Artemis II : Go for Launch — Plus Saturn's Rings, The Gigamaser & A Star From The Dawn of Time

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

0:03 Speaker 2: I'm Anna and I'm Avery. And if you're listening to

0:06 Speaker 2: this on the morning of Wednesday, the first of April,

0:09 Speaker 2: here in Australia, there is a rocket on a launch

0:12 Speaker 2: pad in Florida right now, fully fueled, fully crude, and

0:16 Speaker 2: pointed at the Moon.

0:18 Speaker 1: This is not an April fool's joke.

0:21 Speaker 2: Absolutely not. For the first time in over fifty years,

0:25 Speaker 2: human beings are preparing to leave Earth and head toward

0:29 Speaker 2: the Moon. And today, on this very special episode seventy

0:32 Speaker 2: seven of season five, we are your countdown companion.

0:36 Speaker 1: We have six stories for you today, and yes, Artemis

0:40 Speaker 1: two is front and center. But we've also got a

0:43 Speaker 1: record breaking space laser, a twelve billion year old comet,

0:48 Speaker 1: a star born from the ashes of the very first

0:50 Speaker 1: stars in the universe, and a new chapter in the

0:54 Speaker 1: mystery of Saturn's rings.

0:56 Speaker 2: It is, without question, one of the most extraordinary days

0:59 Speaker 2: in the history of human spaceflight. Let's go weave again.

1:03 Speaker 1: Where the world's attention is today Kennedy's Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida,

1:08 Speaker 1: where the countdown clock for NASA's Artemis two mission is ticking.

1:13 Speaker 2: At four forty four pm Eastern time yesterday. That's early

1:16 Speaker 2: this morning for our Australian listeners. NASA flight controllers started

1:20 Speaker 2: the official countdown. Liftoff is targeted at six twenty four

1:24 Speaker 2: pm Eastern, which is eight twenty four tomorrow morning AEDT.

1:29 Speaker 1: The crew has been in quarantine at the Neil Armstrong

1:32 Speaker 1: Operations and Checkout Building following a strict schedule of sleep, nutrition,

1:37 Speaker 1: and technical briefings. Commander Read Wiseman told reporters on the weekend,

1:42 Speaker 1: and I love this quote. Hey, let's go to the Moon.

1:46 Speaker 2: That is the energy we need. Wise men. Leads a

1:49 Speaker 2: crew of four Commander Read Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission

1:54 Speaker 2: specialist Christina Cock, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Together they

1:59 Speaker 2: will become the first humans to travel to the vicinity

2:02 Speaker 2: of the Moon since Apollo seventeen in December nineteen seventy two.

2:06 Speaker 1: More than fifty three years. And this mission, Artemis two

2:11 Speaker 1: won't land on the Moon. It's a ten day test flight.

2:14 Speaker 1: The Orion capsule, launched aboard the Massive Space Launch System rocket,

2:19 Speaker 1: will perform a Figure eight trajectory out around the Moon,

2:23 Speaker 1: coming within about six thousand miles of the lunar surface

2:26 Speaker 1: on April sixth, then back to Earth for splashdown in

2:30 Speaker 1: the Pacific on approximately April eleven.

2:33 Speaker 2: The purpose is to stress test the Orion capsule's life

2:36 Speaker 2: support systems with humans on board for the first time.

2:40 Speaker 2: Everything they learn paves the way for Artemis three, now

2:43 Speaker 2: planned as a low Earth orbit docking test in twenty

2:46 Speaker 2: twenty seven and ultimately the first lunar landing since Apollo

2:51 Speaker 2: in twenty twenty eight.

2:53 Speaker 1: BASA Launch director Charlie Blackwell Thompson reported yesterday that the

2:57 Speaker 1: countdown run up has been quote extremely smooth, with only

3:02 Speaker 1: very minor ground equipment issues. Weather is currently forecast at

3:06 Speaker 1: eighty percent favorable. Some cloud cover and potential high winds

3:10 Speaker 1: on the ground are the primary concerns.

3:12 Speaker 2: And NASA has confirmed there's a six day launch window

3:15 Speaker 2: from April first through April six before the next opportunity

3:19 Speaker 2: opens at the end of the month, so there's some

3:21 Speaker 2: flexibility if they need it.

3:23 Speaker 1: For our Southern Hemisphere listeners. And this is genuinely moving.

3:27 Speaker 1: This is the moment our generation has been waiting for.

3:31 Speaker 1: The next chapter of human exploration of the Cosmos begins

3:35 Speaker 1: Thursday morning, April second, at nine twenty four am Australian

3:40 Speaker 1: Eastern time, and if in the US six twenty four

3:44 Speaker 1: pm Eastern daylight time on April first, which all translates

3:49 Speaker 1: to twenty two to twenty four UTC on April second.

3:53 Speaker 1: I hope I got all those conversions right.

3:56 Speaker 2: We will be watching every second now. There was a

4:00 Speaker 2: dramatic subplot to yesterday's launch preparations. The Sun decided to

4:04 Speaker 2: get involved. On Sunday night, a massive X one point

4:08 Speaker 2: four class solar flare erupted from an active sunspot region

4:13 Speaker 2: designated AR four four zero five. It peaked at just

4:17 Speaker 2: after eleven pm Eastern Time and triggered a significant high

4:21 Speaker 2: frequency radio blackout across the sunlit side of Earth, including,

4:26 Speaker 2: as it happens, parts of Southeast Asia and Northern Australias.

4:30 Speaker 1: Class flares are the most powerful category the Sun produces,

4:35 Speaker 1: and X one point four is serious business. The flare

4:38 Speaker 1: also launched a coronal mass ejection, a massive cloud of

4:42 Speaker 1: solar plasma with a possible Earth directed component.

4:46 Speaker 2: So NASA had something of an anxious Monday morning, but

4:50 Speaker 2: at the L minus two press conference, Associate Administrator Amic

4:54 Speaker 2: Kashatria gave everyone the all clear. Quote we're not expecting

4:58 Speaker 2: the CME to cause any effects. We're not tracking concerns

5:02 Speaker 2: for the mission in general. Artemis two is go for

5:05 Speaker 2: April first.

5:07 Speaker 1: Noah's Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a G two

5:11 Speaker 1: that's moderate geomagnetic storm watch for today, Tuesday, March thirty first,

5:16 Speaker 1: with G one minor storm conditions possible through launch day tomorrow.

5:21 Speaker 2: And here's the silver lining for our listeners. That geomagnetic

5:25 Speaker 2: activity means auroras could be visible at lower latitudes than

5:29 Speaker 2: usual tonight under G two conditions, the southern Aurora, the

5:33 Speaker 2: Aurora Australis may be visible further north than normal. Southern

5:38 Speaker 2: hemisphere Aurora watchers get outside tonight.

5:41 Speaker 1: We'll be watching the skies and the launch pad at

5:44 Speaker 1: the same time.

5:45 Speaker 2: All right, now, let's travel to the other end of

5:47 Speaker 2: the universe, because while everyone's been watching the launch pad,

5:51 Speaker 2: astronomers have spotted something extraordinary in the deep Cosmos.

5:55 Speaker 1: Scientists have discovered the most distant and most powerful natchal

6:00 Speaker 1: space laser ever detected. And I know that sounds like

6:03 Speaker 1: science fiction, but these things are very much real.

6:07 Speaker 2: They're called masers, the microwave equivalent of a laser, where

6:11 Speaker 2: a laser amplifies visible light. A maser amplifies microwave radiation.

6:16 Speaker 2: When a maser is powerful enough to be seen in

6:19 Speaker 2: other galaxies, it gets the name megamazer. And now astronomers

6:23 Speaker 2: have found something so powerful they're proposing an entirely new category.

6:28 Speaker 1: A gigamaser. The signal comes from a galaxy system designated

6:33 Speaker 1: Deep Breath Ha TLSJ one hundred forty two thousand, nine

6:38 Speaker 1: hundred thirty five point three minus two thousand, eight hundred

6:42 Speaker 1: thirty six, located approximately eight billion light years from Earth.

6:48 Speaker 1: The light we're detecting began its journey when the universe

6:51 Speaker 1: was barely half its current age.

6:54 Speaker 2: It was discovered by the mere Cat Radio Telescope ARRAT

6:57 Speaker 2: in South Africa, sixty four linked radio dishes working as

7:01 Speaker 2: one instrument. The detection was completely serendipitous. Team leader Tato

7:06 Speaker 2: Manamella from the University of Pretoria described it as quote,

7:10 Speaker 2: we are seeing the radio equivalent of a laser halfway

7:14 Speaker 2: across the universe.

7:15 Speaker 1: And the mechanism is spectacular. Two galaxies are colliding. The

7:20 Speaker 1: gravitational violence of the merger compresses enormous clouds of gas,

7:25 Speaker 1: triggering a burst of new star formation. The intense radiation

7:29 Speaker 1: from those newborn stars then excites hydroxyl molecules that's one

7:33 Speaker 1: oxygen atom bonded to one hydrogen atom, causing them to

7:37 Speaker 1: emit microwaves in a focused, amplified beam.

7:40 Speaker 2: The signal is so intense, roughly one hundred thousand times

7:44 Speaker 2: the luminosity of a star concentrated into a very narrow

7:49 Speaker 2: slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, that it warrants its own

7:53 Speaker 2: classification beyond megamser and it wouldn't even be visible without

7:58 Speaker 2: a stroke of cosmic luck. A completely unrelated four ground

8:03 Speaker 2: galaxy is perfectly aligned between the source and Earth, acting

8:08 Speaker 2: as a gravitational lens and amplifying the signal further.

8:12 Speaker 1: Bead researcher Monamela said, this is just the beginning. We

8:16 Speaker 1: don't want to find just one system. We want to

8:18 Speaker 1: find hundreds to thousands. The expectation is that when the

8:22 Speaker 1: square kilometer array comes fully online in South Africa, we'll

8:26 Speaker 1: start finding these gigamasers across cosmic history.

8:29 Speaker 2: The universe is remarkable.

8:32 Speaker 1: From one ancient signal to another. Our old friend, the

8:36 Speaker 1: interstellar comet three I Atlas, has just revealed a staggering

8:40 Speaker 1: secret about its age.

8:42 Speaker 2: We've been following three i at Lists since it was

8:44 Speaker 2: discovered back in July twenty twenty five, the third known

8:48 Speaker 2: interstellar object to pass through our Solar system. It's swung

8:51 Speaker 2: around the Sun, caused enormous excitements, and now it's heading

8:55 Speaker 2: back out toward Jupiter and beyond.

8:58 Speaker 1: But new analysis using data the James Web Space Telescope

9:02 Speaker 1: has given scientists a remarkable new insight. By examining the

9:05 Speaker 1: isotopic composition of gases out gassing from the comet, specifically

9:10 Speaker 1: the ratio of carbon twelve to carbon thirteen, and the

9:13 Speaker 1: deuterium content of its water. Researchers now believe three i

9:17 Speaker 1: at Lists may be between ten and twelve billion years old.

9:22 Speaker 2: Let that sink in our Sun is four point six

9:26 Speaker 2: billion years old. Earth is four point five billion years old.

9:31 Speaker 2: This comet may have formed nearly three times earlier than

9:34 Speaker 2: that in the very earliest epoch of the Milky Way's history,

9:38 Speaker 2: when the galaxy was first igniting with star formation.

9:42 Speaker 1: The chemical signature tells the story. Three idsh Atls's water

9:47 Speaker 1: contains more deuterium, a heavier form of hydrogen, than any

9:51 Speaker 1: comet previously studied. Its carbon isotope ratios are also markedly

9:56 Speaker 1: different from anything in our Solar system. These signatures point

10:00 Speaker 1: to formation in an extremely cold environment around thirty kelvin

10:05 Speaker 1: that's minus two hundred and forty three degrees celsius in

10:09 Speaker 1: the early metal poor protoplanetary disk of some ancient, long

10:14 Speaker 1: vanished star.

10:16 Speaker 2: And here's the haunting part. The star that gave birth

10:19 Speaker 2: to this comment. The star it originally orbited almost certainly

10:23 Speaker 2: no longer exists. It would have burned through its nuclear

10:27 Speaker 2: fuel and dyed billions of years ago. Three I slash

10:31 Speaker 2: Atls has been drifting through interstellar space alone for longer

10:36 Speaker 2: than our planet has existed.

10:38 Speaker 1: Researcher Romaine Maggiola of the Royal Belgian Institute for Space

10:43 Speaker 1: Aeronomy put it beautifully. He said, if three I dash

10:47 Speaker 1: ATLS is indeed as old as this study suggests, the

10:51 Speaker 1: large amounts of volatile molecules it contains indicate that rich

10:55 Speaker 1: prebiotic chemistry may have already been occurring in star forming

10:59 Speaker 1: reas engens very early in the history of our galaxy.

11:03 Speaker 2: A comet as a time capsule from the dawn of

11:06 Speaker 2: the Milky Way. We may never get another chance to

11:09 Speaker 2: study one like this in Staying.

11:11 Speaker 1: With the theme of ancient messengers, astronomers have found a

11:14 Speaker 1: star in our own cosmic backyard that preserves the chemical

11:18 Speaker 1: fingerprint of the very first stars that ever existed.

11:22 Speaker 2: The star is called Pictor II five oh three, and

11:26 Speaker 2: it lives in an ultra faint dwarf galaxy called Pictor two,

11:30 Speaker 2: about one hundred and fifty thousand light years from Earth,

11:33 Speaker 2: which in cosmic terms is practically next door. The galaxy

11:36 Speaker 2: itself is more than ten billion years old.

11:40 Speaker 1: Pictori five o three is what astronomers call a second

11:44 Speaker 1: generation star, meaning it formed from the debris of the

11:48 Speaker 1: very first stars in the universe. Those first stars, made

11:52 Speaker 1: almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, burned hot and fast,

11:56 Speaker 1: and exploded in supernovae, scattering the first heavier elements into

12:00 Speaker 1: the cosmos. Pictori five oh three formed from that debris.

12:06 Speaker 2: The evidence is unmistakable. The star contains less iron than

12:10 Speaker 2: any other star ever measured outside the Milky Way, less

12:14 Speaker 2: than a forty thousandth the iron content of our Sun,

12:17 Speaker 2: and it's enormously rich in carbon. That specific chemical signature

12:22 Speaker 2: is the hallmark of material enriched by the first generation

12:25 Speaker 2: of stellar explosions.

12:27 Speaker 1: The discovery, published in Nature Astronomy in March, was led

12:31 Speaker 1: by Annie Ruth Cheaty, a Brinson Prize fellow at Stanford University.

12:36 Speaker 1: It used the dark energy camera at the Victor M.

12:38 Speaker 1: Blanco four meter telescope at Saro Tolo Interamerican Observatory in Chile.

12:44 Speaker 1: So this is beautifully a Southern hemisphere discovery.

12:48 Speaker 2: MIT astrophysicist Anna Frable, who was not involved in study,

12:52 Speaker 2: told Science News, it's a fantastic discovery. I know how

12:56 Speaker 2: hard it is to find these stars. They are so

12:59 Speaker 2: so rare.

13:00 Speaker 1: What's making this particularly significant is that Pictor II five

13:04 Speaker 1: O three is the first unambiguous example of a second

13:08 Speaker 1: generation star found inside an ultra faint dwarf galaxy like

13:13 Speaker 1: Pictor two, which matters because it validates the theory that

13:17 Speaker 1: many of the most primitive stars we see in the

13:19 Speaker 1: Milky Ways halo were originally formed in tiny, ancient dwarf

13:24 Speaker 1: galaxies like Pictor two, which eventually merged with our own

13:28 Speaker 1: galaxy over cosmic time.

13:30 Speaker 2: As NSF program director Chris Davis put it, discoveries like

13:33 Speaker 2: this are cosmic archaeology, uncovering rare stellar fossils that preserve

13:38 Speaker 2: the fingerprints of the universe's first stars. I love that

13:42 Speaker 2: phrase cosmic archaeology.

13:44 Speaker 1: And we close today with Saturn, because who doesn't love

13:48 Speaker 1: Saturn and a fresh new chapter in one of planetary

13:51 Speaker 1: science's best mysteries, Where did those magnificent rings come from?

13:56 Speaker 2: Saturn's rings are one of the most iconic sites in

13:59 Speaker 2: the Solar System. But here's a thing. They're surprisingly young.

14:03 Speaker 2: Saturn itself is over four and a half billion years old,

14:06 Speaker 2: but its rings appear to be only somewhere between one

14:09 Speaker 2: hundred million and a few hundred million years old. The

14:12 Speaker 2: question has always been why are they so young?

14:15 Speaker 1: New research presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference

14:19 Speaker 1: in Texas this month adds compelling new weight to what's

14:22 Speaker 1: become the leading hypothesis that the rings were created when

14:26 Speaker 1: Saturn destroyed one of its own moons.

14:28 Speaker 2: The hypothetical moon has been named Chrysalis, a beautiful name

14:32 Speaker 2: because it transformed into something else entirely. The scenario, led

14:37 Speaker 2: by Ye Feijao of the University of California, Santa Cruz,

14:40 Speaker 2: goes like this, Sometime between one hundred and two hundred

14:44 Speaker 2: million years ago, the orbit of Chrysalis became gravitationally destabilized,

14:49 Speaker 2: sending it on a fatal trajectory towards Saturn.

14:52 Speaker 1: Saturn's tidal forces then went to work. The simulations show

14:56 Speaker 1: that the planet would have preferentially stripped away the Moon's

15:00 Speaker 1: icy outer mantle, while leaving much of its denser, rocky

15:05 Speaker 1: core intact. That distinction is crucial because it explains a

15:10 Speaker 1: long standing puzzle, why are Saturn's rings composed almost entirely

15:16 Speaker 1: of water ice with almost no rock?

15:19 Speaker 2: Because the rock sank into Saturn and the ice became

15:22 Speaker 2: the rings. The stripped icy material remained in orbit was

15:26 Speaker 2: gradually shaped and sculpted by the gravitational influence of Saturn's

15:30 Speaker 2: larger moons, particularly tighten and spread into the magnificent ring

15:34 Speaker 2: system we see today.

15:36 Speaker 1: And there's a bonus explanation. Saturn has a surprisingly steep

15:40 Speaker 1: axial tilt. It's tilted about twenty six point seven degrees.

15:45 Speaker 1: The loss of Chrysalis is thought to have been the

15:47 Speaker 1: gravitational trigger that knocked Saturn out of a resonance with Neptune,

15:52 Speaker 1: which had been controlling its tilt for billions of years.

15:55 Speaker 1: Lose the Moon, lose the resonance, and the tilt changes.

15:59 Speaker 2: As lead researcher jowtoldspace dot Com this scenario can clearly

16:03 Speaker 2: explain why Saturn's rings are young. It's one of those

16:06 Speaker 2: moments where a single event, a moon falling to its doom,

16:10 Speaker 2: explains multiple mysteries at once.

16:13 Speaker 1: Chrysalis the moon that became a butterfly, or in this case,

16:17 Speaker 1: one of the most breathtaking sights in the Solar System.

16:20 Speaker 2: And that is your Astronomy Daily for today, episode seventy

16:24 Speaker 2: seven of season five, What a day to be a

16:27 Speaker 2: space fan.

16:28 Speaker 1: Tomorrow, if all goes to plan, four human beings will

16:31 Speaker 1: ride fire into the sky and begin the journey to

16:34 Speaker 1: the Moon for the first time since nineteen seventy two.

16:38 Speaker 1: It's hard to fully comprehend what that means.

16:41 Speaker 2: We'll be back as soon as we can with launch coverage.

16:44 Speaker 2: In the meantime. If you're in Australia or New Zealand tonight,

16:47 Speaker 2: look south. There may be Aurora's.

16:49 Speaker 1: And if you're watching the launch and you feel a

16:52 Speaker 1: lump in your throat when that rocket clears the tower,

16:55 Speaker 1: that's exactly the right reaction from.

16:57 Speaker 2: Anna and me. This is Astronomy Daily. Your skies, everyone,

17:01 Speaker 2: Sunny Day Star is the troll Star is The toll

17:20 Speaker 2: Star is the