#411: Aussie Astronaut Adventures & Jovian Journeys: Unveiling Space's Latest Marvels

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Hi there, Thanks for joining us
on this episode of Space Nuts. I'm

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your host Andrew Dunkley. Glad you
could join us once again. Coming up

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on this particular episode, we'll be
looking at Australia's first female astronaut, announced

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this week. Her name is Katherine
Vannell Peg. We'll tell you a little

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bit about her. She had to
go through quite a process to get there,

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but it's all good news. We'll
also be inspecting things within our solar

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system, a lava lake on EO. We'll be looking at Jupiter's water or

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lack of as the case may be, and a new theory as to why

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methane is being found on Mars.
And it's a strange theory. Indeed,

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indeed we'll tell you all about it
on this episode of Space Nuts. Fifteen

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seconds. Guidance is in chantal ten
nine ignition Squench Space nuts UI or three

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two more space notes. As when
I reported Bills Goods joining us to take

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a dip in the legs of EO
is Professor Fred what's an astronomer at large?

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Hello Fred? Yeah, you'd want
to have your steel chip boots on.

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I think if you did that,
But yes, it's very good to

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be here, Andrew. I'm delighted
to be back on Space Nuts once again.

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I'm glad to have you. Otherwise
I'd be sitting here making a complete

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fool of myself, which happens lightly, rather than me making it complete with

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myself, which is also what happens
anyway. It's all about Yes, it

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is. Otherwise we'd have to call
it space normals. Yeah, yeah,

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properly, yes, and it doesn't
have a ring to it at all.

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Now we might as well get stuck
straight in and first cab off the rank

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is this announcement that we have now
and Australian female astronaut, first one ever.

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We've had a couple of blokes,
but this is our first female astronaut

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and she had to really work hard
to get there. She did, Yes,

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she saw the blokes. Just to
get that out of the way.

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Paul Scully Power and Andrew Thomas,
Thomas, Andy Thomas, both of them

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my actually had quite a lot to
do with. In fact, Paul Scully

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Power wants led me completely astray after
an episode of the Prime Minister Science Prizes

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when I shared a cab with him. We ended up I didn't end up

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at my hotel going to bed,
which is what I expected. We ended

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up in a bar, so that
was interesting. But to come back to

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reality, I've also I actually have
met Catherine Bennell Peg and I can't remember

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the I can't remember the occasion on
which it was. It was down in

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Adelaide. I think it was at
the Space Agency because that's where she worked.

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Day job is the Space Agencies,
and this is the Australian Space Agency,

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of course it's she is the space
as Director of Space Technology and there

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must have been an event on I
think it was Anrico Palermo, who's the

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head of the Space Agency, who
introduced me to Catherine, but I can't

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remember what the event was. I
do play fairly regular trips down to Adelaide,

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where the Space Agency has its headquarters. Anyway, enough of that.

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What is she She's what? She's
now a fully trained astronaut. She's just

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finished a formal astronaut training in Germany. She is basically somebody who's always wanted

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to be an astronaut. Let me
quote what she says in the news release.

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When I dreamed of becoming an astronaut
as a child, I never thought

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it possible to do so, representing
Australia. It's an honor to be granuating

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as an astronaut with the Australian flag
on my shoulder. And actually the reason

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why she's saying that is that I
think both Andy Thomas and Paul Scully Power

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had the US flag on their shoulder
because I think they were whilst they were

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Australian citizens, are born Australian.
I think they had US citizenship as well,

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So Catherine doesn't. She's actually got
UK citizenship as well. But like

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me, and that I mean,
but she will represent Australia. She goes

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on to say, representing Australia is
filled with opportunities to propel our nation science

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and technology forward in the global space
arena and to raise the level of aspiration

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for the next generation. I hope
my training and whatever comes next unlocks the

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path for more Australians to become involved
in human spaceflight. So she's now,

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she's now fully qualified. Will it
remains to be seen as to when she

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will get a flight. I hope
she will, and I hope we'll talk

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about it on Space Notes. We
might in build an interviewer one day,

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wouldn't that be lovely? Yes?
Yes, I believe She's one of six

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graduates out of an original pool of
twenty two and a half thousand. There

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you go. It's incredible. It's
pretty pretty tight. Back in the seventies

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there was there was an invitation for
US citizens to apply for astronaut training.

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Now looked at the advert But I
didn't qualify because I'm too tall. Really

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yeah, five foot eleven was the
limit. I'm six foot four, so

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no chance, no chance. Just
how tall I am for it? Five

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foot eleven, five eleven. Yeah, you could go. It's not too

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late, Andrew, Oh, I
think it probably is. Probably, although

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although you know, if I took
a leaf out of John Glenn's book,

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I could probably get up there.
Yeah, well that's right when he last

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went. Yes, yes, a
bit young boy. Yeah, it's anticipated

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that all six of these graduates should
get into space before twenty thirty. That's

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your plan. I think, great, it's excellent. So yeah, we've

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got to keep going until twenty thirty
so we can talk to Catherine. There's

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a nice there's a nice comment by
the person I just mentioned in Rico,

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the head of the Australian Space Agency. He says, we're proud of Catherine.

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She will return to Australia, a
qualified astronaut brimming with knowledge, insights

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and connections that will help generate global
opportunities for our industry. And that's good

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news. It is. And to
wrap it up, she's thirty nine and

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a mother of two and that's good
too. I mean, mums in space

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would be rare, wouldn't they.
I don't know the statistics on that,

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but it's something we could look at. Yes, yeah, I'll write that

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down. Mun's in space? How
many mums in space? That's a good

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idea. And yes, well done
and congratulations, we wish her well,

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Katherine Bearnell pig. Now, Fred, let's move on to Juno, do

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you know, which is just a
little bit further out than the Moon and

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other places where astronauts are headed soon. But this is part of the Sorry

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we're going to Eo, but jo
is the mission. It is the closest

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moon to Jupiter and they've been taking
a very close look at it and they're

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making some amazing discoveries on this mission. Absolutely, it's so you know,

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I can't remember when Juno was went
into a bit around Jupiter. It's been

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quite a while, I reckon it's
been four or five years. We've had

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extraordinary images of of the you know, the cloud tops on Jupiter, stuff

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that we never really imagine because there's
so much going on, as we'll talk

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about in a minute, there's so
much going on around Jupiter's polls that you

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never actually see from from ground based
observations. You know, even the Hubble

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telescope or the James Webb telescope,
which has taken some very fine image of

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Jupiter, it doesn't see that structure
around the north pole, which is a

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south pools of Jupiter. But also
what has happened is within the last actually

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the last six months, back in
December and again in February, JUNO made

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close flybys of EO, the innermost
of the moons that were discovered by Galileo,

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what were called the Galilean moons.
In fact, a minimum distance was

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fifteen hundred kilometers from the surface of
EO. And so lots of data taking,

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lots of image taking, and that's
basically what we're talking about, because

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there's been some really quite striking imagery
that's been produced. And one of the

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one of the areas that was flown
basically at a low altitude and by that

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I mean hundred kilometers was around what
I think is the biggest of the of

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the volcanoes on sorry on Eo.
EO is riddled with volcano it's the most

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volcanically active body in the Solar System. It gets its its heat for the

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activity from the fact that it's in
a resonance resonant orbits with some of the

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other Galilean moons, in fact,
principally Europa and Ganymede. Those resonances basically

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squash and squeeze Eo along with the
gravity of Jupiter itself to warm up the

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center by friction. Basically you've got
you know, this squeezing and squashing and

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so that's why it's so volcanically active. And I think the most active or

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the biggest of these volcanoes is Lucky
and it sits in the middle of a

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lava lake which has been observed actually
from the Earth surface. And I think

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we might have talked a few years
ago about observations which were made from Earth

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of the lava lake it's called Lucky
Paterra, that showed that its surface kind

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of dried up from time to time
and then turned over that you've got these

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kind of lava lake icebergs that actually
turned over, and you might remember because

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you've increased the amount of infrareend radiation
that's coming from it, which is how

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you know it's turned over. Do
you remember that? Yeah? Yes,

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I do, yes, Yeah.
And it's quite a blake too, isn't

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it. Yeah? Two hundred kilometers
long, one hundred and twenty seven miles

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it's not a small lake. We'd
call that an inland sea here, I

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think nearly. Yeah, and it's
lava. You know. One of the

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observations that Juno has made is that
there is a very strong specular reflection that

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comes off it, which means you're
dealing with a very smooth surface. Indeed,

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and just to point out that,
there are available on the web some

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YouTube basically reconstructions of the imagery that
make it look like a flyby, and

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they are very nicely done. They
are artists impressions, but they're made on

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the basis of the real imagery that
Juno has taken, and certainly in one

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of them, you've got a nice
reflection of the planet itself in the lava

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lake, which gives you an idea
of just how smooth that surface is.

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And can we just move on as
well to one of the other regions that

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was imaged. This is amazing,
isn't it astonishing? There is there is

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because EO is so volcanically active,
it's got mountains on it, and one

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of them is quite extraordinary. It's
called Steeple Mountain. Once again, it's

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an artist's impression that we're seeing,
which might mean that the elevation has been

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extended. But it's based on Juno
imagery and it looks like a cathedral with

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you know, a medieval cathedral with
with with towers on it. So yes,

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that's probably, you know, a
result of the tectonic activity on EO.

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So we've got really quite remarkable structures
on the surface that were I think

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are a bit unexpected. I don't
think we we found too much evidence of

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really sharp mountains, but they're being
shut by this by this flyby. Yeah,

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they've named this one's Steeple Mountain,
haven't they. That's exactly what it

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looks like. It's very reminiscent actually
of the imagery anyway of of Mont Sale

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Michelle. I don't know whether you've
ever visited there when you've been sojourning in

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France, but it's off the coast
of northern France, and it's a volcanic

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plug. It's offshore. It sits
in the middle of the ocean, but

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it's got buildings all the way up. It's basically a monastery, and it's

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got this extraordinary cathedral on top with
sepels that look a lot like Steeple Mountain

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here on the on EO. So
that was, well, that was the

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lightness that didn't work in my mind
when I looked at this in imagery.

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It's quite extraordinary. EO is just
a bit bigger than our moon. And

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yeah, it's sort of suffering the
effect of a tugger war between other moons

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and Jupiter itself resulting in all of
its volcanic activity. A pretty volatile kind

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of place. And JUNO started orbiting
EO or Jupiter, I should say,

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on the fourth of July twenty sixteen. So it's nearly eight years ten years.

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Wow, what did I say?
Four or five years? I was,

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yeah, it's austral sixteen. While
we're talking about the JUNO mission,

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it's also been looking at Jupiter itself
and taking some scientific readings. And one

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of the things that scientists seem to
be interested in is Jupiter's water what have

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they found out there? Well,
I think this comes from analysis of the

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polar cyclones on Jupiter, which we're
really only seeing close up as Juno gets

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closer and closer to the surface.
And you might remember that Saturn has a

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polar hexagon, which is this hexagonal
structure that comes from cyclonic activity. He

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basically sets up a wave in it's
a wave akin to the jet stream on

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Earth around the pole. Jupiter's got
something similar with the sort of symmetry that

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we've seen on Saturn, only this
is actually eight sided symmetry rather than six

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sided symmetry, and it's this set
of cyclones around the polar are eight of

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them, but they're also surround a
central you know, a kind of mother

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cyclone, if I can put it
that way, which is even more prominent.

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But what has been discovered is that
the microwave radiation from that central cyclone

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right at Jupiter's north pole, and
we are talking about the northern polar region.

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Now, that central cyclone has a
low level of microwave signature. It's

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much less strong than the other storms
that are going around it. And so

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what's being inferred from this is that
the structure underneath that cloud surface is very

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different from the other cyclones, and
in fact, they're expecting as we get

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more data from JUNO, to be
able to build what you might call a

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three dimensional map of these polar storms
so you can see how they stretch down

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into the atmosphere of Jupiter. And
that comes from a quote by JUNO project

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scientists whose name is Steve Levin.
He's at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. So

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that's again related to how they are
looking for the molecular structure of Jupiter's atmosphere,

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and it turns out that there isn't
as much water on Jupiter as they

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expected to find what we call water
abundance. So it's suggesting and this is

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by looking at molecules like oxygen and
hydrogen TO and H two, and they

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of course are the constituents of water. That is suggesting that there is a

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deficiency of water on the planet Jupiter, which is unexpected, and so you

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know, it feeds into our understanding
of how Jupiter formed. There's a quote

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which is on the NASA Spaceflight website
which perhaps I can I can just read

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this because it's certainly puts it more
cogently than I will juno's new results on

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Jovian water abundance suggest very low water
abundance, an unexpected results that scientists are

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still trying to understand. However,
these results do support scientists theories that during

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the Solar System's formation, water lice
material was lightly a driving force between heavy

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element en Richmond, the process by
which chemical elements heavier than hydrogen and helium

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were recreted or collected by Jupiter during
its formation. And they're going to basically

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keep looking with JUNO to try and
work out what the distribution of water abundance

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is comparing pullar and equatorial regions,
And no doubt we might talk about that

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down the trap. We may well
do. There's just so much going on

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that mission is quite incredible. The
fact that it's done, I don't know,

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getting close to sixty maybe more flybys
of Jupiter and it's done. And

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while it's doing that, they've been
able to coordinate flybys of the near moons,

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which in an engineering sense is just
an extraordinary mission. And well you

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probably historically going in it's one of
one of the great feats of modern space

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engineering. I would imagine absolutely and
remember you know when this was being planned

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and I think back in twenty sixteenth
space nuts that already started. We were

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talking about it then. Nobody knew
whether it would survive radiation bells. That

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was always one of the big questions, is he going to make it?

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And well, it certainly has,
and it's doing a fine job, as

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we've been discussing, and it sure
has. And if you want to chase

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up information about that Juno mission and
the water on Jupiter and those incredible geological

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features on EO, it's on the
NASAs spaceflight dot Com web website. Even

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this is space Nuts Andrew Dunkley here, we're Professor Fred Watson space Nuts.

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Now, Fred, let's move on
to Mars, a little bit closer to

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Earth sort of. And they have. We've we've discussed this a few times

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and there's been all sorts of theories
put up about why they've been detecting methane

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on Mars. One of the theories
is it may still have some sort of

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tectonic activity below the surface, or
it may have some you know, primordial

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life that's that's leaking this stuff out. Because most of the methane on Earth

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is created by living creatures. We
know there aren't living creatures on Mars to

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this point in time. So you're
thinking maybe there's something you know, microbial

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below the surface that might be doing
this, But a new theory has been

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put forward and the cause might be
us human Yes, well partly us,

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that's right, partly, which is
not directly indirectly caused by us. Yeah,

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yeah, some of this anyway,
because this the puzzle of methane puzzle

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is and it's one that goes back
before we started sending the you know,

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curiosity and perseverance to Mars, because
you can observe this in the atmosphere from

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Earth. You can detect that there
is methane in Mars' atmosphere, So we

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knew about this long time ago.
And yes, exactly as you've said,

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is it residial volcanism or is it
methanogenic micros, both of which are interesting

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ideas, but it's behaved in a
very odd way. For example, there

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is one spacecraft which is a European
Space Agency spacecraft. It's called the EXO

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Mar Exo Mars Trace Gas Orbiter.
It's in orbit lower orbit around Mars.

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It's never detected methane, and that
is bizarre because that's why it was said

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there because we see Mars, we
do see myth. Then in the atmosphere

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of Mars, I think it probably
means that you don't get any methane at

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high altitudes, and then we've got
you know, Curiosity had a device known

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as SAM Sample Analysis at Mars which
keeps on detecting traces of methane around the

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surface of the location where it is, which is Gale Crater, named after

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an Australian amateur astronomer in the early
twentieth century. So Gale Crater is a

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place where methn's detected on the surface, but in fact it's the only one

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so far because none of the Perseverance
doesn't have anything to detect Mars. Perseverance,

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of course is in a different place, it's Jesuit Crater, so it

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doesn't have the ability to detect meThe
But the story gets more complicated because quite

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often methane is detected at night by
Curiosity, but then it vanishes during the

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day. It varies with the seasons. As you know, Mars of course

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has seasons. It's got a similar
orbital inclination to the Earth about twenty five

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degrees if I remember rightly, and
sometimes it goes you know way way up

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spikes to levels around forty times greater
than we normally see. So what's the

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story why do some This is a
question that's on a lovely article on this

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on fits dot org, the fis
dot org website. They oppose the question

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why does some science instruments detect methane
on the Red planet while others don't?

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And what they are coming to the
conclusion The new idea in this is,

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and it comes from NASA, it's, you know, something that's been basically

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studied for quite a while. In
fact, it's a scientists at they got

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old to Space Flight Center, green
Belt, Maryland where this work is coming

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from. What they are suggesting is
that the soil of Mars, which is

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kind of different from the soil on
the Earth. We know that there's very

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fine grain sand there, but also
that you get if there's a high level

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of salt concentration within that soil,
it gets crusty. So you've got a

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crust that covers the lower levels.
And they're suggesting that underneath that crust,

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and they're not suggesting how the methane
is produced, but what they're suggesting is

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that the methane rises up and it
is locked in by this crust of soil

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making up you know, making up
the surface of Mars. And so they

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suggest that during summer, when it's
a bit warmer, that weakens the crust

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and you get methane seeping out,
and that's why we see the seasonal variations

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in methane. But also that if
you've got a rover which weighs about the

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same as a car, you know, driving over this crust, it could

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break the crust as you drive over
it and let the methane out. So

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that that's why you're seeing it in
Gale Krater because this is where this crust

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is. That the rovers driving over
that every time you know, it goes

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forward, it's going to stress the
surface, maybe it release puffs of methane.

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It's a really interesting idea, and
as you say, it means that

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humans are intervening in this process of
Martian methane more than we perhaps thought thought

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there was. Well, it sort
of brings into the into the arena the

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Ockham's razor theory. The most obvious
answer is probably the right one. And

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you can see the tracks that these
rovers leave behind, and they do dig

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little holes and grooves, and it
stands to reason that if you're driving over

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pockets of methane and you're cracking the
surface, it's going to come up and

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you're going to detect it. If
the rover's got that kind of equipment on

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board, it could well be the
reason, but it still doesn't answer the

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question as to how it got there
in the first place. That's quite right.

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That remains a mystery. Yes,
but some of its escaping is seasonal

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and possibly interventional. Yes, interventional. I like that. It's a good

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word. Yeah, I love making
up words that it could be an intervenualist,

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interventionistic. Yeah, well that's even
better. Yeah, I like that.

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Yes, Yeah, it's it's an
interesting theory and one that you could

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hold water or me. Yeah.
I don't know how you you know,

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I don't know how you investigate this
further way, putting methane detectors on the

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spacecraft. There is a comment from
another scientist that got up spaceflights to which

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is, methane experiments are resource intensive, so we have to be very strategic

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when we decided to do them.
So, you know what, it sounds

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like they're half hearted about it.
I'm not going to touch that one.

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Andrew. Yeah, anyway, two. You know, yes, it's hard

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to know how you how you pursue
that to prove them that's the case.

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But maybe future surface spacecraft the way
to go. They might be more focused

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on answering these significant specific questions.
Yes, especially especially the question of where

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it all came from in the first
place. Is it still being produced somewhere

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down deep inside big questions? All
right, very good, and yes,

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as Fritz said, you can chase
that story up on the fizz dot org

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website. That's p h y.
Yes, and don't forget to visit our

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00:28:03.000 --> 00:28:07.839
website while you're online listening to us. So you can do that by going

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00:28:07.880 --> 00:28:14.559
to space nuts podcast dot com or
space nuts dot io and have a look

305
00:28:14.599 --> 00:28:18.119
around while you're there, and you
can listen to back episodes. You can

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00:28:18.240 --> 00:28:25.160
subscribe to that thing that we have
on there that I've forgotten the name of.

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00:28:25.519 --> 00:28:33.279
I'm doing a Fred freend Ye.
Yes, isn't it becoming a supporter.

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00:28:33.640 --> 00:28:37.000
Becoming a supporter is what I'm talking
about. So you can do that,

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00:28:38.000 --> 00:28:41.880
check out the space nut Shop all
that sort of stuff. Fred.

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That's where we're going to wrap it
up for this episode, reminding people of

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our next episodes coming up. In
the not too distant future a Q and

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A episode looking at all sorts of
interesting stuff as requested by the audience.

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But until then, Fred, thank
you very much. We'll see you soon.

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Sounds great. Thank you, Andrew. Talk to Sir Fred Watson,

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Astronomer at large, and thanks to
here in the studio. Let me just

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check and see how he's going.
Popped out for a cup of tea.

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So we'll just sit here and twiddle
our thumbs for a while, and so

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we can come back and stop everything. No we won't, but thanks for

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your company. Catch you on the
next episode of Space Notts from me Andrew

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Duncley. Bye bye. You'll be
listening to the Space Nuts podcast available at

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Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or your favorite podcast player. You

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can also stream on demand at bites
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