Latest / Made of Stars / SLIM Not So Shady Any More
Transcript
- 0:00Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics, and
- 0:04space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been known to learn about astronomical
- 0:08phenomenon, the scientific method, and expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar,
- 0:12asterism and uranus. Listen, that's your own risk. Go ahead. When
- 0:22made of stars, made them stars, madies. When maida stars you could
- 0:33be from high they would New Mexicomus. Where are stars? When we are
- 0:54made of stars? I'm Wes Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean
- 0:59Cruisan from colun To State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center. More than Shawn,
- 1:03Good Morning, Wes could be here today. I still think I should
- 1:06get the honorary degree so that I can be Doctor of West Carrol. And
- 1:10it just gives a little better balance, you know, just to what we're
- 1:14doing here. You know, I mean, I'll bring it up to the
- 1:15committee. Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure they'll they'll take it under serious
- 1:19advisement. It would also sound better at graduation, you know, when I'm
- 1:26reading the names out at graduation. Indeed, doctor of Radio Science that's or
- 1:30or you know whatever. I'll take anything, doctor of basket weaving. I
- 1:34would take it. I was with you yesterday at your at your place of
- 1:41business at the Coca Cola Space Science Center, my son Luke and his class
- 1:47or his class and others. I guess it was a few groups. We're
- 1:51having a field trip there and checking out some of the new activities that you
- 1:55had in place. They had a really good time. Yeah, it was
- 1:57good to have them here. And and that particular school that your son goes
- 2:01to, it's a very good school. We always enjoy having them down and
- 2:05we were basically prototyping on your son West. I'll just have to admit we're
- 2:09just prototyping a new activity. But the activities seem to be going really well.
- 2:14It is a simulated Mars I'm sorry, I simulated moon base experience.
- 2:19There are some Mars aspects, so they're working on the weather on Mars as
- 2:23well as on other planets as part of their Moon base exploration activities. They're
- 2:30also looking at lunar geology. They're driving some rovers around on the surface of
- 2:34the Moon, and they're studying moon phases. So this is a great set
- 2:38of activities that are all built into one package, and we really enjoyed having
- 2:44that crew down. It's aimed at the sixth grade, the sixth grade science
- 2:46standards, but really kids around that age, either a little bit younger or
- 2:51a little bit older, or even adults honestly, would really enjoy that experience.
- 2:55And we were happy to host your son's school and glad to have you
- 3:00down yesterday. Yeah. No, it was great to see it in action
- 3:01and great to see them doing it. And you know, I've seen some
- 3:05of the other activities and things that they've done in the past, so when
- 3:07there's something new, I was like, man, this is a great chance
- 3:12since it's brand new to see it, you know, while being there with
- 3:15him. So I thought that was great, and I like what you guys
- 3:17are doing with it. And I know you guys are tweaking a few little
- 3:22things and you've got some cosmetic upgrades to do to it. But it was
- 3:24great. I mean, it was seeing them all engaged, and you point
- 3:29out it's a good school. It is a good school, and you know
- 3:31you're catering to some gifted kids sometimes in those in those groups, so knowing
- 3:38how much it kept them engaged was great as well. So I know they
- 3:40had a good time. So speaking of the moon and Mars. It's a
- 3:44great segue into our first stories today, both of them, because one,
- 3:51I mean, we'll get to this one second, but it's kind of a
- 3:54zombie Moonlander, I guess, because it's funny. You and I had not
- 4:00really talked, but that's exactly the way I was going to describe it,
- 4:03so well, get out of my head. But we'll get to that because
- 4:09it's one of those things that we had written off and you know, not
- 4:13so fast. But we'll get that in a second. Let's first start with
- 4:16a sad story. As you know, I sent you a text when I
- 4:20saw it this week and you were like, oh, oh, I hadn't
- 4:24seen that yet, So I had to. I had to be the one
- 4:27to break the news to you. There's moments in our lives where we remember
- 4:31where we were in certain moments, especially sometimes like I remember the moment when
- 4:36I learned that Magic Johnson was going to retire from the NBA because he had
- 4:42an HIV diagnosis. I remember that very vividly. It was really sad.
- 4:46It was a monumental moment in history with the AIDS epidemic, and you know,
- 4:51one of the great basketball players of all time, and it was a
- 4:54big deal. And I remember that. I remember where I was in the
- 5:00context of me learning that Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter had died. Uh.
- 5:05Just just some of these moments. This is kind of one of those
- 5:09for me learning about the people. Those are very solemn moments. I mean,
- 5:15those are very serious, solo moments. I remember where I was when
- 5:17I heard that Coke was changing its formula. You know it's a different Yes,
- 5:21we're gonna change Coca Cola. What are we doing thinking? Man?
- 5:27Yeah, all of those. But uh, the this feels like a friend
- 5:33who we were losing. Uh. And it's a friend that we had for
- 5:38a lot longer than we we really should have a lot longer than was planned.
- 5:42Obviously. Uh. It lived its proper full length life because it it
- 5:49served a great purpose and it will it will continue to do so in future
- 5:55missions. Enough lead up to it. Let's talk about ingenuity. That is
- 5:59now it served its purpose and can now rest in peace on the surface of
- 6:05Mars. This is sad what you sent me the text. I hadn't heard
- 6:09it yet, and so I pulled the story up immediately after that, and
- 6:13I had a similar emotional reaction to yours. It's like, ah, the
- 6:17poor little marsh helicopter died. Ah. But friends, let's just consider the
- 6:26facts. This thing was incredibly successful, right. First of all, it
- 6:31really isn't alive. Second of all, it just absolutely killed its mission.
- 6:38Yeah, one hundredfold over what they thought the thing was gonna do. And
- 6:43third it has now become a prototype for a kind of companion to new planetary
- 6:49rovers that are probably gonna be set up on each and every mission from now
- 6:54on. So this is a success one hundredfold. So we had to just
- 7:00before we get into the actual like final moments of the life of this little
- 7:04Mars critter, we got to just consider this is a this is a piece
- 7:08of engineering that far surpassed all expectations. This is like, this is kind
- 7:14of like Tom Brady, you know, being a late round draft pick,
- 7:16not a lot of hype, not a lot of people going, oh my
- 7:18gosh, this guy is gonna end up being the greatest quarterback to ever play
- 7:21the game. And then then he went on to become Tom Brady. I
- 7:28mean, this is the Tom Brady of Mars helicopters. I can tell you
- 7:30that I could think that was just a lot of confidence yeah, I think
- 7:34that's all Mars helicopters. That's safe. That is a good So they expected
- 7:42this thing maybe five missions. I mean there was not you know, first
- 7:46of all, there was the hope maybe this thing will be able to fly
- 7:50right like maybe on Mars we'll be able to have this thing actually get some
- 7:55air. It did that, and they thought, well, maybe about five
- 7:58flights out of this thing. When they're on the drawing board at JPL where
- 8:03this thing was built Jet Propulson Laboratory in California, their plan was, Okay,
- 8:07we're going to plan for five times five flights during the first month of
- 8:13operation of the little helicopter, once it drops out from under perseverance. If
- 8:18we can get five flights out of this baby, we have achieved, right
- 8:22five, It flew seventy two times, so and I know that's not itself.
- 8:31I know the math that's not one hundred fold there. But I'm just
- 8:35saying from five just kind of demonstration test flights to by the end of the
- 8:41life of this helicopter, it was actually leading the rover and scouting out paths
- 8:48of traverse across the Mars surface and locating interesting things to study on the planet.
- 8:54Which was not ever really part of the original shall we say, set
- 9:01of achievements they expected from the helicopter. These were all add on tasks based
- 9:07on its discovered capabilities once it was already on the planet. And now because
- 9:15of this amazing demonstration of technology, now all future rovers are likely to be
- 9:22designed to have such a robotic companion, not only on Mars, but possibly
- 9:28on the surface of Venus and other planets as well. I say other planets.
- 9:33I'm including moons in their other worlds, shall we say. So this
- 9:37has been a staggering successful mission, right, staggeringly successful. So all right,
- 9:43so let's just say this. Check out the information on space Flight Now
- 9:46as well as other sites. But on Spaceflight Now they will have a link
- 9:50to a live stream that occurred yesterday, Wednesday of this week that was held
- 9:56by NASA where they kind of just more but also celebrated the Mars helicopter ingenuity
- 10:03and all of its achievements, shall we say. If you have trouble finding
- 10:09it, you can replay it on NASA's YouTube channel. You can find it
- 10:13there, and it's really cool. I listened to a good part of that
- 10:16before the broadcast before our podcast today and just kind of listen to what they
- 10:20had to say about it. It's really kind of a fun thing to go
- 10:24back and revisit hearing what the designers of the helicopter were thinking when they first
- 10:30put it together, and then what it actually was able to achieve up there.
- 10:33Of course, the big milestone is it is the first aircraft from Earth
- 10:39to fly in alien skies, right, it is the first. I'm not
- 10:41talking about rocket ships that drop through the atmosphere. I'm talking about actual aviation
- 10:46in the atmosphere of another world. And so it was the first ever to
- 10:50do that. That was an amazingly important thing to accomplish. And then,
- 10:56as we say, seventy two flights after it had only five flights planned and
- 11:00a complete change in mission. All of these things were going great and splendidly,
- 11:05and we're looking forward well into the future. When all of a sudden,
- 11:09it was a bit of you know, a bit of a dust storm.
- 11:13They lost communications and it came down for a hard landing on January eighteenth,
- 11:18it's seventy second and final flight, and as it came back down it
- 11:24hit the ground hard, obviously at an awkward angle. The scientists involved said,
- 11:28yes, our rotors made contact with the surface. Yeah, that means
- 11:33it crashed and it broke. And if you ever personally had an outdoor like
- 11:37hobby helicopter, you know that you're probably five to ten minutes away from that
- 11:41thing hitting the ground and breaking the props off, right. So that's so
- 11:46the fact that this landed, this mission extended so long before it has its
- 11:50hard landing and broke the props is itself kind of staggering and amazingly successful.
- 11:56Yeah, unbelievable the journey any of this little helicopter that just kept giving and
- 12:03kept giving, and you know, like you said, it paves the way
- 12:07now for future missions for the need. I'm gonna I'm gonna leapfrog the zombie
- 12:13craft story just for a second because I think this one is a nice segue
- 12:20into it. And you know, knowing that we had folks on Earth programming
- 12:24a helicopter to fly around on Mars. By the way, don't give you
- 12:30I know you want to monitor your kids and their time they spend online and
- 12:33on video games if those games involve coding, just know one day they could
- 12:39be flying a helicopter on Mars if they're doing the right coding. Game so
- 12:43you know, you could get advice on that, but don't give them too
- 12:46hard of a time if that's what they're doing, because I mean, it
- 12:50could lead to an incredible career. Or you know, maybe they could be
- 12:52on the International Space Station and controlling a robot down on Earth. Because that
- 12:58just happened. That did just happen, and we're talking about German astronaut Marcus
- 13:03Vant. German astronaut Marcus Vant from the DLR that's the German Space Agency aboard
- 13:11the International Space Station in orbit around the Earth, controlling a robot dog,
- 13:16a robodog, a four legged robot on an artificial Mars terrain back on the
- 13:22Earth right. So it's a simulation of being able to control robots from space
- 13:26on the Red planet itself. But it was an interesting thing. You may
- 13:31have seen images of Spot the Dog, which is a robot designed by Boston
- 13:37Dynamics as a four footed robot. So this is similar to Spot the Dog
- 13:41a little bit smaller versions it's more like an Australian shepherd rather than a Great
- 13:46Dane, but you know that kind of thing. So it's a kind of
- 13:48a medium sized four legged robodog back on the artificial Mars terrain. Back on
- 13:54the Earth, it was being tested by the German Space Agency for future Mars
- 13:58xloration. Not only was it a demonstration of technology that yes, astronauts from
- 14:05orbit can drive these robots on the surface of a planet, but it's also
- 14:09the test of the four legged propulsion system itself. Right So until now only
- 14:16wheel driven robots have been controlled remotely from space by astronauts, so writes officials
- 14:22from the DLR. They go on with their quote to say, but Bert,
- 14:24which is the name of the dog robot, Bert has mastered several types
- 14:28of gates and thanks to his leg based locomotion, can explore rough terrain,
- 14:35including small caves that his rolling teammates cannot reach. So this is a different
- 14:41kind of mobility platform for robots that might go into a very rugged terrain like
- 14:48the surface of Mars, and they can simply get to places that Mars robots
- 14:52like Perseverance, which is a big golf cart, basically they just can't get
- 14:56in there, or they can't go down into a cave, or they can't
- 15:00get over certain rocks. But a legged robot can traverse these difficult terrains,
- 15:05and so that's part of the exploration by the German Space Agency DLR and by
- 15:13Marcus Vant, the German astronaut. Now it's important to say this, Marcus
- 15:18Vant is up aboard the International Space Station and yes, with NASA's blessing,
- 15:22but not part of a NASA team of astronauts typical for the International Space Station.
- 15:30Instead, Vont is a board ISS as part of the SpaceX Axiom three
- 15:35crew or the AX three crew from Axiom Space. So he's up there on
- 15:41this two week mission. He is a European Space Agency astronaut, but he's
- 15:46been assigned to the SpaceX ax three mission, which is a commercial endeavor.
- 15:50So this is just one more kind of industry bell weather that we are shifting
- 15:56away from the old ways of thinking about how astronauts get to space and who's
- 16:00in control of those missions and and you know, to almost like an airline
- 16:06based system where you're just buying a ticket with a commercial company and they're just
- 16:08flying you up to your destination. So so it's a really interesting story about
- 16:12the robot, really interesting story about being able to control it from orbit,
- 16:17but it's also an interesting story about how astronaut Marcus Vant actually got up to
- 16:22the International Space Station. And how how that commercial influence is changing the way
- 16:27astronauts go to space. So I think it was Eminem, who one of
- 16:33his many nicknames, Slim, who once said, and I quote, guess
- 16:37who's back back again. It happens to be Slim, but not Eminem,
- 16:45although he may be back. I don't know. I don't really keep up
- 16:48with that that side of the music world anymore. I used to. But
- 16:52Japan's Slim. We had written this thing off. This is uh we were.
- 16:56We were saying, hey, they had a win. They managed to
- 17:00have a soft landing on the moon, fifth country to do that, and
- 17:06congratulations, Too bad about your craft that wasn't getting any sunlight to have any
- 17:11power to it. But sometimes things move in the sky and sunlight reaches things
- 17:19like I don't know, you know, probes that are sitting there waiting for
- 17:25the opportunity to power back up again, And hey, sunlight hit the right
- 17:29thing apparently because it's back. Yeah, unlike Eminem, who's still making obscene
- 17:34gestures at forty nine ers fans, Well, this particular spacecraft is actually going
- 17:40back to work. Well, you know, I'd almost rather have that than
- 17:44Taylor Swift at the super Bowl. But anyway, that's another I don't know
- 17:48now I think about it, that didn't really make it. It'd probably rather
- 17:52have Taylor Swift there, but that's different. Well, speaking of being in
- 17:55the big game, I guess if you have a working Moonlander and you're a
- 17:59space agent, see that's a good thing. Yes, almost like having some
- 18:03celebrity from the music industry be at your Super Bowl game. It was almost
- 18:07like that, right, yeah, so so all right, So just last
- 18:10week, Less and I bemoaned the fact that this poor unfortunate Japanese lander had
- 18:17soft landed on the surface but simply couldn't power up its batteries because the solar
- 18:22panels were sitting at the wrong angle. But it's little kind of spherical robots
- 18:27had companionships had fallen off and taken pictures of the lander actually sitting there on
- 18:33the Moon basically doing nothing. So anyway, it was a sad story.
- 18:36So listen to last week's podcast, enjoyed that sad story, and then come
- 18:40back to this one because it's alive. It's, as Wes alluded to a
- 18:45moment ago, a zombie spacecraft which was once dead but back alive again.
- 18:49Friends, it is back from the dead. So first of all, let's
- 18:53just talk about what SLIM stands for. I'm not talking about Eminem. I'm
- 18:57talking about the space vehicle smart Lander for investigating Moon Slim. I think that's
- 19:03what it stands for for M and M as well. Yeah, I think
- 19:07it's the same thing. It's exactly the same, probably is probably so anyway,
- 19:10all right, so smart Lander for investigating Moon Slim. The Japanese probe
- 19:14from the Japanese Space Agency called Jackson is back alive. Because as the Moon
- 19:22slowly rotates, and yes it does rotate, and yes it does keep the
- 19:25same face facing toward the Earth all the time. The moon does, there's
- 19:29some complicated, well semi complicated relationships between orbit and then it's revolution. It's
- 19:34revolution period. It's it's a rotational period that allowed that to happen. Anyway,
- 19:41Besides all that, the Sun finally just kind of creeped around to an
- 19:44angle where it hit some of the solar panels, and suddenly the folks that
- 19:48Jackson were getting small signals back from their lander. It was talking again.
- 19:53They said, wait a minute, this thing might not be dead after all.
- 19:56They let the power juice up a little bit more and they were able
- 20:00to start turning on systems. So even though those solar panels didn't land at
- 20:06exactly the angle they needed them to power up immediately, enough sunlight has been
- 20:11able to hit those panels that it slowly charged up the batteries and they're able
- 20:15to turn it on. And now they have re establish re established communications with
- 20:21SLIM as of last Sunday, So nearly nine days after the probe touchdown,
- 20:27Japan became and allowing Japan to become the fifth country to land on the Moon
- 20:32safely. The probe is actually back alive again and it looks like it's going
- 20:36to actually be able to take on its scientific mission, which was to analyze
- 20:41the composition of olivine rocks on the lunar surface with its multi ban spectral cameras.
- 20:45Right, So this is all good stuff. Right, So we have
- 20:49a spacecraft now on the surface of the Moon from the Japanese Space Agency that
- 20:53can give us clues about the origin of the Moon and just help us learn
- 20:56a little bit more about the science, but also teach just a lot about
- 21:00not giving up on your robotic spacecraft. Friends. So what you're saying is
- 21:06SLIM became less shady and had one shot, one opportunity to have everything.
- 21:12Anyway, Sorry, I'm gonna stop. I don't think I said that.
- 21:15I think you said that. I'm gonna stop all the M and M talk.
- 21:18That's as far i'm gonna go with it. I was just kicking myself.
- 21:22I didn't use the term shady. All right. So coming up after
- 21:26a quick break, you were talking about commercial space, and we have a
- 21:32pretty cool commercial space story that is in progress or about to happen, and
- 21:37but the mission is in the works. We'll talk about that right after this.
- 22:03Okay, So we were talking commercial space, and there's now the beginning
- 22:11stages, the early phases of a commercial company sending non NASA astronauts to space
- 22:18to do a space walk. Yeah. So this is a really interesting story.
- 22:25It involves SpaceX and their Dragon capsule. It also involves a very well
- 22:34known now entrepreneur and commercial astronaut by the name of Jared Isaacman. Jared Isaacman
- 22:41in particular got famous because he gave away a seat aboard one of the flights
- 22:45that he was on to somebody during a Super Bowl ad a couple of years
- 22:51ago. So that was pretty cool. That flight was the inspiration four flight,
- 22:56which was the first all commercial astronauts crew to ever go to space.
- 23:03And now Jared Isisigman and the team at SpaceX have developed a new mission called
- 23:08Polaris Dawn. And in the Polaris Dawn mission, they're going to go to
- 23:15space again aboard a Dragon capsule, and two of the astronauts on board are
- 23:19actually going to become the first ever all civilian corps of astronauts to perform a
- 23:27spacewalk an extra vehicular activity an EVA. And this is the first time that
- 23:37no former employees of a nation state's astronaut corps. These are just civilians,
- 23:45right, never been part of a of a nation space program. These people
- 23:49are going to go outside of their vehicle. Now, that's a very hazardous
- 23:55maneuver at any time, and yet it's still feels like just the next necessary
- 24:02step in the whole commercial astronaut endeavor because we've we've managed to get these commercial
- 24:07astronauts up to either space platforms or just fly them in vehicles and bring them
- 24:12back down. But now a spacewalk is at hand, all right, So
- 24:18read about this story, by the way on spaceflight now dot com. It
- 24:22turns out that two members of this team Jared Isaacman and Scott kid Potit.
- 24:29Kid is kind of a nickname, Send quotes Scott kid Potit, the pilot
- 24:34of this vehicle. Those two individuals sat down with the team from of reporters
- 24:40from Spaceflight Now and they did an interview with them about the upcoming mission.
- 24:45In that interview, Jared Isaacman has the following quote. This time around,
- 24:49there's a lot of emphasis on our kind of specific objectives, the altitude,
- 24:55especially the EVA, the extra vehicular activity, and the new suit development,
- 25:00Isaacman said. He went on to say this, and unlike being there at
- 25:03the end where they say, hey, here's your suit, we get to
- 25:07be there through every iteration of it, you know, starting with an IVA
- 25:11which is the intra vehicular activity going between two vehicles, starting with the IVA
- 25:18suit that's not really suitable for going outside the vehicle, to what we have
- 25:22now, which is getting close to the flight article. So anyway, Jared
- 25:29isaac been saying, that's really cool. They get to be involved from the
- 25:33origination of this new space suit actually taking out on a spacewalk, and again
- 25:37it's showing that there's just a new era in the capability of civilian astronauts and
- 25:44commercial space companies in what they're trying to do. So right now, it
- 25:51looks like this flight will be no earlier than sometime this year, which means
- 25:55it might be in twenty twenty five rather than twenty twenty four. But they
- 25:59are getting ready for this flight, and when they have this four member crew
- 26:03go up on the Dragon capsule, they'll have thirty eight experiments from twenty three
- 26:07different research institutions that they're going to be performing aboard that flight. Additionally,
- 26:14their flight was going to be a fundraiser for Saint Jude's Children's Research Hospital,
- 26:19which is just a really cool thing that they try to tie into their missions.
- 26:22So so I would say this press on Polaris, Dawn Crue, we
- 26:27wish you the very best, and it's just a really interesting mission and a
- 26:33great activity that you're taking place. It's an exciting next step in all of
- 26:36this. It involves commercial space and then at some point tourism. I mean,
- 26:41it's a lot of things that are kind of you know that this could
- 26:45could lead to, you know, in the very distant future. Yeah,
- 26:48and think about this, Wes. It could very well be a fully civilian
- 26:53commercial crew that reaches Mars first, Right, So, like, hey,
- 27:00what country is going to be first to land on the Moon? That was
- 27:02the space race? Hey, what country's going to be first to put a
- 27:06lander on the planet Mars? Hey what private group of citizens is going to
- 27:11be first to put a footprint on the red planet? Right? So it
- 27:15might be a country, it might be a federal space agency, but it
- 27:18could very well just be a troop of intrepid explorers from a commercial activity similar
- 27:25to this one that may put the first bootprint on Mars, which is a
- 27:29very very interesting possibility. It's always fun when we have stories, and we
- 27:34like to sometimes really hit into a good science story to wrap things up in
- 27:38the show. It's always fun when we have a story that involves exoplanets around
- 27:45a young star because that gives us a look at a lot of things as
- 27:48far as development of that solar system. Yeah, so there's a there's kind
- 27:53of just a little tale that I tell at the beginning of my astronomy classes
- 27:56when I'm teaching an introductory astronomy class, and you know, I tell this
- 28:02tale of like, imagine if you were a creature that only lived one day
- 28:06and you walked out into the forest, and you tried in that one single
- 28:10day to figure out how the forest grew. You didn't get the chance to
- 28:12watch the trees change during the seasons. You didn't get the chance to live
- 28:17long enough to watch trees start out as small and grow up into tall trees
- 28:21and fall dead. You had to just look around at what you could see
- 28:23and figure it all out from there, right in a single day. Well,
- 28:26that's kind of like what happens to us as we look out at the
- 28:30universe. The time scales of evolution on a universal scale are so long compared
- 28:37to our lifespans that we really can't watch big processes evolve and stick around long
- 28:42enough to see things change. So what we have to do is we have
- 28:45to look out at the universe and see many different steps of evolution or iteration
- 28:52with systems like planets forming around other stars, for instance, and try to
- 28:57put the pieces together from what we can see in a snapshot of a certain
- 29:02time. And so that's kind of how the whole signs of exoplanets has been
- 29:07evolving. We see mature solar systems like ours. We see solar systems around
- 29:12stars that are getting ready to go supernova. So it's kind of the end
- 29:17of the life cycle of a solar system. But this particular story is about
- 29:21a solar system on the very early cusp of just forming. So the star,
- 29:26compared to our Sun, is relatively new. It's only lived for a
- 29:30short stellar lifespan of seven hundred million years. Remember that our solar system is
- 29:37about four point six billion years old, which is substantially longer. We think
- 29:41that stars like our Sun will live about ten billion years, so we're only
- 29:45about halfway through our own life cycle. But now we get to look at
- 29:48the early stages of that stellar evolution, and we actually have found around one
- 29:55of the stars like that, a very young star. It's only two hundred
- 29:59and seventy six light years away, which again on the cosmic scale, is
- 30:02right in our backyard, so we can see it up close in a manner
- 30:04of speaking, and it's very young. That gives us a chance to study
- 30:10what was just recently discovered, which is six planets around that star, a
- 30:15six planet solar system around the same young star. Extremely young star compared to
- 30:22the lifespans of stars. And so this was done by a team called the
- 30:26test Kech Survey, which is an international team of astronomers who are using data
- 30:32from the KECH Telescope, the wm KEX Observatory, and also from the Transiting
- 30:38Exoplanet Survey satellite, which we better know is Tests. So they're looking at
- 30:44they're identifying potential exoplanet candidates with tests and then going back with the wm KEXCH
- 30:49Observatory, which is a big telescope in Hawaii, and taking a really close
- 30:53look at these exoplanet candidates and confirming that they are actually planets. So now
- 31:00there are six new planets around this very young Solar system, which is going
- 31:03to allow us to study how planets evolve around their parent stars, how they
- 31:08first get going in this very early solar system. It also adds to the
- 31:12total number of exo planets that we know about. Extra solar planets. Five
- 31:17thousand, five hundred and seventy two have now been confirmed orbiting around four thy,
- 31:23one hundred and fifty different stars, with another ten thousand and sixty five
- 31:30candidates awaiting confirmation from programs like the Test KECH Survey. So anyway, this
- 31:36is the state of exoplanets right now, and we've just added a really cool
- 31:38new system. By the way, the name of the system you probably won't
- 31:41remember this, it won't roll off the tongue, but it's TOI eleven thirty
- 31:45six. That's the catalog number for this, TOI eleven thirty six, which
- 31:48is a test catalog number. A sun like stars, This is similar to
- 31:53how our star looked in its infancy, just two hundred and seventy six light
- 31:57years away with six planets around it. Really cool story. Check out more
- 32:02of the details in the article on Universe today dot com. You got a
- 32:07busy February ahead of you, as we're just really getting into this month.
- 32:10Now. You've got Astronomy Night coming up at FDR State Park, which is
- 32:15a road game for you guys, coming up on February tenth, and then
- 32:21towards the end of the month, the Columbus Toy and Comic Book Show,
- 32:24So we have kind of a triune of events taking place around the Columbus Toy
- 32:30and Comic Book Show, which is our event, but we're also co promoting
- 32:35that event and working with the River Center for the Performing Arts here in Columbus,
- 32:38Georgia, which is our fantastic theater and pipe organ facility, our performing
- 32:44arts facility here in town. The Schwob School of music at Columbus State University
- 32:49is housed inside the River Center, So if you're unfamiliar with that with our
- 32:53region, that's a really cool feature that we have our university's music programs associated
- 33:00with the theaters at the River Center for the Performing Arts. But the River
- 33:02Center is going to be running the classic silent movie Metropolis, which if you've
- 33:09seen Metropolis you already know. But if you haven't seen Metropolis, people turn
- 33:15into robots, or you know, they're turning people into robots or something like
- 33:17that. It's a it's an early it's an early cinematic exploration of the whole
- 33:23idea of human beings becoming robots during the Industrial Revolution, and so they literally
- 33:30turned somebody into a robot in this movie. So there's a very famous female
- 33:34robot featured in this motion picture. All right, So the River Center for
- 33:37the Performing Arts is going to show the silent feature, but as with many
- 33:40silent movies, they actually have a music soundtrack, and during the original airings
- 33:45of the or showings of these films, that soundtrack was played live by live
- 33:50musicians. Well, the River Center is bringing back that tradition and they ask
- 33:54something called the wave organ. They're actually going to have a live organist to
- 33:58play all of the soundtrack for the Silent Motion picture, so the music will
- 34:02be performed live, and it has robots in it, which is a very
- 34:06sci fi themed kind of thing. So they gave us a call here at
- 34:08Space Sign Center and said, hey, how would you like to collaborate and
- 34:12partner on this event, and so we said absolutely we would do that.
- 34:16So we're co promoting Metropolis, which is on the seventeenth of February with our
- 34:22Columbus Comic Book and Toy Show, which is on the twenty fifth of February,
- 34:24just the very next weekend, and there are co promotions and discounts available
- 34:30for those two events. But also we're going to have students from our local
- 34:36school district who we work with very closely here at Space Science Center, who
- 34:38are on robotics teams come out and demonstrate their robots both on the night of
- 34:45Metropolis February seventeenth in the gallery atrium of the River Center before the show,
- 34:52so you can come see all the robot teams doing demos out there, as
- 34:57well as our Columbus State University robotics professors students. And on February tenth,
- 35:04We're going to have another expo during the day with a Lunch and learned by
- 35:07me to talk all about the development of robots and space robotics. So there's
- 35:14a Lunch and Learn February tenth with robotics expos from Muscoge County students. There's
- 35:19also the performance of Metropolis on February seventeenth, Robots Robots, robots running all
- 35:23around the gallery. And there's the Columbus Comic Book and Schoy Toy Toy Show
- 35:29Columbus Comic Book and Toy Show on February twenty fifth here at Space Science Center.
- 35:34So as much sci fi robot fun as you could possibly imagine in the
- 35:38month of February. If you can't remember all of that from my very poor
- 35:43descriptions here talking through that, just go visit our website check out www dot
- 35:47cc SSC dot org Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie dot org, and you can find
- 35:52out all the information on all of those events I just talked about, Metropolis,
- 35:58Lunch and learns, comic booking, toy shows, robots everywhere. It's
- 36:02a lot. So it sounds like you're just taking it easy for the month
- 36:06of February, nothing really planned. Nothing to do what we can. West.
- 36:09We do what we can to inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers,
- 36:14and science communicators here at the Coke Cola Space side set Sean and I
- 36:17thank you for listening, and we'll do this again next week. Overhead Door
- 36:29Company of Columbus has all of your garage door needs covered. Residential and commercial
- 36:34service and repairs. If you need a new garage door, or you're just
- 36:37looking to upgrade or repair your current door, Overhead Door Company of Columbus has
- 36:42you covered. Plus they've got your emergency repairs or service covered as well.
- 36:46Seven oh six three five eight forty five hundred seven oh six three five eight
- 36:52forty five hundred O Dccolumbus dot com