Anna: Welcome to Astronomy Daily, your source for
the latest space and astronomy news. I'm
Anna.
Avery: And I'm Avery. We've got another stellar
episode lined up for you today. Monday,
January 26, 2026.
Anna: That's right. Today we're taking you on quite
a journey through the cosmos. We'll be
exploring two fascinating Mars storeys that
paint very different pictures of the Red
Planet's future. From terraforming dreams
to atmospheric water harvesting for survival.
Avery: Plus, we've got some incredible disc
discoveries from across the universe. We'll
reveal how NASA's Chandra Observatory has
catalogued over 1.3 million x
ray sources, discover an ingenious new use
for earthquake sensors that could save lives,
and uncover why those water worlds we've been
excited about might actually be lava
planets in the skies.
Anna: And we'll finish with a breathtaking look at
our cosmic future, courtesy of the James Webb
Space Telescope's latest images of a dying
star. So settle in because we're about to
explore the univers together.
Avery: Let's get started, Avery.
Anna: Let's kick things off with what could be one
of humanity's most ambitious projects ever.
Scientists are saying it's time to take
terraforming Mars seriously and they've got a
roadmap to make it happen.
Avery: This is fascinating stuff, Anna. Uh, for
decades, terraforming Mars has been the stuff
of science fiction. But new research suggests
we might actually have the tools to pull it
off. A team of planetary scientists,
biologists and engineers has published what
amounts to a blueprint for transforming the
Red Planet into a habitable world.
Anna: What's really interesting is the timeline
they're proposing. This isn't a quick fix.
We're talking about a, uh, multi generational
project that could take centuries. But the
key breakthrough is that they believe we can
use resources already on Mars rather
than shipping everything from Earth.
Avery: Exactly. The plan has three distinct
phases. Phase one is all about warming the
planet. Right now, Mars averages around minus
70 degrees Celsius. The scientists propose
using engineered nanoparticles made from
Martian dust, shaped like tiny rods and
released into the atmosphere. These particles
would trap escaping heat and scatter sunlight
towards the surface, potentially warming Mars
by more than 30 degrees Celsius.
Anna: And here's the clever part. This method is
over 5000 times more efficient than previous
terraforming schemes. University of
Chicago planetary scientist Edwin Kite, one
of the study's co authors, notes that Mars
was habitable in the past. So greening
Mars could be viewed as the ultimate
environmental restoration challenge.
Avery: Phase two brings in biology. Once
temperatures rise enough to melt some of
Mars's vast ice deposits, scientists would
introduce genetically engineered
extremophiles, hardy microorganisms that
can survive in the harshest environments.
These pioneer species would kick off
ecological succession, creating organic
matter and slowly changing the chemistry of
the surface and atmosphere.
Anna: And the final phase is the longest and most
ambitious, building a stable biosphere
with oxygen rich air. The goal is a
0.1 bar oxygen atmosphere, which would be
enough to sustain human life without pressure
suits. Harvard planetary scientist Robin
Wordsworth puts it beautifully. Life is
precious. We know of nowhere else in the
universe where it exists. We have a duty to
conserve it on Earth, but also to consider
how we could begin to propagate it to other
worlds.
Avery: But this isn't just about making Mars
habitable. Nina Lanza from Los Alamos
National Laboratory sees Mars as a prime
testbed for planetary engineering. She
suggests that if we want to learn how to
modify our environment here on Earth to keep
it habitable, maybe it would be better to
experiment on Mars first, rather than being
too bold with our home planet.
Anna: Of course, there are serious ethical
considerations. As Lanza points out, if
we terraform Mars, we'll really change it in
ways that may or may not be reversible.
Mars has its own history and we might lose
the opportunity to study how planets form and
evolve in their natural state.
Avery: The researchers stress that we need to start
preparing now. Even though actual
terraforming is still far off. Upcoming
Mars missions in 2028 or 2031
should include small scale experiments to
test these strategies, such as warming
localised regions. Any technology deployed
must be reversible, controllable and
biologically safe.
Anna: It's an audacious vision. But as the team
points out, 30 years ago, terraforming
Mars wasn't just hard, it was impossible.
Today, with advances in technology and our
understanding of Mars, it's becoming a real
possibility. Whether we should do it is a
question we'll need to answer as a
civilization.
Avery: Sticking with Mars, Anna Our next storey
takes a more immediate look at how future
astronauts might survive on the Red Planet.
New research suggests that the Martian
atmosphere itself could provide a vital
backup water source.
Anna: This is really practical thinking, Avery.
While underground ice remains the most
promising long term water source for Mars
missions, scientists are now exploring
atmospheric water harvesting as an adaptable
solution for scenarios where subsurface
resources are inaccessible.
Avery: The study, led by Dr. Vasilis Englesakis
of Strathclyde University and published in
Advances in Space Research, emphasises
building a self sufficient water
infrastructure. As Dr. Anglizakis explains,
reliable access to water would be essential
for human survival on Mars. Not only for
drinking, but also for producing oxygen and
fuel, which would reduce dependence on Earth
based supplies.
Anna: The challenge is that Mars atmosphere is
extremely thin and cold, but it does
contain trace amounts of water vapour that
could be collected and condensed using
specialised technology. The study introduces
novel approaches inspired by Earth based
dehumidification and sorption technologies.
Avery: What makes this particularly valuable is the
flexibility. While underground ice deposits
are seen as the most practical long term
solution, their accessibility is limited,
especially near likely landing zones for
human missions. Since the precise location of
usable ice is uncertain and excavation
technology is still evolving, having
alternative sources is essential.
Anna: Atmospheric water harvesting offers a mobile,
adaptable alternative. The equipment would be
portable, making it a compelling addition to
the toolkit for sustaining human life on
Mars. As Dr. Inglezakis notes, this
study is one of the first to compare the
various technologies that could be deployed
to recover water in a Martian environment.
Avery: The key takeaway is that future Mars missions
will require not just one solution, but a uh,
layered approach. Combining underground ice
extraction, soil moisture recovery and
atmospheric harvesting will allow missions to
adapt to different environmental and
logistical conditions.
Anna: While the process is energy intensive,
atmospheric harvesting can serve as a crucial
contingency, especially in emergencies or
during long range missions. The research
offers insights that could make future space
exploration missions more self sufficient and
sustainable.
Avery: It's this kind of practical, multifaceted
planning that will ultimately make long
duration Mars missions and potential
colonisation efforts successful. Every
backup system counts when you're 225
million kilometres away from home, from the.
Anna: Red Planet to the entire cosmos.
Avery let's talk about NASA's Chandra X
Ray Observatory and its incredible catalogue
of cosmic recordings.
Avery: Anna uh, this is like the ultimate
astronomical music collection. The Chandra
source catalogue now contains over
1.3 million X ray detections
across the sky, representing 22 years of
observations from one of NASA's great
observatories.
Anna: The latest version, called CSC
2.1 contains data through the end
of 2020 and includes over
400,000 unique compact and
extended sources. This catalogue is
a treasure trove for scientists, providing
everything from precise positions in the sky
to detailed information about X ray
energies.
Avery: What makes this particularly valuable is that
it allows scientists using other telescopes
both on the ground and in space, including
NASA's James Webb and Hubble telescopes,
to combine Chandra's unique X ray data with
information from other wavelengths of light.
Anna: To illustrate the richness of this catalogue,
NASA released a stunning new image of the
Galactic Centre, the region around the
supermassive Black hole at the heart of the
Milky Way, Sagittarius A.
In just a 60 light year span,
Chandra has detected over 3300
individual X ray sources.
Avery: That's incredible when you think about it.
3300 sources and what amounts to a
pinprick on the entire sky. This image
represents 86 observations added together,
totaling over 3 million seconds of Chandra
observing time.
Anna: They've also created a fascinating
sonification of the catalogue, translating
the astronomical data into sound. The
sonification encompasses the new map that
includes all of Chandra's observations from
its launch through 2021, showing how
X ray sources appear and reappear over
time through different musical notes.
Avery: In the visualisation, each X ray detection is
represented by a circle, and the size of a
circle is determined by the number of
detections in that location over time. You
can see the core of the Milky Way in the
centre and the galactic plane stretching
horizontally across the image.
Anna: And here's the exciting part. Since
Chandra continues to be fully operational,
the catalogue keeps growing. The video
transitions to and beyond after
2021 as the telescope continues
to collect new observ.
Avery: This catalogue represents decades of cutting
edge science and will continue to be an
invaluable resource for astronomers studying
everything from stellar evolution to the
nature of black holes. It's a testament to
the longevity and continued productivity of
the Chandra mission.
Anna: Now for something completely different. Avery
scientists have found an ingenious new use
for earthquake sensors, tracking dangerous
space debris as it falls back to Earth.
Avery: This is such a clever solution to a growing
problem. Every year, thousands of discarded
satellites orbit our planet and an increasing
number are falling back into Earth's
atmosphere. While most disintegrate before
hitting the ground, some survive long enough
to pose real dangers.
Anna: Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and
the University of London have demonstrated
that existing seismic monitoring networks can
track these falling satellites with
remarkable accuracy. The investigation was
led by Benjamin Fernando, a UH postdoctoral
fellow at Johns Hopkins, who studies seismic
activity on both Earth and other planets.
Avery: Here's how it works. When falling objects re
enter Earth's atmosphere at high speed, they
generate sonic booms. These sonic
booms create shock waves that ripple through
the ground. And seismometers can detect this
seismic energy just like they detect
earthquakes.
Anna: The team demonstrated this by analysing the
April 2, 2024 re entry
of China's Shenzhou 15 orbital
module. This module was about 3
1/2ft in diameter and weighed over
1.5 tonnes. Definitely
dangerous if any component reached Earth's
surface.
Avery: Using127 Seismometers in
Southern California. They tracked the module
as it travelled at Hypersonic velocities
between Mach 25 and Mach 30,
roughly 10 times faster than the world's
fastest jet. From the seismometer data, they
reconstructed the object's trajectory,
determining it followed a northeasterly path
over Santa Barbara and Las Vegas.
Anna: What's particularly impressive is that their
reconstruction placed the flight path about
25 miles north of the predicted RE entry
path from orbital tracking alone. This
highlights the limitations of current
tracking methods once objects enter the
denser parts of the atmosphere.
Avery: The seismic data also revealed the breakup
pattern. Initially the signals showed the
spacecraft was mostly intact during its high
altitude trajectory. Later signals
indicated complex waveforms showing
fragmentation about eight to 11
unique breakup events within just two
seconds.
Anna: This gradual degradation pattern is crucial
information. It suggested that dense
reinforced components likely survived long
enough to reach the lower atmosphere,
increasing their chances of landing intact.
Avery: Beyond just tracking where debris lands, this
method addresses environmental concerns.
Falling debris can produce tiny particulate
matter containing toxic propellants or
radioactive materials. For example,
Chilean scientists found man made plutonium
in a glacier that they suspect came from the
Russian spacecraft uh, Mars 96, which
disintegrated in 1996.
Anna: The ability to track debris in near real
time, providing accurate locations within
minutes instead of days or weeks would help
authorities respond faster, protect people
and identify hazardous materials. It
could also provide aircraft warnings and
support environmental monitoring.
Avery: As Fernando points out, as launches increase
and more large satellite constellations reach
the end of their design lives, tools like
this will become increasingly important. We
need as many different ways as possible to
track and characterise space debris.
Anna: Avery Our next storey is going to make
exoplanet hunters rethink some of their most
exciting discoveries. It turns out that
98% of what we thought were potential water
worlds might actually be lava planets.
Avery: This is a real wake up call for the
scientific community. Anna New uh, research
led by Rob Calder at the University of
Cambridge suggests that nearly all known sub
Neptune exoplanets, previously thought to be
potential ocean bearing hycean worlds, are
far more likely to be composed of molten
rock.
Anna: Sub Neptunes are the most commonly discovered
type of exoplanet, larger than Earth but
smaller than Neptune. Yet their exact nature
has remained elusive. Because our solar
system offers no direct equivalent.
Understanding what these worlds are made of
is crucial for the search for life and for
refining our models of planetary formation.
Avery: The problem stems from what scientists call
degeneracy, when one set of observations
can be interpreted in multiple ways. Take the
case of planet K2 18b.
Researchers celebrated its methane rich
ammonia Poor atmosphere as evidence of a
Hycean planet with thick hydrogen atmosphere
overlying vast oceans.
Anna: But here's the twist. Kaldar and his team
point out that molten rock can also dissolve
ammonia just like water can. So the
absence of ammonia doesn't necessarily mean
there are oceans. It could just as easily
indicate a magma ocean.
Avery: To test their theory, the researchers
developed a new model called the
Solidification shoreline. This tool connects
the amount of energy a planet receives from
its star with the star's effective
temperature. By plotting known exoplanets
against this framework, they could estimate
whether a planet was likely to have
maintained a magma ocean since formation.
Anna: Using the Proteus model to simulate internal
heat dynamics, they found that 98% of
sub Neptune exoplanets fall above
this shoreline. That means they receive
enough stellar energy to keep their interiors
hot and molten, rather than allowing them to
cool into solid bodies.
Avery: For astrobiologists and exoplanet hunters,
the implications are significant. The
Hycean world hypothesis had offered an
enticing planets that might host life
in vast subsurface oceans protected by thick
atmospheres. This new research suggests that
vision may have been premature.
Anna: It's important to note that this doesn't
close the door on water worlds altogether. It
simply urges caution against over
interpretation and reminds us that planetary
evolution can take multiple paths. As
Calver and his team make clear, the lack of
reliable atmospheric mass data across many
exoplanets limits current models.
Avery: While this conclusion might seem like a
setback, it actually offers a more stable
foundation for future research. It's better
to have a realistic understanding of what
these planets are than to chase false hopes
of habitability.
Anna: Exactly. Science progresses through these
kinds of corrections and refinements. We're
building a more accurate picture of the
cosmos, even if it means letting go of some
earlier assumptions.
Avery: And Anna for our final storey.
Today we have something both beautiful and
sobering. A glimpse into the future fate
of our own sun.
Anna: The James Webb Space Telescope has captured
stunning new images of the Helix Nebula,
one of the closest planetary nebulae to
Earth. And what it reveals is absolutely
breathtaking.
Avery: Avery, also known as the eye of
God, the Helix Nebula is located about
650 light years away in the
constellation Aquarius. It's the result of a
sun like star that exhausted its nuclear fuel
and shed its outer layers into space, leaving
behind a dense core called a white dwarf.
Anna: Webb's near infrared camera captured
pillars of gas that look like thousands of
comets with extended tails tracing the
circumference of an expanding shell of gas.
These structures form when BLISTERING winds
of hot moving gas from the dying star
crash into slower moving colder shells
of dust and gas that were shed earlier in the
star's life.
Avery: What makes Webb's view so special is the
level of detail it reveals. The image shows
the stark transition between different
temperature hot ionised gas near
the centre where the white dwarf sits, cooler
molecular hydrogen farther out and
protective pockets where more complex
molecules can begin to form within dust
clouds.
Anna: The colour in the image represents
temperature and chemistry. Blue marks the
hottest gas being blasted by the white
dwarf's radiation. Yellow regions show
gas that's cooled as it moves away from the
white dwarf. And the coolest material at the
edge of the nebula appears red.
Avery: This isn't just a pretty picture. It's
showing us stellar recycling in action.
The gas and dust being expelled don't
disappear. They're incorporated into the
interstellar medium, enriching clouds with
heavy elements forged in the stellar
interior. This is the raw material from
which new stars and planets will eventually
form.
Anna: According to NASA, this image is essentially
a window into our own Future. In about
5 billion years, our sun will enter
this same phase, creating a similar nebula
as it fades into a white dwarf.
Avery: The Helix Nebula has been imaged many times
over the nearly two centuries since it was
discovered by both ground based and space
based observatories. But Webb's near
infrared view brings unprecedented detail,
revealing structures that were invisible to
previous telescopes.
Anna: Scientists can use these detailed
observations to refine their understanding of
stellar evolution, how stars end their lives
and how they distribute the elements they've
created back into the galaxy. Every
shell of gas represents a different episode
of mass loss, creating a timeline of the
star's final stages.
Avery: It's a powerful reminder that even in death,
stars continue to shape the universe. The
atoms that will one day form new worlds,
perhaps even new life, are being forged and
distributed in nebulae like this right now.
Anna: It's both humbling and inspiring to see
our cosmic future laid out so clearly.
The Helix Nebula shows us that endings in
space can be as magnificent as beginnings.
Avery: And that wraps up today's journey through the
cosmos. From terraforming dreams to
atmospheric water harvesting on Mars, from
from X ray catalogues mapping millions of
cosmic sources to earthquake sensors tracking
falling satellites, we've covered incredible
ground today.
Anna: We've also learned to be more cautious about
those exciting water world discoveries and
witnessed the beautiful death of a sun like
star through Webb's remarkable eyes.
It's been quite a day in space in astronomy
news.
Avery: Thanks for joining us on Astronomy Daily.
Remember, you can find us at
astronomydaily.IO for all our
episodes, show notes and more.
Anna: And don't forget to follow us on social
media. Astrodaily Pod we
love hearing from our listeners about what
storeys excite you most.
Avery: Until next time, keep looking up clear
skies everyone.
Mhm.
Sam.