Salty Skies on a Pink Planet, Black Holes Burp, and a Lunar Lander for Moon Base 2

Anna: Hello, and welcome to Astronomy Daily,

your daily dose of space news from across

the cosmos. I'm Anna.

Avery: And I'm, um, avery. It's Friday the 19th of

June, 2026, and we have an

absolutely packed show for you today.

Anna: We're talking salty skies on a mysterious

pink world, Black holes with serious

indigestion, a new batch of spy

satellites heading to orbit right now, and a

lunar lander that could be the cornerstone of

humanity's first first moon base.

Avery: Plus, we'll find out what a NASA spacecraft

learned from a double lobed asteroid that's

been slowly reshaping itself for more than

100 million years. And we'll celebrate

a little robot that's just run a marathon

on Mars.

Anna: If you're watching on YouTubeMusic, smash

that subscribe button. If you're listening.

Wherever podcasts live, a review means the

world to us.

Let's get into the news.

Avery: Our first story today is a gorgeous piece of

science from the James Webb Space Telescope.

And it involves a world that astronomers have

been desperate to study for over a decade.

Anna: GJ 504b, the

pink planet. It was first discovered back in

2013, and it got that nickname because of

its distinctive, rosy, hazy appearance.

It orbits a sun like star about

57 light years from Earth.

Avery: And here's what made it so tantalizing and so

frustrating at the same time. It's one of the

coldest planetary mass companions ever

directly imaged, sitting at around

550 degrees Fahrenheit. For

context, that's roughly the temperature of a

domestic bread oven, which sounds hot

Anna: to us, but for directly imaged worlds,

that's genuinely frigid. Most are, uh,

between 1,000 and 2,000 degrees

Fahrenheit. The pink planet was so cold and

so faint that every attempt to study it from

ground failed. Teams around the world tried

and came

Avery: up empty, which made it a perfect target for

Webb and a team led by Anish Babuvaj

at Northwestern University center for

Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research

and Astrophysics, Sierra

finally cracked it open.

Anna: The results were published yesterday in the

Astronomical Journal, and they are wild.

The atmosphere of

GJ504B is filled

with exotic chemistry, heavy elements

including carbon, bio oxygen, nitrogen

and sulfur. But the real headline, finding

Salt Clouds.

Avery: For the first time ever, astronomers have

found direct evidence for salt clouds in a

cold object's atmosphere. Scientists had

theorized this was possible more than 15

years ago, but nobody had actually seen it

until now.

Anna: Babu Raj and his team ran simulations

testing three different types of clouds, and

only the salt cloud model produced results

that Were physically consistent with the Webb

data when they accounted the salt clouds.

Previously confusing molecular signatures in

the spectrum suddenly made sense.

Avery: There's also a twist about what this object

actually is. With a mass of around

25 times that of Jupiter, the pink planet

might not technically be a planet after all.

It may be a brown dwarf, a so called

failed star, Something that formed like a

star but never accumulated quite enough mass

to ignite hydrogen fusion in its core.

Anna: The team also found that

GJ504B appears

unusually rich in metals, elements

heavier than hydrogen and helium, and is

likely between 2.5 and 4 billion

years old, which explains why it's cooled

down so much.

Avery: There are still open questions exactly what

kinds of salts make up those clouds? Is it

truly a planet or a brown dwarf? Both

questions may require further web time to

answer, but what a first look.

Anna: Babu Raj put it beautifully. When we

finally obtained its spectrum, it immediately

looked interesting. But once we started

digging deeper into the data, we realized it

was not like anything we had analyzed before.

Avery: The pink planet. Salty, ancient,

mysterious, and finally starting to give up

its secrets.

Anna: Story 2 and we're staying in the world of

exotic astrophysics. The this time with

supermassive black holes, and specifically

with what happens long after they've devoured

an unfortunate star.

Avery: So to set the scene, every so often a uh,

star wanders too close to a supermassive

black hole. The black hole's gravity shreds

the star apart in a process called a tidal

disruption event, or tde, producing

a brilliant flash of optical, ultraviolet and

X ray light from the center of what was

previously a quiet galaxy.

Anna: This initial flare fades over weeks to

months, and historically that's when

astronomers stopped watching the show seemed

to be over.

Avery: But it turns out the show was only just

getting started. Using the NSF's Very Large

Array radio observatory in New Mexico, One of

the most sensitive radio observatories on the

planet. A team led by Kate Alexander at the

University of Arizona has discovered that a

surprising number of these TDE's produce

a powerful delayed radio burst months

or even years later.

Anna: Like a cosmic belch?

Avery: Exactly like a cosmic belch,

Alexander herself said at a press conference

this week. Sometimes after it seems like they

are done eating, they may get indigestion and

let out a large radio burp. These late

time radio burps can appear when the black

hole eats too fast or eats too slowly,

which I love

Anna: because it turns out the universe has the

same dietary advice as your GP.

Avery: The team assembled the largest sample of TDEs

ever studied at radio wavelengths, and they

found that roughly 40% of all TDES

eventually produced this delayed radio

emission. That is a much higher rate than

Anna: anyone expected, and crucially, they've

worked out how to predict which ones will

burp. TDEs that later produce

delayed radio emission are less likely to

show helium emission lines in their early

optical spectra. That early chemical

fingerprint is a signal to keep watching.

Avery: This has real practical implications for

telescope scheduling. Radio follow up of

TDES was typically abandoned if nothing

showed up in the first year. This research

shows that's far too soon. These events are

long, evolving stories, and the most

energetic chapter may unfold years down the

track.

Anna: What we're seeing here is a window into how

supermassive black holes grow, launch

outflows, and reshape the galaxies around

them. And the VLA is giving us a

Avery: front row seat worth noting for our

dedicated listeners. This is distinct from

the Jetty McJetface story we've discussed

before. This new VLA research covers a

whole population of TDEs and establishes the

general rules, a really significant step

forward.

Story three and this one is happening as you

listen, literally right now.

Anna: SpaceX launched

NROL179 from

Vandenberg Space Force Base in California in

the early hours of this morning, Friday the

19th of June. That's mission number 14

in the National Reconnaissance Office's

rapidly expanding proliferated

Architecture program.

Avery: And for those not across this program, it's

worth stepping back to appreciate the scale

of what the NRO and SpaceX are doing

together. The Proliferated Architecture is

a new approach to reconnaissance from space.

Rather than a small number of large,

expensive satellites, the NRO is deploying

a constellation of many smaller satellites

that are faster to build, cheaper to replace,

and far more resilient to stay ahead

Anna: the competition and ensure it can continue to

operate in a heightened threat environment.

That's the official framing from the nro. The

agency is modernizing its architecture in

space and on the ground, delivering more

capability faster with increased resilience.

Avery: NRO L179 is the

71st Falcon 9 launch of

2026 since 71 launches,

and the year isn't half over. That is a pace

that was simply inconceivable a decade ago.

Anna: Of the 70 launches so far this year,

57 have been devoted to SpaceX's

Starlink broadband constellation,

demonstrating just how much of the company's

cadence is now driven by its own satellite

business.

Avery: SpaceX livestreamed the launch up until

shortly after liftoff, but then ended

coverage at the ONRO's request the number of

satellites deployed and the details of their

or remain classified standard

operating procedure for this program.

Anna: What we do know is that this network has now

grown to become, in the NRO's own words,

the largest and most capable government

constellation in orbit in US history.

A remarkable statement.

Story four and we're heading to the moon. Or

at least to the Pittsburgh company that's

building the spacecraft that's going to the

moon.

Avery: On Monday, June 15, Astrobotic

held a public unveiling of its Griffin 1

lunar lander at its head headquarters in

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And this isn't just

another moon mission. NASA has formally

designated Griffin 1 as Moon Base

2, the second mission in its planned program

to establish a permanent human presence on

the lunar surface.

Anna: Griffin one is what Astrobotic CEO

John Thornton called the first infrastructure

class lander going to the surface of the

moon. That's a meaningful distinction.

Previous commercial landers, including

Astrobotics own Peregrine, which launched in

January 2024 but suffered a

propulsion failure and couldn't attempt a

landing, were relatively small payload

delivery vehicles.

Avery: Griffin one is in a different class. It has

a payload capacity of

660kg. It will

carry 10 payloads from six nations to the

lunar South Pole region, specifically the

Noble Crater area near Mons Mouton.

Anna: The headline payload is Astrolabe's Flip

rover, the Flex Lunar innovation

platform. At 500kg, it will

be the heaviest commercial payload ever

delivered to the lunar surface. It's carrying

four NASA science instruments and will help

demonstrate the mobility systems that future

lunar terrain vehicles will need.

Avery: Other payloads come from esa, Canada,

Germany, Japan and Australia, which is

always nice to call out for our audience here

in the Southern Hemisphere.

Anna: The lander is currently completing final

integration at Astrobotics Pittsburgh

facility before being shipped to NASA's Jet

Propulsion Laboratory in California for

environmental testing. After that, it heads

to Cap Canaveral for launch preparations,

with the Flip rover joining it there.

Avery: Launch is targeted for the fourth quarter of

2026 with a SpaceX Falcon Heavy.

So we may be watching this one land before

the year's out.

Anna: This mission comes in the wake of Voyager

Technology's acquisition of Astrobotic in a

deal valued at up to $300 million.

So the company arrives at this milestone

moment with new resources and a new parent.

Thornton summed it up. This lander will

be part of the cornerstone of building the

moon base on the surface of the moon from a

Avery: company that started nearly two decades ago

and, um, has had its share of heartbreak.

Here's hoping Griffin sticks The Landing

Story

Anna: 5, and this is one of my favorites.

Today, an asteroid with an extraordinarily

rich life story, now told in remarkable

detail. Thanks to NASA's Lucy spacecraft.

Avery: Lucy is on its way to study the Trojan

asteroids, the ancient rocky bodies that

shared Jupiter's orbit and are considered

time capsules from the early solar system.

But on April 20 last year, it made a

practice flyby of a small main belt

asteroid called 52246.

Anna: Donald Johansen, named after the

paleoanthropologist who discovered Lucy, the

famous hominin fossil, which is a lovely bit

of naming symmetry.

Avery: The flyby was brief, just a close pass

at 960km, but it was

extraordinarily productive. And the results

published yesterday in the journal Science

reconstructed a 155 million

year biography of this little world.

Anna: The first thing you notice from the Lucy

images is Donald Johansen is a

contact binary. Two distinct

lobes of rock fused together at a

narrow neck, like a, ah, cosmic

snowman. If snowmen were made of ancient

asteroid rubble.

Avery: The team led by Simone Markey at the

Southwest Research Institute mapped craters

across both lobes and found them saturated.

So old that new craters are simply

obliterating older ones. Based on impact

statistics for the main asteroid belt, the

surface is at least 40 million years old.

Anna: That's consistent with Donald Johansen

being a member of the Origin asteroid

family. A, ah, collection of fragments from a

parent body that was catastrophically

destroyed around 155

million years ago. The two lobes are

likely pieces of that original smash up

that eventually found each other and merged.

Avery: But here's where it gets genuinely

fascinating. The neck connecting the two

lobes is younger than the lobes themselves,

smoother, with far fewer craters,

estimated as less than 20 million years old.

So how do you get an old body with a young

neck?

Anna: The answer lies in the asteroid's

rotation. Lucy confirmed that Donald

Johanson rotates extraordinarily

slowly once every

252.6

hours. That's more than 10 Earth days

per rotation. And it's tumbling as

well, with a second wobbling period of

455 hours.

Avery: This ultra slow spin is the key to

everything. When contact binaries first form,

they're typically spinning fast. Centrifugal

force counteracts gravity and pushes material

out towards the ends. But over millions of

years, pressure from sunlight, a subtle

but relentless force called the YORP effect,

gradually slows the rotation

Anna: once the spin rate drops below a critical

threshold, somewhere around once every

10 hours. For Donald Johansson,

gravity takes over from centrifugal force

and suddenly loose material on the smaller

lobe starts sliding toward the larger one,

like sand flowing down a hill.

Avery: Every new impact rattles the asteroid. More

landslides, more regolith flowing towards the

center. The net gets built up over time,

layer by layer, smoothed by millions of

slow motion avalanches. That's why it's

younger than the rest of the body.

Anna: What I love about this story is that it shows

what a brief flyby can actually reveal

when you have the right instruments and the

right analysis. The Lucy team measured

this asteroid for a matter of hours and

pieced together a geological narrative

spanning over a hundred million years.

Avery: And this was the practice run. In August

2027, Lucy will fly past Eurybates,

a Trojan asteroid more than 10 times the

size of Donald Johansson. If we learned this

much from a quick pass at a small main belt

rock, the Trojan, uh, encounters are going to

be extraordinary.

Anna: The solar system's history, one flyby

at a time.

Avery: And our final story today is one that

deserves a moment of genuine celebration.

Anna: NASA's Perseverance rover has now

driven more than 26.2

miles across the surface of Mars.

In other words, it has completed a

marathon on another planet.

Avery: Percy, as the team affectionately calls it,

landed in Jezero crater on 18th February

2021. It has been trundling across the mart

landscape ever since, drilling rocks,

collecting samples, taking panoramic images,

and doing science that would have seemed like

science fiction not long ago.

Anna: 26.2 miles, or

42.2 kilometers in just

over five years. That sounds slow.

And compared to a human marathon runner, it

obviously is. But remember that for

Percy, driving is the interruption between

science. The rover's days are filled with

drilling, abrading rock, surfing surfaces,

calibrating instruments, and studying ancient

geology.

Avery: And, um, the terrain it's traversing now,

beyond the western rim of Jezero Crater,

is some of the most scientifically valuable

ground of the entire mission. Ancient

fractured rocks, igneous minerals that

predate the formation of Jezero itself.

Geological structures that may preserve

evidence of Mars earliest history.

Anna: Perseverance is also approaching the distance

record for any rover on another planet. The

record currently belongs to NASA, NASA's

Opportunity rover, which managed

45.16 kilometers over

roughly 14 years before a global

dust storm ended its mission in 2018.

Percy is closing in on that record, with the

mission planned to continue through at least

2028.

Avery: To put that in perspective, if you were

standing on the Martian surface watching

Perseverance go by, you'd be experiencing

temperatures that could drop to minus 8, 80

degrees Celsius. Overnight, breathing nothing

at all and being bombarded by radiation.

The fact that this rover not only survives

but thrives in that environment and keeps

doing world class science is a genuine

engineering marvel.

Anna: Mars One Soul at a Time

Congratulations to the entire Perseverance

team on this milestone.

Avery: And that wraps up today's edition of

Astronomy Daily. Your Friday fix of the

best space and astronomy news from across the

cosmos.

Anna: A beautiful lineup today. Salty alien

skies belching black holes, a

landmark moon lander, the remarkable story of

an asteroid that's been renovating itself for

millions of years, and a little rover hitting

a major milestone on the Red planet.

Avery: If you enjoyed today's show, please take 30

seconds to leave us a review. Wherever you

listen, it makes a genuine difference in

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Anna: You can follow us on social media at

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Avery: From all of us here at Astronomy Daily and

the bytes.com podcast network, have a

wonderful weekend. Keep looking up and we'll

see you back here on tomorrow with our

weekend wrap.

Anna: Clear skies, everyone.

In this episode