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00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Anna: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Astronomy
00:00:02 --> 00:00:05 daily. It's Thursday, September 3,
00:00:05 --> 00:00:08 2026. I'm Anna and this is series
00:00:08 --> 00:00:10 five, episode 184.
00:00:11 --> 00:00:14 Avery: And I'm Avery. Anna, we've got a
00:00:14 --> 00:00:16 spacecraft doing something irreversible
00:00:16 --> 00:00:17 today.
00:00:17 --> 00:00:19 Anna: We do. As we're recording,
00:00:19 --> 00:00:22 BepiColombo, the European and Japanese
00:00:22 --> 00:00:25 mission to Mercury is throwing away the
00:00:25 --> 00:00:26 module that got it there.
00:00:26 --> 00:00:28 Avery: Throwing away sounds harsh.
00:00:29 --> 00:00:32 Anna: It's accurate, though. Eight years, nine
00:00:32 --> 00:00:34 planetary flybys, one very serious
00:00:34 --> 00:00:37 engine problem, and today the transfer module
00:00:37 --> 00:00:40 gets cut loose and the two science orbiters
00:00:40 --> 00:00:42 are on their own. It's the start of the
00:00:42 --> 00:00:43 arrival phase.
00:00:43 --> 00:00:46 Avery: That's our lead, then. NASA
00:00:46 --> 00:00:49 has just handed Blue Origin $700
00:00:49 --> 00:00:52 million to build the Internet connection for
00:00:52 --> 00:00:54 Anna: Mars, which is a much bigger deal than it
00:00:54 --> 00:00:55 sounds.
00:00:55 --> 00:00:58 Avery: It really is. Then Saturn has grown
00:00:58 --> 00:01:01 a new shape at its South Pole and nobody
00:01:01 --> 00:01:04 expected it. And an Australian in Broken
00:01:04 --> 00:01:06 Hill is part of how we found out.
00:01:07 --> 00:01:09 Anna: Love that storey. And then a
00:01:09 --> 00:01:12 second Chinese private company has flown a
00:01:12 --> 00:01:14 reusable rocket three weeks after the first
00:01:14 --> 00:01:14 one.
00:01:15 --> 00:01:17 Avery: Plus we'll get you sorted for the sky
00:01:17 --> 00:01:19 tonight. Both hemispheres, as always.
00:01:20 --> 00:01:21 Anna: Let's get into it.
00:01:22 --> 00:01:24 Avery: Okay, set the scene for me. What is
00:01:24 --> 00:01:25 physically happening today?
00:01:26 --> 00:01:29 Anna: So BepiColombo has flown to Mercury as a
00:01:29 --> 00:01:31 stack, three pieces bolted together.
00:01:31 --> 00:01:34 At the bottom you've got the Mercury transfer
00:01:34 --> 00:01:37 module. That's the Ion engine bus, the thing
00:01:37 --> 00:01:39 with the enormous solar wings that's been
00:01:39 --> 00:01:41 doing the driving. On top of that sits the
00:01:41 --> 00:01:43 European Orbiter, the Mercury Planetary
00:01:43 --> 00:01:46 Orbiter. And on top of that sits the Japanese
00:01:46 --> 00:01:49 one, Mio, the Mercury Magnetospheric
00:01:49 --> 00:01:50 Orbiter
00:01:50 --> 00:01:52 Avery: M3 spacecraft in a tower.
00:01:53 --> 00:01:56 Anna: A tower. And Today, at around
00:01:56 --> 00:01:58 8 in the morning, US Eastern Time, which is
00:01:58 --> 00:02:00 about 10 o' clock tonight for us in Sydney,
00:02:01 --> 00:02:04 the transfer module separates. ESA is
00:02:04 --> 00:02:07 carrying it live. They start the broadcast a
00:02:07 --> 00:02:09 bit before, pause it, and come back about
00:02:09 --> 00:02:12 an hour later to confirm they've got a signal
00:02:12 --> 00:02:14 from what is now, for the first time, an
00:02:14 --> 00:02:15 independent spacecraft.
00:02:16 --> 00:02:18 Avery: And there's no putting it back together.
00:02:18 --> 00:02:21 Anna: None. That's why Today matters. Up
00:02:21 --> 00:02:23 to this point, if something went wrong, you
00:02:23 --> 00:02:26 still had the propulsion module. From today,
00:02:26 --> 00:02:28 the Ion engines are gone. Everything after
00:02:28 --> 00:02:30 this runs on the orbiter's own chemical
00:02:30 --> 00:02:31 thrusters.
00:02:31 --> 00:02:34 Avery: Take me back. This launched in
00:02:34 --> 00:02:37 2018, October 20,
00:02:37 --> 00:02:38 2018,
00:02:38 --> 00:02:41 Anna: on an Ariane 5 out of Kourou. So we are
00:02:41 --> 00:02:42 three weeks shy of eight years.
00:02:43 --> 00:02:45 Avery: Eight years to reach the closest planet to
00:02:45 --> 00:02:48 the sun. Which sounds backwards.
00:02:48 --> 00:02:51 Anna: It sounds backwards and it's the single most
00:02:51 --> 00:02:53 counterintuitive thing About Mercury. If you
00:02:53 --> 00:02:55 point a rocket at Mercury and just let go,
00:02:56 --> 00:02:58 you don't gently arrive, you fall.
00:02:58 --> 00:03:01 The Sun's gravity well is enormous and you
00:03:01 --> 00:03:03 pick up speed the whole way down. The hard
00:03:03 --> 00:03:06 part isn't getting there, the hard part is
00:03:06 --> 00:03:08 arriving slowly enough that Mercury's very
00:03:08 --> 00:03:10 weak gravity can actually catch you.
00:03:10 --> 00:03:13 Avery: So the whole mission is a braking problem.
00:03:13 --> 00:03:15 Anna: The whole mission is a breaking problem.
00:03:16 --> 00:03:18 BepiColombo has used one flyby of Earth,
00:03:19 --> 00:03:22 two of Venus and six of Mercury
00:03:22 --> 00:03:25 itself. The last of those in January
00:03:25 --> 00:03:27 2025 plus years of
00:03:27 --> 00:03:30 continuous, very gentle thrusting from
00:03:30 --> 00:03:33 those ion engines, all of it to
00:03:33 --> 00:03:35 shed speed rather than gain it.
00:03:35 --> 00:03:38 Avery: Nine flybys. That's more than most
00:03:38 --> 00:03:40 missions do in a lifetime.
00:03:40 --> 00:03:43 Anna: And there's a lovely bit of history in that,
00:03:43 --> 00:03:45 because the mission is named after the man
00:03:45 --> 00:03:48 who invented that technique, Giuseppe
00:03:48 --> 00:03:51 Colombo. Bepi, to everyone who knew him
00:03:51 --> 00:03:53 was an Italian mathematician who worked out
00:03:53 --> 00:03:56 in 1974 that if you shaped
00:03:56 --> 00:03:59 Mariner 10's trajectory correctly, you could
00:03:59 --> 00:04:01 get repeat visits to Mercury instead of just
00:04:01 --> 00:04:04 one. He also figured out why Mercury
00:04:04 --> 00:04:06 rotates three times for every two orbits.
00:04:07 --> 00:04:09 So the mission carries the name of the person
00:04:09 --> 00:04:11 who made this kind of flight possible at all.
00:04:12 --> 00:04:15 Avery: Now, you said one very serious
00:04:15 --> 00:04:16 engine problem.
00:04:16 --> 00:04:19 Anna: Yes. April 2024. The team
00:04:19 --> 00:04:22 found unexpected electric currents flowing
00:04:22 --> 00:04:24 between the transfer module's solar arrays
00:04:24 --> 00:04:26 and one of its power distribution units.
00:04:27 --> 00:04:29 The practical effect was that there wasn't
00:04:29 --> 00:04:31 enough power reaching the electric thrusters,
00:04:31 --> 00:04:33 so. So they couldn't run at full thrust.
00:04:34 --> 00:04:35 Avery: How much did they lose?
00:04:35 --> 00:04:38 Anna: They clawed back most of it. Engineers got
00:04:38 --> 00:04:41 the thrusters to about 90% of original
00:04:41 --> 00:04:44 performance, but 90% wasn't enough for
00:04:44 --> 00:04:46 the trajectory they were flying. Santa
00:04:46 --> 00:04:49 Martinez, the mission manager, put it plainly
00:04:49 --> 00:04:51 at the time. After months of investigation,
00:04:52 --> 00:04:54 they concluded the thrusters would stay below
00:04:54 --> 00:04:56 the minimum thrust needed for the orbit
00:04:56 --> 00:04:59 insertion they'd planned for December 2025.
00:05:00 --> 00:05:02 Avery: So they redesigned the Arrival.
00:05:02 --> 00:05:05 Anna: They redesigned the Arrival, new trajectory,
00:05:05 --> 00:05:08 a revised set of flybys, and the arrival
00:05:08 --> 00:05:10 slipped by 11 months, from December
00:05:11 --> 00:05:13 2025 to November this year, which is why
00:05:13 --> 00:05:15 we're talking about it now rather than last
00:05:15 --> 00:05:16 Christmas.
00:05:17 --> 00:05:19 Avery: 11 months is a long slip. Was
00:05:19 --> 00:05:20 anything gained?
00:05:21 --> 00:05:24 Anna: A bit, actually. Johannes Benkov,
00:05:24 --> 00:05:26 the project scientist, made the point that
00:05:26 --> 00:05:28 the extra time flew the instruments through
00:05:28 --> 00:05:31 parts of Mercury's environment they'd never
00:05:31 --> 00:05:33 otherwise have sampled. It's not compensation
00:05:33 --> 00:05:36 for the delay, but it isn't nothing either.
00:05:37 --> 00:05:39 Avery: Alright, so today the module goes.
00:05:40 --> 00:05:41 What's the calendar from here?
00:05:42 --> 00:05:44 Anna: It's a slow staged arrival.
00:05:45 --> 00:05:47 November 21st is gravity capture.
00:05:47 --> 00:05:49 That's when Mercury actually takes hold of
00:05:49 --> 00:05:52 both orbiters. Then in the second week of
00:05:52 --> 00:05:55 December, around the 9th and 10th, MIO
00:05:55 --> 00:05:57 is released into its own very stretched
00:05:57 --> 00:06:00 orbit. About a week after that, the European
00:06:00 --> 00:06:03 orbiter starts working its way down. It
00:06:03 --> 00:06:05 reaches its final Science orbit on March 10th
00:06:05 --> 00:06:08 next year and routine science operations
00:06:08 --> 00:06:11 formally begin on April 6th, 2027.
00:06:12 --> 00:06:14 Avery: So today is the beginning of a seven month
00:06:14 --> 00:06:15 arrival.
00:06:15 --> 00:06:17 Anna: That's exactly the right way to think about
00:06:17 --> 00:06:20 it. Nobody's landing, nobody's braking
00:06:20 --> 00:06:23 hard. It's a long, careful settling
00:06:23 --> 00:06:24 in and
00:06:24 --> 00:06:26 Avery: the two orbiters end up in quite
00:06:26 --> 00:06:29 Anna: different places deliberately so. The
00:06:29 --> 00:06:32 European orbiter goes low and tight, roughly
00:06:32 --> 00:06:34 480 kilometres at its closest,
00:06:35 --> 00:06:37 1500 at its furthest. That's the
00:06:37 --> 00:06:40 mapping orbit. Mineralogy, elemental
00:06:40 --> 00:06:42 composition, the surface at a range of
00:06:42 --> 00:06:45 wavelengths. MIO goes much higher and much
00:06:45 --> 00:06:48 more elliptical out to something like eleven
00:06:48 --> 00:06:50 and a half thousand kilometres because it's
00:06:50 --> 00:06:52 chasing the magnetic field and the particles
00:06:53 --> 00:06:55 and you need to fly through a big volume of
00:06:55 --> 00:06:56 space to sample that properly.
00:06:57 --> 00:06:59 Avery: Which brings me to the thing I actually want
00:06:59 --> 00:07:01 to know. What are the questions?
00:07:02 --> 00:07:04 Anna: Three big ones, and they're all genuinely
00:07:04 --> 00:07:07 strange. The first is the magnetic field.
00:07:07 --> 00:07:10 Mercury is small. It should have cooled and
00:07:10 --> 00:07:12 frozen solid billions of years ago. And yet
00:07:12 --> 00:07:15 it has a global magnetic field. Of the
00:07:15 --> 00:07:17 rocky planets, only Earth and Mercury do
00:07:18 --> 00:07:20 so. Something inside it is still liquid and
00:07:20 --> 00:07:22 still moving and we don't have a settled
00:07:22 --> 00:07:23 explanation for that.
00:07:24 --> 00:07:26 Avery: And uh, Mercury's core is huge, isn't it?
00:07:27 --> 00:07:29 Anna: Enormous. Relative to the planet, the iron
00:07:29 --> 00:07:32 core takes up something like 85% of the
00:07:32 --> 00:07:35 radius. Mercury is essentially a
00:07:35 --> 00:07:38 metal ball with a thin coat of rock on it and
00:07:38 --> 00:07:39 nobody is entirely sure why.
00:07:40 --> 00:07:41 Avery: Second question.
00:07:41 --> 00:07:44 Anna: Ice. There is water ice sitting in
00:07:44 --> 00:07:46 permanently shadowed craters at Mercury's
00:07:46 --> 00:07:49 poles on the planet closest to the sun,
00:07:49 --> 00:07:52 where the day side gets to well over 400
00:07:52 --> 00:07:54 degrees Celsius. The floors of some polar
00:07:54 --> 00:07:57 craters never see sunlight, so they stay cold
00:07:57 --> 00:07:59 enough to hold ice. But where it came from
00:08:00 --> 00:08:02 and how much there is is open.
00:08:03 --> 00:08:03 Avery: And the third?
00:08:04 --> 00:08:06 Anna: The hollows. These are my favourite
00:08:07 --> 00:08:09 messenger. The last mission to orbit Mercury
00:08:09 --> 00:08:12 found these bright, shallow, irregular pits
00:08:12 --> 00:08:15 scattered across the surface. No impact
00:08:15 --> 00:08:18 structure, no volcanic vent, just ground that
00:08:18 --> 00:08:20 appears to be disappearing. The best guess
00:08:20 --> 00:08:23 is some volatile material in the rock is
00:08:23 --> 00:08:25 sublimating straight to gas and leaving the
00:08:25 --> 00:08:28 hollow behind. And they look fresh.
00:08:28 --> 00:08:31 There's a real possibility Mercury's surface
00:08:31 --> 00:08:33 is actively changing right now, which is not
00:08:33 --> 00:08:35 something you expect from a dead little
00:08:35 --> 00:08:35 world.
00:08:36 --> 00:08:38 Avery: How many times have we actually been to
00:08:38 --> 00:08:39 Mercury before this?
00:08:40 --> 00:08:42 Anna: Barely. Two missions ever.
00:08:43 --> 00:08:46 Mariner 10 did three flybys in 1974 and
00:08:46 --> 00:08:48 75. Messenger orbited from
00:08:48 --> 00:08:51 2011 to 2015. That's it.
00:08:51 --> 00:08:54 It is the least explored planet in the inner
00:08:54 --> 00:08:56 solar system by a very wide margin.
00:08:57 --> 00:08:59 Avery: And is there an Australian thread here?
00:09:00 --> 00:09:01 There usually is.
00:09:01 --> 00:09:04 Anna: There is, and it's a nice one. ESA
00:09:04 --> 00:09:06 tracks its deep space missions through a
00:09:06 --> 00:09:08 network that includes new Norcia in Western
00:09:08 --> 00:09:11 Australia, north of Perth. And ESA
00:09:11 --> 00:09:14 opened a brand new deep space antenna at that
00:09:14 --> 00:09:16 site in October last year, working with
00:09:16 --> 00:09:19 csiro Southern Hemisphere ground
00:09:19 --> 00:09:20 stations aren't, ah, a courtesy on missions
00:09:20 --> 00:09:23 like this. They're how you keep a spacecraft
00:09:23 --> 00:09:25 in contact as the Earth turns.
00:09:25 --> 00:09:27 Avery: So what should people actually watch for
00:09:27 --> 00:09:28 today?
00:09:28 --> 00:09:31 Anna: Signal acquisition. That's the moment.
00:09:32 --> 00:09:34 Separation itself is a mechanical event. You
00:09:34 --> 00:09:37 can't really see the thing that tells you it
00:09:37 --> 00:09:39 worked is the ground station hearing a
00:09:39 --> 00:09:42 healthy carrier from a spacecraft that an
00:09:42 --> 00:09:44 hour earlier didn't exist as an
00:09:44 --> 00:09:47 independent object. If that comes through
00:09:47 --> 00:09:50 clean, Bepicolombo is genuinely on
00:09:50 --> 00:09:50 approach.
00:09:51 --> 00:09:53 Avery: Right, second storey.
00:09:53 --> 00:09:56 And this one is about plumbing, but the
00:09:56 --> 00:09:58 good kind. NASA announced on Tuesday,
00:09:59 --> 00:10:01 September 1, that it has awarded Blue
00:10:01 --> 00:10:04 Origin a firm fixed price contract
00:10:04 --> 00:10:07 worth about $700 million to build
00:10:07 --> 00:10:10 Mars telecommunications network, which is
00:10:10 --> 00:10:13 Anna: not a science mission, deliberately not.
00:10:13 --> 00:10:15 Avery: This is a, ah, dedicated communications
00:10:15 --> 00:10:18 orbiter. Its entire job is relaying
00:10:18 --> 00:10:21 science data, imagery, navigation information
00:10:22 --> 00:10:25 and mission commands for anything operating
00:10:25 --> 00:10:28 on or around Mars. No
00:10:28 --> 00:10:30 instruments of its own, competing for power
00:10:30 --> 00:10:31 and pointing time.
00:10:32 --> 00:10:34 Anna: And that's the change, isn't it? Because
00:10:34 --> 00:10:36 right now that job is done by science
00:10:36 --> 00:10:37 orbiters moonlighting.
00:10:38 --> 00:10:41 Avery: Exactly right. Every picture you have ever
00:10:41 --> 00:10:44 seen from Curiosity or perseverance came
00:10:44 --> 00:10:46 home through Mars Odyssey or the Mars
00:10:46 --> 00:10:49 Reconnaissance Orbiter. Uh, Odyssey, launched
00:10:49 --> 00:10:52 in 2001, MRO launched
00:10:52 --> 00:10:54 in 2005. Odyssey is
00:10:54 --> 00:10:57 25 years old and it's carrying the data
00:10:57 --> 00:11:00 return for a whole planet as a side hustle.
00:11:00 --> 00:11:02 Anna: And people have been sounding the alarm about
00:11:02 --> 00:11:03 that for years.
00:11:04 --> 00:11:07 Avery: For years. The worry has always been
00:11:07 --> 00:11:09 the same if one of those two fails.
00:11:10 --> 00:11:13 Surface missions don't go quiet exactly, but
00:11:13 --> 00:11:15 their data rates fall off a cliff. You'd
00:11:15 --> 00:11:17 be choosing which images come home.
00:11:18 --> 00:11:20 Anna: So what's Blue Origin actually building?
00:11:21 --> 00:11:23 Avery: It's based on their Blue Ring platform,
00:11:23 --> 00:11:26 a hybrid spacecraft that uses both solar
00:11:26 --> 00:11:29 electric and chemical propulsion. It
00:11:29 --> 00:11:32 launches on New Glenn. Delivery deadline
00:11:32 --> 00:11:35 is December 31, 2028
00:11:35 --> 00:11:38 and NASA expects it operational at Mars
00:11:38 --> 00:11:39 by 2030.
00:11:39 --> 00:11:42 Anna: And the contract is design, develop,
00:11:42 --> 00:11:44 launch and operate all four.
00:11:45 --> 00:11:48 Avery: All four. That's the interesting bit,
00:11:48 --> 00:11:50 structurally. NASA isn't buying a
00:11:50 --> 00:11:53 spacecraft, it's buying A service the same
00:11:53 --> 00:11:55 way it now buys communications around the
00:11:55 --> 00:11:58 Earth and the moon. It sits under the Space
00:11:58 --> 00:12:01 Communications and Navigation programme and
00:12:01 --> 00:12:04 it follows a request for proposals NASA put
00:12:04 --> 00:12:05 out back in May.
00:12:06 --> 00:12:07 Anna: Who else was in the running?
00:12:07 --> 00:12:10 Avery: Rocket Lab was the other finalist. So
00:12:10 --> 00:12:13 this was a real competition, not a sole
00:12:13 --> 00:12:14 source award.
00:12:14 --> 00:12:16 Anna: And Blue Origin does have Mars form now,
00:12:16 --> 00:12:18 which they didn't have two years ago.
00:12:19 --> 00:12:22 Avery: That's the part I'd flag. New Glenn's
00:12:22 --> 00:12:24 second flight in November last year
00:12:24 --> 00:12:27 carried NASA's twin escapade probes to
00:12:27 --> 00:12:30 Mars and landed its booster for the first
00:12:30 --> 00:12:33 time on the same mission. So the pitch here
00:12:33 --> 00:12:35 isn't theoretical and
00:12:35 --> 00:12:37 Anna: the longer game is crewed missions.
00:12:37 --> 00:12:39 Avery: That's stated fairly openly in the
00:12:39 --> 00:12:41 announcement. If you're serious about people
00:12:41 --> 00:12:43 at Mars in the late2030s
00:12:43 --> 00:12:46 or2040s, you cannot run that on two
00:12:46 --> 00:12:49 orbiters built in the Clinton and Bush
00:12:49 --> 00:12:52 administrations. You need infrastructure
00:12:52 --> 00:12:54 that's designed to be infrastructure.
00:12:54 --> 00:12:57 Anna: It's the least glamorous. $700 million
00:12:57 --> 00:13:00 NASA will spend this decade and probably
00:13:00 --> 00:13:01 one of the more important.
00:13:02 --> 00:13:05 Avery: Nobody's ever made a poster of a relay
00:13:05 --> 00:13:07 satellite but nothing else works without
00:13:07 --> 00:13:08 it.
00:13:08 --> 00:13:11 Anna: Now this one is just lovely. Saturn's south
00:13:11 --> 00:13:14 pole has a ten sided shape around it
00:13:14 --> 00:13:15 and it wasn't there before.
00:13:16 --> 00:13:18 Avery: Ten sided. A uh. Decagon.
00:13:19 --> 00:13:22 Anna: A decagon published in Science
00:13:22 --> 00:13:24 Advances yesterday September 2nd. Led by
00:13:24 --> 00:13:27 Augustin Sanchez Lavega at the University of
00:13:27 --> 00:13:30 the Basque country in Spain with Amy Simon at
00:13:30 --> 00:13:32 NASA Goddard and Michael Wong at UC Berkeley
00:13:32 --> 00:13:34 among the co authors.
00:13:34 --> 00:13:37 Avery: And we already knew Saturn does this at the
00:13:37 --> 00:13:37 other pole.
00:13:38 --> 00:13:40 Anna: That's the famous one, the northern
00:13:40 --> 00:13:43 hexagon. The six sided been known since
00:13:43 --> 00:13:46 Voyager in the 1980s and it is rock
00:13:46 --> 00:13:49 solid. Amy Simon's line is that it has
00:13:49 --> 00:13:51 been there every single time anyone has
00:13:51 --> 00:13:53 looked for more than 40 years.
00:13:54 --> 00:13:56 Avery: So why has nobody seen a southern one before?
00:13:57 --> 00:14:00 Anna: Because we couldn't look. Saturn is
00:14:00 --> 00:14:02 tilted like Earth and It takes about 30
00:14:02 --> 00:14:05 years to go around the sun. Between roughly
00:14:05 --> 00:14:08 2012 and 2023. The the south
00:14:08 --> 00:14:11 pole was simply turned away from us. It has
00:14:11 --> 00:14:13 only recently come back into view.
00:14:13 --> 00:14:15 Avery: And who spotted it?
00:14:15 --> 00:14:17 Anna: This is the part I love. Amateur
00:14:17 --> 00:14:20 astronomers. The first hint turned up in
00:14:20 --> 00:14:23 ground based images in 2024. A
00:14:23 --> 00:14:26 subtle undulating band around the pole in
00:14:26 --> 00:14:28 pictures submitted to something called the
00:14:28 --> 00:14:30 Planetary Virtual Observatory Laboratory,
00:14:30 --> 00:14:33 which is a database professionals use to mine
00:14:33 --> 00:14:36 amateur planetary imagery. Two observers
00:14:36 --> 00:14:39 are credited. Jean Paul Auger and Trevor
00:14:39 --> 00:14:39 Berry.
00:14:39 --> 00:14:41 Avery: Trevor Berry as in.
00:14:41 --> 00:14:44 Anna: As in Broken Hill, New South Wales,
00:14:44 --> 00:14:46 far western Outback, New South Wales.
00:14:47 --> 00:14:49 He's a former miner who built his own
00:14:49 --> 00:14:51 observatory. He's been imaging Saturn for the
00:14:51 --> 00:14:54 better part of two decades. He's won an
00:14:54 --> 00:14:56 Astronomical Society of Australia award for
00:14:56 --> 00:14:59 it and he has a long history of contributing
00:14:59 --> 00:15:01 to exactly this kind of professional work.
00:15:02 --> 00:15:04 Avery: So a uh, bloke in Broken Hill helps find a
00:15:04 --> 00:15:05 new feature on Saturn
00:15:06 --> 00:15:09 Anna: and then Hubble goes and confirms it. Once
00:15:09 --> 00:15:10 they knew what to look for, the team went
00:15:10 --> 00:15:13 into Hubble's Opal programme. That's the long
00:15:13 --> 00:15:15 running survey that photographs the outer
00:15:15 --> 00:15:18 planets every year and found the Decagon
00:15:18 --> 00:15:20 sitting there in data going back to 2023
00:15:21 --> 00:15:23 with observations running through late August
00:15:23 --> 00:15:23 last year.
00:15:24 --> 00:15:26 Avery: How big is it in Earth terms?
00:15:27 --> 00:15:29 Anna: I'm going to be careful here because some of
00:15:29 --> 00:15:31 the coverage yesterday quoted a width that's
00:15:31 --> 00:15:34 larger than Saturn. Its which
00:15:34 --> 00:15:36 obviously can't be right. The official
00:15:36 --> 00:15:39 releases don't put a hard number on it. What
00:15:39 --> 00:15:42 we can say confidently is that it's the same
00:15:42 --> 00:15:45 class of feature as the a
00:15:45 --> 00:15:47 planet scale wave locked inside a polar jet
00:15:47 --> 00:15:50 stream tens of thousands of kilometres
00:15:50 --> 00:15:53 across. I'd rather wait for the paper's own
00:15:53 --> 00:15:55 figures than repeat one that doesn't survive
00:15:55 --> 00:15:57 a sanity cheque fair.
00:15:57 --> 00:15:59 Avery: And why 10 sides rather than six?
00:16:00 --> 00:16:02 Anna: The mechanism is thought to be the same in
00:16:02 --> 00:16:05 both cases. A meandering wave trapped
00:16:05 --> 00:16:08 inside a fast polar jet. The number of
00:16:08 --> 00:16:10 sides falls out of how fast and how wide that
00:16:10 --> 00:16:13 jet is. Different jet, different number.
00:16:13 --> 00:16:16 Avery: And the really interesting difference is the
00:16:16 --> 00:16:16 age.
00:16:17 --> 00:16:19 Anna: That's the headline for scientists. The
00:16:19 --> 00:16:22 hexagon is old and stable. This thing looks
00:16:22 --> 00:16:25 new and Simon's assessment is that it appears
00:16:25 --> 00:16:27 to be strengthening. Which means for the
00:16:27 --> 00:16:29 first time we get to watch one of these form
00:16:29 --> 00:16:32 rather than inheriting a finished one. The
00:16:32 --> 00:16:34 plan is to keep tracking it with Hubble and
00:16:34 --> 00:16:37 JWST as sunlight builds toward the
00:16:37 --> 00:16:39 southern summer over the next few years and
00:16:39 --> 00:16:41 see whether it settles or falls apart.
00:16:42 --> 00:16:45 Avery: A planet sized geometry experiment running
00:16:45 --> 00:16:46 in real time.
00:16:46 --> 00:16:48 Anna: And we're on the right side of the planet to
00:16:48 --> 00:16:50 appreciate it. Which we'll come back to in a
00:16:50 --> 00:16:51 few minutes.
00:16:52 --> 00:16:54 Avery: Last news storey. And it's another one for
00:16:54 --> 00:16:56 the Chinese commercial launch column.
00:16:57 --> 00:16:59 Galactic Energy flew its Palace 1
00:16:59 --> 00:17:02 rocket for the first time. That was late on
00:17:02 --> 00:17:05 August 31st US Eastern Time.
00:17:05 --> 00:17:08 So morning of September 1st in China out
00:17:08 --> 00:17:10 of the Jiuquan Launch Centre.
00:17:10 --> 00:17:11 Anna: And it worked.
00:17:12 --> 00:17:14 Avery: Clean debut. The company says it
00:17:14 --> 00:17:17 reached its planned orbit about 30 minutes
00:17:17 --> 00:17:20 after liftoff. First flight of a brand
00:17:20 --> 00:17:23 new vehicle straight to orbit, which is not a
00:17:23 --> 00:17:23 given.
00:17:23 --> 00:17:24 Anna: Give me the numbers.
00:17:25 --> 00:17:28 Avery: 52 metres tall. So a bit over a
00:17:28 --> 00:17:31 hundred and seventy feet, about seven tonnes
00:17:31 --> 00:17:34 to low Earth orbit. And crucially, the
00:17:34 --> 00:17:36 first stage is built to be reusable
00:17:36 --> 00:17:39 hypersonic grid fins, deployable landing
00:17:39 --> 00:17:42 legs rated for up to 25 flights.
00:17:42 --> 00:17:45 If that specification sounds familiar, it's
00:17:45 --> 00:17:47 because it's essentially the Falcon 9
00:17:47 --> 00:17:48 playbook.
00:17:48 --> 00:17:50 Anna: Did they try to land it?
00:17:50 --> 00:17:53 Avery: No hardware was fitted, but no
00:17:53 --> 00:17:56 recovery attempt on a maiden flight. They're
00:17:56 --> 00:17:59 targeting the second half of 2027 for the
00:17:59 --> 00:18:00 first landing try.
00:18:00 --> 00:18:02 Anna: Now, the reason this matters isn't really the
00:18:02 --> 00:18:03 rocket on its own.
00:18:04 --> 00:18:06 Avery: No, it's the pattern. Look at the last
00:18:06 --> 00:18:09 eight weeks in China. July 10th a, uh,
00:18:09 --> 00:18:12 long March 10th b, that's the state programme
00:18:13 --> 00:18:16 launches and catches its first stage in a net
00:18:16 --> 00:18:19 strung across a ship at sea, making China
00:18:19 --> 00:18:21 only the second country ever to recover an
00:18:21 --> 00:18:24 orbital class booster. Mid
00:18:24 --> 00:18:27 August land space lands Juke
00:18:27 --> 00:18:30 3 on legs. The first Chinese private
00:18:30 --> 00:18:32 company to do it, though, as we covered at
00:18:32 --> 00:18:35 the time, it caught fire and toppled over
00:18:35 --> 00:18:38 after touchdown. And now, three
00:18:38 --> 00:18:40 weeks later, a second private company
00:18:40 --> 00:18:43 debuts a vehicle with recovery hardware
00:18:43 --> 00:18:44 already on it.
00:18:45 --> 00:18:47 Anna: Three different programmes, three different
00:18:47 --> 00:18:49 approaches in under two months.
00:18:49 --> 00:18:52 Avery: And there's a clear commercial driver.
00:18:52 --> 00:18:55 China is building out very large satellite
00:18:55 --> 00:18:57 constellations. Gul Wang Qian
00:18:57 --> 00:19:00 Fan and you cannot deploy tens of
00:19:00 --> 00:19:03 thousands of satellites on expendable rockets
00:19:03 --> 00:19:04 at any sensible price.
00:19:05 --> 00:19:08 Galactic Energy is quite openly positioning
00:19:08 --> 00:19:11 Palace One as a constellation workhorse.
00:19:11 --> 00:19:13 Anna: And this isn't a startup with no track
00:19:13 --> 00:19:15 record, not at all.
00:19:15 --> 00:19:18 Avery: They already Fly Series 1, a
00:19:18 --> 00:19:21 small satellite launcher with more than 20
00:19:21 --> 00:19:24 flights behind it. So Palace 1
00:19:24 --> 00:19:26 is a step up, not a first attempt.
00:19:27 --> 00:19:29 Anna: The thing I'd watch is 2027.
00:19:30 --> 00:19:32 Landing is the hard part and everyone's
00:19:32 --> 00:19:33 landing attempt is still ahead of them.
00:19:34 --> 00:19:37 Right, let's get you outside. And we have to
00:19:37 --> 00:19:39 start with Saturn tonight. For obvious
00:19:39 --> 00:19:41 reasons after that segment, it
00:19:41 --> 00:19:42 Avery: would be rude not to.
00:19:43 --> 00:19:46 Anna: Saturn is rising around sunset now and it's
00:19:46 --> 00:19:48 up for most of the night over in Aquarius.
00:19:48 --> 00:19:51 Sitting at about magnitude 0.4.
00:19:52 --> 00:19:55 It's building toward opposition on October 4,
00:19:55 --> 00:19:56 so it gets a little better every night for
00:19:56 --> 00:19:57 the next month.
00:19:58 --> 00:20:00 Avery: And the rings are doing something unusual.
00:20:01 --> 00:20:04 Anna: They're tilted only about 8 degrees from edge
00:20:04 --> 00:20:06 on close to the narrowest they've been in a
00:20:06 --> 00:20:08 dozen years, which some people find
00:20:08 --> 00:20:10 disappointing and I think is the opposite.
00:20:11 --> 00:20:14 When the rings are nearly closed, the moons
00:20:14 --> 00:20:17 line up in a much tighter row and the globe
00:20:17 --> 00:20:19 of the planet is easier to see detail on.
00:20:19 --> 00:20:22 Avery: It's a different Saturn Southern
00:20:22 --> 00:20:23 hemisphere advantage
00:20:23 --> 00:20:26 Anna: tonight, a real one from
00:20:26 --> 00:20:28 Sydney. Saturn climbs high overhead, so
00:20:28 --> 00:20:30 so you're looking through much less
00:20:30 --> 00:20:32 atmosphere than northern observers who get it
00:20:32 --> 00:20:35 lower in the southern sky. If you've got a
00:20:35 --> 00:20:37 telescope and you've been meaning to use it,
00:20:37 --> 00:20:40 this is the month. And to be clear, the
00:20:40 --> 00:20:42 decagon we just talked about is far beyond a
00:20:42 --> 00:20:44 backyard scope that's a Hubble class
00:20:44 --> 00:20:47 detection. What you can see is the ring
00:20:47 --> 00:20:48 tilt and the moons.
00:20:49 --> 00:20:51 Avery: For North American listeners specifically,
00:20:51 --> 00:20:53 the big one is tonight's Moon.
00:20:54 --> 00:20:57 Anna: Yes, the Moon passes very close to the
00:20:57 --> 00:20:59 Pleiades tonight, and it's an actual
00:20:59 --> 00:21:01 occultation from North America, from East
00:21:01 --> 00:21:04 Asia and from Arctic latitudes. The
00:21:04 --> 00:21:06 cluster's stars wink out behind the lunar
00:21:06 --> 00:21:09 limb. If that's you, that's your event,
00:21:09 --> 00:21:12 and binoculars are plenty. And from here,
00:21:12 --> 00:21:15 from Australia, New Zealand. The Moon and the
00:21:15 --> 00:21:18 Pleiades rise together in the small hours
00:21:18 --> 00:21:21 as a close. Pretty pairing, but
00:21:21 --> 00:21:24 no occultation worth setting an alarm
00:21:24 --> 00:21:27 for if you're up. Anyway, moon phase
00:21:28 --> 00:21:30 waning gibbous and it hits last quarter
00:21:30 --> 00:21:33 tomorrow, September 4th. Practically
00:21:33 --> 00:21:35 that means it rises late, so the early
00:21:35 --> 00:21:38 evening is dark, which is good news for the
00:21:38 --> 00:21:40 next one, Venus.
00:21:40 --> 00:21:43 Venus is the unmissable one, low in the
00:21:43 --> 00:21:46 west to west southwest, roughly 14
00:21:46 --> 00:21:48 degrees up an hour after sunset from Sydney.
00:21:49 --> 00:21:52 Sunset here is about 5:35 in the afternoon at
00:21:52 --> 00:21:54 the moment. It's just pulled away from Spica
00:21:54 --> 00:21:57 after their conjunction on Monday night, and
00:21:57 --> 00:21:59 it's building toward greatest brilliancy on
00:21:59 --> 00:22:02 September 18th. There's a beautiful thin
00:22:02 --> 00:22:04 crescent moon alongside it on the 14th,
00:22:04 --> 00:22:05 so mark that one.
00:22:06 --> 00:22:07 Avery: Pre dawn.
00:22:07 --> 00:22:09 Anna: Jupiter is back and it's worth the early
00:22:09 --> 00:22:12 start. Rising East Northeast around
00:22:12 --> 00:22:15 10 to 4 in the morning. Mars is also
00:22:15 --> 00:22:18 there, low and slowly fading. And
00:22:18 --> 00:22:20 tonight it makes a triangle with Betelgeuse
00:22:20 --> 00:22:22 and Elnath. If you want a target to find
00:22:22 --> 00:22:24 Avery: and there's a Jupiter event coming for
00:22:24 --> 00:22:27 Anna: North America, there is. On
00:22:27 --> 00:22:29 September 8, the moon occults, uh, Jupiter,
00:22:29 --> 00:22:31 visible from Canada, the United States,
00:22:32 --> 00:22:35 Mexico, Greenland, the Caribbean and eastern
00:22:35 --> 00:22:37 Russia. The catch is that for most of that
00:22:37 --> 00:22:40 footprint, it happens in daylight with the
00:22:40 --> 00:22:41 sun above the horizon.
00:22:41 --> 00:22:44 Avery: Which brings us to the standing reminder
00:22:44 --> 00:22:47 Anna: it does, and it applies to that occultation
00:22:47 --> 00:22:50 directly. If you are observing anywhere near
00:22:50 --> 00:22:52 the sun, take it seriously. Any filter
00:22:52 --> 00:22:55 you use for direct solar viewing must be
00:22:55 --> 00:22:56 certified to the ISO
00:22:56 --> 00:22:59
00:22:59 --> 00:23:02 standard. Not sunglasses, not smoked
00:23:02 --> 00:23:04 glass, not a stack of exposed film,
00:23:04 --> 00:23:07 ISO 123122
00:23:08 --> 00:23:10 and cheque. The certification is genuine.
00:23:10 --> 00:23:12 Sweeping a telescope or binoculars around a
00:23:12 --> 00:23:15 daylight sky looking for Jupiter, it is
00:23:15 --> 00:23:17 exactly the situation where people get hurt.
00:23:17 --> 00:23:20 Avery: Anything else on the calendar three to
00:23:20 --> 00:23:22 Anna: pencil in International Observe the Moon
00:23:22 --> 00:23:25 night on the 19th, the equinox on the
00:23:25 --> 00:23:28 22nd, spring for us, autumn for our
00:23:28 --> 00:23:30 northern listeners, and the harvest Moon
00:23:30 --> 00:23:33 rising near Saturn on the 26th, which, after
00:23:33 --> 00:23:34 tonight's conversation, feels like a nice
00:23:34 --> 00:23:35 bookend.
00:23:36 --> 00:23:38 Avery: And that's episode 184.
00:23:39 --> 00:23:42 BepiColombo has cut loose the module that
00:23:42 --> 00:23:44 carried it for eight years and is officially
00:23:44 --> 00:23:46 on approach to Mercury.
00:23:46 --> 00:23:49 Anna: Blue Origin is building Mars a proper phone
00:23:49 --> 00:23:52 line. Saturn has grown a ten sided crown
00:23:52 --> 00:23:55 at its south pole with a hand from an amateur
00:23:55 --> 00:23:57 astronomer in Outback New South Wales, and a
00:23:57 --> 00:23:59 second Chinese private company has put a
00:23:59 --> 00:24:01 reusable rocket into orbit.
00:24:01 --> 00:24:04 Avery: Full show notes, links to every primary
00:24:04 --> 00:24:07 source and the whole back catalogue are at
00:24:07 --> 00:24:09 astronomydaily IO.
00:24:09 --> 00:24:12 Anna: You can find us on X Instagram and
00:24:12 --> 00:24:14 TikTok@astrodaily podcast. And if you've got
00:24:14 --> 00:24:17 a question or a correction, we genuinely want
00:24:17 --> 00:24:19 it, there's a contact form on the website.
00:24:19 --> 00:24:22 You'll find us at astronomydaily IO.
00:24:22 --> 00:24:25 Avery: If today's episode was useful, the single
00:24:25 --> 00:24:28 most helpful thing you can do is send it to
00:24:28 --> 00:24:29 one person who'd enjoy it.
00:24:30 --> 00:24:33 Anna: We'll be back tomorrow. Until then, clear
00:24:33 --> 00:24:34 skies, Clear skies, um,
00:24:38 --> 00:24:41 Avery: Are told the world.