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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Astronomy Daily, your daily guide to

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what's happening in space. I'm Anna and I'm Avery.

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Speaker 2: It is Tuesday, February twenty fourth, twenty twenty six, and

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we have a busy show for you today.

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Speaker 1: We do the big headline, the one everyone in the

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space community is talking about right now is Artemis and specifically,

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what is happening to that rocket at this very moment.

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Speaker 2: Quite literally, as we record this, the SLS rocket is

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making a very slow journey about one mile per hour

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back to its garage.

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Speaker 1: We have all the details on that. We also have

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a genuinely exciting story from Mars, a wild mission concept

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to chase an interstellar comet. Tina's mystery space plane is

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back in orbit, and we wrap up with some beautiful

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red giant science that solves a mystery that's been bugging

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astronomers since the nineteen seventies.

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Speaker 2: Plus we run through this week's launch schedule. It is

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surprisingly busy despite all the Artemis drama. Let's get into it.

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Speaker 1: So, Avery, let's start with Artemis, because this is a

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story that has taken yet another dramatic turn.

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Speaker 2: Honestly, Anna, this one stings a little because just last week,

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we were watching a really successful second wet Tress rehearsal

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and NASA was talking about March six as a real

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launch date. Things were looking.

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Speaker 1: Good, and then Saturday happened, And then Saturday happened.

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Speaker 2: Overnight on February twenty first engineers noticed something concerning an

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interruption in the flow of helium to the rocket's upper stage,

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specifically the interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage or ICPS.

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Speaker 1: And just to be clear for listeners who might be

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newer to the show, what does the ICPS actually do?

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Speaker 2: Great question. The ICPS is the upper stage of the

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SLS rocket. It sits above the core stage and it's

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what fires to push Orion and the crew on their

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trans lunar trajectory toward the Moon. It uses helium internally

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to do two critical jobs. It maintains environmental conditions around

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its engine, and it pressurizes the liquid hydrogen and liquid

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oxygen propellant tanks. So helium is not optional. Helium is fundamental.

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Speaker 1: And this helium flow issue appeared after the wet dress

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rehearsal had completed, not during it, which makes it particularly

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tricky to pin.

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Speaker 2: Down exactly the WDR itself went smoothly. It was during

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reconfiguration afterward that data showed the interruption. NASA administrator Jared

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Isaacman posted about it on Saturday, saying the team was

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investigating three possible causes, a blocked filter between the vehicle

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and ground support equipment, a failed quick disconnect umbilical interface,

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or a failed check valve on the vehicle, similar to

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what caused delays on Artemis one.

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Speaker 1: And regardless of which of those three it turns out

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to be, the answer is the same.

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Speaker 2: The answer is always the same. They have to go

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back to the vehicle assembly building. You can't fix any

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of those things on the launch pad. So NASA confirmed

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a rollback, and that rollback is happening today, February twenty fourth.

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The sls Orion and the whole stack are being loaded

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onto the Crawler and making that four point two mile

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journey back to the VAB at roughly one mile per hour.

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Speaker 1: Which takes several hours. It is not a fast vehicle.

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Speaker 2: It's not. The crawler itself weighs about six and a

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half million pounds unloaded, and it's burning around one hundred

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and sixty five gallons of diesel per mile. It is

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an extraordinary piece of engineering in its own right.

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Speaker 1: So where does this leave the mission timeline?

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Speaker 2: March is definitively off the table. Isaac Man was very

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clear about that April is now the earliest possible window,

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and NASA has said that quick action to get back

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to the VAB could still preserve April. A full media

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briefing is expected this week. Crewe commander Red Wiseman, pilot

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Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Coch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy

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Hansen had just entered quarantine and have now been released again.

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This would be their second exit from quarantine, which.

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Speaker 1: Tells you something about how hard this process has been.

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And this is still the first crude mission beyond low

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Earth orbit since Apollo seventeen in nineteen seventy two. The

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stakes are enormous.

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Speaker 2: They really are. NASA's under pressure, both from the public

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and from the White House to get this done. Isaac

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Men has been quite transparent about the challenges, which is appreciated.

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We'll keep you updated as the investigation progresses. A media

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briefing is expected this week.

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Speaker 1: Okay, let's lift the mood a little because our next

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story is genuinely brilliant and it comes from Mars.

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Speaker 2: This is one of my favorites of the week. NASA's

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Perseverance rover has just been given something that effectively functions

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as GPS on a planet that has no GPS sett

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lights whatsoever.

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Speaker 1: So how do you navigate on Mars? Walk us through

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how it used to work.

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Speaker 2: So Historically, Perseverance used a system called visual odometry. Every

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few feet, it takes camera images of the surrounding rocks

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and geological features, and it tracks how those features shift

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and frame to estimate how far it's moved. It's clever,

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but the problem is that tiny errors add up. On

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a long drive, the rovers internal sense of where it

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is could be off by more than thirty five meters

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that's over one hundred feet. When it hit that threshold

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of uncertainty, its safety systems would kick in and it

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would just stop and wait for instructions from Earth.

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Speaker 1: And with communication delays of up to twenty four hours,

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that could mean an entire day of lost exploration time exactly.

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Speaker 2: So, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab developed a new system called

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Mars Global Localization. Here's how it works. Perseverance takes a

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full three hundred and sixty degree panorama with its navigation cameras.

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Then an algorithm compares that ground level view with high

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resolution orbital maps captured by the Mars reconnaissance orbit or

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far above. It matches the terrain, the ridges, rocks, slopes,

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and triangulates an exact position. The whole process takes about two.

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Speaker 1: Minutes two minutes to know where you are with twenty

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five centimeter accuracy. That is remarkable.

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Speaker 2: What makes it even cleverer is where the computing power

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comes from. It runs on the helicopter base station. The

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processor that Perseverance used to communicate with Ingenuity. Ingenuity fluid

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seventy second and final flight last year, so that processor

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was sitting idle. It runs more than one hundred times

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faster than the rover's main computers. The team essentially repurposed.

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Speaker 1: It so Ingenuity keeps giving even in retirement.

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Speaker 2: It really does. Mars Global Localization was used successfully for

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the first time in regular mission operations on February second,

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and again on February sixteenth. JPL's chief Engineer of Robotics Operations,

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Vandy verma U, described it as giving the rover GPS,

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saying it can now drive for potentially unlimited distances without

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calling home.

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Speaker 1: And this has implications beyond just Mars, doesn't it big implications.

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Speaker 2: NASA is already looking at adapting this for future lunar

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missions where you have difficult lighting conditions and long cold

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nights that make precise location data even more critical. And

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if we ever have astronauts driving pressurized rovers on Mars,

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they won't be able to wait for Houston to tell

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them where they are. This is exactly the kind of

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technology they'll need.

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Speaker 1: What a story five years on Mars and perseverance just

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keeps getting smarter, and hopefully so are we now this

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next story. I love this one because it is genuinely audacious.

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We're talking about a mission concept that was published this

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week for Chasing Down an interstellar comment. Avery said the scene.

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Speaker 3: Right so our audience will remember comment three. I slash

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ATLS the third confirmed interstellar object ever detected in our

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Solar System. Discovered in July twenty twenty five. It came

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screaming through from outside the Solar System, made its closest

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approach to the Sun last October, swung past Venus in November,

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and came closest to Earth in December. It is now

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racing away from US at over sixty kilometers per second.

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Speaker 1: Which is extraordinarily fast. For context, that's faster than any

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spacecraft humanity has ever launched.

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Speaker 2: Much faster, and that speed is the whole problem. Researchers

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from the Initiative for Interstellar Studies published new work this

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week exploring how you could actually send a spacecraft to

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intercept it. The short answer is you need to do

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something genuinely extreme. They call it a solar O birth maneuver.

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Speaker 1: Explain that to us.

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Speaker 2: So the O birth effects is actually a principle used

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in basically every rocket launch. It says that if you

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fire your engines when you're moving fast, you get a

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bigger boost then if you fire them when you're going slowly. Normally,

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it's applied when a spacecraft is at the closest point

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of its orbit around the planet. What this mission proposes

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is doing it at the closest point of a solar orbit,

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a literal close flyby of the Sun itself. We're talking

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three point two solar radii from the Sun's surface. That

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is extremely close.

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Speaker 1: How close is that actually?

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Speaker 2: To put it in perspective, the Parker Solar Probe goes closer,

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but even that is an extraordinary engineering challenge. At that distance,

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the heat and radiation are intense the spacecraft would need

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serious shielding, but the gravitational kick from firing your engines

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that close to the Sun is so powerful that you

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could theoretically reach speeds never achieved by human made objects,

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And then.

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Speaker 1: You'd still need how long to actually reach three I

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gosh atls.

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Speaker 2: If launched in twenty twenty five, which the researchers identify

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as the optimal window based on the alignment of Earth, Jupiter,

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the Sun, and the comet, the spacecraft would reach three

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I dash atls by around twenty eighty five, at a

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distance of approximately seven hundred and thirty two astronomical units

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from the Sun. For comparison, Voyager one has been traveling

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for nearly fifty years and is only at about one

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hundred and seventy AU.

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Speaker 1: So this would be the most distant rendezvous in human history.

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Speaker 2: By a massive margin, and only a flyby would be possible,

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not orbit insertion, because both the spacecraft and the comet

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would be moving so fast, But even a flyby would

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be extraordinary because three I dash atls didn't form an

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hour solar system if formed around the different star, possibly

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one that no longer exists. Its chemical fingerprints could tell

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us things about planetary formation elsewhere in the gallay that

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we simply cannot learn any other way.

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Speaker 1: It's one of those stories where the scale of ambition

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just takes your breath away. Is there any serious movement

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toward actually doing this?

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Speaker 2: The researchers are clear this is a proposal, not a

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funded mission, but twenty thirty five is only nine years away.

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Decisions would need to start being made soon, and three

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i at lists won't be the last interstellar visitor. The

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more of these we find, the more valuable the case

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for chasing one becomes dang.

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Speaker 1: In the realm of things we don't know much about,

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Let's talk about China's shen Long spacecraft, which launched on

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its fourth mission earlier this month.

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Speaker 2: Genlong, which means divine dragon in Chinese, is one of

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those topics that generates a lot of fascination, precisely because

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so little is officially confirmed. This is China's reusable robotic

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space plane, broadly analogous to the US Air Force's X

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three seven B. It launched from the Juquon set Light

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Launch Center on February sixth or seventh aboard a long

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March two.

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Speaker 1: F rocket, and as usual, China hasn't said.

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Speaker 2: Much, extremely little. The official line via state media shein

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Wa is that the mission will conduct quote technology verification

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and will provide technical support for the peaceful use of space.

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No launch time was given, no photographs, no mission duration, nothing, But.

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Speaker 1: We can look at what the previous missions have done

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and draw some inferences.

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Speaker 2: We can. The first mission in September twenty twenty lasted

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two days, the second in twenty twenty two lasted two

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hundred and seventy six days. The third launch December twenty

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twenty three lasted two hundred and sixty eight days. So

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recent missions have been around nine months in orbit. If

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this one follows the pattern, we might expect it to

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return around November or December.

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Speaker 1: And what have analysts pieced together about what it does

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up there?

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Speaker 2: This is where it gets interesting. Western space tracking organizations,

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including the US Space Force and private space situational awareness companies,

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have observed that shen Long conducts what are called rendezvous

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and proximity operations. It maneuvers close to other objects in orbit.

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It has deployed small objects possible sub satellites during at

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least two previous missions One of those objects was observed

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transmitting signals over North America, leading some analysts to describe

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it as a potential mobile signals intelligence.

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Speaker 1: Platform, and the anti satellite angle.

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Speaker 2: Analysts are cautious. Some experts point out that shen long,

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small payload bay, and limited power generation make it an

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unlikely direct space weapon, but the ability to approach other

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satellites at close range is inherently dual use. It could

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be inspection, it could be servicing, it could be something else.

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We genuinely don't know. What we do know is that

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the US X three seven b's eighth mission is also

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currently in orbit, launch last August to test quantum inertial

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sensors and high bandwidth laser links. These are the only

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two countries flying reusable space planes right now, and they're

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both being quite secretive about it.

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Speaker 1: The new space race conducted largely in silence, perfectly put. Now,

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let's do a quick run through of what else is

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happening on the launch front this week, because despite all

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the artemis drama, the commercial sector does not stop.

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Speaker 2: It really doesn't. Today February twenty fourth, we actually have

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a launch scheduled from Wallop's flight facility in Virginia Rocket

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Labs HACE Rocket Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron is carrying

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a fascinating payload called dart A. It's a scamjet powered

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hypersonic vehicle built by Brisbane based company Hypersonics Launch Systems

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and this will be a it's first ever flight. The

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mission is nicknamed That's Not a Knife, which we.

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Speaker 1: Appreciate Australian hypersonics delivered with Australian humor exactly.

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Speaker 2: BaseX also has a Falcon nine starlink launch out of

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Cape Canaveral. Today, Wednesday brings another Starling from Vandenberg, but

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the standout launch of the week is Friday. Firefly Aerospace's

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Alpha rocket is returning to flight on the Stairway to

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seven mission.

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Speaker 1: Tell us about that one.

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Speaker 2: So Firefly's last Alpha launch was in April twenty twenty

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five and it ended in failure. The rocket had an

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anomaly and the mission was lost. This is their return

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to flight, and it's significant for another reason. This will

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be the last flight of Alpha in its current Block

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one configuration. They're upgrading to Block two for Flight eight,

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which introduces in house avionics and thermal improvements. So Flight

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seven is essentially a test bed for some of those

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new systems ahead of the.

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Speaker 1: Full upgrade, a lot riding on it.

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Speaker 2: Quite a lot. Then the week closes out on Sunday,

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March first, with two more SpaceX starlink missions, one from

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Vandenberg and one from Cape Canaveral. By the end of

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this week, SpaceX will have surpassed twenty seven Falcon nine

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launches for twenty twenty six alone. The cadence is extraordinary,

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and all.

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Speaker 1: Of this happening while the SLS is making its one

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mile per hour journey back to the VAB quite the contrast.

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Speaker 2: The juxtaposition pretty much writes itself, and.

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Speaker 1: We close today with some beautiful deep science. A new

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study published this week in the journal Nature Astronomy has

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solved a mystery about red giant stars that have had

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astronomers puzzled since the nineteen seventies.

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Speaker 2: I love this one so a bit of background. Red

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giants are what stars like our sun become when they

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exhaust their hydrogen fuel. They expand dramatically and undergo chemical changes.

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One of the most striking observations has been a consistent

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decline in the ratio of carbon twelve to carbon thirteen

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in their outer layers. Scientists knew this had to be

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caused by material rising up from the nuclear furnace in

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the core, but they could not figure out how that

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material crossed the stable barrier layer separating the core from

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the outer envelope until now. Until now, a team led

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by Simon Bleuwen at the University of Victoria's Astronomy Research Center,

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working with colleagues at the University of Minnesota, used cutting

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edge three dimensional hydrodynamic simulations to model the actual fluid

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dynamics inside a red giant, and they found the answer

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its rotation.

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Speaker 1: Stellar rotation drive the mixing in.

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Speaker 2: A really dramatic way. Their simulations showed that in non

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rotating stars, waves passing through the barrier layer transport very

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little material, which is what previous models predicted, but once

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you add rotation, it amplifies those waves enormously. Mixing rates

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exceed non rotating stars by over one hundred times, and

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they increase with faster rotation rates. That matches exactly what

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we observe on real red giant surfaces.

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Speaker 1: And these weren't small simulations. They used some serious computing power.

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Speaker 2: Two supercomputers the Texas Advanced Computing Center at ut Austin

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and the brand new Trillium supercomputing cluster at the University

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of Toronto's Cinet facility. The principal investigator, falk Herwig, described

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these as the most computationally intensive stellar convection simulations ever performed.

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They were only possible because of very recent advances in supercomputing.

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Speaker 1: And what does this mean for us? For our Sun?

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Speaker 2: In about five billion years, our Sun will enter its

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red giant phase. It'll expand and likely swallow Mercury, Venus

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and probably Earth. Beyond the frost line, Jupiter, Saturn and

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beyond those worlds will move into the new habitable zone.

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This research gives us much better per ditions of exactly

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how our Sun's chemistry will evolve during that transition, what

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elements will appear on its surface, how fast changes will occur.

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Speaker 1: Which sounds like a very long term concern, but understanding

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how our star will die is genuinely important science.

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Speaker 2: It is, and the techniques developed here have applications far

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beyond astronomy. The same simulation methods apply to ocean currents,

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atmospheric dynamics, even blood flow. Balk Kerwig is already working

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with researchers in those fields to develop new large scale

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simulation tools.

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Speaker 1: The universe teaching us about the ocean. I love it.

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And that is your Astronomy Daily for Tuesday, February twenty fourth,

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Big day for Artemis and not in any way anyone hoped.

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But as we've seen today, space science never stops, whether

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it's a rover finding its feet on Mars or scientists

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finally understanding why red giant stars change the way they do.

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Speaker 2: If you want to keep up with the Artomis rollback developments,

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we'll have updates and tomorrow's show once NASA has held

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that media reefing. In the meantime, you can find us

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at Astronomy Daily dot io and at astro Daily Pod

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across all your social platforms.

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Speaker 1: Subscribe if you haven't already, leave us a review if

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you have a moment. It really does help and we

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will see you tomorrow.

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Speaker 2: Clear skys everyone, Clear Stys Sunday. Star Is

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Speaker 3: Star Is