Jan. 8, 2026

Expandable Space Stations, Martian Caves & Rogue Planet Revelations

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Transcript

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New Year, New Discoveries: Expandable Space Stations, Martian Caves, and Rogue Planets
In this exciting New Year edition of Space Nuts, hosts Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson kick off 2026 with a bang, discussing groundbreaking developments in space exploration and astronomy. From innovative proposals for expandable space stations to intriguing discoveries on Mars, this episode is packed with cosmic insights.
Episode Highlights:
- Expandable Space Stations: Andrew and Fred dive into a fascinating proposal for an inflatable space station that could expand to be larger than the International Space Station. They explore the technology behind this concept and its potential implications for future space tourism and research.
- Strange Caves on Mars: The duo discusses recent findings of unique caves on Mars that may have formed through water-driven processes. These caves could provide a habitat for microbial life, sparking interest in future rover missions to investigate their potential.
- Observations of Rogue Planets: Andrew and Fred delve into the elusive nature of rogue planets, discussing how recent observations using gravitational microlensing have shed light on a planet 22 times the mass of Jupiter, located approximately 10,000 light years from Earth. They reflect on the significance of these findings and the advancements in technology that facilitate such discoveries.

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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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WEBVTT

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Hi there, and happy New Year. Welcome to a new

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edition of Space Nuts. My name is Andrew Duncle your host.

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Great to have your company. I hope you had a

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great Christmas and New Year and looking forward to getting

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your brain crammed full of stuff from astronomy and space

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science over the next twelve months or so. Coming up

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in this episode some really interesting stories. A proposal to

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develop an expandable space station. This is one that you

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launch and then you put it out into space and

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then it just sort of blows up, you know, not catastrophically,

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but it expands and it'll be bigger than the International

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Space Station.

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Apparently, strange new.

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Caves on Mars will cast an eye on that. Oh yeah,

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that's you think about it. That's a good joke. And

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observations of a rogue planet. We'll talk about all of

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that on this new Year's edition of Space Nuts.

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Fantal ten nine Ignition Space Nuts or three two one

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Space Nurse.

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As when I reported Bill Good and he's back for

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more in twenty twenty six. His name is Professor Fred

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Wat's an astronomer at large. Hello Fred, Happy Year, Andrew

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Year to you too, and Marney.

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Yep, mine he's out at the moment, but I shall

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pass on your greetings. I can't believe that we know

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more than a quarter of the way through the century.

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I know where did it go?

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It's just it's just flown and it.

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And I can't keep up. Well, you're obviously managing, because

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he's still here. I'm still here, Yes, and I must

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be too because I'm still here.

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Yes, yes we are, and onward and upward. Did you

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have a nice Christmas New Year or that getting nice preses?

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It was great. Yes, it was a quiet festive season

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because you know, we've been everywhere the two months before,

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and so we've finally found us our feet again and

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sort of more or less settle back into home life. Yeah.

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I might mention the pressy that I've been really enjoying,

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and that is it's almost like a dongle that plugs

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into my old iPod. My how old is it? It's

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eighteen years old now, my iPod still in perfect working order.

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This is a good advert for Apple. But of course

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it doesn't have Bluetooth, and all it has is a

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little audio socket. Yeah, but the dongle you plug in

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this small box into the audio socket, switch it on

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and it's live on Bluetooth, and the sound quality is

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unbelievable compared with a straightforward wire to your headphone.

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Yeah, isn't it good.

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It's good that they can come up with technology to

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make old technology old technology, and iPod work in them

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in the modern era.

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It's really meant for people getting on aeroplanes, so you

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can you can plug it into the audio socket on

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your your seat back and listen on your Bluetooth headphones.

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But for me, it's it's just a joy because the

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old iPod has got far more music on it than

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any other device that I've got.

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Yeah, I put all my music on my on my phone.

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Yeah, it falls off your phone. Mine certainly does, so

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we can talk about that later.

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I've had the problem, but yes, we might look into that.

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Interesting falls off. It's hard to know what my favorite

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gift is, but I think it's or it might be

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my rock box. You know how I steal rocks from

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different parts of the world.

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Yes, you do illegally.

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Judy's got a display case for me, fabulous. Yeah, and

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she brought me a labeler so I could put all

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the names down. So it's sitting just over there. Next

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time I show it. Yeah, some good gear in there,

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everything from a rock from Mount it and to shrapnel

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from the Western Front.

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Yeah.

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I'll pick up anything.

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Yeah, and I think you've got the odd meteor right

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in there as well. I might have.

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You know, it's very hole.

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Yes and.

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Yeah, yeah, there's there's a few.

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I can't remember them all now TD mount t d oh.

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Yeah. In shall we get.

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Stuck into business because you know, we could talk about

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our Christmas presents all day?

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God are we pathetic? I do apologize to the audience.

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This is what comes of being just adequate, really, isn't it.

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We've just been old and dodgy. That's that's what it is. Uh.

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Let's talk about this proposal to develop an expandable space station.

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This looks like something out of a science fiction movie

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when you look at the images. Obviously they're artistic impressions

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because they haven't actually launched this thing yet, but the

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idea behind it, and they're talking about putting it up

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sometime next year as a test case.

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But you take it on a rocket.

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Let it out, and then it just expands out into

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the space you want. You can do whatever you like

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with it.

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It's I think you know what we're seeing the future

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here and at the same time we're looking into the

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past because in the early two thousands, company called Bigelow Aerospace.

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Thank you for reminding me of that name ten minutes ago,

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because I couldn't remember it. Bigelow Aerospace, which actually is

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the same company on the chain of hotels and motels

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I think in the USA. But they pioneered the idea

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of inflatable spacecraft, and I've forgot what the name of

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the spacecraft were. They had two which were both launched,

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and one of them had it was full of photographs

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of people who'd sent their photographs to be put inside

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this inflatable module, and so they were floating around in weightlessness.

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They had a camera looking at everybody's picture going past.

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Yours might have been one of them.

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Actually, I can't remember if it was that one or

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something else.

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It was something like Merlin or Hermes or something that

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I can't remember what it was anyway, but there were

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two of them, and they demonstrated pretty successfully that an

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inflatable spacecraft is a viable proposition. And you know, you

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might think, oh my god, what happens when you get

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a micro meteorite, But it turns out that you can put,

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you know, various fabrics, the sort of stuff that you

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put in bulletproof vests. You can actually layer the fabrics

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that use in the inflatable module so that it will

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be moderately resistant to micrometeorites. And that I think might

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have been what sparked this new idea. I'm not sure

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whether the new proposal owes anything to bigger Ow Aerospace,

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And it might be the same company with a different name,

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a company, sorry, go ahead now, it could be I

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was just a company company called mac Space, And basically

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they've unveiled something a proposal which is called the Thunderbird

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Station Love the name which has been announced with in

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the last week or so, and it's it's a large

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inflatable habitat that's got much more internal volume than your

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typical thing that you launch that is rigid. In fact,

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I think it's it's I can't remember the exact dimensions,

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but it's it's something like three times the volume of

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a standard ISS module, one of the the modules that

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goes to build up the International Space Station. So the

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main factor it's launched in a compact form, but it

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expands to twenty times it's launch volume once it's in

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orbit and you don't need to assemble it. You press

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a button and there's a hiss, I guess, and there

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it goes. You've got your inflatable module. And so there

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is a flight being planned on a SpaceX right shair mission,

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as you said, next year, in which we might see

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a test version of one of these they're so called

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Mission Evolution flight to validate the on orbit deployment of

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the module and actually test it's you know, how resilient

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it is to micrometeoroid impact. So interesting stuff, Yeah, it.

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Is, And this is probably just the beginning of a

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potential new way of dealing with space tourism. Because at

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the moment you can go up and do a little

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bit of floating around and then come back down again.

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You don't get a heck of a long time up there.

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And yeah, yeah, but this could take it to a

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whole new level.

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And I think that was the motivation behind Bigelow's ventures

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earlier in the earlier in the century. So yeah, but

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it clearly, you know, it clearly has merit. If you

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can make it with the right degree of protection, you

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are finding a cheap way of getting large volumes into

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space of course, the downside of that for astronomers is

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that these things, being big, are going to be much

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more reflective than your average spacecraft.

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I've got a scenario in my head. Look, I think

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I found planet.

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Not what's that?

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That's thunderbird got in a way, Yeah, that's exactly it

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that you've got. You know, you've got satellite trails basically

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interrupting your observations. We're already seeing it with Starlink in

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a big way, with something like I think it's eight

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thousand now, but they're operational, and that's going to go

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up to twelve thousand, probably by the end of the decade,

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and maybe more in the next decade. What I guess

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the macspace project has in its favor is that these

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won't be launched twenty at a time like the Starlink

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satellites are, because you won't need that many of them,

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So they'll be probably more like in terms of space rarity,

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more akin to the International Space Station, although I'm sure

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the plan is to have many of them, but perhaps

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not hundreds or thousands enough to satisfy the needs of

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people wanting to put experiments into micro gravity.

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And as I understand that that original idea from bigger

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lower aerospace was looking at commercial space stations and smaller

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stations for other purposes, and I think I found some

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of the names they had. One named Nautilus, okay, there

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was Space Complex Alpha, Space Complex Bravo, and another one

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called Skywalker.

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Apparently none of whichering any bells.

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No, didn't remind me of anything either. But this is

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probably a step towards better ways of putting hardware into space.

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But I don't doubt that the day will come, Fred

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where you'll be able to launch a purpose built space

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station which will rotate and give you gravity, and you'll

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be able to spend a couple of weeks up there

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just giving the rest of the planet the bird or

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whatever it is you do when you go up. I

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don't know what you do when you get out there.

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You know you float, and.

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I'm sure you do yes at the moment. So I

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think I saw I seeing so many headlines over the

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holiday break, but I think I saw one. Was it

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a Chinese or be a Russian mission being planned which

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would have an artificial gravity system, So something that will

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rotate about an access to give you artificial gravity, which

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we know will work, and as I've mentioned before Tom Spilker,

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who is married to Linda Spilker, the great Cassini mission

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scientist and Saturn scientists. She's I think she's still working

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on some of the missions designed to go and look

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at Titan or Enceladus, those moons of Saturn. Her husband

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is somebody who specializes in designing artificial gravity systems for orbit,

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and I think he's worked with NASA, and so we

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might see something popping up out of their media pages

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sometime down the track as well.

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That would be interesting. Yeah, it's generally a matter of

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time before we we get there, And yeah, this sounds

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amazing and it reminds me of those pop up caravans.

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You know, they were invented a long time ago. But

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you go and park your caravan, push a button and

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the whole thing opens up and there you are. You've

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suddenly got more space. And that's more or less what

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this is about. And you can configure it to whatever

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needs arise. So it doesn't it's a one size fits all,

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but what you do on the inside's up to you.

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By the sound of it.

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Yeah, that's right, Yes, so that's kind of what you want.

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It's just like a you know an office block where

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you rent out the space and your clients take whatever

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they need to do their work. Yeah, laboratories or engineering

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centers or offices whatever. Yeah.

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So we will look forward to that test flight in

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early twenty twenty seven from max Space. If you want

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to read all about it, you can do so on

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space connect online dot com dot au. This is Space

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Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson. Let's take

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a break from the.

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Okay, we've tacked a space nuts.

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Now, Fred, More and more news keeps coming out of Mars,

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and this is quite an incredible discovery. They have found

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caves unlike any found on the planet before, and we've

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got the kinds of caves on Earth. That's correct.

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I thought you'd like this story because Mars are Mars tragic.

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So the scientific paper which is published this week, I

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think in the Astrophysical journal Letters, which is one of

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the major astronomy journals and space science journals in the world,

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and the paper which is by I think entirely Chinese authors.

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I'm not sure, maybe maybe there are other nationalities in there,

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but principally Chinese authors. It's called water driven Accessible Potential

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Castic Caves in Hebrus Valets Mars, and the subtitle is

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implications for subsurface habitability. In other words, could living organisms

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be found in these in these caves or evidence of

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their having been living organisms? So what what these scientists

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have done is and you know this again is a

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beautiful illustration of the fact that we've got so much

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archival data now, not just on the universe at large,

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but on the planets as well. What they've done is

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they've basically surveyed space borne photographs as Mars by using

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data from various spacecraft. I'm sure they've used, you know,

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the high rise camera on the one of the Mars

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orbiters Mars Global Surveyor is an Alder orbitter that they

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used data from. So these spacecraft have got a huge

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wealth of information about the planet's surface which has not

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all been trolled through. Yeah, you know, we're still seeing

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images that have probably not really been examined before. And

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what they've done with these data is looked at a

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region called Hebrus Valleys, the Hebrews Valley, I guess you'd

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translate it as which is in Mars's northwest. So it's

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very much in the region of Mars that is less mountainous.

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The southern hemisphere of Mars, as we've talked about many

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times before, is mountainous. It's many covered in craters. The

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northern hemisphere is much flatter, many fewer craters, and at

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a lower level it think it's about three kilometers on

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average lower than the lower than the southern hemisphere. That's

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something called the Martian dichotomy, by the way. So what

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they've done is they've looked at what looked like pits

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in the in the in the landscape. And that's not

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that unusual to find things like that, because we know

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of many features that sort of speak of as being

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I mean the speak but they you know, what you

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see tells you that they are probably lava tubes. They're

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probably you know, places which we have here on Earth

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as well. I think you and I have both walked

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through lava tubes in Hawaii, which are like long caves

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where the lava was flowing and gradually dried out and

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you're left with a you're left with a long cave.

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So these are quite different. The newly discovered ones are

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what are called skylights, So that tells you that they

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are openings in the roof of caverns. But the structure

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of them and the sort of features around them and

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the landscape that they're in suggests that these are not

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lava tubes because that sedimentary rock that they're in, it's

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not it's not volcanic rock. So there's some of the

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data that they've looked at shows in the surrounding rock

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around these caves carbonates and sulfates uh. And so that's

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basically a water you know, a water driven rock or

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a water formed rock uh. And there's they're suggesting that

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what you're seeing is caves that have formed by water

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underneath the surface flowing and dissolving the bedrock. And that's

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what we on Earth call cast topography. Hence casting your

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mind forward or backwards whatever you said at the beginning, Andrew.

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So it's a you know that that gives you a

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landscape that's punctuated often by giant sinkholes, which is a

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bit a bit topical at the moment because they've just

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got one in Melbourne. That's probably to do with tunnels

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being dug. It's a big sinkhole in a sports oval

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that has not become popular. It's eight meters across. I

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don't think that's anything to do with water soluble rock,

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but probably more like might be tunnel. I don't know anyway.

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Cast scenery generally on Earth is this limestone within limestone regions,

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and there are places like that in the United Kingdom,

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not very far from where I grew up in Mexico. Mexico, indeed,

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Slovenia has the most wonderful system of cast caves, which

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I had the pleasure to go and explore with a

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colleague from the University of Lubliana a few years ago.

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Sensational stuff. If we find the same thing on Mars,

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that is going to be remarkable. But the point that

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the authors of this paper are making is that that

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might provide a suitable habitat, suitable environment for microorganisms because

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you're protected from the radiation of the from the sun,

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the particle and ultra violet radiation and you know, it

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could be that living organisms have found a place where

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they could evolve and develop. So there might be evidence

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of microbial life there, which suggests that this part of

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Mars's surface might be a good place to send a rover. Yeah,

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and I think that's the bottom line of the article.

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Yeah, I've thought of a name for it. If they

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want to send it rover down, they could call it spilunka.

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Call it what spilunk Isn't it called spelunking when you

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go down caves and.

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Might oh well because of spileology. Yeah, yeah, it's splunking.

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They could call it spilunka. I like that, Yes, yes, sorry,

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that went over my head.

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Actually I learned that word when we visited Hawaii and

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they told us how people go traveling down lava tubes,

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not the tourist ones with electric lights in them, but actual,

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you know, uncharted ones or ones that they know about that,

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and they're just like, it's like mountain climbing, but the opposite.

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Yes, yeah, you can get into all kinds of trouble.

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00:22:56.559 --> 00:22:58.440
Oh, yes, you can, especially.

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00:22:58.119 --> 00:23:02.839
With underground systems and things of that sort. It doesn't

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00:23:02.880 --> 00:23:05.759
float my boat, have to say, the idea of climbing

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into a cave with a with a not a snorkel,

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but you know, basically breathing apparatus.

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It's been a couple of famous cases over the years

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of people who didn't come back because they got themselves

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into difficult situations and it is a really dangerous.

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Thing to do.

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But what's another interesting thing about these caves is there

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they're enormous.

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Yes, that's right, they're not They're not small, they're and

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you know, they they've it's I guess again it to

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use a metaphor, it speaks loudly of the of the

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volumes of water that must have have basically flowed down

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them in the in the millennia ago when they were

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being formed, because I guess we're you know, we're we're

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seeing evidence of water driven ocean and we know that

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00:24:01.799 --> 00:24:04.359
perhaps three and a half to four billion years ago

382
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Mars was wet, but isn't now, so we're looking at

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very ancient water flows. But yes, it says that there

384
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must have been a lot of water there. It is.

385
00:24:13.119 --> 00:24:16.640
It's a remarkable piece of work. I hadn't looked at

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the original paper in great detail, but will do because

387
00:24:21.759 --> 00:24:24.519
it's such an interesting topic and They've done a lot

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of very careful work on this. Yeah.

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Some of these cave openings are over seven hundred meters wide, Yeah,

390
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which is extraordinary. Three hundred and fifty seems to be

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a common number. Some of them are around almost double that.

392
00:24:38.960 --> 00:24:39.799
It's double that.

393
00:24:40.519 --> 00:24:43.680
Yeah. It sort of makes you wonder why we're really

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seeing these things before. I suspect what has allowed these

395
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authors to make the deductions that they have is because

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