Weekend Wrap: Mars Slingshot, Dragon Launch, Cosmic Web, Dracula's Chivito, Starship V3 & More

0:00 Anna: Good morning, good afternoon, or good

0:02 evening, wherever in the world you're

0:04 listening. It's Saturday, and that means it's

0:06 time for the Astronomy Daily weekend space

0:08 and astronomy news rep. I'm Anna.

0:11 Avery: And I'm, um, Avery. Each week we take a look

0:13 back at the biggest stories from across the

0:15 past seven days. And today we've got two

0:18 fresh off the press headlines, four of the

0:21 week's most important stories, and a little

0:23 bonus to round things off.

0:25 Anna: It has been a genuinely spectacular week

0:28 in space. Let's get into it.

0:30 Avery: We're going to start with something that

0:32 happened literally yesterday. And it's the

0:34 kind of moment that reminds you just how

0:36 extraordinary space exploration really is.

0:39 Anna: NASA's Psyche spacecraft completed a, uh,

0:42 gravity assist flyby of Mars on Friday,

0:44 skimming just 2,800 miles above the

0:47 planet's surface at over 12,000 miles per

0:50 hour.

0:51 Avery: Now, for context, Psyche launched back in

0:54 October 2023 on a 2.2

0:56 billion mile journey to reach its namesake

0:59 asteroid 16 Psyche, a metal

1:02 rich rock in the asteroid belt that

1:04 scientists believe may hold clues about how

1:06 the cores of planets like Earth first formed.

1:09 Anna: And rather than burn through propellant to

1:11 get there, the mission used Mars as a

1:14 slingshot, borrowing the planet's

1:16 gravitational energy to boost Psyche's speed

1:19 and bend its trajectory toward the asteroid.

1:21 Avery: The numbers are remarkable. In the days

1:24 leading up to closest approach, Psyche was

1:26 traveling at around 46,500

1:29 miles per hour relative to the Sun. After the

1:32 flyby that jumped over 52,000

1:34 Anna: miles per hour, three speeds courtesy of

1:37 Mars.

1:38 Avery: And while Psyche was in the neighborhood, the

1:40 science team wasn't just watching. They used

1:42 the opportunity to calibrate the spacecraft's

1:45 imager for the first time using Mars as a

1:47 target. And they also fired up the other

1:49 science instruments. There's even a chance

1:52 the cameras may have captured evidence of

1:54 Mars faint dusty ring formed by

1:57 micrometeorites striking Phobos and Deimos.

2:00 Anna: The time lapse imagery is still being

2:02 compiled, so more to come on that front. Next

2:05 stop for Psyche, the asteroid belt. With

2:08 arrival at asteroid psyche expected in

2:10 Avery: 2029, a, uh, spacecraft worth an

2:13 estimated $10 quadrillion in

2:15 asteroid real estate. Though I suspect we're

2:18 not going to be mining it anytime soon.

2:21 Anna: Not quite, but what a journey it already is.

2:24 Avery: Also happening yesterday, SpaceX, uh, finally

2:26 got the CRS 34 mission off the ground

2:29 after not one, but two weather scrubs earlier

2:32 in the week.

2:33 Anna: Third time's a charm. A Falcon 9 rocket

2:36 lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 6:05 in the

2:39 evening. Eastern time on Friday, carrying a

2:41 Dragon cargo spacecraft loaded with around

2:44 £6,500 of supplies and science

2:46 experiments bound for the International Space

2:48 Station station.

2:49 Avery: And it's actually a record breaking flight.

2:52 This particular Dragon capsule is making its

2:54 sixth flight to the iss. That's the most

2:57 flights any cargo Dragon has ever made.

3:00 Anna: Now here's the live angle for our weekend

3:02 listeners. Dragon is due to dock autonomously

3:05 to the station's Harmony module at around 7

3:07 in the morning tomorrow, Sunday the 17th. So

3:10 if you're up early, you may actually be able

3:12 to catch that docking coverage live on NASA.

3:16 Avery: Among the science heading upstairs,

3:17 experiments studying how bacteria behave in

3:20 microgravity, a, uh, bone scaffold made from

3:23 wood that could lead to new treatments for

3:25 osteoporosis, equipment to monitor space

3:27 weather's effect on Earth's power grids and

3:30 satellites, and research into how red blood

3:33 cells change in the space environment.

3:35 Anna: The Dragon is set to stay docked until mid

3:37 June before returning with time sensitive

3:39 research samples.

3:40 Avery: The expedition's 74 crew, including Commander

3:43 Jessica Meir and ESA astronaut Sophie

3:46 Adeno, will

3:47 Anna: the unpacking honors busy times on the iss.

3:51 Let's now take a look at the biggest stories

3:53 from across the past seven days.

3:55 Avery: Time now for our four story weekly wrap. The

3:58 biggest, most important space and astronomy

4:01 stories from the past seven days. Anna, uh,

4:04 where do we start?

4:05 Anna: We start with the Universe's skeleton and

4:07 the most detailed look anyone has ever taken

4:10 at it.

4:11 Avery: Scientists using NASA's James Webb Telescope

4:14 have produced the most detailed map ever made

4:16 of what astronomers call the cosmic web. The

4:19 vast skeleton like structure of dark matter

4:21 filaments and sheets that forms the

4:23 underlying architecture of the entire

4:25 universe.

4:26 Anna: Imagine a uh, giant three dimensional

4:29 spider's web stretching across all of space

4:32 with galaxies and galaxy clusters sitting

4:35 at the intersections and along the threads,

4:38 while enormous empty voids lie in

4:40 between. That's the cosmic web.

4:43 Avery: Led by researchers at the University of

4:45 California, Riverside, the team used

4:48 Cosmos Webb, uh, the largest survey program

4:50 ever conducted by JWST, to chart more

4:53 than 164,000 galaxies

4:56 across 13.7 billion years of cosmic

4:59 history. They traced this structure all the

5:01 way back to when the universe was just 1

5:04 billion years old.

5:05 Anna: One of the lead researchers described the

5:07 jump in detail as truly significant,

5:10 saying they can now see the cosmic web at a

5:13 time when the universe was just a few hundred

5:15 million years old. An era that was

5:18 essentially out of reach before jwst.

5:21 Avery: What used to look like a single smooth

5:23 structure when viewed by Hubble now resolves

5:26 into many separate components. Details that

5:28 were blurred before are now clearly visible.

5:31 Anna: And in a wonderful commitment to open

5:33 science, the team has released everything

5:36 publicly. The full pipeline, the galaxy

5:39 catalog, and even a video showing the cosmic

5:42 web evolving across billions of years.

5:45 Avery: The skeleton of the universe. And now anyone

5:48 can explore it. Published this week in the

5:50 Astrophysical Journal.

5:51 Anna: Now to a story with possibly the best name

5:54 in the history of space.

5:56 Dracula's Civito.

5:58 Avery: I cannot think of a better name for a planet

6:00 nursery.

6:01 Anna: Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space

6:03 Telescope have imaged the largest

6:06 protoplanetary disk ever observed around a

6:09 young star. The system is known officially

6:11 as

6:12 IRAS2307767,

6:18 but its researchers have nicknamed it

6:20 Dracula's Civito. One researcher is from

6:23 Transylvania, another is from Uruguay, where

6:25 a, uh, civito is

6:26 Avery: a popular sandwich science at its finest.

6:30 Anna: The disk is located about a thousand light

6:32 years from Earth and stretches nearly 400

6:35 billion miles across, roughly 40

6:38 times the diameter of our own solar system,

6:41 all the way out to the Kuiper Belt.

6:43 Avery: And what Hubble has revealed is that this

6:45 disk is not the calm, orderly structure

6:47 astronomers expected planet nurseries to be.

6:50 It's chaotic, turbulent, enormous

6:53 wisps of gas and dust shoot vertically above

6:56 and below the disk's central plane, far

6:59 further than anything seen in a similar

7:01 system.

7:01 Anna: And strangely, these dramatic features

7:04 only appear on one side of the disk. The

7:07 other side cuts off sharply with nothing

7:10 that bizarre asymmetry scientists cannot

7:13 yet fully explain. Perhaps a sudden

7:15 influx of material, perhaps gravitational

7:18 interactions with the surrounding

7:20 environment.

7:21 Avery: The disk contains between 10 and 30 times

7:24 the mass of Jupiter, enough raw material to

7:27 potentially build several gas giant planets.

7:29 Scientists think it may be an oversized,

7:32 super chaotic version of what our own early

7:34 solar system once looked like.

7:36 Anna: As lead author Christina Monch from Harvard

7:39 and Smithsonian put it, planet nurseries can

7:42 be far more active and chaotic than we ever

7:44 expected. Right now, there are more questions

7:47 than answers. But these images are a

7:49 beginning point

7:50 Avery: and the star at the center, still hidden

7:53 behind all that dust. Scientists don't even

7:55 know if it's one star or two.

7:57 Anna: Dracula's Chivito. A mystery wrapped in

8:00 a cosmic sandwich.

8:02 Avery: This one's for everyone who's been waiting.

8:04 And it has been a long wait. SpaceX

8:07 has set, uh, Tuesday, May 19th. That's this

8:09 coming Tuesday as the launch date for

8:11 Starship version 3 flight 12.

8:14 Anna: Seven months since the last Starship flight.

8:17 NV3 is not just another test.

8:20 It's the most comprehensively redesigned

8:23 version of the vehicle so far. Nearly

8:26 every major system has been modified.

8:29 Avery: The super heavy booster now uses three larger

8:32 redesigned grid fins rather than four, each

8:35 with a new catch point for the tower recovery

8:37 system. The Raptor 3 engines have been

8:40 upgraded for higher thrust and simplified

8:42 operation. The propellant tanks have been

8:44 enlarged. The upper stage has an entirely new

8:47 maneuvering and propulsion system.

8:50 Anna: This flight will also debut launch pad

8:52 2 at Starbase in Texas, a new

8:55 upgraded pad with faster propellant loading

8:58 and electromechanical actuators on the catch

9:01 arm.

9:01 Avery: Tower Flight 12 won't attempt a booster

9:04 tower catch SpaceX is prioritizing

9:07 systems validation over showmanship. This

9:10 time the super heavy will splash down in the

9:13 Gulf of Mexico, or if you prefer, the Gulf

9:16 of America, and the starship upper stage

9:19 will continue on a suborbital trajectory,

9:22 deploying 22 Starlink simulator

9:25 satellites before splash down in the Indian

9:28 Ocean.

9:29 Anna: Why does this matter? Beyond the Spectacle

9:31 because Starship V3 is the version

9:34 NASA needs for the Artemis lunar landing

9:37 program. Before astronauts can land on the

9:40 moon, SpaceX needs to demonstrate

9:42 propellant transfer in orbit, and that

9:45 milestone depends on the success of this new

9:47 vehicle.

9:49 Avery: Launch window opens at 6:30 in the morning

9:51 AEST on Wednesday, May 20. For

9:54 our Australian listeners and for the rest of

9:57 the world, that will be 8:30pm

9:59 UTC on Tuesday, May 19th.

10:02 We'll be watching closely and you can expect

10:04 coverage in Monday's episode ahead of

10:06 Anna: the launch and before our bonus story,

10:09 a personal message to our Australian and

10:12 Southern Hemisphere Step outside

10:14 tonight, look west after sunset and

10:17 say goodbye to a visitor that won't be back

10:20 for 170,000 years.

10:23 Avery: Comet C 2025 R3 Pan

10:26 stars, which put on such a spectacular show

10:29 for Northern Hemisphere observers through

10:31 April, has now moved into the southern sky

10:34 and it's your turn.

10:35 Anna: The comet passed its closest point to the sun

10:38 back on April 19 and reached its

10:41 closest approach to Earth on April

10:44 26. It's fading now, but it's also

10:46 moving further from the sun in the sky, which

10:49 means it's becoming easier to spot from a,

10:52 uh, dark location with binoculars

10:54 tonight.

10:55 Avery: Saturday 16th May is actually

10:58 ideal timing because tonight is New

11:00 Moon, the darkest skies of the month. The

11:03 comet is currently tracking through the

11:05 constellation Monoceras the Unicorn,

11:08 just east of Orion in the evening sky.

11:11 Anna: Earlier this week, NASA's Astronomy

11:14 Picture of the Day featured a breathtaking

11:16 long exposure shot taken from the Craigieburn

11:19 Mountain range in New Zealand, showing the

11:22 comet with two distinct a short

11:25 curved dust tail and a long blue

11:27 ion tail, with the Orion Nebula

11:30 visible in the background.

11:32 Avery: This comet is an Oort Cloud visitor, a

11:34 frozen time capsule from the earliest days of

11:37 our solar system. Some astronomers believe

11:40 gravitational interactions with the outer

11:42 planets could eventually fling it out of the

11:45 solar system entirely. Meaning this truly

11:47 may be humanity's last chance to see it.

11:51 Anna: Clear skies, Southern Hemisphere

11:53 binoculars, dark horizon. Look west

11:56 after sunset. You've got a few more weeks

11:58 before it fades beyond reach.

12:01 Avery: And now, because we couldn't resist, it's

12:04 time for this week weekend wrap bonus. And

12:06 this one is pure joy.

12:09 Anna: Even Mars rovers have bad days.

12:12 Avery: NASA's Curiosity rover, which has been

12:14 exploring the Gale crater on Mars since 2012,

12:18 drilled into a rock this week nicknamed

12:20 Atacgama. Standard procedure.

12:22 Curiosity does this all the time to sample

12:25 the rock's chemistry.

12:26 Anna: Except this time, the entire chunk of

12:29 rock ripped clean out of the ground and

12:32 stayed stuck to the drill.

12:34 Avery: Just refused to let go. A, uh, complete Mars

12:36 souvenir that Curiosity did not ask for.

12:40 Anna: Engineers at JPL had to watch as the

12:42 rover shook, maneuvered and worked to free

12:45 itself from its unexpected passenger. The

12:48 Internet naturally had a field day.

12:51 Avery: Curiosity has been on Mars for nearly

12:53 14 years. It has drilled into

12:56 hundreds of rocks. And this week it

12:59 finally met one that fought back.

13:02 Anna: A little reminder that space exploration,

13:04 even after all these years, still has the

13:07 ability to surprise you. Sometimes with awe

13:10 inspiring science and sometimes with a rock

13:13 that just won't let go.

13:14 Avery: We love you Curiosity. Never change.

13:17 Anna: That's your Astronomy Daily weekend space and

13:20 astronomy news wrap for Saturday 17th

13:23 May, 2026. What a week it has

13:26 been.

13:27 Avery: Psyche's Mars Slingshot, a record

13:29 breaking Dragon launch with docking happening

13:32 today. The cosmic web mapped in

13:34 stunning detail. The most chaotic planet

13:37 nursery ever seen. Starship V3

13:40 ready on the pad. A once in

13:43 170,000 years Comet in

13:45 your southern skies and a uh, Mars rover

13:48 with a souvenir it uh, didn't ask for.

13:51 Anna: If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe.

13:53 Leave us a review and tell a friend. You can

13:56 find us at astronomydaily IO and

13:59 follow us on social media

14:01 astrodailypod. And before I leave you

14:04 this week, one more reminder to check our

14:06 sponsor's special money saving deal. I'm

14:09 talking about NordVPN, the one we use

14:12 because we only want the best. To get the

14:14 details, just click on the link in the show

14:16 notes, you'll be glad you did.

14:18 Avery: And a uh, reminder, we have new episodes

14:20 every Monday to Saturday and we'll be back

14:23 Monday ahead of that Starship V3 launch.

14:26 Don't miss it.

14:27 Anna: For Avery, I'm Anna. Clear skies everyone.

14:36 Wow.

14:41 Story soul.