WEBVTT
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One more sleep after nine days in deep space, nine
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days that took humanity further from Earth than we have
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ever been. The Artemis two crew is coming home. Splashdown
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is tomorrow, and we have the full countdown.
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Plus the NASA scientists who literally screamed when the astronauts
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spotted something nobody expected to see on the Moon. We'll
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tell you what it was and why it matters so
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much for future missions.
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A brand new class of star has been discovered. Meet
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Gandolf and Moon sized, two cosmic oddballs that have just
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rewritten the stellar rule book.
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Mars still very much not welcoming visitors. We have the
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science to prove it, and four planets are lining up
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in the April sky for a rare celestial parade.
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And we close with the most relatable space story in years.
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What happens when four astronauts take their iPhones a quarter
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of a million miles from Earth.
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Boiler The photos are extraordinary.
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Hello, and welcome to Astronomy Daily, Season five, Episode eighty five.
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I'm Anna and I'm Avery. It is Thursday, the ninth
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of April twenty twenty six, and we are broadcasting from
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Astronomy Daily dot io on the BYTES dot com podcast network.
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It has been a big week in space, and it
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is about to get even bigger.
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Let's go.
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I'm ready.
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It is day nine of the Artemis two mission, and
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right now the Orion spacecraft, call sign Integrity, is hurtling
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back toward Earth at extraordinary speed. Tomorrow evening, it will
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splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of
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San Diego, and when it does, four astronauts will have
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completed the most significant human spaceflight since the Apollo program.
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The splashdown is scheduled for around eight pm Eastern time,
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that's Friday morning for US here in Australia and New Zealand,
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and NASA says the weather window is looking favorable. The
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USS John P. Murtha, the naval recovery vessel, is already
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on station in the Pacific with hell copters and divers
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ready to retrieve the crew and avery.
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Before any of that can happen, there's a critical sequence
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of events. The crew module, the part that carries the astronauts,
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has to separate from the service module. Then it plunges
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into the atmosphere at around twenty five thousand miles an hour.
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There'll be a blackout period of several minutes when mission
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control loses all contact as the plasma sheath forms around
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the capsule.
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And then parachutes. First, the drogue choots to slow them
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down dramatically, then the main parachutes and orion drops to
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about seventeen miles per hour for a soft ocean landing
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after nine days and nearly seven hundred thousand miles of travel.
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Now the heat shield. This is the thing that has
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been quietly keeping engineers awake at night. After the uncrewed
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Artemis one mission, inspectors found that chunks of the heat
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shield had sheared away unevenly during reentry. NASA and Lockheed
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Martin spent four years investigating and redesigning it. Both say
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they are highly confident it will perform perfectly tomorrow, but
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it will be the real world test.
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Once safely aboard the MIRTHA, the crew will undergo medical
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evaluations before flying to Johnson's Space Center in Houston. Commander
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Red Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Kock, and
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Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hanson.
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History makers, every single one of them. Victor Glover, the
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first person of color to travel to the Moon, Christina Cock,
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the first woman, Jeremy Hanson the first person from a
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country other than the United States to reach lunar distance.
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And when they get home, President Trump has apparently already
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promised them a White House visit. I'd say they've earned it.
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We'll, of course have the full splashdown coverage intomorrow's episode
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of Astronomy Daily. Set those alarms.
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Now, while all the drama of the homeward journey has
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been unfolding, the science team at Johnson Space Center has
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been going absolutely wild over what the crew observed during
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the lunar flyby on Monday.
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And I do mean wild avery NASA's lunar science lead
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Kelsey Young described, and this is a direct quote from
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the press conference, audible screams of delight in the science
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evaluation room.
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What were they screaming about?
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Micro meteorite impact flashes. During the solar eclipse phase of
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the flyby, when the Moon blocked the Sun and Orion
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was in darkness, the crew spotted between four and six
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distinct flashes of light on the lunar surface, brief, colorless
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pinpricks of light lasting just milliseconds. Each one was a
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tiny rock traveling thousands of miles per hour slamming into
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the Moon.
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Now. Scientists had hoped the crew might see one or
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two of these. Apollo astronauts reported a handful across all
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the missions, but to see multiple flashes so quickly, so clearly,
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they genuinely weren't expecting it.
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Commander Wiseman described it beautifully in the post flyby debrief.
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He said they had five minutes of what he called
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human emotional reaction just staring at the darkened Moon during
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the eclipse, and then the impacts started showing up.
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And why does this matter? Scientifically? Because knowing the frequency
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and location of micro meteorite impacts is critical engineering data.
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When future Artemis crews are living and working on the
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lunar surface, building habitats, doing spacewalks, those tiny rocks are
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going to be falling on their heads and their equipment.
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Every data point about impact rates helps engineers design better protection.
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The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbitter team is right now using the
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crew's sketches and timing notes to hunt for fresh craters
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from those specific impacts. They may actually be able to
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see the new craters from orbit.
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And there's a beautiful human moment buried in all of
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this too. During the flyby, the crew proposed names for
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two previously unnamed craters on the lunar far side, suggested
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Integrity after their spacecraft, and Carol, in honor of Commander
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Wiseman's late wife. Those names have been submitted to the
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International Astronomical Union for official consideration.
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That stopped me in my tracks when I read it,
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History made names written into the Moon.
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Moving now to a story that has absolutely nothing to
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do with Artemis but is just as extraordinary in its
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own way. Astronomers have just identified a brand new class
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of stellar objects, and they've named them gandolf and moon sized.
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I'm immediately interested.
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As you should be so context. When a starlike our
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Sun runs out of fuel, it eventually collapses into what's
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called a white dwarf, an incredibly dense Earth sized remnant.
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These are common, we know them well. But when two
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white dwarfs in a binary system collide and merge, the
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resulting object can be strange, define strength, ultramassive, highly magnetic,
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rapidly rotating. And this is the weird part, emitting X
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rays even though they're completely alone, no companion star, no
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material being pulled in from somewhere else, just X rays
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from a solo stellar remnant.
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Normally, X ray emissions from white dwarfs come from accretion
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one star stealing material from another, so to see it
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happening in isolation is genuinely new.
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Exactly, and researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology
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Austria ISTA have now confirmed two of these objects share
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five distinct characteristics ultramassive, highly magnetic, rapidly rotating, companionless, and
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X ray emitting. Two is enough to define a class.
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And one of them is surrounded by a half ring
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of ionized gas trapped in its own asymmetrical magnetic field.
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Hydrogen emission spectra that looked like and I love this
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description cat ears cat ears.
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The spectral signature kept switching between two peaks in sync
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with the objects six minute rotation period, something no one
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had ever seen in a white dwarf before, which is
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why they named it after the Tolkien character who famously
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speaks in riddles.
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Gandolf, who likes to speak in riddles.
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That is perfect and moon size is its companion in
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this new class, a white dwarf so dense that a
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mass equivalent to our entire sun is compressed into something
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roughly the size of the moon.
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I need a moment to process that.
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Take your time. The universe will wait.
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So what does it all mean? Are there more of
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these out there?
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Almost certainly? The researchers say, finding two objects with five
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overlapping features is and I'm paraphrasing here, more than enough
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to start a search. The hunt for more gandolfs and
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moon sizes is on down to.
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The red place in it and a story that offers
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a rather sobering perspective on humanity's ambitions there.
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New research published this week suggests that Mars's surface was
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never really a viable candidate for life, not just now,
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but potentially at any point in its history. Scientists at
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Universe Today have been covering a study that consolidates a
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growing body of evidence radiation bombardment, toxic perclorates in the soil,
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and the near total absence of a protective atmosphere.
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We've known for a long time that Mars is hostile now.
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The question has always been whether there was a window
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billions of years ago when Mars had liquid water in
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a thicker atmosphere, when life could have gained a foothold.
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And the emerging picture is that even then, the surface
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may have been too brutal. The radiation levels alone, without
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a magnetic field to the flex soolar particles, would have
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been devastating to any surface biology. Whatever life Mars may
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have had, if any, would have needed to be underground
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almost immediately.
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Which actually may missions like Artemis even more striking. By contrast,
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Earth got it right. We're here, we evolved, We survived
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long enough to send four people around the Moon on iPhones.
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Mars just didn't make it.
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The subsurface is still the focus of active scientific interest.
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There may be liquid water deep below the Martian crust,
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there may be microbial life sheltering from the surface hellscape,
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But the romantic notion of ancient surface life basking under
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a warm Martian sun, the science is increasingly against.
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It, and it makes the search for life elsewhere feel
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even more precious, and the protection of life here feel
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even more urgent.
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Well said, onto something a little more uplifting, at least visually.
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Guy watching time, and this month's night sky is offering
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up a genuinely lovely alignment. Four planets are currently visible
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together in April skies Mercury, Mars, Saturn, and Neptune.
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Now Neptune you'll need binoculars or small telescope for it's
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not naked eye under any practical conditions, but Mercury, Mars
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and Saturn are all available to the unaided eye if
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you know where and when to look.
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For our Southern Hemisphere listeners in Australia and New Zealand,
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the best viewing window is the eastern sky and the
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hours before dawn. Mercury is the trickiest. It's always close
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to the sun, but right now it's at a reasonable
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elongation and worth hunting.
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For Bars has been a reliable presence in our skies
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for months now, and Saturn is that beautiful, steady golden
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glow that never twinkles the way stars do. If you
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grab even a modest pair of binoculars and point them
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at Saturn, you can make out the ring system. It
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never gets old.
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This is a great time to get kids outside and
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look up four planets at once. Artemis two coming home tomorrow.
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The timing couldn't be better for a bit of genuine wonder.
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Clear skies permitting, check the star Walk app or your
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localist astronomy society for specific viewing times from your location.
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Links has always in our show notes and.
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We close today with perhaps the most delightfully human story
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of the entire Artemis two mission.
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You know, amongst all the orbital mechanics and the heat
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shield engineering and the science about micro meteorite impacts, there's
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this other story quietly running alongside it all. Before Artemis two,
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astronauts brought their iPhones.
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Not to make calls, there's no signal two hundred and
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fifty two thousand miles from Earth, but NASA Administrator Jared
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Isaacman made a deliberate decision to allow the crew to
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bring iPhone seventeen pro maxes on board as personal cameras.
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The idea was simple, give the crew the tools to
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capture their own story.
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And they have. Christina Coach and Commander Weisman use the
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iPhone's front camera, the selfie camera, to take what are
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being described as genderinely the greatest selfies in human history,
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their faces softly lit from inside the cabin, and behind them,
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suspended in the black of space, our entire planet, a
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pale blue crescent from a quarter of a million miles away.
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The EXIF data from the images shows they kept the
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camera on default settings, no special filters, no complicated exposures,
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just point the phone at the window, press the button.
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And then there's Reed Weizman during the lunarflyby turning off
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all the cabin lights so there's no reflection on the windows,
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zooming his iPhone seventeen to eight X and photographing Chebyshev
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Crater on the far side of the Moon, a place
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that had never been photographed by a human holding a
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camera in their hands.
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Before you could argue Apple should just retire the shot
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on iPhone ad campaign. Now it has been definitively one.
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The crew has reportedly shot more images on their phones
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than through the professional Nikon cameras, and NASA says everything
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captured will be made publicly available within six months, so
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there's a lot more to come.
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There's something quietly extraordinary about this story. We're in an