Paul: 0:01

Welcome to Space Week, the podcast that brings you weekly space for everyday people. We're your hosts, Paul and Blake. Join us each week as we take you on a journey through the cosmos and bring the wonders of space down to Earth. So sit back, buckle up and get ready for another exciting episode. I hope you already have your pens ready, because we're kicking off this week's launch segment with the time-resolved observations of precipitation structure and storm intensity with a constellation of small- sats, otherwise known as the tropics mission.

Blake: 0:44

Man, I do love NASA and their acronyms.

Paul: 0:47

It's god awful, man. I think they did that one on purpose. I think they saw tropics and they're like okay, we gotta come up with something.

Blake: 0:55

Dude, i swear that's how they always do it. Nasa and governments, they do the same thing all of them, all across the world, you know.

Paul: 1:03

Just do it backwards. Just do it backwards.

Blake: 1:05

Yeah yeah.

Paul: 1:07

So anyways, rocket Lab launched the final pair of NASA tropic satellites last Friday, may 26th, in New Zealand So it was late Thursday for us in the US completing the constellation of storm searching sats. You may remember, the first two were launched earlier in May. As a reminder, tropics is a mission dedicated to the improved modeling and forecasting of tropical cyclones like hurricanes and typhoons. Depending on what side of the world you're on, we'll be able to see these storms in unprecedented detail, and this will help us gather a better understanding of how these storms form and develop in intensity. As a general comparison, tropics is positioned in a way to overfly any storm once every hour, whereas current systems are limited to about once every six.

Blake: 1:54

Oh wow, That's a huge change.

Paul: 1:55

It's gonna be a big change, yeah, so better detail and more often, so it's gonna be pretty cool.

Blake: 2:00

Yeah, for sure, and I feel like they already have pretty accurate predictions on where these storms are gonna land. You know, if I remember right, one of the recent hurricanes near where we live, they were within about 50 miles of their prediction, if I remember right.

Paul: 2:17

Yes, and my understanding is now that they're gonna be able to kind of hone in on those predictions on those tracks sooner in the storms development.

Blake: 2:27

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.

Paul: 2:29

So you know we're used to that. They call it like here, they call it the cone of uncertainty.

Paul: 2:33

You know and yeah it just gets bigger and bigger as it makes it towards landfall and you don't really know where it's gonna go until it's much later in development. Yeah, so they're gonna try and improve upon that. Now. This next one's just as exciting, in my opinion, as tropics, as we're seeing more countries involved in developing and launching their own launch vehicles.

Paul: 2:56

South Korea had the third flight of their Nuri rocket on the same day as tropics. In case you've already forgot, that was last Thursday, may 25th. Nuri is South Korea's first fully domestic rocket, so it's all done in house. It's in three stages. It stands approximately 150 feet tall, so it's just under 46 meters for our metric guys, and it's capable of bringing 1.5 tons to low Earth orbit. That's pretty significant. The electron rocket that launched tropics, for comparison, is just a two stage that brings only about 660 pounds to orbit, so pretty significant rocket here being completely built in South Korea. Anyways, the payload for Thursday's launch consisted of a 400 pound NextSat for NASA, four Snipe CubeSats, which stands for Small Scale Magnetospheric and Ionospheric Plasma Experiment. I'll kind of dumb this down a little bit. These will study high energy particles in Earth orbit. That's pretty much all you gotta know And three other CubeSats handling various tasks of all kinds of things. Nuri was first launched in 2021, and they're aiming to continue use through 2027. So pretty cool seeing South Korea enter the game like this.

Blake: 4:19

Yeah, for sure. And I mean, you know, they've, always kind of lived under the shadow of China's rocket launches and stuff like that for our Asian friends. Definitely something cool to see. Yeah more developing countries.

Paul: 4:32

Oh for sure, And Blake, you're gonna like this one. It brings your space fiber internet to fruition. Sweet, so SpaceX kicked off Memorial Day weekend with the launch of ArabSat's. It was the Bader 8 satellite, if I remember right. Yeah, bader 8 satellite, early Saturday morning. The launch comes after a scrubbed attempt on Wednesday due to weather and a rescheduling for Friday night, but was held an hour to wait for winds to calm down, so it brought the launch to 1230 Saturday morning. The nearly 10,000 pound satellite built by Airbus was developed for ArabSat to replace the existing Bader 6 satellite in geostationary orbit 22,000 miles above Earth. Orbital maneuvers will be made using high efficiency plasma thrusters and are expected to take several months to complete.

Blake: 5:25

So the maneuvers are expected to take several months.

Paul: 5:29

Yeah, yeah, right now. they launched it into like a elliptical transfer orbit.

Blake: 5:34

Okay.

Paul: 5:36

And then, yeah, they're going to use these plasma thrusters. Obviously they don't have a lot of thrust, but they're very efficient at their job. But it's going to take a long time to speed this thing up to orbit Earth.

Blake: 5:47

Yeah.

Paul: 5:48

At such a high altitude. Now, Bader 8 will provide television broadcast services, video relay and data communication across the Middle East, africa, europe and Asia. In addition to this now this is your part here Airbus has on board an experimental TELEO demonstration. They will beam data to a ground station using lasers with a bit rate of 10 gigabits per second. Airbus wants to advance the technology further, aiming for one terabit per second in later missions.

Blake: 6:23

So you're telling me if I want one terabit internet connection, I have to go live in space.

Paul: 6:29

You either have to live in space or have a laser ground station in your backyard.

Blake: 6:35

Yes, All right, well, sign me up for that. Yeah, yeah.

Paul: 6:40

So this was another key point, by the way, because we had a listener asking about the internet. What was it like last episode or something? We had a listener question about it. What's important about it? Another key point is that the optical laser systems are far less prone to jamming versus the current radio methods. I didn't really think about this.

Blake: 7:01

Oh yeah, that's a good point. I mean, when it comes to police radar guns, they've switched over to LiDAR, to LiDAR. Because, it's a laser.

Paul: 7:11

And it's hard to jam a laser. You can't exactly stop light. You basically just have to get in the way of it, at least not easily, yeah.

Blake: 7:17

Whereas, you know, we have radar jammers and while they're illegal in many states, they are used regardless. And well, they beat the radar gun.

Paul: 7:29

Yeah, yeah, exactly So yeah, but this is a good space defense application.

Blake: 7:35

Yeah, for sure, if you want to call it that.

Paul: 7:38

Next. Now, this wasn't a launch. We actually had a return AX2, which we talked about last episode. They came on back, So Peggy Whitson, john Shoffner, ali Alcarni and Rayana Barnoui splash down safely off the Florida coast Tuesday night. They spent eight days aboard the ISS, orbited Earth 126 times and traveled over 3.3 million miles. Together they conducted 26 research projects and about 20 STEM outreach events. As a reminder, ax2 was Axiom Space's second privately crewed mission to the ISS, with many firsts that you can find in our last episode, if you want to go check that out Now. We can't have a launch segment without a Starlink launch.

Blake: 8:25

It seems so. Yeah, Every launch segment. there's something to do with Starlink.

Paul: 8:30

It's going to be every week. So another batch of 52 version 1.5s were launched late Tuesday out of Vandenberg. So this would have been early Wednesday if you're on the East Coast. They actually it was very late on the West Coast, so depending on which side of the US you're on, determine what day this launch technically took place for you. Of course, this was on board a Falcon 9. As usual, everything went great and marked SpaceX's 200th consecutive flawless Falcon flight. So bravo.

Blake: 9:05

That's a very large milestone to me. I don't even think there were 200 space shuttle missions, huh.

Paul: 9:11

I don't think there were No.

Blake: 9:13

Yeah, crazy to think Yeah.

Paul: 9:16

Now coming off of rockets here. I'm going to go back in time a little bit. This was Thursday, may 25th, so a week before last Virgin Galactic made their first trip to space in almost two years. So remember this isn't Virgin orbit, totally different group Virgin.

Blake: 9:37

Galactic. We'll talk about that later. Yeah.

Paul: 9:38

Yeah, we do have a segment on that later coming up. Galactic uses an air launch technique to take people on suborbital flights. This consists of the space plane VSS Unity and the carrier ship VSS Eve. Blake talked about them previously, you may remember. When Eve reaches about 50,000 feet, it drops Unity, which then fires off its onboard rocket to reach space. Thursday's flight marked the fifth trip for Unity to space, in 25th flight overall. So this includes, you know, like atmospheric tests and glide tests, things like that. The flight lasted about an hour and 20 minutes from leaving the runway back to touchdown. Max speed was Mach 2.94, so almost Mach 3. And Max altitude was 54.2 miles, or just over 286,000 feet.

Blake: 10:31

Yeah, that's pretty crazy. I mean, you know, 286,000 feet, that's quite a few miles, that's cool.

Paul: 10:39

Yeah, so this actually qualified technically qualified for NASA's astronaut wings, i believe. NASA, they put it at 50 miles. Now I don't know if anyone that goes up on this will technically get astronaut wings, because there was a whole thing on that when Blue Origin went to space. Yada, yada, yada who should be given wings and who shouldn't. Yeah, so we'll see. But NASA, i believe they take it to 50 miles, above 50 miles. They consider you an astronaut. Now, galactic says we can expect to see flights much more often, with a goal of one flight per month once commercial operations begin. They're aiming for even higher, though, with a new Delta class of space plane designed to be launched once a week. That release is targeted for 2026. Tickets currently cost $450,000.

Blake: 11:43

All right, who wants to donate $450,000?

Paul: 11:46

Yeah, I need about half a million Blake.

Blake: 11:50

Me too, Me too. I mean just give us a million so we can both go.

Paul: 11:54

Well, yeah, right, but they're actually with the Delta class coming out. They're hoping that they could potentially get one of these going once a day if they get enough planes on board.

Blake: 12:07

Wow, so they'd be able to significantly drop this ticket price. In theory, that's what I'm hoping At that point. It's just instead of $450,000, it's going to be, you know, just a mere $100,000.

Paul: 12:23

Yeah, i mean, just take the price from a house to a luxury car. Yeah, oh man. But moving on real quick mention Wednesday, march 24th, may 24th I don't even know what month we're in anymore May 24th Russia sent a cargo ship to the ISS Progress 84, which carried 2.7 tons worth of food and supplies to the crew aboard. They actually made pretty quick work of it all. It docked just over three hours after launch. So good job Russia on that. Progress is an expendable craft set to burn up in the atmosphere once the mission is done.

Blake: 13:10

Yeah, And that's pretty standard. usually Yeah, But of course we're kind of moving towards reusability nowadays. One thing that didn't save us was the cheapness of reusability, because Virgin Orbit finally shuttered its doors Very unfortunate, And I mean you know this happened over the course of a few months. We've been talking about it since, I feel like Episode 2, maybe Episode 3.

Paul: 13:40

So now they're like done, done, completely Well.

Blake: 13:43

Completely done. I mean, i mentioned this briefly last episode that I had heard something about Virgin Orbit shutting down, but it's official, you know like well, at least through us, through our news outlet, it's official Virgin orbit not defunct. Very sad, i mean. They tried to hold on there for a minute but after failing to secure funding, they had to declare their bankruptcy and then they auctioned off all of their assets And that's that.

Paul: 14:17

That's the way she goes. That's the way she goes. Well, this next one, they're not really shutting their doors per se, but Boeing has delayed Starliner indefinitely. So Boeing made the announcement during a news conference with NASA officials. They're already years behind schedule and we're supposed to compete with SpaceX's Dragon capsule as a commercial means for getting astronauts to and from the ISS Man. I'm really hoping that they can start recovering from this. I was really rooting for Boeing, but it's just not looking good.

Blake: 14:54

It's really not And it's very unfortunate. I mean, we always want space, well, aerospace companies to really flourish, because more competition means more innovation.

Paul: 15:07

Yeah.

Blake: 15:07

Or more things that we get to see. So you know, with Starliner it being so far behind, i was kind of like is it ever going to happen? What's going on? Boeing, i trust your airplanes. Why can't I not trust your space capsule yet?

Paul: 15:24

Exactly. Yeah, And that's the scary part now is really trust? Because in a previous episode, right, I talked about how their July launch could be delayed to next year And if they couldn't fix the computer software issues and hardware compatibility with a new rocket, you know it was one looking too good, So now they're concerned about get this flammable wiring, harnesses and weak parachute links Okay.

Blake: 15:53

Repeat that again. No kidding, But seriously flammable wiring harnesses in this day and age? Yeah.

Paul: 16:00

So, as far as those wiring harnesses go, they believe the protective tape used to wrap them could be flammable under certain conditions, mainly the adhesive used in the tape, and there's like hundreds of feet of it.

Blake: 16:17

Yeah, that's pretty major. That goes kind of back to I believe it was Apollo 1, where there was a spark caused by faulty wiring.

Paul: 16:25

Yeah, Yeah, so I mean that's like immediately, what I thought of was Apollo 1, there on the pad. You know, i don't know if this is as serious of an issue, but I was looking at what they're trying to do to fix it. They're afraid to cut it all off because doing so may cause more damage, so instead they're thinking of wrapping over the existing tape with another material to reduce the risk. So yeah, i mean, we're both kind of looking at each other here, kind of shaking our heads. I mean, before I criticize Boeing too much, you know, i really don't know what the severity of this is and what could potentially spark this adhesive. Because you know I'm thinking, you know, when it comes to wiring, wiring in of itself is slammable, yeah, and so wrapping it in something else that's just as or less slammable than the wiring underneath it isn't technically doing more harm. But you're not necessarily shielding yourself either. So now they want to put a bandaid over it.

Blake: 17:36

Yeah, i don't know how I think about that You know because you know we as pilots we're very familiar with companies that provide their fixes as bandaid solutions.

Paul: 17:49

That's exactly what I see this as, i'd say literal bandaid.

Blake: 17:52

Yeah, exactly, and you know, with bandaid solutions and aviation it's kind of like OK, yeah, but is this airplane really safe? Is it OK to fly? Should I really be risking my life here?

Paul: 18:05

Yeah, We're now at the point where we're talking about spacecraft. You can't. you know, in an airplane, when you have a fire, it's a big deal, and you've got to come down right. You're up in space, you have a fire, you're quite literally toast.

Blake: 18:20

Yeah.

Paul: 18:21

So yeah, i don't, i don't know, i really don't know what their you know risk management is looking at here. It's just tough, it's hard to say And but but let's go ahead and move forward. In regards to the parachutes, the soft links, which are like the soft nylon links that hold the lines to the to the craft, aren't strong enough to support the capsule if one parachute were to fail. So NASA requires the capsule to have three shoots and be able to land on two. So in this case, if one were to fail, the links holding the lines of the remaining two could possibly fail, also under the increased weight and stress.

Blake: 19:10

OK, I need to talk to these engineers real quick. Yeah, guys, come on.

Paul: 19:16

I'm just, I'm like how does that get past your like?

Blake: 19:20

Yeah, How does it get past like your you know your engineers, your team of engineers? really, How does that get past? the manager of that team of engineers? How does that get past like quality assurance and stuff like that There's? there's something going on here And I don't want to say that Boeing's like intentionally cutting corners to be cheaper, But that's what it's sounding like right now.

Paul: 19:46

Yeah, i mean that just seems like such a small, insignificant part, yet extremely important part, you know, piece of the puzzle to try and shortcut, you know who knows what's going on, but it's just one thing after another And there are years behind on this. It's just, it's just not looking good.

Blake: 20:10

Yeah, honestly, I mean I'd say, cut their losses, cut out the wiring, the diagrams, wiring harnesses, fix the parachute problem. Go back to, you know, just go back to the drawing board and try to figure out how to actually fix these problems and not put a band aid solution on this, because these are literal lives at stake here.

Paul: 20:33

Yeah, yeah, it's gotten pretty serious at this point And I think that with them already being this far behind, it's kind of like what do they have to lose by delaying further and just taking the longer, safer way out of it? You know, i feel like if they were really trying to meet some crazy deadline that's like right now. You know, i mean, they're already behind, i don't know. I don't know.

Blake: 20:56

Honestly, I say NASA is about to probably like drop that contract for Boeing and go with someone else.

Paul: 21:03

It's possible, Like I said. I mean, they were supposed to compete with SpaceX and SpaceX already has, I think, like 10 missions to the ISS or something like that.

Blake: 21:11

Yeah, it leaves and bounds above what Boeing has right now. So you know.

Paul: 21:16

I hate to see it. I want Starliner to succeed, but, man, i hate to see it.

Blake: 21:20

Yeah, me too, And you know it's something to behold with all this progress that we're trying to make these days, and something that I'm really excited about actually is the Chinese manned space white program.

Paul: 21:32

Yeah, yeah.

Blake: 21:33

So to kind of put into context about what we're going to talk about, China has actually released a statement, I suppose, about how they were planning to get an astronaut on the moon by 2030.

Paul: 21:49

Yeah, i did see that. Yeah, i know that China's had a lot going on. It's just been hard Like I want to feature them in the launch segment, but it's sometimes hard for me to get data on what they've got, especially on cargo missions. It's hard to figure out what's on board And it's not always posted somewhere where I can easily get access to it.

Blake: 22:10

Yeah, of course I think that might just be like a political thing, because I know US and China aren't on the best of terms right now. So they're probably just trying to keep everything under wraps for them. Who knows, cargo missions could actually be spy satellites. Spy missions right, i'm not trying to, you know, cause any scares or anything like that.

Paul: 22:32

But You never know, I'm just trying to keep going it. So hey, Yeah, no kidding.

Blake: 22:38

And I mean China's space program has come a long way since heck. Even in the early 2000s, they didn't send their first astronaut into space until I think it was 2003.

Paul: 22:51

Yeah, I think I remember that I was real young, but I think I remember that.

Blake: 22:54

Yeah, i mean, you know I was eight years old at the time, But it was still crazy to me, because the first astronaut that the United States sent was Oh man, i forgot his name, but it was like early 60s, 1962 or something like that.

Paul: 23:12

Alan Shepard.

Blake: 23:13

Yeah, alan Shepard, that's the one, 1962 or 1960 something. And you know you're talking about like a 40 year gap in between what we've done and what China's done. And here they are, they're kind of catching up.

Paul: 23:27

Yeah.

Blake: 23:28

And they're like great because, well, they're building their own space station and it's called I'm going to butcher this so hard Tian Gong, I think.

Paul: 23:38

I have no idea. I've seen the name and I'm not even going to attempt it Tian Gong.

Blake: 23:44

I don't know, but, seriously, hats off to you guys that can pronounce that, because I have no clue. They previously had another Tian Gong station called Tian Gong One, and that was like a precursor to Tian Gong Two, and then that was a precursor to Tian Gong, with no number.

Paul: 24:05

Gotcha.

Blake: 24:06

So Tian Gong One actually performed China's first rendezvous in docking with another spacecraft which carried more astronauts, and then they de-orbited it And then they launched up Tian Gong Two, which was another test bet. Essentially They launched that one up. It was smaller, it had a central module and then a laboratory, i think.

Paul: 24:30

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. Were these single module stations like Skylab, or were they multiple modules, type of things?

Blake: 24:38

In my reading it looked like they were multiple modules, But I think it was just one module and then another module.

Paul: 24:45

that they docked to it, gotcha.

Blake: 24:48

That could be wrong. Like yeah, Tian Gong Two was launched into orbit in 2016. And, for reference, we did Skylab back in the 70s And then the International Space Station was like the 90s and stuff like that. So you know, they're getting caught up and they're doing a good job. It's great to see.

Paul: 25:08

Especially by themselves, like that.

Blake: 25:10

Oh yeah, i mean, i did a whole research paper on this thing, but Paul didn't want me to present all of it. It would be a literal episode. It would be a literal episode, it would be a literal episode by itself.

Paul: 25:21

I think I've read his notes. I'm like, oh my God, you got to be kidding Dude, okay.

Blake: 25:28

To be fair, it's all really cool. It's a lot of information, it's a lot of fun.

Paul: 25:33

Yes, i don't blame you at all. Like literally, though, i mean okay, if we start like a Patreon thing, that would be a Patreon deal right there, just like a Chinese space episode just by itself, oh yeah.

Blake: 25:45

We'll do that. All right, we'll look into doing that. I think the first thing that we did was we launched a new project called the Tieng Gong 2. It was launched in 2016 and it orbited Earth until 2019. Then it de-orbited and burned up in the atmosphere, kind of like the Russian launch that happened earlier. That's what we're going to talk about today is Tieng Gong and China's program moving forward. As I said, tieng Gong, we're only calling this one Tieng Gong. There's no number or anything.

Paul: 26:18

We're back to the beginning almost, Yeah essentially. Don't you love that?

Blake: 26:24

Full circle. But yeah, its first piece was launched back in 2021. It's permanently crewed by the Chinese astronauts in low Earth orbit. Kind of like the International Space Station, This station is built more on a modular design similar to the ISS. Once this station is fully built, it will consist of the core module attached to two space labs. It will have its own power, propulsion and license support systems and living quarters, just like the ISS. It's basically China's version of the.

Blake: 26:59

ISS. It is a little smaller than the ISS. It only has space for three astronauts at a time, as opposed to the ISS six. So you know, leaving something to be desired, but nothing major really.

Paul: 27:14

Yeah, yeah, three. I mean you know it makes it sound small, but yeah, when you're putting into comparison of the usual crew of the ISS at six it's.

Blake: 27:22

Yeah, I'm sure they could maybe house like an extra one or two astronauts at a time, but I'm not sure I didn't look too far into it. This station is a major step in China's three-step space exploration program, And real quick. the first step is launch a crewed spaceship with the aim of building up the fundamental capability in human space exploration, which they've achieved that. The second step, develop and launch a space lab in a cargo spaceship and conduct space science experiments, which they've kind of achieved that too. And then the third step, which ties back into the station, is finish the construction of the station. Great right.

Paul: 28:03

Yeah, it seems.

Blake: 28:06

But yeah, you know, the Chinese are making major progress towards their goals of putting humans on the moon, more specifically, chinese astronauts on the moon by 2030. We're going back to the moon. I say we're. Nasa is going back to the moon in 2025, supposedly. We'll see how that goes.

Paul: 28:25

Yeah.

Blake: 28:27

Yeah, their plan includes a short stay on the lunar surface and a human robotic joint exploration. I want to see what they do with this robotic thing they're going to put on on the lunar surface.

Paul: 28:43

I wonder if that's just like a fancy way of saying we're going to send a rover with the humans.

Blake: 28:47

That's a good question, and I'm sure it might be like a rover with a robotic arm or something like that. I don't know. Yeah, i mean shoot.

Paul: 28:58

We had the buggy during Apollo.

Blake: 29:00

Yeah, we're better than you.

Paul: 29:03

We got a buggy on the moon.

Blake: 29:08

The overall goal is to carry out scientific exploration and tech demonstrations on a lunar surface for furthering something I'm not sure I'm wondering if they're going to go the commercial route and be like hey establish a lunar base.

Paul: 29:24

Chinese moon base Yeah.

Blake: 29:26

Yeah, further into that. actually, this whole goal will lead into developing a commuting system and short say, let me rephrase short term day systems for crews and develop human slash robot integrated testing.

Paul: 29:44

Huh, okay.

Blake: 29:47

So probably science labs on the moon, kind of like the space stations, but instead of orbiting the Earth we're actually just on the moon.

Paul: 29:55

See, it sounds a lot like what NASA wants to do with Artemis. and what are they calling it? moon base or God? what's the station around the moon getting called Moon base?

Blake: 30:08

I don't know. Actually, we'll look that up real quick.

Paul: 30:11

Gateway.

Blake: 30:13

Gateway. That's what they're calling it, Yeah.

Paul: 30:15

Gateway is what I'm thinking of.

Blake: 30:17

Okay, well, that's interesting. Yeah, i mean, i don't know if China is trying to directly compete with the United States, but if they are, i'm all for it.

Paul: 30:28

Yeah, their progression is darn quick.

Blake: 30:31

Yeah, i mean. you're talking about going from the first, your first astronaut in 2003 to putting humans on the moon, so almost as quick as what. we did give or take a few years, because our first astronaut was early sixties and then we landed on the moon in 1969, right? Yeah, i think so.

Paul: 30:51

Yeah, 69.

Blake: 30:54

So you know pretty quick there. But this could be a new age space race and I'm all for it. I love space history. I love reading about the space race back in the seventies or sixties and seventies.

Paul: 31:07

It's kind of like seeing a modern version of that Yeah.

Blake: 31:10

Yeah, So you know, I'm excited to see what happens and hopefully it all goes well for China and then all goes well for NASA too.

Paul: 31:19

Yeah, same here. Well, I'll go ahead and change gears from the moon over to Mars real quick. Esa you may have missed it. You can actually go watch it on YouTube. They had a Mars live stream on Friday, So this was to celebrate the Mars Express orbiters 20th birthday. They live streamed images of Mars to YouTube.

Blake: 31:41

Yeah, I saw that and I checked it out real quick and I was like, oh, it's just a single image of Mars.

Paul: 31:46

Yeah, it wasn't really like a video is basically. You know, here's a slide show that refreshes every 50 seconds. Yeah, but I mean, it's the first thing of its kind. They were taken using the visual monitoring camera, or they call it the VMC. It wasn't really built for this purpose, but it's cool, so who cares?

Blake: 32:09

Yeah, honestly, no, seriously. It's a 20 year old spacecraft live streaming stuff back to YouTube.

Paul: 32:16

Yeah.

Blake: 32:16

I mean think about that 20 years ago we barely had computers in our homes, right, or I say that, but like powerful computers, i suppose.

Paul: 32:24

Yeah, before cell phones We were looking at like social media and live streaming all around the place. You know things like that webcams and all that kind of thing.

Blake: 32:32

Yeah, I mean the infancy of the internet and all that.

Paul: 32:36

Yeah. So in case you're wondering why this hasn't been done before, usually feeds or reserves strictly for scientific use. Number one, And live streams themselves are quite rare, because the orbiter has to be in a position around Mars to be able to point its antenna back to Earth without being shadowed by the planet or the sun. During the live stream, they were also talking about having to use power to heat the orbiter before it passes into the shadow of the planet. So even if you do have a live stream opportunity, you still have to be able to have enough power generation to support the needs of the orbiter. But yeah, they were. They actually had to heat up the orbiter enough that once it passed on the dark side of Mars and no longer could generate its own power, it would be cooling down, but it would cool down from a higher temperature to where it wouldn't freeze.

Blake: 33:30

So makes sense. Yeah, yeah, continuing on this Mars segment, we've got going. Our Martian helicopter companion, ingenuity, has decided to take a six day vacation. Oh, no, at least that's how I'm going to freeze it, because it's more funny than what actually happened. Let's put it that way.

Blake: 33:51

So researchers had actually feared the worst when the helicopter didn't wake up during its daily wake up window. Their guess was that a rocky outcrop was interfering with the signal between Ingenuity and its partner, perseverance, who actually receives the commands for the helicopter and then relays them to the helicopter. It was feared lost, just put it that way, and that's super scary. However, they did mention something about this had happened in the past, but it wasn't for six days, it was only for a day or two. So it wasn't major and they were kind of expecting it, i think, because it was approaching the Martian winter or something like that. And on the sixth day it woke up, hey, and everyone in the room breathed the giant sigh of relief. Yeah, i imagine. So, yeah, right, because I mean, we've talked about Ingenuity in the past and just really cool little helicopter that's just flying around on Mars, buddy buddy with Perseverance, and it's just really cool.

Paul: 34:58

It'd be like Perseverance losing its little pet you know be so sad. Perseverance doesn't have its teddy bear anymore.

Blake: 35:03

Oh man, Just like how the whole internet cried a little bit when it lost a pet rock. that had been like hauling around in its wheel for like a year or two or something like that. That was funny.

Paul: 35:16

No, no, you want to cry about rovers, which was the one that was sent the last message out. Do you remember that My battery is getting low and it's something? No, wasn't that curiosity, was that curiosity, i can't remember which one, it was Man. that was sad, though.

Blake: 35:36

I think that was the first Mars rover that we had ever sent.

Paul: 35:39

I didn't think I'd ever feel for a robot that bad.

Blake: 35:43

Oh, man, i mean and you know you're talking about poor rovers They sing themselves happy birthday.

Paul: 35:49

Yes, it's so sad.

Blake: 35:52

Like man, i love you guys, but stop, please, stop making me cry.

Paul: 36:00

The engineers do this stuff on purpose.

Blake: 36:03

Yeah, but you know it's all in good fun and I'm sure they just toss a little beeper on those things and you're just like, oh hey, we can send this little program to control this little beeper, to send happy birthday.

Paul: 36:14

Yeah, a little MIDI thing, just send it out to it, oh man. Collie.

Blake: 36:20

And then you know, speaking of going silent, we actually have learned the cause of the Hakudo R mission And, real briefly, this was a Japanese lunar lander that was supposed to be the very first commercial lunar lander.

Paul: 36:37

Right, right, yeah, but after watching the live stream last I saw they just lost communication of it.

Blake: 36:45

Yeah, they did, because it crashed Well. Yeah, well, you know, like we had said last time, we spoke about it and we broke the news to our listeners that this happened. We kind of were just hoping that, you know, it landed, had some kind of weird antenna glitch or something, I don't know. We were just hoping that it was OK and there was just some kind of communications problem, not necessarily that the lunar lander had crashed. Anyways, on its descent it passed a steep cliff of about three kilometers in elevation and this was determined to be the rim of a crater on the moon. So, yeah, this caused a larger than expected discrepancy between the measured altitude value and the estimated altitude value that they set in advance, and this was kind of an oversight, i think, by the people over at iSpace. But they changed the lunar lander's landing point.

Paul: 37:54

Huh.

Blake: 37:55

Yeah, so before they launched it, sorry, no, after they launched it, they changed its landing point. So before they launched it, they actually programmed it to land in a specific spot and they probably didn't expect this giant crater to appear and cause these issues.

Paul: 38:14

Yeah, I imagine so.

Blake: 38:16

So in their proposed, their first proposed landing spot it probably would have been okay. but then they changed it over to the second spot and then this sensor fault happened, i suppose I guess it is a fault. And then boom goes, dynamite I guess. But no, seriously kind of an oversight on their part. I don't know why they didn't try to fix that problem or maybe rerun some simulations and upload it. I'm not sure.

Paul: 38:50

Now. so I'm just trying to think here. So did the pre-programmed altitude have precedence over the measured altitude? I believe so, Yes. So, it was like I'm supposed to land it. I'm just going to throw some numbers out 30 feet and, oh my God, I just walked off a cliff and it's 300 feet. Well, I'm still going to act like I landed in 30, kind of thing.

Blake: 39:15

Essentially kind of what happened. So the software on board the craft determined that the sensor was faulty because it measured a 3000 or well yeah 3000 meter difference, or three kilometer difference in the altitude.

Paul: 39:33

And it said yeah, there's no way, this is right, The sensors faulty. I'm throwing this data out.

Blake: 39:38

Yeah, i started filtering out that altitude data and it's just like, okay, we're not going to use this sensor anymore. So this is trying to go similarly with what happened with Boeing 737 Max, is, the two sensors weren't meshing well And so you get that runaway nose downtrim that caused some serious crashes. Yeah Yeah, that's kind of what happened here. There were multiple sensors, but one was being filtered out and I guess it was just going off.

Paul: 40:10

Just one and took precedence of the what it thought was the right sensor, which ended up being the false sensor.

Blake: 40:16

Yes.

Paul: 40:16

Gotcha.

Blake: 40:18

As such, this was determined to be a software error that caused a crash. The software was designed to maintain stability throughout the mission, and when it determined the sensor was inaccurate, it rejected it. It was filtering it out, so the must. The software mistakenly thought the craft was at zero altitude, while it was at about three miles or five kilometers above the surface. Oh my God, yeah, big difference. Big difference. I mean, you're talking about maybe an acceleration towards the ground of like maybe 100 meters per second.

Paul: 40:48

Yeah, that's man, that's not good. Yeah, i didn't realize that it was that big.

Blake: 40:53

Oh yeah, no, it was a big difference, i hate to laugh, but that's pretty comical.

Paul: 40:59

No, seriously, like I mean it's like basically a software bug. It's like walking off your front porch and forgetting that you live at the top of a high-rise condo.

Blake: 41:12

Oh man Debbie Yeah.

Paul: 41:14

Dang Golly. Yeah, you didn't miss one step, you missed the whole sky rise, but yeah.

Blake: 41:21

I mean, you know, i wonder what this is going to do for the future of iSpace is whether or not, like hey, we came out, we found the crash. It actually wasn't a big deal. But you know it's a commercial company. People are going to look at their stock, be like, oh, this was a huge failure.

Paul: 41:38

I don't know. I think people see it as all right. I mean things happen, you see. I mean they found the issue and now they know. So you know going forward, you know it's okay. This was pretty much a test after all. Yes, it had stuff on board had it been successful, but it would have been nice had it been. But I think they'll be okay as far as that goes.

Blake: 42:01

Yeah, I think honestly, looking back at the little roadmap of like the 10. I think it was 10 milestone, Yeah 10 milestones, the 10 milestone roadmap that they had for this thing. I think each milestone was basically like oh hey, if we make it first milestone, our new goal is the second one. So they might have planned to only reach the first milestone And then every milestone after that was just extra.

Paul: 42:32

Yeah, it's just a bonus right. Yeah, Yeah because when you looked at their milestone roadmap they were all very close together. It wasn't like launch is milestone one, get to the moon's milestone three and land on them. You're milestone two and land on the moon's milestone three. It was like you got 10 things. It was get to the moon, get into orbit around the moon, get into a landing orbit around the moon, get into an approach orbit around them. You know it was all these little things.

Blake: 43:00

Just a bunch of small little things And honestly, I think landing on it was their final milestone. So if we were going by percentages, they accomplished 90% of what they were going to do 90%.

Paul: 43:11

Yeah, yeah, they made it to the surface, just not the way that was intended.

Blake: 43:17

Yeah, they crashed.

Paul: 43:20

Well, speaking of which NASA actually thinks that they found the crash site. Oh, interesting, they used the lunar reconnaissance orbiter or the LRO. It flew over the area and it took 10 images for a before and after comparison. So the before image to me I don't know. If you look at it, it was kind of blurry, so it's hard to tell what's you know debris and what's just extra details not seen before, like in the before image, because the after image just seems a lot sharper. I'm not sure if it was lighting or the angle that it was taken, but the after image just seems much, much sharper. But it really jumps out at you when they show the ratio image.

Paul: 44:03

And this is created by dividing the data from the after and before images. So think of it as combining the two and then, like the computer kind of takes the difference and then displays that difference to you, you can clearly see an area of higher reflectivity. In other words it's brighter where the lander is thought to have made impact. So you know you can kind of see this. You know you might be wondering, you know why is brighter, you know how does that happen. So think of craters on the moon. The surface of the moon is kind of like scattered dust right. It's not very compact And normally it's kind of dark. I mean it's bright under daylight, but we'll call it like dark gray or something like that Just for sake of example here. When something hits it, it disperses everywhere and it gets compacted, and so when you look at craters on the moon they look almost like little like white stars right With spikes kind of scattering out where all that debris went.

Blake: 45:07

Yeah.

Paul: 45:08

So this is a very similar thing that they were seeing in this ratio image basically was the area before and then the area after was much brighter. It was almost white with kind of scattered debris spreading out. Now they're going to continue imaging over the coming months under various lighting conditions and viewing angles, so hopefully we'll see more and more of this and really get some detail views of what went on.

Blake: 45:31

Yeah, that'd be great. I mean, you know, i just want to see where it was and get a big enough telescope to be able to make out that detail. That'd be great. But no, i'm kidding. Yeah, kind of moving on, we do have another satellite to talk about, and that's the world's first hacking sandbox satellite is set to ride on the SpaceX launch, or did it get launched? I think it was launched. It has launched. I wrote it down in my notes. I just glanced over it, my bad. This little satellite has been dubbed Moonlighter and it's only about five kilograms, so it's really small for a satellite.

Paul: 46:12

You know, i mean it's like small, it's a big, big yeah.

Blake: 46:17

But yeah, it was launched aboard a SpaceX rocket and I believe it's either going to be in orbit around the earth or aboard the space station. I could not find clarification on that.

Paul: 46:32

Interesting.

Blake: 46:33

I saw one article that's like, oh yeah, it's going to be aboard the space station, and then another article that was like yeah, it's been launched into orbit, And I'm like, okay which one is it?

Paul: 46:43

To me, if it's a satellite, I would think it'd be in orbit.

Blake: 46:47

Yeah, you would hope, right. Anyway, this satellite will be a playground for hackers to learn more about cybersecurity and space of course.

Paul: 46:56

I mean, we just talked about that last week.

Blake: 46:59

Oh God, we spent 20 minutes on that topic.

Paul: 47:02

Yeah, we spent a long time on that.

Blake: 47:03

Oh my goodness, we were just talking about really cool spy stuff. You know, because like, Because spy stuff.

Blake: 47:10

Spy stuff yeah, just like space stuff. You know it's super cool. But yeah, the aerospace corporation plans to use the information gathered by the hackers to figure out how we can patch out security goals and vulnerabilities in space. Whether or not that's going to be able to be applied to every satellite up in space right now is a question to be seen. I'd imagine, as long as it's not like a hardware vulnerability and it's only a software vulnerability, they'd be able to patch it out no problem.

Paul: 47:42

Yeah, you would think so yeah.

Blake: 47:45

But you know that's an interesting thing about cybersecurity is like once one thing's patched out, they'll probably be able to find another thing.

Paul: 47:52

Find another loophole.

Blake: 47:55

Just you know, make sure you don't answer your robocalls or you tell them to go to heck or something like that. If you get a spam like text message, don't click on that link. It's going to take your information.

Paul: 48:10

It could be a lone satellite asking about your car's extended warranty.

Blake: 48:15

Sexy satellites found in your area, oh gosh, anyways, moving on from sexy satellites, the coming of robots, the development of AI, how are we feeling about that right now?

Paul: 48:36

Well, considering we now have sexy satellites according to you, I'm not really sure, man. I'm quite uncomfortable.

Blake: 48:44

Okay, probably shouldn't have brought up sexy satellites by that. Anyways, so astronomers are starting to use AI in their data collection, in sorting, if you will. So it's a great thing, because astronomy obviously involves a boatload of data. I mean, you and I we do astrophotography and we're just capturing all this data and then we have to combine it to make a really nice looking image.

Paul: 49:16

Yeah, we're amateurs. I mean, we're just looking at visual data.

Blake: 49:19

Visual data, and there's radio astronomy out there.

Paul: 49:23

Graphs and all kinds of stuff. Yeah, now everything comes through as a pretty picture. We'll put it that way.

Blake: 49:29

Yeah, no, not at all. Anyways, processing all of this data can take a really long time, so astronomers are training AI to help them sort through this data in order to enhance their understanding of it. Well, that makes sense. It'll point out patterns that humans might not have recognized and make predictions and forecasts based on the data presented to it.

Paul: 49:50

Oh yeah, that would be cool, especially when you're like starting to look at brightness measurements and things like that.

Blake: 49:56

Yeah, exactly Like. when is Beetlejuice actually going to go supernova? instead of them being like, yeah, so I could go supernova tomorrow. It could be a thousand years from now. It could be right.

Paul: 50:07

But yeah, that makes total sense because now, instead of having to like hand sweep your data, you could just kind of look at like a huge swath of sky and let the AI just sweep through it and go hey, here's a change. Bam, there you go.

Blake: 50:19

Yeah, exactly, And you know all of this is to make their work simpler and get it out faster and also make it more accessible to the public, which is super exciting.

Paul: 50:31

I mean like I want people to learn about space. I wouldn't know when Beetlejuice is going to blow up.

Blake: 50:37

Yeah, right, I mean, you know, when Beetlejuice blows up, it's just going to be like brighter than the moon apparently. Yeah, So that's fun. But yeah, another really cool thing that was mentioned in one of the articles I read about this is you know, it's going to help make discoveries that we might not have made otherwise. Yeah, So okay.

Paul: 51:03

I see we're going with this. I'm getting there. I see the look on your face. I'm getting there.

Blake: 51:08

I'm getting there All right. So what I mean is there's been discoveries made that just happened by chance, you know, because you know, think about Uranus and Pluto astronomers just so happen to be looking at that part of the sky when they discovered that planet.

Paul: 51:25

That's how we kind of have to look for asteroids too Exactly.

Blake: 51:29

And you know they're thinking. You know, perhaps in the near future AI will make a discovery like this by detecting anomalies and the data that we're collecting. It all looks quite promising And you know as kind of scary as AI is right now, it's also super interesting technology And I want to see it develop into something that helps humanity and helps us make really exciting discoveries and breakthroughs in science that we probably wouldn't have made without it. So let's make sure AI works for us, not us for them, you know.

Paul: 52:06

Yeah, right, and I'm actually thinking about, you know, okay, entrepreneurs out there that know how to code AI for amateur astronomers, right? I would love to have an AI that I can, anytime I get done with an imaging session, upload the images to the AI and it sweeps through every picture for me and tries to detect a change.

Blake: 52:35

I mean, Is that not what?

Paul: 52:38

this is going to do. It is, but I want it. you know, i want it to be accessible to me, okay.

Blake: 52:42

Yeah.

Paul: 52:43

Because, no, seriously, because amateur astronomers make a lot of discoveries and we've seen like impacts on the moon and impacts on Jupiter, even, and like new storms on Jupiter, yeah, so, like you know, if I get done imaging Jupiter, i want to be able to log on to my little astronomy botcom and upload my Jupiter pictures. And it goes Hey, stupid, look, there's a new cloud here, you know, or there might be something here. Take a look at this.

Blake: 53:10

Yeah.

Paul: 53:10

Instead of me having to sweep through everything, hoping I didn't miss something important.

Blake: 53:15

Yeah, exactly, and you know, that kind of goes back to like I don't know if you remember this, but there was a picture not a picture, a gift of the crab nebula. I think it was that I showed you. It was a few months ago. You might not remember, but it's like just showing the crab nebula just slowly expand.

Paul: 53:31

Oh yeah, slowly expanding over the years Yeah, over like 12 years, because it's like a supernova remnant.

Blake: 53:37

Yeah, this guy had been imaging it for X amount of years. I want to say 12. That's the number that's sticking out in my head. I'm not sure, but it's a really, really neat little gift because it shows us that, while it's a static image to us over 10, 15 years, it's actually changing over time.

Paul: 53:57

Yeah, yeah, really neat stuff. Well, continuing with cool stuff and astronomy, here, we have now seen what we think is the brightest quasar since, like the beginning of time, wow, okay, at least like 9 billion years is what they say. So we'll put it that way 5 billion years window there. Okay, anyways, that's yeah, using X rays, astronomers have honed in on a black hole 9.6 billion B, with a B light years away from Earth. What they found is a quasar 100 trillion times brighter than our sun. What in the freaking world?

Blake: 54:50

Okay, can we just imagine for a second the number 100 trillion, yeah, so one million is a lot of money, uh-huh. Or I'm just going to use money in this example. One billion is an insane amount of money because that is A thousand million, a thousand millions. One trillion is even crazier because that is A thousand billions. So now we're at.

Paul: 55:24

A hundred trillion, yeah, a hundred thousand billions. Yeah, that's what we're looking at here. Oh my God, times brighter than our sun. So remember because we talked about this a few episodes back, because people may not even know what the heck I'm talking about with a quasar So quasar is basically just a black hole, supermassive black hole, usually in the middle of the galaxy that's shooting out a jet in any sort of orientation that's not directly at Earth. So that's what we're talking about here.

Blake: 56:01

You know what I just realized? Huh, there's those black holes again.

Paul: 56:05

Yeah, yeah, i'm telling you, man, each week, we got it. Each week, starlink, black holes. We got it here for you, we got it covered. So the quasar named J1144 is found between the constellations of Centaurus and Hydra. It's measured at a whopping 630 million degrees Fahrenheit, that's 350 million Celsius, which is 60,000 times hotter than the sun. So while it blinds you, you're just going to fry as well. The black hole responsible is around 10 billion solar masses and is feeding so quickly that it grows at a rate of 100 suns per year.

Blake: 56:58

I really wish the listeners could see the look on my face right now.

Paul: 57:02

Eventually, we'll do live stream podcasts. by the way, We'll have it up on YouTube.

Blake: 57:06

Yeah.

Paul: 57:08

Oh, my God dude.

Blake: 57:09

What the heck? Yeah What is going on in space, bro. It's just getting worse and worse, I feel like I feel like the more we do this podcast, the more scary stuff we come across. and I'm like man.

Paul: 57:23

We beat it each week almost in a way. That's what it feels like. What's next? Oh yeah, quasars and blazars. Hey, I got a better one for you. Let me just one up that, Yeah.

Blake: 57:33

Let me one up that with a black hole. It's not really a black hole, but it looks like a black hole.

Paul: 57:40

So yeah, I'm man, I can't even fathom. But we were talking about this earlier. Can you imagine if the Milky Way had a quasar in the middle?

Blake: 57:49

Yeah.

Paul: 57:50

If a black hole in the middle of the Milky Way was shooting a jet out of the galaxy, yeah, out of the center of the galaxy.

Blake: 57:56

I mean, i think we kind of like tried to picture it and we were just like, wow, we'd literally never have a nighttime again.

Paul: 58:03

We'd probably never have night. Yeah, we would probably never have night. And if we did, i'm just trying to imagine looking at like the Milky Way in the sky, like a clear night sky out somewhere, and just seeing this plasma jet just being ejected in both directions from it.

Blake: 58:23

Yeah, just imagine, like when we see the Milky Way band at night. It's just like both beams just straight out from the sides, like my goodness.

Paul: 58:32

Yeah, i mean, space is just such a crazy place. I tell you what. But another notable mention here NASA released some images combining new web data, by the way, with the Chandra X-ray Observatory. I think it's Chandra. I'm going to kind of go over this briefly, but they combine web's infrared with X-ray and it has come out with some amazing pictures. There's four of them, i believe. If you're going to look at any one of them, my favorite by far, i think, is the Phantom Galaxy.

Blake: 59:08

Okay.

Paul: 59:09

It's just incredible. You kind of have to wonder what you're even looking at. It looks like you're looking into the center of the universe. It's just nuts. But yeah, go check it out. Just type in web-chandraca in DRA images and it'll come right up on NASA's website. They're awesome One of the best ones I've seen yet come out of web.

Blake: 59:33

Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, the James Webb Space Telescope continues to blow our minds. I love that thing, dude. Every time they release new images I'm like, oh really, where I got to go look at them right now. My goodness, some of the things that it's shown us is crazy.

Paul: 59:51

It's like I'm reliving my childhood, looking at textbooks of Hubble all over again. It's just the same feeling. You're like, wow, that's out there. It's just crazy stuff.

Blake: 1:00:03

Yeah, or whenever they before they launched the Webb Telescope, whenever they would release new Hubble Space Telescope images. It was the same thing, but this is even better. Yeah, well, slightly better. I mean Hubble's kind of hard to beat too, but Webb is something else. Yeah, definitely. And another kind of short imaging topic I wanted to talk about is the pinwheel galaxy. Amateur astronomers have actually captured a little supernova happening in it right now. Over the next couple of months it'll be visible through images, not through the naked eye.

Paul: 1:00:47

Yeah, yeah, we talked about this. I can't remember if it was last episode or the episode before that. We mentioned it when it first happened.

Paul: 1:00:57

It was last week wasn't it, it might have been, but yeah, it's continuing. I think it's got just about as bright as it's going to get now And, from the latest I've seen, it's going to stay that bright for at least maybe another couple months before it begins to dim. But don't worry, even if you can't see it within two months, for whatever reason, it's going to probably take at least two or three years before it dims enough that it's no longer really detectable.

Blake: 1:01:34

Right, yeah, crazy stuff still happening in our galaxy, our local galactic neighborhood, if you will. Yeah, but yeah, that'll be it for the news this week. Let's go ahead and move on to our listener questions.

Paul: 1:01:47

Numero uno. If you could live to see one space event without the risk of death, what would it be? I like these. I like these kinds of questions.

Blake: 1:01:58

Yeah, this one's like this very open-ended question that we both have our own personal opinion on. I'm just going to go ahead and start and say it's tough. There's so many insane things that I want to see. I want to see up close and personal. I don't know if this is the one that I would choose, but I want to see up close and personal, a star exploding.

Paul: 1:02:24

Yeah, that was actually going to be one of my top ones. I want to see a supernova From a far enough distance that I could see the whole thing. it's not just encompassing me. Does that make sense?

Blake: 1:02:38

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I want to be able to see it close enough to where I see it happen in real time. It's not like I'm watching it over the course of five years or something crazy like that. I want to see it happen in real time.

Paul: 1:02:53

Another one that I just thought about a neutron star. Oh yeah, like a pulsar.

Blake: 1:03:01

Oh yeah.

Paul: 1:03:03

It just seems like total fiction to me. I've got no idea what that would actually look like, just this giant ball of neutrons spinning and pulsating at unimaginable speeds.

Blake: 1:03:16

Yeah, and that's crazy. Something else I want to see is like This is my curious mind. I want to live past the event horizon of a black hole. Yeah yeah, that's definitely up there, but I don't know if that's the one I would choose.

Paul: 1:03:35

Yeah, because you're kind of like man. Is it worth it? Is it just a bunch of nothingness, right?

Blake: 1:03:40

Because I mean, once you go through it, there's no going back.

Paul: 1:03:45

Yeah, i'd like to get close enough to one where it's almost like interstellar, where you can see the whole darn thing Again like the supernova, but you're just not like within it Does that make sense. Yeah, yeah, you can observe it in its beauty.

Blake: 1:04:00

I want to see that.

Paul: 1:04:01

Chaos or whatever it might end up being.

Blake: 1:04:04

Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, scientists have actually said that the interstellar black hole was a pretty accurate depiction of it.

Paul: 1:04:13

It was completely computer modeled. It took them forever. Yeah, it was really really neat the way they did that.

Blake: 1:04:20

You know, i think another thing that's up there is I want to see the formation of a planet. What happens? A planet and its moons, even know I got you one better.

Paul: 1:04:30

What the moment of star ignites.

Blake: 1:04:33

Oh yeah, you know the birth of a star.

Paul: 1:04:35

Yeah, like just the moment that fusion begins and it just lights off.

Blake: 1:04:41

Man, that'd be pretty sick, right, oh man.

Paul: 1:04:47

Anyways, okay, okay.

Blake: 1:04:50

So many space events to really like talk about. There's so much that happens in space. It's insane. But yeah, pick your favorite one.

Paul: 1:04:58

Oh God, i think, just out of the pure beauty of it, i would say a supernova.

Blake: 1:05:04

Yeah, okay, i think, yeah, i want to go with the supernova as well.

Paul: 1:05:09

Yeah.

Blake: 1:05:10

Like yeah, okay, it's the death of a star, But I mean, Jesus, imagine getting front row seating to seeing a star explode and cause death and destruction, but that's not important, but also rebirth.

Paul: 1:05:21

I mean, when you think, about it then true, that is true Yeah.

Blake: 1:05:25

I mean that's the supernova is just the stage of the star.

Paul: 1:05:28

Pretty much So anyways, yeah, i mean numerous, endless possibilities, yeah for sure. Now the second question I went ahead and kind of wrote up an answer on this was is the difference in galaxy shape significant? So I imagine this is in regards to me talking about us figuring out that the shape of the Milky Way is not really a forearm spiral like we thought, but more like kind of a two-arm barred spiral galaxy. Yeah, so is the shape significant? The answer, quick answers yes. So I'll go ahead and explain that We have three main categories of galaxies. You got spiral, elliptical and irregular.

Paul: 1:06:15

In theory, spiral galaxies are the youngest and form from clouds of hydrogen. So gravity will begin to pull the hydrogen atoms together And as the clouds grow heavier they spiral inward towards each other and flatten into discs. This can give birth to many star-forming regions and will often see bright, blue and young stars forming within spiral galaxies. As you move towards the center, stars tend to be older and glow like a more orangish-reddish color.

Paul: 1:06:52

Elliptical and lenticular galaxies are thought to be older. They've kind of run out of those star-forming gas clouds and now mainly consist of old stars that have started to interact with one another, forming a spinning disc that can either be well-defined or more spherical in shape. So they're galaxies. They still have some gas and dust in there, but nothing like your spiral galaxies, and they're kind of just I don't want to say burning out, but in a way they are. And then, finally, irregular galaxies are pretty much the result of colliding galaxies and don't really have any defined shape. So to back it all up, yeah, the shapes of galaxies are significant and kind of tell us something about the age and history of the galaxy itself.

Blake: 1:07:41

Yeah, i was going to say age history, how it was formed, kind of.

Paul: 1:07:45

Yeah, has it collided with something? Yeah, so all kinds of cool things.

Blake: 1:07:52

So, yeah, that'll be it for us this week. Thanks for tuning in and listening to us ramble about all the exciting news in the space industry, all the things happening in space, and remember to check out our website, spaceweekco, and be sure to follow us on your favorite platform so you know when our next episode is out. Don't forget to like us on Facebook at Spaceweek and follow us on Twitter at Spaceweek. Underscore.

Paul: 1:08:16

So, without further ado, keep your eyes on the skies. This is Paul and Blake signing off.