Roman Telescope Gets September Launch Date, Hidden Moons Around Uranus & Comet Alert for Southern Skies

0:00 Speaker 1: If you've been stepping outside after dark lately and wondering

0:03 Speaker 1: what that fuzzy smudge low on the horizon might be,

0:07 Speaker 1: stay tuned, because by the end of today's show, you're

0:10 Speaker 1: going to know exactly what it is, exactly when to look,

0:14 Speaker 1: and exactly why you might only ever get one shot

0:17 Speaker 1: at seeing it. Welcome to Astronomy Daily.

0:20 Speaker 2: I'm Anna and I'm Avery. This is season five, episode

0:24 Speaker 2: ninety one of Astronomy Daily, your daily guide to everything

0:28 Speaker 2: happening in space and beyond.

0:30 Speaker 1: It is Thursday, the twenty third of April twenty twenty

0:33 Speaker 1: sixth and we have a cracking episode lined up. Six

0:37 Speaker 1: stories across the board today, from a game changing telescope

0:41 Speaker 1: that just locked in a launch date, to a decade's

0:44 Speaker 1: old cosmic photograph getting a stunning update, to a signing

0:48 Speaker 1: ceremony happening literally as we record this.

0:51 Speaker 2: And we'll close out with that comment you just tease Dana,

0:55 Speaker 2: which our Southern Hemisphere listeners in particular are going to

0:58 Speaker 2: want to hear about trust uses.

1:00 Speaker 1: Let's get into it.

1:02 Speaker 2: We touched on the Roman Space telescope earlier this week

1:05 Speaker 2: when NASA hosted its big unveiling event at Goddard Space

1:08 Speaker 2: Flight Center. But since that story ran, something significant has

1:12 Speaker 2: become clear the launch date, So let's give this the

1:15 Speaker 2: update it deserves.

1:16 Speaker 1: Right and the headline here is genuinely exciting. The Nancy

1:21 Speaker 1: Grace Roman Space Telescope is now targeting a September twenty

1:25 Speaker 1: twenty six launch. That's eight months ahead of its formal

1:28 Speaker 1: deadline of May twenty twenty seven. Eight months, and it

1:32 Speaker 1: came in under budget. In government space projects, that is

1:36 Speaker 1: practically unheard of.

1:38 Speaker 2: To put this in perspective for anyone just catching up,

1:41 Speaker 2: Roman is massa's next flagship space observatory. Think of it

1:45 Speaker 2: as Hubble's younger sibling, same size mirror about two point

1:49 Speaker 2: four meters, but a field of view that is at

1:52 Speaker 2: minimum one hundred times wider than Hubbles. The images it

1:56 Speaker 2: will capture are so large there is literally no screen

1:59 Speaker 2: currently in existence big enough to display them at full resolution.

2:04 Speaker 1: And NASA administrator Jared Isaacman made a striking comparison at

2:08 Speaker 1: this week's press event. What would take Hubble two thousand

2:12 Speaker 1: years to survey Roman can do in a single year,

2:16 Speaker 1: two thousand years versus one let that sink in.

2:20 Speaker 2: The science objectives are vast Roman will hunt for exoplanets,

2:24 Speaker 2: potentially more than one hundred thousand new worlds in its

2:27 Speaker 2: first five years. It'll survey billions of galaxies, and critically,

2:32 Speaker 2: it will probe too of the deepest mysteries in modern physics,

2:35 Speaker 2: dark matter and dark energy. We don't know what either

2:39 Speaker 2: of those actually are, and Roman's wide field infrared vision

2:42 Speaker 2: is designed specifically to pull back the curtain.

2:46 Speaker 1: It's also carrying the Coronograph Instrument, a technology demonstrator that

2:50 Speaker 1: will attempt to directly photograph planets around nearby stars that

2:54 Speaker 1: could be a transformative cypability for the search for Earth

2:58 Speaker 1: like worlds.

3:00 Speaker 2: Will travel to the Sun Earth l two point, the

3:02 Speaker 2: same orbital neighborhood as the James Webb Telescope, about a

3:06 Speaker 2: million miles from Earth. Once there, it begins a five

3:10 Speaker 2: year primary mission. If September holds, we could see first

3:14 Speaker 2: light before the end of this year.

3:16 Speaker 1: Sixteen years after astronomers ranked it as the single highest

3:19 Speaker 1: priority for the next decade of space science. Four separate

3:23 Speaker 1: attempts to cancel the mission, and here we are, eight

3:27 Speaker 1: months ahead of schedule, watching it ship to Kennedy Space

3:30 Speaker 1: Center this summer. Some stories really do have a good ending.

3:34 Speaker 2: A feel good story indeed.

3:37 Speaker 1: Right story two, and this one involves Uranus, which is

3:40 Speaker 1: having quite a moment scientifically lately.

3:43 Speaker 2: Uranus is the gift that keeps giving, the ice giant,

3:46 Speaker 2: seven planets out from the Sun, famously tilted on its side,

3:49 Speaker 2: with twenty nine known moons and a system of thirteen rings.

3:54 Speaker 2: And it's those rings at the center of new research

3:56 Speaker 2: published this week in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

4:00 Speaker 1: A team led by ENK. Depotter at UC Berkeley has

4:04 Speaker 1: combined data from three of the world's most powerful observatories,

4:09 Speaker 1: the WMKEX Observatory in Hawaii, the Hubble Space Telescope, and

4:14 Speaker 1: the James Webb Space Telescope to build the first complete

4:18 Speaker 1: reflectant spectrum of Uranus's two outermost rings, known as the

4:23 Speaker 1: Mew Ring and the New Ring.

4:26 Speaker 2: And what they found is that these two rings, sitting

4:29 Speaker 2: side by side in the Uranian system, are made of

4:32 Speaker 2: completely different stuff, which raises an obvious question.

4:36 Speaker 1: How The Mew Ring, it turns out, is composed of

4:40 Speaker 1: water ice particles, tiny frozen grains being knocked loose from

4:44 Speaker 1: a small moon called Mab by micrometeorite impacts. Mab is

4:50 Speaker 1: only about twelve kilometers across, barely a pebble on cosmic scales,

4:55 Speaker 1: but it's generating an entire ring of ice debris as

4:58 Speaker 1: it orbits.

5:00 Speaker 2: The only other blue ring like this in our Solar

5:03 Speaker 2: system is Saturn's E ring, produced by volcanic activity on Enceladus.

5:08 Speaker 2: The mechanism is different, but the result is remarkably similar.

5:12 Speaker 2: Major finding the same solution twice.

5:15 Speaker 1: Now the new ring is where things get really strange.

5:19 Speaker 1: It's not made of ice. Instead, it's composed of rocky

5:23 Speaker 1: material laced with organic compounds carbon rich molecules, and crucially,

5:28 Speaker 1: there's no known moon nearby that could be the source.

5:32 Speaker 2: The researchers believe there must be unseen rocky bodies, possibly

5:36 Speaker 2: small moon lids, tucked between the known moons, getting bombarded

5:40 Speaker 2: by micrometeorites and feeding material into the ring. In other words,

5:45 Speaker 2: Urinus likely has more moons than we know about.

5:48 Speaker 1: Mark Showalter from the Seti Institute, a co author on

5:51 Speaker 1: the study, was pretty direct about it. He said, solving

5:55 Speaker 1: the full mystery will probably require a spacecraft mission to Uranus.

5:59 Speaker 1: One is in the planning stages. It was the top

6:02 Speaker 1: priority in the most recent National Academy of sciences, planetary science,

6:07 Speaker 1: decatal survey, though funding remains the critical question.

6:11 Speaker 2: There's one more wrinkle worth mentioning the mew ring appears

6:14 Speaker 2: to be changing in brightness over time subtly but measurably.

6:19 Speaker 2: What's causing that? Nobody knows. Another mystery for a mission

6:23 Speaker 2: that fingers crossed eventually gets off the ground.

6:27 Speaker 1: Uranus, deeply weird, deeply fascinating, and apparently still full of secrets.

6:33 Speaker 1: This story is going to keep developing.

6:36 Speaker 2: Story three, and this one's a treat for anyone who

6:39 Speaker 2: loves cosmic imagery with a sight of Time Lap's astronomy.

6:42 Speaker 1: The Hubble Space Telescope has gone back to one of

6:45 Speaker 1: its classic targets, the Triffid Nebula, and the comparison between

6:49 Speaker 1: the original image and the new one is genuinely remarkable.

6:54 Speaker 2: For those I'm familiar. The Triffid Nebula is a star

6:57 Speaker 2: forming region in the constellation Sagittarius, about five thousand light

7:01 Speaker 2: years from Earth. Its name comes from the Latin for

7:04 Speaker 2: divided into three. It split into three distinct lobes by

7:08 Speaker 2: dark dust lanes, giving it the striking trilobate appearance. It's

7:13 Speaker 2: one of Hubble's most celebrated early targets.

7:16 Speaker 1: Hubble first imaged the triffied back in nineteen ninety seven,

7:20 Speaker 1: nearly three decades ago. The new image, captured with upgraded instruments,

7:25 Speaker 1: covers essentially the same field, and by placing the two

7:29 Speaker 1: side by side, astronomers have been able to track real

7:33 Speaker 1: measurable changes in how young stars in the region behave

7:37 Speaker 1: and evolve.

7:38 Speaker 2: Now twenty nine years sounds like a long time to us.

7:41 Speaker 2: On cosmic scales, it's barely an eyeblink, but young stars

7:45 Speaker 2: still in the process of forming, still shedding material, still igniting,

7:50 Speaker 2: can show perceptible changes on human time scales, and that's

7:54 Speaker 2: exactly what the comparison reveals.

7:56 Speaker 1: What Hubble is doing here is functioning as a kind

7:59 Speaker 1: of cosmic time lapse camera, the same telescope, returning to

8:03 Speaker 1: the same subject decades apart, and documenting how the universe

8:08 Speaker 1: has shifted in the interim. It's one of the most

8:11 Speaker 1: powerful aspects of having a long lived observatory in space.

8:15 Speaker 2: And of course, visually, the new Triffid image is spectacular,

8:20 Speaker 2: the deep magentas electric blues and soft golden hues of

8:24 Speaker 2: active stellar nurseries. If you haven't seen it yet, it's

8:27 Speaker 2: worth seeking out. We'll link it in the show notes.

8:30 Speaker 1: The trifid Nebula thirty years older and if anything more

8:35 Speaker 1: beautiful than ever, proof that some things genuinely improve with age.

8:40 Speaker 2: Like us. Maybe Anna story.

8:43 Speaker 1: Four now, and this one is happening today. Right now

8:47 Speaker 1: as we record at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, the.

8:52 Speaker 2: Hash of my Kingdom of Jordan is signing the Artemis Accords,

8:55 Speaker 2: becoming the sixty third country to commit to the Framework

8:58 Speaker 2: for Peaceful and Responsible Space Exploration. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman

9:03 Speaker 2: is hosting Ambassador Dina Kauer for the ceremony.

9:07 Speaker 1: Now we should explain what the Artemis Accords actually are

9:10 Speaker 1: for anyone who joined us more recently. The Accords were

9:14 Speaker 1: established in twenty twenty during the first Trump administration by

9:19 Speaker 1: NASA and the State Department, initially with seven other founding nations,

9:24 Speaker 1: including Australia. They're a set of practical principles covering how

9:28 Speaker 1: countries should conduct themselves in space, transparency, interoperability, data sharing,

9:36 Speaker 1: protecting historic sites, safe zones around operations, and the responsible

9:41 Speaker 1: extraction of resources.

9:43 Speaker 2: They're built on top of the nineteen sixty seven Outer

9:46 Speaker 2: Space Treaty, but they add specificity that the original treaty lacked,

9:50 Speaker 2: and critically, they're open to any nation that wants to

9:53 Speaker 2: participate in the broader Artemis program of Moon exploration.

9:57 Speaker 1: What's interesting about the timing here is that just three

10:00 Speaker 1: days ago, on Monday, Latvia signed as the sixty second nation.

10:05 Speaker 1: Though we've seen two signatories in one week, right on

10:09 Speaker 1: the heels of Artemis two's successful return to Earth.

10:14 Speaker 2: There is a momentum story here. Artemis two returns from

10:17 Speaker 2: the Moon and within days the international community is literally

10:21 Speaker 2: lining up to join the framework. Jordan notably has genuine

10:25 Speaker 2: aspirations in the space sector. The country has invested in

10:28 Speaker 2: satellite technology and space science education in recent years. This

10:32 Speaker 2: isn't just symbolic.

10:34 Speaker 1: Sixty three nations. The list now spans every inhabited continent,

10:39 Speaker 1: with twenty nine European nations, fifteen across Asia, and representation

10:45 Speaker 1: from the Americas, Africa, and Oceania. The Artemis program is

10:49 Speaker 1: increasingly a genuinely global endeavor.

10:53 Speaker 2: Congratulations to Jordan, welcome to the coalition.

10:57 Speaker 1: Before we move on to our next story, I'll just

10:59 Speaker 1: jumpin and give you a reminder about our sponsor, NordVPN.

11:04 Speaker 1: They're the ones who are helping us keep the lights

11:06 Speaker 1: on this week. But if you're looking to make your

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11:27 Speaker 2: All right, story five. And if you're wondering how quickly

11:30 Speaker 2: NASA moves after a successful mission, wonder no more.

11:34 Speaker 1: It was just ten days ago that the Artemis two

11:37 Speaker 1: crew splashed down in the Pacific. Four astronauts home safe

11:42 Speaker 1: after the most distant human spaceflight in history, and NASA

11:47 Speaker 1: is already rolling out the hardware for the next one.

11:50 Speaker 2: On April twentieth, just a week and a half post splashdown,

11:53 Speaker 2: engineers at NASA's Misshout Assembly facility in New Orleans, loaded

11:57 Speaker 2: the core stage of the Artemis three Space launch System

12:00 Speaker 2: rocket onto the agency's Pegasus barge. It's currently en route

12:04 Speaker 2: to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where final integration and

12:07 Speaker 2: outfitting will take place.

12:09 Speaker 1: The core stage is enormous. When fully integrated, it'll stand

12:14 Speaker 1: two hundred and twelve feet tall around sixty five meters.

12:19 Speaker 1: What rolled onto the barge is the top four fifths

12:22 Speaker 1: of that structure, the liquid hydrogen tank, liquid oxygen tank, intertank,

12:27 Speaker 1: and forward skirt. The engine section with its four RS

12:31 Speaker 1: twenty five engines will be attached at Kennedy Now.

12:35 Speaker 2: Artemis please mission profile has evolved since the program was

12:38 Speaker 2: first announced. The original plan landing astronauts at the lunar

12:41 Speaker 2: South Pole has been pushed back to Artemis four, now

12:45 Speaker 2: targeting the first half of twenty twenty eight. Artemis three,

12:48 Speaker 2: scheduled for twenty twenty seven, will instead test rendezvous in

12:52 Speaker 2: docking procedures in Earth orbit, with the Orion spacecraft linking

12:56 Speaker 2: up with one or both of the contracted lunar landers

12:59 Speaker 2: from SpaceX and Blue Origin.

13:01 Speaker 1: It's a sensible reconfiguration. Test the systems in Earth orbit first,

13:06 Speaker 1: where rescue is possible if something goes wrong, then send

13:10 Speaker 1: people to the Moon.

13:11 Speaker 2: And there's an added layer of significance here. One of

13:14 Speaker 2: those landers, Blue Origins Blue Moon, was supposed to launch

13:18 Speaker 2: on a new Glen rocket. That rocket is currently grounded

13:22 Speaker 2: following last week's upper stage mishap, so there's some pressure

13:26 Speaker 2: on Blue Origin to resolve that situation quickly. NASA Administrator

13:30 Speaker 2: Isaacman has expressed confidence publicly, but the clock is ticking.

13:35 Speaker 1: The momentum of the Artemis program feels very real right now.

13:39 Speaker 1: One mission just returned, the next one is literally on

13:42 Speaker 1: a barge. The one after that is already in planning.

13:46 Speaker 1: This program is moving.

13:48 Speaker 2: Next something for our skywatchers.

13:51 Speaker 1: That's right. The story I teased in the opener summary,

13:54 Speaker 1: and this one is especially for our listeners in Australia,

13:57 Speaker 1: New Zealand and across the Southern Hemisphere.

14:00 Speaker 2: Commet see twenty twenty five R three pan Stars. It's

14:05 Speaker 2: been generating buzz for months. Some corners of the Internet

14:08 Speaker 2: have called it the potential great comment of twenty twenty six,

14:12 Speaker 2: and right now this week is when Southern Hemisphere skywatchers

14:16 Speaker 2: get their best shot at it.

14:17 Speaker 1: Let's set the scene. This comment was discovered in September

14:21 Speaker 1: twenty twenty five by the Pan Stars Survey telescope in Hawaii.

14:25 Speaker 1: At that point, it was a faint nineteenth magnitude speck,

14:29 Speaker 1: visible only to the most sensitive detectors. It's been brightening

14:33 Speaker 1: steadily ever since.

14:35 Speaker 2: It reached perihelion. Its closest approach to the Sun on

14:38 Speaker 2: April nineteenth, passing within about seventy five million kilometers of

14:42 Speaker 2: the Sun. And here's where it gets particularly interesting for

14:46 Speaker 2: our Southern Hemisphere listeners. While Northern Hemisphere observers have now

14:50 Speaker 2: largely lost it in the Sun's glare, the geometry is

14:53 Speaker 2: turning in your favor.

14:55 Speaker 1: From late April through early May, the comet will appear

14:59 Speaker 1: in the evening sky for Southern Hemisphere viewers, moving progressively

15:03 Speaker 1: higher after sunset. At its brightest estimates, it could reach

15:07 Speaker 1: magnitude three point five, comparable to the stars of the

15:11 Speaker 1: Southern Cross, and potentially brighter. There's even an optimistic scenario

15:16 Speaker 1: where it approaches magnitude zero, which would make it one

15:19 Speaker 1: of the most striking naked eye comets in years.

15:23 Speaker 2: Now. Comets are famously unpredictable. We can model their orbits beautifully,

15:28 Speaker 2: but their brightness depends on how the icy nucleus responds

15:31 Speaker 2: to solar heating, and that's harder to forecast. The magnitude

15:35 Speaker 2: three point five estimate is a solid baseline, but don't

15:38 Speaker 2: be surprised if it over or under delivers.

15:41 Speaker 1: The closest approach to Earth happens on April twenty sixth,

15:45 Speaker 1: just three days from now, when it passes within about

15:48 Speaker 1: seventy three million kilometers. Look low in the western sky

15:53 Speaker 1: after sunset in the direction of the constellations Pisces and Pegasus.

15:58 Speaker 1: Binoculars will certainly help, but under dark skies you might

16:02 Speaker 1: find it with the naked eye.

16:04 Speaker 2: And here's the detail that gives this story real weight.

16:07 Speaker 2: The comets orbit may be hyperbolic. That means it may

16:10 Speaker 2: have come from interstellar space. We'll swing past the Sun

16:14 Speaker 2: once and then head back out, never to return. If

16:18 Speaker 2: that's confirmed, April and May twenty twenty six could be

16:22 Speaker 2: the only time in all of human history that anyone

16:25 Speaker 2: ever sees this object ever.

16:28 Speaker 1: So get outside this week dark sky western horizon after

16:32 Speaker 1: sunset you might be watching something no human has ever

16:36 Speaker 1: seen before and no human ever will again.

16:40 Speaker 2: Before we wrap up, time for your daily dose of

16:43 Speaker 2: cosmic trivia.

16:44 Speaker 1: Today's question. The Nancy Grace Roman space Telescope shares its

16:49 Speaker 1: primary mirror size with a famous existing space telescope. Which

16:54 Speaker 1: one and where did the mirror originally come from?

16:57 Speaker 2: I'll give you a second or two to think about it.

17:00 Speaker 1: Answer. Roman's two point four meter mirror is the same

17:03 Speaker 1: size as the Hubble Space telescopes. And here's the remarkable backstory.

17:08 Speaker 1: The mirror was actually donated to NASA by the National

17:12 Speaker 1: Reconnaissance Office. It was originally built for a classified intelligence satellite.

17:17 Speaker 1: NASA repurposed surplus spy satellite hardware into what will become

17:22 Speaker 1: one of the most powerful astronomical instruments ever launched.

17:26 Speaker 2: From watching Earth from above to watching the Universe from afar,

17:30 Speaker 2: not a bad career change for a mirror.

17:33 Speaker 1: And that is your Astronomy Daily for Thursday, the twenty

17:36 Speaker 1: third of April twenty twenty six. Six Stories, one Extraordinary Universe.

17:42 Speaker 1: Thank you so much for spending part of your day

17:44 Speaker 1: with us.

17:45 Speaker 2: Find us everywhere. Podcasts are found on YouTube and at

17:48 Speaker 2: Astronomy Daily dot io. Leave us a review if you're

17:52 Speaker 2: enjoying the show. It genuinely makes a difference, and follow

17:55 Speaker 2: us on social media at astro Daily pod.

17:58 Speaker 1: And for our Southern Hemisphe your listeners get outside this week.

18:02 Speaker 1: That comment is waiting for.

18:03 Speaker 2: You until tomorrow. Keep looking up cleer s guys, everyone

18:08 Speaker 2: Sunday Stars to Star is