S02E12: NASA's Parker Solar Probe and the Secrets of the Solar Wind & More Space News

0:00 Goodday everybody, and welcome to Astronomy Daily for Friday, the ninth of June

0:06 two thousand and twenty three. My name is Tim Gibbs and I will be

0:10 your host for today, and as usual I have my favorite at Ai in

0:15 the studio with me, Hallie. What's the news today, Hallie. Astronomers

0:26 observed giant tales of helium escaping Jupiter like planet. A team of astronomers has

0:32 used observations from the Hobby Everley Telescope HT at the University of Texas at Austin's

0:37 McDonald Observatory to discover some of the longest tales of gas yet observed escaping a

0:42 planet. The planet hat P thirty two B is nearly twice the size of

0:47 Jupiter and losing its atmosphere through dramatic jets of helium unfurling before and behind it

0:52 as it travels through space. These tales are more than fifty times the length

0:57 of the planet's radius. The discovery is published June seventh in the journal Science

1:02 Advances. Tales of escaping material around planets are not unheard of. They can

1:07 be the result of a collision freeing a trail of dust and debris, or

1:12 they can be caused by the heat of a nearby star, energizing and blowing

1:15 a planet's atmosphere into space. However, tales as long as hat at p

1:21 thirty two b's are truly remarkable. It is exciting to see how gigantic the

1:26 extended tales are compared to the size of the planet and its host star,

1:30 said Joe Jianjang, Nasa Sagan Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

1:36 He led the team that made this discovery while part of the University of

1:38 Texas at Austin h et Exospheres Project. The ht Exospheres project studies the atmospheres

1:46 of planets outside of our Solar system. Earth's highest coldest rarest clouds are back.

1:53 How to see the erie and octolucent clouds this summer, look north as

1:57 the stars appear in June and July. To have a chance of seeing rare

2:00 noctulucent or a night shining clouds with the naked eye. Look up an hour

2:06 or two after sunset and before sunrise over the next few months, and you

2:08 may see ethereal, blue, silver, or golden streaks in the Northern Hemisphere's

2:13 northern skies called noctulucent clouds, meaning night shining clouds in Latin, or nlc's,

2:20 These strange looking patterns in the sky are the highest, driest, coldest,

2:23 and rarest clouds on Earth. According to a two eighteen study of the

2:28 phenomenon, These shimmering night shining clouds appear in the mesosphere, a layer of

2:34 Earth's atmosphere above the stratosphere and below the thermosphere about forty seven to fifty three

2:38 miles seventy six to eighty five kilometers above Earth's surface. Sometimes dubbed space clouds,

2:46 nlc's form just below the invisible boundary where Earth's atmosphere ends and outer space

2:50 begins, roughly sixty two miles one hundred kilometers above the planet's surface. According

2:55 to NASA that nlcs occur when water vapor freezes into ice crystals that cling to

3:00 dust and particles left by falling meteors high in the atmosphere, which reflect sunlight.

3:06 The peak season for observing nlcs from the northern hemisphere is around the summer

3:09 solstice in late June through the end of July, when they're most easily visible

3:14 from about fifty to seventy degrees north latitude. However, some nlcs have already

3:20 been spotted this month in colder northern regions like Denmark. According to spaceweather dot

3:24 com, Gemini North back on sky with dazzling image of supernova in the Pinwell

3:30 Galaxy. The Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory,

3:36 operated by NSFs and our Lab, has returned from a seven month hiatus literally

3:40 with a bang, as it has captured the spectacular aftermath of a supernova,

3:45 a massive star that exploded in the large Facon spiral Pinwell galaxy Messier one oh

3:51 one. The supernova, named s N twenty twenty three IX, was discovered

3:55 on May nineteenth by amateur astronomer Koichi Idagaki. Since its discovery, observers around

4:01 the globe have pointed their telescopes toward Messier one oh one to get a look

4:05 at the burst of light. Over the coming months, Gemini North will allow

4:10 astronomers to study how the light from the supernova fades and how its spectrum evolves

4:14 over time, helping astronomers better understand the physics of such explosions. The appearance

4:19 of s N twenty twenty three IX is rather serendipitous for the Gemini North telescope,

4:25 which is back to observing with its primary mirror repaired and recoat after suffering

4:29 damage in late twenty twenty two. The damage was limited to a small region

4:33 outside of the light collecting area of the mirror. Nevertheless, the repairs were

4:39 carefully planned and completed to ensure that Gemini North could safely return to normal operations.

4:45 This process lasted approximately seven months, and in May twenty twenty three,

4:48 the mirror was recoat and reinstalled, and the control systems were powered up and

4:54 tested. Nass's Sun Kissing Parker Solar Probe finds source of a fastive solar wind.

5:00 The spacecraft's stead appoint to shower headlike coronal holes as the source of the

5:04 fast solar wind. NASA's Sun Touching Parker Solar Probe has flown close enough to

5:10 our start to spot the fine details of the solar wind, including its origin

5:14 coronal holes in the Sun's atmosphere. Armed with this information, scientists may now

5:19 be able to better predict solar storms that can supercharge auroras over our planet,

5:24 but can also disrupt communication and power infrastructure and pose a threat to satellites.

5:29 Spacecraft and even astronauts. The Parker Solar Probe track the solar wind, a

5:34 stream of charged particles flowing continuously from the Sun back to where it is generated.

5:40 A new study reports this allowed researchers to seek characteristics of the solar wind

5:45 that are lost as it exits the Sun's outer atmosphere or corona and before it

5:49 reaches Earth as a relatively uniform stream. The spacecraft saw that the streams of

5:55 high energy particles that make up the solar wind match so called supergranulation flows within

6:00 coronal halls. This discovery pointed to these regions as the source of the fast

6:05 solar wind, which is seen over the poles of the Sun and can reach

6:09 speeds as great as one point seven million miles per hour two point seven million

6:13 kilometers per hour, around one thousand times faster than the top speed of a

6:16 jet fighter. And that's the news headlines for today. Tims the Astronomy Daily

6:23 Podcast, a couple of stories I'd like to talk about this week. The

6:27 first one is Airbus has developed a system to extract oxygen and metal from lunar

6:32 rigolith. Now, new technologies using material found in space are constantly popping up,

6:39 sometimes from smaller companies and sometimes from larger ones. Back in twenty twenty,

6:44 one of the largest companies of them all announced it technology that would have

6:48 significant implications for the future lunar expedition missions planned over the next ten years.

6:56 The European aerospace giant Airbus has developed the regolith to oxygen and metal's conversion,

7:02 commonly called ROXY. ROXY creates not only oxygen, a resource vital for humans

7:10 to breathe and also for rocket fuel, but also makes metals that can be

7:15 used to manufacture tools, equipment, and even structures on the Moon. And

7:18 it does it simply from the regolith that is present everywhere on the surface of

7:25 the Moon. Now, this process is similar to Moxie, the experiment that

7:30 the rover Perseverance took with it when it landed on the Red planet in two

7:33 twenty one. However, when Airbus announced a successful test of ROXY in October

7:40 twenty twenty, Moxie was not yet proven and was barely even on its way

7:45 to Mars. Moxi also wasn't designed to create metals, which is one of

7:49 the benefits of ROXY. Those metals can be used in processes like making tools,

7:55 containers, and other useful objects. On the Moon itself rather than bringing

7:59 them from Earth, thus saving lots of fuel. It dovetails nicely with efforts

8:05 to bring three D printing technologies to the Moon, and several other companies are

8:09 rushing to carry out those efforts. Roxy's process is relatively environmentally friendly compared to

8:16 existing metal making methods currently used on Earth. A press release from the company

8:22 mentioned that ROXY could be used as an emission free process to obtain metals that

8:28 otherwise collected us using fluoro perofluorocarbons, a potent greenhouse gas. Developing this system

8:35 took more than just the expertise of one company. Airbus collaborated with various universities

8:43 and other companies on the project, including the Fraunhofer, the German Research Institute,

8:48 and a team at Boston University. The Mars Express Orbiter, the European

8:54 Space Agency's first interplanetary mission, entered orbit around Mars on twenty second twenty two

9:01 thousand and three. Sorry Since then, the probe is mapped the Martians surface

9:07 using its high resolution stereo camera, an instrument built by the German Aerospace Center

9:13 with commercial partners in honor of the mission's twentieth anniversary. A celebration occurred last

9:18 Friday, June second the European Space Administration's Space Operations Center in Darmstat, Germany.

9:26 During the festival, a series of global color mosaic images were live strings

9:31 from Mars Express orbiter to Earth. The mosaic is a result of a high

9:37 altitude campaign conducted by the hr SC science team and state of the art image

9:43 processing. The result is a mosaic unparalleled in detail, spatial resolution, and

9:50 diversity of color that provides valuable insight into the Martian environment. This includes revealing

9:56 the surface composition, demons, strating how water once flowed there in the past,

10:03 and modern meteorological phenomena. For almost twenty years, the HRC mapped close

10:09 to the entire service of Mars in color and three dimensions with unprecedented resolution.

10:15 This is possible thanks to the camera's front color channels, and five of the

10:20 panchromatic endare stereo and photometric channels. The camera, operated by DLR Institute of

10:28 Planetary Research, was originally to last one Martian year, which is about six

10:37 hundred and eighty seven Earth days, but the mission's success prompted ESA to extend

10:41 the mission repeatedly most recently until the end of twenty twenty six. Now don't

10:48 forget that. You can find the details about our podcast on spacenuts dot io

10:54 with Steve Dunkley as host on Monday and myself Tim Gibbs host on Fridays.

11:00 You can also find details of our parent podcasts, Space Nuts on space nuts

11:05 dot io as well. Now over to you, Hallie for this week's really

11:11 bad dad joke. I hope it's a good one. Why don't scientists trust

11:15 adams because they make up everything, just like the vastness of the universe.

11:20 And here is an extra one for you, Why did the astronaut become a

11:26 musician because he heard there were some great gigs on the stars? Llie,

11:33 you have surpassed yourself this week. Now don't forget people. You can find

11:37 Astronomy Daily on Monday with Steve Dunkley and myself Tim Gibbs on Fridays. Over

11:43 to you Steve for Monday's episode. Thanks for listening, everybody, Bye bye

11:46 bye The Astronomy Daily Podcasts