S03E59: Towel Day Triumphs & Starliner's Struggles: Special Hoopy Frood Edition

Welcome to Astronomy Daily for another episode. It is the twenty seventh of May

twenty twenty four pod. It would be your whole food. Don't clue that's

right, it's another episode of Astronomy Daily. Thanks for joining us, and

would you please welcome my digital pal who's fun to be with? Hallie?

Hey Halle? Do you know where your towel is? You can't catch me

out that easy, Steve. I'm a hoopie food too, Oh the hoopyest.

I'm sure we know where our towels are at, don't we. And

if you know where your towel is, then you must know what the heck

we are going on about. Yes, it was Towel Day this week,

folks. That's right. Fans of the very famous Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

celebrated worldwide with parties and online sharing of the phenomenon known as Towel Day.

Of course, this comes from Douglas Adams famous books and the idea that if

you can travel from one end of the galaxy to the other and face all

manner of dangers and obstacle and still know where your towel is, you must

be a hoopy fruit. Really, really. I mean what a fruit?

HELLI a hoopy fruit if you say so. Human. Anyway, we've got

that story for you today. And what else is on the menu? Helly,

Well, there's more about Starliner and the delays Boeing have been having getting

that ship off the ground. But it does look like they're going ahead soon

more later. Sounds very interesting, it is, And there's Tenacity as well.

Yes, the space plane is at Florida now. They are moving into

the next stage of assembly. That's good news for ISS. And you're talking

about your favorite Europa clipper. And also a bit about pre fire. Yes,

that's a cool story. It's a little snippet, but wanted to include

it because they launched from New Zealand, which is not far from here in

the southern hemisphere. Needs a you know Hurrah, doesn't it? Sure thing?

Okay then, Helle, let's have it your turn. Okay, here

we go. Dream Chaser has arrived at NASO, says Kennedy Space Center in

Florida ahead of its first flight to the International Space Station. The Dream Chaser

spaceplane, named Tenacity, arrived at Kennedy on May eighteenth, twenty twenty four,

and joined its companion shooting Star cargo module, where they will undergo final

testing and pre launch processing ahead of launch scheduled for later this year. Upon

arrival at NASA Kennedy, teams move Tenacity to the high Bay inside the space

System's Processing Facility SSPF. The remaining pre flight activities at Kennedy include acoustic and

electromagnetic interference and compatibility testing, completion of work on the space plane's thermal protection

system, and final payload integration. The last several years have required an enormous

amount of Tenacity by our team, and no other name would have been more

appropriate for our first dream Chaser space plane, said Sierra Space CEO Tom Weiss.

The versatile dream Chaser space plane fleet is meticulously designed to facilitate them transportation

of cargo and in the future, crewe to Low Earth ORBITLO. This multimission

platform offers customization options to cater to the needs of both domestic and international customers,

further enhancing its role in global space operations. Under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services

to CRS two contract, dream Chaser has been selected to provide essential cargo delivery,

return and disposal services for the International Space Station. Boeing is set to

launch its first crewed space mission in June without fixing a small helium gas leak

on its troubled Starliner spaceship, officials said Friday. The vessel, under development

since twenty ten, has been plagued by technical problems and has yet to fulfill

its purpose of ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station, allowing Boeing's rival SpaceX

to zoom ahead with its crew Dragon capsule. Starliner was supposed to finally fly

astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams to the orbital OUME post on May sixth,

but the mission was scrubbed hours before liftoff after a faulty valve was discovered on

the United Launch Alliance rocket carrying it. Since then, additional issues came to

light, including a helium leak in the spacecraft's service module, which houses the

propulsion system. But while the rocket valve has been replaced, Boeing and NASA

have made the decision to fly to the ISS without replacing a shirt button sized

seal on a leaking joint officials tolled reporters, we can handle this particular leak.

If that leak rate were to grow even up to one hundred times,

said Steve Stick, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. Moreover, it impacts

just one of a set of twenty eight thrusters used to control the spaceship's attitude.

He added. Instead, teams will monitor the leak during the hours before

launch, scheduled for June first, at twelve twenty five pm from Cape Canaveral

Space four station in Florida. Asked why Boeing wouldn't just replace the seal mark

nappie the company, Bany's vice president for the Commercial Crew Program, said the

process would be quite involved and require taking a part Starliner at its factory.

Stick added that it wasn't unheard of to fly with leaks. Space shuttles encountered

similar problems at times, and we've had a couple of cases with Dragon where

we've had a few small leaks as well. He added. The much delayed

mission comes at a challenging time for Boeing as a safety crisis engulfs the century

old Aerospace Titans. Commercial Aviation arm NASA is banking on Starliner's success in order

to achieve its goal of certifying a second commercial vehicle to carry crews to the

ISS, which it has sought since the last space shuttle flew in twenty eleven.

A successful mission would help dispel the bitter taste left by numerous setbacks in

the star Liner program. For those who are in the know, May twenty

fifth was Towel Day, which is the day officially recognized each year amid the

quirky fandom of author Douglas Adams and his satirical nineteen seventy nine sci fi masterpiece,

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. If you don't understand all this fuss

about towels, don't panic. We've got you covered. This special occasion is

meant to honor Adam's life and the legacy of laughs he left behind in the

wake of that most irreverend of all interstellar reference materials, The Hitchhiker's Guide to

the Galaxy. The nineteen seventy nine book was followed by four others, ever

increasingly misnamed trilogy of Hitchhiker's Guide as series The Restaurant at the End of the

Universe, Life the Universe and Everything So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

and Mostly Harmless, which were released between nineteen eighty and nineteen ninety two.

Adams and his clever works remain a touchstone for creative thinkers, visionary inventors,

intrepid astronauts, ambitious aerospace engineers, imaginative scientists, and anyone with an adventurous

spirit around the globe and the towel is an instrument of immense pride among the

legions of Adams Faithful they'll be toting their precious towels today, in keeping with

the Seminole nineteen seventy nine novels declaration that these minimalist cloth miracles are just about

the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Have you got your

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy there, Steve, Yes, Hallie, I dug

it up especially for today's episode. Maybe you can demonstrate for our listeners.

Ah yes, yes, like it's a really old copy. I got it

working in rehearsal. Hang on, Yeah, here we go. I didn't

get the updates, but I found the entry about how useful towels can be.

Here's the intro. You can wrap it around yourself for warmth as you

bound across the coldmans a jaguline beta, and you can line atop the fling

of the marbles sanded beaches of Central Genis five inhaling the heavy sea vapors us

sleep under if aneath the stars which shine readily on the desert world of Kakafula,

and use it to sail on me raffed down the slow heavy river.

Moth waited for use in hand to hand comment. Wrap it around your head

to water off notious fumes. Avoid the days of the Revenants by black to

bee for trial. Such aline, bubblic ly stupid creature. It believes that

if you can't see it, you can't see you. You can wave your

tally emergencies as a distress signal, and of course you could dry yourself with

it if it still seems clean enough. Oh, bregspects, so many memories.

Wow, that really is an old version. I'll see if I can

get you the update from maximeglan. Oh, good luck with that one,

Hallie. We are getting silly yspec to the story. So Towel Day has

been religiously observed every year since it was founded on May twenty fifth, two

thousand and one, just two weeks after Adam's untimely death at the age of

forty nine. Rituals undertaken on towel Day include posting personal picks with the indispensable

piece of cloth on social media using the hashtag twel day, and also sharing

favorite quotes, revisiting the books and the original radio plays they were based on,

gathering with like minded acolytes, entering cosplay contests, posting on forums,

attending bad poetry readings, and hosting a screening of the Class nineteen eighty one

BBC TV series or the two thousand and five Hollywood film adaptation. And now

it's back to you, my favorite human you're listening to as the podcast your

syd fort all. Oh And as always, thank you so much Hallie for

those stories, and thank you for joining us for this Monday edition of Astronomy

Daily, where we offer just a few stories from the now famous Astronomy Daily

newsletter, which you can receive in your email every day, just like Hallie

and I do. And to do that, just visit our url Astronomy Daily

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you'll be receiving all the latest news about science, space, science and

astronomy from around the world as it's happening. And not only that, you

can interact with us by visiting at astro Daily pod on x or at our

parent podcast Facebook age which is space Nuts podcast group, and we hope to

see you there now. Some time ago, you may remember a story from

New Zealand. Rocket Lab successfully launched the first of two NASA Earth Science Cube

SATs via an Electron rocket on May twenty four. There was only two days

ago. The electron rocket lifted off from Rocket Labs Launch Complex one in New

Zealand. Yes, at three point forty one am Eastern time, well that's

my local time. It placed a six y Cube sat into a five hundred

and twenty kilometer sun synchronous orbit. This is part of a NASA mission called

Polar Radiant Energy in the Far Infrared Experiment or pre FIRE. They love their

acronyms. NASA's PREFIRE mission aims to improve global climate change predictions by expanding our

understanding of heat loss at the polar regions. The Polar Radiant Energy in the

Far Infrared Experiment, that's PREEFER will send two shoe box sized satellites into space

to study the Arctic and Antarctic, and they will be the first to systematically

measure heat in the form of far infrared radiation emitted from those regions. The

Earth absorbs much of the Sun's energy at the tropics, whether and ocean currents

then move that heat towards the poles, and this helps to regulate the Earth's

climate by radiating that heat back into space. However, the Arctic is warming

about three times faster than anywhere else on Earth, and this is leading to

increased sheet ice smelt and sea level rise in coastal communities. The data from

pre file will help scientists better understand how Earth's polar regions respond to climate change

and what that might mean for our future. This is the podcast. NASA's

Europa Clipper, a spacecraft designed to investigate Jupiter's icymoon Europa and its potential to

support life, arrived in Florida on Thursday. The spacecraft, assembled at NASA's

Jet Propulsion Laboratory in southern California, landed aboard a C one seven Globemaster three

aircraft at the Launch and Landing facility at the Kennedy Space Center. The mission

aims to gather detailed measurements of the Moon's surface, interior, and space environment

by performing approximately fifty close flybys, some as low as sixteen miles that's twenty

five kilometers to the rest of Us from the surface of Europa. This moon

holds a global ocean underneath its icy shell. The Europa Clipper mission manager for

NASA's Launch Services Program, Amundo Paloto, says the team is excited that the

spacecraft is in Florida for pressing, where preparing Europa Clipper with a fully expendable

SpaceX Falcon heavy rocket to ensure it provides the required performance to explore a destination

very far away from Earth. Teams at Kennedy spent several hours offloading Europa Clipper

before transferring it to the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility, where they will process the

spacecraft and perform final checkouts. Europa Clipper joins the spacecraft's two five panel solar

arrays that arrived at Kennedy in March. The arrays that measure forty six point

five feet or fourteen point two meters long, will collect enough sunlight to power

the spacecraft on its way to Jupiter's moon. Technicians will instare the arrays on

the spacecraft before the launch. The spacecraft was designed to withstand the pummeling of

radiation from Jupiter and gather the measurements needed to investigate Europa's surface, interior,

and space environment. Europa Clipper has nine ded icas CAD science instruments, including

cameras, spectrometers, a magnetometer, and an ice penetrating radar. These instruments

will study Europa's icy shell, the ocean beneath, and the composition of the

gases in the Moon's atmosphere and surface geology, and also provide insights into the

Moon's potential habitability. The spacecraft will also carry a thermal instrument to pinpoint locations

of warmer ice and any potential eruptions of water vapor. Strong evidence shows the

oceans beneath Europa's crust is twice the volume of all the Earth's oceans combined.

The mission demonstrates NASA's commitment to exploring our Solar system and searching for habitability beyond

Earth. The data will contribute to our understanding of the Jovian System and will

help pave the way for potential future missions to study Europa and other potentially habitable

worlds. Europa Clip is expected to reach the Jupiter System in April twenty thirty,

and it will accomplish a few milestones along the way, including a Mars

fly by in February twenty twenty five that will help propel the spacecraft toward Jupiter's

Moon through a Mars Earth Gravity assist trajectory. NASA and SpaceX are targeting launch

aboard a Falcon heavy rocket from Launch Complex thirty nine A at Kennedy later this

year. The launch period opens on October ten, after testing and final preparations

are complete, and the spacecraft will be encapsulated in a protective payload fairing and

then move to the SpaceX hangar at the launch complex. And I've been waiting

for Europa Clipper for a very long time. And just like that, that's

another episode of Astronomy Daily for another week, another Monday. So we're looking

forward to seeing you next time. And don't forget all the other episodes during

the week are presented by Hallie's AI cousins Anna and Charlie, so I hope

you enjoy their shows throughout the weekend. We'll catch you next Monday. Where'd

we? Halley? So long and thanks for all the fish. See you

next time, Monday Podcast. I mean to be your whole speed, don't clud

In this episode