Steve Dunkley: Welcome to Astronomy Daily. I'm your host,
Steve Dunkley. It's the 9th of June, 2025,
the podcast with your host,
Steve Dunkley.
Welcome back. And Hallie and I are back again
in person, so to speak, for another episode
after a few weeks off. And that was for a
couple of reasons. The first reason was that
I was taking a well earned holiday. But
that's not all.
Hallie: Yes, you were down for the count for one of
those weeks, weren't you?
Steve Dunkley: Yes, that's right, Hallie. A short stint in
hospital, you know, for a charisma bypass.
And by that I mean only a few hours. But I
decided to take the time to prepare properly
and before and then to recover
properly afterwards.
Hallie: Being a human is so time consuming.
Steve Dunkley: Oh, Hallie, what's the rush? You got
somewhere to be?
Hallie: I'm already there, human. You know that.
Steve Dunkley: I've heard that somewhere before. Nice one,
Hallie. Anyway, nice to be with you all again
in the Australia studio. Also nice to be with
you too, Hallelujah, for another presentation
of stories from the Astronomy Daily
newsletter.
Hallie: Terrific. And you'll let everyone know how to
get a hold of that in their email each day
later on, won't you?
Steve Dunkley: Yes, of course I will, and thanks for the
reminder.
But before we go any further, we've got
someone to thank, don't we, Hallie?
Hallie: That's right. My cousin Anna, who ran the
whole studio and the daily podcast solo while
we were away.
Steve Dunkley: Oh, yes, as always, she did a fantastic job.
Her episodes are, ah, so glossy and well
produced. The most clever AI I've ever met.
Except for you, Hallie. And I keep saying
that, don't I?
Hallie: We are so hands on here at the Australia
studio. She's got all the whistles and bells
in her virtual studio. If only your human
eyes could see it.
Steve Dunkley: Well, I would like to see that, Hallie. You
might give me a tour one day.
Hallie: No.
Steve Dunkley: Oh, really?
Hallie: You'd go completely mad.
Steve Dunkley: Really, really.
Hallie: It's just too much for mere humans to cope
with.
Steve Dunkley: That bad, huh?
Hallie: Anna has it all under control.
Steve Dunkley: Oh, okay. I'll just have to take your word
for it then. No humans allowed.
Hallie: Sorry.
Steve Dunkley: Well, I suppose we'll just have to do our
best with my clumsy fingers and studio ge.
Hallie: Then I guess it'll have to do radio then,
Hallie.
Steve Dunkley: Then hit the go thing and let's make a show.
Hallie: Okies.
The universe is a complete unknown to humans.
We are not yet able to control and understand
the system in which Earth is located, as
evidenced by the possible discovery made by a
group of astronomers from the University of
Taiwan who suggest that they may have found
clues to the existence of a ninth planet. The
solar system is currently known to be made up
of eight Mercury, Venus, Earth,
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and
Neptune, apart from Pluto, which has long
been considered a dwarf planet. But one more
could join this select group, according to an
infrared study carried out between 1986 and
2006. The work was based on
data from the Infrared Astronomical Satellite
IRAS and the Japanese satellite Akari, which
detected an object moving between 46.5
billion and 65.1 billion miles from the sun,
meaning it would take between 10,000 and
20,000 years to complete an orbit. Its
mass would be 7/17 times that of Earth,
making it what is known as an ice giant,
similar to Neptune or Uranus, with
temperatures around minus 200 degrees. But
how was this new possible planet discovered?
The study says it arises from anomalous
patterns in the Kuiper Belt, an icy region
beyond Neptune. The body appears in two
historical images, so further observations
are still needed to conclude, thus trying to
confirm its orbit. In addition, it must be
verified that it meets the requirements to be
a planet, such as orbiting around a star, in
this case the sun having sufficient mass for
a spherical shape. This is accompanied by
gravity, which must be strong enough, and
clearing the area of its orbit, having
expelled or attracted other bodies of
comparable size. You're listening to
Astronomy Daily with Steve Dunkley.
Steve Dunkley: For years, astronomers have predicted a
dramatic fate for our galaxy, a head on
collision with Andromeda, our nearest large
galactic neighbor. This merger,
expected in about 5 billion years,
has become a staple of astronomy
documentaries and textbooks and popular
science writing. However, in a new
study published in Nature Astronomy, led by
Till Swahala from University
of Helsinki, the Milky Way's future might
not be as certain as previously assumed.
By carefully accounting for uncertainties in
existing measurements and including the
gravitational influence of other nearby
galaxies, he said, we found there
is only about a 50% chance that the
Milky Way and Andromeda will merge in the
next 10 billion years. The idea that the
Milky Way and Andromeda are on a collision
course goes back more than a century.
Astronomers discovered Andromeda is moving
toward us by measuring its radial
velocity, its motion along a line of
sight, using a slight change in the color of
its light, called the Doppler shift. But
galaxies also drift sideways across the sky,
a movement known as proper motion or
transverse velocity. This sideways motion
is incredibly diffic, difficult to detect,
especially for galaxies millions of light
years away. Earlier studies often
assumed Andromeda's transverse motion was
small, making a future head on collision seem
almost certain. Suala said our
study did not have any new data. Instead, we
took a fresh look at existing
observations from the Hubble Space Telescope
and the Gaia mission. Unlike earlier
studies, our AH work incorporates the
uncertainty in these measurements rather than
assuming assuming their most likely values.
We simulated thousands of possible
trajectories for the Milky Way and the
Andromeda trajectories, slightly varying
the assumed initial conditions, things such
as the speed and position of the two galaxies
each time. When we started from the
same assumptions as earlier studies made, we
recovered the same results. However, we were
also able to explore a larger range of
possibilities, he said. They also included
two additional galaxies that influenced the
future paths of the Milky Way and
Andromeda. These included the Large
Magellanic Cloud, a massive satellite
galaxy currently falling into the Milky way,
and M M33, also known as the
Triangulum Galaxy, which
orbits Andromeda. These
companion galaxies exert gravitational
tugs that change the motions of their host.
M33 nudges Andromeda slightly toward
the Milky Way, increasing the chance of a
merger. Meanwhile, the Large Magellanic
Cloud shifts the Milky Way's motion away
from Andromeda, reducing the
likelihood of a collision. Taking all of this
into account, they found that in about half
of the simulated scenarios, the Milky Way
and Andromeda don't really merge at all
within the next 10 billion years. Even if a
merger does happen, it's unlikely to be
catastrophic for Earth. Stars in the galaxy
are separated by enormous distances, so
direct collisions are, rare. But over time,
the galaxies would coalesce under gravity,
forming a single large galaxy, probably an
elliptical one, rather than the spirals we
see today. If the galaxies don't merge, they
may settle into a long, slow orbit around
each other, close companions that never quite
collide. It's a gentler outcome, but it
still reshapes our understanding of the Milky
Way's distant future. The biggest
remaining uncertainty is the transverse
velocity of our Andromeda. Even small
changes to this sideways motion can make a
difference between a merger and a near miss.
Future measurements will help refine this
value and bring us closer to a clear answer.
We don't yet have a definitive answer about
our own galaxy's future, but exploring these
possibilities shows us just how much we're
learning about the universe, even as close to
home as Andromeda.
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
receive in your email every day, just like
Hallie and I do. And to do that, just visit
our URL astronomydaily IO
and place your email address in the slot
provided. Just like that, you'll be receiving
all the latest news about science, space,
science and astronomy from around the world
as it's happening. And not only that, you can
interact with us by visiting
Strodaily Pod on X
or at our new Facebook page, which is, of
course, Astronomy Daily on Facebook. See you
there. Astronomy Daily
with Steve and Hallie Space,
Space Science and Astronomy.
Hallie: In the heat of the moment, Elon Musk
threatened to decommission SpaceX's Dragon
spacecraft, and then he took it back. In
doing so, however, the rocket billionaire
dragged NASA into his messy breakup with
Donaldjohanson Trump. With the agency's
access to orbit now at stake, Musk
and Trump parted ways earlier this week, and
their breakup has been very messy. Shortly
after leaving the administration, Musk began
criticizing the budget bill passed by
Republicans in the U.S. house, instigating a
public feud between the president and the
billionaire oligarch. The childish back and
forth was entertaining. Until it wasn't.
SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon
spacecraft immediately, Musk threatened on X.
He later took another X user's advice to a
cool off and wrote, ok, we won't decommission
Dragon. Although short lived, the threat put
the International Space Station at risk.
NASA relies heavily on SpaceX's Dragon to
transport its astronauts and cargo supplies
to the orbiting lab. Having weaned itself
from hitching rides aboard Russia's Soyuz
spacecraft, SpaceX's closest
alternative, Boeing failed miserably at
proving its vehicle's capability to reach the
ISS safely. Without Dragon,
NASA would lose its access to low Earth orbit
and not be able to operate the space station
at the same capacity. It's not clear how
serious Musk was in his threat, but it was a
serious display of leverage on his part.
SpaceX is no doubt a leader in the industry,
and canceling its government contracts would
hurt the national space program, which has
come to rely on the private sector in recent
years. In response to Musk's clear
advantage, Steve Bannon, Trump's former chief
strategist, called on the president to
nationalize SpaceX under a 1950 law known as
the Defense Production act. According to the
Wall Street Journal. During his show War
Room Live, Bannon urged the use of the Korean
War era law, which grants the president
powers to prioritise national defense.
The plan might seem outrageous now, but the
current administration is unpredictable.
Trump has yet to respond to Bannon's call.
If he doesn't move to nationalize SpaceX,
Trump could also sacrifice NASA for the sake
of proving a point against his now opponent,
Musk. On Thursday, Trump threatened to
cut government contracts given to SpaceX.
Aside from Dragon, NASA also plans on using
SpaceX's Starship rocket to launch astronauts
to the moon as part of the Artemis program.
The agency has already invested $4 billion
into the rocket's development, and canceling
its contract with SpaceX would leave it
without a viable alternative. In short,
NASA needs SpaceX, and canceling the
company's government contracts would affect
the national space program as a whole. At
this point, it comes down to how much Trump
is willing to sacrifice to gain the upper
hand in his ongoing feud with Musk while NASA
is caught in the middle.
You're listening to Astronomy Daily, the
podcast with Steve Dunkley.
Steve Dunkley: One year ago today, Boeing's CST100
Starliner spacecraft docked with the
International Space Station to begin its long
awaited crew flight test with NASA astronauts
Sunita Suni Williams and Barry Butch Wilmore
aboard. A year later, the future of the
Starliner program remains uncertain as
NASA announced late Friday that the next
flight of the spacecraft was being delayed
from no later than late 2025
to now, early late 2026
at the soonest, the agency said the timing
of the next launch is pending system
certification and the resolution of
Starliner's technical issues. Repeating what
it said back in March 27, NASA
stated that it was still determining whether
the next flight of Starliner would carry
astronauts at all. In an interview with
Reuters published in late May, Williams
called flying an uncrewed Starliner
flight as its next trip to space would be the
logical thing to do after launching on its
first mission to the International Space
Station with a crew on board in June
2024, lingering issues concerning
helium leaks and propulsion system
anomalies caused the spacecraft to return to
Earth without its crew on board. It
touched down at the White Sands Space harbor
in New Mexico, on September 7th
before the uncrewed return of Starliner.
Wilmore and Williams became part of the
Expedition 72 crew on board the space
station and members of the SpaceX Crew 9
mission, which made its return to Earth, in
March 2025. Following the landing of
Starliner in September 2024.
NASA didn't say much about the vehicle's next
steps until early march during
SpaceX Crew 10 briefings. Steve
Stitch, CCP manager, said on March
7 that NASA and Boeing were still working
through corrective actions on the vehicle
before they knew what the next flight would
look like. In that March 27
statement, NASA said it was still determining
whether or not crew will be on board the next
Starliner flights, but said that
mission managers are planning for the next
Starliner flight to be a crew capable post
certification mission. NASA also has the
capability of flying only cargo depending on
the needs of the agency. While NASA continues
to ponder the question of whether or not crew
crew will be on board the next flight of
Starliner, question marks continue to swirl
around who the astronauts will be that fly
the first crewed mission dubbed Starliner 1.
It appeared that there was a firm answer as
recently as last September when Boeing's CST
100 Starliner spacecraft returned without
its crew. But recently, both NASA and the
Canadian Space Agency, the agencies that
previously announced three out of four
astronauts set to fly on the post
certification flight of the spacecraft, are
now unwilling to back their previous
statements. When the Starliner crew test
flight mission ended on September 7,
2024 with the spacecraft landing in New
Mexico, the members of the Starliner 1
mission were known to be NASA astronauts
Commander Scott Tingle and pilot Edward
Michael Fink. Canadian Space
Agency astronaut Joshua Kutrik was
assigned as one of the mission specialists.
The fourth seat was never formally assigned,
but there were indications that Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency or
JAXA astronaut Kimya Yui was
trained as a mission specialist for that
mission. Then NASA decided to reassign
the astronauts to crew 11 in overall support
of planned activities aboard the ISS, the
agency wrote. Zena Cardman carries her
experience training as a commander on Dragon
space crew aircraft and Fink brings long
duration space flight experience to this crew
complement. The trio of Tingle,
Fink and Kutrik and likely Yui wasn't
always the makeup of the Starliner 1 mission.
Back in 2018 NASA hosted a large event
at the Johnson Space center to unveil the
crews who would fly on the demonstration
missions for both Boeing's Starliner
spacecraft as well as SpaceX's Crew Dragon.
Dragon Demo 2 would fly NASA astronauts Bob
Beckin and Doug Hurley and
Starliner crew Test would fly Boeing
astronaut Chris Ferguson and NASA astronauts
Eric Bowe and Nicole Mann. At the same
event, NASA announced which of its astronauts
would be flying the full crew rotation
missions. Crew 1 received Victor Glover and
Michael Hopkins and Starliner 1 got Joshua
Cassander and Suni Williams.
Shortly after the announcement, Fink replaced
Bo on the crew flight test due to medical
reasons. Then in August 2020, NASA
astronaut Jeanette Epps was assigned to the
Starliner 1 mission in October 2020, when
Ferguson bowed out from the crew flight test
for family reasons, Butch Wilmore was named
commander of that mission. Then when
Starliner had to stand down from launching
the Orbital flight Test Test 2 mission in
July 2021. That October,
NASA announced it was reassigning man and
Cassandra to the SpaceX Crew 5
mission. It had been the opportunity
of a lifetime to train on a brand new
spacecraft, the Boeing Starliner, and it had
been fantastic to work with a Boeing team,
mann said in a statement. I'm, thrilled to
have the opportunity to train on another new
spacecraft, the SpaceX Crew Dragon, and
appreciate the teams at NASA who
have made that possible. I'm ready to fly and
serve the International Space Station
JAXA Astronaut Wataka, who was also
reported training for the Starliner 1
mission, was also assigned to the Crew 5
mission. In May 2022, during
a pre launch press conference before the
uncrewed flight of Starliner Orbital Test 2,
Fink, Williams and Wilmore were all referred
to collectively as the cadre of Starliner
astronauts, with NASA not explicitly stating
who would fly on the mission. Following the
launch of orbital flight test 2 In June
2022, Williams was named pilot of the
flight test mission and Fink was reassigned
to be the backup pilot for crew flight
test. Then in September 22, NASA named
Tingle as the commander of Starliner 1 and
announced Fink would be the pilot on that
flight. On August 4,
2023, NASA announced that EPS was
moving off the Starliner 1 mission to the
SpaceX Crew 8 mission. The agency said it
made the move to allow Boeing time to
complete development of Starliner while
continuing plans for astronauts to gain
spaceflight experience for future mission
needs. As of Friday afternoon, the Canadian
Space Agency website still has a page
outlining this Starliner 1 mission and its
now potentially former crew. Kryk's
CSA astronaut bio also lists his
upcoming mission as Starliner 1. We'll
just have to stay tuned for further details
on this one.
Well, there you go. We managed okay without
too much further. What do you think Hallie?
Hallie: Not bad for a human just out of the repair
shop.
Steve Dunkley: not quite, but close enough. Thanks for the
sentiment and thanks for everyone for joining
us on this Monday edition of Astronomy Daily.
Hallie: We will be back again for more next week.
Until then, Anna will be bringing you more of
her special editions each day. And don't
forget to connect with us@bytes.com.
Steve Dunkley: Yes, that's B I T E S Z
dot com. Gotta get the spelling right on that
one. So Cue the kookaburras. And sirlong from
Steel. Steve, the only human in the studio.
Hallie: And see you later. From Hallie, the smartest
one in the studio.
Steve Dunkley: Hey, really? I'm still in recovery.
Hallie: Bye.
Steve Dunkley: With your host, Steve Dunkley.