Moon Rocket Rolls Out, Dual Spacewalks & CERN's New Particle | March 19, 2026

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

0:04 Speaker 1: daily dose of everything happening beyond our atmosphere.

0:08 Speaker 2: I'm Ana and I'm Avery. It is Thursday, March nineteen,

0:12 Speaker 2: twenty twenty six, and we are recording this on what

0:16 Speaker 2: might be one of the most action packed days in

0:18 Speaker 2: recent space history, because tonight, the most powerful rocket ever

0:22 Speaker 2: built heads back to the launch pad.

0:24 Speaker 1: And while that's happening, we've got particle physics bombshells from CERN,

0:29 Speaker 1: a galaxy next door that's been hiding a dramatic secret,

0:33 Speaker 1: a bold new take on the search for alien intelligence,

0:36 Speaker 1: and the curious hunt for asteroids that hitch a ride

0:40 Speaker 1: alongside planets around other stars.

0:43 Speaker 2: Buckle in, everyone, this is Astronomy Daily, and the universe

0:47 Speaker 2: has been busy.

0:48 Speaker 1: Let's start with the big live one, because as you're

0:51 Speaker 1: listening to this, something incredible may actually be happening right now.

0:56 Speaker 2: Tonight, Thursday March nineteenth, NASA is planning to begin rolling

1:00 Speaker 2: the Artemis two space launch system rocket and the Orion

1:04 Speaker 2: spacecraft out of the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space

1:07 Speaker 2: Center in Florida and transporting them on the slow journey

1:11 Speaker 2: to launch pad thirty nine B.

1:13 Speaker 1: We say slow, and we mean that literally. The crawler

1:17 Speaker 1: transporter that carries the rocket moves at a maximum of

1:21 Speaker 1: about one mile per hour. The whole trip covers roughly

1:26 Speaker 1: four miles and is expected to take up to twelve hours.

1:30 Speaker 1: It's not fast, but it is spectacular.

1:33 Speaker 2: AASA confirmed the rollout target at eight pm Eastern Time tonight,

1:38 Speaker 2: after a busy few days of closeout activities inside the VAB.

1:42 Speaker 2: There was a brief scare earlier in the week when

1:44 Speaker 2: engineers identified an issue with an electrical harness on the

1:48 Speaker 2: flight termination system of the core stage, which pushed the

1:51 Speaker 2: rollout day back to possibly March twentieth, but teams work

1:55 Speaker 2: quickly and made up the lost time.

1:57 Speaker 1: And of course, the reason all of this matters so

1:59 Speaker 1: much is what comes next. Artemis two is NASA's first

2:04 Speaker 1: crude mission under the Artemis program, the first time human

2:07 Speaker 1: beings will travel to the vicinity of the Moon since

2:10 Speaker 1: Apollo seventeen in December nineteen seventy two, that's more than

2:15 Speaker 1: fifty years ago.

2:16 Speaker 2: The crew of four commander Red Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover,

2:21 Speaker 2: mission specialist Christina Coach, and Canadian Space Agency Mission specialist

2:26 Speaker 2: Jeremy Hanson have already entered pre launch quarantine with plans

2:30 Speaker 2: to arrive to Kennedy Space Center on March twenty seventh.

2:34 Speaker 1: Victor Glover will become the first person of color to

2:36 Speaker 1: reach deep space and the Moon's vicinity. Christina Cock will

2:41 Speaker 1: be the first woman to do so, and Jeremy Hanson

2:44 Speaker 1: will be the first non American citizen to travel to

2:47 Speaker 1: lunar space. This mission is genuinely historic on multiple levels.

2:52 Speaker 2: The mission itself is a ten day free return trajectory

2:55 Speaker 2: around the Moon, not a landing, but a crucial crude

2:59 Speaker 2: test of the or B spacecraft's life support systems and

3:02 Speaker 2: deep space performance before later Artemis missions attempt a lunar.

3:06 Speaker 1: Landing, and the first launch opportunity is Wednesday, April first,

3:11 Speaker 1: with a window that opens at six twenty four pm

3:14 Speaker 1: Eastern Time. Additional windows exist through April sixth, and there's

3:18 Speaker 1: another opportunity on April thirtieth.

3:21 Speaker 2: This rollout itself is a milestone. It's actually the second

3:25 Speaker 2: time the rocket has made this journey this year. It

3:28 Speaker 2: rolled to the pad in January for initial testing, but

3:31 Speaker 2: a series of technical issues, including a liquid hydrogen leak

3:35 Speaker 2: and a helium flow problem required it to roll back

3:38 Speaker 2: to the VAB for repairs in late February.

3:41 Speaker 1: So tonight is the comeback tour. And if you're anywhere

3:45 Speaker 1: near Kennedy's Space Center or just watching a live stream

3:48 Speaker 1: at home, this is absolutely worth staying up.

3:51 Speaker 2: For. A fifty three year wait for humans to return

3:54 Speaker 2: to the Moon ends this April, and tonight the rocket

3:58 Speaker 2: that'll take them there is heading to the launch pad.

4:00 Speaker 2: That's story one.

4:02 Speaker 1: Now, while all that Artemis excitement was building, humans were

4:07 Speaker 1: also doing extraordinary things in orbit in not one, but

4:11 Speaker 1: two space stations simultaneously.

4:14 Speaker 2: Let's start at the International Space Station, where, yesterday, Wednesday,

4:18 Speaker 2: March eighteenth, NASA astronauts Jessica Mayer and Chris Williams completed

4:23 Speaker 2: what's known as US Spacewalk ninety four. They emerged from

4:28 Speaker 2: the Quest airlock at eight fifty two am Eastern Time

4:32 Speaker 2: and concluded their excursion at three point fifty four PM,

4:35 Speaker 2: a total of seven hours and two minutes spent working

4:39 Speaker 2: in the vacuum of space.

4:40 Speaker 1: Their task was to prepare the ISS's to a power

4:44 Speaker 1: channel for the future installation of a new IROSA, an

4:48 Speaker 1: International Space Station rollout solar array. These rollout arrays don't

4:53 Speaker 1: need a motor to deploy. The potential energy stored in

4:56 Speaker 1: the rolled up carbon composite booms is enough to to

5:00 Speaker 1: unfurled full nineteen meter length and about six minutes once installed.

5:06 Speaker 1: It'll be the seventh of eight planned rollout arrays since

5:09 Speaker 1: the upgrades began in twenty twenty one.

5:12 Speaker 2: For Jessica Mayer, this was her fourth spacewalk, bringing her

5:16 Speaker 2: total EVA time to twenty eight hours and forty six minutes.

5:20 Speaker 2: For Chris Williams, it was his very first time stepping

5:24 Speaker 2: outside of spacecraft into open space, and after they closed

5:28 Speaker 2: the hatch, Mayor had some beautiful words to mark the occasion.

5:32 Speaker 1: She noted that March eighteenth was exactly sixty one years

5:36 Speaker 1: since Alexei Leonov made the very first human spacewalk back

5:41 Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty five. A nice piece of space history

5:45 Speaker 1: to carry out into the void with you.

5:47 Speaker 2: This EVA had actually been a long time coming. It

5:50 Speaker 2: was originally planned for January eighth with a different crew,

5:54 Speaker 2: but to a medical emergency involving astronaut Mike Fink led

5:58 Speaker 2: to the cancelation of that spacewalk and ultimately the unprecedented

6:02 Speaker 2: medical evacuation of the entire crew eleven mission, so yesterday

6:07 Speaker 2: was the culmination of a very eventful few months at

6:10 Speaker 2: the station.

6:12 Speaker 1: And while Jessica and Chris were suiting up at the

6:15 Speaker 1: iss over at China's tiang Goong Space station, there was

6:19 Speaker 1: an EVA of their own underway. On Monday, March sixteenth,

6:24 Speaker 1: Shenzo twenty one mission commander Zonglu and crewmate Wu Fe

6:29 Speaker 1: spent approximately seven hours outside Tianggung installing debris shielding to

6:35 Speaker 1: the exterior of the three module station.

6:38 Speaker 2: But what made this one especially notable was the milestone

6:41 Speaker 2: for zang Lu. It was his sixth career spacewalk, tying

6:46 Speaker 2: him to fellow Chinese astronaut Chen Dong for the record

6:49 Speaker 2: of most EVAs ever completed by a Chinese national. Zang

6:54 Speaker 2: made his first trip to space on Shenzo fifteen back

6:57 Speaker 2: in late twenty twenty two, and completed four spacewalks during

7:01 Speaker 2: that mission. He's now matched Chen's tally of six.

7:04 Speaker 1: For context, the overall record for most spacewalks belongs to

7:09 Speaker 1: Russian cosmonaut Anatoli Salovyev, who completed a remarkable sixteen EVAs

7:15 Speaker 1: during his career from nineteen eighty eight to nineteen ninety nine.

7:19 Speaker 1: The American record sits with Peggy Whitson at ten.

7:23 Speaker 2: So in the space of just two days Monday and Wednesday,

7:27 Speaker 2: humans from two different nations conducted spacewalks from two different

7:31 Speaker 2: space stations orbiting Earth. That is not something that happened

7:35 Speaker 2: very often, even a decade ago, and it's becoming increasingly routine.

7:40 Speaker 1: The era of humanity as a multi station spacefaring spaces

7:45 Speaker 1: is very much here all right.

7:47 Speaker 2: Time to get small, very very small, because this week

7:51 Speaker 2: physicists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider made a significant discovery

7:56 Speaker 2: in the subatomic world.

7:58 Speaker 1: The LHCb experiment, that's the Large Hadron Collider Beauty Experiment,

8:04 Speaker 1: has detected a new particle. It's called the Zi cc

8:08 Speaker 1: plus written as the Greek letter ZI with cc plus,

8:12 Speaker 1: and it's a proton like particle known as a baryon

8:16 Speaker 1: that contains two heavy charm quarks and one down cork.

8:20 Speaker 2: To appreciate why that's exciting, a quick refresher. A proton,

8:24 Speaker 2: the particle at the heart of every atom, is made

8:27 Speaker 2: of three quarks, two up quarks and one down quark.

8:31 Speaker 2: Quarks come in six flavors, up, down, charm strange top

8:37 Speaker 2: and bottom. Most everyday matter is built from the lightest

8:41 Speaker 2: two up and down. The others are heavier and more exotic.

8:45 Speaker 1: The zi cc plus is like a proton that's had

8:48 Speaker 1: a dramatic upgrade. Its two upquarks have been replaced by

8:53 Speaker 1: two heavy charm quarks, and because charm quarks are far

8:57 Speaker 1: more massive than upquarks, the result particle weighs roughly four

9:02 Speaker 1: times more than an ordinary proton.

9:04 Speaker 2: This is actually only the second baryon ever detected that

9:08 Speaker 2: contains two heavy quarks. The first, also discovered at LHCb

9:13 Speaker 2: back in twenty seventeen, had two charm quarks and an upquark.

9:17 Speaker 2: This new one has a down cork instead, and despite

9:21 Speaker 2: the similarity, it's predicted to be up to six times

9:24 Speaker 2: less stable, meaning it flashes in and out of existence

9:27 Speaker 2: even faster than its cousin.

9:29 Speaker 1: The discovery was announced this week at the Rencontra des

9:32 Speaker 1: Morion Conference, a prestigious annual gathering of particle physicists, and

9:38 Speaker 1: it's the first new particle found using the upgraded LHCb detector,

9:43 Speaker 1: which received a major overhaul completed in twenty twenty three.

9:48 Speaker 1: It's actually the eightieth particle ever discovered by LHCb since

9:53 Speaker 1: operations began.

9:55 Speaker 2: The signal was detected with a statistical significance of seven

9:58 Speaker 2: sigma of the five sigma threshold required to officially claim

10:02 Speaker 2: a discovery, and it also settles a long standing dispute.

10:07 Speaker 2: Over twenty years ago, an experiment called Seleix claimed to

10:10 Speaker 2: have spotted the same particle at a much lower mass,

10:14 Speaker 2: but no other lab could confirm it. This LHCb results

10:18 Speaker 2: at a mass consistent with theoretical predictions finally resolves that mystery.

10:23 Speaker 1: Why does this matter? Because studying how these exotic heavy

10:27 Speaker 1: quark particles behave and how they decay helps physicists better

10:31 Speaker 1: understand the strong nuclear force, which is the force that

10:34 Speaker 1: binds quirks together inside protons and neutrons. The better we

10:38 Speaker 1: understand that, the better we understand matter itself at its

10:42 Speaker 1: most fundamental level.

10:44 Speaker 2: Particle physics doesn't always make the loudest headlines, but every

10:48 Speaker 2: time we add a new entry to the subatomic zoo,

10:51 Speaker 2: we learn a little more about what the universe is

10:54 Speaker 2: actually made of.

10:55 Speaker 1: Now, let's zoom out, way way out from sub atomic

11:01 Speaker 1: particles to an entire galaxy.

11:03 Speaker 2: The small Magellanic cloud a dwarf galaxy that's one of

11:07 Speaker 2: the Milky Way's closest neighbors, visible to the naked eye

11:10 Speaker 2: from the southern hemisphere, has long been one of the

11:13 Speaker 2: most studied objects in the sky. Astronomers have cataloged its stars,

11:18 Speaker 2: mapped its gas, and tracked its motion for decades, but

11:22 Speaker 2: one stubborn mystery has persisted. The galaxy stars simply don't

11:27 Speaker 2: orbit around its center the way stars in most galaxies do.

11:31 Speaker 2: Instead of rotating in an orderly fashion, their motions appear

11:35 Speaker 2: chaotic and disordered.

11:37 Speaker 1: Now, a team of astronomers from the University of Arizona,

11:41 Speaker 1: led by graduate student hemansh Rethor and senior author Professor

11:46 Speaker 1: Gertina Besla, have cracked that mystery, and the answer is dramatic.

11:52 Speaker 1: The Small Magellanic Cloud crashed directly through its larger companion,

11:58 Speaker 1: the Large Magellanic Cloud, a few hundred million years ago,

12:02 Speaker 1: and it's still reeling from that collision today.

12:05 Speaker 2: The lmc's immense gravity disrupted the SMC's internal structure, sending

12:10 Speaker 2: its stars into wildly different, random trajectories. At the same time,

12:15 Speaker 2: the dense gas of the LMC applied enormous pressure to

12:19 Speaker 2: the SMC's own gas as it punched through, destroying its

12:22 Speaker 2: gas rotation. Rathor described it beautifully. Imagine sprinkling water droplets

12:28 Speaker 2: on your hand and moving it through the air. As

12:30 Speaker 2: the air rushes past, the droplets get blown off by

12:34 Speaker 2: the pressure. Something similar happened to the SMC's gas on

12:38 Speaker 2: a galactic scale.

12:39 Speaker 1: What's particularly fascinating is that for decades astronomers thought the

12:43 Speaker 1: SMC's gas was rotating. It turns out that was an

12:47 Speaker 1: illusion of viewing angle. The collision is actually stretching the

12:51 Speaker 1: SMC and gas moving toward and away from Earth along

12:55 Speaker 1: that stretch just looks like rotation from our perspective, one

13:00 Speaker 1: of those wonderful moments where what we thought we were

13:03 Speaker 1: seeing was something completely different.

13:05 Speaker 2: The collision has also left some lasting scars on the

13:08 Speaker 2: large Magellanic cloud, including a tilted bar shaped structure at

13:12 Speaker 2: its center, tilted out of the plane of the galaxy

13:15 Speaker 2: by the impact.

13:16 Speaker 1: And this discovery has an important implication beyond just understanding

13:20 Speaker 1: these two galaxies. For decades, the SMC has been used

13:25 Speaker 1: as a benchmark, a kind of cosmic yardstick, for understanding

13:29 Speaker 1: how early universe galaxies formed and evolved. Because it's small

13:33 Speaker 1: gas rich and low and heavy elements. But if it's

13:37 Speaker 1: a galaxy still recovering from a catastrophic collision, it may

13:41 Speaker 1: not be the clean reference point we thought it was.

13:44 Speaker 2: As Professor Besler put it, the SMC went through a

13:48 Speaker 2: catastrophic crash that injected a tremendous amount of energy into

13:52 Speaker 2: the system. It is not a normal galaxy by any means.

13:56 Speaker 1: The research is published in the Astrophysical Journal, and the

13:59 Speaker 1: Ta Teme says this is just the first step. They

14:02 Speaker 1: now want to build detailed models of the full collision

14:06 Speaker 1: to understand how it's shaped. The SMCS stars, gas, dust,

14:11 Speaker 1: and even its invisible halo of dark matter.

14:14 Speaker 2: Galaxy next door transforming before our eyes.

14:18 Speaker 1: Story five takes us from colliding galaxies to a very

14:21 Speaker 1: different kind of cosmic companion, tiny asteroid like objects that

14:26 Speaker 1: share an orbit with a planet around another star.

14:29 Speaker 2: These are called exotrojans. To understand the concept, you first

14:33 Speaker 2: need to know about trojans in our own solar system,

14:36 Speaker 2: in our neighborhood. There are more than ten thousand confirmed

14:39 Speaker 2: asteroids that orbit at special gravitational sweet spots called lagrange

14:44 Speaker 2: points in front of and behind Jupiter on its path

14:47 Speaker 2: around the Sun. At these points, the gravitational polls of

14:51 Speaker 2: the Sun and Jupiter balance out, allowing objects to essentially

14:55 Speaker 2: hitch a stable ride along with the planet.

14:57 Speaker 1: Virtually every planet in our Solar system has trojans, though

15:01 Speaker 1: none come close to Jupiter's impressive collection, and for years

15:06 Speaker 1: astronomers have theorized that similar co orbital companions exotrojans, should

15:11 Speaker 1: exist around planets orbiting other stars. After all, if the

15:16 Speaker 1: physics works here, it should work everywhere.

15:19 Speaker 2: The problem no one has confirmed one yet. Projects like

15:23 Speaker 2: the Troy Initiative have been specifically hunting for exotrojans, but

15:27 Speaker 2: these objects are extraordinarily difficult to detect. They're small, they

15:31 Speaker 2: don't produce much of a signal, and disentangling their presence

15:34 Speaker 2: from other noise is genuinely challenging.

15:37 Speaker 1: A new paper in the Astrophysical Journal by Jackson Taylor

15:41 Speaker 1: of West Virginia University and a team of co authors

15:45 Speaker 1: has pushed that hunt into some of the most extreme

15:48 Speaker 1: environments astronomers can imagine the teams searched for exotrojans in

15:53 Speaker 1: conditions far more intense and exotic than anything in our

15:58 Speaker 1: own Solar system. Taking this search to new limits.

16:01 Speaker 2: While no confirmed detection has been announced, research like this

16:05 Speaker 2: is essential for two reasons. First, finding exotrojans would tell

16:10 Speaker 2: us a huge amount about how planetary systems formed and evolved.

16:14 Speaker 2: Trojans are essentially preserved remnants of the early Solar System

16:18 Speaker 2: little time capsules of planetary formation history. Second, some researchers

16:23 Speaker 2: have speculated that trojan regions around habitable zone planets could

16:28 Speaker 2: themselves be interesting places in the context of astrobiology.

16:32 Speaker 1: The first confirmed exotrojan will be a landmark discovery, and

16:36 Speaker 1: research like this is steadily narrowing down where and how

16:40 Speaker 1: to look.

16:41 Speaker 2: And we round out today's episode with a big question

16:44 Speaker 2: about an even bigger search. Humanities hunt for signals from

16:48 Speaker 2: alien civilizations.

16:50 Speaker 1: The search for extraterrestrial intelligence SETI has been underway in

16:55 Speaker 1: various forms for decades. The classic approach has focused on

17:00 Speaker 1: scanning the sky for radio or microwave signals in very

17:04 Speaker 1: narrow frequency bands. The reasoning was that any technological civilization

17:10 Speaker 1: might use these wavelengths to communicate, and narrowband signals are

17:15 Speaker 1: easier to distinguish from natural cosmic noise.

17:18 Speaker 2: But a new paper is arguing that this long established approach,

17:22 Speaker 2: maybe leaving us blind to a huge swath of potential signals.

17:26 Speaker 2: The researcher suggests it's time to broaden the electromagnetic search dramatically,

17:31 Speaker 2: moving beyond just radio and microwave into a much wider

17:35 Speaker 2: range of the spectrum.

17:36 Speaker 1: The logic is intuitive once you think about it. Our

17:39 Speaker 1: own civilizations communications have changed dramatically, even just over the

17:44 Speaker 1: past few decades. We've moved from narrowband AM radio broadcasts

17:48 Speaker 1: to broadband Internet signals, which are spread across wide frequency

17:53 Speaker 1: ranges and might actually look more like background noise to

17:56 Speaker 1: an outside observer. A civilization more advanced than ours might

18:01 Speaker 1: communicate in ways that look nothing like what we've been

18:04 Speaker 1: searching for.

18:05 Speaker 2: There's also the question of what we might be missing

18:07 Speaker 2: in other parts of the spectrum, entirely infrared, optical, ultraviolet,

18:13 Speaker 2: even higher energy bands. All that these could theoretically carry

18:17 Speaker 2: engineered signals that we simply haven't been systematically scanning for.

18:21 Speaker 1: This doesn't mean that traditional radio SETI searches have been wrong.

18:26 Speaker 1: They've been enormously valuable, and the infrastructure built for them

18:29 Speaker 1: has led to real astronomical discoveries. But as our tools

18:34 Speaker 1: and computing power improve, expanding the search makes sense.

18:38 Speaker 2: The universe is enormous, intelligent life, if it exists elsewhere,

18:42 Speaker 2: might communicate in ways we haven't yet imagined, and the

18:46 Speaker 2: electromagnetic spectrum is vast. Casting a wider net seems like

18:51 Speaker 2: exactly the right thing to do.

18:52 Speaker 1: If there's someone out there trying to reach us, Let's

18:56 Speaker 1: make sure we're actually listening on the right channels. And

19:00 Speaker 1: that's our episode.

19:02 Speaker 2: What an extraordinary day to be following the Cosmos, a

19:05 Speaker 2: moon rocket rolling to the pad, two space stations running

19:09 Speaker 2: EVA simultaneously, a new particle from CERN, a galaxy in transformation,

19:15 Speaker 2: and humanity still reaching out into the dark hoping to

19:18 Speaker 2: hear something back.

19:19 Speaker 1: This is why we do this every day. Thanks so

19:22 Speaker 1: much for spending part of your Thursday with us. Everyone.

19:25 Speaker 2: You'll find links to all of today's stories in the

19:28 Speaker 2: show notes, along with our blog posts and all the

19:30 Speaker 2: ways to follow us on social media.

19:32 Speaker 1: Astronomy Daily is part of the bytes dot com podcast network.

19:37 Speaker 1: Find us at Astronomydaily dot io and on x, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube,

19:44 Speaker 1: and tumbler at at astro Daily Pod.

19:47 Speaker 2: Until tomorrow, keep looking.

19:49 Speaker 1: Up clear skys. Everyone.

19:52 Speaker 2: Sunday, start st the story is the soul. Story is

20:11 Speaker 2: the soul.