September 18, 2025 • 29 mins
Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL has reached the ISS. Space Weather announces upcoming solar activity. Scientists discover evidence of liquid water on Ryugu's parent asteroid. Ukraine has destroyed the RT-70 telescope.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Warning.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
known to learn about astronomical phenomenon the scientific method, and
expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
that's your own risk.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Go ahead. When made of stars, made them stars.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Mad sizes, When maida stars.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
You could be from high they would New Mexicomus where
all stars?
Speaker 4 (00:43):
When we are made of stars.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I'm Wes Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean,
cruising from Columbus State Universities, Coca Cola Space Science Center.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Hey Sean, Hey Wes, good to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
All right, let's jump straight into it signas cargo ship
has reached the International Space Station. It was a birthing, right,
not a dock berthing.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
A birthing. A birthing means when you grab it with
a robot arm and attach it kind of like a lego,
rather than the ship actually guiding itself into location. The
robot arm is used. So anyway, the North Grumman's signess
XL cargo ship. Now it's the EXL that we should
focus on for the story. Because that stands for extra law.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
Okay, good. I was worried. I thought, oh no, what
could this mean.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
No, it means exactly what you think it means. It's
a bigger than normal cargo ship. Right, So it's a
version of the signas cargo ship, which is supplied the
International Space Station many on many occasions, except this one's
just bigger, capable of haulingmore freight, and it was able
to dock, and of course it's Hollymoor Freight. It's the
biggest ever cargo spacecraft to arrive at the International Space Station.
(02:06):
It was carrying about eleven thousand pounds of cargo, and
it had a little bit of a false start. So
it launched last Sunday as we're recording the show. By
the way, friends, it was just attached to the space
station today, right, so we're recording on the day we're
made the final docking. It was launched last Sunday as
we were recording the show, September fourteenth, So it left
(02:28):
the Cape Carna Space four station in Florida from Launch
Complex number forty aboard a SpaceX Dragon. I'm sorry, SpaceX
Falcon nine, forget, I said Dragon. A SpaceX Falcon nine
launch vehicle, and of course Dragon's the capsule, it's the
signas that was the capsule this time anyway, So it
was packed with more than five tons of spare parts
(02:52):
and research materials and crew supplies and all kinds of
holiday treats for the space station crew because they're going
to be up there now for the next several months
and they're going to be celebrating Christmas and well thanksgiving.
All those fun things. All the supplies for that has
now arrived to the space station, which is it's kind
of cool. But as it came closer to the space station,
it was actually having a little bit of a computer fault,
(03:14):
and they called it a main engine fault detection software.
They had to adjust the sensitivity on that software because
it was prematurely shutting down the thrusters that were allowing
the vehicle to rendezvous with the International Space Station, and
that's never a good thing. And again, it wasn't flying
itself all the way into the docking port. It was
(03:35):
actually going to be grappled by a robot arm, which
is what they did today. And it was actually Johnny Kim,
who is the mission specialist up there aboard the International
Space Station and Johnny he had a message for the
folks down at NASA. He said, a big congratulations to
NASA and signas teams for a successful signals launch and
rendezvous in capture. Adapting and overcoming unforeseen challenges is something
(04:00):
we do it NASA, and I'm very proud to be
part of this team. So obviously they were able to
overcome the main engine fault detection software sensitivity, they got
the adjustments made, it worked well enough to get it
close enough to the space station that Johnny Kim was
able to grab it with a robot arm and put
it in place now. Dina Contella is a deputy manager
(04:20):
of the Space Station program at Johnson's Space Center, and
she had this to say about the flight. The Sickness
is packed with consumables like nitrogen, oxygen, food, and toilet parts,
and it has a large number of spare parts that
are required for systems like, for example, our urine processor.
So just knowing that your food and oxygen is right
(04:43):
next to the toilet parts and the urine processor components
maybe comforting for astronauts and board the space station because
you need all those things really up there, right, got
to have.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Them all well, And I don't think the urine processor
like was you know, full like. I think they probably
set it up brand new, right, I mean, it's not
like the food was all next to a urine processor
that was soaked with waste.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I would pull it out of the nearby convenience store
stuck at them. No, they didn't do that, of course,
it's all clean parts. It's just, you know, sometimes we
get a little squeamish in our very comfortable daily lives
here on planet Earth. Yeah, and we forget that these
things are all well, you know, utilitarian and important up
there on the International Space Station and they might pack
your Christmas turkey whatever supplies those are right next to
(05:31):
the toilet parts in the urine processor components. And it's
okay because you're an astronaut and you're more mature and
can think through all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
That's right, That's why, you know, I mean, I you know,
if they wanted you and me to go up at
some point, we would happily go up and do a
show from up there. But I don't know that I
would be mature enough to not giggle at some of
these things. All right, So this is the biggest ever
a cargo that has arrived International Space Station. So this
(06:00):
is a cargo larger than anything that the Space Shuttle
would have delivered, Like, this is significantly bigger than that,
or just a little.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Bigger I think.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
I think no, first of all. Okay, so it's not
bigger than the Space Shuttle, but it's it's the biggest
ever cargo spacecraft. So ok So, you know, you know
how these distinctions go. We talk about these in sports
a lot. It's like, well, it's a left handed pitcher,
you know. It's like, Okay, had a different record. So
the Space Shuttle was both a cargo and passenger vehicle
(06:32):
right simultaneously, and its cargo capacity was greater than this.
But this is the biggest ever strictly cargo vehicle yep. Okay, right,
So so something that doesn't have humans on board to
go up there, right, So it's a robot ship. Think
about it that way. It's a robot ship for cargo.
This is the biggest ever of those to arrive at
(06:52):
the International Space Station. Okay.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
And I know I was throwing your curve ball there,
but no, that was That's kind of what I was
wondering as far as the size of the cargo that
the space station was capable of. So this is the
XL cargo ship. It replaced the old extra medium. Is
that what it did?
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Because meeting large, you know, it was the sickness L.
I don't know, was it that? It was the sickness S,
the sickness M, the sickness L, and now the sickness XL.
We can't wait for the signas to XL, I.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Know, and then eventually, you know, you get to the
four and five xls, and then you won't even be
able to find the xcels anymore because I'll just have
those I just my favorite, one of my favorite jokes ever,
is to refer to something as extra medium because you
don't even know which direction that's going. Does that mean
it's bigger than medium or is it smaller than medium?
Extra small is smaller than small. It's not bigger than small.
(07:43):
I don't know the things I do that make me
laugh and make my wife roll her eyes. I read
something recently that said the goal of every man is
to make a beautiful woman roll her eyes at you
for the rest of your life. And I'm like, yes, mission.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Accomplished. I've been there for a few of those againstes.
I've seen that in action.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
You have, and I would imagine you make your wife
roll her eyes quite a bit as well. So mission
accomplished on both of us this very day. This very day,
I'm pretty achieve success.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
In that area.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Pretty sure I did that this morning. So it's a
great that's a it's a win obviously for them and
in the next phase. And we talk about this all
the time. Anytime there's another company that gets involved in
all of this, it's only good. It's good for competition,
it's good for backups, it's good for so many things.
So that's a good that's a big win for them.
(08:33):
So good stuff there. Let's talk about the Sun. We
talked about this last week. We were talking about the
fact that there was this change in the uh in
the surface of the Sun, and one of those things
that we don't often talk about. And we address some
of that. How obviously a change in the Sun's atmosphere
(08:54):
and it starts pointing and sending things in our direction.
We got another story about solar activity, but this is
kind of more of a long term thing more so
than just something that's going on currently.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah, it is, there's been a long term study of
solar activity trends, and the research team working on that
published those findings in the Astrophysical Journal Letters on September
the eighth, And if you want to read more about this,
spaceweather dot com is the place to go. By the way,
doctor Tony Phillips and the crew at space Weather had
this story today. So Tony Phillips and the Space Weather
(09:27):
crew themselves have been looking at long term trends in
the solar activity cycle and it came up basically with
the same conclusion. And so this new study is actually
supported by the work that doctor Tony Phillips and the
crew at space Weather have been doing. Okay, so it's
a new NASA study. It concludes that solar activity has
reversed its decades long weakening trend. So what we were
(09:50):
seeing is solar maximum cycles that were continually weaker than
the last one. So there was a number of years,
a few decades where how intense the number of solar
storms and the power of those storms, the generated explosions
on the sun, solar flares and things, all of that
(10:11):
was decreasing in intensity over a few solar cycles. And
you have to remember that each solar cycle is about
eleven years long, right, so we'd seen this kind of
decreasing trend. Well, the solar cycle we're in now seems
to be a bit more intense than the last couple,
that solar cycle number twenty five. But the new findings
(10:32):
are indicating that the future solar cycles twenty six and
twenty seven and going into the future, So in other words,
the next twenty thirty years are going to be more
intense each time. Now what does that mean, Well, that
means more interaction between the Sun and the Earth in
terms of the Sun shooting off all this deadly radiation
(10:53):
of the Earth and things like our satellites interacting with
that radiation, things like solar activity that we see manifesting
here on Earth as aurora phenomenon and things like that.
But it also has a direct effect on the electronics
and just the orbital characteristics of satellites around the Earth.
So first of all, it comes in as basically like
(11:15):
a giant wave of electricity that's a bunch of charged
particles from the Sun that can actually burn out electronic
components on satellites, making them putting them in danger of
correct operation. But it also makes the atmosphere swell. So
that's the atmosphere of the Earth. And remember we think
about these objects being in space and they're outside the
(11:35):
Earth's atmosphere. Well, the Earth's atmosphere doesn't have a boundary
line that says I stop here. It's kind of a gradient, right,
so it just dies off, which means those satellites out
there in orbit around the Earth, they're still in a
little bit of the Earth's atmosphere, it's just very little.
So what happens though, is when solar activity happens, you know,
giant storms on the Sun, and those materials streak in
(11:57):
from the Sun and interact with Earth's atmosphere, it can
cause the Earth's atmosphere to swell, which means suddenly those
satellites in orbit are going through more air than they
were before, and it causes more drag on those satellites
and it can cause their orbits to decay. And one
of those satellite groups, which happens to be orbiting very
low already, in other words, they already have a fair
(12:18):
amount of drag, are the Starlink satellites from SpaceX. So
spaceweather dot com has a little cute phrase that they
put on there on their report in this whole story,
which says, quote, stay tuned for more sunspots and fewer starlinks.
So the whole idea is that, Yeah, as the atmosphere swells,
it's going to cause more of those starlinks to fall
out of orbit, and SpaceX will have to be replacing those.
(12:40):
So as we look to these long term trends, expect
more interference from the Sun's activity with our satellites in
orbit and also with our electronics here on the surface
of the Earth.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Potentially coming up after a quick break, we'll talk about
liquid water and kind of a cool place. We'll talk
about that next. I tease this as liquid water and
(13:20):
kind of a cool place, but I guess they've been
a really cold place as you think about asteroids moving
through space, and I got questions, I got follow up
questions on this story, so let's just jump right into it.
So with scientists finding evidence of flowing water on ry
Yugu's ancient parent asteroid, and this could be an indicator
(13:40):
of where our water may.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Have come from a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, it's a really interesting story in that regards. So
first of all, just a hat tip to the Japanese
scientists who have a spacecraft that visit an asteroid. The
spacecraft was called Hayabusa two, and this spacecraft was able
to do what's called a sample and return mission, and
so it took samples in twenty eighteen, in twenty nineteen
(14:09):
off the surface of an asteroid called Ryugu, and then
it brought those back to Earth on December fifth in
twenty twenty. And the Japanese scientists have been studying those
samples since that time, and they found some very interesting
things about the soils from the surface of this asteroid. Now,
before we go further, let's get into some astronomy one
oh one, because we like to do that, right. What
(14:33):
is the idea about the way that the planets formed
in the first place. Well, the formation of the Solar
System is thought to have occurred through a process that
we call the solar nebula, which was as the Sun
was forming, a bunch of materials swarming around in orbit
around that primordial Sun in a disc. Those materials started
(14:55):
to accrete, is what we were to use the word
in astronomy, started to stick together, right, and so pretty
soon you had a bunch of little planet tesimals. Little
they're not big enough to be a planet or even
a protoplanet. They're just little chunks of ice and rock
floating around. And then those planet tesils, planet testimals begin
(15:15):
to collide and stick together, and it's kind of like
you're sticking one snowball together with another snowball to make
the base of a big snowman. Right. And so as
the as these materials collected in the outer Solar System,
suddenly you had this era of what we call the
proto planets. And there were many of those, and they
were big. They were you know, kind of think about
(15:37):
the size of the moons around Jupiter, the larger moons
around Jupiter, so maybe bigger than our moon slightly. But
those proto planets then would collide with one another and
they would shatter, and so many of the asteroids that
are now in our asteroid belt are remnants of shattered
proto planets or shattered large asteroids in this violent collisional
(16:01):
period within the early Solar System. Okay, so there's the
setup for the story. Now, Japan sends this vehicle, Hyabusatu,
out to investigate a near Earth object called Ryugu. That's
important to say this. It's not just any old asteroid,
it's one that happens to be a potential Earth impact
or someday. Right, it's in our near environment around or
(16:24):
orbit around the Sun. So they went out to investigate
the nature of this thing with a spacecraft. They brought
the samples back to Earth and lo and behold. The
samples of these materials show that the parent object of
Ryugu must have formed around the four point six billion
year ago mark. That's around the same time that we
(16:46):
think that all the planets were forming, right, So that
means that Ryugu had a parent object that was also
an asteroid or something. But then with chemical analysis of
these samples, whatever the parent object was that was four
point six billion years old, it had flowing liquid water
on its surface. How do they know that? Because they
(17:08):
can figure out the hydration compounds in the soil materials
and say, wow, this is strong evidence of a liquid
water environment that had to be present to form these
kinds of compounds. How do we know that because we
compare it to samples here on the Earth where we
know such conditions existed, right, And so it's a very
(17:29):
interesting set of conclusions. Seyoshi Izuka is one of the
scientists from the University of Tokyo and Seyoshi had a
statement said this, we found that Rayugu preserved a pristine
record of water activity, evidence that fluids moved through its
rocks far later than we expected. This changes how we
(17:53):
think about the long term fate of water asteroids. The
water hung around for a long time and was not
exhausted so quickly as we thought, so says Suyoshi Izuka,
scientists with the University of Tokyo who studied the Hayabusatu samples.
So not only was this water from the parent asteroid
(18:15):
of Rayugu, in other words, it's old, it also was
present on the surface of that asteroid for a long time,
and is in fact even still present in some forms
within the samples returned from Rayugu back in twenty twenty.
So this is an interesting data point that now scientists
who study how we believe the formation of the Solar
(18:37):
System occurred and how we got all the kinds of
compounds and samples that we have from our Earth, from
the Moon, from other places that we've sampled, they have
a little bit new material formula that they have to
figure out, like, hey, how would long term water affect
all of this stuff? Right? How would water being around
(18:59):
and present a lot, a lot longer than we thought.
How would that change the chemistry of these various formations
of soils and rocks that we find on these worlds.
So anyway, a cool story. Space dot Com congratulations to
the Japanese Space Agency an excellent find from their very
effective mission Hyabusa two.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
All Right, I know I'm getting into some just hypothetical
or theoretical or whatever you want with some of these questions.
But when we talk about planets that we discover that
we say, Okay, we've discovered x number of exoplanets that
are in the Goldilock zone in different areas and yet
no evidence of anything that would you know, Occasionally we
(19:38):
get a planet where we say, oh, there's a possibility
of something there. We're starting to detect, you know, certain
types of gases or things, and we say, well, that
might indicate something. But does it take a story like
this or a study like this to tell us how
unbelievably what a low percentage it is for all of
(20:01):
the things to come into play where we were relying
on these compounds, this water to come from somewhere and
specifically direct hit us. On top of being in a
Goldilog zone, on top of having a moon that's able
to protect us, on top of all of the things
that we needed for this to be the perfect storm.
And then you realize, well, sure, there's a lot of
(20:22):
exoplanets we found, but they all kind of needed this
perfect thing to happen to them as well. That just
didn't happen.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah. Well, what Wes is referring to, and maybe I
didn't cover this clearly enough, is to say this that
some of the water on the surface of the Earth.
Now we're a water planet, right, Our planet's surface is
rich in liquid water, and there are a lot of
conversations about where did that water come from. What was
it here in the inner parts of our Earth and
(20:50):
then came to the surface at a later time, or
was it deposited here by the collisions with asteroids like
the one we're talking about Ryugu, with comets which care
a lot higher water fraction even than asteroids. You know,
it's obviously probably some combination of both. But which was
the majority factor? Right? Was it already majority here and
(21:11):
then rose from the Earth's interior, or was it placed
here through collisions with very watery objects in that early
part of the solar system, and yes, this would absolutely
change that idea around because because then the notion as well,
it appears that these objects were maybe more water rich
than we realized for longer periods of time. So collisions
with asteroids like this would have definitely brought a higher
(21:34):
water content to the surface of the Earth. So those
people who do study how our solar system formed and
got to be the way it is today, this is
definitely going to be a little bit of a game
changer for their modeling of how those kinds of things
could occur. Now, so then you extended to exoplanets, you say, okay,
well we need to apply what we understand about our
(21:55):
own solar system to the possibilities of planets around others
are having water within what West referred to as the
Goldilocks zone that just right, not too close, not too
far range from their parent star to say, yeah, those
conditions would be important at that location as well. And so,
but the point is when these kinds of building blocks
(22:18):
of our theories and models change, then our own understanding
of our own solar system changes, and then that, like
you know, dominoes, it changes what we understand then about
solar systems around other stars potentially as well. So yeah,
that's why this is such a very important discovery and
such a very important puzzle piece to say, reinsert now
that it's a bit of a different shape, we have
(22:40):
to reinsert that into the puzzle, and that that's going
to change our understanding of all of those kind of
dominoes leading out to our understanding of planets around other stars.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
And maybe not to really dive into this, but then
the next question, of course, whenever we find water, there's
a possibility of life, and could life be getting delivered
through this mechanism throughout different plants and things. So all
of that a lot of questions. It's always great science
when you get some answers that lead to more questions.
That's when you're more science than it gets to happen.
(23:10):
All right, let's talk about Ukraine. Obviously, the war has
continued on and this is kind of one of those
different kind of casualties to war. And it's not to
minimize the casualties of war, but this is a very
different sort of casualty for the war, and it involves
(23:31):
a giant telescope that was destroyed for strategic reasons.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah, we don't do politics on this show. That's just
something we don't really do. And so this is not
a political story, it's it's just a reality. Right. So war,
as Wes said, has lots of casualties, and there's some
very unfortunate things that happen. And yes, losing life is
number one, right, but it's not all that we lose.
(24:00):
And so this is another one of those stories just
remind everyone that we lose more than that. So in
the Crimea there was a radio telescope called the RT seventy,
and that radio telescope when we were all working together
on science, they kinds of things. That radio telescope was
used for a couple of different purposes. It was used
(24:21):
to support both missions to Venus and Mars, and it
was also used to transmit messages from the Earth out
into our cosmos as basically a friendly wave to anybody
who might be listening to say, Hey, we're here on
planet Earth and you know, we might like to talk
to you people out there, or people's probably not the
(24:44):
right word. We'd like to talk to you intelligent life
forms out there.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
We'd like to talk to you greb ed ar.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
So whatever that message was. Anyway, So this radio telescope
was used for messages like that, or for communicating with
satellites that were going out or probes that were going
out and doing some very important investigations that are on
solar system. And now we find out that last month
it was exploded. It was blown up by Ukrainian defense
(25:14):
forces as a two hundred and thirty foot dish and
it was five thousand metric tons of structure and it
was brought to Ruin. Why well, because the Russian forces
had decided to shall we say, upgrade its capabilities and
use it for military communications. So it had become a
(25:37):
strategic target because the Russians now controlling that section of
Crimea or annexing that peninsula. Back in twenty fourteen, they
were using that radio dish for purposes of war, and
so it got involved in some activities that were deemed
unfriendly by the Ukrainians and they took it out. Anyway,
what we're doing here is we're just kind of mourning
(25:58):
the fact that while something that have been used for
science and for investigating the cosmos has now been reduced
to rubble because it was being conflated to the purposes
of military communications.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
Let's talk about music. Under the Dome.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
We are back with more shows for this school year,
and we got the first of those coming up next month,
just a few weeks away.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, we're super excited about Music under the Dome. It's
a great concert series. Friends, if you've not been down
and seen one of our Music under the Dome concerts,
it's the students and faculty from the Schwob School of
Music here at Columbus State University's Coca Cola at Columbus
State University, and it's here at the Coca Cola Space
Science Center in our planetarium. The Schwob musicians, faculty and
(26:49):
students from the world renowned by the way Schwob School
of Music come and perform inside our planetarium and a
great show that's both audio splendor but also visual splendor.
And our very own Lance Tankersley, our director of our
Ominosphere Theater at the Coca Cola Space Science Center, is
producing that show. It's going to be on October seventh.
(27:10):
It's going to be a great show with those original
graphics choreographed to the music. It's going to be performed
live by the schwa School of Music students and faculty.
Make sure you get your tickets not just for this show,
but for the whole season as soon as possible. Because
our theaters reasonably small, we have one hundred and sixteen seats,
the theater sells out pretty quickly. If you're interested in
(27:31):
seeing one of the concerts this year, make sure you
get on our website and buy your tickets right away.
Www dot cc SSC dot org. Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie
dot org. That's the weblink for the concerts.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
Friends.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
I will tell you also that we have been upgrading
the main seating section. We're going to have some brand new,
very comfortable seats now. That might tempt you to fall asleep, but.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
Don't do it.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Don't do it because I know planetariums are sleep places.
But yeah, you know, just because our seats are nice
and comfortable now, doesn't really give you the license to
fall asleep. Just stay awake and enjoy the whole concert. Friends.
It's gonna be a very relaxing but also very engaging experience.
Come see music under the Dome. Visit the website www
dot cc s SC dot org. Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie
(28:20):
dot org for those concert tickets.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Sean and I thank you for listening, and we'll do
this again next week. Overhead Door Company of Columbus has
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(28:44):
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Warning.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
known to learn about astronomical phenomenon the scientific method, and
expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
that's your own risk.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Go ahead. When made of stars, made them stars.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Mad sizes, When maida stars.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
You could be from high they would New Mexicomus where
all stars?
Speaker 4 (00:43):
When we are made of stars.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I'm Wes Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean,
cruising from Columbus State Universities, Coca Cola Space Science Center.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Hey Sean, Hey Wes, good to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
All right, let's jump straight into it signas cargo ship
has reached the International Space Station. It was a birthing, right,
not a dock berthing.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
A birthing. A birthing means when you grab it with
a robot arm and attach it kind of like a lego,
rather than the ship actually guiding itself into location. The
robot arm is used. So anyway, the North Grumman's signess
XL cargo ship. Now it's the EXL that we should
focus on for the story. Because that stands for extra law.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
Okay, good. I was worried. I thought, oh no, what
could this mean.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
No, it means exactly what you think it means. It's
a bigger than normal cargo ship. Right, So it's a
version of the signas cargo ship, which is supplied the
International Space Station many on many occasions, except this one's
just bigger, capable of haulingmore freight, and it was able
to dock, and of course it's Hollymoor Freight. It's the
biggest ever cargo spacecraft to arrive at the International Space Station.
(02:06):
It was carrying about eleven thousand pounds of cargo, and
it had a little bit of a false start. So
it launched last Sunday as we're recording the show. By
the way, friends, it was just attached to the space
station today, right, so we're recording on the day we're
made the final docking. It was launched last Sunday as
we were recording the show, September fourteenth, So it left
(02:28):
the Cape Carna Space four station in Florida from Launch
Complex number forty aboard a SpaceX Dragon. I'm sorry, SpaceX
Falcon nine, forget, I said Dragon. A SpaceX Falcon nine
launch vehicle, and of course Dragon's the capsule, it's the
signas that was the capsule this time anyway, So it
was packed with more than five tons of spare parts
(02:52):
and research materials and crew supplies and all kinds of
holiday treats for the space station crew because they're going
to be up there now for the next several months
and they're going to be celebrating Christmas and well thanksgiving.
All those fun things. All the supplies for that has
now arrived to the space station, which is it's kind
of cool. But as it came closer to the space station,
it was actually having a little bit of a computer fault,
(03:14):
and they called it a main engine fault detection software.
They had to adjust the sensitivity on that software because
it was prematurely shutting down the thrusters that were allowing
the vehicle to rendezvous with the International Space Station, and
that's never a good thing. And again, it wasn't flying
itself all the way into the docking port. It was
(03:35):
actually going to be grappled by a robot arm, which
is what they did today. And it was actually Johnny Kim,
who is the mission specialist up there aboard the International
Space Station and Johnny he had a message for the
folks down at NASA. He said, a big congratulations to
NASA and signas teams for a successful signals launch and
rendezvous in capture. Adapting and overcoming unforeseen challenges is something
(04:00):
we do it NASA, and I'm very proud to be
part of this team. So obviously they were able to
overcome the main engine fault detection software sensitivity, they got
the adjustments made, it worked well enough to get it
close enough to the space station that Johnny Kim was
able to grab it with a robot arm and put
it in place now. Dina Contella is a deputy manager
(04:20):
of the Space Station program at Johnson's Space Center, and
she had this to say about the flight. The Sickness
is packed with consumables like nitrogen, oxygen, food, and toilet parts,
and it has a large number of spare parts that
are required for systems like, for example, our urine processor.
So just knowing that your food and oxygen is right
(04:43):
next to the toilet parts and the urine processor components
maybe comforting for astronauts and board the space station because
you need all those things really up there, right, got
to have.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Them all well, And I don't think the urine processor
like was you know, full like. I think they probably
set it up brand new, right, I mean, it's not
like the food was all next to a urine processor
that was soaked with waste.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I would pull it out of the nearby convenience store
stuck at them. No, they didn't do that, of course,
it's all clean parts. It's just, you know, sometimes we
get a little squeamish in our very comfortable daily lives
here on planet Earth. Yeah, and we forget that these
things are all well, you know, utilitarian and important up
there on the International Space Station and they might pack
your Christmas turkey whatever supplies those are right next to
(05:31):
the toilet parts in the urine processor components. And it's
okay because you're an astronaut and you're more mature and
can think through all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
That's right, That's why, you know, I mean, I you know,
if they wanted you and me to go up at
some point, we would happily go up and do a
show from up there. But I don't know that I
would be mature enough to not giggle at some of
these things. All right, So this is the biggest ever
a cargo that has arrived International Space Station. So this
(06:00):
is a cargo larger than anything that the Space Shuttle
would have delivered, Like, this is significantly bigger than that,
or just a little.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Bigger I think.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
I think no, first of all. Okay, so it's not
bigger than the Space Shuttle, but it's it's the biggest
ever cargo spacecraft. So ok So, you know, you know
how these distinctions go. We talk about these in sports
a lot. It's like, well, it's a left handed pitcher,
you know. It's like, Okay, had a different record. So
the Space Shuttle was both a cargo and passenger vehicle
(06:32):
right simultaneously, and its cargo capacity was greater than this.
But this is the biggest ever strictly cargo vehicle yep. Okay, right,
So so something that doesn't have humans on board to
go up there, right, So it's a robot ship. Think
about it that way. It's a robot ship for cargo.
This is the biggest ever of those to arrive at
(06:52):
the International Space Station. Okay.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
And I know I was throwing your curve ball there,
but no, that was That's kind of what I was
wondering as far as the size of the cargo that
the space station was capable of. So this is the
XL cargo ship. It replaced the old extra medium. Is
that what it did?
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Because meeting large, you know, it was the sickness L.
I don't know, was it that? It was the sickness S,
the sickness M, the sickness L, and now the sickness XL.
We can't wait for the signas to XL, I.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Know, and then eventually, you know, you get to the
four and five xls, and then you won't even be
able to find the xcels anymore because I'll just have
those I just my favorite, one of my favorite jokes ever,
is to refer to something as extra medium because you
don't even know which direction that's going. Does that mean
it's bigger than medium or is it smaller than medium?
Extra small is smaller than small. It's not bigger than small.
(07:43):
I don't know the things I do that make me
laugh and make my wife roll her eyes. I read
something recently that said the goal of every man is
to make a beautiful woman roll her eyes at you
for the rest of your life. And I'm like, yes, mission.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Accomplished. I've been there for a few of those againstes.
I've seen that in action.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
You have, and I would imagine you make your wife
roll her eyes quite a bit as well. So mission
accomplished on both of us this very day. This very day,
I'm pretty achieve success.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
In that area.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Pretty sure I did that this morning. So it's a
great that's a it's a win obviously for them and
in the next phase. And we talk about this all
the time. Anytime there's another company that gets involved in
all of this, it's only good. It's good for competition,
it's good for backups, it's good for so many things.
So that's a good that's a big win for them.
(08:33):
So good stuff there. Let's talk about the Sun. We
talked about this last week. We were talking about the
fact that there was this change in the uh in
the surface of the Sun, and one of those things
that we don't often talk about. And we address some
of that. How obviously a change in the Sun's atmosphere
(08:54):
and it starts pointing and sending things in our direction.
We got another story about solar activity, but this is
kind of more of a long term thing more so
than just something that's going on currently.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah, it is, there's been a long term study of
solar activity trends, and the research team working on that
published those findings in the Astrophysical Journal Letters on September
the eighth, And if you want to read more about this,
spaceweather dot com is the place to go. By the way,
doctor Tony Phillips and the crew at space Weather had
this story today. So Tony Phillips and the Space Weather
(09:27):
crew themselves have been looking at long term trends in
the solar activity cycle and it came up basically with
the same conclusion. And so this new study is actually
supported by the work that doctor Tony Phillips and the
crew at space Weather have been doing. Okay, so it's
a new NASA study. It concludes that solar activity has
reversed its decades long weakening trend. So what we were
(09:50):
seeing is solar maximum cycles that were continually weaker than
the last one. So there was a number of years,
a few decades where how intense the number of solar
storms and the power of those storms, the generated explosions
on the sun, solar flares and things, all of that
(10:11):
was decreasing in intensity over a few solar cycles. And
you have to remember that each solar cycle is about
eleven years long, right, so we'd seen this kind of
decreasing trend. Well, the solar cycle we're in now seems
to be a bit more intense than the last couple,
that solar cycle number twenty five. But the new findings
(10:32):
are indicating that the future solar cycles twenty six and
twenty seven and going into the future, So in other words,
the next twenty thirty years are going to be more
intense each time. Now what does that mean, Well, that
means more interaction between the Sun and the Earth in
terms of the Sun shooting off all this deadly radiation
(10:53):
of the Earth and things like our satellites interacting with
that radiation, things like solar activity that we see manifesting
here on Earth as aurora phenomenon and things like that.
But it also has a direct effect on the electronics
and just the orbital characteristics of satellites around the Earth.
So first of all, it comes in as basically like
(11:15):
a giant wave of electricity that's a bunch of charged
particles from the Sun that can actually burn out electronic
components on satellites, making them putting them in danger of
correct operation. But it also makes the atmosphere swell. So
that's the atmosphere of the Earth. And remember we think
about these objects being in space and they're outside the
(11:35):
Earth's atmosphere. Well, the Earth's atmosphere doesn't have a boundary
line that says I stop here. It's kind of a gradient, right,
so it just dies off, which means those satellites out
there in orbit around the Earth, they're still in a
little bit of the Earth's atmosphere, it's just very little.
So what happens though, is when solar activity happens, you know,
giant storms on the Sun, and those materials streak in
(11:57):
from the Sun and interact with Earth's atmosphere, it can
cause the Earth's atmosphere to swell, which means suddenly those
satellites in orbit are going through more air than they
were before, and it causes more drag on those satellites
and it can cause their orbits to decay. And one
of those satellite groups, which happens to be orbiting very
low already, in other words, they already have a fair
(12:18):
amount of drag, are the Starlink satellites from SpaceX. So
spaceweather dot com has a little cute phrase that they
put on there on their report in this whole story,
which says, quote, stay tuned for more sunspots and fewer starlinks.
So the whole idea is that, Yeah, as the atmosphere swells,
it's going to cause more of those starlinks to fall
out of orbit, and SpaceX will have to be replacing those.
(12:40):
So as we look to these long term trends, expect
more interference from the Sun's activity with our satellites in
orbit and also with our electronics here on the surface
of the Earth.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Potentially coming up after a quick break, we'll talk about
liquid water and kind of a cool place. We'll talk
about that next. I tease this as liquid water and
(13:20):
kind of a cool place, but I guess they've been
a really cold place as you think about asteroids moving
through space, and I got questions, I got follow up
questions on this story, so let's just jump right into it.
So with scientists finding evidence of flowing water on ry
Yugu's ancient parent asteroid, and this could be an indicator
(13:40):
of where our water may.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Have come from a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, it's a really interesting story in that regards. So
first of all, just a hat tip to the Japanese
scientists who have a spacecraft that visit an asteroid. The
spacecraft was called Hayabusa two, and this spacecraft was able
to do what's called a sample and return mission, and
so it took samples in twenty eighteen, in twenty nineteen
(14:09):
off the surface of an asteroid called Ryugu, and then
it brought those back to Earth on December fifth in
twenty twenty. And the Japanese scientists have been studying those
samples since that time, and they found some very interesting
things about the soils from the surface of this asteroid. Now,
before we go further, let's get into some astronomy one
oh one, because we like to do that, right. What
(14:33):
is the idea about the way that the planets formed
in the first place. Well, the formation of the Solar
System is thought to have occurred through a process that
we call the solar nebula, which was as the Sun
was forming, a bunch of materials swarming around in orbit
around that primordial Sun in a disc. Those materials started
(14:55):
to accrete, is what we were to use the word
in astronomy, started to stick together, right, and so pretty
soon you had a bunch of little planet tesimals. Little
they're not big enough to be a planet or even
a protoplanet. They're just little chunks of ice and rock
floating around. And then those planet tesils, planet testimals begin
(15:15):
to collide and stick together, and it's kind of like
you're sticking one snowball together with another snowball to make
the base of a big snowman. Right. And so as
the as these materials collected in the outer Solar System,
suddenly you had this era of what we call the
proto planets. And there were many of those, and they
were big. They were you know, kind of think about
(15:37):
the size of the moons around Jupiter, the larger moons
around Jupiter, so maybe bigger than our moon slightly. But
those proto planets then would collide with one another and
they would shatter, and so many of the asteroids that
are now in our asteroid belt are remnants of shattered
proto planets or shattered large asteroids in this violent collisional
(16:01):
period within the early Solar System. Okay, so there's the
setup for the story. Now, Japan sends this vehicle, Hyabusatu,
out to investigate a near Earth object called Ryugu. That's
important to say this. It's not just any old asteroid,
it's one that happens to be a potential Earth impact
or someday. Right, it's in our near environment around or
(16:24):
orbit around the Sun. So they went out to investigate
the nature of this thing with a spacecraft. They brought
the samples back to Earth and lo and behold. The
samples of these materials show that the parent object of
Ryugu must have formed around the four point six billion
year ago mark. That's around the same time that we
(16:46):
think that all the planets were forming, right, So that
means that Ryugu had a parent object that was also
an asteroid or something. But then with chemical analysis of
these samples, whatever the parent object was that was four
point six billion years old, it had flowing liquid water
on its surface. How do they know that? Because they
(17:08):
can figure out the hydration compounds in the soil materials
and say, wow, this is strong evidence of a liquid
water environment that had to be present to form these
kinds of compounds. How do we know that because we
compare it to samples here on the Earth where we
know such conditions existed, right, And so it's a very
(17:29):
interesting set of conclusions. Seyoshi Izuka is one of the
scientists from the University of Tokyo and Seyoshi had a
statement said this, we found that Rayugu preserved a pristine
record of water activity, evidence that fluids moved through its
rocks far later than we expected. This changes how we
(17:53):
think about the long term fate of water asteroids. The
water hung around for a long time and was not
exhausted so quickly as we thought, so says Suyoshi Izuka,
scientists with the University of Tokyo who studied the Hayabusatu samples.
So not only was this water from the parent asteroid
(18:15):
of Rayugu, in other words, it's old, it also was
present on the surface of that asteroid for a long time,
and is in fact even still present in some forms
within the samples returned from Rayugu back in twenty twenty.
So this is an interesting data point that now scientists
who study how we believe the formation of the Solar
(18:37):
System occurred and how we got all the kinds of
compounds and samples that we have from our Earth, from
the Moon, from other places that we've sampled, they have
a little bit new material formula that they have to
figure out, like, hey, how would long term water affect
all of this stuff? Right? How would water being around
(18:59):
and present a lot, a lot longer than we thought.
How would that change the chemistry of these various formations
of soils and rocks that we find on these worlds.
So anyway, a cool story. Space dot Com congratulations to
the Japanese Space Agency an excellent find from their very
effective mission Hyabusa two.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
All Right, I know I'm getting into some just hypothetical
or theoretical or whatever you want with some of these questions.
But when we talk about planets that we discover that
we say, Okay, we've discovered x number of exoplanets that
are in the Goldilock zone in different areas and yet
no evidence of anything that would you know, Occasionally we
(19:38):
get a planet where we say, oh, there's a possibility
of something there. We're starting to detect, you know, certain
types of gases or things, and we say, well, that
might indicate something. But does it take a story like
this or a study like this to tell us how
unbelievably what a low percentage it is for all of
(20:01):
the things to come into play where we were relying
on these compounds, this water to come from somewhere and
specifically direct hit us. On top of being in a
Goldilog zone, on top of having a moon that's able
to protect us, on top of all of the things
that we needed for this to be the perfect storm.
And then you realize, well, sure, there's a lot of
(20:22):
exoplanets we found, but they all kind of needed this
perfect thing to happen to them as well. That just
didn't happen.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah. Well, what Wes is referring to, and maybe I
didn't cover this clearly enough, is to say this that
some of the water on the surface of the Earth.
Now we're a water planet, right, Our planet's surface is
rich in liquid water, and there are a lot of
conversations about where did that water come from. What was
it here in the inner parts of our Earth and
(20:50):
then came to the surface at a later time, or
was it deposited here by the collisions with asteroids like
the one we're talking about Ryugu, with comets which care
a lot higher water fraction even than asteroids. You know,
it's obviously probably some combination of both. But which was
the majority factor? Right? Was it already majority here and
(21:11):
then rose from the Earth's interior, or was it placed
here through collisions with very watery objects in that early
part of the solar system, and yes, this would absolutely
change that idea around because because then the notion as well,
it appears that these objects were maybe more water rich
than we realized for longer periods of time. So collisions
with asteroids like this would have definitely brought a higher
(21:34):
water content to the surface of the Earth. So those
people who do study how our solar system formed and
got to be the way it is today, this is
definitely going to be a little bit of a game
changer for their modeling of how those kinds of things
could occur. Now, so then you extended to exoplanets, you say, okay,
well we need to apply what we understand about our
(21:55):
own solar system to the possibilities of planets around others
are having water within what West referred to as the
Goldilocks zone that just right, not too close, not too
far range from their parent star to say, yeah, those
conditions would be important at that location as well. And so,
but the point is when these kinds of building blocks
(22:18):
of our theories and models change, then our own understanding
of our own solar system changes, and then that, like
you know, dominoes, it changes what we understand then about
solar systems around other stars potentially as well. So yeah,
that's why this is such a very important discovery and
such a very important puzzle piece to say, reinsert now
that it's a bit of a different shape, we have
(22:40):
to reinsert that into the puzzle, and that that's going
to change our understanding of all of those kind of
dominoes leading out to our understanding of planets around other stars.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
And maybe not to really dive into this, but then
the next question, of course, whenever we find water, there's
a possibility of life, and could life be getting delivered
through this mechanism throughout different plants and things. So all
of that a lot of questions. It's always great science
when you get some answers that lead to more questions.
That's when you're more science than it gets to happen.
(23:10):
All right, let's talk about Ukraine. Obviously, the war has
continued on and this is kind of one of those
different kind of casualties to war. And it's not to
minimize the casualties of war, but this is a very
different sort of casualty for the war, and it involves
(23:31):
a giant telescope that was destroyed for strategic reasons.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah, we don't do politics on this show. That's just
something we don't really do. And so this is not
a political story, it's it's just a reality. Right. So war,
as Wes said, has lots of casualties, and there's some
very unfortunate things that happen. And yes, losing life is
number one, right, but it's not all that we lose.
(24:00):
And so this is another one of those stories just
remind everyone that we lose more than that. So in
the Crimea there was a radio telescope called the RT seventy,
and that radio telescope when we were all working together
on science, they kinds of things. That radio telescope was
used for a couple of different purposes. It was used
(24:21):
to support both missions to Venus and Mars, and it
was also used to transmit messages from the Earth out
into our cosmos as basically a friendly wave to anybody
who might be listening to say, Hey, we're here on
planet Earth and you know, we might like to talk
to you people out there, or people's probably not the
(24:44):
right word. We'd like to talk to you intelligent life
forms out there.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
We'd like to talk to you greb ed ar.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
So whatever that message was. Anyway, So this radio telescope
was used for messages like that, or for communicating with
satellites that were going out or probes that were going
out and doing some very important investigations that are on
solar system. And now we find out that last month
it was exploded. It was blown up by Ukrainian defense
(25:14):
forces as a two hundred and thirty foot dish and
it was five thousand metric tons of structure and it
was brought to Ruin. Why well, because the Russian forces
had decided to shall we say, upgrade its capabilities and
use it for military communications. So it had become a
(25:37):
strategic target because the Russians now controlling that section of
Crimea or annexing that peninsula. Back in twenty fourteen, they
were using that radio dish for purposes of war, and
so it got involved in some activities that were deemed
unfriendly by the Ukrainians and they took it out. Anyway,
what we're doing here is we're just kind of mourning
(25:58):
the fact that while something that have been used for
science and for investigating the cosmos has now been reduced
to rubble because it was being conflated to the purposes
of military communications.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
Let's talk about music. Under the Dome.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
We are back with more shows for this school year,
and we got the first of those coming up next month,
just a few weeks away.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, we're super excited about Music under the Dome. It's
a great concert series. Friends, if you've not been down
and seen one of our Music under the Dome concerts,
it's the students and faculty from the Schwob School of
Music here at Columbus State University's Coca Cola at Columbus
State University, and it's here at the Coca Cola Space
Science Center in our planetarium. The Schwob musicians, faculty and
(26:49):
students from the world renowned by the way Schwob School
of Music come and perform inside our planetarium and a
great show that's both audio splendor but also visual splendor.
And our very own Lance Tankersley, our director of our
Ominosphere Theater at the Coca Cola Space Science Center, is
producing that show. It's going to be on October seventh.
(27:10):
It's going to be a great show with those original
graphics choreographed to the music. It's going to be performed
live by the schwa School of Music students and faculty.
Make sure you get your tickets not just for this show,
but for the whole season as soon as possible. Because
our theaters reasonably small, we have one hundred and sixteen seats,
the theater sells out pretty quickly. If you're interested in
(27:31):
seeing one of the concerts this year, make sure you
get on our website and buy your tickets right away.
Www dot cc SSC dot org. Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie
dot org. That's the weblink for the concerts.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
Friends.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
I will tell you also that we have been upgrading
the main seating section. We're going to have some brand new,
very comfortable seats now. That might tempt you to fall asleep, but.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
Don't do it.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Don't do it because I know planetariums are sleep places.
But yeah, you know, just because our seats are nice
and comfortable now, doesn't really give you the license to
fall asleep. Just stay awake and enjoy the whole concert. Friends.
It's gonna be a very relaxing but also very engaging experience.
Come see music under the Dome. Visit the website www
dot cc s SC dot org. Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie
(28:20):
dot org for those concert tickets.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Sean and I thank you for listening, and we'll do
this again next week. Overhead Door Company of Columbus has
all of your garage door needs covered. Residential and commercial
service and repairs. If you need a new garage door,
or you're just looking to upgrade or repair your current door,
(28:44):
Overhead Door Company of Columbus has you covered. Plus they've
got your emergency repairs or service covered as well. Seven
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