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Cosmic Fireballs and Astronaut Legends · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Heidi Campo: Welcome back to another fun and
0:03
exciting episode of space nuts.
0:06
Generic: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
0:09
10, 9. Ignition
0:11
sequence start. Space nuts. 5, 4, 3,
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2, 1. 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4,
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3, 2', 1. Space nuts. Astronauts
0:20
report it feels good.
0:23
Heidi Campo: On your host for this episode, Heidi Campo.
0:25
And joining us today is Professor Fred
0:27
Watson, astronomer at large for. Fred,
0:30
how are you doing today? You've been quite
0:32
busy.
0:33
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, I've been traveling a little bit. Just
0:35
uh, down to the nation's capital, the city of
0:38
Canberra, which is uh, about three and a half
0:41
hour drive from here on a road
0:44
that's really pretty good because it's sort
0:46
of dual carriageway all the way, so you don't
0:48
have to worry about not being able to pass
0:51
heavy trucks and things. Um, but it had a.
0:54
The drive down on Sunday evening, uh, had
0:57
a little bit of astronomical interest
0:59
because, uh, as I was
1:02
getting the Acambra, which is down to the
1:04
south of us, um, and approaching the state of
1:06
Victoria, which is still quite a long way
1:09
away. But never mind, that's where I was
1:10
approaching. Um, I saw a fireball, uh,
1:14
uh, a, uh, bright meteor, very bright
1:17
meteor. Uh, it was, uh, right in my field of
1:20
vision. Uh, so the car must have been
1:21
pointing kind of southwest. Uh, this thing
1:24
was probably 15, 20 degrees above the
1:27
horizon. Uh, came in, uh,
1:30
very bright green fireball,
1:33
green coming from partly the atmospheric
1:36
oxygen, partly from the iron in the object.
1:39
Uh, and sort of, I guess it lasted for
1:42
maybe 0.9 of a
1:45
second, something like that, uh, and then at
1:47
the end just disappeared in an orange dot.
1:49
But, uh, the next morning the media were full
1:52
of this, uh, meteor that had been
1:55
seen in Victoria, the state of Victoria,
1:57
which was probably a good 300km from where
2:00
I was. Um, and uh, some
2:03
people said they heard the sonic boom that
2:04
went with it. So there's a big media blitz.
2:07
Yesterday I got a, um, call from
2:10
one of the radio stations to talk about it
2:13
yesterday afternoon actually on the drive
2:15
back. So, yeah, a really
2:17
exciting thing. Um, I've seen, ah,
2:20
being an astronomer and used to work at
2:23
night, I've seen a lot of those, um,
2:25
well, by a lot, maybe a dozen throughout my
2:28
working life where you see something bright
2:30
enough to light up the landscape. Uh, but
2:33
it's quite a long time since I've seen one.
2:34
So it was good to reconnect with the world
2:37
of, uh, immediate, uh, astronomy
2:40
where the Earth is plowing up bits of dust
2:43
and debris through the atmosphere.
2:45
Heidi Campo: Well, it really. And when you do see them,
2:47
it's such an amazing experience. I remember
2:50
I'VE seen a few of them in my lifetime. I
2:52
think just three. But the one really
2:54
brilliant one that I remember, um, I want
2:57
to ask you if my memory has inserted this
3:00
sound into it or if this is possible.
3:03
But it was so bright and it was sparkling,
3:05
like, like magical. Like some animator had
3:07
put sparkles in the sky.
3:09
Professor Fred Watson: Okay.
3:09
Heidi Campo: And it's just sparkling and glitzing across
3:11
the sky. And I can swear in my memory
3:14
I hear like, almost like the firecracker
3:17
sound or like the sound like a sparkler makes
3:19
as it's going across the sky. But I'm like,
3:22
man, is my memory just inserting that sound
3:24
because that's what it looks like, or did it
3:26
really make that sound?
3:27
Professor Fred Watson: Um, so the. The issue with these
3:30
things, if that was a meteor and it sounds
3:32
though it was, um, um. And a fireball is a
3:35
bright meteor, there is a definition. I can't
3:37
remember what it is as to how bright it. It
3:39
has to become to be called a fireball. Well,
3:42
did you see any color in it? In the. In the
3:44
crackles? Could you see any colors or.
3:47
Sorry. In the. I remember pops.
3:49
Heidi Campo: The biggest. The biggest memory I have is the
3:51
pops of color.
3:52
Professor Fred Watson: Like just.
3:53
Heidi Campo: Just like a sparkler.
3:55
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Um, the thing
3:57
is that, um, where they hit the atmosphere,
4:00
it's about 90 kilometers, 60 miles up,
4:03
uh, in the air. And so
4:06
it's too far away to
4:10
technically to hear, um, the
4:13
sound it makes as it's just as it's
4:16
exploding. But, um, the fact that it is
4:18
moving so fast through the atmosphere means
4:20
that you sometimes do get a sonic boom,
4:23
uh, which is the bang. Uh, and it's a single
4:26
bang rather than set of pops. Uh, but that
4:29
can be up to, um. It can
4:32
be up to 90 seconds after you've seen the
4:35
visual thing because it takes that long for
4:36
the sound wave to propagate down through the
4:39
atmosphere from that height. Um,
4:41
so, um, it may well be that you were, uh,
4:44
hearing something else or it was perhaps,
4:47
um, inserted by your brain as you
4:49
suggested. Usually, uh, the sonic boom
4:52
will be after any noise, will be after the
4:54
event.
4:55
Heidi Campo: Well, that's good education. It's good to
4:58
always have you as our reference to ask us.
5:01
And speaking of bright stars in
5:04
the sky, we lost a big one.
5:07
And that's our first story today. Jim Lovell.
5:11
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, A veteran
5:13
astronaut, Uh, a
5:16
name that, for me, you know,
5:19
in the early years of the space age,
5:21
following every move with,
5:24
uh, intense scrutin. Uh,
5:27
it's a name that's very familiar. Jim Lovell.
5:29
Uh, the commander, uh, of
5:32
not um, sure whether he was the commander,
5:34
um, he was commander of Apollo
5:37
13, but his earlier mission was Apollo
5:40
8. Uh, he was on the classic Apollo 8 mission
5:43
which we talked about a couple of episodes
5:45
ago, uh with the earthrise crater.
5:48
Apollo 8, 1968.
5:50
Um, so uh, he um, was as
5:53
I said, the commander of Apollo 13.
5:56
Uh, I think it was his voice that um,
5:59
uttered those immortal words.
6:02
Houston, we have a problem. When the fuel
6:05
cell exploded in the service module of Apollo
6:07
13. So very, very famous uh
6:10
figure, his um,
6:13
supreme ability to cope with
6:16
disaster uh, I think was a big
6:19
contributor into the success of
6:22
Apollo 13. The fact that um, the mission,
6:25
whilst they didn't touched down on the moon.
6:27
I think everybody knows the story. The fuel
6:29
cell exploded on the way out to the moon.
6:31
They just did a translunar orbit, came
6:34
back, uh, and um,
6:36
essentially um, uh did a direct re
6:39
entry uh of the command
6:42
module and landed safely and
6:45
were picked up. An extraordinary story. Uh,
6:47
the movie is well worth watching. Apollo 13,
6:50
it's pretty accurate. Uh, fairly close to the
6:52
truth. But yeah, I think a lot of the success
6:54
of that was just the cool head of this
6:57
astonish astronaut, uh, who
7:00
um, I think um, retired from the astronaut
7:03
corps not that long afterwards and
7:06
went into business I think. Um, so
7:09
a very very well known name at the time and
7:13
basically uh, somebody who we've
7:16
now lost a link with those
7:18
early years of the space uh,
7:21
adventures, human spaceflight. He was 97
7:24
when he died. A week or so ago.
7:27
Heidi Campo: Yeah. And you know, and I, I, I think, you
7:29
know, I don't, I, I don't really know what
7:31
his, his lifestyle or health was like. But I
7:33
do know that those personality types, those
7:35
people who are able to stay calm under
7:38
pressure and manage their stress, it really
7:40
does wonders for your health. And the fact
7:42
that he made it to 97 I think is a little bit
7:45
of a testament to that. So.
7:46
Professor Fred Watson: That's, that's right.
7:48
Heidi Campo: So these are people that we need to remember.
7:49
They're not just role models in space, but
7:51
they're role models for like how to, how to
7:54
kind of live our life and conduct ourselves
7:56
here on Earth. I think it's a uh, little bit
7:59
cheesy, but it's like, you know, you think of
8:01
astronauts is just kind of like these larger
8:03
than life superstars in so many ways. And
8:05
it's like they are the, they are the ones
8:07
who, they have to operate well under
8:10
pressure. And that's a good reminder of how
8:12
we should handle. You know, if someone cuts
8:14
you off in traffic, it's maybe not as
8:15
dramatic as fuel cell exploding, but how can
8:18
we react, um, to those little
8:21
crises here on Earth?
8:23
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, Yep. Yeah, that's a, that's a really
8:25
good point, actually. Um, you know, it's the
8:27
whole demeanor of the person that, that uh,
8:30
um, it tells you,
8:33
uh, if you can behave like that under those
8:36
stresses, it, uh, tells you that you can
8:38
probably cope with every. Anything. Including
8:41
being cut off in traffic.
8:43
Heidi Campo: Absolutely. So his character was played by,
8:47
um, Tom Hanks, right?
8:49
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, that's correct. Yes. Yes, indeed.
8:52
In, in the, in the movie. That's right. Um,
8:54
yeah, it just, you know, it's uh,
8:57
it was. And of course it was very early,
9:00
um, in the Apollo missions. It
9:03
was the third mission to land
9:06
on the moon. Apollo 11, the first Apollo 12
9:09
successful. Apollo 13 was going to be the
9:11
next one. Uh, but, um,
9:15
it didn't happen. Uh, and I guess it also
9:17
illuminated not just the character of the
9:20
person in charge of the mission on board the
9:23
spacecraft, but also the technology that was
9:25
being used. NASA, ah, would have learned
9:27
lessons from that, uh, about the way they
9:29
handle their fuel cells and the design of the
9:31
fuel cells, just as they did with the other
9:34
major tragedy of the Apollo era. Uh,
9:37
Apollo 1, uh, in which three astronauts
9:40
perished in a fire, uh, in the
9:42
capsule while it was still on the ground. It
9:45
was a sort of dress rehearsal. It wasn't
9:47
actually a mission. Uh, and they were in the
9:49
space capsule. And um, it was at that
9:52
time that, uh, NASA used an all
9:55
oxygen atmosphere within
9:58
these capsules. But oxygen is very, very
10:00
reactive. It'll burn with anything.
10:03
Uh, and after that they changed that so
10:06
that Apollo 1 actually led to
10:08
major design changes in the Apollo missions,
10:11
uh, as I'm sure Apollo 13 did as.
10:15
Heidi Campo: Yeah, I just, ah, I want to read you guys
10:17
this last line of the article. That was a
10:19
statement from his family. Um, he had four
10:22
children and his family says we will miss his
10:25
unshakable optimism, his sense of humor,
10:27
and the way he made each of us feel like we
10:30
could do the impossible. I think that's a
10:32
really beautiful line.
10:34
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
10:35
Heidi Campo: You know, those are the things that we want
10:36
to remember when we, when these people who
10:38
are larger than life leave us is, you know,
10:41
who's going to be next? Who? How can they
10:43
inspire us to be the next. The next. You
10:46
know, as we are in the Artemis era now. It's
10:49
going to be that next person to fill those
10:51
shoes.
10:52
Professor Fred Watson: Yes.
10:54
Andrew Dunkley: Let's take a break from the show now to tell
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12:45
Professor Fred Watson: 0T and I feel fine.
12:47
Heidi Campo: Space Nuts and there are big shoes to fill. I
12:50
mean there's so much out there.
12:51
And it looks like our next article here, if
12:54
we'll roll right into that is, we're thinking
12:56
we may have just discovered the biggest black
12:59
hole ever.
13:02
Professor Fred Watson: That's right.
13:02
Heidi Campo: Uh, is this a recent discovery?
13:05
Professor Fred Watson: It is, yes. So, um,
13:08
it's from an object that is
13:11
known. But uh, the research
13:14
that has led to this, which has been done by
13:16
British uh, astronomers, um,
13:19
they've analyzed what we already know about
13:22
this object. Uh, and
13:25
uh, it's essentially something
13:28
that's very visually appealing to look
13:31
at. Um, and it's well known. It's called the
13:33
cosmic horseshoe. You uh, can find
13:36
it probably on many of the websites.
13:39
Um, uh, uh, because
13:42
uh, it's such a visually inspiring thing to
13:45
look at. What we've got is a field of
13:48
galaxies. These are distant galaxies with one
13:51
in particular that's relatively bright. What
13:53
we call an elliptical galaxy. One that
13:55
doesn't have structure but around it is an
13:58
almost complete circle, uh, of
14:00
bluish light. And that is the
14:03
image of a more distant galaxy,
14:06
uh, which is being distorted by the
14:08
gravitational field of the galaxy in the
14:10
foreground. Um, so the horseshoe
14:13
is actually a blurred out image
14:16
of a very distant object
14:19
behind the blob of light that you can
14:22
see in the middle of the horseshoe because
14:24
that's the galaxy which is, we call it the
14:26
lensing galaxy because it is actually acting
14:29
like a lens. The space around that galaxy
14:32
is being distorted so that it mimics a
14:35
lens that sort of magnifies and distorts the
14:38
image uh, of the galaxy behind it. And
14:40
it's an almost perfect alignment, uh,
14:43
where you've got uh, a galaxy
14:46
which is very distant with
14:49
one immediate, sorry, one directly in
14:52
front of it that's much nearer, uh, but
14:54
the two are exactly aligned as uh, seen from
14:57
our uh, vantage point in our own Milky Way
14:59
galaxy. And that alignment produces this
15:02
distortion of the image which we call an
15:04
Einstein ring because they were predicted by
15:07
Einstein that you would see, uh,
15:10
this distorted view of galaxies.
15:13
Uh, the uh, Einstein rings were something
15:16
he thought we'd never see. Uh, but
15:19
we actually started seeing them in the 1970s
15:21
when telescopes got sensitive enough to
15:23
detect uh, these really extraordinary
15:26
structures in space. So that's what we see.
15:29
That's the basic observation. But what
15:32
has now um, uh,
15:34
emerged is detail of
15:37
the structure of the nearer
15:40
galaxy. The galaxy that's doing the lensing,
15:42
the one that's distorting the space. Um,
15:45
it's about 5.6 billion light years
15:48
from our, our own, uh, Milky Way
15:51
galaxy. Uh, and what they've done
15:54
is the scientists have analyzed
15:57
basically the gravitational field, uh,
16:00
around that uh, nearer galaxy,
16:03
that one 5.6 billion years light years
16:05
away. Um, and from, in
16:08
doing that they have been able to estimate
16:11
the size of the, um,
16:15
the, the, excuse me, the, sorry, um,
16:18
I thought it was going to sneeze there, uh,
16:19
the size of the black hole at the center of
16:22
this galaxy. Uh, with. We think that all
16:24
galaxies have a supermassive black hole at
16:27
their center. If not all of them, certainly
16:29
most of them. And this particular one, uh,
16:32
indeed has uh, a black hole. And by
16:35
analyzing the shape of the cosmic horseshoe,
16:38
you can measure its mass.
16:41
Uh, and this, um,
16:45
I'm just reading this in detail again.
16:48
Um, and I think what I'm saying is
16:51
not, it's, well it's true, it's not the
16:53
real truth of the story, which is the one is
16:56
the galaxy that is beyond the one that is
16:59
being imaged, the one whose image is being
17:01
distorted by the nearer galaxy.
17:04
Um, now the
17:07
size uh, of that object,
17:10
uh, is being estimated from
17:13
all these distortions. I'm not telling this
17:15
story very clearly, Heidi. I apologize for
17:17
that. But the bottom line is that they
17:19
believe that the uh, that mass of the
17:22
black hole at the center of this galaxy, uh,
17:25
is something like
17:27
36 billion times
17:30
the mass of the sun. Uh, and that will be a
17:33
record that, that will be a record that the
17:35
one at the center of our own galaxy,
17:38
Sagittarius, uh, a star is
17:41
its name, uh, is only,
17:44
it's about 4 million times the
17:47
mass of the sun. So this one is something
17:49
like 10, 10,000 times bigger,
17:52
uh, than the one that we are seeing.
17:56
Uh, uh, uh, sorry, the one that, the one that
17:58
we have at the center of our own galaxy. So
18:00
it's uh, really um, quite
18:03
remarkable that you can glean this sort of
18:05
information from uh, looking
18:08
at structures in space which are, ah,
18:11
remarkable in their appearance. They're quite
18:13
beautiful. Um, but tell you a
18:16
lot about what's going on, the absolute, the
18:19
actual physical properties of what's going on
18:21
out there in space. So a system of two
18:24
galaxies, one of which has the record
18:26
breaking black hole at its center.
18:29
Heidi Campo: That's amazing. Uh, to be the person who
18:31
discovered that would be pretty exciting.
18:34
Until we find another bigger one.
18:36
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right. Um, yeah, there's nothing
18:38
like a record breaker is there, for kind
18:41
of attracting people's attention. It's the
18:43
headline that you always want to be able to
18:46
make. The biggest or the most distant or the
18:48
faintest or the, or the um,
18:51
uh, mostest. The mostest. Yeah. I
18:54
do remember um, once being able to do a radio
18:56
recorder radio program about the most
18:59
distant objects known at that time. This was
19:02
back in 1982, believe it or not. Uh,
19:05
the discovery of a, is actually a quasar
19:07
discovered by the Anglo Australian telescope
19:09
here in Australia. I was actually in Scotland
19:11
at the time and I recorded an interview about
19:13
this object which was the most distant
19:16
object ever discovered. Um, I
19:19
listened for it on the radio the following
19:22
morning, um, but there was no sign of it
19:24
because that was the day that Argentina
19:26
invaded the Falkland Islands, which was very,
19:29
very big news in the uk. So all
19:31
astronomical stories just got wiped. So
19:35
my first radio interview ended up on the
19:37
cutting room floor thanks to geopolitical
19:40
events beyond my commercial troll.
19:43
Heidi Campo: That's a bummer. Well now look at you.
19:45
Professor Fred Watson: Well, there you go. Yeah, that's right.
19:47
Indeed, that's true.
19:48
Heidi Campo: Uh, looking at this image, it's called the
19:51
Horseshoe, but it almost reminds Me, you
19:53
nerds out there. If you guys are looking at
19:54
this image, you'll appreciate this. It
19:57
reminds me of, um, the, the franchise
20:00
Alien, of the alien embryo with the tail
20:02
wrapping around when it's rolled up in the
20:05
egg. That's what it looks like to me is, uh,
20:07
the alien logo. So that's a, uh, that's a
20:10
little bit kind of eerie. What if there's a.
20:13
Some kind of creature in there?
20:15
Professor Fred Watson: There could be. Who knows, somebody, you
20:18
know, some, some creature that likes black
20:20
holes.
20:21
Heidi Campo: Would that be. Would that be something?
20:23
Well, one thing we do know finally
20:26
is why the rover kept getting
20:29
stuck. And we have finally figured out how
20:32
to unstuck stick this poor little rover.
20:36
Professor Fred Watson: It's true. Um, so,
20:39
uh, NASA's rovers
20:42
and the four that come to mind are Spirit and
20:44
Opportunity in the early 2000s,
20:47
uh, and curiosity I think
20:49
2012, uh, and
20:52
perseverance 2021. Those
20:55
are the, what you might call the iconic
20:58
rovers on the lunar surface. There are more.
21:00
Uh, Tianwen 1 is the Chinese one, which I
21:03
think is now, uh, defunct. I think,
21:06
um, its batteries ran out.
21:09
And there were other, earlier NASA ones, if I
21:12
remember. Sojourner was one of the first
21:14
ones. But, um, these rovers,
21:17
uh, pretty well all of them have six wheels,
21:20
uh, which are sort of independently
21:22
controlled. They're fitted with tires that
21:25
are made of kind of springy metal, um, with
21:28
indentations, uh, in them,
21:31
uh, in order to get purchase
21:34
on the sandy soil of
21:36
Mars. But as you say, they,
21:39
they do occasionally get stuck. Uh, and
21:42
in fact, um, sometimes
21:45
that getting bogged, as we would perhaps
21:48
call it, is, um, in Australian
21:50
parlance, anyway. You got your car bogged,
21:53
did you? Yeah, well, you got your rover
21:54
bogged. It's um, that's a, uh,
21:57
basically sometimes led to the end of the
22:00
life of some of these rovers. I think Spirit
22:03
was one that got bogged and perhaps, um,
22:06
Opportunity as well. Uh, now
22:09
the reason why this is, uh, a bit
22:12
of a pain for NASA engineers
22:15
is that when they do the modeling of
22:18
how a rover with
22:21
the metal tires will behave
22:24
in an environment where the
22:27
gravity is only a third of what the Earth's
22:29
gravity is, uh, they do the
22:32
modeling and it says that they shouldn't get
22:34
bugged. Um, uh, it's uh,
22:37
you know, that they shouldn't actually have
22:39
this phenomenon. They uh, shouldn't get
22:41
stuck, uh, in the soil of
22:44
Mars. Uh, and so
22:47
they've looked at this problem again
22:50
and essentially solved it.
22:53
As you've said, Heidi. Um, what
22:56
they've done is look
22:59
not just at the way the lower
23:01
gravity makes the rover itself
23:04
behave, but the way the lower gravity
23:07
makes the sand that they're trying to drive
23:10
through behave. Uh, and
23:13
when they use these uh, simulations,
23:15
including the gravitational, the lower
23:18
gravitational force on the dust particles
23:20
themselves, um, then they
23:23
realize that why they're getting stuck.
23:26
Oh, well, they're obviously going to get
23:28
stuck if you, if you do that.
23:31
Uh, it's a, ah, it's a. Basically they've
23:33
used, this is a number of uh, uh,
23:36
scientists who've used a,
23:39
a, uh, physics engine, um, Project
23:42
Chrono it's called. Uh, and they've used that
23:45
to essentially disentangle uh,
23:49
what causes this bogging the
23:52
wheels to get stuck. And that's the
23:54
conclusion they've come to. If you take into
23:56
account uh, the lower gravity
24:00
and its effect on the sand particles
24:02
themselves, uh, you're
24:05
going to get stuck from time to time. And
24:07
indeed they do. Now will
24:10
that help, uh, the
24:12
people who drive these rovers, Will it help
24:14
them to get the, the vehicle's unstuck? And
24:17
the answer is probably yes. These
24:19
people have for long had
24:22
um, I guess tricks, you might call them
24:25
techniques is probably a more sober word, uh,
24:28
to try and unstick stuck, uh, up
24:30
Mars rovers, uh, usually it's pretty well
24:33
what you do here on Earth. Try and drive the
24:35
thing backwards and forwards until it comes
24:37
unstuck. Um, they might be able to
24:40
modify those techniques in the light of this
24:42
new information that uh, you have to take
24:44
into account the lower gravity on um, the
24:47
dust itself and not just the spacecraft.
24:50
Heidi Campo: Wow.
24:51
Professor Fred Watson: Sounds pretty obvious really, doesn't it
24:54
Fred?
24:54
Heidi Campo: Have you ever seen ah, one of these like, up
24:57
close, um,
25:00
like models of them?
25:01
Professor Fred Watson: Yes, uh, I have indeed.
25:03
Um, uh, the most memorable one
25:06
actually is uh, it's in
25:09
uh, in Flagstaff, Arizona and
25:12
it's actually the lunar rover. It's one of
25:14
the lunar rovers that went with the Apollo
25:16
astronauts. Uh, I think it was
25:20
the last four Apollo missions, I can't
25:22
remember the exact number, carried a rover to
25:25
carry the astronauts around on the moon. Uh,
25:28
and there's not just a replica, it was
25:31
a prototype model. It's in the foyer of one
25:34
of the uh, geological science
25:36
centers, I think in Flagstaff, Arizona. And
25:39
it's sitting there and you can see how big it
25:41
is, you know, just the
25:44
extraordinary size of it. But the, the
25:46
um, uh, and I have seen models of some of the
25:49
other ones I think Spirit and Opportunity,
25:50
they're in various museums that I've had the
25:53
great privilege to visit in your wonderful
25:55
country, Heidi. Uh, and Always, uh, take away
25:58
very warm memories of those museums.
26:01
Heidi Campo: That's good. Yeah, that was what I was going
26:02
to say is. I think the surprising thing is we
26:05
don't realize the scale of these when we see
26:08
images of them. And so to think something
26:11
this massive is getting stuck.
26:14
It's not like your little, you know, whatever
26:16
vehicle you drive. I have a little, um,
26:19
Subaru. Ah, Crosstrek. It's not like your
26:20
little Subaru Crosstrek gets its wheel stuck
26:23
in a little ditch. It's like this is a
26:25
mammoth of a machine and for it to get stuck
26:28
is a big, big bottleness.
26:31
Professor Fred Watson: That's right. Certainly Spirit, uh, sorry,
26:33
Curiosity and Perseverance, which are very
26:34
similar. They're basically the same, the same
26:37
rover. They are big machines.
26:39
Absolutely. As you say, size, uh, of a
26:42
bigger car than yours. I think.
26:46
Heidi Campo: I always think of them like little, uh, like
26:48
Wall E, the robot from the Pixar animated
26:50
series. Tiny Things.
26:52
Professor Fred Watson: Good old Wall E. Yeah, I'd forgotten about
26:54
Wally.
26:55
Heidi Campo: That was a cute one.
26:57
Professor Fred Watson: A very cute one.
26:59
Heidi Campo: Well, Fred, those, those cover our stories
27:01
for today.
27:02
Did you, uh, have anything you wanted to add
27:04
to anything that we talked about?
27:07
Professor Fred Watson: Um, I did have a comment and I forgot what it
27:10
was. I was gonna make another comment about,
27:13
uh, about the rovers. Uh, the, uh,
27:16
you know, you know that the thing that
27:19
I, I guess just to highlight what you've just
27:21
been saying that these are big machines. It's
27:23
also the complexity of them
27:26
and the ingenuity. Uh, and
27:29
yes, this has reminded me of what I was
27:32
going to say. Uh, another story that's
27:35
been in the headlines this week, uh, is
27:38
the head of NASA the acting head of
27:41
NASA suggesting that by
27:44
2000s, uh, NASA will want to
27:47
deploy a nuclear reactor on the moon? I
27:50
don't know whether you caught that story. Uh,
27:52
in order to be able to provide electrical
27:54
power, it's one 100 kilowatt
27:57
nuclear reactor they're talking about. And
27:59
the reason why I remember I was thinking
28:01
about that in the context of rovers is that
28:05
Curiosity, uh, and Perseverance both
28:07
carry effectively nuclear reactors. They're
28:10
not reactors in the same sense. And, uh,
28:13
they're only delivering 100 watts rather than
28:15
100 kilowatts. But they're called
28:17
radioisotope thermoelectric generators. They
28:20
are carried on board, uh, both Spirit and
28:22
Opportunity and a number of other spacecraft
28:24
like the Voyagers have them on board as well
28:27
to generate the power that they need. Uh, so,
28:30
um, you know, the idea of nuclear, uh,
28:32
processes, uh, in space to power
28:36
missions is Not a new one. It's just that
28:38
the idea of 100 kilowatt nuclear reactor on
28:41
the moon is a little bit bigger than some of
28:43
the other ones. Um, that was the additional
28:45
comment I was going to make.
28:47
Heidi Campo: Well, that. And that's just, ah, uh, so
28:49
valuable to just think of the size and scale
28:52
and power of these because I think, you know,
28:54
we, we hit the little memes of it's singing
28:57
Happy Birthday to itself. And again, we think
28:59
of them as just these cute little, small,
29:03
fragile little things. And they're not.
29:05
They're huge, powerful, massive
29:07
machines. And so the fact that we're now
29:10
learning how to, you know, improve on how
29:13
we're handling them on this soil is really
29:16
fun and exciting. There's always, there's
29:18
always breakthroughs every week. Every week
29:21
there's new breakthroughs. There's new things
29:22
we discover and learn and do and see and.
29:26
Such an exciting, exciting time to be a part
29:28
of the space industry, is it not?
29:30
Professor Fred Watson: That's right. Absolutely.
29:33
Heidi Campo: Well, Fred, this has been, uh, wonderful
29:35
chatting with you today. Thank you so much.
29:38
And for all of you who have been missing
29:40
Andrew, he is still enjoying
29:43
his world cruise. I forgot to mention Andrew
29:46
at the beginning of the episode, if you're
29:47
new here. Um, Andrew is normally our
29:50
host and he's been on a world
29:53
cruise lately. But he will be
29:55
back in a few weeks. So you guys only have me
29:58
for a few short weeks left. So send in.
30:01
Um, our next episode will be a Q and A
30:03
episode. So keep sending in your Q and
30:06
A's to us and we'll answer those. And
30:09
you'll only have me for a few more weeks
30:11
before Andrew's back.
30:12
Professor Fred Watson: It's been fabulous. Actually, Heidi, just
30:15
my comment on that. It's been wonderful.
30:18
You've, uh, risen to the challenge of, um,
30:21
duplicating Andrew Dunkley, um,
30:24
in ways that even Andrew
30:27
Dunkley can't achieve. There you go.
30:29
Heidi Campo: Well, thank you so much. All right,
30:31
everybody. Well, we are looking forward to,
30:34
um, catching you with our next episode, which
30:37
will be a Q and A episode. Till then, we'll
30:40
talk to you later.
30:41
Andrew Dunkley: Hi, Heidi. Hi, Fred. Hi, Huw.
30:43
In the studio, it's Andrew on the Crown
30:44
Princess. As we get to the last latter
30:47
stages of our world cruise. And
30:50
since I spoke to you last, we have been right
30:53
up to the very top of Norway. We made our
30:56
first stop in Bergen, and
30:58
that is just a wonderful sailing through the
31:01
fjords, under the big bridges, uh, right
31:04
into Bergen. And, uh, what we did was a
31:07
little day trip out into the country where
31:10
we visited uh, some amazing um,
31:13
sites. We uh, waterfalls, uh, a little
31:15
shopping or not a shopping village, a little
31:18
fishing village type of place and just had a
31:20
really good look around the fjords and the
31:22
waterfalls and the landscape. Just a
31:24
beautiful country. Of course Norway uh,
31:28
uh, is a very forward thinking country, very
31:30
ah, liberal. Attitude towards a lot of
31:32
things. And they generate
31:35
98% of their electricity
31:38
through hydro power. Uh,
31:41
so um, yeah, quite amazing. The downside of
31:43
Norway is it doesn't have a lot of usable
31:45
land because it's so mountainous. And if it's
31:48
not mountains it's water because of the
31:50
fjords. And uh, so they don't have much
31:53
land to, to live on, let alone use for things
31:56
like agriculture. So they're kind of trapped
31:58
in that regard. After that we went to
32:01
uh, another um, place in Norway,
32:05
uh, where sh, uh,
32:08
Shoulden I think it's pronounced.
32:10
Yeah. And we went and looked at a glacier,
32:13
the biggest glacier in Europe. Uh, we
32:16
couldn't get too close to it but uh, just a
32:19
spectacle to behold, uh, getting um, that
32:21
close to one, uh, and being able to
32:24
photograph it. And you could feel the wind
32:26
coming off it. It was a warm day. But when
32:28
you get to the glacier it just um, blows this
32:31
chill wind off the mountains and um, yeah you
32:34
can really feel the difference. And the water
32:36
coming off that glacier as it melts and it's
32:38
melting a lot faster than it ever has before
32:40
is a beautiful aqua blue as it
32:43
flows down into the fjord. And then
32:46
we went to Honingsvag and
32:49
uh, that's right up north and, and took a
32:52
um, a look around uh, Nord Cap,
32:55
otherwise known as north cape on the 71st
32:58
parallel, uh, right inside the Arctic
33:00
Circle. And they used to think it was the end
33:03
of the world because well there is
33:05
practically nothing north of that except for
33:07
a few islands, uh, and then the uh, the
33:10
ice cap, uh, and, and the 24 hour
33:12
daylight is something to behold. I went up on
33:15
the deck at midnight to have a look one night
33:18
and there was like it was daytime,
33:21
the sun had set. We've reached a point in the
33:24
year where the sun does set for two hours
33:27
but it doesn't get dark. So no northern
33:30
lights, no northern lights. After that
33:33
trip, uh, or visit, we started heading
33:35
southwest, uh, and we're heading
33:38
towards Iceland. So that's our
33:41
next stop, uh, which is due to happen
33:43
tomorrow our time. By the time you get this
33:45
we'll have done it already. Uh, we'll be
33:47
visiting Reykjavik and uh,
33:50
essence of a jaw, which is not how you
33:53
pronounce it. I said North Cape.
33:56
Mentioned all that. Weren't you listening? My
33:57
wife's come in to remind me to tell you we
34:00
went to North Cape.
34:02
Can25,000 of you email
34:05
her and tell her I actually did it.
34:08
Got. Got. I got a look. I got a look.
34:11
No, yeah, we did. We did that. Dude, I've
34:14
done all that. Um, and. And, yeah. Uh,
34:17
so should I do it again? No, I won't.
34:20
Uh, but, um, looking forward to the rest of
34:22
our trip. Only a couple of more stops, as I
34:24
said. Iceland, Greenland, Halifax, and then
34:26
we're getting off in New York, which, uh, is
34:29
not that far away now.
34:31
All right, that's about it. Hope all is. Oh,
34:33
I forgot to mention. That's the thing I
34:34
forgot to mention. I've met a Space Nuts
34:36
listener on board. Oddly enough, we met
34:39
in a toilet. That happens on cruise ships,
34:42
because you need to go there a lot. Um, but,
34:45
yeah, it was nice to catch up. My name
34:47
escapes you. I tried to look up the message
34:48
when you told me you were getting on at
34:50
Dover, uh, and I couldn't find it. So
34:53
my apologies. I know you're listening, but it
34:54
was great to run into you. If you run into us
34:56
again, please, let's have another chat. Uh,
34:59
but, yeah, at least one Space Nuts listener
35:01
on board the Crown Princess. That's it for
35:04
now. Take care. Talk to you soon. Bye. Bye.
35:07
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