SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Here with the second edition of our space news roundup with our friends from Short Wave and the science desk, host Regina Barber and NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce are here. And, Nell, welcome to a segment last time around we decided we might call Spacing Out with Scott. So let's start with the important question. Do you love that, or do you hate it?
REGINA BARBER, BYLINE: (Laughter).
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: I mean, I like it as a name. I try not to space out when I'm talking with you, but, I mean, you can space out if you want to, I guess.
BARBER: (Laughter) Yeah, she's a professional, OK?
DETROW: So I have a suspicion of what we're talking about today, given how much space news I talked with Nell in recent weeks, but what's on the table?
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Well, for one thing, we're going to talk about the success of the Artemis II mission, but more importantly, we're going to look ahead to what's in store for the next Artemis missions.
BARBER: Yes, and we're also going to talk about water on an interstellar comet and what that tells scientists about the unknown solar system it came from, plus what seismic data tells us about the power of eclipses.
DETROW: All right, great. Nell, I have been in Artemis II withdrawal. That was such...
BARBER: (Laughter) It was intense.
DETROW: It was such a rare fun story to cover. It was the first time people ventured out to the moon in five decades. The mission, by and large, went really well.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: And we were both on live together for the launch and the splashdown.
DETROW: I know, we're just going to have to superimpose a rocket blasting off behind you for this because that was such a cool moment last time.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Yeah.
DETROW: You know, not always, but, you know, when it happens, it's great. But I think one key thing that made this such a phenomenon of a story is that the astronauts really seem to be having a fun time doing it.
BARBER: Yeah. And they took, like, gorgeous photos. They broke a record for going the furthest people have ever gone from Earth.
DETROW: But the important caveat that we always had to work in when we talked about this was the fact that they never actually landed on the moon.
BARBER: No, no, no. The crew capsule can't land. In fact, I read that the astronauts need another vehicle to do that - right, Nell?
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Right. So Jared Isaacman, he's the head of NASA who took charge a few months ago. He's this businessman and a private astronaut. Anyway, he has been trying to speed up the two companies that have contracts with NASA to develop a lunar lander, so the hardware they need to land on the moon. Those are - SpaceX and Blue Origin are the companies.
DETROW: Any sense when they think they might have a lander ready?
GREENFIELDBOYCE: It's hard to know since these commercial companies tend to keep things as private as they can, although sometimes stuff just happens. So for example, Blue Origin just had a problem with the upper stage of its new Glenn rocket. I mean, they failed to put a satellite into the right orbit, and then the Federal Aviation Administration grounded the rocket while there's an investigation. So there's been a lot of chatter about how all that could slow down Blue Origin's work to support the moon landing effort.
But anyway, NASA has said that they plan to test one or maybe even both landers next year. And so the basic idea is to launch the crew capsule with astronauts on board, then launch one or both landers so that they can kind of rendezvous with the lander and try to, you know, try things out in space, but do it all close to Earth. So they would be checking out propulsion, life support, all that kind of stuff.
DETROW: And is the thinking that if that works well, then they can go ahead with a mission after that and try to land on the moon, walk on the moon?
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Yeah, I mean, NASA says the landing could happen as soon as 2028. But, you know, there are almost always delays in the space business. Still, NASA is actively preparing for surface operations on the moon. They've even been doing practice simulations with the Artemis II astronauts who just came back, like Christina Koch.
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CHRISTINA KOCH: When we got back to Earth, we all, within one or two days, were in surface spacewalk suits, doing surface geology tasks and doing them well.
BARBER: That must have been so cool to, like, suit up and then pretend to be, like, studying moon rocks on the lunar surface, having just been so close to the actual moon.
DETROW: One other thing I want to mention about Artemis was that really cool moment where they got to witness a solar eclipse from space...
BARBER: Yeah.
DETROW: ...The moon passing in front of the sun.
BARBER: Yeah.
DETROW: It was so cool to see those pictures, and that, of course, also reminded me about the solar eclipse near and dear to our hearts, April 2024, just a few years ago, such a joyous moment. I really enjoyed it. And, Gina, I am happy to hear that we're going to be talking eclipses for the next topic.
BARBER: Yeah, we totally are, and we're going to talk about seismic activity.
DETROW: OK.
BARBER: So, Nell, you saw the solar eclipse, too, right?
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Of course, I saw the total solar eclipse. I'm not going to miss that.
DETROW: I went with my kids' school standing out on the field in front of the school with a bunch of kids staring at it, and it was great.
BARBER: Yeah.
DETROW: It was a fun day.
BARBER: I don't know if this happened to you all, but, like, I saw the total solar eclipse in Buffalo. Everyone was, like, super excited. They were, like, really loud. And then when totality happened - that's when the moon fully covers the sun and when you can see that ghostly corona flickering around it - everyone got really still, really quiet. And this stillness was recorded by seismometers across North America.
BENJAMIN FERNANDO: People were changing their behavior in order to go out and view the eclipse. And that's really the first time that anyone has looked at human behavior through seismics and acoustics that I'm aware of during an event like a solar eclipse.
BARBER: So that's Benjamin Fernando, a planetary scientist at Los Alamos National Lab, and Benjamin and his team found that in the cities that were in the path of totality, like, where you could see that total solar eclipse, it was seismically quiet. So seismometers pick up noise from all sorts of things, like trucks driving around town, you know, constructions, even music concerts.
DETROW: Right. And I always enjoy stories like this because you'll pick up - you know, like, you'll see that a big concert, like a Taylor Swift concert...
BARBER: Yes.
DETROW: ...Actually has seismic activity. So this is kind of like that, but the total opposite?
BARBER: Yes. Yeah, yeah. So I remember that Taylor Swift concert, too. It was really cool. It was actually around, like, 2.3 magnitude earthquake, I think, is what they recorded.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Because they were jumping up and down, right?
BARBER: Well, it's 'cause they were singing, too, like, their just movement and swaying. And Benjamin said that seismometers are able to detect how quiet everything becomes. It's a good reminder that these tools can serve another purpose, like to help us understand noise pollution and how it affects our health and our environment.
DETROW: Last topic, we haven't gone interstellar yet in Spacing Out.
BARBER: No, not yet.
DETROW: We're doing it now - 3I/ATLAS, one of a couple of interstellar objects that came our way recently. There's some news. What's going on?
BARBER: Yeah, so this is a comet that formed outside of our solar system, and it was just found zooming through ours last July. And currently it's in between Jupiter and Saturn 'cause it's still in our solar system. And after studying it for a while, astronomers think they know a little bit more about where it came from.
DETROW: Where?
BARBER: (Laughter) It was somewhere colder than here, than our solar system.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Wait, how do they know that?
BARBER: Yeah, so they can look at the water evaporating from the surface of the comet using an array of radio telescopes in Chile. So scientists found that compared with comets made in our solar system, 3I/ATLAS has water that's different. Specifically, it's got more of this so-called semi-heavy water, and that's water with a slightly altered makeup. And that means it probably formed in a colder environment. So it's likely that it comes from a solar system that formed differently than our own.
DETROW: How close does that get scientists to knowing, though, which specific star system it came from?
BARBER: It really doesn't. So they don't know that.
DETROW: OK.
BARBER: But this information really helps scientists study future interstellar comets and to see if they have the same water composition because in recent years, scientists have gotten better at detecting these interstellar objects, and it seems likely that they're going to find more. So along the way, they can ask, like, is the water composition common, this one that we've seen in 3I/ATLAS, or is it unique? Are we unique?
DETROW: Regina, you're unique.
BARBER: Aw.
DETROW: Don't worry about it.
BARBER: Thank you.
DETROW: That is Regina Barber and Nell Greenfieldboyce of NPR's science podcast Short Wave. You can check it out. They talk about science all the time - not just space, the other sciences as well. Thanks to both of you.
BARBER: Thank you.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Thank you.
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