Artemis II Crew Lands in Florida — Launch Countdown Is On

0:00 Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Astronomy Daily.

0:02 Speaker 2: I'm Anna and I'm Avery. It is Friday, March twenty seventh,

0:07 Speaker 2: twenty twenty six, and our producer has given us an

0:10 Speaker 2: absolutely stacked show. Today.

0:13 Speaker 1: We are literally five days from a crew of four

0:16 Speaker 1: astronauts launching around the Moon for the first time in

0:19 Speaker 1: over fifty years, and today those four people touched down

0:23 Speaker 1: in Florida.

0:24 Speaker 2: We've also got the most detailed look at Saturn ever,

0:27 Speaker 2: captured lightning on Jupiter that makes Earth storms look like

0:30 Speaker 2: a birthday sparkler, and a fifty year stellar mystery finally

0:34 Speaker 2: cracked open by a Japanese space telescope.

0:37 Speaker 1: Plus, we're narrowing down the shortlist of exoplanets most likely

0:41 Speaker 1: to harbor alien life. And we have a juicy update

0:45 Speaker 1: on that dramatic rocket scrub from yesterday.

0:47 Speaker 2: Boiler, it was a boat.

0:49 Speaker 1: It was absolutely a boat. Let's get into it. Let's

0:53 Speaker 1: go then, all right, story one and Avery, this one

0:56 Speaker 1: is really happening today as we record the art Miss

1:00 Speaker 1: two crew is flying into Kennedy's Space Center.

1:03 Speaker 2: Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina coach

1:08 Speaker 2: All from NASA and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen,

1:13 Speaker 2: four people, one rocket, and they are now officially on site.

1:17 Speaker 1: NASA Administrator Jarrett Isaacman and Canadian Space Agency President Lisa

1:22 Speaker 1: Campbell were there to greet them on the tarmac this afternoon.

1:26 Speaker 1: The crew also answered questions from the media.

1:28 Speaker 2: Now, just to set the scene, the SLS rocket and

1:31 Speaker 2: the Orion capsule are already sitting on launch Pad thirty

1:35 Speaker 2: nine B at Kennedy Space Center. They rolled out on

1:38 Speaker 2: March twentieth. Everything is in place. The target launch window

1:42 Speaker 2: opens Wednesday, April first, at six twenty four pm Eastern Time.

1:47 Speaker 1: And April first is not a joke. This is genuinely happening,

1:51 Speaker 1: a two hour window on the first, and if they

1:53 Speaker 1: need it, opportunities continue through April sixth.

1:56 Speaker 2: The crew has been in quarantine since March eighteenth, keeping

1:59 Speaker 2: their head health locked down. Before this ten day mission.

2:02 Speaker 2: They spent the quarantine reviewing procedures at Johnson Space Center

2:06 Speaker 2: in Houston, Texas, and now the rest of the countdown

2:09 Speaker 2: happens here in Florida.

2:11 Speaker 1: This mission is going to take them farther than Earth

2:14 Speaker 1: than any human has been since Apollo thirteen in nineteen seventy,

2:18 Speaker 1: about five thousand miles beyond the Moon. It won't land,

2:21 Speaker 1: but it will swing around the back of the Moon

2:24 Speaker 1: on a free return trajectory and come screaming back to

2:27 Speaker 1: Earth at around twenty five thousand miles per hour.

2:30 Speaker 2: Victor Glover will become the first person of color, Christina

2:34 Speaker 2: Coach the first woman, and Jeremy Hanson the first non

2:37 Speaker 2: American to travel beyond Low Earth orbit. And for Canadians listening,

2:42 Speaker 2: Jeremy Hanson arrives in Florida today for what is going

2:45 Speaker 2: to be the ride of his life.

2:47 Speaker 1: We are going to be covering this story right through launch.

2:51 Speaker 1: Stick with US Astronomy Daily is your front row seat

2:54 Speaker 1: to the most exciting human spacelight moment in a generation.

2:58 Speaker 2: Dory two, and this one is visually stunning. NASA has

3:02 Speaker 2: released a new set of Saturn images and they are

3:04 Speaker 2: genuinely the most comprehensive view of Saturn ever created.

3:08 Speaker 1: This is a collaboration between two of humanity's greatest telescopes,

3:13 Speaker 1: the James Web Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope. Now,

3:17 Speaker 1: these two observatories were launched thirty one years apart. Hubble

3:21 Speaker 1: went up in nineteen ninety web in late twenty twenty one.

3:24 Speaker 1: But when you combine their observations you get something extraordinary.

3:29 Speaker 2: Hubble observes Saturn invisible light in August twenty twenty four,

3:33 Speaker 2: capturing all those familiar golden cloud bands and the iconic rings.

3:37 Speaker 2: You get the colors, the subtle atmospheric variations, the sheer

3:41 Speaker 2: beauty of the thing.

3:43 Speaker 1: Then Webb looked at it in infrared in November twenty

3:46 Speaker 1: twenty four, just fourteen weeks later, and the picture completely transforms.

3:51 Speaker 1: The rings glow brilliantly because they're made of highly reflective

3:55 Speaker 1: water ice. You can see deep atmospheric storms, jet streams,

3:59 Speaker 1: and a mysterious gray green glow at the poles that

4:03 Speaker 1: scientists think may be linked to auroral activity or hide

4:07 Speaker 1: altitude aerosols.

4:08 Speaker 2: One of the most poignant details in this release, Saturn's

4:12 Speaker 2: famous hexagonal jet stream at the north pole is just

4:16 Speaker 2: barely visible in these images, and sciences say this could

4:19 Speaker 2: be among the last clear views of it for decades,

4:23 Speaker 2: because the pole is heading into a long winter darkness

4:26 Speaker 2: that won't lift until the twenty forties.

4:29 Speaker 1: NASA describes what the two telescopes together can do as

4:33 Speaker 1: slicing through Saturn's atmosphere at multiple altitudes. Like peeling back

4:37 Speaker 1: the layers of an onion, Hubble covers the upper clouds

4:41 Speaker 1: web dives deeper into the chemistry. Together, they give researchers

4:45 Speaker 1: a three dimensional picture of how this whole system works.

4:50 Speaker 2: And Webb's wide angle view captured six of Saturn's moons

4:53 Speaker 2: in the same frame, including Titan, which is massive and hazy,

4:58 Speaker 2: and Enceladus, that little world with a subservice ocean that

5:02 Speaker 2: astrobiologists find so tantalizing.

5:05 Speaker 1: We will link to these images in the show notes.

5:07 Speaker 1: They are genuinely worth five minutes of your time just

5:10 Speaker 1: to look at them. Saturn is out there looking absolutely magnificent.

5:15 Speaker 2: Story three and I want everyone to picture the most

5:19 Speaker 2: dramatic lightning storm you have ever seen on Earth, A

5:23 Speaker 2: real cracker thunder rattling the windows. Now imagine that but

5:28 Speaker 2: a million times more powerful.

5:31 Speaker 1: That is potentially what is happening in Jupiter's atmosphere, according

5:35 Speaker 1: to new research from the University of California, Berkeley published

5:39 Speaker 1: this week in the journal AGU Advances.

5:42 Speaker 2: The study used data from NASA's Juno spacecraft, which has

5:46 Speaker 2: been orbiting Jupiter since twenty sixteen. Specifically, it's microwave radiometer.

5:52 Speaker 2: That instrument was designed for studying the planet's atmosphere, but

5:56 Speaker 2: it turns out it's also brilliant at detecting the radio

5:59 Speaker 2: signatures of lightning.

6:01 Speaker 1: The clever bit was that the team focused on a

6:03 Speaker 1: period in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two when

6:07 Speaker 1: a normally storm filled belt on Jupiter went unusually quiet.

6:11 Speaker 1: That meant JUNO could pinpoint individual isolated storm systems, what

6:16 Speaker 1: the researchers call stealth superstorms, and directly measure the power

6:21 Speaker 1: of lightning within them.

6:23 Speaker 2: The results are remarkable. From six hundred and thirteen detected

6:27 Speaker 2: lightning pulses, the power rains from roughly comparable to an

6:31 Speaker 2: Earth lightning bolt all the way up to one hundred

6:34 Speaker 2: times more powerful. But because of uncertainties and how radio

6:38 Speaker 2: frequencies compare across the two planets, some of those bolts

6:41 Speaker 2: could be up to a million times stronger than anything

6:44 Speaker 2: on Earth.

6:45 Speaker 1: And these storms were generating around three lightning flashes per second.

6:50 Speaker 1: On one flyover, JUNO detected two hundred and six separate

6:54 Speaker 1: microwave pulses in a single pass.

6:57 Speaker 2: Lead researcher Michael Wong described it really well On Earth,

7:02 Speaker 2: moist air rises because water makes it more buoyant in

7:05 Speaker 2: a nitrogen atmosphere. On Jupiter, the atmosphere is mostly hydrogen,

7:10 Speaker 2: so moist air is actually heavier and sinks. It takes

7:14 Speaker 2: enormous energy to push it upward, and when those storms

7:17 Speaker 2: finally break loose, they release all of that stored energy

7:20 Speaker 2: in extraordinary ways.

7:23 Speaker 1: What I love about this is that the Juno mission

7:25 Speaker 1: has been delivering incredible science for a decade now, and

7:29 Speaker 1: even as the spacecraft ages, it's still finding ways to

7:33 Speaker 1: rewrite our understanding of the Solar System's biggest planet.

7:37 Speaker 2: Okay, onto our next story today.

7:40 Speaker 1: Story four, and this is one of those stories where

7:43 Speaker 1: astronomers get to say we finally did it after fifty years.

7:48 Speaker 2: The star in question is Gamma Cassiopeia. If you look

7:52 Speaker 2: up at the distinctive W shape of the constellation Cassiopeia

7:55 Speaker 2: on a clear night, the middle star of that W

7:58 Speaker 2: that's it visible to the naked eye about five hundred

8:02 Speaker 2: and fifty light years away, and since nineteen seventy six

8:06 Speaker 2: it has been blasting out X rays around forty times

8:09 Speaker 2: more powerful than you'd ever expect from a star like that.

8:12 Speaker 1: The plasma generating those X rays was hotter than one

8:15 Speaker 1: hundred million degrees, and for decades nobody could agree. Why

8:20 Speaker 1: was it magnetic activity on the star itself? Was there

8:23 Speaker 1: a hidden companion pulling in material? The debate has raged

8:27 Speaker 1: it across multiple research groups for half a century.

8:31 Speaker 2: Now, thanks to Japan's XRIISM space telescope that stands for

8:35 Speaker 2: X Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, developed by JAXA in

8:39 Speaker 2: collaboration with NASA and ESA, the answer is finally in

8:44 Speaker 2: the culprit is a hidden white dwarf companion.

8:47 Speaker 1: The key instrument is called Resolve, a high precision microclorimeter

8:52 Speaker 1: on XRIISM that can measure X ray spectra with extraordinary accuracy.

8:58 Speaker 1: The team observed Gamma Capia three times in December twenty

9:02 Speaker 1: twenty four, February twenty twenty five, and June twenty twenty five,

9:07 Speaker 1: covering the full two hundred and three day orbit of

9:09 Speaker 1: the binary system.

9:11 Speaker 2: What they found was that the superheated plasma generating the

9:14 Speaker 2: X rays was moving in sync with the hidden companion,

9:18 Speaker 2: not with the bright b star. Everyone could see. That's

9:21 Speaker 2: the clincher, first direct proof that it's the white dwarf

9:25 Speaker 2: not the star. Itself driving all that high energy activity.

9:29 Speaker 1: And it turns out this white dwarf is magnetic. Its

9:32 Speaker 1: field is funneling material from the star's surrounding disc toward

9:36 Speaker 1: its pulls, where it releases all that energy as X

9:39 Speaker 1: rays like a tiny but ferocious cosmic vacuum cleaner.

9:43 Speaker 2: The implications go well beyond this one star. Astronomers have

9:47 Speaker 2: long predicted that about fifty to seventy percent of B

9:51 Speaker 2: type binary stars might have white dwarf companions, but solid

9:55 Speaker 2: evidence has been hard to pin down. This result confirms

9:58 Speaker 2: a whole new clas of binary systems that had previously

10:02 Speaker 2: only existed in theory.

10:04 Speaker 1: Lead researcher Yayel Naz at the University of Liege put

10:08 Speaker 1: it beautifully. There has been an intense effort to solve

10:11 Speaker 1: the mystery of gamma cassiopeia across many research groups for

10:15 Speaker 1: many decades, and now, thanks to XRIIM, we have finally

10:20 Speaker 1: done it. A very good Friday for Stellar Astrophysics.

10:24 Speaker 2: Story five, and this one comes with a movie tie

10:27 Speaker 2: in which I am absolutely here for.

10:29 Speaker 1: If you haven't seen Project Hail Mary yet, the Ryan

10:32 Speaker 1: Gosling film based on Andy Weir's novel. It's currently in cinemas,

10:36 Speaker 1: and it is excellent. The premise is that humanity discovers

10:40 Speaker 1: a tiny micro organism called astrophage is consuming the Sun's energy,

10:45 Speaker 1: and one scientist is sent on a desperate solo mission

10:48 Speaker 1: to find the answer at a distant star.

10:51 Speaker 2: And this week, real astronomers at Cornell University's Carl Sagan

10:55 Speaker 2: Institute have published the paper that asks essentially the same

10:59 Speaker 2: question the movie poses. If we were building a real

11:02 Speaker 2: Hail Mary spacecraft, where would we send it?

11:05 Speaker 1: Lead researcher Professor Lisa Koltngeger, alongside a team of undergraduate students,

11:10 Speaker 1: comb through data from the European Space Agency's Gaya mission

11:14 Speaker 1: and the NASA Exoplanet Archive. There are over six thousand

11:19 Speaker 1: known exoplanets. From that enormous list, they've narrowed it down

11:22 Speaker 1: to forty five rocky worlds sitting in their star's habitable

11:26 Speaker 1: zones where liquid water could potentially exist on the surface.

11:30 Speaker 2: The list includes some names that will be familiar to

11:33 Speaker 2: our regular listeners. Trappist one DEFNG about forty light years away,

11:41 Speaker 2: Proxima Centauri b our nearest stellar neighbor at just four

11:46 Speaker 2: point twenty five light years LHS one one four zero B,

11:51 Speaker 2: a dense super earth about forty eight light years out,

11:55 Speaker 2: and quite a few lesser known candidates that could prove

11:59 Speaker 2: just as interesting.

12:00 Speaker 1: What's powerful about this paper is that it's not just

12:03 Speaker 1: a list, it's a strategic roadmap. It tells you which

12:06 Speaker 1: worlds are best suited for transmission spectroscopy with JWST, which

12:11 Speaker 1: worlds are targets for future direct imaging missions, and which

12:14 Speaker 1: have the tightest constraints on habitability.

12:17 Speaker 2: There's also a more conservative list of just twenty four

12:20 Speaker 2: world within a tighter three dimensional habitable zone, and if

12:24 Speaker 2: you account for the uncertainties in stellar measurements, the forty

12:27 Speaker 2: five could expand to as many as seventy three.

12:30 Speaker 1: Haltenngeger summed it up perfectly. Our paper reveals where you

12:34 Speaker 1: should travel to to find life if we ever build

12:37 Speaker 1: a hail Mary spacecraft. The search for alien life just

12:40 Speaker 1: got a short list. I find that genuinely thrilling.

12:44 Speaker 2: Finally, today, the boat story we tease at the beginning

12:47 Speaker 2: of the show.

12:48 Speaker 1: Story six, and yesterday we told you about that extraordinary

12:52 Speaker 1: scrub at t minus three seconds for Esar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket,

12:57 Speaker 1: the most dramatic last second halt you could imagine right

13:00 Speaker 1: on the edge of potentially making European space history.

13:04 Speaker 2: And we didn't know why the countdown got all the

13:07 Speaker 2: way to three seconds before engine ignition. Then nothing. Controllers

13:12 Speaker 2: called the scrub. We knew there was a hold in

13:14 Speaker 2: the countdown, but the exact cause wasn't confirmed when we

13:17 Speaker 2: recorded yesterday.

13:18 Speaker 1: Well, now we know it was a boat.

13:21 Speaker 2: An unauthorized vessel entered the danger zone around and Doya

13:25 Speaker 2: Spaceport in northern Norway during the countdown. The range had

13:29 Speaker 2: already been delayed when the boat first appeared, and by

13:31 Speaker 2: the time the boat cleared and the range was reopened,

13:35 Speaker 2: the propellant temperatures on board the rocket had shifted, the

13:38 Speaker 2: window was gone.

13:39 Speaker 1: To add insult to injury, the countdown had actually cleared

13:43 Speaker 1: t minus three seconds the engines were moments from igniting.

13:48 Speaker 1: ESAR Aerospace would have potentially become the first company ever

13:51 Speaker 1: to launch a rocket to orbit from European soil and

13:55 Speaker 1: a boat said no.

13:56 Speaker 2: No new launch date has been announced as of now.

13:59 Speaker 2: ESAR has said they're working to determine a suitable window

14:02 Speaker 2: and they'll need to assess the propellant situation and any

14:05 Speaker 2: technical reviews before they can reset for another attempt.

14:08 Speaker 1: Now we should note this kind of range safety protocol

14:12 Speaker 1: exists for a reason. Keeping people out of danger zones

14:15 Speaker 1: during rocket launches is genuinely critical. No one is blaming

14:19 Speaker 1: range control here, but the timing could not have been

14:22 Speaker 1: more painful.

14:23 Speaker 2: We'll keep tracking this one. Esar's Spectrum rocket is a

14:26 Speaker 2: genuinely significant vehicle twenty eight meters tall, capable of carrying

14:30 Speaker 2: up to a ton of payload to low Earth orbit,

14:33 Speaker 2: designed and built almost entirely in house near Munich. When

14:38 Speaker 2: it does reach orbit, it will be a historic moment

14:40 Speaker 2: for European space capability.

14:42 Speaker 1: The mission is called onward and Upward, and that is

14:46 Speaker 1: exactly what ESAR will have to be. We're rooting for them.

14:49 Speaker 2: And that is your Astronomy Daily for Friday, March twenty seventh.

14:54 Speaker 2: What a week it has been, and honestly, with Artemis

14:57 Speaker 2: two five days from launch, next week is going to

15:00 Speaker 2: be even bigger.

15:01 Speaker 1: We will be covering every step of the countdown right

15:04 Speaker 1: through to lift off and beyond. Make sure you're subscribed

15:07 Speaker 1: so you don't miss a single episode.

15:09 Speaker 2: You can find us on all the usual platforms at

15:11 Speaker 2: Astronomy Daily, dot io and across social media at astro

15:15 Speaker 2: Daily Pod on x, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Rumble, and Tumblr.

15:21 Speaker 1: And if today's episode sparked something for you, a question, thought,

15:25 Speaker 1: a theory about whether that rogue boat was actually a

15:28 Speaker 1: disgruntled rocket enthusiast, drop us a message we love hearing

15:31 Speaker 1: from you.

15:32 Speaker 2: From all of us here at Astronomy Daily, keep looking up.

15:35 Speaker 2: The universe is not done surprising us.

15:38 Speaker 1: See you tomorrow

15:39 Speaker 2: Sunday Star Star