Astronomy Daily: Latest Space News

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Light from newborn stars may have blown the fog out of the early universe. A new study by Shyam Menon (Flatiron Institute, ANU PhD) and Aaron Smith (UT Dallas) finds that Lyman-alpha radiation — ultraviolet light that bounces from hydrogen atom to hydrogen atom — can clear diffuse gas and dust out of young galaxies while leaving their dense star clusters free to keep forming stars, helping explain why JWST sees so many bright galaxies so early. Also: LOFAR's sharpest and deepest low-frequency radio image yet (almost 63,000 sources, 200 hours of observing); Blue Origin's new GS3 third stage and Northstar engine; and Sandia simulations showing that an asteroid's shape and orientation can change a nuclear stand-off deflection by up to five times. Quick hits: the space station's final roll-out solar array is installed, sunspot region AR4566 fires an M3 flare as October's sunspot number falls, and Earth picks up a tiny temporary mini-moon, 2026 QQ8. Skywatch for both hemispheres: ESCAPADE's powered flybys over southern Australia, the Moon with Venus and Spica, New Moon on the 9th, globular cluster M30 for southern observers, and Mars closing on Jupiter before dawn. Sources: Menon & Smith, The Astrophysical Journal (2026), DOI 10.3847/1538-4357/aeaed6 · de Jong et al., arXiv 2611.06152 (accepted A&A) · Blue Origin announcements, 5 Nov 2026 · Moore et al., Icarus (2026) · NOAA SWPC · Minor Planet Center MPEC 2026-U95 · NASA ESCAPADE blog, 2 Nov 2026.

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A Northwestern-led team builds a physics-based digital twin of the James Webb Space Telescope's coronagraph and recovers the giant planet 51 Eridani b in two-year-old data where standard processing could not see it. Plus VVV CL001, a dust-hidden cluster near the Milky Way's core dated at 13.4 billion years; China's most detailed account yet of its two-launch crewed Moon landing plan; and the flare alert system that tells sounding rockets exactly when to launch, as sunspot region AR4566 turns magnetically complex. The Planet in the Glare (lead) Ferrer-Chavez, Wang, Bouman, Freeman, Pueyo et al., Nature, 4 Nov 2026, DOI 10.1038/s41586-026-11213-z. FLIP (Physics-based Learning for Imaging Planets) models JWST/NIRCam coronagraph optics as a digital twin and subtracts simulated starlight. Tested on HIP 65426, 51 Eridani and TYC 5899: sensitivity improved 2–15×; 51 Eri b recovered at >5σ in F430M (CO₂ band) data where standard processing failed. Not a new planet; three-star demonstration; picometre-stability relief for the Habitable Worlds Observatory is a prospect, not yet shown. VVV CL001: the oldest cluster in the Galaxy? Olivares Carvajal, Zoccali et al., accepted to A&A, arXiv 2610.27969 (posted 20 Oct 2026). Age 13.4 ± 0.4 Gyr from Magellan/FourStar and Hubble photometry; [Fe/H] ≈ −2.2; ~7.3 kpc in the bulge. ~1 Gyr additional systematic from distance; Ton 2 dated at 13.6 Gyr — a strong candidate, not a settled record. China's crewed Moon landing plan Wang Xiang, 7th Manned Space Symposium, Beijing, 31 Oct 2026. Two Long March 10 launches; Lanyue lander and Mengzhou crew ship rendezvous in lunar orbit; crew of three, two land, rover on first landing. No new dates; target remains before 2030. Catching a flare in the act Early flare alert system, The Astrophysical Journal, 4 Nov 2026, DOI 10.3847/1538-4357/ae95fd. Enabled FOXSI-4 and Hi-C Flare to launch into an M-class flare on 17 Apr 2024 and FOXSI-5 to catch three flares on 14 May 2026. AR4566 reached beta-gamma-delta classification on 4 Nov. Quick hits Swift re-entered 7:39 a.m. EST 4 Nov (12:39 UTC) over North Sumatra; NASA's SSPICY (Starfish Space Otter) declared unrecoverable; final ISS roll-out solar array spacewalk (Kutryk, Menon); Hera begins early characterisation at Didymos per ESA's timeline.

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ESCAPADE's double slingshot over Australia NASA's twin ESCAPADE spacecraft, Blue and Gold, will each fly a powered Earth flyby on their way to Mars: the first around 5 a.m. EST on Saturday 7 November, the second around 6 a.m. EST on Monday 9 November. Each fires its engine for about nine minutes at closest approach, a manoeuvre NASA says no Mars-bound spacecraft has flown successfully before. The burns happen over southern Australia, starting 8:51 p.m. AEDT on the 7th and 9:51 p.m. AEDT on the 9th, and the spacecraft may be visible there through telescopes. Western US observers get their best chance between midnight and 2 a.m. PST. Arrival at Mars: 7 and 9 September 2027. Where did the oxygen go? Hubble's GLOW project (McQuinn et al., The Astrophysical Journal, published 2 November; preprint since August) measured oxygen in 37 nearby dwarf galaxies and found they keep only 4–25% (about 11% on average) of the oxygen their stars made, nearly all of it in gas. Simulations predict several times more. Supernova-driven winds are the likely culprit; where the oxygen ended up is still unknown. Gas data included CSIRO's Australia Telescope Compact Array. CHAPEA 2: a year on a pretend Mars NASA's second CHAPEA crew, Ross Elder, Ellen Ellis, Matthew Montgomery and James Spicer, left the 3D-printed Mars Dune Alpha habitat at Johnson Space Center on 31 October after 378 days, including communication delays of up to 22 minutes. An integrated HERA-plus-CHAPEA study is planned for 2027. Can a black hole split in two? A theory paper in Physical Review D (Cacciapaglia, Del Piano, Sannino & Vellucci, 22 October; preprint June) finds a split is thermodynamically allowed only, possibly, for black holes spinning near the maximum rate. The splitting process itself remains unknown, and no split has been observed. Quick hits Swift's final re-entry (see episode for status at recording); Starship Flight 15 targeted 12 November on an FAA planning slide, no SpaceX date yet; BepiColombo Mercury orbit capture 21 November; Voyager 1 one light-day from Earth around 18 November. Skywatch ESCAPADE telescope challenge over Australia (Sat 8:51 p.m. and Mon 9:51 p.m. AEDT); New Moon 9 Nov; Taurid fireballs; Mars and Jupiter closing to about 1.2° on 16 Nov (UT); thin crescent Moon under 1° from Venus around 10:45 UT on 7 Nov, best from eastern North America; Venus about 1.2° from Spica on the mornings of 9–10 Nov; Mercury at greatest western elongation 20 Nov. Never look at the Sun without ISO 12312-2 certified protection. Sources NASA ESCAPADE blog: Twin ESCAPADE spacecraft to slingshot past Earth (2 Nov 2026) — https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/escapade/2026/11/02/nasas-twin-escapade-spacecraft-to-slingshot-past-earth-on-way-to-mars/ NASA SVS ESCAPADE flyby star charts — https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/15114/ JPL Horizons System — https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/app.html#/ UC Berkeley ESCAPADE mission timeline — https://escapade.ssl.berkeley.edu/timeline-news Blue Origin: New Glenn launches NASA's ESCAPADE (13 Nov 2025) — https://www.blueorigin.com/en-US/news/new-glenn-launches-nasa-escapade-lands-fully-reusable-booster NASA: Hubble uncovers case of missing oxygen in nearby dwarf galaxies (2 Nov 2026) — https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-uncovers-case-of-missing-oxygen-in-nearby-dwarf-galaxies/ McQuinn et al., GLOW II: A Census of Oxygen in Low-Mass Galaxies, ApJ, DOI 10.3847/1538-4357/ae93a6 (preprint arXiv 2608.07665) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.07665 NASA: CHAPEA crew 'returns' to Earth (31 Oct 2026) — https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasas-chapea-crew-returns-to-earth/ University of Southern Denmark: Can a black hole split in two? — https://www.sdu.dk/en/om-sdu/fakulteterne/naturvidenskab/nyheder-2026/black-hole-in-two Cacciapaglia, Del Piano, Sannino & Vellucci, Phys. Rev. D 114, 084072 (22 Oct 2026), DOI 10.1103/cx69-t466 — https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/cx69-t466 NASA Swift blog: Swift Observatory to re-enter atmosphere (2 Nov 2026) — https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/swift/2026/11/02/nasas-swift-observatory-to-re-enter-atmosphere/ Starlust: Starship Flight 15 FAA planning date — https://starlust.org/spacex-starship-flight-15-possible-launch-date-revealed/

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Show notes Swift's Last Orbit: NASA's burst hunter falls home, a gamma-ray burst that is two explosions in one, and 3I/ATLAS's dusty ice. Swift's Last Orbit NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere on Wednesday 4 November; the US Space Force prediction is about 03:30 EST (08:30 UTC, 19:30 AEDT), plus or minus 11 hours. Surviving fragments are confined between 20.6°N and 20.6°S, a band that includes northern Australia; NASA puts the risk of harm to anyone at about 1 in 2,100. We look back at 22 years of science from a two-year mission: more than 2,000 gamma-ray bursts, the first short-burst afterglow in 2005, the BOAT in 2022, and about 7,000 papers. Two Bursts, Two Births GRB 160425A, caught by Swift in April 2016, is a 1.7-second short spike, four minutes of silence, then a 51-second long burst from the same place. A Nature Astronomy paper (Li, Wang, Zhang, Cai et al., 23 October; preprint March) argues the first is merger-like and the second collapsar-like. One event, no confirmed supernova or kilonova. 3I/ATLAS's Dusty Ice Webb's NIRSpec found the interstellar comet's ice grains are about a micron across and mixed with lots of dust, resembling some trans-Neptunian objects more than familiar comets (Protopapa et al., ApJL, 26 October; preprint September). Quick Hits Starship Flight 15 targeted NET 12 November per the FAA (unconfirmed by SpaceX); BepiColombo's Mercury orbit insertion on 21 November; Voyager 1 reaches one light-day around 18 November. Skywatch Venus near Spica before dawn, joined by a 5%-lit crescent Moon on Saturday 7 November; Mars and Jupiter closing to 1.2° by 16 November (high from the north); Saturn high in southern evening skies; New Moon 9 November; Leonids 17–18 November. ISO 12312-2 solar safety

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Two black holes caught feeding side by side just 1.3 billion years after the Big Bang. JWST and ALMA confirm LID-1166, the first close dual AGN found beyond the nearby universe. Plus: Swift's final days and NASA's call for ideas to save Hubble, Rubin finds Neptune's missing trailing Trojans as Lucy enters Jupiter's, TRACERS' first look at where the solar wind gets in, and a both-hemispheres skywatch built around the Mars-Jupiter meeting on 16 November. Two Hearts in One Galaxy (LID-1166) JWST/NIRSpec integral-field spectroscopy resolves two feeding black holes ~1.5 kpc (~4,900 ly) apart at z~4.5; ALMA [CII] finds matching cold gas around each. Both appear super-Eddington yet already sit on the local black hole-host mass relation. One system, projected separation; preprint posted July, published in Nature Astronomy this week. Living on Borrowed Altitude Swift ended operations on 20 October and is expected to re-enter in early November. NASA's 29 October Request for Information asks industry about boosting, servicing or safely de-orbiting Hubble, likely to re-enter in 2033-34. Not a commitment; responses due 30 November. Trojan Week Rubin early data confirms 2025 MH348 and 2025 NN80 as long-lived trailing Neptune Trojans, plus candidate 2025 MD138 (Schwamb et al., ApJL). Lucy becomes the first spacecraft to enter the Jupiter Trojan region; Eurybates flyby 11 August 2027. TRACERS: Where the Solar Wind Gets In First results (JGR: Space Physics) suggest cusp reconnection is largely spatial rather than temporal. Mission extended to spring 2027. Quick hits BepiColombo Mercury orbit insertion 21 November; Starship Flight 15 targeted November with a double catch attempt; Voyager 1 one light-day from Earth around 18 November. Skywatch Mars and Jupiter 1.2 degrees apart before dawn on 16 November; Venus, a thin Moon and Spica low at dawn 7-10 November; Saturn high in southern evenings; zodiacal light around New Moon (9 Nov); Leonids 17-18 November; supermoon 24 November. ISO 12312-2 solar safety reminder.

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