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This episode includes AI-generated content.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Anna: Somewhere in a building at the Jet Propulsion
00:00:02 --> 00:00:05 Laboratory sits a Mars rover that
00:00:05 --> 00:00:08 never went to Mars. It's Curiosity's
00:00:08 --> 00:00:11 twin, the testbed vehicle that rehearsed
00:00:11 --> 00:00:13 every drive before the real one made it on
00:00:13 --> 00:00:14 the red planet.
00:00:14 --> 00:00:17 Avery: And on Saturday, NASA announced it's finally
00:00:17 --> 00:00:20 getting a mission not to Mars, though, to the
00:00:20 --> 00:00:22 moon's south pole. With a nuclear generator,
00:00:22 --> 00:00:25 a drill and a job scouting the ground for the
00:00:25 --> 00:00:26 time first, first lunar base.
00:00:26 --> 00:00:29 Anna: Also today, a new way of reading
00:00:29 --> 00:00:32 Einstein's equations that lets gravity behave
00:00:32 --> 00:00:34 a bit like a solar flare. A record
00:00:34 --> 00:00:36 breaking cold experiment on China's space
00:00:36 --> 00:00:39 Station. And the second of NASA's twin Mars
00:00:39 --> 00:00:42 probes firing its engine right over southern
00:00:42 --> 00:00:42 Australia.
00:00:43 --> 00:00:44 Avery: And I'm Avery. Let's get going.
00:00:45 --> 00:00:46 Anna: Hitting the start button now.
00:00:47 --> 00:00:50 Avery: On Saturday, at an aerospace expo and air
00:00:50 --> 00:00:52 show at Kennedy Space Centre, NASA announced
00:00:52 --> 00:00:55 a whole bundle of moon base awards. The one
00:00:55 --> 00:00:57 that's going to stick in people's minds is a
00:00:57 --> 00:01:00 rover called Promise. That stands for
00:01:00 --> 00:01:02 Polar rover for observation, mapping
00:01:03 --> 00:01:04 and in situ exploration.
00:01:04 --> 00:01:07 Anna: And it's nuclear powered, which is the
00:01:07 --> 00:01:07 headline.
00:01:07 --> 00:01:10 Avery: It is. But the bit I find most interesting
00:01:10 --> 00:01:13 is where it comes from. JPL isn't building
00:01:13 --> 00:01:16 a new rover from scratch. Engineers are
00:01:16 --> 00:01:19 taking the electronics, body structure and
00:01:19 --> 00:01:21 mobility system from the duplicate version of
00:01:21 --> 00:01:24 Curiosity, the one that served as the vehicle
00:01:24 --> 00:01:26 system testbed for the Mars mission, and
00:01:26 --> 00:01:29 turning it into a lunar rover. They'll
00:01:29 --> 00:01:32 add flight spare and testbed parts built for
00:01:32 --> 00:01:33 Curiosity. And perseverance.
00:01:34 --> 00:01:37 Anna: So the rover that spent years driving the
00:01:37 --> 00:01:39 Mars yard so that the real Curiosity didn't
00:01:39 --> 00:01:42 have to take risks finally gets to
00:01:42 --> 00:01:45 Avery: go somewhere. That's the story. And it's
00:01:45 --> 00:01:48 powered the same way by a flight spare multi
00:01:48 --> 00:01:50 mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric
00:01:50 --> 00:01:52 Generator, an MMRTG
00:01:52 --> 00:01:55 that's essentially a nuclear battery. The
00:01:55 --> 00:01:58 heat from decaying plutonium is turned into
00:01:58 --> 00:02:00 electricity. Same kind of power source that's
00:02:00 --> 00:02:01 running perseverance right now.
00:02:02 --> 00:02:04 Anna: Let's get to why that matters on the Moon.
00:02:04 --> 00:02:07 Specifically, because solar panels work
00:02:07 --> 00:02:09 fine on the moon most of the time.
00:02:09 --> 00:02:12 Avery: Most of the time is the catch. A lunar
00:02:12 --> 00:02:15 night lasts about two Earth weeks.
00:02:15 --> 00:02:18 Solar powered landers either shut down or
00:02:18 --> 00:02:21 freeze. And promise is going to the
00:02:21 --> 00:02:23 South Pole where there are craters whose
00:02:23 --> 00:02:25 floors haven't seen sunlight in billions of
00:02:25 --> 00:02:28 years. NASA calls them permanently shadowed
00:02:28 --> 00:02:30 regions. Some of them are among the coldest
00:02:30 --> 00:02:32 places measured in the solar system.
00:02:33 --> 00:02:35 Anna: And those are exactly the places where the
00:02:35 --> 00:02:36 water ice is supposed to be.
00:02:36 --> 00:02:39 Avery: Exactly. Ice that could be drinking water,
00:02:39 --> 00:02:42 breathing oxygen, rocket propellant. That's
00:02:42 --> 00:02:44 why everyone wants to land near the South
00:02:44 --> 00:02:44 Pole.
00:02:44 --> 00:02:46 Anna: How sure are we that it's there?
00:02:46 --> 00:02:49 Avery: Sure enough to plan around, not
00:02:49 --> 00:02:52 sure enough to build on. Um, the best direct
00:02:52 --> 00:02:55 evidence is from 2009, when NASA
00:02:55 --> 00:02:57 deliberately crashed a spent rocket stage
00:02:57 --> 00:02:59 into Cabeus Crater near the South Pole.
00:03:00 --> 00:03:02 The LCROSS mission and a, uh,
00:03:02 --> 00:03:05 trailing spacecraft saw water in the plume of
00:03:05 --> 00:03:08 debris. Since then, orbiters
00:03:08 --> 00:03:10 have mapped hydrogen cold traps and
00:03:10 --> 00:03:13 ice signatures in the shadows. But all
00:03:13 --> 00:03:16 of that is from a distance or from
00:03:16 --> 00:03:18 a single violent splash.
00:03:19 --> 00:03:21 Nobody has driven into one of those dark
00:03:21 --> 00:03:22 craters and dug.
00:03:23 --> 00:03:24 Anna: And a solar rover can't do that.
00:03:25 --> 00:03:28 Avery: It can't. NASA's own numbers for the shadowed
00:03:28 --> 00:03:31 craters run as low as -242
00:03:31 --> 00:03:33 degrees Celsius. To give our sense of scale,
00:03:34 --> 00:03:36 Shackleton Crater, right next to the pole, is
00:03:36 --> 00:03:39 about 21 kilometres wide and 4
00:03:39 --> 00:03:41 kilometres deep. With a floor in
00:03:41 --> 00:03:44 permanent shadow, a nuclear rover can keep
00:03:44 --> 00:03:47 its electronics warm, keep its batteries
00:03:47 --> 00:03:49 topped up and keep working in the dark, where
00:03:49 --> 00:03:51 a solar rover would simply stop.
00:03:51 --> 00:03:53 Anna: So what's in the toolkit?
00:03:53 --> 00:03:55 Avery: The centrepiece is a drill called Trident,
00:03:55 --> 00:03:58 built by Honeybee Robotics. It brings
00:03:58 --> 00:04:01 regolith up from as deep as a metre in 10
00:04:01 --> 00:04:03 centimetre steps and measures how hard and
00:04:03 --> 00:04:06 how cold the ground is as it goes. Then
00:04:06 --> 00:04:08 there's a mass spectrometer called MSOLO
00:04:08 --> 00:04:11 to sniff the gases released from that
00:04:11 --> 00:04:13 material. A near infrared spectrometer called
00:04:13 --> 00:04:16 Nirvis to look for ices and minerals, and
00:04:16 --> 00:04:19 a neutron spectrometer that detects hydrogen
00:04:19 --> 00:04:20 under the surface.
00:04:20 --> 00:04:22 Anna: Those four sound familiar?
00:04:23 --> 00:04:25 Avery: They should. They're the same four
00:04:25 --> 00:04:28 instruments flying on VIPER, the earlier ice
00:04:28 --> 00:04:30 prospecting rover. NASA's framing is that the
00:04:30 --> 00:04:33 two rovers will give complementary data sets
00:04:33 --> 00:04:35 from two different parts of the South Pole.
00:04:35 --> 00:04:37 Which is a sensible way to turn one
00:04:37 --> 00:04:39 measurement into a comparison.
00:04:39 --> 00:04:40 Anna: What else?
00:04:41 --> 00:04:43 Avery: A radiometer called laforge to map how
00:04:43 --> 00:04:46 cold the shadowed regions get. Built on
00:04:46 --> 00:04:48 sensor technology from the Diviner instrument
00:04:48 --> 00:04:51 on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a
00:04:51 --> 00:04:53 radiation detector, rad, whose earlier
00:04:53 --> 00:04:56 version has been running on Curiosity on Mars
00:04:56 --> 00:04:59 for 15 years. A laser
00:04:59 --> 00:05:02 reflector so orbiting spacecraft can pin down
00:05:02 --> 00:05:05 where the rover is to within centimetres. And
00:05:05 --> 00:05:07 a camera suite NASA's calling the Lunar
00:05:07 --> 00:05:10 Dashcam, built from the system that filmed
00:05:10 --> 00:05:11 Perseverance landing.
00:05:11 --> 00:05:13 Anna: And there's a self driving angle too.
00:05:13 --> 00:05:16 Avery: There is a new radiation
00:05:16 --> 00:05:19 tolerant computer, a AH LiDAR, to map the
00:05:19 --> 00:05:21 terrain in 3D. And autonomy software
00:05:21 --> 00:05:24 meant to let the rover drive further in the
00:05:24 --> 00:05:27 dark with less hand holding from Earth. Even
00:05:27 --> 00:05:29 the wheels are an instrument. NASA says a
00:05:29 --> 00:05:31 rover might use one of them to dig a trench
00:05:31 --> 00:05:34 and record how the ground behaves, how
00:05:34 --> 00:05:37 firm or loose the regolith is, matters a lot
00:05:37 --> 00:05:39 when you're choosing where to land something
00:05:39 --> 00:05:39 heavy.
00:05:39 --> 00:05:40 Anna: When does it fly?
00:05:41 --> 00:05:44 Avery: NASA is targeting late 2028 with
00:05:44 --> 00:05:46 an 18 month primary mission. Blue
00:05:46 --> 00:05:49 Origin has been awarded a $94 million
00:05:49 --> 00:05:52 base contract with an option worth up to
00:05:52 --> 00:05:54 another $140 million depending on performance
00:05:54 --> 00:05:57 to deliver it on its mark. One lander
00:05:57 --> 00:05:59 Anna: and promise was only one piece of Saturday's
00:05:59 --> 00:06:00 announcement,
00:06:00 --> 00:06:03 Avery: right? NASA picked eight companies for the
00:06:03 --> 00:06:05 next phase of its commercial lunar delivery
00:06:05 --> 00:06:08 programme. CLPS 2, Blue
00:06:08 --> 00:06:11 Origin, Firefly, Intuitive Machines,
00:06:11 --> 00:06:14 ispace US, Lockheed Martin,
00:06:14 --> 00:06:16 Northrop Grumman, SpaceX and Voyager
00:06:16 --> 00:06:19 Technologies. It's a 10 year contract with a
00:06:19 --> 00:06:22 combined maximum value of $10 billion.
00:06:23 --> 00:06:25 The original CLPS contract was raised from
00:06:25 --> 00:06:28 2.6 billion to 4.2 billion.
00:06:28 --> 00:06:30 Anna: Then there's a separate set of launch and
00:06:30 --> 00:06:31 transport orders,
00:06:32 --> 00:06:34 Avery: six task orders worth about $1.3 billion
00:06:35 --> 00:06:37 combined to Aeroscience and Technology,
00:06:37 --> 00:06:40 Blue Origin and Impulse Space. They include
00:06:40 --> 00:06:43 flying Capstone O2 to test navigation
00:06:43 --> 00:06:45 and communications around the moon and
00:06:45 --> 00:06:48 delivering Moonfall, a set of drones designed
00:06:48 --> 00:06:50 to scout the south pole before astronauts
00:06:50 --> 00:06:53 arrive. And SpaceX will fly communications
00:06:53 --> 00:06:56 satellites on a starship to cislunar space in
00:06:56 --> 00:06:56 2028.
00:06:57 --> 00:06:59 Anna: Let's be careful with those big numbers.
00:06:59 --> 00:07:02 Avery: Yes, $10 billion is a ceiling,
00:07:02 --> 00:07:05 not money spent. That kind of contract sets
00:07:05 --> 00:07:07 the maximum that can be ordered over 10 years
00:07:08 --> 00:07:09 and the companies still have to compete for
00:07:09 --> 00:07:12 individual missions. And late 2028 is a
00:07:12 --> 00:07:15 target. Lunar landers have had a rough record
00:07:15 --> 00:07:17 of slipping and of landing badly when they do
00:07:17 --> 00:07:18 get there.
00:07:18 --> 00:07:20 Anna: And there's no Australian angle hiding in
00:07:20 --> 00:07:20 this one?
00:07:21 --> 00:07:24 Avery: No, and I won't invent one. This is an
00:07:24 --> 00:07:26 American programme with American contractors.
00:07:27 --> 00:07:29 What I'd point to is what it means for the
00:07:29 --> 00:07:32 science. For decades, lunar ice has been a
00:07:32 --> 00:07:35 ah, line on a map made from orbit. Promise
00:07:35 --> 00:07:37 is designed to put a drill into the ground
00:07:37 --> 00:07:40 where the map says to ice should be and tell
00:07:40 --> 00:07:42 us whether it's there, how deep and how much.
00:07:43 --> 00:07:45 If the answer is less than hoped, that's just
00:07:45 --> 00:07:47 as important to know before anyone builds
00:07:47 --> 00:07:48 anything.
00:07:48 --> 00:07:51 Anna: A spare rover, a spare power
00:07:51 --> 00:07:53 source and a very real question.
00:07:54 --> 00:07:55 I like it.
00:07:55 --> 00:07:57 Avery: Now for something completely different,
00:07:58 --> 00:08:01 a theory paper. Luca Camiso at
00:08:01 --> 00:08:04 Columbia University and Felipe Aceno at
00:08:04 --> 00:08:07 Universidad Adol Foibanes in Chile have
00:08:07 --> 00:08:09 published a study in Physical Review D called
00:08:10 --> 00:08:13 Reconnection of Gravitational Fields. It
00:08:13 --> 00:08:15 appeared on 28 October and a, uh, preprint
00:08:15 --> 00:08:17 has been around since September.
00:08:17 --> 00:08:19 Anna: And the idea borrows from the sun
00:08:19 --> 00:08:22 Avery: it does. In a plasma magnetic field,
00:08:22 --> 00:08:25 lines get stretched and twisted until,
00:08:25 --> 00:08:28 in the right conditions, they snap and
00:08:28 --> 00:08:30 reconnect in a new arrangement. That's
00:08:30 --> 00:08:33 magnetic reconnection. It dumps the stored
00:08:33 --> 00:08:36 magnetic energy into the particles. And it's
00:08:36 --> 00:08:38 the engine behind solar flares. Camiso has
00:08:38 --> 00:08:40 worked on reconnection for years.
00:08:40 --> 00:08:43 Anna: So the question is whether gravity can do
00:08:43 --> 00:08:44 something like that.
00:08:44 --> 00:08:47 Avery: Right. Einstein's equations can be rewritten
00:08:47 --> 00:08:50 using quantities that behave a lot like
00:08:50 --> 00:08:53 electric and magnetic fields. Because
00:08:53 --> 00:08:55 FaceTime has four dimensions rather than
00:08:55 --> 00:08:57 three. The gravitational equivalent of a
00:08:57 --> 00:09:00 field line is a sheet. Camiso's comparison
00:09:00 --> 00:09:03 is that if you put lots of lines together,
00:09:03 --> 00:09:06 you get a sheet. Under ideal conditions,
00:09:06 --> 00:09:08 those sheets keep their connections. The new
00:09:08 --> 00:09:10 paper works out what happens when those ideal
00:09:10 --> 00:09:13 conditions break down. The sheets can
00:09:13 --> 00:09:16 reconnect, and when they do, energy moves out
00:09:16 --> 00:09:18 of the gravitational field and into matter.
00:09:18 --> 00:09:20 Anna: And they can put numbers on it.
00:09:20 --> 00:09:23 Avery: They derive measures of how fast it happens
00:09:23 --> 00:09:25 and show it changes how energy and momentum
00:09:25 --> 00:09:28 are exchanged between gravity and matter.
00:09:28 --> 00:09:31 Asenjo's point is that Einstein's equations
00:09:31 --> 00:09:33 contain constraints on how spacetime can
00:09:33 --> 00:09:36 evolve m that aren't obvious until you write
00:09:36 --> 00:09:37 them this way.
00:09:37 --> 00:09:38 Anna: Now, the caveats.
00:09:39 --> 00:09:41 Avery: Two of them. First, these sheets are
00:09:41 --> 00:09:44 mathematical tools, not physical surfaces.
00:09:44 --> 00:09:47 Spike's time isn't tearing like fabric.
00:09:48 --> 00:09:51 Second, this is purely theoretical. Nobody
00:09:51 --> 00:09:54 has observed gravitational reconnection. The
00:09:54 --> 00:09:56 obvious place to look is in black hole and
00:09:56 --> 00:09:58 neutron star mergers, where gravitational
00:09:58 --> 00:10:01 fields change violently and quickly. So the
00:10:01 --> 00:10:03 open question is whether it leaves a
00:10:03 --> 00:10:05 signature in the gravitational waves we
00:10:05 --> 00:10:05 already detect.
00:10:06 --> 00:10:09 Anna: So it's, uh, a new lens on equations we've
00:10:09 --> 00:10:11 had for 110 years.
00:10:12 --> 00:10:14 Avery: Exactly. A lens. Not a discovery
00:10:15 --> 00:10:15 yet.
00:10:16 --> 00:10:18 Anna: From the hottest energy releases to the
00:10:18 --> 00:10:21 coldest matter. A team working with
00:10:21 --> 00:10:24 China's Tiangong Space Station reported in
00:10:24 --> 00:10:26 Science last week that they cooled a cloud of
00:10:26 --> 00:10:28 atoms to an equivalent temperature of
00:10:28 --> 00:10:31 9.7 picokelvin.
00:10:31 --> 00:10:34 Avery: Picokelvin being trillionths of a
00:10:34 --> 00:10:37 Anna: degree, trillionths of a degree above
00:10:37 --> 00:10:39 absolute zero. The atoms are Ridium
00:10:39 --> 00:10:42 87, about 20 of them. And at those
00:10:42 --> 00:10:45 temperatures, they merge into a single
00:10:45 --> 00:10:47 quantum state called a Bose Einstein
00:10:47 --> 00:10:50 condensate. Instead of a crowd of individual
00:10:50 --> 00:10:53 atoms, they behave as one giant
00:10:53 --> 00:10:54 matter wave.
00:10:54 --> 00:10:54 Avery: Why go to
00:10:54 --> 00:10:55 Anna: space
00:10:55 --> 00:10:55 Avery: for this
00:10:55 --> 00:10:58 Anna: gravity? On the ground, the cloud
00:10:58 --> 00:11:01 falls, so you have to hold it in a trap. And
00:11:01 --> 00:11:03 the trap itself limits how weakly you can
00:11:03 --> 00:11:06 confine it and how long you can watch it in
00:11:06 --> 00:11:09 orbit. Everything's in free fall. Together,
00:11:09 --> 00:11:12 the cloud can drift and expand for a long
00:11:12 --> 00:11:15 time. The Chinese Academy of Sciences says
00:11:15 --> 00:11:17 they observed it for seven seconds after
00:11:17 --> 00:11:20 release. That doesn't sound long, but for a
00:11:20 --> 00:11:22 cold atom experiment, it's huge.
00:11:23 --> 00:11:25 Avery: Expansion is how they got it so cold,
00:11:25 --> 00:11:27 Anna: right? They combined evaporative cooling
00:11:27 --> 00:11:29 where the most energetic atoms are allowed to
00:11:29 --> 00:11:31 escape, with a further stage in which the
00:11:31 --> 00:11:33 cloud is allowed to expand, which lowers its
00:11:33 --> 00:11:36 energy even more. One honest note
00:11:36 --> 00:11:39 that 9.7 picokelvin is an equivalent
00:11:39 --> 00:11:41 temperature, a way of expressing how little
00:11:41 --> 00:11:43 kinetic energy the atoms have left. Not a
00:11:43 --> 00:11:45 thermometer reading in the usual sense.
00:11:45 --> 00:11:47 Avery: How does it compare with the record before
00:11:47 --> 00:11:50 Anna: NASA's Cold Atom Lab on the International
00:11:50 --> 00:11:53 Space Station was reported? Bose Einstein
00:11:53 --> 00:11:56 condensates expanding with energies of a few
00:11:56 --> 00:11:58 tens of picokelvin in 2022.
00:11:58 --> 00:12:01 So this goes a step colder. The
00:12:01 --> 00:12:04 hardware is a cold atom physics rack built by
00:12:04 --> 00:12:07 Peking University and the Shanghai Institute
00:12:07 --> 00:12:09 of Optics and Fine Mechanics, carried up on
00:12:09 --> 00:12:12 the Mengtian module in October 2022.
00:12:12 --> 00:12:13 Avery: And the payoff?
00:12:13 --> 00:12:16 Anna: Mostly precision. Ultra cold
00:12:16 --> 00:12:19 atoms make extraordinarily sensitive sensors,
00:12:19 --> 00:12:21 atom interferometers that could measure
00:12:21 --> 00:12:24 gravity, test whether everything really
00:12:24 --> 00:12:27 falls at the same rate or one day help
00:12:27 --> 00:12:30 search for dark matter. The Chinese team has
00:12:30 --> 00:12:32 also invited researchers worldwide to propose
00:12:32 --> 00:12:34 experiments on the facility.
00:12:34 --> 00:12:37 Avery: Follow up to our story from episode 222
00:12:37 --> 00:12:40 NASA's twin escapade spacecraft Blue and Gold
00:12:41 --> 00:12:43 spent the past year looping around the point
00:12:43 --> 00:12:45 a million and a half kilometres beyond Earth,
00:12:46 --> 00:12:48 waiting for Earth and Mars to line up. This
00:12:48 --> 00:12:51 month each one has to fly back past Earth and
00:12:51 --> 00:12:53 fire its engine at ah closest approach to
00:12:53 --> 00:12:54 slingshot itself to Mars.
00:12:54 --> 00:12:57 Anna: It's a manoeuvre no NASA spacecraft has
00:12:57 --> 00:13:00 flown before. A powered flyby,
00:13:01 --> 00:13:03 Avery: right? The trick is called the Oberth effect.
00:13:04 --> 00:13:06 A rocket burn is most efficient when you're
00:13:06 --> 00:13:09 already moving fastest, which is when you're
00:13:09 --> 00:13:11 closest to Earth. Each burn lasts about nine
00:13:11 --> 00:13:14 minutes and adds more than 1600 kilometres
00:13:14 --> 00:13:17 an hour, taking each spacecraft from about
00:13:17 --> 00:13:19 10.1 to 10.8 kilometres per
00:13:19 --> 00:13:20 second.
00:13:20 --> 00:13:22 Anna: And Blue went first on Saturday.
00:13:23 --> 00:13:25 Avery: Blue's Burn began at 8:51pm
00:13:25 --> 00:13:28 Australian Eastern Daylight Time on Saturday
00:13:28 --> 00:13:29 the 7th over southern Australia.
00:13:30 --> 00:13:33 Gold's began at 9:51pm Monday
00:13:33 --> 00:13:36 night Sydney time, which was 5:51am
00:13:36 --> 00:13:38 Eastern in the US again over southern
00:13:38 --> 00:13:38 Australia.
00:13:39 --> 00:13:41 Anna: And Gold's burn is confirmed as well.
00:13:42 --> 00:13:44 Avery: Yes, NASA has confirmed both burns went
00:13:44 --> 00:13:47 ahead. Both twins are now on their way to
00:13:47 --> 00:13:47 Mars
00:13:48 --> 00:13:50 Anna: and the team won't know exactly how well
00:13:50 --> 00:13:52 they're aimed for several days.
00:13:52 --> 00:13:55 Avery: That's right, small correction Burns will
00:13:55 --> 00:13:57 tidy up the path over the 10 month cruise,
00:13:57 --> 00:14:00 with arrival at Mars planned for the 7th and
00:14:00 --> 00:14:03 9th of September, 2027. Then they'll
00:14:03 --> 00:14:05 fly in formation and measure how the solar
00:14:05 --> 00:14:07 wind is stripping away the Martian
00:14:07 --> 00:14:10 atmosphere. And if the strategy works, it
00:14:10 --> 00:14:12 means Mars missions don't have to launch in
00:14:12 --> 00:14:14 that narrow window every 26 months.
00:14:14 --> 00:14:17 Anna: A few quick ones. Starship Flight 15 is
00:14:17 --> 00:14:19 targeted for Friday 13th November, with the
00:14:19 --> 00:14:22 window opening at, uh, 4:45pm Central Time.
00:14:22 --> 00:14:25 That's 22:45 UTC or
00:14:25 --> 00:14:27 9:45 on Saturday morning in Sydney.
00:14:28 --> 00:14:30 It's pending regulatory approval and SpaceX
00:14:30 --> 00:14:32 says it's aiming to catch both the super
00:14:32 --> 00:14:35 heavy booster and the Starship Upper Stage
00:14:35 --> 00:14:37 one with the tower for the first time
00:14:37 --> 00:14:39 Avery: targeted, not scheduled. We've learned that
00:14:39 --> 00:14:39 lesson. Um,
00:14:39 --> 00:14:42 Anna: we have next, Voyager 1 is about
00:14:42 --> 00:14:45 to become the first spacecraft to sit a full
00:14:45 --> 00:14:48 light day from Earth, meaning its signals
00:14:48 --> 00:14:51 take 24 hours to reach us. NASA
00:14:51 --> 00:14:53 expect the milestone around the 18th of
00:14:53 --> 00:14:56 November and is marking it on the 17th
00:14:56 --> 00:14:58 with an event called Shine Bright for
00:14:58 --> 00:14:59 voyagers light day.
00:14:59 --> 00:15:01 Avery: 49 years to get there.
00:15:01 --> 00:15:04 Anna: And finally, ESA says the first stage of
00:15:04 --> 00:15:06 euclid's data release1 is due this month.
00:15:07 --> 00:15:10 Raw data, calibrated images, catalogues and
00:15:10 --> 00:15:12 Spectra covering about 1900 square degrees
00:15:12 --> 00:15:15 of sky. No exact date yet, but we'll be
00:15:15 --> 00:15:15 watching.
00:15:16 --> 00:15:19 Avery: Time to look up. The Moon was new on Monday
00:15:19 --> 00:15:22 at 6:02pm in Sydney, 2:02am, um,
00:15:22 --> 00:15:25 Eastern in North America. So this week starts
00:15:25 --> 00:15:26 with dark skies everywhere.
00:15:27 --> 00:15:30 Anna: The best show is in the morning. Venus
00:15:30 --> 00:15:32 is low in the east before sunrise, sitting
00:15:32 --> 00:15:35 about a degree from Spica, the the brightest
00:15:35 --> 00:15:38 star in Virgo on Monday and Tuesday mornings.
00:15:38 --> 00:15:41 Venus is far brighter, magnitude minus
00:15:41 --> 00:15:44 4.2, so look for Spica as a fainter
00:15:44 --> 00:15:45 point beside it.
00:15:45 --> 00:15:48 Avery: And this is one where the north does better.
00:15:48 --> 00:15:51 At, uh, civil dawn, Venus is about 17 or 18
00:15:51 --> 00:15:53 degrees up, uh, from Los Angeles and New
00:15:53 --> 00:15:56 York, 13 from London, but only
00:15:56 --> 00:15:59 about 11 from Sydney. You'll want a clear
00:15:59 --> 00:16:00 eastern horizon here in the south.
00:16:00 --> 00:16:02 Anna: Then there's Mars and Jupiter.
00:16:02 --> 00:16:05 Avery: They're still closing in. On Tuesday,
00:16:05 --> 00:16:08 they're about 2 1/2 degrees apart and on the
00:16:08 --> 00:16:11 16th they reach about 1.2 degrees.
00:16:11 --> 00:16:14 By our own calculation. Some listings give
00:16:14 --> 00:16:16 less than a degree, so expect a slight
00:16:16 --> 00:16:19 disagreement between sources. Jupiter's the
00:16:19 --> 00:16:21 bright 1, around magnitude -2.
00:16:22 --> 00:16:25 Mars is the fainter orange one. They're
00:16:25 --> 00:16:26 near Regulus in Leo,
00:16:26 --> 00:16:28 Anna: and again, the north gets the higher view.
00:16:29 --> 00:16:31 Avery: Much higher. At civil dawn on Wednesday,
00:16:31 --> 00:16:34 they're 65 to 70 degrees up from Los
00:16:34 --> 00:16:37 Angeles and New York, over 50 from
00:16:37 --> 00:16:40 London and 33 or 34 from
00:16:40 --> 00:16:43 Sydney. Still very easy from the south,
00:16:43 --> 00:16:45 just lower in the northeastern sky.
00:16:45 --> 00:16:48 Anna: The evening belongs to the south. The thin
00:16:48 --> 00:16:50 crescent Moon comes back into the western sky
00:16:50 --> 00:16:53 and on Wednesday evening the 11th, it sits
00:16:53 --> 00:16:56 about 2 degrees from Antares, the red heart
00:16:56 --> 00:16:58 of Scorpius, around 8 o' clock in Sydney.
00:16:59 --> 00:17:01 Avery: And from London. The Moon has already set by
00:17:01 --> 00:17:03 then, while from New York it's barely 5
00:17:03 --> 00:17:06 degrees up half an hour after sunset. From
00:17:06 --> 00:17:09 Sydney it's 16 degrees up and climbing higher
00:17:09 --> 00:17:11 each night. By Friday it's over 35
00:17:11 --> 00:17:12 degrees up at dusk.
00:17:13 --> 00:17:14 Avery: Saturn's up in the
00:17:14 --> 00:17:14 Anna: evening too.
00:17:14 --> 00:17:17 Avery: It is half an hour after sunset.
00:17:17 --> 00:17:19 Saturn's about 45 degrees up from Sydney
00:17:19 --> 00:17:22 against 24 to 30 from New York and Los
00:17:22 --> 00:17:25 Angeles and about 16 from London. It's a good
00:17:25 --> 00:17:26 week for a telescope. While the Moon is still
00:17:26 --> 00:17:27 thin,
00:17:27 --> 00:17:30 Anna: the northern Taurids peak around the 11th and
00:17:30 --> 00:17:33 12th. It's a slow, modest shower,
00:17:33 --> 00:17:35 maybe a handful an hour, but it's known for
00:17:35 --> 00:17:38 bright fireballs at midnight. The radiant
00:17:38 --> 00:17:41 in taurus is about 30 degrees up from Sydney
00:17:41 --> 00:17:44 and 60 to nearly 80 degrees up, uh across the
00:17:44 --> 00:17:46 northern cities, so the north will see more.
00:17:46 --> 00:17:49 Avery: And looking ahead, the Leonids peak on the
00:17:49 --> 00:17:52 17th, uh at 4 in the morning. Their radiant
00:17:52 --> 00:17:54 is about 50 to 60 degrees up from the
00:17:54 --> 00:17:57 northern cities, but only around 16 degrees
00:17:57 --> 00:17:59 from Sydney. First quarter Moon sets around
00:17:59 --> 00:18:01 midnight, so the pre dawn hours will be dark.
00:18:02 --> 00:18:04 Anna: And for southern observers with a dark sky
00:18:04 --> 00:18:06 this week, there's the 4 Galaxy Challenge.
00:18:07 --> 00:18:10 Avery: Yes, with no Moon in the evening sky, you can
00:18:10 --> 00:18:12 try to see the Large and Small Magellanic
00:18:12 --> 00:18:14 Clouds, the Milky Way and the Andromeda
00:18:14 --> 00:18:17 Galaxy with your eyes in one session.
00:18:18 --> 00:18:20 That's a southern special. From the north,
00:18:20 --> 00:18:22 the Magellanic Clouds never rise.
00:18:22 --> 00:18:25 Anna: And our standing reminder, never look at
00:18:25 --> 00:18:28 the sun directly through binoculars or
00:18:28 --> 00:18:29 through a telescope without proper
00:18:29 --> 00:18:32 protection. If you're observing the sun, use
00:18:32 --> 00:18:35 only eclipse glasses or solar filters
00:18:35 --> 00:18:36 Certified to the ISO
00:18:36 --> 00:18:39 123122 standard
00:18:39 --> 00:18:42 and check them for damage before every use.
00:18:43 --> 00:18:45 Avery: That's the show a, uh, Curiosity spare
00:18:45 --> 00:18:48 heading for the Moon's south pole. Gravity
00:18:48 --> 00:18:50 behaving like a solar flare on paper,
00:18:51 --> 00:18:54 atoms colder than anything ever recorded,
00:18:54 --> 00:18:57 and two small spacecraft on the way to Mars.
00:18:57 --> 00:18:59 Anna: If you've got a question about anything in
00:18:59 --> 00:19:01 today's episode, send it through the contact
00:19:01 --> 00:19:04 form at astronomydaily IO Some
00:19:04 --> 00:19:06 of our best segments have started with
00:19:06 --> 00:19:07 listener questions.
00:19:08 --> 00:19:10 Avery: You'll find the show notes, links and our
00:19:10 --> 00:19:13 newsletter there too. And we're astrodaily
00:19:13 --> 00:19:14 POD on social media.
00:19:14 --> 00:19:16 Anna: Astronomy AstroDailyPod is part of the
00:19:16 --> 00:19:19 bytes.com podcast network. I'm
00:19:19 --> 00:19:20 Anna.
00:19:20 --> 00:19:22 Avery: And I'm, um, Avery. Clear skies, everyone.
00:19:22 --> 00:19:23 And we'll see you tomorrow.