Lunar Landing Woes, Elon Musk's Spat, and the Discovery of Extreme Nuclear Transients

0:00 Anna: Hey there space enthusiasts and welcome to

0:02 Astronomy Daily. I'm your host, Anna, and I'm

0:04 super excited to bring you the latest cosmic

0:06 happenings. Today we're diving into a mixed

0:09 bag of news from M, A Japanese lunar lander

0:11 that, didn't quite stick the landing to a

0:13 very public spat between Elon Musk and.

0:17 Well, you know. We'll also be taking a look

0:19 at what a maze is doing on M. Mars and get

0:22 this, the biggest explosion scientists have

0:24 seen since the Big Bang. So buckle

0:27 up and let's get started.

0:30 So, first up, we have some updated news from

0:32 Ispace, the Japan based company. And, well,

0:35 it's not great. Their Resilience lander

0:37 unfortunately didn't exactly nail its landing

0:40 on the moon. Yeah, it seems they got to the

0:42 finish line, but weren't quite successful in

0:44 sticking the landing. Now this mission

0:47 launched about four and a half months ago on

0:49 a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral. As

0:52 part of a rideshare with Firefly Aerospace's

0:55 Blue Ghost lander. The teams in Japan

0:57 announced that sadly, they lost communication

1:00 with Resilience, which probably means it

1:02 suffered a hard landing. Ouch.

1:05 Takeshi Hakamada, the founder and

1:08 CEO of Ispace, said that their top

1:11 priority is to analyse the telemetry data

1:13 they managed to get and figure out what went

1:15 wrong. They're aiming to restore trust by

1:17 providing a report to everyone involved.

1:20 The mission actually seemed to be going

1:22 smoothly at first. Resilience went through

1:25 several phases, gradually lowering its orbit

1:28 around the moon. But after it reached about

1:30 20 kilometres above the surface, things went

1:33 south. They lost telemetry, and based

1:36 on the data they have, the lander couldn't

1:38 decelerate enough and it, well, crash

1:40 landed. This lander was carrying science

1:43 payloads and even a rover from Ispace Europe

1:46 named Tenacious. The plan was to land in a

1:49 region called Mare Frigoris, or the Sea of

1:51 Cold. There was even a small model of a

1:54 Swedish house on board, meant to be placed on

1:56 the moon by the rover. Now, this is I Space's

1:59 second landing failure in two missions. But

2:01 their American subsidiary, Ispace US is

2:04 still on contract with NASA for a mission in

2:07 2027 to deliver a larger lander to

2:10 the far side of the moon. So hopefully

2:12 they'll be able to turn things around.

2:15 Okay, next up, we've got a bit of a, ah,

2:17 well, let's call it a situation brewing

2:20 between Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Yeah, you

2:23 heard that right. So apparently these two

2:25 aren't exactly seeing eye to eye anymore.

2:27 After Musk served as a special government

2:29 employee leading the Department of Government

2:31 Efficiency, or doge. Things seemed

2:34 fine. Trump even called Musk one of

2:37 the greatest business leaders and innovators

2:39 the world has ever produced. But things

2:42 went downhill after Musk criticised Trump's

2:44 big beautiful bill. Trump fired back,

2:47 suggesting the US could save money by

2:48 cancelling government contracts with Musk's

2:50 companies. And that's when things got spicy.

2:53 Musk responded with a threat to begin

2:55 decommissioning SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft

2:58 immediately. Now, if Musk is

3:00 serious, this could have some pretty big

3:02 consequences for American spaceflight. I

3:05 mean, think about it. SpaceX's Dragon

3:08 spacecraft have been crucial for NASA

3:10 operations on the International Space

3:12 Station, ushering in a new era of US

3:15 spaceflight. If Dragon gets decommissioned,

3:17 that would basically end US based astronaut

3:20 launches for a while. And Boeing's Starliner

3:23 isn't quite ready to fill that gap yet.

3:25 SpaceX has some pretty substantial government

3:27 contracts, including NASA's Commercial Crew

3:30 Programme, cargo resupply services for the

3:33 ISS, and oh yeah, they're

3:35 supposed to provide the lunar lander for

3:37 NASA's Artemis moon programme. So if those

3:40 contracts get cancelled along with the

3:42 proposed cuts to NASA's budget, it could

3:44 seriously impact NASA as we know it.

3:47 Now it's not clear what this would mean for

3:49 SpaceX's private spaceflight endeavours.

3:51 Axiom Space is about to launch its fourth

3:54 private astronaut mission on a brand new

3:56 Dragon. And SpaceX has been doing some cool

3:58 stuff with private spacewalks and polar

4:00 orbits. NASA's being pretty tight lipped

4:03 about the whole situation, saying they'll

4:05 continue to execute the President's vision

4:07 for the future of space. So we'll have to

4:10 wait and see how this all plays out. But

4:12 yeah, stay tuned folks, because this could

4:14 get interesting.

4:16 Alright, let's move on to something a little

4:18 less dramatic. Have you ever looked at the

4:21 raw images from NASA's Perseverance rover and

4:24 wondered why it keeps snapping pics of this

4:26 weird tiny maze? Well, it turns out there's a

4:28 pretty cool reason. That maze is actually a

4:31 calibration target. One of ten for

4:33 Perseverance's Sherlock instrument. Yeah,

4:35 that's short for scanning habitable

4:37 environments with Raman and luminescence for

4:39 organics and chemicals. Catchy, right? So

4:42 Sherlock is basically a Sherlock Holmes

4:44 inspired tool designed to detect organic

4:46 compounds and other minerals on Mars that

4:49 could indicate signs of, you know, ancient

4:51 microbial life. But to do that accurately, it

4:53 needs to be carefully calibrated. And that's

4:55 where our little maze comes in. Sherlock is

4:58 Located on the rover's robotic arm and and

5:00 uses spectroscopic techniques to analyse

5:02 Martian rocks. To make sure its measurements

5:05 are spot on, it routinely calibrates its

5:07 tools using reference materials with specific

5:10 properties. These are mounted on a plate

5:12 attached to the front of the rover's body,

5:14 which is called the Sherlock Calibration

5:16 target. The maze helps calibrate

5:18 the positioning of the laser scanner mirror

5:21 and characterises the laser's focus. It's

5:24 made of chrome plated lines that are super

5:25 thin, only about twice the width of a human

5:28 hair, printed onto silica glass. And

5:31 get this, if you look closely, there's even a

5:34 tiny Sherlock Holmes portrait right in the

5:36 centre. How cool is that? The calibration

5:39 target also includes samples of materials

5:41 used in spacesuits like Teflon, Gore Tex

5:43 and Kevlar. These are being tested under

5:46 Mars conditions to see how they hold up over

5:48 time, which is crucial for planning future

5:51 human exploration of the red planet. And one

5:53 last fun fact. Sherlock has a sidekick, a

5:55 colour camera called Watson. Yep, just like

5:58 Sherlock Holmes.

6:00 Okay, now for something truly mind blowing.

6:02 Astronomers have stumbled upon a new type of

6:05 giant space explosion. And get this. They're

6:07 calling them extreme nuclear transients, or

6:10 ENTs. And, apparently they're the biggest

6:12 bangs since the Big bang itself. These

6:15 ents are like colossal flares of light from

6:18 the hearts of distant galaxies. And they

6:21 linger way longer than any flares we've ever

6:23 seen before. We're talking about blasts

6:25 that release as much energy as 100 suns would

6:28 over their entire lifetimes. I mean, wow.

6:31 So what are they? Well, it turns out they're

6:34 kind of like stars being torn apart by black

6:36 holes, but on a scale we've never observed

6:39 before. Each star is a massive one, at

6:42 least three times as massive as our sun. And

6:44 each black hole is a supermassive beast

6:46 lurking in the centre of its host galaxy.

6:49 Normally, these events are called tidal

6:51 disruption events, or TDEs. But these

6:53 ENTs are different. They're, like,

6:56 nearly 10 times brighter than normal TDEs.

6:59 And they stay luminous for years, surpassing

7:02 even the brightest supernova explosions.

7:05 Gaia, the space telescope, whose mission was

7:07 to map the Milky Way, actually

7:10 accidentally captured these explosions

7:13 while staring at the sky. Combing through

7:15 Gaia data, scientists found two strange

7:18 events from 2016 and 2018.

7:22 After some digging, they figured out that

7:24 these events were the same kind of event as

7:26 something nicknamed Scary Barbie, which

7:28 sounds absolutely terrifying.

7:31 Ents are super rare, like 10

7:34 million times less frequent than supernovae.

7:36 But they give us a new way to study massive

7:39 black holes in distant galaxies because

7:42 they're so bright and we can see them across

7:44 vast cosmic distances. So in

7:46 astronomy, looking far away means looking

7:49 back in time. By observing these prolonged

7:51 flares, we can learn more about black hole

7:54 growth during a key era when the universe was

7:56 half its current age. It's like

7:59 galaxies were forming stars and feeding their

8:01 supermassive black holes like 10 times more

8:03 vigorously than they do today. Pretty wild

8:06 stuff, huh? And that's

8:09 all the space and astronomy news we have for

8:11 you today. I've been your host, Anna, and I

8:13 hope you enjoyed our journey through the

8:15 cosmos. If you want to stay up to date with

8:17 all the latest space happenings, be sure to

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