Space all over the place

Hi everybody, this is Space Cowboys and I'm in the studio with Joeri. Hi Herbert. Hi there. Joeri is with me and we're going to discuss his space news. He's got a lot of Russian news today, haven't you? Yeah, some exciting things that happened in Russia. All right, and we have a guest, so to speak, because the guest is Thijs himself, who's still in Asia and currently in the Philippines. Hi Thijs, I'm hearing you already. Yes, hi Herbert, hi Joeri. Yes, on the other side of the planet. I feel like I'm exactly on the opposite side. How are things over there? Very good, very good. I mean, it is rainy season, so it's almost the same as last time we spoke. I hardly ever see any stars. Oh, that's good. It's cloudy all the time. So, yes, I don't feel very connected to the universe out here. But very funnily enough, I'm in the Philippines now and I'm traveling around for work. And while I was here, suddenly news came out that the president, Duterte, a controversial man, but he did something good space related. He signed a directive to launch a new space agency in the Philippines. Oh, wow. So. So the Philippines are also going to space. Yes. Yeah. They didn't have one so far. They had something in the past, but that never really never really did anything. It wasn't the same. It never really flew. No. Yeah. It never really flew. But now they I mean, they're not going to launch any rockets. They are probably going to hitchhike on. The rumor is the Japanese on the Japanese space program. I think. So you were maybe you can elaborate about that, what they what they can do. But the idea is that at least first develop satellites and space science and all those things and and a more and a more decent astronomy departments and all the universities. So I can tell you what is making a weird face over here. Never did that. Do I have to be honest? I don't know anything. You know exactly what's going on. No, I don't know anything about the Philippines space agency. I'm sorry. I have to disappoint you. No, but Japanese rockets. Oh, Japanese. I don't know anything about Japanese rockets. Oh, so much. Otherwise, they're going to hitchhike on. That's what you were telling us. Yes. That's the rumor I heard here. Okay, good. Okay. So that's your news. So you have a couple of other things, but I'll turn to you turn to Joeri right now. So keep listening. And please interfere if you have something to say. We'll just continue the conversation. All right. Joeri, what's your news at this point in time? Shall we move over to Russia? Yeah, Russia. There's a lot that has been going on. In that part of the world in the last few weeks. Yeah. So let's start with the most, well, terrible news. A big accident with a nuclear rocket up in the north of Russia. So we have to move. I've been reading about that. Yeah, it's been all over the news. So let's first see what exactly happened over there. Because we have to move back to the 8th of August to the village of Neonoksa in the northern part of Russia. It's near Arhangelsk. So you're far up north. Near Murabansk. Actually. So if you consider the whole of Russia, it's in the northwest. Exactly. Close to Norway, maybe. Yeah. So on the 8th of August, something happened near the village of Neonoksa. Stations in the neighborhood in Norway registered an explosion. And after a few hours, local residents saw people in hazmat suits being evacuated to the hospital in Arhangelsk. One of the biggest cities nearby. The hospital staff wasn't warned of anything. They didn't know what to do. They were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements afterwards. And there were unfortunately five deaths. So five scientists died in an accident in a military base somewhere near Neonoksa. This wasn't all. Something else happened. A few hours after the accident, radiation levels peaked at 4 to 16 times the normal. Bridge. Monitoring stations in Russia also noticed a spike and they were soon switched off. That's a lot compared to what's normal, but it's not extreme, right? It's not scary in itself. But it is scary that radiation levels suddenly... It's not lethal or something. Sure, sure. So something had happened. At least there's an indication that something nuclear was going on. Yes, exactly. So what happened? Yes. We don't really, we don't exactly know. So the Russian ministry, they announced that something went wrong with a test of a nuclear rocket. And experts, for example, Jeffrey Lewis of the Federation of American Scientists, suspect that it was a nuclear thermal rocket for a new kind of cruise missile that was being tested. And something during that test went awfully wrong. In the first place, my question would be, what on earth, what in the name of Putin is a nuclear rocket? How does it work? Well, with the normal rockets, you have fuel that's being ignited and that's being pushed out at incredible speeds that generates lift. With a nuclear thermal rocket, you have, I think, liquid hydrogen that's being heated by a nuclear power generator to such... High temperatures that it expands immensely. And that also generates lift. So it's not burnt, it's just heated and pushed out as hot gas. Exactly. Okay. So you don't need two kinds of rocket fuel. You just have one liquid hydrogen or liquid oxygen. I can immediately think of something that could go wrong. I can immediately think of something that could go wrong. Because if you push out hot hydrogen as such, it's going to be combustible. Exactly. No smoking, please. So, yeah, we don't know what exactly happened, but they think they were testing this new rocket engine, a nuclear rocket engine for a cruise missile, the Buda Vestnik cruise missile. And probably something exploded, resulting in the death of five scientists. Yeah. Okay. And what is the... If I may ask, I'm sorry about the echo. No problem. What is the nuclear element then? So if this rocket explodes, what is the radioactive element? So they have radioisotope generators that generate heat, and that heat is used to expand the liquid hydrogen. So that's comparable to the stuff that's inside the Voyager and many other space tubes. Exactly. If something like that explodes, then you have nuclear particles, nuclear waste everywhere. Okay. All over the place. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that's a scenario. That's one scenario. That's one of the things that they expect to think that happened. But yeah, we don't have any official sources that say that this is what exactly happened. And are there any reliable sources online that you are following? Oh, it's just... Well, Jeffrey Lewis, the scientist from the Federation of American Scientists, he's an expert on all things relating to intercontinental missiles and non-prolactics. He's been working on the non-proliferation treaties. He suspects that this might be the cause. So I have good reasons to believe him, because he's always been right regarding anything dealing with rockets from North Korea or rockets from Russia. Yeah. Okay. Good. So that's that then. I mean, anything else to say on this? No, not really. Let's just hope that this doesn't happen again. And hope that we get to know more. Yeah. And then we can talk about this some next issue of Space Cowboys. Yeah. Okay. What else about Russia? Well, let's move over to something that seemed to go right. The launch of the Soyuz capsule, Soyuz MS-14. So a week ago, we saw an unmanned Soyuz capsule being launched towards the ISS. The first time an unmanned Soyuz capsule has been launched since the 1980s. And it was supposed to test whether the new rockets, a new upgraded version of the Soyuz rocket would be able to deliver the Soyuz capsule okay to the ISS. Everything went perfectly. Right up until the Soyuz capsule reached the ISS. Because what usually happens is that when a Soyuz capsule reaches the ISS, then it triggers an automated rendezvous system called KURS. So it just tries to find the ISS. Tries to lock up a radar beam. Yeah. And then it simply creeps towards the ISS and then docks. But something went wrong. The Soyuz capsule couldn't find the radar beam from the ISS. So it started, you could see it on the video, it started wobbling from side to side. And the people on board the ISS noticed this and said, okay, we're going to stop this docking procedure. We have to cancel it. Abort. Abort mission. Abort mission. So the Soyuz capsule backed away from the ISS and troubleshooting had to begin because, well, of course. They wanted to dock it. It has some supplies on board. It would be a shame to let it burn up in the atmosphere once again. So they had to find a reason what exactly happened. And they noticed, at least the Russian members on board, they noticed that an amplifier, an amplifier meant to send radar signals on which the Soyuz capsule could lock on was faulty. So it wasn't working properly. So changing it wasn't an option. So they had to think of something else. Well, there are multiple docking ports on the ISS. So the Soyuz capsule could use another docking port, but all of them were taken. All the other capsules were taken. So there were no parking spots left on the ISS, so to say. So what do you do? You forgot to introduce paid parking. So what do you do? The only thing they were able to do is move the Soyuz capsule that's already docked to the ISS to another location to free up another port. So yesterday, no, that was on Tuesday. Tuesday, I think. Tuesday, I think. Tuesday, I think. Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday, Thursday. Monday, this week. Three members of the ISS returns to their capsule on which they arrived in the ISS. They Disattach themselves from the ISS, flew backwards a bit, and then flew to another port in the ISS, docked again, entered the ISS once again, and voila, you have an empty port somewhere else. So, yesterday to try to dock the Soyuz MS-14 capsule once again, everything went flawless. Wow. It's, it's, it's a really funny story. story. I mean, if parking space is tight at the ISS, something has got to go. Something is very good because, well, space apparently is in good business shape. Yeah, and they were very unfortunate in this case, because usually there are multiple ways to dock a Soyuz capsule. You have Coors, which is the automated system. That didn't work today. In any other case, if a Soyuz capsule tries to dock, you have someone aboard that could manually steer the Soyuz capsule towards the ISS. Well, this was an unmanned capsule the first time since the 1980s, so there was no one to operate the capsule. In some cases, you have the Progress resupply vessel, which is basically a copy of the Soyuz. That one has a backup system called Toru. And Toru is a system where someone aboard the ISS can overtake the Progress capsule and then manually steer the Soyuz capsule. And then manually steer it towards the ISS. So from inside the ISS, you can take over the capsule and then steer it towards the ISS. This was a Soyuz capsule. It didn't have that kind of backup system. So once the Coors failed, they could do nothing else. Okay. All right. You have more Russian stories. Yeah. So let's stick with the MS-14, the mission, because it carried an interesting payload, new addition to the ISS. Fedor. What's that? Fedor is a robot. Oh, wow. They launched a robot to the ISS. It looks very much like a person. It looks a bit daunting, to be precise. It looks a bit scary. It was an unmanned mission with an artificial man on board. Yeah. So NASA launched a Robonaut 2 a few years ago, did some experiments on making sure that you could operate it. And maybe in the future, a robot like this can be used to perform EVAs, extra vehicular activities. That was not a very convincing robot. They went and shaked hands with it. It was not a very agile one. No, that was about it. I mean, they're very scared of actually putting a robot on the ISS because it could do damage if it's somehow left uncontrolled. For Fedor, it's not going to do a lot more than Robonaut on board the ISS. Russian Cosmod is going to perform some tests, see if he can manipulate the robot. And then after 10 days... And then it's coming back to the Earth in the same capsule as it was being brought. But is it more than a doll? Yeah, it is a bit more than a doll because you can remotely manipulate it and you can use its arms to manipulate switches or something. But that's about it. They won't do anything more than that with Fedor. But of course, in the future, you could use these robots to perform maintenance work on the ISS. Yeah. So astronauts and cosmonauts have more time to do that. Yeah. And cosmonauts have more time left to do actual science. In the future, you can, of course, use these kinds of robots for extravehicular activity, maintenance work outside the space station. It's dangerous, it's costly, a lot of preparation involved. So if you can let robots do that kind of maintenance work outside of the space station, then you have a great, great example of how you can use robotics. So very much a test in that respect. It is. So it's a first step. Don't expect too much of it. It's more like PR work. It's a test. It's great propaganda. Some fun. Yeah. Some fun. But don't expect a fully functioning robot on the ISS right now. Okay. Terrific. What's next? Spooky stuff from Russia. Spy sets. Yeah. Thijs, do you have any comments? No questions. No, no, nothing. No, no, no. I just, so much from Russia. It was so quiet around Russia for such a long time. And now suddenly everything is coming all at once. Yeah. They've been launching quite a lot of missions in the last few weeks. I think, you know, they've been launching quite a lot of missions in the last few weeks. They've really been picking up their pace. Launching communications satellites, some remote sensing satellites, but also, and that's the next story that I'd like to deal with, is spy sets. Spy sets. Give me spy sets. Yes. So let's move over to a satellite mission called Nivellir, or sometimes Napryagini. I love your Russian, but translate please. I don't know what it means. So for the past few years, we've seen some very, very secretive missions being launched from Russia. Small satellites that disattach themselves from an upper stage or from another satellite then perform some sort of reconnaissance orbits around the same satellite. Going away from the satellite, going back to the satellite. Sometimes even it looks like they're reattaching themselves to the satellite. Mm-hmm . And a few years ago, we also saw a number of smaller satellites being launched to geostationary orbit and also performing some of these, well, nearby close proximity operations. Same happened a few weeks ago back in July, four small satellites, which we don't really know what it is, what they were, they were also launched and you could see them do close proximity operations up in space. So flying information, actually. Flying information, but also going towards other satellites. coming very close by. One that was already in space. Yeah, or one that was launched together with these satellites. And of course, the Russians, they are not that open about the exact mission. They have indicated that these are close proximity inspection satellites. But inspection is, of course, a very broad term. Yeah, because you could also inspect somebody else's satellite. Exactly. Yeah. So Nivellier is an inspection satellite, probably. And they've launched quite a few of them. And you can, of course, use these for up-close inspection of other satellites, military satellites of other countries. But then we move over to Buda Vesnik, which is also based on the same kind of technology as Nivellier. Buda Vesnik isn't only inspection. They think that Buda Vesnik is something more anti-satellite weapons. Russians have tried this for years. Back in the 70s and 80s, they also launched anti-satellite missions. These were big, bulky satellites that came close to another satellite and then fired away a bomb full of shrapnel, destroying the other satellite. Oh, yeah. It's a very effective way. Controversial as well. Yeah, very controversial, very effective. But it leaves a lot of debris. Yeah. It looks like Buda Vesnik is going back to that same old idea. India did this recently, by the way. Yeah, but they fired it from the ground. So this is a system where you have this small satellite that is capable of doing close proximity operations. It can go close to another satellite and then inspect it and in the case of Buda Vesnik, maybe even destroy it. Right. We don't... Not very right, maybe. Yeah, but you get the general gist of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Russia is actively working on this kind of technology, inspecting other satellites. Maybe even creating smaller satellites that are capable of destroying another satellite. It's interesting that I'm hearing about this from you right now, because mostly when space weapons are in development and somebody is actively working on this, like launching satellites and testing them, it's in the news. Because it's controversial, there will be discussion about this. I'm not hearing any discussion about this right now. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. It's secretive. It's secretive, and they haven't really done anything illegal except for creeping up on other satellites, but that's not illegal. No. No. Still, I would expect some discussion. How about you, Thijs? Are you still okay over there? Yes, I am. I am. It was funny. You guys know this, but the listeners at home don't. While this all happened, I got into my Airbnb, of which I lost the key. So I am now safely back into my Airbnb. That's good. It's one of those things that can happen when you're traveling. And yeah, I got a spare key and I'm now ready to rock and roll. Very good. Okay. Have you been able to follow the conversation so far? Yes, yes, yes. But only the last three sentences I didn't because I actually pulled up the story that I wanted to talk about. Okay. Okay. So let's do that then. You've been silent for too long. That's why I started addressing you. Okay, yeah, yeah. It's a story that I think a lot of people have maybe heard about because it hit a lot of front pages. Because it was supposedly the first crime committed in space. First crime committed in space. Have you heard about this? I did, yeah. I have. And you realized too he's nodding. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's about. Anne McClain, an astronaut living on ISS. And I don't want to go into the details of the case too much because I don't know. It's also kind of sad because it's something between her and her estranged husband. They, I don't know. I don't know what the situation is between them. The crime allegedly is that she accessed her husband's bank account from space, from the ISS. Yeah. Because they have internet on the ISS. Without his permission. Without his due consent. And that would constitute a crime. It's not like it happened last week or something. She got back from ISS on June 24th, actually, this year. So she's already back on that. If I may interrupt you just very quickly. I'm also looking at Joeri a bit. As far as I know, it's not a husband but a wife. Is that right, Joeri? Yeah. That's right. So maybe you've been reading in Spanish or something. Of course, yeah. Yeah, that's true. Not that it matters very much. But just in case some listeners are wondering. So there you have it. Yeah, of course. Yeah. They're both wives. Of course. Not her. And it's about this bank account. But it instantly raised. It was far more interesting than their relationship. Was just the questions that it raised. Because for some reason, most astronauts so far have, well, at least while in space, really shown like exemplary behavior. So. No crimes have been committed, as we know of yet in space. But especially in a space like ISS, where so many different nationalities float around. The question is, if somebody commits a crime in space, then which jurisdiction does it fall under? And there doesn't seem to be a really clear answer to it. In this case, both Anne McClain and her lover, Warden is her last name. She. She's a woman. She's a woman. She's a woman. She's a woman. She's a woman. She's a woman. She's a woman. She's a woman. She's a woman. She's a woman. She's a woman. She's a woman. She's a woman. She's a woman. She's a woman. They are both from the US. So it's kind of clear that it's just there's a dispute between them on US soil. Yes. But the relevance of the story is, of course, so what happens when somebody commits a crime in space and, and especially when now that the industry is developing, and different companies from different countries are going up there? It's an open question. There's no jurisprudence. There's no, it hasn't really happened yet. So it's sort of like a brave new world. Yes. And the questions that would rise would be, I guess, who files a complaint, if anybody does? Where do you file a complaint? Where do you find a judge to judge a case? Right? Those are the kinds of questions. Yeah, on the ISS. Yeah. Yeah. As an American, a bunch of Russians in the face. Like, where do you prosecute? That's right. And maybe those are questions that we could pose to Tanya Masson, who has been in Space Cowboys, one of the first episodes we had. And maybe do a next episode with her. Exactly. And one of her main conclusions was also, I think, that, well, it's being talked about, you know, but no decisions have been made on this. Yeah. And do you... Do you have any information as to whether the partner of this American astronaut is going to file a complaint? Press charges? I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I don't have the... Because if nobody does, you don't have a court case. Yeah, I mean, it came out of their divorce case, I think. That's where the news originated from. Yeah. Yes, the divorce case. The divorce case. The divorce case. The divorce case is entirely unrelated to space, right? Yes, exactly. It's just simply the fact that she accessed that bank account. Yeah. That's the thing. I mean, she is being accused, and the claim is being accused by her spouse of doing this. So that's where the news comes from. Yeah. It's all allegedly in the total. Thinking out loud, I would say that this is... This is relatively straightforward, because you have two Americans with some dispute. So I guess that you could settle this in the American court, right? Yes. In this case, it's kind of clear. It's just a civil dispute between two people, two Americans, who are legally married in the United States. And that's all. So it's simply the question that I raised. And I sort of feel sorry for Anne McClain. Because it's also like... Well, you know, the woman went to space, went the whole training, and then, like, behind her name is, like, maybe first crime in space. That's not a... Maybe, yeah. Yeah, it's like, oh, man, is that what you did it all for, you know? Yeah, let's have a regular murder case, right? Yeah, exactly. Would be more convincing. Yeah, exactly. But what I thought was very funny. YouTube offered me this new trailer for this new movie. And it sort of... I don't know. It sort of ties into the whole thing of astronauts maybe not always doing the right thing. There's a new movie coming out called Lucy in the Sky. Originally, the name was going to be Bill Blue Dot. It's produced by Reese Witherspoon and Natalie Portman. It has a leading role. And it's loosely based on the case of Lisa Knopf. Lisa Knopf. Lisa Knopf. This is a little while ago. This is 12 years ago. After she got back. So she was a decorated astronaut. Went up on a space shuttle discovery. Was in charge of operating the robotic arms of the shuttle and the International Space Station. So, you know, she went up and she came back down again. But then she eventually got into some sort of... weird altercation and a huge court case. Which included attempts of kidnapping, burglary with assault and battery. Yeah. Also her relationship with another astronaut. I remember something about... She went on some revenge expedition wearing diapers in order to not have to get out of her car and keep driving. It was very, very weird in many respects. It was very, very weird in many respects. And it was... It was also this astronaut just falling from grace in a certain way. Because we all hold astronauts for like the highest standards there are. Yeah. They're freaking heroes. Universal heroes. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So the film is about her. So what happens in the film? The film is not so much about her. The film is more about... I don't know. It's an urban legend. But there's a positive side of being an astronaut. Of... And I'm not an astronaut. So we need to invite an astronaut on the show to talk about this. You, of course, have the positive effect of the overview effect. You hear it a lot, right? Of astronauts going up there and having this life-changing experience for the better. And understanding Earth better. And becoming more... I don't know. Just realizing that the Earth is fragile. All those things. Yeah. Suddenly they're conscious about the environment and everything. Exactly. Yeah. Kind of also this other side of it. Of having almost such a huge experience of going to space that it can be almost dramatic. That's also one of the things that's being told about it. And there is this idea that certain people can come down and also just kind of lose their way. And that was the idea with Lose Nowhere. Maybe it's something about having had too much attention, returning to Earth and getting very little of it. And then maybe falling into a black hole experience. What now? Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Like you come back down and... Yeah. That's sort of the... It can happen, of course. It can happen. But that's what the movie is about. Yeah. And what's the name of that one astronaut? Jim... Jim... Jimmy C. Let's see. What was it? I have his full name. I'm afraid I can't help you here. No. I've got... There's this wonderful... I know it's... Oh, is it Jim Broadbent? Broadbent. It's a good story. It's a good story. It's Jim Cummings. Cummings. Jim Cummings. It's... Yeah. I don't know. There's just... Let's call it just this. There's this great meme. There's a great meme of supposedly an astronaut, but you might not even be an astronaut. I'll go back to you on that. But so, you know, in Lord of the Rings... This... Sorry, I'm going all over the place. It's going all... Yeah. Jim... Yeah. Here we go. Here we go. Jim and Peggy worked for NASA, and there's one guy in the meme. And he asks, what is it like coming back to Earth as an astronaut? Yeah. As an astronaut. And the guy goes, he's like, do you remember that one scene from Lord of the Rings at the end where the hobbits, they come back at the end, they defeated Sauron, they destroyed the ring, all that stuff. They come back to their old bar. They come back to their old bar, and they sit in their old bar just with like a beer, and they have nobody to really talk to about their experience, about this gigantic experience that they had, but there's this guy with a pumpkin, a guy with a really big pumpkin comes in, and everybody in the bar is like elated about the guy with the big pumpkin. And the hobbits, who had this like epic experience, just kind of sit there like, great to be back home. And so Jim, in this meme, is like, how is it to go to space? Yeah. The guy, you know, the hobbits sitting in the bar, and the guy comes, the other guy comes in with the pumpkin. That's how it is for astronauts. Oh, I didn't. I can, I, yeah. I think, yeah. I think that it might be very true for these astronauts. It, it, it, it, I cannot imagine how it is to talk to us lay people, us ordinary people, because we've never seen it. We haven't experienced what they have experienced. So give me the name of the movie again. The name of the movie that's coming out in two weeks is Lucy in the Sky. Lucy in the Sky. Like the Beatles song. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, Lucy in the Sky. Great. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's September 11th. September 11th. Okay. That's a nice date. All right. Now, let me tell you one, one or two space stories that I have. See if I can get to my, my little list here. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. One thing I would like to come back to is our story about the Planetary, Planetary Society's light sail experiment. They launched the satellite. Oh, yeah. I remember that. That was going to get into some orbit and then use a light sail in order to elevate the orbit. So it's been doing some of that for the past couple of weeks. And in Ars Technica, there was a nice piece that I'm going to put a link to in our show notes. And that the piece analyzes how far this light sail experiment has come. And the funny thing is it's a bit unclear whether or not it's a success. Because there are some pluses and some minuses. They've been able to elevate the apogee. So the far end of the elliptical orbit has been, has become a bit higher. But the low end of the elliptical orbit has become a bit lower. Okay. And Ars Technica quotes an expert who says the total energy of the orbit has in fact decreased. Okay. So it's a complicated story. Okay. Somebody from the Planetary Society itself, well, of course, tells the press they're rather satisfied. They've been able to control the mission about two thirds of the time. But if you look at the objective data, the success is not that big. And maybe even carries a minus sign because of the lowered energy of the orbit. Juri? Yeah. So it's great for making sure that your satellite re-enters the atmosphere. At least that's going to succeed. That was a certainty from the beginning. It's a terrible joke. But of course, it's good to see that a light sail does have some effect on the orbit of a spacecraft. So that is of course good to see because they've always hypothesized this effect. And well, it's been proven. It's a small effect. And you have to do a lot of hard work. Yeah. You have to do a lot of hard work to make it into a measurable effect, some sort of macroscopic change in the orbit. That they succeeded in. But of course, you want to increase the energy of your orbit. You want to elevate the orbit, the orbit in the complete orbit, not just one end of it, but both ends. And that they did not succeed in. So light sailing is hard. That's a conclusion. That's a conclusion that we can draw. Yeah. It's almost as hard as nuclear power propulsion. And would it help anywhere else? Excuse me, Thijs, again? Do you know that it wouldn't help if it was anywhere else? Like say you have it. It's really because right now it's still in orbit, right? Yes. If it's already out somewhere far away that it's completely loose from any sort of orbit. Yeah. Wouldn't have that problem. That's right. I think so. Before we started this recording, Jeroen and I were telling each other one way of light sailing must be easy. And that's just straight away from the sun. Because you unfold your sail and you put it in the right direction and off you go. But as long as you're in an orbit around the Earth, you're totally, all the time you are changing your orientation and you have to do a lot of hard work changing the attitude, changing the attitude of your satellite, at least of your sail all the time to make it work properly and make it work at all. And that's still difficult. Yeah. Joeri? Yeah. A few years ago, the Japanese also did a solar sail experiment. It was called IKAROS. It was launched together with Akatsuki, which is a mission to the planet Venus. And that was, of course, an interplanetary mission. So it didn't stick to Earth orbit. It just went out into space. And they also noticed an increase in the speed. In the speed of the spacecraft. Because photons kept hitting the solar sail. Sure. But still, it was a minor increase. It was such a minor increase. Hardly measurable, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that's the practice of solar sailing. I think the idea is that you either need a huge solar sail to get any measurable effect or that you have to hit a solar sail with a laser beam from Earth. Because that could also generate some sort of… And people are thinking about that. Engineers are thinking about that. Yeah. Okay. Here's the next story that I want to discuss with you. And that's, well, another tweet by Elon Musk, who the other day told the world that it was high time to nuke Mars. It's almost like Donald Trump, who had other ideas about nuking stuff. But Elon Musk has the idea that you can nuke the poles or something. Yeah. The poles of Mars. And by doing that, you could introduce, I think, water into the atmosphere on Mars and then start a greenhouse effect and raise the temperature of the planet. So he's thinking about terraforming Mars. Yeah, that's right. Nuking… Terraforming by nuking. I mean, if you go to SpaceX's… Yes. If you go to SpaceX's Twitter, I mean, I believe that's even their cover picture is a terraformed Mars. That's the goal, I think, almost since he started SpaceX. But the nuking thing, he's also been talking about for a very long time. So did he update his nuke plans or is he still behind it? I believe he put a T-shirt on the market. Does that answer your question? Okay. You can buy the T-shirt now. Nuke Mars. You can buy the T-shirt. And then help finance the project. Maybe that… No. Maybe that's another legal question. Can you just go and nuke Mars or do you have to get permission from somebody on Earth? I think we made some agreements, I think back in the 60s. Those treaties. That we shouldn't… That we can't weaponize space, that we can't weaponize other planets, that they don't belong to a country. No. And we have this… We have the environmental protection officer of ESA here in the space… Yeah, we both did. …in the space cowboys. Yeah. And you can't just do this. You have to get permission. And if you don't, you're going to have some… Probably. Well, maybe you can get away with it, but it's not… It's frowned upon. Let's put it that way. Yeah. You're not going to make friends in the space community. I think it's both of them. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. But this fall on the protection. I'm not sure. Okay. More about the solar system. NASA is now going to… Yeah. …make a new system. Yeah. Yeah. NASA is now going to Europa. At least their Europa plan has entered the next stage. They're now actually designing the mission, right? Okay. Thijs, you got a question about that? Yeah. Well, so it's a Europa Tipper mission. Yeah. It's getting the go-ahead now. I mean, the funding was already secured for it. Yeah. Yeah. Great. So, yeah, that's… That's good to hear. …we can be short about this. Yeah. Yeah. Here's another one. Well… Yeah. Wait, wait, wait. Let's just… Let's just… Quickly, for those who don't know what's going on in Europa… Sure. …the icy moon of Jupiter… Yes. …yeah, the icy moon of Jupiter, it would not try to find life. It would study Europa much better in order to see how we could detect life there. So, it's… Yes. …sort of like an intermediary… And Europa is one of the best candidates for harboring life at all. Yes. Well, actually, it's Enceladus, like we talked about, with the designer of the Enceladus life, to find a mission. But for some reason, Europa really got the funding before Enceladus got it. So, it's… But I'm super excited. Hopefully, I think it's launched… Okay. It's set for launch in June 2023, which is not even that… Yeah. …that's a long time. Yeah. It's not even that far away anymore, the Europa paper. No. That's good. That's four years from now. I mean, it's probably going to get released, but no. You know stuff about the Europa mission, Jeroen? Yeah. But that doesn't take a while. No, to be honest, I'm not that knowledgeable on this mission. Okay. I just know that, yeah, it is interesting to visit Europa because of its unique characteristics. Sure. But I always thought that this was a mission that was moored by funding deficits and even problems with its launcher. I think it was supposed to launch on the SLS, the big American rocket that keeps getting delayed. But I'm not sure what the latest status is, whether it's going to be launched on SLS or maybe even on a Vulcan rocket from the United Launch Alliance. Okay. Stuff you do know about is… You have more to say about this, Thijs? No, it's true. Supposedly, it's going to go on an SLS, but it can also go on a Delta IV or on a Vulcan rocket. It's either or. It doesn't really matter. Of course, we have some delay talking to somebody at the Philippines. So, okay, Thijs, stay with us. Jeroen, I wanted to give you the floor to tell us something about Chandrayaan. Ah, Chandrayaan. Because it's on its way to the Moon. It had some attitude, some orbit corrections, and it's now in orbit around the Moon, right? Yeah. So Chandrayaan is India's moon mission, India's newest moon mission. Yes. It's supposed to land on the Moon with a rover on September the 7th. It was launched back in July this year. In the past few weeks, in the past month and a half, it slowly raised its orbit until it entered the gravity and the influence of the Moon. Yep. Now it's in orbit around the Moon. It's sending its first pictures. Of course… All's going well. All's going well up until now. And in the next few days, it'll surface. Yeah. It'll circularize its orbit. It'll lower its orbit. And then it'll release a part of its spacecraft containing the lander and the rover. And then on September the 7th, mark it in your diary, then it'll land on the Moon, hopefully. Yes. Let's hope this one goes well because… Let's hope… …you've had some trouble. Yeah. Let's hope it's not following Israel. That's right. That's right. And this one, the Beresheet, the Israel mission, had some connection with the moon. The Apollo mission had some connection with pollution in space, planetary protection, because there was some speculation that the tardigrades, also known as water bears, maybe were set free on the surface of the Moon. Who knows? Who knows what happens there? Yeah. But that's not the biggest of problems because I don't think the Apollo missions were that free of any… Okay. Very clean. …were that clean because it carried humans to the Moon, of course. Yeah. But still, yeah, it's not that nice to have a spacecraft crash into a planet containing life. No. No, no, no. Okay. No, exactly. So… Didn't the Apollo astronauts leave poop behind? Yes, they did. Yes, they did. So there are worse things to worry about on the Moon. Okay. Okay, let's not… Keep that in the poop. Let's not think and talk about this too much right now. All right. Give me an update, Juri, about Hayabusa 2. Yeah, Hayabusa 2. So a few weeks ago it captured its most recent set of specimens from asteroid Ryugu. Yes. It's been there for a few months now. It fired a projectile and that projectile unearthed some of the deeper laying sediments on Ryugu. Okay. So these were sediments that haven't been touched by the sun in over four billion years. So these are really sediments that carry the building blocks of the universe. They were able to recover these dust particles and they've now safely locked the capsule containing these dust particles in the spacecraft. So almost mission accomplished. At the end of this year, the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft will depart from Ryugu. And it'll start its journey back to Earth. And then somewhere next year, the capsule will reach the Earth. It will separate from the main spacecraft and it'll reenter the atmosphere and hopefully, if everything goes all right, land somewhere in the Australian outback. All right. But you do have, Juri, a news item for us about the fastest trip to the space station so far. Yeah. A new world record. So two interesting things about space station. First of all, this. When the Soyuz launches, Soyuz capsule launches, it used to take two days before it reached the ISS. And the Soyuz is a very cramped space module. So three people inside such a small spacecraft, not something that you'd recommend to everyone. Yeah. So the Russians did some calculations. And if you launch the Soyuz capsule at exact the right moment, they were able to reach the ISS in six hours, which is better. It is much better than spending two days in a cramped space. It's in a cramped capsule. Yeah. And in July, Soyuz MS-13 launched to the ISS and reached it in three hours, which is, of course, blazingly fast compared to two days. So imagine, you start somewhere in the steppes of Kazakhstan and three hours later, you're already in the ISS. Yeah. You don't even have to pee on the way. No. I mean, there's really a big difference. You just hold everything up and then go in the ISS once you're there. But this is, of course, it's a big change for the astronauts. It makes going to the ISS a lot easier. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a train trip. It's like a train trip. Yeah. Yeah. Great. And will this be the norm or is this the exception? No. This is going to be the norm. Of course, they want to make it as comfortable as possible for the astronauts. And if you launch it at the exact right moment and you target the right orbit, then you're able to reach the ISS in three hours now. So this is going to be the norm in the next few years. Three hours. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. I mean, you can't even see it. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. And there's some of the stuff that's going to be needed for that. Yeah. It's going to be an amazing thing. Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, there's the international docking adapter. And I think it's a very important piece of hardware. Because they've been quite busy up there. Last week, there was a spacewalk. And this spacewalk installed a small piece of hardware, but a very important piece of hardware. It was the international docking adapter. Now, you might think, what is this? I do. What is this? So the International Space Station has a lot of docking ports. I mean, we already discussed the Russian docking ports earlier in this episode. But, of course, we're on the brink of sending American, new American capsules, the Dragon capsule, the Starliner from Boeing. All these are going to launch to the ISS in the next few months. But they weren't able to safely or easily dock to the ISS up until now. They need new docking adapters, basically new parking spots. Okay. Okay. So, I mean, I think it's a very important piece of hardware. But I think it's a very important piece of hardware. Because they were thinking, is there some lack of standardization that you need an adapter? I was visualizing this as some add-on to help some spacecraft dock to the... But you don't need an add-on. You just need more ports. Yeah. So these docking adapters are installed on the old ports that were used by the space shuttles back in the days. Oh, I see. So it is a change in standard. It is a change in standard. You have these standard ports for the space shuttles. Yeah. So you have the shuttle and you're now changing them to what is now the standard. Yeah. And the Dragon capsules that are currently launched to the ISS for resupply missions or the Cygnus capsules that are Northrop Grumman's way of resupplying the ISS, they're docked to the station using a common berthing mechanism. It's a very nifty way to dock something. But you need an arm, the Canadarm, to grapple the capsule once it's in space and then attach it to the space station. So you need someone, a human, to grab it and attach it to the space. With these new international docking adapters, you can automate this whole process. So a Dragon capsule or a Starliner capsule lines up with the ISS and then can automatically dock itself to the ISS, which of course takes away a lot of difficult processes. Yeah. So these two, they've installed the previous international docking adapter a few years ago. And it's already being used by the Dragon capsule that launched earlier this year. And now they have two capsules, so two docking ports. Now they can attach a Starliner and a Dragon capsule at the same time. So you have two docking ports that are ready for the new manned space capsules from the US. Okay. Excellent. So they're good to go. Yeah. Now we need the capsules and the rockets. More launches, please. Yeah. That's good news. So SpaceX had some problems with their Dragon capsule. It exploded once it was tested. But they found the root cause of it. And they're aiming for a launch with humans at the end of this year, early next year. Same goes for Starliner. First unmanned launch is somewhere in the beginning of October. If that goes well, then they plan the new manned launch also somewhere at the end of this year, early next year. So they're moving along. And I think we might see the first manned launches from these companies somewhere later this year or early next year. Okay. Hey Thijs, over at the Philippines. Do you have any comments? Any comments on this or other news items that you'd like to share with us? Yeah. I was, I was, I was, no, I just think it's cool. And you're, you, you, you have, you, you always, I'm always like really curious what you come up with. You always come with all the stories that don't seem to make all the headlines. Yeah. I don't, because I only have these stories that do make all the headlines or it's just my algorithm that's like really well tuned. Yeah. I'm tuned towards you and tuned towards me. I was, did you hear about that it's 30 years after Voyager 2 visited Neptune? Which it's, I'm an historian by trade, so I like history stories. Yeah. And it's, what was it? Was it today? What was the exact date? It was this week. I don't remember. Yeah. 25th of August. 25th. So it was three days ago. Okay. Today is the 20th. Yeah. Three days ago. In August of 1989, yeah, Voyager 2 flew past Neptune. And, and it's, it's, what I love about, I mean, it's, it seems like, you know, oh, 30 years ago, you know, it's something that happened in the past, but the pictures that Voyager 2 took are still the best pictures that we have. Yes. And they were a sensation because there were no closeups of the, of the, of the, of the the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, Lao Tsen you know mind you, the Namie Tsen, the Tsen. There have been closeups of Neptunes until that time. Exactly. Exactly. There was just, there was, there was, there was nothing, I mean, there were some pictures of, of Neptune, of course. As a white dot, now suddenly you had surface details, the, the blue planet, you know? Exactly. And it was. It had a great blue spot as well, it was Jupiter-like in that respect. Sorry to interrupt you. Suddenly, out of nowhere. Yeah. Yeah. No. And, and the rings, of course. study even Triton, you know, its moon. Yes. Super close. And all that stuff is just like, you know, it has 14 moons, but the largest one is Triton. And it could even study them from up close. And, you know, it had been discovered way earlier, Triton, but it never was there any plus node you studied up close. And I was just Googling quickly to see, like, how was the lead-up towards this moment, right? Because, like you said, there were only fuzzy pictures of it. And even since then, in the years that passed, Hubble has not been able to do what Voyager has done, or what Voyager did back in 89. So the best pictures that we still have are still from Voyager. It is. So they've been trying to tweak the Very Large Telescope actually the ESA telescope to also make really good pictures. And it seems that the Very Large Telescope is now better than Hubble in taking pictures of Neptune. But still, it reigns supreme, Voyager does. Yeah, you're never going to beat a satellite going there. Yeah, exactly. I mean, when was Voyager launched? In the late 1977, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The cameras, yeah, the 20th of August, 1977. And the cameras it had on board were basically tweaked like really good television cameras. It wasn't like anything like 4K digital or whatever. You know? Not at all. Not at all. And so, because they needed to transmit these pictures back, and digital cameras were not at all at the phase where they were now. So, they had, I believe, some sort of updated version, like a really good television camera that they used, so that they could send the signal back. And even then, I mean, I don't know, for some reason it also is very inviting, I guess, to maybe start thinking about a new mission to the outer solar system. Yeah, because nobody has gone there since. No mission has gone there since, right? No. Exactly. It's too bad. No. And nothing is being even, you know, being planned in that direction. So, for the coming decades, so far as we can see, the pictures that Voyager took 30 years ago of Neptune are still the ones that we have to use in classrooms and universities all over the world. Yeah. So, Neptune has been lonely for 30 years now. And, by the way, Uranus has also. The same goes for Uranus. Yeah, no, it's the same. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Now, thanks for sharing this with us. Joeri, by way of closing remarks, what can you tell us about what's going to happen in the next few weeks? Chandrayaan? More Chandrayaan, yeah. The landing, of course. To be honest, that's the mission that I'm most looking forward to in the next three, four weeks. For the more, well, no, there's not a lot of other things going on. There are no major missions from China. There are no major missions from Russia. Or the U.S. lined up for the next few weeks. But, well, I tend to say this every time. That I expect nothing happens, and then something happens after all. One interesting mission is also the 10th of September. It's going to be HTV-8. Did we know that Japan is also resupplying the ISS? I did not. Okay. Well, it is. So they have this... What are they doing? Sushi? Could be. No. At least they always bring some fresh produce. So I'm not sure fish is the best thing to carry up into space. But for the past few years, they've launched these huge resupply vessels called kunotori, wide storic in Japanese. And the interesting thing is that it also has the capability to carry bigger bulky items that can be attached to the outside of the ISS. So for the past few years, they've used a lot of the ISS. They've used kunotori or HTV to resupply not only clothes, food and things like that, but also external items. And in this case, they're going to carry new batteries to the ISS. Okay. New lithium ion batteries, the ones that tend to explode in your pocket. But no. Not yet. So that's an interesting mission because we have to swap out these batteries, and that's going to take four or five spacewalks, a lot of robotics activity. So the rest of the year will be filled with these kinds of tasks. So they have rechargeable batteries in the space station that need to be replaced. Yeah, because the old ones are nickel hydrogen batteries, old batteries that were launched up there beginning of the 2000s. So they're already almost 20 years old and they're not as effective. So for two big nickel hydrogen batteries, I mean, they're the size of a big dinner table. You can replace one of those with a smaller two. So two nickel hydrogen batteries. Yeah. So you can replace those with one smaller lithium ion battery. So it's actually saving space. Saving space and a lot more effective. So important work coming up, important maintenance work coming up on the ISS. And HTV is going to launch these new batteries. Okay. Nice to look forward to. Thijs, do you have anything to add? No. I mean, I'm also looking forward to that because it's just like you said, like there's not that much happening. There's no landing, there's no landing. There's no landing. There's no landing. There's no landing. There's no landing. There's no arrivals. There's no epic launches or anything like really coming up. So yeah, we should take anything, anything that is happening. Yeah, it's worth looking forward to. We're off the air again for two weeks. Yes. And so if it's September 7th, like you said, Jury, then we should know more by the next episode. Okay. And in two weeks time, we'll be discussing with an expert from TNO research organization in the Netherlands. We will be talking about digital communication between satellites and from earth to satellites. Interesting technology very essential for Also laser communication. Ooh, exciting. That's right. That's right. because a few, a few weeks ago, uh, ESA launched, uh, the edSC satellite. It's a, it's a laser communication satellite. Yeah. Okay. We'll be talking about that while Stay tuned for more from the BBC's the moisase p eye static for E крут is a laser communication satellite c'sa SSDs that rayuine rssing ssdc. In addition to that? Okay, that'll be... Excuse me, Thijs. You said? Yeah, it's going to be awesome. I'm looking forward to it. And I'm going to be back in the studio. You'll be here. So we wish you a safe trip home, Thijs. Take care. Thank you. All right. Yes. Bye-bye. For now. And this has been Space Cowboys. And we'll hope to have all you listeners back with us in two weeks' time when we do the satellite communication thing. This has been Space Cowboys. Thanks to everybody. See you then. Bye.