The new iPhone can connect to satellites. Why SLS didn't
launch and when it might, growing rice in space, and
another incredible image from James Webb, all that and more in
this week's episode of Space bites. Hi, everyone. I'm Fraser
Cain. I'm the publisher of Universe Today, I've been a
space in astronomy news journalist for over 20 years.
This is our space bites. Short, bite sized information about
space and astronomy news that happened this week. Alright,
let's get into the stories. The Tarantula Nebula by James Webb.
Wow. I like I think this is probably my favorite picture
that has come out of the James Webb Space Telescope. So far,
this is just amazing. This is an image of the Tarantula Nebula,
which is a star forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud,
so it's in another galaxy. And it is ludicrously big. Like when
you think about the Orion Nebula, it's relatively nearby,
this one is so much bigger, with so much more star formation,
compared to what they have even just in the Orion Nebula. And
this image was originally taken as part of that first set of
science images that James Webb did. And then I guess the people
who were working with the images looked through this as well as
all of the other images, and decided that they had other cool
images to share. And so they held on to this one, and we just
got it this week. Now, you can go and download a much higher
resolution version, this one that is 14,000 pixels by 8000
pixels, so, so much bigger. And what's really cool about James
Webb, of course, is that it has this infrared view, it can see
cooler objects, it can peer through the gas and dust that
surrounds these star forming nebulae. And so in this image,
there are 1000s of stars that have never been seen before they
were hidden by the nebula. And now thanks to James Webb, we're
able to see them. But still, it's a beautiful image. It's a
scientifically interesting image. Again, I think it's one
of the best images that James Webb has produced so far.
Another delay for SLS. Hopefully, if all goes well, it
will launch September 3 As late as September 5. But you know,
like, if I was a betting man, I would guess that we're going to
have to wait probably until October, there's going to be
some other issues are going to need to sort out. And just
another month just to really double check and fix everything
will be great.
Like, I'm not Nostradamus, but obviously I did call that the
SLS was going to be delayed, and then the SLS was going to be
delayed again. And it was and that wasn't like me being able
to see the future. That is just the reality of trying to deal
with hydrogen as a fuel is the lightest element in the Universe
has teeny, tiny atoms, and it wants to leak out of every
single pressure vessel that you try to do. And this is what NASA
is dealing with. They found a leak in the fuel feed line of
their quick disconnect. And this is an umbilical that connects
the fueling system to the SLS. And there was some kind of leak
coming out of the system. And so they decided to stop the
countdown and try to trace the source of the leak. They're
gonna keep working on this leak while the rocket is on the pad.
But they've got a bit of a hard deadline. Now NASA is on a bit
of a timeline because of a system on board as Celeste
called the FTS the flight termination system. And this
system has been certified for a certain time period, and NASA is
going to run out the clock on that certification. And then
they have to essentially recharge the batteries onboard
the FTS. And the only way to do that is to roll the SLS back to
the Vehicle Assembly Building and be able to access it from
there. And so they're hoping they'll be able to get a waiver.
So they don't have to recertify this FTS system, and that they
can just continue on with their scheduled launch for the 23rd.
So they do get permission, then they'll do some more tests
fuelling on the 17th. And if that works, well, then another
launch window opens up on the 23rd and then another one on the
27th. If they don't get permissions, they're gonna have
to roll the rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building, do a
more significant upgrade, swap out the batteries and they
probably won't be able to fly in October. So at this point, I'm
not going to make any more predictions. I mean, they've
traced down a couple of minor problems remaining. I like their
chances to fly later on in September but I'll keep you
posted. And of course just before we started recording this
episode, we got news that SpaceX starship just did a hot fire
with probably 6 of its raptor two engines all at the same
time. And so we are getting closer and closer to a starship
launch. Remember, Elon Musk said it'll launch sometime within the
next month to 12 months. So it could be right around the
corner. Or we could be waiting another year, the new iPhone
will talk to satellites. This week, Apple did their big new
product announcement, all of the new iPhones and we got a lot of
updates about what they're planning to do. Very little that
has anything to do with space, so my eyes just glazed over. But
one thing did catch my eye. And that is that the new iPhone 14
is going to have satellite connectivity, sort of. The way
it's going to work is on the iPhones, they have an emergency
mode that you can press if you get into trouble. And as long as
you're in cell phone range, then you emergency services, we'll be
alerted. And they'll come and help you out. Well, with the new
iPhone 14, it's going to go to space, which is kind of cool.
Now they're going to be using the Globalstar satellite network
and the connectivity is going to be fairly limited. So if you get
into some kind of accident, and you fall, and you press the
Emergency SOS button, as long as you have a clear view to the
sky, your phone will be able to communicate with one of the
satellites alert emergency services and they'll be able to
come and help you out it'll take a little longer. If you're under
foliage, perhaps you've fallen down a ravine or something. But
still, it should still work as long as you're outside. Behind
the scenes, the signals are going up to the globalstar
network. And these are a series of satellites that are orbiting
at about 1400 kilometers, so much higher than the Starlink
satellites. Now speaking of Starlink, of course, last week,
we talked about how Starlink and T Mobile are going to be
allowing your phone to be able to connect to the satellite
network. And in the case of Starlink, you're going to be
able to make phone calls and text messages from anywhere in
the United States. And I guess eventually, wherever Starlink
has coverage around the world. And the plan is that the
Starlink satellites are going to work with really any mobile
phone. While the Apple version obviously will only work with
the apple 14 They've got special hardware onboard to be able to
send this message out to satellites. And we also learn
that Huawei is going to be offering a similar service on a
Chinese satellite network. And so now you've got like three
different devices, families are going to be able to connect to
the internet, you can see where this is going, that at some
point in the near or far future, you're going to have a mobile
phone that will be able to connect high speed to the
internet from anywhere on Earth. That sounds pretty great.
Growing rice in space, we got news this week that the Chinese
astronauts, taikonauts, on board the 10 Gong Space Station, were
able to successfully grow rice in space. Now growing vegetables
in space is nothing new. The International Space Station has
a greenhouse on board where astronauts can grow various
leafy greens, mustards, even some flowers and they're able to
add these to their meals to spice up and maybe make their
meals less bland and in a package. And they've learned
what it takes to actually grow vegetables in space on the
Chinese space station, they decided to try growing rice. And
they did two varieties of rice, a sort of standard rice and then
a dwarf variety, and actually started growing them back in
July. And we got the news that they the test has been
successful. The standard variety has grown about 29 centimeters
while the dwarf varieties just grown about five centimeters.
But actually, that is the normal amount that you can expect for
growth of these varieties of rice, even if they were on
Earth. In addition to learning to grow vegetables in space, the
purpose of this is to see what kinds of genetic variations
happen to rice while it's grown in space. So they're going to be
bringing the new crop back down to earth. And they're going to
scan the genetic code very carefully to see what kinds of
mutations have happened, possibly due to being in
microgravity, possibly due to increased amounts of radiation.
And that will help understand if it's a sustainable way of
growing crops into the future. And this isn't the first time
that rice has been grown in space. Actually, some Indonesian
students designed an experiment on the International Space
Station back in 2016, to grow rice and they were able to
successfully do it as well. So more examples of food being
grown in space. And that's how we're gonna get to that future
greenhouses in orbit. Green sand on Mars. When NASA chose the
landing site for the perseverance rover. They picked
Jesu crater and they did it for a very special reason because
this is one of the places on Mars that most clearly had water
for long periods of time. It was an impact crater, but it then
filled up with water and probably was wet for a long
period of time, you can see rivers leading in and out of the
crater. And so there's probably sedimentary channels and all
kinds of material that would indicate there was water there
for a long time. Now, when perseverance arrived at Jezero
crater, it did find evidence that yes, indeed, there was
water here at found sedimentary rocks down at the bottom of the
crater places where you would expect the water had been
sitting for a long time and material had collected out and
piled up over long periods of time. But on the edges of the
crater, it found examples of volcanism and one specific kind
of rock tells a really interesting story. So it found
these green rocks, which we now know are olivine. And this is a
mineral that's found on Earth, it is a kind of volcanic rock.
And it happens when there's a lot of trapped gases inside the
lava as it is being ejected from the volcano over time, as the
gases work their way out. The lava switches to a more fluid,
more rocky kind of lava. But the the one that produces this
olivine is actually very explosive. And what it tells you
is that there was a lot of water nearby water in mixed in with
the lava water had penetrated into the rock down to the area
was mixing with the lava and then it was being exploded out
onto the surface. So again, more evidence that Mars is more
complicated than we thought, but also clearly had water for
longer periods than we thought. Rocket Lab tests an engine that
went to space. Now we reported several weeks ago, that Rocket
Lab was able to successfully catch one of the booster rockets
from a recent Electron rocket launch. Well, they didn't quite
catch it. Now the rocket came back to earth with a parachute.
And then a helicopter went out and caught the rocket as it was
falling. And they caught it successfully. But then they
weren't able to hold on to it. And they ultimately had to drop
the rocket into the ocean. They went they fished the rocket out
of the ocean cleaned it up. And this week, we learned they had
been doing a bunch of tests on this rocket engine. And they
were able to prove that it still works fine. They fired it for
the same length of time it would take for this rocket to carry a
payload up to orbit and it worked fine. Now I don't know if
they're actually going to reuse this specific booster but it
shows that the technique works. You can catch these boosters
with a helicopter you can fly them back to the facility you
can fire them again and carry another payload to orbit and
that should be able to reduce costs and make spaceflight even
more inexpensive. NASA's buying some moonwalk spacesuits. NASA
is gearing up for their return to the Moon. Of course, we're
going to see the Artemis one mission launch any day now with
SLS. And then after that was the Artemis two where they work on
the Deep Space gateway. And then Artemis three is when humans
return to the Moon. But they're gonna want to go outside,
they're gonna go for a walk. And right now NASA has no spacesuits
capable of supporting humans out on the surface of the Moon. They
can't go back to the original Apollo era suits. They're all in
museums and are degraded and use old technology. So NASA has gone
to find a new provider. And they've gone with Axiom to
develop the spacesuits you might be familiar with Axiom. They're
the group that sent that first private tourist trip up to the
International Space Station. They're building a private space
module that's going to go on to the International Space Station.
And they are building spacesuits. And so they
demonstrated that they have the capability to build spacesuits
for the lunar mission. NASA is paying them an initial fee of
228 million, but it could end up being billions to do all of the
spacesuits and the spacesuits have to work for the Artemis
three mission, but then also continue to work through till
about 2034. So there's, like when you think about all the
pieces of the puzzle coming together to make a mission like
this work just like one of these like building spacesuits for the
surface of the Moon, the mind boggles and all of the pieces
that have to come together so this is another one that is in
development. If you want more details on any of the stories
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