Artemis II: Homeward Bound and The Lost Mars Mission

0:00 Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Astronomy Daily. I'm Anna and I'm Avery.

0:05 Speaker 1: It is Wednesday, April eighth, twenty twenty six, and what

0:09 Speaker 1: a week it has been. We are deep into what

0:12 Speaker 1: might be the most extraordinary few days in human spaceflight

0:16 Speaker 1: since nineteen seventy two. Artemis two is heading home, and

0:20 Speaker 1: we are going to walk you through exactly where the

0:23 Speaker 1: crew is right now, what happened on flight day seven,

0:26 Speaker 1: and what to expect as they come screaming back through

0:29 Speaker 1: the atmosphere on Friday.

0:31 Speaker 2: Screaming is right. We are talking twenty five thousand miles

0:35 Speaker 2: per hour, the fastest crude re entry in history. But

0:39 Speaker 2: more on that in a moment.

0:41 Speaker 1: We have also got a cargo launch delay that has

0:43 Speaker 1: created one of the most beautifully poetic scheduling coincidences we

0:48 Speaker 1: have ever seen in spaceflight. Some planet shaking new science

0:52 Speaker 1: about how Earth actually formed, fresh data from an alien

0:56 Speaker 1: comet courtesy of a spacecraft designed for Jupiter's mood uns.

1:00 Speaker 2: A new comic for skywatchers to get excited about after

1:03 Speaker 2: last week's spectacular disappointment, and then.

1:06 Speaker 1: To close the show today, something a little different, A mystery,

1:11 Speaker 1: a space mystery that is thirty years old and has

1:15 Speaker 1: never been solved.

1:16 Speaker 2: I have been looking forward to this one all day.

1:18 Speaker 2: I won't lie.

1:19 Speaker 1: Doh of I let's get into it. This is Astronomy Daily,

1:23 Speaker 1: season five, episode eighty four.

1:26 Speaker 2: Right, so let's set the scene. Artemis two launched on

1:30 Speaker 2: April first, Yes, April Fool's Day, and no it was

1:33 Speaker 2: not a joke. And the crew of four have already

1:36 Speaker 2: done the most extraordinary thing. On Monday, Flight Day six,

1:41 Speaker 2: they flew around the far side of the Moon. They

1:43 Speaker 2: set a new record for the furthest humans have ever

1:46 Speaker 2: been two hundred and fifty two thousand, seven hundred and

1:50 Speaker 2: fifty six miles. Nobody in human history has ever been

1:54 Speaker 2: that far.

1:55 Speaker 1: And Flight Day seven, which was yesterday Tuesday, was the

1:58 Speaker 1: day after all drama, the science debrief day, the comedown day,

2:04 Speaker 1: well sort of. They woke up to Tokyo drifting by

2:07 Speaker 1: glass animals and Denzel Curry and I genuinely love whoever

2:12 Speaker 1: selects these wake up songs is having an absolute blast.

2:15 Speaker 2: The playlist creation on Artemis two has been exceptional. Somebody

2:20 Speaker 2: at NASA is doing their best work.

2:22 Speaker 1: They woke up thirty six thousand miles from the moon,

2:25 Speaker 1: two hundred thirty six thousand miles from Earth, and the

2:29 Speaker 1: big item on the agenda was a fifteen minute audio

2:32 Speaker 1: call ship to ship with the crew aboard the International

2:35 Speaker 1: Space Station.

2:37 Speaker 2: So you have four astronauts who have just been further

2:40 Speaker 2: from Earth than any human in over fifty years calling

2:43 Speaker 2: up the International Space Station, which from where O'Ryan was

2:47 Speaker 2: sitting must have felt practically next.

2:49 Speaker 1: Door, right relatively speaking. They spoke with NASA astronauts Jessica Mere,

2:55 Speaker 1: Jack Hathaway, Chris Williams, and ESA's Sophie Adenaut. Just imagine

3:00 Speaker 1: that conversation. So, how was the Moon, you know, bit far?

3:04 Speaker 2: And after that the science debrief. The Artemis two lunar

3:08 Speaker 2: science team had a full debrief session with the crew

3:11 Speaker 2: to capture everything they observed during the flyby while the

3:14 Speaker 2: memories were still sharp.

3:16 Speaker 1: Which makes complete sense, right, These four people have just

3:20 Speaker 1: seen parts of the Moon no human eye has ever

3:23 Speaker 1: seen directly, the far side, craters like Vavlov and the

3:27 Speaker 1: Oriental Basin, an ancient lava field on the border of

3:31 Speaker 1: the Moon's near and far side that's almost impossible to

3:34 Speaker 1: see from Earth. You want those impressions captured immediately.

3:38 Speaker 2: And then in the evening at about nine pm Eastern,

3:42 Speaker 2: Orion fired the first of three trajectory correction burns to

3:45 Speaker 2: begin fine tuning the return path to Earth.

3:48 Speaker 1: Though we are officially in the home stretch. And Flight

3:52 Speaker 1: day eight, which is today, the crew has two key tasks. First,

3:57 Speaker 1: a radiation shelter construction demonstration.

4:00 Speaker 2: Which sounds alarming but is actually a plan drill. The

4:03 Speaker 2: practice assembling a makeshift radiation shelter inside Orion using available

4:08 Speaker 2: materials in case of a solar event during a deep

4:11 Speaker 2: space mission, exactly the kind of emergency preparedness you need

4:15 Speaker 2: locked in before Artemis three heads to the lunar surface.

4:19 Speaker 1: And second manual piloting tests. The crew gets to hand

4:24 Speaker 1: fly Orion directly, which, given that computers handled basically everything

4:29 Speaker 1: on this mission, must feel a bit like being handed

4:31 Speaker 1: the wheel.

4:32 Speaker 2: And then, Friday, April tenth, splash down.

4:36 Speaker 1: Flight day ten, Orion re enters the atmosphere at twenty

4:40 Speaker 1: five thousand miles per hour. That is the fastest crude

4:44 Speaker 1: re entry ever attempted. The heat shields, which caused so

4:48 Speaker 1: much concern and engineering work before this mission, will be

4:51 Speaker 1: put to its ultimate.

4:52 Speaker 2: Test, and collecting data from that re entry is actually

4:56 Speaker 2: one of the core mission objectives, so NASA will be

4:59 Speaker 2: watching those heat shield readings very closely.

5:02 Speaker 1: Blashdown is scheduled for about eight pm Eastern off the

5:06 Speaker 1: coast of San Diego. The USS John P. Murtha, a

5:10 Speaker 1: Navy amphibious transport docship, will be waiting. The crew will

5:13 Speaker 1: be recovered by helicopter, taking a board for medical evaluation,

5:17 Speaker 1: then flown back to Houston, and.

5:19 Speaker 2: That will be it the first time humans have returned

5:22 Speaker 2: from beyond Earth orbit since Apollo seventeen in nineteen seventy two.

5:27 Speaker 2: Mission complete, but.

5:29 Speaker 1: Right now Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy

5:33 Speaker 1: Hansen are heading home and we could not be more

5:37 Speaker 1: excited for them.

5:38 Speaker 2: All right, from the crew heading back to Earth to

5:40 Speaker 2: a cargo ship heading up to the space station with

5:43 Speaker 2: a slight detour through the weather forecast.

5:45 Speaker 1: Yes So, as we reported yesterday, Northrop Grumman's Signus CRS

5:50 Speaker 1: twenty four mission was supposed to launch today Wednesday morning

5:54 Speaker 1: from Cape Canaveral on SpaceX Falcon nine, carrying about eleven

5:59 Speaker 1: thousand pounds of cargo to the International Space Station, but.

6:02 Speaker 2: The weather at Space Launch Complex forty had other ideas

6:06 Speaker 2: and teams have pushed the launch to Friday, April tenth,

6:09 Speaker 2: targeting eight oh three in the morning Eastern backup opportunity

6:13 Speaker 2: on Saturday the eleventh if needed.

6:15 Speaker 1: Now here's why this matters beyond just a weather delay.

6:19 Speaker 1: Friday April tenth is also the day Artemis two splashdowns, so.

6:24 Speaker 2: On the same day, four astronauts returned from the Moon,

6:27 Speaker 2: the furthest humans have been from Earth in over fifty years.

6:31 Speaker 2: A fresh cargo ship launches towards the space station simultaneously.

6:36 Speaker 1: Cape Canaveral is going to be having quite a Friday.

6:39 Speaker 2: The spacecraft itself is the Signus Excel, the larger configuration

6:43 Speaker 2: carrying about eleven thousand pounds of pressurized cargo. Northrop Grumman

6:47 Speaker 2: has named this one the SS Stephen R. Nagel, in

6:50 Speaker 2: honor of the NASA astronaut who flew four Shuttle missions

6:53 Speaker 2: and longed over seven hundred and twenty hours in space.

6:57 Speaker 1: Beautiful tradition. Naming these cargo ships and the science aboard

7:01 Speaker 1: CRS twenty four is genuinely interesting. There's a new module

7:05 Speaker 1: for the Cold Atom Lab on the station, NASA's quantum

7:08 Speaker 1: Science facility to help investigate dark matter and potentially improve

7:13 Speaker 1: computing technology.

7:14 Speaker 2: There's also hardware to produce greater numbers of therapeutic stem

7:18 Speaker 2: cells for blood diseases and cancer, model organisms for a

7:21 Speaker 2: gut microbiome study, and a receiver to improve space weather

7:25 Speaker 2: models that protect GPS and radar infrastructure.

7:28 Speaker 1: Though it's not just food and equipment, this is a

7:31 Speaker 1: proper science delivery.

7:33 Speaker 2: Once it arrives, Signus doesn't dock automatically the way Dragon does.

7:37 Speaker 2: Astronauts Chris Williams and Jack Hathaway will use the Canid

7:41 Speaker 2: Arm two robotic arm to grab it and bring it in.

7:44 Speaker 2: They've been practicing. There was a report last week of

7:46 Speaker 2: them running simulations together in the cupola.

7:49 Speaker 1: And Signus is scheduled to stay at the station until

7:52 Speaker 1: October before undocking with several thousand pounds of trash and

7:57 Speaker 1: burning up on re entry. A rather unglamorous end, but

8:01 Speaker 1: a useful one.

8:02 Speaker 2: Weather permitting. Friday should be quite the day.

8:05 Speaker 1: Okay. Story three, and this one is a genuine rewrite

8:10 Speaker 1: of something we thought we understood.

8:12 Speaker 2: Where did Earth come from? We know the broad answer.

8:15 Speaker 2: Four and a half billion years ago, a cloud of

8:18 Speaker 2: gas and dust collapsed, the Sun formed, and the leftover

8:22 Speaker 2: material clumped into planets, but where exactly did the specific

8:26 Speaker 2: material that became Earth come from.

8:29 Speaker 1: For decades, the accepted model was that Earth got a

8:32 Speaker 1: significant chunk of its building material from the outer Solar

8:35 Speaker 1: System from beyond Jupiter. Estimates ranged from six percent to

8:40 Speaker 1: as much as forty percent of Earth's mass, and the

8:43 Speaker 1: reason this mattered is water pliantists needed that outer Solar

8:47 Speaker 1: System contribution to explain where Earth's oceans came from, because

8:51 Speaker 1: the Inner Solar System was thought to be too dry.

8:54 Speaker 2: But a new study from Eth Zurich, published in the

8:57 Speaker 2: journal Nature Astronomy, has just turned that on its head.

9:01 Speaker 2: Planetary scientists Paulososi and Dan Bauer analyze isotopic ratios of

9:07 Speaker 2: meteorites from across the Solar System and compare them to

9:10 Speaker 2: Earth's composition. Their conclusion, Earth formed almost entirely from Inner

9:16 Speaker 2: Solar System material, the outer Solar System contribution less than

9:20 Speaker 2: two percent, and possibly nothing at all.

9:23 Speaker 1: Now, isotopes are essentially atomic fingerprints. Different regions of the

9:28 Speaker 1: Solar System produce slightly different ratios of the same elements,

9:33 Speaker 1: and you can use those signatures to trace where material originated.

9:37 Speaker 1: Previous studies mostly looked at one or two isotopic systems.

9:41 Speaker 1: Saucy and Bauer looked at ten.

9:44 Speaker 2: Ten different isotopic systems analyzed with statistical methods rarely used

9:49 Speaker 2: in geochemistry, and when you look at all ten together,

9:52 Speaker 2: the picture is unambiguous. Earth is built of non carbonaceous material.

9:58 Speaker 2: Inner Solar System stuff through went through.

10:01 Speaker 1: Which immediately raises an enormous question. If Earth didn't get

10:05 Speaker 1: its water from the outer Solar System from comets and

10:09 Speaker 1: water rich asteroids drifting inward, where did the water come from?

10:13 Speaker 2: And the answer, according to this study is it was

10:16 Speaker 2: already here. Water and volatile elements must have been present

10:20 Speaker 2: in the Inner Solar System from the very beginning. We

10:23 Speaker 2: just didn't realize it.

10:24 Speaker 1: And why was so little Outer Solar System material reaching

10:28 Speaker 1: Earth in the first place? Jupiter. Jupiter formed extremely quickly

10:33 Speaker 1: and grew enormous, and its gravity carved gap in the

10:36 Speaker 1: young protoplanetary disc, essentially a barrier between the inner and

10:41 Speaker 1: outer Solar System. This study suggests that barrier was almost

10:45 Speaker 1: completely impermeable. Almost nothing got through.

10:49 Speaker 2: Jupiter, the bouncer of the Solar system. Sorry, outer Solar

10:53 Speaker 2: system material not tonight.

10:55 Speaker 1: One of the researchers, Dan Bauer, said, we were truly

10:59 Speaker 1: astonished to find that Earth is composed entirely from Inner

11:03 Speaker 1: Solar System material, distinct from any combination of existing meteorites.

11:08 Speaker 1: Even they didn't expect this result.

11:10 Speaker 2: The implications are genuinely big. If water was already present

11:14 Speaker 2: in the Inner Solar System, that changes how we think

11:17 Speaker 2: about the conditions that made life possible here, and it

11:20 Speaker 2: has implications for other planetary systems. Rocky planets around Sun

11:25 Speaker 2: like stars might be wetter than we assumed.

11:28 Speaker 1: It's the kind of result that makes you look at

11:30 Speaker 1: the ground beneath your feet differently. This material formed locally

11:34 Speaker 1: billions of years ago without much help from the wider

11:37 Speaker 1: Solar System. Jupiter kept the neighborhood tidy.

11:41 Speaker 2: And Earth's water was here from the starts, which is

11:44 Speaker 2: kind of beautiful.

11:45 Speaker 1: Actually digging with space science, and this one involves an

11:49 Speaker 1: alien comet, a spacecraft on its way to Jupiter's moons,

11:52 Speaker 1: and an instrument that was never designed to do what

11:55 Speaker 1: it ended up doing.

11:57 Speaker 2: We have followed three iatls closely on the show Quick Catchup.

12:01 Speaker 2: Three IATLS is an interstellar comment, only the third object

12:05 Speaker 2: ever confirmed to have entered our Solar System from interstellar space.

12:09 Speaker 2: Discovered in July twenty twenty five, reached its closest approach

12:13 Speaker 2: to the Sun on October twenty ninth. And when I

12:16 Speaker 2: say it was moving fast two hundred and fifty thousand

12:19 Speaker 2: kilometers per hour, nothing that forms in our solar system

12:23 Speaker 2: moves like that.

12:24 Speaker 1: It is genuinely a visitor from another star system. We

12:28 Speaker 1: have no idea which one.

12:30 Speaker 2: In November twenty twenty five, isa's Juice spacecraft, the Jupiter

12:34 Speaker 2: icy Moons Explorer, currently en route to Jupiter, was in

12:37 Speaker 2: a fortunate position to observe three iatls from deep space

12:41 Speaker 2: just four days after Perihelium. The observations were difficult. It

12:45 Speaker 2: took until February twenty twenty six for the data to

12:48 Speaker 2: reach Earth.

12:49 Speaker 1: And Issa has now published the findings and the headline

12:52 Speaker 1: number is extraordinary. Juice's Magis spectrometer detected two thousand kilograms

12:58 Speaker 1: of water vapor being expelled by three iatls every single second.

13:03 Speaker 2: Two thousand kilograms per second.

13:07 Speaker 1: To give you a sense of scale, that is the

13:09 Speaker 1: equivalent of approximately seventy Olympic swimming pools of water every

13:14 Speaker 1: single day, just evaporating off the surface of this comet

13:17 Speaker 1: into space, which.

13:18 Speaker 2: Tells you This is a very active comment. Water rich

13:21 Speaker 2: at least on the surface, though there's an interesting wrinkle.

13:25 Speaker 2: Its carbon dioxide to water ratio is higher than you

13:28 Speaker 2: typically expect from a Solar System commet, which either means

13:31 Speaker 2: the nucleus is genuinely CO two rich or there's a

13:34 Speaker 2: thick insulating crust hiding ice underneath.

13:37 Speaker 1: Either of which we can determine from here. Three iatls

13:41 Speaker 1: has now passed Jupiter and is heading out of the

13:44 Speaker 1: Solar System. It will never return.

13:46 Speaker 2: And here's the part I find most extraordinary. ESIS navigation camera,

13:51 Speaker 2: designed for navigating near Jupiter's moons looking at surfaces a

13:54 Speaker 2: few hundred kilometers below, also contributed to the science. It

13:58 Speaker 2: provided a unique vantage point from deep space that helped

14:01 Speaker 2: ESA's planetary Defense team refine a comet's orbital path to

14:05 Speaker 2: ten times better accuracy than Earth based observations alone.

14:08 Speaker 1: Could achieve an instrument designed for one job unexpectedly doing

14:12 Speaker 1: something completely different and doing it brilliantly. That is science

14:17 Speaker 1: at its best.

14:18 Speaker 2: What I keep coming back to is the age of

14:20 Speaker 2: three iatls. Based on his trajectory, this commet may be

14:24 Speaker 2: billions of years older than the Solar System itself. It's

14:27 Speaker 2: not just from another star. It may be older than

14:30 Speaker 2: our Sun. It has been traveling through interstellar space for

14:33 Speaker 2: longer than Earth has existed.

14:35 Speaker 1: And it spent about a year passing through our backyard,

14:38 Speaker 1: and we watched it as carefully as we could. And

14:41 Speaker 1: now it's gone. Everything we will ever know about three

14:44 Speaker 1: iatls we know.

14:46 Speaker 2: Already everything we will ever know. I love that and

14:50 Speaker 2: find it completely haunting an equal measure. Right after last

14:54 Speaker 2: week's heartbreak with Comet Maps the sun grazer that did

14:57 Speaker 2: not survive its close pass with the Sun, which we

14:59 Speaker 2: covered yesterday's episode, the good news is that April is

15:03 Speaker 2: not done with comets, not even close. Comet C twenty

15:06 Speaker 2: twenty five are three discovered by the Pan Stars survey

15:10 Speaker 2: is now the prime target for April skywatching, and it's

15:13 Speaker 2: looking genuinely promising. Where Maps was unpredictable and dramatic, Akretz

15:18 Speaker 2: sungrazer diving to within one hundred thousand miles of the

15:21 Speaker 2: Sun's surface, pand Stars is a more conventional comment predictable orbit,

15:26 Speaker 2: manageable approach, the reliable act that shows up when the

15:29 Speaker 2: headliner cancels.

15:30 Speaker 1: And its timing is good. Perry Helion closest approach to

15:34 Speaker 1: the Sun is around April twentieth. Closest approach to Earth

15:37 Speaker 1: is April twenty seventh, when it comes within about forty

15:41 Speaker 1: four million miles of US. At peak brightness, it's expected

15:44 Speaker 1: to reach approximately magnitude eight.

15:47 Speaker 2: Now magnitude eight means you will not see it with

15:49 Speaker 2: the naked eye under normal skies, but binoculars will absolutely

15:53 Speaker 2: do the job. Any small telescope will give you a

15:56 Speaker 2: lovely view. You're looking for a fuzzy smudge, possibly with

15:59 Speaker 2: a fan tail extending away from the Sun.

16:02 Speaker 1: For Northern Hemisphere listeners, look east in the pre dawn

16:06 Speaker 1: sky from mid April through the end of the month.

16:09 Speaker 1: It will be in the constellations Pegasus and Pisces. A

16:13 Speaker 1: good star app Delarium sky Safari star Walk two will

16:18 Speaker 1: give you exact positioning, and for our.

16:21 Speaker 2: Listeners in Australia and New Zealand, your window is actually

16:24 Speaker 2: in early May. In the evening sky. Look west after sunset.

16:29 Speaker 2: Dark skies will significantly help get away from city lights

16:33 Speaker 2: if you can.

16:34 Speaker 1: Coomet brightness predictions can shift. They famously don't always behave,

16:39 Speaker 1: so keep checking sky and Telescope or Universe today. As

16:43 Speaker 1: we get closer to perihelion. But right now the forecast

16:47 Speaker 1: looks encouraging.

16:48 Speaker 2: Think of it as the universe offering a constellation prize

16:52 Speaker 2: after maps. It's a perfectly lovely comment and it deserves

16:55 Speaker 2: our attention.

16:56 Speaker 1: One commet destroyed, one comet in coming April is very

17:01 Speaker 1: on brand for the Solar System. All right, story six,

17:05 Speaker 1: And today we're doing something a little different to close

17:08 Speaker 1: the show.

17:09 Speaker 2: We are going back thirty years, back to one of

17:12 Speaker 2: the strangest and most overlooked stories in the history of

17:16 Speaker 2: space exploration. A mission that was built with extraordinary ambition,

17:20 Speaker 2: launched into tragedy, and then vanished, and nobody has ever

17:25 Speaker 2: found it.

17:26 Speaker 1: This is the story of Mars ninety six.

17:29 Speaker 2: Let's set the scene. It's nineteen ninety six. The Cold

17:33 Speaker 2: War has been over for five years. Russia and the

17:36 Speaker 2: United States are, for the first time in decades, not

17:39 Speaker 2: rivals in space. They're partners. Juttle Mirror is underway, the

17:44 Speaker 2: International Space Station is being designed. There is genuine optimism

17:48 Speaker 2: about what a post Cold War space age could look like.

17:52 Speaker 1: And in that spirit of optimism, an extraordinary mission is

17:56 Speaker 1: being assembled. Russia is leading it, but it is genuinely

18:00 Speaker 1: Thai National science payloads from Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Belgium, Finland, Austria,

18:08 Speaker 1: and the United States, dasa's Jet Propulsion Lab contributing two instruments.

18:14 Speaker 1: This is what cooperation looks like when people choose it.

18:18 Speaker 2: The spacecraft itself is remarkable. At over six thousan five

18:22 Speaker 2: hundred kilograms, it is the largest interplanetary spacecraft humans had

18:27 Speaker 2: ever launched more than forty science instruments aboard, and its

18:31 Speaker 2: ambition is staggering. It would study Mars simultaneously from orbit,

18:36 Speaker 2: from the surface and from below it, from below it,

18:41 Speaker 2: from below it. Mars ninety six was carrying two surface penetrators,

18:46 Speaker 2: hardened cylindrical probe specifically engineered to strike the Martian ground

18:51 Speaker 2: at seventy to eighty meters per second and bury themselves

18:55 Speaker 2: several meters underground, where they would measure seismic activity and

18:59 Speaker 2: heat flow for up to a year.

19:01 Speaker 1: That is actually extraordinary a networked subsurface Mars science station.

19:06 Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety six.

19:09 Speaker 2: It was also carrying two surface landers, small autonomous stations

19:13 Speaker 2: that would descend using an air bag system to cushion

19:16 Speaker 2: their landing, an airbag landing concept that NASA's Mars Pathfinder

19:20 Speaker 2: would use to enormous public acclaim just months later.

19:24 Speaker 1: So the technology was there, the ambition was there, the

19:28 Speaker 1: international partnership was there, and on the night of November sixteenth,

19:33 Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, the proton K rocket lifted off from

19:37 Speaker 1: Bikanor Cosmodrome.

19:38 Speaker 2: And then almost immediately something went catastrophically wrong.

19:44 Speaker 1: The spacecraft entered its parking orbit successfully. The upper stage

19:48 Speaker 1: was supposed to fire and push Mars ninety six toward

19:51 Speaker 1: interplanetary velocity. It didn't. It either failed to ignite properly

19:57 Speaker 1: or shut down almost immediately.

19:59 Speaker 2: And here's a detail that stays with me. The onboard

20:02 Speaker 2: autopilot kept executing its program sequence. It had no way

20:07 Speaker 2: of knowing the mission had already failed. So it separated

20:10 Speaker 2: from the upper stage. It fired its own engine, It

20:14 Speaker 2: unfolded its solar panels, it began transmitting toelemetry.

20:18 Speaker 1: For a brief moment, controllers in Crimea thought it had worked.

20:22 Speaker 1: The signals were there, the spacecraft was doing everything it

20:25 Speaker 1: was supposed to.

20:27 Speaker 2: Until the orbital data arrived and the realization set in.

20:31 Speaker 2: Mars ninety six had never left Earth orbit. It was trapped,

20:36 Speaker 2: and it was about to come back down very rapidly.

20:41 Speaker 2: Early assessments suggested the debris might land over Australia, which

20:45 Speaker 2: prompted President Clinton to call Prime Minister John Howard directly

20:49 Speaker 2: to offer support for any recovery operation. As tracking data

20:53 Speaker 2: was refined, the projected impact zone shifted, eventually settling on

20:58 Speaker 2: a corridor across the Eastern Pacific and into northern Chile

21:02 Speaker 2: and Bolivia.

21:04 Speaker 1: And in the Andes. That same night, witnesses reported something unusual,

21:09 Speaker 1: a brilliant object moving slowly across the sky, not the

21:13 Speaker 1: sudden flash of a meteor, something that lasted nearly a minute,

21:18 Speaker 1: jetting glowing fragments that briefly lit the thin mountain air

21:22 Speaker 1: before fading.

21:24 Speaker 2: One of those witnesses was an electronic specialist at the

21:27 Speaker 2: European Southern Observatory, who later said he had no illusions

21:31 Speaker 2: that it was anything other than a piece of space debris.

21:35 Speaker 1: US Space Command later acknowledged in writing, we believe it

21:39 Speaker 1: is reasonable that the impact was in fact on land.

21:43 Speaker 2: And then nothing. A search was never performed, nobody went looking.

21:48 Speaker 2: Thirty years later, the final resting place of Mars ninety

21:51 Speaker 2: six is completely.

21:53 Speaker 1: Unknown, and here is where it gets genuinely strange. Those

21:58 Speaker 1: surface penetrators built to survive striking Mars at seventy to

22:03 Speaker 1: eighty meters per second, had thick compact casings engineered for

22:08 Speaker 1: violent impact. It is entirely possible that one or both

22:12 Speaker 1: of them survived reentry and are sitting in the Andes

22:16 Speaker 1: right now, largely intact.

22:18 Speaker 2: Hardware built for Mars in a Chilean valley that nobody

22:23 Speaker 2: has ever looked for.

22:24 Speaker 1: The spacecraft was also carrying eighteen radio isotope heater units,

22:30 Speaker 1: small plutonium powered heaters specifically engineered to survive catastrophic events,

22:36 Speaker 1: including atmospheric re entry. Similar units survived the uncontrolled crash

22:41 Speaker 1: of a Soviet satellite over northern Canada in nineteen seventy eight,

22:46 Speaker 1: so these two could still be out there.

22:49 Speaker 2: The Space Review published a beautiful retrospective on this story

22:53 Speaker 2: just this week, and they put it perfectly. A spacecraft

22:56 Speaker 2: engineer to be tracked from hundreds of millions of kilometers

23:00 Speaker 2: away may instead have vanished somewhere on Earth, a world

23:04 Speaker 2: mapped in exquisite detail by satellites, aircraft, and ordinary people

23:09 Speaker 2: carrying cameras in their pockets, somewhere in a dry valley

23:13 Speaker 2: across the wind swept Altiplano or among the salt flats

23:17 Speaker 2: and volcanic slopes of the High On. This hardware built

23:20 Speaker 2: for another planet may still be lying quietly under open sky.

23:25 Speaker 1: Could we find it today with modern satellite imagery, drone surveys,

23:30 Speaker 1: AI pattern recognition. Why has nobody gone looking in thirty years?

23:36 Speaker 2: That is a question I genuinely don't have an answer to.

23:39 Speaker 1: There is a coda to this story that I think

23:42 Speaker 1: deserves to be said. Many of Mars ninety six's science

23:45 Speaker 1: teams didn't give up. They went on to contribute to

23:48 Speaker 1: isa's Mars Express mission, launched in two thousand and three,

23:52 Speaker 1: which is still operating today.

23:54 Speaker 2: And one instrument, the Alpha Proton X ray Spectrometer, developed

23:59 Speaker 2: by the Universe City of Chicago for Mars ninety six,

24:02 Speaker 2: actually reached Mars. A closely related version of it flew

24:06 Speaker 2: aboard NASA's Mars Pathfinder, launched just months after the crash.

24:11 Speaker 2: It landed on Mars in nineteen ninety seven and began

24:14 Speaker 2: returning chemical readings from the surface.

24:17 Speaker 1: One instrument made it, carrying forward the work of the

24:20 Speaker 1: mission that never got there.

24:22 Speaker 2: Somewhere in the Andes, hardware built for another planet sits

24:26 Speaker 2: silent and unfound, and somewhere on Mars, a cousin of

24:31 Speaker 2: that same hardware did exactly what it was built to do.

24:34 Speaker 2: The mission failed, the science and part survived.

24:38 Speaker 1: Russia has never successfully sent an independent Mars mission since

24:43 Speaker 1: Mars ninety six. Worth sitting with, especially this week as

24:47 Speaker 1: we watch Artemis two completing one of the most successful

24:51 Speaker 1: crude missions in decades.

24:53 Speaker 2: Base is hard. Every mission we celebrate, every safe return,

24:57 Speaker 2: every trajectory burn that fires on top time is built

25:01 Speaker 2: on decades of missions that didn't make it. Mars ninety

25:04 Speaker 2: six is one of them.

25:06 Speaker 1: And if you're ever in the andes, keep your eyes open.

25:09 Speaker 2: And that is Astronomy Daily for Wednesday, April eighth, twenty

25:13 Speaker 2: twenty six. What a lineup today.

25:16 Speaker 1: We had Artemis two heading home, a cargo ship delayed

25:19 Speaker 1: into a spectacular Friday, the origin story of the ground

25:23 Speaker 1: beneath your feet rewritten, an alien comment saying it's final farewell,

25:28 Speaker 1: a new comment arriving just in time, and a thirty

25:32 Speaker 1: year old mystery that nobody has solved.

25:35 Speaker 2: If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe wherever you get

25:38 Speaker 2: your podcasts. It genuinely makes a difference in helping us

25:40 Speaker 2: reach more Space enthusiasts around the world.

25:43 Speaker 1: Leave us a review, If you have a moment, tell

25:45 Speaker 1: a friend. Find us on social media. We are at

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25:52 Speaker 1: YouTube links and full show notes at Astronomy Daily dot io.

25:57 Speaker 2: We will be back tomorrow with the latest from space.

26:00 Speaker 1: Until then, for Avery, I'm Anna and for Anna, I'm Avery,

26:04 Speaker 1: keep clicking up.

26:05 Speaker 2: We'll see you tomorrow Sunday. Star is the.

26:17 Speaker 1: Star Is

26:25 Speaker 2: Star