{"podcast":{"title":"Astronomy Daily: Latest Space News","slug":"astronomy-daily-space-news-updates-5658676","podcast_index_feed_id":5658676,"rss_url":"https://www.spreaker.com/show/5648921/episodes/feed","website_url":"https://www.astronomydaily.io","image_url":"https://d3wo5wojvuv7l.cloudfront.net/t_rss_itunes_square_1400/images.spreaker.com/original/3ef2bb90b641d3f09a10b0a281912ff3.jpg","author":"bitesz.com","episode_count":901,"summary":"Join hosts Anna and Avery for daily Space & Astronomy news, insights, and discoveries . Give us 20 minutes and we'll give you the Universe! For more visit, our website and sign up for the free daily newsletter and check out our continually updated newsfeed. http://astronomydaily.io . Follow us on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, YouTube and TikTok ...just search for AstroDailyPod . Enjoy! Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support .","last_synced_at":"2026-09-19T16:18:05.091830+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-space-news-updates-5658676"},"episode":{"title":"Tiny Robots, Alien Caves: NASA's Plan for Titan","slug":"tiny-robots-alien-caves-nasa-s-plan-for-titan","published_at":"2026-08-17T09:31:07+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-space-news-updates-5658676/tiny-robots-alien-caves-nasa-s-plan-for-titan","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-space-news-updates-5658676","url":"https://www.astronomydaily.io","audio_url":"https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/track/op3.dev/e/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/74192269/tiny_robots_alien_caves_nasa_s_plan_for_titan.mp3","summary":"Anna and Avery cover NASA's newly funded concept for spherical, propeller-free \"aerobots\" that could one day explore the methane-carved cave systems of Saturn's moon Titan. Plus: SpaceX breaks its own launch-turnaround record with two Falcon 9 missions 38 minutes apart, Rocket Lab lands its biggest-ever defense contract to build \"Flatellites\" for the U.S. Space Force, and a geomagnetic storm arriving today could bring aurora to high latitudes tonight. **Full show notes:** Today's episode — S05E169, Monday August 17, 2026: **Main story: NASA funds spherical \"Aerobots\" to explore Titan's caves.** A NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase 1 grant is backing SPARK (Solid-state Propulsion for Autonomous Reconnaissance of Karst) — small, propeller-free spherical robots using electrohydrodynamic (EHD) thrusters, led by Daniel Drew (University of Hawaii) with JPL's Ethan Schaler and Jacob Izraelevitz and Michael Malaska (Blue Marble Space Institute of Science). The concept targets Titan's karst terrain — sinkholes and caves carved by liquid methane and ethane rather than water — as a candidate site for astrobiology research. Phase 1 covers nine months; a Phase 2 award could follow. No confirmed mission link yet, though NASA's Dragonfly rotorcraft is headed to Titan around 2028. **SpaceX sets a new launch-turnaround record.** Two Falcon 9 missions launched 38 minutes apart on August 15 — a Globalstar satellite mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 9:12 p.m. ET, and the classified USSF-366 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 9:50 p.m. ET — beating SpaceX's previous 65-minute record from August 2024. Both boosters landed successfully (14th and 18th flights respectively). 2026 tally: 96 Falcon 9 launches so far. **Rocket Lab wins $397 million Space Forc…","meta_description":"Anna and Avery cover NASA's newly funded concept for spherical, propeller-free \"aerobots\" that could one day explore the methane-carved cave systems of Sa…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":1081,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/astronomy-daily-space-news-updates-5658676/episodes/tiny-robots-alien-caves-nasa-s-plan-for-titan/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-space-news-updates-5658676/tiny-robots-alien-caves-nasa-s-plan-for-titan.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}