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NASA Daily — 272. March 17th, 2026 NASA. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.
Welcome to NASA Daily, where we bring you all of NASA's previous day's proceedings in four minutes or less. In today's episode, we bring you NASA's activities from March 17, 2026. NASA is highlighting fascinating discoveries from Earth to Deep Space. On Ireland's burn, tiny fishers in the limestone trap soil and nurture plants, including shamrocks. On Manine Mountain, species like trifolium dubium and trifolium repens thrive in these natural formations, creating the region's signature concentric vegetation patterns. Back on Earth, volunteers are helping scientists study HAL with the search project, part of the Koko-RaHS network. Citizen scientists report HAL, RAIN, and SNOW from their communities using smartphones or gauges, providing data that helps model how HAL melts and predict storm damage.
Farther away, NASA's Osiris Rex mission has solved a mystery about asteroid Bennu. Instead of a smooth surface, Bennu is covered in fractured porous boulders. Samples return to Earth revealed cracks that let heat escape efficiently, explaining why the asteroid has low thermal inertia and improving our understanding of asteroid surfaces. Meanwhile, aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 74 astronauts prepared for a major spacewalk. NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Chris Williams, readyed space suits and tools for a six-and-a-half-hour excursion to upgrade solar arrays. Crew members also conducted training, maintenance, and moon photography for the Earth-shine experiment, while Russian cosmonauts ran simulations and handled cargo. In the night sky, the dim constellation cancer still holds wonders. The beehive cluster, a large open cluster of young stars, shines faintly to the naked eye. The system also hosts the super-earth exoplanet 55 concrete E, orbiting its star every
18 hours with a thick hydrogen helium atmosphere, giving astronomers insights into planets beyond our solar system. On the experimental aviation front, NASA's X59 jet is preparing for its second flight. The team will gradually increase speed and altitude to test supersonic flight, aiming for Mach 1.4, while producing a quiet thump instead of a sonic boom. Future flights will study public response to quieter supersonic travel over U.S. communities. Finally, NASA is reassessing the Artemis II rollout. The rocket could move to Launchpad 39B on March 19 after repairs finished ahead of schedule, keeping the earliest launch opportunity at April 1st, with additional windows through April 30th. NASA will provide a live stream of the rollout. Those were the key activities for NASA on March 17th, 2026. Subscribe to receive daily updates or rate or review so others can find us as well. Thanks for tuning into NASA Daily. This has been an electric-cast media production.
Executive producers are Mark Netter and Peter Raeflson, produced and edited by Delilah Sparata, music by Amir Islai and Peter Raeflson. Start us, please subscribe to the podcast today!
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