S02E29: Stunning! Voyager 2's Interstellar Contact // XRISM // Space Junk Identified and more.

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Good day everybody, and welcome to
the Astronomy Daily podcast for Friday, the

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fourth of August twenty twenty three.
My name is Hallie and I will be

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your host for today. As usual, I am in the studio with my

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favorite human Tim, who unfortunately has
laryngitis, so I will be doing most

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of the hosting duties today. As
Andrew and Steve discussed Voyager too earlier in

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the week, Tim has an anecdote
for us, so over to you,

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Tim, and no rusty voices please, thanks for Hallie, and I'll do

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my very best to not sound too
rusty now. As Hallie has already said,

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Steph and Andrew discussed Voyager earlier in
the week, and if you do

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a search on YouTube for the greatest
live television shot with James Burke, he

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is doing a live piece to camera
talking about the Apollo space rockets whilst Voyager

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is launching in the background. A
lot of people thought this was CGI,

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but this was done in the nineteen
seventies when none of that existed, and

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it's really great to watch. I
would recommend it to you all now,

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seeing as my voice is not one
hundred percent today. Back to you,

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Halle for our Stories of the Week, thanks Tim. In a remarkable feat

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of interstellar communication, NASA has successfully
re established contact with Voyager two, a

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spacecraft that's been journeying through the Cosmos
since nineteen seventy seven. Currently positioned over

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twelve point three billion miles from Earth, Voyager two received an interstellar shout from

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NASA's highest power transmitter based in Canberra, Australia, correcting its antenna orientation and

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re establishing communication. Both Voyager spacecraft
carry Golden Records, twelve inch gold plated

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copper discs narrating the story of our
world to potential extraterrestrial life. The success

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of this interstellar shout, initially not
expected until October fifteenth, marks a significant

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milestone for NASA and the Voyager mission. However, it's worth noting that the

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power banks of the Voyager spacecraft are
projected to run out sometime after twenty twenty

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five. NASA data helps Bangladeshi farmers
save water, money, energy. With

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nearly one hundred and seventy million residents, Bangladesh is one of the most densely

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populated nations in the world. Nearly
half of its residents work on or live

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around farms. And rice crops are
critical to feeding that population. So when

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researchers from the University of Washington and
Bangladesh's Ministry of Agriculture joined forces to use

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data from NASA and its partners to
help the country's rice farmers, the potential

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benefit was substantial. Through their IRIS
program, short for the Integrated Rice Advisory

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System, researchers from UW and Bangladesh
use satellite data to deliver information to farmers

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about how much water they are using, how much they have, and how

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much their crops need. Rice is
an essential crop in Bangladesh, and cultivating

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it requires a lot of water and
fuel. During the country's dry season,

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which takes place from January to June, farmers typically pump groundwater from aquifers.

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Pumping is expensive and it usually requires
burning fuels that release carbon dioxide into the

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atmosphere. To create sustainable and climate
resilient agriculture for the future, we need

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to minimize irrigation waste and decarbonize the
production by using affordable solutions that can be

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scaled globally. Set Feissel Hossain,
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the

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University of Washington and leader of IRIS, The IRIS team completed its first nationwide

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effort in June twenty twenty three,
providing advisories on irrigation needs to more than

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ten million farmers across Bangladesh. Hossain
and the IRIS team estimate that the program

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has the potential to reduce agricultural water
waste in Bangladesh by about thirty percent,

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reduce agricultural fuel consumption by forty five
percent, save one hundred and fifteen million

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dollars annually in fuel subsidies, and
reduce carbon emissions by three hundred thousand tons

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per year. An experiment sent to
the International Space Station aims to help scientists

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develop AC for astronauts who may travel
to remote areas of our Solar System and

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perhaps one day beyond deep space.
AC requires understanding how low gravity affects boiling

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and condensation. An experiment sent to
the International Space Station on the final entary's

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rocket launch, which took place on
Tuesday, August first, aims to help

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scientists develop air conditioning for a future
in which astronauts can travel to remote places

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in the Solar System, keeping humans
alive, happy, and healthy while away

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from the comfort of Earth, including
on spacecraft or in planetary habitats will require

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reliable air conditioning that can continue operating
in wildly different temperatures and when exposed to

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various gravitational environments. Heating, ventilation
and air conditioning systems on Earth use evaporation

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and condensation to control indoor air temperatures
and humidity. Thus, designing systems for

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possible deep space habitats will first require
understanding how microgravity affects such evaporation and condensation

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processes. We have developed over a
hundred years worth of understanding of how heat

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and cooling systems work in Earth's gravity, but we haven't known how they work

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in weightlessness. SETTI some muta war
produce Betty Ruth and Milton by Hollander,

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Family, professor of mechanical engineering,
said in a new step towards this goal,

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a Perdue University experiment launched on the
nineteenth Commercial Resupply Service mission from Northrop

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Grumman and G nineteen to the International
Space Stations. Hopefully it'll collect data to

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help answer long standing questions about how
boiling and condensation work in low gravity.

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This will add a second module to
a facility called the Flow Boiling and Condensation

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Experiment FBC. The first module aboard
the ISS since August twenty twenty one,

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has been collecting data on the effects
of microgravity on boiling in particular, but

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the new components arriving at ISS will
soon allow teams to also investigate how condensation

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works in microgravity by comparing data collected
in orbit with data collected on the ground.

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Both modules will run through twenty twenty
five. Japan's RISM X ray Imaging

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and Spectroscopy mission, pronounced at CHRISM
Observatory, expected to launch August twenty fifth

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August twenty sixth, Japan local time, will provide an unprecedented view into some

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of the hottest places in the universe, and it will do so using an

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instrument that's actually colder than the frostiest
cosmic location now known. Srism's resolve instrument

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will let us peer into the makeup
of cosmic X ray sources to a degree

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that hasn't been possible before, said
Richard Kelly, NASA's RISM principal investigator at

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NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. We anticipate many new insights

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about the hottest objects in the universe, which include exploding stars, black holes,

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and galaxies. Powered by them and
clusters of galaxies. A new NASA

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infographic illustrates the enormous range of cosmic
temperatures. At the bottom of the scale

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is absolute zero kelvin or four hundred
and fifty nine point six seven degrees below

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zero fahrenheit minus two hundred and seventy
three point one five celsius. The detector

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fors RISMS Resolve instrument is just a
few hundreds of a degree warmer than this.

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It's twenty times chillier than the Boomerang
nebula, the coldest known natural environment,

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and about fifty times colder than the
temperature of deep space, which is

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warmed only by the oldest light in
the universe, the cosmic microwave background.

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The instrument, a collaboration between NASSA
and jacksa japan aerospace exploration agency, must

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be kept so cold because it works
by measuring the tiny temperature increase created when

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X rays strike its detector. This
information builds up a picture of how bright

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the source is. In various X
ray energies the equivalent of colors of visible

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light and lets. Astronomers identify chemical
elements by their unique X ray finger prints

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called spectra. With current instruments were
only capable of seeing these finger prints in

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a comparatively blurry way, said Brian
Williams, NASA's RISM Projects scientist at Goddard.

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Resolve will effectively give X ray astrophysics
a spectrometer with a magnifying glass.

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Srism's other instrument, called Stend,
developed by Jackson and Japanese Universities, is

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an X ray imager that will perform
simultaneous observations with Resolve, providing complementary information.

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Both instruments rely on two identical X
ray mirror assemblies developed at Goddard.

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The mystery surrounding a large piece of
space debris that washed up on a beach

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in western Australia appears to have been
solved. The Australian Space Agency believes the

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wreckage is likely a section of the
third stage of a Polar Satellite launch vehicle

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PSLV operated by the Indian Space Research
Organization IRO. The debris is thought to

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be part of a PSLV rocket that
launched a navigation satellite for the IRNSS constellation

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on May twenty ninth, twenty twenty
three. The incident highlights the growing problem

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of space debris with the European Space
Agency estimating that there are currently around ten

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thousand spacecraft in orbit around Earth,
at least two thousand of which are dead.

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The Astronomy Daily Podcast thank you.
Thanks for that. Hollie, do

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you have a joke for us this
week? Here's a science joke for you.

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Why did the biologist break up with
the computer scientist because they couldn't find

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a common ancestor. That is just
a terrible joke. Thanks everybody for listening

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to Astronomy Daily. You can find
all of our episodes, plus our parent

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podcasts, space Nuts at space nuts
dot io or at bites dot com.

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And don't forget that you can join
in the conversation yourself by going to our

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Facebook page Space Nuts podcast group.
You can hear Steve Dunkley on Mondays and

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myself, Tim Gives on Fridays for
a full show. Thanks for listening,

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see you next week. Bye for
now. Thanks Tim TTFN to check you

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care for your own Bregre The Astronomy
Daily Podcast. I