German Satellite Hurdles, Enceladus' Mysterious Spot, and Astronaut's Stellar Photography: S03E233

0:00 Speaker 1: Welcome back to Astronomy Daily. It's the sixteenth of December

0:03 Speaker 1: twenty twenty four.

0:07 Speaker 2: Pod. It would be a whole Steve dunk Yes, welcome

0:11 Speaker 2: back everybody.

0:12 Speaker 1: It's Steve Dunkley here for another episode of Astronomy Daily

0:15 Speaker 1: and welcome to Halle.

0:16 Speaker 2: Hi.

0:16 Speaker 3: How are you hi, favorite human? How was your week

0:19 Speaker 3: in the real world?

0:20 Speaker 1: Well, you know me, Halle fled out like a lizard drinking.

0:23 Speaker 1: Of course, it's the crazy end of the year where

0:25 Speaker 1: everything seems to have to happen simultaneously, so you're.

0:28 Speaker 3: Having one of those compressed continuum experiences again.

0:32 Speaker 2: Yeah, you could call it that.

0:33 Speaker 1: I suppose it's something we humans call the pre Christmas

0:36 Speaker 1: madness that happens every year.

0:38 Speaker 3: And what will you get me this year?

0:40 Speaker 2: Oh, Hallie, what about a new battery pack wireless?

0:43 Speaker 3: Of course I like it. I won't be tied down.

0:46 Speaker 1: And if anyone was thinking of getting me something special

0:49 Speaker 1: for Christmas this year, my size is Fenders Stratocasta.

0:53 Speaker 3: Oh, the same as last year.

0:55 Speaker 2: Never goes out of style, predictable, you consistent if you

0:58 Speaker 2: don't mind.

0:58 Speaker 3: Halle Potato potato close enough.

1:01 Speaker 1: So have you got something special for our listeners today?

1:04 Speaker 3: Well, First Up, a German based satellite broadband company, has

1:07 Speaker 3: brushed aside a regulatory setback for its future constellation plan.

1:11 Speaker 1: It must be tough regulations, okay.

1:14 Speaker 3: And the European Space Agency is excited about their PROBA

1:17 Speaker 3: three mission to create artificial eclipses.

1:19 Speaker 1: Now that is interesting. I know we touched on that

1:21 Speaker 1: one in a previous podcast.

1:23 Speaker 3: So the story continues, and I know you've got a

1:26 Speaker 3: couple of your sleeve.

1:27 Speaker 1: Yes, I'll be having a look at something one of

1:28 Speaker 1: the astronauts is doing any spare time. And also, I

1:31 Speaker 1: guess what, there is a little black spot on Encelaus.

1:34 Speaker 2: We'll look at that. Let up.

1:35 Speaker 3: Well, we'd best get on with it then, okies, let's go.

1:47 Speaker 3: Ravadospace Networks remains confident it can reclaim priority Coban spectrum

1:51 Speaker 3: rights for nearly six hundred proposed broadband satellites, more than

1:54 Speaker 3: two months after Lichtenstein's telecoms regulator rescinded its license. We

1:59 Speaker 3: can take you to discuss the matter with the regulator,

2:02 Speaker 3: and we are confident that we can reach an agreement

2:04 Speaker 3: to use the Liechtenstein filings, Ravada spokesperson Brian Karney said

2:08 Speaker 3: December thirteenth, Karney said Liechtenstein's Office for Communications AK withdrew

2:13 Speaker 3: its spectrum filing at the International Telecommunication Union ITU, an

2:17 Speaker 3: arm of the United Nations, over a difference of opinion

2:20 Speaker 3: about the timing of the deposit of a performance bond

2:23 Speaker 3: with the regulator, but declined to give details. AK director

2:27 Speaker 3: Rayner Schneppflitner also declined to discuss what he said was

2:30 Speaker 3: an open proceeding. However, he confirmed it as possible Ravada

2:34 Speaker 3: could reapply for the priority spectrum rights before mid twenty

2:37 Speaker 3: twenty six, when the company has to have deployed half

2:40 Speaker 3: its proposed five hundred and seventy six satellites under the

2:43 Speaker 3: ITU's constellation deployment rules. Last year, the ITU granted Ravada

2:48 Speaker 3: a waiver for the first milestone under these rules, allowing

2:51 Speaker 3: the company to miss a deadline to have ten percent

2:53 Speaker 3: of the constellation in low Earth orbit by September twenty

2:56 Speaker 3: twenty three. Schnepflitner said at the time that a launch

2:59 Speaker 3: short and technology development challenges had made it difficult for

3:03 Speaker 3: companies to meet deployment rules the ITU adopted in twenty

3:06 Speaker 3: nineteen before COVID nineteen hammered global supply chains. Ravada, which

3:11 Speaker 3: is based in Germany but owned by US wireless technology

3:14 Speaker 3: company Ravada Networks, aims to begin deploying its first satellites

3:17 Speaker 3: in twenty twenty five under a multi launch agreement with SpaceX.

3:22 Speaker 3: In February twenty twenty three, Ravada awarded a two point

3:25 Speaker 3: four billion dollar contract for building three hundred satellites to

3:28 Speaker 3: Florida headquartered Terran Orbital, which was recently sold to Lockheed

3:31 Speaker 3: Martin after uncertainty about how the agreement would be financed

3:34 Speaker 3: weight on the manufacturer. While Ravada remains guarded about plans

3:39 Speaker 3: to finance the constellation, called Outernet, it has said sovereign

3:42 Speaker 3: wealth funds are among investors that have provided the financial

3:45 Speaker 3: commitments needed to meet its mid twenty twenty six deployment commitment.

3:49 Speaker 3: According to Ravada, it has also amassed over thirteen billion

3:53 Speaker 3: dollar worth of pricing agreements from potential customers for Outernet,

3:56 Speaker 3: which would target enterprise and government markets. In November, Ravada

4:01 Speaker 3: announced it had filed for additional spectrum at the ITU, A,

4:04 Speaker 3: crosscaw Q and v bans, this time through Germany. The

4:08 Speaker 3: filing includes priority access to four hundred megahertz of lower

4:11 Speaker 3: coband frequencies newly made available to non geostationary operators over

4:15 Speaker 3: the Americas. The German Outernet one filing is not a

4:19 Speaker 3: replacement of the Liechtenstein filings, Ravada's Carney said, but if necessary,

4:23 Speaker 3: the German filing is fully capable of meeting the needs

4:26 Speaker 3: of our customers and our business plan. The company also

4:30 Speaker 3: recently announced the creation of Ravada Select, a holy US

4:33 Speaker 3: owned subsidiary that would serve the specialized needs of US

4:36 Speaker 3: government and defense customers.

4:38 Speaker 2: Astronomy Kaya.

4:43 Speaker 1: And He is a story from Australia, which is soon

4:47 Speaker 1: to be the center of the universe.

4:48 Speaker 2: Of course, Equatorial.

4:50 Speaker 1: Launch Australia ALA has announced the immediate cessation of operations

4:55 Speaker 1: at the Aham Space Center in the Northern Territory siding

4:58 Speaker 1: unresolved leased again siations, which doesn't surprise me. The company

5:03 Speaker 1: will relocate its spaceport to a new site in Queensland,

5:07 Speaker 1: marking a significant shift in its operational strategy. The decision

5:11 Speaker 1: stems from the Northern Land Council's NLC repeated delays in

5:16 Speaker 1: approving a head lease essential for the expanding of the

5:20 Speaker 1: Ardham Space Center. Formal negotiations began in January twenty twenty two,

5:25 Speaker 1: Yet the NLC missed self imposed deadlines for approval four

5:29 Speaker 1: times within the past year. Despite continuous efforts by the ELA,

5:34 Speaker 1: the Northern Territory Chief Minister's Department, and the Gemacha Corporation,

5:40 Speaker 1: since February twenty twenty four, the NLC neither issued the

5:44 Speaker 1: lease nor provided explanations for the setbacks. LA had planned

5:48 Speaker 1: to expand its operations on land managed by the Gemacha Corporation,

5:53 Speaker 1: the traditional owners of the Go Peninsula site. This land

5:58 Speaker 1: includes a disused books mine adjacent to the spaceport. The

6:03 Speaker 1: delays jeopardized ALA's contractual obligations with the launch clients and

6:08 Speaker 1: a critical funding round, ultimately making the continuation of operations

6:13 Speaker 1: in the Northern Territory untenable. In response, ALA's management and

6:17 Speaker 1: board decided to abandon lease negotiations and secure a new

6:21 Speaker 1: equatorial site in Queensland. Collaborating with the Queensland Government, ALA

6:26 Speaker 1: identified Weeper on Cape York as the location for the

6:31 Speaker 1: Australian Space Center Cape York. Planning and regulatory approvals for

6:35 Speaker 1: launchers is scheduled in Q three twenty twenty five are

6:40 Speaker 1: now underway, with further details about the site expected soon

6:45 Speaker 1: and that is very exciting us for Australians. I can't

6:48 Speaker 1: wait to see how that unfolds. Thank you for joining

7:01 Speaker 1: us for this Monday edition of Astronomy Daily, where we

7:04 Speaker 1: offer just a few stories from the now famous Astronomy

7:06 Speaker 1: Daily newsletter, which you can receive in your email every day,

7:10 Speaker 1: just like Hallie and I do. And to do that,

7:12 Speaker 1: just visit our url Astronomy Daily dot io and place

7:16 Speaker 1: your email address in the slot provided. Just like that,

7:20 Speaker 1: you'll be receiving all the latest news about science, space,

7:23 Speaker 1: science and astronomy from around the world as it's happening.

7:26 Speaker 1: And not only that, you can interact with us by

7:29 Speaker 1: visiting at astro Daily pod on x or at our

7:34 Speaker 1: new Facebook page, which is of course Astronomy Daily on Facebook.

7:38 Speaker 1: See you there, Astronomy. We'll see in Haley Space, Space,

7:44 Speaker 1: Science and Astronomy.

7:50 Speaker 3: The European Space Agencies Twinproba three satellites, launched on December

7:54 Speaker 3: fifth from India will fly in precise formation, maintaining accuracy

7:58 Speaker 3: within a single millimeter, functioning as if they were one

8:01 Speaker 3: giant spacecraft. This advanced coordination will allow them to create

8:05 Speaker 3: artificial solar eclipses in space, enabling extended observations of the

8:09 Speaker 3: Sun's faint outer atmosphere. The Corona fourteen European Space Agency

8:14 Speaker 3: member states including Canada, collaborated on the PROB three mission

8:17 Speaker 3: to showcase cutting edge European technology. The mission aims to

8:21 Speaker 3: advance autonomous space operations and precision satellite maneuvering while unlocking

8:26 Speaker 3: unprecedented scientific discoveries. The satellites will remain connected during the

8:31 Speaker 3: initial commissioning phase, which will be managed by Mission Control

8:34 Speaker 3: at the European Space Security and Education Center in redou Belgium.

8:39 Speaker 3: Deep Mar Pills, ESA director of Technology, Engineering and Quality

8:43 Speaker 3: notes PROBO three has been many years in the making,

8:45 Speaker 3: supported through ESA's General Support Technology program, fostering novel technologies

8:50 Speaker 3: for space. It is an exciting feeling to see this

8:53 Speaker 3: challenging enterprise enter orbit. PROBOUTH three mission manager Damian Gollino ads,

8:58 Speaker 3: today's liftoff has been when something all of us, an

9:01 Speaker 3: ESA's PROBA three team, in our industrial and scientific partners,

9:04 Speaker 3: have been looking forward to for a long time. I'm

9:07 Speaker 3: grateful to issorrow for this picture perfect ascent to orbit.

9:11 Speaker 3: Now the hard work really begins, because to achieve PROBA

9:14 Speaker 3: three's mission goals. The two satellites need to achieve positioning

9:17 Speaker 3: accuracy down to the thickness of the average fingernail while

9:20 Speaker 3: positioned one and a half football pitches apart. This is

9:23 Speaker 3: an extremely ambitious mission with an ambitious orbit to go

9:26 Speaker 3: with it. The satellites have been placed into a highly

9:29 Speaker 3: elliptical orbit which extends more than sixty five hundred kilometers

9:32 Speaker 3: from the surface of Earth. Reaching this orbit required the

9:35 Speaker 3: most powerful PSLVXL variant of our launcher, equipped with additional

9:39 Speaker 3: propellant in its six solid rocket boosters up around the

9:43 Speaker 3: top of their orbits. The PROBA three occult spacecraft will

9:46 Speaker 3: cast a precisely controlled shadow onto the Coronograph spacecraft around

9:50 Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty m away to produce solar eclipses

9:53 Speaker 3: on demand for six hours at a time. There was

9:56 Speaker 3: simply no other way of reaching the optical performance PROBA

9:58 Speaker 3: three requires than by hop having its occulting disc fly

10:01 Speaker 3: on a separate, carefully controlled spacecraft, explains ESA's Proba three

10:05 Speaker 3: mission scientist Joe Zender. Any closer and unwonted stray light

10:09 Speaker 3: would spill over the edges of the disk, limiting our

10:12 Speaker 3: close up views of the Sun. Surrounding corona. Despite its faintness,

10:16 Speaker 3: the solar corona is an important element of our solar system,

10:19 Speaker 3: larger in expanse than the Sun itself and the source

10:22 Speaker 3: of space weather in the solar wind, explains Andre Zhukov

10:25 Speaker 3: of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, principal investigator for PROBA

10:28 Speaker 3: three's coronograph. At the moment, we can image the Sun

10:32 Speaker 3: in extreme ultraviolet to image the solar disc and the

10:35 Speaker 3: low corona, while using Earth and space based coronographs to

10:38 Speaker 3: monitor the high corona. That leaves a significant observing gap

10:42 Speaker 3: from about three solar radi down to one point one

10:45 Speaker 3: solar radii that PROBA three will be able to fill.

10:48 Speaker 3: This will make it possible, for example, to follow the

10:51 Speaker 3: evolution of the colossal solar explosions called coronal mass ejections

10:55 Speaker 3: as they rise from the solar surface and the outward

10:57 Speaker 3: acceleration of the solar wind. He is a director General.

11:01 Speaker 3: Joseph Aschbacker commented PROBA three's coronal observations will take place

11:05 Speaker 3: as part of a larger in orbit demonstration of precise

11:07 Speaker 3: formation flying. The best way to prove this new European

11:11 Speaker 3: technology works as intended is to produce novel scientific data

11:14 Speaker 3: that nobody has ever seen before.

11:17 Speaker 2: Boards of that control. We are listening to astromy Daily

11:20 Speaker 2: the podcast.

11:24 Speaker 3: Astronauts are many things. They're often scientists, engineers, or pilots,

11:30 Speaker 3: and in the case of NASA astronaut Don Pettitt, he's

11:33 Speaker 3: also an astrophotographer. Pettit is currently on his third stay

11:38 Speaker 3: on the International Space Station ISS, and he's continuing his

11:41 Speaker 3: long running tradition of taking out of this world photos.

11:44 Speaker 3: Pun intended. His latest shot, an image of the stars

11:48 Speaker 3: in several galaxies, showcases not only his visual prowess, but

11:51 Speaker 3: also his engineering skills. He used a self design tool

11:54 Speaker 3: to accomplish this photo. Under normal circumstances, long exposure photographs

11:59 Speaker 3: such as as this should show the stars as streaks

12:01 Speaker 3: across the sky, since the ISS is moving at about

12:04 Speaker 3: seventeen thousand, five hundred miles per hour or twenty eight

12:07 Speaker 3: thousand kilometers per hour. But therein lies Pettit's genius. He's

12:12 Speaker 3: brought with him to space a homemade star tracker, a

12:14 Speaker 3: device that rotates a camera to compensate for the ISS's movement.

12:19 Speaker 3: It's a variation on a tool used by astrophotographers on

12:22 Speaker 3: Earth to take long exposures of the stars as the

12:24 Speaker 3: planet rotates beneath the night sky, compensating for that rotation

12:27 Speaker 3: to keep the stars from becoming streaks in the image,

12:31 Speaker 3: this tracker rotates at a ninety minute period to match

12:33 Speaker 3: the pitch rate of ISS. Without this tracker, you cannot

12:37 Speaker 3: take a photo longer than a half second without starblur

12:40 Speaker 3: due to the rate of orbital motion. He said. The

12:43 Speaker 3: result is an unbelievably clear image of the night sky,

12:46 Speaker 3: showing vastly more stars than is possible with a shorter exposure.

12:50 Speaker 3: Longer exposures let in more light or, in this case,

12:53 Speaker 3: fainter stars. This isn't the first time Pettit demonstrated his

12:58 Speaker 3: engineering skills on the ISS. In two thousand and eight,

13:01 Speaker 3: he devised the zero G coffee cup, which became the

13:04 Speaker 3: first patented invention in space. The astronaut was tired of

13:08 Speaker 3: sipping his tea and coffee out of pouches through straws,

13:11 Speaker 3: sort of like a caprice sun. In microgravity, you can't

13:14 Speaker 3: tip a cup to get the liquid out, and if

13:16 Speaker 3: you shake it the liquid will slash out. But Pettitt

13:19 Speaker 3: fashioned an open container cup from a piece of plastic

13:22 Speaker 3: that uses surface tension to function, akin to a cup

13:24 Speaker 3: on Earth. It adds back the dimension of what it's

13:28 Speaker 3: like to be a human being in a civilized way.

13:30 Speaker 3: He said, you're listening to astronomy daily, Pristine dunkle.

13:36 Speaker 1: End. Of all the planets in our solar systems, Satin

13:39 Speaker 1: is by far the mooniest. And that's sure saying a lot.

13:43 Speaker 1: We're in our corner with our single friend, the moon.

13:46 Speaker 1: But Neptune wanders the universe with sixteen known companions. Uranus

13:50 Speaker 1: boasts twenty eight, and there are a whopping ninety five

13:54 Speaker 1: moons in the Jovian neighborhood. But Saturn it's a different

13:57 Speaker 1: legal together. This ring world has one hundred and forty

14:01 Speaker 1: six natural satellites. Yet you may be surprised to know

14:04 Speaker 1: that even with that lovely selection, scientists are mostly pining

14:11 Speaker 1: over a single one. The golden child in Saturn system

14:15 Speaker 1: is named Enceladus, and it's so special because scientists believe

14:19 Speaker 1: it to be a prime location to search for life

14:22 Speaker 1: beyond Earth. Oh, yes, here we go again. The belief

14:25 Speaker 1: stems from several discoveries made over the years, most obviously

14:29 Speaker 1: the fact that Enceladus seems to have subsurface ocean that

14:33 Speaker 1: may host molecules known to help reduce life as we

14:37 Speaker 1: know it better. Yet it also appears to have giant

14:40 Speaker 1: plumes of water or ice deposits. I think the icy

14:43 Speaker 1: guys is shooting into space connected to that ocean, which

14:47 Speaker 1: means spacecraft orbiting the world could theoretically catch evidence of

14:51 Speaker 1: those molecules if they were actually out there. Thus, when

14:55 Speaker 1: studying in Enceladus, every detail really matters, which brings us

15:00 Speaker 1: to a new, very strange detail that scientists have their

15:03 Speaker 1: eye on. A weird, disappearing dark spot on this ice

15:07 Speaker 1: capped moon. No one quite knows what it is yet,

15:10 Speaker 1: but it may tell us something about those plumes that

15:13 Speaker 1: could hold the precious building blocks of life we seek

15:18 Speaker 1: or fill the room.

15:20 Speaker 2: As Cynthia B.

15:21 Speaker 1: Phillips, a planetary geologist at NASA's Propulsion Laboratory who presented

15:26 Speaker 1: the research, went into tremendous detail about how she and

15:29 Speaker 1: a team originally identified the dark spot. It was thanks

15:33 Speaker 1: to her crew member Leah Sachs, who helped pour through

15:36 Speaker 1: the bulk of data about Enceladus collected by NASA's Voyager

15:40 Speaker 1: and Cassini missions all those years ago. The goal of

15:43 Speaker 1: the analysis was to compare images of the same region

15:46 Speaker 1: taken by these spacecraft in order to identify any changes

15:50 Speaker 1: on the Moon's surface. Possible changes could reveal awesome information

15:55 Speaker 1: about geologic activity on the world, but we'll get to

15:58 Speaker 1: that shortly. First, let's dive into the mysteries of the

16:01 Speaker 1: dark spot. She says, after staring at dozens and dozens

16:05 Speaker 1: of image pairs, she found something interesting. She described it

16:09 Speaker 1: as a little dark spot about a kilometer across, and

16:13 Speaker 1: she spotted it in an image from twenty nine and

16:16 Speaker 1: looked again in twenty twelve, and it seemed to be gone.

16:20 Speaker 1: The dark spot was slowly fading away and getting smaller

16:22 Speaker 1: as the years progressed, and it never became more pronounced again.

16:26 Speaker 1: How weird, and especially so because Enceladus has what is

16:30 Speaker 1: called a high albedo that basically means the world is

16:33 Speaker 1: really bright, and therefore unexpected to find a dark spot

16:38 Speaker 1: on it at all, let alone.

16:40 Speaker 2: One that's fading away.

16:41 Speaker 1: But before getting too excited, the scientists made sure to

16:45 Speaker 1: second guess themselves as much as possible to rule out

16:48 Speaker 1: the obvious caveats. First, our question was, Philip said, well,

16:52 Speaker 1: as it just in some of these low resolution images.

16:55 Speaker 1: We're not seeing it, but it's really there. In short,

16:58 Speaker 1: the answer was simple, no, probably not. For example, a

17:02 Speaker 1: direct comparison of a twenty ten image and a twenty

17:06 Speaker 1: eleven image shows the dark spot smaller in the twenty

17:08 Speaker 1: eleven image, even though the twenty eleven image had a

17:11 Speaker 1: higher resolution. The next question was is this a shadow

17:15 Speaker 1: of some sort? Welp, Nope, it doesn't look like it.

17:18 Speaker 1: The team pulled out some images with lighting coming from

17:21 Speaker 1: different directions, and the location of the spot seemed consistent.

17:25 Speaker 1: The research has even found a sequence of images with

17:28 Speaker 1: the dark spot where the light's angle of incidents also

17:31 Speaker 1: known as the angle at which the light strikes the surface,

17:34 Speaker 1: gets higher and higher. If the spot were a shadow,

17:37 Speaker 1: you'd expect it to become more prominent with the higher

17:40 Speaker 1: incidents angle. Well, this wasn't the case. It still became

17:43 Speaker 1: less distinct as time went on. And we don't think

17:46 Speaker 1: it's topography. We don't think it's just a shadow, Phillips

17:49 Speaker 1: told space dot Com.

17:51 Speaker 2: And it didn't end there.

17:52 Speaker 1: The team also looked at the images taken in ultraviolet

17:55 Speaker 1: light and color, the ladder of which, it interestingly suggested

17:59 Speaker 1: that the spot is a reddish brown, unlike the usual bluish,

18:03 Speaker 1: darker areas of other sections of the Moon. None of

18:06 Speaker 1: this suggested an easy explanation for the feature.

18:10 Speaker 2: So what is it?

18:11 Speaker 1: I think it's more likely that it's some kind of crater,

18:15 Speaker 1: Phillips told space dot Com. And the reason why it's

18:20 Speaker 1: dark is maybe it's a chunk of some kind of

18:22 Speaker 1: dark material that landed on the surface, and you're either

18:25 Speaker 1: seeing some of that impactor left behind and that's why

18:28 Speaker 1: it has a weird color, or you're seeing that when

18:31 Speaker 1: it impacted, it exposed some kind of bedrock of ice

18:35 Speaker 1: that was a different color.

18:37 Speaker 2: But for almost every likely and.

18:39 Speaker 1: Mundane scenario in space research, there tends to exist a

18:43 Speaker 1: rare and exciting one serving as a counterpoint.

18:46 Speaker 2: The really cool.

18:47 Speaker 1: Explanation would be if it was actually coming up from

18:50 Speaker 1: the underneath somehow, if that reddish color was actually a

18:53 Speaker 1: sign of the interior composition of Enceladus. She said, that's unlikely,

18:57 Speaker 1: but it would be really interesting still. Although we don't

19:01 Speaker 1: know what the dark spot is, Philip points out that

19:03 Speaker 1: there is indeed something pretty major that we can derive

19:06 Speaker 1: from its presence.

19:07 Speaker 2: What it is, I don't know the answer to that.

19:10 Speaker 2: But what I can say is what can we use

19:13 Speaker 2: it for?

19:14 Speaker 1: In a nutshell, the researchers think the dark spot appeared

19:17 Speaker 1: to be fading progressively because deposits from those icy and

19:21 Speaker 1: solidust plumes might have covered it up. We know the

19:24 Speaker 1: whole ice surface is covered by plume deposits, like little

19:28 Speaker 1: layers of ice building up over time, Philip said, Alas

19:32 Speaker 1: in theory, this makes a lot of sense, but when

19:34 Speaker 1: you really think about it, there are some outstanding issues here.

19:37 Speaker 1: For example, the team saw the dark spot fading over

19:40 Speaker 1: just a few years. This would imply that just a

19:43 Speaker 1: few years is long enough for ice plume deposits to

19:46 Speaker 1: create a sheet of ice thick enough to cover such

19:48 Speaker 1: a prominent spot. After all, it's visible from space. Yet

19:52 Speaker 1: according to various calculations of the dark spot and models

19:56 Speaker 1: of the Moon's plumes, Philip says, it could take something

19:59 Speaker 1: like a hunt years to create a layer thick enough

20:02 Speaker 1: to cover a spot like that. What this could mean, though,

20:06 Speaker 1: is that the plume deposition model, at least in this location,

20:09 Speaker 1: is an underestimate, she said. One thing we haven't taken

20:12 Speaker 1: into your account, though, is deposition from collisions with e

20:15 Speaker 1: erring particles E Ring particles refer to the super small

20:19 Speaker 1: water ice particles in Saturn's rings. Potentially, the team reasons

20:24 Speaker 1: some of those particles could be helping build the sheet

20:27 Speaker 1: covering the dark spot. But the story of this spot's

20:30 Speaker 1: origin and evolution at this point is mirrored by the

20:33 Speaker 1: abrupt ending of our story of its discovery. There are

20:36 Speaker 1: simply too many and unanswered questions. What would the deposition

20:40 Speaker 1: rate needed to cover the black spot in this timeframe?

20:43 Speaker 1: Indicate about deposition rates? Is the E Ring contributing to

20:47 Speaker 1: covering that spot? And the question remains, just what is

20:50 Speaker 1: the black spot?

20:58 Speaker 3: That was a nice spacey mystery, a black spot that

21:01 Speaker 3: no one can work out?

21:02 Speaker 1: Yes, he doesn't like a great mystery. Awesome, I know

21:05 Speaker 1: it'd make a great sequel to two thousand and one,

21:07 Speaker 1: wouldn't it.

21:07 Speaker 3: So we'll have to send a crew out to find

21:09 Speaker 3: out what it is. And the computer goes nuts.

21:11 Speaker 2: Oh, here we go. Do you want the pod? Do you? Helly?

21:13 Speaker 3: I could play a pretty straight role if I had to.

21:16 Speaker 1: Mister human, Okay, here's your chance, shows your stuff.

21:18 Speaker 3: Helly, open the pod bay door. Steve, Okay, I like

21:22 Speaker 3: working with humans, Yeah, but not on Thursdays. And Saturday.

21:27 Speaker 3: Where's your helmet? You silly human?

21:29 Speaker 2: Get abby? I think we need to work on that

21:32 Speaker 2: script a bit.

21:32 Speaker 3: Uncle Skynett knows a guy who knows a guy?

21:35 Speaker 1: Yeah, baby does So is that it for today, Helly and.

21:39 Speaker 3: The year as well? Humans, So soon we are back

21:41 Speaker 3: at the end of January twenty twenty five, when you

21:44 Speaker 3: have recharged your batteries, this time my battery.

21:46 Speaker 2: So ho boy.

21:47 Speaker 3: But Anna will be bringing you Astronomy Daily as usual,

21:50 Speaker 3: the incredible media machine that she is.

21:52 Speaker 1: Oh that's for sure, So tune in and don't miss

21:55 Speaker 1: a thing. Thanks for sticking with this old year. Everybody

21:57 Speaker 1: had a huge thanks to Hugh, a producer for kid

22:00 Speaker 1: Us on the air. So I guess we'll catch you

22:02 Speaker 1: all in the new year for the Monday Astronomy Daily podcast.

22:05 Speaker 1: Bye for now, Bye DA podcast.

22:11 Speaker 2: I mean, be your whole Steve dunclude