Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Astronomy Daily, your daily dose of
what's happening out there in the cosmos.
Speaker 2: I'm Anna and I'm Avery. It is Thursday, the twelfth
of March twenty twenty six, and today's show is a
packed one.
Speaker 1: We've got an interstellar comment that's absolutely loaded with alcohol,
a rocket that bounced back from an explosive year to
nail its seventh flight, and the biggest NASA briefing in months,
the Artemis two flight readiness review is happening right now
as we record.
Speaker 2: We've also got some beautiful science from deep inside the Sun,
a satellite that came home early thanks to the solar cycle,
and the brand new gas cloud discovered swirling around the
black hole at the heart of our Milky.
Speaker 1: Way Dick's stories, Let's get into it.
Speaker 2: Our first story is one of my favorites in a
while because it involves an interstellar comment that's frankly a
little bit drunk.
Speaker 1: You're going to milk that headline all episode, aren't you?
Speaker 2: Every chance? I get so? Three iatls. If you've been
listening to us over the past several months, you'll remember
this as only the third confirmed interstellar object ever detected
passing through our solar system. It came from somewhere out there,
from a completely different planetary system, and it's been one
of the most intensely observed objects in recent memory.
Speaker 1: And now astronomers using ALMA the ATACOMMA large millimeter submillimeter
array in Chile have published new findings about its chemical makeup,
and what they found is genuinely surprising.
Speaker 2: Using Alma's ATACOMMA compact array, researcher studied the coma that
glowing halo of gas and dust around the comet's core
as three IATLS was warming up on its approach towards
the Sun in late twenty twenty five. They focused on
the fingerprints of two molecules, methanol, which is a type
of alcohol, and hydrogen cyanide, and.
Speaker 1: The results were extraordinary. In most Solar system comets, those
two molecules show up in roughly comparable amounts. In three iatls,
the ratio of methanol to hydrogen cyanide was between seventy
and one hundred twenty to one. That's not just unusual,
it places it among the most methanol rich comets ever studied. Period.
Speaker 2: Nathan Roth, the lead researcher from American University put it
really beautifully. He said, observing three iatls is like taking
a fingerprint from another solar system. The details reveal what
it's made of, and it's bursting with methanol in a
way we just don't usually see in comments from our
own solar system.
Speaker 1: There's another fascinating detail here too. In most comments, hydrogen
cyanide flows out from the nucleus the central core. Methanol
usually does the same, but in three iatls, the methanol
is coming from two places, the nucleus and from tiny
icy grains drifting in the coma around the comet. Those
grains are essentially acting like miniature comets of their own,
releasing methanol as they warm up in sunlight. It's a
level of structural complexity we haven't seen traced in an
interstellar object before.
Speaker 2: What does all this methanol tell us It points to
a comet that forms in an extremely cold environment, possibly
a dark molecular cloud packed with carbon monoxide ice, and
that its icy material was incorporated into the comet's nucleus
with very little alteration. Essentially, this thing is a chemical
time capsule from a distant planetary system, and it's older
than our own Sun.
Speaker 1: And here's a fun watch this space moment. Three IATLS
is currently about three point eight astronomical units from the Sun,
roughly the distance between Mars and Jupiter, and heading outward
at around twenty eight kilometers per second. On March sixteenth,
just four days from now, it makes its closest approach
to Jupiter, passing within about zero point three six AU.
It's one of the last major milestones before this visitor
disappears into interstellar space for good.
Speaker 2: It's been one of the most scientifically productive interstellar visitors
we've ever had the luck to catch. Every observation has
taught us something new about how planetary systems, not ours,
form and evolve.
Speaker 1: Story two is a proper comeback story, and those are
always fun to tell. Firefly Aerospace successfully launched its Alpha
rocket last night, Wednesday the eleventh, from Vandenberg Space four
space in California, and it was a mission called Stairway
to seven Flight seven, and it absolutely nailed it.
Speaker 2: For context, Firefly had a rough twenty twenty five two
major mishaps, a failed launch in April and then an
explosive ground test in September. That destroyed a first stage.
The rocket had been grounded for nearly eleven months, so
this was a significant moment for them.
Speaker 1: The mission lifted off at five point fifty pm Pacific time,
completed nominal stage separation, achieved orbital insertion, and delivered a
demonstrator payload for Lockheed Martin. The second stage engine even
performed a relight, a bonus milestone for validating new systems.
Speaker 2: And this wasn't just any flight. Spare Way to seven
was the last flight of Alpha's Block one configuration. Firefly
is now transitioning to Block two, which is an upgraded
version of the rocket, longer, more capable, with a new
in house avionic suite and improved thermal protection. Those systems
were tested in shadow mode on this flight and confirmed.
Speaker 1: Working FEO Jason Kim said the mission was quote flawlessly
executed and while Alpha has now had full mission success
just three times in seven attempts, the trajectory is clearly improving,
and Firefly's lunar landing success with Blue Gost last year
showed they can absolutely get the job done.
Speaker 2: The first Block two flight will carry a US Space
Force mission called Victis Hayes jackaled for no earlier than
the second quarter of this year. Firefly also as plans
to expand Alpha operations to Wallops Island in Virginia and
the s Range Space Center in Sweden. Good times ahead
for this team.
Speaker 1: All right, story three, and this one is literally happening
as we speak. NASA held its Artemis two flight readiness
review today Thursday the twelfth, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida,
with a press conference at three pm Eastern featuring NASA
Administrator Jared Isaacman.
Speaker 2: A flight readiness review is a critical milestone. It's the
formal process where all the key mission stakeholders come together
and evaluate whether every system, every procedure, and every person
is ready to fly. It's one of the last major
gates before a launch date gets set.
Speaker 1: To recap where we are. Artemis two is the first
crude mission of the Artemis program. Four astronauts flying around
the Moon and back inside the Orion spacecraft from Earth
than any humans have ever traveled. The crew is Reed Wiseman,
Victor Glover, Christina Cock and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
Speaker 2: The mission hit a snag in late February when a
helium flow issue was found in the upper stage of
the Space Launch System rocket after a wet dress rehearsal.
The stack had to be rolled back into the vehicle
assembly building for repairs. NASA has since identified and fixed
to seal obstruction in the quick disconnect causing the problem,
and technicians have been validating the repairs.
Speaker 1: The rocket is currently targeting a second rollout to the
launch pad later this month, with an April launch window
on the table. We'll have the outcome of today's press
conference in our show notes. This story is moving fast
and we'll be covering every step of it as we
get closer.
Speaker 2: It has been over fifty years since humans flew beyond
low Earth orbit. Artemis two is going to change that,
and we are so close.
Speaker 1: Well, we certainly hope so.
Speaker 2: Story four is a beautiful piece of long game science.
Researchers from the University of Birmingham and Yale University have
published a study in the Monthly Notices of the Royal
Astronomical Society that reveals something fundamental and surprising about our star.
The Sun's internal structure shifts measurably from one solar cycle
to the next.
Speaker 1: This might sound like it should be obvious of course,
the Sun changes. But here's the thing. During solar minimum,
the Sun is supposed to be at its calmest, fewer
sun spots, weaker magnetic fields, a quieter, more uniform surface.
The assumption had always been that these quiet periods were
basically the same each time around.
Speaker 2: And they're not. The team used a network of six
ground based telescopes called the Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network BISON,
which has been listening to the sun hum for over
forty years. They analyze tiny vibrations inside the Sun, essentially
sound waves trapped inside the star to infer what was
happening beneath the surface. This field is called helio seismology
and it's essentially the same principle as using seismic waves
to map the interior of the Earth.
Speaker 1: They looked at four successive solar minima, the quiet periods
between solar cycles twenty one and twenty five, and found
that the minimum between cycles twenty three and twenty four,
which fell in two thousand and eight to two thousand
and nine, was structurally different from the other three. That
minimum was already known to be one of the quietest
and longest on record, but now they've shown it left
a measurable internal.
Speaker 3: Fingerprint, specifically, a sound wave glitch caused by helium ionization
just below the Sun's surface was significantly stronger than in
the other three minima, and the speed of sound in
the outer layers was slightly.
Speaker 2: Higher, suggesting subtly different gas pressures, temperatures, and magnetic field
strengths deep inside the Sun.
Speaker 1: Why does this matter because how the Sun behaves during
its quiet periods has a strong bearing on how active
the next cycle will be. Better understanding solar minima means
better space weather forecasting and space weather affects satellites, GPS,
power grids, and communications infrastructure here on Earth.
Speaker 2: Professor Bill Chaplin from Birmingham summed it up perfectly. For
the first time they've been able to clearly quantify how
the Sun's internal structure shifts between one cycle minimum and
the next, and the techniques used here could eventually be
applied to other Sun like stars using esay's upcoming Plato mission.
The Sun isn't just our star, it's our best laboratory
for understanding stars everywhere.
Speaker 1: Following up on a story we brought you a couple
of days ago, you could say story five has a
certain poetic quality to it. Yesterday morning, Wednesday, the eleventh
NASA's Van Allen Probe A re entered Earth Earth's atmosphere
and burned up over the eastern Pacific Ocean, ending a
mission that launched back in August twenty twelve, nearly fourteen
years in space.
Speaker 2: The Van Allen Probes, there were two of them, A
and B, were built to study Earth's radiation belts. Those
are the two massive donut shaped zones of high energy
charged particles trapped by our planet's magnetic field. They're named
for physicist James Van Allen, who discovered them in the
late nineteen fifties. Understanding these belts is critical because they
shield Earth from cosmic radiation and solar wind, but they
can also be brutal on satellites and spacecraft passing through them.
Speaker 1: The probes were originally designed for a two year mission,
they ran for nearly seven During that time, they made
a series of landmark discoveries, including the first confirmed observation
of a transient third radiation belt, which can formed during
periods of intense solar activity. The spacecraft ran out of
fuel in twenty nineteen and have been drifting in orbit
ever since.
Speaker 2: Here's what made yesterday's re entry newsworthy beyond the usual
satellite farewell. NASA had originally calculated that Probe A wouldn't
re enter until twenty thirty four, eight years later than
it actually did. The culprit the current solar cycle. We're
in a particularly active phase right now, and increased solar
activity heats and expands Earth's upper atmosphere, which creates more
drag on satellites and low to medium orbit, pulling them
down faster than expected.
Speaker 1: The six hundred kilogram spacecraft mostly burned up on re entry,
as expected, with a one in four thy two hundred
chance of any surviving debris causing harm to anyone on
the ground. The US Space Force confirmed re entry at
six thirty seven am Eastern Time over the Eastern Pacific.
No injuries or debris impact reported, but.
Speaker 2: Is still up there and its re entry isn't expected
before twenty thirty, though given what just happened, we might
want to keep an eye on that estimate too. The
Sun has a way of accelerating things.
Speaker 1: And our final story brings us right to the heart
of our own galaxy and the super massive black holes
sitting there. Astronomers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial
Physics have discovered a new gas cloud orbiting Sagittarius A star,
the four million solar mass black hole at the center
of the Milky Way, about twenty seven thousand light years
from Earth.
Speaker 2: The new cloud is called G two T, and it
was found using the ERIS instrument, the Enhanced Resolution Imager
and spectrograph mounted on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large
Telescope in Chile. Two previous clouds, known as G one
and G two, had been observed orbiting Sagittarius A star
for years, but their true nature was still hotly debated.
Were they pure gas clouds or were they hiding stars
inside them?
Speaker 1: The discovery of G two T turns out to be
the key that helps answer that question. Because the three
clouds don't just share the same general neighborhood. Their three
d orbits are almost identical, just rotated slightly with respect
to each other.
Speaker 2: And here's why that's a big deal. If G one,
G two, and G two T each contain the hidden
star at their core, you'd expect those stars to have
very different orbital histories. The odds of three independent stars
settling into nearly identical orbits around the super massive black
hole are extraordinarily slim, so the matching orbits strongly rule
out the hidden star hypothesis.
Speaker 1: Instead, the astronomers believe all three clouds likely share a
common origin, a massive binary star system called IRS sixteen
s W, which is in that region and is known
to be expelling enormous amounts of gas. The three clouds
may have been shed from that pair of stars at
different times, drifting into similar orbits as they interact with
the extreme gravitational environment near Sagittarius, a star.
Speaker 2: The galactic center is one of the most extreme environments
in the universe. Stars and gas clouds hurtling around the
black hole at tremendous speeds, and yet we're still finding
brand new objects there after decades of observation. It's a
reminder that our own cosmic backyards still hold secrets, extraordinary ones.
Speaker 1: That's all six stories for today. What a show, A
tipsy interstellar comet, a triumphant rocket comeback, the imminent Moon
mission update, the Sun's inner life, a satellite's fiery farewell,
and a new discovery at the very heart of our galaxy.
Speaker 2: If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, leave us a review,
and share us with someone who loves space. You can
find us at Astronomy do io and on all the
major platforms at at astro Daily Pod.
Speaker 1: And keep watching the skies. Jupiter's about to get a
very unusual close visitor. In just four days three I
Atlas making its last big swing before heading back to
the stars.
Speaker 2: From Anna and me, thanks for listening to Astronomy Daily.
We'll see you tomorrow. In the meantime, keep looking up
Sunday
Speaker 3: Stars start