China Aces Lunar Abort Test, Viking Life Debate Reignited, and Hubble's Dying Star

0:00 Speaker 1: Good day, and welcome to Astronomy Daily, your go to

0:04 Speaker 1: source for everything happening in space and astronomy.

0:08 Speaker 2: I'm Anna and I'm Avery. It's Thursday, February the twelfth,

0:12 Speaker 2: twenty twenty six, and we have a packed show for

0:14 Speaker 2: you today.

0:15 Speaker 1: We really do. China has just pulled off a major

0:19 Speaker 1: milestone in its push to land astronauts on the Moon,

0:22 Speaker 1: including a pretty spectacular rocket splashdown that should have a

0:27 Speaker 1: few people at SpaceX paying attention.

0:30 Speaker 2: We've also got ULA's Vulcan centa rocket launching a pair

0:33 Speaker 2: of space surveillance satellites for the US Space Force, a

0:37 Speaker 2: deep dive into why Artemis two has so few chances

0:40 Speaker 2: to actually get off the ground, and a stunning new

0:43 Speaker 2: Hubble image of a dying star.

0:46 Speaker 1: Plus did NASA's Viking missions actually find life on Mars

0:50 Speaker 1: fifty years ago? New research says the answer might be yes,

0:55 Speaker 1: And astronomers are still hunting for the remains of a

0:58 Speaker 1: comet that dramatically fell apart during COVID lockdowns.

1:02 Speaker 2: Let's get into it.

1:03 Speaker 1: Our lead story today takes us to wang Chong Space

1:06 Speaker 1: launch site on the island of Hainan, where yesterday February eleventh,

1:11 Speaker 1: China conducted a landmark test that checked off multiple firsts

1:16 Speaker 1: in a single mission.

1:18 Speaker 2: This was a low altitude demonstration flight of China's next

1:21 Speaker 2: generation Long March ten rocket carrying the Mangjo crew capsule,

1:26 Speaker 2: and what they were testing was something called a max

1:29 Speaker 2: Q abort Basically, can the capsule safely escape the rocket

1:33 Speaker 2: at the moment of maximum aerodynamic stress during ascent?

1:37 Speaker 1: And for context, that's the point during any rocket launch

1:41 Speaker 1: where the vehicle is experiencing the greatest combination of speed

1:45 Speaker 1: and atmospheric resistance. If something goes wrong at max Q,

1:49 Speaker 1: the crew needs to get away fast. This was China's

1:53 Speaker 1: first ever test of that scenario with a crude class spacecraft.

1:57 Speaker 2: The capsule successfully separated from the rocket, It deployed its parachutes,

2:01 Speaker 2: and was recovered at sea. It was carrying lunar space

2:04 Speaker 2: suits and test dummies rather than actual tycho knots, obviously,

2:08 Speaker 2: but the abort system performed exactly as designed.

2:11 Speaker 1: Now here's where it gets really interesting. Avery After the

2:15 Speaker 1: capsule separated, the Long March ten first stage didn't just

2:20 Speaker 1: tumble into the ocean. It performed a powered vertical landing

2:24 Speaker 1: a soft splash down at Sea very much in the

2:28 Speaker 1: style of SpaceX's Falcon nine booster recoveries, and.

2:32 Speaker 2: That's a huge deal because until now, only the United

2:35 Speaker 2: States has had operational reusable orbital class rockets. This was

2:39 Speaker 2: China's first successful rocket recovery attempt, and it worked on

2:43 Speaker 2: the very first powered flight of the Long March ten prototype.

2:47 Speaker 1: And they even had a dedicated autonomous recovery vessel called

2:51 Speaker 1: the Linghangzer standing by, which is essentially China's answer to

2:55 Speaker 1: SpaceX's drone ships.

2:57 Speaker 2: The full Long March ten is going to be an

3:00 Speaker 2: absolute beast when it's complete. A tricore rocket standing around

3:04 Speaker 2: ninety meters tall with about twenty seven hundred tons of

3:08 Speaker 2: liftoff thrust. It's designed to be China's largest launch vehicle

3:12 Speaker 2: and the only one capable of sending both a cruse

3:14 Speaker 2: spacecraft and a lunar lander to the Moon in a

3:18 Speaker 2: single launch.

3:19 Speaker 1: If things continue at this pace, China is projecting a

3:23 Speaker 1: full orbital flight of the Long March ten by twenty

3:26 Speaker 1: twenty seven, with Tycho knots on the lunar surface before

3:29 Speaker 1: the end of the decade. That puts them in a

3:32 Speaker 1: very real race with NASA's Artemis program. Which is targeting

3:36 Speaker 1: its own crude landing with Artemis three no earlier than

3:40 Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight, and this.

3:42 Speaker 2: Test was conducted from the brand new launch pad number

3:45 Speaker 2: three and Wangchang, which was built specifically for these lunar missions,

3:49 Speaker 2: so the infrastructure is going in alongside the hardware.

3:52 Speaker 1: A genuinely significant day for the Chinese space program, and

3:56 Speaker 1: one that adds real momentum to what's shaping up to

3:59 Speaker 1: be the most exciting Moon race since Apollo.

4:03 Speaker 2: Sticking with rockets but moving to Cape canaveral, ULA's Vulcan

4:07 Speaker 2: Centaur rocket is set to launch early this morning, February twelve,

4:11 Speaker 2: with the window opening at three thirty am Eastern time.

4:14 Speaker 1: This is the fourth Vulcan mission overall, and the first

4:18 Speaker 1: of twenty twenty six. The payload is a pair of

4:21 Speaker 1: GSSAP satellites. That's the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program built

4:28 Speaker 1: by Northrop Grumman for the US Space Force.

4:31 Speaker 2: Think of GSSAP as a neighborhood watch program for geosynchronous orbit.

4:36 Speaker 2: These satellites monitor other spacecraft at that critical thirty five

4:40 Speaker 2: thousand kilometer altitude, improving flight safety and giving Space Force

4:44 Speaker 2: operators better situational awareness about what's happening up there.

4:48 Speaker 1: There's also a secondary payload called Propulsive ESPA, essentially a

4:54 Speaker 1: training spacecraft that Space Force guardians will use to practice

4:58 Speaker 1: precision orbital maneuvers and validate techniques for protecting assets in orbit.

5:04 Speaker 2: What's notable about this particular mission is that it's the

5:07 Speaker 2: longest Vulcan flight to date, nearly ten hours, because the

5:11 Speaker 2: Centaur upper stage is performing a direct insertion all the

5:15 Speaker 2: way to geosynchronous orbit rather than just dropping the satellites

5:19 Speaker 2: into a transfer orbit.

5:20 Speaker 1: ULA is under some pressure this year. They've got interim

5:24 Speaker 1: CEO John Elbon at the Helm after Tory Bruno departed

5:28 Speaker 1: to join Blue Origin late last year, and they're targeting

5:31 Speaker 1: eighteen to twenty two launches in twenty twenty six after

5:35 Speaker 1: falling short of their targets in twenty twenty five.

5:39 Speaker 2: They've invested heavily in infrastructure, a second mobile launch platform

5:43 Speaker 2: and a second integration facility at the CAPE. So the

5:46 Speaker 2: capacity is there. The question is whether Vulcan can deliver

5:50 Speaker 2: on the reliability and cadence that they're roughly eighty mission

5:53 Speaker 2: backlog demands.

5:55 Speaker 1: We should note that ULA's webcast coverage will end at

5:59 Speaker 1: faring separation about five minutes after launch, because the classified

6:03 Speaker 1: nature of the payload means the rest of the mission

6:06 Speaker 1: is conducted in silence. Now, speaking of getting rockets off

6:10 Speaker 1: the ground, let's talk about Artemis two, because if you've

6:14 Speaker 1: been following the countdown to the first crude Moon mission

6:17 Speaker 1: in over fifty years, you might have noticed something surprising

6:22 Speaker 1: about how few chances there actually are to launch.

6:26 Speaker 2: NASA has published the available launch dates, and there are

6:29 Speaker 2: just eleven opportunities across March and April combined. Five dates

6:33 Speaker 2: in March the sixth through the ninth, plus March eleventh

6:37 Speaker 2: and six in April. Each window is about two hours long.

6:41 Speaker 1: Eleven chances in sixty one days. That's it, and some

6:46 Speaker 1: of those could be lost to weather or the need

6:48 Speaker 1: to replace consumables like rocket fuel. So why so few?

6:53 Speaker 2: It all comes down to orbital mechanics and the specific

6:56 Speaker 2: requirements of this mission. Artemis two doesn't fly straight right

7:00 Speaker 2: to the Moon. The SLS rocket first delivers the Orion

7:03 Speaker 2: capsule to high Earth orbit, where the crew and ground

7:06 Speaker 2: teams run through a series of checkouts. Then comes a

7:10 Speaker 2: translunar injection burn to send Orion on its way.

7:14 Speaker 1: So the launch time on any given day has to

7:17 Speaker 1: thread the needle. SLS needs to reach the right orbit,

7:21 Speaker 1: Orion needs to be in the correct alignment with both

7:24 Speaker 1: Earth and the Moon for that translunar injection burn, and

7:27 Speaker 1: the whole trajectory has to work as a free return loop,

7:31 Speaker 1: using the Moon's gravity to sling the capsule home.

7:34 Speaker 2: And then there's a power constraint. Orion's solar arrays can't

7:39 Speaker 2: be in darkness for more than ninety minutes at a stretch,

7:42 Speaker 2: so NASA has to rule out any trajectory that would

7:45 Speaker 2: put the spacecraft in an extended eclipse. That alone eliminates

7:49 Speaker 2: a lot of potential dates.

7:51 Speaker 1: The return profile matters too, Orion needs a specific entry

7:55 Speaker 1: angle and conditions for splashdown, so that further narrows the field.

8:00 Speaker 2: Now, the reason we're talking about March and April specifically

8:04 Speaker 2: is that the first wet dress rehearsal that's the full

8:07 Speaker 2: practice run of fueling and countdown procedures, ended early on

8:11 Speaker 2: February second because of a liquid hydrogen leak that took

8:15 Speaker 2: February off the table entirely.

8:17 Speaker 1: A second wet dress attempt is expected soon, possibly this weekend,

8:22 Speaker 1: and NASA officials have been reassuring everyone that there are

8:25 Speaker 1: launch opportunities in every month beyond April as well. They

8:29 Speaker 1: just haven't published those dates yet.

8:32 Speaker 2: And it's worth remembering that Artemis I had similar hydrogen

8:35 Speaker 2: leak issues and still flew successfully in late twenty twenty two,

8:40 Speaker 2: so this isn't uncharted territory.

8:42 Speaker 1: Whenever it flies, it'll be historic. No astronaut has been

8:46 Speaker 1: beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo seventeen in December nineteen

8:50 Speaker 1: seventy two. That's over fifty three years.

8:54 Speaker 2: Moving on to our next story, and it's time for

8:57 Speaker 2: some pure cosmic beauty. NASA has released a breath taking

9:01 Speaker 2: new image from the Hubble Space Telescope showing the Egg

9:04 Speaker 2: Nebula in extraordinary detail.

9:07 Speaker 1: The Egg Nebula is about a thousand light years away

9:10 Speaker 1: in the constellation Signess, and it's what astronomers call a

9:14 Speaker 1: preplanetary nebula, which, despite the name, has nothing to do

9:18 Speaker 1: with planets forming. It's the early stage of a dying

9:21 Speaker 1: Sun like star, shedding its outer layers.

9:24 Speaker 2: And NASA describes it as the first youngest and closest

9:28 Speaker 2: preplanetary nebula ever discovered, which makes it incredibly valuable for

9:32 Speaker 2: studying how stars like our Sun eventually meet their end.

9:36 Speaker 1: What makes this image so striking is the structure. At

9:40 Speaker 1: the center. You have the dying star, the yoke of

9:43 Speaker 1: the egg, hidden behind a dense cloud of dust. Quinn

9:47 Speaker 1: Beams of light punch outward through gaps in that dusty shell,

9:51 Speaker 1: illuminating a series of concentric arcs of gas that ripple

9:55 Speaker 1: outward like waves.

9:56 Speaker 2: And unlike most nebulae, which glow because they're gas as

10:00 Speaker 2: has been ionized, the egg nebula shines purely by reflected

10:04 Speaker 2: light from the central star. The star hasn't heated up

10:08 Speaker 2: enough yet to ionize its surroundings. That's what makes this

10:11 Speaker 2: a preplanetary nebula rather than a full planetary nebula.

10:15 Speaker 1: The symmetry is remarkable too. Scientists say the patterns are

10:19 Speaker 1: far too orderly to have come from a violent event

10:22 Speaker 1: like a supernova. Instead, they point to coordinated sputtering events

10:27 Speaker 1: in the carbon enriched core of the dying star, though

10:30 Speaker 1: the exact mechanism is still poorly understood.

10:33 Speaker 2: There's also evidence of gravitational interactions with one or more

10:38 Speaker 2: hidden companion stars very deep within the dust, which may

10:42 Speaker 2: be helping to shape those dramatic outflows.

10:45 Speaker 1: This preplanetary phase only lasts a few thousand years, an

10:49 Speaker 1: absolute blink in cosmic terms, so catching a nebula at

10:53 Speaker 1: this stage is like catching lightning in a bottle, and

10:56 Speaker 1: the material being shed here is the same kind of

10:59 Speaker 1: carbon rich stardust that seated our own solar system four

11:03 Speaker 1: and a half billion years ago.

11:05 Speaker 2: Hubble has observed the agnebula before, but this new image,

11:09 Speaker 2: taken with the wide field camera three, combines multiple data

11:13 Speaker 2: sets to produce the most detailed portrait yet. Thirty five

11:16 Speaker 2: years in orbit, and Hubble is still delivering.

11:19 Speaker 1: Now for a story that could fundamentally change how we

11:23 Speaker 1: think about Mars. New research published in the journal Astrobiology

11:27 Speaker 1: is making the case that NASA's Viking missions may have

11:31 Speaker 1: actually detected signs of life on Mars back in nineteen

11:34 Speaker 1: seventy six. We just didn't know how to read the data.

11:38 Speaker 2: This is a big claim, so let's unpack it. The

11:41 Speaker 2: Viking Landers carried an instrument called the GCMs, the gas

11:46 Speaker 2: chromatography mass spectrometer, which was designed to detect organic molecules

11:51 Speaker 2: in the Martian soil. At the time, it returned what

11:54 Speaker 2: was interpreted as a negative result no organics found, case closed,

11:59 Speaker 2: and that.

11:59 Speaker 1: Can illusion essentially shut down the debate for decades. The

12:03 Speaker 1: Viking Project scientist Gerald Soffen famously said nobody's no life,

12:09 Speaker 1: and that became the textbook answer.

12:11 Speaker 2: But here's the twist. In two thousand and eight, NASA's

12:15 Speaker 2: Phoenix Lander discovered perchlorates in the Martian soil. Perchlorates are

12:19 Speaker 2: powerful oxidizing chemicals, and it turns out they break down

12:24 Speaker 2: organic molecules when heated, which is exactly what the Viking

12:27 Speaker 2: GCMs did to its soil samples.

12:30 Speaker 1: So in twenty ten, astrobiologist Rafael Navarro Gonzalez showed that

12:36 Speaker 1: if you take organic material and heated in the presence

12:39 Speaker 1: of perchlorate, you get methyl chloride and carbon dioxide, which

12:43 Speaker 1: is precisely the chemical signature that Viking detected and dismissed

12:48 Speaker 1: as either contamination or an unknown chemical process.

12:52 Speaker 2: Lead author doctor Benner puts it very directly, the GCMs

12:57 Speaker 2: didn't fail to discover organics. It did discover them through

13:01 Speaker 2: their degradation products. We just didn't understand what we were

13:05 Speaker 2: looking at.

13:06 Speaker 1: The team has even developed a model for what Martian

13:08 Speaker 1: microbes might look like. They call it barsoom that's bacterial

13:13 Speaker 1: autotrophes that respire with stored oxygen on Mars. The idea

13:18 Speaker 1: is that these organisms could photosynthesize during the Martian Day,

13:21 Speaker 1: produce and store oxygen, then use it to survive the

13:25 Speaker 1: freezing Martian Knights.

13:27 Speaker 2: I should emphasize this doesn't prove there's life on Mars,

13:31 Speaker 2: but it does reopen a door that was closed fifty

13:34 Speaker 2: years ago and makes a compelling case that the evidence

13:37 Speaker 2: was there all along, hiding in plain sight.

13:40 Speaker 1: And it raises a fascinating question if we go back

13:44 Speaker 1: to Mars with modern instruments designed with perchlorates in mind,

13:47 Speaker 1: what else might we find.

13:49 Speaker 2: Our final story today is a bit of a cosmic

13:52 Speaker 2: cold case. Remember comment see twenty nineteen why four at lists.

13:57 Speaker 1: Oh the pandemic comment. It was to discovered in December

14:01 Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, and as it flew toward the Inner Solar

14:03 Speaker 1: System in early twenty twenty, it brightened so rapidly that

14:07 Speaker 1: astronomers predicted it could become visible to the naked eye,

14:11 Speaker 1: a real lockdown spectacle.

14:13 Speaker 2: And then, like so many plans in twenty twenty, it

14:16 Speaker 2: fell apart literally in late April twenty twenty, the comet

14:21 Speaker 2: dramatically disintegrated into dozens of pieces. Hubble tracked about thirty

14:26 Speaker 2: fragments grouped into a few clusters of icy debris.

14:29 Speaker 1: But here's the thing. A new study in the Astronomical

14:33 Speaker 1: Journal by a team led by Salvatore Cordoba Quijano at

14:37 Speaker 1: Boston University has been asking if anything is still out there.

14:41 Speaker 1: Did the comet completely destroy itself or could a chunk

14:45 Speaker 1: have survived.

14:46 Speaker 2: The team scanned the skies in August and October of

14:49 Speaker 2: twenty twenty using the Lowell Discovery Telescope in Arizona and

14:53 Speaker 2: the Zwiki transient facility, which surveys the entire northern sky

14:57 Speaker 2: every two nights. They found nothing.

15:01 Speaker 1: But, and this is the intriguing part, that doesn't necessarily

15:05 Speaker 1: mean there's nothing left. Baryn Alysis suggests that a fragment

15:08 Speaker 1: up to about half a kilometer wide could still exist,

15:12 Speaker 1: but would be too small and too faint for those

15:14 Speaker 1: telescopes to detect. It could be out there right now,

15:18 Speaker 1: quietly tracing the comet's original orbit back toward the outer

15:22 Speaker 1: Solar System.

15:23 Speaker 2: The researchers pose a really thought provoking question, how many

15:27 Speaker 2: comets that we've assumed were completely destroyed? Might actually have

15:31 Speaker 2: surviving remnants still orbiting the Sun.

15:34 Speaker 1: And there's a wonderful historical footnote here. Comet Atlas is

15:38 Speaker 1: believed to be a fragment of the same parent body

15:41 Speaker 1: as the Great Comet of eighteen forty four, which itself

15:44 Speaker 1: may have been visible to Stone Age civilizations about five

15:47 Speaker 1: thousand years ago when it swept past the Sun.

15:50 Speaker 2: So somewhere out there, a tiny piece of a five

15:54 Speaker 2: thousand year old cosmic traveler might still be making its

15:58 Speaker 2: lonely journey through the darkness. I find that oddly beautiful.

16:02 Speaker 1: Me too, And the study serves as a heads up

16:05 Speaker 1: to astronomers. Next time a comet breaks apart, be ready

16:08 Speaker 1: to keep watching, because the story might not be over.

16:12 Speaker 2: And that is your Astronomy Daily for Thursday, February twelfth,

16:16 Speaker 2: twenty twenty six. What a lineup from China's moon ambitions

16:20 Speaker 2: to Viking's long lost life clues. If you enjoyed the show,

16:24 Speaker 2: please do leave us a review on your podcast platform

16:27 Speaker 2: of choice. It really does help new listeners find us,

16:30 Speaker 2: and you can find full show notes, links to all

16:33 Speaker 2: our sources and more at Astronomydaily dot io.

16:37 Speaker 1: For Avery and the whole Astronomy Daily Team, I'm anna

16:40 Speaker 1: keep looking up and we'll see you Tomorrowyday.

16:46 Speaker 2: Stars. Start story is the Trible