Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Dark Matter Stars, Ancient Craters & Lunar Missions: #503 - Unpacking the Latest Discoveries in Space

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Dark Matter Stars, Ancient Craters & Lunar Missions: #503 - Unpacking the Latest Discoveries in Space · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello again, thank you for joining us. This is yet
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Speaker 1: another episode of Space Nuts, the astronomy and space science
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Speaker 1: podcast and radio show on the Community Radio Network in Australia.
0:11
Speaker 1: My name is Andrew Dunkley, your host, and coming up
0:15
Speaker 1: on this episode a question that we may or may
0:18
Speaker 1: not be able to answer. Did we just bind a
0:21
Speaker 1: dark matter star or a dark star to use the term.
0:25
Speaker 1: We will find out the oldest impact crator has been
0:29
Speaker 1: found and it's in Australia. And we're going to update
0:32
Speaker 1: a couple of missions, the Blue Ghost mission how is
0:35
Speaker 1: it going? And another mission called Athena that isn't going.
0:39
Speaker 1: We'll tell you why there's been another starship explosion. And
0:44
Speaker 1: if we've got time, we'll chuck on a success story
0:47
Speaker 1: because I think we're going to need one after all.
0:49
Speaker 1: It's all coming up on this edition of.
0:53
Speaker 2: Space Nuts fifteen, Channel ten nine Ignition Space Nuts or three.
1:03
Speaker 3: Two Space Nuts. When I bought it Bils.
1:09
Speaker 1: Good and the man of the moment feeling real groovy
1:14
Speaker 1: is Professor Fred Watson, an Astronomer at Large.
1:16
Speaker 3: Hello Fred, Hello Andrew, groovy, Baby yeah, just suck it
1:21
Speaker 3: to me and all.
1:21
Speaker 1: That stuff that one for a long time.
1:25
Speaker 3: Well yeah, like we're talking about in the promo. When
1:30
Speaker 3: you look at me, you're looking straight back to the
1:32
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties.
1:35
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I didn't think light was that slow.
1:38
Speaker 3: No, it's pretty slow when it comes out here.
1:41
Speaker 1: Indeed, now, we got a lot on this episode, and
1:47
Speaker 1: the very first story I ordered to tackle was this
1:50
Speaker 1: one about the possible discovery of a dark star. Now,
1:54
Speaker 1: we've had quite a few questions from people asking if
1:59
Speaker 1: they exist and what are they, and we've basically said, well,
2:03
Speaker 1: you know, they might exist, we haven't found one yet.
2:07
Speaker 1: And now the James web Space Telescope may well have
2:11
Speaker 1: spied one.
2:13
Speaker 3: Yes, actually they might have spied three, because there are
2:17
Speaker 3: three candidates for these dark matter stars. And so just
2:24
Speaker 3: setting the scene, the story of the universe is that, yes,
2:30
Speaker 3: there was a big bang and took a little while
2:34
Speaker 3: for atoms and things to form, But that all happened.
2:37
Speaker 3: We had a period called the Dark Ages when the
2:41
Speaker 3: universe was filled with basically called hydrogen.
2:44
Speaker 1: And there were nights.
2:48
Speaker 4: Nights Yeah with ok or without okay, whichever one you wanted.
2:56
Speaker 4: It's yeah, the Dark Ages before the first stars and
2:59
Speaker 4: galaxies formed, and I think the first stars to form
3:02
Speaker 4: were what we and we've sometimes talked about these population
3:05
Speaker 4: three stars, which are basically completely devoid of anything other
3:11
Speaker 4: than hydrogen and helium in the spectrum, because those two
3:14
Speaker 4: elements were formed in the Big Bang, and we know
3:17
Speaker 4: that all the other elements actually there was a trace
3:20
Speaker 4: of lithium as well a couple of other things, but
3:22
Speaker 4: nothing to worry about. All the other elements were formed
3:26
Speaker 4: in the interiors of stars as the universe progressed. So
3:29
Speaker 4: all the stuff we're made of from the hydrogen was
3:33
Speaker 4: once inside a star. And that's kind of, you know,
3:35
Speaker 4: the story of our origin. It's our creation story in
3:38
Speaker 4: a sense.
3:39
Speaker 3: So what people have been looking for is population three stars.
3:42
Speaker 3: They called that for historical reasons, but they're stars that
3:45
Speaker 3: would have been the first stars to form, and they
3:49
Speaker 3: would have been bright. They would have, you been much
3:52
Speaker 3: brighter than the sun. But the thinking has been over
3:57
Speaker 3: I guess the last maybe ten years, since we know
4:03
Speaker 3: that more than three quarters of the matter in the
4:06
Speaker 3: universe is dark matter. It's this stuff that we know
4:09
Speaker 3: exists because it holds galaxies together and stops them flying apart.
4:13
Speaker 3: It's got its own it's got gravity, doesn't interact in
4:16
Speaker 3: any other way with normal matter. So we believe dark
4:21
Speaker 3: matter originated in the Big Bang as well, like the hydrogen.
4:26
Speaker 3: And so the postulate has always been made by always,
4:31
Speaker 3: I mean within the last decade or so. It's probably
4:34
Speaker 3: actually more recently than that, even probably only over the
4:38
Speaker 3: last five years. The postulate was, could you have objects
4:43
Speaker 3: which basically made of clumps of dark matter coming together
4:49
Speaker 3: under their own gravity like hydrogen does in normal stars.
4:54
Speaker 3: But this stuff clumps together, it compresses because its own
4:58
Speaker 3: gravity is so strong. So you got this huge lump
5:01
Speaker 3: of dark matter. And what it then does is, and
5:05
Speaker 3: this is still a hypothesis, we believe that dark matter
5:11
Speaker 3: self annihilates if you get it particles too close together.
5:15
Speaker 3: It's a bit like matter and antimatter. You know, normal
5:19
Speaker 3: matter and antimatter is matter with an opposite electric charge.
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Speaker 3: You bring them together and you get radiation, you get
5:24
Speaker 3: gamma rays. So the thinking is that the same might
5:29
Speaker 3: happen with dark matter. You bring particles of dark matter,
5:32
Speaker 3: they self annihilate and produce a lot of energy, and
5:37
Speaker 3: maybe perhaps even what's left might act as the nucleus
5:41
Speaker 3: for galaxies to form. But the idea is that these
5:45
Speaker 3: dark stars, and it's a ridiculous name because they're billions
5:49
Speaker 3: of times brighter than the Sun, but they're made of
5:52
Speaker 3: dark matter, which is why you know that name comes
5:55
Speaker 3: maybe a million times its mass. The thinking is that
5:59
Speaker 3: they may have eventually condense to become the super massive
6:02
Speaker 3: black holes that we find in the censers of galaxies,
6:05
Speaker 3: and we find them at an age of the universe
6:09
Speaker 3: that was earlier than we can kind of understand anyway.
6:14
Speaker 3: The the there are three objects that have been observed
6:19
Speaker 3: by the James Webb Space Telescope which are formally delineated
6:23
Speaker 3: as galaxies, but they have characteristics in them that have
6:32
Speaker 3: made a number of researchers and this this work is
6:39
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's coming from US universities, and in
6:46
Speaker 3: fact a number of US universities have collaborated on this.
6:51
Speaker 3: But the the the the the point about these observations
7:00
Speaker 3: is that whilst they originally were identified as galaxies because
7:05
Speaker 3: we see them, you know, when the universe was three
7:08
Speaker 3: hundred million years old, we're looking back in time almost
7:11
Speaker 3: the whole age of the universe. They look like just
7:13
Speaker 3: like blobs to the Web telescope, and they look like
7:17
Speaker 3: a lot of the other galaxies. But it's their spectrum
7:19
Speaker 3: that is raising the possibility that these are dark matter stars.
7:26
Speaker 3: And the problem is we don't we know so little
7:31
Speaker 3: about dark matter that you know, it's a hypothesis. It's
7:37
Speaker 3: a hypothesis that dark matter self annihilates. We don't know
7:40
Speaker 3: that for certain. But the deal is that there is
7:45
Speaker 3: enough evidence from the spectra of these objects that makes
7:53
Speaker 3: people think that they are dark matter stars. And I'm
7:57
Speaker 3: going to quote one of the researchers on this topic.
8:04
Speaker 3: It's Dr Freese fr W. E. S E who has said,
8:14
Speaker 3: and it's a really nice quote, you've if you've got
8:18
Speaker 3: a dark matter star forming, Dr Frees says, you've got
8:22
Speaker 3: a weird thing. It looks like the Sun in terms
8:26
Speaker 3: of its surface temperature, but it's a billion times as bright.
8:30
Speaker 3: It could be as bright as an entire galaxy of
8:34
Speaker 3: fusion powered stars. That means stars that are powered by hydrogen.
8:38
Speaker 3: And then the thinking is, as I said, that at
8:40
Speaker 3: the end of their lives they would collapse into super
8:43
Speaker 3: massive black holes. So this is really quite an extraordinary postulate.
8:51
Speaker 3: But it is gaining traction. And this is you know,
8:54
Speaker 3: this is not something that's that's being highlight well, it
8:59
Speaker 3: is highlighted in the slightly more frenetic science press matter
9:04
Speaker 3: stars form found. I mean this is coming. In fact,
9:07
Speaker 3: the article I'm looking at it's from Scientific American, which
9:10
Speaker 3: is one of the most sober and accurate of all
9:14
Speaker 3: the science media feeds. So yes, so have a look
9:18
Speaker 3: at that article. J WSC might have spotted the first
9:22
Speaker 3: dark matter stars. And if you can make more of
9:24
Speaker 3: it than I can, that's good because the the you know,
9:30
Speaker 3: the researchers are still growping with the fact that we
9:35
Speaker 3: know so little about dark matter. And it's one of
9:40
Speaker 3: the co authors and then the doctor Freezer just mentioned,
9:42
Speaker 3: Catherine Freese, who's an astrophysicist at the University of Texas
9:46
Speaker 3: at Austin.
9:48
Speaker 1: It's fascinating because these are once again named very inaccurately,
9:56
Speaker 1: as is dark energy. So let's just be a dark
9:58
Speaker 1: star that's not dark. Yeah, it is a bit. But
10:04
Speaker 1: I think one of the questions that popped out as
10:07
Speaker 1: you were explaining it was these happened very early in
10:11
Speaker 1: the universe three three hundred millionaires a big bang. Does
10:17
Speaker 1: that mean that these may have existed no longer exist.
10:23
Speaker 3: I think that's the thinking that they have a very
10:25
Speaker 3: short life. But the debris becomes the super massive black hole,
10:32
Speaker 3: and so in a way, these things might form the
10:34
Speaker 3: nucleus of galaxies, you know, baby galaxies that are being
10:38
Speaker 3: formed in the other universe. It's a really exciting prospect
10:41
Speaker 3: and I hope we'll hear more about this and talk
10:44
Speaker 3: more about it. I know our listeners, Andrew and our
10:47
Speaker 3: viewers have latched onto this over the last couple of
10:51
Speaker 3: years because we've had several questions about this already, but
10:53
Speaker 3: it's now sort of bubbling to the surface with these
10:56
Speaker 3: three galaxy candidates, which I mean currently they're still thought
11:01
Speaker 3: to be galaxies, but the possibility that they are actually
11:04
Speaker 3: dark matter stars is becoming very, very insistent.
11:09
Speaker 1: I think the original paper published about these three potential
11:14
Speaker 1: galaxies was July twenty twenty three, but now they've taken
11:18
Speaker 1: another look at them and they're thinking, going on a minute,
11:22
Speaker 1: this might be some other dark matter onborn. Anyway, as
11:27
Speaker 1: Fred said, you can look it up at Scientificamerican dot com.
11:32
Speaker 1: It's a fabulous article. Now, Fred, let's get very close
11:37
Speaker 1: to home for us. Well not really because it's in
11:39
Speaker 1: Western Australia, but they've just announced that the oldest impact
11:45
Speaker 1: crater has been found in Western Australia, which basically means
11:50
Speaker 1: in Australia we have now got the oldest and the largest.
11:54
Speaker 1: They're not the same one. The largest is actually in
11:58
Speaker 1: New South Wales, but the oldest is in that very
12:04
Speaker 1: remote area of western Australia and around the Pilbray, isn't it.
12:07
Speaker 3: Yes, it's a Pilborough region that's right sort of north
12:10
Speaker 3: northwestern Australia, very empty part of the country, a bit
12:15
Speaker 3: unforgiving if you happen to be lost there. But our
12:20
Speaker 3: heroes in this story aren't They're scientists from Curtain University.
12:24
Speaker 3: And what's really nice about this story is that these
12:30
Speaker 3: scientists actually predicted that there might be an impact crater
12:36
Speaker 3: kind of pretty well in the middle of Australia. And
12:39
Speaker 3: what led them to that conclusion is a sort of
12:46
Speaker 3: alternative view of how continents formed. So the geological thinking
12:56
Speaker 3: around continents, which of course are represented by continental plates,
13:02
Speaker 3: you know, the plate tectonics theory. One I guess of
13:08
Speaker 3: the perhaps the most popular view is that the continents
13:13
Speaker 3: formed above plumes in the Earth's mantle, which is that
13:19
Speaker 3: sort of soft region between the core which is deep
13:22
Speaker 3: in the center of the Earth and the crust which
13:24
Speaker 3: is the thin layer that surrounds it. So you've got
13:28
Speaker 3: these plumes coming up, and everybody draws the same analogy.
13:32
Speaker 3: It's like a lava lamp, the wax rising. They come
13:36
Speaker 3: up and they basically, you know that the plume of
13:40
Speaker 3: hot stuff, so the condenses out or solidifies on the
13:45
Speaker 3: underneath of the continental plate, and you get a continental plate.
13:52
Speaker 3: I think there's a there's another one that says that
13:55
Speaker 3: actually it was just plate tectonics. You know, as plates
14:02
Speaker 3: collide with each other, there's often what's called a subduction zone,
14:06
Speaker 3: which is where one plate slides underneath the other. And
14:08
Speaker 3: so the suggestion is that as plates slide underneath the
14:11
Speaker 3: continental plates, the continental plates build and become thicker. And
14:15
Speaker 3: those are the two main theories. But these scientists that curtain,
14:21
Speaker 3: and I mean they published an original paper on this
14:24
Speaker 3: several years ago, they suggest that the energy required to
14:31
Speaker 3: make continents actually came from impacts. So you know, an
14:37
Speaker 3: impact that might be an object that's many, many kilometers
14:42
Speaker 3: in diameter. Remember the dinosaur killer was about ten to
14:45
Speaker 3: fifteen kilometers. Impacts on the surface basically put a huge
14:52
Speaker 3: amount of energy into the surface. You've only to look
14:55
Speaker 3: at one of the simulations of what the dinosaur killing
14:59
Speaker 3: astroid that created the Chickilub crater, what that did to
15:02
Speaker 3: the earth during the first fifteen minutes. It sort of
15:05
Speaker 3: just turned the surface into liquid and you get a
15:08
Speaker 3: big splash. And they suggested that an impact might be
15:16
Speaker 3: enough to basically generate the material that you need to
15:22
Speaker 3: make a continent. Maybe more than one collision, but the impact.
15:27
Speaker 3: And I'm going to quote because there's a lovely article
15:31
Speaker 3: on this written by these authors themselves. It's in the Conversation.
15:35
Speaker 3: It's called soleest impact crator was just found in Australia,
15:38
Speaker 3: exactly where geologists soaked it would be. So what they
15:43
Speaker 3: say in that article, and they're talking now about the
15:46
Speaker 3: idea of impacts creating the continental crust our evidence that, yeah,
15:55
Speaker 3: Our evidence lay in the chemical composition of tiny crystals
15:59
Speaker 3: of the mini zircon about the size of sand grains,
16:02
Speaker 3: so they are generally produced by impact. But to persuade
16:07
Speaker 3: other geologists, we needed more convincing evidence, preferably something people
16:11
Speaker 3: could see without needing a microscope. So in May twenty
16:15
Speaker 3: twenty one we began the long drive north from Perth
16:17
Speaker 3: for two weeks of field work in the Pilborough where
16:20
Speaker 3: we meet up with our partners from the Geological Survey
16:22
Speaker 3: of Western Australia to hunt for the crater. And then
16:25
Speaker 3: they tell the story of what they found. And they
16:28
Speaker 3: found the evidence very very quickly, within the first hour
16:32
Speaker 3: of being Yeah, because what they found was shatter cones.
16:40
Speaker 3: And let me quote again from the article, shatter cones
16:43
Speaker 3: are beautiful, delicate branching structures, not dissimilar to Badminton choppercock.
16:48
Speaker 3: They are the only feature of shock visible to the
16:51
Speaker 3: naked eye, and in nature, can only form following a
16:55
Speaker 3: meteorite impact. Little more than an hour into our search,
16:59
Speaker 3: we've found precise what we were looking for. We'd literally
17:02
Speaker 3: open the doors of our four wheel drives and stepped
17:04
Speaker 3: onto the floor of a huge ancient impact crater. And
17:08
Speaker 3: so they've done a lot of subsequent research. They've been
17:11
Speaker 3: back to the to the site and yes, they have
17:15
Speaker 3: essentially defined it. I suppose this as the world's oldest
17:23
Speaker 3: impact crater, which pushes the age of the oldest impact
17:26
Speaker 3: crater back more than a billion years because they say
17:29
Speaker 3: this formed more than three point five billion years ago.
17:32
Speaker 1: Wow, and this is huge, this one.
17:35
Speaker 3: It is, Yes, it's you know, it's continent sized almost,
17:39
Speaker 3: so it would have been a bad continent. I mean
17:42
Speaker 3: a significant chunk of the Australian continent, which is what
17:45
Speaker 3: they represent by the Piliger. So the Piliger may be
17:48
Speaker 3: basically the extent of it, which is very very big.
17:51
Speaker 1: That is incredible. So how big a rock would.
17:54
Speaker 3: Create Yeah, actually it's a really good point. I think
17:58
Speaker 3: we're talking about several kilometers here. I'm just switching to
18:01
Speaker 3: their original paper on this, which is called a paleo
18:08
Speaker 3: arcan impact crater in the Pilburg crighton western Australia, and
18:13
Speaker 3: I'm just looking to see whether they think whether they're abstract. Yes, okay,
18:18
Speaker 3: here we are ten to fifty kilometers in diameter. Wow. Yeah,
18:23
Speaker 3: so it's big massive.
18:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, you wouldn't bigger than yes, yes, we know how
18:28
Speaker 1: damaging that was. So this is quite incredible. They've actually
18:32
Speaker 1: in the Conversation article got a photo of one of
18:35
Speaker 1: those those chef shutterns. Yeah. What incredible. Now to the
18:41
Speaker 1: untrained eye, he'd probably just go, oh that's nice, you.
18:46
Speaker 3: Were me both, But yeah, I mean it is quite
18:50
Speaker 3: extra and it's really neat. If you've got a geologists
18:54
Speaker 3: with you, you know, some of these expeditions, you start
18:57
Speaker 3: to see things straight away. When we did a tour
19:02
Speaker 3: last year of South Australia and one of the things
19:05
Speaker 3: we were looking for were the stromatolites, those microbial mats,
19:10
Speaker 3: the evidence for them in the fossil record, and they're
19:13
Speaker 3: kind of all around you, but you don't see them.
19:15
Speaker 3: And then we got to a sign that said here's
19:17
Speaker 3: a stromatolite, and oh, that's what it looks like, and
19:20
Speaker 3: then you see him everywhere. And it would probably be
19:22
Speaker 3: the same with shatter cones.
19:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've had a similar experience. When you're thinking of
19:26
Speaker 1: buying a new car, you haven't board it yet, you
19:32
Speaker 1: just see them everywhere.
19:33
Speaker 3: That's actually, that is absolutely true. That happened to me
19:36
Speaker 3: when I got my last car. I saw them everywhere. Yeah,
19:40
Speaker 3: that's fun funny.
19:41
Speaker 1: How that happens. All right, if you'd like to read
19:43
Speaker 1: up on that enormous crater, and I will add fred
19:48
Speaker 1: that finding creators like this on Earth is difficult because
19:52
Speaker 1: so many of them are hidden because Earth's alive and
19:55
Speaker 1: all this kids covered up and yeah, this one.
19:58
Speaker 3: Was covered up with roll, that's right, it was covered
20:01
Speaker 3: with bus all.
20:03
Speaker 4: Yeah.
20:04
Speaker 1: So yeah, sometimes it's looking you in the face and
20:07
Speaker 1: saying here, I'm here. You can't see it. Yes, The
20:12
Speaker 1: Conversation dot com is where you'll find that amazing story.
20:16
Speaker 1: This is space Nuts. Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred
20:19
Speaker 1: what's an space nuts? Okay, time for a couple of
20:28
Speaker 1: mission updates. We spoke last week about the successful landing
20:32
Speaker 1: of Blue Ghost, the Blue Ghost mission, the Firefly Probe
20:37
Speaker 1: or whatever it was. See how up to date I am.
20:41
Speaker 1: There's a mission update.
20:42
Speaker 3: This has been going rather well, it has. Yeah, And
20:45
Speaker 3: in fact you can find on the mission page, the
20:49
Speaker 3: Firefly Aerospace mission page, just look fireflyspace dot com. They
20:56
Speaker 3: have live updates on how it's doing on the surface
20:59
Speaker 3: of operations. Remember it's only active for one lunar day
21:05
Speaker 3: or one period of lunar daylight, which is fourteen of
21:07
Speaker 3: our days. I think they're on what are they on now? Day?
21:12
Speaker 3: They landed on second of March.
21:18
Speaker 1: I think, so we're now all but insertion command March
21:22
Speaker 1: of first.
21:23
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, so I think they're landed on the second. Yes,
21:26
Speaker 3: and so we've got you know, a succession day by
21:29
Speaker 3: day lovely images showing the surface that they're landed on.
21:34
Speaker 3: Quite quite amazing stuff. They By March the sixth, they've
21:39
Speaker 3: completed eight of their payload objectives. And remember this is
21:43
Speaker 3: part of NASA's you know, project for putting commercial payloads
21:48
Speaker 3: on the Moon to do studies. The March the seventh,
21:55
Speaker 3: they had the new lunar magneto Telluric sounder deployment footage.
22:01
Speaker 3: So work that one out. And it's basically the lunar
22:06
Speaker 3: Magneto of Telluric sounder is on a mast. It's eight
22:12
Speaker 3: feet tall and it basically so magneto of tell Uric
22:17
Speaker 3: means based on Earth magnetism. So they're using the Earth
22:21
Speaker 3: magnetic field to sample the deep interior of the Moon
22:26
Speaker 3: to learn more about the structure and composition of the
22:29
Speaker 3: Moon's mantle. And a couple of days ago, March the eighth,
22:33
Speaker 3: that's the lowtest I've got. I should probably update this,
22:36
Speaker 3: but I want just now planned power cycling for lunar noon.
22:40
Speaker 3: Lunar noon is when the sun is at its hest
22:43
Speaker 3: in the sky.
22:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of the problems you're trying to
22:47
Speaker 1: overcome because of the temperatures. Yes, during the lunar day
22:53
Speaker 1: risks sort of cooking those exactly, so they power cycle
22:58
Speaker 1: it to keep it cool, which I think is pretty
23:00
Speaker 1: cool again. But the latest thing they've done FRED is
23:07
Speaker 1: drilling operations. Okay, they performed LISTER operations mounted below the
23:14
Speaker 1: lower deck, NASA's Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with
23:21
Speaker 1: Rapidity List. It's a neumatic gas powered drill through which
23:30
Speaker 1: was developed by Texas Tech University. So they're doing a
23:34
Speaker 1: lot of work up there. It's really exciting and so far,
23:37
Speaker 1: so good. Everything's worked, that's correct.
23:40
Speaker 3: Just a quick word of explanation as well. The lunar
23:43
Speaker 3: moon thing is pretty important. Maximum temperature of about one
23:47
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty celsius. But they are this spacecraft landed
23:53
Speaker 3: in Mari Christium, the Sea of Crises, which is very
23:56
Speaker 3: near the lunar equator, so the sun is going to
24:00
Speaker 3: be very high in the sky. It'll be like being
24:02
Speaker 3: in the tropics here on Earth, which is why that's
24:05
Speaker 3: such a big issue, you know, to keep the noon
24:10
Speaker 3: everything working properly.
24:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you would like to follow the mission, the
24:14
Speaker 1: Blue Ghost mission, you can go to fireflyspace dot com.
24:18
Speaker 1: That's their website. From success to a successful failure, we'll
24:23
Speaker 1: call it. This is a mission that landed in a
24:28
Speaker 1: very different place on the Moon, very close to the
24:32
Speaker 1: South Pole region. Unfortunately, and this is the second time
24:37
Speaker 1: that it's happened to this company. The land fell over.
24:41
Speaker 3: So that's right. So they landed successfully, as they did
24:43
Speaker 3: with another spacecraft about a couple of years ago, a
24:47
Speaker 3: successful landing, but it fell over. That's twice. And it's
24:54
Speaker 3: so sad because a lander that is expected to be
24:59
Speaker 3: see the sun and receiving power through its solar panels
25:04
Speaker 3: suddenly finds itself on its side where it can't see
25:07
Speaker 3: the sun or the solar panels can't and essentially the
25:11
Speaker 3: spacecraft dies very rapidly because the batteries don't last very long.
25:15
Speaker 3: I think its Intuitive Machines is the company that's launched
25:19
Speaker 3: this and its predecessor or has built it and deployed it.
25:25
Speaker 3: They did as much as they could in the you know,
25:29
Speaker 3: the short time they had before the batteries ran out,
25:32
Speaker 3: but it's now been declared dead. Sadly, it's a very
25:38
Speaker 3: brave attent. I think I read a comment last week
25:43
Speaker 3: when we're talking about Blue Ghosts successful landing. One of
25:47
Speaker 3: the reasons that they think they were successful it's probably
25:53
Speaker 3: actually easier to land in Mari Chrisium than it is
25:55
Speaker 3: near the South Pole, because there's so many mountains, rocks
25:58
Speaker 3: and things near the South Pole. But one of the
26:00
Speaker 3: things that the Firefly Aerospace credited with their success was
26:05
Speaker 3: the fact that their lander has very wide a very
26:10
Speaker 3: wide quite it's a quadrupot. It's four legs which are
26:14
Speaker 3: spread well out with the spacecraft itself having a low
26:18
Speaker 3: center of gravity. And when you look at the Intuitive
26:21
Speaker 3: Machines spacecraft you can see it's the opposite. Their landing
26:25
Speaker 3: legs are relatively close together. And that it's a tall,
26:29
Speaker 3: a tall spacecraft. I think it's eight meters. I might
26:32
Speaker 3: have that wrong.
26:33
Speaker 1: That's very big, but it's very tall.
26:36
Speaker 3: It's and you know, so you've only got to get
26:40
Speaker 3: a slight I don't know, maybe even a rebound from
26:43
Speaker 3: the lunar surface at the wrong angle, and what's going
26:46
Speaker 3: to happen. It's going to fall over. And sadly, that's
26:49
Speaker 3: what's happened.
26:50
Speaker 2: Yep.
26:50
Speaker 1: The first mission I AM one tipped over and it's
26:57
Speaker 1: sort of we're head of for leg system, but one
27:03
Speaker 1: of the legs broke after it landed on the surface,
27:06
Speaker 1: and yeah, it landed heavier than they Yeah, that will
27:10
Speaker 1: be another Yeah, I am too was the name of
27:13
Speaker 1: this one. And yeah, I'm not sure they've actually figured
27:18
Speaker 1: out what happened as such, but it had so many
27:22
Speaker 1: really great toys on board. It carried two small rovers,
27:26
Speaker 1: Carris being Robot Robot Grace, which was going to sort
27:32
Speaker 1: of drill for ice. This was not a cheap loss either,
27:35
Speaker 1: sixty two and a half million dollars. Yeah, it must
27:39
Speaker 1: be so disappointing. I mean, they got it down on
27:42
Speaker 1: the ground, but something just yeah, they might have just
27:46
Speaker 1: hit a hit a rock, who knows, but very very
27:49
Speaker 1: disappointing for the Athena mission on the Moon beastmuts Fred.
28:02
Speaker 1: Let's move on to another successful failure because they keep
28:05
Speaker 1: calling it that, and this is a starship explosion. Now
28:10
Speaker 1: we only talked about one last week with all the
28:13
Speaker 1: sky lit up by debris falling back into the atmosphere,
28:16
Speaker 1: and it's happened again.
28:19
Speaker 3: Yes, that's correct. Starship Flight eight a bittersweet one because
28:25
Speaker 3: they successfully brought the Falcon Super heavy booster back and
28:30
Speaker 3: grabbed it by those chopsticks on the launchpad. That all
28:34
Speaker 3: works flawlessly, but the spacecraft itself, the starship, suffered what's
28:39
Speaker 3: it called a rapid, unscheduled disassembly in its space.
28:45
Speaker 1: There's more which was blamed on an energetic event.
28:50
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right. And then ergetic event. I think we
28:52
Speaker 3: call that an explosion, don't we.
28:54
Speaker 1: I think we do. I think we do.
28:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, But it actually it was a little bit startling
29:01
Speaker 3: because the explosion happened over land and there was a
29:08
Speaker 3: lot of debris visible. The explosion was photographed by many people. Yes,
29:13
Speaker 3: and I think they're probably must in Florida. And yeah,
29:18
Speaker 3: the the debris cloud that was coming back down to
29:21
Speaker 3: Earth was very, very spectacular. There's quite a lot of
29:24
Speaker 3: movie footage on the web that you can find.
29:27
Speaker 1: And one of the one of the big problems these
29:29
Speaker 1: causes is it creates heavoc for domestic air track. I
29:35
Speaker 1: think for nearly an hour and a half, flights at
29:39
Speaker 1: four airports in Florida had just in kites.
29:42
Speaker 3: Yep, yep, Miami, Fort Lauda, Delle Palm Beach, and Orlando. Yeah.
29:46
Speaker 3: That's a big worry, it is, that's right, it is. Indeed,
29:50
Speaker 3: it's a big worry that you're gonna have bits of
29:54
Speaker 3: starship raining down on your flight. So yeah, I think
29:59
Speaker 3: I think they all just kept all their aircraft grounded
30:03
Speaker 3: until the you know, till the thing had all fallen
30:07
Speaker 3: back to Earth. So another yeah, I mean there had
30:11
Speaker 3: been if I remember rightly, there's been two of these
30:15
Speaker 3: re entries of the Starship. They haven't tried to put
30:17
Speaker 3: Starship into orbit properly yet, but two of the re
30:20
Speaker 3: entries have been better controlled. One got down to a
30:25
Speaker 3: sort of touchdown speed over the ocean, but the thing
30:28
Speaker 3: then exploded before it hit the water. There's quite a
30:31
Speaker 3: litany of interesting stuff going on with this. Of course,
30:36
Speaker 3: Elon Musk has a huge investment in this, in the
30:39
Speaker 3: success of this vehicle, because he's contracted to land the
30:43
Speaker 3: Artemis astronauts on the Moon with it, with the Starship spacecraft,
30:49
Speaker 3: and those astronauts must be looking at these Israeli. Yeah, exactly,
30:54
Speaker 3: they're already they've already been fingered. They know who they are.
30:56
Speaker 3: And if they're watching the TV or anything, yeah.
31:00
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, there would have been a lot beeping on
31:02
Speaker 1: the audio coverage. I imagine Elon Musk described this one
31:06
Speaker 1: as a minor setback, which he always tends to do,
31:09
Speaker 1: I think, so to that successful failure to a successful success.
31:16
Speaker 1: Now this is another thing they've found in Australia. This
31:22
Speaker 1: is the Varda space capsule which came back to Earth
31:25
Speaker 1: and it's the first commercial landing in out back Australia.
31:30
Speaker 1: This was a California company and I love it because
31:34
Speaker 1: the name of the space craft was W two, which
31:37
Speaker 1: stands for Win a Bago too. It was a long,
31:41
Speaker 1: slow mission, but yet the capsule was launched along with
31:47
Speaker 1: another one hundred and thirty things on the payload of
31:51
Speaker 1: a SpaceX Falcon nine and they record they report it
31:56
Speaker 1: as a ride share mission, so this is uber in
32:00
Speaker 1: space base. But they orbited the planet for six weeks
32:06
Speaker 1: and then the capsule made a plunge back into Earth's
32:10
Speaker 1: atmosphere and landed at the Caniba Test Range in South Australia.
32:16
Speaker 1: And this was a spacecraft that carried a spectrometer from
32:21
Speaker 1: the Air Force Research Labs and the Varda Enhanced Pharmaceutical Reactor.
32:28
Speaker 1: Because what they're looking at doing is zero G manufacturing.
32:32
Speaker 1: This is yeah, so they're very excited. This was a
32:36
Speaker 1: huge success for them and we wish them well because
32:41
Speaker 1: there's not much more I can tell you about it.
32:44
Speaker 1: That's good, lah, I guess we'll find out more as
32:47
Speaker 1: as they further develop it. But what's what's the advantage
32:50
Speaker 1: of micro g.
32:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think I think you can you can
32:55
Speaker 3: create chemistry, a pharmacy, ecology by the sound of it.
33:01
Speaker 3: You can create bonds between the molecules that they have
33:06
Speaker 3: a little bit differently, I think from what you do
33:08
Speaker 3: under gravity, and just the structural integrity of things is
33:12
Speaker 3: different in microgravity. So I think there are a lot
33:15
Speaker 3: of experiments being done to see if we can do things,
33:18
Speaker 3: make them better, make them more successful, the more expensive.
33:23
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I think as it readded the atmosphere at
33:28
Speaker 1: hit mark fifteen, Yeah, yes, he's done quick, not bad
33:33
Speaker 1: for a winter Bago. You can read that story dot com. Fred,
33:39
Speaker 1: we are done.
33:40
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, great pleasure. Andrew always good to
33:43
Speaker 3: chat with. Some good stories too. Yeah.
33:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a very active episode. If you would like
33:48
Speaker 1: to catch up on anything Space Nuts related, don't forget
33:51
Speaker 1: our website Space Nuts Podcast dot com, and you can
33:55
Speaker 1: have a look around while you're They're not only at
33:57
Speaker 1: our past episodes, but some of the program notes if
34:01
Speaker 1: you're interested in chasing up anything we've talked about, are
34:04
Speaker 1: always there. Hugh's very diligent with that kind of thing,
34:08
Speaker 1: and plenty of other things to see and do on
34:12
Speaker 1: our website now. I always thank Hugh in the studio,
34:17
Speaker 1: who couldn't be Hugh in the studio today because apparently
34:20
Speaker 1: he was out taking a walk and came across this
34:23
Speaker 1: little lunar lander and thought no one's watching, gave it
34:26
Speaker 1: a shoulder charge and that was the end of that.
34:29
Speaker 1: And from me Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your company. We'll
34:32
Speaker 1: see on the very next episode of Space Nuts. Bye bye.
34:36
Speaker 1: You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast available at
34:41
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34:47
Speaker 1: can also stream on demand at bytes dot com.
34:50
Speaker 4: This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot com.