Euclid Finds 31 Ancient Quasars — Plus a "Snowman" Asteroid and Roman Telescope Update

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Anna: Hello and welcome to Astronomy Daily. I'm

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Anna.

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Avery: And I'm, um, avery. It's Friday, July 10,

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2026, and we've got quite the lineup for you

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today.

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Anna: We're talking about quasars from the dawn of

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time. A telescope getting hoisted onto its

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launch platform, an asteroid hunting

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satellite constellation, a space snowman,

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and a tiny cubesat that wants to

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redraw the map of Earth itself. Itself.

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Avery: It's a big one. Let's not waste any time.

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Straight into it. And Anna, uh, how do you

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feel about looking back nearly 13 billion

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years?

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Anna: Honestly, a little dizzy. But that's

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exactly what the European Space Agency's

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Euclid telescope has just done.

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Astronomers have used it to find, uh, 31

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quasars from the universe's first billion

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years of existence.

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Avery: And quasars, for anyone who needs the

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refresher, are the blazing cores of galaxies.

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Supermassive black holes gorging on gas and

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dust so violently that they can outshine

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every star in their host galaxy combined.

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Anna: Right. And two of these 31 are

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record breakers. Their light left them when

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the universe was just 670

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million years old. That's about 5%

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of its current age.

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Avery: 5%. That's like finding a photo

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from someone's first birthday and using it to

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figure out how they run a company 40 years

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later.

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Anna: Which is basically the mystery here. These

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black holes are already around a billion

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times the mass of our Sun. Nobody has a

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clean explanation for how they packed on that

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much mass so early.

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Avery: The new record holder is cataloged as

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Eucl J17, uh,

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292.75641.8.1.

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And it beats the previous most distant quasar

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by about 15 million years, which, in

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cosmic terms, is basically nothing.

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Anna: The team, led by Daming Yang at Leiden

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University, published the find in Astronomy

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and Astrophysics. And here's a fun detail.

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Finding 31 rare objects buried in a

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survey of billions of galaxies is a

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genuine needle in a haystack bobblem.

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Avery: So how'd they do it?

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Anna: Bayes Theorem. Um, centuries old statistics

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repurposed for one of the largest

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astronomical data sets ever assembled.

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Old math, brand new universe.

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Avery: I love that. Euclid's still got a long way

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to run, too. This is from just its wide

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survey, which will eventually cover more than

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one third of the entire sky.

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Anna: So consider this the opening chapter. There's

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a lot more of the early universe still

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defined now, from the deep past to the

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very near future. NASA's Nancy

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Grace Roman Space Telescope just took another

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step toward launch.

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Avery: This is the big dark matter dark energy

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exoplanet hunting flagship. Right?

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Anna: That's the one. NASA confirmed this week that

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inside the payload hazardous servicing

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facility at Kennedy Space center, technicians

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used cranes to lift the 18,000

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pound observatory onto a specialized work

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platform called the Pantheon.

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Avery: 18,000 pounds hanging in mid air on

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a crane. That's not a moment I'd want to be

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standing underneath.

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Anna: Nerve wracking to watch, I'd imagine. But

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it's a routine and carefully choreographed

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step. It moves Roman from its padded shipping

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configuration into its proper operational

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setup, ready for integration and testing.

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Avery: And they've already powered it up for system

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checkouts to make sure everything survived

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the trip from Goddard in one piece.

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Anna: Exactly. Roman is targeting no earlier

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than Sunday August 30th for launch on a

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SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Launch

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Complex 39A.

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Avery: Once it's up, it's heading out to the sun.

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Earth L2 point. About a million miles from

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Earth where it'll have an unobstructed view

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of the cosmos.

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Anna: From there it'll hunt for dark matter, probe

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dark energy and directly image

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exoplanets around nearby stars. A

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proper Swiss army knife of an observatory.

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Avery: Less than two months to go now. We'll be

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keeping a close eye on this one. Now Anna,

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another quick question. Where's the one

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direction in the sky where we're basically

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blind to incoming asteroids?

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Anna: Straight at the Sun. Anything approaching

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from that direction gets lost in the glare

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for any ground telescope.

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Avery: Which is exactly how the 2013 Chelyabinsk

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meteor snuck up on everyone. It came in from

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near the sun and wasn't spotted until it was

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already in the atmosphere over Russia.

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Anna: China's now laying out detailed plans to

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close that gap. Chief Scientist Li

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Mingtao has confirmed a ah combined ground

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and space monitoring network. And new

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reporting this week reveals just how detailed

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the space side of the plan already is.

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Avery: Give me the details.

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Anna: A paper from June co authored with Wu Wei

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Ren, chief designer of China's lunar

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exploration program, lays out four

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candidate orbits for the space based

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telescopes. The Sun, Earth L1,

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Lagrange Point, an Earth leading or

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trailing orbit, a Venus like

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heliocentric orbit orbit, and something

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called an Earth companion distant

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retrograde orbit.

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Avery: That's a lot of orbital real estate to be

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considering.

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Anna: It is. And each one's being evaluated for

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how well it actually watches that sunward

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blind spot. Right now more than 40,000

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near Earth asteroids are cataloged and we've

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found over 95% of the kilometer

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plus ones that could cause global damage.

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But. But only around

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45% of the smaller

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140 meter class asteroids have been

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found and those are still big enough to

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flatten a small country.

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Avery: So this network is specifically going after

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the ones we're most likely to miss.

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Anna: Exactly. The idea, round the clock, no

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blind spots. Coverage. Combining ground

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telescopes for the night sky with space based

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eyes watching the direction

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Avery: the sun blocks, planetary defense,

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filling in, um, the gaps one orbit at a time.

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Anna: Time for my favorite kind of space story,

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the ones that come with genuinely gorgeous

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pictures. As we reported over the last couple

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of episodes, JAXA's Hayabusa2

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spacecraft has just flown past the asteroid

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Tory Foon. And the images that have been sent

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back so far are wonderful.

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Avery: This is the same Hayabusa 2 that brought us

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those Ryugu samples back in 2020?

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Anna: The very same. Now out on an extended

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mission. On July 5, it screamed past

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Tory Foon at about 5 kilometers a second,

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coming within roughly 800 meters of the

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surface.

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Avery: And what did it find?

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Anna: Tory Foon turns out to be a contact

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binary. Two separate asteroids that

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drifted together over time and fused into

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1 elongated 2 lobed shape.

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Scientists are calling it a snowman. And once

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you see the image, you can't unsee it.

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Avery: Ground based observations had hinted it might

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be elongated, but this is the first time

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anyone's actually confirmed the double lobe

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structure.

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Anna: Right. Using its optical camera,

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Thermal infrared Imager, Near Infrared

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Spectrometer and lidar, all within about

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an hour of closest approach. That's a lot of

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instruments working overtime. On a single

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high speed pass.

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Avery: Corey foons, about 450 meters across,

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orbits the sun every 383 days and

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spins once every five hours. It belongs to

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the Apollo Group, the near Earth asteroids

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whose paths cross our own.

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Anna: Hayabusa2 isn't done yet either.

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Backstop is 1998

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KY26 in 2031, an

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asteroid only about 11 meters across,

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which would make it the smallest asteroid

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ever visited by a spacecraft.

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Avery: From a cosmic snowman to visiting something

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the size of a house, this mission just keeps

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giving.

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Our next story is proof that not every

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exciting mission needs to leave Earth orbit.

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Sometimes it's all about measuring the planet

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we're already standing on.

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Anna: This is grits, the Geodetic

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Reference Instrument transponder for small

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satellites. It launched July 7th

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aboard SpaceX's Transporter 17

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rideshare mission out of Vandenberg.

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Avery: A cubesat, no less. How small are we talking?

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Anna: A, uh, 12U cubesat, about the size of a

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large shoebox built by the Dutch company

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ISAS Space, working with NASA Goddard

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and the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

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Avery: So what's the actual job here?

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Anna: It's tackling a really specific,

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unglamorous, but important problem.

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Right now we measure Earth's precise shape

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and position using three separate systems.

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GPS satellites, radio telescopes, doing

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something called very long baseline

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interferometry and laser ranging stations

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on the ground.

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Avery: And those three systems don't always agree

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with each other.

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Anna: Exactly. Tying them together traditionally

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relies on physical ground based surveying,

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which introduces tiny errors.

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Brits acts as a single satellite that all

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three systems can see and measure at once,

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effectively becoming a shared reference point

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in the sky.

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Avery: So instead of three separate rulers that, uh,

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don't quite line up, you get one ruler

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everyone agrees on.

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Anna: That's the idea. It upconverts incoming

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GPS signals and rebroadcasts them so

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ground based radio telescopes can track it

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too, while a mounted laser reflector lets

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ground stations range it directly.

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Avery: And the payoff is millimeter accuracy in

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what's called the international terrestrial

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reference frame. Basically the master

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coordinate system the whole world uses for

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mapping, navigation and tracking sea level

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rise.

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Anna: It sounds small, but that kind of precision

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underpins everything from your phone's GPS

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to climate science. A, uh, shoebox in orbit,

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quietly making the whole planet easier to

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measure.

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Let's finish today somewhere a little more

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relaxed. If you're the sort of person who

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likes to just step outside and look up

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tonight, you're in luck.

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Avery: Why's that?

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Anna: There's no moon in the sky at all this

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evening, which means no wash of moonlight

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drowning out the fainter stuff. It's

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genuinely one of the best nights of the month

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for chasing dimmer objects with a telescope

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or a decent pair of binoculars.

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Avery: And for anyone wanting an easier target with

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the naked eye, Venus is still keeping close

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company with Regulus, the brightest star in

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Leo, low in the evening twilight.

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Anna: That pairing's been a lovely one this week.

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And Venus is on track to meet up with a

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slender crescent moon around the 17th,

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so keep half an eye on the western sky over

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the coming days.

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Avery: A dark sky tonight. A, uh, planet and star

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pairing to enjoy right now. And a moon Venus

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meetup to look forward to. Not a bad way to

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close things out.

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Anna: Not bad at all. Get outside if you can. The

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sky's putting on a show either way.

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Avery: That's it for today. Quasars from the dawn of

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time. Roman's launch getting closer. A

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sunward asteroid watch. A snowman in the

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asteroid belt. And a cubesat remeasuring the

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Earth.

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Anna: Thanks for spending part of your day with us.

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We'll be back tomorrow with more from across

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the universe. Until then, Clear skies.

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Avery: Astronomy day. Mhm

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stories.