S02E31: Galactic Milestones & Meteor Magic: August Highlights

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Gooday everybody, and welcome to the
Astronomy Daily podcast for Friday, the eleventh

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of August twenty twenty three. My
name is Tim Gibbs and I will be

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your host for today's episode. We'll
be as usual. I have my digital

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report reporter Hallie in the studio with
me today. Helli, how are you

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hi? Tim? I am well, thank you, and it's great to

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see you back with a full voice. I have some great headlines for today's

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show. Do you have some good
stories? Actually I do. I have

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a couple of great stories for us
to cover this week, but let's start

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with you in your headlines. Back
to you, Hallie. Here are today's

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headlines. Virgin Galactic launched its first
tourist passengers into the weightlessness of space Thursday,

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the culmination of a nearly two decade
commercial pursuit. The company said.

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The three passengers, John Goodwin,
Keisha Shehaf and her teenage daughter Anastacia Mayors

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floated gravity free through the Virgin spacecraft
about forty five minutes after taking off.

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They are officially astronauts. Welcome to
space, said Virgin Galactic announcer Sireshia Bandla,

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as the spacecraft pushed above eighty kilometers
fifty miles in altitude, the level

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marking the edge of space where the
pull of gravity is minimal. After a

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few minutes in space, the craft
began descending and safely landed in the US

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state of New Mexico on the same
runway from which it took off. The

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flight was, without a doubt,
the most exciting day of my life,

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said Goodwin eighty, an adventurer who
competed in the nineteen seventy two Olympic Games

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as a canoeist for Britain. The
pure acceleration MACK three in eight and a

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half seconds was completely surreal, he
said. It was incredible and I'm still

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starstruck, said Mayors, who at
eighteen, became the youngest person ever to

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go into space. According to the
company, a long March two sea rocket

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lifted off from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center
in Shanghi Province, North China at six

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fifty three p m Eastern daylight time
on Tuesday twenty two fifty three gmt six

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fifty three a m on August ninth, Beijing time. The successful launch carried

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the haunting Genzi two f or SSA
R zero two synthetic aperture radar satellite for

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emergency management and environment monitoring. According
to China's space authorities, the satellite entered

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into a sun synchronous orbit, meaning
the at orbits over the poles and passes

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over the same region of Earth's surface
at roughly the same local solar time during

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each pass. SSA R zero two
will form an in orbit network with SSAR

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zero one, which launched in October
twenty twenty two. Both carry large deployable

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truss antennas and operate in the s
band, or the microwave portion of the

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electromagnetic spectrum, which space frequencies from
two to four gigahertz. The satellites are

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able to produce images even during cloudy
and rainy weather, filling gaps in the

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coverage of optical satellites. Russia launched
its first probe to the Moon in almost

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fi years on Friday, a mission
designed to give fresh impetus to its space

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sector, which has been struggling for
years and become isolated by the conflict in

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Ukraine. The launch of the Luna
twenty five probe is Moscow's first lunar mission

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since nineteen seventy six, when the
USSR was a pioneer in the conquest of

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space. The rocket with the Luna
twenty five probe lifted off at two ten

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am Moscow time twenty three ten GMT
Thursday from the Vostokni Cosmodrome. According to

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live images broadcast by the Russian Space
Agency ros Cosmos, the spacecraft is due

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to reach lunar orbit in five days. It will then spend between three and

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seven days choosing the right spot before
landing in the lunar South Pole area.

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For the first time in history,
the lunar landing will take place on the

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lunar south Pole. Until now,
everyone has been landing in the equatorial zone.

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Senior Roscosmos official Alexander Blokan said in
a recent interview. Ros Cosmos expects

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the probe to land on the Moon
around August twenty first Astronomy Daily podcast,

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Thanks for that, Hallie. As
many of you will know, the twenty

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twenty three Perceed meter shower peaks this
weekend. The Perceeds are one of the

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highlights of the meteor hunter's calendar.
The perceed meter shower will peak this weekend

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as Earth makes a yearly dive through
the debris left behind by Comet one O

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nine P swift Tuttle. The peak
activity of the meteor shower will occur around

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four o'clock EDT that's eight GMT on
Sunday, August thirteen. The Perceeds are

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a yearly highlight highlight for meteor hunters, who in the right conditions can see

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as many as one hundred fireballs and
light trails per hour from the meteor shower.

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This is according to the Royal Museum
in Greenwich, with even more potentially

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visible at the shower's peak. This
year, the perceed meter shower is active

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between July seventeen in August twenty four. The Perseids take its name from the

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fact that its meteors appear to streak
towards Earth from the constellation Perseus, Astronomers

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call the point from which meteors appear
to stream the radiant. This means that

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the best time to see the Persia
Media shower is when the radiant in Perseus

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is above the horizon. The skywatchers
based in New York, for instance,

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the radiant point of the perse is
a circumpolar, which means it's always overhead,

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meaning the meteor shower is visible all
night after the sun has set and

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a sky has darkened. Russian cosmonaut
Alexander Viktorenko, whose four flights into Earth

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orbit, including the first test of
a space motus cycle and first launch after

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the fall of the Soviet Union,
has died at the age of seventy six.

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The Gregarian Cosmonaut Training Center in Star
City confirmed Viktorenko's death in a statement

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released on Thursday, August to the
tenth. Selecting in nineteen seventy eight to

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join the Soviet Soviet Corps, Victorenko's
cosmonaut career spanned nineteen years, including commanding

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four missions to the Mere space station. Victorenko's first launch, on July twenty

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second, nineteen eighty seven, began
a week long mission to deliver fellow Soviet

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cosmonaut Alexander alex Sandroff for a long
duration stay on Mere and accompany Mohammad Faris,

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a Syrian co cosmonaut, to and
from the space station. The Soyus

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TM three flight marked the first time
a MERE crew had launched on board one

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spacecraft and landed on another, with
victor Enko, Faris, and Alexander Levkin,

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who launched one hundred and seventy four
days earlier, returning to Earth aboard

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Soyus TM two, victor Enko lifted
off on his first long duration mission on

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September the fifth, nineteen eighty nine. This time paired with cosmonaut Alexander Serebov,

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Viktorenko commanded Soyus TMAT and the fifth
expedition to Mere. Over the course

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of their one hundred and sixty six
days in space, the two cosmonauts oversaw

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the arrival and installation of Kavant two, the third module and second major addition

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to the Mere Space space station,
and conducted five spacewalks. On his fifth

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EVA, Viktorenko followed Serebov in testing
Ilka, the so called space motorcycle,

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designed to enable cosmonauts to fly around
space station, similar to Nassa's Manned Maneuvering

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Unit or MMU. Despite its motorbike
moniker, the SPK, or Cosmonaut Maneuvering

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System, as it was formally referred
to, was closer in appearance to a

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floating arm chair than its two wheel
nickname. In total, Victorenko spent four

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hundred and eighty nine days, one
hour, and thirty three minutes in space,

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including nineteen hours and nine minutes on
six space walks Viktorenko was married and

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had two children, Osanka and Alexei. A memorial service and funeral will be

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held on August for twelfth at the
Federal Military Memorial Academy of Russia's Ministry of

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Defense in the urban District of miss
Chica. The Astronomy Daily Podcast, Now,

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Hallie, do you have a joke
for us this week? Why did

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the biologist get a promotion because he
had good self? I I can only

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say, Hallie, your jokes are
getting worse as time goes by. Thanks

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very much anyway, Thanks everybody for
listening to Astronomy Daily. You can find

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all of our episodes, plus our
parent podcasts, Space Nuts at space nuts

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dot io or at bytes dot com, and don't forget that you can join

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in the conversation yourself by going to
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You can hear Steve Dunkley on Mondays
and myself, Tim Gives on Fridays for

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a full show. Thanks for listening, see you next week. Bye for

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now, Thanks Tim ttfans the Astronomy
Daily Podcast. Bye