Space Stories: Another Artemis II Delay, AI Discovers Cosmic Oddities in Hubble Data, and AI Drives a Martian Rover

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Image (Credit): Artemis II mission patch. (NASA)

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—CBS News: “Artemis II Moon Rocket Fueling Test Runs into Problems with Hydrogen Leak“

A hydrogen leak at the base of NASA’s Artemis II moon rocket Monday threw a wrench into a carefully planned countdown “wet dress” rehearsal, but engineers were able to manage a workaround and the test proceeded toward a simulated launch. Whether mission managers will be able to clear the rocket for an actual launch as early as Sunday to propel four astronauts on a flight to the moon will depend on the results of a detailed overnight review and post-test analysis. NASA only has three days — Feb. 8, 10 and 11 — to get the mission off this month or the flight will slip to March.

—ZME Science: “Astronomers Unleashed an AI on Hubble’s Archive and Uncovered 1,300 “Cosmic Oddities.” Most Were Completely New to Science“

For more than three decades, the Hubble Space Telescope has collected targeted images to answer specific scientific questions, from mapping galaxies to studying nearby nebulae. Hubble has gathered so much data that despite their best efforts, astronomers haven’t had the time to analyze it all in detail yet…Now, two astronomers have revisited that massive archive with a new plan. They deployed an artificial intelligence system designed to notice when something looks “wrong”. In just 60 hours of computing time, the tool flagged over 1,300 anomalies hidden within 100 million Hubble snapshots. Hundreds of them have never appeared in scientific literature.

—NASA/JPL “NASA’s Perseverance Rover Completes First AI-Planned Drive on Mars“

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has completed the first drives on another world that were planned by artificial intelligence. Executed on Dec. 8 and 10, and led by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the demonstration used generative AI to create waypoints for Perseverance, a complex decision-making task typically performed manually by the mission’s human rover planners…During the demonstration, the team leveraged a type of generative AI called vision-language models to analyze existing data from JPL’s surface mission dataset. The AI used the same imagery and data that human planners rely on to generate waypoints — fixed locations where the rover takes up a new set of instructions — so that Perseverance could safely navigate the challenging Martian terrain.

Video: Brian Cox Talks About Alien Life – A 2026 Special

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Image (Credit): Professor Brian Cox discussing the evolution of intelligence. (Science Time channel)

If you have followed the career of English physicist Brian Cox, then you know he is a dynamic speaker who has hosted several series on astronomy, including Wonders of the Solar System and Wonders of the Universe.

In this short video from Science Time channel, “Brian Cox Talks About Alien Life – A 2026 Special,” Professor Cox walks the viewer through the chances of finding intelligent life among the 60 billion exoplanets in our galaxy that lie within the habitable zone. To be clear, he is not very optimistic.

The series does not cover much new ground except for some hopeful comments about the James Webb Space Telescope investigating the atmospheres of exoplanet (with Professor Cox wondering whether we will find life on an exoplanet before we find it on Mars). Even so, it is still enjoyable to spend a little bit of time playing around with the Fermi Paradox again.

One of the more intriguing ideas being discussed here and elsewhere is the idea that we may not want to limit our ideas to biological life. The longevity of a civilization may be dependent on its ability to evolve from carbon-based to silicon-based lifeforms. While not explicitly discussed in the video, that could broaden our search beyond a star’s habitable zone yet also frustrate our attempts to find biological signatures in an exoplanet’s atmosphere.

Again, it is worth your time to listen in. I would just ignore the goofy animations that accompany the discussion.

Space Quote: Are We Ready for Extended Space Travel by Humans?

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Image by Olena from Pixabay.

“As an astronaut, I believe our current technology may not have solutions for critical situations we are bound to face moving away from low Earth orbit, and this incident illustrates exactly that. NASA needs to address some urgent and sometimes uncomfortable questions. For example, should a doctor always be on the crew? Should a spaceship heading to Mars have high-tech medical capabilities and facilities — not just a ‘med kit’? A kit consisting of only medications, saline solution, a defibrillator and a few basic instruments places a crew at a serious disadvantage if things really go south.”

-Statement for former NASA astronaut Clayton Anderson in a Washington Post editorial published after this week’s return of four crew members who needed to be evacuated from the International Space Station due to a medical emergency. Had the health issue occurred six months into a trip to Mars the circumstances would have been dire without sufficient health resources. This is more evidence that acquiring the necessary hardware for space travel may be the easy part compared to the software, also known as humans.

Pic of the Week: Liftoff of the New Glenn Rocket

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Image (Credit): Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket as it launched from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on November 13, 2025. (Blue Origin)

This week’s image comes from Scientific American magazine’s best space photos of 2025. It shows Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifting off from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on November 13, 2025. It was carrying NASA’s twin Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) spacecraft, which are destined for Mars. The two identical spacecraft will investigate how the solar wind interacts with Mars’ magnetic environment and how this interaction drives the planet’s atmospheric escape.