Rocket Lab's Hungry Hippos Arrive!| NASA Enlists Global Volunteers for Artemis II

0:00 Anna: Welcome to Astronomy Daily, your source

0:03 for the latest space and astronomy news.

0:06 I'm Anna.

0:07 Anna: And I'm Avery. Thanks for joining us on, um,

0:09 this Saturday, January 24,

0:12 2026. We've got some

0:14 fantastic stories lined up for you today.

0:17 Anna: We certainly do. From rocket development

0:20 milestones to prehistoric lunar

0:22 discoveries, today's episode is packed

0:25 with celestial intrigue.

0:28 Anna: Let's dive right in with our top story.

0:30 Rocket Lab's ambitious neutron rocket has

0:33 hit a significant milestone, even though it

0:36 came with a bit of a bump in the road. Anna,

0:39 what's ah, the latest from Wallops Island.

0:41 Anna: Well, Avery, it's a story of both triumph

0:44 and setback. The good news first.

0:47 Rocket Lab's innovative Hungry Hippo

0:50 fairings have successfully arrived at Wallops

0:52 Island, Virginia after a month long sea

0:55 journey from New Zealand aboard, uh, the

0:57 vessel Northstar Integrity. These aren't

1:00 your typical payload fairings. They're part

1:03 of Neutron's groundbreaking reusable

1:06 system.

1:07 Anna: Right. And, um, what makes these Hungry

1:09 hippos so special?

1:11 Anna: Great question. Unlike traditional fairings

1:14 that are jettisoned and lost during flight,

1:16 these clamshell like structures actually

1:19 stay attached to the first stage as

1:22 it returns home. They open to release the

1:25 second stage and payload, then close back up

1:28 for the ride home. It's a clever design that

1:30 should help drive down launch costs through

1:33 rapid reuse.

1:34 Anna: That's fascinating engineering. But you

1:37 mentioned a setback.

1:38 Anna: Unfortunately, yes. While the Fairings

1:41 were making their journey, Rocket Lab

1:44 experienced a, uh, tank rupture during

1:46 qualification trials at their Middle River,

1:48 Maryland facility. A first stage

1:51 carbon composite tank failed during

1:54 hydrostatic pressure testing. That's where

1:56 they fill the structure with water and

1:59 gradually increase pressure to verify it

2:01 can handle operational loads.

2:04 Anna: Ouch. How, uh, significant is that?

2:06 Anna: Well, Rocket Lab was quick to emphasize that

2:09 testing failures like this, while

2:11 disappointing, are actually part of the

2:14 rigorous development process for high

2:16 performance rockets. They deliberately stress

2:19 hardware to its limits and beyond to ensure

2:22 reliability. The tank was found

2:25 collapsed into a pile of debris. But the

2:28 company maintains this is exactly why they

2:30 test. To find these issues on the ground

2:33 rather than during flight.

2:35 Anna: Silver lining thinking. And, um, the program

2:38 moves forward.

2:39 Anna: Absolutely. With the Hungry Hippo fairings

2:42 now at Wallops, engineers can proceed with

2:45 integration, testing, fit checks, electrical

2:48 interfaces, and eventually static fire

2:51 preparations. The launch mount is already

2:53 in place with the test stand ready for

2:56 major testing with the rocket's second stage.

2:59 Anna: Exciting times for commercial spaceflight.

3:02 Now, speaking of major missions, NASA has

3:04 some news about tracking the upcoming Artemis

3:07 2 mission, right?

3:08 Anna: They do indeed. NASA has selected

3:11 34 global volunteers from 14

3:14 different countries. To track the Orion

3:17 spacecraft during its journey around the

3:19 moon. This is a significant expansion from

3:22 the Artemis 1 mission, which had only 10

3:25 volunteers.

3:26 Anna: So what exactly will these volunteers be

3:28 doing?

3:29 Anna: They'll be using their own equipment.

3:31 Everything from established commercial

3:33 service providers to university research

3:36 facilities to individual amateur

3:39 radio enthusiasts to passively track radio

3:42 radio waves transmitted by Orion during its

3:45 approximately 10 day mission. We're talking

3:47 about 47 ground assets spanning the

3:50 globe.

3:51 Anna: That's impressive international cooperation.

3:54 Who made the cut?

3:55 Anna: The list is quite diverse. Government

3:58 agencies like the Canadian Space Agency

4:00 and Germany's DLR are participating.

4:03 Commercial companies include GUN Hilly Earth

4:06 Station in the uk, Kongsberg Satellite

4:09 Services in Norway, and Intuitive Machines

4:12 in Houston. Universities like UC

4:15 Berkeley, the University of Pittsburgh, and

4:18 even Morehead State University in Kentucky

4:20 are involved.

4:22 Anna: What about amateur radio operators?

4:24 Anna: Oh, yes, they're well represented. We've got

4:27 individuals like Chris Swire from South

4:30 Dakota and Dan Slater from California.

4:33 Amateur radio organizations from Argentina,

4:36 Germany, the Netherlands and France are also

4:39 particip. It's truly a, uh, global

4:41 effort.

4:42 Anna: And this data they collect, what's NASA doing

4:45 with it?

4:46 Anna: The volunteers will submit their tracking

4:48 data to NASA for analysis. This helps the

4:51 agency assess the broader aerospace

4:53 community's tracking capabilities and

4:56 identify ways to augment future moon and

4:58 Mars mission support. Kevin Coggins,

5:01 NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for

5:04 space communications and navigation, called

5:07 it a real step toward scan's

5:09 commercial first vision.

5:11 Anna: Building that public private ecosystem for

5:13 deep space exploration.

5:15 Anna: Exactly.

5:17 Now let's shift gears to some groundbreaking

5:20 lunar research. Scientists

5:22 analyzing samples from China's Chang' E6

5:25 mission have made a discovery that helps

5:27 explain one of the moon's most puzzling

5:30 features.

5:31 Anna: The asymmetry between the near and far sides.

5:34 Anna: Precisely. You know how the near side of the

5:37 moon has all those dark maria, those

5:39 vast volcanic plains that formed the man in

5:42 the Mo pattern we're all familiar with? The

5:45 far side has barely any.

5:47 Anna: I've always found that fascinating. What did

5:49 they discover?

5:50 Anna: Tonga6 brought back samples from the south

5:53 pole Aitken Basin, which is one of the

5:55 largest impact features in the entire solar

5:58 system. About 1600 miles wide

6:01 and between 4.2 and

6:03 4.3 billion years old. Much

6:06 older than the lunar maria, which are around

6:08 3.6 billion years old.

6:11 Anna: And what did these ancient samples reveal?

6:13 Anna: The research team led by Heng Si Tian

6:16 from the Chinese Academy of Sciences found

6:19 something unusual in the basaltic rock

6:21 samples. An abnormal ratio of

6:24 potassium isotopes. Specifically, they

6:27 found more of the heavier potassium 41

6:30 relative to potassium 39 compared to

6:33 samples from the near side.

6:34 Anna: What Would cause that.

6:36 Anna: After exploring several possibilities.

6:39 Cosmic ray irradiation, magma

6:41 processes, meteoritic contamination. They

6:44 concluded that this isotopic signature is a

6:47 relic of the giant impact that formed the

6:50 south pole Aitken basin itself.

6:53 Anna: So the impact actually changed the moon's

6:55 chemistry?

6:56 Anna: Not just changed it, it fundamentally

6:59 altered it. The impact was so violent

7:02 that it heated the moon's crust and mantle

7:04 intensely, Causing many volatile elements,

7:07 including potassium, to evaporate and escape

7:10 into the lighter. Potassium 39.

7:13 Isocope evaporated more easily than the

7:16 heavier one, Leaving behind this unusual

7:19 ratio.

7:20 Anna: That's incredible detective work. And this

7:22 explains the lack of Maria on the far side.

7:25 Anna: Exactly. The reduction in volatiles would

7:28 have suppressed magma formation, Limiting

7:30 volcanism on the far side. It shows how

7:33 deeply that ancient impact affected the

7:35 moon's interior and why isotopic

7:38 analysis can provide windows into the

7:40 conditions of such catastrophic events.

7:43 This research was published in the

7:45 Proceedings of the National Academy of

7:47 Sciences.

7:48 Anna: Fascinating stuff.

7:49 Now, here's something a bit more down to

7:51 earth, Even if it's going to space. Anna, um,

7:54 tell us about this startup that's making

7:55 space memorials affordable.

7:57 Anna: This is a really interesting story, Avery.

8:00 A startup called Space beyond, founded by

8:03 Ryan Mitchell, is planning to send up to

8:06 1,000 people's ashes to space in

8:08 October 2027 for as little as

8:11 $249. Dramatically

8:14 cheaper than traditional space memorial

8:16 services that typically cost thousands of

8:19 dollars.

8:19 Anna: That's quite a price difference. How are they

8:22 pulling this off?

8:23 Anna: It's all about smart use of existing

8:25 infrastructure. They're using a cubesat, one

8:28 of those miniature cube shaped satellites

8:31 that will launch as a rideshare payload on a

8:33 SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The rideshare

8:36 model has really democratized access to

8:38 space.

8:39 Anna: And Ryan Mitchell, he's got some serious

8:42 space credentials, right?

8:43 Anna: Absolutely. He worked on NASA's space

8:46 shuttle program and spent nearly a decade at

8:49 blue origin. The idea actually came to him

8:51 while attending a, uh, family member's ash

8:53 spreading ceremony. He thought, how could I

8:56 do this better? And thus Space beyond was

8:59 born.

9:00 Anna: But there must be some limitations with such

9:02 an affordable service.

9:04 Anna: There are. Customers can only send about one

9:07 gram of ashes. A practical limit due to

9:10 weight considerations and the need to fit

9:12 many customers remains in the cubesat. The

9:15 satellite will only orbit for about five

9:17 years before burning up in Earth's

9:19 atmosphere. So it's not forever.

9:22 Anna: Though that fiery ending has a certain poetic

9:25 quality to it.

9:26 Anna: Mitchell certainly thinks so. Plus, the

9:28 CubeSat will be in a Sun synchronous orbit at

9:31 about 550km altitude,

9:34 meaning it'll fly over the entire globe. With

9:37 modern spacecraft tracking services, families

9:40 should be able to locate it and know when

9:42 it's passing overhead.

9:43 Anna: That's actually really touching. And, um,

9:46 importantly, they're not spreading the ashes

9:48 in space, right?

9:49 Anna: Correct. Mitchell called that an almost

9:52 nightmare scenario because the particles

9:54 could create a debris cloud that could

9:56 endanger other spacecraft. Since customers

9:59 only send about a gram, they can do what they

10:01 wish with.

10:02 Anna: The rest of the thoughtful approach to a

10:04 sensitive service.

10:06 Now, let's talk about something that might

10:08 literally redefine astronomy. Anna,

10:11 tell us about this massive potential exomoon.

10:14 Anna: This one's mind bending, Avery.

10:16 Astronomers using the gravity instrument on

10:19 the Very Large Telescope in Chile have

10:22 detected what might be an exomoon orbiting

10:24 the gas giant HD

10:26 206893B,

10:29 located 133 light years from Earth.

10:32 But here's the kicker. This moon is so

10:35 massive that it might force us to rethink the

10:37 word moon even means.

10:40 Anna: How massive are we talking?

10:42 Anna: Get this. They estimate it could be as much

10:44 as 40% the mass of Jupiter, or

10:47 about nine times the mass of Neptune. To put

10:50 that in perspective, it's thousands of times

10:53 heavier than any moon in our solar system.

10:56 Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon and the

10:58 biggest in our solar system, is thousands of

11:01 times less massive than Neptune.

11:03 Anna: Wow. So how did they even detect something

11:06 like this?

11:06 Anna: Through a technique called astrometry, which

11:09 precisely tracks the position of celestial

11:12 bodies over time. The team led by

11:14 Quentin Crawl from the University of

11:16 Cambridge observed a measurable wobble in

11:19 HD20000

11:21 6893B's motion, uh, a back and

11:24 forth movement with a period of about nine

11:26 months.

11:27 Anna: And, um, that wobble is the Moon's

11:29 gravitational tug.

11:30 Anna: Exactly. Prall explained that the wobble has

11:33 a size comparable to the Earth Moon distance,

11:36 which is the exact signature you'd expect

11:38 from an unseen companion. The potential

11:41 Moon's orbit is also tilted by roughly 60

11:44 degrees, suggesting a turbulent history of

11:47 gravitational interactions.

11:49 Anna: So at, uh, what point does something stop

11:51 being a moon and become a binary companion?

11:54 Anna: That's the million dollar question. Krall

11:57 noted that at these masses, the distinction

11:59 between a massive moon and a low mass

12:01 companion becomes blurred. There's currently

12:04 no official definition of an exomoon,

12:07 so astronomers generally refer to any object

12:10 orbiting a planet as a Moon.

12:12 Anna: This could force a redefinition, potentially.

12:15 Anna: Crawl suggested that as observational

12:17 techniques improve, our definitions and

12:20 understanding of what constitutes a moon will

12:23 almost certainly evolve. He also pointed out

12:26 that we're likely only seeing the tip of the

12:28 iceberg just as the first exoplanets

12:31 discovered were massive ones close to their

12:33 stars because they were easiest to detect.

12:35 The first exomoons we identify will be the

12:38 most massive and extreme examples.

12:41 Anna: Finding exomoons is challenging, I

12:44 imagine.

12:45 Anna: Extremely. The signals they produce are

12:47 minute, often lost in the noise of their

12:50 parent planet's data. The transit method

12:53 that's revolutionized exoplanet discovery

12:56 is less effective for moons because they

12:58 produce light dips too faint to distinguish.

13:01 But astrometry offers a new path

13:04 forward, especially for detecting companions

13:07 in far orbits where large stable

13:10 moons are more likely to exist.

13:12 Anna: This research was published in Astronomy and

13:15 Astrophysics.

13:16 Anna: It's been accepted for publication there, and

13:19 it's currently available as a pre peer

13:21 reviewed paper on arXiv. If confirmed,

13:24 this would not only expand our catalog of

13:26 celestial bodies, but force astronomers to

13:29 rethink one of the oldest definitions in

13:32 planetary science.

13:33 Anna: Incredible.

13:34 And finally, Anna, uh, we have a story that

13:37 might rewrite history, or at least rename

13:40 a famous comet.

13:41 Anna: That's right. New research suggests that

13:44 Halley's Comet might be wrongly maimed.

13:47 Turns out an 11th century English monk

13:49 named Elmer of Malmesbury understood

13:52 the comet's periodic nature centuries before

13:55 the British astronomer Edmund Halley.

13:58 Anna: Wait, so Halley wasn't the first to figure

14:00 this out?

14:01 Anna: According to research by Professor Simon

14:04 Portage Zwart and colleagues published in the

14:06 book Doristat. And everything after,

14:09 Gilmer witnessed Halley's comet twice in

14:12 989 CE and again in

14:14 1066 CE and realized it was

14:17 the same comet returning.

14:20 Anna: How do we know this?

14:21 Anna: The events are described by the 12th century

14:24 chronicler William of Malmesbury. But this

14:27 connection had gone unnoticed by scholars

14:29 until now. The 1066 appearance

14:32 is actually depicted on the famous Bayeux

14:35 Tapestry, which illustrates the events of

14:37 that year, including the Norman Conquest of

14:40 England.

14:41 Anna: So Ilmer must have been quite elderly to see

14:44 it twice.

14:44 Anna: Exactly. Given that the Comet appears

14:47 roughly 76 years, he would have been

14:50 advanced in age when he witnessed it for the

14:53 second time. And here's a fascinating detail.

14:56 As was customary at the time, when he saw it

14:59 in 1066, the king was warned

15:02 of impending disaster. The

15:05 comet appeared during the brief reign of King

15:07 Harold Godwinson, who died at the Battle of

15:10 Hastings that October.

15:12 Anna: Medieval people really did see comets as

15:14 omens, didn't they?

15:16 Anna: They did indeed. The research shows that

15:18 comet appearances around this time were

15:21 consistently associated with the deaths of

15:23 kings, war or famine in the British Isles.

15:26 The researchers even found what might be

15:28 historical fake news. Uh, a comet

15:31 supposedly seen before the death of

15:33 Archbishop Seidrich of Canterbury in

15:35 995, which wasn't actually recorded

15:38 in the chronicles. Possibly an exaggeration

15:41 to frighten people.

15:42 Anna: So what are the researchers calling for?

15:45 Anna: They're arguing that Halley's Comet should be

15:47 given a, uh, different name since it had been

15:49 observed twice and its periodicity

15:51 understood centuries before Halley's work.

15:54 Portuguese Wort mentioned that while the

15:56 research was fun to do, it was challenging

15:59 working in such an interdisciplinary project

16:02 alongside a historian. Nevertheless, they

16:04 plan to carry out further research into

16:06 periodic comet it's amazing how.

16:09 Anna: Interdisciplinary research can uncover these

16:11 historical oversights.

16:13 Anna: It really is. And it shows that scientific

16:16 discovery isn't always about new

16:18 observations. Sometimes it's about looking at

16:21 old records with fresh eyes.

16:24 Anna: Well, that's all the time we have for today's

16:26 episode. What a journey we've been on. From

16:28 rocket fairings to ancient lunar impacts,

16:31 affordable space memorials to massive

16:33 exomoons and.

16:34 Anna: Historical comet discoveries, it never

16:37 ceases to amaze me how much is happening in

16:40 space and astronomy every single day. From

16:43 cutting edge engineering to billion year old

16:45 mysteries, there's always something new to

16:48 learn.

16:48 Anna: Thanks so much for tuning in to Astronomy

16:50 Daily. Be sure to visit our website at

16:52 astronomydaily IO for detailed shown

16:56 notes, transcripts and links to all the

16:57 stories we discussed today.

16:59 Anna: And don't forget to follow us on social

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17:08 Anna: Until next time, keep looking up and keep

17:11 exploring the wonders of our universe.

17:14 Anna: Clear skies everyone.

17:22 Love.