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Hey, it's Cole Swindale.
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After I give everything I've got to land a perfect vocal, I usually take five before
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jumping into the next track.
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And I've learned exactly how to recharge in that time.
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Some folks grab coffee, I hit a quick good lookspin.
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Next thing you know, the break is just as fun as land down the track.
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A better break makes for a better take.
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No purchase necessary, BGW Group Void were prohibited by law, 21 plus TNC Supply, sponsored
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Good day and welcome to Astronomy Daily.
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Your go to source for everything happening in space and astronomy.
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I'm Anna and I'm Avery.
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It's Thursday, February the 12th, 2026 and we have a packed show for you today.
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China has just pulled off a major milestone in its push to land astronauts on the moon,
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including a pretty spectacular rocket splashdown that should have a few people at SpaceX
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We've also got ULA's Vulcan Centaur rocket launching a pair of space surveillance satellites
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for the US Space Force.
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A deep dive into why Artemis 2 has so few chances to actually get off the ground and a stunning
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new Hubble image of a dying star.
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Plus, did NASA's Viking missions actually find life on Mars 50 years ago?
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New research says the answer might be yes and astronomers are still hunting for the
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remains of a comet that dramatically fell apart during COVID lockdowns.
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Our lead story today takes us to Wang Chong Space Launch site on the island of Hainan,
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where yesterday, February 11th, China conducted a landmark test that checked off multiple
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firsts in a single mission.
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This was a low altitude demonstration flight of China's next generation Long March 10 rocket,
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firing the Mangzhou crew capsule, and what they were testing was something called a Max-Q
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Basically, can the capsule safely escape the rocket at the moment of maximum aerodynamic
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stress during a cent?
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And for context, that's the point during any rocket launch where the vehicle is experiencing
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the greatest combination of speed and atmospheric resistance.
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If something goes wrong at Max-Q, the crew needs to get away fast.
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This was China's first ever test of that scenario with a crude class spacecraft.
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The capsule successfully separated from the rocket, deployed its parachutes, and was recovered
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It was carrying lunar space suits and test dummies rather than actual tyco knots, obviously,
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but the abort system performed exactly as designed.
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Now, here is where it gets really interesting, Avery.
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After the capsule separated, the Long March 10 first stage didn't just tumble into the
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It performed a powered vertical landing, a soft splash down at sea, very much in the
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style of SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster recoveries.
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And that's a huge deal because, until now, only the United States has had operational
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reusable orbital-class rockets.
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This was China's first successful rocket recovery attempt, and it worked on the very first
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powered flight of the Long March 10 prototype.
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And they even had a dedicated autonomous recovery vessel, called the Ling Hang Zer, standing
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by, which is essentially China's answer to SpaceX's drone ships.
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The full Long March 10 is going to be an absolute beast when it's complete, a tricor rocket
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standing around 90 meters tall with about 2,700 tons of lift-off thrust.
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It's designed to be China's largest launch vehicle, and the only one capable of sending
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both a cruise spacecraft and a lunar lander to the moon in a single launch.
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If things continue at this pace, China is projecting a full orbital flight of the Long March
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10 by 2027, with tyconauts on the lunar surface before the end of the decade.
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That puts them in a very real race with NASA's Artemis program, which is targeting its
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own crude landing with Artemis III no earlier than 2028.
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This test was conducted from the brand new launch pad number three in Wangchang, which
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was built specifically for these lunar missions, so the infrastructure is going in alongside
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A genuinely significant day for the Chinese space program, and one that adds real momentum
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to what's shaping up to be the most exciting moon race since Apollo.
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Dicking with rockets, but moving to Cape Cammabral, ULA's Vulcan Centaur rocket is set
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to launch early this morning, February 12, with the window opening at 3.30 a.m. Eastern
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This is the fourth Vulcan mission overall, and the first of 2026.
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The payload is a pair of GSSAP satellites.
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That's the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness program, built by Northrop Grumman
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for the U.S. Space Force.
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Think of GSSAP as a neighborhood watch program for Geosynchronous orbit.
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These satellites monitor other spacecraft at that critical 35,000 kilometer altitude, improving
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flight safety, and giving Space Force operators better situational awareness about what's
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There's also a secondary payload called propulsive ESPA, essentially a training spacecraft
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that Space Force Guardians will use to practice precision orbital maneuvers, and validate
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techniques for protecting assets and orbit.
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What's notable about this particular mission is that it's the longest Vulcan flight to
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date, nearly 10 hours, because the Centaur upper stage is performing a direct insertion
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all the way to Geosynchronous orbit, rather than just dropping the satellites into a transfer
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ULA is under some pressure this year.
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They've got in-term CEO John Elban at the helm after Tori Bruno departed to join Blue
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Origin late last year, and they're targeting 18 to 22 launches in 2026, after falling
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short of their targets in 2025.
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They've invested heavily in infrastructure, a second mobile launch platform, and a second
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integration facility at the Cape.
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So the capacity is there.
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The question is whether Vulcan can deliver on the reliability and cadence that their roughly
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80 mission backlog demands.
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We should note that ULA's webcast coverage will end at faring separation, about five
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minutes after launch, because the classified nature of the payload means the rest of the
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mission is conducted in silence.
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Now, speaking of getting rockets off the ground, let's talk about Artemis II, because
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if you've been following the countdown to the first crude moon mission in over 50 years,
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you might have noticed something surprising about how few chances there actually are
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NASA has published the available launch dates, and there are just 11 opportunities across
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March and April combined.
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Five dates in March, the six through the ninth, plus March 11th, and six in April.
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Each window is about two hours long.
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11 chances in 61 days.
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That's it, and some of those could be lost to weather or the need to replace consumables
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like rocket fuel, so why so few?
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It all comes down to orbital mechanics and the specific requirements of this mission.
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Artemis II doesn't fly straight to the moon.
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The SLS rocket first delivers the Orion capsule to high-earth orbit, where the crew and
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ground teams run through a series of checkouts.
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Then comes a Transluner injection burn to send Orion on its way.
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So, the launch time on any given day has to thread the needle.
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SLS needs to reach the right orbit.
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Orion needs to be in the correct alignment with both Earth and the moon for that Transluner
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injection burn, and the whole trajectory has to work as a free return loop using the
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moon's gravity to sling the capsule home.
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And then there's a power constraint.
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Orion's solar arrays can't be in darkness for more than 90 minutes at a stretch, so NASA
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has to rule out any trajectory that would put the spacecraft in an extended eclipse.
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That alone eliminates a lot of potential dates.
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The return profile matters, too.
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Orion needs a specific entry angle and conditions for splashdown, so that further narrows the
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Now, the reason we're talking about March and April specifically is that the first wet
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dress rehearsal, that's the full practice run of fueling and countdown procedures, ended
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early on February 2nd, because of a liquid hydrogen leak.
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That took February off the table entirely.
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A second wet dress attempt is expected soon, possibly this weekend, and NASA officials
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have been reassuring everyone that there are launch opportunities in every month beyond
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They just haven't published those dates yet.
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And it's worth remembering that Artemis I had similar hydrogen leak issues and still flew
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successfully in late 2022, so this isn't uncharted territory.
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Whenever it flies, it'll be historic.
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No astronaut has been beyond low-earth orbit since Apollo 17 in December 1972.
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That's over 53 years.
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Moving on to our next story, and it's time for some pure cosmic beauty, NASA has released
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a breathtaking new image from the Hubble Space Telescope showing the egg nebula in extraordinary
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The egg nebula is about a thousand light years away in the constellation's sickness, and
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it's what astronomers call a pre-planetary nebula, which despite the name has nothing
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to do with planets forming.
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It's the early stage of a dying sun-like star, shedding its outer layers.
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And NASA describes it as the first, youngest, and closest pre-planetary nebula ever discovered,
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which makes it incredibly valuable for studying how stars like our sun eventually meet their
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What makes this image so striking is the structure.
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At the center, you have the dying star, the yoke of the egg, hidden behind a dense cloud
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Quinn beams of light punch outward through gaps in that dusty shell, illuminating a series
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of concentric arcs of gas that ripple outward like waves.
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And unlike most nebulae, which glow because their gas has been ionized, the egg nebula
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shines purely by reflected light from the central star.
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The star hasn't heated up enough yet to ionize its surroundings.
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That's what makes this a pre-planetary nebula rather than a full planetary nebula.
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The symmetry is remarkable, too.
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Scientists say the patterns are far too orderly to have come from a violent event like a
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Instead, they point to coordinated sputtering events in the carbon-enriched core of the
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dying star, though the exact mechanism is still poorly understood.
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There's also evidence of gravitational interactions with one or more hidden companion stars buried
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deep within the dust, which may be helping to shape those dramatic outflows.
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This pre-planetary phase only lasts a few thousand years, an absolute blink in cosmic
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So catching a nebula at this stage is like catching lightning in a bottle.
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And the material being shed here is the same kind of carbon-rich star dust that ceded
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our own solar system four and a half billion years ago.
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Hubble has observed the egg nebula before, but this new image taken with the wide field
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camera 3 combines multiple data sets to produce the most detailed portrait yet.
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Thirty-five years in orbit, and Hubble is still delivering.
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Now for a story that could fundamentally change how we think about Mars.
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New research published in the journal Astrobiology is making the case that NASA's Viking missions
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may have actually detected signs of life on Mars back in 1976.
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We just didn't know how to read the data.
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This is a big claim, so let's unpack it.
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The Viking landers carried an instrument called the GCMS, the gas chromatography mass spectrometer,
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which was designed to detect organic molecules in the Martian soil.
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At the time, it returned what was interpreted as a negative result.
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No organics found, case closed.
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And that conclusion essentially shut down the debate for decades.
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The Viking project scientist Gerald Soffin famously said, no bodies, no life.
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And that became the textbook answer.
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But here's the twist.
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In 2008, NASA's Phoenix lander discovered perchlorates in the Martian soil.
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Perchlorates are powerful oxidizing chemicals, and it turns out they break down organic molecules
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when heated, which is exactly what the Viking GCMS did to its soil samples.
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Though in 2010, astrobiologist Rafael Navarro Gonzales showed that if you take organic material
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and heat it in the presence of perchlorate, you get methyl chloride and carbon dioxide,
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which is precisely the chemical signature that Viking detected and dismissed as either
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contamination or an unknown chemical process.
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The lead author, Dr. Benner, puts it very directly.
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The GCMS didn't fail to discover organics.
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It did discover them through their degradation products.
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We just didn't understand what we were looking at.
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The team has even developed a model for what Martian microbes might look like.
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They call it bar zoom.
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That's bacterial autotrophes that respire with stored oxygen on Mars.
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The idea is that these organisms could photosynthesize during the Martian day, produce and
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Ben used it to survive the freezing Martian nights.
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I should emphasize, this doesn't prove there's life on Mars, but it does reopen a door
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that was closed 50 years ago, and makes a compelling case that the evidence was there all
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along, hiding in plain sight.
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And it raises a fascinating question.
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If we go back to Mars with modern instruments designed with percorates in mind, what else
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Our final story today is a bit of a cosmic cold case.
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Remember comment C 2019 Y4 Atlas?
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Oh, the pandemic comment.
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It was discovered in December 2019, and as it flew toward the inner solar system in
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early 2020, it brightened so rapidly that astronomers predicted it could become visible
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to the naked eye, a real lockdown spectacle.
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And then, like so many plans in 2020, it fell apart.
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In late April 2020, the comment dramatically disintegrated into dozens of pieces.
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Hubble tracked about 30 fragments grouped into a few clusters of icy debris.
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But here's the thing.
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A new study in the Astronomical Journal by a team led by Salvatore Cordoba-Kihano at Boston
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University has been asking if anything is still out there.
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Did the comment completely destroy itself or could a chunk have survived?
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The team scanned the skies in August and October of 2020 using the Lowell Discovery Telescope
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in Arizona and the Zwicky Transient Facility, which surveys the entire Northern sky every
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They found nothing.
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But, and this is the intriguing part, that doesn't necessarily mean there's nothing left.
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Air analysis suggests that a fragment up to about half a kilometer wide could still exist,
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but would be too small and too faint for those telescopes to detect.
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It could be out there right now, quietly tracing the comment's original orbit back toward
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the outer solar system.
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The researchers pose a really thought-provoking question.
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How many comments that we've assumed were completely destroyed might actually have surviving
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remnants still orbiting the sun?
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And there's a wonderful historical footnote here.
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Comment Atlas is believed to be a fragment of the same parent body as the great comment
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of 1844, which itself may have been visible to Stone Age civilizations about 5,000 years
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ago when it swept past the sun.
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So, somewhere out there, a tiny piece of a 5,000-year-old cosmic traveler might still be making
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its lonely journey through the darkness.
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I find that oddly beautiful.
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Me too, and the study serves as a heads-up to astronomers.
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Next time a comment breaks apart, be ready to keep watching, because the story might not
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And that is your astronomy daily for Thursday, February 12, 2026.
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What a lineup from China's moon ambitions to Vikings long-lost life clues.
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If you enjoyed the show, please do leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice.
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It really does help new listeners find us.
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And you can find full show notes, links to all our sources, and more at astronomydaily.io.
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For Avery and the whole astronomy daily team, I'm Anna.
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Keep looking up, and we'll see you tomorrow.
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We'll come to the family.