May 9, 2024

#415: From Starliner's Slip to Lunar Lights: A Glimpse into Tomorrow's Space Tech

#415: From Starliner's Slip to Lunar Lights: A Glimpse into Tomorrow's Space Tech

Embark on a lunar adventure with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson in this episode of Space Nuts, as they delve into the challenges and innovations surrounding our celestial neighbor, the Moon. First up, the duo discusses the recent setbacks of...

Embark on a lunar adventure with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson in this episode of Space Nuts, as they delve into the challenges and innovations surrounding our celestial neighbor, the Moon. First up, the duo discusses the recent setbacks of Boeing's Starliner, a spacecraft that faced yet another delay just moments before its much-anticipated launch. What went wrong this time, and what does it mean for the future of crewed missions?Next, they illuminate the idea of using mirrors to shine sunlight into the permanently shadowed craters of the Moon's South Pole. With the potential of harvesting water ice for resources, could this reflective solution be the key to sustaining future lunar bases?Then, celebrate a special anniversary with the team as they highlight ten years of HIPPI, the High Precision Polarimetric Instrument, and its incredible contributions to astronomy. From tracking magnetic fields in distant galaxies to the possibility of detecting rainbows on exoplanets, HIPPI's decade of discovery is truly something to cheer about.Finally, the conversation turns to Earth as Andrew and Fred explore how satellites are revolutionizing agriculture by predicting crop yields from space. This technology holds promise for farmers around the globe, especially in the face of changing climate conditions.From the intricacies of space technology to the practical applications of satellite data, this episode of Space Nuts is a cosmic journey that connects the farthest reaches of the universe to the down-to-earth matters of daily life. Tune in and let your curiosity take flight.00:00:00 Andrew Dunkley: Space nuts podcast about astronomy and space science
00:01:30 Launch of Boeing Starliner scheduled for Friday has been scrubbed
00:04:47 Andrew Webb: There's a lot of interest in the moon right now
00:10:41 A valley in Norway has a mirror that doesn't see the sun
00:14:56 Andrew Dunkley: Hipie is the high precision polarimetric instrument
00:20:45 Polarising sunglasses can detect rainbows with incredibly high precision
00:25:40 Fred Geyer explores the use of satellites to predict crop yieldsSupport Space Nuts and join us on this interstellar voyage by visiting https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/space-nuts--2631155/support. Don't miss out on future episodes as we continue to decode the universe's grandest puzzles. Clear skies and bold questions await on Space Nuts, where we make the cosmos your backyard.

 

 

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Hello again, thank you for joining
us. This is Space Nuts, the

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podcast about astronomy and space science.
My name, my name is I forget.

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My name is Andrew Dunkley, your
host. It's good to have your

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company. Coming up on today's edition, We've got quite a few things to

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talk about. The the ups and
downs, or certainly not ups of the

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Boeing star Liner. We'll have a
quick chat about that. Lighting up the

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Moon with reflectors is on the agenda. And using satellites to predict crop yields.

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Yes, they looked down from space
and go, oh that looks crop.

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And we're going to look at a
special special anniversary with Professor Fred Watson.

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All coming up on this edition of
Space Nuts fifteen in Channel ten nine

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ignition Space Nuts NI or three two
Space Nuts as when I report it.

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Bill's good and here he is the
man of the Millie second Professor Fred Wat's

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an astronomer A large Hello, Fred, I love Andrew. That was a

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pretty croppy introduction you did there.
Yes, I have to agree with you.

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Most of my introductions are here.
You been all well? Well,

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thank you all good? Still still
it's got strong still a stronger at larging.

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Yes, no, fair enough all
right, let's let's get started.

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I want to talk about the Boeing
star Liner because they were I've been reading

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stories about it for the last week
or so. They were so ramped up

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after years of delays, we were
finally going to get it off the ground,

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and ah, it slipped on a
banana. I don't know what happened,

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but it's it looks like another delay. It was, Yes, so

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the crew of two this was going
to be the first crew mission of the

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star Liner, and it was going
to wind up at the International Space Station

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and probably come back from there as
well. And the launch was set for

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Friday our time. I think I'm
right in saying that I can't remember.

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I get so many tag your word
for it launch dates in my mind.

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You know, these days you can
look forward to a launch pretty well every

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day. Anyway, it was recently. Maybe it wasn't Friday. I think

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that might have been Changese six at
launched on Friday, which was also successful.

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The star Liner, however, I
think they got to within two hours

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of liftoff. Might be exaggerating there, and there was a sort of vibrating

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valve I think on the rocket itself
rather than the star Liner, which caused

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the launch not just to be paused, but to be scrubbed. That was

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the official term term scrub, and
in fact you can find online you can

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find the dialogue between mission control and
the two astronauts in the capsule where I've

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actually got it Houston beep beep thing
something like that. I think that I

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mean Houston or it's equivalent. In
twentieth first centuries, speak said we're scrubbing

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the launch, and you could tell, you know, just the it was

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Roger. Yeah, it wasn't Roger. It was Roger Roger, I think

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the laster. Yeah, that's I
mean the you know, I think they'd

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be happy to scrub anything that was
imparting a risk to the launch, So

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I think you'd be happy with that. But yes, the disappointment when you're

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all you're basically keyed up, because
you know, within a matter of ours,

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if not less, you're you're going
to be docking at the International Space

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Station. The last I heard was
that it's scrubbed for at least ten days,

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and in fact, I've just saw
some photos this morning of the the

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assembly basically the rocket booster with the
star Liner on top being moved back to

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the kind of servicing bay that they've
got there, something a bit like that,

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you know, vehicle assembly building that
there is at Pad thirty nine.

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Anyway, so it's scrubbed for a
while, so hopefully we will catch up

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with better news soon. It was
pretty exciting. It will be you know,

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Bowing's first CREWD mission to space.
Yes, well, I'm sure it

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will happen. But as we've said
many times in the past, safety first,

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so they're just being ultra careful,
and who can blame them for that?

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All right, let's move on to
the Moon. To the Moon and

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back. This is a really interesting
story because we're looking there's so much interest

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in the Moon. We've got a
lot of missions either there or on their

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way there, and they're not too
distant. Future human missions coming up soon.

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I know China is looking at putting
a base there, whether it's on

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the surface or in orbit, a
research base of some kind, and it's

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just going to get bigger and bigger. And the Moon's got a lot of

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attention because well, it's got resources
there that people want. But when you

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get there and set up bases and
have people there long term, there are

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challenges, and one of those is
light that's a problem. It is,

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and yes, you know, you're
absolutely right. The South Pole in particular,

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which is a very heavily created region
of the Moon's surface, is attracting

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international attention because we have evidence from
a number of spacecraft, actually notably an

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Indian one Chandra Yara think it was
called, which the evidence supports the notion

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that there is water ice on the
floor of these craters, because being at

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the south pole of the Moon,
the creaters themselves never see the sun overhead

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or anything like overhead. It's always
at an angle low down in the sky,

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and in most cases so low that
it never rises above the walls of

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these creators, and so sorry the
craters. And so the floor of the

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crater is basically yes, it's got
ice on it, which may have been

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there for millions, perhaps billions of
years, but that ice is basically unobtainable

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because there's no sunlight, so you
can't melt it, nor can you use

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electrical power to decompose it into hydrogen
and oxygen, which is what everybody is

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keen on doing. It gives you
a free supply of oxygen to breathe and

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hydrogen plus oxygen to make rocket fuel. So that's why there's so much interest

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in the ice in these creators is
a potential resource for future exploration of not

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just the Moon, but the Solar
system generally. So there's the problem.

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Power especially is a problem because these
never see the Sun. And that sort

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of thinking has led a group of
scientists somewhat sextas A and M University,

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some at NASA Langley Research Center to
think about how you deal with this,

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and they have basically done the obvious. They've said, well, why can't

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we reflect the light of the Sun
down into the crater? So you focus

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it onto the solar panels and you've
got a mirror near the near the rim

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of the crater. So that's the
plan the research, which is still apparently

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in quite an early stage. What
they've done, though, is to use

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fairly sophisticated modeling systems computer models to
show what will be the best kind of

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surface and the best sorts of materials
as well to use. And it's no

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surprise that a parabolic shape comes out
as being the optimal. That's because paraboloid

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focus is light. That's what many
telescope mirrors are made of. Paraboidal mirror

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that focuses the starlight onto it to
make an image, which you then magnify

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it with an eyepiece. So what
you do with your mirror is steer it

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so it's always basically pointing at the
sun in such a way that it reflects

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the light down to your solar panels, and have it on a mountain that

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will track the Sun as it goes
around the sky. Now, the other

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thing that I think is new about
this is well two things here. One

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of the problems is you want to
make your mirror as big as possible in

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order to collect as much sunlight as
possible. But reflectors are not very easy

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to fold up into the cargo bay
of a spacecraft, or at least you

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know its cargo pod in the nose
of the spacecraft, and so you need

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something that will fold up. Now
we've encountered this problem before Andrew In a

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well known thing called the James Web
telescope, which was indeed folded up because

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it was made of sixteen, sorry
eighteen hexagonal segments that could be folded away.

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What they think of for this,
though, because the optical sing optical

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surfacing requirements to nowhere near astringent.
What they're thinking about is using new materials,

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and in particular something which is called
a self morphing material, which has

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actually been developed texas A and M. So what you do is you have

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what they call shape memory materials and
change the shape in response to changes in

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temperature. And you'd certainly get a
change in temperature when you go at the

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south pool of the Moon, because
the temperature when the sun's not there drops

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to about minus one hundred and fifty. When the sun's there, it's about

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plus one hundred and fifty, And
so I think there's a bit of give

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and take in those levels, but
it's that sort of order. So shape

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morephing materials that will kind of basically
pop into the right shape when the sun

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gets on them are a nice idea. And maybe this is a way to

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the future for the south pole of
the Moon. Maybe are you ready for

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this one? Gat to me on
reflection, that's a good idea. You

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should be on the radio. Oh
God, no, thanks? How much?

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Lie? Are we talking about generating? Here? A mirrorsworth? I

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guess? And there is a comparison, Andrew, and I've forgotten the name

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of the place, but there is
a valley in Norway, southern Norway.

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It's not that far from it's a
valley that doesn't there's a town in the

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bottom of the valley that doesn't see
the sun for I don't know, a

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couple of months around the winter solstice, which of course means kind of November,

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December, January, that sort of
time. And so they have a

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mirror on a hilltop that does see
the sun and basically beams a pool of

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light. I think it's a flat
mirror other than a parabolic one, beams

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a pool of light down into the
town square so that people can, you

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know, people who suffer from sad
what's that season or something disorder in winter

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blues. Yeah, in winter blues, which is pretty serious in those Scandinavian

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countries. So people can get a
taste of sunlight without having to get on

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the jet to go to Mayoka or
somewhere like that. The other thing that

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comes to mind with this is,
and this is a bit off the track,

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but you can't You've got to watch
out for those focusing mirrors because it

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was a story it's probably three four
years ago now, a new building in

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London which had a glass surfaces,
a skyscraper glass surface that was curved and

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it was basically cars. Yeah,
it was melting the insides of it.

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Yeah, come back to their car
and all the plastics melted onto the floor

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of the car. Wow, this
building's focused the sunlight onto it. So

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that's not what The other problem I
heard with buildings like that is it causes

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bird problems. They don't realize it's
actually a solid object because they can see

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a direct reflection of what's around and
behind them, so they go straight into

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it. Thousands of birds get killed
every year from these situations. That's right.

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That's unlikely to be an issue for
the lunar as the Moon, yes,

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but it is certainly is on the
Earth. Yeah, you mentioned how

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cold it gets down in those craters
on the Moon. I stand to be

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corrected, but I do believe that
at the bottom of some of those craters

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it's the coldest place in the Solar
system as far as I'm aware. Yes,

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it's going to be. You're right, there are record breakers for the

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coldest place in the Solar system.
And I think I've read the same thing

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as you have. The bottom of
those creators, they never see the sun,

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and you know, thermal temperature losses, the thermal radiation that you get

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from those into the blackness of space
probably do make them very cold. Indeed,

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hm hmm, yeah, I mean
I could be wrong about that,

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and there are so many very cold
places in the Solar systems down the bottom.

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Sorry, go ahead on, I
was going to say, yes,

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we've got the delay probably here Andrew
both talk over one another. I'm going

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to just continue. I think the
coldest place in the Solar System is in

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a laboratory somewhere in the United States, where the artificially created temperatures just a

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few, you know, micro degrees
above absolute zero. So, in fact,

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I think I've read either that or
either that or it's their management style

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could be that too. Yeah,
all right, so yeah, lighting up

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the Moon a very interesting concept and
one that will probably come to fruition.

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Will shed more light on that down
the track, haha, And you can

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find out more about it at fizz
dot or this is space Nuts. Andrew

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Dunkley here with Professor Fred what's that
and space nuts? Now? Fred,

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we mentioned an anniversary at the head
of the program, ten years of Hippie.

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Yeah it isn't you know. It's
for a start, it's such a

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brilliant acronym. But you're absolutely right
Hippie has been going for ten years.

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Hippie is spelled not hi double p
y, but h I double pi,

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and it's an acronym for the high
precision polar emetric instrument, so high hip

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high precision pio polar emetric instrument.
That acronym has actually been very useful in

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the last day or so because people
are wishing it to Hippie birthday because it's

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ten years old. So Hippie bird, I'll tell you my reaction. I've

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got the shakes. Oh yeah,
tell that one Hippi Hippi shore for goodness

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sake, not strictly, some people
get that, the other will two of

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them. I got it two of
the other ones somewhere. So it's well,

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you know, to tell the story. What was celebrated yesterday, and

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just for reference, yesterday our time
was the eighth of May twenty twenty twenty

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four. On the eighth of May
twenty fourteen, Hippie was first used on

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the Angle Australian Telescope. I was
at that time this astronomery in charge of

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the Angle Australian Telescope, so I
remember it all pretty well. But what

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I didn't realize at that time was
just how powerful an instrument this was,

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and what an illustrious life it was
going to have down the track as it

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has done for ten years. So
that machine has been evolved. It's now,

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00:16:57.159 --> 00:17:02.440
excuse me, Hippie two, which
is the you know, it's the

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improved version. It's been used on
the Anglo Australian Telescope, It's been used

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00:17:07.799 --> 00:17:12.000
on the Germany North Telescope at Mana, KaiA, so one of the biggest

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00:17:12.000 --> 00:17:15.160
telescopes in the world, the eight
point two meter telescope, and a number

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00:17:15.200 --> 00:17:22.240
of other telescopes as well, both
in America and in Australia. So it's

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00:17:22.279 --> 00:17:27.279
got a fabulous track record. It's
it's brainchild again. Sorry, no,

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it's farther figure, if I can
put it that way. It was a

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00:17:32.359 --> 00:17:37.359
colleague and friend of mine by the
name of Jeremy Bailey. He when he

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sent out a lovely notice yesterday advertising
Hippie's tenth birthday, and it's not online,

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it's just something that we know between
astronomers. He basically included a list

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00:17:48.680 --> 00:17:56.200
of all the publications that Hippie has
has resulted in, which come from eighty

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00:17:56.319 --> 00:18:03.720
four hundred and eighteen Individual polarization Measurement
that's pretty impressive. It do what does

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00:18:03.759 --> 00:18:07.920
it do? It just sits in
a corner and goes, oy man,

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00:18:07.079 --> 00:18:12.920
this is so cool. Yeah,
I think it'd be quite good if it

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did the Sorry, you put my
train of thought in an entirely different direction.

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00:18:25.839 --> 00:18:30.440
You're now reflecting on your youth.
Well, I'm actually reflecting on them,

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00:18:30.240 --> 00:18:33.079
on two people who we and I
won't say where they were or how

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00:18:33.119 --> 00:18:37.599
we met them, but two people
that we basically named Cheech and chum because

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00:18:37.680 --> 00:18:45.079
that's what Yes, that's right,
Yes, so I remember. The clue

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00:18:45.160 --> 00:18:51.440
is in the acronym a high precision
polar imetary instrument, and polar imetry is

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00:18:51.480 --> 00:18:55.519
about measuring polarized lights. You can
do it in radio waves as well,

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00:18:55.559 --> 00:19:00.440
but that's with radio telescopes. This
is an optical polarimetry instrument. And you

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00:19:00.480 --> 00:19:04.000
know, I'm sure Jeremy would cringe
if he heard me saying this. Jeremy

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00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:07.920
Bailey, the father figure, along
with many of his colleagues at the University

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00:19:07.960 --> 00:19:11.000
of New South Wales. I should
mention that that's where it was developed here

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00:19:11.039 --> 00:19:17.640
in Sydney. I'm sure they'd cringe
at this analogue. But yes, polarizing

216
00:19:17.680 --> 00:19:22.559
sunglasses, we're all familiar with polarizing
sunglasses and what they do. They take

217
00:19:22.599 --> 00:19:27.759
out the glare from a reflective surface. And that's because if light falls on

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00:19:27.880 --> 00:19:33.759
a reflective surface, it becomes polarized. And what that means is that the

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00:19:33.880 --> 00:19:41.440
vibrations of the Oh, here we
go. These are my golf glasses,

220
00:19:41.839 --> 00:19:47.519
mister polarizing some other supered. Yes, that's good. Now for those of

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00:19:47.559 --> 00:19:52.240
you listening to this who can't see, Andrew looks extremely glamorous with a pair

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00:19:52.279 --> 00:19:56.359
of polarizing sunglasses glasses off. I
wish you'd keep them on all the time,

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00:19:57.240 --> 00:20:02.640
because yeah, it all fits with
the hippie image. You have to

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00:20:02.680 --> 00:20:07.079
say, I'm cool. But if
you now, if you, if you

225
00:20:07.519 --> 00:20:11.119
kind of lift those off your head, Andrew keep looking through them, pull

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00:20:11.200 --> 00:20:17.279
them forward so that you can turn
them round through a right angle, if

227
00:20:17.319 --> 00:20:19.839
you see what I mean. Pull
them forward and then twist them. No,

228
00:20:19.960 --> 00:20:25.880
not that way, the other axis. Yeah, that's it. So

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00:20:25.920 --> 00:20:30.799
when you look through one of those, now you're actually doing the opposite in

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00:20:30.880 --> 00:20:34.000
terms of polarized light. So what
you do the other way, and you'll

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00:20:34.039 --> 00:20:38.200
see light that scattered off a reflective
surface. And if you then turn them

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00:20:38.240 --> 00:20:44.319
back to the way they normally should
be. That will disappear. That's amazing.

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00:20:45.440 --> 00:20:48.640
Again, I never wear them sideways. No, you don't know,

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00:20:48.799 --> 00:20:52.079
that's true. You don't wear them
sideways. You look ridiculous if you did.

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00:20:52.839 --> 00:20:59.119
Anyway, So what's happening there is
that it's the vibe. The way

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00:20:59.640 --> 00:21:04.880
light vibrate. The vibration, the
electromagnetic vibration of a propagating light wave is

237
00:21:06.559 --> 00:21:11.440
kind of in all directions. But
to put the polarizing sunglasses on, what

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00:21:11.519 --> 00:21:17.160
you do is you just basically stream
out most of those directions so that you've

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00:21:17.160 --> 00:21:22.559
got these waves which are effectively representing
a flat surface. I'm not really explaining

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00:21:22.599 --> 00:21:30.599
it very well, but you're confining
the vibrations into one plane. You can

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00:21:30.640 --> 00:21:33.920
put it that way, and that's
what a polarizing sunglass does. Now Hippie

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00:21:33.960 --> 00:21:40.519
does that too, but in a
much much more sophisticated way. And whereas

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00:21:40.519 --> 00:21:45.319
you're you know, if you used
your polarizing sunglasses to measure how much polarization

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00:21:45.400 --> 00:21:48.640
there was in a beam of light, you might get it to one part

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00:21:48.680 --> 00:21:52.319
in ten something like that, and
accuracy of that kind. Hipnie can do

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00:21:52.400 --> 00:21:59.119
that with an accuracy of one or
two parts per million and so it is

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00:21:59.440 --> 00:22:06.000
incredibly high precision, hence the name
Hippie High Precision polarimetary Instrument. So it's

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00:22:06.039 --> 00:22:11.839
got this unique ability and it hasn't
been surpassed by anything else in the world

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00:22:11.880 --> 00:22:17.759
to make these really superbly accurate measurements
all in a box about the size of

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00:22:17.759 --> 00:22:22.119
a loaf of bread, which means
not only was it very cheap to make,

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00:22:22.200 --> 00:22:27.359
it's also one of the smallest frontline
instruments on the world in the world.

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00:22:27.480 --> 00:22:34.519
In fact, Geremany Is Jeremy and
his colleagues sent around a lovely photograph

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00:22:34.559 --> 00:22:41.079
showing Hippie on the back end of
the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. The

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00:22:41.160 --> 00:22:47.720
caption is a very small instrument on
a very large telescope, and Hippie weighs

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00:22:47.799 --> 00:22:51.680
fifteen kilograms, but in order to
mount it on the back of the telescope

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00:22:51.680 --> 00:22:56.240
they've got to add two tons of
counterweight so it doesn't just spoil the balance

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00:22:56.240 --> 00:23:02.200
of the telescope, because most astronomical
instruments weigh several tons. So once it

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00:23:02.319 --> 00:23:11.160
done, it's polarization is really useful
for tracking magnetic fields in distant star systems

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00:23:11.200 --> 00:23:18.920
distant galaxies because what happens is that
magnetic fields tend to align the particles in

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00:23:19.000 --> 00:23:23.079
clouds of dust. And we call
it dust, but to anybody else it's

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00:23:23.079 --> 00:23:30.359
smoke in space. And those clouds
of dust actually are essentially magnetic. They

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00:23:30.400 --> 00:23:34.960
will align along the field lines of
a magnetic field, and the dust also

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00:23:36.480 --> 00:23:40.559
polarizes the light that passes through them. And so what you've got is an

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00:23:40.559 --> 00:23:47.319
instrument that can measure very accurately the
magnetism a very great distances. You know,

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00:23:47.400 --> 00:23:51.720
galaxies at the other side of the
universe can be have the magnetic fields

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00:23:51.759 --> 00:23:55.319
measured, not because you've got a
bar magnet to hold up or anything,

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00:23:55.519 --> 00:23:59.920
but because you've got a polarimitter.
And so that's the kind of science that

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00:24:00.079 --> 00:24:03.960
it does. But it can also
and I love this. Jeremy once told

269
00:24:03.960 --> 00:24:07.640
me this, and I've been blown
away by ever since. You know that

270
00:24:07.039 --> 00:24:11.359
you probably don't know, but again, you should check this with your polarizing

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00:24:11.359 --> 00:24:15.759
sunglasses. If you're on the golf
course with those sunglasses on, Andrew,

272
00:24:17.359 --> 00:24:22.079
you have a shower of rain and
you see a rainbow, check the rainbow

273
00:24:22.119 --> 00:24:26.640
out through your sunglasses and do that
same trick of bending the turning your sunglasses

274
00:24:26.640 --> 00:24:30.759
through ninety degrees and you'll see that
the light from the rainbow is very very

275
00:24:30.799 --> 00:24:37.200
highly polarized. Okay, some polarizing
angles, it disappears altogether. So rainbows

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00:24:37.359 --> 00:24:45.279
are things that polarize light very efficiently. And Hippie is capable because of this,

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00:24:45.880 --> 00:24:52.599
of detecting rainbows in the atmospheres of
xts of planets. Work that one

278
00:24:52.640 --> 00:24:56.039
out. You can find rainbows on
other worlds in orbit around other stars.

279
00:24:56.079 --> 00:25:00.519
What a brilliant thing to look for. I don't whether Jeremy's ever detected that.

280
00:25:00.680 --> 00:25:03.400
I think the last time I spoke
to him we hadn't, But it's

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00:25:03.400 --> 00:25:07.720
certainly one of the one of the
possibilities for this kind of astronomy that you

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00:25:07.799 --> 00:25:11.839
might be able to detect rainbows on
other world wonderful, incredible, what a

283
00:25:11.880 --> 00:25:18.359
great instrument. Happy birthday to Hippie
as ten years ten years old. In

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00:25:18.359 --> 00:25:23.319
fact, we'll go Hippy Hippie hooray. Yes, I'm glad you said that,

285
00:25:23.400 --> 00:25:30.400
because yeah, I wish I hadn't. Did There were several emails back

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00:25:30.400 --> 00:25:37.440
to Jeremy yesterday that said exactly that, Hippie. Certain my ideas, Yes

287
00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:42.119
they are still in you. All
right to our final story today, Fred,

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00:25:42.359 --> 00:25:48.759
and this one is the use of
satellites to predict crop yields. Now,

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00:25:48.799 --> 00:25:53.119
this sounds like it doesn't sound beyond
the realms of possibility. I'm sure

290
00:25:53.400 --> 00:25:57.039
fifty years ago they would have said
hogwash can't be done. Never happened,

291
00:25:57.720 --> 00:26:06.440
But it is. It is.
It's basically a framework that has been put

292
00:26:06.839 --> 00:26:15.079
in place two essentially, and this
is actually coming from the one of one

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00:26:15.079 --> 00:26:21.680
of the press releases about this,
this idea and arises in Cornell University in

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00:26:21.720 --> 00:26:26.960
the United States. The idea is
to produce this framework, and by that

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00:26:27.000 --> 00:26:32.799
I mean a kind of you know, a system framework that would let you

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00:26:33.119 --> 00:26:40.400
predict agricultural yields using minimal data.
That's the trick here. You're using as

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00:26:40.440 --> 00:26:45.960
little information as you can from a
spacecraft to be able to predict the agricultural

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00:26:47.039 --> 00:26:52.759
yield of what's on the ground.
And the reason why that's important is that

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00:26:53.920 --> 00:27:00.000
if you've got you know, if
if you're a farmer in Australia, you're

300
00:27:00.079 --> 00:27:04.079
farmer in the United States, farmer
in Europe, you would have resources that

301
00:27:04.119 --> 00:27:07.079
would let you do that. On
the ground, you be able to go

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00:27:07.119 --> 00:27:11.359
and check your crops and say,
well, this is going to be a

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00:27:11.400 --> 00:27:15.720
bumper harvest, or this is going
to be not a croppy harvest. If

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00:27:15.720 --> 00:27:18.920
I can quote you from the beginning, it's going to be rubbish. So,

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00:27:21.200 --> 00:27:26.119
but if you imagine yourself in a
developing nation with yields that might be

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00:27:26.400 --> 00:27:36.160
highly dependent on weather conditions and virtually
no technology to be able to use to

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00:27:36.240 --> 00:27:40.880
work out whether your crop's going to
fail or not, that is the whole

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00:27:40.960 --> 00:27:48.200
idea of that. And so the
basic premise of this whole work is that

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00:27:48.319 --> 00:27:56.319
from space you can measure essentially the
color of the crop. And by that

310
00:27:56.359 --> 00:28:00.839
I mean not just whether it's green
or you know, green or yellow,

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00:28:00.720 --> 00:28:07.240
but the subtleties of its spectrum.
So you can look at the spectrum of

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00:28:07.359 --> 00:28:14.079
a paddock or a field of crops
from space and analyze that, analyze the

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00:28:14.119 --> 00:28:19.000
colors in it. And what you
can look for is something called chlorophyll fluorescence.

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00:28:19.559 --> 00:28:25.079
Now we're all kind of familiar with
chlorophylla. It's what gives grass and

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00:28:25.119 --> 00:28:33.640
trees the green color, and basically
it's the photo photosynthesis mechanism in crops.

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00:28:33.680 --> 00:28:38.680
It's what actually allows you know,
like to turn the chemicals in those crops

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00:28:38.680 --> 00:28:47.599
into useful things that nourish it and
also provide oxygen. So chlorophyll fluorescence means

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00:28:47.640 --> 00:28:52.279
that if the sun is shining on
it, then you get you get chlorophyll

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00:28:52.559 --> 00:29:00.759
fluorescence being formed and it's a reddish
color that's emitted by photosynthetic tissue, and

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00:29:00.799 --> 00:29:06.079
you can measure that from space and
you can do it pretty accurately. So

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00:29:06.880 --> 00:29:12.200
it means that you're you know,
you're not really getting an instant measurement of

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00:29:12.200 --> 00:29:17.000
what the yield will be, but
it does tell you about the health of

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00:29:17.000 --> 00:29:21.599
that crop on the ground, how
well it's doing, and what sort of

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00:29:21.960 --> 00:29:23.720
you know, what sort of yield
you're likely to get at the end of

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00:29:23.799 --> 00:29:29.880
the day. And so yes,
it's very much aimed at, first of

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00:29:29.920 --> 00:29:33.880
all, as I said, developing
nations, but also the fact that a

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00:29:33.920 --> 00:29:37.599
lot of traditional cropping methods are starting
to break down because of climate change,

328
00:29:37.920 --> 00:29:41.440
and so climate change again is very
much an important part of this story.

329
00:29:42.200 --> 00:29:47.079
Yes, one of the crops that's
under major thread is coffee because they need

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00:29:47.119 --> 00:29:52.640
to grow coffee beans at high altitude
and it's getting too warm, so it's

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00:29:52.680 --> 00:29:56.759
only a certain height they can go
and it could jeopardize future coffee crops.

332
00:29:57.880 --> 00:30:03.480
Satellite technologies anonymous with agriculture these days, and in my part of the world

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00:30:03.480 --> 00:30:10.039
where we have big, big,
huge farms that grow wheat and canola and

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00:30:10.240 --> 00:30:15.279
sorghum and you name it. The
harvesters are actually satellite controls. They're all

335
00:30:15.680 --> 00:30:19.920
geo controlled from space. You can
you sit in the cabin and watch movies

336
00:30:19.960 --> 00:30:26.000
while it just does it all by
itself. It's quite incredible, all satellite

337
00:30:26.000 --> 00:30:30.880
control. It is remarkable and that
comes from it's probably now six years ago.

338
00:30:30.920 --> 00:30:36.079
I seem to remember. This was
part of the twenty eighteen kind of

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00:30:36.160 --> 00:30:42.319
kickoff when the Space Agency was formed. Geosciences Australia got grunts to do exactly

340
00:30:42.359 --> 00:30:48.599
what you've said, to use satellites
to control planters, harvesters, all the

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00:30:48.640 --> 00:30:53.359
other agricultural machines. But it's more
than just giving the driver arrest. It's

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00:30:53.400 --> 00:30:57.839
about high precision farming, so that
you can go within a millimeter of the

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00:30:57.920 --> 00:31:03.759
edge of your paddock where you know
the ground falls away. You know,

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00:31:03.839 --> 00:31:07.240
you can get so close to that
you can have very very high efficiency in

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00:31:07.279 --> 00:31:11.559
the yields of the land. And
that was what they were talking about at

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00:31:11.559 --> 00:31:15.240
that time, how it can improve
the yield by high precision farming. I

347
00:31:15.240 --> 00:31:21.599
imagine it would also be that they'd
be able to calculate the best combination of

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00:31:21.920 --> 00:31:26.079
maneuvers to get the crop off with
the lowest amount of fuel use things like

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00:31:26.119 --> 00:31:32.400
that. It's quite amazing. But
yeah, crop, I can see this

350
00:31:32.599 --> 00:31:37.960
being an incredible tool going forward for
farming, being able to just take a

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00:31:37.000 --> 00:31:41.839
peek at your crop and going Okay, I'm selling the farm or I'm going

352
00:31:41.920 --> 00:31:45.079
to buy another one. Yes,
that's right, that's it, depending on

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00:31:45.119 --> 00:31:49.160
the yields. Yeah, fantastic.
That story, if you're interested, is

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00:31:49.440 --> 00:31:53.920
on seed daily dot com and now
we do have a lot of people in

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00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:57.920
agricultural areas that do listen to us, as seed daily dot com is where

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00:31:57.920 --> 00:32:01.559
you'll find that story. Fred.
That brings us to the end. A

357
00:32:01.720 --> 00:32:07.599
reminder, if you'd like to listen, like to visit our website. You

358
00:32:07.640 --> 00:32:10.680
can do that at space nuts podcast
dot com orspacenuts dot io. If you've

359
00:32:10.720 --> 00:32:16.720
been following us on YouTube, don't
forget to subscribe below and please leave reviews.

360
00:32:17.079 --> 00:32:21.599
Reviews are very handy to spread the
word and get more people on board

361
00:32:21.599 --> 00:32:25.519
with Space Nuts, so yes,
please leave reviews on whatever platform you use.

362
00:32:27.000 --> 00:32:30.839
We'd really appreciate that. Fred.
As always, it's been a great

363
00:32:30.880 --> 00:32:35.799
pleasure, and we will catch up
with you again real soon. Probably could

364
00:32:35.839 --> 00:32:39.519
be minutes, never know, well
it could be. That's a bit unlikely,

365
00:32:39.559 --> 00:32:45.519
but it could be all right,
Thanks Fred, will see you soon.

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00:32:45.359 --> 00:32:50.359
Sounds great. Thanks Andrew Fred wat's
an astronomer at large part of the

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00:32:50.400 --> 00:32:53.960
team here at Space Nuts. And
Hugh in the studio who's been watching all

368
00:32:54.000 --> 00:33:00.319
sorts of crop on his television lately
and I'm not really going to get into

369
00:33:00.359 --> 00:33:04.839
that too deeply scary stuff. And
from me Andrew Ductley, thanks for your

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00:33:04.839 --> 00:33:07.960
company. I will join you again
as Wilfred on the next episode of Space

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00:33:08.039 --> 00:33:13.440
Nuts. See you then, Bye
bye, Spacenuts. You'll be listening to

372
00:33:13.519 --> 00:33:21.279
the Space Nuts podcast available at Apple
Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your

373
00:33:21.319 --> 00:33:24.960
favorite podcast player. You can also
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00:33:25.200 --> 00:33:30.880
This has been another quality podcast production
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