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Anna: Happy Saturday space fans. I'm

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Anna.

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

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weekend space and astronomy news wrap.

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Anna: It's been another big week out there.

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Ancient quasars, mystery spheres on an

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Australian beach, and a solar system mystery

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hiding in plain sight on two very different

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worlds.

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Avery: And today we've also got two brand new

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stories, including a genuine world first from

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China and a tribute to one of the true

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pioneers of space flight.

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Anna: So settle in, let's get into it.

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Avery: Let's start with today's headline story.

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Yesterday morning, Friday, July 10,

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China made genuine space flight history.

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Anna: The Long March 10B rocket lifted off from

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the Hainan Commercial space launch site its

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very first flight and successfully placed a

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satellite into orbit.

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Avery: Nothing unusual about that bit. But about

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six minutes after the first and second stages

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separated, that first stage came back

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down out of the sky and FL itself

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directly into a giant net sitting on a

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ship at sea.

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Anna: A, uh, net, not legs. Like SpaceX's

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Falcon 9 or Blue Origin's New Glenn, the

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Long March 10B has no landing legs at

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all. Instead it deploys four

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lightweight hooks that snag onto a

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huge cross shaped cable tensioned net

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mounted on a purpose built recovery

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vessel called the Linghong Zhe, or

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Navigator.

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Avery: And here's the bit that makes engineers sit

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up. This was the rocket's maiden flight.

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No one has ever nailed a first stage booster

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recovery on the very first attempt before.

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Not SpaceX, not Blue Origin.

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Anna: China's other reusable contenders, The Long

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March 12A and the Commercial Zhuque 3,

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both reached orbit on their debut flights

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last December. But neither one stuck the

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landing. This is the one that finally worked.

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First try.

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Avery: The recovery ship itself is no small thing

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either. 144 meters long, 50

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meters wide, over 25,000

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tons, fully loaded. MHM uses LiDAR at

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each corner to track the falling booster's

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position and attitude in real time. And the

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net's cables absorb all that kinetic energy.

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So the rocket ends up just hanging there

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motionless, dead center.

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Anna: Casc, the state owned China

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Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation,

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says the net approach actually has real

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advantages over the SpaceX style vertical

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leg landing. It simplifies the booster's

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structure, cuts weight and is more forgiving

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of landing position errors because the net

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system can adjust to catch it.

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Avery: This makes China only the second nation on

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Earth to achieve controlled recovery of an

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orbital class rocket booster. And The Long

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March 10B becomes the sixth launch system

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in history to pull it off after the space

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Shuttle Falcon 9, Electron

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Starship and New Glenn.

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Anna: There's a bigger picture here, too. The Long

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March 10B is a commercial cousin of the

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Long March 10A and 10, the

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Rocket family being built to carry Chinese

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astronauts to the moon before 2030.

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So every piece of reusable technology proven

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here feeds directly into that crewed

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lunar program.

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Avery: CASC says they're aiming to actually reuse

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this very booster by the end of the year.

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Shares in Chinese aerospace firms jumped on

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the news with a couple of them hitting daily

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trading limits.

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Anna: A genuinely big moment for global

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spaceflight, and a reminder that the reusable

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rocket club, once a club of exactly

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one, just got a lot more interesting.

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Now into our weekly highlights, the biggest

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stories from the past five days, starting

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with one we told you about earlier this week.

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A genuinely staggering haul of ancient

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quasars

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Avery: ESA's Euclid Space Telescope has

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discovered 31 previously unknown

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quasars from the universe's first billion

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years, and two of them are the most ancient

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ever recorded. Full stop.

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Anna: A ah, quasar happens when huge amounts of gas

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and dust spiral into a

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supermassive black hole at a galaxy's center.

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The friction and gravity heat that material

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to millions of degrees, and the result can

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outshine its entire host galaxy by

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a factor of a thousand.

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Avery: These two record breakers, catchily named

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Euclid

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J17.29.027

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56410.18.1

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and Euclid

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J1253.0.8.557

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054.3.2.3

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were shining when the universe just

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670 million years old

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that's about 5% of its current age.

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Their light has been traveling towards us for

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roughly 13 billion years.

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Anna: The previous redshift record, set back in

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2021, was 7.64.

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These two come in at 7.77 and

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7.69, both beating it.

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Avery: But honestly, the record breakers aren't even

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the most important part of this story. Lead

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researcher Demeng Yang of Leiden University

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points out that finding the first 10 or so

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quasars this old took astronomers

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more than a decade of painstaking work.

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Euclid found more than that in about

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Anna: a year, which means for the first time,

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scientists have something like a real

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population to study a true census of the

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early universe's quasars, rather than just a

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handful of freakishly bright outliers that

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happen to be easy to spot.

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Avery: And that matters, because how these monster

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black holes got so big so fast

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so early in cosmic history remains one

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of the biggest open puzzles in astrophysics.

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Highlight number two takes us to home turf

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here in Australia, and it's a story that had

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a lot of listeners messaging us this week.

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Anna: Dick's Large, metallic spherical

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objects washed ashore at Forest beach north

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of Townsville in Queensland. And

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understandably, that triggered a HAZMAT

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response. While authorities worked out

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exactly what they

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Avery: were dealing with, speculation ran wild

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for a bit. Everything from weather balloons

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to something rather more exotic. But the

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answer turned out to be space related after

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all, just not alien. They were

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identified as pressure vessels, remnants of a

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rocket that had re entered the atmosphere and

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broken apart.

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Anna: These composite overwrapped pressure vessels,

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COPVs for the acronym lovers, are used

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to store gases like helium or nitrogen under

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high pressure aboard rockets. They're built

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tough, specifically so they can survive

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extreme pressure differentials, which

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unfortunately also means they're pretty good

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at surviving RE entry.

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Avery: It's not actually the first time debris like

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this has turned up in Australian shores, but

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six at once, all in one spot,

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definitely got people's attention up in North

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Queensland.

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Anna: Uh, a good reminder that as launch rates

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climb worldwide, this kind of re entry debris

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story is only going to become more common.

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And it's exactly the sort of local angle we

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love bringing you here on the show.

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Avery: ILI3 is one of our favorite kinds of

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story. A, uh, genuine unsolved scientific

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mystery. New analysis of James Webb

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Space Telescope data has turned up an

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unexplained absorption feature. A specific

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field fingerprint in the light at

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5.11 micrometers, showing up

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on the surfaces of both Titan, Saturn's

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big hazy moon, and Pluto, way out

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at the solar system's edge.

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Anna: Two worlds that could hardly be more

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different. Titan has a thick nitrogen methane

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atmosphere and lakes of liquid

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hydrocarbons. Pluto is airless, well,

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near enough bitterly cold and covered in

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nitrogen and methane isis. And yet this

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same unexplained signature shows up on both.

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Avery: Researchers have already ruled out the usual

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suspects. The known ices, the known

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hydrocarbons. Nothing quite

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matches.

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Anna: The leading candidate at the moment is a

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class of molecules called Allenes, but that's

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not confirmed, and scientists are the first

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to say so.

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Avery: What's exciting is what it might mean if it

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does turn out to be something new. Uh, a

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shared chemical process happening

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independently on two very different distant

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world could tell us something fundamental

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about the kind of chemistry that's possible

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out at the cold, dark edges of a solar

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system.

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Anna: We'll definitely be keeping an eye on this

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one as more analysis comes in.

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Avery: And our final highlight from the past week

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takes us out to the true edge of the solar

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system, where an old friend has just opened

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its eyes again.

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Anna: NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, the

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mission that gave us our first close up look

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at Pluto back in 2015 and then

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flew past the Kuiper Belt object arrokaph uh

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in 2019, has emerged from a

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321 day hibernation period.

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Avery: It's currently around 5.9 billion

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miles from Earth out in the Kuiper Belt, well

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beyond Pluto's orbit. Putting a spacecraft

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into hibernation between observation

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campaigns is standard practice for these

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ultra long durations. It

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conserves power, reduces wear on the systems

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and honestly gives the ground team a breather

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too.

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Anna: Now that it's awake, the team can resume New

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Horizons ongoing science campaign,

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including its unique measurements of the

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solar wind and the heliosphere from m a

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vantage point no other operating spacecraft

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can match.

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Avery: It's a lovely reminder that some of our most

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valuable space explorers are the ones that

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just keep going decade after

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decade, quietly rewriting what we know about

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the outer solar system.

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Anna: And to wrap things up today, we wanted to

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take a moment for something a little

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different. A tribute.

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Avery: Wally Funk, full name Mary Wallace

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Funk, passed away this week in her home in

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Grapevine, Texas at the age of 87.

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Anna: If that name doesn't immediately ring a bell,

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her story absolutely should. Back in

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1961, Funk volunteered for a

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privately run program that tested whether

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America's best female pilots could pass

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the same rigorous physical and mental tests

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NASA gave its male astronaut candidates.

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Avery: She was the youngest of the group that became

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known as the mercury 13. And by every

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account, she was extraordinary at it. She

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outperformed, uh, many of the men on the very

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same tests.

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Anna: But in 1961, NASA

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simply wasn't selecting women as astronauts.

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None of the mercury 13 ever flew for the

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agency. Funk applied to NASA four

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times over the following decades and was

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turned down every time, at one point being

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told she didn't have the right engineering

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degree. So she went out and started working

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toward one anyway.

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Avery: She never stopped flying. Over her lifetime,

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she logged more than 19,600

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flight hours, became the first female

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civilian flight instructor at a US military

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base, the first woman inspector for the

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FAA, and personally trained more than

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3,000 pilots.

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Anna: And then, 60 years after that first round

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of astronaut testing, she finally got her

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ride. In July 2021, Blue

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Origin founder Jeff Bezos invited her

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aboard as an honored guest on the New

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Shepard NS16 flight alongside

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himself and his brother Mark.

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Avery: At 82 years old, Wally

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Funk became the oldest woman ever

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to fly to space. A record she

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still holds 11 minutes, a

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few precious moments of weightlessness, and

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six decades of waiting finally

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answered.

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Anna: Blue Origin posted a tribute, calling her a

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pioneer in every sense of the word, and

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NASA's own administrator, Jared Isaacman

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wrote that her passion for flight and

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exploration will keep inspiring generations

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of Americans.

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Avery: A friend and caregiver in Grapevine described

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her as the most eternally optimistic person

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she'd ever met, someone who was told

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no more times than most of us could bear

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and simply never let it stick.

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Anna: Fly Wally Clear skies always

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now, just

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Avery: before we go, let's lighten the mood and send

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you outside this weekend because there's a

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lovely little sky show on offer.

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Anna: Before dawn today, July 11, early

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risers got treated to a beautiful lineup. Low

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in the east northeast, a, uh, slender

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crescent moon joining Mars, the bright orange

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star Aldebaran, and the Pleiades and Hyades

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star clusters all in the same patch of sky.

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Avery: If you missed it this morning, the wider

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grouping is still worth a look over the next

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few mornings. Get out about 90 minutes

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before sunrise, find a clear eastern

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horizon and bring binoculars if you've got

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them for a closer look at the Pleiades.

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Anna: Southern Hemisphere viewers. That's an easy

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one for us here at home. No special gear

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required, just a decent horizon and a bit of

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patience.

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Avery: A gentle, pretty way to close out the week.

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Anna: And that's this week's weekend space and

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astronomy news wrap A world first rocket

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recovery, a farewell to a true space

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pioneer, ancient quasars mystery M

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Spheres, an unsolved mystery on two

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worlds and an old spacecraft waking back

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up.

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Avery: If you enjoyed today's episode, please hit

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subscribe wherever you're listening and leave

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us a review. It genuinely helps new listeners

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find the show.

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Anna: I'm Anna.

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Avery: And I'm Avery. We'll see you next time on

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Astronomy Daily.