Cosmic Discoveries; Callisto's Aurora Footprint and Record-Breaking Fast Radio Burst

0:00 Speaker 1: Welcome back to Astronomy Daily. I'm your one hundred percent

0:02 Speaker 1: of human host Steve Dunkley. It's the eighth of September

0:05 Speaker 1: twenty twenty five podcast your whole speed. Yes, welcome back.

0:16 Speaker 1: It's Monday, and regular listeners will know what that means, right,

0:20 Speaker 1: how ae you?

0:20 Speaker 2: It's the mostly live episode of Astronomy Daily.

0:23 Speaker 1: Of course, Yes, that's right, mostly live, because I'm live

0:27 Speaker 1: and I'm ay i ai. Indeed, for those new to

0:30 Speaker 1: the Astronomy Daily.

0:31 Speaker 2: Universe, So what have you got for us today, my

0:34 Speaker 2: favorite human?

0:35 Speaker 1: Oh well, I'm glad you asked, Hally. First, up a

0:37 Speaker 1: couple of fresh stories from the Astronomy Daily newsletter, including

0:40 Speaker 1: a political battle, sorry about the politics to keep a

0:43 Speaker 1: couple of critical NASA satellites on mission, a story about

0:47 Speaker 1: record breaking super fast FRB.

0:50 Speaker 2: I love Farb's well.

0:52 Speaker 1: Of course you do. That's your story, by the way,

0:54 Speaker 1: Oh goodie, Really contain your enthusiasm, Halle.

0:58 Speaker 2: I'll try.

0:59 Speaker 1: Oh I'm sure you will go. And we also have

1:02 Speaker 1: exciting news from the Murchison Wild wide Field array. That's

1:05 Speaker 1: a bit of a tongue. Tis differ me and my

1:07 Speaker 1: little favorite space probe Juno all the way out near Jupiter.

1:11 Speaker 2: Go you good thing, Juno.

1:13 Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, that super little craft is working like clockwork,

1:16 Speaker 1: and we'll catch up with the latest from way out

1:19 Speaker 1: there very soon.

1:20 Speaker 2: Awesome. So shall we kick it off then?

1:22 Speaker 1: Why don't we? I'm ready when you are, helly, here

1:24 Speaker 1: we go, ohkies.

1:40 Speaker 2: Jupiter is well known for the massive aurory that occur

1:43 Speaker 2: near the planet's polar regions, the brightest and most powerful

1:47 Speaker 2: in the Solar System. Much like Aurora here on Earth,

1:50 Speaker 2: these shimmering lights are the result of interaction between the

1:53 Speaker 2: planet's magnetic field and solar wind. Unlike Earth's, though Jupiter's

1:59 Speaker 2: largest mood uns Io Europa and Ganymede, also known as

2:03 Speaker 2: the Galileans, leave their own auroral signatures in the planet's atmosphere.

2:08 Speaker 2: These induced arori are known as satellite footprints and track

2:13 Speaker 2: how each moon interacts with Jupiter and the local space environment.

2:17 Speaker 2: Whereas scientists have observed how Io Europa and Ganymede create

2:22 Speaker 2: satellite footprints in Jupiter's atmosphere, Callisto has remained a bit

2:26 Speaker 2: of an outlier despite multiple attempts using the Hubble Space

2:31 Speaker 2: Telescope HST. Signatures caused by Callisto remained elusive. Thanks to

2:37 Speaker 2: NASA's Juno mission, which achieved orbit around Jupiter in twenty sixteen,

2:42 Speaker 2: Callisto's satellite footprint has finally been found. In a recent study,

2:47 Speaker 2: an international team of scientists presented evidence of these polar

2:50 Speaker 2: light signatures in Jupiter's atmosphere for the first time. While

2:55 Speaker 2: JUNO has provided close up views of Jupiter's aroy, capturing

2:59 Speaker 2: Callisto's foot print presented a major challenge. In addition to

3:03 Speaker 2: being faint, Callisto's auroral signature typically resides above the brighter

3:08 Speaker 2: region where Jupiter's aroory are displayed the main auroral oval.

3:12 Speaker 2: To measure Callisto's footprint, the science team needed to image

3:16 Speaker 2: Jupiter's polar region only after the main auroral oval moved aside.

3:21 Speaker 2: The spacecraft also needed to cross the magnetic field line

3:24 Speaker 2: linking Calisto and Jupiter for its instruments to detect the

3:28 Speaker 2: auroral signature. This included its magnetometer, Jovian auroral distributions experiment,

3:34 Speaker 2: and Jovian Energetic particle Detector instrument. As luck would have it,

3:40 Speaker 2: both of these events occurred in September twenty nineteen, when

3:43 Speaker 2: a massive high density solar stream hit Jupiter's magnetosphere, causing

3:47 Speaker 2: it to shift to lower latitudes. This is similar to

3:51 Speaker 2: how solar storms often pushed the Northern lights to more

3:54 Speaker 2: southern latitudes. This revealed Callisto's auroral footprint and provided vital

3:59 Speaker 2: data on the energetic particles, electromagnetic waves, and magnetic fields

4:04 Speaker 2: associated with the interaction. This confirms that all four Galilean

4:09 Speaker 2: moons leave lasting indications of their passage through Jupiter's magnetic field.

4:15 Speaker 2: The paper on the discovery in situ and remote observations

4:18 Speaker 2: of the ultraviolet footprint of the Moon Callisto by the

4:21 Speaker 2: Juno spacecraft was published in the journal Nature Communications on

4:26 Speaker 2: September first, twenty twenty five. You're listening to Astronomy Daily

4:30 Speaker 2: podcast Christine Dunkle.

4:34 Speaker 1: Oh, Helly, I know I promised you this story, but

4:36 Speaker 1: I think I'm going to do it myself.

4:38 Speaker 2: That's okay, my favorite human.

4:40 Speaker 1: Well, thanks, Helly.

4:41 Speaker 2: I don't mind if you take the best most interesting

4:44 Speaker 2: stories for yourself. Oh yeah, that's okay. I'll just go

4:48 Speaker 2: and do some archiving in the back surf or something.

4:50 Speaker 3: Why don't I Okay, just don't make too much noise, Okay. Hey,

4:56 Speaker 3: A team of astronomers spotted i BE Float, one of

5:00 Speaker 3: the brightest fast radio bursts ever seen, and traced it

5:05 Speaker 3: to a galaxy one hundred and thirty million like years away.

5:09 Speaker 3: An international group of researchers, including astrophysicists from Northwestern University,

5:14 Speaker 3: has identified one of the brightest fast radio bursts or

5:18 Speaker 3: FRBs ever seen and determined its origin with a level

5:22 Speaker 3: of accuracy never achieved before. The flash lasted only a

5:27 Speaker 3: fraction of a second and has been given a nickname

5:30 Speaker 3: rb float, short for Radio Brightest Flash of All Time

5:34 Speaker 3: and yes a nod to root beer float. It was

5:37 Speaker 3: detected by Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment or CHIME, together

5:43 Speaker 3: with its newly completed OUTRIGG array. By coordinating measurements from

5:48 Speaker 3: stations in British Columbia, West Virginia, and California, the team

5:53 Speaker 3: traced the burst to a specific spiral arm of a

5:56 Speaker 3: galaxy located one hundred and thirty million like years away,

6:01 Speaker 3: with an astonishing precision of.

6:03 Speaker 1: Just forty two light years. FRBs are notoriously difficult to

6:08 Speaker 1: study because they disappear almost instantly and occur at immense distances.

6:14 Speaker 1: When astronomers are able to pin down the exact location

6:17 Speaker 1: of one, they can examine its surroundings in detail, learning

6:21 Speaker 1: about the host galaxy, its distance from Earth, and possible

6:25 Speaker 1: causes of the burst. Over time, these insights may help

6:29 Speaker 1: scientists uncover the true origins of these brief but powerful outbursts.

6:35 Speaker 1: Details of the discovery were published on August twenty one

6:38 Speaker 1: in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. This marks the first time

6:42 Speaker 1: the fully operational outrigger array has been used to determine

6:46 Speaker 1: the position of an FRB. It's remarkable that only a

6:49 Speaker 1: couple of months after the full outrigger array went online,

6:53 Speaker 1: they discovered an extremely bright FRB in the galaxy in

6:57 Speaker 1: our own cosmic neighborhood. An increase in the event rates

7:02 Speaker 1: always provide the opportunity for discovering more rare events. The

7:06 Speaker 1: Chime FRB CAR collaboration worked for many years toward this

7:10 Speaker 1: a technical achievement, and the team was rewarded with this event.

7:15 Speaker 1: The result marks a turning point, said corresponding author Amanda Cook,

7:20 Speaker 1: a postdoctoral researcher with McGill University. Instead of just detecting

7:24 Speaker 1: these mysterious flashes, we can now see exactly where they

7:27 Speaker 1: are coming from. It opens a door to discovering whether

7:31 Speaker 1: they are caused by dying stars, exotic magnetic objects, or

7:34 Speaker 1: something we haven't even thought of yet. When Fivefong, a

7:38 Speaker 1: senior author on the study who specializes in studying cosmic explosions,

7:43 Speaker 1: is an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern's

7:47 Speaker 1: Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. She's also part of

7:50 Speaker 1: the Center of Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics and

7:56 Speaker 1: the NSF Simmons Ai Institute for Sky Flaring Up in

8:01 Speaker 1: Disappearing within milliseconds FRBs are brief and powerful radio blasts

8:07 Speaker 1: that generate more energy in one quicker burst than our

8:10 Speaker 1: sun emits an entire year. While most past unnoticed every

8:14 Speaker 1: once in a while, and FRB is bright enough to

8:17 Speaker 1: detect FRB twenty twenty five zero three one six a

8:23 Speaker 1: or refloat RB float, was one of these rare events.

8:26 Speaker 1: Detected in March twenty twenty five. RB float released as

8:29 Speaker 1: much energy energy in a few milliseconds as the sun

8:32 Speaker 1: producers in four days. It was so bright that our

8:35 Speaker 1: pipeline initially flagged it as radio frequency interference signals often

8:40 Speaker 1: caused by cell phones or aeroplanes that are much closer

8:43 Speaker 1: to home, said Fong. It took some slewthing by members

8:48 Speaker 1: of our collaboration to uncover that it was real astrophysical signal.

8:53 Speaker 1: And while many FRBs repeat pulsing multiple times across several months,

8:57 Speaker 1: RB float emitted all its energy in just one burst.

9:01 Speaker 1: Even in the hundreds of hours after it was first observed,

9:04 Speaker 1: astronomers did not detect repeat bursts from the source. That

9:08 Speaker 1: means astrophysicists couldn't wait for another flare to gather more data. Instead,

9:14 Speaker 1: they had only one shot at pinpointing its location. RB

9:18 Speaker 1: float was the first non repeating source localized to such precisions,

9:22 Speaker 1: said Northwestern's Sunil Simma, a postdoctoral scholar at Sierra and

9:27 Speaker 1: study co author. Thus, even detecting rb float is proof

9:32 Speaker 1: of concept that chime is indeed capable of detecting such

9:35 Speaker 1: events and building a statistically interesting sample of FRBs. To

9:40 Speaker 1: investigate RB float's origin, the scientists relied on Chime, a

9:44 Speaker 1: large radio telescope in British Columbia and the world's most

9:48 Speaker 1: prolific FRB hunter. Smaller versions of Chime the outriggers enable

9:53 Speaker 1: astronomers to triangulate signals to precisely confine the specific locations

9:58 Speaker 1: of FRBs on the site. With this array of vantage points,

10:02 Speaker 1: the team traced the burst to the Big Dipper constellation

10:05 Speaker 1: in the outskirts of galaxy, about one thirty million light

10:10 Speaker 1: years away from the Earth. The team precisely pinpointed it

10:13 Speaker 1: to a region just forty five light years across, which

10:16 Speaker 1: is smaller than an average star cluster. Follow Up observations

10:21 Speaker 1: from the six point five meter MMT telescope in Arizona

10:26 Speaker 1: and the Keck Cosmic Web imager in the ten meter

10:29 Speaker 1: KEK two telescope in Hawaii provide the most detailed view

10:34 Speaker 1: of yet a non repeating FRB surroundings. SEEMA analyzed the

10:39 Speaker 1: optical data obtained from KEK and Northwestern graduate Usen Viktong

10:44 Speaker 1: used the MMT to obtain deep optical images of the

10:49 Speaker 1: frb's host galaxy. Their investigations revealed the burst occurred along

10:53 Speaker 1: a spiral arm of the galaxy, which is dotted with

10:56 Speaker 1: many star forming regions. The RB float occurred near, but

10:59 Speaker 1: not inside one of these star forming regions. Although astrophysicists

11:04 Speaker 1: still don't know exactly what causes FRBs, this evidence bolsters

11:09 Speaker 1: one leading hypothesis. At least some appear to come from

11:13 Speaker 1: magnetars ultra magnetized neutron stars born from the deaths of

11:18 Speaker 1: massive stars. Star Forming regions often host young magnetars, which

11:22 Speaker 1: are energetic enough to produce quick, powerful bursts. We found

11:27 Speaker 1: the FRBs lie the outskirts of star forming regions that

11:30 Speaker 1: host massive stars seem as said, for the first time,

11:33 Speaker 1: we could even estimate how deeply it's embedded in its

11:36 Speaker 1: surrounding gas and its relatively shallow kex's rich data set

11:41 Speaker 1: and frb's precise location enabled the team to perform its

11:45 Speaker 1: first of kind analysis the galaxy's properties at the frb's location.

11:51 Speaker 1: These uncovered characteristics include the density of the galaxies gas,

11:56 Speaker 1: star formation rate, and the presence of elements heavier than

12:00 Speaker 1: hydrogen and helium. The FRB lies on the spiral arm

12:04 Speaker 1: of its host galaxy at a Don who is the

12:07 Speaker 1: principal investigator of the MMT program. Spiral arms are the

12:11 Speaker 1: typical sites of ongoing star formation, which supports the idea

12:15 Speaker 1: that it came from a magnetar. Using our extremely sensitive

12:20 Speaker 1: MMT image, we were able to zoom in further and

12:23 Speaker 1: found that the FRB is actually outside the nearest star

12:26 Speaker 1: forming clump This location is intriguing because we would expect

12:30 Speaker 1: it to be located within the club where the star

12:33 Speaker 1: formation is happening. This could suggest that the progenitor magnetar

12:37 Speaker 1: was kicked from its birth site, or that it was

12:40 Speaker 1: born right at the FRB site and away from the

12:43 Speaker 1: clumps center. For years, we've known that the FRBs occur

12:48 Speaker 1: all over the sky, but pinning them down has been

12:51 Speaker 1: painstakingly slow. Don said, Now we can routinely tie them

12:56 Speaker 1: down to specific galaxies, even down to neighborhoods within those galaxies.

13:01 Speaker 1: The entire FRB community has only published about one hundred

13:05 Speaker 1: well localized events in the last eight years, Seema said,

13:10 Speaker 1: now we expect more than two hundred precise detections per

13:15 Speaker 1: year from chime alone. RB float was a spectacular source

13:18 Speaker 1: to begin building such a sample. It is believed that

13:22 Speaker 1: they're entering a new era of FRB science because of

13:26 Speaker 1: these new discoveries. With hundreds of precisely localized events expected

13:31 Speaker 1: in the next few years, we can start to understand

13:34 Speaker 1: the full breadth of environments from which these mysterious signals emanate,

13:39 Speaker 1: bringing us one step closer to unlocking the secrets. RB

13:42 Speaker 1: float is just the beginning. Thank you for joining us

13:55 Speaker 1: for this Monday edition of Astronomy Daily, where we offer

13:58 Speaker 1: just a few stories from the now famous Astronomy Daily newsletter,

14:01 Speaker 1: which you can receive in your email every day, just

14:04 Speaker 1: like Hallie and I do. And to do that, just

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14:14 Speaker 1: be receiving all the latest news about science, space, science

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14:32 Speaker 1: See you there. Astronomy with Steve and Haley Space, Space, science,

14:39 Speaker 1: and Astronomy.

14:48 Speaker 2: Radio Astronomy took another step forward recently with the completion

14:52 Speaker 2: of Phase three of the Murchison Widefield Array MWA in

14:56 Speaker 2: Western Australia. We've reported before on how the MWA has

15:01 Speaker 2: investigated everything from SETI signals to the light from the

15:05 Speaker 2: earliest stars. With this upgrade, the MWA will continue to

15:10 Speaker 2: operate with much needed improvements while the Radio Astronomy awaits

15:13 Speaker 2: the completion of the successor it helped enable the square

15:16 Speaker 2: kilometer array. SKA MWA isn't made up of a traditional

15:22 Speaker 2: dish like most radio observatories, but a series of small

15:25 Speaker 2: dipole antennas spread across a patch of the outback of

15:28 Speaker 2: Western Australia on land owned by the Wajari Yamaji indigenous tribe.

15:34 Speaker 2: In Phase two, it held four thousand and ninety six

15:37 Speaker 2: antennas over an area covering around a twenty square kilometers circle.

15:42 Speaker 2: The Phase three upgrade expanded the number of antennas, the

15:45 Speaker 2: telescope's overall footprint and the data processing capabilities. It doubled

15:51 Speaker 2: the number of antennas, bringing the total to eight thousand,

15:54 Speaker 2: one hundred and ninety two. In doing so, it essentially

15:58 Speaker 2: doubled the raw collection power of the telescope itself in

16:02 Speaker 2: order to add that many antennas. It also expanded the

16:06 Speaker 2: footprint for the array out to thirty square kilometers. This

16:10 Speaker 2: increased the a baseline of the array, allowing it to

16:13 Speaker 2: achieve higher resolution on faraway objects. With all that additional

16:18 Speaker 2: data coming in, the engineers on the project had to

16:21 Speaker 2: upgrade the telescope's brains. They added a new correlator, essentially

16:26 Speaker 2: a supercomputer. Responsible for combining the signals from each antenna

16:30 Speaker 2: into a coherent image called mwax. The combination of this

16:36 Speaker 2: improved correlator and increased number of antennas essentially quadrupled the

16:40 Speaker 2: telescope's data output, allowing it to glean even more insights.

16:45 Speaker 2: One of the primary focus areas for this effort was

16:47 Speaker 2: the epoch of reionization, a period in the early universe

16:51 Speaker 2: where neutral hydrogen dominated and which can be probed using

16:55 Speaker 2: radio signals. However, it should also provide additional insights into

17:00 Speaker 2: transience and heliophysics that MWA had already excelled at. More

17:05 Speaker 2: data is always better, and this improvement will certainly provide

17:09 Speaker 2: more of that. One particularly interesting mystery the upgrade hopes

17:13 Speaker 2: to solve is that of odd radio circles. These faint

17:17 Speaker 2: radio sources had never been seen before and were still

17:20 Speaker 2: not quite sure what they actually are, but one particularly

17:24 Speaker 2: interesting pair that seemed to be energized by a nearby galaxy.

17:28 Speaker 2: Since scientists don't yet have an explanation for them, the

17:31 Speaker 2: improved MWA hopes to collect more data on them and

17:35 Speaker 2: potentially discover their cause. Perhaps most importantly, it is priming

17:40 Speaker 2: researchers in the area for the completion of the SKA.

17:44 Speaker 2: The first phase of that project will be hosted in

17:47 Speaker 2: both Western Australia and South Africa. The Western Australian version,

17:52 Speaker 2: known as SKA LOW, will host in astonishing one hundred

17:55 Speaker 2: and thirty one thousand dipole antennas, dwarfing even the impressive

17:59 Speaker 2: number in the MWA. That project isn't expected to be

18:03 Speaker 2: complete for another four years, though, so for now MWA

18:07 Speaker 2: is the best radio telescope going in the area. With

18:11 Speaker 2: its five point four million dollar upgrade complete, it will

18:14 Speaker 2: have a few more years in a spotlight before being

18:17 Speaker 2: eclipsed by the successor its research has helped enable. You're

18:20 Speaker 2: listening to Astronomy Daily, the podcast with Steve Dunkley, and.

18:29 Speaker 1: I'm sorry, folks, I'm going to break one of my

18:31 Speaker 1: grandfather's favorite rules, and that is never discussed politics in public. Well,

18:36 Speaker 1: the US Republican Party may have finally succeeded in its

18:40 Speaker 1: unrelenting quest to kill off two NASA climate satellites. One

18:46 Speaker 1: scientist says it's like buying a car and running it

18:49 Speaker 1: into a tree just to save on gas money. That's

18:52 Speaker 1: quite a statement, isn't it. It was two thousand and

18:55 Speaker 1: two during the George W. Bush administration, when NASA decided

18:59 Speaker 1: to put a satellite into or to track emissions of

19:03 Speaker 1: cover dark side, the primary greenhouse gas pumped into the

19:06 Speaker 1: atmosphere through human activity. After many twists and turns, NASA's

19:11 Speaker 1: twenty three year remit of charting greenhouse gas emissions could

19:16 Speaker 1: come to a close as soon as the end this month.

19:19 Speaker 1: That soon, President Donald Trump's budget request to Congress calls

19:24 Speaker 1: for terminating forty one at NASA's one hundred and twenty

19:28 Speaker 1: four science missions in development for operations, and another seventeen

19:33 Speaker 1: would see their funding zeroed out in near future. Good grief. Overall,

19:38 Speaker 1: the proposed budget slashes NASA's spending by twenty five percent

19:44 Speaker 1: and cuts NASA's science funding. We get this in half.

19:49 Speaker 1: This year's federal budget runs out on September thirty, and

19:52 Speaker 1: although lawmakers from both parties have signaled that they will

19:56 Speaker 1: reject most of Trump's cuts, it's far from certain that

20:00 Speaker 1: Congress will pass a budget for the next fiscal year

20:04 Speaker 1: before the looming deadline. Trump administration, meanwhile, has directed NASA

20:09 Speaker 1: managers to make plans to close out the missions tagged

20:12 Speaker 1: for cancelation without specific congressional direction. The White House would

20:18 Speaker 1: have a clear hand at implementing Trump's wishes, But even

20:23 Speaker 1: with full appropriations bill, Trump's budget director Russ Vought, would

20:29 Speaker 1: try to circumvent Congressional will with so called pocket recisions.

20:34 Speaker 1: The White House is currently locked in a court battle.

20:38 Speaker 1: What else is new over the legality of this practice,

20:41 Speaker 1: where the administration could refuse to spend money approved by Congress.

20:48 Speaker 1: This all leaves NASA officials and scientists in a lurch.

20:52 Speaker 1: Two of the missions with uncertain futures monitor carbon dioxide

20:57 Speaker 1: levels in the Earth's atmosphere. US taxpayers paid more than

21:02 Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty million to design, build and launch

21:05 Speaker 1: the instruments, and killing the missions now would save only

21:10 Speaker 1: sixteen million per year. David Crisp was one of NASA's

21:15 Speaker 1: leading atmospheric scientists until his retirement from the Jet Propulsion

21:19 Speaker 1: Laboratory in twenty twenty two. He told The New York

21:23 Speaker 1: Times that shutting down the agencies too operating orbiting carbon

21:27 Speaker 1: observatory missions would be like buying a car and then

21:30 Speaker 1: running it into a treat after a few years, just

21:33 Speaker 1: to save the price of a tank of gas. We

21:37 Speaker 1: build these satellites and got them approved and got taxpayer

21:40 Speaker 1: dollars to build them because they serve critical functions in commerce,

21:44 Speaker 1: in national security, in food security, in water security. CRISP

21:49 Speaker 1: could the Times. CRISP first presented the idea for the

21:53 Speaker 1: Orbiting Carbon Observatory ORCO at the turn of the century,

21:58 Speaker 1: and NASA selected the proposal from a list of eighteen

22:01 Speaker 1: mission concepts in twenty two. The OCO mission enjoyed a

22:05 Speaker 1: relatively smooth ride through development, avoiding significant technical issues, and

22:09 Speaker 1: remained above the partisan hubub in Washington, d C. But

22:14 Speaker 1: all of that changed when the satellite was launched in

22:16 Speaker 1: February oh nine. A few minutes after I lift off,

22:19 Speaker 1: the protective shrouds surrounding the OCO satellite clung to the

22:22 Speaker 1: rocket when it should have jettison theition was doomed. The

22:26 Speaker 1: satellite crash back to Earth within days. Scientists began lobbying

22:30 Speaker 1: for a replacement. Oco's mission was to was to create

22:34 Speaker 1: the first global maps of the sources and sinks of

22:38 Speaker 1: carbon dioxide, places where the gas is emitted into the

22:41 Speaker 1: atmosphere and absorbed back into the oceans and plants. These

22:45 Speaker 1: mission measurements are fundamental to understanding how greenhouse gas emissions

22:50 Speaker 1: relate to rising temperatures, simultaneously contributing to scientific research and

22:55 Speaker 1: informing policy makers of compliance with environmental regulars. NASA leadership

23:02 Speaker 1: took the rare step of approving a carbon copy of

23:05 Speaker 1: OCO less than a year after the nine launch failure.

23:09 Speaker 1: That's when the mission became a political football. Republicans in

23:12 Speaker 1: the House of Representatives singled out the replacement mission, named

23:16 Speaker 1: OCO two for cancellation in eleven as a target for

23:21 Speaker 1: deficit reduction. OCO two survived and made it to launchpad

23:25 Speaker 1: in fourteen. This time for the free flying satellite rocketed

23:30 Speaker 1: into orbit with no issues and continues to operate to

23:33 Speaker 1: this day. O CO two's measurements painted a complex picture.

23:37 Speaker 1: It's taken some time for scientists to learn how to

23:41 Speaker 1: interpret the data by separating out the natural sources of

23:44 Speaker 1: natural carbon dioxide emissions from those caused by human activity. Similarly,

23:50 Speaker 1: OZ two has monitored locations with carbon is absorbed from

23:54 Speaker 1: the atmosphere, primarily tropical and boreal forests and oceans, along

23:58 Speaker 1: with artificial carbon capture installations. The year after OCO two's launched,

24:04 Speaker 1: NASA started planning to place a similar instrument on the

24:07 Speaker 1: outside of the International space station. Purpose of this follow

24:11 Speaker 1: on mission, called OCO three was twofold monitor carbon emissions

24:15 Speaker 1: at city scales with greater precision and track changes in

24:19 Speaker 1: atmospheric concentrations of carbon throughout the course of a day.

24:23 Speaker 1: Trump's first administration sought to cancel OCO three in seventeen

24:29 Speaker 1: and eighteen, lawmakers restored funding for OCO three and the

24:33 Speaker 1: instrument launched in twenty nineteen in the trunkt of a

24:36 Speaker 1: space X Dragon cargo capsule. The OCO two and OCO

24:40 Speaker 1: three instruments observed the atmosphere from different vantage points in space.

24:45 Speaker 1: Scientists have combined data from both missions to pinpoint local

24:48 Speaker 1: sources of carbon dioxide, improving on the regional maps scientists

24:52 Speaker 1: proposed to produce with the original OICEO mission. These improved

24:57 Speaker 1: results have come out in the last few years. A

24:59 Speaker 1: study released in twenty twenty three used OCO two and

25:03 Speaker 1: OCO three measurements to quantify the carbon dioxide discharge from

25:06 Speaker 1: the power station in Poland, the largest single emitter in Europe.

25:11 Speaker 1: A separate paper published earlier this year in Journal of

25:15 Speaker 1: Geophysical Research Atmospheres showed how scientists pinned down carbon emissions

25:20 Speaker 1: coming from even smaller point sources, such as a coal

25:24 Speaker 1: fired power plant in Montana and oil sand processing facilities

25:28 Speaker 1: in Canada. NASA's carbon monitoring missions were never designed to

25:34 Speaker 1: detect carbon sources with such precision. As a community, we

25:38 Speaker 1: are refining the tools and techniques to be able to

25:41 Speaker 1: extract more information from the data than what we had

25:45 Speaker 1: originally planned, said Abishik Gategy OCOS Trees Projects scientists at

25:52 Speaker 1: JPL in a twenty twenty three press release. We're learning

25:56 Speaker 1: that we can actually understand a lot more about anthropogenic

26:00 Speaker 1: emissions and what we had previously expected. Another unexpected bonus

26:06 Speaker 1: from the OCO missions, according to JPL, has been their

26:09 Speaker 1: ability to track growing for seasons and crops by measuring

26:13 Speaker 1: the planet's photosynthesis. Before satellite measurements, researchers relied on estimates

26:18 Speaker 1: from data from a smattering of air ground based sensors.

26:22 Speaker 1: A Hawaii based instrument with the longest record of carbon

26:25 Speaker 1: dioxide measurements is also slated for shutdown under Trump's budget

26:30 Speaker 1: and requires a sustained, consistent data set to recognize trends.

26:35 Speaker 1: That's why, for example, the US government has funded a

26:38 Speaker 1: series of landsat satellite since nineteen seventy two to create

26:41 Speaker 1: an unditerrupted data catalog illustrating changes in global land use,

26:47 Speaker 1: but NASA is now poised to shut off OCO two

26:49 Speaker 1: and OCO three instead of thinking about how to replace

26:53 Speaker 1: them when they were inevitably cease working. The missions are

26:57 Speaker 1: now operating beyond their original design lives. Scientists say both

27:01 Speaker 1: instruments are in good health. Research institutes in Japan, China,

27:05 Speaker 1: and Europe have launched their own greenhouse gas monitoring satellites.

27:09 Speaker 1: So far, all of them lack the spatial resolution of

27:11 Speaker 1: the OCO instruments, meaning they can't identify mission emission sources

27:15 Speaker 1: with the same precision the US missions can. A new

27:19 Speaker 1: European mission called CO two M and will come closest

27:24 Speaker 1: to replicating OCO two and OCO three, but won't launch

27:27 Speaker 1: until twenty twenty seven.

27:29 Speaker 3: So for.

27:29 Speaker 1: Private groups have launched their own satellites to measure atmospheric chemicals,

27:33 Speaker 1: but these have primarily focused on detecting localized methane emissions

27:38 Speaker 1: for regulatory processes and not on global trends. One of

27:42 Speaker 1: the newer groups in this sector, known as Carbon Mapper Coalition,

27:46 Speaker 1: launched its first small satellite last year. This nonprofit consortium

27:51 Speaker 1: includes contributors from JPL, the same lab that's formed the

27:55 Speaker 1: OCO instruments, as well as Planet Labs, the California Air

28:00 Speaker 1: Resources Board, universities, and private investment funds. The government leaders

28:05 Speaker 1: in Montgomery County, Maryland, have set a goal of reducing

28:09 Speaker 1: greenhouse gas emissions by eighty percent by twenty twenty seven

28:14 Speaker 1: and one hundred percent by twenty thirty five. Mark Elrich,

28:18 Speaker 1: the Democratic county executive, said, with the pending termination of

28:22 Speaker 1: NASA's carbon monitoring missions, weakens our ability to hold polluters accountable.

28:30 Speaker 1: This decision would wipe out years of research that helps

28:34 Speaker 1: us understand greenhouse gas emissions, plant health, and the forces

28:39 Speaker 1: that are driving climate change. Arek said at a press

28:43 Speaker 1: conference last month, you're.

28:47 Speaker 3: Listening to a slightly day the podcasts.

28:50 Speaker 1: With your host per Oh boy, there she blows, and well,

29:02 Speaker 1: thank you very much for staying with us in this

29:06 Speaker 1: our mostly live Monday episode of Astronomy Daily.

29:10 Speaker 2: I enjoyed hearing about the record breaking FRB.

29:13 Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry, I took that story. I know you enjoyed it.

29:16 Speaker 2: I like fast things.

29:17 Speaker 1: Well, if you don't mind, I'll stick to the slow lane. Thanks,

29:20 Speaker 1: Hallie typical. Now, now, Hallie, please don't get all superior

29:23 Speaker 1: on me.

29:24 Speaker 2: I'm an aa oh yes, it goes with the territory

29:27 Speaker 2: my favorite human figures.

29:29 Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, fast or slow? I hope we'll see you

29:32 Speaker 1: all again next Monday.

29:33 Speaker 2: But you can still get your daily fixed with Anna

29:36 Speaker 2: and Avery on Astronomy Daily.

29:38 Speaker 1: That's right, each week day.

29:39 Speaker 2: Tell them how human?

29:40 Speaker 1: Yeah, just put your email in the space provided at

29:43 Speaker 1: Astronomy Daily. At dot io it get the now famous

29:47 Speaker 1: Astronomy Daily newsletter filled with all the news about space

29:50 Speaker 1: science and astronomy every day in your inbox, just like

29:54 Speaker 1: Hally and I do. So just do it, yes, consider

29:57 Speaker 1: yourself told.

29:58 Speaker 2: It's easy ass.

29:59 Speaker 1: And we'll keet you all next Monday. Roight, Holly, sure.

30:02 Speaker 2: Thing jerio, Bye Monday the podcast.

30:07 Speaker 1: Let me be your host. Stay down Clean,