NASA Unveils Its Next Great Telescope - Plus Mars Ocean Proof & FAA Grounds New Glenn

0:00 Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Astronomy Daily. I'm Anna and I'm Avery.

0:04 Speaker 2: It is Tuesday, April twenty first, and we have a

0:07 Speaker 2: seriously packed episode for you today.

0:09 Speaker 1: We do. NASA has just pulled back the curtain on

0:12 Speaker 1: its next great space telescope, fully assembled and heading for

0:16 Speaker 1: the launchpad later this year.

0:18 Speaker 2: Sciences are waving a giant bathtub ring at Mars and

0:22 Speaker 2: saying this is proof there was once an ocean there.

0:25 Speaker 1: The FAA has formally grounded Blue Origins New Glen rocket

0:29 Speaker 1: after what is now being called an official mishap. We

0:33 Speaker 1: have the latest fear ax.

0:35 Speaker 2: NASA's extraordinary one hundred and two color Eye in the

0:38 Speaker 2: Sky has begun delivering science and the early results are beautiful.

0:43 Speaker 1: Could your favorite exoplanet be a waterless greenhouse? New research

0:47 Speaker 1: has a sobering answer for many worlds in the habitable zone.

0:51 Speaker 2: And we'll look at what spaceflight does to the human brain,

0:54 Speaker 2: including why those effects don't always go away when astronauts

0:58 Speaker 2: come home.

0:59 Speaker 1: All of that and more. Let's get into.

1:00 Speaker 2: It ready when you are take it away, Anna.

1:03 Speaker 1: Our first story today is one of those moments you

1:06 Speaker 1: want to remember. On Tuesday, NASA opened the doors of

1:09 Speaker 1: its giant clean room at the Goddarn Space Flight Center

1:12 Speaker 1: in green Belt, Maryland, and invited the world to meet

1:15 Speaker 1: the fully assembled Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, one of

1:19 Speaker 1: the most powerful observatories humanity has ever built.

1:24 Speaker 2: I have been following this telescope for years, Anna, this

1:27 Speaker 2: is such a big deal. What are we actually looking

1:29 Speaker 2: at here? So?

1:30 Speaker 1: The Roman Telescope is NASA's next flagship, its successor in

1:35 Speaker 1: many ways to Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope.

1:38 Speaker 1: It's been fully integrated now, meaning it's two major components,

1:42 Speaker 1: the telescope itself and its instrument package, have been joined together,

1:46 Speaker 1: and today was one of the last chances anyone outside

1:49 Speaker 1: NASA will have to see it before it ships to

1:52 Speaker 1: the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

1:54 Speaker 2: And the launch is getting close, right very close.

1:57 Speaker 1: NASA is targeting a launch as early as this coming fall,

2:00 Speaker 1: and the team says they are on track for that.

2:03 Speaker 1: The mission is officially scheduled no later than May twenty

2:06 Speaker 1: twenty seven, but fall twenty twenty six is looking genuinely achievable.

2:11 Speaker 2: And remind us what is Roman actually going to do?

2:14 Speaker 2: Because it has a very different mission to Web.

2:17 Speaker 1: Great question. Roman is primarily designed to serve a huge

2:21 Speaker 1: swaths of the sky, rather than staring deep at single

2:24 Speaker 1: targets the way Web does. It will map hundreds of

2:27 Speaker 1: millions of galaxies, probe the nature of dark energy and

2:30 Speaker 1: dark matter, and search for thousands of exoplanets using a

2:34 Speaker 1: technique called gravitational microlensing. Its field of view is roughly

2:38 Speaker 1: one hundred times wider than hubbles, which means it can

2:42 Speaker 1: map the cosmos at a scale we've simply never been

2:45 Speaker 1: able to do before.

2:47 Speaker 2: One hundred times wider. That is extraordinary. It's like going

2:52 Speaker 2: from a magnifying glass to a panoramic window exactly.

2:57 Speaker 1: Roman will essentially give us the big picture that webs can't.

3:00 Speaker 1: The two telescopes are designed to complement each other perfectly,

3:04 Speaker 1: and today's reveal was one of those reminders that it's

3:06 Speaker 1: really happening. The telescope is done, it's real, and it's

3:10 Speaker 1: almost ready to fly.

3:12 Speaker 2: Incredible. The universe's next great detective is suiting.

3:16 Speaker 1: Up all right, Where do you want to take me next?

3:18 Speaker 2: Savery well, I want to take you to Mars, and

3:21 Speaker 2: I want you to imagine draining a giant bathtub.

3:24 Speaker 1: Okay, I'm imagining it This is a very large.

3:27 Speaker 2: Bathtub planetary scale, because that is essentially what researchers at

3:32 Speaker 2: Caltech California Institute of Technology have been doing. They published

3:36 Speaker 2: a landmark study in the journal Nature this week and

3:39 Speaker 2: they found what they're describing as a bathtub ring around

3:43 Speaker 2: the northern hemisphere of Mars, a flat shelf like band

3:47 Speaker 2: of land up to several hundred kilometers wide that wraps

3:51 Speaker 2: the contours of where an ancient ocean may have once

3:54 Speaker 2: met dry land.

3:56 Speaker 1: So this is evidence of shorelines, or more precisely, content shelves.

4:01 Speaker 2: Exactly, and that distinction matters. Previous research had identified features

4:06 Speaker 2: that looked like ancient shorelines, but those were found at

4:09 Speaker 2: varying elevations, which was a problem. A real shoreline should

4:13 Speaker 2: be level. So the Caltech team, led by former postdoctoral

4:17 Speaker 2: scholar of Dala Zaki and geology professor Michael Lamb, took

4:21 Speaker 2: a different approach. They asked, instead of looking for shorelines,

4:25 Speaker 2: what if we look for the continental shelf.

4:27 Speaker 1: Itself, because on Earth, the shelf is much more stable

4:31 Speaker 1: and durable than the waterline.

4:33 Speaker 2: Precisely, they first modeled what Earth's oceans look like without

4:37 Speaker 2: water and found that the most reliable signature is that flat,

4:41 Speaker 2: wide band of land at depth the coastal plane and

4:44 Speaker 2: continental shelf. Then they looked at topographic data of Mars

4:48 Speaker 2: from orbiting spacecraft and they found exactly that a flat

4:52 Speaker 2: zone in the northern hemisphere, consistent with the coastal shelf

4:56 Speaker 2: of an ocean that once covered roughly a third of

4:59 Speaker 2: the planet's.

5:00 Speaker 1: A third of Mars. That would have made it look

5:03 Speaker 1: almost earth like.

5:04 Speaker 2: And crucially, the river deltas that geologists have already mapped

5:08 Speaker 2: on Mars, those triangular plains where ancient rivers flowed into

5:12 Speaker 2: something larger, line up beautifully with this newly identified shelf.

5:16 Speaker 2: Everything is telling the same story, and.

5:19 Speaker 1: The implications for life are significant in normans.

5:23 Speaker 2: If Mars had a stable ocean covering a third of

5:26 Speaker 2: its surface for potentially millions of years, then its northern

5:30 Speaker 2: lowlands may have been inhabitable and those ancient coastal sediments

5:34 Speaker 2: could have preserved biosignatures the same way coastal sediments on

5:37 Speaker 2: Earth do. The ESA's Rosalind Franklin rover, expected to land

5:41 Speaker 2: on Mars in twenty thirty will explored this exact region

5:45 Speaker 2: and could provide the definitive answer Mars.

5:48 Speaker 1: It turns out may have once had a bath to

5:51 Speaker 1: bring you could see from space.

5:53 Speaker 2: And that Anna is the best kind of geological metaphor.

5:56 Speaker 1: Now, yesterday we told you about Blue Origin's New Glen

5:59 Speaker 1: rocket and the difficult mission it had on Sunday. As

6:02 Speaker 1: a quick recap, New Glenn launched successfully. The booster landed

6:06 Speaker 1: successfully for the second time ever historic, but the upper

6:10 Speaker 1: stage failed to deliver the ast space mobile Bluebird seven

6:13 Speaker 1: satellite to its intended orbit. The satellite was lost.

6:17 Speaker 2: And today there's a significant development because the FAA has

6:20 Speaker 2: now formally stepped in.

6:22 Speaker 1: It has the Federal Aviation Administration has officially classified Sunday's

6:26 Speaker 1: event as a mishap, and that word carries real regulatory weight.

6:30 Speaker 1: New Glen is now grounded. It cannot fly again until

6:34 Speaker 1: Blue Origin completes a full investigation, reports its findings, and

6:38 Speaker 1: the FA determines that the cause of the failure does

6:40 Speaker 1: not pose a risk to public safety.

6:42 Speaker 2: So what do we know about the cause? Has Blue

6:45 Speaker 2: Origin said anything?

6:46 Speaker 1: They have? CEO Dave Limp posted a statement saying that

6:49 Speaker 1: early data suggests one of the b E three U

6:52 Speaker 1: engines in the rocket's upper stage failed to produce sufficient

6:55 Speaker 1: thrust during what's called this second GS two burn, a

6:59 Speaker 1: maneuver needed to circularize the satellite's orbit. The engine underperformed,

7:03 Speaker 1: the burn fell short, and the satellite ended up at

7:06 Speaker 1: roughly one hundred and fifty kilometers altitude instead of the

7:09 Speaker 1: planned four hundred and sixty kilometers, far too low to operate.

7:13 Speaker 2: And it's not just the FAA watching NASA, the National

7:17 Speaker 2: Transportation Safety Board and the US Space Force are all

7:20 Speaker 2: monitoring the investigation.

7:22 Speaker 1: As well, which tells you how seriously the industry is

7:25 Speaker 1: taking this. Blue Origin had up to twelve more new

7:28 Speaker 1: Glen missions planned for twenty twenty six, so the clock

7:31 Speaker 1: is ticking on getting the rocket back in the air.

7:33 Speaker 1: And for AST space Mobile, whose constellation of direct to

7:37 Speaker 1: smartphone broadband satellites depends on launches like this, the setback

7:41 Speaker 1: is significant. Though the company says the satellite's loss is

7:44 Speaker 1: covered by insurance and that three more Bluebird satellites will

7:48 Speaker 1: be ready to ship within thirty days, a.

7:50 Speaker 2: Reminder that in rocketry, even the successes can contain failures

7:54 Speaker 2: and vice versa. Blue Origin had a genuine historic milestone

7:58 Speaker 2: on Sunday, and the genuine setback.

8:01 Speaker 1: We'll keep watching how this investigation unfolds. Now avery, before

8:05 Speaker 1: we move on to our next story, I'd like to

8:08 Speaker 1: give a shout out to our sponsor, you know, the

8:11 Speaker 1: folks who help keep our podcast afloat, and today's episode

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8:28 Speaker 2: Okay, moving on, let's go from a grounded rocket to

8:32 Speaker 2: a very much ungrounded space telescope because FEARX has begun

8:37 Speaker 2: delivering science and the early results are stunning.

8:41 Speaker 1: FEARX for our newer listeners, that stands for spectro Photometer

8:46 Speaker 1: for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and

8:49 Speaker 1: iss Explore and it launched just over a year ago

8:53 Speaker 1: in March of last year.

8:55 Speaker 2: And what makes fear X unlike any telescope we've ever

8:58 Speaker 2: flown is this. It observes the entire sky, the whole thing,

9:03 Speaker 2: in one hundred and two different colors or wavelengths of

9:07 Speaker 2: infrared light. It takes roughly thirty six hundred unique images

9:11 Speaker 2: every single day and is weaving them together into all

9:14 Speaker 2: sky maps that will eventually chart hundreds of millions of galaxies.

9:19 Speaker 1: So what has the first published science shown us?

9:22 Speaker 2: Two things of huge interest. First, ice fear x has

9:28 Speaker 2: mapped the chemical signatures of interstellar ice, including water, carbon dioxide,

9:32 Speaker 2: and carbon monoxide, across star forming regions of our Milky Way,

9:37 Speaker 2: including the turbulent stellar nursery known as Signus X. These

9:42 Speaker 2: microscopic ice crystals coating tiny dust grains in space are

9:46 Speaker 2: where most of the Universe's water forms and is stored.

9:49 Speaker 2: The water on Earth's oceans the ion commets it all

9:53 Speaker 2: traces back to regions like.

9:54 Speaker 1: These, which makes sphere x a telescope that's literally mapping

10:00 Speaker 1: the origins of water and possibly of life exactly.

10:04 Speaker 2: And second, it has mapped polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, complex organic

10:09 Speaker 2: molecules sometimes called the universe's most common carbon compounds, throughout

10:14 Speaker 2: the same regions. These molecules are thought to play a

10:18 Speaker 2: role in prebiotic chemistry, the chemistry that sets the stage

10:21 Speaker 2: for life.

10:22 Speaker 1: So right out of the gate, spherx is looking at

10:26 Speaker 1: the building blocks, and.

10:28 Speaker 2: It's only just begun. It has two years of planned

10:30 Speaker 2: survey operations ahead, and by the time it's done, it

10:34 Speaker 2: will have produced four complete all sky maps. Combined with

10:37 Speaker 2: what the Roman telescope will do surveying galaxies at vast scale,

10:42 Speaker 2: we are about to enter a golden age of sky surveys.

10:45 Speaker 1: I love the idea of a telescope that sees the

10:48 Speaker 1: whole sky and colors our eyes can't even perceive one.

10:52 Speaker 2: Hundred and two shades of the invisible. That's spr x.

10:57 Speaker 1: Now. We talk a lot on this show about planets

11:00 Speaker 1: in the habitable zone, that goldilocks region around a star

11:04 Speaker 1: where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. But

11:07 Speaker 1: new research published this week asks a harder question. Is

11:11 Speaker 1: being in the habitable zone actually enough?

11:14 Speaker 2: And the answer is not necessarily.

11:17 Speaker 1: Not even close. It turns out the new work highlights

11:21 Speaker 1: something that sounds obvious once you hear it, but has

11:24 Speaker 1: significant implications for how we search for life. A planet

11:28 Speaker 1: in the habitable zone still needs substantial water to maintain

11:31 Speaker 1: the carbon cycle that keeps temperature stable. Without water, even

11:36 Speaker 1: a perfectly positioned planet can become a runaway greenhouse world,

11:40 Speaker 1: a Venus style hellscape, regardless of how close it sits

11:45 Speaker 1: to its stars sweet spot.

11:46 Speaker 2: So water isn't just important for life to drink, it's

11:49 Speaker 2: important for regulating the climate that makes life possible in

11:53 Speaker 2: the first place.

11:54 Speaker 1: Precisely on Earth, water plays a critical role in the

11:58 Speaker 1: cycling of carbon between the appas, hemisphere, oceans, and rocks,

12:02 Speaker 1: a process that has kept our planet's temperature remarkably stable

12:06 Speaker 1: over billions of years. Without sufficient water, that cycle breaks down,

12:11 Speaker 1: harbin builds up in the atmosphere, temperatures spike, and you

12:14 Speaker 1: end up with a planet that is technically in the

12:17 Speaker 1: habitable zone but is very much not habitable.

12:20 Speaker 2: Which changes how we should be thinking about candidate worlds.

12:24 Speaker 1: It does. Simply finding a planet at the right distance

12:27 Speaker 1: from its star is no longer enough. We need to

12:30 Speaker 1: be asking how much water that planet has and whether

12:34 Speaker 1: it's retained enough to keep its climate engine running. It

12:38 Speaker 1: raises the bar for what we call a truly earth

12:40 Speaker 1: like world, and it makes our own planet's long geological

12:44 Speaker 1: relationship with water look even more extraordinary. Earth really did

12:49 Speaker 1: win the cosmic lottery several times over. And now for

12:53 Speaker 1: our final story today, I want to get personal. Specifically,

12:58 Speaker 1: I want to get inside an as head. Literally, I

13:02 Speaker 1: feel like this is going somewhere I should be concerned

13:05 Speaker 1: about only slightly.

13:07 Speaker 2: A new study has found that spaceflight changes the human brain,

13:11 Speaker 2: not just temporarily while astronauts are in orbit, but in

13:15 Speaker 2: ways that can persist long after they've come home to Earth.

13:18 Speaker 1: We've talked before on the show about the physical toll

13:21 Speaker 1: of spaceflight muscle loss, bone density changes, fluid shifts, but

13:26 Speaker 1: what specifically is happening to the brain.

13:29 Speaker 2: So the study published in the Proceedings of the National

13:32 Speaker 2: Academy of Sciences found that after extended spaceflight, astronauts' brains

13:37 Speaker 2: are physically shifted in position inside the skull, tilted upward

13:42 Speaker 2: and moved back relative to their normal earth bound position,

13:46 Speaker 2: and the areas most affected are the sensory related regions

13:49 Speaker 2: of the brain, the ones responsible for balance, spatial orientation,

13:53 Speaker 2: and motion processing.

13:55 Speaker 1: Which explains presumably why astronauts often feel disoriented and havece

14:00 Speaker 1: issues when they return exactly.

14:02 Speaker 2: But what makes this study particularly striking is the persistence

14:06 Speaker 2: of these changes. This isn't a short term adaptation that

14:10 Speaker 2: bounces back the moment gravity reasserts itself. The researchers found

14:14 Speaker 2: lasting neurological impacts, suggesting that the microgravity environment genuinely rewires

14:20 Speaker 2: some of the brain's fundamental processing systems over time.

14:25 Speaker 1: And the implications for long duration missions to the Moon

14:28 Speaker 1: or Mars are profound enormous.

14:31 Speaker 2: If astronauts are heading to Mars on a seven month

14:34 Speaker 2: journey each way, with months of surface operations in Martian gravity,

14:39 Speaker 2: which is only thirty eight percent of Earth's, we need

14:42 Speaker 2: to understand what is happening inside their brains, not just

14:45 Speaker 2: for muscles and bones. This research adds to a growing

14:49 Speaker 2: field of aerospace medicine that is trying to make sure

14:52 Speaker 2: the humans who travel to the stars can also function

14:55 Speaker 2: effectively when they get there and when they come home.

14:58 Speaker 1: It is both a little unsettling and deeply fascinating.

15:02 Speaker 2: That is a definition of good science. I think well said,

15:06 Speaker 2: and that is our episode for today. What a show

15:09 Speaker 2: from the Roman telescope revealed to a bathtub ring on Mars,

15:13 Speaker 2: a grounded rocket, a one hundred and two color map

15:16 Speaker 2: of the Milky Way, the secret ingredient that makes planets

15:19 Speaker 2: truly habitable, and what spaceflight is quietly doing to the

15:23 Speaker 2: astronaut's brain.

15:24 Speaker 1: You can find us at Astronomy Daily dot io and

15:27 Speaker 1: across social media at astro Daily Pod. If you enjoyed

15:31 Speaker 1: today's episode, please leave us a review. It makes an

15:34 Speaker 1: enormous difference to the show, and don't forget to give

15:36 Speaker 1: our sponsor link a click. But I think you'll be

15:39 Speaker 1: glad you did.

15:40 Speaker 2: And as always, keep looking up.

15:42 Speaker 1: We'll see you again tomorrow Sunday.

15:46 Speaker 2: Start story is ConTroll