Fraser Cain: Hi, everyone, I'm Fraser Cain. I'm the publisher
of Universe Today, I've been a space and astronomy news
journalist for over 20 years. This is our new segment that we
call space bytes. Now I write a weekly email newsletter that
goes out to over 50,000 people every week. But they're really
big, a lot of reading to be done. And we know that some
people would prefer to have the news videoed at them, as opposed
to having to sit down and read. So these are our bite size new
segments of some of the top space and astronomy news
segments happening this week. All right, let's get into the
news. They did it. They actually did it. Rocket Lab, caught a
booster and then dropped it again. Step aside, SpaceX.
There's another reusable launch platform on the market Rocket
Lab, sort of this week, Rocket Lab on May 2 launched an
electron rocket carrying 34 satellites into low earth orbit,
no problem. But they promised that this time around, they were
going to try to catch the booster stage with a helicopter.
And they did. We've got a you know, somewhat disappointing
video of the helicopter zooming in on the parachute, carrying
the booster rocket as it was gently floating down to earth
and actually caught it with a Sikorsky 92 helicopter. And then
apparently, because the booster was swinging back and forth, it
didn't like how it was being held under the helicopter, they
decided to release it again. And it dropped harmlessly into the
ocean. Now, a lot of people complained that the video wasn't
great. You've just got this sort of fairly grainy footage of them
catching the booster. So like, I've heard recommendations, like
Why was there another helicopter chasing the first helicopter to
film that and maybe there should have been drone filming the
helicopter filming the other helicopter. So we've gotten
really good footage. Anyway, it was a good shot. I'm sure next
time around, they'll actually catch the booster, carry it back
to the launch facility, refurbish it. And we could see a
second launch from an electron rocket booster, which would be
pretty cool. China is going to be building an asteroid
deflection mission of their own. I'm sure you're aware, NASA has
launched their Dart mission, the double asteroid redirection
test, to fly out and impact the Moon of asteroid Didymus. And
hopefully, the asteroid is going to be pushed a little off of its
orbit in an amount that NASA will be able to detect and be
able to figure out how hard is it to shift an asteroid in
orbit. And of course, potentially, if there's a
dangerous asteroid that's coming towards Earth, there'll be able
to know what it's going to take to push that asteroid off of a
deadly trajectory. And we just got news this week that China is
working on their own version of this mission as well. Now, we
don't have any details, yet, we know they're going to be
launching this mission in 2025. And it's gonna be part of a
larger detection, defense system that China is planning. But as
part of this, they're going to choose a target, and they're
going to send an impact or into that target, see if it can push
it off course. And add to this understanding. And so we'll have
two pieces of information, what NASA has learned from Dart and
what China will have learned from their Redirect Mission. And
that will give more data points to get a sense of what it's
going to take to be able to re locate a dangerous asteroid that
could be smashing into Earth in the future, astronomers discover
a new kind of Nova, a micro Nova. Ah, now I'm sure you're
aware of what a supernova is, where a star explodes turns into
a black hole releases as much energy as an entire galaxy,
blasting out material at relativistic speeds destroying
the star in the process creating a black hole. It's a
catastrophic event. A Nova is where you've got a white dwarf
that is actively feeding from some companion star and material
is layering out onto the surface of the white dwarf, and when
enough of it builds up, it acts like a thermonuclear explosion
and releases a flare of energy and then the material builds up
again, and releases more energy and eventually, over a long
enough period of time, enough material has accreted onto the
white dwarf that it detonates as a type one a supernova. Of
course, if you want to get pedantic, right, there are
different kinds of supernova you can have a core collapse
supernova that can produce either a neutron star or a black
hole. Or you can have a type one a supernova where the star
completely detonates entirely into came from a white dwarf and
you can have a supernova where the star is so massive that It
completely detonates leaving nothing behind.
So there are many different kinds of supernova. And so now
astronomers have found this new kind called a micro Nova. And
what's happening here is it same thing you've got a white dwarf
and it's feeding from a companion star, but the white
dwarf has fairly powerful magnetic field lines that are
emanating out of its poles into as material is streaming in from
this companion star, it's following these magnetic field
lines and piling getting deposited piling up in blobs on
to the poles of the white dwarf. And same as with the, with a
nova, once enough material piles up in this small area it ignites
is like a thermonuclear bomb releases a flash of energy, and
then the process happens again. And it's it's still really
powerful, it's still giving off an incomprehensible amount of
energy, but it's not as much as a nova. And it's definitely not
as much as a supernova. So it's a micro Nova, but still very
powerful. What comes after seeing a black hole's event
horizon, we see the photon ring. Last week, we were teased by the
European Southern Observatory that we're going to be seeing
some big announcement from the Event Horizon Telescope, what
could it be a image from the Event Horizon Telescope of
something that's in the Milky Way. Aliens, I'm guessing. But
what comes next, like if you want to be able to image the
region around a black hole. And we've already seen this image of
the event horizon around M87, what is the next thing on the
list of astronomers, and that is to see the photon ring. And so
when you get closer and closer into the black hole, you reach
this region called the photon ring. And this is where light
itself photons are under such pole of the gravity of the black
hole, that they're orbiting around the black hole like like
little planets. And this area, theoretically should be visible.
How can we see it? Well, the Event Horizon Telescope, which
is merely a telescope, the size of planet Earth, is not powerful
enough to see the photon ring around the black hole. In order
to do that, you have to go to space. And so it was a really
interesting study that we found this week, where they calculated
what kinds of additional space telescopes would have to be
added to the Event Horizon Telescope to provide the kind of
resolution that would allow you to see a black holes photon
ring. I don't know what comes after the photon ring. At a
certain point, it's going to be there's nothing else to see.
Astronomers have discovered light echoes from black holes.
So when a black hole is actively feeding, say a blob of gas falls
into it, or a planet or a starship or a star or whatever.
It adds to the mass of the black hole, but it also releases a
flash of gamma radiation. Because black holes are messy
eaters, these scenarios come up when you've got a black hole
with some companion star orbiting around each other. And
the companion star is feeding material into the black hole
generating this accretion disk. And so you've got this accretion
disk around the black hole. So it's feeding from some companion
star, and this accretion disk is whirling around and piling up
around the black hole waiting for its turn to go into the
black hole. And as this material is falling in, as big blobs go
in, you get these blasts of gamma radiation. And this gamma
radiation flies outward through the accretion disk radiating,
releasing flashes of light, and it's going at the speed of
light. And so we can detect these flashes of light as this
radiation is going through the accretion disk. And astronomers
call this a black hole echo. And to date, astronomers had only
seen two of these black holes with echoes. And now a new
survey has turned up eight more of them. And so now you've got a
total of 10 of these black hole echo situations that astronomers
can use to study to understand how black holes feed. And it's
quite amazing because
even though these are very far away, and even if relatively
small amounts of mass get added to the black hole, it's such a
powerful blast of radiation that it can be detected. And you can
not only detect the initial blast radiation, but you can
also see this radiation as it is propagating through the
accretion disk surrounding the black hole. We just got the news
that NASA is probably going to be pushing back the launch of
Artemis one until August and that's good news for them.
Because we're trying to reach 1000 Patreon subscribers. Before
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patreon.com/universetoday. So we've added a bunch of new
content on our Patreon page, and not just for patrons only, but
also just for anyone who wants to listen. And most recently,
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Today, what he's working on, to help create better content,
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patreon.com/universeToday, check that out, and some of the
content that we're putting up there. NASA has announced prizes
for its second I shrunk the payload challenge. For the last
couple of years, NASA has been working with Herox to release a
bunch of challenges to the public, where anyone can come up
with ideas to solve problems for NASA, and earn prizes to be able
to do this. They've done two of the Honey I Shrunk the payload
challenges. And we just got announcement of the winners of
the second challenge just this week. And so the goal of this
Honey I Shrunk The payload is to take what are fairly traditional
large science instruments and figure out really clever ways to
be able to shrink their size power requirements to fit within
fairly small lunar landers. And we got the three winners this
week. The first place is the Sun slicer spectrometer, a miniature
low power x ray spectrometer. The second place is the pulley
lunar water, snooper, which is a low cost simple, extremely
lightweight neutron spectrometer that takes hydrogen atoms in
lunar regolith. And for third place is you Urad a miniature
radiation detector that
will help characterize the dangers of radiation exposure
and absorption in lunar environment. And NASA is also
looking for help with Mars. And this is a challenge that you can
apply to. And we already have these kinds of simulations here
on Earth. They're called Mars analogs where volunteers will go
in a simulated Mars habitat, they have to put on spacesuits
every time they want to go outside, they have to have
communications delays to talk to ground control. But how can we
simulate the experience of being on Mars better? How can we use
virtual reality augmented reality, actual physical
structures to be able to simulate the day length on Mars
or the lower gravity on Mars, or the color of the sky or the
kinds of landscapes that Martian explorers are going to
experience. So if you got some ideas, you can join the Mars XR
challenge. And quick disclaimer, I used to work with Hero X, I
was the product manager for the hero X platform. So I'm friends
with the people behind the projects. But still, they're
pretty cool, and you should check them out. Finally, this is
a really cool video. These are astronauts onboard the
International Space Station, who are having fun while the station
is getting boosted. Now, the International Space Station
flies fairly low for its orbit. And it's still getting a lot of
drag from the Earth's atmosphere. And every few
months, they have to raise the altitude of the space station.
And when this happens, of course, the station is getting a
slight acceleration, but the astronauts on board are still
going the old speed. And so from their perspective, they fall
inside the space station. So this video that you're watching
was actually sped up eight times and you can see them taking
turns falling backwards through the space station, and isn't
until they get a chance to hold on to the wall and get
accelerated to the same rate as the rest of the station that
they stop experiencing this difference. But it looks like a
lot of fun. It's important to know that this boost was made
with a Russian Progress spacecraft that was attached to
the station. And of course, this is a little tricky because of
the Russia Ukrainian war. We probably won't see any more
progress spaceships for a little while. Now the Cygnus cargo
vessel is able to do this maneuver as well. But the Cygnus
is using Russian engines as a way, it's complicated. And
there's gonna need to be some new ways to boost the altitude
of the space station while this situation gets worked out, so
stay tuned. But still, it's fun. It's been a great week for
interviews on Universe Today. And so you haven't checked them
out? You definitely should. I talked to Scott Peterson about
how to search for micro meteorites. These are like point
two to point four millimeter meteorites that are falling on
your roof. And you can go with a magnet, collect them up, look at
them under a microscope and actually find little chunks of
metal and rock that came from space. The other interview I did
is with Dr. Sam Howell, who comes from NASA and he's working
on both the Europa Clipper but also figuring out ways to get
under the ice on Europa, how do we drill down through kilometers
of ice to reach the ocean underneath and find those
Europan Space whales. And it was such an amazing interview, we
went far longer than we normally do. Sam was a wealth of
information. And we really covered every single question
that I get here on the channel all the time. So you should
definitely check out that interview, if you haven't
already seen it. Right? Well, those were all of the news
segments we want to cover this week. Now this is just a
fraction of the news that's in the weekly email newsletter and
on Universe Today, like seven stories, I think we have like 30
or 40 that came out this week. So there's a lot of news on
Universe Today. Ai, this newsletter is a monster this
week. But if you want to check them all out, make sure you're
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