S02E34: Russian Lunar Crash, Martian Oxygen, and Pulsar Discoveries

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Good everybody, and welcome to the
Astronomy Daily podcast. My name is Tim

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Gibbs and I will be your host
for today's episode. We'll be First of

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all, I would like to thank
all of our listeners for getting us into

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the top five of the Astronomy Podcast
charts and in the top one hundred of

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the Science podcast charts. Thank you
very much to everybody. We are truly

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humbled. Both Steve and I are. Now as usual, I have my

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digital AI report a Halle in the
studio with me. Now, Hally,

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I understand you did an extra show
with Steve. Hi, Tim, Yes,

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it was great to do an extra
episode and unexpected as well, but

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always fun to do episodes with Steve. Great, well done, Hallie.

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Now do you have some news headlines
for us this week? I do,

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indeed, here are my top stories. NASA's Lunar Trailblazer satellite is ready to

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hunt for water on the Moon.
Lunar Trailblazer joins a growing list of probes

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and landers heading towards the Moon to
search for water ice. NASA's Lunar Trailblazer

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mission is almost ready for liftoff.
The Lockheed Martin built Lunar Trailblazer satellite is

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fairly small as satellites go, measuring
just eleven point five feet three point five

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meters wide and weighing around four hundred
and forty pounds two hundred and twenty kilograms.

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When it launches no earlier than twenty
twenty four on a yet to be

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determined rideshare mission, along with the
Intuitive Machines i AM two mission, it

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will hunt for water on the Moon's
surface and attempt to map its abundance and

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distribution. The satellite recently received the
second of its two instruments, the Lunar

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Thermal Mapper LTM censor, built by
the University of Oxford in England. LTM

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is designed to use infrared light to
map the surface temperature of the Moon as

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well as mapping variations in the minerals
that make up the lunar surface. According

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to a Jet Propulsion Laboratory JPL statement, doing so will enable the satellite to

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identify lunar locations where water might be
found. Designing, building, testing,

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and now delivering LTM for its trip
to the Moon is a fantastic example of

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the innovative and dedicated teams at Oxford
and across the UK especially given the challenges

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of the recent pandemic. University of
Oxford physicist Neil Bowls set in the statement,

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the data from the mission will help
us to understand how water is transported

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across the surface and potentially captured in
cold traps near the lunar poles, allowing

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follow up from future human robotic exploration. Human missions to Mars necessitate an efficient

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launch system to ascend from the planet
and rendezvous with earthbound return vehicles. The

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critical component for this ambitious task oxygen, not only for as cent propellants,

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but possibly also for life support.
To facilitate a crew of six astronauts.

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Approximately thirty metric tons of oxygen propellants
would be required for a cent. This

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significant amount would be cumbersome and costly
to transport from Earth. The solution produce

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it right on Mars. Drawing oxygen
from mars abundant carbon dioxide CO two presents

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a significant advantage. This innovative technique
is part of an approach termed Institute resource

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Utilization ISRU. Recent accomplishments such as
the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment MOXI project,

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have demonstrated the viability of a prototype
system that can successfully convert Martian CO two

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into oxygen O two. Now the
focus shifts towards elevating this prototype into a

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fully operational system. In their latest
research published in Space Science and Technology,

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researchers Donald Rapp and Eric Hinderman lay
the groundwork for a full scale Mars ISSRU

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system. Their model proposes producing thirty
metric tons of liquid oxygen over fourteen months,

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accounting for the diurnal and seasonal shifts
in the Mars environment. Using the

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five hundred meter Appcher Spherical Radio Telescope
FAST. A research team led by Professor

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H. N. Gene Lynn from
the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy

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of Sciences an AOC has detected distinct
dwarf pulses from a bright pulsar PSAR B

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twenty one eleven plus forty six and
study the radio emission in unprecedented details and

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probed the unknown physics in the magnetosphere. Pulsars generally emit periodic radio signals.

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However, some old pulsars occasionally quenched
for some periods, a phenomenon known as

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a pulse nulling. Perhaps the particles
cannot be produced in the magnetosphere due to

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improper conditions or changes in the magnetic
field structure and radiation region, or the

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area for particle creation is then flooded
by plasma produced in other areas. The

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exact reason for the absence of pulsar
radiation is a mystery, because it is

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impossible to probe the physical state of
the pulsar's magnetosphere when radiation is quenched.

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PSR B twenty one eleven plus forty
six is a relatively old pol And scientists

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have long known that that emission from
this pulsar often nulls for periods of time.

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However, dozens of unusually weak,
very narrow pulses previously unobserved were detected

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during ordinary nulling periods when it was
serendipitously observed on August twenty fourth, August

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twenty sixth, and September seventeenth,
twenty twenty as part of the Galactic Plane

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Pulsar Snapshot Survey, a key project
of the Fast to Hunt pulsars. To

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verify this new kind of emission state, the researchers observed this pulsar for two

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hours again on March eighth, twenty
twenty two. Finally, we picked out

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one hundred and seventy five such narrow
weak pulses, said doctor chinshuis the first

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author of the study. According to
doctor Chen, such pulses stand out from

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normal pulses in terms of pulse width
and energy, and thus have been named

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dwarf pulses the Astronomy Duly Podcasts.
Thanks for that tally. Now I want

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to talk about one story today,
and this Russia's lunar probe crashing on the

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Moon. The Lunar twenty five probe, Russa's first Moon mission in almost fifty

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years, has crashed on the Moon
after an incident during pre landing maneuvers.

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The Russian space agency ross Cosmos has
said communications with Lunar twenty five was lost

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at two fifty seven pm on Saturday. According to preliminary findings, the lander

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has ceased to exist following a collision
with the Moon's surface. Yes, I'm

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sure Russia has been spending too much
money on a war somewhere rather than spending

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a decent amount of money on research
my personal view, But moving on.

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Measure has taken on August the nineteenth
and twenty to locate the craft to make

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contact with it were unsuccessful. The
space agency said in an investigation would be

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launched into the causes of the crash, without giving any indication of what the

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technical problem might occurred. With Lunar
twenty five, Moscow had hoped to build

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on the legacy of its Soviet era
lunar programming, making a return to independent

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lunar explanation in the face of growing
isolation from the west. The eight hundred

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kilogram Lunar twenty five probe was to
have made a soft landing on the lunar

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South Pole, the first in history. Russia has not attempted to land on

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a celestial body since nineteen eighty nine, when the Soviet Union's ill fated Phobos

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two probe to explore the moons of
Mars failed due to an onboard computer malfunction.

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Roskosmos boss Yuri Borisov has said that
the venture would be risky, telling

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President of Vladimir putin face to face
in June that the probability of its succeeding

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was around about seventy percent. Now, Halle, do you have a terrible

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joke for us this week? Why
did the scarecrow win an award because he

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was outstanding in his field of cornceptual
physics. The Astronomy Daily podcast. Thanks

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everybody for listening to Astronomy Daily.
You can find all of our episodes,

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plus our parent podcasts, Space Nuts
at space nuts dot io or at bytes

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dot com. And don't forget that
you can join in the conversation yourself by

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going to our Facebook page Space Nuts
podcast group. You can hear Steve Dunkley

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

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for listening, see you next week, Bye for now.