Artemis III in Jeopardy // Giant Lava Lake on Io // Voyager-1 Fixed

Juno sees a lava lake on Io, Voyager 1 isn’t spouting nonsense any more, Titan Dragonfly gets the greenlight from NASA, and TESS finds its first rogue planet.
ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/2...
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00:00 Intro
00:14 Giant Lava Lake on Io
www.universetoday.com/166716/...
01:52 Voyager-1 restores communication
www.universetoday.com/166733/...
03:39 NASA Greenlights Titan Dragonfly
06:03 TESS finds its first rogue planet
www.universetoday.com/166755/...
08:13 Vote results
08:57 Nancy Grace Roman gets reaction wheels
• Moving Roman: Reaction...
10:28 NASA's solar sail goes to space
www.universetoday.com/166759/...
12:10 Two incredible timelapses from Chandra
chandra.cfa.harvard.edu/photo...
13:16 Downscale for Artemis III?
arstechnica.com/space/2024/04...
15:58 More space news
16:52 Capabilities driven exploration
www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploa...
Host: Fraser Cain
Producer: Anton Pozdnyakov
Editing: Artem Pozdnyakov
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[@JD-mm4ub]

Welcome back Voyager l. We missed you 😊

[@JohnMuz1]

Good News Everyone ..... ;-)

[@mikeguilmette776]

For 40 years I've heard that 2025 would be the final year for the Voyager probes. Always seemed so far off . . .

[@Humanity_Hope_]

In a Perfect World we would have... A Cassini-like mission exploring Uranus, Neptune and Pluto Two Dragonfly missions exploring two separate areas in Titan A lander mission exploring Europa, Triton, and Enceladus

[@austinsapp5867]

Sadly, I think we need to stop focusing on weapons manufacturing and figure out how to feed and house everyone before we can make that a reality.

[@donaldscott3921]

Yes - in a world where military adventures which use billions to - basically - kill life forms - we'd already by settling on Mars and likely on the way to Alpha Centauri. The other observation is that we had a nearly bullet-proof system in the Apollo era and threw it away. This is why the operations-conservative Russians, still using the Soyuz system, will soon pass us in space exploration.

[@MrBerryCake]

@@austinsapp5867 are you a bot lol?

[@zapfanzapfan]

Yes!

[@pucciorossi2790]

Yes. And the sad irony is that, to do all of that would be less expensive than blowing the tens of billions of dollars on a manned lunar mission that has been architecturally flawed from day one.

[@KarldorisLambley]

i am so overjoyed that Voyager1 is talking to us again. it launched when i was 3. throughout my youth it kept showing me awesome things. in some respects it is like an old friend who i have known all my life.

[@Mandanara]

If they cancel the sample return mission we should petition China to bring back the samples left on the surface. If China even hinted on entertaining the prospect NASA would quickly get all the funding needed approved.

[@mitseraffej5812]

If the sample return mission goes ahead I hope they have bullet proof quarantine protocols. I still recall the mayhem a stupid bat virus caused.

[@absalomdraconis]

​@@mitseraffej5812: Ironically, the bat virus was because bats are too closely related to us.

[@Raz.C]

@@mitseraffej5812 I can't imagine any such protocols being necessary in regards to samples devoid of life or living matter.

[@mitseraffej5812]

@@Raz.C To date there is no evidence of life on Mars, but I’m guessing a big reason to bring a sample back to earth is to do more in depth investigations to answer this question. Investigation that can not be done remotely over 10s or 100s of millions of miles.

[@DrDeuteron]

as a nuclear physicist and interplanetary engineer: calling "RTG" "nuclear powered" is 100% A-OK in this context. It's beta-decay, it's plutonium: it's all good. Use "nuclear-reactor powered" should the need arise.

[@frasercain]

Hah, okay, I'm using "nuclear powered" from here on out. :-)

[@absalomdraconis]

It would be good to have a clearer description. Maybe "passive nuclear" would be a good start, since they work directly off of natural decay instead of mostly from chain reactions?

[@trignals]

I was going to suggest radioactive decay powered. Since it's how Fraser ended up explaining what's happening.

[@TheTimer1337]

Imagine reprogramming something flying somewhere in the cosmos, operating on a system that predates DOS. Now that's what I find amazing

[@DavidTremblay]

Is it even an operating system or more like a collection of microcontrollers? I definitely want to know more about how they manage to update software 40 years old at an handfull of bits per sec

[@belstar1128]

They use fortran for programming

[@ReggieArford]

@@belstar1128 More likely machine code; Fortran is a compiled language unsuitable for tiny computers.

[@belstar1128]

@@ReggieArford never mind i looked up up they do use Fortran and sometimes c but mostly Fortran

[@RectalRooter]

I member hearing aboot NASA advertising for Fortran programmers. Hell -- Since we have the Fortran talent -- Lets reboot the Viking Landers lol

[@John-ou4rm]

NASA does deserve all the credit it is given. The pure level of intelligence to make all these things happen really is something.

[@nicholashylton6857]

They've pulled off so many genuine miracles, people take for granted the amount of creativity and outside-of-the-box thinking they do.

[@cm9748]

@@nicholashylton6857 Yeah , my life is so muuuuuch better becaue of NASA ... I can't get reception out side the city , but .. wait , what does NASA do for me ? Oh yeah , that's just like a tax I pay right ?

[@nataliealice05]

@@cm9748Oh you poor thing, nobody told you you're not the centre of the universe?

[@cm9748]

@@nataliealice05 like, that supports my point... Why should the common tax payer care enough about NASA to fund it ? They literally do NOTHING for us .

[@firstjayjay]

​@@nicholashylton685720:26

[@zapfanzapfan]

NASA: How many reaction wheels do you want on the space craft? Fraser: Yes!

[@MrSimonw58]

I was also launched in 1977 and there's no issues

[@jblob5764]

How's your back?

[@RectalRooter]

Do you remember typing that comment ? lol couldn't help myself

[@acanuck1679]

How to make space exploration more rational and less politicized: 1) encourage best practise, best capability at a practical price 2) understand that building basic cis-lunar and then interplanetary transport and supporting infrastructure is the goal--not "let's go to the moon now" or "we should do Mars right away". 3) encourage international cooperation, rather than competition--space is bigger than all of us.

[@jesnoggle13]

The Huygens probe video feed was the best space mission footage of all time. Simply awe inspiring. Imagine the video from dragonfly! Wow!!!!!

[@Raz.C]

Amen, brother!

[@sjzara]

The Voyager fix is amazing. A huge achievement.

[@LuisdeSousa]

The videos by Common Sense Sceptic and Smarter Every Day on Artemis III are well worth the time. I doubt anyone in the loop at NASA ever believed it could work. Still the contract was rushed through and someone got a golden retirement.

[@lazarus2691]

How dare you lump CSS and Destin together. CSS was recently caught using people's art without permission and covering their watermarks, and he's also a certified moron. For example, he refuses to acknowledge that it's possible to land and launch from the moon with the same engine, despite the fact that Surveyor 6 did just that in 1967. He also routinely praises Blue Origin's lander design despite the fact that it *also* relies on orbital refuelling and a significant number of launches from a rocket that hasn't ever flown. And it's using 3 separate vehicles, hydrogen fuel, and unproven cryocooling technology. Oh, and it lands and launches with a single engine - though he denies this.

[@mj2745]

Voyager 1, absolutely incredible how they can get around these issues in such old tech and the vast distance involved. I'm amazed it's still doable!

[@I-0-0-I]

Somoeone needs to make a super cut video of Scott Manley saying “moon” and Fraser saying “lava.”

[@matthewschenker3170]

This is my first time on your channel. Great material. I'm a long-time cosmology, space-travel, physics buff, so I really appreciate this level of detail. I just subscribed and will keep checking here.

[@frasercain]

Welcome aboard!

[@shade01977]

Ahh, Voyager. Easily one of humanity's greatest achievements.

[@creightondaniels7748]

Sir you are without Repose! Well spoken and more than a pleasure to listen to. I always look for new matereal from you with great anticapation. Thankyou.

[@eugeniobevilacqua4606]

Space X on the Moon looks like a ship from a 100 years old fiction film. Let’s hope it works but the look is so old.

[@jblob5764]

They seem to kind of favor a retro thing anyway, big shiny steel rockets and all

[@Daneelro]

Assuming it ever gets into orbit and aces the ship-to-ship refuelling (won't happen quickly as Musk recently admitted that the current version's lifting capacity is a fraction of what it was designed for, and wants to solve it with Raptor 3 & Starship 2), I have grave doubts about this design. The landing: it's top-heavy, could topple when landing on a rough surface, and then the astronauts have to descend from 15 stories high to the surface, what could go wrong? The re-flight: when this giant rocket lands, it would kick up Moon dust & rocks on the surface, which are sure to damage the engines, those same engines that should be fired again for lift-off. Apollo had a separate lift-off part with separate engines. (The Blue Origin design also uses the same engines for landing & lift-off, though at least it is significantly smaller.)

[@avenuePad]

@@Daneelro Agree 100%. Starship was such an obviously bad design that I really have to wonder how it ever got greenlit for Artemis in the first place. It's literally the design that NASA engineers threw away when figuring out the Apollo program because so many things could go wrong. And to trust Elon Musk to actually deliver on a promise? Musk is a disaster. That's either negligence or incompetence. It's an almost certainty that Starship will not be part of Artemis.

[@TBFI_Botswana]

It will never happen.

[@Daneelro]

@@avenuePad It was greenlit in the final days of the Trump-appointed NASA admin by a single person, Kathy Lueders, who now works for SpaceX.

[@phdnk]

I can imagine what Rober Zubrin would say to the ideas like "Capabilities Driven Networks" without a goal. The goal is to spend money and stretch the deadlines indefinitely without any risk.

[@frasercain]

Oh, he'd hate it.

[@zapfanzapfan]

Deadlines is what gets stuff done, ask any student 🙂

[@richardmarkham8369]

Would love to see an interview with the people that patched the voyager firmware and reloaded it. Defo worth a deep dive into how this is done. Do they rebuild the complete software? Do they just send hex patches to be written directly into the memory?

[@frasercain]

Check out the Hard Fork podcast this week. Exactly what you're looking for

[@richardmarkham8369]

@@frasercain Hmmm, first 5 mins was really hard work (super dumbed down babbling). Halfway in a JPL engineer arrives (hurrah). Then the JPL engineer says "We poked a value in and somehow we got memory readout". Maybe they should have interviewed a software guy and not the propulsion guy! I'll keep going...

[@richardmarkham8369]

Just found a book called "Computers In Spaceflight: The NASA Experience" which is free to download. Lots of interesting stuff in there!

[@runrin_]

seems to me like an international moon base program with a diverse crew being the first to step on the moon since apollo would make the most sense. imagine what incredible things we could achieve if we could all just work together? i can dream i guess.

[@JeffCounsil-rp4qv]

Screw your "diverse" BS. You send people that KNOW what they are doing based on their individual skill and intelligence levels that work together like a well oiled machine. In other words, merit, not skin color or "pronoun" preferences.

[@yumazster]

People that fixed Voyager are real wizards😊

[@absalomdraconis]

I don't know if they roused the deep magics to implement the fix, but at the very least they did to get any response in the first place.

[@n1k0n_]

Jesus Christ...just imagine if we diverted 3-5% of our defense budget to NASA what cool missions would actually get launched.

[@jordanbrown4886]

I've said this for years

[@tomamberg5361]

I like living freely in the US, which is made possible by the US defense budget. I'm all for space exploration, but we need to find different ways of funding it.

[@jordanbrown4886]

@@tomamberg5361 the budget for the military is almost $1 trillion dollars a year. I'm sure they could spare $20-$30 billion for space exploration

[@RectalRooter]

I kind of have a rebuttal We now have many Government departments that spread more of the science and technology funding around. Making more funding opportunities for all of us. Including all the U.S laboratories are open to U.S citizens use.

[@MyKharli]

@@tomamberg5361 Your only living freely because your government prints the money used for exchange , your crazy trillion dollar defence budget harms you by its incessant misuse and the ill will that that fosters, let alone the environmental disasters stored for the future with its nuclear endeavours.

[@philipkudrna5643]

Testing an Orion-HLS-docking in LEO makes sense, but only if Orion can be sent to LEO using a dalcon Heavy or something similar, but not, if an SLS is „wasted“ for that stunt!

[@marekg5884]

ULA retired the Delta IV Heavy in 2024. Delta IV's final flight was in 9 April 2024. Maybe Vulcan Centaur could be used. Or why not to use starship to put into orbit. Starship could take Orion into orbit in its payload bay then release it and try the docking.

[@Jameson1776]

@@marekg5884if starship ever makes it into orbit.

[@xliquidflames]

I have been loosely following the Titan mission since it was first proposed. I followed the Mars copter, Ingenuity, like a hawk. I hope they can move Firefly up to launch sooner but even if it does take until the 2030s, I just want it to happen. And just because it gets approved, built, and launched, that's just the first couple steps. Then it has to successfully land and work and actually send back data which will be incredibly hard. We have a hard enough time landing on Mars without crashing. Titan has to be way harder. But I hope it works. I have been looking forward to it for years already.

[@austinsapp5867]

Would Titan be harder to land on than Mars? It has lower gravity and more atmosphere. I figured that would make it easier

[@MCsCreations]

Thanks for all the news, Fraser! 😊 Well... Although I'm not superstitious, I'm crossing my fingers for Starship. Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊

[@ericchin739]

Definitely subscribed I need a reliable space update channel!!

[@billmullins6833]

I have never perceived any sense of urgency with the whole Artemis thing. Back in the 60s there was a definite sense of urgency. Today/ Meh. Whenever (if ever) will be fine.

[@DrDeuteron]

that's because the moon is boring, and humans going there is no big deal.

[@billmullins6833]

@@DrDeuteron But without said sense of urgency nothing gets done. Right now Artemis is just a money sink,

[@frasercain]

Also, only budgeting about 1/10th of Apollo's funding can't help speed things along.

[@DrDeuteron]

@@billmullins6833 if the launch window opens every month, why have a sense of urgency?

[@billmullins6833]

@@frasercain True. But it is just part and parcel to the general lack of urgency for anything at NASA these days. It appears to me like NASA is just a collection of bureaucrats going through the motions.

[@gunnargronvall9385]

The science and engineering to be applied in flying to and flying on Titan is mind blowing!

[@RectalRooter]

Yeap It gets the mind juices flowing thinking about what new inventions and technology they think up

[@gunnargronvall9385]

I am eagerly waiting on what NASA will come up with in the future!

[@Raz.C]

Wow!! Rocketlabs is putting payloads into space for NASA and others? That's awesome news, Fraser!! It's great to hear that the neighbours are coming good (in Australia, we think of NZ as our neighbours). I also really like how instead of building bigger and bigger rockets, they went the other way and built one that's only just big enough to do the job it needs to.

[@johnnyziemer5561]

Love your informative articles, keep up the good work.🤠🧐

[@aria8928]

well researched and articulated video. thank you for making science understandable for people, many space related topics can be very daunting without enthusiast content.

[@Starman_67]

I think Fraser’s “rant” at the end should be in this week’s vote.

[@BrettCoryell]

Did Fraser just declare that IO is the new Ganymede, which is itself the new Europa?

[@DrDeuteron]

"Nothing's new under the Jupiter" - Eclastices

[@peterd9698]

Im an Enceladus fan myself. Then Callisto.. as a moon of Jupiter we might be able to actually visit without frying.

[@sirgibsonable]

RTG = Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator. No worries--it happens to all of us! 🙂 Love your work, thank you, as always!

[@madderhat5852]

"Foolish Cain, only I, Otto Octavius , shall claim the invention 'Octo-coptor' Fear the skies!"

[@mechadense]

Dragonfly FTW!!

[@wschmrdr]

If you want public support, you need to have that "end goal" of the Moon or Mars. Yes, the Gemini missions were great, and honestly some of my favorite to look into, even more so than Apollo, Shuttle, or Falcon. The only problem with just having those little increments as your "goal" is that it's basically a road to nowhere, and you're not going to have public support, which is why the administrations that want us grounded will seek for that, because they have an alternate goal and won't actually spend anything on this stuff. The set of missions I'm actually looking forward to, as much as the Gemini missions, is probably the Polaris missions. And if it wasn't for the MIC's desire through NASA to "butt in" and try to force themselves into the process, SpaceX might actually be able to do the whole thing on their own. I mean, Boeing is going to finally launch humans to the ISS in a demo mission what, FOUR YEARS after SpaceX did it? And because they're the legacy company, they believe they're entitled to our tax dollars to effectively sit on their hands, as they're more worried about DEI and ESG scores than actually accomplishing the mission? Best thing for the government to do right now is to get out of the way. You want to have safety standards? There's nothing wrong with that. But leave the politics behind. Put them to bed.

[@austinsapp5867]

Yayyy Dragonfly! Such an awesome mission!

[@Astroponicist]

Diagram of an RTG used on the Cassini probe A radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG, RITEG), sometimes referred to as a radioisotope power system (RPS), is a type of nuclear battery that uses an array of thermocouples to convert the heat released by the decay of a suitable radioactive material into electricity by the Seebeck effect. This type of generator has no moving parts and is ideal for deployment in remote and harsh environments for extended periods with no risk of parts wearing out or malfunctioning. RTGs are usually the most desirable power source for unmaintained situations that need a few hundred watts (or less) of power for durations too long for fuel cells, batteries, or generators to provide economically, and in places where solar cells are not practical. RTGs have been used as power sources in satellites, space probes, and uncrewed remote facilities such as a series of lighthouses built by the Soviet Union inside the Arctic Circle. Safe use of RTGs requires containment of the radioisotopes long after the productive life of the unit. The expense of RTGs tends to limit their use to niche applications in rare or special situations. Wikipedia

[@ewaf88]

I'll be 76 ( I hope ) by the time it lands on Titan. Something to really look forward to

[@busybillyb33]

The scaling back of Artemis III seems to be the most sensible thing to do and I think is better than sending the Orion capsule and HLS to the moon to test docking and functions. Do the test in LEO, closer to home if you're not landing on the moon. It gives you options to abort and return safely in case of problems.

[@Chris.Davies]

10/10 for Titan copter. Got fingers crossed for the next decade.

[@snezzles278]

exploring a rogue planet would be a great horror-sci-fi plot

[@oiartsun]

Star Trek: Enterprise had one episode set on a rogue planet, literally titled "Rogue Planet" - but unfortunately it wasn't a very good episode.

[@gthomashart3926]

I really enjoyed the news about the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System - and hope to hear more from it some day 😃

[@arunps7719]

Love io, would love more updates as as when they come.

[@RBYU001]

Dragonfly is one of the most exciting missions ever done by NASA!

[@magicsinglez]

I think the rocket that launched it is almost as interesting as the solar sail.

[@absalomdraconis]

The Artemis III plan revision probably should have been the initisl plan for it.

[@ForestWoodworks]

Love your channel.

[@Raz.C]

Ya know, I suspect that one of the reasons the Apollo missions were such a success was that Kenedy gave NASA a timeline; to go to the moon AND return, before the end of the decade. If you don't give NASA a deadline, they'll wait until they're perfectly ready, before they act. Like they said in that movie I no longer remember - "You don't go when you're ready, you go when you're ready enough!"

[@frasercain]

And they gave them $250 billion (inflation adjusted) budget to do it. Artemis has spent about 1/10th that.

[@Raz.C]

@@frasercain Fair point, but all of the tech necessary for such a mission already exists. Not so for the Apollo missions, where they needed to invent various tech as solutions to various problems. Apollo was at the forefront of discovery and a LOT of that money was spent trying to figure out how to extend that frontier. Not so for Artemis, where they're doing something that they've already done before, which means they don't need to spend as much trying to work out how to do something that's never been done before.

[@frasercain]

But doing it with a reusable framework and going to the South Pole does require new tech, like the Lunar Gateway.

[@Raz.C]

@@frasercain Holy monkey poop!! I had no idea that the Lunar Gateway was part of Artemis' endeavours! Cheers, Fraser.

[@czerskip]

Did you say "paperclip"? Oh no! It's started! 🙀

[@billionsandbillionsofstars]

Let’s go to all of the planets and their moons. We can do it all!👍🏻

[@larryfields2652]

I like the rogue planet as its always had me curious and if one can be captured

[@briandeschene8424]

Appreciate that you properly pronounce km as kill-oh-meeter and not kill-ah-mutter - thank you!

[@MrJdsenior]

Congrats and kudos to NASA mission folks for the clever workaround. Nice work! How about radioactive decay powered, because as you know, that's what it is? Or just radioactively powered. It doesn't really matter what the interim power conversion system is, that is just nits, nuts, and bolts. The power comes from the refined state of radioactive matter decaying back to its boring old run of the mill base state.

[@merky6004]

Idea for Mars sample return mission solution. Send a big old laboratory. Or laboratories. They do the tests. No earth contamination.

[@DavidHauck-zy6gm]

looks like i not live long enough to see man on moon again O WELL

[@olorin4317]

‘Nearly nuclear’ has a nice ring to it.

[@UncleJoeLITE]

My first visit, I enjoyed that, thanks.

[@frasercain]

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it

[@johnpfeiffer5663]

Capabilities Driven Framework makes a lot of sense. My project candidates would be refueling, minimizing radiation effects on the human body, permanent moon base, and psychological/mental stability on long space flights.

[@robwalker4548]

We are probably closer to a rouge planet than a a star. I wonder if some of the signs that some think is for Planet X is really sign a rouge planet passed close into the outer solar system.

[@ashb8036]

Are they able to track and follow that rogue planet for further study?

[@jblob5764]

Hey Fraser i have a satellite question for you. Currently the parker solar probe is absolutely haulin butt around the sun and the voyagers are still doing their best to escape it... But these all used multiple gravity assist maneuvers to achieve their ludicrous speed. But what is the fastest we could currently send a spacecraft out into the cosmos without using multiple gravity assist maneuvers? If the goal was to propel a 100kg payload as fast as possible just using rocket, nuclear, laser etc propulsion and going full kerbal. How fast could we theoretically get the satellite moving using any current technology?

[@Darthvanger]

Artemis 😭 The SLS has finally flown though, I'm glad there's some progress.

[@removechan10298]

question (i've tried for years to get this answer) what are the main causes of ISS being near end of life, and why aren't we seeing missions (like you said, level up tech missions) to solve things like stresses in hulls? WE NEED THIS TECH!! in space you don't want to be thinking "well, this ship is 25 years old now, could pop a leak anytime" (iSS has several). I've asked many astronavs about exo/endo things failing/wearing out to no avail. any stories? (except spring and sock)

[@lyledal]

I *really* want a piece of the surface of that lake on Io!!

[@sheepwshotguns42]

ive been watching videos about neutrinos a lot lately and its gotten me to start thinking about bigravity. do you think that would be a good video, or is it too hypothetical?

[@absalomdraconis]

7:10 : Wait, wait, wait, they think a rogue planet passed within _10 lightyears?_ That's _really_ close, now I'm wondering if we can image it with James Webb.

[@CaliforniaBushman]

At -290°F, how will JPL de-ice Dragonfly's rotors from coatings of frozen methane rain? Or weighing down it's fuselage from coated layers? I'm worried.

[@danlewellyn6734]

Starship's inclusion in Artemis was the biggest mistake NASA ever made. If Starship's payload is now only 50T rather than 200, that means 76 refueling launches? (19 with a 200T payload). Spacex forgot the most simple rule of spaceflight...the rocket equation.

[@Max-xl9qv]

4:40 - just say it's plutonium powered. .. (They'll imagine a Delorian-type reactor unit)

[@tiredoldmechanic1791]

I was able to watch the first moon landing but I don't expect to live long enough for another one.

[@frasercain]

Two years at the earliest, six at the latest when the Chinese get there.

[@HylanderSB]

It’s RST, Roman Space Telescope. We don’t say Edwin Hubble when we talk about HST.

[@EASYTIGER10]

1:00 It looks like its full of Hoisin sauce

[@CodyBrumfield1]

What is stopping us from using the same model of lander or satellite and just sending one to every significant body in the solar system? How hard would it be to just have constant, basic monitoring orbiters everywhere?

[@johnmann6866]

While waiting for Dragonfly can I absolutely, absolutely recommend Les Mondes de Saturne by Sandrine Gall et al. It's in French (no problem for Canadians?) but it's packed with info. Great read.

[@ObscureNemesis]

Another thing they figured out in the sixties, was that direct ascent was a bad idea.

[@lazarus2691]

Not if you're trying to land large amounts of cargo and reuse the lander. There's a reason that Blue Origin's lander is also direct ascent, as was Dynetic's unselected Alpaca design. Trying to build the Artemis base camp with something like the Apollo lander would just be silly. You'd have dozens of descent stages littering the surface.

[@tomgarcialmt]

I was a nuclear weapons security guard in the navy and I would call the power source "nuclear" - even if it triggers some folks

[@chrisolix3441]

Fraser we we went to the moon because it was hard. Capability will come from hard goals. Thats why gemini program existed. Gemini capabiliities were clearly part of the hard goal of sending people to the moon. Remember artemis is a new hard goal of going to the substainably. People need to stop talking about aremis as just going to the moon only. Artemis is the development of capabilties to commercialize space and send humans to mars . Quite simple to undertand really.

[@jordanbrown4886]

Agree with this. You build capabilities to obtain a goal. The goals you outlined, moon, commercializing space and going to Mars are what should drive what you become capable of, not the other way around.

[@stephenkiely9244]

Hey Fraser, if a rogue planet came through the centre of our solar system could that be the end of us?

[@Thisandthat8908]

wasn't there a ball bearing issue with older reaction wheels, that they've finally solved? I remember a Scott Manley video on that. something to do with metal and ceramic balls.

[@logtothebase2]

I think I am going into safe mode for a bit.

[@petevenuti7355]

I still want to know where I can get the Voyager schematics

[@Locut0s]

It’s INSANE that they are able to totally reprogram voyager 1 billions of kms away with the signal strength something from and too the craft so crazily low that they can barely pick it out, with a delay time of 21+ hrs and a craft built in the 70s!

[@frasercain]

There are so many stories like this. The creativity is off the charts.

[@stephenburrows4250]

What a shame V1 and V2 didn’t have digital cameras integrated… 🙏

[@destronia123]

Re: Dragonfly problem: Put Drake Bell on the job!

[@Steelninja77]

Would they know if voyager got taken aboard an alien spaceship all of a sudden. perhaps take pictures before the aliens turned it off. That would be amazing. Highly unlikely but still amazing.

[@myleswillis]

I heard they are working on ferrofluid reaction wheels that will hopefully be more reliable.

[@hatterson]

I'm not sure how they expect to get anything done with the "Capability Driven Framework" Everyone knows that it is a hard requirement to have a really cool name for anything space related. At the very least they could have spent some time coming up with a cool backronym. It took me 30 seconds with chat GPT to come up with SPARK (Space Program for Advancing Research and Knowledge) or VISTA (Visionary Initiative for Space Travel and Advancement)

[@frasercain]

Nice backronyms. That's always the first step to a successful program.

[@RectalRooter]

Just joking with you It was to hard for you work it out -- So instead of paying someone to do it for you -- You stole somebody's job and used A.I lol

[@unvergebeneid]

1:00 yeah nah, sorry. That's not a lava lake. That's clearly blood. It's a lake full of blood. New headline: NASA discovers blood lake on Io.

[@ulfpe]

Being a computer scientist at NASA.. WOW

[@Khether0001]

What is the scale? ... Objects still orbit a star at such long distances, how likely are rogue planets of eventually not being captured as they travel through space over millions of years? Are stars that far away from each other that it completely dwarves those immense spheres of influence? Or do rogue planets often move so fast that they just escape rather easily after they enter a solar system?

[@michaeljames5936]

How can they tell with one such reading, that it isn't a huge planet, very far away from its star, with an orbital period of millennia? .... I'm beginning to see problems with this- the large planet, as described, would probably have a really slow transit, and possibly a planet close enough to match the transit time, would have a 'very short orbital period, such that we could wait for it come around again'?? What about a planet with a very eccentric orbit, that happened to match the data from a rogue planet, but was about to loop-off into the outer reaches of the star system, or 'Winter is coming... again, predicable as ever.', as its inhabitants say.? What do you reckon, please?

[@RectalRooter]

Voyager breaks Conspiracy that aliens high jacked it Fix Voyager Voyager breaks Conspiracy that aliens are trying to communicate to us through Voyager Rinse and repeat -- Rinse and repeat

[@waynemccormick4773]

I'd rather see the Titan Mission. The sample return will be used as an excuse to further delay any manned mission.

[@mshepard2264]

Did nasa resolve the plutonium supply problem for RTGs? I remember hearing they were almost out earlier?

[@frasercain]

Yup, they're getting new ones again

[@MustafaAlmosawi]

Re: RTG - although it’s fun to watch you squirm whether or not to define things for new viewers, or receive pedantic corrections from long time viewers - have you considered putting a glossary for fun terms in show notes?

[@ximalas]

Something similar happened to V2 in 2010.