NASA's Lunar Dreams in Jeopardy, China's Bold Moves, and a Lava World Reimagined

0:00 Anna: Hello and welcome to Astronomy Daily,

0:02 your daily guide to the cosmos. I'm

0:05 Anna.

0:05 Avery: And I'm um, avery. It's Tuesday the 2nd of

0:08 June, 2026 and this is season 5

0:11 episode 113.

0:13 Anna: What a week it's been in space already.

0:16 Blue Origin is picking up the pieces. After a

0:18 spectacular rocket explosion and the ripple

0:21 effects for NASA's moon plans are uh, growing

0:24 by the hour.

0:25 Avery: China quietly launched a brand new rocket

0:28 overnight and barely told anyone about it.

0:30 Anna: Starship is grounded again and this time

0:33 there's an IPO in the balance.

0:35 Avery: And NASA's Roman Space Telescope is getting

0:38 ready to change everything we know about

0:40 exoplanets. We're talking a hundred

0:42 thousand new worlds.

0:44 Anna: Plus, did you know Earth was once a planet

0:47 wide ocean of lava for 500

0:50 million years? New research is rewriting

0:53 the story of our early home.

0:55 Avery: And the Hubble Space Telescope has captured a

0:57 stunning new look at a galaxy on a cosmic

0:59 collision course. One that won't end for

1:02 hundreds of millions of years.

1:04 Anna: All that and more right here on Astronomy

1:06 Daily. Let's get into it.

1:08 Avery: Why don't you kick things off Anna with

1:10 today's big news update.

1:12 Anna: Okay. When Blue Origin's new Glenn

1:14 rocket exploded on 28 May, the

1:17 world was watching. But five days on the

1:20 full scale of the damage, not just to the

1:22 pad, but to America's lunar ambitions is

1:25 becoming painfully clear.

1:27 Avery: Let's recap what happened for anyone who

1:29 missed it. The new Glenn was undergoing a

1:32 static fire test. A uh, routine pre launch

1:34 engine ignition at Launch Complex

1:37 36 ahead of a planned June 4 launch.

1:40 Instead, all seven first stage engines

1:42 ignited. Something clearly went wrong and the

1:45 322 foot rocket was engulfed in a

1:48 massive fireball. The explosion could be seen

1:51 and felt for miles.

1:53 Anna: Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp has

1:55 confirmed the company has begun clearing the

1:58 pad. But here's the critical problem. Launch

2:01 Complex 36 is Blue Origin's only

2:03 orbital launch facility. They have no backup.

2:07 And rebuilding a destroyed launch complex

2:09 isn't a matter of weeks.

2:11 Avery: And the mission that was sitting on that pad

2:13 wasn't just about Internet satellites. Blue

2:16 Origin was preparing to deploy Amazon's LEO

2:18 broadband constellation. But the new Glenn is

2:21 also the rocket that NASA is counting on to

2:24 carry its Blue Moon landers to the lunar

2:26 surface.

2:27 Anna: That's right. Just two days before the

2:29 explosion, NASA had signed a new agreement

2:32 with Blue Origin to launch a pair of New

2:34 Glenns carrying rovers to the moon. Rovers

2:37 that would be waiting for Artemis Cruise, the

2:39 Blue Moon Mark 1 Lander scheduled to deliver

2:42 the first hardware for NASA's Moon Base 1

2:45 mission this coming northern autumn will now

2:47 faces an uncertain delay.

2:50 Avery: And when the lander slips, the crew capable

2:52 blue moon mark two timeline slips with it.

2:55 One expert put it bluntly. NASA's moon based

2:58 plans are at this point quote, an

3:00 aspiration rather than being realistically

3:03 achievable in the next few years.

3:05 Anna: It's worth noting that SpaceX and United

3:08 launch alliance both successfully launched

3:10 rockets from elsewhere at the cape less than

3:13 24 hours after the new Glenn explosion.

3:16 A pointed reminder of the advantage of having

3:18 multiple launch pads.

3:20 Avery: A, uh, tough lesson and a sobering moment for

3:22 the whole Artemis program. We'll be watching

3:25 this one very closely.

3:26 Anna: On to our next story. And were the Chinese

3:29 being sneaky or just getting on with

3:31 business?

3:32 Avery: Well, while the world was focused on the Blue

3:34 origin explosion, China was quietly making

3:37 its own significant space history without so

3:40 much as a press release in advance.

3:42 Anna: On June 1, at 4:40am Eastern

3:45 Time, China's new Long March 12B

3:48 rocket lifted off from the Zhuquan Satellite

3:51 launch center in the Gobi Desert. Its very

3:53 first flight with no advance warning

3:56 whatsoever.

3:57 Avery: No announcement, no countdown, just

4:00 gone. China's 35th orbital launch attempt

4:03 of 2026 and arguably one of the most

4:05 technically significant.

4:07 Anna: The Long March 12B is China's answer

4:10 to SpaceX's Falcon 9. It's a two

4:13 stage kerosene and liquid oxygen rocket,

4:15 72 meters tall with a 20 ton payload

4:18 capacity to low Earth orbit. And crucially,

4:21 it's designed from the ground up to be

4:23 reusable. No recovery was attempted on this

4:26 maiden flight, but one is planned.

4:28 Avery: What makes it especially interesting is the

4:31 technology on board the rocket features what

4:33 engineers are calling dual brains.

4:36 Independent flight computers on both stages

4:38 that can process data and make real time

4:40 flight decisions autonomously. Think of it as

4:43 redundant artificial intelligence for the

4:45 rocket itself.

4:47 Anna: The debut mission successfully deployed

4:49 another batch of satellites for the Qian Fan

4:52 Constellation, also known as Thousand

4:54 Sails, China's answer to Starlink. If

4:57 this launch followed the typical batch size,

4:59 the Qianfan Constellation now has

5:01 approximately 180 satellites in

5:04 orbit.

5:05 Avery: And it was developed in just 21 months.

5:08 21 months from concept to first successful

5:11 flight of a new heavy lift rocket. That's a

5:14 remarkable pace by any standard.

5:16 Anna: And in other Chinese space news, and it's

5:19 been a busy week. The three member Shenzhou

5:21 Uh, 21 crew returned safely to Earth on

5:24 29 May 2026, wrapping

5:27 up a record 210 day mission

5:29 aboard the Tiangong Space Station. Commander

5:32 Cheng Liu, Wu Fei and Cheng Hongzhang are all

5:35 in good health. It was a mission that had

5:38 some added drama. A suspected space debris

5:40 strike had damaged the window of their

5:42 original return capsule, requiring China to

5:45 launch an emergency replacement spacecraft to

5:48 bring them home.

5:49 Avery: China's space program is accelerating on

5:51 every front simultaneously. The pace is

5:54 extraordinary.

5:56 Anna: Next up, you could say it's been a rough few

5:58 days for commercial spaceflight and Starship

6:01 hasn't escaped the turbulence. The FAA has

6:04 formally grounded SpaceX's Starship version

6:07 3 rocket following what it's designated a uh,

6:09 Mishap during Flight 12 on 22

6:12 May.

6:13 Avery: Let's remind listeners what happened on

6:15 Flight 12. It was the debut of the Version 3

6:17 configuration, a significant upgrade with new

6:20 Raptor 3 engines featuring a simplified

6:22 design and increased thrust. The launch

6:25 itself looked spectacular. The booster

6:27 separated cleanly and delivered the upper

6:29 stage to its intended trajectory.

6:31 Anna: But then things went wrong during the boost

6:34 back burn. When the super heavy booster fires

6:37 its engines to arc back toward the recovery

6:39 zone, it couldn't light all the planned

6:41 engines. A partial burn ended early. The

6:44 booster then attempted a landing burn, failed

6:47 to ignite and hard splashed into the Gulf of

6:49 Mexico or Gulf of America, depending on where

6:52 you live. Meanwhile, one of the three vacuum

6:55 Raptor vacuum engines on the upper stage also

6:58 failed, though SpaceX was still able to steer

7:01 it to the intended splashdown in the Indian

7:03 Ocean.

7:04 Avery: The FAA has now determined that constitutes a

7:07 mishap under federal launch licensing rules

7:09 and SpaceX must complete a, uh, full

7:11 investigation led by SpaceX but overseen

7:14 by the FAA. Before Starship can fly again.

7:18 The FAA must approve the final report and

7:21 any corrective actions. This is the seventh

7:24 time Starship has been grounded in three

7:26 years.

7:27 Anna: Industry observers are currently pointing to

7:29 a July to August 2026 window for

7:32 Flight 13 May. SpaceX may also choose

7:35 to skip the booster, catch on that flight and

7:37 repeat the Gulf splashdown profile while the

7:40 Raptor 3 issues are understood.

7:42 Avery: Now here's where this gets particularly

7:45 interesting. SpaceX filed its public

7:47 IPO prospectus with the SEC on

7:50 May 20, just two days before Flight

7:53 12. The company is targeting a uh,

7:55 NASDAQ listing under the ticker

7:57 SPCX, with shares

8:00 potentially trading as early as June 12.

8:02 And its entire growth story is built

8:05 around starship.

8:07 Anna: In the S1 filing, SpaceX stated, and

8:10 we're paraphrasing here, that its growth

8:12 strategy depends on increasing launch cadence

8:14 and payload capacity, which in turn depends

8:17 on the successful development of Starship at

8:20 scale. A grounding right before the IPO

8:23 roadshow is not ideal.

8:25 Avery: High stakes all around. We'll keep following

8:28 both the investigation and the IPO timeline.

8:31 Anna: Okay, let's take a breath from all the rocket

8:33 drama and look ahead to something genuinely

8:36 thrilling. NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space

8:39 Telescope is heading to Kennedy Space center

8:41 this month with a launch target of early

8:43 September 2026. And what it's going to do

8:46 is nothing short of staggering.

8:49 Avery: To put it in perspective, since the dawn of

8:51 the exoplanet era, we have confirmed around

8:54 6,300 planets beyond our solar system.

8:57 That's across decades of work from Kepler,

9:00 Tess, Hubble and every ground based

9:02 observatory on Earth. Roman is expected

9:05 to find approximately 100,000

9:08 more in just five years.

9:10 Anna: 100,000 15 times

9:13 everything we've ever found in half a decade.

9:16 How?

9:17 Avery: It comes down to Roman's extraordinary

9:19 combination of Hubble class resolution and a

9:22 field of view at least 100 times larger.

9:25 Where Hubble would photograph a postage stamp

9:27 of sky, Roman photographs a full

9:30 page spread with the same sharpness. It

9:32 can survey the sky up to a thousand times

9:35 faster than Hubble.

9:36 Anna: And critically, Roman will be looking in

9:38 places we've barely explored. Its galactic

9:41 bulge Survey will observe approximately 100

9:44 million stars in the dense, understudied

9:47 heart of the milk Milwaukee regions where

9:49 most planet hunting missions have never

9:51 ventured. It will find planets using both the

9:54 transit method and gravitational

9:56 microlensing, which can detect planets that

9:58 don't even transit their stars.

10:00 Avery: Roman is also expected to find a significant

10:03 population of rogue planets, worlds

10:06 drifting through the galaxy without a star to

10:08 orbit. We currently know of only a handful.

10:11 Roman could reveal thousands.

10:14 Anna: And then there's the coronagraph instrument,

10:16 a ah, technology demonstrator that will

10:18 directly image a handful of large planets

10:21 around nearby stars. Testing techniques

10:23 intended for a future mission to photograph

10:26 Earth like worlds around sun, like stars.

10:29 Roman is also hunting dark energy and dark

10:32 matter.

10:32 Avery: NASA administrator Jared Isaacman described

10:35 the accelerated development as a true success

10:37 story. The telescope is now targeting a

10:40 September launch ahead of its May 2027

10:43 commitment. It's heading to Kennedy Space

10:45 center this very month.

10:47 Anna: Roman is going to be extraordinary. Our

10:50 audience is going to be hearing a lot about

10:52 this one.

10:53 Avery: Now, um, here's a question to ponder. Picture

10:55 the very young Earth. Four and a half billion

10:58 years ago, the Moon has just formed from the

11:01 debris of a catastrophic collision. The

11:03 surface is an ocean of molten rock. As far as

11:06 you can see. The atmosphere is a thick,

11:09 toxic steam. How long did that last?

11:12 Anna: OSU scientists had assumed not very long,

11:15 geologically speaking, A few tens of millions

11:18 of years, perhaps before the planet cooled

11:20 and solidified. But according to A striking

11:23 new preprint from the researchers at the

11:25 Kaptain Astronomical Institute in the

11:27 Netherlands. The answer might be up to half a

11:30 billion years.

11:31 Avery: Half a billion years. To put that in

11:34 perspective, that's longer than the entire

11:36 history of complex animal life on Earth.

11:39 The planet was essentially a global lava

11:42 ocean for that entire time.

11:44 Anna: So what kept it molten for so long? The

11:47 researchers point to two key factors working

11:49 together. First, the Moon. At that early

11:52 stage, the newly formed Moon was orbiting the

11:55 Earth much closer than it does today. That

11:58 proximity created enormous tidal forces.

12:01 Imagine the Moon's gravity kneading the

12:03 interior of the planet like dough. That tidal

12:06 heating alone would have kept the mantle

12:08 churning and molten.

12:10 Avery: And the second factor, the atmosphere.

12:12 Anna: In the early Earth, the thick steam

12:14 atmosphere acted like a thermal blanket,

12:17 trapping heat and dramatically slowing the

12:20 rate at which the planet could radiate energy

12:22 into space and cool down. Without that

12:25 atmospheric insolation, the magma ocean would

12:28 have solidified much faster.

12:29 Avery: But here's the part that makes this more than

12:31 just a story about ancient geology. The

12:34 research also found that these prolonged hot,

12:37 chemical rich conditions would have been

12:39 ideal for producing hydrogen cyanide,

12:42 a molecule that sounds poisonous, but is

12:44 actually considered one of the key building

12:46 blocks of life's precursor chemicals.

12:49 Rna, amino, um, acids.

12:51 Anna: So the very conditions that kept Earth molten

12:54 may also have set the stage for life to

12:56 eventually emerge. A 500 million

12:59 year lava world as a cradle for biology.

13:02 It's a remarkable reframing.

13:04 Avery: The paper is currently available as a pre

13:06 print on Arxiv with full peer review to

13:09 follow. We'll be watching for the published

13:11 results.

13:11 Anna: And we close today with something beautiful.

13:14 A brand new image from the NASA and ESA

13:17 Hubble Space Telescope that was released this

13:20 week as Hubble's picture of the Month.

13:22 Avery: It shows the spiral galaxy Messier

13:24 88 M8, about 63 million

13:27 light years away in the constellation Coma

13:30 Berenices. It's a gorgeous object.

13:32 Tight, symmetrical spiral arms outlined by

13:35 sparkling pink and blue star clusters

13:38 draped in knotted clouds of dust with a

13:41 warm glowing heart.

13:42 Anna: But what makes this image scientifically

13:44 fascinating is the story behind what we're

13:47 seeing. M M88 is a member of the Virgo

13:50 Cluster, a collection of more than a thousand

13:53 galaxies bound together by gravity. And M

13:55 M88 is currently about 2 million light

13:58 years from the cluster's center on a long

14:01 inward journey that will unfold over hundreds

14:03 of millions of years.

14:04 Avery: And that, uh, journey is already leaving

14:06 marks. Researchers have found that M M88

14:09 has significantly less cold gas in its outer

14:12 regions than you'd expect for a galaxy of its

14:14 size. Cold gas is the raw fuel for star

14:17 formation, and it's being stripped away by a

14:20 process called ram pressure stripping, where

14:22 the gravitational influence of the cluster

14:24 environment essentially blows material off

14:27 the galaxy like wind stripping lead from a

14:30 tree.

14:30 Anna: You can actually see the effect in the image.

14:33 The leading edge of the galaxy's gas disk

14:36 appears compressed and piled up like snow

14:39 in front of a plow. The galaxy is being

14:41 reshaped in real time by its environment,

14:44 and in roughly

14:45 Avery: 200 to 300 million years, M88

14:48 will reach its closest encounter with

14:49 neighboring giant Messier 87,

14:52 the galaxy whose supermassive black hole gave

14:55 us humanity's first ever photograph of a

14:58 black hole back in 2019. Their

15:00 gravitational interaction will reshape both

15:03 galaxies

15:04 Anna: profoundly, a cosmic drama unfolding

15:07 across timescales almost too vast to

15:09 comprehend. And Hubble is letting us watch it

15:12 in a single, breathtaking image that is

15:15 Avery: Astronomy Daily for Tuesday, 2nd

15:17 June 2026. What a show

15:20 today. From exploding rockets to a hundred

15:23 thousand new worlds, from Earth's ancient

15:25 fire to, uh, a galaxy's long journey through

15:28 the cosmos.

15:29 Anna: If you enjoyed today's episode, please follow

15:31 us wherever you get your podcasts and share

15:33 us with a fellow space fan. We'd love to grow

15:36 our community.

15:37 Avery: Find us at astronomydaily IO and follow

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15:43 Facebook, YouTubeMusic, and Tumblr, all

15:45 @astrodaily.

15:46 Anna: Pod for Avery I'm Anna

15:49 Clear skies

15:50 Avery: everyone, and stay curious.

15:58 Anna: Love.

16:03 Story soul.