S02E33: SpaceX Mishaps, Hawaiian Fires from Space, and Martian Exploration: A Special Edition

Surprise, surprise, it's Steve here with Astronomy Daily for a Thursday of all days. Yes, I found myself with a couple of moments, so I thought I might drop you all the line and do a special edition. Just it's just one of those weeks where I find myself with a spare hour or two. So on with the show. It's the seventeenth of August twenty twenty three. Welcome aboard your whole Big Dunkley. Yeah, something a bit different today. I'm going to be revisiting a segment from our parent podcast with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson, who present the amazing Space Nuts podcast, which I'm sure most of you are aware of, and of course with me as always in the studio coming in from the ether is my fabulous companion Hallie Howillie. Wow, Thursday, how did you swing it? Well? Just lucky today. Well you'd better get into it. Oh, you don't have a lot of time during the day. Yes, Well, as I mentioned, we'll be catching up with the boys from Spice Nuts Andrew and Fred. Hallie. What have they got for us? It's one of my favorite stories about the geysers on Enceladus Oh that sounds fantastic always and have you got something for us, Hallie? Can you start us off? Yes, this story about SpaceX's Starship launch mishap report Key Dake late On McDuff. SpaceX has submitted to the US Federal Aviation Administration FAA its final report about the debut launch of its Starship vehicle, which ended with a bang four minutes after liftoff. All right, that was back in April and the flight was only four minutes or so, wasn't it. That's right. SpaceX launched a fully stacked Starship for the first time ever on April twentieth, sending the giant rocket spacecraft combo aloft from its Star based site in South Texas. The test flight aimed to get Starship's upper stage part way around Earth, with splash down targeted for a patch of the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii, but that didn't happen. Starship's two stages didn't separate as planned, and SpaceX beamed up a self destruct command, which resulted in the vehicle's detonation high above the Gulf of Mexico. The launch also caused considerable damage at Starbase, blasting out a crater beneath the site's orbital launch mount and reigning chunks of concrete and other debris on the surrounding area. SpaceX soon initiated a mishap investigation overseen by the FAA, which issues launch licenses, to determine exactly what happened on April twentieth and what steps to take to boost the chances of a more successful outcome in the future. Elon Musk's company has now filed that report, but that doesn't mean Starship has been cleared to fly again. SpaceX has submitted its final mishap investigation report to the FAA for review. That review is ongoing. FAA officials set in an emailed statement when a final mishap report is approved, it will identify the corrective action SpaceX must make the statement added separately, SpaceX must modify its license to incorporate those actions before receiving author to launch again. Do you like how they call it a mishap report. It sounds like someone is being naughty. Yes, look, Stasha gets sent to the naughty corner. How funny. But they've already installed a new water deluge system for the launch mount to dampen the immense power output. Of Starship's giant super heavy first stage, and they are prepping Booster nine and an upper stage called Ship twenty five for Starship's second full up test flight. Ever, the optimist Alon Musk is hoping to have it all ready in six to eight weeks, but don't hold your breath. Logistical hurdles still need to be clear. Regardless of the technical progress that SpaceX has made. The FAA is still reviewing the Mishap report, for example. In addition, a coalition of environmental and indigenous groups is currently suing the agency, claiming it didn't properly assess the damage that Starling launches could cause to the South Texas ecosystem and community. And let's hear what you've got for us today, Steve. Now you may have heard of, If you haven't learned how, you must not been near a news service. The deadly wildfires in Hawaii. They were seen from the International Space Station, floating two hundred and fifty nine miles that's four hundred seventeen kilometers above the Pacific Ocean in the hard hit town of Lahaina in Hawaii. The satellite imagery captured by the International Space Station on Saturday, the August twelve shows the Hawaiian island of Maui, four days after the wildfires broke out on land, and it's quite devastating. The photo taken as the Space Laboratory orbited all that way above the Pacific Ocean. As of Wednesday, that's August sixteen, the death toll on Hawaii's catastrophic fires rose above one hundred. Shortly above the confirmation of this figure, Governor Josh Green addressed the public saying that we are heartsick that we've had such loss and not only this devastation being deeply felt and thoroughly documented around the world, especially because it size there's a deadly consequence of human driven climate change, but also being recorded from space. Yes, thes ces all and if you would like to go to space dot com and have a look at the photograph, it's just a mass of cloud and it's most definitely devastating, and closer to the ground, there's plenty of people doing drone overflies of the affected areas and it's very upsetting to look to look at. So it's no surprise that our spaceborn observatories are seeing that in the way that they are. Thanks again for tuning in this is Astronomy Daily on the seventeenth of August twenty twenty three, and don't forget. You can catch all the back editions of Astronomy Daily and Space Nuts at bytes dot com. Also on anywhere you check out podcasts nowadays, we're on all of them. So the good news is that as of yesterday we receive word that we are the number four. Astronomy Daily is the number four podcast in the Astronomy Top one hundred charts. So thank you very much for supporting this podcast. We are extremely chuffed and proud to be presenting you with all the stories that have come across our desk. So we'll continue doing that and please drop us a line and let us know what's happening in your skies. Do that on the podcast page which is Space Nuts Podcast group on Facebook, We're there. Everyone's there. You'll find Tim Gibbs who presents mainly Friday's, Steve Dunkley that's me mainly Mondays, even though it's Thursday today, and you'll find Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson floating around on those pages. And if you've got a question that you'd like to pose, by all means anything to do with astronomy, space science and stuff. One of us will get back to you and we'd love to start a discussion, but especially we'd love to find out what's happening in your skies. Thanks again everybody for your support. Now into something a little bit more. I don't know. Mechanical robot with expandable appendages could explore Martian caves and cliffs of all things. Plenty of areas in the Solar System are interesting for scientific purposes but hard to access by traditional rovers. Some of the most prominent are the caves and cliffs of Mars, which reminds me of some of these stories that I used to read read when I was a kid, where exposed strata could hold clues to where the life ever existed on the red planet and who didn't know that they were going to say that next. So far, none of the missions sent there have been able to explore these difficult to reach places, but a mission concept from a team at Stanford hopes to change all that. The concept known as reach bot Boy. They're going to have to employ somebody to come up with some better names. Maybe me is a robot that can support itself using multiple articulated appendages to navigate terrain that would be difficult to reach using other navigational techniques. In addition to being able to traverse complex ground patterns, it could also, in theory, at least scales sheer cliff faces. It was initially pitched as a NASA's Institute for Advanced Concept project, where it was awarded Phase one grant back in twenty twenty one. The authors describe the idea as a fusion of two separate techniques developed for different purposes, mobile manipulation robots and deployable space structures. Mobile manipulation robots are relatively common in space exploration. Platforms like robo Ort and Lemur utilize robot technology to perform tasks like maintaining the ISS and inspecting other space habitats. Habitats, however, much of their mobility is limited. Efforts like Lemur pride themselves on being able to navigate tricky terrain. But even if even it would have difficulties scaling a cliff face. So we will wait and see how these robots actually face up. Even if they do get to Mars. Let's hope I like robots. Well, that goes without saying, and now here is one of my favorite segments from a past episode of Space Nuts featuring Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson. Steve go put the cattle on this first story. I find really exciting because there's a lot of attention being paid to Enceladust for all sorts of reasons, notwithstanding the potential for life. But these incredible guy eyes that have been recorded previously have been seen again, this time by the James Webb Space Telescope. Yeah, so this is really quite exciting news and it highlights once again the capabilities of the James Webb Telescope as a tool for science. That's sort of par excellence. It's the observations have been made of Saturn's movement and seller Dust. Now we haven't yet seen those observations, so I haven't seen any images, and that's probably partly because the research paper that's describing this work is still pending, so it hasn't yet appeared in the scientific press. And I guess the people who are responsible for it are essentially, you know, keeping their powder dry to to basically stop you know, stop the the media getting hold of it before they've actually published it. Yeah, it happens, which which does happen. And you know that as a mediate person, I've never done it myself. Gosh, never well, never break an embargo, break an embargo. No, and I have to say I have neither because I get all these things that are embargoed too. Don't break them just because it's the wrong thing to do. So, yes, I think that's what's happening there. But this is scientists that the Godard Space Flight Center who have presented these results actually at the conference in the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is in Baltimore, Like so I visited a long time ago. So going back to the matter in hand, Saturn's moon and Sladus, we've known since the flybys of the Cassini spacecraft in the early two thousands. I think it was as early as two thousand and five that the ice plumes being emitted from Antelodus's south pole had been were discovered. Then, in fact, what first hit the headlines. I don't know whether you remember this gun, I'm sure you and I talked about it, but there were these things near the south pole event Saladus, which were markings that were described as tiger stripes because they do they do look a bit like tiger stripes, and then it was discovered that there were actually cracks through which what probably started off as water, but as soon as it hit the vacuum of space became ice crystals, and that's what we're being observed by the Cassini spacecraft. And in fact, Cassini made several passes through those ice crystals so that using the equipment that it had on board, it could detect some of the chemicals that were were in them, principally H two, so water there, but also molecular hydrogen and I think some silicates as well were detected, which tended to give you the insight that the water that was underneath the ice had been in contact with rock before it was spat out to form the ice crystals, and the molecular hydrogen was interpreted as being possibly symptomatic of the fact that there were these deep well it will come to me in a minute, the black smokers. That's the expression I was looking for down on the floor of Enceladus's ocean, the sub ice ocean, that there were basically hydrothermal vents in the ocean floor. So that was all very exciting, but of course, with Cassini's mission coming to an end in twenty seventeen, all that stopped and so further research was not possible until now when the games Web telescope has been directed at Enceladus and they've kind of hit paider because they've discovered an ice plume that is far bigger than any of the ones that were observed by Enceladus, and that sort of makes you wonder why that might be. Is there are you know, one of the cracks one of the tiger stripes has opened up a bit to allow more water through, or is it something to do with the gravitational pull of Saturn. What's happening here? And so that's one of the things that is being studied at the moment. Apparently this ice plume extended quite a lot further than the diameter of Enceladus itself, which is five hundred kilometers. That's that's one of the things they've discovered as a consequence of this observation is how big these guysers are. Yeah, and I remember from that time an image of Enceladus which was taken when Enceladus was battled it, so the sun was behind Enceladus, but you could see that the plumes of stuff that we're coming off Enceladus. We're actually feeding into Saturn's ear ring. The ear ring is one of the diffuse rings outside the you know, the main ring system. And that was great because that answered the puzzle of where the earring came from. It actually comes from ice crystals that generated by in Seladus. So all that's sort of backstory. But now we have these new observations, and in principle, we've got a new way of of you know, investigating these things. Because the James Web is equipped with some very sensitive infrared detectors, spectrometers and things of that sort, is possible that we might get some new insights into what chemical elements and perhaps the molecules are contained within those ice plumes. Although I think the the you know, the bottom line, really the end is going to be sending a spacecraft to Enceladus. Yes, the just going back to what we knew these jets contained, we've got quite a big list in addition to the ones that I mentioned earlier, methane, carbon dioxide, and pneumonia. These are of course all organic molecules, molecules containing carbon and Babelfish probably Babelfish as well. Yes, if you need to translate from you know, one language to another anyway you know it could be. It might be even more exciting than babel push is that if anything like that could be possible, because that methane could turn out to be from methanergenic organisms. We don't know that, but all of this still highlights so Enceladus as a as a fantastic target for further exploration, and a couple of things come to mind. There a mission which is proposed called the Enceladus Orbielander, and that that name tells you what it's going to do. It will orbit the Moon if this goes ahead for about six months and actually flying through those ice ice plumes and then land and look at the exact details of the surface. It probably would not try and penetrate the ice though. That's the province of one that you and I are spoken about before. Something called EEL, which is a bit like an eel some something called a snake robot. EEL is an acronym for exobiology extant life surveyor or eels actually, and one of the brains, one of the principal you know, buffins behind that is Linda Spilker, who was with us a few years ago to give the Alison Levic lecture lecture the Linda Spilker being the Cassini the Cassini Mission scientists so very very well equipped to propose new missions, and I think Heels was one of the ones she was involved with. Yeah, if that doesn't work, of course, the backup mission is the black and deck At mission, which yes, that's right, or if you really need it, the the JCB or the Caterpillar mission with the heavy lifting stuff, or the Ryobi mission, any of those, any of those that can drill. If you got good to go with Ryobi, you only need one set of batteries and that's from roof off. You're different, that's right. Yeah. I actually had a young I've got a Riobi leaf blower, and the balloon blower died before the battery did. Oh it's interesting, it is, isn't it? Quite surprise? Is still that was still very much alive but being tall after the cardboard tube on the end turned it down to blow away the leaves. Anyway, that's a different story. Easy day. I must say, whoever thought of in Enceladus or Belander? Yeah, but I mean, come on, couldn't come up with something better? Than that. I think in the end it would have would have a nicer name. But yeah, I like you, I'm finding this really exciting that the web telescope now can can turn its very substantial capabilities onto a moonlike Enceladus. Certainly nowhere near the same resolution as we had from from the Casine emission, but lots to find out. Nevertheless, Yes, and there's so much attention being paid to Enceladus. And it's similar cousin of Jupiter, which is I'm stretching to remember the name of it. Hang on, hang on, Mike, one think think the beginning with T yes, t I No, no texas instruments, No, t I is Titan. I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking of the other ice well this, well, Titans really an ice moon. Yeah, the notion, I mean, there are the other ice moons that we really know a lot about. Our Europa Gunning Europe BACKLISTO. Yes, around around Jupiter and yes, a prime candidates for potential life. Yeah, exactly what kind of life we don't know. But if we can get up there and find it and study it and see what it's made up of and whether or not it's the same stuff as us. That would be really interesting exactly because if we found life there, living organisms there, it would suggest that wherever you've got the raw materials for life and the right environment, you're going to guess it and it wasteresting stuff. Change the answer to the Drake equation. That's correct, It would would, indeed, and that we're all hoping for that, right the Drake equation though, well it would. It certainly puts one further input into the Drake Drake equi point. It doesn't give you the answer because that's all about intelligent life. Yes, it would be astonishing though if we found vertebrates or something with some kind of intelligence. I keep saying it, I keep saying it. Krill, krill, that's right, that's hyper intellectual krill hype piece. I'm sure they're ound there somewhere. Well, you heard at first, hyper intelligent krill. That's what we can look forward to. Thanks for Johnnyus on Astronomy Daily. This has been a special edition for Thursday because I escaped the bump and grind of my usual day. Thanks for Johnny's looking forward to seeing your day forget. Tim Gibbs on Friday. Steve Dunkly on Mondays and if we can swing it, there'll be more of the same. And thanks for Johnny Us and making us number four globally for the Astronomy Top one hundred. This has been Astronomy Daily for another day. See you next time. Y the Podcast with your host Steve Dunklin.