Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says Dawn go away,
Speaker 1: No good for you. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Laren Bulk,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. So today we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about space, the final frontier, well one of them, one
Speaker 1: of the final frontiers. I mean there could be a superspace, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: what the space behind space? Uh yeah, we're talking about
Speaker 1: space today because we wanted to talk about NASA's Dawn mission.
Speaker 1: If you've been following the space news, as I know
Speaker 1: a lot of our listeners, do you are aware that
Speaker 1: this spacecraft has gone in orbit around a dwarf planet,
Speaker 1: series in our Solar system and serie that's C E
Speaker 1: R E S No, like the Syria on your phone. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you say Siri, where is Dawn, it says
Speaker 1: it will be in eight hours, and you're thinking, no,
Speaker 1: you're just giving more questions. Uh no, that's not the case.
Speaker 1: We're talking series the planet and that or dwarf planet,
Speaker 1: I should say, And that was after it already visited
Speaker 1: another astronomical body vesta, And so we're gonna talk all
Speaker 1: about what it did, why it's important, and what these
Speaker 1: these actual astronomical bodies are because it's a really cool story.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So I want to start this story off
Speaker 1: pre launch. Okay, all right, so like like you know,
Speaker 1: two thousand like way, pre launch, like circle the formation
Speaker 1: of the Solar System. Okay, that goes back before my calendar. Yes,
Speaker 1: yes it does. None of us like four and a
Speaker 1: half billion years ago or four and a half five
Speaker 1: billion years ago, Yeah, sure, sure, so none of us
Speaker 1: were there. No, I mean I know that away. I
Speaker 1: thought I was going to get away. So it only
Speaker 1: occurred to me to say, because you because you made
Speaker 1: a point of I don't know. Okay, So at any rate,
Speaker 1: the leading theory among astronomers and physicists is that everything
Speaker 1: in our Solar System was once just one big, nebulous
Speaker 1: cloud of of gas and dust and ice um, and
Speaker 1: something would have had to have happened to kickstart the
Speaker 1: formation of all the bodies in the Solar System are
Speaker 1: Sun and planets and moons and asteroids and etcetera. But
Speaker 1: we're not entirely sure what that is, but we think
Speaker 1: it might have been a nearby star going supernova. It's
Speaker 1: really cool, and it's one of those things I didn't
Speaker 1: really think about the idea of, uh, what sort of
Speaker 1: of circumstances would have led to all of these coalescing
Speaker 1: into what we know today, And the idea that it
Speaker 1: had to be or potentially had to be an external
Speaker 1: source of energy is really fascinating. Yeah. I'd often heard
Speaker 1: about the formation of the planets, but but I'd always
Speaker 1: thought about it in terms of how the planets and
Speaker 1: other rocky bodies and and gas giants and things formed
Speaker 1: around the Sun. And so you have the idea of
Speaker 1: the protoplanetary disks. Yeah, yeah, the Sun already being there,
Speaker 1: but of course the Sun has not always been there.
Speaker 1: It had to happen at some points. Yeah. So, so
Speaker 1: the radiation from this explosion could have like squished and
Speaker 1: pushed all the matter in this in this cloud nebula um.
Speaker 1: You know, each bit formally would have been an equilibrium,
Speaker 1: but but suddenly they would be exerting their gravitational force
Speaker 1: on all the other bits in really new exciting ways.
Speaker 1: And so as they started colliding and forming bigger, denser bits,
Speaker 1: they would have started orbiting around each other. And more
Speaker 1: bits would collide until the Sun would form in the center,
Speaker 1: and gradually all the other stuff formed around the Sun's orbit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: rocky bodies, some of them containing liquid water, like okay,
Speaker 1: so not Rocky Balboa. No, not Rocky Horror. Neither of
Speaker 1: those things. Both have exquisite bodies, they do well, and
Speaker 1: they do contain liquid water. That's uh so, that's cool. No,
Speaker 1: rocky planets as we know formed closer to the Sun
Speaker 1: and gash bodies like Jupiter and all of that. Um
Speaker 1: some of them having sort of rocky really icy moons
Speaker 1: formed further out and between Mars and Jupiter. The asteroid
Speaker 1: belt formed instead of an actual planet, which is pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The leading theory right now is that not that there
Speaker 1: was a planet therapy and it was destroyed by aliens
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Um No,
Speaker 1: we think that Jupiter's immense gravity mucked about with the
Speaker 1: planetation formation process and prevented I am inventing new words, Joe. Yes. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, Jupiter, being such an enormous body with
Speaker 1: its own gravitational pull ends up interfering with the process
Speaker 1: that would allow these bits to otherwise glom on together.
Speaker 1: And eventually coalesced to another planet. Yeah. Yeah, it just
Speaker 1: just got right up in its grill, and gravitationally speaking,
Speaker 1: Jupiter is all like that. It does get all up
Speaker 1: in the grill. So um. So. The asteroid belt contains
Speaker 1: lots of bodies of different shapes and sizes and compositions,
Speaker 1: and the two biggest are Vesta and Series. Alright, so
Speaker 1: let's start with Vesta. What do we know about that? Well,
Speaker 1: it is a rocky asteroid. I have heard Vesta has
Speaker 1: more in common with the inner planets of the Solar System. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was formed some like four point five billion years ago.
Speaker 1: It's uh. The apparent surface is of basaltic rock, which
Speaker 1: is what happens when lava cools down really fast. So
Speaker 1: what they think happened is that UM lava would have
Speaker 1: oozed up from the asteroids like hot Chewy set shortly
Speaker 1: after its formation and then cooled down pretty quick after that. Um.
Speaker 1: It was the fourth asteroid ever discovered by human people.
Speaker 1: That happened on March seven, thanks to Henrich William Ober's
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think I said that, right, Heinrich
Speaker 1: Wilhelm Olbers. Okay, thank you, UM of Germany if you
Speaker 1: couldn't figure that out, y'all, Uh, don't feel bad. Jonathan
Speaker 1: served in Kaiser Wilhelm's government shortly after the dinosaurs died out,
Speaker 1: and honestly, my my concept of time is somewhat elastic. Alright, So,
Speaker 1: how how big is this thing? It's pretty big. It
Speaker 1: is not small. It's about about and I'm about to
Speaker 1: read some very very precise numbers here, five hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy eight kilometers by five sixty by four eight in miles.
Speaker 1: That translates to mine by three eight by two eight five.
Speaker 1: So sizeable, very sizeable body. They're not really like planet
Speaker 1: or moon size, but like but you know, bigger than
Speaker 1: a car. Yes, four hundred three miles is significantly larger
Speaker 1: than most vehicles. It's almost a sphere, but does have
Speaker 1: this giant chunk that's four hundred and sixty kilometers or
Speaker 1: two eight five miles across and thirteen kilometers or eight
Speaker 1: miles deep that's missing from the south pole. That now,
Speaker 1: that is one of the things that is particularly interesting
Speaker 1: about this this asteroid body. It was one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why it was a great candidate to send a
Speaker 1: spacecraft to get a closer look because there appears to
Speaker 1: be you know, this is a chunk missing. It's not
Speaker 1: like it formed and it just has this interesting shape.
Speaker 1: It looks like this. This is an area where uh,
Speaker 1: something has forcibly impacted uh Vesta, and we we ended
Speaker 1: up having the entire body reshaped from that impact. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's how massive it was. And also this could end
Speaker 1: up teaching us more about some of the stuff we
Speaker 1: found here on our planet. Right. Uh. Yeah, we think
Speaker 1: that as much as five percent of the meteorites that
Speaker 1: fall to Earth are come from that missing chunk. Fine,
Speaker 1: what's crazy? All meteorites come from this from Vesta, from Vesta. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: whatever happened that knocked that bit out? Uh do you
Speaker 1: know how they determine that? Actually, I do know, and
Speaker 1: I can tell you when we get to the part
Speaker 1: about the Vesta mission. So yeah, So it's one of
Speaker 1: only three non earth bodies that we have a sample
Speaker 1: of here on the planet, that the other two being
Speaker 1: Mars in the moon. Right. So we you know, it's
Speaker 1: so neat that we ended up having this stuff like
Speaker 1: it ended up landing on our planet. We know where
Speaker 1: it from, or at least we we have very strong
Speaker 1: belief that it came from that place. Like there's not
Speaker 1: like a receipt, Like we can't say, like we could
Speaker 1: go back to Vest and return it for credit. But
Speaker 1: we do. But we do know, and I'll talk more
Speaker 1: about how we know when we get to that part
Speaker 1: of the episode. So now we move on also to
Speaker 1: talk about series. The dwarf planet. Yes, uh, like Earth,
Speaker 1: it has a dense core and a lighter crust, and
Speaker 1: we think it might have a lot of ice beneath
Speaker 1: the crust and in the mantle because the crust is
Speaker 1: less dense than Earth's and um also appears to contain
Speaker 1: all of these like water bearing minerals and stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: it might maybe even have just a wee bit of atmosphere,
Speaker 1: but we're not sure. Sort of like a whiff of atmosphere. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just an idea of acting. You know. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like a restaurant that's just getting started. It's got a
Speaker 1: little bit of an atmosphere, but we haven't really developed
Speaker 1: it yet. This series was the first dwarf planet we
Speaker 1: ever discovered, though. Yes, that happened on January one, eighteen
Speaker 1: o one, thanks to Giuseppe Piazzi of Italy. Excellent pronunciation
Speaker 1: hold on now, would that that would be including Pluto, now,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it that series was actually discovered before Pluto? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Pluto also being a dwarf planet, pluto status changes on
Speaker 1: a day to day basis. Yeah, it's it's real independable.
Speaker 1: Like we never we never know exactly what we're doing
Speaker 1: dealing with when we talk about Pluto, because by the
Speaker 1: time we record and by the time something publishes, things
Speaker 1: have changed occasionally. So, like we've said, series is about
Speaker 1: nine seventy five kilometers by nine O nine a k
Speaker 1: A six or six by five five sixty five miles.
Speaker 1: It's hard to picture exactly how big that is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's bigger than a car, significantly larger than any vehicle. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: no it is. It is difficult, right, I have those
Speaker 1: problems too, because that you sit there and you think, like,
Speaker 1: how long would it take me to drive? Ye, this distance?
Speaker 1: That that tends to be the way we tend to
Speaker 1: think about it. Uh yeah, And there's before we send
Speaker 1: a spacecraft there. We had, of course observed these I
Speaker 1: mean obviously that they were discovered in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: but we've since made other observations using other equipment. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: we've used telescopes like the Hubble and ground based telescopes
Speaker 1: that are on Earth or close to Earth, and the
Speaker 1: problem with that is when you're looking at very small
Speaker 1: objects that far away, it's hard to resolve them even
Speaker 1: with a very powerful telescope. Right, and there are lots
Speaker 1: of things we could potentially learn from a closer examination,
Speaker 1: which is precisely why these this mission exists, right the
Speaker 1: Dawn mission, the Dawn Mission, the NASA's Dawn mission. So first,
Speaker 1: these are protoplanets, and we know very little about protoplanets
Speaker 1: in general, apart from some hypotheses we have come up with.
Speaker 1: But you know, without going in and taking a closer look,
Speaker 1: you can't really put those hypotheses to the test us
Speaker 1: to see if you're on the right track or if
Speaker 1: you need to adjust the way you were thinking. And
Speaker 1: perhaps there is a different explanation for some of the
Speaker 1: observations you've made. This is the way science works, in
Speaker 1: other words, So that's really exciting. Will literally be learning
Speaker 1: stuff we have not and perhaps could not have anticipated
Speaker 1: as we go into this. We also learn more about
Speaker 1: the formation of our solar system by studying these planets,
Speaker 1: which will give us a few more pieces to that
Speaker 1: puzzle of how we got here, and by we, I
Speaker 1: mean the entire Solar system, not just the people in
Speaker 1: this podcasting studio. UM. So that's really cool, always getting
Speaker 1: more of a complete picture. I doubt we'll ever have
Speaker 1: a complete picture, but we have that desire to continuously
Speaker 1: add to our body of knowledge as far as this goes,
Speaker 1: and I think this will help us add to that. Also,
Speaker 1: the presence of water always leads us to the possibility
Speaker 1: that the planet may have at one time supported life,
Speaker 1: or perhaps there might even be a habitable ocean on Series.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that a little bit later too, and
Speaker 1: we may discover there. There's one hypothesis that suggests that
Speaker 1: a body like Series and a body like Vesta may
Speaker 1: have been responsible for the way the Earth is right now. Uh,
Speaker 1: and the idea being that something like Series might have
Speaker 1: been the source of the water on Earth, and a
Speaker 1: body like Vesta might have been the source of the
Speaker 1: Earth's iron core. So there's some theories exactly they formed Vultron,
Speaker 1: but Vultron in this case was Earth. So it's again
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where the hypotheses have been proposed,
Speaker 1: but now we get a chance to explore this more
Speaker 1: directly and see if those still hold any you know, value,
Speaker 1: or if in fact we have to re reconsider a thinking.
Speaker 1: So if we're just now reaching series and Series is
Speaker 1: very far away, we must have launched quite a while ago.
Speaker 1: I don't remember this launch. Uh yeah, well, let me
Speaker 1: tell you the story about how this launch came about,
Speaker 1: because it is its own really drum addict tail like
Speaker 1: one that could have easily like there needs to be
Speaker 1: a documentary to explain what happened, because it was one
Speaker 1: of those things where for a while, I'm sure the
Speaker 1: leaders on this project were convinced that it was never
Speaker 1: gonna happen, because they were thinking about launching a mission
Speaker 1: to look at Vesta and Series as early as nineteen two.
Speaker 1: So that's when you said pre launch. That's why my
Speaker 1: go to who first was two thousand and then. Now
Speaker 1: NASA has these pitch periods where different potential missions can
Speaker 1: come and present to various heads at NASA and say
Speaker 1: this is where I think we need to dedicate some
Speaker 1: of our resources. This is the sort of mission I
Speaker 1: think we need to do, and here's why. And they
Speaker 1: the project leaders of what would become the Dawn Mission
Speaker 1: went before NASA three separate times in n but didn't
Speaker 1: receive any interest in their posed mission. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: two thousand, when they were selected as a finalist for
Speaker 1: NASA Discovery Mission that they finally had a chance to
Speaker 1: really uh to to to get like established as a mission.
Speaker 1: So that meant there have been eight years that had
Speaker 1: gone by since they first came up with the idea
Speaker 1: till when NASA was saying, all right, let's really look
Speaker 1: at this as a potential mission, which also meant that
Speaker 1: the idea itself had evolved over those eight years. They
Speaker 1: began to tweak it, perfected, that kind of thing. So
Speaker 1: two thousand crazy. I mean, in that span of time,
Speaker 1: you'd have to imagine even the science that informs the
Speaker 1: mission is probably changing. Yeah, technology of the things that
Speaker 1: we're learning just through other missions, I mean, all of
Speaker 1: that is making an impact. But it gets even crazier.
Speaker 1: So in two thousand they're selected as one of these
Speaker 1: three finalists and there to go to NASA in September
Speaker 1: of two thousand and one. Yeah, two thousand one September,
Speaker 1: so they're going to go and talk to NASA when
Speaker 1: the terrorist attack happens and it cancels their meeting obviously,
Speaker 1: I mean everything, everything, everything was canceled because of that.
Speaker 1: So everyone goes home and the mission and it's it's
Speaker 1: future is put on hold. But after a while things
Speaker 1: got back on track. The mission was picked up to
Speaker 1: be a Discovery mission, so it went from finalists who
Speaker 1: picked for a Discovery mission. So now it's ready to go.
Speaker 1: On Christmas Eve two thousand three, the project has canceled
Speaker 1: due to budget cuts on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve,
Speaker 1: but Mr screws Right apparently whoever was in charge of
Speaker 1: the budget was visited by three Spirits and reconsidered. And
Speaker 1: also another big thing that happened was the project partner,
Speaker 1: Orbital Sciences Corporation, offered to continue working on the mission
Speaker 1: at cost, so not not charging anything that would result
Speaker 1: in a profit, but providing their their part at cost
Speaker 1: if it would mean the mission could continue. And things
Speaker 1: kept moving. Two thousand five, so we're still not into
Speaker 1: the point where anything is launched yet. Two five it
Speaker 1: gets in trouble again. The projects in trouble again because
Speaker 1: NASA administration changed. Now I don't know if you guys
Speaker 1: have ever you know, we we've experienced this a little
Speaker 1: bit in our company. Just one of those moments where
Speaker 1: you don't really know what's going to happen because there's
Speaker 1: a big change of leadership way above your pay grade,
Speaker 1: and you just don't know how that's going to trickle
Speaker 1: down and affect you. We've been very fortunate here and
Speaker 1: how stuff works. Um, but I have also been at
Speaker 1: other jobs where a big boss has changed and suddenly
Speaker 1: everyone feels like they're defending their job, like they have to,
Speaker 1: they have to justify why their job exists. The same
Speaker 1: thing is true at NASA with projects where there's a
Speaker 1: big administrative change in NASA, often you have people who
Speaker 1: have to defend their missions, their projects to the new
Speaker 1: administration to convince them that this is in fact worthy
Speaker 1: of funding. And that started up again. So the project
Speaker 1: got shut down two thousand six, but the Jet Propulsion
Speaker 1: Laboratory protested the shutdown. There was a review, and as
Speaker 1: a result of the review, the project was reinstated. So
Speaker 1: this this is just like I mean, this is in
Speaker 1: a way, this part is more crazy than any of
Speaker 1: the science and technology behind it. It's just the fact
Speaker 1: that all these hoops had to be jumped through in
Speaker 1: order for this to even happen. So at two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: the project finally got full approval, full backing from Nasson.
Speaker 1: It was officially official and stuff. So the team had
Speaker 1: hoped to launch the spacecraft between June and July two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, but bad weather scrapped those plans. I know, right,
Speaker 1: It's like there was a black cat that crossed the road.
Speaker 1: They had to go. They had to They had the
Speaker 1: wheel the Dawn spacecraft under a couple of mirrors broke
Speaker 1: on the way there. It was just crazy. But they
Speaker 1: were able to push the launch back to September two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, and and it did go up. It did,
Speaker 1: It did go up. Everything was fine. And here's the
Speaker 1: cool thing. So you know, we talk about things like
Speaker 1: like missions to Mars and how you have a limited
Speaker 1: window when you can launch right because of the way
Speaker 1: that Mars and Earth line up in there, and you
Speaker 1: want to get them when the right so that way
Speaker 1: you are expending the least amount of fuel and thus
Speaker 1: you have you don't have to have too, you don't
Speaker 1: have to add more weight to your launch vehicle. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of reasons, right, I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: very big picture kind of thing. The Dawn spacecraft had
Speaker 1: a little bit more flexibility because it doesn't depend upon
Speaker 1: chemical rockets for its propulsion in space. Ion propulsion drive
Speaker 1: ion thrusters. What. So we've talked like crazy science. I know,
Speaker 1: I know, we've talked about ion thrusters a couple of
Speaker 1: times in the podcast, and there's only been a few,
Speaker 1: relatively few examples of ion thrusters used uh in space missions.
Speaker 1: So here's what an ion thruster is. You use a gas.
Speaker 1: You are energizing a gas. You're essentially bombarding it with
Speaker 1: electrons so that those electrons can freely roam in at gas.
Speaker 1: That's that's where it becomes ionized. I can actually conduct
Speaker 1: electricity that way. The Dawn spacecraft uses xenon gas and
Speaker 1: it emits this charged ion gas as exhaust, So that
Speaker 1: is what actually creates the propulsion, which is really neat.
Speaker 1: It means also that it has a very gentle but
Speaker 1: steady acceleration, so it doesn't chemical rockets can accelerate very rapidly, right,
Speaker 1: and you can make these incredibly uh powerful motions, whereas
Speaker 1: ion thrusters, they are much more gradual in their acceleration.
Speaker 1: The flip side of that is that the top speed
Speaker 1: for a chemical rocket is much lower than the top
Speaker 1: speed for an ion thruster, because even though an ion
Speaker 1: thruster is going to take longer to accelerate to a
Speaker 1: really fast speed, it can continue to do so much
Speaker 1: longer than a chemical rocket, like like a factor of
Speaker 1: ten more because it like uses its fuel more slowly.
Speaker 1: And also it just it has a continuous acceleration acceleration
Speaker 1: thrust as opposed to chemical rockets where you get that
Speaker 1: that amazing amount thrust at the beginning, but it's not
Speaker 1: something that can continue perpetually because then you use up
Speaker 1: all your fuel. So yeah, very much, it's very much
Speaker 1: like it's because it's it's making very very good use
Speaker 1: of the fuel. But this is the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that is not necessarily going to work well for every mission.
Speaker 1: It's good for particular ones, like like the Dawn mission.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a perfect implementation for the Dawn mission,
Speaker 1: and it has turned out to be that way. So
Speaker 1: the ion thrusters came online on October sixth, two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: and from the Dawn Mission Journal entry for October seven,
Speaker 1: two thousand seven. By the way, the I don't know
Speaker 1: if you guys had a chance to look at the
Speaker 1: mission journal at all. But the the project leader from
Speaker 1: Jet Provulsion Laboratories who wrote the mission journal, he is
Speaker 1: a poet as well as an engineer, like he uses
Speaker 1: such poetic language to explain what is happening and the
Speaker 1: you know, like the the that there are now two
Speaker 1: uh to two bodies in the asteroid belt, one brand
Speaker 1: new and one ancient. Beyond words that are rendezvousing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like you're reading and like, holy cow, this guy
Speaker 1: must love science fiction because he's got a he's got
Speaker 1: a really eloquent way of putting it. Everyone that I
Speaker 1: that I read, um either interviews or papers from connected
Speaker 1: with this mission, was just delightful to read. It was altering.
Speaker 1: It's not dry engineering text in other words, So if
Speaker 1: you are interested in this, I highly recommend going to
Speaker 1: the NASA website and looking at the mission Journal. But
Speaker 1: this is an excerpt. This one is more of a
Speaker 1: technical explanation of the ion thrusters. While the three ion
Speaker 1: thrusters are the most familiar part of the i p
Speaker 1: S the ion propulsion system, they are not it's only elements.
Speaker 1: The system includes two computer controllers, only one is used
Speaker 1: at a time. When mission control selects one of the
Speaker 1: one hundred twelve throttle levels, each corresponding to a certain
Speaker 1: power consumption and thrust. The operating controller translates the command
Speaker 1: into currents and voltages that must be applied to parts
Speaker 1: of the thruster and the flow rate of xenon propellant
Speaker 1: to the thruster. The controller also provides the principal communications
Speaker 1: between the main spacecraft computer and the rest of the IPS,
Speaker 1: accepting commands and reporting on the IPS performance. While the
Speaker 1: controller is the brain of the system, the two power units,
Speaker 1: again only one is used at the time, are the
Speaker 1: braun Following instructions from the controller. A power unit receives
Speaker 1: power from the solar rays at about one hundred volts
Speaker 1: and converts it to more than one thousand volts for
Speaker 1: use by the thruster. One hundred and twelve throttle levels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that a hundred and twelve speed bikes. What we're talking about?
Speaker 1: Why doesn't it just go up to one? Because because
Speaker 1: this exactly, I gotta tell you that working the clutch
Speaker 1: gets a little sticky. Between sixty seven and sixty eight,
Speaker 1: it does. Okay, well, you know, you gotta be a
Speaker 1: little careful. Now, everything has its So when it was
Speaker 1: using the ion propulsion as as thrust, which it did
Speaker 1: not do for the entire journey, that would have made
Speaker 1: it go far too fast for by the time it
Speaker 1: was reaching its destination. But when it was using it,
Speaker 1: it was applying thrust on an average of six days
Speaker 1: sixteen hours per week, so out of every week only, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you had six days and sixteen hours of
Speaker 1: it being used. As as as acceleration, the brakes would
Speaker 1: be used for times when they needed to orient the
Speaker 1: the spacecraft so that the antenna was facing back to
Speaker 1: Earth so they could beam back engineering information just to
Speaker 1: make sure everything was going well. So that communication time
Speaker 1: obviously got longer and longer as the spacecraft got further
Speaker 1: from the Earth. Now, one of the maneuvers that the
Speaker 1: Dawn spacecraft made was one of my favorites in space travel,
Speaker 1: the slingshot maneuver. Yeah, yeah, in February of two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: it kind of ricocheted through Mars orbit in order to
Speaker 1: pick up speed on its way to Vestep right, So
Speaker 1: it uses the gravity well of a planet in order
Speaker 1: to accelerate. Yeah, which is you know, it's that's awesome. Right,
Speaker 1: whenever you can make use of the the actual elements
Speaker 1: of space itself to help you on your journey, and
Speaker 1: that thus reduced the amount of effort you have to
Speaker 1: do yourself. Yeah, it's it's sort of like a it's
Speaker 1: sort of like a skateboarder in a silly action movie,
Speaker 1: kind of like catching the rear bumper of a car
Speaker 1: and then then using that cars forward momentum to to
Speaker 1: drive itself forward faster or and what action movie do
Speaker 1: you have in mind? Back to the future action There
Speaker 1: was no there was no word whether or not Power
Speaker 1: of Love was playing at the same time. So there's
Speaker 1: some other stuff that's aboard. There's some other stuff that's
Speaker 1: aboard the spacecraft. Besides it's it's propulsion thrusters, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: getting the soap, getting their nose. Yes, the Dawn mission,
Speaker 1: I was. I was so hoping we could get through
Speaker 1: without having to talk about that. Well, obviously, from the
Speaker 1: amazing images we've seen already, it must have an awesome
Speaker 1: camera and a photographer he's great. Obviously, it's an automated camera. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was made in Germany. Uh, and it does not
Speaker 1: just take those pretty pictures. It's also being used for
Speaker 1: for orbit navigation. Um AND is mapping the surfaces topography
Speaker 1: and can even help us determine what the surfaces of
Speaker 1: these things are made of based on the reflective and
Speaker 1: refractive properties of the stuff down. They're going to be
Speaker 1: very important as we get to it a little bit later. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: there's also a visible and Infrared Mapping spectrometer UM. That's
Speaker 1: a mapping the body's surfaces and helping determine their composition
Speaker 1: and temperature and properties UM AND and that works of
Speaker 1: course by taking you know, very detailed note of the
Speaker 1: wavelengths of light that the surfaces are reflecting. UM. There's
Speaker 1: also a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer good, so I
Speaker 1: can detect like the Hulk, Yeah, excellent. Yeah, the Hulk
Speaker 1: probably lives on series UM constantly playing that sad music,
Speaker 1: just just blogging with his thumb out and there's no
Speaker 1: one there, sad Hulk um. Uh. These are these are
Speaker 1: good for for determining the precise elements that are present
Speaker 1: on those surfaces and it and it works by measuring
Speaker 1: the effects of energetic particles that are bombarding the surfaces.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there are so many particles out
Speaker 1: there in space that are bombarding everything. Um, the researcher
Speaker 1: that I read and an interview from likes to call
Speaker 1: it splat because because that's just what's going on all
Speaker 1: over our galaxy. All yeah, um so uh so yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's radioactive stuff on the surfaces, there's energetic particles
Speaker 1: bombarding the surfaces, and all of those create radiation coming
Speaker 1: up off of the not planet things. I keep wanting
Speaker 1: to say planets, and I'm like, no, they're tot's not planets,
Speaker 1: asteroid and dwarf planet. It just seems like if you
Speaker 1: wanted to be mean, you could say pseudo planets. If
Speaker 1: you want to be If you want to be diplomatic,
Speaker 1: NG say objects objects proto planets, proto planets. At any rate,
Speaker 1: if you very carefully measure that radiation, you can extrapolate
Speaker 1: what must be down there. Um uh you know, either
Speaker 1: being bombarded or or giving off that radiation itself. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then this is my favorite. Uh, they have a
Speaker 1: gravity science unit. I first imagined that this would just
Speaker 1: be an Apple science unit, very little joke grenade for Joe. There. No,
Speaker 1: this this sucker is our way of peeking into the
Speaker 1: objects interiors without actually landing on them UM. And you know,
Speaker 1: you can tell a lot about the inside of a
Speaker 1: space thing by measuring its gravitational field, especially if you've
Speaker 1: got some information about what is on the surface. You
Speaker 1: can extrapolate the density of the thing and therefore the
Speaker 1: composition of the interior based on how the thing is
Speaker 1: pulling and pushing at objects that are near it UM
Speaker 1: And the gravity science unit does this using radio waves UM,
Speaker 1: so it bounces radio waves off of the surface and
Speaker 1: back to the unit in in route that the waves
Speaker 1: get Doppler shifted by the gravity of the thing. So
Speaker 1: so by measuring that Doppler effect really precisely, you can
Speaker 1: figure out how much force the thing is exerting on
Speaker 1: the spacecraft from moment to moment, and then deduce some
Speaker 1: models about what must be in the interior to be
Speaker 1: creating that force. Right, Because of course we know that
Speaker 1: gravity is a function of mass one one part of that, right,
Speaker 1: So the mass is also going to be dependent upon
Speaker 1: what matter is there and the density of that matter.
Speaker 1: So if you're able to measure the gravity, you can
Speaker 1: start to make some good guesses about the nature of
Speaker 1: the matter that is actually there. That's really neat. I
Speaker 1: never really considered it that way, I would have thought
Speaker 1: like I tend to think of it the other way around,
Speaker 1: where you get a good idea of what the matter is,
Speaker 1: and therefore you can guess how how strong the gravitational
Speaker 1: poll is going to be. Actually, wouldn't have to guess.
Speaker 1: You would know if you know what the stuff is
Speaker 1: made of. But that's really really interesting. Uh So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the Don's mission and its
Speaker 1: encounters with Vesta and with Series. Right, So, before it
Speaker 1: got to Series, which it's orbiting now, it had to
Speaker 1: run in with the asteroid Vesta, not not a little
Speaker 1: literal run in. It didn't know, Yeah, I know, it
Speaker 1: sought Vesta out. This was an intended encounter. They hung
Speaker 1: out for a while, you know, the exchange numbers, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Uh. This would have taken place between
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven two thousand twelve and Yeah. So
Speaker 1: in order to get to Vesta, Don had travel two
Speaker 1: point eight billion kilometers or one point seven billion miles there,
Speaker 1: so longer than the length of a car, longer than
Speaker 1: longer than a car. The journey lasted nearly four years
Speaker 1: to get there. Uh, and it confirmed a lot of
Speaker 1: what we suspected about Vesta, which is fine. Like that
Speaker 1: was again one of those things where we had some
Speaker 1: hypotheses and this is a way of finding out if
Speaker 1: we were on the right track. So one of those
Speaker 1: was that Vesta is related to three classes of meteorites, Howard,
Speaker 1: it's eucrites and diogenites, collectively referred to as H. E.
Speaker 1: D meteorites. I've never heard of these before. Do you
Speaker 1: know what the differences? Well, there used to be shimp bights,
Speaker 1: but he left and was replaced by diagenites. Come on, now,
Speaker 1: you made a dawn dish, all right. So the giant
Speaker 1: crater at the south pole of Vesta that Lauren was
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, it did suggest that perhaps there was
Speaker 1: some sort of enormous impact that blasted a huge chunk
Speaker 1: off of Vesta, and at that chunk either are broken
Speaker 1: too smaller pieces, many of which ended up entering Earth's
Speaker 1: atmosphere and became meteorites. And this was a way of saying,
Speaker 1: let's take a closer look and see if that in
Speaker 1: fact is accurate. They use spectral analysis essentially, because we
Speaker 1: knew what the meteorites were made of. They're on Earth exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a real good look at them, and so
Speaker 1: using spectral analysis originally from things like the Hubble telescope,
Speaker 1: it looked like the Vesta was a really good candidate.
Speaker 1: And then using the closer look with Don we were
Speaker 1: able to say that, yeah, it does look like this
Speaker 1: stuff is in fact, uh, the same, the exact same
Speaker 1: stuff that we found back on Earth. All of that
Speaker 1: seems to be holding true, So that hypothesis looks like
Speaker 1: it's pretty accurate now. Also, we saw that Vesta seems
Speaker 1: to have kind of like an onion like layering, and
Speaker 1: these different layers have different densities and compositions. So a
Speaker 1: big chunks you know you talked about how it was
Speaker 1: eight aisles deep on that south pole means that several
Speaker 1: layers are represented by those meteorites. That's why we get
Speaker 1: different types of stuff. It's like almost on the way
Speaker 1: to be in a blooman onion exactly. Well, we're totally
Speaker 1: goofing off on this one. I love it, by the way,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not criticizing. I'm having a good time.
Speaker 1: So the mission also found evidence of hydrated materials, which
Speaker 1: sounds exactly what it what you you know, it means
Speaker 1: what you think it means hydrated, means there's some sort
Speaker 1: of water involved, whether it's water that's captured within certain minerals,
Speaker 1: not water like water pooling on the surface of Vesta,
Speaker 1: because Vesta was believed to be way too hot and
Speaker 1: and not hydrated like hail hydrated. No, not that kind
Speaker 1: of cut cut off one meteorite and tool rise to
Speaker 1: take its place. That's not the way it works. Sorry
Speaker 1: I interact. No, it's fine, but but one of the
Speaker 1: things about that is that the Howardites class of meteorites
Speaker 1: have carbonaceous material in it, meaning that it's carbon rich. Now,
Speaker 1: carbon rich is one of those things you would not
Speaker 1: expect to find on a body like Vesta. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: expect to find water or carbon rich material. So what's
Speaker 1: up with that? I just said that it looks like H. E. D.
Speaker 1: Meteorites have originated from this massive collision that happened in
Speaker 1: Vesta's past. How could that be if, in fact this
Speaker 1: planet wouldn't have had carbon rich material or water on it. Well,
Speaker 1: the thought is that whatever slammed into it did have
Speaker 1: carbon rich material and water on it, and so some
Speaker 1: of it ended up going off into space and becoming
Speaker 1: other chunks of rock eventually becoming meteorites that land here
Speaker 1: on Earth, and some of it said I think I'll
Speaker 1: stick around. Yeah, So if you look at the pictures
Speaker 1: of Vesta, you will see in some of the images
Speaker 1: they'll be darker spots along it that tends to be
Speaker 1: that carbonaceous material, the the type of meteorites or the
Speaker 1: type of rocks that were mentioning here. And so it's
Speaker 1: they a lot of the study I've read, people have
Speaker 1: suggested that they didn't originate on Vesta. This was stuff
Speaker 1: that was deposited on Vesta as a resort, the result
Speaker 1: of collisions. So I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Of course after it left Vesta, Dawn was on track
Speaker 1: to meet up with Series. So right now the Dawn
Speaker 1: spacecraft is has entered Series orbit. It entered on March sixth,
Speaker 1: I believe, or did it in around March six There
Speaker 1: is that one we found out about it, or I
Speaker 1: guess would be the same time. It's not that far away,
Speaker 1: It's not it's not all that far away, um, I
Speaker 1: mean it is very far away. It's not so far
Speaker 1: that it would take us like days to the radio.
Speaker 1: I mean even even in Mars. You're talking like less
Speaker 1: than twenty minutes to get the information. Okay, okay, So
Speaker 1: it entered orbit around Series. Now on the approach, it
Speaker 1: started getting some really good pictures of Series. On Monday,
Speaker 1: January nineteen, so a few months ago, NASA released some
Speaker 1: photos of Series that were taken on Janu and it
Speaker 1: was blurry, but you could clearly see, for example, a
Speaker 1: white spot on the surface of Series. It's something that
Speaker 1: seemed to be reflecting way more sunlight than the rest
Speaker 1: of the surface of the object. And this wasn't the
Speaker 1: first time that we realized there was a bright spot
Speaker 1: on the surface of Series, but suddenly we could see
Speaker 1: it a lot more starkly than ever before. And a
Speaker 1: lot of people started asking what is it. And it's
Speaker 1: really cool because initially the scientists said, we don't know.
Speaker 1: My thought was that it was the Hulk. He had
Speaker 1: fashioned a very highly reflective sign because the thumb sticking
Speaker 1: out wasn't working out and it said will work for
Speaker 1: gamma rays. Nice well. So there have been subsequent photos
Speaker 1: taken with better resolution and still we don't know. We
Speaker 1: don't know what it is. It Uh. It turns out
Speaker 1: there are actually multiple spots on the surface that have
Speaker 1: a much higher albedo a higher reflective index um than
Speaker 1: the rest of the surface, and the main bright spot
Speaker 1: actually has a sort of dimmer companion right next to it.
Speaker 1: There are other bright freckles. I've seen them called on
Speaker 1: the surface of series. You should check out the photos.
Speaker 1: If you haven't seen them, look this up because it
Speaker 1: looks really cool and really strange and people don't know
Speaker 1: the answer yet. Yeah. I love the one that has
Speaker 1: the pair of the spots, the bright one and the
Speaker 1: slightly dimmer companion that are very close together. Like if
Speaker 1: you weren't if your vision wasn't good, you might think
Speaker 1: it's one spot, but it's too. It is too when
Speaker 1: you look at it more closely, and it is strangely
Speaker 1: compelling to see because it almost looks like light is
Speaker 1: being admitted from there. They're very bright. Space dot Com
Speaker 1: wrote this up when when the new higher resolution photos
Speaker 1: come out and they got a statement from Mark Raymond,
Speaker 1: the Dawn mission director and chief engineer, and I love
Speaker 1: this quote. He said, we do not know what the
Speaker 1: white spot is, but it's certainly intriguing. In fact, it
Speaker 1: makes you want to send a spacecraft out there to
Speaker 1: find out. Okay, look what we do. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's what he said, and of course that's exactly what
Speaker 1: we're doing. So as Dawn brings series into sharper focus,
Speaker 1: we will be able to see with exquisite detail what
Speaker 1: what it is, what the white spot is. And I'm
Speaker 1: very excited to find out because there have been all
Speaker 1: these conjectures and people have said it could be cryo
Speaker 1: volcanoes or or ice guyser's you know, shooting up ice
Speaker 1: or materials from underneath the in the icy mantle. Another
Speaker 1: idea I read, I think I read this in a
Speaker 1: piece on I O nine that was interesting that said
Speaker 1: it could be exposed icy crust from recent impacts. So
Speaker 1: in other words, like you've got like the you've got
Speaker 1: the thin, thinner outer layer that got chipped away by
Speaker 1: an impact, and now you're seeing the icy goodness underneath.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah. So so the other places where we're
Speaker 1: not seeing this brightly reflective surface, or places where like
Speaker 1: dust is settled over time and it's sort of dulling
Speaker 1: the normally shiny surface. So one can only imagine what
Speaker 1: it would look like if this is the case. Yeah maybe, no, no,
Speaker 1: maybe if we like polish it up, yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: would be awesome. I also remember seeing one person who
Speaker 1: had suggested that it may also be that the uh
Speaker 1: it's deposits of some sort of highly reflective mineral at
Speaker 1: that particular spot, which is also a possibility. That's one
Speaker 1: of the other things they'll be looking at, and they'll
Speaker 1: be using lots of different methodologies to test these different
Speaker 1: hypotheses to find out which ones are the ones that
Speaker 1: are accurate. Yeah, I'm really excited to find out what
Speaker 1: it is. Now here's a funny thing, a little peak
Speaker 1: behind the curtain, as Jonathan would say, we record these
Speaker 1: podcasts a little bit ahead of time, so it'll be
Speaker 1: really funny if they find out the answer between the
Speaker 1: time we record this and the time it comes out.
Speaker 1: Hopefully that won't happen. But this is today, is Friday,
Speaker 1: March thirteenth, So if we just sounded like idiots, um,
Speaker 1: that's why. That's that's one of the specific reason why
Speaker 1: for this thing right now. Yeah. So there's another interesting
Speaker 1: thing that they're going to be investigating, and Jonathan, you
Speaker 1: brought this up earlier, is the possibility of oceans on series,
Speaker 1: not even just oceans, but possibly habitable oceans, which is great,
Speaker 1: The awesome I mean, it does seem like kind of
Speaker 1: a far off chance. It's not like that they think
Speaker 1: they're likely to find this, but just the possibility is insane.
Speaker 1: On something like if you look at pictures of Series,
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like something that would host life. It
Speaker 1: looks like the moon. It's this kind of like crazy
Speaker 1: dead rock in the middle of space. But before the
Speaker 1: Dawn mission reached Series, scientists had suspected that a good
Speaker 1: bit of Series mass was made of water. So NASA
Speaker 1: says that if of Series mass is H two O
Speaker 1: is water, that would mean Series has more fresh water
Speaker 1: than Earth. That's not more water, but more freshwater. So
Speaker 1: if it does have a substantial amount of water, is
Speaker 1: any of it liquid And if it's liquid, could it
Speaker 1: support life? That might not be as crazy as it sounds. Um,
Speaker 1: if Series does have a substantial amount of ice, the
Speaker 1: rock and the ice could separate into different layers that
Speaker 1: onion effect you were talking about. And some sigh, just
Speaker 1: think that the icy mantle of Series was once an
Speaker 1: underground ocean. So underground ocean, Yeah, okay, that's great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sort of similar to uh, though not exactly the same,
Speaker 1: but sort of similar to what you've heard about might
Speaker 1: be the case on Europa where there is there is
Speaker 1: frozen ice on the surface, but then probably liquid water
Speaker 1: underneath it. But anyway, that's something that maybe possible on Series,
Speaker 1: and we want to find out if that's the case,
Speaker 1: and if there is any liquid water, then there's always
Speaker 1: the chance that we could find evidence of life, which
Speaker 1: obviously be incredibly exciting. Yes, I'm betting on cave dwelling
Speaker 1: ice frogs. Yeah, there's a piece you can look at
Speaker 1: in Science magazine called don Probe to look for a
Speaker 1: Habitable Ocean on Series by Eric Hand in February of
Speaker 1: this year. On top of the water, one of the
Speaker 1: other things we could do is learn more about the
Speaker 1: early formation of the Solar System. Like Lauren was talking
Speaker 1: about early on, these objects out in space can and
Speaker 1: help give us clues about what happened when they were
Speaker 1: created and therefore how everything was created right right right,
Speaker 1: and it may also lead to us learning about how
Speaker 1: the Earth got its water. I think the reason why
Speaker 1: this is also really cool is that the more we
Speaker 1: learn about these processes, the more we know what to
Speaker 1: look for when we're looking outside of our Solar System.
Speaker 1: Things that if we know the various criteria that came
Speaker 1: together to form our solar system. If we can look
Speaker 1: for other similar systems, then that increases our chances to
Speaker 1: find other planets that could potentially support life. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and just getting more data about these things that we've
Speaker 1: only been able to study via via telescope so far. Uh,
Speaker 1: lets us check back in the data from those telescopes
Speaker 1: and see more patterns of where we got it right,
Speaker 1: where we got it wrong, and therefore make better guesses
Speaker 1: about other things that we're seeing through those telescopes. It's awesome,
Speaker 1: so awesome, And I one of the other things we
Speaker 1: can talk about that you know, we have a little
Speaker 1: section in our notes about the future of asteroids, and
Speaker 1: one of the things I wanted to mention is that water.
Speaker 1: The presence of water is a huge, huge deal for us,
Speaker 1: Like for many reasons for extended space exploration, being able
Speaker 1: to potentially harvest water from other bodies would allow us
Speaker 1: a lot more freedom, a lot more flexibility, and also
Speaker 1: creates the potential for things like terraforming down the road.
Speaker 1: If you're talking about bringing water in order to not
Speaker 1: just have something drinkable, but perhaps to help facilitate an
Speaker 1: atmosphere on a planet, that sort of stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a big deal, another big thing about the
Speaker 1: presence of water in space, because I mean, one of
Speaker 1: the things we should mention is, well, we've got plenty
Speaker 1: of water, why don't we just take some water into space. Well,
Speaker 1: it's really expensive to ship stuff into space gallons and
Speaker 1: gallons of fresh water is not a very smart way
Speaker 1: to invest in your your your payloads. So if you
Speaker 1: could actually access water once you're already out of Earth orbit,
Speaker 1: that that's a really cool thing. So asteroids that have
Speaker 1: water on them could be harvest, like you said, not
Speaker 1: just for drinkable water, not just for terraforming and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, but to make rocket fuel. That's because water
Speaker 1: has hydrogen and oxygen, the chemical elements you would use
Speaker 1: to make certain kinds of rocket fuel that we use
Speaker 1: in our reaction drives today. And while you might argue
Speaker 1: that we have plenty of water right now, it is
Speaker 1: a limited supply. It's not like we're getting tons of
Speaker 1: water from outside sources. So if you keep shipping water
Speaker 1: off the planet, I probably wouldn't be worried about that
Speaker 1: for a while. I wouldn't either. I'm just thinking, really
Speaker 1: long term. Yeah. Yeah, the the Earth's water cycle is closed. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: if we were to, say, end up siphoning water off
Speaker 1: of asteroids to bring it back here, uh, that seems
Speaker 1: like it would be a pretty enormous effort. I would
Speaker 1: have to think the steaks would be incredibly high for
Speaker 1: us to put forth that kind of investment. But never
Speaker 1: say never. No, I think it's more the idea that
Speaker 1: we would use this in space where we don't have access,
Speaker 1: like if we were to create another space station further
Speaker 1: out from the Earth. This would be a great source
Speaker 1: to be able to get water. And of course we
Speaker 1: would still be implementing the same water reclamation programs that
Speaker 1: we have on other types of spacecraft to extend use
Speaker 1: of water as long as possible, because you know, just
Speaker 1: because you have an access to it doesn't mean you know,
Speaker 1: you can stop by the series quickie mart and you know,
Speaker 1: pick up a few gallons, say a bunch of astronauts
Speaker 1: just brushing their teeth with the water running just bluggle
Speaker 1: lobs of water just floating around like crazy. We we
Speaker 1: could get more. That's just right over there. That's that
Speaker 1: makes me think of a crazy question. I can't believe
Speaker 1: I didn't think to look this up beforehand. Uh could
Speaker 1: you walk on series? Does it have enough gravity too
Speaker 1: that you could actually, you know, walk around on it.
Speaker 1: I have a question. I don't. It would have to be,
Speaker 1: it would be. I mean it's it is definitely it's
Speaker 1: smaller than our moon. I just looked it up real quick.
Speaker 1: Right now. It looks like the gravity on series the
Speaker 1: downward acceleration is zero point to seven per second squared,
Speaker 1: whereas on the Moon it's one point six ms per
Speaker 1: second squared, right, and the moon is is one six
Speaker 1: could be nine per second square, so so very little gravity.
Speaker 1: Don't jump real baby. It was second a stroll on Series,
Speaker 1: and everything was nice until I sneezed and the next
Speaker 1: thing I knew. But at any rate, Uh, we've been
Speaker 1: fascinated with this whole story, everything from all that went
Speaker 1: into getting the mission together before it even launched to
Speaker 1: the stuff that we're seeing now, the images that are
Speaker 1: returning and the information that's returning from the mission. And
Speaker 1: also we should point out this is this is an
Speaker 1: historic mission for an other reason. It's the first spacecraft
Speaker 1: to visit two different uh proto planets at all, like,
Speaker 1: not only the first one to go to a pro
Speaker 1: planet like like series in that sense, but to go
Speaker 1: to two different ones. So that was a cool thing
Speaker 1: as well. We will keep our eyes on the news
Speaker 1: that comes out of the mission, and uh, like Joe said,
Speaker 1: I hope that this episode comes out before any other
Speaker 1: breaking news. Um. I mean, if if it turns out
Speaker 1: that there's some major thing that happens between when we've
Speaker 1: recorded this and when it publishes, that's awesome, right. I
Speaker 1: mean it's not like it's not like we're gonna be
Speaker 1: unhappy that it happened. We'll just be unhappy that we
Speaker 1: look dumb. So but this was a really fun topic
Speaker 1: to cover. I mean, we always love covering space topics.
Speaker 1: It's one of our favorite subjects to cover on here,
Speaker 1: Space AI and three D printing, that's kind of our
Speaker 1: bread and butter. But of course we love all topics
Speaker 1: about the future. So if there's anything out there that
Speaker 1: you dear listeners would love us to cover. Maybe there's
Speaker 1: some topic but you're just dying to hear more about,
Speaker 1: I invite you to write to us, let us know
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