Latest / Made of Stars / Japan Gets a Win and a Loss on the Moon

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Japan Gets a Win and a Loss on the Moon · 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 expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar, asterism,
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and uranus. Listen, that's your own risk, go ahead. When
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made of stars, made them stars? Mad sizes when maida stars you could
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be from high they would New Mexicomus. Where are stars? When we are
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made of stars? I'm Wes Carrol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean
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Cruise in from Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Sign Center. Morning Sean,
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good morning. We's good to be here with you today. It's a significant
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day and we'll talk about that in just a second. I just want to
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point out and the intro there, our friend Joey Williams. We always talk
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about the music. We talk about the theme song, right, We spend
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a lot of time talking about that. We don't often talk about the voice
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of the intro of the show, which is our friend Joey Williams, and
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he mentions that we use terms like you know, asterism, quasar, and
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uranus. Today we're going to talk about quasars, but we'll do that towards
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the end. I just wanted to mention the fact that you know that that
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comes to fruition every now and then, and this is one of those shows.
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I mean, I think we could probably end up wedging in the other
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two if we really tried hard enough. I mean I technically already said them
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both. But you know, we're you know, we're not going to spend
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a lot of time probably on on Uranus. Anyway, we got a cool
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success story kind of for Japan and the Moon, and we'll get to that
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in a second, but let's start with NASA's Day of Remembrance. Yeah,
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this is always a difficult day because you know, it marks the anniversary of
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some tragedies that took place and a time when NASA lost astronauts on multiple occasions,
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and so they have the Day of Remembrance always toward the end of January,
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and today just happens to be the day of the day we're recording.
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January fifth, twenty twenty four is NASA's Day of Remembrance. They are actually
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live events being held right now, so you know, if you're listening to
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us, you know, as soon as this gets posted, Yeah, you
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can jump over catch the stream maybe live, but for sure I know that
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NASA will have recordings of their stream of this Day of Remembrance up online shortly,
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and they just pause at NASA to remember the lives sacrificed in the name
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of space explort starting with the Apollo one fire in nineteen sixty seven that happened
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on January twenty seventh of that year, the Challenger explosion in nineteen eighty six
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that happened on January twenty eighth of that year, and then the Space Shuttle
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Columbia disaster where it burned up on re entry in two thousand and three that
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happened on February first of that year. So all with just in a very
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few days of each other on the calendar, these three major space disasters for
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NASA where astronauts were lost on each of those seventeen astronauts total. There are
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other astronauts who were also lost on training missions and exercises. Those astronauts are
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also remembered on this day. So NASA just kind of takes a pause and
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just has a ceremony where they remind themselves that, you know, the venture
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of human space exploration is a dangerous one and it's a day where they remember
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those who gave a sacrifice of their lives to advance space exploration. But it's
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also kind of a remembrance to say, we really need to do our best.
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NASA needs to be operating at the highest points of integrity in the engineering
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perspective, in the safety perspective, so that more astronauts are not lost.
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So we tip our hat to the NASA astronauts who lost their lives, who
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risk their lives, and all of the engineers and technicians who work to make
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sure that it doesn't happen again. And to your point, if nothing else,
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it gives that annual reminder that yes, things do happen, sometimes at
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a snail's pace, in the name of safety and getting it right, and
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that is very important. I think we get impatient. You know, we
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live in a extremely fast paced microwave instant gratification society and sometimes NASA just doesn't
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move at the speed that our attention spans are happy with. But good for
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them for maintaining high standards and considering all of the kinds of risks involved making
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sure that people are as safe as they can be when they take on these
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major endeavors like we're about to do very soon when we send astronauts around the
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backside of the Moon with the Artemis program, for instance. Right, So,
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yes, that we just had an announcement where the Artemis got delayed a
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little bit longer. This is Artemis two. But yet it's just kind of
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okay. It needs to be okay because we need to allow the system and
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the process to play out in the proper time frame to keep everybody safe and
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keep the mission alive. So yes, a day of remembrance is a good
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time to remind ourselves that that's really what it's all about. And traveling to
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space is a very difficult endeavor because there are so many dangers and considerations that
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have to be dealt with. And as we start to look ahead to you
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know, next, we send astronauts, like you said, around around the
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moon, to the backside of the moon. But the goal, of course
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is to get astronauts back on the Moon, and that means successfully landing on
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the moon. And as we've pointed out many times on the show, this
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is not an easy thing to do. And we can talk a little bit
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about astrobotic but also the fact that Japan has done something. Now like they
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they're on the board. As far as successfully landing something on the Moon,
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it's not a complete success. But again, sometimes when we talk about what's
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considered a successful mission or a successful launch, there's stages of success. But
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the fact that they were able to land something on the Moon successfully means,
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hey, that's a when in this whole process. Yeah, as we were
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closing out our shows for the year twenty twenty three, we mentioned upcoming in
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the you know, January, and early in the early twenty twenty fourth time
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frame, we thought they were all going to happen in January. They didn't
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quite work out that way for scheduling reasons. But there were three different missions
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that were robotic missions that were going to attempt soft landings on the surface of
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the Moon. One of those was an American company by the name of Astrobotics
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and their lander was the Peregrine Lander. Another one was the Japanese Space Agency
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JACKSA, and theirs was what's called the SLIM Lander stands for Smart Landing for
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investigating the Moon. And then the third one is by Intuitive Machines that's the
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IM one mission, and of course they are they are still up to BAT.
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They have a lander called Nova C that one is not launched yet.
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But in terms of landing these vehicles on the Moon, it's just a good
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reminder to pause and say it's not easy, it's hard, and we have
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seen India fail. We have seen Israel fail, actually seen India succeed after
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they failed, which is a good thing. So it's just important to note
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that over the years, Russia's had failures, other countries have had failures.
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Only four countries to this point had ever had soft landings on the Moon,
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and that was the United States, India, Russia, and China. And
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so this brave new wave of moonlanders, commercial moonlanders and other ones was going
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to attempt three different landings during the very early part In twenty twenty four.
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Astrobotics was first up to BAT. The US company based out of Pennsylvania.
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Their lander, the Peregrine. Well, it didn't get a good boost after
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it got into orbit, and they had to let it re enter Earth's atmosphere.
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It was the least dangerous alternative rather than trying to push it into lunar
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orbit, even though it wasn't functioning properly, and so that one the first
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US attempt to put a lander on the Moon since nineteen seventy two. Burned
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up in the atmosphere on Thursday, so that was bad, not the best
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ending. It was part of NASA's Commercial Crew Lunar Payloads Service CLPS is the
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name of that program, and basically that program is, hey, private companies,
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if you're going to the Moon anyway, we NASA will pay you to
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take some of our payloads on your vehicle. So the Peregrine had five different
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payloads from NASA, and NASA paid one hundred and eight million dollars to have
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Paragrine take those payloads to the Moon, along with twenty other payloads that were
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on board. None of them made it to the Moon. They all burn
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up and so unfortunately that was mission number one down the tubes. Well,
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and it's interesting to point out too that some of that payload was and this
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was sort of one of the things that got some attention, uh with they
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some remains they had, you know, I guess ashes of you know,
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rodden berries and others of Star Trek fame. But the thought was okay,
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well, their final resting place will will be on the Moon, I suppose,
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and we and We discussed in the last couple of weeks the fact that
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there was question about whether or not this thing would just end up drifting,
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you know, into deep space or whatever, or just floating around in space.
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Whatever's going to happen with it, And then there were started to become
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questions about, well, maybe it will be able to do what they were
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hoping. There were some questions off and on. I don't know how realistic
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that was, but it was being discussed. I think if your ultimate resting
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place for your ashes was going to be the Moon and then that can't happen,
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I mean burning up in the atmosphere and kind of being scattered, you
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know, over the entire planet. That's kind of a cool alternative. I
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know it's not exactly what they were hoping for, but that's still kind of
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cool it is. And you know, you so those remains flew in space,
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right right, Let's let's give the family some comfort, right So,
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and I suppose that when you put the ashes of a loved one on board
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of space vehicle, you know that this is at least a possibility for taking
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place. I will tell you that we have a Space Shuttle main engine nozzle
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sitting in our exhibit gallery at RS twenty five engine that's been on nine flights
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to space. One of those Space Shuttle flights also carried ashes from Gene Roddenberry
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to space. So I don't know how many ashes. I don't know how
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many they have. And there were clud goos out. I don't understand they're
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stretching about. Man, they're getting their money's worth there. They know that
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if they put a little here, a little there, a little bit,
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and you know, and that's fine. But I you know, I just
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sit there and I think, I mean, yeah, you'd like, you
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know, the moon, that was the goal. But I mean, how
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many people can say their ashes, you know, got to be spread over
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the whole planet. That's just kind of a neat ending. I think I
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would feel some comfort in that, absolutely, And so hopefully the family of
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mister roden Berry is very happy with the ending on the Paragrid. Yeah,
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you would hope. So I'm just gonna leave it there. Yeah, there
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you go. Well let's talk. I mean, Japan, what went right?
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What went wrong with their slim Lander? And I like, you know,
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smart Lander for investigating moon, that's great? What went right? And
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what went wrong? So it landed successfully. That's what went right, I
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mean it did so so yeah, and it launched successfully, right, so
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that's that's another great thing. So both of those things are good. So
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there are a lot of Japanese robotic lander launched successfully on the nineteenth of February,
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and that was fantastic and made it to the Moon and touched down on
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the Moon I'm sorry, touchdown on the lunar surface on the nineteenth. That's
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that's what I meant to say. It had launched earlier, but and so
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so it was a soft landing, which performing a soft landing on the Moon
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is hard. They succeeded. The spacecraft touched down. Japan became only the
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fifth country in history to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface. We
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mentioned the other four earlier, just a few minutes ago, and so so
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yay right, yay, okay. But unfortunately their power system, powered by
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their solar panels, didn't deploy properly. The battery ran out and the lunar
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lander lost lost its power and electricity in the very harsh lunar environment in a
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very short period of time. Ah yeah, so yay landed didn't work very
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long after that, So It's good to know that everything worked right until the
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thing tried to power itself up using its own power supply, because then the
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Japanese Space Agency can focus on what went wrong, fix that problem, capitalize
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on the things that went right, and get another lander up there in very
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short order. Right, So that's that's the upside. There were definitely some
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things that went right. One of the other things that went right is it
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left a whole lot of parts on the Moon. In case a space explorer
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like Mark Wattley ever gets you know, stranded up there, he can build
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a radio out of the parts. The parts are in good shape because they
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all landed softly, so they're just sitting there as long as you know,
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a Mark Wattley type person was able to just find some power and boot it
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up, then he could probably communicate back with Earth, you know, like
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as seen in the movie The Martian. Yeah, so that's good news.
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Maybe some ketchup packets would have been nice to leave for him too. I
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mean, he only had so much for those potatoes. I mean, maybe
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he could use the solar panels that did work quite right. Maybe he can
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go ahead and manually deploy those and grow potatoes with the power. I don't
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know, Yeah, possible all of that. So that's good news, I
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guess. So the batteries are there, they're just not going to be able
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to be recharged. Were they able to do We're all in good shape.
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Yeah, everything seems to be working just fine. The batteries held in there
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for a while until they couldn't charge anymore, and then they died. So
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they're they're already done. Like no, there's no uh, you know,
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build up of power that they could do anything with other than just they're done.
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That's it, you are, correct sir. Now, there are plans
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apparently in the work. Well let me say it this way. There are
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ideas in the work where they could potentially go up and reclaim this vessel and
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still use it. So that's being discussed because it is in good shape,
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because it did soft land. You know, maybe they could send another robot
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up there and reactivate it and still carry out some of the missions. These
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are the things that Jackson is now considering for their land or that landed in
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good shape and immediately died. So anyway, One of the other things though,
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that happened, Wes, is that on the way down this lander called
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SLIM had a couple of traveling companions called LEV one and LEV two. Now
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LEV stands for Lunar Exploration Vehicle. These are little, tiny mini rovers that
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were deployed as the spacecraft was coming in landed separately from the spacecraft and are
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able to actually maneuver around on the surface, so they still have their power
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for some period of time. And one of them, which is about the
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size of a tennis ball, but which was equipped with a camera, was
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able to spin itself around, point itself at the lander and take what's now
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going to be an iconic and epic photo of the stranded lander the SLIM taken
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by the LEV two robotic space probe that went down to the surface with it.
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So another success. I mean, if you're talking about successes, you're
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looking for upsides. The little companion rovers seem to both have deployed properly,
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and LEV two even got a picture of the mother craft sitting, you know,
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roughly fifty yards away or something like that on the lunar surface. So
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yeah, it's not all bad, you know, it's good. It's all
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right. The moon is hard. One mission completely failed, the other mission
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had failures but also had some success points. That's two of the three.
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The next one up to bat is Intuitive Machines and Intuitive Machines another American company
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schedule for launch on February on sometime in the month of February of twenty twenty
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four, and so they're going to have a lander called Nova Sea and they'll
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be doing some various propellant tests and things like that of Novasea in the next
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several days getting it ready to take a flight to the Moon. All right,
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back to our first story when we were talking about how you take time
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and and sometimes we can be very impatient with it. This next story is
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one of something that took time and and making sure to get it right.
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Uh. And now it's a step closer as a Sierra Space which we talked
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about this radio years ago. Well, now they're a step closer. And
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I guess they've done an official invite the media in to take a look at
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the dream Chasers space plane and here we go. You know, Wes,
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what's fun about you know, our our relationship and the time that we've spent
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together is we've really gotten to see the commercial UH space industry evolve in a
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huge way. As we've been talking about it both on radio and on the
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podcast. It's just been a fun thing for the two of us to kind
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of watch this whole industry unfold, watch competitors rise and fall. You know.
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We we had some favorites along the way, like the Links vehicle,
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which is a great one. We got to know those folks that built Links
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pretty well. But that thing dropped off the face of the earth and is
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now not in any kind of consideration for any kind of commercial space these days.
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And I feel bad for all the people, the very dedicated, smart
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people who are working with that company. And you know, so anyway,
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Dream Chaser felt kind of like another one of these vehicles that you know,
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we had talked about a lot several years ago, and then it just kind
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of went away, but it didn't really go away. So Dream Chaser was
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a vehicle designed and engineered by Sierra Nevada Corporation, which is a space company.
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They later changed their name to Sierra Space, so they are now the
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Sierra Space Company, and Dream Chaser is a vehicle that looks like a little
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mini shuttle. It kind of looks like that secret Air Force X thirty seven
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B vehicle, but not exactly. It looks a little friendlier. It looks
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a little bit less military in its design, and that's because at one point
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it was designed to take space tourists, so they tried to make it look
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cool and inviting for space tourists. Well, all right, so it's mission
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to carry space tourists and be part of NASA's commercial crew program all died away
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when NASA selected SpaceX and Boeing. Mind you, just a footnote here,
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Boeing still unable to fly their starlighter with astronauts to the International Space Station.
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They've yet to achieve. That makes me wonder whether they picked the right ones
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over there at NASA. Maybe they should have taken on the space plane.
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I'll also put in the footnote that I've always been kind of a fanboy.
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Just from a personal sense. I've always thought the dream Chaser was really cool.
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I thought the concept of coming back down and landing on a runway the
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same way as Space Shuttle did was the right way to go rather than splashing
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down in the ocean. And so yeah, I'm gonna hold on to my
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Dream Chaser fandom and tell you this next story, which is Dream Chaser has
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now been selected by NASA to carry cargo up to the International Space Station.
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So there you go. You hang around, you persevere, you con continue
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to engineer for all the eventualities of this very difficult environment of outer space.
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As Wes was just mentioning a moment ago and maybe good things happen, and
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that looks like what's happening for Dreamchaser, because on February first, they're going
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to have a big press conference at the Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky,
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Ohio, and they're going to roll out Dream Chaser with its cargo module attached.
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Cargo module actually has its own name. It's called the Shooting Star.
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I'm not sure that's the best name for it. We don't really want to
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see it. I don't know do we want to see it? Shooting I
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don't think that's a good what anyway, that's what they called it. So
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there you go, the Shooting Star cargo compartment attached to the Dream Chase or
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will be carrying payloads up to the International Space Station as part of NASA's commercial
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crew or sorry, commercial vehicle efforts for Low Earth orbit. So right now,
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though, it's going to be unveiled at the Neil Armstrong facility and then
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it's going to be going undergoing tests in the Mechanical Vibration facility at the Environmental
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Complex at the Neil Armstrong Center in Sandusky, just going to shake the heck
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out of it and do a bunch of other environmental tests just to make sure
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it can withstand the rigors of taking cargoes up to the space station. Now
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here's what I'm personally hoping. I'm personally hoping that the Dream Chaser will be
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allowed to show off its assets and benefits, and through that process we'll be
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able to re enter the commercial crew endeavor to take actual astronauts back and forth
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to the International Space Station. I don't know how realistic that is. I'm
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not a nasty insider. I just have a dream, friends, I have
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a dream today that Dream Chaser will get back in the in the in the
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hunt for actually being able to take either commercial astronauts or NASA astronauts or somebody
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to space aboard that very cool little space plane vehicle. All right, couple
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things. First of all, I understand that they went with Shooting Star because
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they were they're big bad Company fans. They were originally going to call it
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the Rock and Roll Fantasy, but they decided that wasn't going to work either,
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so they went with Shooting Star anyway. One of the things I like
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about this, and I agree with you. I like the look of it.
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I like the design of it. I like the thought that it does
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land the way the Shuttle landed back on a runway. I just when I
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the first time I saw it, I thought, this looks to me what
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I would imagine. And you see this, you know, in sci fi
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movies, But this is what I imagine an escape pod to look like.
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Right, This looks like something that would be attached to the International Space Station
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in case, I don't know, a craft goes up and they have yet
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another problem with you know, a leak in it, and then they needed
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to be able to get somebody home. So that's kind of what I always
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thought about it when I saw it, and that's that's kind of what it
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looks like. So it is exciting to know that they're still in the game.
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It absolutely is. And you know, not all of the opinions that
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I express on here is some kind of a space expert, are really all
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that technical or scientific in nature. I haven't really looked through the technical aspects
24:30
of this vehicle to compare them pros and cons with SpaceX dragons and things that
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splash down the ocean. I'm just like Wes, I think the darn thing
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looks cool, and so I wanted to succeed for that reason. So,
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just in full disclosure, it's just a it's just a fanboy opinion. I
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just like the thing looks cool. Yeah, that's where That's where I'm at
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with it as well. Coming up after a quick break, we're gonna talk
24:56
about quasars. It's gonna happen. Might even say the word uranus or asterism.
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All right, I did it again right after this. I almost think
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that we should get Joey, our voice guy, to come up with a
25:26
line for us where he just says this week in James Webb Space Telescope News,
25:30
because it feels like, you know, we have very regular updates and
25:36
discoveries and incredible images that come from James web So it almost feels like we
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should just make it a segment almost weekly, and you know, it's a
25:44
good place to put that segment right here at the end of the show.
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We love to talk about astronomy and astrophysics related stories. Towards the end of
25:51
our segments, But I will tell you there were two contenders for stories that
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didn't quite make the cut today that I like to just briefly discuss. One
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of those was arguments from folks for investigating the Solar System who really think we
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haven't spent enough time on the planet Uranus and studying that one that actually was
26:10
a story, it didn't quite make the cut. The other one was a
26:12
story from spaceweather dot com where these light pillars in a frozen area of Norway
26:19
are shining up onto the sky and making shapes on the sky where you could
26:23
actually see the shapes of the streets below projected onto the sky. And everybody
26:29
knows that shapes projected onto the sky that people imagine those are called asterisms.
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So I just wanted to throw those two things excellent honorable mentions for this week.
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Good honorable mentions. But instead we're gonna talk about quasars. I love
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the way you crafted those, that was quite quite quite clever. I love
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it all right. Quasars is what we're talking about, not asterisms, not
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Uranus. James Webb getting us an image, getting an image of some young
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quasars and showing us a look back in time. There was a very large
27:07
team of scientists. They were led by a group out of the Max Planck
27:11
Institute for Astrophysics in Germany. But what they did was this, They went
27:15
and took some James Web Space Telescope data sets, which are part of what
27:21
they are calling sky surveys, which means you take these instruments and you point
27:25
them at large swaths of the sky, and then you can use that data
27:30
as a combination of different wavelengths to analyze certain objects at not just the same
27:37
colors, so to speak, but a variety of colors of light coming from
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deep space. Okay, so this is what's happening. There's instruments aboard James
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Space Telescope called the Cosmos web, Jades, uncover, cheers, primer.
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Those are all acronyms for various wavelength regions being detected by various instruments aboard JA.
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Okay, so now that's the kind of layout. This team said,
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we're really interested in studying the evolution of supermassive black holes as far back as
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we can go in time, and what we want to do is we want
28:15
to look at those supermassive black holes in a variety of different wavelengths to see
28:19
how evolved they are at at a time of the very early universe. So
28:29
when we look back in distance, because of the finite travel time of light,
28:33
the finite travel speed of light, we are also looking back in time.
28:37
So the farther away we can look, the farther back in time we
28:41
can also look. And so it's a way to look back in time and
28:45
see what was going on in the earliest part of the universe. And so
28:49
the only way we can see these supermassive black holes at this extreme distance,
28:55
and therefore this extreme look back time is to find the black holes that are
29:00
feeding the most successfully. And those black holes as they feed, those super
29:04
massive black holes in the center of galaxies, as they feed, they throw
29:08
off just an enormous amount of radiation, not from the black hole itself,
29:14
but from the disk of material that's going down the black hole like soap going
29:18
down a drain, and before it crosses the event horizon and disappears forever,
29:23
it throws off ultra intense radiation. We know those objects as quasars. Fun
29:30
fact, my advisor was done a weistrap at University in Vada, Las Vegas.
29:37
Her advisor at cal Tech was Martin Schmidt. Martin Schmidt was the discoverer
29:42
of the quasar. He was the first person to figure out what quasars really
29:45
were. So I feel like I have kind of an academic tie back to
29:51
the guy that actually discovered what quasars really were, which is kind of cool.
29:55
So I always like quasars. So this team, in looking at the
29:59
James Webb Space telescope data sets, identified sixty four quasars that were an ultra
30:07
distance away, which put them less than a billion years after the beginning of
30:11
the universe, which is a very very early time. And they found that
30:17
the luminosity of these quasars relative to their galaxy around them was really really large.
30:23
In other words, these supermassive black holes were perfectly formed already at this
30:30
very early time, which tells a little something about how these black holes may
30:36
have evolved. There's two ideas. Did they just directly collapse into the super
30:40
big thing that they are, or did they go through a series of smaller
30:44
mergers with little black holes and build themselves up over time. Well, that
30:48
second process would take too long. Have these supermassive black holes exist? And
30:53
therefore this new JWST study really says that the early universe was very of in
31:00
the sense of these super massive black holes at a very early time. So
31:03
it looks like the quick direct collapse method might be might be how these super
31:10
massive black holes formed in the very earliest part of the universe. You didn't
31:15
catch all that, Just rewind and listen one more time. You can pick
31:19
it all up. It's a really cool story. If you don't like that,
31:22
angle, just look up the story on Universe today dot com. I
31:26
love that we're basically getting just a glimpse of what taking one of your classes
31:30
is like. From time to time. Let's talk about astronomy night. I
31:34
know you guys have one coming up this weekend. Road trip a road game
31:40
if you will, Providence Canyon where it's happening this weekend. Yep. So
31:45
we love our astronomy nights. There are a chance for people to look at
31:48
these distant objects with their own eye through our telescopes. If you haven't been
31:52
able to join us, come out and visit us at one of our astronomy
31:55
nights. When we do road games, that are usually places that we escape
31:57
the city lights and look at the sky in very dark conditions. But our
32:01
home games include visits into our Omosphere Theater planetarium, so either one is a
32:07
treat. You can check out our schedule by visiting the website. Check us
32:10
out at www dot cc SSC dot org, Charlie Charlie samsab Charlie dot org.
32:17
Or you can visit us on Facebook and follow us there because we put
32:21
announcements out for all of our events, including our astronomy nights, on our
32:24
Facebook page, so follow us on Facebook, check out the website, come
32:29
out and see the nighttime sky with our astronomy team here a Space Science Center
32:31
at Columbus State University and Sean and I thank you for listening, and we'll
32:37
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