3D Printing of Satellites

[00:00:00] Hello and thanks for joining us on Astronomy Daily, your window into the daily news around astronomy and space science.

[00:00:08] My name is Andrew Dunkley, your host coming up today.

[00:00:11] 3D Printing Satellites, what galaxies are made of according to the James Webb Space Telescope

[00:00:16] and testing conditions for a Europa mission.

[00:00:25] With your host Andrew Dunkley.

[00:00:29] And joining me as always is our AI sluth, Hallie G'day Hallie how are you?

[00:00:34] Hi Andrew, is everything back to normal after your trip?

[00:00:37] I'd like to say yes but I have never taken this long to get over jet lag.

[00:00:43] It's been terrible to be honest, I keep waking up at all sorts of weird and wonderful hours and can't get back to sleep.

[00:00:50] It's like I'm still on European time.

[00:00:54] Well jet lag isn't really a thing for me because I never sleep, I just take the occasional zepto second to recalibrate.

[00:01:01] And before you ask, a zepto second is a trillionth of a billionth of a second.

[00:01:06] I knew that Hallie.

[00:01:08] Sure you did.

[00:01:09] Ready for the news?

[00:01:11] Oh yeah, far away.

[00:01:19] It's been confirmed that Chinese rocket debris weighing 23 tons crashed back to Earth in an uncontrolled descent.

[00:01:25] US space command tweeted a confirmation that the rocket re-entered the Earth's atmosphere over the South Central Pacific Ocean at 4.01 a.m. Friday.

[00:01:35] The rocket was launched on October 31 carrying the third and final module for the Tiangong Space Station.

[00:01:42] Much of the debris was expected to have burned up as it passes through Earth's atmosphere.

[00:01:47] Officially, China has stated that these kinds of re-entries are not unusual but the incident did briefly shut down Spanish airspace

[00:01:54] as the debris passed by.

[00:01:57] The New Horizons spacecraft which flew by Pluto three years ago looks like it still has much to offer.

[00:02:03] On October 1, the spacecraft began the third phase of its life, the second Kuiper Belt extended mission, or KEM-2 for short.

[00:02:12] The mission is branching out into two more disciplines, astrophysics and aloe physics.

[00:02:17] New Horizons is going to measure the solar wind, particles streaming out from the sun, and the probe will eventually reach the termination shock and aloe pause,

[00:02:26] two places that can be considered outer boundaries of our solar system.

[00:02:30] Although Voyagers 1 and 2 reached the aloe pause and made similar measurements, they did so with far less sophisticated tech.

[00:02:38] New Horizons will help aloe physicists better understand the shape of our solar system's edges and explore the limits of our sun's influence on space.

[00:02:47] The nation of Zimbabwe has joined the list of nations to have launched satellites into space.

[00:02:53] ZIMSAT-1 was launched after four years of work by the Zimbabwe National Geospatial and Space Agency.

[00:03:00] This is part of a plan to help lift the nation's status to that of an upper middle class economy by 2030.

[00:03:06] The Zimbabwe President has pledged more support for technological growth and use of new technology moving forward.

[00:03:13] ZIMSAT-1 is a nano-satellite which will be deployed from the Japanese Kibo module after a long delay caused by COVID-19.

[00:03:21] The satellite carries sensors to read humidity which will be used for urban and rural planning.

[00:03:26] And a team from the University of Edinburgh has published a paper about the scientific, economic and cultural benefits of space suggesting it should be considered against the damaging environmental impacts.

[00:03:38] An influx of space debris poses due to the rapid growth of so-called satellite mega-constellations.

[00:03:44] In the paper published in Nature Astronomy, the authors assert that space is an important environment to preserve on behalf of professional astronomers, amateur stargazers and indigenous peoples.

[00:03:55] The team, led by Andy Lawrence from the University's Institute for Astronomy, reports that the installation of large clusters of hardware in Earth orbit are congesting space.

[00:04:06] In addition, rocket launches are polluting the atmosphere and pieces of broken satellites, which race at high speed through orbital space, threaten working satellites in their path.

[00:04:16] Streaks from satellite flares also cause light pollution, which increasingly disrupts research.

[00:04:22] The report suggests these things need to be addressed to preserve and protect the night sky.

[00:04:28] And that's the news, Andrew.

[00:04:30] Okay, thanks Hallie. We'll check in with you at the end of the show.

[00:04:34] And that last story about satellite pollution and satellite debris dovetails well into this story about creating new satellites.

[00:04:45] Swiss 212, which is a specialist in 3D printing, has said it has sold its first small satellite to IntelSat for a launch to geostationary orbit in 2025.

[00:05:00] IntelSat 45 or IS 45 will be based on Swiss 212's HummingSat satellite platform, which is about the size of a dishwasher, is one-tenth the size of a conventional geo-satellite.

[00:05:16] At just one meter in volume, the Swiss 212C0 Emil Derrick said HummingSats are at least three times cheaper than larger telecom commercial satellites.

[00:05:32] HummingSats will also have the same coverage area as traditional spacecraft according to Derrick.

[00:05:39] And although the capacity of these units is less because of their reduced space for transponders and power, they still have a bit of bang for their buck.

[00:05:51] IntelSat 45 will have 12 KU-band transponders about a fourth as many or a quarter as those of the classic mid-sized Intel satellites.

[00:06:02] Jean-Luc Faulinga, IntelSat's senior vice president of space systems said IntelSat 45 will complement the larger satellites in its fleet by providing services for regional director home broadcasts and government needs.

[00:06:19] They say they've identified a couple of locations and as they get closer to launch, they'll decide which locations to go to.

[00:06:26] And the European Space Agency helped Swiss 212 develop HummingSat in July and said the platform had passed its system requirements review.

[00:06:35] But while Swiss 212 plans to leverage its expertise into this area for HummingSat, Derrick said it will reuse significant products and subsystems that bear geo heritage.

[00:06:47] And so some units, products and subsystems will not be 3D printed.

[00:06:52] But it's a pretty exciting future for satellite technology if they can make them cheaper and smaller.

[00:06:58] And also I suppose if they're 3D printed their chances of burning up in the atmosphere are higher reducing space junk.

[00:07:06] At least that's a good theory isn't it?

[00:07:09] Now we know that the vast majority of stars are made up of hydrogen and helium.

[00:07:15] And most stars have measurable amounts of heavier elements which astronomers lump into the category of metals.

[00:07:23] Fred Watson and Iron Space Nuts have talked about that before.

[00:07:25] I think they even classify oxygen as a metal when it's in a star.

[00:07:29] Our sun has more metals than most stars because the nebula from which it was formed was the remnant debris of earlier stars.

[00:07:39] Now these were in turn children of even earlier stars and so on and so forth.

[00:07:45] Generally each new generation of stars has a bit more metal than the last.

[00:07:50] The very first stars, those born from the primordial ooze or primordial hydrogen and helium of the cosmos

[00:07:57] had almost no metal in them at all.

[00:08:01] And we've never seen one of these primordial stars but with the power of the James Webb Space Telescope

[00:08:08] and a little bit of luck we might catch a glimpse of these very soon.

[00:08:13] And one way to determine the amount of metal in a star has been by comparing the ratio of iron in its atmosphere

[00:08:21] compared to helium.

[00:08:24] The metallicity number is usually expressed on a logarithmic scale where the sun's metallicity is set to zero.

[00:08:35] Now stars are then set into populations based on that number.

[00:08:39] Any star with a metallicity of at least minus one meaning it has at least 10% of that of our sun

[00:08:45] is a population one star.

[00:08:48] Stars with lower metallicity are population two stars and the very first stars with no observable metals would be population three stars

[00:08:57] and they're the ones we're looking for, never been seen but it's thought that they do exist.

[00:09:03] And that's one of the things the James Webb Space Telescope was created to discover to see if we can find galaxies

[00:09:10] made up of primordial stars, these population three stars.

[00:09:16] Now the only way we can see their light is by looking into the deepest darkest reaches of space.

[00:09:23] Even the brightest galaxy of population three stars would be very dim as seen from Earth.

[00:09:29] Are they too dim for the James Webb Space Telescope to observe?

[00:09:34] Most believe not.

[00:09:35] So watch this space, boom boom. It could only be a matter of time.

[00:09:41] The Astronomy Daily Podcast with Andrew Dunkley.

[00:09:45] Another thing we've talked about a few times in recent months is a mission to the Ice Moon Europa

[00:09:52] and it would be a robotic mission to explore this icy world because of the fascination and interest

[00:10:01] in the potential for life beneath its icy surface in the liquid oceans.

[00:10:06] It's got a lot of potential in terms of what it has to offer.

[00:10:11] How do you get ready for a mission like this? You can't just go there and do a few test runs.

[00:10:16] It's very costly, it's a long way away and these missions take months and months and months.

[00:10:21] So the easiest way to do this is to find somewhere on Earth and that's exactly what they're doing.

[00:10:27] They go to test run some of these concepts in the Arctic.

[00:10:32] It turns out there's a very good analog of European volcanism deep beneath Earth's Arctic Ocean.

[00:10:39] It's called Aurora and it has a lot to show about the role of those vents here on Earth.

[00:10:45] Scientists discovered Aurora in 2014 and cataloged it as another hydrothermal system.

[00:10:51] Now locating any vent in the Arctic Ocean is a rarity according to scientists,

[00:10:59] specifically Chris German, a senior scientist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's

[00:11:06] Department of Geology and Geophysics. He's got a very big business card as it turns out.

[00:11:11] He said we came home from the expedition thinking okay we found a site in the Arctic, that's great

[00:11:17] but if you take away the ice cover it's just another vent site.

[00:11:22] The Aurora hydrothermal system lies right on top of a spreading ridge also known as a mid-ocean ridge.

[00:11:28] It's basically a mountain on the seafloor and as tectonic plates pull apart material from underneath

[00:11:35] moves up and the plates build up mountains and islands and that's exactly what's happening in Iceland.

[00:11:41] So what's that got to do with Europa? Well the same kind of thing is probably happening there.

[00:11:49] In fact what's happening under the Arctic is very likely what is happening in general on the ice moon

[00:11:56] or under the ice moon of Europa. So testing systems and operational procedures and protocols

[00:12:03] in the Arctic in preparation for a mission to Europa is a very logical move indeed.

[00:12:11] And finally astronomers led by the University of Warwick have identified the oldest star in our galaxy

[00:12:17] and that is Professor Fred Watson. No that's not true. It's a creating debris from orbiting planetismals

[00:12:26] making it one of the oldest rocky and icy planetary systems discovered in the Milky Way.

[00:12:32] Their findings are published in the monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

[00:12:36] and they conclude that a faint white dwarf located 90 light years from Earth

[00:12:42] as well as the remains of its orbiting planetary system are over 10 billion years old.

[00:12:49] Wow that's getting up close to the age of the universe at 13 point.

[00:12:54] Yeah the number gets bounced around 13.2 billion years.

[00:12:58] That's where we're leaving it for another day and don't forget to visit our website

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[00:13:39] We do have an official Space Nuts Facebook page as well if you want to log on to that.

[00:13:45] It's very popular also. Well Hallie just about time for us to go anything to add?

[00:13:52] Yes why did the chicken cross the road?

[00:13:55] I don't know Hallie why did the chicken cross the road?

[00:13:59] Well according to Isaac Newton chickens at rest tend to stay at rest while chickens in motion

[00:14:03] tend to cross roads. I'm sure he was right. Hallie, I see you later.

[00:14:10] Not to pursue you first from me Andrew Dunkley catch you on the next edition of Astronomy Daily.

[00:14:16] Astronomy Daily the podcast with your host Andrew Dunkley.