Latest / Made of Stars / The Return of OSIRIS-REx!

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The Return of OSIRIS-REx! · Made of Stars

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  Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics, and
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  space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been known to learn about astronomical
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  phenomenon the scientific method and expand their vocabulary to include terms like quasar, asterism
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  and uranus. Listen, that's your own risk. Go ahead. Where made
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  of Stars, Made of stars? Made where Stars? You could be from
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  High Hollywood, New Mexico, Mars, Where Stars? When we are made
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  of Stars. I'm West Carroll, joined by my good friend doctor Sean Cruz
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  from Columbus State Universities Coca Cola Space Science Center. Mornan Sean, Good morning,
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  West. It's great to be here with you. We have a really
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  awesome lineup of stuff coming here. I'm excited to talk about these stories.
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  It feels like we've been talking about the Osiris REX mission for I don't know,
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  a decade or so. It hasn't been that long, but it's been
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  a while and it's finally coming home. So Osiris Rex, ladies and gentlemen,
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  is a mission to go grab some samples off the surface of an asteroid,
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  then turn around and bring them home. That sounds ambitious. This thing
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  launched in early September of twenty eighteen, I was there. I had the
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  very fortunate privilege to be able to take a group of my students down and
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  we did a podcast of the webcast of the launch, i should say,
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  and at that time my students got to meet some of the project scientists and
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  hear about the kinds of things that we're going to take place in the research
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  and of this particular mission. They also, on that same trip got to
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  preview the Orion capsule, which was still being constructed at that time, but
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  has now made a trip around the Moon and returned safely back to the Earth,
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  which is all awesome. So Osirius Rex has a near and dear place
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  to my heart. And here at clumb State University, our program is actually
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  a program in Earth and Space sciences, and our astronomy track is actually astrophysics
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  and planetary geology. It's really kind of a Solar System planetary astronomy course,
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  and so people who get these degrees they have geology courses as well as astronomy
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  and astrophysics courses, and so when there's a geological space mission, it really
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  resonates with my students here and the faculty at Columbus State. This is one
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  of those. So now Osiris REX again. It launched into that in eighteen.
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  It made contact with the asteroid and the asteroids by the way, the
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  name of the asteroid is Benu, and Benu is one of these asteroids that
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  is a potentially hazardous asteroid, which means it comes close enough to the Earth
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  that it has any kind of orbital variations it might make it something that could
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  potentially impact the Earth. So all right, so that makes it an interesting
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  asteroid. We need to know more about it. So the mission actually made
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  contact with the asteroid and picked up samples in twenty twenty, so it didn't
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  know COVID it was going on because it was out hanging around with Benu,
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  but we actually did. We actually did a webcast during the COVID crisis for
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  people and students who were kind of homebound and things like that on the day
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  leading up to that touchdown or that impact with the asteroid Benu. So that
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  was kind of fun. So these are reasons why West that you think we've
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  been talking about this a long time, We really have. This is a
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  really important mission. It was interesting in its development, It had a successful
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  launch, and then it made a really amazing point of contact with the asteroid
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  venue, and now it's turned around and head back home. Well, it's
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  going to be here on Sunday, this Sunday, September twenty fourth. It's
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  going to be completing its six plus year journey of retrieving these asteroid samples,
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  and it's going to drop them through the Earth's atmosphere to land in the desert
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  of Utah out at a place that's managed by the Department of Defense called the
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  Utah Test and Training Range. It's going to drop those samples in a trajectory
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  that should bring them safely down to the Utah Test and Training Range, and
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  then scientists will be able to get their hands for the first time in US
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  history on a sample of asteroid material fresh off the surface of an actual asteroid.
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  Okay, So, just as a quick question, because you and you
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  probably don't know exactly step by step what's gonna happen once he gets here,
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  But I'm going to assume, and maybe I'm dead wrong, but in my
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  head, I'm imagining that they get the samples and they're gonna go into some
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  sort of a safe room. They're gonna be in some sort of a place
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  where because we don't really know what they've extracted from this exactly. That's part
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  of the mission. I like that you mentioned the geology component of this because
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  obviously that's this very significant part about what's happening on Mars now, and we're
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  gonna talk about something about that coming up in just a few minutes. But
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  what's the fay you mentioned and you say, and what made me think of
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  this? As you said they're gonna have their hands on it, They're not
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  really gonna have their hands on it right away, right well, I mean
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  that's the concern right out of the gate, right as you go. What
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  if they brought back in what could it be and could it possibly lead to,
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  you know, venom in the Spider Man universe? Is that a possibility.
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  I'm not saying it won't because I don't have that data. So I
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  cannot deny that this sample of material from the asteroid will turn someone into venom.
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  I can't, all right, that's fair, it's too early. It's
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  just too early to tell. But I can tell you this. So there's
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  there's a five step process that they're going to use to bring it into the
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  atmosphere and land it on the ground. We should talk about that quickly.
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  But once it's actually on the ground and scientists get their tongues on it,
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  so to speak. Yeah, what they will do is they'll actually transport that
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  whole capsule and sample to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Why
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  there, because, ladies and gentlemen, that's the place that the Moon samples
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  were brought during the Apollo missions. They have the proper clean room and isolation
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  facilities necessary to not only keep the space sample from turning someone into venom,
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  but maybe more importantly, from us humans or our biological environment from contaminating the
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  space sample. That's really what we don't want to do. We want to
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  protect this sample from contamination by those biotic and other materials in the Earth's atmosphere
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  and environment. We don't want those contaminating this very pristine sample that was just
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  returned from space. So that'll be the next step, once it's safely on
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  the ground, will be to transport it to the Johnson Space Center to their
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  lunar labs and where they have the proper isolation equipment, and they will then
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  extract the sample and begin the analysis process at that time. Yeah, I
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  mean that answers the question I had, and I assume that because we don't
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  really know what the sample fully contains, and that's part of the science that
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  will be happening. You don't want to introduce it to our atmosphere anymore than
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  we want to introduce it to our atmosphere, like you said the other direction.
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  Yeah, that's exactly right. So something to note about this asteroid.
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  Even in making contact with it with the Osiris Rex spacecraft, we learned a
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  lot because it's a lot less tightly bound together than even asteroid scientists understood.
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  It is really a big rubble pile that is loosely held together by gravity,
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  similar to what we saw during the Dart mission when that spacecraft impacted the surface
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  of the tiny asteroid Dimorphus. We found that it was just a big rubble
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  pile. Well, Benu is similar to that. So you say, okay,
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  well it's a rubble pile. What is it rubble of It's the materials
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  that were left over from the time in the earliest part of the Solar System's
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  history when material was just gathering together to be solid at all, coming out
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  of gaseous and frozen states to actually make minerals. Then rocks and then these
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  rocks pulled themselves together via gravity into these loosely bound asteroid clusters, and that's
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  really what Benu is like. So when we hit that thing with a spacecraft,
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  even gently to take samples off the surface, we realize it's a lot
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  less tightly bound together than we understood before, which means friends that that material
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  has not been processed through the procedure of forming a planet and then shattering that
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  planet apart, and then you have asteroids from the fragments of a previous proto
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  planet. No. Instead, this is like somebody gently assembled a time capsule
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  at the earliest era of the Solar System's history and it's just been waiting for
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  us to unwrap it. And that's what's going to happen after Sunday. It
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  is really important that this capsule from the Osiris rexibission can survive the five not
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  so easy steps of re entry. That phrase was coined by a writer on
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  space dot Com, but here they are. The first step is that early
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  in the morning on Sunday morning, NASA has to actually power Osiris rex back
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  up. Now that might fail. This thing has been more or less dormant
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  for a couple of years, while let's travel back from the asteroid. So
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  we don't know if all the systems are going to power up. Hopefully they
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  will. We're counting on you know, the engineers have considered all of the
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  harsh environments of space and these systems will simply turn back on. But NASA
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  is going to be required to power us power up osiris REX Sunday morning and
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  check the trajectory of the orientation and make sure if they need to tweak those
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  things on the way in, they can do that to where it's on the
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  right path so that when the capsule's jettisoned, it goes in the right direction.
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  So that's step one here. Cup step two, the return capsule has
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  to separate from the spacecraft and come in on the correct trajectory to descend into
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  the Utah Desert. Now, this is from an altitude of about sixty three
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  thousand miles above the Earth. That's way out there, right, that's beyond
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  the geostationary satellites. So it's got a ways to travel, and it has
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  to do that at just the right time to be on just the right trajectory.
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  So that's step number two that could potentially go wrong. Step number three
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  Once it actually hits the Earth's atmosphere, things are going to heat up due
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  to the friction between that spacecraft traveling at a very high velocity and the upper
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  portion of the Earth's atmosphere, So the heat shields have to be able to
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  dissipate that energy during reentry so it doesn't burn up in a fireball. At
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  the same time, that process is going to decelerate the capsule, slow it
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  down, heat it up, and that way NASA can use their ground based
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  infrared imaging systems to begin to track it so they know where it's at.
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  So in case it's not coming in on the proper line, they have some
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  rough idea of where to point their sensors and track that thing to the ground.
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  But hopefully it'll just be coming in on the right path, all right.
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  First three step. First three steps are power up, successfully, jettison
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  the capsule exactly the right time, and then survive the heated reentry through the
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  RS's atmosphere. Okay, step number four. About two minutes after that atmospheric
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  contact comes in, they're gonna pop out what's called a drogue shute, a
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  drogue parachute. This is the first parachute that slows that spacecraft down from hypersonic
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  speeds all the way down to subsonic speeds less than the speed of sound.
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  So that drove shoot has a big job to do because that's a giant delta
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  V that's a big change in velocity as it's coming through the atmosphere. And
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  this will all happen, you know, roughly ten miles above the Utah Training
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  and Testing Range, and that all happens in about, hopefully, if everything's
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  going right, about ten forty six am on Sunday morning. So once it
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  gets down to that altitude and that speed, then the radar stations should be
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  able to start tracking it. So now they've shifted from the infrared imaging where
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  it was a fiery hot ball coming through the atmosphere to now they're tracking it
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  basically like an aircraft using ground based radar, and they should be able to
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  detect with that radar the landing location of that pod to within thirty feet of
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  its actual location, which is pretty impressive. All right. So there's the
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  first four steps. The final step, ladies and gentlemen, this at about
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  ten fifty am, the main parachute will deploy and the main parachute is a
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  much larger, much higher friction with the atmosphere of parachute, which should slow
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  the spacecraft way down and bring it down from about a mile in altitude to
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  a nice, cushy, soft landing that would kind of feel like a Fender
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  Bender car accident for us, but yet for the spacecraft. It's designed to
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  take that shock that should occur around the ten fifty five mark somewhere in the
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  Utah Desert. So there it is, Ladies and gentlemen, there is the
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  descent pattern for the oustiris Rex. There's the five things that have to take
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  place in order for that to be successful. We will be keeping our fingers
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  crossed, and I will be watching that on my phone as you might want
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  to. It's going to be on NASA TV, but you can also tune
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  in through space dot Com. I'm sure space Flight Now we'll have coverage all
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  the usual suspects, so there'll be an opportunity if you like to tune in,
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  for you to join in and watch that spacecraft come in through Earth's atmosphere
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  successfully. Those five not so easy steps. I like when you and I
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  swap texts that have something related to the show in them. I never really
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  know what I'm gonna get from you. You probably think the same thing with
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  me. Sometimes it involves paper machee aliens that we talked about in the last
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  week. But this week you sent me something that I had to watch it
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  about three times to fully process exactly what I was seeing. But it relates
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  to the Parker Solar Probe getting a nice blast from a coronal mass ejection.
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  O MG West Carroll. This is one of the coolest space videos I have
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  seen in a really long time. Folks. If you'd like to see it,
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  there are two ways I can recommend. The first is going to Live
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  science dot com. That's where I found the story and linked to the video.
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  But you can simply go to YouTube and type in the words close encounter
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  with a CM CMME, standing for coronal mass ejection. Type in close encounter
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  with the CME, and it will be the top video that comes up.
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  It is direct data from this spacecraft called the Parker Solar Probe, which has
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  been flying very near to the Sun for a few years now, and it
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  had a remarkable encounter last year. It's important to note that this happened a
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  year ago September fifth, twenty twenty two is when this actually took place.
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  But as the solar probe was orbiting the Sun at a mere five point seven
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  million miles, which sounds like a long ways, and if you had to
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  walk to the spectrum store, it probably would be a long ways. But
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  it's not very far if you're a spacecraft orbiting the Sun. In fact,
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  it's way way too close. So five point seven millet for most spacecraft,
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  that is five point seven million miles is right in the proximity of where the
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  solar wind is leaving the photosphere of the Sun and streaming out through the Solar
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  System. And as the Parker Solar Probe was gently orbiting the Sun at this
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  close distance, mining its own business taking data, the Sun just took a
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  potshot at It just straight up fired its weapons directly at Parker Solar Probe.
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  What do I mean, while it released a solar flare that triggered this massive
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  coronal mass ejection and launched material equivalent to approximately the mass of Mount Everest in
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  the form of high speed charge radiation in an expanding bubble out away from the
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  photospheric surface of the Sun, directly at the spacecraft. And so when you
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  watch this video. You have to remember you're seeing Parker vision. In other
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  words, you're seeing the data coming from that solar probe. It's not like
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  a GoPro strapped onto the front of it. So it makes you a little
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  bit to understand what's actually going on. But you'll see you'll see the Parker
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  solar probe actually orbiting the Sun. In the distance. You'll see bright stars
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  and planets that are kind of moving out from under from behind the surface of
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  the Sun as the pro orbits. But then all of a sudden, on
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  your left, in the direction of the surface of the Sun, a massive
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  wave of high speed charge radiation simply pummels that spacecraft. And it is quite
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  honestly alarming in appearance as you understand all the things that are happening. So
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  this is the closest to the Sun that scientists have ever been able to observe
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  a coronal mass ejection. Why did it take so long for us to see
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  the video, Well, it's not because they didn't have the video. But
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  see, scientists have to do their job too, which is they have to
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  process that data, they have to analyze it, and then they publish a
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  scientific paper. And that took about a year. So on September fifth of
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  this year, twenty twenty three, the scientists with the Perker solar probe released
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  an Astrophysical Journal article that they had this video attached to. So that's why
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  it is now being released and we're all seeing it. And this is what
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  West and I were talking about. We saw this and just went, oh,
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  my gosh, it is stunning. It is absolutely violent and amazing and
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  the most maybe the most amazing part is that the solar probe just kept going.
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  I mean it took all that pummeling, it rode the ripples of a
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  coronal mass ejection, the most powerful explosion that can occur in the Solar System,
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  and it just kept going. That is an awesome piece of technology,
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  absolutely and a fantastic, amazing thing to see. And as you pointed out,
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  I just mentioned again Live Science dot Com where we're talking about that story
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  from all right, as promised, Mars Curiosity Rover is made some progress and
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  it's it's an exciting time on Mars. Clearly one of the greatest space robots
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  in the history of human kind production of space robots, the Mars Curiosity Rover.
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  Remember it's not the newest one, it's not the one who has the
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  little helicopter buddy. That's Perseverance. So Perseverance is kind of a twin sibling
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  of Curiosity with some upgraded tech. It's kind of like Iron Man and war
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  Machine or so, I don't know, something like that. But anyway,
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  Curiosity has been on Mars longer and has been doing more science than Perseverance just
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  because of the longer duration. And what it's been doing is slowly climbing up
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  a mountain in the middle of a crater on Mars. And that mountain is
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  called Mount Sharp and believe me, they named it that for a reason.
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  It's a sharp peak. But it's also has very sharp ridges on the sides
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  of that mountain, and NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has been trying to reach the
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  summit of one of those ridges for over three years. So it's a well
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  known fact that these rovers move a tad slope. That's on purpose. They're
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  trying to keep that thing moving slow and steadily and in a very safe way.
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  But they've been trying to go to a place called the Ghettas Valas Ridge,
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  and the Ghettas Valis Ridge is a place where they can overlook this big
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  apron of material that washed out from the crater, rim carrying all kinds of
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  mud and boulders down a steep slope and depositing them into an alluvial fan or
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  a big fan shaped debris pile down below. And so they're trying to get
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  kind of a bird's eye view of that particular feature. Now, if they
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  had a little mini helicopter, that might have been useful, but they don't
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  have one. On curiosity. They do on perseverance. So the curiosity rover
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  simply has to climb to a place where there's a vantage point where they can
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  see down over this ridge onto the alluvial fan. So that's what they've been
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  working on, and after three failed attempts over three years, they were finally
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  able to navigate that vehicle around the knife edged gator back rocks of the extremely
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  steep slopes and see down onto that alluvial fantom material. Here's the thing.
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  When you have something like this that is washed down from the top of the
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  mountain, that means you get to see material from the top of the mountain
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  without actually going to the top of the mountain. Because that curiosity rover can
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  never climb to the top of Mount Sharp. It simply wasn't designed to do
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  so. So Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity's project scientist at the JPL Jet Propulsional Laboratory,
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  had a quote He said, this, it's a thrill to be able
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  to reach out and touch rocks that were transported from high places up on Mount
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  Sharp, will that we'll never be able to visit with Curiosity, And that
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  quote from that scientist kind of sums up the whole idea. The Mars Curiosity
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  Rover is now giving images and data to scientists on Earth of a region of
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  that mountain that simply wasn't attainable by any other means other than studying a landslide
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  or this alluvial fan down at the bottom of that cliff. What an amazing
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  accomplishment and good job for the scientists with the Mars Curiosity Rover at JPL.
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  Coming up after a quick break, we'll give an update on Starship as it's
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  a little closer to being able to do another launch, or is it.
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  I mean, I guess technically it's closer, but we'll find out how much
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  closer after this. So we talked about Elon Muss kind of using X the
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  platform formerly known as Twitter. I don't know at what point we stopped saying
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  that. I feel like everybody always has to clarify what X is, but
• 24:18
  using X, he was kind of nudging the FAA, saying, Hey,
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  we're we're ready, We're all set, We're good to go when we're waiting
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  on you guys. And I guess now maybe he needs to reach out to
• 24:30
  the folks at the Fish and Wildlife Review because they seem to be currently holding
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  the ball. Now. Yes, first, to your first point, we
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  say we stopped saying that as soon as we stopped saying the artist formerly known
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  as Prince Yeah, I guess I think we still once in a while say
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  that, ask you and me anyway, Yeah, part of the Federal Aviation
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  Administration's review of the shall we call it Big Bang that took place on the
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  Boka Chika launchpad last April A big bang. Yes, it was a very
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  large bang apparently when SpaceX Is starship launched without a sound suppression system, which
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  I don't know kind of why they thought they could get away with that,
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  honestly, but they did anyway in their agile development process, so they basically
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  threw debris all over the coast of South Texas and cause some headaches for themselves
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  and for others and blew up their rockets. It's quite likely the reason for
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  the failure of the rocket in the first place. All right, So as
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  part of the FAA review, they engaged the US Fish and Wildlife Service to
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  make sure there was no environmental contamination issues for the various endangered species that live
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  in the region along the coast of southern Texas there and so not only does
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  the FAA have to complete their questions, which it sounds as if SpaceX is
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  fairly well taking care of most of those issues. They're checking them off,
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  but now SpaceX has to have approve an approval from the US Fish and Wildlife
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  Service. They have to have an environmental review, and it doesn't sound like
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  that agency is in any burning hurry. Remember Elon kept saying they want to
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  launch as soon as the FAA's investigation is over. But now that there's an
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  engagement with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, doesn't look like it might be
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  this year because the US Fish and Wildlife Service is saying, well, it
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  could take anywhere between thirty and one hundred and thirty five days. Now.
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  Obviously, if they get it if they get it wrapped up in thirty days,
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  which they could, then yes, there might be a twenty twenty three
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  launch of the starship, and it's super heavy booster. But if it lingers
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  on for one hundred and thirty five days, we're going to be pushing right
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  on into the year twenty twenty four. So this is kind of the latest
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  update from from Boca Chica. And you know, perhaps Elon can make a
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  very generous contribution to some endangerous speece he's on the coast of Texas and maybe
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  push forward. I'm not saying that would work. I don't think that's probably
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  right. It couldn't just help incentivize the US Fish and Wildlife Service to perhaps
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  work a few extra hours and complete that review as quickly as possible. It
• 27:15
  certainly couldn't hurt. I mean, I don't know that that would get the
• 27:18
  job done, but it certainly couldn't hurt. And it would be good period,
• 27:22
  right, just a nice donation, and all right, let's quickly talk
• 27:26
  about this. James Webb, I guess stirring up a hornet's nest about the
• 27:32
  early galaxies and the ages and things, because it's one of those deals where
• 27:36
  you look at something long enough, and with the right space telescope, you
• 27:40
  might find out information you didn't know was there and oops. Yeah. So
• 27:45
  I mean that's really the impetus in creating a JWST type instrument, right.
• 27:51
  We know that if we put up telescopes with greater capabilities, we're going to
• 27:55
  find out new things in space. That's the goal, right, that is
• 28:00
  the goal. I mean, if you spend you know, maybe a decade
• 28:03
  to half a development and several billion dollars in actual production, and then you
• 28:07
  know another billion dollars to launch it, and you get the telescope up there
• 28:11
  and you find absolutely nothing new, that might be a tad of a disappointment.
• 28:17
  But ladies and gentlemen, we don't have to worry about that because JWST
• 28:19
  has been no sort of disappointment. In fact, it's been quite the opposite.
• 28:25
  It has been a stunning success. And this is another one of those
• 28:29
  times. So JWST is allowing astronomers to study farther earlier galaxies than ever before
• 28:37
  because it can see better, it has greater sensitivity and greater resolution. Even
• 28:41
  though that greater sensitivity and resolution is coming in the infrared part of the spectrum.
• 28:45
  That's actually useful because visible light over that grade of a distance gets red
• 28:51
  shifted into the ir. So in a sense, we're still looking at visible
• 28:55
  light images of galaxies. They've simply just been red shifted into the infrared part
• 28:59
  of the spec all right. So with that capability, the James Webspace Telescope
• 29:03
  was able to spot some galaxies when the universe was only nine hundred million years
• 29:10
  old. Remember the principle the farther away you look, the farther back in
• 29:15
  time you're seeing because of the finite like travel speed. So these galaxies are
• 29:21
  so far away that the clock on the entire life of the universe had run
• 29:26
  less than one billion years, which is a long time to me and you,
• 29:30
  but to a thirteen point eight billion year old galaxy, it's not very
• 29:33
  far. This is approximately six percent of the current age of the whole universe.
• 29:40
  And yet looking at this vast distance, they see galaxies that look reasonably
• 29:47
  developed. In other words, it looks like they've been there forming for a
• 29:51
  long time, because they have all the features of budding, mature galaxies.
• 29:59
  Jorheimer, a scientist would promote the College, described it this way. It's
• 30:03
  like if you went to a kindergarten and you saw a teenager sitting in the
• 30:08
  kindergarten seats right, It's like, wait a minute, that young man looks
• 30:14
  so tad more developed than he should be. Sandler, Yes, too much
• 30:22
  like Adam Sandler in that movie where he did that. So anyway, is
• 30:27
  the universe really older than we think? Maybe that's the question. Maybe the
• 30:33
  question is maybe it's not how galaxies could have formed within two hundred to five
• 30:37
  hundred million years after the Big Bang, which seems unlikely. Maybe the galaxy
• 30:41
  in the universe itself and those galaxies in it are actually older than we think.
• 30:47
  This is an idea put forth by a scientist named Rajandra Gupta from the
• 30:52
  University of Ottawa, and it's a modification on our estimates for the age of
• 30:59
  the universe rather than on how fast galaxies could form. Folks, I'm pulling
• 31:04
  this information from an article on MPR dot org. It's a good article.
• 31:07
  There are other sources that are talking about the same thing. We have a
• 31:11
  mystery on our hands. Either galaxies are born and within like you know,
• 31:17
  a week's time, turn into a teenager, or maybe they were born a
• 31:22
  lot longer ago than we realize and the entire universe in terms of our age
• 31:26
  estimation, is just older than we think it is. So there it is
• 31:30
  two really interesting consequences and a great mystery for scientists to resolve. That's what
• 31:36
  we do, friends, We take data and we solve mysteries. So it's
• 31:41
  a fun job. Let's talk music under the Dome because the new season is
• 31:45
  getting ready to kick off. We have our new season beginning on October three.
• 31:52
  This concert series, it features the talented students and faculty from the Schube
• 31:56
  School of Music here at Columbis State University, and they come into the Coca
• 32:00
  Cola Space Science Center, also part of Columba State University, and perform their
• 32:04
  music underneath the Planetarium Dome, with the visuals being projected onto the dome being
• 32:12
  original to the shows and choreographed to the music. That is a phenomenal collaboration
• 32:17
  between the artists in our region and in our university and the musicians in the
• 32:23
  Shrobe School of Music, all happening in our theater environment at Coca Cola Space
• 32:30
  Science Center. If you're anywhere near our area, I would encourage you to
• 32:32
  please come down and check out one of these great concerts. There's only four
• 32:37
  of them this year, and two of them are going to be at October
• 32:40
  and November. Then the next two we'll be at the Spring. So ladies
• 32:44
  and gentlemen, this is your time. Check it out at the website go
• 32:49
  to www dot cc SSC dot org. There are still a handful of tickets
• 32:54
  available for the night of October three, our first concert in our music Undo
• 33:00
  the Dome series. Thanks for listening, and we'll do it again next week.
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