Voyager 2’s “Big Bang” Rescue: One More Year in Deep Space

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Anna: Somewhere past the edge of the Sun's

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influence, more than 21 billion

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kilometers from here, a spacecraft older

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than almost everyone listening is losing

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about 2 watts of power a year and

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quietly refusing to go dark.

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Avery: And this week, a team of engineers found a

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way to give it another year of science. Good

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morning, or good evening, wherever you are.

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This is Astronomy Daily. I'm Avery.

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Anna: And I'm anna. It's Wednesday the 5th of

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August. Today, a clever rescue for

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Voyager 2. A cell tower that fits in

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a rocket fairing, a sea of honeycombs

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on Mars, and a little telescope about

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to go hunting for the universe's missing

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gas. Plus everything worth looking up

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for north and south.

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Avery: Let's get into it.

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Anna: Let's start out at the very frontier of

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everything we've ever built. Voyager 2

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launched in 1977. That's

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nearly 49 years ago, and it's

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still right now, sending back data from

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interstellar space. It crossed the

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heliopause, the boundary of the Sun's bubble,

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back in November 2018. It is

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over 13 billion miles from

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Earth. That's about 21 billion

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kilometers.

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Avery: And, um, when you're that far out, a

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conversation takes a while. A radio command

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from Earth needs the better part of a day

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just to reach it.

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Anna: Close to 19 or 20 hours one

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way. So you can't exactly troubleshoot

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in real time. Now, here's the challenge the

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mission has been living with. The Voyagers

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don't run on solar panels. Out there,

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sunlight is basically useless. They run

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on what's called a radioisotope

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thermoelectric generator, an

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rtg, which turns the heat from

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slowly decaying plutonium into

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electricity.

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Avery: And the catch with decay is that it never

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stops. Every year, both voyagers lose about

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4 watts of power. Four watts doesn't sound

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like much. It's a fraction of an old light

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bulb. But do that for almost half a century,

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and the margins get razor thin.

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Anna: So thin that since 2024, the team

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has had to switch off two science instruments

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on each spacecraft just to keep the lights

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on. And they were staring down another one.

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Without intervention, Voyager 2 would have

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had to lose yet another instrument before the

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end of this year.

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Avery: Which is where this week's news comes in. And

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I love that they gave it a nickname. NASA's

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Jet Propulsion Laboratory calls it the Big

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Bang.

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Anna: It does sound dramatic. For what is

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essentially very careful housekeeping.

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The Big Bang was a coordinated move.

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The engineers simultaneously turned off

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certain powered devices on the spacecraft and

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swapped in lower power alternatives,

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all while making sure Voyager 2 stayed

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warm. Enough to keep functioning. Because out

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there, the cold is another enemy

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entirely. Let a propellant line freeze

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and you can lose the whole spacecraft.

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Avery: And the payoff for all that care.

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Anna: They freed up enough power to keep three

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science instruments running for at least an

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extra year. An instrument that was going to

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go silent in 2026 now stays

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on. And the team says they'll try the very

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same trick on Voyager 1, which is even

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further away in the coming months.

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Avery: So what are those three instruments actually

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doing out there? Because Voyager isn't taking

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pretty pictures anymore. The cameras were

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switched off decades ago.

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Anna: Right. What's left are, ah, the fields and

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particle senses on Voyager 2. That's

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the magnetometer which feels the magnetic

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field, the plasma wave subsystem

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which effectively listens to the density of

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the charged gas around it, and the

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cosmic ray subsystem which counts the high

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energy particles streaming in from the

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galaxy. Together they turn

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interstellar space from a line on a

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diagram into an actual measured

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place. The only direct readings

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humanity has ever taken from outside the

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sun's bubble.

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Avery: And um, here's a detail I think our

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Australian listeners in particular will love.

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When JPL wants to send the command to Voyager

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2, there's really only one antenna on Earth

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that can do it.

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Anna: Hanburgh. Voyager 2 headed

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south out of the solar system below the plane

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of the planets. And from that angle the only

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dish with the clear line to it is the big

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70 meter antenna at the Canberra Deep

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Space Communication Complex. So

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every one of these life extending commands,

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the Big Bang included, goes up through

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the southern hemisphere. There's something

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rather lovely about that. The oldest working

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emissary we have stays in touch through

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a dish in the New South Wales bush.

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Avery: And uh, the people behind it are historian

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themselves. The mission has NASA retirees in

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their 80s advising on subsystems they helped

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design in the 70s, working alongside team

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members so young their parents hadn't been

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born when Voyager launched.

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Anna: Two generations, one spacecraft. And

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a running argument with entropy that they

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keep somehow winning by a year at a

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time. The honest truth is the Voyagers are

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in their twilight. Every watt now is a

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decision about what humanity still gets to

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learn from out there. But this week the

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twilight got a little longer. And that's

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worth marking the little spacecraft

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Avery: that could still could.

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Next, from the oldest hardware in the sky to

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some of the newest. In the early hours this

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morning US time a SpaceX Falcon 9

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lifted off from Cape Canaveral and delivered

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three satellites, Bluebird 11,

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12 and 13, into orbit for a company

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called AST Space Mobile. And True

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to form, the first stage came back for its

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30th successful landing.

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Anna: And the pitch behind these is genuinely

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futuristic. No special phone, no

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dish, no satellite handset. Your

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ordinary unmodified smartphone connects

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straight to the satellite, straight up to

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orbit.

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Avery: The trick is scale. To reach a normal phone,

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which has a tiny antenna and not much power,

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the satellite has to do the heavy lifting

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with an enormous antenna of its own. These

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next generation Bluebirds unfold phased

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array antennas of around two and a half

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thousand square feet. That's the

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largest commercial array ever flown in low

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Earth orbit. Roughly the footprint of a

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decent sized house up there in space.

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Anna: And they're faster than the first batch,

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Avery: nearly double the peak download speed of the

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earlier Bluebirds, which had already hit

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close to 100Mbps, straight to a

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standard phone. This trio follows three

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that went up in June. And the company is

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aiming to start beta service later this year,

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building towards a constellation that can

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give proper coverage across its key markets.

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Anna: It's worth being clear eyed about it. They're

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not the only ones chasing direct to phone

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from space. SpaceX's own Starlink is

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doing a version of this too. But the promise

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is the same and it's a big one.

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Avery: The idea that the dead zone, the bottom of a

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valley, the middle of the outback, a boat

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well offshore, just quietly disappears.

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For the billions of people still unconnected

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or underconnected, that's not a gadget story,

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that's infrastructure.

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Anna: Now to Mars and a bit of an anniversary,

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because today, the 5th of August is 14

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years to the day since NASA's Curiosity

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RO touched down in Gale Crater.

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And it has marked the occasion more or less

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by finding something that stopped the mission

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team in their tracks.

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Avery: This is the honeycomb terrain everyone's been

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sharing.

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Anna: It is as Curiosity climbs a

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valley the team has nicknamed Valley Grande.

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On the slopes of Mount Sharp, it rolled into

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a landscape covered with polygons,

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honeycomb shaped cracks in the ground each.

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Each one only about 4-8 cm

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across. The Rover has seen little patches of

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these before, but never anything on this

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scale. In, uh, a 360 degree

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panorama stitched from over 300

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images, the shapes spread out in

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every direction as far as the camera can

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see. They even wrap around the base of a

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small butte.

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Avery: The project scientists put it beautifully,

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said that after everything they've seen

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through Curiosity's eyes, this sea of

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polygons still took their breath away. So

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what makes a honeycomb like that?

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Anna: Water or the memory of it? Patterns

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like these can form when mud dries and

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cracks, or through repeated cycles of wetting

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and drying, or when buried sediment gets

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squeezed and pushes water out. And that fits

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the bigger picture of where Curiosity is.

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The foothills of Mount Sharp are thought to

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have hosted lakes and streams billions of

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years ago. So this isn't just a pretty

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texture. It's another line of evidence for,

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uh, a Mars that was once wet layered into

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the rock.

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Avery: 14 years, wheels worn down to holes.

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And it's still turning up.

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Anna: Genuine surprises, still climbing,

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still reading the story written in the stone.

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Not bad for a mission that was only ever

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promised two years.

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Avery: Our last story today is a look ahead to a

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launch just 10 days away and one with

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a distinctly Southern hemisphere flavor.

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Around the 15th of August, a Rocket Lab

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electron is due to lift off from Mahia in New

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Zealand carrying a NASA mission called

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Aspera.

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Anna: And Aspera is tiny. This is not a

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flagship observatory, it's

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Avery: roughly shoebox sized, a small Satellite,

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part of NASA's Pioneers program, which funds

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genuinely ambitious science on a modest

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budget. But the question it's chasing is

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enormous. Aspeta will be the first NASA

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mission to map in ultraviolet light the hot

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diffuse gas that drifts in around

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galaxies, what astronomers call the circum

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galactic medium.

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Anna: And this ties into one of the quiet

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embarrassments of cosmology, doesn't it? The

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missing baryons.

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Avery: It really does. The mission's principal

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investigator put it almost sheepishly. We

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have a good idea of how much ordinary matter

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there should be to explain all the stars we

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see, and yet we've searched far and wide and

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still can't find most of it. A lot of it is

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thought to be hiding in this faint gas

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between and around galaxies too diffused

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to see easily. Esperad is built to trace

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it. The gas flowing in to build new stars

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and the gas being blown back out.

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Anna: And there's uh, a nice human footnote there

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is.

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Avery: The mission is led out of the University of

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Arizona by one of the youngest principal

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investigators in NASA's history. A small

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telescope, a young scientist, a big question.

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Launching from a clifftop in New Zealand,

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we'll be watching for it around the 15th.

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Anna: And that brings us to the sky tonight first,

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then a big fortnight ahead and I'll be

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straight with you about who gets the best of

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it tonight. The moon is at last quarter, so

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the first half of the night stays nice and

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dark before it rises. And in the pre dawn

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sky, Mars is sitting in a neat little

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triangle with Elnath, the bright star that

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marks the tip of Taurus's horn and the star

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cluster, um, M35 over in Gemini.

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Mars and Elmath are easy naked eye. Grab

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binoculars for M M35 and you'll find that

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soft glow of stars just beside them. That

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one's there for everybody north and south.

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Avery: And uh, then there's the 12th of August,

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which is shaping up to be the single biggest

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sky day of the year.

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Anna: Three headline events in 24 hours. So

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let's take them honestly one at a time.

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First, a total solar eclipse. This one

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traces a very unusual path. It touches down

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in the arctic near eastern Siberia, nearly

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grazes the north pole, then sweeps over

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Greenland, Iceland, where totality peaks, uh,

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at a little over two minutes and finishes

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over northern Spain around sunset. It's the

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first total solar eclipse to reach mainland

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Europe since 1999. Parts of the

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United States from Alaska across to the

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northeast get a partial bite out of the sun.

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Avery: And for our southern hemisphere listeners,

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including me, the plain truth is we don't see

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this one at all. It's entirely a, uh,

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northern hemisphere event.

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Anna: We don't, but NASA and others will livestream

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it so you can still share the moment. And one

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rule that never gets trimmed on this show. If

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you are anywhere the sun is even partially

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eclipsed, you need certified eclipse glasses

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that meet the ISO

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123122 standard

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for every partial phase. Ordinary

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sunglasses will not protect your eyes. And

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never point a camera, telescope or binoculars

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at the sun while wearing eclipse glasses. The

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concentrated light can destroy the filter and

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your sight in an instant.

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Avery: Second event that same day. The Perseids.

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Anna: And 2026 is a special year for them

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because the peak on the night of the 12th

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into the 13th falls on a new moon.

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No moonlight at all to wash them out. The

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next time that lines up is 2045.

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From a dark rural site, you might see 30

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to 50 an hour and up to 100 under

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really pristine skies. Now the

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Perseids favor the northern hemisphere. The

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point they radiate from climbs high in the

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north and barely clears the horizon down

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south. So northern listeners, this is your

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night. Southern listeners, you'll catch far

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fewer. But a patient hour after midnight

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looking northeast can still turn up a few

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bright ones.

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Avery: And third, the planet parade.

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Anna: Six planets strong along the pre dawn

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sky around the 12th. Mercury,

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Venus's neighbor, Jupiter, Mars,

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Saturn and the two ice giants, Uranus and

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Neptune. Don't picture a, uh, tidy line.

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It's a broad arc following the ecliptic.

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Mars and Saturn are the easy naked eye ones.

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Uranus and Neptune need binoculars or a

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telescope. Mercury and Jupiter sit

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low in the dawn glow for North America and

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the northern mid latitudes look about 30

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to 60 minutes before your local sunrise,

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with the arc running towards the southwest.

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Down south, the window's a bit later and

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shorter, and the arc leans towards the

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northwest. And the mornings either side of

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the 12th work just as well, so treat them as

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practice runs.

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Avery: So the 12th leans north. What does the

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Southern hemisphere get to call its own?

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Anna: Um, plenty, actually. On the 7th,

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a modest shower called the Eta Eridinaids

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peaks only a few an hour, but it genuinely

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favors southern observers. The winter Milky

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Way is riding high for us. So the

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Sagittarius star fields, the Lagoon Nebula

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and company are beautifully placed under a

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dark sky and mark the calendar for the

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27th into the 28th. A deep

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partial lunar eclipse that's visible across,

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um, much of the Americas and parts of Europe

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and Africa. A, uh, proper both

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hemispheres event to close the month. We'll

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have full local timings closer to each one.

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Avery: That's your lot for today. Voyager Second

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Wind, A, uh, phone tower in orbit, honeycombs

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on Mars, and the little gas Hunter warming up

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in New Zealand.

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Anna: You'll find all our sources and links in the

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show notes and over at astronomydaily IO

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and you can find us on all your usual

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platforms at Strodaily Pod. And

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keep an eye out tomorrow. There may just be

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word on whether that derelict rocket stage

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left a fresh mark on the Moon.

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Avery: Until then, from Avery and Anna,

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clear skies.