These are my notes and expanded thoughts from this month’s Space News segment on ABC Radio Hobart and ABC Northern Tasmania. Every month I join Lucie Cutting on Sunday mornings to chat about what’s happening above and beyond.
Here’s what we discussed, plus some of my notes, and expanded thoughts from this edition of the programme:
Water on the moon?
China just made space history, and it’s not the headline you’d expect. Back in June 2024, their Chang’e-6 mission became the first spacecraft ever to return samples from the lunar far side. The mission was very cool (a technical term), requiring a relay satellite just to communicate, since radio signals can’t pass through a moon’s worth of solid rock.
Within the 1,935 grams of lunar soil were microscopic fragments of the rarest meteorites in existence: CI chondrites, water-bearing asteroids from the outer Solar System. These fragments contain a bunch of water (20% water by weight), locked inside hydrated minerals that have remained pristine for billions of years.
Less than 1% of meteorites found on Earth are CI chondrites because Earth’s atmosphere destroys them on entry. But the Moon has no atmosphere so it’s been quietly collecting and preserving these ancient visitors in perfect condition. This is some of the first physical proof that water-rich asteroids bombarded the inner Solar System early in its history. The concentration of these fragments suggests CI chondrites could account for 30% of the Moon’s meteorite collection, which is significantly higher than anyone expected. And if they were hitting the Moon, they were hitting Earth too…
This is relevant because we can use this new knowledge to learn where the Earth’s oceans came from. China’s lunar samples provide compelling evidence… water-bearing asteroids from the outer solar system may have delivered the water that makes life on Earth possible. The Moon preserved the evidence that Earth’s atmosphere destroyed! Exciting.
The mission also brought back multi-billion year old volcanic basalt, proving ancient volcanism on the far side, which may help explain why the Moon’s hemispheres evolved so differently. The far side has far fewer volcanic plains than the near side we see from Earth, and scientists still don’t fully understand why.
A lot more missions are planned: Chang’e-7 will search for water ice at the south pole in 2026 using a hopping probe (which is as nifty as it sounds), and Chang’e-8 will follow in 2028, testing whether we can use lunar resources to make bricks and sustain life support systems. There’s also an International Lunar Research Station in planned for the 2030s.
The “Quiet” Supersonic Jet
NASA’s X-59 is a technological marvel and an environmental disaster waiting to happen. The X-59 can fly at Mach 1.42 at 55,000 feet while producing a sonic boom that sounds like a car door slamming instead of an explosive bang. That’s 75 decibels versus Concorde’s window-shattering 105-110 decibels.
This is because its engine is mounted on top of the fuselage, and the aircraft has a super-long nose. Combined, this redirects shockwaves away from the ground. Modern supercomputer modeling made this possible thanks to aerodynamic calculations that were likely impossible during the Concorde era.
This means the world of capitalism is very excited about potentially overturned the long-standing ban on supersonic flight over land, and reigniting supersonic travel in general. This could be great for travel, but also medicine, and disaster response.
With all that said, it’s not going to be great for the environment. New supersonic aircraft would burn significantly more fuel per passenger-mile than conventional aircraft. Some estimates show 8 times as much fuel as a Boeing 777 for a trans-Atlantic trip. Concorde burned 16 times more fuel per passenger-mile than a Boeing 747.
Flying at 55,000 feet releases pollution that depletes the ozone layer, and water vapour and black carbon linger for years in the stratosphere, acting as greenhouse gases. The stratosphere doesn’t clean itself quickly like the lower atmosphere—pollutants released there can persist for years, continuously damaging the ozone layer we spent decades healing from CFCs. NASA acknowledges the X-59 “does not do everything that we’re going to need to have sustainable supersonic air transportation.” Critics call it “putting Humvees in the sky” and a potential “climate debacle.”
What We Didn’t Get To
We were going to talk about October 2025, the month NASA went dark during the second-longest government shutdown in U.S. history (which at the time of posting this is still going). While a huge percentage of NASA’s workforce was furloughed, some remarkable things happened in silence: Artemis II’s complete vehicle assembly (humanity’s return to the Moon, ready to go), a major policy shift reopening competition for the Artemis III lunar lander, Japan’s successful HTV-X1 cargo ship docking with the ISS, Mars rovers observing an interstellar comet, and Perseverance continuing to study the “Cheyava Falls” rock which is one of the best candidates for ancient life signs ever discovered.
All of this happened without NASA being able to communicate with the public. No press conferences, no mission updates, no social media. Meanwhile, JPL lost 500 more jobs on top of previous layoffs and the largest space advocacy event in U.S. history (nearly 300 advocates from 38 states meeting with 250 congressional offices) struggled for attention, overshadowed by shutdown coverage. Alas.
But we ran out of time to properly cover it. Maybe next month we’ll talk about what it means when American democracy can’t sustain long-term scientific endeavors because they can’t fund their government past October 1st… or perhaps that’s too depressing.
Next month I’ll be back on ABC Radio Hobart and ABC Northern Tasmania with Lucie for more space news.
View the archive of Space News.