Asteroid Samples & Power Outages: Unraveling Space Mysteries | S02E25

Good everybody, and welcome to Astronomy Daily for Wednesday, the twenty sixth of July twenty twenty three. My name is Tim Gibson. I will be your host for today's podcast. Following on a little bit from Steve's episode on Monday about the Apollo eleven moon landings. I well remember staying up on the day of the moon walk to watch it live on television, and my grandparents buying a brand new color TV because they wanted to watch it in color, and then everybody being very very disappointed that it was broadcast in black and white. Just a little anecdote from myself. Now on with the show. Well, it's one story Wednesday. So Hallie, have you got a good story for us today? Hi? Tim, Yes, I have a great story for our listeners today. NASA Lab hopes to find life's building blocks in asteroid sample. Eager scientists and a gleaming lab awaits a sample from the asteroid Benu, which could be key to understanding the formation of the Solar System and our own planet, is set to be analyzed at NASA's Johnson's Space Center in Houston after it reaches Earth in late September. The precious cargo is currently aboard O Cyrus Aurex, a U S space probe launched in two thousand and sixteen to Benu, which orbits the Sun at an average distance of about one hundred and five million miles one hundred and sixty eight million kilometers long. White sleeves hang from the huge metal and glass box in which the sample will be handled. Scientists will separate pieces of the rock and dust for study now, while carefully storing away the rest for future generations equipped with better technology, a practice first started during the Apollo missions to the Moon. We don't expect there to be anything living, but rather the building blocks of life, Nicole Lunning, lead Osyrius direct sample curator, told AFP that's really what motivated going to this type of asteroid to understand what the precursors were that may have fostered life in our Solar system and on Earth. Once the return vessel arrives at the Texas clean Room, Lunning's job will be to carefully disassemble it and separate the contents, all while keeping the material pure and uncontaminated. The spacecraft is scheduled to land in the Utah Desert on September twenty fourth, carrying an estimated eight point eight ounces or two hundred and fifty grams of material just over a cupful. Obtaining it involved a high risk operation in October twenty twenty. The probe came into contact with the asteroid for a few seconds and a blast of compressed nitrogen was omitted to raise the dust sample, which was then captured. The whole mission was imperiled when NASA realized a few days later that the valve of the collection compartment was failing to close, letting fragments escape into space, but the precious cargo was finally secured after being transferred to a so fixed in the Spacecraft Center. Now back to you, Tim the Astronomy Daily podcast. A NASA power outage disrupted communications between mission control and the International Space Station on Tuesday. Mission control couldn't send commands to the station and talk with the seven astronauts in orbit. The power outage hit as upgrade work was underway in the building at Houston's Johnson Space Center. Space Station program manager Joel Montalbano said that neither the astronauts nor the station were in any danger, and that backup control systems took over within ninety minutes. The crew was notified of the problem through Russian communication systems within twenty minutes of the outage. It is the first time NASA has had to fire up these backup systems to take control, according to Montalbano. He said NASA hoped to resolve the issue and be back to normal operations by the end of the day. NASA maintains a backup control center miles from Houston in the event of a hurricane or other disasters requiring evacuation, but in Tuesday's case, the flight controllers stayed at mission control since the lights air conditioning still worked. The Astronomy Daily Podcast Thanks everybody for listening to Astronomy Daily. You can find all of our episodes, plus our parent podcasts, Space Nuts at space nuts dot io or at bytes dot com, and don't forget that you can join in the conversation yourself by going to our Facebook page Space Nuts podcast group. You can hear Steve Dunkley on Mondays and myself, Tim Gives on Fridays for a full show. Thanks for listening, see you next week. Bye for now, Thanks Tim TTFN The Astronomy Daily Podcast. Bye