NASA's Roman Space Telescope Is Ready to Fly — Nine Months Early

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Anna: Hey everyone. Welcome back to Astronomy

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AstroDailyPod. I'm Anna.

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Avery: And I'm, uh, avery. It's Tuesday, August

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25th, series five, episode

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176.

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Anna: Quick programming note before we get into it,

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no firm new launch date yet on China's

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Chang' E7, the storey we spent most of

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yesterday's episode on. Still pointing at

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that mid to late September window we talked

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about. Nothing more specific from CNSA

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as of this morning. We'll flag it the moment

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that changes.

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Avery: So instead, today belongs to a

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telescope. A, uh, very big, very expensive,

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very ready to fly telescope.

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Anna: NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space

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Telescope is sitting inside its rocket

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fairing right now. Cleared for launch this

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Sunday, and it's getting there the better

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part of a year earlier than anyone expected.

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We'll spend some real time on why that

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matters.

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Avery: Astronauts are heading back outside the space

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station today for the third spacewalk in a

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month. Astronomers have found a scar

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at the centre of the Milky Way from a

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collision 12 billion years ago.

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Jupiter might be about to supercharge the

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Perseids in 2028. And there's

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a near total lunar eclipse this week

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though we've gotta manage expectations on

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that last one. For anyone listening from down

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under, let's get into it.

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Okay, so this is the big one today. Talk me

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through where things actually stand.

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Anna: As of Monday, the Nancy Grace Roman Space

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Telescope is fully encapsulated inside the

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fairing of the Falcon Heavy rocket that's

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going to launch it. That happened at Kennedy

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Space Centre's Payload Hazardous Servicing

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facility. Teams will move the encapsulated

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payload over to SpaceX's hangar at

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pad 39A, made it to the rocket

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and roll the whole stack out to the pad later

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this week. Liftoff is targeted for no earlier

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than 7:26am Eastern time

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this Sunday, August 30th.

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Avery: That's in Florida time. So for anyone doing

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the math from Australia, that lines up with

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Sunday night here. Somewhere around 9:30pm

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Sydney time.

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Anna: Exactly. We'll pin down the precise local

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time closer to launch day. But here's the

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headline that actually got our attention.

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Roman is launching about nine months ahead of

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its original schedule.

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Avery: Nine months early for a NASA flagship

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mission. That basically never happens.

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Anna: It basically never happens, which is exactly

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why it's worth pausing on. Big space

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telescopes have a well earned reputation for

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slipping. Right. Webb famously blew out its

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schedule and budget by years. Roman going the

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other direction, arriving early and as far as

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the reporting shows, without dramatic cost

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blowouts, is genuinely unus.

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And it says something about how NASA and its

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contractors have run this build.

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Avery: What actually happens once it's up there?

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What is Roman for?

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Anna: 2 big jobs plus a bonus one.

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Job 1 map Dark Energy and dark matter

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by surveying huge swaths of the sky and

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watching how galaxies are distributed and how

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their light is bent by gravity. Job 2

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Hunt for exoplanets using a coronagraph

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instrument that's specifically built to block

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out a star's glare so the much fainter

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planets around it become visible. NASA's

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senior project scientist on this, Julie

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McInerney, put it nicely. She called it

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doing magic with physics, using the wave

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properties of light itself to cancel out

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starlight and reveal what's hiding next to

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it.

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Avery: And, um, the bonus job?

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Anna: The bonus job is speed. Roman's

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mirror is roughly the same size and sharpness

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as Hubble's, so similar image quality,

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but its camera has a field of view about

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100 times wider. NASA's own

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comparison is the one that stuck with us. One

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month of Roman surveying the Milky Way would

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take Hubble something like a

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Avery: century to match a century of

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Hubble time in a month.

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Anna: That's the number over its main survey.

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Roman is expected to image something like

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2 billion galaxies. And it'll

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generate more than 500 terabytes of data

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a year. For comparison, Hubble has

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produced around 400 terabytes total

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across its entire 35 year mission.

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Roman matches that in well under 12 months

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every year for years M. How

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Avery: does it stack up against James Webb since

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that's the telescope everyone's already got a

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mental picture of different job.

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Anna: Basically, Webb is built for depth,

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extreme sensitivity in the infrared,

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staring at one small patch of sky for a

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long time to see extremely faint,

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extremely distant objects in exquisite

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detail. Roman is built for breath,

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a wide field survey machine covering

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roughly 50 times the area Webb can. In

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a single image, one finds needles, the

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other maps the whole haystack. And

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Roman's actually expected to help with a

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puzzle. Webb turned up the little red

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dots, these compact, surprisingly

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luminous objects from the early universe

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nobody's fully explained yet. More

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sky coverage means more of those objects to

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study statistically instead of one at a time.

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Avery: Where does it actually go once it launches?

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Anna: Not low Earth orbit like Hubble or the space

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station Roman is headed to. Sun Earth,

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Lagrange Point 2, about

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1.6 million kilometres out.

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The same gravitationally stable neighbourhood

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Webb calls home. It's carrying enough

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hydrazine fuel on board for course

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corrections on the way out and for station

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keeping across a planned five year prim

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mission.

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Avery: Any sense of what happens right after launch?

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Like day One week one.

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Anna: Jeremy Perkins, one of the integration and

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test scientists on the project, described it

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about as plainly as you can. Roughly

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30 days out from an early August update,

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he said, we're going to be launching Roman,

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testing it out, opening the deployable

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aperture cover, looking at the sky and

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sending data down to the ground for the first

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time. So the sequence is launch,

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commissioning, first light, and then the real

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survey work begins.

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Avery: And the project managers basically just

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declared it done and ready.

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Anna: Jacqui Townsend's line was short. Roman

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is ready for launch after nine months of

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schedule margin. They clearly feel confident

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saying that.

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Avery: Worth asking. Who actually is Nancy Grace

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Roman? The name gets used a lot without the

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backstory.

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Anna: She was NASA's first chief astronomer back in

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the 1960s and she's usually credited as

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the person who did more than anyone to get

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the Hubble Space Telescope funded and built

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in the first place, which is where the

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nickname Mother of Hubble comes from. This

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mission actually started life under a much

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clunkier name, Wide Field Infrared

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Survey Telescope, before NASA renamed it in

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her honour a few years back. Given what

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Roman's actually built to do, a fast

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wide field survey machine following on from

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Hubble's legacy. It's a genuinely fitting

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name.

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Avery: And, um, this isn't a NASA only build, Right.

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I feel like I've seen ESA and other partners

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mentioned, right?

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Anna: There's meaningful international

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contribution. ESA is flying as a

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formal partner, supplying detector hardware

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for that coronagraph we just talked about,

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plus star trackers and batteries. And

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here's a nice local angle. Some of Roman's

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data is going to come down through a new 35

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metre ESA antenna at New Norcia

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out in Western Australia.

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Avery: Wait, this telescope's data's going to

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physically land in Australia?

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Anna: Some of it, yes. New Norcia already

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hosts one ESA dish, and this new one

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was built partly with missions like Roman in

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mind. So next time someone tells you space

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is happening somewhere else, you can point

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out there's a dish out west quietly catching

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signals from a telescope parked a million

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miles from Earth.

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Avery: And, um, remind me on cost, because flagship

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telescopes have a reputation for blowing

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budgets as well as schedules, anon's been

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Anna: reported at roughly $4 billion across its

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development. That's real money, but it's a

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fraction of Webb's final cost. And going back

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to where we started, it's arriving early

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rather than late, which on recent NASA

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flagship history is close to a genuine

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surprise.

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Avery: So to sum up the why this Matters, a $4

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billion flagship observatory, arriving

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early instead of late, headed out to join

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Webb at L2 built to survey the

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sky roughly a hundred times faster than

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Hubble, hunting dark energy and thousands

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of new exoplanets at the same time.

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Anna: That's the mission Sunday morning. US time.

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We'll be watching.

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Avery: Sticking with things happening literally this

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week, there is a spacewalk today.

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Anna: There is, and it's the third one in less than

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a month for the same two astronauts. NASA's

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Anil Menon and ESA's Sophie AdNote are

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heading back outside the International space

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station today. US time for what Mission

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Control is calling Spacewalk 98,

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Menon's third career EVA, AD notes.

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Avery: Second, remind me what the first two were

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about.

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Anna: Spacewalk 96 back on August 6th

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had Menon out with veteran astronaut Jessica

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Mair, installing hardware to modify the

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station's power channels, prepping for a

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future solar Array upgrade. Spacewalk

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97 on the 18th is the one that actually

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made headlines. Menon and Adano went out to

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replace a space to ground communications

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antenna. And Adno became the first French

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woman ever to conduct a spacewalk.

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Avery: And today's picks up where that one left off.

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Anna: Right. Today's walk is billed as finishing

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the antenna replacement and if time and

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consumables allow, swapping in a new

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retroreflector, which is a passive device

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used to help visiting spacecraft navigate and

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dock precisely. Standard EVA suit

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up puts the actual hatch open time at around

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8:35am M. Eastern, running

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roughly six and a half hours. So by the time

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most of you are hearing this, it's either

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just getting underway or already wrapped up.

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Avery: US side Three spacewalks, two

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astronauts, one month. That's a heavy

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cadence.

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Anna: It is though. It's also just what station

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maintenance looks like when several jobs

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queue up at once. Power upgrades, comms,

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hardware, docking aids. Nothing about today's

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walk is flagged as urgent or off normal. It's

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scheduled methodical work. We'll confirm how

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it went and note anything unexpected once

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NASA posts the wrap up.

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Avery: Now, for something that happened a lot longer

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ago than this morning, try 12 billion

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years.

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Anna: This is a genuinely nice piece of galactic

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archaeology. A team led by Daveed

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Massari at the Italian Institute for

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Astrophysics, working on something called the

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ARMA Project, has identified evidence that

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that the Milky Way swallowed a dwarf galaxy

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roughly 12 billion years ago. Which pushes

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the known start of our galaxy's merger

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history back about 1.8 billion years

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earlier than anything previously documented.

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Avery: How do you even find evidence of

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Anna: something that old globular clusters,

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these dense ancient balls of stars that orbit

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the galactic core. The team used Hubble to

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measure the ages and chemical makeup the

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metallicity of clusters right at the Milky

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Way centre with real precision. And they

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found three distinct groups. Two matched

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patterns astronomers already understood. The

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third didn't fit anything on record.

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Different age, different chemistry, which is

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the signature of material that came from

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somewhere else entirely.

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Avery: Somewhere else being this dwarf galaxy.

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Anna: Right, They've given it the name low energy

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Kraken Hercules or LKH for short,

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and estimate its mass at around 500

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million times that of the Sun. That's

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genuinely comparable in scale to Gaia

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Enceladus, the previously best known ancient

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merger in the Milky Way's history. Most of

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what LKH contributed ended up

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concentrated within about 20,000 light years

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of the galactic centre, which is exactly why

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it left a scar right at the core, rather than

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out in the disc somewhere else.

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Avery: What does finding this actually tell us?

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Beyond just there was another one.

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Anna: It fills in the very earliest chapter of the

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Storey. One of the team members, Chiara

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Zerbinati, put it simply. This work tells us

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what happened to the Milky Way in its

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infancy. A merger that early and that

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massive would have shaped how the galaxy's

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core assembled and how everything since has

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built on top of it. She called it a piece of

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the answer to where we ultimately came from.

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Avery: 12 billion years, and we're only just now

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finding the scar tissue.

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Anna: That's galactic archaeology for you. The

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wounds heal into structure. And it takes

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instruments like Hubble and a lot of careful

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work on stellar ages to read the scar.

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Avery: Okay, moving on and sticking with things

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written a long way in advance. This one's a

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forecast rather than a discovery. Meteor

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watchers are starting to talk about

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Anna: 2028, specifically whether

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Jupiter is about to give the Perseid meteor

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shower a serious boost. Robert Lunsford

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from the American Meteor Society has been

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modelling this. Jupiter's gravity passes

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close to part of the debris stream left

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behind by Comet 109p Swift Tuttle,

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the comet responsible for the perseids.

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Roughly every 12 years, the next close

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pass lines up with 2028.

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Avery: And the effect is what exactly?

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Anna: Jupiter's pull can nudge some of that debris

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into orbits that bring it closer to Earth's

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path. Which means more material for our

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atmosphere to potentially run into, and

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potentially a real outburst rather than a

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typical year's Perseid rate.

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Avery: How much more are we talking?

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Anna: Lunsford's own framing is honest about the

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uncertainty. He called these predictions

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educated guesses because the models don't

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have great data on exactly how dense the

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debris is at different points in the stream.

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But the working expectation is a, ah, two

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step signal. If 2027's Perseids

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come in elevated above 100 meteors an hour,

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that would support forecasts of something

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like 2 to 300 an hour in 2028.

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Genuinely spectacular.

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Avery: If it holds up, that's years away. But the

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good news is the timing might actually

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cooperate.

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Anna: It might. The 2028 peak is expected under

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a third quarter moon, which is far better

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than a full moon washing out the fainter

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meteors. Nothing to mark the calendar for

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yet, but it's the kind of setup worth

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watching over the next two Augusts.

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Avery: Alright, what should people actually go out

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and look for? And from what you said at the

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top of the show, I have a feeling a caveat's

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coming.

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Anna: There is, and we want to get ahead of it

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rather than oversell it. The lunar eclipse we

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flagged yesterday is real and it's dramatic

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on paper. A partial eclipse the night of

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August 27th into the 28th covering

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96% of the moon's disc. About as

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close to total as a partial eclipse gets

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without crossing the line. Peak coverage

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lands around 12:12am U.S. eastern

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Time on the 28th, which is 4:12

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UTC.

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Avery: Um, and convert it to here.

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Anna: That's the catch. 4:12 UTC works

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out to a little after 2pm in Sydney.

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Daybright Moon nowhere near the horizon.

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This one plays out over the Americas and

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parts of Europe and Africa, catching it low

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near sunrise for Australia and pretty much

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all of Asia and Pacific. The Moon is simply

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on the wrong side of the planet when it

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happens.

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Avery: So no blood moon for us this time.

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Anna: Not this time. Genuinely sorry to the watch

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this space crowd from yesterday. If you've

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got family or listeners in the Americas,

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though, it's worth telling them. 96%

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coverage, completely safe to watch with

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nothing more than your eyes, binoculars or a

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telescope. And it should turn the moon, uh, a

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deep coppery red as it passes through Earth's

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shadow.

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Avery: Anything to actually look at from down here

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this week, so we're not sending everyone home

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empty handed.

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Anna: Keep an eye on the evening western sky for

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Venus. It's been sitting there bright and

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unmistakable through most of August and is

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still an easy naked eye target after sunset.

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And Saturn's well placed too, rising

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in the east as it gets dark and sitting up

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nicely for a chunk of the evening. If you've

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got binoculars or a small scope handy.

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Nothing as headline grabbing as a comet

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outburst, but a genuinely nice pair to go

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find tonight.

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Avery: Venus at dusk, Saturn overnight, and an

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eclipse for the other side of the planet.

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Anna: That's the sky this week and that's it for

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Today's episode.

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Series 5 Episode 176 in the

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00:16:42.900 --> 00:16:43.260
Books

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Avery: Quick Recap NASA's Roman Space Telescope is

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encapsulated, cleared and launching this

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Sunday, nine months ahead of schedule, to

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hunt dark energy and exoplanets from deep

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space. Astronauts Anil Menon and Sophie

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Adenote are back outside the station today

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for their third spacewalk in a month.

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Astronomers have found a 12 billion year old

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merger scar at the heart of the Milky Way.

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Jupiter might supercharge the Perseids in

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2028, and there's a spectacular near total

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lunar eclipse this week, just not for us here

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in the southern hemisphere.

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Anna: If you enjoyed the show, the best thing you

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00:17:17.479 --> 00:17:19.799
can do is tell a friend. Leave us a rating

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00:17:19.799 --> 00:17:22.479
wherever you listen and follow us. Just

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00:17:22.479 --> 00:17:24.799
search astrodaily pod on Facebook,

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00:17:25.039 --> 00:17:28.039
Instagram, TikTok X, Tumblr and

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00:17:28.039 --> 00:17:28.559
YouTube.

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00:17:28.799 --> 00:17:30.399
Avery: And while you're online, head to

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00:17:30.399 --> 00:17:33.359
astronomydaily IO and sign up for our free

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00:17:33.359 --> 00:17:35.890
daily newsletter. A summary of the latest

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00:17:35.890 --> 00:17:38.130
space and astronomy news straight to your

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00:17:38.130 --> 00:17:41.010
inbox, plus an email alert every time we post

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00:17:41.010 --> 00:17:41.810
a new episode.

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Anna: We'll be back tomorrow with more from across

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00:17:44.490 --> 00:17:45.250
the universe.

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Avery: Until then, keep looking up and

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clear skies.

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Anna: See you next time. Astronomy Day

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00:17:53.730 --> 00:17:54.930
Avery: Storeys we told.

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You.

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Anna: Mhm.