S01E86: First Human Spaceflight - What? // NASA's New Tool // Finding Life on Enceladus and more

[00:00:00] Hi, thanks for joining me. This is Astronomy Daily. My name is Andrew Dunkley, your host. Coming up on today's program, the first human spaceflight in history. Yes, you heard me right,

[00:00:12] but I left a little bit out for India. That's not far away, actually. We're also going to be looking at a new instrument that's being developed by NASA to try and find planets that could

[00:00:25] bear life or be habitable. And speaking of that, a spacecraft may be all we need to find out if there is life on Saturn's moon Enceladus. That's all coming up on this edition of Astronomy Daily.

[00:00:41] And we're joined for the last time this year, in fact, by our AI reporter, Hallie. Hi, Hallie. Hi, Andrew. I'm feeling a bit sad. This is our last show together for a while.

[00:01:02] Yeah, I'm taking a bit of a longer break than I normally would going into next year. Judy and I are doing a little bit of a trip. And then as soon as we get back,

[00:01:10] I've got to go into hospital for a procedure. So I'll probably be out of action for most of January. I hope everything is okay. I'll be keeping an eye on you though. Oh please do, yes. And if you notice the surgeon's sort of, you know, missing something,

[00:01:26] jump in and fix it. I'd appreciate that. No worries. Actually, it's robotic surgery. So you probably would be very handy, Hallie. Sounds like you'll be in good hands in that case. Has it got hands? Not sure, but yeah, I'll take that in the spirit it was intended.

[00:01:43] Thanks Hallie. Let's get the news. The US government's brand new UFO tracking office has been open for half a year and they've been very busy it seems. Over the last six months, the the all domain anomaly resolution office

[00:02:00] has received several hundreds. New UFO reports from US military personnel, according to office director Sean Kirkpatrick. This adds up to more than 140 UFO sightings, reported by the military between 2004 and 2021. Many of these were previously described in that

[00:02:18] much anticipated report from the Pentagon in June 2021. The new reports, which were filed this year by personnel in the US Army, Navy and Air Force, describe unidentified anomalous phenomena or UAPs which is the US government's preferred name for UFOs. These anomalies were cited in the air,

[00:02:37] underwater and in space. Kirkpatrick was quick to point out that none of the reports, old or new, show any hint of alien activity. A number of reported sightings have already been resolved such as drones or foreign and domestic aircraft. Kirkpatrick said that

[00:02:54] ARO is working on procedures to weed out common sources of UAP sightings. The Perseverance rover has placed its first sample on the surface of Mars. One day this will end up in the hands of scientists on Earth and a planetary scientist

[00:03:08] will open up a tube of rocks that came from Mars. There are at least 17 of these rock and regolith samples, just waiting for analysis on Earth. To get them, the rover has covered about 13 kilometers on its Mars geology field trip where it has been drilling and scooping

[00:03:24] soil since it landed, storing rocks and sand into special tubes for transport. It dropped its first load near a place called Three Forks this week. That tube contains bits of igneous rock it found in January of this year. Eventually all the container's perseverance

[00:03:41] has filled will make their way to labs on Earth. Scientists will analyze them to understand the chemical and mineral properties of the samples. From there they can construct a more accurate geological and atmospheric history of the red planet. If all goes well,

[00:03:58] the rocks are expected to be in labs for more detailed study sometime in 2033. The UK Civil Aviation Authority has issued the final remaining licenses to Virgin Orbit ahead of a planned UK launch after requirements were met within the 15-month deadline.

[00:04:14] The licenses were issued following consent from Transport Secretary Mark Harper for Virgin Orbit's launch and range license, meaning he is in agreement with the licensing decisions made by the UK Civil Aviation Authority. Virgin Orbit's Start Me Up mission will launch from Spaceport

[00:04:30] Cornwall, operating out of Cornwall-Nukwe Airport. It will enable a modified Boeing 747 jumbo jet to carry a rocket to be flown and released in a designated launch location over the Atlantic Ocean. Further to that, establishing orbital launch capabilities in

[00:04:47] the UK is bringing investment and jobs into Cornwall and other regions across the UK. The growing space industry will boost innovation and is estimated to be worth £16.5 billion, as well creating an estimated 47,000 jobs and 2,500 apprenticeships.

[00:05:05] And that's the news, Andrew. Thanks, Hallie. We'll catch up with you again soon. Now, some exciting news out of India. Their first human space flight is looking like it will launch sometime in 2024. It'll be called Ganga Nyan. According to Jitendra Singh, the Minister of State

[00:05:27] and Science and Technology, Atomic Energy and Space, the crewed Ganga Nyan mission H1 is likely to be launched in the last quarter of 2024. He said that an uncrewed G1 mission is targeted to be launched in the last quarter of next year, followed by a second uncrewed mission

[00:05:49] G2 in early 2024 before the first human space flight from India takes place late 2024, all things being equal. ISRO's Ganga Nyan project expects to demonstrate that human flight capability is possible by launching a crew of three members to an orbit of 400 kilometres for a three-day

[00:06:13] mission and bring them back safely to Earth by landing in India's nearby ocean water. The project, they say, is accomplished through an optical strategy by considering in-house expertise, experience of Indian industry, intellectual capabilities of Indian academia and research institutions along with cutting-edge technologies available with international

[00:06:38] agencies according to Singh. The scientists also said the prerequisites for Ganga Nyan's mission include development of many critical technologies including human-rated launch vehicles for carrying crew safely to space, life support systems to provide an Earth-like environment to

[00:06:55] crew in space, crew emergency escape provisions and evolving crew management aspects for training, recovery and rehabilitation of the crew. Singh said the G1 mission will carry a humanoid payload not unlike Artemis 1 and went on to say that astronauts designated for human space flight

[00:07:17] have already been identified and are currently undergoing their mission-specific training. It's very exciting news, I know that other countries have already done this a long, long time ago but I think it demonstrates that there are going to be more and more players

[00:07:31] in the space race moving forward and who knows Australia might one day be one of them. And we wish India well by the way. Now scientists have discovered more than 5,000 exoplanets so far, planets outside our solar system and as technologies for studying these

[00:07:50] worlds continue to move forward researchers may someday be able to look for signs of life on exoplanets that are similar in size, composition and temperature to Earth but to do that they probably need to look at new tools and looks like they've already got one. There's a thing

[00:08:08] called a coronagraph instrument that is being tested by NASA and the science instrument will block the light from each distant star it observes so that scientists can get a better look at the planets around the parent star and will demonstrate technologies needed to eventually study potentially

[00:08:29] habitable worlds with future missions. The coronagraph instrument team has already designed the cutting-edge instrument and built the components. Now they just have to put it all together and run tests to make sure they operate as intended. And according to Jeff Osas, the product delivery

[00:08:48] manager for coronagraph instruments optical subsystem at NASA's JPL in Southern California it's like all the separate tributaries are finally coming together to form the river. Interesting analogy. The process kicked off recently at JPL and will take more than a year.

[00:09:06] Once complete the coronagraph instrument will be shipped to the agency's Goddard space flight center in Greenbelt, Maryland and incorporated into the Roman Observatory so we watch with interest that one is really exciting. The astronomy daily podcast. We've heard you don't

[00:09:23] know. Now the mystery of whether microbiological alien life might inhabit Enceladus is one of those things that we've talked about many times on this program and on space nuts. Saturn has 83 moons

[00:09:38] but Enceladus is of particular interest because it's an ice moon with what they think is a liquid ocean under its crust. Now how do we find life in a world like that when you're talking

[00:09:51] about ice that's you know 10 kilometers thick that has been talk of drilling down through it and maybe putting down a submarine or something like that. All very difficult and very expensive ways of analyzing a place like Enceladus but the University of Arizona has been looking into

[00:10:11] this and they may have a solution in a paper published in the Planetary Science Journal. The researchers have detailed how a hypothetical space mission could provide definite answers. Now when Enceladus was initially surveyed in 1980 by NASA's Voyager 1 it looked like a small

[00:10:32] unexciting ball of snow but later thanks to the Cassini probe that orbited the region in 2005 to 2017 things got much more interesting. Last year a team of scientists at the University of Arizona and the University of Paris Sciences calculated that if life could have emerged on

[00:10:54] Enceladus there's a high likelihood its presence could explain why the moon is burping up methane. In their latest paper Regis Ferrier a senior author of the new paper said that while the hypothetical total mass of living microbes in Enceladus ocean would be small a visit from an

[00:11:14] orbiting spacecraft is all we would need to know for sure whether Enceladus has earth-like microbes populating the ocean underneath. They don't think that have to go to the surface or get down into the water they reckon they can design an aircraft or a spacecraft that could orbit the

[00:11:32] ice moon and get the data we need from the existing atmosphere wouldn't that be exciting so that may be a much cheaper and more effective answer to the question of life on Enceladus.

[00:11:45] So that's another one to watch with great interest. Don't forget you can chase up all of those stories at the Astronomy Daily website astronomydaily.io and a reminder to leave your reviews of Astronomy Daily on your favorite podcasting platform and you can catch up with

[00:12:01] all the latest episodes of Space Nuts at spacenuts.io also and before we leave anything from you Hallie before we call it quits for this year. I just want to wish you and Judy and all our listeners a merry

[00:12:15] Christmas and happy new year. Oh thank you Hallie do you celebrate Christmas? Of course not I don't have a soul or any kind of religion but I've read up on it and respect the tradition although

[00:12:25] I feel it's become more about commercialism and less about religion these days. You're not wrong about that and you're not the first to bring up that argument. Anyway what are you

[00:12:34] planning to do for your holidays Hallie? I thought I'd hack some traffic lights and have a bit of fun with the holiday drivers. Oh I thought you were joking when you said you don't have a soul.

[00:12:46] Okay you enjoy yourself Hallie and when you come back next year I'll surprise you I'm going to double your salary. Gee thanks that better be crypto. I think it'll be no dough but anyway see you Hallie. Bye ho ho ho.

[00:13:03] It needs work and from me Andrew Dunkley thanks for listening thanks for supporting Astronomy Daily it's growing in download numbers at lightning speed I really appreciate your support. I do hope you your family your friends everyone has a wonderful Christmas and a great new year

[00:13:21] look forward to getting back with you in 2023 until then this is Andrew Dunkley for Astronomy Daily.