Latest / Made of Stars / Dropping Things Much Like They are High In Temperature

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Dropping Things Much Like They are High In Temperature · Made of Stars

0:00
Speaker 1: Warning.
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Speaker 2: The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
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Speaker 2: and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
0:07
Speaker 2: known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
0:10
Speaker 2: expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
0:15
Speaker 2: that's your own risk.
0:16
Speaker 3: Go ahead.
0:22
Speaker 4: When made of stars, made them stars, madies. When made
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Speaker 4: us stars, you could be from high they would New
0:36
Speaker 4: Mexicomus where all stars?
0:43
Speaker 3: When we are made of stars.
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Speaker 5: I'm West Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean
0:59
Speaker 5: Cruising from Columbus State Universities Coca Cola Space Science Center. Hey,
1:03
Speaker 5: Sean Wes, good morning, Good to be here today. We're
1:06
Speaker 5: doing a Wednesday edition of the show. Just scheduling conflicts
1:12
Speaker 5: for tomorrow, so this is a Wednesday edition. We normally
1:15
Speaker 5: record and release on Thursdays. So you're getting it a
1:19
Speaker 5: little early, a little early drop as the kids would say.
1:22
Speaker 5: Sometimes you know, you gotta drop it just a little early.
1:24
Speaker 5: Sometimes you have to drop it a little late. We
1:27
Speaker 5: try not to drop it late, but we do, in
1:29
Speaker 5: fact try to drop it much like it has high temperatures.
1:33
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean as you do, right, I mean you know,
1:36
Speaker 6: if something needs dropped, we drop it. That's what we do.
1:40
Speaker 1: You want it to drop it.
1:41
Speaker 5: I mean, if it's not actually hot, you want it
1:44
Speaker 5: to be dropped as if it were hot. I don't
1:48
Speaker 5: know if the kids are still saying that, but I
1:50
Speaker 5: know at one time they were saying that we got
1:54
Speaker 5: some updates on some rockets. But this is a little
1:57
Speaker 5: tricky because this is still supposed to have happened.
2:00
Speaker 1: Now. Just as an update.
2:02
Speaker 5: Last show, we said, hey, they're about to launch this
2:05
Speaker 5: great new rocket, and basically, within like five minutes of
2:10
Speaker 5: us dropping the show as if it were hot, this
2:14
Speaker 5: story got much less hot. And you sent me a
2:17
Speaker 5: text like, well, of course they've already rescheduled it and
2:21
Speaker 5: moved it. But we pointed out, hey, weather permitting. We
2:23
Speaker 5: always say weather permitting, because anytime they want to launch
2:27
Speaker 5: one of these rockets as if it's hot, sometimes things
2:29
Speaker 5: cool down based on weather circumstances. Enough of the hot shenanigans.
2:34
Speaker 5: Let's talk about the new Glen.
2:37
Speaker 6: So new Glenn, I mean, it's launch date got dropped
2:41
Speaker 6: like it was hot. That's that's pretty much what happened.
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Speaker 1: Is that what happened with James Wakes.
2:48
Speaker 6: I think maybe it was cold. Quite frankly, yeah, it
2:50
Speaker 6: was quite been a temperature I don't know. Anyway, they
2:54
Speaker 6: have rescheduled the new Glenn a couple of different times
2:56
Speaker 6: since we were with you last and quite frankly, it
2:59
Speaker 6: has not long un yet. So yeah, so we're still
3:02
Speaker 6: talking about it's future launch, which is as we record
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Speaker 6: this show, sometime in the next twenty four hours, maybe
3:10
Speaker 6: just a little bit more than twelve hours as we're
3:13
Speaker 6: recording the show, but sometime in the overnight hours tonight,
3:17
Speaker 6: which is again as Wes said, Wednesday, January fifteenth, also
3:23
Speaker 6: scheduled for today, awkwardly enough for billionaire space entrepreneurs. SpaceX
3:30
Speaker 6: starship supposed to launch maybe at about five pm today.
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Speaker 6: So so it's this is kind of a battle of
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Speaker 6: big rockets, and we didn't really intend to turn this
3:40
Speaker 6: into a full story, but we just want to make
3:42
Speaker 6: folks aware that we are watching this and you know,
3:45
Speaker 6: we are bringing you the latest updates and the latest
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Speaker 6: updates as of Wednesday, not our typical recording day of Thursday.
3:52
Speaker 6: Is that these neither of these rockets have launched, so
3:55
Speaker 6: their status has not changed. They are unlaunched.
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Speaker 5: If you're a billionaire and you want to measure rockets,
4:02
Speaker 5: Today's the day to do it, That's what we're saying.
4:04
Speaker 6: You know, sometimes you just have to stand up a
4:07
Speaker 6: couple of big rockets and see how they stack up.
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Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying.
4:11
Speaker 5: That's occasionally that is the case, and apparently today is
4:15
Speaker 5: that day. So we'll have more on those, hopefully next
4:18
Speaker 5: week or at the very least next week, we'll tell
4:21
Speaker 5: you what the new scheduled launches are. Let's move on
4:25
Speaker 5: to the I like this story a lot because as
4:28
Speaker 5: soon as I heard about this, my first question was
4:33
Speaker 5: apparently the right question, because it's the very basis for
4:37
Speaker 5: I guess partly what this mission is all about. So there,
4:40
Speaker 5: a wooden satellite is going to be launched into orbit.
4:43
Speaker 5: Now how does this work?
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Speaker 1: Exactly?
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Speaker 5: It's it's made of wood, it's a cube sat and
4:52
Speaker 5: they would just so part of the test is how's
4:55
Speaker 5: wood hold up in space?
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Speaker 6: So imagine if you could find some new Superman material
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Speaker 6: that was you know, somewhat lightweight, very sturdy, and fully renewable,
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Speaker 6: like almost as if it was growing on trees. You
5:09
Speaker 6: could just grow more of this material and build spaceships
5:14
Speaker 6: out of it. You know what, if well, okay, what
5:17
Speaker 6: if it's wood, what if it's actually what if it's
5:19
Speaker 6: actually trees?
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Speaker 1: Right?
5:21
Speaker 6: Yeah, Well, so, as Wes immediately pointed out, he said, well,
5:25
Speaker 6: how does wood hold up in space? I said, well,
5:27
Speaker 6: I think that's the point, right, That's what's going to
5:30
Speaker 6: happen is they're going to launch a cube SAT from
5:34
Speaker 6: the International Space Station and see how it holds up
5:39
Speaker 6: in space. And actually it's already been deployed. It was
5:41
Speaker 6: actually deployed from ISS back in December. But now the
5:46
Speaker 6: Japanese Space Agency working with the University of Kyoto on
5:50
Speaker 6: something called Ligno SAT lig No SAT l I g
5:54
Speaker 6: n O SAT, which is made from the Hanoki magnolia tree,
6:01
Speaker 6: and it was constructed out of wooden panels from the
6:05
Speaker 6: Hanoki magnolia tree. And basically this cube SAT has been deployed.
6:10
Speaker 6: They're taking data from it and they're going to figure
6:13
Speaker 6: out how wood holds up in the enormous temperature variations
6:17
Speaker 6: of space. Now, you might just be thinking off the cuff, no,
6:20
Speaker 6: wait a minute, space is really cold, So how does
6:23
Speaker 6: wood hold up in the really cold Well, obviously that's
6:26
Speaker 6: you know, that's a thing. But remember as this as
6:29
Speaker 6: this CubeSat might orbit the Earth. It's going to be
6:31
Speaker 6: going in and out of Earth's shadow every forty five minutes.
6:37
Speaker 6: It goes all the way around the Earth every ninety minutes,
6:40
Speaker 6: so it's going to be every forty five minutes it's
6:42
Speaker 6: going to be either going from sun to shadow or
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Speaker 6: shadow to sun. In other words, day to night, night
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Speaker 6: to day. There is a really unexpected thing that happens
6:53
Speaker 6: when when an object like this is actually in the sun,
6:57
Speaker 6: it gets very hot like sunlight without the atmosphere to
7:02
Speaker 6: tamp it down a little bit. This is unadulterated sunlight
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Speaker 6: directly on the surfaces of these wooden panels of ligno
7:10
Speaker 6: sat as it orbits the Earth. That's going to cause
7:15
Speaker 6: some severe heating. So not only is it going from
7:17
Speaker 6: severe heating to extreme cold, it's doing it every forty
7:21
Speaker 6: five minutes. And it's been doing it now since it
7:24
Speaker 6: was deployed in September and in December, not September. I
7:28
Speaker 6: don't know where September came from, as it was deployed
7:30
Speaker 6: in December.
7:32
Speaker 5: So going from those extreme temperatures, I mean, we know
7:36
Speaker 5: how it would affect wood here on Earth.
7:39
Speaker 6: I mean, imagine if you took your favorite piece of
7:41
Speaker 6: Ikea furniture.
7:42
Speaker 1: Right, I got lots of it.
7:45
Speaker 6: It's everywhere, as with all fight furniture.
7:48
Speaker 1: My favorite piece of Ikea furniture is Swedish meatballs.
7:51
Speaker 5: And I haven't had them at Ikea, but I hear
7:56
Speaker 5: they're really good.
7:57
Speaker 1: So that need to just make a pilgrimage.
8:00
Speaker 3: Let's go.
8:00
Speaker 5: Let's just let's do a show one day from the
8:02
Speaker 5: parking lot at ike Anyway.
8:04
Speaker 6: Does Sweden have a space program? We should find that out.
8:07
Speaker 6: I'm sure they do.
8:08
Speaker 5: Anyway, have to dehydrate those meatballs and send them up
8:10
Speaker 5: to those poor astronauts who are being forced to eat
8:13
Speaker 5: dehydrated food in space.
8:14
Speaker 6: When you get stranded in space, you might as well
8:17
Speaker 6: just face the fact that you're going to have to
8:19
Speaker 6: eat dehydrated Ikea Swedish meatballs.
8:23
Speaker 5: Those other astronauts that aren't stranded that are up there, man,
8:26
Speaker 5: they are just they're taking it straight. How They got
8:28
Speaker 5: a waffle house chef just he's cooking right off the grill,
8:33
Speaker 5: frying up eggs and things. But those poor stranded ones, man,
8:36
Speaker 5: they're eating the dehydrated stuff. It's pitiful.
8:39
Speaker 6: It's really a shame that they couldn't find food for
8:41
Speaker 6: those stranded astronauts who have a spacecraft attached to the
8:45
Speaker 6: International Space Station as we speak.
8:47
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm sorry, I've absolutely derailed this whole conversation.
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Speaker 1: So it's made of wood.
8:55
Speaker 6: I think that our listeners, who are regular listeners probably
8:58
Speaker 6: understand that we get to on occasion sometimes it happens.
9:03
Speaker 5: So my idea on this this satellite. Sorry, I'm just
9:06
Speaker 5: whenever you see and I've seen this a few times,
9:08
Speaker 5: there's there'll be a video of a guy who will go,
9:10
Speaker 5: I'm going to take like, you know, this wood I've
9:14
Speaker 5: got and I'm going to build like a Mustang a car,
9:18
Speaker 5: you know, and they do it.
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Speaker 1: They make it out of wood. Everything's made out of wood.
9:22
Speaker 5: And then they got you know whatever, you know, parts
9:24
Speaker 5: they have to have for the engine or whatever. But overall, structurally,
9:28
Speaker 5: the whole thing's made out of wood. I mean, is
9:29
Speaker 5: that basically the deal here is.
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Speaker 6: Very much like that. And you know, I have rarely
9:35
Speaker 6: seen a wooden Mustang, but it I mean not to
9:39
Speaker 6: cast dispersions on any part of the country, but I
9:41
Speaker 6: do live in the southeast and I occasionally see you know,
9:44
Speaker 6: homemade camper shells just all plywood. Yeah, you know, so
9:49
Speaker 6: just I mean probably I see those more than I should, honestly,
9:52
Speaker 6: and so so imagine that in space, and how would
9:57
Speaker 6: it hold up?
9:58
Speaker 1: You know?
9:58
Speaker 6: That's so maybe that's that's what we should think about.
10:00
Speaker 6: It is how would a wooden camper shell hold up
10:04
Speaker 6: in orbit where the International Space Station used to be.
10:07
Speaker 6: That's what we're really thinking about here.
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Speaker 1: You do live in an area with a little light pollution.
10:12
Speaker 6: I do. There's very little light pollution and lots of
10:15
Speaker 6: wooden camper shells.
10:16
Speaker 5: So I think there may be a connection there, but
10:18
Speaker 5: I don't want to assume anything, so in time we'll
10:21
Speaker 5: know a little bit more about that. Now, this is
10:23
Speaker 5: another benefit that I can see. And I mean, I
10:26
Speaker 5: know this is a small thing that they're working with now,
10:30
Speaker 5: but if they made big ones out of wood and
10:33
Speaker 5: it was effective whenever they had to end one and
10:37
Speaker 5: they could just you know, drop it into the atmosphere,
10:39
Speaker 5: it would burn up faster, right.
10:41
Speaker 6: I bet it would burn up substantially faster. I don't
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Speaker 6: know what the flammability properties are of Hanoki magnolia wood specifically,
10:51
Speaker 6: but since it's wood, I'm guessing it's burn out better
10:55
Speaker 6: than some of the metal chunks of a oh, I
10:57
Speaker 6: don't know, Chinese rockets or space sex, you know, couplers
11:01
Speaker 6: or the kinds of things that have fallen on homes
11:03
Speaker 6: lately in Florida and Malaysia and other places. Probably if
11:07
Speaker 6: those were made out of wood, I don't know how
11:08
Speaker 6: way they would have done in space, but they would
11:10
Speaker 6: have burned up in the atmosphere very nicely.
11:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like that would that would make sense.
11:15
Speaker 5: We're gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
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Speaker 5: we're going to talk about a discovery from the James
11:21
Speaker 5: web Space Telescope right after this. So it seems like
11:44
Speaker 5: not too long ago the James web Space Telescope was
11:48
Speaker 5: dropped much like it was hot. I don't know if
11:50
Speaker 5: that was the reason that it was dropped, but it
11:52
Speaker 5: was dropped just the same and then they managed to
11:56
Speaker 5: you know, pick it up again and send it to
12:00
Speaker 5: and it's given us all these amazing images, these amazing
12:04
Speaker 5: scientific advancements as far as some of the research they've
12:08
Speaker 5: been able to do with it in just a very
12:10
Speaker 5: short amount of time. All Right, The latest now that
12:13
Speaker 5: they have discovered one of the earliest gargantuan supernova's ever
12:17
Speaker 5: seen thanks to JWST.
12:20
Speaker 6: Yeah, the reason JWST was able to photograph these gargantuan
12:24
Speaker 6: supernovas was probably because it wasn't made of wood, I think. So,
12:31
Speaker 6: you know, I've talked way too much about the properties
12:34
Speaker 6: of wood, which I know nothing about. Really, I'm not
12:36
Speaker 6: a carpenter. I should get back to astronomy, which I actually.
12:41
Speaker 5: I mean, I would argue if it was made of wood,
12:44
Speaker 5: maybe maybe dropping it wouldn't have been quite as like, ah,
12:48
Speaker 5: you know, because it's a little more solid.
12:50
Speaker 1: But anyway it could have splintered.
12:52
Speaker 6: I don't know that's.
12:53
Speaker 5: True too, Maybe that would have been a problem. All right,
12:55
Speaker 5: So let's talk supernovas. Let's talk let's talk physics for
12:59
Speaker 5: a moment.
13:00
Speaker 6: When we look further away from Earth, ladies and gentlemen,
13:03
Speaker 6: what we look into is back in time. So we're
13:06
Speaker 6: also looking back into time. And that's because of the
13:08
Speaker 6: finite travel speed of light. So it takes a while
13:12
Speaker 6: to get here. So when light has had to travel
13:14
Speaker 6: very very far distances, it had to leave a long
13:17
Speaker 6: time ago. So when we look at that ancient light,
13:20
Speaker 6: we're looking back in time. Okay, So, as the James
13:23
Speaker 6: Webb space telescope peered back to some of the earliest
13:27
Speaker 6: times in the history of our universe, a mere two
13:31
Speaker 6: billion years after the Big Bang. Now that sounds like
13:34
Speaker 6: a long time. Let's remember that the universe is probably
13:39
Speaker 6: about thirteen and a half billion years old, so it's
13:42
Speaker 6: like eleven and a half billion years back into time
13:46
Speaker 6: when the universe was only two billion years old, all right,
13:49
Speaker 6: So at that time, stars were very, very different than
13:53
Speaker 6: they are today. And the reason is because there hadn't
13:57
Speaker 6: been very many supernova explosions at that time. And it's
14:02
Speaker 6: only in these supernova explosions that the heaviest elements on
14:06
Speaker 6: the periodic table are created, even just things like calcium
14:13
Speaker 6: and iron and aluminum. And you know, we don't consider
14:17
Speaker 6: those the heaviest elements on the periodic table, but the
14:20
Speaker 6: things that we find is fairly normal on our Earth, right,
14:23
Speaker 6: silicon as another one, oxygen even so, really, in the
14:29
Speaker 6: earliest part of the universe, the primary elements were simply hydrogen, helium,
14:34
Speaker 6: and a little bit of lithium and everything else that
14:39
Speaker 6: those are the first three elements on the periodic table.
14:41
Speaker 6: Everything else on the periodic table had not been created
14:44
Speaker 6: because it has to be created in the process that
14:47
Speaker 6: formed stars and the end of those stars lives. So
14:52
Speaker 6: those heavier elements are created in supernova explosions. Well, so
14:56
Speaker 6: what were the first supernova explosions like that didn't have
15:01
Speaker 6: all those heavier elements inside the star. Those stars were
15:05
Speaker 6: very different creatures than the stars we see today, which
15:09
Speaker 6: are composed largely of other elements besides hydrogen and helium.
15:16
Speaker 6: So what Jacob's Webspace Telescope did is it looked back
15:20
Speaker 6: into the earliest part of the universe, located galaxies where
15:24
Speaker 6: supernova were taking place, and tried to study some of
15:26
Speaker 6: those earliest supernova explosions. They discovered two things. Number one,
15:33
Speaker 6: the energy coming from those supernovae were approximately twice the
15:38
Speaker 6: amount of energy that come from supernova's in a more
15:41
Speaker 6: modern time are more contemporary supernova explosions twice the amount
15:46
Speaker 6: of energy from those early stars. The second thing they
15:51
Speaker 6: discovered was that those monster stars that created those gigantic
15:56
Speaker 6: supernova explosions were probably about twenty times the mass of
16:01
Speaker 6: our sun. So those very young stars forming in those
16:05
Speaker 6: really pristine early environments in the universe were much much
16:12
Speaker 6: larger machines than the average stars that we see today. Say,
16:18
Speaker 6: in our neighborhood, in our own Milky Way galaxy. And
16:21
Speaker 6: there's a project called the Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, and
16:27
Speaker 6: it's the James web Space Telescope Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey,
16:32
Speaker 6: so it gets the acronym of JADES JADES. The JADES
16:37
Speaker 6: program is specifically studying star behavior in the earliest galaxies
16:43
Speaker 6: that they can see to help us understand both how
16:47
Speaker 6: those stars and their parent galaxies evolved in the earliest
16:51
Speaker 6: part of our universe. So it's a really interesting study.
16:55
Speaker 6: And it's the JADES Survey from James Webspace Telescope that
16:59
Speaker 6: gave us this new data about these truly gargantuan supernov
17:03
Speaker 6: explosions yielding twice as much energy as their modern cousins do.
17:09
Speaker 5: Today, we have a couple of events reasons for folks
17:14
Speaker 5: to be looking into the sky different parts of the planet,
17:17
Speaker 5: but reasons to look in the sky. First up, it
17:20
Speaker 5: was a Monday the thirteenth and we all survived, which
17:23
Speaker 5: is good.
17:25
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean those Monday the thirteenths have to be
17:28
Speaker 6: some somehow worse than Friday the thirteenth. If you want
17:31
Speaker 6: more information about that, we discussed this in detail on
17:33
Speaker 6: the last podcast, and.
17:34
Speaker 5: We talked about occultation happening of Mars. So you know,
17:38
Speaker 5: you start throwing the word a cult around and on
17:41
Speaker 5: Monday the thirteenth, it just seems like the makings of
17:44
Speaker 5: either a really bad or a so bad it's good
17:47
Speaker 5: horror movie.
17:48
Speaker 6: I mean, this is what scientists do. We like to
17:51
Speaker 6: scare people because when we scare them enough, they give
17:54
Speaker 6: us funding.
17:54
Speaker 1: So there you go.
17:55
Speaker 6: So, yeah, Monday the thirteenth, occultation sounds very frightening. We
18:00
Speaker 6: hope that, we hope that you are reasonably scared of
18:04
Speaker 6: this event that took place. It's scared enough to actually
18:06
Speaker 6: go out and look at it. It was actually very cool.
18:09
Speaker 6: I got to see glimpses of this on Monday night myself.
18:11
Speaker 6: And so the full moon passed directly between us and
18:16
Speaker 6: the planet Mars, blocking out the view of Mars from
18:19
Speaker 6: the Earth. We call that an occultation. The word occult
18:23
Speaker 6: means to hide, and so in astronomical terms, when we
18:26
Speaker 6: talk about one object occulting another object, it means it's
18:30
Speaker 6: blocking it so you can't see it. So the occultation
18:33
Speaker 6: of Mars by the moon was visible across North America
18:37
Speaker 6: and there are some staggeringly good images out there. You
18:41
Speaker 6: can check out an image gallery on spaceweather dot com.
18:45
Speaker 6: They have a real time Lunar occultation photo gallery. But
18:49
Speaker 6: we'd also like to point out one of our former
18:51
Speaker 6: student assistants here at Coca Cola Space Science Center in Columbus, Georgia,
18:54
Speaker 6: who now works over at NASA stacking up the SLS rocket.
18:58
Speaker 6: That would be Zach Cocher. And Zach has posted an
19:01
Speaker 6: absolutely spectacular image of Mars peaking around the limb of
19:06
Speaker 6: the Moon. It's on Zach's Facebook page.
19:09
Speaker 1: I think we're.
19:10
Speaker 6: Going to actually share that on the Facebook page for
19:13
Speaker 6: the podcast here, and so you can go to the
19:17
Speaker 6: Facebook page for our podcast Made of Stars of course
19:20
Speaker 6: and find that image from our friend Zach Coker, which
19:23
Speaker 6: is absolutely staggeringly beautiful.
19:26
Speaker 5: So we've had that, and then we've had we talked
19:29
Speaker 5: about the comet last week survived rush with the Sun,
19:34
Speaker 5: and I guess some folks being able to see that
19:38
Speaker 5: naked eye or not naked eye, well potentially naked eye.
19:41
Speaker 6: So let's just back up and just say this. The
19:44
Speaker 6: big headline here is this comet survived, It made it
19:49
Speaker 6: pass a very very close pass with the sun. It
19:53
Speaker 6: sprayed material everywhere. And again you can go to spaceweather
19:57
Speaker 6: dot com pull up their archive from the first this week,
20:00
Speaker 6: from that Monday, the thirteenth, and you can see a
20:03
Speaker 6: coronagraph image of this comet coming in very near proximity
20:07
Speaker 6: to the Sun. That's an amazing animation in itself. And
20:11
Speaker 6: now this comet has survived that close pass, even though
20:14
Speaker 6: it lost lots of material, it is survived, has come
20:17
Speaker 6: around and it's now visible in twilight evening. Skies and
20:22
Speaker 6: astrophotographers are getting images of this comet in the extreme
20:26
Speaker 6: twilight of the sun. See it's very close to the
20:29
Speaker 6: sun still, and so as the sun sets, you have
20:32
Speaker 6: to look just minutes after the sun sets into the
20:35
Speaker 6: very bright twilight after the sun goes down to be
20:38
Speaker 6: able to find it. But people who do this and
20:40
Speaker 6: do it well, they are locating it and you can
20:43
Speaker 6: see images of this comet with its tail again on
20:46
Speaker 6: space weather dot com taken by very talented astro photographers.
20:50
Speaker 6: It is possible friends, that you yourself can go out
20:53
Speaker 6: there with a pair of binoculars. Make sure the sun
20:56
Speaker 6: is down before you start pointing binoculars out the sun sun.
21:01
Speaker 6: We don't want you to point binoculars that the sun
21:03
Speaker 6: when it's still up.
21:04
Speaker 1: Oh it's not so.
21:05
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's bad. It's bad on the eyes to do that.
21:07
Speaker 6: So make sure the sun is all the way down.
21:10
Speaker 6: Then point your binoculars over in that direction and you
21:13
Speaker 6: can scan that twilight sky and you could potentially see
21:17
Speaker 6: comet see twenty four G. Three. We notice comet Atlas.
21:21
Speaker 6: You might see another comet Atlas over there in the
21:24
Speaker 6: evening twilight, very very shortly after the sunsets coming up.
21:29
Speaker 5: After one more quick break, we'll ask a question that
21:33
Speaker 5: needs to be asked. Will NASA have to drop one
21:37
Speaker 5: of its Mars missions as if it were hot. We'll
21:40
Speaker 5: talk about that next. So we've talked for a while. Now,
22:04
Speaker 5: you send you know, equipment to Mars, You get some samples,
22:08
Speaker 5: you bury them in the ground, and you go, we're
22:10
Speaker 5: gonna go back and get those things later. Now, not
22:15
Speaker 5: so fast. Are we going to get the samples? Are
22:18
Speaker 5: we not going to get the samples?
22:19
Speaker 1: Do we know?
22:20
Speaker 5: I mean, I guess this is just one of the
22:21
Speaker 5: questions we've got. Is there money for this?
22:24
Speaker 1: I guess? Is the real question? Right? Yeah?
22:26
Speaker 4: It is.
22:26
Speaker 6: It is the real question. And as we're going through
22:29
Speaker 6: a government in transition right now, we are actively actively
22:35
Speaker 6: doing it. One of the big questions is about money
22:38
Speaker 6: across government. Right there's a brand new government organization being
22:44
Speaker 6: formed that's looking at how efficiently money is being spent
22:48
Speaker 6: across the spectrum. And so when you have that taking place,
22:53
Speaker 6: you begin to look at the Space Agency NASA itself
22:56
Speaker 6: and say, well, how is NASA spending its money and
23:00
Speaker 6: are there efficiencies that could be gained? And so then
23:03
Speaker 6: you start to look at programs that might be way
23:06
Speaker 6: over budget and way past their period of time which
23:10
Speaker 6: they should have taken place. And there's a program that
23:12
Speaker 6: began as far back as nineteen seventy eight, and the
23:18
Speaker 6: idea would be, well, what if we sent some kind
23:21
Speaker 6: of a vehicle up to the surface of Mars. It
23:24
Speaker 6: picked up samples and stored them in tubes, and then
23:30
Speaker 6: another vehicle that was good at picking up these tubes
23:32
Speaker 6: went to Mars and picked up all the tubes and
23:35
Speaker 6: returned them back to the Earth. Now that's a very
23:37
Speaker 6: easily spoken set of criteria, but it is not that
23:42
Speaker 6: easy to actually engineer all of those things. And we
23:46
Speaker 6: know that one of the greatest Mars exploration vehicles ever
23:50
Speaker 6: to explore the surface of Mars is NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover,
23:56
Speaker 6: and NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover is doing just that. It's
24:01
Speaker 6: picking up samples of Martian soil from some really interesting
24:05
Speaker 6: locations on Mars. It's stuffing that soil into cigar sized
24:12
Speaker 6: titanium tubes, and it's leaving these tubes on the surface
24:16
Speaker 6: for another vehicle to come along, pick it up and
24:19
Speaker 6: take it home. You see, the Perseverance Rover itself has
24:23
Speaker 6: no way to leave the surface, so it can't itself
24:26
Speaker 6: return these samples.
24:28
Speaker 1: But the.
24:30
Speaker 6: Long planned criteria or set of protocols was going to
24:35
Speaker 6: be for another vehicle to go pick up those samples
24:37
Speaker 6: and bring them home. Okay, Well, so just recently on
24:42
Speaker 6: January the seventh, the current NASA administrator Bill Nelson came
24:46
Speaker 6: out and said, yeah, so about that whole Sample return program,
24:51
Speaker 6: the Mars Sample Return PROGRAMSR, The MSR program is in
24:56
Speaker 6: severe jeopardy because costs have exploded and deadlines have been passed,
25:03
Speaker 6: and the program might actually be canceled. In fact, Bill
25:07
Speaker 6: Nelson said it's a no go in its current form,
25:10
Speaker 6: We're just going to go ahead and pull the plug
25:12
Speaker 6: on the current version of this program. Now it needs
25:15
Speaker 6: a complete revisioning to take place. And so, in mister
25:21
Speaker 6: Nelson's words themselves, he said this. As that plan has proceeded,
25:25
Speaker 6: it continued to be delayed as to when we would
25:28
Speaker 6: get the samples back, and the cost began to accelerate,
25:31
Speaker 6: to the point that earlier this past year it was
25:33
Speaker 6: thought that it could be as much as eleven billion
25:36
Speaker 6: dollars and you would not even get the samples back
25:40
Speaker 6: until twenty forty. Well, that just simply is unacceptable. End
25:47
Speaker 6: quote from Bill Nelson, the director of NASA. So when
25:51
Speaker 6: you have that come out at a time where we're
25:53
Speaker 6: transitioning to a new government and they have efficiency on
25:56
Speaker 6: the mind on their minds. And oh, by the way,
25:59
Speaker 6: one of the people in charge of the Efficiency group
26:02
Speaker 6: newly formed, also happens to run a private space company
26:06
Speaker 6: that might actually be going to Mars sometime before twenty forty. Yeah,
26:12
Speaker 6: then there's a shift of focus, let's just say. And
26:16
Speaker 6: so mister Nelson has actually reached out to a variety
26:21
Speaker 6: of commercial space companies, and yes, they do include SpaceX
26:24
Speaker 6: and Blue Origin, and ask them for help or new
26:28
Speaker 6: plans of how to defray the costs of this, How
26:31
Speaker 6: can we get this done more cheaply and more quickly
26:35
Speaker 6: than what NASA's plan was, particularly in light of the
26:39
Speaker 6: fact that in the year twenty twenty eight, the nation
26:43
Speaker 6: of China has a mission scheduled to go to Mars,
26:47
Speaker 6: pick up samples and bring them back home. Now it's
26:50
Speaker 6: called the tian Win three mission. It's what's known as
26:54
Speaker 6: a grab and go mission, which means it's basically just
26:57
Speaker 6: going to land in one place. Vehicle that lands there
27:01
Speaker 6: is going to pick up soil, and then it has
27:03
Speaker 6: a second stage that is a return stage that's going
27:06
Speaker 6: to lift off from Mars and bring it back home,
27:08
Speaker 6: which means you only get samples from one spot. Unlike
27:12
Speaker 6: the Marsh Perseverance Rover, which picked up many, many samples
27:15
Speaker 6: from many interesting locations, you would only get samples from
27:18
Speaker 6: one spot from China. You still don't want China bringing
27:22
Speaker 6: back Mars dirt before you can bring back Mars dirt.
27:25
Speaker 6: If you're the director of NASA, you just don't want
27:27
Speaker 6: that to happen. So it's going to be interesting going
27:30
Speaker 6: forward to see how all of this intrigue on the
27:33
Speaker 6: Red planet with a sample return mission unfolds.
27:37
Speaker 5: A couple of things. Yeah, this is that new space
27:40
Speaker 5: race that we talked about. I mean, basically, right, this
27:42
Speaker 5: is kind of one of those things in play. I
27:45
Speaker 5: just think there was a time, a long time ago
27:49
Speaker 5: they would have just sent up a monkey with like
27:51
Speaker 5: a T shirt cannon, right, and then just launch them back.
27:54
Speaker 5: I mean, that would have been the plan. You know,
27:56
Speaker 5: if you could just get them to not eat all
27:57
Speaker 5: the bananas too fast, and then you know, he could
28:00
Speaker 5: just grab them and fire him back and you know,
28:03
Speaker 5: we'd all salute the monkey.
28:05
Speaker 1: But they don't do that anymore. That's not the way
28:06
Speaker 1: things work.
28:08
Speaker 6: I mean, the Monkeys on Mars program was terminated quite
28:11
Speaker 6: a few years ago, so I think that they, you know,
28:14
Speaker 6: sided for various reasons not to put any more monkeys
28:17
Speaker 6: on the surface of Mars.
28:18
Speaker 5: They're American heroes, those monkeys, they really are. Let's talk
28:21
Speaker 5: about what's going on at Columba State University's Coca Cola
28:25
Speaker 5: Space Science Center, because you guys are getting ready to
28:27
Speaker 5: go into the second half. You got the first half,
28:30
Speaker 5: you deferred the kickoff, right, and then you get you
28:33
Speaker 5: get the kickoff to start the second half coming up
28:36
Speaker 5: in early March for Music under the Dome.
28:40
Speaker 6: And we have some great things also taking place in
28:42
Speaker 6: our in our gallery too, so they should be completed
28:44
Speaker 6: by the time that that new Music under the Dome
28:48
Speaker 6: was going to be launched in early March. So if
28:50
Speaker 6: you don't know what Music under the Dome is, friends,
28:52
Speaker 6: it's a fantastic concert series that's performed by the artists,
28:56
Speaker 6: both faculty and students of our Schwild School of Music
28:59
Speaker 6: right here Columbus State University. They perform inside of our
29:02
Speaker 6: planetarium and they have artists who a visual artists who
29:06
Speaker 6: accompany their music with original graphics up on the dome
29:10
Speaker 6: that are choreographed to the music. This is a fantastic
29:13
Speaker 6: concert series if you're anywhere in the area, or quite frankly,
29:17
Speaker 6: just travel in, you know, just fly into Columbus and
29:20
Speaker 6: come see one of these concerts. If you want tickets,
29:22
Speaker 6: you can find out information on ticketing at our website.
29:25
Speaker 6: Go to www dot CCSC dot org. Check out the
29:31
Speaker 6: concerts for March, April, and May. And also when you
29:35
Speaker 6: come to those new concerts this spring, you'll also be
29:38
Speaker 6: able to see some of the new exhibits that are
29:40
Speaker 6: going up in the exhibit gallery at Columbus State University's
29:42
Speaker 6: Coca Cola Space Science Center. Some exciting transformations and renovations
29:46
Speaker 6: taking place. We always try to keep things fresh and new,
29:49
Speaker 6: so we have kind of a paced schedule that we
29:52
Speaker 6: go through, but this is really going to be some
29:54
Speaker 6: great upgrades for some of the exhibits in our exhibit gallery.
29:57
Speaker 6: So check out all of the exciting information at our
30:00
Speaker 6: website www dot CCSSC dot org, or just follow us
30:06
Speaker 6: on Facebook and we'll be posting updates to our Facebook
30:08
Speaker 6: page as we go along.
30:10
Speaker 5: If you haven't been to Music under the Dome, it's unbelievable.
30:13
Speaker 5: They will, in fact, those musicians will, in fact drop
30:16
Speaker 5: it like it's hot. That's what they do for the show,
30:19
Speaker 5: and it's just amazing. Sean and I thank you for listening,
30:21
Speaker 5: and we'll do this again next week. Overhead Door Company
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