Artemis II's Historic Cargo, Orbital Debris Crisis, and AI Finds 7,000 New Worlds

Anna: Welcome to Astronomy Daily. I'm Anna.

Avery: And I'm, um, avery. It's Friday, January

23rd, and we've got an amazing lineup of

space stories to close out your week.

Anna: We certainly do. Today we're exploring

NASA's plans to send some very special

keepsakes around the moon on Artemis 2.

Blue Origin's latest new Glenn launch

plans, and some m fascinating new research

about where Earth's water really came from.

Avery: Plus, we'll dive into a rather urgent warning

about the increasing dangers of space space

debris, uncover new insights about how

supermassive black holes grew so quickly,

and learn how AI Is helping scientists

discover thousands of new exoplanets.

Let's get started, avery.

Anna: As Artemis 2 preparations continue at

Kennedy Space Center, NASA has revealed

something really special they'll be taking

along for the ride. And it's not just the

four astronauts.

Avery: Oh, I love when missions carry meaningful

items. What are they bringing?

Anna: This is fascinating. The official flight kit

includes a piece of fabric from the original

1903 Wright Flyer. It's a

tiny swatch just one inch square from the

very first aircraft that made the powered

flight at Kitty Hawk. What's even cooler is

that this same piece already flew on the

space shuttle discovery back in

1985.

Avery: So it's making its second journey to space.

That's a beautiful connection between the

beginning of powered flight and humanity's

return to the moon. What else is in the

flight kit?

Anna: There's an American flag with an incredible

history. It flew on the very first

shuttle mission, STS1, and the

final shuttle mission, STS135.

It also went up on SpaceX's first crewed

Dragonflight. Talk about bookending an era

of spaceflight.

Avery: That flag has seen some serious history. Is

there anything connecting Artemis back to the

Apollo program?

Anna: Absolutely. They're flying a flag that was

originally meant for Apollo 18, a

mission that never happened. This will be its

very first spaceflight, finally fulfilling

its original destiny after all these years.

There's also a photo negative from the Ranger

7 mission, which was the US first

spacecraft to successfully reach the lunar

surface back in the 1960s.

Avery: It's like they're weaving together the entire

story of American exploration. And knowing

NASA, I bet they're including the public

somehow.

Anna: Of course, an SD card carrying

millions of names, including ours, from the

send you'd name to space campaign will be

aboard. NASA administrator Jared

Isaacman put it beautifully when he said

these artifacts reflect the long arc of

American exploration and the generations of

innovators who made this moment possible.

With about 10 pounds of mementos in total,

Artemis 2 will truly be carrying our, uh,

collective history and dreams. Dreams Forward

into the next chapter beyond Earth.

Avery: What a perfect way to mark America's

250th anniversary.

Now, speaking of missions and launches, let's

shift gears to Blue Origin and their New

Glenn rocket.

Anna: Blue Origin has announced their third New

Glenn launch is scheduled for late February.

And there's an interesting twist to this one.

Avery: Let me guess. Everyone expected them to fly

their Blue Moon lunar lander next, right?

Anna: Exactly. But instead, they're launching a

satellite for AST Space Mobile,

making it the second commercial payload to

fly on New Glenn. The blue moon mark one

lander is currently being shipped to NASA's

Johnson Space center for vacuum chamber

testing. And they haven't announced a launch

date for that mission yet.

Avery: So what makes this particular launch notable?

Anna: This will be the third New Glenn launch in

just over a year, which is impressive

considering the rockets spent a decade in

development. But here's the really exciting

part. They're reusing the booster from

November's second flight. They successfully

landed it on a drone ship in the Ocean, just

like SpaceX does with Falcon 9.

Avery: So this demonstrates their reusability

program is working. That's crucial for

reducing launch costs. What else is Blue

Origin working on?

Anna: They've got some ambitious plans. In

November, they revealed a super heavy variant

of New Glenn that will be taller than a

Saturn V rocket on par with

SpaceX's Starship. And just this week, they

announced a satellite Internet constellation

called Terrawave that they plan to start

deploying in late 2027.

Avery: February is shaping up to be a busy month for

spaceflight. NASA might launch Artemis 2 as

early as February 6th. SpaceX is testing

the third version of Starship, and Crew 12 to

the International Space Station is also

scheduled.

Speaking of busy orbital environments, that

brings us to our next story about space

debris.

Anna: Avery, this next story is both

fascinating and a bit alarming. A

new study has introduced something called the

crash clock. And according to their

calculations, if satellite operators

suddenly lost the ability to maneuver their

spacecraft, we could see a catastrophic

collision in just 5.5 days.

Avery: Wait, 5.5 days? That's

incredibly short. What's driving this?

Anna: Megaconstellations. The researchers found

that close approaches between satellites,

defined as two satellites passing within

1km of each other, now happen

every 22 seconds across all low

Earth orbit megaconstellations. For Starlink

alone, It's once every 11 minutes. Each

Starlink satellite performs an average of

41 avoidance maneuvers per year.

Avery: Those numbers are staggering, and you said

5.5 days. I thought I'd heard this was

originally 2.8 days.

Anna: Good catch. The team updated their model

based on community feedback. The original

calculation was 2.8 days, but after

incorporating expert input, they Revised it

to 5.5 days for 2025 data.

By comparison, back in 2018, before the

mega Constellation era really took off, it

would have taken 164 days before

a collision.

Avery: So we've gone from 164 days down

to 5.5 days in just seven years.

What could cause operators to lose control

like that?

Anna: Solar storms are the main threat. When a

coronal mass ejection hits Earth, it heats up

the upper atmosphere, creating more drag on

satellites and making their trajectories

harder to predict. During the Gannon storm in

May 2024, over half of all

satellites in low Earth orbit had to for

repositioning maneuvers. More seriously,

solar storms can knock out satellites,

navigational and communication systems,

leaving them unable to maneuver at all.

Avery: And, um, solar storms don't give us much

warning, do they?

Anna: Typically just a day or two at most. The

study found that within 24 hours of losing

maneuvering capability, there's a 30% chance

of a collision between tracked objects and a

26% chance of a collision involving a, uh,

Starlink satellite. Specifically, such

collisions would be catastrophic, creating

major debris generating events with high

likelihood of secondary and tertiary

collisions.

Avery: That sounds like Kessler Syndrome, the

cascade effect, where collisions create

debris that causes more collisions.

Anna: Exactly. Though the researchers want to be

clear about something important, lead author

Sarah Thiel emphasized, they're not saying

Kessler Syndrome is days away. The crash

clock only measures time to the first

collision, not a runaway cascade.

Bolkesler Syndrome would take decades or even

centuries to develop. But the clock does show

how reliant we are on errorless operations

every single day.

Avery: So it's more of a stress indicator for the

orbital environment, Right.

Anna: The team suggests the crash clock could

serve as a key environmental indicator,

similar to how we use carbon emissions

metrics for climate change. They're calling

for improved debris mitigation,

coordinated traffic management, and stronger

space weather resilience measures to protect

the technology modern society depends on.

Now let's shift from orbital concerns to

lunar mysteries.

Avery: For decades, Anna, uh, scientists have

assumed that Earth's water was delivered by

asteroids and comets during the Late heavy

bombardment about 4 billion years ago. But

new research from lunar samples is

challenging that assumption.

Anna: The Apollo samples are still teaching us new

things after all these years. What did they

find?

Avery: Dr. Tony Gargano the Lunar and Planetary

Institute led a team that analyzed lunar

rocks and regolith using high precision

triple oxygen isotopes. They found that

meteorites could only have supplied a small

fraction of Earth's water. Even by the most

generous estimates, the lunar surface record

sets a hard limit on volatile delivery.

Anna: Why is the Moon such a good record keeper for

this?

Avery: On Earth, tectonic plates constantly renew

the surface, erasing traces of ancient

impacts. But the Moon is airless and hasn't

had geological activity for billions of

years. So its geological record since the

Late Heavy Bombardment has been carefully

preserved. It's like a cosmic history book

that hasn't been edited.

Anna: How did they approach the analysis

differently from previous studies?

Avery: Instead of focusing on metal loving elements

like previous researchers, Gargano's team

analyzed oxygen isotopes, which make up the

largest mass fraction of rocks. The oxygen

triple isotope signature can separate two

things that are often confused in lunar

the addition of impactor material and the

effects of impact induced vaporization on

isotopic composition.

Anna: And what did the oxygen isotopes tell them?

Avery: They found that at least 1% of the moon's

mass consists of impact related material,

likely from carbonaceous meteorites that

partially vaporized on impact. From this,

they calculated that only a tiny amount of

water has been delivered to the Earth Moon

system since the Late Heavy Bombardment

compared to Earth's existing water.

Anna: To put that in perspective, how much water

does Earth have?

Avery: Water covers over 71% of Earth's surface,

but it only accounts for about

0.023% of Earth's

total mass. That still works out to roughly

1.46 sextillion kilograms.

That's 1.46 followed by 21

zeros. So even a tiny fraction of that is

significant.

Anna: Co author Dr. Justin Simon from NASA

summed it up. Well, the results don't say

meteorites delivered no water, but they

do make it very hard for late meteorite

delivery delivery to be the dominant source

of Earth's oceans.

Avery: This has interesting implications for lunar

exploration, doesn't it?

Anna: Absolutely. While meteorites may have

delivered only a tiny fraction of Earth's

water, their contribution could be crucial

for the Moon. Water ice in permanently

shadowed regions is essential for

establishing a sustained human presence,

providing drinking water, irrigation,

radiation shielding and the means to make

rocket propellant. As the researchers noted,

that small amount of water delivered by

impacts could be the single most important

factor enabling humanity's expansion

into space.

Avery: From water on the Moon to mysteries in the

early universe, let's talk about supermassive

black holes.

Anna: How did black holes get so big so

fast? That's been one of astronomy's great

mysteries. Avery and researchers at Ireland's

Maynooth University have found an answer.

Avery: The James Webb Space Telescope has been

finding these massive black holes in the

early universe that shouldn't exist according

to our previous models. Right?

Anna: Exactly. These supermassive black

holes existed just a few hundred million

years after the Big Bang, and conventional

theories said there wasn't enough time for

them to grow so large. The Maynooth

team, led by PhD candidate Daxel

Mehta, used state of the art computer

simulations to reveal what happened.

Avery: Um, and what did they discover?

Anna: The chaotic conditions in the early universe

triggered these smaller black holes to

undergo what they call a feeding frenzy,

devouring material all around them. The

dense, gas rich environments in early

galaxies enabled something called Super

Eddington accretion.

Avery: Super Eddington accretion. That sounds

intense. What is it?

Anna: It's when a black hole eats matter

faster than what's considered normal or safe.

Normally, when matter falls into a black hole

that quickly, it should blow the food away

with radiation pressure. But somehow,

in these early dense environments, the

black holes kept eating anyway,

growing incredibly fast into

tens of thousands of times the mass of our

Sun.

Avery: So they found the missing link between the

first stars and later supermassive black

holes.

Anna: Yes. Black holes come in two main

seed. Light seeds, which start at only

about 10 to a few hundred times the mass of

our sun, and heavy seeds, which can start at,

uh, up to 100,000 solar masses.

Previously, astronomers thought you needed

those rare heavy seeds to explain

supermassive black holes. But this research

shows that common light seed black holes

can grow at extreme rates under the right

conditions.

Avery: Dr. John Regan from the team put it perfectly

when he said heavy seeds are somewhat exotic

and may need rare conditions to form. But

their simulations show that garden variety

stellar mass black holes can grow at extreme

rates in the early universe.

Anna: This has implications beyond just

understanding the past. The research team

noted that future gravitational wave

observations from the Lisa mission, scheduled

to launch in 2035, may be able to

detect the mergers of these tiny, early,

rapidly growing baby black holes.

It's exciting to think we might actually

observe these processes directly from black

holes to exoplanets.

Avery: Let's close with our final story about AI

hunting for new worlds. Anna. Uh, we've found

over 6,000 exoplanets so far, with more

than half discovered using data from NASA's

Kepler and Tess missions. But there's still a

treasure trove of data waiting to be

analyzed. And that's where artificial

intelligence comes in.

Anna: I remember hearing about exominer back in

2021. Is that what this is about?

Avery: Exactly. The team at NASA's Ames

Research center created Exominer, which used

AI to validate 370 new

exoplanets from Kepler data. Now they've

released Exominer, trained on both

Kepler and TESS data, and the results are

impressive.

Anna: What can the new version do?

Avery: On, um, its initial run of test data,

Exominer identified

7,000 targets as exoplanet candidates.

These are signals that are likely to be

planets but require follow up observations to

confirm. The software sifts through

observations of possible transits, those

tiny dips in starlight when a planet passes

in front of its host star and predicts which

ones are real planets versus other phenomena

like eclipsing binary stars.

Anna: And this is all open source software?

Avery: Yes. Anyone can download it from GitHub and

use it to hunt for planets in TESS's growing

public data archive. Kevin Murphy, NASA's

chief science data Officer, emphasized that

open source software like exominer

accelerates scientific discovery. When

researchers freely share their tools, it lets

others replicate results and dig deeper into

the data.

Anna: What makes exominer

particularly effective?

Avery: Miguel Martinho, the co investigator,

explains that when you have hundreds of

thousands of signals like this, it's the

ideal place to deploy deep learning

technologies. Despite Kepler and TESS

operating differently, TESS surveys nearly

the whole sky looking for planets around

nearby stars, while Kepler looked at a small

patch of sky more deeply. The two missions

produce compatible datasets. This allows

exominer to train on both and

deliver strong results.

Anna: Project lead Hamed Valizadigan said it

perfectly with not many resources, they can

make a lot of returns. What's next for the

program?

Avery: The team is working on giving the model the

ability to identify transit signals

themselves from raw data, rather than just

evaluating pre identified candidates and

looking ahead. NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space

Telescope will capture tens of thousands of

exoplanet transits starting in a few years

and all that data will be freely available

too. The advances made with exominer could

help hunt for planets in Roman data as well.

Anna: Exoplanet scientist John Jenkins summed it

up beautifully. Open source science and open

source software are, uh, why the exoplanet

field is advancing as quickly as it is. It's

a great reminder of how collaboration and

shared resources drive discovery.

Avery: And that's all we have time for today. What a

day of space news. Anna um, from legacy

keepsakes heading to the moon to urgent

warnings about orbital debris to AI

discovering thousands of new.

Anna: Worlds and everything in between. New

insights about Earth's water, the rapid

growth of supermassive black holes, and Blue

Origin's expanding launch manifest. Space

exploration continues to accelerate on

multiple fronts.

Avery: That's it for today's episode of Astronomy

Daily. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see

you tomorrow. Keep looking up.

Anna: Clear skies, everyone.

Avery: Astronomy Day

Stories we told.

Anna: Love.

Avery: Story Soul.

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