The Rotten-Egg Planet, RBFLOAT's Secret Origin & Goddard's 100-Year Mystery

0:00 Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Astronomy Daily.

0:03 Speaker 2: I'm Anna and I'm Avery. It's Tuesday, the seventeenth of

0:07 Speaker 2: March twenty twenty six, and we are back with your

0:10 Speaker 2: daily dose of everything happening in space and astronomy.

0:13 Speaker 1: Another big show today, Avery, New planets that would knock

0:17 Speaker 1: you off your feet with the stench, a cosmic radio

0:21 Speaker 1: flash breaking every record in the books, and a mystery

0:24 Speaker 1: that's been sitting unsolved for one hundred years.

0:28 Speaker 2: Exactly one hundred years. You love an anniversary. Let's get

0:32 Speaker 2: straight into it.

0:33 Speaker 1: Our first story is one that is genuinely extraordinary and

0:37 Speaker 1: slightly revolting. Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have

0:42 Speaker 1: identified a planet that doesn't fit into any category we've

0:45 Speaker 1: had before, and if you could somehow smell its atmosphere,

0:49 Speaker 1: you'd wish you hadn't.

0:51 Speaker 2: That is a sentence I was not expecting to say today.

0:54 Speaker 2: Tell me everything.

0:55 Speaker 1: So the planet is called L ninety eight fifty nine D.

0:59 Speaker 1: It orbits as small red dwarf star about thirty five

1:02 Speaker 1: light years from Earth, which in astronomical terms, is genuinely

1:06 Speaker 1: close to us. It's about one point six times the

1:09 Speaker 1: size of Earth on the surface. It sounds fairly ordinary.

1:12 Speaker 2: But it's not ordinary at all? Is it?

1:15 Speaker 3: Not?

1:15 Speaker 1: At all? When researchers from the University of Oxford looked

1:18 Speaker 1: at the data from JWST alongside ground based telescopes, they

1:23 Speaker 1: found two extremely strange things. First, the planet has an

1:28 Speaker 1: astonishingly low density for its size. Second, its atmosphere is

1:32 Speaker 1: loaded with hydrogen sulfide, which, for anyone who needs a reminder,

1:36 Speaker 1: is the compound responsible for the smell of rotten eggs.

1:40 Speaker 2: Soh, the whole place stinks, got it? Well?

1:43 Speaker 1: The whole place is also a magma ocean. Their models

1:47 Speaker 1: suggest L ninety eight fifty nine D has a permanent

1:51 Speaker 1: global ocean of molten rock on its surface, and that

1:54 Speaker 1: magma ocean acts as a massive reservoir, soaking up and

1:58 Speaker 1: slowly releasing sulfur cons into the atmosphere over billions of years.

2:03 Speaker 2: Okay, so when you say ocean, you don't mean.

2:06 Speaker 1: Water, absolutely not molten rock. Imagine standing on a world

2:11 Speaker 1: where the sea is lava and the air smells like

2:14 Speaker 1: a volcanic vent. That's this planet.

2:17 Speaker 2: Hard pass But scientifically this is.

2:20 Speaker 1: Huge, right, It really is, Because this planet doesn't fit

2:24 Speaker 1: into either of the two boxes. Astronomers have used for

2:27 Speaker 1: small worlds. It's not a gas dwarf with a hydrogen

2:30 Speaker 1: heavy atmosphere, and it's not a water world covered in

2:33 Speaker 1: oceans and ice. It's something else entirely weed researcher doctor

2:38 Speaker 1: Harrison Nichols from Oxford said, and I love this quote

2:42 Speaker 1: that it makes us ask what other types of planets

2:45 Speaker 1: are waving to be uncovered.

2:47 Speaker 2: The universe just keeps surprising us.

2:49 Speaker 1: Every single week. The paper was published on the sixteenth

2:53 Speaker 1: of March in the journal Nature Astronomy, so literally yesterday,

2:57 Speaker 1: Science will have the link in the show notes.

3:00 Speaker 3: Story two. And this one's a genuine radio astronomy landmark.

3:04 Speaker 3: Scientists have identified the brightest fast radio burst ever recorded,

3:07 Speaker 3: and for the first time they've pinpointed exactly where it

3:11 Speaker 3: came from.

3:12 Speaker 1: And they gave it a brilliant name.

3:14 Speaker 2: They called it RB float Radio brightest flash of all time,

3:19 Speaker 2: which is simultaneously very science y and very.

3:22 Speaker 1: Extra Love the confidence of that name. So what is

3:26 Speaker 1: a fast radio burst? For anyone who needs a refresher.

3:29 Speaker 2: A fast radio burst or FRB is a flash of

3:32 Speaker 2: radio energy that lasts just milliseconds a thousandth of a second,

3:37 Speaker 2: but in that blink, it can briefly outshine every single

3:40 Speaker 2: radio source in its entire galaxy. They've been baffling astronomers

3:44 Speaker 2: since the first one was spotted in two thousand and seven.

3:47 Speaker 2: Nobody knows for certain what causes them, and until recently,

3:51 Speaker 2: pinpointing their exact origin in space has been essentially impossible.

3:55 Speaker 1: So what changed.

3:56 Speaker 2: An upgraded version of the Chime telescope in British Columbia,

4:00 Speaker 2: which now has what they call outriggers, smaller companion telescopes

4:04 Speaker 2: placed at different sites across North America and California and

4:08 Speaker 2: West Virginia. Together they act like a continent sized telescope

4:12 Speaker 2: with extraordinary precision.

4:14 Speaker 1: And that's how they caught RB float exactly.

4:18 Speaker 2: The burts came from a spiral galaxy called NGC forty

4:22 Speaker 2: one forty one, just one hundred and thirty million light

4:25 Speaker 2: years away, which for an FRB is essentially our cosmic backyard.

4:30 Speaker 2: The team at McGill University described the localization precision as

4:35 Speaker 2: being equivalent to spotting a coin from one hundred kilometers away.

4:39 Speaker 2: They trace it to a region just forty five light

4:42 Speaker 2: years across, smaller than an average star cluster on the

4:46 Speaker 2: outer edge of a star forming region in that galaxy,

4:49 Speaker 2: and then JWST got involved. It did because having the

4:54 Speaker 2: precise location meant they could point JWST at that exact

4:59 Speaker 2: spot when they found something unexpected, a faint infrared signal

5:04 Speaker 2: right where RB float came from. Scientists are still working

5:08 Speaker 2: out what it is, possibly a red giant star, possibly

5:11 Speaker 2: a fading light echo from the burst itself.

5:15 Speaker 1: The mystery within the mystery.

5:17 Speaker 2: And here's the other thing that's got researchers thinking RB

5:21 Speaker 2: float hasn't repeated. Most well studied FRBs do repeat. This

5:27 Speaker 2: one fired off and went silent, which challenges the idea

5:32 Speaker 2: that all fast radio bursts come from the same type

5:35 Speaker 2: of source.

5:36 Speaker 1: This really does feel like a new era for FRB science.

5:40 Speaker 2: That's exactly what the team said. The full papers are

5:42 Speaker 2: in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Link is in the notes.

5:46 Speaker 1: Story three and this is perfectly timed because it's happening

5:49 Speaker 1: tomorrow and you can watch it live. Two NASA astronauts

5:53 Speaker 1: are stepping outside the International Space Station for the first

5:56 Speaker 1: spacewalk of twenty twenty six.

5:58 Speaker 2: I love a spacewalk story. Who's going out?

6:01 Speaker 1: NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, who is on her second spaceflight

6:05 Speaker 1: and her fourth EVA, and alongside her Chris Williams, who

6:09 Speaker 1: is heading outside for the very first time. This will

6:12 Speaker 1: be his debut spacewalk.

6:14 Speaker 2: That is such a special moment, your first time in

6:17 Speaker 2: the vacuum of space with nothing between you and the

6:19 Speaker 2: universe but a suit.

6:21 Speaker 1: They exit the Quest airlock at around eight in the

6:24 Speaker 1: morning Eastern Time on Wednesday the eighteenth, so tomorrow morning,

6:27 Speaker 1: and they're expected to be outside for around six and

6:30 Speaker 1: a half hours.

6:31 Speaker 2: And what's the job.

6:33 Speaker 1: They're installing a modification kit and rooting cables on the

6:36 Speaker 1: port side of the station to prepare the two to

6:38 Speaker 1: a power channel for a future upgrade. The station is

6:41 Speaker 1: getting additional rollout solar arrays the i rosas, which will

6:45 Speaker 1: boost its power generation capacity tomorrow. Spacewalk is the preparation

6:49 Speaker 1: work that makes that future installation possible.

6:53 Speaker 2: So this is kind of like doing the electrical rough

6:55 Speaker 2: end before you can install the solar panels on your

6:57 Speaker 2: house roof.

6:58 Speaker 1: That's actually a perfect analogy. And this is historically significant too.

7:03 Speaker 1: It's the two hundred and seventy eighth spacewalk in support

7:06 Speaker 1: of station assembly, maintenance and upgrades. A number that really

7:10 Speaker 1: puts into perspective just how much human labor has gone

7:13 Speaker 1: into building and running the ISS over the decades.

7:16 Speaker 2: How can people watch?

7:17 Speaker 1: DASA is carrying live coverage from six point thirty in

7:20 Speaker 1: the morning Eastern on Nasaplus, Amazon Prime Video, and the

7:24 Speaker 1: NASA YouTube channel. We'll have the direct link in the

7:26 Speaker 1: show notes.

7:27 Speaker 2: Thirty four, and we're heading to Mars. New research is

7:31 Speaker 2: suggesting that Mars was habitable for much longer than scientists

7:34 Speaker 2: had previously thought, and the Curiosity rover is right now

7:38 Speaker 2: investigating some strange features that could tell us a lot

7:41 Speaker 2: more about the planet's watery past.

7:43 Speaker 1: Mars keeps giving us surprises.

7:45 Speaker 2: It really does, so there are two threads to this.

7:49 Speaker 2: The first is new research published this week suggesting that

7:52 Speaker 2: hidden water may have persisted beneath the Martian surface far

7:56 Speaker 2: later in the planet's history than current models suggest. Scientists

8:01 Speaker 2: studying ancient sand dunes in Gale Crater, which is where

8:04 Speaker 2: Curiosity has been operating for years, have found evidence that

8:08 Speaker 2: liquid water was present and active much more recently than

8:12 Speaker 2: the standard timeline.

8:13 Speaker 1: Which extends the window during which life could potentially have

8:16 Speaker 1: existed on Mars exactly.

8:19 Speaker 2: And then separately curiosity has been investigating something that looks

8:22 Speaker 2: genuinely strange on the surface. These formations that scientists are

8:26 Speaker 2: describing as spiderweb ridges, their box work structures, intricate networks

8:32 Speaker 2: of raised lines that likely formed when minerals crystallize inside

8:35 Speaker 2: cracks in ancient rock that was once saturated with groundwater.

8:40 Speaker 1: So they're essentially fossilized water works.

8:43 Speaker 2: That's a beautiful way of putting it. The boxwork ridges

8:46 Speaker 2: are fascinating because they preserve a record of where water

8:50 Speaker 2: was moving through the rock, which could tell us about

8:52 Speaker 2: the chemistry of that ancient water, how long it was there,

8:55 Speaker 2: and whether the conditions were right for microbial life.

8:58 Speaker 1: And curiosity still going strong after all these years.

9:02 Speaker 2: Bill exploring, still sciencing. The links to both the water

9:06 Speaker 2: research and the box work story are in the show notes.

9:09 Speaker 1: Story five, and this one has a wonderful anniversary angle

9:13 Speaker 1: plus a genuine unsolved mystery that has been sitting there

9:16 Speaker 1: for exactly one hundred years.

9:18 Speaker 2: Tell me the mystery first.

9:20 Speaker 1: Yesterday, the sixteenth of March twenty twenty six, marked exactly

9:24 Speaker 1: one hundred years since Robert Goddard launched the world's first

9:27 Speaker 1: liquid fueled rocket. He did it in a snowy field

9:30 Speaker 1: on a farm in Auburn, Massachusetts, owned by his aunt.

9:34 Speaker 1: The rocket flew for two and a half seconds. It

9:37 Speaker 1: reached an altitude of forty one feet and traveled one

9:40 Speaker 1: hundred and eighty four feet sideways before coming back to earth.

9:43 Speaker 2: Not impressive by modern standards.

9:45 Speaker 1: But absolutely revolutionary. The rocket was fueled by liquid oxygen

9:50 Speaker 1: and gasoline. Goddard had proved that liquid propulsion worked, and

9:54 Speaker 1: that was the essential breakthrough that would eventually lead to

9:57 Speaker 1: the V two, the Saturn five, and the In nine

10:00 Speaker 1: rockets launching from Cape Canaveral today.

10:03 Speaker 2: So what's the mystery.

10:04 Speaker 1: The rocket's name was Nell, and nobody knows where Nell

10:08 Speaker 1: is today. The original rocket, the actual hardware that flew

10:12 Speaker 1: on March sixteenth, nineteen twenty six, was gathered up from

10:15 Speaker 1: the snow by Goddard, put back in his vehicle, and

10:18 Speaker 1: taken to his laboratory. He didn't preserve it as a

10:21 Speaker 1: historic artifact. He didn't have much money at the time,

10:24 Speaker 1: and he simply reused what he could.

10:26 Speaker 2: He didn't know he just changed history.

10:29 Speaker 1: Well, he knew he'd done something important, but he was

10:32 Speaker 1: also incredibly secretive. He didn't even tell people publicly about

10:36 Speaker 1: the flight for ten years. This Smithsonian has what is

10:39 Speaker 1: believed to be Nell's nozzle. It was incorporated into the

10:42 Speaker 1: successor rocket, the May nineteen twenty six version, which survives

10:47 Speaker 1: at the National Air and Space Museum, but the rest

10:50 Speaker 1: of Nell scattered, reused, or lost.

10:53 Speaker 2: So the rocket that launched the space Age is just gone.

10:57 Speaker 1: It's one of space history's great missing artifact. Celebrations took

11:01 Speaker 1: place at Goddard's original launch site, which is now the

11:04 Speaker 1: ninth hole of a golf course by the way, with

11:06 Speaker 1: one hundred scale model rockets launched in his honor. NASA, AIAA,

11:12 Speaker 1: Blue Origin, and a whole host of organizations have been

11:15 Speaker 1: marking the centennial.

11:16 Speaker 2: Robert Goddard's wife, Esther, also deserves a mention here.

11:20 Speaker 1: She absolutely does. She was there that day, she operated

11:23 Speaker 1: the camera that took the only photographs of the launch,

11:26 Speaker 1: and she was instrumental in documenting and preserving Goddard's work

11:29 Speaker 1: throughout his life. The anniversary coverage has rightly been celebrating

11:33 Speaker 1: both of them.

11:34 Speaker 2: Happy hundred now wherever you.

11:36 Speaker 1: Are, Indeed, happy one hundred.

11:38 Speaker 2: And our final story today is one of those technical

11:41 Speaker 2: breakthroughs that sounds technical but has some genuinely exciting implications

11:45 Speaker 2: for the future of space exploration. Researchers from MIT, Miterer

11:50 Speaker 2: Corporation and Sandia National Laboratories have published the paper in

11:54 Speaker 2: Nature describing a new kind of chip that could fundamentally

11:57 Speaker 2: change how spacecraft communicate and navigate.

12:01 Speaker 1: This is the photonic chip story, right. I've been looking

12:04 Speaker 1: forward to this one.

12:05 Speaker 2: It is so here's the context. One of the heaviest

12:08 Speaker 2: and most power hungry components on any spacecraft has traditionally

12:12 Speaker 2: been its optical and communications hardware, specifically the bulky mechanical

12:17 Speaker 2: mirror systems used for light ar and free space laser communications.

12:21 Speaker 2: Every gram matters when you're launching something into space.

12:25 Speaker 1: The whole size, weight and power problem exactly.

12:29 Speaker 2: Engineers call it swap, and what this team has done

12:32 Speaker 2: is replace those heavy mechanical mirrors with an optical phase

12:36 Speaker 2: array on a single chip. It's essentially a silicon photonics

12:40 Speaker 2: device that can steer laser beams electronically with no moving

12:43 Speaker 2: parts at all.

12:45 Speaker 1: No moving parts. That's significant in a spacecraft context.

12:49 Speaker 2: Hugely significant moving parts wear out, moving parts fail in

12:53 Speaker 2: the cold and radiation of space. A chip with no

12:56 Speaker 2: moving parts that can do the same job, is lighter,

13:00 Speaker 2: more reliable, and uses far less power. The implications for lightar,

13:04 Speaker 2: which is used for things like landing on other worlds,

13:07 Speaker 2: mapping terrain, and docking, are substantial, and for laser communications

13:12 Speaker 2: between spacecraft and back to Earth. This could enable much

13:15 Speaker 2: faster data transfer on much smaller platforms.

13:18 Speaker 1: So future missions, including small satellites, lunar landers, maybe even

13:23 Speaker 1: Mars missions could carry this technology.

13:26 Speaker 2: That's exactly the vision. The paper was published in Nature,

13:29 Speaker 2: and the team describes it as a potentially fundamental shift

13:32 Speaker 2: in spacecraft optical design. We'll have the full link in

13:36 Speaker 2: the show notes.

13:36 Speaker 1: That is everything for today's Astronomy Daily six stories covering

13:40 Speaker 1: everything from magma oceans and missing rockets to record breaking

13:44 Speaker 1: radio bursts and spacewalks. Happening tomorrow morning.

13:48 Speaker 2: If you want to watch Jessica Meyer and Chris Williams

13:50 Speaker 2: step Outside the ISS, set your alarm. Coverage starts at

13:54 Speaker 2: six point thirty Eastern on NASA Plus and YouTube. We'll

13:58 Speaker 2: have the link waiting for you in the show notes.

14:00 Speaker 1: And if today's episode got you excited about space, please

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