 Hello citizens of Earth, it's me, Jared, and welcome to station 204 for your Space News for September 11th, 2019. And we had a lot of stuff happen since our last Space News, so let's go ahead and go straight into traffic. We're heading to Russia to start, where a Rakut converted ballistic missile left the pad at the Police Cosmodrome on August 30th at 1,400 universal time. It successfully placed its satellite payload, Cosmos 2540, into a near-circular 950 kilometer sun-synchronous orbit. Cosmos 2540 will take geodetic data, like measurements of the Earth's gravitational field, tectonic plate motions and tides. In China, Kaizal 1A lifted off from the Zhixiang Satellite Launch Center at August 30th at 2341 universal time. Carrying two small satellite payloads for the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Space City Company Limited, both were successfully deployed in a polar orbit 600 kilometers above the Earth. Also on September 6th, the Indian Space Research Organization attempted to become the fourth country to land a payload on the surface of the Moon with their Vikram lander as a part of the Shandrian II mission. Controllers lost contact several minutes before landing, which was scheduled for 2023 universal time. However, over the past few days, ISRO has announced that they've actually found the Vikram lander and it's in one piece on the surface of the Moon and they're trying to communicate with it. So we'll keep you updated and hopefully we get to hear the best possible outcome. So use MS-14 undocked from the International Space Station and performed a perfect return to Earth on September 6th, landing in Kazakhstan at 2132 universal time. SkyBot F-850 was returned as planned after performing a multitude of tests. Luckily it did so without taking control of the International Space Station and somehow dooming humanity forever. I don't know any small launchers that can lift themselves to a geosynchronous orbit, let alone a payload, but two companies are coming together and that could be happening relativity soon. Relativity space is developing the Terran-1, the world's first 3D-printed rocket. And when I say 3D-printed rocket, I don't mean a part or two, I mean the whole rocket and gelata. And they've got the world's largest metal 3D printer, which they've dubbed Stargate. The next piece of the equation is Momentus. They are developing in-space shuttle services that can move satellites from one orbit to another. And they've struck a deal to purchase a Terran-1 launch from Relativity, with an option for five more. So Relativity will send the payload as far as their Terran-1 rocket can take it and then the Momentus shuttle will bring it the rest of the way to geo-orbit from there. Here's why I think this is important. Traditionally, smallsats would have to ride-share on a large rocket to get anywhere near geo-orbit. This announcement is enabling smallsad lights to get to places like geo and opens up institutions like colleges to fly and operate missions from their own campuses. What would you have fly to geo if you could? Well, leave your suggestions in the comments below. This year we interviewed Momentus on orbit 12.10 and last year we interviewed Relativity on orbit 11.19. So make sure to check out those episodes for more info on the both of them. And now from really small satellites to really small organisms, we're going to go down to New Zealand with a really small Lisa Stojanovski. I love that the Dragon spacecraft is able to bring cargo from the space station back down to Earth. It lets researchers do analysis that simply can't be done on the space station because of limited time and resources. But if we're going to actually go and live on the moon and Mars, we need to do some serious analysis on things like space mining and oxygen generation. And that's exactly the kind of cargo that Dragon brought back to Earth this last week. I hear a lot of talk about how space mining will enable human sediments to be self-sufficient away from Earth. And most of those ideas involve robotic machinery to collect the raw materials and then turn them into useful products. But what if there was an easier way? The bio rock experiment just attempted to grow microbes on slabs of basalt in space. And they chose basalt for good reason. It's one of the most common rocks on both the moon and Mars. You're probably thinking this experiment has one fatal flaw. They didn't actually grow the microbes on the moon or Mars. But that's exactly why they used a centrifuge to grow the samples in zero gravity, Martian gravity and 1g. Once back on Earth, the researchers will examine the liquid soup that was surrounding the rock samples and measure amounts of minerals such as iron, calcium and magnesium that the bacteria have managed to pull out of the rock. And here's my favorite part. If the microbes are still able to digest rocks in microgravity or low gravity, we could use them to turn moon or Mars rocks into soil and nutrients for growing plants off Earth. But wouldn't it be great if we could grow something that would both provide oxygen and food? That's exactly the kind of sample that Dragon just brought home. You might be more familiar with it as an ingredient in your green smoothie, but besides being a supplement superfood, Clarella algae was just grown for six months on the space station. It was part of a new advanced life support system that the German space agency was testing. That life support system uses chemical processes to recycle carbon dioxide back to oxygen, but some of the carbon dioxide gets sent to the algae growth chamber instead. Now this was just a demonstration model, so it didn't produce enough oxygen for even just one astronaut. But if the samples brought back on Dragon show that the algae was happy in microgravity, then the project will be scaled up to supply enough oxygen for one crew member. I'm more curious about how the algae gets turned from a soupy mess into something that I can eat. Apparently it's a great source of vitamin B12, unsaturated fatty acid and protein, but would you give it a go? Apparently it's supposed to taste like sushi. That sounds awkwardly delicious. Well, now let's go from really small things to something really big. Here's Jade Kim. Lately, China has been killing it when it comes to contributions to astronomy, and now, move over Arecibo, there's a new giant radio telescope in town. That's right, China's fast is now fully operational. Besides being a marvel of technical construction, FAST, which stands for 500 meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope, will also emphasize international collaboration by eventually being open to astronomers from all over the world. Or at least, we hope. You see, FAST has just one final hoop to jump through, and that is the National Construction Acceptance at the end of September. After it passes, the telescope will then be open for use on the global scale, pending Chinese government approval of course. Although it's just now becoming fully operational, FAST has already been scientifically functional since 2016. It had its first discovery of two new pulsars in August 2017 and has since discovered 130 new pulsar candidates. So, why radio astronomy? Well, because looking into the cosmos with radio-tinted glasses, not only allows us to peer into the most distant crevices of the early universe, but also, aliens! Some of the things FAST will be studying include pulsars, fast radio bursts, interstellar molecules, a couple of major surveys, and of course, interstellar communication signals. A.K.A. aliens! Replacing the Aeroscebo telescope in Puerto Rico as the world's largest radio telescope, FAST is comprised of one giant dish containing 4,450 individual panels. With FAST's remarkable sensitivity, its future contributions to radio astronomy will be profound to say the least. Whether we're appearing deeply into the process that led our galaxy to evolve or finally getting a text back from our neighboring civilizations, one thing's for certain, the journey has just begun. And now let's turn our attention to our local star, and for our space weather, here's Dr. Tana Fascoe. Space weather this week has definitely been a bit on the exciting side. As we switch to our front-side sun, you can see that coronal hole that's leaving the sun's west limb. That coronal hole brought us some fast solar wind, and along with a stealthy solar storm, it brought us up to storm levels at Earth. In fact, it brought us up to G2 levels, which is a moderate storm level, and this lasted over three days, so it's an extended storm period. And unfortunately, the peak of the storm happened right around September 1st and 2nd, right when Hurricane Dorian was absolutely hovering over the Bahamas and just decimating multiple cities there. And the first responders and the hurricane watchnets, of course they went dead. I heard amateur radio operators and emergency responders were having a horrible time trying to get people up on 20 and 40 meters. Now back at the sun, we also have had a very small sunspot that showed up for a little while. It was kind of spitting off a few things here and there, but nothing in terms of flares. There's no real strong activity there, so no worry about radio blackouts. And then that region has since kind of died down a bit. Taking a closer look at Hurricane Dorian shows us yet another example of how dangerous the consequences can be when space weather and terrestrial weather conspire. Right when Hurricane Dorian was slamming the Bahamas, a solar storm was ravaging the Earth's shield and upper atmosphere above it. This made communications on the special emergency radio frequency channels called Hurricane Watchnets nearly unusable. Overall, the solar storm ravaged near Earth's space and the skies above the hurricane for nearly three days. During that time, watchnet responders reported numerous outages, some of them lasting hours on end. Corey McKay, a radio operator near Naples, Florida, remarked that he couldn't receive the net control stations in Miami, Key West, or in the Dominican Republic during the peak of the solar storm. Likewise, James Pasterfield, a net control operator near Las Vegas, said he had to switch from 20 to 40 meters to hear any emergency traffic at all. Even after the solar storm began to wane on September 3rd, Daryl Youngblood said that 40 meters was quote, horrible at best but still usable. And all of this happened while Dorian hovered over Freeport and the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas slowly making its way toward the Florida coast. Sadly, though I've been watching hurricane coverage from news outlets all over the world, not once have I heard anything about the impacts of this solar storm on emergency radio responders or on the fragile lifeline they hold for people in need. And when that lifeline can be lost because of space weather events like this G2 level storm we just had, that's when it's more important than ever for meteorologists to provide relevant information to the public about these dangers for all kinds of weather. For more details on this week's space weather, including when and where to see Aurora, how GPS and emergency radio is going to fare, come check out my channel or see me at spaceweatherwoman.com. On September 2nd, the European Space Agency took action with one of their atmospheric science satellites, Aeolus, to prevent a potential collision with a SpaceX Starlink test satellite. Now, a lot of people just kind of hand wave this is not a big deal, but I think you should not dismiss this too quickly. With the probability of a collision at 320 kilometers above the Earth being predicted by ESA as one in a thousand and predicted by SpaceX as one in 590, ESA attempted to contact SpaceX several times, but without a reply they made the call to expend fuel to move Aeolus, fuel that dictates the lifetime of a satellite's orbital operations. So who's at fault? SpaceX for not doing anything? ESA for overreacting? Well, simply put, no one is at fault. Rules in space are still dictated by the Outer Space Treaty, which was put in place in 1967, and there are really no rules saying who has the right of way when in orbit. Considering that over the next decade, multiple companies like Amazon, OneWeb, Kepler and of course SpaceX are planning on putting up mega-constellations somewhere near 20,000 active satellites combined, in order of magnitude more than we have now, our rules and regs just aren't up to snuff, and someone needs to figure this out and quickly. If you were asked to update those rules and regs, what would you do? Well, let us know in the comments below. And that about wraps it up for this show. Of course we do have a live show coming up this Saturday at 1800 UTC, and you're going to want to tune in because we've got Andy Klesch, the chief engineer of Marco, which is Mars, Cube One. This is the mission that flew with insight out to Mars and provided data as it was going through the entry, descent and landing process, which by the way, Marco, is the first interplanetary CubeSat, and we're going to talk about the future of CubeSats and how we're going to use them to explore our own solar system. And of course we want to thank all of the patrons of tomorrow without your help, we would not be able to do these shows. So if you've got something out of this show and you'd like to give something back, go to patreon.com.tmro or youtube.com.tmro.com. And you can give as little as a dollar per month. If you'd like another way to support the show, you can hit the subscribe button, hit the bell notification at the top, and you're probably going to want to do that anyhow. We've been having a lot of letting off steam lately, and those have been fun, and you definitely want to catch those live. And that's it for this week's Space News. Until the next one, keep exploring. And Gary, I'll catch you on the flip side. That's exactly the samples at Dragon. What is a dragon? Oh my God. All of us this week. Do you like dragons? And do you like science? What if we could combine both? One thing's for sure. This is the start. One thing's for certain. The journey has just begun. One thing's for certain. The journey has just begun. Or we're finally getting a text back from our neighboring aliens. I don't like that. It's extraterrestrial neighbors. Nailed it.