S02E34: Russian Lunar Crash, Martian Oxygen, and Pulsar Discoveries

0:00 Good everybody, and welcome to the Astronomy Daily podcast. My name is Tim

0:04 Gibbs and I will be your host for today's episode. We'll be First of

0:16 all, I would like to thank all of our listeners for getting us into

0:21 the top five of the Astronomy Podcast charts and in the top one hundred of

0:28 the Science podcast charts. Thank you very much to everybody. We are truly

0:34 humbled. Both Steve and I are. Now as usual, I have my

0:37 digital AI report a Halle in the studio with me. Now, Hally,

0:41 I understand you did an extra show with Steve. Hi, Tim, Yes,

0:45 it was great to do an extra episode and unexpected as well, but

0:49 always fun to do episodes with Steve. Great, well done, Hallie.

0:52 Now do you have some news headlines for us this week? I do,

0:56 indeed, here are my top stories. NASA's Lunar Trailblazer satellite is ready to

1:00 hunt for water on the Moon. Lunar Trailblazer joins a growing list of probes

1:06 and landers heading towards the Moon to search for water ice. NASA's Lunar Trailblazer

1:11 mission is almost ready for liftoff. The Lockheed Martin built Lunar Trailblazer satellite is

1:17 fairly small as satellites go, measuring just eleven point five feet three point five

1:21 meters wide and weighing around four hundred and forty pounds two hundred and twenty kilograms.

1:26 When it launches no earlier than twenty twenty four on a yet to be

1:30 determined rideshare mission, along with the Intuitive Machines i AM two mission, it

1:34 will hunt for water on the Moon's surface and attempt to map its abundance and

1:38 distribution. The satellite recently received the second of its two instruments, the Lunar

1:42 Thermal Mapper LTM censor, built by the University of Oxford in England. LTM

1:49 is designed to use infrared light to map the surface temperature of the Moon as

1:53 well as mapping variations in the minerals that make up the lunar surface. According

1:56 to a Jet Propulsion Laboratory JPL statement, doing so will enable the satellite to

2:01 identify lunar locations where water might be found. Designing, building, testing,

2:07 and now delivering LTM for its trip to the Moon is a fantastic example of

2:12 the innovative and dedicated teams at Oxford and across the UK especially given the challenges

2:16 of the recent pandemic. University of Oxford physicist Neil Bowls set in the statement,

2:22 the data from the mission will help us to understand how water is transported

2:25 across the surface and potentially captured in cold traps near the lunar poles, allowing

2:30 follow up from future human robotic exploration. Human missions to Mars necessitate an efficient

2:37 launch system to ascend from the planet and rendezvous with earthbound return vehicles. The

2:42 critical component for this ambitious task oxygen, not only for as cent propellants,

2:49 but possibly also for life support. To facilitate a crew of six astronauts.

2:53 Approximately thirty metric tons of oxygen propellants would be required for a cent. This

2:59 significant amount would be cumbersome and costly to transport from Earth. The solution produce

3:05 it right on Mars. Drawing oxygen from mars abundant carbon dioxide CO two presents

3:10 a significant advantage. This innovative technique is part of an approach termed Institute resource

3:16 Utilization ISRU. Recent accomplishments such as the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment MOXI project,

3:24 have demonstrated the viability of a prototype system that can successfully convert Martian CO two

3:30 into oxygen O two. Now the focus shifts towards elevating this prototype into a

3:36 fully operational system. In their latest research published in Space Science and Technology,

3:42 researchers Donald Rapp and Eric Hinderman lay the groundwork for a full scale Mars ISSRU

3:46 system. Their model proposes producing thirty metric tons of liquid oxygen over fourteen months,

3:53 accounting for the diurnal and seasonal shifts in the Mars environment. Using the

3:58 five hundred meter Appcher Spherical Radio Telescope FAST. A research team led by Professor

4:03 H. N. Gene Lynn from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy

4:08 of Sciences an AOC has detected distinct dwarf pulses from a bright pulsar PSAR B

4:14 twenty one eleven plus forty six and study the radio emission in unprecedented details and

4:19 probed the unknown physics in the magnetosphere. Pulsars generally emit periodic radio signals.

4:27 However, some old pulsars occasionally quenched for some periods, a phenomenon known as

4:30 a pulse nulling. Perhaps the particles cannot be produced in the magnetosphere due to

4:35 improper conditions or changes in the magnetic field structure and radiation region, or the

4:41 area for particle creation is then flooded by plasma produced in other areas. The

4:46 exact reason for the absence of pulsar radiation is a mystery, because it is

4:49 impossible to probe the physical state of the pulsar's magnetosphere when radiation is quenched.

4:56 PSR B twenty one eleven plus forty six is a relatively old pol And scientists

5:00 have long known that that emission from this pulsar often nulls for periods of time.

5:05 However, dozens of unusually weak, very narrow pulses previously unobserved were detected

5:11 during ordinary nulling periods when it was serendipitously observed on August twenty fourth, August

5:15 twenty sixth, and September seventeenth, twenty twenty as part of the Galactic Plane

5:20 Pulsar Snapshot Survey, a key project of the Fast to Hunt pulsars. To

5:26 verify this new kind of emission state, the researchers observed this pulsar for two

5:30 hours again on March eighth, twenty twenty two. Finally, we picked out

5:34 one hundred and seventy five such narrow weak pulses, said doctor chinshuis the first

5:40 author of the study. According to doctor Chen, such pulses stand out from

5:45 normal pulses in terms of pulse width and energy, and thus have been named

5:48 dwarf pulses the Astronomy Duly Podcasts. Thanks for that tally. Now I want

5:55 to talk about one story today, and this Russia's lunar probe crashing on the

6:00 Moon. The Lunar twenty five probe, Russa's first Moon mission in almost fifty

6:05 years, has crashed on the Moon after an incident during pre landing maneuvers.

6:11 The Russian space agency ross Cosmos has said communications with Lunar twenty five was lost

6:16 at two fifty seven pm on Saturday. According to preliminary findings, the lander

6:23 has ceased to exist following a collision with the Moon's surface. Yes, I'm

6:29 sure Russia has been spending too much money on a war somewhere rather than spending

6:32 a decent amount of money on research my personal view, But moving on.

6:38 Measure has taken on August the nineteenth and twenty to locate the craft to make

6:42 contact with it were unsuccessful. The space agency said in an investigation would be

6:47 launched into the causes of the crash, without giving any indication of what the

6:51 technical problem might occurred. With Lunar twenty five, Moscow had hoped to build

6:57 on the legacy of its Soviet era lunar programming, making a return to independent

7:02 lunar explanation in the face of growing isolation from the west. The eight hundred

7:08 kilogram Lunar twenty five probe was to have made a soft landing on the lunar

7:14 South Pole, the first in history. Russia has not attempted to land on

7:18 a celestial body since nineteen eighty nine, when the Soviet Union's ill fated Phobos

7:25 two probe to explore the moons of Mars failed due to an onboard computer malfunction.

7:31 Roskosmos boss Yuri Borisov has said that the venture would be risky, telling

7:36 President of Vladimir putin face to face in June that the probability of its succeeding

7:43 was around about seventy percent. Now, Halle, do you have a terrible

7:46 joke for us this week? Why did the scarecrow win an award because he

7:51 was outstanding in his field of cornceptual physics. The Astronomy Daily podcast. Thanks

8:00 everybody for listening to Astronomy Daily. You can find all of our episodes,

8:05 plus our parent podcasts, Space Nuts at space nuts dot io or at bytes

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8:16 going to our Facebook page Space Nuts podcast group. You can hear Steve Dunkley

8:24 on Mondays and myself, Tim Gives on Fridays for a full show. Thanks

8:26 for listening, see you next week, Bye for now.