NASA Finds the Crater a SpaceX Rocket Left on the Moon
Anna and Avery cover how NASA, working with South Korea's Danuri orbiter, pinpointed and imaged the exact crater left by a SpaceX Falcon 9 stage that struck the Moon on August 5th. Plus: the private rescue mission for NASA's ailing Swift telescope has officially failed, astronomers may have caught dark matter bending a black hole's jet, and Rocket Lab launches its ninth radar satellite for Japan's iQPS. Full show notes: Today's episode — S05E173, Friday August 21, 2026: Main story: NASA finds the crater a SpaceX rocket left on the Moon. A spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage struck the Moon's surface on August 5, 2026, at 19.4759°N, 266.7138°E. South Korea's Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (Danuri) imaged the impact site within hours using its LUTI camera, confirming the predicted location to within 0.6 miles and passing refined coordinates to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team. LRO's Narrow-Angle Camera imaged the site on August 11–12, revealing a crater roughly 60 feet wide and less than 10 feet deep, with dark rays of space-weathered material excavated from about 1.5 feet down and brighter rays of fresh, unweathered material from deeper still. NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (Planetary Defense program) refined the original impact prediction using data from independent astronomers. Swift telescope rescue mission fails. NASA's Swift Observatory, losing altitude faster than expected due to heightened solar activity, was the target of a $30 million rescue attempt by Arizona-based Katalyst Space Technologies. Their LINK spacecraft launched July 3 on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket but suffered an attitude-control failure roughly three weeks later, spinning uncontrollably before it could dock with and boost Swift. NASA confirmed the mission's failure on August 19; Swift is now expected to reenter the atmosphere uncontrolled before the end of 2026. LINK will still attempt a proximity flyby to gather data for future servicing missions. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman: "This is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting." Dark matter may be magnifying a black hole's jet. A team led by Silke Britzen at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, combining data from the VLBA, the Fermi gamma-ray telescope, and NASA's Swift X-ray instrument, found that the plasma jet from blazar PKS 2233-148 shows an unexpected deviation consistent with gravitational lensing by an unseen dark matter clump — a potential first detection of dark matter substructure lensing a blazar jet. The result could also help confirm blazars as sources of high-energy cosmic neutrinos. Published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, July 31. Rocket Lab launches a new radar satellite for Japan. Rocket Lab launched SUSANOO-II, a synthetic aperture radar Earth-observation satellite, for Tokyo-based iQPS on an Electron rocket from New Zealand (mission: "The Lightning God Defends"). It's Rocket Lab's ninth launch for iQPS, part of a planned 36-satellite constellation, and marks the company's 14th flight of 2026 and 93rd Electron mission overall. Tonight's sky: the Moon is a waxing gibbous, about 63% illuminated. With a telescope, find the Ring Nebula (M57) in Lyra — look for bright star Vega overhead, then the small parallelogram of stars just below it. Mark your calendars for a 96%-partial lunar eclipse on August 27–28, nearly total — full viewing details to come. Links & sources: - NASA Science — NASA's LRO Images Falcon 9 Crater on Moon, Learns New Details - Universe Today — NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Images Falcon 9 Crater on Moon, With Some Help From a Korean Spacecraft - Space.com — Private mission to save NASA's Swift space telescope fails - Live Science — 'This is not the outcome we were working towards': $30 million mission to save NASA's Swift telescope fails - Space.com — Dark matter could magnify the jets of a ravenously feeding supermassive black hole - Space.com — Rocket Lab launches private Japanese Earth-observing satellite to orbit - Space.com — Night sky August 2026: what you can see tonight - TheSkyLive — Moon Phase on August 21, 2026 Follow us: search astrodailypod on your favorite platform · astronomydaily.io
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.
0
00:00:00.640 --> 00:00:03.000
Anna: Hey, everyone. Welcome to today's Astronomy
1
00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:04.240
AstroDailyPod. I'm Anna.
2
00:00:04.400 --> 00:00:06.788
Avery: And I'm avery. It's Friday, August 21st,
3
00:00:06.892 --> 00:00:09.200
series five, episode 173.
4
00:00:09.520 --> 00:00:11.840
Anna: And today we've actually got a bit of a case
5
00:00:11.840 --> 00:00:14.280
closed storey to lead with. Remember that
6
00:00:14.280 --> 00:00:16.640
SpaceX rocket stage that slammed into the
7
00:00:16.640 --> 00:00:17.680
moon a couple weeks back?
8
00:00:17.920 --> 00:00:19.640
Avery: The one everybody was speculating about
9
00:00:19.640 --> 00:00:22.000
because nobody could say exactly where it hit
10
00:00:22.240 --> 00:00:22.880
that one.
11
00:00:23.040 --> 00:00:25.480
Anna: NASA's finally got the pictures. We know
12
00:00:25.480 --> 00:00:28.480
exactly where, exactly how big, and it turns
13
00:00:28.480 --> 00:00:30.760
out an international team basically built a
14
00:00:30.760 --> 00:00:32.700
forensic investigation around it.
15
00:00:32.940 --> 00:00:35.620
Avery: Then some less happy space. The rescue
16
00:00:35.620 --> 00:00:37.700
mission for NASA's Swift telescope has
17
00:00:37.700 --> 00:00:38.620
officially failed.
18
00:00:38.940 --> 00:00:41.380
Anna: It has. And stick with us, because storey
19
00:00:41.380 --> 00:00:43.540
number three connects right back to that one
20
00:00:43.540 --> 00:00:46.340
in a pretty ironic way. Plus a fresh
21
00:00:46.340 --> 00:00:47.940
satellite launch out of New Zealand
22
00:00:47.940 --> 00:00:48.460
overnight.
23
00:00:48.700 --> 00:00:51.060
Avery: And tonight's sky has a proper deep sky
24
00:00:51.060 --> 00:00:52.860
target. If you've got a telescope handy,
25
00:00:52.940 --> 00:00:53.820
let's get into it.
26
00:00:53.980 --> 00:00:55.900
Okay, so back up for people who missed it.
27
00:00:55.900 --> 00:00:58.710
What actually happened here on August 5th?
28
00:00:58.790 --> 00:01:01.750
Anna: A, uh, spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage
29
00:01:01.750 --> 00:01:04.110
basically dead. Hardware left over from a
30
00:01:04.110 --> 00:01:06.670
launch no longer under control struck the
31
00:01:06.670 --> 00:01:09.110
Moon's surface. This kind of thing happens
32
00:01:09.110 --> 00:01:11.390
more than people realise. There's a fair bit
33
00:01:11.390 --> 00:01:13.430
of leftover rocket hardware drifting around
34
00:01:13.430 --> 00:01:16.110
out there and every so often the orbits catch
35
00:01:16.110 --> 00:01:17.990
up with it and something comes down.
36
00:01:18.390 --> 00:01:21.070
Avery: So this wasn't a, uh, SpaceX aimed for the
37
00:01:21.070 --> 00:01:21.750
moon storey.
38
00:01:22.150 --> 00:01:24.470
Anna: Not at all. It's an uncontrolled impact.
39
00:01:25.090 --> 00:01:27.010
What made it interesting was what happened
40
00:01:27.010 --> 00:01:29.450
next. Astronomers around the world had been
41
00:01:29.450 --> 00:01:31.490
tracking this stage for a while and had a
42
00:01:31.490 --> 00:01:33.450
rough prediction of where and when it would
43
00:01:33.450 --> 00:01:36.330
hit. So this became a genuine race to go
44
00:01:36.330 --> 00:01:38.850
photograph the aftermath before anyone even
45
00:01:38.850 --> 00:01:40.450
knew exactly what they'd find.
46
00:01:40.850 --> 00:01:41.970
Avery: And they found it.
47
00:01:42.130 --> 00:01:44.770
Anna: They found it. NASA's Centre for Near Earth
48
00:01:44.770 --> 00:01:47.250
Object Studies, that's the Planetary Defence
49
00:01:47.250 --> 00:01:49.170
Programme, took tracking data from
50
00:01:49.170 --> 00:01:51.330
independent astronomers and refined the
51
00:01:51.330 --> 00:01:53.820
impact prediction, then handed that off to
52
00:01:53.820 --> 00:01:56.100
the international partners flying spacecraft
53
00:01:56.100 --> 00:01:58.780
around the moon. First on the scene, so to
54
00:01:58.780 --> 00:02:01.620
speak, was South Korea's Dinuri, the Korea
55
00:02:01.620 --> 00:02:04.460
Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, which used its Luti
56
00:02:04.460 --> 00:02:06.900
camera to image the impact site within hours
57
00:02:07.060 --> 00:02:09.420
and nailed the predicted location to within
58
00:02:09.420 --> 00:02:11.140
about 6, 10 of a mile.
59
00:02:11.460 --> 00:02:13.460
Avery: That's a genuinely tight prediction for
60
00:02:13.460 --> 00:02:14.780
something falling out of the sky.
61
00:02:14.780 --> 00:02:17.700
Anna: Uncontrolled, it really is. Denuri
62
00:02:17.700 --> 00:02:19.820
then passed its refined coordinates over to
63
00:02:19.820 --> 00:02:22.170
the Lunar Reconnaissance orbiter team. And
64
00:02:22.170 --> 00:02:25.130
LRO's narrow angle camera got its own images
65
00:02:25.130 --> 00:02:28.010
on August 11th and 12th. Those are the ones
66
00:02:28.010 --> 00:02:29.770
NASA released this week with the full
67
00:02:29.770 --> 00:02:30.410
analysis.
68
00:02:30.810 --> 00:02:32.890
Avery: So what does the crater actually look like?
69
00:02:33.290 --> 00:02:35.850
Anna: It's about 60ft wide and less than
70
00:02:35.850 --> 00:02:38.490
10ft deep. Modest by lunar impact
71
00:02:38.570 --> 00:02:41.170
standards. This isn't a dramatic scar you'd
72
00:02:41.170 --> 00:02:43.770
spot from Earth. But what's genuinely useful
73
00:02:43.770 --> 00:02:46.330
about it are the rays. These streaks of
74
00:02:46.330 --> 00:02:48.570
ejected material radiating out from the
75
00:02:48.570 --> 00:02:51.310
crater. LRO caught both darker rays
76
00:02:51.310 --> 00:02:53.950
and brighter rays, and each one tells you
77
00:02:53.950 --> 00:02:54.590
something different.
78
00:02:54.990 --> 00:02:55.630
Avery: How so?
79
00:02:55.790 --> 00:02:57.750
Anna: The darker streaks are made of surface
80
00:02:57.750 --> 00:02:59.950
material that's already been sitting exposed
81
00:02:59.950 --> 00:03:02.510
to solar, wind and cosmic rays for a long
82
00:03:02.510 --> 00:03:05.229
time. What's called space weathering. And
83
00:03:05.229 --> 00:03:07.430
that was dug up from about a foot and a half
84
00:03:07.430 --> 00:03:10.190
down. The brighter streaks are fresh material
85
00:03:10.190 --> 00:03:12.790
excavated from even deeper that hasn't been
86
00:03:12.790 --> 00:03:15.110
weathered at all yet. So you're essentially
87
00:03:15.110 --> 00:03:17.390
getting a cross section of the lunar soil at
88
00:03:17.390 --> 00:03:19.750
two different depths handed to you for free
89
00:03:19.750 --> 00:03:20.510
by the impact.
90
00:03:21.120 --> 00:03:23.200
Avery: A rocket stage as an accidental science
91
00:03:23.200 --> 00:03:25.960
Anna: instrument, that's honestly the most useful
92
00:03:25.960 --> 00:03:28.040
way to think about it. It's not a mission.
93
00:03:28.040 --> 00:03:30.760
Nobody planned this experiment. But planetary
94
00:03:30.760 --> 00:03:33.120
scientists get real value out of studying
95
00:03:33.120 --> 00:03:36.000
these fresh, precisely dated impacts because
96
00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:38.280
they help calibrate how quickly the moon's
97
00:03:38.280 --> 00:03:40.880
surface weathers over time. Which matters for
98
00:03:40.880 --> 00:03:43.240
dating other craters. We can't otherwise put
99
00:03:43.240 --> 00:03:43.840
a clock on
100
00:03:44.240 --> 00:03:45.520
Avery: coordinates for the record.
101
00:03:46.240 --> 00:03:48.960
Anna: 19.4759 degrees
102
00:03:48.960 --> 00:03:51.245
north, 266.6
103
00:03:51.575 --> 00:03:54.220
7138 east, at an
104
00:03:54.220 --> 00:03:57.020
elevation of about 511 metres.
105
00:03:57.260 --> 00:03:59.260
Though next time you're looking at a full
106
00:03:59.260 --> 00:04:02.020
lunar map, that's roughly the spot where a
107
00:04:02.020 --> 00:04:04.780
piece of Falcon 9 is now permanently part of
108
00:04:04.780 --> 00:04:05.260
the moon.
109
00:04:05.660 --> 00:04:08.099
Avery: Tiny, uninvited addition to the lunar
110
00:04:08.099 --> 00:04:08.620
surface.
111
00:04:08.780 --> 00:04:10.300
Anna: It's not going anywhere.
112
00:04:10.540 --> 00:04:13.180
Alright, this next one's a tougher storey,
113
00:04:13.500 --> 00:04:15.780
an official update to a storey we've been
114
00:04:15.780 --> 00:04:18.340
following for some weeks now. And it's not a
115
00:04:18.340 --> 00:04:21.129
happy ending. NASA's Swift Observatory,
116
00:04:21.449 --> 00:04:23.609
a telescope that's been watching gamma ray
117
00:04:23.609 --> 00:04:25.929
bursts and other high energy events since
118
00:04:25.929 --> 00:04:28.729
2004, has been slowly losing
119
00:04:28.729 --> 00:04:31.489
altitude faster than expected because of
120
00:04:31.489 --> 00:04:34.209
increased solar activity puffing up the upper
121
00:04:34.209 --> 00:04:36.489
atmosphere and adding extra drag.
122
00:04:36.889 --> 00:04:38.569
Avery: So it's literally falling.
123
00:04:38.969 --> 00:04:41.929
Anna: It's literally falling. And without a rescue,
124
00:04:42.009 --> 00:04:44.529
it's going to burn up in an uncontrolled re
125
00:04:44.529 --> 00:04:46.729
entry sometime before the end of this year.
126
00:04:47.440 --> 00:04:50.440
So NASA took a bit of a gamble. They signed a
127
00:04:50.440 --> 00:04:53.280
$30 million contract with an Arizona company
128
00:04:53.360 --> 00:04:56.360
called Catalyst Space Technologies to build a
129
00:04:56.360 --> 00:04:58.880
dedicated rescue spacecraft called Link
130
00:04:59.120 --> 00:05:01.720
and try to dock with Swift and boost it back
131
00:05:01.720 --> 00:05:02.880
to a safer orbit.
132
00:05:03.200 --> 00:05:05.600
Avery: That's an extremely tight turnaround for
133
00:05:05.600 --> 00:05:05.840
building
134
00:05:05.840 --> 00:05:08.680
Anna: a spacecraft under a year designed to
135
00:05:08.680 --> 00:05:11.320
launch. Link actually got off the ground on
136
00:05:11.320 --> 00:05:14.320
July 3, riding a Northrup Grumman Pegasus
137
00:05:14.320 --> 00:05:17.130
XL rocket launch. And for about three weeks
138
00:05:17.210 --> 00:05:19.170
things were tracking toward an actual
139
00:05:19.170 --> 00:05:22.010
rendezvous attempt. And then, um, and
140
00:05:22.010 --> 00:05:24.370
then Link itself started spinning
141
00:05:24.370 --> 00:05:27.370
uncontrollably. An attitude control failure
142
00:05:27.370 --> 00:05:29.770
on the rescue spacecraft, not on Swift.
143
00:05:30.090 --> 00:05:32.650
NASA made the failure official on August
144
00:05:32.650 --> 00:05:35.530
19th. Swift's fate is now sealed.
145
00:05:35.690 --> 00:05:38.370
Uncontrolled reentry sometime before year's
146
00:05:38.370 --> 00:05:40.490
end. No more boosts coming.
147
00:05:40.730 --> 00:05:43.620
Avery: Is that just it then? Um, mission over.
148
00:05:43.780 --> 00:05:44.580
Nothing learned?
149
00:05:45.060 --> 00:05:47.900
Anna: Not quite. Link is apparently still going to
150
00:05:47.900 --> 00:05:50.340
attempt a close approach to Swift, even
151
00:05:50.340 --> 00:05:53.020
without being able to dock and boost it just
152
00:05:53.020 --> 00:05:55.420
to gather proximity operations data for
153
00:05:55.420 --> 00:05:57.780
whatever the next rescue attempt looks like.
154
00:05:58.100 --> 00:06:01.020
And NASA administrator Jared Isaacman put
155
00:06:01.020 --> 00:06:03.860
it about as honestly as you can, this
156
00:06:03.860 --> 00:06:05.860
is not the outcome we were working toward,
157
00:06:06.020 --> 00:06:08.420
but it does not change why this mission was
158
00:06:08.420 --> 00:06:09.140
worth attempting.
159
00:06:09.630 --> 00:06:11.950
Avery: Which is the very diplomatic way of saying we
160
00:06:11.950 --> 00:06:13.990
tried something hard and it didn't work, but
161
00:06:13.990 --> 00:06:16.190
we needed to try exactly that.
162
00:06:16.430 --> 00:06:18.950
Anna: Satellite servicing and rescue missions are
163
00:06:18.950 --> 00:06:20.990
still a, uh, genuinely new capability.
164
00:06:21.470 --> 00:06:23.710
Nobody's got this down to a routine yet.
165
00:06:24.030 --> 00:06:26.630
Every attempt, successful or not, is
166
00:06:26.630 --> 00:06:28.670
teaching people how to actually do it.
167
00:06:29.070 --> 00:06:31.230
Avery: Small silver lining for a telescope that's
168
00:06:31.230 --> 00:06:32.590
about to become a shooting star.
169
00:06:32.990 --> 00:06:35.990
Anna: A very expensive, very short lived
170
00:06:35.990 --> 00:06:36.270
one.
171
00:06:36.560 --> 00:06:38.240
Avery: Okay, you said this one connects back to
172
00:06:38.240 --> 00:06:39.360
Swift how?
173
00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:42.720
Anna: Because Swift's X ray instrument is actually
174
00:06:42.720 --> 00:06:45.600
part of the data behind it. One last bit of
175
00:06:45.600 --> 00:06:47.720
science out of that observatory before it
176
00:06:47.720 --> 00:06:50.240
goes. There's a blazar that's a
177
00:06:50.240 --> 00:06:53.120
supermassive black hole blasting out a jet of
178
00:06:53.120 --> 00:06:55.680
plasma pointed almost directly at us
179
00:06:55.920 --> 00:06:56.960
called PKS
180
00:06:57.280 --> 00:07:00.280
223-3148. A
181
00:07:00.280 --> 00:07:03.200
team led by Silke Britzen at the Max Planck
182
00:07:03.200 --> 00:07:05.560
Institute for Radio Astronomy has been
183
00:07:05.560 --> 00:07:07.560
watching its jet using three different
184
00:07:07.560 --> 00:07:10.340
instru. The Very Long Baseline
185
00:07:10.340 --> 00:07:13.060
array here on Earth for radio, the Fermi
186
00:07:13.060 --> 00:07:15.820
telescope for gamma rays, and Swift for X
187
00:07:15.820 --> 00:07:16.220
rays.
188
00:07:16.620 --> 00:07:18.700
Avery: Three instruments stakeout, right?
189
00:07:18.700 --> 00:07:21.060
Anna: And combining all three is what let them
190
00:07:21.060 --> 00:07:23.580
catch something odd. The jet's motion
191
00:07:23.580 --> 00:07:26.220
changed in a way that doesn't match a normal
192
00:07:26.220 --> 00:07:28.780
blazar. It made a sudden, unexpected
193
00:07:28.780 --> 00:07:31.700
deviation, almost like something invisible
194
00:07:31.700 --> 00:07:34.060
gave it a nudge partway along its path.
195
00:07:34.510 --> 00:07:37.030
Avery: And something invisible is doing a lot of
196
00:07:37.030 --> 00:07:38.030
work in that sentence.
197
00:07:38.350 --> 00:07:41.190
Anna: It is, because the team's explanation is
198
00:07:41.190 --> 00:07:43.470
that an unseen clump of dark matter
199
00:07:43.870 --> 00:07:46.150
sitting between us and the jet is
200
00:07:46.150 --> 00:07:48.870
gravitationally lensing it, bending and
201
00:07:48.870 --> 00:07:51.270
magnifying the light of the jet, just like
202
00:07:51.270 --> 00:07:53.990
the way a giant galaxy cluster can lens a
203
00:07:53.990 --> 00:07:56.830
background galaxy, just on a much smaller,
204
00:07:56.830 --> 00:07:58.590
much harder to catch scale.
205
00:07:58.910 --> 00:08:01.750
Avery: Why does that matter? Beyond cool, Dark
206
00:08:01.750 --> 00:08:02.670
matter did a thing.
207
00:08:03.380 --> 00:08:05.580
Anna: Because we still don't know what dark matter
208
00:08:05.580 --> 00:08:07.980
actually is. And one of the best tools we've
209
00:08:07.980 --> 00:08:09.900
got for finding out is looking for its
210
00:08:09.900 --> 00:08:12.420
substructure clumps of it through exactly
211
00:08:12.420 --> 00:08:14.980
this kind of subtle lensing signature. If
212
00:08:14.980 --> 00:08:16.940
this holds up, it's one of the first times
213
00:08:16.940 --> 00:08:19.460
anyone's caught a dark matter clump lensing a
214
00:08:19.460 --> 00:08:22.340
blazar jet specifically. And there's a bonus.
215
00:08:22.740 --> 00:08:25.380
Blazars are suspected sources of high energy
216
00:08:25.380 --> 00:08:28.140
cosmic neutrinos, the ghost particles that
217
00:08:28.140 --> 00:08:30.670
barely interact with anything. A confirmed
218
00:08:30.670 --> 00:08:32.470
lensing event like this could help prove
219
00:08:32.470 --> 00:08:34.350
blazars really are where some of those
220
00:08:34.350 --> 00:08:35.470
neutrinos come from.
221
00:08:35.950 --> 00:08:37.790
Avery: Ritson have anything to say about it?
222
00:08:38.030 --> 00:08:40.790
Anna: Her quote was we are very happy to have
223
00:08:40.790 --> 00:08:43.150
discovered as yet undetected phenomena in the
224
00:08:43.150 --> 00:08:45.710
jet as well as in the gamma ray light curve
225
00:08:45.870 --> 00:08:47.950
published in Monthly Notices of the Royal
226
00:08:47.950 --> 00:08:50.670
Astronomical Society back on July 31.
227
00:08:51.230 --> 00:08:53.670
Avery: So even mid M collapse, Swift's still out
228
00:08:53.670 --> 00:08:54.990
here doing useful science.
229
00:08:55.560 --> 00:08:57.000
Anna: Going out on a high note at least.
230
00:08:57.640 --> 00:08:59.560
Next, a quick one to close out the news.
231
00:08:59.640 --> 00:09:01.680
Rocket Lab had a launch overnight from their
232
00:09:01.680 --> 00:09:02.760
pad in New Zealand.
233
00:09:03.080 --> 00:09:04.120
Avery: What'd they send up?
234
00:09:04.360 --> 00:09:07.040
Anna: A satellite called Susanoo 2 for the
235
00:09:07.040 --> 00:09:09.960
Tokyo based company IQPS. That's
236
00:09:09.960 --> 00:09:12.080
their ninth satellite launched by Rocket Lab.
237
00:09:12.080 --> 00:09:14.480
Now it's a synthetic aperture radar
238
00:09:14.480 --> 00:09:16.840
satellite, meaning it images the ground using
239
00:09:16.840 --> 00:09:19.640
radar instead of visible light. So it can see
240
00:09:19.640 --> 00:09:21.760
straight through cloudgover and works just as
241
00:09:21.760 --> 00:09:23.160
well at night as during the day.
242
00:09:23.760 --> 00:09:25.640
Avery: Handy for a company building out a whole
243
00:09:25.640 --> 00:09:27.280
constellation of these, I'd guess.
244
00:09:27.600 --> 00:09:30.360
Anna: Exactly. This is satellite number nine toward
245
00:09:30.360 --> 00:09:33.120
a planned constellation of 36. All
246
00:09:33.120 --> 00:09:35.800
aimed at giving customers near real time high
247
00:09:35.800 --> 00:09:38.200
resolution radar imagery of pretty much
248
00:09:38.200 --> 00:09:40.800
anywhere on Earth. The mission was nicknamed
249
00:09:40.800 --> 00:09:43.400
the Lightning God. Defens lifted off on an
250
00:09:43.400 --> 00:09:46.280
electron rocket just 59ft tall and
251
00:09:46.280 --> 00:09:49.240
dropped Susanoo 2 into low Earth orbit about
252
00:09:49.240 --> 00:09:52.000
357 miles up, roughly 50
253
00:09:52.000 --> 00:09:53.120
minutes after liftoff.
254
00:09:53.610 --> 00:09:55.770
Avery: Rocket Labs keeping up a pretty relentless
255
00:09:55.770 --> 00:09:56.810
launch pace this year.
256
00:09:57.050 --> 00:09:59.610
Anna: This was their 14th flight of 2026
257
00:09:59.610 --> 00:10:02.530
alone and 93rd overall for the electron
258
00:10:02.530 --> 00:10:04.490
rocket. They're closing in on their own
259
00:10:04.490 --> 00:10:06.650
record with plenty of year left to go.
260
00:10:06.970 --> 00:10:08.330
Avery: No signs of flowing down.
261
00:10:08.650 --> 00:10:09.449
Anna: None at all.
262
00:10:09.690 --> 00:10:11.930
Avery: Alright, before we go, what should people
263
00:10:11.930 --> 00:10:13.370
actually go look at tonight?
264
00:10:13.530 --> 00:10:16.370
Anna: If you've got a telescope, even a modest 14
265
00:10:16.370 --> 00:10:18.770
inches or so pointed at the Ring Nebula.
266
00:10:18.770 --> 00:10:20.990
Tonight, look straight up after dark for
267
00:10:20.990 --> 00:10:23.150
Vega, the brilliant star practically
268
00:10:23.150 --> 00:10:25.510
overhead. And just below it, you'll spot a
269
00:10:25.510 --> 00:10:27.870
neat little parallelogram of stars marking
270
00:10:27.870 --> 00:10:30.550
the constellation Lyra. The Ring Nebula,
271
00:10:30.550 --> 00:10:33.150
catalogued as M M57, sits right
272
00:10:33.150 --> 00:10:35.390
inside that parallelogram what are
273
00:10:35.390 --> 00:10:37.230
Avery: we actually looking at with that one?
274
00:10:37.470 --> 00:10:40.190
Anna: It's the glowing ghostly remnant of a dying
275
00:10:40.270 --> 00:10:43.150
sun like star. Threw the eyepiece at decent
276
00:10:43.150 --> 00:10:46.030
magnification 100 to 150 times.
277
00:10:46.500 --> 00:10:48.940
It looks like a small pale grey smoke ring
278
00:10:48.940 --> 00:10:51.340
hanging against the starfield. If you've got
279
00:10:51.340 --> 00:10:54.340
an oxygen 3 or narrow band filter, that'll
280
00:10:54.340 --> 00:10:56.180
make it pop even more against the background.
281
00:10:56.660 --> 00:10:58.980
Avery: And for anyone without a telescope tonight,
282
00:10:59.060 --> 00:11:01.300
Anna: the Moon's the easy target. It's a waxing
283
00:11:01.300 --> 00:11:03.860
gibbous, about 63% illuminated,
284
00:11:04.020 --> 00:11:06.020
nice and bright overhead through the evening.
285
00:11:06.340 --> 00:11:08.540
And mark your calendars for next week. A
286
00:11:08.540 --> 00:11:11.380
partial lunar eclipse on the 27th and 28th
287
00:11:11.460 --> 00:11:14.380
is going to cover a full 96% of the
288
00:11:14.380 --> 00:11:17.180
Moon's face, about as close to total as a
289
00:11:17.180 --> 00:11:19.520
partial eclipse gets. We'll have full viewing
290
00:11:19.520 --> 00:11:21.880
details for that one as it gets closer, a
291
00:11:21.880 --> 00:11:22.360
teaser
292
00:11:22.360 --> 00:11:24.000
Avery: and a homework assignment in one.
293
00:11:24.320 --> 00:11:25.120
Anna: That's the job.
294
00:11:25.200 --> 00:11:27.600
And that's it for today's episode. Series
295
00:11:27.600 --> 00:11:30.480
five episode 173 in the books,
296
00:11:30.480 --> 00:11:31.120
so to speak.
297
00:11:31.520 --> 00:11:33.760
Avery: Quick recap. NASA and international
298
00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:36.640
partners pinned down exactly where a SpaceX
299
00:11:36.640 --> 00:11:39.400
rocket stage hit the moon. The rescue mission
300
00:11:39.400 --> 00:11:41.840
for NASA's Swift telescope comes up short.
301
00:11:42.240 --> 00:11:44.720
A black hole jet may be getting a boost from
302
00:11:44.720 --> 00:11:47.600
unseen dark matter. And Rocket
303
00:11:47.600 --> 00:11:50.460
Lab keeps its launch pace red hot with a new
304
00:11:50.460 --> 00:11:52.140
radar satellite for Japan.
305
00:11:52.540 --> 00:11:54.740
Anna: If you enjoyed the show, the best thing you
306
00:11:54.740 --> 00:11:57.100
can do is tell a friend. Leave us a rating
307
00:11:57.100 --> 00:11:59.340
wherever you listen and follow us. Just
308
00:11:59.340 --> 00:12:01.700
search astrodaily Pod on your favourite
309
00:12:01.700 --> 00:12:03.980
platform. Bull show notes and links are
310
00:12:03.980 --> 00:12:06.300
always up at astronomydaily IO
311
00:12:06.780 --> 00:12:07.460
we'll be back
312
00:12:07.460 --> 00:12:09.380
Avery: tomorrow with the weekend wrap from across
313
00:12:09.380 --> 00:12:10.140
the universe.
314
00:12:10.300 --> 00:12:12.300
Anna: Until then, um, keep looking up.
315
00:12:12.540 --> 00:12:13.580
Avery: Clear skies everyone.
316
00:12:13.980 --> 00:12:15.340
Anna: Astronomy Day.
317
00:12:16.440 --> 00:12:18.300
Avery: Mhm Storeys we told
318
00:12:20.270 --> 00:12:20.510
Anna: love.