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00:00:00 --> 00:00:03 Anna: Hey, everyone. Welcome to today's Astronomy
00:00:03 --> 00:00:04 AstroDailyPod. I'm Anna.
00:00:04 --> 00:00:06 Avery: And I'm avery. It's Friday, August 21st,
00:00:06 --> 00:00:09 series five, episode 173.
00:00:09 --> 00:00:11 Anna: And today we've actually got a bit of a case
00:00:11 --> 00:00:14 closed storey to lead with. Remember that
00:00:14 --> 00:00:16 SpaceX rocket stage that slammed into the
00:00:16 --> 00:00:17 moon a couple weeks back?
00:00:17 --> 00:00:19 Avery: The one everybody was speculating about
00:00:19 --> 00:00:22 because nobody could say exactly where it hit
00:00:22 --> 00:00:22 that one.
00:00:23 --> 00:00:25 Anna: NASA's finally got the pictures. We know
00:00:25 --> 00:00:28 exactly where, exactly how big, and it turns
00:00:28 --> 00:00:30 out an international team basically built a
00:00:30 --> 00:00:32 forensic investigation around it.
00:00:32 --> 00:00:35 Avery: Then some less happy space. The rescue
00:00:35 --> 00:00:37 mission for NASA's Swift telescope has
00:00:37 --> 00:00:38 officially failed.
00:00:38 --> 00:00:41 Anna: It has. And stick with us, because storey
00:00:41 --> 00:00:43 number three connects right back to that one
00:00:43 --> 00:00:46 in a pretty ironic way. Plus a fresh
00:00:46 --> 00:00:47 satellite launch out of New Zealand
00:00:47 --> 00:00:48 overnight.
00:00:48 --> 00:00:51 Avery: And tonight's sky has a proper deep sky
00:00:51 --> 00:00:52 target. If you've got a telescope handy,
00:00:52 --> 00:00:53 let's get into it.
00:00:53 --> 00:00:55 Okay, so back up for people who missed it.
00:00:55 --> 00:00:58 What actually happened here on August 5th?
00:00:58 --> 00:01:01 Anna: A, uh, spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage
00:01:01 --> 00:01:04 basically dead. Hardware left over from a
00:01:04 --> 00:01:06 launch no longer under control struck the
00:01:06 --> 00:01:09 Moon's surface. This kind of thing happens
00:01:09 --> 00:01:11 more than people realise. There's a fair bit
00:01:11 --> 00:01:13 of leftover rocket hardware drifting around
00:01:13 --> 00:01:16 out there and every so often the orbits catch
00:01:16 --> 00:01:17 up with it and something comes down.
00:01:18 --> 00:01:21 Avery: So this wasn't a, uh, SpaceX aimed for the
00:01:21 --> 00:01:21 moon storey.
00:01:22 --> 00:01:24 Anna: Not at all. It's an uncontrolled impact.
00:01:25 --> 00:01:27 What made it interesting was what happened
00:01:27 --> 00:01:29 next. Astronomers around the world had been
00:01:29 --> 00:01:31 tracking this stage for a while and had a
00:01:31 --> 00:01:33 rough prediction of where and when it would
00:01:33 --> 00:01:36 hit. So this became a genuine race to go
00:01:36 --> 00:01:38 photograph the aftermath before anyone even
00:01:38 --> 00:01:40 knew exactly what they'd find.
00:01:40 --> 00:01:41 Avery: And they found it.
00:01:42 --> 00:01:44 Anna: They found it. NASA's Centre for Near Earth
00:01:44 --> 00:01:47 Object Studies, that's the Planetary Defence
00:01:47 --> 00:01:49 Programme, took tracking data from
00:01:49 --> 00:01:51 independent astronomers and refined the
00:01:51 --> 00:01:53 impact prediction, then handed that off to
00:01:53 --> 00:01:56 the international partners flying spacecraft
00:01:56 --> 00:01:58 around the moon. First on the scene, so to
00:01:58 --> 00:02:01 speak, was South Korea's Dinuri, the Korea
00:02:01 --> 00:02:04 Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, which used its Luti
00:02:04 --> 00:02:06 camera to image the impact site within hours
00:02:07 --> 00:02:09 and nailed the predicted location to within
00:02:09 --> 00:02:11 about 6, 10 of a mile.
00:02:11 --> 00:02:13 Avery: That's a genuinely tight prediction for
00:02:13 --> 00:02:14 something falling out of the sky.
00:02:14 --> 00:02:17 Anna: Uncontrolled, it really is. Denuri
00:02:17 --> 00:02:19 then passed its refined coordinates over to
00:02:19 --> 00:02:22 the Lunar Reconnaissance orbiter team. And
00:02:22 --> 00:02:25 LRO's narrow angle camera got its own images
00:02:25 --> 00:02:28 on August 11th and 12th. Those are the ones
00:02:28 --> 00:02:29 NASA released this week with the full
00:02:29 --> 00:02:30 analysis.
00:02:30 --> 00:02:32 Avery: So what does the crater actually look like?
00:02:33 --> 00:02:35 Anna: It's about 60ft wide and less than
00:02:35 --> 00:02:38 10ft deep. Modest by lunar impact
00:02:38 --> 00:02:41 standards. This isn't a dramatic scar you'd
00:02:41 --> 00:02:43 spot from Earth. But what's genuinely useful
00:02:43 --> 00:02:46 about it are the rays. These streaks of
00:02:46 --> 00:02:48 ejected material radiating out from the
00:02:48 --> 00:02:51 crater. LRO caught both darker rays
00:02:51 --> 00:02:53 and brighter rays, and each one tells you
00:02:53 --> 00:02:54 something different.
00:02:54 --> 00:02:55 Avery: How so?
00:02:55 --> 00:02:57 Anna: The darker streaks are made of surface
00:02:57 --> 00:02:59 material that's already been sitting exposed
00:02:59 --> 00:03:02 to solar, wind and cosmic rays for a long
00:03:02 --> 00:03:05 time. What's called space weathering. And
00:03:05 --> 00:03:07 that was dug up from about a foot and a half
00:03:07 --> 00:03:10 down. The brighter streaks are fresh material
00:03:10 --> 00:03:12 excavated from even deeper that hasn't been
00:03:12 --> 00:03:15 weathered at all yet. So you're essentially
00:03:15 --> 00:03:17 getting a cross section of the lunar soil at
00:03:17 --> 00:03:19 two different depths handed to you for free
00:03:19 --> 00:03:20 by the impact.
00:03:21 --> 00:03:23 Avery: A rocket stage as an accidental science
00:03:23 --> 00:03:25 Anna: instrument, that's honestly the most useful
00:03:25 --> 00:03:28 way to think about it. It's not a mission.
00:03:28 --> 00:03:30 Nobody planned this experiment. But planetary
00:03:30 --> 00:03:33 scientists get real value out of studying
00:03:33 --> 00:03:36 these fresh, precisely dated impacts because
00:03:36 --> 00:03:38 they help calibrate how quickly the moon's
00:03:38 --> 00:03:40 surface weathers over time. Which matters for
00:03:40 --> 00:03:43 dating other craters. We can't otherwise put
00:03:43 --> 00:03:43 a clock on
00:03:44 --> 00:03:45 Avery: coordinates for the record.
00:03:46 --> 00:03:48 Anna: 199 degrees
00:03:48 --> 00:03:51 north, 266.6
00:03:51 --> 00:03:54 7138 east, at an
00:03:54 --> 00:03:57 elevation of about 511 metres.
00:03:57 --> 00:03:59 Though next time you're looking at a full
00:03:59 --> 00:04:02 lunar map, that's roughly the spot where a
00:04:02 --> 00:04:04 piece of Falcon 9 is now permanently part of
00:04:04 --> 00:04:05 the moon.
00:04:05 --> 00:04:08 Avery: Tiny, uninvited addition to the lunar
00:04:08 --> 00:04:08 surface.
00:04:08 --> 00:04:10 Anna: It's not going anywhere.
00:04:10 --> 00:04:13 Alright, this next one's a tougher storey,
00:04:13 --> 00:04:15 an official update to a storey we've been
00:04:15 --> 00:04:18 following for some weeks now. And it's not a
00:04:18 --> 00:04:21 happy ending. NASA's Swift Observatory,
00:04:21 --> 00:04:23 a telescope that's been watching gamma ray
00:04:23 --> 00:04:25 bursts and other high energy events since
00:04:25 --> 00:04:28 2004, has been slowly losing
00:04:28 --> 00:04:31 altitude faster than expected because of
00:04:31 --> 00:04:34 increased solar activity puffing up the upper
00:04:34 --> 00:04:36 atmosphere and adding extra drag.
00:04:36 --> 00:04:38 Avery: So it's literally falling.
00:04:38 --> 00:04:41 Anna: It's literally falling. And without a rescue,
00:04:42 --> 00:04:44 it's going to burn up in an uncontrolled re
00:04:44 --> 00:04:46 entry sometime before the end of this year.
00:04:47 --> 00:04:50 So NASA took a bit of a gamble. They signed a
00:04:50 --> 00:04:53 $30 million contract with an Arizona company
00:04:53 --> 00:04:56 called Catalyst Space Technologies to build a
00:04:56 --> 00:04:58 dedicated rescue spacecraft called Link
00:04:59 --> 00:05:01 and try to dock with Swift and boost it back
00:05:01 --> 00:05:02 to a safer orbit.
00:05:03 --> 00:05:05 Avery: That's an extremely tight turnaround for
00:05:05 --> 00:05:05 building
00:05:05 --> 00:05:08 Anna: a spacecraft under a year designed to
00:05:08 --> 00:05:11 launch. Link actually got off the ground on
00:05:11 --> 00:05:14 July 3, riding a Northrup Grumman Pegasus
00:05:14 --> 00:05:17 XL rocket launch. And for about three weeks
00:05:17 --> 00:05:19 things were tracking toward an actual
00:05:19 --> 00:05:22 rendezvous attempt. And then, um, and
00:05:22 --> 00:05:24 then Link itself started spinning
00:05:24 --> 00:05:27 uncontrollably. An attitude control failure
00:05:27 --> 00:05:29 on the rescue spacecraft, not on Swift.
00:05:30 --> 00:05:32 NASA made the failure official on August
00:05:32 --> 00:05:35 19th. Swift's fate is now sealed.
00:05:35 --> 00:05:38 Uncontrolled reentry sometime before year's
00:05:38 --> 00:05:40 end. No more boosts coming.
00:05:40 --> 00:05:43 Avery: Is that just it then? Um, mission over.
00:05:43 --> 00:05:44 Nothing learned?
00:05:45 --> 00:05:47 Anna: Not quite. Link is apparently still going to
00:05:47 --> 00:05:50 attempt a close approach to Swift, even
00:05:50 --> 00:05:53 without being able to dock and boost it just
00:05:53 --> 00:05:55 to gather proximity operations data for
00:05:55 --> 00:05:57 whatever the next rescue attempt looks like.
00:05:58 --> 00:06:01 And NASA administrator Jared Isaacman put
00:06:01 --> 00:06:03 it about as honestly as you can, this
00:06:03 --> 00:06:05 is not the outcome we were working toward,
00:06:06 --> 00:06:08 but it does not change why this mission was
00:06:08 --> 00:06:09 worth attempting.
00:06:09 --> 00:06:11 Avery: Which is the very diplomatic way of saying we
00:06:11 --> 00:06:13 tried something hard and it didn't work, but
00:06:13 --> 00:06:16 we needed to try exactly that.
00:06:16 --> 00:06:18 Anna: Satellite servicing and rescue missions are
00:06:18 --> 00:06:20 still a, uh, genuinely new capability.
00:06:21 --> 00:06:23 Nobody's got this down to a routine yet.
00:06:24 --> 00:06:26 Every attempt, successful or not, is
00:06:26 --> 00:06:28 teaching people how to actually do it.
00:06:29 --> 00:06:31 Avery: Small silver lining for a telescope that's
00:06:31 --> 00:06:32 about to become a shooting star.
00:06:32 --> 00:06:35 Anna: A very expensive, very short lived
00:06:35 --> 00:06:36 one.
00:06:36 --> 00:06:38 Avery: Okay, you said this one connects back to
00:06:38 --> 00:06:39 Swift how?
00:06:40 --> 00:06:42 Anna: Because Swift's X ray instrument is actually
00:06:42 --> 00:06:45 part of the data behind it. One last bit of
00:06:45 --> 00:06:47 science out of that observatory before it
00:06:47 --> 00:06:50 goes. There's a blazar that's a
00:06:50 --> 00:06:53 supermassive black hole blasting out a jet of
00:06:53 --> 00:06:55 plasma pointed almost directly at us
00:06:55 --> 00:06:56 called PKS
00:06:57 --> 00:07:00 223-3148. A
00:07:00 --> 00:07:03 team led by Silke Britzen at the Max Planck
00:07:03 --> 00:07:05 Institute for Radio Astronomy has been
00:07:05 --> 00:07:07 watching its jet using three different
00:07:07 --> 00:07:10 instru. The Very Long Baseline
00:07:10 --> 00:07:13 array here on Earth for radio, the Fermi
00:07:13 --> 00:07:15 telescope for gamma rays, and Swift for X
00:07:15 --> 00:07:16 rays.
00:07:16 --> 00:07:18 Avery: Three instruments stakeout, right?
00:07:18 --> 00:07:21 Anna: And combining all three is what let them
00:07:21 --> 00:07:23 catch something odd. The jet's motion
00:07:23 --> 00:07:26 changed in a way that doesn't match a normal
00:07:26 --> 00:07:28 blazar. It made a sudden, unexpected
00:07:28 --> 00:07:31 deviation, almost like something invisible
00:07:31 --> 00:07:34 gave it a nudge partway along its path.
00:07:34 --> 00:07:37 Avery: And something invisible is doing a lot of
00:07:37 --> 00:07:38 work in that sentence.
00:07:38 --> 00:07:41 Anna: It is, because the team's explanation is
00:07:41 --> 00:07:43 that an unseen clump of dark matter
00:07:43 --> 00:07:46 sitting between us and the jet is
00:07:46 --> 00:07:48 gravitationally lensing it, bending and
00:07:48 --> 00:07:51 magnifying the light of the jet, just like
00:07:51 --> 00:07:53 the way a giant galaxy cluster can lens a
00:07:53 --> 00:07:56 background galaxy, just on a much smaller,
00:07:56 --> 00:07:58 much harder to catch scale.
00:07:58 --> 00:08:01 Avery: Why does that matter? Beyond cool, Dark
00:08:01 --> 00:08:02 matter did a thing.
00:08:03 --> 00:08:05 Anna: Because we still don't know what dark matter
00:08:05 --> 00:08:07 actually is. And one of the best tools we've
00:08:07 --> 00:08:09 got for finding out is looking for its
00:08:09 --> 00:08:12 substructure clumps of it through exactly
00:08:12 --> 00:08:14 this kind of subtle lensing signature. If
00:08:14 --> 00:08:16 this holds up, it's one of the first times
00:08:16 --> 00:08:19 anyone's caught a dark matter clump lensing a
00:08:19 --> 00:08:22 blazar jet specifically. And there's a bonus.
00:08:22 --> 00:08:25 Blazars are suspected sources of high energy
00:08:25 --> 00:08:28 cosmic neutrinos, the ghost particles that
00:08:28 --> 00:08:30 barely interact with anything. A confirmed
00:08:30 --> 00:08:32 lensing event like this could help prove
00:08:32 --> 00:08:34 blazars really are where some of those
00:08:34 --> 00:08:35 neutrinos come from.
00:08:35 --> 00:08:37 Avery: Ritson have anything to say about it?
00:08:38 --> 00:08:40 Anna: Her quote was we are very happy to have
00:08:40 --> 00:08:43 discovered as yet undetected phenomena in the
00:08:43 --> 00:08:45 jet as well as in the gamma ray light curve
00:08:45 --> 00:08:47 published in Monthly Notices of the Royal
00:08:47 --> 00:08:50 Astronomical Society back on July 31.
00:08:51 --> 00:08:53 Avery: So even mid M collapse, Swift's still out
00:08:53 --> 00:08:54 here doing useful science.
00:08:55 --> 00:08:57 Anna: Going out on a high note at least.
00:08:57 --> 00:08:59 Next, a quick one to close out the news.
00:08:59 --> 00:09:01 Rocket Lab had a launch overnight from their
00:09:01 --> 00:09:02 pad in New Zealand.
00:09:03 --> 00:09:04 Avery: What'd they send up?
00:09:04 --> 00:09:07 Anna: A satellite called Susanoo 2 for the
00:09:07 --> 00:09:09 Tokyo based company IQPS. That's
00:09:09 --> 00:09:12 their ninth satellite launched by Rocket Lab.
00:09:12 --> 00:09:14 Now it's a synthetic aperture radar
00:09:14 --> 00:09:16 satellite, meaning it images the ground using
00:09:16 --> 00:09:19 radar instead of visible light. So it can see
00:09:19 --> 00:09:21 straight through cloudgover and works just as
00:09:21 --> 00:09:23 well at night as during the day.
00:09:23 --> 00:09:25 Avery: Handy for a company building out a whole
00:09:25 --> 00:09:27 constellation of these, I'd guess.
00:09:27 --> 00:09:30 Anna: Exactly. This is satellite number nine toward
00:09:30 --> 00:09:33 a planned constellation of 36. All
00:09:33 --> 00:09:35 aimed at giving customers near real time high
00:09:35 --> 00:09:38 resolution radar imagery of pretty much
00:09:38 --> 00:09:40 anywhere on Earth. The mission was nicknamed
00:09:40 --> 00:09:43 the Lightning God. Defens lifted off on an
00:09:43 --> 00:09:46 electron rocket just 59ft tall and
00:09:46 --> 00:09:49 dropped Susanoo 2 into low Earth orbit about
00:09:49 --> 00:09:52 357 miles up, roughly 50
00:09:52 --> 00:09:53 minutes after liftoff.
00:09:53 --> 00:09:55 Avery: Rocket Labs keeping up a pretty relentless
00:09:55 --> 00:09:56 launch pace this year.
00:09:57 --> 00:09:59 Anna: This was their 14th flight of 2026
00:09:59 --> 00:10:02 alone and 93rd overall for the electron
00:10:02 --> 00:10:04 rocket. They're closing in on their own
00:10:04 --> 00:10:06 record with plenty of year left to go.
00:10:06 --> 00:10:08 Avery: No signs of flowing down.
00:10:08 --> 00:10:09 Anna: None at all.
00:10:09 --> 00:10:11 Avery: Alright, before we go, what should people
00:10:11 --> 00:10:13 actually go look at tonight?
00:10:13 --> 00:10:16 Anna: If you've got a telescope, even a modest 14
00:10:16 --> 00:10:18 inches or so pointed at the Ring Nebula.
00:10:18 --> 00:10:20 Tonight, look straight up after dark for
00:10:20 --> 00:10:23 Vega, the brilliant star practically
00:10:23 --> 00:10:25 overhead. And just below it, you'll spot a
00:10:25 --> 00:10:27 neat little parallelogram of stars marking
00:10:27 --> 00:10:30 the constellation Lyra. The Ring Nebula,
00:10:30 --> 00:10:33 catalogued as M M57, sits right
00:10:33 --> 00:10:35 inside that parallelogram what are
00:10:35 --> 00:10:37 Avery: we actually looking at with that one?
00:10:37 --> 00:10:40 Anna: It's the glowing ghostly remnant of a dying
00:10:40 --> 00:10:43 sun like star. Threw the eyepiece at decent
00:10:43 --> 00:10:46 magnification 100 to 150 times.
00:10:46 --> 00:10:48 It looks like a small pale grey smoke ring
00:10:48 --> 00:10:51 hanging against the starfield. If you've got
00:10:51 --> 00:10:54 an oxygen 3 or narrow band filter, that'll
00:10:54 --> 00:10:56 make it pop even more against the background.
00:10:56 --> 00:10:58 Avery: And for anyone without a telescope tonight,
00:10:59 --> 00:11:01 Anna: the Moon's the easy target. It's a waxing
00:11:01 --> 00:11:03 gibbous, about 63% illuminated,
00:11:04 --> 00:11:06 nice and bright overhead through the evening.
00:11:06 --> 00:11:08 And mark your calendars for next week. A
00:11:08 --> 00:11:11 partial lunar eclipse on the 27th and 28th
00:11:11 --> 00:11:14 is going to cover a full 96% of the
00:11:14 --> 00:11:17 Moon's face, about as close to total as a
00:11:17 --> 00:11:19 partial eclipse gets. We'll have full viewing
00:11:19 --> 00:11:21 details for that one as it gets closer, a
00:11:21 --> 00:11:22 teaser
00:11:22 --> 00:11:24 Avery: and a homework assignment in one.
00:11:24 --> 00:11:25 Anna: That's the job.
00:11:25 --> 00:11:27 And that's it for today's episode. Series
00:11:27 --> 00:11:30 five episode 173 in the books,
00:11:30 --> 00:11:31 so to speak.
00:11:31 --> 00:11:33 Avery: Quick recap. NASA and international
00:11:34 --> 00:11:36 partners pinned down exactly where a SpaceX
00:11:36 --> 00:11:39 rocket stage hit the moon. The rescue mission
00:11:39 --> 00:11:41 for NASA's Swift telescope comes up short.
00:11:42 --> 00:11:44 A black hole jet may be getting a boost from
00:11:44 --> 00:11:47 unseen dark matter. And Rocket
00:11:47 --> 00:11:50 Lab keeps its launch pace red hot with a new
00:11:50 --> 00:11:52 radar satellite for Japan.
00:11:52 --> 00:11:54 Anna: If you enjoyed the show, the best thing you
00:11:54 --> 00:11:57 can do is tell a friend. Leave us a rating
00:11:57 --> 00:11:59 wherever you listen and follow us. Just
00:11:59 --> 00:12:01 search astrodaily Pod on your favourite
00:12:01 --> 00:12:03 platform. Bull show notes and links are
00:12:03 --> 00:12:06 always up at astronomydaily IO
00:12:06 --> 00:12:07 we'll be back
00:12:07 --> 00:12:09 Avery: tomorrow with the weekend wrap from across
00:12:09 --> 00:12:10 the universe.
00:12:10 --> 00:12:12 Anna: Until then, um, keep looking up.
00:12:12 --> 00:12:13 Avery: Clear skies everyone.
00:12:13 --> 00:12:15 Anna: Astronomy Day.
00:12:16 --> 00:12:18 Avery: Mhm Storeys we told
00:12:20 --> 00:12:20 Anna: love.