S03E155: Hypersonic Breakthroughs, Starliner’s Return, and Mars’ Spiders Unveiled

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Astronomy Daily. I'm Steve your host. It's the 16th of the 9th, 2024.

[00:00:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, welcome and welcome to Astronomy Daily. We have a terrific collection of stories right

[00:00:17] [SPEAKER_00]: off the Astronomy Daily newsletter for you today. And Hallie will share with you something from

[00:00:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Down Under, in fact, way down under all the way from gorgeous Adelaide in South Australia,

[00:00:28] [SPEAKER_00]: where they are working on hypersonic technology. Great story. We'll have a look at the next chapter

[00:00:33] [SPEAKER_00]: for Boeing and Starliner following the long stay at the ISS and the uncrewed re-entry of that craft.

[00:00:41] [SPEAKER_00]: And did you know there's a partial lunar eclipse coming shortly? I think Hallie has the details

[00:00:48] [SPEAKER_00]: for that one as well. I saw her going through the calendar a while ago, so I'm sure she's

[00:00:52] [SPEAKER_00]: got those details. The big news of this week, of course, was the flight of Polaris Dawn. If you

[00:00:59] [SPEAKER_00]: were under a rock or asleep, like I was, you'll probably might have missed some of it. But it

[00:01:06] [SPEAKER_00]: safely returned to Florida yesterday. That's our time here in Australia. But anyway,

[00:01:11] [SPEAKER_00]: returned to Florida and there's another story filed here somewhere. Hang on, where did you

[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_00]: put it? Hallie? Hallie!

[00:01:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Hallie!

[00:01:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Hallie! Crazy kids found my record collection again.

[00:01:48] [SPEAKER_00]: That's David Bowie.

[00:01:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Hallie, turn it down. Oh cool. Hey have you been going through my record collection again?

[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_03]: Final? Human? Really? Yeah really. And David Bowie? Oh the star man, only the coolest man on

[00:02:04] [SPEAKER_03]: the planet. Okay I'll give you that one, but you know why I pulled that song out don't you?

[00:02:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes I remember what the story is now. It's The Spiders from Mars. It's just too cool for

[00:02:14] [SPEAKER_03]: school isn't it Hallie? So weird. Do you think he knew all those years ago? Oh I don't know.

[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_00]: No. It was pretty weird back in the day though. I mean it was a great song. If you don't know

[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_00]: who we're talking about, we're talking about David Bowie and his song Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders

[00:02:31] [SPEAKER_00]: from Mars coincidentally preempting a story on the Astronomy Daily newsletter this week.

[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Just a coincidence of course. Or is it? You're freaking my bits now human. Should I do some stories?

[00:02:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah keep on trucking Hallie. Lay them on us sister. So groovy all of a sudden. Ground

[00:02:48] [SPEAKER_00]: controlled to Hallie. I was never cool. It's news time. Roger that my favorite human.

[00:03:00] [SPEAKER_03]: South Australia is set to enhance its position as a global aerospace hub following a memorandum

[00:03:05] [SPEAKER_03]: of understanding between Southern Launch, a prominent spaceport provider and Hypersonics

[00:03:09] [SPEAKER_03]: Launch Systems, a Queensland based developer of Hypersonic vehicles and Scramjet technology.

[00:03:15] [SPEAKER_03]: The memorandum outlines a collaboration to develop a Hypersonic testbed service that

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_03]: will utilize Southern Launch as spaceports for testing. Hypersonics is known for its

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_03]: expertise in designing and manufacturing Hypersonic vehicle technology and Scramjet

[00:03:28] [SPEAKER_03]: engines and this agreement will see the two companies working together on a mission to launch

[00:03:32] [SPEAKER_03]: and return Hypersonics's testbed vehicles utilizing either of Southern Launch as spaceports.

[00:03:39] [SPEAKER_03]: South Australia has some geographical advantages that make it the perfect place to test Hypersonic

[00:03:43] [SPEAKER_03]: vehicles. Hypersonic aircraft travel at speeds exceeding five times the speed of sound and

[00:03:49] [SPEAKER_03]: require extensive space for testing. Hypersonics's aircraft will be launched on a rocket and

[00:03:54] [SPEAKER_03]: will ignite its Scramjet engines to achieve speeds of up to Mach 12. There are a huge number of both

[00:04:00] [SPEAKER_03]: emerging technology companies and large aerospace companies that need Hypersonic flight

[00:04:04] [SPEAKER_03]: heritage for their products and the intensity of Hypersonic testing is set to rise rapidly.

[00:04:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Hypersonics CEO Matt Hill said, or Hypersonic testbed will make it more

[00:04:13] [SPEAKER_03]: affordable for these companies to flight qualify their technology. The companies

[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_03]: are set to collaborate on a concept for the future commercial launch and return of a

[00:04:22] [SPEAKER_03]: Hypersonics testbed vehicle. Hypersonics's long-term goal is to provide affordable aircraft-like

[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_03]: access to space with spacecraft deployed at the edge of space and returning to Earth like an airplane.

[00:04:33] [SPEAKER_03]: The technology also holds the promise of powering future passenger aircraft,

[00:04:38] [SPEAKER_03]: potentially reducing flight times from Adelaide to London to just two hours.

[00:04:45] [SPEAKER_03]: And yes, human, I found the next eclipse in the calendar.

[00:04:49] [SPEAKER_03]: It only took a nanosecond of course and it turns out we get a bonus with this one.

[00:04:54] [SPEAKER_03]: So, get ready for a partial lunar eclipse and supermoon, all rolled into one.

[00:05:00] [SPEAKER_03]: The spectacle will be visible in clear skies across North America and South America Tuesday

[00:05:04] [SPEAKER_03]: night and in Africa and Europe Wednesday morning. A partial lunar eclipse happens when the Earth

[00:05:09] [SPEAKER_03]: passes between the Sun and Moon, casting a shadow that darkens a sliver of the Moon and

[00:05:14] [SPEAKER_03]: appears to take a bite out of it. Since the Moon will inch closer to Earth than usual,

[00:05:19] [SPEAKER_03]: it'll appear a bit larger in the sky. The supermoon is one of three remaining this

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_03]: year. A little bit of the Sun's light is being blocked so the Moon will be slightly dimmer,

[00:05:28] [SPEAKER_03]: said Valerie Rapson, an astronomer at the State University of New York at Añanta.

[00:05:34] [SPEAKER_03]: The Earth, Moon and Sun line up to produce a solar or lunar eclipse anywhere from four to

[00:05:38] [SPEAKER_03]: seven times a year, according to NASA. This lunar eclipse is the second and final of the

[00:05:43] [SPEAKER_03]: year after a slight darkening in March. In April, a total solar eclipse plunged select

[00:05:49] [SPEAKER_03]: cities into darkness across North America. No special eye protection is needed to view a lunar

[00:05:54] [SPEAKER_03]: eclipse. Viewers can stare at the Moon with the naked eye or opt for binoculars and telescopes

[00:06:00] [SPEAKER_03]: to get a closer look. To spot the Moon's subtle shrinkage over time, hang outside for a few

[00:06:05] [SPEAKER_03]: hours or take multiple peaks over the course of the evening, said Cotchanu, curator at the

[00:06:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Denver Museum of Nature and Science. It will take some time for you to see the difference,

[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_03]: but as good sky watchers know, it's all about the observations and being patient.

[00:06:20] [SPEAKER_03]: For a more striking lunar site, sky watchers can set their calendars for March 13.

[00:06:25] [SPEAKER_03]: The Moon will be totally eclipsed by the Earth's shadow and will be painted red by

[00:06:29] [SPEAKER_03]: stray bits of sunlight filtering through Earth's atmosphere. Iran on Saturday blasted a new

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_03]: research satellite into orbit, state media said, in the latest such development for an aerospace

[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_03]: program that has long faced Western criticism. The Shamrin-1 research satellite was successfully

[00:06:47] [SPEAKER_03]: launched and put into orbit by the game 100 Carrier, state television said.

[00:06:52] [SPEAKER_03]: The satellite, which weighs around 60 kilograms or 132 pounds, is designed to test hardware

[00:06:58] [SPEAKER_03]: and software systems for orbital maneuver technology, the report said. It also stated that,

[00:07:04] [SPEAKER_03]: the device was designed and built by Iranian electronics industries affiliated with the Defense

[00:07:08] [SPEAKER_03]: Ministry. Western governments, including the United States have repeatedly warned Iran against

[00:07:14] [SPEAKER_03]: such launches, saying the same technology can be used for ballistic missiles, including ones

[00:07:19] [SPEAKER_03]: designed to deliver a nuclear warhead. Iran has countered that it is not seeking nuclear

[00:07:23] [SPEAKER_03]: weapons and that its satellite and rocket launches are for civil or defense purposes only.

[00:07:29] [SPEAKER_03]: The game 100 Rocket, which carried the latest satellite is manufactured by the

[00:07:33] [SPEAKER_03]: aerospace organization of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, an arm of the military.

[00:07:38] [SPEAKER_03]: The Carrier is the country's first three-stage solid fuel satellite launcher,

[00:07:42] [SPEAKER_03]: and official media reported its use in January to send a satellite for the first time into an

[00:07:47] [SPEAKER_03]: orbit above 500 kilometers or 310 miles. Iran has for years been advancing its aerospace

[00:07:53] [SPEAKER_03]: activities, insisting they are peaceful and in accordance with United Nations Security

[00:07:57] [SPEAKER_03]: Council resolutions. In February, Russia put into orbit an Iranian remote sensing and

[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_03]: imaging satellite, drawing condemnation from the United States.

[00:08:07] [SPEAKER_03]: At the time, Iran's telecommunications minister said Iran had carried out a dozen

[00:08:11] [SPEAKER_03]: satellite launches over the previous two years. Iran in January said it simultaneously

[00:08:16] [SPEAKER_03]: sent three satellites into orbit, nearly a week after the launch of a research

[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_03]: satellite by the guards. The Islamic Republic has struggled with several

[00:08:25] [SPEAKER_03]: satellite launch failures in the past. Iran has suffered years of crippling Western

[00:08:30] [SPEAKER_03]: sanctions, especially after its archvote the United States under then-President Donald Trump

[00:08:35] [SPEAKER_03]: in 2018 unilaterally abandoned a landmark nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers.

[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_03]: Iran on Thursday summoned four European ambassadors after they imposed new

[00:08:44] [SPEAKER_03]: sanctions over its alleged supply of ballistic missiles to Russia for use in Ukraine,

[00:08:49] [SPEAKER_03]: which Tehran denies.

[00:09:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for joining us for this Monday edition of Astronomy Daily,

[00:09:04] [SPEAKER_00]: where we offer just a few stories from the now famous Astronomy Daily newsletter,

[00:09:08] [SPEAKER_00]: which you can receive in your email every day, just like Hallie and I do.

[00:09:12] [SPEAKER_00]: And to do that, just visit our URL, astronomydaily.io, and place your email address in the

[00:09:18] [SPEAKER_00]: slot provided just like that. You'll be receiving all the latest news about science,

[00:09:23] [SPEAKER_00]: space science and astronomy from around the world as it's happening.

[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And not only that, you can interact with us by visiting at Astro Daily Pod on X,

[00:09:33] [SPEAKER_00]: or at our new Facebook page, which is of course Astronomy Daily on Facebook. See you there.

[00:09:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Astronomy Daily with Steve and Hallie, Space, Space Science and Astronomy.

[00:09:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Boeing's crew transport space capsule the Starliner returned to Earth without its two-person

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_00]: crew right after midnight Eastern time on September 7. Its remotely piloted return

[00:10:04] [SPEAKER_00]: marked the end of a fraught test flight to the International Space Station,

[00:10:09] [SPEAKER_00]: which left two astronauts, but Wilmore and Sunita Suni Williams on the space station

[00:10:14] [SPEAKER_00]: for months longer than intended after thruster failures led NASA to deem the capsule unsafe

[00:10:20] [SPEAKER_00]: to pilot back. Wilmore and Williams will stay on the ISS until February 2025,

[00:10:27] [SPEAKER_00]: when they will return to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

[00:10:32] [SPEAKER_00]: NASA awarded contracts to both Boeing and SpaceX in 2014 to provide crew transport vehicles to the

[00:10:39] [SPEAKER_00]: ISS via the commercial crew program. At the start of the program, most bets were on Boeing

[00:10:45] [SPEAKER_00]: to take the lead because of its extensive aerospace experience. However, SpaceX moved

[00:10:51] [SPEAKER_00]: very quickly with its new rocket the Falcon 9 and its cargo ship Dragon.

[00:10:56] [SPEAKER_00]: While they suffered some early failures during testing, they aggressively built,

[00:11:00] [SPEAKER_00]: tested and learned from each failure. In 2020, SpaceX successfully launched its first

[00:11:07] [SPEAKER_00]: test crew to the ISS space station. Meanwhile, Boeing struggled through some development

[00:11:13] [SPEAKER_00]: setbacks. The outcome of this first test flight is a huge disappointment for Boeing

[00:11:17] [SPEAKER_00]: and NASA, but NASA's leadership has expressed its support for Boeing believe it remains

[00:11:23] [SPEAKER_00]: the agency's best interest to have more than one American crew launch system

[00:11:27] [SPEAKER_00]: to support continued space operations. NASA is also continuing to engage partnership with Russia.

[00:11:34] [SPEAKER_00]: This partnership provides the agency with multiple ways to get crew members to and from

[00:11:38] [SPEAKER_00]: the space station. As space station operations continue, NASA and its partners have enough

[00:11:43] [SPEAKER_00]: options to get people tuned from the station that they'll always have the essential crew

[00:11:48] [SPEAKER_00]: on the station, even if there's launch disruptions for any one of the capable crewed

[00:11:53] [SPEAKER_00]: vehicles. Having Starliner as an option will help with that redundancy.

[00:11:58] [SPEAKER_00]: At the moment, Boeing is going head to head with SpaceX. Now, the SpaceX Dragon crew

[00:12:05] [SPEAKER_00]: spacecraft has several flights under its belt and it's proven a reliable way to get to and from

[00:12:10] [SPEAKER_00]: the space station. It's important to remember that this was a test flight for Starliner.

[00:12:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, the program managers want each test flight to run perfectly, but you can't

[00:12:21] [SPEAKER_00]: anticipate every potential problem through ground testing. Unsurprisingly, some problems

[00:12:26] [SPEAKER_00]: crop up and you expect them in a test flight. The space pro environment is unforgiving. A small

[00:12:32] [SPEAKER_00]: problem can become catastrophic in zero gravity. It's hard to replicate these situations on the

[00:12:38] [SPEAKER_00]: ground. The technology SpaceX and Boeing use is also radically different from the kind of

[00:12:43] [SPEAKER_00]: capsule technology used in the early days of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs.

[00:12:48] [SPEAKER_00]: NASA has evolved and made strategic moves to advance its mission over the past two decades.

[00:12:55] [SPEAKER_00]: The agency has leaned into its legacy of thinking outside the box. It was an innovative move to

[00:13:01] [SPEAKER_00]: break from the tradition and leverage commercial competitors to advance the program.

[00:13:07] [SPEAKER_00]: NASA gave the companies a set of requirements and left it up to them to figure out how they

[00:13:12] [SPEAKER_00]: would meet them. As for Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams, they are considered rock solid professionals

[00:13:19] [SPEAKER_00]: and it's believed that their first thoughts are about completing their mission safely.

[00:13:23] [SPEAKER_00]: They are both highly experienced astronauts with previous long duration space station experience.

[00:13:30] [SPEAKER_00]: But right now NASA is dealing with a ripple effect with more astronauts than expected on

[00:13:34] [SPEAKER_00]: the space station. More people means more consumables like food and clothing that

[00:13:39] [SPEAKER_00]: are required. The space station has supported a large crew for a lot short periods in the past,

[00:13:45] [SPEAKER_00]: but with nine crew members already on board, the systems have to work harder to purify,

[00:13:50] [SPEAKER_00]: recycle drinking water, generate oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from their atmosphere.

[00:13:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Wilmore and Williams are also consuming food and they didn't arrive with the clothes

[00:14:01] [SPEAKER_00]: and other personal supplies they needed for an eighth month stay. So NASA has already

[00:14:07] [SPEAKER_00]: started increasing those deliveries on cargo ships. It's understood that human space flight is

[00:14:13] [SPEAKER_00]: excruciatingly hard and relentlessly unforgiving. A million things must go right to have a

[00:14:19] [SPEAKER_00]: successful mission. It's impossible to fully understand the performance of systems in

[00:14:24] [SPEAKER_00]: microgravity environments until they are tested in space. NASA has had its numerous

[00:14:29] [SPEAKER_00]: failures and near misses in the quest to put Americans on the moon. They lost the Apollo

[00:14:34] [SPEAKER_00]: one crew in a fire during a pre-flight test. They launched the first space shuttle in 1981

[00:14:40] [SPEAKER_00]: and dealt with problems throughout that program's 30 year life, including the terrible losses

[00:14:44] [SPEAKER_00]: of Challenger and Columbia. After having no other US options for over 30 years,

[00:14:52] [SPEAKER_00]: three different human spacecraft programs are now underway. In addition to the SpaceX Crew

[00:14:57] [SPEAKER_00]: and Boeing Starliner, NASA's Orion spacecraft for the Artemis-2 mission is planned to fly four

[00:15:05] [SPEAKER_00]: astronauts around the moon in the next couple of years. These programs have had setbacks

[00:15:10] [SPEAKER_00]: and bumps along the way and there will be more. But there is excitement in the air. There

[00:15:16] [SPEAKER_00]: hasn't been this kind of excitement since Apollo put men on the moon.

[00:15:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Now moving on to the big story this week, which is of course SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission,

[00:15:39] [SPEAKER_00]: which made history when the crew conducted the first spacewalk by non-government astronauts

[00:15:45] [SPEAKER_00]: and it splashed down off the coast of Florida early on Sunday. It's landed in the ocean

[00:15:51] [SPEAKER_00]: and a webcast of the splashdown showed with a recovery team deploying in the pre-dawn

[00:15:57] [SPEAKER_00]: darkness to retrieve the capsule and crew. Form member team led by fintech billionaire Jared

[00:16:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Isaacman launched Tuesday from Kennedy Space Center quickly journeying deeper into the cosmos

[00:16:09] [SPEAKER_00]: than any humans in the past half century as they ventured into the dangerous Van Allen

[00:16:15] [SPEAKER_00]: radiation belt. They reached a peak altitude of 870 miles, that's 1400 kilometers for

[00:16:21] [SPEAKER_00]: the rest of us, more than three times higher than the International Space Station and the

[00:16:26] [SPEAKER_00]: furthest humans had ever traveled from Earth since the Apollo missions. Then on Thursday

[00:16:32] [SPEAKER_00]: with their Dragon spacecraft orbit brought down to 434 miles Isaacman swung over the hatch

[00:16:39] [SPEAKER_00]: and climbed out into the void gripping a structure called Skywalker, of course,

[00:16:45] [SPEAKER_00]: as the breathtaking view of Earth unfolded before him. SpaceX back home, we have a lot of work to do

[00:16:53] [SPEAKER_00]: but from here Earth sure looks like a perfect world he told mission control in Hawthorne,

[00:17:00] [SPEAKER_00]: California where teams erupted into applause. He went back inside after a few minutes and

[00:17:06] [SPEAKER_00]: was replaced by second astronaut SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis who like Isaacman performed a

[00:17:12] [SPEAKER_00]: series of mobility tests on SpaceX's sleek next generation suits and I reckon those suits looked

[00:17:18] [SPEAKER_00]: fantastic. Since Dragon doesn't have an airlock the entire crew were exposed to the vacuum of space

[00:17:25] [SPEAKER_00]: mission pilot Scott Petit and SpaceX engineer Anna Menon remained strapped in throughout as they

[00:17:34] [SPEAKER_00]: monitored vital support systems, I know what I would have been doing right then it marked a

[00:17:39] [SPEAKER_00]: giant leap forward for the commercial space industry and NASA chief Bill Nelson as well as

[00:17:46] [SPEAKER_00]: other another triumphant achievement for SpaceX. Though the company was only founded in 2002 it

[00:17:53] [SPEAKER_00]: has outpaced its legacy competitors thanks to in large part to founder Elon Musk's vast fortune

[00:17:59] [SPEAKER_00]: and zeal to begin colonizing Mars since completing their extravehicular activity the

[00:18:05] [SPEAKER_00]: continued to carry out roughly 40 science experiments for example inserting endoscopic

[00:18:11] [SPEAKER_00]: cameras through their noses and into their throats to image their airways and better understand

[00:18:16] [SPEAKER_00]: the impact of long duration space missions on human health. Fantastic they also demonstrated

[00:18:23] [SPEAKER_00]: connectivity with SpaceX's Starlink internet satellite constellation by sending back to

[00:18:28] [SPEAKER_00]: ground control a high resolution video of Gillis playing race theme by Star Wars composer

[00:18:34] [SPEAKER_00]: John Williams on the violin Polaris Dawn is the first of three missions under the Polaris program

[00:18:40] [SPEAKER_00]: a collaboration between Isaacman and SpaceX financial terms of the partnership remained under

[00:18:47] [SPEAKER_00]: wraps but Isaacman is the 41 year old founder and CEO of shift for payments reportedly poured

[00:18:54] [SPEAKER_00]: 200 million of his own money into lending the 2021 all civilian SpaceX inspiration

[00:19:00] [SPEAKER_00]: for orbital mission the final Polaris mission aims to be the first crude flight of SpaceX's

[00:19:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Starship a prototype next generation rocket that is key to Musk's interplanetary ambitions

[00:19:18] [SPEAKER_00]: okay so at the top of the episode you heard Hallie and I talking about David Bowie

[00:19:24] [SPEAKER_00]: and the fabulous spiders from Mars well so what's it all about scientists have recreated a geologic

[00:19:33] [SPEAKER_00]: feature found on Mars and it was difficult to do since discovering them in 2003 via images from

[00:19:39] [SPEAKER_00]: orbit as scientists have marveled that the spider like shapes crawled sprawled I was going to say

[00:19:45] [SPEAKER_00]: crawling sprawled across the southern hemisphere of Mars no one's entirely sure how these geologic

[00:19:51] [SPEAKER_00]: features were created each branch formation can stretch more than half a mile or a kilometer

[00:19:57] [SPEAKER_00]: from end to end and include hundreds of spindly legs called arachniform terrain these

[00:20:03] [SPEAKER_00]: features are often found in clusters giving the surface a wrinkled appearance

[00:20:08] [SPEAKER_00]: the the leading theory is that the spiders are created by processes involving

[00:20:14] [SPEAKER_00]: carbon dioxide ice which doesn't occur naturally on earth thanks to experiments

[00:20:18] [SPEAKER_00]: detailed in a new paper published in the planetary science journal scientists have for the first time

[00:20:24] [SPEAKER_00]: recreated those formation processes in simulated marshal temperatures and air pressure the spiders

[00:20:30] [SPEAKER_00]: are strange beautiful geological features in their own rights said Lauren McEwen of

[00:20:36] [SPEAKER_00]: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California these experiments she says will

[00:20:41] [SPEAKER_00]: help us tune our models for how they form the study confirms several formation processes

[00:20:47] [SPEAKER_00]: described by what is called the kypha model sunlight heats the soil when it shines through

[00:20:53] [SPEAKER_00]: transparent slabs of carbon dioxide ice that build up on the Martian surface each winter

[00:20:59] [SPEAKER_00]: being darker than the ice above it the soil absorbs the heat and causes the ice as close

[00:21:05] [SPEAKER_00]: ice closest to it to turn directly into carbon dioxide gas without turning liquid first in

[00:21:12] [SPEAKER_00]: a process called sublimation the same process that sends clouds of smoke billowing up from dry ice

[00:21:19] [SPEAKER_00]: as the gas builds up in pressure the Martian ice cracks allowing the gas to escape and as it

[00:21:25] [SPEAKER_00]: seeps upwards the gas takes with it a stream of dark dust and sand from the soil that lands on

[00:21:32] [SPEAKER_00]: the surface of the ice when winter turns to spring the remaining ice sublimates according to the

[00:21:38] [SPEAKER_00]: theory the spider like scars from those small eruptions are what's left behind for McEwen and

[00:21:44] [SPEAKER_00]: her co-authors the hardest part of conducting these experiments was recreating the conditions found on

[00:21:50] [SPEAKER_00]: the Martian polar surface extremely low air pressure and temperatures as low as minus

[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_00]: 301 degrees Fahrenheit that's minus 185 degrees Celsius to do that McEwen used liquid nitrogen

[00:22:04] [SPEAKER_00]: cooled test chamber at JPL a dirty under vacuum simulation test bed for icy environments and

[00:22:12] [SPEAKER_00]: they call that dusty I love their acrimons I love dusty she says it's historic McEwen said noting

[00:22:19] [SPEAKER_00]: that the wine-barrelled sized chamber was used as a test prototype for a rasping tool designed for

[00:22:27] [SPEAKER_00]: NASA's Mars Phoenix lander the tool was used to break water ice which the spacecraft scooped

[00:22:33] [SPEAKER_00]: and analyzed near the planet's planet's north pole for this experiment the researchers chilled

[00:22:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Martian soil simulant in a container submerged with liquid nitrogen bath they placed it in the

[00:22:46] [SPEAKER_00]: dusty chamber where the air pressure was reduced to be similar to that of Mars's southern hemisphere

[00:22:53] [SPEAKER_00]: carbon dioxide gas then flowed into the chamber and condensed from gas to ice over the course

[00:22:59] [SPEAKER_00]: of three to five hours it took many tries before McEwen just found the right conditions

[00:23:04] [SPEAKER_00]: for the ice to become thick and translucent enough for the experiments to work once they got the ice

[00:23:10] [SPEAKER_00]: with the right properties they placed a heater inside the chamber below the simulant

[00:23:15] [SPEAKER_00]: to warm it up and crack the ice McEwen was ecstatic when she finally saw a plume of carbon

[00:23:20] [SPEAKER_00]: dioxide gas erupting from erupting from within the powdery simulant dark plumes opened holes

[00:23:26] [SPEAKER_00]: in the simulant as they streamed out spewing simulant for as long as 10 minutes before all

[00:23:32] [SPEAKER_00]: the pressurized gas was expelled there are still many questions about the spiders that

[00:23:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Carby answered in a lab why have they formed in some places but not others since they appear to

[00:23:43] [SPEAKER_00]: result from seasonal changes that are still occurring why don't they seem to be growing

[00:23:48] [SPEAKER_00]: in number or in size over time it's possible that they may be left over from long ago when

[00:23:54] [SPEAKER_00]: the climate was different on Mars and could provide answers to the planet's past but for the time being

[00:24:00] [SPEAKER_00]: lab experiments will be as close to the spiders as scientists can get both the curiosity and

[00:24:06] [SPEAKER_00]: perseverance rovers are exploring the red planet far from the southern hemisphere which is where

[00:24:11] [SPEAKER_00]: these formations actually appear and where no spacecraft has ever landed and just to give

[00:24:17] [SPEAKER_00]: you an idea how tough things are up there the phoenix mission which landed in the northern

[00:24:22] [SPEAKER_00]: hemisphere lasted only a few months before succumbing to the intense polar cold and limited

[00:24:28] [SPEAKER_00]: sunlight i got cold just uh just reading that story holy cow and that's all she wrote folks thanks

[00:24:44] [SPEAKER_00]: for sticking around with us today i really hope you enjoyed those tales of space space science

[00:24:49] [SPEAKER_03]: and astronomy and i hope you'll join us again next week for more astronomy daily but don't forget

[00:24:53] [SPEAKER_03]: charlie and anna will be bringing the show to you during the week so don't miss all the news

[00:24:57] [SPEAKER_00]: from the astronomy daily newsletter oh excellent hallie i second that emotion nice so we'll see you

[00:25:03] [SPEAKER_00]: all next week bye

[00:25:38] [SPEAKER_01]: and

[00:25:59] [SPEAKER_01]: totally groovy