Blue Origin Reuses New Glenn But Loses Satellite + Artemis 2 Heat Shield News

0:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to Astronomy Daily, your daily guide to everything happening

0:04 Speaker 1: in space and beyond. I'm anna, joined as always by Avery,

0:08 Speaker 1: and it is Monday, April twentieth, twenty twenty six. Welcome

0:12 Speaker 1: everyone wherever you're tuning in from.

0:14 Speaker 2: And what a weekend it was in the space world. Anna,

0:18 Speaker 2: big things happen while some of us were sleeping.

0:20 Speaker 1: You are not wrong. Today we have six stories that

0:24 Speaker 1: covered the full spectrum, from a rocket that pulled off

0:27 Speaker 1: a historic milestone and then immediately ran into trouble to

0:31 Speaker 1: some genuinely beautiful planetary science that will make you look

0:35 Speaker 1: at Saturn a little differently.

0:37 Speaker 2: Blue Origin is going to be the talk of the

0:39 Speaker 2: industry today. Big booster landing and a satellite in the

0:43 Speaker 2: wrong place. Stay with us, let's get into it. I'm

0:46 Speaker 2: ready if you are.

0:47 Speaker 1: Our lead story today takes us to Cave Canaveral, Florida,

0:51 Speaker 1: where yesterday Sunday, April nineteenth, Blue Origin made history and

0:56 Speaker 1: then a few hours later had a very bad morning.

1:00 Speaker 1: The roller coaster that is rocket science exactly. Let's start

1:04 Speaker 1: with the good news. Blue Origins New Glen rocket lifted

1:08 Speaker 1: off at around seven to twenty five Eastern time, yesterday

1:11 Speaker 1: on its third ever mission, designated NG three. But here's

1:15 Speaker 1: what made this one special. For the first time ever,

1:19 Speaker 1: Blue Origin was flying a previously used New Glen first stage.

1:23 Speaker 1: The booster nicknamed Never tell Me the Odds, had already

1:27 Speaker 1: flown once before, back in November last year on NG two.

1:31 Speaker 2: I love the booster names, and reusing an orbital class

1:34 Speaker 2: rocket is genuinely a big deal. BaseX has been doing

1:38 Speaker 2: it routinely for years now, but this was Blue Origin's

1:41 Speaker 2: first time proving New Glen can come back.

1:44 Speaker 1: And fly again, and it did exactly that. About three

1:48 Speaker 1: and a half minutes after liftoff, the first stage shut

1:51 Speaker 1: down and separated. Six minutes in Never tell Me the

1:54 Speaker 1: Odds came down and landed cleanly on Blue Origin's drone

1:58 Speaker 1: ship Jacqueline in the Atlantic Go Jeff Bezos shared video

2:02 Speaker 1: of the landing on social media, and Elon Musk, to

2:05 Speaker 1: his credit, offered, congratulations, that's.

2:08 Speaker 2: A sentence I didn't expect to say.

2:10 Speaker 1: Today, and yet here we are now the bad news.

2:14 Speaker 1: About two hours after launch, Blue Origin posted an update

2:18 Speaker 1: saying the upper stage had placed the payload, a Bluebird

2:22 Speaker 1: seven satellite for AST Space Mobile, into what they called

2:26 Speaker 1: an off nominal orbit, which is aerospace speak for the

2:30 Speaker 1: wrong orbit. How wrong lower than planned. AST Space Mobile

2:36 Speaker 1: confirmed that Bluebird seven had powered on and separated from

2:40 Speaker 1: the rocket successfully, but the altitude was too low to

2:43 Speaker 1: sustain operations. Their onboard propulsion couldn't compensate for the shortfall,

2:48 Speaker 1: and so the decision was made. Bluebird seven will be

2:52 Speaker 1: de orbited. It'll burn up in the atmosphere.

2:55 Speaker 2: That's a significant satellite. Bluebird seven was meant to deliver

2:59 Speaker 2: direct to smart phone cellular broadband from space. It would

3:02 Speaker 2: have joined AST's growing constellation. The good news is the

3:06 Speaker 2: satellite was covered by insurance and AST says they have

3:10 Speaker 2: Bluebirds eight, nine to ten nearly ready to ship, expected

3:14 Speaker 2: in about a month.

3:15 Speaker 1: And AST Space Mobile maintains their target of around forty

3:19 Speaker 1: five satellites in orbit by the end of twenty twenty

3:22 Speaker 1: six across multiple launch providers. So this is a setback,

3:26 Speaker 1: not a disaster for Blue Origin. They've proven the booster works,

3:30 Speaker 1: they now have some explaining to do about the upper stage.

3:34 Speaker 1: This was New Glenn's first payload loss and the investigation

3:38 Speaker 1: will be closely watched.

3:39 Speaker 2: The rivalry with SpaceX continues, and for now SpaceX's record

3:44 Speaker 2: on payload delivery is something Blue Origin needs to match.

3:47 Speaker 1: While Blue Origin was making news for all the wrong

3:50 Speaker 1: reasons with its upper stage yesterday, this morning, SpaceX provided

3:55 Speaker 1: a tidy contrast, a clean, routine launch of a GPS

3:59 Speaker 1: satellite for the UNA United States Space Force.

4:01 Speaker 2: The kind of mission SpaceX almost make look boring at

4:04 Speaker 2: this point.

4:05 Speaker 1: In the early hours of this morning, Monday, April twentieth,

4:09 Speaker 1: a SpaceX Falcon nine lifted off from Space Launch Complex

4:14 Speaker 1: forty at Cape Canaveral carrying GPS three space Vehicle ten.

4:19 Speaker 1: This is the tenth in the next generation GPS three series,

4:23 Speaker 1: which delivers three times better accuracy and up to eight

4:27 Speaker 1: times improved anti jamming capability compared to older GPS satellites.

4:33 Speaker 2: GPS touches everything navigation, financial transactions, emergency services, military operations.

4:41 Speaker 2: These upgrades matter enormously, even if the launches don't generate

4:45 Speaker 2: the drama of a Blue Origin mishap.

4:47 Speaker 1: The Falcon nine first stage returned to land as expected,

4:51 Speaker 1: Clean mission, clean delivery. SV ten joins its predecessors in

4:56 Speaker 1: the GPS constellation, which serves billions of people and devices

5:01 Speaker 1: every single day. Sometimes the best rocket stories are the

5:05 Speaker 1: ones with no surprises.

5:07 Speaker 2: If you've been following along with Astronomy Daily over the

5:10 Speaker 2: past few weeks, you'll know that the Artemis two mission

5:13 Speaker 2: has been one of our biggest editorial threads this season.

5:16 Speaker 2: The crew of four splashed down on April tenth after

5:19 Speaker 2: a ten day journey that took humanity back to the

5:22 Speaker 2: vicinity of the Moon for the first time since nineteen

5:25 Speaker 2: seventy two, and now we have some important post mission use.

5:29 Speaker 2: The heat shield appears to have done its job.

5:33 Speaker 1: This is a big relief for NASA. The heat shield

5:36 Speaker 1: on the Orion capsule, named Integrity by the crew, had

5:40 Speaker 1: a known design flow going into the mission. After Artemis

5:43 Speaker 1: one's uncrued test flight in twenty twenty two, engineers found

5:48 Speaker 1: that the avcot oblative material had cracked and broken off

5:52 Speaker 1: in ways they hadn't predicted. There was significant debate about

5:56 Speaker 1: whether to fly Artemis two with the same heat shield.

6:00 Speaker 2: NASA ultimately decided to proceed, but with a modified re

6:03 Speaker 2: entry trajectory steeper than originally planned to reduce the time

6:07 Speaker 2: the shield spent at peak heating temperatures, and that decision

6:11 Speaker 2: appears to have paid off. Artemis two commander read Wiseman

6:15 Speaker 2: led the crew in a visual inspection of integrity shortly

6:18 Speaker 2: after splashdown, and his assessment was encouraging. There was some

6:22 Speaker 2: char loss on the shoulder of the capsule, but the underside,

6:26 Speaker 2: which takes the brunt of re entry heating, looked, in

6:29 Speaker 2: Wiseman's own words, wonderful. He said.

6:32 Speaker 1: The crew just leaned under and looked at it, and

6:34 Speaker 1: four humans were satisfied with what they saw. That's a

6:38 Speaker 1: good sign. There was also social media speculation about a

6:42 Speaker 1: white patch visible in post splash down images, but NASA

6:46 Speaker 1: administrator Jared Isaacman addressed that directly the discoloration matched expected

6:51 Speaker 1: behavior in the compression pad area and had been replicated

6:55 Speaker 1: in pre flight testing no unexpected conditions.

6:59 Speaker 2: A full and engineering data review is still underway. This

7:02 Speaker 2: was not an uncomplicated heat shield, and NASA will be

7:06 Speaker 2: thorough and analyzing the re entry data. What we can

7:09 Speaker 2: say today is that all four astronauts read Wiseman, Victor Glover,

7:14 Speaker 2: Christina Coach and Canada's Jeremy Hansen came home safely, and

7:18 Speaker 2: NASA has confirmed this was the last mission for this

7:22 Speaker 2: particular heat shield design. Future Artemis flights will get a

7:25 Speaker 2: redesigned thermal protection system.

7:28 Speaker 1: And Artemis two commander Wiseman has said the mission bodes

7:32 Speaker 1: well for returning astronauts to the lunar surface. Is words,

7:36 Speaker 1: it's absolutely doable, and it's doable.

7:38 Speaker 2: Soon onwards and upwards.

7:41 Speaker 1: Literally time for some beautiful planetary science Thataturn's moon, Titan

7:46 Speaker 1: is one of the most extraordinary places in the Solar System.

7:50 Speaker 1: It has a thick atmosphere, rivers, lakes, and seas. The

7:55 Speaker 1: catch is that those seas are not water. They're liquid

7:58 Speaker 1: methane and ethane hydrocarbons, and a new study published in

8:03 Speaker 1: the Journal of Geophysical Research Planets has just given us

8:07 Speaker 1: our best picture yet of what the surface of those

8:09 Speaker 1: seas actually looks.

8:11 Speaker 2: Like, which is waves, enormous, surreal, waves.

8:16 Speaker 1: Enormous and slow. Researchers from MIT and the Woods Whole

8:21 Speaker 1: Oceanographic Institution developed a new wave modeling tool called Planet Waves,

8:27 Speaker 1: and when they applied it to Titan's hydrocarbon seas, the

8:30 Speaker 1: results were striking. On Earth, you need a decent wind

8:34 Speaker 1: to build significant waves. On Titan, a mild breeze, the

8:39 Speaker 1: kind you'd barely notice, could generate waves more than three

8:42 Speaker 1: meters tall or over ten feet. But here's the catch.

8:46 Speaker 1: Because of Titan's lower gravity and the different physical properties

8:50 Speaker 1: of liquid hydrocarbons compared to water, those waves would move

8:54 Speaker 1: in slow motion.

8:56 Speaker 2: The lead author describes it perfectly. She says, it looks

8:59 Speaker 2: like tall waves moving in slow motion. If you stood

9:02 Speaker 2: on the shore of one of Titan's seas, you'd feel

9:05 Speaker 2: only a soft breeze, but you'd see these enormous rollers

9:08 Speaker 2: coming toward you. It would feel completely wrong, deeply alien.

9:13 Speaker 1: And the planet waves model didn't stop at Titan. The

9:17 Speaker 1: team also modeled wave behavior on ancient Mars, back when

9:21 Speaker 1: it had liquid water, and on three exoplanets. One is

9:25 Speaker 1: a cool super earth called LHS one one four zero B,

9:30 Speaker 1: which may have oceans but whose strong gravity would suppress

9:34 Speaker 1: wave height. Another is a Venus like world with lakes

9:37 Speaker 1: of sulfuric acid, where only very powerful winds would generate

9:42 Speaker 1: even ripples. And then there's fifty five kncree E, a

9:46 Speaker 1: lava world, an ocean of molten rock with gravity so

9:50 Speaker 1: strong that even hurricane force winds would produce barely a ripple.

9:55 Speaker 2: This model is also genuinely useful for mission planning if

9:59 Speaker 2: we ever send a flow voting probe to Titan, and

10:01 Speaker 2: NASA's Dragonfly rotorcraft is heading there. Engineers need to know

10:05 Speaker 2: what kind of wave forces their hardware will face.

10:08 Speaker 1: Titan continues to surprise us. Every new model, every new instrument,

10:14 Speaker 1: every new angle. This moon just keeps getting more fascinating.

10:18 Speaker 2: From alien oceans to our own night sky. Because this

10:21 Speaker 2: week is a great week to be a stargazer in

10:24 Speaker 2: the Southern Hemisphere and really anywhere on Earth.

10:27 Speaker 1: The Lyrids are back.

10:29 Speaker 2: The Lyrids are back. One of the oldest recorded meteor

10:32 Speaker 2: showers in history, observations go back approximately twenty seven hundred years.

10:37 Speaker 2: The Lurid meteor shower peaks in the early hours of

10:40 Speaker 2: Wednesday morning, April twenty second, and this year viewing conditions

10:44 Speaker 2: are nearly ideal.

10:46 Speaker 1: The reason is the moon, after months of meteor shower droughts,

10:50 Speaker 1: the first significant display since the Quadrant Hids in early January,

10:55 Speaker 1: arrives this year with a crescent moon that sets after midnight,

10:59 Speaker 1: So from about about one or two in the morning

11:01 Speaker 1: on Wednesday through to dawn, the sky will be beautifully dark.

11:06 Speaker 2: For our listeners in Australia and New Zealand, that means

11:09 Speaker 2: a Wednesday morning April twenty second, from around midnight or

11:12 Speaker 2: one am onwards as primetime find the darkest sky. You

11:16 Speaker 2: can let your eyes adjust for at least half an

11:18 Speaker 2: hour and look toward the eastern sky near the constellation Lyra.

11:23 Speaker 2: Though the meteors themselves can streak anywhere across the sky,

11:26 Speaker 2: you're looking for up to fifteen to twenty meteors per

11:29 Speaker 2: hour under ideal conditions.

11:32 Speaker 1: The Lyrids are caused by debris left behind by comet Thatcher,

11:36 Speaker 1: which takes about four hundred and fifteen years to orbit

11:39 Speaker 1: the Sun. It was last in the Inner Solar System

11:42 Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty one and won't return until around twenty

11:46 Speaker 1: two seventy six, so the shower is a gift from

11:49 Speaker 1: a comet that none of us or our grandchildren's grandchildren

11:53 Speaker 1: will ever get to see directly.

11:55 Speaker 2: And the Lyriids are known for producing bright fireballs, not

11:59 Speaker 2: as frequently as the per Sads or Geminis, but they

12:02 Speaker 2: do happen, so it's worth staying out for a while.

12:04 Speaker 2: If you see something spectacular, share it. We'd love to

12:07 Speaker 2: hear from you.

12:08 Speaker 1: Our final story today takes us to the future of

12:11 Speaker 1: ground based astronomy and a pivotal moment for one of

12:15 Speaker 1: the most ambitious telescope projects ever conceived. The Giant Magellan

12:19 Speaker 1: Telescope in Chile has just entered its final design phase

12:24 Speaker 1: ahead of a critical funding decision that will go before

12:27 Speaker 1: the United States Congress.

12:29 Speaker 2: This is a telescope that could genuinely change what we

12:32 Speaker 2: know about the universe.

12:33 Speaker 1: Let's set the scene. We are living through the era

12:36 Speaker 1: of extremely large telescopes, a generation of observatories with mirrors

12:42 Speaker 1: in the twenty to forty meter range that will dwarf

12:45 Speaker 1: anything currently in operation. The European Extremely Large Telescope under

12:51 Speaker 1: full construction in Chile, has a thirty nine meter primary

12:55 Speaker 1: mirror and is on track to enter service in twenty

12:58 Speaker 1: twenty nine, will be the largest optical telescope on Earth.

13:03 Speaker 2: Then there are the two American entries. The Giant Magellan

13:06 Speaker 2: Telescope GMT being built at Las Campana's observatory in Chile

13:11 Speaker 2: with the twenty five meter aperture made up of seven

13:14 Speaker 2: enormous mirror segments, and the thirty meter telescope, also American

13:18 Speaker 2: lad both face more complex funding situations.

13:21 Speaker 1: The GMT entering final design phase is a significant milestone.

13:26 Speaker 1: It means the engineering is mature and the project is

13:29 Speaker 1: heading toward construction readiness, but the money needs to come

13:33 Speaker 1: through from the NSF. The science case is extraordinary, detecting

13:38 Speaker 1: Earth like planets around nearby stars and studying their atmospheres

13:42 Speaker 1: for signs of life, probing the nature of dark matter

13:46 Speaker 1: and energy, looking back at the first stars and galaxies.

13:50 Speaker 2: And the competition from China shouldn't be overlooked. China's shun

13:53 Speaker 2: Tea and Space Telescope is due for a twenty twenty

13:56 Speaker 2: seven launch and promises significant capability. The argument for funding

14:00 Speaker 2: the GMT is partly scientific and partly strategic. The United

14:04 Speaker 2: States has defined the boundaries of astronomy for decades, and

14:07 Speaker 2: falling behind now would have long term consequences.

14:10 Speaker 1: We will be following the congressional decision closely. For now,

14:14 Speaker 1: the GMT is moving forward and the universe is waiting patiently.

14:19 Speaker 1: I hope that's our six stories for today. Blue Origins,

14:23 Speaker 1: Mixed Morning, a clean SpaceX GPS launch, Artemis two's heat

14:28 Speaker 1: shield giving US post mission relief, slow motion alien waves

14:32 Speaker 1: on Titan, the Lyrids about to peak, and the giant

14:36 Speaker 1: Magellan Telescope heading toward its funding moment.

14:40 Speaker 2: Before we go trivia time. Here's today's question. The Lyrid

14:44 Speaker 2: meteor shower is produced by debris from Comet Thatcher. Approximately

14:48 Speaker 2: how often does Commet Thatcher complete one orbit around the Sun.

14:52 Speaker 1: Think about it and the answer is in today's show notes,

14:55 Speaker 1: along with links to all six stories.

14:58 Speaker 2: If you're heading out Wednesday morning for the lyri we

15:00 Speaker 2: want to hear about it, find us at Astronomy Daily

15:03 Speaker 2: dot io or at astro Daily Pod on the socials.

15:06 Speaker 1: And if you're enjoying the show, please leave us a review.

15:09 Speaker 1: It genuinely helps new listeners find us. We'll be back

15:13 Speaker 1: tomorrow with more from the universe. Until then, keep looking

15:16 Speaker 1: up Clear's guys.

15:18 Speaker 2: Everyone. Sunday Stars start