Short Wave - Space news: Project Hail Mary, Artemis, data centers

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

Short Wavers, we hear your requests. You want MORE! SPACE! So this is the first installment of a new segment focusing only on space news. First, we talk about the new sci-fi film Project Hail Mary and the accuracy of the science in the movie. Then, we move on to data centers in orbit, if they are better for the environment and why even send them up into space. Finally, we round out the conversation with a quick update about the upcoming Artemis II launch. The space nerds assembled for this conversation are host and astrophysicist Regina G Barber, known space enthusiast and host of All Things Considered Scott Detrow and NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel. Interested in more on space? Check out our whole summer series, Space Camp. Or email us your question at [e-mail] to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Shortwaivers, Regina Barbara here. And if you've been listening to this show for any time at all, you probably know that I'm a formally trained physicist with a focus in astrophysics because I love all things space. Basically, I'm all about any chance to learn more about, you know, everything. So I am so excited because today we're going to try something new. Something I've been workshopping with colleagues for a while. We're dedicating this entire episode to nerding out about a bunch of space news. And with the power vested in me as host, I'm summoning friends from around NPR to do just that.

And who better to do that for this inaugural episode than science correspondent Jeff Brumfield. Hey, Jeff. Hello. And I've brought known space nerd, all things considered host, one of the co-creators of this great idea. I think I was the other people here. other co-creator of this great idea, Scott Detrow. Hey, Scott. I'm excited. This has gone from something we have talked excitedly about around the coffee machine at work, to something into microphones. Yeah. Okay. Can we call this podcast segment spacing out with Gina? What a good idea.

It's your show. You can call it whatever you want. Excellent. Okay. I think the only way to start is to tell our listeners why you both deserve to be here. I've talked about my field of science. I love. I loved hanging out with my dad and watching Star Trek Next Generation. Jeff, why do you love space? I don't know. It's quiet. Less bad things seem to happen there. Maybe, maybe.

What about you? I think I could answer that on a lot of different levels. I think on the human level, there's so many things that, you know, world where it is hard to sometimes feel good and inspired by the news that we cover. There's so many things that I think are really inspiring, whether it's telescopes that are reaching back. into the prehistoric early days. Beginning of time. That is exciting to me, whether it's launching a probe that crashes into an asteroid. I think that's really cool and exciting, whether it's astronauts returning to the moon.

I just really enjoy reading about it and makes me feel good. And I think on a deeper level, like space is so vast and so infinite, sometimes I will think about it to the point of personal paralysis. Yes. Because it is so overwhelming to think about that you just, like, can't move. And, like, that's kind of uncomfortable, but in a cool way. I mean, Jeff, has that ever happened to you? Because I remember talking to my little cousins about what I do for, you know, when I was in grad school and they were like 10. And they just started being like, I don't want to think about it.

And it started freaking them out. You know, I don't know. I've always found it kind of comforting. Yeah, me too. Going back to the world being a bad place sometimes, not always. Yeah. But, you know, space is a reminder that, you know, we are, we are, but on a tiny little dot. and at the end of the day, there's much larger things afoot.

Maybe we shouldn't all stress out so much. It keeps me chill. What's better flipside to that exact same idea? Well, both of you have definitely earned your spot. And with that, today on the show, we're talking about three space stories in the news. First, the film Project Hail Mary, then the prospect of data centers in space, and a quick update on the upcoming Artemis Mission. You're listening to Shoreway.

The Science Podcast from NPR. Okay, Scott, Jeff, I am most excited to talk to you guys about Project Hail Mary, which I actually got to watch for work. So let's start with that. I am both very excited to see it, and I don't know when I'm going to see it, because here is my plan. I want to read the book. The book has just been sitting there on the nightstand.

I feel like I need to read the book first, then see the movie. No, no. No, no. Put the book down. Go see the movie. I've actually heard people that that's actually the best way to do it. Okay. Let me explain the plot like real quick.

Please do not spoil anything. I won't, I promise. So in the near future, scientists notice that there are these alien microbes breeding on Venus, then going to eat the sun. Eat the sun. Yeah, like dimming it to a point that in 30 years, crops will die, animals will die, humans will die. So world leaders send a mission to a nearby star that's not being eaten because these microbes are eating all these other stars too, not just our sun. And they want to figure out how to save the sun. So one of the astronauts is scientist-turn middle school teacher, Rylan Grace, and he's played by Ryan Gosselin.

I put the knot an astronaut. I've never done anything. I've never done a space. I can't even moonwalk. And Scott, as I'm sure you already know, this movie is based on a book by Andy Weir, the same guy who wrote The Martian. And he does have a track record of writing really scientifically cool books that turn into Hollywood hits. And Gina, on that note, I have to ask, it's a movie actually any good? Well, first off, Jeff, I mean, it's a blog.

Blockbuster for a reason. Like, I went in completely blindo. I didn't read the book, Scott. I didn't even watch the trailer. I loved it. I loved the jokes. I love the puppetry, the visuals. It was all stunning. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Did you just say puppets? Yeah, yeah. You said no spoilers. I know. So that's literally all I'm going to say. Okay. Okay. But Jeff was nodding at this. And I'm curious, like, how good is the science? Because the Martian, like, you got the potato growing. You got all the science happening. Yeah, a lot was pretty accurate. Like, they did hint to special relativity. where like if you're traveling near the speed of light, you're going to experience time dilation. So like Ryan Gosling's character aged differently than people on Earth. They did take some creative licenses with like the fundamentals of biology though. So like these alien microbes, like they existed in space. They were like on the surface of the sun and they were water based. I don't know about that. But that didn't seem to bother astrobiologist Michael Wong from Carnegie Science.

He loved the movie. He read the book. But did point out that there. one like accidental scientific mistake in the movie. It's kind of fun to note that the two exoplanets in the movie were exoplanets that we thought existed at the time that Project Taylor Mary was being written. But in just the past few years between the book, the book's release and the movie, we've actually discovered that these planets may not actually exist.

Yeah, Scott, so in the grand scheme of things, it's not really a mistake. It's just that like science has gotten more advanced since the book was written. All right, Jeff. Second topic. Launching artificial intelligence into space. Is, is this a thing? Yeah. I mean, it's something that some folks are taking seriously, including Elon Musk.

He's actually making this the central mission of SpaceX, his space launch company, which just merged actually with his AI company, XAI. Here he is on Saturday unveiling new plans for a massive new microchip factory that would make. chips used for data centers in space? I actually think that the cost of deploying AI in space will drop below the cost of terrestrial AI much sooner than most people expect. I think it may be only 203 years. Okay, Jeff, at Shorewave, we've done like a bunch of stories about data centers and how they use a lot of water, they use a lot of electricity.

Like, is this the solution? Like, just sitting them up into space. ejecting them from the Earth. Yes, actually. According to people who support the science. idea it is, right? It comes down to really electricity. You know, there is a lot of problems around generating enough electricity for all these data centers on the ground. And if you go up into space, you know, you got the sun. Yeah, we were just talking about it. We were just talking about it.

Great source of power. Yeah. It's all free. It's plentiful. And the napkin math looks pretty good, right? You can get as much as you want. But I've got to say when I started speaking to independent experts, I heard a lot of skepticism. Walk me through some of these specific skepticism, then. Right. Well, let's start by talking about the biggest sort of computer-y thing we have in space right now, which is the international space station. Love it. It's the largest facility in orbit. And its solar panels generate around 100 kilowatts of power. Okay.

Now, that may sound like a lot, but XAI's colossus computing facility in Memphis, Tennessee consumes around 150 megawatts. So you can do the math. Wow. I don't want to. Yeah, you don't want to. Well, that's all right. I actually got MIT aerospace professor Olivier de Weck to do the math for us. You would have to build, just for the power in photovoltaically, a facility that's 1,000 times the size of the ISS.

That seems hard to do. It's not easy. There's an even bigger problem, right, on the back end, it's heat, right? Space is cold. That's true. But, like, it's a vacuum. So there's no way to transfer, like, heat away from these computer chips, right? Right, right.

And so you need these massive, rations. radiators that actually use some sort of fluid to gather the heat from the chips and then conducted out into space. And those end up being almost as big as solar arrays. Okay. So we start this conversation with Elon Musk saying two or three years away, then we have an expert saying a thousand times the size of the International Space Station. What do we think our real talk estimate is like on those two extreme ends of the spectrum, is this a thing that one way or another you think happens down the line? I think there's a way to sort of parse this, which is there will be more.

more computing in space for sure. And it'll probably, at least for now, be on smaller satellites, smaller amounts of computing that can be distributed. Whether we end up with giant data centers, with kilometer long solar arrays, I think that's going to be a lot more than two or three years off. But we'll see, you know, Elon loves to give a tight deadline. We'll just have to see where we land. One more thing I wanted to ask about, and this is something that I think is a lot closer than whatever Musk is talking about. I think so, at least. And that is. the Artemis 2 launch. What's going on there? Yeah, Scott, so the U.S. is set to launch humans back to the moon for an orbit, something that hasn't

happened since the early 70s. And the launch window for Artemis opens pretty soon on April 1st. But there have been some technical problems with this mission's rocket. There was a hydrogen leak which forced NASA to push back this launch. So at this point, Scott, anything could happen. We'll be watching. All right. All right. Well, and I hope we can do this again. I hope we can hang out in, like, talk about space again. Jeff, Scott, thank you so much. We can talk about whether Artemis II happened or whether it didn't happen. Yeah. We can talk about, as we said at the beginning, literally an infinite amount of other topics.

At the end of all of our spacing outs, it'll just be like, what's happening to Artemis right now? It could go for years, right? Already, yes. Thanks for having us. Thank you so much. If you like this episode, share it with a friend. It really helps our show. And hey, give us a follow on the NPR app or wherever else.

you're listening from so that you'll never miss a new episode. This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and Kai McNamee. It was edited by Christopher Antaliyata, Amina Khan, and our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. See you tomorrow.