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