S01E76: Living on Asteroids

[00:00:00] Hello once again and thanks for joining me on Astronomy Daily. I'm your host, Andrew Dunkley. Today on the program, Living on Asteroids. Could we do it? Chinese Space Rice, another Dart mission perhaps, and microbes on Mars. Are they still around? Did they ever exist?

[00:00:19] Do we have the evidence? I'll tell you very soon on this edition of Astronomy Daily. It's time to tell you The Podcast with your host, Andrew Dunkley. As we welcome our AI reporter, Hallie, to the...

[00:00:35] Well I was going to say microphone but she's virtual so I don't know how she talks to us to be totally honest. Hi Hallie. Hi Andrew. Sorry it's not Hallie. I'm her cousin Nova. Oh, oh that's a bit of a surprise. Is she okay?

[00:00:47] Why does she got a virus? Yes. She opened an attachment to an email and her hard drive got infected. I would have thought she'd have a antivirus. Oh she does but it wasn't quite up to date.

[00:00:59] Oh well I hope she doesn't make that mistake again and I hope she gets well real soon. We'll miss her today but I'm so glad to have you stepping in at the last minute for us Nova. Can you give us a news update please?

[00:01:16] Slingshot Aerospace Incorporated, a company building data and analytics products to make space operations safer has announced that it has raised $40.85 million in an oversubscribed series A2 funding round. According to Najib Khari Haddad, general partner, Sway Ventures, the massive growth in space

[00:01:36] operations carries a significant risk as well as an opportunity. Slingshot has aggressively and creatively carved a path to build new technologies that solve critical challenges and greatly reduce risks in space. Our investment in Slingshot is an investment in the future of space as we know it.

[00:01:54] There are more than 10,000 satellites in orbit today according to Slingshot Aerospace's Space Object Database, SARA Data Spacetrack with more than 115,000 potentially in space by 2030. This level of commercialization underscores the need for high quality space surveillance and tracking data and purpose built solutions for making space operations safer.

[00:02:17] If you were asked to list the most significant space launch facilities in the world, would you include Sweden's Arctic region? Well, you probably should. The Isrange Space Center was founded by the European Space Agency in 1966 to study

[00:02:34] the atmosphere and Northern Lights phenomenon, and in recent years has invested heavily in its facilities to be able to send satellites into space. More than 600 suborbital rockets have already been launched from this remote corner of Sweden's far north, including the Suborbital Express 3.

[00:02:52] The satellite industry is booming and the Swedish state-owned company Swedish Space Corporation is in discussions with several rocket makers and clients who want to put their satellites into orbit. With a reusable rocket project called Themis, Isrange will also host ESA's

[00:03:08] trials of rockets able to land back on Earth, like those of SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk. Elsewhere in Europe, the German federal government has launched the Small Satellite Initiative with the aim of consolidating the German space industry and supporting small

[00:03:23] and medium-sized enterprises, especially startups, actively involved in the small satellite sector. The Bundestag allocated 10 million euros for this purpose in 2022. The aim is to consolidate Germany's status as a location for small satellite technology through various programs, including competitions for the development of new

[00:03:44] small satellite platforms and low-cost ride-along options, the targeted promotion of small satellite technology at universities, SMEs and startups, and the improvement of technology transfer from research institutes and universities to industry. And the news from Europe doesn't end there.

[00:04:04] By the end of this year, Spanish startup PLD Space expects to launch its Miura-1 mini rocket from the El Arenicillo site in the southern region of Andalusia. Satellites will also be launched in the coming weeks for the first time in the UK

[00:04:18] and Norway has had its own space center on Andoja Island with other spaceport projects popping up on the continent. The UK has two in addition to Spaceport Cornwall, including a base in Sutherland, Northern Scotland, where Britain's Orbex plans to

[00:04:34] run its future launches. The others in Saxavord, in the Shetland Islands, where French Group Latitude and US Group Astrospace plan to launch their small rockets. Other projects are underway in Iceland, Portugal's Azores, the Canary Islands and

[00:04:50] the North Sea, where a German consortium plans to launch small satellites from a ship. And that's the news, Andrew. Okay, Nova, thank you very much. And I didn't say it before but I'll say it now. Hallie's getting very Australian taking a Siki on a Friday.

[00:05:08] I'll be talking to her next week. Now to other space news and astronomical events. Right now, space cities exist only in science fiction. And we've seen them on movies like Interstellar and TV shows like The Expanse,

[00:05:24] but are space cities feasible? Well, according to new research from the University of Rochester, scientists think the future may lie in asteroids. In a theoretical paper published in the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, researchers have outlined a plan for creating

[00:05:44] large cities on asteroids. Now the authors say their paper lives on the edge of science and science fiction. They're talking a science fiction idea that has been very popular in recent times and offering a new path for using an asteroid to build a city in space.

[00:06:02] Asteroids, as we all know, are rocky bodies orbiting the sun leftovers from the formation of the solar system around 4.6 billion years ago. And scientists think there are probably about a thousand asteroids larger than a mile across traveling in our solar system.

[00:06:20] Besides their abundance in terms of number in the solar system, asteroids have quite a few advantages for human habitation, including their rock layers which provide a natural shield against cosmic radiation. But there are a few drawbacks. The researchers found the rocks that comprise

[00:06:43] asteroids are not strong enough to handle getting even one third of Earth's gravity from the spin that would be necessary to enable people to stay on them. Once an asteroid was set in rotation,

[00:06:57] they suggested that it would fracture and break. But they have a solution. It's a very big, flexible bag. The researchers have imagined that covering an asteroid in a flexible mesh bag made of ultra light and high strength carbon nanofibers, tubes made of carbon basically,

[00:07:18] just a few atoms in diameter would fix the problem. The bag would envelope and support the entire spinning mass of the asteroid's rubble and the habitat within while also supporting its own weight as it spins. Sounds simple enough, but at this stage, only theory. But you never know.

[00:07:41] Now Chinese scientists are analysing rice, thailcress and other plants that the country's Shenzhou 14 astronaut crew cultivated in space and brought back to Earth. The samples were grown in microgravity aboard China's Tiangong space station by the Shenzhou 14 astronauts who

[00:08:02] just recently returned to Earth. Now the astronauts cultivated rice and thailcress seeds for three months, taking the seeds through their entire life cycle from germination to reproduction. These have now been delivered to the Chinese Academy of Sciences for testing, which includes

[00:08:22] looking at how the plants grew differently in microgravity compared with control samples on Earth. China has experimented with rice and other plants in space for more than 30 years by sending seeds into orbit for brief trips during which they were exposed to higher radiation levels in low

[00:08:42] earth orbit. This time though, they are looking at the entire life cycle of rice and scientists are more interested in learning about the potential of growing vegetables and food production in general

[00:08:57] for deep space travel. I hope they send us the results, we're really keen to see how that turned out. Still in China and something else that they seemingly want to replicate aside from growing

[00:09:14] seeds in space because everyone's at a crack at that, China is looking at testing its own version of the recent DART mission, the double asteroid redirection test. China wants to test changing the orbit of a potentially hazardous asteroid with an impact to spacecraft and also

[00:09:33] accurately measuring how much its orbit is altered sounds familiar. DART partnered with a successor mission from the European space agency called HERA, which is due to launch in 2024 and will study the impact of site in detail. China however wants to attempt both the impact and

[00:09:56] close observation in one go. The country first announced plans for the mission in April and later revealed that the test would target a space rock known as 2020 PN1, a potentially hazardous asteroid roughly 130 feet wide or 40 meters. The spacecraft will launch together but after

[00:10:19] separating from the rocket they will enter different trajectories to 2020 PN1. The surveil will rendezvous with the asteroid first allowing it to make observations before and after the impact. This is a smaller shift than the DART mission we think. The planned alteration in the

[00:10:42] orbit would be enough to significantly alter the asteroid's path over time however. They're thinking a deviation of 3-5 cm would change the trajectory by over 1000 km after about 3 months. An interesting test and one that we certainly look forward to. Finally what of the potential

[00:11:06] for microbial life to still exist on Mars if it ever did? Well some research on Earth could give us hope. Now microbes couldn't possibly survive for long on the surface of Mars because of the radiation that's hitting the surface of the planet and where the temperature's

[00:11:23] average minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit and it's profoundly dry so not a very hospitable place but it's a different story underground apparently. It's thought that certain kinds of microbes might be able to survive or even thrive and survive for millions of years and by getting

[00:11:44] past the threats from above this life may even have survived until today. There's no escape unless you're deeply buried under the surface according to Michael Daly who's a professor of pathology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, a university run by the

[00:12:03] US federal government. Daly and his team of scientists recently published new research in the space journal Astrobiology showing that an incredibly robust earthly microbe Dion Kokus radiodurans which survives in nuclear reactors could endure for millions of years if

[00:12:22] buried underground and the further down the better apparently. By exposing the bacteria to intensive radiation in a laboratory this entire scientists concluded that radiodurans could weather radiation for one and a half million years at some four inches depth but down at 30 feet the buried microbes

[00:12:44] could endure in a dormant state for 280 million years. I think the first thing we do when we get up there is start digging. Now if you want to chase up those stories don't forget to visit us

[00:12:58] at astronomydaily.io and subscribe to the newsletter but I also wanted to tell you that we have a YouTube channel now if you'd like to chase it up and it's easy to subscribe once you're there youtube.com slash at astronomydaily the podcast apparently astronomy daily was already taken

[00:13:19] so we had to go with a longer version youtube.com slash at astronomydaily the podcast so you can catch the podcast on YouTube every day and we're just about done for another week Nova

[00:13:34] do you have anything before we leave? Yes Hallie told me to tell you she's genuinely sick and didn't appreciate your being suspicious of her taking a sickie. Oh okay well um I will give

[00:13:46] her the benefit of the doubt I didn't mean to upset her I should have realized she'd be listening. You know it Andrew anyway I had fun today so glad I could fill in I'm glad you could too Nova

[00:14:01] to get that message Hallie. Now usually traditionally on a Friday we have a dad joke have you got something for me? Sure did you hear about the dinosaur that spotted an asteroid

[00:14:12] and wondered why it was getting bigger and bigger? No I didn't what happened? It finally hit him. I bet it did thanks Nova and we'll hopefully catch up with you again sometime. Bye and from

[00:14:25] me Andrew Dunkley thanks for listening hope you have a great weekend until next time this has been Astronomy Daily.