Episode
Postcards From Mars
- Published
- Jul 21, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 995
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- http://astronomydaily.io
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Summary
Astronomy Daily · S05E146 · “Postcards from Mars” · Tuesday 21 July 2026 NASA’s Psyche probe phones home from its Mars flyby — data and a spellbinding month-long time-lapse — as Europe’s Plato planet-hunter clears its final test. From the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting: a CubeSat that could give us hours of solar-storm warning, and a new way to forecast the Sun’s next active spell. Plus the first pieces of the giant ngVLA radio array, and a Southern Hemisphere meteor shower to catch this week. Story notes & sources 1 · Psyche phones home NASA’s Psyche spacecraft (launched 2023; arriving metal asteroid 16 Psyche in 2029) used a 15 May Mars gravity assist to test its instruments. The neutron spectrometer detected the anticipated count-rate enhancement near closest approach; the gamma-ray/neutron spectrometer, magnetometer and imager all performed well. Data and a month-long Mars time-lapse were released this week. ● NASA/JPL — “Psyche Mission Delivers Mars Flyby Data, Time-lapse Video” (17 Jul 2026) ● Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — LLNL-built gamma-ray sensor’s first planetary measurements (17 Jul 2026) 2 · Plato clears its final exam ESA’s Plato — 26 cameras hunting Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars — passed electromagnetic compatibility testing in the Maxwell chamber at ESTEC, its last major qualification hurdle. It’s bound for Sun-Earth L2 aboard an Ariane 6 (current target 2027). ● ESA — “Plato’s electronics ready for space” (20 Jul 2026) 3 · HENON space-weather CubeSat Presented at NAM 2026: HENON, a deep-space CubeSat that would sit ~15 million km upstream of Earth (10× farther than L1), potentially extending severe geomagnetic-storm warning from ~15 minutes to 2–3 hours. It carries the UK-built MAGIC…