Andrew Dunkley: Hello again. Thanks for joining us. This is Space Nuts. My name is
Andrew Dunkley. Thanks for joining us. Coming up on this
episode, we are going to be looking
at a rather amazing achievement
involving a. An organization who have
landed on the moon. And you're saying, yeah, it's been done.
Not like this, it hasn't. On top of that,
we've got a mission that's going past the moon
that is in a little bit of trouble as well.
We'll also focus our attention on the Andromeda galaxy.
And we've had some questions recently about Andromeda.
Well, uh, you be interested to know that
it has been suffering from interference
and it wasn't us. It wasn't. We didn't do
it. And Voyager 1 back in the news again. That's
all coming up on this episode of space
nuts.
Voice Over Guy: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
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Andrew Dunkley: And he's back in the big chair after a month away.
It's Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at large. Hello,
Fred.
Professor Fred Watson: Hello, Andrew. Good to be back. Uh, so
the politicians always say, good to be with
you.
Andrew Dunkley: Yes, they do, don't they?
Professor Fred Watson: Good to be with you.
Andrew Dunkley: I'm sure they sit there with, um, with consultants and
committees. The right way to say hello.
Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's right. And the answer
is. Good to be with you.
Andrew Dunkley: Good to be with you.
Um, now, we talked on the last
episode or two, um, when you
popped in on us, um, about your trip
north. One thing I wondered
is, while you were there to look at the aurora
borealis and the like, um,
on an astronomy tour, did you actually get to
see, uh, the planetary alignment? Or
couldn't you view it from that far north?
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, we could, but, uh,
you're right, it's a good question because the ecliptic,
which is where all the planets lie, uh,
just like the equator, the celestial equator is very low
down at the latitudes we were at. The furthest north we got was to north
cape, which is 71 degrees
latitude. Um, a lot of the time we're in
Greenland. Iceland's a little bit further south. It's
only the top, really. The north coast of Iceland, that's within the
Arctic Circle. But we're also, well, in the Arctic Circle in
Sweden and Norway. North Cape, of course, is in
Norway. Uh, so, yes, your view of the
sky is different. Um, what?
Always. And I remember being struck by this
in my very, very first visit to the
Arctic, which was back in 2012 when we led our first
expedition up there. Uh, and
I was struck by the fact that I could see
stars which from our
latitude in. And I'm still thinking of
the northern hemisphere from the latitude of the United Kingdom,
were only visible in the summertime and we were there in the
middle of winter. So you can see, um, at least
two stars of something called the summer triangle. The summer
triangle is Vega, Altair, and
the brightest star in Cygnus, which is,
um, Deneb. Deneb. Vega
and Altair. Vega and Deneb were very,
very visible, uh, in
midwinter, uh, near the north pole
because the pole of the sky
is tilted upwards so you can see things that
from kind of middle latitudes you'd only see
in summer. Uh, so what it meant was. Yes, your
question is well made. Uh, we certainly saw
Venus, Jupiter and Mars very clearly,
probably Saturn, although it was quite near the
horizon then. And I don't think we got a glimpse of
Mercury. So that parade of planets that
really, uh, occupied the media, uh, for us in the southern
hemisphere, it was actually best back in January.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, it's, uh, it's only in the north that it's been a
hot topic within the last few days.
Andrew Dunkley: The reason I ask is it's been in the news again
because they said that, uh, well, the
popular press is saying, oh, you know, the big alignment first time.
Yeah, last time we'll see it in 60 years, blah,
blah. Um, Jonti has a particular
problem with the way the media.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: Spews this kind of information out and,
you know, don't let the truth get in the way of good story type of
attitude.
Professor Fred Watson: That's right.
Andrew Dunkley: Um, but it was,
uh, apparently it was the whole set
at the end of February because Mercury was part of the
deal then.
Professor Fred Watson: From the Northern hemisphere.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. Well, there you go. And um,
Yeah, I was just wondering if you got a chance to spot
it.
Professor Fred Watson: But, uh, no, didn't see Mercury.
Andrew Dunkley: No, I didn't see any of it much.
Professor Fred Watson: Okay.
Andrew Dunkley: I did go out and look, but where I am in town, it's. It's
a really bad position and I'd have to, uh, go out
and find a hill and as you know, there are not that
many of them around here.
Professor Fred Watson: No, no. You're a bit, uh, a bit low on hills up there. You need
somebody to come and build one for you.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, yeah. Or just cut all the trees
down and.
Professor Fred Watson: Oh, is that too. But that's not a good idea.
Andrew Dunkley: No, not really.
Professor Fred Watson: No.
Andrew Dunkley: Okay.
All right. Uh, let's get onto Our first official
story and this one is very exciting
and again getting a lot of press
and that's been the successful landing of
the Blue Ghost Lunar lander
on the moon. Uh, this is
a lot different to what we were witnessing in the 60s
and 70s and a few of the more recent
missions because they were um,
publicly funded and um, government
gazetted and all that jazz. This is a completely
different kettle of.
Professor Fred Watson: Fish indeed because it
is a commercial spaceflight, it's a
commercial company, uh, with the lovely name of
Firefly Aerospace. Uh, their Blue
Ghost lander is named after a rare species
of Firefly, uh, which is found in the
Appalachian area of the United States.
I uh, love the name of the mission. It's not Apollo
or Artemis or anything. It's called Ghost
Riders in the Sky.
Andrew Dunkley: I love it.
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, and we did see, uh, earlier in the week
before the spacecraft landed successfully, which it did on
uh, March 2, uh, Eastern Standard
Time, Sunday at the weekend.
The weekend just gone. Uh, we did see some
images during the week from the navigation cameras which
uh, showed the Earth and the moon as uh, the
lander flew by. But the reason why this
lander is going to the moon or has gone to the moon
is that it's part of uh, something you and I have
Talked about, Andrew. NASA's Commercial Lunar
Payload Services program,
CLPS Commercial Commercial Lunar
Payload, uh, which basically is NASA
contracting to private companies,
uh, for payloads to go to the
lunar surface, uh, either experiments
or um, you know, I suppose they, they're
all experiments or at least uh, things that test the
technology, uh, uh, basically
to check things out before the
Artemis mission really gets underway with
a lunar landing. We hope that
Artemis will see humans walking on the
moon. 2027 I
think is the current date. Uh, but
that could change because all sorts of things are
happening, uh, inside NASA, which we really
didn't expect. Um, anyway, uh, the Launch
was on the 15th of January, so it's taken a little while to get
there. It uh,
um, the spacecraft rode into orbit on a Falcon
9, a SpaceX Falcon 9, uh, and
essentially uh, having gone into lunar
orbit, uh, earlier in February, 13th
of February, it was
descended or sent, um, a
command to descend to the lunar
surface on the 1st of March and successfully
touched down on the 2nd. So really great
stuff. Fantastic news that a, uh,
commercial spaceflight has landed
successfully on the moon.
Andrew Dunkley: Yes, it is marvelous and
um, it's a very short mission though, isn't
it? They're not going to be doing much for long from what I
understand.
Professor Fred Watson: I think that's Right. I think the, the, you know, the essential
part was just demonstrating that they can get there.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, which they've now done very
successfully. Um, it's, uh,
it's. I think it's, uh,
as you said, it's a short mission. Uh, I think
it's one of these things that will only last for a
lunar day. I need to check that. But it's that sort of time.
Uh, it's easy to find some really nice pictures of,
uh, what the sky would
look like for Blue Ghost. Uh, there's a
very nice picture on X of a gentleman
by the name of Buzz Aldrin watching the
landing. Yes.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. He sent them a message of congratulations.
Professor Fred Watson: Yes. Yeah. Uh, which is great. And, you
know, who better to send a
congratulations to a, um, like
that than Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk
on the moon.
Andrew Dunkley: Absolutely. Yes. And I, uh, think I've mentioned
before I've had the great pleasure of meeting and interviewing
him in my radio career. So that was one of the big
highlights for me.
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, and one of the highlights for me was having dinner with
him.
Andrew Dunkley: Oh, uh, that's even better. Yeah.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, it was really interesting. We'll talk about
that some of the time. It was a very interesting meeting, but it was very
stimulating. This is probably a decade ago. Yeah,
yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: Great.
Professor Fred Watson: Great company, as you know.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.
I, I notice, uh, in one of the stories, I think
it's in sky and telescope,
uh.org they they refer to
the, uh, descent orbit insertion
as nine minutes of terror.
Professor Fred Watson: Yes.
Andrew Dunkley: But we've talked about these terrifying landings
on other worlds, particularly Mars. I
wouldn't have thought that it would be as big a
deal on the moon, given that this, you know, no
atmosphere of.
Professor Fred Watson: You're right. Yeah. And you're
absolutely right because, um, you know, if you're landing on
Mars, a lot of the, uh, trajectory is dictated
not just by, uh, orbital mechanics, which
is how things work in space, but dictated by
the vagaries of the atmosphere. If you've got slightly higher pressure than
you expected, you've got more braking force, and
suddenly, uh, your spacecraft is heading for a
different part of the surface at a higher speed than you
would want or lower speed or whatever. Um, and
you're right that, um, in the case of the Moon,
it's all about orbital mechanics, which are very, very
predictable. But you can imagine, you know, you've got
to fire those thrusters at just the right moment to
break it so that when it lands on the moon, it doesn't land
too hard and smash up on the rocks or basically
bounce off and then smash up. You've got to get
things just right. So nine minutes of terror.
I can sympathize with that. I think I'd feel like that too.
Andrew Dunkley: Well, when you're talking about breaking from
3,800 miles an hour to 90 miles an
hour. Yes, that, that would be,
that would be terrifying if, um, you know, you
push the wrong button.
And I think I had to smile when I read
the story because they, they said successful, uh,
landing and upright. So
I think, I think they were sort of saying, well,
you know, even if it lands on its side, that's a success. But it's even better
that it's standing.
Professor Fred Watson: It was last year, wasn't it, that one of the
spacecraft did land on its side? That's right.
Andrew Dunkley: I think it was the Indian mission.
Professor Fred Watson: Was it, Was it Indian or Japanese? I can't remember.
Um, but yeah. So it was landed in such a way that the
solar panels weren't seeing the sun.
Andrew Dunkley: Yes, that's right.
Professor Fred Watson: So, yes, it's very important to have it the right way up.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. Anyway, we wish them well. It'll be a quick visit
and it paves the way
for Artemis too. We still don't know when that's going to happen.
Seems to be getting pushed back time and time again. But
they will get there eventually.
Professor Fred Watson: I'm sure they will.
Andrew Dunkley: One will hope.
Generic: Roger, you're allowed to start here also space
nuts.
Andrew Dunkley: Now, while we're talking about these kinds of, uh,
commercial missions, there's another one that's in the news. This is a
private mission, uh, that was heading out
past the moon to the Odin asteroid,
the um, private Odin asteroid
probe. All was looking
nominal until recently.
Things seem to have gone awry somewhat.
Professor Fred Watson: Yes, the uh, the comment
that perhaps highlights the situation comes from,
uh, uh, somebody by the name of
Matthew Gialish, I think it is, who is the co
founder and CEO of AstroDailyPod Forge, which is the,
um, the organization that is
operating the Odin spacecraft.
Uh, what he said on Friday, uh, the
28th of February was we don't fully
understand the state of the vehicle.
Uh, it's thought still though, to
be in a mode that means it's
not being fried by the light of the sun. It's
in an attitude in
regard to the sun that will
not have parts of it being unduly heated,
although, uh, we believe that it is
tumbling. Um, and uh, you
know, uh, this is not a good thing for a
spacecraft, um, uh, to
experience. That's one of two
alternatives which I think are still valid,
Andrew. One is that the spacecraft is tumbling,
uh, which is not nice, uh, or the other
is that everything's fine, but there are issues with the
telemetry back on Earth, their ground receivers not being
properly configured or whatever. So they're
still basically worrying about what's. What's going
on. We should check that story again, perhaps next
week.
Andrew Dunkley: What's the goal of the mission? They're going to visit an asteroid.
But what do they want to do with it?
Professor Fred Watson: Basically check it out, uh, to
send imagery, uh, of,
uh, an asteroid which rejoices in the name of
2022 OB5. Uh,
and, um, it's a
possible first step
in basically
recovering resources from a space
object. In other words, asteroid mining. Wow.
So if this mission was successful, and
we're not sure that that's the case at the moment, um,
this mission is basically designed to
focus, uh, the
cameras, uh, on that asteroid
2022 OB5, in order
to get a survey of the
surface, see what's there, take lots of
images, use, um, the filters in the cameras
to get some idea of the surface texture and
things of that sort, which you can do, particularly in the
infrared wave band. But that's a precursor, uh,
to a second mission. This mission's called odin. The
second mission is called Vestri, which will aim to
land on the asteroid. So that's perhaps the more
ambitious one that we will be looking at down the
track. Assuming that Odin, uh,
pulls it off or Space Forge pulls it off, as far as
odin's concerned.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, uh, well, fingers crossed. Um,
I think this quote from Matt Gillick,
uh, who you quoted earlier, says it
all. I think we all know the hope is fading as we
continue the mission.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, um, I mean, it's what
we've always said. Space is hard.
Andrew Dunkley: It's tough out there. Yeah, yeah, it's, uh,
it's a difficult gig. But they keep on trying. And,
uh, you know, not all missions are absolute failures. Even
when they don't go well, there's something to learn,
and there's always something to learn.
Professor Fred Watson: That's right.
Andrew Dunkley: It's better next time. Yes, indeed.
And you, uh, can read about that story if you
like@spare.com. this is
Space Nets with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred
Watson.
Okay, we checked all four systems and team with a Go
Space Net.
Okay, Fred, let's, uh, head towards
Andromeda. Or is it heading towards us? Either
way, uh, we. We've had
a few questions recently with Jonti about
Andromeda, and he was, um. Yeah, uh, he had a
lot to say about it. Uh, and one of the questions
we got recently was is the Milky
Way already affecting
Andromeda? And you know, to
a certain degree, not a massive amount. The
answer is yes, according to Jonti. Uh,
but uh, we don't have to do that because it's
now been discovered that Andromeda's um, being picked
on by some little
cousins nearby. It's already
getting ah, a bit of a dust up, so to
speak.
Professor Fred Watson: It may. Yeah. So this may be the
results of something bigger, something
that we probably need to know about as well.
Um, the bottom
line here is you're quite right. Uh,
the Andromeda galaxy, we can see, we see
it in the constellation of Andromeda, obviously,
uh, at a distance of about 2 1/2 million light
years, uh, like the Earth.
Sorry, let me rephrase that.
Like the Milky Way, our own
galaxy, um, it's surrounded by
a uh, swarm of dwarf galaxies.
In fact about three or four dozen of them
altogether. Um, it's uh, it
is, uh, those dwarf galaxies,
we call them satellite galaxies because they are satellites of
Andromeda, uh, have been
analyzed to death, uh, in a, in
you know, some new research that's been carried out
using the Hubble Space TeleScope still, after
35 years, still doing a very, very fine
job in giving us spectra and
images of distant objects. So uh,
the researchers have used the Hubble, uh,
essentially to map the motion of
these dwarf galaxies, which is an extraordinary thing to be able
to do, um, and look at
their position in three
dimensions around the uh, Andromeda
galaxy. Uh, and
it's comparing uh, what they
found with what we know from the dwarf
galaxies that orbit our own. And it's is probably a
similar sort of number. It's about two dozen, I think,
satellite uh, galaxies that we have. The biggest two are the Large and Small
Magellanic Clouds. Uh, so you
take all that, um, uh, you build a map
of where these galaxies are around Andromeda and you find
that they're in quite different orientations
from what we find in our own
galaxy. Um, uh, one
of the comments, uh, in
this story, uh, and this is uh, coming
from uh, some of the researchers in fact, uh,
Daniel Weiss of the University of
California at Berkeley, uh,
has basically pointed out
that something significant has happened to
Andromeda to change the
distribution of the satellite galaxies.
Um, because half of them, uh,
rather than sort of swarming around, uh,
like you know, moths around a flame, half
of these galaxies are actually in a plane.
Uh, you know, they're
basically in, in one plane. Of
the space around, uh, around Andromeda, and they're
all going in the same direction. And that
is, uh, as, um, as Daniel
Weiss says, that is weird. Um, he
says it was actually a total surprise to find
the satellites in that configuration. And we still don't fully
understand why they appear that way.
Another colleague, uh, says,
um, this uh, is Alessandro
Savino, says it is clear,
it's a clear indication of how small galaxy
growth is disturbed by the influence of
a massive galaxy like Andromeda.
Um, and I think the, the bottom
line here is that they've got much, um,
younger, uh, stars in them.
These dwarf galaxies, uh, form
their stars very early on in the history of the
Andromeda galaxy, which probably goes back 12 or 13 billion
years, um, and then kept on.
And uh, the idea
is that the,
the perhaps. And they say that they
really don't know what's happening, but perhaps there
was a collision between Andromeda
and another galaxy, uh,
some billions of years ago, which caused
this peculiarity of
the, uh, of the, of the dwarf galaxies surrounding
Andromeda. Everything about it is
weird, including my, um, my account of it.
Andrew Dunkley: Just
uh. So they're saying it's weird. They say they
don't really know what happened, but it would have to be
some kind of gravitational effect or
interference, wouldn't it?
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And I think that's
probably what they're looking at, you know, as they try to understand how
you can end up with a, uh, with a set
of, uh, something like 15 or
20 dwarf galaxies, all of which lie in a single
plane that flies in the face of everything we understand about dwarf
galaxy formation, um, and
certainly is very different from what we find in our own Milky Way
galaxy.
Andrew Dunkley: And from what I can tell, they've tried to figure this out
using computer simulations and it didn't work.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there you go.
And uh, that's just basically telling you
that you need to put something else into the
simulation and maybe it is a collision with another large
galaxy, something else that's not in there already, to
try and, uh, replicate what we see in the
real world.
Andrew Dunkley: So could that mean that if there was a collision with another
large galaxy, that the result is
Andromeda?
Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's. I think what you'd have to agree with
that. Um,
it, it's not been a, I mean the
collision between Andromeda and the Milky Way, when
it happens in three and a half billion years or whenever
it says in the diary that that's going to happen.
Uh, it's, that changes the shape of
both of them. Uh, it basically you get a
collision. All the shockwaves, gravitational
shock waves, cause
formation of supernovae. Basically, uh,
form really big stars which last only a
short time, then explode as supernovae. That uses up all
the gas, uh, in the galaxies and you end
up with what we call
Milkomeda, the Milky Way
Andromeda combination, which looks more like uh, what we call
an elliptical galaxy. A galaxy with no,
um, no gas, no star formation.
Uh, and Andromeda now is not like that at
all. It's a actively star forming galaxy. So
the suggestion is that maybe it was a smaller object
that caused this disruption to the satellite
galaxies.
Andrew Dunkley: It's. Is it classified as a spiral
galaxy?
Professor Fred Watson: Yes, it's a, it's a spiral definitely.
Andrew Dunkley: Okay. Um, and so is ours. But when they
get together they're just going to be boring.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, they will, they'll be shaped like a football,
uh, with no spiral arms. Nothing happening, nothing
to see here.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. Ah, it's a bit sad really.
Professor Fred Watson: I mean because they're both pretty smart looking
now.
Andrew Dunkley: What a pity. Oh well, um,
you know, we can't stop it. We'll just have
to put up with it when the time comes. How long? Three and
a half billion.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, yeah, it's um, something to look forward to, you
know, with trepidation perhaps.
Andrew Dunkley: Yes, eventually. All right, uh, that story
is uh, uh, at Cosmos
magazine dot com if you'd like to read up on
that one.
Generic: Three, two, one.
Space nuts.
Andrew Dunkley: Uh, Fred, let's uh, go and visit an old
friend, uh, someone who we thought had stopped writing
to us. We don't know what we did wrong, but they
have reached out to say hello. I'm still here. I'm
alive again. Voyager 1.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right, uh,
20. I looked it up the other day.
25,
is that right? Yeah, no, 20.
About 27 billion kilometers away.
And the most distant human made
object. I uh, think it's
got uh, 22.5
light hours of travel time for the
commands. Um,
so the. What the.
Basically the story goes back in fact to
uh, the 20. I uh, think.
I can't remember what date it was, but it's back in November
2023. So it's um, you know,
well over a year ago, uh, that
um, the transmission started coming through
in a gobbledygook format. Uh,
and there was, I think an
issue with one of the
memory chips. Um,
and you know, there was
work done on trying to fix
that, uh, which basically I think
took Five months or so. Uh, and
then, uh, was it in
April 2024, uh
there was uh, a
successful uh, receipt
of data,
um, and that the
machine was sending back things that you could actually read
rather than just gobbledygook. So that was back
in April 2024.
But I think there's been another loss
since then. Uh, and
the you know, the um,
difficulties that Voyager 1 has are
uh, to some extent ongoing. Um,
but uh, there is, you know, it's good news
that uh, uh, at least we are
still in some sort of communication with Voyager
1 and hopefully there's still
potential for intelligible uh,
signals to come back. The, the really
interesting thing I guess is the, the power supply which is
the radioisotope thermoele generator,
which is now delivering a tiny fraction of what
it delivered right at the beginning of the mission in the late
1970s. And so we've got
uh, an issue there. And what NASA has done is switched
off various instruments
progressively so that things like the
magnetometers that we call the magnetic field and things like that,
I think they are now switched off so that you're saving
power just for pointing the
antenna, which is done by the spacecraft's thrusters
and essentially sending signals backwards and
forwards.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, it's uh, it's quite remarkable though
after all these decades that
it's still going, we still communicate with it,
we can still send it information.
Professor Fred Watson: Yes.
Andrew Dunkley: And um, of course Voyager 2 is
still out there and still going strong, although
it too has had some issues. Although I
think um, the most
recent big issue with Voyager 2 was July
2023 when a series of commands was sent
to the spacecraft, causing its
antenna to point away from Earth. I think
we did talk about that.
Professor Fred Watson: We did talk about it. That's right.
Andrew Dunkley: And it stopped the uh, spacecraft from receiving
commands or sending data back to Earth.
And I think they managed
to somehow circumvent that.
Um, I, I, I believe
it involved the Canberra deep space
complex.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, I was just going to mention that. In fact it must have
done because that Canberra deep space
complex, uh, the Tidbin Billa dish, as we
call it in the trade, uh, is
uh, the only uh, antenna um, on Earth that can
actually communicate with Voyager 2.
And that's because Voyager 2's at a latitude, if I remember
rightly. It's about 66 degrees
below the equator in terms of the direction
it's going out to, which makes it
invisible to the other two, uh, stations in
the Deep Space, uh, network, which are in
Madrid and uh, Goldstone in California.
So, uh, yes, only, uh, only Tidbinbilla can
see Voyager 2.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, and that's how they saved it. They picked up a very
faint signal.
Professor Fred Watson: That's right.
Andrew Dunkley: NASA was able to transmit some corrective
data like, uh, to
Voyager 2 and got it back online, which
was very good news. Uh, and Voyager
1's now back with us. So they're both still going. They're both still
talking to us. We did.
Professor Fred Watson: Extraordinary.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. We thought we'd offended both of them, but no, it's. It's
all good. I mean, they've been alone for so long. I can
understand them being a bit grumpy.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. They might
like their own company though. M. They've both got music
to listen to, so.
Andrew Dunkley: Going different ways, aren't they?
Professor Fred Watson: Yes, they are. That's the thing. Uh, Voyager 2 is heading
much more to the south than Voyager 1 is.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. M. It's such
amazing. An amazing story for
both of them, too. I mean, how
far past end of mission have they survived?
That's extraordinary.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Decades. It is, it is. It's
fantastic. And they, you know, eventually their
batteries will run out. Those, uh, radioisotope thermal
thermoelectric generators will fizzle out so that
they can't even send power to the, uh, to
the transmitters. But the spacecraft will keep on
going because they are
orbital mechanics. Maybe for billions of years. We just don't
know.
Andrew Dunkley: Yes. Until someone catches them in a Venus fly trap
on some other planet and it's all over Red
Rover. Who knows?
Professor Fred Watson: Who knows?
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, Great, uh, story about Voyager 1. You
can, um, find that online. There's quite a few
news stories about it.
Professor Fred Watson: Can I just, um, add one comment?
So, the Canberra deep space communication
complex is 60 years old this
month.
Andrew Dunkley: Wow.
Professor Fred Watson: There you go. I should have, should have remembered that. You
did, yeah. Should have remembered it earlier.
60 years old this month.
Andrew Dunkley: Yes. It took you 60 years to remember that?
All right, um, we are just about
done. Thanks, uh, for your company. Thank you, Fred, as always.
We'll wrap it up and we'll catch you on the next episode.
Professor Fred Watson: That sounds wonderful. I'll look
forward to it.
Andrew Dunkley: All right, we'll see you then. Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at
large. Don't forget to visit us, uh, on our website.
In the meantime, you can do that@spacenutspodcast.com or
spacenuts IO all sorts of things to see
and do and buy there.
Um, more mainly Fred's books. But you know, there's other
stuff as well. Some of it's even interesting.
Oh, sorry. Um, some of it's
not. And I think I wrote those books. Never mind.
Ah, and thanks, uh, to Huw in the studio, who
couldn't be with us today because he was,
um, stirring the pot around
Andromeda, causing all sorts of mayhem.
Typical of you. And from me, Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your
company. Catch you on the very next episode of Space Nuts. Bye.
Bye.
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