Artemis 2 Delayed, SpaceX Unveils Stargaze Safety System

Anna: Welcome to Astronomy Daily, your source for

the latest space and astronomy news. I'm

Anna.

Avery: And I'm Avery. We're here to bring you

today's cosmic headlines on this Wednesday,

February 4, 2026.

Anna: We've got a packed show today with some

significant developments. NASA's Artemis

2 mission has hit another speed bump with

their moon rocket, experiencing some familiar

issues during testing.

Avery: SpaceX is making headlines on two fronts

today. Launching an innovative new space

safety system while also deal with a

temporary grounding of their Falcon 9 rocket.

Anna: The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted

something extraordinary in the early

universe. A rare five way galaxy

merger that's challenging our understanding

of cosmic evolution.

Avery: Scientists have finally cracked a 50 year

mystery about why nearby galaxies seem to be

fleeing from us. And it involves a massive

cosmic void.

Anna: And we'll wrap up with fascinating new

research on runaway stars. Massive

stellar objects racing through the Milky Way

at incre speeds.

Avery: Let's dive in.

Anna: Our top story today comes from NASA's Kennedy

Space center in Florida, where Artemis 2

mission has been delayed by at least a month

following issues during a critical wet dress

rehearsal test.

Avery: This is the mission that will send four

astronauts on a flyby of the moon, the first

crewed lunar mission in over 50 years.

The crew includes NASA astronauts Reid

Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch

and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy

Hansen.

Anna: So what happened during this test? NASA

concluded a 49 hour practice countdown on

Tuesday after loading 700,000

gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen

into the massive Space Launch System rocket.

Avery: And early in the tanking process, as we

reported yesterday, they detected a hydrogen

leak from the interface that routes cryogenic

propellant into the rocket's core stage.

Sound familiar?

Anna: Unfortunately, yes. These hydrogen leaks

are reminiscent of the issues that plagued

the Artemis I launch attempts back in 2022.

However, there's some good news. They did

resolve the issue during this test and

actually achieved full tanking on the first

try, which NASA considers a tremendous

success.

Avery: That's actually quite significant progress.

The resolution involved stopping the hydrogen

flow, allowing the interface to warm up so

the seals could reseat and then adjusting the

flow of propellant. It worked, but it raised

concerns about launch day operations.

Anna: NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced

they're moving off the February launch window

and targeting March for the earliest possible

launch. The first opportunity next month is

Friday, March 6th at

8:29pm Eastern Time, with the window

extending through March 11th.

Avery: There were other issues too, weren't there? I

read about problems with a valve and some

communication dropouts.

Anna: Right, a, uh, valve associated with the Orion

crew Module hatch pressurization had to be re

torqued and closeout operations took longer

than planned. Cold weather affected several

cameras and other equipment. And perhaps most

concerning, there were dropouts in audio

communication channels that have been

recurring over the past few weeks.

Avery: What's the crew saying about all this?

Anna: Commander Reid Wiseman posted on social media

expressing immense pride in seeing the rocket

reach 100% fuel loading. Especially

knowing how challenging the scenario was for

the launch team. He said they're jumping back

into training tomorrow to start preparations

for March.

Avery: And uh, NASA's planning another wet dress

rehearsal before the actual launch, correct?

Anna: That's right. Launch Director Charlie

Blackwell Thompson confirmed they'll conduct

another wet dress before proceeding with the

actual launch. The team needs to fully review

all the data from this test, mitigate each

issue and return to testing before setting an

official target launch date.

Avery: It's a delay, but safety has to come first,

especially with a crewed mission to the moon.

Anna: From the Moon to low Earth orbit.

SpaceX has just unveiled a

revolutionary new space safety system called

stargaze that could fundamentally change

how we manage the increasingly crowded space

around our planet.

Avery: This is fascinating technology, Anna. Uh,

stargaze is a space situational awareness

system that uses data From M nearly 30,000

star trackers across the Starlink satellite

constellation to continuously monitor objects

in low Earth orbit.

Anna: 30,000 star trackers, that's an

incredible network. And they're detecting

approximately 30 million transits

daily across the fleet. That's uh, a several

order of magnitude increase in detection

capability compared to conventional ground

based systems.

Avery: The need for this kind of system has never

been more urgent. Practices like leaving

rocket bodies in LEO operators,

maneuvering satellites without sharing

trajectory predictions and anti satellite

tests have all heightened collision risks.

Conventional methods typically observe

objects only a limited number of times per

day, causing large uncertainties in orbital

predictions.

Anna: What makes Stargaze particularly powerful is

that it provides conjunction screening

results within minutes compared to the

current industry standard of several hours.

That speed can be the difference between a

successful collision avoidance maneuver and

a catastrophic impact.

Avery: Basics actually shared a real world example

that demonstrates just how critical the

system is. In late 2025, a

Starlink satellite encountered a uh,

conjunction with a third party satellite that

was performing maneuvers, but whose operator

wasn't sharing ephemeris data.

Anna: Ephemeris data, that's the trajectory

prediction information, right?

Avery: Exactly. So initially the close approach was

anticipated to be about 9,000 meters away,

considered a safe missed distance with zero

probability of collision. But then just five

hours before the conjunction, the third party

satellite performed a maneuver that Collapsed

the anticipated missed distance to just 60

meters.

Anna: 60 meters. That's terrifyingly close

in space terms.

Avery: Stargaze quickly detected this maneuver and

published an updated trajectory to the

screening platform, generating new

conjunction data messages that were

immediately distributed. The Starlink

satellite was able to react within an hour of

detecting the maneuver, planning an avoidance

maneuver to reduce coll back down to zero.

Anna: And here's the really important part. SpaceX

is making this data available to all

satellite operators free of charge. Starting

this spring, satellite operators who submit

their own trajectory predictions to the

platform will receive conjunction data

messages against stargaze data.

Avery: It's been in closed beta with over a dozen

participating satellite operators, and the

response has been positive. SpaceX is drawing

a parallel to commercial aviation. There are

hundreds of thousands of sites daily, but

they avoid collision broadcaster location and

flight plans to other aircraft.

Anna: SpaceX is calling on all spacecraft operators

to follow this same minimal standard of

sharing predicted trajectories, Starlink

updates and shares their ephemeris publicly

every hour as an example.

Avery: This is the kind of collaborative approach we

need. As space becomes more congested, it's

not just about protecting SpaceX's massive

constellation. It's about creating a safer

orbital environment for everyone.

Anna: Speaking of SpaceX, the company has

temporarily grounded its Falcon 9 rocket

following an issue with the upper stage on a

recent Starlink launch. And the timing

couldn't be more critical.

Avery: This happened on Monday, February 2nd. A UH

Falcon 9 successfully delivered 25

Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit as

planned. But after deploying the payloads,

the rocket's upper stage failed to perform

its deorbit burn.

Anna: That deorbit burn is designed to bring the

spent upper stage down for controlled

destruction in Earth's atmospher. Without it,

we have another piece of debris in orbit,

exactly the kind of problem that stargaze is

designed to help monitor.

Avery: The good news is the upper stage did manage

to passivate itself by venting propellant,

which lowered its perigee to about

110km, according to

satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell. It will

re enter quickly, but SpaceX.

Anna: Has grounded the Falcon 9 fleet while teams

review data to determine root cause and

corrective actions. And here's where the

timing gets tricky. The Crew 12 astronaut

mission to the International Space Station is

currently scheduled to launch on February 11,

just eight days from now.

Avery: Crew 12 is particularly important because it

will restore the ISS to its normal complement

of seven crew members. The station has been

operating with a skeleton crew of just three

astronauts since January 15, when the four

crew 11 astronauts departed in the first

ever medical evacuation from the ISS.

Anna: NASA Associate Administrator Amit uh

Kshatriya confirmed that NASA teams from the

commercial crew program are embedded in the

investigation alongside SpaceX and the FAA.

He said they're pressing towards the Crew 12

window, but the launch will be contingent on

the return to flight rationale.

Avery: It's worth noting that the Falcon 9 has an

incredible safety record. Last year alone, it

launched a record breaking 165

times, with all missions successful. Just

a single mission experienced a significant

anomaly, a Starlink launch where a booster

toppled after landing at Sea.

Anna: That March 3rd incident was traced to a fuel

leak in one of the booster's nine Merlin

engines, which led to a fire that weakened a

landing leg. SpaceX halted launches for a

week at that time as well.

Avery: The question now is whether they can resolve

this upper stage issue quickly enough to meet

the February 11th crew 12 launch date.

If not, those three astronauts on the ISS

will have to wait a bit longer for

reinforcements from orbital mechanics to.

Anna: The deepest reaches of space. The James Webb

Space Telescope has spotted something

extraordinary. A five way galaxy merger

in the early universe that's challenging our

understanding of cosmic evolution.

Avery: This is remarkable. Anna, uh, the system

consists of five compact, actively star

forming galaxies that were emerging when the

universe was only about 800 million years

old. That's just 6% of the universe's

current age.

Anna: And the level of complexity is what's really

stunning astronomers. These five galaxies are

packed into a remarkably small region of

space. They're separated by only tens of

thousands of light years. To put that in

perspective, that's far closer together than

most neighboring galaxies in the modern

universe.

Avery: Dr. Wada H. Yu from Texas A and M University,

the study's lead author, explained that what

makes this remarkable is that a merger

involving such a large number of galaxies was

not expected so early in the universe's

history. At that time, galaxy mergers were

thought to be simpler, usually involving only

two to three galaxies.

Anna: But it's not just the number of galaxies

that's impressive. These five galaxies are

producing stars at a combined rate of roughly

250 solar masses per year.

That's far exceeding typical star formation

rates for that era.

Avery: And this rapid stellar production has already

enriched the system with heavier elements

like oxygen, materials forged in stellar

interiors and dispersed through galactic

interactions. The presence of these elements

indicates that multiple generations of stars

had already lived and died.

Anna: The really fascinating part is that gas

containing oxygen and hydrogen extends

beyond the galaxies themselves. This suggests

that gravitational interactions are pushing

enriched material into intergalactic space,

showing how early mergers may have shaped not

just galaxies, but the larger cosmic

environment.

Avery: This discovery really disrupts the standard

model of galaxy assembly. That model proposes

a, uh, gradual buildup where small galaxies

merge over long periods to form larger

systems. But this five way merger

demonstrates that complex multi galaxy

interactions were already underway less than

a billion years after the Big Bang.

Anna: Professor Casey Popovich, a UH co author on

the study, emphasized the implications

by showing that a complex merger driven

system exists so early. It tells us

our theories of how galaxies assemble and

how quickly they do so need to be updated to

match reality.

Avery: This adds to the growing body of evidence

from JWST that the early universe

was capable of producing massive mature

looking galaxies at astonishing speed.

Matter in the early universe appears to have

clustered more rapidly and efficiently than

our simulation suggested.

Anna: The study was published in Nature Astronomy,

and it's another example of how JWST

is fundamentally changing our understanding

of the cosmos.

Avery: Sticking with cosmic mysteries, Scientists

have finally solved a 50 year old puzzle

about why nearby galaxies appear to be

fleeing from our own Milky Way. And the

answer involves a massive cosmic void right

in our neighborhood.

Anna: This is one of those mysteries that's been

nagging at astronomers for decades. Avery

most large galaxies near the Milky Way, with

the exception of Andromeda, appear to be

moving away from us and seem largely

unaffected by the gravitational pull of our

Local Group of galaxies.

Avery: The Local Group being the Milky Way,

Andromeda and dozens of smaller galaxies.

So what's the solution?

Anna: Led by Ewood Wempe at the Captain Institute

in Gronigan, an international research team

used advanced computer simulations and

discovered that matter just beyond the Local

Group forms a broad flat

structure stretching tens of millions of

light years across. And here's the

vast empty regions lie above and

below this structure.

Avery: So we're basically living on a cosmic pancake

surrounded by voids.

Anna: That's actually a pretty good analogy. This

flat distribution of matter is the only way

to accurately account for both the combined

mass of the Milky Way and Andromeda and

unexpected motions of nearby galaxies.

Avery: But how does this flat structure explain why

galaxies are moving away from us?

Anna: It comes down to the Local Void, a

vast empty region discovered back in

1987 by Brent Tully and Rick

Fisher. The Local void extends

approximately 60 megaparsecs, or

about 200 million light years. Beginning

at the edge of the Local.

Avery: Group, The Local Void is growing because

there's very little matter inside it to exert

gravitational pull. Our Milky Way sits in

what's called the Local Sheet, a flat array

of galaxies that, um, bounds the void. And

this Local Sheet is Rushing away from the

void's center at 260 kilometers

per second.

Anna: How fast is that affecting the Milky Way?

Avery: The Milky Way's velocity away from the local

void is 970,000

kilometers per hour. That's 600,000

miles per hour. It's astonishingly fast.

Anna: So the new simulations show that this hidden

geometry, the flat plane of dark matter

beyond the Local Group, with voids above and

below, is what's driving these galactic

motions.

Avery: Exactly. When researchers included this

configuration in their simulations, they

closely matched the observed positions and

speeds of nearby galaxies. It provides a

coherent explanation for motions that have

puzzled astronomers for half a century.

Anna: This is connected to research about the

Hubble tension, too, isn't it? The

discrepancy in measurements of the universe's

expansion rate?

Avery: That's right. Some researchers have proposed

that if we're inside a large local void, it

could affect how we measure cosmic expansion,

making the local universe appear to be

expanding faster than it actually is. Though

that particular idea remains controversial

and needs more evidence.

Anna: What's remarkable is that we're learning Our

immediate cosmic neighborhood is far more

structured and dynamic than we previously

understood. We're not just floating in a

uniform sea of galaxies. We're on a sheet

of matter bordering a massive void.

Avery: And that void is shaping our galaxy's journey

through space in fundamental ways.

Anna: For our final story today, we're turning to

some of the fastest objects in our galaxy,

Runaway stars that are racing through the

Milky Way at incredible speeds.

Avery: Researchers from institutes across Spain have

just completed the most extensive

observational study to date of these stellar

speedsters, analyzing 214 O

type stars, the brightest and most massive

class of stars in our galaxy.

Anna: These aren't just fast moving stars, Avery.

We're talking about stars with velocities

that often exceed 700 kilometers per

second. That's fast enough to escape the

Milky Way's gravity entirely.

Avery: The term runaway stars was first used back

in the early 1960s by Dutch astronomer

Adrian Blau. He observed stars moving at

unusually high speeds and proposed they

originated in binary systems and were

ejected when the companion star collapsed and

exploded in a supernova.

Anna: By 2005, astronomers discovered even

faster runaway stars, Leading to the

designation hypervelocity stars. These

objects are fascinating because of the

influence they have on galactic evolution.

Avery: By escaping their systems of origin, these

stars irradiate gas and dust in the

interstellar medium, eventually seeding it

with heavy elements after they go supernova.

This affects how future stars and planets

will form.

Anna: So what did this new study reveal? The team

used data from ESA's Gaia

observatory and the IACOB

Spectroscopic Database to analyze these

214o type stars.

Avery: They found that most runaway stars rotate

slowly, while those that rotate faster are

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