April 6, 2026

Artemis II Soars Beyond the Moon + Comet MAPS' Dramatic Demise

Artemis II Soars Beyond the Moon + Comet MAPS' Dramatic Demise
Season 5

For the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972, human beings are flying around the Moon — and it's happening RIGHT NOW. In this episode of Astronomy Daily, Anna and Avery deliver a full Artemis II update covering Flight Days 4 and 5, and the historic lunar flyby unfolding TODAY. We also have the promised verdict on Comet MAPS — the 'Easter comet' that plunged toward the Sun on April 4. Did it survive? Then two remarkable discovery stories: 87 hidden stellar streams uncovered in the Milky Way's outskirts, and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's stunning debut — 11,000 new asteroids in just six weeks. We close with an extraordinary astronomical event: a solar eclipse witnessed from beyond the Moon's far side. IN THIS EPISODE: • 00:00 — Intro • Story 1 — Artemis II: Days 4 & 5 + Today's Lunar Flyby • Story 2 — Comet MAPS: The Easter Comet's Fate • Story 3 — Third Dark-Matter-Free Galaxy Discovered • Story 4 — 87 Hidden Stellar Streams Found in the Milky Way • Story 5 — Rubin Observatory: 11,000 Asteroids in 6 Weeks • Story 6 — Solar Eclipse from Beyond the Moon 🌐 astronomydaily.io | 🐦 @AstroDailyPod

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Right now, as you're listening to this, there are four

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human beings flying around the Moon.

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For the first time since December nineteen seventy two, fifty

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three years.

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Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen are

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aboard NASA's Ryan spacecraft conducting a six hour lunar flyby today,

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photographing the far side, breaking the all time human distance

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record from Earth, and about to witness a solar eclipse

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from beyond the Moon.

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We also have the verdict on comet maps, the one

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we promised you on Saturday, did it survive its plunge

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into the Sun.

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Plus a third galaxy with no dark matter, eighty seven

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hidden stellar streams discovered in our own galaxy, and a

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new telescope that found eleven thousand asteroids in just six weeks.

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I'm Avery and I'm Anna. This is Astronomy Daily, Season five,

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episode eighty two. Let's go.

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Let's start where we left off on Saturday, flight day

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four for the Artemis two crew.

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At the start of the day, Oriyan and her crew

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were approximately one hundred and sixty nine thousand miles from

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Earth and one hundred and ten thousand miles from the

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Moon halfway there and closing fast.

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The big activity on day four was a manual piloting demonstration.

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Christina Coke and Jeremy Hansen took turns at the controls

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testing two different thruster modes to give engineers real deep

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space handling data on the spacecraft.

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And this isn't just for show. Commander Wiseman and Victor

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Glover are scheduled to repeat the same demonstration on day

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eight so mission controllers can compare how different crew members

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handle the spacecraft its proper test flight methodology.

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The crew also spent time reviewing their lunar science target

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list for today's flyby, about thirty five geological features they've

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been asked to observe and photograph. Top of that list

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is the Orientel Basin, which.

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Is for listeners who haven't heard of it, a nearly

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six hundred mile wide impact crater that straddles the boundary

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between the near and far sides of the Moon three

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point eight billion years old. The Artemis two crew will

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be the first humans to see it from multiple angles

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as they swing around.

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They also found time for some cru selfies using one

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of Orion's solar array cameras. Very relatable astronauts. They're just

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like us. Day five, the crew woke up to see

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low Green's working class Heroes, which feels about right for

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people who are about to fly around the Moon.

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Very appropriate playlist choice from mission control.

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The main objective on Sunday was a full evaluation of

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the Orion Crue survival suit. All four crew members put

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on the suits, pressurized them, did leak checks, simulated seat entry,

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and tested whether they could eat and drink while wearing them.

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That last one matters more than it might sound. If

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there's ever a cabin emergency on a future mission and

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the crew has to suit up quickly, they need to

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know they can sustain themselves in the suit for an

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extended period.

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Later on Sunday, mission control completed a short trajectory correction

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burn seventeen and a half seconds to fine tune or

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Ryan's path to the Moon.

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And then just after midnight Eastern Time on Monday morning,

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so very early today, the spacecraft entered the Moon's gravitational

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sphere of influence. Lunar gravity now has more pull on

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Orion than Earth's does, the.

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First humans in that position since the Apollo.

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Era, and so to today. Flight Day six the main event.

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The six hour fly by window runs from two forty

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five to nine forty pm Eastern. Depending on when you're

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listening to this, the crew may already be deep into it.

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Closest approach is at around seven pm Eastern, four thousand

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and sixty six miles above the surface, far enough out

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to see the entire lunar disc at once, including regions

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near both poles that Apollo astronauts never had this view of.

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And here's the record that gets broken. Today. At seven

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oh five pm Eastern, Orion will reach its maximum distance

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from Earth two hundred and fifty two thousand, seven hundred

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and fifty seven miles.

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Beating Apollo thirteen's record by four thousand, one hundred and

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two miles. Apollo thirteen, the mission that survived an explosion

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in deep space and used the Moon's gravity to slingshot

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back to Earth, held that record for fifty six years.

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There will also be a communications blackout when Orion passes

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behind the Moon. Signals between the spacecraft and NASA's Deep

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Space network are blocked. That blackout begins around five forty

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seven pm Eastern and lasts about forty minutes.

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Nor Mole expected nothing to worry about. It happened on

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Artemis one and on every Apollo mission two, but it

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does mean mission control is briefly out of contact with

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the crew while they're on the far side.

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One more thing for today, the crew are attempting to

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recreate one of the most famous photographs in history. Apollo

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eates earth Rise, the image of Earth rising above the

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Moon's horizon, taken on Christmas Eve nineteen sixty eight, one

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of the most iconic images ever made.

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Well see if they can match it. My money is

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on yes.

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We'll be watching splashdown for the full mission is on

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track for Friday, April tenth, off San Diego.

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All right, we promised you this one on Saturday, and

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we're going to deliver.

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Comet maps D twenty twenty six A one maps discovered

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on the thirteenth of January this year in the AMAX

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one Observatory in Chile's Atakama Desert. Why it's Sungrazer, a

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family of comets that plunge extremely close to the Sun

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on very elongated.

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Orbits, and maps was special. Even within that family, it

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holds the distinction of being the earliest discovered cruits Sungrazer

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ever found spotted more than two astronomical units from the Sun,

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giving astronomers months to track its approach.

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On Saturday, April fourth, Maps reached Perihelion, its closest point

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to the Sun. It passed approximately ninety nine thousand miles

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from the solar surface. To put that in perspective, the

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diameter of the Sun itself is eight hundred and sixty

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five thousand miles.

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It was scorchingly impossibly close.

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Some were calling it the Easter Comet, hoping it would

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emerge from that encounter blazing in the post Perihelian sky.

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Comets in this family have done it before. Iks Seki

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in nineteen sixty five survived and became one of the

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brightest comets of the twin century. Comet Lovejoy in twenty

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eleven survived and became a spectacular naked eye.

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Object, but Maps didn't make it.

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About six hours before pery Helian, coronagraph images from the

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Soho spacecraft showed it at a round magnitude negative zero

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point six and brightening, Then shortly after it disintegrated. It

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never re emerged from behind the Sun, though.

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A spectacular death, if not the spectacular survival we were

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hoping for. The question now is whether any ghostly debristail remains,

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but if it does, it would be faint and short lived.

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It's worth sitting with us for a moment. Mapps was

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a fragment of a comet that last visited the Inner

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Solar System roughly seventeen hundred years ago, possibly connected to

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a comet witnessed in broad daylight in the year three

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hundred and sixty three AD, documented by the historian Ammanilius Marcellinus.

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It made it all the way back, and the sun

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hook it.

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There is a silver lining, though, Comet C. Twenty twenty

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five R three pan Stars is brightening and putting on

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its own show. This month, April seventeenth is your best

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viewing opportunity. You'll need binoculars. It should reach around magnitude eight,

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but look east before dawn in the constellations Pegasus and Pisces.

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We'll keep you updated.

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Rest well.

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Maps Now to some deep cosmology that genuinely shakes the

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foundations of how we think galaxies work.

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So the standard model of galaxy formation says dark matter

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is the invisible scaffolding that holds galaxies together without its

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gravitational pool. The rotational forces of a galaxy stars would

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simply cause it to fly apart.

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Dark matter makes up the vast majority of a galaxy's mass.

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We can't see it, it doesn't interact with light, but

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we infer it everywhere we look. Until in twenty eighteen,

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a team at Yale led by astronomer Peter von Dockam

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found something that shouldn't exist.

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A galaxy with virtually no dark matter NGC ten fifty

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two DASH DF two, an ultra diffuse galaxy faint spread

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out c through almost and the stars inside it were

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moving far too slowly. There wasn't enough mass the dark

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matter was missing.

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Then they found a second one, NNGC ten fifty two

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DASH DF four, same thing, and both galaxies appeared to

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lie along the same trail in space, and.

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Now announced this week a third NNGC ten fifty two

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DASH DF nine, which falls directly on that same trail

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between DF two and DF four. The team used a

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Keck observatory in Hawaii to measure how fast the stars

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inside DF nine are moving, and the result was the same.

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No dark matter required to explain the dynamics.

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Three in a row on the same lene, that is

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not a coincidence.

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The explanation the team favors is the bullet dwarf collision theory.

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Imagine two gas rich dwarf galaxies hurtling toward each other

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at enormous speed. They collide. The stars, which interact electromagnetically,

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get tangled up and slow down, but dark matter only

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interacts via gravity. The dark matter halos of each galaxy

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just passed straight through each other, like ghosts.

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What's left behind is a trail of star rich galaxies

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that have been completely stripped of their dark matter DF two,

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D four, DF nine, all born from the same catastrophic

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ancient collision.

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The team wants to measure a fourth and fifth galaxy

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on the same trail. The farther out they go, the

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fainter the targets get. But if they find the same signature,

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that's about as close to a smoking gun as cosmology.

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Gets, and what it tells us is profound dark matter exists,

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but it doesn't have to be everywhere. Galaxies can form

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and persist without it under the right or rather the

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extremely violent circumstances.

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Our next two stories today share something in common. Both

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involve new tools and new algorithms revealing hitting populations of

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objects at a scale that simply wasn't possible before. The universe,

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it turns out, has been holding out on.

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Us, starting with our own galaxy. Astronomers at the University

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of Michigan have just announced the discovery of eighty seven

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new stellar stream candidates in the outskirts of the Milky Way.

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Now stellar streams for listeners who haven't come across them before.

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Stellar streams are when a compact cluster of stars travels

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through the Milky Way's gravitational field. The galaxy slowly pulls

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stars away from it. Those stars get stretched out into long,

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trailing ribbons, barking threads of light following the cluster's orbital path.

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Study co author Oleg Neettin put it beautifully. He said,

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it's like riding a bike with a bag of sand,

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where the bag has a hole in it, the sand

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spilling out behind you. That's the stellar stream.

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Before the study, fewer than twenty of these streams had

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been found, and most of those were discovered by chance

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astronomer stumbling across them in Gaya data while looking for

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other things.

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Lead researcher Yin Tanchen, who goes by Bill, took a

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more systematic approach. He developed a new algorithm called star

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stream which uses a physics based model of how these

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streams actually form rather than just looking for visual patterns

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in the data, and he turned it loose on the

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full Gaya data set.

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The result eighty seven candidates, more than quadrupling the known

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population in one go, and these are the rarest kind

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streams from globular clusters that are still intact. You can

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compare the stream directly to its parent cluster, which makes

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them enormously scientifically valuable.

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Because the shapes and sizes of these streams encode information

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about the forces they've experienced, and that tells you about

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the Milky Way's mass distribution, including how its dark matter

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halo is structured.

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So these ribbons of stars are essentially a map of

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invisible matter. The next step is follow up with more

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powerful instruments NASA's Roman Space Telescope, Ruben Observatory, and DIESI

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to verify which of the eighty seven are real streams

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and which might be background.

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Noise, which brings us rather neatly to Ruben Observatory.

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The via C Reuben Observatory, which we've mentioned a few

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times in the last couple of months as it was

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coming online, has just released its first major data set,

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and the numbers are staggering.

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In six weeks, six weeks of early engineering quality data,

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not even full science operations, yet, Rubin found over eleven

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thousand new asteroids, generated nearly a million measurements, and refine

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the orbits of more than eighty thousand previously cataloged objects.

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Some of those eighty thousand had effectively vanished from tracking

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systems because their orbits were two uncertain Ruben recovered them

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with far greater precision. Objects that were lost found again.

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Mario Jerrich, the Ruben Solar System lead scientists to the

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University of Washington, summed it up well, he said, and

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I'm paraphrasing. This first submission is just the tip of

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the iceberg. What used to take years or decades to

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discover Ruben will unearth in months.

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Among the new finds are thirty three near Earth objects

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asteroids whose orbits bring them relatively close to Earth's None

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of them pose any threat, and the largest is about

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five hundred meters across. But here's the sobering context. Scientists

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estimate that only forty percent of mid sized near Earth objects,

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those larger than one hundred and forty meters large enough

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to cause serious regional damage have been found so.

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Far forty percent. We're more than halfway to knowing what's

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out there in that size range, but only barely. Ruben

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is expected to discover up to ninety thousand additional near

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Earth objects once fully operational, potentially doubling the known population.

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The early data set also turned up around three hundred

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and eighty trans Neptunian objects icy bodies far beyond Neptune.

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Two of them have highly elongated orbits that carry them

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as far as one thousand times the Earth Sun distance,

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among the most distant known objects in the entire Solar System.

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And this is still just the beginning. When the Legacy

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Survey of Space and Time the LSST begins full operations,

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Reuben is expected to find tens of thousands of asteroids

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every few nights. Over a decade, the known asteroid population

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could triple.

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We are entering an arrow where the Solar System becomes

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a continuously monitored environment rather than a partially mapped frontier.

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That's an extraordinary shift.

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And it has real implications for planetary defense. More objects

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found earlier means more lead time to respond if something

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concerning turns up.

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Nothing concerning has turned up, but now we have the

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tools to know much sooner if it does.

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We want to close today with something that hasn't happened before,

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not just in the history of space exploration, in the

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history of human experience.

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Tonight, toward the end of the lunar fly by window,

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the Sun will pass behind the Moon from the perspective

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of the Orion spacecraft, a solar eclipse lasting nearly an hour.

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From beyond the Moon's far side.

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No human being has ever seen that the Apollo cruse

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flew much closer to the lunar surface. They didn't have

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this vantage point during this eclipse. Read Wiseman, Victor Glover,

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Christina Cock, and Jeremy Hansen will be in near total darkness,

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floating in deep space, with the Moon blocking the Sun

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above them and the Earth a quarter million miles away.

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And they'll be working during that darkness. The crew will

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search for media erroid impact flashes on the lunar surface,

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brief flickers of light when space rocks strike the Moon.

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They'll look for dust lofting above the lunar limb. They'll

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observe deep space targets, planets visible only because the Sun

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is hidden.

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Science that can only be done in that moment from

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that place.

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There's a symmetry to today's episode that I keep coming

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back to. We opened with the crew photographing the Moon's

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ancient geology in the light. We're closing with them watching

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the Moon swallow the sun in the dark.

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Fifty three years ago. The last humans to come this

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far were the crew of Apollo seventeen, Jean Cernon, Harrison Smith,

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Ronald Evans. They left the Moon on December fourteenth, nineteen

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seventy two. Sternan was the last person to walk on

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the lunar surface. Before he climbed back into the lander,

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he said, we leave as we came, and God willing

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as we shall return with peace and hope for all mankind.

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Today we returned.

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Today we returned. Blashdown is Friday, April tenth, twenty twenty six.

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We'll be with you every step of the way.

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That's Astronomy Daily for Monday, the sixth of April twenty

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twenty six, Season five, episode eighty two.

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Thank you for spending this time with us. If today's

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episode moved you, and I think it might have, share

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it with someone. Tell them humans are flying around the

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Moon again, because they are.

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You can find us at Astronomy Daily dot io, and

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we're at astro Daily Pod across x, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube,

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and Tumbler.

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We'll be back tomorrow with Day seven of the Artemis

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two mission and whatever else the universe throws at us.

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Until then, keep looking up clear skies, everyone.

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Sunday Stars. The story is the soul. The story is

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the Soul.

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M