The Weekend Wrap: NASA's Bold Swift Rescue, Cosmic Demolition Derby Unfolds

0:00 Anna: Happy Saturday, space fans. I'm Anna.

0:03 Avery: And I'm Avery. Welcome to Astronomy Daily's

0:06 weekend space and astronomy news wrap.

0:08 Anna: It has been another seriously action packed

0:11 week in space and astronomy. And today we're

0:13 bringing you the six biggest stories, two

0:16 brand new ones, plus a recap of the four that

0:19 dominated the headlines this week.

0:21 Avery: And we're kicking things off with something

0:23 literally happening right now. A daring

0:26 first of its kind rescue mission that's set

0:28 to launch Tuesday morning.

0:30 Anna: Stay with us. It's going to be a great one.

0:32 Our first story this weekend is one you won't

0:35 want to miss. And it's preparing right now as

0:38 we speak.

0:39 Avery: NASA Swift Boost mission is now planned to

0:42 launch Tuesday morning from Kwajalein Atoll

0:44 in the South Pacific. And if successful, it

0:47 will be the first time in history that a

0:49 commercial robotic spacecraft has captured

0:52 and repositioned a, uh, government science

0:54 satellite that was never designed to be

0:56 serviced.

0:57 Anna: The mission aims to rescue the Neil Gerald

1:00 Swift Observatory, a telescope that has been

1:02 hunting gamma ray bursts and other cosmic

1:05 explosions since 2004. Swift

1:08 was supposed to last two years. It's now

1:10 22 years old and still doing brilliant

1:13 science.

1:14 Avery: So what's the problem? Solar storms.

1:17 Recent bursts of intense solar activity

1:19 puffed up Earth's outer atmosphere, creating

1:22 extra drag on Swift's orbit. If nothing

1:25 is done, Swift would re enter and burn up by

1:27 late 2026.

1:29 Anna: Enter Catalyst Space Technologies, a, uh,

1:32 startup from Flagstaff, Arizona. NASA

1:35 awarded them a $30 million contract in

1:37 September 2025, less than a year ago

1:40 to build a spacecraft, launch it, and save

1:43 Swift.

1:44 Avery: That spacecraft is called a link. About the

1:46 size of a refrigerator, it has three robotic

1:49 arms, ion engines, and a suite of

1:51 sensors. It rode into orbit this morning

1:54 aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket,

1:57 an air launch vehicle dropped from a modified

1:59 L1011. Interestingly, this is

2:02 Pegasus's first flight since 2021

2:05 and its final planned mission.

2:07 Anna: Over the coming months, Link will carefully

2:09 maneuver to rendezvous with Swift, Rabbit

2:12 with those robotic arms and fire its engines

2:15 to push the observatory to a higher safety,

2:17 safer orbit. Buying it at least five more

2:20 years of science life.

2:21 Avery: It sounds almost too audacious. And even

2:24 Swift's own chief scientist admitted to

2:26 losing some sleep over it.

2:28 Anna: Who wouldn't? But the fact that this mission

2:30 was conceived, built and launched in under a

2:33 year is itself a landmark achievement.

2:36 It's being called a template for how

2:38 responsive commercial servicing missions can

2:40 work in the Future.

2:42 Avery: And for $30 million, a fraction of what it

2:45 would cost to build and launch a replacement

2:47 telescope.

2:47 Anna: It's an extraordinary we'll be following

2:50 Link's progress closely on Astronomy Daily

2:53 in coming days. Fingers crossed for a

2:55 successful rendezvous and many more years of

2:58 swift watching the universe's most powerful

3:01 explosions.

3:02 Our second story this weekend comes courtesy

3:05 of the James Webb Space Telescope, and it is

3:08 spectacular.

3:09 Avery: Astronomers have spotted what they're calling

3:11 a cosmic demolition derby. At least six

3:14 galaxies in the process of smashing into one

3:17 another and merging into what will eventually

3:19 become one of the largest galax in the

3:21 universe.

3:22 Anna: The system is called TGSS

3:25 J1530

3:26 1049. We're seeing it as it

3:29 was 12 billion years ago, when the

3:32 universe was only about 1 1/2 billion years

3:35 old. Four of those six galaxies are

3:38 already surprisingly massive. Together they

3:40 contain hundreds of billions of times the

3:43 mass of our sun, all packed into a region

3:46 just a few tens of thousands of light years

3:48 across.

3:49 Avery: That makes it one of the densest known

3:51 concentrations of massive galaxies from this

3:53 early period in cosmic history.

3:56 Astronomers call it a protocluster, the

3:59 seed of what will eventually become a vast

4:01 galaxy cluster like the ones we see in the

4:03 local universe today. And at the heart of

4:06 this galactic pileup, something even more

4:09 remarkable a growing supermassive black

4:11 hole. Radio observations confirmed jets

4:14 of material being expelled at high speed as

4:17 matter falls into the black hole at the

4:19 center of this maelstrom.

4:21 Anna: What makes this discovery so significant is

4:23 that astronomers can watch both processes

4:26 happening simultaneously. The buildup of

4:29 a giant galaxy and the growth of its central

4:32 black hole. These two things are thought to

4:34 co evolve, but catching them both in the act

4:37 this early in the universe is

4:39 extraordinarily rare.

4:41 Avery: The discovery came thanks to a clever

4:43 combination of tools. Radio astronomers first

4:46 tipped off the team by detecting unusual

4:48 emissions that hinted at an undiscovered

4:50 active black hole. Webb then revealed the

4:53 full picture not one galaxy, but a whole

4:56 complex of six.

4:57 Anna: The research was led by astronomers at Leiden

5:00 University and the University of Oxford and

5:03 published this week in the Open Journal of

5:05 Astrophysics and Astronomy and Astronomy

5:08 Avery: and Astrophysics, another stunning

5:10 chapter in what JWST is revealing about the

5:13 early universe and the reminder of just how

5:16 much cosmic construction was already underway

5:19 in the universe's first billion years.

5:22 Anna: Now it's time for our weekly wrap, the four

5:24 biggest stories that had the space and

5:26 astronomy community buzzing this week.

5:29 Avery: Story one of our weekly wrap and it

5:31 involves one of NASA's most traveled

5:33 spacecraft and a very strange little world.

5:37 Anna: NASA's Lucy mission has published new results

5:40 from its April 2025 flyby of

5:42 asteroid Donald Johansson, and the findings

5:45 are Genuinely surprising. Published

5:48 this week in the journal Science, the

5:50 research reveals that this half mile wide

5:52 asteroid doesn't spin the way scientists

5:55 expected.

5:56 Avery: Instead of rotating cleanly on a single axis

5:59 like most solar system bodies, Donald

6:01 Johanson tumbles on two axes

6:04 simultaneously. It flips end over end

6:07 once every ten and a half Earth days, while

6:09 also rocking side to side on its long axis

6:12 once every 26 and a half days.

6:15 Scientists call this non principal axis

6:17 rotation. And it looks, in the words of the

6:20 research team, like a very slow,

6:22 unpredictable wobble.

6:24 Anna: In addition to its unusual motion, Lucy

6:27 found that Donald Johansen is shaped like a

6:29 peanut. Two cratered lobes joined by a

6:32 narrow neck. It's what's known as a contact

6:35 binary. Likely formed when two fragments from

6:38 an ancient collision slowly drifted together

6:40 under gravity and merged.

6:42 Avery: And that ancient collision, it happened about

6:45 155 million years ago

6:48 when a much larger asteroid roughly 50

6:51 miles wide was struck and shattered.

6:53 Donald Johanson is one of the surviving

6:56 pieces.

6:57 Anna: Perhaps most intriguingly, Lucy's infrared

7:00 spectrometer detected iron rich clay minerals

7:03 on the surface. Minerals that form only when

7:05 rock interacts with liquid water. So at

7:08 some point long ago, water was present on

7:11 Donald Johansson's parent body.

7:13 Avery: The Lucy mission, led by the Southwest

7:16 Research Institute, is now heading for its

7:18 primary destination, Jupiter's Trojan

7:21 asteroids. This flyby was officially a

7:23 rehearsal. But as Lucy's lead scientist

7:26 Simone Markey put it, it's already clear that

7:29 no two asteroids are alike. And the Trojans

7:31 are going to challenge everything we think we

7:33 know.

7:34 Anna: We can't wait.

7:36 Avery: From a wobbling peanut shaped asteroid to an

7:38 interstellar comet revealing alien chemistry.

7:41 It's been quite a week. Let's get into it.

7:44 Anna: Story two of our wrath is also happening

7:46 today. And it's a sky watching opportunity

7:49 for those of you with a telescope.

7:51 Avery: A 1km wide asteroid designated

7:53 1997 NC1 is making

7:56 its closest approach to Earth right now.

7:59 Saturday, June 27th. It'll pass at a

8:02 distance of about 1.5 million miles,

8:05 or 2.4 million kilometers. Roughly

8:07 seven times the distance between Earth and

8:10 the Moon.

8:10 Anna: To put that in perspective, this asteroid is

8:13 about 50 to 60 times wider than the

8:16 Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded over Russia

8:18 in 2013, shattering windows across

8:21 six cities and sending 1500 people to

8:24 seek medical treatment. The difference is

8:27 1997 NC1 was known

8:30 about well in advance, is completely tracked,

8:33 and poses absolutely no threat to Earth.

8:36 Avery: It was discovered by the Near Earth Asteroid

8:38 Tracking System on haleakala in Hawaii.

8:41 NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been

8:44 using radar to get a Close look this week,

8:46 bouncing signals off the asteroid to generate

8:49 three dimensional models revealing its shape

8:51 and structure.

8:52 Anna: If you're in the Southern hemisphere and have

8:54 a 6 inch or larger telescope, tonight is

8:57 a great opportunity to watch it drift across

9:00 the background stars. It won't streak across

9:03 the sky like a shooting star. It moves too

9:05 slowly for that. But over five to seven

9:08 minutes you'll be able to see it shift

9:10 position against the star background.

9:12 Avery: It's a beautiful reminder that our solar

9:15 neighborhood is not empty and that planetary

9:18 defense tracking systems are doing exactly

9:20 what they're supposed to do. Watching,

9:22 measuring, knowing.

9:24 Anna: Clear skies.

9:25 To those of you with your telescopes

9:27 Avery: out tonight, story three. And we

9:30 return to one of the most exciting objects to

9:32 visit our solar system in years. The

9:35 interstellar comet 3i Baily

9:38 Atlas.

9:39 Anna: 3i Bailey Atlas was discovered on

9:41 July 1 last year, making it only the

9:44 third interstellar object ever detected.

9:47 It tore through our solar system, looped

9:50 around the sun and is now heading out past

9:52 Jupiter, never to return. And the James

9:55 Webb Space Telescope has been making the most

9:58 of every moment it had.

10:00 Avery: New analysis of Webb's mid infrared

10:02 observations has confirmed something

10:04 remarkable. 3 I Bailey Atlas

10:07 contains methane, making it the first

10:09 interstellar object ever found to carry this

10:12 gas. And the ratio of methane to water

10:15 is much higher than anything seen in comets

10:18 from our own solar system.

10:19 Anna: What does that tell us? It tells us that this

10:22 comet formed somewhere very cold,

10:24 far colder than anywhere in our solar

10:27 neighborhood. The methane was buried deep

10:29 beneath the surface as ice, shielded from

10:32 solar heating. As the comet first entered the

10:34 solar system, it only sublimated, turned

10:37 directly from ice to gas as the comet

10:40 drew closer to the sun on its way back out.

10:43 Avery: The comet is also loaded with methanol,

10:46 essentially alcohol, which was discovered

10:48 earlier in the year. And it was itself

10:50 unusual. Together this chemistry is

10:53 completely unlike anything we see in comets

10:55 born around our sun.

10:57 Anna: SETI researchers also trained radio

10:59 telescopes on UM3i Bailey Atlas looking

11:02 for signals that might indicate artificial

11:05 technology. They found nothing beyond human

11:08 made interference as expected. But the

11:10 rapid response observations were valuable in

11:13 their own right, helping to further

11:15 Characterize the object.

11:17 Avery: 3i Bailey Atlas is now heading into the

11:20 outer solar system and will eventually return

11:22 to the interstellar void. The Webb

11:25 observations represent our last close look at

11:28 this extraordinary visitor. And what a

11:30 visitor it turned out to be. A chemical

11:33 fingerprint of a world we'll never see.

11:36 Anna: And our uh, fourth and final story of the

11:38 weekly Wrap, a cosmic detective story from

11:41 close to home.

11:42 Avery: Astrophysicists have announced what appears

11:44 to be the first ever identified pair of

11:47 sibling supernova remnants. One of them

11:50 is the Jellyfish Nebula, a well known and

11:53 visually stunning supernova remnant that's

11:55 been studied for decades. The other had been

11:58 hiding in plain sight. Concealed in the

12:00 jellyfish's bright glare supernova

12:03 Anna: remnants are the expanding shells of gas and

12:06 debris left behind when a massive star

12:08 explodes. Finding two remnants that appear

12:11 to share a common origin born from the

12:14 same stellar system is something astronomers

12:17 have theorized about but never conclusively

12:19 identified before.

12:21 Avery: The two remnants are connected by a bright

12:23 filament of gas, which the researchers

12:25 believe is evidence of their shared history.

12:28 The discovery suggests that the two stars

12:30 that produced these remnants were once

12:32 companions, a binary system that both

12:34 went supernova perhaps millions of years

12:37 apart from It's

12:38 Anna: a beautiful example of stellar archaeology

12:41 using the leftover wreckage of dead stars to

12:44 reconstruct the lives they lived billions of

12:46 years ago.

12:47 Avery: The Jellyfish Nebula, also known as

12:49 IC443, sits about 5,000

12:52 light years away in the constellation Gemini.

12:55 It's a popular target for amateur

12:57 astrophotographers, and now it has a hidden

12:59 sibling to its name.

13:01 Anna: The universe, as always, rewards those

13:04 who look closely.

13:05 That's the Astronomy Daily Weekend wrap for

13:08 Saturday, June 27, 2026.

13:11 What a week it's been. Satellite rescues,

13:13 galaxy pile ups, wobbling asteroids,

13:16 alien chemistry, and the secrets of dead

13:19 stars.

13:20 Avery: If you've enjoyed today's episode, please

13:22 subscribe, leave a review and share us with a

13:24 friend who loves space as much as we do.

13:26 We're back Monday with fresh daily episodes,

13:29 and we'll be keeping a close eye on how that

13:31 swift rescue mission is

13:32 Anna: going to find us at astronomydaily. Uh

13:35 IO and follow us on your favorite platforms

13:37 at Strodaily Pod.

13:39 Avery: Until next time, from all of us at Astronomy

13:42 Daily, Clear skies.