March 17, 2026
The Rotten-Egg Planet, RBFLOAT's Secret Origin & Goddard's 100-Year Mystery
Astronomy Daily S05E65 — 17 March 2026 Six stories from the frontiers of space and astronomy, hosted by Anna and Avery. IN THIS EPISODE: • 🪐 JWST identifies a brand new class of exoplanet — a permanent magma ocean world with a hydrogen sulfide atmosphere 35 light-years from Earth • 📡 RBFLOAT — the brightest fast radio burst ever detected — is pinpointed to a galaxy 130 million light-years away, with a mysterious JWST infrared discovery at the same location • 🧑🚀 The first ISS spacewalk of 2026 is happening TOMORROW — NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Chris Williams step outside at 8am EDT, March 18. Watch live on NASA+ • 🌊 Hidden water beneath Mars — new research suggests the Red Planet was habitable far longer than we thought, and Curiosity is investigating strange 'spiderweb' formations that reveal its watery history • 🚀 100 years ago yesterday, Robert Goddard launched the world's first liquid-fuelled rocket. But where is 'Nell' — the original rocket — today? The mystery of space history's greatest missing artefact • 🛸 MIT, MITRE and Sandia publish a Nature paper on a photonic chip that could replace bulky mechanical mirrors on spacecraft — a potential revolution in space communications and LiDAR SOURCE LINKS: • JWST / L 98-59 d magma planet (Nature Astronomy, 16 March 2026): phys.org/news/2026-03-class-molten-planet-abundant-sulfur.html • RBFLOAT fast radio burst papers (Astrophysical Journal Letters): sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/03/260315004348.htm • ISS Spacewalk 94 — live coverage: NASA+ / NASA YouTube (6:30am EDT, 18 March 2026) • Mars water research and Curiosity boxwork ridges: sciencedaily.com • Goddard centennial — collectSPACE: collectspace.com/news/news-031626a-robert-goddard-liquid-fuel-rocket-centennial-where-nell.html • MIT photonic chip paper (Nature): universetoday.com — March 16, 2026 Find us: astronomydaily.io | @AstroDailyPod on Twitter/X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Tumblr Part of the Bitesz.com Podcast Network
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WEBVTT
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Hello, and welcome to Astronomy Daily.
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I'm Anna and I'm Avery. It's Tuesday, the seventeenth of
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March twenty twenty six, and we are back with your
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daily dose of everything happening in space and astronomy.
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Another big show today, Avery, New planets that would knock
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you off your feet with the stench, a cosmic radio
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flash breaking every record in the books, and a mystery
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that's been sitting unsolved for one hundred years.
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Exactly one hundred years. You love an anniversary. Let's get
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straight into it.
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Our first story is one that is genuinely extraordinary and
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slightly revolting. Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have
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identified a planet that doesn't fit into any category we've
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had before, and if you could somehow smell its atmosphere,
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you'd wish you hadn't.
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That is a sentence I was not expecting to say today.
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Tell me everything.
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So the planet is called L ninety eight fifty nine D.
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It orbits as small red dwarf star about thirty five
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light years from Earth, which in astronomical terms, is genuinely
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close to us. It's about one point six times the
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size of Earth on the surface. It sounds fairly ordinary.
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But it's not ordinary at all? Is it?
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Not?
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At all? When researchers from the University of Oxford looked
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at the data from JWST alongside ground based telescopes, they
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found two extremely strange things. First, the planet has an
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astonishingly low density for its size. Second, its atmosphere is
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loaded with hydrogen sulfide, which, for anyone who needs a reminder,
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is the compound responsible for the smell of rotten eggs.
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Soh, the whole place stinks, got it? Well?
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The whole place is also a magma ocean. Their models
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suggest L ninety eight fifty nine D has a permanent
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global ocean of molten rock on its surface, and that
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magma ocean acts as a massive reservoir, soaking up and
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slowly releasing sulfur cons into the atmosphere over billions of years.
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Okay, so when you say ocean, you don't mean.
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Water, absolutely not molten rock. Imagine standing on a world
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where the sea is lava and the air smells like
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a volcanic vent. That's this planet.
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Hard pass But scientifically this is.
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Huge, right, It really is, Because this planet doesn't fit
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into either of the two boxes. Astronomers have used for
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small worlds. It's not a gas dwarf with a hydrogen
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heavy atmosphere, and it's not a water world covered in
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oceans and ice. It's something else entirely weed researcher doctor
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Harrison Nichols from Oxford said, and I love this quote
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that it makes us ask what other types of planets
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are waving to be uncovered.
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The universe just keeps surprising us.
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Every single week. The paper was published on the sixteenth
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of March in the journal Nature Astronomy, so literally yesterday,
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Science will have the link in the show notes.
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Story two. And this one's a genuine radio astronomy landmark.
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Scientists have identified the brightest fast radio burst ever recorded,
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and for the first time they've pinpointed exactly where it
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came from.
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And they gave it a brilliant name.
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They called it RB float Radio brightest flash of all time,
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which is simultaneously very science y and very.
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Extra Love the confidence of that name. So what is
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a fast radio burst? For anyone who needs a refresher.
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A fast radio burst or FRB is a flash of
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radio energy that lasts just milliseconds a thousandth of a second,
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but in that blink, it can briefly outshine every single
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radio source in its entire galaxy. They've been baffling astronomers
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since the first one was spotted in two thousand and seven.
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Nobody knows for certain what causes them, and until recently,
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pinpointing their exact origin in space has been essentially impossible.
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So what changed.
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An upgraded version of the Chime telescope in British Columbia,
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which now has what they call outriggers, smaller companion telescopes
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placed at different sites across North America and California and
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West Virginia. Together they act like a continent sized telescope
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with extraordinary precision.
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And that's how they caught RB float exactly.
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The burts came from a spiral galaxy called NGC forty
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one forty one, just one hundred and thirty million light
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years away, which for an FRB is essentially our cosmic backyard.
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The team at McGill University described the localization precision as
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being equivalent to spotting a coin from one hundred kilometers away.
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They trace it to a region just forty five light
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years across, smaller than an average star cluster on the
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outer edge of a star forming region in that galaxy,
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and then JWST got involved. It did because having the
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precise location meant they could point JWST at that exact
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spot when they found something unexpected, a faint infrared signal
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right where RB float came from. Scientists are still working
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out what it is, possibly a red giant star, possibly
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a fading light echo from the burst itself.
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The mystery within the mystery.
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And here's the other thing that's got researchers thinking RB
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float hasn't repeated. Most well studied FRBs do repeat. This
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one fired off and went silent, which challenges the idea
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that all fast radio bursts come from the same type
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of source.
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This really does feel like a new era for FRB science.
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That's exactly what the team said. The full papers are
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in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Link is in the notes.
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Story three and this is perfectly timed because it's happening
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tomorrow and you can watch it live. Two NASA astronauts
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are stepping outside the International Space Station for the first
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spacewalk of twenty twenty six.
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I love a spacewalk story. Who's going out?
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NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, who is on her second spaceflight
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and her fourth EVA, and alongside her Chris Williams, who
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is heading outside for the very first time. This will
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be his debut spacewalk.
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That is such a special moment, your first time in
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the vacuum of space with nothing between you and the
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universe but a suit.
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They exit the Quest airlock at around eight in the
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morning Eastern Time on Wednesday the eighteenth, so tomorrow morning,
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and they're expected to be outside for around six and
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a half hours.
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And what's the job.
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They're installing a modification kit and rooting cables on the
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port side of the station to prepare the two to
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a power channel for a future upgrade. The station is
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getting additional rollout solar arrays the i rosas, which will
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boost its power generation capacity tomorrow. Spacewalk is the preparation
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work that makes that future installation possible.
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So this is kind of like doing the electrical rough
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end before you can install the solar panels on your
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house roof.
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That's actually a perfect analogy. And this is historically significant too.
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It's the two hundred and seventy eighth spacewalk in support
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of station assembly, maintenance and upgrades. A number that really
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puts into perspective just how much human labor has gone
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into building and running the ISS over the decades.
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How can people watch?
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DASA is carrying live coverage from six point thirty in
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the morning Eastern on Nasaplus, Amazon Prime Video, and the
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NASA YouTube channel. We'll have the direct link in the
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show notes.
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Thirty four, and we're heading to Mars. New research is
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suggesting that Mars was habitable for much longer than scientists
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had previously thought, and the Curiosity rover is right now
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investigating some strange features that could tell us a lot
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more about the planet's watery past.
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Mars keeps giving us surprises.
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It really does, so there are two threads to this.
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The first is new research published this week suggesting that
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hidden water may have persisted beneath the Martian surface far
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later in the planet's history than current models suggest. Scientists
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studying ancient sand dunes in Gale Crater, which is where
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Curiosity has been operating for years, have found evidence that
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liquid water was present and active much more recently than
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the standard timeline.
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Which extends the window during which life could potentially have
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existed on Mars exactly.
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And then separately curiosity has been investigating something that looks
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genuinely strange on the surface. These formations that scientists are
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describing as spiderweb ridges, their box work structures, intricate networks
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of raised lines that likely formed when minerals crystallize inside
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cracks in ancient rock that was once saturated with groundwater.
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So they're essentially fossilized water works.
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That's a beautiful way of putting it. The boxwork ridges
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are fascinating because they preserve a record of where water
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was moving through the rock, which could tell us about
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the chemistry of that ancient water, how long it was there,
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and whether the conditions were right for microbial life.
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And curiosity still going strong after all these years.
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Bill exploring, still sciencing. The links to both the water
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research and the box work story are in the show notes.
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Story five, and this one has a wonderful anniversary angle
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plus a genuine unsolved mystery that has been sitting there
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for exactly one hundred years.
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Tell me the mystery first.
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Yesterday, the sixteenth of March twenty twenty six, marked exactly
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one hundred years since Robert Goddard launched the world's first
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liquid fueled rocket. He did it in a snowy field
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on a farm in Auburn, Massachusetts, owned by his aunt.
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The rocket flew for two and a half seconds. It
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reached an altitude of forty one feet and traveled one
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hundred and eighty four feet sideways before coming back to earth.
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Not impressive by modern standards.
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But absolutely revolutionary. The rocket was fueled by liquid oxygen
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and gasoline. Goddard had proved that liquid propulsion worked, and
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that was the essential breakthrough that would eventually lead to
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the V two, the Saturn five, and the In nine
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rockets launching from Cape Canaveral today.
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So what's the mystery.
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The rocket's name was Nell, and nobody knows where Nell
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is today. The original rocket, the actual hardware that flew
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on March sixteenth, nineteen twenty six, was gathered up from
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the snow by Goddard, put back in his vehicle, and
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taken to his laboratory. He didn't preserve it as a
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historic artifact. He didn't have much money at the time,
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and he simply reused what he could.
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He didn't know he just changed history.
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Well, he knew he'd done something important, but he was
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also incredibly secretive. He didn't even tell people publicly about
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the flight for ten years. This Smithsonian has what is
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believed to be Nell's nozzle. It was incorporated into the
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successor rocket, the May nineteen twenty six version, which survives
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at the National Air and Space Museum, but the rest
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of Nell scattered, reused, or lost.
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So the rocket that launched the space Age is just gone.
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It's one of space history's great missing artifact. Celebrations took
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place at Goddard's original launch site, which is now the
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ninth hole of a golf course by the way, with
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one hundred scale model rockets launched in his honor. NASA, AIAA,
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Blue Origin, and a whole host of organizations have been
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marking the centennial.
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Robert Goddard's wife, Esther, also deserves a mention here.
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She absolutely does. She was there that day, she operated
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the camera that took the only photographs of the launch,
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and she was instrumental in documenting and preserving Goddard's work
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throughout his life. The anniversary coverage has rightly been celebrating
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both of them.
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Happy hundred now wherever you.
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Are, Indeed, happy one hundred.
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And our final story today is one of those technical
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breakthroughs that sounds technical but has some genuinely exciting implications
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for the future of space exploration. Researchers from MIT, Miterer
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Corporation and Sandia National Laboratories have published the paper in
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Nature describing a new kind of chip that could fundamentally
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change how spacecraft communicate and navigate.
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This is the photonic chip story, right. I've been looking
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forward to this one.
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It is so here's the context. One of the heaviest
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and most power hungry components on any spacecraft has traditionally
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been its optical and communications hardware, specifically the bulky mechanical
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mirror systems used for light ar and free space laser communications.
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Every gram matters when you're launching something into space.
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The whole size, weight and power problem exactly.
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Engineers call it swap, and what this team has done
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is replace those heavy mechanical mirrors with an optical phase
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array on a single chip. It's essentially a silicon photonics
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device that can steer laser beams electronically with no moving
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parts at all.
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No moving parts. That's significant in a spacecraft context.
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Hugely significant moving parts wear out, moving parts fail in
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the cold and radiation of space. A chip with no
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moving parts that can do the same job, is lighter,
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more reliable, and uses far less power. The implications for lightar,
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which is used for things like landing on other worlds,
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mapping terrain, and docking, are substantial, and for laser communications
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between spacecraft and back to Earth. This could enable much
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faster data transfer on much smaller platforms.
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So future missions, including small satellites, lunar landers, maybe even
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