September 2, 2025 • 23 mins
In this episode of SpaceTime, we explore the latest developments in space exploration, including the European Space Agency's Juice mission, NASA's Psyche spacecraft, and groundbreaking advancements in lunar resource utilization.
Juice Mission Back on Track
The European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, is set for a critical flyby of Venus after overcoming a communications anomaly that temporarily severed contact with Earth. Engineers successfully restored communication with the spacecraft, which is now on its way to study Jupiter's Galilean moons—Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa—believed to harbor subsurface oceans that may support extraterrestrial life. The flyby will assist Juice in gaining the necessary speed for its journey to Jupiter, scheduled for arrival in 2031.
Psyche Spacecraft Calibration
NASA's Psyche spacecraft, launched in 2023, has successfully calibrated its onboard cameras as it journeys toward the metal-rich asteroid of the same name. The spacecraft aims to unlock the secrets of planetary cores and will utilize its cameras to capture images of Psyche's surface when it arrives in 2029. The calibration process includes imaging Earth and Mars to ensure the instruments perform optimally for their scientific objectives.
Creating Resources from Moon Dust
In a significant breakthrough, scientists have developed a method to produce water, oxygen, and methane fuel using lunar regolith, sunlight, and carbon dioxide from astronauts' breath. This innovation could drastically reduce the cost of transporting supplies from Earth to the Moon, paving the way for sustainable lunar bases and expanded space exploration capabilities.
www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com
✍️ Episode References
European Space Agency
https://www.esa.int/
NASA
https://www.nasa.gov/
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/spacetime-space-astronomy--2458531/support.
Juice Mission Back on TrackPsyche Spacecraft CalibrationCreating Resources from Moon Dust
Juice Mission Back on Track
The European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, is set for a critical flyby of Venus after overcoming a communications anomaly that temporarily severed contact with Earth. Engineers successfully restored communication with the spacecraft, which is now on its way to study Jupiter's Galilean moons—Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa—believed to harbor subsurface oceans that may support extraterrestrial life. The flyby will assist Juice in gaining the necessary speed for its journey to Jupiter, scheduled for arrival in 2031.
Psyche Spacecraft Calibration
NASA's Psyche spacecraft, launched in 2023, has successfully calibrated its onboard cameras as it journeys toward the metal-rich asteroid of the same name. The spacecraft aims to unlock the secrets of planetary cores and will utilize its cameras to capture images of Psyche's surface when it arrives in 2029. The calibration process includes imaging Earth and Mars to ensure the instruments perform optimally for their scientific objectives.
Creating Resources from Moon Dust
In a significant breakthrough, scientists have developed a method to produce water, oxygen, and methane fuel using lunar regolith, sunlight, and carbon dioxide from astronauts' breath. This innovation could drastically reduce the cost of transporting supplies from Earth to the Moon, paving the way for sustainable lunar bases and expanded space exploration capabilities.
www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com
✍️ Episode References
European Space Agency
https://www.esa.int/
NASA
https://www.nasa.gov/
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/spacetime-space-astronomy--2458531/support.
Juice Mission Back on TrackPsyche Spacecraft CalibrationCreating Resources from Moon Dust
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Spacetime Series twenty eight, episode one hundred and six,
for broadcast on the third of September twenty twenty five.
Coming up on space Time, Europe's Deuce mission back on
track for its fly by a venus following earlier problems.
NASA's Psyche spacecraft calibrates its onboard cameras as it continues
on its mission to Jupiter, and scientists have developed a
(00:21):
way to use moondust to create water, oxygen, and fuel.
All that and more coming up on space Time.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome to space Time with Stuart Gary.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
The European Space Agency's Jupiter Icymons Explorer spacecraft Juice is
still on track for its gravity assisted close fly by
a venus following a successful resolution of spacecraft canmunications anomaly
which temporarily severed all contact with the Earth.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Juice is on its.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Way to orbit and stated the three Galilean ice moons
of Jupiter, Gennymeede, Callisto, and Europa. These funituary mass moons
are being targeted because they're thought to have significant bodies
of liquid water beneath their frozen surfaces, and that could
make them potentially habitable for extraterrestrial life. The spacecraft's anomaly
issue first emerged during a routine ground station passed back
(01:27):
in July. It temporarily disrupted Juice's ability to transmit information
about itself and status back to Earth. Mission managers at
ester's European Space Operations Center in Dumbstadt, Germany worked with
Juices manufacturers at Airbus to troubleshoot the problem and successfully
restore communications in time to prepare for the upcoming planetary
(01:47):
encounter with Venus. The normally began when eas's deep space
communications antenna in Spain failed to establish contact with the
spacecraft at the expected time, and attempts to re establish
contact with the space craft using ace's new NAUSEA station
near Perth also failed, confirming it was an issue with
a spacecraft rather than with the ground stations. With no
(02:08):
signal and no telemetry, mission managers feed Juice might have
entered survival mode, a sort of last resort configuration triggered
by modible onboard systems failures, now in such a state
that spacecraft would spin slowly swooping across Earth once every hour. However,
no such intermittent signal was detected due to spacecraft operations
(02:29):
manager Angela Dietes says losing contact with the spacecraft is
one of the most serious scenarios you can face. With
no telemetry, it's much more difficult to diagnose and resolve
the root cause of an issue. Initially, attention turned to
the communications subsystem. Engineers suspected either a misalignment of Juice's
medium gain antenna or a failure in the signal transmitter
(02:51):
or amplifier, so they considered two recovery strategies. Waiting for
the next automatic spacecraft reset in forty days time, or
sending commands blind into space in the direction that Juice
should be at, hoping that they'll be received by one
of the back up low gain antennas on the spacecraft.
Thing is wedding two weeks for a reset would have
meant delaying some important preparations for the Venus flyby. On
(03:15):
the other hand, blind commanding was a challenge. Juice was
around two hudred million kilometers from Earth and located on
the other side of the Sun. It took each attempt
at rescue signal eleven minutes to reach the spacecraft, and
mission managers then had to wait another eleven minutes to
determine if they'd been successful.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Six attempts to.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Steer the medium game antenna back towards the Earth were
all unsuccessful, but recovery efforts continued, lasting almost twenty hours
and focused on manually powering up Juic's on board communication systems.
But eventually a command did succeed in reaching Juice and
triggering a response. That command activated the signal amplifier, which
boosts the strength of the signal which Juce sends towards
(03:56):
the Earth. Once contact had been re established, Juice was
found to be in excellent condition, no systems had failed,
and all telemetry was nominal. It seems the root cause
of the problem was a software timing glitch. See The
software function that switches the signal applifier on and off
relies on an internal timer, and this timer is constantly
(04:17):
counting up and restarting from zero once every sixteen months. Now,
if the function happens to be using the timer at
the exact moment it restarts, then the applifier remains switched
off and use the signal is too weak to be
detected from Earth. This is now developing workarounds to ensure
it doesn't happen again. With the anomaly behind them. Juice
mission managers are now turning their attention to the Venus flyby,
(04:39):
which is the second of four plane gravity assists for
the spacecraft.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Juice has been.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Designed for the cold, dark environment of Jupiter, but it
still needs to cope with the intense heat of the
environment near Venus, so in order to protect its sensitive components,
spacecraft uses its main high gain antenna as a sort
of thermal shield. Due to thermal constraints, it's remote sensing
instruments can't be active during the flyby. The thing is
(05:04):
to have gone directly to Jupiter. Without the flybys meant
Juice would have needed to leave the Earth with a
much higher velocity around eleven kilometas per second. However, at
almost six thousand kilograms, Juice is one of the heaviest
interplanetary spacecraft ever launched, and with such a massive payload,
it's around five launch vehicle could only provide an escape
velocity of around two and a half kilometas per second,
(05:26):
and so that's why the spacecraft's using four gravity assist
maneuvers in order to pick up the rest of the
speed needed. Juice will use the gravity of Venus to
bend its orbit around the Sun and gain speed relative
to the Earth without using fuel. The Venus flyby will
give Juice a significant boost, and when at next encounters
Earth in September twenty twenty six, the spacecraft will have
(05:48):
reached the required Jupiter transfer velocity of eleven kilometas per second,
but Jupiter won't be in the right place to send
Juice out towards it just yet, so Juice will use
the flyby of Earth in twenty twenty six the further
fine tune its trajectory. Then, after one more orbit around
the Sun, the spacecraft will return to Earth for a
final fly by January twenty twenty nine, and this will
(06:12):
place Jupiter in the right transfer trajectory for intercepting Jupiter
in July twenty thirty one. This space time still to come,
NASA's Psyche spacecraft calibrates its onboard cameras and using moondust
to create water, oxygen, and fuel on the lunar surface.
All that and more still to come on space time.
(06:49):
NASAs Psyche spacecraft has successfully calibrated its onboard cameras as
it continues on its journey to the metal rich asteroid,
which shares its name. Psyche, was launched back on octob
Over the thirteenth, twenty twenty three. Its mission is to
explore the origins of planetary cause by orbiting and studying
the metallic asteroid sixteen Psyche. The spacecraft will arrive at
(07:11):
Psyche in twenty twenty nine. The asteroid is around two
hundred and fifty three kilometers in diameter and contains about
one percent of the total mass of the main asteroid
built between Mars and Jupiter. Several possible origins have been
proposed for Psyche. The earliest is that the asteroid is
an exposed metallic core resulting from a collision that stripped
(07:32):
away the crust and matal of what was originally a
much larger, differentiated parent body some five hundred kilometers in diameter. However,
this idea is fallen out of favor of late because
mass and density estimates are inconsistent with the idea of
a remnant core. The second hypothesis is that Psyche was
disrupted and gravitationally reaccreted into a mix of metal and silicates. Now,
(07:55):
if this is the case, it may well be a
candidate for the parent body of a class of stony
eye iron meteorites. A third and now most favorite hypothesis
is that Psyche could be a differentiated object, just like
the dwarf Planets series and the asteroid Vesta, which are
also both located in the main asteroid belt. But Psyche
experienced a sort of iron volcanism also known as ferro
(08:16):
volcanism while it was still cooling. Now, if that's true,
the model predicts that metal would be highly enriched only
in those regions of the asteroid containing relic volcanic centers,
and this hypothesis is being supported by radar observations. As
for the Psyche probe, will it look back at the
Earth and Moon silhouetted against the velvet blackness of space,
(08:38):
capturing some iconic images from two hundred and ninety million
kilometers away. During one of the probe's science instrument checkouts
on July the twentieth and twenty third, the spacecraft's twin
cameras captured modible, long exposure images of the two bodies,
which appear as little more than dots sparkling with reflected
sunlight in the constellation areas. The Multi Spectral Imager instrument
(09:00):
comprises a pair of identical cameras equipped with filters and
telescopic lenses photograph the asteroid Psyche's surface in different wavelengths
of light. You see the color and shape of a
planetary body. Spectra can reveal details about its composition. When
choosing targets for imagere testing calibration, scientists look for bodies
that shine with reflected sunlight, just as the asteroid Psyche does.
(09:23):
They also look for objects that have a spectrum that
they be familiar with, so they can compare previous telescopic
or spacecraft data from those objects with what Psyche's instruments
are observing. Earlier this year, Psyche turned its lenses towards
Stupiter and Mars for calibration. Each has a spectrum more
reddish than the somewhat bluer tones of Earth. Those checkouts
(09:43):
also proved successful, but the checkouts will continue because they
need to determine whether the image's performance is changing, so
scientists use them to compare data from different tests. That way,
when the spacecraft finally does slip into orbit around Psyche,
scientists can be sure that the instrument.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Caves just as expected.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Psyche Imager instrument lead Jim Bell from Arizona State University
says mission managers may also decide to emit Satin and
the asteroid Vesta in order to continue to test the images. Now,
the imager wasn't the only instrument they got a successful checkout.
Scientists also put the spacecraft in magnetometer and it's gamma
ray neutron spectrometer through a series of tests, something they
(10:23):
do every six months. Psyche's next big milestone will be
the flyby of the red planet Mars that sledded for
May twenty twenty six. There it'll use the planet to
gravity as a slingshot to help fling the spacecraft towards
the asteroids Psyche and that all mark Psyche's first of
two planned loops around the Solar System.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
This report from Massa TV.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
I remember two Voyager missions launched in nineteen seventy seven.
Shortly after launch they turned around. They got the Earth
and the Moon in the same picture. I've just been
fascinated with imaging from deep space missions ever since and
been very fortunate to be able to create some of
those pictures.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
Psyche is a what's called an M class asteroid in
the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
It's a sixteenth asteroid discovered back in the nineteenth century,
and we think that maybe it's the remnants of a
planetary core.
Speaker 6 (11:14):
All of the missions I've worked on had some sort
of an imaging device.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Isn't that the.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
First question that everyone asks?
Speaker 3 (11:21):
What does it look like?
Speaker 5 (11:22):
And so I've been dreaming about this object now for
over a decade, and by then it'll be two decades.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
I've been dreaming about this object, and then to see
what it really looks like.
Speaker 6 (11:32):
What's more exciting than that?
Speaker 5 (11:35):
For Psyche, we know it it's going to be a
relatively dark object, so we have to have an instrument
that can see in that sensitivity with the dark surface
and still be able to resolve the features that we're
looking at.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
The cameras on Psyche we call them the Psyche Multi
Spectral imagers. They're a pair of identical cameras. They're a
pair for redundancy. We have a problem with one, we've
got the other.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
One, and with stereo we can build what's called a
digital terrain model the surface of Psyche, which we're very
interested in knowing at a high resolution. Using the different filters,
we actually can infer geochemistry of the surface. We can
also associate it with the gamma ray and neutrons spectrometry
data that to sort of really drill down into the
(12:24):
composition of the asteroid.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
We'll also take pictures farther out into the infrared where
these where these sensors are still sensitive, and where we
can get a little bit more information about the kinds
of rocks and minerals on the surface. One of the
other functions besides science for the cameras is that they
are are navigation cameras as well. This technique that was
invented back in the seventies called optical navigation take pictures
(12:49):
of stars and starfields, kind of like looking at a
sextent on a ship hundreds of years ago. The same
process is used in modern space missions as well.
Speaker 5 (12:58):
The instruments actually being built by a company called mail
In Spaceline Systems. They built the ro camera, they built
mass CAN, they built mass CAMZ, They've built numerous other
cameras that are flown to Mars, and they do the
final fabrication and quality control before then delivering that instrument
to JPL.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
No deep space camera system like this has ever been built. However,
the components that go into the cameras all have a
lot of experience in space a lot of what NASA
calls heritage.
Speaker 6 (13:30):
When we get to Psyche, we'll go into orbit. The
imager will primarily work during orbits A and B to
get the images to characterize the surface features, to make
the topographic map, and to get the color images which
will hint it the composition.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Standard plan is it.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
We're pointed straight down and we're snapping pictures as the
asteroid rotates underneath them.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
Usually the most important image that everybody gets excited is
that first image that we acquire that you get it back.
Speaker 4 (14:01):
We are super committed on the Psyche project, from PI
Linda Elkinstanan all the way down to sharing this experience
with the public. I think the only thing we know,
and that's based on NASA's fifty sixty year experience now,
is it is not going to look like what we
think it's going to look like, and it's going to
(14:23):
be really interesting.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Whatever we find.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
And in that report from MASSA TV, we heard from
Psyche Imager instrument lead Jim Bill, Psyche Principal Investigator Lindy Elkins,
and Psyche Science Data Center Manager Ernest Cisneros, all from
Arizona State University. This is space time still to come
using moondust to create water, oxygen and fuel on the
(14:46):
lunar surface, and later in the Science report and you
study warns that years of repeated exposure to heat waves
could accelerate aging. All that and more still to come
on space time, scientists to find a way to create water,
(15:15):
oxygen and methane fuel using moondust, astronauts, breadth, and sunlight.
Transporting supplies from Earth to any future lunar base will
be expensive because the greater the massive cargo on a spacecraft,
the heart of the rocket has to work in order
to launch into space. So being able to produce water,
oxygen and methane on the Moon would save a lot
of money and this could open up new space science possibilities. However,
(15:39):
a report in the journal Dull points out that photothermal
technology has only ever been tested in the lab. It
will be far more complicated to operate in the lunar environment,
where they need to contend with extreme temperature changes as
well as radiation and low gravity.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
This is space time.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
And time out of take another look at some of
the other stories making use in science this week.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
With a Science report, A new.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Study warns that rising levels of plastic waste are now
breaking down in every part of Earth's land, sea, and
air environment, and that's leading to a proliferation of micro
and nanoplastic pollution, which is posing a serious risk all
the planet's life forms. The findings by scientists at Flinders
University show that chemical leakage is adding urgency to calls
(16:38):
for a robust world plastics treaty. The authors have compiled
the scientific policy submission for the United Nations for a
new treaty in order to manage plastic production and its waste.
A new study warns that years of repeated exposure to
heat waves could be accelerating the aging process. The findings,
reported in the journal Nature Climate Change, show the problem
(17:00):
was especially significant for manual workers, rural residents, and people
from communities with fewer air conditioners. The author's analyzed data
from twenty four thousand, nine hundred and twenty two adults
with an average biological age of forty six point three
years who were living in Taiwan, and they then assessed
how heat waves were influencing aging in the group. They
(17:21):
found that repeated exposure to heat waves increased average biological age.
The studies showed that while participants appeared to adapt to
heat wave conditions over a fifteen year period, the harmful
health effects did not disappear. Canadian scientists say, oh like
robots called Luca that were originally given to twenty families
to help their children learn to read in twenty twenty
(17:43):
one didn't end up on the scrap heeap once the
mission was completed, but instead became, at least in some cases,
valued members of the family. A report in the journal
Frontiers in Robotics and Ai examined what happened to nineteen
of those families in twenty twenty five found that eighteen
still had Luca, many were still charging it, and one
(18:04):
chart even referred to the reading bot as her little brother.
Some parents even admitted keeping Luca more for their own
nostalgia than for their kids. The authors say their study
shows that even a simple robot can become part of
a family's symbolic life. It means designers and researchers will
need to think of a robot's lifespan not just in
terms of months, but in years. Google's long away to
(18:28):
Pixel ten has finally hit the stores, and its new
AI capabilities are the headline feature with the details We're
joined by technology editor alex O Harrol Royd from Tech
Advice Start Life.
Speaker 7 (18:39):
Google has launched new phones, the tenth generation of its
Pixel phones, this fourth watch, it's third fold and especially
you've got faster processes, better cameras, more durable casings. But
the real star of the show is the improved capabilities.
Let me tell you about a couple of features. One
is a camera coach. So you're taking a photograph of something,
but you know you're not a professional photographer, and wouldn't
(19:01):
it be nice if your phone could say, ask the
subject to move a little bit to the riot or
to the left, or how about you move in a
bit closer, and you've got AI coaching you. But that's
just one aspect, another aspect that is unique to the
Android world. So not even Samsung and other providers have
it yet, not even older pixels, and certainly Apple, which
made promises about this sort of thing back at Worldwide
(19:22):
develop A conference last year, they haven't been able to
deliver this either. Google calls this magic queue, and this
is their AI assistant that is going into overdrive to
bring you information right when you need it. So an example,
let's say that you have to change a booking for
a hotel or a restaurant, and you're in the phone
with that hotel or the restaurant. Now, wouldn't it be
nice if the details of the booking would appear right
(19:43):
on the screen as you're on the phone. What about
when a friend is asking you, what's the address of
the venue that we're going to on the weekend? Now
that addresses in your messages or in your email. Wouldn't
it be nice if that information could just be surfaced
right then and there, and then you can hit the
button and it will be said. So there's lots of
little ways that your phone can, through the power of
AI and all the interconnected apps, surface helpful information to
(20:04):
you at the exact moment you need it, at the moment.
It's an exclusive. I haven't said when all the pixels
will get it. They haven't said when Sam Sung and
others will get it, but clearly at some point they will.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Well that's Google side.
Speaker 7 (20:15):
What about Apple, Yes, Well, they normally launch phones at
this time of the year as well. So what we
have here is the iPhone seventeen range, which might be
called the iPhone twenty six. We don't know yet. We
do know that the new iPhones and iPads and Apple
Watches and Max and all the previous ones that are
compatible at the moment with the newest operating system will
get iOS and iPad WES twenty six, which has that glassy,
(20:38):
see through transparent look, which is preparing us for a
world when all wearing augmented reality glasses and we do
not want to have giant interface elements blocking our view.
Even if you're looking at something, you still and be
able to see behind it, and then you get rid
of those interface elements so that you're looking back at
the real world. And I've been using a bit of
version of iOS twenty six on iPhone now for some
(21:01):
months and it's fantastic. And I've shown this to people
and they're going, oh, what phone is that They can
see it's an iPhone, but they don't recognize interface. And
when I tell them it's the beta version of YOS
twenty six, they are excited to try it. So Apple
will know that it have some surprises. We're supposed to
have big redesigns for the iPhone and then come IPHA,
the big tech show in Germany that's on every year,
(21:21):
and there's going to be big announcements from Samsung. Will
have more to say about those in the next couple
of weeks. But it's smartphone launching season. We've had launches
from Samsung earlier in the last couple of months with
their folding phones. It's going to be new devices from Samsung.
It's a template. There's new devices from Google available in
stores right now, and of course the big Daddy Apple
with their launches September nine in the US.
Speaker 8 (21:42):
Alexa Hawra Royce, Take Advice, Start Life, and that's.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
The show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday
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(22:22):
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(22:43):
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Speaker 2 (22:54):
You've been listening to space Time with Stuart Gary. This
has been another quality podcast producttion from bytes dot com
This is Spacetime Series twenty eight, episode one hundred and six,
for broadcast on the third of September twenty twenty five.
Coming up on space Time, Europe's Deuce mission back on
track for its fly by a venus following earlier problems.
NASA's Psyche spacecraft calibrates its onboard cameras as it continues
on its mission to Jupiter, and scientists have developed a
(00:21):
way to use moondust to create water, oxygen, and fuel.
All that and more coming up on space Time.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome to space Time with Stuart Gary.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
The European Space Agency's Jupiter Icymons Explorer spacecraft Juice is
still on track for its gravity assisted close fly by
a venus following a successful resolution of spacecraft canmunications anomaly
which temporarily severed all contact with the Earth.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Juice is on its.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Way to orbit and stated the three Galilean ice moons
of Jupiter, Gennymeede, Callisto, and Europa. These funituary mass moons
are being targeted because they're thought to have significant bodies
of liquid water beneath their frozen surfaces, and that could
make them potentially habitable for extraterrestrial life. The spacecraft's anomaly
issue first emerged during a routine ground station passed back
(01:27):
in July. It temporarily disrupted Juice's ability to transmit information
about itself and status back to Earth. Mission managers at
ester's European Space Operations Center in Dumbstadt, Germany worked with
Juices manufacturers at Airbus to troubleshoot the problem and successfully
restore communications in time to prepare for the upcoming planetary
(01:47):
encounter with Venus. The normally began when eas's deep space
communications antenna in Spain failed to establish contact with the
spacecraft at the expected time, and attempts to re establish
contact with the space craft using ace's new NAUSEA station
near Perth also failed, confirming it was an issue with
a spacecraft rather than with the ground stations. With no
(02:08):
signal and no telemetry, mission managers feed Juice might have
entered survival mode, a sort of last resort configuration triggered
by modible onboard systems failures, now in such a state
that spacecraft would spin slowly swooping across Earth once every hour. However,
no such intermittent signal was detected due to spacecraft operations
(02:29):
manager Angela Dietes says losing contact with the spacecraft is
one of the most serious scenarios you can face. With
no telemetry, it's much more difficult to diagnose and resolve
the root cause of an issue. Initially, attention turned to
the communications subsystem. Engineers suspected either a misalignment of Juice's
medium gain antenna or a failure in the signal transmitter
(02:51):
or amplifier, so they considered two recovery strategies. Waiting for
the next automatic spacecraft reset in forty days time, or
sending commands blind into space in the direction that Juice
should be at, hoping that they'll be received by one
of the back up low gain antennas on the spacecraft.
Thing is wedding two weeks for a reset would have
meant delaying some important preparations for the Venus flyby. On
(03:15):
the other hand, blind commanding was a challenge. Juice was
around two hudred million kilometers from Earth and located on
the other side of the Sun. It took each attempt
at rescue signal eleven minutes to reach the spacecraft, and
mission managers then had to wait another eleven minutes to
determine if they'd been successful.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Six attempts to.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Steer the medium game antenna back towards the Earth were
all unsuccessful, but recovery efforts continued, lasting almost twenty hours
and focused on manually powering up Juic's on board communication systems.
But eventually a command did succeed in reaching Juice and
triggering a response. That command activated the signal amplifier, which
boosts the strength of the signal which Juce sends towards
(03:56):
the Earth. Once contact had been re established, Juice was
found to be in excellent condition, no systems had failed,
and all telemetry was nominal. It seems the root cause
of the problem was a software timing glitch. See The
software function that switches the signal applifier on and off
relies on an internal timer, and this timer is constantly
(04:17):
counting up and restarting from zero once every sixteen months. Now,
if the function happens to be using the timer at
the exact moment it restarts, then the applifier remains switched
off and use the signal is too weak to be
detected from Earth. This is now developing workarounds to ensure
it doesn't happen again. With the anomaly behind them. Juice
mission managers are now turning their attention to the Venus flyby,
(04:39):
which is the second of four plane gravity assists for
the spacecraft.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Juice has been.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Designed for the cold, dark environment of Jupiter, but it
still needs to cope with the intense heat of the
environment near Venus, so in order to protect its sensitive components,
spacecraft uses its main high gain antenna as a sort
of thermal shield. Due to thermal constraints, it's remote sensing
instruments can't be active during the flyby. The thing is
(05:04):
to have gone directly to Jupiter. Without the flybys meant
Juice would have needed to leave the Earth with a
much higher velocity around eleven kilometas per second. However, at
almost six thousand kilograms, Juice is one of the heaviest
interplanetary spacecraft ever launched, and with such a massive payload,
it's around five launch vehicle could only provide an escape
velocity of around two and a half kilometas per second,
(05:26):
and so that's why the spacecraft's using four gravity assist
maneuvers in order to pick up the rest of the
speed needed. Juice will use the gravity of Venus to
bend its orbit around the Sun and gain speed relative
to the Earth without using fuel. The Venus flyby will
give Juice a significant boost, and when at next encounters
Earth in September twenty twenty six, the spacecraft will have
(05:48):
reached the required Jupiter transfer velocity of eleven kilometas per second,
but Jupiter won't be in the right place to send
Juice out towards it just yet, so Juice will use
the flyby of Earth in twenty twenty six the further
fine tune its trajectory. Then, after one more orbit around
the Sun, the spacecraft will return to Earth for a
final fly by January twenty twenty nine, and this will
(06:12):
place Jupiter in the right transfer trajectory for intercepting Jupiter
in July twenty thirty one. This space time still to come,
NASA's Psyche spacecraft calibrates its onboard cameras and using moondust
to create water, oxygen, and fuel on the lunar surface.
All that and more still to come on space time.
(06:49):
NASAs Psyche spacecraft has successfully calibrated its onboard cameras as
it continues on its journey to the metal rich asteroid,
which shares its name. Psyche, was launched back on octob
Over the thirteenth, twenty twenty three. Its mission is to
explore the origins of planetary cause by orbiting and studying
the metallic asteroid sixteen Psyche. The spacecraft will arrive at
(07:11):
Psyche in twenty twenty nine. The asteroid is around two
hundred and fifty three kilometers in diameter and contains about
one percent of the total mass of the main asteroid
built between Mars and Jupiter. Several possible origins have been
proposed for Psyche. The earliest is that the asteroid is
an exposed metallic core resulting from a collision that stripped
(07:32):
away the crust and matal of what was originally a
much larger, differentiated parent body some five hundred kilometers in diameter. However,
this idea is fallen out of favor of late because
mass and density estimates are inconsistent with the idea of
a remnant core. The second hypothesis is that Psyche was
disrupted and gravitationally reaccreted into a mix of metal and silicates. Now,
(07:55):
if this is the case, it may well be a
candidate for the parent body of a class of stony
eye iron meteorites. A third and now most favorite hypothesis
is that Psyche could be a differentiated object, just like
the dwarf Planets series and the asteroid Vesta, which are
also both located in the main asteroid belt. But Psyche
experienced a sort of iron volcanism also known as ferro
(08:16):
volcanism while it was still cooling. Now, if that's true,
the model predicts that metal would be highly enriched only
in those regions of the asteroid containing relic volcanic centers,
and this hypothesis is being supported by radar observations. As
for the Psyche probe, will it look back at the
Earth and Moon silhouetted against the velvet blackness of space,
(08:38):
capturing some iconic images from two hundred and ninety million
kilometers away. During one of the probe's science instrument checkouts
on July the twentieth and twenty third, the spacecraft's twin
cameras captured modible, long exposure images of the two bodies,
which appear as little more than dots sparkling with reflected
sunlight in the constellation areas. The Multi Spectral Imager instrument
(09:00):
comprises a pair of identical cameras equipped with filters and
telescopic lenses photograph the asteroid Psyche's surface in different wavelengths
of light. You see the color and shape of a
planetary body. Spectra can reveal details about its composition. When
choosing targets for imagere testing calibration, scientists look for bodies
that shine with reflected sunlight, just as the asteroid Psyche does.
(09:23):
They also look for objects that have a spectrum that
they be familiar with, so they can compare previous telescopic
or spacecraft data from those objects with what Psyche's instruments
are observing. Earlier this year, Psyche turned its lenses towards
Stupiter and Mars for calibration. Each has a spectrum more
reddish than the somewhat bluer tones of Earth. Those checkouts
(09:43):
also proved successful, but the checkouts will continue because they
need to determine whether the image's performance is changing, so
scientists use them to compare data from different tests. That way,
when the spacecraft finally does slip into orbit around Psyche,
scientists can be sure that the instrument.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Caves just as expected.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Psyche Imager instrument lead Jim Bell from Arizona State University
says mission managers may also decide to emit Satin and
the asteroid Vesta in order to continue to test the images. Now,
the imager wasn't the only instrument they got a successful checkout.
Scientists also put the spacecraft in magnetometer and it's gamma
ray neutron spectrometer through a series of tests, something they
(10:23):
do every six months. Psyche's next big milestone will be
the flyby of the red planet Mars that sledded for
May twenty twenty six. There it'll use the planet to
gravity as a slingshot to help fling the spacecraft towards
the asteroids Psyche and that all mark Psyche's first of
two planned loops around the Solar System.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
This report from Massa TV.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
I remember two Voyager missions launched in nineteen seventy seven.
Shortly after launch they turned around. They got the Earth
and the Moon in the same picture. I've just been
fascinated with imaging from deep space missions ever since and
been very fortunate to be able to create some of
those pictures.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
Psyche is a what's called an M class asteroid in
the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
It's a sixteenth asteroid discovered back in the nineteenth century,
and we think that maybe it's the remnants of a
planetary core.
Speaker 6 (11:14):
All of the missions I've worked on had some sort
of an imaging device.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Isn't that the.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
First question that everyone asks?
Speaker 3 (11:21):
What does it look like?
Speaker 5 (11:22):
And so I've been dreaming about this object now for
over a decade, and by then it'll be two decades.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
I've been dreaming about this object, and then to see
what it really looks like.
Speaker 6 (11:32):
What's more exciting than that?
Speaker 5 (11:35):
For Psyche, we know it it's going to be a
relatively dark object, so we have to have an instrument
that can see in that sensitivity with the dark surface
and still be able to resolve the features that we're
looking at.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
The cameras on Psyche we call them the Psyche Multi
Spectral imagers. They're a pair of identical cameras. They're a
pair for redundancy. We have a problem with one, we've
got the other.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
One, and with stereo we can build what's called a
digital terrain model the surface of Psyche, which we're very
interested in knowing at a high resolution. Using the different filters,
we actually can infer geochemistry of the surface. We can
also associate it with the gamma ray and neutrons spectrometry
data that to sort of really drill down into the
(12:24):
composition of the asteroid.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
We'll also take pictures farther out into the infrared where
these where these sensors are still sensitive, and where we
can get a little bit more information about the kinds
of rocks and minerals on the surface. One of the
other functions besides science for the cameras is that they
are are navigation cameras as well. This technique that was
invented back in the seventies called optical navigation take pictures
(12:49):
of stars and starfields, kind of like looking at a
sextent on a ship hundreds of years ago. The same
process is used in modern space missions as well.
Speaker 5 (12:58):
The instruments actually being built by a company called mail
In Spaceline Systems. They built the ro camera, they built
mass CAN, they built mass CAMZ, They've built numerous other
cameras that are flown to Mars, and they do the
final fabrication and quality control before then delivering that instrument
to JPL.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
No deep space camera system like this has ever been built. However,
the components that go into the cameras all have a
lot of experience in space a lot of what NASA
calls heritage.
Speaker 6 (13:30):
When we get to Psyche, we'll go into orbit. The
imager will primarily work during orbits A and B to
get the images to characterize the surface features, to make
the topographic map, and to get the color images which
will hint it the composition.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Standard plan is it.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
We're pointed straight down and we're snapping pictures as the
asteroid rotates underneath them.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
Usually the most important image that everybody gets excited is
that first image that we acquire that you get it back.
Speaker 4 (14:01):
We are super committed on the Psyche project, from PI
Linda Elkinstanan all the way down to sharing this experience
with the public. I think the only thing we know,
and that's based on NASA's fifty sixty year experience now,
is it is not going to look like what we
think it's going to look like, and it's going to
(14:23):
be really interesting.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Whatever we find.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
And in that report from MASSA TV, we heard from
Psyche Imager instrument lead Jim Bill, Psyche Principal Investigator Lindy Elkins,
and Psyche Science Data Center Manager Ernest Cisneros, all from
Arizona State University. This is space time still to come
using moondust to create water, oxygen and fuel on the
(14:46):
lunar surface, and later in the Science report and you
study warns that years of repeated exposure to heat waves
could accelerate aging. All that and more still to come
on space time, scientists to find a way to create water,
(15:15):
oxygen and methane fuel using moondust, astronauts, breadth, and sunlight.
Transporting supplies from Earth to any future lunar base will
be expensive because the greater the massive cargo on a spacecraft,
the heart of the rocket has to work in order
to launch into space. So being able to produce water,
oxygen and methane on the Moon would save a lot
of money and this could open up new space science possibilities. However,
(15:39):
a report in the journal Dull points out that photothermal
technology has only ever been tested in the lab. It
will be far more complicated to operate in the lunar environment,
where they need to contend with extreme temperature changes as
well as radiation and low gravity.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
This is space time.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
And time out of take another look at some of
the other stories making use in science this week.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
With a Science report, A new.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Study warns that rising levels of plastic waste are now
breaking down in every part of Earth's land, sea, and
air environment, and that's leading to a proliferation of micro
and nanoplastic pollution, which is posing a serious risk all
the planet's life forms. The findings by scientists at Flinders
University show that chemical leakage is adding urgency to calls
(16:38):
for a robust world plastics treaty. The authors have compiled
the scientific policy submission for the United Nations for a
new treaty in order to manage plastic production and its waste.
A new study warns that years of repeated exposure to
heat waves could be accelerating the aging process. The findings,
reported in the journal Nature Climate Change, show the problem
(17:00):
was especially significant for manual workers, rural residents, and people
from communities with fewer air conditioners. The author's analyzed data
from twenty four thousand, nine hundred and twenty two adults
with an average biological age of forty six point three
years who were living in Taiwan, and they then assessed
how heat waves were influencing aging in the group. They
(17:21):
found that repeated exposure to heat waves increased average biological age.
The studies showed that while participants appeared to adapt to
heat wave conditions over a fifteen year period, the harmful
health effects did not disappear. Canadian scientists say, oh like
robots called Luca that were originally given to twenty families
to help their children learn to read in twenty twenty
(17:43):
one didn't end up on the scrap heeap once the
mission was completed, but instead became, at least in some cases,
valued members of the family. A report in the journal
Frontiers in Robotics and Ai examined what happened to nineteen
of those families in twenty twenty five found that eighteen
still had Luca, many were still charging it, and one
(18:04):
chart even referred to the reading bot as her little brother.
Some parents even admitted keeping Luca more for their own
nostalgia than for their kids. The authors say their study
shows that even a simple robot can become part of
a family's symbolic life. It means designers and researchers will
need to think of a robot's lifespan not just in
terms of months, but in years. Google's long away to
(18:28):
Pixel ten has finally hit the stores, and its new
AI capabilities are the headline feature with the details We're
joined by technology editor alex O Harrol Royd from Tech
Advice Start Life.
Speaker 7 (18:39):
Google has launched new phones, the tenth generation of its
Pixel phones, this fourth watch, it's third fold and especially
you've got faster processes, better cameras, more durable casings. But
the real star of the show is the improved capabilities.
Let me tell you about a couple of features. One
is a camera coach. So you're taking a photograph of something,
but you know you're not a professional photographer, and wouldn't
(19:01):
it be nice if your phone could say, ask the
subject to move a little bit to the riot or
to the left, or how about you move in a
bit closer, and you've got AI coaching you. But that's
just one aspect, another aspect that is unique to the
Android world. So not even Samsung and other providers have
it yet, not even older pixels, and certainly Apple, which
made promises about this sort of thing back at Worldwide
(19:22):
develop A conference last year, they haven't been able to
deliver this either. Google calls this magic queue, and this
is their AI assistant that is going into overdrive to
bring you information right when you need it. So an example,
let's say that you have to change a booking for
a hotel or a restaurant, and you're in the phone
with that hotel or the restaurant. Now, wouldn't it be
nice if the details of the booking would appear right
(19:43):
on the screen as you're on the phone. What about
when a friend is asking you, what's the address of
the venue that we're going to on the weekend? Now
that addresses in your messages or in your email. Wouldn't
it be nice if that information could just be surfaced
right then and there, and then you can hit the
button and it will be said. So there's lots of
little ways that your phone can, through the power of
AI and all the interconnected apps, surface helpful information to
(20:04):
you at the exact moment you need it, at the moment.
It's an exclusive. I haven't said when all the pixels
will get it. They haven't said when Sam Sung and
others will get it, but clearly at some point they will.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Well that's Google side.
Speaker 7 (20:15):
What about Apple, Yes, Well, they normally launch phones at
this time of the year as well. So what we
have here is the iPhone seventeen range, which might be
called the iPhone twenty six. We don't know yet. We
do know that the new iPhones and iPads and Apple
Watches and Max and all the previous ones that are
compatible at the moment with the newest operating system will
get iOS and iPad WES twenty six, which has that glassy,
(20:38):
see through transparent look, which is preparing us for a
world when all wearing augmented reality glasses and we do
not want to have giant interface elements blocking our view.
Even if you're looking at something, you still and be
able to see behind it, and then you get rid
of those interface elements so that you're looking back at
the real world. And I've been using a bit of
version of iOS twenty six on iPhone now for some
(21:01):
months and it's fantastic. And I've shown this to people
and they're going, oh, what phone is that They can
see it's an iPhone, but they don't recognize interface. And
when I tell them it's the beta version of YOS
twenty six, they are excited to try it. So Apple
will know that it have some surprises. We're supposed to
have big redesigns for the iPhone and then come IPHA,
the big tech show in Germany that's on every year,
(21:21):
and there's going to be big announcements from Samsung. Will
have more to say about those in the next couple
of weeks. But it's smartphone launching season. We've had launches
from Samsung earlier in the last couple of months with
their folding phones. It's going to be new devices from Samsung.
It's a template. There's new devices from Google available in
stores right now, and of course the big Daddy Apple
with their launches September nine in the US.
Speaker 8 (21:42):
Alexa Hawra Royce, Take Advice, Start Life, and that's.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
The show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday
and Friday through Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, Google podcast, pocker Casts, Spotify, Acast,
Amazon Music bytes dot Com, SoundCloud YouTube, your favorite podcast
download provider, and from space Time with Stuart Gary dot com.
(22:22):
Space Time's also broadcast through the National Science Foundation, on
Science Own Radio and on both iHeartRadio and tune In Radio.
And you can help to support our show by visiting
the Spacetime Store for a range of promotional merchandising goodies,
or by becoming a Spacetime Patron, which gives you access
to triple episode commercial free versions of the show, as
(22:43):
well as lots of burness audio content which doesn't go
to weir, access to our exclusive Facebook group, and other rewards.
Just go to space Time with Stuart Gary dot com
for full details.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
You've been listening to space Time with Stuart Gary. This
has been another quality podcast producttion from bytes dot com
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