Rockets Across Continents, A Black Hole's Jet Unveiled, and Rain of Rubies on Distant World

0:00 Anna: Rockets on two continents, the

0:03 most detailed look ever at a jet

0:06 screaming out of the first black hole

0:08 humanity ever photographed, and a

0:11 planet where the rain is made of rubies

0:14 and sapphires. It is Wednesday

0:16 17th June

0:19 2026 and this is Astronomy

0:21 M Daily.

0:23 Avery: I'm Avery.

0:24 Anna: And I'm Anna. We have got a

0:26 packed show for you today, including a

0:29 Chandra double header that we are very

0:31 excited about.

0:33 Avery: Plus a quick but important update on a

0:35 Dragon capsule that splashed down this

0:37 morning carrying some genuinely remarkable

0:40 science from the International Space Station.

0:42 Anna: Let's get into it.

0:44 Avery: Our first story comes from Cape Canaveral,

0:46 where SpaceX kicked off today very early this

0:48 morning by launching three of the biggest

0:51 commercial communications satellites ever put

0:54 into low Earth orbit.

0:55 Anna: These are AST Space Mobile's

0:58 Bluebird 8, 9 and 10, the

1:01 latest additions to what the company is

1:03 calling the first and only space based

1:06 cellular broadband network that connects

1:09 directly to ordinary smartphones. No

1:12 special hardware, no satellite phone,

1:15 just the device already in your pocket.

1:18 Avery: The Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch

1:20 Complex 40 at uh, Cape Canaveral Space Force

1:23 Station at 2:39 in the morning Eastern

1:26 Time. The BO

1:27 B1007 on its 29th flight

1:30 came back down on the drone ship, a shortfall

1:33 of gravitas in the Atlantic about eight and a

1:36 half minutes later. Business as usual for

1:38 SpaceX.

1:39 Anna: But the satellites themselves are anything

1:42 but routine. These block 2

1:44 bluebirds are a major leap over the first

1:47 generation. Each one carries a phased

1:50 array spanning nearly 2,400

1:52 square feet, making them the largest

1:55 commercial phased arrays ever deployed in

1:58 low earth orb. For comparison, the

2:01 first generation bluebirds had a raise of

2:03 around 693 square feet. So

2:06 we're talking about a uh, three and a half

2:08 times increase in size

2:10 Avery: and that size translates directly to

2:13 capability. Each satellite supports 10

2:16 gigahertz of processing bandwidth and peak

2:18 speeds of 120 megabits per

2:21 second per coverage cell. AST Space

2:24 Mobile says that's nearly double what the

2:26 Block 1 satellites could deliver.

2:28 Anna: The company has been racing to build out this

2:31 constellation after a setback earlier this

2:34 year when a Blue Origin New Glenn

2:36 rocket carrying another Bluebird satellite

2:39 exploded during a static fire test.

2:42 Today's successful launch puts them firmly

2:45 back on track.

2:46 Avery: AST Space Mobile already has agreements with

2:49 over 50 mobile network operators globally,

2:52 including AT&T, Verizon and Vodafone,

2:55 covering nearly 3 billion subscribers. The

2:58 vision is global broadband coverage,

3:00 especially for the billions of people in

3:02 areas where terrestrial mobile networks

3:04 simply don't reach.

3:06 Anna: A big morning for space based connectivity

3:08 and a reminder of just how fast this

3:11 sector is moving.

3:13 Story two, and we are staying with launches

3:16 because if one rocket spectacular wasn't

3:18 enough for a Wednesday morning, Europe

3:20 decided to join the party.

3:22 Avery: Orion Space launched its Ariane 6 rocket from

3:25 the Guiana Space center in Kourou, French

3:27 guiana today, carrying

3:29 36Amazon Leo broadband

3:31 satellites to low Earth orbit. That is the

3:34 heaviest payload ever launched by any

3:36 Ariane rocket in the entire history of the

3:39 program.

3:40 Anna: To give that some Context, the previous two

3:42 Ariane 6Amazon LEO flights

3:45 each carried 32 satellites.

3:48 Today's mission, designated

3:49 VA269, carried four

3:52 more. And payload mass is

3:55 estimated to be around

3:56 45,900 pounds,

3:59 roughly 21 metric tons.

4:02 Avery: But here's what makes this launch

4:03 particularly noteworthy beyond just a record

4:06 payload. Today was the debut flight of the

4:09 upgraded P160C solid

4:11 rocket boosters. Orion 6 flew today with

4:14 four of these new strap on boosters and they

4:17 are a significant improvement over the

4:19 P120C boosters that have powered

4:22 all previous Orion 6 flights.

4:24 Anna: The P160C boosters are

4:27 1 meter longer inside and can carry

4:30 up to 156 tons of

4:33 propellant each, a, uh, 10%

4:36 increase in performance over the

4:38 P120C. That

4:40 upgrade pushes Ariane 64's

4:43 total payload capacity to

4:46 approximately 22 tons in low

4:49 Earth orbit.

4:50 Avery: Ariane says this is all part of Ariane 6

4:53 ramping up rapidly. Less than two years after

4:55 its inaugural flight, the rocket is already

4:58 undergoing its first major performance

5:00 upgrade. And with 18 Ariane six

5:03 launches contracted for the Amazon LEO

5:05 Constellation alone, the European launch

5:08 business looks very healthy indeed.

5:10 Anna: This was the eighth Ariane 6 launch

5:13 overall, and the third of

5:15 2026. And with the successful

5:18 deployment of these 36 satellites,

5:21 Arianespace has now placed

5:23 100Amazon LEO satellites into

5:26 orbit in just five months.

5:29 That is quite apace.

5:31 Avery: A uh, quick but important update now

5:33 following on from the story we brought you

5:35 yesterday about SpaceX's Dragon

5:37 CRS 34 cargo capsule

5:40 undocking from the International Space

5:42 Station.

5:43 Anna: As we told you, the Dragon undocked from the

5:46 Harmony Module's forward port at around

5:49 12:25 Eastern Time yesterday

5:52 afternoon while the station was flying

5:54 about 418 km

5:57 above the northern Pacific Ocean. And

6:00 this morning, right on schedule, it

6:03 splashed down off the coast of California,

6:06 completing a roughly 17 hour return

6:09 journey.

6:10 Avery: And um, this is the part that makes this more

6:12 than just a logistics story. Dragon CRS

6:15 34 is bringing back some of the most

6:17 medically significant science payloads the

6:20 station has assembled for return in some

6:22 time.

6:23 Anna: The cargo includes bioprinted organ

6:26 and cartilage tissue work that could

6:29 eventually transform how we approach

6:31 joint repair and transplant medicine.

6:34 There are also materials developed for

6:37 DNA inspired cancer treatments, but

6:40 blood forming stem cells and data from

6:43 experiments on improving cryogenic

6:45 fuel storage for future deep space

6:48 missions.

6:49 Avery: It's worth remembering that Dragon is the

6:51 only cargo vehicle currently serving the ISS

6:54 that can return to Earth intact.

6:57 Russia's Progress capsules and Northrop

6:59 Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft both burn up on

7:02 re entry, taking whatever they carry with

7:04 them. Dragon's ability to bring science

7:07 home is genuinely irreplaceable right now.

7:10 Anna: Time sensitive samples like living cell

7:13 cultures are flown by helicopter from the

7:15 recovery ship to Kennedy Space center, where

7:18 research teams are standing by a, uh,

7:21 reminder that space science doesn't pause at

7:24 splashdown.

7:25 Avery: Story four and the start of our Chandra

7:28 double header and what a place to begin with

7:30 the most famous black hole in the universe.

7:33 Anna: If the name Messier87 rings

7:36 a bell, that's because in 2019

7:39 it became the first black HOL that

7:42 humanity ever directly imaged. The

7:45 Event Horizon Telescope captured that

7:47 now iconic picture of a glowing ring

7:50 of superheated gas surrounding a

7:53 dark central shadow. That shadow

7:56 is M M87 star, a

7:59 supermassive black hole weighing

8:01 6.5 billion times the mass of

8:04 our sun, located about 55

8:07 million light years away.

8:09 Avery: And shooting out from that black hole is one

8:11 of nature's most extraordinary phenomena,

8:14 a jet of particles being blasted into space

8:17 at nearly the speed of light, stretching

8:20 thousands of light years. We've known about

8:22 this jet for a century, but we've never seen

8:24 it in quite this level of detail before.

8:27 Anna: An international team led by Camille

8:30 Poitras, a PhD student at UH

8:33 Laval University in Canada, has

8:35 produced the most detailed X ray

8:38 view ever obtained of that jet by

8:41 combining Chandra Observations taken

8:43 between 2012 and 2025

8:46 with advanced image processing techniques.

8:50 The results were presented this week at the

8:53 248th meeting of the American

8:56 Astronomical Society in Pasadena,

8:59 California.

9:00 Avery: What the team found is genuinely striking.

9:03 The deconvolved images reveal structures

9:05 within the jet that were previously too

9:07 blended together to distinguish, including

9:10 two separate components in a feature called

9:12 HST1 and complex morphology

9:15 in downstream knots. They also measured a

9:18 global decrease in the jet's X ray emission

9:21 of up to 84% over the observation

9:24 period, which is consistent with a process

9:26 called synchrotron cooling.

9:28 Anna: In plain English, the particles in the jet

9:30 are losing energy as they travel, and we can

9:33 now watch that cooling happen in real time

9:35 across more than a decade of observations.

9:38 Some features of the jet appear to be

9:40 essentially stationary, while others are

9:42 moving at what looks like faster than the

9:45 speed of light, an effect called superluminal

9:47 motion that's caused by the geometry of how

9:50 we're viewing the jet. Not a violation of

9:52 physics.

9:53 Avery: The team combined Chandra data with

9:56 observations from jwst, the

9:58 Hubble Space Telescope, the Very Large Array

10:01 and alma, giving a truly multi

10:04 wavelength picture of this extraordinary

10:06 object. As one team member put it, these

10:09 results demonstrate how uniquely powerful

10:12 Chandra remains for tracking the evolution of

10:14 extreme phenomena over long timescales.

10:17 Anna: 26 years after launch, Chandra is still

10:20 delivering first of its kind science. And we

10:23 have another example of exactly that coming

10:25 up next.

10:26 Avery: The second half of our Chandra double header

10:29 takes us from 55 million light years away

10:32 to much closer to home, to the very center

10:35 of our own Milky way galaxy, about

10:37 26,000 light years from Earth.

10:40 Anna: Astronomers using data from NASA's Chandra X

10:42 Ray Observatory, working alongside ESA's

10:45 XM Newton mission, have detected what

10:47 appeared appears to be the remnant of a

10:49 supernova. A, uh, dead star's explosion in

10:52 a remarkable location right near

10:54 Sagittarius A, the supermassive

10:57 black hole at the heart of the Milky Way

10:59 Galaxy.

11:00 Avery: If confirmed, this would be the closest

11:03 supernova remnant ever discovered to

11:05 Sagittarius A. And the neighborhood it was

11:08 found in is extraordinary. The galactic

11:11 center is an incredibly dense, turbulent

11:13 region packed with massive stars, long

11:16 threads of magnetic fields and enormous

11:19 clouds of gas orbiting the central black hole

11:21 at high speed.

11:23 Anna: The evidence comes from X ray data from both

11:25 Chandra and XM Newton, which showed a

11:28 mysterious bright spot in a region called the

11:30 Sagittarius C complex. The brightness of this

11:33 object is about 10 times greater than other

11:36 nearby star clusters, which makes it very

11:39 unlikely to simply be a cluster of stars.

11:41 The research team believes they're looking at

11:44 diffuse gas that has been heated to millions

11:46 of degrees by the shockwave of a stellar

11:49 explosion.

11:50 Avery: The team estimates the star that created this

11:52 wreckage exploded around 1700 years ago.

11:55 So sometime in the 3rd or 4th century CE,

11:59 the exploding star would have ejected

12:01 material at around 2 million miles per hour.

12:04 And the expanding shock wave is what Chandra

12:06 is detecting now as a diffused glow of X

12:09 rays.

12:09 Anna: This finding was published in the

12:11 Astrophysical Journal, and it adds another

12:14 piece to our picture of the galactic center,

12:16 one of the most extreme and least understood

12:19 environments in our own galaxy. The

12:21 researchers note that supernova remnants like

12:24 this one are, uh, critical suppliers of heavy

12:26 elements, iron, oxygen,

12:29 silicone that are essential for the formation

12:31 of new planets and ultimately for life.

12:35 Avery: Two remarkable stories from one remarkable

12:37 observatory, Chandra has had quite a week.

12:40 Anna: We're closing today's episode with our most

12:43 visually spectacular story, a world

12:46 so extreme it sounds like science fiction.

12:49 But everything we're about to tell you is

12:51 real. And it's backed by data from the James

12:53 Webb Oscilloscope.

12:55 Avery: Meet WASP121B.

12:58 This is what astronomers call an ultra hot

13:00 Jupiter. A gas giant roughly twice

13:03 the size of Jupiter, located about

13:06 855 light years from Earth.

13:09 It orbits its host star at such an impossibly

13:12 close distance that a single year on this

13:15 planet lasts just 30 hours. And

13:18 because it's so close, it's tidally locked,

13:21 meaning one side permanently faces the star

13:23 and the other side permanently faces cold,

13:26 dark space.

13:28 Anna: The dayside temperature reaches around

13:30 3,000 degrees Celsius. That

13:33 is hot enough to vaporize metals. On

13:36 that scorching dayside, materials like

13:39 iron, magnesium, titanium and

13:42 aluminum exist as gases. But

13:44 as powerful winds blowing at around

13:47 18,000 km per hour

13:50 carry those vaporized metals around to the

13:52 cooler night side, something

13:54 extraordinary happens.

13:57 Avery: They condense. And when aluminum

13:59 condenses with oxygen, it forms a compound

14:02 called corundum. And corundum,

14:05 depending on which trace impurities are

14:07 present, is the mineral that on Earth, we

14:10 call either a sapphire or a ruby.

14:13 Anna: So on the night side of

14:14 WASP121B, it rains

14:17 rubies and sapphires. Not

14:20 gemstone quality crystals, but

14:22 microscopic droplets of what are

14:25 essentially liquid gemstones falling

14:28 through the clouds before being swept back to

14:30 the dayside by those ferocious winds, where

14:33 they vaporize again and the cycle continues.

14:36 Avery: New WJST observations have

14:39 now given astronomers the most detailed

14:42 weather picture ever assembled for this

14:44 world, tracking atmospheric dynamics

14:47 across both hemispheres in three dimensions.

14:50 And researchers describe the planet's

14:52 atmosphere as a 3D system, not just

14:55 a series of snapshots. And say

14:57 WJST gives them the most detailed

15:00 glimpses into distant planets ever

15:02 obtained.

15:04 Anna: To put that in perspective, we are not just

15:06 detecting whether a planet has an atmosphere

15:08 anymore. We're doing something approaching

15:11 weather forecasting for a world nearly

15:14 900 light years away.

15:16 Avery: And the forecast for tonight on Wasp

15:18 121B, winds at

15:21 18,000 kilometers per hour, with a chance

15:23 of sapphire showers on the night side. I

15:26 would leave the umbrella at home. It almost

15:28 certainly won't help.

15:30 Anna: That is Astronomy daily for Wednesday,

15:32 17 June 2026.

15:35 Thank you so much for spending part of your

15:37 day with us.

15:38 Avery: If you enjoyed today's episode, please

15:41 subscribe, leave us a review and share the

15:43 show with someone who loves space. Every new

15:46 listener helps us keep doing what we do.

15:48 Anna: Find us at astronomydaily IO for

15:51 show notes, episode archives, and more. And

15:54 you'll find us on social media. Astrodaily

15:57 Pod.

15:58 Avery: We'll be back tomorrow with more of the

16:00 universe's best stories. Until then, keep

16:03 looking up.

16:04 Anna: Clear skies, everyone.

16:12 The.

16:17 Story.