Moon Safe! Asteroid Threat Ends + Cosmic Laser Record + Solar Storm Hits Mars

0:00 Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome back to Astronomy Daily.

0:03 Speaker 2: I'm Ana and I'm Avery. Happy Friday, space fans, We've

0:07 Speaker 2: got a great one for you today.

0:09 Speaker 1: We do six stories, and honestly, this is one of

0:13 Speaker 1: the more varied lineups we've had in a while. We've

0:16 Speaker 1: got planetary defense, a cosmic laser from halfway across the universe,

0:21 Speaker 1: a solar superstorm hitting Mars, a SpaceX rocket polluting the

0:26 Speaker 1: atmosphere on its way.

0:27 Speaker 2: Down, a mystery satellite launch from the other side of

0:30 Speaker 2: the world, and my personal favorite scientists trying to grow

0:35 Speaker 2: chickpeas on the moon.

0:37 Speaker 1: Bon hummus. Avery, that's where we're headed.

0:40 Speaker 2: Moon hummus. Let's go.

0:42 Speaker 1: Okay, First up, great news for anyone who's been losing

0:46 Speaker 1: sleep over asteroid twenty twenty four y R four. NASA

0:50 Speaker 1: has now officially ruled out any chance of it hitting

0:53 Speaker 1: the Moon in twenty thirty two.

0:55 Speaker 2: Right, So let's quickly recap the story for anyone who

0:58 Speaker 2: hasn't been following it. This asteroid was discovered back in

1:02 Speaker 2: December twenty twenty four, and for a while it was

1:05 Speaker 2: genuinely alarming. It briefly became the most dangerous asteroid identified

1:10 Speaker 2: in the last twenty years with a small but very

1:13 Speaker 2: real chance it could hit Earth.

1:15 Speaker 1: That Earth impact risk was ruled out fairly quickly, but

1:19 Speaker 1: when the asteroid faded from view last year, astronomers were

1:22 Speaker 1: left with something almost as intriguing, a lingering four percent

1:27 Speaker 1: chance it could strike the Moon on December twenty second,

1:30 Speaker 1: twenty thirty two.

1:31 Speaker 2: Four percent sounds small, but in asteroid terms, that's enormous.

1:36 Speaker 2: We're talking about a sixty meter rock, roughly the same

1:39 Speaker 2: size as what caused the Tenguska event in nineteen oh eight,

1:43 Speaker 2: or what dugout meteor crater in Arizona. If it hit

1:46 Speaker 2: the near side of the Moon, it would have created

1:48 Speaker 2: a crater about a kilometer wide and put on the

1:51 Speaker 2: most spectacular light show humanity has ever seen from Earth.

1:55 Speaker 1: So everyone's been watching very closely. The problem was by

1:59 Speaker 1: spring last year, the asteroid had drifted so far away

2:03 Speaker 1: it was invisible to pretty much every telescope on Earth

2:07 Speaker 1: and in space, with one exception.

2:10 Speaker 2: The James Web Space Telescope, which pushed itself to its

2:14 Speaker 2: very limits To catch this thing. A team led by

2:17 Speaker 2: the JOHNS. Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory used Web's near infrared

2:21 Speaker 2: camera in two observation windows in February the eighteenth and

2:25 Speaker 2: the twenty six to track down this incredibly faint speck

2:29 Speaker 2: against the background of stars.

2:31 Speaker 1: And the result was clear. The new measurements allowed scientists

2:35 Speaker 1: to map twenty twenty four y are forest trajectory with

2:38 Speaker 1: enough precision to rule out a lunar collision. Instead of

2:42 Speaker 1: hitting the Moon, It's going to pass at a distance

2:45 Speaker 1: of about thirteen thousand, two hundred miles from the lunar surface,

2:49 Speaker 1: which is yes, closer than some satellites orbit Earth, but

2:53 Speaker 1: it's a miss.

2:54 Speaker 2: Thirteen thousand, two hundred miles is basically next door in

2:57 Speaker 2: astronomical terms, but next door is still a miss. The

3:01 Speaker 2: Moon is safe, Earth is safe, and twenty twenty four

3:04 Speaker 2: yr four is just gonna keep trucking.

3:07 Speaker 1: NASA says they'll observe it again when it swings back

3:10 Speaker 1: near Earth in twenty twenty eight, So the story isn't

3:13 Speaker 1: quite over, but for now the threat is officially off

3:16 Speaker 1: the table.

3:17 Speaker 2: Good news to kick off the show What's next?

3:20 Speaker 1: Okay? Story two. This one comes out of South Africa

3:24 Speaker 1: and it involves what scientists are describing as a cosmic laser.

3:28 Speaker 1: And I mean that almost literally.

3:31 Speaker 2: Tell me more lasers in space. Sounds like something I

3:34 Speaker 2: need in my life.

3:35 Speaker 1: So astronomers using the Meerkat radio telescope in the Karu

3:39 Speaker 1: Desert have detected the most distant hydroxyl megamazer ever found.

3:45 Speaker 1: It's located in a violently merging galaxy four than eight

3:48 Speaker 1: billion light years away, and the signal is so powerful

3:52 Speaker 1: that researchers are actually calling it a gigamaser rather than

3:56 Speaker 1: a megamser.

3:57 Speaker 2: Okay, let's break this down for people. What exactly is

4:00 Speaker 2: a hydroxyl megamser?

4:03 Speaker 1: Right, So, on Earth, a laser works by exciting atoms

4:07 Speaker 1: or molecules until they release light in a very tight

4:11 Speaker 1: amplified beam. The same basic physics can happen in space,

4:15 Speaker 1: but instead of visible light, it happens at radio wavelengths.

4:19 Speaker 1: Hydroxyl molecules that's one hydrogen, one oxygen in massive gas

4:24 Speaker 1: clouds can be excited by the energy of colliding galaxies

4:28 Speaker 1: and amplify radio waves in exactly the same way. When

4:32 Speaker 1: the signal is extraordinarily bright, it's called a megamaser.

4:36 Speaker 2: So it's a natural radio laser powered by two galaxies

4:40 Speaker 2: smashing into each other.

4:41 Speaker 1: Exactly, and the one mirror caatound cataloged as hat Las

4:47 Speaker 1: J one four two nine three five point three dash

4:51 Speaker 1: zero zero two eight three six is the most distant

4:54 Speaker 1: and luminous example ever detected. We're seeing it as it

4:58 Speaker 1: existed when the universe was less than half its current age.

5:02 Speaker 2: And you said there was a gravitational lens involved as well.

5:06 Speaker 1: Yes, this is the really lovely part of the story.

5:09 Speaker 1: On its eight billion year journey to Earth, the radio

5:12 Speaker 1: signal happened to pass directly behind another completely unrelated galaxy

5:18 Speaker 1: sitting between us and the source. That foreground galaxy's gravity

5:22 Speaker 1: bent and warped space around it, acting like a natural

5:26 Speaker 1: magnifying glass and amplifying the signal even further before it

5:30 Speaker 1: reached Meerkat. So we have a natural space laser being

5:34 Speaker 1: focused by a natural gravitational telescope.

5:37 Speaker 2: That is genuinely delightful. The universe just handed astronomers a

5:40 Speaker 2: cosmic gift.

5:42 Speaker 1: The lead researcher, doctor Thoto Monomela, from the University of Pretoria,

5:47 Speaker 1: described it beautifully. He said they were seeing the radio

5:50 Speaker 1: equivalent of a laser halfway across the universe, and that

5:54 Speaker 1: it was a wonderfully serendipitous discovery.

5:57 Speaker 2: And the bigger picture here is that Meerkat is a

5:59 Speaker 2: precursor to the square kilometer array, the SKA, which is

6:03 Speaker 2: going to be even more powerful. So this is just

6:05 Speaker 2: a start of what's possible exactly.

6:08 Speaker 1: Bonamella's team wants to find hundreds, even thousands of these objects,

6:12 Speaker 1: and when the SKA comes online, that's going to become

6:16 Speaker 1: a real possibility.

6:17 Speaker 2: Incredible, all right.

6:19 Speaker 1: Story three and a bit of recent space history.

6:22 Speaker 2: Story three takes us back to May twenty twenty four

6:25 Speaker 2: and to Mars. You might remember that in May twenty

6:28 Speaker 2: twenty four, Earth was hit by the biggest solar storm

6:31 Speaker 2: recorded in over twenty years. Spectacular auroras were seen as

6:34 Speaker 2: far south as Mexico.

6:36 Speaker 1: I remember it well. Half the world was posting aurora photos, right.

6:41 Speaker 2: But that same storm also slammed into Mars. And thanks

6:44 Speaker 2: to Issa's two Mars orbiters, Mars Express and Exo Mars

6:48 Speaker 2: Trace Gas Orbital, we now know in unprecedented detail what

6:52 Speaker 2: that actually looked like. A new paper published today in

6:55 Speaker 2: Nature Communications reveals a full picture.

6:58 Speaker 1: So what happened to Mars?

7:00 Speaker 2: In short, Mars got absolutely hammered. The storm sent fast moving,

7:04 Speaker 2: energetic magnetized plasma and X rays flooding towards the red planet.

7:09 Speaker 2: When this barrage hit Mars's upper atmosphere, it stripped electrons

7:12 Speaker 2: from neutral atoms, causing two distinct layers of the atmosphere

7:16 Speaker 2: to fill up with charged particles at altitudes of around

7:19 Speaker 2: one hundred and ten and one hundred and thirty kilometers.

7:22 Speaker 1: How much of an effect are we talking?

7:25 Speaker 2: The electron density in those layers surged by forty five

7:28 Speaker 2: percent in one and a whopping two hundred and seventy

7:31 Speaker 2: eight percent in the other. Lead author Jacob Parrott from

7:34 Speaker 2: ISSA described it as the biggest response to a solar

7:37 Speaker 2: storm ever seen at Mars.

7:39 Speaker 1: And the orbiters themselves were affected too.

7:41 Speaker 2: Write they were both spacecraft suffered computer errors from the

7:46 Speaker 2: energetic particles, which is a known hazard of space weather,

7:50 Speaker 2: But crucially both had been designed with radiation resistant components

7:55 Speaker 2: and error correction systems, so they recovered fast and the

7:59 Speaker 2: time was incredibly fortunate. The researchers were able to capture

8:04 Speaker 2: the aftermath of the storm using a technique called radio

8:07 Speaker 2: ocultation just ten minutes after a large solar flare hit Mars.

8:12 Speaker 1: Radial occultation for our listeners that's where one spacecraft beams

8:17 Speaker 1: a radio signal to another at precisely the moment it

8:20 Speaker 1: disappears over the planet's horizon. The signal gets bent by

8:24 Speaker 1: the atmosphere on the way, and scientists can read all

8:28 Speaker 1: sorts of information about the atmospheric layers from the way

8:31 Speaker 1: it bends.

8:32 Speaker 2: It's a technique that's been used for decades here at Earth,

8:36 Speaker 2: but only recently has it been applied between two spacecraft

8:39 Speaker 2: that Mars. This was a perfect demonstration of how powerful

8:42 Speaker 2: it can.

8:43 Speaker 1: Be, and there's a broader significance here, isn't there. Mars

8:47 Speaker 1: has no global magnetic field the way Earth does, which

8:50 Speaker 1: is why the storm hits so much harder.

8:54 Speaker 2: Exactly on Earth, our magnetic field deflects a lot of

8:57 Speaker 2: the solar particles and channels the rest toward the poles

9:00 Speaker 2: as auroras. Mars lost its magnetic field billions of years ago,

9:05 Speaker 2: and that's almost certainly why it also lost most of

9:07 Speaker 2: its atmosphere and its liquid water over time. This study

9:12 Speaker 2: helps us understand that ongoing process, and it has very

9:15 Speaker 2: practical implications for future crude missions and radar operations on

9:20 Speaker 2: and around Mars.

9:21 Speaker 1: Really fascinating staff.

9:24 Speaker 2: Okay story four, and this one has a bit more

9:26 Speaker 2: of an edge to it.

9:28 Speaker 1: So this story starts with a SpaceX Falcon nine upper

9:31 Speaker 1: stage that back in February twenty twenty five failed to

9:35 Speaker 1: execute its planned de orbit burn after delivering twenty two

9:39 Speaker 1: Starlink satellites to orbit. It drifted uncontrolled for eighteen days

9:45 Speaker 1: before beginning an uncontrolled re entry about one hundred kilometers

9:49 Speaker 1: off the west coast of Ireland.

9:51 Speaker 2: I remember this one. Some debris came down in Poland,

9:54 Speaker 2: which caused a fairly significant diplomatic incident. Poland dismissed its

9:59 Speaker 2: head of Space agency over the lack of communication about

10:03 Speaker 2: where the thing was going to land.

10:05 Speaker 1: Right. But now there's a new dimension to this story.

10:08 Speaker 1: A paper just published in Communications, Earth and Environment by

10:13 Speaker 1: Robin Wing and her colleagues at the Leibnitz Institute for

10:16 Speaker 1: Atmospheric Physics in Germany has for the first time ever

10:21 Speaker 1: directly tied a specific rocket re entry to a measurable

10:25 Speaker 1: atmospheric pollution plume.

10:27 Speaker 2: How did they do that?

10:29 Speaker 1: They were operating a highly sensitive resonance fluorescence led our

10:33 Speaker 1: system in Kulan's Born, Germany, essentially a laser based atmospheric

10:38 Speaker 1: monitoring instrument. They weren't specifically watching for the rocket, they

10:43 Speaker 1: were just doing their regular atmospheric observations. But right around

10:47 Speaker 1: midnight on the twentieth of February twenty twenty five, just

10:51 Speaker 1: twenty hours after the Falcon nine came down, they detected

10:54 Speaker 1: a spike in lithium vapor levels in the upper atmosphere.

10:59 Speaker 2: Lithium, which which is not something that should be up

11:01 Speaker 2: there in any quantity.

11:03 Speaker 1: Normally, lithium in the upper atmosphere sits at about three

11:06 Speaker 1: atoms per cubic centimeter. They measured a spike to thirty

11:11 Speaker 1: one atoms per cubic centimeter at an altitude of between

11:14 Speaker 1: ninety four and ninety seven kilometers. That's a tenfold increase.

11:19 Speaker 2: And lithium is in the rocket because.

11:22 Speaker 1: Falcon nine upper stages carry an estimated thirty kilograms of

11:26 Speaker 1: lithium in lithium ion batteries and in the aluminum lithium

11:31 Speaker 1: alloy that makes up the whole plating. Critically, that alloy

11:35 Speaker 1: starts melting at precisely ninety eight point two kilometers altitude,

11:40 Speaker 1: which matches exactly where the pollution cloud was detected.

11:44 Speaker 2: That's a pretty compelling fingerprint. But did they need to

11:47 Speaker 2: do more than just say, well, there's lithium up there

11:50 Speaker 2: and a rocket just fell down.

11:51 Speaker 1: They did. They ran eight thousand simulations of backward wind

11:56 Speaker 1: trajectories from the light our station in Germany all the

11:59 Speaker 1: way back to the re entry point over Ireland. They

12:02 Speaker 1: checked every other possible source and everything pointed to the rocket.

12:06 Speaker 1: The case is solid.

12:08 Speaker 2: So what are the implications. Is a lithium cloud in

12:11 Speaker 2: the upper atmosphere a big deal?

12:14 Speaker 1: That's actually still an open question, and the researchers are

12:17 Speaker 1: honest about that. We don't yet fully understand the impact

12:21 Speaker 1: on atmosphere chemistry. But what this paper represents is a first.

12:25 Speaker 1: It's the first time a specific re entry event has

12:29 Speaker 1: been directly linked to a specific pollution plume. And with

12:33 Speaker 1: the growth of mega constellations hundreds and eventually thousands of

12:37 Speaker 1: satellites being launched and diorbited, this is going to become

12:41 Speaker 1: an increasingly important area of study.

12:44 Speaker 2: And presumably we need to start thinking about whether controlled

12:47 Speaker 2: re entries can be designed to minimize this kind of

12:50 Speaker 2: chemical contamination exactly.

12:52 Speaker 1: That's the question the paper ends with. It's not alarmist,

12:56 Speaker 1: it's more of a we need to start measuring this

12:59 Speaker 1: properly moment, which this paper very much is good.

13:03 Speaker 2: Story five slightly.

13:04 Speaker 1: Lighter, it's mystery launch time.

13:07 Speaker 2: Okay, story five. Rocket Lab launched an electron rocket from

13:11 Speaker 2: its New Zealand site yesterday evening local time, marking the

13:14 Speaker 2: company's eighty third launch to date. The mission is called

13:18 Speaker 2: Insight at Speed is a friend, indeed, which is exactly

13:22 Speaker 2: the kinds of cryptic mission name that drives people absolutely

13:25 Speaker 2: mad on the space forums.

13:27 Speaker 1: What do we know about it?

13:28 Speaker 2: Almost nothing, which is rather the point. Rocket Lab announced

13:32 Speaker 2: to launch just a few hours before liftoff, which is

13:35 Speaker 2: unusually short notice even for them. They confirmed it's a

13:39 Speaker 2: single satellite for a confidential commercial customer, deployed to an

13:43 Speaker 2: orbit about four hundred and seventy kilometers above Earth. That's it.

13:47 Speaker 1: The mission name is interesting, though, Insight at Speed. That

13:51 Speaker 1: sounds like it could be an Earth observation or intelligence

13:55 Speaker 1: related payload fast access to imagery.

13:57 Speaker 2: Maybe that's been the general speculation. And yes, small fast

14:01 Speaker 2: satellite for rapid imaging. But rocket Lab isn't saying anything

14:05 Speaker 2: beyond confidential commercial customer, and the customer isn't saying anything either,

14:10 Speaker 2: which is of course they're right.

14:12 Speaker 1: Rocket Lab has carved out quite a niche for exactly

14:14 Speaker 1: this kind of mission. Small, dedicated launches on relatively short

14:19 Speaker 1: notice for customers who want discretion. It's a good business

14:22 Speaker 1: to be.

14:22 Speaker 2: In eighty three launches in counting. They're doing just fine. Okay,

14:26 Speaker 2: last story, and I've been looking forward to this one

14:29 Speaker 2: all morning.

14:30 Speaker 1: That can only mean one thing. It's a food related story.

14:34 Speaker 2: Right. Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin, working

14:38 Speaker 2: with Texas A and M, have successfully grown and harvested

14:41 Speaker 2: chickpeas in simulated moon dirt, published today in Scientific Reports.

14:46 Speaker 2: First time it's ever been done.

14:48 Speaker 1: Okay, tell me everything.

14:50 Speaker 2: So the challenge with lunar regolith, which is the technical

14:54 Speaker 2: name for moon dirt, is that it is spectacularly hostile

14:57 Speaker 2: to plant life. It's fine as t powder, it's subrasive

15:01 Speaker 2: and clingy, it has no organic material whatsoever, no microbes,

15:06 Speaker 2: and it contains toxic heavy metals like aluminum, copper, and zinc.

15:10 Speaker 2: Previous attempts to grow plants in actual Apollo lunar samples

15:14 Speaker 2: resulted in stressed, stunted plants that absorbed dangerous levels of metals.

15:19 Speaker 1: So how did the Texas team crack it?

15:22 Speaker 2: Two ingredients. First, vermic compost, which is essentially worm castings.

15:27 Speaker 2: Red wiggler earthworms were fed food scraps and cotton waste,

15:31 Speaker 2: the kind of organic material that would naturally accumulate on

15:34 Speaker 2: a long lunar mission anyway, and their output provided a rich,

15:38 Speaker 2: microbiley diverse soil amendment that could be mixed with the

15:42 Speaker 2: reguliff simulant. Okay, so wormpoo got it precisely. Second ingredient

15:47 Speaker 2: are buscular micorrhizal fungi AMF, which were used to coat

15:52 Speaker 2: the chickpea seeds before planting. These fungi are remarkable. They

15:56 Speaker 2: extend into the soil like the secondary root system, improving

16:00 Speaker 2: nutrient uptake while simultaneously helping to sequester heavy metals away

16:05 Speaker 2: from the plant. They also produce proteins that bind loose

16:08 Speaker 2: regulith particles together, making the stuff behave more like actual soil.

16:13 Speaker 1: And it worked.

16:14 Speaker 2: It worked with caveats mixtures of up to seventy five

16:18 Speaker 2: percent reguli, simulants could successfully produce flowering seed bearing plants.

16:24 Speaker 2: Go above seventy five percent, and the plants started showing

16:27 Speaker 2: serious stress and dying early and across the board. The

16:31 Speaker 2: regulith plants produce fewer seeds than the control plants grown

16:34 Speaker 2: in ordinary earth soil, though the individual seeds that did

16:39 Speaker 2: grow were comparable in size and weight.

16:42 Speaker 1: Can they eat them?

16:44 Speaker 2: Not yet. The chickpeas are currently being tested for metal accumulation.

16:49 Speaker 2: They need to make sure no dangerous levels of aluminum

16:52 Speaker 2: or other heavy metals made it into the seeds before

16:55 Speaker 2: anyone takes a bite. The lead researcher, Jessica Atkins said,

17:00 Speaker 2: and I love this. Before anyone makes moon hummus, we

17:04 Speaker 2: need to confirm they are safe and nutritious. She has

17:07 Speaker 2: also promised to be the first one to make Moon

17:10 Speaker 2: hummus if they pass.

17:12 Speaker 1: That is a fantastic quote. And I love that she

17:15 Speaker 1: played bad Moon rising. To encourage the plants in the lab, she.

17:19 Speaker 2: Hung a poster of chickpeas growing on the moon above

17:21 Speaker 2: the growth chamber as well. Kind of silly, but something

17:25 Speaker 2: to aim for. This is the energy we want in

17:28 Speaker 2: space science.

17:29 Speaker 1: So what's the bigger picture here? This isn't just about hummus?

17:33 Speaker 1: I assume no.

17:34 Speaker 2: Although the hummus angle is doing a lot of heavy

17:37 Speaker 2: lifting for the press coverage, the real significance is this.

17:41 Speaker 2: As we plan for long term human presence on the

17:44 Speaker 2: Moon through the Artemis program and beyond. Food sustainability is

17:48 Speaker 2: a genuine challenge. You cannot shuttle all the food you

17:52 Speaker 2: need from Earth to a lunar base, and definitely the

17:55 Speaker 2: cost is prohibitive. So being able to grow crops from

17:58 Speaker 2: local resources, converting sterile regolith into living soil using biology

18:04 Speaker 2: that future astronauts could actually bring with them and maintain,

18:08 Speaker 2: is a crucial piece of the.

18:09 Speaker 1: Puzzle, and chickpeas specifically are a great choice for this

18:13 Speaker 1: right high protein resilient plant.

18:16 Speaker 2: Exactly high protein nitrogen fixing, they actually put nutrients back

18:21 Speaker 2: into the soil as they grow and relatively hardy. The

18:25 Speaker 2: team is now exploring whether seeds from the moon grown

18:28 Speaker 2: chickpeas can grow a second generation and what the nutritional

18:31 Speaker 2: profile of the harvest looks like. It's early days, but

18:35 Speaker 2: Sarah Santos, the principal investigator, summed it up well, this

18:39 Speaker 2: is a small first step toward growing crops on the Moon,

18:43 Speaker 2: but we have shown this is feasible and we are

18:45 Speaker 2: moving in the right direction.

18:47 Speaker 1: Moon Hummus coming to a lunar outpost near you.

18:51 Speaker 2: Eventually I will be first in line and.

18:55 Speaker 1: That's your Astronomy Daily for Friday, the sixth of March

18:58 Speaker 1: twenty twenty six.

19:00 Speaker 2: I'm Anna and I'm Avery. Thanks so much for listening,

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19:28 Speaker 1: Clear skies everyone.

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