[Music]
hello
we are molly and stephanie and we
welcome you to this new and awesome
weekly space news wednesday your number
one show to get all the space news
you'll ever need
want to know what's going on in the
international space station in the
universe
and what new discoveries are being made
all around our solar system
stay tuned and simply enjoy this pilot
of the weekly news update for everybody
[Music]
on thursday july 16th spacewalker chris
cassidy commander of expedition
63 got some support from bob behnken on
the 230 spacewalk at the international
space station
they removed the last six of the 48
aging nickel hydrogen batteries and
installed the last three missing new
lysium ion batteries
totaling to 24 new batteries and to
complete the power circuit installed an
adapter plate on each of them
the mission to swap the batteries began
last year continued into january and was
a very complex and time-consuming
upgrade progress
on july 1st the astronauts already
routed power
and ethernet cables in preparation for
the installation of a new wireless
communication systems
just for us so we were already able to
view the latest space work
with enhanced hd camera bob bien can
have the opportunity to get into the
bitterlaw expandable activity module
beam to perform some activities inside
beam has been attached to the iss
tranquility module since april 2016.
speaking of bob he'll be returning to
earth with doug on august 2nd aboard the
dragon ship endeavour
as eulong called it felix will be live
streaming the splashdown with tj and
marcus
and while we're talking about crew
dragon let's talk about the capsule
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with the first crude flight of a spacex
crew dragon on my 30s
this year the foundation for the first
reusable space vehicle produced by
spacex was late
with a launch the commercial program hit
the first major milestone and
successfully delivered bob binkin
and doug hurley to the iss now nasa and
spacex have modified their contract
agreement
to give spacex the permission to reuse
previously flown crew dragons on top of
a falcon 9 booster
to send further astronauts to the iss
originally spacex had to use a new crew
dragon plus a brand new falcon 9 booster
to launch astronauts from u.s soil now
the modified commercial crew
transportation capability contract
will enable spacex to reuse a crew
dragon
sometime in 2021 starting with crew 2
for the first time in fact from now on
all commercial crew program contractors
will be allowed to reuse their
spacecrafts on crude flights
as nasa's spokesperson stephanie
shearholds reportedly told space news
nasa performed an in-depth review and
determined that the terms of the overall
contract modifications were in the best
interests of the government
time to talk about the fascinating
bright star betelgeuse with its home in
the constellation of orion
after getting our attention with its
unique blinking a team from the max
planck institute for astronomy in
heidelberg
has uncovered the reason behind its
recent dimming it is caused by large
star spots on butyl juice's surface
sorry dust is ruled out now while
undergoing frequent brightness
variations go hand in hand with being a
giant red star
the luminosity's drop of about 40 in
only seven months was quite the surprise
after trying to explain the change with
various scenarios
and a possible imminent supernova the
international team led by tavisha
demovardina
finally demonstrated that temperature
variations in the photosphere
or outer shell of the star was caused by
star spots
alright now but what are star spots
have you ever heard about sunspots these
darker appearing dots in the sun's
luminous photosphere
they are caused by a lower surface
temperature than the area surrounding it
and can mostly been seen in pairs or
small groups
star spots are basically the same just
up to 100 percent
bigger than the tiny spots on our sun
now let's imagine that
this is beetlejuice and the gigantic
cool star spots are covering over
50 to 70 of its surface let's see
what happens
yeah that's kind of weird now
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let's uh head on to the next topic i'd
say
it was a good idea
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already in 2019 pioneer astronautics
with its president dr robert zubrin
was selected by nasa to develop a new
battery and a gas spectrometer
especially for use on the moon the lunar
flow battle should be a scalable
long-duration device with minimum
capacity loss over many cycles
to store energy for astronauts and for
the first moon habitants
its other big advantage is that its
electrolytes are derived from the lunar
regolith
reducing the needed mass transported to
the moon recently they received further
funding under the sbir phase two
together with three other companies
locally produced oxygen is vital for
lunar habitats and steel is a
well-proven building material
both of these are heavy and transporting
them from earth is immensely expensive
this shows us that in-situ resource
utilization or isru
will be a key component in the crude
lunar artemis program
as well as the later human exploration
of mars
looks like nasa's inside rovers module
might be stuck
again the self-hammering mold that will
give us insight into mass interior has
been having problems since
early 2019. recently the scientists seem
to have resolved the problem
using rover's robotic arm to push the
mole to the martian soil
but nasa has found possible evidence
that the mole might have started
bouncing in place again
[Music]
come and kneel wise anyway comet
nearwise passed
closest to the sun on july 3 2020. it is
expected to remain
visible to the naked eye throughout july
it has brightened to magnitude plus one
while developing a second tail get your
binoculars out and look at it
at its closest approach to earth
tomorrow july 23rd
because you might be able to tell the
difference between the tails
the slightly curved tail of dust and the
other perfectly straight
blue gas tail but what about it why do
comets develop tails
it is pretty common for comet to have
two tails they start to appear when the
comet approaches the sun
when they're far away from the sun the
body remains completely frozen
as the sun's radiation is far too weak
to cause any notable effects
only as the comet gets closer to the sun
will its energy start to push
small dust particles away and these
particles start to form a long gray or
white tail
so whatever color the material of the
main body from the comet is
the main or dust tail will always have
the same color
and appears to curve due to the change
of relative forces and its motion
in other words every grain of dust has a
different size and gets a different
flight pass because of that
secondary tail on the other hand never
does have the same color as the comet
it will instead be blue faint and will
always make a perfect line
pointing away from the sun because
unlike dust every iron particle is
identical and follows the same
motion while forming a plasma that
creates a magnetosphere
around the comet
[Music]
on july 9th dr namakata and colleagues
observed 12
stellar flares including a rare
extremely large
super flare on the red dwarf ade leonis
superflares result in massive magnetic
storms with the potential of sterilizing
habitable exoplanets
the astronomers were able to collect
some very intriguing data
more information on these fundamental
stellar phenomena will help us predict
super flares
and possibly mitigate magnetic storm
damage
here on earth that's what senior author
dr kazunari shibata said
a scientist at kyoto university they
might even be able to begin to
understand how these emissions can
affect the existence
or emergence of life on other planets
thanks for watching the first episode of
this new space news format
i hope you enjoyed it and if so like and
share have you been able to watch
neowise or did you watch a spacewalk in
hd already
tell me in the comments have a wonderful
week and remember to check in next week
for further exciting news