Lunar Landing Woes, Elon Musk's Spat, and the Discovery of Extreme Nuclear Transients

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Anna: Hey there space enthusiasts and welcome to Astronomy

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Daily. I'm your host, Anna, and I'm super excited to

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bring you the latest cosmic happenings. Today we're

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diving into a mixed bag of news from M, A Japanese

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lunar lander that, didn't quite stick the landing to a very

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public spat between Elon Musk and.

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Well, you know. We'll also be taking a look at what

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a maze is doing on M. Mars and get this,

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the biggest explosion scientists have seen since the Big

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Bang. So buckle up and let's get

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started.

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So, first up, we have some updated news from Ispace, the

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Japan based company. And, well, it's not great.

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Their Resilience lander unfortunately didn't exactly

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nail its landing on the moon. Yeah, it seems they got to the

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finish line, but weren't quite successful in sticking the

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landing. Now this mission launched about

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four and a half months ago on a Falcon 9 rocket from

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Cape Canaveral. As part of a rideshare with

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Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander.

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The teams in Japan announced that sadly, they

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lost communication with Resilience, which probably

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means it suffered a hard landing. Ouch.

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Takeshi Hakamada, the founder and

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CEO of Ispace, said that their top

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priority is to analyse the telemetry data they managed

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to get and figure out what went wrong. They're aiming to

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restore trust by providing a report to everyone involved.

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The mission actually seemed to be going smoothly at first.

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Resilience went through several phases,

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gradually lowering its orbit around the moon. But

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after it reached about 20 kilometres above the surface,

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things went south. They lost telemetry,

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and based on the data they have, the lander couldn't

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decelerate enough and it, well, crash

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landed. This lander was carrying science

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payloads and even a rover from Ispace Europe

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named Tenacious. The plan was to land in a

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region called Mare Frigoris, or the Sea of Cold.

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There was even a small model of a Swedish house on board, meant to be

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placed on the moon by the rover. Now, this is I

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Space's second landing failure in two missions.

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But their American subsidiary, Ispace US

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is still on contract with NASA for a mission

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in 2027 to deliver a larger

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lander to the far side of the moon. So hopefully

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they'll be able to turn things around.

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Okay, next up, we've got a bit of a, ah, well,

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let's call it a situation brewing between

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Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Yeah, you heard that

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right. So apparently these two aren't exactly seeing eye to

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eye anymore. After Musk served as a special

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government employee leading the Department of Government

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Efficiency, or doge. Things seemed

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fine. Trump even called Musk one of

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the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever

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produced. But things went downhill after

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Musk criticised Trump's big beautiful bill.

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Trump fired back, suggesting the US could save money by cancelling

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government contracts with Musk's companies. And that's

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when things got spicy. Musk responded with a

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threat to begin decommissioning SpaceX's Dragon

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spacecraft immediately. Now, if

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Musk is serious, this could have some pretty big

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consequences for American spaceflight. I mean,

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think about it. SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft

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have been crucial for NASA operations on the International

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Space Station, ushering in a new era of

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US spaceflight. If Dragon gets

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decommissioned, that would basically end US based

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astronaut launches for a while. And Boeing's

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Starliner isn't quite ready to fill that gap yet.

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SpaceX has some pretty substantial government

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contracts, including NASA's Commercial Crew

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Programme, cargo resupply services for the ISS,

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and oh yeah, they're supposed to provide the lunar

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lander for NASA's Artemis moon programme. So if

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those contracts get cancelled along with the proposed

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cuts to NASA's budget, it could seriously impact

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NASA as we know it. Now it's not clear what

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this would mean for SpaceX's private spaceflight endeavours.

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Axiom Space is about to launch its fourth private

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astronaut mission on a brand new Dragon. And

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SpaceX has been doing some cool stuff with private spacewalks and

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polar orbits. NASA's being pretty tight

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lipped about the whole situation, saying they'll

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continue to execute the President's vision for the future of space.

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So we'll have to wait and see how this all plays out.

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But yeah, stay tuned folks, because this could get

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interesting.

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Alright, let's move on to something a little less

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dramatic. Have you ever looked at the raw images

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from NASA's Perseverance rover and wondered why it keeps

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snapping pics of this weird tiny maze? Well,

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it turns out there's a pretty cool reason. That maze is actually

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a calibration target. One of ten for

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Perseverance's Sherlock instrument. Yeah, that's short for

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scanning habitable environments with Raman and luminescence for

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organics and chemicals. Catchy, right? So

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Sherlock is basically a Sherlock Holmes inspired tool

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designed to detect organic compounds and other minerals on

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Mars that could indicate signs of, you know,

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ancient microbial life. But to do that accurately, it

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needs to be carefully calibrated. And that's where our little maze

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comes in. Sherlock is Located on the rover's

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robotic arm and and uses spectroscopic techniques to

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analyse Martian rocks. To make sure its measurements

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are spot on, it routinely calibrates its tools

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using reference materials with specific properties.

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These are mounted on a plate attached to the front of the rover's

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body, which is called the Sherlock Calibration target.

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The maze helps calibrate the positioning of the laser

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scanner mirror and characterises the laser's focus.

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It's made of chrome plated lines that are super thin,

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only about twice the width of a human hair, printed onto

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silica glass. And get this, if you look

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closely, there's even a tiny Sherlock Holmes portrait

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right in the centre. How cool is that? The

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calibration target also includes samples of materials used in

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spacesuits like Teflon, Gore Tex and

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Kevlar. These are being tested under Mars

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conditions to see how they hold up over time, which is

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crucial for planning future human exploration of the red

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planet. And one last fun fact. Sherlock has a

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sidekick, a colour camera called Watson. Yep, just

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like Sherlock Holmes.

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Okay, now for something truly mind blowing.

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Astronomers have stumbled upon a new type of giant space

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explosion. And get this. They're calling them extreme

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nuclear transients, or ENTs.

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And, apparently they're the biggest bangs since the Big bang

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itself. These ents are like

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colossal flares of light from the hearts of distant

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galaxies. And they linger way longer than any

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flares we've ever seen before. We're talking about

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blasts that release as much energy as

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100 suns would over their entire lifetimes. I

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mean, wow. So what are they? Well,

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it turns out they're kind of like stars being torn apart by black

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holes, but on a scale we've never observed

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before. Each star is a massive one, at

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least three times as massive as our sun. And each black

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hole is a supermassive beast lurking in the centre of its

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host galaxy. Normally, these events are called

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tidal disruption events, or TDEs. But these

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ENTs are different. They're, like,

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nearly 10 times brighter than normal TDEs.

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And they stay luminous for years, surpassing

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even the brightest supernova explosions.

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Gaia, the space telescope, whose mission was to map

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the Milky Way, actually accidentally

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captured these explosions while

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staring at the sky. Combing through Gaia data,

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scientists found two strange events from

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2016 and 2018.

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After some digging, they figured out that these events were the

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same kind of event as something nicknamed Scary

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Barbie, which sounds absolutely terrifying.

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Ents are super rare, like 10

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million times less frequent than supernovae. But

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they give us a new way to study massive black holes

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in distant galaxies because they're so

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bright and we can see them across vast cosmic

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distances. So in astronomy, looking far

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away means looking back in time. By observing

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these prolonged flares, we can learn more about black

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hole growth during a key era when the universe was half

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its current age. It's like galaxies

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were forming stars and feeding their supermassive black holes

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like 10 times more vigorously than they do today.

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Pretty wild stuff, huh?

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And that's all the space and astronomy news we have for you today.

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I've been your host, Anna, and I hope you enjoyed our journey through the

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cosmos. If you want to stay up to date with all the latest

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space happenings, be sure to visit our website at

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astronomydaily IO. There

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meantime, keep looking up.