Speaker 1: Hi there, thanks for joining us. This is Space Nuts.
Speaker 1: My name is Andrew Dunkley. It's great to have your
Speaker 1: company yet again. Coming up on this episode, we will
Speaker 1: be looking at a new Big Bang theory, so to speak.
Speaker 1: It's sort of wrapped up with dark matter and dark
Speaker 1: dark energy and all that dark and foreboding stuff, so
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that. Some other data is pointing to
Speaker 1: a potential outer planet and it may not be Planet nine,
Speaker 1: or is it. We're not sure yet.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about that and.
Speaker 1: Some space science stuff. An old Russian spacecraft is headed
Speaker 1: back to Earth and unfortunately that's not where it was
Speaker 1: originally supposed to go back in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 2: Artemis too.
Speaker 1: An update on that, and a bit of a budget
Speaker 1: cut issue with NASA. That's all coming up on this
Speaker 1: episode of Space Nuts fifteen in Channel ten nine Ignition
Speaker 1: Space Nut or three.
Speaker 3: Two one Space Nurse when I report it.
Speaker 1: Neil Good and it's good to see Professor Fred Watson
Speaker 1: again joining us on this episode of space and that's
Speaker 1: high Fred.
Speaker 4: Hello, Andrew, very good to see you too.
Speaker 2: You're looking hale and hearty.
Speaker 1: I have to say yes, I've got I've got a
Speaker 1: new background you like my new office. Yes, my new
Speaker 1: virtual office.
Speaker 4: It's it's saying a lot of hellos at the moment
Speaker 4: it is has.
Speaker 2: Got a low error.
Speaker 1: And if I put my hands in the right place,
Speaker 1: they're invisible.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: In fact, if I go yeah, if I look around,
Speaker 1: I go invisible.
Speaker 2: Do Yes.
Speaker 4: Yes, you went invisible a minute or two ago, and
Speaker 4: I thought you'd lock it in into space.
Speaker 2: Never mind, it was one day, No doubt you will.
Speaker 1: But now you've been away, haven't you.
Speaker 4: We were over in lord How Island, which is an
Speaker 4: island some some kilometers off of the coast of New
Speaker 4: South Wales, is on the same latitude of Port Macquarie.
Speaker 1: I used to broad to.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, she did that.
Speaker 4: I didn't actually have that much chance to talk to
Speaker 4: many of the locals in detail, or else I would
Speaker 4: have asked them if they In fact, I think I
Speaker 4: did ask one person whether they listened to.
Speaker 2: You, and they said yes.
Speaker 4: But we were there for a dark sky festival.
Speaker 2: Lord How is.
Speaker 4: Working on the prospect of becoming Australia's first dark sky island,
Speaker 4: which is like a dark sky park, but it's an island.
Speaker 4: I'm not giving away any secrets there, but there are
Speaker 4: people working on that very enthusiastically and we wish them
Speaker 4: every success with it. So one of this was a
Speaker 4: sort of kickoff festival with talks and presentations and I
Speaker 4: took the old Gibson guitar and Marny and I did
Speaker 4: a set in their music night. We did seven songs
Speaker 4: between us. I was cool and I've done that for
Speaker 4: about fifty years. And then you know, we did some
Speaker 4: experiments with the friend of ours, Marcuscaro, launching rockets with
Speaker 4: which were fueled by vinegar and bicarbonate of soda, which
Speaker 4: meant we all ended up smelling of vinegar for the
Speaker 4: next four days. And yeah, it went. It went went
Speaker 4: very well. That was a fun thing for the kids
Speaker 4: to do. So it was a good festival and it
Speaker 4: wound up on Thursday evening with very nice meal cooked
Speaker 4: up by one of the top chefs on the island.
Speaker 1: Wow, it's fantastic. I haven't been the lord here, but
Speaker 1: to get there you need.
Speaker 2: To go, you do need.
Speaker 1: It's also the home of some unique wildlife I believe.
Speaker 4: There are yes, and particularly the wood hen which is ubiquitous.
Speaker 4: They had a program four or five years and three
Speaker 4: or four years ago I think it was to eliminate
Speaker 4: all the rats on the island which were eating the woodhens,
Speaker 4: and that was quite controversial, but it's worked, and the
Speaker 4: woodhens are there in remarkable proflicty.
Speaker 2: Was that there?
Speaker 1: And they also have those quite rare stickings. Is it
Speaker 1: on the spire it's on Balls Pyramids? Yeah, Balls Pyramid
Speaker 1: twenty kilometers off. Lord how we had a very rough
Speaker 1: crossing to Balls Pyramid. We went because I always wanted
Speaker 1: to see it up close and personal. It's this stick
Speaker 1: of rock five hundred.
Speaker 4: Meters high and remarkable and as you said, it does
Speaker 4: have I think it's the only place where these nocturnal
Speaker 4: stick insects are phoned, and they're usually quite big.
Speaker 2: So a photograph of one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember that story breaking many years ago when
Speaker 1: they found them and they went, oh my goodness, didn't
Speaker 1: know they were here.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, incredible place it is.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. So what about you have? How's your week been?
Speaker 1: Pretty quiet? Actually, just sort of settling back into normal life,
Speaker 1: even though that's going.
Speaker 2: To be temporary.
Speaker 1: But I did want to show you something from our trip.
Speaker 1: As you know, we went to San Francisco, and San
Speaker 1: Francisco is the home of a big rock known as Alcatraz. Indeed,
Speaker 1: and you know, I like to collect souvenirs wherever I go,
Speaker 1: particularly particularly little rocks from different places. But this one's legal.
Speaker 1: There it is save the rock. Yeah, and inside that box, yes,
Speaker 1: two pieces, two pieces of the cell block of Alcatraz
Speaker 1: because they're trying to do renovations to keep it going
Speaker 1: for future generations, and so as a part of the
Speaker 1: renovation process, they've had to demolish certain sections and they're
Speaker 1: selling the rock to fund the renovations.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 1: I've got two pieces of the cell wall from Alcatraz.
Speaker 2: In my collections.
Speaker 4: Now see them as your screen tries to wipe them
Speaker 4: out and make them part of the background. But if
Speaker 4: I tip it forward a dispute can see them.
Speaker 2: So that's yeah. They are. Oh there they are, yes.
Speaker 4: Looking very very penal commonly this.
Speaker 1: Chunk of concrete, It says, this chunk of concrete is
Speaker 1: a byproduct of a major rehabilitation effort now underway on
Speaker 1: the island. It's been inspected by park historic preservation specialists
Speaker 1: to be sure that it contains nothing of research potential.
Speaker 1: So it's just looks like a piece of concrete but
Speaker 1: it's actually a piece of Alcatraz. It's all mine.
Speaker 4: And interestingly it's in the news at the moment, of course,
Speaker 4: because President Trump wants to reinstate it.
Speaker 2: As a jail, does he.
Speaker 1: I didn't hear that one. It needs well, I'll tell
Speaker 1: him one thing for free. It needs work. It needs work.
Speaker 1: But it's only a fifteen minute trip to get over there. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's right, thirty nine, So yeah's it's worth visiting. Though,
Speaker 1: we better get down to the business of the day,
Speaker 1: and that is astronomy in space science. And we'll start
Speaker 1: off with this story fred a new theory on the
Speaker 1: Big Bang, dark matter, dark energy, all of that stuff
Speaker 1: is rolled into this this paper that's been released through
Speaker 1: the Universe. City of Alabama in Huntsville. This is this
Speaker 1: is a physics professor who's come up with alternative theories
Speaker 1: in the past or other things. This one, though, is
Speaker 1: probably going to get pulled apart under the microscope. What
Speaker 1: he's suggesting is there might not have been one big bang,
Speaker 1: but lots of little bangs.
Speaker 4: That's right exactly, and you know you've you've described it perfectly.
Speaker 4: It's a really interesting theory in that if you have
Speaker 4: lots of little bangs rather than one big one. Apparently,
Speaker 4: mathematically you can get rid of dark matter and dark energy,
Speaker 4: which are of course the two big problems in current cosmology.
Speaker 4: What are these And just a bit of background there.
Speaker 4: Dark energy, we think is the property of space that
Speaker 4: makes the expanding universe accelerating its expansion, although there's just
Speaker 4: we're just starting to see evidence that that might slow
Speaker 4: down that acceleration. It looks as though it was more
Speaker 4: rapid five billion years ago than it is today. And that's,
Speaker 4: you know, new news. I guess on the on the
Speaker 4: what you might call the conventional picture, and of course
Speaker 4: the other half of that is the dark matter, which
Speaker 4: is something that we believe holds galaxies together and holds
Speaker 4: clusters of galaxies together, which is invisible and undetectable except
Speaker 4: by its gravity. Two big problems for modern cosmology. So
Speaker 4: Professor new It thinks that he's solved both of these
Speaker 4: with a theory that it's got a name.
Speaker 2: I can't remember what it is.
Speaker 4: It's his paper is entitled I can't find the title
Speaker 4: of his paper. It's something like getting rid of dark
Speaker 4: matter and dark energy. It's basically the idea exactly as
Speaker 4: you've said, is that you instead of having one big bang,
Speaker 4: you you have several little ones that sort of every
Speaker 4: time you get one, they you know, it sort of
Speaker 4: restarts things in an odd way. And that's the bit
Speaker 4: of this that I have to say, I don't understand
Speaker 4: because we have such great evidence that there's only been
Speaker 4: one big bang, and that is the fact that we
Speaker 4: still see it the cosmic microwave background radiation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wasn't that wouldn't that just wipe this theory out instantaneously?
Speaker 4: Well, unless he suggests that you get, you know, a
Speaker 4: new microwave background radiation every time there's one of these
Speaker 4: mini big bangs. But that actually flies in the face
Speaker 4: of the research, the observations that Professor lew is suggesting
Speaker 4: that we do to detect these multiple big bangs. I
Speaker 4: think the cosmic microwave back radiation is a showstopper for this.
Speaker 4: And the reason is when we look out into space,
Speaker 4: we see progressively objects, most notably galaxies, at different red shifts.
Speaker 2: They're increasing red shift.
Speaker 4: It's the red shift is the move of the of
Speaker 4: the light to the red end of the spectrum. It's
Speaker 4: what we measure. We believe it's happening because space is expanding.
Speaker 4: That stretches the light waves and gives you the red shift.
Speaker 4: And if you look at a high enough redshift, what
Speaker 4: you see you see the big Bank, You see the
Speaker 4: cosmic microwave background radiation, the flash of the Big Bang
Speaker 4: when it became from when the universe became transparent about
Speaker 4: three hundred and eighty thousand years after the Big Bang event. Now,
Speaker 4: what Professor lew is saying is that you could test
Speaker 4: his theory by looking for as you look back in time,
Speaker 4: in other words, that increasing red shifts, look for jumps
Speaker 4: in red shift, which you know it might mean that
Speaker 4: if you're looking along a particular line of sight, you
Speaker 4: see all the galaxies along that line of sight, you
Speaker 4: see them gradually increasing in red shift, and then suddenly
Speaker 4: you see a jump in redshift, which looks as though
Speaker 4: something's missing. And what he's suggesting is that's where you
Speaker 4: get a mini Big Bang. But that, as I said,
Speaker 4: flies in the face of the cosmic micround radiation, because
Speaker 4: that is at the most extreme red shift we can observe.
Speaker 4: It's a the red shift of about thirteen hundred because
Speaker 4: the universe has expanded by a factor similar to that
Speaker 4: in the time since since it became transparent, which is
Speaker 4: what we can see. We can see the opaque universe
Speaker 4: at that great distance. So that's my take on it
Speaker 4: for what it's worth from a non cosmologist. But it's
Speaker 4: causing interest.
Speaker 2: It's really, you.
Speaker 4: Know, actually an interesting piece of work. I haven't looked
Speaker 4: at the original paper, but as you pointed out, I
Speaker 4: think you found this one, Andrew. This is on the
Speaker 4: Brighter Side of News website. There's a lovely piece of
Speaker 4: pros at the end of that article which I'd love
Speaker 4: to read out to you, quotching the brighter side of news.
Speaker 4: Instead of hunting for invisible ingredients i e. Dark matter
Speaker 4: and dark energy. Instead of hunting for invisible ingredients, scientists
Speaker 4: might start listening for the echoes of ancient, unstoppable bursts,
Speaker 4: the hidden rhythms of a universe still in motion.
Speaker 1: Very poetic, very very I think the paper is titled
Speaker 1: are dark matter and dark energy Omnipresent?
Speaker 2: Yes? That's yeah, I had that, but I couldn't remember it. Now,
Speaker 2: Well why would you remember that? Yes, So watch this space.
Speaker 4: We'll see what other physicists and astronomers may of it,
Speaker 4: and hopefully see a bit more.
Speaker 1: That's What I like about these papers is that everybody
Speaker 1: gets to read them and go, Okay, I think that's
Speaker 1: wrong and this is why, or I think that could
Speaker 1: be on the money, and this is why. You know,
Speaker 1: everybody gets a say in it.
Speaker 2: So it gets.
Speaker 1: Bounced around like a yeah, it's a pinball until everyone
Speaker 1: seems to settle on some agreeable potential answer.
Speaker 2: Would that be right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right, And it's a consensus. It's you know,
Speaker 4: as the scientific consensus emerges, that's what we then regard
Speaker 4: as as the standard.
Speaker 2: Model, if I can put it that way.
Speaker 4: But often, like some of this particular work, is going
Speaker 4: to take a lot to verify it, and looking for
Speaker 4: redshift steps might be one way of doing it. And
Speaker 4: in fact I was going to mention this that is
Speaker 4: not new. I remember back in the seventies when I
Speaker 4: was working at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, one of
Speaker 4: my colleagues was looking for what he called quantized redshifts,
Speaker 4: redshifts that appeared in groups among the galaxies, which is
Speaker 4: the sort of thing that you might expect Professor Lew's research.
Speaker 2: To throw up. He didn't find them.
Speaker 4: That the person who was my colleague at Edinburgh he did,
Speaker 4: he never found them, so but that was, of course,
Speaker 4: with nineteen seventy technology. We have moved on a very,
Speaker 4: very long way since then. Just a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm sure we'll hear more about this story as
Speaker 1: people analyze his theory. So we'll keeping on that. And
Speaker 1: as Fred said, it's available for you to read on
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Speaker 1: space Nuts. Now back to the show space Nuts. Now, Fred,
Speaker 1: let's move on to another story that we've looked at
Speaker 1: many times, and that is planet nine. Although this is
Speaker 1: probably not about planet nine, but they have been looking
Speaker 1: at data that suggests there is an out of planet
Speaker 1: further out than I think we're planet dark nine should be.
Speaker 1: So this could is this planet ten or nine point
Speaker 1: five or what.
Speaker 4: I think they're calling it eight and a half because
Speaker 4: we've got yes, this is not planet nine, that is
Speaker 4: planet eight point five.
Speaker 1: Right, that's okay, So what's the story.
Speaker 4: So well, let's scan backwards to two thousand and sixteen.
Speaker 4: I think it was, yeah, twenty sixteen, when two US
Speaker 4: astronomers basically puts out paper suggesting that the fact that
Speaker 4: we've got all these distant asteroid orbits these are objects
Speaker 4: trans Neptunian objects, objects that are beyond the orbit of Neptune,
Speaker 4: and in fact, some of them are called extreme trans
Speaker 4: Neptunian objects, objects a long way beyond the orbit of Neptune,
Speaker 4: whose orbits are highly elliptical, they're very very elongated, but
Speaker 4: they seem to line up the you know, the elongated
Speaker 4: orbit seemed to line up, and they suggested that was
Speaker 4: because there's a planet out there that we haven't found.
Speaker 4: They call it Planet nine. They think it's probably ten
Speaker 4: times the mass of the Earth, what you might call
Speaker 4: a super Earth or a sub Neptune. Those are the
Speaker 4: planets that are kind of common in other solar systems
Speaker 4: but are missing in our Solar system. So it sort
Speaker 4: of fit fit the bill. Lots of enthusiasm for this,
Speaker 4: but also again lots of controversy. I think I've probably
Speaker 4: mentioned to you at the beginning of last year, was it.
Speaker 2: I think yes.
Speaker 4: When I was in Canada, I spoke to a planetary
Speaker 4: scientist there who said Planet nine is rubbish. And that
Speaker 4: was somebody who was well tuned with you know, with
Speaker 4: the with the science anyway, we now have a.
Speaker 2: New theory or.
Speaker 4: Sorry, some new observations which come from astronomers in Taiwan,
Speaker 4: Japan and here in Australia. And what they've done is
Speaker 4: they've looked through archival images from two infrared satellites. One
Speaker 4: was called IRAS, which I remember well. It was a
Speaker 4: NASA Netherlands UK satellite dating from nineteen eighty three, a
Speaker 4: very very productive satellite, infrared astronomy satellite, that's what the
Speaker 4: abbreviation was. And Akari, which was a kind of Japanese equivalent,
Speaker 4: which was launched quite a long time later in two
Speaker 4: thousand and six. And that means, excuse me, both these
Speaker 4: satellites surveyed the sky.
Speaker 2: Excuse my frog in my throat.
Speaker 4: But they are you know, they're doing it at two
Speaker 4: completely different times, which are twenty five ish years apart.
Speaker 4: And so what that means is that if there's something
Speaker 4: deep in the Solar system that is slowly moving, you
Speaker 4: will you might be able to pick it up, pick
Speaker 4: up its motion on these sets of images that were
Speaker 4: taken so far apart in time.
Speaker 2: That's what they've found.
Speaker 4: They basically had two million objects in the two catalogs,
Speaker 4: and they got down to I think it was thirteen
Speaker 4: candidates of objects that moved slowly across the sky in
Speaker 4: the time, and then they looked at each one by eye.
Speaker 4: Some of them probably turned out to be flaws in
Speaker 4: the data and things of that sort, but one of
Speaker 4: them actually looked very promising because the two observations, the
Speaker 4: Iras and Nikari observations, separated by twenty odd years, showed
Speaker 4: an object that had moved, but its color and its
Speaker 4: brightness were the same in both images, and so they
Speaker 4: are suspecting that that makes it the same object rather
Speaker 4: than two bits of data or.
Speaker 2: Something like that. Now it's it's actually.
Speaker 4: Something different from what Planet nine has been suspected. First
Speaker 4: of all, this object, if it is real, goes around
Speaker 4: the Sun in the opposite direction from everything else. It's
Speaker 4: tilted way over its orbits tilted at one hundred and
Speaker 4: twenty degrees, which because it's more than ninety degrees, means
Speaker 4: it's going the wrong way around. Whereas planet nine, the
Speaker 4: theory that was built around these extreme trans Neptunian objects
Speaker 4: that you know, provided a model for planet nine that
Speaker 4: really needed a very low orbit tilt fifteen degrees or
Speaker 4: so in order to do the stretching of these orbits
Speaker 4: or the alignment of these orbits. So the two scientists
Speaker 4: who were the original proposers of planet nine might grow
Speaker 4: and constanting Latigin, they say, well, whatever this is, it's
Speaker 4: not planet nine, and it's it's but it may be
Speaker 4: something else.
Speaker 2: That's the.
Speaker 4: Inference that this thing may be real, and it clearly
Speaker 4: needs more data to determine whether it's a real object.
Speaker 4: If it is, it might as exactly as we were
Speaker 4: said before, might be planet eight and a half or
Speaker 4: nine and a half. I guess the best bet for
Speaker 4: finding it is going to be when we get the V. C.
Speaker 4: Rubin Observatory online, which is going to be towards the
Speaker 4: end of this year, and that is going to be
Speaker 4: able to look at the Southern Sky, which I think
Speaker 4: is where this object is. I can't remember what constellation
Speaker 4: it was in, but it's going to be able to
Speaker 4: look at the Southern sky in much detail, and it
Speaker 4: may find Planet nine, or it may confirm Plant eight
Speaker 4: and a half, or may just tell us there's nothing
Speaker 4: out there at all. So this is something that we're
Speaker 4: going to look forward to, and you and I will
Speaker 4: talk about it, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this has also created another issue because if
Speaker 1: this is a planet beyond where planet nine should be,
Speaker 1: there is another theory that suggests that it will basically
Speaker 1: eliminate the potential existence of planet nine because they would
Speaker 1: interfere with each other, and that's not evident in this data.
Speaker 2: That's correct, that's right.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, you picked up on something I've forgotten when
Speaker 4: I when I read the piece.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: It's if this is a real object, it would not
Speaker 4: be compatible with there being a planet nine, which would
Speaker 4: actually be much nearer than this. This is a long
Speaker 4: long way away, right on the edge of the Solar System,
Speaker 4: if it's real, and it would conflict with the idea
Speaker 4: of a planet nine. Yes, So so it may be
Speaker 4: that this will if it turns out to be the
Speaker 4: right thing, If it turns out to be a real thing,
Speaker 4: then it might not the planet nine theory on the
Speaker 4: head altogether.
Speaker 1: But it's still just as exciting because it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a planet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it could be a planet that's.
Speaker 1: Want to be a planet regardless, So yeah, forget planet nine, yeah, whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Yeah, Well, hopefully we can we can
Speaker 1: find that one they might end up calling a planet
Speaker 1: nine anyway, because well.
Speaker 2: That's what it will be, what it will be exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really interesting. This one just keeps coming up.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm giving it does. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: If you would like to read up on that, it's
Speaker 1: been published on the website science dot org. This is
Speaker 1: space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson. Space
Speaker 1: Nuts now Fred quick stories about various things that are happening,
Speaker 1: mainly involving space craft or space missions or lack of
Speaker 1: although the last story is more of a budget cut issue.
Speaker 1: But let's go back to nineteen seventy two when the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union and the United States were very heavily involved
Speaker 1: in the space race, and the Soviet Union launched a
Speaker 1: spacecraft that was supposed to send a lander to Venus,
Speaker 1: didn't quite make it, and now it's coming it's probably
Speaker 1: going to crash back down to worse.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: So Cosmos four to eight to two was the name
Speaker 4: of the mission, and it was on its way to Venus.
Speaker 4: You're absolutely right. But apparently one of the final stages
Speaker 4: in the rocket, the upper stage, the booster, basically malfunctioned
Speaker 4: and so the spacecraft went in orbit around the Earth.
Speaker 4: It's probably quite a big orbit. I'm not sure if
Speaker 4: its dimensions, but it's so it's been in orbit around
Speaker 4: the Earth for the last fifty three years, and that
Speaker 4: time has now come when its orbit is decaying and
Speaker 4: it looks as though it is going to re enter
Speaker 4: the Earth's atmosphere, and with actually a prediction for its
Speaker 4: century almost as soon as the end of this week.
Speaker 4: It's and that's very hard to predict because it is
Speaker 4: it's uncontrolled. It doesn't have you know, it doesn't have
Speaker 4: any any sort of way of being being directed as
Speaker 4: to where it will re enter the atmosphere, so it'll
Speaker 4: come down in a random place. And as you mentioned
Speaker 4: earlier on, it's it's dangerous in a sense because this
Speaker 4: spacecraft was designed to penetrate the atmosphere of Venus, and
Speaker 4: Venus's atmosphere is much thicker than our atmosphere. Now, it
Speaker 4: would have been a controlled entry into the atmosphere of Venus,
Speaker 4: it would have had breaking rockets to slow it down,
Speaker 4: which it doesn't have coming into the Earth's atmosphere. But
Speaker 4: it does mean that there might be bits of this
Speaker 4: capsule which will actually survive re entry and could land
Speaker 4: on the grounds. One to watch I think is this
Speaker 4: because we could see a headline that this piece of
Speaker 4: ancient space junk has landed in somebody's paddic or we're
Speaker 4: still landed on somebody's house, and we'll probably cause global news.
Speaker 4: So look out for news on that within the next
Speaker 4: few days.
Speaker 1: It might create one heck of a fireball.
Speaker 2: It could, Yes, that's right, Yeah, it could. As it comes.
Speaker 1: Down, we don't know. We don't know where it might.
Speaker 2: Land at this stage. It's one of these.
Speaker 1: Very unpredictable, unpredictable scenarios, So it could just land anywhere.
Speaker 1: I mean, odds are it's going to miss something significant.
Speaker 1: It's just probably going to land in Probably water would
Speaker 1: be most likely.
Speaker 4: Well, that's that's correct, because water is what covers most
Speaker 4: of the Earth or seventy five percent, that's right, And
Speaker 4: that sort of tends to be what happens with re
Speaker 4: entering space ABAE.
Speaker 2: Most of it goes into the ocean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they go on to say that the risk
Speaker 1: of something getting hit is not particularly high, but not zero.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: That's great, But I guess that's always the case with
Speaker 1: anything coming through the atmospheres. Yes, watch with interest, keep
Speaker 1: your eye on the sky. That story in Space Daily
Speaker 1: dot com. Let's move on to our next story. This
Speaker 1: is really exciting news. Lockheed Martin has finished the Orion
Speaker 1: capsule which is going to be put on top of
Speaker 1: Artemis two.
Speaker 4: Indeed, that's right for launch next year, and Artemis two
Speaker 4: will will carry four astronauts and in a in a
Speaker 4: repeat mission of Artemis one, which was basically going to
Speaker 4: the Moon and back, going into a very elongated orbit
Speaker 4: around the Moon, and then coming back to Earth, re
Speaker 4: entering and landing back on Earth. That was all done
Speaker 4: as a dress rehearsal. It's I think it's two years
Speaker 4: ago now, and it worked flawlessly. Actually, everything worked very
Speaker 4: well after a few hiccups on the launch pad. So
Speaker 4: Artemis two is the same thing, but will carry a crew.
Speaker 4: I think the capsule has been I think it's had
Speaker 4: some upgrades from the original planned one.
Speaker 1: And I think they I think they put a toilet
Speaker 1: in it.
Speaker 2: That would be very good if they did.
Speaker 4: These are We've got a quote here that comes from
Speaker 4: one of the Lockheed Martin technical engineers. To support the
Speaker 4: health and safety of the crew, this new systems have
Speaker 4: been added, which include life support, air water, thermal control,
Speaker 4: waste management as you said, displays and controls, audio communications,
Speaker 4: an exercise machine, and a fully functional launcher boort system
Speaker 4: and so and lots and lots of other bells and
Speaker 4: whistles on it. And so there'll be a lot of
Speaker 4: work now to kind of get the thing ready for
Speaker 4: launch next year. But yes, Artemis is on track for
Speaker 4: Artemists too, flying very soon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they will carry astronauts this time.
Speaker 2: This will be a human.
Speaker 1: Mission and they're going to go way past the Moon
Speaker 1: like the first mission. Yes, will this be a record
Speaker 1: as to the furthest people have been out?
Speaker 4: It will indeed, that's right, it's going to be the
Speaker 4: you know, it's going to be the furthest from Earth
Speaker 4: that any human has ventured.
Speaker 1: So that's yes, Yeah, the moment, I think that record
Speaker 1: is held by Michael Collins because he was by himself,
Speaker 1: wasn't he in the Apollos actual?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that might be right. I mean, all the Apollo astronauts,
Speaker 4: the the what was it it was the capsule commander
Speaker 4: I think were left in orbit around the Moon. I
Speaker 4: don't know, until some of those orbits might have been
Speaker 4: higher than others.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I just said rings a bell. I think
Speaker 2: I think that's right. Yeah, I'm sure I'll be corrected.
Speaker 2: I could look it up.
Speaker 4: But yeah, bother we've got Space notes listeners.
Speaker 2: They're very quick to correctors.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, But this is all the exciting news and it
Speaker 1: looks yeah, they're looking at was it April next year
Speaker 1: or launch? Everything on schedule at the moment. But this
Speaker 1: is another example of the collaborative effort to put these
Speaker 1: missions together. It's Lockheed Martin's just one company. I think
Speaker 1: air Bus is involved in this as well, and so
Speaker 1: many others. So we will watch with interest. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of glad they put that life support system in. That
Speaker 1: would probably be useful.
Speaker 2: It might be, yes, it might be helpful.
Speaker 1: Indeed, you can find plenty of stories that talk about
Speaker 1: that particular mission online if you care to search. One
Speaker 1: final thing, Fred, and this is probably not good news,
Speaker 1: and that is a potential budget cuts that will hit
Speaker 1: NASA pretty hard.
Speaker 2: Very hard. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So this is the White House has proposed federal spending
Speaker 4: budget for twenty twenty six, and there's cuts in many,
Speaker 4: many areas. But NASA have actually taken the brunt of
Speaker 4: this with a cut facing a possible cut has to
Speaker 4: be approved clearly, but it's twenty four point three percent,
Speaker 4: coming down from twenty four point eight billion in this
Speaker 4: financial year to eighteen point eight billion in the next
Speaker 4: financial year. And of course, so many of NASA's programs
Speaker 4: are very very sensitive to funding. Many of them are
Speaker 4: on shoe string budgets, you know, like keeping the Voyagers
Speaker 4: in Touch and the deep space programs, all of that,
Speaker 4: possible future missions for new horizons, that's all you have
Speaker 4: to worry about the future of them. What's perhaps more significant,
Speaker 4: and you know, I can see sort of where this
Speaker 4: is going is we've just been talking about Artemis. The
Speaker 4: current Artemis program has I think five missions, which the
Speaker 4: last ones would have you know, would have.
Speaker 2: The Gateway, the Gateway.
Speaker 4: Space station in orbit around the Moon. Basically, the cuts
Speaker 4: would bring the Artemis mission to an end. After Artemis three,
Speaker 4: Gateway would be canceled, and those later Artemis landings would
Speaker 4: be canceled as well, and the sort of load on
Speaker 4: lunar exploration would then be taken by the private sector.
Speaker 2: That's the idea that you get the.
Speaker 4: Private sector to do it, which probably means SpaceX and
Speaker 4: Blue Origin and companies like that, and so it will
Speaker 4: be a remarkably big change to what's currently planned.
Speaker 2: So the.
Speaker 4: Launch vehicles for Artemis are the Space Launch System SLS,
Speaker 4: which uses recycled Shuttle components, and the Orion capsule. That's
Speaker 4: what we've just been talking about. The capsule will hold astronaut.
Speaker 4: The idea would be to phase it out after the
Speaker 4: three flights, after Artemis three, so that includes the SLS
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 2: That would go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what I found in regards like twenty four
Speaker 1: point three percent funding cut, that is a huge, huge cut.
Speaker 1: It is, and most of that would be felt in
Speaker 1: the Space and Earth Science divisions of NASA. And when
Speaker 1: you look at what they do. Space Science Division does heliophysics,
Speaker 1: planetary science, and astrophysics, and the Earth Science Division looks
Speaker 1: at atmospheric sciences, oceanography, land sciences, criosphere technology, biosphere technology.
Speaker 1: I would have thought they were pretty important areas.
Speaker 2: But yes, yes, that's rue.
Speaker 1: They could get hammered in this if this budget cut
Speaker 1: goes ahead. Do you think Elon has sort of been
Speaker 1: saying to mister Trump, look, I can do this, you
Speaker 1: don't have to pay for.
Speaker 4: I couldn't possibly guess that the conversations that go between
Speaker 4: those two, but it wouldn't be rised.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a it's a bit of a worry. Someone
Speaker 1: else told me that they've totally cut funding to national
Speaker 1: public Radio NPS, which is that's the US equivalent to
Speaker 1: the A b C.
Speaker 2: So I heard that.
Speaker 1: So that that's fairly tragic, I think in this scheme
Speaker 1: of things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this this these budget proposals have to go
Speaker 4: to the US Congress because they appropriate the funds, and
Speaker 4: it's you know, it's remains to be seen what happens
Speaker 4: after that. The Congress is fairly evenly balanced, I think politically, so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, unlike unlike our new government that's just been elected there,
Speaker 1: I think it's looking pretty lopsided at the moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, quite quite quite a result. That was Okay, thank
Speaker 2: you for Verdi.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to look into that story about the
Speaker 1: budget the potential budget cuts to that's a spaceflight now
Speaker 1: dot com is the website. We're all done, Fred, Thank you.
Speaker 4: It's been a pleasure, always good to talk and to
Speaker 4: bring us ourselves up today as well as everybody.
Speaker 2: Else on what's going on in the world of space
Speaker 2: and astronomy.
Speaker 1: Very true, all right, we'll catch you on the next episode.
Speaker 1: Thank you Fred, Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large. And
Speaker 1: we would say thanks to here in the studio, but
Speaker 1: he's not where us. Budget cuts or you know how
Speaker 1: it goes. And don't forget to visit us on our
Speaker 1: website social media, and please leave reviews on your favorite
Speaker 1: podcasting platform apparently they're quite helpful. And from me Andrew Dunkley,
Speaker 1: thanks for your company. See you on the next episode
Speaker 1: of Space Nuts.
Speaker 2: Bye bye.
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