BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) — Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, India's 15-year-old cricket sensation, will have to wait to make his senior international debut.
Sooryavanshi, who is coming off being the top run scorer in this year's Indian Premier League, was left out again by India for the second and final T20 match against Ireland in Belfast. He also didn't play in the first match that India lost by 34 runs on Friday for Ireland's first-ever win over the Indians in any format.
The next chance for Sooryavanshi — who is aged 15 years and 93 days — to become the youngest player to feature in a top-tier men’s T20 will be in the five-match series in England starting Wednesday. Ireland’s Joshua Little holds the record — he was 16 years and 309 days when making his debut in the format.
Sooryavanshi would become the youngest-ever player in India’s senior men’s team. The great Sachin Tendulkar was 16 years and 205 days when he made his test debut in 1989, then made his ODI debut 33 days later.
The youngest-ever player in men’s international cricket remains Hasan Raza, who was 14 years and 227 days when he made his test debut for Pakistan in 1996.
India won the toss, opted to bowl first at Stormont, and gave debuts to allrounder Suryansh Shedge and 24-year-old fast bowler Prince Yadav.
The selectors kept faith with the top order of Sanju Samson, Abhishek Sharma and Ishan Kishan instead of bringing in Sooryavanshi.
Lineups:
Ireland: Tim Tector, Ross Adair, Harry Tector, Lorcan Tucker (captain), Ben Calitz, Gareth Delaney, George Dockrell, Matthew Humphreys, Matt Hollard, Liam McCarthy, Jai Moondra
India: Sanju Samson, Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan, Shreyas Iyer (captain), Tilak Varma, Suryansh Shedge, Shivam Dube, Axar Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Harshit Rana, Prince Yadav
AP cricket: https://apnews.com/hub/cricket
India's players celebrate the wicket of Ireland's Ross Adair during the second T20 Test match between Ireland and India in Belfast, Ireland, Sunday, June 28, 2026. (Liam McBurney/PA via AP)
Ireland's Jai Moondra, center, celebrates with team-mates after bowling out India's Sanju Samson during the first T20I test match at Stormont, Belfast, Northern Ireland, Friday June 26, 2026. (Liam McBurney/PA via AP)
FILE - Rajasthan Royals' Vaibhav Sooryavanshi gestures as he warms up before the start of the Indian Premier League cricket match between Gujarat Titans and Rajasthan Royals in New Chandigarh, India, Friday, May 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia, file)
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA is racing to save an aging telescope from falling back to Earth with a daring rescue mission.
The $30 million salvage operation gets underway as soon as this week with the planned launch of a robotic lifesaver.
NASA hired startup Katalyst Space Technologies to boost the Swift Observatory to a higher orbit where it can continue hunting for some of the universe’s biggest explosions. A three-armed spacecraft built by Katalyst will chase after Swift once it takes off from an atoll in the Pacific's Marshall Islands aboard an airplane-launched Pegasus rocket. Liftoff could occur as early as Tuesday.
Scanning the cosmos since its launch in 2004, Swift has been sinking faster and faster because of recent intense solar activity. It needs to get to a higher, more stable orbit as soon as possible to survive.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope — also at risk — could be next.
Like Swift, Hubble is losing altitude as the sun erupts with one flare after another. Katalyst Space CEO Ghonhee Lee said his company's next-generation robot, still in development, could save the day for the much bigger Hubble in a couple years.
Only China has attempted a mission like the upcoming one, successfully boosting a satellite into a higher graveyard orbit four years ago.
“This is the first American space robot to go up and do anything like this,” Lee told The Associated Press. “NASA has all these big senior observatories … all of them can benefit from a service like this. So what we're proving with this mission is this is a new play in the playbook that's available.”
It will take Katalyst's autonomous spacecraft, named Link, about a month to rendezvous with Swift and catch it, and another couple months to raise its orbit from the current 224 miles (360 kilometers) to the desired 373 miles (600 kilometers).
The 1.6-ton (1.4-metric ton) gamma ray observatory must be above 185 miles (300 kilometers) for the rescue to work. It's expected to reach that point of no return in October, according to the latest estimates.
Roughly the size of a small kitchen refrigerator with a 40-foot (12-meter) solar wingspan, Link sports three arms with a reach of just over 3 feet (1 meter). Each arm has two finger-like pinching grippers that resemble the hands of a Lego mini figure.
If all goes well, Swift could be back in business by September, according to Lee.
Worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Swift was never designed to be repaired, let alone retrieved by hands — human or otherwise. That's what makes this so challenging, according to company officials, who stress there is no guarantee it will work.
NASA signed a contract with Katalyst last September with only two requests: It has to be a rush job, but please don't make things worse. Nine months later, the company is ready to rumble.
“I have to be honest. No one thought it was going to be possible. No one thought we would get as far as we’ve already gotten today,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, NASA's astrophysics director.
NASA has bought a little more time for Swift, turning off all scientific instruments to slow its descent. Observations ceased in February.
NASA's science mission chief Nicky Fox said it's worth the effort.
“If we let Swift reenter, we would lose that telescope. We would lose a lot of capability,” she said. “We don’t currently have the budget to build another one to replace that.”
While everything cannot be saved in space, Swift is special, said Domagal-Goldman.
True to its name, Swift is designed to pivot quickly to capture late-breaking astronomical events such as gamma ray bursts and exploding stars. With more discoveries expected by the Webb Space Telescope and soon-to-launch Roman Space Telescope, Swift, if saved, would be busier than ever as “NASA's first responder.”
Katalyst sees Swift as the jumping-off point for a new repair business in space. The company's next-generation robotic rescuer, scheduled to fly next year, will tackle satellites as high as 22,300 miles (35,800 kilometers) up. Lee envisions hundreds of robots in orbit one day, not only fixing and hoisting satellites but also refueling them and building solar farms, data centers and other platforms.
Thirty-six-year-old Hubble, which received repeat servicing by spacewalking astronauts during the shuttle era, could follow in 2028 with a life-extending Katalyst boost.
“It's a national treasure,” Fox said. “People love Hubble.”
This story corrects spacecraft name to Link.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
This photo provided by NASA shows Kieran Wilson, LINK’s principal investigator, and Hunter Robertson, a space systems engineer, both at Katalyst Space, standing next to their spacecraft inside the SES (Space Environment Simulator) at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., April 17, 2026, ahead of thermal vacuum testing. (Sophia Roberts/NASA via AP)
