March 5, 2026

Artemis Updates, The Brain Nebula & Mapping the Galactic Center

Artemis Updates, the Brian Nebula, and Galactic Mapping In this enlightening episode of Space Nuts, hosts Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson dive into the latest developments in space exploration and celestial phenomena. From the shifting...

Show Notes
Transcript

Artemis Updates, the Brian Nebula, and Galactic Mapping
In this enlightening episode of Space Nuts, hosts Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson dive into the latest developments in space exploration and celestial phenomena. From the shifting timelines of the Artemis program to the fascinating discoveries made by the James Webb Space Telescope, this episode is packed with cosmic insights and intriguing discussions.
Episode Highlights:
- Artemis Program Updates: Andrew and Fred discuss the recent delays in the Artemis 2 mission, which is now expected to launch no earlier than April. They also explore the implications of the newly inserted Artemis 3 mission, which will focus on testing spacecraft capabilities in Earth orbit before the lunar landing.
- The Brian in Space: The hosts delve into the discovery of the PMR1 nebula, also known as the Exposed Cranium Nebula. They discuss its unusual appearance and the significance of the James Webb Space Telescope's observations that reveal this nebula's intricate structure, reminiscent of a brain.
- Mapping the Galactic Center: Andrew and Fred highlight a groundbreaking survey of the center of our galaxy, revealing the complex dynamics and chemical compositions within this turbulent region. They discuss the technologies used in this research and what it means for our understanding of the Milky Way.

For more Space Nuts, including our continuously updating newsfeed and to listen to all our episodes, visit our website. Follow us on social media at SpaceNutsPod on Facebook, Instagram, and more. We love engaging with our community, so be sure to drop us a message or comment on your favorite platform.
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Stay curious, keep looking up, and join us next time for more stellar insights and cosmic wonders. Until then, clear skies and happy stargazing.

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Hi there, thanks for joining us again. This is Space Nuts.

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My name is Andrew Dunkley. It's great to have your company.

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We're going to talk about a lot of things today,

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and one of them is the Artemis program. Now, we

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did talk about it very recently because things had changed.

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The Artemis to launch was set back, and it looks

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like they're actually going to take the artemist to rocket

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back to the assembly building now and they're not anticipating

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an Artemis to launch to send humans around the Moon

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and back until at least April. But that's not what

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we're going to talk about. We'll explain that shortly. We're

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going to look at the new Ukrainium nebula. This one

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sounds quite unbelievable a brain in space could be and

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the center of our galaxy has been mapped in detail.

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What's it look like? We will tell you on this

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episode of Space.

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Nuts fifteen, Channel ten nine ignition sign Space Nuts NY

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or three.

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Two Space Nuts as when I reported Bill's good. Joining

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us once again is Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large.

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Hi Fred, Hello Andrew. Good to see you back from

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your sod.

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Yes, yes, I won't dwell on it too much. I'm

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sure people have seen the photos on Facebook if they

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cared to look on my page. I didn't put them

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on the space nuts page. But yeah, we went to

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Borneo for a couple of weeks and we saw some

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amazing wildlife, orangutang sun bears, proboscous monkeys, civets. You know,

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you know about the civet They eat the coffee berry

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and pooh out the bean and then they collect the

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beans and turn them into coffee. Yeah, we saw some

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of those. Didn't try to coffee. What else? Macaque monkeys.

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I even managed data in holes at a rather nice

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resort golf course, and I've paid the price for that

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because it was a pretty ordinary game. But I enjoyed

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the course beautiful, although the greens in are better than

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that there, you go much better. It's how Superintendent was

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very pleased to hear when I saw him the other day.

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But yeah, incredible country.

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I think.

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I don't know if you can see the map behind me,

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Fred say that, I tell you, yes, that is the

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map of the Sandikan Death March. In World War Two,

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Australian and English military personnel that had been captured by

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the Japanese were sent to Borneo to build an airport,

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and when it looked like the war was lost to Japan,

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they were ordered to kill all prisoners and they force

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marched one eight hundred Australians from Sandakan to a place

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called Ranao in northern Borneo. Of those, eighteen hundred six survived.

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It's a terrible tragedy. It's Australia's worst atrocity in terms

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of war, and not many people know about it. They

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know all about Gallipoli, they know all about some of

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the major battles of World War One and World War Two,

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the Rats of to Brook. It all goes down in folklore,

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but it is is one of the probably one of

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the most forgotten elements of Australian military history really, and

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I would encourage people to go and read about it.

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I knew about it.

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But it's not well publicized. And I think it's a

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tragedy that we tend to put this stuff at the

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back of our minds and should never be forgotten what

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happened over there. So we've basically on the tour followed

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the route of the death March, not intentionally. It was

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just the way the road went, but went to the

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memorials and read all the names, one hundreds and hundreds

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of names. The British suffered similarly, there were six hundred

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British that were captured and basically left to die. It

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was just just horrible. For itd horrible, but the wildlife

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and the rainforests and the rivers and the people magnificent.

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Highly recommend borneo, highly recommend it. Now, you were up

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late last night, weren't you.

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I was, Yeah, there was because of the total eclipse

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of the Moon, which I know you didn't get to

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see because you had eight eighths cloud. I know that

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because of the angle. Australian telescope not very far away

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from you got no observations last night of any can

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But in Sydney we've had cloudy weather for weeks, but

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the clouds, the clouds broke and so we saw the

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eclipse and that was Geordie. Of course that just chimed

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in there. But we actually have Geordie's sister staying with

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us for a whole one. So yeah, this is going

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to probably for the next few weeks. We'll have the

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terrible duo, the more or less identical ones a little

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bit fatter than the other. I won't mention which is which,

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but yeah, and so they yes, she arrived, Rosy arrived today.

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But yeah, that's nothing to do with the clips. We

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did see the blood moon. It was a total eclipse

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of the moon, so that the Earth, the moon was

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well immersed in the shadow of the Earth. We had

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about an hour of totality and during that time the

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clouds came and went a bit, but we got a

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really good view of that blood moon phenomenon caused by

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scattering of lights from the atmosphere, scattering of sunlight. Yes,

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so it was good, but it was, as you've just said,

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of late night and I'm just catching up.

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Yeah enough, it's quite a spectacle of blood moon. I'm

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sorry I missed it, but it can't help the weather,

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which reminds me we also had to deal with flooding

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at the end of the monsoon while we were overseas,

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and that it was fun driving through floodwaters. They wouldn't

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let you do that in Australia, but we weren't in Australia,

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were we. So yeah, we should get down to it, Fred,

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There's a lot to talk about, and our first subject

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is yet again the Artemis missions. And I mentioned at

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the beginning that Artemis two has been put back in

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the shed and probably won't launch those astronauts until at

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least April. But we are now talking about Artemis three. Now,

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this was the mission that was slated for initially twenty

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twenty seven, then push back to probably twenty twenty eight

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to put people on the Moon. There's been several changes.

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It looks like they won't be doing that, and they

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might not be using SpaceX the way things are shaping up.

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That's right. So this was an announcement last week at

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the time we're recording, and you're quite right. What has

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happened is that there's in a major update to the

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Artemis program with an extra mission slotted in. So Artemis three,

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exactly as you've said, was originally going to be the

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lunar landing mission sometime after twenty twenty seven. But what

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they have, what NASA has done, is inserted another mission,

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which is now Artemis three, which will not land on

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the Moon. It will be a spacecraft that will simply

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go into Earth orbit, and what it will do is

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essentially replicate in a sense what Apollo nine did after

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the Apollo eight mission. It's to check that you can

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rendezvous with the equipment, you can do the necessary steps

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that need to be taken in space which have not

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yet been tried and tested. Because Artemis two will simply

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involve the Orion capsule containing the four astronauts, what that

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will do is it will accelerate up to the eleven

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kilometers per second needing to get to the Moon, go

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around the Moon, and then come back again without any

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of the kind of technical details involved with first of all,

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refueling spacecraft in space, that's one of the things that's

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part of the Artemist program, but also doing the rendezvous

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and turning spacecraft around and things of that sort. It's

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a bit like in the Apollo missions where you had

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to turn the turn the lunar module around to dock

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with the with the crew module, with the basically the

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crew capsule. So all of that is now being slotted

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into Apollo. Sorry, Becky. Artemis three, with the landing itself,

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actually forecasts for Artemis four, and one of the reasons

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for this is the fact that there is still a

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lot of work to do on the landing vehicle. Now.

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Back in the day some years ago, NASA contracted both

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SpaceX and Blue Origin. The two companies led by the

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two billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Those two companies

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were tasked with developing a crew lander vehicle to land

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on the Moon. The favored version was Elon Musk's Starship

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the top end of a starship which would which was

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originally going to be the Artemis three Lander. Now the

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lander landing has been pushed back to Artemis four, but

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the gate is now still open for the Bezos company

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to further develop its own lunar landing module, which has

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been under test for quite a while and is so

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in a sense, is a competitor to SpaceX. So the

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two programs are running side by side, and NASA will

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eventually have to make a choice as to which one

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they go with. If I may, there's a very nice

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quote from NASA NASA Associated Administrator, a very senior person

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in NASA, who says, we are looking back to the

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wisdom of the folks that designed Apollo. The entire sequence

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of Artemis flights needs to represent a step by step

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build up of capability, with each step bringing us closer

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to our ability to perform the landing missions. Each step

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needs to be big enough to make progress but not

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so big that we take unnecessary risk given previous learnings. Therefore,

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we want to fly the landing missions in as close

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to the same Earth are sent configuration as possible, which

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means using an upper stage and pad system as close

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to the Block one configuration as possible. That's the basic,

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the basic space launch system configuration. So we will see

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what happens. You're right that Artemis two, the the stack

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is currently back in the vehicle assembly building for checks

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on the upper stage, that's the second stage that will

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actually push the spacecraft into a lunar trajectory. There were

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issues with the helium mechanism for that upper stage, you

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might remember we did talk about that before. That's now

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being fixed and we have a date no sooner than

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April the sixth for a launch of Artemis two, so

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we'll look out for that. But yes, a major change

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in the in the Artemist strategy, which makes a lot

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of sense.

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Yeah, I think it does, and copying a successful series

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like the Apollo missions, notwithstanding what happened to Apollo third

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in but that wasn't that was unforeseen.

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It was just a quirk really.

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And everyone got time. But yeah, what I find interesting

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is those Apollo missions went back to back to back

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to back to back really fast. They seem to be

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much more inflated in their in their mission dates, don't they.

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They do, and that's partly because the technology is now

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far more complex, because these missions are not just to

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achieve boots on the ground. It's all about setting up science,

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you know, a kind of almost permanent presence on the Moon.

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The ultimate schedule, again, this came out of the recent

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press releases and press conferences. The ultimate schedule is one

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Artemis mission per year once we have started, once the

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first lunar landing has taken place, there'll be one a year. Now.

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That is much slower than the Apollo cadence. They were

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one every few months I think. So Apollo eleven was July,

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Pollo twelve was was November, when Apollo thirteen was. But

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you get that, you know that the intervals were a

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few months rather than a few years. I guess another

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reason for not just not just the scientific reasons for

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making it a spacing of one year, but that each

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of these is a very expensive venture. I've seen a

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figure quoted a four billion dollars per launch for an

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Artimist mission, which is high watering. That's right.

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Yeah, did they hit you up for a loan for it?

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I think yeah, I could probably muster a few dollars. Though.

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It's funny when you talk about the advances in technology

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because I'm holding my mobile phone in my hand right now.

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It's got a hell of a lot more computer power

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than the computer on Apollo eleven.

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Sadly, it's also invisible because of your background. No, no, yeah,

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it just disappears what it looks like. You know what

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it looks like. That's right, Yeah, but you're absolutely right. Yes,

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it's quite amazing.

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Not many people probably realize they're packing a lot more

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power than the Apollo missions carried. So yeah, it's all

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in your pocket. If you'd like to read about the

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latest in regard to the Artemis missions, you can do

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that at the Universe today dot com website. But Nasau

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I'll have it on their website and many others as well.

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Is a Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson.

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That's a that's agreement is that if the goodness this

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is what he does is he gets very enthusiastic.

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Nuts. Oh drives me in mud. Honestly, it drives me mud.

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I love it. I really do.

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To our next story this this could be the title

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of a science fiction novel, The Brain in space. We're

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talking about a very strange nebula that looks like a

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brain inside a clear sphere, and this is the consequence

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of a star that's kind of shed its out of

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layers and created this quite bizarre looking nebula called PMR one.

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Indeed, that's right. I very much like the headline from

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space dot Com covering this story, which is James Webspace

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telescope performs brain surgery or mysterious exposed cranium nebula, which

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I think sums it up pretty well. That's a good one. Yeah,

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it's great. So it's basically a highly evolved star, by

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which I mean a star that's getting near the end

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of its life. It's thrown off some of the layers

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of its outer envelope. And what we've seen from the

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James web is images which are taken in the near

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infrared and in the mid infrared, and so we get

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two quite different views of this thing that does look

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for all the world like an X ray inside somebody's head.

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You can see the outline of the skull and a

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lot of funny stuff going on inside.

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It really does look that way, doesn't it Like somebody

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does put a brain in a goldfish ball and check

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that up in the air.

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Yes, that's right, with a few stars in the backgroom.

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It's a little bit close to home for me actually,

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because the object's technical formal name is PMR one, and

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it was discovered originally by astronomers using the telescope, one

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of the telescopes. I was astronomer in charge of the

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one point to me to UK Schmidt telescope back in

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the late nineteen nineties, and three of my close leagues

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were involved with this program, Quentin Parker, David Morgan, and

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Ken Russell. And their names are Parker, Morgan, and Russell.

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And that is why this is called PMR one. It

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was the first object that was discovered under a program

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actually really masterminded by Quentin Parker, an old friend who's

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now a professor in the University of Hong Kong. He

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had a mission to photograph the sky because back in

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those days we were still using photography on the Schmid

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telescope using what we call a narrow band filter that

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just picked out the light of excited hydrogen, something called

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an H one filter or an H alpha filter, and

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so the telescope used this filter to survey the night

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sky and many interesting objects were revealed, of which the

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first one in the particular program that he collaborated with

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David Morgan and Ken Russell was concerned PMR one. That's

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the object we're talking about now. Now we never saw

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it with the Schmidt telescope. That was just a flaint,

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faint glowing blob. But with the James Webb we see

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this extraordinarily detailed, this detailed image. So that the history

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is that it was discovered in the late nineteen nineties

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on the Schmidt telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, which was

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a kind of fore runner of the James Web telescopes

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and Infrared Telescope and NASA Infrared Observatory when they looked

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at PMR one. That was when this curious appearance led

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to its unofficial name of the exposed cranium nebula. But

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the James Webb was taking that a step further with

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these latest observations, which are really quite remarkable, and you

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do get a very strong impression of the three dimensional

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view of this ball of not so much a ball

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it's a kind of elongated almost like a you know,

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an oval football elongated sphere of gas with a whole

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lot of stuff going on inside it. And what we've

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got is an ancient star which is casting off its

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outer layers. There is a class of stars called wolf

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Rea stars, named after two astronomers I think Drs wolf

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and Reya. I think that's right thinking back, and they

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are really ancient stars, massive stars that are getting near

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the end of their lives, and basically they have winds

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of radiation which are blowing away their outer envelopes and

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form this nebula, and eventually they may turn into a

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supernova and exploding star. So we understand though from the

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research that's been carried out with this, that whether it

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is a wolf raya star in the middle of PMR one,

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or something else, we don't know. The that's going to

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be absolutely at the very center of that brain like

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nebula inside the exposed cranium.

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Yeah, I'm gathering that seeing something like this is very unusual.

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It doesn't look like the kind of nebulaly normally see photographed.

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It's got uniformity for a start, and it's and you

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can see the explosive effect radiating out, it just happens

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to look like a brain.

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Yes, that's right, So I mean that hydrogen alpha survey

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that I mentioned that Quentin Parker and colleagues were engaged in.

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I'm pretty sure I took some of the photographs for

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it as well back in the day, because I was

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still a working astronomer then when I was an astronomy

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in charge. I think that one of the main things

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that that program did was reveal a very large number

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of silicle planetary nebula. So a planetary nebula is a

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cloud of gas that's got usually has circular symmetry, which

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is why it looks like a planet. And it was

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William Hershall who gave it that gave them the name

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a planetary nebula. The most famous ones are the Ring

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nebula in the northern hemisphere and the Helix nebula down

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in the south. But this thing might might be might

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actually in the end turn out to be a planetary nebula,

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which is an old star that's cast off its out

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a lairs and the central core of the star has

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turned into what we call a white dwarf, something about

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the size of the Earth, but with very high mass

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massive a star, and those are white dwarfs are very

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hot and they're what excite the glowing the gas into

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into glowing. But it's not clear whether this object is

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actually a white dwarf or one of these al free

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stars that I was just talking about.

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Yeah, yeah, I think we've probably got a bit of

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a Dolier effect here because we've just got it and gone,

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that's a brain.

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It's a brain. Yeah, that's right, Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

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When we were out on the river in Borneo, what

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they told us was it's chock full of saltwater crocodiles,

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because every time we saw a log, Yes, that's the

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thing you.

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Thought it was, Oh, it's a crocodile. Yeah.

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Yeah, I think when we saw that forty meter crocodile

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surging down the river, we were all panicking a bit

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turned out to be a tree.

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Well the brunches gave it away, did they, Yes.

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Well, no, I didn't have any was that's what really made.

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It weird like a crocodile?

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Yeah, Well, because we had all that monsoon rain while

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we were there, and the river was flooded. And this

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is a river five hundred and sixty kilometers long and

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about where we were two or three hundred meters wide.

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It was massive and the water was flowing very fast.

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It was quite scary actually, but yeah, it is. It is, Yeah,

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one of those weird effects. We try to humanize every

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thing we see in You look at something and think crocodile. No, actually, no,

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that's a log And here here we are looking at

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a brain in space, which is a some kind of nebula.

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Trying to figure out what kind and how it all happened.

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But you can read about that at theaweb dot org

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website if you want to check it out. Amazing images

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they are too. This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley

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and Fred Watson.

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About step Bartolom mount Up. I'm all crowd preman space nuts.

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In the past spread we've had questions from the audience

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about the center of our galaxy and it's not easy

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to answer because we can't see it. It's all shrouded

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in dust. Although you and I have discussed what it

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would be like on Earth if there was no dust,

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and the light would be so much different for us,

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So things could have turned out a different way had

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that not been there. But yes, it's shrouded, but there

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are ways to look, and they've just published a finding,

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thanks to a couple of the great telescopes on Earth,

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of what the center of our galaxy is like. They've

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mapped a massive section of it in significant detail.

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That is correct. And I might just preface this discussion

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by noting that in terms of personnel there is a

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close connection with what we've just been talking about the

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UK Schmidt Telescope, because one of my former colleagues at

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the UK Schmidt Telescope, doctor Andy Longmore, I worked with

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him at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh. He's still based in Edinburgh,

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but he and his wife Marie were actually visiting us

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here in Australia at the beginning of this year, so

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I went up to Newcastle to see them. And it's

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their son that is the lead author on the paper

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that has just mapped the center of the galaxy, which

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is very nice. It's a lovely connection. So Steve Longmore

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their son, like father, like son. He's turned into an

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astronomer and very capable because he has led this major

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survey which is called ACES. ACES is an acronym for

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Alma CMZ Exploration Survey and the CMZ, if I remember rightly,

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is the central something zone, central molecular zone of the

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galaxy where molecules lurk around around the black hole at

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