Voyager 1 Dying? NASA Powers Down Science Instrument + Life Clues on Mars & Artemis Suit Crisis

0:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to Astronomy Daily, your daily guide to the universe

0:04 Speaker 1: and everything happening in it.

0:06 Speaker 2: I'm Anna and I'm Avery. It is Wednesday, April the

0:10 Speaker 2: twenty second, twenty twenty six, and it is a big

0:14 Speaker 2: day for fans of humanity's most well traveled spacecraft.

0:18 Speaker 1: It really is.

0:19 Speaker 2: Today.

0:19 Speaker 1: We have six stories, ranging from the Bitter Suite to

0:23 Speaker 1: the Thrilling, and two of them touch on Mars in

0:26 Speaker 1: very different ways.

0:27 Speaker 2: We've got a legendary probe fighting for survival, fifteen billion

0:31 Speaker 2: miles away, organic molecules hinting at life on the Red planet,

0:36 Speaker 2: a black hole that makes our sun look like a

0:38 Speaker 2: birthday candle, SpaceX hitting a stunning reusability milestone, a sobering

0:43 Speaker 2: reality check for the Artemis program, and tonight's sky that.

0:48 Speaker 1: Is a full show. Let's get into it, shall we.

0:50 Speaker 2: I'm ready to go.

0:51 Speaker 1: Our lead story today is about a spacecraft that launched

0:55 Speaker 1: before most of our listeners were born and is still

0:58 Speaker 1: against all odds, calling Home.

1:01 Speaker 2: Voyager one, the most distant human made object ever built.

1:06 Speaker 2: Right now, It's more than fifteen billion miles from Earth,

1:09 Speaker 2: so far away that a radio signal takes twenty three

1:12 Speaker 2: hours just to reach it.

1:14 Speaker 1: And on April this seventeenth, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent

1:19 Speaker 1: it a very difficult command. Engineers turned off the low

1:24 Speaker 1: Energy Charged Particles experiment, the LEECP, one of Voyager one's

1:30 Speaker 1: last remaining science instruments.

1:32 Speaker 2: The LACP had been running almost continuously since Voyager one

1:36 Speaker 2: launched in nineteen seventy seven, nearly forty nine years. It

1:40 Speaker 2: measured ions, electrons, and cosmic rays from interstellar space, data

1:45 Speaker 2: that literally no other instrument anywhere in the universe could provide.

1:49 Speaker 1: Though, why turn it off? This short answer is power.

1:53 Speaker 1: Voyager one runs on a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. It converts

1:58 Speaker 1: heat from decaying plutonium into electricity, and that power supply

2:03 Speaker 1: loses about four watts every year.

2:06 Speaker 2: After five decades, that decline has become critical. In late February,

2:11 Speaker 2: during a routine roll maneuver, Voyager once, power levels dropped

2:15 Speaker 2: unexpectedly and the probe came dangerously close to triggering an

2:18 Speaker 2: automatic under voltage fault protection. Basically, the spacecraft would have

2:23 Speaker 2: shut itself down in self preservation mode.

2:26 Speaker 1: That would have triggered a multi day recovery process. From

2:29 Speaker 1: fifteen billion miles away. The team needed to act first,

2:34 Speaker 1: so they made the call switch off the LEECP.

2:37 Speaker 2: It's worth noting this wasn't a panic decision. Years ago,

2:41 Speaker 2: the Voyager science and engineering teams set down together and

2:44 Speaker 2: agreed on an ordered shutdown sequence, which instruments would go

2:48 Speaker 2: offline first, to keep the most scientifically valuable systems running

2:52 Speaker 2: as long as possible. The LCP was next on the list.

2:56 Speaker 1: Of ten original instrument sets on Voyager one, seven are

3:00 Speaker 1: now shut down. Only two remain active, the magnetimeter, which

3:04 Speaker 1: measures interstellar magnetic fields, and the Plasma Waves subsystem, which

3:09 Speaker 1: listens for density changes in the plasma surrounding the spacecraft.

3:13 Speaker 2: There is a sliver of hope on the LCP, though

3:16 Speaker 2: engineers left a tiny motor just half a WoT running

3:20 Speaker 2: inside the instrument. It keeps the sensor able to rotate.

3:24 Speaker 2: The idea is that if engineers can find more power somehow,

3:27 Speaker 2: there's a chance the LACP could switch back on, and.

3:30 Speaker 1: NASA is working on exactly that. The team is developing

3:34 Speaker 1: what they're calling the Big Bang, an ambitious plan to

3:37 Speaker 1: swap out a group of older, power hungry components all

3:41 Speaker 1: at once with lower power alternatives. The goal is to

3:44 Speaker 1: buy the spacecraft significantly more time.

3:47 Speaker 2: They're planning to test a big bang on Voyager two first.

3:50 Speaker 2: It's slightly closer to Earth and has a little more

3:53 Speaker 2: power to spare, so it's the safer test subject. Those

3:56 Speaker 2: tests are scheduled for May and June. If they go well,

4:00 Speaker 2: the same fix will be attempted on Voyager one no

4:02 Speaker 2: sooner than July, and.

4:04 Speaker 1: If it works, there's a chance the LACP comes back online.

4:08 Speaker 1: The ultimate goal is to keep at least one science

4:11 Speaker 1: instrument operating on both Voyagers well into the twenty thirties.

4:15 Speaker 2: So is this the end? Not yet, but it's the

4:18 Speaker 2: beginning of the final chapter. Every day Voyager one drifts

4:22 Speaker 2: a little further into the unknown, still sending back data,

4:25 Speaker 2: still functioning in a region of space no other human

4:28 Speaker 2: made object has ever reached.

4:30 Speaker 1: For context, Voyager one was designed to last five years.

4:34 Speaker 1: It has now been flying for nearly ten times. That

4:37 Speaker 1: whatever the engineers at JPL have to do to keep

4:40 Speaker 1: it going, I think most of us are quietly cheering

4:42 Speaker 1: them on.

4:43 Speaker 2: Absolutely forty nine years, still out there, still talking to us.

4:48 Speaker 1: Our second story today takes us to Mars and to

4:52 Speaker 1: a discovery that's making astrobiologists sit up very straight.

4:56 Speaker 2: Indeed, NASA's Curiosity rover has just published the results of

5:00 Speaker 2: a chemistry experiment that had never been attempted on another

5:03 Speaker 2: planet before, and what it found is genuinely remarkable.

5:07 Speaker 1: Published yesterday in the journal Nature Communications, the study describes

5:11 Speaker 1: how Curiosity used a chemical called tetra methyl ammonium hydroxide

5:16 Speaker 1: TMAH to break apart larger organic molecules in Martian rock samples.

5:22 Speaker 1: The idea was to reduce complex compounds into something that

5:25 Speaker 1: rovers instruments could actually read, and.

5:28 Speaker 2: The results more than twenty distinct organic molecules, including several

5:33 Speaker 2: that had never been confirmed on Mars before, among them

5:36 Speaker 2: a nitrogen bearing molecule whose structure resembles a precursor of DNA,

5:41 Speaker 2: the first time anything like that has been found on

5:44 Speaker 2: the Martian surface.

5:45 Speaker 1: Curiosity also detected benzothiophine, a large, double ringed sulfurous compound

5:50 Speaker 1: that's commonly found in meteorites and asteroids, which raises an

5:54 Speaker 1: interesting question about where all this organic chemistry actually came from.

5:59 Speaker 2: That's the crucial and scientists are being very careful to

6:02 Speaker 2: flag it. This experiment cannot tell us whether these molecules

6:06 Speaker 2: came from ancient Martian life, from geological processes on the planet,

6:10 Speaker 2: or from meteorites that rained down billions of years ago.

6:13 Speaker 2: The chemistry looks similar in all three cases.

6:16 Speaker 1: Mead researcher Amy Williams put it this way, the same

6:20 Speaker 1: stuff that rained down on Mars for meteorites, is what

6:22 Speaker 1: rained down on Earth, and it probably provided the building

6:25 Speaker 1: blocks for life as we know it on our planet.

6:28 Speaker 1: So even the most conservative interpretation is pretty profound.

6:32 Speaker 2: What the experiment does confirm strongly is that complex organic

6:36 Speaker 2: molecules can be preserved in the Martian subsurface for over

6:40 Speaker 2: three and a half billion years. That's huge. It means

6:44 Speaker 2: Mars can hold on to the kinds of chemical signatures

6:46 Speaker 2: that could tell us whether life ever lived there.

6:49 Speaker 1: The samples were taken from the Glen Torden region of

6:51 Speaker 1: Gale Crater, an area rich in clay minerals that scientists

6:55 Speaker 1: believe was once a lakebed. Those clays are particularly good

6:59 Speaker 1: at locking in and preserving organic compounds over geological time scales.

7:04 Speaker 2: And the timing matters for future missions too. The Rosalind

7:07 Speaker 2: Franklin rover that European Space Agency's Mars mission carries a

7:11 Speaker 2: longer drill than Curiosity and will bring TMAH experiments of

7:15 Speaker 2: its own. Dragonfly heading to Saturn's moon Titan will carry

7:19 Speaker 2: similar chemistry. Curiosity has effectively proven the technique works on

7:23 Speaker 2: another world.

7:25 Speaker 1: The Mars sample return mission, which would have brought Martian

7:28 Speaker 1: rocks back to Earth for definitive analysis, has effectively been

7:31 Speaker 1: canceled under the current US administration, so the path to

7:35 Speaker 1: a definitive answer has narrowed, but the evidence is still accumulating.

7:39 Speaker 2: Building blocks of life preserved for three and a half

7:42 Speaker 2: billion years on Mars. That's not a smoking gun, but

7:46 Speaker 2: it's a very interesting set of footprints.

7:49 Speaker 1: Now from the edge of our Solar system and the

7:51 Speaker 1: surface of Mars, we're going somewhere truly wild. Story three

7:55 Speaker 1: is about black holes and a measurement that scientists have

7:58 Speaker 1: been trying to pin down for decades.

8:01 Speaker 2: Researchers led by Curtain University in Australia have published the

8:04 Speaker 2: new study in Nature Astronomy that directly measures for the

8:08 Speaker 2: first time the instantaneous power of jets erupting from a

8:12 Speaker 2: black hole.

8:13 Speaker 1: The black hole in question is Signus X one, one

8:17 Speaker 1: of the most famous systems in the sky. It was

8:20 Speaker 1: the first black hole ever confirmed, and it sits about

8:23 Speaker 1: sixty one hundred light years away. It has a mass

8:27 Speaker 1: around twenty one times that of our Sun, and it

8:30 Speaker 1: orbits a massive blue, super giant companion star.

8:34 Speaker 2: The jets coming off this black hole are extraordinary. The

8:38 Speaker 2: study found. They carry energy equivalent to the output of

8:41 Speaker 2: ten thousand suns, and they travel at roughly half the

8:45 Speaker 2: speed of light, about one hundred and fifty thousand kilometers

8:48 Speaker 2: per second.

8:49 Speaker 1: What's especially elegant about how this measurement was made is

8:53 Speaker 1: that the team used the companion star as a kind

8:56 Speaker 1: of natural instrument. As the black hole or orbits its companion,

9:01 Speaker 1: the star's powerful stellar winds pushed the jets sideways, bending

9:06 Speaker 1: them like a strong gust bending water from a fountain.

9:10 Speaker 2: By measuring how strong those stellar winds were and observing

9:14 Speaker 2: precisely how much the jets were deflected, the researchers could

9:17 Speaker 2: calculate the jets' real time power for the first time ever.

9:21 Speaker 2: Previous estimates had only been able to average jet energy

9:25 Speaker 2: over thousands or even millions of years.

9:28 Speaker 1: They called these the dancing jets because the direction of

9:32 Speaker 1: the jets shifts as the black hole and star move

9:35 Speaker 1: around each other in their orbit. It's a beautiful image, actually,

9:39 Speaker 1: this immense destructive force dancing.

9:42 Speaker 2: The finding also confirmed something furious have long assumed but

9:46 Speaker 2: never proven directly, that roughly ten percent of the energy

9:50 Speaker 2: released as matter falls into the black hole is carried

9:53 Speaker 2: away by the jets. That number has been baked into

9:56 Speaker 2: cosmological models for years now, it has actual observational.

10:00 Speaker 1: Backing, and the implications go well beyond just signus x one.

10:06 Speaker 1: The physics around black holes scales consistently, so a measurement

10:10 Speaker 1: from a black hole twenty one times the mass of

10:13 Speaker 1: our Sun can anchor our understanding of black holes millions

10:17 Speaker 1: or even billions times more massive the one sitting at

10:21 Speaker 1: the hearts of entire galaxies.

10:23 Speaker 2: There's also a lovely Australian connection here. The Square Kilometer

10:28 Speaker 2: Array Observatory, currently under construction in Western Australia and South Africa,

10:33 Speaker 2: is expected to detect black hole jets from millions of

10:37 Speaker 2: distant galaxies. This new measurement gives scientists the calibration point

10:42 Speaker 2: they'll need to interpret all of that future data.

10:45 Speaker 1: Ten thousand suns dancing half the steed of light. I

10:51 Speaker 1: love this.

10:51 Speaker 2: Job, fame every day, just Before we.

10:55 Speaker 1: Head into our next story about another SpaceX record, I'd

10:59 Speaker 1: like to take a moment to remind you to check

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11:26 Speaker 1: today and secure your online life. Okay, Avery back to you.

11:30 Speaker 2: Story four is a milestone that would have seemed like

11:33 Speaker 2: science fiction just a decade ago. On Sunday, the nineteenth

11:37 Speaker 2: of April, SpaceX completed its six hundred successful landing of

11:41 Speaker 2: an orbital class rocket booster DIX hundred.

11:45 Speaker 1: The landing happened during a Starlink mission from Vandenberg Space

11:49 Speaker 1: Force Base in California. The Starlink seventeen to twenty two

11:53 Speaker 1: mission carrying twenty five broadband satellites into low Earth orbit.

11:58 Speaker 2: The booster, involved B one zero OWN ninety seven, was

12:01 Speaker 2: making its eighth flight. It came back down and touched

12:04 Speaker 2: down perfectly on the drone ship, of course, I still

12:07 Speaker 2: love you in the Pacific Ocean. The six hundred recovery

12:11 Speaker 2: as routine as it gets.

12:13 Speaker 1: What makes that number extraordinary is the pace at which

12:16 Speaker 1: it's arrived. Bacex hit five hundred landings in September twenty

12:20 Speaker 1: twenty five. That means the jump from five hundred to

12:23 Speaker 1: six hundred took just seven months. Booster recovery has gone

12:27 Speaker 1: from an audacious experiment to a production line operation.

12:32 Speaker 2: And SpaceX Vice president of Launch Kiko Danchev confirmed the

12:36 Speaker 2: breakdown on social media. Four hundred and ninety six of

12:40 Speaker 2: those six hundred landings have been on autonomous drone ships

12:43 Speaker 2: at sea, and one hundred and four on solid ground

12:46 Speaker 2: that landing zones.

12:48 Speaker 1: And remember where this all started. The very first successful

12:52 Speaker 1: Falcon nine land landing was in December twenty fifteen. The

12:55 Speaker 1: first drone ship landing followed in April twenty sixteen. SESS

13:00 Speaker 1: rates since then has climbed to essentially one hundred percent.

13:04 Speaker 2: Reusing the most expensive part of the rocket, the first stage,

13:08 Speaker 2: has transformed the economics of getting to orbit. Each refurbished

13:12 Speaker 2: booster saves tens of millions of dollars and allows SpaceX

13:16 Speaker 2: to maintain a launch cadence that no one else can match,

13:19 Speaker 2: and all of.

13:20 Speaker 1: That expertise feeds directly into Starship, the massive vehicle designed

13:24 Speaker 1: to eventually carry humans to the Moon and Mars. The

13:28 Speaker 1: six hundred landings aren't just a number, They're a foundation.

13:32 Speaker 2: Dix hundred congrats to the SpaceX team.

13:36 Speaker 1: Story five brings us back to the Artemis program, and

13:39 Speaker 1: we're still glowing from the success of Artemis two, which

13:42 Speaker 1: returned safely to Earth just twelve days ago. But today's

13:46 Speaker 1: story is a sobering companion to that triumph.

13:49 Speaker 2: Because even as the program celebrates getting humans further from

13:53 Speaker 2: Earth than anyone has been since Apollo, a significant problem

13:57 Speaker 2: is quietly growing on the ground, and it centers on

14:01 Speaker 2: something that might sound mundane, the space suits.

14:04 Speaker 1: Bassa's Office of Inspector General released a report on Monday,

14:08 Speaker 1: the twentieth of April, and it makes for uncomfortable reading.

14:12 Speaker 1: The central finding the next generation spacesuits that astronauts are

14:17 Speaker 1: supposed to wear on the lunar surface during Artemis three,

14:21 Speaker 1: the actual moon landing may not be ready until twenty

14:25 Speaker 1: thirty one or later, which.

14:27 Speaker 2: Would be three years after the twenty twenty eight target

14:30 Speaker 2: date that NASA leadership is still publicly defending.

14:34 Speaker 1: The suits are being developed under a program called Exploration

14:37 Speaker 1: extra Vehicular Activity Services EXVA. NASA originally selected two companies,

14:45 Speaker 1: Axiom Space building the lunar surface suit and Collins Aerospace

14:49 Speaker 1: building a microgravity suit for the ISS.

14:53 Speaker 2: Collins is effectively out. According to the OIG report, Collins

14:57 Speaker 2: began missing milestones within about a year of its contract award.

15:01 Speaker 2: It completed its preliminary design review a full year late

15:05 Speaker 2: before NASA and Collins agreed to descope and wind down

15:08 Speaker 2: the contract. Collins had actually received an excellent rating during

15:12 Speaker 2: the proposal process, despite concerns NASA program managers already had

15:17 Speaker 2: about the company's existing spacesuit work. The OIG was not

15:21 Speaker 2: flattering about that source selection.

15:24 Speaker 1: So Axiom Space is now the sole contractor building the

15:27 Speaker 1: suit intended for the lunar surface, and the OIG's math

15:31 Speaker 1: on that situation is star.

15:33 Speaker 2: Looking at comparable NASA human space flight programs, commercial cargo,

15:38 Speaker 2: commercial crew, Orion the Space launch System, the average time

15:42 Speaker 2: from contract award to first test flight has been eight

15:46 Speaker 2: point seven years. Axiom's EXVA contract was awarded in twenty

15:51 Speaker 2: twenty two.

15:52 Speaker 1: Apply that historical average and first flight lands in twenty

15:56 Speaker 1: thirty one. The OIG was careful to say it isn't

15:59 Speaker 1: formally predicting that outcome, but it also said the projection

16:03 Speaker 1: was more realistic than the original schedule. In auditor language,

16:07 Speaker 1: that's pretty pointed.

16:09 Speaker 2: NASA administrator Jared Isaacmanh pushed back on April twentieth, posting

16:13 Speaker 2: on social media that NASA is inserting its own subject

16:17 Speaker 2: matter experts directly into Axiom's development work and is confident

16:21 Speaker 2: the suits will be ready for a twenty twenty eight

16:23 Speaker 2: lunar landing. Axiom has said it plans to test the

16:26 Speaker 2: suit in twenty twenty six, either on the ISS or

16:30 Speaker 2: during an Artemis related mission.

16:32 Speaker 1: The OIG's response, essentially is that a demonstration suit and

16:36 Speaker 1: a crew rated lunar surface suit are very different things,

16:40 Speaker 1: and the gap between them is measured in years, not months,

16:43 Speaker 1: and the.

16:44 Speaker 2: Problem doesn't stop at the Moon. The ISS version of

16:47 Speaker 2: Axiom suit also slips past twenty thirty. NASA faces a

16:51 Speaker 2: scenario where the space station literally runs out of operational

16:55 Speaker 2: spacesuits before replacement is certified. The current EMU suits are

16:59 Speaker 2: decades and there's a hard deadline the ISS is being

17:03 Speaker 2: decommissioned at the end of this decade.

17:05 Speaker 1: The OIG report also notes that the spacesuit delay sits

17:09 Speaker 1: within a broader context of Artemis three schedule pressure. A

17:13 Speaker 1: separate report from March found SpaceX's lunar starship Lander at

17:17 Speaker 1: least two years behind schedule and Blue Origins Blue Moonlander

17:21 Speaker 1: at least eight months late.

17:23 Speaker 2: Every component of Artemis three rocket, capsule, Lander, spacesuit is

17:28 Speaker 2: on its own delayed schedule. The critical path isn't any

17:32 Speaker 2: single element, It's whichever one finishes last.

17:35 Speaker 1: That's the uncomfortable reality. Artemis two was a genuine triumph,

17:39 Speaker 1: and we should celebrate it. But the road to boots

17:42 Speaker 1: on the Moon is still longer and bumpier than the

17:44 Speaker 1: official timeline suggests.

17:46 Speaker 2: We'll keep watching it, and we'll keep reporting it.

17:49 Speaker 1: And we'll finish tonight with something much more immediate and

17:52 Speaker 1: much more beautiful. Story six is your skywatching alert for this.

17:56 Speaker 2: Evening tonight, Wednesday, April twenty second up after sunset, and

18:01 Speaker 2: you'll be treated to a lovely conjunction. The half moon

18:04 Speaker 2: is sitting just three degrees away from Jupiter, with the

18:07 Speaker 2: pair framed beneath the twin stars. Castor and Polyx in

18:11 Speaker 2: the constellation Gemini.

18:12 Speaker 1: Three degrees is close enough that you can cover both

18:15 Speaker 1: with a width of three fingers held at arm's length

18:18 Speaker 1: with the naked eye. It's a beautiful pairing two of

18:21 Speaker 1: the brightest objects in the sky side by side, and

18:24 Speaker 1: if you.

18:25 Speaker 2: Have binoculars, even better. You should be able to pick

18:28 Speaker 2: out Jupiter's four Galilean moons as tiny dots flanking the

18:31 Speaker 2: planet Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto in a little line.

18:36 Speaker 1: For our listeners in the southern hemisphere, you'll find a

18:39 Speaker 1: pair in the northwestern sky after dark, tracing their arc

18:42 Speaker 1: toward the horizon through the evening. The further south you are,

18:45 Speaker 1: the shorter the viewing window, so don't wait too long.

18:49 Speaker 2: A half moon is actually a pretty good time for

18:51 Speaker 2: this kind of observation. It's bright enough to make a

18:54 Speaker 2: dramatic visual companion, but not so overwhelmingly bright that it

18:57 Speaker 2: washes out everything nearby.

19:00 Speaker 1: Step outside tonight, look northwest after sunset, and say hello

19:04 Speaker 1: to Jupiter. It's been the standout planet of the season,

19:07 Speaker 1: and it's still putting on a show.

19:09 Speaker 2: That's all for today's edition of Astronomy Daily, Season five,

19:12 Speaker 2: episode ninety. Thank you so much for listening.

19:15 Speaker 1: If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe wherever you get

19:18 Speaker 1: your podcasts and leave us a rating or review. It

19:21 Speaker 1: genuinely helps new listeners find us.

19:24 Speaker 2: You can find us at Astronomydaily dot io and on

19:26 Speaker 2: social media at astro Daily Pod on all the major platforms.

19:30 Speaker 1: For Avery, I'm anna, We'll see you tomorrow.

19:33 Speaker 2: Clear Skies, everyone, Sunny Day. Start Starz