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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Astronomy Daily. I'm Anna and

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I'm Avery.

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Speaker 2: It's Friday, February the twentieth, twenty twenty six, and our

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producer has absolutely loaded us up. Today. We've got eight

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stories to get through.

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Speaker 1: Eight, that's right, and honestly, they're all worth it. We've

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got huge breaking news from the Kennedy Space Center about

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Artemis two, a genuinely damning report that NASA itself has

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described as we failed them, some absolutely mind bending deep

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space discoveries. And yes, we are going to briefly talk

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about UFOs.

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Speaker 2: We absolutely are, just briefly and responsibly.

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Speaker 1: Responsibly that is the word. Right, let's dive in. There

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is a lot of ground to cover.

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Speaker 2: I think this might be the biggest episode we've ever done,

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but there's plenty to cover today.

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Speaker 1: We are going to start with the biggest space story

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of the week, and it's one that broke overnight. DASA

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has just completed its second wet dress rehearsal of the

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Artemis two Space launch System rocket, and from everything we're hearing,

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it went well.

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Speaker 2: Really well. Actually, teams ran the SLS through a full countdown,

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fueling the rocket with its super cold liquid hydrogen and

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liquid oxygen, simulating launch day procedures right down to closing

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the orion crue caudal hatch, and they got all the

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way to T minus twenty nine seconds before wrapping up.

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That is exactly where they wanted to stop.

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Speaker 1: And this matters enormously because the first wet dress rehearsal

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back on February second and third had to be called

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off early due to hydrogen fuel leaks at launch Pad

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thirty nine B. That was a setback. NASA had to

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go in and replace seals and there was very real

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uncertainty about whether they'd solve the problem.

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Speaker 2: And it looks like they have. NASA is holding a

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media briefing this morning eleven am Eastern, and we'll be

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watching that closely, but the early word is positive.

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Speaker 1: So for anyone who needs refresher on what this mission

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actually is, Artemis two is the first crude flight of

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the Artemis program. It's not a moon landing that comes

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later with Artemis three, but it is the first time

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humans will travel to lunar distance since Apollo seventeen in

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nineteen seventy two. We are talking more than fifty years

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and the.

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Speaker 2: Crew is Commander Read Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist

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Christina cock All NASA, and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen from

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the Canadian Space Agency. They're going to fly around the

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Moon in a free return trajectory and come home ten days.

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No landing, but an absolutely historic journey.

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Speaker 1: And if this morning's press conference gives the all clear,

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the launch window we're looking at is as early as

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March sixth, That is just two weeks away. Avery, What

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does that feel like to you?

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Speaker 2: Honestly, it feels surreal. We've been living in the Artemis

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era for years now. Artemis ie flew in twenty twenty two,

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and it's been a long road to get here. But

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two weeks from now there could be four astronauts on

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their way to the Moon.

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Speaker 1: We will have full coverage as things develop, and if

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that briefing produces any surprises, we'll update you in tomorrow's episode.

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For now, though, looking very good for Artemis three now.

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Speaker 2: While NASA is very much in celebratory mode for this morning,

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yesterday they were facing a very different kind of news day.

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An independent review board release its full report into the

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Boeing Starliner crude flight test, and it is a damning document.

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Speaker 1: Damning is the word. The report formally classifies the Starliner

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mission as a quote type A mishap, the most serious

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category in NASA's safety framework. That means it was an

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event that could have resulted in death or permanent disability.

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And NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman stood up in front of

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the cameras yesterday and said, and I'm paraphrasing here, we

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almost did have a really terrible day.

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Speaker 2: We failed them, them being astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams,

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who launched in June twenty twenty four expecting to be

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gone for eight to ten days and ended up spending

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two hundred and eighty six days in orbit.

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Speaker 1: Right, So let's just remind listeners how we got here.

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Boeing won a four point two billion dollar contract from

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NASA back in twenty fourteen to build the Starliner as

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a second commercial crew vehicle alongside SpaceX's Crew Dragon. Starliner

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ran into problems on its very first uncrewed test flight

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in twenty nineteen, needed a second unpiloted flight before it

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was deemed ready, and Butch and Sunny finally launched in

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June of last year.

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Speaker 2: The trip up went ok. They docked successfully with the

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International Space Station, but during the rendezvous approach, the capsule

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experienced multiple helium leagues in the propulsion system and several

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of the maneuvering prusters failed. There was a moment where

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they temporarily lost with a report calls six degrees of

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freedom control. Had things gone differently in those minutes, had

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the thrusters not recovered, docking might not have been possible.

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Speaker 1: And what's really chilling about reading the report is discovering

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just how many warning signs were there. The investigation found

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that NASA and Boeing were aware of concerns that weren't

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fully understood, but were considered acceptable for flight anyway. There

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was pressure, institutional pressure to make this mission succeed because

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the entire commercial crew program's credibility depended on having two

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viable crew vehicles.

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Speaker 2: The report quotes unnamed massive personnel saying things like there

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was yelling in meetings, it was emotionally charged and unproductive,

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and if you weren't aligned with the desired outcome, your

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input was filtered out or dismissed. One person said they

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stopped speaking up entirely because they knew they'd be dismissed.

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Speaker 1: That is a profoundly troubling portrait of an organization under pressure,

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and what makes it worse is this, One NASA worker

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told the investigation panel roughly eleven months after the mission,

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nobody within NASA or outside of NASA has been held accountable.

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Speaker 2: Nobody Administrator Isaacman addressed that head on. He said there

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will be accountability. He said, the report reveals that advocacy

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for the missions success quote exceeded reasonable bounds and placed

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the mission, the crew, and America Space program at risk.

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He also made clear that NASA will not fly another

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crew on Starliner until the technical causes are understood, the

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propulsion system is fully qualified, and all sixty one recommendations

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from this report are implemented.

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Speaker 1: Sixty one recommendations spanning technical, organizational, and cultural domains. Boeing,

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for its part, said they've made substantial progress and driven

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significant cultural changes.

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Speaker 2: We'll see. It's worth noting, Butch and Sony are safe.

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They got home in a SpaceX crew drag in early

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twenty twenty five and have since retired from NASA. But

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this report is a stark reminder of just how close

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things came to going very wrong, and how important is

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that the lessons are actually learned.

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Speaker 1: One more thing before we move on. Isaacman confirmed the

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eventual cost of Starliner's woes exceeded the two million dollar

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type A mishap threshold by quote one hundredfold, So not

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just a safety crisis, an enormous financial one too.

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Speaker 2: All right, we promised you this, and here it is.

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President Trump has been making noise again about UAPs, unidentified

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aerial phenomena, and the possibility of releasing classified government files,

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including apparently what's actually going on at Area fifty one.

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Speaker 1: And look, the serious astronomy community broadly keeps its distance

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from this territory for good reasons. We're not going to

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go deep on it today because there is genuinely not

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much new substance to report yet, its hints and statements

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rather than actual declassification.

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Speaker 2: But and this is an honest butt, if genuine classified

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data about UAP encounters were actually released in a verifiable,

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scientifically usable form, that would be worth serious examination. The

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scientific community has actually been pushing for more transparency in

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this area for years. The issue has never been whether

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UFOs are real as a phenomenon. There are clearly things

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being observed that pilots and sensors can't immediately explain. The

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question is what they actually are.

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Speaker 1: Right, And the history of these big reveals is, shall

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we say, not encouraging. You get a lot of heavily

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redacted documents, a lot of blurry footage, and then not much.

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Speaker 2: Area fifty one, though that is a name. If files

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about what's actually been going on out there, and then

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Nevada Desert come out, even if it's all just experimental aircraft,

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that's going to be a fascinating day. Regardless.

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Speaker 1: We will watch this space pun an tended. If something

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genuinely newsworthy emerges from the UAP file story, we will

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cover it properly. For now, back to the actual cosmos.

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Speaker 2: Now, this is one of those stories that really makes

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you stop and think about how strange the universe is.

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has identified what may be the

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most heavily dark matter dominated galaxy ever discovered.

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Speaker 1: The object is called CDG two and CDG stands for

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circumgalactic diffuse galaxy, which is already a fascinating description. It's

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an extraordinarily faint, low surface brightness galaxy that's basically invisible

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when you look at it. There are only a sparse

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scattering of faint stars, but according to the measurements, the

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vast majority of its total mass is dark matter.

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Speaker 2: We should take a moment here to explain what dark

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matter actually is for anyone who's new to the show.

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Dark matter is the name we give to whatever makes

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up most of the mass of the universe that we

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can't see, can't di tech directly, and don't fully understand.

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We know it exists because of its gravitational effects, the

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way galaxies rotate, the way light bends around galaxy clusters,

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but beyond that, it remains one of the great unsolved

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problems in physics.

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Speaker 1: And CDG two is interesting because it seems to be

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almost entirely dark matter. The few stars it contains are

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almost an afterthought. It's like finding a house that's built

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almost entirely of invisible walls. You could only see the wallpaper.

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Speaker 2: What makes this particularly significant is that we've long theorized

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that galaxies like this should exist. In the standard model

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of cosmology, dark matter forms the scaffolding that ordinary matter

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gas stars planets falls into and clumps around, but most

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galaxies have converted a good portion of that gas into

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stars by now. CDG two seems to have barely bothered.

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Speaker 1: The question is why why did so little star formation

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occur here? Was it stripped of its gas by interactions

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with neighboring galaxies? Is it in an unusually isolated environment.

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Those are the questions that will keep astronomers busy for

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a while, but as a window into dark matter's dominant

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role in shaping the cosmos, this.

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Speaker 2: One is remarkable. Aimen to that.

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Speaker 1: From one galaxy mystery to another, astronomers have spotted a

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candidate jellyfish galaxy, one of the most visually striking types

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of galaxies we know of, dating back to just five

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billion years after the Big Bang. And the reason this

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is extraordinary is because theory said this shouldn't be possible.

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Speaker 2: Let me explain what a jellyfish galaxy is for anyone

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picturing an actual jellyfish floating through space, which honestly is

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not a bad mental image. A jellyfish galaxy gets its

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name from the long streamers of gas and young stars

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that trail behind it like tentacles. They form through a

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process called ram pressure stripping.

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Speaker 1: Ram pressure stripping is a essentially what happens when a

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galaxy moves through the hot diffuse gas that fills galaxy

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clusters what astronomers call the inter cluster medium. The galaxy

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is moving so fast through this medium that it gets

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the cosmic equivalent of a blast of wind from the front,

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and the gas in its outer regions gets blown backwards,

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forming those trailing streams.

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Speaker 2: Now. The reason this discovery is so significant is that

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ram pressure stripping was thought to require a dense enough

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cluster environment to operate, and in the early universe, five

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billion years after the Big Bang, clusters weren't expected to

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be dense enough. Yet the universe was younger, less evolved,

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clusters were less mature.

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Speaker 1: And yet here we have what looks like a fully

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formed jellyfish galaxy from that early era. It challenges our

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timeline of how galaxy clusters developed and how ram pressure

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stripping operated in the young universe.

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Speaker 2: There's also a bonus mystery here. The discovery may shed

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light on the so called red nugget galaxies compact red

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massive galaxies from the early Universe that have puzzled astronomers

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for years. The theory is that ram pressure stripping in

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jellyfish galaxies could be one of the mechanisms that transform

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normal star forming galaxies into those quiescent red nuggets. If confirmed,

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this single galaxy could be a crucial missing link in

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understanding how galaxies evolve.

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Speaker 1: It does still need to be confirmed. It's officially a

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candidate at this stage, but the evidence looks strong. And

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this is exactly the kind of thing that makes deep

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sky astronomy so endlessly fascinating.

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Speaker 2: All right, here's a story that's a little different in flavor.

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It's part wow, cool science, part should we be thinking

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about this more carefully? Yes.

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Speaker 1: For the first time ever, scientists have observed a cloud

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of air pollution forming in near real time as a

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SpaceX rocket burned up during re entry into Earth's atmosphere.

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And I want to be clear about what we mean,

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I burned up here. This isn't a failed mission. This

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is the normal end of life process for a rocket

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stage where it re enters the atmosphere and disintegrates through

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the heat of reentry.

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Speaker 2: So these things happen routinely, And what sciences have now

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been able to do using atmospheric monitoring instruments is actually

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watch in something close to real time the chemical cloud

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that forms as the rocket material vaporizes, metals, aluminum oxide, particles,

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various combustion products, all of it lighting up in the instruments.

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Speaker 1: And this matters because we're launching things at an ever

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increasing rate. SpaceX alone is launching dozens of missions per year.

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If every re entry deposits a cloud of metallic particles

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and other pollutants into the upper atmosphere, and we're doing

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this hundreds of times a year, what does that add

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up to over a decade.

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Speaker 2: The honest answer right now is we don't fully know.

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This is genuinely new science. Researchers have been raising concerns

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about the potential impact of rocket exhaust and re entry

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pollution in the stratosphere for a few years now, but

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being able to observe it in real time to actually

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characterize what's happening, is a significant step towards understanding the

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cumulative effect.

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Speaker 1: It's one of those stories where the science itself is fascinating,

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but the implications quietly deserve more attention than they're getting.

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The space economy is booming. That's wonderful in many ways,

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but what are the environmental costs of a high cadence

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launch industry is a question that needs answering, and researchers

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are now developing the tools to start answering.

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Speaker 2: It something to watch, and full credit to the scientists

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making these observations pioneering work.

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Speaker 1: Now we come to a story that, and I say

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this with genuine enthusiasm, is about as mind bending as

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astronomy gets. Researchers may have confirmed the very first true

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dark galaxy. Not just a galaxy dominated by dark matter

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like CDG two we discussed Earth, but a galaxy made

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almost entirely of dark matter with effectively no stars at all.

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Speaker 2: A dark galaxy, in theory, is a region of space

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where dark matter has clumped together in sufficient quantity to

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form a gravitationally bound structure, essentially a galaxy shaped thing,

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but where ordinary matter has never clumped enough to form

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stars or has been stripped away entirely. We've theorized they

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should exist for decades, and now we may finally have one.

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Speaker 1: I want to sit with that for a second. A

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galaxy a structure that has all the gravitational signatures of

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a galaxy with no stars in it. You literally cannot

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see it with any optical telescope. It's detectable only by

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its gravitational effects on nearby visible matter.

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Speaker 2: It's like detecting a ghost by watching how other people

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react to the room it's standing in.

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Speaker 1: That is exactly the right analogy. Actually, the way astronomers

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identify these objects is by looking at how their gravity

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warps the light and motion of surrounding galaxies, and when

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they do the maths on the candidate identified in this

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new research, the numbers point to a massive dark matter

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structure with essentially no luminous component.

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Speaker 2: If confirmed, this would be a genuinely landmark moment in cosmology.

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We've known for decades that dark matter vastly outweighs ordinary

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matter in the universe, roughly five to one, but actually

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finding a structure that is purely dark matter with no

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ordinary matter hitch hiking along inside it would be extraordinary

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observational proof of how dark matter can organize itself independently.

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Speaker 1: The researchers are being appropriately cautious. This requires further confirmation

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and independent verification, but the evidence is compelling. We'll keep

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you posted as this one develops, and.

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Speaker 2: We close today with something a little different in mood,

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something poetic actually, comments.

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Speaker 1: C Slash two zero two four e one, known as

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comet wear Kosh after its discoverer, as we mentioned earlier

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in the week, is making its closest approach to Earth today.

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Right now, as you listen to this, the comet is

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passing at roughly the same distance from Us as the Sun,

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about one astronomical unit, and it's putting on a genuinely

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beautiful display for those with telescopes or binoculars in the

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right conditions.

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Speaker 2: There are images out already, a gorgeous thirty minute exposure

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taken last week from Chile showing a five degree long

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ion tail that's ten times the width of the full

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Moon in the sky, plus three shorter dust tails. The

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coma of the comet glows green from the breakdown of

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dicarbon molecules by sunlight.

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Speaker 1: But here's what makes this one special and why we

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wanted to close the show with it. Commetware Coche is

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on a hyperbolic.

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Speaker 2: Orbit, which means it is not coming back.

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Speaker 1: It is not coming back. This comment has traveled from

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the outermost reaches of the Solar System. It's wung around

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the Sun, passed close by our little blue dot, and

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when it leaves, it will leave forever. Its orbit carries

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it out of the Solar System entirely into interstellar space.

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It will become a wanderer between the stars.

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Speaker 2: You know, we had THREEI dot atls this season, the

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interstellar object that came into our solar system from somewhere

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else entirely, that was a visitor from interstellar space commetware

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Koch is going the other direction. It's leaving.

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Speaker 1: We're waving goodbye to a comment that no human will

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ever see again. And I find that genuinely moving. So

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if you have clear skies tonight or this weekend, and

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you can get to a dark spot with a pair

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of binoculars, it is worth trying to find it. Check

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the Astronomy apps for its exact position. It is bright

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enough to see last chance, a cosmic farewell. And that's

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a wrap on a genuinely packed episode of Astronomy Daily.

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Eight stories, breaking news, accountability, journalism, mind bending, deep space science,

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and a cosmic goodbody.

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Speaker 2: Thank you so much for spending part of your Friday

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with us. If you enjoy today's show, please do leave

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a review wherever you listen. It makes a huge difference

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in helping new listeners find us.

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Speaker 1: You can find us at Astronomy Daily dot io for

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the blog and show notes, and we're at astro Daily

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Pod across all the social platforms we'll see you again tomorrow,

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and if Artemis two gets a launch date confirmed today,

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we'll make sure that's front and center.

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Speaker 2: Until then, keep looking up clear skies.

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Speaker 3: Everyone say, star is the tall, Star is the tall

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Speaker 2: Story is the