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Speaker 1: Hey, they're stargazers, and welcome to Astronomy Daily, your daily

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dose of what's happening out there in the cosmos.

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Speaker 2: I'm Anna, and I'm Avery. Today is Saturday, March twenty first,

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twenty twenty six, and honestly, Anna, we've got another busy show.

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Speaker 1: Today, We really do. A moon rocket has arrived at

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the launch pad for the first time in over fifty years,

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carrying astronauts. We've got a pair of weird, dying stars

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behaving in ways nobody's ever seen before. And a comment

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that basically fell apart while Hubble happened to be watching accidentally.

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Speaker 2: Plus fifteen brand new moons in our Solar system, a

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growing garbage problem on our own moon, and the genuinely

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dramatic spacecraft story one lost, one found.

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Speaker 1: It's a big one. Let's get into it.

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Speaker 2: We're going to start with NASA's Artemis two, and this

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one feels different. After months of delays, repairs, and anxious waiting,

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the rocket is finally on the pad.

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Speaker 1: At eleven twenty one am Eastern Time on Friday, March twentieth,

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NASA's Space Launch System rocket and Oryan spacecraft arrived at

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launch pad thirty nine b at Kennedy's Space Center in Florida,

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after an eleven hour overnight journey from the vehicle assembly

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building hauled by the Giant Crawler transporter at less than

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one mile per hour.

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Speaker 2: A three hundred and twenty two foot tall moon rocket

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creeping through the night at jogging pace. And honestly, that's

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exactly how it should be.

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Speaker 1: It really is, And the current target launch date is

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no earlier than Wednesday, April first, which means we could

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be watching the first humans leave Earth's orbit in over

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fifty years in less than two weeks.

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Speaker 2: So who's on board the Artemis two crew is Commander

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Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialist Christina Coach,

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all from NASA, along with Canadian Space Agency mission specialists

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Jeremy Hansen.

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Speaker 1: And this mission is full of historic firsts. Victor Glover

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will become the first person of color to travel be

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yond Earth orbit, Christina Coach will be the first woman

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to do so, and Jeremy Hansen will be the first

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non American citizen to leave Earth orbit.

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Speaker 2: They'll fly a free return trajectory around the Moon and

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back to Earth in approximately ten days, no landing. This

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is a test flight, but it's a crucial one now.

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Speaker 1: The road to the pad was not smooth. Earlier this year,

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a helium flow problem in the rocket's upper stage forced

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the team to roll the whole stack back to the

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vehicle assembly building. That pushed the launch from February, then March,

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and now April.

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Speaker 2: But the team fixed when needed fixing, including replacing batteries

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on the flight termination system, and now PAD teams are

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moving into final countdown preparations.

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Speaker 1: The last time humans flew beyond Earth orbit was Apollo

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seventeen in December nineteen seventy two. That was over fifty

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three years ago. April first cannot come come soon enough.

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Speaker 2: We will absolutely be following this one. Let's move on,

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all right.

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Speaker 1: Story two is pure stellar science, and it's one of

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those discoveries that makes you realize how much of the

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universe we still haven't seen yet.

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Speaker 2: Astronomers have found something that until now nobody was sure

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could even exist. A pair of brown dwarf stars orbiting

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each other so closely that one is actively pulling material

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from the other.

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Speaker 1: Let's back up slightly, so, what is a brown dwarf?

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So Brown dwarfs are sometimes called failed stars, They're bigger

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than giant planets, but not massive enough to ignite and

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sustain hydrogen fusion the way our Sun does. They sort

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of sit in a strange no man's land between planet

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and star.

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Speaker 2: And we know many of them exist in binary pairs,

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but this system, designated ztf J one two three nine

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plus eight three four seven, is something else entirely. These

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two brown dwarfs are in an incredibly tight orbit, completing

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a full loop around each other in fifty seven minutes.

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Speaker 1: Fifty seven minutes, for context, our moon takes about twenty

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seven days to orbit Earth. These two are practically on

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top of each other.

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Speaker 2: And because they're so close, the gravity of one is

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pulling material from the surface of the other, a process

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called mass transfer. This kind of behavior has been seen

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before in binary white dwarfs, the dense remnants of dead stars,

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but never in brown dwarfs. This is a first.

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Speaker 1: The research team, led by Caltech graduate student Samuel Whitebook,

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actually had colleagues who didn't believe the finding at first.

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One co author said, and I love this. We've told

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some of our colleagues about them, and they didn't believe

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such a thing exists.

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Speaker 2: Which is the best kind of science discovery. The system

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is only about a thousand light years away, which is

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close enough that follow up observations with the James Webbs

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telescope are being planned.

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Speaker 1: And what's the eventual fate of these two Either they

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merge into a single brighter star or the one that's

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gaining mass eventually becomes massive and enough to trigger nuclear

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fusion and become a proper star. Either way, a fascinating, ending.

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Speaker 2: Incredible stuff story. Three on a and this one involves

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Hubble being very, very lucky.

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Speaker 1: So this story starts with a mishap and ends up

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as one of the most extraordinary observational luck stories in

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recent astronomy.

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Speaker 2: Tell us all about it.

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Speaker 1: Okay, So, researchers at Auburn University had won telescope time

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on the Hubble Space Telescope to study a specific comment,

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but then new technical constraints meant their original target wasn't viewable,

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so they quickly found a replacement, a different comment designated

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C slash twenty twenty five K one slash at lisk

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or just comment K one for short.

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Speaker 2: Routine. Enough, so far.

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Speaker 1: Routine until one of the team, co investigator John Nonan,

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sat down to look at the data the next morning,

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and he found not one comment in the images. He

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found four because Comment K one was falling apart right

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in front of Hubble's cameras.

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Speaker 2: The commet had fragmented into at least four distinct pieces,

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each with its own coma that fuzzy envelope of gas

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and dust around the commentary nucleus, and Hubble's sharp eyes

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could clearly resolve each fragment separately, something ground based telescopes

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could barely make out as blurry blobs.

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Speaker 1: The timing was extraordinary. The comet had passed closest to

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the Sun its perihelion just about a month before. That's

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the most intense heat and gravitational stress a comet experiences,

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and for long period comets like Cone, it's when they're

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most vulnerable to breaking up, and.

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Speaker 2: Hubble just happened to be watching. The team was able

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to trace the history of each fragment back in time,

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essentially reconstructing exactly how and when the breakup happened. This

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is the first time Hubble has captured a comment this

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early in the fragmentation process.

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Speaker 1: There's also an intriguing mystery buried in the data. There

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was a delay between when the comet broke up and

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when bright foutbursts were seen from the ground. Normally, when

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a comet fragments and exposes fresh ice to sunlight, you'd

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expect it to brighten almost immediately, but this one didn't. Why.

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Nobody knows yet, and.

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Speaker 2: The initial analysis shows that comet K one is unusually

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depleted in carbon, which gives us new clues about the

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primorial chemistry of our early Solar system, all from a

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comet that wasn't even the intended target.

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Speaker 1: Best accidents in science, honestly, onwards. Story four is a

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numbers came So.

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Speaker 2: How many moons to Saturn have.

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Speaker 1: As of this week two hundred and eighty five.

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Speaker 2: Two hundred and eighty five and Jupiter.

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Speaker 1: One hundred and one. The Minor Planet Center of the

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International Astronomical Union announced on March sixteenth that four new

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moons have been confirmed around Jupiter and eleven new moons

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around Saturn.

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Speaker 2: Fifteen new moons just like that. I love this recurring story.

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It feels like somebody keeps going around the back of

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these planets and finding more hiding.

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Speaker 1: There, sort of exactly what's happening. Actually, the Saturn moons

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were found by a team led by Edward Ashton from

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the University of British Columbia who combed through data from

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the Canada, France Hawaii telescope going back to twenty nineteen,

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and the Jupiter moons were spotted by a team led

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by Scott Shephard at the Carnegie Institution.

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Speaker 2: All of these newly confirmed moons are tiny, barely a

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couple of miles across, with magnitudes around twenty five to

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twenty seven, meaning they're far too faint to see without

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some of the world's most powerful telescopes.

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Speaker 1: Far what astronomers call irregular moons, captured objects orbiting far

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from the planet, often going the wrong way in retrograde.

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Most of the new Saturnian moons are doing just that,

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moving in the opposite direction to the planet's rotation, which

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is a strong sign they were probably captured from somewhere else,

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either asteroids snagged by Saturn's gravity or fragments from a

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collision that broke up a larger moon in the distant past.

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Speaker 2: And this count is only going to keep climbing. The

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Veric Reuben Observatory went fully online last year, and it's

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going to be detecting these tiny, faint moons at a

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rate we haven't seen before.

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Speaker 1: Poor Jupiter, though, still two hundred moons behind Saturn. It's

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like Jupiter just can't catch up.

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Speaker 2: Jupiter just needs a try harder. Okay, story five, and

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this one's a little closer to home.

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Speaker 1: So here's a question. What's on the Moon right now?

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Other than dust and rock, I mean.

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Speaker 2: The flags, some rovers, U golf ball, I.

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Speaker 1: Think more than one hundred metric tons of human made material,

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spacecraft parts, scientific instruments, cameras, landers, crash sites, and yes,

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actually bags of human waste left behind by Apollo astronauts.

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Speaker 2: We left star rubbish on the Moon.

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Speaker 1: We absolutely did. And that's just what's there now. We're

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on the verge of a completely new era of lunar activity,

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crude missions, commercial landers, scientific rovers, resource prospectors, and nobody

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has a comprehensive framework for what happens to all the

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stuff we're about to bring up there.

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Speaker 2: There's no Lunar Environment Protection Agency, there's no international treaty

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specifically addressing lunar surface contamination. The Outer Space Treaty of

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nineteen sixty seven says countries are responsible for their national

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activities in space, but it doesn't get into the specifics

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of say a crash lander leaking propellant near a scientifically

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important site.

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Speaker 1: And there are real concerns beyond aesthetics. Some of the

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most scientifically valuable areas of the Moon, like the permanently

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shadowed craters near the Poles, which may hold ancient ice deposits,

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could be contaminated by human activity before we've even finished

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studying them in their pristine style.

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Speaker 2: Space policy researchers and planetary scientists are increasingly pushing for

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binding international agreements about lunar preservation zones, impacts, site protections,

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and responsible disposal of mission hardware.

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Speaker 1: It's a conversation the space community needs to have urgently,

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because the missions are coming, whether the policy frameworks are

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ready or not. The Moon has been waiting four and

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a half billion years. The least we can do is

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think carefully before we trash it.

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Speaker 2: All Right, We're ending today's show with a story that

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has two very different outcomes, one spacecraft recently lost and

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one spacecraft recently found.

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Speaker 1: Let's start with the one that was found. ESA's Proba

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three mission, which we mentioned yesterday, has now been officially

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confirmed as recovered, and the details of how it happened

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are genuinely dramatic.

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Speaker 2: So PROBA three is a fascinating mission. It uses two

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separate spacecraft flying in precise formation at an altitude of

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over sixty thousand kilometers to create an artificial solar eclipse.

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One satellite carries a disc that blocks the Sun, and

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the other carries a cornograph to study the faint outer

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atmosphere of the Sun, which is normally washed out by

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the Sun's blinding light.

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Speaker 1: On February fourteenth, the Corona spacecraft, one of the two,

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suffered a chain of failures that caused it to lose

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its orientation. Its solar panels turned away from the Sun,

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its batteries drained, and it entered survival mode, tumbling silently

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through space for nearly a month.

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Speaker 2: Engineers tracked it and waited for an opportunity. That opportunity

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came when the tumbling spacecraft briefly turned its solar panels

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toward the Sun just enough to generate a small amount

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of power. Teams in Spain acted immediately and contact was

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re established.

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Speaker 1: LISA Director General Joseph Ashbacker said they saw that some

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sunlight was actually hitting the solar panels, and that was

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their moment. The spacecraft has now regained stable orientation and

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is charging its batteries. Engineers are carefully running checks before

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resuming science operations.

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Speaker 2: Relief all around now. Contrast that with the story of

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NASA's Maven spacecraft, currently orbiting Mars, or at least it

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should be.

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Speaker 1: NASA lost contact with Maven on December sixth last year,

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after the spacecraft was expected to emerge from behind Mars

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after a routine pass on the far side of the planet.

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Two days before contact was lost, telemetry showed everything was normal,

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no problems whatsoever.

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Speaker 2: But then a fragment of tracking data from the day

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contact was lost suggested Maven was rotating unexpectedly as it

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came out from behind Mars and was no longer in

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its planned orbit. NASA immediately began recovery efforts.

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Speaker 1: Those efforts have now been ongoing for over three months.

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DASA has used its deep space network, the Green Bank Observatory,

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even the Curiosity rover pointed skyward on the Martian surface

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in attempts to detect a signal. So far nothing.

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Speaker 2: At a conference this week, NASA's Planetary Science Director Louise

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Procter said, and I thought this was a poignant quote.

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We haven't officially said Mavin is lost, yet we're still

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looking for it.

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Speaker 1: Mavin has been orbiting Mars since twenty thirteen, twelve years

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of science studying how Mars lost its atmosphere over billions

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of years and transformed from a potentially habitable world into

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the cold desert we see today. It also handles about

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twenty percent of communications between Earth and the Mars rovers.

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Speaker 2: Other orbiters, including Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, and issa's

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Trace Gas Orbiter, are taking up the relay duties for now,

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and NASA's exploring options for a replacement Telecommunicationations orbiter.

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Speaker 1: One story of recovery one still unresolved. Will keep you

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posted on both.

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Speaker 2: And that is your Astronomy Daily for Saturday, March twenty first,

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twenty twenty six. What a show today? A moon rocket

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on the pad, a comet in pieces, failed stars behaving unexpectedly,

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fifteen new moons, a moon covered in our junk, and

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two spacecraft with very different stories.

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Speaker 1: As always, links to all our source articles are in

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the show notes. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave

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us a review wherever you get your podcasts. It genuinely

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helps more people find the show.

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Speaker 2: You can find us at Astronomy Daily dot io and

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on social media everywhere. At astro Dailypod, we are part

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of the Bytes dot com podcast network. Check them out

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for more great shows.

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Speaker 1: Until next time, keep looking up clear skys.

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Speaker 2: Everyone say, stars, Stars, the Soul, Stars, the Soul