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Secretive Spaceplane Launch Delayed · 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,
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asterism and uranus. Listen, that's your own risk. Go ahead. When
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made of stars, made them stars, made sizes? When made us stars,
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you could be from high they would new Mexicomas. Where a stars?
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When we are made of stars? John moa good friend, Doctor Sean cruising
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from Columbus State University, these Coca Cola Space Science Center. I'm Wes Carol
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more than Shawn. Good morning West, it's going to be here with you
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today. We have our first story today is about a Falcon heavy launch that
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was gonna happen. It was supposed to be taking a secret, super secret
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military spy plane up. It's been put on hold. How secretive can this
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military spy plane be our space plane? I guess is what it is.
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I said spy, but I don't know what else it would be used for.
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If it's secret and it's a plane, you know it's not a spy
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I guess. We can't say spy, can we I don't know what was
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the hot air balloon? Anyway, it's a space plane and it was secretive
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and it's not going up yet. It's on hold. You and I know
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about it. So how secretive can it be? That's what I'm trying to
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say. I mean, and I guess it was a Freudian thing. I
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guess to say spy, but it's probably officially nothing to do with spying on
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anyone at all. There's no spying involved. I don't Yeah, I wouldn't
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bet on that, but okay, sure, I'm trying. We don't know.
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I'm trying not to go I'm trying not to get audited as far as
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you and I know everything going on whatsoever. I'm playing a little cya.
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So this is a space plane. It was supposed to go out secretive,
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the X thirty seven B. Yeah, so if you were just to see
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this thing sitting out on the runway, it looks like what you and I
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have phrased in the past as a little mini Shuttle, right. It looks
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like the Space Shuttle had had a mini me, you know, a little
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small version. Sounds cute, and it is kind of cute. I mean,
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it's you know, it's like a little buddy that looks just like your
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power around anyway. So you and I have been talking about this particular vehicle
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since our radio days. This thing it made its debut back in about twenty
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ten, and it's never been really discussed what it was, other than in
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a test article by the United States what was then the Air Force now it's
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the Space Force, right, So this is, you know, one of
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those divisions within the Air Force that split off to become the Space Force.
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Anyway, So it's a space plane and it's secretive, and they have launched
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it on a variety of other vehicles, but this time they were going to
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ride SpaceX. You know, ride SpaceX, and you should do that,
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right because they're the they're the current space line that's getting a lot of attention
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and carrying out more missions than anybody else there. Launching it every like what
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thirty hours or something. They're going up very frequently. Well, and by
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the way, there's another story we didn't talk about, but they just had
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to delay a launch of their Starlink system because of bad weather. But that
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was going to happen almost at the same time as this vehicle was going to
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go up. This vehicle is not on one of the Falcon Nines. It
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was slated to fly on the Falcon Heavy. And since I'm using words in
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past tense like was, you might have figured out already that they didn't fly.
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They've been supposed to fly for a couple of days. Actually, the
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original flight was going to be on Monday, and then it was delayed a
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couple of times. My very space aware friend Scott and Norman down here at
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the Space Science Center, our our space historian and educator, he's been telling
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me like, keep me updated. Hey, they're gonna delay. Hey,
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it looks like they're gonna go. Oh no, they're not. I've been
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hearing this from Scott all week. So so here on Thursday, we're finding
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out that they actually scrubbed the thing for a bit. They rolled it back
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to the hangar last night, which would have been Wednesday. Or did they
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or did they? I mean, I feel like that's a fair question to
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ask when we're talking about super secret space planes. I mean, it's not
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a bad question, so we can at least ask the question they rolled something
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back to way they have appeared to roll back, at least unless there was
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some David Copperfield magic going on. They've at least appeared to roll back the
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Falcon heavy rocket itself, right, I guess the exact location of the space
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plane does remain unknown to those of us in the you know, second generation
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space media. I would say, there's the first generation space media that's actually
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down there covering it, and then there's you and me who are reading their
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coverage and you know, kind of talking about it here on air. But
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so so Spaceflight Now is actually the source of this article, and they just
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updated their coverage last night with a pointer that said, yeah, they're rolling
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this thing back to the hangar. So it doesn't look like it's going to
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launch soon. It looks like whatever problem was preventing them from launching is still
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in place now. The tricky thing is when you have a super secretive Space
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Force mission by the way, dubbed US Space Force fifty two. So it's
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the ussf fifty two mission. That's what we know about it for sure,
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is it's its name. Does that mean does that mean there've been fifty one
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other missions? I mean, is that what that is? Do we know?
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Yeah? Yeah, I guess so, I don't really. Surely they're
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not two other missions with the space plane. Anyway, whatever reason they gave
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it that designation. They rolled that sucker back to the to the hangar aboard
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the Falcon Heavy. So it would have been the first time that the spaceplane
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X thirty seven B has flown aboard a Falcon Heavy. So even though both
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the rocket and the vehicle have made flights to space before, this is a
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new dating situation. They just hooked up, so they hadn't really you know,
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flown together yet, shall we say. And so so maybe there was
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a glitch in the interface. Maybe it's been speculated online that it has something
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to do with the interface with the ground support systems. We don't know if
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that's for the rocket or for the space plane itself. It's all a bit
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of an enigma wrapped inside a riddle, and we don't know yet. That's
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that really complicates it, doesn't enigma? Yeah, it hard for guys like
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you and me to you know, to start through these things and really get
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down to the bottom of it. Anyway, One thing we do know,
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it's not launching on Thursday, December fourteenth, twenty twenty three, that we
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do know. So it was supposed to go up today didn't happen, and
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at some point we assume it will go up, but we can't fully assume
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anything because it is a super secret space plane. Hey, let's talk about
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the Geminids, because last week we talked about a brand new, brand spanking
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new meteor shower, which doesn't happen a lot. That's really uncommon. That's
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not something that you know, like every couple of days in the news.
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Hey, it is a new meteor. No, that doesn't happen. Is
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there's long don't have those very much. No, And that's because it requires
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a new comet to orbit the Sun nearby enough to the Earth, the Earth's
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orbit that it leads a de brisch trail that we could run into. So
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all that's kind of rare. But yet it did happen one other time.
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It happened back in the eighteen hundreds. So suddenly there was a brand new
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meteor shower back in the eighteen hundreds, and it appeared to be coming from
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the constellation of Gemini. It happened in December December, and it seemed to
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be a fairly robust meteor shower, in other words, plenty of debris.
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So since that time, astronomers have been searching for the source of the Geminid
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meteor shower, and they thought they found it back in the early nineteen eighties
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with some infrared imaging spacecraft because they found this certain asteroid called thirty two hundred
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faith On. And thirty two hundred faith On is actually a little bit of
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a weird asteroid in that it kind of has a tail like a comet.
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So in other words, when it gets closest to the Sun, it sort
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of melts and leaves some kind of stream of debris behind it. And astronomer
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said, Aha, there we go. We can't find a comment to associate
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with this Geminid meteor shower. But this asteroid appears to be a little bit
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on the leaky side, and so probably what's happened is this asteroid has left
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the debris trail. Okay, so that's the setup. Now here comes the
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pitch. A brand new study has revealed that it's not very likely that thirty
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two hundred faith On is actually the source of the Geminid meteor shower, which
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in itself is a reasonably new meteor shower. It has to be something else.
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So what do you think about that? Well, I want to go
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back to when you said it is a leaky meteor shower. What does that
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mean? It's very leaky? What means this? Let me be very clear
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on what I think is leaking and is not leaking. I just want to
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make sure I clarify that it's the asteroid that appeared to be Oh you said
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no, you said asteroid. I messed it up. I was just focusing
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on leak. Yeah. Well, you know, so in other words,
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when a body like a like an asteroid contains enough volatile material, think about
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that as ices, frozen water, frozen carbon dioxide, frozen methane. When
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that body then gets close to the Sun, those ices heat up and in
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the weird environment that is the solar system, with very little to no air
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pressure, it's kind of a vacuum. So when that happens, these materials
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escape off into space and they form a tail and they're blown out in the
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direction of the solar wind blowing away from the Sun. Okay, so it
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appeared that thirty two hundred faith On has a tail. So that's why I
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called it leaky, just being you know, a colloquial speaking So gotcha anyway,
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Yeah, well, improving and if nothing else, this proves that I'm
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not always the mentality of a fourteen year old child, because I didn't go
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to leaking asteroid as you know, you would have thought my brain would have
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processed it that way. I said in meteors anyway, I mean I think
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I was trying to tee you up with that shot. I think you are
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I think year old time still trying to go there. Still screwed it up.
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So you didn't follow me down to that dark place west, you didn't
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fall. Thank you for not following me down to that dark place. So
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basically, now we have a brand new meteor shower that they're investigating and trying
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to learn as much about it as possible, and then we're also taking a
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look back in time at the previous new one, like the previous new kid
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on the block, to try to because they go back to square one.
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Now, that's exactly right, and that's what one of the researchers basically said
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that as a quote. They are back to square one. So so these
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are a couple of co authors from the Naval Research Lab, which does tracking
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of Solar System objects. For obvious reasons, there are potential threats to Earth
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and things like that. So one researcher by the name of Carl Badams,
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another researcher by the name of Kai Joan. So these are the two researchers
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that we have quotes from on today's story. By the way this story comes
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from comes to us from spaceweather dot com. You can go there and check
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it out on this date and you'll see the story there. But basically it
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says this quote from Carl Batam's our work has upended years of belief about thirty
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two hundred faith On as the source of the geminids. It's not what we
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thought it was. And the other co author, Kai Sheng Xiong, says
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this the tale we see today could never supply enough dust to create the Gemini
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media shower. Also, he says, we're back to square one. Where
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where did the geminus come from? You might be asking, well, what
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did they see that led them to believe that they have to go back to
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square one? It's simply this Faithon's tail, that tale of material that coming
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from the leaky asteroid. Faithon's tale is not made up of rocks and dust.
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It's made up of sodium gas. So you have a material that does
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not generate meteor showers forming the tail of this kind of hybrid between an asteroid
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and a comet. So really, the material coming from that asteroid that forms
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a comet like tail, albeit a small one, it's not even made of
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the right stuff to create a meteor shower, according to this new study.
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So yeah, so it can't be then the source of the gym and and
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meta showers. And so all of this material got published in the Planetary Science
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Journal, and it is leading a new mystery. This is good because this
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is job security for astronomers. Now we have to go figure out, well,
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where did this thing come from? If it didn't come from this recurring
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comet and it didn't appear until the eighteen hundreds, which is relatively recently,
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what went by that left this permanent stream of material that the Earth runs into
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every December and creates a very prolific meteor shower. It's a really interesting question,
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and not just that it's a job security, but it's kind of interesting
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that there are two of them, to be two of these to be explored
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and discovered more about them researched now at the same time, which is kind
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of wild with a brand new one. And then basically it becomes a brand
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new one all over again. I mean, to your point, meter showers
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don't make the news very often. I mean you kind of hear that they're
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happening. Go out and see them. Hey, tonight's the Persia meter shower,
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or tonight's the landed media shower or whatever, and so we hear a
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lot about that. Hey, these are fun of innso the sky. You
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want to make sure and go see it when you can. But what we
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don't hear very often is, oh, there's a new meteor shower, like
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it's never been seen before. This is the first time ever that this particular
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shower is going to occur, or hey, this familiar shower. We have
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no idea suddenly where it came from, because we pretty much have tied down
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where all the sources of meter showers are. So it's a little weird when
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we come across one that we just have no idea what the source is.
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So, yeah, this is an interesting story and one that we don't hear
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very often. All right, let's talk about the voyager one another instance now
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where it is not communicating back to Earth. We've covered this has happened multiple
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times. This isn't brand new. So I guess we're back to the hope
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again that it will begin communicating with Earth again. The Voyager spacecraft, Ladies
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and Gentlemen, launched in the nineteen seventies, So maybe the headline should be
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there's still a glimmer of hope that we can still talk to a forty six
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year old spacecraft. That kind of makes it a little bit more well of
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a positive spin on this story, right, And yes, we've lost contact
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with Voyager one. In the past, there have been moments where NASA didn't
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they did some kind of an update on the software, or they did some
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kind of necessary rearranging of things, and the software just quit working right or
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didn't work in the way they expected it to after the update. And this
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is this has caused them to go back think about this. They have to
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go back now and stir up nineteen seventies era technology and the engineers who know
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how to use that and write in the kind of code that existed in the
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nineteen seventies to get this thing to work again. It's like it's like trying
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to, you know, play those old movies on your VCR from you know,
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that same era. It's like, oh, do I even know how
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to hook up my VCR to this new TV I've got. I don't even
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know if it has the right hookups, how can I even get it connected?
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Anyway? So when the spacecraft start sending back, shall we call it
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mixed messages or confused messages? Basically what they described it NASA as binary gobbledegook.
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That's never a good thing, and they have to really get their thinking
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caps on and do some some very interesting, interesting and creative worker rounds to
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try to get the thing to work. Now, we here at Space Science
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Center are very familiar with this process because you know, we're a nonprofit organization
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and we are literally littered throughout the building with aged out technologies that we need
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to keep going and keep running. So we do these kinds of cprs on
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very old systems all the time. Maybe NASA should call my tech team.
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They might be able to help out. I don't know, but whatever it
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is, it's at least a process that we're familiar with in the nonprofit museum
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world. According to NASA's blog, it says this finding solutions to challenges the
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probes encounter often entails consulting original, decades old documents written by engineers who didn't
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anticipate that the what easying is of today, and as a result, it
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takes time for the team to understand how a new command will affect the spacecraft's
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operation in order to avoid unintended consequences. Yes, we like to avoid those
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unintended consequences whatever possible. So in other words, they can't just send up
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what they think is a proper patch without thinking through all the things that that
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patch might do or not do to the spacecraft. So they're in the process
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right now. Get it to talk again. Maybe we can still be communicating
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with a forty six plus year old spacecraft. That would certainly be interesting.
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It's been interesting so far because it's given us some new data on the outer
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most reaches of our Solar system, which if that spacecraft hadn't been out there
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with sensors, we wouldn't have had those pieces of information. So good stuff,
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but yet a little bit of a scary time for Voyager one right now.
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And if anything, maybe it's a valuable reminder to, you know,
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keep track of things, take notes on things, and you might have to
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reference them later, you know, if you're you know, getting some help
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with your you know, it like around the house. I'm not specifically speaking
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about my parents or anything, but if you know your son has to come
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over and help you, you know, reboot something, maybe take detailed notes
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so that down the line maybe they can be referenced. I've got one parent
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who's better at that than the other. I'll just say that, and she
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knows, and she knows who she is. Right, one's better at it
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than the other. That's all. So, since since the tech team here
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at Space Science that has to speak about me occasionally in these in these kinds
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of terms, I don't really want to throw your parents under the bus,
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so to speak, at this point, but I should probably take better notes
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when I'm receiving some it tech support as well. However, it is a
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fundamental kind of axiom of science and engineering that note taking and keeping good lab
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notes is a really important part of the scientific process. So you're not wrong
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about that. Coming up after a quick break, we're going to talk about
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solar storms and trains. We'll talk about that right after this. All right,
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we've been talking about CMEs coronal mass ejections. We've been talking about solar
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storms really for quite a while now. Really, I guess once we started
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rolling into getting to the closer to the period of solar maximum, and we've
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certainly had a very active sun and we've talked about the possible hazards of communications
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and things when it comes to solar storms, and there's also transportation issues,
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and I know, we talked about the fact that if you were going to
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be taking like an international flight, especially if you were, you know,
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leaving the northern US or you were leaving Canada to go to the UK,
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you might be flying, you know, in a place where a solar storm
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could expose you to extra radiation. You know, nothing that would you go
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like, oh my gosh, it's gonna like overcook our plane food that you
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get that's you know, typically overcooked. I mean, I could blame it
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on that, I suppose. But let's talk about trains, because I don't
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typically think about trains as being something that solar storms could have an impact on,
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but apparently they can. I mean, so this is an oddly specific
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example of the kinds of effects that can take place on the surface of the
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Earth. And yes, on previous episodes of this podcast and back in our
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radio show, we talked a lot about the various kinds of effects that could
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happen with solar storms on more of a broad scale, like oh, electronics
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can be affected, or power grids can be affected, or communication systems can
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be affected. But this is an oddly specific example, which is simply this.
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If you're riding in an Amtrak train and you're coming up to a place
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where you're going to come to a split in the tracks. If the light
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is green, you should go ahead and go and that split is safe for
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you to go. But if the light is red, hopefully the train engineer
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that's driving your train realizes they need to go ahead and stop that train,
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slow it down, do something to avoid being on the same spur as another
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train that's moving potentially in the opposite direction as you are, and that would
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be considered bad. So anyway, those lights switching red to green. A
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group from the Lancaster University in England has done a study specifically on railroad indicator
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lights and how much solar radiation would it cause for those lights to malfunction,
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And it turns out that not only is it possible for enough solar radiation to
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come down to the surface of the Earth during one of the our more powerful
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solar storms, that radiation also doesn't have to be that much of a fraction
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of the overall impending radiation, So in other words, it doesn't take very
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much radiation, and it could actually cause a railroad indicator to turn the wrong
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color. Well, if you happen to be riding that train, that's a
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big deal. Now. The lead author on the study is a person by
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the name of Cameron Patterson, and you can read about this again on space
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dot com, but it says this. He had a quote that says,
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this is obviously very significant from a safety perspective. We found that space weather
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events capable of triggering faults in these track circuits are rare, but expect that
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every few decades here in the United Kingdom, all right, So obviously where
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they are in England, every few decades, obviously, that means it could
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happen tomorrow, really honestly, right, So it's just a matter of statistics.
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So we are moving into a period of time where the solar activity is
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increasing, that's called solar maximum, and so the recommendation from this particular group
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of scientists is that the risk is real and that railroads should actually begin to
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monitor solar activity to make sure glitches in their electronics don't turn green lights to
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red lights, or more importantly, red lights to green lights, and have
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accidents on their rail system. So a really interesting study. Again, a
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very specific example of one of the many multitude of things that are detrimental to
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us and also can be caused by incoming solar storms. Let's talk about Mars.
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They had kind of a strange incident happened. There is this a common
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thing for the atmosphere to swell there? I assume it's probably not a normal
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thing to happen. So this is another story about the Sun. It's also
25:10
on space dot Com, by the way, you can find it there.
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We live in an environment in our solar system that the exterior part of our
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planet in other words, the outer layers of the atmosphere and the planet's magnetosphere,
25:22
which you have a magnetic field around our planet that kind of shields us
25:26
from most solar radiation. But those two things are surviving in a rather hostile
25:30
and interesting environment. They are constantly being bombarded from the Sun's solar wind that's
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the stream of charged particles leaving the Sun that are generated by the nuclear activity
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taking place in the core of the Sun. Okay, so this material streams
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out through the Solar System all the time. Our planet and the planet Mars
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and other planets in our Solar System are being buffeted by this material all the
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time. And we know that happens, and we know that part of the
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reason the atmosphere of our planet is the size it is and the shape it
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is is because of this ongoing bombardment of solar radiation. Okay, so what
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happens if that solar wind suddenly stops for maybe a few hours or maybe a
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couple of days just because of variabilities in the statistics that dictate what the solar
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wind looks like. So this is something that can happen, although it is
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rare. Well, it turns out that a vehicle called the MAVEN spacecraft that's
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in orbit around the planet Mars. MAVEN stands for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution,
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So it's a spacecraft specifically made to study the atmospheric history of Mars by
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looking at effects in mars current atmosphere. The spacecraft was taking data last year,
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and some of that data included a couple of days where there was a
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big giant lull in the Sun's solar wind. In other words, kind of
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an empty spot in the river, and we suddenly on Mars did not have
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that influx of solar radiation that we usually have. And then the atmosphere of
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Mars did something weird. It reacted to that it blew up like a balloon.
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It expanded on the side of the of the sun, so and on
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the side of the incoming solar radiation it expanded by almost twice. It almost
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doubled in size, right, So it's really kind of a strange effect.
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Actually, it was four four times its usual size on that sun facing side
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and a doubling overall of the atmosphere. So a strange effect took place,
27:45
obviously because of an interaction with the solar wind. So the question is can
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the Sun affect weather? And the answer clearly here is well, it affects
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the atmosphere, and the atmosphere is what generates weather. So therefore one percent
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yes, it can generate a anomaly in the atmosphere of a planet, thereby
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generating anomally in the weather of the planet for that short period of time.
28:15
So if it can happen on Mars, which by the way, this expanding
28:18
of the atmosphere is thought to possibly have caused dry periods on Mars, may
28:22
have even helped Mars lose a majority of its atmosphere over time because of these
28:27
kinds of incidents that took place. If it can happen on Mars, can
28:32
it happen on Earth? Now that's that's still an unsettled question. But this
28:38
study saying, well, it probably did happen on Earth. We just don't
28:42
have a Maven like spacecraft high enough above the Earth's surface to monitor the atmosphere
28:49
in the same kind of way that the atmosphere of Mars was being monitored by
28:53
Maven. So interesting. Clearly there were some changes in the atmosphere of the
28:59
Earth during that same period of time, but they can't just say, yeah,
29:03
the atmosphere blew up to two or three or four times its normal size.
29:07
So and that was what I was going to ask. So obviously we're
29:11
talking about if these particular solar winds die down for Mars, they would have
29:18
died down for us as well as I mean, And are we talking about
29:22
this is a specific question as far as solar winds goes. So are we
29:26
talking about they spread out evenly in all directions or are solar winds sort of
29:32
directional with the Earth and Mars had to have been reasonably lined up for them
29:37
to be affected by the same stoppage and solar wind. That's a really insightful
29:41
and great question, because variability occurs throughout the solar wind stream. It does
29:49
exit the Sun in all directions, so there's solar wind going out in all
29:53
directions. But obviously with things like solar flares or solar disturb solar storms,
30:00
stun spot groups, those kinds of surface variabilities can cause variability in the outflow
30:07
of material from the suns surface as well, so it's not a perfectly homogeneous
30:11
or uniform ongoing process. There are variabilities in that. So you're right about
30:18
the fact that Mars and Earth would have to be generally closely lined up for
30:23
the same variability to guaranteed affect the Earth during that period of time. But
30:30
what remains as an overall general truth is that solar wind variability can in fact
30:37
cause atmospheric changes, and if it can do it on Mars, it can
30:41
do it on Earth. And we're a heck of a lot closer to the
30:44
Sun than Mars is, so those effects might be actually larger in terms of
30:49
just a blunt physical number than they are on Mars. Those kinds of insightful
30:53
questions are why I make all the big bucks. Here. Let's talk about
30:57
the Coca Cola Space Science and the month of raining, month of December.
31:03
We're basically halfway there and closing in very quickly on the new year. So
31:10
what you guys have going on there and as far as calendar goes, and
31:14
what folks can expect, because I mean, let's be honest, we're getting
31:18
really close to people maybe starting to have visitors. They may already have visitors
31:22
for the holidays in the house and they're looking for something to do to get
31:25
out of the house. Yeah, so coming down to see us as a
31:26
great idea. As long as we're open, we really invite you to come
31:30
down with the family if they get here in time. So we are actually
31:34
going to be open until basically one week from today as we're recording this podcast.
31:38
Space Science Center will be open through December the twentieth. We will be
31:42
closing down from the twenty first on throughout the holiday, and then we'll be
31:48
opening back up again on January third. So if you want more specific information
31:52
about our calendar, please just visit us on our website www dot cc SSC
32:00
dot org. Those initials stand for Coca Cola Space Science Center. We are
32:07
not part of the Coca Cola Corporation, by the way, they were a
32:09
generous sponsor to open us up, but we are part of Columbus State University
32:15
and we are a unit within that institution, and so check us out at
32:19
the website CCSSC dot org. Charlie, Charlie SamSam Charlie dot org, Sean
32:24
and I thank you for listening, and we'll do this again next week.
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