Prime Video offers the best in entertainment. This should be fun. Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista go completely down in the hilarious new action film The Wrecking Crew. Inbegrepen by Prime. Yeah, I'm pumped. Find the new Game of Thrones series A Night of the Seven Kingdoms. Based on the bestseller of George R.R. Martin. Look by being a member of HBO Max. So be brave, be just. So whatever you want to find, Prime Video. Here you look at everything. Abonnement is revised. In-house conferencing is 18+. Algemene voorwaarden zijn van toepassing. I'm really not comfortable with this at all. Also, I love how we just didn't explain last episode. You know, we had that question last episode about, like, what's an asteroid? What's a comet? What's a meteor? We should have explained, like, I'm the astrophysicist. Robert's the astronomer. Rich is, like, the rocket scientist. And I'm here for the vibes, okay? And then, yeah, we should have explained the difference between those three different things because obviously they get confused. Anyway, these bonus episodes, right, we usually tackle... your questions that you've sent in. But if you listened to last episode, you'll notice we're a little bit questioned out after that. So we thought it would be fun to take the opportunity to look at the year ahead and chat about some of the biggest space events happening in 2026. So yeah, before we dive into that, I just want to say thank you again to everyone that supports this show. I realise it's not possible for everyone, but it really helps us keep making the show if you join the Supermassive Club for a small monthly fee. Not only do you get ad-free episodes, but there are a few forums on there and it's where me and a few other of the members chat about stargazing, book recommendations and more. So go to supermassive.supportingcast.fm to join or there's a link in our episode description. Right, admin over. Let's get on to talking about this year. And it is something that a few of you asked about. So listener Carolina, for example, wants to know what are the space missions we're most excited for this year? Good question, Carolina. And for me, it's got to be the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The launch is set for September of this year, but it might get pushed back to 2027. Who knows? We'll see. Hopefully it will be this year. Now, this is a true follow up to the Hubble Space Telescope. So I know we always talk about JWST as being like Hubble's successor. And I remember around when it was launched, that was sort of the narrative about JWST. But it really wasn't, right? JWST was completely different to Hubble. It was so much bigger. It looked in the infrared rather than visible wavelengths of light. Whereas Roman really is the follow-up. It's pretty much exactly the same size of mirror. It's looking at a similar wavelength or colours of light range of like visible with a little bit of infrared and a little bit of ultraviolet, but not quite as much as Hubble. The thing that's different, because I bet you're now thinking, well, it sounds exactly the same to Hubble. Why are you replacing it? Hubble is obviously also coming to the end of its life in terms of working, moving parts and its orbit and everything like that. But the reason Roman is different, it will just have a massive field view. It's like 100 times bigger than Hubble's field of view, but with the same resolution and clarity. So if you can imagine like Hubble images, but over such a more massive area. So it's really going to be very transformative. And over the first five years of observations, like it's set to image like 50 times the sky area that Hubble's image just in its like 30 years of service. So it's a very, very cool instrument. Three quarters of its time, it will be spent on like survey missions, you know, where it's like a designated thing that it's doing. It's always looking in certain parts of the sky, either to find exoplanets or map dark matter where it is in the universe or spot supernova for, you know, understanding the acceleration of the universe better, which is our next episode. But the rest of the time, it's going to be used like the Hubble Space Telescope and JWST are now in that, you know, astronomers will apply to use it for their specific science case and like drill down on something specific. and actually the call for proposals went out in December which was like the most insane email to get you know when like you're like you've been hearing about something coming online for ages and ages and ages then you finally get this email being like how would you like to use Roman apply for time to use it the deadline is March 2026 and you go ah how are we already at this point you know it's absolutely crazy it's such an exciting time uh for me and all my colleagues it is it's a huge one actually isn't it for this year it is huge yeah and i feel like not many people have heard about roman you know i feel like there's a lot of publicity on like the big ones being built on the ground like the extremely large telescopes and there's been a lot of on ruben obviously recently and you know there's been a lot on euclid and jwt but roman come on everyone it really will be then a sort of golden age for exploration with all these observatories and Hubble's still operating as well, which I just think is extraordinary. Yeah. Because we have the Hubble images alongside the James Webb images, but also to have these other observatories at the same time. Yeah, it's incredible. And I think I don't, I mean, I don't really remember, at least in the first last 10 years of my career, maybe a bit more than I was 13, like there being this kind of a time where there's been so many observatories coming online around about the same time. So it's going to be very transformative. Lots of telescopes doing big surveys, yes, but then also we've still got things like Roman to do that sort of detailed science that we like to do as well. And as we always say, it's the things that we don't know about as well. Like, what is this going to bring up? Like, it's so exciting. Robert, what about you? What are you excited for this year? Yeah, I mean, well, definitely Nancy Grace Roman. And, you know, it'll be interesting to see actually if the images are quite as iconic as Hubble. You know, presumably that's going to be about the team there really getting them out there, because I can just see that being, you know, hopefully we'll see those images splashed all over papers, all over websites and we'll be seeing those too. But there's a few really. I like the ESA plateau mission, which is coming possibly the end of this year, possibly early 2027. And this has the classic, you know, acronym constructed to make a word, planetary transits and oscillation of stars. So it sort of does what it says basically. So it's going to be looking for exoplanets around other stars through the transit method, searching about a million stars, but more distributed than Kepler was that did that. And there's a lot of UK involved, There a guy Don Palacco in Warwick who we should probably talk to at some point who was one of the people who instigated it And it going to be looking for Earth and larger exoplanets because in all of the ways we tried to find them there are relatively few, actually. You hear very often, Super Earth or Earth 2.0 in press releases and so on. We're not really there yet. We still need to be... If we think that planets like Earth are good places for life to evolve and emerge, you know we really do need to find a lot more of them to have some kind of handle on whether it's ubiquitous let alone to start actually finding out whether there's genuine in life on them or not yeah you're right though like there's not that many known like they're like the kind of number where you you know exoplanet scientists could can still sort of list them all by name and when i say name they're all like you know kepler 132f and like jg4 whatever it is you know it's all catalogue numbers so it is quite fun to think would we ever get to a stage where you can't list them all by name i'm sure someone would be able to but yeah i know exactly and that's the thing is it so maybe if we start to get hundreds of those that could be really an amazing step forward and just maybe you know some of those are gonna have life on them who knows but it's another of those incremental steps along the way and then the other one i quite like is there's the chinese lunar mission changi 7 which is going to include a south pole lander on the south polar moon that's significant because that's where there's water ice under the surface we think and it's also seen as a good site for a hopefully nicely international future moon base and i'm putting that in big is there is, it's not a very big area actually where you can put moon bases and get this, these things called the peaks of eternal light where they almost always have the sun above the horizons. They're good for solar power. And that area, those areas, little mountaintops and rims of craters and the amount of ice there probably isn't all that much, but it's very, very accessible. So I hope is really that, you know, that the powers collaborate on that rather than putting down a flag and trying to claim different sites. But regardless of that, I think it would be really cool to actually have images and uh and to have something on the ground on the surface they're doing that work to find out if there really is lots of water ice i haven't thought about this before but like how is it going to work with changi 7 being a south pole lander but also artemis is targeting the south pole as well so is there going to be some clashes i mean hopefully they're on slightly different sites you know you sort of hope that there's enough collaboration to make that work so and i can't remember the person who i spoke to i did write a piece about this actually for the BBC on space diplomacy. There is a whole sort of academic branch of space diplomacy. And that's the genuine concern that there will be two separate bases, possibly more, you know, with other countries like India or countries in the Middle East looking at also lunar exploration. Yeah, but on the same opposite sides of the same crater. Well, this is the thing, because it's a very crated area. Even though you think the South Pole will be big, there's probably not that many places you could like that. You say you could have, yeah, you could have, I don't know whether you saw the Apple TV series For All Mankind. And that had that very scenario. Only then it was the Soviet Union and the US, you know, sort of facing off over quite a small distance on the moon. But at the moment, that is the way things are lining up. You'll have a Chinese base on the moon and you'll have a US-led base on the moon. It makes so much sense, doesn't it, to be like, just talk to each other. I know that there's like lots of things to negotiate on that, but like surely pooling information would just be really helpful. But on that, I mean, there's so many Chinese missions happening this year. Obviously, there's Chang'e 7. There's also Tianwen 2, which is looking at collecting samples from an asteroid as well. They're also launching a space telescope and there's talk of a launch of a reusable rocket. it, okay, that's a private company looking into that. But I think once I started looking into this, I was like, oh, okay, China are doing quite a lot this year. There's quite a lot of variety there. On the whole collaboration, there is this UN Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space. I'm supposed to be going to the meeting in Vienna next month. And I don't know if the lunar stuff is coming up on the agenda, but it's the kind of thing they're supposed to talk about. So diplomats get in a room. I guess it's probably quite exciting if you're a diplomat, isn't it, really, to be talking about this stuff and they're supposed to thrash this stuff out so we'll see i really hope they do you know so but because as you say china is a really is doing really great things in space so it would be nice if that was done in collaboration and hopefully you know other domestic issues and terrestrial issues don't get in the way and richard is what about you is there anything else that you're looking forward to that we haven't mentioned already well i'd like to bring it back to a bit of idealism and the idealism of the voyager missions of uh launched in 1977 so voyager 1 and voyager 2 uh would have been going 49 years still going next year the 50th anniversary of these amazing missions and in november this year voyager 1 will be one light day wow from Wow. An arbitrary unit, yay. An arbitrary unit. So, you know, that means effectively, you know, it's a 24 hours for a signal from Voyager 1 to reach us. And I think it also shows just how big space is and how when we talk about, you know, interstellar travel, these dreams of traveling to the nearest stars or to these exoplanets, how long it takes using current technology. but it is extraordinary and it's extraordinary they can still receive a signal from this spacecraft that is so far so far away yeah outside our solar system and yet still what like 0.005 percent of the way to the next nearest star it's absolutely crazy so i've actually got up here how far away it is currently constantly changes currently right as we're recording this uh so it's going to be a lot further from the time we finish. But you look at the... Is that a crock? Is he's editing time, Isla? Excuse me, no, I think you'll find that we release an episode every two weeks. I think you'll find it's very heavily scheduled, yeah. It's all pre-planned. So it is currently, what, 15,928,048,720 miles away. Great. also can we say another thing that's happening in november 2026 is that after eight years beppy colombo is finally entering orbit around mercury and this is one of those things i've been talking to people about beppy colombo when was it was last year and people were like why did it take so long to get to mercury it not that far away and i like well you you could just fire it at Mercury but it would sling right past it and it wouldn slow down The reason it takes eight years to get there is because it has to slow down to actually enter its orbit around it But that's so exciting that it's nearly there. There's a lot of people who've been waiting a long time for that. I don't know how people work on missions like that, like make their research about like, you know, I'll now just launch it and I'll wait eight years. I just don't think I have the patience. No, not at all. It's launched. I'd like my answers now, please. Thank you very much. it is a real concern though in terms of the team so you develop a spacecraft you develop your your satellite or your spacecraft going to mercury you have all your team there you work out what your research is going to be what you do for those eight years so you have to go away you lose a lot for your team they go off and join other teams do something else expertise because like oh how we that whole instrument on board who wrote the code for that oh blah blah they retired five years ago like no one knows how to work that you know so you really have to like keep on top of that have you written your hand over come on um but yeah for those who are unfamiliar with beppy this will be this is a spacecraft which will then separate into two science orbiters so you've got the mercury planetary orbiter um which is going to look at the planet's surface and interior and then you've got something from the Japanese space agency JAXA which is the Mercury magnetospheric orbiter which I don't normally say correctly so that's a good one and that's looking at Mercury's really powerful magnetic environment so they're gonna together just tell us so much more about Mercury yeah because there's so much that we don't know about such a close planet yeah exactly okay and then so following on from that Anne Edgworth has also asked what stargazing events are we most looking forward to so I think we have to give this to Robert first first one yeah I mean it's got to be the total solar eclipse on the 12th of August right the first one in Europe since 2015 I know I know stole it from Becky um and that's and a total solar eclipse is when the the moon is directly between the earth and the sun and close enough to the earth because the moon's distance varies that it completely blocks out the bright surface of the sun the photosphere what that means is that day becomes night, more or less. And you see the wonderful outer atmosphere of the sun, the corona. And people travel from all over the world to see these things. But the good news with this one is that it's running across, well, Greenland and Iceland. So if you're adventurous, you could see, theoretically at least, see the eclipse and northern lights at the same time. Would that be amazing? It goes across the Atlantic, a tiny, tiny bit of Portugal, and then across Spain and the Balearic Islands. And yes, I am absolutely planning to go and see it. And we'll see. I mean, the weather forecast isn't too bad. So fingers crossed. Wait, they're forecasting it that far out in advance in August? Oh, only the, well, the climatological one. They look at the cloud cover typically at that type of year and stuff. Spain isn't terrible, but it's quite low in the sky. So you need to make sure you're not in a place where it's concealed by a forest or mountains or buildings or something like that. And that's a consideration. That is a concern, isn't it, about this eclipse? Because it's so low. Yeah, it's like a sunset. Yeah. Yeah. So is a good bet to try and be able to see is to be actually on the ocean? Honestly, I guess it depends where you are. Are we chartering a boat? Is this what's happening? Wouldn't that be great? I think yes and no. If you're on a boat. Please don't promise that, Robert. Please don't promise that. I'm leaving that in the edit and sharing that with the world. We'll use some of Becky's consultancy fee for it, I think. That would cover it, right? Job done. I'm sure some astronomers somewhere have a boat. I'm sure I can find a colleague who's like, yeah, I've got some, let's do it. If you're listening to this and you're a chartered captain, please get in touch. I mean, it's a good idea. You have to be very agile, I think, because if you go out into the Atlantic, as we all know, we all live in Britain, we know what the weather's like, and the Atlantic is that on steroids, really. So you can at least move around. And if you've got good forecasts and you're able to travel quickly, you might be able to get to the place where the sky is clear. But at sunset, it's harder because, you know, you really need that sight line through the atmosphere is so long. You really have to get very lucky that there are no clouds in the way. But, you know, that said. Sunsets are like my favourite thing. So just like see a sunset and an eclipse at the same time. Like a sunset toenail sun. Toenail moon, I accepted, but toenail sun, come on. It's so lyrically. Oh, we got through the whole episode without mentioning it. I'm going to start charging you, Becky. A fiver goes in the toenail jar every time. Oh, don't start my toenail jar. Lovely call. Anyway, I guess I've got to pick something different now. I'll have to say something new because Robert picked the eclipse. So I always look forward to the Perseids meteor shower, which peaks in August at the new moon. So because the eclipse is obviously at the new moon on the 12th, it means the Perseids peaks at the same time. So I was thinking about how convenient that is. If you are planning a trip, you know, make sure that when you're planning your eclipse trip, you plan somewhere, you know, close to maybe like a darker sky site. So maybe the middle of the ocean is a great shower, Izzy. Maybe that is what we should do. I've got some research to do, guys. Leave it with me. But I was looking as well. Obviously, we all know favorite planet is Saturn. And Saturn does reach opposition on the 4th of October, 2026. so opposition is when it is closest in its orbit to earth essentially because you can draw a straight line between the sun earth and saturn it's in the opposite part of the sky from the sun hence opposition which means it rises you know at sunset and sets at sunrise so it's visible all night and it's the brightest that it gets in the sky because it's like fully lit from our perspective here on earth by the sun um plus the rings will have tilted again by that point because you remember like last year they were right edge on the rings so you can barely even see them they were just tiny skinny thin line so you would show it to people who've never seen saturn in a telescope before and they'd be like where are the rings and you'd be like i'm so so sorry but they're not visible at the moment and they'd be like what um so yeah they will just have an amazing view when saturn's at our position the rings will be tilted up to us and i just love seeing other people see saturn through a telescope for the first time i just like share in their joy right i've had people claim that it looks like the people like you've put a sticker on the end of the telescope and i'm like i haven't i promise that's just what it looks like it looks so so cool so i am looking forward to that i think just because it'll be winter or getting into winter time again the nights will be longer there'll just be lots of opportunity to see saturn whenever you do have a clear night and yeah i just love it so much richard what about you anything else that you want to throw in there I think Becky said it all really with looking at the planets for a telescope is just the most extraordinary thing And that's my pledge for the year is just get my act together with my telescope, get my gear together, get everything ready to go. So essentially, you know, set up the telescope properly during the day, check the batteries are all set up, check the sighting is all right, get it going. So all and get the big coat. get everything ready so it's like my clarinet practice if the clarinet is there and set up I will play it if it's in the case I won't so get everything set up get it all working and get out and it sounds like you're a father like packing the hospital bag before like a baby's born you're like I've got everything ready for when I'm told to go go go it's a bit that it's so interesting because I was looking at like what do I want from this year and one of my goals for this year was to be a better astronomer and so I have decided I am finally going to get a sea star nice and I also want to dabble a bit more with astrophotography so I just hopefully we do an astrophotography episode Izzy and that can be like your revision for oh my goodness that would be amazing I'll just be like furiously note-taking and then yes okay got it um so I can't say that there is one major event it's just kind of being like just see more of them look up more i know what you mean i feel like i've been a bit of a bad astronomer in the past like year or so because i'm just like i might just stay asleep i did get out for the northern lights for the invisible light back in may 2024 that was fine izzy i know that's still a sore point for you we'll move on um hey i did i have seen them i made the second one it's fine yeah sure but i feel like i'm just being like i'll just stay in bed and i'm like no get up you know these really are once in a lifetime get up out of bed yes i um the thing that's holding me back is not having a good thermos flask so well you know there's a better star and a thermos flask there we go there's some really nice designs for thermos there's some really retro designs for thermos flasks because i did ask for one for christmas didn't get one so i might because you're absolutely right so that's these to go in my emergency hospital kit as Becky described it. So yeah, I just need everything ready to go. I need everything ready to go, everything set up because I looked at the sky a couple of nights ago and got out of the car, looked at the sky. It was really cold and I guess this is fantastic. I should get a telescope out. And then you think about all the fast and the calibration of the setup. Yeah, exactly. Exactly that. The telescope's not aligned. This is why sea stars are great because you just press a button on your phone and it does it. Well, yes. lazy astronomers hey i was just said i'd do more i didn't say i'd you know work harder but what about is there anything else that you guys are excited for for 2026 we've covered a lot i just want to pick up on the on the artemis i would like to see some progress on a moon lander for for nasa we can you know we debated the whether it was a good thing or a bad thing to go back to the moon in the last episode but i think with the you know nasa's talked about artemis 3 landing in 2028 that's really not going to happen i can't see how that can possibly happen because there is no lander so i'd like to see some progress whether that's from blue origin or spacex or just something something else otherwise we lose the momentum so whatever you think about artemis you're going to have artemis 2 going around the moon the idea is to then go back and land on the moon but we could so easily lose the momentum after artemis 2 unless there is a lander ready to go great point robert it's a good point yeah yeah well i mean i'm gonna look more prosaically at more things in the sky i think and it's we're still it's worth remembering it was remembering we're still at you know not far off sunspot maximum the sun's still very active and even what a couple of weeks ago there was another great display the northern lights over the uk which i managed to miss because the only part of the uk that had cloud was the southeast but never mind i'm not bitter i've seen them before and australia too like those people in australia that were seeing it which you forget how far like north australia actually is in comparison to like how how fast north we are do you want to try to say they're not as close to the poles as well the circles as we are up here in europe right yeah but they still know they had a grave view exactly so so it's still there so still you know do still keep in on that it's still that nice time and i think we've been really really so lucky with this whole series of brilliant displays actually I can't remember previous sunspot cycles where it was that good so so fingers crossed for a few more of those and the other the other as well as the Perseids the Geminis meteor and shower is a bit in December is a bit overlooked but it was really good this year um you know if you get clear skies and let's face it December's a bit chancy actually it's a really good one to look out for so little celestial events like that do keep an eye on those or obviously keep telling you about those on this podcast and here's hoping fingers crossed for just a lovely comet that we can see with the naked eye just in case well there is a prospect of one there is a tentative prospect i'm trying to remember the name but it's a kreutz sungrazer it's been discovered it's still quite far from the sun it's going to get quite close to the sun and these can be quite bright so we will see and i think it's predicted to be bright in april thereabouts but it's early days so we probably need to be listening to the next podcast or so when we've got a bit more information on it but that is was that yr4 was it yr4 no it's c2026a1 maps there we go so that's the the memorable name associated with that but yeah as they all are but but yeah that's another one just possibly in the spring there'll be a nice comment in the sky who knows i think listeners need to chip in with what they would call that comment because we need an easier name well people are calling it comet maps now M-A-P-S right so you can call it maps I want it to be more zany personally but anyway that's something for another time another time I think that is it for this episode we've covered so much if you would like to add to the supermassive mailbox then please do you can email your questions your pictures anything else to podcast at rs.ac.uk send them on instagram at supermassivepod or if you're a member of the supermassive club then you can post them in the forum we'll be back in a few weeks time where we'll be diving into what the heck is going on with our understanding of the acceleration of the universe i'm very excited for that one um i just love cosmology is really fun to talk about not so much to do and i think we might have our first ever nobel prize winning guest on the show but tbc we'll have to see what happens he doesn't make promises but yes fingers crossed yeah and i'm sure i hope that will bring you back to listen to the podcast because if that doesn't then nothing else will but until next time everybody happy stargating
