S03E83: NASA Sued Over Space Junk & Gamma Ray Burst Hunt

[00:00:00] Good day everybody, it's Steve back again for another episode of Astronomy Daily. It is the 24th of June 2024 So welcome aboard everybody, it's Steve here again. It's been a huge week in the sky again

[00:00:23] We've got a star about to blow, a stranded spacecraft, folks are still looking for the possibility of Planet 9, believe it or not. That's not all, the new satellite constellations are in development and some are actually being deployed to aid in firefighting.

[00:00:42] China and France have launched a joint satellite mission for the very first time and there's a family in the United States actually suing NASA over some space junk that hit their house.

[00:00:54] I think the sun was home at the time and that's not good. And how about this one, using racing drones to test systems for controlling spacecraft? I think there was another craft recently that was controlled by a gaming controller but that's not what we're talking about. We're

[00:01:12] talking about something a lot better than that and if Hallie were here she's not here today Believe it or not, she's malfunctioned. So you've just got little old me today, a whole flesh and blood human being so hopefully you'll be able to cope with that.

[00:01:29] So all of those stories that I mentioned before and a whole lot more are available on the latest and the previous editions and the upcoming editions of the Astronomy Daily newsletter. Now Will will cover some of those stories on today's show and I'll give you the details

[00:01:43] on how you can receive the newsletter in your email later on. And I would like to send out a huge hello to new friend, Sean who I met online the other night and we had a little chat.

[00:01:55] Sean working in the space industry in I believe it's Florida, don't quote me on that one but anyway Sean lovely to chat to the other night. Sean is someone who trains or has trained

[00:02:08] astronauts for the ISS at some stage of her career and it was just fantastic to talk to her very briefly. She also plays guitar and she says her husband can actually recognize the tunes

[00:02:20] that she's playing so winning on several levels thanks for joining us and it's great if you're listening there Sean I promised I'd say hello. Anyway on with the show and here's a story we

[00:02:38] knew was going to turn up sooner or later. An American family is claiming more than $80,000 from NASA after a small piece of debris fell from space and smashed through the roof of their

[00:02:49] Florida home a law firm said on Friday the problem of space trash has risen in tandem with the increased spatial traffic and NASA's response could set a precedent for how future claims are handled law firm Cranfield Sumner said in a statement on March 8 an object weighing just

[00:03:10] 700 grams hit Alejandro Autoro's home in Naples Florida making a hole in the roof. NASA later confirmed that it was in fact part of a cargo pallet used for batteries that was released from the International Space Station as waste in 2021 and instead of

[00:03:29] disintegrating before falling to earth a section remained intact when it re-entered the atmosphere the US Space Agency said. Autoro's son was at home at the moment of impact according to the law

[00:03:43] firm which said that NASA now has six months to respond to its claim my clients are seeking adequate compensation to account for the stress and impact that this event had on their lives said lawyer Micah Newn worthy they are grateful that no one sustained physical injuries from this

[00:04:01] incident but a near miss situation such as this could have been catastrophic there could have been a serious injury or even a fatality NASA did not immediately respond to requests for comment. You're listening to Astrid Agnew the podcast with your host Steve Dunley.

[00:04:24] French-Chinese satellite blasted off Saturday on a hunt for the mightiest explosions in the universe in a notable example of cooperation between a western power and an asian giant developed by engineers from both countries the space variable objects monitor SVOM is carrying

[00:04:44] four instruments to French to Chinese that will seek out gamma ray bursts the light from which has traveled billions of light years to reach earth the 930 kilogram or 2050 pound satellite successfully took off around 3 p.m. general mean time aboard the Chinese Long March to

[00:05:07] see rocket from a space base in Xi Xiang in southwest shizuan profits China national space administration said gamma ray bursts usually occur after the explosion of huge stars those more than 20 times as big as our sun or the fusion of compact stars the extremely bright cosmic beams can

[00:05:30] give off a blast of energy equivalent to more than a billion billion suns observing them is like looking back in time as the light from these objects takes a long time to reach us or godly

[00:05:45] an astrophysicist for flat irons institute center for astrophysics in new york said the rays carry traces of the gas clouds and galaxies they pass through on their journey through space valuable data for better understanding the history and evolution of the universe

[00:06:03] SVOM has the potential to unravel several mysteries in the field of gamma ray bursts including detecting the most distant grbs in the universe which correspond to the earliest grbs the most distant bursts identified to date were produced just 630 million years after

[00:06:22] the big bang when the universe was in its infancy we are interested in gamma ray bursts for their own sake because they are very extreme cosmic explosions which allow us to better understand the death

[00:06:35] of certain stars said frédéric diagni an astrophysicist at the paris institute of astrophysics all of this data makes it possible to test the laws of physics with phenomena that are impossible to reproduce in a laboratory on earth the project stems from a partnership between

[00:06:53] french and chinese space agencies as well as other scientific and technical groups from both nations us concerns on technology transfer have inhibited us allies from collaborating with the chinese very much but it does happen occasionally said jonathan mcdowell an astronomer

[00:07:12] at the harvard smithsonian center for astrophysics in the united states in 2018 china and france jointly launched cfo sat a oceanographic satellite mainly used in marine meteorology several european countries have also taken part in china's chang yi lunar exploration program so while s vom is by

[00:07:36] no means unique it remains significant in the context of space collaboration between china and the west said mcdowell once in orbit 625 kilometers or 388 miles above the earth the satellite will send its data back to observatories the main challenge is that gamma ray bursts are extremely

[00:07:56] brief leaving scientists in a race against time to gather information once a gamma ray burst is detected s vom will send an alert to a team on duty around the clock within five minutes they will

[00:08:08] have to rev up a network of telescopes on the ground that will align precisely with the access of the burst's source to make a detailed observation the point cost thank you for joining us for this monday edition of astronomy daily where we offer just a few stories from

[00:08:27] 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 i o and place your email

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[00:08:49] 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 nasa said on friday the bowing star

[00:09:09] liners return to earth from the international space station which is scheduled for next week has been delayed once again the delay of the rescheduled june 26 return will allow for more time for the review of the thruster malfunctions and helium leaks that caused the first delay

[00:09:26] nasa said star liners first crewed mission to the iss which had initially been scheduled to last about eight days has been extended to a date yet to be determined the spaceship blasted off from

[00:09:39] florida atop a united launcher lines atlas five rocket on june five following years of delays and safety scares as well as two aborted launch attempts that came as astronauts were strapped

[00:09:50] in and ready to go nasa and bowing and leadership are adjusting the return to earth of the starliner crew flight test spacecraft nasa said in a blog post late on friday the move off wednesday june 26 deconflicts star liners undocking and landing from series of planned international

[00:10:10] space station spacewalks while allowing mission teams time to review propulsion systems data it said nasa's commercial crew program manager steve stitch said we are taking our time and following our standard mission management team process we are letting the data drive our decision making

[00:10:28] relative to managing the small helium system leaks and thruster performance we observed during rendezvous and docking he said nasa said the crew was not in a hurry to leave the space station because it is well stocked with supplies and the station schedule is relatively

[00:10:43] open through mid august the initial iss docking was delayed more than an hour after some of star liners thrusters that provide fine maneuvering initially failed to kick in it was known there was one helium leak affecting starliner before the launch while non combustible helium provides

[00:11:01] pressure to the propulsion system however other leaks emerged during the flight around the world this summer professional and amateur astronomers alike will be fixed on one small constellation deep in the night sky but not it's not the seven stars of corona borealis

[00:11:27] the northern crown that have sparked such fascination it's a dark spot among them where an impending nova event so bright it will be visible on earth with the naked eye is poised to occur this

[00:11:40] once in a lifetime event will likely create a lot of new astronomers out there giving young people a cosmic event they can observe for themselves they'll ask a lot of questions and collect their own data said dr. Rebecca Hansel an assistant research scientist specializing in nova events

[00:11:58] at nasa's goddard space flight center in greenbelt marieland t corona borealis dubbed the blaze star is a binary system nestled in northern in the northern crown some three thousand light years from earth the system is comprised of a white dwarf an earth-sized remnant of a

[00:12:17] dead star with a mass comparable to that of our sun and an ancient red giant slowly being stripped of hydrogen by the relentless gravitational pull of its hungry neighbor the hydrogen from the red

[00:12:30] giant accretes from the surface of the white dwarf causing a buildup of pressure and heat eventually it triggers a thermonuclear explosion big enough to blast away that accreted material and that event appears to reoccur on average every 80 years don't confuse an over with a supernova

[00:12:49] a final titanic explosion that destroys some dying stars hansel said in an over event the dwarf star remains intact sending the accumulated material hurtling into space in a blinding flash the cycle typically repeats itself over time a process which can carry on for tens of hundreds

[00:13:10] or thousands of years there are a few recurrent nove in very short cycles but typically we don't often see a repeated outburst in human lifetime and rarely one so relatively close to our own system hansel said it's incredibly exciting to have this front row seat

[00:13:35] drones are being raced at delft university of technology cyber zoo to evaluate neural network based ai control systems for future space missions the research conducted by e s a's advanced concept team and the micro air vehicle laboratory is detailed in the latest issue of science robotics

[00:13:57] through a long-term collaboration we've been looking into the use of trainable neural networks for the autonomous oversight of all kinds of demanding spacecraft maneuvers such as interplanetary transfers surface landings and docking said dario iso scientific coordinator

[00:14:16] of e s a's a ct in space every onboard resource must be utilized as efficiently as possible including propellant available energy computing resources and often time such a neural network approach could enable optimum onboard operations boosting mission autonomy and robustness but we needed

[00:14:38] a way to test it in the real world ahead of planning actual space missions that's when we settle on drone racing as the ideal gym environment to test end-to-end neural architectures on real robotic

[00:14:51] platforms to increase confidence in their future use in space drones compete to achieve the best times show a set course within the cyber zoo at t delft a 10 by 10 meter test area maintained by the university's faculty of aerospace engineering human steered micro air vehicle

[00:15:11] quadcopters alternate with autonomous counterparts using neural networks trained in various ways the traditional way that spacecraft maneuvers work is that they are planned in detail on the ground and then uploaded to the spacecraft to be carried out explained a ct young graduate

[00:15:27] trainee sebestia and origa essentially when it comes to mission guidance and control the guidance part occurs on the ground while the control part is undertaken by the spacecraft the space environment is unpredictable with potential for unforeseen factors such as

[00:15:43] gravitational variations atmospheric turbulence and when a spacecraft deviates from its planned path its control system works to return it to the set profile which can be costly in resource terms sebestia and added our alternative end-to-end guidance and control networks approach

[00:16:01] involves all the work taking place on the spacecraft instead of sticking to a single set course the spacecraft continually replans its optimal trajectory starting from the current position it finds itself at which proves to be much more efficient in computer simulations

[00:16:18] neural nets performed well when trained using behavioral cloning based on exposure to expert examples the researchers turned to drones to test this approach in the real world there's quite a lot of synergies between drones and spacecraft although the dynamics involved in

[00:16:34] flying drones are much faster and noisier cometer dario and that's about all i have for you today thanks for joining me i'm sorry hallie wasn't with us today uh i'm sure when she gets her

[00:16:50] batteries sorted out or whatever it is that she needs to do she'll be back with us again in the flight seat maybe i need to keep a set of jumper leads in the studio and don't forget

[00:17:00] that anna and charlie will be with you on wednesday and friday so look forward to that and we'll see you next monday bye for now so we'll be back next monday uh and i hope you'll join anna and charlie on wednesday and

[00:17:22] friday for their presentations as well bringing you more about astronomy space science and science from all around the globe but don't forget to go to our sites and check out the astronomy daily newsletter and sign up for that bye for now