Out of Control

SpaceTime Series 24 Episode 52 AI Transcript

[00:00:00] This is space time series 24 episode 52 for broadcasts on the 10th of May, 2021. Coming up on space time, another out of control Chinese spacecraft crashes to earth. The ingenuity helicopter begins a new demonstration phase on Mars and solving the mystery of the length of a day on Venus. Oh, that and more coming up on space time.

Welcome to space time with steward. Gary

people have once again, faced a major threat from an out of control Chinese spacecraft. The problem. This time was the massive cost stage of the long March five Bay rocket, which last month launched the first module of China's new space [00:01:00] station into orbit. After delivering the module into its 380 kilometer high orbit, the 30 meter long rocket segment should have undertaken a control deorbit burn placing itself on a re-entry track that would have sent it into a remote part of the Southeastern Pacific ocean.

Now this point, Nemo, an uninhabited location with no shipping or airline routes. Instead Beijing lift the giant 22 times booster tumbling wildly out of control, Harvard astronomer, Jonathan McDowell, summarized it best on Twitter saying that this was not an accident, but poor rocket design, the Pentagon, which was tracking the madly spinning booster admits that it's impossible to determine where ground zero for the long March five B will be until around 90 minutes before impact.

That's because it all depends on how atmospheric drag decays the orbit. So scientists really only know it's going to be on its final orbit when it's already on its final orbit. Dr. Brad Tucker is an astronomer with the [00:02:00] Australian national universities, Mt. Strum lobes. And the problem is, you know, people would like to say, well, it's going to happen at this exact time and location.

We would like that too, but it's uncontrolled. And when it's uncontrolled, that means that we don't know exactly the angle it's hitting the earth atmosphere. And it's the atmosphere that produces the drag that slows it down, that falls back to the earth. And the Earth's atmosphere itself is a really hard to model at this level of detail and changes.

It changes daily sometimes by the minute solar activity can actually change the Earth's atmosphere. So all of these things mean we have some uncertainty. It really wasn't until the final orbit that they knew for sure where it was going to come down and when it was going to come down, Because it kept bouncing off the atmosphere and doing one more robot and then finally decided not to bounce, but everyone wants these to land in the South Pacific ocean.

That is the goal because the most remote or uninhabited place in the earth. And in fact, lots of these pieces of debris have landed there [00:03:00] before. But when you're uncontrolled, you can't guarantee that mechanics meant the Chinese rocket would hit the Earth's atmosphere almost 28,000 kilometers per hour.

And its orbital trajectory meant it would crash back onto the surface somewhere between 40 degrees, North and 40 degrees South of the equator and that places. Most of the world's population, it's crosshairs, including many major cities from New York to Los Angeles, Sydney to Melbourne. It eventually crashed down in the Indian ocean on Sunday at around 1224 Australian Eastern standard time.

That's two 24 in the morning. Greenwich, meantime, slamming into the water ne all in the mole. Dave's archipelago and official statement from NASA. Shortly after the impact said China was failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space to Bree. NASA says space-faring nations must minimize the risks to people and property on earth of reentries from space objects, and maximize transparency regarding those [00:04:00] operations.

The agency says it's crucial that China and all spacefaring nations, the commercial entities act responsibly and transparently in space to ensure the safety, stability, security, and long-term sustainability of outer space activities. The bottom line is sheer dumb luck is all that stood in the way of a major disaster.

Now, if all this sounds a little bit deja VU, and that's because Beijing's done this before just three years ago in 2018, China lost control of its Tiangong one space station, which eventually crashed back to earth, just Northwest of Tahiti. Beijing had lost contact with a school bus sized prototype space station two years earlier, but they didn't bother telling anyone or asking for help until other nations detected it's over the K he'll go gone one when it crashed, it ended up, uh, over the Easter weekend a few years ago, about a hundred Ks Southeast of Fiji.

And then you're right. As you said, once we knew [00:05:00] that last trip, you know, within 45 minutes, An hour where it's going to come. And again, even still, there's still a large uncertainty that we know along this line that it's going to fall, but you know where on the line again, by 10 minutes, you're talking about half the Pacific ocean.

The Chinese communist party has shown a long-standing reckless attitude towards space travel. On January the 11th, 2007, China conducted an atti satellite missile test using a D of 21 ballistic missile launch from the GI Chang satellite launch center to deliberately blow up a Chinese weather satellite in order to demonstrate to the world that they could do it.

The missiles slammed head on into the 750 kilogram  spacecraft at an altitude of 865 kilometers traveling at eight kilometers per second, and smashing birth space craft into a debris field containing literally hundreds of thousands of pieces of shrapnel. The event remains the largest recorded creation of space debris in history with will over 2000 pieces of trackable [00:06:00] size space junk catalog.

Did the immediate aftermath. And then just last year, another Chinese long match, five Bay, rocket crashed back to earth. This one, leaving a trail of debris across Africa. This isn't the first time they've used this rocket and this isn't the first time it's come down unexpectedly a few years ago is believed to have actually come down over the ivory coast and actually hit some things.

So, you know, this is part of their design and this is it. Country or China bashing. It's just a bad design. Everyone agrees. This is not how you should design the rocket because you end up in exactly this situation. There's gotta be literally millions and millions of bits of shrapnel up. They're all moving at 28,000 kilometers an hour.

As they overt the earth. Some the size of rocket boosters like this. Oh, yeah, that's right. You know, they, they run the gamut and they all pose a danger because when you're traveling tens of thousands of kilometers an hour, a flake of paint can destroy something. You know, you don't want to be hit by a screw traveling 40,000 kilometers an hour.

[00:07:00] So maybe your whole satellite, doesn't just disintegrate. Right. And then it's a piece of space shelf. And with these big pieces, like this rocket booster, like the saddle, like old satellites, they can break apart into hundreds or thousands of pieces of debris, which can crash into more and more. In fact, just the other weekend, when the space X crew too was going up, they had a potential worry of a piece of space junk heading for, and they.

Prep for an evacuation. You know, these things are happening all the time. So as we put more stuff up, we're producing more junk. Now we're trying to do three things limit how much junk we put up there and groups are getting better at it. This isn't the case in this rocket booster and start knowing where the junk is.

Cause at least you can potentially tell something that you can control to get out of the way and then cleaning it up. And it's actually something that surely is doing a big part of with the facilities that Mount Strongbow using Glaser. The track and the orbit, these tiny bits of debris, and then there's groups building things to capture larger satellites in orbit.

So it's a huge body of work, but it also has to start with us not creating more junk, just like on earth. Now this laser [00:08:00] technology is really interesting. This was something first of all, by electro optics, I think in Queanbeyan, which is named Mount Strom low a couple of years ago. What this does is it's able to track small bits of space junk, but also a more powerful version would be out of slow down their speed as well.

And that would help them the orbit. So this is small things we're talking that's exactly right. So, and so we've been hosting, so EOS has the laser telescope on the mountain, and we started a joint project between ANU and them to actually build that more powerful laser. That was actually just turned on for the first time, a few weeks ago, because if you have to, if you have enough laser energy energy, and if you just slow it down, You can actually get it to fall to the atmosphere and then burn up harmlessly.

Cause that's the name of the game. You want the Earth's atmosphere to disintegrate it or get rid of it. So this is now that it works with the remarkable piece of technology. And again, we're only talking about small bit, but there's millions of these small bits and those millions can turn into a lot more broken satellite.

There are a lot of problems getting the world to a greater allow this laser to be built because [00:09:00] it must be a one or two categories out there that. Unhappy about the idea of Australia shooting lasers up at settler. Okay. It is a joint project with a few different countries, but yes, you know, it is a technology that people want to keep an eye on, but at the same time, everyone knows space junk is a problem.

It's one of the few topics that all the countries essentially communicate and agree on and talk to because it affects everyone equally. Um, you know, this just really highlights the scale of the problem when adversaries or people who don't talk on earth, talk in space, you know, it's a bit of a different problem, and this is exactly what is going on, which is why a lot of people are disappointed to say the least in the design of the loan March five D because you could just do better.

And that's what everyone does. They have purposely these aims to Orbitz. You know, and come back down controlled or not even getting to orbit. So it's not a problem. No, obviously you want to be like, basics were just lands and you'd reuse it, but you don't want to at least create more issues. And that's exactly what this is.

And this is not going to be there only launched they're [00:10:00] planning on building the rest of the space station, which required more of these rockets to go up. Each of which has the same issue. This isn't an isolated. China were the ones who in 2007, used the missile to blow up one of their own weather satellites, just to show that they could do it, that itself lift where he stole the biggest single cloud of debris up.

That's exactly right. You know, these little bitches get, you know, these proof, these streams going around the earth. And they can crash into more things and more things. India did it a few years ago. Much of it is Mali to the U S and Russia as well. It's these things that sometimes we're just not learning.

And you know, it's a slippery slope to show what you can do technologically in advanced technologically versus being a bit careless. And there's a lot of pointing of showing the careless nature. Let's say of this last launch.

This is one of the few, you know, a lot of people talk about asteroids hitting the earth. Yes, they, they will. And do, but we kind of know of that problem. We know how to solve it. Chesler syndrome. No, [00:11:00] that cascading runaway effect of space debris is just a real issue. It's a worry because we're so dependent on satellites.

I think that's the thing we don't appreciate is just how dependent on satellites are. If we lose satellite infrastructure and, or the ability to put more up, because we can't essentially leave the earth, then we're going to have to change a lot of ways. We operate here on earth quickly and dramatically, and people are not ready for that.

And what that means is we have to solve this space junk problem, but we're not doing it. That enough. And this is what a lot of people point to where it's growing, it's growing, it's growing. You would like to say those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it. We've seen, you know, how we polluted some of the oceans and plastics in the oceans and all sorts of things like that.

We can learn what we have done here on earth. And you would think we would do better in space, but we're not. I remember seeing one of the opening scenes of the movie gravity now. Hollywood. Normally doesn't do space very well. And gravity was an example [00:12:00] of that, that movie. There were lots of things there that I wasn't very impressed with, but one thing I was impressed with was the initial collision, which destroyed the space station in the movie.

How close was that to reality? Do you think for a Kessler syndrome event, look, that's the exact worry. If you get enough hitting a big piece of debris, then it proves it's just. Tens of thousands, which then created a triggering effect. I think eye opening scene actually is effective. To be honest, I saw that same.

I thought, yes. That's. That's exactly what a bill. No gravity misses is. We have different Heights and satellites, so wouldn't knock out every satellite. But if you're in close proximity, yes, you will get knocked out. And just, as you said, with that Chinese anti-satellite tests, there's a stream of to read that, then just get stuck going around the earth.

It doesn't just float or sink away. It gets stuck in orbit. And it's uncontrolled and kind of like if you're on the Parkway or the highway, and all of a sudden, you just do a sharp turn across all the lanes, you're going to hit someone. And that's the worry is that as these cross, the path of everything else that is controlled, they run into them.

And so [00:13:00] while obviously it's Hollywood and, you know, a movie, it highlighted in a very, I think, effective way. What we really are worried about is that one or two things that is that cascading trigger effect. You know, we say the straw that broke the camel's back, we worry about that piece that breaks the spaces back, so to speak and something like that.

If the space station, if that happened to the space station, besides the calamity in loss of life, it would be, uh, you know, words cannot even describe the issues. We would start to have Brad Taka and astronomer with the Australian national universities, Mount strum observatory. And this is space time still.

The com NASA is ingenuity. Mars helicopter begins a new demonstration phase of its mission and solving the mystery of a length of a day on Venus, all that, and more still to come. Um, space time.

[00:14:00] After beating all its technology demonstration parameters, masses, MAs ingenuity helicopter will now begin a new phase of flight operations scouting out ahead of the mass perseverance Rover searching for interesting geology and the best routes. Mission manages that NASA jet propulsion laboratory and passing the California say the 1.8 kilogram rotocraft will now shift its focus from proving that powered control flight as possible on Mars to demonstrating flight operations.

That future aerial craft can utilize. This new flight program that ingenuity is on follows a successful fourth test flight with saw the helicopter climb to an altitude of five meters. Then fly South over rock sand ripples, and small impact craters for 133 meters. Collecting images with its downward looking navigation camera, and then going into a Harbor while imaging with its color camera and then returning to its takeoff [00:15:00] point near the Rover known as Wright brothers field.

The flight doubled the range flown took a record 117 seconds and Sarah, an increased air speed of 3.5 meters per second. Ingenuity is transition brings with it, a new flight envelope with more precision maneuvering, greater use of its aerial observation capabilities. And of course, more overall risk. The change also means ingenuity will require less support from the perseverance Rover team, which is looking ahead for targets, take rock and sedimentary samples in the search for AIDS microbial life on Mars on April the 26 six, the mission 66 soul or Martian day.

Perseverance drove 10 meters South to identify potential targets for its first sampling operation. Perseverance project scientists can fairly from Caltech says the six wheel car size robot. We'll spend the next couple of hundred souls executing its first science campaign. Looking for interesting rock crops along a two kilometer long patch of crater floor [00:16:00] before heading North.

And then towards Jethro. Crate is ancient river Delta, a place where geological, sediments, and possibly also fossilize microbial life. If it ever existed on Mars may have washed into. With short drives expected for perseverance in the near term, ingenuity could be used to execute flights to land either near the Rover's location or as the Rover progresses at future anticipated parking spots, perseverance, which transported ingenuity on its 278 million kilometer journey from earth to Mars landed in jest road credit back on February the 18th on a mission to search for evidence of past life on the red planet.

The helicopter can use these opportunities to perform aerial observations of the rovers science targets, potential Rover routes and study and accessible features. While also capturing stereo images for digital elevation maps. Mind you, the cadence of flights during this phase will slow down from once every few days to once every two or three weeks.

[00:17:00] Mission managers will now assess flight operations after 30 souls and will complete flat operations no later than the end of August. That timing will allow the Rover team to wrap up its planned science activities and prepare for solar injunction. The period in mid-October when Mars and the earth will be on opposite sides of the sun, thereby blocking our communications.

This is space time, still the com solving the mystery of the length of the day on Venus and NASA space, X crew one returned safely to earth. All that and more store to come on. Space time.

scientists have developed the most accurate measurement yet of the length of a day on Venus finding it to be 243.02, two six [00:18:00] earth days. The findings reported in the journal nature. Astronomy also share that the length of a Venusian day can vary by as much as 20 minutes. Venus is an enigma. It's the planet next door yet it reveals a little about itself.

An opaque blanket, a thick cloud conceals, a harsh landscape pelted by acid, rain and baked in temperatures, which can liquefy led. The new measurements are based on 15 years of radar observations, which is slowly lifting the veil on some of the illnesses, most basic properties, including the tilt of its axis and the size of its core.

The study's lead author. John Margo from the university of California, Los Angeles says Venus is earth sister planet. Yet these fundamental properties have remained unknown. The thing is Venus and earth have a lot in common. They're both Rocky worlds born at the same time and a similar conditions in the same part of the solar system and out of the same materials, they're [00:19:00] both nearly the same size have nearly the same mess and virtually identical densities.

Yet they've evolved along very different paths. Something happened to Venus early in its history, causing it to rotate in the opposite direction to the earth and most other planets in the solar system. Fundamentals, such as how many hours are in a Venusian day will provide crucial data for understanding that a Virgin histories of these neighboring worlds changes in Venus's spin and orientation revealed how mass is spread out within knowledge of its internal structure in turn fuels insights into the planet's formation, it's volcanic history, and how time has altered its surface.

The new radar measurements show that an average down Venus last 243.0226 earth days. That's three weeks longer than the Venusian year and roughly two thirds of an earth year. What's small. The rotation rate and Venus is always changing. A value [00:20:00] measured on one day will be a bit longer or shorter in the length of day measured at another time.

The authors estimated the length of the Minutian day from each of the individual measurements they made and they observed differences of at least 20 minutes. Margo says that probably explains why previous estimates didn't agree with each other. He thinks Venus's heavy atmosphere is likely the blame for the variation as it sloshes around the planet.

It exchanges a lot of momentum with a solid ground beneath speeding up and slowing down its rotation. This happens on earth as well at the exchange here only adds or subtracts one or two milliseconds from each day, the effects far more dramatic on Venus because the Venusian atmosphere is roughly 93 times as massive as earth.

And so there's an awful lot more momentum there to trade. Margo and colleagues were also able to determine that Venice's axial tilt is just 2.6392 degrees that compares with the earth 23 and a half degree. Tilt. Based on these measurements, the author has [00:21:00] calculated that the planet's core is about 3,500 kilometers cross.

That's about the same as that of the earth, although they couldn't tell how much of that is a solid outer core. And how much is a liquid in a core to reach their conclusions, Margo and colleagues use neces deep space communications network. 70 made a Goldstone, California dish, the fire radio waves at Venus 21 times between 2006 and 2020.

Several minutes later, those radio waves bounced off Venus and echoed back to worth to be picked up by Goldstone and roughly 20 seconds later, by the 100 meter Greenbank observatory edition, West Virginia, the exact delay between receipt EPR, two facilities provided a snapshot of how quickly Venus is spinning while the particular window of time in which of these acres are most similar reveals the planets tilt this space time.

Still the comm matters space X crew one returned safely to worth and later in the science report [00:22:00] and use daddy has determined for the first time, how much the woods glaciers have retreated because of climate change, all that, and much more still to come. On space time,

six dragon crew. One mission is splashed down safely in the Gulf of Mexico ending the first commercial crew program, long duration mission about the international space station. The return comes from six months after launching a border Falcon nine rocket from the Kennedy space center in Florida, the crew dragon capsule resilience dock to the harmony modules forward docking port at the space station 27 hours after liftoff.

The mission also marked the first night splashed, another manual spacecraft since the Apollo eight predawn return to the Pacific ocean back [00:23:00] on December the 27th, 1968. So in the next phase of the mission, dragon has a series of steps to complete. Before returning Mike, Victor Shannon. And so each you home first dragon will maneuver to the correct, uh, attitude, um, and then starts to separate.

It's called then the jettison, his trunk, which is the cylindrical unpressurized part of the spacecraft. The trunk is currently connected to the AFT or bottom section of the dragon capsule, where the heat shield is located. So in order to expose the heat shield and get the vehicle ready for atmospheric reentry, well jettison the trunk.

From there, the spacecraft will use its forward thrusters to perform a deorbit burn, which will put dragon on a trajectory to return to earth. The burn will last more than 16 minutes. Once it starts and to prepare for these upcoming events right now, the dragon capsule is doing a. Number of things that autonomously it's isolating the thermal control system fluid loops from the radiator.

This system is what will help keep the internal temperature of [00:24:00] dragon, uh, for, uh, for Mike Victor, Shannon. So ICI, um, nice and cool. During re-entry a dragon is also initiating separation of the claw mechanism, which will terminate data, power and fluid connections between the capsule and the trunk through dragon and its trunk now separate flying free.

Uh, and we are just. Moments away from hearing the beginning of the deorbit burn. And right on time, we also have the start of the deorbit burn. As we mentioned, this should last 16 minutes, 26 seconds. So this has fully committed a crew dragon to coming, right? Holmes, CRN, the entry, descent, and landing phase of the mission.

Once crew dragon really begins its entry into the Earth's atmosphere. Fear. We anticipate a loss of signal for about seven minutes where we won't be able to receive a telemetry or data or a video or audio from the crew dragon vehicle. And the reason for that comms blackout is because plasma builds up on the outside of the capsule due [00:25:00] to the, uh, the speed at which the vehicles re-entering it, risk atmosphere and building up that heat too.

Around 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit outside the capsule we show the burn is complete with nominal performance, nose cone, closure, initiated. And space X from resilience. Uh, we copy all that's great news and we're following the nose gum. That is great news that deorbit burn completed successfully. And now we're moving on to nose cone closure in the background right now, dragon is currently inhibiting those Ford bulkhead thrusters that we just use to complete the deorbit burn, ensuring it's safe to latch the nose cones shut for re-entry.

So as we begin, the second half of entry, dragon is now beginning to flush Nitrox into the cabin and continuing to hop off Mike, Victor Shannon. And so each his suit with cold air, again, this is what will allow the cabin temperature to remain comfortable [00:26:00] while external temperatures reach over 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

The heat shield is pointing forward. Um, the bottom, uh, so to speak of the capsule, leading the capsule into the landing site. And the suits themselves can detect if they start to get too warm and will automatically starts drawing in that Nitrox again to keep the astronauts nice and cool all the way down until splashdown and weather continues to look great.

Uh, excellent. If I may say. Wind speeds are very low and the height of the waves are also very low. There's no rain in the area. So really ideal conditions for splashdown and recovery of the crew. Um, once they splash down, there are a couple of boats that will step in to make sure that the area is safe.

They're uh, they'll collect the shoots. And then there is a larger recovery vessel that will come up and scoop dragon out of the water, hoists that using a crane on the back of the boat, onto the deck. And then we have a couple of checkout [00:27:00] procedures to get through. Before we open up the hatch and a medical staff can start to attend and evaluate how the astronauts are doing before they, you know, eventually get into the helicopter and it starts to make the way back.

Towards land's Finnegan's space. Next we show nose cone secure for entry and space X from resilience. We see the same. We just heard that dragon is an entry attitude, uh, exactly where they need to be. And, uh, for this targeted splashdown off the coast of Panama city, Florida. We have that loss of signal that we predict to occur coming up in about one minute.

And we expect to see that last for about seven minutes. My Cockins. Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and switching a Gucci, all onboard crew dragon returning home today. And we're standing by for that Los under a hundred and kilometers in altitude, altitude of crew dragon now at 90 kilometers. So again, a lot of things are happening pretty rapidly here in the first set of parachutes we'll deploy.

They are drone shoots. They are. Conical in nature and their job is to stabilize and begin sort of the [00:28:00] initial, uh, deceleration of the vehicle followed, uh, very shortly after, by the main parachutes, four of them, dragon space, ex Comcheck and space access is dragon over 4g is 42 kilometers space X. We have you loud and clear expect automated shoot deployment.

And resilience copies. We were at kilometers 4.34 on the jeans that's commander, Mike Hopkins reporting the G's that they experienced of Han reentry. And as you heard, we are now out of that loss of signal portion, meaning the plasma has eroded away enough from the spacecraft. My heart skipped a beat, as soon as I heard, uh, the crew, uh, responding back.

And again, X a GPS is converged, expect nominal altitude for drug shoot, deploy. The copy of the drug, the boy dragon resilience. Now 30 kilometers over earth. It's quite a quick drop over that a [00:29:00] hundred that we saw just a few minutes ago. Those two drones shoots should deploy at 18,000 feet and attic. An altitude crew dragon will be moving approximately 350 miles per hour.

Recovery team reports visual or at 20 kilometers rotating space X copies on the seat rotation. The seats are rotating into the proper landing position. We saw them a little bit more reclined earlier facing the top of the capsule, and now they are more forward facing towards that side. Michelle Good space, X copies and concurs nominal decent right on two drugs.

Two drugs shoes have deployed. Everything looks phenomenal and we're slowing the dragon vehicle down. We are expecting the four main shoots to deploy, uh, within the next minute on four mains and resilient hoppy, then we'd be a nominal dependent, right? Any sex copies and concern, concurs nominal decent, right?

[00:30:00] Four main parachutes slowing the vehicle down to what will be about 16 miles per hour. Prior to splashdown just off the coast of Panama city, Florida, we show you just under 800 meters still good, decent, right? Just under 800 meters from the earth. That's about half of a while and we are tracking splashdown.

and 600 liters and we're killing liter per second on a decent grade, a little higher than that.

And they expect we still nominal rates. You get a hundred meters price for a splashdown space, X copies brace for slush down seconds away from splashdown everything nominal aboard crew dragon resilience, returning to earth. And there, the boats starting to chase after dragons begin their recovery operations.

As soon as dragon lands.

[00:31:00] But we have visual confirmation of the crew, one resilience capsule. It's from resilience. That is excellent news. We are splashed down. Pyros have fired or autumn. SpaceX copies and concurs. We do. She makes a cut well, and we have successful. Splashdown the main shoots have also caught as well. The fast boats are now making the way towards the capsule to begin the recovery operations.

Again, that first boat is going to start to inspect the capsule and make sure that there isn't any residual, uh, toxic fumes in the air, half of NASA and the space X teams. We welcome you back to planet earth and thanks for flying space X. But those of you enrolled in our frequent flyer program, you have earned 68 million miles on this voyage.

Resilient back on planet earth and we'll take those miles. Are they transferable and dragon, we'll have to refer you to our marketing department for that policy. A bit of levity from the crew and, and that [00:32:00] splashdown coming at 11:56 PM. Pacific time, six 56 GMT during their mission crew one contributor to some 250 scientific experiments.

Among other things. They looked at protein, crystal development, drugs, testing, robotic assistant technologies, growing crops on station and looking at new ways to produce semiconductors Crystal's crew on astronauts also took part in five space walks, connecting cables, and the recently installed by telomere science platform.

Repairing for the space stations, new solar rays servicing the Albany up has cooling system and completing several external maintenance tasks. Last month old, four crew on astronauts boarded the resilience for a docking port relocation maneuver moving their dragon spacecraft from the forward facing port to the space facing portable the harmony module that move allowed the forward facing port to receive the new crew to mission, which arrived on station on April the 24th.

Later this year, space X [00:33:00] next dragon commercial resupply mission. It's 22nd is scheduled to dock to the newly vacated Zenith port, bringing with it. The first pair of new space station, solar arrays. Following splashdown resilience was returned to space X's vehicle processing facility at the Kennedy space center.

Now known as the dragon lay. It's the same building where the space shuttles used to be serviced between missions. There the spacecraft will be carefully inspected systems replaced and prepared for its next mission. This is space-time

and Tom Matta. Take a brief look at some of the other stories making using science this week with a science report. A new study has for the first time worked at how much the world's glaciers have retreated GE to climate change. Using data from messes, Terra, satellite scientists, rebel to measure the turtle melt of the planets 220,000 glaciers, not [00:34:00] including the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

The findings reported in the journal nature show that between the year 2020 19, the wards glaciers lost an average of 267 billion tons of ice. Every year. Scientists also found that the loss of global MES accelerated sharply during this period. For example, between 2000 and 2004 glaciers lost 227 billion tons of ice a year.

But between 2015 and 2019, the last mass increase the 298 billion tons annually. The glacial ice melt caused global sea levels to increase during the spirit by some 0.74 millimeters per year with nearly half due to the thermal expansion of water as it heats up. And you study warns that invertebrates are declining globally in both diversity and abundance.

The findings reported in the journal, astral entomology suggest potential serious consequences for ecosystem functioning [00:35:00] scientists found many Australian butterflies are impaired or declining, but fewer listed for protection by legislation. The authors identified the 26 Australian butterflies at most immediate risk of extinction within the 20 year timeframe.

They found the Australian flag Tillery and pale Imperial history topping the extinction risk list. Paleontologist have identified a new species of hadrosaurs duck-billed dinosaur at a dig site on Japan, Southern islands. The findings published in the journal scientific reports suggest that your motor source is a narky migrated from Asia to North America, rather than the other way round as previously thought.

Scientists also found that the herbivores evolved from walking upright to walking on all fours. The remains were discovered in late Cretaceous strata Denny from around 71.94 is 71.6, 9 million years ago. Hadrosaurs are often thought of as the cows of the age of dinosaurs. [00:36:00] Reaching lengths of eight meters and weighing as much as eight tons, they've become the most commonly found of all dinosaur fossils being discovered everywhere from North America and Europe, through to Africa, Asia, and Australia.

And you study right reported in the American journal of clinical nutrition found that whether it's espresso latte or decaf, your genetic code could be what's driving your desire for coffee. A study of 390,435 people. But the university of South Australia found casual genetic evidence that cardio health as reflected in blood pressure and heart rate influences, coffee consumption.

The authors found that people with high blood pressure and Jina and Rhythmia were more likely to drink less coffee, they were more likely they'd drink the caffeinated coffee or to avoid coffee altogether compared to this without such symptoms. Mainstream news outlets have gone after COVID-19 conspiracy theories, passion, and that's good, but when it comes to that other [00:37:00] science topics, it seems they have no problem ignoring scientific evidence and promoting conspiracy theory nonsense, and that's bad.

The problem is the major media organizations, dirty employees, specialists, science journalists, and then use the departments. Sure. Nash programs do, but they're busy working on their own shows. So it's lifted general news reporters usually do the police rounds and local politics to cover it. And the problem is they usually don't know the first thing about science.

And so they usually end up doing a really bad job and the editors, it was supposed to sub their work and correct their mistakes or just the scientifically ignorant. It's not their fault. It's just a specialist field. And it's one, they know nothing about. Tim Mendham from Australian skeptic says all this causes confusion and ends up fueling the public skepticism of science more broadly.

And that's yeah, there was quite a Skyping article in a recent addition to the American council on science and health. The trouble with the media was they're not very consistent in their supporters. Scientific thinking [00:38:00] I must follow the science of medicine at that COVID et cetera, even though some of them are even there, but in other areas, they regard science as an asthma or as a problem, rather than as a solution, whether that's science medicine or whatever particular area you're looking at of the classic cases, media response, in some cases to climate change where the media that is saying follow the science as far as kind of it, that then suddenly saying the science is rubbish.

As far as climate change, even though the science is equally well-supported in both cases, it's an area of contention. Area that's linked to politics obviously, and a whole range of different conditions, but their suggestion is that the media really probably needs to lift up game and have some sort of consistency.

Please, journalists make mistakes that happens, obviously, especially when you're talking about complex science topics, but position taken by some media sort of totally inconsistent is a way, what then do you believe in the media? Which is, which just means a lot of people who end up distrusting the media.

Oh, dear. It's trusting the media. What we're seeing. I [00:39:00] think his media or trying to get listeners or viewers or readership. And in order to do that, they're catering for an audience and what's happening is the found their niche markets that they're going for. And they're pandering to those markets. Those markets are very comfortable hearing the news they want to hear.

They don't necessarily want to hear the truth. Feel sort of echo chamber audience agrees with everything you say we're seeing globally with media, which makes it really hard when you're actually looking for someone who's going to report stories and present stories to you in a completely dispassionate factual way.

And the problem gets even worse when you're dealing with a topic. As complicated as science and medicine, they, you really do need specialist reporters. And these days, very few media organizations have those specialists reporters in place. Yes, it's true. I mean, I could, you could probably count the number of full-time science reporters on, on one hand in Australia, leading outside medicine, there's probably a fair number of journalists who cover [00:40:00] medicine, but a lot of the people sent out to cover science, but not scientists.

So, you know, you're relying on people who were learning on the job. Yeah. The night I saw newsreader there. Talk about dinosaurs existing 2 billion years ago. I was fell off my seat that too,

exactly the most complicated thing. It took a long time for multicellular, but they are not, I mean, the scientific literacy. I remember that news really once talking about, I think it was one of the, there was something going past one of the moons of Jupiter, which was, he said, which was nice. Interesting story with that.

They originally got Nicole, the alien movie IO. That was the first of the alien movie franchise. And they changed the name to alien because everyone thought they meant 10. I just thought I'd throw that in there. Carry on. Sorry about that scientific illiteracy. Not the best. So it's historical literacy is not the best.

There's all sorts of areas where people are prime to things, and they're not helped by media, which is inconsistent. [00:41:00] The idea of that 2 billion year old dinosaurs shake your head. Should you rely on these people? Good news media is having a hard enough time. It is. So they're trying to do clickbait and all sorts of ways to attract a particular audience.

It's sad. It's a fact of life. Can you say it shouldn't be, cause it shouldn't be, do you find the best sources you should. You just got to do a little bit of work to find them. From Australian skeptics

and that's the shut for now. Space-time is available every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday through Apple podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, Google podcast, pocket casts, Spotify ICAST Amazon music bites.com SoundCloud YouTube favorite podcast, download provider and from space-time with Stewart, gary.com space [00:42:00] times also broadcast through the national science foundation on science own radio and on both iHeart, radio and tune in radio.

And you can help to support our show by visiting the space time store for a range of promotional merchandising goodies, or by becoming a space-time patron, which gives you access to the triple episode, commercial free versions of the show, as well as lots of Burness audio content, which doesn't go to where access to our exclusive Facebook group and other rewards.

Just go to space time with Stuart, gary.com for full details. And if you want more space time, please check out our blog where you'll find all the stuff we couldn't fit in the show, as well as heaps of images, new stories, loads, videos, and things on the web. I find interesting or amusing, just go to space-time with Stuart, gary.tumbler.com.

That's all one word and that's tumbler without the aid. You can also follow us through at Stuart, Gary on Twitter at space-time with Stuart Gary on Instagram. Through our space-time YouTube channel and on [00:43:00] Facebook, just go to facebook.com forward slash space time with Stuart, Gary and space-time is brought to you in collaboration with Australian sky and telescope magazine.

Your window on the universe. You've been listening to space-time with Stewart, Gary. This has been another quality podcast production from bitesz.com