The Interplanetary Podcast

Putting the Ace back into Space - Down to Earth chat with Hosts Matthew Russell and Jamie Franklin to Promote Space and Space Travel for the Benefit of Mankind.

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100th Podcast LIVE at the BIS

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Loren Grush Interview and chat about Aeolus

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This week features our monthly chat with David Baker, legend, of Spaceflight magazine - Nasa and the ISS

Jamie and Matt bring you the week's space news.

Happy Birthday Georgy Stepanovich Shonin

Specific Impulse

Mars Close Approach

Medusae Fossae

Boeing shifts schedule for Starliner

Space ain’t so high anymore

Siblings have been to space?

Hindu Lunar Folklore

Space Song playlist on spotify bit.ly/spacesongs

If you enjoy the show please go over to www.Patreon.com/Interplanetary and become a Patron or even a producer of the show.

If you enjoy why not join the BIS at www.bis-space.com the oldest space advocacy organisation in the world.

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Hosts: Matt Russell and Jamie Franklin

Music: Matt Russell / Iam7

Additional Narration: George Russell

www.interplanetary.org.uk

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Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.

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This week we have a bumper episode all about Matt's visit to the European Spaceport in French Guiana and the exciting news about British Spaceports. Featuring not 1 but 3 interviews withCharlotte Beskow Head of the ESA Kourou OfficeStefano Bianchi, Vega Program Manager, ESAJean Luc Voyer DDO (Director of Operations) Directeur Des Opérations VA222, VA227, VS15, VA231, VA236, Has Musk gone Mad?Awesome Space Fact

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Can artificial miniature magnetospheres be used to protect spacecraft

Ruth Bamford of the Rutherford Appleton laboratory

On earth the radiation hazards that you come across a generally related to the radioactive Decay of heavy elements like radium and uranium and  gamma rays and x-rays etc. However out in space is a completely different story and it's one of the major obstacles to space travel beyond the Earth. The extreme forces at the centre of the Sun, black holes, pulsars, quasars and of Supernova Explosions can accelerate protons, alpha Particles (two protons and two neutrons bound together), and even heavier nuclei like that of Iron, to ridiculous speeds and energies from mega electron volts to hundreds of giga electron volts which are of course extremely bad for you.  Because the energy is so high the nuclei of atoms and the electrons are blasting out into space separately as a form of high energy plasma.

The astronauts at the Apollo era saw these is blinding flashes when one of these high energy particles hit the back of their retina for example however it plays havoc with Electronics solar panels and most importantly human tissue.

So how do we protect ourselves from the galactic cosmic rays and the really highly variable solar particles from solar flares etc which are an ever-present hazard in space.  

In the 1950s especially from Explorer 1 onwards came the study of how the Earth protects itself from these galactic rays via its own magnetosphere something that life on earth would almost be impossible without.  Since this discovery many schemes have been put forward to using “active” shielding of spacecraft much like that of the Earth's magnetic field to deflect these dangerous cosmic rays. But they all seem to be totally impractical expensive and bulky.  

In all these past studies it was assumed that incoming cosmic charged particles were deflected or reflected using simple charged particle dynamics in a vacuum where the charged particles slowdown or accelerated by Electric Fields or bent around magnetic field lines. In this new study they have looked at a far more complicated system and treated the solar winds and cosmic winds as a plasma which is incredibly complicated but has yielded some interesting conclusions, And that the effectiveness of these mini magnetosphere acting as radiation protection Shields needs to be reconsidered and not simply dismissed based on outdated assumptions.

The team have validated there experiments in the laboratory in solar wind tunnels in computer simulations and also there are some interesting validations in space.   There are naturally occurring mini magnetic spheres on the moon and these create an interesting effect where the colour of the regolith is actually maintained over millenia because it is protecting the ground from this solar radiation Data from both the Chinese chang’e2 and the Indian Chhandrayaan 1 have revealed these “Lunar Swirls” in glorious detail, and showing these Relatively weak phenomena to be capable of slowing incoming Particles and providing a tranquil Haven from the solar wind

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 Based on a spacecraft design by Mark G Benton in an AIAA publication from 2011 it could be shown that you would need the requirements of about 20 kilowatts of onboard power being directed The superconducting Magnetic coils weighing about 3000 kilograms including the Cooling.  This would reduce the particle Flux by about 20% but you could greatly enhance this by pumping plasma into the bubble and this would mean 80 to 90% of particles would be excluded and deflected

The scientists have concluded that the use of active deflector shielding for radiation in space may be coming of age. It's a field that may have been ignored because of the over simplistic models used before to work out the power requirements to deflect these dangerous particles.  The study uses and much more complicated interaction but shows to be more efficient, This combined with the great progress in the last 10 years of superconducting technology and liquid deposition and multilayer coated conductor films etc etc May lead to a totally practical construction within the next 10 years Of a fully functioning active deflector shield.

More work is needed to understand the very complex interactions in these plasmas around Magnetic Fields but if humanity is going to go into space we absolutely do need active radiation shielding

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This is the goal: To make available for life every place where life is possible. To make inhabitable all worlds as yet uninhabitable, and all life purposeful.

Hermann Oberth

Overdue Obituary

Donald Lynden-Bell CBE FRS (5 April 1935 – 6 February 2018)  British theoretical astrophysicist.

He was the first to determine that galaxies contain supermassive black holes at their centres, and that such black holes power quasars.[3] Lynden-Bell was President of the Royal Astronomical Society (1985–87)

Received numerous awards for his work, including the inaugural Kavli Prize for Astrophysics.

"Violent Relaxation." Violent relaxation has many applications in dynamical astronomy, affecting the orbits of stars within star clusters and galaxies.

"Gravothermal Catastrophe" a phenomenon in star clusters that is the result of the negative heat capacity of gravitational systems. The catastrophe occurs when the core of a cluster shrinks and heats up, causing it to transfer energy to stars in the cluster's halo, leading the cluster core to collapse.

Authored an influential 1974 paper with James E. Pringle about the evolution of disks around "nebular variables," which were later to become known as T Tauri stars – an early phase in a star's life cycle. The paper predicts the signature of radiation from such disks, which is emitted primarily at infrared wavelengths where it dominates over the emission from the star.

In the 1980s, he was a member of a group of astronomers known as the 'Seven Samurai' who postulated the existence of the Great Attractor, a huge, diffuse region of material around 250 million light-years away that results in the observed motion of our local galaxies.

Donald was married to Ruth Lynden-Bell, a British chemist, emeritus professor of Queen's University Belfast and the University of Cambridge,

Lynden-Bell died at his home in Cambridge on 6 February 2018, at the age of 82

SPACE NEWS

18 April 22:51 Falcon 9 Full Thrust Cape Canaveral SLC-40 SpaceX

TESS Space observatory

In orbit and Operational

Block 4 first-stage booster, serial number B1045.

ESS should discover a large number of exoplanets that are, unlike the Kepler planets, close enough for detailed spectroscopic followup by other observatories

25 April 17:57 Rokot / Briz-KM Plesetsk Site 133/3

Sentinel-3B Low Earth (SSO) Earth observation

The second Sentinel-3 satellite, Copernicus Sentinel-3B, was launched 25th April, joining its identical twin Sentinel-3A in orbit. This pairing of satellites increases coverage and data delivery for the European Union’s Copernicus environment programme.

X37B

The USAF OTV-5 spaceplane mission launched in Sep 2017 located in orbit by hobbyists.

Jim Bridenstine finally confirmed as new NASA Administrator

After a seven and a half month wait, the new head boss of NASA has finally been chosen and it is Trump’s nominee James Bridenstine that narrowly get the vote.

UK explores producing own satellite system after EU’s Galileo snub

FT report: Britain is exploring plans to launch a satellite navigation system as a rival to the EU’s €10bn Galileo project in an escalating row with Brussels over whether the UK can be trusted with Europe’s most sensitive security information after Brexit

INCREDIBLE COMET FOOTAGE

Twitter user named landru79 has combined Rosetta images taken from about 13km away from the comet. The images from June 1, 2016 are combined into the short video below.

Bill Gates Backs OneWeb Surveillance Network

EarthNow plans to use OneWeb's technology to equip each satellite with "an unprecedented amount of onboard processing power, including more CPU cores than all other commercial satellites combined." The satellites will also use machine learning to analyze live imagery, although the company does not reveal exactly what the satellites will be analyzing

Chat with David Baker

Are the Russians using satellites to inspect those from other countries?

Trump Space Policy unfolds

SLS

Program planning for 2 Mobile Launchers 1st major cargo-only flight *might* be Europa Clipper, now set for a Block 1, not a Block 1B Block 1B delayed to mid-2020s Block 1 now likely to fly 4 times, including on EM-2 crew Orion flight. Spying and the military in space in general.

Jamies Space Fact

Space Song playlist on spotify

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