Slow Crawl, Fast Comet

0:00 Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Astronomy Daily, your daily guide to

0:04 Speaker 1: what's happening in space. I'm Anna and I'm Avery.

0:08 Speaker 2: It is Tuesday, February twenty fourth, twenty twenty six, and

0:12 Speaker 2: we have a busy show for you today.

0:15 Speaker 1: We do the big headline, the one everyone in the

0:18 Speaker 1: space community is talking about right now is Artemis and specifically,

0:23 Speaker 1: what is happening to that rocket at this very moment.

0:26 Speaker 2: Quite literally, as we record this, the SLS rocket is

0:30 Speaker 2: making a very slow journey about one mile per hour

0:34 Speaker 2: back to its garage.

0:36 Speaker 1: We have all the details on that. We also have

0:38 Speaker 1: a genuinely exciting story from Mars, a wild mission concept

0:43 Speaker 1: to chase an interstellar comet. Tina's mystery space plane is

0:47 Speaker 1: back in orbit, and we wrap up with some beautiful

0:50 Speaker 1: red giant science that solves a mystery that's been bugging

0:54 Speaker 1: astronomers since the nineteen seventies.

0:57 Speaker 2: Plus we run through this week's launch schedule. It is

1:00 Speaker 2: surprisingly busy despite all the Artemis drama. Let's get into it.

1:05 Speaker 1: So, Avery, let's start with Artemis, because this is a

1:08 Speaker 1: story that has taken yet another dramatic turn.

1:11 Speaker 2: Honestly, Anna, this one stings a little because just last week,

1:15 Speaker 2: we were watching a really successful second wet Tress rehearsal

1:18 Speaker 2: and NASA was talking about March six as a real

1:21 Speaker 2: launch date. Things were looking.

1:23 Speaker 1: Good, and then Saturday happened, And then Saturday happened.

1:28 Speaker 2: Overnight on February twenty first engineers noticed something concerning an

1:32 Speaker 2: interruption in the flow of helium to the rocket's upper stage,

1:35 Speaker 2: specifically the interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage or ICPS.

1:41 Speaker 1: And just to be clear for listeners who might be

1:43 Speaker 1: newer to the show, what does the ICPS actually do?

1:47 Speaker 2: Great question. The ICPS is the upper stage of the

1:51 Speaker 2: SLS rocket. It sits above the core stage and it's

1:54 Speaker 2: what fires to push Orion and the crew on their

1:57 Speaker 2: trans lunar trajectory toward the Moon. It uses helium internally

2:02 Speaker 2: to do two critical jobs. It maintains environmental conditions around

2:06 Speaker 2: its engine, and it pressurizes the liquid hydrogen and liquid

2:10 Speaker 2: oxygen propellant tanks. So helium is not optional. Helium is fundamental.

2:16 Speaker 1: And this helium flow issue appeared after the wet dress

2:19 Speaker 1: rehearsal had completed, not during it, which makes it particularly

2:23 Speaker 1: tricky to pin.

2:24 Speaker 2: Down exactly the WDR itself went smoothly. It was during

2:29 Speaker 2: reconfiguration afterward that data showed the interruption. NASA administrator Jared

2:34 Speaker 2: Isaacman posted about it on Saturday, saying the team was

2:37 Speaker 2: investigating three possible causes, a blocked filter between the vehicle

2:42 Speaker 2: and ground support equipment, a failed quick disconnect umbilical interface,

2:47 Speaker 2: or a failed check valve on the vehicle, similar to

2:50 Speaker 2: what caused delays on Artemis one.

2:53 Speaker 1: And regardless of which of those three it turns out

2:55 Speaker 1: to be, the answer is the same.

2:58 Speaker 2: The answer is always the same. They have to go

3:01 Speaker 2: back to the vehicle assembly building. You can't fix any

3:04 Speaker 2: of those things on the launch pad. So NASA confirmed

3:08 Speaker 2: a rollback, and that rollback is happening today, February twenty fourth.

3:12 Speaker 2: The sls Orion and the whole stack are being loaded

3:16 Speaker 2: onto the Crawler and making that four point two mile

3:19 Speaker 2: journey back to the VAB at roughly one mile per hour.

3:24 Speaker 1: Which takes several hours. It is not a fast vehicle.

3:28 Speaker 2: It's not. The crawler itself weighs about six and a

3:31 Speaker 2: half million pounds unloaded, and it's burning around one hundred

3:34 Speaker 2: and sixty five gallons of diesel per mile. It is

3:38 Speaker 2: an extraordinary piece of engineering in its own right.

3:41 Speaker 1: So where does this leave the mission timeline?

3:44 Speaker 2: March is definitively off the table. Isaac Man was very

3:48 Speaker 2: clear about that April is now the earliest possible window,

3:51 Speaker 2: and NASA has said that quick action to get back

3:54 Speaker 2: to the VAB could still preserve April. A full media

3:57 Speaker 2: briefing is expected this week. Crewe commander Red Wiseman, pilot

4:02 Speaker 2: Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Coch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy

4:07 Speaker 2: Hansen had just entered quarantine and have now been released again.

4:11 Speaker 2: This would be their second exit from quarantine, which.

4:14 Speaker 1: Tells you something about how hard this process has been.

4:18 Speaker 1: And this is still the first crude mission beyond low

4:21 Speaker 1: Earth orbit since Apollo seventeen in nineteen seventy two. The

4:25 Speaker 1: stakes are enormous.

4:27 Speaker 2: They really are. NASA's under pressure, both from the public

4:31 Speaker 2: and from the White House to get this done. Isaac

4:34 Speaker 2: Men has been quite transparent about the challenges, which is appreciated.

4:38 Speaker 2: We'll keep you updated as the investigation progresses. A media

4:41 Speaker 2: briefing is expected this week.

4:43 Speaker 1: Okay, let's lift the mood a little because our next

4:46 Speaker 1: story is genuinely brilliant and it comes from Mars.

4:50 Speaker 2: This is one of my favorites of the week. NASA's

4:52 Speaker 2: Perseverance rover has just been given something that effectively functions

4:56 Speaker 2: as GPS on a planet that has no GPS sett

5:00 Speaker 2: lights whatsoever.

5:01 Speaker 1: So how do you navigate on Mars? Walk us through

5:04 Speaker 1: how it used to work.

5:05 Speaker 2: So Historically, Perseverance used a system called visual odometry. Every

5:11 Speaker 2: few feet, it takes camera images of the surrounding rocks

5:14 Speaker 2: and geological features, and it tracks how those features shift

5:17 Speaker 2: and frame to estimate how far it's moved. It's clever,

5:21 Speaker 2: but the problem is that tiny errors add up. On

5:24 Speaker 2: a long drive, the rovers internal sense of where it

5:27 Speaker 2: is could be off by more than thirty five meters

5:30 Speaker 2: that's over one hundred feet. When it hit that threshold

5:33 Speaker 2: of uncertainty, its safety systems would kick in and it

5:35 Speaker 2: would just stop and wait for instructions from Earth.

5:38 Speaker 1: And with communication delays of up to twenty four hours,

5:41 Speaker 1: that could mean an entire day of lost exploration time exactly.

5:46 Speaker 2: So, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab developed a new system called

5:49 Speaker 2: Mars Global Localization. Here's how it works. Perseverance takes a

5:54 Speaker 2: full three hundred and sixty degree panorama with its navigation cameras.

5:58 Speaker 2: Then an algorithm compares that ground level view with high

6:01 Speaker 2: resolution orbital maps captured by the Mars reconnaissance orbit or

6:04 Speaker 2: far above. It matches the terrain, the ridges, rocks, slopes,

6:09 Speaker 2: and triangulates an exact position. The whole process takes about two.

6:13 Speaker 1: Minutes two minutes to know where you are with twenty

6:16 Speaker 1: five centimeter accuracy. That is remarkable.

6:20 Speaker 2: What makes it even cleverer is where the computing power

6:23 Speaker 2: comes from. It runs on the helicopter base station. The

6:26 Speaker 2: processor that Perseverance used to communicate with Ingenuity. Ingenuity fluid

6:31 Speaker 2: seventy second and final flight last year, so that processor

6:35 Speaker 2: was sitting idle. It runs more than one hundred times

6:38 Speaker 2: faster than the rover's main computers. The team essentially repurposed.

6:42 Speaker 1: It so Ingenuity keeps giving even in retirement.

6:46 Speaker 2: It really does. Mars Global Localization was used successfully for

6:50 Speaker 2: the first time in regular mission operations on February second,

6:54 Speaker 2: and again on February sixteenth. JPL's chief Engineer of Robotics Operations,

6:59 Speaker 2: Vandy verma U, described it as giving the rover GPS,

7:03 Speaker 2: saying it can now drive for potentially unlimited distances without

7:06 Speaker 2: calling home.

7:07 Speaker 1: And this has implications beyond just Mars, doesn't it big implications.

7:12 Speaker 2: NASA is already looking at adapting this for future lunar

7:15 Speaker 2: missions where you have difficult lighting conditions and long cold

7:18 Speaker 2: nights that make precise location data even more critical. And

7:23 Speaker 2: if we ever have astronauts driving pressurized rovers on Mars,

7:26 Speaker 2: they won't be able to wait for Houston to tell

7:28 Speaker 2: them where they are. This is exactly the kind of

7:31 Speaker 2: technology they'll need.

7:32 Speaker 1: What a story five years on Mars and perseverance just

7:36 Speaker 1: keeps getting smarter, and hopefully so are we now this

7:40 Speaker 1: next story. I love this one because it is genuinely audacious.

7:45 Speaker 1: We're talking about a mission concept that was published this

7:47 Speaker 1: week for Chasing Down an interstellar comment. Avery said the scene.

7:53 Speaker 3: Right so our audience will remember comment three. I slash

7:56 Speaker 3: ATLS the third confirmed interstellar object ever detected in our

8:00 Speaker 3: Solar System. Discovered in July twenty twenty five. It came

8:04 Speaker 3: screaming through from outside the Solar System, made its closest

8:08 Speaker 3: approach to the Sun last October, swung past Venus in November,

8:12 Speaker 3: and came closest to Earth in December. It is now

8:15 Speaker 3: racing away from US at over sixty kilometers per second.

8:19 Speaker 1: Which is extraordinarily fast. For context, that's faster than any

8:24 Speaker 1: spacecraft humanity has ever launched.

8:27 Speaker 2: Much faster, and that speed is the whole problem. Researchers

8:31 Speaker 2: from the Initiative for Interstellar Studies published new work this

8:35 Speaker 2: week exploring how you could actually send a spacecraft to

8:38 Speaker 2: intercept it. The short answer is you need to do

8:42 Speaker 2: something genuinely extreme. They call it a solar O birth maneuver.

8:47 Speaker 1: Explain that to us.

8:49 Speaker 2: So the O birth effects is actually a principle used

8:52 Speaker 2: in basically every rocket launch. It says that if you

8:56 Speaker 2: fire your engines when you're moving fast, you get a

8:59 Speaker 2: bigger boost then if you fire them when you're going slowly. Normally,

9:03 Speaker 2: it's applied when a spacecraft is at the closest point

9:06 Speaker 2: of its orbit around the planet. What this mission proposes

9:10 Speaker 2: is doing it at the closest point of a solar orbit,

9:14 Speaker 2: a literal close flyby of the Sun itself. We're talking

9:18 Speaker 2: three point two solar radii from the Sun's surface. That

9:22 Speaker 2: is extremely close.

9:24 Speaker 1: How close is that actually?

9:26 Speaker 2: To put it in perspective, the Parker Solar Probe goes closer,

9:30 Speaker 2: but even that is an extraordinary engineering challenge. At that distance,

9:35 Speaker 2: the heat and radiation are intense the spacecraft would need

9:39 Speaker 2: serious shielding, but the gravitational kick from firing your engines

9:43 Speaker 2: that close to the Sun is so powerful that you

9:47 Speaker 2: could theoretically reach speeds never achieved by human made objects,

9:52 Speaker 2: And then.

9:52 Speaker 1: You'd still need how long to actually reach three I

9:56 Speaker 1: gosh atls.

9:57 Speaker 2: If launched in twenty twenty five, which the researchers identify

10:01 Speaker 2: as the optimal window based on the alignment of Earth, Jupiter,

10:05 Speaker 2: the Sun, and the comet, the spacecraft would reach three

10:08 Speaker 2: I dash atls by around twenty eighty five, at a

10:13 Speaker 2: distance of approximately seven hundred and thirty two astronomical units

10:17 Speaker 2: from the Sun. For comparison, Voyager one has been traveling

10:21 Speaker 2: for nearly fifty years and is only at about one

10:25 Speaker 2: hundred and seventy AU.

10:27 Speaker 1: So this would be the most distant rendezvous in human history.

10:32 Speaker 2: By a massive margin, and only a flyby would be possible,

10:36 Speaker 2: not orbit insertion, because both the spacecraft and the comet

10:40 Speaker 2: would be moving so fast, But even a flyby would

10:43 Speaker 2: be extraordinary because three I dash atls didn't form an

10:48 Speaker 2: hour solar system if formed around the different star, possibly

10:52 Speaker 2: one that no longer exists. Its chemical fingerprints could tell

10:57 Speaker 2: us things about planetary formation elsewhere in the gallay that

11:00 Speaker 2: we simply cannot learn any other way.

11:03 Speaker 1: It's one of those stories where the scale of ambition

11:07 Speaker 1: just takes your breath away. Is there any serious movement

11:10 Speaker 1: toward actually doing this?

11:12 Speaker 2: The researchers are clear this is a proposal, not a

11:15 Speaker 2: funded mission, but twenty thirty five is only nine years away.

11:19 Speaker 2: Decisions would need to start being made soon, and three

11:22 Speaker 2: i at lists won't be the last interstellar visitor. The

11:26 Speaker 2: more of these we find, the more valuable the case

11:29 Speaker 2: for chasing one becomes dang.

11:31 Speaker 1: In the realm of things we don't know much about,

11:34 Speaker 1: Let's talk about China's shen Long spacecraft, which launched on

11:38 Speaker 1: its fourth mission earlier this month.

11:40 Speaker 2: Genlong, which means divine dragon in Chinese, is one of

11:44 Speaker 2: those topics that generates a lot of fascination, precisely because

11:48 Speaker 2: so little is officially confirmed. This is China's reusable robotic

11:53 Speaker 2: space plane, broadly analogous to the US Air Force's X

11:56 Speaker 2: three seven B. It launched from the Juquon set Light

12:00 Speaker 2: Launch Center on February sixth or seventh aboard a long

12:03 Speaker 2: March two.

12:04 Speaker 1: F rocket, and as usual, China hasn't said.

12:08 Speaker 2: Much, extremely little. The official line via state media shein

12:12 Speaker 2: Wa is that the mission will conduct quote technology verification

12:17 Speaker 2: and will provide technical support for the peaceful use of space.

12:21 Speaker 2: No launch time was given, no photographs, no mission duration, nothing, But.

12:27 Speaker 1: We can look at what the previous missions have done

12:29 Speaker 1: and draw some inferences.

12:31 Speaker 2: We can. The first mission in September twenty twenty lasted

12:35 Speaker 2: two days, the second in twenty twenty two lasted two

12:39 Speaker 2: hundred and seventy six days. The third launch December twenty

12:43 Speaker 2: twenty three lasted two hundred and sixty eight days. So

12:47 Speaker 2: recent missions have been around nine months in orbit. If

12:50 Speaker 2: this one follows the pattern, we might expect it to

12:53 Speaker 2: return around November or December.

12:56 Speaker 1: And what have analysts pieced together about what it does

12:59 Speaker 1: up there?

13:00 Speaker 2: This is where it gets interesting. Western space tracking organizations,

13:05 Speaker 2: including the US Space Force and private space situational awareness companies,

13:10 Speaker 2: have observed that shen Long conducts what are called rendezvous

13:13 Speaker 2: and proximity operations. It maneuvers close to other objects in orbit.

13:19 Speaker 2: It has deployed small objects possible sub satellites during at

13:23 Speaker 2: least two previous missions One of those objects was observed

13:27 Speaker 2: transmitting signals over North America, leading some analysts to describe

13:31 Speaker 2: it as a potential mobile signals intelligence.

13:34 Speaker 1: Platform, and the anti satellite angle.

13:38 Speaker 2: Analysts are cautious. Some experts point out that shen long,

13:42 Speaker 2: small payload bay, and limited power generation make it an

13:45 Speaker 2: unlikely direct space weapon, but the ability to approach other

13:49 Speaker 2: satellites at close range is inherently dual use. It could

13:54 Speaker 2: be inspection, it could be servicing, it could be something else.

13:58 Speaker 2: We genuinely don't know. What we do know is that

14:01 Speaker 2: the US X three seven b's eighth mission is also

14:05 Speaker 2: currently in orbit, launch last August to test quantum inertial

14:09 Speaker 2: sensors and high bandwidth laser links. These are the only

14:12 Speaker 2: two countries flying reusable space planes right now, and they're

14:16 Speaker 2: both being quite secretive about it.

14:19 Speaker 1: The new space race conducted largely in silence, perfectly put. Now,

14:25 Speaker 1: let's do a quick run through of what else is

14:27 Speaker 1: happening on the launch front this week, because despite all

14:30 Speaker 1: the artemis drama, the commercial sector does not stop.

14:34 Speaker 2: It really doesn't. Today February twenty fourth, we actually have

14:39 Speaker 2: a launch scheduled from Wallop's flight facility in Virginia Rocket

14:43 Speaker 2: Labs HACE Rocket Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron is carrying

14:49 Speaker 2: a fascinating payload called dart A. It's a scamjet powered

14:54 Speaker 2: hypersonic vehicle built by Brisbane based company Hypersonics Launch Systems

14:59 Speaker 2: and this will be a it's first ever flight. The

15:02 Speaker 2: mission is nicknamed That's Not a Knife, which we.

15:04 Speaker 1: Appreciate Australian hypersonics delivered with Australian humor exactly.

15:11 Speaker 2: BaseX also has a Falcon nine starlink launch out of

15:14 Speaker 2: Cape Canaveral. Today, Wednesday brings another Starling from Vandenberg, but

15:18 Speaker 2: the standout launch of the week is Friday. Firefly Aerospace's

15:22 Speaker 2: Alpha rocket is returning to flight on the Stairway to

15:25 Speaker 2: seven mission.

15:26 Speaker 1: Tell us about that one.

15:28 Speaker 2: So Firefly's last Alpha launch was in April twenty twenty

15:31 Speaker 2: five and it ended in failure. The rocket had an

15:34 Speaker 2: anomaly and the mission was lost. This is their return

15:37 Speaker 2: to flight, and it's significant for another reason. This will

15:41 Speaker 2: be the last flight of Alpha in its current Block

15:44 Speaker 2: one configuration. They're upgrading to Block two for Flight eight,

15:48 Speaker 2: which introduces in house avionics and thermal improvements. So Flight

15:52 Speaker 2: seven is essentially a test bed for some of those

15:55 Speaker 2: new systems ahead of the.

15:56 Speaker 1: Full upgrade, a lot riding on it.

15:59 Speaker 2: Quite a lot. Then the week closes out on Sunday,

16:02 Speaker 2: March first, with two more SpaceX starlink missions, one from

16:07 Speaker 2: Vandenberg and one from Cape Canaveral. By the end of

16:10 Speaker 2: this week, SpaceX will have surpassed twenty seven Falcon nine

16:15 Speaker 2: launches for twenty twenty six alone. The cadence is extraordinary,

16:20 Speaker 2: and all.

16:21 Speaker 1: Of this happening while the SLS is making its one

16:24 Speaker 1: mile per hour journey back to the VAB quite the contrast.

16:28 Speaker 2: The juxtaposition pretty much writes itself, and.

16:31 Speaker 1: We close today with some beautiful deep science. A new

16:35 Speaker 1: study published this week in the journal Nature Astronomy has

16:39 Speaker 1: solved a mystery about red giant stars that have had

16:42 Speaker 1: astronomers puzzled since the nineteen seventies.

16:45 Speaker 2: I love this one so a bit of background. Red

16:48 Speaker 2: giants are what stars like our sun become when they

16:51 Speaker 2: exhaust their hydrogen fuel. They expand dramatically and undergo chemical changes.

16:57 Speaker 2: One of the most striking observations has been a consistent

17:00 Speaker 2: decline in the ratio of carbon twelve to carbon thirteen

17:04 Speaker 2: in their outer layers. Scientists knew this had to be

17:08 Speaker 2: caused by material rising up from the nuclear furnace in

17:11 Speaker 2: the core, but they could not figure out how that

17:13 Speaker 2: material crossed the stable barrier layer separating the core from

17:17 Speaker 2: the outer envelope until now. Until now, a team led

17:22 Speaker 2: by Simon Bleuwen at the University of Victoria's Astronomy Research Center,

17:26 Speaker 2: working with colleagues at the University of Minnesota, used cutting

17:30 Speaker 2: edge three dimensional hydrodynamic simulations to model the actual fluid

17:35 Speaker 2: dynamics inside a red giant, and they found the answer

17:39 Speaker 2: its rotation.

17:40 Speaker 1: Stellar rotation drive the mixing in.

17:43 Speaker 2: A really dramatic way. Their simulations showed that in non

17:47 Speaker 2: rotating stars, waves passing through the barrier layer transport very

17:52 Speaker 2: little material, which is what previous models predicted, but once

17:55 Speaker 2: you add rotation, it amplifies those waves enormously. Mixing rates

18:00 Speaker 2: exceed non rotating stars by over one hundred times, and

18:04 Speaker 2: they increase with faster rotation rates. That matches exactly what

18:09 Speaker 2: we observe on real red giant surfaces.

18:11 Speaker 1: And these weren't small simulations. They used some serious computing power.

18:15 Speaker 2: Two supercomputers the Texas Advanced Computing Center at ut Austin

18:20 Speaker 2: and the brand new Trillium supercomputing cluster at the University

18:23 Speaker 2: of Toronto's Cinet facility. The principal investigator, falk Herwig, described

18:29 Speaker 2: these as the most computationally intensive stellar convection simulations ever performed.

18:35 Speaker 2: They were only possible because of very recent advances in supercomputing.

18:38 Speaker 1: And what does this mean for us? For our Sun?

18:41 Speaker 2: In about five billion years, our Sun will enter its

18:44 Speaker 2: red giant phase. It'll expand and likely swallow Mercury, Venus

18:49 Speaker 2: and probably Earth. Beyond the frost line, Jupiter, Saturn and

18:54 Speaker 2: beyond those worlds will move into the new habitable zone.

18:58 Speaker 2: This research gives us much better per ditions of exactly

19:01 Speaker 2: how our Sun's chemistry will evolve during that transition, what

19:05 Speaker 2: elements will appear on its surface, how fast changes will occur.

19:08 Speaker 1: Which sounds like a very long term concern, but understanding

19:11 Speaker 1: how our star will die is genuinely important science.

19:14 Speaker 2: It is, and the techniques developed here have applications far

19:18 Speaker 2: beyond astronomy. The same simulation methods apply to ocean currents,

19:22 Speaker 2: atmospheric dynamics, even blood flow. Balk Kerwig is already working

19:27 Speaker 2: with researchers in those fields to develop new large scale

19:30 Speaker 2: simulation tools.

19:31 Speaker 1: The universe teaching us about the ocean. I love it.

19:35 Speaker 1: And that is your Astronomy Daily for Tuesday, February twenty fourth,

19:38 Speaker 1: Big day for Artemis and not in any way anyone hoped.

19:42 Speaker 1: But as we've seen today, space science never stops, whether

19:45 Speaker 1: it's a rover finding its feet on Mars or scientists

19:48 Speaker 1: finally understanding why red giant stars change the way they do.

19:52 Speaker 2: If you want to keep up with the Artomis rollback developments,

19:55 Speaker 2: we'll have updates and tomorrow's show once NASA has held

19:59 Speaker 2: that media reefing. In the meantime, you can find us

20:02 Speaker 2: at Astronomy Daily dot io and at astro Daily Pod

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20:12 Speaker 1: you have a moment. It really does help and we

20:14 Speaker 1: will see you tomorrow.

20:15 Speaker 2: Clear skys everyone, Clear Stys Sunday. Star Is

20:28 Speaker 3: Star Is