Blue Origin and Future Launch Outlook

Astronomy cast Episode seven ninety seven, Summer in Space , twenty twenty six. Welcome to Astronomy Cast, our weekly fact journey through the cosmos, where we help you understand not only what we know but how we know what we know. I'm Fraser Kane. I'm the publisher of University with me as always is Dr. Pamela Gay, senior scientist for theet Planary Science Institute and the Director of CosmoQuest. Hey Pamela doing? I am itchy . Poison Ivy ivying here . I need a goat. I can't find a goat. Do they have rental goats where you are? There are places in the U. S. you can rent goats . I have seen videos. I have definitely admired goat rental from afar, but I have I am not aware of any place that one could rent a goat here in my area, although I would if I could because there's all kinds of shrubbery that I would love to sort of dial back . They apparently will just tear through the Himalayan blackberries, which are awful here in on Vancouver Island. So they're tasty , but they are awful. Yeah Yeah, yeah, I always mention this, how grateful I am that we don't have venomous snakes or venomous plants . I just feel I'm bulletproof. I walk into the forest . I might get a tick if I'm out for days and days and days and obviously there's a occasional mosquito they're named but apart from that we have and then a bear, you know, like obviously we watched bears crossing our property last night so that's cool. Yeah there's that. Yeah, we're we have a bunch of just bears that will move through our property and they'll just they'll follow the same path every day for a couple of weeks while they're they're eating the dandelions right now and then they'll move higher tire elevations than we don't see them for the rest of the summer. But this time around, you know, May June we see a lot of bears. Mamas with babies Yeah, it's spicy. I had a snake that decided it was going to be super bitey, but like it was smaller around than my thumb. So I just made fun of it. What was it garter snake? It was a garter snake. It was very determined to bite me. All right, we're about to take a much needed two month hiatus, but just because we're not here doesn't mean that space stops existing and doing things. Today, let's give a preview of the big events due to happen in space this summer so you can prepare yourself and make sure you don't miss a thing . Talk about in a second, but it's time for break. Tired of your car insurance rate going up, even with a clean driving record, you're not alone. That's why there's Jerry, your proactive insurance assistant. Jerry compares rates side by side from over fifty top insurers and helps you switch with ease. Jerry even tracks market rates and alerts you when it's best to shop. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over one thousand three hundred dollars a year. Switch with confidence, download the Jerry app or vis,it Jerry. AI slash libs in today. That's JER Y dot AI slash LIB SYN we're back . Okay , so you know, you and I both did some research in preparation for this episode and I feel pretty confident that we are not leaving our audience that be breath for the next two months. There's actually not a ton of really big events that are going to happen except for like one that's , but there's a bunch of smaller events and then one that will probably be delayed and will probably fall back into our schedule anyway, or we'll be able to report on it moments after. So I'm spoilerizing what's about to happen . So let's sort of break this into two areas I need to know what you consider the one really great event . Oh the eclipse . Okay. So eclipse. It could have been the launch of Nancy Grace Roman. That's the one that I think is going to happen right at the end. We'll probably get delayed. And yeah, I think we're safe to and then the rest, we've got some conjunctions, we've got some lunar events. We've got some sort of milestones for various spacecraft , astrophotography opportunities. Yeah, and then some classics that come around every time of the year. But we don't have like maybe there'll be some more tests of SpaceX , but Blur Jin is kind of out of the run forning several months . Yeah . But even there could be another Starship explosion. Yeah, there could be or launch, who knows, but even that they're sort of in a in a sort of time where after the last test where they got to get a bunch of st uff dialed in, they big plans to send crew , not a lot of big changes to missions, no space launch systems are going to be launched. Like I feel we could not have timed this better for what is in the the launch docket right now and in the celestial space motion docket but let's just pick something that you think is going to be interesting that people should keep their eyes peeled for this summer. So Hyabusa two flies past the asteroid . I'm going to say this so wrong. So wrong. I'm sorry, Tora Fun? I'm gonna ask Torufune if it's Japanese but it is Japanese. Yeah, I'm gonna get Toru Fune, but I have not learned Japanese yet . It's true. But now I've been there twice. I've been to Japan twice Planning to go again at the end of the year. So at some point I'm going to have to take the leap and actually start learning some Japanese. So this is the mission that went to Ryugu and collected the sample and flung the sample back at Earth and we have the sample and the mission kept going . And so this is another near Earth asteroid and I am excited to find out if it's another rubble pile like Ryugu or another c ashew like Idekawa. Yeah , I'm hoping for another cashew. And at least each one of these asteroid closing encounters are precious and individual s. Super important . And there's like there's nothing that is as good as getting a picture up close from these asteroids. Like you compare the blurry images that are taken, the single pixels that are seen from Earth based telescopes and you compare that to just the luxurious detail that we saw from Osiris Rex or Hybusa two there's no comparison. And just awesome. Yeah, and each one gives us entirely new information. You know, it's not like you see one asteroid, you see them all. You literally could see every single asteroid and only then will you have seen them all. Yeah . Yeah. Vesta in series are huge and radically different. Yeah, the little ones are all and it's not the only encounter we're probably going to have in July . The other ones so Hyvosa two is a Jackson mission and then we have you're going to say this correctly for me in a moment. Tian Wen two , Tim Wen gets to the qu asi moon Kema O O , Alewa Kamo. It's Hawaiian. Oh , ohawa, kamo oil a. I'm guessing. And that is a Hawaiian term, a language neither of us are learning. But so this is a Chinese mission. The exact date of the arrival is unknown . But again, little tiny spud . This is another asteroid except this one got captured ever so itorily . I'm perhaps making up words into Earth's orbit. And so we're going to have in July close up images of two new worlds. Yeah, yeah. And I mean these quasi moons are really interesting because you know, one of the possibilities is that these are coming that these are from the Mono that, to get an object that is in a very similar orbit to the Earth, it had to have a source. And the one source is that it could have just been three body interactions with various asteroids that kick something into this place where it's now a quasi moon , you know, it falls into a gravitational well , hangs out with us for a little while, then falls back out again and goes about its married business and then hangs out again. And typically they'll stick around for a few orbits . But case seems to be building that a lot of these quasi moons have a chemical fingerprint that is very similar to the moon . And then you can sort of think, okay, so maybe these things are chunks of the moon that were gouged out by fairly large impacts at some point in the recent past . Or leftover bits from the Earth collision right, which would be incredible. . Right. And and so I mean and then there's also the we don't know like what other chunks may be out there from like did Saya have a moon before it hid into us? I mean that is like science fiction territory folks. I just entered science fiction . Most likely this is a leftover chunk from the collision or something gouged out of the moon where there are craters kilometers deep. Right. Yeah . So very useful. And of course Temwin is then going to be heading off to its future sample return mission. So there's a lot and then it's going to end up going into orbit around another comet. So it's got like a bunch of work It has a future. Yeah, yeah, totally. And so and I love this kind of opportunistic there happens to be something that's on the trajectory of the spacecraft. Let's just take a close look. And so we're going to get an image of this little, as you say And it's something completely novel. Yep, totally. Again, every asteroid has its own unique butterfly. What else have you got ? So those are the two big missions that have me super hyped. Then in August, we're looking at potentially the Xia seven launch. This is another lunar mission. This one's going to the South Pole region again. It is specifically tasked with looking for water and so we're starting to see better and better chemistry missions being launched by China , both going and sampling Mars and bringing it back, going and exploring for water on the moon . China is really killing it with its slow and steady approach and then there is hope that on the last day of August we will see the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched into orbit , which will give us another infrared observatory . It's a survey telescope . It has all sorts of really cool capacity to see planets and a whole bunch of other stuff. It's just the planet stuff that a lot of us are excited about . So yeah , I mean, Nancy Chris Roman is your next big telescope to be obsessed with . The history of this, of course, is that it was a spare mirror provided by the Natural Reconnaissance Office to NASA and then NASA and they said, you know, we've got these hubble class mirrors that we don't need anymore . Would you like them? We're just gonna throw them in the garbage because we've got much better mirrors for spying on Earth . Would you like to do something with it? And NASA thought about it and decided that they would make something that they would change put on different secondary optics than Hubble and make a wide field version of Hubble but was also in the infrared . And this thing is going to be phenomenal. So much faster, brand new instrumentation. It is going to map out the cosmos at a speed and at a scale, the likes of which really we only have kind of on Earth, we have Vir ubin. Spirax is doing its own thing, but it doesn't have the resolution or the depth. It's compared to the size of Nancy Christ Roma. And what I love about this telescope is that it is on budget and it is ahead of schedule. Originally it wasn't thought that it was going to launch until twenty twenty seven. Well, here we are in twenty twenty six now and like the launch date just keeps coming forward. Yeah . And so it's incredible that we're going to see this thing launch ideally august thirty first is the day they're targeting . But you know, one does not simply book a return trip to a rocket launch. Therefore I think we can safely assume that this thing is going to delay at least once or twice. And so hopefully it will fall back into our regular schedule and when it does . Then we're allowed to talk about a red pamela. Oh, I guess after some science. We'll get some wait for a slight. Yeah, and there's going to be a double header of learning about Nancy Grace Roman, who was the first chief scientist of NASA and the person who really spearheaded the completion of the Hubble Space Telescope . And we'll talk about the mission and the human. And it's all super exciting. Yeah, yeah. So those are the those are the confirmed scheduled things. There's a few minor things. There's a, you know, there's going to be a background constant cadence of probably Starlink launches coming out of SpaceX. There's going to be other minor missions . Rocket Lab is planning a mission. So not neutron No, no . And then and you sort of brush past this, but yeah, I think the Chinese Changa Seven mission is going to be a big one. You know, that is them , you know, this one's going to have a hopper, an orbit er, a relay satellite, a lander , and a sample return mission. It's going to go to the South Polo Moon. This is the place where all of the water ice is likely contained. And so this is a really exciting target. And then this is going to lay the ground for the next one, Chang eight, which is coming twenty seven. Anyway, a couple years. And that's going to be doing its resource utilization on the surface of the room. We're going to try to three D print things on the moon . And then this is leading up to twenty thirty when hopefully Chinese astronauts will set foot on the moon for the first time. All right, now we are going to switch to natural events , but it's time for break . A burst pipe , a dead water heater . The AC calling it quits. Who do you call? 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It's not great for human beings. I would describe it as terrible . If you look at literally, if you look at the path , like think about the one that we just had, right? Was it the twenty twenty two one? twenty twenty four . Tow theard twentys twenty four one, yeah, yeah it went it went Mexico. Just straight across America . The United States and into Canada, the twenty eighteen one went all the way across the United twenty seventeen. twenty seventeen. Yeah, everybody who wanted could make their way to some place and not be completely on top of each other . But you look at the trajectory that this one is taking this map is just so terrible. Is making a little cut on Iceland so like great like Iceland can handle that kind of traffic Greenland Greenland? Yeah, so who's going to go to Greenland to watch an eclipse. And then it makes this tiny little pass through a little chunk like right to the Ismth of Spain . And so all of Europe is going to descend upon tiny little spot in the corner of Spain. And so unless you live there, unless you've got your accommodation lockdown, this is going to be a nightmare getting in, getting out, traffic is going to be. Like you remember how awful the traffic was for the various North American eclipses. This is gonna be a nightmare on brutal little roads mountainous roads. This is all like you've got to be really serious to do this one. There's some eclipse cruises. I get invited to do one. There's some in the Mediterranean and there's some in the North the North Atlantic, yeah. Yeah, I got invited to do one and I was like , come pass . You need to pass this on the main okay, all right, yeah, I'll pass on pass to panel . Yeah . So yeah, this one , if you live in Europe and you live close and you've got a place scheduled and you're okay to hunker down for a while, both before and after the event itself, then go for it. But I think transportation, accommodation, this one's going to be rough . There's some islands in the Mediterranean that again you are going to be packed in and unable to move , but saying I watched an eclipse from a Mediterranean island just sounds kind of luxurious. Yeah, yeah, it's just finding accommodation. Yes, it's just gonna be tough. But then august twenty seventh twenty eighth is a lunar eclip se. And the thing about that solar eclipse on august twelfth is this is the same time as the Perseus forget about the solar eclipse. No one cares about the solar eclipse. I mean some, people care about the solar people care Solar Elides are the best, but sure . But this means there is a new moon illuminating the sky when the perse one of the big three meteor shows every year is gonna be doing its thing. So this is your chance to go out , see meteor shower . If you're where I live, watch lightning bugs going nuts and see if the meteors outnumber the satellites . That's always the question nowadays. But there'll be no moon. Yeah, there'll be no moon. No , this is so important. Yeah. Like if there is a b ad moon, I just don't even bother. Right. the Delta Aquariads don't bother. Yeah, not worth it. But when there's a good moon, then you do it. And the Perseids for the Northern Hemisphere, we understand southern hemisphere you exist . This is not for you , for the Northern Hemisphere . This is the best one because you've just got nice temperatures outside . You can go out, set up , lay on your lay on your sleep cot, lay on the ground, have your friends around you , fall asleep to the Persians, and with a new moon, this is an absolute dream version of it. So we couldn't ask for a better Perseus meter shower this year. So what if you are at all interested if you have an excuse if you hammock excuse august twelfth , thirteenth, so look the night of the twelfth, into the thirteenth , plan something, pull these . Some of my favorite memories are my parents taking setting us out to watch the Pursuits Meter shower. This is these are the memories that will last a lifetime for you and your kids. And if you can afford to take more time off on august seventh, there's an event that is going to have me finding a farmer's field with my tripod if it's super hot and I don't want to go camping . The crescent moon is passing through the Pleiades . This is something I've seen through a telescope before, just a little refractor. It's gorgeous , and I really hope that I can get some good shots of it with my six hundred millimeter lens . And this is just one of those there's places on the sky that have more stars than others. There's places that are prettier than others. And when the crescent moon , which is not as bright , passes star clusters, you get this really cool, you can see the dark side in Earth Glow , you can see that thin crescent and then you see all the stars around it. And you actually see how bright the sky is so that's actually one of the things I'm most looking forward to. But you have to act quickly, right? Because that is happening early, like right after sunset, you get the crest of the moon, please is already going to be very low on the horizon and then it's over. Yeah. And so then, you know, the way eclipses work, they go in in groups and so you get usually you get a solar clip and that's followed by a lunar clip. So there will be a lunar eclipse which is going to be august twenty seventh twenty eighth. So that's going to be right at the end of the of the of our time away from you. But it's only partial. And well, it's partial, but it's a good partial. So it's not partial. Yeah. It's a ninety three percent partial, which means that the moon will go completely. You'll see the Pac Man chomping, taking away from the Moon. It'll go completely dark and then it will turn red briefly before it comes out the other side of it. And so you're going to get a pretty good view of the moon for this one. I would take it. Yeah , I am excited but Africa, Europe . I am more excited about that crescent in the Playadies. Really? Yeah. Most of the Americas and Eastern Pacific. So, you know, again, it's fair ly well positioned . So think Eastern North America across the ocean , Europe , parts of Africa , it should be a well positioned eclipse for people to be able to see. Yeah . And basically August is enjoy the moon. Yeah I'm a little bit sad because originally the Griffin One mission or, Griffin Mission One was supposed to launch that month, and it's now delayed in November . But we are getting to the point where as we look up at the moon, we can start to imagine there's going to be a whole lot more clutter on that surface fairly soon. And enjoy it. All right, we're going to take another break And we're back . So we've covered kind of like the space exploration events the natural events . I guess we should talk about some of the things that are a bit in flux. And we don't know if they're going to happen or not. So let's talk about what SpaceX is up to. So this week, there should be the initial public offering which which they're hoping will garner , what is it one point seven five trillion dollars ? I have valuation. They're not going to be able to take home. They're going to take home. No, that's whatever a couple hundred billion aire. Yeah , but there's I did a eleven page, I don't know how I wrote that many pages assessment of the consequences of what they're planning to do and breaking down the numbers. And the thing that got me about this is in Q one of calendar year twenty twenty six, SpaceX lost two billion dollars across their four divisions . They are on target to lose roughly eight billion dollars in twenty twenty six, which exceeds the NASA science Mission Directorate budget, which is only seven point two five billion . Yeah, do you remember when SpaceX was the cheap? Yeah, yeah. So we're currently looking at a situation where SpaceX is throwing away more money than throwing away is the wrong word. They're losing more money than NASA has for science. Now , all of what they're planning hinges on Starship working . They were planning for their next starship to be the catch. The FAA has said Nope, you guys get to hover over the ocean one more time because they had booster issues. Their booster kind of exploded . So we are looking this summer. There should be the launch of Starship thirteen . Yeah, we should see another launch . And there are currently a lot of concerns because we haven't seen any refueling testing . The NASA announced earlier yesterday that the Artemis test in twenty twenty seven have a starship that does not have any of the human capacity. It's just going to have a docking port bolted onto it . So Starship is desperately behind schedule for what it owes NASA and And they haven't proven anything other than satellite deployment. Now they can do a lot of what they want to do on ballistic missions Starship without actually going orbital . Or with Starship being disposed of . Exactly. Right. They could launch a heavy lift mission and then and then crash Starship into the ocean if they wanted to. It would be much more expensive than a fully reasonable rocket, but it might be something that gets them back on the on the path to getting fulfilling their obligations. So we're trying to see, yeah, exactly. What's wild is they are essentially planning to need as much methane per year as ten percent of US exports. Yeah, I mean I think, you know, you say it all depends on Starship. I actually think it all depends on whether or not the AI bubble pops . Yeah, that's another side . But but yeah, the AI bubble is going to pop. Yeah, how the bubble will pop is the question exactly. And when. And so yeah they happened to originally but back when it was XAI , they wisely, it turns out, invested in a gigantic, you know, gigantic compute infrastructure. And that is the bottleneck. And so all of their competitors are coming to them to pay for computing on systems because they weren't able to make their own AI model function very well . And so they're actually making money head over fist on their on just renting out their servers. Like a lot of them like a billion dollars a month or something. It's crazy . So then the and then the other thing that would have had implications or would have we would have been watching was the events of New Glen and what's happening with Blue Origin . They've got They've got their Bloom and Mark one, which actually did a success test in their in the big vacuum chamber at NASA. And so that is going to be the lander. They're going to do some test launches of the lander later on this year. And that's all still on schedule. Then you got the Mart two, which is going to be the one that's going to carry humans. And they were able to kind of get back into the consideration for being able to send humans to the moon as part of Artemis whatever comes after that. And then there's they've done one launch. They've successfully tested the reuse of a booster and then they had this disaster at Launchpad LC three thousand six A and that was bad . The rocket exploded, the launch platform is heavily toast, the mobile transporter is to ast. Looks like the various buildings and tanks and water detail uses and all that that all seems okay , but they're looking at probably eighteen months of rebuild. And so various events we're expecting to come out of Lord in the summer, they're not gonna happen. And the Mark One lander fits inside the Falcon heavy fairings . Well, so the issue is that SpaceX doesn't have any way to fuel it. So they're trying to figure out is there a way fuel the Mark Series vehicles in a SpaceX rocket to at least give us multiple rockets for this lander . There's a lot to be worked out and we're going to learn just how fast can they rebuild things when you have enough billionaires involved? Yeah, so I would I would not be surprised if nothing happens this summer , right? Like I would literally not be surprised if we come back at the beginning of September and no starship, no starship s, no planes. Anything. None of that. Yeah, yeah, one launch from Rocket Lab and of a satellite and that's and that's sort of like the big events. So yeah, but the Japanese are going to be launching an H three to the space station . We're saying goodbye to the Atlas five rocket. That's right. The last not assigned to a Starliner and no one knows when Starliner's going to get launched. Yeah, that's an end of an era. Yeah, Atlas five is an old workhorse. So there will be six on retainer for when they either do use the star leap liners or give up on the star liners, one or the other . But that's it. Okay . So, you know, hopefully we've given you some events, but I also feel like I hope I hope you guys don't feel like we are leaving an alert. Things seem very calm. I believe and there are two more episodes. Yeah, there are two more episodes for sure. But I feel like when it comes to space, although space is still going to exist and still do stuff, we have asked very nicely to just slow its roll. Vacation, just be chill, have a good summer with the rest of us. All right, Pamela, we will see all of you next week. We're not going anywhere yet. Nope. See you all next week. And stay cool. It's horrible out there, folks. And thanks to our patrons. Some of you have figured out you can get me to say truly ridiculous things by having truly ridiculous usernames . For those of you who make me laugh, I salute you . To those of you whose names I'm about to mispronounce , I'm just really sorry . This week we would like to thank Allen Gross, Andrew Allen, Antisaur, Astrosetz, Beboch Apocalypse, Bob Zatski, Brian Bade, Burry, Gowen, Claudia Mastriani Dale, Alexander, David, David Rostiera , John Mundus, Elliot Walker, Fairchild Just As It Sounds, Frodo Tanbnaenu, Gerhard Schweitzer , Greg Davis, Hannah Tankery , James Signorovich, John Baptiste La Martinet , Jim McGean, John Holstein, John Hermann, Jonathan Poe, Justin S , Katian Ulissa, Kimberly Rec, Larry Sotz , Lou Zealand, Mark Scher, Masa Herleu, Matthias Hayden, Michael Wichman, Mike Huzzy , Nick Boyd , Patricia Hope, Paul Lol , Rejev Akari, Richard Drum, Robert Cordova, Ryan Amari, Sam Brooks and his mom, Scott Bieber, Samyon, Torfesson, Steve Rut ley , TC Starboy , Travis C Porco Rutley and wiped only three times because I like the itch . Thank you all so very much