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

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Space Center in Florida, bags packed suits ready, waiting for

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the weather to cooperate. SpaceX Crew twelve is almost go

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and the countdown is very much on.

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

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on a show plus a lava tunnel. The size of

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a city has just been confirmed under the clouds of Venus,

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and the tiny teethpoon of asteroid dust has just rewritten

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the story of how life's ingredients form in space. Good morning,

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good evening wherever you are in the world, and welcome

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to Astronomy Daily. I'm anna and I'm avery. Let's get

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into it.

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

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ISS is shorthanded right now and NASA wants to fix

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that as soon as possible. The SpaceX Crew twelve mission

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has been pushed back once again, this time to know

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earlier than Thursday, February twelfth, at fight in the morning

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Eastern Time. The culprit weather along the crew Dragon's flight path.

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

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wave off the Wednesday window entirely. Conditions are expected to

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improve Thursday but Friday the thirteenth is also being kept

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as a backup, so we're in a holding pattern, but

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a short one hopefully.

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

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this is a really international team. Commanding the mission is

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NASA astronaut Jack Hathaway, his first spaceflight command pilot seat

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goes to the brilliant Jessica Meyer, who's no stranger to

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the ISS. Then you've got Sophie at a Knot representing

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the European Space Agency this is her first spaceflight, and

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Ross Cosmos cosmonaut Andre Fejev completing the quartet.

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

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a fascinating spacecraft. This will be Freedom's fifth flight, returning

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after a whopping five hundred and one day turnaround since

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crew nine. And here's something they'll watch for at launch.

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This mission will mark the very first use of Landing

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Zone forty, a brand new landing pad built right inside

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the SLC forty complex itself. So the booster is going

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to launch and then come back and land right next door.

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That's wild.

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

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rotation different from the usual six months is the expected duration.

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Because of Crew eleven's early medical evacuation back in January,

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Crew twelve is expected to stay for eight to nine months,

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longer than a typical stay. The ISS needs the staffing,

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and this crew is ready, and.

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

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The launch manifest is absolutely stacked. Right now. We have

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ULA's Vulcan rocket going up with USSF eighty seven, a

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pair of satellite surveillance for the US Space Force. Then

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there's the first Arion six four launch, which will carry

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thirty two Amazon Kuiper Internet satellites that's Starling's main competitor,

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by the way, plus a Russian Proton m and surprise, surprise,

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multiple Starlink missions. It is genuinely one of the busiest

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launch weeks we've seen in a while.

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

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Live streams will be available online for most, if not all,

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of these launches.

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

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star because right now, as we reported a few days ago,

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it is being very talkative. Sunspot region AR four three

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six six has been one of the most active regions

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of solar cycle twenty five and overnight if fired off

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four M class flares. The biggest was an M two

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point eight that's a moderate flare for context, at around

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two fourteen UTC this morning, which triggered a minor R

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one class radio blackout over the seas between Australia and

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Papa New Guinea.

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

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solar flares are classified by their peak X ray intensity.

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C class are minor, M class are moderates and can

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cause brief radio blackouts at high latitudes, and X class

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are the big ones, the kind that can knock out

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power grids and satellite communications. So four M class flares

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in a day is definitely worth paying attention to.

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

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of some spectacular X class activity over the past couple

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of weeks. Two it's been a busy region. Now it's

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rotating out of the Earth facing part of the Sun,

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so today the forecast is quiet to unsettled as the

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Corona whole stream influence gradually weakens, but forecasters will be

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watching it closely. If we get any significant CMEs thrown

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our way, that could mean Aurora's pushing further from the

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poles than usual, which is always exciting news for skywatchers.

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

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which is tracking hotter than predicted. I don't put the

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Aurora alert apps away just yet. We'll keep monitoring.

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

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

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the most exciting ongoing areas of science, the BENU samples

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from NASA's Osyrius rex mission. We've talked about BENU a lot,

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and each new study seems to shift our thinking a

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little more. This week's paper, published in the Proceedings of

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the National Academy of Sciences might be the biggest shift yet.

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

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and asteroids formed through what's called Strecher synthesis, a process

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that requires warm liquid water. The classic picture was something

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like a wet, warm asteroid interior chemistry bubbling along. But

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the Penn State team, led by Alison Basinski looked at

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the isotopic signatures of amino acids in the BENU samples,

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specifically glycine, which is the simplest amino acid, and found

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that the story is much more complicated.

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

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icy radiation rich environments, the kind of environment we'd associate

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more with the outer Solar System than a warm, watery asteroid.

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Basinski described it as their results flipping the script on

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how amino acids form. It's not just one pathway anymore.

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It looks like there are many conditions under which life's

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building blocks can emerge.

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

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form in extreme icy environments, not just warm watery ones,

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the range of places in the cosmos where life's precursors

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might exist just got dramatically wider. We're talking about icy moons,

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comet nuclei, the outer reaches of the Solar System, places

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we might not have been prioritizing in the search for

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life's ingredients.

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

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sample smaller than a tea spoon. That speck of four

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point six billion year old asteroid dust is genuinely changing

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our understanding of how life may have gotten started. The

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Osiris REX mission just keeps on giving.

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

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found lava tubes on the Moon, we found them on Mars,

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and now, for the first time, scientists have confirmed one

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on Venus. A team from the University of Trento in

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Italy has published the paper in Nature Communications this week

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revealing the existence of a massive underground lava tunnel on

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our closest planetary neighbor.

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

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they found it. Venus is famously difficult to observe. It's

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permanently wrapped in thick sulfuric acid clouds that block direct

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photography of the surface. So the team went back to

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radar data collected by NASA's Magellan spacecraft between nineteen ninety

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and nineteen ninety two, data that's over thirty years old.

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They developed a new imaging technique specifically designed to detect

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underground conduits near surface collapse features called skylights, and when

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they applied it to the nix Mons region, named for

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the Greek goddess of the night, they found it.

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

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thing is enormous, the lava tube is estimated to be

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around one kilometer wide. That's wider than any lava tube

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found on Earth, the Moon, or Mars. The roof is

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at least one hundred and fifty meters thick, the empty

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void below is at least three hundred and seventy five

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meters deep, and based on the surrounding terrain analysis, the

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whole conduit could extend for at least forty five kilometers underground.

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

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interesting reason it's so big. Venus has lower gravity than

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Earth and a denser atmosphere, which actually favors the rapid

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formation of a thick insulating crust on top of lava flows,

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so the tubes can grow larger and last longer on

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Venus than elsewhere. The planet with the worst surface conditions

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in the Solar System might have some remarkably stable real

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estate underground.

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

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Issa's Envisions based craft and NASA's Veritas are both being

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developed for Venus, and both will carry advanced radar systems

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capable of doing this kind of subsurface analysis in far

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greater detail. The team describes this discovery as only the

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beginning of what could be a long and fascinating research

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program into Venus's Hidden Geology.

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

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on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. A new paper in

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the International Journal of Astrobiology by plant biologist Lincoln Ties

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at UC Santa Cruz argues that if we want to

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find advanced alien civilizations, we should be looking for exoplanets

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with large, accessible deposits of coal.

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

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love this, So what's the argument? Tye traces the chain

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of development that led to us being able to communicate

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across interstellar distances. On Earth. None of our advanced technology,

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no steel, no deep fossil fuel extraction, no electricity, no

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radio telescopes would have been possible without first being able

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to forge steel, and steel required coal, specifically huge amounts

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of shallow energy dense coal, like the deposits laid down

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during the Carboniferous and Permian periods roughly three hundred and

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thirty to two hundred and sixty million years ago.

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

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any technological civilization anywhere in the universe. Intelligence isn't enough.

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Biology isn't enough. You need the geology to match a

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planet that happened to grow the right kinds of forests

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at the right time in its history, under the right

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conditions to bury them and compress them into energy dense

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coal seams that a curious civilization could then dig up

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and use to bootstrap and industrial revolution.

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

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planets in the so called photosynthetic habitable zone, where both

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liquid water and oxygen producing photosynthesis are possible, might be

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relatively rare. Even rarer are the planets where all the

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conditions align. The right star, the right orbit, the right biology,

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the right geology, and the right timing. Cole doesn't just appear.

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It requires a very specific sequence of events across hundreds

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of millions of years.

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

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revolution would produce atmospheric signatures elevated carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide,

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nitrogen oxides, so these are theoretically detectable with sufficiently powerful telescopes.

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The catch, as the paper acknowledges, is that the coal

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burning phase of any civilization would be relatively brief. We

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certainly hope it is so. The detection window would be narrow,

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but it it adds a whole new layer to what

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we're looking for when we study exoplanet atmospheres.

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

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have this conversation, the reason we built the telescopes and

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the rockets and the radio transmitters, might ultimately come down

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to a lucky geological accident three hundred million years ago.

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We happen to live on a planet with a lot

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of coal in the right places at the right time.

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Not every world will be so fortunate.

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

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of February twenty twenty six. From Solar Fireworks and a

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count down to Launch to Lava Tunnels on Venus, Rewritten

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Science from Benu and a genuinely thought provoking new take

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on the search for extraterrestrial life. It's been quite the episode.

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

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leave us a review wherever you listen. It genuinely helps

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more people find us, and if you want to go

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deeper on any of today's stories, we have links to

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all the source articles waiting for you in the show

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notes at Astronomy Daily dot io.

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

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if you've got a question, a story tip, or just

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want to tell us what you think, we'd love to

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hear from you. Thanks for listening and we'll see you

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again tomorrow.

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

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st star St