ISS Back to Full Strength, Artemis 2 Battles Hydrogen Leaks, and Enceladus Goes Electromagnetic

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

0:05 Speaker 1: to source for space and astronomy news.

0:08 Speaker 2: I'm Anna and I'm Avery. It's February sixteenth, twenty twenty six,

0:13 Speaker 2: and what a weekend it's been in space. We've got

0:16 Speaker 2: six stories for you today, starting with some very welcome

0:20 Speaker 2: news from Low Worth Orbit.

0:21 Speaker 1: That's right, after more than a month of operating with

0:25 Speaker 1: a skeleton crew, the International Space Station is finally back

0:29 Speaker 1: to full strength. SpaceX's Crew twelve mission docked at the

0:34 Speaker 1: ISS on Saturday afternoon, Valentine's Day, no less, bringing four

0:39 Speaker 1: fresh crew members to the orbiting laboratory.

0:42 Speaker 2: And what a crew it is. We've got NASA astronauts

0:46 Speaker 2: Jessica Mayer and Jack Hathaway, ESA astronaut Sophie Adnaut from France,

0:52 Speaker 2: and Ross Cosmos cosmonaut Andre Fadeev. They launched the board

0:57 Speaker 2: of Falcon nine rocket early on Friday the thirteenth, the

1:01 Speaker 2: first time NASA has ever launched a crude mission on

1:04 Speaker 2: a Friday the thirteenth, by.

1:06 Speaker 1: The way, lucky day after all. The Dragon capsule Freedom

1:11 Speaker 1: docked at the space facing port of the Harmony module

1:14 Speaker 1: at three point fifteen pm Eastern time on Saturday. Commander

1:18 Speaker 1: Jessica Mayer radioed up as they approached, and Chris Williams,

1:22 Speaker 1: who'd been holding the fort with just two cosmonauts since

1:26 Speaker 1: mid January, was clearly delighted to see them arrive.

1:30 Speaker 2: You can understand why the station had been down to

1:33 Speaker 2: just three crew members since January fifteenth, when Crew eleven

1:37 Speaker 2: departed a month ahead of schedule due to a medical

1:40 Speaker 2: issue with one of its astronauts. NASA hasn't identified which

1:44 Speaker 2: astronaut or given details, but it left the ISS short

1:48 Speaker 2: staffed for a lot longer than anyone wanted.

1:51 Speaker 1: Now here's the interesting subplot to this mission. The original

1:55 Speaker 1: Crew twelve lineup was different. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev was

2:00 Speaker 1: originally assigned to the flight, but was abruptly removed back

2:04 Speaker 1: in December. Ross Cosmos officially said he was transitioning to

2:09 Speaker 1: other work, but reports from investigative journalists tell a rather

2:13 Speaker 1: different story.

2:14 Speaker 2: Right As we reported last week, according to The Insider,

2:18 Speaker 2: Artimiev was expelled from the United States after being accused

2:22 Speaker 2: of violating International Traffic in Arms Regulations ITAR. As it's known.

2:27 Speaker 2: He was allegedly caught photographing SpaceX engines, documents and other

2:32 Speaker 2: sensitive technologies with his phone. That's his serious allegation in

2:36 Speaker 2: the world of space cooperation.

2:38 Speaker 1: Very serious. Indeed, it's a reminder that even in an

2:41 Speaker 1: era of international collaboration aboard the ISS, geopolitical tensions are

2:47 Speaker 1: never far from the surface. That Yajev stepped in as

2:51 Speaker 1: the replacement and the mission went ahead.

2:53 Speaker 2: The crew twelve team is expected to stay aboard through October,

2:57 Speaker 2: making this a slightly longer stint than the usual six months.

3:00 Speaker 2: Sophie Ateno has a particularly packed schedule. She's expected to

3:05 Speaker 2: take part in nearly two hundred experiments, including testing a

3:09 Speaker 2: development version of the new EVA suit called Eurosuit, which

3:13 Speaker 2: was developed by French companies Spartan Space and Decathalon, along

3:17 Speaker 2: with the Institute of Space Medicine.

3:19 Speaker 1: Testing spacesuits designed partly by the people who make hiking gear.

3:24 Speaker 1: I love that. All right, Let's move to our second story,

3:27 Speaker 1: and it's the saga that just won't quit Artemis two

3:31 Speaker 1: and its ongoing battle with hydrogen leaks.

3:34 Speaker 2: Oh, this is becoming quite the drama. So here's where

3:37 Speaker 2: things stand. NASA conducted what they called a confidence test

3:41 Speaker 2: on February twelve, partially filling the SLS core stage's liquid

3:46 Speaker 2: hydrogen tank to check whether newly replaced seals in the

3:49 Speaker 2: fueling interface were doing their job, and the result mixed.

3:54 Speaker 2: They encountered a problem with ground support equipment that reduced

3:57 Speaker 2: the flow of hydrogen into the rocket. The good news

4:00 Speaker 2: is that engineers were able to gather data at the

4:02 Speaker 2: critical interfaces, the exact points where the leak had occurred

4:06 Speaker 2: during the earlier wet dress rehearsal on February second, and

4:10 Speaker 2: from what NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said during the Crew

4:14 Speaker 2: twelve coverage, the early signs are cautiously encouraging.

4:18 Speaker 1: He said they didn't see the same leaks at comparable

4:21 Speaker 1: periods during this test that they'd seen during the full

4:24 Speaker 1: wet dress rehearsal. That's progress, even if it's not a

4:28 Speaker 1: definitive green light yet.

4:30 Speaker 2: For those catching up, here's the backstory. The first wet

4:33 Speaker 2: dress rehearsal ran from January thirty first through February third.

4:37 Speaker 2: They managed to fully load both SLS stages with cryogenic

4:41 Speaker 2: propellant and even got the countdown to the T minus

4:44 Speaker 2: five minute mark, but then the ground launch sequencer automatically

4:48 Speaker 2: stopped everything because of a spike in the hydrogen leak rate.

4:52 Speaker 1: And these pesky hydrogen leaks are nothing new for the

4:56 Speaker 1: SLS program. They plagued Artemis one back in twenty twenty two,

5:00 Speaker 1: causing months of delays. The Mission Management Team chair John

5:04 Speaker 1: Honeycutt admitted this latest round caught them off guard. Hydrogen

5:08 Speaker 1: is such a tiny molecule it can escape through the

5:12 Speaker 1: smallest imperfection in the propellant system.

5:14 Speaker 2: The February launch window has already been abandoned and NASA

5:18 Speaker 2: is now targeting March for the earliest possible launch. Engineers

5:22 Speaker 2: worked through the weekend to perch lines, inspect equipment, and

5:26 Speaker 2: replace a filter suspected of causing the reduced flow. A

5:29 Speaker 2: second full wet dress rehearsal is expected before any launch attempt.

5:33 Speaker 1: We'll keep following this one closely. Artemis two, when it

5:37 Speaker 1: does fly, will send four astronauts, Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover,

5:41 Speaker 1: Christina Cock and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a ten

5:45 Speaker 1: day trip around the Moon, the first crude lunar flyby

5:49 Speaker 1: since the Apollo era.

5:51 Speaker 2: Now from the challenges of getting off our planet to

5:54 Speaker 2: the wonders of the outer Solar System, our third story

5:57 Speaker 2: is a real Beautyana.

5:59 Speaker 1: Oh, I love this one. Saturn's tiny moon, Enceladus, just

6:04 Speaker 1: five hundred kilometers across, has been revealed as a giant

6:07 Speaker 1: electromagnetic powerhouse whose influence stretches over half a million kilometers

6:13 Speaker 1: through saturn space environment.

6:15 Speaker 2: Half a million kilometers that's more than two thousand times

6:20 Speaker 2: the Moon's own radius. An international team led by Lena

6:23 Speaker 2: Hadid from the Labretois the Plasmas in France analyzed thirteen

6:28 Speaker 2: years of data from the Cassini spacecraft, and what they

6:31 Speaker 2: found is stunning.

6:33 Speaker 1: So we all know Enceladus for its water geysers, those

6:36 Speaker 1: spectacular plumes erupting from the south pole. But it turns

6:40 Speaker 1: out those geysers do a lot more than just spray

6:44 Speaker 1: water into space. The water, vapor, and dust become ionized,

6:48 Speaker 1: creating an electrically charged plasma that interacts with Saturn's magnetic

6:53 Speaker 1: seld as it sweeps past.

6:55 Speaker 2: And that interaction generates these structures called alfin wings. Think

6:59 Speaker 2: of them like electromagnetic vibrations traveling along a string, except

7:04 Speaker 2: the string is Saturn's magnetic field lines, and they're connecting

7:07 Speaker 2: this tiny moon to the giant planet's poles.

7:10 Speaker 1: The researchers found that the primary alphin wing isn't just

7:14 Speaker 1: a simple structure. It's threaded by fine scale filaments produced

7:19 Speaker 1: by turbulence in the plasma. These filaments help the waves

7:22 Speaker 1: bounce back and forth between Saturn's ionosphere and the plasma

7:26 Speaker 1: Taurus that encircles Enceladus's orbit. The result is this incredible

7:31 Speaker 1: lattice like pattern of crisscrossing electromagnetic waves.

7:35 Speaker 2: Across four different Cassini instruments. The team identified thirty six

7:40 Speaker 2: separate crossings that showed these wave signatures. And here's the

7:43 Speaker 2: remarkable part. Thirteen of those crossings occurred far from any

7:47 Speaker 2: close flyby of Enceladus. The moon's electromagnetic reach is simply enormous.

7:53 Speaker 1: Co author Thomas Chust described Enceladus as a planetary scale

7:58 Speaker 1: alphin wave generator moon, just five hundred kilometers wide, capable

8:02 Speaker 1: of influencing the magnetospheric environment on the scale of Saturn itself.

8:08 Speaker 1: The team says this has major implications for understanding how

8:11 Speaker 1: small bodies regulate energy flow in giant planetary magnetospheres.

8:16 Speaker 2: And there's the forward looking element too. The researchers say

8:20 Speaker 2: their findings highlight the importance of future missions to Enceladus,

8:24 Speaker 2: like the planned ISSA orbiter and lander in the twenty forties,

8:27 Speaker 2: carrying instruments specifically designed to study these electromagnetic interactions.

8:32 Speaker 1: From Enceladus to interstellar space. Now, our fourth story takes

8:37 Speaker 1: us to the ongoing saga of three Iatls, the third

8:42 Speaker 1: interstellar object ever detected in our Solar system.

8:46 Speaker 2: And today researchers from the Initiative for Interstellar Studies i

8:50 Speaker 2: FORIS have published a fascinating new paper proposing how we

8:55 Speaker 2: might actually catch up with this cosmic visitor. The comment

8:58 Speaker 2: is heading away from Us, now approaching Jupiter for its

9:02 Speaker 2: closest pass on March the sixteenth, before it leaves our

9:05 Speaker 2: Solar system forever.

9:07 Speaker 1: The challenge is obvious. By the time three IATLS was

9:11 Speaker 1: discovered in July twenty twenty five, it was already moving

9:15 Speaker 1: too fast for any direct intercept mission from Earth. Even

9:19 Speaker 1: the issa's planned comet interceptor, sitting ready at the Sun

9:23 Speaker 1: Earth L two point wouldn't have been able to reach it.

9:27 Speaker 2: So Adam Hibberd and colleagues at I FOURIS took a

9:31 Speaker 2: different approach. They're proposing what's called a solar obirth maneuver.

9:35 Speaker 2: The idea is to launch a spacecraft in twenty thirty

9:38 Speaker 2: five that would first swing past Jupiter for a gravity assist,

9:42 Speaker 2: then plunge close to the Sun, firing its engines at

9:45 Speaker 2: the closest approach to maximize the slingshot effect. This would

9:50 Speaker 2: hurl the probe out of the Solar System fast enough

9:53 Speaker 2: to catch three iatls.

9:55 Speaker 1: The downside a fifty year flight time, but the researchers

10:00 Speaker 1: argue it's worth it. Every interstellar object that passes through

10:04 Speaker 1: is a message in a bottle from another star system.

10:07 Speaker 1: The science return from a close up study would be extraordinary, and.

10:12 Speaker 2: There have been earlier proposals too, including one that suggested

10:16 Speaker 2: NASA's junoprobe could be redirected from Jupiter orbit to intercept

10:20 Speaker 2: three iatls, but with JUNO low on fuel and having

10:25 Speaker 2: engine issues, that always seemed like a long shot.

10:28 Speaker 1: Three iatls remains one of the most fascinating objects to

10:32 Speaker 1: visit our Solar System. Bigger and more active than either

10:36 Speaker 1: Omuamua or Borisov, It's given us an unprecedented look at

10:40 Speaker 1: material from beyond our stellar neighborhood, Even if we can't

10:44 Speaker 1: catch it this time. Studies like this are laying the

10:47 Speaker 1: groundwork for when the next interstellar visitor comes calling.

10:51 Speaker 2: Now, let's turn our gaze back to our own star

10:54 Speaker 2: for story number five. If you're an Aurora chaser, today

10:57 Speaker 2: might be worth keeping an eye on.

11:00 Speaker 1: That's right, there's currently a G one minor geomagnetic storm

11:04 Speaker 1: watch in effect for today, February sixteenth, and it's being

11:08 Speaker 1: driven by a combination of factors.

11:11 Speaker 2: First, there's a huge trans equatorial corona hole directly facing

11:15 Speaker 2: Earth right now, and it looks like an old friend.

11:18 Speaker 2: Observers believe it's the same corona hole we saw back

11:21 Speaker 2: in mid January, having survived its transit across the far

11:25 Speaker 2: side of the Sun and come back around for another pass.

11:29 Speaker 2: These corona holes act like solar wind lighthouses, sweeping Earth

11:33 Speaker 2: with fast solar wind roughly every twenty seven days as

11:37 Speaker 2: the Sun rotates.

11:38 Speaker 1: On top of that, an M one point zero solar

11:41 Speaker 1: flare erupted from active region forty three seventy three on

11:45 Speaker 1: February thirteenth, launching a coronal mass ejection that's expected to

11:50 Speaker 1: arrive at Earth right about now. If the CME interacts

11:54 Speaker 1: strongly with the coronal hole's high speed stream, we could

11:58 Speaker 1: see conditions bump up to G two moderate levels.

12:02 Speaker 2: For our listeners at higher latitudes thank Northern Europe, Canada

12:06 Speaker 2: and the Northern Tier US States, it's worth checking those

12:09 Speaker 2: Aurora apps tonight. Even at G one levels, Aurora displays

12:14 Speaker 2: can be visible in Scotland, Scandinavia and across the Northern

12:18 Speaker 2: Tier US States.

12:19 Speaker 1: And with the sun now in the declining phase of

12:22 Speaker 1: solar cycle twenty five, space weather experts say that while

12:26 Speaker 1: big explosive events may become less frequent, coronal holes can

12:31 Speaker 1: actually provide a steadier rhythm of minor to moderate storms.

12:35 Speaker 1: Aurora chasers shouldn't pack away their cameras just yet.

12:39 Speaker 2: And finally, our sixth story is a quick one, but

12:42 Speaker 2: it shows just how relentless the pace of spaceflight has become.

12:46 Speaker 1: SpaceX launched yet another Starlink mission in the early hours

12:50 Speaker 1: of this morning. The Starlink six Dash one Ozho three

12:53 Speaker 1: mission lifting off from Cape Canaveral's Space Launch Complex forty.

12:58 Speaker 1: It carried twenty nine to Link V two mini satellites

13:02 Speaker 1: to low Earth orbit.

13:03 Speaker 2: This was the tenth orbital flight from Cape Canaveral so

13:07 Speaker 2: far in twenty twenty six, and we're not even through February.

13:11 Speaker 2: The first stage booster flying for its tenth time successfully

13:15 Speaker 2: landed on the drone ship a shortfall of gravitas in

13:17 Speaker 2: the Atlantic.

13:19 Speaker 1: N slights for that booster. SpaceX continues to demonstrate the

13:23 Speaker 1: reliability and reusability of Falcon nine at a pace that

13:27 Speaker 1: would have seemed extraordinary just a few years ago. Combined

13:30 Speaker 1: with the Crew twelve launch on Friday, SpaceX's six hundredth

13:35 Speaker 1: Falcon nine flight, It's been quite the week for Hawthorn.

13:39 Speaker 2: The six hundredth Falcon nine. That's genuinely remarkable when you

13:43 Speaker 2: think about.

13:43 Speaker 1: It, it really is. And that brings us to the

13:46 Speaker 1: end of today's episode of Astronomy Daily fixed stories covering

13:51 Speaker 1: human spaceflight, lunar ambitions, Saturnian science, interstellar visitors, space weather,

13:57 Speaker 1: and the unstoppable launch cadence of SpaceX.

14:01 Speaker 3: If you've enjoyed today's show, please do leave us a

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14:06 Speaker 3: listeners find us and follow us on social media at

14:10 Speaker 3: astro Daily Pod for updates throughout the day.

14:13 Speaker 1: You can also check out our full show notes and

14:15 Speaker 1: blog post at Astronomydaily dot io, where we've got links

14:19 Speaker 1: to all the sources and studies we've discussed today.

14:22 Speaker 2: Until tomorrow. Keep looking up clear size.

14:25 Speaker 1: Everyone.

14:26 Speaker 2: Sunday, Start, Start,