Japan readies Phobos sample mission & Wormhole collisions enter simulations - Space News (Oct 18, 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: - SurveyMonkey, Using AI to surface insights faster and reduce manual analysis time - https://get.surveymonkey.com/tad - Invest Like the Pros with StockMVP - https://www.stock-mvp.com/?via=ron - Prezi: Create AI presentations fast - https://try.prezi.com/automated_daily Today's topics: Japan readies Phobos sample mission - Japan is preparing to launch JAXA's MMX spacecraft on the first mission designed to return samples from Phobos, a moon of Mars. The material could reveal how Mars's moons formed and preserve clues about the early solar system. [123] Wormhole collisions enter simulations - The first three-dimensional simulations of binary Ellis-Bronnikov wormholes suggest that hypothetical encounters could form black holes or produce short gravitational-wave bursts. The work is a non-peer-reviewed theoretical preprint and does not show that wormholes exist. [171][225] Solar wind could spark auroras - Fast solar wind from an Earth-facing coronal hole is expected to arrive around October 20. Forecasters see a chance of a minor geomagnetic storm and enhanced auroras at high latitudes. [187][190] First-quarter Moon brightens tonight - The Moon reaches its first-quarter phase on October 18, offering favorable evening views of lunar craters and mountains. Shadows along the boundary between lunar day and night make surface relief easier to see. [1][7] Episode Transcript Japan readies Phobos sample mission Japan is preparing to launch the Martian Moons eXploration spacecraft, better known as MMX, on Tuesday morning local time. The mission will ride aboard Japan's H3 rocket and begin a journey expected to last about five years. Its main destination is Phobos, the larger of Mars's two small moons. MMX is designed to study the moon closely, land on its surface and collect at least a small handful of material. If the mission goes according to plan, that sample will return to Earth in 2031. It would be the first material ever brought home from a moon of Mars. The central mystery is Phobos itself. Scientists are still debating whether Phobos and its smaller companion, Deimos, are captured asteroids or debris assembled after a major impact on Mars. Their composition could distinguish between those possibilities. Phobos may also contain tiny fragme