Astronomy Cast

Mars is cold & dry today, but the evidence is growing that it used to be warmer & wetter. with seas & oceans that covered large parts of its surface. With the additional findings of the chemicals for life, the search for life on Mars is getting pretty interesting! New results from Perseverance and Curiosity describe a past Mars with complex chemistry and water. But did it have life?

Show Notes

• Summer astronomy and spaceflight highlights
• Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launch outlook
• Roman’s role in mapping the cosmos and exoplanet studies
• Chang’e 7 mission to the Moon’s south pole
• Future lunar exploration and resource utilization plans
• Hayabusa2 flyby of asteroid Torafune
• Upcoming asteroid missions, including Tianwen-2
• Quasi-moons and their possible lunar origin
• August 2026 total solar eclipse in Europe and the Arctic
• Perseid meteor shower under dark, moonless skies
• Crescent Moon passing through the Pleiades
• Partial lunar eclipse in late August
• Starship, Blue Origin, and major launch updates
• Artemis timeline and lunar lander development
• Retirement of the Atlas V rocket
• Challenges and delays facing upcoming space missions
• What to watch in the sky during the Astronomy Cast summer break

Transcript

Fraser Cain:

Astronomy Cast, Episode 797 Summer in Space 2026. Welcome to Astronomy Cast, our weekly, facts-based journey through the Cosmos, where we help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know. I'm Fraser Cain, I'm the publisher of Universe Today.

With me, as always, is Dr. Pamela Gay, Senior Scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the Director of Cosmoghost. Hey Pamela, how are you doing?

Dr. Pamela Gay:

I am itchy, poison ivy is ivying here. I need a goat, I can't find a goat. Do they have rental goats where you are?

There are places in the U.S. you can rent goats.

Fraser Cain:

I have seen videos, I have definitely admired goat rental from afar, but I am not aware of any place that one could rent a goat here in my area. Although I would if I could, because there's all kinds of shrubbery that I would love to sort of dial back. They apparently will just tear through the Himalayan blackberries, which are awful here on Vancouver Island.

They're tasty, but they are awful. Yeah, yeah. I always mention this, how grateful I am that we don't have venomous snakes or venomous plants.

I feel I'm bulletproof. I walk into the forest, I might get a tick if I'm out for days and days and days. And obviously there's the occasional mosquito, they're named.

But apart from that, we have... And then a bear, obviously we watched bears crossing our property last night.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Oh, that's cool.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah, there's that. Yeah, we have a bunch of just bears that will move through our property and they'll just follow the same path every day for a couple of weeks while they're eating the dandelions right now. And then they'll move higher, higher elevations than we don't see them for the rest of the summer.

But this time around, you know, May, June, we see a lot of bears. Mamas with babies. Yeah, it's spicy.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

I had a snake that decided it was going to be super bitey, but like it was smaller around than my thumb. So I just made fun of it.

Fraser Cain:

Was it a garter snake?

Dr. Pamela Gay:

It was a garter snake. It was very determined to bite me.

Fraser Cain:

All right. We're about to take a much needed two month hiatus, but just because we're not here doesn't mean that space stops existing and doing things. Today, let's give a preview of the big events due to happen in space this summer.

So you can prepare yourself and make sure you don't miss a thing. OK, so, you know, you you and I both did some research in preparation for this episode, and I feel pretty confident that we are not leaving our audience that bereft for the next two months. There's actually not a ton of really big events that are going to happen, except for like one that's great.

But there's a bunch of smaller events and then one that will probably be delayed and will probably fall back into our schedule anyway, or we'll be able to report on it moments after. So I'm I'm spoilerizing what's about to happen. So let's sort of break this into two areas.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

I need to know what you consider the one really great event. Oh, the eclipse. OK, big solar eclipse.

It could have been the launch of Nancy Grace Roman.

Fraser Cain:

That's the one that I think is going to happen right at the end. We'll probably get delayed. And so, yeah, I think, you know, we're safe to run the rest.

We've got some conjunctions. We've got some lunar events. We've got some sort of milestones for various spacecraft, astrophotography opportunities.

Yeah. And then some classics that come around every every time of year. But we don't have like maybe there'll be some more tests of SpaceX.

But Blorgen is kind of out of the running for several months.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah, but there could be another Starship explosion.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah, there may be or more launch. Who knows? But even that they're sort of in a in a sort of time after the last test where they got to get a bunch of stuff dialed in.

There are no big plans to send crew. Not a lot of big changes to missions. No space launch systems are going to be launched.

I feel we could not have timed this better for what is in the launch docket right now and in the celestial space motion docket.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yes.

Fraser Cain:

But let's just pick something that you think is going to be interesting that people should keep their eyes peeled for this summer.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

So Hayabusa 2 flies past the asteroid. I'm going to say this so wrong. So wrong.

I'm sorry. Torafun.

Fraser Cain:

I'm going to say Torafune if it's Japanese.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

It is Japanese.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah, I'm going to guess Torafune. But I have not learned Japanese yet.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

It's true.

Fraser Cain:

But now I've been there twice. I've been to Japan twice, planning to go again at the end of the year. So at some point, I'm going to have to take the leap and actually start learning some Japanese.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

So this is the mission that went to Ryugu and collected a sample and flung the sample back at Earth. And we have the sample and the mission kept going. And so this is another near-Earth asteroid.

And I am excited to find out if it's another rubble pile like Ryugu or another cashew like Itakawa.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

I'm hoping for another cashew.

Fraser Cain:

And each one of these asteroid close encounters are precious and individual. Yeah, they're super important. And there's like there's nothing that is as good as getting a picture up close from these asteroids.

Like you compare the blurry images that are taken, the single pixels that are seen from Earth-based telescopes. And you compare that to just the luxurious detail that we saw from OSIRIS-REx or Hayabusa to it's there's no comparison.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

It's just awesome.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. And each one gives us entirely new information. You know, there's not like you see one asteroid, you've seen them all.

You literally could see every single asteroid. And only then will you have seen them all. Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Vesta and Ceres are huge and radically different. The little ones are all. And it's not the only encounter we're probably going to have in July.

The other one. So Hayabusa 2 is a JAXA mission. And then we have, you're going to say this correctly for me in a moment, Tianwen-2 gets to the quasi-moon.

Kama-oalewa? It's Hawaiian.

Fraser Cain:

Kamo-oalewa, I'm guessing. And that is a Hawaiian term, a language neither of us are learning.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

So this is a Chinese mission. The exact date of the arrival is unknown. But again, little tiny spud.

This is another asteroid, except this one got captured ever so transitorially. I'm perhaps making up words into Earth's orbit. And so we're going to have in July close-up images of two new worlds.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, these quasi-moons are really interesting because, you know, one of the possibilities is that these are coming, that these are from the Moon, that to get an object that is in a very similar orbit to the Earth, it had to have a source. And the one source is that it could have just been three-body interactions with various asteroids that kick something into this place where it's now a quasi-moon.

You know, it falls into our gravitational well, hangs out with us for a little while, then falls back out again and goes about its merry business and then hangs out again. And typically they'll stick around for a few orbits. But the case seems to be building that a lot of these quasi-moons have a chemical fingerprint that is very similar to the Moon.

And then you can sort of think, okay, so maybe these things are chunks of the Moon that were gouged out by fairly large impacts at some point in the recent past.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Or leftover bits from the Theia-Earth collision.

Fraser Cain:

Right. Which would be incredible. Yeah.

Right.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

And then there's also the, we don't know what other chunks may be out there from, like, did Theia have a Moon before it hit into us? That is like science fiction territory here, folks. I just entered science fiction.

Most likely this is a leftover chunk from the collision or something gouged out of the where there are craters kilometers deep.

Fraser Cain:

Right. Yep. So very useful.

And of course, Tim Wynn is then going to be heading off to its future sample return mission. So, you know, there's a lot. And then it's going to end up going into orbit around another comet.

So there's, it's got like a bunch of work. It has a future. Yeah, yeah, totally.

And so, and I love this kind of opportunistic, there happens to be something that's on the, on the trajectory of the spacecraft. Let's just, let's just take a close look. And so we're going to get an image of this little, as you say.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

And, and it's something completely novel.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah, totally. Again, every asteroid is its own unique butterfly. What else you got?

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Um, so, so those are the two big missions that have me super hyped. Then in August, we're looking at potentially the Chang'e 7 launch. This is another lunar mission.

This one's going to the South Pole region. Again, it is specifically tasked with looking for water. And, and so we're, we're starting to see better and better chemistry, uh, missions being launched by China, both going and sampling Mars and bringing it back, going and exploring for water on the moon.

China is really killing it with its slow and steady approach. And then there is hope that on the last day of August, we will see the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched into orbit, which will give us another infrared observatory. It's a survey telescope.

It, it has all sorts of really cool capacity to see planets, um, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It's just the planet stuff that a lot of us are excited about. So yeah.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Nancy Grace Roman is your next big telescope to be obsessed with.

Uh, the history of this, of course, is that it was a spare mirror provided by the natural reconnaissance office to NASA. And then NASA, and they said, you know, we, we've got these Hubble class mirrors that we don't need anymore. Would you like them?

We're just going to throw them in the garbage, uh, because we've got much better mirrors for spying on, on earth. Uh, would you like to do something with it? And, and NASA thought about it and decided that they would make something that they would change, put on different secondary optics than Hubble and make a wide field version of Hubble, but was also in the infrared.

And, and this thing is going to be phenomenal. So much faster, brand new instrumentation. It is going to map out the cosmos at, at a speed and a scale, the likes of which really we only have kind of on earth.

We have Vera Rubin.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Sphere X is doing its own thing, but it doesn't have the resolution or the depth.

Fraser Cain:

It's compared to the size of, of Nancy Grace Roman. And what I love about this telescope is that it is on budget and it is ahead of schedule. Originally it wasn't thought that it was going to launch until 2027.

Well, here we are in 2026 right now. And the, and it like the launch date just keeps coming forward.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah.

Fraser Cain:

And, and so it's incredible that we're going to see this thing launch. Ideally, uh, August 31st is the day they're targeting, but you know, one does not simply book a return trip to a rocket launch. Therefore I think we can safely assume that this thing is going to delay at least once or twice.

And so hopefully it will fall back into our regular schedule. And, and when it does, uh, then we're allowed to talk about it, right, Pamela? Oh, I guess after it does some science, we'll get some, wait till first light.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah. And there's going to be a double header of learning about Nancy Grace Roman, who was the first chief scientist of NASA and the person who really sphere headed the, uh, uh, completion of the Hubble space telescope. Um, and, uh, we'll talk about the mission and the human and it's all super exciting.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. Yeah. So those are the, those are the confirmed scheduled things.

Uh, there's a few minor things, there's, you know, there's going to be a background constant cadence of, of probably Starlink launches coming out of SpaceX. There's going to be other minor missions. Um, rocket lab is, is planning a mission.

So not neutron. No, no. Um, and then, and you sort of brush past it, but yeah, I think the, the, the Chinese Chang'e seven mission is going to be a big one that, you know, that is them, uh, you know, this one's going to have a hopper, an orbiter, a relay satellite, a lander, uh, and a sample return mission.

It's going to go to the South Pole of the Moon. This is the place where all of the water ice is likely contained. And so this is a really exciting target.

And then this is going to lay the ground for the next one, Chang'e eight, which is coming 27, anyway, a couple of years. And that's going to be doing its issue resource utilization on the surface of the moon. We're going to try to 3d print things on the moon.

Um, and then this is leading up to 2030 when hopefully Chinese astronauts will set foot on the moon for the first time. Let's talk about some of the interesting natural events are going to be happening during this summer.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

So, so your heart belongs to this solar eclipse that is 62 days, 21 hours and 11 minutes away, according to time and date.

Fraser Cain:

I love the time that we're recording this. Okay.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Time and date has a really cool countdown clock. If you're into countdown clocks, it amuses me. Um, this particular solar eclipse is one that is like in the extreme Northern polar regions and then dips down into Europe.

It's not great for human beings.

Fraser Cain:

I would describe it as terrible. If you look at literally, if you look at the path, like, like think about the one that, that we just had, right. Was it the 2022 one?

2024. The 2024 one. Yeah.

It went, it went Mexico. Just straight across America. Uh, the United States and into Canada.

The 2018 one went all the way across the United States. Yeah. Everybody who wanted could make their way to some place and not be completely on top of each other.

But you look at the trajectory that this one is taking. This map is just so terrible. Is making a little cut on Iceland.

So like, great. Like Iceland can handle that kind of traffic. Greenland.

Greenland. Yeah. So who's going to go to Greenland to, to watch an eclipse.

And then it makes this tiny little pass through a little chunk, like right through the isthmus of Spain. And so all of Europe is going to descend upon this tiny little spot in the corner of, of Spain. And so unless you live there, unless you've got your, your accommodation locked down, this is going to be a nightmare getting in, getting out.

Traffic is going to be like, you remember how awful the traffic was for the various North American eclipses. This is going to be a nightmare on brutal little roads, mountainous roads. This is all like, you've got to be really serious to do this one.

Um, there's some, uh, eclipse cruises. I got, I get invited to do one.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

There's some in the Mediterranean and there's some in the North Atlantic.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. I got invited to do one and I was like, I'm going to pass. You need to pass those on the main.

Oh, okay. All right. Yeah.

I'll pass them. Pass. Two pairs.

Yeah. So yeah, this one, if you live in Europe and you live close and you've got a place scheduled and you're okay to hunker down for a while, both before and after the event itself, then go for it. But I think transportation accommodation, this one's going to be rough.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

There's some islands in the Mediterranean that again, you are going to be packed in and unable to move. But saying I watched an eclipse from a Mediterranean island just sounds kind of luxurious. Yeah.

Fraser Cain:

It's just, it's just finding the accommodation. Yeah. It's just going to be tough.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

But then August 27, 28 is a lunar eclipse. And the thing about that solar eclipse on August 12th is this is the same time as the Perseids. So forget about the solar eclipse.

No one cares about the solar eclipse. I mean, some people care about the solar eclipse.

Fraser Cain:

Some people care.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Solar eclipses are the best, but sure. But this means there is a new moon not illuminating the sky when the Perseids is one of the big three meteor shows every year is going to be doing its thing.

Fraser Cain:

Yes.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

So this is your chance to go out, see Meteor Shower. If you're where I live, watch lightning bugs going nuts and see if the meteors outnumber the satellites. That's always the question nowadays, but there'll be no moon.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. There'll be no moon. This is so important.

Like if there is a bad moon, I just don't even bother.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Right. The Delta Aquariids don't bother.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. Not worth it. But when there's a good moon, then you do it.

And the Perseids for the Northern Hemisphere, we understand Southern Hemisphere, you exist. This is not for you. For the Northern Hemisphere, this is the best one because you've just got nice temperatures outside.

You can go out, set up, lay on your sleep cot, lay on the ground, have your friends around you, fall asleep to the Perseids. And with a new moon, this is an absolute dream version of it. So we couldn't ask for a better Perseids Meteor Shower this year.

So if you are at all interested, if you need an excuse, yeah, if you need a hammock excuse, yeah. August 12th, 13th, so like the night of the 12th into the 13th, plan something, please. Some of my favorite memories are my parents setting us out to watch the Perseids Meteor Shower.

These are the memories that will last a lifetime for you and your kids.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

And if you can afford to take more time off, on August 7, there is an event that is going to have me finding a farmer's field with my tripod if it's super hot and I don't want to go camping. The crescent moon is passing through the Pleiades. This is something I've seen through a telescope before, just a little refractor.

It's gorgeous. And I really hope that I can get some good shots of it with my 600 millimeter lens. And this is just one of those.

There's places on the sky that have more stars than others. There's places that are prettier than others. And when the crescent moon, which is not as bright, passes through star clusters, you get this really cool, you can see the dark side in earth glow.

You can see that thin crescent and then you see all the stars around it and you actually see how bright the sky is. So that's actually one of the things I'm most looking forward to.

Fraser Cain:

But you have to act quickly, right? Because that is happening early, like right after sunset. You get the crescent moon, Pleiades is already going to be very low on the horizon and then it's over.

And so then, you know, the way eclipses work, they go in groups. And so usually you get a solar eclipse and that's followed by a lunar eclipse. So there will be a lunar eclipse, which is going to be August 27, 28.

So that's going to be right at the end of our time away from you.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

And it's only partial.

Fraser Cain:

Well, it's partial, but it's a good partial.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

So it's a good partial.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah, it's a 93% partial, which means that the moon will go completely, you'll see the Pac-Man chomping, taking away from the moon. It'll go completely dark and then it'll turn red briefly before it comes out the other side of it. And so you're going to get a pretty good view of the moon for this one.

I would take it.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah, I am excited. Yep. Africa, Europe.

I am more excited about that crescent in the Pleiades.

Fraser Cain:

Really, huh? Yeah. Most of the Americas and Eastern Pacific.

So, you know, again, it's fairly well positioned. So think Eastern North America, across the ocean, Europe, parts of Africa. It should be a well positioned eclipse for people to be able to see.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah. And basically, August is enjoy the moon.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

I'm a little bit sad because originally the Griffin one mission or Griffin mission one was supposed to launch that month and it's now delayed into November. But we are getting to the point where as we look at the moon, we can start to imagine there's going to be a whole lot more clutter on that surface fairly soon.

Fraser Cain:

Yep, yep.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

And enjoy it. Yeah.

Fraser Cain:

So we've covered kind of like the space exploration events, the natural events. I guess we should talk about some of the things that are a bit in flux, and we don't know if they're going to happen or not. So let's talk about what SpaceX is up to.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

So this week, there should be the initial public offering, which they're hoping will garner, what is it, $1.75 trillion.

Fraser Cain:

Or a valuation, they're not going to be able to take home, they're going to take home whatever, a couple hundred billion, merely.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

But I did an 11 page, I don't know how I wrote that many pages, assessment of the consequences of what they're planning to do and breaking down the numbers. Wow. The thing that got me about this is in Q1 of calendar year 2026, SpaceX lost $2 billion across their four divisions.

They are on target to lose roughly $8 billion in 2026, which exceeds the NASA Science Mission Directorate budget, which is only $7.25 billion.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah, do you remember when SpaceX was the Jeep?

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah, yeah. So we're currently looking at a situation where SpaceX is throwing away more money than, throwing away is the wrong word, they're losing more money than NASA has for science. Now, all of what they're planning hinges on Starship working.

Um, they were planning for their next Starship to be the catch. The FAA has said, nope, you guys get to hover over the ocean one more time. Because they had booster issues, their booster kind of exploded.

So we are looking this summer, there should be the launch of Starship 13.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah, we should see another launch.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

And there are currently a lot of concerns because we haven't seen any refueling testing. The NASA announced earlier yesterday that the Artemis 3 test in 2027 will have a Starship that does not have any of the human capacity, it's just going to have a docking port bolted on to it. So Starship is desperately behind schedule for what it owes NASA.

And they haven't proven anything other than satellite deployment. Now they can do a lot of what they want to do on ballistic missions using Starship without actually going orbital.

Fraser Cain:

Or with Starship being disposed of.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Exactly.

Fraser Cain:

They could launch a heavy lift mission and then crash Starship into the ocean if they wanted to. It would be much more expensive than a fully reusable rocket. But it might be something that gets them back on the path to fulfilling their obligation.

So we're going to see. Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

What's wild is they are essentially planning to need as much methane per year as 10% of US exports.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, you say it all depends on Starship. I actually think it all depends on whether or not the AI bubble pops.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah, that's another side. But yeah, the AI bubble is going to pop.

Fraser Cain:

How the bubble will pop is the question.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Right, exactly.

Fraser Cain:

And when. And so they happen to originally, back when it was XAI, they wisely, turns out, invested in a gigantic compute infrastructure. And that is the bottleneck.

And so all of their competitors are coming to them to pay for computing on their systems because they weren't able to make their own AI model function very well. And so they're actually making money hand over fist on just renting out their servers, like a lot of money, like a billion dollars a month or something. It's crazy.

And then the other thing that would have had implications or we would have been watching was the events of New Glenn and what's happening with Blue Origin. They've got their Blueman Mark 1, which actually did a successful test in the big vacuum chamber at NASA. And so that is going to be the lander.

They're going to do some test launches of that lander later on this year. And that's all still on schedule. Then you've got the Mark 2, which is going to be the one that's going to carry humans.

And they were able to kind of get back into the consideration for being able to send humans to the moon as part of Artemis 4 or whatever comes after that. And then they've done one launch. They've successfully tested the reuse of a booster.

And then they had this disaster at Launchpad LC-36A. And that was bad. The rocket exploded.

The launch platform is heavily toast. The mobile transporter is toast. Looks like the various buildings and tanks and water deluges and all that, that all seems okay.

But they're looking at probably 18 months of rebuild. And so various events we were expecting to come out of Lourdes in the summer, they're not going to have.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

And the Mark 1 lander fits inside the Falcon Heavy fairings. So the issue is that SpaceX doesn't have any way to fuel it. So they're trying to figure out, is there a way to fuel the Mark series vehicles in a SpaceX rocket to at least give us multiple rockets for this lander?

There's a lot to be worked out. And we're going to learn just how fast can they rebuild things when you have enough billionaires involved.

Fraser Cain:

So I would not be surprised if nothing happens this summer. I would literally not be surprised if we come back at the beginning of September and no human... No Starship, no New Glenn, no Mark, anything.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

None of that.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. One launch from Rocket Lab and of a satellite and that's sort of like the big events. But the Japanese are going to be launching an H3 to the space station.

Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

We're saying goodbye to the Atlas V rocket.

Fraser Cain:

That's right.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

The last Atlas V not assigned to a Starliner and no one knows when Starliner is going to get launched.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah, that's an end of an era.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah. Atlas V is an old workhorse. So there will be six on retainer for when they either do use the Starliners or give up on the Starliners, one or the other.

But that's it.

Fraser Cain:

Okay. So, you know, hopefully we've given you some events, but I also feel like I hope you guys don't feel like we're leaving you in a lurch. Things seem very calm, I believe.

And there are two more episodes. And there are two more episodes, for sure. But I feel like when it comes to space, although space is still going to exist and still do stuff, we have asked it very nicely to just slow its roll, take a vacation, just be chill, have a good summer with the rest of us.

All right, Pamela, we will see all of you next week. We're not going anywhere yet.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Nope. See you all next week and stay cool. It's horrible out there, folks.

And thanks to our patrons. Some of you have figured out you can get me to say truly ridiculous things by having truly ridiculous usernames. To those of you who make me laugh, I salute you.

To those of you whose names I'm about to mispronounce, I'm just really sorry. This week, we would like to thank Alan Gross, Andrew Allen, Antosaur, AstroSets, Bebop Apocalypse, Bob Zatzke, Brian Bede, Burry Gowan, Claudia Mastriani, Dale Alexander, David, David Rostiera, John Mundus, Elliot Walker, Fairchild Just as it Sounds, Frodo Tannenbaum, Gerhard Schweitzer, Greg Davis, Hannah Tankery, James Signorowicz, John-Baptiste Lematne, Jim McGeehan, John Holstein, John Herman, Jonathan Poe, Justin S., Katie and Ulyssa, Kimberly Rieck, Larry Zatz, Lou Zeeland, Mark Sher, Masa Herleu, Matthias Hayden, Michael Wichman, Mike Huzzy, Nick Boyd, Patricia Hope, Paul Lowell, Rajev Akari, Richard Drumm, Robert Cordova, Ryan Amari, Sam Brooks and his mom, Scott Bieber, Semyon Torfason, Steve Rutley, T.C. Starboy, Travis C. Porco, Rutley, and wiped only three times because I like the itch. Thank you all so very much.

Fraser Cain:

All right. Thanks, everyone, and we will see you next week.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Bye-bye.

Live Show

Mars is cold & dry today, but the evidence is growing that it used to be warmer & wetter. with seas & oceans that covered large parts of its surface. With the additional findings of the chemicals for life, the search for life on Mars is getting pretty interesting! New results from Perseverance and Curiosity describe a past Mars with complex chemistry and water. But did it have life?

Show Notes

• The search for life on Mars
• Viking mission and its lasting impact on Mars exploration
• Evidence that Mars was once warmer, wetter, and potentially habitable
• Discovery of ancient rivers, lakes, shorelines, and possible oceans
• Confirmation of water ice by the Phoenix mission
• Curiosity rover's detection of organic molecules
• Perseverance rover's search for biosignatures and ancient habitability
• Bright Angel Formation and promising organic discoveries
• InSight's contributions to understanding Mars' interior
• Growing evidence for long-lived liquid water on Mars
• Why Mars Sample Return is essential for confirming past life
• Perseverance's cached samples and retrieval plans
• The delayed Rosalind Franklin rover mission
• Tianwen discoveries of ancient Martian shorelines
• Sample return missions as the next revolution in planetary science
• Could Mars preserve evidence of ancient microbial life?
• Future prospects for robotic and human exploration of Mars

Transcript

Fraser Cain: 

It's the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast, coming in 3, 2, 1. Astronomy Cast, Episode 796, Oceans and Organics on Mars. Welcome to Astronomy Cast, our weekly, facts-based journey through the Cosmos, where we help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know.

I'm Fraser Cain, I'm the publisher of Universe Today. With me as always is Dr. Pamela Gay, Senior Scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the Director of Cosmic West. Hey Pamela, how you doing?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

I am experiencing levels of spring that are unlike your levels of spring, but my weeds are taller than I am in some of my flower beds. Oh my goodness, things are growing like never before. And you have them trying to breed in your nose, from what I understand.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, so I returned from a trip in Japan to a wall of histamines. You know, all of the plant matter had been waiting for me to return. And so it's literally the moment I got off the plane in our home city, the allergies came roaring in.

And I am a Claretonian, and still, I know you can probably hear a little gloopiness in my voice. So I will do the best that I can to minimize it, and you know, our editors will clean up the dad sounds. But yeah, man, it is gorgeous.

You leave your garden for two weeks, you come back, and it has been busy and it's surprising and it's wonderful to see all of the changes. And no deer got in, which is great. So I get to see what trees look like when they're actually allowed to grow as opposed to savaged by brutal, cruel deer.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

I have one hilarious green bean plant. They're growing up strings. And I have cages around the bottom.

And then the cage only goes up so high. And there is this naked section on the vines that is the part the groundhog could reach over the cage. So leaf, leaf, leaf, naked, leaves.

It's glorious and excellent. And the groundhog survived getting picked up by my dog and carried off.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. If you don't garden, why not?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

It's the best.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, you know, some people don't have a room to garden, but even if you have like a little balcony, get gardening.

All right. Mars is cold and dry today, but the evidence is growing that it used to be warmer and wetter with seas and oceans that covered large parts of its surface. With the additional findings of the chemicals for life, the search for life on Mars is getting pretty interesting.

All right. So I want to talk first about like setting the scene, which was the dead end that the Viking mission got us to in the search for life on Mars. Can you tell this story?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

So the Viking mission had three different experiments on board that were designed to try and identify, is there life here? Both by looking to see what chemicals were getting metabolized, how the air in the container was getting metabolized, and by looking at the organics. And they realized that one of the experiments, they had not taken into consideration the reality of Mars, and it was utterly inconclusive.

Fraser Cain: 

The worst kind of conclusive.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yes. One of the experiments was like, there is life. And then everyone's like, no, no, no, no, this must have a different explanation.

And then the third one was like, I got nothing. So we have yes, no. And did we take into consideration everything we should have?

And this has led to squabbling that persists to this day, to this day, right now, as we are recording this, the National Academy of Science, there is a two day meeting going on, on astrobiology and signs of life, where they were discussing these experiments this morning. So literally to this day, on this day, this is getting discussed. And so the thinking was, some people were like, yes, there is present day microbial life on Mars, and they will go to their graves arguing even for lichens.

And then the majority of the field, which is honestly over it with all of the people claiming aliens is like, no, Viking did not prove anything, it did not prove anything. And so from the 1970s until the early 2000s, everyone was like, no, Mars is dry, Mars has never had water, we're going to explain the canyons, we're going to explain everything that looks like fluid flow, as aeolian processes, which means wind, it is the coolest word. And not fluvial processes, which means water, less cool of a word.

And then we started landing landers again.

Fraser Cain: 

But I think the, I mean, more than just landing landers, there were orbiters, there were images from the, from orbit, that told a story that was really hard to explain by wind patterns alone, that you're seeing craters, where rivers are flowing into them, and rivers are flowing out of them, you are seeing features that can really only be explained by moving water. And, and, and that I think, so then, they sort of, you know, the way they described is they went back to the beginning, they ripped up the foundation, went back to first principles and said, okay, let's just start by telling the story of this, of Mars. Let's just like, was there ever liquid water on Mars?

And if we can get to there, then was there liquid water on Mars for a long time? And if we can get there, then were there organics on Mars? And then are there any indications that there is or was ever life on Mars?

Like it was like, we are going to no longer make this argument inconclusive.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And this was the follow the water plan. And so in 2003, we had a new orbiter arrive that started delivering high res images. And we started getting neutron measurements indicative of frozen water.

And what was really interesting was the 2003 Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference, the headliners were all alien processes, it's wind. And at the end of the session, which is usually when people's brains are dead and they're no longer taking notes, was when you'd hear the, but Fluvial explains this better. Let me count the ways.

And then a couple of years later, we finally had Spirit and Opportunity get to the surface. And as Spirit and Opportunity climbed around, looking at the landscape, we were finding things like these cracked mud landscapes that I listened to the words I just used to describe it, cracked mud.

Fraser Cain: 

Cracked mud, yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And suddenly, the language that was headlining changed to water processes.

Fraser Cain: 

And so you're still sort of living in this, this seems to indicate cracked mud, this appears to indicate water, but then you're seeing things like the famous blueberries, concretions. So you talked about cracked mud. Yeah.

And that was just one. I mean, there were a lot of smoking gun evidence. And I think one of the ones that was most exciting people are probably very familiar with were these spherules or these Martian blueberries.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

So these were actually discovered by the Opportunity rover. Again, part of that Spirit and Opportunity pair of rovers. And these were the kind of small minerals that we really only expect to be formed in water.

And it got people thinking, okay, so how do we need to rewrite the history of Mars to make sense of this? And the revolution started there. And Spirit and Opportunity had a lot of really good equipment.

They had their stereoscopic vision, they had arms, they could drill a bit. They had some spectral capacity, but they didn't have that dig deep and they didn't have the power necessary.

Fraser Cain: 

All right. So Spirit Opportunity said, okay, yes, there appear to be geological traces that water was acting here on the surface of Mars. But it was you could have had a deluge and then it was over one rain four billion years ago and then it was over and then the world was dry forevermore.

And that is not conducive to life. So NASA said, okay, let's build up the picture. How long was water present on the surface of Mars?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And this is where we saw a trio of missions that started with Mars Phoenix, which was launched in 2007, landed in 2008. And its sole raison d'etre was to identify water. Flat out, is there water ice?

It went to a polar region. It had a scoop. It had an amazing social media campaign and it landed on the surface.

It went scrapey scrapey. It revealed white stuff and the white stuff sublimated exactly the way water ice should sublimate. There it was.

Fraser Cain: 

Right. And you look at Mars in a telescope, you see the polar ice caps like there is water ice. But it is hard as a rock ice at the poles.

Question is, is it mixing with the regolith at more southern latitudes?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

It was 68 degrees north.

Fraser Cain: 

Right. So you're seeing that water ice is blended in to the regolith just below the surface in the one spot that Phoenix landed. And so it must be in other places as well.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And this was where we also saw discussions start to arise about the dark stripes that were getting seen. Is that water? Is there brine beneath the surface?

So all of that was coming out. And this led to funding of Curiosity rover and InSight lander. InSight went with a seismograph looking to see if Mars was still geologically active.

It went with equipment to drill that failed spectacularly and was the most amazing we're going to problem solve this ever. InSight is amazing. And then Curiosity was sent with a radiothermal generator, which is a lump of nuclear materials that as it decays, generates heat, generates power.

So with its radiothermal generator, it had more power to be able to do more science. And it also carried with it a sample analysis ability that we had never had before. So the sample analysis at Mars SAM, located in Curiosity's belly, had the ability to take samples and twice, which is not a lot, but it had to carry chemicals with it to drop on the samples it scooped up.

So the samples that it scooped up, the chemical it dropped on allowed it to break apart organics to see what are these complex molecules made of. The first paper to come from this just came out. They did a sample at Mary Anning.

This is the name of the rock. It's named after the woman in Dover that the seashells, seashells, seashells. Yeah.

That tongue twister that I am incapable of saying is actually because of her. She collected fossils and sold them to take care of her family.

Fraser Cain: 

She sold seashells by the seashore.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And she was also like the first citizen science, but also became a leading paleontologist. Awesome story. Go read it.

They named this rock after her. That's awesome. And they found 20 organics that had never previously been seen on Mars in the broken up much bigger molecules.

And so this is one of the amazing wet chemistry labs that they're able to do with Curiosity. And Curiosity's early successes led to the launch of Perseverance rover, which is in Jezero crater. So Gale crater is clearly a former lake.

It has Mount Sharp, which is the central peak of the crater. It has been climbing Mount Sharp, looking at organics at different places as it goes. Jezero crater is another previously filled with water crater, but its wall collapsed, creating this amazing river delta.

And while crossing the river, it came across, it's called Sapphire Canyon where this river about Perseverance. So Percy over in Jezero crater had been going through Sapphire Canyon where this river used to flow and came across what they've named the Bright Angel Formation. And this was about a year ago.

And with all the capabilities that this little rover has, they poked and prodded this rock and the organics they're finding are completely consistent with a biosignature. Now they can't say for certain that there was life on Mars. They don't have the capacity.

Percy did its best. It could only get us so far. We need to do a sample return.

We have canceled our sample return. We hate everything right now.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. All right. So just to sort of recap the story so far, right?

The purpose of Curiosity was to say, was there water acting on the surface of Mars for a long period of time? And in the crater that it landed in, climbing the flanks of Mount Sharp, it found ample evidence that this place was not only wet once, but it was wet for a long time that the rains fell, the crater filled, that this was a lake. Yeah.

And that water was doing water stuff for a very long time. Curiosity kind of nailed that. So then you move on to that next step and you say, okay, then were the conditions habitable for life for a long period of time?

And this was the purpose of Perseverance. And so in addition to it confirming that Jezero crater had water acting on it for long periods of time, it also found that the conditions were... The stuff of life.

It found the stuff of life, that the conditions were reasonable, that if we dropped Earth life down, it would stand a good chance of surviving in this environment. And then, as you said, found some really exciting, and this is fairly fresh stuff. I mean, we're talking within the last year here from an exploration mission that has been in this new phase since Spirit and Opportunity.

I mean, we are 20 years into Let's Find Life on Mars V2. And we are now getting to the point where there is a rock. There are chemicals in that rock, which we'll talk about in a little more detail here, that the scientists have said, we've tried to explain it in every non-life way that we can.

And we have come out, we've run out of ideas. Someone, please explain this rock.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Right.

Fraser Cain: 

Now, obviously, other astrobiologists are saying, hold my beer.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah.

Fraser Cain: 

Right? I got plenty of explanations.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

But that's the thing is they said, hold my beer. And they said, give me my beer back. I got nothing.

Fraser Cain: 

Hold my beer. No, I'm getting my beer back. Okay, one more time.

No, wait. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think you're exactly right, which is that we are now, we have gone as far as...

I mean, obviously, we can get farther. I mean, if we saw a fossil, right? If we saw a stromatolite, if we saw something really exciting.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

But they've seen things that look exactly like stromatolites.

Fraser Cain: 

I know, I know, I know, I know. But if we did see a Mars bunny run by, then that would be more evidence, right? But now we need that sample returned because there is only so much lab equipment you can pile into these rovers.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah.

Fraser Cain: 

We need to bring these things home.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And Rosalind Franklin just doesn't have it. It's... Rosalind Franklin rover is several-year-old technology because this poor rover got cursed by the Russian-Ukrainian war and losing its launch vehicle and a bunch of other stuff.

The US has canceled all NASA-funded missions to Mars in lieu of commercial missions to the moon. And we have these samples scattered all over Mars that just need someone...

Fraser Cain: 

No, not sampled. In Perseverance's sample collection...

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

So it's left caches as it goes.

Fraser Cain: 

It has done both.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah.

Fraser Cain: 

So it has taken samples, put them inside its special sample collection apparatus, and then it has taken backups and dropped them on the landscape behind it. And so you could either meet up with Perseverance, hand over the samples, put them on your return vehicle, bring them home to Earth, or you could chase down the pathway that Perseverance has traveled and pick up samples that are lying there on the surface of Mars. Both are options.

Yeah. And that you get 20 or whatever of the finest, most interesting samples that the scientists on Earth were able to direct Perseverance towards into the hands of the biggest labs on Earth, you are going to make some magic.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah.

Fraser Cain: 

But this is not... We're not going to trauma dump. This is not a grieving session here where we are just going to whine about a lack of a Mars sample return mission.

We want to...

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Celebrate what's been discovered.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah, we want to bring you right up to speed with what is the cutting edge of the search for the story of life on Mars.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And it's really amazing. And the details are still coming out. It takes time to analyze results.

We're going to continue to see new results about Bright Angel Rock. I'm having to be so careful during this episode because I read a paper that is not yet published that I'm working on putting together press stuff for. And it's so cool, people.

And so here we have a river delta that has essentially been fossilized in place. And there's so much other cool stuff on Mars. There was work done a few years ago where by looking at how the landscape was altered in response to water, they were able to identify where tsunamis have historically taken place.

So you can imagine one of these crater lakes that gets thwomped by either a landslide or an incoming meteor, both. And as a result, a tsunami moved across the crater lake. And there's some evidence, this is still being discussed, how long it would have lasted, that the reason that one side of Mars is at a radically different altitude than the other is there used to be an ocean.

And so what we're seeing is the ocean floor and the continental landmasses, sands, ocean. I just love that idea. Kevin Gill has amazing graphics related to that.

We used one of them for the slide cover for this video. Go look at Kevin Gill's work. It's science-based.

Fraser Cain: 

And this is like a multi-country exploration. So we got a really interesting discovery from the Chinese rover, Tianwen, which found, it was able to map the ancient shoreline. They've targeted the landing site for Tianwen to be at what was thought to be the ancient shoreline.

And it was able to map out and see that, yes, indeed, this was the place where water was probably lapping at the side of an ancient sea for a very long period of time. Very exciting. So again, the evidence is building.

Now, the Chinese are going to be sending a sample return mission. Tianwen 3. And yeah, and it's going 28?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

It launches in 28. It lands in 2031. And they're not going to have a multi-year rover ahead of it collecting samples, but they are going to carefully target where it lands.

It's too early to know where it will land at this point.

Fraser Cain: 

Grab something interesting nearby, put it on a rocket, send it home. So we will, by the middle of next decade, well, early next decade, get our hands on a fresh piece of Mars, which is pretty exciting. Not as good as the best samples Perseverance could find, but it is still a good first step towards getting some samples from Mars.

So do you think, like, are we now in the endgame of the V2 search for life on Mars?

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

I don't know if we're endgame yet, just because time scales are so wibbly wobbly. I mean, that's the thing is our exploration of Mars is limited by the technology we've been able to land, which is where Percy did the best it could and said, I think biosignatures, but we can't prove it without a full laboratory of equipment that has a whole lot more power than that little robot has. The helicopters we're planning to send aren't going to be able to do chemistry.

Fraser Cain: 

Right. The skyfall.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah. And so the endgame question is, when are we going to bring back the right samples to incontrovertibly say, yes.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. And I think, like, I'm sure people who are listening to this right now, their thought is, well, aren't humans going to go to Mars? And so can't they do this in the same way that humans went to the moon and the tech stack for sending humans to Mars and bringing them safely home to Earth is the same thing, but vastly more complicated than sending a robot, picking up a bunch of samples and bringing them back home to Earth.

The robots are hardier. They can handle a lot more. So if you can't do the first thing, then you can't do the second thing.

Right. And your other option is we'll send the humans and then send good lab equipment. But again, good lab, like we're talking devices that are the size of a small building.

Right. You cannot take one of those and put them on the surface of Mars. You really want to bring that stuff back home to Earth.

And so I think you're going to see that gate be, can we get good samples back from Mars that allow the scientists to conclusively search? And I think a great analogy of this is what's happening with the samples of Ryugu and...

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

And Bennu.

Fraser Cain: 

Bennu.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Yeah.

Fraser Cain: 

And we're seeing these just little whiffs of asteroids... Amazing science. ...turning into some of the most incredible discoveries that science has made about our understanding of the history of the solar system. I mean, they are finding amino acids. They are finding ratios of water to deuterium. Yeah.

They are putting together the history of the solar system in a way that you just have never been able to do with the meteorites that the solar system has deigned to drop on our planet up until this point. So yeah. Endgame is sample return.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

I'm hoping that we can do fossil hunting while we're both still alive. That is my dream, is fossil hunting on Mars.

Fraser Cain: 

Fossil hunting on Mars. Yeah. Walking around, chipping open a rock, looking inside.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

I mean, it can be a robot. It can be a super powerful robot.

Fraser Cain: 

Yeah. Yeah. But why not...

I like to go with a little hammer and chip away at rocks and look for fossils inside. So let's let an astronaut do that too. That might be a good use of astronauts.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

It's true. It's something that I've always said I hope to be a little lady fossil hunting on Mars. I think I'm just a little bit scarred by the double boom of Starship's booster and Blue Origin's New Glenn.

So last week was a really bad day. And currently we have Starship, New Glenn, and Vulcan all grounded.

Fraser Cain: 

Yes. Yeah. We are not go for launch.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

We are not go for launch.

Fraser Cain: 

Right. All right. Well, Pamela, that was awesome.

Thank you.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

It was my pleasure. And thank you to all our patrons. Some of you have realized you can get me to say truly ridiculous things by having truly ridiculous usernames.

To those of you who make me laugh, I salute you. To those of you whose names I'm about to mispronounce, I'm just really sorry. This week, we would like to thank Adam Anise Brown, Alexis, Andy Moore, Astro Bob, Bart Flaherty, Benjamin Mueller, Bresnik, Bruce Amazine, Christian Bergholt, Cooper, David Fines, David Green, Dr. Whoa, Ed, Evil Melky, Frank Stewart, Jeff McDonald, Gordon Duis, Hal McKinney, Jacob Huell, Jason Kwong, Jeremy Quarrel, Joanne Mulvey, John Drake, Jonathan H. Staver, Justin Proctor, Katie B., Kim Barron, Lab Rat Matt, Les Howard, Mark, Mark Thompson, Matthew Horstman, Michael Purcell, Mike Dog, Nate Detweiler, Papa Hot Dog, Paul L. Hayden, Philip Walker, Rhythm Chameleon, Robby the Dog with the Dot, Ruben McCarthy, Sage Sinfen, Scone, Sean Matz, Seggy Kemmler, Taz Talley, Tim Garrish, Van Ruckman, and William Andrews. Thank you all so very much.

Fraser Cain: 

All right, thanks, everyone, and we will see you next week.

Dr. Pamela Gay: 

Bye-bye.

Live Shows https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwCk5uldz4g

This is the final episode of our series on sci-fi universes. And this week we will tackle “The Expanse”. Now we’ve got fusion drives, Proto-matter, g-forces! Listen up, belta lawda! Let's look at the science of our own possible (with a side of aliens) future. 

Show Notes

• Science and physics of The Expanse
• Fraser’s favorite sci-fi series
• Strong recommendation for the show and books
• Epstein Drive and fusion propulsion
• Artificial gravity through acceleration
• Metallic hydrogen and advanced spacecraft technology
• Newtonian space combat and high-G effects
• Ring gates and interstellar travel
• Realistic human adaptation to life in space
• Asteroids as weapons of mass destruction
• Earth, Mars, and Belter politics
• Belter culture and low-gravity living
• The protomolecule and precursor civilizations
• Themes of humanity’s future in space
• Future discussions: Battlestar Galactica and Dungeon Crawler Carl
• Upcoming episodes: Oceans and Organics on Mars, Big Rockets and the Moon Race, and summer reading recommendations.

Transcript

Fraser Cain:

AstronomyCast Episode 795 The Science of the Expanse. Welcome to AstronomyCast, our weekly facts-based journey through the Cosmos, where we help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know. I'm Fraser Cain, I'm the publisher of Universe Today.

With me, as always, is Dr. Pamela Gay, a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute, and the director of Cosmoguest. Hey Pamela, how you doing?

Dr. Pamela Gay:

I am experiencing sunlight streaming radically into my studio in a way I don't get to see on Mondays because I've usually fled at this point of the day.

Fraser Cain:

Right. Yeah, we're usually done recording, but here we are later on in the afternoon and you're getting that afternoon sunlight coming through. It's true.

Feels good.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah.

Fraser Cain:

This is the final episode of our series on sci-fi universes, and this week we will tackle the Expanse. Now, we've got fusion drives, protomatter, and G-forces. Listen up, Beltalota.

All right, now last week I said that Stargate was objectively the best sci-fi series ever done. I was wrong. I was wrong.

I take it back. The Expanse. The Expanse is objectively, without question, the best sci-fi television series ever made.

So say we all.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Okay. And where does Babylon 5 go?

Fraser Cain:

Oh, we're not going to do the Science of Babylon 5, are we?

Dr. Pamela Gay:

We are not. We absolutely are not. No.

Fraser Cain:

And we're not going to do Battlestar Galactica.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

And I did hear you say, so say we all is a fabulous phrase, by the way. That one just needs incorporated into life more often.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah, no, I won't do a Science of Battlestar Galactica, because then I'll just go off in rage. But I'm going to re-watch it. Once we finish Stargate.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Just don't watch the last season.

Fraser Cain:

I won't watch the last season, yeah. It's too bad that they never were able to finish Battlestar Galactica.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Right, exactly.

Fraser Cain:

It would have been much better if they'd had a final season to that show, but they never did. Anyway, we're not talking about Battlestar Galactica. We're talking about The Expanse.

So The Expanse is so good.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

It really is. Now, reading the books also, just those of you who are like, nah, get through the first third of the first book. And it's also the first third of the first TV season.

It starts slow because this is a space opera, people. And there are a lot of characters to introduce. There are a lot of concepts to introduce.

And oh my goodness, the journey you you will be taken on. Yes, you just have to, you know, a roller coaster, the part where you're going up and it's going chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk, and you're just like, why? Why did I wait in line five hours to go chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp?

Yeah, it's it's going to be worth it. It's going to be worth it.

Fraser Cain:

Yes.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

And this is not a 30 second ride. Yeah.

Fraser Cain:

And the TV show, like, what is it? Six seasons? It is just it is phenomenal.

Yeah. Such a good show. And what's nice is in the previous episodes, we've talked about the science of things, but a lot of it's just hand waving nonsense.

In this, we've only got a couple of hand wavy things and the rest is just real science taken to the extremes. And that part makes it just beautiful. So, um, so we, I guess let's start with as, as we have been, let's start with transportation.

Um, and let's start with, let's start with the terrible, so the terribly named Epstein Drive.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah.

Fraser Cain:

What an unfortunate name. Oh, if they only didn't know him.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

But the Rosanante.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about Epstein Drives.

What is it?

Dr. Pamela Gay:

I don't remember.

Fraser Cain:

Okay. It's a direct fusion drive.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Thank you.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. Yeah. So this is, this is a real kind of system.

And you know, we talk about this idea of like having fusion energy, fusion plants, and you've got either the, you know, the giant tokamak that's being built in, in Europe right now. And, you know, there's, uh, there are the laser ignition facilities that are happening in the U S but there is another style of fusion that if, if you're willing to sort of walk the fine line between a thermonuclear weapon, because like we know how to do nuclear fusion.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

We do.

Fraser Cain:

It's a, it's a fusion bomb.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

It just tends to be a bit faster than we can control.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. You just don't get the energy out in a nice controlled way. So direct fusion is this sort of halfway point where you are sort of detonating small amounts of fusion and you're using that as a, um, as a propulsion system. And in fact, this is real.

So, uh, NASA has been funding through some of its NIAC grants, uh, direct fusion drives and people are proposing you could make it out to the outer solar system in, uh, a couple of years as opposed to decades.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

And NASA has a, a new, uh, raison d'etre, I'm just going to use that word a lot, apparently during this part of the season, um, uh, that is to get a, uh, working fusion generator and we'll see. Fission though.

Fraser Cain:

Fission.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

You're right.

Fraser Cain:

They're planning on building a fission. Yeah. Yeah.

Totally different than fusion.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

I need to have a bulletin board that is fission on one side, fusion on the other, and just Right. Cause I'm, I'm going to swap them. Dyslexia is particularly cruel.

Fraser Cain:

Right. Um, the cool thing about the drives in the Expanse is that they give you gravity, that they fire so hard that you could accelerate your spacecraft so that you were then experiencing 1G inside.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

And then you flip.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. And then, and then they flip. So they, they go for half the journey at 1G of acceleration, and then they've reached a halfway point and then they flip around and then they go at 1G of deceleration.

And so you experience gravity on both, in both legs of the journey.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

And it also leads to interesting spacecraft designs cause there's some metric, uh, not all of them, but many of them.

Fraser Cain:

Some metric. What do you mean?

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Symmetric. They, they, they, when you flip them, they look, the, the, the way the spacecraft looks, you look at the silhouette, um, it's, it's, they have to be able to.

Fraser Cain:

Oh, I see. Symmetrical. Okay.

I got it. I got it. I understand what you're saying.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah.

Fraser Cain:

Sorry. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Like the, it's, it's sort of interesting that the, like the spacecraft, the way they're designed, they're kind of like living in a skyscraper.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah. You need it so that, that when you rotate it, not all hell breaks loose. Cause if I, weight matters.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Or mass.

Fraser Cain:

I don't know if they talk about what the fuel is, but I think it's, it's a metallic hydrogen, which is a real thing.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

That would make sense. Yeah.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. And so in the interior of Jupiter is thought to be hydrogen that is pressed together under thousands of gigapascals of force. And it gets turned into this lattice where you're essentially compressing the hydrogen atoms as close as they'll possibly go.

And they turn into this metallic form that actually generates Jupiter's magnetic field. And this is supposedly been, been generated in the lab, although some people are, are skeptical that it's actually happened, but, and so one possibility is if you can take regular hydrogen, squeeze it into this metallic form, it might remain in that form. It may not require the ongoing pressure to keep it in that form.

And so now you've got this, this form of fuel that you then are feeding into a fusion reactor and you've just got enormous amounts of, of energy storage that can then be used in a way that provides you with a huge amount of thrust.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

And if you go to Epcot at Disney World and you ride the ride that theoretically takes you to Mars, that actually just rotates you super, super fast. And you watch the show that they have at the beginning, which stars the one badass woman from Firefly. I'm so bad with proper nouns.

They talk about the rocket you're about to take to go to Mars is powered by, by solid hydrogen, so metallic hydrogen. And if you yell at the TV that that's not a thing that they can do, everyone around you will stare at you. And if you proceed to yell out the number of space toilets, Annie Wilson, I'm looking at you, they will look at you even worse.

Fraser Cain:

Right. Yeah. So, and, and then what, one of the really cool implications for, for this, these high fusion drives is then the combat works in this very Newtonian way where, you know, they're calculating the, the motion of these spacecraft, they're moving, they can make various slight adjustments.

And so you're having to lead the target, you're trying to predict the target if you're going to be shooting it. We'll talk more about weapons in, in a bit, but, but that if you are inside the ship, you are then experiencing these high G maneuvers. The one G is, is purely for comfort.

These things can go much faster. They can do five Gs. They can put you into horrendous G forces while these things are in, in combat.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

And they have couches for it.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. They have, they have a fluid that they pump into their veins, right?

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah. So, so there's two different things that go on. They have the high G couches, which conform and support your body so that like you don't have every bone in your body break.

But then the other issue that you run into is high G situations. And someone just pointed out in the YouTube chat that the high Gs on the Mars ride at Epcot made them very not happy with the world. There's certain medications that don't mix well with high Gs, statins is one of them.

So if you think about it, if there are drugs that make it harder for you to tolerate high Gs, there's also going to be medications that make it easier for you to keep your blood even more hyper oxygenated because it's going to be harder for the blood to get to your brain that prevents strokes from occurring. All the things that are in extreme risk during high G events, um, these drugs are meant to assist with, although they still end up losing their pilots and seasons into the series due to a high G maneuver that they don't make it back from.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. And I've mentioned many times that like one of my favorite sequences in a sci-fi television show is where they're in a ship, this sort of really nimble little ship, but there's a bunch of tools out left out and they're making these high G maneuvers shifting back and forth. And now the tools are flying around inside the spacecraft like bullets because everything else is strapped down.

Like what you're supposed to do is strap everything down inside your ship. But in this, they, they leave some stuff out. I forget that like they were, they were working on something when something got attacked and they didn't have time.

And now it's very dangerous. Yeah. It's all weapons inside their ship, which is just terrifying.

So, so they don't have faster than light drives, but they do have stargates, the ring gates.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

They, they have eventually, um, so, so one spoilers just, just to warn you all, it's been out long enough. If I feel okay, spoilering everything. So one of the core premises is, is they encounter a alien life form in the form of this weird, like fungal kind of stuff that, uh, can infest humans and change their actions.

And while trying to understand what's happening, what's going on, uh, there's a bit of seeing visions because of course there is, um, they end up finding in the outer solar system, um, a, a ring that once set up, when they pass into it, it affects how they're moving. And when they try and pass back out of it, once they get things working again, um, they can use it to jump to other solar systems. It, one of the things that gets encountered during that particular season, and it's even better in the books, is this idea that without gravity, wounds don't work right.

And that, that's a really weird sentence to be stating, but.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. Yeah. That you, your blood won't clot in zero gravity or something like that.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Not so much that it doesn't clot as it doesn't flow in a reasonable way. So we're used to this idea that when you cry in zero gravity, the tears just bubble up on top of your eyeballs. We got introduced to the idea of blobs of blood flying around in one of the Star Trek movies.

Um, but in Expanse, the idea that our body is designed to have blood drain away from wounds, um, in zero gravity, it just pools where it is and keeps expanding where it is. And you have to suck the blood out, yuck, and seal it up, right. Or spin up gravity.

So one of the ideas is you need gravity in order to heal. And that's a powerful idea.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. Really cool. Uh, okay.

So we've talked about the, the transportation. Let's, let's talk about, um, sort of the, well, I guess we'll talk briefly about weapons, which we tend to sort of reach at this point.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Flinging asteroids.

Fraser Cain:

Yes. Well, right. So, so you've got the, the drones, the missiles on the various ships, which are like little mini fusion drives that are, they're tracking their target.

You got point defense kinetic weapons that are able to try to blow those things out of the, out of the sky when they're, when the missiles are coming at you. But as you said, uh, at one point someone uses asteroids as a, uh, as a weapon of mass destruction.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah. So this, this is really kind of a remarkably rich set of ideas where they have prisons, especially for the violent that are deep, deep, deep underground and they get harmed in the process of asteroid striking. And of course they still figure out how to escape.

Um, but it just makes for a really amazing set of concepts. But since you know, where the earth is going to be, I feel safe in saying, uh, and days from now and years from now, if you start asteroids, which can be really dark on an intercept path with the planet earth, once they're set flying, they're just going to hit and it's the ultimate terrorist weapon.

Fraser Cain:

Well, it's, it is, but, but there are these essentially stealth weapons that they have a version of mutually assured destruction like we have with nuclear weapons on, on earth. They have these, these mass accelerators that are stealth, they're stealthed pointing at each other's planets.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah.

Fraser Cain:

And so if you detect the asteroids haven't been sent to your planet, you can fire your accelerators at your opponent and make sure that, that all life is wiped out on their planet as well. And so they've just taken the standard idea of, of nuclear weapons on ballistic trajectories and then just scale that up so that now you've got mutually assured destruction at a solar system level. And the idea is, is terrifying and, and used for great mayhem in the, in the books.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

And this is in the true sense of a space opera, something with so many different plots going on because you have the aliens, you have Mars wanting independence, you have the earth system trying to just keep everyone in line, behave children. You have the belters, you have the people in the outer solar system, and you have this idea of who does and doesn't get resources, who does and doesn't get jobs, and it gets into the economics, it gets into the science. And one of the things that does really well is it gets into how does the human body change if it's able to reproduce in space?

And there's an idea encountered where people want to travel to places with gravity to give birth. And that if you've spent too much of your life in space, you can take all the drugs in the world to try and survive. You can exercise all you want, and you're still going to get deathly sick if, if you're trying to be somewhere with gravity.

You're still going to struggle if you're a Martian going to the planet Earth.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. Yeah. There's the, one of the main characters is a Martian Marine who has trained in heavier gravity for years of her life and still has a rough time going to Earth.

She's super tough in every other situation, but on Earth, she's definitely feeling the increased gravity. And then the belters, the people who live in the asteroid belts, who've been living in one-tenth gravity, they're almost a totally different species of human beings at this point.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

And they also do something that I really love, which is because the belters spend so much of their life in spacesuits, spend so much of their life where you can't see hand gestures and facial expressions the same way, they have large gesture sign language that gets incorporated into how they speak. And then there's other things that come into it that we've seen other places like Battlestar Galactica, which we're not going to discuss. There's an episode where Naomi has to jump from one spacecraft to another.

And she pre-breathes to hyperoxygenate her blood. She exhales so that she doesn't explode. That's always a problem.

She has the bursting of the blood vessels, the massive bruising. All of this is legit and it's just kudos to them. They did an amazing job.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, people always wonder what would happen if you went outside without your spacesuit.

Watch The Expanse. They cover it.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah. Naomi goes through some stuff.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Totally. All right. So let's talk about the part that is like the most science fiction, which is the protomolecule and the weird biology of this.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

So protomolecule, they don't really talk about is this a virus? Is this a, what is it? Is it a parasite?

How does it communicate? So they are oblivious to all these details, which is part of what allows them to do awesome sauce with it. Yeah.

The idea is once you're exposed to this, it starts taking over your body, repurposing it. It changes your physical structure. You get really gross, really, really gross, kind of turn into a lump, begin to merge with everything around you.

So it's really gross. I'm just going to repeat that a few more times. Yeah, really gross.

But the protomolecule also allows communications between different life forms. And it's this idea that we had from the last episode with Stargate of the parasites can make you do stuff. And so the protomolecules are trying to essentially take over humanity.

They end up on Ganymede. One thing that you see across the Expanse universe is this idea that they have spun things up enough that the inside walls are like you're walking on the bottom of the surface of Ganymede. There have actually been some fast rotating asteroids recently announced from the Vera Rubin Observatory.

These things do exist. They are actually rotating without falling apart fast enough to have nearly lunar gravity, which is wild to think about. So they get that idea of how to get artificial gravity correct.

But like they lose Ganymede to the protomolecule because it takes over the life forms on board it. And they also end up having to give a couple of the characters extreme radiation poisoning. They talk about the consequences of that throughout the series.

It's a show where what you see in season one crops up years later.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. Yeah. That essentially the protomolecule, and we don't want to spoil it too deeply, especially because they haven't finished the books yet.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah, they have.

Fraser Cain:

No, no, they haven't finished, sorry, they haven't finished turning the books into shows yet.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Okay. So there's going to be years before they can do the last book.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. There's apparently going to be like a movie to wrap it up or something like that. I don't know if they're going to do more seasons.

It's bananas to me that they didn't just keep going. How could they not just keep going?

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Well, there was a gap in time between those books of like 20 years. The human beings needed to age.

Fraser Cain:

I guess so, or they need new actors. But yeah, but the gist being that it's this, I mean, there's a lot of flavors and ideas that we've talked about quite a lot in the show about panspermia, directed panspermia, right? Like what if you wanted to clear out a solar system, get it prepared for you to move in and take over?

I've classically always said that the best thing to do is send the inhabitants a bad idea.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah.

Fraser Cain:

Right? You send a message like contact that says, build an enormous machine and people can't help themselves. They'll build the enormous machine.

It's true. And then the machine destroys your civilization. And then you didn't have to send a weapon, you have to send anything.

So the protomolecule is kind of like this idea that you're clearing the ground, you are resetting a site so that you can now build what you need in that solar system. And that there's this other sort of precursor race, similar to the ancient, similar to the precursors in Star Trek. Like this theme comes up quite a bit.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

They're finding relics on the solar systems they're able to get to, and the relics are weird and scary and- Yeah.

Fraser Cain:

And point to some precursor civilization that had plans for the galaxy.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah. Yeah.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. Yeah. And is not your friend.

Like, you're always hoping, like, come on, there's gotta be a good reason. The protomolecule can't be all bad, right? No, it's all bad.

So it's a really interesting concept, which is, when you sort of deal with the more philosophical ideas of this show, what happens when you are a incredibly powerful race, you are transcending dimensions, you are spreading out across everywhere you can reach. How do you make this job as easy as possible for yourself? Both to get around, both to not have to have rivals to deal with.

It's a great concept. And just the levels that this goes as you climb up, because finding the ring gates gives humanity access to the galaxy, but also then puts you closer and closer into contact with the other things that are out there.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Well, and it also just gets into all of the issues of humans being humans and doing stupid things. And what what do you do for love? What do you do for social justice?

What do you do for power and how the rich are able to live completely different lifestyles than the poor? So it has the science dimensions. It has the human dimensions.

It has characters that have so many layers to them that you think they're just like a big, dumb thug. And then you realize this is someone who's just trying to figure out how to human when they had no example as a child. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah.

Fraser Cain:

And, you know, man, I mean, it just it just goes on. There's the Mormons, I think, build interstellar spacecraft because they're planning on going to another star system, which gets stolen from them. Yeah, there's there's just so many bits and pieces, large and small in this in this show.

And and I loved every part of it.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Read the books, too, people. Read the books.

Fraser Cain:

So I will admit I have not read the book. They're so good.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

I read the books first.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah, my wife has, but I haven't.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

And and like I was like, I can't watch this TV show because I love these books too much. And then I didn't I didn't have I didn't have a regret. So, yeah, well, the first few episodes of the first season.

But other than that, yeah, yeah, yeah. Get through this first few episodes and then.

Fraser Cain:

No, it was gripping from moment one. But OK, fine. Yeah.

Yeah. Cool. Well, I hope people enjoyed this this four part series.

And I did. We can. Yeah, me too.

Come on. We get to talk about science fiction here. So let us know if you want us to continue.

You know, there are a bunch of other shared universes that we could talk about. Dungeon Crawler, Carl, because there's a ton of science in that. But, you know, you've both got an interstellar civilization.

We could talk about Battlestar Galactica because there is a lot of stuff in Battlestar Galactica.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

So currently we are going to take the Monday of Memorial Day weekend off.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

I currently have slated for June. Oceans and Organics on Mars. Big Rockets, Moon Race.

And then a recommended summer reading. We can turn all of those into TV shows. Sure.

If we need to. Just let us know what you want.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. Let us know if that's what you want or is it like or some portion of the audience is going to be like, oh, I don't want to do this. So let us know.

Yeah, I mean, we could definitely talk about Babylon 5.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah. Dungeon Crawler, Carl has a new book coming out.

Fraser Cain:

I know. Two days.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Three days.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to be I'm going to be probably listening to it while I'm in Japan.

So.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

So many Kickstarters.

Fraser Cain:

Yeah.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

I have spent so much money on Kickstarter.

Fraser Cain:

All right. Thanks, Bubba.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Thank you. And thank you to everyone out there. Some of you have figured out you can get me to say truly ridiculous things by having truly ridiculous usernames.

To those of you who make me laugh, I salute you. To those of you whose names I'm about to mispronounce, I'm just really sorry. This week, we would like to thank Alan Gross, Andrew Allen, Antosaur, Astro Sets, Bebop, Apocalypse, Bob Zatzky, Brian Bede, Burry Gowan, Claudia Mastroianni, Dale Alexander, David, David Rustiera, John Mundus, Elliot Walker, Fairchild, Just as it sounds, Frodo Tannenbaum, Gerhard Schweitzer, Greg Davis, Hannah Tankery, James Signorovich, John Baptiste Lamartine, Jim McGeehan, John Holstein, John Herman, Jonathan Poe, Justin S., Katie and Ulyssa, Kimberly Reek, Larry Zotz, Lou Zeeland, Mark Share, Masa Herleu, Matthias Hayden, Michael Wichman, Mike Huzzy, Nick Boyd, Patricia Hope, Paul Lowell, Rajiv Akari, Richard Drumm, Robert Cordova, Ryan Amari, Sam Brooks and his mom, Scott Bieber, Semyon Torfason, Steve Rutley, TC Starboy, Travis C.

Porco, Rutley, and wiped only three times because I like the itch. Thank you all so very much.

Fraser Cain:

Thanks, everyone. And we will see you when we're back. I think we're off one day, one week, right?

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Yeah, we're off one week for Memorial Day.

Fraser Cain:

Okay, we'll see you then.

Dr. Pamela Gay:

Okay. Bye, everyone.

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