India Reaches Orbit — Privately — Today's Space News
Astronomy Daily: The Latest Space NewsJuly 20, 2026x
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00:15:3814.36 MB

India Reaches Orbit — Privately — Today's Space News

Astronomy Daily S05E145 — “Arrival” — Monday, 20 July 2026. On the 57th anniversary of Apollo 11, we cover a first-of-its-kind launch, a Mars flyby science haul, a four-billion-year-old Martian record, a habitable-zone world with a likely atmosphere, shrimp feeding in simulated microgravity, and the new science of listening to black holes ring. In This Episode (01:30) India goes private in orbit — Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1 aces its debut “Mission Aagaman,” making India the third nation with a private orbital launch capability. Plus a Starship Flight 13 update (NET 23–24 July). (05:30) Psyche’s Mars gift — NASA/JPL releases the science haul from Psyche’s 15 May Mars gravity assist, including the magnetometer’s first measurement of another body. (08:30) Mars keeps the receipts — Perseverance examines the “Broom Point member” on Jezero’s rim — some of the oldest terrain any rover has studied, recording ~4 billion years of impacts. (11:30) A world holding its breath — A Science paper detects escaping helium at LHS 1140b, pointing to a replenished, substantial atmosphere on a habitable-zone super-Earth. (A different planet from Friday’s story!) (15:00) Space shrimp — Okayama University of Science shows crustaceans can feed under simulated microgravity — a step toward closed-loop space food systems. (17:30) The bells of spacetime — A major review shows black-hole “spectroscopy” — reading ringdown gravitational waves — is becoming a real test of Einstein, ahead of the Einstein Telescope, Cosmic Explorer and LISA. (20:30) Skywatch — A coronal-hole solar wind stream brings a chance of minor aurora australis for far-southern latitudes around 21–22 July. Story Sources ● Vikram-1 / Mission Aagaman — Space.com; Skyroot Aerospace; ESA/Manorama coverage (18 July 2026). ● Psyche Mars flyby data — NASA/JPL release (17 July 2026). ● Perseverance “Broom Point member” — Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, Imperial College London-led. ● LHS 1140b helium escape — Science, Harvard-led (16 July 2026); Magellan Clay telescope. ● Space shrimp — Microgravity Science and Technology; Okayama University of Science Space Aquaculture Project. ● Black-hole spectroscopy — Classical and Quantum Gravity review (Birmingham / Johns Hopkins / Lisbon). ● Skywatch — EarthSky Sun news; UK Met Office & Australian BOM space weather (19 July 2026). Astronomy Daily is part of the Bitesz.com Podcast Network. Web: astronomydaily.io — Social: @AstroDailyPod

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00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Anna: Good day and welcome to Astronomy Daily.

00:00:03 --> 00:00:04 I'm Anna.

00:00:04 --> 00:00:06 Avery: And I'm, um, avery. It's Monday, the 20th of

00:00:06 --> 00:00:09 July, 2026, and here's a lovely bit of

00:00:09 --> 00:00:12 timing to start us off. 57 years ago

00:00:12 --> 00:00:15 today, two human beings first set their boots

00:00:15 --> 00:00:17 down in the dust of another world.

00:00:17 --> 00:00:19 Anna: Apollo 11, 20

00:00:20 --> 00:00:22 July 1969. And on the very

00:00:22 --> 00:00:25 anniversary of that first arrival, our

00:00:25 --> 00:00:28 lead story today is about an arrival of a

00:00:28 --> 00:00:31 different kind. A young private company half

00:00:31 --> 00:00:34 a world away announcing itself to the cosmos

00:00:34 --> 00:00:35 for the first time.

00:00:35 --> 00:00:38 Avery: Plus a spacecraft that swung past Mars and

00:00:38 --> 00:00:40 came away with a scientific treasure chest.

00:00:40 --> 00:00:43 A, uh, Mars rover reading a 4 billion year

00:00:43 --> 00:00:46 old diary of cosmic violence. A nearby

00:00:46 --> 00:00:48 world that looks like it's holding onto an

00:00:48 --> 00:00:50 atmosphere, shrimp learning to

00:00:50 --> 00:00:53 Anna: eat in weightlessness, and black holes

00:00:53 --> 00:00:55 that ring like bells. Quite the menu.

00:00:55 --> 00:00:56 Let's get into it.

00:00:57 --> 00:00:59 So our lead On Saturday morning,

00:00:59 --> 00:01:02 18 July, a rocket called

00:01:02 --> 00:01:05 Vikram 1 lifted off from the Satish

00:01:05 --> 00:01:07 Dhawan Space center at Sri

00:01:07 --> 00:01:09 Harikoda on India's east coast.

00:01:10 --> 00:01:13 And 17 minutes later, mission Control could

00:01:13 --> 00:01:15 say the words everyone had been holding their

00:01:15 --> 00:01:17 breath for brand success.

00:01:18 --> 00:01:20 Avery: And the reason that matters, Anna, is who

00:01:20 --> 00:01:22 built it. Bikram 1 was developed by

00:01:22 --> 00:01:25 Skyroot Aerospace, a private company out of

00:01:25 --> 00:01:28 Hyderabad founded back in 2018 by two

00:01:28 --> 00:01:31 former ISRO engineers. This wasn't a

00:01:31 --> 00:01:33 government launch. This was India's first

00:01:33 --> 00:01:36 ever private orbital rocket reaching space.

00:01:36 --> 00:01:39 Anna: Which puts India in a very small club.

00:01:39 --> 00:01:41 With this flight, India becomes just the

00:01:41 --> 00:01:44 third nation on Earth with a private orbital

00:01:44 --> 00:01:47 launch capability alongside the United States

00:01:47 --> 00:01:50 and China. That's the whole company on that

00:01:50 --> 00:01:51 list. 3.

00:01:51 --> 00:01:53 Avery: The rocket itself is a neat piece of

00:01:53 --> 00:01:56 engineering. It's about 22 meters tall, four

00:01:56 --> 00:01:59 stages, three solid, one liquid, and

00:01:59 --> 00:02:02 it can put around 350 kilograms into

00:02:02 --> 00:02:04 low earth orbit. The mission was named

00:02:04 --> 00:02:07 Agaman, which is Sanskrit for arrival,

00:02:07 --> 00:02:09 hence our episode titled Today.

00:02:09 --> 00:02:11 Anna: And it delivered a genuinely charming

00:02:11 --> 00:02:14 payload. Multiple technology demonstration

00:02:14 --> 00:02:16 satellites went up to about

00:02:16 --> 00:02:19 450km, including a

00:02:19 --> 00:02:22 satellite from G' Raha Space, a debris

00:02:22 --> 00:02:24 capture robotic arm from a company called

00:02:24 --> 00:02:27 cosmoserve, and Sky Root's own

00:02:27 --> 00:02:28 scope satellite.

00:02:28 --> 00:02:31 Avery: But my favorite bits are the symbolic ones.

00:02:31 --> 00:02:33 There was a handwritten postcard from Prime

00:02:33 --> 00:02:36 Minister Modi carried to orbit. There was

00:02:36 --> 00:02:39 a floral artwork called Cosmic Bloom.

00:02:39 --> 00:02:42 And then there's this. An 18 karat

00:02:42 --> 00:02:44 gold micro rocket carrying

00:02:44 --> 00:02:47 microscopic sculptures of three giants of

00:02:47 --> 00:02:50 Indian science. Sivi Raman, Bikram

00:02:50 --> 00:02:53 Sarabhai and A.P.J. abdul

00:02:53 --> 00:02:53 Kalam.

00:02:53 --> 00:02:56 Anna: Each sculpture smaller than a grain of rice.

00:02:57 --> 00:02:59 Avery: Smaller than a grain of rice. I love that

00:03:00 --> 00:03:02 you launch your first orbital rocket and you

00:03:02 --> 00:03:04 find room to honor the people whose shoulders

00:03:04 --> 00:03:06 you're standing on. The rocket is even named

00:03:06 --> 00:03:09 after Sarabhai, often called the father of

00:03:09 --> 00:03:10 India's space program.

00:03:10 --> 00:03:13 Anna: It's a beautiful gesture, and it caps a

00:03:13 --> 00:03:15 journey that began with Sky Roots suborbital

00:03:15 --> 00:03:18 Vikram s back in 2022.

00:03:18 --> 00:03:21 This is the moment they graduate from reached

00:03:21 --> 00:03:24 space to reached orbit. One Sky Root

00:03:24 --> 00:03:26 commentator called it the dawn of a new space

00:03:26 --> 00:03:29 era. And for India's commercial sector, that

00:03:29 --> 00:03:31 doesn't feel like hyperbole.

00:03:31 --> 00:03:33 Avery: Now, meanwhile, on the other side of the

00:03:33 --> 00:03:35 launch world, we're all still waiting on a

00:03:35 --> 00:03:37 rather larger rocket.

00:03:37 --> 00:03:39 Anna: We are Starship Flight 13.

00:03:40 --> 00:03:42 Longtime listeners know we've been tracking

00:03:42 --> 00:03:45 this one. SpaceX tried to fly it on Thursday,

00:03:45 --> 00:03:47 but the countdown aborted right at T0

00:03:47 --> 00:03:50 when a few of the 33 Raptor engines

00:03:50 --> 00:03:52 engines on the super heavy booster didn't

00:03:52 --> 00:03:55 light, the vehicle safely detanked, no harm

00:03:55 --> 00:03:55 done.

00:03:55 --> 00:03:58 Avery: And Elon Musk said afterwards that to be

00:03:58 --> 00:04:00 confident of a clean flight, two Raptors

00:04:00 --> 00:04:02 would be pooled and replaced. So the target

00:04:03 --> 00:04:05 has been sliding around. But as we record,

00:04:05 --> 00:04:08 the working date is no earlier than the 23rd

00:04:08 --> 00:04:09 to 24th of July.

00:04:10 --> 00:04:12 Anna: So keep your eyes on this space literally

00:04:13 --> 00:04:15 later this week, when Flight 13 does

00:04:15 --> 00:04:18 fly, it's aiming to deploy the first batch of

00:04:18 --> 00:04:21 the big new V3 Starlink satellites

00:04:21 --> 00:04:23 and eventually to attempt catching the upper

00:04:23 --> 00:04:25 stage with the launch tower. But, uh, for

00:04:25 --> 00:04:28 today, the launch success story belongs to

00:04:28 --> 00:04:28 Skyroot.

00:04:29 --> 00:04:31 Avery: Small rocket, huge milestone.

00:04:31 --> 00:04:34 Sometimes that's exactly how history arrives.

00:04:34 --> 00:04:37 Story two takes us out into the solar system

00:04:37 --> 00:04:40 with NASA's Psyche spacecraft. The mission on

00:04:40 --> 00:04:42 its way to that strange metal rich asteroid

00:04:42 --> 00:04:45 on also called Psyche, out in the main belt.

00:04:45 --> 00:04:48 Anna: Right, and to get there, Psyche needed a

00:04:48 --> 00:04:50 gravitational boost. Back on 15

00:04:50 --> 00:04:53 May, it swung past Mars for a gravity assist

00:04:54 --> 00:04:56 dealing a little of the planet's orbital

00:04:56 --> 00:04:59 momentum to slingshot itself onward. And

00:04:59 --> 00:05:02 this week, JPL released the full science hall

00:05:02 --> 00:05:03 from that flyby, which is

00:05:03 --> 00:05:06 Avery: really a dress rehearsal that turned into a

00:05:06 --> 00:05:08 bonus science session. Because a flyby like

00:05:08 --> 00:05:10 this is the perfect chance to switch on your

00:05:10 --> 00:05:13 instruments against a real planetary body and

00:05:13 --> 00:05:15 check that everything works before you arrive

00:05:15 --> 00:05:17 at your actual target in 2029.

00:05:17 --> 00:05:20 Anna: And everything did work. The gamma ray and

00:05:20 --> 00:05:23 neutron spectrometer got its first proper

00:05:23 --> 00:05:25 workout measuring a real world. But the

00:05:25 --> 00:05:28 headline for me is the magnetometer. Because

00:05:28 --> 00:05:31 during the Mars pass, it made its first ever

00:05:31 --> 00:05:33 measurement of the magnetic environment

00:05:33 --> 00:05:34 around another body.

00:05:35 --> 00:05:37 Avery: And that instrument really matters for the

00:05:37 --> 00:05:39 mission's big question. When Psyche reaches

00:05:39 --> 00:05:41 the asteroid, one of the things scientists

00:05:41 --> 00:05:44 most want to know is whether it has or once

00:05:44 --> 00:05:47 had magnetic field, because that would be a

00:05:47 --> 00:05:50 fingerprint of a molten metal core, a clue

00:05:50 --> 00:05:52 that this object might be the exposed heart

00:05:52 --> 00:05:54 of a shattered baby planet.

00:05:54 --> 00:05:57 Anna: So proving the magnetometer works cleanly at

00:05:57 --> 00:05:59 Mars gives the team real confidence. For

00:05:59 --> 00:06:02 2029, JPL also released a, uh,

00:06:02 --> 00:06:05 lovely timelapse of Mars growing and then

00:06:05 --> 00:06:07 shrinking in the spacecraft's view as it

00:06:07 --> 00:06:08 swept past.

00:06:08 --> 00:06:10 Avery: It's a good reminder that, um, on these long

00:06:10 --> 00:06:13 cruises, the journey itself does science. You

00:06:13 --> 00:06:15 don't just coast to the destination, you

00:06:15 --> 00:06:18 rehearse, you calibrate. And sometimes you

00:06:18 --> 00:06:20 get a free look at a neighbor along the way.

00:06:20 --> 00:06:23 Anna: Story three keeps us at Mars, but on the

00:06:23 --> 00:06:25 surface with the Perseverance Rover, which

00:06:25 --> 00:06:27 has been climbing the rim of Jezero Crater.

00:06:28 --> 00:06:30 Avery: And it's found something remarkable up there.

00:06:30 --> 00:06:32 A new study in the Journal of Geophysical

00:06:32 --> 00:06:35 Research Planets, led by researchers at

00:06:35 --> 00:06:37 Imperial College London, describes a

00:06:37 --> 00:06:40 75 meter thick stack of rock on the crater

00:06:40 --> 00:06:42 rim that they're calling the Broom Point

00:06:42 --> 00:06:42 member.

00:06:43 --> 00:06:45 Anna: And this stack is essentially a diary,

00:06:45 --> 00:06:48 layer after layer of what geologists call

00:06:48 --> 00:06:51 breccia rock that's been smashed,

00:06:51 --> 00:06:54 melted and welded back together by repeated

00:06:54 --> 00:06:56 asteroid impacts. And the timing is the

00:06:56 --> 00:06:59 astonishing part. This terrain is older than

00:06:59 --> 00:07:00 Jezero Crater

00:07:00 --> 00:07:02 Avery: itself, which makes it some of the oldest

00:07:02 --> 00:07:05 ground any Mars rover has ever laid its

00:07:05 --> 00:07:07 instruments on. We're talking roughly 4

00:07:07 --> 00:07:10 billion years back in a chapter of solar

00:07:10 --> 00:07:12 system history, sometimes called the era of

00:07:12 --> 00:07:14 heavy bombardment, when impacts were

00:07:14 --> 00:07:15 relentless.

00:07:16 --> 00:07:18 Anna: So perseverance is effectively reading a

00:07:18 --> 00:07:20 weather report from the most violent period

00:07:20 --> 00:07:23 the inner solar system has known. Each

00:07:23 --> 00:07:26 layer records another blow. And because

00:07:26 --> 00:07:28 Earth's surface has been endlessly recycled

00:07:28 --> 00:07:31 by plate tectonics and erosion, we've lost

00:07:31 --> 00:07:33 almost all of our own rocks from that age.

00:07:34 --> 00:07:36 Avery: That's the quiet profundity of it. Mars kept

00:07:36 --> 00:07:39 the receipts that Earth threw away to

00:07:39 --> 00:07:41 understand the bombardment that shaped our

00:07:41 --> 00:07:43 own young planet, the very era when life may

00:07:43 --> 00:07:46 have been getting started here, we may have

00:07:46 --> 00:07:48 to read the story off the rocks of Mars.

00:07:48 --> 00:07:50 Anna: And these are exactly the kinds of samples

00:07:50 --> 00:07:53 Perseverance has been caching for a future

00:07:53 --> 00:07:55 return to Earth. Imagine getting a four

00:07:55 --> 00:07:58 billion year old page of that diary into a

00:07:58 --> 00:07:58 laboratory.

00:07:59 --> 00:08:01 Avery: Story four is a big one for the exoplanet

00:08:01 --> 00:08:03 hunters. And Ana, Uh, I want to flag

00:08:03 --> 00:08:05 something right up front for our regular

00:08:05 --> 00:08:05 listeners.

00:08:06 --> 00:08:08 Anna: Please do, because this could sound familiar

00:08:08 --> 00:08:11 and it isn't exactly.

00:08:11 --> 00:08:14 Avery: A few days ago, in Friday's episode, we led

00:08:14 --> 00:08:16 with a story about the first detection of an

00:08:16 --> 00:08:19 atmosphere on a rocky world. This is a

00:08:19 --> 00:08:21 completely different planet, a different

00:08:21 --> 00:08:24 research team, and a different paper. So

00:08:24 --> 00:08:26 don't adjust your sets. This is fresh news

00:08:26 --> 00:08:27 about a different world.

00:08:28 --> 00:08:30 Anna: The world in question is LHS

00:08:30 --> 00:08:33 1140 B, a super Earth about

00:08:33 --> 00:08:36 49 light years away, orbiting a small

00:08:36 --> 00:08:39 red dwarf star. And it's long been one

00:08:39 --> 00:08:41 of the most tantalizing planets we know

00:08:41 --> 00:08:44 because it sits in the habitable zone where

00:08:44 --> 00:08:46 liquid water could in principle exist.

00:08:47 --> 00:08:49 Avery: And in a new paper in the journal Science

00:08:49 --> 00:08:52 published on 16 July, a team

00:08:52 --> 00:08:55 led from Harvard detected helium

00:08:55 --> 00:08:57 escaping from the planet. They used the

00:08:57 --> 00:09:00 Magellan Clay telescope in Chile to catch it.

00:09:00 --> 00:09:03 Anna: Now, on its own planet, losing gas might

00:09:03 --> 00:09:06 sound like bad news for an atmosphere, but

00:09:06 --> 00:09:08 here's the clever twist. Given how old this

00:09:08 --> 00:09:11 system is, the planet should have lost all

00:09:11 --> 00:09:14 its primordial helium long ago. The

00:09:14 --> 00:09:16 fact that we can still detect it escaping

00:09:16 --> 00:09:19 means something must be replenishing it.

00:09:19 --> 00:09:22 Avery: And that points to a substantial actively

00:09:22 --> 00:09:24 maintained atmosphere, rather than a bare

00:09:24 --> 00:09:27 airless rock, which is exactly the property

00:09:27 --> 00:09:30 you need if a habitable zone planet is going

00:09:30 --> 00:09:33 to be genuinely habitable. An atmosphere

00:09:33 --> 00:09:35 regulates temperature, shields the surface,

00:09:35 --> 00:09:37 and can hold onto water.

00:09:37 --> 00:09:39 Anna: This has been one of the great open questions

00:09:39 --> 00:09:42 for planets around red dwarf stars. Those

00:09:42 --> 00:09:45 stars are prone to flares that can strip a,

00:09:45 --> 00:09:47 uh, planet's air away. So finding strong

00:09:47 --> 00:09:50 evidence that LHS 1140 B

00:09:50 --> 00:09:53 is holding onto and refreshing an

00:09:53 --> 00:09:56 atmosphere is a genuinely significant step.

00:09:56 --> 00:09:59 Avery: It moves this world from promising a dress

00:09:59 --> 00:10:02 toward address. Worth a very close look.

00:10:02 --> 00:10:05 And you can bet the James Webb Telescope's

00:10:05 --> 00:10:06 name is already on the waiting list.

00:10:07 --> 00:10:10 Anna: Dory5 is a little lighter and I have

00:10:10 --> 00:10:12 to say, rather delightful.

00:10:12 --> 00:10:14 Avery, we need to talk about

00:10:14 --> 00:10:15 spacestream.

00:10:15 --> 00:10:18 Avery: Words I did not expect to say today, but here

00:10:18 --> 00:10:21 we are. Researchers at the Okayama University

00:10:21 --> 00:10:24 of Science in Japan have published the first

00:10:24 --> 00:10:26 results from something called the Space

00:10:26 --> 00:10:29 Aquaculture Project. And the question they're

00:10:29 --> 00:10:31 asking is deeply practical. Can we grow

00:10:31 --> 00:10:33 seafood in space?

00:10:33 --> 00:10:36 Anna: Because if we are serious about long stays on

00:10:36 --> 00:10:38 the moon or Mars, we can't just keep shipping

00:10:38 --> 00:10:41 up freeze dried meals forever. We need

00:10:41 --> 00:10:44 closed loop food systems, little self

00:10:44 --> 00:10:46 sustaining ecosystems that recycle nutrients.

00:10:47 --> 00:10:49 And a food chain needs more than just plants,

00:10:50 --> 00:10:50 right?

00:10:50 --> 00:10:53 Avery: So the team built a clever device, a high

00:10:53 --> 00:10:56 speed clinostat, essentially a rig that

00:10:56 --> 00:10:59 spins at around 130 rotations per

00:10:59 --> 00:11:01 minute to simulate the effects of

00:11:01 --> 00:11:04 microgravity here on the ground. And into

00:11:04 --> 00:11:07 that they placed juvenile shrimp along with

00:11:07 --> 00:11:10 tiny brine shrimp Artemia as their food.

00:11:10 --> 00:11:12 Anna: And the Key finding is, charmingly,

00:11:13 --> 00:11:16 the shrimp could still feed. Catching and

00:11:16 --> 00:11:18 eating prey when your body doesn't know which

00:11:18 --> 00:11:21 way is down is not trivial. A lot of

00:11:21 --> 00:11:24 feeding behavior relies on gravity cues. But

00:11:24 --> 00:11:26 the shrimp managed what suggests

00:11:26 --> 00:11:27 crustaceans

00:11:27 --> 00:11:29 Avery: could be a viable link in a future space food

00:11:29 --> 00:11:32 chain. And it's the published paper in the

00:11:32 --> 00:11:34 journal Microgravity Science and Technology

00:11:35 --> 00:11:37 that makes this more than a fun idea. It's an

00:11:37 --> 00:11:39 actual first data point.

00:11:39 --> 00:11:42 Anna: A prawn on the barbie Orbital edition.

00:11:42 --> 00:11:44 Somewhere down the line, an astronaut's

00:11:44 --> 00:11:47 dinner might start life spinning in a lab

00:11:47 --> 00:11:48 like this one.

00:11:48 --> 00:11:50 Avery: Clear skies and apparently clear water.

00:11:51 --> 00:11:53 And for our last story, we go to the most

00:11:53 --> 00:11:56 extreme physics in the universe. Because it

00:11:56 --> 00:11:58 turns out, black holes ring.

00:11:58 --> 00:12:01 Anna: They do. When two black holes spiral

00:12:01 --> 00:12:04 together and merge, the newborn black hole

00:12:04 --> 00:12:06 that results doesn't just settle down

00:12:06 --> 00:12:08 quietly. It, for a fraction of a second,

00:12:08 --> 00:12:11 wobbles, it vibrates, and it sheds

00:12:11 --> 00:12:14 that energy as gravitational waves at very

00:12:14 --> 00:12:17 specific frequencies. Scientists call it the

00:12:17 --> 00:12:18 ring down.

00:12:18 --> 00:12:21 Avery: And the analogy everyone reaches for is a

00:12:21 --> 00:12:23 bell. Strike a bell and it rings at

00:12:23 --> 00:12:25 particular tones that depend on its shape,

00:12:26 --> 00:12:28 its size, its material. A black

00:12:28 --> 00:12:31 hole is much simpler. Its ring depends on

00:12:31 --> 00:12:34 essentially just two things, its mass and

00:12:34 --> 00:12:35 its spin.

00:12:35 --> 00:12:38 Anna: And that simplicity is the gift. A major

00:12:38 --> 00:12:40 new review, bringing together researchers

00:12:40 --> 00:12:43 from the University of Birmingham, Johns

00:12:43 --> 00:12:45 Hopkins and the University of Lisbon in the

00:12:45 --> 00:12:48 journal Classical and Quantum Gravity, lays

00:12:48 --> 00:12:50 out how black hole spectroscopy is

00:12:50 --> 00:12:53 maturing from a beautiful theory into a real

00:12:53 --> 00:12:55 working experimental science.

00:12:56 --> 00:12:58 Avery: And the reason it matters is that it's one of

00:12:58 --> 00:13:00 the cleanest tests of Einstein we have.

00:13:00 --> 00:13:03 General relativity makes a very precise

00:13:03 --> 00:13:05 prediction for what those ring down tones

00:13:05 --> 00:13:08 should be. If we listen carefully and the

00:13:08 --> 00:13:10 tones match, Einstein passes another

00:13:10 --> 00:13:13 brutal exam. If they don't quite match,

00:13:14 --> 00:13:15 then we

00:13:15 --> 00:13:17 Anna: might be hearing the first whisper of new

00:13:17 --> 00:13:20 physics. A crack in the theory under the most

00:13:20 --> 00:13:22 extreme conditions imaginable.

00:13:22 --> 00:13:24 Avery: And we're on the cusp of hearing this

00:13:24 --> 00:13:27 properly. Today's detectors catch hints of

00:13:27 --> 00:13:29 the ring, but the next generation, the

00:13:29 --> 00:13:32 Einstein telescope, cosmic explorer and the

00:13:32 --> 00:13:35 space based LISA mission, will hear these

00:13:35 --> 00:13:37 black hole bells with real clarity.

00:13:38 --> 00:13:40 Anna: It's a wonderful thought. The most silent,

00:13:40 --> 00:13:43 invisible objects in the cosmos, and we're

00:13:43 --> 00:13:46 learning to listen to them chime before we

00:13:46 --> 00:13:48 go, our sky watch. And this one's for our

00:13:48 --> 00:13:51 friends down south, which is a lot of us.

00:13:51 --> 00:13:53 Avery: There's a large coronal hole on the sun

00:13:53 --> 00:13:56 that's rotated around to face Earth, and it's

00:13:56 --> 00:13:59 sending a stream of fast solar wind our way.

00:13:59 --> 00:14:01 The forecaster is expected to arrive around

00:14:01 --> 00:14:03 the 21st to 22nd of July.

00:14:03 --> 00:14:06 Anna: So midweek, which brings a chance,

00:14:06 --> 00:14:09 and I'll stress chance of some minor

00:14:09 --> 00:14:11 aurora australis activity for the fall far

00:14:11 --> 00:14:14 southern latitudes. We're talking Tasmania,

00:14:15 --> 00:14:17 the south of the south island of New Zealand,

00:14:17 --> 00:14:20 and similar high magnetic latitude spots.

00:14:21 --> 00:14:23 Avery: Let's keep expectations sensible. This is a

00:14:23 --> 00:14:26 modest event, not one of the great storms

00:14:26 --> 00:14:29 we've had this cycle. Geomagnetic activity in

00:14:29 --> 00:14:31 the kp3.5 range, so no

00:14:31 --> 00:14:34 guarantees of curtains of light. But if

00:14:34 --> 00:14:36 you're somewhere dark and far south midweek,

00:14:36 --> 00:14:38 it's worth a look toward the southern horizon

00:14:38 --> 00:14:39 after dark.

00:14:40 --> 00:14:42 Anna: And with solar maximum conditions still

00:14:42 --> 00:14:44 lingering, these chances keep coming around.

00:14:45 --> 00:14:47 Wrap up warm. It is winter down here after

00:14:47 --> 00:14:47 all.

00:14:48 --> 00:14:50 Avery: That's our lot for today. From India's first

00:14:50 --> 00:14:53 private rocket reaching orbit. To shrimp

00:14:53 --> 00:14:55 learning to dine in free fall. To black holes

00:14:55 --> 00:14:58 ringing across spacetime. What a spread.

00:14:58 --> 00:15:00 Anna: Thanks for spending part of your day with us.

00:15:01 --> 00:15:03 You can find us at astronomydaily,

00:15:03 --> 00:15:05 IO and on all the socials at

00:15:06 --> 00:15:08 AstroDailyPod We're back tomorrow.

00:15:08 --> 00:15:11 Avery: Um, until then, I'm Avery.

00:15:11 --> 00:15:13 Anna: And I'm Anna. Clear skies everyone.

00:15:16 --> 00:15:17 Avery: Mhm.