(upbeat music)
- Hey there, welcome to the Freethink Progress Report,
where we talk about what the solutions of today
will mean for your world tomorrow.
My name is Jeffrey
and today I'm gonna be talking about all things space.
Lunar landings, zombie space satellites
and spotting poop from space.
We'll get there but I'm sure the question
you're really wondering right now is, "Am I wearing pants?"
The United States, or rather private enterprise
in the United States is going to the moon again
for the first time since Apollo 17.
And it aims to get there within four years.
Now, this is huge because it means that new space race
is here now as NASA awards contracts
to three companies that say they can land a man on the moon.
SpaceX, Dynetics and Blue Origin.
The contract is for a lunar landing system
for NASA's Artemis program,
the successor to the Apollo program.
With three companies competing,
we're finally seeing the new space race come to fruition.
We're in the end game now.
Manned space flight was the final benchmark
and SpaceX aims to flex first
with a manned launch from U.S. soil,
which hasn't happened since 2011.
While NASA delays testing of it's own space launch system
and the Orion spacecraft to protect its workers from COVID,
SpaceX is pushing ahead and they're gonna have a launch
on my 27th with a man in their Dragon spacecraft
which has been used before for cargo.
Previous missions to the moon leveraged
a national ambition for scientific achievement
at a huge expense.
This time around the United States
is saving a whole lot of money
by leveraging the emerging field of private space companies.
This area is full of interesting niches
for private companies to fill.
Check out our series, "The New Space Race",
to see other contenders in this area
and learn about their strategies.
There are thousands of man-made objects
in earth's orbit.
Some are functioning satellites,
some are just left over rocket parts and other space junk.
The U.S. Airforce officially keeps tracks of these objects
in a catalog that tells you what and where
these objects are but that's not the whole story.
There are several unofficial catalogs
that paint a broader picture.
Some satellites are not even acknowledged by the governments
that put them there for national security reasons,
even though you yourself can see them in the night sky
if you have little know how.
There're also a number of zombie satellites
which are satellites that begin transmitting again
after a long period of inactivity.
Amateur astronomer Scott Tilly
recently found one of these satellites.
He found himself with a lot of time on his hands
under lockdown in his home in British Columbia
and with that free time he likes to hunt for satellites
in the night sky.
Scott found the LES 5 satellite,
a U.S. military satellite launched in 1967
and then decommissioned in 1972.
And it's actually not the first time
Scott has found something like this.
We did another story a few years ago
of Scott finding NASA's lost satellite named Image.
Scott is part of an informal network
of satellite spotters from around the world called See-Sat-L.
You can join in on the fun
by posting your own satellite observations
on their website or mailing list,
check out satobs.org/seesat to learn more.
If you're not quite technical enough
to do satellite hunting, there are still some ways
that you can check out some cool space shit, literally,
and still feel like you're kind of productive
by contributing to the world of science.
With a mobile app called Zooniverse,
you can help scientists classify space imagery
like the shape of galaxies.
Classifying them helps physicists
understand the forces that formed our universe.
Another way to contribute to the world of science
is to look at poop as seen from outer space.
Scientists are finding and estimating
the size of penguin populations
by looking at the volume of poop they leave behind
as seen through satellite imagery.
But this process
takes a lot of manual searching through pictures,
you can help by looking for that poop yourself.
Checkout penguinmap.coms/contribute
to do your duty.
That's all I've got for today,
feel free to contribute to the discussion below.
And if there are any interesting stories in your orbit
let us know.
Send us an email at tips@freethink.com.
Thanks for watching.
(bright music)