Avery: Welcome to Astronomy Daily, the podcast
bringing you the biggest news from across the
cosmos. I'm Avery.
Anna: And I'm Anna. It's great to have you with us.
Today we'll be looking at Google's ambitious
plan to build data centers in space. A
dangerously close encounter between two
satellites in orbit, and a new theory that a
rogue planet may have reshaped our entire
solar system.
Avery: Plus, we'll explore how Mars might be
secretly influencing Earth's climate. And
celebrate an incredible new milestone for the
legendary V Voyager 1 spacecraft.
Let's get right into it.
Anna: Ready when you are.
Avery: So, Anna, our first story sounds like it's
straight out of science fiction. Google wants
to put data centers in space. It's
called Project Suncatcher.
Anna: It does have that futuristic feel, but the
reasoning behind it is actually very
practical. On Earth, data centers consume
an immense amount of electricity, and a huge
portion of that just goes to keeping them
cool.
Avery: Right. So the idea is, in space, you've got
unlimited solar power, and the cold vacuum is
a perfect and free cooling system.
Anna: That's the core concept. They envision a
constellation of satellites, each equipped
with powerful TPU chips, forming a
distributed data center in orbit. They're
planning to launch the first two prototype
satellites in early 2027 to test the
idea.
Avery: But it can't be that simple. I imagine space
throws a few curveballs at sensitive
electronics.
Anna: Mm, Several big ones. Cosmic radiation
is a constant threat that can corrupt data
and damage hardware. Thermal management is
also more complex than you think. You have to
actively radiate heat away from the sun
facing side.
Avery: And I'm guessing the launch costs aren't
cheap.
Anna: They're astronomical. So Even if the
2027 demonstration is a success,
Google is very clear that this is just the
first step in a project that could take time,
decades to realize. It's a bold long term
vision.
Avery: This is a developing story, so we'll be sure
to keep an eye out for updates.
Anna: Speaking of crowded skies, our next story
is a bit of a cautionary tale. A recently
launched Chinese spacecraft from a Kinetica
1 rocket had a very close pass with one of
SpaceX's Starlink satellites.
Avery: Okay, how close is very close when you're in
orbit?
Anna: The two came within 200 meters of each
other at orbital speeds of thousands of
miles per hour. That is incredibly small
margin for error. A collision would have been
catastrophic.
Avery: Wow. So what went wrong?
Anna: SpaceX used the incident to highlight a
growing problem. A fundamental lack of
coordination and communication between
different satellite operators. Low Earth
orbit is becoming dangerously congested.
Avery: I believe it. The number of satellites has
just exploded in the last few years.
Anna: It has. We're now at about
13,000 functional satellites, which is
a huge jump from just hundred back
in 2020. Most of that increase is from
Starlink.
Avery: And don't the Starlink satellites have an
autonomous collision avoidance system?
Anna: They do, and it performs thousands of
maneuvers. But the system is only as good as
the tracking data it has. When new
uncoordinated objects appear, it makes the
situation far more dangerous for everyone.
This is the exact scenario that could lead to
the Kessler Syndrome, where one.
Avery: Collision creates a cloud of debris which
causes more collisions, creating a feedback
loop until orbit is unusable.
Anna: Precisely. This near miss serves as
a stark warning. Better international space
traffic management isn't a luxury anymore.
It's a necessity.
Avery: All right, let's journey from the chaos of
the near future back to the chaos of the
distant past. I love these stories. A
new study proposes that a rogue planet may
have completely rearranged our early solar
system.
Anna: Mm It's a really compelling idea that tries
to solve a long standing puzzle called the
giant planet Instability.
Avery: Okay, what's that?
Anna: Well, evidence suggests that the giant
planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and
Neptune didn't form in their current
stable orbits billions of years ago. They
went through a violent reshuffling with their
orbits shifting dramatically.
Avery: Right, and this instability event explains a
lot of weird things about our solar system.
Like the structure of the Kuiper Belt and the
existence of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids.
Anna: Exactly. But the big question has always
been what kicked it all off? This
new research ran simulations and found that
a close flyby from a wandering substellar
object could have been the trigger.
Avery: So you mean a rogue planet or something even
bigger just drifted through our cosmic
neighborhood and stirred the potential?
Anna: Essentially, yes. The simulations show
an object between three and 30 times the
mass of Jupiter. So a super Jupiter or a
small brown dwarf passing through the outer
solar system could have provided just the
right gravitational nudge to send the giant
planets into that chaotic dance that
ultimately shaped the solar system we see
today.
Avery: That is amazing. To think that the layout of
our home is potentially the result of a
chance encounter with a cosmic wanderer
billions of years ago.
Anna: And speaking of cosmic connections, our next
story suggests that one of our neighbors has
had a much bigger influence on us than we
thought. It turns out Mars may have
been secretly pulling the strings on Earth's
climate for eons.
Avery: Mars? But it's so much smaller than Earth.
How could it have such a big impact?
Anna: Through the subtle Persistent tug of
gravity. A new study analyzed deep
sea sediment cores which hold a record of
Earth's past climate. They found that the
gravitational interactions between Earth and
Mars appear to amplify long term
climate rhythms here on Earth.
Avery: What kind of rhythms are we talking about?
Like seasons?
Anna: Much, much longer. The study focused on
the 100,000 year cycles that are
strongly linked to the coming and going of
our ice ages. These are primarily driven by
predictable changes in Earth's orbit and tilt
known as Milinkovitch cycles.
Avery: Okay, so where does Mars fit in?
Anna: The combined gravity of Earth and Mars
creates a sort of resonance in the solar
system. A grand cycle that repeats every
2.4 million years. This resonance
amplifies the effects of the Milinkovitch
cycles, making the swings between glacial and
interglacial periods more pronounced.
Avery: So the red Planet is helping to dictate our
ice ages. I always think of the sun and Moon
as the big players, but I never would have
guessed Mars had a say. The solar system is
more interconnected than I thought. Thought.
Anna: It's a beautiful reminder that no planet is
an island.
Avery: For our final story today, we're heading out
of the solar system and into the vastness of
interstellar space. The legendary
spacecraft Voyager 1 is about to hit an
absolutely staggering milestone.
Anna: This one is truly mind bending. In
November of 2026, Voyager 1
will be one light day from Earth.
Avery: One light day. Lets put that in perspective.
That means a radio signal traveling at the
absolute fastest speed possible. The speed of
light will take a full 24 hours to
travel from Earth to the spacecraft.
Anna: And Then another 24 hours for a reply
to get back to us. That's a 48 hour
round trip just to send a command and confirm
it was received. The distance is almost
incomprehensible.
Avery: It really is. And to think it launched in
1977, it's the most distant
human made object still operating on
1970s technology.
Anna: It's an absolute marvel of engineering. It
has overcome so many challenges over the
decades, including a very serious memory
failure just recently that the team at ah,
NASA managed to diagnose and fix from
nearly 24 billion kilometers away.
Avery: That's like performing remote surgery from
across the solar system. Unbelievable.
And it's still sending useful data.
Anna: It is, it's our only direct source of
information about the interstellar medium,
the space between the stars.
Unfortunately its nuclear power source
is slowly fading. It's expected to go
silent for good sometime in the2030s.
Avery: But even then its journey isn't over. It will
just keep drifting through the Milky Way
forever.
Anna: Exactly. A silent ambassador
carrying its golden record. With the sights
and sounds of humanity, it will likely
outlast Earth itself. A true legend
of exploration.
Avery: And what a perfect, humbling note to end on.
From data centers in our own backyard to a
lonely probe tasting the space between stars,
what a day for astronomy.
Anna: News it certainly was. To
recap, we discussed Google's orbital
ambitions, a traffic jam in space, a
a rogue planet shaking up our past,
Mars's surprising influence on our climate,
and Voyager 1's incredible,
lonely journey.
Avery: Thanks so much for joining us on Astronomy
Daily. We'll be back tomorrow with more news
from across the universe. Until then, keep
looking up clear skies.
Anna: Astronomy Day
stories.