 It's your news from tomorrow for March 29th 2019. Now I know we're a little bit later in the week and releasing this news episode but there was a lot happening in our solar system so I wanted to take a little bit of extra time to make sure we got it all in there. So let's first start off with our space traffic. First up we have the Prisma Earth observation satellite launched to orbit aboard a Vega rocket. This occurred on March 22nd 2019 at 0150 universal time from the Arian space launch pad in French Guiana. If it looked like that vehicle just kind of jumped right off the pad well it basically did. The first stage is solid fuel and those things just book. 30 seconds after launch it was already traveling faster than the speed of sound at sea level. The Prisma mission is led by the Italian space agency known as ASI and is designed to monitor the environment, track pollution and water quality and chart the growth of forests and crops. Next up we had a launch from China. The private space company OneWeb launched their OSM rocket on March 27th at 1039 universal time from the Shiquan Space Center in northwest China. Once again we had a solid fuel rocket so it's just leaping right off the pad and everything looked great right up until just after second stage ignition and from here we could see the rocket kind of not going in a straight line and veering off course where it then fell back to earth bringing its CubeSat payload down with it. Now these are still experimental launches and they're still working on getting things going. The OSM rockets a small launcher similar to the Electron rocket from Rocket Lab but it has about 25% less payload capacity than that Electron rocket and speaking of Rocket Lab since news was out late this week it offered me a chance to sneak in the latest Electron launch which lifted off from Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand on March 28th 2019 at 2327 universal time. In my personal opinion this is one of the most beautiful launch sites on earth and it is always fun to hear the birds chirping in the background prior to lift off. On board was the DARPA R3D2 demonstration mission or Radio Frequency Risk Reduction Deployment Demonstration which I'm pretty sure is like a half-backer named which is when they realized how close it was to R2D2 and then they were like okay we're gonna call this R3D2? I don't know. The R3D2 mission is basically a way for DARPA to try and get a really giant communications package onto a very small satellite by invigorating a membrane antenna on orbit. So that's our current space traffic that happened this last week but there was some news talking about some future space traffic of humans heading back to the moon. For more on that here's a little bit of what Vice President Mike Pence had to say in Alabama. It is the stated policy of this administration and the United States of America to return American astronauts to the moon within the next five years. We must accelerate the SLS program to meet this objective but know this the president has directed NASA and administrator Jim Bridenstine to accomplish this goal by any means necessary. In order to succeed as the administrator will discuss today we must focus on the mission over the means. You must consider every available option and platform to meet our goals including industry, government, and the entire American Space Enterprise but to be clear we're not committed to any one contractor. If our current contractors can't meet this objective then we'll find ones that will. If American industry can provide critical commercial services without government development then we'll buy them and if commercial rockets are the only way to get American astronauts to the moon in the next five years then commercial rockets it will be. To reach the moon in the next five years we must select our destinations now. NASA already knows that the lunar south pole holds great scientific, economic, and strategic value but now it's time to commit to go there and today the national space council will recommend that when the first American astronauts return to the lunar surface that they will take their first steps on the moon's south pole. This news combined with NASA administrator Bridenstine's comments from last week paint a very compelling if not confusing picture for the future of NASA. I'm not entirely sure what this means for the future of the space launch system versus private companies but rest assured regularly continue to watch this story with a freakishly large amount of interest and now let's shift our attention from the moon over to asteroid Bennu and I'll hand it over to Jade for that. Ever go to a party and spot someone cute from across the room who seemed pleasant enough until you started walking towards them and realized that they're actually kind of terrifying? That's basically how the scientists studying Bennu are feeling right about now. New data coming out of NASA has indicated that Bennu is quite different than we previously thought. After Osiris Rex arrived to Bennu in December 2018, several interesting discoveries have been made that are much different than what scientists were expecting to find. Leading up to a rival, preliminary studies combined with distant imaging seem to indicate a rather pleasant rocky body relatively safe for landing on and studying and the like. As we got closer, however, the face of Bennu started to change dramatically. Instead of a relatively even surface sprinkled with a few pebbles, it turns out there are giant boulders up to 30 feet in diameter dotting the surface. This makes finding a safe landing spot for Osiris a bit trickier. Furthermore, it's been discovered that the regolith is also extremely variable in size, which can make collecting samples a little complicated as the collecting mechanism aboard the spacecraft was only designed for pebbles up to 2 centimeters in diameter. Speaking of rocks, another item to add to the list of things that make Bennu so edgy is that it appears to be exploding kinda. Yes, that's right. This asteroid seems to be coughing up some of its rocky particles. Touted as one of the biggest surprises of principal investigator Dante Loretta's science career, Osiris Rex has detected a total of 11 ejection episodes thus far, with the first one being recorded on January 6th. Most of these ejectiles have velocities too slow to exceed Bennu's escape velocity, so most just rain back down onto the surface after a brief orbit around the asteroid. Now, there are some objects whose speeds reach several meters per second that do eventually escape out into space, but don't worry. According to the team, the chances of a rock hitting the spacecraft are actually quite low. Heck, this may even spill out a Bennu meteor shower in the future. As far as what's causing Bennu's rocky nausea, it's speculated that solar heating when Bennu reaches perihelion may be to blame, which actually may also account for why Bennu is nearly spinning itself to death. You also heard that correctly. Bennu is literally doing a dance of death by itself. These peculiar behaviors may be due to the yorpe effect. And no, yorpe is not something out of Rick and Morty, but it's when the surface gets heated by the sun and then re-radiates the energy, causing it to rotate at an ever-increasing speed. And if that wasn't enough, Bennu's reflectivity is also all over the place. Although it's one of the darkest objects in our solar system, its surface can reflect anywhere from 4 to 20 percent of light, and this can actually spell disaster for the laser navigation system aboard. One interesting implication of all this variability is that Bennu is comprised of different rocks that may have come from different places and have undergone different processes, making Bennu a smorgish board of science-y solar system goodies. Despite these less-than-ideal conditions, Loretta and his team are still pretty confident that they can navigate around these challenges and perhaps even stay on schedule. I mean, hey, if High Abusa 2 could handle Ryugu, I have plenty of faith that Osiris rocks can do the same. So, with all of the craziness that lies ahead, you may be wondering, why even study these super-hazardous space rocks? Well, asteroids are a lot like cosmic time capsules, but instead of Pink Floyd records and questionable fashion choices, these time capsules hold the secrets to what the solar system was like way back in its earliest years of existence. Dark, carbon-rich asteroids like Bennu may have transported chemicals necessary for life, as well as water, back to our planet, when it was but a wee little baby Earth. Kind of like Uber Eats, but for existence. And if there's one thing that we've learned from all of these discoveries made thus far from Osiris rocks is that, whoa, there's still a lot more we need to figure out. We talk about the different ways that the Cosmos wants to kill us so often on this show that I'm thinking we may need to make it into a regular segment. Here's Sarah Vincent with the latest challenge. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's super bugs! That's right, it's that time again, time to talk about all the stuff in space that wants to kill you. Last week Jade talked about the white elephant gift that is space herpes. Now I get to tell you about ISS super bugs and our efforts to thwart their dastardly deeds. What are super bugs and where do they come from? Super bugs is a catch-all term for bacteria that have become resistant to our traditional methods of treatment. Sometimes that resistance comes from prolonged exposure to antibacterial drugs like penicillin, and that exposure gives them time to adapt. Just like vaccines and humans give us herd immunity, immunity mutations in bacteria give them resistance to our means of fighting them. And it gets better, because just like going to a doctor for a vaccination shot, bacteria don't have to be born with the resistance mutation. They can pass resistant DNA strands through contact so entire colonies can become resistant very quickly if the conditions are right. So, where is this bacterial dream home? For all the reasons Jade mentioned last time, that haven is the International Space Station. Space weakens us and strengthens the germs. And now for the good news. We have a silver bullet, and I mean that mostly literally. Silver has antibacterial properties that have been known for centuries, perhaps even millennia. How it works is still a mystery, but when has that ever stopped us from doing something? A team led by Dr. Elizabeth Groman had a special surface installed in the ISS to test the efficacy of a material called AGXX. AGXX stands for AG, or silver, and XX, meaning something-something register trademark patent pending XX. So what it is is a stainless steel substrate coated with silver and ruthenium, and XX other things. The beauty of silver is that it, like herpes, keeps on giving. Bacteria interact with it, it kills them, they die, and leave behind, you guessed it, silver. So far, AGXX has proven a worthy adversary for the superbugs. Groman reported that after six months of exposure on the ISS, no bacteria were recovered from AGXX coated surfaces. And fun fact, they didn't replace just any old surface. They replaced the toilet door. Yes, right now space is hard and hard on us, but these bacteria and yeast cells, they're our terrestrial brethren, and they evolve adaptations that allow them to survive in environments that we assumed would kill absolutely everything. So who knows? Maybe the secret to human survival in space will be found in a Petri dish. And finally, let's take a peek at our nearest star. Dr. Tamatha Scove brings us this week's Space Weather. Space Weather this week comes down just a little bit from last week. As we switch to our frontside sun, you can see region 2736 is now leaving the earth field of view. This is the region that boosted the solar flux by quite a bit, making amateur radio operators very happy. It also fired off a solar storm that was earth directed, and this solar storm was so hyped in the media, it made headlines all around the world. Now the storm did arrive, but it arrived late, and so when Aurora came, most people weren't out looking anymore. So if for you Aurora photographers who might have been left out in the cold, lucky for you we do have a coronal hole that's rotating into the earth strike zone, and it could bump us back up to active conditions by around the 28th. Now as we switch to our backside sun, you can see in stereo's view, which is a little bit more from the side right now, there's not a lot going on. So once this coronal hole rotates through the earth strike zone, and we get a little burst of fast wind, it looks like weather may go quiet for at least a week. Switching to our moon, we are now passing through the third quarter phase, and even by the 31st the moon will only be about 20% illuminated. So you night sky watchers, now is a good time to start looking for those dim objects in the sky. And now for your Leo, miogeo orbit outlook. As we talk about the solar storm that hit us this week, it's not been a big storm, and unlike typical storms, it did not compress the earth's magnetic shield very much at all. So as we switch to the low energy particle environment, these are the particles that cause surface charging on the spacecraft, and can affect the solar arrays and cause electrical discharges in short circuits. You can see there's a big pile of flux that all that red ring right around the geo orbit, and it continues to build. This solar storm was so gentle that it didn't hit the earth's shield hard enough to cause all of that flux to dump. So it continues to build and build and build. So you geo satellite operators, be aware easily over the next few days you could be seeing some issues due to surface charging. For more details on this week's space weather, including some info on that hyped solar storm, when it hit, how much aurora was seen, and when we will get another chance to see more aurora. Check out my channel, or come visit me at spaceweatherwoman.com. That's our new show this week, but we have oh so much more exciting content coming right up. This Saturday at 1800 universal time we'll be welcoming on Eric Smith from NASA to talk about the James Webb Space Telescope. Oh you know our astronomers are clamoring for this interview, and if you want to watch live make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel and then hit that notification bell. I also wanted to thank all of the citizens of tomorrow who helped to make these shows happen. These are the people who financially contribute to the shows, allowing us to bring you content week after week. Without their help, we wouldn't have space news, nor would we have our live interviews. I'm hoping to start up a unique roundtable type show too, and if you want to help us to make all of this magic happen, head on over to patreon.com slash tmro to contribute per episode, or subscribe star.com slash tmro to contribute monthly. Thank you so much for watching. I look forward to geeking out with everyone on our live show this weekend. It's going to be a lot of fun, and in the comments below.