Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / #411: Aussie Astronaut Adventures & Jovian Journeys: Unveiling Space's Latest Marvels

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#411: Aussie Astronaut Adventures & Jovian Journeys: Unveiling Space's Latest Marvels · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

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Hi there, Thanks for joining us on this episode of Space Nuts. I'm
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your host Andrew Dunkley. Glad you could join us once again. Coming up
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on this particular episode, we'll be looking at Australia's first female astronaut, announced
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this week. Her name is Katherine Vannell Peg. We'll tell you a little
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bit about her. She had to go through quite a process to get there,
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but it's all good news. We'll also be inspecting things within our solar
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system, a lava lake on EO. We'll be looking at Jupiter's water or
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lack of as the case may be, and a new theory as to why
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methane is being found on Mars. And it's a strange theory. Indeed,
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indeed we'll tell you all about it on this episode of Space Nuts. Fifteen
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seconds. Guidance is in chantal ten nine ignition Squench Space nuts UI or three
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two more space notes. As when I reported Bills Goods joining us to take
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a dip in the legs of EO is Professor Fred what's an astronomer at large?
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Hello Fred? Yeah, you'd want to have your steel chip boots on.
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I think if you did that, But yes, it's very good to
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be here, Andrew. I'm delighted to be back on Space Nuts once again.
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I'm glad to have you. Otherwise I'd be sitting here making a complete
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fool of myself, which happens lightly, rather than me making it complete with
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myself, which is also what happens anyway. It's all about Yes, it
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is. Otherwise we'd have to call it space normals. Yeah, yeah,
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properly, yes, and it doesn't have a ring to it at all.
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Now we might as well get stuck straight in and first cab off the rank
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is this announcement that we have now and Australian female astronaut, first one ever.
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We've had a couple of blokes, but this is our first female astronaut
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and she had to really work hard to get there. She did, Yes,
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she saw the blokes. Just to get that out of the way.
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Paul Scully Power and Andrew Thomas, Thomas, Andy Thomas, both of them
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my actually had quite a lot to do with. In fact, Paul Scully
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Power wants led me completely astray after an episode of the Prime Minister Science Prizes
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when I shared a cab with him. We ended up I didn't end up
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at my hotel going to bed, which is what I expected. We ended
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up in a bar, so that was interesting. But to come back to
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reality, I've also I actually have met Catherine Bennell Peg and I can't remember
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the I can't remember the occasion on which it was. It was down in
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Adelaide. I think it was at the Space Agency because that's where she worked.
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Day job is the Space Agencies, and this is the Australian Space Agency,
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of course it's she is the space as Director of Space Technology and there
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must have been an event on I think it was Anrico Palermo, who's the
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head of the Space Agency, who introduced me to Catherine, but I can't
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remember what the event was. I do play fairly regular trips down to Adelaide,
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where the Space Agency has its headquarters. Anyway, enough of that.
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What is she She's what? She's now a fully trained astronaut. She's just
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finished a formal astronaut training in Germany. She is basically somebody who's always wanted
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to be an astronaut. Let me quote what she says in the news release.
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When I dreamed of becoming an astronaut as a child, I never thought
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it possible to do so, representing Australia. It's an honor to be granuating
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as an astronaut with the Australian flag on my shoulder. And actually the reason
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why she's saying that is that I think both Andy Thomas and Paul Scully Power
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had the US flag on their shoulder because I think they were whilst they were
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Australian citizens, are born Australian. I think they had US citizenship as well,
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So Catherine doesn't. She's actually got UK citizenship as well. But like
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me, and that I mean, but she will represent Australia. She goes
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on to say, representing Australia is filled with opportunities to propel our nation science
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and technology forward in the global space arena and to raise the level of aspiration
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for the next generation. I hope my training and whatever comes next unlocks the
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path for more Australians to become involved in human spaceflight. So she's now,
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she's now fully qualified. Will it remains to be seen as to when she
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will get a flight. I hope she will, and I hope we'll talk
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about it on Space Notes. We might in build an interviewer one day,
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wouldn't that be lovely? Yes? Yes, I believe She's one of six
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graduates out of an original pool of twenty two and a half thousand. There
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you go. It's incredible. It's pretty pretty tight. Back in the seventies
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there was there was an invitation for US citizens to apply for astronaut training.
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Now looked at the advert But I didn't qualify because I'm too tall. Really
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yeah, five foot eleven was the limit. I'm six foot four, so
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no chance, no chance. Just how tall I am for it? Five
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foot eleven, five eleven. Yeah, you could go. It's not too
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late, Andrew, Oh, I think it probably is. Probably, although
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although you know, if I took a leaf out of John Glenn's book,
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I could probably get up there. Yeah, well that's right when he last
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went. Yes, yes, a bit young boy. Yeah, it's anticipated
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that all six of these graduates should get into space before twenty thirty. That's
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your plan. I think, great, it's excellent. So yeah, we've
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got to keep going until twenty thirty so we can talk to Catherine. There's
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a nice there's a nice comment by the person I just mentioned in Rico,
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the head of the Australian Space Agency. He says, we're proud of Catherine.
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She will return to Australia, a qualified astronaut brimming with knowledge, insights
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and connections that will help generate global opportunities for our industry. And that's good
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news. It is. And to wrap it up, she's thirty nine and
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a mother of two and that's good too. I mean, mums in space
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would be rare, wouldn't they. I don't know the statistics on that,
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but it's something we could look at. Yes, yeah, I'll write that
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down. Mun's in space? How many mums in space? That's a good
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idea. And yes, well done and congratulations, we wish her well,
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Katherine Bearnell pig. Now, Fred, let's move on to Juno, do
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you know, which is just a little bit further out than the Moon and
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other places where astronauts are headed soon. But this is part of the Sorry
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we're going to Eo, but jo is the mission. It is the closest
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moon to Jupiter and they've been taking a very close look at it and they're
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making some amazing discoveries on this mission. Absolutely, it's so you know,
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I can't remember when Juno was went into a bit around Jupiter. It's been
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quite a while, I reckon it's been four or five years. We've had
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extraordinary images of of the you know, the cloud tops on Jupiter, stuff
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that we never really imagine because there's so much going on, as we'll talk
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about in a minute, there's so much going on around Jupiter's polls that you
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never actually see from from ground based observations. You know, even the Hubble
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telescope or the James Webb telescope, which has taken some very fine image of
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Jupiter, it doesn't see that structure around the north pole, which is a
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south pools of Jupiter. But also what has happened is within the last actually
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the last six months, back in December and again in February, JUNO made
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close flybys of EO, the innermost of the moons that were discovered by Galileo,
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what were called the Galilean moons. In fact, a minimum distance was
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fifteen hundred kilometers from the surface of EO. And so lots of data taking,
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lots of image taking, and that's basically what we're talking about, because
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there's been some really quite striking imagery that's been produced. And one of the
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one of the areas that was flown basically at a low altitude and by that
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I mean hundred kilometers was around what I think is the biggest of the of
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the volcanoes on sorry on Eo. EO is riddled with volcano it's the most
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volcanically active body in the Solar System. It gets its its heat for the
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activity from the fact that it's in a resonance resonant orbits with some of the
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other Galilean moons, in fact, principally Europa and Ganymede. Those resonances basically
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squash and squeeze Eo along with the gravity of Jupiter itself to warm up the
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center by friction. Basically you've got you know, this squeezing and squashing and
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so that's why it's so volcanically active. And I think the most active or
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the biggest of these volcanoes is Lucky and it sits in the middle of a
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lava lake which has been observed actually from the Earth surface. And I think
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we might have talked a few years ago about observations which were made from Earth
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of the lava lake it's called Lucky Paterra, that showed that its surface kind
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of dried up from time to time and then turned over that you've got these
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kind of lava lake icebergs that actually turned over, and you might remember because
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you've increased the amount of infrareend radiation that's coming from it, which is how
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you know it's turned over. Do you remember that? Yeah? Yes,
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I do, yes, Yeah. And it's quite a blake too, isn't
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it. Yeah? Two hundred kilometers long, one hundred and twenty seven miles
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it's not a small lake. We'd call that an inland sea here, I
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think nearly. Yeah, and it's lava. You know. One of the
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observations that Juno has made is that there is a very strong specular reflection that
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comes off it, which means you're dealing with a very smooth surface. Indeed,
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and just to point out that, there are available on the web some
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YouTube basically reconstructions of the imagery that make it look like a flyby, and
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they are very nicely done. They are artists impressions, but they're made on
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the basis of the real imagery that Juno has taken, and certainly in one
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of them, you've got a nice reflection of the planet itself in the lava
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lake, which gives you an idea of just how smooth that surface is.
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And can we just move on as well to one of the other regions that
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was imaged. This is amazing, isn't it astonishing? There is there is
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because EO is so volcanically active, it's got mountains on it, and one
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of them is quite extraordinary. It's called Steeple Mountain. Once again, it's
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an artist's impression that we're seeing, which might mean that the elevation has been
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extended. But it's based on Juno imagery and it looks like a cathedral with
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you know, a medieval cathedral with with with towers on it. So yes,
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that's probably, you know, a result of the tectonic activity on EO.
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So we've got really quite remarkable structures on the surface that were I think
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are a bit unexpected. I don't think we we found too much evidence of
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really sharp mountains, but they're being shut by this by this flyby. Yeah,
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they've named this one's Steeple Mountain, haven't they. That's exactly what it
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looks like. It's very reminiscent actually of the imagery anyway of of Mont Sale
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Michelle. I don't know whether you've ever visited there when you've been sojourning in
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France, but it's off the coast of northern France, and it's a volcanic
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plug. It's offshore. It sits in the middle of the ocean, but
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it's got buildings all the way up. It's basically a monastery, and it's
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got this extraordinary cathedral on top with sepels that look a lot like Steeple Mountain
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here on the on EO. So that was, well, that was the
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lightness that didn't work in my mind when I looked at this in imagery.
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It's quite extraordinary. EO is just a bit bigger than our moon. And
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yeah, it's sort of suffering the effect of a tugger war between other moons
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and Jupiter itself resulting in all of its volcanic activity. A pretty volatile kind
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of place. And JUNO started orbiting EO or Jupiter, I should say,
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on the fourth of July twenty sixteen. So it's nearly eight years ten years.
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Wow, what did I say? Four or five years? I was,
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yeah, it's austral sixteen. While we're talking about the JUNO mission,
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it's also been looking at Jupiter itself and taking some scientific readings. And one
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of the things that scientists seem to be interested in is Jupiter's water what have
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they found out there? Well, I think this comes from analysis of the
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polar cyclones on Jupiter, which we're really only seeing close up as Juno gets
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closer and closer to the surface. And you might remember that Saturn has a
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polar hexagon, which is this hexagonal structure that comes from cyclonic activity. He
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basically sets up a wave in it's a wave akin to the jet stream on
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Earth around the pole. Jupiter's got something similar with the sort of symmetry that
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we've seen on Saturn, only this is actually eight sided symmetry rather than six
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sided symmetry, and it's this set of cyclones around the polar are eight of
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them, but they're also surround a central you know, a kind of mother
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cyclone, if I can put it that way, which is even more prominent.
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But what has been discovered is that the microwave radiation from that central cyclone
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right at Jupiter's north pole, and we are talking about the northern polar region.
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Now, that central cyclone has a low level of microwave signature. It's
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much less strong than the other storms that are going around it. And so
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what's being inferred from this is that the structure underneath that cloud surface is very
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different from the other cyclones, and in fact, they're expecting as we get
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more data from JUNO, to be able to build what you might call a
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three dimensional map of these polar storms so you can see how they stretch down
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into the atmosphere of Jupiter. And that comes from a quote by JUNO project
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scientists whose name is Steve Levin. He's at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. So
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that's again related to how they are looking for the molecular structure of Jupiter's atmosphere,
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and it turns out that there isn't as much water on Jupiter as they
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expected to find what we call water abundance. So it's suggesting and this is
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by looking at molecules like oxygen and hydrogen TO and H two, and they
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of course are the constituents of water. That is suggesting that there is a
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deficiency of water on the planet Jupiter, which is unexpected, and so you
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know, it feeds into our understanding of how Jupiter formed. There's a quote
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which is on the NASA Spaceflight website which perhaps I can I can just read
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this because it's certainly puts it more cogently than I will juno's new results on
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Jovian water abundance suggest very low water abundance, an unexpected results that scientists are
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still trying to understand. However, these results do support scientists theories that during
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the Solar System's formation, water lice material was lightly a driving force between heavy
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element en Richmond, the process by which chemical elements heavier than hydrogen and helium
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were recreted or collected by Jupiter during its formation. And they're going to basically
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keep looking with JUNO to try and work out what the distribution of water abundance
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is comparing pullar and equatorial regions, And no doubt we might talk about that
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down the trap. We may well do. There's just so much going on
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that mission is quite incredible. The fact that it's done, I don't know,
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getting close to sixty maybe more flybys of Jupiter and it's done. And
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while it's doing that, they've been able to coordinate flybys of the near moons,
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which in an engineering sense is just an extraordinary mission. And well you
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probably historically going in it's one of one of the great feats of modern space
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engineering. I would imagine absolutely and remember you know when this was being planned
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and I think back in twenty sixteenth space nuts that already started. We were
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talking about it then. Nobody knew whether it would survive radiation bells. That
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was always one of the big questions, is he going to make it?
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And well, it certainly has, and it's doing a fine job, as
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we've been discussing, and it sure has. And if you want to chase
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up information about that Juno mission and the water on Jupiter and those incredible geological
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features on EO, it's on the NASAs spaceflight dot Com web website. Even
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this is space Nuts Andrew Dunkley here, we're Professor Fred Watson space Nuts.
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Now, Fred, let's move on to Mars, a little bit closer to
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Earth sort of. And they have. We've we've discussed this a few times
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and there's been all sorts of theories put up about why they've been detecting methane
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on Mars. One of the theories is it may still have some sort of
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tectonic activity below the surface, or it may have some you know, primordial
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life that's that's leaking this stuff out. Because most of the methane on Earth
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is created by living creatures. We know there aren't living creatures on Mars to
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this point in time. So you're thinking maybe there's something you know, microbial
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below the surface that might be doing this, But a new theory has been
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put forward and the cause might be us human Yes, well partly us,
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that's right, partly, which is not directly indirectly caused by us. Yeah,
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yeah, some of this anyway, because this the puzzle of methane puzzle
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is and it's one that goes back before we started sending the you know,
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curiosity and perseverance to Mars, because you can observe this in the atmosphere from
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Earth. You can detect that there is methane in Mars' atmosphere, So we
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knew about this long time ago. And yes, exactly as you've said,
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is it residial volcanism or is it methanogenic micros, both of which are interesting
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ideas, but it's behaved in a very odd way. For example, there
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is one spacecraft which is a European Space Agency spacecraft. It's called the EXO
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Mar Exo Mars Trace Gas Orbiter. It's in orbit lower orbit around Mars.
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It's never detected methane, and that is bizarre because that's why it was said
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there because we see Mars, we do see myth. Then in the atmosphere
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of Mars, I think it probably means that you don't get any methane at
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high altitudes, and then we've got you know, Curiosity had a device known
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as SAM Sample Analysis at Mars which keeps on detecting traces of methane around the
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surface of the location where it is, which is Gale Crater, named after
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an Australian amateur astronomer in the early twentieth century. So Gale Crater is a
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place where methn's detected on the surface, but in fact it's the only one
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so far because none of the Perseverance doesn't have anything to detect Mars. Perseverance,
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of course is in a different place, it's Jesuit Crater, so it
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doesn't have the ability to detect meThe But the story gets more complicated because quite
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often methane is detected at night by Curiosity, but then it vanishes during the
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day. It varies with the seasons. As you know, Mars of course
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has seasons. It's got a similar orbital inclination to the Earth about twenty five
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degrees if I remember rightly, and sometimes it goes you know way way up
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spikes to levels around forty times greater than we normally see. So what's the
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story why do some This is a question that's on a lovely article on this
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on fits dot org, the fis dot org website. They oppose the question
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why does some science instruments detect methane on the Red planet while others don't?
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And what they are coming to the conclusion The new idea in this is,
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and it comes from NASA, it's, you know, something that's been basically
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studied for quite a while. In fact, it's a scientists at they got
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old to Space Flight Center, green Belt, Maryland where this work is coming
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from. What they are suggesting is that the soil of Mars, which is
23:56
kind of different from the soil on the Earth. We know that there's very
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fine grain sand there, but also that you get if there's a high level
24:04
of salt concentration within that soil, it gets crusty. So you've got a
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crust that covers the lower levels. And they're suggesting that underneath that crust,
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and they're not suggesting how the methane is produced, but what they're suggesting is
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that the methane rises up and it is locked in by this crust of soil
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making up you know, making up the surface of Mars. And so they
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suggest that during summer, when it's a bit warmer, that weakens the crust
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and you get methane seeping out, and that's why we see the seasonal variations
24:52
in methane. But also that if you've got a rover which weighs about the
24:57
same as a car, you know, driving over this crust, it could
25:06
break the crust as you drive over it and let the methane out. So
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that that's why you're seeing it in Gale Krater because this is where this crust
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is. That the rovers driving over that every time you know, it goes
25:19
forward, it's going to stress the surface, maybe it release puffs of methane.
25:25
It's a really interesting idea, and as you say, it means that
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humans are intervening in this process of Martian methane more than we perhaps thought thought
25:33
there was. Well, it sort of brings into the into the arena the
25:37
Ockham's razor theory. The most obvious answer is probably the right one. And
25:44
you can see the tracks that these rovers leave behind, and they do dig
25:48
little holes and grooves, and it stands to reason that if you're driving over
25:53
pockets of methane and you're cracking the surface, it's going to come up and
25:57
you're going to detect it. If the rover's got that kind of equipment on
26:02
board, it could well be the reason, but it still doesn't answer the
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question as to how it got there in the first place. That's quite right.
26:10
That remains a mystery. Yes, but some of its escaping is seasonal
26:15
and possibly interventional. Yes, interventional. I like that. It's a good
26:21
word. Yeah, I love making up words that it could be an intervenualist,
26:27
interventionistic. Yeah, well that's even better. Yeah, I like that.
26:33
Yes, Yeah, it's it's an interesting theory and one that you could
26:41
hold water or me. Yeah. I don't know how you you know,
26:48
I don't know how you investigate this further way, putting methane detectors on the
26:55
spacecraft. There is a comment from another scientist that got up spaceflights to which
27:00
is, methane experiments are resource intensive, so we have to be very strategic
27:04
when we decided to do them. So, you know what, it sounds
27:10
like they're half hearted about it. I'm not going to touch that one.
27:17
Andrew. Yeah, anyway, two. You know, yes, it's hard
27:26
to know how you how you pursue that to prove them that's the case.
27:30
But maybe future surface spacecraft the way to go. They might be more focused
27:36
on answering these significant specific questions. Yes, especially especially the question of where
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it all came from in the first place. Is it still being produced somewhere
27:48
down deep inside big questions? All right, very good, and yes,
27:53
as Fritz said, you can chase that story up on the fizz dot org
27:57
website. That's p h y. Yes, and don't forget to visit our
28:03
website while you're online listening to us. So you can do that by going
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to space nuts podcast dot com or space nuts dot io and have a look
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around while you're there, and you can listen to back episodes. You can
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subscribe to that thing that we have on there that I've forgotten the name of.
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I'm doing a Fred freend Ye. Yes, isn't it becoming a supporter.
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Becoming a supporter is what I'm talking about. So you can do that,
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check out the space nut Shop all that sort of stuff. Fred.
28:41
That's where we're going to wrap it up for this episode, reminding people of
28:45
our next episodes coming up. In the not too distant future a Q and
28:49
A episode looking at all sorts of interesting stuff as requested by the audience.
28:55
But until then, Fred, thank you very much. We'll see you soon.
28:57
Sounds great. Thank you, Andrew. Talk to Sir Fred Watson,
29:02
Astronomer at large, and thanks to here in the studio. Let me just
29:06
check and see how he's going. Popped out for a cup of tea.
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So we'll just sit here and twiddle our thumbs for a while, and so
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we can come back and stop everything. No we won't, but thanks for
29:15
your company. Catch you on the next episode of Space Notts from me Andrew
29:18
Duncley. Bye bye. You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast available at
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