Speaker 1: Hey, space enthusiasts, you're tuned into another exciting episode of
Astronomy Daily, where we bring you the most fascinating stories
from the frontiers of space exploration. Today's lineup is packed
with incredible developments from across the space industry. We'll be
diving into Blue Origins latest plans for their massive new
Glen rocket, and some significant changes within the company. We'll
also check in on Icepace's resilience Lunar Lander as it
makes its way toward a historic moon landing attempt. In
other news, we'll explore how the James Webb Space Telescope
might help us better understand a potentially hazardous asteroid that's
caught the attention of astronomers worldwide. Plus, we'll get you
up to speed on SpaceX's latest starship preparations. And to
wrap things up, I've got some absolutely remarkable stories about
spacecraft that have literally come back from the dead. Trust me,
These tales of space resurrection will blow your mind. So
strap in and get ready for your daily dose of
space news and discovery. Let's dive into our first story
of the day, some major developments from Blue Origin. The
company has announced plans for their second new Glen launch
targeting late spring this year. Note that's late spring in
the Northern Hemisphere, so for Southern Hemisphere listeners that will
be late fall or autumn. This comes after their first
launch in January, which, while achieving many mission objectives, encountered
some issues during the booster recovery attempt. Dave Limp, Blue
Origins CEO, recently shed some light on what went wrong
during that first flight. It appears they experienced a propulsion
related problem that prevented the massive booster from making its
planned landing. According to Limp, while most engine conditions were nominal,
they had trouble getting everything properly flowing from the tanks
to the engines during the critical re entry burn. The
good news is that Blue Origin believes they've identified the
root cause and the fixes needed aren't particularly complex. This
is crucial because the ability to reuse these massive boosters
is central to Blue Origins busysiness model. The company already
has a second booster in production, and they're confident this
investigation won't significantly impact their launch timeline. While they haven't
announced what payload will fly on this second mission, Limp
mentioned they're considering several options. They're treating their first three
flights as development missions, so while they're open to flying
commercial payloads, they're prepared to use mass simulators if necessary. However,
this news comes alongside a significant restructuring at Blue Origin.
The company announced this week that they're reducing their workforce
by about ten percent, affecting more than one thousand employees
across various departments, including management, engineering, R and D, and
project management. Limp explained that the company had grown and
hired very rapidly in recent years, which led to increased
bureaucracy and less focus than needed. The restructuring aims to
streamline operations and improve manufacturing efficiency as they scale up
their launch case cadence. Despite these cuts, Blue Origin isn't
hitting the brakes on growth entirely. They're still planning to
hire hundreds of new employees this year, but with a
more targeted focus on manufacturing and operations. The company is
particularly keen on ramping up production of their new Glen
rockets and advancing work on their Blue Moon lunar lander,
which they hope will reach the lunar surface later this year.
Next up, the Japanese space exploration company I Space is
making exciting progress with their second lunar mission. Their Resilience Lander,
which launched on January fifteenth aboard a SpaceX Falcon nine rocket,
is now preparing for a crucial lunar flyby that marks
a significant milestone in its journey to the Moon. Unlike
the more direct routes taken by some lunar missions, Resilience
is taking what we might call the scenic route, an
energy efficient, circuitous path that will ultimately save valuable fuel.
Last week, the spacecraft successfully completed a critical maneuver that
set up this upcoming lunar fly positioning it perfectly for
this fuel saving gravity assist What's particularly fascinating about this
flyby is that while it will create the mission's largest
change in velocity, the spacecraft won't actually feel any acceleration.
It's all thanks to the elegant physics of gravitational forces.
The close pass by the Moon will naturally alter Resilience's trajectory,
setting it up for the second phase of its journey
using what's called a low energy transfer. As of this week,
Resilience was already positioned beyond the Moon's orbit, about two
hundred eighty six thousand miles from Earth. If all goes
According to plan, the spacecraft will attempt to land in
mare Frigoris, the Sea of Cold in the Moon's northern hemisphere,
around late May or early June. The lander isn't traveling
alone on this ambitious journey. It's carrying several payloads, including
the tenacious microrover, which will conduct mobile exploration of the
lunar surface. This mission represent and it's an important step
forward for private lunar exploration, especially following I Space's previous
landing attempt. Interestingly, Resilience shared its launch with another lunar
bound spacecraft, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Lander, which has already
successfully completed its translunar injection burn and is on track
for its own lunar encounter Next up, I felt we
needed a small update to this next story. As you
may have noticed, the popular press seems to be getting
themselves into quite a state. What's the popular saying, We're
all going to die? Not quite, but this a developing
story that's certainly capturing the attention of astronomers worldwide. And
now the James Webb Space Telescope is being called upon
to help determine the potential impact risk of asteroid twenty
twenty four yr four. This space rock currently has a
two point one percent chance of colliding with Earth on
December twenty second, twenty thirty two, a probability that's actually
increased slightly from the initial one point two per estimate
in late January. So far, more than fifty observatories have
contributed over three hundred and fifty observations of this asteroid,
but pinning down its exact trajectory has proved challenging. The
object is currently more than sixty five million kilometers away
and rapidly fading from view, making it increasingly difficult to
track with ground based telescopes. The full Moon is currently
interfering with observations, and as the asteroid continues to dim
to magnitude twenty four, only the largest telescopes on Earth
can still detect it. This is where WEB comes in.
The space telescope is scheduled to make crucial observations in
March and May, long after the asteroid becomes too faint
for other instruments to track. A team led by Andy
Rivkin at Johns Hopkins University has secured four hours of
web's observing time. Their observations will serve two crucial purposes,
first to better estimate the asteroid's size and then to
help refine its orbital parameters. This data could prove decide
in determining whether Earth is actually in danger. Efforts to
find previous observations of the asteroid from twenty sixteen, when
it last passed close to Earth have so far come
up empty. Despite thorough searches through archival data from various observatories,
no confirmatory images have been found. While these negative observations
can sometimes be useful, they must be treated with extreme
caution when calculating orbital predictions. This situation has led to
twenty twenty four YR four receiving a ter Reino Scale
rating of three, the second highest ranking ever assigned to
a potential impact threat. Only asteroid Opophos previously reached a
higher rating of four back in two thousand and four,
though it was quickly determined to pose no danger unlike
a pofas. The uncertainty around twenty twenty four YR four's
trajectory means we may not have a definitive answer about
its impact risk until its next close approach in twenty
twenty eight, Unless Web's observations can help resolve the misty sooner. Next,
let's take a look at what Starship has been up
to this week. As SpaceX gears up for its eighth
Starship test flight, the company has been conducting crucial preflight
tests at their Starbase facility in Texas. Just last weekend,
they completed a full duration static fire test of the
super Heavy booster, successfully igniting all thirty three Raptor engines
on the massive two hundred thirty three foot rocket stage.
Following the booster test, SpaceX turn their attention to Starship itself,
conducting engine tests on Tuesday evening at a separate test
stand near the launch facilities. This test was more extensive
than the boosters, putting the engines through various thrust levels
to simulate the different conditions the propulsion system will experience
during actual flight. The company has also introduced some new
hardware modifications for this upcoming launch, though specific details haven't
been disclosed. Once these tests are complete, the Starship vehicle
will be transported to join its super Heavy parkartner at
the launch pad, where the two will be stacked together.
When fully assembled, this engineering marvel stands an impressive four
hundred and three feet tall with the Starship portion alone,
exceeding the height of the Statue of Liberty. This launch
follows January's Ift seven mission, which saw mixed results. While
that flight achieved some successes, including a successful catch of
the super heavy booster by the launch tower's chopstick arms,
contact with the Starship Portion was lost about eight point
five minutes into the flight. The vehicle was later observed
breaking up over the Caribbean. Space X is targeting a
launch date at the end of February, though this timeline
depends on several factors, including receiving the necessary launch license
from the Federal Aviation Administration. This will mark their second
Starship launch of twenty twenty five, as the company works
toward their ambitious goal of completing twenty five launches this year.
These test flights are drawing increasing attention as NASA's time
twenty twenty seven Artemis three mission approaches, a mission that
will rely on Starship to land astronauts on the lunar surface.
I love this next story in the fascinating world of
space exploration. Not every mission that goes dark stays that way. Sometimes,
against all odds, spacecraft we thought were lost forever managed
to phone home again. Let me share some remarkable stories
of these space based resurrection events. Take the case of Serbi,
a small satellite launched in twenty twenty three to study
Earth's radiation belts. After completing its initial four month missions
so successfully that NASA extended it, Serbey suddenly went dark
in April twenty twenty four. The team was devastated, especially
when massive solar storms hit Earth in May, exactly the
kind of event Serbi was designed to study. But then
something extraordinary happened. On May twenty third, out of nowhere,
Serbi's signal returned, though it only stayed alive for two
and a half days before falling silent again. It wasn't
finished yet. The plucky little spacecraft came back once more
on June tenth, this time for good, at least until
it's planned re entry in October. Even more remarkable is
the story of NASA's Image, spacecraft launched in two thousand
to study Earth's magnetosphere. Image operated flawlessly for five years
before suddenly going silent in December two thousand and five.
For over a decade, everyone assumed it was dead. Then
in January twenty eighteen, an amateur radio astronomer accidentally picked
up its signal while searching for something else entirely. When
NASA re established contact, they discovered something fascinating. The spacecraft
had been stuck in a bizarre loop, rebooting itself every
seventy two hours for thirteen years straight, unable to properly
power its communication system. It was like a patient in
a coma, alive but unable to reach out to the world.
These revivals aren't always accidental. Sometimes spacecraft are deliberately put
into hibernation, like the European Space Agency's Jotto mission after
visiting Halley's comment in nineteen eighty six. It was powered
down to conserve energy, only to be awakened four years
later for another comet encounter. Even NASA's Wise Telescope got
a second life. After completing its initial mission and being
shut down. It was reactivated as new WIS to hunt
for potentially hazardous asteroids. These stories remind us that in
space exploration, sometimes patients and persistence can bring seemingly lost
missions back from the brink, providing unexpected opportunities for new discoveries.
And that wraps up today's episode of Astronomy Daily. I'm
Anna and I've enjoyed bringing you these fascinating stories from
the world of space exploration and astronomy. From blue origins,
latest developments to miraculous spacecraft revivals, It's been another exciting
day in space news. If you want to stay up
to date with all the latest developments in space and astronomy,
visit our website at Astronomy Daily dot io. There you
can sign up for our free daily newsletter and access
our constantly updates newsfeed. You'll also find all our past
episodes available for listening anytime. We're also active across social media.
You can find us as astro Daily Pod on Facebook,
x YouTube, YouTube, music, Tumblr, and TikTok. Follow us there
for bonus content and real time updates on breaking space news.
This has been Astronomy Daily. Thank you for listening, and
keep looking up. There's always something amazing happening in the Cosmos.
Suday star is Starz story