Artemis II Gets Its Launch Date: April 1 | Magnetar Born | Planets Collide | S05E62

0:00 Speaker 1: Happy Friday the thirteenth, space fans, and if you're superstitious,

0:05 Speaker 1: I'm afraid We've got nothing but good luck today.

0:08 Speaker 2: That's right, We've got astronauts heading to the Moon, the

0:11 Speaker 2: birth of one of the most extreme objects in the universe,

0:14 Speaker 2: planets smashing into each other, an asteroid that buzzed right

0:18 Speaker 2: past us while we were sleeping, possible auroras tonight.

0:22 Speaker 1: And a neutrino so powerful that scientists have been trying

0:26 Speaker 1: to figure out where it came from for three years.

0:29 Speaker 1: They may finally have the answer.

0:31 Speaker 2: I'm Avery and I'm Anna.

0:33 Speaker 1: This is Astronomy Daily, your daily dose of what's happening

0:37 Speaker 1: in space and beyond. Let's get into it.

0:39 Speaker 2: Okay, let's start with the big one. After years of delays, setbacks,

0:44 Speaker 2: hydrogen leagues, and a very stressful few months of repairs,

0:48 Speaker 2: NASA has officially given Artemis two the green light to launch.

0:52 Speaker 1: The agency completed its flight readiness review on Thursday. That's

0:56 Speaker 1: the big final meeting where all the mission managers get

0:59 Speaker 1: together and essentially ask the question, are we ready to

1:03 Speaker 1: put four people on top of a rocket and send

1:06 Speaker 1: them around the Moon.

1:07 Speaker 2: And the answer was a unanimous yes. Every team voted go,

1:12 Speaker 2: no dissenting opinions, no last minute holdouts.

1:15 Speaker 1: The target launch date is April first, and no that's

1:19 Speaker 1: not a joke, with a window opening at six twenty

1:22 Speaker 1: four pm Eastern Time. They've also got backup windows on

1:26 Speaker 1: April second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and thirtieth if anything

1:31 Speaker 1: causes a delay.

1:32 Speaker 2: So for anyone who needs a refresher. Artemis two is

1:35 Speaker 2: the first crude flight of NASA Space Launch System, the

1:39 Speaker 2: SLS and the Orion capsule. It's going to carry four

1:43 Speaker 2: astronauts around the Moon in a figure eight loop and

1:46 Speaker 2: bring them back to Earth safely.

1:48 Speaker 1: The crew is Commander Red Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission

1:53 Speaker 1: specialists Christina Cock and Jeremy Hanson. Hanson is Canadian, so

1:58 Speaker 1: this will be the first time an American astronaut has

2:01 Speaker 1: traveled beyond low Earth orbit.

2:03 Speaker 2: The mission lasts ten days in total. They won't be

2:06 Speaker 2: landing on the Moon. This is a test flight proving

2:09 Speaker 2: that o'rian can handle deep space travel and bring its

2:12 Speaker 2: crew home safely. Specifically, the heat shield performance during reentry

2:17 Speaker 2: is one of the things are watching very carefully.

2:20 Speaker 1: So what caused all the holdups? The short version after

2:24 Speaker 1: the rocket's wet dress rehearsal, a full practice countdown and

2:27 Speaker 1: fueling test, engineers found a problem with helium flow in

2:31 Speaker 1: the upper stage. The whole stack had to be rolled

2:34 Speaker 1: back into the Vehicle assembly building for repairs.

2:37 Speaker 2: The good news is that problem has been fixed. It

2:40 Speaker 2: turned out to be a blocked seal and a cable

2:43 Speaker 2: connecting the rocket to the ground systems, a relatively small fix,

2:47 Speaker 2: but one that took time to diagnose and sort out.

2:50 Speaker 1: Bassa also confirmed they won't be doing another wet dress

2:53 Speaker 1: rehearsal before launch, so the rollback to the launch pad

2:56 Speaker 1: on March nineteenth will be the beginning of the final

2:59 Speaker 1: put now.

3:01 Speaker 2: There was also a notable update to the broader Artemis

3:04 Speaker 2: program during Thursday's press conference. Artemis three, which was previously

3:08 Speaker 2: going to attempt a lunar landing, is no longer doing that. Instead,

3:13 Speaker 2: it's going to focus on rendezvous and docking maneuvers, with

3:15 Speaker 2: the lunar landers being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin.

3:19 Speaker 1: The actual first lunar landing has now moved to Artemis four,

3:24 Speaker 1: but NASA is still targeting twenty twenty eight for boots

3:27 Speaker 1: on the lunar surface, so the goal hasn't shifted, just

3:30 Speaker 1: the way they're getting there, and it's worth stepping back

3:34 Speaker 1: and appreciating what April first would mean if it all

3:37 Speaker 1: goes to plan. The last time humans left Low Earth

3:41 Speaker 1: orbit was December nineteen seventy two, the final apolloition. That's

3:46 Speaker 1: over fifty three years ago. Artemis two would be the

3:49 Speaker 1: first time humans have ventured beyond our planet's immediate neighborhood

3:53 Speaker 1: in more than half a century.

3:56 Speaker 2: April cannot come soon enough.

3:58 Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about one of the most extreme objects

4:02 Speaker 1: in the universe, the magnetar.

4:05 Speaker 2: A magnetar is a type of neutron star, already one

4:09 Speaker 2: of the densest things that can exist, but with a

4:11 Speaker 2: magnetic field so powerful it makes normal neutron stars look mild.

4:17 Speaker 2: We're talking fields hundreds to one thousand times stronger than

4:20 Speaker 2: a regular neutron star, which is already billions of times

4:24 Speaker 2: stronger than anything we have on Earth.

4:27 Speaker 1: They're only about ten miles across, but they can spin

4:30 Speaker 1: more than a thousand times per second when they're young.

4:33 Speaker 1: They're also thought to be behind some of the most

4:35 Speaker 1: powerful and mysterious signals we see in the cosmos, including

4:39 Speaker 1: fast radio bursts, and.

4:41 Speaker 2: For the first time ever, a team of astronomers has

4:44 Speaker 2: actually watched one being born.

4:46 Speaker 1: The paper was published in Nature on Wednesday. The team

4:50 Speaker 1: was studying a supernova called SN twenty twenty four AFAV,

4:55 Speaker 1: discovered back in December twenty twenty four, located about a

4:58 Speaker 1: billion light years from Earth. It's what's called a super

5:01 Speaker 1: luminous supernova, at least ten times brighter than a typical

5:05 Speaker 1: stellar explosion, and it stays bright for much longer too.

5:09 Speaker 2: These super luminous supernovae have puzzled astronomers since the early

5:14 Speaker 2: two thousands. Normal supernovae are powered by the shockwave of

5:18 Speaker 2: a collapsing stellar core, but these things are just too

5:21 Speaker 2: bright for that explanation to work on its own.

5:24 Speaker 1: Back in twenty ten, a physicist at UC Berkeley named

5:27 Speaker 1: Dan Cassen proposed that a magnetar hiding at the center

5:31 Speaker 1: could be the power source. It's spinning magnetic field accelerating

5:35 Speaker 1: particles into the surrounding debris, keeping the whole thing lit up.

5:39 Speaker 1: It was an elegant theory, but there was no direct

5:42 Speaker 1: evidence to prove.

5:43 Speaker 2: It until now. Graduate student Joseph Farrah at UC Santa Barbara,

5:49 Speaker 2: working with a global network of telescopes at Los Cumbers

5:52 Speaker 2: Observatory tracked SN twenty twenty four AFAV for over two

5:57 Speaker 2: hundred days, and they noticed something very strange.

6:01 Speaker 1: Instead of fading smoothly, the supernova's light oscillated on its

6:05 Speaker 1: way down, not just one or two bumps, four of them,

6:09 Speaker 1: and crucially, the time between each bump got shorter and shorter.

6:13 Speaker 1: The team called it a chirp, and it's the same

6:16 Speaker 1: word used for the signal from merging black holes detected

6:19 Speaker 1: by gravitational wave observatories.

6:21 Speaker 2: The explanation that fits perfectly is a magnetar with a

6:25 Speaker 2: wobbling accretion disc around it. Some of the material from

6:29 Speaker 2: the explosion fell back towards the newborn magnetar, forming an

6:33 Speaker 2: asymmetric disc. Because a magnetar is spinning so fast and

6:38 Speaker 2: is so massive, it warps spacetime around it, an effect

6:42 Speaker 2: predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity called lens fearing precession,

6:48 Speaker 2: causing the disc to wobble. As a disc spirals inward

6:52 Speaker 2: and shrinks, the wobble gets faster and the light pulses

6:56 Speaker 2: speed up. That's your chirp.

6:58 Speaker 1: The team estimates the mag natar's spin period at four

7:01 Speaker 1: point two milliseconds, meaning it's spinning about two hundred and

7:05 Speaker 1: forty times per second, and its magnetic field at around

7:09 Speaker 1: three hundred trillion times that of Earth. Both of those

7:12 Speaker 1: are classic magnetar signatures.

7:15 Speaker 2: Joseph Farah put it brilliantly, this is the science I

7:18 Speaker 2: dreamed of as a kid. It's the universe telling us

7:21 Speaker 2: out loud and in our face that we don't fully

7:24 Speaker 2: understand it yet.

7:26 Speaker 1: This is also the first time that general relativity has

7:29 Speaker 1: been needed to explain the mechanics of a supernova. That's

7:32 Speaker 1: a remarkable statement. Einstein's equations, written over a century ago

7:37 Speaker 1: describing something happening a billion light years away and a

7:40 Speaker 1: billion years in the past.

7:42 Speaker 2: Science is genuinely incredible, sometimes, from the.

7:46 Speaker 1: Death of a star to the death of two planets.

7:49 Speaker 1: This week, astronomers published evidence of watching two worlds smash

7:53 Speaker 1: into each other in real time eleven thousand light years

7:56 Speaker 1: from Earth.

7:58 Speaker 2: This one comes from the University of Water Washington. Doctoral

8:01 Speaker 2: candidate Anastasios to Zanidyx was combing through archival telescope data

8:06 Speaker 2: when he noticed a star called Gaya twenty EHK, a

8:10 Speaker 2: perfectly ordinary, stable sun like star, doing something very strange.

8:16 Speaker 1: From about twenty sixteen, the star showed three dips in brightness,

8:20 Speaker 1: unusual but not completely unheard of. Then around twenty twenty one,

8:25 Speaker 1: its light output went haywire. As to Xanadix himself put it,

8:30 Speaker 1: stars like our sun don't do that. So when we

8:32 Speaker 1: saw this one, we were like, hello, what's going on here?

8:36 Speaker 2: What was going on was an enormous cloud of rocks

8:39 Speaker 2: and dust passing in front of the star from our

8:41 Speaker 2: line of sight, atchually blocking its light, and the source

8:45 Speaker 2: of all that debris a catastrophic collision between two planets.

8:50 Speaker 1: The analysis suggests the two worlds have been spiraling towards

8:53 Speaker 1: each other for years. Those initial dips in brightness from

8:57 Speaker 1: twenty sixteen were likely caused by a series of grazing impacts,

9:02 Speaker 1: like two ships sideseswiping each other at increasing speed. Then

9:06 Speaker 1: around twenty twenty one they had their final catastrophic collision,

9:10 Speaker 1: and the infrared signature from all that superheated debris lit up.

9:15 Speaker 2: Here's a part that really captures the imagination. The debris

9:18 Speaker 2: cloud is orbiting Gaya twenty ehk at roughly one astronomical unit,

9:24 Speaker 2: the same distance as Earth is from our Sun, and

9:27 Speaker 2: at that distance over millions of years, that material could

9:31 Speaker 2: cool and solidify into new planetary bodies, possibly something resembling

9:36 Speaker 2: an Earth Moon system.

9:37 Speaker 1: Because that's how our moon was thought to have formed.

9:40 Speaker 1: A planetary body about the size of Mars struck the

9:44 Speaker 1: early Earth, and the resulting debris eventually coalesced into our Moon.

9:48 Speaker 1: The collision around Gaya twenty ehk may be the closest

9:52 Speaker 1: real time analog we've ever observed.

9:55 Speaker 2: The paper was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters on Wednesday.

9:59 Speaker 2: The research note that while these collisions are probably common

10:02 Speaker 2: in the early stages of Solar system formation, catching one

10:06 Speaker 2: in the act requires a very specific alignment and a

10:09 Speaker 2: lot of patients. Their hope is that the VERA Reuben Observatory,

10:13 Speaker 2: which has just come online, could find as many as

10:16 Speaker 2: one hundred more such events over the next decade.

10:20 Speaker 1: How rare is the event that created the Earth and Moon?

10:23 Speaker 1: That question is fundamental to understanding whether life is we

10:27 Speaker 1: know it could exist elsewhere. Every collision like this one

10:30 Speaker 1: brings us a little closer to the answer.

10:33 Speaker 2: Right, So, while you were asleep last night, a bus

10:36 Speaker 2: size asteroid flew closer to Earth.

10:38 Speaker 1: Than the Moon, completely harmless, but The timing and the

10:42 Speaker 1: discovery circumstances are what make this story interesting.

10:46 Speaker 2: Asteroid twenty twenty six EG one, that's its official designation,

10:51 Speaker 2: made its closest approach to Earth at eleven twenty seven

10:55 Speaker 2: pm Eastern Time last night, passing about one hundred ninety

10:59 Speaker 2: seven thousand miles away. The Moon sits at roughly two

11:03 Speaker 2: hundred thirty nine thousand miles, so this thing flew inside

11:07 Speaker 2: the Moon's orbit. It was traveling at around twenty one thousand,

11:12 Speaker 2: five hundred miles per hour and is estimated to be

11:15 Speaker 2: somewhere between thirty two and seventy two feet across, roughly

11:20 Speaker 2: the size of a bus or small lorry.

11:22 Speaker 1: At that size, even if it had hit Earth, it

11:25 Speaker 1: would have mostly burned up in the atmosphere. No global catastrophe,

11:28 Speaker 1: but it's a reminder that space is a busy place

11:31 Speaker 1: and these things happen regularly.

11:33 Speaker 2: What's particularly noteworthy is how recently it was discovered. Astronomers

11:38 Speaker 2: first spotted twenty twenty six EG one on March eighth,

11:41 Speaker 2: just five days before it flew past. That's an incredibly

11:45 Speaker 2: short warning window, and it illustrates a real challenge in

11:48 Speaker 2: planetary defense. Small, fast moving objects can be very hard

11:53 Speaker 2: to detect until they're almost upon us.

11:55 Speaker 1: NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies has confirmed that

11:59 Speaker 1: no major where asteroid strikes capable of causing serious damage

12:03 Speaker 1: are expected in the next one hundred years, but major

12:06 Speaker 1: is doing a lot of work. In that sentence, small

12:09 Speaker 1: objects like this one pass close to Earth all the time.

12:12 Speaker 2: The silver lining here is that the VERA. Reuben Observatory,

12:16 Speaker 2: which his name is coming up a lot in space

12:18 Speaker 2: news right now and rightly so, has already discovered two

12:22 Speaker 2: thousand previously unknown Solar System bodies since beginning operations. It's

12:26 Speaker 2: going to transform our ability to find these things early.

12:30 Speaker 2: There are currently forty one thousand near Earth asteroids being

12:34 Speaker 2: tracked by NASA and its partners, and that number is

12:37 Speaker 2: only going to grow.

12:38 Speaker 1: So the good news is we're getting better at it.

12:41 Speaker 1: The slightly unsettling news is there's still plenty we're not

12:44 Speaker 1: seeing yet, but.

12:46 Speaker 2: Rest assured we are getting better at it.

12:48 Speaker 1: Now for something a little more immediate and potentially beautiful,

12:52 Speaker 1: If you live at a higher latitudes and you're listening

12:55 Speaker 1: to this before tonight, you might want to look up.

12:58 Speaker 2: A stream of fast moving solar wind from a large

13:01 Speaker 2: coronal hole on the Sun is expected to reach Earth

13:04 Speaker 2: today around midday UTC, and that arrival could trigger minor

13:08 Speaker 2: geomagnetic storm conditions what's classified as a G one.

13:12 Speaker 1: Storm great question. Coronal holes are regions in the Sun's

13:17 Speaker 1: outer atmosphere where the magnetic field lines open out into

13:21 Speaker 1: space rather than looping back. Through these openings, the solar

13:25 Speaker 1: wind streams out much faster and more concentrated than usual.

13:29 Speaker 2: When a coronal hole faces Earth, as the Sun rotates,

13:33 Speaker 2: that fast moving stream of charged particles heads our way.

13:37 Speaker 2: It typically takes two to three days to arrive after

13:39 Speaker 2: the coronal hole aligns with Earth, and this one has

13:43 Speaker 2: been tracking in our direction for the past few days.

13:46 Speaker 1: During g one conditions, auroras can become visible from higher

13:50 Speaker 1: latitude locations. We're talking places like Edinburgh and the Scottish Highlands, Reikyevik,

13:55 Speaker 1: northern Scandinavia, Seattle, Minneapolis, and in the southern hemisphere Hobart

14:01 Speaker 1: in Tasmania.

14:03 Speaker 2: If you're in or near any of those areas tonight,

14:05 Speaker 2: get away from city lights, find a dark spot with

14:08 Speaker 2: a clear northern or southern horizon, depending on where you are,

14:12 Speaker 2: and give your eyes about twenty minutes to adjust. The

14:15 Speaker 2: best of reviewing is usually in the hours around local midnight.

14:19 Speaker 1: There's also a handy detail here for sky observers. The

14:23 Speaker 1: moon is currently a waning crescent at about thirty four

14:26 Speaker 1: percent illumination, so it won't be washing out the sky

14:30 Speaker 1: for most of the night. Conditions could be pretty good, and.

14:33 Speaker 2: Even if the geomagnetic activity stays mild and the auroras

14:37 Speaker 2: don't materialize, Europa is currently transiting Jupiter. You can catch

14:41 Speaker 2: the little moon crossing the face of the giant planet

14:44 Speaker 2: through a telescope this week. There's always something to see

14:47 Speaker 2: up there.

14:47 Speaker 1: And finally, to close out what has been a genuinely

14:51 Speaker 1: extraordinary news day, we're going to the floor of the

14:54 Speaker 1: Mediterranean Sea.

14:55 Speaker 2: There's a detector down there called KM three and NET,

15:00 Speaker 2: which sits off the coast of Sicily. It's built to

15:03 Speaker 2: catch neutrinos, those ghostly near massless particles that barely interact

15:08 Speaker 2: with anything passing through the Earth as if it weren't there.

15:12 Speaker 1: Three years ago, KM three NET recorded a neutrino with

15:16 Speaker 1: more energy than any of its kind ever detected before,

15:19 Speaker 1: a genuinely extraordinary particle. The question was where on Earth,

15:25 Speaker 1: or rather where in the universe did it come from?

15:28 Speaker 2: Scientists have been puzzling over that ever since Neutrinos travel

15:33 Speaker 2: in straight lines and aren't deflected by magnetic fields the

15:36 Speaker 2: way charged particles are, so, in principle, you can trace

15:40 Speaker 2: their path back to the source. The challenge is correlating

15:43 Speaker 2: that direction with known objects in the sky.

15:47 Speaker 1: The team now believes the most likely source is a

15:49 Speaker 1: population of blazars. A blazar is a type of galaxy

15:54 Speaker 1: with a super massive black hole at its center that

15:57 Speaker 1: is actively firing a jet of plasma directly towards Earth.

16:01 Speaker 1: They're among the most violent and energetic objects in the

16:05 Speaker 1: observable universe.

16:06 Speaker 2: The idea is that as particles get accelerated to extreme

16:10 Speaker 2: velocities in these jets, they can produce neutrinos with truly

16:15 Speaker 2: staggering energies, energies that dwarf anything we can achieve in

16:19 Speaker 2: the most powerful particle accelerators on Earth.

16:22 Speaker 1: Now, the team is being careful to say this is

16:25 Speaker 1: the most likely explanation rather than a confirmed one. Penning

16:29 Speaker 1: down the exact source of a single particle is a

16:32 Speaker 1: fiendishly difficult problem, but the correlation between the neutrino's arrival

16:37 Speaker 1: direction and known blazar positions is compelling.

16:41 Speaker 2: It's a beautiful example of multi messenger astronomy using different

16:45 Speaker 2: types of signals, in this case particle physics and traditional

16:49 Speaker 2: light based observations to build up a picture of what's

16:53 Speaker 2: happening in the most extreme environments in the cosmos.

16:56 Speaker 1: From the bottom of the sea to the edge of

16:59 Speaker 1: the observable universe. Never a dull day in astronomy.

17:03 Speaker 2: That is your Astronomy Daily for Friday, March thirteenth, twenty

17:07 Speaker 2: twenty six. What a lineup.

17:09 Speaker 1: Artemis two cleared for launch on April first, the first

17:13 Speaker 1: observed birth of a magnetar, two planets caught in the

17:17 Speaker 1: act of colliding, an asteroid buzzing past in the night,

17:21 Speaker 1: potential auroras tonight, and a record breaking neutrino traced back

17:26 Speaker 1: to some of the most violent objects in the universe.

17:30 Speaker 2: If you want to go deeper on any of today's stories,

17:32 Speaker 2: the links are all in the show notes, and if

17:34 Speaker 2: you saw any auroras tonight, we want to know. Tag

17:37 Speaker 2: us on social media as at Astro Daily.

17:39 Speaker 1: Pod, new episodes every weekday and Saturdays. Subscribe wherever you

17:44 Speaker 1: get your podcasts, and we'll see you back here tomorrow

17:48 Speaker 1: Until then keep looking up clear skies. Everyone, Sunday.

17:54 Speaker 2: Star is.

18:02 Speaker 1: The story is.

18:03 Speaker 2: The Soul Store is control

18:15 Speaker 1: H