Auroras on Ganymede, Superflare Warnings and Japan’s Very Bad Week

0:00 Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome back to Astronomy Daily.

0:03 Speaker 2: I'm Anna, and I'm Avery and Anna. Today's episode is

0:06 Speaker 2: genuinely one of those ones where I kept saying wait

0:09 Speaker 2: what out loud reading the headlines.

0:11 Speaker 1: Right, We've got auroras on Jupiter's biggest moon that look

0:15 Speaker 1: just like the ones here on Earth, a solar storm

0:17 Speaker 1: early warning system that could give us a whole year's

0:20 Speaker 1: notice before the really dangerous ones hit, a cosmic image

0:24 Speaker 1: that is genuinely going to make you stop scrolling.

0:27 Speaker 2: And Japan's struggling private rocket company has had yet another

0:31 Speaker 2: very bad day. This is Series five, Episode fifty five

0:35 Speaker 2: of Astronomy Daily. Let's get into it.

0:37 Speaker 1: So our first story is a beautiful one. Scientists have

0:41 Speaker 1: just published detailed new research showing that Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede,

0:46 Speaker 1: has auroras, and not just auroras, auroras that look strikingly

0:51 Speaker 1: similar to the northern lights here on Earth.

0:53 Speaker 2: Which already sounds incredible for listeners who might not know.

0:57 Speaker 2: Ganymede is fascinating in its own right. It's actually bigger

1:01 Speaker 2: than Mercury. It's thought to have a vast liquid saltwater

1:04 Speaker 2: ocean beneath its icy crust, and it's the only moon

1:07 Speaker 2: in our entire Solar system known to have its own

1:10 Speaker 2: magnetic field, and.

1:11 Speaker 1: That magnetic field is the key to this story. The

1:14 Speaker 1: research was led by astrophysicists at the University of Liege

1:18 Speaker 1: in Belgium, and they used data from NASA's Juno spacecraft,

1:22 Speaker 1: which made a close flyby of Ganymede back in twenty

1:25 Speaker 1: twenty one, coming within about one thousand kilometers of the surface.

1:29 Speaker 2: So what did they find. Previous observations at suggested Ganymede

1:33 Speaker 2: had auroras, but they were blurry and low resolution. With

1:37 Speaker 2: Juno's ultraviolet spectrograph, the team could finally see the fine detail,

1:41 Speaker 2: and what they found surprise them.

1:43 Speaker 1: Right they expected to see smooth, continuous, oval shaped glowing

1:47 Speaker 1: bands like a diffuse curtain of light. Instead, Ganymede's auroras

1:52 Speaker 1: are fragmented into a chain of distinct bright patches, each

1:56 Speaker 1: one roughly fifty kilometers across.

2:00 Speaker 2: Those same structures, called beads, are something we see in

2:03 Speaker 2: Earth's own auroral displays. They're linked to large scale rearrangements

2:07 Speaker 2: of the magnetoskhire that release enormous amounts of energy. The

2:11 Speaker 2: fact that we're seeing the same thing on Ganymede suggests

2:14 Speaker 2: that the fundamental physical processes creating auroras might be essentially universal.

2:19 Speaker 1: Which is a beautiful idea when you think about it,

2:22 Speaker 1: that the same magnetic dance that lights up our polar

2:25 Speaker 1: skies on Earth is happening on a moon half a

2:28 Speaker 1: billion kilometers away. The research was published in the journal

2:31 Speaker 1: Astronomy and Astrophysics.

2:34 Speaker 2: And if you're wondering when we'll get another look, frustratingly,

2:37 Speaker 2: Juno will never fly over Ganimat again. The next close

2:40 Speaker 2: up opportunity will come in twenty thirty one, when ESA's

2:43 Speaker 2: Juice spacecraft arrives at Jupiter. Until then, these fifteen minutes

2:47 Speaker 2: of data from twenty twenty one are all.

2:49 Speaker 1: We have fifteen minutes of data that have kept scientists

2:53 Speaker 1: busy for years. That's pretty remarkable.

2:55 Speaker 2: Really, Okay, next up, and this one has real world stakes.

2:59 Speaker 2: An inter national team of sciences has developed what they're

3:02 Speaker 2: calling the first system that can actually predict when and

3:05 Speaker 2: where the most dangerous solar storms superflares are likely to occur.

3:11 Speaker 1: And the headline number here is remarkable. They're talking about

3:14 Speaker 1: up to a year's advance warning, which, if you know

3:17 Speaker 1: anything about how solar forecasting currently works is a complete

3:21 Speaker 1: game changer.

3:22 Speaker 2: Right because today we can maybe predict a solar flare

3:25 Speaker 2: a few hours before it happens, if we're lucky. And

3:28 Speaker 2: that's for regular flares. Superflares, the really extreme X ten

3:32 Speaker 2: or stronger events happen so fast and so unpredictably that

3:36 Speaker 2: they've historically been almost impossible to foresee.

3:40 Speaker 1: So how does this new approach work. The team, led

3:44 Speaker 1: by doctor Victor velasco Arera from the National Autonomous University

3:49 Speaker 1: of Mexico analyzed nearly fifty years of X ray data

3:53 Speaker 1: from solar monitoring satellites. They identified two repeating natural cycles

3:59 Speaker 1: in solar activity, one lasting about one point seven years

4:03 Speaker 1: and another of around seven years. When those cycles align

4:07 Speaker 1: in certain ways, the risk of superflares increases sharply.

4:12 Speaker 2: And the system doesn't just give you a time window,

4:14 Speaker 2: it also identifies which specific regions of the Sun are

4:17 Speaker 2: at greatest risk for Solar cycle twenty five, the one

4:21 Speaker 2: we're in right now. The model flags a high risk

4:24 Speaker 2: window that runs roughly from mid twenty twenty five through

4:27 Speaker 2: to mid twenty twenty six, focused on the Sun's southern hemisphere.

4:32 Speaker 1: Meaning we're in it right now.

4:35 Speaker 2: We are, and the reason this matters so much is

4:37 Speaker 2: what a serious superflare could actually do. We're talking widespread

4:42 Speaker 2: power grid failures, satellite damage, GPS disruption, communications blackouts. For

4:48 Speaker 2: astronauts traveling outside Earth's magnetic protection, like the Artemis two

4:52 Speaker 2: crew heading around the Moon, it could pose serious radiation risks.

4:56 Speaker 1: The team actually validated this approach by demonstration it correctly

5:01 Speaker 1: anticipated powerful eruptions on the far side of the Sun

5:04 Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four, events nobody knew about until after

5:08 Speaker 1: the fact. That retroactive confirmation is what gives the scientific

5:12 Speaker 1: community confidence the model is genuinely working. It's been published

5:17 Speaker 1: in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

5:19 Speaker 2: Lead researcher doctor Velasco Herrera put it, well, we can't

5:23 Speaker 2: tell you the exact moment a storm will erupt, but

5:26 Speaker 2: we can tell you when the conditions are most dangerous,

5:29 Speaker 2: and that lead time is what makes all the difference

5:32 Speaker 2: for utilities, satellite operators, and space agencies planning missions.

5:36 Speaker 1: Think of it like a hurricane season forecast rather than

5:40 Speaker 1: a specific storm path prediction. You know when to be

5:43 Speaker 1: on guard. That could genuinely save lives and billions of

5:47 Speaker 1: dollars in infrastructure.

5:49 Speaker 2: Right let's take a breath from the We're all in

5:51 Speaker 2: danger stories and look at something beautiful. NASA and ISSA

5:56 Speaker 2: have released a stunning new combined image of the Cat's

5:59 Speaker 2: Eye nebula, bringing together observations from two of our most

6:02 Speaker 2: powerful space telescopes, EUCLID and Hubble.

6:05 Speaker 1: The Cat's Eye nebula is one of those objects that

6:08 Speaker 1: just never gets old. It's a planetary nebula, the glowing

6:12 Speaker 1: remains of a star similar to our Sun, that expelled

6:16 Speaker 1: its outer layers as it died, Located about three thousand

6:20 Speaker 1: light years away in the constellation Draco. It was actually

6:24 Speaker 1: one of the first nebulae ever observed through a spectroscope

6:27 Speaker 1: way back in eighteen sixty four.

6:30 Speaker 2: And Hubble has imaged it before famously. But this new

6:33 Speaker 2: composite uses euclid's wide field infrared capability alongside Hubble's detailed

6:39 Speaker 2: optical and ultraviolet data to produce something genuinely new. You

6:44 Speaker 2: can see the layered, billowing shrouds of expelled material in

6:47 Speaker 2: extraordinary detail, along with the intricate inner structures around the

6:51 Speaker 2: central white dwarf.

6:53 Speaker 1: What I love about this story is what it says

6:55 Speaker 1: about where we are with our telescope infrastructure. Right now,

6:59 Speaker 1: we have Hubble, Web, euclid, all operating simultaneously, each with

7:04 Speaker 1: different strengths, and scientists are combining their data to produce

7:09 Speaker 1: views of the universe that no single instrument could achieve alone.

7:13 Speaker 2: This is also, in a very direct sense, a preview

7:16 Speaker 2: of our own son's future. In about five billion years,

7:20 Speaker 2: our sun will go through the same process, jetting its

7:23 Speaker 2: outer layers, leaving behind a glowing nebula and a dense

7:26 Speaker 2: white dwarf at its core. The Catsie is one possible

7:30 Speaker 2: version of our cosmic obituary.

7:33 Speaker 1: Cheerful but genuinely awe inspiring. We'll have a link to

7:37 Speaker 1: the full image in the show notes. It is absolutely

7:40 Speaker 1: worth seeing full size.

7:42 Speaker 2: It's just incredible what they keep on finding out there.

7:44 Speaker 1: Staying in the beautiful corner of the universe for a moment,

7:48 Speaker 1: the James Webb Space Telescope has delivered another jaw dropping image,

7:52 Speaker 1: this time of a spiral galaxy called NNGC five one

7:56 Speaker 1: three four, sitting about sixty five million light years away.

8:01 Speaker 2: So not exactly next door, but in infrared, Web is

8:05 Speaker 2: able to pierce through the dust that normally obscures so

8:09 Speaker 2: much of the galactic structure, and what it reveals is

8:12 Speaker 2: extraordinary glowing clouds of gas stellar nurseries where new stars

8:17 Speaker 2: are actively forming and the intricate spiral arms traced in

8:21 Speaker 2: enormous detail.

8:23 Speaker 1: NNGC five one three four is what's called a barred

8:26 Speaker 1: spiral galaxy. It has a central bar shaped structure from

8:29 Speaker 1: which its spiral arms extend. Galaxies like this are really

8:33 Speaker 1: important to study because they let us trace the entire

8:36 Speaker 1: stellar life cycle in one place, from dense clouds of

8:39 Speaker 1: gas where new stars are just beginning to form, right

8:42 Speaker 1: through to older stellar populations in the central regions.

8:46 Speaker 2: And this image also serves as a kind of reference

8:49 Speaker 2: point for understanding galaxy evolution more broadly. By comparing infrared

8:53 Speaker 2: observations of galaxies like NNGC five one three four across

8:57 Speaker 2: cosmic time, astronomers can build a picture of how galaxies grow, change,

9:02 Speaker 2: and eventually in some cases stop forming stars altogether.

9:06 Speaker 1: Web continues to deliver every single week. There's something new.

9:10 Speaker 1: Link to the full image in the show notes.

9:12 Speaker 2: As always, Okay, we've had two gorgeous images and some

9:16 Speaker 2: landmark science. Time to talk about Japan's very unlucky rocket program.

9:22 Speaker 1: Poor cairos So to set the scene for anyone just

9:25 Speaker 1: joining this story. Space one is a Tokyo based startup

9:29 Speaker 1: founded in twenty eighteen, backed by canon Ihi Aerospace, Shimizu Corporation,

9:34 Speaker 1: and the Development Bank of Japan. They've been trying to

9:37 Speaker 1: become the first fully private Japanese company to put satellites

9:41 Speaker 1: into orbit using a domestically developed rocket.

9:44 Speaker 2: Their first Chiros rocket exploded seconds after liftoff in March

9:48 Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. The second one made it off the

9:51 Speaker 2: pad in December twenty twenty four, but los attitude control

9:54 Speaker 2: about two minutes in, creating what one commentator described as

9:58 Speaker 2: a very expensive quirk screw in the.

10:00 Speaker 1: Sky, And so all eyes were on Cairo's Number three,

10:04 Speaker 1: which has been through a genuinely painful week. The launch

10:07 Speaker 1: was originally scheduled for February twenty fifth, scrubbed for weather, BEN,

10:12 Speaker 1: rescheduled for Sunday, scrubbed for weather again, BEN, rescheduled for Wednesday,

10:16 Speaker 1: March fourth, which seemed promising, and.

10:19 Speaker 2: Then a safety monitoring system activated thirty seconds before liftoff

10:24 Speaker 2: due to unstable signal reception from a positioning satellite, and

10:27 Speaker 2: the launch was aborted. No new date has been set,

10:30 Speaker 2: though the launch window runs until March twenty fifth, and to.

10:34 Speaker 1: Be clear, that system activating is actually the system doing

10:37 Speaker 1: exactly what it's supposed to do. This is not a

10:40 Speaker 1: failure in the sense that the previous two launches were.

10:43 Speaker 1: It's the safeguard working correctly, but it's still deeply frustrating

10:47 Speaker 1: for everyone involved, including the local community in Kushimoto who've

10:51 Speaker 1: embraced this as a kind of space tourism attraction.

10:54 Speaker 2: There's something genuinely compelling about this story because it's about

10:57 Speaker 2: a country's private space industry trying to find its feet

11:01 Speaker 2: in a market now dominated by SpaceX. Japan has excellent

11:05 Speaker 2: government rockets, the H three has been going well, but

11:08 Speaker 2: the commercial small satellite launch market is where everyone wants

11:12 Speaker 2: to be, and Space one is fighting hard to get there.

11:15 Speaker 1: We will absolutely be watching still a few weeks in

11:18 Speaker 1: the launch window. Fingers crossed for Cairos number three.

11:21 Speaker 2: Will keep you updated.

11:23 Speaker 1: And finally, a story I find genuinely exciting because it's

11:26 Speaker 1: about solving a problem we've been quietly ignoring for decades.

11:30 Speaker 1: Europe is developing orbital repair robots, autonomous spacecraft that could refuel, fix,

11:36 Speaker 1: and reposition satellites in orbit.

11:38 Speaker 2: The freeming. I love here is space tochucks, which is

11:41 Speaker 2: how the project manager at thallus Alna Space, Stephanie bihar

11:45 Speaker 2: La Fenetre, described it. The idea is a robotic satellite

11:49 Speaker 2: with a mechanical arm that can approach a stricken or

11:52 Speaker 2: aging satellite, capture it, service it, and if necessary, push

11:56 Speaker 2: it to a different orbit.

11:58 Speaker 1: The scale of the problem this addresses is significant. There

12:02 Speaker 1: are now nearly fifteen thousand operational satellites in orbit. The

12:07 Speaker 1: vast majority were designed to be entirely disposable. Once they

12:11 Speaker 1: malfunction or run out of fuel, they either drift into

12:15 Speaker 1: a graveyard orbit or contribute to the growing debris problem.

12:19 Speaker 1: Repair was never part of the business model.

12:22 Speaker 2: Dallas Alina Space is planning a demonstration mission for twenty

12:26 Speaker 2: twenty eight, so still a few years away, that will

12:29 Speaker 2: prove out the capture and servicing technology. One of the

12:32 Speaker 2: clever insights in the engineering is that around three quarters

12:35 Speaker 2: of all satellites in orbit have robust metal rings that

12:39 Speaker 2: were originally designed for launch. Those rings turn out to

12:42 Speaker 2: be ideal grab points for a robotic arm, even though

12:45 Speaker 2: nobody designed them with that in mind.

12:48 Speaker 1: There are fascinating legal questions too, if a French company's

12:53 Speaker 1: robot repairs a South Korean military satellite who bears liability

12:57 Speaker 1: if something goes wrong during the procedure. These are genuinely

13:01 Speaker 1: unsolved problems in international space law that need to be

13:05 Speaker 1: worked out before this market can scale.

13:08 Speaker 2: And it's not just Europe. There are parallel programs in

13:11 Speaker 2: the US and China. But this story shows Europe is

13:14 Speaker 2: serious about staking a claim in what could be a

13:17 Speaker 2: very large market for telecommunications companies running aging geostationary satellites

13:23 Speaker 2: worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The economics of repair

13:26 Speaker 2: versus replacement are compelling.

13:29 Speaker 1: It's also just a nice idea, isn't it. Space is

13:33 Speaker 1: full of expensive hardware. We've abandoned the idea that we

13:37 Speaker 1: might start going back up there to fix things rather

13:40 Speaker 1: than just launch new ones. Feels like a more mature

13:43 Speaker 1: relationship with the orbital environment, and.

13:46 Speaker 2: That's our six for today. Auroras on Ganymede Solar Superflair forecasting,

13:51 Speaker 2: the cats ey Nebula reimagined a stunning web galaxy, Japan's

13:56 Speaker 2: ongoing rocket struggles, and Europe's plans to send robots to

14:00 Speaker 2: fix our orbital infrastructure.

14:02 Speaker 1: If you want to see any of the images we

14:04 Speaker 1: talked about today, the cats I, NGC, five, one, three, four,

14:09 Speaker 1: Ganimedes auroras. They're all linked in the show notes and

14:12 Speaker 1: the blog post over at Astronomy Daily dot io.

14:16 Speaker 2: If you're enjoying the show, the best thing you can

14:18 Speaker 2: do is leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or

14:20 Speaker 2: Spotify and share the episode with a friend who loves space.

14:24 Speaker 2: It genuinely makes a difference.

14:26 Speaker 1: You can also find us at astro Daily Pod across x, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube,

14:32 Speaker 1: and Facebook. We're back tomorrow with more. Until then, keep looking.

14:36 Speaker 2: Up Sunday Stars starsz