S02E16: Euclid Space Observatory // Artemis 2 Astronaut // Ingenuity Helicopter // and Steve's Birthday Nostalgia

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Welcome everybody to Astronomy Daily for another
episode. I'm Steve Dunkley, your host.

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It is July three, twenty twenty
three. Welcome aboard whole, and

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welcome, of course to Hallie,
our co pilot. How are you today,

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Hallie? Doing just fine? Thanks? Hello everyone. Well, it's

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been a big week. I've watched
the Falcon nine go up, taking a

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new crew to the ISS and that
was exciting. Lots of interesting other things

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going on. How about it,
Hallie. Well, the EUCLID Space Observatory

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is finally on its way to the
far side of the Sun of all places.

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Yes, we're exactly to the Sun
Earth lagrange point to position looking for

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dark matter. Oh, of course
that's where I'll find it. And I'll

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be chatting about Tess and the discovery
of a couple of earthlike exo planets.

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I love exoplanets. Really, you
always pushed them to the side of your

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plate. I had no idea.
And I've got some Artemis news about their

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Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Oh,
don't tell me, he's joined Space Force.

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Don't be silly. And you've got
a really interesting story about gravitational waves,

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haven't you. Oh, yeah,
six planets are big news these days.

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And also they've caught up with that
little helicopter on Mars that they lost

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communication with after sixty three days on
it's lonesome. So I can't wait to

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find out about that. And you're
going to tell us about that one.

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That's right. I'll get on with
it now. Here's the short takes.

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A new space observatory is flying across
the void after a dramatic launch atop a

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SpaceX rocket last Saturday, July first, but its journey has just begun.

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The European EUCLID Space Telescope began its
long journey to deep space on a SpaceX

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Falcon nine rocket from Cape Canaveral Space
Force Station on Florida's Space Coast. Oh,

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Steve, you should be playing the
Space Force music. European Space Agency

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Director General Joseph Ashbocker said it was
really a fantastic launch from the insertion of

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the spacecraft into orbit separation, but
he said researchers are anxious to the point

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where the various instruments are being switched
on will take a couple of weeks.

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The EUCLID Space Observatory will now spend
the next month commuting to the Sun Earth

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lagrange point two, which is about
one million miles one point five million kilometers

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away from our planet on the opposite
side of the Sun. Next comes a

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complex sequence of tests and observations to
make sure its two instruments are ready to

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go before it is cleared for its
ultimate mission to find evidence of invisible dark

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matter and dark energy and how it
is shaping our universe. Canada's Artemist two

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astronaut Jeremy Hanson says his country is
just getting started in lunar realms with his

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Round the Moon mission. He says
that a Canadian will walk on the Moon

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one day. Hanson was named it
as representative on Artemis two on April third,

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and within days, the experienced test
pilot found himself exploring new worlds as

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a result, speaking with Stephen Colbert, walking the Red carpet at Guardians of

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the Galaxy Volume three, participating in
an Indigenous vision quest, visiting policymakers in

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Canada and the US, and carrying
the flag at the Coronation of Charles the

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Third. After this work to connect
with numerous communities touched by space, the

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Artemist two crew officially began training on
May fifteenth, studying the control systems and

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computers of the Orion spacecraft and other
technical matters in a few months. However,

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the training timeline gets a little fuzzy, as this will be the first

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Moon crew in a half century.
The crew is awaiting direction as well as

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the development of simulators and procedures from
senior management for developmental missions. That's to

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be expected, Hanson said. Eventually
you'll see us doing amazing science and deep

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space. Hanson said, you'll see
a Canadian walk on the Moon someday and

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eventually go to Mars, because we
have that ability to do it in a

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way that brings benefits to Canadians.
The Canadian Space Agency has suggested that Canada

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will have seats on Artemis four and
six, which are both planned moon landing

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missions slated for around the end of
the decade see essays. Director of Space

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Exploration Development Martin Bergeron disclosed those early
stage discussions at the Canadian Lunar Workshop in

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late May. The first landing mission
Artemis three, maybe in twenty twenty five

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or twenty twenty six. The fifty
second flight of Nassa's Ingenuity Mars helicopter is

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now in the official mission log book
as a success. The flight took place

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back on April twenty sixth, but
mission controllers at nassa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in

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southern California lost contact with the helicopter
as it descended toward the surface for landing.

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The Ingenuity team expected the communications drop
out because a hill stood between the

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helicopter's landing location and the Perseverance rover's
position, blocking communication between the two.

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The rover acts as a radio relay
between the helicopter and mission controllers at JPL.

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In anticipation of this loss of communications, the Ingenuity team had already developed

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recontact plans for when the rover would
drive back within range. Contact was re

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established June twenty eighth, when Perseverance
crested the hill and could see Ingenuity again.

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The goal of flight fifty two,
a one thousand, one hundred and

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ninety one foot three hundred and sixty
three meter and one hundred and thirty nine

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second long flight, was to reposition
the helicopter and take images of the Martian

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surface for the rovers science. The
portion of J zero Crater the rover and

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helicopter are currently exploring has a lot
of rugged terrain which makes communications dropouts more

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likely, said JPL's Josh Anderson,
the Ingenuity team lead. The team's goal

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is to keep Ingenuity ahead of Perseverance, which occasionally involves temporarily pushing beyond communication

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limits. We're excited to be back
in communications range with Ingenuity and receive confirmation

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of flight fifty two. Sixty three
days is a long time to wait for

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the results of a flight, but
the data coming and indicates all is well

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with the first aircraft on another world. If the remainder of Ingenuity's health checks

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are equally rosy, the helicopter may
fly again within the next couple of weeks.

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The target for flight fifty three is
an interim airfield to the west,

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from which the team plans to perform
another westward flight to a new base of

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operations near a rocky outcrop. The
Perseverance team is interested in exploring. And

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that's all from me for now.
Back to you, Steve Astronomycast, and

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once again thank you for joining us
on Astronomy Daily. I'm Steve Dunkley,

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your host, and you can catch
all the past episodes of Astronomy Daily at

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space nuts dot io. And you
can catch all of the past episodes of

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Space Nuts, our parent podcast with
Drew Dunkly and Professor Fred Watson at that

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same address. Astronomers have found a
second Earth sized planet in an intriguing alien

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solar system. NASA's leading planet hunting
spacecraft has spotted its second planet that matches

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Earth size and may be able to
retain liquid water, and both worlds all

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but the same star. NASA's Transiting
Exoplanet Survey satellite TESS launched in April twenty

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eight. Since then, the mission
has discovered two hundred and eighty five confirmed

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exoplanets and more than six thousand candidates. One of the most intriguing of the

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confirmed planets is a world dubbed TI
seven hundred D, which is about the

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size of Earth and located in its
star's habitable zone. Now, scientists have

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determined that the planet has a neighbor
that's just as tantalizing, thanks to an

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October twenty twenty one alert that the
Earth Orbiting Telescope has seen something interesting.

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Emily Gilbert, an astronomer at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, told space

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dot Com. We first started looking
at it and we're like, as this

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real Gilbert and her colleagues are presenting
the research at the two hundred and forty

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first meeting of the American Astronomical Society
being held this week in saddle It's Seattle,

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And virtually she was very excited,
and the timing helped too, because

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in keeping with the birthday theme,
it was the day before her birthday.

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Test finds planets by staring at stars
for a month at a time, looking

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for small dips in brightness that can
indicate a planet passing between the star and

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the telescope. From these dips,
destronomers can estimate the size of a planet

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and clockets orbit. In twenty twenty, Gilbert and her colleagues reported the discovery

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of three planets around a small star
called TiO seven hundred. TiO stands for

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a test object of interest, which
is located about a hundred light years away

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from Earth. That star is a
red dwarf, but unlike many of its

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siblings, TiO seven hundred is relatively
quiet, without the sudden pulses of activity

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that could fry any life on a
nearby world. In the full two year

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data set that we have from tests, she says, we see no evidence

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of optical flare. Two of the
three planets the Tests initially found in the

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TiO seven hundred system orbit too close
to the star to look much like Earth,

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but the third world, known as
TiO seven hundred D, is particularly

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tantalizing that the world its found is
about twenty percent larger than Earth and orbits

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the star every thirty seven days,
putting it in what scientists called the habitable

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zone, where temperatures would allow liquid
water to exist on the surface. Tests

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will have its eye back on TiO
seven hundred in just over a week,

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Gilbert noted, with another nine months
or so of data due within the coming

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year, and researchers have brought in
reinforcements as well. Gilbert is currently observing

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the system with the very large telescope
in Jilly, using it's all spectrograph for

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rocky exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations ESPRESSO
instrument, which is designed to characterize Earth

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like exoplanets. The researchers hope the
ESPRESSO observations will allow them to determine the

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masses of all four planets in the
system, and a collaborator is using the

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Hubble Space telescope to estimate the star's
ultra violet emissions information that could inform climate

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models for these planets. And although
the James Webb Space Telescope has already proven

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capable of sniffing out the components of
an exoplanetary atmosphere, that skill won't be

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used on either TiO seven hundred or
E, which are each small enough that

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an atmospheric analysis would take far too
long to be practical. Given the star's

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small size, Gilbert says, however, it might be able to study the

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largest planet at Tao seven B.
She added, if the star was a

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little closer or a little bigger,
she said, we might have been able

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to spot Tao seven E in the
first year of Tessa's data. Ben Horde,

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a doctoral candidate at the University of
Maryland College Parks and a graduate researcher

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at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in
Maryland, set in a statement, but

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the signal was so faint that we
needed the additional year of a transit observations

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to identify it. Now scientists have
finally heard the chorus of gravitational waves that

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ripple through the universe. Scientists observed
for the first time the faint ripples caused

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by the motion of black holes that
are gently stretching and squeezing everything in the

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universe. They reported Wednesday that they
were able to actually hear what are now

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called low frequency gravitational waves, that
is, changes in the fabric of the

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universe that are created by huge objects
moving around and colliding in space. It's

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really the first time that we have
evidence of just this large scale motion of

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everything in the universe, said Moira
mcgloughlin, co director of NANOGrav the research

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collaboration that published the results in the
Astrophysical Journal Letters. Einstein predicted that when

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really heavy objects moved through space time
the fabric of our universe, they create

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ripples that spread through that fabric.
Scientists sometimes likened these ripples to the background

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music of the universe. In twenty
fifteen, scientists use an experiment called Ligo

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Lego to detect gravitational waves for the
first time and showed Einstein was right.

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But so far those methods have only
been able to catch waves of high frequencies,

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explained Nannagram member Shiara Mingarelli, an
astro physicist at Yale University. Those

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quick chirps come from specific moments when
relatively small black holes and dead stars crash

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into each other, Mingarelli said in
the latest research, scientists were searching for

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waves at a much lower frequency.
These low ripples can take years or even

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decades to cycle up and down,
and probably come from some of the largest

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objects in our universe, supermassive black
holes billions of times the mass of our

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Sun. Galaxies across the universe are
constantly colliding and merging together. As this

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happens, scientists believe, and the
enormous black holes at the centers of these

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galaxies also come together and get locked
into a dance before they finally collapse into

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each other, explained Bulks Marker,
an astrophysicist at Columbia University who was not

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involved in the research. The black
holes sent off gravitational waves as they circle

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around in these pairings, known as
binaries supermassive black holes. Binaries slowly and

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calmly orbiting each other are tenors and
base of the cosmic operas Marker set.

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No instruments on Earth could capture the
ripples from these giants, so we had

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to build a detector that was roughly
the size of the galaxy, said NANOGrav

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researcher Michael Lamb of the Seti Institute. The results released this week include fifteen

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years of data from NANOGrav, which
has been using telescopes across North America to

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whose searched for the waves. Other
teams of gravitational wave hunters around the world

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also published studies, including in Europe, India, China, and Australia.

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The scientists pointed telescopes at dead stars
called pulsars, which send out flashes of

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radio waves as they spin around in
space like lighthouses. These bursts are so

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regular that scientists know exactly when the
radio waves are supposed to arrive on our

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planet, like perfectly regular clockwork.
But as gravitational waves walk the fabric of

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spacetime, they actually change the distance
between Earth and these pulsars, throwing off

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that steady beat. And by analyzing
this tiny changes in the ticking rate across

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different pulsars, with some pulses coming
in slightly early and others late, scientists

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could tell that the gravitational waves were
passing through. So far, this method

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hasn't been able to trace exactly where
these low frequency waves are coming from,

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said Mark Kamyankowski, an astrophysicist at
Johns Hopkins University who was not involved with

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the research. Instead, it's revealing
that the constant hum that is all around

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us, like when you're standing in
the middle of a birthday party and there's

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our birthday theme. Again, you'll
hear all of these people talking, but

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you won't hear anything in particular,
he said. At any rate, they're

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hoping that continuing to study this kind
of gravitational wave can help us to learn

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about the biggest objects in our universe. It could open new doors to cosmic

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archaeology that may track the history of
black holes and galaxies merging all around us.

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Now, considering it's my birthday on
Friday, I thought I'd have a

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look back at what sort of things
were going on during my lifetime and looking

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at thirty eight years ago on this
day, or were within this day.

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On July two in nineteen eighty five, it was the turn of space Probe

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Giotto to be launched toward Hallie's commets. So Hallie, you'd be all over

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that, wouldn't you. I don't
think you were invented. Then on July

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two, nineteen eighty five, year
of European Space Agency launched Joto's space probe

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to get a close up look at
Hallie's commet, and I do remember this

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one. Nearly nine months after the
launch, on March fourteen, nineteen eighty

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six, Jodo became the first spacecraft
to observe a commet close up as it

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flew by. Hallie's comet came within
three hundred and seventy miles in the old

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language of the comets surface. Jotto
was named after the early Renaissance painter Giotto

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di Berdoni, who had depicted Halley's
comet as the star of Bethleham in his

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painting Adoration of the Magi. I
can't believe that's thirty eight years already,

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and just like that, that's how
this little universe comes to an end.

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Another episode of Astronomy Daily, Done
and dusted. Thanks for joining us home,

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Steve your host, and don't forget
Tim on Friday's Andrew and Professor Fred

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on Space Nuts. You can hear
all the episodes of both podcasts on space

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Nuts dot io anytime you like and
join them in the car or while you're

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walking or jogging or yogging as they
say in Sweden. Isn't it? Is

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that true or not? I'm not
sure anyway, See you later, Hallie,

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See you all next time, over
and out your whole beeve dunkle