Anna: Hello and welcome to Astronomy Daily.
I'm Anna.
Avery: And I'm, um, Avery. You're listening to
season five, episode 115. And our
team has lined up quite a Tuesday for us
today.
Anna: They really have. We've got a historic
crew announcement from NASA, a brand new
launch date for the most powerful Wide Field
telescope ever built, A solar storm
that put on a light show over much of the
Northern Hemisphere, a space station
emergency and and more.
Avery: And we'll close out with the rocket comeback
story that's happening right now tonight as
we record this. So stay with us all the way
to the end.
Anna: This is Astronomy Daily. Let's get into it.
Avery: Our lead story today is breaking news and
it's big. Earlier this morning at
11:00am, um, Eastern Time, NASA held a
live event at Johnson Space center in Houston
and officially announced the four person crew
for Artemis 3.
Anna: Now, some of our listeners might be
wondering, Artemis 3, isn't that the
moon landing? And the answer is it was
and then it wasn't. And now the crew is
finally official.
Avery: Let me explain what Artemis 3 actually is
now. Back in February this year, NASA
Administrator Jared Isaacman made a big
announcement. Artemis 3 would no longer be
the mission to land humans on the moon.
Instead, it's been redesignated as a low
Earth orbit docking demonstration.
Anna: Think of it as NASA's version of Apollo 9.
In 1969, before Apollo 11
landed on the moon, NASA sent Apollo 9
to test the lunar module in Earth orbit,
practicing every rendezvous and docking
maneuver they'd need. Artemis 3 is doing
exactly the same thing half a century
later.
Avery: This is critical work. You cannot send
astronauts to dock with the lander on the
moon if you haven't proven those docking
systems were closer to home first. The
Artemis program takes no shortcuts.
Anna: So who's going? That's the big news from
this morning. The crew names were officially
unveiled during the Johnson Space center
broadcast just hours ago. As we record this
episode, full details are on NASA's website
and we'll link everything in the show notes.
Avery: What we can say is that NASA has been looking
for astronauts with exceptional spacewalk
experience, piloting skills, and hands on
time with Artemis hardware. The crew of
Artemis II, which splashed down in the
Pacific on April 10, demonstrated those
qualities spectacularly. And today's
announcement sets the stage for what comes
next.
Anna: And what comes Next after Artemis 3 is
Artemis 4, which has now become the mission
carrying the first human boots back on lunar
soil since Apollo 17 in
December 1972 that is
currently targeted for early 2028.
Avery: So today is a Milestone day. A crew has
a name. The next chapter of human space
exploration has faces on it.
Anna: History in the making. We'll have full crew
coverage and follow up in tomorrow's episode
as the world reacts.
Avery: Our second story comes with a launch date.
And it's sooner than almost anyone expected.
NASA has officially set August 30,
2026 as the launch date for the Nancy Grace
Roman Space Telescope.
Anna: That is eight months ahead of the agency's
previous commitment to flying no later than
May 2027. This is a genuine
success story in a program that has had its
share of delays and budget pressures over the
years.
Avery: So what is Roman and why are astronomers so
excited? The Roman Space Telescope is a
wide field infrared observatory, and its
defining feature is sheer width. Its
Wide field instrument has a field of view at
least 100 times larger than the Hubble Space
Telescope. 100 times. That
is not a small difference. Where Hubble peers
deep into tiny slivers of sky, Roman
will sweep vast areas in a fraction of the
time. It's been designed to image
approximately 1 billion galaxies over its
primary five year mission, with a possible
five year extension after that.
Anna: Its primary scientific targets are dark
energy, dark matter and exoplanets.
On the exoplanet side, Roman will conduct a
gravitational microlensing survey expected
to discover more than a thousand new
worldsplanets that would be completely
invisible to any other current telescope.
Avery: Engineers are currently packing Roman at
NASA's Goddard Space Flight center in
Maryland, ready for shipment down to Kennedy
Space center in Florida. Once there, it'll
move into the Payload Hazardous Servicing
Facility for a thorough inspection, power
testing, launch rehearsals, and the loading
of about 290 gallons of
hydrazine propellant.
Anna: It will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from
Kennedy. Given Falcon Heavy's track record
and the level of preparation the Roman team
has put in, the space community is feeling
genuinely optimistic.
Avery: And this is an important distinction from
Webb, which we talk about often. Webb looks
deep but narrow. Roman will survey
wide and fast. The two telescopes are
complementary. Roman will identify
extraordinary targets that Webb can then
follow up on in painstaking detail.
Anna: Think of it as Roman casting the net and
Webb examining what's in it. Together, they
are the most powerful pair of space
observatories humanity has ever operated
simultaneously.
Avery: August 30th is the date. Mark your calendars
from the far future
Anna: to the very recent past.
Our third story is about what the sun did to
us this week. And the answer is it threw a
cannibal at us.
Avery: A cannibal. Coronal mass ejection to be
precise. And yes, that is the actual
scientific term. Let us explain.
Anna: It started with an M M class solar flare from
active sunspot region
AR4461. On June 6,
that flare launched a coronal mass ejection,
a huge cloud of magnetized plasma toward
Earth. So far that's not unusual. The
sun does this regularly.
Avery: What made this one special was that a second
faster CME erupted not long after
that second ejection caught up with and
merged with the first, creating a combined
more powerful event. When a faster
CME overtakes a slower one and they
combine, scientists call it a cannibal
CME.
Anna: The merged cloud arrived at Earth on June 8,
and both NOAA and the UK Met Office
had already issued a G3.
That's strong geomagnetic storm watch.
To put that in context, the scale runs from
G1 up to G5.
Extreme G3 means Aurora
displays are possible as far south as mid
northern latitudes. Think Oregon, Illinois
or Northern England.
Avery: For our uh, listeners in Australia and New
Zealand, you'd want to be watching from the
southern island of New Zealand or Tasmania to
catch the aurora australis during an event
like this. And even then it's a close call.
But the Northern hemisphere had quite the
show on the 8th.
Anna: The geomagnetic activity was still elevated
into today June 9th, with a G2
watch remaining in place. And there's a
delicious coincidence here. June 9th is also
the night of the Venus Jupiter conjunction.
The two brightest planets appearing less than
2 degrees apart in the western sky after
sunset. So people who went outside to watch
the conjunction may also have caught a
glimpse of the aurora.
Avery: The sun is currently very active. There are
multiple sunspot regions on the Earth facing
side right now and a large coronal hole
rotating into an Earth directed position,
meaning further geomagnetic activity in the
days ahead is possible. Keep your eyes on the
sky folks. Space weather is being generous
this week.
Anna: Moving on to the International Space Station
and a story that caused hearts to race last
Friday at uh, just 1:00pm UTC.
On June 5th, NASA ordered the crew aboard uh,
the ISS to don spacesuits,
shelter inside the docked SpaceX Dragon
spacecraft and prepare for potential
evacuation.
Avery: To be clear from the outset, the crew was
safe and within about two hours they received
the all clear to return to normal operations.
But the reason this happened is something the
ISS program has been managing for years
and it is getting harder to manage.
Anna: The issue is the Zvezda service
module, specifically a transfer tunnel
section called the prk. It's part of The
Russian segment of the station, and it has
been developing cracks and small atmospheric
leaks since 2019.
Roscosmosthat's the Russian space
agency has been applying sealants and
mitigation measures continuously. But the
cracks keep developing.
Avery: On June 5, new leaks were found in the
tunnel during what was meant to be a more
extensive repair operation. Russian crew
members paused the repair work to assess the
new measurements. And NASA, out of an
abundance of caution, ordered the four non
Russian crew members to shelter in the
Dragon.
Anna: The repair assessment eventually allowed them
to stand down. NASA says they are continuing
to monitor the situation very closely,
working with Roscosmos on a solution. But
this is an aging station. It's been
continuously inhabited for over 25
years now, built beginning in November
1998, and the structural pressures are
real.
Avery: The current plan is to operate the ISS
through the end of 2030 with a controlled
deorbit and destructive re entry in early
2031. Whether the PRK
tunnel can be kept sealed and safe for
another four plus years is one of the more
pressing questions facing the program right
now.
Anna: For now, the crew is safe and working, but
this story will be one to watch.
Avery: Story five brings us up to speed on the
fallout from Blue Origin's catastrophic
rocket explosion, and it is having
significant ripple effects on NASA's entire
lunar program.
Anna: Here's the background for listeners who may
have missed it. On May 28, Blue
Origin's new Glenn rocket exploded during a
static fire test AT Launch Complex
36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
A, uh, static fire test is when you ignite
the engines while the rocket is still on the
pad, bolted down to check their performance
ahead of a real launch.
Avery: The explosion was enormous, visible from
more than a hundred miles away. The rocket
was destroyed. The transporter and erector
holding it in place was wrecked. A lightning
tower was demolished. The main gantry
suffered structural damage. Satellite images
captured the full scorched extent of the
destruction.
Anna: No one was injured, which, given the scale of
the explosion, is remarkable. Blue Origin
CEO Dave Limp has said the pad can be
repaired faster than initially feared. Key
infrastructure, including the propellant
tanks, water tower and storage systems,
survived intact. He's committed to having
another new Glenn ready for launch before the
end of 2026.
Avery: That is an ambitious timeline, though, and
the consequences for NASA's lunar program are
serious. Blue Origin was supposed to launch
its Blue Moon Mark one cargo lander, an
uncrewed demonstrator intended to deliver a
NASA Paylo to the moon this autumn. Um, as
the inaugural mission of the Moon based
program.
Anna: With New Glenn out of action and LC
36 in ruins, NASA Administrator
Jared Isaacman is now describing what he
calls a whole of government response. The
agency is actively seeking an alternative
launch vehicle for the Blue Moon lander,
decoupling it from New Glenn entirely for
now.
Avery: And um, there's a direct connection to
Artemis 3, the crew we just told you about in
story one. Artemis 3 is meant to dock with
both the SpaceX Lander variant and Blue
Moon Mark 2 in Low Earth orbit. If Blue
Origin's hardware isn't flight proven before
then, that mission profile becomes
significantly more complicated.
Anna: Administrator Isaacman has said he remains
optimistic about a crewed lunar landing in
2028 using whatever landing craft
is available. But the road to the moon just
got a bit bumpier.
And for our final story, something that is
actually happening right now tonight as
we broadcast this episode. The Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency
is attempting to launch its H3 rocket
from Tanegashima Space Center.
Avery: This is a comeback story and JAXA really
needs it to work. The H3's last flight was
a painful one. Back in December last year,
the rocket attempted to launch carrying a
quasi Zenith satellite navigation
satellite, part of Japan's own regional GPS
style positioning network. The mission ended
in failure when the QZS5 satellite
separated from the rocket prematurely during
stage separation and fell into the ocean.
Anna: The cause was eventually traced to adhesive
strips in the payload support structure
peeling off. DAXA has made
modifications to the satellite payload
section to address exactly that failure
mode and sensors have been installed to
monitor the fix during flight.
Avery: Tonight's launch is a test flight rather than
an operational mission. The rocket is
carrying a dummy main payload called the
vehicle evaluation payload 5 or
VEP 5, along with a small collection of
real satellites from universities and
research organizations.
Anna: What makes this version of the H3
particularly interesting is its engine
configuration. This is the
H3.3 variant. It uses
three liquid fuel LE9 engines in the
first stage and no solid rocket boosters at
all. That makes it Japan's first large
rocket powered entirely by liquid
propulsion. It's a significant milestone for
the country's launch capability and its
ambitions to compete in the global commercial
launch market.
Avery: The launch Tonight opens at 9:53am M
Japan Standard Time on June 10, which is
8:53pm Eastern Time on June
Nint. So for our uh, listeners in Australia
and the Pacific, you may actually be able to
watch the livestream this morning.
Anna: DAXA has had an impressive H3 track record.
Overall, the vehicle has successfully flown
multiple times. Tonight is about proving the
fix works, restoring confidence and getting
back to the serious business of building
Japan's independent access to space.
Avery: We're rooting for them. Go H3.
Anna: And that is your Astronomy Daily for Tuesday,
June 9, 2026. What a
day it has been.
Avery: A new Artemis crew, a telescope ready to
show us a billion galaxies, a solar
storm painting the sky green, a space
station holding its breath, a moon program
rebuilding after disaster, and the
rocket about to attempt its redemption.
Anna: Bass never sleeps, and neither do we.
Well, almost never. Tomorrow's episode will
have full reaction and detail on the Artemis
3 crew announcement. You won't want to miss
it.
Avery: If you enjoyed today's show, please
subscribe, leave us a review and share
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Avery. Keep looking up.
Anna: This has been Astronomy Daily the
stormy
Avery: day the stories be
told,
The stories the song.