Astrum Space - The Dawn of a New Technological Age

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

Some of the most fascinating technology in space exploration. Is space tech changing our planet? Discover our full back catalogue of hundreds of videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@astrumspaceFor early access videos, bonus content, and to support the channel, join us on Patreon: https://astrumspace.info/4ayJJuZ

Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usa.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. There was a time when visiting Mars was a thing purely of science fiction, relegated to the likes of

John Carter or Arnold Schwarzenegger's character Douglas Quaid from Total Recall. However, thanks to recent advances in technology, the first humans might be walking on Mars within this decade. They'll be brought there by Starship, a rocket in development by Space X, which hopes to get humans to Mars by as soon as 2030. Once the colony is established, many others will start making the six-month trip to the red planet. Perhaps this is a thing that you might do in your lifetime. Even if made as a commercial vacation, the journey to Mars is no trivial cruise or long-distance flight.

If you go, you will not come back the same again. You quite literally could be changed forever. I'm Alex McColligan and you're watching Astrum. Today we will be taking a look at Starship and imagining for ourselves, what a voyage to the red planet might be like. Space ex-company founder Elon Musk has long aspired to take humans to Mars. In 2005, Musk first declared to the world his plans to create a long-term, high-capacity rocket, one capable of carrying massive weights into orbit.

However, it took over a decade of development and tinkering with the idea for Starship to be first officially announced. Starship is a super-heavy lift-launch vehicle, made to deliver. deliver 100 metric tons to low Earth orbit and beyond. It is fully reusable, able to launch and then land itself thanks to high levels of control from its multiple engines as well as its flaps, which extend to slow its fall in atmosphere. Starship is a spacecraft of two parts. The first part, the super heavy booster, is a 69-meter-tall beermoth, filled primarily with two massive tanks of liquid oxygen and liquid methane fuel.

sports up to 33 Raptor engines, capable of producing between them around 76 million newtons of force. The Starship spacecraft, which is the second stage, sits on top of its super-heavy booster. It's 50 metres long, with a diameter of 9 meters, and is equipped with a distinctive shiny exterior. This shine is important. Starship is not made from the usual carbon fiber, which is a material you might expect in a rocket, but instead a version of stainless steel, a similar material to what you might find in your knife and fork. Stainless steel is a surprisingly useful building material for rockets, it turns out. It can heat up to temperatures of over 1,300 degrees Celsius without melting or warping, which is useful when you intend your rocket to perform

atmospheric re-entry. But more than that, it is cheap and easy to mass produce. This speaks to Musk's vision. He intends to produce entire fleets of these. In his mind, Mars is somewhere that humans will set up a serious presence, and when that happens, it's only natural that materials, products, and personnel will need to make the journey to and from the Red Planet. Which brings us to Starship's payload. As previously mentioned, this mostly hollow space is able to carry around 100 tons.

a 9-meter-circular base, and is 18 meters high, tapered to a point, allegedly because Musk thought it would be funnier to have a pointier rocket. It can be used to carry satellites, which can then be released into orbit for commercial ventures. However, SpaceX has made it clear that when it comes to the trip to Mars, they intend to put humans in this area. Currently, SpaceX has not revealed what the interior design of this habitation will definitively look like, but there are some preliminary.

ideas. So, let's explore those ideas. Let's imagine that in a couple of decades from now, we receive a call that Talas colonists are needed on Mars, and it's time to make the long trip. To begin with, you would travel to a SpaceX launch site, possibly in cooperation with NASA, and would meet up with your roughly 100 co-passengers. 100 passengers are how many SpaceX thinks it can comfortably fit inside of Starship, Although Musk mentioned that this number could be as high as 200 if passengers were willing to really cram themselves in there. You might do well to get to know some of these people now, as unlike with a regular trip

in an aeroplane, you are going to be spending a lot of time with these individuals. On an airplane, it is often tempting to watch a film, read a book, or go to sleep. However, you can't only do that for six whole months. These are the people you are going to be eating breakfast with. spend your free time together, you may form friendships. Human interaction is important for healthy psychology, and there is no way off this flight midway if you find there's someone you don't get along with. Better start off by making friends early. Together you will then be ushered into the rocket itself. Likely for the initial launch, you and the others will need to strap into

your seats. All that thrust beneath you will crush you with powerful G-forces that will push you into your chair. More intense than the most powerful roller coaster, a certain level of physical fitness will be an important element of this part. If there is a medical emergency on the flight, you are not going to get proper hospital treatment until you get to the other side. You will likely have been screened before travelling. Launch and lift-off will only last about nine minutes. At some point in this journey, the super-heavy booster will detach and drop back to Earth. The booster is reusable, and by controlling its descent it will land perfectly on a landing pad, ready to be filled up with fuel again for another voyage.

Thrust will switch over to Starship. While in the atmosphere, it will use three of its Raptor engines, but will switch over to the other three once the ship has reached true space. These secondary Raptor engines have larger nozzles, which are better suited to propelling the ship through space. All of this will be enough to get you up past the Carmen line and into space. You will now be travelling at thousands of kilometres per hour. However, as the boosters cut off and as gravity drops away, you will suddenly experience

weightlessness. Gravity, as we discussed in this video, is only a form of acceleration. If we do not accelerate, even if we are travelling at thousands of miles an hour, we will float around. This will be a major feature of the next six months of your life. By now, the seatbelt lights will come off and you can begin to explore your environment. Current plans expect Starship to be split up into multiple floors or areas. At the bottom will be crew cabins.

You will likely share a cabin with one to two other people and conditions will be a little cramped. Above that, there will be a common area for gathering and social interaction. You will see exercise areas and equipment, an important part of space travel. On the International Space Station, where astronauts also spend six months stints, exercise takes up two hours of their daily routine. You will need to do this too to prevent the loss of muscle mass and bone density. Without it, you will lose considerable weight and may not be able to stand up once you reach Earth's gravity again.

There may also be some emergency shelters. Hopefully you will not spend too much time in these, but it'll be important to acquaint yourself with where they are in the event of an unexpected solar flare. One of the greatest threats of space travel is radiation. Prolonged exposure can result in cancers and other negative health effects. Solar flares represent a hazardous spike in this radiation level, and the captain might at times require you to take refuge in these thick walled shelters for the good of your health. Meal time will be a little different from what you are used to.

The food you will eat in space must be able to survive for months on end without going bad. There is no opportunity to restock. The International Space Station does not even have a fridge. All of this means that vacuum-sealed, rehydratable food will be the order of the day. Whatever you eat, be wary of mess. You will not be able to sprinkle salt or pepper on your food, as the low gravity will send this flying into the air. Thus, these will be provided in liquid form.

for water, well, the only way to carry enough water for 100 people to Mars is to have excellent recycling systems. So anything that comes out of you will likely be siphoned off and recycled, only to be served back to you at your next meal time. It's best not to think about it. Then again, this is not that different from what happens on Earth. All the water you drink has been through many other living things systems multiple times. As I said, best not to think about it. Showers will not likely be present, as without gravity, water does not flow. Astronauts tend to use waterless shampoos and rub themselves with wet flannels. Toilets will be something you need to strap yourself down to use, and they will be vacuum-powered to get rid of waste and to stop it floating around.

Sleep will take a little adjusting too, as there will be no true night and day anymore, and gravity will not pull you down onto a bed. Think you could get used to all of this? Well, here is where the really strange things start happening. As you travel through space, you will start to experience changes. Under the effects of low gravity, you will start to grow taller. Some astronauts gained an entire inch of height after six months in space. Your face will become redder and puffier, as your heart, so used to fighting against gravity to pump up blood through your system, will find itself too good at its change.

job in a weightless environment. This change can lead to health issues, thickening of carotid arteries, and sight issues. These are not all fully understood by scientists, as there are not many examples of humans in space to test from. But perhaps the strangest of all, your very DNA will change. There is always some adaptability in human DNA. Certain genes are turned on or off at certain times in our life under certain conditions. In a twins study performed by NASA in 2019, two twins with identical genetic material were tested. One were sent up to space for six months, the other remained on Earth. When the two reunited and were tested again, it was found that the astronaut twins' DNA had changed in how it was expressing itself, creating differences between him and his

brother. There were shortened telomeres, weakening of the immune system. and issues with bone formation. It's worth noting, upon arriving back on Earth, most of these changes in genetic expression reverted back to normal after six months. However, 9% of them did not. In ways we do not fully understand yet, spending time in space changes you, most likely because of the radiation the astronaut experienced.

So, eventually you will arrive at Mars. Starship will fall at an angle and will use its flaps to shed an incredible 99% of its kinetic energy aerodynamically, traveling in a long arc through the atmosphere before eventually bringing you to the planet's surface. You will step out into the biodomes and sniff the manufactured Martian air. Starship will be checked over and then refueled using oxygen and methane extracted from Mars itself. As for you, you will have plenty of time to ponder. All journeys change us, but yours may be the one that you can never change back from. The you that left Earth will never truly return home. But then, perhaps that's just how it always is.

Have you ever wondered what space travel might be like in the future? In many science fiction stories, in the future, humanity has spread out across the solar system, colonizing planets and asteroids. Given the hundreds of millions of kilometers between us and even the closest orbital bodies, this is not easy to do in real life, at least not with our current level of technology. NASA predicts that it will take seven months to make it to even our closest neighbor, Mars. This is why sci-fi writers often invent powerful engines on their spacecrafts, warp drives, Epstein drives, and hyperdrives, that allow humans to cross those distances in days or

minutes rather than months or years. These conventional flight times occur because of the limitations in conventional rocketry. new technology is arising, something that feels like it's straight out of sci-fi, that might one day completely replace conventional rockets. With its greater efficiency, those month-long flight times could become mere days. And while the technology is still under development, there are examples of it being used in outer space missions right now. What is this technology? Ion engines. And with them, the future might be a lot closer than you think. I'm Alex McColgan and you're watching Astrum. Join with me as we learn more about this developing

technology and learn more about these devices that may well be the future of space travel. To begin with, for those who are unfamiliar, what is an ion engine? And how are they different from conventional rockets we know today? All rocketry works under the principle of conservation of momentum. If you want to go up, you must send something else flying down, with enough momentum to equal the upward momentum you wish to achieve. Conventional chemical rockets do this by burning rocket fuel. Oxidizer mixes with a chemical like liquid methane, heating it and causing it to expand. By sending out this stream of highly energized exhaust from the bottom of the rocket, the top is sent flying upwards, kind of like releasing the air from inside a balloon

to send it whizzing around the room. Momentum is conserved in these cases. In our example with the balloon, the momentum of the air leaving the balloon equals the momentum of the balloon flying around. With the rocket, the momentum of the exhaust equals the force of the rocket going upwards. In theory, you could travel around in space

simply by having a very large balloon and releasing its air. However, you would run into a problem with this method, you would run out of air very quickly and then would not be able to reduce any more thrust. Balloons are not very efficient forms of rocket propulsion. To a degree, this is also the problem with our current chemical rockets. Although burning the fuel does give it more kinetic energy than simply squeezing it out of a balloon, chemical rockets are still not that efficient, as there is an upper limit to

how fast you can accelerate exhaust material by burning fuel. than burning it hotter, if you want to go faster with such a rocket, the only solution is to burn more fuel, which means you need to carry more fuel, which means your rocket has to be bigger and heavier, requiring even more fuel. And once you run out of said fuel, that is it. You can produce no more thrust. Conserving their fuel is the reason the NASA trip to Mars will take seven months. There's no way they could have a large enough rocket that could carry enough fuel to accelerate passengers all the way to Mars. Consider the over 60-meter size of some of the rockets being launched currently, such as the Artemis 1 SLS rocket. They

got a spacecraft to the moon recently, a much closer target. Its main core stage was filled to the brim with 2.8 million liters of fuel. That fuel was all burned up in just the first 10 minutes after launch. To carry enough fuel to accelerate all the way to Mars, would need a ridiculously large ship, which would need a monstrous amount of thrust simply to get it off the ground. It's just not efficient. Momentum is equal to mass times velocity. Chemical rockets try to go faster by simply throwing more mass out the back of their thrusters.

But what if instead we increased the velocity at which that mass was thrown? That would also increase momentum, giving you more thrust. this is where ion engines come in. Ion engines attempt to give thrust electrically to their propellant. Rather than burning fuel to cause rapid expansion, they attempt to create ions or charged particles that then are accelerated along electromagnetic fields, sometimes to speeds of 146,000 kilometers per hour, depending on the model. The more electricity you have, the more momentum you could impart to such a particle.

the faster it leaves the back of your rocket, the more momentum that your rocket gains to move forward. This means that you could get away with using far less fuel on your trip, provided that you could create enough electrical energy to accelerate your particles. The takeaway is that ion engines are much more efficient than chemical rockets. Chemical rocket fuel efficiency could achieve up to 35% efficiency, while ion engines could manage 90%. Different models vary in their efficiency, but all require far less propellant to achieve acceleration, so much so that they can literally accelerate for years.

And this acceleration adds up. NASA space shuttles have top speeds of 29,000 kilometres per hour. Iron thrusters can achieve speeds that are 11 times that. The upper cap is how much electricity you can produce, not how much fuel is in the tank. So, if ion engines are so superior, why haven't we already started using them? That question is a little misleading. We have been using them. The recent NASA Dart mission was equipped with a next gridded ion thruster,

ready to be used in the event that its conventional thrusters failed. Deep Space One visited distant comets while using an N-star ion engine. For a period between 1972 and the late 90s, Soviet satellites made use of Hall-Effect thrusters, a type of ion propulsion, as stabilizes on their satellites. This functionality is still being used on satellites today. Space X's Starlink satellites also use Hall-Effect thrusters. Even entire space stations have been propelled by these thrusters.

The Chinese Tian Gong space station is moved by propellant, but also four Hall-Effect thrusters, which are used to adjust and maintain the station's orbit. These thrusters have reportedly been firing continuously for 8,240 hours with no problems. But as you might have intuited, there is also a problem with current generation ion thrusters, which means they're not yet ready to replace all conventional rockets. They have a fatal flaw, an Achilles heel. Iron thrusters on the market today have terrible umph. To illustrate this point, if you were to take an ion

thruster and were to hold out your hand to try to stop it moving, the force you would feel would be roughly comparable to the weight of a single piece of paper. That is the trade-off. Iron thrusters can accelerate for years. They usually use chemically inert gases as their fuel source, so are very safe. They can accelerate particles up to huge speeds, but the number of particles being accelerated is small. So the force of this thrust is tiny.

An ion engine cannot produce the large enough thrust needed to get a spacecraft out of Earth's powerful gravity well by itself. Of course, in space, with no air resistance to fight against, and with enough time, this tiny thruster can add up. Even a gentle acceleration can get you where you want to go if nothing opposes it. For point of reference, some ion engines in space can take a couple of days to accelerate a spacecraft up to about the speed of a moving car. This means that ion thrusters have a niche on long-distance missions, ones that can get away with only gentle force to maintain orbits or for moving very small things like tiny satellites. But they are a long way away from being able to carry humanity a long way away. There are other problems to overcome.

Ion engines work by creating circuits, moving patterns of electrons that can carry charge and create electrical and magnetic fields. However, ions from the atmosphere can interfere with the delicate balance of these circuits. If the circuit breaks down because extra negative charges are coming in when they shouldn't, or are bleeding out unexpectedly, the engine loses its ability to create the right fields, which means it can't accelerate reliably. Not only that, but the best fuel sources for ion engines, the chemically inert xenon, is very rare and expensive, $1,000 per kilogram.

Ion engines will need to overcome all these problems if they are to become the primary form of space transportation in the future. That said, there are some efforts being made to do just that. Helicon thrusters are a new type of ion thruster that are being developed by the European Space Agency in collaboration with the Australian National University. They are making breakthroughs that improve thruster efficiency even further, decreasing the wear on parts, and making it so ion thrusters are even better suited to those long space voyages. In terms of fuel source, some ion thrusters under development are being built in ways that allow them to use a much wider range of fuel sources. The complexly named magnetoplasma dynamic thruster has configurations that allow it to use

hydrogen, argon, ammonia or nitrogen as propellant. In certain settings, it can even use the ambient gas in low Earth orbit. Imagine having a spaceship whose fuel source was literally air, whose only waste exhaust was that same air. This is a trait shared by the ever-improving variable-specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket, which is particularly intriguing as it can use almost anything as a fuel source, although it has a preference for Argon. Argon is 200 times cheaper than its competitor, Xenon, making it a much more viable fuel source.

VASIMA also has more umph than other ion thrusters. The designers of VASM claim that it could take astronauts to Mars in just 39 days. However, the technology has some kinks to work out. It is extremely power-hungry. It is designed to heat plasma inside it to 1 million degrees Celsius, or 173 times the temperature of the sun's surface. We do not yet have power sources efficient enough to feed this engine at the levels necessary for that 39-day trip. And even when we do, unsurprisingly, getting rid of all the excess heat

this creates is problematic, as in space there is nothing to transfer the excess heat too. These up and coming lines of ion thrusters all still have a long way to go before they will be able to totally replace conventional rockets. While their efficiency is incredible, their poor thrust leaves much to be desired. But even if an ion engine is never developed with the thrust necessary to get out of a planet's gravity well, this capability to significantly reduce travel time to distant planets, and its advantages as a way of efficiently moving satellites, means that iron thrusters already have their niche. Scientists keep searching for solutions to iron thrusters' technological challenges.

For now, conventional chemical rockets remain the only option for short-burn high-thrust journeys. But one day, if those challenges are overcome, this may no longer be true. ion engines might become the only type of engine worth using. Then, the solar system as a whole will open up to us like never before. It might one day be possible to pop over to Mars for a holiday. Perhaps this is one more example of where science fiction one day becomes science fact. You may have heard in the news last year that Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos have become the first billionaires to get into space themselves. Whatever your thoughts on this, it marks a fascinating point in human history.

In the past, the space race was exclusively a contest or collaboration of nations, but now private companies are beginning to enter the fray. Why this sudden change? And what does this mean for the future of space travel and exploration, now that businesses are starting to look to the stars? What might it mean for humanity's future? I'm Alex McColligan, and you're watching Astrom. And while it might be a little too early to say for sure what the future brings,

we can perhaps gain greater insights into these questions by looking at why some of these companies and individuals are reaching for the stars. The commercialization of space is not a new thing. In 1962, just five years after the first artificial satellite was launched by the USSR, the first commercial satellite, Telstar 1, was launched by the AT&T Corporation, as a means of broadcasting American television programs to Europe. It was launched using a NASA rocket.

In 1975, Ortrug, or the first company to attempt to develop an alternative propulsion system for rockets, was founded in Stuttgart, Germany. And in 1984, the US President Ronald Reagan signed the Commercial Space Launch Act, intending to encourage companies to explore space. Satellites have been a staple of modern life for many years now, enabling internet connections and helping us to navigate through tools like SATNAVs, among other things. In other words, companies have already been commercializing space for some time. So what's different about these recent space flights?

Well, these flights are the first time that private companies have built their own rockets and flown their own founders into space. They represent a turning point in space exploration and the beginning of a fledgling space tourism industry where wealthy individuals can pay to spend time in space. This could have larger future impacts than you might think, as we'll explore later in the video. But let's first take a look at some of the companies that have been developing their own rockets to travel into space. In particular, we'll be looking at Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and Space. SpaceX, as the differing approaches of all of these companies offer us the best glimpses of the

many possible outcomes of commercial space flights. To begin with, let's examine Virgin Galactic, as it was Richard Branson who won the race to be the first billionaire to fly into space on their own rocket. He did this on the 11th of July in 2021, but had actually created Virgin Galactic much earlier back in 2004. Branson's company, the Virgin. Group had taken an interest in the idea of space tourism and had noted that another smaller company, Scaled Composites, was developing their own rocket, called Spaceship One. Scaled Composites hoped to win the Ansari X Prize for the first private crude spacecraft. Branson reached out to scaled composites and convinced them to make the Virgin Group their sole

customer of future spacecrafts if they succeeded. They did so on October 4, 2004, with Spaceship 1 flying to 112 kilometers in altitude and returning to the Earth safely and with a crew. It's worth noting that space is officially recognized as starting at 100 kilometers by many agencies at a point known as the Kaman Line, named after Theodor von Kaman, the first person who tried to define such a boundary. Spaceship 1 did successfully fly over the Kaman Line boundary. However, NASA sees space as beginning at around 80 kilometers. With that success under their belt, scaled composites and Virgin Galactic began working together to create a whole fleet of new spaceships, model name Spaceship 2, with scaled

composites providing the technical know-how and Virgin Galactic providing much of the initial capital. Together they founded the spaceship company, with Virgin owning 70% of the shares, but eventually this rose to 100% when Virgin bought out the company completely. The rocket they designed had one aim in mind, space tourism, to get six passengers and two pilots up into space, to allow them to see incredible views of the Earth, and to experience a feeling of weightlessness. To do this, they used an intrast.

interesting method. Instead of just creating a rocket, they actually attach their spaceship two to a specialized aircraft called White Knight 2, which carried the spaceship 2 up to an altitude of 15,000 meters. Then the spacecraft is released and activates its rocket booster, which takes it to supersonic speeds in just eight seconds. The spaceship 2 then begins climbing, arcing higher and higher until it was pointed straight up. It reaches over 80 kilometres, the NASA definition of the boundary of space. All in all, this trip up takes roughly an hour.

At the height of spaceship 2's climb, it cuts its thrusters and lets gravity begin to slow its acceleration. This drop in acceleration results in the passengers on board feeling weightless. Sort of like when you throw a ball straight up in the air, there is a brief moment when the ball is neither rising, nor falling. This moment of perfect balance between upward motion and gravitational pull

lasts for roughly five minutes, after which the spaceship too begins to fall to the Earth. It glides its way back down much slower than a capsule reentering the atmosphere by using a feathered re-entry system before gliding its way back to its launch pad. This part of the trip would also take about an hour, making for a two-hour round trip total. With the success of Richard Branson getting into space, Virgin Galactic will be looking to start flying passengers into space within this year. But why does this matter? Ticket prices for a flight on spaceship two, or possibly spaceship three by then, will cost $250,000, far outside the price range of most people. Shouldn't that money instead be invested in issues closer to home, rather than providing the rich with a fun day out,

Well, as our next Billionaire has pointed out, space tourism might just be the way that space travel becomes accessible to everyone. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, created his own space company, Blue Origin, with this aim in mind. Bezos has always had an interest in space, mentioning in an interview at the age of 18 his desire to build space hotels, amusement parks and colonies for 2 to 3 million people who would be in. in orbit. However, this was not simply as a way to make money. Bezos explained at the time that this was

a way of preserving Earth. By moving certain amounts of the population off the planet, it might reduce the strain on the environment. In 2000, when Bezos was wealthy enough from the success of Amazon to start making his dreams become a reality, he began Blue Origin, funding it privately with his own money. However, to begin with, Bezos kept the project fairly secret. He did not reveal publicly that he had founded the company, and even in 2003, when he started buying land for a possible launch site, the public was left wondering what he wanted the land for. Unlike Virgin Galactic, which leaned on investors to fund its research, and so was very open with its aims, Blue Origin did not make much public noise for about a decade. It accepted a

contract from NASA in 2009, and did publish a rough report on the progress of the rocket it was developing, but it was not until 2015 that it began to speak more openly about its goals. And those goals had not changed much from when Bezos was young. Blue Origin's first commercial rocket, the New Shepherd, named after Alan Shepard, the first Americans go into space, was also a tourism rocket. But Bezos made it clear in speeches that he did not intend to stop there. In his mind, this was just a beginning. In 2016, he made a speech where he compared the space industry now with aviation back in its infant days.

In the early days of airplane flight, a big portion of people flying were those seeking the simple thrill of flying in a plane. This tourism and entertainment factor expanded interest in the industry, which made it so many companies developed the technology further. Nowadays, almost anyone can buy a plane ticket. Although spacecraft tickets are extremely expensive for now, in the long run, Bezos said that the space industry could go the same way. Bezos's rocket, the new shepherd, is a little different in design from Branson's. It has a more standard thruster that carries an observation pod up into the sky, which then detaches. It also goes higher than spaceship too, crossing the Carmen line to a height of around 107 kilometers.

It also travels much faster. The whole trip, from takeoff to landing, will only last about 11 minutes, unlike Virgin Galactics two hours, although it will no doubt carry a similar price tag for tickets. And Bezos is already looking ahead. Although 107 kilometers is over the Kaman line, it is still far from true orbit. Blue Origin's future goal is to get their next rocket, named New Glenn after another astronaut into orbit. And as for the project after that, well, the name is New Armstrong. It is clear that Blue Origin intends to make its way to the moon.

This is in line with Bezos's stated objectives, to pave the way for industry to more accessibly get into space. Although he doesn't expect to see it in his lifetime, Bezos has said that he expects much of the Earth's heavy industry to one day be done in space. space. Our last billionaire, however, has his eyes on an even further goal. Elon Musk's company, SpaceX, is a little different from the other two. While Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin focus on space tourism, SpaceX has been more focused on commercial ventures. Since its founding in 2002, SpaceX has grown to dominate the market, taking half of the contracts to launch satellites into space. Part of its success in this area is,

is due to the fact that its rocket, the Falcon 9, is reusable. This reusability drastically reduces the cost of launches, making launching satellites and other cargo much cheaper. The Falcon 9 is much larger than New Shepard or spaceship 2. While the latter two are roughly comparable, at 18 meters in length each, Falcon 9 is 70 meters. Its thrusters are powerful enough to get it into orbit.

It carries a reusable cargo capsule named the Dragon, the first of which carried supplies up to the International Space Station. The Falcon 9 is able to carry 5,500 kilograms of weight into orbit, or more if they're willing to sacrifice the reusability of the rocket. This ability to transport cargo reflects a possible future purpose of Space X, to carry freight to Mars. Elon Musk has always made it clear that he intends to one-time, day see a colony on Mars, and in 2001, his company conceptualized greenhouses that might grow plants

there. Any such colony will no doubt need supplies from Earth, particularly in its early days, as vital equipment and personnel would need to be transported over. Any company with the large-scale capability to transport heavyweights between Earth and Mars would stand to make a lot of money. In 2001, Musk attempted to buy rockets that might start the process of getting supplies to Mars, but realized that it would be cheaper to create his own. Thanks to the success of SpaceX, which is now currently valued at well over $75 billion, Musk has gained the funds necessary to further his dream. SpaceX is developing a new line of rocket known as Starship,

which they hope will be able to go to the moon and later be able to transport 100 tons to Mars before refueling there and flying back. It will be an incredible achievement, and although it takes roughly six months to travel to Mars, it will make the red planet far more accessible to humankind. Space tourism, lunar landings, orbiting facilities and refueling stations, shipping to Mars.

These are all the stated objectives of the commercial interests looking at space. And although they're still a long way from achieving some of those goals, the fact that they are making the progress they are makes those future goals seem all the more plausible. This is why Billion Ayers traveling into the edges of space in their own rockets is exciting. It not only marks the beginning of an age where trips for the average person

traveling to another planet could one day be real, but it could lead the way for humanity truly being an interplanetary species. Now, I know these companies have their controversies, which I avoided in this video. However, what company seems the most promising to you? Maybe there's a company I didn't mention that has real potential too. Do you think it's good for there to be healthy competition in this industry?

Let me know what you think in the comments below. Right now, the Perseverance Rover is located inside the Yezaro crater on Mars, roughly 363 million kilometers away from us. And yet, despite this distance, Perseverance is sending us thousands of images, videos and scientific data from its various senses and instruments. If you think that's far away, the Voyager spacecraft took and sent the famous pale blue dot image from 6 billion kilometers from Earth.

That's 40 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. We currently use radio waves to transmit data to and from spacecraft. That's right, the same kind of waves used to listen to the radio. However, at interplanetary distances, even with the incredible and expensive technology in use to date, data transfer speeds can be far slower than dial up internet. This severely limits how much data a probe can capture as well as the speed in which it's received, which is why NASA has something new up its sleeve. I'm Alex McColgan and you're watching Astrum.

Join with me today as we understand how NASA stays in Congress. contact with spacecraft billions of kilometers away and explore the new kinds of technology NASA have just launched in the field of deep space communication. Unsurprisingly, the probes and rovers of NASA missions do not have extremely powerful radio antennas themselves. They simply aren't big enough or powerful enough to house them. They have small but directional and efficient antennas which transmit their data. This means most of the heavy lifting needs to come from huge radio.

video antennas on the Earth itself. NASA uses something called the Deep Space Network to communicate with its spacecraft. The Deep Space Network is the largest and most sensitive scientific communication system in the world. The Deep Space Network received and relayed to the world the first TV images of astronaut Neil Armstrong setting foot on the surface of the moon in 1969. It was called on to support the nerve-wracking Apollo 13 mission after the rupture of an oxygen tank, which forced NASA to abort the planned lunar landing.

During the critical re-entry of the capsule, it was essential that engineers on the ground maintain contact with the astronauts on board. The spacecraft's minimal power was needed for re-entry, with little left over for communications. The Deep Space Network was able to capture these whispers from space, and it helped bring the astronauts home. And of course, the Deep Space Network maintains contact with every ongoing Deep Space NASA mission. It can even talk to the rovers on Mars. In fact, each antenna can receive multiple incoming signals at the same time. However, it only has the capability to transmit

one at a time. So, how does it work? Well, it's a network of three facilities containing multiple giant radio telescopes, with facilities located in California, Spain and Australia. Each facility has multiple antennas. And while the size of the antennas is important, it's. It isn't the only factor to consider. Their placement is actually very important too. They are all equidistant from each other and are approximately 120 degrees apart in longitude, with each facility situated in semi-mountainous, ball-shaped terrain to help shield against radio frequency interference.

The location of the three sites means that at any given moment in the Earth's rotation, almost every area of the sky is covered by an antenna, so there aren't many many of the communication blackouts with ongoing missions. The Deep Space Network helps gather the science data acquired by the spacecraft, it transmits commands and uploads software modifications to spacecraft. While the Deep Space Network tracks, sends commands to, and receives data from all NASA spacecraft beyond the Moon, the network also supports other international space agencies, like the European Space Agency, Japanese Space Agency, and the Indian Space Agency.

However, there are downsides to this system too. They require large antennas on Earth, ultra-sensitive receivers, and powerful transmitters in order to maintain contact over the vast distances involved. And as incredible and as versatile as the Deep Space Network is, it is showing its age. It's been the only communication system for NASA for decades. Replacing major components can cause problems, as it can leave an antenna out of service for months at a time. Plus, the older 70-meter antennas are reaching the end of their lives. At some point, these will need to be replaced. And in reality, they are not very efficient

when it comes to interplanetary missions. As I mentioned, at tremendous distances, the data transfer rate is painfully slow. It took New Horizons over two years to send back all the data it collected from just the one Pluto flyby. So what can be done better? Well, this is where the Laser Communications Relay demonstration mission comes into play. Since the dawn of space exploration, NASA has used radio frequency systems to communicate with astronauts and spacecraft, but the LCRD will demonstrate the capabilities of optical communications. Launched on the 7th of December 2021, this space relay is a new,

better, faster and more advanced way of transmitting data in space using infrared laser communications rather than radio waves. Infrared light has higher frequencies when compared to radio waves, and that means more data can be packed into each transmission. This antenna in space can send data to Earth from geosynchronous orbit at 1.2 gigabits per second. With it, it's almost like NASA is upgrading from ADSL to fiber internet. Including the benefits of the increased data transfer speeds, the LCRD will also help NASA remove the need for missions to have direct line of sight to antennas on Earth, and its geostationary orbit will mean it's always in view of the ground stations on Earth.

A geostationary orbit means the spacecraft is orbiting Earth the same speed as Earth's rotation, meaning the same side of Earth is always in its view. Now, this is a technology demonstration mission, but it is hoping to be a technology demonstration mission, but it is that the LCRD will prove the capabilities of optical communication in space. Using this system, we should have a bandwidth increase of 10 to 100 times more than radio frequency systems. Additionally, optical communication instruments are smaller in size, and they weigh less than radio instruments.

So for a spacecraft using optical communications, that would mean there would be more room for science instruments, or simply a less expensive launch due to its lower weight. In fact, the entire LCRD payload itself is only the size of a standard king-size mattress, compared to the 70-meter BMF radio antennas the deep space network currently utilize. Hopefully, optical communication systems are also very power-efficient. But the major downside of using optical signals is that they cannot easily penetrate cloud coverage, so NASA must still build a system flexible enough to avoid interruptions due to weather on Earth.

The LCRD will test this by transmitting data to two ground stations, one of which is located in California, with the other in Hawaii. These locations were chosen for their minimal cloud coverage. So what will the LCRD actually be used for? As part of the technology demonstration, it will be able to relay data from the ISS to Earth at much greater speeds than currently possible. Because the ISS is orbiting so close to Earth, it's only ever in view of ground stations for very short periods of time.

However, if it is relaying data to the LCRD, which is high above the Earth, it will remain in view of the LCRD for half of its orbit, and so can relay data to it for much longer periods of time. And assuming LCRD is proven a success, we do have some upcoming missions that will utilize this new optical capability. The Orion Artemis 2 mission, which is planned to launch in 2024, is set to transfer ultra-high-definition video over infrared light to Earth, which will show Artemis 2 astronauts exploring the Moon in a definition we've never seen before.

In addition, the Psyche mission, which is planned to be launched in 2026, will go to an asteroid over 240 million kilometers away from Earth. He will carry the deep space optical communication payload to test laser communications at this distance. These missions will help pave away for laser communication in the space field. The increase in bandwidth will fix one of the major bottlenecks of science collection that has really hindered missions in the past. Being able to transmit ultra-high-definition video from planets and asteroids going forward

seems like an incredibly exciting prospect, and honestly I just can't wait. Thus, should we explore the far reaches of the solar system again, hopefully this time we won't have to wait years at a time for all the data to reach us. In H.G. Wells' novel, The War of the Worlds, Mars is the home of an advanced alien race. These super-intelligent beings had access to gigantic robotic walkers which could stride across the terrain with ease, blasting all in their path, intent on conquering our Earth. Unfortunately, our explorations of Mars have thus far not found any signs of hostile aliens plotting world domination aboard giant walkers, but robotic walkers on Mars might not be a thing

of science fiction for much longer, not if NASA and Boston Dynamics have anything to do with it. Thanks to these two organizations, walking robots on Mars could soon be a reality, and they are already more advanced than you might think. I am Alex McColgan and you're watching Astrum. With me today as we uncover the surprising advances that have been made in walking robotics and how through autonomous AI these robots could revolutionize our exploration and colonization of the red planet.

And remember, these advances have already been made. But first, why is NASA interested in developing robots with legs? If you have been keeping up with the sort of robots that scientists have been sending to Mars, you will notice that they all have a fairly similar design. Spirit, opportunity, curiosity, perseverance, even the true or wrong rover deployed on Mars by China earlier this year are six-wheeled rovers with large bodies, some over two meters tall, carrying various kinds of scientific equipment and cameras. This is because form follows function.

Wheels are an easy way to help a robot to get around on a flat surface, and a large body allows for more scientific equipment to be carried. However, wheels also come with downsides, in that they limit the kinds of places these robots can explore. Spirit's mission suffered a serious setback in 2009, when it got stuck in soft sand, a trap it never escaped from. Although scientists wanted to continue using it as a stationary platform to study the area immediately around it, getting stuck was essentially the end of the mission for Spirit,

especially when it drained its batteries trying to get out. A similar thing happened to Opportunity in 2000. Although, fortunately, in its case, Opportunity was able to escape from wheel spinning after just over a month of being stuck. However, there was also a point in the first year of Opportunity's mission where it was exploring endurance crater. The exposed rock in the sides of this crater were ideal for answering questions about the history of water on Mars.

Opportunity had limits on how steeper surface it could drive on, about 30 degrees, and it was uncertain whether it could get out of the crater again. if it drove into it. In the end, scientists decided to send Opportunity into the crater anyway. As it happened, Opportunity was able to drive out and continued exploring Mars's surface for another 15 years.

But all that science wouldn't have been possible if Opportunity's wheels had meant it couldn't escape endurance. Now compare that with this. You're great of protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based restoration agent who will stick by your side from start to finish.

Phone calls, filing documentation, preparing insurance claims, your agent handles it all. In fact, we're so confident restoration is guaranteed, pour your money back. Isn't it nice to have someone like that on your side? Save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com slash Spotify. Terms apply. This robot, known as Big Dog, was created by Robotics Company, Boston Dynamics, a company that makes some truly impressive robots. You should check out their parkour robot, Atlas, a humanoid robot capable of running, jumping,

and climbing over obstacles in a way that almost feels human. And you can really see the advantages that legs can offer in these kind of situations. Big Dog could easily traverse powdery conditions, even up slopes, allowing it to explore a greater range of areas in an environment like Mars. However, it was a later version that caught NASA's eye. Meet Spot. Spot is a walking robot originally designed for tasks on Earth, such as data collection and mapping spaces for industry,

or going into dangerous areas that humans can't enter, such as in areas that are heavily irradiated. It's able to carry weights of up to 14 kilograms, and can perform repetitive tasks, and walk upstairs, over gravel, and other uneven surfaces. It comes with cameras that can see all around it, mapping the space. If it falls over, it can self-write itself even from being completely upside down. Unlike the rovers on Mars, which have top speeds of about 0.2 kilometres per hour,

Spot can travel at around 5.8 kilometers per hour. But the cleverest part about it is its intelligent AI. By using information it sees in its cameras, Spot is able to create a 3D image in its onboard computer. computer, and it can use that information to figure out the best way to travel over obstacles. You don't necessarily control it. Instead, you tell it where you want to go, and it figures out for itself the best way to get there, actively avoiding obstacles if they present themselves.

If it does start to fall, it can figure out what it needs to do to stop falling, and moves its legs to arrest its fall in a way that almost feels alive. It is this autonomy, mixed with spots incredible range of versatility and movement, and that makes it ideal for exploration of other planets. It's not possible to directly control a robot on another planet. The distance is so great that there would be several minute lags between a scientist sending a signal and the robot taking an action. So a lot of decision making needs to be done by a robot on location.

This is true of the rovers NASA has sent to Mars already, like spirit and opportunity. However, Spot can take this to another level. To a collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Spot is proving to be capable of working with a series of other robots to explore Martian analog caves here on Earth, completely independent of humans. They are exploring the whole layout on their own, choosing their path, walking over obstacles. They can handle pitch black lighting conditions, smoke, dust, and even water. They can recognize points of interest and investigate them.

One area of Mars and the moon that NASA would like to explore in future are caves. Caves are scientifically interesting for several reasons. They allow scientists to see deep into the geology of a planet without needing to do any drilling, which is a difficult process, helping them tell what the structure is like, or whether water was ever present. They are sheltered ecosystems. While things on the surface might be eroded over time by wind or cosmic radiation, Off a shelter, preserving anything scientifically interesting for us to find.

NASA's Braille program is even interested in whether any bacteria might have survived in such an environment on Mars, or at least if the remains might be there. Finally, this shelter and protection from radiation also make them a good location for future human colonization, making it all the more important for us to map them out for any future human missions. Currently, we struggle to explore caves on other planets. Taking photos from space only really tells us information about maybe the entryway. Scientists can't map cave structures from orbit.

Rovers-like opportunity would struggle to explore such a cave, as the ground would probably not be very flat. The passageway might become too narrow for a two-meter-wide robot, and the terrain would be uncertain. And perhaps worst of all, signal to Earth would quickly become blocked by all that rock, meaning a robot that requires any human input would not get very far. In other words, a robot that was sent to explore a cave on Mars would need to be able to go in and explore the entire thing on his own, with no prior knowledge of what the terrain might look

like in there. It would need to see and map the terrain, decide how to move around it, and finally bring that information back out to the surface. And this is what NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Boston Dynamics are currently doing. By combining Nebula, an advanced decision-making AI, with a versatile platformer spot, NASA is hoping to one day be able to send several of these robots to a cave on Mars or the moon and have them go in and map it, independently organizing themselves by working as a group, using cameras, robotic arms, and scientific equipment to identify objects of scientific interest,

relaying that information to each other, and then sending in the robot carrying the right equipment to further study and photograph the object of interest. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Boston Dynamics are part of a team called Team Co-Star and are taking part in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge. This competition pits cutting-edge robots and teams across the globe to practice at exactly this kind of task, to enter tunnels, caves and underground urban environments, and to explore and map them, possibly finding things of interest or disaster victims for later search, rescue, The final is taking place at the end of September 2021.

If Team Co-Star win, it would be an excellent sign that their robotic walkers are entirely capable of doing everything that would need to be done on a real space mission. There is currently no set date when Spot would be ready to explore the Moon or Mars. This is still in the testing phase. However, this technology offers a tantalizing possibility. One day, rather than Martians sending robotic walkers to Earth to help them colonize it, It might be us sending robots to help us colonize there. So there we have it.

Our robotic walk is on Mars? Not yet, but there soon may well be. Ever since humanity realized that Mars is a world with plenty of similarities to our own, our collective imagination has run wild about the prospect of life there, including the prospect of experiencing our lives there. Can we as a species colonize Mars? And if so, how would we do it? There seems to be more and more talk in the media about this subject, but are we really

at a technological level where we could create a settlement on Mars? I'm Alex McColgan and you're watching Astrum, and together we will explore the prospect of having a human colony on the red planet. Today's video is a collaboration with Raffer from our Spanish channel. If you are a Spanish speaker, be sure to check out his channel here or through the link in the description. As you may already know, Mars has had several robotic exploration missions over the years, such as the legendary curiosity and opportunity rovers.

The journey they went on and the things they discovered has helped spur a collective interest about the future prospects of Mars. In fact, there is now so much interest in Mars that private companies have been created to promote its colonization, such as the Mars Society and Mars One. All this fascination is understandable since our own. neighboring planet as a series of characteristics that make it similar to our home. It is the closest celestial body where life could have existed in the past. This notion has been around since as early as the 19th century when astronomers began to attribute

the geology of Mars to a Martian civilization. This wasn't a crazy assumption considering the technology we had at the time. A newspaper article from the New York Times in 1911 even spent time discussing the subject. However, recently, the idea of life on Mars is getting more proponents again. Even NASA believed there is something to be found. The main objective of the Perseverance rover that will launch this summer is to find evidence of life there. This is significant because apart from the Viking program in the 70s, most other missions

didn't have any means of searching for biological life. Rather, they focused on the past prospects of habitability on Mars. In other words, they search for signs of past liquid oceans and not for evidence of microbes. All these missions have been laying the foundation for what is coming up. Numerous space agencies and companies now have their eyes set on putting colonies on Mars. But how would colonists get there and survive? The trip itself to Mars would take about three months, with the most optimal launch conditions. This doesn't seem too excessive.

It's like a long voyage on a cruise ship, but you have to consider that you would spend at least three months outside the safety of Earth's magnetic field. Out here, you are exposed to the solar wind and cosmic radiation. Prolonged exposure to this kind of radiation can cause astronauts to develop cancer and even symptoms of Alzheimer's before they reach Mars. Fortunately, there are some thoughts about how to protect against this. The astronauts could be shielded using materials in the ship's construction that are rich in hydrogen. In fact, the cabin could be surrounded by a water tank in the walls, water being rich in hydrogen.

Another option is to create a magnetic field around the spacecraft, but this requires generating a huge amount of energy from a reactor small enough to fit on the ship, something we don't have the technology to do safely just yet. In addition, the further away from Earth you travel, the longer the time delay gets with communications. We take it for granted that on Earth, if you phone someone on the other side of the planet, you might only get a split second time delay. At these distances, the speed of light is incredibly fast.

With astronomical distances, it's pretty slow. On Mars itself, the distance to Earth means the transmissions will be delayed by anything between 3 to 22 minutes. This is only one way, so accounting for the return transmission, the minimum delay is six minutes, making a normal phone conversation highly impractical. Text, audio, and video messages are possible, but Martian settlers will have to fend for themselves if they need to make any immediate decisions, for example, in cases of emergencies or equipment failures, making remote operations or assistance in real time unfeasible.

But let's say all these difficulties are overcome and that the colonists reach Mars. Where would they settle? At the moment there is no one favorite candidate. The North Pole is a distinct possibility due to the presence of water ice in the caps there. Another interesting option is the 81 km wide Corolev crater, as it's also filled with water ice. The atmosphere isn't thick enough for liquid water to pool on the surface of Mars for any length lengthy period of time, however, pockets of water locked up in ice can be found at the bottom

of craters where it is cold enough. On Mars, there is also the possibility of settling near underground water deposits found in permafrost under the crust. Studies based on data from a combination of Mars orbiters have revealed and mapped out locations for water under the ground all across the planet. Although more difficult to extract than surface ice, it could open the door to colonies in more equatorial latitudes, regions that are much warmer, where solar panels for energy production would be much more effective.

Mission planners would probably try to combine this finding with a location in the Northern Hemisphere. The ground elevation there is much lower, meaning the atmosphere is thicker, perfect for slowing and landing a spacecraft. Another consideration when looking for a settlement location is to see if there are lava tubes nearby. A lava tube is basically a long cave that formed when magma flowed through it, that is since emptied, resulting in fairly uniform tunnels. We see many examples of these on Earth, and on Mars, they could even be large enough to house buildings inside. While

lava tubes and caves have been identified on Mars, suitable candidates will also need to consider what we mentioned before, the elevation of the location and the prospects of nearby water. Once a site has been chosen, missions can begin to make the area suitable for a human habitat. Not everything colonists could possibly need would fit in one spaceship to Mars, so several forer-runner missions will have to take place, laying the foundations autonomously for what the colonists will need. There have been several architectural competitions to find the best design for long-lasting habitats, although there is no model that is said to be definitive yet.

are a wide variety of proposals, from creating habitats using ice to habitats built with the design structure of fungi. However, the majority of the suggestions utilize the regolith found all over the surface of Mars to build a habitat using 3D printing techniques through autonomous robots. Unfortunately, robots like these don't exist yet, so they have to be developed before this idea even becomes a possibility. But basically, this concept requires requires excavating material from the surface, which would then be processed and mixed with water ice into something similar to concrete. The structure is then 3D printed layer by layer by the autonomous robots.

Robotic assistance and artificial intelligence will be invaluable in preparing the habitat for the colonists' arrival. Doing it by hand once they are there would be an impossible task, since astronauts are confined to their suits, especially things requiring hard and prolonged. manual labor. Once the 3D printed habitat is complete, it needs to support the weight of additional regolith. These habitats must efficiently protect the inhabitants from radiation, so in the final phase

of many of these proposals, they recommend covering the habitat with more regalith, simply by shoveling it on top. This is because Mars does not have a magnetic field like Earth, so radiation is a big problem on the surface too. So, the more material there is between the Sun and the colonists, the better they will be protected from its harsh radiation. Once the habitats are suitably prepared for humans, the colonists can begin to arrive. Even with the help of the autonomous robots, they still have a lot to do, connect up power,

set up equipment, just generally get the site up and running. While this is going on, they probably have to reside in temporary habitats, be it their own ship that they arrived with, or maybe inflatable habitats. In any case, these habitats would not be very spacious and only provide the basics for survival. When the permanent habitats are ready, they will need to be pressurized. One method for creating breathable air is acquiring oxygen through electrolysis, and then mix it with nitrogen. Electrolysis has the added benefit of generating hydrogen, which can then be refined into

Hydrazine as fuel. Once generated, this pressurized environment can easily be sustained through air recycling systems, something that is already being used by the International Space Station. Another method to get oxygen is from the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. That's why the Perseverance Rover also incorporates the Moxie module, which is an experiment to see if this is possible. However, for these tasks, substantial energy production is needed. One obvious source of energy is solar panels.

On Mars, however, solar production is only about 40% of what you would get with the same solar panels on Earth, because Mars is further away from the sun and receives less light. So, it's a source that is helpful only half the time due to the day and night cycle, not to mention the sandstorms that sweep across the planet from time to time, that it ruined solar-paneled marsh emissions in the past. So this by itself isn't reliable enough for a colony. Another option is to send a not-yet-invented cold nuclear reactor, which will guarantee a more stable energy source.

Obviously, the best solution incorporates a hybrid of both, combined with reliable batteries to store power in the event of power outages or emergencies. The settlers would also need to consider the need to produce and purify water for consumption and other purposes. Ideally, they will be able to generate 5 litres per settler per day. This shouldn't be too much of a problem because we know where to find water already on Mars in the form of water ice. Additionally, the colonies should also incorporate water recycling systems to minimize water waste. This technology, again, is already used effectively on the International Space Station. The production of water is a simple,

as extracting the ice, cooking it in an oven until it evaporates, condensing it in water, and filtering it again using ceramic and carbon filters. With these steps combined, we have all the ingredients necessary to create a habitat suitable for life, an enclosed, protected environment with a steady production of oxygen and water. From there, the colonists can focus on growing plants for consumption, but there is a big obstacle to overcome first, although there is soil in the form of regolith on Mars, it has to be treated in order to be fertile. This regolith contains perchlorates, which are toxic for human consumption in large quantities,

so it first has to be washed out with water. Once cleansed of toxic substances, the regolith needs to be treated with fertilizers, and even after this, the soil must be mixed with organic matter so that it has the ideal texture for seeds to sprout. A study already shows that it should be possible to grow plants on Mars and the moon, and in fact I already made a video about that. But there is another option, aquaponics, or the growing of plants in direct contact with water in a closed cycle.

With this environment, there is a fish pond which is responsible for delivering nitrates to the water with fish feces. Tillopias are the most widely used fish for these fish. closed systems, as they feed on almost anything and survive well in murky water. They are also edible, so they could be an important source of protein for the colonists. Human feces and other waste could also be used as fertilizer, since in these colonies everything will have to be reused. So just like with the energy production, perhaps it would be wisest to use both systems,

aquaponics and regolith. In any case, these farms will consume a lot of energy. energy in the form of light, and they would need daily maintenance by the colonists. With all these systems, the colony would be self-sufficient, although it would not be an easy life, confined to a small space, stuck with the same people, often eating the same things, and with constant tasks and stress. The psychological demands would be very taxing. Even on Earth we have some very remote and lonely places where people live.

For instance, scientists in Antarctica or submarine crews. These groups undergo regular psychological checks to protect their mental health, and even in these situations, people there know that they can always be sent back home. But colonists on Mars are trapped. There's no immediate turning back, if ever, so only individuals with a strong mental fortitude could persevere. In addition, there is an array of health problems associated with low gravity. The zero gravity experiment with the Kelly twins on the ISS brought up serious health issues

that include loss of muscle and bone mass, vision problems, poor fluid distribution, a loss of balanced sense, spine misalignment, cardiovascular problems, and a weaker immune system. While we don't know exactly how the human body will cope in a low gravity environment for extended periods, settlers on Mars may struggle with some of these issues too. To counteract the risks, the settlers will have to do a lot of exercise, which further lengthens their working hours. NASA has even gone as far as to consider genetic modifications for the astronauts who embark on long-stay missions to combat the dangers of radiation and microgravity, among others. This could even be plausible with current

technology, although a lot of controversy on the moral limits of such manipulation arises. Still, even with all these considerations, there's no shortage of volunteers wanting to go. Every time there's been an opportunity, agencies and companies have received a barrage of applications from hopeful candidates. These colonies will depend on how technology evolves here, although at the moment it seems that we already have a lot, but not all of what is necessary to create bases outside of Earth. As more countries and companies set their sights on space, it may make you wonder, what's the end goal?

Do we simply want to be a space-faring species? Exploring the solar system for the betterment of humanity? Or do people smell profit in space? While researching this video, I found out a lot of eye-opening reasons why mining in space, and especially on our moon, might well be something that we see happening in the next couple of of decades. Why? Well, just wait until you find out what's actually there to be mined.

The first substance is known as Helium 3. You may have heard of Helium 3 in sci-fi stories, as theories suggest it is the ideal substance for a clean type of nuclear reactor, with no radiation and no dangerous byproduct. It also has uses in medicine and radiation detectors. However, it is really rare on Earth. It does occur naturally and can be found in deposits of natural gas, for instance, but it's generally not viable to extract, as even in natural gas, there are only around 100 parts per billion.

So let's say we had 1 billion cubic meters of natural gas, you'd only be able to extract around 15 kilograms of helium 3 from it. A lot of the time, that's not economically viable. We can also produce helium 3 as a byproduct of the radioactive decay. Tritium. The problem with that, though, is that tritium is a crucial component of nuclear weapons. And so when the world slowed down the production of nuclear weapons, helium-3 stockpiles also started to diminish.

Assuming we don't want more tritium in the world, it means we need to find another source of helium-3, especially if technology improves enough for helium-3 reactors to become a reality. Fortunately, we have a world in orbit around Earth right now, which has been bombarded by Helium 3 for billions of years, thanks to the Sun. Earth's magnetic field deflects Helium 3 travelling with the solar wind around the planet, whereas the Moon, with no magnetic field for protection, simply absorbs it in the top layer of the ground, called Regolith. We aren't talking huge quantities, it has at most 50 parts per billion, but because it's all over

the moon, not just in tiny pockets, it can be collected alongside any other mining operation. It could also be used to power reactors on the moon itself, which would help a moon base be self-sufficient. Some people think that helium-3 mining on the moon will not be viable, however China states that eventually mining helium-3 is one of the primary goals of their Chinese lunar exploration program. American, European, and Indian scientists have all stated it is something they will consider further, and Russia is conducting a feasibility study on this right now. Even private companies are eyeing up the possibility. Because the parts per billion of helium-3 are relatively low, even in the moon's regolith,

it would make sense that whoever was mining for helium-3 would also be mining for something else in the regolith at the same time. But what else can be found in it? As it happens, the lunar regolith is packed with different materials. Look at this false color mosaic of the moon, each color indicating different deposits of minerals found on the lunar surface. There are plenty of metals to be found on the moon in large quantities, like iron, titanium, aluminium, silicon, calcium, and magnesium.

Some of these metals are locked into hard to access minerals and oxides. However, separating the metals will often also produce useful by-products like oxygen and hydrogen. They are super basic and not rare on Earth at all, but unlocking these elements on the moon itself will allow for a colony to be self-sustaining. As oxygen means breathable air, hydrogen can be converted to fuel, and combining the two will produce water. Unprocessed regolith could also prove useful, as it could potentially be turned into

Lunar-Crete, useful for building infrastructure on the moon without having to transport the materials from Earth. Glass could also easily be produced from lunar regolith. And as I mentioned in a previous video, while it's not super ideal, some plants can grow in lunar regolith, helping any lunar base to be self-sufficient in growing its own food, short of using hydroponics. But perhaps the most important resource found on the moon are, ironically enough, metals known as rare earths.

Interestingly, rare earths, which consist of this section of the periodic table, and the are not actually super rare on Earth. However, the difficulty in mining them is that they have not really collected into big deposits, rather they are dispersed through the Earth's crust. This means that they are exceptionally hard to mine on Earth, and there are only a few countries worldwide that have deposits large enough to do anything about it. Even then, most countries don't bother at all because of the massive environmental and human damages that come from the pollution of mining them.

The only country that did not waver from these problems is China, as China has around 30% of the planet's rare earth supply, and because it is one of the only countries mining for them, they have a 95% control of the market. However, just as a side note, one of its big mines was actually found in Myanmar, and with the military coup that just took place, there might have been a shift in that mine's control. In any case, 95% control of the market puts China in the market. in a powerful position worldwide, especially seeing as these minerals are so valuable to our society,

being components of various electronics and batteries. Because of the massive push recently to switch to electric vehicles with their huge battery packs, demand for these materials will only increase. So it's worthwhile considering whether minerals building these batteries come from. Our countries with somewhat sizeable deposits like the US, Canada, Australia and South Africa, Africa, going to start digging up their backyard to extract them? Or rather than pollute the Earth further in our attempt to go green, is it actually more feasible to get these rare earths off the moon instead?

Rare Earths aren't any more common on the Moon than on Earth, however some deposits have already been identified, and pollution on the Moon would certainly not have any of the devastating environmental and human consequences attached to doing it here. As demand for these elements inevitably goes up in the coming decades, it could well be that mining for them on the moon becomes economically viable. And not only that, but a control on the market means control of the market price, and whichever country is in control will have a tremendous advantage. Will it be China maintaining their position, or will some of the other space-faring countries

and companies want a piece of the pie? Only time will tell. leads on to another curious question, who actually has mining rights on the moon? Well, it's a bit unclear. The main space treaty, which most countries in the world have signed up to, is called the Outer Space Treaty, and covers things like disallowing weapons of mass destruction in space, disallowing military bases in space, and disallowing claiming any celestial body. However, it doesn't really cover mining.

Other treaties have been put forward, which would cover mining in space. But so far, only non-space-faring countries have signed up for it. Right now, it could just be a matter of first-come, first-served. So, there we have it. A look into the future of what may occur on the surface of the moon. What do you think? How mining on the moon ever be worthwhile, or is it an expensive, dangerous pipe dream? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

What is a human? We come in all shapes and sizes. colors and genders. And yet, we find it still fairly simple to identify in our heads, yes, that's a human, or no, that's not. But this might not always be quite so easy to do. While humans have remained fairly consistent over the last 10,000 years, there are advances in the works that might make things a little murkier. We are on the cusp of a technical revolution that might redefine what makes us, us. That technology is gene editing, and it is not science fiction.

NASA is already looking into using it on astronauts, and for good reason, it is likely an unavoidable necessity if we want to settle on other planets. Why is that? And what are the long-term implications if we let this genie out of its bottle? And perhaps, most importantly, what will it mean to be human 1,000 years from now? I'm Alex McColgan and you're watching Astrum, and in today's video we will attempt to find out. There is a pernicious obstacle out there for any would-be space fairer. It is one you've likely heard of, but perhaps you've not realised how serious it was.

Beyond the protective shroud of our planet's magnetosphere, radiation is a big deal. Even on Earth, we cannot avoid radiation. We are subjected to small doses of it every year, just from the rocks that make up the planet, and the tiny amount of cosmic radiation that seeps into our atmosphere. There is no truly safe amount of it, but the tiny dose of roughly 3 milliseconds a year is usually no bother to us. A single millisevert is the equivalent of about 3 chest x-rays, so as these are spread out over the year, it gives our body time to recover from any damage such radiation causes.

But once you start leaving the Earth's magnetosphere, the radiation dosage goes up. Merely standing on the moon increases your dosage 200 times. Solar particles ejected from the sun and background cosmic radiation slice through any unprotected astronauts' body up there, causing damage to their DNA that can lead to short-term acute symptoms like fever, nausea, and vomiting, and also long-term health problems like cancer and sterility. This is problematic enough that most space agencies put a lifelong cap on how much radiation an astronaut can receive before they're permanently grounded, around 1,000 millicclerts.

Once you've been exposed to that much radiation, you're not allowed into space again. But, problematically, even with all the shielding that humans can muster, it is currently estimated that the round trip to and from Mars will give you a dosage as high as 1,200 Milleuarts. In other words, a completely fresh astronaut will be able to make one trip to Mars, and their career will be permanently over. And that's just Mars. If ever humans want to colonize other places in the solar system, such as the icy moon Europa,

They would face 5,500 milliseconds in just a single day. At that level, their odds of dying in the next 30 days is 50%. Yet it will be necessary to leave Earth. While it may seem a long way away, 6 billion years from now, our sun will become a red giant. At that point, it will expand and engulf the inner planets of the solar system. Every species on the planet at that time, every work that we humans have created will be gone forever, consumed in a raging inferno, unless we've spread out to where our sun-gone berserk can't reach us.

And that's not even to mention the fact that a planet-ending asteroid could hit us with a dinosaur-level extinction event long before that. We're actually overdue the next one, statistically speaking. So going to space seems advisable. If we have colonies on more than one planet, it reduces the risk of an asteroid taking us all out, the cosmic equivalent of not putting all our eggs in one basket. This is why, on the 13th of August 2021, NASA announced that it had completed a successful test of genome editing aboard the International Space Station.

It should be noted there are different levels of gene editing. The test done by NASA was to break the DNA of yeast, remove a section, and then replace it with a sequence of healthy yeast DNA through a technique known as CRISPR. As radiation causes damage to DNA, being able to remove segments and replace them with healthy segments is a convenient genetic maintenance, the equivalent of replacing a puncture on a tire. This already would be useful to astronauts traveling through space, as it would allow them to repair ongoing damage to their DNA by constantly replacing damaged parts of it. But genetic editing and CRISPR can go one step further.

There is nothing to say that the replacement DNA has to be the same as the original. CRISPR has been used successfully to implant totally new genes into test subjects, giving them desirable traits according to the gene editor's aims. For instance, genetic diseases like sickle cell aneur, Result in low levels of hemoglobin in the blood. CRISPR allows these harmful genes to be removed from a cell and replaced with a healthier version that does produce the needed hemoglobin. Trials are already underway to encouraging success.

But it doesn't stop there. CRISPR can borrow genes from entirely different species. Tardigrades are microscopic little animals that carry the nickname for the nickname for the nickname Water Bears. Their claim to fame is that they are resilient to all sorts of harsh environments. They can survive radiation, desiccation, which is being completely dehydrated, and have even survived the harshness of space. That radiation resistance is particularly interesting to us, and the result of a protein they produce called D-Sup. In 2015, geneticists successfully edited the gene that produced D-Sup from a tartigrade cell into a culture of human cells.

Incredibly, the human cells became 40% more resistant to radiation. This technology is here, and is already quite accurate and versatile. Of course, there is still a lot to learn about the human genome. It turns out that the one-gen, one-trait model is too simplistic. One gene can do several things, and editing one can have unexpected knock-on effects throughout the body. As such, any introduction of tartagrade cells into humans must be done slowly and cautiously. But it does seem likely that over time, scientists will understand what each gene does

and how to balance the pros and cons of gene editing, which raises an ethical dilemma. Because we learn how to, and it's entirely possible that we as a species will master how to do this, should we? That's not really for me to answer, but I will point out that this is already going on. Aside from the ability, genetic modification is giving us to cure genetic diseases, or to repair damaged DNA, which I imagine most people would be fairly okay with, even genetically modified designer babies have been carried to full term. A Chinese doctor in 2018 announced to the world the birth of two gene-edited babies, Lulu and Nana.

The two children had been engineered before birth to be resistant to the strain of HIV. The only problem was the doctor had not told anyone that was what he had been doing. His work was shut down within days by the Chinese government and in 2019 he was jailed. But to some respect, the genie is out of the bottle. and we have to start asking how we would like to see this technology applied. It may become necessary for anyone travelling to Mars or to the other planets in the solar system to receive gene therapy conferring on them this resistance to radiation. And as the techniques for conferring genes from other species improves, specialised hybrid

humans might become more and more common, or even required, in some areas. While replacing the genes of every cell in our bodies is still a ways away, there is a possibility that it will one day happen. And if it does happen, what would that mean for us? Well, want to settle on a warm or cold planet like Mercury or Pluto? Certain traits might be conferred from extremophiles that give you resistance to extreme temperatures. There are many species of bacteria out there that survive perfectly well in icy conditions. It might be useful for any human settling out there to do the same.

Speaking of Pluto, low-light environments might make it advantageous to either gain improved low-light vision, larger eyes, or to gain traits like echolocation, like dolphins or bats. One thousand years into the future, this will very likely be possible. How about breathing underwater? We could take the DNA of aquatic creatures. creatures and give humans gills. That might help overcrowding on Earth too, by allowing us to inhabit oceans, as well as allowing us to settle on any aquatic worlds we might one day find. Want to travel on long voyages through space?

Even with faster rockets, travelling to other stars might take hundreds of years. It might be useful to be able to hibernate in such a condition. Or to have more efficient energy intake systems, meaning you need to be able to be able to hibernate in such a condition. you need less food. One day, humans might introduce chloroplasts into their skin, supplementing energy intake with photosynthesis, like plants do. Electricians might gain the ability to sense electric fields, like hammerhead sharks. Our senses might expand into other spectra of light, allowing us to see X-rays or infrared.

Seeing heat might be incredibly useful in some lines of work. Seeing radiation might be handy if you're considering stepping outside into a solar storm. Our ability to eat a varied diet might increase. There are worms today that can eat plastic. Maybe we one day will be able to do the same. Increased longevity. Enhanced intelligence. The possibilities are endless, as extensive as the genetic catalogue of any species that

has ever existed and ever will exist, and even further. One day, we may get so proficient with genetic editing that scientists will write their own genes from scratch, granting traits as desired. Christopher Mason, a geneticist and computational biologist who has worked with NASA on seven projects, believes in his book the next 500 years that humans might one day customize their traits on the fly. Given the methods described above, people could find themselves in a state where they decide, I want to turn these genes on for tonight, or I want these genes active for summer.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Humans already adapt in many different ways, but it does raise serious philosophical questions about what it means to be human. Our DNA would no longer define who we are as it would be under our control. While initially the technology would only be available to the rich, 1,000 years from now, it be so common and so well understood that it could be available to everyone. Children could be given homework assignments on changing genes at school, according to some theorists.

Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's, like low prices in every aisle. And when you download the Ralph's app, you can clip and save more with digital coupons every week. Plus, you can earn fuel points to save up to $1 per gallon at the pump. At Ralph's, you can enjoy more ways to save and more rewards every time you shop. so it's always easy to save big every day with savings and rewards. Ralph's SoCal for over 150 years. Savings may vary by state. Fuel restrictions apply.

See site for details. What is a human? Is it our DNA? Our ability to communicate? Is it what we look like? 1,000 years from now, humans might look more different from each other than ever. Will it bring a deeper segregation to our society than what we already have?

What would the ethical and moral dilemmas be? Genetic manipulation might even become a question of fashion and cosmetics, people giving themselves tails or wings for nothing more than the fun of it. It could be completely down to what they choose. And once humans start spreading out across the stars, adaptations would cause them to become more and more diverse culturally and even genetically. Our human race may split off into separate species altogether. So what do you think? Would this be a future you recoil from, or is it one that excites you? I'd love to see your discussions in the comments.

Do you know the many surprising connections between the deepest parts of space and the deepest recesses of our ocean? Both are cold, dark places where human beings. humans cannot breathe, and where the pressure alone is enough to kill you. Both upset our normal experiences of gravity, providing explorers with a strange weightlessness or buoyancy if they could somehow survive being there in the first place. And both contain many unsolved, captivating mysteries. Our oceans are filled with life we've never seen before.

And who can say what lurks in the unexplored corners of space? I was initially caught off guard when I heard that NASA had turned its attention towards exploring the Hidal zones deep in the ocean. After all, NASA is normally about space. What are they doing deep under the water and on Earth? I'm Alex McColgan and you're watching Astrom. Put on your diving gear and join me in a world of undersea facilities, uncanny life and an environment so hostile, we've mapped more of our own. of Mars than of this terrain on our own planet.

In 1957, a year before NASA was founded, a paper published by the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts claimed the Deep Oceans covered over two-thirds of the surface of the world, and yet more is known about the shape and surface of the moon than is known about that of the bottom of the ocean. This was a reference to the fact that in the world before echo-sounding technology was commonly used to map the sea floor, we didn't know much about the topography of what was down there. We've come a long way since then. But while we have mapped the moon thanks to satellites and telescopes, we have still only

mapped 23.4% of the ocean floor in high resolution. In fairness, this still represents an area of 120 million square kilometers, about three times the moon's surface area, so the old saying no longer hold to the world. entirely true. Hence why we can instead talk of Mars, which has a surface area of 145 million square kilometres, but still, it's a profound gap in our knowledge of our own world. NASA was founded in 1958 with the purpose of expanding human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and in outer space, and developing vehicles and technologies that would help them to do so. Exploring the ocean was not originally on their radar, or sonar.

However, in 1978, NASA began monitoring the ocean with their first dedicated oceanographic satellite, C-SAT, which was capable of collecting data on sea surface winds, surface temperatures, wave heights, and other features. This helped them learn more about our planet's oceans and their impact on the global climate. Still, some of NASA's most exciting forays into the ocean only began at the turn of the millennium. One way in which the sea can prepare astronauts for space is through simulated space experiences. About 8.7 kilometers off Key Largo in Florida is the world's only undersea research laboratory,

Aquarius Reef Base. Built in 1986, it is a small, three-roomed habitat large enough to have to have a small, and house six people are to push, with a main room that combines sleeping and living quarters, an entry dock, and a wet porch for entering the sea around it. It was originally designed to help aquanauts remain at the bottom of the sea for weeks at a time through a technique known as saturation diving. By remaining at the depth of 19 metres, a human body becomes saturated with gas dissolved in its bloodstream, which allows these researchers to stay at depth without ill effects for much longer periods of time, nine hours for one dive rather than one or two hours.

This made it ideal for biologists wanting to study the local environment in situ. In 2001, however, NASA, along with other space agencies such as ISA, realized that it made a great space training location. The cramped living conditions mimic those found on the International Space Station, So astronauts who spent a week at Aquarius Reef Base would get a vital taster of what life would be like up there. It also allowed them to practice performing experiments and generally get used to the expected and unexpected aspects of life in a hostile environment.

NASA began the NEMO program, or the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations, and that same year began sending their astronauts to the habitat. There have been 23 Nemo missions since then, merging astronaut crews from a variety of different space agencies, which lasted up to three weeks. Astronauts there became aquanauts, and got the chance to don deep spacesuits, getting a taste for what spacewalks might be like outside of our planet, readying them for the day humans returned to the moon, or go to Mars. This was not the only use NASA had for the ocean, however.

the most significant training was not for NASA's astronauts, but rather for the machines that would one day visit the largest oceans outside of planet Earth. Let's now go deeper and consider the exploration of alien oceans. Our solar system is home to many large oceans outside of Earth. Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus, to name just two, have significant bodies of water beneath their kilometer thick, icy surfaces. In spite of only being one-fourth of the Earth's diameter, scientists believe that Europa holds twice as much water as all of our oceans combined. This is an intriguing concept, as even though no sunlight penetrates down to those steps, the mixture of liquid water bordering a rocky inner crust would make both of these locations ideal candidates for life.

Scientists have considered how to best test to see if life really has arisen in the oceans of icy moons. In 2024, NASA will launch the Europa Clipper, with the mission to fly by the moon Europa and scan it to learn more about the depth of its icy shell, to try to determine the composition of its oceans and generally get a better picture of the moon as a whole. However, Europa Clipper will only be laying the groundwork for future missions, which one day might see that, might see, cryobots melting through the 10km thick icy shell of Europa using nuclear-powered radiators to penetrate its oceans and see first-hand what lies below. Once down there, no radio signal will be able to reach them easily. Messages will be relayed via a vast cable brought down

through the ice along with a cryobot. This means that such cryobots will need to be able to autonomously descend a further 100 to 200 kilometres to explore the dark, chilling, and highly pressurized environment they're likely to find, to see what alien life might swim in those waters. So, with a mission objective on the horizon to explore deep, dark waters in search of never-before seen life, what better place to start than the unexplored oceans we already have at home? The deepest parts of the oceans on Earth are only 11 kilometers deep, but due to the gravitational differences between Europa and Earth, the pressure you'd experience between the two are much more comparable than you might think.

Europa's 100km deep ocean is thought to have a hydrostatic pressure between 130 to 260 megapascals, which, if it existed in an ocean on Earth, would equate to a depth of around 13 to 26 kilometers. This is much better than if you'd had to go hundreds of kilometres down on Earth, but it's still no picnic. Pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest place in our ocean, is 1,100 times the pressure on the surface, which is enough to crush the individual cells in the human body,

or to implode most submarines. And yet, life survives there, and it doesn't just survive, it thrives. The deep sea explorers of the Galapagos Hydro Thermal Expedition in 1977, using a specially reinforced remotely operated vehicle that could survive those pressures, were shocked to discover not a barren wasteland, but thriving ecosystems gathered around hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor down there. Tube worms, crabs and fish were found in rich abundance. As scientists performed more dives, they found all manner of strange, life forms down there. Shrimp like amphipods, the size of your hand, giant, ethereal, big,

thin, squid. Squid that were eight meters long and looked positively alien. In the depths between 6,000 and 11,000 meters, in an area known as the Hidal Zone, named after the god of the underworld, Hades, life had learned to adapt to conditions in ways no one could have imagined possible. And this incredible adaptability gives scientists a better understanding of what might be possible on other worlds. The deepest parts of the ocean are mostly found near the fault lines of continental plates, where one plate subducks under another. These deep trenches create a unique V-shaped environment that channels organic debris from above

down into a sludgy pool. Whenever a carcass falls down there, the organisms in the hailed zone are somehow able to quickly detect it and arrive within minutes. Other organisms rely on nutrient-rich liquids pumped out of thermal vents. If you added up all these trenches into one landmass, you would end up with an area the size of Australia, a whole, unexplored continent. NASA wants to explore these regions using autonomous drones, perhaps whole swarms of them that would be able to detect locations of interest such as thermal vents and would be able

to map out the terrain using cameras and onboard AI, similar to that used by the Perseverance rover on Mars. It's a challenging task. Not only would such a drone need to be able to withstand the excessive pressure, but the temperature around such thermal vents can spike to hundreds of degrees. Drones would need to be able to survive rapid temperature swings if they are able to survive. In 2014, one such deep-sea drone known as Nereus was sent into the Kermodeck trench off the coast of New Zealand.

This is the area NASA has selected as testing ground for its new equipment. However, sadly, Nerius was not able to survive the press down there, in spite of having succeeded on Hidal dives before, and it imploded. Pieces of plastic were later found floating to the surface. NASA's latest drone is Narius' descendant. a smaller, lighter, autonomous submarine known as Orpheus. Orpheus has yet to enter the depths of the Hidal Zone. Instead, it is being put through its paces in shallower waters.

But if it works, its lighter design would make it easier to transport on a rocket to the oceans of Europa at some point in the distant future. Although, this dream might not be so distant after all. In 2023, NASA's Planetary Exploration Science Technology Office gathered a team of 40 top researchers from multiple fields in the California Institute of Technology to discuss how close we might be to making this trip. A surprising amount of technology needed is already there. Their conclusion was that the mission was feasible, scientifically compelling, and the most plausible near-term way to directly search for alien life in situ on an ocean world. With the combined information being gathered by Europa Clipper and the technical experimentation being done with Orpheus and other

autonomous submarines like it, perhaps it is something we will see within our lifetimes, although no concrete plans have we made yet. When it finally does happen though, and a human-made drone starts to swim in those dark seas across the Gulf of space, what will it See, perhaps it will feel strangely like home. We are water-based life forms here on Earth. The first large, complex animals formed in our oceans, all life is dependent on water to live. Rather than arid, rocky and dusty wildernesses, there will be something strangely soothing about exploring oceans beyond our own, like entering a place we already know, even though

we've never been there before. Does something lurk in those alien seas? Although it's only speculation, the sheer fact that this might be true is enough. To discover that life came to exist not once, but twice in just our own solar system, would have massive implications on life's prevalence in the universe as a whole. It would mean life is likely abundant, and we ought to be ready to see a lot more of it out there. But proving it is the challenge.

Only by perfecting the technology here on Earth will we be able to crack open those frozen shells, enter those inky depths, and find the definitive answers we seek. For NASA, their mission to find life in our solar system begins in our oceans. Thanks for watching! We are now very close to our end goal of 1,000 astrumnoughts on Patreon, and I can't thank you enough for having answered the call. The closer we get, the more it's looking like I'll be able to expand our content here and bring back Astroma answers. So submit your video suggestions and questions over on Patreon. If you'd like to become an Astromot, you can join the Patreon

with the link down below. When you join, you'll be able to watch the whole video ad-free, see your name in the credits, and submit questions to our team. Once again, a huge thank you from myself and the whole Astrum team. Meanwhile, click the link to this playlist for more Astrum content. I'll see you next time.