The #DailySpace brings you the universe at 10am PST / 1pm EST / 5pm GMT on twitch.tv/CosmoQuestX. Today’s #spacenews includes the following stories:

In our first story of the day, I have a quick update on Lightsail 2. Loosed on July 12 into a circular orbit, this new kind of spacecraft deployed its solar sale on July 23. Since then, it has been using the sail to change its orbit into a more and more elliptical orbit. So far, it’s moved its highest point by about 2 km and at the same time, it’s dropped its lowest position closer to the Earth. The mission team, which is lead by the Planetary Society, will continue making these orbital changes until the sail begins to dip into the Earth’s atmosphere, and the drag from the atmosphere has a greater effect than the push from the solar wind.

From spacecraft development to spacecraft discoveries, our second story comes to us from the TESS mission. Just like we had on Tuesday, today’s round of press releases brings us a trio of releases covering a new trio of planets. In announcements from the Carnegie Institute, Cornell University, and NASA Goddard, team scientists shared that the red dwarf star GJ 357 has been discovered to have 3 planets, including one in the star’s habitable zone.

This system is just 31 ly from earth, and its worlds are different from anything we have in our system. The innermost planet is a hot-Earth 22% larger than Earth and orbits every 3.9 days. Farther out, GJ 357 c is 3.4Earth masses with a 9.1 day orbit. The outermost world has a more Mercury like 55.7 day orbit and is 6.1 Earth masses, making it either a super earth or Sub Neptune planet. When and if the James Webb Space Telescope launches, astronomers will be able to try and measure the world’s atmosphere. If it is thick enough, and contains the right mix of green house gases, it’s possible the world could be warm enough for liquid water. Of course, it could also be more like -64F or -53C, which would be it’s no-atmosphere equilibrium temperature.

Now, if you’re wondering why TESS is finding world after world orbiting red dwarf stars, it’s because TESS is searching all the closest stars, and since Red Dwarfs are the most common kind of star, they are the bulk of what TESS will be looking at. When we look up, the sky is filled with mostly bright stars, because we can see them at the greatest distances, but… really bright stars are rare.

One of the hardest kinds of stars to find is the metal poor, 2nd generation star. As far as we understand it, the 1st generation of stars was made of Hydrogen, Helium, and a touch of the Lithium – basically, they were made of the stuff left over after the Big Bang. These stars were significantly bigger than what we have today, and lived and died quickly

The second generation of stars were mostly made of the same stuff, but were enriched with just a touch of heavier elements that changed how they evolve, allowing them to live much longer lives, and in the case of the smallest stars, they are still here to be found today. The trick is finding them in the diversity of generations of stars that have been forming over the past 13 billion years.

In a new paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical society, a team lead by Thomas Nordlander of the Australian National University has announced the discovery of a star that has 1.5 million times less iron than our Sun. Iron is generally used as a diagnostic of how many heavy atoms are in a star, and in this case this tiny amount of iron combined with the stars evolved state tells us they found one of those hard to find 2nd generation stars. It is thought to be made from the materials from a single supernova that mixed with an otherwise pure cloud of primordial gas. It likely formed in just the first few hundred million years of our universe, and is just plain kind of awesome.

While not science today’s last story is one that taught me something new. Today is the first day of August and it is also a new moon. With 30 days in this month, the moon will have a chance to orbit all the way around the earth before we enter September. This 2nd new moons in a month is called a Black Moon and is the sibling to a blue moon, which is the 2nd Full Moon of a month.

The Black Moon will be occurring during the US’s Labor Day weekend holiday, and you are all encouraged to get out, look up, and be amused at this not very scientific fact.

Join us tomorrow for more Daily Space news – and keep mapping Bennu!