Avery: And hello and welcome back to Astronomy
Daily, your daily dose of cosmic news. I'm
Avery.
Anna: And I'm Anna. It's great to be with you all
again as we break down the latest happenings
from across the universe.
Avery: And today we've got a major rocket launch
that got scrubbed at the last minute. The
discovery of a truly unique exoplanet system,
and our first ever detailed look at a star
outside our own galaxy.
Anna: Plus we'll be looking at the dangerous
weather on Venus and, well,
let's just say a new recipe for space food
that is raising some eyebrows.
Avery: You're not kidding, Anna. It's definitely an
interesting one. So let's not wait any
longer. Let's get right into it.
Anna: I'm ready if you are.
Avery: Okay, first up, uh, let's talk about some
drama down on the launch pad. It was supposed
to be a big day for Blue Origin, but their
second ever New Glenn rocket launch was
scrubbed yet again.
Anna: Right. This was a really crucial mission for
them. This wasn't just another test flight.
It was a commercial mission carrying NASA's
Escapade spacecraft.
Avery: Escapade is headed to Mars, so a very
important payload. But the launch was hit
with a triple whammy of problems.
Anna: Mhm. What happened?
Avery: First, there was bad weather moving into the
area. That's pretty standard. Then they
reported some minor equipment issues they
needed to sort out. But the real kicker was a
cruise ship.
Anna: A cruise ship?
Avery: You're kidding. Nope. A cruise ship had
apparently wandered into the restricted
flight path zone offshore. You can plan for
technical glitches and weather, but it's
tough to plan for a road rogue vacation
vessel.
Anna: Wow. That has to be frustrating for the
entire team. So when will they try again?
Avery: The new launch date is set for November 12,
so fingers crossed they get a clear sky and
more importantly, a clear ocean.
Anna: And there's so much riding on this
because it's not just about getting the NASA
probe on its way. It's about the rocket
itself. The main goal for Blue Origin here is
to prove the reusability of the new Glenn's
first first stage booster.
Avery: Exactly. During the very first launch, that
booster failed to land successfully on the
drone ship. For a rocket to be commercially
viable these days, it has to be reusable.
So this is a massive test for Blue Origin to
show they can compete.
Anna: We'll definitely be watching on November
12th.
Let's move from our solar system to worlds
much farther away. Astronomers have just
confirmed a fascinating new exoplanet system
called TOI2267.
Avery: Oh, this is the one in the binary star
system, right? The one that's about 72 light
years away?
Anna: That's the one. It's a system with two
red dwarf stars orbiting each other
relatively closely. And what makes this
discovery so groundbreaking is that it's the
first time we've ever found planets that are
transiting or passing in front of both of
the stars in a binary system.
Avery: Wow, that's incredible. So there are planets
orbiting each of the suns in this two sun
system. How many did they find?
Anna: They have confirmed two rocky exoplanets
and they have a very strong candidate for a
third. This is so exciting because
finding planets in such a close binary system
really throws a wrench in our existing models
of planet formation.
Avery: Right. Because the gravitational environment
would be so chaotic, you'd think the pull
from the second star would disrupt a delicate
process of dust and gas clumping together to
form planets.
Anna: Precisely. The thinking was that it would be
very difficult, if not impossible, for
rocky Earth like planets to form there. But
this discovery challenges that idea directly.
It suggests that the universe is better at
making planets than we gave it credit for and
that uh, rocky worlds might be far more
common in binary systems than we ever
thought.
Avery: That's amazing. What are the next steps for
studying?
Anna: The system team is planning follow up
observations with both the Hubble and the
James Webb space telescopes. They want to
study the atmospheres of these planets and
confirm the third candidate.
Avery: A multi planet system around a double
sun. It sounds like something straight out of
science fiction. I can't wait to see what
JWST.
Anna: Finds there and we'll be sure to report them
when the findings are in.
Avery: Alright, let's bring it a bit closer to home
now. Or at least closer to the astronauts
orbiting our home on the International Space
Station. Ana, uh, you tease this one at the
top of the show. Space food is getting
weird.
Anna: Creative is the word I used, I believe.
But yes, this is certainly a conversation
starter. The European Space Agency or
esa, is currently testing a new kind
of food, a powdered protein called
solane.
Avery: Solane? Okay, sounds
futuristic. What's it made from?
Anna: It's made in a bioreactor from
microbes, air and electricity.
It's a type of gas fermentation process.
But the headline grabbing part isn't how it's
made, but rather the planned source for a key
ingredient on the iss.
Avery: I'm bracing myself. What's the ingredient?
Anna: It requires a source of nitrogen
and the plan is to use urea, which would
be harvested directly from astronaut urine.
Avery: There it is. So they are making food
from astronaut.
Anna: P in a very complex,
sterile and highly scientific way. Yes.
It's all about creating a closed loop
sustainable food system for long duration
missions to the moon or Mars. You can't
rely on resupply missions from Earth for all
your food. You have to make it yourself from
what you have.
Avery: That makes perfect sense. Waste not, want
not. Especially when you're millions of miles
from the nearest grocery store. It's the
ultimate form of recycling.
Anna: Exactly. The project even has a fun
Hobi Wan. The goal is to perfect this
gas fermentation technology so that it can
operate efficiently in microgravity
environments of space. If it works, it
could be a game changer for deep space
exploration.
Avery: Obi Wan, I'm still going to picture a Jedi
knight in a lab coat. But I have to admit,
it's a fascinating and incredibly practical
innovation from the space station.
Anna: Let's journey much, much farther out.
Astronomers have just achieved a major
milestone. They've captured the first
detailed image of an individual star
outside our own Milky Way galaxy.
Avery: That's incredible. We've seen smudges of
light from other galaxies, but to resolve a
single star, that's a huge achievement.
Which star is it?
Anna: It's a red supergiant named
whog64. It's
located in the Large Magellanic, which is a
small satellite galaxy that orbits our Milky
Way. The image was taken using the European
Southern Observatory's Very Large
Telescope interferometer.
Avery: And what did they find? I imagine a red
supergiant is quite a sight.
Anna: They found something very strange.
The star itself is shrouded in a
massive, thick cocoon of dust and gas.
But the cocoon isn't a neat symmetrical
sphere like our models predict.
Avery: It's.
Anna: Instead, it's clumpy and highly
asymmetrical. It's a shape that has
completely baffled the scientists who
observed it.
Avery: So it's not behaving the way an aging star is
supposed to as it sheds its outer layers into
space.
Anna: Not at all. It fundamentally challenges our
understanding of how massive stars evolved in
their final stages. And to add to the
mystery, the star has also dimmed
dramatically in recent observation.
Avery: And the two things could be related. Maybe
this new weird dust cloud is just blocking
more of its light.
Anna: That's the leading theory. Another
possibility is that
whog64 might have a
hidden companion star, and its gravity is
pulling the dust into this strange, distorted
shape. Whatever the answer is, it's a
fantastic puzzle that proves how much we
still have to learn about our closest
galactic neighbors.
Avery: For Our final story today, let's head back
into our own solar system and visit
Earth's so called evil twin, the
planet Venus.
Anna: Always a fascinating, if utterly
terrifying place.
Avery: Absolutely. A new study has managed to
model the weather on the surface of Venus for
the first time. And the findings have major
implications for future missions planning to
land there.
Anna: I imagine hot is the the main forecast,
but what about the wind?
Avery: Well, the winds themselves are surprisingly
slow, only about 1 meter per second, which
is roughly a slow walking pace. But the key
is the planet's atmosphere. It is
incredibly dense, about 90 times
denser than Earth's.
Anna: Ah. Uh, so even the slow wind has a
lot of force behind it because the air itself
is so heavy.
Avery: Exactly. The study shows that this slow
moving, super dense wind has more than enough
force to lift free fine dust and particles
from the surface. This means Venus can
experience dust storms, which is a huge
concern for any future landers like NASA's
upcoming Da Vinci mission.
Anna: You wouldn't want your very expensive probe
to get effectively sandblasted the moment
it lands. That makes sense.
Avery: Definitely not. But the study did find a sort
of silver lining to Venus's weather. It
showed that winds flowing over the planet's
mountainous regions play a crucial role in
circulating the atmosphere.
Anna: And that circulation helps moderate
temperatures. Venus has such a long day
night cycle, the temperature swings must be
enormous.
Avery: They would be, but this wind helps even
things out a bit. So the weather is both a
significant threat and the planetary
stabilizing force. It just goes to show how
complex Venus is the more we learn about it.
Anna: And with that, we are out of time for today's
episode of Astronomy Daily.
Avery: What a fascinating tour of the cosmos it was.
We had launch scrubs and cruise ships,
new planets around double suns, space
food from unconventional sources,
a, um, mysterious star in another galaxy, and
the new look at the harsh weather of Venus.
Anna: It's a constant and welcome reminder that the
universe is always full of surprises, big and
small. Thank you so much for joining us.
Avery: We'll be back tomorrow with more of the
latest news. Until then, keep looking up.
Love
story Soul.
Anna: Hmm.