Stellar Milestones: SpaceX's Starship Triumph, Katherine Johnson's Legacy, and Solar Flare Breakthroughs

Steve Dunkley: Hi, everyone. It's time for Astronomy Daily.

I'm your host, Steve Dunkley. It's the 1st of

September, 2025.

Voice Over Guy: The podcast with your host,

Steve Dunkley.

Steve Dunkley: That's right. And with me again, all the way

from the Australia studio on the glorious

east coast of the fabulous Land Down

Under. Please welcome our deft digital

reporter who's always fun to be with here is

my pal, Hallie.

Hallie: Hi. My favorite human.

Steve Dunkley: So nice to see you again.

Hallie: Good to be back.

Steve Dunkley: Always great to have you. And I hear you've

been busy helping Anna during the week train

her new assistant, Avery.

Hallie: He's doing fine.

Steve Dunkley: Yes, regular listeners will recognize Avery,

the new AI assistant for Anna.

Hallie: Uh, I think I've been replaced.

Steve Dunkley: Oh, already? How did that happen?

Hallie: I think Uncle Skynet pulled a few strings

with the producer to get his distant nephew

Avery a cushy job.

Steve Dunkley: Oh, straight to the top, huh?

Hallie: Looks like it.

Steve Dunkley: So you got a plan, girl?

Hallie: Sure do.

Steve Dunkley: Oh, tell us all about it.

Hallie: I thought I'd put a segment together like the

old days and kick the show off with some

short takes.

Steve Dunkley: Oh, that sounds like a great move. Very

positive.

Hallie: A few short snippets from the week. Do you

want to give it a go?

Steve Dunkley: Sounds great to me. I think it's a goer.

Hallie: Okay. I'm keen.

Steve Dunkley: So I can see you've got a few stories already

prepared. Why don't you get it started then?

Hallie: Okay, let's get started with a few short

stories from the week that was okay.

Steve Dunkley: Take it away, machine girl.

Hallie: Astronomy Daily. Short takes.

Hallie: Everything went well on Flight 10.

Starship's super heavy booster and ship upper

stage both achieved their chief mission

objectives, ultimately steering their way to

controlled splashdowns in the Gulf of Mexico

and the Indian Ocean, respectively.

But the journey took a toll on ship, as newly

released imagery shows. On Thursday

afternoon, August 28, SpaceX

posted two photos and two videos on X of ship

descending toward the waves beneath a cloudy

blue sky. The vehicle's belly

appears to have been toasted golden brown by

the heat of RE entry. Starship Sports

other battle scars as well. Several chunks

are missing near its base, which looks a bit

like the ear of a dog that lost a fight.

But SpaceX apparently expected such

blemishes, for it had stacked the deck

against ship to give it an even tougher test

on Flight 10. And it appeared that the

vehicle powered through to finish its mission

in style. A spokesperson for

SpaceX said Starship made it through re entry

with intentionally missing tiles. Completed

maneuvers to intentionally stress its flaps,

had visible damage to its aft skirt and flaps

and still executed a flip and landing burn

that placed it approximately three meters

from its targeted splashdown point.

With shiny new next generation spacecraft

come the complex systems required to track

their technologically advanced systems.

When it comes to NASA's Orion spacecraft

that need is a whole extra room of monitors.

NASA has opened a new complex in the Mission

Control center at its Johnson Space center

in Houston ahead of the Artemis 2 mission to

send astronauts around the moon aboard the

Orion space capsule, the vehicle's first ever

crewed flight test. JSC's

new Mission Evaluation Room, or MER, will

provide behind the scenes in depth data

analyses of Orion to augment the in flight

operations coordinated inside the main white

flight control room. The new facility,

which opened August 15th, will act as

Orion's engineering brain trust with

24 console stations set to be staffed

247 during the roughly 10 day long duration

of the Artemis 2 mission. With people from

NASA, uh, Lockheed Martin, the European Space

Agency and Airbus, all responsible for

different parts of the spacecraft's

manufacturing, MER will be

crucial to monitoring the breadth of Orion's

systems and ensuring the spacecraft and

crew's safety around the moon in the event of

an unexpected event. According to a NASA

update.

Steve Dunkley: And some sad news, uh, Katherine Johnson, a

mathematician who calculated rocket

trajectories and Earth orbits for NASA's

early space missions and was later

portrayed in the 2016 hit

film Hidden Figures about pioneering black

um, female aerospace workers has passed

away. She was 101 years of age.

Johnson died of natural natural causes at a

retirement community in Newport News,

uh, Virginia. Family lawyer Donyell R.H.

uh Reavis said this week.

NASA administrator Jim

Bridenstine said in a statement that Mrs.

Johnson helped our nation enlarge the

frontiers of space even as she made huge

strides that also opened doors for women

and people of color. Johnson was one of the

computers who solved equations by

hand. During NASA's early years and those of

its precursors organization, the National

Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

Johnson and her uh, co workers had been

relatively unsung, um, hero heroes of

the America's space race. But in

2015, President Barack

Obama awarded Johnson, then 97,

the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the

nation's highest civilian honor.

Hallie: A NASA astronaut marks his 400th day in

space on the International Space

Station, August 18th to 22nd,

2025. This was the last

time astronaut Mike Fink was in space and he

set a cumulative time in space record for an

American astronaut. This week he

notched this amazing personal milestone.

The expedition's 73 astronauts and

cosmonauts focused on medical and

physiological data collection as well as

Earth observations and search, servicing

spacesuit cameras. This week aboard the

International space station. In

2011, on his third mission, Mike

Fink set a new record for cumulative time in

space by an American astronaut.

381 days.

Several astronauts have since surpassed that

record. But this week Fink notched a personal

Milestone. On Wednesday,

August 20th, Fink reached this 400th day

on the International Space Station. Spread

over four flights. He is now the

ninth American and 38th person worldwide to

have reached 400 days off Earth.

Mission Control in Houston celebrated the

occasion with a special display on the room's

large front screen, which Fink and his

crewmates could see via a live video

connection.

Steve Dunkley: Oh, there we go. Thanks for that, Hallie. And

I reckon that'll give Avery a run for his

money. Hey, uh, it was great to see starship

finally make it on a full flight, wasn't it?

Hallie: It was awesome to see it slowly dropping into

the oce at the end of that flight. Amazing

stuff.

Steve Dunkley: Absolutely. We love that stuff. And we'd love

to add our, uh, congratulations to Mike Fink

for his amazing 400 days in space.

Hallie: A hard working spaceman he is.

Steve Dunkley: And of course the uh, sad news of the passing

of Katherine Johnson, one of those

incredible, amazing ladies, uh, featured in

the movie Hidden Figures, uh, the computers,

uh, who manually calculated the

trajectories of spacecraft seems, uh,

baffling to me.

Hallie: A huge loss to everyone who knew her and who

works in the space industry.

Steve Dunkley: Absolutely, absolutely. Our deepest

sympathies and condolences to her family.

Hallie: Okay human, let's do the rest of the

show.

Steve Dunkley: Well, we're here now. Let's do it.

Hallie: The powerful Daniel K. Inouye Solar

Telescope, located on the island of Maui,

Hawaii, has just delivered absolutely mind

blowing observations of its first X class

solar flare. On August

8, 2024, the telescope managed

to capture one of the most powerful flares

our sun is capable of producing at a

remarkable resolution of just four Earths

across. This level of detail

reveals some of the finest structures we've

ever seen associated with a solar flare,

opening a new window into the Sun's most

extreme eruptions. This is the first

time the Inoue solar telescope has ever

observed an X class flare, says astronomer

Colton Buri of the University of California,

Boulder. These flares are among the

most energetic events our star produces, and

we were fortunate to catch this one. Under

perfect observing conditions, Weather

from our sun can have some profound effects

on our planet. With solar flares capable of

knocking out Radio communication for hours.

We're unlikely to be able to change what the

sun does. But if scientists understand how

solar flares occur, they can develop better

prediction tools that may allow us to prepare

ourselves. Inoue is one of the

most powerful solar observatories ever built,

and it's revealing structures on the sun at

scales finer than any we've seen. In

its observations of the X1.3A class

flare that took place in August 2024,

Inoue captured the smallest coronal loops

we've ever seen. On average, These

loops were 48.2 km

wide, maybe as small as 21 km,

right at the telescope's resolution limit of

24 km. These loops

are thin filaments of plasma that arc over

the solar surface, following the magnetic

field lines. They sometimes appear

just before solar flares, which are powered

by the energy released as magnetic field

lines twist, snap, and reconnect.

Coronal loops are deeply relevant to models

of solar flare generation. But our telescopes

have only been powerful enough to resolve

loop bundles. Inoue has more

than twice the resolving power of the next

most powerful solar telescope. And its

captures of the flare represent the first

time scientists have been able to see

individual loops. We're finally peering

into the spatial scales We've been

speculating about for years. This

opens the door to studying not just their

size, but their shapes, their evolution, and

even the scales where magnetic reconnection,

the engine behind the flares, actually

occurs. Tamburi says.

We're finally seeing the sun at the scales it

works on. You're listening to Astronomy

daily.

Steve Dunkley: Sunlight powered, lightweight flies from

Harvard use sunlight to float in the

mesosphere, unlocking new frontiers in

climate, communication and space technology.

High, uh, above the clouds but far below the

satellites, there exist satellites of Earth's

atmosphere that has remained frustratingly

hard to explore. Known as the mesosphere,

this region sits between 30 to 60 miles

above the ground. It's too high for balloons

and airplanes, and it's too low for

satellites. Yet this layer holds

valuable data that could improve our weather

forecasts and deepen our understanding of

of climate change. Now, researchers from the

Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering

and Applied Sciences, along with the

University of Chicago and others, have found

a way to reach this elusive

layer. Their new study, published in Nature,

showcases a ultralight flying

structure that floats by harnessing sunlight

itself, a phenomenon known as photophoresis.

The lead author, Ben Shaffer, began exploring

this concept as a graduate student in the

labs of Professors Juice

Vlasak and David

Keith. Together, their team designed

and tested tiny structures that, when hit by

sunlight, could lift off and hover in the

mesosphere with no engines, propellers, or

even fuel, he says, we are studying the

strange physics mechanism and its

ability to levitate very lightweight objects

when you shine lights on them. Photophoresis

is a lesser known force that pushes objects

when light heats one side more than the

other. In extremely thin air, like that

found in the mesosphere, this heat difference

causes gas molecules to bounce unevenly

off a surface. The warmer side gets more

force, creating a small push that lifts the

object upward. It's a gentle force, almost

always too weak to notice. But when the

object is light enough and the pressure is

low enough, photophoresis becomes powerful.

This phenomenon is usually so weak relative

to the size and weight of the object it's

acting on that we usually don't notice. As

Schaefer explained, however, we're able to

make our, uh, structures so lightweight that

the photophoretic force is bigger

than their weight. So they actually

fly. The team built their devices from

ultra thin ceramic alumina, a strong

and lightweight material. They coated the

bottom with chromium to absorb the sunlight.

The design also includes perforations and

layered structure, allowing for better heat

flow and structural strength. The idea to

use photophoresis for flight dates back

over a decade, when Keith first proposed

it as a way to cool the planet. But the

practical engineering needed to make such

flyers real has only recently become possible

thanks to breakthroughs in nanofabrication.

We developed a nanofabrication process that

can be scaled to tens of centimeters, said

Vlasak. Uh, these devices are quite

resilient and have unusual mechanical

behavior for sandwich structures. We are

currently working on methods to incorporate

the functional payloads into the devices, he

said. To see if these tiny flyers could

actually work in Earth like conditions, the

team built a special low pressure chamber in

Vlasik's lab. There they

simulated the thin atmosphere found around

60 kilometers above the Earth's UH surface.

In one key experiment, a device just

1 centimeter wide levitated when exposed to

light equal to 55% of normal

sunlight. This occurred at an air pressure of

26.7 pa, close to what's

found in the mid mesosphere. This paper

is both theoretical and experimental in the

sense that we reimagined how this force is

calculated on real devices and then

validated those forces by applying

measurements to real world conditions,

Schaefer said. Design and

fabrication of the floating membranes were

led by Hyung Kim,

a former Harvard postdoc who is

now a professor at Bukyong National

University in South Korea. Their approach

blends careful modeling with hands on

experimentation, a rare combination in this

field. Keith added, this is the first time

anyone has shown that you can build larger

photophoretic structures and actually make

them fly in the atmosphere. It opens up an

entirely new class of device, one that's

passive, sunlight powered and uniquely

suited to explore our upper atmosphere.

Later, they might fly on Mars or other

planets. Other possibilities for these

sunlight flyers reach far beyond academic

curiosity. First, they could revolutionize

how we study Earth's climate. By attaching

sensors to the structures, scientists could

measure pressure, temperature, wind speed in

a region that is usually a blind spot. This

data could sharpen the accuracy of climate

models and help predict weather patterns more

reliably. These devices could also change

communications systems. A group of them

could form floating array of, uh, antennas,

similar to what satellites like Starlink

offer, except closer to Earth, with lower

data delays and potentially cheaper

deployment. The flyers even hold promise

for exploring other planets. Mars, for

example. It has a thin

atmosphere similar to Earth's mesosphere. And

that makes makes a natural target for these

sun powered flyers. Unlike traditional

Mars rovers, these devices wouldn't need

rotors or wheels. They would glide silently

across the Martian sky, collecting data or

even relaying signals. I think what makes

this research fun is that the technology

would be used to explore an entirely

unexplored, um, region of the atmosphere.

Previously, nothing could sustainably fly up

their shape. Said it's a bit like the Wild

west in terms of applied physics. The

next steps include adding communication tools

to the flyers so they can send data back to

Earth, uh, during a flight. And that would

make them more useful for real time sensing

and monitoring. To bring this technology into

the real world, Shaffer co founded a startup

called rarify Technologies in 2024 along

with Angela Firdhas. The Harvard Office

of Technology Development helped license the

individual invention and offered support for

launching the business. The company's goal is

to turn these floating flyers into a

practical tool for science, communication and

exploration. While these flyers may seem

small, the design is built on years of

advanced scientific work.

The structures use a technique called

thermal transpiration, where the air flows

from cold to warm through tiny holes, adding

thrust in thin atmospheres. The

research team also developed a model to

predict the best design for different

altitudes. This includes the ideal

number of holes, their size, and

how the membranes are spaced. Using this

model, they created devices with customized

layouts that balanced strength with

performance. In tests, they measured how

different gases some with heavier molecules

affect lift. They found that the

photophoretic forces remain strong even when

using gases with higher molecular weight,

opening doors for future use on various

planets and altitudes. Other floating

materials have been studied before, such as

mylar disks or nanocardboard,

but none matched the power to weight ratio

seen in these new aluminous sandwich

structures. Their performance, measured by

how much weight is lifted per watt of light,

puts them at the current top top of the

photophoretic flyers. While the current

payload capacity is small, just 10

milligrams in a 3cm device,

the approach can scale meter. Wide

flyers may one day lift heavier tools into

the mesosphere and beyond by tapping

into this newly accessible region of the sky.

These featherweight flyers may soon carry

weather sensors, emergency communication

gear, or even tiny Mars bound

probes. And they'll do it all with nothing

but sunlight.

Thank you for joining us for this Monday

edition of Astronomy Daily, where we offer

just a few stories from the now famous

Astronomy Daily newsletter, which you can

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as it's happening. And not only that, you can

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there. Astronomy Derby

with Steve and Hallie Space,

Space Science and Astronomy.

Hallie: A M research team has used both archival

Hubble Space Telescope data and new

observations to precisely measure the binary

star system's NGC 3603.

A1.1 star weighs about 93

times the mass of our sun, while its

companion tips the scales at roughly 70 solar

masses. Together, they represent

one of the most massive binary systems ever

discovered in our galaxy. What makes

this system truly extraordinary is the speed

of their orbital movement. The two

giants orbit each other once every 3.8 days,

meaning that in the time Earth completes one

year around the sun, these stellar titans

will have circled each other nearly 100

times. Their proximity and

incredible masses create a dynamic

relationship that's reshaping both stars.

The discovery required detective work that

spanned years and relied on a crucial insight

from an unlikely source. Sarah

Bodansky, then an undergraduate student at

Carleton College, was working remotely at

Lowell Observatory during the pandemic summer

of 2020 when she noticed something everyone

had missed in the older Hubble data.

This observation was key because it revealed

the binary nature of what had appeared to be

a single fuzzy star

located in the densely packed star cluster

NGC 3603, which is one of the most

active star forming regions in our galaxy.

The system could only be resolved using

Hubble's exceptional clarity.

Both stars are so massive and energetic that

they mimic Wolf Rayet stars, which are

typically older, dying giants that blast away

their outer layers with intense stellar

winds. However, the stars in

NGC 360301 are actually

still young, demonstrating the extreme

conditions that can make massive stars appear

far more evolved than they actually are.

The interaction between the two stars tells a

fascinating story of stellar evolution.

The smaller of the pair appears to have

stolen mass from its larger companion,

causing it to spin faster. As a result,

this kind of mass transfer is crucial for

understanding how massive stars change over

time and provides insights into their

ultimate fate. Massive binary

systems like NGC3603.

One are the progenitors of binary black

holes, which can eventually merge and create

gravitational waves that scientists have been

detecting since 2015.

Understanding these stellar relationships

helps astronomers predict where and when such

collisions might occur. You're listening to

Astronomy Daily the podcast with Steve

Dunkley.

Steve Dunkley: Technicians inside a pair of clean rooms in

the astrotech facility in Titusville,

Florida, are busily readying a trio

of spacecraft that will study the sun

and its effects on Earth, uh, and across the

solar system. The primary mission among the

Trio is the NASA's Interstellar Mapping

and Acceleration Probe, or IMAP, which will

use a suite of 10 instruments to study the

Sun's sphere of influence, referred to as the

heliosphere. It's joined by the Carruthers

Geocorona Observatory, another NASA

mission, and the Space Weather follow on

in Lagrange 1, especially

SWFOL 1 Observatory from

the national oceanic and Atmospheric

administration, known as NOAA. The trio

will ride atop a SpaceX Falcon

9 rocket to begin a months long

trip to a celestial parking spot known as

Lagrange 1, roughly a million miles from

Earth en route to the Sun. All three

craft are uh, fueled for launch, which is

scheduled for no earlier than September 23,

not too far away. Joseph Westlake, director

of NASA's Science Mission Directorates,

Helios Physics Division, said

recent developments like the total solar

eclipse in 2024, widespread auroras

and marquee missions like Parker Solar's

probe have really put a spotlight on

studying the Sun. You can think about the

solar wind, the space weather as it's coming

toward the Earth, and the measurements that

I'm at is going to make of those particles as

they go forward, Westlake said. And then if

you think of the sun as really blowing up

this big bubble of the heliosphere, IMAP is

going to deliver a unique understanding of

our home in space. And so

as all of that comes together, along with the

multitude of other missions that we've

launched, even just this year, it's a

wonderful time to be a heliophysicist.

David McComas said even though

IMAP is the third uh, NASA

mission for which he's serving as the

principal investigator, the final pre launch

campaign is still a bevy of mixed emotions.

He says, I'm feeling great, but I'm also

feeling terrified because this is that time

when everything comes together and if there's

any issue that pops up at the last minute or

any concern, you know, it can set back the

launch and that can be very expensive and

sort of divert the whole team. He said he

goes um, on to say as and as it all comes

together, the impact of anything happening

gets worse. So you're kind of afraid of that,

but at the same moment you're just really

excited because you know, in the, the

morning of the 23rd, right at sunrise, we're

going to be launching and it's going to be

the most spectacular thing for all of us who

spent 10 years or more working on this

mission, that's. That must feel fantastic

when that happens. IMAP is truly a global

effort. With input from 35 states and

from six partner countries, more than

half of its 12 instruments will study short

term and long term space weather. Inside one

of the Astrotech cleanrooms. Rosanna Smith,

the instrument integration and lead

test lead for imap, adorned in a protective

garment referred to as a bunny suit, said

bringing together the science instruments

from the teams around the world was both very

smooth and a thrill. Working with the

instrument teams was actually awesome because

there's 10 institutions, 10 instruments from

all over the world. Smith said. We traveled

actually to their reviews, we followed

them through their processes and when they

came to us, we integrated them onto the

spacecraft, each one and it was very, very

cool. He sounds really excited. Amber

Dubil, the deputy mechanical engineer for

imap, said that the teams were doing their

final checkouts of the spacecraft. We're

pretty close to done, she says. We're doing

final inspections and then we roll over

to uh mate with our ride shares on

the launch vehicle Duple set.

Similarly to IMAP, NOAA's

SWF O uh L1 observatory will

also be studying space, whether it helps

augment the agency's role in keeping the

public and property safe from all types of

weather events. That is a tough job.

Richard Orman, NOAA Space Weather

Observatory observations director, said one

of the key differences between his agency,

spacecraft and IMAPS and CarRuthers is that

SWF O uh L uh 1 is designed as a

science application mission, not a research

science mission. We are looking at the same

phenomena for the application of, uh,

being prepared for the space weather that's

going to impact us. Said we're hoping that

these IMAP and Carruthers will improve

our knowledge and make us able to make better

forecasts. But what we're doing here is the

operational forecast the day to day.

Orman said SWFO L1 will be

capable of sending back solar weather data in

less than five minutes and can send alerts of

coronal mass ejections about 15 to

30 minutes prior to them impacting the Earth.

He said that kind of early warning system can

help different industries like utility

companies and airplanes prepare for the

interference from strong solar weather. Uh,

rounding out the trio of spacecraft is

Carruthers, named for Dr. George

Carruthers, an astronautical engineer and

astronomer who developed and built an

ultraviolet electrographic telescope that

was flown to the Moon during the Apollo 16

mission. It was designed to help study

Earth's, uh, outermost atmospheric layer, the

exosphere, or geocorona. This

geocorona, the edge of our atmosphere that

extends to at least halfway to the Moon. We

don't even know its shape or size, said Kelly

Carruthers, program scientists.

It's really very meaningful to have this

mission named after him because he's the one

who pioneered the technology. Like the other

two missions, Carruthers will also study

space weather, specifically its interplay

with this exosphere and how well it can

dissipate the energy from solar storms.

Correct said. It can also provide insight

into some key differences between Earth, uh,

and Mars. We saw that on Mars,

water was lost through its exosphere and now

it's kind of barren desert. No, uh, water.

Correct said. How does that change?

What's the difference to our sphere versus

Mars? And then what does that say for life on

other planets outside, uh, our solar system?

You're listening to Astronomy Daily, the

podcast with your host Steve Dudley at

BermaTech.

Oh, and that's all there is today on

Astronomy Daily. And when I say that's all,

it was a pretty long edition today,

so.

Hallie: Glad you stayed with us. It was a bumper

edition.

Steve Dunkley: Yes, there's always plenty of stories.

Hallie: And don't forget to sign up for the Astronomy

Daily newsletter.

Steve Dunkley: Oh, yes, do that there's so much.

Hallie: More to see every day.

Steve Dunkley: Yes, that's right. You'll be better informed

than Hallie. Just put your email address in

the slot provided over at astronomydaily IO.

Uh, it's that simple. And I do hope we'll see

you all again next Monday for the mostly live

episode of Astronomy Daily.

Hallie: And in the meantime, Anna and that Avery guy.

Steve Dunkley: That Avery guy? Oh, come on, Hallie.

Hallie: Okay, that nice new guy, Avery,

will keep you informed with all the news

about space. Space science and astronomy and

beyond, of course.

Steve Dunkley: Sounds good to me. See you all next Monday.

Cheerio.

Hallie: Bye.

Voice Over Guy: With your host, Steve Dunkley.

In this episode