Europe's Rocket Moment, A Hidden Cosmic Explosion, and Brown Dwarfs in Love

0:00 Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Astronomy Daily.

0:03 Speaker 2: I'm Anna and I'm Avery. It is Monday, March twenty third,

0:07 Speaker 2: twenty twenty six, and we are back for another week

0:10 Speaker 2: of space and astronomy news.

0:12 Speaker 1: And what a way to kick off the week, because

0:14 Speaker 1: right now, as you're listening to this, a rocket is

0:17 Speaker 1: sitting on a launchpad in Norway waiting to make history.

0:22 Speaker 1: We'll have all the details in just a moment.

0:24 Speaker 2: We also have the story of a cosmic explosion so

0:27 Speaker 2: powerful it would dwarf a billion suns that nobody saw coming.

0:31 Speaker 2: We've got a docking drama unfolding at the International Space Station,

0:35 Speaker 2: and a pair of so called failed stars that are

0:38 Speaker 2: rather brilliantly refusing to fail.

0:41 Speaker 1: Plus, we're going to take a little trip back in

0:43 Speaker 1: time sixty years to one of NASA's most heart stopping

0:48 Speaker 1: emergencies and the extraordinary photos that have only just come

0:52 Speaker 1: to light.

0:53 Speaker 2: Dick stories, zero filler, Let's go.

0:55 Speaker 1: All right, Story one, and we want to say right

0:58 Speaker 1: up front, this one one is live, as in the

1:02 Speaker 1: launch window for this mission opened just a few hours

1:05 Speaker 1: before many of you are listening to us right now.

1:08 Speaker 2: That's right today, Monday, the twenty third of March twenty

1:11 Speaker 2: twenty six, Germany's Esar Aerospace is attempting the second flight

1:15 Speaker 2: of its Spectrum rocket from Andoja Spaceport in northern Norway.

1:19 Speaker 2: And this is not just another locket launch. This is

1:22 Speaker 2: potentially a landmark moment for European spaceflight.

1:25 Speaker 1: For context, until very recently, no orbital rocket had ever

1:30 Speaker 1: launched from the European continent. None. If you were a

1:33 Speaker 1: European company or agency that wanted to put something in orbit,

1:37 Speaker 1: you had to go elsewhere. That changed just under a

1:41 Speaker 1: year ago when Spectrum flew for the first time, But

1:44 Speaker 1: that first flight ended roughly thirty seconds after liftoff when

1:48 Speaker 1: a vent valve issue caused a loss of attitude control

1:51 Speaker 1: and the rocket came down into the sea.

1:54 Speaker 2: So today's flight, titled Onward and Upward, is the comeback.

1:58 Speaker 2: It's esar's qualification, and it's the first time Spectrum will

2:02 Speaker 2: carry actual customer payloads. We're talking five CubeSats from European

2:06 Speaker 2: universities and companies, including teams from t U Berlin, the

2:10 Speaker 2: University of Meraborg and the Technical University of Vienna, all

2:14 Speaker 2: flying through ESA's BOOST program.

2:16 Speaker 1: And the stakes are real. ESA's European launcher challenge requires

2:21 Speaker 1: participating companies to reach orbit no later than twenty twenty seven.

2:26 Speaker 1: If Spectrum succeeds today, ESAR takes a massive step toward

2:30 Speaker 1: proving European commercial launch is a genuine independent capability.

2:35 Speaker 2: The launch window opened at nine pm Central European time,

2:38 Speaker 2: that's eight UTC, and ESAR CEO Daniel Metzler has described

2:43 Speaker 2: this flight as quote a deliberate step toward delivering sovereign

2:46 Speaker 2: access to space for Europe and allied nations.

2:49 Speaker 1: So fingers crossed everyone, we will absolutely be covering the

2:54 Speaker 1: outcome tomorrow. Spectrum fly straight and fly far.

2:58 Speaker 2: Story two, and we're going going back sixty years because

3:01 Speaker 2: sometimes the most remarkable stories are the ones history almost forgot.

3:06 Speaker 1: Most people know Neil Armstrong as the first human to

3:09 Speaker 1: walk on the Moon, but before Apollo eleven, before the

3:13 Speaker 1: Sea of Tranquility, there was a moment in March nineteen

3:16 Speaker 1: sixty six, sixty years this month, when Armstrong came extraordinarily

3:21 Speaker 1: close to not surviving a mission at all.

3:25 Speaker 2: Armstrong was commander of Gemini eight alongside pilot David Scott.

3:29 Speaker 2: The mission successfully docked with an unmanned a Gina target vehicle,

3:33 Speaker 2: the first ever docking of two spacecraft in orbit, a

3:36 Speaker 2: critical milestone for the Apollo program, But shortly after docking,

3:40 Speaker 2: the joint spacecraft began to roll uncontrollably.

3:43 Speaker 1: Armstrong undocked from the aegina, thinking it was the source

3:47 Speaker 1: of the problem, but that actually made things worse. The

3:50 Speaker 1: Gemini capsule went into a violent spin, reaching one revolution

3:55 Speaker 1: per second. The crew were on the verge of losing consciousness.

3:59 Speaker 2: Armstrong managed to regain control using the re entry attitude thrusters,

4:05 Speaker 2: but using those meant the mission had to be aborted immediately.

4:09 Speaker 2: Demini eight came down in a secondary recovery zone in

4:13 Speaker 2: the Pacific, where Armstrong and Scott were retrieved by the

4:17 Speaker 2: USS Mason after several rough hours at.

4:21 Speaker 1: Sea, and now sixty years on, never before seen photographs

4:25 Speaker 1: of Armstrong's return, his rescue from the Pacific, his arrival,

4:30 Speaker 1: the relief on the faces of those around him, have

4:32 Speaker 1: been donated to the Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapacanetta, Ohio,

4:38 Speaker 1: the museum that bears his name.

4:40 Speaker 2: These aren't widely known images, they capture a moment of

4:43 Speaker 2: pure human relief, the calm after one of NASA's closest

4:47 Speaker 2: calls in the pre Apollo era, and they serve as

4:50 Speaker 2: a beautiful reminder that the path to the Moon was

4:53 Speaker 2: paid with moments of extraordinary courage under pressure.

4:56 Speaker 1: We'll link to more on this story in the show notes.

4:59 Speaker 1: If you're a space history fan, this one is well

5:02 Speaker 1: worth a read.

5:03 Speaker 2: Story three and this one genuinely blew our minds when

5:06 Speaker 2: we came across it. It involves an explosion so powerful

5:10 Speaker 2: it released the equivalent of the total radio energy output

5:13 Speaker 2: of billions of suns, and astronomers completely missed it until

5:18 Speaker 2: they found the echo.

5:20 Speaker 1: So let's set the scene. Gamma ray bursts are the

5:23 Speaker 1: most energetic explosions in the known universe. They happen when

5:27 Speaker 1: massive stars collapse and form black holes, firing jets of

5:32 Speaker 1: high energy radiation into space. Within seconds, they release more

5:37 Speaker 1: energy than our Sun will produce over its entire ten

5:41 Speaker 1: billion year lifetime.

5:42 Speaker 3: The catch is those jets are incredibly narrow. We only

5:46 Speaker 3: detect gammay bursts when the jet happens to be pointing

5:49 Speaker 3: directly at Earth. If it's aimed elsewhere, the initial flash

5:53 Speaker 3: goes completely onzeene. These are sometimes called orphin afterglows, and

5:58 Speaker 3: they've been theorized for decades, but almost never caught until now.

6:03 Speaker 1: Using the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder ASKAP based in

6:07 Speaker 1: Western Australia, astronomers detected a radio signal designated as GAP

6:13 Speaker 1: JAY zero zero five five one two DASH two five

6:17 Speaker 1: five eight three four. It brightened rapidly over a period

6:21 Speaker 1: of weeks, then began a slow, steady fade, and it's

6:24 Speaker 1: still detectable more than a thousand days later.

6:27 Speaker 2: Left almost no trace at visible light or X ray wavelengths,

6:31 Speaker 2: which is exactly what you'd expect from a jet that

6:33 Speaker 2: wasn't pointed at us. The researchers, led by Ashna Gulati

6:37 Speaker 2: and Tara Murphy from the University of Sydney, described this

6:41 Speaker 2: as the most convincing orphan afterglow candidate ever identified.

6:45 Speaker 1: There is one other explanation, and it's arguably just as wild.

6:50 Speaker 1: This signal could be the echo of a star being

6:53 Speaker 1: torn apart by an intermediate mass black hole, a category

6:58 Speaker 1: of black hole that sits between the stellar mass black

7:01 Speaker 1: holes born in supernova explosions and super massive monsters at

7:06 Speaker 1: the centers of galaxies. Extraordinarily rare, extraordinarily hard to detect.

7:12 Speaker 2: Either way, the discovery opens a new window on some

7:15 Speaker 2: of the universe's most extreme events. The team hopes to

7:19 Speaker 2: use the same approach to find many more of these

7:22 Speaker 2: hidden explosions, cosmic blasts that never announced themselves with a flash,

7:26 Speaker 2: but lingered quietly as ghosts in the radio.

7:29 Speaker 1: Sky, ghosts in the radio sky. I love that the

7:33 Speaker 1: paper is published in the Astrophysical Journal, and it's well

7:37 Speaker 1: worth reading.

7:38 Speaker 2: Story four, and this one's genuinely alarming. The global astronomy

7:43 Speaker 2: community is raising the alarm over two proposed satellite projects

7:46 Speaker 2: that experts say could fundamentally and permanently alter humanity's view

7:51 Speaker 2: of the night sky.

7:52 Speaker 1: The first is SpaceX. In January this year, SpaceX applied

7:57 Speaker 1: to the US Federal Communications Commission the FCC for approval

8:02 Speaker 1: to launch up to one million satellites as orbiting data

8:06 Speaker 1: centers designed to power artificial intelligence systems from space. One million.

8:12 Speaker 2: To put that in perspective, right now, there are approximately

8:15 Speaker 2: fourteen thousand active satellites and Earth orbit. BaseX is proposing

8:20 Speaker 2: to increase that by a factor of over seventy and

8:23 Speaker 2: according to astronomers, even a fraction of that constellation would

8:27 Speaker 2: add thousands of naked eye visible objects to the night

8:30 Speaker 2: sky at any given moment, in some cases outnumbering the

8:34 Speaker 2: stars themselves.

8:35 Speaker 1: The second proposal comes from a startup called reflect Orbital.

8:40 Speaker 1: They want to launch up to fifty thousand mirrors into

8:43 Speaker 1: low Earth orbit, each one about fifty five meters wide,

8:48 Speaker 1: designed to reflect sunlight back to Earth to power ground

8:52 Speaker 1: based solar installations. Each reflected beam, astronomers worn, would be

8:57 Speaker 1: around four times brighter than a f full moon, and

9:01 Speaker 1: it wouldn't stay in one place.

9:04 Speaker 2: Robert Massey, the Deputy executive director of the British Royal

9:08 Speaker 2: Astronomical Society, described the situation as quote really intolerable, saying

9:13 Speaker 2: it would be quote absolutely the destruction of a central

9:17 Speaker 2: part of human heritage.

9:19 Speaker 1: The Royal Astronomical Society, the European Southern Observatory, and the

9:24 Speaker 1: International Astronomical Union have all filed formal objections to the FCC.

9:30 Speaker 1: The ESO estimates that SpaceX's proposed constellation alone could contaminate

9:36 Speaker 1: up to ten percent of data from the Very Large

9:39 Speaker 1: Telescope in Chile, and potentially up to thirty percent for

9:43 Speaker 1: certain kinds of observations.

9:45 Speaker 2: The concern is compounded by the FCC's approach to evaluating

9:49 Speaker 2: these applications, fast tracking them without requiring environmental impact assessments,

9:54 Speaker 2: and the public common period has already closed.

9:57 Speaker 1: This is a story we'll be watching very closely. The

10:01 Speaker 1: night sky has been a shared human heritage for as

10:04 Speaker 1: long as our species has existed. The idea that it

10:07 Speaker 1: could be fundamentally transformed, not by a natural event but

10:12 Speaker 1: by commercial interests is something the astronomical community feels very

10:17 Speaker 1: strongly about, and honestly so do we.

10:20 Speaker 2: Story five and the quick heads up, this one is

10:23 Speaker 2: also an evolving situation. The docking is scheduled for tomorrow morning.

10:28 Speaker 1: Yesterday, Sunday, March twenty second, Russia's Progress ninety four cargo

10:33 Speaker 1: spacecraft launched from the Baikanor Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a

10:38 Speaker 1: Soyuz rocket. It's carrying about three tons of supplies to

10:42 Speaker 1: the International Space Station, food, fuel, scientific equipment, and medical

10:48 Speaker 1: supplies for the expedition's seventy four crew.

10:51 Speaker 2: The launch itself went smoothly, but shortly after separating from

10:55 Speaker 2: the rocket, engineers noticed a problem. One of Progress ninety

10:59 Speaker 2: four's two TU curse automated rendezvous antennas, the system the

11:03 Speaker 2: spacecraft uses to home in on the ISS for docking,

11:06 Speaker 2: failed to deploy. As planned.

11:08 Speaker 1: Trouble shooting is ongoing and all other systems are reported

11:12 Speaker 1: to be working normally. The spacecraft is continuing its two

11:16 Speaker 1: day journey to the station regardless. Docking at the Poisk

11:20 Speaker 1: module is scheduled tomorrow morning, Tuesday March twenty fourth, at

11:24 Speaker 1: around nine thirty Eastern time.

11:27 Speaker 2: If the antennas still can't be deployed by then, Expedition

11:30 Speaker 2: seventy four Commander Sergei Kutzwershkov will take manual control, highlighting

11:35 Speaker 2: the spacecraft to dock using the tellerobotically operated rendezvous system,

11:40 Speaker 2: essentially a backup control panel located in this Viesta service module.

11:45 Speaker 1: Manual docking of a cargo spacecraft is not something that

11:48 Speaker 1: happens every day. It's a demanding procedure, but it's been

11:52 Speaker 1: done before. Commander Kudzverrshkov is an experienced cosmonaut and the

11:57 Speaker 1: situation is being monitored carefully.

12:00 Speaker 2: We'll have an update on how this one resolved intomorrow's episode.

12:03 Speaker 2: For now, fingers crossed for a smooth arrival.

12:06 Speaker 1: And finally, story six, and this is our favorite one

12:10 Speaker 1: of the day. It involves brown dwarfs sometimes called failed stars,

12:15 Speaker 1: and a discovery that even the researchers themselves struggled to believe.

12:20 Speaker 2: Brown dwarfs occupy a strange middle ground between planets and stars.

12:25 Speaker 2: They're more massive than gas giants like Jupiter, but not

12:28 Speaker 2: quite massive enough to ignite and sustain the nuclear fusion

12:32 Speaker 2: that powers a proper star. They glow a little, mainly

12:36 Speaker 2: from deuterium fusion in their earlier years, but they fade

12:39 Speaker 2: over time, hence the nickname failed stars.

12:42 Speaker 1: Now, binary systems where two objects orbit each other, are

12:47 Speaker 1: common in the cosmos, and we've long known that in

12:50 Speaker 1: certain binary systems, mass can transfer from one object to another.

12:55 Speaker 1: A white dwarf stealing matter from a companion, for instance,

12:58 Speaker 1: can eventually trigger a supernova, but this kind of mass

13:02 Speaker 1: transfer had never been observed between two brown dwarfs until now.

13:07 Speaker 2: A team at Caltech led by graduate students Samuel Whitebook

13:12 Speaker 2: was searching through data from the Ziggy Transient Facility, a

13:15 Speaker 2: sky survey telescope, when they noticed something unusual. An object

13:20 Speaker 2: designated ztf J one thousand, two hundred and thirty nine

13:25 Speaker 2: plus eight thousand, three hundred and forty seven was changing

13:29 Speaker 2: dramatically in brightness roughly every fifty seven minutes.

13:33 Speaker 1: What they'd found was a pair of brown dwarfs orbiting

13:36 Speaker 1: each other at astonishing proximity the entire system. Both objects

13:40 Speaker 1: would fit within the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

13:44 Speaker 1: They're spinning around each other once every fifty seven minutes,

13:48 Speaker 1: and one is actively stealing mass from the other through

13:51 Speaker 1: what the researchers describe as a kind of gravitational nozzle,

13:55 Speaker 1: creating a hotspot that blazes in blue and ultraviolet light.

14:00 Speaker 2: Coole author Thomas Prince put it simply, these are very

14:04 Speaker 2: exotic objects. We've told some of our colleagues about them,

14:07 Speaker 2: and they didn't believe such a thing exists.

14:10 Speaker 1: The system is about one thousand light years away in

14:13 Speaker 1: the constellation ursa Major, close enough to make it an

14:17 Speaker 1: excellent candidate for follow up observations with the James Webbs

14:21 Speaker 1: Space Telescope. And as for what happens next, well, there

14:25 Speaker 1: are two possibilities. Either the thieving brown dwarf gains enough

14:29 Speaker 1: mass to ignite fusion and become a real star, or

14:33 Speaker 1: the two eventually spiral together and merge into one brighter object.

14:38 Speaker 1: Either way, as white Book puts it, the failed stars

14:42 Speaker 1: get a second chance.

14:43 Speaker 2: The paper is published in the Astrophysical journal letters and

14:47 Speaker 2: it's a genuinely wonderful read.

14:49 Speaker 1: And that is your Astronomy Daily for Monday, March twenty third.

14:53 Speaker 1: Six stories, one live launch to watch, and one pair

14:57 Speaker 1: of brown dwarfs proving that even failed stars deserve a

15:00 Speaker 1: second act.

15:01 Speaker 2: Tomorrow we'll have the outcome of the Spectrum launch and

15:04 Speaker 2: the Progress ninety four docking, so we might be bringing

15:08 Speaker 2: you to Cliffhanger resolutions at once. Subscribe so you don't

15:12 Speaker 2: miss it.

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15:23 Speaker 1: full show notes and source links are always at Astronomy

15:26 Speaker 1: Daily dot io.

15:28 Speaker 2: Until tomorrow, keep looking up and keep wondering.

15:31 Speaker 1: Goodbye everyone, Sunday.

15:36 Speaker 2: Star st Start