Fascinating Frontiers
By Patrick
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Category: Astronomy
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Episodes: 162
Description
Daily space and astronomy news: NASA and SpaceX missions, ESA operations, exoplanet and James Webb discoveries, and the engineering behind humanity's push into the cosmos — with ongoing story tracking across Starship, Artemis, and deep-space science. For space enthusiasts, engineers, and the curious.
AI Disclosure: This podcast is curated by Patrick but uses AI-generated voice synthesis for audio production.
| Episode | Date |
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Ep 173: A new vest design could cut cancer risk for astronauts heading beyond Earth’s protective…
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Aug 26, 2026 |
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Ep 172: After an eight-year trek, a joint ESA-JAXA spacecraft is about to become the third to…
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Aug 25, 2026 |
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Ep 171: A fleet of seventeen spacecraft has shown that solar eruptions stretch across a far larger…
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Aug 24, 2026 |
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Ep 170: Earth's shadow will soon swallow 96 percent of the Moon, giving the Americas a front-row…
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Aug 23, 2026 |
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Ep 169: A suitcase-sized satellite on the Moon’s far side could finally listen to the universe’s…
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Aug 22, 2026 |
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Ep 168: Multiple observatories have combined forces to reveal the Tarantula Nebula’s turbulent…
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Aug 21, 2026 |
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Ep 167: A satellite built to measure photosynthesis from orbit just received its final fuel load…
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Aug 20, 2026 |
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Ep 166: A star has been clocked orbiting the Milky Way's central black hole at 25,000 km/s, closer…
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Aug 19, 2026 |
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Ep 165: Gaia and Hubble have traced the Milky Way’s first major collision to a dwarf galaxy…
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Aug 18, 2026 |
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Ep 164: Spherical robots may soon explore hidden caves on Saturn’s moon Titan in search of…
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Aug 17, 2026 |
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Ep 163: Astronomers may have been reading the wrong spin on distant worlds because thick…
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Aug 16, 2026 |
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Ep 162: Orbital mirrors could flood the night sky with light brighter than the full Moon across…
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Aug 15, 2026 |
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Ep 161: A rare star stream outside the Milky Way just gave astronomers a new way to weigh dark…
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Aug 14, 2026 |
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Ep 160: A new X-ray catalog of two million sources shows galaxy cluster outskirts hotter and…
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Aug 13, 2026 |
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Ep 159: A star near our galaxy’s central black hole is still forming dust and water despite…
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Aug 12, 2026 |
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Ep 158: Webb reveals dust and water forming right next to the Milky Way’s central black hole…
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Aug 11, 2026 |
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Ep 157: Astronomers watched a lone black hole shred a star, revealing how these wanderers reshape…
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Aug 10, 2026 |
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Ep 156: A self-driving rover on Mars has already shattered every distance record set by earlier…
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Aug 09, 2026 |
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Ep 155: A gravitational arc candidate at redshift near 4.4 has appeared in public James Webb data…
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Aug 08, 2026 |
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Ep 154: A trillion-mile gas streamer is tilting the planet-forming disk around a young triple…
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Aug 07, 2026 |
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Ep 153: A Falcon 9 upper stage slammed into the Moon after drifting for a year, giving orbiters a…
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Aug 06, 2026 |
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Ep 152: Webb’s pinhole mask is letting astronomers resolve details on Io and young stars that…
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Aug 05, 2026 |
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Ep 151: Astronomers have now searched far more of the Milky Way for alien signals than anyone…
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Aug 04, 2026 |
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Ep 150: A spent Falcon 9 stage is heading for a lunar impact this week that orbiters will track in…
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Aug 03, 2026 |
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Ep 149: A new Chinese lunar mission is drawing interest from an entire continent while NASA’s…
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Aug 02, 2026 |
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Ep 148: Astronomers have detected the first exomoon, opening a new window on how satellites form…
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Aug 01, 2026 |
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Ep 147: Venus will dominate evening skies this August while Mercury and Jupiter form a tight dawn…
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Jul 31, 2026 |
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Ep 146: Webb is tracing how the universe’s earliest mysterious red objects may have simply grown…
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Jul 30, 2026 |
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Ep 145: Radio telescopes have tracked space debris for the first time by listening for its own faint signals.
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Jul 28, 2026 |
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Ep 144: A seed that circled the Moon now grows into a living tree in the middle of Manhattan.
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Jul 27, 2026 |
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Ep 143: Three astronauts are heading home after 241 days in orbit while Juno reaches its closest approach to Earth.
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Jul 26, 2026 |
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Ep 142: Astronomers report the first strong evidence for an exomoon orbiting a planet 73 light-years away.
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Jul 25, 2026 |
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Ep 141: Hubble has found the first “missing” black hole inside a famous star cluster by combining two decades of data with new infrared views.
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Jul 24, 2026 |
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Ep 140: A candidate Jupiter-sized moon orbiting far beyond our solar system is forcing astronomers to redraw the line between planets and moons.
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Jul 23, 2026 |
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Ep 139: A European spacecraft just cleared its final major test before hunting Earth-like worlds around Sun-like stars.
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Jul 22, 2026 |
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Ep 138: Astronomers have watched a distant galaxy's central black hole erupt for the first time in real time after two prior outbursts went unseen until they faded.
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Jul 21, 2026 |
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Ep 137: Fifty years after Viking 1 touched down on Mars, new missions are shifting focus from the surface to the thin air above the Red Planet.
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Jul 20, 2026 |
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Ep 136: NASA's Psyche spacecraft just used Mars as a gravitational slingshot, returning a rich dataset that will sharpen its approach to a metal world never visited before.
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Jul 19, 2026 |
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Ep 135: A private Indian rocket just reached orbit on its first try while a NASA probe wakes up billions of miles out.
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Jul 18, 2026 |
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Ep 134: Astronomers report signs of an atmosphere on a rocky world in the habitable zone 48 light-years away, a first for planets of its kind.
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Jul 17, 2026 |
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Ep 133: Astronomers have directly imaged a third giant planet in the Beta Pictoris system by spotting its carbon monoxide signature with JWST.
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Jul 16, 2026 |
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Ep 132: China's Tianwen-2 probe has reached a near-Earth asteroid after a billion-kilometre chase, raising the possibility that the target is a long-lost lunar fragment.
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Jul 15, 2026 |
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Ep 131: Four new NASA missions will help turn the Moon into a permanent base while another rover just ran a full marathon on Mars.
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Jul 14, 2026 |
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Ep 130: A Chinese probe has reached a quasi-moon while JWST reveals a hot Jupiter with violently different day and night sides.
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Jul 13, 2026 |
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Ep 129: UN records now let anyone track satellite registrations that official sites still hide.
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Jul 12, 2026 |
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Ep 128: Japan just completed the first test flight of an experimental reusable rocket, landing it safely after launch.
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Jul 11, 2026 |
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Ep 127: A Chinese rocket just became only the second booster ever recovered after an orbital launch, landing on a barge after sending its payload skyward.
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Jul 10, 2026 |
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Ep 126: A Falcon 9 booster has now completed its 36th flight and landing, carrying 29 more Starlink satellites into orbit.
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Jul 09, 2026 |
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Ep 125: A total solar eclipse will turn day to night across northern Spain next month as the Moon fully covers the Sun.
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Jul 08, 2026 |
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Ep 124: Euclid telescope has found the two oldest quasars known, their light crossing more than 13 billion years to reach us.
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Jul 07, 2026 |
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Ep 123: An asteroid set for a once-in-a-millennium Earth flyby could be seen by ninety percent of the world's population.
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Jul 06, 2026 |
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Ep 122: Astronomers just found giant planets lighter than cotton candy, forcing a rethink of how worlds assemble.
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Jul 05, 2026 |
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Ep 121: A robotic spacecraft just launched to nudge a long-running NASA observatory back into a stable orbit.
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Jul 04, 2026 |
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Ep 120: A planet 25 light-years away shows signs it could support liquid water on its surface.
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Jul 03, 2026 |
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Ep 119: A shoebox-sized probe will soon ride an asteroid flyby to test surface operations before the rock skims Earth in 2029.
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Jul 02, 2026 |
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Ep 118: NASA is weighing whether to send a spare Mars rover to the Moon while awarding nearly $600 million in new lunar lander contracts.
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Jul 01, 2026 |
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Ep 117: NASA is launching a robot to lift its aging Swift telescope before atmospheric drag pulls it down.
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Jun 30, 2026 |
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Ep 116: Supermassive black holes keep flinging radio-emitting material into space years after swallowing a star, showing their appetites stay active long after the initial feast.
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Jun 29, 2026 |
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Ep 115: The week's biggest developments, pulled together — what actually moved, why it matters, and what to watch next.
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Jun 28, 2026 |
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Ep 114: Mars is gliding past the Pleiades star cluster in the early-morning sky, offering a rare close pairing visible before sunrise.
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Jun 27, 2026 |
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Ep 113: After eight years of continuous thrust, BepiColombo has powered down its engines for the final coast toward Mercury.
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Jun 26, 2026 |
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Ep 112: Astronomers have captured the first “fingerprints” of a black hole’s event horizon, the boundary where nothing escapes.
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Jun 25, 2026 |
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Ep 111: An asteroid impact that ended the dinosaurs also sustained underground conditions for life eight million years longer than earlier estimates.
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Jun 24, 2026 |
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Ep 110: An interstellar comet that passed the Sun last year may be nearly three times older than our Solar System and formed in a stellar system nothing like our own.
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Jun 23, 2026 |
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Ep 109: NASA’s next flagship observatory has reached Florida for final checks before an August launch on a Falcon Heavy.
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Jun 22, 2026 |
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Ep 108: The week's biggest developments, pulled together — what actually moved, why it matters, and what to watch next.
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Jun 21, 2026 |
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Ep 107: JWST has imaged a galaxy cluster so massive and concentrated that it formed when such structures were not expected to exist yet.
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Jun 20, 2026 |
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Ep 106: A distant exoplanet once nicknamed the Pink Planet turns out to host salty clouds detectable only through infrared observations that pierce its thick atmosphere.
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Jun 19, 2026 |
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Ep 105: An upgraded Ariane 6 just lofted Europe’s heaviest payload ever, 36 Amazon satellites riding on boosters carrying 14 extra tonnes of propellant each.
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Jun 18, 2026 |
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Ep 104: Chandra spots possible supernova remains surprisingly close to the Milky Way’s central black hole.
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Jun 17, 2026 |
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Ep 103: China's Tianwen-2 probe is executing a string of fine burns to reach its target asteroid next month.
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Jun 16, 2026 |
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Ep 102: Tiny red dots scattered across the early universe have turned out to be black holes cloaked in dense gas.
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Jun 15, 2026 |
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Ep 101: The week's biggest developments, pulled together — what actually moved, why it matters, and what to watch next.
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Jun 14, 2026 |
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Ep 100: NASA's X-59 jet just broke the sound barrier for the first time while aiming to replace thunderous sonic booms with a quiet thump.
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Jun 13, 2026 |
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Ep 99: A lunar meteorite recovered from the Sahara carries chemical traces of a 3.5-billion-year-old impact that struck the Moon, Earth, and asteroids at the same time.
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Jun 12, 2026 |
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Ep 98: Webb has now reached the era when the universe's very first stars and galaxies formed.
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Jun 11, 2026 |
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Ep 97: A galactic wind driven by early-universe collisions is stripping star-forming fuel so fast it may explain why so many massive galaxies went dead.
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Jun 10, 2026 |
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Ep 96: European startup Isar Aerospace just raised 270 million euros to scale its rocket program worldwide.
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Jun 09, 2026 |
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Ep 95: NASA will name the crew for Artemis III, the mission that will test docking with commercial landers ahead of crewed lunar landings.
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Jun 08, 2026 |
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Ep 94: Looking back at 7 episodes from 2026-06-01 to 2026-06-07 — the stories that mattered, what we learned, and what to watch next.
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Jun 07, 2026 |
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Ep 93: Astronomers have finally detected winds streaming from the Milky Way’s central black hole after a fifty-year search.
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Jun 06, 2026 |
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Ep 92: An interstellar comet is venting methane at levels never seen in solar-system comets, hinting at a wildly different formation history.
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Jun 05, 2026 |
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Ep 91: A meteorite from the Sahara holds the first direct traces of a lost moon-size world that formed just after the solar system began.
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Jun 04, 2026 |
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Ep 90: A meteorite has delivered the first direct evidence that a Mars-sized world once orbited the young sun before shattering in a collision.
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Jun 03, 2026 |
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Ep 89: Blue Origin plans to fly its New Glenn rocket again before year’s end after a launch-pad incident damaged the gantry but spared key tanks.
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Jun 03, 2026 |
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Ep 88: Seven scorching hot Jupiters are showing the strongest signs yet of magnetic fields through their bizarre wind patterns.
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Jun 02, 2026 |
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Ep 87: A rare pair-instability supernova may have erased one of the universe's most massive stars without leaving any remnant behind.
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Jun 01, 2026 |
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Ep 86: Looking back at 6 episodes from 2026-05-25 to 2026-05-31 — the stories that mattered, what we learned, and what to watch next.
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May 31, 2026 |
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Ep 85: Blue Origin’s New Glenn test failure at Cape Canaveral now threatens to push back NASA’s Artemis crewed lunar landing schedule.
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May 30, 2026 |
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Ep 84: A lost ice giant may explain how Jupiter and Uranus acquired their moons.
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May 29, 2026 |
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Ep 83: A neutrino carrying record energy may have been hurled across the cosmos by a black hole-powered blazar.
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May 28, 2026 |
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Ep 82: NASA is ordering the first rovers, landers and drones to build a Moon base spanning hundreds of square miles.
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May 27, 2026 |
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Ep 81: NASA's Psyche spacecraft is using Mars gravity to reach a metal asteroid never visited before.
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May 26, 2026 |
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Ep 80: NASA’s new directive targets a nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030 to support sustained surface operations.
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May 25, 2026 |
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Ep 79: Looking back at 6 episodes from 2026-05-18 to 2026-05-24 — the stories that mattered, what we learned, and what to watch next.
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May 24, 2026 |
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Ep 78: SpaceX just flew its largest Starship yet on a test that ended with a controlled splashdown halfway around the world.
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May 23, 2026 |
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Ep 77: SpaceX halted the first flight of its heavily redesigned Starship V3 vehicle after a last-minute ground equipment problem.
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May 22, 2026 |
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Ep 76: NASA is shifting its Moon strategy from the Lunar Gateway toward a permanent surface base.
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May 21, 2026 |
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Ep 75: A single Falcon 9 just added two dozen more nodes to a growing web of satellites that now blankets the planet in broadband.
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May 20, 2026 |
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Ep 74: A joint European-Chinese spacecraft is now heading out to capture the first X-ray views of the invisible boundary where the solar wind slams into our planet’s magnetic shield.
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May 19, 2026 |
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Ep 73: A faint crescent Moon is sliding past Venus tonight, offering a rare chance to watch two worlds share the same patch of sky.
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May 18, 2026 |
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Ep 72: Looking back at 4 episodes from 2026-05-11 to 2026-05-17 — the stories that mattered, what we learned, and what to watch next.
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May 17, 2026 |
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Ep 71: A NASA probe is borrowing Mars’ gravity to reach a metal asteroid no spacecraft has ever visited.
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May 16, 2026 |
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Ep 70: A faint halo surrounds the eclipsed Sun in Orion spacecraft images, hinting at light behavior no one fully expected in the vacuum of space.
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May 14, 2026 |
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Ep 69: A supernova caught mid-explosion in a spiral galaxy offers a rare window into stellar death at 50 million light-years away.
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May 12, 2026 |
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Ep 68: Two space agencies just finalized plans to study an asteroid that will skim Earth in 2029, offering a rare close-up of a potentially hazardous object.
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May 11, 2026 |
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Ep 67: A commercial spacecraft has completed final tests for NASA’s first satellite-rescue mission in a crowded orbital environment.
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May 10, 2026 |
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Ep 66: ESA and JAXA have formalized a joint mission to study asteroid Apophis ahead of its close 2029 flyby.
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May 09, 2026 |
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Ep 65: NASA and SpaceX are preparing a new cargo launch to restock the International Space Station.
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May 08, 2026 |
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Ep 64: JWST has directly examined the surface of a distant exoplanet for the first time.
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May 06, 2026 |
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Ep 63: Firefly Aerospace plans to debut its upgraded Alpha Block 2 rocket late this summer amid rising demand.
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May 05, 2026 |
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Ep 62: Astronomers identify 27 candidate planets orbiting binary stars in distant solar systems.
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May 04, 2026 |
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Ep 61: NASA's lithium-fed nuclear thruster has been tested for the first time, advancing options for Mars missions.
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May 02, 2026 |
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Ep 60: A Falcon Heavy is rolling toward the pad for its first launch in 18 months while Europe prepares Ariane 6’s second flight with four boosters.
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Apr 30, 2026 |
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Ep 59: NASA's Artemis III crewed lunar landing slips to no earlier than late 2027 as planners refine the timeline.
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Apr 28, 2026 |
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Ep 58: NASA's Webb telescope has directly imaged water-ice clouds in the atmosphere of a nearby super-Jupiter exoplanet.
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Apr 26, 2026 |
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Ep 57: NASA has released a fresh batch of images from Artemis II operations showing Earth, the Moon, and the Sun captured across multiple mission phases.
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Apr 24, 2026 |
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Ep 56: NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has completed final assembly and is on track for September launch.
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Apr 22, 2026 |
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Ep 55: Vera C. Rubin Observatory has already discovered 11,000 new asteroids before its main survey even begins.
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Apr 20, 2026 |
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Ep 54: NASA picks Falcon Heavy for ESA’s Rosalind Franklin Mars rover despite its own proposed budget cut.
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Apr 18, 2026 |
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Ep 53: NASA's SPHEREx has mapped vast "interstellar glaciers" of ice stretching more than 600 light-years across the Milky Way.
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Apr 16, 2026 |
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Ep 52: Theoretical models now link core magnetism in red giants to fossil fields on white dwarfs, illuminating our Sun’s eventual fate.
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Apr 14, 2026 |
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Ep 51: Artemis II crew prepares for high-stakes re-entry and Pacific splashdown after journey beyond the Moon.
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Apr 10, 2026 |
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Ep 50: Artemis II has broken the Apollo-era human distance record from Earth while looping around the Moon’s far side.
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Apr 08, 2026 |
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Ep 49: Artemis II astronauts have entered the Moon's sphere of influence, marking humanity's return to lunar space.
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Apr 06, 2026 |
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Ep 48: Artemis 2 astronauts have successfully repaired their toilet during the first crewed lunar mission in over 50 years.
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Apr 02, 2026 |
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Ep 47: SpaceX is preparing to loft 119 small satellites in one rideshare launch from California this morning.
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Mar 30, 2026 |
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Ep 46: [Slow News Edition] Mars-like exoplanets orbiting M-dwarfs could lose their atmospheres in just millions of years.
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Mar 28, 2026 |
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Ep 45: [Slow News Edition] Hubble has caught a tiny comet slowing its spin and then reversing direction entirely.
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Mar 26, 2026 |
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Ep 44: Giant craters on metallic asteroid Psyche could finally confirm if it's the exposed core of a destroyed protoplanet.
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Mar 24, 2026 |
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Ep 43: Researchers are investigating how Mars gravity will change astronauts' skeletal muscle.
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Mar 22, 2026 |
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Ep 42: ESA will charter its own dedicated SpaceX Crew Dragon flight to the ISS to expand astronaut flight opportunities.
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Mar 20, 2026 |
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Ep 40: Blue Origin has filed plans for a massive constellation of up to 51,600 satellites to host data centers in orbit.
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Mar 20, 2026 |
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Ep 41: The vernal equinox arrives today at 10:46 A.M. EDT, marking astronomical spring as the Sun crosses directly over Earth’s equator.
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Mar 20, 2026 |
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Ep 39: NASA confirms readiness for Artemis 2, targeting a crewed lunar orbit no earlier than April 1.
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Mar 14, 2026 |
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Ep 38: Scientists traced the most energetic neutrino ever detected to blazars powered by supermassive black holes.
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Mar 12, 2026 |
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Ep 37: NASA's DART mission successfully altered an asteroid's solar orbit, proving deflection potential for planetary defense.
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Mar 10, 2026 |
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Ep 36: A new study proposes space weather scrambles alien radio signals, evading SETI detectors.
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Mar 08, 2026 |
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Ep 35: China's new economic plan elevates space as a pillar industry with deep space goals.
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Mar 06, 2026 |
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Ep 34: A total lunar eclipse tonight will turn the full moon blood red, visible to over 3 billion people.
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Mar 02, 2026 |
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Ep 33: NASA has overhauled its Artemis program, canceling the Artemis 3 moon landing and adding a preparatory mission in 2027.
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Feb 27, 2026 |
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Ep 32: NASA shakes up human spaceflight leadership after critical Starliner report.
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Feb 26, 2026 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 31 - January 30, 2026 at 04:15 AM PST
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Jan 30, 2026 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 30 - January 28, 2026 at 04:13 AM PST
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Jan 28, 2026 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 29 - January 26, 2026 at 04:09 AM PST
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Jan 26, 2026 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 28 - January 25, 2026 at 03:32 PM PST
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Jan 25, 2026 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 27 - January 23, 2026 at 04:09 AM PST
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Jan 23, 2026 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 26 - January 22, 2026 at 04:09 AM PST
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Jan 22, 2026 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 25 - January 11, 2026 at 04:09 AM PST
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Jan 11, 2026 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 24 - January 10, 2026 at 04:07 AM PST
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Jan 10, 2026 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 23 - January 09, 2026 at 04:08 AM PST
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Jan 09, 2026 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 22 - January 07, 2026 at 04:09 AM PST
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Jan 07, 2026 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 21 - January 06, 2026 at 04:09 AM PST
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Jan 06, 2026 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 20 - January 05, 2026 at 04:09 AM PST
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Jan 05, 2026 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 19 - January 04, 2026 at 04:07 AM PST
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Jan 04, 2026 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 18 - January 03, 2026 at 04:08 AM PST
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Jan 03, 2026 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 17 - January 02, 2026 at 04:08 AM PST
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Jan 02, 2026 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 16 - January 01, 2026 at 04:08 AM PST
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Jan 01, 2026 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 15 - December 31, 2025 at 04:08 AM PST
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Dec 31, 2025 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 14 - December 30, 2025 at 04:09 AM PST
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Dec 30, 2025 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 13 - December 29, 2025 at 04:08 AM PST
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Dec 29, 2025 |
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Fascinating Frontiers - Episode 12 - December 28, 2025 at 04:07 AM PST
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Dec 28, 2025 |