Artemis II Reaches the Pad, Akatsuki's Final Farewell, and China Cracks the FRB Code

Anna: Welcome to Astronomy Daily, your source

for the latest news in space and astronomy.

I'm Anna.

Avery: And I'm Avery. We've got an

absolutely packed show for you today with

some really exciting developments happening

across the solar system and beyond.

Anna: That's right, Avery. NASA's Artemis 2

mission just reached a major milestone that

brings us closer to putting humans back on

the moon. We'll update you on the m

impressive journey their massive rocket just

completed.

Avery: Plus, we're saying goodbye to a spacecraft

that refused to give up. Japan's

Akatsuki mission to Venus has officially

ended after more than a decade of incredible

science. But not before delivering some

stunning discoveries.

Anna: We've also got a fascinating storey about

China's fast telescope solving a

cosmic mystery that's had astronomers

scratching their heads for years. Fast

radio bursts, anyone?

Avery: Speaking of mysteries, there's some

concerning news about a Spanish military

satell. We'll explore what might be the most

comprehensive year for space science in

recent memory, with missions heading to the

moon, Mars and beyond.

Anna: And finally, astronomers have been taking a,

uh, closer look at dwarf galaxies. And what

they found is changing our understanding of

supermassive black holes across the universe.

Avery: It's going to be a great show, so let's get

into it.

Anna: All right, Avery. Let's kick things off with

some really exciting news from NASA's Kennedy

Space Centre in Florida. The Artemis 2

mission just hit a huge milestone.

Avery: This is big, Anna.

Anna: Uh.

Avery: After nearly 12 hours of careful travel,

NASA's Space Launch System rocket and Orion

spacecraft finally reached launch pad

39B this past Saturday evening.

Anna: And when you say careful travel, you really

mean it. We're talking about NASA's Crawler

Transporter 2 moving at a blazing

maximum speed of just 0.82

miles per hour.

Avery: Right. I could literally walk faster than

that. But when you're moving a massive moon

rocket, slow and steady definitely wins the

race. The journey from the vehicle assembly

building covered about four miles.

Anna: What I find interesting is that they had to

make a planned pause. Along the way, the team

needed to reposition the crew access arm,

which is essentially a bridge that will

provide the astronauts access to the Orion

spacecraft on launch day.

Avery: That's such a critical piece of

infrastructure. Now that the rocket's at the

pad, teams are preparing for what NASA calls

a wet dress rehearsal, which is targeted for

no later than February 2nd.

Anna: Can you explain what that entails for our

listeners who might not be familiar?

Avery: Absolutely. During the wet dress rehearsal,

engineers will load the rocket with its

cryogenic propellants, super cold fuel

run through the entire countdown. Sequence

and then practise safely draining all those

propellants from the rocket. It's basically a

full mission simulation without actually

launching.

Anna: And this is absolutely essential. Before

putting a crew on board, NASA wants to make

sure every system works perfectly.

Avery: Exactly. Now, they've noted that additional

wet dress rehearsals might be required to

ensure the vehicle is completely ready for

flight. And if needed, they may roll the

SLS and Orion back to the vehicle assembly

building for additional work.

Anna: Let's talk about the crew. This is going to

be a historic mission.

Avery: It really is. The Artemis 2 mission

will send NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman,

Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with

Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy

Hansen, on approximately 10 day journey

around the moon and back.

Anna: And this will be the first crewed lunar

mission since Apollo 17 in

1972. We're talking about more

than 50 years.

Avery: That's incredible when you think about it.

And this mission is a crucial stepping stone

towards landing humans on the moon's surface

again, which will then help us prepare for

the ultimate sending astronauts to Mars.

Anna: The timeline is really coming together. From

rollout to wet dress rehearsal to launch,

it's all happening.

Avery: And every step brings us closer to seeing

humans venture beyond Earth orbit for the

first time in over half a century. It's

an exciting time for space exploration.

Anna: Moving from the moon to our other planetary

neighbour.

We need to talk about the end of an era at

Venus. Japan's Akatsuki mission

officially concluded in September 2025

after an absolutely remarkable journey.

Avery: This is such a bittersweet storey, Anna. Uh,

Akatsuki, which was operated by JAXA and

iss, was Japan's first fully

successful planetary orbiter. And it went

through quite an ordeal to get there.

Anna: Right, because the mission didn't exactly go

according to plan from the start, did it?

Avery: Not at all. Akatsuki launched back in 2010

with the goal of studying Venus's atmosphere,

but it actually failed to enter Venus orbit

on its first attempt due to a main engine

malfunction. So the spacecraft ended up

drifting around the sun for five years.

Anna: Five years. That must have been incredibly

frustrating for the team. But they didn't

give up.

Avery: They absolutely didn't. In December 2015,

JAXA engineers managed a second attempt using

the spacecraft's smaller thrusters. And this

time it worked. Akatsuki successfully entered

orbit around Venus and became the only

operational spacecraft there at the time.

Anna: So what kind of work did it accomplish once

it finally got into position?

Avery: Well, the spacecraft weighed just over

1150 pounds and carried five

imaging instruments plus a six radio system.

Its orbit was Highly elliptical, ranging from

about 620 miles at its closest to

Venus all the way out to

223,700 miles

at its farthest point.

Anna: That's quite a range. I imagine that gave

them different perspectives on the planet.

Avery: Exactly. It allowed for both wide angle

observations and detailed close up studies of

Venus's thick toxic cloud layers. And

Akatsuki made some really incredible

discoveries during its decade of operations.

Anna: Like what?

Avery: One of the most striking findings was a, uh,

giant stationary gravity wave about

6,200 miles long. It's the

largest of its kind in the entire solar

system.

Anna: That's enormous. What causes something

like that?

Avery: These gravity waves appeared as alternating

light and dark bands in the atmosphere. And

they're created when air is pushed upward by

mountainous terrain on Venus's surface.

What's fascinating is that how even the lower

surface can influence the upper atmospheric

layers despite the crushing pressure.

Anna: Akatsuki, uh, also contributed to

understanding Venus's super rotation

phenomenon, right?

Avery: That's right. Super rotation is this bizarre

phenomenon where Venus's upper atmosphere

moves significantly faster than the planet's

surface rotates. Akatsuki provided evidence

linking this wind acceleration to vertical

momentum transfers through waves and

turbulence.

Anna: So how did the mission ultimately end?

Avery: In late April 2024, contact with

Akatsuki was lost during a period of low

precision attitude control. Basically, the

spacecraft's orientation and antenna

positioning drifted off target. The

transmitter likely kept working, but the

radio signal could no longer reach Earth.

Anna: And despite months of attempts to re

establish communication, they couldn't get it

back.

Avery: Unfortunately not. JAXA

officially sent the final command to

terminate the mission on September 18,

2025, just over 15 years after

launch. This ensured no uncontrolled signals

would continue broadcasting from the inactive

probe.

Anna: What a legacy though. Despite all the

setbacks, Akatsuki delivered remarkable

science about Venus's atmosphere and proved

that you should never count a mission out.

Avery: Absolutely. It's a testament to the ingenuity

and determination of the team. They turned

what could have been a complete failure into

a highly successful decade.

Anna: Long mission from Venus.

Let's turn our attention to one of the

biggest mysteries in modern astronomy. Fast

radio bursts and Avery. Chinese

astronomers have just made a breakthrough

that's reshaping our understanding of these

enigmatic signals.

Avery: This is really exciting work, Anna. Um, an

international team using China's FAST

telescope, that's the 500 metre

aperture spherical Telescope, also known as

the China Sky Eye, has uncovered the

first clear evidence that some fast radio

burst sources actually originate in binary

star systems.

Anna: Okay, so for our listeners who Might not be

familiar. Can you explain what fast radio

bursts are?

Avery: Sure. Fast radio bursts, or

FRBs, are these incredibly brief

but energetic pulses of radio waves from

deep space. We're talking about flashes that

last less than a thousandth of a second, but

can release more energy than our sun emits in

days.

Anna: That's mind boggling. And most of these are

one time events, right?

Avery: Exactly. Most FRBs are one

off events, which makes them really hard to

study. But a handful repeat and those

give astronomers rare opportunities for long

term observation. That's what made this

discovery possible.

Anna: So tell us about this particular burst they

were studying.

Avery: The team led by Professor Bing Zhang from the

University of Hong Kong focus on a repeating

source called

FRB2205.29A,

located about 2.5 billion light years

away. They monitored it for 17

months using FAST, which is the world's most

sensitive instrument for detecting these

signals.

Anna: And for most of that time it seemed pretty

unremarkable.

Avery: That's what's so interesting. For 17

months, the signal appeared consistent and

ordinary. But then near the end of

2023, something truly exciting

happened that transformed the entire study.

Anna: What changed?

Avery: They detected what they call an RM flare,

a sudden dramatic change in the rotation

measure of the radio waves. The rotation

measure increased by more than a factor of

100, then rapidly declined over

two weeks before returning to its previous

level. Think of rotation measure as

describing how polarised radio waves twist

as they pass through magnetic plasma. A

sudden change like this reveals shifts in the

environment surrounding the FRB source.

Anna: And what does that tell us?

Avery: Uh, well, this flare suggested that the

FRB's environment was suddenly flooded by

highly magnetised plasma, likely

ejected by a nearby star. It's consistent

with coronal mass ejections, those massive

bursts of stellar material that our sun

occasionally launches.

Anna: So that's the smoking gun for a binary

system.

Avery: Exactly. By linking this RM flare

to plasma activity from a companion star,

the team provided the strongest evidence yet

that some FRBs arise in binary

systems containing a magnetar, which is a

neutron star with an extremely strong

magnetic field paired with a regular star

like our sun.

Anna: This contradicts the long standing belief

that FRBs come solely from isolated

magnetars, doesn't it?

Avery: It does, and it's a major shift in our

understanding. The findings were published in

the journal Science and mark a real milestone

for astrophysics. The observations were

corroborated by data from Australia's Parkes

telescope, which reinforces the reliability

of these findings.

Anna: Do these results fit into any broader

theories about FRBs?

Avery: Actually, yes. They align with a unified

model recently proposed by Professor Zhang

and colleagues, suggesting that all FRBs

originate from Magnetars, but those within

binary systems have specific geometries

and environments that make them repeat more

frequently.

Anna: So we're starting to piece together the

puzzle of, uh, why some FRBs repeat

and others don't.

Avery: Exactly. And this discovery was only

possible because of persevering observations

using the world's best telescopes and the

tireless work of dedicated research teams.

It's astronomy at its finest.

Anna: Alright, now let's look ahead, because

2026 is shaping up to be an

absolutely incredible year for space science.

Avery, where should we even begin?

Avery: There's so much happening. Ana, uh, let's

start with lunar missions, because we're

seeing a real renaissance in moon

exploration. Multiple commercial landers and

government missions are on the schedule.

Anna: And we learned some valuable lessons from

2025's lunar landing attempts, didn't we?

Avery: We certainly did. In early

2025, three commercial landers

attempted moon landings, but only one,

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost,

succeeded. That was a major milestone as

the first fully successful commercial lunar

landing.

Anna: Blue Ghost touched down near Mons Littrelle

in Mar Criseum and operated for several

days before shutting down during the lunar

night.

Avery: Right, And Firefly isn't resting on their

laurels. They're planning Blue Ghost Mission

2 for November 2026, launching

aboard a Falcon 9. This mission will carry

some really interesting payloads, including

NASA's Lucy Night experiment.

Anna: That's the Lunar Surface Electromagnetic

Experiment at night. And it's particularly

exciting because it'll become the first

operational radio telescope on the moon,

operating through the lunar night.

Avery: Also flying on that mission is the United

Arab Emirates Rasheed Rover 2.

But what makes this launch even more

interesting is that it'll debut Firefly's

Elytra Dark Space Tug, which will boost Blue

Ghost to the moon and insert ESA's Lunar

Pathfinder communication satellite into lunar

orbit.

Anna: There are other commercial missions planned

too, right?

Avery: Absolutely. Intuitive Machines is planning

its IM3 mission in the second half of the

year with another Nova Sea Lander. And Blue

Origin will attempt its first lunar landing

with the Blue Moon Mark one Pathfinder

mission, testing systems for future crewed

missions.

Anna: What about the Gryphon Lander?

Avery: Astrobotics Gryphon Lander is scheduled for

July 2026. And it'll carry

Astrolabe's Flip rover, a, uh,

prototype for their larger Flex rover

being pitched. NASA's Artemis programme.

Anna: And China's getting in on the action too.

Avery: They are. Chang' e 7 is planned to launch

this year and attempt a landing on the rim of

Shackleton Crater near the south pole. It's a

comprehensive mission with an orbiter, lander

rover and even a small hopping probe.

Anna: Let's shift to Mars. What's happening there?

Avery: Well, 2026 marks another Mars transfer

window, so we'll see new missions heading to

the Red Planet. NASA's twin escapade

satellites called Blue and Gold actually

launched in November 2025 and are waiting

at the Sun Earth Lagrange.2 until the

transfer window opens in November.

Anna: What will they study?

Avery: They'll investigate how the solar wind has

been stripping away at Mars atmosphere over

time. And Japan's MMX M UM mission, the

Martian Moons Exploration Mission, will also

launch during this window to study Phobos and

Deimos and even attempt to collect a sample

from Phobos.

Anna: There's also the ongoing situation with

NASA's MAVEN satellite. Isn't there?

Avery: Unfortunately, yes. MAVEN lost contact in

early December when it failed to cheque in

after passing behind Mars. A small fragment

of telemetry suggests the spacecraft might be

rotating and its orbit may have changed.

NASA had to pause recovery efforts during the

Mars solar conjunction, but they planned to

start trying again over the weekend. No word

yet on how that's going, but fingers are

crossed.

Anna: Indeed, fingers crossed for maven.

Now, what about space telescopes? We've got

some major launches coming up.

Avery: Three new space telescopes are launching in

2026. First up is ESA's

Smile mission in April aboard a Vega C

rocket. It'll study Earth's magnetosphere

interacting with solar wind using soft X ray

and ultraviolet observations.

Anna: Then we have the Nancy Grace Roman Space

Telescope in October.

Avery: M that's the big one. Roman will launch on a

Falcon 9 and features a 288

megapixel camera that'll perform sky surveys

with Hubble quality resolution, but producing

images nearly 200 times larger.

Construction was completed in November and

it's currently in final testing.

Anna: And ESA's Plato mission rounds out the year.

Avery: Exactly. PLATO launches in December aboard,

uh, an Ariane6.2 and will search for

Earth like exoplanets in their star's

habitable zones. It'll study up to 1

million stars.

Anna: There are also some exciting arrivals this

year, right?

Avery: Yes. ESA's HERA mission arrives

at the Didymos binary asteroid system in

November, a month ahead of schedule thanks to

excellent spacecraft performance. It'll study

the crater left by NASA's dart impact.

Anna: And don't forget BepiColombo.

Avery: Right. The joint ESA JAXA

mission enters Mercury orbit on November 6th.

After an eight year journey, it'll deploy two

orbiters that begin science operations in

early 2027.

Anna: This really is going to be an incredible year

for space science.

Avery: Without a doubt. From the Moon to Mars,

from nearby asteroids to distant galaxies,

2026 promises discoveries will

advance our understanding of the cosmos.

Anna: Now we need to talk about a, uh. Concerning

development in Earth orbit. Bain's His

DAT company has confirmed that one of their

military communications satellites has

sustained what they're calling non

recoverable damage.

Avery: This is a significant loss. Anna. Uh, we're

talking about the SpainSat NG2 satellite,

which was struck by what's being described as

a space particle. And despite the

relatively small size of this particle, the

damage is total.

Anna: Let's give our listeners some context. This

satellite was brand new, wasn't it?

Avery: Very new. It launched aboard a SpaceX

Falcon 9 just this past October

2025. SpainSatNG2 was one of a

pair of satellites built by Airbus to provide

secure communications for Spain's armed

forces. So what exactly happened

on January 16? Hisdat released details

explaining that while the space particle was

estimated to be only millimetres in size and

weighing just a few grammes, its extremely

high velocity combined with the location of

the impact caused catastrophic non

recoverable damage.

Anna: That really highlights the danger of space

debris and micrometeorites, doesn't it?

Avery: Absolutely. Even something tiny can be

devastating when it's travelling at orbital

velocities. The company did note that because

a satellite is in a highly eccentric orbit,

it doesn't pose any risk or interference to

existing or future space missions.

Anna: What are the financial implications?

Avery: Well, his dad says the satellite was fully

insured against this type of incident, so

there won't be any direct economic damage to

the company. However, here's the thing.

While the insurance covers the loss, a uh,

claim this large will almost certainly drive

up insurance premiums for future satellites.

Anna: How much are we talking about?

Avery: The total SpainSat ng programme cost is

around 2 billion euros, according to Spain's

official foreign investment promotion agency.

So this single satellite claim is likely in

the hundreds of millions of euros.

Anna: That's going to have ripple effects across

the insurance market.

Avery: It will. And there's another concern. The

replacement timeline. Airbus secured the

contract to build the first two Spain Sat Ng

satellites back in May 2019 and the

first one launched in January 2025.

That's more than five years from contract to

launch.

Anna: So if we're looking at a similar timeline for

SpainSat NG3, we might not

see a replacement until around 2030.

Avery: That's the concern. In fact, HISDAT has

already initiated a request for quotation for

the replacement satellite. In the meantime,

they'll continue providing secure

communications for Spain's armed forces using

Spainsat NG1 and the original

Spainsat satellite.

Anna: Wait, the original Sveinsat from

2006?

Avery: Exactly. That satellite launched aboard an

Ariane 5 in 2006 with a

15 year design life. And here we are almost

20 years later, still relying on it.

That's actually a testament to good

engineering and design.

Anna: But surely it can't be operating at full

capacity after all this time?

Avery: You'd expect some degradation, yes, but it's

remarkable that it's still functional. But

this incident really underscores the

vulnerability of our space assets and the

importance of having redundancy.

Anna: This also raises questions about space debris

tracking and mitigation, doesn't it?

Avery: Absolutely. If a particle just

millimetres in size can cause total loss of

a satellite worth hundreds of millions of

euros, we really need to think seriously

about the growing debris problem in Earth or

orbit and around it.

Anna: For our final storey, let's venture into the

distant universe to talk about some

fascinating new research on dwarf galaxies

and the black holes at their centres.

Avery, this is challenging some long held

assumptions.

Avery: It really is, Anna. Astronomers from the

Harvard and Smithsonian Centre for

Astrophysics and the University of North

Carolina at Chapel Hill presented what

they're calling the most comprehensive senses

of active galactic nuclei in dwarf

galaxies to date.

Anna: Now, for listeners who might need a

refresher, can you explain what an active

galactic nucleus is?

Avery: Sure. Active galactic nuclei, or

agn, sometimes called quasars, are the

incredibly bright core regions of galaxies.

They're so luminous that they can temporarily

outshine all the stars in the entire

galaxy combined.

Anna: And that's because of the supermassive black

holes at the centre of.

Avery: Exactly. These supermassive black

holes accelerate infalling gas and dust and

their accretion discs to near the speed of

light, producing intense radiation across the

electromagnetic spectrum. Everything from

visible light in infrared to microwaves and

X rays.

Anna: For decades, we've known that many massive

galaxies have supermassive black holes at

their centres. And we assumed the same was

true for dwarf galaxies, right?

Avery: That was the assumption. But scientists have

since learned that many dwarf galaxies

actually don't have these central black

holes. That's why this new census was so

important.

Anna: So what did they do?

Avery: The team reassessed over 8,000 nearby

galaxies for signs of active black hole

activity. They grouped these galaxies by mass

and analysed the latest optical, infrared

and X ray observations to detect Even the

faintest signs of AGN activity.

Anna: And what did they find?

Avery: Previous surveys generally found about 10

AGNs per 1,000 dwarf galaxies. That's

just 1%. But this new census yielded

values of about 20 to 50 per 1,000

or 2 to 5%.

Anna: So they're finding AGNs are two to five times

more common than we thought in dwarf

galaxies?

Avery: Yes. Now this is still significantly

less than what we observe in medium sized

galaxies at 16 to 27% or

large galaxies at 20 to 48%.

But it's a substantial increase from previous

estimates.

Anna: What's causing this discrepancy with earlier

surveys?

Avery: A big part of it was suppressing the glare

from star formation, which had been obscuring

emissions from accreting, uh, black holes.

The team developed better detection methods

to cut through that glare.

Anna: So what does this tell us about how black

holes relate to galaxy mass?

Avery: Well, the results suggest that AGN

frequency is mass dependent and increases

sharply among galaxies with mass similar to

our Milky Way. As lead author Magda

Polymera explained, there's an intense jump

in AGN activity between dwarf galaxies and

mid sized galaxies.

Anna: That's a significant finding. What might

explain it?

Avery: It could indicate a fundamental shift in the

galaxies themselves as they grow. Or it might

mean we're still not catching everything into

smaller galaxies and need even better

detection methods. Either way, it's an

important clue.

Anna: How does this relate to galaxy formation?

Avery: Well, as co author Professor Sheila

Kanopan pointed out, we believe the Milky Way

formed from many smaller galaxies that merged

together. So the massive black holes in those

dwarf galaxies should have merged to form the

Milky Way's supermassive black hole.

Anna: So understanding these dwarf galaxy black

holes helps us understand our own galaxy's

history.

Avery: Exactly. These results are essential to

test models of black hole origins and their

role in shaping galaxies over cosmic time.

Are there still uncertainties in this census?

Yes. There's still a margin of uncertainty

where fainter creating black holes are

involved. So these percentages are

approximate. Future observations with more

sensitive instruments will likely refine

these numbers.

Anna: But this gives astronomers a much clearer

picture than we had before.

Avery: Absolutely. It provides the clearest picture

yet of how likely galaxies of different sizes

are to host active black holes. And it

demonstrates how cutting through the glare of

star formation can reveal what's really

happening at the centres of nearby galaxies.

Anna: And the team is releasing their data for

other researchers to verify and expand on.

Avery: That's right. They're making their processed

measurements available so other astronomers

can confirm and build on these results.

That's good science in action.

Anna: Well, that brings us to the end of another

packed episode of Astronomy Daily. From

the Artemis, uh, two rocket reaching the

launch pad to new discoveries about black

holes in dwarf galaxies, it's been quite a

journey through the cosmos today.

Avery: It really has, Anna. Uh, we covered

everything from the Moon to Venus to distant

galaxies, and every storey reminds us just

how active and exciting space exploration and

astronomy are right now.

Anna: Before we go, a quick reminder that you can

find more space and astronomy news on our

[email protected].

we've got detailed articles, images and lots

In this episode