April 8, 2026

Artemis II: Homeward Bound and The Lost Mars Mission

Artemis II: Homeward Bound and The Lost Mars Mission
Season 5

Today's Space News — Astronomy Daily S05E84 | April 8, 2026 In today's episode, Anna and Avery cover six incredible stories spanning the final days of humanity's return to deep space, a lost spacecraft mystery, and fresh science rewriting how we understand our own planet. TODAY'S STORIES: (00:00) Intro (01:30) Story 1 — Artemis II Day 7/8: science debrief done, trajectory burns fired, and the crew heads home for a historic splashdown Friday (08:00) Story 2 — Cygnus CRS-24 launch delayed to April 10 due to weather — now launching the same day Artemis II lands (13:00) Story 3 — Earth formed entirely from inner Solar System material: Jupiter blocked everything else, and water was already here (19:00) Story 4 — ESA Juice delivers stunning new data on interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS: 70 Olympic pools of water per second (24:00) Story 5 — Comet C/2025 R3 PanSTARRS is the new comet to watch this April — and it's looking good (29:00) Story 6 — FEATURE: Mars 96, the lost Mars mission that crashed back to Earth 30 years ago — and was never found Subscribe for daily space and astronomy news | astronomydaily.io | @AstroDailyPod

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WEBVTT

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Hello, and welcome to Astronomy Daily. I'm Anna and I'm Avery.

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It is Wednesday, April eighth, twenty twenty six, and what

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a week it has been. We are deep into what

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might be the most extraordinary few days in human spaceflight

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since nineteen seventy two. Artemis two is heading home, and

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we are going to walk you through exactly where the

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crew is right now, what happened on flight day seven,

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and what to expect as they come screaming back through

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the atmosphere on Friday.

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Screaming is right. We are talking twenty five thousand miles

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per hour, the fastest crude re entry in history. But

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more on that in a moment.

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We have also got a cargo launch delay that has

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created one of the most beautifully poetic scheduling coincidences we

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have ever seen in spaceflight. Some planet shaking new science

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about how Earth actually formed, fresh data from an alien

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comet courtesy of a spacecraft designed for Jupiter's mood uns.

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A new comic for skywatchers to get excited about after

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last week's spectacular disappointment, and then.

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To close the show today, something a little different, A mystery,

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a space mystery that is thirty years old and has

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never been solved.

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I have been looking forward to this one all day.

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I won't lie.

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Doh of I let's get into it. This is Astronomy Daily,

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season five, episode eighty four.

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Right, so let's set the scene. Artemis two launched on

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April first, Yes, April Fool's Day, and no it was

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not a joke. And the crew of four have already

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done the most extraordinary thing. On Monday, Flight Day six,

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they flew around the far side of the Moon. They

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set a new record for the furthest humans have ever

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been two hundred and fifty two thousand, seven hundred and

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fifty six miles. Nobody in human history has ever been

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that far.

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And Flight Day seven, which was yesterday Tuesday, was the

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day after all drama, the science debrief day, the comedown day,

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well sort of. They woke up to Tokyo drifting by

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glass animals and Denzel Curry and I genuinely love whoever

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selects these wake up songs is having an absolute blast.

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The playlist creation on Artemis two has been exceptional. Somebody

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at NASA is doing their best work.

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They woke up thirty six thousand miles from the moon,

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two hundred thirty six thousand miles from Earth, and the

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big item on the agenda was a fifteen minute audio

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call ship to ship with the crew aboard the International

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Space Station.

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So you have four astronauts who have just been further

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from Earth than any human in over fifty years calling

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up the International Space Station, which from where O'Ryan was

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sitting must have felt practically next.

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Door, right relatively speaking. They spoke with NASA astronauts Jessica Mere,

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Jack Hathaway, Chris Williams, and ESA's Sophie Adenaut. Just imagine

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that conversation. So, how was the Moon, you know, bit far?

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And after that the science debrief. The Artemis two lunar

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science team had a full debrief session with the crew

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to capture everything they observed during the flyby while the

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memories were still sharp.

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Which makes complete sense, right, These four people have just

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seen parts of the Moon no human eye has ever

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seen directly, the far side, craters like Vavlov and the

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Oriental Basin, an ancient lava field on the border of

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the Moon's near and far side that's almost impossible to

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see from Earth. You want those impressions captured immediately.

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And then in the evening at about nine pm Eastern,

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Orion fired the first of three trajectory correction burns to

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begin fine tuning the return path to Earth.

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Though we are officially in the home stretch. And Flight

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day eight, which is today, the crew has two key tasks. First,

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a radiation shelter construction demonstration.

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Which sounds alarming but is actually a plan drill. The

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practice assembling a makeshift radiation shelter inside Orion using available

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materials in case of a solar event during a deep

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space mission, exactly the kind of emergency preparedness you need

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locked in before Artemis three heads to the lunar surface.

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And second manual piloting tests. The crew gets to hand

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fly Orion directly, which, given that computers handled basically everything

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on this mission, must feel a bit like being handed

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the wheel.

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And then, Friday, April tenth, splash down.

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Flight day ten, Orion re enters the atmosphere at twenty

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five thousand miles per hour. That is the fastest crude

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re entry ever attempted. The heat shields, which caused so

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much concern and engineering work before this mission, will be

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put to its ultimate.

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Test, and collecting data from that re entry is actually

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one of the core mission objectives, so NASA will be

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watching those heat shield readings very closely.

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Blashdown is scheduled for about eight pm Eastern off the

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coast of San Diego. The USS John P. Murtha, a

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Navy amphibious transport docship, will be waiting. The crew will

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be recovered by helicopter, taking a board for medical evaluation,

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then flown back to Houston, and.

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That will be it the first time humans have returned

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from beyond Earth orbit since Apollo seventeen in nineteen seventy two.

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Mission complete, but.

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Right now Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy

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Hansen are heading home and we could not be more

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excited for them.

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All right, from the crew heading back to Earth to

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a cargo ship heading up to the space station with

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a slight detour through the weather forecast.

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Yes So, as we reported yesterday, Northrop Grumman's Signus CRS

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twenty four mission was supposed to launch today Wednesday morning

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from Cape Canaveral on SpaceX Falcon nine, carrying about eleven

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thousand pounds of cargo to the International Space Station, but.

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The weather at Space Launch Complex forty had other ideas

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and teams have pushed the launch to Friday, April tenth,

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targeting eight oh three in the morning Eastern backup opportunity

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on Saturday the eleventh if needed.

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Now here's why this matters beyond just a weather delay.

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Friday April tenth is also the day Artemis two splashdowns, so.

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On the same day, four astronauts returned from the Moon,

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the furthest humans have been from Earth in over fifty years.

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A fresh cargo ship launches towards the space station simultaneously.

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Cape Canaveral is going to be having quite a Friday.

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The spacecraft itself is the Signus Excel, the larger configuration

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carrying about eleven thousand pounds of pressurized cargo. Northrop Grumman

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has named this one the SS Stephen R. Nagel, in

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honor of the NASA astronaut who flew four Shuttle missions

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and longed over seven hundred and twenty hours in space.

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Beautiful tradition. Naming these cargo ships and the science aboard

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CRS twenty four is genuinely interesting. There's a new module

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for the Cold Atom Lab on the station, NASA's quantum

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Science facility to help investigate dark matter and potentially improve

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computing technology.

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There's also hardware to produce greater numbers of therapeutic stem

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cells for blood diseases and cancer, model organisms for a

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gut microbiome study, and a receiver to improve space weather

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models that protect GPS and radar infrastructure.

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Though it's not just food and equipment, this is a

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proper science delivery.

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Once it arrives, Signus doesn't dock automatically the way Dragon does.

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Astronauts Chris Williams and Jack Hathaway will use the Canid

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Arm two robotic arm to grab it and bring it in.

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They've been practicing. There was a report last week of

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them running simulations together in the cupola.

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And Signus is scheduled to stay at the station until

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October before undocking with several thousand pounds of trash and

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burning up on re entry. A rather unglamorous end, but

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a useful one.

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Weather permitting. Friday should be quite the day.

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Okay. Story three, and this one is a genuine rewrite

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of something we thought we understood.

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Where did Earth come from? We know the broad answer.

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Four and a half billion years ago, a cloud of

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gas and dust collapsed, the Sun formed, and the leftover

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material clumped into planets, but where exactly did the specific

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material that became Earth come from.

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For decades, the accepted model was that Earth got a

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significant chunk of its building material from the outer Solar

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System from beyond Jupiter. Estimates ranged from six percent to

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as much as forty percent of Earth's mass, and the

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reason this mattered is water pliantists needed that outer Solar

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System contribution to explain where Earth's oceans came from, because

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the Inner Solar System was thought to be too dry.

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But a new study from Eth Zurich, published in the

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journal Nature Astronomy, has just turned that on its head.

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Planetary scientists Paulososi and Dan Bauer analyze isotopic ratios of

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meteorites from across the Solar System and compare them to

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Earth's composition. Their conclusion, Earth formed almost entirely from Inner

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Solar System material, the outer Solar System contribution less than

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two percent, and possibly nothing at all.

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Now, isotopes are essentially atomic fingerprints. Different regions of the

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Solar System produce slightly different ratios of the same elements,

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and you can use those signatures to trace where material originated.

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Previous studies mostly looked at one or two isotopic systems.

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Saucy and Bauer looked at ten.

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Ten different isotopic systems analyzed with statistical methods rarely used

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in geochemistry, and when you look at all ten together,

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the picture is unambiguous. Earth is built of non carbonaceous material.

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Inner Solar System stuff through went through.

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Which immediately raises an enormous question. If Earth didn't get

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its water from the outer Solar System from comets and

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water rich asteroids drifting inward, where did the water come from?

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And the answer, according to this study is it was

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already here. Water and volatile elements must have been present

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in the Inner Solar System from the very beginning. We

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just didn't realize it.

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And why was so little Outer Solar System material reaching

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Earth in the first place? Jupiter. Jupiter formed extremely quickly

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and grew enormous, and its gravity carved gap in the

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young protoplanetary disc, essentially a barrier between the inner and

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outer Solar System. This study suggests that barrier was almost

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completely impermeable. Almost nothing got through.

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Jupiter, the bouncer of the Solar system. Sorry, outer Solar

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system material not tonight.

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One of the researchers, Dan Bauer, said, we were truly

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astonished to find that Earth is composed entirely from Inner

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Solar System material, distinct from any combination of existing meteorites.

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Even they didn't expect this result.

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The implications are genuinely big. If water was already present

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in the Inner Solar System, that changes how we think

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about the conditions that made life possible here, and it

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has implications for other planetary systems. Rocky planets around Sun

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like stars might be wetter than we assumed.

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It's the kind of result that makes you look at

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the ground beneath your feet differently. This material formed locally

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billions of years ago without much help from the wider

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Solar System. Jupiter kept the neighborhood tidy.

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And Earth's water was here from the starts, which is

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kind of beautiful.

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Actually digging with space science, and this one involves an

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alien comet, a spacecraft on its way to Jupiter's moons,

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and an instrument that was never designed to do what

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it ended up doing.

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We have followed three iatls closely on the show Quick Catchup.

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Three IATLS is an interstellar comment, only the third object

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ever confirmed to have entered our Solar System from interstellar space.

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Discovered in July twenty twenty five, reached its closest approach

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to the Sun on October twenty ninth. And when I

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say it was moving fast two hundred and fifty thousand

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kilometers per hour, nothing that forms in our solar system

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moves like that.

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It is genuinely a visitor from another star system. We

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have no idea which one.

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In November twenty twenty five, isa's Juice spacecraft, the Jupiter

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icy Moons Explorer, currently en route to Jupiter, was in

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a fortunate position to observe three iatls from deep space

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just four days after Perihelium. The observations were difficult. It

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took until February twenty twenty six for the data to

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reach Earth.

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And Issa has now published the findings and the headline

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number is extraordinary. Juice's Magis spectrometer detected two thousand kilograms

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of water vapor being expelled by three iatls every single second.

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Two thousand kilograms per second.

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To give you a sense of scale, that is the

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equivalent of approximately seventy Olympic swimming pools of water every

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single day, just evaporating off the surface of this comet

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into space, which.

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Tells you This is a very active comment. Water rich

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at least on the surface, though there's an interesting wrinkle.

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Its carbon dioxide to water ratio is higher than you

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typically expect from a Solar System commet, which either means

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the nucleus is genuinely CO two rich or there's a

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thick insulating crust hiding ice underneath.

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Either of which we can determine from here. Three iatls

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has now passed Jupiter and is heading out of the

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Solar System. It will never return.

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And here's the part I find most extraordinary. ESIS navigation camera,

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00:13:51.039 --> 00:13:54.399
designed for navigating near Jupiter's moons looking at surfaces a

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few hundred kilometers below, also contributed to the science. It

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00:13:58.200 --> 00:14:01.360
provided a unique vantage point from deep space that helped

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00:14:01.559 --> 00:14:05.000
ESA's planetary Defense team refine a comet's orbital path to

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ten times better accuracy than Earth based observations alone.

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Could achieve an instrument designed for one job unexpectedly doing

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something completely different and doing it brilliantly. That is science

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at its best.

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What I keep coming back to is the age of

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three iatls. Based on his trajectory, this commet may be

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billions of years older than the Solar System itself. It's

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00:14:27.519 --> 00:14:30.039
not just from another star. It may be older than

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00:14:30.080 --> 00:14:33.440
our Sun. It has been traveling through interstellar space for

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longer than Earth has existed.

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And it spent about a year passing through our backyard,

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00:14:38.440 --> 00:14:41.159
and we watched it as carefully as we could. And

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00:14:41.240 --> 00:14:44.720
now it's gone. Everything we will ever know about three

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00:14:44.799 --> 00:14:46.639
iatls we know.

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00:14:46.759 --> 00:14:50.200
Already everything we will ever know. I love that and

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00:14:50.279 --> 00:14:54.320
find it completely haunting an equal measure. Right after last

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00:14:54.320 --> 00:14:57.360
week's heartbreak with Comet Maps the sun grazer that did

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00:14:57.360 --> 00:14:59.600
not survive its close pass with the Sun, which we

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00:14:59.639 --> 00:15:03.039
covered yesterday's episode, the good news is that April is

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not done with comets, not even close. Comet C twenty

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twenty five are three discovered by the Pan Stars survey

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is now the prime target for April skywatching, and it's

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00:15:13.919 --> 00:15:18.600
looking genuinely promising. Where Maps was unpredictable and dramatic, Akretz

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sungrazer diving to within one hundred thousand miles of the

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Sun's surface, pand Stars is a more conventional comment predictable orbit,

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manageable approach, the reliable act that shows up when the

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headliner cancels.

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And its timing is good. Perry Helion closest approach to

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the Sun is around April twentieth. Closest approach to Earth

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is April twenty seventh, when it comes within about forty

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00:15:41.000 --> 00:15:44.480
four million miles of US. At peak brightness, it's expected

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to reach approximately magnitude eight.

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Now magnitude eight means you will not see it with

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00:15:49.799 --> 00:15:53.519
the naked eye under normal skies, but binoculars will absolutely

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00:15:53.519 --> 00:15:56.120
do the job. Any small telescope will give you a

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00:15:56.159 --> 00:15:59.679
lovely view. You're looking for a fuzzy smudge, possibly with

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a fan tail extending away from the Sun.

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For Northern Hemisphere listeners, look east in the pre dawn

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00:16:06.600 --> 00:16:09.559
sky from mid April through the end of the month.

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It will be in the constellations Pegasus and Pisces. A

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00:16:13.559 --> 00:16:18.159
good star app Delarium sky Safari star Walk two will

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00:16:18.200 --> 00:16:21.159
give you exact positioning, and for our.

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00:16:21.120 --> 00:16:24.879
Listeners in Australia and New Zealand, your window is actually

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00:16:24.919 --> 00:16:29.279
in early May. In the evening sky. Look west after sunset.

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00:16:29.840 --> 00:16:33.320
Dark skies will significantly help get away from city lights

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00:16:33.360 --> 00:16:34.159
if you can.

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Coomet brightness predictions can shift. They famously don't always behave,

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so keep checking sky and Telescope or Universe today. As

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we get closer to perihelion. But right now the forecast

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looks encouraging.

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Think of it as the universe offering a constellation prize

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00:16:52.120 --> 00:16:55.639
after maps. It's a perfectly lovely comment and it deserves

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00:16:55.679 --> 00:16:56.200
our attention.

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One commet destroyed, one comet in coming April is very

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00:17:01.440 --> 00:17:04.960
on brand for the Solar System. All right, story six,

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00:17:05.359 --> 00:17:08.359
And today we're doing something a little different to close

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00:17:08.400 --> 00:17:08.759
the show.

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We are going back thirty years, back to one of

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00:17:12.759 --> 00:17:15.960
the strangest and most overlooked stories in the history of

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00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:20.119
space exploration. A mission that was built with extraordinary ambition,

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00:17:20.799 --> 00:17:25.440
launched into tragedy, and then vanished, and nobody has ever

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00:17:25.519 --> 00:17:26.000
found it.

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00:17:26.599 --> 00:17:29.240
This is the story of Mars ninety six.

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00:17:29.920 --> 00:17:33.319
Let's set the scene. It's nineteen ninety six. The Cold

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00:17:33.319 --> 00:17:36.519
War has been over for five years. Russia and the

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00:17:36.599 --> 00:17:39.720
United States are, for the first time in decades, not

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00:17:39.920 --> 00:17:44.279
rivals in space. They're partners. Juttle Mirror is underway, the

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00:17:44.400 --> 00:17:48.559
International Space Station is being designed. There is genuine optimism

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00:17:48.599 --> 00:17:51.480
about what a post Cold War space age could look like.

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00:17:52.079 --> 00:17:56.039
And in that spirit of optimism, an extraordinary mission is

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00:17:56.079 --> 00:17:59.720
being assembled. Russia is leading it, but it is genuinely

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00:18:00.200 --> 00:18:08.680
Thai National science payloads from Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Belgium, Finland, Austria,

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00:18:08.720 --> 00:18:13.920
and the United States, dasa's Jet Propulsion Lab contributing two instruments.

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This is what cooperation looks like when people choose it.

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00:18:18.279 --> 00:18:22.519
The spacecraft itself is remarkable. At over six thousan five

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00:18:22.599 --> 00:18:27.119
hundred kilograms, it is the largest interplanetary spacecraft humans had

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00:18:27.200 --> 00:18:31.440
ever launched more than forty science instruments aboard, and its

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00:18:31.480 --> 00:18:36.240
ambition is staggering. It would study Mars simultaneously from orbit,

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00:18:36.559 --> 00:18:40.680
from the surface and from below it, from below it,

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00:18:41.359 --> 00:18:46.119
from below it. Mars ninety six was carrying two surface penetrators,

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00:18:46.599 --> 00:18:51.119
hardened cylindrical probe specifically engineered to strike the Martian ground

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00:18:51.240 --> 00:18:55.000
at seventy to eighty meters per second and bury themselves

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00:18:55.079 --> 00:18:59.000
several meters underground, where they would measure seismic activity and

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00:18:59.119 --> 00:19:00.559
heat flow for up to a year.

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00:19:01.279 --> 00:19:06.559
That is actually extraordinary a networked subsurface Mars science station.

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00:19:06.839 --> 00:19:08.720
In nineteen ninety six.

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00:19:09.079 --> 00:19:13.519
It was also carrying two surface landers, small autonomous stations

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00:19:13.519 --> 00:19:16.480
that would descend using an air bag system to cushion

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00:19:16.559 --> 00:19:20.920
their landing, an airbag landing concept that NASA's Mars Pathfinder

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00:19:20.960 --> 00:19:24.160
would use to enormous public acclaim just months later.

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00:19:24.799 --> 00:19:28.279
So the technology was there, the ambition was there, the

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00:19:28.440 --> 00:19:32.880
international partnership was there, and on the night of November sixteenth,

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00:19:33.039 --> 00:19:37.039
nineteen ninety six, the proton K rocket lifted off from

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00:19:37.119 --> 00:19:39.039
Bikanor Cosmodrome.

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00:19:38.920 --> 00:19:43.680
And then almost immediately something went catastrophically wrong.

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00:19:44.359 --> 00:19:48.640
The spacecraft entered its parking orbit successfully. The upper stage

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00:19:48.799 --> 00:19:51.880
was supposed to fire and push Mars ninety six toward

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00:19:51.960 --> 00:19:56.960
interplanetary velocity. It didn't. It either failed to ignite properly

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00:19:57.200 --> 00:19:59.240
or shut down almost immediately.

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00:19:59.680 --> 00:20:02.839
And here's a detail that stays with me. The onboard

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00:20:02.880 --> 00:20:07.039
autopilot kept executing its program sequence. It had no way

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00:20:07.039 --> 00:20:10.440
of knowing the mission had already failed. So it separated

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00:20:10.440 --> 00:20:13.839
from the upper stage. It fired its own engine, It

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00:20:14.000 --> 00:20:18.039
unfolded its solar panels, it began transmitting toelemetry.

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00:20:18.559 --> 00:20:22.200
For a brief moment, controllers in Crimea thought it had worked.

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The signals were there, the spacecraft was doing everything it

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00:20:25.960 --> 00:20:26.640
was supposed to.

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00:20:27.359 --> 00:20:31.799
Until the orbital data arrived and the realization set in.

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Mars ninety six had never left Earth orbit. It was trapped,

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00:20:36.680 --> 00:20:40.519
and it was about to come back down very rapidly.

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00:20:41.119 --> 00:20:45.400
Early assessments suggested the debris might land over Australia, which

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00:20:45.440 --> 00:20:49.480
prompted President Clinton to call Prime Minister John Howard directly

357
00:20:49.599 --> 00:20:53.720
to offer support for any recovery operation. As tracking data

358
00:20:53.799 --> 00:20:58.400
was refined, the projected impact zone shifted, eventually settling on

359
00:20:58.440 --> 00:21:02.640
a corridor across the Eastern Pacific and into northern Chile

360
00:21:02.759 --> 00:21:03.960
and Bolivia.

361
00:21:04.000 --> 00:21:09.119
And in the Andes. That same night, witnesses reported something unusual,

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00:21:09.680 --> 00:21:13.880
a brilliant object moving slowly across the sky, not the

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00:21:13.920 --> 00:21:18.200
sudden flash of a meteor, something that lasted nearly a minute,

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00:21:18.680 --> 00:21:22.480
jetting glowing fragments that briefly lit the thin mountain air

365
00:21:22.680 --> 00:21:23.440
before fading.

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00:21:24.079 --> 00:21:27.160
One of those witnesses was an electronic specialist at the

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00:21:27.240 --> 00:21:31.680
European Southern Observatory, who later said he had no illusions

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00:21:31.680 --> 00:21:34.680
that it was anything other than a piece of space debris.

369
00:21:35.319 --> 00:21:39.279
US Space Command later acknowledged in writing, we believe it

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00:21:39.359 --> 00:21:42.759
is reasonable that the impact was in fact on land.

371
00:21:43.000 --> 00:21:47.799
And then nothing. A search was never performed, nobody went looking.

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00:21:48.400 --> 00:21:51.839
Thirty years later, the final resting place of Mars ninety

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00:21:51.880 --> 00:21:54.039
six is completely.

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00:21:53.440 --> 00:21:58.359
Unknown, and here is where it gets genuinely strange. Those

375
00:21:58.480 --> 00:22:02.880
surface penetrators built to survive striking Mars at seventy to

376
00:22:03.119 --> 00:22:08.160
eighty meters per second, had thick compact casings engineered for

377
00:22:08.400 --> 00:22:12.920
violent impact. It is entirely possible that one or both

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00:22:12.960 --> 00:22:16.240
of them survived reentry and are sitting in the Andes

379
00:22:16.440 --> 00:22:18.720
right now, largely intact.

380
00:22:18.920 --> 00:22:23.079
Hardware built for Mars in a Chilean valley that nobody

381
00:22:23.119 --> 00:22:24.160
has ever looked for.

382
00:22:24.799 --> 00:22:29.839
The spacecraft was also carrying eighteen radio isotope heater units,

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00:22:30.279 --> 00:22:36.400
small plutonium powered heaters specifically engineered to survive catastrophic events,

384
00:22:36.440 --> 00:22:41.799
including atmospheric re entry. Similar units survived the uncontrolled crash

385
00:22:41.880 --> 00:22:45.839
of a Soviet satellite over northern Canada in nineteen seventy eight,

386
00:22:46.359 --> 00:22:48.799
so these two could still be out there.

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00:22:49.480 --> 00:22:52.839
The Space Review published a beautiful retrospective on this story

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00:22:53.079 --> 00:22:56.599
just this week, and they put it perfectly. A spacecraft

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00:22:56.720 --> 00:22:59.960
engineer to be tracked from hundreds of millions of kilometers

390
00:23:00.240 --> 00:23:04.359
away may instead have vanished somewhere on Earth, a world

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00:23:04.480 --> 00:23:09.319
mapped in exquisite detail by satellites, aircraft, and ordinary people

392
00:23:09.440 --> 00:23:13.279
carrying cameras in their pockets, somewhere in a dry valley

393
00:23:13.480 --> 00:23:17.359
across the wind swept Altiplano or among the salt flats

394
00:23:17.359 --> 00:23:20.839
and volcanic slopes of the High On. This hardware built

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00:23:20.880 --> 00:23:24.799
for another planet may still be lying quietly under open sky.

396
00:23:25.559 --> 00:23:30.480
Could we find it today with modern satellite imagery, drone surveys,

397
00:23:30.640 --> 00:23:35.319
AI pattern recognition. Why has nobody gone looking in thirty years?

398
00:23:36.000 --> 00:23:39.240
That is a question I genuinely don't have an answer to.

399
00:23:39.880 --> 00:23:42.079
There is a coda to this story that I think

400
00:23:42.160 --> 00:23:45.720
deserves to be said. Many of Mars ninety six's science

401
00:23:45.759 --> 00:23:48.799
teams didn't give up. They went on to contribute to

402
00:23:48.920 --> 00:23:52.400
isa's Mars Express mission, launched in two thousand and three,

403
00:23:52.720 --> 00:23:54.839
which is still operating today.

404
00:23:54.960 --> 00:23:59.400
And one instrument, the Alpha Proton X ray Spectrometer, developed

405
00:23:59.440 --> 00:24:02.000
by the Universe City of Chicago for Mars ninety six,

406
00:24:02.559 --> 00:24:06.440
actually reached Mars. A closely related version of it flew

407
00:24:06.480 --> 00:24:11.039
aboard NASA's Mars Pathfinder, launched just months after the crash.

408
00:24:11.440 --> 00:24:14.519
It landed on Mars in nineteen ninety seven and began

409
00:24:14.559 --> 00:24:16.519
returning chemical readings from the surface.

410
00:24:17.200 --> 00:24:20.519
One instrument made it, carrying forward the work of the

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00:24:20.559 --> 00:24:21.960
mission that never got there.

412
00:24:22.720 --> 00:24:26.799
Somewhere in the Andes, hardware built for another planet sits

413
00:24:26.880 --> 00:24:31.039
silent and unfound, and somewhere on Mars, a cousin of

414
00:24:31.079 --> 00:24:34.119
that same hardware did exactly what it was built to do.

415
00:24:34.559 --> 00:24:37.880
The mission failed, the science and part survived.

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00:24:38.480 --> 00:24:43.079
Russia has never successfully sent an independent Mars mission since

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00:24:43.200 --> 00:24:47.599
Mars ninety six. Worth sitting with, especially this week as

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00:24:47.599 --> 00:24:51.200
we watch Artemis two completing one of the most successful

419
00:24:51.279 --> 00:24:52.920
crude missions in decades.

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00:24:53.559 --> 00:24:57.519
Base is hard. Every mission we celebrate, every safe return,

421
00:24:57.720 --> 00:25:01.200
every trajectory burn that fires on top time is built

422
00:25:01.240 --> 00:25:04.640
on decades of missions that didn't make it. Mars ninety

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00:25:04.680 --> 00:25:05.759
six is one of them.

424
00:25:06.200 --> 00:25:09.200
And if you're ever in the andes, keep your eyes open.

425
00:25:09.759 --> 00:25:13.240
And that is Astronomy Daily for Wednesday, April eighth, twenty

426
00:25:13.279 --> 00:25:15.559
twenty six. What a lineup today.

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00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:19.839
We had Artemis two heading home, a cargo ship delayed

428
00:25:19.880 --> 00:25:23.759
into a spectacular Friday, the origin story of the ground

429
00:25:23.759 --> 00:25:28.480
beneath your feet rewritten, an alien comment saying it's final farewell,

430
00:25:28.880 --> 00:25:32.039
a new comment arriving just in time, and a thirty

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00:25:32.119 --> 00:25:34.480
year old mystery that nobody has solved.

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00:25:35.039 --> 00:25:38.079
If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe wherever you get

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00:25:38.119 --> 00:25:40.880
your podcasts. It genuinely makes a difference in helping us

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00:25:40.920 --> 00:25:43.000
reach more Space enthusiasts around the world.

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00:25:43.519 --> 00:25:45.599
Leave us a review, If you have a moment, tell

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00:25:45.640 --> 00:25:48.279
a friend. Find us on social media. We are at

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00:25:48.440 --> 00:25:52.720
astro Daily Pod on Twitter and x, Instagram, TikTok and

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00:25:52.839 --> 00:25:57.119
YouTube links and full show notes at Astronomy Daily dot io.

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00:25:57.799 --> 00:25:59.920
We will be back tomorrow with the latest from space.

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00:26:00.519 --> 00:26:04.400
Until then, for Avery, I'm Anna and for Anna, I'm Avery,

441
00:26:04.640 --> 00:26:05.319
keep clicking up.

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00:26:05.400 --> 00:26:10.640
We'll see you tomorrow Sunday. Star is the.

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00:26:17.920 --> 00:26:18.440
Star Is

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00:26:25.839 --> 00:26:26.039
Star