Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Big Science, Big Rocket at the Marshall Space Flight Center

Episode Date: September 5, 2018

Mat Kaplan’s Huntsville, Alabama trip wraps up with a tour of the historic and history-making Marshall Space Flight Center. Join him at the control center for research underway on the International Space Station, under a tent where a critical component of the Space Launch System rocket is getting finishing touches, in a conversation about the Fermi spacecraft’s search for the universe’s biggest explosions, and with the Center’s Associate Director for Technical efforts. Then wrap up with Bruce Betts and the anniversaries of one fictional and one factual explorer of deep space. Learn and hear more at: http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2018/0905-2018-marshall-center.htmlLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Big science and a big rocket at the Marshall Space Flight Center this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome, I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. We began our visit to Huntsville, Alabama last week at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. This time we go next door to the sprawling U.S. Army's Redstone Arsenal, host to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Many of the greatest moments in space history can be traced back to this facility, right back to the first rocket to successfully carry an American satellite into orbit. We'll meet the Center's Associate Director for all things technical, visit the Earth-bound Control Center for all the science underway on the International Space Station,

and join the space-based search for the most powerful explosions in the universe with a member of the Fermi team. I met my first guest outside a huge structure at Marshall. How many of you enjoyed the rocket road trip my colleagues Casey Dreyer, Jason Davis, and Merck Boyan took in 2016? One of the great people they met on that journey was Andy Shore. Andy is deputy manager for the Spacecraft Payload Integration and Evolution Office. He works to bring together the tremendous components of the Space Launch System, that gigantic rocket expected to lift off from Florida for the first time in 2019.

We're the interface between the payload of the rocket and the rocket. So we build to the adapters that connect the payload to the propulsion end of the rocket. We also procure the upper stage that once it gets into space that puts the Orion crew capsule on its trajectory for the moon. And in addition, we're merging exploration with science in the integration of 13 CubeSats into the upper Orion stage adapter that's the interface between the upper stage and the Orion hardware. So once the Orion has separated in between the Van Allen belts

and it's a safe distance away so there's not a risk of recontact, we start deploying through a series of five bus stops starting in between the Van Allen belts with the last one being past the moon. We've got 13 CubeSats, 6U CubeSats. They're about the size of a boot box that we deploy to give them access to generate or to discover science in deep space beyond low Earth orbit. We have a three-unit CubeSat, light sail. Yeah. So the way I look at it is a 1U is like a little bit of an oversized Rubik's Cube. It's a 10 by 10 by 10 centimeter?

10 by 10 by 10 centimeter, a little bigger than a standard Rubik's Cube. And if you take six of them and connect them together, you've got basically a boot box. And that's the configuration of the housing volume you have for these CubeSats to pack in the instruments they need to go research their science. So I read that this is going to be the first launch, in a sense, a launch, a release of CubeSats outside of Earth orbit. I believe it is. There's a lot of access to low Earth orbit today. You know, the SpaceX's, Delta 4, the rideshare program looks for opportunities for these smaller satellites to get access to space, but we're able to take advantage of the volume that we have to have a secondary objective of the SLS mission to provide beyond low Earth orbit. NEOSCOUT, for instance, they're going to deploy a solar sail

and go out and take pictures of an asteroid. So we're providing that capability to them as well. This is my first stop, my very first time in Huntsville, first time at Marshall. The first thing that impressed me as we drove into the Redstone Arsenal is how incredibly huge this place is. Well Well we are a relatively small resident of Redstone Arsenal so primarily an army base if you will but we've carved out our little

niche here that we've both you know back in our past we've built the Saturn launch vehicles and we've built on that to bring us to this next exploration class capable vehicle that we're building today SLS and so yeah all this has been set up to build on that heritage bring us to this next exploration class capable vehicle that we're building today, SLS. And so, yeah, all this has been set up to build on that heritage and lead us out to deep space access again. What's inside this big building that we've got right here? Primarily, this building is where we do human factors engineering. So they got their start, if you will, back in the Skylab days to how can we construct, have modules that not only allow astronauts to live in space, but to be able to do valuable research and work in space. And so that's what they do in this building is those different human factors assessments to facilitate

how they can do the job the astronauts, we need them to do in space. And that foundation of Skylab is what led to the International Space Station that we take advantage of today. The hardware we're going to show you, the launch vehicle stage adapter, that comes off the core stage, the gas tank, if you will, of SLS, and connects to the upper stage. Again, once it gets into space, it will separate, and that upper stage will push the Orion spacecraft on its trajectory for the moon.

Well, that hardware was built here at Marshall Space Flight Center over in our friction stir weld facility. Then after that, we took it over to another building in our materials and processes area to put on the spray-on foam insulation, very similar to the foam that was used on the external tank during the space shuttle. Okay, so we've applied that foam by hand. It was the largest structure we've applied that foam by hand to and flight hardware as well. But although it was a big building, this is a tall structure. It's about 28 feet tall. Coming out of that building, we only had about a foot of clearance. Okay, and we still have to put that separation hardware on. So on this building here, we've got, you can see it's a much taller door. And so we can get in and we can

get the crane down. we can install that hardware, and it's just a matter of geometry. It really boils down to that. Can we go inside? Let's go in. This is an Alabama summer. I mean, I knew what I was coming to. It's fairly cool still right now, but you can sure feel that humidity.

Yeah, gills, lungs are necessary, but gills help around here. Okay, so I love radio. This is the perfect creek. You want to get a vision? You know what? This looks a lot bigger on the inside. It is a huge cavernous building, and you can see the magnitude, the scale, the structures that they assess in here, again,

for how astronauts can live and work in space and do useful research. So we did a test where we took flight identical articles, loaded them up to 1.4 times what they expect to see in a launch environment. So it kind of put that in perspective. When we loaded the Orion stage adapter, the ICPS, the upper stage, and the LVSA that we're going to see here in a moment together. ICPS, that's that cryogenic initial stage, right? The one that will eventually be replaced? Yeah, eventually replaced by the exploration upper stage, which will have four engines as

opposed to the one engine we have on the upper stage we're using today. It's essentially the same upper stage that Delta 4 uses for their missions today. It's kind of like saying you're mustang up to Roush to get it tuned up. We tuned it up a little bit to get a little more performance, but that's essentially the same. To put it in perspective, that test and the loads we experienced during mission, we stacked all that hardware together, had to put a 114,000 pound load ring on top of it, still had to put about six actuators around there to pull it down to get it up to the loads we expect to see at launch. So even 115,000 pounds wasn't enough to stress it to types of environments it's going to experience during a launch. How'd it do? It did great. Passed with flying colors. So we'll walk on over. You can

see we have a large tent and that's to protect. Since this is a working building, we want to make sure that we keep any contaminants from getting into the hardware. We've got connected cables in here, connectors. We seal those ends, but we just want to make sure we make every effort to make sure that we keep the flight hardware safe and unaffected by the work that's going on elsewhere in this building. So basically you've got sort of a tent clean room here. Exactly. Not technically a clean room but that's essentially the intent. It helps. Yes. Through here? Okay. Wow and there it is. There you go. There's that seemingly insignificant 28 feet of a 322 foot tall rocket. So you can see

that we've got the foam for the thermal protection. And so it comes on. When it's first applied, it's a cream color, but you can see how it's darkening. It'll eventually turn orange like the foam on the space shuttle, and it does that from exposure to the sun. We had to step back a little bit because this is flight hardware. This is flight hardware. This will fly on the first mission, EM-1.

Which is still going to go around the moon. Which is still going to go around the moon. It's still going to go around the moon. It will go farther. Well, it won't go farther than certainly spacecraft have gone from the Earth. But when we get to the crewed mission, that crew will set the record for the farthest distance humans have been from the Earth. Now, Apollo 13 crew, Fred Hayes, who we were able to tour this hardware, and he signed the inside of the Orion stage adapter. So we've got that connection from the Saturn Apollo era to this era, which is pretty cool. But his record and his crew's record will be eclipsed once we fly the crewed mission of SLS.

That is so cool. And that crewed mission, EM-2, it's going to go further because it's what's known as a free return trajectory, so it's got to swing way past the moon? Exactly. That's how we achieve that record, if you will. So it'll go way out and then come back and deploy the chutes and come in just like the crew capsules did during the Apollo program. So the first thing that I think of when I talk about that is it's about time. We're getting closer to humans getting past low Earth orbit again.

Oh, exactly. A long time coming for sure. I think back during the Saturn-Apollo era, no one would have imagined it took this long. But we're thankful to be here. The hardware's coming together as you're standing in front of it here. We've already shipped hardware to the Cape. It's in the Space Station Processing Facility at KSC. The engines, the RS-25s that go underneath the core stage, the gas tank, if you will, of SLS again, they have been tested and are ready to be shipped to the tank.

So all the hardware is ready to come together and be assembled so we can execute the first mission and then the subsequent missions going forward. We're looking at this foam. You said it's got the heritage from the shuttle space transportation system. But one of the key advantages of going back to humans in a capsule sitting on top of the rocket, right, is they don't need to worry as much about stuff like that foam, which might, you know, pieces of it might come off, as it often did with the shuttle. And that's part of what we're seeing, right? So, yeah, it's going back to simple physics and geometry. And when you put the crew on top,

that's a safe location to put them. We've got the crew escape launch abort system. Should something be detected on the launch vehicle that says this is not a safe situation that can be activated and pull them away to safety so this is a very very robust very safe vehicle to to put the astronauts on just recently i guess it came to light that because of the additional funding from congress for the the second mobile launch platform that you're going to be able to stick with that lower power upper stage for a little bit longer. And the fact that that's the one now that may get those lucky astronauts out toward the moon, and maybe something we care a lot about at the Planetary Society as well, the Europa Clipper mission that will get a straight shot out to Jupiter in Europa.

Right. With the new manifest, we'll fly two additional block one configurations. And so that makes three total. So EM-1, EM-2, and what we'll call science mission one, which is the Europa Clipper mission that you referred to. So we know the efforts. We understand the work that needs to be done to human rate that upper stage. And those activities are in work to contract that with the provider of that, United Launch Alliance, Boeing United Launch Alliance. We know what we need to go do, and we're excited to be given the opportunity to go execute those missions. And I can tell you, I know the Europa Clipper people at JPL real well, and boy are they excited about being able to go there directly without having to stop along the way at other planets.

Well, certainly other vehicles could get them there, but with the mass that we're able to lift, the volumes we're able to provide, they don't have to do the engineering origami to fit into a constrained space, if you will. But the energy we can impart, we can get Europa Clipper to Jupiter, get the science back before the other vehicles can get there. It's just a matter of simple physics. And that's a tremendous benefit to the scientists. Oh, yeah. Five fewer years in space, that's pretty good.

Exactly. They don't have to work their whole career and then hope they get the science back before it's time for them to go enjoy retirement, if you will. Now, before I get mail from our listeners who say, it wouldn't have been stopping at those other planets. Okay, no, no, no. It's just a flyby. That's what's eliminated. It's a straight shot out.

It's a straight shot, direct shot, rather than doing the gravity assist where you do the flybys and kind of swing around and use the slingshot effect, if you will, to get you out to the destination you're trying to achieve. We've talked shuttle. I want to go back a little bit further. The heritage of the Saturn V. This is going to be the first rocket that comes close to having and eventually may surpass the payload of that fantastic old rocket.

Hard to believe that that worked so well back in the 1960s. Here we are 50 years later. How did that legacy of the Saturn V inform the development of SLS? Well, certainly over time we built off of that foundation that they established for us. And so as our tools got better, our analytical capability got better, our metallurgy got better. We could build on that, again, foundation to be more efficient in our structures, lighter in our structures, and be able to lift more payload. But there's still that connection, still that DNA back to the Saturn launch vehicle in this hardware we're looking at right here. This is such a tall structure with the equipment we had to build it.

We had to build it in two halves. The challenge there is this is a cone and when you bring those two together, when you do a friction stir weld, you have to have the mating surfaces very rigidly secured so when you do your friction stir welds, you don't induce any defects. We used a clamp that was used back during the Saturn program. It was called a Hawthorne clamp. It was a two-piece clamp that they could machine a little groove, put a stainless steel ribbon through, and a little pickup would pull the two halves together.

They'd do a tack weld, friction stir tack weld, around the circumference, and then there was a cutter that would break that ribbon, and the two halves would fall away, and then they'd do their final friction stir weld. You know, I think I saw a video of that. We'll put a link up to it on the episode page because it really is pretty fascinating watching this thing track around this cone. Exactly.

And by using that, we were able to save over $5 million being good stewards of the resources we're providing. So we've got that DNA connection back to the Saturn launch vehicle. And then the two mating surfaces of this cone, the lower and bottom rings, we have to have those extremely parallel. Because when you're imparting eight and a half million pounds of thrust up through the structure, you don't want to have a bias to a particular zone that could fail the hardware. And so to achieve that, we had a TIG welder, an automatic TIG machine that had a little... What does TIG stand for? Do you know?

It's basically your standard welding, traditional welding. Yeah, fusion welding, if you will. But it had a little power takeoff end that we could put a machining bit on, and that's how we machined after we welded the rings onto the structure. We machined them to the parallelism requirement, and that same hardware was used to build the Saturn launch vehicle hardware as well. So we've got multiple connections back to the last exploration class vehicle that NASA fielded.

You've mentioned friction stir welding. That's a technology they didn't have back in the Saturn days, right? Exactly. And so that's another way we're able to save weight and be able to achieve more payload mass to orbit, if you will. And so basically what you do there is you take two aluminum plates, and we're doing the same thing for the core stage, the gas tank. You put two aluminum plates together,

and you have a pin tool that spins up to a relatively low RPM, and it heats up the metal, but it doesn't technically melt it. So it'll take it up to about 800, 900 degrees, very hot, mind you, but the melting temperature is somewhere around 1,100 degrees. So it doesn't melt. It doesn't alter the crystalline structure of it. It cools very quickly. Soon after it's done welding, you put your hand on it.

Very smooth, very robust weld. It's 10% stronger than a traditional fusion weld. And any time we can be more efficient with the structure, again, that's more payload that we can launch. Sure, come on through. We've got some people. This is a working environment. Finding their way through the tent here. What often doesn't show up when you look at hardware like this online,

you look at pictures in the media and so on, is what's going on inside here. All the electronics, all the control systems that are needed, What's going on inside here? All the electronics, all the control systems that are needed, which 50 years after Saturn have got to be a heck of a lot more advanced. They are more advanced, but you've still got to have cables. Like you said, you still have to have connectors, and that's a lot of weight too, mind you.

So remember, the core stage is a little different than the shuttle architecture where most of the brains, all the brains was in the shuttle. Here, those critical computers are in the core stage. And so we've got to pass those cables back and forth between the rocket and the crew capsule, the reason for building the launch vehicle. And so those have to pass through this structure here. So we've got connectors. There's kind of a lattice honeycomb structure inside of here. You can just make it out, yeah.

Yeah, so, you know, the panels are machined into that structure to eliminate weight. But where those ortho grid pockets come together, we can drill and tap those. In fact, the large holes you see there, forward and aft, there'll be doors there. But those can come off, and technicians will go in and attach platforms so they can do whatever work they have to on the upper stage that's nested inside this hardware. So we're setting up for all that type of work, and then what we're doing in this facility is when this vehicle reaches orbit, the separation plane is the top of this adapter.

So just like the upper stage that we procure from Boeing ULA, we're procuring that separation hardware as well, since that's what they use on the Delta IV the upper stage that we procure from Boeing ULA, we're procuring that separation hardware as well, since that's what they use on the Delta IV Heavy, upper stage the same, so it makes sense to use the same separation hardware. That's what we're installing in this facility is that separation hardware. Once it gets into orbit, it will separate. The upper stage will slowly be pushed out by some helium-driven pistons. And then once it's a safe distance away, that upper stage will light and put the crew capsule on its trajectory for the moon.

You're an integration guy, as well as all the other stuff you do. And I'm thinking of, just as it happened in the Apollo days, you've got all these different components coming together to make the Space Launch System. There are many of them being developed at different facilities by different teams. What do you do to make sure that when everything comes together, everything matches up the way it's supposed to? Communicate, communicate, communicate. So you have to have all the systems engineering processes and procedures in place. You have to have your engineering documentation that you can communicate to the launch side of how to stack and launch this hardware. But at the end of the day, it comes to that personal communication of this is what we're sending to you.

This is what it means. And help them understand what we're communicating to them in order for them to be able to successfully perform their duties. You think it's coming together well for EM-1, that first flight of this big new rocket next year? Yes, I do. Again, we've got hardware already at the Cape. We've got hardware in Utah ready to be shipped to the Cape. Those are the solid rocket motors. We've got the liquid engines that have been green-run and are packaged and protected,

ready to be shipped to the Cape to be launched. So all the pieces come together. It's a very complicated dance. There's a lot of choreography that has to come together. But again, communication is the key to making sure all that comes together successfully. And we're achieving our goals. Can't wait to see that launch, Andy. I hope I'm at the Cape to see it.

I do as well. Andy Schor at the Cape to see it. I do as well. Andy Shore at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Check out my photos on this week's show page found at planetary.org slash radio. Rocket and other hardware is treated with the greatest of respect at Marshall. Even old rocket engines that might have been broken down for scrap can become revered objects. As I saw when I joined Marshall's associate director technical in front of the center's headquarters building, Paul McConaughey has received NASA's Exceptional Service Medal three times.

In 2011, he received the Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Executive, the second highest award a president can bestow. You'll hear more about Paul's background when we go up to his office, but first... It's not modern art, but it is a form of rocket art. I think it's art. Okay, so to the left you see the space shuttle main engine. That's one of the residual engines that we have from that program. That engine is also being updated and used for the SLS program as being called the RS-25. So we plan on having four flight sets currently available for SLS, and we're also now in the process of restarting that production line

for future launches of that vehicle. In the middle, you see the F-1. You've seen the Saturn V. That's the workhorse that got the boost stage of the Saturn V up. And to the right, you see the J-2X, which was the second stage and the upper stage of the Saturn V. We have also updated that engine. It is now called the J-2X. That engine has been developed and is available for future stage development for the rocket community. So there's a little bit of history there you see standing in front of you, but it also leads to where we're going in the future based on the RS-25 and the SLS vehicle. Kind of an awe-inspiring experience to just stand in front of all three

of these, but particularly that one in the middle, that giant F-1 engine that got us to the moon. Yes, that is really a legacy as a historic engine. If you look at the history of rocketry, the size of that engine, the thrust level, and the fact that it did get us to the moon really is a legacy and a monument to the fact that it did get us to moon really is a legacy and a monument to the people that built it. Do you think that we will ever see a liquid-fueled rocket engine of that kind of scale again? Well, you currently have the RD-180, which gets about a million pounds thrust, but it is a multi-thrust chamber system. So a single-thrust chamber system like that on the F-1, that may be the last one we see in the future.

Currently, the rockets that you see on the drawing board do not have any single engines of that thrust level. So that RS-25 to its left, there'll be, what, four of those, I think, in the core stage of the SLS? Yes, there'll be four of those on the core stage of the SLS, giving us about a million pounds thrust, and those will be complemented by the five-segment boosters, so you'll see a total of about eight and a half million pounds thrust for the first stage and a half of the SLS. Which is more than the Saturn V, isn't it? Yes, so that configuration

gets us a significant amount of payload, more than the Saturn V, and it will evolve ultimately to 130 metric tons to lower Earth orbit, putting about 40 to 45 metric tons to a translunar injection. Headed into Marshall headquarters now. Paul's talking too fast or too low? Can you hear him okay? No, it's fine. It's perfect. Yeah.

Have you seen a model of the SLS? I have, but not a big one like this. Okay, so what you visited earlier today was that launch vehicle stage adapter. That is that cone on top underneath. So put that in scale. You were fairly tiny when you were standing next to that. If you put this in scale, the size of a human down there, you see the itty bitty man. Well, that's actually a six- foot man there standing against the launch vehicle. So Marshall Space Flight Center is working on this and currently developing it for a 2020 launch. We're also in the process of developing smaller

rockets like the Mars Ascent Vehicle, which is the vehicle that will return a Mars sample to an orbiter, which will then bring the Mars sample back to Earth. So the Mars Ascent Vehicle, that's about four and a half feet long, so it will be smaller than that human. And here you see the SLS. So we work on rockets and transportation systems that range from the very small to the very, very large. Sample return from Mars, of course, that's a holy grail for a lot of Mars scientists. It is. We're very excited about that. We're partnering and supporting JPL in that activity,

and we really want to see that mission go forward because that really is the next major step for our Mars exploration. That actually bridges our robotic program to the human exploration and Mars self-return, so we're quite excited about that. Absolutely. So where are we? Nice exhibit area here.

This is our Heritage Museum. And you see here, starting from this end of the display, the Saturn V, you've seen that or aware of that. But actually the history of that. Don't skip the Mercury Redstone. So it actually starts with the Mercury Redstone. It actually starts before then going to the Redstone and the V2. You're aware of the German team that came over from Panamandae, Wernher von Braun. They say von Braun here. The correct pronunciation is probably Von Brown.

But he was our first center director, and he basically established the trajectory, the skills, and the forward path for the center. And we continue to maintain his legacy and his vision. So you see the transportation systems going from the Redstone to the Saturn V to the shuttle. These are in chronological order. We've also established a significant science capability. You've talked earlier to Adam about the gamma-ray burst monitor, but the legacy of Marshall goes not only to the gamma rays but also X-rays.

We developed the Chandra Observatory here at Marshall. Another of the great observatories. One of the great observatories. And before that, we developed the Hubble Space Telescope, which was the first great observatory that worked the visible part of the spectrum. It's hard to imagine anything else that has gone into space that has inspired the general public more than the work done by the Hubble. I would agree with that.

It's amazing how long it has lasted. I think it's outlived its predicted life, and it continues to do great science. I know the plan right now is even to continue some of the science, even as James Webb is operable. So we see it continuing on and continue to inspire in the visible spectrum. I was going to ask you about that. If its life, fingers crossed, is going to extend into the time the James Webb Space Telescope, which, of course, has now unfortunately been delayed a little bit further so we

really need the Hubble to keep working. Right so right now the Hubble we're looking at potential deorbit starting in around 2023 I think there's a decision going forward as to whether we whether we do or deorbit or reboost with Webb land launching in 2021 we expect operations to begin late 2021 after six months of commissioning. So hopefully there'll be some overlap between James Webb and Hubble Space Telescope. Nice model of the International Space Station there too. I mean, you know, we have to remember, oh, we're headed to talk about that? So let's start off the human spaceflight legacy. Sure. So I was just going to say, I mean, it's, we have to remind ourselves that there are people

living in that right of our heads right now. Right. So that history and heritage goes back to Skylab, which was basically a little space lab, which is adapted to a stage on the Saturn V. So Skylab really was the first space station in humanity's experience. You saw that we had an initial problem there with one of the solar arrays and thermal panels, but it was a very successful program. It really was the first long-term experiment of humans living in space. We then evolved to the space lab activities on a shuttle where we could then do a lot of these space science experiments on shuttle

in a laboratory environment. And Marshall worked very closely with the JSC folks in terms of developing that, doing experiments there, and operating that within a shuttle mission time frame. And this is the lab that lived in the shuttle payload bay? Yes, it lived in the shuttle payload bay. Astronauts would move from the mid-deck into the space lab and do their experiments in there, and we operated those experiments from here at Marshall. You surely have seen the video of the astronauts enjoying themselves,

even running around that track, sort of providing their own artificial gravity. This was so far ahead of its time, it seems to me, and also maybe the greatest example of repurposing in the history of the space program. Yes, so that was, you're right, that was the example of repurposing, is how do you take hardware that we currently have available, how do you adapt it and modify it for a different purpose? In fact, it was such a good idea that there are a couple two companies right now that do have upper stage experience and hardware, and they're looking at how to repurpose their upper stages for in-space habitat applications. So we just came a little bit ago today from that big bay where we saw a mock-up of a HAB that could go up on the SLS, and it dwarfs all of these.

Yes, that was the 8.4-meter diameter mock-up that we have. That would have been, if you took a SLS upper stage or a configuration on top of SLS, that's what the habitat would look like. One of the challenges is the space community basically works around a 5-meter diameter, and actually space stations are significantly smaller. Typically we're seeing habitats around a 5, 5.5 meter. If we go to a 7 meter diameter, which is currently would fit in the payload bay of an SLS or is a diameter of the New Glenn upper stage for Blue Origin,

we could have a larger habitat configuration. And yeah, if you're an astronaut, more room is better. Yes. But if you're managing mass, you know, volume then becomes a mass challenge. So there's really a trade there between diameter, what the crew can stand over a long period versus what we can really launch and maintain for a long mission in space. Nice to have that room too if you're going to spend a couple years getting to Mars and back.

Yes. And given my choice, I'll take the large diameter. I'm just one voice in the equation in discussion. I think you've got lots of company. Into Marshall's headquarters we went for the ride up to Paul McConaughey's office with a sweeping view of Marshall and the Redstone Arsenal. Paul picked up by telling me more about his job. I get to oversee the programmatmatic and the technical capabilities at the center and kind of keep my eye on how the program and technical performance

is at the center and making sure we're on track for all those activities. 32 years, starting here at Marshall, right? But you spent some time at NASA headquarters as well. Yes. So when I finished off my PhD at Cornell, I went to Mississippi State, was a professor there for a few years, and then had the option to come to Marshall and do spaceflight hardware. And to me, that was a nice trade between a bunch of research papers versus hardware. So I chose the hardware. And I've been lucky in my career. I've had a couple stints at headquarters.

The most recent one was being the director of cross-program system integration for the SLS ground systems and Orion programs. And I was also chief engineer for that program. So I was up there for three years on that assignment and then moved here to this current position as associate director. That role of integration, it came up when we were talking with Andy Shore, because when you're pulling together a system as complex as SLS and different components being built all over the place and Orion as well, which is not only being built in the US, but the service module that's coming from the European Space Agency. How do you stay on top of this? How do you make sure that when it all comes together,

it all fits? So that's an excellent question. And it's a big challenge. Needless to say, requires very cognizant, engaged engineers and leadership. So you're forcing communication, and that communication allows you to understand what issues you need to be working at the interfaces. And then you also, at each one of these activities, who is the lead for that activity? So with respect to SLS, Orion, and ground systems at the Cape, and even between Orion and the Europeans, you identify who's the lead and who's the responsible party and then the integration committee then respects that integration lead and they line up with respect to that both in terms of their communications and their support for the

interfaces. But we're managing predominantly interfaces and when it becomes a larger system model we've identified who really owns that system model and then holds the people underneath that accountable. It's a little bit different than the shuttle model, and it's more like the Apollo model in terms of how it's managed. If you think about the Saturn V and Apollo, there was a very discrete single interface between Apollo and the Saturn V. Similarly for SLS and Orion, there's a very discrete single interface, a little more complex with the ground system. Okay. Needless to say,

there's a lot of software talking there and there's a lot of umbilicals that have to dance at the right time, but they're making it work and it is a challenge. And so far it's worked out very well. I'm so glad that you brought up Apollo and looking back to the legacy that was left us, that last biggest rocket, which someday SLS will surpass. What did we learn during the Apollo era that is now informing our development of the space launch system? So what we learned on Apollo was a lot of the complexities of a very large, lightweight structure and how you fly that and guide it with a very complex and powerful propulsion system. So what we learned is how do you fly an egg, right? How do you fly an egg? It's almost ready to break apart.

Well, it's not going to really break apart. But it's a very lightweight structure that you have to manage both the dynamics and the controls of that. And so that's one of the things we learned on Apollo. We then moved those lessons learned to Shuttle. We had some of the sort of challenges on Shuttle, and now we're moving those over to SLS. So a lot of the things that we've learned in terms of the architecture, vehicle dynamics, and propulsion dynamics have directly had that lineage from Saturn to the SLS. I also think of what it took in terms of development of project management in Apollo. Are we still benefiting from some of those advances? Yeah, so the legacy of that whole management model is in place. We basically still have the same roles of responsibility as a project manager and then

the program manager and how the responsibilities then flow down to the elements of the projects underneath that. And the integration activity you talked about earlier is that challenge of how you bring those elements together for a system, both at the SLS level and then the Orion SLS and ground systems level.

So we're in a building that is where the office of the first director of the Marshall Space Flight Center was, a name that is known to just about everybody who'd listen to this show. You said Von Braun might actually be the better of pronunciation, but Von Braun is how we know it. It's how the locals here pronounce it, Von Braun. And I will later today be talking to Senator Doug Jones across the table that he used, apparently, to plan the Saturn V. I mean, it is evidence of the amazing legacy of this place, the Marshall Space Flight Center. Yeah, so when I first came and worked here, I actually hired in and my division chief was the last working

original member of the German rocket team from Penemunde. He was a young aerodynamicist. I hired into the fluid dynamics division and had the honor and learning experience of working for him. You see a lot of the questions and the way people run meetings, the discussions in the meetings here go back to the example that Von Braun said about always being inquisitive, asking good questions, and being open to communication. We try to maintain that legacy and operational model here at the center. You know, I'm glad you mentioned fluid dynamics. I'm going to go a little bit far afield here for a moment because I know that's kind of where you started, as you just said. And I think of it every time I pour cream into coffee and how incredibly complex that field is still and how hard it is to model.

And yet it is so important. I don't think it gets the attention it deserves if you want to do something like build a gigantic rocket. Or pour a cup of coffee. Or pour a cup. Yeah, so it is one of the critical disciplines that enable rocketry, right? It's not just what goes around the rocket, but what goes on inside the rocket. And one of our challenges as a community was being able to predict how flow occurs and what happens to flows in the engine and what happens to that structure

as the flow goes around the various parts and components. Early on, there was a lot of testing in the Saturn program and also in the Shuttle program. As time has gone on, our analytical tool capability has increased. We're trying to do less testing and trying to support some of the risk assessment with analysis. So we now see that analysis plays a larger role in development, and also that combined with some of our advanced manufacturing capabilities, we now get the development time of a rocket engine maybe down from maybe eight years, nine years, down to two or three years for some of the smaller engines. So some of these advancements

in design capability, analysis, and advanced manufacturing have really allowed us to lower the turn time for some of these subsystems. Back specifically to SLS, it is making use of what we learned and what was developed for the space transportation system, the shuttle. You were showing me the engine outside, that RS-25, which is derived from the main engine for the space shuttle. Could we be developing SOS now in the time frame that it's happening and the price range that is happening if we didn't have these legacy components? No, I don't think so. That's one of the reasons we picked some legacy components is because engine development is a non-trivial exercise, right? Especially when you're dealing with a

half a million pound thrust hydrogen engine. Clearly a solid rocket motor of the size of the current motors that we have is a whole development legacy into itself. It's the largest solid rocket motor in the world, right? Using that capability and building off that has enabled us to make better progress, faster progress in the SLS system, where the challenge is, is in the core stage, where now you're dealing with the largest hydrogen tank we've ever built. It's a very large structure on the order of 230 feet long. And not only is it a cryogenic structure, much like we had on the external tank with shuttle, but now you're integrating an engine section like we used to have on the orbiter. And you also have the whole brains on how to run it.

So a core stage is not just an external tank like we had on shuttle, but it's more a combination of the propulsion system and the avionics and the intelligence to run the stage. And that's such an important distinction because, yeah, we're making use of some of that, a lot of what we learned and some of those components updated. But this is still a new rocket. We know from experience, any time that you take on developing something with lots of new technology, it could be the James Webb Space Telescope, in this case, the Space Launch System,

it takes time, and it often takes more time than you might have originally thought. Do you think that's just part of the development process? Because I know that you guys, as much as anybody in Congress, let's say, want to get this rocket built and get it up into space. Yes. So we worry schedule a lot, and we do our best in terms of planning. But there are often unplanned surprises in any development system, especially for large, complex space systems. And what we've seen with James Webb and what we've seen with SLS are some of these unknown surprises. We've also had that in commercial crew, right?

We've planned a flying commercial crew two years earlier. So we're finding these challenges, and the hardware is not always easy as we look. and the hardware is not always easy as we look. Maybe it's optimistic planning, but a lot of it is finding those unknowns that you really don't know about ahead of time or plan for. An example would be on the tank welding for the current hydrogen tank. We ended up welding thicker structural lands

or well lands than we ever have in the past. Instead of going from a half inch, we went up to five eighths of an inch. Well, it turned out that extra added thickness gave us a challenge that we weren't ready for, and it cost us some time in terms of schedule to sort out that welding process on the friction-stirred welding tool at Michoud Assembly Facility. That was a lesson learned. We didn't plan on that, but we're stepping into an area of welding things robotically, friction-stirred welding of robotic structures thicker than we've ever welded before.

So we had some things to learn before we sort it all out. One thing about NASA, it has always done a good job of documenting process like this. So how do you think what we are learning and even the problems that we're learning from the challenges, the unexpected challenges that are coming up. How is this going to inform us and help us in the future as we head out across the solar system? The downside of a first build is running into these challenges. The upside of the second and third build is hopefully you've got it right, and it's basically then becomes a production process. So the positive aspect is we'll use everything we've learned on build one, so that build two, three, four, five, and six will be significantly faster and hopefully of lower cost.

We also take the lessons learned that we have on SLS, and we share those openly with industry, whether it's Blue Origin, SpaceX, Northrop Grumman. We're very open about sharing what we've learned. And it's not really just a NASA lesson learned, but it really becomes a U.S. industrial-based lesson learned. I'll give you a great example. I was at SpaceX, this is years ago, and they were developing the Dragon capsule from that company. Their head of structural engineering told me, first thing they did was they bought all the old Apollo documentation, you know, like four feet of documentation. And they learned a lot from what NASA had to learn the hard way by building Apollo and building the command module.

Right. So similarly, a lot of our technologies that we've developed, we put on, we make those available to industry. There's also a continuous move of personnel. So we may train somebody here, and they may go to industry after spending five or ten years here, and they become very productive in the industry. So that's also part of how we transfer knowledge within the community is doing a technology and then moving that, even though it may not have flown within a NASA mission, it then becomes a technology that moves to industry.

Industry is a partner in doing it, but it's also personnel and that corporate memory that moves across the industrial base in the nation. And that's okay with you guys? Absolutely. Absolutely. We're actually, that's part of our chartering job. As we proceed toward EM-1, Exploration Mission 1, which is still going to take us out, not humans, but take us out around the moon. How is it looking? Actually looking pretty good. We were down at Michoud Assembly Facility earlier this week

looking at the core stage as it's being assembled. We're ready to move the structural test article for the hydrogen tank up here to Marshall. And we just recently completed the avionics integration into the forward skirt. And so we're quite happy to get these large piece parts put together and ready for final integration to the whole core stage so core stage is looking pretty good in terms of the hardware the boosters are almost completely cast and being ready to ship to the cape the upper stage is already at the cape ready for flight the orion stage adapter is there for flight and the four engines are already there at the Cape ready to be installed for flight.

So we're quite a ways along. Similarly for Orion, I think they're in final integration of that spacecraft. So we're excited to pull those together and then also put them together at the Cape. I don't want to give anybody the idea that SLS is the only thing going on here at Marshall, because we've already gotten good evidence of much of the breadth of work that is underway here. And we're going to go from your office to seeing where science is run, at least from the ground, up on the ISS. That's always been true of this place, hasn't it? Yeah, so we've talked about the legacy of our larger space science activity,

but we also have had a major role in payload ops and science on human habitats. An example would be starting with Skylab. There was some science done on Skylab by those folks. Then we moved to SpaceLab on the shuttle. And then as Space Station Comma came along, Marshall was responsible for the payload ops integration. JSC is responsible for the flight ops, mission ops. Marshall does the payload ops where all the science and the station utilization occurs. whether that investigator's in a university, at another NASA center, or within a company,

to be the interface between that principal investigator and the execution of that experiment on science. And so they're that bridge in how they execute and implement that on station. And they work very closely with the astronauts and both the PIs. So that's quite an exciting area. You'll see there's about 100 civil servants and about 500 contractors down there. It's a very large facility, very active, and you'll see one room, but that one room has tentacles all over the world. It also acts as the backup facility in case JSC gets hit by a hurricane. They bring their personnel up here, and then they can then run station from the flight perspective and mission perspective from here. That's interesting.

I mean, of course, you'd want that kind of redundancy, wouldn't you? Yes. One that we just reported on a few weeks ago, the Cold Atom Lab, such a great example of the kind of science that can only be done in microgravity in a place like the ISS. Yeah, so the experiments on station are really fascinating. They go, obviously, from the physical science, as you talked about there. We do a lot of the combustion device experiments, how flames propagate in a zero-g environment. Fluid dynamics, we talked about the fascinating fluid dynamics experiments on station.

In many respects, the astronauts themselves become a life science experiment. Yeah, yeah. So the whole fact of Scott Kelly and his Russian counterpart spending a whole year on a station. And the data we got from that was a very rich data set for how we then extrapolate human exploration to Mars and for moon. So we're quite excited about the station experiments, both the small, the big, the physical, and the biological. You had a big day here just two days ago. The new NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine, was here checking things out. He seems like a real space geek, I mean, in the most positive way, like I am. Yeah, so we had an opportunity to spend a couple days with Jim. He was down at the Michoud Assembly Facility looking

at the hardware down there for SLS, and he came up here and spent some time with the folks, had a press conference, toured some of the facilities, talked to employees. He really is a space enthusiast. He's quite knowledgeable and he's also a great leader. And we view him as interfacing with both the White House and the Congress in a very positive sense, representing NASA's capabilities, but also not only that, but also leading us and focusing on exploring the Moon, the cislunar environment, developing a capability there, and then taking that experience and moving on to Mars. So he's really presenting a focused vision for the agency around human exploration and how we're going to execute that through the current SLS system,

partnering with commercial entities, developing the gateway, and moving on to the moon and then Mars. So it's actually quite exciting to see that focus and how well it's communicated by our leader do you think we're on the right pathway to getting boots up on the red planet yes now that that is a loaded question I'm acutely aware of that because in theory you don't need to go to the moon to go to Mars right we've seen the architectures you can go directly to go to the moon to go to Mars, right? We've seen the architectures, you can go directly to Mars. On the other hand, putting humans into a three-year mission without mitigating some of that risk ahead of time,

so I think it's good to go back to the moon to get that risk mitigation for humans. There are also a lot of things about the moon we don't know, right? The more we explore it, the more surprised we become. So I expect as a scientist that we will see things on the moon that we've never seen before, and hopefully they'll be very positive. I'm still excited about going to Mars. I'm a big Mars fan myself because I'm big on carbon and hydrocarbons, amino acids, those things that hopefully will lead us to understand human and planetary evolution in greater detail.

It's a big job. Sounds like you're enjoying yourself, though. I am. Hopefully a little more time to enjoy myself here at Marshall. Thank you, Paul. Very good. Thank you, sir. Marshall Space Flight Center Associate Director Technical Paul McConaughey.

We got back in the car for a short drive to yet another of Marshall's many buildings. This was the International Space Station Payload Operations Center. Inside was a control room that had much in common with one you might see at the Johnson Space Center or JPL. Lots of consoles, lots of big flat-screen video displays, and a collection of men

and women managing and monitoring the many research efforts underway on the ISS. Mark McElyea joined me just outside in a viewing gallery. He is Associate Director for the Payload Operations Division. So always one of my favorite things is visiting a place like this with lots of consoles and people sitting behind them doing important work and in your case talking to people living a couple of hundred miles over our heads right now. Yeah, it's a lot of exciting things are going on here. What we're looking at right

now is the payload operations integration center that is part of the International Space Station program. What we do here is we manage the science that goes on on Space Station. Space Station is first and foremost a spacecraft, but then what we're doing is we're trying to get all the utilization that we can accomplished with, then, you know, we bring home information and data that's of scientific importance to all of our scientists who are distributed across the world. You will be happy to hear that on Planetary Radio, we love to talk about science going on in the ISS. It was only a few weeks ago we did a show that covered two things.

The sextant, that is more for the astronauts to practice their celestial navigation, but especially the cold atom lab. The idea is that this is where that gets coordinated with what the scientists on the ground, the principal investigators? That's right, Matt. Through the history of the program, we've got over 2,000 science users that have flown instruments on space station, have been able to bring home, you know, important science that helps in medical research, that helps in materials research, astrophysics, almost any dimension of science that you can think of. You know, there's been something that has been done on space station for that. Right now, the astronauts are working with a science instrument called SPHERES. It's a technology demonstration primarily, but we've used it as a platform to do fluid

studies, understand how chemicals mix. It free floats, free floats in there, and because of that, you know, it lends itself to a lot of different kinds of things. We've got human research. Human research is really important, not only for terrestrial applications, but also for the long-term exploration of space. Yeah. And that's a lot of what's happening on the ISS. We're learning how to send people, healthy people, to and from Mars, right? That's right. You know, when you start going to Mars, you know, it's long duration. You're

looking at a mission that to get there is a long time. You're going to stay there for a long time and get back. So you're looking at something, you know, on the order of a year and a half to two years for the entire duration. During that time, you're in microgravity. You're also in a high radiation environment. Then you have the issues of a small crew far away from home. There's a lot of things that we'll be able to learn and have learned from Space Station. Then you have the issues of a small crew far away from home. There's a lot of things that we'll be able to learn and have learned from Space Station. And then the newest project that we're planning here at NASA, we call it the Deep Space Gateway,

which is basically a smaller kind of space station in cislunar orbit that will be preparing the way for eventually surface operations on the moon and then later looking at transitioning to a journey to Mars. So I'm distracted here because we just had an astronaut float by and there he is going the other way. That's live? That is live. Yes. These guys, the live video is the SPHERES experiment that I mentioned earlier. He's got a SPHERES he's carrying there as he floats through the ISS. Yes, so SPHERES, it consists of three SPHERES.

They're about 21 centimeters in diameter. They co-locate each other. They use ultrasound communication. They also use wireless communication. And then they're tethered. You're looking at things like tethered dynamics. One of the things that you get into is with satellite repair, repair of spacecraft. You may want to send a tethered robot out and in order to do the repair you need to understand the dynamics so you can build a better

control system. And I did mention earlier that since these things are free floating they make a good platform for certain kinds of experiments, fluid studies, things like that. Astronauts, as a rule, they're pretty smart. Oh, yeah. There are lots of engineers. A few of them are scientists. But they're going to have to work with stuff in fields like, you know, biological fields, medical fields, that they may not have no expertise in. They have to get these experiments accomplished

on behalf of scientists who don't get the privilege of going up there. That's right. You guys are the interface. That's right. One of the things that goes on before we fly a mission is we have astronaut training. Astronaut training, of course, it's on the spacecraft itself. You have to know how to live and work in space. But the big thing for us is the science utilization. And so a lot of the science utilization happens at scientist home sites. We do some training on what we call facility class payloads. These are things that support science but aren't science in themselves, like a glove box. Yeah. Okay, so you can put science inside. So we do a lot of that kind of training at Johnson Space Center in the training facility there.

There's just a lot of training that goes into getting these astronauts ready. We also have onboard training, so they can refresh themselves through these videos and things on their laptop computers right before they run it. And then during the execution of the science activities, they're in communication here with the Pilot Ops Integration Center. We have a flight controller called the PACOM who can talk to them, answer questions, and it's very common for us to enable the scientists at their user site to actually speak directly with astronauts to help

answer questions and provide guidance on whatever kind of procedure or activity they're trying to perform. One of the things that I feel like is really important and we should never lose sight of is the amount of international cooperation that's going on. We've got our international partners and you know they have contributed financially and they really contribute to what I say to the spirit of what Space Station is and you see you just see a lot of joy when we have payload working groups. You see a lot of camaraderie between the flight crews. This is beginning to extend now to the Gateway

project. You know, as we go and we build surface capabilities on the moon, and eventually when we go to Mars, I mean, I think you will see that international cooperation continuing. It's a really good thing. They put the I in ISS. They do. I'm also thinking of, oh, and I'm still distracted because now floating up into the foreground in one of these shots is one of those little red spheres. There you go. And it's free floating. It's flying itself around. Right. Another interesting thing about the SPHERES experiments is we let schools, and this can be colleges, universities, and even high schools, get an opportunity from time to time to conduct experiments with SPHERES. So this is part of our outreach, and it also really helps younger people, you know,

get engaged in the scientific, technical, engineering, math kind of area. One of the things that some of the schools have done is they've developed control algorithms for these spheres. And so it's a software program that they can uplink and then see how it flies. So this improves, you know, this is engineering. It helps their understanding of flight dynamics and dynamics of a device like this in a, you know, microgravity environment. So I think at the other end of the spectrum, in terms of your customers, if you will, are I'm thinking like pharmaceutical companies doing biomedical research up there. Yeah, there's a lot going on.

We've even flown, within the last year, we've flown a DNA synthesizer. Dr. Kate Rubins operated that. There always has been interest in human life sciences, but you're beginning to see a lot of interest, you know, in the DNA kind of research and that dimension going on. One of the things that's going on in the medical field is personalized medicine. There's a lot of companies that are doing ground-based research to try to come up with better ways to treat cancer and other diseases through personalized medicine. They can analyze your DNA and then customize treatment to it. There are companies out there that believe that microgravity can give birth to some new ideas and a better understanding of how some of that kind of stuff

works. This going on 24-7? It goes on 24 by 7. The astronauts, now they typically work their day shift, which from here in Huntsville, Alabama, is 1 a.m. in the morning until about 3, 4 o'clock in the afternoon. While the crew is awake, we have the payload communicator position operational. They handle space to ground with the astronauts. Any communication on science that's required drives us to try to schedule that science activity while the crew is awake. The rest of the time, there's a lot of instruments that have been set up, and they're internal to space station, and they're running. They might be material science experiments.

They might be plant growth experiments, things like that that can continue. External on the truss, we have Earth observation. We have solar observation, we have some astrophysics experiments out there taking data. It's just really exciting. Awful lot going on up there. Paul McConaughey said something interesting, which is that, God forbid, something bad happens at Johnson Space Center, they can move up here and you can take on the operations side as well. Yeah, that's right. We've got the ability to bring up the backup control center for the mission control in Houston. Things like hurricanes, fires, you know, things that could happen in the facility,

then they can deploy here. We can have the facility up and operational in a couple of hours. Houston people will come. It'll be a small group initially, and then they can bring their whole team here and operate. And we have another control room behind the one you're seeing that we use for mission simulations. But in the event we have to activate that backup control center, then it serves that purpose. How long have you been here? I was here 39 years in May of this year. No kidding. Congratulations. Thank you. It's been a wonderful career. I live close by, and so Marshall Space Flight Center has been an influence on me really my whole life. We were testing Apollo engines, Saturn V engines here when I was a child,

and you could feel the house rumble as they fired. And I was all about space and the early space missions, so went to the University of Alabama in Huntsville, became a co-op student here. And I guess they liked me. They offered me a job, and I'm still here. Thank you for sharing some of that enthusiasm for all this stuff that you work on, like I said, up above our heads. Well, you know, the space station to me is a personal passion. Thank you, Mark.

All right. Thanks, Matt. Enjoyed it. Mark McElyea of the Marshall Space Flight Center. As you heard from Paul McConaughey, Marshall is much more than human spaceflight. So I'm Adam Goldstein. I work for University Space Research Association, and I'm a member of the Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor Team here at Marshall Space Flight Center. So the USRA, which has come up before on our show because it has hands, fingers into all kinds of things going on in space research and in astronomy, right? That's correct. It was started right around the Apollo program, and it was sort of stood up to get universities to work with NASA and help analyze

and do science with NASA. So long history, but a lot of stuff still going on and more to come. In this case, specifically, tell us about Fermi. So Fermi is a gamma-ray space telescope. It's sort of one of the premier gamma-ray space telescopes operating right now. And there's two instruments. The main instrument on board is the Large Area Telescope. So it can see a large fraction of the sky. It studies not just the galaxy, but the rest of the universe at very high energies. The other instrument on board, which I work on, is the gamma-ray burst monitor. And it actually monitors the entire sky that's not blocked by the Earth. So that's about two-thirds of the sky at any one time. It monitors it for transient phenomena like gamma-ray bursts. We also

see things like solar flares, and we see things called terrestrial gamma ray flashes, which are associated with thunderstorms on Earth. So I'm going to guess that you work very closely collaboratively with another spacecraft called Swift. That's correct. So Swift is a very complementary spacecraft. So they also detect gamma ray bursts. They don't see the entire sky like GBM does. And they operate at a little bit lower energies. But they're complementary in that they can get a much better location on the sky for the gamma ray burst. And then we can do a lot of the spectral and timing analysis. Your instrument would catch something happening over in the sky. And these are transient things. They don't last long. Let Swift know.T swings over there and takes a closer look.

Yes. In fact, that's exactly what happens. So we have a real-time pipeline that's built. So we can trigger on board the spacecraft and we send down these alerts to the ground. And this whole ground pipeline basically is automated so that Swift and other telescopes on the ground receive these alerts and they can point their telescopes at a particular part of the sky to try to find this event. Remind me and the audience about GRBs, gamma ray bursts, because they're fascinating. I guess we're closing in on figuring out what causes them, but you don't want to be too close because if you're within, what, fewer than a few light years away, or maybe a lot of light years, it can ruin your whole day. Yeah, so gamma ray bursts are really, really cool. They are the most

powerful explosions that we've ever observed in the universe. Observationally, we found that there's two distinct types of gamma ray bursts, what we call long gamma ray bursts. These can last for several seconds. And then there's the short duration gamma ray burst, which can last a fraction of a second. And we think that these two have two different origins. So long gamma ray bursts, we think, originate from massive, massive stars. At the end of their lives, they collapse down and form a black hole. And this black hole, you have all this matter from the dead star accreting onto the black hole, and it drives these jets out from the dying star at very close to the speed of light. For short-duration gamma-ray bursts, we think that these are the merging of compact objects, like two neutron stars.

These are very compact, very dense stars. And when they merge, they also, we think, form a black hole. And the accretion of the neutron star material onto that black hole, again, drives these jets. So with the first of those, the collapse of a star into a black hole, you get these jets of energy and other stuff coming basically sort of out of the poles, right, perpendicular to the rotation of the object? Right, yeah. So that's currently the thought is that the ejecta, the jets,

are shooting out around the rotation axis of the star, and it may be aided by some magnetic field that is surrounding the star as well. I mean, I was making jokes about can ruin your whole day, but you really don't want to be in the line of one of those beams of gamma rays. Right. That's exactly correct. So we're asked all the time about, you know, what's the chance of Earth getting hit by gamma ray bursts? It's incredibly low, which is good. You know, to be in danger, we wouldn't want one in our galaxy. More than a few light years, maybe 100,000 or a million light years.

Right. So we wouldn't want one in our galaxy for sure. The good thing is that our galaxy, we don't think, hosts the type of stars that are likely to produce gamma ray bursts. So that's very good news for us. I'll say. Is this now settled, the thinking that these shorter gamma ray bursts, that that is caused by the collision of two things like two neutron stars? Or is that still up in the air, so to speak? So it's a very good question. And today is a very good day to be asking that question because exactly one year ago today, August 17th, 2017, we had a gamma ray burst on board the spacecraft, on board GBM, which is pretty ordinary. It was a short duration gamma-ray burst, but at the same time we had an alert

from LIGO, the Gravitational Wave Observatory, that they detected gravitational waves from the same part of the sky at the same time. Putting the information together from the gravitational waves and the gamma rays, we can deduce that this gamma ray burst was produced by the merging of two neutron stars. So yes, we now know that at least some short-duration gamma ray bursts are produced by merging neutron stars. And I read about this, and I don't think it's gotten the attention that it deserves, because I think this is one of the most awesome scientific achievements ever. It is definitely the first time that gravitational waves in conjunction with another what we call messenger, so light, neutrinos, gravitational waves are all different messengers. It's the

first time that gravitational waves have conclusively been detected along with light. been detected along with light. And this goes far beyond telling us about gamma ray bursts. We can actually use the arrival time of the gravitational waves and the light to test Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. So we know now to better than one part in one quadrillion that gravitational waves travel at the speed of light. Gold Albert, everybody's testing all the time, and so far he stands up pretty well. He was a pretty smart guy. Where does Fermi fit into sort of the constellation of great space telescopes like Hubble? And I'm thinking of others that have been put up by NASA, infrared and other portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

So Fermi, I think, is a pretty unique instrument. Unfortunately, we don't create pretty pictures of the sky because we see the sky in gamma rays, and there's not as many gamma ray photons coming from the sky as there are optical photons that Hubble sees. But Fermi operates in this high- energy regime where there's lots of really interesting stuff going on. So Fermi, of course, is looking for counterparts to gravitational waves, which we saw last year. Just about a month after that, Fermi also saw a hint, the Large Area Telescope on Fermi saw a hint of gamma rays associated with neutrinos that were also detected by IceCube, a neutrino detector in Antarctica. I like to call it the

multi-messenger observatory because gamma rays play a central part in multi-messenger astrophysics in that the most powerful explosions and the most powerful astrophysical phenomena produce gravitational waves and neutrinos. And these different messengers can tell us a lot about the universe that we can't just figure out from light by itself. It's hard to believe that it really wasn't that many years ago when everything that we learned about stuff outside our solar system was just visible light. about stuff outside our solar system was just visible light. Yeah, gravitational waves and neutrinos have really opened up a whole other part of the universe. And it's pretty exciting to look at the future and see what's going on. You know, NASA is getting ready for its decadal survey to figure out what the next big missions are going to be planned. And for sure,

multi-messenger astrophysics goes into this. Gravitational wave observatories, so the LISA Observatory, these are a gravitational wave observatory that's going to be flown in space, operated by the European Space Agency, but also with contributions from NASA. There's a lot of people planning right now for astrophysics missions to work complementary with LISA and with other gravitational wave missions of the future. Just one more question. What's the connection between Fermi and where we are now, Marshall Space Flight Center? GBM was built and designed by the team here at Marshall, which kind of has a history with gamma ray bursts.

So the BATSE burst and transient source experiment on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory was also designed and built and operated from Marshall. This group here has a lot of heritage with gamma ray bursts and with high energy transient phenomena. Thank you so much. Keep scanning the skies. Yeah, definitely. Thank you. Adam Goldstein of the University Space Research Association and a member of the Fermi spacecraft team.

I am tremendously grateful to everyone who made my visit to the Marshall Space Flight Center so interesting and inspiring. Again, photos of the trip are waiting for you on this week's episode page at planetary.org slash radio. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. So we are back with the chief scientist for the Planetary Society. That's Bruce Betts here once again to tell us about the night sky. And we've got a contest to answer and a new one to throw at you that is just moments away. All kinds of good stuff. Welcome back.

Thank you, Matt. I got lost there for a moment. Could you tell? Yes, I did. You really need your radio GPS. I need you to guide me through the stars. That's what I need. Oh, let me do that.

You know, we've got the moon going to hang out with some planets coming up here. So the moon in the evening sky will be near super bright Venus on the 12th of September. And Venus will be low in the west in the early evening. And then Jupiter the next night on its celestial way on the 13th of September, and then we'll move and eventually get near Saturn and Mars, which also are extending across the evening sky. We move on to this week in space history. It's a special day, especially for you, Matt. No, not the birth of either of your daughters, the birth of Star Trek, 1966. Thank you very much for remembering. It's always good to think of that. And what does that make?

52 years now, 52 years. Wow, that's old. Yeah. Well, and even Shatner is starting to show it. Yeah, maybe. Also this week in less important news was the launch of Voyager 1 in 1977. Still working, just like the Star Trek franchise. Yeah, and doesn't look like its age as much as Shatner.

True, but we haven't really gotten a good look at it in a while. That's true. There are no mirrors out there. But Voyager 1 did look good on T.J. Hooker. Really weird. Jumping over the hoods of cars, right? Go ahead. We move on to random space fact. Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.

Okay. So keeping us in the Voyager 1 theme, I thought it was about time to check back in on our most distant human made object. As of now, September 2018, Voyager 1 is more than 143 AU from the sun. AU is an earth sun distance. It's 143 times farther from the sun than the earth is, or that's also more than 28 times the sun Jupiter distance, or more than 4.7 times the Neptune sun distance. It is out there, especially in solar system scale terms. As always, what amazes me as much as anything is that we can still hear it with the tiny, what is it, 20-something watt transmitter that it has. That's just, what a wonderful accomplishment by the Deep Space Network.

It really is. Yeah, you can also download it via podcast these days. So anyway, moving on to the trivia contest, I asked you who was the Spitzer Space Telescope named after? And I warned that I needed more than just someone named Spitzer. So at least a first name. How do we do? I got to read this one first from Mark Dunning in Ormond Beach, Florida. He says, well, it is a guy named Spitzer after all. And then he goes on to talk about Lyman Spitzer.

That was not our winner. No, not Mark. It was Robert Laporta, a longtime listener and a first-time winner in Avon, Connecticut, who said Lyman Spitzer was the astronomer who had promoted the concept of space telescopes way back in the 1940s. In fact, he wrote a report for the RAND Corporation in 1946 describing the advantages of an extraterrestrial observatory, and there was a direct line from there to the Hubble Space Telescope and all the others. By the way, that paper was called The Astronomical Advantages of an Extraterrestrial Observatory. Thank you, Jeremiah Johnson in Madison, Wisconsin, for providing that little factoid. And that's all correct by you, isn't it? That is totally correct. Then congratulations are

definitely due to Robert Laporta. Robert, we're going to send you a Planetary Radio t-shirt and a 200-point itelescope.net account. More about those in a moment. Ertan Yuzak in Phoenix, Arizona, said that he did not know that Spitzer had also founded the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. So his contributions, this guy really got around. He did a lot of amazing stuff. We heard from Joel Murray or Joe Murray in Hoboken and Nathan Hunter. Spitzer, also quite the mountaineer. He was the first to ascend with a guy named Donald Morton

Mount Thor, which happens to be the highest vertical rise of any mountain on this planet. It's up on Baffet Island, part of Canada. Seems like an amazing, amazing individual. And then, you know, I thought I had it here, but somebody else said, I think it might have been Mark Little from Northern Ireland said, he also did pioneering work on the development of sonar. So a renaissance guy. Totally.

They should name something after him. Yeah, let's get around to that. Alright, move on to the next trivia contest. Come back to Voyager and how it communicates. What is the diameter of the Voyager 1 or Voyager 2 high-gain antenna? Voyager 1 or Voyager 2 high-gain antenna diameter? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. You know, that's a very good one. I could not tell you off the top of my head. It's probably bigger than the top of my head, if I remember correctly.

I was just wondering, is it bigger than your height? Is it bigger than your ego? Maybe yes to one and no to the second. We'll find out next time. Couple of weeks off. As we speak, somebody is going to be chosen by Random.org, someone with the right answer. Well, we'll get that Planetary Radio t-shirt.

You know where to find them. ChopShopStore.com is where the Planetary Society store is. You can check out the shirt there and all of our other cool stuff. And a 200-point iTelescope.net account. You know, we've been saying that if you don't

have use for that account, you can donate it to a school or a nonprofit if you have one in mind, or maybe even if you don't have one in mind, because our friends at Astronomers Without Borders are also happy to get a donation of these iTelescope accounts, and they will make sure that they are sent out to deserving young people somewhere around the world. Most of the work that AWB does, or a lot of the work they do, is in third world countries where they don't have a lot of telescopes or maybe even any telescopes available, but they do have the internet in many cases, and you're going to be helping young people to

learn astronomy. But it's up to you. You can keep it for yourself as well. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about your name and the names of all your friends backwards. Thank you, and good night. Let's see. Your name backwards would be, oh, wait a minute.

It's that guy from the other universe. I know. It turns out. What an odd coincidence. Okay, well, okay, that's from the other universe. I know. It turns out. What an odd coincidence. Okay, well, okay, that's E-Curb. I mean, that's Bruce, the chief scientist for the Planetary Society. He joins us every week here for What's Up, and someday maybe we will hear again from E-Curb.

Talk to you later, Tam. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its members who work at NASA centers throughout the USA. Mary Liz Bender is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. I'm Matt Kaplan, Ad Astra.