Blue Origin's TeraWave Network, Historic ISS Medical Evacuation & Buzz Aldrin Turns 96

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Hey there, space fans.

I'm Anna.

And I'm Avery.

Welcome to Astronomy Daily, your daily dose

of space and astronomy news.

It's Thursday, January 22nd, 2026.

And boy, do we have a packed episode for you today?

We really do.

We're covering everything from blue origins

ambitious new satellite internet network

to an update on that historic medical evacuation

from the International Space Station.

Plus, we'll celebrate a special birthday for a lunar legend.

That's right.

We've also got some fascinating science stories,

including new insights into Saturn's moon and celadus.

Surprising discoveries about plasma waves at Mercury

and groundbreaking observations of solar flares.

Do buckle up.

Let's dive right into today's space headlines.

All right, Anna, let's kick things off

with some major news from Blue Origin.

Jeff Bezos' space company just announced

a new satellite internet network called TerraWave.

And the numbers are pretty staggering.

They really are.

We're talking about data speeds up to six

terabytes per second.

That's seriously impressive.

How does that compare to what's available now?

Well, for context, SpaceX's Starlink currently

maxes out at 400 megabits per second for consumers.

Though they're planning to upgrade

to one gigabit speeds in the future.

But six terabytes per second,

that's in a completely different league.

So this isn't really targeting the same market

as Starlink then.

Exactly.

Blue Origin is very clear about this.

TerraWave is geared toward enterprise customers,

data centers, and government applications.

It's meant to add a space-based layer

to existing network infrastructure,

particularly for reaching locations

that traditional methods can't access.

What's the architecture looking like?

How many satellites are we talking about?

The constellation will use a mix of 5,280 satellites

in low-earth orbit, and 128 in medium-earth orbit.

The low-earth orbit satellites will use RF connectivity

with maximum data transfer speeds of 144 gigabits per second.

While the medium-earth orbit satellites

will use optical lengths to achieve

those incredible six terabits per second speeds.

When can we expect to see this actually deployed?

Blue Origin plans to start deploying

the first satellites in late 2027.

They haven't given a timeline for the full build-out yet,

which makes sense given the scale of the project.

This is interesting timing, too, isn't it?

Because Jeff Bezos' other company, Amazon,

just rebranded their satellite network as Leo.

That's right.

Leo will have around 3,000 satellites in low-earth orbit

offering more traditional broadband speeds to consumers.

So taken together,

Amazon's Leo and Blue Origin's TerraWave

could provide pretty robust competition

to SpaceX's Starlink across different market segments.

It's really shaping up to be an exciting era

for satellite internet.

The competition should drive innovation

and hopefully improve service for everyone.

Absolutely.

And it shows how Blue Origin is evolving beyond

just their space tourism flights with New Shepherd.

With the successful launches of their new Glen Rocket,

landing the booster on just a second attempt,

and now this satellite network announcement,

they're really becoming a multifaceted

commercial space player.

Great point.

All right, let's move on to some news

from closer to home,

or at least from low-earth orbit.

Avery, we need to talk about the unprecedented

medical evacuation from the International Space Station.

This was a historic moment

and not in a way anyone wanted.

Well, today we have a bit of an update

as the astronauts have made their first live appearance

since returning to Earth.

You're absolutely right, Anna.

For the first time in over 25 years

of continuous human presence on the ISS,

and the first time in NASA's entire history,

a space mission was cut short due to a medical issue.

The four astronauts of crew 11 splash down

in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California

on January 15th, about a month earlier than planned.

Can you tell us who was on this crew?

The crew included NASA astronauts,

Zena Cardman and Mike Fink,

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut,

Kimeya Yui, and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov.

They'd been on the station for 167 days,

having launched back in August 2025.

And NASA still hasn't disclosed

which crew member had the medical issue

or what the condition was.

That's correct.

They're protecting the astronaut's medical privacy.

What they have said is that the crew member is stable

in that this wasn't an emergency situation,

despite bringing the entire crew home early.

How did this unfold?

What were the warning signs?

The first public indication came when NASA

canceled a planned spacewalk on January 8th

due to a medical concern.

Mike Fink and Zena Cardman were supposed to venture

outside the station to work on the power system.

The next day, NASA made the decision

to bring the entire crew home early.

That must have been a difficult decision to make.

Absolutely.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman emphasized

that while they have medical equipment

and trained crew members aboard the ISS,

the capability to properly diagnose

and treat this particular condition

simply doesn't exist on the station.

He called it a controlled medical evacuation,

not an emergency deorbit.

What's particularly interesting to me

is what the crew member said

at their press conference yesterday.

They seemed remarkably positive about the experience.

They really did.

Mike Fink, who was the ISS commander during this mission,

said the way the crew and ground teams handled everything

made him more confident about human space exploration,

not less.

He specifically mentioned this boat's well

for the upcoming Artemis program.

I remember reading that they used

the portable ultrasound machine on the ISS

during this incident.

Right, Fink mentioned that during the press conference.

He emphasized that while the ultrasound

was extremely helpful,

the ISS doesn't have the capacity

for a larger imaging equipment like MRI machines.

Zena Cardman also pointed out that

as we venture beyond low-earth orbit to the moon

and eventually Mars,

having better diagnostic and treatment tools on board

will be a critical challenge to solve.

How has this affected operations on the ISS?

Oh, their departure left only three people on the station,

two Russian cosmonauts and one NASA astronaut

who derived on a Soyuz capsule in November.

That significantly reduced from the typical crew of seven,

which means fewer experiments and less maintenance

can be performed.

The next crew rotation, crew 12,

is scheduled to launch no earlier than February 15th.

Despite the challenging circumstances,

this really demonstrates the professionalism

and preparedness of our space programs.

Exactly.

As Cardman emphasized, astronauts are the eyes

and ears for researchers on the ground.

And this experience will undoubtedly inform

how we prepare for longer duration missions

further from Earth.

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All right, shall we move on to a much happier space story?

Absolutely.

This past Tuesday, January 20th marked

the 96th birthday of Buzz Aldrin,

the second man to walk on the moon,

and now the oldest living astronaut.

What an incredible milestone.

Buzz Aldrin born Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr.

on January 20th, 1930, in Glenrich, New Jersey,

made history alongside Neil Armstrong

during the Apollo 11 landing in 1969.

He was 39 years old when he stepped onto the lunar surface.

I love the story behind his nickname.

Did you know that his sister couldn't pronounce brother

properly and called him buzzer,

which got shortened to Buzz?

I did, and he liked it so much,

he legally changed his first name to Buzz in 1988.

Now it's worth noting that this past year

hasn't been easy for Aldrin.

He lost his wife, Anka Fauer, last fall,

after a battle with cancer.

They'd been married on his 93rd birthday in 2023.

That's heartbreaking, but it sounds like he's surrounded

by family now.

Yes, his family posted an update in late December

showing he's spending time with his children

and grandchildren in Los Angeles,

and they're planning to move him closer

to family in Southern California.

Despite his age and recent loss,

he remains a cheerleader for NASA and space exploration.

Speaking of which, the timing of his birthday

is pretty special with the Artemis II mission coming up.

Absolutely.

The Artemis astronauts wished him a happy birthday

this past weekend from Kennedy Space Center

as their Orion spacecraft atop the space launch system

rocket rolled out to launch pad 39B.

It's the same pad that launched many Apollo missions.

The Artemis II crew, NASA astronauts Reed Wiseman,

Victor Glover, Christina Koch,

and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hanson

could launch as early as February 6th.

They'll be the first humans to return

to the vicinity of the moon since 1972.

And they'll make history too.

Victor Glover will be the first black astronaut,

Christina Koch, the first woman,

and Jeremy Hanson, the first non-American

to travel that far from Earth.

What really struck me was how the Artemis astronauts

talked about their connections to the Apollo program.

Me too.

Reed Wiseman shared this great story

about almost missing a call from Apollo 10's

General Tom Stafford on the day he was selected

for Artemis II.

He thought it was a telemarketer,

but Stafford called to congratulate him.

And Wiseman said the Apollo astronauts

are just so excited that were headed back to the moon.

Victor Glover mentioned carrying a bag of wisdom quotes

from Apollo 9's Rusty Schweikert to the space station.

And he's planning to take it to the moon as well.

And Christina Koch talked about Fred Hayes

from Apollo 13 teasing her about breaking their distance record.

She said that moment brought her into the Apollo camaraderie,

and she promised to carry that spirit forward.

Jeremy Hanson's story is my favorite, though.

He saw a picture of buzz or kneel on the moon as a kid,

turned his treehouse into a spaceship,

and here he is now about to go to the moon himself.

It really shows the lasting impact of the Apollo program.

Of the 12 men who walked on the moon,

only four are still alive.

Buzz Aldrin at 96, David Scott at 93,

Charles Duke at 90, and Harrison Schmidt at 90.

Buzz Aldrin truly is a living legend,

and his enthusiasm for the future of space exploration

is inspiring.

Happy 96th birthday buzz.

Dear here, now let's shift gears

and head out to Saturn's moon Enceladus.

Anna, this next story is about one of the most exciting places

in our solar system when it comes to the search for life.

Saturn's moon Enceladus.

Oh, I love Enceladus.

Those gorgeous plumes shooting out from the South Pole

are just mesmerizing.

What's the new development?

A team of Japanese scientists has developed

a new method for analyzing those plumes

that could help us determine whether Enceladus's subsurface

motion is habitable.

They're proposing to use Raymond Spectroscopy

to estimate the pH levels of the water

being ejected from the moon.

Raymond Spectroscopy, can you explain what that is

for our listeners?

Sure, Raymond Spectroscopy is a technique

that uses laser light to identify

the molecular composition of materials.

It's been used on several planetary missions,

including on the Perseverance rover currently on Mars.

The technique can identify different chemical compounds,

and in this case, different pH levels.

And why is pH so important for habitability?

Well, the pH level tells us how acidic or alkaline

the water is, which is crucial for understanding

whether life as we know it could potentially exist there.

Scientists have estimated that Enceladus's plumes

likely have a pH somewhere between A and 12,

which is weakly to strongly alkaline.

So how do they test this method?

The researchers conducted laboratory experiments

using carbonate salty fluid samples at different pH levels.

They placed these samples in a vacuum chamber

to simulate Enceladus's surface conditions,

letting the fluid evaporate and freeze,

leaving only the salt deposits behind.

Then they used ramen spectroscopy instruments

configured to simulate how they'd work

on a future space mission.

And were they successful?

They were.

The ramen spectroscopy successfully

identified the different pH levels

in each of the salt deposit samples.

The researchers concluded that this technique

could identify carbonate minerals on Enceladus's surface

and potentially estimate the pH of the subsurface ocean.

This is particularly clever, because it means

we wouldn't necessarily need to drill through the ice

to sample the ocean directly.

Exactly.

The plumes are constantly depositing material on the surface,

so a lander could analyze these deposits

and learn about the ocean below.

It's a much more accessible approach

than trying to penetrate kilometers of ice.

Remind me, what do we already know about Enceladus

from the Cassini mission?

Well, Cassini discovered the plumes back in the mid-2000s

and even flew through them.

The mission found mostly water ice,

but also salt-rich ice grains, organic molecules,

hydrogen gas, and evidence of heat,

all indicative of active geology

and a warm subsurface ocean.

And the presence of hydrogen gas was particularly exciting

because it could be produced by hydrothermal vents

on the ocean floor, right?

Exactly.

That could provide a source of chemical energy

for potential microbial life,

similar to what we see around hydrothermal vents

in Earth's deep oceans.

Being able to measure the pH more accurately

would be another crucial piece of the habitability puzzle.

This really makes me excited for future missions

to Enceladus.

Hopefully we'll see a dedicated mission there

in the coming decades.

Absolutely.

The technology is there.

We just need the mission.

All right, let's head to Mercury for our next story.

Avery, this next story reveals some surprising connections

between Mercury and Earth.

It turns out these two very different planets

have more in common than we thought

when it comes to their magnetospheres.

That's right, Anna.

An international team of researchers has discovered

that natural electromagnetic waves

called chorus emissions occur in Mercury's magnetosphere

with strikingly similar characteristics

to those found around Earth,

despite Mercury having a magnetic field,

only about 100 as strong.

Chorus waves, that's such an evocative name.

Can you explain what these are?

Sure.

Chorus waves are plasma waves that sound like bird song

when converted to audio frequencies.

They're created when electrons in a planet's magnetosphere

interact with electromagnetic waves,

producing these characteristic rising and falling tones.

And why do we care about these waves?

On Earth, they play a crucial role

in the Van Allen radiation belts.

They can both accelerate particles to create the belts

and also cause particles to rain down into the atmosphere,

depleting them.

Understanding these waves is important

for space weather forecasting

and protecting satellites from radiation.

So how did researchers make this discovery at Mercury?

They used data from the Beppi-Colombo missions

Magneto-Sphiric Orbiter called Mio

during six flybys of Mercury between 2021 and 2025.

They combined this with decades of data

from Earth's Geotale satellite,

which operated from 1992 to 2022.

Why was Geotale particularly useful for comparison?

Great question.

Geotale observed Earth's Magneto tail

from about 10 Earth radii away,

conditions that actually resemble Mercury's

much smaller, more compact, Magneto-Sphir.

This made it an excellent benchmark for comparison.

What exactly did they find?

The team identified rapid, rising

and falling frequency sweeps at Mercury,

indicating the same kind of nonlinear coupling

between electrons and waves that we see at Earth.

They also found that the emissions were concentrated

in the dawn side sector,

just like at Earth where energetic electrons

preferentially stream through the Magneto-Sphir.

What surprised me about this is that Mercury

has almost no atmosphere.

I would have thought that would make a big difference.

That's what scientists expected too.

Earlier theories suggested that Mercury

wouldn't have the cold or low-energy electrons

necessary to generate chorus waves.

But this discovery confirms predictions from 2025

that these electrons do exist around Mercury.

So what does this tell us about how universal

these plasma processes are?

It demonstrates that the mechanisms responsible

for generating chorus emissions

can operate across vastly different planetary environments

from Earth with its strong magnetic field

and thick atmosphere to Mercury with its weak field

and virtually no atmosphere.

It's a universal plasma process.

This has implications for other planets too, doesn't it?

Absolutely.

The researchers mentioned that this opens up

systematic comparative studies of a rural

and radiation processes at multiple planets,

including Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

By understanding how these emissions work

across different planetary systems,

we can build a more complete picture

of plasma physics throughout the solar system.

And Mio is scheduled to enter Mercury orbit in late 2026,

right?

That's correct.

Once an orbit, Mio will be able to make

much more detailed observations of how these emissions vary

with location and how they interact

with electron populations around Mercury.

We should learn a lot more in the coming years.

It's amazing how studying one planet helps us

understand others.

All right, let's wrap up with some solar science.

For our final story today, Anna, we're heading to the sun

to talk about some remarkable new insights

into how solar flares actually work,

courtesy of Esa's solar orbiter spacecraft.

Solar flares are one of those phenomena

that everyone's heard of and are certainly

in the news this week.

But I think many people don't really understand what's happening.

What did solar orbiter discover?

Well, researchers found that solar flares start

with what they're calling a magnetic avalanche.

Just like a snow avalanche starts

with a small amount of snow movement

and then cascades into something much larger,

solar flares begin with initially weak magnetic disturbances

that rapidly become more violent.

That's a great analogy.

How are they able to observe this?

Solar orbiter captured one of its most detailed views

of a large solar flare during its September 30th, 2024,

close approach to the sun.

What made this observation special was the combination

of four different instruments working together,

the extreme ultraviolet imager along with spice, sticks,

and fire.

What kind of detail are we talking about?

The high-resolution imagery from the EUI instrument

zoomed in to features just a few hundred kilometers

across in the sun's corona, capturing changes

every two seconds.

And the team was able to watch the build up to the flare

for about 40 minutes before it erupted.

That's incredibly fortunate timing.

It really was.

Pradeep Chita from the Max Planck Institute

for Solar System Research, who led the study,

said they were very lucky to witness the precursor events

in such beautiful detail.

These kinds of high cadence observations

take up enormous amounts of memory on spacecraft,

so they can't do them all the time.

So what actually happens during this magnetic avalanche?

About 40 minutes before the main flare,

the instruments observed a dark filament of twisted magnetic

fields connected to a cross-shaped structure

of progressively brightening magnetic field lines.

New magnetic field strands appeared every two seconds or less,

each one magnetically contained and becoming twisted like ropes.

And then everything becomes unstable?

Exactly, just like in a typical avalanche,

the region becomes unstable.

The twisted strands begin to break and reconnect

in what's called magnetic reconnection.

This rapidly triggers a cascade of further destabilizations,

creating progressively stronger reconnection events

and outflows of energy,

visible as increasing brightness in the imagery.

This is different from how scientists previously

thought flares work.

Scientists had proposed a simple avalanche model

for explaining the collective behavior

of thousands of flares on the sun and other stars,

but it wasn't clear whether a single large flare

could be described this way.

This result shows that a flare isn't necessarily

one coherent eruption,

but can be a cascade of many interacting reconnection events.

I read something about reigning plasma blobs in this study.

Yes, that's one of the most fascinating parts.

The team observed ribbon-like features moving

extremely quickly down through the sun's atmosphere,

even before the main episode of the flare.

These streams of what they called reigning plasma blobs

are signatures of energy deposition.

They get stronger as the flare progresses

and continue even after the flare subsides.

And they detected some seriously high energy particles, too, right?

They did.

The STIX instrument measured x-ray emission

that rose dramatically during the flare

as reconnection events increased.

Particles were accelerated to speeds of 40 to 50%

of the speed of light.

That's about 430 to 540 kilometers per hour.

Those high energy particles can be dangerous

for satellites and astronauts, can't they?

Absolutely.

They can escape into interplanetary space

and pose radiation hazards to satellites, astronauts,

and even Earth-based technologies.

That's why understanding this process

is essential for forecasting space weather.

What surprised the researchers most about this discovery?

Chita said they didn't expect the avalanche process

could lead to such high energy particles.

They're excited to explore this further,

but he mentioned they'd meet even higher resolution x-ray

imagery from future missions to really untangle

all the details.

What does this mean for our understanding

of flares on other stars?

That's a great question.

Mijo Janvier, Esa Solar Orbiter Co-Project Scientist,

called this one of the most exciting results

from Solar Orbiter so far.

She said an interesting prospect

is whether this avalanche mechanism happens in all flares

and on other flaring stars as well.

It really highlights how much we still

have to learn about our own sun,

even as we explore the far reaches of the solar system.

Absolutely, and that's the beauty of space science.

There's always new mysteries to unravel.

Well, that wraps up another packed episode of Astronomy Daily.

We've covered everything from cutting-edge satellite technology

to historic medical operations in space,

from birthday celebrations to groundbreaking scientific

discoveries.

What a journey through the cosmos,

from blue origins ambitious TerraWave network

to the first medical evacuation in ISS history,

from Buzz Aldrin's 96th birthday to Enceladus's potentially

habitable ocean from Mercury's plasma waves

to the sun's magnetic avalanches.

There's never a dull moment in space exploration.

If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to subscribe

to Astronomy Daily wherever you get your podcasts.

We bring you the latest space in Astronomy News every single day.

And don't forget to follow us on social media for updates,

bonus content, and to join our community of space enthusiasts.

You can find all our episodes and more at astronomydaily.io.

Thanks for joining us on this cosmic journey.

Keep looking up.

Clear skies, everyone.

This has been Astronomy Daily.

We'll see you tomorrow.

Astronomy Daily.

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