Solar Fireworks, Crew-12 Countdown, and Venus Hides a Secret

0:00 Speaker 1: Four astronauts are sitting in quarantine right now at Kennedy's

0:04 Speaker 1: Space Center in Florida, bags packed suits ready, waiting for

0:09 Speaker 1: the weather to cooperate. SpaceX Crew twelve is almost go

0:14 Speaker 1: and the countdown is very much on.

0:17 Speaker 2: Meanwhile, our sun is doing what it does best, putting

0:21 Speaker 2: on a show plus a lava tunnel. The size of

0:23 Speaker 2: a city has just been confirmed under the clouds of Venus,

0:27 Speaker 2: and the tiny teethpoon of asteroid dust has just rewritten

0:30 Speaker 2: the story of how life's ingredients form in space. Good morning,

0:34 Speaker 2: good evening wherever you are in the world, and welcome

0:37 Speaker 2: to Astronomy Daily. I'm anna and I'm avery. Let's get

0:40 Speaker 2: into it.

0:41 Speaker 1: Let's kick things off with our lead story because the

0:45 Speaker 1: ISS is shorthanded right now and NASA wants to fix

0:49 Speaker 1: that as soon as possible. The SpaceX Crew twelve mission

0:53 Speaker 1: has been pushed back once again, this time to know

0:56 Speaker 1: earlier than Thursday, February twelfth, at fight in the morning

1:01 Speaker 1: Eastern Time. The culprit weather along the crew Dragon's flight path.

1:07 Speaker 2: Yeah, mission teams did a weather review and decided to

1:09 Speaker 2: wave off the Wednesday window entirely. Conditions are expected to

1:13 Speaker 2: improve Thursday but Friday the thirteenth is also being kept

1:17 Speaker 2: as a backup, so we're in a holding pattern, but

1:19 Speaker 2: a short one hopefully.

1:20 Speaker 1: And while we're waiting, let's talk about the crew, because

1:24 Speaker 1: this is a really international team. Commanding the mission is

1:28 Speaker 1: NASA astronaut Jack Hathaway, his first spaceflight command pilot seat

1:34 Speaker 1: goes to the brilliant Jessica Meyer, who's no stranger to

1:38 Speaker 1: the ISS. Then you've got Sophie at a Knot representing

1:42 Speaker 1: the European Space Agency this is her first spaceflight, and

1:46 Speaker 1: Ross Cosmos cosmonaut Andre Fejev completing the quartet.

1:51 Speaker 2: They'll be writing aboard Crewe Dragon Freedom, which is itself

1:54 Speaker 2: a fascinating spacecraft. This will be Freedom's fifth flight, returning

1:59 Speaker 2: after a whopping five hundred and one day turnaround since

2:02 Speaker 2: crew nine. And here's something they'll watch for at launch.

2:05 Speaker 2: This mission will mark the very first use of Landing

2:08 Speaker 2: Zone forty, a brand new landing pad built right inside

2:12 Speaker 2: the SLC forty complex itself. So the booster is going

2:16 Speaker 2: to launch and then come back and land right next door.

2:19 Speaker 2: That's wild.

2:20 Speaker 1: It is wild now. One thing that makes this particular

2:24 Speaker 1: rotation different from the usual six months is the expected duration.

2:29 Speaker 1: Because of Crew eleven's early medical evacuation back in January,

2:34 Speaker 1: Crew twelve is expected to stay for eight to nine months,

2:38 Speaker 1: longer than a typical stay. The ISS needs the staffing,

2:42 Speaker 1: and this crew is ready, and.

2:44 Speaker 2: It's a big week for launches Beyond just Crew twelve.

2:47 Speaker 2: The launch manifest is absolutely stacked. Right now. We have

2:51 Speaker 2: ULA's Vulcan rocket going up with USSF eighty seven, a

2:54 Speaker 2: pair of satellite surveillance for the US Space Force. Then

2:58 Speaker 2: there's the first Arion six four launch, which will carry

3:01 Speaker 2: thirty two Amazon Kuiper Internet satellites that's Starling's main competitor,

3:05 Speaker 2: by the way, plus a Russian Proton m and surprise, surprise,

3:10 Speaker 2: multiple Starlink missions. It is genuinely one of the busiest

3:14 Speaker 2: launch weeks we've seen in a while.

3:16 Speaker 1: So if you're a launch watcher, clear your Thursday calendar.

3:20 Speaker 1: Live streams will be available online for most, if not all,

3:23 Speaker 1: of these launches.

3:25 Speaker 2: Okay, story two, And we keep an eye on our

3:27 Speaker 2: star because right now, as we reported a few days ago,

3:31 Speaker 2: it is being very talkative. Sunspot region AR four three

3:35 Speaker 2: six six has been one of the most active regions

3:38 Speaker 2: of solar cycle twenty five and overnight if fired off

3:41 Speaker 2: four M class flares. The biggest was an M two

3:44 Speaker 2: point eight that's a moderate flare for context, at around

3:48 Speaker 2: two fourteen UTC this morning, which triggered a minor R

3:51 Speaker 2: one class radio blackout over the seas between Australia and

3:55 Speaker 2: Papa New Guinea.

3:56 Speaker 1: Just to give people a quick refresher on the scale here,

4:00 Speaker 1: solar flares are classified by their peak X ray intensity.

4:04 Speaker 1: C class are minor, M class are moderates and can

4:08 Speaker 1: cause brief radio blackouts at high latitudes, and X class

4:12 Speaker 1: are the big ones, the kind that can knock out

4:15 Speaker 1: power grids and satellite communications. So four M class flares

4:20 Speaker 1: in a day is definitely worth paying attention to.

4:23 Speaker 2: RC four three sixty six has actually been the source

4:26 Speaker 2: of some spectacular X class activity over the past couple

4:29 Speaker 2: of weeks. Two it's been a busy region. Now it's

4:32 Speaker 2: rotating out of the Earth facing part of the Sun,

4:35 Speaker 2: so today the forecast is quiet to unsettled as the

4:39 Speaker 2: Corona whole stream influence gradually weakens, but forecasters will be

4:43 Speaker 2: watching it closely. If we get any significant CMEs thrown

4:47 Speaker 2: our way, that could mean Aurora's pushing further from the

4:50 Speaker 2: poles than usual, which is always exciting news for skywatchers.

4:54 Speaker 1: We're still in an active phase of solar cycle twenty five,

4:57 Speaker 1: which is tracking hotter than predicted. I don't put the

5:00 Speaker 1: Aurora alert apps away just yet. We'll keep monitoring.

5:03 Speaker 2: We certainly will. This is exciting stuff.

5:06 Speaker 1: Okay. Moving on. Story three takes us to one of

5:09 Speaker 1: the most exciting ongoing areas of science, the BENU samples

5:13 Speaker 1: from NASA's Osyrius rex mission. We've talked about BENU a lot,

5:17 Speaker 1: and each new study seems to shift our thinking a

5:19 Speaker 1: little more. This week's paper, published in the Proceedings of

5:22 Speaker 1: the National Academy of Sciences might be the biggest shift yet.

5:27 Speaker 2: So what's the finding. For decades, sciences thought amino acids

5:31 Speaker 2: and asteroids formed through what's called Strecher synthesis, a process

5:35 Speaker 2: that requires warm liquid water. The classic picture was something

5:39 Speaker 2: like a wet, warm asteroid interior chemistry bubbling along. But

5:44 Speaker 2: the Penn State team, led by Alison Basinski looked at

5:47 Speaker 2: the isotopic signatures of amino acids in the BENU samples,

5:50 Speaker 2: specifically glycine, which is the simplest amino acid, and found

5:54 Speaker 2: that the story is much more complicated.

5:57 Speaker 1: The data suggests these amino acids formed under harsh, cold,

6:01 Speaker 1: icy radiation rich environments, the kind of environment we'd associate

6:05 Speaker 1: more with the outer Solar System than a warm, watery asteroid.

6:09 Speaker 1: Basinski described it as their results flipping the script on

6:12 Speaker 1: how amino acids form. It's not just one pathway anymore.

6:16 Speaker 1: It looks like there are many conditions under which life's

6:19 Speaker 1: building blocks can emerge.

6:21 Speaker 2: And why does that matter? Because if amino acids can

6:24 Speaker 2: form in extreme icy environments, not just warm watery ones,

6:29 Speaker 2: the range of places in the cosmos where life's precursors

6:32 Speaker 2: might exist just got dramatically wider. We're talking about icy moons,

6:37 Speaker 2: comet nuclei, the outer reaches of the Solar System, places

6:41 Speaker 2: we might not have been prioritizing in the search for

6:43 Speaker 2: life's ingredients.

6:44 Speaker 1: What's remarkable is that all of this came from a

6:47 Speaker 1: sample smaller than a tea spoon. That speck of four

6:50 Speaker 1: point six billion year old asteroid dust is genuinely changing

6:54 Speaker 1: our understanding of how life may have gotten started. The

6:57 Speaker 1: Osiris REX mission just keeps on giving.

7:00 Speaker 2: Story four today, and I genuinely love this one. We

7:03 Speaker 2: found lava tubes on the Moon, we found them on Mars,

7:07 Speaker 2: and now, for the first time, scientists have confirmed one

7:10 Speaker 2: on Venus. A team from the University of Trento in

7:13 Speaker 2: Italy has published the paper in Nature Communications this week

7:17 Speaker 2: revealing the existence of a massive underground lava tunnel on

7:20 Speaker 2: our closest planetary neighbor.

7:23 Speaker 1: And the really clever part of this story is how

7:25 Speaker 1: they found it. Venus is famously difficult to observe. It's

7:29 Speaker 1: permanently wrapped in thick sulfuric acid clouds that block direct

7:33 Speaker 1: photography of the surface. So the team went back to

7:36 Speaker 1: radar data collected by NASA's Magellan spacecraft between nineteen ninety

7:40 Speaker 1: and nineteen ninety two, data that's over thirty years old.

7:44 Speaker 1: They developed a new imaging technique specifically designed to detect

7:48 Speaker 1: underground conduits near surface collapse features called skylights, and when

7:52 Speaker 1: they applied it to the nix Mons region, named for

7:55 Speaker 1: the Greek goddess of the night, they found it.

7:57 Speaker 2: Now let's talk size for a moment, because, because this

8:00 Speaker 2: thing is enormous, the lava tube is estimated to be

8:03 Speaker 2: around one kilometer wide. That's wider than any lava tube

8:07 Speaker 2: found on Earth, the Moon, or Mars. The roof is

8:10 Speaker 2: at least one hundred and fifty meters thick, the empty

8:13 Speaker 2: void below is at least three hundred and seventy five

8:15 Speaker 2: meters deep, and based on the surrounding terrain analysis, the

8:19 Speaker 2: whole conduit could extend for at least forty five kilometers underground.

8:24 Speaker 1: Forty five kilometers. That's a subterranean highway. And there's an

8:29 Speaker 1: interesting reason it's so big. Venus has lower gravity than

8:33 Speaker 1: Earth and a denser atmosphere, which actually favors the rapid

8:37 Speaker 1: formation of a thick insulating crust on top of lava flows,

8:42 Speaker 1: so the tubes can grow larger and last longer on

8:45 Speaker 1: Venus than elsewhere. The planet with the worst surface conditions

8:49 Speaker 1: in the Solar System might have some remarkably stable real

8:53 Speaker 1: estate underground.

8:54 Speaker 2: This also has really important implications for future Venus missions.

8:58 Speaker 2: Issa's Envisions based craft and NASA's Veritas are both being

9:02 Speaker 2: developed for Venus, and both will carry advanced radar systems

9:06 Speaker 2: capable of doing this kind of subsurface analysis in far

9:10 Speaker 2: greater detail. The team describes this discovery as only the

9:14 Speaker 2: beginning of what could be a long and fascinating research

9:17 Speaker 2: program into Venus's Hidden Geology.

9:20 Speaker 1: And our final story Today takes a delightfully unexpected angle

9:25 Speaker 1: on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. A new paper in

9:29 Speaker 1: the International Journal of Astrobiology by plant biologist Lincoln Ties

9:34 Speaker 1: at UC Santa Cruz argues that if we want to

9:37 Speaker 1: find advanced alien civilizations, we should be looking for exoplanets

9:42 Speaker 1: with large, accessible deposits of coal.

9:45 Speaker 2: Coal, not radio signals, not Dyson spheres. Coal. I genuinely

9:52 Speaker 2: love this, So what's the argument? Tye traces the chain

9:55 Speaker 2: of development that led to us being able to communicate

9:58 Speaker 2: across interstellar distances. On Earth. None of our advanced technology,

10:03 Speaker 2: no steel, no deep fossil fuel extraction, no electricity, no

10:08 Speaker 2: radio telescopes would have been possible without first being able

10:12 Speaker 2: to forge steel, and steel required coal, specifically huge amounts

10:17 Speaker 2: of shallow energy dense coal, like the deposits laid down

10:21 Speaker 2: during the Carboniferous and Permian periods roughly three hundred and

10:25 Speaker 2: thirty to two hundred and sixty million years ago.

10:29 Speaker 1: The paper argues that the same logic should apply to

10:32 Speaker 1: any technological civilization anywhere in the universe. Intelligence isn't enough.

10:38 Speaker 1: Biology isn't enough. You need the geology to match a

10:42 Speaker 1: planet that happened to grow the right kinds of forests

10:45 Speaker 1: at the right time in its history, under the right

10:48 Speaker 1: conditions to bury them and compress them into energy dense

10:52 Speaker 1: coal seams that a curious civilization could then dig up

10:55 Speaker 1: and use to bootstrap and industrial revolution.

10:59 Speaker 2: And the implication for SETI are fascinating. The paper suggests

11:03 Speaker 2: planets in the so called photosynthetic habitable zone, where both

11:07 Speaker 2: liquid water and oxygen producing photosynthesis are possible, might be

11:12 Speaker 2: relatively rare. Even rarer are the planets where all the

11:15 Speaker 2: conditions align. The right star, the right orbit, the right biology,

11:20 Speaker 2: the right geology, and the right timing. Cole doesn't just appear.

11:25 Speaker 2: It requires a very specific sequence of events across hundreds

11:29 Speaker 2: of millions of years.

11:30 Speaker 1: There is also a potential detection angle. An alien industrial

11:35 Speaker 1: revolution would produce atmospheric signatures elevated carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide,

11:41 Speaker 1: nitrogen oxides, so these are theoretically detectable with sufficiently powerful telescopes.

11:48 Speaker 1: The catch, as the paper acknowledges, is that the coal

11:51 Speaker 1: burning phase of any civilization would be relatively brief. We

11:55 Speaker 1: certainly hope it is so. The detection window would be narrow,

11:59 Speaker 1: but it it adds a whole new layer to what

12:01 Speaker 1: we're looking for when we study exoplanet atmospheres.

12:05 Speaker 2: It's also a slightly humbling thought. The reason we can

12:08 Speaker 2: have this conversation, the reason we built the telescopes and

12:11 Speaker 2: the rockets and the radio transmitters, might ultimately come down

12:15 Speaker 2: to a lucky geological accident three hundred million years ago.

12:19 Speaker 2: We happen to live on a planet with a lot

12:21 Speaker 2: of coal in the right places at the right time.

12:24 Speaker 2: Not every world will be so fortunate.

12:27 Speaker 1: And that is your Astronomy Daily for Tuesday, the tenth

12:30 Speaker 1: of February twenty twenty six. From Solar Fireworks and a

12:34 Speaker 1: count down to Launch to Lava Tunnels on Venus, Rewritten

12:39 Speaker 1: Science from Benu and a genuinely thought provoking new take

12:43 Speaker 1: on the search for extraterrestrial life. It's been quite the episode.

12:47 Speaker 2: If you enjoy today's show, please take a moment to

12:49 Speaker 2: leave us a review wherever you listen. It genuinely helps

12:52 Speaker 2: more people find us, and if you want to go

12:54 Speaker 2: deeper on any of today's stories, we have links to

12:57 Speaker 2: all the source articles waiting for you in the show

12:59 Speaker 2: notes at Astronomy Daily dot io.

13:01 Speaker 1: Find us on social media at Astro Daily Pod, and

13:04 Speaker 1: if you've got a question, a story tip, or just

13:06 Speaker 1: want to tell us what you think, we'd love to

13:08 Speaker 1: hear from you. Thanks for listening and we'll see you

13:11 Speaker 1: again tomorrow.

13:11 Speaker 2: I'm Anna and I'm Avery. Keep looking up Sunday, star

13:19 Speaker 2: st star St