Crew-12 Spy Scandal, AI on Mars & Interstellar Comet's Last Secret?

0:00 Speaker 1: Four astronauts, one rocket, and weather that just will not cooperate.

0:06 Speaker 1: The Crew twelve team is in quarantine in Florida, watching

0:09 Speaker 1: the forecast and waiting.

0:11 Speaker 2: A visitor from another solar system is heading for the

0:14 Speaker 2: exit and handing us a chemical blueprint of its home

0:18 Speaker 2: solar system on the way out. Plus a rover on

0:22 Speaker 2: Mars just took orders from an AI instead of a

0:25 Speaker 2: human for the very first time.

0:28 Speaker 1: All that plus a rare solar eclipse just days away,

0:32 Speaker 1: new research that could change how we search for life,

0:35 Speaker 1: and starship making a comeback after a dramatic setback. It's

0:39 Speaker 1: a big day. Welcome to Astronomy Daily.

0:42 Speaker 2: Let's get started. Anna take it away.

0:46 Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Astronomy Daily, your daily guide to

0:50 Speaker 1: what's happening out there.

0:51 Speaker 2: I'm Anna and I'm Avery. It is Wednesday, February eleventh,

0:55 Speaker 2: twenty twenty six. We have six stories to get through today,

0:59 Speaker 2: and it's one of those lineups where every single one

1:03 Speaker 2: of them earns its place.

1:04 Speaker 1: We're going to kick off with the ongoing Crew twelve

1:07 Speaker 1: drama at Cape Canaveral, then swing to deep Space for

1:11 Speaker 1: the latest from three I Slash Atlas, and then we've

1:14 Speaker 1: got a mars Ai story that genuinely made me stop

1:17 Speaker 1: and think, some fascinating new science about why Earth ended

1:21 Speaker 1: up being habitable at all, a rare solar eclipse just

1:25 Speaker 1: days away, and a big starship update.

1:28 Speaker 2: Let's get into it so avery.

1:31 Speaker 1: As of this morning, the Crew twelve mission has now

1:34 Speaker 1: been pushed back to no earlier than Friday, February thirteenth.

1:38 Speaker 1: That is the third attempted launch date in less than

1:41 Speaker 1: a week.

1:42 Speaker 2: It really is. Weather has been the culprit each time.

1:46 Speaker 2: The teams originally had a window on Wednesday, eleventh, today,

1:50 Speaker 2: but conditions along the Dragon spacecraft flight path just weren't cooperating,

1:54 Speaker 2: so they waved it off. Then Thursday the twelfth got pushed.

1:58 Speaker 2: Now they're looking at Friday morning with a planned lift

2:02 Speaker 2: off at five point fifteen Eastern.

2:04 Speaker 1: And the reason there's so much urgency here isn't just

2:07 Speaker 1: that people are impatient. The International Space Station is currently

2:11 Speaker 1: running on what NASA is calling a skeleton crew. Preue

2:15 Speaker 1: eleven had to come home early back in January following

2:18 Speaker 1: a medical issue with one of the astronauts, and since

2:21 Speaker 1: then the station has been significantly understaffed. Prue twelve is

2:26 Speaker 1: the relief team.

2:27 Speaker 2: Which makes every weather delay feel a little more loaded

2:30 Speaker 2: than usual. The people up there are doing the work

2:33 Speaker 2: of a full crew with a much smaller team.

2:36 Speaker 1: So who's making this trip, Well, let's run through them

2:40 Speaker 1: one more time. Commander is NASA astronaut Jessica Meyer, a

2:44 Speaker 1: veteran of a previous long duration station mission and well

2:48 Speaker 1: known for conducting the first all female spacewalk back in

2:51 Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. Jill be joined by pilot Jack Hathaway, also

2:56 Speaker 1: from NASA on his first spaceflight.

2:58 Speaker 2: And then there are two men specialists, Sophie Adnot from

3:02 Speaker 2: the European Space Agency representing France and Andre Fedjaiyev from

3:07 Speaker 2: Russia's ros Cosmos. This will be fed Jaiev's second trip

3:10 Speaker 2: to the station. Once they dock, they're looking at an

3:13 Speaker 2: eight to nine month stay, longer than usual to cover

3:16 Speaker 2: the time loss by krue eleven's early departure.

3:19 Speaker 1: Now, there is a subplot to this mission that I

3:22 Speaker 1: think a lot of people may not have heard about.

3:25 Speaker 1: Back in December, Russia's ross Cosmos quietly removed cosmonaut aleg

3:29 Speaker 1: Artemiev from the Crew twelve mission. The official line was

3:33 Speaker 1: that he had transitioned to quote other work.

3:37 Speaker 2: Which is the kind of statement that immediately makes you

3:39 Speaker 2: want to know what the actual reason is.

3:42 Speaker 1: Right and investigative outlet The Insider reported that Artemiev was

3:47 Speaker 1: effectively expelled from the United States by a being accused

3:51 Speaker 1: of violating international traffic in arms regulations by allegedly photographing

3:56 Speaker 1: SpaceX engines, documents and other sense technologies with his phone

4:02 Speaker 1: and then exporting that information.

4:04 Speaker 2: So he was allegedly taking photos insite SpaceX facilities of

4:09 Speaker 2: proprietary rocket technology and sending it out of the country.

4:13 Speaker 1: That appears to be the allegation. He was replaced by

4:17 Speaker 1: Andre Fadyeev and Ross. Cosmos has said very little publicly,

4:21 Speaker 1: but it's a striking reminder that even in the cooperative

4:24 Speaker 1: world of the International Space Station, the geopolitical tensions of

4:29 Speaker 1: the wider world don't disappear at the door, and it

4:32 Speaker 1: raises interesting questions about what access international partners are given

4:37 Speaker 1: to commercial SpaceX facilities. These aren't NASA government sites anyway.

4:43 Speaker 3: The crew are in quarantine, the rocket is on the pad,

4:46 Speaker 3: and all eyes are now on the Florida forecast for

4:48 Speaker 3: Friday will update you the moment there's news.

4:52 Speaker 1: Our second story takes US to the outer Solar System,

4:55 Speaker 1: where interstellar comet three I atlass is continuing its fair

4:59 Speaker 1: way tour. And before it goes, it's been handing scientists

5:03 Speaker 1: some truly unexpected data just to.

5:06 Speaker 2: Set the scene. Three I at Lists was discovered in

5:09 Speaker 2: July twenty twenty five by a telescope in Chile, traveling

5:13 Speaker 2: far too fast on a trajectory that could impossibly have

5:16 Speaker 2: originated within our Solar System. It's only the third interstellar

5:20 Speaker 2: object ever confirmed to have passed through, after Omuamua in

5:24 Speaker 2: twenty seventeen and Borisov in twenty nineteen.

5:28 Speaker 1: Dasa's SPEARX telescope observed three I at Lists in December

5:32 Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, and the results have been remarkable. The

5:36 Speaker 1: comet's coma has become dramatically more active and chemically complex.

5:42 Speaker 1: B REX detected water, ice, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, organic compounds,

5:48 Speaker 1: and rocky material being ejected in chunks far larger than

5:52 Speaker 1: the fine dust grains you'd normally expect. The scientists described

5:56 Speaker 1: it as a cocktail of chemicals that haven't been exposed

5:59 Speaker 1: to space for billions of years.

6:02 Speaker 2: The James Web Space telescope added another layer, finding that

6:06 Speaker 2: the ratio of carbon dioxide to water in the coma

6:09 Speaker 2: is approximately eight to one, which is one of the

6:12 Speaker 2: highest CO two to water ratios ever measured in any comet.

6:16 Speaker 2: In our solar systems, comets water tends to dominate, so

6:20 Speaker 2: the implication is three i at lists may have formed

6:24 Speaker 2: much further from its home star than a typical cometwood

6:27 Speaker 2: near a CO two ice line. Its chemistry is essentially

6:31 Speaker 2: telling us something about the architecture of the planetary system

6:35 Speaker 2: it came from.

6:36 Speaker 1: There's also data on the comet spin. It rotates once

6:40 Speaker 1: every sixteen point one six hours, and researchers found it

6:44 Speaker 1: had strange wobbling jets in a rare sun facing anti tail.

6:49 Speaker 1: Normally comet tails point away from the Sun, but three

6:52 Speaker 1: i at lists briefly had one pointing toward it, genuinely

6:56 Speaker 1: weird behavior.

6:57 Speaker 2: As of today, three iat list is in the con

7:00 Speaker 2: installation Gemini, fading beyond naked eye visibility. It's heading towards

7:04 Speaker 2: a Jupiter flyby in mid March before leaving the Solar

7:08 Speaker 2: system forever, and there's one more data release to watch for.

7:11 Speaker 2: Lisa's Juice spacecraft observed three iat lists back in November,

7:16 Speaker 2: but couldn't transmit the data while using its antenna as

7:19 Speaker 2: a heat shield. That data is expected to arrive here

7:22 Speaker 2: on Earth anytime now in February, so there could still

7:25 Speaker 2: be one more surprise.

7:26 Speaker 1: Coming when future generations ask what we learned about other

7:30 Speaker 1: solar systems in twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six,

7:34 Speaker 1: three I at lists is going to be a big

7:36 Speaker 1: part of the answer.

7:37 Speaker 2: Dave travels three IY slash at lists. Don't be a stranger,

7:41 Speaker 2: although I suppose by definition you always will be.

7:46 Speaker 1: Now, this next story is one I find genuinely fascinating

7:50 Speaker 1: because it sits right at the intersection of robotics, artificial intelligence,

7:55 Speaker 1: and the practical reality of exploring another planet. M NASA

8:01 Speaker 1: handed the wheel of the Perseverance Mars rover to an AI,

8:05 Speaker 1: not metaphorically literally, the AI generated the rovers driving waypoints,

8:11 Speaker 1: and the rover followed them without human control across two

8:15 Speaker 1: separate days, covering a total of four hundred and fifty

8:18 Speaker 1: six meters.

8:20 Speaker 2: And just to be clear, this isn't NASA hopping on

8:22 Speaker 2: a bandwagon. They have been working on autonomous rover navigation

8:26 Speaker 2: for years out of sheer necessity. Mars is so far

8:30 Speaker 2: away that a round trip radio signal takes around twenty

8:33 Speaker 2: five minutes. That means every driving instruction you send has

8:37 Speaker 2: a built in delay, and every unexpected obstacle requires another

8:41 Speaker 2: twenty five minutes to respond to. Autonomous navigation isn't a luxury,

8:46 Speaker 2: it's a practical requirement.

8:48 Speaker 1: So in this demonstration, the AI analyzed orbital images from

8:52 Speaker 1: the Mars Reconnaissance orbiter's high rise camera as well as

8:56 Speaker 1: digital elevation models. It identified how sand traps, boulder fields,

9:02 Speaker 1: bedrock rocky outcrops, and then generated a path defined by

9:07 Speaker 1: a series of waypoints to avoid them. From there, Perseverance's

9:12 Speaker 1: own onboard auto navigation system took over to actually execute

9:17 Speaker 1: the drive.

9:18 Speaker 4: And importantly, before those AI generated waypoints were sent to Mars,

9:22 Speaker 4: they were tested here on Earth using Perseverance's engineering twin,

9:26 Speaker 4: a full scale physical replica at JPL's Mars yard, So

9:30 Speaker 4: this wasn't a blind experiment. There was a safety net

9:33 Speaker 4: built in.

9:34 Speaker 1: The AI in question is built on Anthropics Claude, which

9:38 Speaker 1: regular listeners may know as the same AI that helps

9:42 Speaker 1: power this show. So there's a certain pleasing symmetry and

9:45 Speaker 1: reporting on that it really is.

9:48 Speaker 2: And the engineers are excited about what comes next. One

9:51 Speaker 2: of the current limitations is that the longer a rover

9:54 Speaker 2: drives without human relocalization, essentially humans checking in to confirm

9:58 Speaker 2: where it is on the map, the more positional uncertainty

10:02 Speaker 2: build up. Over six hundred and fifty five meters, that

10:05 Speaker 2: uncertainty can grow to around thirty three meters. The goal

10:09 Speaker 2: is to use AI to solve that relocalization problem too,

10:13 Speaker 2: so rovers can handle kilometer scaled drives entirely on their own.

10:17 Speaker 1: And beyond Mars. This matters for the whole future of

10:21 Speaker 1: deep space exploration. NASA's Dragonfly mission to Saturn's moon Titan

10:26 Speaker 1: will rely heavily on AI for autonomous navigation as it

10:30 Speaker 1: flies around in Titan's thick atmosphere. The further from Earth

10:34 Speaker 1: you go, the more critical autonomous systems become, because waiting

10:38 Speaker 1: twenty five minutes for a signal is one thing, but

10:41 Speaker 1: waiting hours or days is quite another.

10:45 Speaker 2: The vision the JPL team laid out is compelling intelligence

10:48 Speaker 2: systems not just at mission control here on Earth, but

10:51 Speaker 2: embedded in the rovers, helicopters, and drones themselves, trained on

10:55 Speaker 2: the collective knowledge of NASA's engineers and scientists. The Mars

10:59 Speaker 2: rover of twenty thirty five may look quite different from perseverance.

11:04 Speaker 1: Our next story is one of those pieces of research

11:06 Speaker 1: that sounds almost philosophical at first, but turns out to

11:10 Speaker 1: have very concrete scientific implications. A new study published in

11:15 Speaker 1: Nature Astronomy has found that life on Earth may be

11:18 Speaker 1: thanks to an extraordinarily lucky chemical accident during our planet's

11:23 Speaker 1: formation nearly four point six billion years ago.

11:27 Speaker 2: And when they say lucky, they mean it. The research

11:30 Speaker 2: suggests that two elements absolutely essential for life as we

11:35 Speaker 2: know it, phosphorus and nitrogen, only stayed accessible on Earth's

11:39 Speaker 2: surface because of a very precise and apparently quite rare

11:44 Speaker 2: balance of oxygen during the planet's earliest formation.

11:47 Speaker 1: Here's how it works. When a young rocky planet forms,

11:51 Speaker 1: it's initially molten, a churning ball of liquid rock. As

11:55 Speaker 1: heavy metals sink inward to form the core. Lighter materials

11:59 Speaker 1: stay near the surface during this chaotic stage called core formation.

12:04 Speaker 1: The amount of oxygen present determines where other elements end up.

12:08 Speaker 1: The researchers from Etch Zurich found that oxygen levels need

12:12 Speaker 1: to fall within a surprisingly narrow range for both phosphorus

12:16 Speaker 1: and nitrogen to remain in the mantle and crust available

12:20 Speaker 1: for future life.

12:22 Speaker 3: To little oxygen and phosphorus bonds with iron and gets

12:25 Speaker 3: dragged into the core, taking away a key ingredient for

12:28 Speaker 3: DNA sell membranes and energy transfer. Too much oxygen and

12:33 Speaker 3: nitrogen is more easily lost to space. Either way, the

12:36 Speaker 3: chemistry needed for life never fully comes together. Earth hit

12:40 Speaker 3: this sweet spot, what the researchers are calling a chemical

12:43 Speaker 3: Goldilock zone precisely.

12:46 Speaker 1: The lead researcher, Craig Walton put it clearly, if Earth

12:49 Speaker 1: had had just a little more or a little less

12:52 Speaker 1: oxygen during core formation, there would not have been enough

12:55 Speaker 1: phosphorus or nitrogen for the development of life. They also

12:59 Speaker 1: modeled mar and found it likely had the wrong oxygen balance,

13:03 Speaker 1: more phosphorus in the mantle than Earth but less nitrogen,

13:07 Speaker 1: challenging conditions for life as we know it.

13:10 Speaker 2: This is a significant challenge to how we've traditionally thought

13:13 Speaker 2: about the search for life. The habitable zone, the region

13:17 Speaker 2: around a star where liquid water can exist on the surface,

13:20 Speaker 2: has been our go to framework, but this research suggests

13:24 Speaker 2: that even a planet in the perfect orbital position with

13:27 Speaker 2: liquid water could be fundamentally incapable of supporting life if

13:32 Speaker 2: its internal chemistry didn't form correctly.

13:35 Speaker 1: And here's the hopeful flip side. The oxygen conditions during

13:40 Speaker 1: planetary formation are linked to the chemistry of the host

13:43 Speaker 1: star itself, because planets form from the same material as

13:47 Speaker 1: their stars, So in principle, by looking at stellar chemistry

13:51 Speaker 1: we might be able to predict which planetary systems had

13:55 Speaker 1: the right conditions from the start. Walton's advice for the

13:58 Speaker 1: search look for solars systems with stars that resemble our

14:02 Speaker 1: own sun.

14:03 Speaker 3: It makes the Earth feel even more special and the

14:06 Speaker 3: universe feel a little more vast and empty. All right,

14:11 Speaker 3: from the philosophical to the spectacular. In exactly one week's time,

14:16 Speaker 3: on February seventeenth, an annular solar eclipse is going to

14:19 Speaker 3: sweep across the Southern Hemisphere. This is the so called

14:23 Speaker 3: ring of fire eclipse, where the Moon passes directly in

14:26 Speaker 3: front of the Sun, but because it's at a slightly

14:29 Speaker 3: greater distance from Earth than usual, it appears a little

14:32 Speaker 3: smaller than the Sun's disk. The result is a thin,

14:36 Speaker 3: blazing ring of sunlight surrounding the Moon's dark silhouette dunning.

14:41 Speaker 1: Though this is different from a total solar eclipse where

14:44 Speaker 1: the Moon completely covers the Sun and you get that

14:47 Speaker 1: eerie darkness in the middle of the day. In an

14:50 Speaker 1: annular eclipse, the Moon blocks about ninety six percent of

14:53 Speaker 1: the Sun's disk, but that remaining sliver stays visible and

14:57 Speaker 1: the ring effect is only visible for around two minutes

15:00 Speaker 1: and twenty seconds at any given location. In the past.

15:04 Speaker 2: The path of annularity for this one is quite remote.

15:08 Speaker 2: It runs primarily over Antarctica, which means the full ring

15:12 Speaker 2: of fire experience will be witnessed by the researchers at

15:15 Speaker 2: places like Concordia Station, the French Italian outpost on the

15:20 Speaker 2: Dome Sea plateau, and Myrni Station, the Russian base on

15:24 Speaker 2: the Davis Sea coast. We're talking about teams of maybe

15:28 Speaker 2: fifty to two hundred people, a very exclusive audience for

15:32 Speaker 2: one of nature's best shows.

15:34 Speaker 1: For the rest of US, partial phases will be visible

15:37 Speaker 1: from the southernmost parts of South America, southern Chile and Argentina,

15:42 Speaker 1: and from parts of South Africa. Not the full ring,

15:45 Speaker 1: but still a striking site if you're in the right

15:47 Speaker 1: location with proper eclipse glasses. And it goes without saying

15:52 Speaker 1: never look directly at the Sun during an eclipse without

15:55 Speaker 1: approved eclipse glasses. The ring of fire does not mean

15:59 Speaker 1: the sun is safe to look at.

16:01 Speaker 2: There's also something lovely about the timing of this eclipse.

16:04 Speaker 2: February seventeenth is the start of Chinese New Year, specifically

16:09 Speaker 2: the Year of the Fire Horse. The new moon that

16:12 Speaker 2: causes the eclipse is the same new moon that marks

16:14 Speaker 2: the beginning of the lunar new year, and the crescent

16:17 Speaker 2: moon visible on February eighteenth will signal the start of Ramadan.

16:22 Speaker 2: So this one celestial event sits right at the intersection

16:25 Speaker 2: of multiple major cultural moments around the world.

16:28 Speaker 1: If you're not in the past and want to watch,

16:31 Speaker 1: there will almost certainly be live streams from research teams

16:34 Speaker 1: in Antarctica. We'll keep an eye out and link to

16:36 Speaker 1: any good ones in the show notes. And we're going

16:39 Speaker 1: to close out today's main stories with a Starship update,

16:42 Speaker 1: because after a frustrating lull, things are very much moving

16:46 Speaker 1: again at SpaceX's star Base facility in South Texas.

16:50 Speaker 2: Do understand why this is significant, you need a quick

16:53 Speaker 2: bit of context. The last Starship flight, Flight eleven, was

16:58 Speaker 2: the final launch of the Block two configuration. BaseX is

17:02 Speaker 2: now transitioning to Block three, which is a significantly upgraded

17:06 Speaker 2: architecture featuring new Raptor three engines, enhanced performance, and improved

17:11 Speaker 2: reusability features. But the development of Block three hit a

17:15 Speaker 2: serious setback when Booster eighteen, the first Block three booster,

17:20 Speaker 2: failed during cryogenic pressure testing late last year. Its outer

17:25 Speaker 2: container cracked.

17:26 Speaker 1: BaseX moved fast Booster nineteen. The replacement was stacked and

17:32 Speaker 1: delivered to the test site in record time, and in

17:34 Speaker 1: the first week of February it successfully completed not one

17:38 Speaker 1: but two cryogenic pressure tests. The first was on February second,

17:43 Speaker 1: the second on the fourth. Both passed Darbase watchers described

17:48 Speaker 1: it as looking like the entire booster had frozen solid

17:52 Speaker 1: as super chilled liquid oxygen entered it, which is exactly

17:56 Speaker 1: what it's supposed to do.

17:57 Speaker 2: Booster nineteen has since been returned to the production site

18:00 Speaker 2: for further work and all eyes are now on the

18:03 Speaker 2: flight stack. Booster nineteen paired with Ship thirty nine, which

18:07 Speaker 2: is being prepared for what will be the debut of

18:10 Speaker 2: the full Block three vehicle. The current target is a

18:13 Speaker 2: launch window in the February to March timeframe. THO sources

18:17 Speaker 2: familiar with the program point to March as the most

18:20 Speaker 2: realistic date.

18:21 Speaker 1: Flight twelve is a genuinely significant milestone. It'll be the

18:25 Speaker 1: first flight of the Block three Starship, the first use

18:28 Speaker 1: of the new Pad two architecture at Starbase, and the

18:32 Speaker 1: debut of Raptor three engines at scale. The stakes are high.

18:36 Speaker 1: NASA needs a successful Block three to progress towards using

18:40 Speaker 1: Starship as the human landing system for the Artemis program's

18:44 Speaker 1: crude lunar missions. That timeline is already under pressure.

18:48 Speaker 2: Meanwhile, infrastructure work continues at a remarkable pace. Pad one

18:53 Speaker 2: at Starbase is being rebuilt, SpaceX's facility at Kennedy Space

18:57 Speaker 2: Center at Launch Complex thirty nine A is progressing toward

19:01 Speaker 2: a first Florida Starship launch in the second half of

19:03 Speaker 2: twenty twenty six, and environmental approval has been granted for

19:08 Speaker 2: a brand new Starship complex at Space Launch Complex thirty

19:12 Speaker 2: seven at Cape Canaveral, which would eventually give the program

19:16 Speaker 2: five launch pads across Texas and Florida.

19:19 Speaker 1: Five launch pads for Starship. It's a lot to take in,

19:23 Speaker 1: but after Booster eighteen's failure and the testing lull, the

19:27 Speaker 1: fact that Booster nineteen has passed its cryotests and Flight

19:31 Speaker 1: twelve is back on track. Is genuinely good news for

19:34 Speaker 1: the program.

19:35 Speaker 2: We will be watching closely.

19:37 Speaker 1: That is everything we've got for you today on Astronomy

19:40 Speaker 1: Daily Fix stories, all of them worth your time. From

19:43 Speaker 1: astronauts waiting for weather in Florida to a comet carrying

19:47 Speaker 1: four billion year old secrets from another star, a rover

19:51 Speaker 1: taking orders from an AI on Mars, new science that

19:55 Speaker 1: makes life on Earth feel like a cosmic lottery win,

19:58 Speaker 1: a ring of fire one week away, and starship dusting

20:02 Speaker 1: itself off for another attempt at history.

20:05 Speaker 2: A genuinely brilliant day to be following Space news. Thank

20:08 Speaker 2: you so much for spending part of it with us.

20:10 Speaker 1: If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe wherever you get

20:14 Speaker 1: your podcasts, and if you want to go deeper on

20:16 Speaker 1: any of these stories. Full show notes and our blog

20:19 Speaker 1: are over at Astronomy Daily dot.

20:21 Speaker 2: Io until tomorrow. Keep looking up.

20:24 Speaker 1: Take care everyone, Sunny Day Stars

20:36 Speaker 4: Start all