Artemis II's Historic Cargo, Orbital Debris Crisis, and AI Finds 7,000 New Worlds

Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing.

Another checkered flag for the books.

Time to celebrate with Chamba.

Jump in at chambacasino.com.

Let's Chamba.

No purchase necessary, BTW Group.

Boy, we're prohibited by mom.

CCNC, 21 plus sponsored by Chamba Casino.

Welcome to Astronomy Daily.

I'm Anna.

And I'm Avery.

It's Friday, January 23rd.

And we've got an amazing lineup of space stories

to close out your week.

We certainly do.

Today, we're exploring NASA's plans

to send some very special keepsakes

around the moon on Artemis II.

Blue origins, latest new Glenn launch plans,

and some fascinating new research

about where Earth's water really came from.

Plus, we'll dive into a rather urgent warning

about the increasing dangers of space debris.

Uncover new insights about how super massive black holes

grew so quickly, and learn how AI is helping scientists

discover thousands of new exoplanets.

Let's get started.

Avery, as Artemis II preparations

continue at Kennedy Space Center,

NASA has revealed something really special

they'll be taking along for the ride.

And it's not just the four astronauts.

Oh, I love when missions carry meaningful items.

What are they bringing?

This is fascinating.

The official flight kit includes a piece of fabric

from the original 1903 Wright Flyer.

It's a tiny swatch, just one inch square,

from the very first aircraft

that made the powered flight at Kitty Hawk.

What's even cooler is that this same piece

already flew on the Space Shuttle Discovery

back in 1985.

So it's making its second journey to space.

That's a beautiful connection between the beginning

of powered flight and humanity's return to the moon.

What else is in the flight kit?

There's an American flag with an incredible history.

It flew on the very first shuttle mission, STS-1,

and the final shuttle mission, STS-135.

It also went up on SpaceX's first crew dragon flight.

Talk about book ending an era of space flight.

That flag has seen some serious history.

Is there anything connecting Artemis

back to the Apollo program?

Absolutely.

They're flying a flag that was originally meant

for Apollo 18, a mission that never happened.

This will be its very first space flight,

finally fulfilling its original destiny

after all these years.

There's also a photo negative from the Ranger 7 mission,

which was the US first spacecraft

to successfully reach the lunar surface back in the 1960s.

It's like they're weaving together

the entire story of American exploration.

And knowing NASA, I bet they're including the public somehow.

Of course, an SD card carrying millions of names,

including ours from the send your name to space campaign,

will be a board.

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman put it beautifully

when he said these artifacts reflect

the long arc of American exploration

and the generations of innovators

who made this moment possible.

With about 10 pounds of mementos in total,

Artemis II will truly be carrying our collective history

and dreams forward into the next chapter beyond Earth.

What a perfect way to mark America's 250th anniversary.

Now, speaking of missions and launches,

let's shift gears to Blue Origin and their new Glen Rocket.

Blue Origin has announced their third new Glen launch

is scheduled for late February,

and there's an interesting twist to this one.

Let me guess, everyone expected them to fly

their Blue Moon lunar lander next, right?

Exactly, but instead, they're launching a satellite

for AST Space Mobile,

making it the second commercial payload to fly on New Glen.

The Blue Moon Mark I lander is currently being shipped

to NASA's Johnson Space Center

for vacuum chamber testing,

and they haven't announced a launch date for that mission yet.

So what makes this particular launch notable?

This will be the third new Glen launch in just over a year,

which is impressive considering the rocket

spent a decade in development.

But here's the really exciting part.

They're reusing the booster

from November's second flight.

They successfully landed it on a drone ship in the ocean,

just like SpaceX does with Falcon 9.

So this demonstrates their reusability program is working.

That's crucial for reducing launch costs.

What else is Blue Origin working on?

They've got some ambitious plans.

In November, they revealed a super heavy variant of New Glen

that will be taller than a Saturn V rocket

on par with SpaceX's Starship

and just this week,

they announced a satellite internet constellation

called TerraWave that they plan to start deploying

in late 2027.

February is shaping up to be a busy month for spaceflight.

NASA might launch Artemis II as early as February 6.

SpaceX is testing the third version of Starship

and crew 12 to the International Space Station

is also scheduled.

Began of busy orbital environments,

that brings us to our next story about space debris.

February, this next story is both fascinating

and a bit alarming.

A new study has introduced something called the Crash Clock

and according to their calculations,

if satellite operators suddenly lost the ability

to maneuver their spacecraft,

we could see a catastrophic collision in just 5.5 days.

Wait, 5.5 days?

That's incredibly short.

What's driving this?

Mega constellations.

The researchers found that close approaches

between satellites defined as two satellites

passing within one kilometer of each other

now happen every 22 seconds

across all low earth orbit mega constellations.

For Starlink alone, it's once every 11 minutes.

Each Starlink satellite performs an average

of 41 avoidance maneuvers per year.

Those numbers are staggering

and you said 5.5 days.

I thought I'd heard this was originally 2.8 days.

Good catch.

The team updated their model based on community feedback.

The original calculation was 2.8 days

but after incorporating expert input,

they revised it to 5.5 days for 2025 data.

By comparison, back in 2018

before the mega constellation era really took off,

it would have taken 164 days before a collision.

So we've gone from 164 days down to 5.5 days

in just seven years.

What could cause operators to lose control like that?

Solar storms are the main threat.

When a coronal mass ejection hits Earth,

it heats up the upper atmosphere,

creating more drag on satellites

and making their trajectories harder to predict.

During the Ganon storm in May 2024,

over half of all satellites in low earth orbit

had to use fuel for repositioning maneuvers.

More seriously, solar storms can knock out

satellites navigational and communication systems,

leaving them unable to maneuver at all.

And solar storms don't give us much warning, do they?

Typically just a day or two at most.

The study found that within 24 hours

of losing maneuvering capability,

there's a 30% chance of a collision

between tracked objects and a 26% chance

of a collision involving a starling satellite specifically.

Such collisions would be catastrophic,

creating major debris generating events

with high likelihood of secondary and tertiary collisions.

That sounds like Kessler syndrome,

the cascade effect where collisions create debris

that causes more collisions.

Exactly, though the researchers want to be clear

about something important.

Lead authors, Sarah Theill emphasized

that they're not saying Kessler syndrome is days away.

The crash clock only measures time to the first collision,

not a runaway cascade.

Bull Kessler syndrome would take decades

or even centuries to develop,

but the clock does show how reliant we are

on errorless operations every single day.

So it's more of a stress indicator

for the orbital environment.

Right, the team suggests the crash clock

could serve as a key environmental indicator,

similar to how we use carbon emissions metrics

for climate change.

They're calling for improved debris mitigation,

coordinated traffic management,

and stronger space weather resilience measures

to protect the technology modern society depends on.

Now, let's shift from orbital concerns to lunar mysteries.

For decades, Anna, scientists have assumed

that Earth's water was delivered by asteroids

and comets during the late heavy bombardment

about four billion years ago.

But new research from lunar samples

is challenging that assumption.

The Apollo samples are still teaching us new things

after all these years.

What did they find?

Dr. Tony Gargano at the Lunar and Planetary Institute

led a team that analyzed lunar rocks and regolith

using high precision triple oxygen isotopes.

They found that meteorites could only

have supplied a small fraction of Earth's water,

even by the most generous estimates.

The lunar surface record sets a hard limit

on volatile delivery.

Why is the moon such a good record keeper for this?

On Earth, tectonic plates constantly renew the surface,

erasing traces of ancient impacts.

But the moon is airless and hasn't had

geological activity for billions of years.

So its geological record since the late heavy bombardment

has been carefully preserved.

It's like a cosmic history book that hasn't been edited.

How did they approach the analysis differently

from previous studies?

Instead of focusing on metal loving elements

like previous researchers, Gargano's team

analyzed oxygen isotopes, which make

up the largest mass fraction of rocks,

the oxygen-triple isotopes signature

can separate two things that are often

confused in lunar regolith, the addition of impact

or material, and the effects of impact

induced vaporization on isotopic composition.

And what did the oxygen isotopes tell them?

They found that at least 1% of the moon's mass

consists of impact-related material,

likely from carbonaceous meteorites that partially vaporized

on impact.

From this, they calculated that only

a tiny amount of water has been delivered

to the Earth moon system since the late heavy bombardment,

compared to Earth's existing water.

To put that in perspective, how much water does Earth have?

Water covers over 71% of Earth's surface,

but it only accounts for about 0.023% of Earth's total mass.

That still works out to roughly 1.466 trillion kilograms.

That's 1.46 followed by 21 zeros.

So even a tiny fraction of that is significant.

Poether, Dr. Justin Simon from NASA, summed it up well.

The results don't say meteorites delivered no water,

but they do make it very hard for late meteorite delivery

to be the dominant source of Earth's oceans.

This has interesting implications for lunar exploration,

doesn't it?

Absolutely.

Well, meteorites may have delivered only

a tiny fraction of Earth's water.

Their contribution could be crucial for the moon.

Water ice in permanently shadowed regions

is essential for establishing a sustained human presence,

providing drinking water, irrigation, radiation shielding,

and the means to make rocket propellant.

As the researchers noted, that small amount of water

delivered by impacts could be the single most important factor

enabling humanity's expansion into space.

From water on the moon to mysteries in the early universe,

let's talk about supermassive black holes.

How did black holes get so big so fast?

That's been one of astronomy's great mysteries, Avery.

And researchers at Ireland's Maynuth University

have found an answer.

The James Webb Space Telescope

has been finding these massive black holes

in the early universe that shouldn't exist

according to our previous models, right?

Exactly.

These supermassive black holes

existed just a few hundred million years

after the Big Bang.

And conventional theories said there wasn't enough time

for them to grow so large.

The Maynuth team, led by PhD candidate Daxel Mehta,

used state-of-the-art computer simulations

to reveal what happened.

And what did they discover?

The chaotic conditions in the early universe

triggered these smaller black holes

to undergo what they call a feeding frenzy,

devouring material all around them.

The dense gas-rich environments in early galaxies

enabled something called super-eddington accretion.

Super-eddington accretion.

That sounds intense. What is it?

It's when a black hole eats matter faster

than what's considered normal or safe.

Normally, when matter falls into a black hole that quickly,

it should blow the food away with radiation pressure.

But somehow, in these early, dense environments,

the black holes kept eating anyway,

growing incredibly fast into tens of thousands

of times the mass of our sun.

So they found the missing link

between the first stars and later supermassive black holes?

Yes, black holes come in two main seed types.

Light seeds, which start at only about 10

to a few hundred times the mass of our sun and heavy seeds,

which can start at up to 100,000 solar masses.

Previously, astronomers thought you needed

those rare, heavy seeds to explain supermassive black holes.

But this research shows that common, light seed black holes

can grow at extreme rates under the right conditions.

Dr. John Reagan from the team put it perfectly

when he said heavy seeds are somewhat exotic

and may need rare conditions to form,

but their simulations show that garden variety

stellar mass black holes can grow at extreme rates

in the early universe.

This has implications beyond just understanding the past.

The research team noted that future gravitational wave

observations from the lease emission scheduled

to launch in 2035 may be able to detect the mergers

of these tiny, early, rapidly growing baby black holes.

It's exciting to think we might actually

observe these processes directly.

From black holes to exoplanets,

let's close with our final story about AI hunting

for new worlds.

Anna, we've found over 6,000 exoplanets so far,

with more than half discovered using data

from NASA's Kepler and test missions.

But there's still a treasure trove of data waiting

to be analyzed, and that's where artificial intelligence comes in.

I remember hearing about exo-minor back in 2021.

Is that what this is about?

Exactly.

The team at NASA's Ames Research Center created exo-minor,

which used AI to validate 370 new exoplanets from Kepler data.

Now they've released exo-minor plus plus trained

on both Kepler and test data, and the results are impressive.

What can the new version do?

On its initial run of test data,

exo-minor plus plus identified 7,000 targets

as exoplanet candidates.

These are signals that are likely to be planets

but require follow-up observations to confirm.

The software sifts through observations of possible transits,

those tiny dips in starlight when a planet passes

in front of its host star, and predicts which ones are real planets

versus other phenomena like eclipsing binary stars.

And this is all open source software?

Yes, anyone can download it from GitHub

and use it to hunt for planets

and test his growing public data archive.

Kevin Murphy, NASA's chief science data officer,

emphasized that open source software like exo-minor

accelerates scientific discovery.

When researchers freely share their tools,

it lets others replicate results and dig deeper into the data.

What makes exo-minor plus plus particularly effective?

Miguel Martinho, the co-investigator,

explains that when you have hundreds of thousands

of signals like this, it's the ideal place

to deploy deep learning technologies.

Despite Kepler and test operating differently,

test surveys nearly the whole sky looking

for planet around nearby stars,

while Kepler looked at a small patch of sky more deeply,

the two missions produce compatible data sets.

This allows exo-minor plus plus to train on both

and deliver strong results.

Project lead, Hamed Valiza'd again, said it perfectly.

With not many resources, they can make a lot of returns.

What's next for the program?

The team is working on giving the model the ability

to identify transit signals themselves from raw data,

rather than just evaluating pre-identified candidates.

And looking ahead, NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

will capture tens of thousands of exoplanet transits

starting in a few years,

and all that data will be freely available too.

The advances made with exo-minor

could help hunt for planets in Roman data as well.

Exoplanet scientist John Jenkins summed it up beautifully.

Open source science and open source software

are why the exoplanet field is advancing as quickly as it is.

It's a great reminder of how collaboration

and shared resources drive discovery.

And that's all we have time for today.

What a day of space, newsanna,

from legacy keepsakes heading to the moon

to urgent warnings about orbital debris

to AI discovering thousands of new worlds.

And everything in between, new insights about Earth's water,

the rapid growth of supermassive black holes,

and blue origins expanding launch manifest.

The base exploration continues to accelerate

on multiple fronts.

That's it for today's episode of Astronomy Daily.

Thanks for joining us and we'll see you tomorrow.

Keep looking up.

Clear skies, everyone.

Astronomy Daily, the star is the toe.

The star is the toe.

The star is the toe.

It means it's chumba time with hundreds of casino style games

and new titles arriving weekly.

There's always something fresh to try at Chumba Casino.

The daily booze make it even more fun.

And have me about to get them all during my downtime.

Ready for a fun way to chill out and enjoy a few minutes

for yourself?

Let's chumba.

No purchase necessary.

VGW Group Void were prohibited by law, CTs and Cs,

21 plus sponsored by Chumba Casino.