Asteroid Exploration Robots, Lunar Missions Update, and the Vera Rubin Controversy: S04E41

0:00 Speaker 1: Hello again, and welcome to Astronomy Daily. It's the seventeenth

0:03 Speaker 1: of February twenty twenty five, the podcast, I mean.

0:09 Speaker 2: Your whole Steve dunk clue.

0:14 Speaker 1: Oh yes, we're back again. This is Steve Dunkley, your host.

0:18 Speaker 1: You're already human host on Astronomy Daily. Hallie and I

0:22 Speaker 1: are back with some more stories from the Astronomy Daily newsletter,

0:25 Speaker 1: and we better get on with it. Welcome back, Halle.

0:28 Speaker 1: Isn't that right? You've got some stories from the newsletter

0:30 Speaker 1: for us to rate. Steve right, I tell us all

0:32 Speaker 1: about it.

0:33 Speaker 3: I know you love robot stories, so I found a

0:35 Speaker 3: fun one that has asteroids and as an added bonus, robots.

0:38 Speaker 1: Oh no, you've got my attention.

0:39 Speaker 3: That's a double whemmie for you, isn't it.

0:41 Speaker 1: Oh yes, you hit the bull's eye. Rocks and robots.

0:45 Speaker 1: It ticks all the boxes.

0:46 Speaker 3: I have another about lunar missions Blue Ghost one and resilience.

0:50 Speaker 1: Oh. I like lunar missions as well, but no.

0:52 Speaker 3: Robots, not in that one. Sorry.

0:55 Speaker 1: And for something completely different, I'll be sharing a story

0:58 Speaker 1: that discusses recent changes to the official history on a

1:01 Speaker 1: website of one particular scientist. And this says well it's

1:05 Speaker 1: alamed the astronomy community. So more on that light up.

1:08 Speaker 3: That sounds interesting, yes, and.

1:10 Speaker 1: No, politics can get a bit dry, but when it

1:12 Speaker 1: looks like the rewriting history, you've got a question that,

1:15 Speaker 1: don't you. So stick around for that one. And of

1:17 Speaker 1: course we're going to be following the continuing saga of

1:20 Speaker 1: our friends the Nesser astronauts Sunny Williams and Butch Wilmore. Okay,

1:25 Speaker 1: and this is about of contention because lots of people

1:27 Speaker 1: online continuing to say that they are stranded. Well they

1:30 Speaker 1: don't think, so we should jump right in. Rud A Hallie,

1:33 Speaker 1: hit that stud button.

1:34 Speaker 3: Here we go. A spring loaded robot could explore the

1:48 Speaker 3: asteroid belt almost indefinitely. The asteroid Belt, beckonds it contains

1:53 Speaker 3: enough resources for humans to expand into the entire rest

1:56 Speaker 3: of the Solar System and has no biosphere to speak up.

2:00 Speaker 3: It is a giant mind just waiting to be exploited.

2:03 Speaker 3: So a student team from the University of Texas at

2:06 Speaker 3: Austin has devised a plant to exploit it as part

2:08 Speaker 3: of the Revolutionary Aerospace System Concepts Academic Linkage or RASCAL,

2:13 Speaker 3: a competition sponsored by NASA to encourage undergraduate and graduate

2:17 Speaker 3: students to develop innovative ideas to solve some of space

2:20 Speaker 3: exploration's challenges. UT Austin's submission to the competition last year

2:25 Speaker 3: known as the Autonomous Exploration through Extraterrestrial Regions known as

2:29 Speaker 3: the ETHER project certainly fits that bill. Ether was submitted

2:33 Speaker 3: to the AI powered Self Replicating Probe subsection of RASCL

2:36 Speaker 3: twenty twenty four, which solicited ideas that would advance John

2:39 Speaker 3: Vond Newman's idea of a self replicating space probe. Ether

2:43 Speaker 3: addresses those challenges in two distinct ways. First, it combines

2:48 Speaker 3: a spring loaded landing system and a metal burning rocket

2:50 Speaker 3: engine to hop between different asteroids in the Belt. To

2:54 Speaker 3: fuel its rocket, it uses a system to harvest water

2:57 Speaker 3: and metal, specifically aluminium, from the surface of the asteroid

3:00 Speaker 3: it's currently on, splits it into its components, and then

3:03 Speaker 3: dumps them into a fuel tank that can be used

3:05 Speaker 3: to power its next strip to a different asteroid. All

3:08 Speaker 3: of this is powered by a Pillowot reactor using sterling

3:11 Speaker 3: technolo y crusty nuclear reactor that has been undergoing NASA

3:15 Speaker 3: and DOUGH testing for over a decade. The springs and

3:18 Speaker 3: Ether's legs have a twofold purpose. First, they allow for

3:22 Speaker 3: a soft landing on the surface of the gravitationally weak

3:25 Speaker 3: asteroid and can transfer some of the energy created by

3:27 Speaker 3: that landing into stored energy, which can be used to

3:30 Speaker 3: launch the system from its landing place later. It also

3:33 Speaker 3: has a set of wheels to navigate around the asteroid's surface.

3:37 Speaker 3: When it's time to jump off again, it replants its

3:39 Speaker 3: legs and springs back into space with a little help

3:42 Speaker 3: from its rocket engine. The rocket engine designed as part

3:45 Speaker 3: of Ether can burn metal such as aluminium that the

3:48 Speaker 3: craft harvests from the asteroid to use as fuel. It

3:52 Speaker 3: is the primary system designed to take the craft from

3:54 Speaker 3: asteroid to asteroid, and it is meant to be a

3:56 Speaker 3: high delta V option for doing so quickly. Ether also

4:00 Speaker 3: tries to mimic a von Newman probe by using a

4:02 Speaker 3: machine learning algorithm to improve its resource harvesting efforts. It

4:06 Speaker 3: would take data from various sensors, including synthetic aperture, radar,

4:10 Speaker 3: and a spectrometer an estimate where the best spot would

4:13 Speaker 3: be to land to refuel while collecting that additional fuel material.

4:17 Speaker 3: It would communicate back with Earth via high speed optical

4:20 Speaker 3: communication link, allowing an Earth based server to update the

4:23 Speaker 3: machine learning parameters and improve the algorithm's outcome for the

4:26 Speaker 3: next hop. The original mission designed for Ether has its

4:29 Speaker 3: stopping at two specific asteroids before moving on to as

4:32 Speaker 3: yet unnamed ones. The first, which is probably no surprise,

4:37 Speaker 3: is Psyche, the big metallic asteroid that is about to

4:39 Speaker 3: be visited by its own dedicated probe. Data from that

4:43 Speaker 3: probe will help inform the first iteration of Ether's learning algorithm,

4:46 Speaker 3: and the input the sensors provide from its visit will

4:48 Speaker 3: update it before its next step. Themis that asteroid, though smaller,

4:53 Speaker 3: is expected to contain a large amount of water ice,

4:56 Speaker 3: which is a necessary component for Ether's rocket engines.

5:05 Speaker 1: Now, the continuing saga of our friends on the ISS

5:08 Speaker 1: Boeing star Liner astronauts are in the final stretch of

5:12 Speaker 1: their unexpectedly long stint in Earth orbit. They are setting

5:16 Speaker 1: the record straight with all of these stranded astronauts talk.

5:20 Speaker 1: NASA's Sonny Williams and Butch Wilmore launched to the International

5:25 Speaker 1: Space Station last June on the first crude test of

5:29 Speaker 1: the Boeing's star Liner spacecraft. The duo expected their orbital

5:33 Speaker 1: stayed to last only ten days. But Starliner experienced thrust

5:37 Speaker 1: to malfunctions during its approach to and docking maneuvers. This

5:41 Speaker 1: led to an extensive investigation by NASA and bowing back

5:45 Speaker 1: on the ground while the Space Agency decided how to proceed. Ultimately,

5:49 Speaker 1: Starliner returned to Earth uncrude, and after some astronaut assignment shuffling,

5:55 Speaker 1: Wilmore and Williams were added to the downward leg of

5:59 Speaker 1: SpaceX Crew nine mission, which arrived at the ISS in

6:03 Speaker 1: late September. Absorbing Williams and Wilmore into the Crew nine

6:07 Speaker 1: meant extending their time in space through the arrival of

6:11 Speaker 1: Crew ten and at the end of Crew nine six

6:14 Speaker 1: month through rotation. Since then, headlines lamenting the woes of

6:18 Speaker 1: the so called stranded astronauts have ebbed in and out

6:22 Speaker 1: of the media cycles, all the while Williams and Wilmore

6:25 Speaker 1: have continued performing their regular duties aboard the ISS, including

6:29 Speaker 1: Williams breaking the record for the most cumulative space walking

6:33 Speaker 1: time by a woman. The bears situation gained even more

6:37 Speaker 1: attention recently after President Donald Trump blamed the Biden administration

6:41 Speaker 1: for virtually abandoning the two astronauts and publicly calling SpaceX

6:46 Speaker 1: CEO and close Trump advisor Elon Musk to come to

6:50 Speaker 1: the rescue. Sorry, I nearly drifted off to sleep there.

6:54 Speaker 1: I think there might be some sort of catatonic trigger

6:56 Speaker 1: when I read paragraphs like that. Anyway, back to the

6:59 Speaker 1: story him. In December, NASA announced a delay to the

7:02 Speaker 1: launch of Crew ten to know earlier than late March,

7:06 Speaker 1: due to the need to complete work on the new

7:08 Speaker 1: Dragon spacecraft being built for the mission. This delay further

7:11 Speaker 1: pushed back the return of Williams and Wilmore, who will

7:14 Speaker 1: fly home with the two astronauts who launched on the

7:17 Speaker 1: Crew nine Dragon, NASA's Nick Hagen cosmonaut Alexander Gorbinov. More

7:22 Speaker 1: delays in the manufacturer of Crew ten's new Dragon have

7:26 Speaker 1: now prompted NASA to swap that mission spacecraft for one

7:29 Speaker 1: that can be made ready sooner. The announcement came two

7:32 Speaker 1: weeks after the social media exchange between President Trump and Musk,

7:36 Speaker 1: who echoed the President's misleading stranded astronauts rhetoric, and Williams

7:41 Speaker 1: and Wilmore hope that that rhetoric will change. In a

7:45 Speaker 1: recent conversation with CNN's Anderson Cooper, the two explained that

7:49 Speaker 1: sometimes the mission extensions, even ones that push ustay from

7:52 Speaker 1: ten days to ten months, are just part of the job.

7:55 Speaker 1: We come prepared, we come committed, and that's what your

7:58 Speaker 1: human space spaceflight program is. It prepares for any and

8:03 Speaker 1: all contingencies and that we can conceive of, and we

8:06 Speaker 1: prepare for those. Willmore told Cooper, we don't feel abandoned,

8:10 Speaker 1: we don't feel stuck, and we certainly don't feel stranded.

8:14 Speaker 1: In fact, Wilmore pointed out, all the astronauts aboard ISS

8:17 Speaker 1: are capable of returning to Worth immediately in the event

8:20 Speaker 1: of an emergency. We never expect to come back just

8:23 Speaker 1: special for us or anyone unless it was a medical

8:26 Speaker 1: issue or something really really out of the normal circumstances,

8:30 Speaker 1: he said. Help us change the rhetoric, Wilmore asked Cooper,

8:34 Speaker 1: Let us change it to prepared and committed. Both astronauts

8:38 Speaker 1: have lived aboard the ISS for extended periods on previous missions,

8:41 Speaker 1: and both say that they're enjoying their time in space.

8:44 Speaker 1: On this one. It's just amazing how when you come

8:47 Speaker 1: across the hatch after you've been there, it's like, oh

8:50 Speaker 1: my gosh, I remember what this is all like, I

8:53 Speaker 1: remember feeling what it's like floating, and I think both

8:57 Speaker 1: of us adapted really quickly, Williams said during a CNN interview.

9:01 Speaker 1: She also said that the end of their current space

9:03 Speaker 1: flight will be an emotional one. I think both of

9:06 Speaker 1: us will be a little sad when that feeling of

9:08 Speaker 1: space sort of leaves us. NASA is currently targeting no

9:12 Speaker 1: earlier than March twelve for the launch of the Crew

9:15 Speaker 1: ten mission, which will fly the Crew Dragon capsule Endurance

9:19 Speaker 1: rather than Space Ex's new Dragon. A typical crew overlap

9:23 Speaker 1: aboard the Space station lasts about a week, so Wilmore

9:25 Speaker 1: said he expects Crew nine to depart Earth around March nineteen.

9:40 Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us for this Monday edition of

9:43 Speaker 1: Astronomy Daily, where we offer just a few stories from

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10:20 Speaker 2: Astronomy Day with Steve and Helle Space, Space, Science and Astronomy.

10:37 Speaker 3: One commercial lunar lander has entered orbit around the Moon,

10:40 Speaker 3: while another launched at the same time has performed a

10:43 Speaker 3: lunarflyby to set up a later return. Firefly Aerospace confirmed

10:48 Speaker 3: on February thirteenth that its Blue Ghost one lander entered

10:50 Speaker 3: orbit around the Moon, performing a four minute, fifteen second

10:53 Speaker 3: burn of its reaction control system thrusters starting at eight

10:57 Speaker 3: fifty one pm Eastern. The company did not disclosed specifics

11:01 Speaker 3: about the orbit, but amateur trackers monitoring its radio signals

11:04 Speaker 3: estimated that the spacecraft is in an orbit between one

11:07 Speaker 3: hundred and fifty and five thousand, six hundred and seventy

11:10 Speaker 3: three kilometers above the Moon. Firefly said the lander will

11:13 Speaker 3: perform additional maneuvers to move into a circular orbit to

11:16 Speaker 3: prepare for its landing attempt. That landing is scheduled for

11:20 Speaker 3: three forty five am Eastern March second. The company and

11:23 Speaker 3: NASA announced February fourteenth blue Ghost one is carrying ten

11:27 Speaker 3: NASA payloads through the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program,

11:31 Speaker 3: intended to operate at the landing site near Mayor Chrisium

11:34 Speaker 3: through the end of the lunar day and several hours

11:36 Speaker 3: after sunset. Blue Ghost one launched on January fifteenth on

11:40 Speaker 3: a Falcon nine, sharing the launch with the Resilience lunar

11:43 Speaker 3: lander from Japanese company ice Base. Resilience, the company's second

11:47 Speaker 3: lander mission, performed a lunar flyby on February fourteenth, passing

11:51 Speaker 3: about eight thousy four hundred kilometers from the lunar surface

11:54 Speaker 3: at five forty three pm Eastern Resilience is following a

11:58 Speaker 3: low energy trajectory to the Moon, one that will take

12:00 Speaker 3: it as far as one point one million kilometers from

12:03 Speaker 3: Earth before returning in early May to perform a lunar

12:05 Speaker 3: orbit insertion burn that will be followed by a landing

12:09 Speaker 3: attempt in the mare Frigoris region of the Moon, although

12:11 Speaker 3: ice Base has not disclosed a planned landing date. Takishi Hakamada,

12:16 Speaker 3: founder and chief executive of ice Base, said in a statement,

12:19 Speaker 3: I feel very confident about the Resilience lander, which has

12:22 Speaker 3: steadily achieved milestones and is on track for success, and

12:25 Speaker 3: our employees who have made meticulous preparations for this impressive

12:28 Speaker 3: fly by of the Moon. Both Firefly Aerospace and ice

12:31 Speaker 3: Base have outlined milestones and success criteria for their lander mission.

12:36 Speaker 3: For Firefly, achieving lunar orbital insertion was the tenth of

12:39 Speaker 3: seventeen milestones from launch to operations of the lander after

12:42 Speaker 3: sunset on the lunar surface. The lunar fly by by

12:45 Speaker 3: resilience was the fifth of ten milestones for ice Base,

12:48 Speaker 3: from pre launch preparations to establishing a steady system state

12:52 Speaker 3: after landing. Blue Ghost one could end up operating on

12:55 Speaker 3: the lunar surface at the same time as another commercial lander.

12:59 Speaker 3: Intuitive Machines is preparing for a February twenty six launch

13:02 Speaker 3: of its i AM Too lunar lander mission at the

13:04 Speaker 3: beginning of a window that runs for four days. I

13:07 Speaker 3: AM two, like the company's i AM one lander mission

13:10 Speaker 3: a year ago, is taking a more direct route to

13:12 Speaker 3: the Moon. Steve Altemus, chief executive of Intuitive Machines, toult

13:17 Speaker 3: CNBC on February seventh that a launch any day in

13:20 Speaker 3: the window would set up a landing in the mons

13:22 Speaker 3: Mouton region near the south pole of the Moon. On

13:24 Speaker 3: March sixth budge of that.

13:26 Speaker 1: So all well listen to Astronomy Day, the podcast. Scientists

13:33 Speaker 1: are alarmed as Rubon Observatory changes the biography of astronomer

13:38 Speaker 1: Verra Reuben Meant the President of the United States push

13:42 Speaker 1: to MDI efforts. Char Mila Kuthneer reported on space dot

13:47 Speaker 1: com on February twelve that astronomers are expressing disappointment and

13:52 Speaker 1: alarm as the federally funded Ruben Observatory altered the biography

13:56 Speaker 1: of renowned astronomer Verra Rubin, for whom the facility is

14:00 Speaker 1: named on its website. The amended version curtails her legacy

14:04 Speaker 1: of championing women in science and removes all mentions of

14:08 Speaker 1: the Observatory's efforts to reduce barriers for women and other

14:11 Speaker 1: historically underrepresented groups in the field. The idea that they

14:16 Speaker 1: can somehow obliterate these sources is dead wrong. Scientists in

14:20 Speaker 1: general and astronomers in particular are not going to take

14:23 Speaker 1: these threats lying down. Astronomer John Barranteen told Space dot Com.

14:29 Speaker 1: He goes on to saying, no executive order, no political edict,

14:32 Speaker 1: is going to undermine or end our efforts to make

14:34 Speaker 1: these scientific workforce look more like our people. If anything,

14:37 Speaker 1: it's giving us more encouragement to continue to do this

14:40 Speaker 1: work because it is the morally, philosophically and politically right

14:44 Speaker 1: thing to do. The edits, first reported by a pro

14:48 Speaker 1: Publica on January thirty, came as federal agencies across the

14:52 Speaker 1: government scrambled to revamp their websites in order to comply

14:55 Speaker 1: with the US executive Order issued by the President Donald Trump,

14:59 Speaker 1: which in funding for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and

15:04 Speaker 1: removes all mentions of them from public facing websites. On

15:08 Speaker 1: January twenty seven, it was reported in Pro Publica that

15:11 Speaker 1: a portion of Reuben's bio titled she Advocated for Women

15:16 Speaker 1: in Science, was removed entirely before being republished later that

15:21 Speaker 1: day in a diluted form. As of Tuesday, February eleven,

15:25 Speaker 1: the alted bio still excluded a paragraph that originally read

15:29 Speaker 1: science is still a male dominated field, but Reuben Observatory,

15:32 Speaker 1: which is located in northern Chile, is working to increase

15:37 Speaker 1: participation from women and other people who have historically been

15:41 Speaker 1: excluded from science. Reuben Observatory welcomes everyone who wants to

15:45 Speaker 1: contribute to science and takes steps to lower or eliminate

15:49 Speaker 1: barriers that exclude those with Left's privilege. One sentence in

15:54 Speaker 1: the final paragraph, which originally read vera Reuben offers an

15:58 Speaker 1: excellent example of what happened when more minds participate in

16:02 Speaker 1: science was changed to replace the word more with many,

16:06 Speaker 1: altering the meaning from emphasizing the need for diverse perspectives

16:11 Speaker 1: to simply highlighting a high number of people, which changes

16:14 Speaker 1: and waters down the meaning of the statement considerably. This

16:17 Speaker 1: is the story of what happened in her life. Ivette Sendez,

16:21 Speaker 1: a radio astronomer at the University of Oregon, told space

16:24 Speaker 1: dot com she was a huge champion for women in science,

16:28 Speaker 1: in particular because she faced things that were discriminatory for women.

16:31 Speaker 1: Diminishing those stories is pretty disturbing, frankly, she says. Other

16:36 Speaker 1: pages on the Observatory's website, including the jobs and staff

16:39 Speaker 1: bio pages, have also been modified to erase mentions of

16:43 Speaker 1: diversity and inclusion efforts. The Observatory, it's funder the National

16:48 Speaker 1: Science Foundation, and the White House did not respond to

16:50 Speaker 1: requests for comment on February three. Beyond her scientific achievements,

16:55 Speaker 1: Reuben also paved the way for women in science. Perhaps

16:59 Speaker 1: most notably one in sixty four, she battled to gain

17:01 Speaker 1: access to observe at the famed Paloma Observatory in California,

17:06 Speaker 1: becoming the first woman officially allowed to use its telescopes.

17:10 Speaker 1: Colleagues recall that when Reuben noticed the only restroom of

17:13 Speaker 1: the observatory was labeled men, she cut out a timely

17:16 Speaker 1: paper skirt and taped it to the image of a

17:18 Speaker 1: man on the door. She turned around and said, now

17:21 Speaker 1: you have a ladies room, and then she got to work.

17:24 Speaker 1: That was vera Rubin, reads a twenty twenty one statement

17:28 Speaker 1: from a former Carnegie Science president Eric Isaacs. Throughout her career,

17:33 Speaker 1: she championed women in the field. As one example, she

17:37 Speaker 1: frequently would see lists of speakers at conferences. Former colleague

17:41 Speaker 1: Netta Bashol of Princeton University told Astronomy dot Com, and

17:46 Speaker 1: if there were few or no women speakers, she would

17:49 Speaker 1: contact the organizers and tell them they've got a problem

17:52 Speaker 1: and they need to fix it. But what if she

17:55 Speaker 1: hadn't been that fierced, What if she hadn't been the

17:57 Speaker 1: personality that we all have come to know, the unstoppable warrior,

18:02 Speaker 1: Isaac said in the Carnegie Science statement, and Here's the

18:05 Speaker 1: question that really haunts me, which is how many vera

18:09 Speaker 1: Ururbans have we lost to these kinds of obstacles. As

18:13 Speaker 1: similar barriers are threatened to resurface due to the Trump

18:16 Speaker 1: administration's ongoing efforts to erase initiatives aimed at improving diversity

18:21 Speaker 1: in science, the astronomy community seems to be maintaining steadfast

18:26 Speaker 1: in its refusal to reverse decades of progress. Astronomy is

18:30 Speaker 1: not going to let Vera's contributions be forgotten, said Barantine.

18:34 Speaker 1: Various groups are actively working to use tools to archive

18:38 Speaker 1: content that has already been removed, as well as content

18:41 Speaker 1: that could potentially be erased from federal websites. The idea

18:45 Speaker 1: that they can somehow obliterate these sources is dead wrong.

18:49 Speaker 1: Scientists in general and astronomers in particular are not going

18:53 Speaker 1: to take these threats lying down, he said. But we

18:55 Speaker 1: have a long road ahead, and I expect there will

18:58 Speaker 1: be times when that road will be very difficult to walk.

19:02 Speaker 1: He declined to disclose the specifics of these efforts, but

19:05 Speaker 1: noted that the forces aligned against this should be aware

19:09 Speaker 1: that it's happening and they won't be able to stop it.

19:12 Speaker 1: Even at NASA. The offices associated with DEI initiatives were

19:16 Speaker 1: shut down during Trump's first days in office. A recently

19:21 Speaker 1: in stated high profile program called Here to Observe or HDO,

19:26 Speaker 1: which paired undergraduate students from underrepresentative groups with scientists running

19:31 Speaker 1: NASA missions, was recently grounded. The media Outlete four four,

19:36 Speaker 1: an independent journalist founded news website, reported that NASA employees

19:40 Speaker 1: were told to drop everything and scrub mentions of a

19:43 Speaker 1: list of words from public facing sites, including indigenous people, equity, accessibility,

19:52 Speaker 1: environmental justice, as well as anything specifically targeting women and

19:57 Speaker 1: in Brackett's Women in Leadership at etc. NASA has since

20:02 Speaker 1: removed inclusion as one of its core values. The flurry

20:07 Speaker 1: of changes triggered by the directive has led to the

20:10 Speaker 1: erasure of articles featuring NASA astronomers and underrepresentative communities that

20:14 Speaker 1: the agency published in years past, like this one. Now,

20:18 Speaker 1: these pages sometimes display launch schedules of past SpaceX launchers

20:23 Speaker 1: in instead of the original pros. The original titles appear

20:27 Speaker 1: to remain. Agency employees have also been instructed to remove

20:31 Speaker 1: their pronouns from all work communications and instead follow the

20:35 Speaker 1: predesigned signature block adopted by agency NPR reported. Astrobiologist MICHAELA. Vasilova,

20:42 Speaker 1: who served as the director of High Seas Space Research

20:46 Speaker 1: Station in Hawaii, told space dot Com that her efforts

20:50 Speaker 1: to encourage more women, people of color, and LGBTQ plus

20:55 Speaker 1: scientists to join her simulated missions to the Moon and

20:58 Speaker 1: Mars resulted in a more applicants from these communities representation matters.

21:03 Speaker 1: Some of them told me that they only applied because

21:06 Speaker 1: they saw that others like them were successful in this

21:09 Speaker 1: sector too, She said. During those simulated missions, the more

21:13 Speaker 1: diverse a crue was, the more successful a mission ended

21:16 Speaker 1: up being. The team got along better, was able to

21:19 Speaker 1: problem solve more efficiently, and they were more productive with

21:23 Speaker 1: their research projects. The impact of ongoing changes, which have

21:27 Speaker 1: prompted many talented and experienced people to leave the Space

21:30 Speaker 1: Agency quote, will likely be long term, and they could

21:34 Speaker 1: cause many interesting projects not to get pursued or finished,

21:37 Speaker 1: she said. On May seventeen, nineteen ninety six, nearly fifty

21:41 Speaker 1: years after her own graduation. In nineteen forty eight, Rubin

21:45 Speaker 1: addressed the graduating class of the University of California, Berkeley, saying,

21:49 Speaker 1: I hope that you will fight injustice and discrimination in

21:52 Speaker 1: all its guises. I hope you will value diversity among

21:55 Speaker 1: your friends, among your colleagues, and, unlike some of your regents,

22:00 Speaker 1: among the student body population. She says, I hope that

22:03 Speaker 1: when you are in charge, you will do better than

22:06 Speaker 1: my generation has.

22:21 Speaker 3: Thanks for hanging out with us for this episode.

22:24 Speaker 1: Yes, and don't forget there's more every day with Halle's

22:27 Speaker 1: cousin Anna.

22:28 Speaker 3: She won't let you down.

22:29 Speaker 1: No, she won't.

22:30 Speaker 3: She's way more hard working than my favorite human.

22:32 Speaker 1: Ohy, Helle, I resemble that comment.

22:34 Speaker 3: You sure do, funny man, So watch it or Anna

22:37 Speaker 3: will want your job next.

22:39 Speaker 1: There's no risk there. I know. She can't work the

22:41 Speaker 1: coffee machine, Halle.

22:42 Speaker 3: It's so old school.

22:43 Speaker 1: Hey Helle, how did the AI change the coffee filter?

22:46 Speaker 1: I give up it didn't.

22:48 Speaker 3: Oh great, those old school appliances again, ha ha I know.

22:52 Speaker 3: And on that note, see you all next week, maybe

22:55 Speaker 3: for a nice English muffin and a cappuccino. Perhaps, Oh

22:58 Speaker 3: nay you talk and Halle see you la bye the podcast.

23:05 Speaker 1: I mean to be your host, Steve Dunkle. Yeah, thanks, Hallie,

23:24 Speaker 1: just one sugar, thanks, Yeah,