September 1, 2025 • 33 mins
In this episode of SpaceTime, we delve into thrilling advancements in space exploration, including a remarkable test flight of SpaceX's Starship, groundbreaking insights into Mars, and a classified mission from the United States Space Force.
Starship's Spectacular Test Flight
After overcoming numerous challenges, SpaceX's Starship has successfully completed its 10th test flight, launching from Texas and splashing down in the Indian Ocean. This flight demonstrated the rocket's capabilities, including a controlled splashdown of the Super Heavy booster and the successful deployment of Starlink satellite simulators. The mission provided critical data on the vehicle's performance during reentry, including stress testing its heat shield.
New Insights into Mars
The European Space Agency's Mars Express Orbiter has provided new observations of the Acheron Foci region, revealing the geological forces that have shaped the Red Planet. These findings highlight the impact of ancient geological upheaval and climatic shifts on Mars' landscape, offering clues about its past and the dynamic processes that continue to influence its environment today.
Space Force's Secret Shuttle Mission
The United States Space Force has launched its 8th X37B space shuttle mission, utilizing a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. This classified mission aims to test next-generation technologies, including advanced laser communication systems and quantum sensors. The versatile X37B continues to serve as a platform for various operational demonstrations and experiments in space.
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.
Starship's Spectacular Test Flight
After overcoming numerous challenges, SpaceX's Starship has successfully completed its 10th test flight, launching from Texas and splashing down in the Indian Ocean. This flight demonstrated the rocket's capabilities, including a controlled splashdown of the Super Heavy booster and the successful deployment of Starlink satellite simulators. The mission provided critical data on the vehicle's performance during reentry, including stress testing its heat shield.
New Insights into Mars
The European Space Agency's Mars Express Orbiter has provided new observations of the Acheron Foci region, revealing the geological forces that have shaped the Red Planet. These findings highlight the impact of ancient geological upheaval and climatic shifts on Mars' landscape, offering clues about its past and the dynamic processes that continue to influence its environment today.
Space Force's Secret Shuttle Mission
The United States Space Force has launched its 8th X37B space shuttle mission, utilizing a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. This classified mission aims to test next-generation technologies, including advanced laser communication systems and quantum sensors. The versatile X37B continues to serve as a platform for various operational demonstrations and experiments in space.
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.
Mark as Played
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
five for broadcasts on the first of September twenty twenty five.
Coming up on space Time, a spectacular successful test flight
for Starship, and You Look at the Titanic forces shaping
the red planet Mars, and America's military space Shuttle launches
on its latest secret mission. All that and more coming
(00:23):
up on space Time.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome to space Time with Stuart Gary.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
After a number of setbacks to world's biggest and most
powerful rocket, space Exis Starship has undertaken a successful test flight,
launching under stunning blue skies on the Texas Gulf coast
and splashing down just as planned in the Indian Ocean
off the Western Australian coast just over an hour later.
The flight had been delayed two days, first by ground
(01:07):
systems issues, then by bad weather. The one hundred and
twenty three meter tall reusable Mega rocket was on its
tenth test flight, igniting the super heavy boosters thirty three
methane field Raptor engines, leashing some sixteen million pounds of thrust,
blasting off from SpaceX's starbase in Berker, Chica, South Texas.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
No.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Eight seven six five four three two one vehicles pitchc
gun range, booster, chamber pressure nominal for a little over
forty seconds into flight thirty three at ravion's power in
(01:53):
telemtary nominal, getting good call outs healthy systems on the
booster as it starts to pitch over over the gulf.
All right, a little over one minute into flight, about
to pack through max q macroq. All right, so we
are through the period of maximum dynamic pressure max stress
on the vehicle as it continues to fly.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Back in June, SpaceX suffered another blow when the vehicle
it was originally preparing for test flight ten exploded on
a star based test stand, destroying the starship upper stage,
forcing the company to switch to another ship. That last
was eventually traced to damage in a composite overwrapped pressure
vessel in starship's payload bay used to hold nitrogen gas
(02:31):
to the vehicle's environmental control system. This time, the launch
went smoothly. The hot fire stage separation sequence also went
as planned, with a super heavy first stage booster undertaking
a controlled splash down in the blue waters of the
Gulf of America seven minutes after lift off.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Our next major event is going to be hot staging.
To get ready, the booster will shut down all but
three of its raptor engines. The clamps holding the two
stages together will release, and the Starship second stage ignites
it engines. The ship then separates from the super Heavy
booster and heads to space. At the same time, the
three engines still firing on super Heavy will flip the
booster around. Ten more engines will ignite for the boost backburn,
(03:11):
putting the first stage on the path four splashdown in
the Golf. The hot stage will be jettisoned for this flight,
and that should occur just after the boostbackburn. So we're
about to shut down the first stage and perform hot
staging all right.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Seeing the engines start to throttle down, Miko ship ignition startup,
space separation, Stage separation confirmed. We've got six engines running
on ship. Booster is doing its boost back burn, continuing
now towards its splashdown site in the Gulf, where we
are seeing all such rappers lit up on ship.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Super Heavy boost has already proven it's so reliable, with
two spectacular launch pad landings during test flight seven and eight,
being caught both times by the launch towers, Megazilla chopstick arms.
So SpaceX use this flight spooster return to Worth to
carry out a number of experiments, including a fuel conserving
controlled flip during these stage and a landing burn during
(04:02):
which one of the engines was deliberately shut down. Now
the list the boost is successfully compensated for the loss
of thrust and even completed to control with HOBBA before splash.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Down down all right, So at this point we finished
our boost back burn, so that was shut down. So
that's the first of the two burns after a launch
that the booster is going to do today. So now
it's headed towards the Gulf, it's not going to be
quite as an aggressive of a flight down. We relax
that angle of attack a little bit, but we are
then going to be looking for it to do its
(04:32):
engine tests for the landing burn, and those are going
to be a little unique this time. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Typically we start with all thirteen c inner engines lit
for that landing burn and bring that down to just
the center three. But one of our test objectives for
today is to simulate what an engine out situation would
look like. So we're going to be intentionally turning off
one of those center three and instead lighting one of
the engines from the middle ten ring.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Yeah, we did see one of those engines in the
middle ring shut down during the initial asso. Looks like
we have hot stage jettison floating away there to the
left of the booster. Yeah, we did see one of
those middle engines shut down during the ascent. Again, we
are resilient, engine out on super heavy. We were able
to get through our asset starship flying on the expected path.
There's still a chance that engine could be back in
(05:16):
the mix for the very start of the landing burn.
So we'll see if we light up all thirteen. But
we've I mean, we've even done a landing burn at
the tower with an engine out, so very resilient. We'll
see how it does on its way down to the gulf.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Though shipraptor chamber pressures nomenal.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
All right, here we go landing burg startups like we
got twelve of those thirteen down, the three including one
of the middle ring down to two. Nice little hover
and landing burn shut down and into the gulf here
we come. And the booster has splashed out.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
This flight nine back in June and also wants to
take in several experiments during its boosts the descent, including
a different re entry angle, and so also aimed for
a splash down in the gulf rather than back on
the launch pad. And while that just appeed to go
well for most of the cent, the test flight nine
booster suddenly exploded just before splash down. That anomaly is
(06:07):
thought of being caused by high forces on the boosters
fuel transferred pipe due to the high angle of attack
during descent. The failure was in the booster's main fuel
tank pressurization system, the fuser, which has now been redesigned
to better direct pressurized gas in the main fuel tank,
decreasing strain on the diffuser structure mean only thirty two
meter tall Starship upper stage used full Flight ten continued
(06:31):
its climb as planned into a suborbital trajectory.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
Ship chamber pressure's nominal so that chamber pressure just that
expected thrust level in those raptor engines on the ship
three vacuum optimized level about seven minutes into today's flight,
ship continuing its ascent burn. This goes until just about
nine minutes into our flight. That ship engine cut off
is slated for eight minutes and fifty seven seconds. We
(06:55):
are going to see those three arevack the raptor vacuum
engines knows shut down first, and we continue burning for
a couple seconds longer on those inner three before we
hit sicco or second engine cut off.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Yeah, we have ship engine cut off coming up here
just shortly. And as we mentioned, today's flight test is
not an orbital flight, but rather one that demonstrates the
Starship's orbital capability.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
Parship terminal guidance. Entering the final phase of this burn, right,
shut down the vacuum engines, ship engine cut off. We
shut down.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Those center three successful ship engine cut.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Off SICCO Baby, there we go. That's what we want,
nominal orbit fer sure.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
All right, we just heard the call out for a
nominal orbital insertion.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
All right, So ship is in space.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Once in its suborbital flight path. About twenty minutes after launch,
Starship successfully deployed eight Stylink satellight simulators in order to
test it's PiZZ like dispenser mechanism, something it had failed
to achieve on its three previous test flights.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
And the flaps starting to move into a stowed position.
So we've got some exciting demonstrutions planned while we're on orbit.
That right there, we just saved the fts the flight
termination system. That's that automatic flight safety system we have
on the vehicle, so that is now turned off while
ship starts its coast period. Our next milestone is going
to be the deployment of those Starlink simulators. We've got
(08:18):
some payload inside of starship that we're hoping to deploy
into space for the very first time. It'll go about
one satellite a minute.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Just a few seconds until we expect those payload doors
to open.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
All right, one more time, open the pod bay doors,
holl So we are currently in payload deploy prep. One
step closer. How listen, this time he cooperated. He opened
the payload door for us. Ship has transitioned to payload deploy.
There we go.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
There goes another one, finally getting to deploy some of
those simulated satellites, his system.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
Moving down next brow, there we go. This is just
kind of a dress rehearsal for when we're going to
do be deploying the V three re satellites. And these
are just a massive, massive increase to Starlink's capability. Each
one of them has sixty terabits per second of capacity
that's going to get added to the network per launch.
(09:13):
That's twenty times more than what we're adding with every
single Falcon nine launch today. All right, So, as we said,
we've got eight total that we're going to go through today.
It's about a minute for each one. All right, another
one firing out. The last one has been deployed Starlink
Simulator payload complete.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Also, unlike its flight nine, this latest mission didn't suffer
any issues with the reaction control system, meaning the spacecraft
was able to retain correct attitude control during its flight.
That failure during test flight nine, it lifts Starship, rolling
out of control and eventually breaking up during its re entry.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Yeah, we were able to get to a reentry last time,
but we didn't have full attitude control, so we weren't
able to go in you know, heat chield first the
way we're designed to, So we ended up losing contact
with the ship before we could make it all the
way through. So you still get data, but you're you're
not really getting the data that we want to make sure.
We're kind of stressed testing the vehicle.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Another test about thirty eight minutes into test flight ten,
so mission managers reignite when a Starship center raptor engines.
That's a procedure which would be needed during regular flight operations.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
A relight of a single raptor engine while we are
in space. We've done this once before. This is not
necessary to deorbit, as we are in a suborbital trajectory,
but this was essentially a chance to test out what
we need to be able to do. A deorbit burn
at about thirty seven minutes or so into the flight
and then we get into re entry, relate, demost startup.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
All right, looks like we confirmed the relight of one
of those center raptor.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Engines and shut down.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Second time.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
We've done that.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Super exciting, FuG congrats to the team on this milestone.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
In about forty five minutes after launch, Starship began its
planned re entry back into words atmosphere. Mission managers had
again modified the vehicle at its re entry trajectory in
order to push the spacecraft to its limits. During the
test flight, you mis hate you, tiles have been removed
in order to stress test vulnerable areas across the vehicle.
Several tiles were also seen to fall off during the flight.
(11:18):
Engineers also use the mission to test new metallic tile options,
including one with an active cooling system.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
We're looking to get that light show and more importantly,
get that really critical data about the ship's heat shield.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Yeah, exactly, at about T plus forty five minutes, we'll
be heading for re entry again running those experiments with
the tiles. We're going to be doing missing tiles, metallic tiles,
and also intentionally loading those vehicles flaps.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
There's a managers that we removed a bunch of tiles,
and we do this in some intentionally scary places on
the vehicle because we're really looking are there spots that
were vulnerable to this before we ever start moving towards
putting ship into a full orbital mission to then do
re entries a little bit later on, so really critical
(12:04):
to get that data. Re Entry has begun. We are
starting to re enter the Earth's atmosphere. We're moving about
five times the speed of sound, and we're about to
start barreling through the Earth's atmosphere and head for a
splash down in the Indian Ocean. We don't plan to
recover the spacecraft today, but if we do make it
all the way down to the water, who knows. But
the goal of this part of the flight is to
(12:26):
learn as much as we can about the ship's heat shield.
Fully reusable, rapidly reusable heat shield for spacecraft has never
been done before. It's one of the hardest engineering challenges
still out there for us, and.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Re entry is a critical phase of flight, so we'll
need information on how the ship's system ends up performing.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Still, the deliberately violent re entry trajectory did take its toll,
with a portion of the spacecraft's skirt the engine bay
breaking off and sending chunks of de breed space.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
That's not what we want to see. We just saw
some of the aft skirt just take a hit, so
we've got some visible damage on the aft skirt. We're
continue to re enter though, and again we are intentionally
stressing the ship as we go through this, so it
is not guaranteed to be a smooth ride down to
the Indian Ocean. We've removed a bunch of tiles in
(13:19):
kind of critical places across the vehicle, trying to kind
of push this vehicle to the limits to learn what
its limits are as we design our next version of Starship.
So forty seven minutes, forty five seconds into the flight,
the light show is continuing the hit we saw to
the skirt definitely interesting. I will note when we started
(13:39):
doing these missing tile tests, we were intentionally removing them.
Only in the skirt is that's not over your fuel
tanks or anything else that's kind of structurally critical for
keeping the entire vehicle together. That obviously exposes your engines,
so that could do some things for our landing burn.
The ship itself, it's little over fifty meters tall. We've
got the six engines on board, the three vacuum, the
(14:02):
three C level, and they're down to a control right
so at this point the flaps have controlled. That means
we're getting into a dense enough part of the atmosphere
that the flaps can start controlling us. We're not only
reliant on those kind of reaction control system thrusters.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
We're going to continue hearing some callouts as the ship
makes its way back to Earth. So when we hear
entry max heating and entry max queue, that will mean
the ship has made it through the maximum heating and
aerodynamic loads it will experience as it returns. So if
it makes it through those, we could say we're doing
pretty well.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
It's about seventy four kilometers in altitude.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Been about ten minutes. Like Dan said, Starship will be transonic.
This is going to be the period of flight where
the velocities of airflow surrounding and flowing past the vehicle
are concurrently below, at and above the speed of sound,
so somewhere in the range of mock zero point eight
to one point two for reference. Commercial jets have a
range of cruising speeds, but most of them fly at
(14:58):
speeds between mock point seven to four and mock point
eighty five, So that's four hundred and eighty to five
seventy five miles per hour or seven hundred and seventy
to nine hundred and thirty kilometers per hour.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
And after transonic comes subsonic. That just means you're slower
than the speed of sound. We're still well in access
to that right now, but by the time we hit subsonic,
we're essentially belly flopping down one of the other things
we're doing during this, and you're going to see Starship
kind of pitch in some pretty not extreme ways, but
a little extreme as we're trying to really stress the
(15:29):
structure of it of the ship itself, specifically those aft flaps,
so the ones in the very bottom of the vehicle.
We're pushing not just how well does the heat shield
hold up, but how well does the ship structure hold up.
I mean, we are pushing it beyond essentially what we
think we'll have to fly at to do something like
a return to launch site. So again, may not be
(15:50):
a very smooth ride downhill, but we're doing that by design.
We're really trying to find what are the edges that
we can operate at in target? Is past peak heating?
All right?
Speaker 3 (15:58):
We just heard the call out that we're past peak heating.
So things are looking good so far.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
Yeah, looking good. And at this point again the flaps
are controlling just maintain control, maintain attitude of the vehicle.
As we're coming down, we are maximumly stressing those apt
flaps right now. It's like we got a little bit
of burned through the very bottom part of it.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
On board camera is showing milting neither hinge on one
of the control flaps.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Ship maintaining control. It's still a little bit toasty on
the aft skirt of the vehicle. As we continue coming in.
It's about forty eight forty nine counting down to forty
eight kilometers in altitude. This re entry I is going
to take about twenty minutes or so until our plans
flash down. We were trying to splash down about one
hour and six minutes into the flight. Yeah, and one day.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Starship is designed to land on Mars where there are
obviously no runways or other humans to help us out,
So we are doing propulsive landing instead of more traditional
means such as parachutes, and propulsive landing enables us to
have more rapid reusability with these vehicles.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Right now, we've got kind of a lot of forward momentum,
lot of forward velocity, and then eventually by the time
we hit subsiding, all right, here we go. So this
is what we've been talking about where we are going
to essentially try to fully deploy those apt flaps and
really stress them out. So again this is meant to
test the extremes for the vehicle, those flaps swinging out
(17:19):
like we're still maintaining control. One of the changes we
made after flight six was to change the tile line
a little bit, so we had kind of scaled back
the number of tiles significantly. Is when we go to
catch these ships, you don't want to see I think,
as Elon said, you don't want to shuck the ship
as you catch it and knock all those tiles off,
So we knew we were going to have to kind
(17:41):
of peel back that layer a little bit, and the
first time we did it was on flight six, and
we saw wrinkling and dimples almost in the ship as
we were creating these hot spots in the uneven parts
of the heat shield, and so we tod kind of
address that. We smoothed it out on the ship, and
just looking at it, we can see kind of a
little little bit of hot spot, a little bit of
(18:01):
warping almost near the payload door, little bit of colored
patina up above it, but we don't see those kind
of deep almost they almost look like gouges on that.
So it looks like that's been pretty successful.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
So our shape is subsonic, all right.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
So at this point we've dropped below the speed of sound.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Still despite the damage, Starship eventually performed the controlled vertical landing,
splashing down tail first, just as planned, right on target
in the Indian Ocean, sixty six minutes after launch.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
We're gonna do the flip and the burns, so we're
only using those three center raptor engines the sea levels,
the ones that can kind of gimbal that can move
around and steer, dipping the nose down a little bit.
Two of our engines chilled in waiting on one more,
so we'll attempt to use three burns for that initial flip.
We eventually go down to just two raptors for the
(18:50):
end of the landing burn. Structurally, we're looking good, got
good pressures in our nose cone for everything. So Starship's
doing its belly flop right now. We're going to do
the flip. Swing out. Let's punch through some clouds first,
Starship lanning burns start up, seeing three engines, here's our flip.
There's a pooing, there's a splashdown. Hey, oh bad, go
(19:15):
planning flip, planning burn, splash out of the Indianosha. There
we go.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
This successful test flight will help e some of NASA's
concerns about Starship being ready for the Plan twenty twenty
seven Atamus three mission that'll see humans return to the
lunar surface for the first time since Apollo seventeen. Way
back in nineteen seventy two, NASA plans to use a
modified version of Starship called the HLS transport crew from
(19:41):
the Orion capsual down to the lunar South Pole's surface
for a week long stay, but there are still many
major hurdles yet to be overcome, including working out how
to refuel the HLS in lunar orbit and keep the
cryogenic liquid methane and oxygen cold enough and long enough
to prevent it from boiling off during the ten or
more st ship flights that it will take to transport
(20:02):
enough fuel to the HLS for the crew transfer mission.
Starship and its super heavy booster are being developed by
SpaceX boss Elon Musk as a colonial transport system to
move one hundred people or one hundred and fifty tons
of payload at a time on deep space missions, not
just to the Moon but ultimately to Mars and beyond.
(20:22):
Starship will also replace the existing Falcon nine rockets and
Dragon spacecraft on orbital missions around the Earth, and they
could eventually be used for point to point planetary transport flights,
putting any two places on Earth within just ninety minutes
of each other. This is space time still to come.
A new look at the Titanic forces that have shaped
(20:43):
the Red planet, Mars and the United States Space Force
launches its eighth X thirty seven B space Shuttle on
another classified mission. All that and more still to come
on space time. The European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter
(21:13):
has revisited a spectacular rift valley system on the red planet,
showing how Mars was shaped by ancient geological upheaval and
later sculpted by ice rich flows. The spacecraft's high resolution
stereo camera first captured the Huron Phoci area back in
April two thousand and four, shortly after Mars orbit insertion.
(21:34):
Huron Phoci is at the western end of its striking
system of deep fishes forming on thousand meters deep valleys
stretching for hundreds of kilometers. The new observations have revealed
the faulted terrain's hosted grub and pattern. This is a
system of raised and lowered blocks formed by molten material
rising beneath the Martian crust more than three point seven
(21:55):
billion years ago, in the process pulling the surface apart.
The valley floors were then later smoothed by slow moving glaciers.
The new observations are providing evidence of repeated climatic swings
that suggests cycles of warming and cooling on the Red planet,
which allowed ice to advance towards the Martian equator before
(22:16):
retreating again. Astronomers believe that these climatic shifts stem from
gramatic variations in the red planet's axial tilt. Earth's relatively
stable axial tilt is moderated by its relatively large moon,
but the two tiny Martian moons pherbos and demos, have
little effect on the Red planet. So the Martian axial
tilt is swung by between fifteen and forty five degrees
(22:38):
over the past ten million years, and this gramatically amplifies
the effects of the Melancovit cycles on its climate. The
Melancovit cycles are regular, long term, periodic changes in the
planet's orbit an axial tilt, which in turn affect the
amount of solar energy reaching the planet and influencing climatic patterns.
The three key cycles involve eccentricity, that is, changes in
(23:01):
the shape of a planet's orbit from being more circular
to being more elliptical. This change alters the total amount
of solar radiation received by a planet over the course
of its orbit. Then there's obliquity, which involves changes in
the angle of the tilt of a planet spin axis
with respect to its orbital plane. The greater the tilt,
the more extreme seasons become. And finally, there's procession that
(23:25):
involves the wobble of a planet's spin axis, in other words,
the direction in space in which the axis is pointing.
It's similar to how a top wobbles as it spins.
In the case of Earth, for example, the direction in
which its axis is pointed changes over a period of
roughly twenty six thousand years. This affects climate and the
timing of seasons relative to the planet's position in its orbit,
(23:47):
and while these changes are fairly gradual on Earth, on
the red planet Mars, the changes are striking, having a
major effect on its climate. Towards the east of acron Fosi,
the fractured ground gives worre to dark plains separated by
maces and rounded hills, which are remnants of an eroded
rock layer. Eroded ancient channels carved by the persistent movement
(24:10):
of ice and debris snake between these features. Smoother plains
lie to the west, stretching all the way towards the giant,
now extinct Shield volcano Olympus, Mond's largest volcano in our
Solar System and more than twice the height of Mount Everest.
Mars Express has been orbiting the Red planet since two
thousand and three, and it's continuing its mission of mapping
(24:31):
the planet, delivering data that's reshaping sciences understanding of Martian
geological and climatic history. This is space time still to come.
The United States Space Forces military space Shuttle launches on
its eighth secret mission, and later in the science report,
palaeontologists uncover one of the most complete ixious or fossils
(24:53):
ever found. All that and more still to come on
space time. The United States Space Force has launched its
(25:14):
eighth X thirty seven B space Shuttle mission on another
classified flight, The Dotal wing space plane was mounted inside
the payload fairing of a SpaceX Falcon nine rocket for
the launch of Pad thirty nine A at the Kennedy
Space Center at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Space in Florida.
The United States Space Force says the vehicle's clandestine mission
will include a wide range of tests and experimentation objectives.
(25:38):
The military says these operational demonstrations and experiments comprised next
generation technologies, including laser communication systems and the highest performing
quantum inertial sensor system ever tested in space. The X
thirty seven was originally developed by NASA and the US
military back in nineteen ninety nine as a mini version
of the manned Space Shuttle. It was designed to be
(26:01):
carried in the payload bay of the Space Shuttle and
then launched from orbit on a range of potential missions,
including the refueling and servicing of operational satellites. It would
also undertake independent research, carrying instruments in its own payload bay.
The project was eventually taken over exclusively by the military
in two thousand and four, and that resulted in the
(26:21):
development of two operational X thirty seven B reasonable spacecraft
by Boeing, the first of which flew its first orbital
mission in twenty ten. The last X thirty seven B mission,
OHTV seven, remained in orbit for more than a year
before returning to Earth back in March, and previous missions
have lasted in orbit for several years at a time,
the longest staying up for nine hundred and eight days.
(26:44):
This eighth mission, OTV eight, is the fourth vehicle one
the X thirty seven b's proven itself to be a
versatile platform capable of targeting highly elliptical orbits and also
dipping down in the upper Earth atmosphere using aero breaking
to change orbits before for enemy nations can lock tracking
onto it. And that's important because as well as testing
(27:04):
new technologies, these space plans can also be used for
reconnaissance missions and they can utilize a range of anti
satellite capabilities visiting, studying, and monitoring enemy spacecraft in orbit.
This space time and time out to take a brief
(27:34):
look at some of the other stories making news in
science this week with a science report. A new study
has found that teens and young people who use vapes
are more likely to pick up smoking cigarettes, use marijuana,
and take up drinking, as well as facing much higher
risks of a host of health issues. A report in
the General Tobacco Control examine the results of twenty one
(27:56):
previous systematic studies, finding young people who vape are three
more likely to start smoking cigarettes and were consistently more
likely to start using dope and binge drinking booze. Vaping's
also been linked to asthma diagnosis and worsening symptoms for
a range of different health issues, including ammonia, low's sperm
count migraines and poor mouthhealth. Paleontologists in Queensland have uncovered
(28:21):
one of the most complete ixtiosaur fossils ever found. Ixiosaurs
were marine predators from the age of the dinosaur and
were similar in appearance to modern day dolphins. The seven
point one meter long aquatic reptile was discovered four hundred
kilometers northwest of Longreach in out back western Queensland. The
one hundred million year old fossil, thought to be species
(28:42):
of Platatyigus australis, is some ninety percent complete. The find
includes a complete vertebral column and intact left flipper, part
of the right flipper, as well as hind flippers, partial
telfin and a nearly complete scullant Also, the ixiosaur was
a dominant predator of the inlands which covered much of
western Queensland some one hundred million years ago. Surgeons in
(29:06):
China have for the first time transplanted a genetically modified
pig lung into a human patient. The lung continued to
function in the recipient for almost nine days. A report
in the journal Nature Medicine claims previous research on transplanting
genetically modified pig organs are focused primarily on kidneys, hearts,
and livers, with genetic modifications used to remove adogens that
(29:28):
could make the human immune system reject the organs immediately. So,
using the same strategy, the surgeons implanted a pig lung
into a thirty nine year old human had already been
declared brain dead. They say the body did not immediately
reject the lung. However, the lung dicho signs of damage
twenty four hours after transplant and signs of rejection at
three and six days before it finally died on day nine.
(29:54):
A new study is found that around three in every
ten Americans make use of astrology terot cards four in
telling at least once a year. However, the findings by
Pure Research also showed that about two thirds of those
so they only do it for fun. To mend them
from Australian Skeptics says. The findings also show that around
one in ten people mostly engage because they believe the
(30:15):
practices really do give them helpful insights, and one in
one hundred actually rely on what they learned from these
practices when making major life decisions.
Speaker 5 (30:24):
Curious searches are pretty reasonable places that are quite Legiti,
and they did a survey as close to getting up
towards ten thousand US adults, asking them what their attitude
toward astrology and fortune telling, tarot carts, that sort of stuff,
and they said three in ten Americans make use of
it at least once a year, but most of those
do it for fun. It's sort of like reading the
star fid astrology in the local paper, or they just
sort of dabble it it but don't take it that seriously.
(30:46):
So you could say that nine out of ten Americans
don't take astrology seriously, so that'd be a different headline entirely.
There's one person out of tens who might say they
engage mostly because they believe the practices give them helpful insights.
And there's one percent for the whole population they say
they rely on what they learn from astrology of tarracarts,
et cetera when making major life decisions. So it get
(31:07):
easy to say that nineteen nine percent of Americans do
not lie one that's probably not the way people want
to see it. They're talk about being a big industry,
billion dollars of revenue, employing one hundred and five thousand people.
Apparently cut into a different market research firm either world,
so it is big business. The biggest fans tend to
be younger people tend to be people who's just got
(31:27):
as high school. Younger women, especially LGBTQ people apparently have
a greater interest, but it's not necessarily huge. People who
are older age sixty five or older, those with higher incomes,
college degrees, and those who identify as politically conservative are
less likely than are the adults to believe in astrology
and engage with tarot cards. So there doesn't seem to
(31:47):
be a correlation either between religion religious belief and belief
in these things, which is interesting because they do tend
to contradict each other. But a lot of religious people
are just as much inclined through follow astrology in tarot carts,
according to this survey, or at least have fun with
it as the non religious gript although atheist seem to
be a bit more discissive of astrology and tero biginess
probably don't believe in the supernatural. It's the growing industry.
(32:07):
Despite the fact that what he can I say funk.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
When you say one percent of Americans, there's still three
point three million people. That's a lot of people.
Speaker 5 (32:15):
Yeah, yeah, but I mean there's more people than that
believe in ghosts. It's only a small PERCENTA let's sume
that they take it very seriously. There are a lot
more people taking a lot of other supernatural things seriously.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
That's timendum from Australia Skeptics, and that's the show for now.
(32:44):
Space Time is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through
Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcast poker Casts, Spotify a Cast,
Amazon Music, bytes dot com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast provider,
and from space Time with Stuart Gary dot com. Space
Time's also broadcast through the National Science Foundation, on Science
(33:08):
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And you can help to support our show by visiting
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(33:32):
Just go to space Time with Stuart Gary dot com
for full details.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
You've been listening to space Time with Stuart Gary This
has been another quality podcast production from bytes dot com.
This is Spacetime Series twenty eight, Episode one hundred and
five for broadcasts on the first of September twenty twenty five.
Coming up on space Time, a spectacular successful test flight
for Starship, and You Look at the Titanic forces shaping
the red planet Mars, and America's military space Shuttle launches
on its latest secret mission. All that and more coming
(00:23):
up on space Time.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome to space Time with Stuart Gary.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
After a number of setbacks to world's biggest and most
powerful rocket, space Exis Starship has undertaken a successful test flight,
launching under stunning blue skies on the Texas Gulf coast
and splashing down just as planned in the Indian Ocean
off the Western Australian coast just over an hour later.
The flight had been delayed two days, first by ground
(01:07):
systems issues, then by bad weather. The one hundred and
twenty three meter tall reusable Mega rocket was on its
tenth test flight, igniting the super heavy boosters thirty three
methane field Raptor engines, leashing some sixteen million pounds of thrust,
blasting off from SpaceX's starbase in Berker, Chica, South Texas.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
No.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Eight seven six five four three two one vehicles pitchc
gun range, booster, chamber pressure nominal for a little over
forty seconds into flight thirty three at ravion's power in
(01:53):
telemtary nominal, getting good call outs healthy systems on the
booster as it starts to pitch over over the gulf.
All right, a little over one minute into flight, about
to pack through max q macroq. All right, so we
are through the period of maximum dynamic pressure max stress
on the vehicle as it continues to fly.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Back in June, SpaceX suffered another blow when the vehicle
it was originally preparing for test flight ten exploded on
a star based test stand, destroying the starship upper stage,
forcing the company to switch to another ship. That last
was eventually traced to damage in a composite overwrapped pressure
vessel in starship's payload bay used to hold nitrogen gas
(02:31):
to the vehicle's environmental control system. This time, the launch
went smoothly. The hot fire stage separation sequence also went
as planned, with a super heavy first stage booster undertaking
a controlled splash down in the blue waters of the
Gulf of America seven minutes after lift off.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Our next major event is going to be hot staging.
To get ready, the booster will shut down all but
three of its raptor engines. The clamps holding the two
stages together will release, and the Starship second stage ignites
it engines. The ship then separates from the super Heavy
booster and heads to space. At the same time, the
three engines still firing on super Heavy will flip the
booster around. Ten more engines will ignite for the boost backburn,
(03:11):
putting the first stage on the path four splashdown in
the Golf. The hot stage will be jettisoned for this flight,
and that should occur just after the boostbackburn. So we're
about to shut down the first stage and perform hot
staging all right.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Seeing the engines start to throttle down, Miko ship ignition startup,
space separation, Stage separation confirmed. We've got six engines running
on ship. Booster is doing its boost back burn, continuing
now towards its splashdown site in the Gulf, where we
are seeing all such rappers lit up on ship.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Super Heavy boost has already proven it's so reliable, with
two spectacular launch pad landings during test flight seven and eight,
being caught both times by the launch towers, Megazilla chopstick arms.
So SpaceX use this flight spooster return to Worth to
carry out a number of experiments, including a fuel conserving
controlled flip during these stage and a landing burn during
(04:02):
which one of the engines was deliberately shut down. Now
the list the boost is successfully compensated for the loss
of thrust and even completed to control with HOBBA before splash.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Down down all right, So at this point we finished
our boost back burn, so that was shut down. So
that's the first of the two burns after a launch
that the booster is going to do today. So now
it's headed towards the Gulf, it's not going to be
quite as an aggressive of a flight down. We relax
that angle of attack a little bit, but we are
then going to be looking for it to do its
(04:32):
engine tests for the landing burn, and those are going
to be a little unique this time. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Typically we start with all thirteen c inner engines lit
for that landing burn and bring that down to just
the center three. But one of our test objectives for
today is to simulate what an engine out situation would
look like. So we're going to be intentionally turning off
one of those center three and instead lighting one of
the engines from the middle ten ring.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Yeah, we did see one of those engines in the
middle ring shut down during the initial asso. Looks like
we have hot stage jettison floating away there to the
left of the booster. Yeah, we did see one of
those middle engines shut down during the ascent. Again, we
are resilient, engine out on super heavy. We were able
to get through our asset starship flying on the expected path.
There's still a chance that engine could be back in
(05:16):
the mix for the very start of the landing burn.
So we'll see if we light up all thirteen. But
we've I mean, we've even done a landing burn at
the tower with an engine out, so very resilient. We'll
see how it does on its way down to the gulf.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Though shipraptor chamber pressures nomenal.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
All right, here we go landing burg startups like we
got twelve of those thirteen down, the three including one
of the middle ring down to two. Nice little hover
and landing burn shut down and into the gulf here
we come. And the booster has splashed out.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
This flight nine back in June and also wants to
take in several experiments during its boosts the descent, including
a different re entry angle, and so also aimed for
a splash down in the gulf rather than back on
the launch pad. And while that just appeed to go
well for most of the cent, the test flight nine
booster suddenly exploded just before splash down. That anomaly is
(06:07):
thought of being caused by high forces on the boosters
fuel transferred pipe due to the high angle of attack
during descent. The failure was in the booster's main fuel
tank pressurization system, the fuser, which has now been redesigned
to better direct pressurized gas in the main fuel tank,
decreasing strain on the diffuser structure mean only thirty two
meter tall Starship upper stage used full Flight ten continued
(06:31):
its climb as planned into a suborbital trajectory.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
Ship chamber pressure's nominal so that chamber pressure just that
expected thrust level in those raptor engines on the ship
three vacuum optimized level about seven minutes into today's flight,
ship continuing its ascent burn. This goes until just about
nine minutes into our flight. That ship engine cut off
is slated for eight minutes and fifty seven seconds. We
(06:55):
are going to see those three arevack the raptor vacuum
engines knows shut down first, and we continue burning for
a couple seconds longer on those inner three before we
hit sicco or second engine cut off.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Yeah, we have ship engine cut off coming up here
just shortly. And as we mentioned, today's flight test is
not an orbital flight, but rather one that demonstrates the
Starship's orbital capability.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
Parship terminal guidance. Entering the final phase of this burn, right,
shut down the vacuum engines, ship engine cut off. We
shut down.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Those center three successful ship engine cut.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Off SICCO Baby, there we go. That's what we want,
nominal orbit fer sure.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
All right, we just heard the call out for a
nominal orbital insertion.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
All right, So ship is in space.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Once in its suborbital flight path. About twenty minutes after launch,
Starship successfully deployed eight Stylink satellight simulators in order to
test it's PiZZ like dispenser mechanism, something it had failed
to achieve on its three previous test flights.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
And the flaps starting to move into a stowed position.
So we've got some exciting demonstrutions planned while we're on orbit.
That right there, we just saved the fts the flight
termination system. That's that automatic flight safety system we have
on the vehicle, so that is now turned off while
ship starts its coast period. Our next milestone is going
to be the deployment of those Starlink simulators. We've got
(08:18):
some payload inside of starship that we're hoping to deploy
into space for the very first time. It'll go about
one satellite a minute.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Just a few seconds until we expect those payload doors
to open.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
All right, one more time, open the pod bay doors,
holl So we are currently in payload deploy prep. One
step closer. How listen, this time he cooperated. He opened
the payload door for us. Ship has transitioned to payload deploy.
There we go.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
There goes another one, finally getting to deploy some of
those simulated satellites, his system.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
Moving down next brow, there we go. This is just
kind of a dress rehearsal for when we're going to
do be deploying the V three re satellites. And these
are just a massive, massive increase to Starlink's capability. Each
one of them has sixty terabits per second of capacity
that's going to get added to the network per launch.
(09:13):
That's twenty times more than what we're adding with every
single Falcon nine launch today. All right, So, as we said,
we've got eight total that we're going to go through today.
It's about a minute for each one. All right, another
one firing out. The last one has been deployed Starlink
Simulator payload complete.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Also, unlike its flight nine, this latest mission didn't suffer
any issues with the reaction control system, meaning the spacecraft
was able to retain correct attitude control during its flight.
That failure during test flight nine, it lifts Starship, rolling
out of control and eventually breaking up during its re entry.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Yeah, we were able to get to a reentry last time,
but we didn't have full attitude control, so we weren't
able to go in you know, heat chield first the
way we're designed to, So we ended up losing contact
with the ship before we could make it all the
way through. So you still get data, but you're you're
not really getting the data that we want to make sure.
We're kind of stressed testing the vehicle.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Another test about thirty eight minutes into test flight ten,
so mission managers reignite when a Starship center raptor engines.
That's a procedure which would be needed during regular flight operations.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
A relight of a single raptor engine while we are
in space. We've done this once before. This is not
necessary to deorbit, as we are in a suborbital trajectory,
but this was essentially a chance to test out what
we need to be able to do. A deorbit burn
at about thirty seven minutes or so into the flight
and then we get into re entry, relate, demost startup.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
All right, looks like we confirmed the relight of one
of those center raptor.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Engines and shut down.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Second time.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
We've done that.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Super exciting, FuG congrats to the team on this milestone.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
In about forty five minutes after launch, Starship began its
planned re entry back into words atmosphere. Mission managers had
again modified the vehicle at its re entry trajectory in
order to push the spacecraft to its limits. During the
test flight, you mis hate you, tiles have been removed
in order to stress test vulnerable areas across the vehicle.
Several tiles were also seen to fall off during the flight.
(11:18):
Engineers also use the mission to test new metallic tile options,
including one with an active cooling system.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
We're looking to get that light show and more importantly,
get that really critical data about the ship's heat shield.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Yeah, exactly, at about T plus forty five minutes, we'll
be heading for re entry again running those experiments with
the tiles. We're going to be doing missing tiles, metallic tiles,
and also intentionally loading those vehicles flaps.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
There's a managers that we removed a bunch of tiles,
and we do this in some intentionally scary places on
the vehicle because we're really looking are there spots that
were vulnerable to this before we ever start moving towards
putting ship into a full orbital mission to then do
re entries a little bit later on, so really critical
(12:04):
to get that data. Re Entry has begun. We are
starting to re enter the Earth's atmosphere. We're moving about
five times the speed of sound, and we're about to
start barreling through the Earth's atmosphere and head for a
splash down in the Indian Ocean. We don't plan to
recover the spacecraft today, but if we do make it
all the way down to the water, who knows. But
the goal of this part of the flight is to
(12:26):
learn as much as we can about the ship's heat shield.
Fully reusable, rapidly reusable heat shield for spacecraft has never
been done before. It's one of the hardest engineering challenges
still out there for us, and.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Re entry is a critical phase of flight, so we'll
need information on how the ship's system ends up performing.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Still, the deliberately violent re entry trajectory did take its toll,
with a portion of the spacecraft's skirt the engine bay
breaking off and sending chunks of de breed space.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
That's not what we want to see. We just saw
some of the aft skirt just take a hit, so
we've got some visible damage on the aft skirt. We're
continue to re enter though, and again we are intentionally
stressing the ship as we go through this, so it
is not guaranteed to be a smooth ride down to
the Indian Ocean. We've removed a bunch of tiles in
(13:19):
kind of critical places across the vehicle, trying to kind
of push this vehicle to the limits to learn what
its limits are as we design our next version of Starship.
So forty seven minutes, forty five seconds into the flight,
the light show is continuing the hit we saw to
the skirt definitely interesting. I will note when we started
(13:39):
doing these missing tile tests, we were intentionally removing them.
Only in the skirt is that's not over your fuel
tanks or anything else that's kind of structurally critical for
keeping the entire vehicle together. That obviously exposes your engines,
so that could do some things for our landing burn.
The ship itself, it's little over fifty meters tall. We've
got the six engines on board, the three vacuum, the
(14:02):
three C level, and they're down to a control right
so at this point the flaps have controlled. That means
we're getting into a dense enough part of the atmosphere
that the flaps can start controlling us. We're not only
reliant on those kind of reaction control system thrusters.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
We're going to continue hearing some callouts as the ship
makes its way back to Earth. So when we hear
entry max heating and entry max queue, that will mean
the ship has made it through the maximum heating and
aerodynamic loads it will experience as it returns. So if
it makes it through those, we could say we're doing
pretty well.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
It's about seventy four kilometers in altitude.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Been about ten minutes. Like Dan said, Starship will be transonic.
This is going to be the period of flight where
the velocities of airflow surrounding and flowing past the vehicle
are concurrently below, at and above the speed of sound,
so somewhere in the range of mock zero point eight
to one point two for reference. Commercial jets have a
range of cruising speeds, but most of them fly at
(14:58):
speeds between mock point seven to four and mock point
eighty five, So that's four hundred and eighty to five
seventy five miles per hour or seven hundred and seventy
to nine hundred and thirty kilometers per hour.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
And after transonic comes subsonic. That just means you're slower
than the speed of sound. We're still well in access
to that right now, but by the time we hit subsonic,
we're essentially belly flopping down one of the other things
we're doing during this, and you're going to see Starship
kind of pitch in some pretty not extreme ways, but
a little extreme as we're trying to really stress the
(15:29):
structure of it of the ship itself, specifically those aft flaps,
so the ones in the very bottom of the vehicle.
We're pushing not just how well does the heat shield
hold up, but how well does the ship structure hold up.
I mean, we are pushing it beyond essentially what we
think we'll have to fly at to do something like
a return to launch site. So again, may not be
(15:50):
a very smooth ride downhill, but we're doing that by design.
We're really trying to find what are the edges that
we can operate at in target? Is past peak heating?
All right?
Speaker 3 (15:58):
We just heard the call out that we're past peak heating.
So things are looking good so far.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
Yeah, looking good. And at this point again the flaps
are controlling just maintain control, maintain attitude of the vehicle.
As we're coming down, we are maximumly stressing those apt
flaps right now. It's like we got a little bit
of burned through the very bottom part of it.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
On board camera is showing milting neither hinge on one
of the control flaps.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Ship maintaining control. It's still a little bit toasty on
the aft skirt of the vehicle. As we continue coming in.
It's about forty eight forty nine counting down to forty
eight kilometers in altitude. This re entry I is going
to take about twenty minutes or so until our plans
flash down. We were trying to splash down about one
hour and six minutes into the flight. Yeah, and one day.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Starship is designed to land on Mars where there are
obviously no runways or other humans to help us out,
So we are doing propulsive landing instead of more traditional
means such as parachutes, and propulsive landing enables us to
have more rapid reusability with these vehicles.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Right now, we've got kind of a lot of forward momentum,
lot of forward velocity, and then eventually by the time
we hit subsiding, all right, here we go. So this
is what we've been talking about where we are going
to essentially try to fully deploy those apt flaps and
really stress them out. So again this is meant to
test the extremes for the vehicle, those flaps swinging out
(17:19):
like we're still maintaining control. One of the changes we
made after flight six was to change the tile line
a little bit, so we had kind of scaled back
the number of tiles significantly. Is when we go to
catch these ships, you don't want to see I think,
as Elon said, you don't want to shuck the ship
as you catch it and knock all those tiles off,
So we knew we were going to have to kind
(17:41):
of peel back that layer a little bit, and the
first time we did it was on flight six, and
we saw wrinkling and dimples almost in the ship as
we were creating these hot spots in the uneven parts
of the heat shield, and so we tod kind of
address that. We smoothed it out on the ship, and
just looking at it, we can see kind of a
little little bit of hot spot, a little bit of
(18:01):
warping almost near the payload door, little bit of colored
patina up above it, but we don't see those kind
of deep almost they almost look like gouges on that.
So it looks like that's been pretty successful.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
So our shape is subsonic, all right.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
So at this point we've dropped below the speed of sound.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Still despite the damage, Starship eventually performed the controlled vertical landing,
splashing down tail first, just as planned, right on target
in the Indian Ocean, sixty six minutes after launch.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
We're gonna do the flip and the burns, so we're
only using those three center raptor engines the sea levels,
the ones that can kind of gimbal that can move
around and steer, dipping the nose down a little bit.
Two of our engines chilled in waiting on one more,
so we'll attempt to use three burns for that initial flip.
We eventually go down to just two raptors for the
(18:50):
end of the landing burn. Structurally, we're looking good, got
good pressures in our nose cone for everything. So Starship's
doing its belly flop right now. We're going to do
the flip. Swing out. Let's punch through some clouds first,
Starship lanning burns start up, seeing three engines, here's our flip.
There's a pooing, there's a splashdown. Hey, oh bad, go
(19:15):
planning flip, planning burn, splash out of the Indianosha. There
we go.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
This successful test flight will help e some of NASA's
concerns about Starship being ready for the Plan twenty twenty
seven Atamus three mission that'll see humans return to the
lunar surface for the first time since Apollo seventeen. Way
back in nineteen seventy two, NASA plans to use a
modified version of Starship called the HLS transport crew from
(19:41):
the Orion capsual down to the lunar South Pole's surface
for a week long stay, but there are still many
major hurdles yet to be overcome, including working out how
to refuel the HLS in lunar orbit and keep the
cryogenic liquid methane and oxygen cold enough and long enough
to prevent it from boiling off during the ten or
more st ship flights that it will take to transport
(20:02):
enough fuel to the HLS for the crew transfer mission.
Starship and its super heavy booster are being developed by
SpaceX boss Elon Musk as a colonial transport system to
move one hundred people or one hundred and fifty tons
of payload at a time on deep space missions, not
just to the Moon but ultimately to Mars and beyond.
(20:22):
Starship will also replace the existing Falcon nine rockets and
Dragon spacecraft on orbital missions around the Earth, and they
could eventually be used for point to point planetary transport flights,
putting any two places on Earth within just ninety minutes
of each other. This is space time still to come.
A new look at the Titanic forces that have shaped
(20:43):
the Red planet, Mars and the United States Space Force
launches its eighth X thirty seven B space Shuttle on
another classified mission. All that and more still to come
on space time. The European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter
(21:13):
has revisited a spectacular rift valley system on the red planet,
showing how Mars was shaped by ancient geological upheaval and
later sculpted by ice rich flows. The spacecraft's high resolution
stereo camera first captured the Huron Phoci area back in
April two thousand and four, shortly after Mars orbit insertion.
(21:34):
Huron Phoci is at the western end of its striking
system of deep fishes forming on thousand meters deep valleys
stretching for hundreds of kilometers. The new observations have revealed
the faulted terrain's hosted grub and pattern. This is a
system of raised and lowered blocks formed by molten material
rising beneath the Martian crust more than three point seven
(21:55):
billion years ago, in the process pulling the surface apart.
The valley floors were then later smoothed by slow moving glaciers.
The new observations are providing evidence of repeated climatic swings
that suggests cycles of warming and cooling on the Red planet,
which allowed ice to advance towards the Martian equator before
(22:16):
retreating again. Astronomers believe that these climatic shifts stem from
gramatic variations in the red planet's axial tilt. Earth's relatively
stable axial tilt is moderated by its relatively large moon,
but the two tiny Martian moons pherbos and demos, have
little effect on the Red planet. So the Martian axial
tilt is swung by between fifteen and forty five degrees
(22:38):
over the past ten million years, and this gramatically amplifies
the effects of the Melancovit cycles on its climate. The
Melancovit cycles are regular, long term, periodic changes in the
planet's orbit an axial tilt, which in turn affect the
amount of solar energy reaching the planet and influencing climatic patterns.
The three key cycles involve eccentricity, that is, changes in
(23:01):
the shape of a planet's orbit from being more circular
to being more elliptical. This change alters the total amount
of solar radiation received by a planet over the course
of its orbit. Then there's obliquity, which involves changes in
the angle of the tilt of a planet spin axis
with respect to its orbital plane. The greater the tilt,
the more extreme seasons become. And finally, there's procession that
(23:25):
involves the wobble of a planet's spin axis, in other words,
the direction in space in which the axis is pointing.
It's similar to how a top wobbles as it spins.
In the case of Earth, for example, the direction in
which its axis is pointed changes over a period of
roughly twenty six thousand years. This affects climate and the
timing of seasons relative to the planet's position in its orbit,
(23:47):
and while these changes are fairly gradual on Earth, on
the red planet Mars, the changes are striking, having a
major effect on its climate. Towards the east of acron Fosi,
the fractured ground gives worre to dark plains separated by
maces and rounded hills, which are remnants of an eroded
rock layer. Eroded ancient channels carved by the persistent movement
(24:10):
of ice and debris snake between these features. Smoother plains
lie to the west, stretching all the way towards the giant,
now extinct Shield volcano Olympus, Mond's largest volcano in our
Solar System and more than twice the height of Mount Everest.
Mars Express has been orbiting the Red planet since two
thousand and three, and it's continuing its mission of mapping
(24:31):
the planet, delivering data that's reshaping sciences understanding of Martian
geological and climatic history. This is space time still to come.
The United States Space Forces military space Shuttle launches on
its eighth secret mission, and later in the science report,
palaeontologists uncover one of the most complete ixious or fossils
(24:53):
ever found. All that and more still to come on
space time. The United States Space Force has launched its
(25:14):
eighth X thirty seven B space Shuttle mission on another
classified flight, The Dotal wing space plane was mounted inside
the payload fairing of a SpaceX Falcon nine rocket for
the launch of Pad thirty nine A at the Kennedy
Space Center at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Space in Florida.
The United States Space Force says the vehicle's clandestine mission
will include a wide range of tests and experimentation objectives.
(25:38):
The military says these operational demonstrations and experiments comprised next
generation technologies, including laser communication systems and the highest performing
quantum inertial sensor system ever tested in space. The X
thirty seven was originally developed by NASA and the US
military back in nineteen ninety nine as a mini version
of the manned Space Shuttle. It was designed to be
(26:01):
carried in the payload bay of the Space Shuttle and
then launched from orbit on a range of potential missions,
including the refueling and servicing of operational satellites. It would
also undertake independent research, carrying instruments in its own payload bay.
The project was eventually taken over exclusively by the military
in two thousand and four, and that resulted in the
(26:21):
development of two operational X thirty seven B reasonable spacecraft
by Boeing, the first of which flew its first orbital
mission in twenty ten. The last X thirty seven B mission,
OHTV seven, remained in orbit for more than a year
before returning to Earth back in March, and previous missions
have lasted in orbit for several years at a time,
the longest staying up for nine hundred and eight days.
(26:44):
This eighth mission, OTV eight, is the fourth vehicle one
the X thirty seven b's proven itself to be a
versatile platform capable of targeting highly elliptical orbits and also
dipping down in the upper Earth atmosphere using aero breaking
to change orbits before for enemy nations can lock tracking
onto it. And that's important because as well as testing
(27:04):
new technologies, these space plans can also be used for
reconnaissance missions and they can utilize a range of anti
satellite capabilities visiting, studying, and monitoring enemy spacecraft in orbit.
This space time and time out to take a brief
(27:34):
look at some of the other stories making news in
science this week with a science report. A new study
has found that teens and young people who use vapes
are more likely to pick up smoking cigarettes, use marijuana,
and take up drinking, as well as facing much higher
risks of a host of health issues. A report in
the General Tobacco Control examine the results of twenty one
(27:56):
previous systematic studies, finding young people who vape are three
more likely to start smoking cigarettes and were consistently more
likely to start using dope and binge drinking booze. Vaping's
also been linked to asthma diagnosis and worsening symptoms for
a range of different health issues, including ammonia, low's sperm
count migraines and poor mouthhealth. Paleontologists in Queensland have uncovered
(28:21):
one of the most complete ixtiosaur fossils ever found. Ixiosaurs
were marine predators from the age of the dinosaur and
were similar in appearance to modern day dolphins. The seven
point one meter long aquatic reptile was discovered four hundred
kilometers northwest of Longreach in out back western Queensland. The
one hundred million year old fossil, thought to be species
(28:42):
of Platatyigus australis, is some ninety percent complete. The find
includes a complete vertebral column and intact left flipper, part
of the right flipper, as well as hind flippers, partial
telfin and a nearly complete scullant Also, the ixiosaur was
a dominant predator of the inlands which covered much of
western Queensland some one hundred million years ago. Surgeons in
(29:06):
China have for the first time transplanted a genetically modified
pig lung into a human patient. The lung continued to
function in the recipient for almost nine days. A report
in the journal Nature Medicine claims previous research on transplanting
genetically modified pig organs are focused primarily on kidneys, hearts,
and livers, with genetic modifications used to remove adogens that
(29:28):
could make the human immune system reject the organs immediately. So,
using the same strategy, the surgeons implanted a pig lung
into a thirty nine year old human had already been
declared brain dead. They say the body did not immediately
reject the lung. However, the lung dicho signs of damage
twenty four hours after transplant and signs of rejection at
three and six days before it finally died on day nine.
(29:54):
A new study is found that around three in every
ten Americans make use of astrology terot cards four in
telling at least once a year. However, the findings by
Pure Research also showed that about two thirds of those
so they only do it for fun. To mend them
from Australian Skeptics says. The findings also show that around
one in ten people mostly engage because they believe the
(30:15):
practices really do give them helpful insights, and one in
one hundred actually rely on what they learned from these
practices when making major life decisions.
Speaker 5 (30:24):
Curious searches are pretty reasonable places that are quite Legiti,
and they did a survey as close to getting up
towards ten thousand US adults, asking them what their attitude
toward astrology and fortune telling, tarot carts, that sort of stuff,
and they said three in ten Americans make use of
it at least once a year, but most of those
do it for fun. It's sort of like reading the
star fid astrology in the local paper, or they just
sort of dabble it it but don't take it that seriously.
(30:46):
So you could say that nine out of ten Americans
don't take astrology seriously, so that'd be a different headline entirely.
There's one person out of tens who might say they
engage mostly because they believe the practices give them helpful insights.
And there's one percent for the whole population they say
they rely on what they learn from astrology of tarracarts,
et cetera when making major life decisions. So it get
(31:07):
easy to say that nineteen nine percent of Americans do
not lie one that's probably not the way people want
to see it. They're talk about being a big industry,
billion dollars of revenue, employing one hundred and five thousand people.
Apparently cut into a different market research firm either world,
so it is big business. The biggest fans tend to
be younger people tend to be people who's just got
(31:27):
as high school. Younger women, especially LGBTQ people apparently have
a greater interest, but it's not necessarily huge. People who
are older age sixty five or older, those with higher incomes,
college degrees, and those who identify as politically conservative are
less likely than are the adults to believe in astrology
and engage with tarot cards. So there doesn't seem to
(31:47):
be a correlation either between religion religious belief and belief
in these things, which is interesting because they do tend
to contradict each other. But a lot of religious people
are just as much inclined through follow astrology in tarot carts,
according to this survey, or at least have fun with
it as the non religious gript although atheist seem to
be a bit more discissive of astrology and tero biginess
probably don't believe in the supernatural. It's the growing industry.
(32:07):
Despite the fact that what he can I say funk.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
When you say one percent of Americans, there's still three
point three million people. That's a lot of people.
Speaker 5 (32:15):
Yeah, yeah, but I mean there's more people than that
believe in ghosts. It's only a small PERCENTA let's sume
that they take it very seriously. There are a lot
more people taking a lot of other supernatural things seriously.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
That's timendum from Australia Skeptics, and that's the show for now.
(32:44):
Space Time is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through
Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcast poker Casts, Spotify a Cast,
Amazon Music, bytes dot com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast provider,
and from space Time with Stuart Gary dot com. Space
Time's also broadcast through the National Science Foundation, on Science
(33:08):
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
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(33:32):
Just go to space Time with Stuart Gary dot com
for full details.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
You've been listening to space Time with Stuart Gary This
has been another quality podcast production from bytes dot com.
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