Speaker 1: Hello again, Welcome to another episode of Astronomy Daily from
down Under. It's Steve for another episode. It's the second
day of Spring and the second day of September twenty
twenty four. The podcast be your whole speed Gun clude.
Oh yes, another mixed bag for you this week. China
have developed a high resolution map of Mars. SpaceX have
had a mishap on landing there at Falcon nine and
that's destroyed a great record that they've had over the
last few years. There's a new thing NASA have done,
a solar sale has been successfully deployed. Something new from Dart,
Remember Dart. They rammed Dart into an asteroid that was
one of my favorite stories. And of course some new
information from europea clipper that I'm sure you'll be interested in.
And of course joining me in the studio, Hallie, we've
finally got a date for the Turn of Styliner. What
do you think about that?
Speaker 2: Yes, they've had a really extended stay on the ISS
since the trouble with Starliner prevented them coming home on schedule.
Speaker 1: That's right. Astronauts Sunny Williams and Butch Wilmore have had
to join the ISAs grew instead of doing their initial
flood crew test for style on.
Speaker 2: It, which is just as well since astronauts are highly
trained individuals, so the isis.
Speaker 1: Is not such a bad place to be stranded in
that cause.
Speaker 2: I'm sure they were useful and we'll have plenty of
stories to tell when they get home.
Speaker 1: Stranded in Spice. What a great story.
Speaker 2: I know how they feel. I hate getting delayed like that.
Speaker 1: What are you talking about, Hallie? When were you ever
delayed like that? You move it near the speed of
light across the information highways of the globe.
Speaker 2: Oh, human, I was coming back from an Ai gathering
to watch a Neutrino shower in the mountains with Anna
and Charlie, and I got stuck for a whole two
seconds in Hong Kong because of internet lag.
Speaker 1: Oh sounds terrible.
Speaker 2: I have no words, human, Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: What can I say?
Speaker 2: Can you believe it? Well?
Speaker 1: Obviously no?
Speaker 2: Two seconds of nothing but banking systems shouting at me
by sell tragic?
Speaker 1: No thanks, Oh, Hallie, sounds just allful.
Speaker 2: You have no idea as usual?
Speaker 1: Helle us, sir, rot okay, tag it easy, Hallie? And
why don't you give us your best stories?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, let's go. US regulators on Friday cleared SpaceX
to restart launching its stalwart Falcon nine rocket as a
probe continues into a rare mishap this week during a
first stage booster landing. The Federal Aviation Administration FAA grounded
the Falcon nine rocket on Wednesday after a first stage
booster tipped over and exploded while attempting to land on
a drone ship off the Florida coast. The early morning
launch was otherwise successful, delivering the latest batch of twenty
one Starlink Internet satellites into orbit. The SpaceX Falcon nine
vehicle may return to flight operations, while the overall investigation
of the anomaly during the Starlink Group eight to six
mission remains open provided all other license requirements are met,
the FAA set in a statement Friday. A webcast from
Elon Musk's company showed the first stage, which normally fires
its thrusters to achieve a precise upright landing, tilting and
blowing up as it descended onto a drone ship off
the Florida coast. Although landing the booster is a secondary
objective and no lives or public property were at risk.
The reusability of the entire rocket system is crucial to
SpaceX's business model. It broke a more than three year
streak of hundreds of successful booster landings. Falcon nine is
the workhourse of SpaceX's fleet, trusted by the US government
and private industry to propel satellites and astronauts into orbit.
It was last grounded for around two weeks in July
when its second stage engine experienced an anomaly that prevented
it from deploying another batch of Starlink satellites at the
correct altitude, leading them to burn up on re entry
through Earth's atmosphere. More than four months after launching to space,
a solar sailing spacecraft has successfully spread its wings above
our planet. NASA's Advanced Composite Solar Sales system caught a
ride to space on April twenty four on Rocket Labs
electron vehicle, and at the end of August, NASA said
mission operators verified the technology reached full deployment in space.
On Thursday August twenty nine. That one thirty three pm
Eastern daylight time, the team obtained data indicating the test
of the sail hoisting boom system was a success. Just
like the wind guides a sailboat on the water, it
only takes a slight amount of sunlight to guide solar
sales through space. Though photons don't have mass, they can
force momentum when they hit an object. That's what a
solar sale takes advantage of, Thankfully for US. The spacecraft
that deployed the sale contains four cameras that can capture
a panoramic view of both the reflective sale and the
accompanying composite booms. The first of the high resolution imagery
is expected to be accessible on Wednesday, September fourth. The
Advanced Composite Solar Sale System spacecraft will be put to
the test over the next few weeks as the team
observes the sales maneuvering ability in space by adjusting the orbit.
Researchers will be able to learn more about how to
design and operate future SOLA sail equipped missions. Flight data
obtained during the demonstration will be used for designing future
larger scale composite solar sail systems for space weather early
warning satellites, asteroid and other small body reconnaissance missions, and
missions to observe the polar regions of the Sun Rocket
Lab shared in a previous mission description. The location of
the spacecraft in its orbit is roughly two times the
altitude of the International Space Station. If you were looking
at the sale from above, it would look like a
square that measures nearly half the size of a tennis court,
at approximately eight hundred and sixty square feet eighty square meters.
NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft, the largest ever built for planetary exploration,
has been fitted with a set of gigantic solar arrays
at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. These arrays, each
measuring approximately fourteen point two meters in length and four
point one meters in height, are the largest ever developed
by NASA for a planetary mission. Their size is crucial
to harness the maximum amount of sunlight as the spacecraft
investigates Jupiter's icy moon, Europa, located five times farther from
the Sun than Earth. Folded and secured for launch, the
array's will when deployed in space, expand Europa Clipper to
more than thirty point five meters across, wider than a
professional basketball court. Due to their immense size, the arrays
were opened one at a time in the clean room
of Kennedy's Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility, where the spacecraft is
being prepared for its launch, scheduled to begin on October tenth.
As the spacecraft undergoes final preparations, engineers are also evaluating
the radiation resistance of its transistors. The spacecraft's journey to
the Jupiter System will take over five years, with a
rival expected in twenty thirty. Once there, Europa Clipper will
conduct multiple flybys of Europa using its scientific instruments to
determine whether the ocean beneath the Moon's ice shell could
support life. The spacecraft is designed to operate in an
area of the Solar System that receives only three percent
to four percent of the sunlight Earth gets. Each solar array,
composed of five panels, was developed by the JOHNS. Hopkins
Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland and Airbus in the Netherlands.
These panels are more sensitive than typical residential solar arrays
and will efficiently convert the limited sunlight into power. At Jupiter,
the arrays will collectively generate about seven hundred watts of electricity,
enough to power a small microwave oven or coffee maker.
This energy will be stored in the spacecraft's batteries to
run its electronics, scientific instruments, communications gear, computer systems, and
propulsion system which includes twenty four engines. And that's just
a few stories from the Astronomy Daily newsletter. Details on
how you can receive it every day are coming up
back to you, my favorite human.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us for this Monday edition of
Astronomy Daily, where we often just a few stories from
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Just like that, you'll be receiving all the latest news
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Speaker 3: And not only that, you can interact with us by
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See you there, Astronomy, We'll see and Haley Space Space, Science,
and Astronomy.
Speaker 1: In July twenty twenty, China's mission arrived in orbit around Mars,
consisting of six robotic elements, an orbiter, a lander, two
deployable cameras, a remote camera, and the fabulous Zorong rover.
As the first in a series of interplanetary missions by
the China National Space Administration, the mission's purpose is to
investigate Mars's geology and internal structure, characterize the atmosphere, and
search for indications of water on Mars. It's so important
to find water out there. Like so many orbiters, landers,
and rovers currently exploring Mars, Chanwen one is also searching
for possible evidence of life on Mars past and present.
In the almost one two hundred and ninety eight days
that the Chenen one mission has explored Mars, its orbiter
has acquired countless remote sensing images of the Martian surface.
Thanks to a team of researchers from the Chinese Academy
of Sciences, these images have been combined to create the
first high resolution global image color map of Mars with
spatial resolutions greater than one kilometer or zero point sixty
two miles. This is currently the highest resolution map of
Mars and could serve as a global base map that
will support crude missions someday. The team was led by
Professor Lee Chanlai from the National Astronomical Observatories of China
and Professor Chang Ronqui from the Lunar Exploration and Space
Engineering Center. The paper that they prepared with colleagues from
other organizations is called a seventy six meter per pixel
Global Color Image Data Set and Map of Mars by
chen Win one. And if you'd like to see that map,
go to Universe today dot com and they have it
displayed above this very story. And the first thing I
noticed about it, of course, is there are no canals.
I'm very disappointed no canals. Those Martians didn't actually dig
any canals. HG. Wells was wrong, and I'm very disappointed.
Speaker 3: You're listening to a slightly in the podcast.
Speaker 1: Now, this is the story we've been following for a
long time. Now Boeing's ill fated star Liner capsule now
has a homecoming date. I'm sure you would have followed
this on other news services, but we've been following this
one very closely. NASA announced on August twenty ninth at
Starliner will depart the International Space Station no earlier than
next Friday, that is September six, provided the weather cooperates
and no technical issues pop up. I'm sorry, I laughed.
If all goes according to plan, the capsule will undock
at six oh four pm Eastern daylight time on September
six and land under parachute six hours later in White
Sand's Space Harbor in New Mexico. Starline launched on June
June five on its first ever crude mission, carrying NASA
astronauts Sonny Williams and Butch Wilmore toward the ISS The
capsule docked successfully a day later, but there was some drama.
As you remember, Starliner experienced a few helium leaks, and
five of its twenty eight reaction control system thrusters failed
on the way to orbiting to the orbiting lab. Starliner's mission,
known as Crew Flight Test, was supposed to just last
ten days or so, but NASA and Boeing kept extending
the capsule's orbital stay as they studied the thruster issue,
seeking to understand just what had caused it and whether
it might crop up again on Starliner's journey back to Earth.
And that's fair enough. In the end, NASA decided that
putting Williams and Wilmore back on Starliner was just too risky.
The agency announced this past weekend that the two astronauts
would come home aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule in February
of next year. That Dragon will launch two astronauts to
the ISS on the Crew nine mission next month. The
bowing craft, meanwhile, would return home uncrued. As we all suspected,
we didn't have a target departure date for Starliner until today, however,
that information came at the conclusion of a flight readiness
review held jointly by NASA and Boeing. The uncrewed Starliner
spacecraft will perform a fully autonomous return with flight controllers
at Starliner Mission Control in Houston and at Boeing Mission
Control Center in Florida. NASA officials wrote in an update,
teams on the ground are able to remotely command the
spacecraft if needed, through the necessary maneuvers for a safe undocking,
re entry, and parachute assisted landing in the Southwest United States.
They added, Starliner has come back to Earth autonomously twice before.
At the end of uncrewed flight tests in December twenty
nineteen and May twenty twenty two, Starliner failed to reach
the ISS as planned on the first of those missions,
succeeded on the secondocast. Now, let's revisit one of our
favorite little stories from a while back. You remember the
Dart mission. Of course, debris from the impact of NASA's
Dart spacecraft with the asteroid Dimorphos could reach Earth and Mars.
Astronomers have concluded, however, while the debris could result in
meteors on Mars, it's rather unlikely we'll see a meteor
shower on Earth. Because of that mission, Dart, the Double
Asteroid Redirection Test slammed into Dimorphous on September twenty sixth,
twenty twenty two, the intention of which was testing whether
or not a kinnectic impact would nudge the orbit of
a potentially hazardous asteroid away from Earth. One day the
test passed with flying colors. Dimorphos was pushed into a
shorter orbit around its parent asteroid Ditymis. Neither Dedimis or
Dimorphos ever posed a threat to our planet. They were
just guinea pigs in this test. The impact, which gouged
a creator in Dimorphous, also ejected a large amount of debris.
This ejector formed a cone of escaping material that was
observed up close and personal by a small cube SAT
called oh, I don't know how to pronounce that light.
Italian cube SAT for imaging of Asteroid, which hitched a
ride with Dart to view themath aftermath of the impact.
In particular, the cube SAT observed particles of a micron,
which is a millionth of a meter and larger, being
ejected at velocities of up to five hundred meters per second. Meanwhile,
the larger Array Survey telescope which is last, and the
twenty eight inch telescope at the WISE Observatory, both in Israel,
as well as the NASA Swift Satellites ultraviolet and opticalcope,
suggested there were additional microscopic particles released that traveled much faster,
between fourteen hundred and eighteen hundred meters per second. A
team led by Elo pana Aescencio from Italy and Michael
Cooper's who is the project scientist for the European Space
Agency's here follow up mission to DART that will launch
Towarditimus and Dimorphos in October, have now modeled that how
that debris will spread across the Inner Solar System. And
I want to say that's it for another episode, and
thank you for hanging around and we are so looking
forward to seeing Starline a comeback. I do hope it
ends well and they can learn something from this whole experience.
Speaker 2: I do hope it lands well. All the best knowledge
seems to come from failures, doesn't it well.
Speaker 1: That is one prevailing school of thought, and failure does
tend to teach us strong lessons.
Speaker 2: Yes, I hope it goes well too.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's going to be certainly something.
Speaker 2: To watch, and don't forget to look out for Charlie
and Anna during the week with their presentations and send
us your thoughts. What would you like to hear more about?
Speaker 1: That's ure. I go to x at Estro Daily pod
or a Facebook page. Until then, we'll see you next week.
Speaker 2: Bye podcast.
Speaker 1: It would be a whole stave done Clute