Runaway Black Hole Confirmed, Mercury Still Active & 2032 Moon Impact Risk

Anna: Welcome to Astronomy Daily, your

source for the latest space and astronomy

news. I'm Anna.

Avery: And I'm Avery. Thanks for joining us on this

Thursday, February 29, 2026.

We've got a fascinating lineup today covering

everything from Mercury's surprising

geological activity to a possible

asteroid impact on the M Moon.

Anna: That's right. We're going to explore bright

streaks on Mercury that suggest our

smallest planet is still geologically

active. Cheque in on NASA's TESS

satellite after a command error temporarily

sidelined it and discuss the discovery of an

intriguing Earth like exoplanet that's

much colder than you might expect.

Avery: Plus, we'll bring you updates on NASA and

SpaceX. Moving up the Crew 12 launch to help

out the Skeleton crew currently on the

International Space Station. Then we'll dive

into the wild world of runaway black holes

tearing through space and wrap up with what

could be a once in a lifetime scientific

opportunity if an asteroid hits the moon in

2020 32.

Anna: It's quite a ride.

Today, let's get started with some surprising

news from the innermost planet in our solar

system.

Avery: Mercury has long been viewed as a small,

geologically dead world, but new research

is challenging that assumption in a big way.

A team led by researchers at the University

of Bern has uncovered hundreds of bright

linear streaks on crater slopes that point to

ongoing volcanic activity and and volatile

laws from Mercury's interior.

Anna: This is really fascinating work, Avery.

The team applied deep learning techniques to

analyse about 100,000 high

resolution images taken by NASA's

messenger spacecraft during its orbital

mission from 2011 to 2015.

Using this automated approach, they mapped

the global distribution of roughly

400 bright streaks that had previously

escaped comprehensive cataloguing.

Avery: And what they found was pretty telling. These

features, known as slope lineae, occur

preferentially on sun facing slopes inside

relatively young impact craters that cut

through thick volcanic deposits. The

concentration of streaks in these thermally

stressed environments indicates that solar

heating is an important trigger for volatile

escape from near surface layers.

Anna: Much of these streaks originate in small

bright depressions called hollows that dot

crater floors and walls. These hollows have

long been interpreted as products of volatile

loss, and their close association with the

lineae supports the view that both structures

form when volatile components like sulphur

or other light elements escape from the

subsurface.

Avery: According to the research team, fracture

networks created by the original impact

events likely provide pathways that allow

volatile rich material from deeper levels to

reach the surface. Uh, as solar radiation

warms these exposed zones, volatiles can

escape into space, driving the development or

modification of the Bright streaks downslope.

Anna: What's particularly exciting is the

timing. This research arrives just as the

joint ESA and JAXA uh, Becky Colombo

mission is en route to Mercury. The mission

carries an advanced payload that includes

several key contributions from the University

of Bernard.

Avery: Absolutely. The Becky Colombo Laser Altimeter

or bela, was designed and built in part

at the University of Bern. It will use laser

pulses from an orbit roughly a thousand

kilometres above the surface to measure

elevations with about 10 centimetre

precision, enabling a uh, detailed

reconstruction of Mercury's topography.

Anna: The Bern team also contributed the ion

optical system for STROFEO, a NASA

mass spectrometer on BepiColombo that will m

measure the composition of Mercury's

extremely thin atmosphere, connecting

present day volatile escape at the surface to

the surrounding exosphere.

Avery: The research team plans to use the current

inventory of slope streaks as a baseline for

future comparisons once BepiColombo begins

returning data by imaging key regions

again, they aim to determine whether new

streaks have formed or existing ones have

changed since the MESSENGER era. Any such

changes would provide strong evidence that

volatile driven processes are still

reshaping Mercury's surface on human time

timescales.

Anna: It's a great reminder that even our smallest

closest planetary neighbour still has secrets

to reveal. Mercury is far more dynamic than

we thought.

Avery: Shifting from Mercury to uh, our planet

hunting efforts, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet

Survey Satellite, or TESS, recently had a bit

of a scare when a command error temporarily

knocked it offline.

Anna: Right. The spacecraft was forced into safe

mode after an unexpected command error caused

its solar panels to misalign with the sun.

This misalignment had serious consequences

because the panels were unable to charge

tess's batteries, leading to a low power

condition that triggered the automatic

transition to safe mode.

Avery: In safe mode, all non essential systems are

turned off to conserve power and the

spacecraft awaits further instructions from

ground controllers. NASA engineers quickly

worked to resolve the issue and fortunately

tess's safe mode performed as intended,

protecting the spacecraft from permanent

damage.

Anna: This incident is actually reminiscent of past

missin failures. Remember Viking 1 back

in 1982? A uh, faulty command caused the

loss of communication and there was that

catastrophic series of events that nearly

destroyed the Soho probe in 1998.

But unlike those cases, TESS was fortunate

to have safeguards in place.

Avery: Exactly. The spacecraft's automatic safe

mode kicked in when the power situation

became critical. The safe mode is designed to

preserve the spacecraft's core functions such

as attitude control and ensure it can be

reactivated once engineers identify and

address the issue.

Anna: According to NASA, the mission team is now

reviewing and updating procedures to prevent

this command error from happening in the

future. It's a good reminder that even with

advanced technology, human error remains a

significant challenge in space operations.

Avery: Absolutely. While tess's recovery was

successful and demonstrates how far space

mission technology has come, this incident

emphasises the need for continued vigilance

in mission planning. The risk of human error

is always there, and the consequences can be

costly in terms of both time and resources.

Anna: The good news is that TESS is back online and

continuing its important work of hunting for

exoplanets. Which brings us nicely to our

next storey about a newly discovered Earth

like world.

Avery: Speaking of exoplanets, astronomers have just

discovered what might be one of the closest

things we have to Earth's twin. Though it's

considerably colder than our home.

Anna: Planet, the Exoplanet is called

HD13710B

and it's located 146 light years

away. It's slightly larger than Earth and

orbits a star that resembles our Sun.

However, despite its similarities to Earth in

terms of size and orbital period, its surface

could be far colder than even Mars,

potentially reaching a frigid minus 90

degrees Fahrenheit or minus 68 degrees

Celsius.

Avery: This discovery was published in the

Astrophysical Journal Letters and was made by

an international team led by Alexander

Venner. The search for Earth, like

exoplanets, has been a central focus of

astronomical research for over three decades

now.

Anna: Dr. Huang, a key member of the research team,

explained it well when he said, since the

discovery of the first exoplanet 30 years

ago, we've always tried to find Earth's

Trinity. HD13007 010

b could bring us closer to that goal.

Although it's not an exact match, the.

Avery: Planet is positioned in what astronomers call

the habitable zone of its star, which is the

area where water could potentially exist in

liquid form, which is crucial for life as we

know it. However, there's a major obstacle

right the.

Anna: Star HD

137010B

orbits is cooler and dimmer than our sun,

meaning the planet receives only a fraction

of the energy Earth does. This could result

in surface temperatures as low as

-90 degrees Fahrenheit, making it one

of the coldest exoplanets discovered in

recent years.

Avery: But scientists remain hopeful. Dr.

Venner pointed out that while the planet's

surface might be frozen, it could still fall

within the broader optimistic habitable zone

of its star. With the right atmospheric

conditions,

HD137010B

might not be as inhospitable as its

temperature suggests.

Anna: One of the challenges of studying this planet

is its orbital distance from its star, which

is similar to Earth's but much farther than

the typical exoplanets that are easier to

observe. Transits when the planet crosses

in front of its star happen less frequently,

making it harder to confirm the planet's

existence.

Avery: The discovery was made from a single Transit

captured by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.

Further confirmation of the planet's

existence and detailed analysis of its mass

and atmosphere will require more data, which

might not be possible until the next

generation of telescopes become operational.

Anna: It's an exciting discovery that adds to our

understanding of the types of environments

where life could potentially exist beyond our

solar system. Even if

HD137010B

is too cold for life as we know it, it

teaches us valuable lessons about planetary

habitability.

Avery: Now let's turn our attention back to Earth

orbit and the International Space Station.

NASA has announced an earlier than expected

target date to launch the next astronauts to

the ISS.

Anna: That's right, the agency is now targeting

February 11 for liftoff of SpaceX

Crew 12 mission, which will fly four

astronauts to join the skeleton crew

presently operating the orbital.

That's four days earlier than originally

planned.

Avery: Just to give everyone context, currently only

three crew members are covering the

maintenance and science investigations aboard

the ISS. They were left behind on January

14th by the early departure of Crew 11

on the station's first ever medical

evacuation.

Anna: The M Crew 12 astronauts were already in line

to take the Crew 11's quartet's place, but

they had originally been scheduled to overlap

with them before their return to Earth.

SpaceX and NASA had originally targeted

February 15 for Crew 12's launch, but

managed to get the mission's crew Dragon

spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket ready ahead

of schedule.

Avery: The Crew 12 team includes NASA

astronauts Jessica Meir, who's the mission

commander, and Jack Hathaway as pilot.

The mission specialists are Sophie Adenot of

the European Space Agency and

Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei

Fedyayev.

Anna: Interestingly, Fedyav was a relatively late

replacement for cosmonaut Oleg Artemiev, who

was pulled off Crew 12 in early December,

possibly for violating US national security

regulations.

Avery: This quartet will fly the crew Dragon capsule

named Grace to the ISS for a longer than

normal assignment lasting nine months instead

of the typical six months. It'll be the

second spaceflight for both Mayur and Fedyav,

while Hathaway and Adino uh are both

spaceflight rookies headed to orbit for the

first time.

Anna: The launch window opens on February 11th at

6:00am Eastern Time from Launch Complex 40

at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in

Florida. If they don't manage to launch that

day, there are backup opportunities. On

February 12th and 13th, the Crew.

Avery: 12 astronauts will join NASA, Chris Williams

and cosmonauts Sergey Kud Sverskov and

Sergei Mikayev as part of ISS

Expedition 74, which will eventually

transition to Expedition 75 before

the end of Crew 12's rotation station. It's

great to see the relief crew heading up

sooner to help out the skeleton crew

currently managing the station.

Anna: Now for something truly mind bending.

Astronomers have confirmed the first runaway

supermassive black hole and it's leaving

quite a trail behind it.

Avery: This is wild stuff, Anna. Uh, the black

hole was identified by a 200,000 light

year tail and a supersonic bow shock in the

Cosmic Owl galaxy, which is actually a

pair of ring galaxies about 8.8 billion

light years away. The rings appear as

owlized as they get closer and closer to

merging.

Anna: The research led by Peter von Dockam, um,

from Yale's Astronomy Department, was

confirmed using observations from the James

Webb Space Telescope. The central

proposal is that this linear feature is the

wake behind a runaway supermassive black

hole. And this is strongly supported by their

analysis.

Avery: But how does something weighing potentially

millions or even billions of times the mass

of our sun get kicked out of a galaxy? The

answer lies in galaxy mergers. When big

galaxies collide and merge, they force the

black holes at their respective centres into

close proximity.

Anna: Right. If two black holes become locked in a

gravitational dance and then a third crashes

in from another merging galaxy, the resulting

instability can hurl one of the trio away at

sufficient speed to exit the host galaxy

entirely. This can happen through two main

mechanisms.

Avery: The first is gravitational wave recoil.

When black holes merge, they emit uh,

gravitational waves that can give the

resulting black hole a velocity boost of up

to several thousand kilometres per second,

propelling it away from the galactic centre.

Anna: The second mechanism is the classical

slingshot scenario. In this case, a long

lived binary black hole forms through a

merger of two galaxies when a third

supermassive black hole is introduced. In a

second merger, the three body interaction can

eject one of the black holes, usually the

lightest one.

Avery: What's particularly striking about this

confirmed runaway black hole is the trail it

leaves behind. As the black hole ploughs

through intergalactic space, it compresses

tenuous gas in front of it, which

precipitates the birth of hot blue stars.

This creates a 200,000 light year long

contrail of young stars.

Anna: The black hole also generates a bow shock at

the head of this week, something the

researchers predicted based on shock models

from the ages of the stars in the trail. They

deduce that the black hole escaped about 40

million years ago and is barreling through

space at roughly 1600 kilometres per

second.

Avery: To put that in perspective, that's fast

enough to travel from Earth to the moon in

about 14 minutes. It's an incredible

speed for something so massive.

Anna: Recent papers have shown images of

surprisingly straight streaks of stars within

galaxies that seem to be convincing evidence

for runaway black holes. One paper describes

a very distant galaxy imaged by James Webb

with a bright contrail, suggesting a black

hole with a mass 10 million times the mass

of the sun.

Avery: It's a reminder that the universe is even

more dynamic and violent than we often

imagine. These behemoths aren't just sitting

quietly at the centres of galaxies. Some of

them are literally tearing through space,

creating new stars in their wake.

Anna: And finally, let's talk about an upcoming

event that has both exciting scientific

potential and some concerning risks.

On 12-22-2032,

asteroid 2024 yr 4

has a 4% chance of actually striking

the Moon.

Avery: A 4% chance might not sound like much, but

it's definitely non negligible. If this

collision does happen, it will release enough

energy to be the equivalent of smacking our

nearest neighbour with a medium sized

thermonuclear weapon. It would be six

orders of magnitude more powerful than the

last major impact on the moon, which happened

back in 2013.

Anna: A uh, new paper from Yifan he of Tsinghua

University looks at the potential scientific

opportunities if this collision occurs. And

while they can simulate models of how the

impact will go, monitoring it as it happens

will provide never before collected actual

data that's infeasible to get any other way.

Avery: The impact would vaporise rock and plasma and

would be clearly visible from the Pacific

region where it will be nighttime during the

impact. Even days after the impact, the

melt pool of the impacted material will still

be cooling, allowing infrared observers like

the James Webb Space Telescope to capture

plenty of data.

Anna: The impact should form a crater roughly one

kilometre wide and 150 to

260 metres deep, with a 100

metre pool of molten rock at the centre.

Comparing it in size to other craters

scattered around the moon will help us

understand its bombardment history.

Avery: The impact will also set off a global

moonquake of magnitude 5.0 that

would be the strongest moonquake yet detected

by any seismometer on the Moon. Watching the

propagation of the moonquake will shine a

light on the Moon's interior and help

researchers understand its composition.

Anna: And here's where it gets really spectacular.

A final piece of the scientific puzzle will

be the debris field created by the blast. Up

to 400 kilogrammes of lunar material

is expected to survive re entry to Earth,

creating essentially a free large scale

lunar sample return mission.

Avery: At its peak right around Christmas of 2032,

simulations expect up to 20 million meteors

per hour to hit our atmosphere, at least on

the leading edge of the planet. Most of them

would have naked eye visibility, including

some 100 to 400 fireballs per hour.

Anna: But there is a downside to all of this that

400 kilogrammes of meteors has to land

somewhere, and it looks like the crosshairs

fall squarely on South America, North Africa

and the Arabian Peninsula. A few kilogrammes

of space rock falling on Dubai could

certainly cause some damage.

Avery: Perhaps more dangerous is the risk of

satellite mega constellations that play such

an important role in our modern day

navigation and Internet systems. Such an

event could trigger Kessler Syndrome and

bring the entire network down over the span

of a few short years, while also locking us

out from being able to get anything else

safely into orbit for much longer.

Anna: Due to the risks, some space agencies are

already considering a deflection mission that

would bump asteroid 2024 yr 4

out of the way of a potential lunar

collision. But that hasn't been set in stone

yet. Neither has the actual impact itself,

with only a 4% chance of happening.

Avery: If the odds increase over the coming years,

we as a species will have to decide whether

it's worth it to deflect it or not. If we

do, we might miss out on a whole bunch of

cool science, but we also might save our

entire orbital infrastructure and the few

lives directly to boot.

Anna: And that wraps up today's episode of

Astronomy Daily. From Mercury's surprising

activity to a possible lunar impact in our

future, space continues to surprise and

amaze us.

Avery: Thanks for joining us today. For more space

news and to explore our archive of episodes,

visit our [email protected].

you can also find us on social media,

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Anna: If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe

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enthusiasts find us. Until next time, keep

looking up clear skies everyone.

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