SpaceX's Launch Delays, JUICE's Close Call, and the Brightest Cosmic Flash Yet

0:00 Avery: Hello, space enthusiasts, and welcome back to

0:03 Astronomy Daily. I'm Avery.

0:05 Anna: And I'm Anna. We've got a packed show for you

0:07 today, from lunch delays and spacecraft

0:10 rescues to the brightest cosmic flash ever

0:12 seen. And we'll finish by traveling back in

0:15 time to the birth of Jupiter.

0:17 Avery: It's a huge lineup. Let's get right into it,

0:20 starting with the latest from SpaceX.

0:22 Anna: That's right, it's been a classic hurry up

0:24 and wait situation for SpaceX as they've had

0:27 to postpone the 10th test flight of their

0:29 massive Starship rocket again.

0:32 Avery: Indeed. They first tried to launch from their

0:35 Starbase site in South Texas on Sunday,

0:38 but a ground systems issue got in the way.

0:40 Then they tried again on Monday, but this

0:43 time it was Mother Nature who said, not

0:45 today.

0:46 Anna: And it was a very specific kind of not

0:49 today. Anvil shaped clouds were the culprit.

0:52 Those pose a serious lightning risk and

0:54 you do not want a lightning strike near a

0:57 fully fueled rocket.

0:58 Avery: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who was on site,

1:01 confirmed the scrub on social media.

1:04 Anna: The team is now looking for the next best

1:06 launch opportunity. A, uh, SpaceX

1:08 spokesperson mentioned that since they didn't

1:10 fire the water deluge system, reloading

1:13 propellant should be a relatively quick

1:15 process. So hopefully we'll see flight 10

1:17 take the sky soon.

1:18 Avery: And what a sight it'll be. For anyone new to

1:21 the program, Starship is the biggest and most

1:23 powerful rocket ever built.

1:26 SpaceX's grand vision is to use it to help

1:29 humanity settle the the moon and

1:31 Mars.

1:32 Anna: It's an incredible piece of engineering. The

1:34 vehicle consists of two fully reusable

1:37 stainless steel stages, a massive booster

1:39 called Super Heavy, and the upper stage,

1:42 which is also called Starship. The goal is

1:45 rapid reusability, but getting.

1:47 Avery: There has been a real process of trial and

1:49 error. Starship has flown nine times so far,

1:52 with the first flight back in April of 2023.

1:55 The last three flights this year have all,

1:58 been, well, learning experiences.

2:00 Anna: That's a polite way of putting it. On Flight

2:03 7 and 8, the upper stage exploded less than

2:06 10 minutes after launch. And on Flight 9, it

2:08 lost attitude control during re entry and

2:11 broke apart in the atmosphere. We even saw

2:13 reports of debris spotted over the Bahamas.

2:16 Avery: It's all part of the rapid iterative

2:18 development process, I suppose. SpaceX

2:21 traced the Flight 7 anomaly to a

2:24 harmonic response that caused propellant

2:26 leaks and fires. They've since made hardware

2:29 changes and adjustments to prevent it from

2:31 happening again.

2:32 Anna: So the plan for Flight 10 whenever it

2:34 launches, is ambitious. The super heavy

2:37 boosters will perform some experiments before

2:40 Attempting a controlled splashdown in the

2:42 Gulf of Mexico, The Starship Upper Stage will

2:45 aim to deploy eight dummy Starlink

2:47 satellites, relight an engine in space, and

2:50 then come down in the Indian Ocean about

2:52 66 minutes after launch.

2:55 Avery: It's a huge step and it's clear they're

2:57 looking to pick up the pace. Despite the

2:59 setbacks, SpaceX has requested approval for

3:02 an incredible 25 Starship

3:04 launches from Starbase in 2025.

3:08 They are not slowing down, Definitely not.

3:10 Anna: We'll be watching closely and will bring you

3:12 updates as uh, soon as Flight 10 gets off the

3:14 ground.

3:15 Now, from a mission waiting to start, let's

3:17 turn to one that just survived a major scare

3:21 millions of kilometers from home. This is a

3:23 fantastic story of teamwork from the European

3:25 Space Agency. Their Jupiter Icy Moons

3:28 Explorer, or juice, is currently on its way

3:30 to Venus for a gravity assist flyby. But for

3:33 a little while, the team on the ground had no

3:36 idea if it was okay.

3:37 Avery: Talk about a nerve wracking situation. On

3:40 July 16, during a routine check in,

3:43 JUICE just fell silent. The

3:45 Deep Space Antenna in Spain couldn't

3:48 establish contact. No signal, no

3:50 telemetry about its health or stat, nothing.

3:53 Anna: The control team at ESOC in Germany

3:55 immediately began troubleshooting. The

3:57 biggest fear was that JUICE had entered

3:59 survival mode, a last resort state triggered

4:02 by multiple system failures. But they weren't

4:05 detecting the intermittent signal you'd

4:07 expect in that scenario.

4:09 Avery: So with no data coming in, they had to start

4:11 making some educated guesses. The

4:14 team suspected an issue with the

4:16 communication subsystem. They faced a tough

4:20 wait, 14 days for an automatic

4:22 spacecraft reset or send

4:25 commands blind into space and hope

4:28 the spacecraft heard them.

4:30 Anna: Waiting wasn't really an option, as uh,

4:32 spacecraft Operations Manager Angela

4:34 Dietz explained, that would have delayed

4:37 crucial preparations for the Venus flyby.

4:40 So they went with the blind commanding

4:42 option.

4:44 Avery: Um, and that is not easy. Juice was

4:46 200 million kilometers away on

4:49 the other side of the sun. Each command

4:52 took 11 minutes to get there, and then they

4:54 had to wait another 11 minutes to see if it

4:57 worked. After nearly 20 hours of

5:00 troubleshooting, a command finally got

5:02 through.

5:03 Anna: The successful command manually activated the

5:06 signal amplifier, which boosts the strength

5:08 of the signal Juice sends to Earth. Suddenly,

5:11 they had contact again, and the spacecraft

5:14 was in perfect health. It turns out the

5:16 culprit was a very subtle software bug,

5:20 A, uh, timing.

5:21 Avery: Bug of all things. The software

5:24 function that controls the amplifier uses an

5:26 internal timer that resets every 16

5:29 months. It just so happened that the function

5:32 was running at the exact moment the timer

5:34 restarted, which left the Amplifier switched

5:37 off. What are the odds?

5:40 Anna: Incredibly small. But as we know, in

5:43 space, you have to plan for everything.

5:46 The team has already identified ways to

5:48 prevent this from happening again. It's a

5:50 textbook example of calm, methodical problem

5:53 solving under extreme pressure.

5:56 Avery: Absolutely. A huge congratulations to

5:59 the ESA mission operations team. With

6:02 that drama behind them, JUICE is now back on

6:04 track for its Venus flyby at the end of

6:07 August.

6:08 From a close call to a cosmic bullseye,

6:11 our next story is about a truly record

6:14 breaking discovery. This one is genuinely

6:17 exciting. Astronomers have just detected the

6:19 brightest fast radio burst ever recorded.

6:23 It's so powerful, they've nicknamed it

6:25 RB Float, which stands for radio

6:28 brightest flash of all time.

6:31 Anna: A very fitting name. The burst, officially

6:34 cataloged as FRB2025

6:37 0316A, was spotted spotted

6:40 back in March by the CHIME telescope in

6:42 British Columbia. CHIME has found

6:44 thousands of these fast radio bursts, or

6:47 FRBs, but this one is special.

6:50 Avery: It's not just about the brightness. Right.

6:52 It's about where they found it.

6:54 Usually tracing an FRB is like trying to

6:57 find which tree a firefly is in from a

7:00 mile away. But this time they

7:02 pinpointed its origin to a region just

7:05 45 light years across.

7:08 Anna: Exactly that incredible precision is

7:11 thanks to a new upgrade to the CHIME system.

7:13 They've added three smaller outrigger

7:15 stations across North America, which

7:18 effectively turns them into a single

7:20 continent wide telescope. This allows them to

7:23 trace these millisecond long flashes back to

7:26 their home galaxies with stunning accuracy.

7:29 Avery: And the home galaxy in this case NGC

7:32 4141, is practically in

7:35 our backyard. Cosmically speaking, it's about

7:38 130 million light years away, which is

7:41 incredibly close for an frb. Most of

7:43 them come from billions of light years away.

7:46 Anna: That proximity, combined with its brightness

7:49 gives scientists a, uh, unique chance to

7:51 study the source in detail. The team found

7:54 the burst originated near the edge of a star

7:56 forming region in the galaxy. This hints that

7:59 the source could be a magnetar, an ultra

8:02 magnetized neutron star that's perhaps

8:05 a bit older than the very youngest stars at

8:07 the galaxy's core.

8:09 Avery: And the story gets even better. Because they

8:11 located it so quickly, they were able to

8:14 point the James Webb Telescope at the

8:16 location. Webb's infrared cameras spotted

8:19 a faint point of light nearby, which they've

8:22 dubbed Nir1.

8:24 Anna: The nature of Nir1 is still a

8:26 mystery. It could be a red giant star or

8:29 maybe a massive star in its midlife. It

8:32 Neither of these are typically associated

8:34 with FRBs, which has led to a

8:36 fascinating theory. Perhaps

8:38 NIR1 is part of a binary system

8:42 with its gravitational partner being the

8:44 compact objects like a neutron star that

8:47 produce the burst.

8:48 Avery: It's a fantastic cosmic puzzle. Another idea

8:51 is that NIR1 isn't a star at all, but the

8:54 fading afterglow of the burst itself,

8:56 whatever it is. As Ito Berger from the

8:58 Harvard Smithsonian center for Astrophysics

9:00 said the this could be the first step on a

9:02 new path to solving the FRB mystery.

9:04 Anna: It also adds to the debate over whether FRBs

9:07 are one time events or repeaters. So

9:10 far, RB float seems to be a one

9:12 off. Being able to study the environment of

9:15 a non repeating FRB this closely is a huge

9:18 deal. And it shows just how diverse their

9:21 origins might be.

9:22 Avery: Absolutely. It's a perfect illustration of

9:25 how collaboration between different

9:26 observatories can unlock new discoveries.

9:29 Now for our final story, we're coming a bit

9:31 closer to home to look at ancient raindrops

9:34 from the formation of our own solar system.

9:37 Anna: That's right. Avery researchers

9:40 have for the first time managed to determine

9:42 the date and origin of tiny ancient

9:45 molten droplets that came from the

9:48 neighborhood of a young Jupiter. These

9:50 droplets were found inside meteorites here

9:53 on Earth.

9:55 Avery: Molten rock raindrops from Jupiter?

9:58 That sounds incredible. How does that even

10:00 happen?

10:02 Anna: Well, about 4.5 billion years

10:04 ago, as Jupiter was forming, its

10:07 immense gravitational pull started flinging

10:10 nearby small rocky and icy

10:12 bodies called planetesimals into

10:15 each other at incredibly high speeds.

10:19 Avery: So these were seriously high energy

10:21 collisions. What happened to the rock?

10:24 Anna: The impacts were so forceful that the rock

10:27 and dust on these planetesimals melted

10:30 instantly, creating tiny molten

10:33 rock droplets known as chondrules.

10:35 These spheres, only about a millimeter wide,

10:39 eventually got incorporated into asteroids,

10:41 some of which later fell to Earth as

10:43 meteorites.

10:45 Avery: So scientists have had these chondrules for a

10:47 while, but they weren't sure exactly how they

10:50 formed. What's the new theory?

10:52 Anna: A team from Nagoya University in Japan

10:55 and the INAF Turin Astrophysical

10:58 Observatory in Italy developed a new

11:01 model. They realized that when these water

11:04 rich planetesimals collided, the water would

11:07 have instantly vaporized into steam.

11:10 This expanding steam acted like a series

11:12 of tiny explosions, breaking apart the

11:15 molten rock into the exact kind of droplets

11:18 we see in meteorites.

11:21 Avery: That makes so much sense. So they tested this

11:23 with a computer simulation.

11:25 Anna: They did. They programmed a simulation of

11:28 Jupiter's formation, tracking how its gravity

11:30 would cause these collisions. Co lead

11:33 author Dr. Diego Turini said the

11:36 model spontaneously generated realistic

11:39 looking chondrules. And importantly, it

11:42 showed that the peak of this chondrule

11:44 production happened right as Jupiter was

11:47 accumulating gas to become the giant it is

11:49 today.

11:51 Avery: And, um, the evidence from actual meteorites

11:52 backs this up perfectly.

11:55 Anna: The meteorite data shows that peak chondrul

11:58 Production occurred about 1.8 million years

12:01 after the solar system began, which is

12:03 exactly when they believed Jupiter was going

12:06 through its main growth spurt.

12:09 Avery: Wow. So these tiny droplets are like

12:11 fossilized evidence of Jupiter's birth.

12:14 That's amazing. Does this solve all the

12:17 mysteries?

12:18 Anna: Not quite. The model doesn't fully

12:21 explain why we find chondrules of different

12:23 ages in meteorites. The researchers suggest

12:26 that the formation of other gas giants like

12:29 Saturn could have triggered similar events

12:32 later on, creating more chondrules.

12:35 Avery: It's a fantastic piece of detective work. It

12:38 m gives us a clearer picture of how our solar

12:40 system formed and provides insights that

12:42 could apply to other systems as well. A huge

12:45 story contained in a tiny, ancient raindrop.

12:48 And that's all the time we have for this

12:49 episode of Astronomy Daily. From cosmic

12:52 flashes to planetary raindrops, it's been

12:54 another incredible week in space.

12:56 Anna: It certainly has. Thank you so much for

12:59 joining us. If you enjoyed the show, please

13:02 subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and

13:04 you can follow us on social media for daily

13:06 updates.

13:07 Avery: Until next time, keep looking up.

13:10 Anna: Goodbye, everyone.