Live ISS Spacewalk, Asteroid DNA Discovery, Aurora Alert & Artemis II Rollout

0:00 Speaker 1: Right now as we record this, two NASA astronauts are

0:04 Speaker 1: floating outside the International Space Station two hundred and fifty

0:08 Speaker 1: miles above your head, rewiring the station's power grid in

0:12 Speaker 1: the vacuum of space. We've got the full story, plus

0:17 Speaker 1: asteroid DNA, a solar storm heading our way tomorrow night,

0:21 Speaker 1: a moon rocket on the move, and Blue Origins plan

0:24 Speaker 1: to defend Earth from killer space rocks. It's Wednesday, the

0:28 Speaker 1: eighteenth of March twenty twenty six. This is Astronomy Daily.

0:33 Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Astronomy Daily. You're daily briefing on

0:37 Speaker 2: everything happening in the cosmos and closer to home. I'm

0:40 Speaker 2: Avery and I'm Anna.

0:43 Speaker 1: We are deep into a week that feels like the

0:45 Speaker 1: universe is trying to grab our attention all at once,

0:49 Speaker 1: and honestly, we're here for it.

0:51 Speaker 2: Genuinely. Every story today has something remarkable about it, so

0:55 Speaker 2: let's get straight into it. Story number one, and it

0:58 Speaker 2: is happening right now.

1:00 Speaker 1: At around eight o'clock this morning Eastern time, NASA astronauts

1:03 Speaker 1: Jessica Meir and Chris Williams stepped out of the International

1:07 Speaker 1: Space Station's Quest airlock and into open space, beginning US

1:12 Speaker 1: spacewalk number ninety four.

1:15 Speaker 2: This one was a long time coming, Anna. It was

1:17 Speaker 2: originally scheduled for January the eighth, back when a different

1:21 Speaker 2: crew was meant to suit up. But then something extraordinary happened.

1:25 Speaker 2: The first ever medical evacuation from the International Space Station

1:29 Speaker 2: forced the early departure of the crew eleven mission, and

1:32 Speaker 2: everything was reshoveled.

1:34 Speaker 1: Right, And this is why the EVA you're hearing about today,

1:38 Speaker 1: right now as you listen to this episode is the

1:41 Speaker 1: very first spacewalk of twenty twenty six, the two hundred

1:44 Speaker 1: and seventy eighth spacewalk in support of Space station assembly, maintenance,

1:49 Speaker 1: and upgrades since construction began.

1:52 Speaker 2: Meer and Williams are out there preparing the station's to

1:55 Speaker 2: a power channel for future installation of another rollout solar array,

2:00 Speaker 2: the seventh of its kind. These IROSA arrays, as they're called,

2:04 Speaker 2: are like accordion style solar panels that unfurl once installed,

2:09 Speaker 2: and they've been systematically boosting the station's power generation capacity.

2:13 Speaker 1: For Jessica Miir, this is her fourth spacewalk. For Chris Williams,

2:17 Speaker 1: it is his first, and what a debut. Six and

2:21 Speaker 1: a half hours in vacuum, installing a modification kit and

2:25 Speaker 1: routing cables on the port side of the station.

2:28 Speaker 2: A second spacewalk, EVA ninety five is already planned to

2:32 Speaker 2: prep a different power channel, the three B, for yet

2:35 Speaker 2: another future solar array installation. That one is tentatively set

2:40 Speaker 2: for April first, which, yes, is also the day Artemis

2:43 Speaker 2: two is scheduled to launch. April Fool's Day is going

2:46 Speaker 2: to be a very busy day in space.

2:48 Speaker 1: If you want to watch the spacewalk or watch the replay,

2:51 Speaker 1: depending on when you're listening, NASA covered it live on Nasaplus,

2:55 Speaker 1: Amazon Prime, and YouTube starting at six thirty am Eastern.

3:00 Speaker 2: Worth a look. Story two is a genuine jaw dropper,

3:03 Speaker 2: and I want to give it the space it deserves.

3:06 Speaker 1: So. Scientists have now confirmed that samples collected from the

3:10 Speaker 1: asteroid Reugu contain all five canonical nucleobases, the molecular building

3:17 Speaker 1: blocks of DNA and RNA, all five adenine, guanine, cytozine, thymine,

3:24 Speaker 1: and uracill.

3:25 Speaker 2: For listeners who want the slightly deeper version. Nucleobases are

3:29 Speaker 2: the chemical letters that encode genetic information. DNA uses four

3:34 Speaker 2: of them. Adenine, guanine, cytizine, and thymine RNA swaps in

3:39 Speaker 2: uracill for thymine. Every living thing on Earth, every bacterium,

3:44 Speaker 2: every plant, every animal, every human being uses these five

3:48 Speaker 2: molecules as the foundation of their genetic code.

3:52 Speaker 1: And we just found all of them on a rock

3:55 Speaker 1: that has been hurtling through space since before the Earth existed.

4:00 Speaker 2: Samples were brought back to Earth in twenty twenty by

4:02 Speaker 2: Japan's Hyabusa two mission, a spacecraft that flew three hundred

4:06 Speaker 2: million kilometers to asteroid Reyugo, landed on it, fired a

4:10 Speaker 2: small projectile to kick up material, collected the debris, and

4:14 Speaker 2: flew home. The total hal was about five point four

4:17 Speaker 2: grams of pristine asteroid material that's barely more than a teaspoon, and.

4:23 Speaker 1: From that tiny sample, just about twenty milligrams. For this study,

4:27 Speaker 1: researchers at Japan's jam Stack Agency, led by biochemist Toshiki Koga,

4:33 Speaker 1: extracted and identified all five nucleobases, published this week in

4:39 Speaker 1: the journal Nature Astronomy.

4:41 Speaker 2: Now, the researchers are careful to say, and this is important,

4:44 Speaker 2: the presence of these molecules does not mean life existed

4:48 Speaker 2: on Reyugu. What it does mean is that the rock

4:51 Speaker 2: chemical ingredients for life can form in space without any

4:55 Speaker 2: biology involved at all, and can be preserved inside asteroids

4:59 Speaker 2: for billion of years.

5:01 Speaker 1: And here's where it gets really interesting for the big picture.

5:05 Speaker 1: For Yugo is a carbon rich asteroid, a C type,

5:09 Speaker 1: and they found all five nucleobases in roughly equal amounts.

5:13 Speaker 1: That's a different ratio to what's been found in the

5:16 Speaker 1: Murchison meteorites which fell in Australia in nineteen sixty nine,

5:21 Speaker 1: and different again from the asteroid Benu, samples of which

5:25 Speaker 1: were returned by NASA's Osiris REX mission.

5:28 Speaker 2: Those differences actually reflected different chemical histories of each space rock,

5:33 Speaker 2: different environments, different temperatures, different amounts of water and ammonia

5:37 Speaker 2: they were exposed to billions of years ago.

5:40 Speaker 1: But here's the headline. We now have pristine samples from

5:44 Speaker 1: two different asterites, Ryugu and Benu, both showing the presence

5:49 Speaker 1: of life's key molecular ingredients. That strongly suggests these molecules

5:54 Speaker 1: are widespread across the Solar System, and that raises a

5:58 Speaker 1: profound question. Did the these molecules rain down on early

6:02 Speaker 1: Earth via asteroid impacts and help kickstarred life here.

6:06 Speaker 2: The panspermia hypothesis, the idea that the building blocks of life,

6:10 Speaker 2: or even life itself can travel between worlds, gets a

6:14 Speaker 2: little more evidence every time we go looking, and stories

6:17 Speaker 2: like this one remind me why sample return missions are

6:20 Speaker 2: so extraordinarily valuable.

6:23 Speaker 1: Story three. If you are anywhere in the northern hemisphere

6:26 Speaker 1: and quite a few in the South, listen up because

6:29 Speaker 1: you might want to set an alarm for tomorrow night.

6:32 Speaker 2: On March sixteenth, active region AR four three ninety two

6:37 Speaker 2: on the Sun erupted with an M two point seven

6:40 Speaker 2: class solar flare, that's the moderately strong flare, and it

6:44 Speaker 2: hurled a coronal mass ejection or CME directly towards Earth.

6:49 Speaker 2: Noah Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a G two

6:52 Speaker 2: moderate geomagnetic storm watch from March nineteenth, with a chance

6:57 Speaker 2: the conditions could ramp up to G three, which is

7:00 Speaker 2: classified as strong.

7:02 Speaker 1: G two conditions can push Aurora displays to latitudes as

7:05 Speaker 1: far south as New York, the Upper Midwest, and similar

7:09 Speaker 1: latitudes in Europe and Asia. D three, if it materializes,

7:14 Speaker 1: could extend those sightings even further south, possibly as far

7:18 Speaker 1: as Illinois.

7:19 Speaker 2: And the timing here is really interesting from a science perspective.

7:23 Speaker 2: The CME is expected to arrive on March nineteenth, which

7:27 Speaker 2: is essentially the vernal equinox, and that matters because of

7:31 Speaker 2: something called the Russell mcpheerin.

7:33 Speaker 1: Effect, named after geophysicists Christopher Russell and Robert mcphern, who

7:38 Speaker 1: first described it in nineteen seventy three. Around the equinoxes,

7:43 Speaker 1: Earth's orientation in space puts its magnetic field at a

7:47 Speaker 1: right angle to the incoming solar wind. That geometry makes

7:51 Speaker 1: it much easier for charged particles from a CME to

7:54 Speaker 1: punch through our magnetosphere, so even a relatively modest storm

7:59 Speaker 1: can use far more spectacular auroras than you might expect.

8:04 Speaker 2: Basically, March and September are statistically the best months of

8:07 Speaker 2: the year to see the northern lights, and we have

8:10 Speaker 2: a CME arriving right at the equinox. Aurora chasers call

8:14 Speaker 2: it Aurora season, and this year it's living up to

8:17 Speaker 2: the name.

8:18 Speaker 1: The peak activity is expected overnight on the nineteenth, so

8:22 Speaker 1: the evening of Thursday the nineteenth into the early hours

8:25 Speaker 1: of Friday the twentieth, get yourself somewhere dark away from

8:29 Speaker 1: city lights. Check the aurora forecast apps, Space Weather Live

8:34 Speaker 1: my Aurora forecast, and keep an eye on the KP index.

8:38 Speaker 1: If it's climbing toward five or above, go outside and

8:41 Speaker 1: look north.

8:43 Speaker 2: And remember, Aurora displays depend on the orientation of the

8:47 Speaker 2: CME's magnetic field when it actually arrives, which is notoriously

8:52 Speaker 2: hard to predict until it's almost at Earth. The forecast

8:55 Speaker 2: could change, but right now the signs look promising.

9:00 Speaker 1: Four and this one is another one that's genuinely unfolding

9:03 Speaker 1: as we speak. The Artemis to Moon rocket, the massive

9:08 Speaker 1: space launch system carrying the Orion spacecraft and its four

9:11 Speaker 1: person crew, is about to roll back out to launch

9:15 Speaker 1: Pad thirty nine B at Kennedy's Space Center in Florida.

9:18 Speaker 2: And I say about two because the exact timing is

9:22 Speaker 2: being decided today. As of the latest update from NASA,

9:26 Speaker 2: engineers finish their close out work faster than expected, and

9:30 Speaker 2: as of this recording, they're deciding whether the rollout happens

9:33 Speaker 2: as early as tomorrow, Thursday the nineteenth, or Friday the twentieth.

9:38 Speaker 2: Either way, it's happening this week. Here's the backstory. The

9:42 Speaker 2: rocket first rolled out to the pad back in January,

9:45 Speaker 2: but two wet dress rehearsals. Those are full fueling simulations.

9:49 Speaker 2: Uncovered issues, including a liquid hydrogen leak and then a

9:53 Speaker 2: helium flow problem. The rocket rolled back into the vehicle

9:57 Speaker 2: assembly building in late February for engineers replace a dislodged

10:02 Speaker 2: seal in the helium system, fitted new flight termination batteries,

10:07 Speaker 2: replaced a seal on the core stage liquid oxygen feed line,

10:11 Speaker 2: and just recently replace an electrical harness in the flight

10:15 Speaker 2: termination system. No further wet dress rehearsals are planned. The

10:19 Speaker 2: next time the rocket is fueled, it'll be for the

10:21 Speaker 2: real thing.

10:23 Speaker 1: DASA is targeting April first for launch. They have windows

10:26 Speaker 1: running from April first through to the sixth, with additional

10:30 Speaker 1: dates later in the month if needed. The crew is

10:33 Speaker 1: Commander Reed Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina

10:38 Speaker 1: Koch and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency.

10:42 Speaker 2: If this launch goes ahead as planned, Glover becomes the

10:45 Speaker 2: first person of color to reach deep space, Kach becomes

10:49 Speaker 2: the first woman, and Hanson becomes the first non American citizen.

10:54 Speaker 2: It will be the first human mission to the vicinity

10:57 Speaker 2: of the Moon since Apollo seventeen. In dis December of

11:00 Speaker 2: nineteen seventy two, over fifty years ago.

11:04 Speaker 1: The mission itself is a ten day free return trajectory

11:07 Speaker 1: around the Moon and back, no lunar orbit, no landing,

11:11 Speaker 1: but they will travel farther from Earth than any human

11:15 Speaker 1: being has ever, passing roughly five thousand miles beyond the Moon,

11:20 Speaker 1: and it sets the stage for everything that comes after.

11:23 Speaker 2: This is the moment the whole Artemis program has been

11:26 Speaker 2: building toward the rollout. Whenever it happens in the next

11:29 Speaker 2: day or two, will be life streamed by NASA and

11:32 Speaker 2: takes about twelve hours, with the rocket traveling four miles

11:36 Speaker 2: to the pad at about one mile per hour, slow

11:39 Speaker 2: and steady.

11:41 Speaker 1: And story five a look at what Blue Origin has

11:44 Speaker 1: been quietly working on in the asteroid defense.

11:46 Speaker 2: Space def Bezos's space company has partnered with NASA's Jet

11:51 Speaker 2: Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology to develop

11:55 Speaker 2: a mission concept called Neo Hunter Near Earth Object Hunter.

12:00 Speaker 2: The goal build a spacecraft capable of detecting, characterizing, and

12:05 Speaker 2: deflecting potentially dangerous asteroids before they become a problem.

12:10 Speaker 1: The platform they're proposing to use is Blue Ring Blue

12:13 Speaker 1: Origins modular spacecraft bus that can carry up to four

12:17 Speaker 1: thousand kilograms of payload across as many as thirteen connection ports.

12:22 Speaker 1: It's designed to operate anywhere from low Earth orbit all

12:25 Speaker 1: the way out to deep space destinations, including Mars.

12:29 Speaker 2: Meal Hunter works in two phases. Phase one, the spacecraft

12:34 Speaker 2: deploys a swarm of cube SATs to rendezvous with a

12:37 Speaker 2: potentially hazardous asteroid and characterize it, measuring its mass, density, composition,

12:43 Speaker 2: and precise trajectory. That information is critical because the right

12:47 Speaker 2: deflection technique depends entirely on what the asteroid is made

12:51 Speaker 2: of and how fast it's moving.

12:53 Speaker 1: If the asteroid is manageable, Phase one also deploys an

12:57 Speaker 1: ion beam emitter. This is fascinating. The spacecraft fires a

13:02 Speaker 1: concentrated stream of charged particles directly onto the asteroid's surface.

13:08 Speaker 1: The force of those particles over time is enough to

13:12 Speaker 1: nudge the asteroid onto a slightly different path. It's extraordinarily precise,

13:18 Speaker 1: it's non destructive, and if you have enough warning time,

13:21 Speaker 1: it works.

13:22 Speaker 2: But if the asteroid is too large or moving too

13:25 Speaker 2: fast for the ion beam to be effective, Neo Hunter

13:28 Speaker 2: switches to phase two, what Blue Origin calls robust kinetic disruption.

13:34 Speaker 2: The spacecraft simply crashes into the asteroid at up to

13:37 Speaker 2: twenty two thousand, six hundred miles per hour. Before doing so,

13:41 Speaker 2: it releases a smaller dedicated camera satellite, which they brilliantly

13:46 Speaker 2: named the Slamcam, to document the impact and confirm mission success.

13:51 Speaker 1: The slam Cam. I love that name.

13:54 Speaker 2: It's very honest marketing. This is, of course, the same

13:57 Speaker 2: basic approach NASA's Dart mission demonstration in September twenty twenty two,

14:02 Speaker 2: when it successfully changed the orbit of the asteroid moonlit

14:05 Speaker 2: dimorphous Dart proved the concept works. Neo Hunter would be

14:10 Speaker 2: a more sophisticated, multitool version.

14:12 Speaker 1: Of that, and it's worth noting planetary defense is getting

14:17 Speaker 1: increasing attention right now. The asteroid twenty twenty four YR

14:21 Speaker 1: four grabbed headlines earlier this year when it briefly appeared

14:25 Speaker 1: on NASA's impact risk list before being ruled out. Asteroids

14:29 Speaker 1: fly past Earth uncomfortably close more often than most people realize.

14:34 Speaker 1: Having a commercial platform capable of rapid response is genuinely valuable,

14:40 Speaker 1: and smart.

14:41 Speaker 2: Blue Origin described it as another example of how commercial

14:45 Speaker 2: platforms like Blue Ring can conduct a low cost, high

14:48 Speaker 2: priority science exploration and planetary Defense missions. No launch day

14:53 Speaker 2: has been announced yet, but the concept has been developed

14:55 Speaker 2: with JPL, which gives it serious scientific credibility.

15:00 Speaker 1: And that is a wrap on today's Astronomy Daily. What

15:03 Speaker 1: a lineup, a live spacewalk, the molecular ingredients of life

15:08 Speaker 1: found on an asteroid, a solar storm and root, a

15:12 Speaker 1: moon rocket preparing to roll, and a spacecraft that may

15:16 Speaker 1: one day save the world.

15:18 Speaker 2: Just the normal Wednesday. Really, if you're heading outside tomorrow

15:21 Speaker 2: night to look for the Aurora, we want to hear

15:24 Speaker 2: about it. Find us on socials everywhere as astro Daily

15:27 Speaker 2: pod and share your photos. We'd love to see them.

15:30 Speaker 1: And if you've enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe wherever you

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15:40 Speaker 1: be honest, should be everyone.

15:42 Speaker 2: Astronomy Daily is part of the bytes dot com podcast network.

15:46 Speaker 2: Find full show notes, transcripts and links at Astronomy Daily

15:50 Speaker 2: dot io. From Anna and Avery, Clear Skies and we'll

15:54 Speaker 2: see you tomorrow Sunday. Start the Store has The Soul

16:14 Speaker 2: Store has ConTroll