Rocket Lab's Hungry Hippos Arrive!| NASA Enlists Global Volunteers for Artemis II

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Welcome to Astronomy Daily, your source

for the latest space and astronomy news.

I'm Anna.

And I'm Avery.

Thanks for joining us on this Saturday, January 24th, 2026.

We've got some fantastic stories lined up for you today.

We certainly do.

From rocket development milestones

to prehistoric lunar discoveries,

today's episode is packed with celestial intrigue.

Let's dive right in with our top story.

Rocket Labs ambitious neutron rocket

has hit a significant milestone,

even though it came with a bit of a bump in the road.

Anna, what's the latest from Wallops Island?

Well, Avery, it's a story of both triumph and setback.

The good news first.

Rocket Labs' innovative, hungry hippo fairings

have successfully arrived at Wallops Island, Virginia.

After a month-long sea journey from New Zealand,

aboard the vessel North Star Integrity.

These aren't your typical payload fairings.

They're part of neutron's groundbreaking reusable system.

Right, and what makes these hungry hippos so special?

Great question.

Unlike traditional fairings that are jettisoned

and lost during flight,

these clamshell-like structures actually stay attached

to the first stage as it returns home.

They open to release the second stage and payload,

then close back up for the ride home.

It's a clever design that should help drive down

launch costs through rapid reuse.

That's fascinating engineering, but you mentioned a setback.

Unfortunately, yes.

While the fairings were making their journey,

Rocket Lab experienced a tank rupture

during qualification trials

at their Middle River Maryland facility.

A first-stage carbon composite tank

failed during hydrostatic pressure testing.

That's where they fill the structure with water

and gradually increase pressure

to verify it can handle operational loads.

Ouch, how significant is that?

Well, Rocket Lab was quick to emphasize

that testing failures like this while disappointing

are actually part of the rigorous development process

for high-performance rockets.

They deliberately stress hardware to its limits

and beyond to ensure reliability.

The tank was found collapsed into a pile of debris,

but the company maintains this is exactly why they test

to find these issues on the ground

rather than during flight.

Silver lining thinking and the program moves forward.

Absolutely.

With the hungry hippo fairings now at Wallops,

engineers can proceed with integration testing,

fit checks, electrical interfaces,

and eventually static fire preparations.

The launch mount is already in place with the test stand

ready for major testing with the rocket's second stage.

Exciting times for commercial spaceflight.

Now, speaking of major missions,

NASA has some news about tracking

the upcoming Artemis 2 mission, right?

They do indeed.

NASA has selected 34 global volunteers

from 14 different countries to track the Orion spacecraft

during its journey around the moon.

This is a significant expansion from the Artemis 1 mission,

which had only 10 volunteers.

So what exactly will these volunteers be doing?

They'll be using their own equipment,

everything from established commercial service providers

to university research facilities,

to individual amateur radio enthusiasts

to passively track radio waves transmitted by Orion

during its approximately 10-day mission.

We're talking about 47 ground assets spanning the globe.

That's impressive international cooperation.

Who made the cut?

The list is quite diverse.

Government agencies like the Canadian Space Agency

and Germany's DLR are participating.

Commercial companies include Goon Hilli Earth Station in the UK,

Kongsburg satellite services in Norway

and Intuitive Machines in Houston,

universities like UC Berkeley,

the University of Pittsburgh,

and even more head-state university in Kentucky are involved.

What about amateur radio operators?

Oh, yes, they're well-represented.

We've got individuals like Chris Swire from South Dakota

and Dan Slater from California.

Amateur radio organizations from Argentina, Germany,

the Netherlands, and France are also participating.

It's truly a global effort.

And this data they collect, what's NASA doing with it?

The volunteers will submit their tracking data

to NASA for analysis.

This helps the agency assess the broader aerospace communities

tracking capabilities and identify ways

to augment future moon and Mars mission support.

Kevin Coggins, NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator

for Space Communications and Navigation

called it a real step toward scans commercial first vision.

Building that public-private ecosystem

for deep space exploration.

Exactly.

Now, let's shift gears to some groundbreaking lunar research.

Scientists analyzing samples from China's Changa 6 mission

have made a discovery that helps explain

one of the moon's most puzzling features.

The asymmetry between the near and far sides?

Precisely.

You know how the near side of the moon has all those dark maria,

those vast volcanic planes that formed the man

in the moon pattern we're all familiar with?

The far side has barely any.

I've always found that fascinating.

What did they discover?

Changa 6 brought back samples from the South Pole 8 Kin Basin,

which is one of the largest impact features

in the entire solar system, about 1,600 miles wide,

and between 4.2 and 4.3 billion years old.

Much older than the lunar maria,

which are around 3.6 billion years old.

And what did these ancient samples reveal?

The research team, led by Hang Sea Teon

from the Chinese Academy of Sciences,

found something unusual in the basaltic rock samples

and abnormal ratio of potassium isotopes.

Specifically, they found more of the heavier potassium 41

relative to potassium 39 compared to samples from the near side.

What would cause that?

After exploring several possibilities,

cosmic ray irradiation, magma processes,

mediarrytic contamination,

they concluded that this isotopic signature

is a relic of the giant impact

that formed the South Pole 8 Kin Basin itself.

So the impact actually changed the Moon's chemistry?

Not just changed it, it fundamentally altered it.

The impact was so violent that it heated the Moon's crust

and mantle intensely,

causing many volatile elements,

including potassium,

to evaporate and escape into space.

The lighter potassium 39 isotope evaporated more easily

than the heavier one,

leaving behind this unusual ratio.

That's incredible detective work.

And this explains the lack of mario on the far side.

Exactly.

The reduction in volatiles

would have suppressed magma formation,

limiting volcanism on the far side.

It shows how deeply that ancient impact

affected the Moon's interior

and why isotopic analysis can provide windows

into the conditions of such catastrophic events.

This research was published in the proceedings

of the National Academy of Sciences.

Fascinating stuff.

Now here's something a bit more down to earth.

Even if it's going to space.

Anna, tell us about the startup

that's making space memorials affordable.

This is a really interesting story, Avery.

A startup called Space Beyond, founded by Ryan Mitchell,

is planning to send up to 1000 people's ashes to space

in October, 2027,

for as little as $249,

dramatically cheaper than traditional space memorial services

that typically cost thousands of dollars.

That's quite a price difference.

How are they pulling this off?

It's all about smart use of existing infrastructure.

They're using a CubeSat,

one of those miniature, cube-shaped satellites

that will launch as a rideshare payload

on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The rideshare model has really democratized access to space.

And Ryan Mitchell, he's got some serious space credentials, right?

Absolutely.

He worked on NASA's Space Shuttle program

and spent nearly a decade at Blue Origin.

The idea actually came to him

while attending a family member's ash spreading ceremony.

He thought, how could I do this better?

And thus, Space Beyond was born.

But there must be some limitations

with such an affordable service.

There are.

Customers can only send about one gram of ashes,

a practical limit due to weight considerations,

and the need to fit many customers' remains in the CubeSat.

The satellite will only orbit for about five years

before burning up an Earth's atmosphere.

So it's not forever.

Though that fiery ending has a certain poetic quality to it.

Bichel certainly thinks so.

Plus, the CubeSat will be in a sun-synchronous orbit

at about 550 kilometers altitude,

meaning it'll fly over the entire globe.

With modern spacecraft tracking services,

families should be able to locate it

and know when it's passing overhead.

That's actually really touching.

And importantly, they're not spreading the ashes in space, right?

Correct.

Bichel called that an almost nightmare scenario

because the particles could create a debris cloud

that could endanger other spacecraft.

Since customers only send about a gram,

they can do what they wish with the rest.

Thoughtful approach to a sensitive service.

Now, let's talk about something

that might literally redefine astronomy.

Anna, tell us about this massive potential exomone.

This one's mind-bending Avery.

Astronomers using the gravity instrument

on the very large telescope in Chile

have detected what might be an exomone orbiting the gas giant HD206893B

located 133 light-years from Earth.

But here's the kicker.

This moon is so massive that it might force us to rethink

the word moon even means.

How massive are we talking?

Yet this.

They estimate it could be as much as 40% the mass of Jupiter,

or about nine times the mass of Neptune.

To put that in perspective, it's thousands of times heavier

than any moon in our solar system.

Anamine, Jupiter's largest moon

and the biggest in our solar system,

is thousands of times less massive than Neptune.

Wow, so how did they even detect something like this?

Through a technique called estrometry,

which precisely tracks the position

of celestial bodies over time.

The team, led by Quentin Crawl from the University of Cambridge,

observed a measurable wobble in HD206893B's motion,

a back and forth movement with a period of about nine months.

And that wobble is the moon's gravitational tug.

Exactly.

Crawl explained that the wobble has a size comparable

to the Earth moon distance, which is the exact signature

you'd expect from an unseen companion.

The potential moon's orbit is also tilted

by roughly 60 degrees, suggesting a turbulent history

of gravitational interactions.

So at what point does something stop being a moon

and become a binary companion?

That's the million dollar question.

Crawl noted that at these masses,

the distinction between a massive moon

and a low mass companion becomes blurred.

There's currently no official definition of an exomune.

So astronomers generally refer to any object orbiting

a planet as a moon.

This could force a redefinition?

Potentially.

Crawl suggested that as observational techniques improve,

our definitions and understanding

of what constitutes a moon will almost certainly evolve.

He also pointed out that we're likely only seeing

the tip of the iceberg.

Just as the first exoplanets discovered

were massive ones close to their stars

because they were easiest to detect,

the first exomoons we identify

will be the most massive and extreme examples.

Finding exomoons is challenging, I imagine.

Extremely, the signals they produce are minute,

often lost in the noise of their parent planet's data.

The transit method that's revolutionized

exoplanet discovery is less effective for moons

because they produce light dips to faint to distinguish.

But astrometry offers a new path forward,

especially for detecting companions in far orbits

where large, stable moons are more likely to exist.

This research was published in astronomy and astrophysics.

It's been accepted for publication there

and it's currently available as a pre-peer-reviewed paper

on archive.

If confirmed, this would not only expand

our catalog of celestial bodies,

but force astronomers to rethink

one of the oldest definitions in planetary science.

And finally, Anna, we have a story

that might rewrite history

or at least rename a famous comet.

That's right.

New research suggests that Haley's comet

might be wrongly maimed.

Turns out, an 11th century English monk

named Ilmer of Momsbury

understood the comet's periodic nature centuries

before the British astronomer Edmund Haley.

Wait, so Haley wasn't the first to figure this out?

According to research by Professor Simon Portagee's

work and colleagues published in the book

Dora Stad and Everything After,

Ilmer witnessed Haley's comet twice in 989 CE

and again in 1066 CE and realized

it was the same comet returning.

How do we know this?

The events are described by the 12th century chronicler,

William of Momsbury, but this connection

had gone unnoticed by scholars until now.

The 1066 appearance is actually depicted

on the famous Bayou tapestry,

which illustrates the events of that year,

including the Norman Conquest of England.

So Ilmer must have been quite elderly to see it twice?

Exactly, given that the comet appears roughly 76 years,

he would have been advanced in age

when he witnessed it for the second time.

And here's a fascinating detail,

as was customary at the time,

when he saw it in 1066,

the king was warned of impending disaster.

The comet appeared during the brief reign

of King Harold Godwinson,

who died at the Battle of Hastings that October.

Medieval people really did see comets as omens, didn't they?

They did indeed.

The research shows that comet appearances around this time

were consistently associated with the deaths

of kings, war, or famine in the British Isles.

The researchers even found what might be historical fake news,

a comet supposedly seen before the death

of Archbishop Cydric of Canterbury in 995,

which wasn't actually recorded in the Chronicles,

possibly in exaggeration to frighten people.

So what are the researchers calling for?

They're arguing that Haley's comet

should be given a different name since it had been observed

twice and its periodicity understood centuries

before Haley's work.

The Portuguese weren't mentioned that while the research

was fun to do, it was challenging working

in such an interdisciplinary project alongside a historian.

Nevertheless, they planned to carry out further research

into periodic comet.

It's amazing how interdisciplinary research

can uncover these historical oversights.

It really is, and it shows that scientific discovery

isn't always about new observations.

Sometimes it's about looking at old records with fresh eyes.

Well, that's all the time we have for today's episode.

What a journey we've been on.

From rocket fairings to ancient lunar impacts,

affordable space memorials to massive exomoons

and historical comet discoveries.

It never ceases to amaze me how much is happening

in space and astronomy every single day.

From cutting edge engineering to billion-year-old mysteries,

there's always something new to learn.

Thanks so much for tuning into Astronomy Daily.

Be sure to visit our website at astronomydaily.io

for detailed show notes, transcripts,

and links to all the stories we discussed today.

And don't forget to follow us on social media.

We're at AstroDailyPod on X, Facebook, Instagram,

TikTok, YouTube, and Tumblr.

Until next time, keep looking up

and keep exploring the wonders of our universe.

Glere skies, everyone.

Astronomy day, the story's the toll.

The story's the toll.

The story's the toll.

The story's the toll.

Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing.

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