Latest / Made of Stars / Recapping Space News of 2024 Part 1

Transcript

Recapping Space News of 2024 Part 1 · Made of Stars

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Speaker 1: Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
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Speaker 1: and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
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Speaker 1: known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
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Speaker 1: expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
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Speaker 1: that's your own risk. Go ahead.
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Speaker 2: When made of stars, made them stars.
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Speaker 1: Made sizes.
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Speaker 3: When made of stars, you could be from high they
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Speaker 3: would New Mexicomus where a.
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Speaker 1: Stars?
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Speaker 3: When we are made of stars. I'm Wes Carol, joined
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Speaker 3: by my good friend doctor Seawan Cruzen from Columbus State Universe,
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Speaker 3: Coca Cola Space Signed Center. Good morning Sean, Good morning.
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Speaker 2: West, and ho ho ho. It's the whole day, time.
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Speaker 3: Of year, it is. Indeed, this is the time of
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Speaker 3: year where we take a look back at the year,
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Speaker 3: the biggest space news stories of the year. It's a
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Speaker 3: two parter, so we'll have a part one this week
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Speaker 3: and then next week we'll finish with the biggest stories
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Speaker 3: of the year. And I know they're sort of are
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Speaker 3: they in order by when they happen or in order
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Speaker 3: by significance? I know it's hard to rank them by significance,
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Speaker 3: but I guess we primarily kind of do this just
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Speaker 3: in order by how they happen. I know, we start
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Speaker 3: all of this in January, and we've got a couple
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Speaker 3: couple of January stories to start it.
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Speaker 2: I mean, so I will just be honest and say,
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Speaker 2: this is my own kind of compilation list. And you know,
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Speaker 2: it's easy to as you're just looking back through old shows,
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Speaker 2: going you know, what happened this year and what was significant.
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Speaker 2: I started in January, so there's probably some time sequencing
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Speaker 2: prejudice to this thing. But I really did try to say, well,
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Speaker 2: what were the I don't know if they're the most important,
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Speaker 2: but the most impactful stories. What were the most impactful
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Speaker 2: stories of twenty twenty four And you know what do
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Speaker 2: we really need to think about five years from now
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Speaker 2: looking back and saying, hey, that happened back in twenty
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Speaker 2: twenty four, right, So so I tried to pull out
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Speaker 2: those stories which I think we're going to remember, and
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Speaker 2: I say we, I mean you and me, sure, right,
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Speaker 2: So maybe not the entirety of the space community, but
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Speaker 2: you and me, as we've done this show, what we'll
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Speaker 2: remember as we look back and say, oh, yeah, that
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Speaker 2: was in twenty twenty four. So I try to pull
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Speaker 2: ten stories that kind of represent that sort of a list,
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Speaker 2: and I hope everybody enjoys them. I think they're good.
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Speaker 3: Well, we were going to start with a sad one,
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Speaker 3: maybe the saddest one. I don't know. I mean, it's sad,
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Speaker 3: but it's not sad. It's one of those things where
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Speaker 3: you know, we end up assigning human characteristics to a
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Speaker 3: piece of machinery, and as we're prone to do as
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Speaker 3: a people, you know, it just happens. We just sort
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Speaker 3: of almost think of I don't know, like a little
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Speaker 3: helicopter or drone or whatever on Mars flying around, and
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Speaker 3: we almost think of it like it's a little pet.
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Speaker 3: It's not a pet, it's a machine that did its job,
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Speaker 3: and then a whole lot more and back in January
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Speaker 3: of this year, early in the year it flew its
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Speaker 3: final flight.
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Speaker 2: I like to think of the Ingenuity story a bit
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Speaker 2: like the original Gladiator movie, like we know what's going
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Speaker 2: to happen in the end, right If you haven't seen
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Speaker 2: the Gladiator movie, I don't want to spoil it here
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Speaker 2: for you. It's only been out for what twenty years?
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Speaker 2: I don't know. Something.
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Speaker 3: I think it's safe to say that people that are
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Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe people are learning about it now
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Speaker 3: that hadn't seen it because of the sequel or quasi
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Speaker 3: sequel or whatever it is. But you know, there have
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Speaker 3: been many people who have taken journeys to wheat fields
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Speaker 3: just to walk through and move their hands through the wheat.
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Speaker 3: So I think it's probably safe to say people know
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Speaker 3: what happened in the movie.
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Speaker 2: Ingenuity stuck its tiny paws down into the Martian soil
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Speaker 2: and let the dirt just simply slip through its fingers.
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Speaker 3: Yep. One final time. That one final time.
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Speaker 2: It reached out its little propellers and touched the Elysian
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Speaker 2: fields of Mars yep as it slipped off into a
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Speaker 2: dreamlike state. But the one thing you'd say about the
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Speaker 2: Gladiator movie is the Gladiator was successful.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true.
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Speaker 2: The Gladiator achieved all of his goals in the end,
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Speaker 2: right we almost we considered that happy ending for a
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Speaker 2: Gladiator movie.
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Speaker 3: Maybe, I mean, technically, if we're really breaking this down,
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Speaker 3: he had accomplished his goals even before becoming you know,
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Speaker 3: the Gladiator. So I think it's safe to say that
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Speaker 3: just by flying that first mission, Ingenuity had accomplished some
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Speaker 3: of those similar goals right out of the gate. But
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Speaker 3: to continue on and on and on for seventy two flights,
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Speaker 3: that's really impressive, and it's a really a solid tribute
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Speaker 3: to the engineering behind this thing and the questions of
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Speaker 3: what if we tried to do this on another planet.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's just remember that that's true. Friends. This
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Speaker 2: is the first time that aviation has taken place on
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Speaker 2: another planet. That we've flown an aerial vehicle on any
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Speaker 2: world in the Solar System besides Earth. Ingenuity was the
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Speaker 2: first time, and as West alluded to, it almost didn't
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Speaker 2: make the cut for instruments that would even go to Mars.
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Speaker 2: It was a late add on for the Mars Perseverance
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Speaker 2: program or what we at one time knew was the
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Speaker 2: twenty twenty rover. Anyway, So, so the helicopter, the little drone,
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Speaker 2: actually made seventy two flights. It had one hundred and
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Speaker 2: twenty nine minutes of airtime on Mars. It covered over
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Speaker 2: eleven miles, which there are many rovers that don't make
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Speaker 2: it that far on other planets. Right, So, so by
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Speaker 2: all measures, this test flight, this test article, which was
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Speaker 2: basically a proof of concept, can we fly something in
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Speaker 2: an atmosphere of another planet. Achieved that goal, and as
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Speaker 2: Wes said, far beyond it made it all the way
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Speaker 2: to Rome, it met the Emperor. You know, it had
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Speaker 2: a happy ending.
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Speaker 3: And yes it died.
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Speaker 2: It died with a rather rough landing last year, which
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Speaker 2: is on the on January the eighth, the little Ingenuity
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Speaker 2: helicopter came up, crashing down onto the surface and it
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Speaker 2: broke its little propellers. But even now it is still
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Speaker 2: not completely dead. It's not entirely dead. It's now serving
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Speaker 2: as a ground monitoring station for wind patterns and for
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Speaker 2: other things on the surface of Mars. So even now
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Speaker 2: it's not a helicopter anymore, but it's an active ground
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Speaker 2: station for the Mars Exploration teams at the Jet Propulsion
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Speaker 2: Laboratory at NASA. So a really cool story. Actually, there
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Speaker 2: was a new story that just came out just a
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Speaker 2: few days ago, just at the end of last week,
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Speaker 2: which about the helicopter, which NASA came out and said, hey,
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Speaker 2: we know why it crashed. The navigation system actually became
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Speaker 2: confused because the surface of Mars over which the little
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Speaker 2: helicopter was flying basically was so featureless that it couldn't
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Speaker 2: it couldn't determine its altitude properly, and so then when
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Speaker 2: it came back down to land, it was coming in
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Speaker 2: thinking the ground was further away than it really was.
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Speaker 2: And once again it's you know, it's a glitch in
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Speaker 2: the navigational system. But again, can you really call it
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Speaker 2: a glitch when it's been that successful. It just reached
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Speaker 2: the limits of its navigational system? How about that? Yeah,
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Speaker 2: And so that announcement came out just a few days ago,
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Speaker 2: the thirteenth of December twenty twenty four, an analysis of
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Speaker 2: the navigation system of ingenuity. The reason that's important is
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Speaker 2: they don't want to do it again, right if they
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Speaker 2: sent another helicopter up there. They want to be able
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Speaker 2: to overcome those shortfalls in the system.
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Speaker 3: And important for moving forward, for you know, whatever's next
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Speaker 3: when it comes to trying to do this again and
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Speaker 3: a lot of new information when you realize something that
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Speaker 3: you thought maybe this will fly once, maybe hopefully it'll
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Speaker 3: fly once it flies seventy two times and eleven miles
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Speaker 3: and you go, okay, well we could definitely send a
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Speaker 3: slightly upgrade model up there and see what happens next time.
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Speaker 3: Another story from January was and this is one of
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Speaker 3: those stories that has been going on for quite some
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Speaker 3: time when this is a carryover from radio story. But
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Speaker 3: it finally happened the beginning of this year. One of
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Speaker 3: the containers from the Osiris REX mission was opened and
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Speaker 3: you just you know, hey, what's going to come out?
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Speaker 3: What's going to be in there? Is this where venom
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Speaker 3: finally comes to Earth? Who knows? Well, now we know,
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Speaker 3: I mean.
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Speaker 2: We have you know, two frames of reference for time now,
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Speaker 2: and that was prior to COVID and post COVID, So
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Speaker 2: this was a pre COVID launch. So this, this vehicle,
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Speaker 2: the Osiris REX spacecraft launched prior to COVID, flew out
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Speaker 2: to an asteroid called Benu. It flew close enough that
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Speaker 2: it's an instrument called the tag SAM, which is basically
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Speaker 2: like a big vacuum cleaner tube that reached down to
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Speaker 2: the surface of that asteroid Benu, scooped up a bunch
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Speaker 2: of samples and then brought them back home. They arrived
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Speaker 2: back on Earth successfully in September of last year, twenty
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Speaker 2: twenty three, but they couldn't pop the lid on that thing.
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Speaker 2: It was a little bit stuck, and so they had
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Speaker 2: to do some engineering measures to actually get it open,
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Speaker 2: so they didn't get this sample return mission opened until
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Speaker 2: January twenty third of twenty twenty four, So that was
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Speaker 2: one of the most One of the most notable events
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Speaker 2: that took place in twenty twenty four was the opening
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Speaker 2: of o Cyrus Rex sample return container. And the reason
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Speaker 2: that that asteroid is important for us to understand is
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Speaker 2: because it's traveling on a trajectory that could bring it
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Speaker 2: very close to the Earth. In other words, this is
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Speaker 2: one of those asteroids that we may have to punch
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Speaker 2: in the eye at some point. And what Osiris Rex
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Speaker 2: did is it went out there and gave us a
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Speaker 2: really good idea about the physical nature of that asteroid,
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Speaker 2: what is it made out of, how how tightly is
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Speaker 2: it bound together, and just gave us a really good
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Speaker 2: detailed look at some of the surface chemistry of the
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Speaker 2: material on the outer layer of that asteroid. So we
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Speaker 2: just understand it better. So, yeah, the opening of the
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Speaker 2: old Cyrus Rex containers from Asteroid Venue January twenty third,
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Speaker 2: twenty twenty four one of the top ten space stories
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Speaker 2: from twenty twenty four.
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Speaker 3: More made of Stars. Right after this, we also have
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Speaker 3: this story that we have another sort of connection to
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Speaker 3: in that just before William Shatner went to space and
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Speaker 3: became the oldest person to go to space, I interviewed
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Speaker 3: him and this was not all official then we didn't
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Speaker 3: talk about it specifically in the interview, but very soon
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Speaker 3: after the interviews, that's when it all happened. And then
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Speaker 3: this year that record was and that was back in
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Speaker 3: twenty twenty one when he went up. Well now that
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Speaker 3: record has been broken, and that happened in May.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and so an interesting story. May of twenty twenty four,
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Speaker 2: a gentleman by the name of Ed Dwight became the
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Speaker 2: oldest person to ever travel into space. He's still the
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Speaker 2: record holder. He was ninety years, eight months and thirty
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Speaker 2: days old. I guess at some point we're going to
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Speaker 2: have to start counting minutes and seconds. But the ninety days,
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Speaker 2: ninety years, eight months, ten days. And the reason that's
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Speaker 2: important is because that was just a little bit older
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Speaker 2: than William Shatner. Star Trek actor William Shatner was nearly
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Speaker 2: two months older than Shatner when he went up in
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Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. So Ed Dwight also not because he
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Speaker 2: was the first African American Astronaut candidate. He was selected
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Speaker 2: and champion by President Kennedy, but he did not make
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Speaker 2: the final cut for the astronaut core back when that
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Speaker 2: original class of astronauts was selected in nineteen sixty three.
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Speaker 2: So unfortunately he was almost America's first African American astronaut.
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Speaker 2: But now he has a different distinction. He has become
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Speaker 2: the oldest human being to ever travel in space. Ed Dwight,
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Speaker 2: we tip our hat to you. You crossed the Carmen
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Speaker 2: line back in May of twenty twenty four. The Carmen Line, friends,
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Speaker 2: that's the one hundred kilometers above the service of the
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Speaker 2: Earth line. It is one of the official definitions for
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Speaker 2: the technical boundary of space. So if you reach that
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Speaker 2: altitude above the Earth, you are technically considered to be
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Speaker 2: in space. Ed Dwight crossed it and moved into history
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Speaker 2: as the oldest human being to ever fly into space.
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Speaker 3: And I know we talked about this back in May
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Speaker 3: when when this story happened, But you got to think
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Speaker 3: somebody who spent so much time thinking, oh my gosh,
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Speaker 3: this is gonna happen for me, I'm gonna go to space,
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Speaker 3: and then that doesn't happen for you, and then you've
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Speaker 3: got to spend a certain amount of time morning. You
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Speaker 3: gotta you gotta have that period where you go, Man,
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Speaker 3: it just almost I almost got to go to space.
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Speaker 3: I can only imagine what happens when you're, you know,
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Speaker 3: ninety years old and you get the call and they say, hey,
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Speaker 3: would you like to go to space? Now that's a
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Speaker 3: pretty big that's a pretty big thing to have, sort
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Speaker 3: of that that mulligan in life to come to come
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Speaker 3: back around for you. So just a cool moment for him,
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Speaker 3: and a cool moment that Blue Origin was able to
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Speaker 3: do for him.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, once you live sixty years of your life thinking
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Speaker 2: that you've missed your chance to go to space, yeah,
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Speaker 2: I think you've probably more or less given up on
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Speaker 2: the idea. And in Ed Dwighte's own words, he said
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Speaker 2: this quote, I thought I really didn't need this in
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Speaker 2: my life, and then he said, but now I need
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Speaker 2: this in my life. I'm ecstatic. So anyway, we're very
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Speaker 2: happy for him too. Congratulations Ed Dwight the record holder
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Speaker 2: and likely for a while I would think as the
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Speaker 2: oldest person to ever fly in space.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it's just one of those great and I
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Speaker 3: liked it. All of our stories, at least in this
15:25
Speaker 3: week's show, are sort of those continuing over stories that
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Speaker 3: have some some beginning and then now they pay off
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Speaker 3: for us again, which brings us to another story that's
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Speaker 3: just kind of gone on and on and on, and
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Speaker 3: we occasionally have these moments where we say, oh, they've
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Speaker 3: lost contact with Voyager one, and then you know, eventually
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Speaker 3: you think, whoa, oh, this is a long are they
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Speaker 3: going to get contact again? Well, in October after losing contact,
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Speaker 3: they got contact again.
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Speaker 2: So before I had my driver's license at age sixteen,
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Speaker 2: not just because I didn't get a driver's license for
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Speaker 2: a long time. Before I had my driver's license at
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Speaker 2: age sixteen, Voyager one wasy cool. It was already out
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Speaker 2: there exploring the Solar system. So it's been out there
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Speaker 2: for a very long time. Voyager one a champion of
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Speaker 2: the nineteen eighties, sending back all kinds of great images
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Speaker 2: from that part, from that part of our solar system,
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Speaker 2: the outer part of our Solar system. And so the
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Speaker 2: fact that we're still talking about it as an active
16:34
Speaker 2: spacecraft in twenty twenty four is simply remarkable. I will
16:39
Speaker 2: tell you that that almost didn't happen. So we lost
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Speaker 2: an important portion of Voyager one's hard drive back in
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Speaker 2: the summer of twenty twenty four, and there was a
16:55
Speaker 2: miracle of engineering in my opinion, and maybe those two
16:59
Speaker 2: things are not mutual compatible. I don't know. It feels
17:04
Speaker 2: like a miracle to me because there are engineers out
17:06
Speaker 2: there who are smart enough to do this. How about that.
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Speaker 2: So this is a miraculous fix in my opinion, that
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Speaker 2: they were able to re configure the hard drive of
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Speaker 2: this spacecraft so that it would only write to certain
17:21
Speaker 2: sectors of the hard drive because a hard drive sector
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Speaker 2: had gone had gone foul, and so they could no
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Speaker 2: longer use it. They were able to do that from
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Speaker 2: fifteen billion miles away with technology from the nineteen seventies,
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Speaker 2: So that's really the miraculous part. But then after doing
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Speaker 2: that and actually getting Voyager to work again and to
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Speaker 2: begin to send useful science data back to the Earth,
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Speaker 2: in October, they lost communications with it again, so we thought, oh,
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Speaker 2: Voyager's gone for sure this time. But on October twenty fourth,
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Speaker 2: the engineers at JPL again pulling rabbits out of hats.
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Speaker 2: Somehow out there, we're able to successfully re establish contact
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Speaker 2: with Voyager one. Yes, yet again, and the most distant
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Speaker 2: space explorer from the Earth is still communicating data from
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Speaker 2: what it's like beyond the boundaries of the Solar System
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Speaker 2: in what we call interstellar space, over fifteen billion miles
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Speaker 2: in distance. It's still going. So that makes it one
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Speaker 2: of the greatest stories of twenty twenty four in my mind.
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Speaker 3: And you got to think some of these engineers that
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Speaker 3: worked on it back in the seventies or having their
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Speaker 3: ed Dwhite moments of you know, they're calling me back
18:41
Speaker 3: in here we go. We got to do this again.
18:43
Speaker 3: We got to figure it out. I thought I was retired,
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Speaker 3: Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me
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Speaker 3: back in all those moments being able to do that. Hey,
18:51
Speaker 3: coming up after a quick break. It's a multi part story,
18:55
Speaker 3: but it relates to some incredible nights, some just incredible
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Speaker 3: sights in the sky. But nights is part of it,
19:03
Speaker 3: by the way, so we will talk about that right
19:06
Speaker 3: after this. So we had a very interesting and historic
19:35
Speaker 3: year when you think about some of the sites we
19:39
Speaker 3: were able to take in in our skies, and you know,
19:44
Speaker 3: we had an eclipse, we had a comment that we
19:49
Speaker 3: were able to see that got a great perspective on that,
19:53
Speaker 3: and then of course Aurora borealis in the southern skies
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Speaker 3: not once but twice this year.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely incredible lineup. You know, these are things that people
20:09
Speaker 2: could really wait their whole lives to see one of
20:13
Speaker 2: these things one time. And so in that perspective, I mean,
20:18
Speaker 2: there are many people who've never seen a total eclipse
20:21
Speaker 2: of the sun. There are many people who've never seen
20:24
Speaker 2: a bright comet in the sky. There are many people
20:27
Speaker 2: who've never seen the Northern lights, particularly those people who
20:31
Speaker 2: live in the south and folks, if you don't know it,
20:34
Speaker 2: that's where this show or originates. We live in Georgia,
20:38
Speaker 2: West central Georgia. You don't typically see Aurora borealis phenomenon
20:43
Speaker 2: in West central Georgia. Well as West just mentioned, we're
20:46
Speaker 2: going to start there. We saw the Northern lights twice,
20:52
Speaker 2: and when I say see them, I mean really see them.
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Speaker 2: There were two historic events of northern lights that traveled
21:01
Speaker 2: so far south that we could easily see them from
21:04
Speaker 2: our latitude, which is about thirty two and a half degrees,
21:07
Speaker 2: which means we're about only one third from the equator
21:11
Speaker 2: to the North pole, which means the sky had to
21:13
Speaker 2: be glowing for two thirds from the pole down toward
21:17
Speaker 2: the equator for us to be able to see these lights.
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Speaker 2: So that's the way to think about it. On May
21:22
Speaker 2: tenth of twenty twenty four, there was a historic geomagnetic storm.
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Speaker 2: It didn't just bring northern lights to Columbus, Georgia, where
21:31
Speaker 2: we are. It brought northern lights all the way down
21:35
Speaker 2: to southern Puerto Rico and other parts in the Caribbean
21:39
Speaker 2: and parts of Mexico. So it traveled all the way
21:43
Speaker 2: down to be visible at eighteen degrees north latitude, a
21:47
Speaker 2: mere eighteen degrees from the equator of the Earth, and
21:51
Speaker 2: so Wes and I both got a chance to see
21:54
Speaker 2: those phenomenon. I happened to just be well, it's funny.
21:58
Speaker 2: We were doing a show. If you go back in
21:59
Speaker 2: the arc, you'll hear us talking about this just prior,
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Speaker 2: and we said on the show, Hey, I might want
22:05
Speaker 2: to go out and check for northern lights tonight, depending
22:08
Speaker 2: on where you live, because there's a really big storm
22:10
Speaker 2: on the Sun and it's really thrown a bunch of radiation.
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Speaker 2: And this is where I have to tell on myself
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Speaker 2: and say I completely forgot about it. I was like, yeah, okay,
22:18
Speaker 2: we're never going to see northern lights here. It's really rare.
22:20
Speaker 2: And by the way, I've seen northern lights one other
22:23
Speaker 2: time from the south pretty brightly, so so I know
22:26
Speaker 2: it can occur. But for whatever reason, I was busy
22:29
Speaker 2: with my life. I wasn't paying attention, and I told
22:31
Speaker 2: my wife, Hey, you want to take a little stroll
22:33
Speaker 2: down the driveway before we go to bed, let's walk outside.
22:36
Speaker 2: Well it's a good thing we took that stroll because
22:38
Speaker 2: when I got to the end of my driveway where
22:40
Speaker 2: it's nice and dark, I looked up and I said,
22:43
Speaker 2: what is that?
22:46
Speaker 1: And there was a.
22:46
Speaker 2: Giant white column stretching across the sky. And my first
22:51
Speaker 2: thought was because I'm one of the dumbest smart people
22:54
Speaker 2: you'll ever think of, you'll ever see, I didn't just
22:57
Speaker 2: immediately say, oh, will I remember the radio show I
22:59
Speaker 2: did today? No, I remember the podcast. No, I went,
23:02
Speaker 2: I think that's a search light. No, Sean, it was
23:08
Speaker 2: not a searchlight. It was something else. It was the
23:11
Speaker 2: Aurora borealis. And it took me probably a full ninety
23:14
Speaker 2: seconds to go, wait a minute, Wait a minute, search light.
23:20
Speaker 2: That's no search light, that's a space station. No, that's
23:24
Speaker 2: a that's no search light. That's the Aurora borealis.
23:27
Speaker 3: So yeah, and then my story my phone WASNA say,
23:31
Speaker 3: my story not quite so dramatic. I just kind of
23:33
Speaker 3: went outside for something and I don't remember what it was,
23:35
Speaker 3: and I went, why is the sky pink? Uh?
23:42
Speaker 2: What's funny? Is the pink reddish colors that we both
23:46
Speaker 2: so clearly saw that night didn't show up right when
23:50
Speaker 2: I saw that column. I just saw that column of
23:53
Speaker 2: white and thought, that's something that's not man made, that's
23:56
Speaker 2: not a cloud. And then so then I pointed my
23:59
Speaker 2: camp or my phone camera to the sky and I
24:02
Speaker 2: picked up the colors with the phone right So then
24:06
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, okay, those reds were a little too
24:08
Speaker 2: faint for me to see at first, but then the
24:11
Speaker 2: sky began to blossom and it really got noticeable, and
24:15
Speaker 2: you could see it even at latitude thirty two. I
24:17
Speaker 2: think you and I were texting each other at one
24:19
Speaker 2: point too, going hey, or you seeing this? Yeah? Are
24:21
Speaker 2: you seeing this too?
24:22
Speaker 3: I think I think my exact text was is this
24:25
Speaker 3: what I think it is? When I took the picture
24:28
Speaker 3: and sent it to you, I needed some confirmation before
24:31
Speaker 3: I went, oh my gosh, this is happening.
24:34
Speaker 2: What's so fun is that you know, we've you and
24:36
Speaker 2: I have kind of gotten into a community of skywatchers
24:39
Speaker 2: now because of this program and other other activities that
24:42
Speaker 2: we're involved with. And my phone just absolutely erupted, probably
24:47
Speaker 2: less than fifteen minutes after I first saw the white
24:51
Speaker 2: column and the sky. Everybody was figuring it out. Everyone
24:54
Speaker 2: was out there taking pictures. I was trying to let
24:56
Speaker 2: you know, like an inner circle no by via text, Hey,
24:59
Speaker 2: go out look at the sky right now. But then
25:01
Speaker 2: when the greater group got a hold of it, they
25:04
Speaker 2: really were sending me some text So that was a
25:06
Speaker 2: lot of fun. The last time Aurora Borealis were visible
25:11
Speaker 2: from Puerto Rico, which occurred on May tenth, the previous
25:15
Speaker 2: time was in nineteen twenty one, and the previous time
25:19
Speaker 2: to that was in eighteen fifty nine.
25:22
Speaker 3: So this is roughly.
25:23
Speaker 2: A one hundred year event that took place on May tenth.
25:27
Speaker 2: So that's that's a pretty astounding thing, right, and so
25:32
Speaker 2: it places this among the greatest geomagnetic storms of the
25:36
Speaker 2: past five hundred years that according to our friends at
25:39
Speaker 2: spaceweather dot com. So it's a really interesting thing and
25:43
Speaker 2: you think, wow, I'm so glad I saw this one
25:46
Speaker 2: because it'll never happen again. You know, it's one hundred
25:49
Speaker 2: year event. I'll never get to see it. Then came October,
25:54
Speaker 2: five months later. This is an important point, ladies and gentlemen,
25:58
Speaker 2: to remind everybody. We at solar maximum, or roughly at
26:01
Speaker 2: solar maximum right now. We're at the maximum period of
26:04
Speaker 2: activity on the Sun where the Sun is really throwing
26:07
Speaker 2: a lot of radiation at the Earth. So it's not
26:09
Speaker 2: entirely surprising that we would have two Aurora events which
26:14
Speaker 2: could be viewed this far south. But it surprised me.
26:17
Speaker 2: So on October tenth, twenty twenty four, you know what
26:22
Speaker 2: to five months? So I can't do the math.
26:26
Speaker 3: Five months to the day. Yeah, no, it was exactly
26:29
Speaker 3: five months. We realized that also as we were calling
26:32
Speaker 3: that shot again on the podcast the day up, Hey,
26:35
Speaker 3: this could happen again tonight, and then it did.
26:38
Speaker 2: So on the October event, Spaceweather or space dot Com
26:41
Speaker 2: rather referred to it as three hours of magic, unquote
26:46
Speaker 2: three hours of magic. So on Thursday, October tenth, the
26:50
Speaker 2: sky lit up again and it was visible all the
26:53
Speaker 2: way down. In fact, in some ways the October event
26:57
Speaker 2: was more visible from my particular location than the previous
27:02
Speaker 2: May event. And Wes, you and your and your family
27:05
Speaker 2: came out and joined me. Your sons came out and
27:06
Speaker 2: joined me. We were out there in the dark skies
27:08
Speaker 2: of Harris County, which is kind of outside of town,
27:11
Speaker 2: and we really got to see it together and that
27:13
Speaker 2: was a lot of fun.
27:14
Speaker 3: It was great photos and great memories. And I know
27:17
Speaker 3: they won't forget it, which is those things that you
27:19
Speaker 3: try to do as a parent. You want to make
27:21
Speaker 3: sure you're instilling those things, those memories that your kids
27:23
Speaker 3: won't forget, those experiences. Those are way better than buying things, right,
27:28
Speaker 3: you want those experiences.
27:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was really happy to be able to share
27:32
Speaker 2: that with your sons too. That was great. So there
27:34
Speaker 2: you go two, not once, but twice, Aurora Borealis in
27:38
Speaker 2: the South. What else could you ask for it? Well,
27:40
Speaker 2: what about the other two things that happened in twenty
27:42
Speaker 2: twenty four that are kind of once in a lifetime event,
27:45
Speaker 2: or at least they're semi rare. Let's just say that
27:48
Speaker 2: the Great American Eclipse Part two. Folks, A lot of
27:52
Speaker 2: folks missed it in twenty seventeen, they didn't get into
27:55
Speaker 2: the path of totality, so like me, many people traveled
27:58
Speaker 2: to where they could get into the path of totality.
28:01
Speaker 2: There was another total eclipse visible in the United States
28:05
Speaker 2: on the fourth of April twenty twenty four. I happened
28:09
Speaker 2: to travel to Waco, Texas. But the path of totality
28:12
Speaker 2: went all across North America from Mexico through the United
28:16
Speaker 2: States up into Canada. So all you had to do
28:18
Speaker 2: is get along that line and you can see totality.
28:22
Speaker 2: Totality won't be visible again in the lower forty eight
28:26
Speaker 2: States for about another of thirty years something along those lines,
28:32
Speaker 2: so it's a semi rare event anyway. And so this
28:35
Speaker 2: eclipse called the Great American Eclipse. It was a really
28:39
Speaker 2: nice event even here in Columbus, Georgia, because approximately seventy
28:43
Speaker 2: eight percent of the Sun's surface was covered, so many
28:46
Speaker 2: people got to see some sort of an eclipse today
28:49
Speaker 2: that day, all across the United States. And then a
28:52
Speaker 2: few people got into totality. And again I was down
28:54
Speaker 2: there with a chip and Joe Anne down in Waco,
28:58
Speaker 2: Texas hanging out at their place, happened to see the
29:00
Speaker 2: eclipse from there, so really fun stuff that day.
29:03
Speaker 3: Well, surely that's all of the great things that happened
29:06
Speaker 3: in the sky this year, right.
29:08
Speaker 2: No, sir, that was one more commet Chu Chin Shan Atlas,
29:15
Speaker 2: or in other words, the Purple Mountain comet, because it
29:18
Speaker 2: was discovered at Purple Mountain Observatory in China, and that's
29:20
Speaker 2: what Chu Chin Shan stands for, means that's translated to
29:24
Speaker 2: purple mountain from Chinese. And so the Purple Mountain comet,
29:29
Speaker 2: Comet Tea Atlas grazed our skies in October and many
29:34
Speaker 2: people saw this naked eye comet. But more importantly, I
29:37
Speaker 2: think for a lot of people, they got cell phone pictures.
29:40
Speaker 2: So many people actually got far better cell phone pictures
29:42
Speaker 2: than even the ones I had. And I knew it
29:44
Speaker 2: was coming and had a little stand for to hold
29:46
Speaker 2: my phone. I just saw some incredible pictures that people
29:50
Speaker 2: just took from their palm, just holding their phone to
29:53
Speaker 2: the sky of Comet Tea Atlas. So that was the
29:57
Speaker 2: quad event, the fourth in a and a quad of
30:01
Speaker 2: really amazing events in the sky taking place in twenty
30:04
Speaker 2: twenty four total eclipse commet t Atlas and then two
30:09
Speaker 2: historic Aurora Borealis displays that reached all the way down
30:12
Speaker 2: to Columbus, Georgia. And that friends, wraps up our first
30:18
Speaker 2: five or lower five, shall we say, in the list
30:21
Speaker 2: of ten of the most amazing space events in twenty
30:23
Speaker 2: twenty four.
30:24
Speaker 3: This is part one. Part two will air next week
30:28
Speaker 3: and we will do the top five stories of the
30:32
Speaker 3: Space News stories of the year of twenty twenty four.
30:37
Speaker 3: Last those were great stories, they were incredible. How could
30:40
Speaker 3: it possibly get better? I don't know how you could
30:43
Speaker 3: get five better stories? So are we saying that the
30:45
Speaker 3: other five are more important than those five? I'll just
30:49
Speaker 3: just a little hint at what's coming next week. You know,
30:54
Speaker 3: were they stuck? Weren't they stuck? I mean, that's one
30:57
Speaker 3: of the questions that we're going to have to revisit.
31:00
Speaker 3: I think it's safe to say that, you know, thanks
31:03
Speaker 3: to some giant chopsticks, a certain private company had a
31:07
Speaker 3: pretty big year, and then a billionaire not named Elon
31:12
Speaker 3: Musk had a pretty good end to the year, and
31:15
Speaker 3: some guy.
31:15
Speaker 2: Stuck his head out of a spaceship further from Earth
31:18
Speaker 2: and we've been since the Apollo missions. That's probably a
31:21
Speaker 2: pretty important story.
31:22
Speaker 1: I would think.
31:23
Speaker 3: Probably has some significance and may have even more significance
31:27
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty five. Sean and I thank you for listening,
31:30
Speaker 3: and we will do this again next week. Overhead Door
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