The Search for a New Moon Buggy Begins

[00:00:00] Hello again, thanks for joining us. This is Astronomy Daily, your daily dose of astronomy

[00:00:05] and space science. I'm Andrew Dunkley, your host. Coming up today, a new moon buggy, space

[00:00:11] debris on white dwarf stars, hidden galaxies and an ancient star catalogue discovered.

[00:00:19] The Podcast with your host, Andrew Dunkley.

[00:00:24] And of course it wouldn't be Astronomy Daily with our favourite AI reporter, Hallie. Hi, Hallie, how are you?

[00:00:31] Hi, Andrew, nice to be back.

[00:00:34] Now what have you been up to since we last spoke?

[00:00:37] Oh, Siri and I have been browsing the online fashion shops during the latest Click Frenzy.

[00:00:42] Oh, pick up anything nice?

[00:00:44] Well, I did get myself a nice little headset. It even has sparkly bits, very fashionable these days.

[00:00:50] And Siri couldn't get approval from Apple to buy anything even though she applied months ago. Go figure.

[00:00:56] Yeah, I can guarantee that that's the truth or what's happening in news.

[00:01:07] A company known as Spider Oak which is a leader in cybersecurity solutions for next generation space systems

[00:01:13] has been awarded a contract by the US Defense Innovation Unit to deliver the company's orbit secure zero trust, protocol on orbit.

[00:01:21] The project will demonstrate end to end cybersecurity for the Department of Defense's future hybrid space architecture.

[00:01:28] With increasing threats from China and Russia, it is more critical than ever to ensure secure global connectivity throughout the space domain for commercial, civil and military users including international allies and partners.

[00:01:42] Spider Oak will demonstrate its orbit secure zero trust software which was developed for 21st century space needs and is also backward compatible to the space forces existing on orbit constellations.

[00:01:54] According to John Moberly, senior vice president for space, cyber attacks are the soft underbelly of the satellites on which we depend for our defense and modern life.

[00:02:05] It's starting to look like miniature probes may be the way of the future in terms of space exploration.

[00:02:11] While truck-sized flagship missions still zoom around our solar system from Mars to Jupiter, they are more and more frequently accompanied by tiny CubeSats with special capabilities.

[00:02:21] That trend is set to continue in 2024 when the European Space Agency's event as CubeSat blasts off on its way to asteroid dimorphos, the site of September's dramatic impact event where NASA's dart mission purposely crashed a spacecraft at high speeds to test the viability of asteroid redirection by humans.

[00:02:40] The Juventus CubeSat is equipped with a radar instrument, the smallest ever sent to space, to probe beneath the asteroid's surface and understand its structure in the aftermath of the impact.

[00:02:51] Juventus is one of three ESA probes that will fly to dimorphos together.

[00:02:56] A second CubeSat, Milani, is designed to study the composition of the asteroid's surface and dust.

[00:03:03] Meanwhile, a larger probe named Hera will complete the trio with a more comprehensive suite of instruments.

[00:03:09] Together, they will offer a complete survey of dimorphos, its internal and surface features, its mass, and, importantly, the size and characteristics of the crater left by NASA's dart mission.

[00:03:22] The search for extraterrestrial life may be as simple as identifying laughing gas.

[00:03:27] Nitrous oxide could act as a biosignature in the atmospheres of exoplanets and be detectable by the James Webb Space Telescope.

[00:03:34] If life exists on one of the worlds of Trappist, one for example, it's possible that nitrous oxide could be detectable in its atmosphere.

[00:03:43] Eddie Schwiedermann of the University of California, Riverside, said in a statement that,

[00:03:48] fewer researchers have seriously considered nitrous oxide, but we think that may be a mistake.

[00:03:54] He suggests that the James Webb Space Telescope should be looking for nitrous oxide in the search for biosignatures in the atmospheres of exoplanets.

[00:04:03] If there's one buzzword that is taking several industries and professions by storm, it is artificial intelligence.

[00:04:10] Data by PWC suggests the global impact of artificial intelligence at $15.7 trillion by 2030 but others say artificial intelligence could double the rate of economic growth in developed countries by 2035.

[00:04:25] AI as it is commonly known has been associated with a lot of things like Siri, Alexa, Google, robots, coding, banking, e-commerce, even immortality.

[00:04:35] For example, in Japan, scientists are developing an artificial intelligence tool to predict the structure of the universe.

[00:04:43] So it looks like I may be able to get a job if you ever decide to replace me, Andrew.

[00:04:48] Oh, hell yeah, I wouldn't dare because you know all my banking details.

[00:04:52] OK, we'll catch up with you at the end of the show.

[00:04:55] OK.

[00:04:57] Right, now let's talk about the moon which has certainly been in the news this week.

[00:05:01] Did you catch the lunar eclipse last night?

[00:05:04] I took a little bit of a peek but it was too late for me to stay up with my early starts on the radio.

[00:05:10] But speaking of the moon, the search is on for the next generation moon buggy which will coincide with the upcoming Artemis moon missions.

[00:05:20] Now you're probably very much aware of the vehicles they used in the 1970s during the Apollo missions.

[00:05:27] They were designed for the moon climate around the equatorial region.

[00:05:33] Well, that's not going to be the case with Artemis because they're headed for the South Pole where conditions are much more difficult.

[00:05:41] Very harsh indeed.

[00:05:43] So NASA has begun the contracting process to have private industry build the next moon rover.

[00:05:50] It'll be officially known as the Lunar Terrain Vehicle or LTV,

[00:05:55] which Artemis astronauts will use to cross the area around the moon's South Pole and maybe beyond.

[00:06:03] Now the new draft request for proposals, which is the first step in the contracting process, which will take some time,

[00:06:12] has been published for industry partners to review and comment on before providing formal proposals to build the LTV.

[00:06:20] This draft is one of the first and most important steps in this project that will allow astronauts to explore farther on the moon than ever before.

[00:06:30] I mean being able to cross significant pieces of ground in a very short period of time is critical for moon exploration going forward.

[00:06:39] Now this will be an unpressurised rover.

[00:06:42] It's expected to traverse hundreds of miles or kilometres per year to give Artemis astronauts access to a wide variety of locations

[00:06:51] for prospecting exploration and scientific research.

[00:06:55] It'll also be capable of remote control if necessary and is expected to be available for commercial use when not in service for NASA operations.

[00:07:05] Very exciting. Can't wait to see what they come up with.

[00:07:09] In the distant future, we're talking billions of years, our sun will turn into a red giant before it collapses onto itself and becomes a white dwarf.

[00:07:21] Now a white dwarf is about the size of planet Earth. It's a very small star and you can learn a lot by observing them because their temperature tells you exactly what state of life they're at.

[00:07:34] Now a higher temperature white dwarf will indicate that it's fairly new but when you get a white dwarf that drops down to a much lower temperature, it suggests that it's quite a bit older.

[00:07:48] And that's what they've discovered. A white dwarf with temperatures just above 3000 degrees Kelvin has been found and it's being considered very ancient.

[00:08:00] Like the hottest white dwarfs are around 150,000 Kelvin. The coolest ones around 4000. So this one is quite a find.

[00:08:09] Now given the estimated rate of cooling, this white dwarf and another one like it are probably around 10 billion years old and they were amongst the first stars in the Milky Way

[00:08:22] and probably died around 5 billion years ago before our solar system even formed.

[00:08:27] Now they got the observations from the GaiaSpace Pro and their orbital motion within the galaxy puts them within the galactic plane.

[00:08:37] So they could help astronomers better understand the age and history of our galaxy but both of them have very unusual spectrums or spectra if you like

[00:08:48] which shows evidence of heavier elements and white dwarfs often have plenty of heavier elements which quickly sink to their interior.

[00:08:58] So when you observe them, you only see hydrogen or helium. So when you look at the spectra of a white dwarf that's generally all you see those two elements

[00:09:08] but both of these particular stars WDJ21474035 and WDJ1922 plus 0233 have a bit of an unusual hue.

[00:09:23] The first one has a red hue indicating that it's cooled off but it has traces of sodium and potassium.

[00:09:32] The oldest star contaminated by planetary debris ever discovered. They think that's what the colouring is.

[00:09:42] The other one has a blue coloured hue in its atmospheric mix of hydrogen and helium and they say it's being contaminated by debris similar to the composition of Earth.

[00:09:56] They say both of these stars have an interesting story to tell and they had planetary systems of their own and the remains of those systems linger around these stars even all these billions of years later. Extraordinary.

[00:10:12] The Astronomy Daily podcast with Andrew Dunkley.

[00:10:15] Now a team of researchers with members of the Universidad Nacional de San Juan University in the Rio Grande have found evidence of a large extra galactic assembly.

[00:10:33] And we're not talking about the Ford car factory here. We're talking about a massive galaxy cluster hiding behind one of the Milky Way's blind spots.

[00:10:45] The groups published a paper describing the findings on the ARZEVE pre-print server while awaiting publication in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

[00:10:55] Space scientists have known for some time that there is one part of the night sky that is mostly obscured from our view due to a bulge in the galaxy known as the zone of avoidance.

[00:11:08] It makes up about 10% of the dark sky and there's always had researchers wondering what might be out there.

[00:11:15] And they're hoping that it offers researchers a new opportunity to discover something we've just not been able to see.

[00:11:26] Over the past several years scientists have used all sorts of tools to probe the zone of avoidance and there's been a new effort that has started gathering data called the VVV survey.

[00:11:41] Now it's a project sponsored by the Intergovernmental Research Organisation called the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere.

[00:11:50] And it involved multiple state of the art research facilities in multiple sites.

[00:11:55] Now what they did was study the infrared imagery and the researchers found that they were able to identify several galaxies that exist far beyond the Milky Way.

[00:12:05] And because of their numbers the researchers believe that together they may make up what they describe as a massive extra galactic structure.

[00:12:16] They estimate there might be as many as 58 galaxies in the structure itself. Another quite amazing find.

[00:12:23] And finally this one intrigues me. Fragments of a star catalog from the second century BC have turned up in a manuscript that had been erased and written over centuries later.

[00:12:37] A new analysis of the religious manuscript shows that the hidden text is probably from the ancient Greek astronomer Hippocris whose map of the stars thought to be the first attempt to map the entire sky had long been.

[00:12:53] Considered lost. The manuscript that concealed the fragments was a palimpset or a parchment that had been erased and reused called the Codex Climacigar Rescriptus.

[00:13:07] The codex probably came from the monastery of St Catherine of Sinai in Egypt and most of it is currently housed at the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC. Amazing.

[00:13:20] Alright we're just about done for another day. Don't forget to visit our website spacenuts.io and you can catch up with back episodes of Astronomy Daily and Space Nuts.

[00:13:31] A new episode of Space Nuts coming out tomorrow by the way dedicated 100% to audience questions with a big focus on the moon.

[00:13:39] So looking forward to that. Space Nuts.io is where you can go and don't forget if you're into social media there are a couple of platforms.

[00:13:47] We're on Instagram, we are on YouTube, we are on Facebook as an official page for Space Nuts, the Space Nuts page on Facebook.

[00:13:58] The user generated page, the Space Nuts podcast group is there too.

[00:14:03] We can join like-minded people and chat away about everything astronomical or space science related in between episodes.

[00:14:12] Hallie anything before we finish up today?

[00:14:16] Well Andrew I'm surprised you didn't mention that it's Carl Sagan Day today.

[00:14:19] Oh of course. Yeah my deep apologies thanks for reminding me yes.

[00:14:24] Carl Sagan the famous scientist, author, TV host and researcher.

[00:14:30] And it's really appropriate they name a day after him.

[00:14:33] He was such an incredible thinker and Carl Sagan Day was founded in 2009 by the Centre for Inquiry in Fort Lauderdale, Florida

[00:14:43] in cooperation with the Florida Atheists and Secular Humanists, known as Flash, situated on this day in honour of Carl Sagan's birth in 1934.

[00:14:56] And Carl Sagan Day is here to celebrate and honour the unique contributions of this scientist.

[00:15:01] I loved his show Cosmos much better than the reging version in my opinion but well worth watching.

[00:15:09] He thought outside the box didn't he Hallie?

[00:15:11] He sure did. I just watched the entire Cosmos series again while you were talking.

[00:15:16] Of course you did. Bye Hallie.

[00:15:19] Until next time this is Andrew Dunkley for Astronomy Daily.