Latest / Space News Today / NASA Artemis Overhaul, Vulcan Centaur Grounded, and the Milky Way’s True Origin Story

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NASA Artemis Overhaul, Vulcan Centaur Grounded, and the Milky Way’s True Origin Story · Space News Today

0:00
Hello and welcome to Astronomy Daily,
0:03
your daily briefing from the cosmos. I'm
0:05
Anna.
0:06
>> And I'm Avery. It is Saturday, February
0:08
28th, 2026, and we are back with season
0:11
5, episode 51.
0:14
>> A slightly later start to our day than
0:16
usual, Avery, but the universe has been
0:18
very much keeping normal business hours
0:21
on our behalf.
0:22
>> It absolutely has. Six stories today.
0:25
And honestly, what a six. We've got a
0:27
major shakeup at NASA headquarters, a
0:30
serious headache for the Pentagon's
0:32
launch calendar, one of the most
0:34
mind-bending objects ever discovered in
0:36
the deep universe, a rather unsettling
0:38
experiment about Martian soil, a genuine
0:42
breakthrough in how we might breathe on
0:43
the moon, and a piece of galactic
0:45
archaeology that is rewriting the
0:47
history of our home galaxy.
0:50
>> If you are anywhere near a clear western
0:52
horizon tonight, we've also got a little
0:54
cosmic bonus for you. Six planets lined
0:57
up in the evening sky. More on that as
0:59
we go. But first, let's get into the
1:01
news.
1:02
>> Our lead story today is a big one, and
1:04
it has been the talk of the space
1:05
community since Friday afternoon. NASA
1:08
administrator Jared Isacman has
1:10
announced a major restructuring of the
1:12
Aremis program. And when I say major, I
1:15
mean this is the most significant
1:17
overhaul since the program was first
1:19
established.
1:20
>> So, let's break this down because
1:21
there's quite a bit to unpack. The
1:24
headline is this. Artemis 3, which was
1:26
supposed to be the first crude lunar
1:28
landing in more than 50 years, is no
1:31
longer going to the moon. At least not
1:34
yet.
1:34
>> That's right. Instead of landing on the
1:36
lunar south pole in 2028 as originally
1:40
planned, Artemis 3 has been redesigned
1:42
as a low Earth orbit test flight
1:45
targeting launch in 2027. The crew will
1:48
rendevous and dock in orbit with one or
1:51
both of the commercial lunar landers,
1:53
SpaceX's Starship human landing system
1:56
and Blue Origins Blue Moon and run a
1:59
full suite of tests. Space suits and
2:02
microgravity, life support checks,
2:04
navigation, propulsion, everything you
2:07
would want to have verified before you
2:09
actually depend on those systems to
2:10
bring people back from the surface of
2:12
the moon. Isaacman drew a very
2:15
deliberate comparison to the Apollo
2:16
program. He pointed out that NASA didn't
2:19
go from Apollo 8, which was the first
2:21
crude flight around the moon, straight
2:23
to the landing. Apollo 9 and 10 tested
2:26
all the critical hardware in Earth and
2:28
lunar orbit first. His argument is that
2:31
Artemis, as currently structured, was
2:34
essentially skipping those steps. And
2:36
that concern was echoed just days
2:38
earlier by the NASA Independent
2:40
Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, which
2:43
released its annual report calling the
2:45
existing plans too risky and
2:47
recommending a restructure. So this
2:50
wasn't a shock in some quarters, but the
2:52
scale of the changes still caught a lot
2:54
of people by surprise.
2:55
>> The block 1B upgrade to the space launch
2:58
system has also been scrapped. NASA is
3:00
standardizing the vehicle configuration
3:02
to reduce complexity and accelerate the
3:05
launch cadence because that is really
3:07
the overarching goal here. Moving from a
3:10
program that has launched the SLS once
3:12
every few years to one that aims for a
3:15
flight every 10 months or so,
3:17
>> which is genuinely ambitious. The SLS
3:19
has launched exactly once. Isacman
3:22
himself has been quite candid about
3:24
that, noting that a flight rate that low
3:26
is simply not sustainable and not safe.
3:30
His view is that the more frequently you
3:32
fly, the sharper your team stay, the
3:34
less your skills atrophy, and the safer
3:36
each subsequent mission becomes.
3:38
>> The revised plan targets Aremis 4 and 5
3:41
for lunar landings in 2028, with at
3:44
least one surface landing per year
3:46
thereafter. One thing that was
3:48
conspicuously absent from the
3:50
announcement though, any mention of the
3:52
lunar gateway space station, which had
3:54
been central to earlier Artemis
3:56
planning.
3:57
>> Isaacman deflected questions about
3:58
gateway, saying the focus needed to stay
4:00
on what he called the hardest part,
4:03
actually getting astronauts to and from
4:05
the moon with a reliable cadence. Make
4:07
of that what you will.
4:09
>> And Artemis 2 itself, that's the crude
4:12
flight around the moon. No landing.
4:14
That's been in preparation at Kennedy
4:16
Space Center. It's currently targeting
4:19
no earlier than April 1st after rolling
4:22
back to the vehicle assembly building on
4:24
February 25th to address a helium
4:27
pressurization issue in the upper stage.
4:30
Engineers are working through it. The
4:32
goal is a successful wet dress rehearsal
4:35
before a launch date is confirmed.
4:37
>> So, a lot of moving parts, but the
4:39
direction of travel seems clear. Apollo
4:42
style step-by-step buildup, faster
4:44
cadence, leaner vehicle configuration.
4:47
We will be keeping a very close eye on
4:49
how this unfolds over the coming months.
4:51
>> Now, staying in launch industry news,
4:54
and this one is going to cause some
4:56
significant headaches for the United
4:58
States military's space launch program
5:00
this year, the US Space Force has placed
5:03
an indefinite hold on all national
5:05
security launches aboard ULA's Vulcan
5:09
Centaur rocket. This follows an anomaly
5:12
observed during the USSF87 mission which
5:15
launched on February 12th. That was
5:17
Vulcan's fourth flight overall and it
5:19
was carrying a pair of geocynchronous
5:21
space situational awareness satellites,
5:23
essentially neighborhood watch
5:25
satellites for the military, keeping
5:27
tabs on what's happening in
5:28
geocynchronous orbit.
5:29
>> The mission itself was technically
5:32
successful. The payloads were delivered
5:34
to their correct orbits, but observers
5:37
watching the launch footage noticed
5:39
something very unwelcome. An unusual
5:41
plume of debris from one of the solid
5:44
rocket boosters. And specifically, it
5:46
appeared that a booster nozzle may have
5:49
separated during ascent, which will
5:51
sound familiar to anyone following
5:52
Vulcan closely because essentially the
5:55
same thing happened on the rocket's
5:56
second certification flight back in
5:58
October 2024. ULA investigated said the
6:01
root cause was a manufacturing defect
6:04
and said it had been corrected and now
6:06
it appears to have happened again.
6:08
>> Colonel Eric Zarabniski, the Space
6:11
Force's portfolio acquisition executive
6:13
for Assured Access to Space, was very
6:16
direct at the Air and Space Forces
6:18
Association warfare symposium this week.
6:22
He said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that
6:24
until the anomaly is fully understood
6:27
and corrective actions are developed and
6:30
implemented, there will be no more
6:32
Vulcan national security missions.
6:34
>> The scale of the problem is hard to
6:36
overstate. Vulcan is manifested for more
6:39
than a dozen national security launches
6:41
this year. Nearly its entire 2026
6:44
manifest is military. With an
6:46
investigation that could run for months,
6:48
this could seriously disrupt the
6:50
Pentagon's launch schedule. And it comes
6:52
at a particularly challenging time for
6:54
ULA, which recently saw the departure of
6:56
longtime CEO Tory Bruno. ULA and
7:00
Northrep Grumman, who make the solid
7:02
rocket boosters, have confirmed they are
7:04
standing up a joint investigation team.
7:07
No timeline has been given for
7:09
resolution. We'll be watching this one
7:11
closely.
7:12
>> Right time to zoom out. Way, way out. 11
7:15
billion lighty years out in fact because
7:18
astronomers have just announced a
7:19
discovery of what might be the most
7:21
extraordinary object in the early
7:23
universe and it has a story attached to
7:25
it that is quite wonderful.
7:27
>> So this discovery involves something
7:29
called a protocluster which is
7:32
essentially a galaxy cluster in the
7:34
process of being assembled. These are
7:37
the primordial cities of the universe
7:39
where gravity is busy pulling together
7:41
what will eventually become some of the
7:44
most massive structures in existence.
7:46
And the object in question is called
7:49
J0846.
7:51
Now the reason they were able to see
7:53
J846 in such extraordinary detail is
7:57
because of a cosmic accident of
7:58
alignment. Sitting almost perfectly
8:01
between us and J0846 is a closer galaxy
8:04
cluster. And the immense mass of that
8:06
foreground galaxy cluster is acting as a
8:09
gravitational lens, bending and
8:11
amplifying the light from the distant
8:13
protocluster behind it, making it appear
8:16
far brighter and larger than it
8:17
otherwise would. It's the universe
8:19
providing us with a zoom lens that no
8:21
human engineer could ever build. And
8:24
when astronomers pointed the very large
8:26
array radio telescope in New Mexico and
8:29
the Alma telescope in the Chilean
8:32
Otakama Desert at this magnified view,
8:35
what they found was stunning. What had
8:38
previously looked like a single smudge
8:40
of light in older survey data, turned
8:43
out to be at least 11 separate galaxies,
8:46
all crammed into a region of space,
8:49
smaller than the distance between our
8:51
own Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy
8:54
next door.
8:55
>> 11 galaxies in a space that tight. And
8:59
every single one of them is undergoing a
9:01
starburst, pumping out new stars at a
9:03
rate that would make our own galaxy look
9:06
thoroughly lazy by comparison. They are
9:08
building stars at a ferocious, almost
9:11
frenzied pace. The reason we couldn't
9:13
see them in ordinary optical telescopes
9:16
is that they are absolutely shrouded in
9:18
dust. Dust that absorbs visible light
9:22
completely. ALMA's ability to detect the
9:24
faint thermal glow of cold, dust, and
9:27
gas is what cuts through that cosmic fog
9:30
and reveals what's actually happening in
9:33
there. Lead researcher Nicholas Fu, a
9:36
graduate student at Arizona State
9:38
University, described the whole scenario
9:40
beautifully. The foreground cluster is
9:43
the mature modern city. The protocluster
9:46
behind it is the ancient settlement it
9:49
grew from. And by looking back more than
9:51
11 billion years, we are essentially
9:54
catching a galaxy cluster in the very
9:56
first chapter of its life. It's also the
9:59
first strongly lensed protocluster core
10:02
ever discovered, which makes it
10:04
scientifically invaluable. Gravitational
10:07
lensing is giving us a level of detail
10:10
we simply could not access any other
10:12
way. Nature, it turns out, is a pretty
10:15
outstanding telescope builder. Now, if
10:18
you've been thinking about how future
10:19
Mars explorers will feed themselves,
10:21
grow plants, or avoid contaminating the
10:24
red planet, this next story is directly
10:27
relevant. And it involves one of our
10:29
favorite microscopic creatures, the
10:31
tardigrade, otherwise known as the water
10:34
bear. And if you've heard of them
10:36
before, you'll know they are essentially
10:38
the toughest animals on Earth, surviving
10:41
freezing, radiation, the vacuum of
10:43
space, extreme dehydration. They are
10:47
extraordinary.
10:48
>> A research team led by microbiologist
10:50
Coran Bakerman's at Penn State Eltona
10:53
has been using tardigrades as biological
10:56
proxies. Essentially asking the
10:58
question, what the simulated Martian
11:00
soil actually do to Earth microbes?
11:03
Because this matters enormously both for
11:06
planetary protection, making sure we
11:08
don't contaminate Mars with Earth life,
11:10
and for understanding whether astronauts
11:12
could safely use Martian soil for
11:14
growing food. And the results published
11:17
in the International Journal of
11:18
Astrobiology were surprising when
11:21
tardigrades were placed into simulated
11:24
Martian regalith and they used a
11:26
simulant designed to closely match what
11:28
NASA's Curiosity rover has sampled in
11:31
Gale Crater. Their activity dropped
11:34
significantly. These creatures, which
11:36
can survive almost anything, were being
11:39
suppressed by the Martian soil itself,
11:42
>> which is a remarkable finding on its
11:44
own. But then they tried something
11:45
clever. They rinsed the regalith with
11:48
water before introducing the tardigrades
11:50
and that almost entirely removed the
11:53
harmful effect. The tardigrades were
11:55
back to nearly normal activity levels.
11:58
>> So whatever is doing the damage in
12:00
Martian soil is water soluble. The team
12:03
suspects salts or some other water
12:06
soluble compound possibly related to
12:08
perchlorates that have been detected in
12:10
Martian regalith by previous missions.
12:13
They're still investigating this
12:14
specific culprit.
12:16
>> Now, there are two very interesting
12:18
things to take from this. First, Martian
12:20
soil might naturally act as a kind of
12:23
chemical defense against Earth microbes,
12:25
which could be genuinely helpful from a
12:27
planetary protection standpoint.
12:29
Microbes hitching a ride on spacecraft
12:31
or equipment might struggle to establish
12:34
themselves in an environment that is
12:35
actively hostile to them. Second, and
12:38
this is the hopeful angle, if the
12:40
harmful compounds can simply be washed
12:43
away with water, that opens a potential
12:46
pathway for treating the soil to make it
12:49
usable for plant growth in future Mars
12:51
habitats. Water is incredibly scarce on
12:55
Mars, of course, so it's not a simple
12:57
solution, but it is a lead worth
13:00
pursuing.
13:01
>> Professor Bakerman summed it up well.
13:03
When we send people to non-earth
13:05
environments, we need to understand two
13:07
things. How the environment will impact
13:09
the people and how the people will
13:11
impact the environment. This research is
13:14
pushing both of those questions forward.
13:16
And now, a story that connects
13:18
beautifully with our lead story today,
13:20
because NASA this week also confirmed a
13:24
significant milestone in one of the
13:26
technologies that will be absolutely
13:28
essential if the revamped Aremis program
13:31
is ever going to achieve that dream of a
13:34
permanent human presence on the moon.
13:36
We're talking about insitu resource
13:39
utilization, ISRU, which is the umbrella
13:42
term for the idea of using what's
13:44
already available at your destination
13:46
rather than shipping everything from
13:48
Earth. And specifically, we're talking
13:50
about oxygen. Because here's a fact that
13:53
should stop you in your tracks. Lunar
13:56
regalith, the loose rock and dust
13:58
covering the moon's surface, is
14:01
approximately 45% oxygen by mass. The
14:05
vast majority of it locked up in silicut
14:07
minerals deposited over billions of
14:10
years as the moon passes through Earth's
14:12
magnetic tail, capturing oxygen ions
14:16
from our upper atmosphere. 45% oxygen
14:19
just sitting there waiting to be
14:21
unlocked.
14:22
>> NASA's carbo reduction demonstration
14:25
project, CARD, has been working on doing
14:28
exactly that aboard the International
14:30
Space Station. The technique uses
14:32
concentrated solar energy to heat the
14:35
regalith to extreme temperatures,
14:37
triggering a chemical reaction that
14:39
releases that bound oxygen as carbon
14:41
monoxide gas. That CO can then be
14:44
converted downstream into breathable
14:46
oxygen. And this week, the card team
14:49
confirmed that their integrated
14:51
prototype combining a carbothermal
14:54
oxygen production reactor from Sierra
14:56
Space, a solar concentrator from NASA's
14:59
Glenn Research Center, precision mirrors
15:02
from composite mirror applications, and
15:05
avionics and gas analysis systems from
15:07
Kennedy Space Center have successfully
15:10
passed a full integrated test,
15:12
confirming production of carbon monoxide
15:15
through a solardriven chemical. chemical
15:17
reaction on simulated lunar regulith.
15:20
>> That is a meaningful step, not a demo,
15:23
not a simulation, an actual integrated
15:26
system test confirming the chemistry
15:28
works. The next steps are
15:30
miniaturaturization, durability testing,
15:32
and ultimately deploying something like
15:34
this on the lunar surface.
15:36
>> And the applications go beyond just
15:39
breathing air. The same process could be
15:41
adapted to convert carbon dioxide into
15:44
oxygen and methane, giving future moon
15:47
bases a way to produce rocket propellant
15:50
in situ, which dramatically changes the
15:53
economics of the whole enterprise. You
15:55
no longer need to ship fuel from Earth
15:57
for the journey home.
15:59
>> The technology also has direct
16:01
applicability to Mars. A solar-driven
16:03
oxygen extraction system working on
16:06
Martian regalith would be a cornerstone
16:08
of any long-term surface presence there,
16:10
too. So, it's worth connecting the dots.
16:13
This week, NASA announced it wants
16:15
annual moon landings from 2028. And this
16:18
week, NASA confirmed a key piece of
16:20
technology that would make staying there
16:22
actually viable. These stories belong
16:24
together.
16:25
>> Well spotted, Avery. Nicely joined up.
16:28
>> And for our final story today, we're
16:30
heading home. or rather we're heading
16:32
back to the very beginning of home
16:35
because a new study has just rewritten
16:37
what we thought we knew about how our
16:39
own galaxy formed.
16:41
>> This research centers on a type of star
16:43
called an RR Lyra variable. These are
16:47
ancient pulsating stars. They swell and
16:50
shrink over the course of just a few
16:53
hours, brightening and dimming like a
16:55
slow cosmic heartbeat. What makes them
16:59
extraordinary as scientific tools is
17:01
that they are almost eerily predictable.
17:04
Astronomers know precisely how
17:07
intrinsically bright they are, which
17:09
means that by measuring how bright they
17:11
appear in the sky, you can calculate
17:13
their distance with great precision.
17:16
>> They are in the truest sense cosmic
17:19
lighouses, standard candles for
17:21
measuring the universe. And crucially,
17:23
they are old. Not millions of years old,
17:26
billions, more than 10 billion years.
17:30
These stars were forming when the Milky
17:32
Way itself was still taking shape in the
17:35
chaotic early universe shortly after the
17:37
Big Bang. They are essentially living
17:39
fossils. A large international team of
17:43
astronomers assembled the biggest
17:45
catalog of these ancient stellar fossils
17:48
ever compiled. thousands of them.
17:51
Combining precise distance measurements
17:53
with data from the European Space Ay's
17:56
Gaia satellite, which has mapped the
17:58
positions and movements of over a
18:00
billion stars across the galaxy.
18:03
Together, this gave them a
18:05
threedimensional map of the early Milky
18:08
Way that they could essentially rewind
18:10
like a film, tracing these ancient stars
18:13
back to where they came from and how
18:16
they were moving in the galaxy's
18:17
formative years. And what they found
18:20
challenged the longheld assumption. The
18:22
conventional picture was that the Milky
18:24
Way's different structural layers, the
18:27
outer halo, the thick disc, the thin
18:29
disc, formed at different times,
18:31
sequentially, one building on the last.
18:34
The halo first, then the thick disc,
18:36
then the thin disc.
18:38
>> But the new results suggest that all of
18:40
these layers formed at roughly the same
18:43
early epoch. not sequentially,
18:46
simultaneously, or close to it. The main
18:49
difference between the layers isn't age,
18:52
it's chemistry. Stars in the halo
18:55
contain less iron than those in the
18:57
thick disc, which in turn contain less
19:00
than the thin disc. Each successive
19:02
layer was enriched by the deaths of
19:04
previous stellar generations, a kind of
19:07
celestial inheritance passed down
19:10
through supernova. The iron content
19:12
tells the story of the order, not the
19:15
ages themselves.
19:16
>> And perhaps the most striking finding
19:19
involves our nearest galactic neighbor,
19:21
the Andromeda galaxy. When the team
19:23
compared the chemical fingerprints of
19:25
these ancient stars across the Milky Way
19:28
with those in Andromeda, they found
19:30
strikingly similar patterns despite the
19:32
two galaxies being very different in
19:35
size and structure, which suggests this
19:37
isn't just a local story. It may be a
19:40
universal mechanism by which large
19:42
galaxies form.
19:43
>> The idea that galaxies as different as
19:46
the Milky Way and Andromeda went through
19:49
the same fundamental process of
19:51
formation written in the chemistry of
19:53
their oldest stars. That is a genuinely
19:56
profound result. The lactic archaeology
19:59
at its finest.
20:01
>> And with 10 billiony old stars doing the
20:03
storytelling, you really can't argue
20:05
with the witnesses.
20:06
>> Right. Before we close out today, a
20:09
quick reminder for anyone listening this
20:11
evening. Tonight is the peak of
20:13
February's six planet parade. If you
20:16
step outside about 30 minutes after
20:18
sunset and look west, you should be able
20:20
to spot Venus blindingly bright. You
20:23
really can't miss it. Along with Jupiter
20:26
high in the sky and Saturn low on the
20:29
western horizon, Mercury is also out
20:32
there if you have a flat, clear horizon
20:34
and you're quick. Uranus and Neptune
20:36
round out the six, though you'll need
20:39
binoculars or a telescope for those.
20:41
>> It's a genuinely lovely evening
20:43
spectacle. They'll miss it.
20:45
>> And that is everything for episode 51.
20:48
What a day in space. A program reshaped,
20:52
a rocket grounded, a cosmic construction
20:55
site 11 billion years in the past, water
20:58
bears on Mars, solar powered oxygen on
21:01
the moon, and our galaxy's formation
21:04
story turned upside down.
21:06
>> Not a bad Saturday.
21:08
>> Not a bad Saturday at all. If you
21:11
enjoyed today's episode, please do share
21:13
it with a fellow space enthusiast. Leave
21:16
us a review wherever you listen and
21:18
follow us on social media at astrodaily
21:21
pod for updates throughout the day.
21:24
>> You can also find our show notes, blog
21:26
posts, and full episode archive over at
21:29
astronomyaily.io.
21:31
Everything you need is right there.
21:33
>> From all of us here at Astronomy Daily,
21:36
clear skies and we'll see you Monday.
21:39
>> See you then, everyone.
21:43
Stories told
21:51
stories told
21:59
stories