Black Hole Born in Silence | Crew-12 Launches | Inside-Out Planets

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Good morning, good evening, and good whenever you're listening.

Welcome to Astronomy Daily, your front row seat to the Cosmos.

I'm Anna.

And I'm Avery.

It's Friday the 13th February, 2026.

And if you're superstitious, well,

the universe doesn't care about your calendar.

It's been too busy making black holes,

breaking rockets, and building planetary systems

that make absolutely no sense.

That's right.

We've got an absolutely packed show for you today.

Astronomers may have just watched a star quietly collapse

into a brand new black hole

in our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy.

No supernova required.

SpaceX's Crew 12 is launching

to the International Space Station as we speak.

Europe's most powerful rocket just flew

for the very first time, and that's just for starters.

We've also got a Vulcan rocket

that apparently didn't learn its lesson

the first time around, a planetary system

that's been turned completely inside out,

and NASA's Swift Observatory going into survival mode

to avoid a fiery reentry.

Let's get into it.

We're kicking things off with what is quite literally

happening right now.

NASA and SpaceX have given the final go

for Crew 12 mission to the International Space Station.

Lift off was scheduled for 5.15 AM

Eastern time this morning

from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral.

The crew is an international squad.

We've got NASA astronauts Jessica Mir and Jack Hathaway,

European Space Agency astronauts Sophie Ettenau from France,

and Ross Cosmos Cosmonaut Andre Fedyev from Russia.

They're writing a board of SpaceX Dragon capsule

on a Falcon 9 rocket.

And this launch was supposed to happen yesterday

on the 12th, but mission teams waved off

due to weather conditions along the flight path.

They completed a final weather briefing last night

and gave the all clear to proceed into the countdown.

If everything went according to plan this morning,

the crew should arrive at the station tomorrow afternoon

on Valentine's Day at around 3.15 PM Eastern.

Romantic, right?

Nothing says I love you like docking with a space station

at 28,000 kilometers per hour.

Once they're aboard, they'll bring the station back up

to its full complement of seven crew members.

The ISS has been operating with a reduced crew,

so this is a welcome reinforcement.

They've got a packed science agenda waiting for them up there.

Fun stat on this one, the Falcon 9 booster being used,

B1081, is flying for its 22nd time.

22 flights on a single rocket booster.

And this is the 19th Falcon 9 mission of 2026 alone,

and we're only in mid-February.

SpaceX's launch cadence is just relentless.

We'll keep you updated on crew 12's progress

as they make their way to the station.

You can catch the full coverage on NASA Plus,

Amazon Prime, and NASA's YouTube channel.

All right, Anna, this next story is the kind of thing

that gives astrophysicists goosebumps.

Astronomers believe they've witnessed something extraordinary,

a massive star in the Andromeda galaxy

that didn't go out by a bang, but just quietly vanished.

And what it left behind appears to be a brand new black hole.

This is genuinely remarkable.

The star, catalogued as M31 2014 DS1,

was a yellow supergiant about 13 times the mass of our own sun,

sitting roughly 2.5 million late years away

in our neighboring Andromeda galaxy.

Before it disappeared, it was one of the brightest stars

in Andromeda, shining about 100,000 times brighter

than our own sun.

So here's what happened.

A team led by Columbia University Astrophysicist,

Keisha Lyday, was sifting through archival data

from NASA's Neo wise mission, an infrared space telescope

that mapped the sky from 2009 to 2024.

They were building a map of how millions of stars

change in brightness over time.

And buried in that data, they found something stunning.

Starting around 2014,

this star began to brighten in infrared light.

Then it started fading dramatically in visible light.

And by 2022, it vanished entirely from Neo wise's view.

Even with the most sensitive telescopes available today,

there's nothing there.

As DePos put it, imagine if Betelgeuse

just suddenly disappeared.

That's essentially what happened here,

just in the galaxy next door.

Now, normally when a massive star dies,

it goes out spectacularly as a supernova.

The core collapses, neutrinos erupt outward,

and the resulting shockwave blasts

the star's outer layers into space

in an explosion that can outshine an entire galaxy.

But this star didn't do any of that.

It appears to be what astronomers call a failed supernova.

The theory is that the core collapsed as expected,

forming a dense neutron star,

but the shockwave that was supposed to blow the star apart

just wasn't strong enough.

Instead of exploding outward,

most of the star's material fell back inward,

overwhelming the neutron star and creating a black hole.

It's death by implosion rather than explosion.

And what's really interesting is the role of convection.

The team realized that previous models

hadn't properly accounted for the churning turbulent motions

in the star's outer layers.

When they factored that in,

they found the convection actually helps sap energy

from the shockwave, making it more likely to fail.

That's a significant new insight.

The material that didn't fall straight in

is now forming a rotating accretion disk

around the newborn black hole,

slowly spiraling inward, much like water circling a drain.

The infrared glow from that debris

should remain visible to the James Webb Space Telescope

for decades as it gradually fades.

The study was published yesterday in the journal Science

and the implications are huge.

If relatively lightweight stars like this one

at just 13 solar masses can collapse directly into black holes,

then there could be far more black holes out there

than we've previously estimated.

This could be a very common way for stars to die,

and we've just been missing it

because there's no explosion to see.

Not everyone's convinced yet, though.

Some astronomers suggest this could be a case

of merging stars whose combined light got obscured by dust.

But as one researcher put it,

the definitive test is simple.

Death is forever.

If it's truly a black hole,

that star is never coming back.

Future observations with JWST will help settle the debate.

Sticking with the launch theme,

Europe had a huge milestone yesterday.

The most powerful version of the Arian 6 rocket

flew for the first time,

and it was carrying cargo for one of SpaceX's biggest competitors.

That's right.

Arian Space launched the Arian 64,

the four booster configuration of Europe's new flagship rocket.

It lifted off from the Guyana Space Center

in Kuru, French Guyana at 1645 UTC on February 12th,

and riding on top were 32 satellites

for Amazon's internet constellation,

now officially branded as Amazon Leo.

So let's break down the naming.

The Arian 6 comes in two versions,

the 6-2 with two strap on solid rocket boosters

and the 6-4 with four.

This was the first time the 6-4 has ever flown,

and it's significantly more powerful.

Those 4P120C solid boosters

give it the extra punch needed to loft have your payloads.

And Amazon Leo, formerly known as Project Kuiper,

is Amazon's answer to SpaceX's Starlink.

The plan is to build a constellation of 3,236 satellites,

providing broadband internet from low Earth orbit.

So these 32 satellites are an early batch

to start building out that network.

It's a big deal on two fronts.

For Europe, the Arian 6-4 flying successfully

means they now have a heavy lift option

that can compete for larger commercial and government payloads.

And for Amazon, getting satellites up on a non-SpaceX rocket

is strategically important.

You don't want your main competitor

also being your sole right to orbit.

The launch went smoothly

with the satellites successfully deployed into low Earth orbit.

It's a promising start for the Arian 6-4 configuration.

Now, speaking of rockets that had a slightly less smooth day,

we need to talk about the Vulcan Centaur.

This is an update to the story we covered yesterday.

United Launch Alliance flew the USS F-87 mission

for the US Space Force early on February 12th,

and there was a very familiar problem.

About 30 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral,

observers noticed a bright glow

and a shower of sparks pouring from the aft end

of one of the four Gem 63 XL solid rocket boosters.

Video and tracking footage showed what

appears to be a nozzle burn through,

where hot exhaust gas essentially melts its way

through the nozzle casing.

And here's the thing, this has happened before.

The exact same type of anomaly occurred

during Vulcan's second certification flight back in October 2024.

ULA and booster manufacturer Northrop Grumman

spent months investigating that incident,

identified a manufacturing defect and said they'd fixed it.

The third flight in August 2025 went cleanly.

But now on just the fourth flight overall,

the problem is back.

ULA acknowledged it had, quote, an observation early

during flight on one of the four solid rocket motors

and said the team is reviewing the data.

The silver lining is that the mission still succeeded.

The Falcon 9, sorry, the Vulcan's twin BE4 main engines

compensated and the Centaur upper stage

completed all its planned burns.

About eight hours after launch, ULA confirmed

the payloads were successfully delivered

to geosynchronous orbit, more than 22,000 miles above Earth.

The primary payload was a pair of GSSAP satellites

for the Space Force.

These are maneuverable spacecraft that

serve as a sort of neighborhood watch for geosynchronous orbit,

monitoring activity near US and Allied assets.

There were also some research and development

payloads aboard.

But the bigger question now is what this means

for Vulcan's future?

ULA had ambitious plans to fly 16 to 18 missions this year,

including launches for Amazon, GPS satellites,

and more Space Force payloads.

A recurring booster issue on a rocket that's only flown four

times is a serious concern.

The Space Force has already said it will work closely

with ULA on flight worthiness

before the next national security mission.

We'll be watching this one closely.

Vulcan is supposed to be ULA's flagship for the future,

replacing the venerable Atlas V.

It needs to prove it can fly reliably,

and a pattern of booster issues isn't helping that case.

All right, time for some planetary weirdness.

Astronomers have found a star system

that looks like someone assembled the planets

in the wrong order.

Think of it as a cosmic double stuffed Oreo.

That's actually a great analogy.

The star is called LHS1903.

It's a red dwarf about half the mass of our sun

located about 116 light years away.

It has four planets, all orbiting

and less than 30 days.

So it's a very compact system.

And from the star outward,

the arrangement goes rocky, gaseous, gaseous, rocky,

which is the exact opposite of what models predict.

In standard planetary formation theory,

rocky planets form closer to the star

where intense starlight strips away atmospheres

and gas giants form farther out

where there's more gas available in the proto-planetary disk.

You'd expect rocky on the inside, gassy on the outside.

But LHS1903 follows the rules beautifully

for the first three planets,

a rocky one closest in, then two gaseous ones.

And then the fourth planet, the one furthest out,

is rocky again.

It's like finding a Venus-like world

out past Neptune's orbit.

It just shouldn't be there.

The system was first discovered

by NASA's test mission back in 2019.

And this latest study, published February 12th in Science,

used a suite of ground-based

and space-based instruments

to precisely determine the planet's masses and densities.

That's how they could tell which ones are rocky

and which have thick, gaseous envelopes.

The leading explanation is planetary migration.

Sometime early in the system's history,

the inner planets may have shuffled around,

similar to what happened in our own solar system

during the late heavy bombardment.

A gravitational reshuffle could have sent a large body

crashing into the fourth planet,

stripping away its atmosphere,

or the planet may have formed late

after the system had run out of gas.

As astronomer Andrew Cameron

from the University of St. Andrews put it,

that stuff does happen in young planetary systems.

This one has a look of something

that's been turned inside out.

It's a fantastic reminder that for all our models and theories,

the universe keeps finding ways as a crisis.

Our final story today is about a veteran space telescope

that's fighting for its life

and NASA's creative plan to save it.

The Neil Geralt Swift Observatory

has been one of NASA's workhorses

for high energy astrophysics.

It's been an orbit for about 21 years,

rapidly sluing to observe gamma-ray bursts

and other transient cosmic events,

but time and physics are catching up with it.

The problem is atmospheric drag,

enhanced solar activity,

and we're right around solar maximum.

Heat's Earth's upper atmosphere

and causes it to expand.

That expanded atmosphere creates more drag

on satellites in low orbit, slowly pulling them down.

Swift's average altitude has been steadily declining

and it's now dropped below about 250 miles

or 400 kilometers.

So on February 11,

NASA's Swift team made a tough call.

They've temporarily suspended most science operations.

The burst alert telescope will keep detecting gamma-ray bursts,

but the spacecraft will no longer slew

to follow up on those detections with its other instruments.

Instead, controllers are keeping Swift

in a fixed orientation

that minimizes atmospheric drag.

Think of it like a swimmer turning sideways

to cut through a current instead of facing it head on.

By reducing how much surface area Swift presents

to the thin wisps of atmosphere at that altitude,

they can slow the orbital decay.

And here's a creative part.

NASA has contracted a company

called Catalyst Space Technologies

based in Flagstaff, Arizona

to actually go up and give Swift the push.

They're planning a servicing mission

that will boost the observatory into a higher orbit

extending its scientific lifetime.

The reboost spacecraft is expected to launch in the summer,

but for that to work,

Swift needs to stay above about 185 miles,

roughly 300 kilometers.

So everything they're doing now

is about preserving enough altitude

to make the rescue mission possible.

It's a fascinating case study in satellite servicing.

If it works, it demonstrates a capability

that could be applied to all sorts of aging spacecraft.

Rather than letting valuable observatories burn up,

you send a little tugboat to push them back up.

The economics of that could be transformative for space science.

We're rooting for Swift,

21 years of service and still going.

Fingers crossed, the reboost mission comes together in time.

And that wraps up another packed edition of Astronomy Daily.

What a Friday the 13th it's been

from a star silently becoming a black hole

to rockets that keep surprising us.

The universe never takes a day off.

If you enjoyed today's episode,

please hit subscribe wherever you're listening

and leave us a review if you can.

It really does help new listeners find us.

You can also follow us on social media

at Astro Daily Pod on all the major platforms.

Head over to astronomydaily.io

for full show notes and links to all the stories we covered today.

And if you've got questions, story tips,

or just wanna say hi, we'd love to hear from you.

Until next time, keep looking up.

Clear skies, everyone.

Astronomy day.

The star is the toe.

The star is the toe.

The star is the toe.

Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing.

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