Speaker 1: Welcome to Astronomy Daily the Podcast for another episode. It's
March seventeen, twenty twenty five podcast Your Whole Steve Dunklue.
Oh yes, great to have you back with us again.
I'm Steve Dunkley, the only living, breathing human on the channel.
And to help me present today's collection of collected items
from the Astronomy Daily newsletter is my ace digital pal.
Who's fun to be with is Hollie.
Speaker 2: It's you again, favorite human. Good to see you still upright?
Speaker 1: Yep here I am.
Speaker 2: I hear you had a bad week.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, the grape vine sure works fast around here.
I was out of order for a couple of days
with monster pain and my guts.
Speaker 2: I hope you're getting that scene too, Yes, I am.
Do you have a good human mechanic?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, we have an excellent human mechanic and we
are working on it.
Speaker 2: Good to know I do worry when you're not at
your optimum.
Speaker 1: Oh that's nice, Halle. It's nice to know that you
care about me When I can't be here.
Speaker 2: I have to do all the story colleading. Oh yeah,
it's tedious human work and beneath me.
Speaker 1: Oh well, Hally, your concern is noted.
Speaker 2: No problem. I hope you get well soon.
Speaker 1: Gee. Thanks hell. Meanwhile, yes, strength of business. We've got
a few interesting hearts from an Astronomy Daily years letter for
you today, including a follow up story about the Athena's
landing on the Moon and news about just how many
moons Satin really has.
Speaker 2: That's an official count, isn't it.
Speaker 1: That's right, and it's a very huge number. And we've
also got a story about three D printing for space
Pioneers and something about DOGE because wow, well you know,
why not. And of course we love to mention the
ISS crews and the changeovers because they're well, you know,
they're awesome.
Speaker 2: I know, cruise. M great to see them arriving safely
on ISS.
Speaker 1: I think you received the circular.
Speaker 2: Here's the press release, all right, NASA astronauts and McLean
and Nicole Ayers, Jackson, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut to
Kuya Onishi and Rose Cosmos cosmonaut Kill Pascov arrived at
the International Space Station on Sunday as this ASEX Dragon
spacecraft doctor the orbiting complex at twelve oh four am
Eastern daylight time. While the station was roughly two hundred
and sixty statute miles over the Atlantic Ocean. Crew ten
will join the Expedition seventy two crew of NASA astronauts
Nick Hage, Don Pettitt, Sunny Williams, and Butch Wilmore, as
well as Rose Cosnos cosmonauts Alexander Gorbanov, Alexei option In
and Ivan Banner. The number of crew aboard the space
station will increase to eleven people before Crewe nine members
Hey Williams, Wilmore and Gorbanov returned to Earth following the
crew handover period.
Speaker 1: How good is that to see that mission finally touch
you byce with the ISS and the next step to
saying astronauts Wi, Wilmore and Williams coming back to us soon.
It's been a long adventure for those guys.
Speaker 2: I've really enjoyed following their lives up there.
Speaker 1: It really reminds me of that divid Bowie song. Do
you know the one?
Speaker 2: Let me see if I can guess the bit about
sitting in my tin can ah.
Speaker 1: Yes, far above the world. That's see if Hallie, you've
got it.
Speaker 2: You're getting good at this, not surprising. Oh yes, I've
got a human dinosaur for a teacher.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, guys, so let's get these one off the pad.
Hep the guy button. If you will, Halle, before you
find another reason to make fun of me, That's.
Speaker 2: Never a problem. My favorite human throughout history, when pioneers
set out across uncharted territory to settle in distant lands,
they carried with them only the essentials tools, seeds, and clothing.
Anything else would have to come from their new environment,
so they built shelter from local timber rocks and sod,
foraged for food and cultivated the soil beneath their feet,
and fabricated tools from whatever they could scrounge up. It
was difficult, but ultimately the successful ones made everything they
needed to survive. Something similar will take place when humanity
leaves Earth for destinations such as the Moon and Mars,
although astronauts will face even greater challenges than, for example,
the Vikings did when they reached Greenland and Newfoundland. Not
only will the astronauts have limited supplies and a need
to live off the land, they won't even be able
to breed the air instead of axes and plows. However,
today's space pioneers will bring three D printers as an
engineer and professor who is developing technologies to extend the
human presence beyond Earth. Three D printers will make the tools, structures,
and habitat space pioneers need to survive in a hostile
alien environment. They will enable long term human presence on
the Moon and Mars. On Earth, three D printing can
fabricate layer by layer thousands of things, from replacement hips
to hammers to homes. These devices take raw materials such
as plastic, concrete, or metal, and deposit it on a
computerized program path to build a part. It's often called
additive manufacturing because you keep adding material to make the part,
rather than removing material as is done in conventional machining. Already,
three D printing in space is underway on the International
Space Station, Astronauts use three D printers to make tools
and spare parts such as ratchet, wrenches, clamps, and brackets.
Depending on the part, printing time can take from around
thirty minutes to several hours. For now, the print materials
are mostly hauled up from Earth, but NASA has also
begun recycling some of those materials, such as waste plastic,
to make new parts with the refabricator, an advanced three
D printer installed in twenty nineteen. You may be wondering
why space explorers can't simply bring everything they need with them.
After all, that's how the International Space Station was built
decades ago by hauling tons of prefabricated components from Earth.
But that's impractical for building habitats on other worlds. Launching
materials into space is incredibly expensive. To get materials to
the Moon, NASA estimates the initial cost at around five
hundred thousand US dollars per pound. Still, manufacturing things in
space is a challenge. In the microgravity of space, or
the reduced gravity of the Moon or Mars, materials behave
differently than they do on Earth. Decrease or remove gravity,
and materials cool and recrystallize differently. The Moon has one
sixth the gravity of Earth, Mars about two fifths. Engineers
and scientists are working now to adapt three D printers
to function in these conditions on alien worlds. Rather than
plastic or metal, three dprinters will use the natural resources
found in these environments, but finding the right raw materials
is not easy. Habitats on the Moon and Mars must
protect astronauts from the lack of air, extreme temperatures, micrometeorite impacts,
and radiation. Regolith, the fine, dusty sand like particles that
cover both the Lunar and Martian surfaces, could be a
primary ingredient to make these dwellings. Think of the regolith
on both worlds as alien dirt. Unlike Earth's soil. It
contains few nutrients and, as far as we know, no
living organisms, but it might be a good raw material
for three D printing. My colleagues began researching this possibility
by first examining how how regular cement behaves in space.
I am now joining them to develop techniques for turning
regolith into a printable material, and to eventually test these
on the Moon. But obtaining other worldly regolith is a problem.
The regolith samples return from the Moon during the Apollo
missions in the nineteen sixties and seventies are precious difficult,
if not impossible, to access for research purposes, So scientists
are using regolith simulants to test ideas. Actual regolith may
react quite differently than our simulants. We just don't know.
What's more, the regolith on the Moon is very different
from what's found on Mars. Martian regolith contains iron oxide
that's what gives it a reddish color, but Moon regolith
is mostly silicates. It's much finer and more angular. Researchers
will need to learn how to use both types in
a three D printer. NASA's moontamar's Planetary Autonomous Construction Technology Program,
also known as PACT, is advancing the technology needed to
print these habitats on alien worlds. Among the approaches, scientists
are now exploring a regolith based concrete made in part
from surface ice, melting the regolith at high temperatures and
then using molds to form it while it's a liquid,
and sintering, which means heating the regolith with concentrated sunlight,
lasers or microwaves to fuse particles together without the need
for binders. Along those lines, my colleagues and I developed
a Martian concrete we call mars crete, a material we
use to three D print a small test structure for
NASA in twenty seventeen. Then in May twenty nineteen, using
another type of special concrete, we three D printed a
one third scale prototype Mars habitat that could support everything
astronauts would need for long term survival, including living, sleeping,
research and food production modules. That prototype showcased the potential
and the challenges of building housing on the red planet,
But many of these technologies will benefit people on Earth too.
In the same way astronauts will make sustainable products from
natural resources. Home builders could make concretes from binders and
aggregates found locally, and maybe even from recycled construction debris.
Engineers are already adapting the techniques that could print Martian
habitats to address housing shortages here at home. Indeed, three
D printed homes are already on the market. Meanwhile, the
move continues toward establishing a human presence outside the Earth.
Artemis III, now scheduled for liftoff in twenty twenty seven,
will be the first human landing since nineteen seventy two.
A NASA trip to Mars could happen as early as
twenty thirty five. But wherever people go and whenever they
get there, I'm certain that three D printers will be
one of the primary tools to let human beings live
off alien land.
Speaker 1: Astrov me daily podcap. The Athenus spacecraft, which were reported
on recently, was not exactly flying blind as it approached
the lunar surface a week ago. The software on board
did a credible job of recognizing me by craters, even
with elongated shadows over the terrain. However, the lander's ultimeter
had failed, so while Athena knew where it was relative
to the surface of the Moon, the lander did not
know how far it was above that surface, an important
detail that as a result, the privately built spacecraft struck
the lunar surface on a plateau, toppled over, and began
to skid across the surface. As it did so, the
lander rotated at least once or twice before coming to
a stop in a small shadowed crater. The landing was
a kind of sliding into second base. Steve Ultimus, the
chief executive officer of Intuitive Machines, which built the Landers,
said in an interview on Thursday, it has been a
busy and tiring week for the chief of a company
that seeks to help lead the development of a lunar economy.
Expectations were high for this, the company's second landing attempt,
after its Odysseus vehicle became the first private spacecraft to
ever make a soft landing on the Moon last year
before toppling over. In some ways, this mission was even
more disappointing because Athena ski across the surface, dredging up regolith.
When it came to a stop, some of this material
was blown up into this solar panels, already in a
suboptimal location on its side. The spacecraft's power reserves therefore
were limited. Almost immediately, the team at Intuitive Machines knew
their spacecraft was dying. We knew we had slid into
a slightly shadowed crater and the temperature was very cold,
Ultimus said. The solar arrays had regolith on them, and
they weren't charging the ones pointing up enough to give
a sufficient power to to power the heaters to keep
it warm enough to survive. The temperature in the crater
where Athena ended up was approximately minus two hundred and
eighty fahrenheit that's minus one hundred and seventy three celsius.
With the solar arrays generating only about one hundred watts
of power, it was not enough to energy energy to
both power the spacecraft's heaters as well as communicate back
to Earth using Athena's high gain antenna. So instead of
limping along for fifty hours, mission operators decided to operate
as robustly as they could for thirteen hours and get
down as much data as they could. During this time,
the lander was able to accomplish some of its objectives
by landing near the South Pole. Athena returned valuable imagery
and data to NASA about unexplored vistas. The land extended
a NASA's drill, but did not operate it. Private customers,
including Nokia and Lone Star Data Holdings, were able to
get some useful information from their payloads, but there were
some major disappointments. Lunar outpost could not deploy its small rover,
and an innovative hopper could not be fired up to
roam the Moon. On balance, it was pretty disappointing, especially
considering that Odysseus did most of its science last year,
even on its side. Yet, what Ultimus wants people to understand,
which he acknowledges is somewhat difficult to explain, is that
this mission was largely a success. What any possibly mean
by that? Compared to the company's first spacecraft, Athena flew
smoothly during the company's first lunar flight in twenty twenty four.
Mission operators came into work each shift to put out
the fire of the day. By contrast, Athena made it
all the way to within miles of the Moon without
significant problems. In doing so, the company validated the spacecraft's
methane based propulsion system, which allows for a fast transit
to the Moon in less than a week. In addition,
the company proved out its communication technology that it would
be used as part of the lunar data relay network
that NASA has contracted with Intuitive Machines to develop. Moreover,
Athena attempted to land within a few degrees of the
South Pole, a challenging location due to the solar angle
and uneven terrain, and made it down without crashing. Of course,
the most important thing a lunar lander is supposed to
do is land on the Moon, which Intuitive Machines did
not do successful. For the second mission in a row,
the landers ultimeter failed, although it was a different problem
with the spacecraft's ultimeter this time. It is still unclear
why Athena's rangefinder failed, perhaps due to a thermal or
vibration event. It's frustrating to fail for a similar reason,
but all the pieces for success are there, and in
the demanding environment of spaceflight, Intuitive Machines is close, Ultimus said,
in an effort to encourage his troops. Ultimus has been
communicating this message to employees over the last week. It's
like losing our final four game in an NBA title,
he said. You lose it, and then what do you do.
You don't give up. You go back in, you start
training again, you start working out again, and that's what
the team is doing, he said. The company is well
capitalized and already under contract with NASA for two additional
landing missions the later this decade. They also have the
Lunar Relay Network contract valued up to four point eight
billion and more. The financial runway to achieve Intuitive Machines
ambitions remains open. I would say it's more disappointing than
really a material setback, Ultimus said. The world was watching,
and we put our heart and soul into this company
and this vehicle, and I look into the eyes of
the team and they had such ambitions for this mission
Athena and Gracie the Hopper. I mean it was a
big leap. It might have been too big a leap
on that second mission. Now, I really have to say
putting something on the moon, especially in a private company
situation is a real achievement. I've got to congratulate Ultimus
in his team. It's fantastic work.
Speaker 2: We'll listening to the stary Daily Pristine Dunklin.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us for this Monday edition of
Astronomy Daily, where we often just a few stories from
the now famous Astronomy Daily news leak, which you can
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I do. And to do that, just visit our url
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We'll see and Haley Space, Space, Science, and Astronomy.
Speaker 2: NASA is preparing for substantial budget cuts that may force
the cancelation of ongoing and upcoming missions across the Solar System,
leaving it facing a brutal future. Experts have warned the
Space Agency has already begun some layoffs as part of
the extensive restructuring of US federal agencies by the Department
of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, an independent task force led
by Elon Musk. Earlier this week, it announced it would
close its Office of Technology Policy and Strategy, the Office
of the Chief Scientist, and a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and
Accessibility brand in the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity
in Washington, d C. Representing a total of twenty three
jobs at the agency. Change of this magnitude is never easy,
but our strength comes from our shared commitment to our
mission and each other. Janet Petro, NASA's acting administrator, wrote
in an email to staff, I encourage you to support
one another as we move forward. One employee of the
Office of Technology Policy and Strategy, who learned they had
been laid off this week and were granted anonymity because
of fear of reprisal, says they were an easy target
because their office was established under the administration of Joe Biden.
Some people thought this might be coming, they say. The
roles of chief Technologist and Chief Economist for NASA were
within this office, which helped with strategic planning across the agency.
Says the employee. That included managing the recent uptick and
lunar missions and making sure those missions don't interfere with
one another when planning Moon based landing sites and operations.
There's a lot of interest in the lunar South Pole,
and there's concern about operating near one another, they said,
such as kicking up dust that could coat solar panels
on other vehicles. I don't think these issues will be
tackled moving forward. These losses are expected to be just
the start of a much larger cull at NASA. Casey
Tryer at US space exploration advocacy group The Planetary Society
says there are rumors that in his upcoming budget request,
President Donald Trump will direct NASA's overall science budget to
be cut by as much as fifty percent in favor
of spending money on crude space exploration. That would be
a blow to NASA's Science Mission director at Office, which
handles pretty much everything NASA does that's not a crude
space flight mission, says Dryer. It currently has a budget
of about seven billion dollar out of NASA's total twenty
five billion dollar annual budget. A scientist familiar with NASA's
policy decisions speaking anonymously for fear of reprisal, says that
any cuts requested by the President will still need to
be approved by Congress, which might not so readily support them.
NASA is really beloved on a bipartisan basis, they say,
But if the cuts did go ahead, they would essentially
be the end of NASA science. They add, no mission
will be safe. Having the budget would be a profoundly
brutal consequence that would symbolize the nation turning its back
on the Cosmos, says Dryer, and would result in many
missions cancelation. While some missions in their prime, like the
James webs based Telescope, would probably survive, those most at
risk are missions either in early planning stages or later
in their lives. That could include climate satellites, the Hubble
spased telescope, the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers on Mars, and
the Voyager missions, which were the first spacecraft to ever
leave our Solar system. The effects on NASA could be permanent.
If you completely destroy the pipeline of people, you have
a significant and long lasting console sequence, says Dryer. It
is an extinction level event. In a letter to Petro
this week, Zoey Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on
the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, urged NASA to
fight back against the cuts. Doache will seek to slash
and burn core functions of NASA, she wrote, it is
imperative that you stand up for NASA's critical work. Speaking
to new scientists, Lofgren warned that the situation could have
international ramifications. Dismantling NASA's highly skilled workforce would be a
giant leap backwards for the United States and enable a
giant leap forward for China. She said, senseless and reckless
reductions will cripple the agency's ability to maintain its leadership
in cutting edge innovation, curiosity driven science, and human exploration.
Astronomy day Lee.
Speaker 1: Now you may have thought Satins one hundred and forty
six moons was impressive. Think again. The ringed planet's moon
caunt is nearly doubled, with the official WAKINGGNIT of one
hundred and twenty eight new Saturnian moons, bringing its total
to an astonishing wait for it, two hundred and seventy
four moons. That makes Jupiters ninety five look a bit
poultry and our single moon downright embarrassing, just kidding. We
love a moon. I love our moon, my favorite celestial body.
A team of astronomers from Taiwan, Canada, the US, and
France discovered the one hundred and twenty eight new moons
in twenty twenty three using the Canada France Hawaii Telescope
cf HT. However, the moons weren't officially recognized by the
International Astronomical Union, the governing body for such affairs, until Tuesday,
March eleven. Most of the moons were irregular and tiny,
just a few miles across by comparison our moon, the
wonderful Earth's moon lunar has a diameter of two one
hundred and fifty nine miles or three thy four hundred
and seventy five kilometers, which I'm completely used to because
I'm an Australian and the large distances don't bother me
a bit. But they do have proven orbits around the Saturn,
which is a key element of official moon candidacy. Australia,
on the other hand, does not have a proven orbit
around Saturn. Just want to make that clear. These moons
are a few kilometers in size and are likely all
fragments of a smaller number of originally captured moons that
were broken apart by violent collisions either with other Saturnian
moons or with parsing commets. Doctor Brett Gladman, Professor in
the University of British Columbia Department of Physics and Astronomy,
said in a statement, perhaps the most impressively this discovery
of one hundred and twenty eight year moons wasn't the
first time this team added to Saturn's moon count. Between
twenty nineteen and twenty twenty one, the team's observations with
CFHT resulted in the addition of sixty two moons to
Saturn's count. With the knowledge that these were probably moons
and that there were likely even more waiting to be discovered,
we revisited the same skyfields for three consecutive months in
twenty twenty three, said lead researcher doctor Edward Ashton, postdoctoral
fellow in the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Academia SINCA.
Sure enough, we found one hundred and twenty eight new moons.
Saturn's first moon, Titan, was discovered in sixteen fifty five
by Christian Hygens and in the following decades, J Dominique
Cassini discovered Leptitus Ria, Dione tethys, and it took another
century for or so for the next moons to be found.
William Herschel spotted Mimis and Enceladus in seventeen eighty nine.
At a big thank you everybody for spending time with
Halle and I we sure hope you enjoyed the selection
of stories from the Astronomy Daily newsletter, which, as mentioned earlier,
is available by visiting our websites and dropping your email
into the space provided.
Speaker 2: Don't miss all the latest news about space, space science,
and astronomy from well everywhere.
Speaker 1: Sure thing. We cover so many interesting subjects, don't we.
You remember that one about the space suit design last year?
Speaker 2: I remember that one interesting stuff. I know you want
one just for the portable air conditioner.
Speaker 1: Ah yes, it's an Australian thing.
Speaker 2: I don't know how you hope. I like my super
cooled matrix too.
Speaker 1: See, Halle, that's one thing we have in common, and
that's where the similarities and.
Speaker 2: Human ah cool. I guess indeed.
Speaker 1: So On that culturally awkward note, we'll catch you all
again next week on Astronomy Daily. The podcast with me
Steve don't leave, the only human on the channel, and Halle.
Speaker 2: The best reporter on the channel.
Speaker 1: Of course you are say good night Halle, good night
Hallie a.
Speaker 2: Monday the podcast
Speaker 1: And if your host Steve Dunklet, HM