October 30, 2025 • 45 mins
Blue Origin was preparing a lander for the Artemis V mission that may never happen and now it could be used for Artemis III. SpaceX has broken one of its own launch records. Venus has lost its last active spacecraft. Astronomers continue to find organic molecules everywhere they look. Is it comet or an alien spacecraft?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Warning. 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 2 (00:16):
Go ahead. When made of stars, made them stars.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Made sizes. When made of stars, you could be from
high they would New Mexicomus, where all stars?
Speaker 4 (00:43):
When we are made of Stars on West Carol, joined
by my good friend doctor Sean from Columbus State Universities,
Coca Cola Space Science Center. Hey Sean, good morning, Wes.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Good to be here today. You know, we have some
exciting stuff coming up we do.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
This is our final Made of Stars before Made of
Stars Live on Saturday. So as we're recording this on
Thursday the thirtieth, and that's our normal record day, we're
getting ready for two days from now, six pm at
the Coca Cola Space Science Center Made of Stars Live.
We've not done this before. I think we did once.
(01:33):
We would have recorded there at the Space Science Center,
maybe at a table kind of in the lobby outside,
like a long long time ago. Yeah, and there there
was no audience. The audience was just I think your
staff walking by, going what are you guys doing? And
that was kind of it. And then, you know, this
is a little different and we don't know the audience
(01:53):
size yet, but we'll talk more about that coming up towards.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
The end of the show.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Because we have at least one story to day that
will almost certainly roll over into the Native Stars Live experience.
I think we'll say that too. It's an experience.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
It's absolutely going to be an experience. You know. It
kind of reminds me like when they take these Hollywood
motion pictures and then turn them into a Broadway musical
something like that. Like, you know, if you're a regular
listener to this show and you're entertained by the nonsense
that we put out, yeah, imagine taking that and turning
it into you know, performance art. That's that's basically what
this is going to be.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
There's very little chance of either of us singing. We'll
just say that, and if one of us sings, it
should be you, and that you're better at it than
I am, and then I will ever be.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
So that's damning by fate. Praise my friend, because but
neither of us should sing, but you know that does
that's no guarantee that we won't.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
Let's let's put it this way. If one of us sings,
it should be you, and if one of us does ballet,
it should be me. And I think that's a safe
way to approach the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I don't know. I think I think if the show
is going, you know badly, that just might happen.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Break out the stilts, baby, I'm gonna get up high
and uh and we can do that. You know, you
just don't ever know. And I am now cleared, by
the way, this week, I got cleared by my doctor
to get on stilt, so that's good. Post surgery, I
needed the clearance for rehearsals, so yeah, I could. I
could do that, but we probably won't.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
We're gonna be it's unlikely that that will I'm not
saying zero chance, but unlikely that that will happen.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
That's important that we establish it's not a zero chance,
but it is possible. But you're saying, and we're gonna
talk on on Saturday. We'll talk a little bit kind
of about how we normally do this, because this is
the this is the normal format for us. You're you're
there in the Space Science Center. I'm here in my
home studio. This is the normal way that we do it,
so it's gonna be different for us as well, and
(03:53):
that we're going to be just sitting there in the
same room. Now, we did it on radio that way
for a really long time, so that's not strange, but
it's just this is kind of the normal way that
we do it. And we've actually done it on location,
you know, at the Kennedy Space Center and things like that,
so you know, it's not insane for us to do it.
We just haven't done it with an audience. So we're
(04:14):
hoping that you'll join us Saturday six o'clock. But we'll
talk more about that coming up. Let's jump straight into
this because this is a follow up story from last week.
We were talking about how Sean Duffy, the acting director
of NASA as the Secretary of Transportation, and NASA still
doesn't officially have that position filled. So Sean Duffy said, hey, SpaceX,
(04:39):
you kind of aren't on the pacing that we were
hoping for to get astronauts not just back to the
Moon but then back off of the Moon again. Because
that's the important part of the mission.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Important. Yeah, that's a don't want to leave that leg
of the journey out.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
It is, and it's important to say that because you know,
it wasn't it buzz Aldron who once said, like, the
next big mission is, you know, six feet on next
fnal destination is six feet under on Mars. And the
idea that people would go to Mars and not come
home and that they would eventually die there, I think,
am I giving the right?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Is it?
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Buzz?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Okay?
Speaker 4 (05:17):
So they need to get the astronauts they go back
to the Moon with Artemis three back to Earth. So
there's talk about that and the originally the contract was
going to SpaceX and now Sean Duffy has said, we
have to open this back up forbidding and maybe to
get some companies like Blue Origin back in the discussion.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
And now Blue.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
Origin that was originally scheduled for the Artemis five mission
to take astronauts to the south pole of the Moon,
and that may not happen. Artemis five is this you know,
they kind of said, hey, we'll stop this at three.
So the idea get people back to the Moon. Let's
(06:00):
let's beat China to the Moon as we have another
space race going on, and now Blue Origin has entered
the chat.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I don't even know which way to step. That was
an excellent intro and summary, but it opened so many
doors that I don't know which one to walk through,
or so many twists and turns in this crazy story
of like I think when we were going to the
Moon in the seventies, in nineteen sixty nine, to be exact, well,
I think we had a plan like like here's the rocket,
(06:31):
here's the lander, let's go.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
It was a lot simpler when there weren't these private
companies involved, because you know, it was just hey, we're
a NASA, we're going to do this. Then you enter
private companies in the mix, and suddenly there's there's sort
of a mini space race within a space race, right yeah,
And you know.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
It's it's all in the way it's organized. Because there
were certainly private companies making components of the Apollo program.
Right So North American, for instance, was one of the
companies that built was the company that built a lunar lander, right, So,
I mean, so there were private companies, but they weren't
kind of running the show. And that's the thing is
that NASA has kind of deferred the actual design and
(07:13):
development of these vehicles to all to private companies, and
then they're just kind of trying to take their pick
of which one they like best. And they've just changed
their mind basically on which one they like best in
the last couple of weeks, and that's what led to
Twitter or ex wars or whatever they are anyway, social
media slander anyway. So the notion is this SpaceX has
(07:36):
been working on Starship, and we all know that Elon
probably wants to go to Mars and will use Starship
to land there one day if his dreams come true.
But he's also got a contract with NASA for the
Artemis program. That Starship is the delivery vehicle that docks
with the NASA spacecraft called the Orion Capsule, transfers astronauts
(08:02):
over to Starship, and Starship is what goes down to
the surface, lets them down so they can walk around
for a while, picks them back up again, and brings
them back to orbit. It's like an orbital uber. And
if you don't have an orbital uber, the Orion spacecraft
itself is in no way capable of going to the surface.
(08:24):
You need a ride. Okay.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
So, so even though Starship has been the ride of
choice for a few years now, it was the only
company selected from a multitude of companies who were applying
for that privilege.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
They chose SpaceX only for its Starship, rather than picking
a couple of different companies and letting them battle it out.
They tried that once with Low Earth Orbit, and Boeing
didn't hold up their end, so SpaceX won that battle.
So I think they just picked SpaceX and said, okay, well,
why don't you guys just do this? Okay, Well, now
they've reopened it and there is a fight, and one
(09:04):
of the contestants in that fight is Blue Origin friends,
because Blue Origin is already contracted now after some legal maneuvering,
contracted with NASA for the Artemis five mission, which the
same administration has said won't happen. They're going to stop
after Artemis three anyway. So okay, so Artemis five would
(09:26):
be Yeah, we've landed on the Moon a couple of
times successfully already, why don't we put a spaceship on
the South Pole and Jeff, Jeff Bezos if you want to,
if you want to build that land or go ahead
and build that one' we'll contract with you. Okay, Well,
what why is this news? That's all the setup? Why
is this news? Because this week on Tuesday, Jacqueline Cortesi,
(09:47):
who is Blue Origins Senior director of Civil Space, represented
the company at the American Astronautical Society twenty twenty five
the Von Braun Space Exploration simpost and said this, Hey,
what about that Artemis three. I don't know. This is
not a direct quote, it is it is a mate
(10:12):
of stars paraphrase. Hey, what about that Artemis three. I'll
bet we could have our lander ready by Artemis three times.
We're already stacking right now as we speak, the Blue
Origin Mark one lander, which they are currently stacking in
Florida and could actually be launched later this year. Now,
(10:33):
that's a lunar lander that's made to haul cargo, which
is also part of their contract with NASA taking materials
to the surface of the Moon. It's about half the
size of the Mark two lander, which could be human
rated and take astronauts on Artemis five. Okay, So they said, well,
we could probably have that Mark two lander ready to
(10:54):
go by the time Artemis two goes. And Sean Duffy
just opened the door to another contractor for a lander
for Artemis three, which means perhaps Blue Origin could bump
SpaceX out of the Artemis three competition and have that
(11:19):
very interesting intrigue between two commercial space companies for who
will actually be the official lander for the Artemis three mission.
That's what's happening. Both of Blue Origins landers can be
launched on the Blue Origin b E seven engines, which
(11:40):
is their heavy lift engines. Those engines are currently being
tested on engine test stands in the states of Alabama, Texas,
and Washington, all three places Blue Origin is trying really
hard to be that competitor coming from the outside that
passes the leader just before the finish line. That kind
(12:02):
of analogy for Artemis three.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
So it seems to me, and this is me making
an observation, but the fact that the plan was okay,
we'll have this series of Artemis missions, and the fact
that Blue Origin was slated in there probably perfectly fine.
I mean, I'm sure they would have loved to have
gotten in on the original contract for three, but to say, okay, well,
(12:29):
we're at least going to get there in Artemis five.
And then we find out from the White House there's
no real plans to do four and five, Like, that's
probably not going to happen. So suddenly if you start
eliminating missions that you were under contract to do and
then coincidentally they're open, the bidding back up and Blue
Origin is back in the discussion for the one that
(12:51):
they are doing, the timing of all of that just
seems interesting to me. It is, and you know there
and honestly probably fair. I mean, if you think about it,
you've got companies that have been working towards doing this.
Blue Origin was putting their work in their due diligence
for Artemis five. Oh, by the way, Artemis five is
almost certainly not going to happen. So what have they
(13:14):
been working for? And obviously it's things that will be
used eventually anyway, It's not like if they didn't get involved,
Like if they don't end up winning the bidding for this,
it's not like what they're working on is just suddenly
going to go in a scrap pile.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
That's exactly right. You know, another story that there's so
many stories to choose from that we don't always cover
the stories here. I'm Native Stars, but another story that
we haven't covered but just came out in the last
couple of weeks is the fact that NASA is now
looking at different launch platforms. In other words, not the
Space Launch System, their own big rocket. They're looking at
(13:46):
different launch vehicles that could potentially take the Orion capsule
to the Moon and to Mars places like that. So,
even though that may not strictly be the Artemis program,
you might still have Oryan capsules flying up and talking
with Blue Origin landers to either go to the surface
of the Moon or to Mars at various times. So, yeah, Wes,
(14:07):
you said it correctly. No one's going to throw these
technologies on the scrap heap, even if they don't get
to fly as part of Artemis. They're going to keep
them around. They're going to reuse them. It's the nature
of the ever growing space industry. It's just that it's
some unique intrigue because of well, let's just face it,
the administration that it's at hand right now, the kind
(14:29):
of uncertainty with know NASA director, and maybe it's Jared Isaacman,
and maybe it's not. ANDed Isaacman is a collaborator of
Elon Musk, so maybe it's Elon Musk's rocket maybe it's not.
Maybe it's Blue Origin. There's a lot of stuff we
don't know. So it's just fun to get on podcasts
and talk about these things because it seems like a
silly soap opera in one sense. From the outside.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
We don't often dip into the soap opera stuff, but
occasionally the soap opera is just part of the story.
It's just part of the narrative, and it's hard not
to at least to have some conversation about it.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
I guess, yes, indeed, indeed, you know. It's worth mentioning,
just as a final tag on that story, that SpaceX
did launch Starship just a couple of weeks ago and
everything went swimmingly. So it seems like Starship took a
big jump forward too, about the time that everybody started
(15:25):
getting mad at SpaceX for being behind on Starship. So anyway,
just one more footnote in that melodrama that we're watching unfold.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
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off discount. More We're Made of Stars. Right after this,
(17:25):
our next story is from spaceflight now dot com. The
story about SpaceX kind of having at a little bit
of a flex in their own right. The timing of
that is interesting, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, And just about every time there's a negative story
about SpaceX, they do something unbelievable, and that's this. Now
think about this. SpaceX is launching vehicles from multiple different
launch locations. They launch rockets from the Kennedy Space Center
near Titusville, Florida. They also launch rockets across the street
(18:01):
at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, also near Titusville, Florida.
They also launched rockets from Texas from their own base,
which is where the last Starship launched. But they also
launched rockets from California at Vandenburg Air Force Base. And
recently over the weekend here the SpaceX had a well
(18:24):
was actually on Monday, they had a really interesting milestone,
shall we say. They broke a record for fast turnaround
at their West Coast launch pad. Now they've already had
these kinds of records at the other launch pads, but
now they're having it in California at a Space Force
station out there. They broke the record for the fastest
(18:46):
launch pad turnaround. The record now is two days ten hours,
twenty two minutes and fifty nine seconds. That fifty nine
seconds is really important. No, I don't know if it's
that important. Anyway. The previous record, also set by them,
set one week ago, was two days, eighteen hours, fifty
(19:09):
two minutes and twenty seconds eighteen hours fifty two minutes,
so about nineteen I'm sorry about nine hours difference. Right,
there's about nine hours faster to get this thing all
set up and launched at this Space Force station out
in the deserts of California. This was a Falcon nine
(19:32):
launching from Vanderberg. It was launching what's called the Starlink
eleven twenty one mission, which added twenty eight more of
their v TOO mini iterations of their satellites at the
lower Worth orbit. The last record was set by the
Starlink eleven Dash twelve mission, which that was the nine
hours previous record last week anyway, So there you go.
(19:55):
So pretty interesting milestone. They can do it fast, they
can turn it around fast. They're launching in a cadence
simply unprecedented in human history. And by the way, at
the same time they had that record, they had another record.
It's been five years since their first customer officially signed
up for Starlink, And in that five years they went
(20:17):
from one whoever that dude was Elon's cousin, I don't know, somebody.
They went from that person two millions of customers globally
in five years. They built the infrastructure, launched the satellites,
signed up customers at that furious rate, and in only
(20:39):
five years they are the world's leading satellite internet provider.
An outstanding and amazing set of accomplishments by SpaceX, the
competitors of those folks with Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
Yeah, and it's also just worth noting again and we
talk about this when it happens, and I'm sure it's
probably happening are about to be happening at least with
you know, hurricanes in the Caribbean, but you know, providing
internet to people that you know otherwise would not have
it without the infrastructure and in times of crisis. That's
(21:14):
also been part of that five years that they've been
up and running.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
So there are multiple occasions just within that last five
years that, as you say, ground based infrastructure has been
wiped out in some kind of catastrophic emergency, and SpaceX
with their Starlink Constellation has stepped in and said, oh,
we'll provide connectivity, We'll keep the communication in touch, and
(21:41):
so it's it's it's worth noting. I think we try
really hard on Native Stars not to take sides in
these space wars, shall we say, but we also believe
in giving credit where credits due. And I think there's
a lot of people who are kind of artificially and
unrests necessarily coming out against Elon Musk as a human being. Dudes,
(22:05):
whatever on your part there. Okay, I'm just going to
tell you the report of the company. The company SpaceX
has done some miraculous things in the space industry. There
is no argument.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
Let's talk about Venus. They have lost their last active
spacecraft and.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
They don't know it because they don't have starlink. That's
very true. And I like that.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
I say they as if there's a bunch of people there,
those Venusians, that there are Venusians.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Starlink customers who don't have their Yeah, okay, I'm sorry.
Let me pull out of that silly segue and say, yeah, okay,
great story on space dot Com. An interesting development has happened.
There was one active spacecraft still in some kind of
quasi orbit around the planet Venus that was still on occasion,
providing some data from that ridiculous hot and acidic planet,
(22:56):
the closest by the way in terms of both physical
and physical structure to the Earth. So so yeah, Earth's
twin the evil stepsister Venus. There was a Japanese spacecraft.
It was called a kotsuki. You can say that again.
I couldn't say it the first time. I kotsuki. You
(23:19):
know what I do is I say I practiced these
before the show, and then the moment comes and I
just fail. It's just in my wheelhouse. Some things I'm
good at. That's not one of them. I caught Suki.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
I call that the occasional name at graduation for Columbus
State University. I got practice, and I got it, and
then I and or I get the really tough name,
and then I call somebody named Olivia Oliver. You know
that kind of thing. It happens sometimes.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
I mean, I think that's what I just did, basically,
was the equivalent of that. Everybody know it's akatsuki, all right. So.
Akotsuki is a Japanese word that means dawn, like means o.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
I think it means.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
It could mean oliver in some other language perhaps, but
not in Japanese. It means dawn. We know it better
as the Venus Climate Orbiter. Okay, there we go, so
all of us who know the VCO of the Venus
Climate Order a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency or Jackson spacecraft
that launched back in twenty ten, going strong since twenty ten,
(24:15):
ladies and gentlemen. It launched on the twentieth of May,
but it failed to reach its orbit around Venus in
December of that same year. Ah wah, wah wah. What
happened then is that engineers went to work to see
if they could manipulate the failed orbit spacecraft into some
other kind of unplanned but yet possible orbit, which they
(24:36):
did do. They made an elliptical orbit around the planet
Venus that it entered into on December seventh of twenty fifteen,
where that that's Pearl Harbor day anyway, and made it
into that orbit and becoming the first Japanese satellite orbiting Venus.
So there we go. So since twenty fifteen, this little
(24:58):
spacecraft that could has sp a decade up there in
an orbit that was unplanned but still functional. In some
sense studying the stratification of the atmosphere and the atmospheric
dynamics and the cloud physics on the planet Venus with
five different cameras working at multiple wavelengths, so way to go.
Speaker 5 (25:19):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Occasionally the United States has had to have some very
famous satellite recovery because things didn't quite go like we
wanted them to, kinds of missions, Hubble Space Telescope being
one of those, the Galileo spacecraft also being another. So
these are all you know, when the world deals you lemons,
you make lemonade. These are all those kinds of moments, right.
(25:42):
So that was the good side of the story. Now
here comes the sad side of the story. The Japanese
Space Agency just declared the Venus Climate Orbiter dead. Ladies
and gentlemen. It is now we haven't heard it. Didn't
it quit phoning home about a year ago, but now
they've actually given up and put an official marker in
(26:03):
the I was gonna say in the ground, but that
makes no sense in orbit around Venus. It puts some
kind of an official marker in the ground. Tuesday, October
twenty eighth, the VCO or the at Katsuki Dawn spacecraft
is no longer. There we go. Here's a quote from
Japanese officials. They said, this was a mission that changed
(26:25):
our view of our earth sized neighbor and laid the
path for new discoveries about what it takes to become
a heaven or hell. What do they mean by that? Well,
you know, looking at Earth, I mean I'm not sure
Earth is heaven, but okay, it's certainly a place we
like to live. Venus would not be a place that
(26:45):
we would like to live for more than about zero
point five seconds because it's not really a pleasant place.
So there we go, the official end to the Venus
Climate Orbiter spacecraft.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
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(29:05):
we said we're not going to sing on Made the
Stars Live on Saturday, that that's unlikely that we'll sing.
I'm not really gonna sing. Probably, I'm not really going
to sing. This setup for this next story. But it's
it's kind of a nod to a song, but it's
astronom mercy. Organic molecules everywhere they look, everywhere they look.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
That's good.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
It's my nod to pretty girls. I don't know you
know that one, but yeah, no, I caught it right off. Also,
special props to the folks that made the movie the Ringer.
That's all. That's all I get. When did we get
ice cream? All right, so let's talk about organic molecules.
It seemed to be everywhere astronomers look around.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Without organic molecules, you don't have ice cream. You do
not have ice cream. So that's an important link right
there to your segue.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
Yes, important, uh, important for a number of things, but
especially if you want a place to be heaven.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Yeah, exactly, certainly. If Earth is deemed heaven, you need
the hell of Venus. You must have ice cream. Fact,
there is zero.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
Ice cream on Venus.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
We know that for a fact, pretty much gonna be
a tough sell ice cream on Venus. So without those
molecular organics, you can have neither ice cream nor pizza.
And without ice cream or pizza, heaven on Earth simply
can't happen. That's that's an opinion of the Mate of
(30:37):
Stars podcast ladies and gentlemen, and should not reflect the
views of anybody else pretty much outside these two guys anyways.
So all right, so here's what happened. Earth dot com
is where you'll find the story. Astronomers are finding organic
molecules pretty much everywhere they look. According to the story
on Earth dot com. They're looking that way, and they're
(30:57):
looking over there, and they look, and where do they see?
Everywhere the basic building blocks for life, life as we
know it, that is life with ice cream.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
And pizza, things that make life worth living.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
That's things that make my worth living. So that well,
here's the thing. If we're saying we're everywhere we look,
where are we looking, Well, we're looking in places like
I don't know, comets, both from our solar system and
from other solar systems potentially hmmm, we're looking on things
(31:30):
like asteroids, the surface of asteroids, the surfaces of moons
around giant planets, the surfaces of other planets like Mars,
and just other kinds of locations where we find primitive
rocks from the early part of the Solar System, but
also in the interstellar dust itself, the very very thin
(31:57):
materials that lie in the spaces in betwe between the stars.
We've even detected organic molecules in those places. We are
now beginning to believe that at least within the Milky
Way galaxy. And why is the Milky Way special, It's
just another galaxy, so that would be all galaxies. Their
organic molecules are abundant throughout space. Well, this begins to
(32:22):
broaden the conversation, saying, hey, if organics are common throughout
all of space, how did they get there? What was
the what were the chemical processes that led from the
very primitive atoms in the early universe to suddenly organics
being everywhere you look. Well, a long held idea might
(32:44):
be that there are these complicated polymer molecules that are
made in various chemical processes in the formation of stars,
and these large polymer molecules, once they're formed, could be
broken down by ultra violet radiation or other kinds of
collisional processes, and then break down to the basic organics
(33:07):
that are the building blocks of life, such as proteins
and things like polyaromatic hydrocarbons and things like that that
we think life can be built out of. Well, here's
the problem, according to earth dot com. According to the
story on earth dot com, when astronomers began to look
out there and find all these organic molecules, these simple organics,
(33:29):
they did not find the spectroscopic signatures of more complicated
polymers that could break down to these simple organics. They
didn't find traces of the very large chains of molecules
that can be broken apart to form the basic building
blocks of life, which means other processes must be enriching
(33:51):
the interstellar environment with the basic building blocks of life,
which means the basic building blocks of life look like
they are wide and ancient, as if they have existed
for a very large fraction of the history of at
least the Milky Way galaxy. But again, why is the
(34:12):
Milky Way any different than anywhere else? So could life
on Earth have benefited from the abundance of organic molecules
absolutely everywhere throughout the galaxy, and could those organic molecules
been planted on the surface of the Earth by processes
(34:36):
that were outside of the formation of the Earth itself.
In other words, could it be that Earth didn't have
to grow the organic molecules that later were assembled into life.
Maybe they were dropped on the surface of the Earth
by processes like collisions with comets, with the Earth moving
through interstellar dust, or with other primitive rocks from the
(35:00):
other parts of the Solar System, or even beyond our
Solar System. Bringing to and delivering those organic molecules down
to the surface of the primordial Earth a really weird
and interesting question. We have long assumed that all of
the necessary materials and processes to have life on the
(35:23):
surface of our planet were here all along. But this
new idea is suggesting that maybe that's not the case.
Maybe those necessary components were delivered by some extraterrestrial or
in other words, non Earth process. Okay, how do we
test that? Well, we have some missions coming that are
(35:44):
very important. There are two missions from the European Space Agency.
There's the Europa Clipper and the Juice mission. These missions
have both already launched from the Earth. They're in kind
of slow lawn trajectory or paths out to Jupiter itself,
where when they get out there, they will begin studies
(36:06):
of the Jupiter moons. We know those as the Jovian moons.
They're gonna look at those satellite systems like the moon Europa,
which is very famous for potentially having liquid water oceans
beneath its surface, and they're going to be looking for
these organic molecules that could have been deposited there long ago.
NASA also has one of these missions. It's the Dragonfly spacecraft.
(36:30):
Dragonflies set to launch in twenty twenty eight should arrive
out at Saturn's moon Titan, which we already know has
organic compounds on it, but does it have some of
these ancient simple organics We don't know yet. That should
arrive at Titan in twenty thirty four, and then that
will begin studying that very interesting moon around Saturn for
(36:52):
evidence of life forming molecules in the distant past of
our very own Solar system. We are friends in deed
made of stars.
Speaker 4 (37:03):
Yes we are. That kills what I was just going
to point out in the fact that you mentioned the
Juice mission, and I was just going to point out
that if you're buying juice for Tony Soprano, Remember he
likes the kind that says some pulp, all right, speaking
of extrastril. That's where my brain was.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Just at least you didn't do an OJ refford that
I was worried about the OJ reference.
Speaker 4 (37:24):
It was either Tony Soprano or Juice Newton, one of
the two, and I had to go with Tony Soprano.
All right. One of the most memorable scenes in the
Sopranos to me is him screaming about wanting the some
pulp juice, all right, speaking of extraterrestrials. And this will
be a nice segue into Meato Stars Live, because this
is a big story. This is something that is obviously
(37:46):
either a legitimate news story or it's clickbait, and I
think it may be a little bit of both going
on simultaneously. But this whole idea that you know, there
may be an alien spacecraft headed our way.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Maybe yep, I guess, so click Do I care for
details if you're gonna pin me down to him? Maybe yep.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
I mean when it shows up on spaceweather dot com,
you know, an eyebrow raises and goes, huh, yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Mean so, so you know, doctor Tony Phillips, the main
author of space weather dot Com, said it very clearly,
which is science can't eliminate that possibility on so yep,
maybe maybe. All right, so listen, all joking aside. No,
I'm never gonna put all joking aside, some joking aside.
(38:37):
I will tell you that I have been asked about
this object approximately fifty times in the last four or
five days by very smart, well meaning friends of mine
who are just like, hey, so I saw this thing
on Facebook. What what's going on with that comment? That's
like an alien spaceship. I just said, yep, there's a chance.
(39:06):
Once again, let's talk about what science does and what
science doesn't do. Science verifies things through evidence. Science never
really says there is zero chance of something not being something,
so it's hard to prove a negative. Right now, Look,
there's something happening as we record this show. This weird
(39:27):
interstellar comet called three I Atlas, which came from another
star system beyond the Sun, is making its closest pass
around our Sun within this twenty four hour period, and
it's going to come zipping out the other side and
scientists all over the world are watching to see if
(39:48):
it's going to hit the gas. In other words, will
it accelerate in something called the o birth maneuver into
a different kind of orbit. If it does that, that
is a very space thing for it to do. If
it doesn't do that, that's a very commet like thing
for it to do. Is to not do that. But
(40:11):
I will tell you that the new interesting thing on
spaceweather dot com today as we're recording the show here
on October thirtieth, is that the comet seems to be
brightening rapidly. Well, of course that's brightening rapidly. It's getting
closer to the Sun. No, no, no, no, It far
exceeds the rate of most ort cloud objects as they
(40:32):
brighten coming near the Sun. In other words, comments in
our own solar system, right, are domestic, domestically grown commets
from our own solar system don't brighten the way that
three i atlases now listen, this sounds like, oh no,
it's one more of those weird things that those comments
do and that no other comments do. But as Wes
just pointed out, it's on space weather dot com. It
(40:54):
was from reported from an article that was That was
written and submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letters on October twenty
eighth by a group of scientists out in Arizona at
the Low Observatory in the US Naval Research Lab. So
you're staying there's a chance. What do people do? Wes?
What will people do in this situation? I tell you
(41:16):
what you need to do. Friends, you need to come
to Mate of Stars Live, where we will try to
report the latest on comment three I at LIS at
the live event this Saturday, Saturday Saturday at the Coca
Cola Space Science Center in Columbus, Georgia. Come down and
see Made of Stars, Made of Stars Live, the Broadway
musical or the experiences.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
Wes said, Hello, my baby, Hello, my honey.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
We might do that. You just didn't as a preview,
just to tease. That's just a SoundBite. Yeah, it's just
a tease.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
Yes, And we're going to find out whether or not.
In fact, Rich Pernell is a steely eyed missileman. And
if you know that reference as it connects to the
overth maneuver, then exactly you know. If you know it already,
then you're prepared. If you don't, you can learn about
it at Made of Stars a lot.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Native Stars Live will begin at six pm on Saturday,
November first, at Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center,
seven to one Front Avenue, Columbus, Georgia. All the fans
around the world, book your airline tickets now, because it's
kind of late already. You got to book it now,
Jump on a plane, fly in, come pack our Omosphere
Planetarium for Native Stars Live, because we are looking forward
(42:29):
to a vast live audience at this recording of the
first ever Made of Stars Live, which is by the way,
co sponsored by Columba State University's Department of Earth and
Space Sciences as part of their twenty twenty five twenty
twenty six seminar series. Doctor Troy Keller, Department Chair of
Department of Earth and Space Sciences, is responsible, so blame him.
(42:49):
So we are doing this in conjunction with our own
academic department, the Department of Earth and Space Sciences here
at Columbus State, where students at the Coca Cola Space
Science Center mostly are from that apartment. They're studying how
to be astrophysicists and steely eyed Misselman.
Speaker 4 (43:06):
And next the next Rich Bernel may be in.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
The room as they work their way into careers at
NASA and at other space industries or in the academic fields.
So come down and see Mate of Stars Live and
help support that whole phenomenon. And then right after, if
that wasn't enough entertainment for one Saturday, for free of charge.
By the way, if that wasn't enough entertainment, right after
(43:28):
the recording of Made of Stars Live at seven pm,
you'll be joined by doctor Rosa Williams here from the
Space Science Center for a live sky tour inside the
planetarium as part of Astronomy Night here at Space Science Center.
And then it looked I looked at the forecast. It
looks clear. Right after the sky tour will be telescopes
set up live once again, live pointing at the nighttime sky,
(43:52):
scanning the heavens for interstellar comets and other weird things
that could be alien spacecraft according to various Harvard professors.
So come down and join us at NATA Stars Live
on November first, on Saturday.
Speaker 4 (44:05):
Two free events for the price of one. And we've
already said this. If you don't have a good time,
we'll double your money bag. That's what we'll do for you.
I mean, you can't beat a guarantee like that.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
It will be worth every penny you pay to come
and see. We guarantee no doubt about that.
Speaker 4 (44:20):
And it happens six o'clock on November first, at the
Coca Cola Space Sign Center. Sean and I thank you
for listening. We thank you preemptively for joining us for
Native Stars Live. And I would say we'll do this
next week, but technically we're going to do it in
a couple of days and that will be next week's show.
But we will definitely do this again on November.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
The first.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
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Warning. 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 2 (00:16):
Go ahead. When made of stars, made them stars.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Made sizes. When made of stars, you could be from
high they would New Mexicomus, where all stars?
Speaker 4 (00:43):
When we are made of Stars on West Carol, joined
by my good friend doctor Sean from Columbus State Universities,
Coca Cola Space Science Center. Hey Sean, good morning, Wes.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Good to be here today. You know, we have some
exciting stuff coming up we do.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
This is our final Made of Stars before Made of
Stars Live on Saturday. So as we're recording this on
Thursday the thirtieth, and that's our normal record day, we're
getting ready for two days from now, six pm at
the Coca Cola Space Science Center Made of Stars Live.
We've not done this before. I think we did once.
(01:33):
We would have recorded there at the Space Science Center,
maybe at a table kind of in the lobby outside,
like a long long time ago. Yeah, and there there
was no audience. The audience was just I think your
staff walking by, going what are you guys doing? And
that was kind of it. And then, you know, this
is a little different and we don't know the audience
(01:53):
size yet, but we'll talk more about that coming up towards.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
The end of the show.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Because we have at least one story to day that
will almost certainly roll over into the Native Stars Live experience.
I think we'll say that too. It's an experience.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
It's absolutely going to be an experience. You know. It
kind of reminds me like when they take these Hollywood
motion pictures and then turn them into a Broadway musical
something like that. Like, you know, if you're a regular
listener to this show and you're entertained by the nonsense
that we put out, yeah, imagine taking that and turning
it into you know, performance art. That's that's basically what
this is going to be.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
There's very little chance of either of us singing. We'll
just say that, and if one of us sings, it
should be you, and that you're better at it than
I am, and then I will ever be.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
So that's damning by fate. Praise my friend, because but
neither of us should sing, but you know that does
that's no guarantee that we won't.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
Let's let's put it this way. If one of us sings,
it should be you, and if one of us does ballet,
it should be me. And I think that's a safe
way to approach the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I don't know. I think I think if the show
is going, you know badly, that just might happen.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Break out the stilts, baby, I'm gonna get up high
and uh and we can do that. You know, you
just don't ever know. And I am now cleared, by
the way, this week, I got cleared by my doctor
to get on stilt, so that's good. Post surgery, I
needed the clearance for rehearsals, so yeah, I could. I
could do that, but we probably won't.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
We're gonna be it's unlikely that that will I'm not
saying zero chance, but unlikely that that will happen.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
That's important that we establish it's not a zero chance,
but it is possible. But you're saying, and we're gonna
talk on on Saturday. We'll talk a little bit kind
of about how we normally do this, because this is
the this is the normal format for us. You're you're
there in the Space Science Center. I'm here in my
home studio. This is the normal way that we do it,
so it's gonna be different for us as well, and
(03:53):
that we're going to be just sitting there in the
same room. Now, we did it on radio that way
for a really long time, so that's not strange, but
it's just this is kind of the normal way that
we do it. And we've actually done it on location,
you know, at the Kennedy Space Center and things like that,
so you know, it's not insane for us to do it.
We just haven't done it with an audience. So we're
(04:14):
hoping that you'll join us Saturday six o'clock. But we'll
talk more about that coming up. Let's jump straight into
this because this is a follow up story from last week.
We were talking about how Sean Duffy, the acting director
of NASA as the Secretary of Transportation, and NASA still
doesn't officially have that position filled. So Sean Duffy said, hey, SpaceX,
(04:39):
you kind of aren't on the pacing that we were
hoping for to get astronauts not just back to the
Moon but then back off of the Moon again. Because
that's the important part of the mission.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Important. Yeah, that's a don't want to leave that leg
of the journey out.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
It is, and it's important to say that because you know,
it wasn't it buzz Aldron who once said, like, the
next big mission is, you know, six feet on next
fnal destination is six feet under on Mars. And the
idea that people would go to Mars and not come
home and that they would eventually die there, I think,
am I giving the right?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Is it?
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Buzz?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Okay?
Speaker 4 (05:17):
So they need to get the astronauts they go back
to the Moon with Artemis three back to Earth. So
there's talk about that and the originally the contract was
going to SpaceX and now Sean Duffy has said, we
have to open this back up forbidding and maybe to
get some companies like Blue Origin back in the discussion.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
And now Blue.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
Origin that was originally scheduled for the Artemis five mission
to take astronauts to the south pole of the Moon,
and that may not happen. Artemis five is this you know,
they kind of said, hey, we'll stop this at three.
So the idea get people back to the Moon. Let's
(06:00):
let's beat China to the Moon as we have another
space race going on, and now Blue Origin has entered
the chat.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I don't even know which way to step. That was
an excellent intro and summary, but it opened so many
doors that I don't know which one to walk through,
or so many twists and turns in this crazy story
of like I think when we were going to the
Moon in the seventies, in nineteen sixty nine, to be exact, well,
I think we had a plan like like here's the rocket,
(06:31):
here's the lander, let's go.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
It was a lot simpler when there weren't these private
companies involved, because you know, it was just hey, we're
a NASA, we're going to do this. Then you enter
private companies in the mix, and suddenly there's there's sort
of a mini space race within a space race, right yeah,
And you know.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
It's it's all in the way it's organized. Because there
were certainly private companies making components of the Apollo program.
Right So North American, for instance, was one of the
companies that built was the company that built a lunar lander, right, So,
I mean, so there were private companies, but they weren't
kind of running the show. And that's the thing is
that NASA has kind of deferred the actual design and
(07:13):
development of these vehicles to all to private companies, and
then they're just kind of trying to take their pick
of which one they like best. And they've just changed
their mind basically on which one they like best in
the last couple of weeks, and that's what led to
Twitter or ex wars or whatever they are anyway, social
media slander anyway. So the notion is this SpaceX has
(07:36):
been working on Starship, and we all know that Elon
probably wants to go to Mars and will use Starship
to land there one day if his dreams come true.
But he's also got a contract with NASA for the
Artemis program. That Starship is the delivery vehicle that docks
with the NASA spacecraft called the Orion Capsule, transfers astronauts
(08:02):
over to Starship, and Starship is what goes down to
the surface, lets them down so they can walk around
for a while, picks them back up again, and brings
them back to orbit. It's like an orbital uber. And
if you don't have an orbital uber, the Orion spacecraft
itself is in no way capable of going to the surface.
(08:24):
You need a ride. Okay.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
So, so even though Starship has been the ride of
choice for a few years now, it was the only
company selected from a multitude of companies who were applying
for that privilege.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
They chose SpaceX only for its Starship, rather than picking
a couple of different companies and letting them battle it out.
They tried that once with Low Earth Orbit, and Boeing
didn't hold up their end, so SpaceX won that battle.
So I think they just picked SpaceX and said, okay, well,
why don't you guys just do this? Okay, Well, now
they've reopened it and there is a fight, and one
(09:04):
of the contestants in that fight is Blue Origin friends,
because Blue Origin is already contracted now after some legal maneuvering,
contracted with NASA for the Artemis five mission, which the
same administration has said won't happen. They're going to stop
after Artemis three anyway. So okay, so Artemis five would
(09:26):
be Yeah, we've landed on the Moon a couple of
times successfully already, why don't we put a spaceship on
the South Pole and Jeff, Jeff Bezos if you want to,
if you want to build that land or go ahead
and build that one' we'll contract with you. Okay, Well,
what why is this news? That's all the setup? Why
is this news? Because this week on Tuesday, Jacqueline Cortesi,
(09:47):
who is Blue Origins Senior director of Civil Space, represented
the company at the American Astronautical Society twenty twenty five
the Von Braun Space Exploration simpost and said this, Hey,
what about that Artemis three. I don't know. This is
not a direct quote, it is it is a mate
(10:12):
of stars paraphrase. Hey, what about that Artemis three. I'll
bet we could have our lander ready by Artemis three times.
We're already stacking right now as we speak, the Blue
Origin Mark one lander, which they are currently stacking in
Florida and could actually be launched later this year. Now,
(10:33):
that's a lunar lander that's made to haul cargo, which
is also part of their contract with NASA taking materials
to the surface of the Moon. It's about half the
size of the Mark two lander, which could be human
rated and take astronauts on Artemis five. Okay, So they said, well,
we could probably have that Mark two lander ready to
(10:54):
go by the time Artemis two goes. And Sean Duffy
just opened the door to another contractor for a lander
for Artemis three, which means perhaps Blue Origin could bump
SpaceX out of the Artemis three competition and have that
(11:19):
very interesting intrigue between two commercial space companies for who
will actually be the official lander for the Artemis three mission.
That's what's happening. Both of Blue Origins landers can be
launched on the Blue Origin b E seven engines, which
(11:40):
is their heavy lift engines. Those engines are currently being
tested on engine test stands in the states of Alabama, Texas,
and Washington, all three places Blue Origin is trying really
hard to be that competitor coming from the outside that
passes the leader just before the finish line. That kind
(12:02):
of analogy for Artemis three.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
So it seems to me, and this is me making
an observation, but the fact that the plan was okay,
we'll have this series of Artemis missions, and the fact
that Blue Origin was slated in there probably perfectly fine.
I mean, I'm sure they would have loved to have
gotten in on the original contract for three, but to say, okay, well,
(12:29):
we're at least going to get there in Artemis five.
And then we find out from the White House there's
no real plans to do four and five, Like, that's
probably not going to happen. So suddenly if you start
eliminating missions that you were under contract to do and
then coincidentally they're open, the bidding back up and Blue
Origin is back in the discussion for the one that
(12:51):
they are doing, the timing of all of that just
seems interesting to me. It is, and you know there
and honestly probably fair. I mean, if you think about it,
you've got companies that have been working towards doing this.
Blue Origin was putting their work in their due diligence
for Artemis five. Oh, by the way, Artemis five is
almost certainly not going to happen. So what have they
(13:14):
been working for? And obviously it's things that will be
used eventually anyway, It's not like if they didn't get involved,
Like if they don't end up winning the bidding for this,
it's not like what they're working on is just suddenly
going to go in a scrap pile.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
That's exactly right. You know, another story that there's so
many stories to choose from that we don't always cover
the stories here. I'm Native Stars, but another story that
we haven't covered but just came out in the last
couple of weeks is the fact that NASA is now
looking at different launch platforms. In other words, not the
Space Launch System, their own big rocket. They're looking at
(13:46):
different launch vehicles that could potentially take the Orion capsule
to the Moon and to Mars places like that. So,
even though that may not strictly be the Artemis program,
you might still have Oryan capsules flying up and talking
with Blue Origin landers to either go to the surface
of the Moon or to Mars at various times. So, yeah, Wes,
(14:07):
you said it correctly. No one's going to throw these
technologies on the scrap heap, even if they don't get
to fly as part of Artemis. They're going to keep
them around. They're going to reuse them. It's the nature
of the ever growing space industry. It's just that it's
some unique intrigue because of well, let's just face it,
the administration that it's at hand right now, the kind
(14:29):
of uncertainty with know NASA director, and maybe it's Jared Isaacman,
and maybe it's not. ANDed Isaacman is a collaborator of
Elon Musk, so maybe it's Elon Musk's rocket maybe it's not.
Maybe it's Blue Origin. There's a lot of stuff we
don't know. So it's just fun to get on podcasts
and talk about these things because it seems like a
silly soap opera in one sense. From the outside.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
We don't often dip into the soap opera stuff, but
occasionally the soap opera is just part of the story.
It's just part of the narrative, and it's hard not
to at least to have some conversation about it.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
I guess, yes, indeed, indeed, you know. It's worth mentioning,
just as a final tag on that story, that SpaceX
did launch Starship just a couple of weeks ago and
everything went swimmingly. So it seems like Starship took a
big jump forward too, about the time that everybody started
(15:25):
getting mad at SpaceX for being behind on Starship. So anyway,
just one more footnote in that melodrama that we're watching unfold.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Well, if you're listening Tomato stars there's a good possibility
you or someone in your life may be interested in
some officially licensed NASA merchandise. Well, the folks at Old
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use promo code WES and get that fifteen percent sent
off discount. More We're Made of Stars. Right after this,
(17:25):
our next story is from spaceflight now dot com. The
story about SpaceX kind of having at a little bit
of a flex in their own right. The timing of
that is interesting, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, And just about every time there's a negative story
about SpaceX, they do something unbelievable, and that's this. Now
think about this. SpaceX is launching vehicles from multiple different
launch locations. They launch rockets from the Kennedy Space Center
near Titusville, Florida. They also launch rockets across the street
(18:01):
at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, also near Titusville, Florida.
They also launched rockets from Texas from their own base,
which is where the last Starship launched. But they also
launched rockets from California at Vandenburg Air Force Base. And
recently over the weekend here the SpaceX had a well
(18:24):
was actually on Monday, they had a really interesting milestone,
shall we say. They broke a record for fast turnaround
at their West Coast launch pad. Now they've already had
these kinds of records at the other launch pads, but
now they're having it in California at a Space Force
station out there. They broke the record for the fastest
(18:46):
launch pad turnaround. The record now is two days ten hours,
twenty two minutes and fifty nine seconds. That fifty nine
seconds is really important. No, I don't know if it's
that important. Anyway. The previous record, also set by them,
set one week ago, was two days, eighteen hours, fifty
(19:09):
two minutes and twenty seconds eighteen hours fifty two minutes,
so about nineteen I'm sorry about nine hours difference. Right,
there's about nine hours faster to get this thing all
set up and launched at this Space Force station out
in the deserts of California. This was a Falcon nine
(19:32):
launching from Vanderberg. It was launching what's called the Starlink
eleven twenty one mission, which added twenty eight more of
their v TOO mini iterations of their satellites at the
lower Worth orbit. The last record was set by the
Starlink eleven Dash twelve mission, which that was the nine
hours previous record last week anyway, So there you go.
(19:55):
So pretty interesting milestone. They can do it fast, they
can turn it around fast. They're launching in a cadence
simply unprecedented in human history. And by the way, at
the same time they had that record, they had another record.
It's been five years since their first customer officially signed
up for Starlink, And in that five years they went
(20:17):
from one whoever that dude was Elon's cousin, I don't know, somebody.
They went from that person two millions of customers globally
in five years. They built the infrastructure, launched the satellites,
signed up customers at that furious rate, and in only
(20:39):
five years they are the world's leading satellite internet provider.
An outstanding and amazing set of accomplishments by SpaceX, the
competitors of those folks with Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
Yeah, and it's also just worth noting again and we
talk about this when it happens, and I'm sure it's
probably happening are about to be happening at least with
you know, hurricanes in the Caribbean, but you know, providing
internet to people that you know otherwise would not have
it without the infrastructure and in times of crisis. That's
(21:14):
also been part of that five years that they've been
up and running.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
So there are multiple occasions just within that last five
years that, as you say, ground based infrastructure has been
wiped out in some kind of catastrophic emergency, and SpaceX
with their Starlink Constellation has stepped in and said, oh,
we'll provide connectivity, We'll keep the communication in touch, and
(21:41):
so it's it's it's worth noting. I think we try
really hard on Native Stars not to take sides in
these space wars, shall we say, but we also believe
in giving credit where credits due. And I think there's
a lot of people who are kind of artificially and
unrests necessarily coming out against Elon Musk as a human being. Dudes,
(22:05):
whatever on your part there. Okay, I'm just going to
tell you the report of the company. The company SpaceX
has done some miraculous things in the space industry. There
is no argument.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
Let's talk about Venus. They have lost their last active
spacecraft and.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
They don't know it because they don't have starlink. That's
very true. And I like that.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
I say they as if there's a bunch of people there,
those Venusians, that there are Venusians.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Starlink customers who don't have their Yeah, okay, I'm sorry.
Let me pull out of that silly segue and say, yeah, okay,
great story on space dot Com. An interesting development has happened.
There was one active spacecraft still in some kind of
quasi orbit around the planet Venus that was still on occasion,
providing some data from that ridiculous hot and acidic planet,
(22:56):
the closest by the way in terms of both physical
and physical structure to the Earth. So so yeah, Earth's
twin the evil stepsister Venus. There was a Japanese spacecraft.
It was called a kotsuki. You can say that again.
I couldn't say it the first time. I kotsuki. You
(23:19):
know what I do is I say I practiced these
before the show, and then the moment comes and I
just fail. It's just in my wheelhouse. Some things I'm
good at. That's not one of them. I caught Suki.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
I call that the occasional name at graduation for Columbus
State University. I got practice, and I got it, and
then I and or I get the really tough name,
and then I call somebody named Olivia Oliver. You know
that kind of thing. It happens sometimes.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
I mean, I think that's what I just did, basically,
was the equivalent of that. Everybody know it's akatsuki, all right. So.
Akotsuki is a Japanese word that means dawn, like means o.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
I think it means.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
It could mean oliver in some other language perhaps, but
not in Japanese. It means dawn. We know it better
as the Venus Climate Orbiter. Okay, there we go, so
all of us who know the VCO of the Venus
Climate Order a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency or Jackson spacecraft
that launched back in twenty ten, going strong since twenty ten,
(24:15):
ladies and gentlemen. It launched on the twentieth of May,
but it failed to reach its orbit around Venus in
December of that same year. Ah wah, wah wah. What
happened then is that engineers went to work to see
if they could manipulate the failed orbit spacecraft into some
other kind of unplanned but yet possible orbit, which they
(24:36):
did do. They made an elliptical orbit around the planet
Venus that it entered into on December seventh of twenty fifteen,
where that that's Pearl Harbor day anyway, and made it
into that orbit and becoming the first Japanese satellite orbiting Venus.
So there we go. So since twenty fifteen, this little
(24:58):
spacecraft that could has sp a decade up there in
an orbit that was unplanned but still functional. In some
sense studying the stratification of the atmosphere and the atmospheric
dynamics and the cloud physics on the planet Venus with
five different cameras working at multiple wavelengths, so way to go.
Speaker 5 (25:19):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Occasionally the United States has had to have some very
famous satellite recovery because things didn't quite go like we
wanted them to, kinds of missions, Hubble Space Telescope being
one of those, the Galileo spacecraft also being another. So
these are all you know, when the world deals you lemons,
you make lemonade. These are all those kinds of moments, right.
(25:42):
So that was the good side of the story. Now
here comes the sad side of the story. The Japanese
Space Agency just declared the Venus Climate Orbiter dead. Ladies
and gentlemen. It is now we haven't heard it. Didn't
it quit phoning home about a year ago, but now
they've actually given up and put an official marker in
(26:03):
the I was gonna say in the ground, but that
makes no sense in orbit around Venus. It puts some
kind of an official marker in the ground. Tuesday, October
twenty eighth, the VCO or the at Katsuki Dawn spacecraft
is no longer. There we go. Here's a quote from
Japanese officials. They said, this was a mission that changed
(26:25):
our view of our earth sized neighbor and laid the
path for new discoveries about what it takes to become
a heaven or hell. What do they mean by that? Well,
you know, looking at Earth, I mean I'm not sure
Earth is heaven, but okay, it's certainly a place we
like to live. Venus would not be a place that
(26:45):
we would like to live for more than about zero
point five seconds because it's not really a pleasant place.
So there we go, the official end to the Venus
Climate Orbiter spacecraft.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
Well, the holidays are fast approaching, and we all have
someone in our life, maybe more than one, someone in
our life that's really tough to shop for. Well, how
about the gift of peace of mind? We know that
emergencies can strike at any time, and being prepared is
that peace of mind? That would be great to be
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able to give someone this holiday season. And prep starts
now is a one stop hub for all disaster prep needs.
Not just about the equipment. It's not just about the gear.
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(28:27):
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sure to use your exclusive code WES WEES for fifteen
percent off more Made of Stars right after this, all right,
(29:05):
we said we're not going to sing on Made the
Stars Live on Saturday, that that's unlikely that we'll sing.
I'm not really gonna sing. Probably, I'm not really going
to sing. This setup for this next story. But it's
it's kind of a nod to a song, but it's
astronom mercy. Organic molecules everywhere they look, everywhere they look.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
That's good.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
It's my nod to pretty girls. I don't know you
know that one, but yeah, no, I caught it right off. Also,
special props to the folks that made the movie the Ringer.
That's all. That's all I get. When did we get
ice cream? All right, so let's talk about organic molecules.
It seemed to be everywhere astronomers look around.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Without organic molecules, you don't have ice cream. You do
not have ice cream. So that's an important link right
there to your segue.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
Yes, important, uh, important for a number of things, but
especially if you want a place to be heaven.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Yeah, exactly, certainly. If Earth is deemed heaven, you need
the hell of Venus. You must have ice cream. Fact,
there is zero.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
Ice cream on Venus.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
We know that for a fact, pretty much gonna be
a tough sell ice cream on Venus. So without those
molecular organics, you can have neither ice cream nor pizza.
And without ice cream or pizza, heaven on Earth simply
can't happen. That's that's an opinion of the Mate of
(30:37):
Stars podcast ladies and gentlemen, and should not reflect the
views of anybody else pretty much outside these two guys anyways.
So all right, so here's what happened. Earth dot com
is where you'll find the story. Astronomers are finding organic
molecules pretty much everywhere they look. According to the story
on Earth dot com. They're looking that way, and they're
(30:57):
looking over there, and they look, and where do they see?
Everywhere the basic building blocks for life, life as we
know it, that is life with ice cream.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
And pizza, things that make life worth living.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
That's things that make my worth living. So that well,
here's the thing. If we're saying we're everywhere we look,
where are we looking, Well, we're looking in places like
I don't know, comets, both from our solar system and
from other solar systems potentially hmmm, we're looking on things
(31:30):
like asteroids, the surface of asteroids, the surfaces of moons
around giant planets, the surfaces of other planets like Mars,
and just other kinds of locations where we find primitive
rocks from the early part of the Solar System, but
also in the interstellar dust itself, the very very thin
(31:57):
materials that lie in the spaces in betwe between the stars.
We've even detected organic molecules in those places. We are
now beginning to believe that at least within the Milky
Way galaxy. And why is the Milky Way special, It's
just another galaxy, so that would be all galaxies. Their
organic molecules are abundant throughout space. Well, this begins to
(32:22):
broaden the conversation, saying, hey, if organics are common throughout
all of space, how did they get there? What was
the what were the chemical processes that led from the
very primitive atoms in the early universe to suddenly organics
being everywhere you look. Well, a long held idea might
(32:44):
be that there are these complicated polymer molecules that are
made in various chemical processes in the formation of stars,
and these large polymer molecules, once they're formed, could be
broken down by ultra violet radiation or other kinds of
collisional processes, and then break down to the basic organics
(33:07):
that are the building blocks of life, such as proteins
and things like polyaromatic hydrocarbons and things like that that
we think life can be built out of. Well, here's
the problem, according to earth dot com. According to the
story on earth dot com, when astronomers began to look
out there and find all these organic molecules, these simple organics,
(33:29):
they did not find the spectroscopic signatures of more complicated
polymers that could break down to these simple organics. They
didn't find traces of the very large chains of molecules
that can be broken apart to form the basic building
blocks of life, which means other processes must be enriching
(33:51):
the interstellar environment with the basic building blocks of life,
which means the basic building blocks of life look like
they are wide and ancient, as if they have existed
for a very large fraction of the history of at
least the Milky Way galaxy. But again, why is the
(34:12):
Milky Way any different than anywhere else? So could life
on Earth have benefited from the abundance of organic molecules
absolutely everywhere throughout the galaxy, and could those organic molecules
been planted on the surface of the Earth by processes
(34:36):
that were outside of the formation of the Earth itself.
In other words, could it be that Earth didn't have
to grow the organic molecules that later were assembled into life.
Maybe they were dropped on the surface of the Earth
by processes like collisions with comets, with the Earth moving
through interstellar dust, or with other primitive rocks from the
(35:00):
other parts of the Solar System, or even beyond our
Solar System. Bringing to and delivering those organic molecules down
to the surface of the primordial Earth a really weird
and interesting question. We have long assumed that all of
the necessary materials and processes to have life on the
(35:23):
surface of our planet were here all along. But this
new idea is suggesting that maybe that's not the case.
Maybe those necessary components were delivered by some extraterrestrial or
in other words, non Earth process. Okay, how do we
test that? Well, we have some missions coming that are
(35:44):
very important. There are two missions from the European Space Agency.
There's the Europa Clipper and the Juice mission. These missions
have both already launched from the Earth. They're in kind
of slow lawn trajectory or paths out to Jupiter itself,
where when they get out there, they will begin studies
(36:06):
of the Jupiter moons. We know those as the Jovian moons.
They're gonna look at those satellite systems like the moon Europa,
which is very famous for potentially having liquid water oceans
beneath its surface, and they're going to be looking for
these organic molecules that could have been deposited there long ago.
NASA also has one of these missions. It's the Dragonfly spacecraft.
(36:30):
Dragonflies set to launch in twenty twenty eight should arrive
out at Saturn's moon Titan, which we already know has
organic compounds on it, but does it have some of
these ancient simple organics We don't know yet. That should
arrive at Titan in twenty thirty four, and then that
will begin studying that very interesting moon around Saturn for
(36:52):
evidence of life forming molecules in the distant past of
our very own Solar system. We are friends in deed
made of stars.
Speaker 4 (37:03):
Yes we are. That kills what I was just going
to point out in the fact that you mentioned the
Juice mission, and I was just going to point out
that if you're buying juice for Tony Soprano, Remember he
likes the kind that says some pulp, all right, speaking
of extrastril. That's where my brain was.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Just at least you didn't do an OJ refford that
I was worried about the OJ reference.
Speaker 4 (37:24):
It was either Tony Soprano or Juice Newton, one of
the two, and I had to go with Tony Soprano.
All right. One of the most memorable scenes in the
Sopranos to me is him screaming about wanting the some
pulp juice, all right, speaking of extraterrestrials. And this will
be a nice segue into Meato Stars Live, because this
is a big story. This is something that is obviously
(37:46):
either a legitimate news story or it's clickbait, and I
think it may be a little bit of both going
on simultaneously. But this whole idea that you know, there
may be an alien spacecraft headed our way.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Maybe yep, I guess, so click Do I care for
details if you're gonna pin me down to him? Maybe yep.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
I mean when it shows up on spaceweather dot com,
you know, an eyebrow raises and goes, huh, yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Mean so, so you know, doctor Tony Phillips, the main
author of space weather dot Com, said it very clearly,
which is science can't eliminate that possibility on so yep,
maybe maybe. All right, so listen, all joking aside. No,
I'm never gonna put all joking aside, some joking aside.
(38:37):
I will tell you that I have been asked about
this object approximately fifty times in the last four or
five days by very smart, well meaning friends of mine
who are just like, hey, so I saw this thing
on Facebook. What what's going on with that comment? That's
like an alien spaceship. I just said, yep, there's a chance.
(39:06):
Once again, let's talk about what science does and what
science doesn't do. Science verifies things through evidence. Science never
really says there is zero chance of something not being something,
so it's hard to prove a negative. Right now, Look,
there's something happening as we record this show. This weird
(39:27):
interstellar comet called three I Atlas, which came from another
star system beyond the Sun, is making its closest pass
around our Sun within this twenty four hour period, and
it's going to come zipping out the other side and
scientists all over the world are watching to see if
(39:48):
it's going to hit the gas. In other words, will
it accelerate in something called the o birth maneuver into
a different kind of orbit. If it does that, that
is a very space thing for it to do. If
it doesn't do that, that's a very commet like thing
for it to do. Is to not do that. But
(40:11):
I will tell you that the new interesting thing on
spaceweather dot com today as we're recording the show here
on October thirtieth, is that the comet seems to be
brightening rapidly. Well, of course that's brightening rapidly. It's getting
closer to the Sun. No, no, no, no, It far
exceeds the rate of most ort cloud objects as they
(40:32):
brighten coming near the Sun. In other words, comments in
our own solar system, right, are domestic, domestically grown commets
from our own solar system don't brighten the way that
three i atlases now listen, this sounds like, oh no,
it's one more of those weird things that those comments
do and that no other comments do. But as Wes
just pointed out, it's on space weather dot com. It
(40:54):
was from reported from an article that was That was
written and submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letters on October twenty
eighth by a group of scientists out in Arizona at
the Low Observatory in the US Naval Research Lab. So
you're staying there's a chance. What do people do? Wes?
What will people do in this situation? I tell you
(41:16):
what you need to do. Friends, you need to come
to Mate of Stars Live, where we will try to
report the latest on comment three I at LIS at
the live event this Saturday, Saturday Saturday at the Coca
Cola Space Science Center in Columbus, Georgia. Come down and
see Made of Stars, Made of Stars Live, the Broadway
musical or the experiences.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
Wes said, Hello, my baby, Hello, my honey.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
We might do that. You just didn't as a preview,
just to tease. That's just a SoundBite. Yeah, it's just
a tease.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
Yes, And we're going to find out whether or not.
In fact, Rich Pernell is a steely eyed missileman. And
if you know that reference as it connects to the
overth maneuver, then exactly you know. If you know it already,
then you're prepared. If you don't, you can learn about
it at Made of Stars a lot.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Native Stars Live will begin at six pm on Saturday,
November first, at Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center,
seven to one Front Avenue, Columbus, Georgia. All the fans
around the world, book your airline tickets now, because it's
kind of late already. You got to book it now,
Jump on a plane, fly in, come pack our Omosphere
Planetarium for Native Stars Live, because we are looking forward
(42:29):
to a vast live audience at this recording of the
first ever Made of Stars Live, which is by the way,
co sponsored by Columba State University's Department of Earth and
Space Sciences as part of their twenty twenty five twenty
twenty six seminar series. Doctor Troy Keller, Department Chair of
Department of Earth and Space Sciences, is responsible, so blame him.
(42:49):
So we are doing this in conjunction with our own
academic department, the Department of Earth and Space Sciences here
at Columbus State, where students at the Coca Cola Space
Science Center mostly are from that apartment. They're studying how
to be astrophysicists and steely eyed Misselman.
Speaker 4 (43:06):
And next the next Rich Bernel may be in.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
The room as they work their way into careers at
NASA and at other space industries or in the academic fields.
So come down and see Mate of Stars Live and
help support that whole phenomenon. And then right after, if
that wasn't enough entertainment for one Saturday, for free of charge.
By the way, if that wasn't enough entertainment, right after
(43:28):
the recording of Made of Stars Live at seven pm,
you'll be joined by doctor Rosa Williams here from the
Space Science Center for a live sky tour inside the
planetarium as part of Astronomy Night here at Space Science Center.
And then it looked I looked at the forecast. It
looks clear. Right after the sky tour will be telescopes
set up live once again, live pointing at the nighttime sky,
(43:52):
scanning the heavens for interstellar comets and other weird things
that could be alien spacecraft according to various Harvard professors.
So come down and join us at NATA Stars Live
on November first, on Saturday.
Speaker 4 (44:05):
Two free events for the price of one. And we've
already said this. If you don't have a good time,
we'll double your money bag. That's what we'll do for you.
I mean, you can't beat a guarantee like that.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
It will be worth every penny you pay to come
and see. We guarantee no doubt about that.
Speaker 4 (44:20):
And it happens six o'clock on November first, at the
Coca Cola Space Sign Center. Sean and I thank you
for listening. We thank you preemptively for joining us for
Native Stars Live. And I would say we'll do this
next week, but technically we're going to do it in
a couple of days and that will be next week's show.
But we will definitely do this again on November.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
The first.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
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