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Speaker 1: Four astronauts, one rocket, and weather that just will not cooperate.

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The Crew twelve team is in quarantine in Florida, watching

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the forecast and waiting.

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Speaker 2: A visitor from another solar system is heading for the

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exit and handing us a chemical blueprint of its home

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solar system on the way out. Plus a rover on

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Mars just took orders from an AI instead of a

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human for the very first time.

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Speaker 1: All that plus a rare solar eclipse just days away,

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new research that could change how we search for life,

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and starship making a comeback after a dramatic setback. It's

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a big day. Welcome to Astronomy Daily.

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Speaker 2: Let's get started. Anna take it away.

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

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what's happening out there.

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Speaker 2: I'm Anna and I'm Avery. It is Wednesday, February eleventh,

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twenty twenty six. We have six stories to get through today,

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and it's one of those lineups where every single one

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of them earns its place.

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Speaker 1: We're going to kick off with the ongoing Crew twelve

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drama at Cape Canaveral, then swing to deep Space for

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the latest from three I Slash Atlas, and then we've

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got a mars Ai story that genuinely made me stop

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and think, some fascinating new science about why Earth ended

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up being habitable at all, a rare solar eclipse just

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days away, and a big starship update.

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Speaker 2: Let's get into it so avery.

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Speaker 1: As of this morning, the Crew twelve mission has now

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been pushed back to no earlier than Friday, February thirteenth.

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That is the third attempted launch date in less than

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a week.

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Speaker 2: It really is. Weather has been the culprit each time.

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The teams originally had a window on Wednesday, eleventh, today,

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but conditions along the Dragon spacecraft flight path just weren't cooperating,

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so they waved it off. Then Thursday the twelfth got pushed.

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Now they're looking at Friday morning with a planned lift

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off at five point fifteen Eastern.

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Speaker 1: And the reason there's so much urgency here isn't just

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that people are impatient. The International Space Station is currently

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running on what NASA is calling a skeleton crew. Preue

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eleven had to come home early back in January following

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a medical issue with one of the astronauts, and since

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then the station has been significantly understaffed. Prue twelve is

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the relief team.

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Speaker 2: Which makes every weather delay feel a little more loaded

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than usual. The people up there are doing the work

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of a full crew with a much smaller team.

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Speaker 1: So who's making this trip, Well, let's run through them

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one more time. Commander is NASA astronaut Jessica Meyer, a

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veteran of a previous long duration station mission and well

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known for conducting the first all female spacewalk back in

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twenty nineteen. Jill be joined by pilot Jack Hathaway, also

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from NASA on his first spaceflight.

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Speaker 2: And then there are two men specialists, Sophie Adnot from

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the European Space Agency representing France and Andre Fedjaiyev from

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Russia's ros Cosmos. This will be fed Jaiev's second trip

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to the station. Once they dock, they're looking at an

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eight to nine month stay, longer than usual to cover

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the time loss by krue eleven's early departure.

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Speaker 1: Now, there is a subplot to this mission that I

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think a lot of people may not have heard about.

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Back in December, Russia's ross Cosmos quietly removed cosmonaut aleg

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Artemiev from the Crew twelve mission. The official line was

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that he had transitioned to quote other work.

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Speaker 2: Which is the kind of statement that immediately makes you

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want to know what the actual reason is.

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Speaker 1: Right and investigative outlet The Insider reported that Artemiev was

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effectively expelled from the United States by a being accused

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of violating international traffic in arms regulations by allegedly photographing

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SpaceX engines, documents and other sense technologies with his phone

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and then exporting that information.

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Speaker 2: So he was allegedly taking photos insite SpaceX facilities of

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proprietary rocket technology and sending it out of the country.

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Speaker 1: That appears to be the allegation. He was replaced by

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Andre Fadyeev and Ross. Cosmos has said very little publicly,

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but it's a striking reminder that even in the cooperative

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world of the International Space Station, the geopolitical tensions of

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the wider world don't disappear at the door, and it

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raises interesting questions about what access international partners are given

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to commercial SpaceX facilities. These aren't NASA government sites anyway.

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Speaker 3: The crew are in quarantine, the rocket is on the pad,

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and all eyes are now on the Florida forecast for

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Friday will update you the moment there's news.

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Speaker 1: Our second story takes US to the outer Solar System,

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where interstellar comet three I atlass is continuing its fair

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way tour. And before it goes, it's been handing scientists

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some truly unexpected data just to.

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Speaker 2: Set the scene. Three I at Lists was discovered in

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July twenty twenty five by a telescope in Chile, traveling

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far too fast on a trajectory that could impossibly have

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originated within our Solar System. It's only the third interstellar

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object ever confirmed to have passed through, after Omuamua in

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twenty seventeen and Borisov in twenty nineteen.

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Speaker 1: Dasa's SPEARX telescope observed three I at Lists in December

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twenty twenty five, and the results have been remarkable. The

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comet's coma has become dramatically more active and chemically complex.

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B REX detected water, ice, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, organic compounds,

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and rocky material being ejected in chunks far larger than

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the fine dust grains you'd normally expect. The scientists described

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it as a cocktail of chemicals that haven't been exposed

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to space for billions of years.

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Speaker 2: The James Web Space telescope added another layer, finding that

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the ratio of carbon dioxide to water in the coma

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is approximately eight to one, which is one of the

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highest CO two to water ratios ever measured in any comet.

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In our solar systems, comets water tends to dominate, so

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the implication is three i at lists may have formed

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much further from its home star than a typical cometwood

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near a CO two ice line. Its chemistry is essentially

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telling us something about the architecture of the planetary system

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it came from.

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Speaker 1: There's also data on the comet spin. It rotates once

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every sixteen point one six hours, and researchers found it

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had strange wobbling jets in a rare sun facing anti tail.

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Normally comet tails point away from the Sun, but three

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i at lists briefly had one pointing toward it, genuinely

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weird behavior.

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Speaker 2: As of today, three iat list is in the con

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installation Gemini, fading beyond naked eye visibility. It's heading towards

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a Jupiter flyby in mid March before leaving the Solar

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system forever, and there's one more data release to watch for.

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Lisa's Juice spacecraft observed three iat lists back in November,

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but couldn't transmit the data while using its antenna as

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a heat shield. That data is expected to arrive here

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on Earth anytime now in February, so there could still

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be one more surprise.

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Speaker 1: Coming when future generations ask what we learned about other

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solar systems in twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six,

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three I at lists is going to be a big

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part of the answer.

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Speaker 2: Dave travels three IY slash at lists. Don't be a stranger,

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although I suppose by definition you always will be.

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Speaker 1: Now, this next story is one I find genuinely fascinating

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because it sits right at the intersection of robotics, artificial intelligence,

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and the practical reality of exploring another planet. M NASA

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handed the wheel of the Perseverance Mars rover to an AI,

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not metaphorically literally, the AI generated the rovers driving waypoints,

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and the rover followed them without human control across two

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separate days, covering a total of four hundred and fifty

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six meters.

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Speaker 2: And just to be clear, this isn't NASA hopping on

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a bandwagon. They have been working on autonomous rover navigation

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for years out of sheer necessity. Mars is so far

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away that a round trip radio signal takes around twenty

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five minutes. That means every driving instruction you send has

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a built in delay, and every unexpected obstacle requires another

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twenty five minutes to respond to. Autonomous navigation isn't a luxury,

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it's a practical requirement.

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Speaker 1: So in this demonstration, the AI analyzed orbital images from

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the Mars Reconnaissance orbiter's high rise camera as well as

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digital elevation models. It identified how sand traps, boulder fields,

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bedrock rocky outcrops, and then generated a path defined by

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a series of waypoints to avoid them. From there, Perseverance's

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own onboard auto navigation system took over to actually execute

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the drive.

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Speaker 4: And importantly, before those AI generated waypoints were sent to Mars,

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they were tested here on Earth using Perseverance's engineering twin,

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a full scale physical replica at JPL's Mars yard, So

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this wasn't a blind experiment. There was a safety net

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built in.

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Speaker 1: The AI in question is built on Anthropics Claude, which

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regular listeners may know as the same AI that helps

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power this show. So there's a certain pleasing symmetry and

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reporting on that it really is.

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Speaker 2: And the engineers are excited about what comes next. One

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of the current limitations is that the longer a rover

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drives without human relocalization, essentially humans checking in to confirm

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where it is on the map, the more positional uncertainty

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build up. Over six hundred and fifty five meters, that

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uncertainty can grow to around thirty three meters. The goal

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is to use AI to solve that relocalization problem too,

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so rovers can handle kilometer scaled drives entirely on their own.

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Speaker 1: And beyond Mars. This matters for the whole future of

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deep space exploration. NASA's Dragonfly mission to Saturn's moon Titan

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will rely heavily on AI for autonomous navigation as it

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flies around in Titan's thick atmosphere. The further from Earth

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you go, the more critical autonomous systems become, because waiting

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twenty five minutes for a signal is one thing, but

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waiting hours or days is quite another.

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Speaker 2: The vision the JPL team laid out is compelling intelligence

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systems not just at mission control here on Earth, but

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embedded in the rovers, helicopters, and drones themselves, trained on

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the collective knowledge of NASA's engineers and scientists. The Mars

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rover of twenty thirty five may look quite different from perseverance.

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Speaker 1: Our next story is one of those pieces of research

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that sounds almost philosophical at first, but turns out to

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have very concrete scientific implications. A new study published in

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Nature Astronomy has found that life on Earth may be

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thanks to an extraordinarily lucky chemical accident during our planet's

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formation nearly four point six billion years ago.

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Speaker 2: And when they say lucky, they mean it. The research

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suggests that two elements absolutely essential for life as we

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know it, phosphorus and nitrogen, only stayed accessible on Earth's

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surface because of a very precise and apparently quite rare

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balance of oxygen during the planet's earliest formation.

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Speaker 1: Here's how it works. When a young rocky planet forms,

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it's initially molten, a churning ball of liquid rock. As

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heavy metals sink inward to form the core. Lighter materials

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stay near the surface during this chaotic stage called core formation.

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The amount of oxygen present determines where other elements end up.

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The researchers from Etch Zurich found that oxygen levels need

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to fall within a surprisingly narrow range for both phosphorus

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and nitrogen to remain in the mantle and crust available

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for future life.

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Speaker 3: To little oxygen and phosphorus bonds with iron and gets

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dragged into the core, taking away a key ingredient for

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DNA sell membranes and energy transfer. Too much oxygen and

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nitrogen is more easily lost to space. Either way, the

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chemistry needed for life never fully comes together. Earth hit

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this sweet spot, what the researchers are calling a chemical

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Goldilock zone precisely.

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Speaker 1: The lead researcher, Craig Walton put it clearly, if Earth

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had had just a little more or a little less

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oxygen during core formation, there would not have been enough

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phosphorus or nitrogen for the development of life. They also

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modeled mar and found it likely had the wrong oxygen balance,

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more phosphorus in the mantle than Earth but less nitrogen,

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challenging conditions for life as we know it.

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Speaker 2: This is a significant challenge to how we've traditionally thought

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about the search for life. The habitable zone, the region

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around a star where liquid water can exist on the surface,

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has been our go to framework, but this research suggests

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that even a planet in the perfect orbital position with

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liquid water could be fundamentally incapable of supporting life if

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its internal chemistry didn't form correctly.

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Speaker 1: And here's the hopeful flip side. The oxygen conditions during

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planetary formation are linked to the chemistry of the host

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star itself, because planets form from the same material as

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their stars, So in principle, by looking at stellar chemistry

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we might be able to predict which planetary systems had

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the right conditions from the start. Walton's advice for the

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search look for solars systems with stars that resemble our

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own sun.

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Speaker 3: It makes the Earth feel even more special and the

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universe feel a little more vast and empty. All right,

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from the philosophical to the spectacular. In exactly one week's time,

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on February seventeenth, an annular solar eclipse is going to

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sweep across the Southern Hemisphere. This is the so called

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ring of fire eclipse, where the Moon passes directly in

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front of the Sun, but because it's at a slightly

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greater distance from Earth than usual, it appears a little

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smaller than the Sun's disk. The result is a thin,

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blazing ring of sunlight surrounding the Moon's dark silhouette dunning.

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Speaker 1: Though this is different from a total solar eclipse where

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the Moon completely covers the Sun and you get that

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eerie darkness in the middle of the day. In an

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annular eclipse, the Moon blocks about ninety six percent of

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the Sun's disk, but that remaining sliver stays visible and

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the ring effect is only visible for around two minutes

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and twenty seconds at any given location. In the past.

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Speaker 2: The path of annularity for this one is quite remote.

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It runs primarily over Antarctica, which means the full ring

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of fire experience will be witnessed by the researchers at

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places like Concordia Station, the French Italian outpost on the

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Dome Sea plateau, and Myrni Station, the Russian base on

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the Davis Sea coast. We're talking about teams of maybe

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fifty to two hundred people, a very exclusive audience for

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one of nature's best shows.

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Speaker 1: For the rest of US, partial phases will be visible

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from the southernmost parts of South America, southern Chile and Argentina,

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and from parts of South Africa. Not the full ring,

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but still a striking site if you're in the right

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location with proper eclipse glasses. And it goes without saying

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never look directly at the Sun during an eclipse without

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approved eclipse glasses. The ring of fire does not mean

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the sun is safe to look at.

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Speaker 2: There's also something lovely about the timing of this eclipse.

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February seventeenth is the start of Chinese New Year, specifically

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the Year of the Fire Horse. The new moon that

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causes the eclipse is the same new moon that marks

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the beginning of the lunar new year, and the crescent

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moon visible on February eighteenth will signal the start of Ramadan.

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So this one celestial event sits right at the intersection

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of multiple major cultural moments around the world.

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Speaker 1: If you're not in the past and want to watch,

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there will almost certainly be live streams from research teams

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in Antarctica. We'll keep an eye out and link to

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any good ones in the show notes. And we're going

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to close out today's main stories with a Starship update,

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because after a frustrating lull, things are very much moving

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again at SpaceX's star Base facility in South Texas.

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Speaker 2: Do understand why this is significant, you need a quick

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bit of context. The last Starship flight, Flight eleven, was

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the final launch of the Block two configuration. BaseX is

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now transitioning to Block three, which is a significantly upgraded

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architecture featuring new Raptor three engines, enhanced performance, and improved

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reusability features. But the development of Block three hit a

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serious setback when Booster eighteen, the first Block three booster,

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failed during cryogenic pressure testing late last year. Its outer

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container cracked.

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Speaker 1: BaseX moved fast Booster nineteen. The replacement was stacked and

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delivered to the test site in record time, and in

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the first week of February it successfully completed not one

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but two cryogenic pressure tests. The first was on February second,

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the second on the fourth. Both passed Darbase watchers described

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it as looking like the entire booster had frozen solid

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as super chilled liquid oxygen entered it, which is exactly

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what it's supposed to do.

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Speaker 2: Booster nineteen has since been returned to the production site

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for further work and all eyes are now on the

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flight stack. Booster nineteen paired with Ship thirty nine, which

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is being prepared for what will be the debut of

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the full Block three vehicle. The current target is a

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launch window in the February to March timeframe. THO sources

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familiar with the program point to March as the most

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realistic date.

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Speaker 1: Flight twelve is a genuinely significant milestone. It'll be the

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first flight of the Block three Starship, the first use

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of the new Pad two architecture at Starbase, and the

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debut of Raptor three engines at scale. The stakes are high.

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NASA needs a successful Block three to progress towards using

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Starship as the human landing system for the Artemis program's

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crude lunar missions. That timeline is already under pressure.

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Speaker 2: Meanwhile, infrastructure work continues at a remarkable pace. Pad one

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at Starbase is being rebuilt, SpaceX's facility at Kennedy Space

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Center at Launch Complex thirty nine A is progressing toward

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a first Florida Starship launch in the second half of

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twenty twenty six, and environmental approval has been granted for

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a brand new Starship complex at Space Launch Complex thirty

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seven at Cape Canaveral, which would eventually give the program

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five launch pads across Texas and Florida.

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Speaker 1: Five launch pads for Starship. It's a lot to take in,

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but after Booster eighteen's failure and the testing lull, the

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fact that Booster nineteen has passed its cryotests and Flight

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twelve is back on track. Is genuinely good news for

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the program.

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Speaker 2: We will be watching closely.

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Speaker 1: That is everything we've got for you today on Astronomy

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Daily Fix stories, all of them worth your time. From

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astronauts waiting for weather in Florida to a comet carrying

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00:19:47,759 --> 00:19:51,519
four billion year old secrets from another star, a rover

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00:19:51,720 --> 00:19:55,160
taking orders from an AI on Mars, new science that

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makes life on Earth feel like a cosmic lottery win,

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a ring of fire one week away, and starship dusting

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itself off for another attempt at history.

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Speaker 2: A genuinely brilliant day to be following Space news. Thank

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you so much for spending part of it with us.

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Speaker 1: If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe wherever you get

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your podcasts, and if you want to go deeper on

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any of these stories. Full show notes and our blog

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are over at Astronomy Daily dot.

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Speaker 2: Io until tomorrow. Keep looking up.

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Speaker 1: Take care everyone, Sunny Day Stars

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Speaker 4: Start all