James et al. report the detection of a burst of emission over a 695 MHz to 1031 MHz bandwidth with ASKAP. The burst was localised through analysis of near-field time delays to the long-decommissioned Relay 2 satellite, and exhibited a dispersion measure consistent with expectations for a single pass through the ionosphere. After coherent dedispersion, the burst was determined to be less than 30 ns in width (as illustrated in the figure above), with an average flux density of at least 300 kJy. The team consider an electrostatic discharge (ESD) or plasma discharge following a micrometeoroid impact to be plausible explanations for the burst. ESDs have previously been observed with the Arecibo radio telescope, but on 1000 times longer timescales. These observation opens new possibilities for the remote sensing of ESD, which poses a serious threat to spacecraft, and reveals a new source of false events for observations of astrophysical transients. Clancy James has given a description of this work in an article in The Conversation. (Image credit: Clancy James)