Earth Captures a Temporary Mini-Moon & Hera Reaches the Didymos Asteroids - Space News (Nov 6, 2026)

Support The Automated Daily directly: 15 free episodes a day, 5 editions, 3 languages, about $4 a day to produce. A coffee keeps it going: theautomateddaily.com/support Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Consensus: AI for Research. Get a free month - https://get.consensus.app/automated_daily - Discover the Future of AI Audio with ElevenLabs - https://try.elevenlabs.io/tad - KrispCall: Agentic Cloud Telephony - https://try.krispcall.com/tad Today's topics: Earth Captures a Temporary Mini-Moon - Astronomers confirmed that the tiny asteroid 2026 QQ8 is temporarily orbiting Earth. The harmless mini-moon will escape Earth’s gravity after a brief stay lasting through December. [237] Hera Reaches the Didymos Asteroids - ESA’s Hera spacecraft returned its first close-up view of the Didymos binary asteroid system. The planetary-defense mission will examine how Dimorphos responded to NASA’s historic DART impact. [106] Station Completes Solar Power Upgrade - Astronauts Anil Menon and Joshua Kutryk installed the final roll-out solar array on the International Space Station. The completed upgrade significantly increases the station’s available electrical power. [91] China Launches Three Research Satellites - China placed three Yaogan-51 remote-sensing satellites into orbit aboard a Long March rocket. Officials say the spacecraft will support scientific experiments and electromagnetic-environment research. [8] Swift Telescope Ends Historic Mission - NASA’s Swift Observatory reentered Earth’s atmosphere after nearly twenty-two years of studying gamma-ray bursts, black holes and exploding stars. Its mission lasted more than ten times longer than originally planned. [32][137] Artemis Launch Disturbed Earth’s Ionosphere - Researchers found that the Artemis II launch and later engine burns temporarily altered Earth’s ionosphere. The disturbances could have reduced local GPS accuracy, although no widespread outage was identified. [185][186] Episode Transcript Earth Captures a Temporary Mini-Moon We begin close to home, where astronomers have confirmed that Earth currently has a temporary mini-moon. The object, named 2026 QQ8, is a natural asteroid only about a meter across. It was first noticed in August, but calculations show that Earth’s gravity captured it back in April. For a while, researchers were not certain whether it was a genuine space rock or a discarded piece of human-made hardware. Follow-up observations settled the question. QQ8 poses no danger and will remain farther away than our permanent Moon during its closest approach. It should escape Earth’s gravitational hold after December and resume orbiting the Sun in 2027. Temporary captures like this give astronomers useful opportunities to study the small and often overlooked objects moving through Earth’s neighborhood. [237][238] Hera Reaches the Didymos Asteroids Farther out, the European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft has delivered its first close-up view of the Didymos asteroid system. This is the pair that includes Dimorphos, the small asteroid struck by NASA’s DART spacecraft in 2022. That collision successfully changed Dimorphos’s orbit, demonstrating th