Andrew Dunkley: Hi there. Thanks for joining us on another
episode of Space Nuts. Great to have your
company. My name is Andrew Dunkley, your host
and I uh, hope you can stick around because
we've got a jam packed show. We're
once again going to Mars because
they've looked uh, at some new evidence that
uh, does suggest Mars oceans may have
been vast. That is really
exciting news. We're also going to look at
the fastest spinning asteroid yet discovered.
This one's uh, really in a spin.
It's uh, making everybody dizzy. And the
evacuation of the International Space Station
uh, due to ill health. We'll see if we can
get uh, some news on that because that's
actually happening as Fred and I are uh,
recording today. That's all coming up
on this edition of Space Nuts. 15
seconds. Guidance is internal.
Voice Over Guy: 10, 9. Ignition
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Andrew Dunkley: And he's back again to furnish us with his
knowledge. He is Professor Fred Watson,
Astronomer at large. Hello Fred.
Professor Fred Watson: Hello Andrew. I was just doing a quick
calculation there for a number that I want to
use um, later in the chat.
Andrew Dunkley: Now I need to apologise in advance because
ah, they're working across the road and I
think they're using uh, dynamite because
it's pretty noisy um, but
hopefully it won't mess me up too much. I can
hear it but I don't know if it's coming
through the system. It's got all sorts of
filters but um, some things you can't stop.
Professor Fred Watson: Um.
Andrew Dunkley: Now Fred, I did want to actually mention a
couple of things before we start on our
topics because uh, I meant to do this last
week for our first show back of the year just
to highlight some of the things that are
coming up in 2026 that we can look forward to
and that you and I will probably talk about.
The Artemis 2 launch is
slated. Uh, whether or not it'll be delayed
again remains to be seen. But um, that will
see a crew doing a lap around the moon,
uh, and that'll be the first time humans have
been back uh, in orbit around the moon
since the 70s which uh, is
exciting and probably too long but um,
that'll be good. Um, this one I know will
excite you. The Grace Roman Space Telescope
is going to be launched. That one um,
is going to um, opened so many doors for
us I suspect, um, the
PLATO mission, uh, which will be searching
for rocky planets. It'll uh, be doing a lot
more than that. But that's one of the things
that it's being set out to do. Uh,
China is to launch its own space
telescope as well, um, in the hunt
for dark matter and dark energy.
And there's another mission that's going to
be studying uh, the moon and Mars. Well,
several missions, not just one. Um, more
Chinese and Japanese missions involved there.
And I think this is one you and I have talked
about before. The Smile mission, uh, which
will be studying Earth's magnetic field and
how the sun interacts with our uh,
atmosphere, uh, is um, due to be launched
this year as well. I'm sure there's a lot
more going on than that, but there's some of
the highlights of 2026 so
uh, we'll have a lot to talk about.
Professor Fred Watson: Fred, could I add a couple more as well?
Andrew Dunkley: Oh, go for it.
Professor Fred Watson: Um, we've just uh, heard that the Pandora
spacecraft has entered orbit, uh, which I
think is a spacecraft, uh, again looking
um, looking at exoplanets to try
and sort of tell us a bit more about how
their atmospheres might reveal stuff. Um,
China has just filed for 200,000
satellites constellation with the
International Telecommunications Union which
is. Yeah, yeah, well it's not the biggest
yet. The biggest was back in 2020 when the
Rwandan government filed for over
300,000. Um, uh, since then
they've launched one cubesat, I think. So,
um, that looked like a filing that
getting your foot in the door. Uh, and just
turning to nature. We've got some interesting
events coming up. Uh, March 3rd, total
eclipse of the Moon visible certainly from
our hemisphere in Australia, not sure about
North America and Europe. Um,
there's uh, towards the end of the year and
this will happen twice, uh, which is great
cause you can see it on different sides of
the Earth. I think it's October, sometime in
October and sometime in November there will
be an occultation of the planet Jupiter by
the Moon. That means the moon will pass in
front of Jupiter and certainly for us in
November here in Australia it will be during
the daytime. So get your binoculars out
during the daytime, check out the moon and
watch for Jupiter disappearing.
Andrew Dunkley: Oh, that'll be good. Yeah,
that'd be a good one for a backyard
telescope, wouldn't it?
Professor Fred Watson: Absolutely perfect, yes.
Andrew Dunkley: Awesome. Um, I had my
6 year old granddaughter here uh, the other
day and uh, the moon was, was out in the
east and um, it was still daytime but it was
pretty prominent. So I grabbed the telescope
and gave her a look and uh, I tried to
explain to her what craters were and
she struggled with the concept. But she
eventually I think figured it out. But uh,
yeah, took a couple of photos of her looking
through the telescope. She was very excited
which she sent to me.
Professor Fred Watson: It was uh, lovely to see them, Andrew. Yeah,
yeah, lovely, lovely shots. A youngster
looking through a telescop with granddad in
the background is great. Yeah, yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: Uh, she's got blonde hair and blue eyes and
her brothers and sisters are all brown haired
and brown eyed. So. Okay,
she, she seems to have picked up Judy's side
of the family genes because Judy's blondie,
blonde with blue eyes. But um, she's the only
one in the, in the family that's, that's gone
that, that way. It happens though, doesn't
it? It's just the way it is.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: That's DNA.
Um, okay Fred, uh,
let's get stuck into it because uh, we're
heading off to Mars and we're
doing this because of a study that's just
been published. Uh, in fact in the
last week, uh, or two about uh,
observations of Mars that suggest
that its oceans were once vast. Now
we always knew there was probably surface
water but we didn't really know whether they
were, you know, pockets or separate
oceans or what. But now they're thinking
the oceans might have been
enormous.
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, yes, that's right. And I mean, you know,
we revisit this story probably on average
once every month or two. Uh, the
last time we covered this, and I
wrote it up actually in um, an Australian
Geographic article, um, not that I did the
research, but this is other people's research
and that was pointing in the same direction.
Andrew. It was um, a group that looked at the
way um, rivers, ancient rivers on Mars, uh,
meandered, uh, because you can learn
something from the meandering about the
size of the body of water that they're
emptying into. And they came to the same
conclusion. The river meanders tell you that
there was a large body of water at the end of
it at the mouth of these rivers, uh, rather
than just a few puddles or a few lakes and
things of that sort. Uh, and this new piece
uh, of work, um, whilst it's a different,
uh, you know, it's got a different emphasis,
comes up with exactly the same answer. Uh,
and it's scientists uh, who have looked uh,
at the, I remember rightly there in
uh, in Switzerland. Yeah, University of Bern,
uh, it's scientists who've looked at the
region around Valles, uh,
Marineris, you know, that great huge
chasm in the, uh, in the surface of
Mars. Near Mars's equator. Uh, something that
makes the Grand Canyon look like a bit of a
scratch on the, on the surface of the Earth.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. Is it right that the Grand Canyon would
fit into one of its tributaries or something?
Professor Fred Watson: That's right. I think that's correct, yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: Amazing.
Professor Fred Watson: Um, so they've been looking in that region
and certainly on the northern side and the
northern flanks there are valleys that
um, sort of open out onto the plains of Mars.
Because that uh, Valles Marineris is kind
of right at the start of the highland areas
of the southern hemisphere of Mars. Mars has
got this dichotomy. The northern hemisphere
is flat and low, southern hemisphere 3km
higher on average, full of craters, mountains
and all around rest of it. Uh, so um, uh,
um, what they've done is they've looked at
regions, uh, where, you know, where there's
this transition from the mountainous
highlands of the south to the
lowlands of the north. And they've looked
very carefully at uh, data from
uh, several orbiting spacecraft, um, I
guess Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is one and
some of the other ones, um, actually even um,
uh, um, ESO's
ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. So, uh,
Mars Express, another ESA, sorry, not ESO,
ESA, uh, European Space Agency, Another
um, uh, uh, orbiting spacecraft. They've
taken the data from these, looked
at the height, the
topography and looked at the
geomorphology. Let me get it right.
Geomorphological, um,
um, features that they can find.
What have they spotted? They've spotted,
ah, a whole succession of
ancient river deltas, um, this
is to say regions where a river mouth
opened into what they're calling now
an ocean, uh, and deposited
um, its sediments. The sediments out of the
river fall down to the floor, uh, of the
ocean and build up basically
a rock form, uh, which is preserved today.
It's a kind of fossilized river delta.
There's something similar going on, uh, as
you and I have spoken about many times at
Jezero Crater, which is why, um,
perseverance is there, because there's a
river delta there. But I think these are on a
much larger scale. And um, the
great thing is that when you look at them,
they sort of define a shoreline,
um, because these are all occurring
at the same topographical height in
Mars's geography. And so they
basically uh, define a shoreline. And that
shoreline tells you that um, there would have
been a lot of water in Mars's northern
hemisphere for the water level to reach the
height that we find those deltas at.
Uh, so really? Yeah, really nice piece
of Work, uh, done with characteristic
Swiss precision, I think. Uh, that's been
widely reported. Um, there's several
articles, uh, on the science news feeds,
um, which basically support this idea.
Very nice piece of research indeed.
Andrew Dunkley: And they think it was as big as
the Arctic Ocean on Earth, just by
comparison. And how big as the Arctic Ocean?
It's 14 million square kilometers or
five and a half million square miles
big, uh, in size. So that's a lot of
water on Mars and uh, a lot of it's still
there, Fred.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right. We um, know from
particularly, uh, the Phoenix mission that
just scraped the surface in the Martian
Arctic and sure enough there was permafrost
underneath. So a lot of it's still there.
There's still water locked up in the two ice
caps of Mars. Um, but probably
not. Well, I don't know. It's actually really
interesting. I do remember reading quite some
time ago that if you thawed out even just the
Antarctic ice cap of Mars, you'd cover the
whole planet to a depth of several meters.
Um, now whether that still holds good with
what we've discovered since then, that was
quite an old, I think that was probably 20
years, 15 years ago, so that that comment
was made. It would be interesting to know how
we evaluate that now. But I think it's still
true, uh, that a lot of that water is still
there.
Andrew Dunkley: Ah, yeah, it is, uh, a
fascinating story.
Professor Fred Watson: Water means life.
Andrew Dunkley: Well, yes, yes, we've said that many times.
And you just don't know, do you?
Professor Fred Watson: You don't. Yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: Although the, uh, the mission to retrieve
those um, cylinders that contain
potential evidence of that.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: Has been scotched. So it's just going to sit
in abeyance for um, an
indefinite period.
Professor Fred Watson: So, yeah, I think, um,
so this is news that, um, the Senate have
um, basically agreed with the White House in
saying that um, the Mars Sample Return
Mission, uh, should be canceled. Uh,
and so that will probably go through. It's
not been voted on yet, I don't think. Um,
and so that means, yes, we've got these
canisters on Mars, uh, carefully dropped by
perseverance, uh, but
with a joint European Space Agency NASA
mission to retrieve them, uh, which, whose
cost has blown out. Uh, we've talked about
this before, uh, and not perhaps
surprising that it's now had a line drawn
under it. Now that's bad
news because we really would like to get hold
of these samples. There's one in particular
that may contain actually fossilized
microbes. Uh, you know, um,
so it's um, there's uh, every keenness to do
that. Um, um, and I think it
will. There'll certainly be a revisiting
of this idea. Esa, I think, is still going
ahead with their half of the bargain. Which
was, I think, to build the orbiter which
would actually bring the samples back to
Mars. NASA's part was gathering them up on
the surface and sending them up to orbit
around Mars. Uh, so, you know,
uh, it's bad news. There's a bright side to
it though, in that the money that's being
saved will probably go to some of the other
missions that are being planned.
Name your favorite planet. You might get some
good news out of this. I know your favorite
and probably mine too, is Mars. Uh, but,
um, anyway, we'll see what happens. I
wouldn't write, uh, the Mars sample return
off altogether in my flights of
fantasy. Last night, while my,
uh, respiratory tract infection was
making me cough all night, I was thinking
maybe the Chinese could bring them back
because I think they're planning a sample
return mission as well. So maybe we do a deal
there. Which would be fabulous international
cooperation.
Andrew Dunkley: It would. It would indeed. Of course, we
could always start the conspiracy and say,
what does NASA and the US Government know
that they're not telling us?
Hence no return. Yeah, yeah.
Professor Fred Watson: Be careful what you, what you say, Andrew.
Andrew Dunkley: No, look, I'm just kidding around, but, uh,
it's just money, isn't it? That's, that's the
thing.
Professor Fred Watson: It's all about money. That's right. It's not
about finding something with legs that you
don't want anybody to know about.
Andrew Dunkley: Yes, that's been done in a lot of science
fiction films.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, it has. And um.
Andrew Dunkley: Yes, all right. Great story about
the oceans of Mars though. If you'd like to
check it out, it's on the Phys p h y
s.org website. Or you can read the
paper that's been published in the journal
NPJ Space Exploration.
This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and
Professor Fred Watson.
Roger, in your labs right here.
Also Space Nuts to our
next story, Fred. And this
is, uh, a really good one for a couple of
reasons. It's something we haven't seen
before, but it also involves the, uh,
Rubin Observatory, which, um,
has already, uh, done things that,
uh, other observatories have not been able
to do and promises to do so much more.
This is the fastest spinning asteroid yet
discovered. And a couple of headlines I've
read suggested why hasn't it thrown itself
to pieces because of the speed at which it's
rotating and
the rate is rather high when you look at what
the average asteroid does.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, so it is a record breaker.
It's the fastest spinning asteroid
for its size. Uh, because I think
smaller things can spin faster than this.
It's uh, 710 meters long, nearly
three quarters of a kilometer. Uh, so
it's not a small asteroid at all. This
is quite a large one. Uh, and
it spins at the rate of one rotation
every one minute 53
seconds. So that
is one heck of a spin. So that's its day
length, Andrew. If you were standing on it,
your day will be 1 minute 53 seconds. Seconds
night and day, not 24 hours. Um,
but uh, you're absolutely right. I think it's
interesting for two reasons. One is exactly
as you've said. It underlines, uh, just
how powerful the Rubin Observatory is going
to be. The observations of
this object were made during the
sort of commissioning period for the
telescope's instruments, which was earlier
last year, April and May 2025. Uh,
and um, that you know, that um,
as you probably remember, I think they
released uh, uh, information saying they got.
They discovered more than a thousand
asteroids in 10 hours of observing, which is
pretty fantastic. Uh, the telescope's
capabilities will allow it to survey the
entire southern sky every three
nights, uh, with an eight meter class
telescope. That is an astonishing achievement
and we.
Andrew Dunkley: Must find something incredible.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, we will. Yeah, there's going to be all
kinds of things that come out of the
woodwork. Uh, it's what we call, um,
uh, sort of time sensitive astronomy or
transient astronomy. You're looking for
things that either move or change in the sky
and it's going to be so good at finding them.
And um. Yeah. So the real
observing, uh, campaign, the Large
Synoptic Survey, uh, will start
uh, sometime this year, uh, sort of when
they're ready to hit the go button. Uh, but I
think everybody at the Rubin is pretty happy
with the way things are going. Um, and just
to sort of highlight that, you know,
it's a telescope with this kind of capability
to make many observations over a short period
of time of the same area of sky. That has
allowed uh, the scientists to
discover the very rapid rotation
of this asteroid. Because what you have to
produce, uh, to look at the way an asteroid
rotates is what's called a light curve. You
look at the way its brightness changes. Uh,
because most asteroids, asteroids are quite
asymmetric. They're either shaped like a
potato or a dumbbell. Very, uh, few are
anything remotely spherical. Um, uh,
this particular one is I think Quite
elongated. And so as it rotates,
uh, different sides of it catch the
sunlight and you get a variation in the light
that we see from it. Uh, and so that uh,
has allowed, because it's, you know, it's
only 1 minute 53 seconds for one
complete revolution that has allowed the
scientists to determine that fact,
um, to the asteroid itself. You're right,
it's interesting. It rejoices in the name of
2025 MN45, a
classic asteroid name. Um, and
it's in the main asteroid belt. That's
a good place for it to be between uh, Jupiter
and Mars, where most of the asteroids are.
Uh, but um, its rotation
is what highlights um,
the unusual nature of it. Because as you and
I have spoken about before, many asteroids
are uh, basically what we call rubble piles.
They're just piles of debris which stick
together loosely under their own,
uh, gravity. Um, little
uh, Dimorphos and Didymos, the
two, uh, objects that NASA did the
DART test on a few years ago, they are
probably rubber piles. They've got the
characteristic rubber pile shape, which is
like two cones, um, uh, back to
back. Uh, if it was a rubber
pile, it would have flown apart
gazillions of years ago, uh, with
that short period of rotation, 1 minute
53 seconds. So, um, uh, and when
you look at the size of it and
uh, interpret what the rotation means, it
tells you it's probably made of absolutely
solid rock. This is something that is
um, going to be hard to pull apart, to
rotate. For it to be that big rotate at that
speed, it's got to be solid rock, um,
um, making it uh, you know, in some ways even
more interesting because we think the rubber
piles are perhaps the more common uh,
asteroids that we see.
Andrew Dunkley: Do we, do we have any idea what would make it
different, why it would be different? Is it a
piece of a destroyed planet Theia?
Professor Fred Watson: Well, yeah, could be, uh, might be part of
Theia, the one that created the moon, uh,
after, after it collided with the ah, Earth.
It's more likely you're right. It's
probably, um, you know, maybe part of the
outer mantle of what would have been
a protoplanet. In the early solar
system, these things were the building blocks
of planets. They collided and sometimes they
blasted each other apart, sometimes
they stuck together to form what we see
in the solar system today. Um,
and I, uh, think some of the collisions that
would have happened in the early solar
system, uh, may well have set an
object like this spinning very rapidly. In
fact, it might have initially been
spinning even more rapidly. Than it is now.
Because we're looking at probably several
billion years ago. When whatever
happened to it happened. So, uh, an
object of some interest. And, um, one
that I'm sure will be studied, uh, in
greater detail. We might want to know things
like, um, the infrared signature of its
surface. Which gives you an idea of what the
surface is like, how rough it is, whether
it's a. Whether it's a smooth
surface. What materials are likely to be,
uh, found on its surface. That can all come
from spectroscopy and also the science of
polarimetry, which is what you look at to
know whether something's highly reflective.
Or rather rough and diffuse. So,
yeah, m. I think there's lots to learn about,
uh, 2025 MN45.
Andrew Dunkley: Indeed. So it's in the asteroid
belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Um, people probably imagine
that to be just a wall of roc.
How do we get through it? But it's quite
sparse, isn't it?
Professor Fred Watson: It is, yeah. Yeah. Uh, it's
sparse enough that, um, uh, several
spacecraft have actually gone through it
unscathed. Um, so,
yes, it's.
Andrew Dunkley: Well, I've never heard of a spacecraft
actually running into anything out there.
Not that there have been that many that have
gone through, but.
Professor Fred Watson: That's right. But, you know, as, um.
Uh. Was it Douglas Adams. Space
is big. Yes.
Andrew Dunkley: Yes.
Professor Fred Watson: You might think it's a long way down to the
chemist at the corner of the street. But
that's nothing compared with space. I think
that was what he said.
Andrew Dunkley: Yes, indeed. Uh, so if you would like to
learn more about what the Vera C. Rubin
Observatory has discovered, you can do
that@the universitytoday.com website.
Or you can read the paper in the
Astrophysical Journal Letters. Which was,
uh, only published on January 7th. So they're
getting down to business early this year,
aren't they?
Professor Fred Watson: This is space nuts. Sorry. I was
going to say, um, we always get a really
good, um, crop of news stories at this time
of year. Because it's right at the beginning
of January that the American Astronomical
Society has its annual meeting.
And, um, so there's always some great
stories. So, you know, that's why it was,
uh. You know, it was published last week. I'm
sure that's actually.
Andrew Dunkley: It's actually very clever because as someone
who worked in the media for 40 years. And
had, um, to work a lot of Christmases and New
Years, you quite often find you're
struggling for stories because
everything's shut down. So you're not getting
the information that you normally get. So
to actually be in a position to do stories
like this at this time of year is
um. Yeah, it's well
positioned, as we would say. M. Uh,
you can read all about it, of course. And uh,
we uh, will certainly be keeping a very close
eye on what the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is
going to be doing
um, from now on because it's uh,
it's, it's, it's all up and running and uh,
already doing some remarkable things. This
is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Fred
Watson.
Space Nuts. Now Fred, uh, by the time
people hear us talking about this story,
things will have uh, changed a bit. But
as we speak, uh, we understand that
the Crew Dragon spacecraft
is docking at the International Space Station
to do the first ever crew
evacuation. Now, after 25 years,
I'm surprised this is the first time this has
happened. But uh, there's been a medical
issue. They won't elaborate on who or what,
uh, but it's gotta be serious if somebody's
um, if they're bringing the whole crew back.
It's uh, a crew of four. There's seven on
board at the moment. But they're bringing
four back, correct?
Professor Fred Watson: That's right. So, uh, there is a crew of
three uh, now. So as we speak, um, I
think they've probably undocked the crew
Dragon spacecraft from the International
Space Station. I think that happened an hour
ago. And um, they
will then re. Enter and bring the crew
back in a pretty routine fashion,
uh, landing in a few hours from now. Um, so
you're right, it's Crew 11, uh,
the SpaceX, um,
what's called the SpaceX Crew 11 because
they're the ones that go up and down in the
crew Dragon, uh, rather than the Soyuts,
which is the space vehicle that will bring
the other uh, the remaining three astronauts
down when their time comes to an end. Uh,
you're right. It's a medical evacuation that
Crew, Crew 11 consists of, um, if I
remember rightly, two NASA, uh, uh,
astronauts, one Russian
cosmonaut and uh, a Japanese
uh, astronaut as well. Uh, so they're coming
home, uh, they're coming home something like
a month early. And we are told as
exactly as you've said that this is because
of a medical issue which apparently is not
uh, an emergency. It's not urgent, but it's
thought to be something that is going to be
much better dealt with on Earth. Uh, we don't
know which of the astronauts has the issue.
Um, I saw a picture of them posed just before
they evacuated the spacecraft,
uh, um, last night and they all looked
fairly cheerful, uh, but um, so
you know, uh, you can't really read
from people's faces how they're feeling. Um,
which is just as well because I feel pretty
crook at the moment. So
that's uh, because of my uh, uh, upper
respiratory tract infection. Sorry to keep
harping on about it. Anyway, going back to
the more important story, Andrew. Well it's
a good thing you're not.
Andrew Dunkley: In the International Space Station feeling
like that.
Professor Fred Watson: Well, that's right, I, you'd have the same
thing too. Uh, so, yeah, so,
um, interesting. Uh, but your comment's well
made. You know the fact that it's the first
time in the 25 year history
of the ISS, of the
ISS being permanently occupied,
um, the first time this has happened. And I
think it was Jared Isaacman, the newly
appointed NASA administrator, the boss of
NASA, who made the comment. It might
be somebody else but it is one of the
high ups in NASA made the comment that
when they planned the ISS and they were
working towards it, they expected that there
would be something like this happening every
three years. So they've done pretty well
to get through 2015, five years without um,
needing to bring people home because of a
medical issue. Yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: While you've been talking Fred, I've just
been looking online to see where things are
up to and I've found a um, they did a live
stream of the crew uh, Dragon docking at the
International Space Station through
uh, I think it's NASA's YouTube Music
channel and you can, you can
actually log on and, and watch what happens
and see the whole process. It's quite
incredible what we can do now isn't it with
um, live coverage from space as ah, things
unfold. It's uh, a far cry
from those times back in the 60s and 70s when
we were looking at those really fuzzy black
and white pictures off the moon.
Professor Fred Watson: Which was miraculous in its day.
Andrew Dunkley: Oh it was in itself, yes. Yes.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: Actually I am watching Crew Dragon detach as
we speak.
Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's right.
Andrew Dunkley: So that happened probably 30 minutes ago,
give or take our time. Yeah,
um, it's, it's like a slow motion ballet
isn't it? When they uh, things in
spacecraft.
Professor Fred Watson: Ah, yeah, well you don't want to bang into
anything.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. Anyway, I hope all is well with
the uh, individual involved. I'm uh,
I'm not sure we'll ever find out what exactly
the issue is. That's, that's subject to
privacy from what I understand. But the fact
that they've been able to go
up there, get them, bring them back and deal
with the problem is extraordinary
because go back to the 70s when
Skylab was in orbit. If someone got sick
or injured in that situation,
I don't know if we would have been able to do
much in a hurry.
Professor Fred Watson: Um, yeah, maybe not. I mean, there would have
been contingency plans in place.
It's, um. I think
some of the things that might have brought
somebody home from Skylab might be things
that could have been fixed on the
International Space Station because there is
quite a, you know, a fair, Fair amount of
medical expertise up there and some of the
kit. But you don't want people taking
appendices out and things like that in space.
Andrew Dunkley: No, not really. You just have to wipe down
the walls afterwards, and that's not fun.
Although I should, um, counter it by saying
we did recently have a situation where. Where
a crew got stuck on the International Space
Station for very unusual reasons due to,
uh, incompatible spacesuits because of a
failure in the Boeing Starliner.
So, you know, that wasn't a quick
rescue, that one, but it didn't involve
illness or injury, so it wasn't as urgent.
But, uh, sometimes it. It can be a
slow process, but, um. Uh, yeah, but
NASA's been very quick to point out that this
has got nothing to do with an operational
issue. It's, um. It's a personal issue.
Nothing to do with an injury or accident on
board. They want to make that pretty clear.
Um, so, uh, yeah, we wish them well. They're
on their way back as we speak. And by the
time you hear this podcast, they will have
returned, no doubt.
Um, that's it, Fred. Gosh, we got through
that in a mighty hurry, didn't we?
Professor Fred Watson: Um, yes, I think
we. We gave it due, due
recognition. We've been talking for well over
an hour, Andrew.
Andrew Dunkley: Oh, have we?
Doesn't feel like it, but no. Um.
Professor Fred Watson: 38 minutes. I'm sorry. I'm misreading my
clock. You're right.
Andrew Dunkley: That's okay.
Professor Fred Watson: Well, we got through that in a hurry.
Andrew Dunkley: You're probably reading a Mars clock because
we talked about it. It's going a bit
faster. Um, now
if you were to follow, uh, up those stories,
I've told you where to go and look for them.
But you, uh, can also read the show notes on
our website, spacenutspodcast.more space
nuts IO and while you're
there, uh, you might like to, um, check out
all the. All the tabs and,
uh, links on our. On our website, the, uh,
Astronomy Daily feed. You can subscribe for
your daily dose of astronomy and space
Science news. Uh, don't forget reviews.
We really do appreciate your reviews. The
more reviews, the more we get noticed. And
the more we get noticed, the more people
listen. And then, you know, we can buy
ourselves an ice cream at the end of the day.
Um, you can also send questions
or comments in through the AMA link and
so on and so forth. And don't forget to visit
the Space Nuts shop. Uh, that's one thing
that Huw, um, did some years ago
and it's been very popular. All the, uh,
Space Nuts memorabilia, if you, if you want
to get hold of it. I've got, I've got my
Space Nuts cup here somewhere.
Professor Fred Watson: Here it is. Look. Look at this.
Andrew Dunkley: There it is.
Professor Fred Watson: I never got, I never got one of those.
Andrew Dunkley: I, I'd buy.
It's
good. That's good.
Professor Fred Watson: I'm too stingy.
Andrew Dunkley: Got shirts. We've got hoodies, we've got, uh,
all sorts of bits and bobs at the Space Nuts
Shop, uh, at our website. Thank, uh,
you, Fred. We'll leave it there. We'll catch
you on the next episode.
Professor Fred Watson: Look forward to it, Andrew. See you soon.
Andrew Dunkley: Professor Fred Watson, astronomer at large.
And thanks to Huw in the studio, who couldn't
be with us today, had to be evacuated
after attempting, uh, a Michael Jackson
moonwalk. Not good at his age.
Professor Fred Watson: No.
Andrew Dunkley: And from me, Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your
company. We'll catch you on the next episode
of Space Nuts.
Professor Fred Watson: Bye.
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