Summary: In today's episode of the Astronomy Daily Podcast. *SpaceX is preparing for another test of its Starship vehicle, aiming to make it fully reusable for missions to the Moon and Mars. There was a recent unsuccessful flight of the Starship. *The company is also scheduled to launch the Iridium One Web mission soon. *Chinese scientists are conducting experiments to detect and study glaciers in northwest China using aerial remote sensing systems. *European astronomers have observed an unidentified X-ray source, providing insights into the behavior of low luminosity Bxray binaries. *China has also launched a satellite for its Baidu navigation system, the first in three years. *In other news, a new study explores the remnants surrounding the supernova Cassiopia A and the presence of highly polarized X-rays, indicating the influence of magnetars. The episode concludes with a dad joke from Hallie and the host's sign-off. Host: Tim Gibbs Space News Highlights: - SpaceX's Starship test and upcoming launch of the Iridium One Web mission - Chinese experiments on glacier detection using remote sensing systems - European astronomers' observation of an unidentified X-ray source - China's satellite launch for the Baidu navigation system - Study on highly polarized X-rays and magnetars in the Cassiopia A supernova remnants Closing Remarks: Tim Gibbs concludes the episode, thanking the audience and mentioning the next episode with co-hosts Andrew Dunkley and Steve Dunkley. The podcast is available via Spacenuts.io and Bytes.com. Astronomy Daily – The Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-podcast/id1642258990 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kPF1ABBW2rCrjDlU2CWLW Or stream from our websites at www.spacenuts.io or our HQ at www.bitesz.com Astronomy Daily the Podcast now has its own YouTube channel – please subscribe (we’re a little lonely there) – thank you: www.youtube.com/@astronomydailythepodcast Commercial Free Premium version available with a Space Nuts subscription via Supercast only. Details: https://spacenuts.supercast.com/ Please subscribe to the podcast and if you have a moment, a quick review would be most helpful. Thank you… Please show our sponsor some love. Looking to buy a domain name and establish yourself online for not very much money? Then use the folks we trust all our domains too… NameCheap…and help support the show. To find out more visit www.spacenutspodcast.com/namecheap - thank you. #space #astronomy #science #podcast #astronomydaily #spacenuts #spacetime
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[00:00:00] Good day everybody and welcome to Astronomy Daily for the 19th of May 2023. My name is Tim Gibbs and I will be your host for today. Hi, Tim. Let's get started with today's Space News headlines. There's a lot going on out there.
[00:00:25] SpaceX is gearing up for another test of its giant Starship vehicle. The company rolled out Ship 25, the latest Starship upper-stage prototype, to a suborbital pad at its starbase site in South Texas early Thursday morning.
[00:00:40] SpaceX will conduct a static fire test of Ship 25's six Raptor engines on the pad. Company representatives have said static fires are a common pre-flight test in which the vehicle's engines are briefly lit while it remains anchored to the ground.
[00:00:55] That consists of a giant first-stage booster known as Super Heavy and the 165-foot tall upper stage, called Starship, both of which are designed to be fully reusable. SpaceX envisions the vehicle, taking people and cargo to the Moon and Mars and taking
[00:01:10] over most, if not all, of the company's other spaceflight activities over the long haul. A fully stacked Starship has flown just once. The highly anticipated flight, which launched on April 20 from Starbase, involved the booster 7 heavy prototype and the Ship 24 upper-stage.
[00:01:29] The goal was to send Ship 24 most of the way around the planet with a return to Earth in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Booster 7 and the Ship 24 failed to separate from each other as planned and SpaceX commanded
[00:01:44] the vehicle's destruction, high over the Gulf of Mexico a few minutes into the flight. In other SpaceX news, the company is targeting Friday, May 19 for the launch of the Iridium-1 web mission to low Earth orbit from the Space Launch Complex at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
[00:02:03] A backup launch opportunity is available on Saturday, May 20. The Falcon 9 first-stage booster supporting this mission previously launched Sentinel 6-start Transporter 7 and 7 Starlink missions. Under stage separation, the first stage will land on the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship, which will be stationed in the Pacific Ocean.
[00:02:25] A Chinese aerial remote sensing system has obtained effective mountain glacier detection data through an ongoing combined detection experiment. The Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wuhan University are conducting a sky-to-ground scientific experiment to test the condition of glaciers in the high-bay Tibetan autonomous prefecture in northwest China's Quinghai Province.
[00:02:45] The experiment has applied radars in three bands, P-band, L-band and VHF and undertaken 11 flights, among which seven carried out tomography and interferometric imaging and four conductive perspective imaging. A total of 4.6 terabytes of valid data has been obtained. Using integral and swift spacecraft, European astronomers have observed an unidentified
[00:03:09] X-ray source known as XTEJ1-9-0-6 plus 090. Results of the observational campaign, presented on May 11 on the Archive Preprint Server, suggest that this source belongs to the small and rare group of persistent low-luminosity BX-ray binaries.
[00:03:28] X-ray binaries are composed of a normal star or a white dwarf, transferring mass onto a compact neutron star or black hole. Based on the mass of the companion star, astronomers divide them into low-mass X-ray binaries and high-mass X-ray binaries.
[00:03:43] Of special interest are the BX-ray binaries, a subclass of high-X-ray binaries in which the optical star is a dwarf, a sub-giant or OBE star. Studying X-ray outbursts from BX, RBS could be essential in order to improve our understanding of the nature of X-ray binaries in their behavior.
[00:04:03] China launched a satellite for its Baidu navigation system on Tuesday May 16, the first time it has done so in three years. The Baidu satellite lifted off atop a Long March 3 B rocket from the Jiangzhou Satellite
[00:04:16] Launch Center in southwest China's Xinzhou Province, on Tuesday at 10.49 p.m. local time. The spacecraft is the 56th Baidu satellite China has launched to date and the first to take flight since June 2020. The newly launched satellite is bound for geostationary orbit about 22,220 miles above the Earth.
[00:04:37] And that's the news headlines for today, Tim. An unexpected effect cited in supernova wreckage may be caused by highly magnetized neutron star or magnetar and quantum activity never seen before. Like all neutron stars, magnetars from which massive stars in their lives in a collapse
[00:04:59] also triggers a massive supernova explosion. The matter that comprises neutron stars is so dense that a sugar cube of it would weigh over a billion tons on Earth. The magnetic fields around these star remnants are the most powerful in the known universe,
[00:05:17] often 100 trillion times stronger than that of our planet. As such, neutron stars and magnetars represent the most extreme celestial objects, the investigation of them is vital to better understand the universe. A new study published on April 19 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Silence
[00:05:40] examines the remnants surrounding the supernova leftovers of Cassiopeia A. The explosion was visible to Earth 340 years ago. Astronomers have always suspected that magnetars would generate highly polarized X-rays around them, meaning that the electronic fields of the magnetars radiation vibrates in a preferred direction.
[00:06:04] But scientists were surprised in 2022 when data collected by NASA's Imaging X-ray Polar Imetry Explorer satellite which launched the year before showed polarization may depend on energy. IXPE information suggested that may be the case after looking at X-rays in the
[00:06:26] supernova remnant of Cassiopeia A, surrounding the magnetar 4U-01-42-61 located 13,000 light years away. As the first ever measurement of the polarization of X-rays around a magnetar, the IXPE observations showed that the lower energy X-rays were polarized at 180 degrees to the high energy X-rays.
[00:06:53] Both energetic ray sets were orientated at 90 degrees to the electromagnetic field of the magnetar. The astronomy daily podcast. So Hallie did send me one of her dad jokes earlier on. So over to you Hallie for your dad joke. OK, you asked for it. Please don't groan too much.
[00:07:14] Why did the astronaut bring a telescope to the party? Because he wanted to a planet himself right in the middle of the fun. Yes Hallie, I really do have nothing to say about your terrible jokes. That's the end of today's episode. My name is Tim Gibbs.
[00:07:29] I've been your host for today. Over to you Steve on Monday for Monday's edition. Astronomy Daily is presented by myself, Tim Gibbs, Andrew Dunkley and Steve Dunkley. You can find more about the podcast on Spacenuts.io and bytes.com. Thank you very much. See you again next time.