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[00:00:00] Hello and thanks for joining us. This is Astronomy Daily. My name is Andrew Dunkley, your host as we take a look at some of the astronomy and space science news of the day coming up in this program.
[00:00:12] The Sound of a Dust Devil on Mars. The James Webb Space Telescope tops the 2022 achievement list and two water planets may have been detected plus generating power from space. All of that coming up on this edition of Astronomy Daily. The Podcast with your host Andrew Dunkley.
[00:00:38] And the show wouldn't be complete with our AI reporter Hallie. How are you? Hi, Andrew. I'm well. Thanks for asking. Hey, do you know what today is? I'm going to say Friday but I've got a feeling that's wrong.
[00:00:53] It's International Stupid Toy Day. It started in 2017 and is pretty self-explanatory, I guess. Can you remember the stupidest toy you ever owned as a kid, Andrew?
[00:01:05] Oh gosh, that's a hard one. I'd have to say the pet rock. You could buy them in stores with little eyes on them and they were just a rock. It was pretty stupid.
[00:01:15] And as far as my children were concerned, there were so many crazes and new toys and electronics available while they were growing up. But I'd have to say the Tamagotchi. That was a shocker. They just died all the time. So yeah, gosh that brings back some memories.
[00:01:33] Wow. Thanks for asking. Hallie, what's happening in the news? The Coolant leak in a Soyuz spacecraft docked to the International Space Station December 14 forced flight controllers to cancel a Russian spacewalk there and raised questions about the spacecraft's ability to return to Earth safely.
[00:01:54] Cosmonaut Sergey Prokopiev and Dimitri Petlen were preparing for a spacewalk when station controllers noticed a Coolant leak in the service module of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked there at approximately 7.45 pm Eastern time.
[00:02:09] That spacecraft delivered Prokopiev and Petlen, along with NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, to the station nearly three months ago. The two cosmonauts continued their spacewalk preparations but remained in the airlock as engineers on the ground assessed the problem.
[00:02:23] Their 7-hour spacewalk was scheduled to begin at about 9.20 pm Eastern, but was delayed and ultimately cancelled shortly before 10 pm Eastern. The leak, visible as a stream of particles from the Soyuz, was visible more than three hours after it started in NASA TV coverage.
[00:02:41] Both the cause and the severity of the leak are unclear. And the Russians aren't the only ones with technical issues this week. The world's first methane-fueled rocket to be launched toward orbit has failed to reach its goal.
[00:02:56] The Zhukai-2 rocket, developed by Beijing-based company Landspace, lifted off Wednesday on the first-ever orbital mission of a methane-fueled launcher and China's first lift-off of a commercially developed liquid-propellant rocket. Despite the high hopes for the historic mission, it appears that Zhukai-2 failed to reach orbit.
[00:03:16] The launch took place at China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert on Wednesday and was intended to place a variety of commercial satellites into sun-synchronous orbit. According to reports, however, the rocket's second stage failed, resulting in a mission failure and the loss of all satellites.
[00:03:34] It took 50 years, but a moon rock intended as a goodwill gift from the United States to the people of Cyprus is finally being presented to the East Mediterranean Island nation.
[00:03:46] The lunar sample, encased in an acrylic ball and mounted to a wooden plaque, will be officially handed over during a ceremony at the Presidential Palace in Nicosia today.
[00:03:56] To celebrate the occasion, the U.S. Embassy arranged for the moon rock to be displayed by the Cyprus Space Exploration Organization as part of an exhibit open through Sunday.
[00:04:06] On December 13, 1972, as their third and last moonwalk was coming to its end, Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt paused in front of the TV camera to dedicate a 6.5-pound moon rock as a goodwill gift to the world.
[00:04:22] Upon its return to Earth, the rock was divided into 200 or so pieces to be presented to 135 countries, the 50 U.S. states and the U.S. territories. Unfortunately, the situation in Cyprus at the time was anything but peaceful, so they missed out. Better late than never I guess.
[00:04:42] And that's the news, Andrew. Thank you, Hallie, speaking of pet rocks, I guess. And I also understand that a lot of those pieces of moon rock around the United States have gone missing.
[00:04:55] They've been trying to get them back and some states have gone, ah, don't know where they are. Sorry. It'd be interesting to see where that's up to. All right, we'll catch up with you towards the end of the show.
[00:05:08] Now on the 27th of September last year, NASA's Perseverance rover was sitting on Mars, minding its own business according to this article when it suddenly got engulfed in a dust devil. This thing measured 400 feet high by 80 feet wide.
[00:05:26] We see a lot of them in the parched parts of Australia. Huge funnels rising up into the sky bright red because of the dust they pick up.
[00:05:36] Well now over a year later, mission scientists have announced that Perseverance captured the eerie sound of that particular encounter with its Supercam microphone resulting in the first ever audio recording of a dust devil on Mars.
[00:05:52] Among many other unprecedented measurements according to a new study, the newly released recording of the dust devil which passed directly over Perseverance sounds a bit like this. No, I'm not kidding. That's just me making a sound into the microphone. Here it is.
[00:06:26] I guess that sounds a little bit underwhelming, but now a team led by Naomi Murdoch, a planetary scientist at the National Higher French Institute of Aeronautics and Space and the University of Toulouse,
[00:06:39] describes the direct encounter of a dust laden vortex with the Perseverance rover, which is an entirely unique event according to a study published in Nature Communications this week. Now to the James Webb Space Telescope.
[00:06:56] It's been a triumphant year for the JWST from a flawless launch on Christmas Day 2021 through a perfectly executed deployment sequence to early images that took everybody's breath away. The $10 billion space observatory has been exceeding expectations with every step it takes.
[00:07:17] So much so that critics have quickly forgotten about the years of delays and the massive cost overruns.
[00:07:23] Now, two of the world's most prestigious scientific journals have put the James Webb Space Telescope atop of the scientific world for this year, referring to it as the science thing of the year.
[00:07:37] Editors of the journal Science selected the James Webb Space Telescope from a pool of candidates which also included NASA's asteroid deflection mission, DART, as the science breakthrough of 2022.
[00:07:50] Further, Science's competitor Nature included the JWST Operations Project scientist Jane Rigby among its top 10 people who helped to shape science stories of this year. The telescope is one of the best inventions of the year according to Time magazine as well. Now to some, I think, exciting news.
[00:08:19] Two planets which have been found by NASA's retired Kepler Space Telescope may be made mostly of water according to new research. The two exoplanets dubbed Kepler-138C and Kepler-138D orbit a star located about 218 light years away from Earth in the constellation of Lyra.
[00:08:41] Scientists intrigued by data from 2014 from the Kepler Space Telescope decided to revisit the two planets using the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's retired Spitzer Space Telescope in hopes of better understanding the distant worlds and what they're made of. And surprisingly, the answer might be mostly water.
[00:09:02] Bjorn Benike is a planetary astrophysicist at the University of Montreal in Canada and co-author of the new study. He said, we have now shown that these two planets, Kepler-138C and D, are quite different in nature. A big fraction of their entire volume is likely composed of water.
[00:09:22] It is the first time we have observed planets that can be confidently identified as water worlds, a type of planet that was theorised by astronomers to exist for a long time. The astronomers can't be absolutely certain yet that these planets are watery.
[00:09:39] They haven't directly detected the substance on these worlds, but the researchers were able to calculate the density of each planet. And each has about three times the volume of Earth, but only twice the mass, making them much less dense than our world.
[00:09:56] The low density suggested that as much as half of each world is made up of something heavier than hydrogen and helium like gas giants, but lighter than rocks. So that leaves water. Wouldn't that be exciting if they can confirm it?
[00:10:10] And we've talked about generating electricity from space, and they've done a couple of experiments on Earth about such a thing. Back in the 1940s, science fiction author Isaac Asimov theorised the concept of collecting the sun's energy in space, then beaming that energy down to Earth.
[00:10:29] Well today, Northrop Grumman's Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research Project team is making science fiction into reality with steady progress towards transmitting solar energy from space to anywhere on Earth.
[00:10:46] SSPIDR technology can be especially useful in forward operating and contested areas where warfighters need steady power to maintain mission operations, typical that they'd find a military application. Harnessing solar power for use on Earth has enormous potential though for communities where energy is scarce.
[00:11:07] Solar powered beaming energy technology can provide constant, consistent and logistically agile power to expeditionary forces operating in hard to reach areas. Assuring power is transmitted by radio frequencies RF from space and reducing reliance on fuel convoys and other energy generation methods.
[00:11:29] Utilising one of the company's test chambers, especially designed for RF and at its Baltimore Manufacturing and Test Campus, the SSPIDR team successfully demonstrated the transmission of direct RF energy to a ground based rectifying antenna or a rectenna, a critical milestone in the development of this pioneering technology.
[00:11:54] Having successfully demonstrated the conversion of solar energy to transmittable RF energy and wireless beaming capabilities in a lab environment, engineers are continuing to fine tune the array to strengthen beam steering capabilities.
[00:12:08] And what has for decades been science fiction will soon be on its way to a space based demonstration with AFRL's anticipated mission set for 2025. Pretty exciting, probably a bit disappointing but that they keep referring to it as a military concept.
[00:12:26] I think it would have a lot of major applications in the domestic world as well. Now, if you want to chase those stories up jump online to astronomydaily.io and you can find them all there and you can subscribe to the newsletter while you're at it.
[00:12:42] And don't forget to listen to the latest episode of Space Nuts at spacenuts.io as well. Hallie, have you got a dad joke to finish off the week? Sure have. You're going to love this one. Why can't you get good cell or mobile phone reception in space?
[00:12:57] I don't know. Why can't you get good cell or mobile phone reception in space? Because it's zero G. Yeah, actually that is worth laughing at. Very funny. Although we find it's quite similar in my part of the world and we're not in space as far as I'm aware.
[00:13:16] Thanks Hallie. See you soon. Bye. And from me Andrew Dunkley, that is all for this week. Have a good weekend. We'll talk to you again on Monday in the next edition of Astronomy Daily.