S26E78: Life's Building Blocks in Deep Space // NASA Upgrades // Rocket Lab's Cyclone Satellites

This is Spacetime Series twenty six, Episode seventy eight, for broadcast on the thirtieth of June twenty twenty three. Coming up on Spacetime, an amino acid essential for life found in interstellar space, Important upgrades the NASA's Deep Space network and rocket labs, coming to a storm the EU. All that and more coming up on Spacetime. Welcome to Spacetime with Stewart Garry. Astronomers have discovered trip to Fan, one of the twenty amino acids considered essential for life as we know it in deep space. The detection, reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, was found in data from NASA Spitzer Space Time Colescope during observations of a nearby star forming region. Amino Acids are the building blocks of proteins, which are the key macromolecules for the development of life on Earth. The authors identified more than ten emission bands for the molecule trip to Fan inside the perseous molecular cloud complex and in particular inside the stellar system I SEE three forty eight, located a thousand light years away. This region is generally invisible to the unaided eye, but it shines brightly when viewed in infrared wavelengths. One of the studies authors, Susanna Iglesias Growth from the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics, says, given the spectral coverage in the infrared and the large spectroscopic database from the Spitzer telescope, this amino acid was an obvious candidate to search for in space. Ice three forty eight is an exceptional star forming region and an extraordinary chemical laboratory, and thanks to its proximity to the Earth, astronomers carry out some of the most intensive searches for molecules in this to stellar medium. In glecious Growth that also recently detected molecules such as water, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, cyanide, acetylene, benzene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and fulorines in the same region, she says the novelty of this work is that tripp to Fan has never before been detected in interstellar space, and in spite of decades of research, there has never been a confirmed detection of other amino acids in any other star forming region. Glecius Growth believes evidence for tripp to fan associated emission lines might also be found in other star forming regions, as could other amino acids. In fact, they may be common in the gas from which stars and planets are formed. She says. It's also likely amino acids are enriching the gas in protoplanetary disks and in the atmospheres of annually formed exoplanets, perhaps accelerating the emergence of life. The analysis of the molecules emission bands also allowed the authors to estimate the clouds temperature in the region. They found it was around two hundred and eighty kelvin at seven degrees celsius, a temperature very similar to that already measured for molecular hydrogen and water in her previous studies. The new work also provides an estimate for the abundance of trip to fan in this region, finding it was around ten billion times lower than for molecular hydrogen. Amino Acids are often found inside meteorites on Earth, and so they may have been present as early as the formation of the Solar System four point six billion years ago, and Glesius Growth says this new discovery, and hopefully that of other amino acids in the near future, could indicate that protein building agents, which are the key to the development of living organisms exist naturally in the regions of space where stars and planetary systems are formed, and that suggests that life may also be more common in our galaxy than what we could have predicted this space time still to come, major upgrades and NASA's deep space communications network and Pocket Lab coming to a storm near you. All that and more still to come on spacetime, NASA isn't the process of upgrading its deep space communications network. The upgrades necessary in order to communicate with more spacecraft than ever before and to accommodate evolving mission needs managed by the che Propulsion Laboratory in passing into California. The deep space network is what enables missions to track, send commands to and receive scientific data from fire away spacecraft. For example, when NASA's Mass Perseverance rover touched down on the Red Planet, it was the agency's deep space network which provided direct communications with the rover, enabling the mission to send and received data that helped make the event possible. And when Cyrus REX took samples from the asteroid Banou, it was the deep space network which played a crucial role, not just in sending the command sequence to the probe, but also for transmitting its stunning images back to Earth. In fact, the Deep Space Communications Network has been the backbone of NASA's communication system since nineteen sixty three. It's currently supporting more than thirty nine missions, with thirty more missions now in development, and with that sort of a workload, NASA needs to upgrade its capacity. The Deep Space Network consists of tracking antennas across three complexes evenly spaced around the planet. There's the Goldstone Complex near Barstow, California, There's one in Madrid, Spain, and then there's the tid Been Millar Deep Space Nearwork near the Australian capital of Canberra. In addition to supporting missions, the antennas are regularly used to conduct radio science, studying planets, black holes, and tracking near Earth objects. As part of this upgrade, NASA's constructed two new anten dishes, increasing capacity from twelve to fourteen. In January twenty twenty one, the Deep Space Network commissioned its new thirty four meter dish named DSS fifty six at its Madrid complex. While previous antennas were limited in the frequency bands they could receive or transmit, and that often restricted them to communicating with specific spacecraft. The new Madrid dish is an all in one antenna able to send and receive the full range of communications frequencies used by NASA. Soon after bringing DSS fifty six online, that's a completed eleven months of critical upgrades to DSS forty three. That's the massive seventy meter dish at Tidbin Bella, and it was a crucial upgrade because DSS forty three is the only dish in the Southern Hemisphere with a transmitter powerful enough to broadcast at the right frequency to send commands to the distant Voyager two spacecraft, which is now hurtling through interstellar space and is the most distant man made object in history. In fact, the DSS forty three refurbishments paved the way for similar upgrades to the seventy meter dishes at Goldstone and the Drid. The improvements are all part of a project to meet not just the heightened demand, but also the evolving mission needs of NASA. Missions increasingly generate far more data now than what they did in the past. In fact, the data add from deep space spacecraft has grown by more than ten times since the first lunar missions in the nineteen sixties, and as NASA looks towards any humans demas, the need for higher data volumes will only increase further, and optical communications is one tool that can help meet this demand for higher data volumes, using lasers to enable higher bandwidth communications. Experiments doing this and now being carried out. Meanwhile, the Deep Space Networks radio antennas remain the backbone of its operations. This report from NASSA TV. NASA has robotic explorers all over our Solar System and beyond, but how do we communicate with the far away spacecraft. We communicate with them by using the big antennas of the Deep Space Network or DSN. The DSN has three antenna complexes evenly spaced around the world in the United States, Spain, and Australia. That means that as the world turns, at least one antenna complex can always contact spacecraft no matter where they are in the sky above Earth. This antenna was constructed in nineteen sixty five a massive seventy meter dish which has a total area of approximately one acre. This large antenna includes not only the seventy meter dish, but also a base that can turn to point it at any place in the sky, and along with the DSN antennas across the world, has helped us communicate with rovers landing on Mars, the New Horizons mission to Pluto, the Voyager missions to Jupiter, Saturn and beyond, and more. The Deep Space Network sides the crucial connection for commanding spacecraft and receiving never before seeing images and scientific information. The seventy meter antennas are driven by hydraulic drive systems using a two hundred horsepower motor that's the power of a car engine. The seventy meter antennas can communicate in S band and X band radio signals, which are two different types of radio communications used for talking with far away spacecraft. This is spacetime Still to come. Rocket Lab launches the second of its two dedicated missions, Fanessa, deploying a constellation of tropical cyclone monitoring satellites, and later in the science report he studies warn that September Arctic SAIS could be gone by the twenty thirties. All that and more still to come on spacetime. Rocket Lab is successfully launchs the second of two dedicated missions for NASA to deploy a constellation of tropical cyclone monitoring satellites. The Electron coming to a storm near EU. Mission lifted off from Launch Complex one, Pad B on New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula, deploying the two final cube sets of NASA's Tropics constellation, the first pair of satellites. We're launched back on May eighth, Stage one, Stage two press for flight, hyperage, flow, engine purge and evils deluge activated KEEN nine eight seven six five four three two one. And that is a beautiful liftoff for Electron. The final two trophic satellites are on their way and coming to a storm near you. With Electron now having cleared the pad, the next milestone is max Q. This is the point where the forces on Electron are at their greatest clear MAXQU, And there we have it. Electron has passed through max Q and continues on the way to space. Right now, Electron is traveling at over two thousand kolometers per hour and as an altitude of twenty kilometers. Now. Coming up next is main engine cutoff or MIKO, where the nine Rutherford engines on Electron's first stage shut down to make way for separation between the first and second stages within seconds. The single space optimized Rutherford engine on the second stage will ignite to carry the kickstage and the Tropic satellites all the way to orbit. That should take place shortly at a round T plus two and a half minutes. Stage probation still nominal. They stand by for Mikol roughly at seconds fifteen seconds to MIKO Chatham Station and Miko con from suble stitch the mission, and just like clockwork, we have had MIKO stage one and stage two separation and ignition of Electron second stage coming up very shortly. We'll also see electrons faring separate and fall away. These two carbon composite halves form a protective nose cone over the Tropic satellites, keeping them safe during ascent. Once we're in space, though they're not needed as the forces on Electron are not nearly as great, so we can get rid of them and clear the way for payload separation now for this mission, because we're headed to that five hundred and fifty kilometer circular orbits straight away with stage two, we're leaving the faring attached just a little bit longer than usual. Separation successful and that's fairing separation confirmed. We are at four minutes into flight now and coming up next is a process unique to electron battery hot spot. The pumps on Electron's Rotherford engines are powered by electron pumps which draw their energy from batteries. Once we deplete the batteries, they are dead weights that we don't want to carry all the way to orbit, so we eject and swap over to a fresh set in flight. So far a nominal mission for coming to a storm near you. The second of two dedicated launches to deploy a storm monitoring constellation for NASA Stage Door Propulsion are still holding nominal code and SOUS remaining. Now we're coming up on that all important battery hot swap. Powering engines with batteries is one of the things that makes the Rutherford engine special. The single stage two engine requires real longer duration than the Stage one engines, so we have to hot swap the spent batteries to a third fresh one. This is one of the final gates to orbits, so let's listen into the operators and mission controls for that calling hop stortling down. It's good, and there you have at a clean hot swat for the second stage Rutherford Engine. Electron continues to orbit with around two minutes remaining in today's Stage two burn. Speed is good, altitude is good, Electron is good. T plus seven minutes into the second Tropics mission for NASA, These two CubeSats, along with the two that we launched just eighteen days ago, will provide members of the meteorological community with hourly returns over the same storm to more accurately predict patterns which could save the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. T plus eight minutes in and we are now around thirty kilometers away from that five hundred and fifty kilometer target orbit. This Stage two burn is taking us all the way to a circular orbit. Then we have that dog leg inclination change just over the equator to put us in the correct plane the payload deployment coming up. At thirty three minutes into the mission, Electron is continuing well at speeds of over nineteen thousand kilometers per hour ahead of SICCO and kickstage separation. SICCO stands for second engine cutoffs. Immediately after that shutdown, electrons kickstage separates from the second stage, and in around one minute the Curry engine will ignite and begin that plane change maneuver a hit of payload deployment STAGEY separation controvet, I'm trans to orbits and that is sec confirmed as planned. The kickstage has also cleanly separated, ready for that final CURI burn in around twenty minutes from now, followed by payload deployment at T plus thirty three minutes. The timing was key for the mission in order to get the full satellite constellation in the correct position with deployment into their operational orbit within a sixty day period, with the two dedicated launches needing to take place within eighteen days of each other. The spacecraft are all now in a five hundred and fifty kilometer high orbit at an inclination of around thirty degrees. They're designed to collect tropical storm data more frequently than other weather satellites, allowing meteorologists and weather forecasters to improve their understanding of what are storms doing. But to reach the low thirty degree inclination, electrons second stage placed the kickstage and the tropic satellites into a circular orbit, and the kickstage then needed to carry out a plane change maneuver in order to position the satellites at thirty degrees. Here's the question, how does a group of satellites, each no more than a foot long, help improve forecasts for tropical storms and hurricanes. Let's take a look. Hurricanes are some of the most powerful and destructive weather events on Earth. The twenty twenty Atlantic hurricane season was brutal, producing a record breaking thirty name storm. What's more, ten of those storms were characterized as rapidly intensifying, some throttling up by one hundred miles per hour in under two days. Many weather satellites will generally measure a storm only once every few hours, leaving gaps in coverage where a storm may quickly strengthen. To help fill this observation down, NASA is launching Tropics, a collection of satellites designed to make a big impact on our understanding of damaging storms. Their mission to provide near hourly observations of a storm's precipitation, temperature, and humidity, allowing scientists to better understand what drives a storm's intensification. To achieve this, researchers at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory developed a miniaturized microwave radiometer that's about the size of a cup of coffee. This small instrument will measure storm strength by detecting the thermal radiation naturally emitted by the oxygen and water vapor in the air. As Earth's climate continues to change, cost effective but powerful satellites like Tropics will be an important tool to help us better observe developments driving rapid changes in powerful storms and help forecasters better predict and prepare for the weather ahead. The two Tropics launches mac rocket Labs thirty six and thirty seventh Electron missions. They also MAC the company's fourth and fifth missions this year, bringing the total number of satellites launched by Electron to one hundred and sixty three and a dozen end there. The launch was far by the successful test flight of a modified version of the Electron called the HASTY, which stands for Hypersonic Accelerated Suborbital Test Electron. It's designed to carry heavier payloads up to seven hundred kilograms on suborbital sounding rocket missions. To do this, it uses a modified kick stage for hypersonic payload deployment and has options for different tailored fairings in order to accommodate larger payloads including air breathing, ballistic reentry boost guided and space based equipment. The inaugural launch of the Hasty took place from Rocket Labs Launch Complex two in Nassa's Wallops Island Flight Facility on the Virginia mid Atlantic coast, carrying a classified payload. This Space Time and Time That take another brief look at some of the other stories making us in science this week with a science report. A new study warns that the sea ice that usually forms around the Arctic during September could be completely melted by as soon as the twenty thirties. The findings are reported in the General Nature Communications are based on detailed studies by Korean, Canadian, and German researchers who model the future of the Northern Pole under current and low emission scenarios. The authors say this future puts the ice dooms day clock a full decade earlier than previously thought. A new study shows that people with cannabis used disorder are at a higher risk of being diagnosed with illnesses such as depression, as well as non psychotic and psychotic bipolar disorder. The findings are reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, are based on the study of over six and a half million people in Denmark. The researchers looked at diagnosis data for cannabis used disorder against diagnoses of the psyche patric disorders, and they say the disorder was associated with a higher risk for all of them, especially psychotic bipolar disorder. The researchers say the risk of being diagnosed with depression or bipolar disorder was highest in the six months after cannabis used disorder diagnoses. Scientists at the Queensland Museum Network have described three new species of carnivorous sponges collected on the Great Barrier Reef. The sponges were collected at a depth of one eight hundred and fifty meters by the Schmidt Ocean Institute's research vessel Falca using an rov. You can read the details of the discovery and a description of each species in the journal Zootaxia. Nobel Prize syndrome or nobelitis is a phenomenon associated with scientists, including Nobel Prize winning researchers, who indorseable form study in pseudo scientific areas in their later years, usually although not always, after having won the esteem some legitimate scientific achievement. What makes the syndrome so special is the fact that you normally think that of all people in the world, Nobel laureates would be the most resistant pseudo science crackery. However, timendum from a Strange skeptic says, it seems, on the contrary, nobil disease underscores the fact a human simply aren't immune to falling for crank ideas, pseudo scientific dogma and wu. In the case of an American academic who was doing stuff on neurobiology and doing sort of reasonable stuff on depression and that sort of stuff and the impact of the brain and then on these conditions on the physical positions, then he was moving into some slightly fringy area. He started looking at the impact of someone's birthdate on their brain structure and the function of the brain. So you wander spectically astrology, almost looking from a birthdates and comparing them with brain skins. Now whether you see what you want to see. He got mixed up with a group called the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which has been around for a while, started by astronaut edgar Mitchell to look into sort of paranormal areas. And this group has been looking at a lot of things psychic and influence of psychipics. They definitely believe in telepathy and psychokinesis, which is moving stuff with you mind, astral protection your body, going outside your body, is that handeling, which is about calling up ancient spirits. So an academic moving into further and further, not that disguise necessarily involved in those worry things, but it's certainly getting involved in some strange areas is not that uncommon. Unfortunately, that's what we call the Nobel rot of a number of Nobel scientists who have moved into some very fringy areas normally outside the areas for which they want a Nobel prize. And I think because they want a Nobel prize, they have a certain inframater given to what they're doing now, which is selling a vitamin or we're working in some particulars of the esoteric field. It happens a lot, and we've come across academic senior academics, professors and as we say, Nobel Prize winners who do this sort of stuff. And whether it's because they believe that they can do no wrong because they've had this great a seatment, or whether because they're just looking for something different, or whether they've just gone up. It's amazing how common Nobel Price syndrome can be. That yeah, it happens. It happens a lot, well a lot to all of us would be bit unkind, but iman it happens a mask to who happened to you or me for example, never but I know, I know of skeptics, people who have been firm skeptics who have just suddenly turned and gone down a rabbit hole. Very sad to see when someone is obviously, if someone who applies strong critical thinking techniques then doesn't to something which means something more to them itself. Story, if you're balancing emotion and desire against that of rationality, often rationality goes out of the window. Unfortunately, something you really really want, you're going to go down that past for a lot of people, whether you're an academic or whether you're an or new person on the street, you're really going to be careful about and think about where you're going. And you'd hope in your academics and scientists and things would do that, but apparently they don't. That's timendum from Australian Skeptics and that's the show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, Google podcast pocket Casts, Spotify, Acast, Amazon, Music bytes dot com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and from Spacetime with Stuart Gary dot com. Spacetime's also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio and on both iHeartRadio and tune In Radio. 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