The Supermassive Podcast - 10: Humans In Space - with Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti

Episode Date: October 23, 2020

Why do we need astronauts? And where are we hoping to send them in the future? This month, Dr Becky Smethurst and Izzie Clarke explore the role of humans in space exploration and are joined by European Space Agency Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.  Plus, the team celebrate 20 years of human presence on the International Space Station and Robert Massey shares his top tips for stargazing in November.  The Supermassive Podcast is a Boffin Media Production by Izzie Clarke and Richard Hollingham

Becky, where is your spacesuit? When is Chris Hemsworth going to fall from the sky in my day job? It's just a growing issue because all these missions leave something behind. Izzy, do you reckon you'd make a good astronaut? Hello, welcome to the Supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society with me, science journalist Izzy Clark, and with astrophysicist Dr. Becky Smethurst. This month, we're exploring the role of humans in space exploration. Why do we need intrepid astronauts and where are we hoping to send them

in the future? Izzy, do you reckon you'd make a good astronaut? Fundamentally, no not I don't really enjoy flying um but once I had to make a documentary about colonizing space and in that I got to go in a centrifuge and I loved it but um it's like for anyone that doesn't know what that is it's one of those little pods that's on a huge arm and it just like spins you around so you feel lots of g I think I got up to 4.2 g but I was a novice uh in my radio days and decided to do an interview after that moment and my head was completely scrambled and when I listened back it was like one of the worst interviews I've ever done because I couldn't think clearly I don't know whether to be like jealous that you got to ride one of those things or not. Like, which is your face do all that weird,

like flappy thing where your skin just sort of goes. Yeah. And also what's really weird is like your body starts to compensate like where to send blood. Like where's, where is it important for the blood to go to? So you have to tense your legs to sort of send it all up to the, to your head.

Cause otherwise you start to get this tunnel vision and your your brain essentially going oh you don't need blood to the eyes like the vision can just go you still you don't lose it permanently but it's just like let's conserve this so it's a really weird sensation when suddenly it's like one of those looney tune cartoons where the black edges start creeping in and you can see just this circle it was so weird but I was literally like a kid at the candy store it was one of the most exciting things I've ever done how about you do you reckon you could handle it um I don't have anywhere near as exciting as a story I think I'd like to think I'd be a good astronaut but um I mean I wouldn't

put my money on it I don't know if you've noticed this about me, but I'm a little bit excitable and distractible. So I just think I'd just be like, ooh, what does this button do? And they'd be like, Becky, focus. Plus also I get really car sick as well. So I would probably, I mean, no one would want to be like my co-pilot, right? Because they'd just be like,

no, she's going to blow, she's going to blow. So between us, I don't think we'd do very well. No, probably not. Anyway, we've also got Robert Massey here, the Deputy Director of the Royal Astronomical Society. Robert, did you ever want to be an astronaut? I think I did, you know, when I was in primary school. And bearing in mind that I'm slightly older than the two of you,

it was back in the 1970s when this just seemed like a completely reasonable thing. You know, it's like completely reasonable thing you know oh yeah of course you know loads of us are just going to go into space because that's what we'll do so at that point i think definitely yes and i think probably if you'd asked me for my career options at the age of eight i would have said astronaut uh yeah it's it's just you know what you would have wanted to do certainly certainly amongst my primary school friends but there is something almost superhuman about astronauts, isn't there? It's, yeah. I mean, they're still such an elite cadre. You know, every so often I periodically remind myself

how few people have been to space. Now, bearing in mind, we've had astronauts and cosmonauts for 60 years, nearly 60 years, because, you know, the anniversary of Gagarin's flight is next year, isn't it? The 566 people have been to space. So it's a massively elite thing. There have been a handful of space tourists. It's a really tough

thing to do. And they are, yeah, I guess superhuman is a fair thing. What I'm always struck by whenever I meet astronauts is just how calm and measured most of them are. And I think that's probably the kind of temperament you really need, isn't it? If you, particularly if you're doing some sort of slightly risky space exploration mission, you have to be just able to sit there and solve all these problems and, and fix things despite, you know, the kind of stresses I suspect I'd be feeling if I was in that situation. I'm not sure I'd be quite, you know, in an Apollo 13 situation, I'm not sure I'd be the one remaining calm, put it that way. All right, Robert. Thanks for that. We'll catch up with you later in the show anyway for some stargazing tips.

If you listened last month, you'll remember that Becky made a certain promise if I got an astronaut on the podcast. Right. I tell you what, if you do get an astronaut for me, we'll be close to Halloween when we do the podcast, right? So I might break out the astronaut Halloween costume I wore when I was 11 to interview them if you can get me an astronaut and becky where is your

spacesuit okay so apparently this spacesuit is buried somewhere in my parents loft in their house in lancashire which conveniently for me is now in a tier three lockdown shout out to all my Lancastrians out there sorry um also we couldn't find a picture of it either however I did find a picture of me the next Halloween dressed as Einstein with the crazy hair and everything so we'll pop that up on our social media accounts so that you can all just laugh at me because I didn't manage to find the astronaut suit. Okay, I'll take that. I'll take that. But I can't take any credit,

but we have got an astronaut on the show. That credit needs to go to our exec producer, Richard. We'll be hearing from him later to celebrate 20 years of humans on the International Space Station. But drum roll, please, because earlier this month, Becky and I were so excited to speak with European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.

She holds the record for the longest uninterrupted space flight by a European astronaut. It was 199 days and 16 hours. Samantha started by telling us about the experiments she did on the International Space Station. Samantha started by telling us about the experiments she did on the International Space Station. A broad range. I mean, you know, we are talking about long expeditions, right? As you mentioned, the number you said that adds up to about six months and a half. And you work every day, full days, sometimes also the weekends. And experiments are a big part of that.

So you obviously end up working on dozens of experiments. And you're really just working on them in the sense that you're executing them. You know, sometimes people ask me questions where they think that I'm the scientist and I'm like, I'm not the scientist. I didn't come up with this experiment. Sometimes I even barely understand what it is about. But, you know, we are really just responsible to carrying it out. And the cool thing about the ISS is that you actually are involved in this really broad range because it's not about, you know, a lab on the ground on Earth will usually be dedicated to one discipline. But the ISS is more about weightlessness, microgravity, as we say. And that can be relevant for life sciences. So we get to work with cell cultures,

tissues, small animals, you know, like little worms, or I even had fruit flies. You get to work on plants. You get to work on yourself. A lot of the time, the astronauts are not just the operators of the experiment, but also the subject that gets observed. And that's the life sciences. But then there's also a broad range of, let's say, physical sciences that have interesting questions that can be answers in weightlessness. And that goes from fluid science, you know, how do fluids behave in weightlessness, to combustion, you know, how do flames change, to mixing of substances, to material sciences, you know, how do metal solidify.

So very, very broad range of activities. So last month on the Supermassive podcast, we explored the benefits of sending probes and rovers to space over humans. But reversing that and with your experience, what are the benefits of sending humans instead of probes? Yeah, I mean, the benefit is that it's really still quite hard. And I think it will stay that way for a long time to replicate. On the one hand, the energy efficiency of human beings, their ability to adapt and self-repair, and the versatility of human beings. We can learn to do a lot of diverse things, and we can adapt if the situation changes in ways that robots

equipped with artificial intelligence will one day be able to do. I certainly don't put any limits on what technology will be able to implement in time, But I think we're certainly not there yet. So when you're talking about repetitive tasks in an environment which is suitable for robots, then why not? It's probably cheaper and it's less risky. But those are very specific environments and very specific tasks. And when you want to go beyond that, I think it's still very, very hard to replicate the advantages of having a human, even if, of course, it's more expensive, you have to keep the human alive and so on and so forth.

But I think the trade right now is at least in favor of having a good balance between the two, right now is at least in favor of having a good balance between the two certainly not replacing humans quite yet okay well thinking you know to the beyond and we hear a lot about a talk of going back to the moon and going back to mars i'm really curious as to where you would like to send humans next and where you think they would be of most benefit to go? Well, I mean, you always tend to look at this based also on what is possible and whether the path that we're on is going right. Of course, it would be really cool to explore under ice oceans of Europa with astronauts. But is that realistic right now? Of course, it's not. So, you know, we are on this path of going to Mars eventually via the moon. And I think that makes sense. You know, there are on this path of going to Mars eventually via the moon.

And I think that makes sense. You know, there's always this big debate. Why don't we go straight to Mars? We've been on the moon already. But I'm somebody who could experience firsthand how much you actually learn that you didn't know about when you actually really start doing things. really start doing things. It might all look figured out on paper, but then you really learn about the hurdles and all the things you didn't think about and how you put it all together when you're actually trying to run hardware in space and run a mission. And so we've learned so much over the years on the International Space Station. And I think it does make sense

to have that intermediate step in in lunar orbit and on the surface of the moon because then you can make that step to Mars with a much bigger chance of succeeding. And what are some of the things that we're hoping to learn from those missions if we do get there? Why do we want to go? Well, I mean, there's different perspectives. I mean, I'm an astronaut, so I'm in the camp of we go because we go. Yes. Okay, great. Do we need another reason? I'm convinced it has money.

Obviously, why else? But of course, you know, from a science point of view, there's a lot of scientific questions. On the moon, of course, we don't expect to find life or anything like that. But it's a geologist's dream and finding out more about the origin of the moon, Earth system. And so, you know, the history of our own planet. And then if we jump to Mars, then there, there is also a chance of finding life. And maybe robots will find it.

I mean, we have plenty of robots, rovers on Mars and we'll get a few more soon. But again, the ability to explore from the point of view of human beings is much bigger. And so that's a pretty cool question. I mean, you know, is there life on Mars? And if there is, is it related to life on Earth? I mean, is this like the same life that kind of moved from one planet to the other? Or did it originate independently on the two different planets? That would be a complete game changer, because then you could say, okay, it's quite likely then for life to emerge if the circumstances are right. Because right now we don't know, right? You know, sometimes people say, oh, there's like, you know, billions of planets out there.

And, you know, many of them are in this habitable zone. And so it's inevitable that there is life somewhere out there. And I'm like, I'm always cautious because I'm like, well, we don't exactly know how life emerged on our planet. I mean, for what we know, it was really like a completely, absolutely unlikely event that really only happened once in the entire universe. We just don't know. So now if you find it on Mars and you can kind of tell that it originated independently, then that's a completely game changer. Then it's like, okay, well, then it's really likely that there is a lot of life out there. You know, I'm sure there's people who don't care at all about those questions but

I think for many of us they're really fascinating that was the wonderfully lovely Samantha Cristoforetti there and we have part two of that conversation coming up later when we were chatting to her over zoom I caught the two of us just staring at her beaming at her it was like grins galore she literally must have been terrified I know I caught the same thing there's these two avidly smiling faces that were just like tell me more love me be my friend please be my friend what I absolutely loved though was just about it was the two of us talking to her so relaxed and casual and I realized halfway through the conversation it was also about one year since the first all-female spacewalk as well and I just I think this is just a great time to just reflect on yeah okay how far humanity as a

whole has come in terms of space exploration but also just a nice recognition of the strides we're making in terms of gender equality in space as well. It just, oh, I just got so excited when we were talking to her when I realized that. Now, the International Space Station has played a huge part when it comes to astronauts doing science in space. And this month, we're celebrating 20 years of continuous human presence on the International Space Station. 240 individuals from 19 countries have visited the orbiting laboratory. And our very own exec producer, Richard Hollingham, was actually at the launch to cover it as a journalist back in 1998 and joins us now. Richard, I don't think I've ever been more jealous of anything.

You were actually at the launch. How was that? Well, actually pretty grim. So I was the only BBC journalist actually at the launch. In fact, I was the only British broadcast journalist at the launch. And it was the first time they'd had a media trip. So there was me and there was a scary woman from CNN. And there were a few other more specialist journalists there at Baikonur. And they didn't really know what to do with us either, this foreign press. So they gathered us and stuck us on what turned out later to be a missile silo. It was so cold. I don't think I've ever been so cold.

And I've been to Antarctica twice. So we were stuck on this missile sil salah in this frozen desert with the rocket the proton rocket in the far distance in kind of in the gray this white rocket blending into the gray and then when it actually launched i was doing a live commentary for radio five live so i was actually huddled behind a rock with a mobile phone to my ear doing this commentary for Five Live. So, I mean, it was an extraordinary experience, but it's one of those experiences that was enjoyable in retrospect, but not so much at the time. Fair enough. I just imagine you miserably sat behind a rock, like, get me back to my hotel. Sounds so glamorous. Get into journalism, kids. But at the start of the mission you know we look back

on it now as this huge success the International Space Station but it wasn't a guaranteed success was it? No I mean at that time it was every story and every story I did as a reporter for the World Service at that time was will it launch or won't it? Will it be a success or won't it be a success? The then head of what's now become the UK Space Agency, the head of science for that organization, described it at the time as an orbiting white elephant. There were lots of American congressmen generally who wanted to cut funding for it. So yeah, absolutely, it was by no means a success. So there'd already been another space station that didn't happen. So when Ronald Reagan was president, there was space station freedom. And they spent millions, hundreds of millions, probably billions on nothing. I mean, nothing, there was no actual hardware built. So, yeah, absolutely. It was no guarantee that the International Space Station was going to be a success.

So what were some of the initial aims of the International Space Station? Well, at the time, as much as anything, it was about, well, learning how to live in space, learning about long duration spaceflight. There was also the using the space shuttle. So the space shuttle had been built, and the idea of the space shuttle, launched first in 1981, was that it would serve as a space station, but there was no space station for it to service. So it started to justify the use of the space station, but really at the time the main driver for the International Space Station

was international cooperation in space, international partnership, and keeping the Russian space program alive. Well, I mean, it certainly achieved that. But how have those missions then changed over time? Obviously, we know it as a success. Well, now, when anyone talks about the space station, certainly from the space agencies, they'll talk about science. They'll still talk about international partnerships, but they'll talk about the science and the science that's coming out from the space station. Whether that's learning to live in space, well, that's one aspect

of it, but increasingly microgravity research, and increasingly not just publicly funded microgravity research on the space station publicly funded microgravity research on the space station but privately funded research there's quite a few racks quite a few experiments flown on the space station by private companies so feeding money back into the space program and i mean that's one possible future actually privately funded research in microgravity and did you think richard back then when you were watching the launch huddle behind a rock, that in 20 or so years, you'd still be talking about the legacy of the space station, the fact that it is still above us? Was it actually forecast at the time to last this long?

No, not at all. I mean, I looked back and they're actually on the BBC website. They're archived on the website. The stories I wrote, there was one I think I wrote back in 2000, just before the first crew, Expedition 1, started on the space station. And there was still a lot of skepticism. And personally, I was very skeptical about the whole project, the whole project becoming, but it has. It's become what they claimed it would become, this enormous, this incredible engineering structure in space.

And whatever you think about, whether it's value for money or not, or whether it's been worth the time or effort, just in terms of something of great human achievement, then, I mean, you know, it is incredible. It's an incredible thing for humanity to have built. It really is, isn't it? I mean, what are we on now? Something like mission 200 and something? We literally just saw two brand new astronauts come to the space station last week. Like it is amazing when you think back at that.

But what are the future plans now for the space station? Obviously, we didn't expect it to last this long. And so what are we looking at going forward? Well, that's a very, very good question. It's certainly funded up to 2024. There is no guarantee, although it will probably be funded beyond that. The trouble is that the space agencies are putting their efforts into, well, not the trouble necessarily, but inevitably putting their money into human missions to the moon and then on to Mars, there isn't going to be enough money as well to fund the space station. So it's really interesting to see what will happen

in the next few years. And then it's the Russian side of that as well. So will Russia decide to continue to operate on the space station? Will the space station end up being split apart a bit, maybe? You could have multiple small space station end up, you know, being split apart a bit, maybe, you know, you could have multiple small space stations from the International Space Station, or will it end up increasingly in the hands of, you know, private space companies. So it is really interesting, no one entirely knows. But at the moment, NASA, as the major funder for the space station, does not have enough budget to keep astronauts on the space station to the same extent it does now and to land astronauts on the moon.

So unless it gets a major increase in its budget, one or the other is going to have to give. Well, I wouldn't want to be the one making that decision at the minute. I don't think I could be impartial there. But thanks very much for that, Richard. It was great, great to hear all your experiences with the launch and your thoughts on the space station. So if you haven't heard Richard's podcast either, Space Muffins, then get to it. This is the Supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society with me, astrophysicist Dr. Becky Smedhurst, and with science journalist Izzy Clark. This month, it's all about humans exploring space. We've still got part two of our conversation

with ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, but I am going to squeeze in a few questions for Becky and Robert. So Debbie Lozaga says, there have been many depictions of humans in space without protective equipment or the suit goes dead. That's ranging from Superman to Star Wars. We had Princess Leia in the last movie and Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy.

What would actually happen to your body in space without a working suit or protection? That is so up your street, Becky. Yeah, it's so up my street. Because I remember that Thor did this in the last Avengers film as well, right they plucked him from space although i guess thor is a norse god rather than a human and he's played by chris hemsworth too who is a literal superhuman you know i you know natalie portman in thor right is an astrophysicist and she studies black holes which is what i do and like chris hemsworth just falls from the sky and i'm like when is chris hemsworth gonna fall from the sky in my day job

when is when is that going to happen i am waiting you gotta keep dreaming becky yeah what was i talking about oh they're all surviving in space protection in space yes yeah okay so one thing that people think is is the big issue in space is the temperature right they assume space is incredibly incredibly cold which it is you know the average temperature of space is the temperature, right? They assume space is incredibly, incredibly cold, which it is, you know, the average temperature of space is something like 2.7 degrees above absolute zero. The thing is space is a vacuum. There's no air molecules to do any of the heat transfer. You know, you have this sort of like collision of molecules and molecules gain energy and that's how they transfer heat away from you. And they radiate heat, you know, like your cup of tea cooling down or something like that. But that doesn't happen in space so the only way for energy to to literally be lost in space is is

by radiation by infrared sort of radiating away so you wouldn't freeze as you went out it would take actually a very very long time if you went out into space with no suit you'd actually feel fairly warm if you were in the sunshine because you'd be getting hit by radiation from the sun if you were in shadow then you'd start to rad hit by radiation from the sun. If you were in shadow, then you'd start to radiate away very, very slowly. So it's not the cold that will kill you. It's actually the fact that you are in a vacuum, right? So for example, your instinct,

if you were going into space, might be to take a big deep breath, wouldn't it? You'd be like, don't do that ever. Because- It doesn't sound great in a fact no no no the problem is when you're in a vacuum is that actually the water first of all in your body the boiling temperature of water is lowered in a vacuum so actually all of the water starts to evaporate so you'll get incredibly dry eyes and incredibly dry mouth but also the water from your bloodstream will start

to evaporate and it's got nowhere to go so it gets trapped under your skin so you have these huge big pockets of water vapor trapped under your skin so it'll sort of look like your skin will start to bubble a little bit but then also the oxygen evaporates from your blood as well so your blood becomes deoxygenated in about 15 seconds and when that hits your brain you're going to pass out so you'd sort of look like a very shrivelly raisin people have estimated from what's happened to maybe animals or any sort of little accidents that have happened you know out in space and everything that an unconscious human out in vacuum would probably be able to last about a minute or so but after that

it would be the lack of oxygen that would get you that that is actually quite terrifying I'm really Debbie I hope that answers your question and doesn't give you nightmares I was researching it like well thanks for clearing that one up Robert here's one from Tomoy New York who says what is the upper limit to the distance of travel possible from the earth for space exploration by people and by machines? Will it ever be possible to go interstellar or even intergalactic? Yeah, that's a really great question there, Tom. I mean, the answer is that there's no upper limit as such, because if you've got the patience, the longevity, the vehicles to do it, you can travel an enormous distance.

However, the practicalities of that do get in the way. So for example, even if we try to explore the solar system, it takes years to get to the outer planets. I mean, for example, the New Horizons probe took nine years to get to Pluto, and that was one of the fastest we'd ever sent in space. So you can see that this is more of the issue than actually just whether it's possible to go further or not. Then you've got the Voyager probes that are way outside the solar system now, and they just carry on. And while we can pick up signals from them,

then you could argue that they're still exploring, I suppose, when we can no longer detect the signals because they finally shut down and it's simply too weak, then that's some kind of limit. But there have been really interesting ideas about, I should also say as well that actually for people, it's at the moment,

the furthest we've been is obviously the moon, a few days away, we talk a lot about going to Mars, but we're not that close to doing that yet. You know, a six month trip there, a year on the surface, six months back. Once you start to try and go further than that, it's really, really hard. about this particularly for space probes rather than people and there's interesting work on things like project starship breakthrough star shop funded by the breakthrough foundation to send a a tiny micro probe weighing just a gram power it with us with a star sail so highly reflective material and use the pressure that comes from a really powerful laser to blast it to the nearest star proxima centauri and the reason for doing that is we think there is a an earth-sized planet around that in the habitable zone of that star so it might be a place we could go and have a look so you know this we're not close to being able to do that yet but people are thinking about the idea i'm not sure whether we want to really want to

build a massively uh powerful laser or not or how feasible that is to pump energy to it and so on to say nothing of how it might be misused but there are there are people thinking about it and there were wacky ideas early on as well like uh one of my favorites is project dadless which used uh nuclear fusion drives and was literally powered by a series of nuclear explosions happening each second to drive this thing forward now again that doesn't sound like something i'd necessarily want to ride on particularly on takeoff. But there were people right back in the 1950s thinking about these ideas.

And if you want to go just beyond the stars, if you want to go intergalactic, it's going to be clearly much, much harder still, because you're not just talking about light years, but millions of light years. And so even if you're traveling at the speed of light, then it's very hard for a human to do that however the only thing you can do or think about is if you if you don't mind not seeing

your family and friends again you can take advantage of one of the facets of Einstein's theory of relativity which is that if you travel at very very high speeds time runs more slowly for you so millions of years could pass on the surface of the earth but hypothetically if you go go fast enough you could get these trips to be you would you could perceive them as quite short uh but this is you know this is fantastical stuff we have no idea how to send things at that kind of speed yet let alone people so it's uh it's some way off but so is there an upper limit it's it's a practical one at the moment and in our imagination definitely not but whether we the gulf between the two is still quite big yeah i think when i think about it i always think interstellar that interstellar travel that's not out of the realms of possibility like you can

imagine the future thousands of years or so in the future where interstellar travel might be a thing but intergalactic travel i'm like i don't ever think that's going to be possible just because of the speed of light and physics as we know it right now just cause cause physics and Richard Lynn Lamb wants to know are we ever going to replace the shuttle program so we can replace and repair satellites Becky do you want to take that one yeah I mean I really hope so because one of the things I'm not looking forward to in the next decade or so is the Hubble Space Telescope coming down or running out of fuel, not being able to be used anymore. Eventually, its orbit decaying and crashing to Earth. I just I can't I've never lived in a world where Hubble

didn't exist up in space. So it's weird to me that it wouldn't be there if we could service it in some way. Maybe we could save it and continue using it which i think would be so so cool to do i mean we've obviously got sort of nasa now exporting sort of low earth orbit uh launches to spacex and boeing people like that to get astronauts up to the iss perhaps they'll develop something like the space shuttle that could be used to service something like hubble and other satellites you know we don't necessarily have to rely on government agencies to do this. You know, SpaceX might decide that they have a need to service their satellites that they currently have in orbit and so might come up with something that can do that. NASA are currently developing their SLS system, the space launch system for their spacecraft Orion, but that's for humans to go

to the moon and possibly beyond so again that's not something that they're really developing that could be for uh satellites in orbit and i think you raise a really good question because what are we going to do with all this space junk that's currently up there right yeah i was reading about this there's 8 000 metric tons of space junk and it is it's just a growing issue because all these missions leave something behind exactly yeah you think about how many bits of various different things are up there and i remember this fascinating talk that was given by dr alice gorman once that i saw we should really get on the podcast actually she's dr space junk on twitter

she's so good um and she was talking about how is there value in space junk in terms of like the sort of cultural value to it sort of saying that's humanity's history right in terms of space exploration so you know the oldest pieces of space junk is sort of an old Russian probe that was launched sort of shortly after Sputnik and it has value should we bring it down to earth and put it in a museum for example then if you do that it sort of reduces its value because then it's not the oldest piece of space junk. The second oldest piece of space junk

becomes the oldest piece of space junk. So it's this really odd conundrum about, should we preserve some of that space junk because it is our history? Should we start to clean up it a little bit around Earth? And I think her conclusion was until it becomes a problem, until it becomes sort of like a danger to either other satellites space

stations anything like that or to us on earth then we should just just leave it up there for now but if we can have something in the future that can perhaps i don't know hoover them up or service them whatever i think that would be really cool yeah and i know that there are definitely companies out there that are looking at different ways they can capture space chunks whether that's looking at different ways that they can capture space chunks, whether that's looking at using some sort of net that they can deploy or even harpooning them and sort of dragging them back to a capsule. Like people are thinking about this. I was just going to say that also the prospect

of maybe 100,000 new satellites going up in the next few years concentrates my mind about this as well. You know, there's concern about how well they're managed because even if only say 1% of those fail and they're drifting around that's another thousand objects so we do need to take it really seriously sounds like we should do a whole podcast on that so if you want to send any questions to us for a future episode then email podcast at ras.ac.uk or tweet at royal astck. Let's get to part two of our chat with ESA astronaut Samantha

Cristoforetti. Earlier she was explaining why we'd want to send astronauts to Mars but what challenges do we actually need to overcome to get there? So there's a big effort right now going on on the ISS actually to test new generation life support technologies in the hope that we can have something which is, on the one hand, more compact, just as efficient and effective, but more compact and more. There's the issue of consumables. You know, you have to be able to feed people and they need to have oxygen to breathe for quite a long time. There's the issue of radiation, which is a big question mark in many ways. I mean, some people describe it as a showstopper. Truth is that we know so little in the end about the biological effects of radiation

in deep space, that we are taking it very cautiously. You know, we have this big margins of uncertainty and, you know, and we add safety margins on top of that. But that's really due to the fact that we understand so little. So, you know, if we could understand a little bit better with that, you know, galactic cosmic rays really due to biological systems and so specifically to the human body, then we would be reducing those margins of uncertainty. And then maybe it would turn out that it's not as big of a challenge as we assume it is right now, just because we have to play it safe.

And of course, you need to be able to land safely on Mars, which is, you know, it's not, it's not, it's not so easy. Maintain an infrastructure there for a long time. So, you know, you can see it's quite a big step from you know being on the international space station so just intermediate stop on the moon will be really useful i think yeah i mean that i mean it is a huge step when you put it like that do you think that you will be involved in those future missions as an astronaut like the moon or mars or can you not tell us yeah mars probably not i mean i would assume that that will be for a younger generation of astronauts. The moon, you know, why not?

I mean, it's not impossible. You know, it depends what life choices eventually I'll make and what opportunities come around. But certainly we have a goal at the European Space Agency to, over the years, step up our game in terms of cooperating with this international effort of moon exploration and that should normally also lead to opportunities for Europeans to you know one day maybe walk on the moon. That would be incredible I'd love to see that. Saying that then getting people on the moon maybe even yourself in the future what do you think the future looks like for humans and robots working together in space exploration? I think there will be more and more of that. And that's just because as

technology evolves, then robots will become more capable, more reliable, and adapt to interact with human beings in a flexible way. There's issues of safety, of course, but I think those are being resolved. Because one thing is like industrial robots, right? They're restrained in their environment and in their safety bubble, their interaction with human beings is very strictly regulated by safety protocols,

safety procedures, and stuff like that. So if you really want to have a robot body that really kind of like works with you and helps you explore and maybe helps you go to the more hostile area or the more dangerous places or just do repetitive tasks or, you know, just picking up things for you or carrying things for you and stuff like that, then there's definitely this interaction that needs to be solved. And that includes both the efficiency of the interaction and the safety of the interaction but i think that that will come and it will be more and more my dream of you on the moon with sort of r2d2 it's not dead

of course you snuck in a star wars reference you're such a fangirl i can't help it i was like i said it and I was like, I just wanted the floor to swallow me whole. I was like, did I just say that to a real astronaut? That was European Space Agency astronaut, Samantha Cristoforetti, who's also our new best friend. Best friend, Samantha. Now we've talked about Mars quite a bit this episode

and I've loved seeing it in the night sky this month. It is just so bright and it's one thing that's being talked about for National Astronomy Week, isn't it Robert? It is, that's right, National Astronomy Week which is normally a very, very big event around people going to observatories and looking through telescopes, all those kind of things in large numbers. Can't quite happen the same way this time. It's something I should say that happens every few years when there's particularly nice events in the sky. But the team, which includes the RAS, has chosen to focus on Mars because although it's not quite as bright in November, the week runs on the 14th to the 22nd of November, I should say. We had nine days just to take in two weekends. It's actually going to

be nicely placed in the evening sky. So whereas when it was at opposition at its absolute best, you had to be up fairly late to get a good view. By mid-November, it's going to be pretty convenient. The clocks will have gone back and it will be very, very obvious still in the sky. And they're going to do things like running virtual telescope sessions. So they'll have observatories around the country, amateur astronomy groups, connecting webcams to telescopes and more sophisticated things to show people what it looks like uh running talks from mars specialists throughout the week i think they're doing some for children every lunchtime each day and some for adults in the in the early evening as well so i'm really

looking forward to it i think it's going to be a really interesting set of events and and uh you know it's a really nice way to find out about the latest thinking on the red planet what the experts researching this i'm very very sure there'll be discussions on whether there's life on mars too the important thing to to plug is the website which is astronomyweek.org.uk okay taking note of that but what else can we see this month well it's it's still definitely planet season obviously mars is still there for some time to come and will still be very obvious and bright but you've you've still just about got time to come and will still be very obvious and bright. But you've still just about got Jupiter and Saturn sinking down towards the west.

And this month is one of those rare occasions when you can, if you're patient enough, you can see all five planets in the sky. So if you don't need sleep, if you start the evening very much, the clock's going back about half five, I guess, you'll see Jupiter and Saturn in the southwest. Mars comes up fairly quickly. And in the morning sky, you've see Jupiter and Saturn in the southwest Mars comes up fairly

quickly and in the morning sky you've got Mercury Venus and the Moon so Mercury is fairly elusive it's a difficult planet to see but the help on the 12th and the 13th of November is that the Moon will move between Venus which is really dazzlingly bright and Mercury so have a look for it because it's one of those nice opportunities. I've somehow been up early enough around like 6, 6.30ish to see Venus as well. And that is so bright. It's lovely. You're just like, oh, right, it's right there in front of you. And actually with a small telescope, that's another thing you can see. You can't see detail.

You certainly can't see phosphine with your small telescope, but you can see the can see the phase of the planet and that's quite a nice thing to watch as well and bearing in mind that was one of the ways that uh convinced Galileo that the planets were moving around the sun rather than the earth and I was thinking like with them you know most of the UK now possibly going into some higher form of lockdown and only being able to see people outside you know stargazing with friends and family social distance is something that you can really easily do you know so we've heard like fire pits are selling out everywhere you know crack out the fire pit a wrap up warm look at the stars in an evening and chat to your family actually not over a screen but socially distanced it's a lovely thing to do the clocks

have gone back so we're all in that kind of sort of november uh feeling when october november feeling when it'll be you know a bit darker but get out and look at the sky if you've got a clear sky uh pick up a pair of binoculars and look around because you've got the pleiades cluster really obvious the seven sisters uh rising in the early evening and then above those this other beautiful slightly less well-known cluster but still very very very easy to see double cluster in perseus and check these out you pick a pair of binoculars up and you look at these things, you see that these objects, which look like, you know, in some cases smudges with the eye, like the double cluster, you pick up a pair of binoculars and it breaks into this jewel box of stars. But, you know, I think it's a really special thing to see. Well, that is it for

this month. Next time, we're going to be chatting about the future of observing space. Now, we're really bad podcasters and we keep forgetting to plug all the things that we're supposed to be chatting about the future of observing space. Now, we're really bad podcasters and we keep forgetting to plug all the things that we're supposed to. So I'm just going to get through this really quickly at the end. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a nice review so that new people can find us. No, seriously, though, it really, really helps.

So please do that. Tweet us if you try some astronomy at home. It's at Royal Astrosoc on Twitter or email your questions to podcast at ras.ac.uk. And we'll try and cover them in a future episode. But until then, happy stargazing.