Black Hole Born in Silence | Crew-12 Launches | Inside-Out Planets

0:00 Speaker 1: Good morning, good evening, and good winever you're listening, Welcome

0:04 Speaker 1: to Astronomy Daily, your front row seat to the Cosmos.

0:08 Speaker 2: I'm Anna and I'm Avery.

0:10 Speaker 3: It's Friday, the thirteenth, February twenty twenty six. And if

0:14 Speaker 3: you're superstitious, well, the universe doesn't care about your calendar.

0:18 Speaker 3: It's been too busy making black holes, breaking rockets, and

0:21 Speaker 3: building planetary systems that make absolutely no sense.

0:25 Speaker 1: That's right, We've got an absolutely packed show for you today.

0:30 Speaker 1: Astronomers may have just watched a star quietly collapse into

0:34 Speaker 1: a brand new black hole in our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy.

0:38 Speaker 1: No supernova required. SpaceX's Crew twelve is launching to the

0:42 Speaker 1: International Space Station as we speak. Europe's most powerful rocket

0:46 Speaker 1: just flew for the very first time, and that's just

0:49 Speaker 1: for starters.

0:50 Speaker 3: We've also got a Vulcan rocket that apparently didn't learn

0:53 Speaker 3: its lesson the first time around, a planetary system that's

0:57 Speaker 3: been turned completely inside out. And now this is Swift

1:00 Speaker 3: Observatory going into survival mode to avoid a fiery re entry.

1:04 Speaker 3: Let's get into it.

1:06 Speaker 1: We're kicking things off with what is quite literally happening

1:09 Speaker 1: right now. NASA and SpaceX have given the final go

1:13 Speaker 1: for Crew twelve mission to the International Space Station. Liftoff

1:17 Speaker 1: was scheduled for five point fifteen am Eastern Time this

1:19 Speaker 1: morning from Space Launch Complex forty at Cape Canaveral.

1:23 Speaker 3: The crew is an international squad. We've got NASA astronauts

1:27 Speaker 3: Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronauts Sophiettino

1:32 Speaker 3: from France and Ross Cosmos cosmonaut Andre Fadiev from Russia.

1:37 Speaker 3: They're riding aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule on a Falcon

1:40 Speaker 3: nine rocket.

1:41 Speaker 1: And this launch was supposed to happen yesterday on the twelfth,

1:44 Speaker 1: but mission teams waved off due to weather conditions along

1:48 Speaker 1: the flight path. They completed a final weather briefing last

1:51 Speaker 1: night and gave the all clear to proceed into the countdown.

1:54 Speaker 3: If everything went according to plan this morning, the crew

1:57 Speaker 3: should arrive at the station tomorrow afternoon, on Valentine's Day,

2:00 Speaker 3: at around three fifteen pm Eastern Romantic Right. Nothing says

2:05 Speaker 3: I Love you like docking with a space station at

2:07 Speaker 3: twenty eight thousand kilometers per hour.

2:10 Speaker 1: Once they're aboard, they'll bring the station back up to

2:13 Speaker 1: its full complement. Of seven crew members. The ISS has

2:16 Speaker 1: been operating with a reduced crew, so this is a

2:18 Speaker 1: welcome reinforcement. They've got a packed science agenda waiting for

2:22 Speaker 1: them up there.

2:23 Speaker 3: Fun stat on this one. The Falcon nine booster being

2:26 Speaker 3: used B one zero eight one is flying for its

2:29 Speaker 3: twenty second time, twenty two flights on a single rocket booster.

2:34 Speaker 3: And this is the nineteenth Falcon nine mission of twenty

2:36 Speaker 3: twenty six alone. And we're only in mid February. Base

2:40 Speaker 3: Exis launch cadence is just relentless.

2:43 Speaker 1: We'll keep do updated on crew twelves progress as they

2:46 Speaker 1: make their way to the station. You can catch the

2:48 Speaker 1: full coverage on NASA Plus, Amazon Prime, and NASA's YouTube channel.

2:52 Speaker 3: All right, Anna, this next story is the kind of

2:55 Speaker 3: thing that gives astrophysicists goosebumps. Astronomers believe they've witnessed something extraordinary.

3:01 Speaker 3: A massive star in the Andromeda Galaxy that didn't go

3:04 Speaker 3: out by a bang, but just quietly vanished, and what

3:08 Speaker 3: it left behind appears to be a brand new black hole.

3:12 Speaker 1: This is genuinely remarkable. The star, cataloged as M thirty

3:16 Speaker 1: one twenty fourteen DS one, was a yellow supergiant about

3:21 Speaker 1: thirteen times the mass of our own Sun, sitting roughly

3:24 Speaker 1: two point five million light years away in our neighboring

3:27 Speaker 1: Andromeda Galaxy. Before it disappeared, it was one of the

3:31 Speaker 1: brightest stars in Andromeda, shining about one hundred thousand times

3:35 Speaker 1: brighter than our own Sun.

3:37 Speaker 3: So here's what happened. A team led by Columbia University

3:40 Speaker 3: astrophysicist Kisha Lai Day was sifting through archival data from

3:44 Speaker 3: NASA's Neal Wise mission, an infrared space telescope that mapped

3:48 Speaker 3: the sky from twenty nine to twenty twenty four. They

3:51 Speaker 3: were building a map of how millions of stars change

3:54 Speaker 3: in brightness over time, and buried in that data they

3:57 Speaker 3: found something stunning.

3:59 Speaker 1: Starting around twenty fourteen, this star began to brighten in

4:03 Speaker 1: infrared light, then it started fading dramatically invisible light, and

4:08 Speaker 1: by twenty twenty two it had vanished entirely from Neo

4:11 Speaker 1: wise's view. Even with the most sensitive telescopes available today,

4:16 Speaker 1: there's nothing there. As Depasse put it, imagine if betal

4:20 Speaker 1: juice just suddenly disappeared, That's essentially what happened here, just

4:25 Speaker 1: in the galaxy next door.

4:27 Speaker 3: Now. Normally, when a massive star dies, it goes out

4:31 Speaker 3: spectacularly as a supernova. The core collapses, neutrinos erupt outward,

4:36 Speaker 3: and the resulting shock wave blasts the star's outer layers

4:40 Speaker 3: into space in an explosion that can outshine an entire galaxy.

4:45 Speaker 3: But this star didn't do any of that. It appears

4:48 Speaker 3: to be what astronomers call a failed supernova.

4:51 Speaker 1: The theory is that the core collapsed as expected, forming

4:55 Speaker 1: a dense neutron star, but the shockwave that was supposed

4:59 Speaker 1: to blow the star apart just wasn't strong enough. Instead

5:03 Speaker 1: of exploding outward, most of the star's material fell back inward,

5:09 Speaker 1: overwhelming the neutron star and creating a black hole. Its

5:13 Speaker 1: death by implosion rather than explosion.

5:17 Speaker 3: And what's really interesting is the role of convection. The

5:20 Speaker 3: team realized that previous models hadn't properly accounted for the

5:25 Speaker 3: churning turbulent motions in the star's outer layers. When they

5:28 Speaker 3: factored that in, they found the convection actually helped sap

5:32 Speaker 3: energy from the shockwave, making it more likely to fail.

5:36 Speaker 3: That's a significant new insight.

5:38 Speaker 1: The material that didn't fall straight in is now forming

5:42 Speaker 1: a rotating accretion disk around the newborn black hole slowly

5:47 Speaker 1: spiraling inward, much like water circling a drain. The infrared

5:52 Speaker 1: glow from that debris should remain visible to the James

5:55 Speaker 1: Webb Space Telescope for decades as it gradually fades.

5:59 Speaker 3: The study was published yesterday in the journal Science, and

6:02 Speaker 3: the implications are huge. If relatively lightweight stars like this

6:07 Speaker 3: one at just thirteen solar masses can collapse directly into

6:11 Speaker 3: black holes, then there could be far more black holes

6:14 Speaker 3: out there than we've previously estimated. This could be a

6:18 Speaker 3: very common way for stars to die, and we've just

6:20 Speaker 3: been missing it because there's no explosion to see.

6:23 Speaker 1: Not everyone's convinced yet, though Some astronomers suggest this could

6:28 Speaker 1: be a case of merging stars whose combined light got

6:32 Speaker 1: obscured by dust. But as one researcher put it, the

6:35 Speaker 1: definitive test is simple. Death is forever. If it's truly

6:40 Speaker 1: a black hole, that star is never coming back. Future

6:44 Speaker 1: observations with JWST will help settle the debate.

6:49 Speaker 3: Thicking with the launch theme, Europe had a huge milestone yesterday.

6:53 Speaker 3: The most powerful version of the Arion six rocket flew

6:56 Speaker 3: for the first time, and it was carrying cargo for

6:59 Speaker 3: one of SpaceX's biggest competitors.

7:02 Speaker 1: That's right, Ariyan Space launched the Arion sixty four, the

7:06 Speaker 1: four booster configuration of Europe's new flagship rocket. It lifted

7:11 Speaker 1: off from the Guyana Space Center in Kuru, French, Guyana

7:15 Speaker 1: at sixteen forty five UTC on February twelfth, and writing

7:20 Speaker 1: on top were thirty two satellites for Amazon's Internet constellation,

7:25 Speaker 1: now officially branded as Amazon Leo.

7:28 Speaker 3: So let's break down the naming. The Arion six comes

7:31 Speaker 3: in two versions, the six to two with two strap

7:34 Speaker 3: on solid rocket boosters and the six four with four.

7:38 Speaker 3: This was the first time the six to four has

7:41 Speaker 3: ever flown, and it's significantly more powerful. Those four P

7:45 Speaker 3: one twenty C solid boosters give it the extra punch

7:48 Speaker 3: needed to loft heavier payloads.

7:50 Speaker 1: And Amazon Leo, formerly known as Project Kuiper, is Amazon's

7:56 Speaker 1: answer to SpaceX's Starlink. The plan is to build a

7:59 Speaker 1: con installation of three thousand, two hundred and thirty six

8:03 Speaker 1: satellites providing broadband Internet from low Earth orbit. So these

8:08 Speaker 1: thirty two satellites are an early batch to start building

8:12 Speaker 1: out that network.

8:13 Speaker 3: It's a big deal on two fronts for Europe. The

8:16 Speaker 3: Arion six' four flying successfully means they now have a

8:20 Speaker 3: heavy lift option that can compete for larger commercial and government.

8:24 Speaker 3: Payloads and For, amazon getting satellites up on a NON

8:28 Speaker 3: SpaceX rocket is strategically. Important you don't want your main

8:32 Speaker 3: competitor also being your sole ride to.

8:34 Speaker 1: Orbit the launch went smoothly with the satellites successfully deployed

8:39 Speaker 1: into Low earth. Orbit it's a promising start for The

8:42 Speaker 1: arion six'. Four, configuration now speaking of rockets that had

8:47 Speaker 1: a slightly less, smooth day we need to talk About The.

8:50 Speaker 1: Vulcan centaur this is an update to the story we.

8:53 Speaker 1: Covered Yesterday United launch alliance FLEW the ussf eighty seven

8:57 Speaker 1: mission FOR The Us space force Early on, february twelfth

9:01 Speaker 1: and there was a very. Familiar problem about thirty seconds

9:06 Speaker 1: after Liftoff From cape canaveral observers noticed a bright glow

9:10 Speaker 1: and a shower of sparks pouring from the aft end

9:13 Speaker 1: of one of The four gems SIXTY three xl solid.

9:16 Speaker 1: Rocket boosters video and tracking footage showed what appears to

9:21 Speaker 1: be a nozzle, burned through where a hot exhaust gas

9:24 Speaker 1: essentially melts its way through the.

9:26 Speaker 2: Nozzle casing and here's.

9:28 Speaker 3: The thing this has. Happened before the exact same type

9:32 Speaker 3: of anomaly Occurred during vulcan's second certification flight Back in

9:36 Speaker 3: october twenty. TWENTY four ula and Booster Manufacturer northrop grummen

9:40 Speaker 3: spent months investigating, that incident identified a, manufacturing defect and

9:45 Speaker 3: said they'd. Fixed it the third Flight in august twenty

9:48 Speaker 3: twenty five, went cleanly.

9:50 Speaker 1: But now on just the fourth, flight overall the problem.

9:54 Speaker 1: IS back ula acknowledged it had quote an observation early

9:58 Speaker 1: during flight on one of the four solid rocket motors

10:02 Speaker 1: and said the team is reviewing.

10:03 Speaker 3: The data the silver lining is that the mission. Still

10:06 Speaker 3: Succeeded the falcon, nine Sorry the Vulcan's twin bee four main,

10:11 Speaker 3: engines compensated And the centaur upper stage completed all its.

10:15 Speaker 3: Plan burns about eight hours, AFTER launch ula confirmed the

10:19 Speaker 3: payloads were successfully delivered to, geosynchronous orbit more than twenty

10:24 Speaker 3: two thousand Miles.

10:25 Speaker 1: Above earth the primary payload was a PAIR of gssap

10:29 Speaker 1: satellites For The. Space force these are maneuverable spacecraft that

10:34 Speaker 1: serve as a sort of neighborhood watch for geosynchronous orbit.

10:38 Speaker 1: Monitoring ACTIVITY near us and. Allied assets there were also

10:42 Speaker 1: some research and development.

10:43 Speaker 3: Payloads aboard but the bigger question now is what this

10:47 Speaker 3: Means for. VULCAN'S future ula had ambitious plans to fly

10:51 Speaker 3: sixteen to eighteen missions, this year including Launches FOR amazon

10:55 Speaker 3: gps satellites And More space. FORCE payloads a recurring boost

11:00 Speaker 3: issue on a rocket that's only flown four times is a.

11:03 Speaker 3: Serious Concern The space force has already said it will

11:06 Speaker 3: work CLOSELY with ula on flight worthiness before the next national.

11:10 Speaker 3: Security mission we'll be watching this.

11:12 Speaker 1: One closely bulkan is supposed to be ULA's flagship for,

11:16 Speaker 1: the future replacing The venerable. Atlas five it needs to

11:20 Speaker 1: prove it can, fly reliably and a pattern of booster

11:23 Speaker 1: issues isn't helping that case.

11:26 Speaker 3: All right time for some. Planetary weirdness astronomers have found

11:30 Speaker 3: a star system that looks like someone assembled the planets

11:33 Speaker 3: in the. Wrong order think of it as a cosmic double.

11:36 Speaker 3: Stuffed oreo that's actually a.

11:39 Speaker 1: Great analogy the star IS called lhs nineteen. Zero three

11:44 Speaker 1: it's a red dwarf about half the mass Of, our

11:47 Speaker 1: sun located about one hundred and sixteen light. Years away

11:51 Speaker 1: it has four planets all orbiting in less than, thirty

11:54 Speaker 1: days so it's a very. Compact system and from the,

11:58 Speaker 1: star outward the arrangement goes rocky gaseous, gaseous rocky.

12:03 Speaker 3: Which is the exact opposite of what models predict in

12:07 Speaker 3: standard planetary. Formation theory rocky planets form closer to the

12:10 Speaker 3: star where intense starlight strips, away atmospheres and gas giants

12:15 Speaker 3: form farther out where there's more gas available in the.

12:18 Speaker 3: Protoplanetary disc you'd expect rocky on the inside gassy on,

12:22 Speaker 3: the OUTSIDE.

12:23 Speaker 1: But lhs nineteen oh three follows the. Rules beautifully for

12:27 Speaker 1: the first, three planets a rocky one closest in than two,

12:30 Speaker 1: gaseous ones and then the, fourth planet the one, furthest

12:34 Speaker 1: out is. Rocky again it's like Finding a venus like

12:37 Speaker 1: world Out past. Neptune's orbit it just shouldn't.

12:41 Speaker 3: Be there the system was first discovered By NASA's test

12:44 Speaker 3: mission back in, twenty nineteen and this, latest Study published

12:48 Speaker 3: february Twelfth, in science used a suite of ground based

12:51 Speaker 3: and space based instruments to precisely determine the planet's masses.

12:55 Speaker 3: And densities that's how they could tell which ones are

12:58 Speaker 3: rocky and which, have thick. Gascious envelopes the.

13:01 Speaker 1: Leading explanation is. Planetary migration sometime early in the, system's

13:07 Speaker 1: history the inner planets may have, shuffled around similar to

13:11 Speaker 1: what happened in Our Own solar system during the late.

13:15 Speaker 1: HEAVY bombardment a gravitational reshuffle could have sent a large

13:20 Speaker 1: body crashing into the, fourth planet stripping away, its atmosphere

13:25 Speaker 1: or the planet may have formed late after the system

13:28 Speaker 1: had run out.

13:29 Speaker 3: Of gas As Astronomer andrew cameron From the University Of

13:33 Speaker 3: saint andrew's, put it that stuff does happen in young.

13:36 Speaker 3: Planetary systems this one has the look of something that's

13:40 Speaker 3: been turned. Inside out it's a fantastic reminder that for

13:44 Speaker 3: all our models, and theories the universe keeps. Finding ways as.

13:47 Speaker 1: A prisis our final story today is about a veteran

13:52 Speaker 1: space telescope that's fighting for its life and NASA's creative

13:56 Speaker 1: plan to.

13:57 Speaker 3: Save It The Neo Garold swift observatory has been one

14:00 Speaker 3: of NASA's warkhorses for high. Energy astrophysics it's been in

14:04 Speaker 3: orbit for about twenty, one years rapidly slewing to observe

14:08 Speaker 3: gamma ray bursts and other transient, cosmic events but time

14:12 Speaker 3: and physics are catching up.

14:14 Speaker 1: With it the problem is. Atmospheric drag enhanced, solar activity

14:20 Speaker 1: and we're right around solar Maximum heats earth's upper atmosphere

14:24 Speaker 1: and causes it. To expand that expanded atmosphere creates more

14:29 Speaker 1: drag on satellites in, low orbit slowly pulling. Them down

14:34 Speaker 1: swift's average altitude has been, steadily declining and it's now

14:39 Speaker 1: dropped below about two hundred and fifty miles or four

14:43 Speaker 1: hundred Kilometers.

14:44 Speaker 3: So on, february Eleventh NASA's swift team made a. Tough

14:48 Speaker 3: call they've temporarily suspended most. Science Operations The burst alert

14:53 Speaker 3: telescope will keep detecting gamma, ray bursts but the spacecraft

14:57 Speaker 3: will no longer slew to follow up on those detections

15:00 Speaker 3: with its. Other, instruments instead controllers Are keeping swift in

15:03 Speaker 3: a fixed orientation that minimizes.

15:06 Speaker 1: Atmospheric drag think of it like a swimmer turning sideways

15:10 Speaker 1: to cut through a current instead of facing it. Head

15:13 Speaker 1: on by reducing how much Surface area swift presents to

15:17 Speaker 1: the thin wisps of atmosphere at, that altitude they can

15:21 Speaker 1: slow the.

15:22 Speaker 2: Orbital decay and here's the.

15:24 Speaker 3: CREATIVE part nasa has contracted a Company Called Catalyst, space

15:28 Speaker 3: technologies Based, In, flagstaff arizona to actually go up And

15:32 Speaker 3: give swift. The push they're planning a servicing mission that

15:36 Speaker 3: will boost the observatory into a, higher orbit extending its.

15:39 Speaker 3: Scientific lifetime the reboost spacecraft is expected to launch in,

15:44 Speaker 3: the summer but for that, To work swift needs to

15:47 Speaker 3: stay above about one hundred eighty five miles roughly three,

15:52 Speaker 3: Hundred kilometers so everything they're doing now is about preserving

15:56 Speaker 3: enough altitude to make the rescue. Mission possible it's a

16:00 Speaker 3: fascinating case study in. Satellite servicing if, it works it

16:04 Speaker 3: demonstrates a capability that could be applied to all sorts of.

16:08 Speaker 3: Aging spacecraft rather than letting valuable observatories, burn up you

16:12 Speaker 3: send a little tugboat to push them. Back up the

16:15 Speaker 3: economics of that could be transformative for.

16:18 Speaker 1: Space science we're Rooting for swift twenty one years of

16:22 Speaker 1: service and still going. Fingers crossed the reboost mission comes together,

16:26 Speaker 1: in time.

16:27 Speaker 3: And that wraps up another packed Edition Of. Astronomy daily What,

16:32 Speaker 3: a friday, The thirteenth it's been from a star silently

16:35 Speaker 3: becoming a, black hole to rockets that keep. Surprising us

16:38 Speaker 3: the universe never takes a.

16:40 Speaker 1: Day off if you enjoyed, today's episode please hit subscribe

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17:00 Speaker 3: show notes and links to all the stories we, covered

17:02 Speaker 3: today and if you've, got questions, story tips or just

17:05 Speaker 3: want to, say hi we'd love to hear.

17:07 Speaker 2: From you until, next time keep looking up clear.

17:11 Speaker 3: Skies Everyone sunday star Is the star is the