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 to bring the wonders of space down to Earth. So sit back, buckle up and get ready for another exciting episode. Hey, everyone, we're finally back. Sorry for that kind of extended leave of absence there.

Blake: 0:36

Yeah, a lot going on in our personal lives that we we'd actually be excited to share with you guys.

Paul: 0:41

Yeah, a lot of career advancement going on. I finally got my ATP. It's kind of about time. I'm sitting around 2,500 flight hours.

Blake: 0:49

Yeah, so now you can be the captain on the jets that you fly I am the captain now? yeah, and then me personally. I studied hard, i grinded real, real long hours and all that stuff And I passed my instrument written exam, so I'm moving up in the piloting world, so there you go One step closer.

Paul: 1:08

So anyways, yeah, it's been about it's coming up on three weeks here. So we got a lot of content for you guys, a bunch of topics, but they're kind of shorter, so we're just going to kind of bump on through them. So I'll go ahead and lead us off with rocket launches As always, a whole bunch of SpaceX, and I'm going to go ahead and lead it off with Starlink. We had four of them. So I'm just going to kind of bunch them all together real quick.

Blake: 1:35

Yeah, that's fine.

Paul: 1:38

Starlink six, dash four was our first one. It launched a batch of 22 version two minis Sunday June 4th at a Cape Canaveral after delays from May 30th and June 1st for weather. Starlink five, dash 11 launched 52 version 1.5 Monday June 12th at a Cape Canaveral after delays from the 9th, 10th and 12th. Starlink five, dash seven launched 47 version 1.5 Thursday June 22nd out of Vandenberg, california. And lastly, starlink five, dash 12 launched 56 version 1.5 Friday June 23rd at a Cape Canaveral, marking SpaceX's 44th launch in the first half of the year A new record.

Blake: 2:25

Phenomenal I guess. More satellites in the, in the sky, to kind of trick us into thinking they're asteroids or aliens, if you will.

Paul: 2:33

Yeah, yeah, we were actually out with our telescopes the other night. We're sitting there looking at stuff going. What is this? But, as a reminder, the current generation is version 1.5, with the next generation, as you want to call it, is the version two minis. Now, don't let the mini moniker fool you. Of course, they're about four times as big as the version 1.5s And they're called mini because of the full size version twos that will be launched in the future aboard Starship. So for those of you that haven't been here for the past, what? seven weeks.

Blake: 3:07

Yeah, something like that. We've been talking about these satellites for quite a while because they're on every Starlink launch.

Paul: 3:12

It's every week. But now that's out of the way, we'll go ahead and move on. SpaceX launched a Dragon 2 cargo capsule on a resupply mission to the ISS on Monday, june 5th, off of Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was delayed from June 3rd and 4th due to high winds in the booster recovery area. So remember, they got to recover these boosters. They had high winds in the recovery zone so they had to delay it further. On board were some more ISS rollout solar arrays, or IROZAs or IROZAs, whatever you want to call them.

Blake: 3:47

IROZAs.

Paul: 3:48

ROSAs. They will require two spacewalks each to install, one for preparation with a mod kit and one for the install itself. Next was SCODEN O-D-I-N, which is a student-led mission by the Canadian Space Agency to measure airborne particles in the atmosphere. in regards to climate change, Moonlighter was the next one.

Blake: 4:15

I actually talked about Moonlighter in the last episode. Space hackers, if you will.

Paul: 4:20

Space hackers, right Yeah we were trying to figure out where this thing was going, so it turns out it did go to the ISS. This CubeSat that we talked about last episode, like Blake just said, is a cyber test platform in hacking sandbox. Its first mission is to host challenges for the Hack-a-Sat 4 event, which is the first capture-the-flag hacking competition with on-orbit challenges taking place at DEFCON 31 in Las Vegas. DEFCON is like a convention.

Blake: 4:52

Yeah.

Paul: 4:53

But yeah, i don't know. This just makes me want to get into the stuff even more.

Blake: 4:57

I know I mean, cybersecurity is very interesting and it'd also be really cool just to know how all of that stuff works. Like I said previously in my web development background, i've had to patch up some holes in some people's websites or websites that I built myself. It's like man, that's how they do that.

Paul: 5:21

That's cool, right? I just want to play capture-the-flag on a space satellite.

Blake: 5:27

Well, you got to become a cybersecurity professional for that, because there are guys out there that are way better than you are. Well, yeah, thanks.

Paul: 5:35

Okay, Looks like good luck, man. And finally, RADSAT SK I think is what it was, I'm trying to remember. This does some real technical stuff with measuring radiation, but bottom line, it measures radiation and is much smaller and cheaper than previous satellites. This will also be testing the use of high concentrations of melanin as a radiation shield in space aboard this thing, so I don't know. They're going to infuse melanin and space shields.

Blake: 6:12

That's interesting.

Paul: 6:14

So I don't know how they do that, but they do that. Next we had SpaceX Transporter 8. Falcon 9 launched the rideshare mission Monday, june 12th out of Vandenberg. This marks the eighth rideshare mission for SpaceX, as they continue to see high demand for these types of missions. They were a whopping 72 payloads on board, with many firsts for several companies, ranging from weather satellites to pharmaceutical manufacturing and recovery. I don't really have time to go over them all, but SpaceNewscom has a great article highlighting the key ones. If you want more info on that, i see you're kind of questioning one of these, you know exactly what I'm going to ask you right.

Blake: 6:58

Sure, go for it. The pharmaceuticals one. What are they doing in space with satellites?

Paul: 7:05

I don't know. They're manufacturing pharmaceuticals in zero gravity. What drugs you need to manufacture in zero gravity, i have no idea.

Blake: 7:16

Okay, okay, sorry I may have misheard that pharmaceutical drug manufacturing in space. Okay, i thought you said pharmaceutical satellites and stuff.

Paul: 7:26

I'm like what, oh, we're giving first aid off of satellites, or?

Blake: 7:30

something, yeah, something like that. I don't know.

Paul: 7:33

Yeah, no, they're basically manufacturing pharmaceuticals and then they have a recovery capsule that drops back to Earth once it's done. I have no clue. We'll have to look into that, but that is interesting, that's, that's something.

Paul: 7:48

Yeah, then we had another. Falcon 9 launch the Satria 1 communication satellite for Indonesian satellite operator PSN on Sunday, june 18th, at a Cape Canaveral. Satria stands for satellite of the Republic of Indonesia and will provide free internet and communications to close to 150,000 public use facilities, including schools, hospitals and government offices across the country. It will have a total throughput capacity of 150 gigabits per second, which is three times the capacity of the nine satellites currently in use. Sounds fantastic, but my only concern is that only gives one megabit per second to each facility when you do the math.

Blake: 8:39

Yeah, that that checks out. But you know, it's like a large ISP really.

Paul: 8:45

It's like, yeah, okay, they have Terabit Brute put to their users, but they get they have to split that terabit Among everybody else exactly, yeah, cuz I was gonna say I mean it's assuming everyone's online at the same time, you know, yeah, and doesn't really take into the capacity of The already available other satellites and ground-based stations. So yeah. Next we had a United Launch Alliance Delta 4 heavy that launched a classified spy satellite for the US National Reconnaissance Office Thursday June 22nd out of Cape Canaveral. Obviously, we don't know what this is, it's classified.

Blake: 9:28

It's a spy satellite.

Paul: 9:29

It's a spy satellite, but it is rumored to be an Orion Reconnaissance sat.

Paul: 9:37

I haven't looked into those but It's a rumor, i don't know. The Delta 4 heavy is the largest in the family of rockets and consists of three cores mounted together to form a triple-body Rocket. Much like other heavy rockets, like Falcon Heavy and the NASA SLS, it can carry up to 2,540 pounds to low earth orbit, 31,330 pounds to geosynchronous transfer orbit and 14,500 pounds to geosynchronous orbit. So Geosynchronous transfer orbit is getting the payload into an orbit ready to be locked into geosynchronous orbit. So the rocket just gets it there and then it's up to the payload to get itself the rest of the way.

Blake: 10:23

Interesting Yep.

Paul: 10:25

So that wraps up the launches themselves, but we did have a few spacewalks as well as usual.

Paul: 10:32

Well, with these solar arrays that they're putting out, they're having to, they're having to go up and install them. So the first was on Friday, june 9th, astronaut Steve Bowen and Woody Oberg worked a little over six hours to install and deploy the fifth Iroza aboard the ISS's Starbird Trust structure and made preparations for the sixth array, to come later. This marked Bowen's ninth spacewalk in Hoburg's first, bowen and Hoburg then continued with our second spacewalk on June 15th to install the sixth Iroza They made preparations for on the ninth. This concludes the installation of these new arrays until two more sets to be installed in 2025. Spacewalk 265 marks Hoburg's second spacewalk is, you can kind of put together. We just talked about us first. Yeah, bowen's tenth, though tying him for the most spacewalks by US astronaut, along with Mike Lopez, bob Bankin.

Paul: 11:34

I guess Bankin, peggy Whitson, who we talked about previously, and Chris Cassidy. We then had a Russian spacewalk, carried out by, of course, sergei Propochev and Dmitry Patelin. This was on Thursday, june 22nd, and lasted six hours 24 minutes. They completed their main objectives to retrieve experiment packages from the ZEVSTV.

Paul: 11:59

ZEVSTV. Yeah, there we go, thank you, and Poisk modules and install communications equipment outside of the station. One final mention this didn't show up in my launch schedule for some reason, but I did want to talk about it. Rocket lab is testing some sort of sub orbital rocket called haste, which stands for hypersonic accelerator, sub orbital test electron. So My understanding is they're using their existing electron rocket for sub orbital payload testing.

Blake: 12:32

Interesting.

Paul: 12:34

I wonder what they'll do with that. That's what I'm trying to kind of know. I mean, there's obviously a need for it, Otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. Yeah, it's. My understanding is it's basically there for a hypersonic and suborbital Capability testing for certain payloads.

Blake: 12:49

I'm not sure what well, it certainly is interesting because you know, these Commercial players in the space industry are pretty good about testing and making sure their stuff works and they just want to, you know, get into the game and Create that market or tap into that untapped market, if you will. A few problems with this sometimes because a lot of these developments can be time-consuming, money-consuming and all that stuff like that. And we've talked about this in the past. But Boeing CEO has said that they're still committed to the Starliner.

Paul: 13:29

Okay, i mean, we talked about this last episode. I guess they heard us, huh.

Blake: 13:33

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I mean we trashed on this thing for a while in the last episode and I Like to think one of Boeing's employees heard us riffing on it and like send it up the chain.

Paul: 13:44

You know, hey guys, let's get on this. I mean We didn't really. I mean we're not trying to like rag on it or anything. I want Starliner to succeed. You know I like Boeing.

Blake: 13:54

Yeah, I mean full disclaimer me too.

Paul: 13:57

But yeah, I mean they definitely got to Really get things together on this and do it rather quickly.

Blake: 14:04

Yeah, and I mean let's quickly review What's wrong with the Starliner. It's got flammable wiring. That caught was caused by, like a binding agent.

Paul: 14:14

It was a tape. It was a tape around the wires. The adhesive on the tape was that's right.

Blake: 14:18

Yeah, bad parachute harness linkages. So if one were to fail, they think that the whole thing would just fail. I suppose, yeah, computer software issues and just not being on a good timeline to get to service. So I mean, this thing was supposed to compete with SpaceX's Dragon capsule. But here we are, a few years since the Dragon capsules first mission, and on top of that The Dragon capsule has quite a few missions under its belt. It's been proven to be safe and reliable. So far It's done about 20 missions if you include the two variants, the crew dragon and the cargo dragon, and If you want to get into the details, only 10 crewed missions.

Paul: 15:03

But Still, better than the Starliner is fat zero, yeah, yeah, and I mean 10 crewed missions is still a lot in the grand schemes, That's a lot of missions, oh, Yeah, and I mean, you know, like we said, full disclaimer, we do want Boeing to succeed and kind of break into the industry and the space.

Blake: 15:22

It's break into the space industry Just because, well, it's Boeing, yeah, like flying on their airplanes and usually they're pretty nice little airplanes I'm talking like the triple seven, the 787 and all that stuff, like really cool airplanes.

Paul: 15:39

I like how you called them little and then name the widebodies. Well, you know.

Blake: 15:45

We'll start with the 737 and then we'll work our way up.

Paul: 15:48

Okay, but.

Blake: 15:50

Yeah, we'll see where this goes. We want Boeing to compete and To me it seems their biggest problem is they have some pretty basic engineering things that they need to overcome if they want to be taken Seriously in this industry. Yeah, I think so and you know Not a hundred percent sure on this, but it even sounded like that though shift gears kind of away from the Starliner and and commit to other launch vehicles, or commit only to launch vehicles, but They're saying they're committed to the Starliner. I don't know what's going on there.

Paul: 16:27

Yeah, i don't know either and I haven't really heard much about their launch vehicles yet. I know they had to come off of the Atlas. That's one of their problems with Starliner. It was supposed to go on the Atlas and now they're gonna be retiring Atlas sometime soon, if not already, i'm not sure. I haven't kept up with it. But so, yeah, i I don't know if they're gonna do something in-house with a launch system or something different and go out of the way, but They do have some good coming here. The Air Force has designated Boeing and NASA's new plane, the x66 a. It aims to be a new design for single-isle aircraft and could lead to a 30% reduction in fuel consumption. Oh well. So it's got this trust wing design Which is like imagine like a 172 rights. It's a high wing with like a trust that comes up, right, yeah. So now imagine a passenger plane, but it's got like a high wing. Imagine like a 737, but its wings are mounted high. Oh yeah, i've seen pictures of this thing, yeah.

Blake: 17:36

And then it's got Wings that would come from the bottom To meet it and they're like yeah so it's like it's a high wing and then that trust that is supposed to be is A wing as well.

Paul: 17:49

I think it's a lifting surface as well. Oh, wow I think, and I've seen a couple different concept images. One of them shows like forward-mounted engines, like a conventional airplane, and then the other one shows like engines that are mounted between the two wings. So I'm not really sure which is the correct design.

Blake: 18:09

It. Okay, it's been a while since I've seen the concept images, but if I remember right, the one that I saw it was like mounted where the wing meets the wing.

Paul: 18:18

Yeah, I mean, yeah it's, it's weird, i don't know, but they did get a designation, so it's moving forward. It's moving forward, Yeah and so they're hoping it to be kind of the future of, you know, single aisle plane design, at least for the time being yeah, that'd be.

Blake: 18:36

That'd be pretty neat. Speaking of other planes, we've got Virgin Galactic flying Italian researchers over the last. Between last episode and today, i forget, it's been like three weeks.

Paul: 18:48

Yeah, maybe three weeks.

Blake: 18:50

Yeah, virgin Galactic has announced its commercial space operations are here, after one quick flight in microgravity for some Italian researchers, after the Italians do their thing with spaceship 2, which is the whole assembly, that's the, the carrier and also the. Launch vehicle Yeah for the sub orbital vehicle, if you will sub orbital space plane thing with a rocket on the back. Yeah, that thing. It's like the Bell X1, if you will.

Paul: 19:18

Yeah they.

Blake: 19:21

After the Italian researchers are done, virgin Galactic plans to begin bringing paying customers to experience sub over sub orbital space flight.

Paul: 19:31

How much is a ticket?

Blake: 19:33

$450,000. Oh Yeah, and there's probably a long line to pay.

Paul: 19:41

I bet, i bet there's already a waiting list. Yeah yeah, we can imagine.

Blake: 19:45

I mean I sure wish we could afford that house a millionaire.

Paul: 19:48

Yeah, i mean shoot, i would yeah me to be on there me too.

Blake: 19:52

I mean it's such a high cost, but I get it. It's a very Ambitious project, that's for sure. They'll be providing these several Rolf I Cannot say the word sub orbital right now. They'll be providing these flights on a monthly basis, i Assume, to perform inspections, maintenance and repairs on the crowd to keep it as safe as possible, and Hope all goes well for them.

Paul: 20:20

Yeah, and if you remember too, i think the last time I brought them up during the launch segment, they were working on a new version of the plane that would be able to like be launched weekly, or something like that.

Blake: 20:30

Yeah, yeah, that's right And you know I believe once that happens, So hopefully bring the ticket costs down. It's definitely still not gonna be cheap. Yeah, fingers crossed probably be. Oh hey, it's gonna be 400,000 rather than 450,000. Yeah, yeah no, I'm kidding.

Paul: 20:47

Here's a coupon code. But speaking of ambitious new aircraft and space planes, spacex recently conducted an engine test of starship 25 at Starbase outside of Brownsville in Texas. This was a test of the engine pumps ahead of a static fire test for the near future. So there was no ignition, just a spin of the pumps and a shutdown. And what I mean by that is rockets. They use turbo pumps to send their fuel and oxidizer under pressure.

Paul: 21:21

Yeah they have to make sure that they spin and do everything they're supposed to. So that's essentially what this was. They spun them up real quick, spewed some liquid oxygen out in a big you know cloud and. That's about it. Yeah, no fire today. No fire today, but they will have that soon, as what it looks like. That's what this is in preparation for.

Blake: 21:40

Yeah, yeah, for sure, i mean, one test always leads to the next test, if that test is successful, right, exactly.

Paul: 21:46

Yep. Also, nasa has taken delivery of the Artemis 2 service module. Ooh, so the European service module 2, or EMS, or ESM 2 little dyslexic there, arrived at Kennedy Space Center back in 2021, but documents finalizing the handover from the ESA to NASA have officially been signed, wow. So they held a small ceremony at KSC on June 14th And, to my knowledge, artemis 2 astronaut Victor Glover was included in that, along with a bunch of other officials.

Blake: 22:24

So That's awesome.

Paul: 22:26

Yeah, you know, just one step closer. By the way, the service module. I didn't really explain that, but in case you don't know and you can't, you know, don't remember it from. You know Dragon's got a service module. You know Apollo kind of had a service module. It basically just houses all the life supports, the fuel, the propulsion, it's what's got the rocket on the back, and then when they're done with the mission They let it loose and then just bring the capsule back to the atmosphere.

Blake: 22:52

Yeah, so it's what the capsule sits on top of. Yeah, low and behold my friends. More news about the Chinese space program. Hey, it's time more focused on their lunar efforts. I believe last episode we did in fact talk a little bit about their plans for a moon base. We did but it was mostly about their I Kind of guess their overall goal for the next decade.

Paul: 23:17

Yeah, and a little bit about their station and all that going on station mostly Yeah.

Blake: 23:22

We've known for a little while that China has plans to build a base of operations and study our our closest neighbor, moose. They've announced that a few countries have since joined their initiative to establish the International Lunar Research Station, or I LRS. Oh, cool, okay. The countries that have signed on are Russia, pakistan, united Arab Emirates and the Asia Pacific Space Corps Operation Organization, or Apsco is what I'm gonna call it.

Paul: 23:54

Wow, yeah, i didn't realize so many were involved. I thought China was kind of doing this by themselves.

Blake: 23:58

But so originally good point you bring up. Originally This was a joint project between China and Russia, But ever since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, China seems to have opened up the project to the rest of the countries as Probably a show of neutrality in my opinion. But you know that's not. I Don't want to get into politics here.

Paul: 24:20

This is not a political podcast.

Blake: 24:22

I just think that's what's going on. But yeah, real quick. Apsco, or the Asia Pacific Space Cooperation Organization, includes a number of countries all over the east all joined together for the advancement of space development. So it's like Heck. I even think Pakistan's one of them, but it's a bunch of countries over in the east, so Thailand, pakistan, malaysia, i think, is one of them. It's crazy. Wow. More on them, maybe in a patreon episode or something. Yeah, that'd be cool, yeah.

Paul: 24:55

Yeah, we talked about that doing like a whole picture episode on China. We do need to set that up. I think that'd be cool.

Blake: 25:00

Yeah, that'd be fun. The I LRS aims to construct a permanent lunar base in the 2030s with a few milestone missions beforehand. They didn't go into detail what the milestone missions might be, but I assume it's just gonna be a bunch of testing of probably heavy launch vehicles, because that's, that's a lot.

Paul: 25:22

Yeah, they're gonna definitely need some of those. Yeah, cuz I was thinking about that a little bit because a lot of these countries Some of them do have rockets and everything Yeah, they're. They're smaller payload, low earth orbit type rockets.

Blake: 25:35

Yeah, well, you know, china has launched Space stations up They do have their own heavy capabilities, Yeah it's just that I think the biggest issue here is Building a station on the moon. Yeah, so imagine taking One module of the ISS all the way up to the moon.

Paul: 25:59

That's a lot of fuel. It's a lot.

Blake: 26:03

I Really wish Everyone could see the scale of the Saturn 5 rocket that took the astronauts to the moon.

Paul: 26:10

It's insane and the size of their capsule.

Blake: 26:15

It is mind-blowing.

Paul: 26:17

It's funny. I mean I've got a. Okay, I've got a Lego kit of the Saturn 5 in the room right now with us and it comes with a little bit. He scale capsule. It does, yeah, you can see, and it's just hysterical.

Blake: 26:30

Definitely definitely look something like that up, because, oh my god, it's insane. Like yeah, okay, they have a little bit more than that capsule, but Man, it's still.

Paul: 26:42

It's pretty it's pretty comical how much you need to lift such a small payload so far. I mean, look at the space launch system, the SLS, that's gonna take Artemis, yeah, i know. So I mean, there, you, there, you have it. So now you got to take an entire space station segment to the moon and we're gonna do it too. We're gonna do it too Eventually, yeah, but yeah, looking forward to that they are planning to build this base over five missions.

Blake: 27:07

So that's I Mean it's a lot, That's pretty quick Yeah. It's a lot, but also it's it's pretty quick. I mean, I'm not a hundred percent sure how many built the ISS, but it wasn't five. Yeah, they also plan to power this base by nuclear reactors, which is pretty awesome to think about. and I mean, paul, would you like to educate the class?

Paul: 27:30

Okay, Yes, when you told me about this I started thinking I was like nuclear reactors, i was like, and then I remembered I Was on a flight one time with a guy I think from IBM was doing this. They're setting up like a new facility in the woodlands here north of Houston and And they're they're putting together what are called SMRs or small modular reactors, and I don't think IBM's like the first to do it. But it's like this new technology and Essentially I'm not going to go into nuclear physics here, super details on how reactors work, but it's easier than you think. You can find it like in a 10-minute YouTube video You can know how nuclear reactors work.

Paul: 28:07

They're not that hard but essentially what you have in a normal sized one and like a big power plant is, you know, a bunch of rods of uranium or whatever your fuel is. It gets really hot in a pool, produces steam, blah, blah, blah, you know. However they have it set up, it might spin a turbine or something whatever. These are basically just small versions of that and you can picture them as like little bitty Almost capsules, right, and you can put as many of them together as you want. You can transport them because they're so small. You can just bring them wherever you want, set them up in the middle of nowhere, in our case on the moon And, and they're awesome. And as we continue to kind of research nuclear energy and in different fuels and doing so, these can get really, really efficient At a very low cost.

Blake: 28:59

Oh yeah.

Paul: 29:00

So they're kind of the next big thing. Keep an eye for them. So that's small modular reactors or SMRs, if you want to look them up.

Blake: 29:06

Yeah, that'd be pretty sweet in. That's just one of the challenges of like building a moon base, because you have to think about the moon. It's such a harsh environment. I mean, you're talking about being in the Sun for in extended, extended period of time and then being in the shadows for an extended period of period of time. The Sun's really hot, shadow for really cold. Yeah, i don't think people realize this, but our Earth's atmosphere protects us from a lot of the Sun's radiation and heat.

Paul: 29:39

It's insane, especially here recently, with the solar activity picking up. Oh yeah, that's not one of our topics today, but but that is something to think about is we've had a lot more activity here as we reach the peak of the peak of the solar cycle. Oh yeah, so yeah, it does a lot for us.

Blake: 29:57

Anyways. So they have to engineer it that way and also they're gonna start it out as a robotics research facility. So I'm assuming a bunch of sensors, drilling arms and scanners at first, and then it'll transition to housing astronauts.

Paul: 30:13

Huh, okay, so like a little center for like a bunch of little rovers to go around and do their thing. Yeah bring people there. Yeah, that would be cool. That would be pretty cool.

Blake: 30:24

I'm looking forward to it. I mean, i want to see us on the moon. I know we've talked about going to Mars, but Really, the moon is right there guys.

Paul: 30:35

Well, I'm gonna kind of scream back over to our atmosphere and all that. Scientists have found that we're pumping out so much groundwater that we've actually changed the tilt of the Earth All right, just let that sink in.

Blake: 30:52

Okay, we're good, okay, cool.

Paul: 30:56

So this comes from an article on spacecom and explains that between 1993 and 2010, the Earth's tilt has changed by 31.5 inches or 80 centimeters. Scientists have known that the tilt changes from climate-related processes such as thawing of icebergs and redistribution of water mass across the planet. That makes sense. There's a lot of water on Earth. Things melt, things freeze. The density changes. Okay, it changes the tilt right. Water is really heavy.

Blake: 31:29

Yeah.

Paul: 31:30

Yeah, and it's a vast majority of the surface of the planet, Yeah. So here's the thing Their calculations were off by 31 inches, though Every time they factored it in they're sitting there going okay, we're off by 31 inches. We're off by 31 inches. What the heck is making up the 31 inches of tilt that we see? It wasn't until they took into account the 2,150 gigatons of water that we've removed from the natural reservoirs that their calculators finally zeroed out. We moved a lot of water in close to 20 years, So that makes sense.

Blake: 32:09

I mean, my goodness, that is a lot of water.

Paul: 32:14

Yeah, But 31 inches, I mean, when you think about it it's not a whole lot, but it's there. I mean it's pretty neat that we've actually done enough, that we've changed the tilt of the Earth.

Blake: 32:29

Yeah, oh God. Okay, well, let's hope we don't tilt it on our side.

Paul: 32:35

That would not be fun. I'm kind of picturing like some cartoon where everyone just starts pushing all the water to one side of the planet.

Blake: 32:42

Like that. One episode is SpongeBob, where Patrick's like why don't we just take any bottom and move it somewhere else?

Paul: 32:51

I totally forgot about that. There's going to be a lot of people that don't get that reference, but there are going to be some that do And it's going to be great. It's going to be great, all right. Next one Webb got a new friend, webb Webb, so the James Webb Space Telescope has a new friend called Mantis. Of course, we have NASA here again with their acronyms. I love NASA's acronyms. Mantis sounds like a fun little sidekick, right, but it actually stands for monitoring activity from nearby stars with UV imaging and spectrops Tread. I'm going to try that one again. Spectroscopy.

Blake: 33:33

Spectroscopy, spectroscopy, spectroscopy.

Paul: 33:38

No, it's got to be spectroscopy.

Blake: 33:43

It's got to be spectroscopy, spectroscopy.

Paul: 33:46

That does not sound right. Spectroscopy, spectroscopy, spectroscopy.

Blake: 33:54

All right, i'll let you do it.

Paul: 33:56

We're going to do it for two minutes here. We're going to see this in different ways. Anyways, mantis is an eight and a half million dollar CubeSat that will look at stars in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths and measure the amount of radiation exposed to their exoplanets. This, in combination with Webb's data of rocky planet atmospheres, could help astronomers hone in on which, or more, are less suited to sustaining life.

Blake: 34:26

Nice.

Paul: 34:26

Nice Yeah.

Blake: 34:27

So we might find some alien neighbors.

Paul: 34:30

Hey, yeah, we've been looking now for a while and Webb is really kind of sped up the search of terrestrial planets.

Blake: 34:37

Seems like it Yeah.

Paul: 34:38

We're seeing a lot more of it, and now this little friend is going to help even more.

Blake: 34:44

Well, that's awesome And it's just a little CubeSat, just a little big CubeSat.

Paul: 34:47

It's got like two telescopes on it. Like I said, one's that super ultraviolet thing and then the other one is kind of a radiation looking thing.

Blake: 34:55

So yeah, That's cool, and you know one thing about CubeSats. what's one of our favorite topics to talk about?

Paul: 35:03

Space John, space John.

Blake: 35:07

So we'll be trying to deal with Kessler syndrome here. There's been a mission I say there's been a mission. There is a mission to help declutter old, dead satellites, and this brings us hope that we won't ever run into the problem posed by Kessler syndrome Real quickly. Kessler syndrome is a phenomenon that will soon be in a potentially disastrous state where we can no longer launch things into orbit.

Paul: 35:36

Yeah, that'd be a little scary.

Blake: 35:38

Yeah, that means no more satellites, no more Starling. We probably lose a lot of communications and stuff like that because these satellites don't last forever.

Paul: 35:49

Yeah, i mean it's like okay, you take up all the space with satellites, now you have no more space to actually bring down the satellites, exactly Yeah.

Blake: 35:58

A startup company aims to fix that. And I mean it's always startup companies. right It is.

Paul: 36:03

Yeah, It's always these little individual groups with the mission. It's pretty cool, I gotta admit. props to them.

Blake: 36:08

Well, in fact, it's actually many startup companies that aim to fix this problem, but this one seems to be the most promising. AstroScale is on the cusp of something great. Their new project, the ELSA-M, is what I'm going to call it. It's ELSA-M.

Paul: 36:29

Okay.

Blake: 36:30

With rendezvous with current satellites and thusly de-orbited. Easy enough, right? They're calling this one end of life. Services by AstroScale-multiple ELSA.

Paul: 36:40

Yeah.

Blake: 36:44

I mean, they just wanted a cool acronym, so they tried. Yeah, no, i'm kidding. It's a really promising technology, it looks like, but they're also trying to offer more as well. So other services are active debris removal, so removing junk that serves no purpose at all. So, like rocket fairings and stuff like that, they've been blasted and we don't need them anymore. Put them back on the Or de-orbit them.

Paul: 37:11

De-orbit them Yeah.

Blake: 37:14

Life extension, including, but not limited to, refueling and repositioning satellites into a new orbit.

Paul: 37:21

Oh, that'd be nice, boosting ones that are kind of starting to fall and drift out.

Blake: 37:25

Yeah, exactly, And I'm going to butcher the pronunciation of this, but in situ or in site 2 SSA, which they're describing as rendezvousing with the satellite, studying its size, orbit and other movement it might make. This is basically the start of it. I believe They need to study it, They need to know everything about that satellite so they can make the proper decision on how to de-orbit it or move it to somewhere else.

Paul: 37:56

Gotcha. So, knowing kind of its weight, what it is, how much do we have to burn and what direction? yada, yada, yada. all the orbital mechanics involved, Exactly.

Blake: 38:06

You've got it. This mission, the ELSA-M, comes on the heels of their successful ELSA-D mission. What does the D stand for?

Paul: 38:18

I'm not going to say it, go for it.

Blake: 38:22

Demonstration Yeah, that Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is the same thing, but it was just a demonstration variant. Anyways, really neat technology, but there's a caveat to it, in my opinion. Astroscale is going to have customers attach a docking plate that had a QR code on it to their satellites. This QR code is then scanned to give the ELSA-M a bunch of information about the satellites to make a safe approach and then de-orbit it or make the necessary refueling slash repairs.

Paul: 38:56

Cool. So it scans it and it's kind of like an ID tag.

Blake: 39:00

Yeah, exactly, and it'll have all of the craft's information about it. So the ELSA doesn't have to get close, study it and then do it. It just gets close, scans it and it's like all right, we're good, cool, we know what to do Now. I think this is an interesting approach, primarily because if you want to have that QR code on board, you have to have it on board when it's launched.

Blake: 39:29

Yeah, So it's like you know, you and I kind of briefly talked about this yesterday, but it's kind of like a subscription service or like a hey, here's the money that you need to take care of the satellite in 10, 15 years.

Paul: 39:46

Yeah.

Blake: 39:47

Or something like that.

Paul: 39:48

Yeah, it's like is it gonna be a subscription thing or is it gonna be a one-time fee where we go hey, you put our plate on here. You know, this cost covers the cost of the plate and then the deorbit when the time comes.

Blake: 40:03

Yeah, or does it cover the cost of the plate And then in 10 years we had to pay you X amount to deorbit Yeah. Interesting economics there, because well, hey, what happens if Aster scale is no longer around, right?

Paul: 40:20

Exactly What happens if they're no longer around. What happens with technology? changes All that stuff.

Blake: 40:27

So I know it's interesting, but yeah, this kind of ties in with another article I read about the Space Force wanting to harness this promising technology. So, specifically, the Space Force views the need for in-orbit repairs as a strategic advantage, saying they're ready and willing to buy the providers with this technology as soon as it's available. I think that's what Aster scale is trying to tap into is the Space Force is like hey, you know, we need to deorbit satellites, we need to change them, we need to change their orbit somehow, some way shape or form or refueling them in order to save money.

Paul: 41:07

Yeah, I would be thinking, like you know, with all the spy satellites going up, being able to reposition your spy satellites instead of them to send up new ones.

Blake: 41:14

Exactly, And you know, oh hey, this spy satellites now out of fuel. We can't do anything about it. Now let's contract this company to then refuel it, move it somewhere else, and then we have it again.

Paul: 41:28

Yeah.

Blake: 41:29

The great thing about that would be like hey, you know the average satellite's lifespan. What I found was about seven to 10 years in low Earth orbit and about 15 years in geosynchronous orbit. With today's technology, so you know, some of them might be up there for shorter periods of time, some might be up there for longer.

Paul: 41:51

Yeah, i'm just curious about the 15 year geosynchronous. Again, we kind of get back to technology changes and geosynchronous is pretty far up there. So It is You know you got to get up there and have enough left to really do some work, versus you know you get up there and you affect one satellite. It's like okay.

Blake: 42:09

Yeah, exactly, And you know, kind of like I said, imagine that you're able to double the lifespan of an old satellite.

Paul: 42:17

Yeah.

Blake: 42:18

And make use of it again. That theoretically has the cost of the satellite itself. So satellites are very expensive And, like we said, they only really last seven to 10 years, maybe 15 years if they're in a higher orbit. So yeah, $10 million is about the low end, yeah, and then 400 million is about the high end is what I found, And I mean like that is a huge range.

Paul: 42:46

It's a huge range And yeah, it's a significant cost to manufacturers and companies when they want to put their equipment on board. Yeah, little cube sets are around the 10 mil range.

Blake: 42:57

Yeah, And I mean like literally little cube sets things that you can just pick up and hold in your hand, So Kind of.

Paul: 43:04

Kind of A little bit bigger, but I mean just about there, yeah, yeah.

Blake: 43:09

And in 400 million. Imagine you're like a TV provider, cell phone provider or something like that. That's probably not where it is, but for them maybe about 200 million, and then, hey, it's about to die, let's send someone else to save it.

Paul: 43:24

Yeah.

Blake: 43:25

Probably cheaper in the long run for them. Like I said, this is the market that Astroscale is trying to target. All right, ladies and gentlemen, actually we have a new segment that we're dubbing nightmare fuel. It's about these crazy things in space happening that give me nightmares Well, me and Paul really, But you know, it might also give you nightmares. So strap in, because we're about to tell you some crazy things.

Paul: 43:53

Yeah, we just decided. You know what? We get something just about every episode that's just kind of like out there. You know, whether it's supernovas, black holes, you name it, there's always something. Well, this week I've got like three things.

Blake: 44:07

Oh.

Paul: 44:07

God, save me, please. So this first topic I went ahead and called Iron Rain. Astronomers have been taking a closer look at a planet discovered in 2013, known as WASP 76B. I actually remember seeing stuff about this planet when it was first discovered, but it's a gas giant almost twice the width of Jupiter and around six times its volume, but orbits its star at a dangerously close range. Nice, yeah, it's tidally locked, meaning one side faces its star. On this side, temperatures reach 4,350 degrees Fahrenheit or 2,400 degrees Celsius, so it just melts everything.

Paul: 44:56

Just melts your face off. Yep, Nice. The team of astronomers have now detected iron in its atmosphere, meaning on the hot side the iron vaporizes. You've got iron clouds, Iron clouds, baby, Iron clouds. And is blown by the star because the immense solar wind to the cold side of the planet where it condenses and rains to deeper layers in the planet. Iron rain baby.

Blake: 45:28

I don't. I need like a big umbrella for starters made out of like something Diamonds Yeah, diamonds, we'll just say diamonds, my goodness.

Paul: 45:41

Yeah, so there you go, the unique composition of elements in 76B's atmosphere seemed to suggest that it was formed in the protodisc of a collapsed star. So it's a little bit unique. A protodisc is like the, the most unique thing that's ever been discovered. Protodisc is like the, the planet forming region that you get around, usually like new solar systems. That's what the planets form in, yeah, protodisc. They're thinking that this one, like it, had a collapsed star and I don't know weird kind of chain of events to form this thing. Furthermore, scientists have concluded that the composition of a gas giant's atmosphere is highly sensitive to temperatures, where, depending on the temperature that an element condenses, will determine whether it will be present in the upper atmosphere or be hidden deeper in its layers. So, in other words, to kind of picture this, elements that we don't observe on Jupiter because they're too cold to rise up into its upper layers can be very present on a gas giant such as 76B, and a difference in temperature in just a few degrees Celsius can be enough to change the composition of the clouds.

Blake: 46:59

Amazing.

Paul: 47:00

Because think about it right, you know, when you reach, like, the boiling point of water, bam, now it's steam, bam, now it's water again. Same thing with all these other elements. So you could see, you know, gaseous elements in the upper atmosphere of one gas giant, but another gas giant that's just a few degrees colder. You don't see them at all. They're down low because they grew heavy and they fell. So, yeah, iron rain, that's that one.

Blake: 47:28

I don't even wanna know if there's anything even like alive on that planet, because I'm just like how Yeah, yeah.

Paul: 47:39

So what happens when a planet like was 76B gets too close to its parent star, as if it ain't close enough already? New research on the infant protostar, fu-ori, you know, may have an answer. I don't know, that's how they spell it FU, space orri. What a name, what a name, right, i love it, so I'm gonna call it orri. Ori was observed to have increased in brightness 85 years ago as the result of a massive flare, trillions of times more powerful than the brightest solar flare from our own sun. The cause the extreme evaporation of a young gas giant.

Blake: 48:23

Oh boy.

Paul: 48:24

Yeah, scientists ran a simulation of the protoplanetary disk thought to have been a quiet nursery for newborn planets, but instead it's a tremendously violent inferno, ripping infant planets apart in a chaotic manner only that the darkest of minds could imagine.

Blake: 48:44

Oh my god, this is some, some, some crazy stuff right here. I mean, we talked about a star eating its planet before, but it being a regular occurrence, oh no.

Paul: 48:58

Yep. In the simulation, fragments of the disk clumped together to form a planet much like WAS-76B, a super Jupiter of sorts, that began hurtling inward towards its parent star. Scientists watched as the atmospheric layers were stripped away and became part of the molten soup that makes up the disk. Eventually, the planet became so close that it began generating extreme tidal forces within itself, stretching it in one direction, much like spaghettification with a black hole, until it ripped itself apart, feeding the parent star Ori. feeding on the now vaporized planet grew in mass, causing it to brighten in a powerful flare.

Blake: 49:44

I don't know what to say. Well, there you have it. I'm not sleeping tonight.

Paul: 49:51

Just when you think that you know the universe is peaceful and that planets form in a nice little crib around their parent star. No, it's all a cannibalistic nightmare.

Blake: 50:03

It's all a cannibalistic nightmare. Oh my goodness, dude. Well, i guess this week we don't have a black hole to talk about, and that's my biggest fear right now.

Paul: 50:17

So, yeah, i've got one more, though This one isn't too scary. I actually think it's kind of comical and cool. Six new stars have been discovered racing each other through the Milky Way, two of which, named J0927 and J1235, are moving faster than any other seen before. These two stars are traveling at 5.1 and 3.8 million miles per hour. The other four are traveling at over 2.2 million miles per hour. These stars are traveling so quickly that they've surpassed the escape velocity of our galaxy and are headed for in a galactic space.

Blake: 51:04

So it's like Formula One in space.

Paul: 51:08

Yeah, they're just gone. The scientists that discovered the stars believed they were ejected as the result of a Type 1A supernova very near to them. Now I'm going to see who was paying attention when I explained the types of supernovas in previous episodes Not me, so I'm going to reeducate you.

Blake: 51:32

Okay, thank you.

Paul: 51:34

A Type 1A comes at the result of a white dwarf who by itself is too small to explode at the end of its life and begins to feed on a companion star. So dead white dwarf becomes a zombie, starts feeding on the next one, you know, on the next door neighbor. Eventually it grows large enough to surpass the. I have no idea how to pronounce this. I've seen this. A good Chilean times Chandrescar So andrescar, so andrescar.

Blake: 52:07

Oh man, Chandrescar, I don't know.

Paul: 52:12

I don't know. It sounds like some mythological creature.

Blake: 52:14

It does.

Paul: 52:15

But that limit. Okay, This is the mass it needs to go supernova. That's right yeah, so it feeds off the companion star, grows big enough to where it can finally go boom. Scientists think that this is what happened, and the resulting supernova rocketed the nearby stars to the vast universe outside of the Milky Way. Well, that's quite a bit of fun.

Blake: 52:37

Yeah, okay, that one doesn't give me nightmares, but I think it's kind of funny.

Paul: 52:43

Yeah, no, it's simply Goes boom and all these little neighbor stars just go flying. They're running away.

Blake: 52:48

Just run away, yeah, like cats running away from a vacuum or something like that, yeah yeah.

Blake: 52:53

Well, that's the end of our nightmare fuel segment And that'll be it for the news this week. Let's learn something this week as we talk about our listener questions. If you'd like to ask a question about the show or anything about space or astronomy at all, you can reach out to us on Twitter at spaceweek underscore, or by emailing us through contact at spaceweekco. For our first question today, y'all talked about the death of a star. Can a whole galaxy die?

Paul: 53:26

I'll let you answer that. I'm going to say yes.

Blake: 53:29

And the answer yes. Longer. More convoluted answer, though Galaxies die when stars within them stop forming. From the article I found on CNN, astronomers have actually observed a galaxy die before I didn't know that The galaxy ID 2299 was observed ejecting over half of the gas it uses to form stars. Each year, astronomers observe this galaxy lose about 10,000 suns where it's up gas. Wow, yeah, so I think at this rate well, i did say over half its gas. They said something like 48% is gone. Now, despite this, the remaining gas the galaxy is using to form stars more quickly than our own galaxy forms them, and the remaining gas is to pump out stars like nobody's business. So I mean, half of it's gone, the other half is getting consumed like crazy, and then I think at one point it's just going to snuff out.

Paul: 54:35

Yeah, i mean yeah because, when you think about it, the rest of the stars die out. In theory, a supernova would kind of feed gas back into it, hopefully form more. But if they're few and far between, you really don't have anything to light them off.

Blake: 54:52

Yeah, Unfortunately I couldn't find a little bit more information on this. I do want to look into it because that sounds interesting. It's a great question, Yeah.

Paul: 55:01

I didn't really think about that, like I was talking about the shapes of galaxies, i think that was last episode. One of the listener questions or shapes of galaxies. Are those important? and why you get into like the ellipticals and stuff, and they're basically just older galaxies. Spiral galaxies are a little more new, like our own. So, yeah, it's interesting to think about what does happen as they get older and older. So, yeah, that's pretty interesting.

Blake: 55:25

I suppose what they really mean by die in this context would be like oh, it's no longer growing, it's no longer putting out new stars, everything might still be there but it's just not growing anymore.

Blake: 55:39

Onto our next question, which is a little bit more open and didn't and I say a little, i mean a whole, whole lot we've actually had to sit here and talk or think about this for a few seconds. If you got to determine the next move for space, what would it be? What would you have improved or invented or what would you focus on?

Paul: 55:57

Golly man, I feel like that's like the most intense space interview question you could receive.

Blake: 56:03

Oh yeah, that is a loaded question And, you know, i feel like this is preparing for our eventual NASA interview.

Paul: 56:10

Yeah, right, i'm going to let you go first, because sometimes it'll spark my mind. I've got kind of an idea. I'm going to see what you say, because I haven't had much time to think about this. Blake told me this question like right before we started recording this episode, so I'm going to let you go first.

Blake: 56:31

I'll let you think about it for a few seconds at least. You know I'm kind of undecided for the most part, but I think I want to see better propulsion systems, more speed, getting around the galaxy more faster. Think about going to and from the moon in like a day, rather than the usual two weeks that it takes. How much faster can we really get right?

Paul: 57:01

Yeah, I kind of hate you because that's exactly what I was thinking. No, but seriously, I think that that's our major roadblock here and exploring more of the cosmos.

Blake: 57:13

I agree.

Paul: 57:14

It's how do we get there, and how do we get there in a amount of time that makes sense? Because, i mean, really, we're just limited to our solar system at the moment. We're going to need propulsion that not only can get us faster, but can do it efficiently. We're going to need fuels that do not weigh as much. There's just a lot left to do.

Blake: 57:44

Oh yeah, it's technology that we're a little ways away from.

Paul: 57:48

We're in the infant stages here.

Blake: 57:50

Yeah, and something else that I kind of think about every now and then is like I don't know how into UFOs and stuff you are, but some of those very interesting videos that they've since declassified, and like the little Tic Tac thing. Little Tic Tac, I mean that thing crazy, even if it's not an actual alien ship. imagine something like that. Right, That would be like end goal for us or our next goal.

Paul: 58:23

Something anti-gravity or that can form its own gravity bubble would be insane. I think that would just be the key to everything. But it's you know? how in the world do you do that? How do you create that amount of energy? That's the question. Yeah, we're at a point where we burn fuels for propulsion and I think we're going to have to get away from that. We've got to figure out a way to create thrust without burning something, without some obvious chemical reaction, using a ton of fuel. Yes, we have like electronic, you know ion type engines and stuff now, but they don't put out enough thrust.

Blake: 59:04

Not, yet Not yet.

Paul: 59:07

So you know, i think about the first gasoline engines and first steam engines. Little bitty things couldn't do a darn thing. A horsepower or two, you know. And now look at where we are. So again we're in the infant early stages. I'm sure we'll come up with something if we all just put our heads together.

Blake: 59:24

Yeah, that's my answer. What's?

Paul: 59:28

yours Space potatoes.

Blake: 59:30

We need more space potatoes. There you go again with the space potatoes. Oh wait, no, that's supposed to be me.

Paul: 59:37

That's supposed to be you, i'm kidding.

Blake: 59:43

Well, that's it for us this week. Thanks for sticking with us and tuning in as we navigate through our business personalized and the busy news of the space industry, things happening in space and you know more, rambling on and on and on. You can check us out on Facebook, twitter and at our website, spaceweekco, where you'll find links to all of our social media platforms. If you wouldn't mind stopping by your favorite podcast wherever you listen to us and leaving us a review letting us know where we can improve or letting us know how much you like our show, that'd be great. It helps us out a lot and we want to see more growth.

Paul: 1:00:21

Well, keep your eyes on the skies. This is Paul Ambulate signing off.