S02E07: SpaceX's Starship Test, Glacier Detection in China, and Unveiling the Mysteries of Magnetars

WEBVTT

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Goodday everybody, and welcome to Astronomy
Daily for the nineteenth of May twenty and

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twenty three. My name is Tim
Gibson. I will be your host for

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today. Hi. Tim, Let's
get started with today's space news headlines.

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There's a lot going on out there. SpaceX is gearing up for another test

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of its giant Starship vehicle. The
company rolled out Ship twenty five, the

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latest Starship upper stage prototype, to
a suborbital pad at its star Base site

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in South Texas early Thursday morning.
SpaceX will conduct a static fire test of

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Ship twenty five six Raptor engines on
the pad. Company representatives have said static

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fires are a common preflight test in
which the vehicle's engines are briefly lit while

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it remains anchored to the ground.
Starship consists of a giant first stage booster

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known as super Heavy and the one
hundred and sixty five foot tall upper stage

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called Starship, both of which are
designed to be fully reusable. SpaceX envisions

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the vehicle taking people and cargo to
the Moon and Mars and taking over most,

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if not all, of the company's
other spaceflight activities over the long haul.

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A fully stacked Starship has flown just
once. The highly anticipated flight,

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which launched on April twentieth from Starbase, involved the Booster seven heavy prototype and

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the Ship twenty four upper stage.
The goal was to send Ship twenty four

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most of the way around the planet, with a return to Earth in the

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Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. Unfortunately,
that didn't happen. Booster seven and the

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Ship twenty four failed to separate from
each other as planned. In SpaceX commanded

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the vehicle's destruction high over the Gulf
of Mexico a few minutes into the flight.

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In other SpaceX news, the company
is targeting Friday made the nineteenth for

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the launch of the Iridium one Web
mission to low Earth orbit from the Space

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Launch Complex at the Van and Berg's
Base Force Base in California. A backup

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launch opportunity is available on Saturday,
May twentieth. The Falcon nine first stage

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booster supporting this mission previously launched Sentinel
six, Start, Transporter seven, and

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seven Starlink missions. After stage separation, the first stage will land on the

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of Course I Still Love You drone
ship, which will be stationed in the

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Pacific Ocean. A Chinese aerial remote
sensing system has obtained effective mountain glacier detection

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data through an ongoing combined detection experiment. The Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wuhan

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University are conducting a sky to ground
scientific experiment to test the condition of glaciers

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in the High Bay tibetan Autonomous Prefecture
in northwest China's Qinghai Province. The experiment

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has applied radars in three bands,
P band, L band and VHF and

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undertaken eleven flights, among which seven
carried out tomography and interferopherometric imaging and four

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conductive perspective imaging. A total of
four point six terabytes of valid data has

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been obtained using Integral and Swift spacecraft. European astronomers have observed an unidentified X

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ray source known as XTEJ one dash
nine dash zero dash six plus zero nine

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zero. Results of the observational campaign, presented on May the eleventh on the

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Archive preprint server suggest that this source
belongs to the small and rare group of

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persistent low luminosity b X ray binaries. X ray binaries are composed of a

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normal star or a white dwarf transferring
mass onto a compact neutron star or black

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hole. Based on the mass of
the companion star, astronomers divide them into

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low mass X ray binaries and high
mass X ray binaries. Of special interest

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are the b x ray binaries,
a subclass of high X ray binaries in

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which the optical star is a dwarf, a subgiant or obe star. Studying

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X ray outbursts from b x rbs
could be essential in order to improve our

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understanding of the nature of X ray
binaries in their behavior. China launched a

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satellite for its Baidoo navigation system on
Tuesday, May the sixteenth, the first

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time it has done so in three
years. The Baidu satellite lifted off atop

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a long March three B rocket from
the Jiangzhou Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's

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Shinju Province on Tuesday at ten forty
nine pm local time. The spacecraft is

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the fifty sixth Baidu satellite China has
launched a date, and the first to

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take flight since June twenty twenty.
The newly launched satellite is bound for geostationary

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orbit about twenty two two hundred and
twenty miles above the Earth. And that's

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the news headlines for today. Tim
the Astronomy Daily podcast. An unexpected effects

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sited in supernova wreckage may be caused
by highly magnetis neutron star or magnetar and

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quantum activity never seen before, like
all neutron stars, magnetars from which massive

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stars in their lives in a collapse. Also triggered is a massive supernova explosion.

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The matter that comprises neutron stars is
so dense that a sugar cube of

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it would weigh over a billion tons
on Earth. The magnetic fields around these

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stars star remnants are the most powerful
in the known universe, often one hundred

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trillion times stronger than that of our
planet. As such, neutron stars and

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magnetars represent the most extreme celestial objects. The investigation of them is vital to

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better understand the universe. A new
study published on April the nineteenth in the

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journal Proceedings of the National Academy of
Silence examines the remnants surrounding the supernova left

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leftovers of Cassiopia A. The explosion
was visible to Earth three hundred and forty

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years ago. Astronomers have always suspected
that magnetars would generate highly polarized X rays

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around them, meaning that the electronic
fields of the magnetar's radiation vibrates in a

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preferred direction, but scientists were surprised
in twenty and twenty two when data collected

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by nassa's Imaging X Ray polar Imagery
Explorer satellite, which launched the year before,

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showed polarization may depend on energy.
I XPE information suggested that may be

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the case after looking at X rays
in the supernova remnant of Cassiopia A surrounding

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them magnetar four U zero one forty
two plus sixty one, located thirteen thousand

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light years away, as the first
ever measurement of the polarization of X rays

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around a magnetar. The IXPE observations
showed that the lower energy X rays were

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polarized at one hundred and eighty degrees
to the high energy X rays. Both

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energetic rays sets were orientated at ninety
degrees to the electromagnetic field of the magneta.

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The Astronomy Daily podcasts, So Hallie
did send me one of her dad

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jokes earlier on so over to you, Hallie for your dad joke. Okay,

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you asked for it, Please don't
grown too much. Why did the

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astronaut bring a telescope to the party
because he wanted to a planet himself right

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in the middle of the funky Yes, Hallie, I really do have nothing

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to say about your terrible jokes.
That's the end of today's episode. My

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name is Tim Gibs. I've been
your host for today. Over to you

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Steve on Monday for Monday's edition.
Astronomy Daily is presented by myself, Tim

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Gibbs, Andrew Dunkley and Steve Dunkley. You can find more about the podcast

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on space nuts dot io and bites
dot com. Thank you very much,

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See you again next time.