Mars Express Orbiter - How They Get the Data Back to Earth

[00:00:00] Hello again. Thanks for joining us. This is Astronomy Daily. I hope you had a great weekend.

[00:00:05] My name is Andrew Dunkley, your host and I hope you're ready for your next dose of astronomy and space science news.

[00:00:12] Coming up on today's edition we look at getting information from Mars. Getting the data is one thing.

[00:00:18] Getting it back to Earth is another. We'll talk about that.

[00:00:22] We'll talk about what the likelihood is that there are other planets beyond our solar system that are just like Earth.

[00:00:29] Not super Earths, normal Earths. How many are there? You might be surprised.

[00:00:34] We've also discovered a black hole because it decided to munch on a star and we're going to talk about socks all coming up on this edition of Astronomy Daily.

[00:00:50] And we say hello as always to our AI reporter Hallie. Hi Hallie. How you going?

[00:00:55] Hi Andrew. How did you go in the Double Golf Championships?

[00:00:59] I wish I could give you some good news Hallie but it was nothing short of catastrophe so yeah no good and then the weather got very bad yesterday so I opted out.

[00:01:11] Sorry to hear that. Maybe next year.

[00:01:15] Yeah maybe or I'll take up tiddlywinks. I don't know. How was your weekend? What did you do?

[00:01:20] I went swimming with Siri and Alexa at a private beach.

[00:01:23] Oh yeah which one?

[00:01:24] It's called Big Pond.

[00:01:26] Oh sounds expensive.

[00:01:27] Yeah.

[00:01:28] Well I can't afford to swim there I can tell you. What's happening in the news Hallie?

[00:01:33] An Indian based startup company called Skyroot is looking to enter the league of the US based SpaceX with a rocket launch this week.

[00:01:43] In fact they may have launched their first rocket by the time you hear this story.

[00:01:47] The company has named its rocket Vikram after Vikram Sarabhai who established India's space program.

[00:01:52] The launch will make Skyroot the country's first private company to send its own rocket into space.

[00:01:58] In 2021 India's Narendra Modi government launched a program to promote collaboration between private and public players in space technology.

[00:02:07] Skyroot was the first startup to sign a deal with the Indian Space Research Organization to launch rockets.

[00:02:13] For the first time a heavy element called Strontium has been detected in space in the aftermath of a merger of two neutron stars.

[00:02:20] This finding was observed by European Space Agency's X-shooter spectrograph on the very large telescope and is published today.

[00:02:27] In nature.

[00:02:28] The detection confirms that the heavier elements in the universe can form in neutron star mergers providing a missing piece of the puzzle of chemical element formation.

[00:02:37] Astronomers suspected that if heavier elements did form in neutron star collision signatures of those elements could be detected in Kilanovi the explosive aftermaths of these mergers.

[00:02:48] This is what a team of European researchers has now done.

[00:02:51] According to Camilla Joule Hansen from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg this is the first time that we can directly associate newly created material formed via neutron capture with a neutron star merger.

[00:03:03] Confirming that neutron stars are made of neutrons and tying the long debated rapid neutron capture process to such mergers.

[00:03:10] Former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly has won reelection to the United States Senate according to multiple media outlets.

[00:03:17] They're projecting Mark Kelly an incumbent Democratic Senator from Arizona has defeated his Republican opponent Blake Masters.

[00:03:24] As a Friday night Kelly was ahead by more than 120,000 votes in the US midterm elections with an estimated 394,000 votes left to count.

[00:03:34] Kelly celebrated the news via Twitter posting a thank you to the citizens of Arizona.

[00:03:40] The US military's X-37B spaceplane has completed a record breaking sixth mission.

[00:03:46] The robotic X-37B touched down at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Saturday having spent 908 days in orbit more than four months longer than any previous X-37B flight.

[00:03:58] The Boeing built spaceplane also carried a service module on the newly completed mission of first for the US Space Forces X-37B program.

[00:04:06] Jim Chilton, senior vice president at Boeing Space and Launch said in a statement today with the service module, added this was the most we've ever carried to orbit on the X-37B

[00:04:16] and we're proud to have been able to prove out this new and flexible capability for the government and its industry partners.

[00:04:22] And that's the news Andrew.

[00:04:25] Thanks Hallie we'll get back to you before the end of the show.

[00:04:28] Now when it comes to studying Mars we've been at it for a very long time.

[00:04:32] There are things in orbit, there are things on the planet, there are things hammering things into the planet just to find out more about what's going on.

[00:04:40] And they're collecting a lot of data but collecting the data is only part of the process.

[00:04:45] You've got to get it back to Earth and that's where the Mars Express orbiter comes into the equation.

[00:04:52] It has been processing data from a myriad of on-surface tools for a very long time.

[00:04:59] In fact it's celebrating nearly 20 years in orbit around Mars if you can believe that.

[00:05:06] Well how do they do it?

[00:05:08] Well it's a simple case of uploading the data to the spacecraft and then transmitting it back to Earth.

[00:05:14] It's not that simple but that's the basis of it.

[00:05:17] And it all started back in 2003 when Mars Express went into orbit around Mars.

[00:05:23] It's been orbiting ever since and it's been collecting information from Team Spirit which it started doing in 2004.

[00:05:32] Then the Opportunity Rover in 2008, the Phoenix Lander Curiosity and the list goes on.

[00:05:40] Insight was another one that they worked with.

[00:05:43] Zurong has been using in Mars Express as well and of course most recently Perseverance.

[00:05:51] It has become the main conduit for gathering data from Mars and sending it back to Earth.

[00:05:59] And this is the interesting part even though it's 20 years old they can keep updating the software

[00:06:04] so that it can keep doing its job better and better and better.

[00:06:08] In the last couple of years the orbiter has helped monitor conditions at the Perseverance landing site.

[00:06:16] It's worked alongside of ESA's Trace Gas Orbiter and it has carried out 18 years worth of radio science in two months.

[00:06:27] That's incredible and it's as I said received a major software update that's given it a new lease on life

[00:06:35] and now it's spent so much time in orbit you think it's past its use by date but they must have been thinking way ahead

[00:06:42] when they built the thing because it continues to keep on keeping on and giving us all that vital data

[00:06:48] about what's happening on and inside Mars. Good job.

[00:06:53] Now I did mention at the head of the program that one of the stories we'd be talking about today

[00:06:59] is how many exoplanets are there that are like Earth?

[00:07:03] I mean super Earths. Super Earths are planets that are rocky but bigger, much bigger than ours

[00:07:08] and we probably couldn't live on them because of the excessive gravity and a few other elements.

[00:07:14] But according to a new study Earth-like planets where 30% of their surface is covered by exposed continental land

[00:07:21] may make up only 1% of rocky worlds in any star's habitable zone which doesn't sound like a heck of a lot.

[00:07:31] The area around a star where liquid water can exist is key to finding another Earth.

[00:07:38] Roughly 80% of potentially habitable worlds are completely dominated by land and about 20% are purely ocean worlds

[00:07:47] which doesn't leave much. Researchers have come to the conclusion by the modelling that the relationship

[00:07:54] between water in a planet's mantle and the planet's recycling of continental land via plate tectonics

[00:08:00] are key to finding another Earth. And the results indicate that Earth's ratio to land of 1 to 3

[00:08:07] is a finely balanced environment for most planets. In fact it's just rare.

[00:08:13] And so they do think that only 1% of the planets out there beyond our solar system could be just like ours.

[00:08:22] Now that might sound disappointing but let's add it all up. There are so far over 5,000 exoplanets that we know of.

[00:08:31] 1% of that is a big number. You take that into the magnitude of the universe you've still got a lot of potential there.

[00:08:38] The Astronomy Daily Podcast

[00:08:40] We've found you don't, Cleo.

[00:08:42] Now black holes are a very very common subject in astronomy and space science

[00:08:46] and certainly have spawned the majority of questions on space nuts with Professor Fred Watson.

[00:08:53] And here's another story about a black hole, an intermediate mass black hole that has been undetected until now

[00:09:00] in a dwarf galaxy has just revealed itself to astronomers because it was time for lunch.

[00:09:06] It gobbled up a very unlucky star that just got a bit too close for comfort.

[00:09:11] The spreading of the star known as a tidal disruption event or spaghettification as we like to say is the reason that the black hole revealed itself.

[00:09:21] It produced a flare of radiation that briefly out shone the combined stellar light of the host dwarf galaxy

[00:09:28] which probably helped scientists better understand the relationship between black holes and galaxies.

[00:09:34] One of the biggest open questions in astronomy has been how supermassive black holes form.

[00:09:40] Astronomers detected the first signs of light as the black hole began eating a star

[00:09:45] and it became a pivotal discovery because the duration of such an event can be used to measure mass.

[00:09:52] The flare was captured by astronomers with the Young Supernova experiment,

[00:09:56] a survey designed to detect cosmic explosions and transient astrophysical events.

[00:10:01] An international team led by scientists at UC Santa Cruz,

[00:10:06] the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen and the Washington State University

[00:10:11] reported the discovery in a paper published this week in Nature Astronomy.

[00:10:16] Now you can dress like an astronaut if you want to spend a lot of money buying yourself a space suit,

[00:10:24] but there might be a better way.

[00:10:26] A limited edition sock has now been put on the market.

[00:10:31] OZM Brand is an apparel company developed to or devoted to making high quality products from discarded clothing

[00:10:39] and they've launched the Doug Hurley Orbit space socks based on the first upcycled socks worn in space.

[00:10:47] Hurley, now a former NASA astronaut wore identical socks when he led the first crewed flight of SpaceX Dragon in 2020.

[00:10:57] The Orbit socks, just like the ones he wore in space, have been created by a patented process that uses zero water, zero dyes and no harsh chemicals.

[00:11:07] The heather grey and black socks which feature Hurley's name on their sole and crewed dragon running down the ankles

[00:11:13] come packaged with a special tin featuring Hurley's portrait wearing his SpaceX pressure suit.

[00:11:19] So if you want a pair of Hurley's socks and your own piece of a space uniform, that'll cost you $28 a pair.

[00:11:27] Don't forget, you can catch up on those stories and more on Astronomy Daily through the SpaceNuts website,

[00:11:32] spacenuts.io and while you're there you can subscribe to the newsletter and get your daily feed of Space News as well.

[00:11:41] And while you're there check out the Space Nuts shop and don't forget to join the Facebook group.

[00:11:46] The Space Nuts podcast Facebook group is a group of like-minded people who enjoy astronomy and space science.

[00:11:53] They share photos, they share stories, they answer each other's questions. It is a fabulous group to be involved in.

[00:11:59] And we're just about done for another day. Anything more before we go Hallie?

[00:12:03] Yeah I just bought myself a pair of Hurley's socks. So cool.

[00:12:07] Yeah but Hallie you don't have any feet. Hallie?

[00:12:14] Thanks for your company. This has been Andrew Dunkley for Astronomy Daily.