NASA's Curious Universe - Field Notes: Nhulunbuy, Australia

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

Tropical rainforests, snowy mountain peaks, even the Australian outback – NASA experts travel to a wide range of environments right here on Earth to better understand our universe. Miles Hatfield, NASA heliophysics science writer, recaps a recent reporting trip to cover a sounding rocket launch in Australia’s remote Northern Territories.

Captain's log. It seems like everything here is a deep hue of red. The iron in the soil and dirt really just coats everything. All the cars, you can tell who's new. Those cars are still white. People have been here for a while have all been coated with a fine mist of red dust. Welcome back to another Field Notes episode of NASA's Curious Universe. NASA experts travel to some incredible places to learn more about our planet and the universe around us.

Last summer, NASA science writer Miles Hatfield visited Nullin Boy Australia to cover a sounding rocket launch from a brand new rocket range. You might remember sounding rockets from our season four episode, up and away with sounding rockets. They're small, uncrewed rockets that shoot off to orbit on short journeys. They study everything from our own atmosphere to the surface. atmosphere to the stars. Less than an hour after taking off, they come parachuting back to Earth, with payloads of data collected during their flights.

Let's listen in with Miles, as he prepares for and witnesses NASA's first rocket launch from this brand new Southern Hemisphere launch site, operated by Equatorial Launch Australia. I'm Miles Hatfield. I'm a science writer here at NASA. I write about heliophysics, which is the science of the sun and the sun's connections to everything around us in space. Nolamboy was this little mining town.

There was one grocery store. It did not look like what I thought Australia would look like. It was cloudy and rained a lot. Nolumboi is at the northeastern tip of the northern territories in Australia, where the desert meets the sea. Nolomboi is not what you think of, or at least not what I think of, when I think of Australia.

It's much more like a tropical area. It's at 12 degrees south latitude, which is one of the reasons that's such a great site for a rocket range, because we're so close to the equator, which gives rockets that are launching into orbit a little bit of extra orbital velocity. So we were there to film, but I was also there capturing audio for this show.

And we were trying to really make sure we capture the full story of all the pieces that have to go right to get a rocket up into space. So I was thinking a lot about, like, how do I convey the feeling of this place in sound? You hear this sort of crunch of the pebbles beneath your feet. They look like dipping dots. You know, the things that you'd get at like a carnival or you go to like six flags or something? That's what this place sounds like. This was the first launch from a commercial launch range outside of the United States for NASA.

The key reason we were in Australia or key feature of the location of this launch range was that it was in the Southern Hemisphere. Half the stars in the sky you can't see from the Northern Hemisphere. If you want to do science that involves one of these stars, you have to launch from the Southern Hemisphere if you're going to do a soundy rocket launch. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere, the least populated part of Australia, the Northern Territories, which is great if you're going to be shooting things up into space and having them fall back down. We did a bunch of research in advance to just learn about the groups involved in this launch range. Aboriginal groups in Australia, especially in what they call the top end, which is where we were. They pay so much attention to the stars, and it's really integrated into what's called song.

They are kind of like constellations, patterns of stars, but they're woven together in a story that people will sing. And this song lines actually serve as a mnemonic for traveling. They're like guideposts, they're like direction. When Europeans first came to Australia, they used Aboriginal groups as their guides, so they were following their paths. And those paths kind of stuck. So there's some big highways, routes that go across Australia that still map onto the songlines, sort of carved into the land now. The range was built on Gumach clan land.

Gumach is one of the clans in the Yolngu nation. What we learned about is that the Gumaches are actually partners in this. Gumach Corporation are who cleared the land and built a lot of the facilities, and they are the lease owners that Equatorial Launch Australia is paying for that land. If you've ever gone to, like, Kennedy or one of these well-established launch ranges, you're going to look at this, you're going to be like, where am I? They basically set up a bunch of these little portable offices that are just sort of plopped down. They built a huge place that they called the PIF, the payload integration facility.

It's this giant barn-like thing with scaffolding. and plastic covering. A couple hundred yards away is the actual launcher, which is concrete. Other than that, it was dirt and trees. It was really minimalistic. It was like, what do you need to launch a rocket? And that's what they put.

So I was there for about three weeks. And luckily, the night before I had to leave, early in the morning, they launched. This was the first launch from Equatorial Launch Australia. There was a lot of press. Remember, this is in the middle of nowhere in this tiny town that does not have a capacity for 100 journalists to come out and cover the story. So they had set up this tent site far away at the edge of the range for all the press and VIPs.

That's the sound of the VIP tour bus, which has just arrived. And the CEO of ELA, the Ecuador. Memorial Launch, Australia, CEO of the range, leading the tour. It's carrying the U.S. Consul General. Everyone was there. We were setting up our cameras, and I was trying to pay attention to a couple different groups at the same time. There's the actual science team. Their main action doesn't happen until the rocket's already in the air.

Prior to that, there's the wind-wading people, the range safety officer, there's the campaign manager, there's all these people running the operations that are getting the rocket ready to go. we're kind of bouncing around between these people trying to make sure we're capturing everything that's happening. You want to capture the actual rocket launch, so you want to be outside seeing the launch, but then you, of course, want to see the scientist's reaction. You want to be following them as the data's coming in, but then there's also right up before launch.

The real excitement is in the offices where the people who are actually controlling the launcher, which is separate from the science team. So you really kind of want to be in a bunch of different places at once. It's T-minus two hours, and the activity's starting to pick up. The whole range was pretty quiet about an hour ago, but now the VIPs are showing up, and everyone's getting ready. The rocket's vertical. We're getting ready for launch.

It's supposed to be the dry season. They plan the launch windows during the dry season. They expected it to be dry. That was not the case. Captain's log. Stuck in the car again because it's the third time it's rained. for two minutes before stopping while we keep trying to sit up the cameras. It keeps raining.

The weather was terrible. We had so many stop starts because of the wind and the rain. That's the sound of it suddenly starting to pour at four minutes until launch. It would be like nothing. Looks like we're getting close. Get down to two minutes in the count. And then a huge rainstorm would open up. and it would just like flood everything.

Three minutes later it would go away. And then we would start, okay, pick up the count again. Yeah, I say we might as well just get the cannon set up. And if we have to tear it down, for the rain, we tear it down. But let's get it set up. 30 seconds. Copy 30. We're out there and we're watching.

And after many, many stops and starts, the count is clear. I got this great video of a range safety officer. she's the person who makes the final call about win. So she's going to be the last person to say, stop, hold. And you can see her as the launch gets down to the count. Just before everyone else gets excited, she gets excited. And it's like, three, two, she's already like, yeah!

And then you can see the rocket go off and everyone else is cheering. If you've seen videos of like the space shuttle, sort of this slow lift off, is not. a slow lift off of the Sony rocket. It's loud, it's fast. I tried to capture audio. It just sounds like you're breaking the camera. It just sounds like if you're ripping something really thick, like thick paper, that's what it sounded like. As the rocket launches, different parts of it fall off. First, the first stage motor falls off. Then the second stage kicks in and it stays with the payload, which is the scientific instrument part,

all the way up into space, and then the end opens up so that the telescope can see. All that eventually falls back down. The nose cone separates. The payload has a parachute that comes out, so it falls back down. Hopefully gets a soft landing. Now we need to see what the science team is looking at.

After the launch, the main exciting thing that's happening is like, and the scientists rapidly seeing all the things that they're getting, watching the data come in. Everyone was super excited and watching the scientists' faces as the data was coming in. I interviewed one of the grad students afterwards. My name is Avruh Broy. I am a sixth year grad student from the University of Wisconsin. I asked him like, how are you feeling? How are you doing? How are you feeling?

And I think he said, I've not been better in a long time. I have not been better in a while. Yeah? Yeah. Congratulations, man. I loved it. We hope to find something here, and we know I think we're all. The whole flight from the launch rail to it falling back down is probably like a half an hour.

They only get about five minutes of observing time once they're up above the atmosphere. But if everything goes right, that's plenty. So did the parachute just deploy or like what, how did... Yeah, the parachutes deploy, we're on the shoot now coming down. So the whole thing's over pretty quick. Of course, then you have to go find the pieces of the rocket. And that can take a while. I was lucky enough to go out and help get the first stage

for the first rocket that launched, and so we were hiking out through the bush. So right now we're hiking down the escarpment just on the other side of the launch pad. We are in search of the first stage, which is supposedly not more than about a kilometer is so away from the launch range, but we got to get through some pretty serious thicket

before we get there. The thing that I think everybody on the internet knows about Australia is that everything there is trying to kill you. We had these ants. They're like green butt ants. That is totally not the scientifically correct term, but these ants that would crawl on us and they would bite.

Oh yeah, me too. They were everywhere, and so we were out there just hiking around and just hear us all... Luckily we were with some of the Dimaru rangers who really know the area and know the local wildlife. What is it called? Gondula? Gondola. Cool. We almost stepped on a King Brown snake.

You know, you just have to watch where you're stepping. We're bushwhacking. We're getting out there, and then we find the first... stage and that stuff is pretty, like it's impaled in the ground. Wow, there it is. We had to have the helicopter drop off tools to dig it out. I think we're going to need a little bit more kit down here that I wasn't thinking. Crow bars, shovels, all that stuff, and the big net to put all that stuff back in.

That shovel, a box of demo bags. and then the helicopter comes and takes it back. It was so fun. It was really fun. I definitely want to go back. There's so much more of the country to see, and people were really friendly. I've been writing about soundy rockets

pretty much since I started at NASA, which was the end of 2017. So I'd written about it, but I didn't really understand what it was like. I'd written about the science. I knew a lot about the different types of rockets. Like, I'd done plenty of coverage on this, but, man, it's different.

to be out there, to see the people that do the work. You get better stories. I'm a storyteller, right? I get to talk about the cool parts. So any other field campaigns? Sign me up. This is NASA's Curious Universe. This episode was written and produced by Christian Elliott

and edited by Christina Dana. Our executive producer is Katie Conan's. The Curious Universe team includes Maddie Arnold and Michaela Sosby. Our theme song was composed by Matt Rousseau and Andrew Santa Guida of System Sounds. Special thanks to Denise Hill, Mara Johnson-Grow, and Joy Ung. If you liked this episode, please let us know by leaving us a review, tweeting about the show, and tagging at NASA, and sharing NASA's Curious Universe with a friend.

And remember, you can follow NASA's Curious Universe in your favorite podcast app to get a notification each time we post a new episode. It's not how you doing, it's how you going, right? It sort of blurs into one syllable. How go on, Mike? How on Mike? And how are you going, mate? You know?

I'd actually had it before, but we had to get vegemite. And I actually kind of developed a taste for it. It's very, very, very salty. And you've got to start small. But I got a can of it after, you know, three weeks. I was like, all right, I can... My vegemite tolerance is up. I would say I'm not generally afraid of spiders, but like spiders in a bathroom is not, that's the last place you want.

Anyhow, we saw what all the Australians online said was like a baby huntsman. Of course, us Americans are screaming. There's a giant huntsman spider in here. Come look at it. It's right there. Here's the brave rocketeers. Isn't it just awful?