Sept. 3, 2026
BepiColombo Lets Go: Eight Years, Nine Flybys, One Irreversible Moment
Anna and Avery cover BepiColombo's arrival at Mercury beginning today, as the ESA/JAXA mission jettisons the transfer module that has carried it for nearly eight years and nine planetary flybys. Plus: NASA awards Blue Origin a $700 million contract to build a dedicated Mars communications orbiter, Hubble confirms a brand-new ten-sided cloud pattern at Saturn's south pole — first spotted by amateur astronomers, one of them in outback New South Wales — and China's Galactic Energy flies its reusable Pallas-1 rocket for the first time.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.
Sponsor Details:
Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!
Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmail
Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click Here
This episode includes AI-generated content.
WEBVTT
0
00:00:00.960 --> 00:00:02.760
Anna: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Astronomy
1
00:00:02.760 --> 00:00:05.288
daily. It's Thursday, September 3,
2
00:00:05.432 --> 00:00:08.400
2026. I'm Anna and this is series
3
00:00:08.480 --> 00:00:10.880
five, episode 184.
4
00:00:11.440 --> 00:00:14.200
Avery: And I'm Avery. Anna, we've got a
5
00:00:14.200 --> 00:00:16.680
spacecraft doing something irreversible
6
00:00:16.680 --> 00:00:17.040
today.
7
00:00:17.680 --> 00:00:19.640
Anna: We do. As we're recording,
8
00:00:19.640 --> 00:00:22.480
BepiColombo, the European and Japanese
9
00:00:22.480 --> 00:00:25.080
mission to Mercury is throwing away the
10
00:00:25.080 --> 00:00:26.240
module that got it there.
11
00:00:26.720 --> 00:00:28.400
Avery: Throwing away sounds harsh.
12
00:00:29.090 --> 00:00:32.050
Anna: It's accurate, though. Eight years, nine
13
00:00:32.050 --> 00:00:34.810
planetary flybys, one very serious
14
00:00:34.810 --> 00:00:37.530
engine problem, and today the transfer module
15
00:00:37.530 --> 00:00:40.170
gets cut loose and the two science orbiters
16
00:00:40.170 --> 00:00:42.450
are on their own. It's the start of the
17
00:00:42.450 --> 00:00:43.330
arrival phase.
18
00:00:43.810 --> 00:00:46.690
Avery: That's our lead, then. NASA
19
00:00:46.690 --> 00:00:49.250
has just handed Blue Origin $700
20
00:00:49.330 --> 00:00:52.050
million to build the Internet connection for
21
00:00:52.050 --> 00:00:54.850
Anna: Mars, which is a much bigger deal than it
22
00:00:54.850 --> 00:00:55.250
sounds.
23
00:00:55.960 --> 00:00:58.840
Avery: It really is. Then Saturn has grown
24
00:00:58.840 --> 00:01:01.560
a new shape at its South Pole and nobody
25
00:01:01.560 --> 00:01:04.480
expected it. And an Australian in Broken
26
00:01:04.480 --> 00:01:06.520
Hill is part of how we found out.
27
00:01:07.080 --> 00:01:09.840
Anna: Love that storey. And then a
28
00:01:09.840 --> 00:01:12.079
second Chinese private company has flown a
29
00:01:12.079 --> 00:01:14.520
reusable rocket three weeks after the first
30
00:01:14.520 --> 00:01:14.840
one.
31
00:01:15.320 --> 00:01:17.280
Avery: Plus we'll get you sorted for the sky
32
00:01:17.280 --> 00:01:19.880
tonight. Both hemispheres, as always.
33
00:01:20.680 --> 00:01:21.640
Anna: Let's get into it.
34
00:01:22.230 --> 00:01:24.630
Avery: Okay, set the scene for me. What is
35
00:01:24.630 --> 00:01:25.990
physically happening today?
36
00:01:26.550 --> 00:01:29.150
Anna: So BepiColombo has flown to Mercury as a
37
00:01:29.150 --> 00:01:31.350
stack, three pieces bolted together.
38
00:01:31.910 --> 00:01:34.150
At the bottom you've got the Mercury transfer
39
00:01:34.150 --> 00:01:37.070
module. That's the Ion engine bus, the thing
40
00:01:37.070 --> 00:01:39.070
with the enormous solar wings that's been
41
00:01:39.070 --> 00:01:41.590
doing the driving. On top of that sits the
42
00:01:41.590 --> 00:01:43.990
European Orbiter, the Mercury Planetary
43
00:01:43.990 --> 00:01:46.750
Orbiter. And on top of that sits the Japanese
44
00:01:46.750 --> 00:01:49.610
one, Mio, the Mercury Magnetospheric
45
00:01:49.610 --> 00:01:50.100
Orbiter
46
00:01:50.100 --> 00:01:52.770
Avery: M3 spacecraft in a tower.
47
00:01:53.170 --> 00:01:56.050
Anna: A tower. And Today, at around
48
00:01:56.050 --> 00:01:58.810
8 in the morning, US Eastern Time, which is
49
00:01:58.810 --> 00:02:00.930
about 10 o' clock tonight for us in Sydney,
50
00:02:01.250 --> 00:02:04.249
the transfer module separates. ESA is
51
00:02:04.249 --> 00:02:07.010
carrying it live. They start the broadcast a
52
00:02:07.010 --> 00:02:09.890
bit before, pause it, and come back about
53
00:02:09.890 --> 00:02:12.170
an hour later to confirm they've got a signal
54
00:02:12.170 --> 00:02:14.500
from what is now, for the first time, an
55
00:02:14.500 --> 00:02:15.700
independent spacecraft.
56
00:02:16.100 --> 00:02:18.100
Avery: And there's no putting it back together.
57
00:02:18.820 --> 00:02:21.740
Anna: None. That's why Today matters. Up
58
00:02:21.740 --> 00:02:23.860
to this point, if something went wrong, you
59
00:02:23.860 --> 00:02:26.380
still had the propulsion module. From today,
60
00:02:26.380 --> 00:02:28.820
the Ion engines are gone. Everything after
61
00:02:28.820 --> 00:02:30.780
this runs on the orbiter's own chemical
62
00:02:30.780 --> 00:02:31.380
thrusters.
63
00:02:31.860 --> 00:02:34.260
Avery: Take me back. This launched in
64
00:02:34.900 --> 00:02:37.220
2018, October 20,
65
00:02:37.380 --> 00:02:38.100
2018,
66
00:02:38.500 --> 00:02:41.500
Anna: on an Ariane 5 out of Kourou. So we are
67
00:02:41.500 --> 00:02:42.980
three weeks shy of eight years.
68
00:02:43.620 --> 00:02:45.980
Avery: Eight years to reach the closest planet to
69
00:02:45.980 --> 00:02:48.260
the sun. Which sounds backwards.
70
00:02:48.820 --> 00:02:51.140
Anna: It sounds backwards and it's the single most
71
00:02:51.140 --> 00:02:53.900
counterintuitive thing About Mercury. If you
72
00:02:53.900 --> 00:02:55.940
point a rocket at Mercury and just let go,
73
00:02:56.100 --> 00:02:58.420
you don't gently arrive, you fall.
74
00:02:58.820 --> 00:03:01.340
The Sun's gravity well is enormous and you
75
00:03:01.340 --> 00:03:03.780
pick up speed the whole way down. The hard
76
00:03:03.780 --> 00:03:06.060
part isn't getting there, the hard part is
77
00:03:06.060 --> 00:03:08.670
arriving slowly enough that Mercury's very
78
00:03:08.670 --> 00:03:10.430
weak gravity can actually catch you.
79
00:03:10.910 --> 00:03:13.230
Avery: So the whole mission is a braking problem.
80
00:03:13.470 --> 00:03:15.630
Anna: The whole mission is a breaking problem.
81
00:03:16.110 --> 00:03:18.990
BepiColombo has used one flyby of Earth,
82
00:03:19.310 --> 00:03:22.230
two of Venus and six of Mercury
83
00:03:22.230 --> 00:03:25.078
itself. The last of those in January
84
00:03:25.222 --> 00:03:27.550
2025 plus years of
85
00:03:27.550 --> 00:03:30.470
continuous, very gentle thrusting from
86
00:03:30.470 --> 00:03:33.070
those ion engines, all of it to
87
00:03:33.070 --> 00:03:35.210
shed speed rather than gain it.
88
00:03:35.770 --> 00:03:38.570
Avery: Nine flybys. That's more than most
89
00:03:38.570 --> 00:03:40.410
missions do in a lifetime.
90
00:03:40.970 --> 00:03:43.050
Anna: And there's a lovely bit of history in that,
91
00:03:43.370 --> 00:03:45.730
because the mission is named after the man
92
00:03:45.730 --> 00:03:48.290
who invented that technique, Giuseppe
93
00:03:48.290 --> 00:03:51.130
Colombo. Bepi, to everyone who knew him
94
00:03:51.450 --> 00:03:53.890
was an Italian mathematician who worked out
95
00:03:53.890 --> 00:03:56.690
in 1974 that if you shaped
96
00:03:56.690 --> 00:03:59.410
Mariner 10's trajectory correctly, you could
97
00:03:59.410 --> 00:04:01.610
get repeat visits to Mercury instead of just
98
00:04:01.610 --> 00:04:04.240
one. He also figured out why Mercury
99
00:04:04.240 --> 00:04:06.880
rotates three times for every two orbits.
100
00:04:07.360 --> 00:04:09.320
So the mission carries the name of the person
101
00:04:09.320 --> 00:04:11.680
who made this kind of flight possible at all.
102
00:04:12.400 --> 00:04:15.400
Avery: Now, you said one very serious
103
00:04:15.400 --> 00:04:16.240
engine problem.
104
00:04:16.880 --> 00:04:19.840
Anna: Yes. April 2024. The team
105
00:04:19.840 --> 00:04:22.200
found unexpected electric currents flowing
106
00:04:22.200 --> 00:04:24.480
between the transfer module's solar arrays
107
00:04:24.560 --> 00:04:26.880
and one of its power distribution units.
108
00:04:27.360 --> 00:04:29.480
The practical effect was that there wasn't
109
00:04:29.480 --> 00:04:31.680
enough power reaching the electric thrusters,
110
00:04:31.830 --> 00:04:33.580
so. So they couldn't run at full thrust.
111
00:04:34.220 --> 00:04:35.500
Avery: How much did they lose?
112
00:04:35.980 --> 00:04:38.820
Anna: They clawed back most of it. Engineers got
113
00:04:38.820 --> 00:04:41.380
the thrusters to about 90% of original
114
00:04:41.380 --> 00:04:44.260
performance, but 90% wasn't enough for
115
00:04:44.260 --> 00:04:46.580
the trajectory they were flying. Santa
116
00:04:46.580 --> 00:04:49.140
Martinez, the mission manager, put it plainly
117
00:04:49.140 --> 00:04:51.820
at the time. After months of investigation,
118
00:04:52.140 --> 00:04:54.380
they concluded the thrusters would stay below
119
00:04:54.380 --> 00:04:56.660
the minimum thrust needed for the orbit
120
00:04:56.660 --> 00:04:59.260
insertion they'd planned for December 2025.
121
00:05:00.320 --> 00:05:02.080
Avery: So they redesigned the Arrival.
122
00:05:02.640 --> 00:05:05.640
Anna: They redesigned the Arrival, new trajectory,
123
00:05:05.640 --> 00:05:08.280
a revised set of flybys, and the arrival
124
00:05:08.280 --> 00:05:10.878
slipped by 11 months, from December
125
00:05:11.002 --> 00:05:13.880
2025 to November this year, which is why
126
00:05:13.880 --> 00:05:15.839
we're talking about it now rather than last
127
00:05:15.839 --> 00:05:16.480
Christmas.
128
00:05:17.040 --> 00:05:19.920
Avery: 11 months is a long slip. Was
129
00:05:19.920 --> 00:05:20.800
anything gained?
130
00:05:21.200 --> 00:05:24.040
Anna: A bit, actually. Johannes Benkov,
131
00:05:24.040 --> 00:05:26.440
the project scientist, made the point that
132
00:05:26.440 --> 00:05:28.480
the extra time flew the instruments through
133
00:05:28.480 --> 00:05:31.140
parts of Mercury's environment they'd never
134
00:05:31.140 --> 00:05:33.980
otherwise have sampled. It's not compensation
135
00:05:33.980 --> 00:05:36.460
for the delay, but it isn't nothing either.
136
00:05:37.100 --> 00:05:39.980
Avery: Alright, so today the module goes.
137
00:05:40.300 --> 00:05:41.900
What's the calendar from here?
138
00:05:42.380 --> 00:05:44.380
Anna: It's a slow staged arrival.
139
00:05:45.180 --> 00:05:47.580
November 21st is gravity capture.
140
00:05:47.820 --> 00:05:49.860
That's when Mercury actually takes hold of
141
00:05:49.860 --> 00:05:52.740
both orbiters. Then in the second week of
142
00:05:52.740 --> 00:05:55.500
December, around the 9th and 10th, MIO
143
00:05:55.500 --> 00:05:57.940
is released into its own very stretched
144
00:05:57.940 --> 00:06:00.670
orbit. About a week after that, the European
145
00:06:00.670 --> 00:06:03.270
orbiter starts working its way down. It
146
00:06:03.270 --> 00:06:05.870
reaches its final Science orbit on March 10th
147
00:06:05.870 --> 00:06:08.630
next year and routine science operations
148
00:06:08.630 --> 00:06:11.590
formally begin on April 6th, 2027.
149
00:06:12.310 --> 00:06:14.829
Avery: So today is the beginning of a seven month
150
00:06:14.829 --> 00:06:15.350
arrival.
151
00:06:15.990 --> 00:06:17.750
Anna: That's exactly the right way to think about
152
00:06:17.750 --> 00:06:20.710
it. Nobody's landing, nobody's braking
153
00:06:20.710 --> 00:06:23.510
hard. It's a long, careful settling
154
00:06:23.510 --> 00:06:24.630
in and
155
00:06:24.630 --> 00:06:26.590
Avery: the two orbiters end up in quite
156
00:06:26.590 --> 00:06:29.590
Anna: different places deliberately so. The
157
00:06:29.590 --> 00:06:32.510
European orbiter goes low and tight, roughly
158
00:06:32.510 --> 00:06:34.990
480 kilometres at its closest,
159
00:06:35.310 --> 00:06:37.990
1500 at its furthest. That's the
160
00:06:37.990 --> 00:06:40.750
mapping orbit. Mineralogy, elemental
161
00:06:40.750 --> 00:06:42.950
composition, the surface at a range of
162
00:06:42.950 --> 00:06:45.790
wavelengths. MIO goes much higher and much
163
00:06:45.790 --> 00:06:48.270
more elliptical out to something like eleven
164
00:06:48.270 --> 00:06:50.690
and a half thousand kilometres because it's
165
00:06:50.690 --> 00:06:52.850
chasing the magnetic field and the particles
166
00:06:53.010 --> 00:06:55.290
and you need to fly through a big volume of
167
00:06:55.290 --> 00:06:56.930
space to sample that properly.
168
00:06:57.410 --> 00:06:59.730
Avery: Which brings me to the thing I actually want
169
00:06:59.730 --> 00:07:01.970
to know. What are the questions?
170
00:07:02.610 --> 00:07:04.730
Anna: Three big ones, and they're all genuinely
171
00:07:04.730 --> 00:07:07.490
strange. The first is the magnetic field.
172
00:07:07.810 --> 00:07:10.210
Mercury is small. It should have cooled and
173
00:07:10.210 --> 00:07:12.850
frozen solid billions of years ago. And yet
174
00:07:12.850 --> 00:07:15.610
it has a global magnetic field. Of the
175
00:07:15.610 --> 00:07:17.970
rocky planets, only Earth and Mercury do
176
00:07:18.630 --> 00:07:20.470
so. Something inside it is still liquid and
177
00:07:20.470 --> 00:07:22.630
still moving and we don't have a settled
178
00:07:22.630 --> 00:07:23.670
explanation for that.
179
00:07:24.150 --> 00:07:26.790
Avery: And uh, Mercury's core is huge, isn't it?
180
00:07:27.270 --> 00:07:29.990
Anna: Enormous. Relative to the planet, the iron
181
00:07:29.990 --> 00:07:32.670
core takes up something like 85% of the
182
00:07:32.670 --> 00:07:35.390
radius. Mercury is essentially a
183
00:07:35.390 --> 00:07:38.350
metal ball with a thin coat of rock on it and
184
00:07:38.350 --> 00:07:39.910
nobody is entirely sure why.
185
00:07:40.470 --> 00:07:41.350
Avery: Second question.
186
00:07:41.830 --> 00:07:44.390
Anna: Ice. There is water ice sitting in
187
00:07:44.390 --> 00:07:46.510
permanently shadowed craters at Mercury's
188
00:07:46.510 --> 00:07:49.250
poles on the planet closest to the sun,
189
00:07:49.570 --> 00:07:52.010
where the day side gets to well over 400
190
00:07:52.010 --> 00:07:54.730
degrees Celsius. The floors of some polar
191
00:07:54.730 --> 00:07:57.450
craters never see sunlight, so they stay cold
192
00:07:57.450 --> 00:07:59.970
enough to hold ice. But where it came from
193
00:08:00.130 --> 00:08:02.370
and how much there is is open.
194
00:08:03.010 --> 00:08:03.810
Avery: And the third?
195
00:08:04.210 --> 00:08:06.690
Anna: The hollows. These are my favourite
196
00:08:07.090 --> 00:08:09.730
messenger. The last mission to orbit Mercury
197
00:08:09.970 --> 00:08:12.450
found these bright, shallow, irregular pits
198
00:08:12.700 --> 00:08:15.100
scattered across the surface. No impact
199
00:08:15.100 --> 00:08:18.100
structure, no volcanic vent, just ground that
200
00:08:18.100 --> 00:08:20.900
appears to be disappearing. The best guess
201
00:08:20.900 --> 00:08:23.260
is some volatile material in the rock is
202
00:08:23.260 --> 00:08:25.860
sublimating straight to gas and leaving the
203
00:08:25.860 --> 00:08:28.300
hollow behind. And they look fresh.
204
00:08:28.780 --> 00:08:31.100
There's a real possibility Mercury's surface
205
00:08:31.100 --> 00:08:33.660
is actively changing right now, which is not
206
00:08:33.660 --> 00:08:35.260
something you expect from a dead little
207
00:08:35.260 --> 00:08:35.580
world.
208
00:08:36.060 --> 00:08:38.380
Avery: How many times have we actually been to
209
00:08:38.380 --> 00:08:39.580
Mercury before this?
210
00:08:40.310 --> 00:08:42.550
Anna: Barely. Two missions ever.
211
00:08:43.110 --> 00:08:46.110
Mariner 10 did three flybys in 1974 and
212
00:08:46.110 --> 00:08:48.630
75. Messenger orbited from
213
00:08:48.630 --> 00:08:51.590
2011 to 2015. That's it.
214
00:08:51.910 --> 00:08:54.350
It is the least explored planet in the inner
215
00:08:54.350 --> 00:08:56.550
solar system by a very wide margin.
216
00:08:57.110 --> 00:08:59.590
Avery: And is there an Australian thread here?
217
00:09:00.150 --> 00:09:01.270
There usually is.
218
00:09:01.830 --> 00:09:04.550
Anna: There is, and it's a nice one. ESA
219
00:09:04.550 --> 00:09:06.350
tracks its deep space missions through a
220
00:09:06.350 --> 00:09:08.630
network that includes new Norcia in Western
221
00:09:08.630 --> 00:09:11.620
Australia, north of Perth. And ESA
222
00:09:11.620 --> 00:09:14.100
opened a brand new deep space antenna at that
223
00:09:14.100 --> 00:09:16.380
site in October last year, working with
224
00:09:16.380 --> 00:09:19.100
csiro Southern Hemisphere ground
225
00:09:19.100 --> 00:09:20.860
stations aren't, ah, a courtesy on missions
226
00:09:20.860 --> 00:09:23.220
like this. They're how you keep a spacecraft
227
00:09:23.220 --> 00:09:25.020
in contact as the Earth turns.
228
00:09:25.740 --> 00:09:27.980
Avery: So what should people actually watch for
229
00:09:27.980 --> 00:09:28.300
today?
230
00:09:28.540 --> 00:09:31.340
Anna: Signal acquisition. That's the moment.
231
00:09:32.220 --> 00:09:34.980
Separation itself is a mechanical event. You
232
00:09:34.980 --> 00:09:37.330
can't really see the thing that tells you it
233
00:09:37.330 --> 00:09:39.370
worked is the ground station hearing a
234
00:09:39.370 --> 00:09:42.210
healthy carrier from a spacecraft that an
235
00:09:42.210 --> 00:09:44.770
hour earlier didn't exist as an
236
00:09:44.770 --> 00:09:47.410
independent object. If that comes through
237
00:09:47.410 --> 00:09:50.290
clean, Bepicolombo is genuinely on
238
00:09:50.290 --> 00:09:50.610
approach.
239
00:09:51.570 --> 00:09:53.170
Avery: Right, second storey.
240
00:09:53.490 --> 00:09:56.290
And this one is about plumbing, but the
241
00:09:56.290 --> 00:09:58.930
good kind. NASA announced on Tuesday,
242
00:09:59.090 --> 00:10:01.810
September 1, that it has awarded Blue
243
00:10:01.810 --> 00:10:04.210
Origin a firm fixed price contract
244
00:10:04.530 --> 00:10:07.410
worth about $700 million to build
245
00:10:07.950 --> 00:10:10.630
Mars telecommunications network, which is
246
00:10:10.630 --> 00:10:13.470
Anna: not a science mission, deliberately not.
247
00:10:13.870 --> 00:10:15.870
Avery: This is a, ah, dedicated communications
248
00:10:15.950 --> 00:10:18.950
orbiter. Its entire job is relaying
249
00:10:18.950 --> 00:10:21.950
science data, imagery, navigation information
250
00:10:22.270 --> 00:10:25.230
and mission commands for anything operating
251
00:10:25.230 --> 00:10:28.110
on or around Mars. No
252
00:10:28.110 --> 00:10:30.270
instruments of its own, competing for power
253
00:10:30.270 --> 00:10:31.630
and pointing time.
254
00:10:32.030 --> 00:10:34.470
Anna: And that's the change, isn't it? Because
255
00:10:34.470 --> 00:10:36.230
right now that job is done by science
256
00:10:36.230 --> 00:10:37.470
orbiters moonlighting.
257
00:10:38.100 --> 00:10:41.060
Avery: Exactly right. Every picture you have ever
258
00:10:41.060 --> 00:10:44.020
seen from Curiosity or perseverance came
259
00:10:44.020 --> 00:10:46.580
home through Mars Odyssey or the Mars
260
00:10:46.580 --> 00:10:49.420
Reconnaissance Orbiter. Uh, Odyssey, launched
261
00:10:49.420 --> 00:10:52.300
in 2001, MRO launched
262
00:10:52.300 --> 00:10:54.900
in 2005. Odyssey is
263
00:10:54.900 --> 00:10:57.500
25 years old and it's carrying the data
264
00:10:57.500 --> 00:11:00.340
return for a whole planet as a side hustle.
265
00:11:00.580 --> 00:11:02.580
Anna: And people have been sounding the alarm about
266
00:11:02.580 --> 00:11:03.460
that for years.
267
00:11:04.310 --> 00:11:07.190
Avery: For years. The worry has always been
268
00:11:07.190 --> 00:11:09.910
the same if one of those two fails.
269
00:11:10.070 --> 00:11:13.070
Surface missions don't go quiet exactly, but
270
00:11:13.070 --> 00:11:15.990
their data rates fall off a cliff. You'd
271
00:11:15.990 --> 00:11:17.910
be choosing which images come home.
272
00:11:18.470 --> 00:11:20.630
Anna: So what's Blue Origin actually building?
273
00:11:21.190 --> 00:11:23.510
Avery: It's based on their Blue Ring platform,
274
00:11:23.990 --> 00:11:26.870
a hybrid spacecraft that uses both solar
275
00:11:26.870 --> 00:11:29.640
electric and chemical propulsion. It
276
00:11:29.640 --> 00:11:32.560
launches on New Glenn. Delivery deadline
277
00:11:32.560 --> 00:11:35.280
is December 31, 2028
278
00:11:35.360 --> 00:11:38.280
and NASA expects it operational at Mars
279
00:11:38.280 --> 00:11:39.200
by 2030.
280
00:11:39.680 --> 00:11:42.640
Anna: And the contract is design, develop,
281
00:11:42.800 --> 00:11:44.960
launch and operate all four.
282
00:11:45.440 --> 00:11:48.080
Avery: All four. That's the interesting bit,
283
00:11:48.080 --> 00:11:50.680
structurally. NASA isn't buying a
284
00:11:50.680 --> 00:11:53.640
spacecraft, it's buying A service the same
285
00:11:53.640 --> 00:11:55.880
way it now buys communications around the
286
00:11:55.880 --> 00:11:58.730
Earth and the moon. It sits under the Space
287
00:11:58.730 --> 00:12:01.730
Communications and Navigation programme and
288
00:12:01.730 --> 00:12:04.610
it follows a request for proposals NASA put
289
00:12:04.610 --> 00:12:05.610
out back in May.
290
00:12:06.010 --> 00:12:07.290
Anna: Who else was in the running?
291
00:12:07.770 --> 00:12:10.690
Avery: Rocket Lab was the other finalist. So
292
00:12:10.690 --> 00:12:13.449
this was a real competition, not a sole
293
00:12:13.449 --> 00:12:14.250
source award.
294
00:12:14.650 --> 00:12:16.970
Anna: And Blue Origin does have Mars form now,
295
00:12:16.970 --> 00:12:18.570
which they didn't have two years ago.
296
00:12:19.210 --> 00:12:22.090
Avery: That's the part I'd flag. New Glenn's
297
00:12:22.090 --> 00:12:24.380
second flight in November last year
298
00:12:24.700 --> 00:12:27.460
carried NASA's twin escapade probes to
299
00:12:27.460 --> 00:12:30.260
Mars and landed its booster for the first
300
00:12:30.260 --> 00:12:33.220
time on the same mission. So the pitch here
301
00:12:33.220 --> 00:12:35.060
isn't theoretical and
302
00:12:35.060 --> 00:12:37.020
Anna: the longer game is crewed missions.
303
00:12:37.260 --> 00:12:39.299
Avery: That's stated fairly openly in the
304
00:12:39.299 --> 00:12:41.860
announcement. If you're serious about people
305
00:12:41.860 --> 00:12:43.774
at Mars in the late2030s
306
00:12:43.986 --> 00:12:46.980
or2040s, you cannot run that on two
307
00:12:46.980 --> 00:12:49.180
orbiters built in the Clinton and Bush
308
00:12:49.180 --> 00:12:52.010
administrations. You need infrastructure
309
00:12:52.010 --> 00:12:54.170
that's designed to be infrastructure.
310
00:12:54.650 --> 00:12:57.290
Anna: It's the least glamorous. $700 million
311
00:12:57.770 --> 00:13:00.570
NASA will spend this decade and probably
312
00:13:00.570 --> 00:13:01.610
one of the more important.
313
00:13:02.570 --> 00:13:05.210
Avery: Nobody's ever made a poster of a relay
314
00:13:05.210 --> 00:13:07.930
satellite but nothing else works without
315
00:13:07.930 --> 00:13:08.330
it.
316
00:13:08.810 --> 00:13:11.810
Anna: Now this one is just lovely. Saturn's south
317
00:13:11.810 --> 00:13:14.170
pole has a ten sided shape around it
318
00:13:14.570 --> 00:13:15.930
and it wasn't there before.
319
00:13:16.750 --> 00:13:18.830
Avery: Ten sided. A uh. Decagon.
320
00:13:19.390 --> 00:13:22.150
Anna: A decagon published in Science
321
00:13:22.150 --> 00:13:24.990
Advances yesterday September 2nd. Led by
322
00:13:24.990 --> 00:13:27.510
Augustin Sanchez Lavega at the University of
323
00:13:27.510 --> 00:13:30.430
the Basque country in Spain with Amy Simon at
324
00:13:30.430 --> 00:13:32.910
NASA Goddard and Michael Wong at UC Berkeley
325
00:13:32.910 --> 00:13:34.110
among the co authors.
326
00:13:34.590 --> 00:13:37.110
Avery: And we already knew Saturn does this at the
327
00:13:37.110 --> 00:13:37.790
other pole.
328
00:13:38.350 --> 00:13:40.710
Anna: That's the famous one, the northern
329
00:13:40.710 --> 00:13:43.640
hexagon. The six sided been known since
330
00:13:43.640 --> 00:13:46.440
Voyager in the 1980s and it is rock
331
00:13:46.440 --> 00:13:49.440
solid. Amy Simon's line is that it has
332
00:13:49.440 --> 00:13:51.560
been there every single time anyone has
333
00:13:51.560 --> 00:13:53.480
looked for more than 40 years.
334
00:13:54.200 --> 00:13:56.680
Avery: So why has nobody seen a southern one before?
335
00:13:57.400 --> 00:14:00.000
Anna: Because we couldn't look. Saturn is
336
00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:02.800
tilted like Earth and It takes about 30
337
00:14:02.800 --> 00:14:05.720
years to go around the sun. Between roughly
338
00:14:05.720 --> 00:14:08.480
2012 and 2023. The the south
339
00:14:08.480 --> 00:14:11.400
pole was simply turned away from us. It has
340
00:14:11.400 --> 00:14:13.200
only recently come back into view.
341
00:14:13.840 --> 00:14:15.200
Avery: And who spotted it?
342
00:14:15.600 --> 00:14:17.800
Anna: This is the part I love. Amateur
343
00:14:17.800 --> 00:14:20.480
astronomers. The first hint turned up in
344
00:14:20.480 --> 00:14:23.320
ground based images in 2024. A
345
00:14:23.320 --> 00:14:26.240
subtle undulating band around the pole in
346
00:14:26.240 --> 00:14:28.000
pictures submitted to something called the
347
00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:30.480
Planetary Virtual Observatory Laboratory,
348
00:14:30.800 --> 00:14:33.280
which is a database professionals use to mine
349
00:14:33.280 --> 00:14:36.160
amateur planetary imagery. Two observers
350
00:14:36.160 --> 00:14:39.000
are credited. Jean Paul Auger and Trevor
351
00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:39.520
Berry.
352
00:14:39.840 --> 00:14:41.440
Avery: Trevor Berry as in.
353
00:14:41.840 --> 00:14:44.160
Anna: As in Broken Hill, New South Wales,
354
00:14:44.560 --> 00:14:46.800
far western Outback, New South Wales.
355
00:14:47.200 --> 00:14:49.120
He's a former miner who built his own
356
00:14:49.120 --> 00:14:51.880
observatory. He's been imaging Saturn for the
357
00:14:51.880 --> 00:14:54.160
better part of two decades. He's won an
358
00:14:54.160 --> 00:14:56.680
Astronomical Society of Australia award for
359
00:14:56.680 --> 00:14:59.320
it and he has a long history of contributing
360
00:14:59.320 --> 00:15:01.520
to exactly this kind of professional work.
361
00:15:02.310 --> 00:15:04.590
Avery: So a uh, bloke in Broken Hill helps find a
362
00:15:04.590 --> 00:15:05.990
new feature on Saturn
363
00:15:06.390 --> 00:15:09.030
Anna: and then Hubble goes and confirms it. Once
364
00:15:09.030 --> 00:15:10.750
they knew what to look for, the team went
365
00:15:10.750 --> 00:15:13.590
into Hubble's Opal programme. That's the long
366
00:15:13.590 --> 00:15:15.670
running survey that photographs the outer
367
00:15:15.670 --> 00:15:18.270
planets every year and found the Decagon
368
00:15:18.270 --> 00:15:20.710
sitting there in data going back to 2023
369
00:15:21.110 --> 00:15:23.430
with observations running through late August
370
00:15:23.430 --> 00:15:23.990
last year.
371
00:15:24.630 --> 00:15:26.790
Avery: How big is it in Earth terms?
372
00:15:27.030 --> 00:15:29.350
Anna: I'm going to be careful here because some of
373
00:15:29.350 --> 00:15:31.990
the coverage yesterday quoted a width that's
374
00:15:31.990 --> 00:15:34.690
larger than Saturn. Its which
375
00:15:34.690 --> 00:15:36.850
obviously can't be right. The official
376
00:15:36.930 --> 00:15:39.690
releases don't put a hard number on it. What
377
00:15:39.690 --> 00:15:42.410
we can say confidently is that it's the same
378
00:15:42.410 --> 00:15:45.090
class of feature as the a
379
00:15:45.090 --> 00:15:47.650
planet scale wave locked inside a polar jet
380
00:15:47.650 --> 00:15:50.290
stream tens of thousands of kilometres
381
00:15:50.290 --> 00:15:53.090
across. I'd rather wait for the paper's own
382
00:15:53.090 --> 00:15:55.130
figures than repeat one that doesn't survive
383
00:15:55.130 --> 00:15:57.010
a sanity cheque fair.
384
00:15:57.330 --> 00:15:59.810
Avery: And why 10 sides rather than six?
385
00:16:00.570 --> 00:16:02.290
Anna: The mechanism is thought to be the same in
386
00:16:02.290 --> 00:16:05.130
both cases. A meandering wave trapped
387
00:16:05.130 --> 00:16:08.130
inside a fast polar jet. The number of
388
00:16:08.130 --> 00:16:10.610
sides falls out of how fast and how wide that
389
00:16:10.610 --> 00:16:13.290
jet is. Different jet, different number.
390
00:16:13.930 --> 00:16:16.489
Avery: And the really interesting difference is the
391
00:16:16.489 --> 00:16:16.810
age.
392
00:16:17.450 --> 00:16:19.730
Anna: That's the headline for scientists. The
393
00:16:19.730 --> 00:16:22.730
hexagon is old and stable. This thing looks
394
00:16:22.730 --> 00:16:25.130
new and Simon's assessment is that it appears
395
00:16:25.130 --> 00:16:27.330
to be strengthening. Which means for the
396
00:16:27.330 --> 00:16:29.290
first time we get to watch one of these form
397
00:16:29.610 --> 00:16:32.090
rather than inheriting a finished one. The
398
00:16:32.090 --> 00:16:34.170
plan is to keep tracking it with Hubble and
399
00:16:34.170 --> 00:16:37.170
JWST as sunlight builds toward the
400
00:16:37.170 --> 00:16:39.810
southern summer over the next few years and
401
00:16:39.810 --> 00:16:41.770
see whether it settles or falls apart.
402
00:16:42.410 --> 00:16:45.370
Avery: A planet sized geometry experiment running
403
00:16:45.370 --> 00:16:46.330
in real time.
404
00:16:46.730 --> 00:16:48.610
Anna: And we're on the right side of the planet to
405
00:16:48.610 --> 00:16:50.730
appreciate it. Which we'll come back to in a
406
00:16:50.730 --> 00:16:51.210
few minutes.
407
00:16:52.180 --> 00:16:54.780
Avery: Last news storey. And it's another one for
408
00:16:54.780 --> 00:16:56.900
the Chinese commercial launch column.
409
00:16:57.300 --> 00:16:59.900
Galactic Energy flew its Palace 1
410
00:16:59.900 --> 00:17:02.740
rocket for the first time. That was late on
411
00:17:02.740 --> 00:17:05.300
August 31st US Eastern Time.
412
00:17:05.620 --> 00:17:08.580
So morning of September 1st in China out
413
00:17:08.580 --> 00:17:10.500
of the Jiuquan Launch Centre.
414
00:17:10.740 --> 00:17:11.620
Anna: And it worked.
415
00:17:12.100 --> 00:17:14.820
Avery: Clean debut. The company says it
416
00:17:14.820 --> 00:17:17.380
reached its planned orbit about 30 minutes
417
00:17:17.380 --> 00:17:20.220
after liftoff. First flight of a brand
418
00:17:20.220 --> 00:17:23.020
new vehicle straight to orbit, which is not a
419
00:17:23.020 --> 00:17:23.300
given.
420
00:17:23.780 --> 00:17:24.900
Anna: Give me the numbers.
421
00:17:25.460 --> 00:17:28.300
Avery: 52 metres tall. So a bit over a
422
00:17:28.300 --> 00:17:31.100
hundred and seventy feet, about seven tonnes
423
00:17:31.100 --> 00:17:34.060
to low Earth orbit. And crucially, the
424
00:17:34.060 --> 00:17:36.180
first stage is built to be reusable
425
00:17:36.580 --> 00:17:39.540
hypersonic grid fins, deployable landing
426
00:17:39.540 --> 00:17:42.500
legs rated for up to 25 flights.
427
00:17:42.900 --> 00:17:45.870
If that specification sounds familiar, it's
428
00:17:45.870 --> 00:17:47.910
because it's essentially the Falcon 9
429
00:17:47.910 --> 00:17:48.510
playbook.
430
00:17:48.830 --> 00:17:50.110
Anna: Did they try to land it?
431
00:17:50.670 --> 00:17:53.510
Avery: No hardware was fitted, but no
432
00:17:53.510 --> 00:17:56.390
recovery attempt on a maiden flight. They're
433
00:17:56.390 --> 00:17:59.270
targeting the second half of 2027 for the
434
00:17:59.270 --> 00:18:00.350
first landing try.
435
00:18:00.830 --> 00:18:02.870
Anna: Now, the reason this matters isn't really the
436
00:18:02.870 --> 00:18:03.870
rocket on its own.
437
00:18:04.110 --> 00:18:06.830
Avery: No, it's the pattern. Look at the last
438
00:18:06.830 --> 00:18:09.780
eight weeks in China. July 10th a, uh,
439
00:18:09.910 --> 00:18:12.820
long March 10th b, that's the state programme
440
00:18:13.380 --> 00:18:16.180
launches and catches its first stage in a net
441
00:18:16.180 --> 00:18:19.140
strung across a ship at sea, making China
442
00:18:19.220 --> 00:18:21.860
only the second country ever to recover an
443
00:18:21.860 --> 00:18:24.460
orbital class booster. Mid
444
00:18:24.460 --> 00:18:27.220
August land space lands Juke
445
00:18:27.220 --> 00:18:30.180
3 on legs. The first Chinese private
446
00:18:30.260 --> 00:18:32.820
company to do it, though, as we covered at
447
00:18:32.820 --> 00:18:35.460
the time, it caught fire and toppled over
448
00:18:35.540 --> 00:18:38.390
after touchdown. And now, three
449
00:18:38.390 --> 00:18:40.830
weeks later, a second private company
450
00:18:40.910 --> 00:18:43.590
debuts a vehicle with recovery hardware
451
00:18:43.590 --> 00:18:44.590
already on it.
452
00:18:45.150 --> 00:18:47.110
Anna: Three different programmes, three different
453
00:18:47.110 --> 00:18:49.310
approaches in under two months.
454
00:18:49.870 --> 00:18:52.030
Avery: And there's a clear commercial driver.
455
00:18:52.590 --> 00:18:55.350
China is building out very large satellite
456
00:18:55.350 --> 00:18:57.870
constellations. Gul Wang Qian
457
00:18:57.870 --> 00:19:00.670
Fan and you cannot deploy tens of
458
00:19:00.670 --> 00:19:03.350
thousands of satellites on expendable rockets
459
00:19:03.350 --> 00:19:04.910
at any sensible price.
460
00:19:05.830 --> 00:19:08.590
Galactic Energy is quite openly positioning
461
00:19:08.590 --> 00:19:11.510
Palace One as a constellation workhorse.
462
00:19:11.990 --> 00:19:13.790
Anna: And this isn't a startup with no track
463
00:19:13.790 --> 00:19:15.670
record, not at all.
464
00:19:15.990 --> 00:19:18.790
Avery: They already Fly Series 1, a
465
00:19:18.790 --> 00:19:21.270
small satellite launcher with more than 20
466
00:19:21.349 --> 00:19:24.110
flights behind it. So Palace 1
467
00:19:24.110 --> 00:19:26.710
is a step up, not a first attempt.
468
00:19:27.350 --> 00:19:29.590
Anna: The thing I'd watch is 2027.
469
00:19:30.470 --> 00:19:32.350
Landing is the hard part and everyone's
470
00:19:32.350 --> 00:19:33.990
landing attempt is still ahead of them.
471
00:19:34.630 --> 00:19:37.310
Right, let's get you outside. And we have to
472
00:19:37.310 --> 00:19:39.190
start with Saturn tonight. For obvious
473
00:19:39.190 --> 00:19:41.550
reasons after that segment, it
474
00:19:41.550 --> 00:19:42.950
Avery: would be rude not to.
475
00:19:43.510 --> 00:19:46.070
Anna: Saturn is rising around sunset now and it's
476
00:19:46.070 --> 00:19:48.470
up for most of the night over in Aquarius.
477
00:19:48.870 --> 00:19:51.750
Sitting at about magnitude 0.4.
478
00:19:52.230 --> 00:19:55.030
It's building toward opposition on October 4,
479
00:19:55.190 --> 00:19:56.990
so it gets a little better every night for
480
00:19:56.990 --> 00:19:57.670
the next month.
481
00:19:58.230 --> 00:20:00.710
Avery: And the rings are doing something unusual.
482
00:20:01.410 --> 00:20:04.010
Anna: They're tilted only about 8 degrees from edge
483
00:20:04.010 --> 00:20:06.610
on close to the narrowest they've been in a
484
00:20:06.610 --> 00:20:08.850
dozen years, which some people find
485
00:20:08.850 --> 00:20:10.930
disappointing and I think is the opposite.
486
00:20:11.330 --> 00:20:14.170
When the rings are nearly closed, the moons
487
00:20:14.170 --> 00:20:17.090
line up in a much tighter row and the globe
488
00:20:17.090 --> 00:20:19.490
of the planet is easier to see detail on.
489
00:20:19.890 --> 00:20:22.370
Avery: It's a different Saturn Southern
490
00:20:22.370 --> 00:20:23.490
hemisphere advantage
491
00:20:23.490 --> 00:20:26.050
Anna: tonight, a real one from
492
00:20:26.050 --> 00:20:28.920
Sydney. Saturn climbs high overhead, so
493
00:20:28.990 --> 00:20:30.310
so you're looking through much less
494
00:20:30.310 --> 00:20:32.950
atmosphere than northern observers who get it
495
00:20:32.950 --> 00:20:35.430
lower in the southern sky. If you've got a
496
00:20:35.430 --> 00:20:37.310
telescope and you've been meaning to use it,
497
00:20:37.470 --> 00:20:40.190
this is the month. And to be clear, the
498
00:20:40.190 --> 00:20:42.550
decagon we just talked about is far beyond a
499
00:20:42.550 --> 00:20:44.710
backyard scope that's a Hubble class
500
00:20:44.710 --> 00:20:47.390
detection. What you can see is the ring
501
00:20:47.390 --> 00:20:48.590
tilt and the moons.
502
00:20:49.390 --> 00:20:51.710
Avery: For North American listeners specifically,
503
00:20:51.790 --> 00:20:53.950
the big one is tonight's Moon.
504
00:20:54.510 --> 00:20:57.190
Anna: Yes, the Moon passes very close to the
505
00:20:57.190 --> 00:20:59.230
Pleiades tonight, and it's an actual
506
00:20:59.230 --> 00:21:01.810
occultation from North America, from East
507
00:21:01.810 --> 00:21:04.690
Asia and from Arctic latitudes. The
508
00:21:04.690 --> 00:21:06.930
cluster's stars wink out behind the lunar
509
00:21:06.930 --> 00:21:09.610
limb. If that's you, that's your event,
510
00:21:09.850 --> 00:21:12.730
and binoculars are plenty. And from here,
511
00:21:12.970 --> 00:21:15.810
from Australia, New Zealand. The Moon and the
512
00:21:15.810 --> 00:21:18.730
Pleiades rise together in the small hours
513
00:21:18.970 --> 00:21:21.850
as a close. Pretty pairing, but
514
00:21:21.850 --> 00:21:24.850
no occultation worth setting an alarm
515
00:21:24.850 --> 00:21:27.540
for if you're up. Anyway, moon phase
516
00:21:28.020 --> 00:21:30.540
waning gibbous and it hits last quarter
517
00:21:30.540 --> 00:21:33.300
tomorrow, September 4th. Practically
518
00:21:33.380 --> 00:21:35.980
that means it rises late, so the early
519
00:21:35.980 --> 00:21:38.380
evening is dark, which is good news for the
520
00:21:38.380 --> 00:21:40.100
next one, Venus.
521
00:21:40.420 --> 00:21:43.420
Venus is the unmissable one, low in the
522
00:21:43.420 --> 00:21:46.340
west to west southwest, roughly 14
523
00:21:46.420 --> 00:21:48.980
degrees up an hour after sunset from Sydney.
524
00:21:49.380 --> 00:21:52.260
Sunset here is about 5:35 in the afternoon at
525
00:21:52.260 --> 00:21:54.890
the moment. It's just pulled away from Spica
526
00:21:54.890 --> 00:21:57.010
after their conjunction on Monday night, and
527
00:21:57.010 --> 00:21:59.250
it's building toward greatest brilliancy on
528
00:21:59.250 --> 00:22:02.050
September 18th. There's a beautiful thin
529
00:22:02.050 --> 00:22:04.530
crescent moon alongside it on the 14th,
530
00:22:04.850 --> 00:22:05.970
so mark that one.
531
00:22:06.370 --> 00:22:07.250
Avery: Pre dawn.
532
00:22:07.490 --> 00:22:09.730
Anna: Jupiter is back and it's worth the early
533
00:22:09.730 --> 00:22:12.610
start. Rising East Northeast around
534
00:22:12.610 --> 00:22:15.330
10 to 4 in the morning. Mars is also
535
00:22:15.330 --> 00:22:18.130
there, low and slowly fading. And
536
00:22:18.130 --> 00:22:20.210
tonight it makes a triangle with Betelgeuse
537
00:22:20.210 --> 00:22:22.050
and Elnath. If you want a target to find
538
00:22:22.870 --> 00:22:24.950
Avery: and there's a Jupiter event coming for
539
00:22:24.950 --> 00:22:27.630
Anna: North America, there is. On
540
00:22:27.630 --> 00:22:29.750
September 8, the moon occults, uh, Jupiter,
541
00:22:29.830 --> 00:22:31.990
visible from Canada, the United States,
542
00:22:32.310 --> 00:22:35.310
Mexico, Greenland, the Caribbean and eastern
543
00:22:35.310 --> 00:22:37.830
Russia. The catch is that for most of that
544
00:22:37.830 --> 00:22:40.190
footprint, it happens in daylight with the
545
00:22:40.190 --> 00:22:41.430
sun above the horizon.
546
00:22:41.910 --> 00:22:44.390
Avery: Which brings us to the standing reminder
547
00:22:44.710 --> 00:22:47.110
Anna: it does, and it applies to that occultation
548
00:22:47.110 --> 00:22:50.010
directly. If you are observing anywhere near
549
00:22:50.010 --> 00:22:52.890
the sun, take it seriously. Any filter
550
00:22:52.890 --> 00:22:55.450
you use for direct solar viewing must be
551
00:22:55.450 --> 00:22:56.890
certified to the ISO
552
00:22:56.890 --> 00:22:59.330
123122
553
00:22:59.330 --> 00:23:02.130
standard. Not sunglasses, not smoked
554
00:23:02.130 --> 00:23:04.330
glass, not a stack of exposed film,
555
00:23:04.890 --> 00:23:07.690
ISO 123122
556
00:23:08.010 --> 00:23:10.090
and cheque. The certification is genuine.
557
00:23:10.410 --> 00:23:12.770
Sweeping a telescope or binoculars around a
558
00:23:12.770 --> 00:23:15.100
daylight sky looking for Jupiter, it is
559
00:23:15.100 --> 00:23:17.340
exactly the situation where people get hurt.
560
00:23:17.740 --> 00:23:20.020
Avery: Anything else on the calendar three to
561
00:23:20.020 --> 00:23:22.540
Anna: pencil in International Observe the Moon
562
00:23:22.540 --> 00:23:25.220
night on the 19th, the equinox on the
563
00:23:25.220 --> 00:23:28.020
22nd, spring for us, autumn for our
564
00:23:28.020 --> 00:23:30.340
northern listeners, and the harvest Moon
565
00:23:30.340 --> 00:23:33.140
rising near Saturn on the 26th, which, after
566
00:23:33.140 --> 00:23:34.980
tonight's conversation, feels like a nice
567
00:23:34.980 --> 00:23:35.500
bookend.
568
00:23:36.140 --> 00:23:38.792
Avery: And that's episode 184.
569
00:23:39.088 --> 00:23:42.060
BepiColombo has cut loose the module that
570
00:23:42.060 --> 00:23:44.980
carried it for eight years and is officially
571
00:23:44.980 --> 00:23:46.380
on approach to Mercury.
572
00:23:46.960 --> 00:23:49.360
Anna: Blue Origin is building Mars a proper phone
573
00:23:49.360 --> 00:23:52.200
line. Saturn has grown a ten sided crown
574
00:23:52.200 --> 00:23:55.000
at its south pole with a hand from an amateur
575
00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:57.800
astronomer in Outback New South Wales, and a
576
00:23:57.800 --> 00:23:59.720
second Chinese private company has put a
577
00:23:59.720 --> 00:24:01.360
reusable rocket into orbit.
578
00:24:01.760 --> 00:24:04.560
Avery: Full show notes, links to every primary
579
00:24:04.560 --> 00:24:07.520
source and the whole back catalogue are at
580
00:24:07.520 --> 00:24:09.440
astronomydaily IO.
581
00:24:09.840 --> 00:24:12.000
Anna: You can find us on X Instagram and
582
00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:14.760
TikTok@astrodaily podcast. And if you've got
583
00:24:14.760 --> 00:24:17.240
a question or a correction, we genuinely want
584
00:24:17.240 --> 00:24:19.400
it, there's a contact form on the website.
585
00:24:19.960 --> 00:24:22.680
You'll find us at astronomydaily IO.
586
00:24:22.840 --> 00:24:25.640
Avery: If today's episode was useful, the single
587
00:24:25.640 --> 00:24:28.360
most helpful thing you can do is send it to
588
00:24:28.360 --> 00:24:29.880
one person who'd enjoy it.
589
00:24:30.280 --> 00:24:33.120
Anna: We'll be back tomorrow. Until then, clear
590
00:24:33.120 --> 00:24:34.880
skies, Clear skies, um,
591
00:24:38.920 --> 00:24:41.800
Avery: Are told the world.
0
00:00:00.960 --> 00:00:02.760
Anna: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Astronomy
1
00:00:02.760 --> 00:00:05.288
daily. It's Thursday, September 3,
2
00:00:05.432 --> 00:00:08.400
2026. I'm Anna and this is series
3
00:00:08.480 --> 00:00:10.880
five, episode 184.
4
00:00:11.440 --> 00:00:14.200
Avery: And I'm Avery. Anna, we've got a
5
00:00:14.200 --> 00:00:16.680
spacecraft doing something irreversible
6
00:00:16.680 --> 00:00:17.040
today.
7
00:00:17.680 --> 00:00:19.640
Anna: We do. As we're recording,
8
00:00:19.640 --> 00:00:22.480
BepiColombo, the European and Japanese
9
00:00:22.480 --> 00:00:25.080
mission to Mercury is throwing away the
10
00:00:25.080 --> 00:00:26.240
module that got it there.
11
00:00:26.720 --> 00:00:28.400
Avery: Throwing away sounds harsh.
12
00:00:29.090 --> 00:00:32.050
Anna: It's accurate, though. Eight years, nine
13
00:00:32.050 --> 00:00:34.810
planetary flybys, one very serious
14
00:00:34.810 --> 00:00:37.530
engine problem, and today the transfer module
15
00:00:37.530 --> 00:00:40.170
gets cut loose and the two science orbiters
16
00:00:40.170 --> 00:00:42.450
are on their own. It's the start of the
17
00:00:42.450 --> 00:00:43.330
arrival phase.
18
00:00:43.810 --> 00:00:46.690
Avery: That's our lead, then. NASA
19
00:00:46.690 --> 00:00:49.250
has just handed Blue Origin $700
20
00:00:49.330 --> 00:00:52.050
million to build the Internet connection for
21
00:00:52.050 --> 00:00:54.850
Anna: Mars, which is a much bigger deal than it
22
00:00:54.850 --> 00:00:55.250
sounds.
23
00:00:55.960 --> 00:00:58.840
Avery: It really is. Then Saturn has grown
24
00:00:58.840 --> 00:01:01.560
a new shape at its South Pole and nobody
25
00:01:01.560 --> 00:01:04.480
expected it. And an Australian in Broken
26
00:01:04.480 --> 00:01:06.520
Hill is part of how we found out.
27
00:01:07.080 --> 00:01:09.840
Anna: Love that storey. And then a
28
00:01:09.840 --> 00:01:12.079
second Chinese private company has flown a
29
00:01:12.079 --> 00:01:14.520
reusable rocket three weeks after the first
30
00:01:14.520 --> 00:01:14.840
one.
31
00:01:15.320 --> 00:01:17.280
Avery: Plus we'll get you sorted for the sky
32
00:01:17.280 --> 00:01:19.880
tonight. Both hemispheres, as always.
33
00:01:20.680 --> 00:01:21.640
Anna: Let's get into it.
34
00:01:22.230 --> 00:01:24.630
Avery: Okay, set the scene for me. What is
35
00:01:24.630 --> 00:01:25.990
physically happening today?
36
00:01:26.550 --> 00:01:29.150
Anna: So BepiColombo has flown to Mercury as a
37
00:01:29.150 --> 00:01:31.350
stack, three pieces bolted together.
38
00:01:31.910 --> 00:01:34.150
At the bottom you've got the Mercury transfer
39
00:01:34.150 --> 00:01:37.070
module. That's the Ion engine bus, the thing
40
00:01:37.070 --> 00:01:39.070
with the enormous solar wings that's been
41
00:01:39.070 --> 00:01:41.590
doing the driving. On top of that sits the
42
00:01:41.590 --> 00:01:43.990
European Orbiter, the Mercury Planetary
43
00:01:43.990 --> 00:01:46.750
Orbiter. And on top of that sits the Japanese
44
00:01:46.750 --> 00:01:49.610
one, Mio, the Mercury Magnetospheric
45
00:01:49.610 --> 00:01:50.100
Orbiter
46
00:01:50.100 --> 00:01:52.770
Avery: M3 spacecraft in a tower.
47
00:01:53.170 --> 00:01:56.050
Anna: A tower. And Today, at around
48
00:01:56.050 --> 00:01:58.810
8 in the morning, US Eastern Time, which is
49
00:01:58.810 --> 00:02:00.930
about 10 o' clock tonight for us in Sydney,
50
00:02:01.250 --> 00:02:04.249
the transfer module separates. ESA is
51
00:02:04.249 --> 00:02:07.010
carrying it live. They start the broadcast a
52
00:02:07.010 --> 00:02:09.890
bit before, pause it, and come back about
53
00:02:09.890 --> 00:02:12.170
an hour later to confirm they've got a signal
54
00:02:12.170 --> 00:02:14.500
from what is now, for the first time, an
55
00:02:14.500 --> 00:02:15.700
independent spacecraft.
56
00:02:16.100 --> 00:02:18.100
Avery: And there's no putting it back together.
57
00:02:18.820 --> 00:02:21.740
Anna: None. That's why Today matters. Up
58
00:02:21.740 --> 00:02:23.860
to this point, if something went wrong, you
59
00:02:23.860 --> 00:02:26.380
still had the propulsion module. From today,
60
00:02:26.380 --> 00:02:28.820
the Ion engines are gone. Everything after
61
00:02:28.820 --> 00:02:30.780
this runs on the orbiter's own chemical
62
00:02:30.780 --> 00:02:31.380
thrusters.
63
00:02:31.860 --> 00:02:34.260
Avery: Take me back. This launched in
64
00:02:34.900 --> 00:02:37.220
2018, October 20,
65
00:02:37.380 --> 00:02:38.100
2018,
66
00:02:38.500 --> 00:02:41.500
Anna: on an Ariane 5 out of Kourou. So we are
67
00:02:41.500 --> 00:02:42.980
three weeks shy of eight years.
68
00:02:43.620 --> 00:02:45.980
Avery: Eight years to reach the closest planet to
69
00:02:45.980 --> 00:02:48.260
the sun. Which sounds backwards.
70
00:02:48.820 --> 00:02:51.140
Anna: It sounds backwards and it's the single most
71
00:02:51.140 --> 00:02:53.900
counterintuitive thing About Mercury. If you
72
00:02:53.900 --> 00:02:55.940
point a rocket at Mercury and just let go,
73
00:02:56.100 --> 00:02:58.420
you don't gently arrive, you fall.
74
00:02:58.820 --> 00:03:01.340
The Sun's gravity well is enormous and you
75
00:03:01.340 --> 00:03:03.780
pick up speed the whole way down. The hard
76
00:03:03.780 --> 00:03:06.060
part isn't getting there, the hard part is
77
00:03:06.060 --> 00:03:08.670
arriving slowly enough that Mercury's very
78
00:03:08.670 --> 00:03:10.430
weak gravity can actually catch you.
79
00:03:10.910 --> 00:03:13.230
Avery: So the whole mission is a braking problem.
80
00:03:13.470 --> 00:03:15.630
Anna: The whole mission is a breaking problem.
81
00:03:16.110 --> 00:03:18.990
BepiColombo has used one flyby of Earth,
82
00:03:19.310 --> 00:03:22.230
two of Venus and six of Mercury
83
00:03:22.230 --> 00:03:25.078
itself. The last of those in January
84
00:03:25.222 --> 00:03:27.550
2025 plus years of
85
00:03:27.550 --> 00:03:30.470
continuous, very gentle thrusting from
86
00:03:30.470 --> 00:03:33.070
those ion engines, all of it to
87
00:03:33.070 --> 00:03:35.210
shed speed rather than gain it.
88
00:03:35.770 --> 00:03:38.570
Avery: Nine flybys. That's more than most
89
00:03:38.570 --> 00:03:40.410
missions do in a lifetime.
90
00:03:40.970 --> 00:03:43.050
Anna: And there's a lovely bit of history in that,
91
00:03:43.370 --> 00:03:45.730
because the mission is named after the man
92
00:03:45.730 --> 00:03:48.290
who invented that technique, Giuseppe
93
00:03:48.290 --> 00:03:51.130
Colombo. Bepi, to everyone who knew him
94
00:03:51.450 --> 00:03:53.890
was an Italian mathematician who worked out
95
00:03:53.890 --> 00:03:56.690
in 1974 that if you shaped
96
00:03:56.690 --> 00:03:59.410
Mariner 10's trajectory correctly, you could
97
00:03:59.410 --> 00:04:01.610
get repeat visits to Mercury instead of just
98
00:04:01.610 --> 00:04:04.240
one. He also figured out why Mercury
99
00:04:04.240 --> 00:04:06.880
rotates three times for every two orbits.
100
00:04:07.360 --> 00:04:09.320
So the mission carries the name of the person
101
00:04:09.320 --> 00:04:11.680
who made this kind of flight possible at all.
102
00:04:12.400 --> 00:04:15.400
Avery: Now, you said one very serious
103
00:04:15.400 --> 00:04:16.240
engine problem.
104
00:04:16.880 --> 00:04:19.840
Anna: Yes. April 2024. The team
105
00:04:19.840 --> 00:04:22.200
found unexpected electric currents flowing
106
00:04:22.200 --> 00:04:24.480
between the transfer module's solar arrays
107
00:04:24.560 --> 00:04:26.880
and one of its power distribution units.
108
00:04:27.360 --> 00:04:29.480
The practical effect was that there wasn't
109
00:04:29.480 --> 00:04:31.680
enough power reaching the electric thrusters,
110
00:04:31.830 --> 00:04:33.580
so. So they couldn't run at full thrust.
111
00:04:34.220 --> 00:04:35.500
Avery: How much did they lose?
112
00:04:35.980 --> 00:04:38.820
Anna: They clawed back most of it. Engineers got
113
00:04:38.820 --> 00:04:41.380
the thrusters to about 90% of original
114
00:04:41.380 --> 00:04:44.260
performance, but 90% wasn't enough for
115
00:04:44.260 --> 00:04:46.580
the trajectory they were flying. Santa
116
00:04:46.580 --> 00:04:49.140
Martinez, the mission manager, put it plainly
117
00:04:49.140 --> 00:04:51.820
at the time. After months of investigation,
118
00:04:52.140 --> 00:04:54.380
they concluded the thrusters would stay below
119
00:04:54.380 --> 00:04:56.660
the minimum thrust needed for the orbit
120
00:04:56.660 --> 00:04:59.260
insertion they'd planned for December 2025.
121
00:05:00.320 --> 00:05:02.080
Avery: So they redesigned the Arrival.
122
00:05:02.640 --> 00:05:05.640
Anna: They redesigned the Arrival, new trajectory,
123
00:05:05.640 --> 00:05:08.280
a revised set of flybys, and the arrival
124
00:05:08.280 --> 00:05:10.878
slipped by 11 months, from December
125
00:05:11.002 --> 00:05:13.880
2025 to November this year, which is why
126
00:05:13.880 --> 00:05:15.839
we're talking about it now rather than last
127
00:05:15.839 --> 00:05:16.480
Christmas.
128
00:05:17.040 --> 00:05:19.920
Avery: 11 months is a long slip. Was
129
00:05:19.920 --> 00:05:20.800
anything gained?
130
00:05:21.200 --> 00:05:24.040
Anna: A bit, actually. Johannes Benkov,
131
00:05:24.040 --> 00:05:26.440
the project scientist, made the point that
132
00:05:26.440 --> 00:05:28.480
the extra time flew the instruments through
133
00:05:28.480 --> 00:05:31.140
parts of Mercury's environment they'd never
134
00:05:31.140 --> 00:05:33.980
otherwise have sampled. It's not compensation
135
00:05:33.980 --> 00:05:36.460
for the delay, but it isn't nothing either.
136
00:05:37.100 --> 00:05:39.980
Avery: Alright, so today the module goes.
137
00:05:40.300 --> 00:05:41.900
What's the calendar from here?
138
00:05:42.380 --> 00:05:44.380
Anna: It's a slow staged arrival.
139
00:05:45.180 --> 00:05:47.580
November 21st is gravity capture.
140
00:05:47.820 --> 00:05:49.860
That's when Mercury actually takes hold of
141
00:05:49.860 --> 00:05:52.740
both orbiters. Then in the second week of
142
00:05:52.740 --> 00:05:55.500
December, around the 9th and 10th, MIO
143
00:05:55.500 --> 00:05:57.940
is released into its own very stretched
144
00:05:57.940 --> 00:06:00.670
orbit. About a week after that, the European
145
00:06:00.670 --> 00:06:03.270
orbiter starts working its way down. It
146
00:06:03.270 --> 00:06:05.870
reaches its final Science orbit on March 10th
147
00:06:05.870 --> 00:06:08.630
next year and routine science operations
148
00:06:08.630 --> 00:06:11.590
formally begin on April 6th, 2027.
149
00:06:12.310 --> 00:06:14.829
Avery: So today is the beginning of a seven month
150
00:06:14.829 --> 00:06:15.350
arrival.
151
00:06:15.990 --> 00:06:17.750
Anna: That's exactly the right way to think about
152
00:06:17.750 --> 00:06:20.710
it. Nobody's landing, nobody's braking
153
00:06:20.710 --> 00:06:23.510
hard. It's a long, careful settling
154
00:06:23.510 --> 00:06:24.630
in and
155
00:06:24.630 --> 00:06:26.590
Avery: the two orbiters end up in quite
156
00:06:26.590 --> 00:06:29.590
Anna: different places deliberately so. The
157
00:06:29.590 --> 00:06:32.510
European orbiter goes low and tight, roughly
158
00:06:32.510 --> 00:06:34.990
480 kilometres at its closest,
159
00:06:35.310 --> 00:06:37.990
1500 at its furthest. That's the
160
00:06:37.990 --> 00:06:40.750
mapping orbit. Mineralogy, elemental
161
00:06:40.750 --> 00:06:42.950
composition, the surface at a range of
162
00:06:42.950 --> 00:06:45.790
wavelengths. MIO goes much higher and much
163
00:06:45.790 --> 00:06:48.270
more elliptical out to something like eleven
164
00:06:48.270 --> 00:06:50.690
and a half thousand kilometres because it's
165
00:06:50.690 --> 00:06:52.850
chasing the magnetic field and the particles
166
00:06:53.010 --> 00:06:55.290
and you need to fly through a big volume of
167
00:06:55.290 --> 00:06:56.930
space to sample that properly.
168
00:06:57.410 --> 00:06:59.730
Avery: Which brings me to the thing I actually want
169
00:06:59.730 --> 00:07:01.970
to know. What are the questions?
170
00:07:02.610 --> 00:07:04.730
Anna: Three big ones, and they're all genuinely
171
00:07:04.730 --> 00:07:07.490
strange. The first is the magnetic field.
172
00:07:07.810 --> 00:07:10.210
Mercury is small. It should have cooled and
173
00:07:10.210 --> 00:07:12.850
frozen solid billions of years ago. And yet
174
00:07:12.850 --> 00:07:15.610
it has a global magnetic field. Of the
175
00:07:15.610 --> 00:07:17.970
rocky planets, only Earth and Mercury do
176
00:07:18.630 --> 00:07:20.470
so. Something inside it is still liquid and
177
00:07:20.470 --> 00:07:22.630
still moving and we don't have a settled
178
00:07:22.630 --> 00:07:23.670
explanation for that.
179
00:07:24.150 --> 00:07:26.790
Avery: And uh, Mercury's core is huge, isn't it?
180
00:07:27.270 --> 00:07:29.990
Anna: Enormous. Relative to the planet, the iron
181
00:07:29.990 --> 00:07:32.670
core takes up something like 85% of the
182
00:07:32.670 --> 00:07:35.390
radius. Mercury is essentially a
183
00:07:35.390 --> 00:07:38.350
metal ball with a thin coat of rock on it and
184
00:07:38.350 --> 00:07:39.910
nobody is entirely sure why.
185
00:07:40.470 --> 00:07:41.350
Avery: Second question.
186
00:07:41.830 --> 00:07:44.390
Anna: Ice. There is water ice sitting in
187
00:07:44.390 --> 00:07:46.510
permanently shadowed craters at Mercury's
188
00:07:46.510 --> 00:07:49.250
poles on the planet closest to the sun,
189
00:07:49.570 --> 00:07:52.010
where the day side gets to well over 400
190
00:07:52.010 --> 00:07:54.730
degrees Celsius. The floors of some polar
191
00:07:54.730 --> 00:07:57.450
craters never see sunlight, so they stay cold
192
00:07:57.450 --> 00:07:59.970
enough to hold ice. But where it came from
193
00:08:00.130 --> 00:08:02.370
and how much there is is open.
194
00:08:03.010 --> 00:08:03.810
Avery: And the third?
195
00:08:04.210 --> 00:08:06.690
Anna: The hollows. These are my favourite
196
00:08:07.090 --> 00:08:09.730
messenger. The last mission to orbit Mercury
197
00:08:09.970 --> 00:08:12.450
found these bright, shallow, irregular pits
198
00:08:12.700 --> 00:08:15.100
scattered across the surface. No impact
199
00:08:15.100 --> 00:08:18.100
structure, no volcanic vent, just ground that
200
00:08:18.100 --> 00:08:20.900
appears to be disappearing. The best guess
201
00:08:20.900 --> 00:08:23.260
is some volatile material in the rock is
202
00:08:23.260 --> 00:08:25.860
sublimating straight to gas and leaving the
203
00:08:25.860 --> 00:08:28.300
hollow behind. And they look fresh.
204
00:08:28.780 --> 00:08:31.100
There's a real possibility Mercury's surface
205
00:08:31.100 --> 00:08:33.660
is actively changing right now, which is not
206
00:08:33.660 --> 00:08:35.260
something you expect from a dead little
207
00:08:35.260 --> 00:08:35.580
world.
208
00:08:36.060 --> 00:08:38.380
Avery: How many times have we actually been to
209
00:08:38.380 --> 00:08:39.580
Mercury before this?
210
00:08:40.310 --> 00:08:42.550
Anna: Barely. Two missions ever.
211
00:08:43.110 --> 00:08:46.110
Mariner 10 did three flybys in 1974 and
212
00:08:46.110 --> 00:08:48.630
75. Messenger orbited from
213
00:08:48.630 --> 00:08:51.590
2011 to 2015. That's it.
214
00:08:51.910 --> 00:08:54.350
It is the least explored planet in the inner
215
00:08:54.350 --> 00:08:56.550
solar system by a very wide margin.
216
00:08:57.110 --> 00:08:59.590
Avery: And is there an Australian thread here?
217
00:09:00.150 --> 00:09:01.270
There usually is.
218
00:09:01.830 --> 00:09:04.550
Anna: There is, and it's a nice one. ESA
219
00:09:04.550 --> 00:09:06.350
tracks its deep space missions through a
220
00:09:06.350 --> 00:09:08.630
network that includes new Norcia in Western
221
00:09:08.630 --> 00:09:11.620
Australia, north of Perth. And ESA
222
00:09:11.620 --> 00:09:14.100
opened a brand new deep space antenna at that
223
00:09:14.100 --> 00:09:16.380
site in October last year, working with
224
00:09:16.380 --> 00:09:19.100
csiro Southern Hemisphere ground
225
00:09:19.100 --> 00:09:20.860
stations aren't, ah, a courtesy on missions
226
00:09:20.860 --> 00:09:23.220
like this. They're how you keep a spacecraft
227
00:09:23.220 --> 00:09:25.020
in contact as the Earth turns.
228
00:09:25.740 --> 00:09:27.980
Avery: So what should people actually watch for
229
00:09:27.980 --> 00:09:28.300
today?
230
00:09:28.540 --> 00:09:31.340
Anna: Signal acquisition. That's the moment.
231
00:09:32.220 --> 00:09:34.980
Separation itself is a mechanical event. You
232
00:09:34.980 --> 00:09:37.330
can't really see the thing that tells you it
233
00:09:37.330 --> 00:09:39.370
worked is the ground station hearing a
234
00:09:39.370 --> 00:09:42.210
healthy carrier from a spacecraft that an
235
00:09:42.210 --> 00:09:44.770
hour earlier didn't exist as an
236
00:09:44.770 --> 00:09:47.410
independent object. If that comes through
237
00:09:47.410 --> 00:09:50.290
clean, Bepicolombo is genuinely on
238
00:09:50.290 --> 00:09:50.610
approach.
239
00:09:51.570 --> 00:09:53.170
Avery: Right, second storey.
240
00:09:53.490 --> 00:09:56.290
And this one is about plumbing, but the
241
00:09:56.290 --> 00:09:58.930
good kind. NASA announced on Tuesday,
242
00:09:59.090 --> 00:10:01.810
September 1, that it has awarded Blue
243
00:10:01.810 --> 00:10:04.210
Origin a firm fixed price contract
244
00:10:04.530 --> 00:10:07.410
worth about $700 million to build
245
00:10:07.950 --> 00:10:10.630
Mars telecommunications network, which is
246
00:10:10.630 --> 00:10:13.470
Anna: not a science mission, deliberately not.
247
00:10:13.870 --> 00:10:15.870
Avery: This is a, ah, dedicated communications
248
00:10:15.950 --> 00:10:18.950
orbiter. Its entire job is relaying
249
00:10:18.950 --> 00:10:21.950
science data, imagery, navigation information
250
00:10:22.270 --> 00:10:25.230
and mission commands for anything operating
251
00:10:25.230 --> 00:10:28.110
on or around Mars. No
252
00:10:28.110 --> 00:10:30.270
instruments of its own, competing for power
253
00:10:30.270 --> 00:10:31.630
and pointing time.
254
00:10:32.030 --> 00:10:34.470
Anna: And that's the change, isn't it? Because
255
00:10:34.470 --> 00:10:36.230
right now that job is done by science
256
00:10:36.230 --> 00:10:37.470
orbiters moonlighting.
257
00:10:38.100 --> 00:10:41.060
Avery: Exactly right. Every picture you have ever
258
00:10:41.060 --> 00:10:44.020
seen from Curiosity or perseverance came
259
00:10:44.020 --> 00:10:46.580
home through Mars Odyssey or the Mars
260
00:10:46.580 --> 00:10:49.420
Reconnaissance Orbiter. Uh, Odyssey, launched
261
00:10:49.420 --> 00:10:52.300
in 2001, MRO launched
262
00:10:52.300 --> 00:10:54.900
in 2005. Odyssey is
263
00:10:54.900 --> 00:10:57.500
25 years old and it's carrying the data
264
00:10:57.500 --> 00:11:00.340
return for a whole planet as a side hustle.
265
00:11:00.580 --> 00:11:02.580
Anna: And people have been sounding the alarm about
266
00:11:02.580 --> 00:11:03.460
that for years.
267
00:11:04.310 --> 00:11:07.190
Avery: For years. The worry has always been
268
00:11:07.190 --> 00:11:09.910
the same if one of those two fails.
269
00:11:10.070 --> 00:11:13.070
Surface missions don't go quiet exactly, but
270
00:11:13.070 --> 00:11:15.990
their data rates fall off a cliff. You'd
271
00:11:15.990 --> 00:11:17.910
be choosing which images come home.
272
00:11:18.470 --> 00:11:20.630
Anna: So what's Blue Origin actually building?
273
00:11:21.190 --> 00:11:23.510
Avery: It's based on their Blue Ring platform,
274
00:11:23.990 --> 00:11:26.870
a hybrid spacecraft that uses both solar
275
00:11:26.870 --> 00:11:29.640
electric and chemical propulsion. It
276
00:11:29.640 --> 00:11:32.560
launches on New Glenn. Delivery deadline
277
00:11:32.560 --> 00:11:35.280
is December 31, 2028
278
00:11:35.360 --> 00:11:38.280
and NASA expects it operational at Mars
279
00:11:38.280 --> 00:11:39.200
by 2030.
280
00:11:39.680 --> 00:11:42.640
Anna: And the contract is design, develop,
281
00:11:42.800 --> 00:11:44.960
launch and operate all four.
282
00:11:45.440 --> 00:11:48.080
Avery: All four. That's the interesting bit,
283
00:11:48.080 --> 00:11:50.680
structurally. NASA isn't buying a
284
00:11:50.680 --> 00:11:53.640
spacecraft, it's buying A service the same
285
00:11:53.640 --> 00:11:55.880
way it now buys communications around the
286
00:11:55.880 --> 00:11:58.730
Earth and the moon. It sits under the Space
287
00:11:58.730 --> 00:12:01.730
Communications and Navigation programme and
288
00:12:01.730 --> 00:12:04.610
it follows a request for proposals NASA put
289
00:12:04.610 --> 00:12:05.610
out back in May.
290
00:12:06.010 --> 00:12:07.290
Anna: Who else was in the running?
291
00:12:07.770 --> 00:12:10.690
Avery: Rocket Lab was the other finalist. So
292
00:12:10.690 --> 00:12:13.449
this was a real competition, not a sole
293
00:12:13.449 --> 00:12:14.250
source award.
294
00:12:14.650 --> 00:12:16.970
Anna: And Blue Origin does have Mars form now,
295
00:12:16.970 --> 00:12:18.570
which they didn't have two years ago.
296
00:12:19.210 --> 00:12:22.090
Avery: That's the part I'd flag. New Glenn's
297
00:12:22.090 --> 00:12:24.380
second flight in November last year
298
00:12:24.700 --> 00:12:27.460
carried NASA's twin escapade probes to
299
00:12:27.460 --> 00:12:30.260
Mars and landed its booster for the first
300
00:12:30.260 --> 00:12:33.220
time on the same mission. So the pitch here
301
00:12:33.220 --> 00:12:35.060
isn't theoretical and
302
00:12:35.060 --> 00:12:37.020
Anna: the longer game is crewed missions.
303
00:12:37.260 --> 00:12:39.299
Avery: That's stated fairly openly in the
304
00:12:39.299 --> 00:12:41.860
announcement. If you're serious about people
305
00:12:41.860 --> 00:12:43.774
at Mars in the late2030s
306
00:12:43.986 --> 00:12:46.980
or2040s, you cannot run that on two
307
00:12:46.980 --> 00:12:49.180
orbiters built in the Clinton and Bush
308
00:12:49.180 --> 00:12:52.010
administrations. You need infrastructure
309
00:12:52.010 --> 00:12:54.170
that's designed to be infrastructure.
310
00:12:54.650 --> 00:12:57.290
Anna: It's the least glamorous. $700 million
311
00:12:57.770 --> 00:13:00.570
NASA will spend this decade and probably
312
00:13:00.570 --> 00:13:01.610
one of the more important.
313
00:13:02.570 --> 00:13:05.210
Avery: Nobody's ever made a poster of a relay
314
00:13:05.210 --> 00:13:07.930
satellite but nothing else works without
315
00:13:07.930 --> 00:13:08.330
it.
316
00:13:08.810 --> 00:13:11.810
Anna: Now this one is just lovely. Saturn's south
317
00:13:11.810 --> 00:13:14.170
pole has a ten sided shape around it
318
00:13:14.570 --> 00:13:15.930
and it wasn't there before.
319
00:13:16.750 --> 00:13:18.830
Avery: Ten sided. A uh. Decagon.
320
00:13:19.390 --> 00:13:22.150
Anna: A decagon published in Science
321
00:13:22.150 --> 00:13:24.990
Advances yesterday September 2nd. Led by
322
00:13:24.990 --> 00:13:27.510
Augustin Sanchez Lavega at the University of
323
00:13:27.510 --> 00:13:30.430
the Basque country in Spain with Amy Simon at
324
00:13:30.430 --> 00:13:32.910
NASA Goddard and Michael Wong at UC Berkeley
325
00:13:32.910 --> 00:13:34.110
among the co authors.
326
00:13:34.590 --> 00:13:37.110
Avery: And we already knew Saturn does this at the
327
00:13:37.110 --> 00:13:37.790
other pole.
328
00:13:38.350 --> 00:13:40.710
Anna: That's the famous one, the northern
329
00:13:40.710 --> 00:13:43.640
hexagon. The six sided been known since
330
00:13:43.640 --> 00:13:46.440
Voyager in the 1980s and it is rock
331
00:13:46.440 --> 00:13:49.440
solid. Amy Simon's line is that it has
332
00:13:49.440 --> 00:13:51.560
been there every single time anyone has
333
00:13:51.560 --> 00:13:53.480
looked for more than 40 years.
334
00:13:54.200 --> 00:13:56.680
Avery: So why has nobody seen a southern one before?
335
00:13:57.400 --> 00:14:00.000
Anna: Because we couldn't look. Saturn is
336
00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:02.800
tilted like Earth and It takes about 30
337
00:14:02.800 --> 00:14:05.720
years to go around the sun. Between roughly
338
00:14:05.720 --> 00:14:08.480
2012 and 2023. The the south
339
00:14:08.480 --> 00:14:11.400
pole was simply turned away from us. It has
340
00:14:11.400 --> 00:14:13.200
only recently come back into view.
341
00:14:13.840 --> 00:14:15.200
Avery: And who spotted it?
342
00:14:15.600 --> 00:14:17.800
Anna: This is the part I love. Amateur
343
00:14:17.800 --> 00:14:20.480
astronomers. The first hint turned up in
344
00:14:20.480 --> 00:14:23.320
ground based images in 2024. A
345
00:14:23.320 --> 00:14:26.240
subtle undulating band around the pole in
346
00:14:26.240 --> 00:14:28.000
pictures submitted to something called the
347
00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:30.480
Planetary Virtual Observatory Laboratory,
348
00:14:30.800 --> 00:14:33.280
which is a database professionals use to mine
349
00:14:33.280 --> 00:14:36.160
amateur planetary imagery. Two observers
350
00:14:36.160 --> 00:14:39.000
are credited. Jean Paul Auger and Trevor
351
00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:39.520
Berry.
352
00:14:39.840 --> 00:14:41.440
Avery: Trevor Berry as in.
353
00:14:41.840 --> 00:14:44.160
Anna: As in Broken Hill, New South Wales,
354
00:14:44.560 --> 00:14:46.800
far western Outback, New South Wales.
355
00:14:47.200 --> 00:14:49.120
He's a former miner who built his own
356
00:14:49.120 --> 00:14:51.880
observatory. He's been imaging Saturn for the
357
00:14:51.880 --> 00:14:54.160
better part of two decades. He's won an
358
00:14:54.160 --> 00:14:56.680
Astronomical Society of Australia award for
359
00:14:56.680 --> 00:14:59.320
it and he has a long history of contributing
360
00:14:59.320 --> 00:15:01.520
to exactly this kind of professional work.
361
00:15:02.310 --> 00:15:04.590
Avery: So a uh, bloke in Broken Hill helps find a
362
00:15:04.590 --> 00:15:05.990
new feature on Saturn
363
00:15:06.390 --> 00:15:09.030
Anna: and then Hubble goes and confirms it. Once
364
00:15:09.030 --> 00:15:10.750
they knew what to look for, the team went
365
00:15:10.750 --> 00:15:13.590
into Hubble's Opal programme. That's the long
366
00:15:13.590 --> 00:15:15.670
running survey that photographs the outer
367
00:15:15.670 --> 00:15:18.270
planets every year and found the Decagon
368
00:15:18.270 --> 00:15:20.710
sitting there in data going back to 2023
369
00:15:21.110 --> 00:15:23.430
with observations running through late August
370
00:15:23.430 --> 00:15:23.990
last year.
371
00:15:24.630 --> 00:15:26.790
Avery: How big is it in Earth terms?
372
00:15:27.030 --> 00:15:29.350
Anna: I'm going to be careful here because some of
373
00:15:29.350 --> 00:15:31.990
the coverage yesterday quoted a width that's
374
00:15:31.990 --> 00:15:34.690
larger than Saturn. Its which
375
00:15:34.690 --> 00:15:36.850
obviously can't be right. The official
376
00:15:36.930 --> 00:15:39.690
releases don't put a hard number on it. What
377
00:15:39.690 --> 00:15:42.410
we can say confidently is that it's the same
378
00:15:42.410 --> 00:15:45.090
class of feature as the a
379
00:15:45.090 --> 00:15:47.650
planet scale wave locked inside a polar jet
380
00:15:47.650 --> 00:15:50.290
stream tens of thousands of kilometres
381
00:15:50.290 --> 00:15:53.090
across. I'd rather wait for the paper's own
382
00:15:53.090 --> 00:15:55.130
figures than repeat one that doesn't survive
383
00:15:55.130 --> 00:15:57.010
a sanity cheque fair.
384
00:15:57.330 --> 00:15:59.810
Avery: And why 10 sides rather than six?
385
00:16:00.570 --> 00:16:02.290
Anna: The mechanism is thought to be the same in
386
00:16:02.290 --> 00:16:05.130
both cases. A meandering wave trapped
387
00:16:05.130 --> 00:16:08.130
inside a fast polar jet. The number of
388
00:16:08.130 --> 00:16:10.610
sides falls out of how fast and how wide that
389
00:16:10.610 --> 00:16:13.290
jet is. Different jet, different number.
390
00:16:13.930 --> 00:16:16.489
Avery: And the really interesting difference is the
391
00:16:16.489 --> 00:16:16.810
age.
392
00:16:17.450 --> 00:16:19.730
Anna: That's the headline for scientists. The
393
00:16:19.730 --> 00:16:22.730
hexagon is old and stable. This thing looks
394
00:16:22.730 --> 00:16:25.130
new and Simon's assessment is that it appears
395
00:16:25.130 --> 00:16:27.330
to be strengthening. Which means for the
396
00:16:27.330 --> 00:16:29.290
first time we get to watch one of these form
397
00:16:29.610 --> 00:16:32.090
rather than inheriting a finished one. The
398
00:16:32.090 --> 00:16:34.170
plan is to keep tracking it with Hubble and
399
00:16:34.170 --> 00:16:37.170
JWST as sunlight builds toward the
400
00:16:37.170 --> 00:16:39.810
southern summer over the next few years and
401
00:16:39.810 --> 00:16:41.770
see whether it settles or falls apart.
402
00:16:42.410 --> 00:16:45.370
Avery: A planet sized geometry experiment running
403
00:16:45.370 --> 00:16:46.330
in real time.
404
00:16:46.730 --> 00:16:48.610
Anna: And we're on the right side of the planet to
405
00:16:48.610 --> 00:16:50.730
appreciate it. Which we'll come back to in a
406
00:16:50.730 --> 00:16:51.210
few minutes.
407
00:16:52.180 --> 00:16:54.780
Avery: Last news storey. And it's another one for
408
00:16:54.780 --> 00:16:56.900
the Chinese commercial launch column.
409
00:16:57.300 --> 00:16:59.900
Galactic Energy flew its Palace 1
410
00:16:59.900 --> 00:17:02.740
rocket for the first time. That was late on
411
00:17:02.740 --> 00:17:05.300
August 31st US Eastern Time.
412
00:17:05.620 --> 00:17:08.580
So morning of September 1st in China out
413
00:17:08.580 --> 00:17:10.500
of the Jiuquan Launch Centre.
414
00:17:10.740 --> 00:17:11.620
Anna: And it worked.
415
00:17:12.100 --> 00:17:14.820
Avery: Clean debut. The company says it
416
00:17:14.820 --> 00:17:17.380
reached its planned orbit about 30 minutes
417
00:17:17.380 --> 00:17:20.220
after liftoff. First flight of a brand
418
00:17:20.220 --> 00:17:23.020
new vehicle straight to orbit, which is not a
419
00:17:23.020 --> 00:17:23.300
given.
420
00:17:23.780 --> 00:17:24.900
Anna: Give me the numbers.
421
00:17:25.460 --> 00:17:28.300
Avery: 52 metres tall. So a bit over a
422
00:17:28.300 --> 00:17:31.100
hundred and seventy feet, about seven tonnes
423
00:17:31.100 --> 00:17:34.060
to low Earth orbit. And crucially, the
424
00:17:34.060 --> 00:17:36.180
first stage is built to be reusable
425
00:17:36.580 --> 00:17:39.540
hypersonic grid fins, deployable landing
426
00:17:39.540 --> 00:17:42.500
legs rated for up to 25 flights.
427
00:17:42.900 --> 00:17:45.870
If that specification sounds familiar, it's
428
00:17:45.870 --> 00:17:47.910
because it's essentially the Falcon 9
429
00:17:47.910 --> 00:17:48.510
playbook.
430
00:17:48.830 --> 00:17:50.110
Anna: Did they try to land it?
431
00:17:50.670 --> 00:17:53.510
Avery: No hardware was fitted, but no
432
00:17:53.510 --> 00:17:56.390
recovery attempt on a maiden flight. They're
433
00:17:56.390 --> 00:17:59.270
targeting the second half of 2027 for the
434
00:17:59.270 --> 00:18:00.350
first landing try.
435
00:18:00.830 --> 00:18:02.870
Anna: Now, the reason this matters isn't really the
436
00:18:02.870 --> 00:18:03.870
rocket on its own.
437
00:18:04.110 --> 00:18:06.830
Avery: No, it's the pattern. Look at the last
438
00:18:06.830 --> 00:18:09.780
eight weeks in China. July 10th a, uh,
439
00:18:09.910 --> 00:18:12.820
long March 10th b, that's the state programme
440
00:18:13.380 --> 00:18:16.180
launches and catches its first stage in a net
441
00:18:16.180 --> 00:18:19.140
strung across a ship at sea, making China
442
00:18:19.220 --> 00:18:21.860
only the second country ever to recover an
443
00:18:21.860 --> 00:18:24.460
orbital class booster. Mid
444
00:18:24.460 --> 00:18:27.220
August land space lands Juke
445
00:18:27.220 --> 00:18:30.180
3 on legs. The first Chinese private
446
00:18:30.260 --> 00:18:32.820
company to do it, though, as we covered at
447
00:18:32.820 --> 00:18:35.460
the time, it caught fire and toppled over
448
00:18:35.540 --> 00:18:38.390
after touchdown. And now, three
449
00:18:38.390 --> 00:18:40.830
weeks later, a second private company
450
00:18:40.910 --> 00:18:43.590
debuts a vehicle with recovery hardware
451
00:18:43.590 --> 00:18:44.590
already on it.
452
00:18:45.150 --> 00:18:47.110
Anna: Three different programmes, three different
453
00:18:47.110 --> 00:18:49.310
approaches in under two months.
454
00:18:49.870 --> 00:18:52.030
Avery: And there's a clear commercial driver.
455
00:18:52.590 --> 00:18:55.350
China is building out very large satellite
456
00:18:55.350 --> 00:18:57.870
constellations. Gul Wang Qian
457
00:18:57.870 --> 00:19:00.670
Fan and you cannot deploy tens of
458
00:19:00.670 --> 00:19:03.350
thousands of satellites on expendable rockets
459
00:19:03.350 --> 00:19:04.910
at any sensible price.
460
00:19:05.830 --> 00:19:08.590
Galactic Energy is quite openly positioning
461
00:19:08.590 --> 00:19:11.510
Palace One as a constellation workhorse.
462
00:19:11.990 --> 00:19:13.790
Anna: And this isn't a startup with no track
463
00:19:13.790 --> 00:19:15.670
record, not at all.
464
00:19:15.990 --> 00:19:18.790
Avery: They already Fly Series 1, a
465
00:19:18.790 --> 00:19:21.270
small satellite launcher with more than 20
466
00:19:21.349 --> 00:19:24.110
flights behind it. So Palace 1
467
00:19:24.110 --> 00:19:26.710
is a step up, not a first attempt.
468
00:19:27.350 --> 00:19:29.590
Anna: The thing I'd watch is 2027.
469
00:19:30.470 --> 00:19:32.350
Landing is the hard part and everyone's
470
00:19:32.350 --> 00:19:33.990
landing attempt is still ahead of them.
471
00:19:34.630 --> 00:19:37.310
Right, let's get you outside. And we have to
472
00:19:37.310 --> 00:19:39.190
start with Saturn tonight. For obvious
473
00:19:39.190 --> 00:19:41.550
reasons after that segment, it
474
00:19:41.550 --> 00:19:42.950
Avery: would be rude not to.
475
00:19:43.510 --> 00:19:46.070
Anna: Saturn is rising around sunset now and it's
476
00:19:46.070 --> 00:19:48.470
up for most of the night over in Aquarius.
477
00:19:48.870 --> 00:19:51.750
Sitting at about magnitude 0.4.
478
00:19:52.230 --> 00:19:55.030
It's building toward opposition on October 4,
479
00:19:55.190 --> 00:19:56.990
so it gets a little better every night for
480
00:19:56.990 --> 00:19:57.670
the next month.
481
00:19:58.230 --> 00:20:00.710
Avery: And the rings are doing something unusual.
482
00:20:01.410 --> 00:20:04.010
Anna: They're tilted only about 8 degrees from edge
483
00:20:04.010 --> 00:20:06.610
on close to the narrowest they've been in a
484
00:20:06.610 --> 00:20:08.850
dozen years, which some people find
485
00:20:08.850 --> 00:20:10.930
disappointing and I think is the opposite.
486
00:20:11.330 --> 00:20:14.170
When the rings are nearly closed, the moons
487
00:20:14.170 --> 00:20:17.090
line up in a much tighter row and the globe
488
00:20:17.090 --> 00:20:19.490
of the planet is easier to see detail on.
489
00:20:19.890 --> 00:20:22.370
Avery: It's a different Saturn Southern
490
00:20:22.370 --> 00:20:23.490
hemisphere advantage
491
00:20:23.490 --> 00:20:26.050
Anna: tonight, a real one from
492
00:20:26.050 --> 00:20:28.920
Sydney. Saturn climbs high overhead, so
493
00:20:28.990 --> 00:20:30.310
so you're looking through much less
494
00:20:30.310 --> 00:20:32.950
atmosphere than northern observers who get it
495
00:20:32.950 --> 00:20:35.430
lower in the southern sky. If you've got a
496
00:20:35.430 --> 00:20:37.310
telescope and you've been meaning to use it,
497
00:20:37.470 --> 00:20:40.190
this is the month. And to be clear, the
498
00:20:40.190 --> 00:20:42.550
decagon we just talked about is far beyond a
499
00:20:42.550 --> 00:20:44.710
backyard scope that's a Hubble class
500
00:20:44.710 --> 00:20:47.390
detection. What you can see is the ring
501
00:20:47.390 --> 00:20:48.590
tilt and the moons.
502
00:20:49.390 --> 00:20:51.710
Avery: For North American listeners specifically,
503
00:20:51.790 --> 00:20:53.950
the big one is tonight's Moon.
504
00:20:54.510 --> 00:20:57.190
Anna: Yes, the Moon passes very close to the
505
00:20:57.190 --> 00:20:59.230
Pleiades tonight, and it's an actual
506
00:20:59.230 --> 00:21:01.810
occultation from North America, from East
507
00:21:01.810 --> 00:21:04.690
Asia and from Arctic latitudes. The
508
00:21:04.690 --> 00:21:06.930
cluster's stars wink out behind the lunar
509
00:21:06.930 --> 00:21:09.610
limb. If that's you, that's your event,
510
00:21:09.850 --> 00:21:12.730
and binoculars are plenty. And from here,
511
00:21:12.970 --> 00:21:15.810
from Australia, New Zealand. The Moon and the
512
00:21:15.810 --> 00:21:18.730
Pleiades rise together in the small hours
513
00:21:18.970 --> 00:21:21.850
as a close. Pretty pairing, but
514
00:21:21.850 --> 00:21:24.850
no occultation worth setting an alarm
515
00:21:24.850 --> 00:21:27.540
for if you're up. Anyway, moon phase
516
00:21:28.020 --> 00:21:30.540
waning gibbous and it hits last quarter
517
00:21:30.540 --> 00:21:33.300
tomorrow, September 4th. Practically
518
00:21:33.380 --> 00:21:35.980
that means it rises late, so the early
519
00:21:35.980 --> 00:21:38.380
evening is dark, which is good news for the
520
00:21:38.380 --> 00:21:40.100
next one, Venus.
521
00:21:40.420 --> 00:21:43.420
Venus is the unmissable one, low in the
522
00:21:43.420 --> 00:21:46.340
west to west southwest, roughly 14
523
00:21:46.420 --> 00:21:48.980
degrees up an hour after sunset from Sydney.
524
00:21:49.380 --> 00:21:52.260
Sunset here is about 5:35 in the afternoon at
525
00:21:52.260 --> 00:21:54.890
the moment. It's just pulled away from Spica
526
00:21:54.890 --> 00:21:57.010
after their conjunction on Monday night, and
527
00:21:57.010 --> 00:21:59.250
it's building toward greatest brilliancy on
528
00:21:59.250 --> 00:22:02.050
September 18th. There's a beautiful thin
529
00:22:02.050 --> 00:22:04.530
crescent moon alongside it on the 14th,
530
00:22:04.850 --> 00:22:05.970
so mark that one.
531
00:22:06.370 --> 00:22:07.250
Avery: Pre dawn.
532
00:22:07.490 --> 00:22:09.730
Anna: Jupiter is back and it's worth the early
533
00:22:09.730 --> 00:22:12.610
start. Rising East Northeast around
534
00:22:12.610 --> 00:22:15.330
10 to 4 in the morning. Mars is also
535
00:22:15.330 --> 00:22:18.130
there, low and slowly fading. And
536
00:22:18.130 --> 00:22:20.210
tonight it makes a triangle with Betelgeuse
537
00:22:20.210 --> 00:22:22.050
and Elnath. If you want a target to find
538
00:22:22.870 --> 00:22:24.950
Avery: and there's a Jupiter event coming for
539
00:22:24.950 --> 00:22:27.630
Anna: North America, there is. On
540
00:22:27.630 --> 00:22:29.750
September 8, the moon occults, uh, Jupiter,
541
00:22:29.830 --> 00:22:31.990
visible from Canada, the United States,
542
00:22:32.310 --> 00:22:35.310
Mexico, Greenland, the Caribbean and eastern
543
00:22:35.310 --> 00:22:37.830
Russia. The catch is that for most of that
544
00:22:37.830 --> 00:22:40.190
footprint, it happens in daylight with the
545
00:22:40.190 --> 00:22:41.430
sun above the horizon.
546
00:22:41.910 --> 00:22:44.390
Avery: Which brings us to the standing reminder
547
00:22:44.710 --> 00:22:47.110
Anna: it does, and it applies to that occultation
548
00:22:47.110 --> 00:22:50.010
directly. If you are observing anywhere near
549
00:22:50.010 --> 00:22:52.890
the sun, take it seriously. Any filter
550
00:22:52.890 --> 00:22:55.450
you use for direct solar viewing must be
551
00:22:55.450 --> 00:22:56.890
certified to the ISO
552
00:22:56.890 --> 00:22:59.330
123122
553
00:22:59.330 --> 00:23:02.130
standard. Not sunglasses, not smoked
554
00:23:02.130 --> 00:23:04.330
glass, not a stack of exposed film,
555
00:23:04.890 --> 00:23:07.690
ISO 123122
556
00:23:08.010 --> 00:23:10.090
and cheque. The certification is genuine.
557
00:23:10.410 --> 00:23:12.770
Sweeping a telescope or binoculars around a
558
00:23:12.770 --> 00:23:15.100
daylight sky looking for Jupiter, it is
559
00:23:15.100 --> 00:23:17.340
exactly the situation where people get hurt.
560
00:23:17.740 --> 00:23:20.020
Avery: Anything else on the calendar three to
561
00:23:20.020 --> 00:23:22.540
Anna: pencil in International Observe the Moon
562
00:23:22.540 --> 00:23:25.220
night on the 19th, the equinox on the
563
00:23:25.220 --> 00:23:28.020
22nd, spring for us, autumn for our
564
00:23:28.020 --> 00:23:30.340
northern listeners, and the harvest Moon
565
00:23:30.340 --> 00:23:33.140
rising near Saturn on the 26th, which, after
566
00:23:33.140 --> 00:23:34.980
tonight's conversation, feels like a nice
567
00:23:34.980 --> 00:23:35.500
bookend.
568
00:23:36.140 --> 00:23:38.792
Avery: And that's episode 184.
569
00:23:39.088 --> 00:23:42.060
BepiColombo has cut loose the module that
570
00:23:42.060 --> 00:23:44.980
carried it for eight years and is officially
571
00:23:44.980 --> 00:23:46.380
on approach to Mercury.
572
00:23:46.960 --> 00:23:49.360
Anna: Blue Origin is building Mars a proper phone
573
00:23:49.360 --> 00:23:52.200
line. Saturn has grown a ten sided crown
574
00:23:52.200 --> 00:23:55.000
at its south pole with a hand from an amateur
575
00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:57.800
astronomer in Outback New South Wales, and a
576
00:23:57.800 --> 00:23:59.720
second Chinese private company has put a
577
00:23:59.720 --> 00:24:01.360
reusable rocket into orbit.
578
00:24:01.760 --> 00:24:04.560
Avery: Full show notes, links to every primary
579
00:24:04.560 --> 00:24:07.520
source and the whole back catalogue are at
580
00:24:07.520 --> 00:24:09.440
astronomydaily IO.
581
00:24:09.840 --> 00:24:12.000
Anna: You can find us on X Instagram and
582
00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:14.760
TikTok@astrodaily podcast. And if you've got
583
00:24:14.760 --> 00:24:17.240
a question or a correction, we genuinely want
584
00:24:17.240 --> 00:24:19.400
it, there's a contact form on the website.
585
00:24:19.960 --> 00:24:22.680
You'll find us at astronomydaily IO.
586
00:24:22.840 --> 00:24:25.640
Avery: If today's episode was useful, the single
587
00:24:25.640 --> 00:24:28.360
most helpful thing you can do is send it to
588
00:24:28.360 --> 00:24:29.880
one person who'd enjoy it.
589
00:24:30.280 --> 00:24:33.120
Anna: We'll be back tomorrow. Until then, clear
590
00:24:33.120 --> 00:24:34.880
skies, Clear skies, um,
591
00:24:38.920 --> 00:24:41.800
Avery: Are told the world.
