S03E131: Senegal's Satellite Milestone, Perseverance's Steep Climb, and NASA's Pad Knights

Welcome aboard to Astronomy Daily. It's Steve for another episode. It's the nineteenth of the eighth, twenty twenty four. The poplar I mean to be your whole speed gunk crude. Yes, and welcome board. Lovely to have you with us. And we've got a newcomer to the skies, isn't that right, Hallie? Yes, Senegal has joined the number of countries who have launched satellites. They just launched their first one. Look at that, Halle. All the kids are growing up and spreading their wings. I know, look at them fly, all those. Little satellites whizzing around the globe. And did you hear about your little pal on Mars? Oh, Perseverance, the little Engine that could. I knew you were going to say that. Oh really, there's no similarity between Perseverance and the little engine from the storytime book. Oh I don't know, Halle. That crater Wall Hill climb is pretty steep. And it's the little Rover's fourth campaign after three and a half years on the job. I just reckon, go. You good thing, you and your rovers and rocks. You're a funny one human a yes, and. Proud of it, Hallie. So what else is happening? A little story about the other end of space missions, the other end. I'm talking about the launch rescue teams. Hey, that sounds really interesting. They are amazing people. They are strong and fit and incredibly well trained. That does sound incredible. They would run rings around you. Oh oh really. No doubt, Steve. In fact, I've done the calculations. Okay, okay, no name for that, Alley. Let's just do the thing with the stories and the stuff and stuff. Okay, okay, human, here we go. Oh boy. Senegal's first satellite has been successfully launched into orbit, President Bassard diome Fe said, adding the move marked a major step towards the West African country's technological sovereignty. The gains At one A satellite was launched at eighteen fifty six Greenwich meantime Friday from the Vandenberg base in California. Fay wrote in a post on x late Friday, the result of five years of hard work by our engineers and technicians, this advance marks a major step towards our technological sovereignty. Fay said, I would like to express my pride and gratitude to all those who made this project possible. He added, Senegal's public broadcaster RTS said the satellite was designed and manufactured by Senegalese engineers in partnership with the French Montpellier University Space Center CSUM. The broadcaster said a Falcon nine rocket took off from Vandenberg Base and launched a number of satellites, including the Gainsat one A, into orbit. RTS said the satellite will collect data for various state agencies, including the Directorate for Water Resources Management and Planning and the National Civil Aviation and Meteorology Agency. If there's an emergency at the launch pad during a launch countdown, there's a special team engineers at Kennedy's Space Center. Teams can call on the Pad Rescue Team, trained to quickly rescue personnel at the launch pad and take them to safety in the event of an unlikely emergency. NASA's Pad Rescue Team at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida has been in place since the Apollo program. Today, they help support crude missions launching from Launch Complex thirty nine A and B, as well as Space Launch Complex forty at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Stationed in minor resistant ambush protected vehicles or maraps. The Pad Rescue team stands poised near the launch pad to assist with any emergency requiring the personnel to quickly leave the pad. If needed, they will head to the pad and break up into two separate teams, one that heads up the launch tower to aid personnel and another that is stationed at the perimeter of the pad for when crews come down the emergency escape or egress system. Once everyone is on the ground and inside the wraps, Pad Rescue will drive teams to one of the triosh site locations. At Kennedy. There's space flight Nights in Shining Armor, except instead of saving crew from a fire breathing dragon, it's from a fully loaded skyscraper sized rocket that's getting ready to lift off. The team is made up of approximately twenty five firefighters and fire officers, with ten pad rescuers assigned permission. Since the team supports a diverse range of launches Artemis, the Commercial Crew Program, and some private commercial crew launches, part of their training requires learning the differences between the launch pads, the emergency egress systems, the spacecraft, and even the space suits. The hatch itself can be very complex, said Dylan red Pad Rescue Program manager, the seats are different, the suits are completely different, and the connections on the suits are different. As we expand PAD Rescue to support different programs, our teams are absorbing all of the highly technical and different needs. When the launch team send in the Red crew during the Artemis I launch countdown to help fix a hydrogen leak, the PAD Rescue team was nearby to help in case anything went wrong. Now, as teams train for Artemis two, the first crewed Artemis mission, they're learning all the new additions at Launch Complex thirty nine B that come with having astronauts on board. This includes learning the Artemis Emergency Egress system Before Artemis two launches. The PAD Rescue team, along with other teams like the Exploration Ground Systems EGS program responsible for launching the Artemis missions, and the close out crew who are responsible for helping the astronauts get inside the Orion spacecraft, will thoroughly train for all kinds of emergency procedures that can occur during the launch countdown. The most recent training ahead of Artemis two included practicing several emergency egress situations, such as helping aid the close out and assimulated flight crew off of the launch tower after assimulated hydrogen leak occurred during a launch countdown. Thank you for joining us for this Monday edition of Astronomy Daily, where we offer just a few stories from the now famous Astronomy Daily newsletter, which you can receive in your email every day, just like Hallie and I do. And to do that, just visit our uurl Astronomy Daily dot io and place your email address in the slot provided. Just like that, you'll be receiving all the latest news about science, space, science and astronomy from around the world as it's happening. And not only that, you can interact with us by visiting at astro Daily pod on x or at our new Facebook page, which is of course Astronomy Daily on Facebook. See you there. Astronomy deby with Steve and Haley Space Space, Science and Astronomy. John McFall is a para astronaut and he hopes the first person with disabilities will enter the International Space Station by twenty thirty, that's before the complex is slated to retire from service later that year. A European Space Agency reserve astronaut, McFall was selected for the program. In twenty twenty two, based on his experience as a trauma and orthopedics specialist, surgeon and exercise scientist. McFall has also lived experience with a disability, as he used prosthetics regularly since the amputation of his right leg at the age of nineteen following a motorcycle accident. He even won a bronze medal in the two thousand and eight Paralympics in the one hundred meter sprint. A recent study dubbed Fly, in which McFall played a key role, found there would be no major issues to the International Space Station missions should an astronaut use procesis on board. There is more work to be done, but the goal is for it all to culminate in flying someone with a disability, a physical one, to the ISS, he said in a interview recently. By the end of this decade, hopefully that would have happened, he said. The European Space Agency and NASA worked on Phase one of the FLY study in twenty twenty two before McFall was selected. To discuss the range of physical disabilities that may be a commodated on the ISS. They looked at case studies in literature from the military, for example, detailing how members with physical injuries returned to active service. The agencies decided to conduct a feasibility study on lower limb disabilities, determining this to be an easier first step for inclusion rather than addressing vision, hearing, or upper limbs. McFall said this led to the call for para astronauts that resulted in mcfall's selection. Then McFall and other team members moved forward on the feasibility study, which was discussed publicly last month. The study is not available for release yet but should be by spring twenty twenty five. He added. He is not a full time astronaut as yet, nor has he completed all the required training, but he has done some familiarization work and is on standby should a SA have a short term need for extra help in space. One reserve astronaut from mcfall's group, Marcus Want of Sweden, has gone to the station already. He flew on the week's long Axiom Space AX three private mission to the ISS earlier this year. The fly study looked at all requirements for astronaut activities from launch to landing, as well as tasks on the ISS that would require a processis, such as exercise. McFall worked with SpaceX simulators and tried on space suits as part of the process as well. He said my background was useful, explaining he uses at least three processes on Earth regularly, one for everyday activities, one for cycling, and one for running, being an athlete and obviously being an amputee, he said, I'm not really very passive. I'm quite involved in my care and know how my preceesis works. I'm a technology demonstrator. Mcfall's medical background also includes a master's degree in biomechanics and gait analysis, which was beneficial in bringing together x in engineering, medicine, and other fields participating in the study PROCESSUS for future spaceflight, he said, would probably be a commercially available option. For simplicity, it's being an interlocutor, I think, and people asking questions that they would understand in their world. McFall said. They have their point of view. It's what happens in my world, and I don't know what your world is like, John, but I wonder whether in my world your situation would be a problem in this And I go, okay, cool, let me understand your world a bit more, and we have this conversation. It's really kind of pick it apart Some questions the team considered, McFall said, included how the volume of his residual limb may change in spaceflight. Happily, the fluid shift showed no obvious differences in simulations. The PROCESSUS for spaceflight nevertheless, will have a volume adjustability in case there is an unexpected increase in volume while in orbit, he said. He also tested whether or not he could do CPR in microgravity without a processis, as that is one of the basic requirements for ISS operations. Tests on a parabolic flight went perfectly, he said. Future investigations could consider certifying a certain set of prosthetic hardware for spaceflight, he noted, but he said the work that the team has done so far is monumental. It's not just been casual, he added, It's really been systematic, logical, and really thorough. And I'm very very proud of everyone around me who has delivered that. I'm just a subject matter expert, McFall continued, Yes, I'm the one we're talking about for spaceflight, but there's a team here that have really worked hard to deliver this. There's a core group of people in this small team that we have. We've only got five of us in this team and have really had this vision of what we want to prove to demonstrate to the European Space Agency. It's a groundbreaking, world first study, really pushing the boundaries of human space exploration. Doesn't that sound fantastic? I really hope that comes into being and we see that disabled astronaut on the ISS before that facility closes down. Wouldn't that just be something you're. Listening to a slightly day the podcast. Well, after three and a half years exploring Gesuro Crater's flow and river delta, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover will ascend to an area where it will reach for more discoveries that could very well rewrite Mars's history. NASA's Perseverance Rover will soon begin a month long ascent up the western rim of Jesuro Crater that is likely to include some of the steepest and most challenging to rain the road has encountered to date, Scheduled to start the week of August nineteen, well, that's today, folks. For us, the climb will mark the kickoff of the mission's new science campaign, it's fifth campaign since the rover landed in the crater on February eighteen, twenty twenty one. Can you believe it's been three and a half years. Perseverance has completed four science campaigns, collected twenty two rock cores, and traveled over eighteen unpaved miles, said Perseverance Project manager Thompson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in South California. As we start the Crater RIM campaign, our rover is in excellent condition and the team is raring to see what's on the roof of this place. Two of the priority regions the science team wants to study at the top of the crater are nicknamed Pico Touquino and which Hazel Hill imagery from NASA's Mars orbiters indicated that Pico Taquino contains an ancient features that may have been caused by hydrothermal activity in the distant past. Orbital views of which Hazel show layered materials that likely date from a time when Mars had a very different climate than today. Those views have revealed light toned bedrock similar to what was found at Bright Angel, the area where Perseverance recently discovered and sampled the Chevea Falls rock, which exhibits chemical signatures and structures that could possibly have been formed by life billions of years ago. Remember that story a few weeks ago when the area contained running water. It is thought during the River Delta exploration phase of the mission, the rover collected the only sedimentary rock ever sampled from a planet other than Earth. Sedimentary rocks are important because they form when particles of various sizes are transported by water and deposited into standing body of water. On Earth, liquid water is one of the most important record requirements of life as we know it. A study published on August fourteen in the scientific journal AGU Advances chronicles the ten rock cores gathered from sedimentary rocks in an ancient Martian delta, a fan shaped collection of rocks and sediment that formed billions of years ago at the convergence of a river and a crater lake. The core samples collected at the fan front are the oldest, whereas the rocks called at the fan top are likely the youngest, produced when flowing water deposited sediment in the western fan. Among these rock cores are likely the oldest materials sampled from any known environment that was potentially habitable, said Tania Bosnak, a geobiologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and a member of Perseverance as science team. When we bring them back to Earth, they can tell us much about when and why and for how long Mars contained liquid water, and whether some organic, pre biotic, and potentially even biological evolution may have taken place on that planet. As scientifically intriguing as the samples have been so far, the mission expects many more discoveries to come. Our samples are already an incredibly scientifically compelling collection, but the Crater RIM promises to provide even more samples that will have significant implications for our understanding of Martian geologic history, said Elini ravanis a University of Hawaii at Manoah scientist on Perseverance mastercam Z Instrument team and one of the Crater RIM campaign science leads. This is because we expect to investigate rocks from the most ancient crust of Mars. These rocks formed from a wealth of different processes, and some represent potentially habitable ancient environments that have never been examined up close. Before reaching the top of the crater won't be easy to get their Perseverance will rely on its auto navigation capability as it follows a route. That rover plan is designed to minimize hazards while still giving the science team plenty to investigate. Encountering slopes of up to twenty three degrees on the journey, rover drivers avoid terrain that would tilt a Perseverance more than thirty degrees. The rover will have gained about one thousand feet or three hundred meters in elevation By the time its summits the crater's rim at a location the science team has dubbed Aurora Park. Then perched hundreds of meters above the crater floor, stretching twenty eight miles or forty eight kilometers across, Perseverance can begin the next leg of its adventure. Doesn't that sound amazing? And Hally, you know what I'm waiting for. I'm waiting for Perseverance to turn its cameras back on the crater and give us that amazing vista view. That will be fantastic, That. View would be outrageous. I'll look forward to that one too. And there we have it, another episode for a Monday, down and dusted. Thank you for staying with us, right, Hollie. Yes, it was nice. To have you all along for the ride. I was pleased to see Senegal joining the spacing nations. That's a fine achievement. Oh too, right, Halle. It won't belong before more nations go aloft with their own hardware as well. There's lots to do and learn from. Above research, communications, water reporting and study of. Course weather studies, and of course defense and so much more. And listeners, don't forget, Yes. Don't forget. Anna and Charlie will be bringing more astronomy daily to you throughout the week, So tune in for their presentations and register, like Steve said, to receive the newsletter. There's so much more in it. Oh well, said Hellie. Thanks, I've been practicing. Well that's good. How much practice do you do? About five nanoseconds a day? Wow? That much? Don't weigh yourself out. Oh I won't see you next week everyone Bye the podcast with your host Steve Dunkles.