Historic ISS Medical Evacuation: Crew Returns Safely + Missing Galaxies & Mars Crisis

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Hey there, space enthusiasts.

Welcome to Astronomy Daily.

Your source for the latest news from the Cosmos.

I'm Anna.

Anna Maverick.

We've got another pack show today

with some fascinating stories from both near and far.

Anna, what are we covering?

Well, Avery, we're starting close to home

with some breaking news from the International Space Station.

Four astronauts just completed the first ever

medical evacuation from the ISS

and splashed down safely back on Earth.

That's quite significant.

We'll also be diving into a cosmic mystery

about missing galaxies.

Getting an update on NASA's troubled maven spacecraft

orbiting Mars and exploring some surprising findings

about how viruses behave in microgravity.

Plus, we'll discuss two newly discovered exoplanets

that are challenging how we think about habitable zones.

And we'll wrap up with an absolutely stunning

new radio image of the Milky Way.

That's revealing hidden structures we've never seen before.

Bots to get through, so let's jump right in.

All right, Avery, let's start with our top story.

Four International Space Station crew members

successfully splashed down in the Pacific Ocean

off the coast of San Diego early this morning,

marking a historic first for the orbital laboratory.

Yeah, this was the ISS's first ever medical evacuation

in its 26 years of continuous operation.

The crew members included American astronauts Mike Fink

and Zena Kardman, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov

and Japanese astronaut Kimi Ayui.

The capsule touched down at 1241 Eastern time

after spending five months in space.

Now, NASA has been pretty tight-lipped

about the specific medical issue

that prompted this early return,

which is understandable given privacy concerns.

Right.

What they have said is that the affected crew member was

and continues to be in stable condition.

Mike Fink, who was the pilot for SpaceX Crew 11,

posted on social media earlier this week,

reassuring everyone that the crew is okay

and that this was a deliberate decision

to allow proper medical evaluations on the ground

where full diagnostic capabilities exist.

That makes sense.

James Polk, NASA's Chief Health and Medical Officer,

mentioned there was a lingering risk

and uncertainty about the diagnosis

that led to the decision to bring the crew back

earlier than originally scheduled.

They were supposed to stay until mid-February.

It's worth noting that three other crew members

remained on the ISS.

American astronaut Chris Williams

and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Kutsferchkov

and Sergei Mikashev arrived at the station

in November aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

So station operations continue normally.

This really highlights the importance

of having trained medical protocols in place.

The evacuated crew members had been trained

to handle unexpected medical situations

and according to senior NASA official Amit Shatria,

they handled everything extremely well.

Absolutely, and this serves as a good reminder

that despite all the incredible engineering

and planning that goes into spaceflight,

we're still dealing with human bodies

in an extreme environment.

Things can and do happen.

Well, we're glad everyone is safe

and receiving the care they need back on Earth.

All right, Anna, our next story takes us

much further out into space

and much further back in time.

For years, astronomers have assumed

that if they looked hard enough into the deep cosmos,

they'd find an almost infinite supply

of tiny dim galaxies hiding into darkness.

Right, the prevailing theory has been

that the smaller the galaxy, the more of them there should be.

It's kind of like a pyramid

where you have a few massive galaxies at the top

and exponentially more small ones as you go down.

Exactly, but a new study led by Exu Hang Ma

from the University of Wisconsin

is challenging that assumption.

Using data from the James Webb Space Telescopes

uncover program, the team looked through

a massive galaxy cluster called a Bell 2744,

which acts as a natural gravitational lens.

Oh, that's clever.

The gravity from this cluster literally warps space time

and acts like a cosmic magnifying glass, right?

Precisely, it bends and brightens light

from more distant objects,

allowing us to see galaxies from the epoch of reionization,

roughly 12 to 13 billion years ago.

This was a transformative era

when the first stars and galaxies were flooding the universe

with ultraviolet light.

So what did they find that was so surprising?

Well, when researchers count galaxies

of different brightnesses,

they normally use what's called illuminosity function.

It's basically a cosmic bar chart

showing how many bright versus dim galaxies exist.

And for study after study,

the chart kept going in one direction.

More small, think galaxies than bigger, brighter ones.

But that's not what they found this time.

Nope, instead of continuing to climb,

the numbers peaked and then started to drop off.

They're calling this faint and suppression,

which means that below a certain brightness,

the population of galaxies actually starts to thin out.

So where did all these tiny galaxies go?

Did they just disappear?

In a sense, yes.

The study suggests it's a case of cosmic bullying.

In the early universe, the intense radiation

from the first big stars could have heated up

the surrounding gas so much

that small, low mass galaxies couldn't hold onto it.

Without gas, they couldn't form new stars

and without stars, they stayed dark,

essentially becoming cosmic ghosts.

That's fascinating, but it also creates a problem, doesn't it?

I thought these tiny galaxies were supposed

to be the main drivers of reionization.

You're absolutely right.

This finding suggests we might need to rethink our models.

If these ultra-faint galaxies are missing,

they can't be the ones doing all the heavy lifting

during reionization.

We might need to look at slightly bigger,

more established galaxies to explain

how the universe became transparent.

This is why I love space science.

Every answer creates 10 new questions.

Put an agree more, and they'll need more data

from JWST and upcoming surveys

to see if this is a universal pattern

or just a quirk of this particular region of space.

Okay, Avery, let's head to Mars now

for an update on NASA's Mavn spacecraft.

And unfortunately, it's not good news.

No, it's not.

NASA officials are now saying

it's very unlikely they'll be able to recover

the Mars atmosphere and volatile evolution orbiter,

which has been silent since December 6th.

Navyn has been orbiting Mars since September 2014,

studying the planets upper atmosphere

and how solar wind strips it away.

It's also served as a crucial communications relay

between Mars' rovers and Earth.

Right, the spacecraft was supposed to pass behind Mars

as seen from Earth, a routine occurrence,

but when it emerged, NASA's deep space network

didn't observe any signal.

That was over a month ago now.

And the telemetry they did manage to recover

from December 6th wasn't encouraging, was it?

Not at all.

Analysis of a brief fragment of tracking data

from a radio science experiment

indicated the spacecraft was tumbling

and no longer in its planned orbit.

That's a really bad sign, because if the spacecraft

is tumbling, its antennas aren't pointing toward Earth,

which makes communication basically impossible.

They even tried using the Curiosity Robors camera

to take pictures of Maven as it passed overhead,

assuming it was still in its expected orbit,

but they didn't detect it.

Yeah, on December 16th and 20th,

the fact that they couldn't spot it suggests

its orbit has indeed changed significantly.

Louise Proctor, director of NASA's planetary science division,

said it plainly during a meeting earlier this week.

We will start looking again,

but at this point, it's looking very unlikely

that we are going to be able to recover the spacecraft.

The timing has been particularly challenging, too, hasn't it?

Absolutely.

Mars went into solar conjunction on December 29th,

which is when Mars and Earth are on opposite sides of the Sun.

During this period, the Sun interferes with radio communications,

so NASA paused all communications with Mars missions.

That blackout period just ended on January 16th,

so they can resume attempts, but the outlook is grim.

The good news is that Maven isn't the only communications relay at Mars, right?

That's correct.

Proctor mentioned that other orbiters like Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

and Mars Odyssey can pick up the slack.

She said Maven was not a major part of the Mars relay network,

and they're taking steps to ensure

they can still retrieve data from rovers on the surface.

Still, it's sad to potentially lose a spacecraft

that's been so productive for over a decade.

Definitely.

Maven has made groundbreaking discoveries

about Mars' atmospheric loss,

and even observed an interstellar object

called 3-I-A-T-L-S late last year.

Its contributions to planetary science have been immense.

Our next story is taking us back to the International Space Station,

but this time we're looking at some much smaller inhabitants,

bacteria, and the viruses that infect them.

Oh, this is fascinating research.

A new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison

used E. coli bacteria and the virus called bacterial phage T7

to study how microgravity affects the evolutionary relationship

between viruses and their hosts.

Though they sent bacteria and viruses to space.

Exactly.

They prepared parallel sets of E. coli cultures

infected with T7.

One set stayed on Earth as a control,

and the other went to the ISS to experience microgravity.

Then they compared what happened to both groups.

And I'm guessing things didn't play out the same way

in both environments.

You guessed right.

The analysis showed that T7 infections still

occurred on the ISS, but it only proceeded

after an initial delay.

So spaceflight appears to slow down the early stages

of virus host encounters without completely blocking infection.

That's interesting on its own, but I imagine they dug deeper.

They did.

They performed whole genome sequencing

and found that both the viruses and bacteria

accumulated distinctive patterns of mutations in space

compared to their counterparts on Earth.

The viruses evolved specific changes

that appear to improve their ability to bind to

and infect bacterial cells.

And what about the bacteria?

Were they just sitting drugs?

Not at all.

The space-flown E. coli populations

acquired mutations that may strengthen their defenses

against a virus attack and enhance their chances

of surviving in near-weightless conditions.

It's like they were engaged in an evolutionary arms race,

but the rules of the race were different in space.

So microgravity is actually changing how evolution works?

In a sense, yes.

The study shows that spaceflight not only changes

the physiology of microbes, but also the physical environment

in which viruses and bacteria encounter each other.

This alters the rules of their evolutionary interaction.

OK, but beyond the pure science fascination,

does this have any practical applications?

Absolutely.

Here's where it gets really cool.

They conducted follow-up experiments on Earth

and found that the microgravity associated mutations

actually increased the virus's activity

against disease-causing E. coli strains

that normally resist T7.

Trains that are implicated in urinary tract infections

and are often drug-resistant.

So by studying viral evolution in space,

we might actually discover new ways

to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria here on Earth.

That's exactly what the researchers are suggesting.

According to the authors, these space-adapted viruses

can be harnessed to engineer improved bacterial phages

for use in human health applications.

That's incredible.

The International Space Station continues

to prove its worth as a unique research platform.

We'll do for a little while yet.

All right, Avery, let's travel to some distant star systems

now.

Astronomers have discovered two new exoplanets

that are prompting scientists to rethink

how we define habitable zones.

Yeah, this is really interesting work.

The research introduces the concept of a temperate zone,

which is broader than the traditional habitable zone

we usually talk about.

Can you explain the difference?

I think a lot of people assume habitable zone

and temperate mean the same thing.

Good question.

The traditional habitable zone is pretty narrowly defined.

It's the distance range from a star

where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface.

But this new research, led by Madison Scott

from the University of Birmingham

and Georgina Dransfield from the University of Oxford,

expands that to include what they call the temperate zone.

And how is that defined?

The temperate zone is defined by something

called insulation flux, which describes

the amount of solar energy reaching a planet's surface.

They're using a range between about 136 watts per square meter

and 6,805 watts per square meter.

Earth receives about 1,361 watts per square meter,

just for reference.

So it's much broader than the conservative habitable zone.

Exactly.

The point is to identify planets that

receive moderate levels of stellar radiation.

They might not be perfect for life as we know it,

but they're worth studying because,

as our understanding of habitability evolves,

some of these planets might turn out

to be more interesting than we initially thought.

So what are these two new planets?

The first is T-O-I-6716-B, which is roughly earth sized

between 0.91 and 1.05 Earth radii, and most likely rocky.

The second is T-O-I-7384-B, which is a sub-neptune

measuring about 3.37 to 3.77 Earth radii.

This one probably has a rocky core with a thick hydrogen

and helium envelope.

And they're both orbiting red dwarf stars.

Correct.

They're orbiting what are called

mid-to-late-type M-dorfs, which are small, dim, cool stars.

These types of stars are really important for this kind

of research because temperate planets orbiting them

are much more likely to transit in front of their stars

from our point of view, making them easier to detect and study.

So the goal is to build up a catalog of planets

that we can actually study in detail.

Exactly.

T-O-I-6716-B has a predicted transmission spectroscopy

metric similar to the famous TRAPPIST-1 planets, which

makes it a good candidate for JWST observations

if it has retained its atmosphere.

The researchers conclude that these discoveries show

the power of combining test data with ground-based observations

to build a catalog of temperate planets

for atmospheric studies in the coming decade.

It's exciting to think we're moving beyond just counting

exoplanets to actually being able to study their atmospheres

in detail.

And for our final story today, we're coming back home

to our own galaxy.

Astronomers in Australia have just released

the most detailed, low-frequency radio image

of the Milky Way ever produced.

This image is absolutely stunning.

It was captured by the Mercheson Wildfield telescope

in Western Australia and reveals thousands

of structures across the galaxy's southern sky

that we've never seen in this kind of detail before.

And the numbers behind this are pretty impressive.

It took over 1 million CPU hours to process the data,

which was collected across 141 nights between 2013 and 2020.

And this isn't just a prettier version

of something we already had, right?

This is genuinely new science.

Absolutely.

According to the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research,

this updated release from the GLEAM-X survey

delivers twice the resolution and 10 times

the sensitivity of earlier efforts.

Plus, it covers twice as much of the sky.

What kind of things can we see in this image?

Well, Sylvia Montavani, a PhD student at Curtin University

who led the project, explains you can clearly

identify remnants of exploded stars,

represented by large red circles in the image.

The smaller blue regions indicate stellar nurseries

where new stars are actively forming.

So it's showing us both the birth and death of stars.

Exactly.

One of the major focuses of this survey

is finding supernova remnants, which are notoriously difficult

to spot in the cluttered background of the Milky Way.

Hundreds are already catalogued,

but astronomers believe thousands more still hidden.

With this new level of resolution,

those cosmic scars from ancient stellar explosions

are easier to identify.

The image also helps with pulsar studies, doesn't it?

Yes, measuring pulsar brightness across different radio bands

could improve our understanding of how

these spinning neutron stars function

and where they live in the galaxy.

The survey has catalogued over 98,000 radio sources in total.

That's an incredible number, and I

read that this is setting the stage

for an even more powerful telescope.

Right.

The Merchant Wildfield Array will eventually

be surpassed by the SKA Lower Ray, which

is currently under construction in the same region

of Western Australia.

Once the SKA Observatory's operational,

it'll deliver even sharper and deeper views of the universe.

But for now, we have this remarkable foundation,

associate professor Natasha Hurley Walker,

who leads the Gleam X survey, called

this an exciting milestone in astronomy,

since no low frequency radio image

of the entire Southern Galactic plane

has been published before.

And it's not just about the Milky Way.

The catalog includes distant galaxies as well,

so it's a dense, glowing map of our cosmic neighborhood

that future generations of astronomers

will use, refine, and expand upon.

Well, that wraps up today's episode of Astronomy Daily.

We covered quite a bit of ground today

from the first medical evacuation from the ISS

to missing dwarf galaxies, the troubled Mars Orbiter, viruses

evolving in space, newly discovered exoplanets,

and a spectacular new view of our home galaxy.

It really shows the incredible breadth

of space science happening right now,

whether it's 300 miles above our heads on the ISS,

millions of miles away at Mars,

or billions of light years away in the early universe,

there's always something new to discover.

Thanks so much for joining us today.

If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and leave us a review.

It really helps other space enthusiasts find us.

And if you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover,

reach out to us on social media.

You'll find us on all the major platforms,

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We love hearing from our listeners.

Until next time, keep looking up.

Clear skies, everyone.

The starry day, the starry's the toll.

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