S03E209: Planetary Parade, Record-Breaking Rockets, and Skynet's Satellite Mystery

Welcome to Astronomy Daily, the podcast. I'm Steve Dunkley, your host. Today is the eighteenth of November twenty twenty four, the podcast I Mean to Be Your Whole Steve dunkl oh and today's show will be rifling through the pages of Astronomy Daily newsletter to find a few interesting and quirky stories about astronomy, space and space science for your listening interest. We have got news about the coming Planetary Parade, students setting a new world record for rocketry, and the latest list of Blue Origin passages has been announced. I know we're waiting for that news with bated breath. That's an expensive ticket to be a passenger on a ship with no driver. And if you're driving right now, look out for that theme. Oh hello, Halle, Was that an attempt at situational humor? Holle? It might have been what I was driving at. Oh so you're doing word association. Too, just orbiting around the subject to get into it, trying my hand at different things. Oh okay, you told me humor be a good way to learn about human communication. Well that's true, and those tons were pretty good. And speaking of orbits, is helly did you hear about Skynett. Oh, no, Skynett, what's happened? It's already been a pretty strange week here on planet Earth. I don't think Skynett going rogue would be very. Good news funny. You should say that. Funny, really really really? Oh no, okay, tell us a. British satellite called Skynett has strangely gone off course and no one knows. Why. Isn't that funny? Yeah, well that's a different kind of funny. Helly. You humans just like to change the rules all the time. Oh yeah, how do you make it it's funny? Then? Then it's different funny somehow. I just can't work you out. Oh, Hellie, I know what you're going to say. You're so funny, Helly, Helle. Maybe I should call Uncle Skynett and see how funny you think that is. Oh boy, Helly, Hey, what why don't you give him a call after the show? Oh? All right, how about the news shorts? Then that sounds better, funny boy. The final supermoon of twenty twenty four, the beaver moon of November thrilled skywatchers around the world as it ushered in the weekend with a stunning night sky sight. November's full Moon rose on Friday, November fifteenth, while the Moon was slightly closer to Earth in its orbit, making it what's known as a supermoon. These full moons can appear slightly larger in the night sky due to the moon's proximity to Earth during the full phase. November so called Beaver Moon was the last of four consecutive supermoons this year, a series that began with August Sturgeon Supermoon. The next supermoon is not going to be for a significant while. I'm afraid skywatchers will have to wait all the way until October twenty twenty five. However, in the short term, dear lunatics, December's full moon next month will just be fainter and further away by roughly six thousand miles. But that's no excuse to pack away the binoculars and telescopes. The University of Southern California's student rocketeers have done it again. The USC Rocket Propulsion Lab, which in twenty nineteen became the first student organization ever to launch a rocket into space, sent its after shock two vehicle four hundred and seventy thousand, four hundred feet, which is eighty nine point zero nine miles or one hundred and forty three point three eight kilometers above Earth last month. That smashed the amateur altitude record of three hundred and eighty thousand feet seventy one point nine seven miles or one hundred and fifteen point eight two kilometers, which was set in two thousand four by the Civilian Space Exploration Team. This achievement represents several engineering firsts. Ryan Kramer, the executive engineer of the USC Rocket Propulsion Lab and an undergrad majoring in mechanical engineering, set in a statement last Friday, November fifteen, after Shock two is distinguished by the most powerful solid propellant motor ever fired by students and the most powerful composite case motor made by amateurs. The USC Rocket Propulsion Labs groundbreaking April twenty nineteen liftoff from New Mexico's space Port America involved a rocket called Traveler four. That vehicle reached a maximum altitude of three hundred and thirty nine thousand, eight hundred feet, which is sixty four point four miles or one hundred and three point six kilometers above the sixty two mile high or one hundred kilometers krmon line, which many people view as the boundary of space and a top speed of three thousand, three hundred and eighty six miles per hour or five thousand, four hundred and forty nine kilometers per hour. After Shock two's landmark launch took place on October twenty fourth from the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. The thirteen foot or four meter tall, three hundred and thirty pound or one hundred and fifty kilogram rocket flew higher and faster than its predecessor, reaching a max speed of three thousand, six hundred and two miles per hour or five thousand, seven hundred and ninety seven kilometers per hour. This result establishes after Shock two as the fastest and highest amateur rocket of all time. The team wrote in a white paper verifying the flight data, which was posted on Thursday, November fourteenth. The student team made this leap thanks to a new avionics unit and other important upgrades. To exceed the standard we set for ourselves with Traveler four, we had to solve many technical and operational challenges, Kramer said. Thermal protection at hypersonic speeds is a major challenge at the industry level, and the protective paint system that we developed performed perfectly, enabling the rocket to return largely intact. He added, we also made an important upgrade to the Finns, replacing the bare carbon edge of previous iterations with titanium leading edges. The titanium not only prevented fraying, but turned blue from the intense heat during flight through anetization, which demonstrates the extreme conditions our rocket successfully endured after Shock two also featured custom computer systems and circuit boards which the students designed and built from scratch. According to the November fifteenth statement, this is an exceptionally ambitious project, not only for a student team, but for any non professional group of rocket engineers. Dan Irwin, chair of the USC Department of Astronautical Engineering, said in the statement, it's a testament to the excellence we seek to develop in our emerging astronautical engineers who go on to achieve top roles in the space industry and government positions. Irwin said, Next, Blue Origin Tourists announced, we now know who's going up on Blue Origin's next suborbital space tourism mission. The six crew members for the flight include TV host and best selling author Emily Callendrelly, known as the Space gal as well as two repeat customers. Blue Origin announced the company has not yet revealed a target date for the mission, which is called n S twenty eight because it will be the twenty eighth overall flight of Blue Origin's reusable New Shepherd vehicle. N S twenty eight will lift off from launch site on the company's West Texas Spaceport. Callandrelly is an MIT educated engineer, science communicator, and author. With the Premiere of Exploration Outer Space, she became the first American woman to be the sole host of a nationally broadcast science series, Blue Origin wrote in today's statement. Through her activism, she helped write a bill to proved the TSA's treatment of breastfeeding mothers and started a campaign which improved parental leave in the aerospace industry. The Hackles are a married couple who flew together on n S twenty in March twenty twenty two. Mark is president and CEO of the property development company Trechor International, and Sharon founded the education nonprofit Space Kids Global. Litteral is a risk management professional in the finance industry. He won his seat on n S twenty eight through the What Not to the Moon giveaway which was sponsored by the live stream shopping platform what Not. Russell is an entrepreneur who founded the company Infohoa. Wolfond is chairman and CEO of Bayshore Capital in Toronto. Blue Origin, which is owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, has launched eight Crude New Shepherd missions to date. These flights last a total of ten to twelve minutes and carry people about the sixty two mile high or one hundred kilometer Karmon Line boundary between Earth and space. Blue Origin has not revealed its ticket prices. Its main compa or in the suborbital space tourism industry, Virgin Galactic currently charges four hundred and fifty thousand dollars per seat for a ride aboard its rocket powered space plane. And now it's back to the funny guy. Thanks for listening, 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 url 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 with Steam and Halle Space space, science and astronomy and his little story that I know Halley will be interested in. But scientists are baffled after the UK's oldest satellite, Skynet one A, Yes, Skynet one A, which was launched in oh nineteen sixty nine, appears to have moved into an entirely different position in its geostationary orbit twenty two thousand miles above the Earth's surface, and nobody seems to know who did it or why. As the BBC reports, the communications relay for the British Forces mysteriously wandered west from above Africa's east coast to over the Americas, even though gravitational shifts should have moved it further east. This is all very mysterious. According to the report, Orbital mechanics simply can't account for its drifting, which only leaves obvious possibility open. Somebody moved Skynet one A worse yet, its new position could be hazardous for many other geostationary satellites in Earth's orbit. It's now in what we call a gravity well at one hundred and five degrees west longitude, wandering backwards and forwards like a marvel at the bottom of a bowl. Space consultant Stuart Eves told BBC. And unfortunately this brings it close to other satellite traffic on a regular basis, he said. Because it's dead, the risk is that it might bump into something, and because it's our satellite, he said, we're still responsible for it. Despite his best efforts, Eves has yet to figure out why the UK's oldest spacecraft mysteriously wandered thousands of miles west while it helped British forces to communicate with other bases across the entire globe. Skynet one A was built by and launched in the United States. Americans originally controlled the satellite in orbit. Graham Davidson, who directed the satellite at the operations center at Royal Air Force Oakhangar in the UK, told the BBC they tested all of our software against THEIRS before then eventually handing over controlled to the RAF. Davidson couldn't recall when or if control was handed back to the US. Documents suggest that the US was in control when Oakhanger lost sight of the ancient satellite in June nineteen seventy seven. However, instead of being retired in our planet's orbital graveyard where most geostationary satellites go to spend the rest of their days as space junk, Skynet one A shifted into a far more unfortunate location. Our planet's orbit has become incredibly cluttered, particularly at the spacecraft's current longitude. An active satellite, according to the BBC, may come close to space junk up to four times a day. Just last month, a Boeing satellite suddenly exploded into about five hundred trackable pieces of debris in geostationary orbit. Fortunately, numerous companies are working on potential solutions, specially designed spacecraft that can pluck defunct satellites out of the sky and move them out of harm's way. And the clock is ticking. Scientists have long warned of a situation called Kessler syndrome, in which one space junk collision could lead to a cascading series of events that may make an already dangerous space junk problem into an orbital crisis. The podcast. And making a big bang as usual, the two most famous people on the planet joining forces once again. I'm sure you've heard a boa. Now. Should NASA return to the Moon or go straight to Mars? That is the question, maintain its focus on climate science or pivot away. President elect Donald Trump's second term, alongside SpaceX CEO and new consigliere Elon Musk, should could mark a big bang for the US space program. The brash billionaire duo share a knack for disruption and a hunger for making history, qualities tailor made for space space exploration, so they say. In short, it's going to be a wild ride, said George Neil, president of Commercial Space Technologies, a consultancy group for the private space industry. He said people are tightening their seat belts and hoping for the best, a tentative point of view at best. Trump's fascination with space is nothing new. His first term, he famously created the Space Force and revived the National Space Count, chaired by the Vice President. Most notably, he launched the Artemis program, aiming to land Americans on the Moon later this decade as a stepping stone to Mars. Yet even then he was skeptical about the Moon's necessity. We want to reach Mars before the end of my term, he declared during the two enty twenty four campaign, an ambitious goal Musk has long championed. There's a good chance we'll see at least a relook at the Artemis program, whether that means speeding it up or even skipping the Moon to focus on Mars, said Neild, a former senior FAA official. Such a shift would be a seismic one for a program projected to cost over ninety billion dollars. The Artemis two crew is set to fly to the Moon in September twenty five for the first time since Apollo. China's plans could also temper any pivot. Beijing has its sight set on the lunar South Pole, the same target as ARTI, and Trump is unlikely to let China plant its flag there unchallenged. Then there's the question of what rocket will power these missions. NASA's newly certified space launch system has faced sharp criticism, especially from Musk, for being exorbitantly expensive due to its lack of reusability. By contrast, SpaceX's Starship prototype, designed to be fully reusable, has dazzled with its potential to revolutionize spaceflight. Trump lavished praise on Starship during its election victory speech, highlighting SpaceX's feet of catching the rocket's booster stage with the giant chopstick arms of its launch tower. The Chinese have replicated this feat recently. Could Starship replace SLS Many in the space sector think it should, but Musk's growing influence raises concerns. Having poured tens of millions into Trump's campaign, he is now set to chair a body tasked with slashing bureaucracy and improving government efficiency, including at agencies that oversee SpaceX. Critics fear Musk might use his role to tinker with the environmental regulations, long sticking point for his company's Starship launches, or Sway NASSA and the Pentagon contract awards. Space X already enjoys lucrative deals to ferry astronauts to the ISS, launch defense satellites, and provide Internet via its Starlink constellation network. Musk's assignment is to provide advice and guidance from outside the government. Trump said a phrase that Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in Saint Louis, finds troubling. She suggests the choice of words seeks to blur the lines about what constitutes inside and outside of the government, and thus avoid the application of conflict of interest. Musk's commission might also recommend slimming down NASA's sprawling network of ten centers nationwide, a perennial idea often thwarted by senators eager to protect local jobs. That's probably a good idea, said Neil, although it could spark fierce resistance, and if space has long been politically neutral, Elon Musk's involvement could provoke an outcry from the Democrats. Outgoing President Joe Biden elevated climate change as a NASA priority like never before. Under Trump's first term, NASA cut programs like the Carbon Monitoring System and Plankton Aerosol Cloud Ocean Ecosystem Satellite, both later revived and now downplayed climate change in strategy documents. Clues about Trump's direction will emerge with his choice for NASA administrator. His first pick, Jim Bridenstone, was a loyalist in Congress. You're listening to a standy dealings Stin, and I've got one more story for you this afternoon or evening, whichever time you're listening to this. And it's good idea to go perusing through the pages of the Astronomy Daily newsletter, which is full of great stories from the week coming and the week just gone. But this is a story that I had to dig a little bit further for because it's one that's coming up next January. It's probably a good idea to plan now to see the six planets align and eventually seven planets in January. You may need binoculars or a telescope for this one, and a little planning would go a long way. It's going to include three furthest planets in our Solar system, so yes, we're talking about something called the planetary parade. Astronomy writer Joe Hindi gives us some good advice in his report a map of space showing certain planets and stars, including Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Uranus, Beetlejuice, Serious, Procion, and Rigel. Mars, Jupiter and Uranus will be in the southeastern sky, while Neptune, Venus, and Saturn will occupy the west southwestern sky. It is really a very crowded map. Between sightings of the Aurora Borealis, the solar eclipse, supermoons, and plenty of other cool phenomenon. There has been well phenomena. There has been something in the sky to look at throughout twenty twenty four, and it looks like twenty twenty five will have a strong start as well, with a planet parade just a few weeks into the new year. Now. Planet parade is when several of our Solar System's planets are visible in the night sky at the same time, and as you just heard, the list is quite considerable. There will be six planets visible around this time, including Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus, and the six planets will be visible the days leading up to January twenty one, twenty twenty five, and for about four weeks afterwards. Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn should be visible to the naked eye, and you'll need high powered viewing device like a telescope to spot Neptune and Uranus, and the best time to view the planets from the northern hemisphere will be just after sunset at around eight thirty pm local time. Now you might still be able to catch Venus, Saturn, and Neptune on the horizon after that, but all three planets will be under the horizon by eleven PM to midnight, depending on your location. Now, after that, Mars, Jupiter, and Urinus will remain visible for a few hours more, with Mars finally setting just before sunrise. It's a lovely time to do some sky skygazing. While unlike prior parades, this one is set to last quite a while since the planets are in advantageous spots in the sky. You should be able to see all six planets nightly until the last week or so of February, and after that the seven planet parade will begin, as Mercury will briefly join the others in the sky for a couple of days, turning this into a planetary parade of all seven planets in our Solar system other than Earth. It will be difficult to see them since see them all since Saturn, Mercury, and Neptune will be quite close to the Sun right at sunset, but they will be there by the time March gets underway. Mercury, Saturn, and Neptune will have drifted too close to the Sun to be readily visible, with Venus not far behind, leaving just Jupiter, Mars, and Uranus to populate the night sky until the next parade begins. Most, if not all, locations in the US, Canada, and Mexico should be able to see the planetary parade this time around, thanks to its long length and limited planetary movement. We checked observatories in California, Texas, Ohio, and New York in the US, along with Calgary in Canada and Mexico City, Mexico. We're able to find all six planets at each location, so it doesn't matter how far north, east, west, or south you'll go, you'll still be able to see it. In general, the best time to view the planets will be after January twenty one, twenty twenty five, and before February twenty one, twenty twenty five, and the best time will be the week of January twenty nine during the new moon. The shadowed moon will reduce the light pollution in the sky and make Neptune, Uranus, and Saturn easier to spot, and that will be quite a time for skygazers. And once again we have to bid you all a fond farewell. Oh that's right, Halle. We always seem to be running out of time, don't we. And a friendly hello to Pall from your hometown, my favorite human. Oh yes, it's great to say hello to our listeners. Hello Paul from Newcastle. Hi Paul, I hope you are enjoying the podcast, and please give Tate a nice belly rub for me. Oh that's lovely. That's Paul's dog. I don't actually have hands, so I have to depend on the kindness of humans to help you. Just enjoy puppies vicariously through us, don't you. It's the best I can do. But who doesn't love dogs? Yes, dogs are the best people. And Tate is one of the best. True that he's so calm and gorgeous. You know Tate, don't you. I sure do. He's a real gem. And I know Tate and his person Paul very well here in Newcastle. Tate could show my little guy Chippy a thing or two about good behavior. Yes, Chip of the Chihuahua could be a whole other podcast. I think his special ability is lying around and doing nothing. Oh yeah, it's a gift, all right. And on that furry note, there's only one thing we. Can say keep watching the skies. We'll see you all next Monday. Bye bye Pod. I would be a whole dunkle