Hour 2 of Ottawa Now for Wed. August 5th, 2026

An abandoned four-tonne SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Upper Stage is on a collision course with the Moon – expected to crash at over 8,700 kilometres-per-hour this week. While the impact near the Einstein Crater poses no risk to Planet Earth, scientists plan to use space telescopes to study the debris plume from the impact, providing a unique opportunity to analyze subsurface lunar materials. Jesse Rogerson, an astrophysicist at York University, joins Kristy Cameron in Hour 2. Meantime, it’s a hot August afternoon in Canada’s Capital. And if you’ve been longing for a swim, perhaps you’ve been looking at the Rideau River or perhaps the Ottawa River. But after those massive July storms drenched Ottawa, triggering raw sewage overflows right into the river, a lot of us are asking if those bodies of water are actually safe to jump in. That begs the question: Are they? We dig deeper with Banu Ormeci, the Director of the Carleton Global Water Institute.