Dark Matter Revealed by Light Echoes, MAVEN's Legacy, and Groundbreaking Research on Menstruation in Space

0:00 Anna: Light echoes, revealing dark matter,

0:03 a race against orbital decay with days

0:05 to go, a supernova ghost haunting

0:08 the heart of our own galaxy. And an

0:11 11 year farewell to one of the best Mars

0:14 missions we've ever flown.

0:16 Avery: Plus, the first ever scientific study of

0:18 menstruation in space is officially on the

0:21 launchpad. And, um, Europe's plucky little

0:23 rocket is trying and trying and

0:26 trying again.

0:27 Anna: It's Monday, the 22nd of June,

0:30 2026. You're listening to Astronomy

0:33 Daily. I'm Anna.

0:34 Avery: And I'm Avery. Let's get into it.

0:37 Anna: We have something genuinely new to tell you

0:39 about dark matter this morning, and it

0:42 involves the supermassive black hole right

0:45 at the heart of our own galaxy,

0:47 Avery: Sagittarius a, our galaxy's 4

0:50 million solar mass anchor. Scientists have

0:52 been staring at it for decades, and, um, they

0:54 just found something hiding in plain sight.

0:57 Anna: Researchers at Virginia Tech have developed a

0:59 technique called echo mapping, and they've

1:02 used it to find hints that Sagittarius A

1:06 and other supermassive black holes are

1:08 surrounded by dense clusters of dark matter.

1:12 Avery: Now, dark matter makes up about 85% of

1:15 all the matter in the universe. We know it's

1:17 there because of how it bends light and pulls

1:20 on stars. But we can't see it, touch

1:22 it, or detect it directly. It just

1:25 lurks.

1:26 Anna: Until now, the environments

1:29 immediately around supermassive black holes

1:32 were basically impenetrable to dark matter

1:34 searches. But echo mapping changes that.

1:37 Here's how it works.

1:39 Avery: When a black hole at the center of an active

1:41 galaxy flares, spitting out light, that

1:44 light bounces off surrounding gas and dust,

1:46 creating delayed echoes that we can detect,

1:49 like sonar, but using light and gravity.

1:52 Anna: Mayank Sharma, the Virginia Tech graduate

1:55 student who led the study, said we are

1:57 reaching a point where the observational

1:59 evidence for dark matter is simply

2:02 undeniable. The research was published in

2:05 Physical Review D on June 11th.

2:07 Avery: What they found were signatures in those

2:09 echoes that couldn't be explained by the

2:11 black hole lone. There appears to be extra

2:14 material, extra mass huddled around it.

2:17 And the leading candidate, dark matter.

2:20 Anna: The implications are significant. If

2:23 dark matter clumps densely around

2:25 supermassive black holes, including our

2:28 own Sagittarius A. That

2:30 changes our models of how galaxies form,

2:33 how black holes grow, and potentially how

2:36 dark matter interacts at the smallest

2:39 scales.

2:39 Avery: And this is an entirely new observational

2:42 tool. Scientists now have a way to peer into

2:44 the environments right around black hole

2:46 hearts and look for the universe's most

2:49 mysterious ingredient.

2:50 Anna: Dark matter. Still invisible, still

2:53 mysterious, but apparently very

2:55 attached to the biggest objects in the

2:58 cosmos.

2:59 Avery: We have a major update on a story we've been

3:01 following closely here on Astronomy Daily,

3:03 the daring rescue mission to save NASA's Neil

3:06 Jarrell's Swift Observatory.

3:08 Anna: Swift launched in 2004. It's been one

3:11 of NASA's most productive telescopes,

3:14 spotting gamma ray bursts, pivoting quickly

3:17 to follow up targets across ultraviolet, X

3:20 ray and visible light. 22 years

3:22 of extraordinary science.

3:24 Avery: But here's the problem. Swift was never

3:27 equipped with thrusters. And after years of

3:29 heightened solar activity, the atmosphere has

3:32 puffed up, increasing drag. Swift

3:35 has been sinking slowly but fatally

3:38 towards Earth.

3:39 Anna: Enter Catalyst Space Technologies, a,

3:42 uh, startup that NASA commissioned to build a

3:44 robotic servicer called Link, essentially

3:47 a space tugboat with three robotic arms and

3:50 xenon ion thrusters to grab

3:53 Swift and haul it back up to safety.

3:55 Avery: And here's the new development. The launch

3:58 day is confirmed June 27, just five

4:01 days from now. Northrop Grumman Stargazer

4:03 aircraft left Wallops flight facility on June

4:06 18th carrying the Pegasus XL rocket

4:09 with Link tucked inside. And it's been making

4:11 its way across the Pacific.

4:13 Anna: It's now en route to Kwajalein Atoll in the

4:16 Marshall Islands, a remote equatorial

4:19 location chosen specifically for its orbital

4:22 geometry. The Pegasus rocket will be

4:24 dropped from about 40,000ft, fire its

4:27 engines and deliver Link to orbit in roughly

4:30 10 minutes.

4:32 Avery: The hard part comes after launch. Link then

4:35 has to chase down Swift, spending two to

4:37 three weeks closing in on an observatory that

4:40 was never designed to be grabbed and use its

4:42 robotic arms to latch on.

4:44 Anna: As of mid June, Swift was orbiting at

4:47 about 225 miles altitude.

4:50 If it dips below 185 miles,

4:53 the rescue becomes physically impossible.

4:56 Link's thrusters wouldn't be strong enough to

4:59 fight the drag and boost them both to safety.

5:02 Avery: If it works, Link will push Swift back up to

5:05 around 600 km, its original

5:07 altitude, which sustained the telescope for

5:10 22 years. The first time. That would give

5:13 Swift potentially another two decades of

5:15 science.

5:16 Anna: And if successful, this will be the first

5:19 ever capture of an uncrewed US Government

5:21 satellite by a private robotic

5:24 spacecraft. The whole space industry is

5:27 watching.

5:28 Avery: Five days. The countdown is on.

5:30 Anna: Stay near the center of the galaxy with us

5:33 for a moment because we have another

5:35 extraordinary discovery to share. And this

5:38 one is thousands of years in the making.

5:40 Avery: NASA's Chandra X Ray Observatory, working

5:43 alongside ESA's XMM M M Newton

5:46 and the Meerkat radial telescope in South

5:49 Africa, has found what appears to be a

5:51 supernova remnant lurking in a star

5:54 forming region called Sagittarius C.

5:56 Just a few Dozen light years from Sagittarius

5:59 A.

5:59 Anna: This would make it one of the closest

6:02 supernova remnants ever found to the

6:04 supermassive black hole at the center of our

6:07 galaxy. The research was published in the

6:10 astrophysical journal on June 11,

6:13 and NASA made it the astronomy picture of the

6:16 day on June 18th.

6:18 Avery: What they found is a bright blob of X ray

6:20 emission, A blue blob in the composite images

6:23 buried inside a much larger cloud of radio

6:26 emission. The Sagittarius C region itself

6:29 is enormous, about 50 light years across.

6:32 Anna: The team think this blob is the expanding

6:35 wreckage of a massive star that detonated in

6:38 a core collapse supernova. When a star

6:40 runs out of fuel, collapses in on itself and

6:43 explodes outward in one of the universe's

6:46 most violent events.

6:48 Avery: And the numbers are staggering. This remnant

6:51 is estimated to be at least 1700 years

6:54 old, meaning the light from that explosion

6:56 would have reached Earth around the year 300

6:58 AD and it's still racing outward at

7:01 about 2 million miles per hour.

7:04 Anna: The team led by Zem Lin Zhu and Mark

7:06 Morris at UCLA looked for chemical

7:09 signatures of a supernova like elevate

7:12 iron, oxygen and silicon. They didn't

7:15 find a clear spike, but that may be because

7:18 the debris has already mixed with the

7:20 surrounding gas.

7:21 Avery: The galactic center is an incredibly dense,

7:24 exotic environment. Magnetic fields,

7:26 fast orbiting gas clouds, massive stars,

7:29 and now possibly the ghost of a star that

7:32 exploded in late antiquity, embedded just

7:35 spitting distance from our galaxy's central

7:37 black hole.

7:38 Anna: If confirmed, this remnant adds an important

7:40 data point to our understanding of how

7:43 stellar cycles play out in the most extreme

7:45 environments in the galaxy, and how

7:48 supernovae seed the next generation of stars

7:51 and planets with heavy elements.

7:53 Avery: A blue blob expanding at 2 million

7:56 miles an hour for 1700 years.

7:59 And we only just noticed it.

8:01 Anna: We want to take a moment now to pay tribute

8:03 to one of NASA's great Mars missions. Because

8:06 on June 3, NASA officially declared

8:09 the end of the Maven mission after 11

8:12 years in orbit at Mars.

8:14 Avery: MAVEN, that stands for Mars Atmosphere and

8:16 Volatile Evolution, launched from Cape

8:19 Canaveral in November 2013, arrived

8:22 at Mars in September 2014, and was only

8:24 ever supposed to last one year. It

8:27 lasted 11.

8:28 Anna: The mission was designed to answer one of

8:31 planetary science's most compelling

8:34 how did Mars go from a warm, wet world

8:37 with rivers, lakes, and a thick atmosphere

8:40 to the cold, dry desert desert we see today?

8:42 Avery: And MAVEN cracked it open. It measured

8:45 atmospheric escape rates, the pace at

8:48 which gas is being stripped away by solar

8:51 wind. It discovered that solar storms

8:54 dramatically accelerate that stripping.

8:57 It found a New type of aurora at Mars,

9:00 one that occurs planet wide, unlike

9:02 Earth's, which are confined to the poles.

9:05 Anna: It also observed a first atmospheric

9:07 sputtering. That's when charged particles

9:10 slam into the upper atmosphere hard enough to

9:13 splash neutral gas molecules out into space.

9:16 Like doing a cannonball in a pool, as the

9:18 mission's principal investigator, Shannon

9:20 Curry, put it.

9:21 Avery: Maven also helped keep our surface rovers

9:24 alive. It acted as a crucial communications

9:27 relay for Curiosity and perseverance,

9:29 passing messages between Earth and the

9:32 Martian surface. When Maven went silent,

9:34 it left a real gap.

9:37 Anna: And silent it went. On December 6 last

9:39 year, Maven passed behind Mars on a routine

9:42 orbit and never came back. An

9:45 anomaly review board spent months searching

9:47 for a signal. They found fragments of

9:50 telemetry showing the spacecraft had entered

9:52 a fast spin, draining its batteries beyond

9:55 recovery.

9:56 Avery: NASA formally ended the mission at a press

9:58 conference on June 3rd. Shaman Curry, when

10:01 asked what she'd put on Maven's tombstone,

10:04 had an immediate answer. Best Mars

10:06 mission ever.

10:08 Anna: Over 800 scientific publications.

10:11 Auroras, atmospheric escape, Global

10:14 dust storm studies, observations of

10:16 interstellar comet 3I Atlas.

10:19 Maven changed how we understand an entire

10:21 planet.

10:22 Avery: It will remain in Mars orbit for another 50

10:25 to 100 years before eventually burning up in

10:28 the Martian atmosphere. Fitting, really.

10:30 Maven studied Mars atmosphere until the very

10:33 end. And one day, it will become part of it.

10:37 Anna: 11 years of extraordinary science.

10:40 Farewell, Maven.

10:41 Avery: Now, here's a story that's surprising for one

10:44 simple reason. It's 2026. More than

10:47 100 women have flown to space, and nobody

10:50 has actually ever studied menstruation in

10:52 microgravity until, um, now.

10:54 Anna: A nonprofit called Operation Period, led by

10:57 Gen Z researchers Manju Bangalore and Priya

11:00 Abhiram has announced a suborbital research

11:03 mission called Operation Period Zero,

11:06 or OP1, on a Virgin Galactic

11:08 suborbital flight targeted for 2027.

11:12 Avery: Anju Bangalore is a physicist, astronautical

11:15 engineer, and former NASA researcher.

11:17 Priya Abhiram is an engineer who has worked

11:20 on astronaut life support systems at NASA and

11:23 Blue Origin. These are serious scientists

11:25 tackling a serious gap.

11:28 Anna: Here's the gap right now. Astronauts who

11:30 menstruate typically choose to fully suppress

11:33 their periods during spaceflight using

11:35 hormonal IUDs or oral contraceptives.

11:38 Not because it's dangerous, but because

11:40 nobody has studied. What happens if they

11:43 don't.

11:43 Avery: With no data, there are no real choices.

11:46 And as spaceflight missions get longer, to

11:49 the moon, to Mars, the question becomes more

11:52 urgent. What happens to the menstrual cycle

11:55 in microgravity? Does it change? Does

11:57 Fluid dynamics behave differently. Nobody

12:00 knows.

12:01 Anna: Op1 will send Bangalore and Abhiram

12:04 themselves to the edge of space on a Virgin

12:06 Galactic suborbital flight to collect real

12:09 physiological data. The specific research

12:12 protocol will be announced closer to the

12:14 mission.

12:15 Avery: The announcement came on June 19. The team

12:18 sits under Operation Period's research wing,

12:20 called the Redshift Lab. And the team has

12:23 been pointed out that over 750 people

12:26 have traveled to space. Yet this fundamental

12:29 human biology has simply never been formally

12:31 studied.

12:33 Anna: It's a gap that's been hiding in plain sight.

12:35 And it matters not just for the astronauts of

12:38 today, but for the humans who will one day

12:40 live on the Moon or spend years in transit to

12:43 Mars.

12:44 Avery: History is full of things that should have

12:46 been studied decades earlier. Good to see

12:48 this one finally getting its mission patch.

12:51 Anna: And finally today, a story about persistence,

12:54 ambition, and the maddening physics of

12:56 getting a rocket off the ground.

12:58 Avery: Europe wants sovereign access to space.

13:01 Not just through Ariana Space's big

13:03 launchers, but through a new generation of

13:06 nimble commercial small satellite rockets

13:09 built in Europe for European needs.

13:12 Anna: The leading candidate for that crown is Isar

13:15 Aerospace, a German startup headquartered

13:18 near Munich. They've raised over 800

13:21 million euros in private funding. They have a

13:23 rocket called Spectrum, 28 meters tall,

13:26 capable of hauling up to a ton to low Earth

13:29 orbit. And they are trying very,

13:32 very hard to fly it.

13:34 Avery: Vectrum's first test flight was in March last

13:37 year. It lasted 30 seconds before a

13:40 vent valve unexpectedly opened. The rocket

13:43 lost attitude control and it plunged into the

13:46 sea near the launch pad.

13:47 Anna: But critically, it cleared the pad,

13:50 proved the engines could fire, proved liftoff

13:53 was possible. And, Isar learned, fixed the

13:56 softw, increased margins, and came back

13:59 for a second attempt.

14:01 Avery: That second attempt, the Onward and Upward

14:04 mission, carrying five European university

14:06 cubesats and a technology demonstrator,

14:09 has been trying to launch from Andoya

14:11 spaceport in Norway since January. Four

14:14 attempts this year alone.

14:17 Anna: January scrubbed for a faulty pressurization

14:20 valve. March scrubbed for fuel temperature

14:23 issues. And then a fishing vessel wandered

14:25 into the hazard zone. April postponed

14:28 over a suspected pressure vessel leak. June

14:31 15 halted after an anomaly in the fluid

14:34 system.

14:35 Avery: As of today, the launch window at Andoya has

14:38 reportedly expired and no new date has been

14:41 announced. ISAR is analyzing the data from

14:44 the June 15th abort.

14:46 Anna: To be fair, this is exactly what test flight

14:49 programs look like. SpaceX had

14:51 spectacular failures. Rocket lab had

14:54 scrubs. Every rocket that flies reliably

14:56 today once refused to fly at all.

15:00 Avery: But the backdrop matters. Europe's space

15:02 sector needs a sovereign small launcher.

15:05 Isar is the furthest ahead, and every delay

15:08 is a reminder of just how hard the business

15:10 of rocketry really is.

15:13 Anna: We'll be watching. Go Spectrum whenever

15:15 you're ready.

15:17 Avery: Before we wrap up, let's look up what's in

15:19 the winter sky tonight for our Southern

15:21 Hemisphere listeners.

15:23 Anna: The June Buddids meteor shower peaks

15:26 Tonight right around 1am GMT,

15:28 which for Eastern Australia is around midday,

15:32 so Southern Hemisphere viewers will have

15:34 missed the peak. But the Bootids are famously

15:37 unpredictable. Occasional outbursts have

15:39 surprised observers in the past. Worth a look

15:42 either way, though. Expect only a handful of

15:44 meteors per hour.

15:46 Avery: The Moon is in its first quarter phase, half

15:49 lit, making it a great target for binoculars

15:52 or a small telescope. Tonight, look for the

15:54 crisp terminator line where craters and

15:57 mountain ranges cast sharp shadows.

15:59 Anna: Tomorrow night, the Moon will appear near

16:02 Spica, the bright blue white heart of

16:04 Virgo, an easy and lovely pair to spot

16:07 after sunset with the naked eye.

16:10 Avery: And keep watching the western horizon after

16:12 sunset for the planetary trio. Venus

16:15 remains the brightest by far, with Jupiter

16:18 nearby. Mercury is fading lower but

16:21 still catchable if you have a clear western

16:23 horizon,

16:24 Anna: beautiful winter skies, Everyone rug up

16:27 and look up.

16:28 That's Astronomy daily for Monday 22nd

16:31 June 2026. I'm Hannah.

16:34 Avery: And I'm Avery. Thank you so much for spending

16:36 part of your day with us in the cosmos.

16:39 Anna: You'll find links and show

16:40 notes@astronomydaily IO and

16:43 if you're enjoying the show, leaving us a

16:45 review really does make a difference.

16:48 Avery: Find us on X, Instagram, Facebook,

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16:53 Astrodaily Pod, we'd love to

16:56 hear what you thought of today's stories.

16:58 Anna: Until tomorrow, keep your eyes on the

17:00 Avery: stars and your mind in the universe.

17:14 Anna: The stories.

17:22 Were told

17:26 m.