Space Mirrors Spark Controversy, Hidden Space Junk Revealed, and Black Hole Energy Breakthrough

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Anna: Hello and welcome to Astronomy daily for

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Tuesday the 14th of July

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2026. I'm Anna.

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Avery: And I'm, um, Avery. Episode 140

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of season five. And honestly, today's rundown

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reads like someone dared us to pick the most

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argument starting stories we could find.

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Anna: It really does. Coming up, American

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regulators have just approved the launch of

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the first commercial space mirror, a

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spacecraft designed to beam sunlight down to

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Earth at night. And astronomers are,

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let's say, not thrilled.

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Avery: We've also got a newly revealed minefield of

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invisible space junk in one of the most

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valuable orbits around Earth with an

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Australian telescope right in the middle of

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the detective work. Plus, physicists and

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Manhattan have recreated black hole energy

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extraction in a lab. The biggest telescope

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ever built just moved for the very first

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time. And a new paper explains how the Square

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Kilometer Array is about to turn cosmic

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lightning flashes into a map of the invisible

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universe.

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Anna: And later, a quick update on Starship

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Flight 13 and the story of the Harvard

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astronomer who's just been handed the keys to

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the White House's new UFO

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Avery: Science Council told you argument

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starting. Let's get into it.

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Anna: Our lead story today. On 9 July,

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the US Federal Communications Commission

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formally authorized the launch of Earendil

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1, a demonstration satellite from

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California startup Reflect Orbital.

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Once in orbit around 600 kilometers up,

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it will unfurl a thin film reflector

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18 meters on a side that's roughly

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60ft and use it to bounce sunlight

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down to specific spots on the ground for

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several minutes at a time.

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Avery: So to be clear for everyone, a giant

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steerable mirror in space whose entire

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job is to shine daylight onto the night side

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of Earth.

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Anna: That's exactly it. The company calls itself

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the Sunlight Company and the pitch is

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sunlight on demand. Lighting construction

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sites so crews can work through the night,

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illuminating search and rescue operations,

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and boosting solar farms by extending their

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generating hours past sunset.

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Avery: The demonstration satellite weighs about

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142kg and is due to launch

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later this year. And here's the number that

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makes this a much bigger story than one test

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satellite. ReflectorBital has talked about

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operating 50,000 or more of these

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mirror craft in low Earth orbit by 2035,

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which is why

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Anna: the astronomy community has reacted the way

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it has. The FCC application drew

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nearly 1900 public comments, the

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overwhelming majority critical. For

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comparison, SpaceX's application for up to

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a million orbital data center satellites drew

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about 1500. The European southern

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Observatory has described plans like these as

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an existential threat to optical astronomy.

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Avery: And it's not just professional observatories.

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The American Astronomical Society Raised the

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prospect of eye damage for amateur

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astronomers. The company itself has

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acknowledged there's a risk if someone

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happened to catch the reflected beam through

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a telescope with a large enough aperture.

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Plus concerns about momentarily dazzling

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pilots and about what artificial daylight

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does to wildlife. Circadian rhythms are not

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optional extras for most living things.

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Anna: The FCC's answer to all of that was

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essentially not our department. The

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commission said concerns about optical

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astronomy and the environment fall outside

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its review, which is limited to radio

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spectrum. It found the risks with a single

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satellite unlikely to materialize, and said

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testing novel technology is in the public

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interest.

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Avery: Which might be true for one satellite. One

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mirror tested carefully with the light

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contained, switchable and steered away from

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observatories. That's a technology

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demonstration. 50,000 of them is a

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different planet to live on. And the

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regulatory gap is the real story here. If the

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agency licensing these satellites says

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impacts on the sky aren't their job, then,

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uh, whose job are they?

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Anna: To be fair to the company, they say they're

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trying to earn trust. The light is

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contained within the target spot. It can be

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switched off at any moment. And they'll avoid

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sensitive areas like research

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observatories and protected habitats.

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Their co founders said this license is the

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first step toward rigorously testing

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both the technology and the safeguards.

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Avery: And that test data, uh, will matter. But I

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suspect this is one we'll be covering again

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and again.

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Anna: The satellites, named Earendil, by the way.

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Tulkin fans, will recognize the mariner, who

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sails the sky with a shining star on his

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brow.

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Avery: At least they've got good taste in names.

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Whether the night sky agrees is another

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matter. Okay.

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From mirrors we can see, to junk

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we can't. A new study led by the

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University of Warwick has uncovered some of

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the faintest space debris ever detected in

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geosynchronous orbit. Fragments down to

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about five centimeters across. That's

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two inches. And here's the kicker.

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Nearly 80% of the faint objects

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they found don't appear in any publicly

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available catalog.

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Anna: Let's set the scene for anyone new to this

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geosynchronous orbit is that special

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band about

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36,000km up where a

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satellite circles the Earth, exactly in

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step with our planet's rotation so it

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hangs over the same spot. It's home

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to the big, expensive workhorses.

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Communications, broadcasting, weather,

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monitoring, some of the most valuable real

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estate in space.

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Avery: And unlike low Earth orbit, there's no

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cleanup service. Down low, the wisps of

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atmosphere gradually drag debris down until

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it burns up. At, uh, geo altitude, there

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is essentially nothing. Whatever ends up

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there, a dead satellite, a, uh, fragment from

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a breakup stays there effectively

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forever.

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Anna: So how did they find pieces this small

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at that distance?

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Avery: Clever image processing rather than new

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hardware. The team went back to archival

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survey data from the Isaacman Newton

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Telescope in the Canary Islands and applied a

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technique called blind stacking, layering

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many images along different possible

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trajectories so that incredibly faint moving

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objects rise up out of the noise. That

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reprocessing revealed 25 debris track

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lips the original analysis had completely

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missed. And the brightness flickering of many

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of these fragments shows their tumbling as a

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drift.

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Anna: And um, there's a lovely local connection in

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this one. The follow up observing campaign

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extended the survey to Siding Spring

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Observatory here in Australia. Working with

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the Australian National University plus

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Japan's Bisei Space Guard center with

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jaxa. Genuinely international

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detective work, which makes sense because the

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Geo Belt is a shared resource.

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Avery: The study's lead author, Dr. James Blake,

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pointed out that pieces of junk up there can

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be moving at kilometers per second relative

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to each other. So even a 5 centimeter

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fragment carries enough energy to do serious

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damage to a very expensive satellite. And

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his co author, Dr. Stuart Eaves had the line

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of the week. The debris in geosynchronous

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orbit is a potential minefield. And

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nobody in their right mind walks into a

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minefield without a mine detector.

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Anna: The constructive takeaway being we now

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have the detection techniques. Beeper's

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systematic surveys of the Geo Belt need

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to become routine because there are

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only so many orbital slots up there and

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one bad debris event could poison a

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chunk of that belt for generations.

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M Now to a story that's been making headlines

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this week, and it's a proper piece of physics

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history. Researchers at the Advanced

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Science Research center at the City

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University of New York have recreated in

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a laboratory the mechanism by which energy

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can be extracted from a spinning black hole.

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The papers in Nature.

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Avery: Okay, walk me through the black hole part

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first, because it's one of the great ideas of

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20th century physics.

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Anna: It goes back more than half a century. To Sir

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Roger Penrose, A, uh, spinning black hole

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drags the very fabric of space around with it

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in a region called the Ergosphere.

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Penrose realized that if a particle ventured

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in there and split in two, one piece could

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fall in while the other escaped, carrying

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more energy than the original particle

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arrived with energy stolen from the black

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hole's rotation. The physicist

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Yakov Zeldowicz then extended the

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idea to bounce a wave off a, uh,

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sufficiently fast rotating object and the

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wave can come away amplified. That effect

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is called super radiance.

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Avery: And the problem for 50 odd years has been the

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words sufficiently fast. You can't

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mechanically spin anything quickly enough.

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There were beautiful experiments with water

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vortices in 2017 and a rotating

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acoustic disc in 2020. But physically

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spinning objects hit a heart

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Anna: ceiling, which is where the New York team's

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trick comes in. They call it synthetic

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rotation. Instead of spinning anything at

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all, they built a ring of electronic

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resonators and rapidly modulated their

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electrical properties in a timed sequence

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running around the ring to an incoming

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radio wave. The stationary device is

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indistinguishable from something rotating

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impossibly fast. The synthetic rotation

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can even mimic motion faster than light,

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which no physical object could ever achieve.

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Avery: And it worked. The waves actually came out

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stronger.

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Anna: They did. The team measured genuine

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amplification with waves extracting energy

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from the synthetic rotation, exactly as

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Penrose and Zeldewicz predicted. Nothing

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moves. Yet the wave leaves with more energy

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than it arrived with.

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Avery: What I love about this one is that it cuts

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both ways. It's a fundamental physics

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validation, a 50 year old prediction about

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black holes confirmed on a benchtop in

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Manhattan. But it's also a brand new kind of

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amplifier. With a team talking about

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applications in wireless communications,

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optics and quantum technologies.

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Astrophysics as an engineering department.

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Anna: Black holes inspiring better radios since

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1969, who knew?

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Avery: Next to a mountaintop in Chile's Atacama

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Desert, where the biggest optical telescope

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humanity has ever attempted just did

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something for the very first time, it moved.

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Anna: This is the European Southern Observatory's

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Extremely Large Telescope, the

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elt, under construction on Cerro

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Armazonis. Crews rotated the

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telescope's entire structure around its

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vertical axis for the first time. And in the

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most charming detail of the week, they

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started by pushing it by hand a few

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centimeters before completing a full

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rotation with auxiliary motors. Eso

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captioned the release. And yet it moves,

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which Galileo would surely have appreciated.

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Avery: Now, let's put numbers on why hand pushing

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this thing is remarkable. The structure

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currently weighs about three and a half

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thousand tons. Once the mirrors and

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instruments go in, it climbs to around 4,600

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tons. And the whole assembly floats on a film

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of oil just 80 microns thin,

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roughly the width of a human hair. That's how

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a handful of people can start 10 million

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pounds of telescope turning.

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Anna: And this wasn't ceremony. It was a critical

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engineering test. That rotation is how the

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ELT will point anywhere in the southern

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sky. So proving the motion is smooth is a

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genuine milestone on the road to first light.

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When it's complete, the ELT's segmented

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primary mirror will stretch 39 meters

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across, built from 798

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hexagonal segments. Working as one,

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it'll gather more light than any optical

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telescope in history.

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Avery: ESO's program manager, Roberto Damai, said

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it beautifully that it's a reminder of what

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can be achieved when people push in the same

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direction, literally and figuratively.

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Anna: And for our listeners. Remember, this giant

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lives under southern skies, the Magellanic

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Clouds, the galactic center overhead. The

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ELT will see the same sky you do from

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your backyard, just 40 million times

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better.

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Avery: Rude, frankly, but we'll allow it.

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Anna: Sticking with giant instruments and southern

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skies. A new paper doing the rounds this

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week lays out how the Square Kilometer

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Array is going to use one of the most

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violent phenomena in the cosmos to

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map things, things no telescope can see.

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And the lead author is Dr. Manisha Caleb

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of the University of Sydney Home, UM team.

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Avery: All right. The violent phenomenon in

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question being fast radio bursts.

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Anna: Fast radio bursts. Flashes of radio

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energy from other galaxies that last about

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a millisecond, a hundred times quicker than a

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blink, yet carry enormous energy.

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And they're useful precisely because of what

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happens to them on the way here. As a

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burst crosses billions of light years, the

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plasma it passes through disperses it,

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stretching the signal out by frequency. And

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magnetic fields twist its polarization

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through an effect called Faraday rotation.

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Every burst arrives carrying a record of

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everything it traveled through.

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Avery: So each one is like a core sample drilled

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through the universe. The gas between

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galaxies barely emits any light, and

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magnetic fields emit none at all. But you can

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read both from what they've done to the burst

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along the way.

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Anna: Exactly. And the paper's argument is

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about scale. We've caught FRBs by

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the hundreds so far. The SKA, with

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SKA low being commissioned right now

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in Western Australia alongside the Dish

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Array in South Africa, is expected to

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detect them in the thousands upon thousands.

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At those numbers, the team argues, frbs

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graduate from curiosities into a

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genuine cosmological survey tool,

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tracing where the universe's missing ordinary

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matter is hiding, mapping cosmic

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magnetic fields, probing the universe's

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expansion, even testing fundamental

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physics, like whether photons have any

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mass at all.

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Avery: And the poetry of it is that we still don't

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fully know what makes a fast radio burst.

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Magnetars are the leading suspects, but the

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case is enclosed. So the SKA

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gets to work the mystery from both ends,

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using the bursts as tools while

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simultaneously figuring out what they are.

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Anna: A telescope, partly in our own backyard,

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using millisecond flashes from across the

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universe to weigh the invisible. The next

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few years of this are going to be something

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special Next up

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Avery: a, uh, quick update on Starship Flight 13. We

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gave you the full preview in yesterday's

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episode. So just the new developments today.

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First, the launch date has slipped. SpaceX

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is now targeting no earlier than Thursday

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16th July at 6:45

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in the evening US Eastern Time. That's

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8:45 Friday morning for those of us on

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Australia's east coast.

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Anna: And second, the good news that came with the

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slip. Basex has completed a, uh, full

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static fire of the super heavy Booster,

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lighting all 33 Raptor engines on the

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pad. That's the final major test before

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flight.

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Avery: The mission itself is unchanged from what we

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covered yesterday. The second flight of the

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version 3 vehicle carrying the first

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genuinely functional Starlink V3

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satellites rather than mass simulators.

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If the schedule holds, we'll have the full

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story in Friday's episode.

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Anna: Set those alarms, Australia. A Friday

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breakfast launch is the civilized way to

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watch Starship fly.

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Now, in case you missed it over the past

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couple of weeks, and because it's simply too

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interesting to leave on the shelf, Harvard

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astrophysicist Avi Loeb has been

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appointed to chair a brand new White House

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UAP Science Advisory Council, a

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scientific panel tasked with investigating

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unidentified anomalous phenomena.

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That's the current official term for what

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everyone still calls UFOs, covering

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objects in the air, in space or even

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underwater.

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Avery: And for listeners who know the name, yes,

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that Avi Loeb, former chair of

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Harvard's Astronomy Department, hundreds of

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papers on black holes and the early universe,

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and in recent years, the most famous or

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infamous advocate for taking the possibility

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of alien technology seriously. He's the one

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who suggested the interstellar object

404
00:17:10.710 --> 00:17:13.550
Oumuamua might have been an artificial light

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sail back in 2017.

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00:17:15.670 --> 00:17:18.470
Anna: The setup the council was established under

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the Trump administration's transparency push

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on uap alongside agencies

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including the Pentagon's Anomaly Resolution

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Office, Office of the Director of National

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Intelligence and the FBI.

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00:17:31.430 --> 00:17:34.150
Loeb's team reports to a new UAP

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governance board overseen by the intelligence

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community. And after its first meeting, the

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00:17:39.720 --> 00:17:42.640
council requested more than 50 videos,

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images and documents from the Pentagon tied

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to known incidents, including the so called

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orb sightings reported by military personnel.

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Avery: Now the scientific community's reaction has

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00:17:54.880 --> 00:17:57.600
been divided is the polite word.

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00:17:57.920 --> 00:18:00.040
John Kirkpatrick, who used to run the

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Pentagon's own UAP investigations, said

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Loeb is not viewed favorably by much of the

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scientific community and lacks national

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00:18:07.700 --> 00:18:10.300
security experience. Critics point to his

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00:18:10.300 --> 00:18:12.820
hand picked counsel, including not just data

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00:18:12.820 --> 00:18:15.460
scientists and oceanographers, but also

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00:18:15.460 --> 00:18:18.020
figures who've openly claimed the US has

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00:18:18.020 --> 00:18:20.460
recovered non human craft and

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00:18:20.460 --> 00:18:22.860
Anna: in fairness, here's the other side of the

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00:18:22.860 --> 00:18:25.820
ledger. Loeb himself says he's starting from

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00:18:25.820 --> 00:18:28.500
the assumption these objects are human made

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and treating it as a national security

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00:18:30.820 --> 00:18:33.660
question. He says the government is genuinely

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00:18:33.660 --> 00:18:36.340
baffled by some of what it's seen, and his

436
00:18:36.340 --> 00:18:38.740
argument is that the fact these cases are

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00:18:38.740 --> 00:18:41.540
being open to scientists at all suggests

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00:18:41.540 --> 00:18:43.140
officials aren't confident they're

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00:18:43.140 --> 00:18:45.940
conventional. His stated focus is

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00:18:45.940 --> 00:18:48.380
instrumentation, data standards and

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00:18:48.380 --> 00:18:51.340
rigorous collection. In his words, better

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00:18:51.340 --> 00:18:54.260
data could settle the alien debate once and

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00:18:54.260 --> 00:18:54.740
for all.

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Avery: And that's the version of this I can

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00:18:57.020 --> 00:19:00.020
genuinely get behind. The worst outcome for a

446
00:19:00.020 --> 00:19:01.860
question like this is that it stays in the

447
00:19:01.860 --> 00:19:04.420
realm of blurry footage and anecdote forever.

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00:19:04.950 --> 00:19:06.910
If this council produces calibrated

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00:19:06.910 --> 00:19:09.590
instruments and open data, that's a win,

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regardless of what the answer turns out to

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be. If it produces headlines instead of data,

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well, we'll report that too.

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Anna: His own line on it Keep our eyes on the

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00:19:19.510 --> 00:19:21.350
orbs, not the social media.

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00:19:21.830 --> 00:19:24.150
Avery: On, um, this show, we keep our eyes on both

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00:19:24.550 --> 00:19:26.750
strictly professionally Time for

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Anna: your skywatch, and Tonight is genuinely one

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to circle. 14 July brings a

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00:19:32.420 --> 00:19:35.020
super new moon, which means the darkest

460
00:19:35.020 --> 00:19:37.820
skies of the entire month. And for those of

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00:19:37.820 --> 00:19:40.420
us in Australia and New Zealand, that's a

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00:19:40.420 --> 00:19:43.260
standing invitation. The Milky Way's core

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00:19:43.260 --> 00:19:45.420
is riding high through the evening, with

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Scorpius and Sagittarius nearly

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00:19:47.860 --> 00:19:50.220
overhead. If you've been meaning to get

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00:19:50.220 --> 00:19:52.980
somewhere dark and see our galaxy properly

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00:19:53.140 --> 00:19:55.300
tonight and the next few nights are the

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Avery: time while you're out there, look west after

469
00:19:58.070 --> 00:20:00.950
sunset for Venus, absolutely blazing at

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around magnitude -4 in LEO. You

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00:20:03.670 --> 00:20:06.190
can't miss it. And here's one for your diary.

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00:20:06.190 --> 00:20:09.030
On Thursday and Friday evening, the 16th

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and 17th, a slender young crescent

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moon slides up past Regulus and then Venus,

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low in the western twilight.

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Anna: A beautiful photo opportunity for the early

477
00:20:19.150 --> 00:20:21.750
risers. The pre dawn east is where the

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00:20:21.750 --> 00:20:24.520
planets are congregating. Saturn is up after

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midnight and high before dawn with its rings

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tilted nicely for small telescopes. And

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Mars is gliding right past Aldebaran in

482
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Taurus this very morning. Two reddish

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points of similar brightness about 5 degrees

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apart. A lovely color comparison with just

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your eyes.

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Avery: Dark skies, a brilliant evening star, and

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a red planet racing a red star. Not a

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00:20:48.400 --> 00:20:50.240
bad week's programming from the universe.

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Anna: And that's Astronomy daily for Tuesday

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00:20:53.060 --> 00:20:55.860
14th July. All our episodes,

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00:20:55.940 --> 00:20:57.820
show notes and the newsletter are

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00:20:57.820 --> 00:21:00.660
@astronomydaily IO and you'll

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00:21:00.660 --> 00:21:02.260
find us across social media.

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00:21:02.260 --> 00:21:05.100
Avery: Astrodaily pod if

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00:21:05.100 --> 00:21:07.820
today's episode sparked an opinion and let's

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00:21:07.820 --> 00:21:10.380
face it space mirrors and UFO councils will

497
00:21:10.380 --> 00:21:12.780
do that. Come tell us about it. We read

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00:21:12.780 --> 00:21:14.260
everything. I'm Avery.

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00:21:14.340 --> 00:21:16.660
Anna: And I'm Anna. Thanks for spending part of

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00:21:16.660 --> 00:21:18.630
your day with us. Until tomorrow.

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Avery: Clear skies.