Lunar Lander Mishaps, Milky Way Mysteries, and Venus's Hidden Asteroids

Anna: Welcome to Astronomy Daily. I'm your host,

Anna, and I'm thrilled you're joining us for

another exciting dive into the cosmos.

Today we'll be exploring the recent

challenges faced by some ambitious

spacecraft, uncovering surprising new

discoveries about our very own Milky Way

galaxy, and discussing a potential hidden

family of asteroids that might be sharing

Venus's orbit. Plus, we'll take a look

ahead at what promises to be a very busy week

for space launches around the globe. Stay

with us. First up,

let's talk about the challenges of lunar

exploration.

Japanese company ISPACE has announced that it

believes its second lunar lander mission,

named Resilience, crashed due to problems

with its laser rangefinder. This crucial

piece of equipment is designed to determine

altitude during descent, but it reportedly

suffered a hardware issue. During a press

briefing, company executives explained that

the laser rangefinder, meant to provide the

first altitude data at 3 km above the

surface, didn't give its initial measurement

until the lander was less than 900 meters

high. By then, the spacecraft was

traveling much faster than planned, reaching

66 meters per second compared to the

intended 44 meters per second. The last

telemetry from the lander at an altitude of

192 meters, still showed it descending

rapidly at 42 meters per second.

Images later released by NASA's Lunar

Reconnaissance Orbiter show a 16 meter wide

crater marking the probable crash site.

ISpace's executive vice president

Yoshitsugu Hitachi clarified that this

incident was different from their first

mission in 2023, which failed due to

a software error. While the software on

Resilience worked as intended, the laser

rangefinder was a different model but sourced

from a new unnamed supplier.

Investigations ruled out improper

installation, leading the company to conclude

the unit's performance simply degraded.

Several factors could have caused this,

including lunar surface conditions, reduced

laser power, or even effects from the space

environment like vacuum and radiation.

Looking ahead, ISPACE is taking significant

steps to prevent future issues. Chief

Technology Officer Ryo Ujiya stated they will

enhance testing for the laser rangefinder and

and related sensors to better simulate high

speed and low reflectivity conditions.

They're also considering using a different

flight proven laser rangefinder and

augmenting it with other sensors like LIDAR

or cameras for more robust navigation.

These efforts will be supported by a new

external review board, including former

engineers from NASA and the Japanese space

agency jaxa. Despite the setbacks,

ISPACE remains committed to, with CEO

Takeshi Hakamada emphasizing their resolve

to keep improving and moving forward with

their next missions, both still scheduled for

2027.

Moving on let's turn our attention to Europe,

where the exploration company recently faced

a setback with its Mission Possible Test

vehicle. This European company, which

aims to develop orbital spacecraft for cargo

and eventually human transport, achieved a

partial success and a partial failure in

its latest test flight. The vehicle

powered up and flew successfully in orbit

before making a controlled RE entry into

Earth's atmosphere. Crucially, it

managed to re establish communication after

the blackout period, suggesting it navigated

the most thermally challenging part of

reentry effectively. However, the company

lost contact with the spacecraft just a few

minutes before its planned touchdown in the

ocean. In a candid update, the

exploration company indicated that the most

likely culprit was an issue with the

deployment of its parachutes, which were

designed to deploy at specific velocities

during descent. This demonstration

vehicle, measuring two and a half meters in

diameter, aimed to test four key

structural performance in orbit, surviving RE

entry, autonomous navigation, and recovery in

real world conditions. It only clearly failed

in this final critical task of recovering the

vehicle M. Despite this challenge, the

company's transparent and rapid communication

acknowledging the partial failure within

hours of the launch is quite refreshing in

the space industry. The Mission Possible

vehicle was developed at a relatively low

cost of about $20 million in just

2.5 years, demonstrating

the company's aggressive timeline and

commitment. While it's possible the

exploration company might conduct another

subscale demonstration, this mission

represents a significant step forward for

Europe's commercial space sector, which has

historically lagged behind the US And China.

The ability to launch a fairly large vehicle

and bring it back through Earth's atmosphere

less than four years after the company's

founding is a credible and promising start.

They are now focused on developing their full

size Nix cargo spacecraft with a potential

flight as early as 2028.

Now let's shift our gaze closer to home

within our own cosmic neighborhood.

Astronomers have recently developed a

groundbreaking new method for accurately

mapping the outer gas disk of the Milky Way,

and what they've found is quite surprising.

It turns out our galaxy's structure is far

more complex than previously thought,

complete with what they describe as

flocculant or tufty looking gas clouds.

This innovative approach, pioneered by

Sukanya Chakrabarti of the University of

Alabama and Peter Craig from msu,

relies on determining the precise distances

to very young stars within the outer disk.

They leverage data from the European Space

Agency's Gaia satellite, which has

meticulously measured the brightness,

positions, motions, and, crucially, the

distances to nearly 2 billion Milky Way

stars. As Chakrabarti emphasized,

distance is one of the most Fundamental

things you can measure in the universe.

Unless you know distances, you can't map

anything. This is a significant departure

from traditional mapping methods that use

kinematic distances which assume a model for

the galaxy's velocity fields. These

older methods can be imprecise, especially

for gas clouds which appear much fleecier and

more disturbed than the smoother patterns

seen in stars. To overcome these

inaccuracies, the team used a clever pattern

matching technique. They observed that the

spiral structure in the gas clouds of nearby

galaxies closely mirrors the structure of

young stars less than 400 million years old,

which are born from these gas clouds. By

pairing young stars with known locations to

nearby clumps of gas, they created a new map

that isn't dependent on the problematic

kinematic assumptions. For highly accurate

distance markers, they relied on Cepheid

variable stars which pulsate with a, uh,

regular rhythm, allowing astronomers to

calculate incredibly precise distances.

The results are transforming our

understanding. Craig noted that their new

maps nicely demonstrate that the spiral

structure in the gas disk of the Milky Way is

highly flocculant and that the overall

structure of the disk is complex. This

technique combining pattern matching with

accurate stellar distances promises to

significantly improve our understanding of

the prevalence and shapes of the clouds in

the hydrogen disk. Beyond that,

these more accurate maps can enhance three

dimensional dust maps of the entire galaxy

and help astronomers identify disturbances

within the disk, such as interactions with

nearby dwarf galaxies or even the presence

of dark matter. It's a truly exciting

development that paints an even more

intricate picture of our home galaxy

moving from the intricate patterns within our

own Milky Way.

Let's turn our attention to an exciting

discovery much closer to home, right in our

solar system. Astronomers are currently

delving into a little known and largely

unseen group of asteroids that quietly share

Venus's orbit around the Sun. These

fascinating space rocks, dubbed Venus Co

orbital asteroids, might be far more numerous

than we ever imagined. To date, only

about 20 of these unique asteroids have been

confirmed. However, a new study led by

Valerio Carruba from Sao Paulo State

University in Brazil the suggest that

hundreds more could be lurking just out of

sight. Karuba excitingly compared this

potential discovery to discovering a

continent you didn't know existed. The reason

so few have been found until now is their

elusiveness. They appear close to the sun in

our sky, making them difficult for ground

based telescopes to spot. And their rapid

movement adds to the tracking challenge.

To investigate this hidden population,

Karuba's team ran extensive computer

simulations modeling the orbits of hundreds

of hypothetical Venus Co orbital asteroids

over a staggering 36,000 years into

the future, they found that many of these

objects could remain gravitationally bound to

Venus's orbit for an average of about 12,000

years. Interestingly, their orbits appeared

chaotic, meaning small shifts over long

periods could eventually push them onto

different paths, including some that might

bring them closer to Earth. However, there's

no need for alarm. Experts, including

astronomer Scott Shepard from the Carnegie

Institution for Science, emphasize that none

of the known asteroids pose an immediate

threat, and the timescales involved span many

thousands of years. The likelihood of one

colliding with Earth anytime soon is

extremely low. Despite the low risk,

understanding these objects is crucial for

building a more complete picture of near

Earth space. Because they're so hard to spot

from Earth, the team also explored new

detection methods. Their simulations suggest

that a spacecraft orbiting closer to Venus

would have a much better chance. And the

newly commissioned Vera C Rubin Observatory,

though not specifically designed for the

inner solar system, could potentially catch

some of these hidden asteroids during its

special twilight observing campaigns. Further

into the future, a proposed mission concept

called Crown and envisions a fleet of small

spacecraft near Venus specifically designed

for this search. These efforts promise to

unveil many more of these dynamically

intriguing objects, adding another layer to

our understanding of the solar system's

diverse inhabitants.

From hidden asteroids to perplexing planets,

astronomers have been busy unraveling cosmic

mysteries. And speaking of mysteries,

scientists may have finally cracked the

curious case of what are known as double hot

Jupiters. These are rare exoplanet pairs

found in binary star systems, with one

scorching gas giant orbiting each of the twin

stars. This arrangement has long puzzled

scientists, seeming to defy our understanding

of how planets form. But now a team

of astronomers believes they have the key to

this celestial puzzle, a process known as von

Zypolidov Kozai or zlk. Migration

team leader and Yale University astronomer

Melena Rice describes it as a dance of sorts

of essentially in a binary star system,

the gravitational influence of the second

star can significantly shape and warp the

orbits of planets, causing them to migrate

inward towards their parent stars. The

researchers propose that this mechanism leads

to a mirrored migration process, resulting in

both stars in the binary system ending up

with their own hot Jupiter. To reach this

conclusion, Rice and her colleagues performed

numerous simulations of binary stars with two

planets using powerful computing clusters and

data from sources like NASA's Exoplanet

Archive and the European Space Agency's Gaia

mission. The unintended yet

exciting consequence of this research is that

it makes our planet formation models a whole

lot more interesting. We typically expect

giant planets to form much further away from

their host stars. Which is precisely why Hot

Jupiters, especially pairs of them, have been

such a captivating subject of studying. For

future discoveries, the team suggests

revisiting binary systems where just one Hot

Jupiter has already been found. The crucial

factor, however, is that these parent stars

need to have a moderate separation, not too

close and not too far apart, just the right

distance for this gravitational dance to

unfold.

Next up, the global launch manifest continues

to be as busy as ever. As we approach the

halfway point of 2025 this week,

we're looking at a packed schedule

highlighted by multiple SpaceX Falcon 9

missions, including a significant private

crewed flight to the International Space

Station. First up, Axiom Space aims to return

crew to the iss with its fourth private

mission, AX4, launching today if all goes

according to plan. From Florida Commanding

this flight is Peggy Whitson, a former NASA

astronaut, making this her second commercial

mission and further extending her record for

the longest cumulative time in space by an

American. Joining her are Shubanshu

Shukla from India and mission specialists

Slawash Usnanski, Wisniewski of Poland and

Tibor Kapu of Hungary, all making their first

space flights and marking significant

milestones for their nations. This mission

also debuts crew Dragon

C213, the final capsule ever

manufactured completing SpaceX's fleet. The

Falcon 9 booster will attempt a, uh, return

to launch site landing. Beyond the

crewed mission, SpaceX is maintaining its

impressive pace with three Starlink satellite

deployments also on the docket. This week,

two Falcon 9 flights will launch from Cape

Canaveral carrying Starlink V2 mini

satellites into low Earth orbit, while the

third lifts off from Vandenberg Space Force

Base in California. These launches underscore

SpaceX's aggressive goal of completing 170

orbital flights this year. Elsewhere on the

launch pad, Rocket Lab aims to continue its

record cadence with the 67th electron

mission, symphony in the Stars from New

Zealand. Slightly delayed for checkouts,

this confidential commercial payload is set

for a 650 kilometer orbit.

Blue Origin also has its fifth New Shepard

suborbital flight of 2025

NS33, expected to carry a crew of

six passengers, just above the Carmen line

for a brief period of microgravity after

being scrubbed last weekend. And

finally, a momentous launch marks the end of

an era, the 50th and final mission for

the Japanese H2A rocket. This

swan song flight, delayed due to an

electrical issue, will carry the GOSAT GEO

Water Earth Observation payload from the

Tanegashima Space Center. This satellite is

designed to monitor greenhouse gases and

measure water on Earth's surface and in the

atmosphere. The H2A, with an

impressive track record, is being phased out

in favor of its successor, the H3 family.

And with that news, we wrap up today's

episode of Astronomy Daily, where we explored

everything from lunar lander challenges and a

European spacecraft's re entry setback to the

clumpy nature of our Milky Way and the hidden

asteroids of Venus. Plus the fascinating

dance of double hot Jupiters and a look at

the busy week ahead for space launches. Thank

you for joining us. I'm Anna your your host

and I hope you enjoyed this dive into the

cosmos. Remember, you can visit

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