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Good day, stargazers, and welcome to Astronomy Daily, episode forty
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one of season five. I'm Anna and I'm.
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Avery, and what a day will be alive and looking up? Anna,
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It's Tuesday, February seventeenth, twenty twenty six, and we have
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not one, but two celestial events happening today.
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That's right. The Sun is about to be turned into
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a ring of fire over Antarctica, and a comment that
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may never return is making its closest pass to Earth
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as we speak. Plus we've got JWST solving an identity
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crisis for some massive exoplanets, NASA doing CT scans on
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the Northern Lights, and a startup that wants to fuel
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rockets with water. And a preview of why twenty twenty
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six might just be the greatest year of eclipses in
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a generation.
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Let's not waste a single second. Let's dive right.
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In, so Avery, We've been building up to this for weeks,
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and today is finally the day. Right now, as many
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of our listeners are tuning in, an annular solar eclipse
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is tracing its path across Antarctica.
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And I know some of our listeners might be thinking,
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didn't we just cover this, and yes, we've talked about
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it in recent episodes, but today is the day, and
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there's something truly special happening down at the bottom of
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the world.
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Let's recap the essentials. An annular eclipse happens when the
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Moon passes directly between the Earth and the Sun, but
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because the Moon is at a more distant point in
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its orbit, it doesn't completely cover the Sun's disk. Instead,
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you get this breath taking ring of brilliant sunlight surrounding
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the dark silhouette of the Moon.
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The ring of fire, and today's ring will last up
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to two minutes and twenty seconds for anyone lucky enough
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to be standing in the path of annularity. At the
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moment of greatest eclipse, which occurs at twelve twelve UTC,
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the Moon will cover approximately ninety six percent of the
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Sun's surface.
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Now ninety six percent sounds like almost everything, but here's
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the important thing. It's not a total eclipse. The sky
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won't go dark. You absolutely must keep your solar eclipse
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glasses on for the entire event. There's no moment where
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it's safe to look at the Sun with the naked eye.
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The path of annularity itself is actually quite wide, for
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eclipse standards about six hundred and sixteen kilometers across, but
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it's crossing some of the most remote territory on Earth.
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We're talking about the Antarctic mainland and the surrounding Southern Ocean.
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So realistically, the only people seeing the full ring of
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fire today are researchers at a handful of Antarctic stations.
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However, the partial phases of the eclipse are visible from
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a much wider area. Observers in southern Argentina, southern Chile,
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southeastern Africa, Madagascar, and Mauritius will all see the Moon
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take a bite out of the Sun to varying degrees.
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And here's something that I think really elevates today's event.
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This eclipse kicks off the first eclipse season of twenty
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twenty six. Eclipse seasons are these brief windows, typically about
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thirty four days long, when the geometry of the Sun, Earth,
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and Moon aligns just right for eclipses to occur, and
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they usually come in pairs.
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Exactly so less than two weeks from now, on March
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the third, we get a total lunar eclipse, a blood moon,
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visible from North America. And that's just the beginning for
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twenty twenty six, which we'll come back to later in
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the show.
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For anyone wanting to follow along today, there are several
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live streams available, and we'll have links in our show
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notes even if you can't see it from where you are.
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This is a wonderful moment to appreciate the clockwork precision
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of our solar system.
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Am sticking with things happening literally today, let's talk about
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Comet C twenty twenty four e one, better known as
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Comet weird Chosh, which is making its closest approach to
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Earth right now.
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This is one of those stories where the science and
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the poetry really come together beautifully. This comment was discovered
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back in March twenty twenty four by Polish astronomer Casper
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Weirtoch using the Mount Lemon survey in Arizona, and today
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it passes within about one hundred and fifty one million
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kilometers from Earth, roughly the same distance as Earth is
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from the Sun, so.
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It's not exactly a close shave, but it's still a
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significant astronomical moment. What makes this comment truly special is
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that it's on a hyperbolic orbit. For our listeners who
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aren't familiar with that, term. It means the comet's trajectory
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isn't a closed loop. It's not coming back.
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Ever, or at least not for over two hundred thousand years,
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and even that's optimistic. Scientists believe it originated in the
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Orc cloud, that vast icy shell at the outer edges
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of our solar system, and it's now getting a gravitational
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slingshot that will send it how into interstellar space. This
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is genuinely a once in a civilization event.
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NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day featured Comet Versos today
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with a thirty minute exposure taken from Chile, showing a
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gorgeous five degree long ion tail and three separate dust tails.
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The comet also has a vivid green coma, which scientists
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believe is linked to carbon bearing compounds, likely diatomic carbon,
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fluorescing under ultraviolet sunlight.
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The James Webb Telescope actually observed this comet last year
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when it was still far out at about seven astronomical
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units from the sun. They found that it's activity is
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primarily driven by carbon dioxide rather than carbon monoxide, which
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is interesting because it suggests the comet may have lost
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its near surface COO early in its evolution.
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Now, in terms of actually seeing it at magnitude seven
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point eight to eight point two, you're going to need
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bens at minimum, ideally a small telescope. It's currently in
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the constellation Sculptor, quite low in the southwestern sky after sunset.
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Southern hemisphere observers have the far better view today.
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Northern hemisphere observers don't despair. Over the coming days, the
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comment will climb a bit higher, and by around February
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twenty third it should be a more accessible target as
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it passes near some galaxies in Cetus, but it will
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be fading by then. If you can get out tonight
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with some optics, it's worth the effort. You're quite literally
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saying goodbye to something the human race will never see again.
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All right, let's travel one hundred and thirty three light
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years away to the constellation Pegasus, where the James Webb
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telescope has just settled one of exoplanet's science's most persistent mysteries.
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And the key to solving it. Hydrogen sulfide, the molecule
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that gives rotten eggs their delightful aroma. Published in Nature Astronomy,
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a team from UCLA and U see San Diego use
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JWST to study HR eight seven nine nine system, which
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hosts four enormous gas giant planets, each between five and
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ten times the mass of Jupiter.
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Now, these planets have been known since two thousand and eight,
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and they're actually directly visible through telescopes, which is remarkable
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in itself. Most exoplanets are detected indirectly. But because they're
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so massive, and because they're so far from their star
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between fifteen and seventy times Earth's distance from the Sun,
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scientists have long debated if they're truly planets or something
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else entirely.
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Specifically, are they planets or brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs are
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sometimes called failed stars, objects that form through gravitational collapse
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of a gas cloud like a star, but never got
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massive enough to sustain hydrogen fusion. The traditional mass boundary
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is around thirteen Jupiter masses, but that's a bit arbitrary.
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What really matters is how they formed. Did they form
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like planets through core accretion, building up a solid core
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from dust and rock that then attracted gas, or did
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they form like stars through the rapid collapse of a
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dense pocket of gas.
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And this is where the rotten eggs come in. The
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team detected hydrogen sulfide in the atmospheres of these three
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worlds Hr eight, seven, nine, nine, C, D, and E.
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Now why is sulfur the key? Because at the vast
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distances these planets orbit their star, sulfur can only exist
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in solid form within the protoplanetary disc. It cannot be
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in the gas phase. So if they're sulfur in these
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planet's atmospheres, it had to have been gobbled up as
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solid material during the planet's formation.
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That's the smoking gun for core accretion. These worlds massive
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as they are formed the same way Jupiter did, just
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on a much grander scale. Previous studies looking at carbon
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and oxygen couldn't distinguish between the two formation pathways because
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those elements can come from either gas or solids.
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The researchers also found that these planets are enriched in
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heavy elements compared to their hostar by factors of roughly
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two to nine times. The estimate the four planets together
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contain around six hundred earth masses of heavy material. That's
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an extraordinary amount of solid material.
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And this phrases a really fascinating question. How big can
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a planet get if objects ten times Jupiter's mass can
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form through Cora accretion, where exactly is the line between
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the biggest planets and the smallest brown dwarfs.
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Lead researcher Jerry Swan from UCLA put it beautifully. He said,
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the technique they used to separate the light from these
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incredibly faint planets ten thousand times fainter than their star,
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will eventually be applicable to studying earth like worlds. He said.
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Finding an Earth analog is the holy grail, and we
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might be twenty to thirty years away from getting the
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first spectrum of an earth like planet and searching for biosignatures.
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The future of exoplanet science built on the foundation of
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smelly gas.
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Who would have thought thing closer to home now? Well,
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relatively speaking. NASA launched two groundbreaking sounding rocket missions from
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Alaska earlier this month, and the results are already exciting
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the science community.
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These launched from the Poker Flat Research Range near Fairbanks,
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and they had two of the best mission acronyms I've
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ever encountered. The first is Badass, the Black and Diffuse
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Auroral Science Surveyor and yes that's the real name.
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Launched February ninth, Badass reads an altitude of about three
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hundred and sixty kilometers and was specifically designed to study
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a phenomenon called black auroras. These are these strange dark
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structures that appear as apps or voids drifting within the
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brighter diffuse aurora like someone has taken an eraser to
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parts of the Northern Lights.
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What's happening physically is that electrons, instead of streaming down
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into Earth's atmosphere the way they do in normal auroras,
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are shooting upward into space. Scientists don't fully understand why
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this reversal happens, and Badass was designed to gather data
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on exactly that.
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Then on February tenth, NASA launched the GNEISS mission. That's
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the Geophysical Non Equilibrium Ionoscire Science System. This one used
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two rockets launched just thirty seconds apart, flying side by
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side through the same aurora along different slices.
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And here's the clever bit. Each rocket ejected four sub payloads,
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giving them multiple measurement points inside the aurora. Simultaneously, the
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rockets also sent radio signals through the surrounding plasma to
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a network of eleven ground receivers. The way the plasma altered,
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those radio wives allowed scientists to map the plasma density,
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revealing where electrical currents can flow.
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Principal investigator Christina Lynch from Dartmouth College described it as
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essentially doing a CT scan of the plasma beneath the
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aurora in the same way a medical CT scan uses
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X rays passing through different body tissues to reconstruct the
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three D image. NIE uses radio waves passing through auroral
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plasma to reconstruct the electrical environment in three dimensions.
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Both missions reported that all instruments performed as expected and
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returned high quality data. This is particularly satisfying for the
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Badass team because the same mission was on the launch
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pad at Poker Flat last year, but the required auroral
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conditions never materialized before the launch window closed.
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Understanding how auroral currents work isn't just pure physics. Those
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currents shape how energy from space spreads through earth upper atmosphere.
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Where the current fans out, the atmosphere heats up, which
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can affect satellite drag, GPS accuracy and radiocommunications. With our
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increasing dependence on space based technology, this research has very
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practical implications.
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Now for something that sounds like science fiction but is
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heading for a real World test later this year. A
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startup called General Galactic, led by former SpaceX engineer Hallan Madison,
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is developing technology to use water as rocket fuel.
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And before anyone thinks we're talking about some kind of
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perpetual motion scam, the science here is sound. The core
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concept uses electrolysis, splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen,
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and then using those gases in two different propulsion systems.
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Right For chemical propulsion, you burn the hydrogen and oxygen together,
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which produces high pressure thrust, much like a conventional rocket engine.
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For electrical propulsion, you ionize the oxygen and accelerate it
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using a magnetic field, creating plasma thrust. Madison describes that
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second type as very very low thrust. People jokingly like
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to call it a burp in space, but.
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Even a burp in space can be useful for precise
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maneuvers and station keeping. The real game changer here isn't
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the propulsion technology itself, but the fuel source. Water is
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one of the most abundant resources we found on other worlds.
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There's water ice on the Moon, on Mars, on asteroids.
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If you can turn that water into fuel, you've essentially
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created the infrastructure for cosmic refueling stations.
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That's exactly Madison's long term vision. He's talking about building