The Space Show this week – May.9.2023

May 9, 2023 TopSpacer

The guests and topics of discussion on The Space Show this week:

1. Tuesday, May. 9, 2023; 7 pm PST (9 pm CST, 10 pm EST): We welcome back Dr. Pascal Lee on returning to the Moon, going to Mars, settlement and more.

2. Hotel Mars – Wednesday, May. 10, 2023; 1:00 pm PST (3:00 pm CST, 4:00 pm EST): Douglas Messier will talk with John Batchelor and Dr. David Livingston about Starship-FAA litigation and related topics in the news

3. Friday, May.12, 2023; 9:30-11 am PST (11:30 am-1 pm CST, 12:30-2 pm EST): We welcome back Melodie Yashar, space architect and space settlement discussions.

4. Sunday, May.14, 2023; 12-1:30 pm PST (2-3:30 pm CST, 3-4:30 pm EST): No show today for Mother’s Day. Happy Mother’s Day to all.

Some recent shows:

** Sunday, May.7.2023 – John Strickland talked about

his visit to the recent Starship launch at Boca [Chica Beach] near Brownsville, TX. After talking Starship, environmental issues and KSC as an alternate launch site, we talked nuclear and solar power, energy and more.

** Friday, May.5.2023 – Gianni Martire and Luke Sellers discussed

their new paper on gravity waves and SETI-like searches. Our two guests explained the science behind their theory, talked lots about gravity waves, RamaCraft and more.

** Hotel Mars – Laura Montgomery, space law specialist, gave an update to John Batchelor and David Livingston on “Artemis, multiple nations competing at the lunar south pole, enhancing OST provisions such as no celestial property ownership, and more“.

** Tuesday, May.2.2023 – Dave Barnhart, CEO of Arkisys, explained “his new multi-use in space port for commercial space development“:

** Monday, May.1.2023: Aggie Kobrin and Rod Pyle of the National Space Society (NSS) came back to the program to discuss the NSS’s upcoming ‘s Int. Space Development Conference (ISDC 2023) during May 25-28 in Frisco, Texas.

** Sunday, Apr.30.2023 – Dr. David Livingston led an Open-Lines call-in discussion with Space Show listeners starting “with a great call about O2 scrubber technology, plus lots of calls on Starship, enviornmental conceerns and more“.

** Friday, Apr.28.2023 – Dr. Matthew Weinzierl of the Harvard Business School “discussed commercial space economics, Matt’s Harvard classes relating to commercial space and economics plus his students, student interest in space, space as a long term play vs. short term economic news“.

The Space Show is a project of the One Giant Leap Foundation .

The Space Show - David Livingston — The Space Show – Dr. David Livingston

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Videos: “Space to Ground” & other space habitat reports – May.8.2023

May 8, 2023 TopSpacer

Here is the latest episode in NASA’s Space to Ground weekly report on activities related to the International Space Station:

** Expedition 69 NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 Relocates Crew Dragon Capsule on Space Station – May 6, 2023 – NASA Video

The SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour undocked from the zenith port of the Harmony module on the International Space Station and relocated for a docking to the forward port of Harmony on May 6. Aboard the Dragon for the brief flight were NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren “Woody” Hoburg as well as UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut, Andrey Fedyaev. The maneuver opened the zenith port of Harmony for the arrival of a SpaceX cargo vehicle later this summer.

** Roscosmos Cosmonauts Prepare to Conduct Spacewalk – NASA Johnson

This computer-generated animation is a depiction of a scheduled spacewalk by Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin outside the International Space Station to assist in the movement of an experiment airlock from the Rassvet module to the Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module. The spacewalk, scheduled to take place on May 3rd, will be the fifth in Prokopyev’s career and the third for Petelin.

** Cosmonaut tosses ‘obsolete hardware’ into space during spacewalk – VideoFromSpace

During a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on May 3, 2023, Russian cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev jettisoned a “5-kilogram bundle of obsolete hardware into the vacuum of space,” according to NASA.

** Healthy food in the International Space Station | Minerva Mission – European Space Agency, ESA

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti shares how she maintains a healthy and balanced diet during her Minerva mission aboard the International Space Station. She introduces her “piatto unico” meal allowance, featuring freeze-dried meals that are self-balanced according to the Harvard Healthy Eating Plate guidance and Mediterranean diet principles. As she showcases two of her favourite meals, a wholegrain wheat couscous with vegetables and legumes, and a spelt salad with Mediterranean little tunny, dried tomatoes, pine nuts, and asparagus, she emphasizes the importance of selecting local, seasonal, and natural ingredients for optimal nutrition and taste. Join Samantha on her culinary journey in space

** Tianzhou-5 undocking – SciNews

According to the China National Space Administration (CNSA), the Tianzhou-5 (天舟五号) cargo spacecraft was undocked from the Tianhe Core Module (天和核心舱) on 5 May 2023, at 07:26 UTC (15:26 China Standard Time), and started an “independent flight stage”. Tianzhou-5 will be re-docked to the China Space Station(中国空间站), on the front port of the Tianhe Core Module, after the departure of the Shenzhou-15 (神舟十五) crew spacecraft.

** Live Video from the International Space Station (Official NASA Stream) – NASA

Watch live video from the International Space Station, including inside views when the crew aboard the space station is on duty. Views of Earth are also streamed from an external camera located outside of the space station. During periods of signal loss due to handover between communications satellites, a blue screen is displayed.

The space station orbits Earth about 250 miles (425 kilometers) above the surface. An international partnership of five space agencies from 15 countries operates the station, and it has been continuously occupied since November 2000. It’s a microgravity laboratory where science, research, and human innovation make way for new technologies and research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. More: https://go.nasa.gov/3CkVtC8

Did you know you can spot the station without a telescope? It looks like a fast-moving star, but you have to know when to look up. Sign up for text messages or email alerts to let you know when (and where) to spot the station and wave to the crew: https://spotthestation.nasa.gov

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ESO: Observation of distant gas clouds formed from the first stars

May 3, 2023 TopSpacer

The latest report from the European Southern Observatory (ESO):

Astronomers find distant gas clouds
with leftovers of the first stars

This artist’s impression shows a distant gas cloud that contains different chemical elements, illustrated here with schematic representations of various atoms. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers have detected three distant gas clouds whose chemical composition matches what we expect from the explosions of the first stars that appeared in the Universe. These early stars can be studied indirectly by analysing the chemical elements they dispersed into the surrounding environment after they died in supernova explosions. The three distant gas clouds detected in this study are rich in carbon, oxygen, and magnesium, but poor in iron. This is exactly the signature expected from the explosions of the first stars.

Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), researchers have found for the first time the fingerprints left by the explosion of the first stars in the Universe. They detected three distant gas clouds whose chemical composition matches what we expect from the first stellar explosions. These findings bring us one step closer to understanding the nature of the first stars that formed after the Big Bang.

“For the first time ever, we were able to identify the chemical traces of the explosions of the first stars in very distant gas clouds,”

says Andrea Saccardi, a PhD student at the Observatoire de Paris – PSL, who led this study during his master’s thesis at the University of Florence.

Researchers think that the first stars that formed in the Universe were very different from the ones we see today. When they appeared 13.5 billion years ago, they contained just hydrogen and helium, the simplest chemical elements in nature [1]. These stars, thought to be tens or hundreds of times more massive than our Sun, quickly died in powerful explosions known as supernovae, enriching the surrounding gas with heavier elements for the first time. Later generations of stars were born out of that enriched gas, and in turn ejected heavier elements as they too died. But the very first stars are now long gone, so how can researchers learn more about them?

“Primordial stars can be studied indirectly by detecting the chemical elements they dispersed in their environment after their death,”

says Stefania Salvadori, Associate Professor at the University of Florence and co-author of the study published today in the Astrophysical Journal.

Using data taken with ESO’s VLT in Chile, the team found three very distant gas clouds, seen when the Universe was just 10–15% of its current age, and with a chemical fingerprint matching what we expect from the explosions of the first stars. Depending on the mass of these early stars and the energy of their explosions, these first supernovae released different chemical elements such as carbon, oxygen and magnesium, which are present in the outer layers of stars. But some of these explosions were not energetic enough to expel heavier elements like iron, which is found only in the cores of stars. To search for the telltale sign of these very first stars that exploded as low energy supernovae, the team therefore looked for distant gas clouds poor in iron but rich in the other elements. And they found just that: three faraway clouds in the early Universe with very little iron but plenty of carbon and other elements — the fingerprint of the explosions of the very first stars.

This peculiar chemical composition has also been observed in many old stars in our own galaxy, which researchers consider to be second-generation stars that formed directly from the ‘ashes’ of the first ones. This new study has found such ashes in the early Universe, thus adding a missing piece to this puzzle.

“Our discovery opens new avenues to indirectly study the nature of the first stars, fully complementing studies of stars in our galaxy,”

explains Salvadori.

This diagram illustrates how astronomers can analyse the chemical composition of distant clouds of gas using the light of a background object like a quasar as a beacon. When the light of the quasar passes through the gas cloud, the chemical elements in it absorb different colours or wavelengths, leaving dark lines in the spectrum of the quasar. Each element leaves a different set of lines, so by studying the spectrum astronomers can work out the chemical composition of the intervening gas cloud.

To detect and study these distant gas clouds, the team used light beacons known as quasars — very bright sources powered by supermassive black holes at the centres of faraway galaxies. As the light from a quasar travels through the Universe, it passes through gas clouds where different chemical elements leave an imprint on the light.

To find these chemical imprints, the team analysed data on several quasars observed with the X-shooter instrument on ESO’s VLT. X-shooter splits light into an extremely wide range of wavelengths, or colours, which makes it a unique instrument with which to identify many different chemical elements in these distant clouds.

This study opens new windows for next generation telescopes and instruments, like ESO’s upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) and its high-resolution ArmazoNes high Dispersion Echelle Spectrograph (ANDES).

“With ANDES at the ELT we will be able to study many of these rare gas clouds in greater detail, and we will be able to finally uncover the mysterious nature of the first stars,”

concludes Valentina D’Odorico, a researcher at the National Institute of Astrophysics in Italy and co-author of the study.

Notes

[1] Minutes after the Big Bang the only elements present in the Universe were the three lightest ones: hydrogen, helium and very small traces of lithium. Heavier elements were formed much later on in stars.

Links

Research paper
Photos of the VLT
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The Space Show this week – May.2.2023

May 2, 2023 TopSpacer

The guests and topics of discussion on The Space Show this week:

1. Tuesday, May 2, 2023; 7 pm PST (9 pm CST, 10 pm EST): We welcome Dave Barnhart, CEO of Arkisys, will discuss transitioning from a single use to multi-use economy and what that means for space

2. Hotel Mars – Wednesday, May 3, 2023; 1:00 pm PST (3:00 pm CST, 4:00 pm EST): Laura Montgomery, space law specialist, will update John Batchelor and David Livingston on space policy, law, Artemis, and more.

3. Friday, May 5, 2023; 9:30-11 am PST (11:30 am-1 pm CST, 12:30-2 pm EST): We welcome Gianni Martire and Luke Sellers to discuss their new paper, which you can find on the blog for this program, that looks at new tools for SETI searches such as the LIGO gravitational wave detector.

4. Sunday, May 7, 2023; 12-1:30 pm PST (2-3:30 pm CST, 3-4:30 pm EST): John Strickland is back with us to talk about the SpaceX Starship, energy and more. Don’t miss it.

Some recent shows:

** Hotel Mars – Wednesday, Apr.26.2023 – Rick Fisher, Asian strategy and space policy expert, talked with John Batchelor and David Livingston about “the recent Starship Demo flight in the context of China developing its own Super Heavy reusable rocket, the Long March 9 (LM-9)“.

** Sunday, Apr.23.2023 – Dr. Erika Nesvold talked about “ethics, space settlement, and living in space“.

** Friday, Apr.21.2023 – Tim Cash

went over the known details for the initial Starship demo test from April 20, discussing potential problems, possible remedies and rocket modifications. Furthermore, Tim talked about his passion in detail, space solar power. Starship modifications and the potential impact on lunar and Mars timelines were also discussed as was the rocket’s acoustic damage at launch to the engines and the pad.

** Tuesday, April.18.2023 – Dr. Robert Zubrin discussed his new book, The Case For Nukes [Amazon commission link] and “nuclear power and why, invention and progress, SSP, nuclear propulsion and much more“.

The Space Show is a project of the One Giant Leap Foundation .

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Videos: “Space to Ground” & other space habitat reports – May.2.2023

May 2, 2023 TopSpacer

Here is the latest episode in NASA’s Space to Ground weekly report on activities related to the International Space Station:

** Canadarm dance | 4K timelapse – European Space Agency, ESA

Timelapse video made during ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet’s second mission to the International Space Station, “Alpha”. The camera is setup to take pictures at intervals of two a second, and the pictures are then edited into this video that plays at 25 pictures a second. The video is around 12 times faster than real speed.

Thomas shared this video on social media saying:

“We often mention robotics on the International Space Station but it doesn’t mean we are playing with robots. We have a 17–m-long, fully-articulated robotic arm on the outside, proudly built by the Canadian Space Agency. It is hugely important to our operations here: it grabs visiting vehicles, moves astronauts around during spacewalks, and does a lot of outside maintenance and logistics. It is always a fun (and to be honest, a bit tense because it’s not easy) moment when we get to fly it though our control panels and joysticks from the Cupola or the Lab (there are no windows there but we have lots of outside cameras).”

Over 200 experiments are planned during Thomas’ time in space, with 40 European ones and 12 new experiments led by CNES.

** Astronauts Prepare Station For Solar Array Upgrades – NASA Johnson

On April 28, NASA astronaut Steve Bowen (EV1) and UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi (EV2) will conduct a spacewalk to continue installation of hardware to support future power system upgrades outside the International Space Station. This will be the 261st spacewalk in support of space station assembly, maintenance, and upgrades. It will be the eighth spacewalk for Bowen and the first for Alneyadi, also the first for any UAE astronaut. This computer-generated animation of the spacewalk is narrated by ISS Expedition 69 Spacewalk Officer Sandy Fletcher.

** See the 1st Arab astronaut to spacewalk and NASA crewmate work outside ISS – NASA Video

UAE astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi became the 1st Arab astronaut to take a spacewalk as he and NASA astronaut Steve Bowen work outside the International Space Station on April 28, 2023. Learn more about Sultan Al Neyadi: https://www.space.com/sultan-al-neyad…

The spacewalkers prepped the space station for a power upgrade.

** Space-Grown Crystals Offer Clarity on Parkinson’s Disease – ISS National Lab

Apr 2, 2019: Parkinson’s disease affects more than 5 million people on Earth. Research on the International Space Station could provide insight into this chronic neurodegenerative disease and help scientists find ways to treat and prevent it. In this video, NASA astronaut Serena Auñon-Chancellor narrates as European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Alexander Gerst uses a microscope to examine and photograph the LRRK2 crystals.

Learn more about this research: https://go.nasa.gov/2FtsPiY

** Commercial space station company Gravitics CEO Colin Doughan – Becoming Off-Worldly Together

Gravitics CEO Colin Doughan tells us about the future of commercial space stations and what it might look like to live and work in space on StarMax and future artificial gravity space stations.

Want to attend our monthly guest webinars live as well as get exclusive access to monthly training webinars, weekly chats, and resources to get ready for your future spaceflight. We’re a community of future astronaut hopefuls supporting each other on our paths to space.

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** CMG Airs Exclusive Livestreaming of China’s Tiangong Space Station on Space Day – CCTV Video News Agency

In celebration of the eighth Space Day of China on Monday, the China Media Group (CMG) aired a four-hour exclusive livestreaming of China’s Tiangong space station in conjunction with the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).