Oh

Astronomy cast episodes 662 looking ahead at new and recycled missions. Welcome to astronomy cast for weekly facts based journey through the cosmos where we help you understand not only

what we know but how we know what we know. I'm Fris or King. I'm the publisher of universe today. I've been a space in astronomy journalist for over 20 years with me is Dr. Pamela gate a senior scientist for the planetary science Institute and the director of cosmic quest. Hey Pamela how you doing? I am doing well. It is as we record this December 5th and by the time this will go out to our podcast listeners there will have been an occultation of Mars. Mm-hmm. I'm going to ask you to do a question.

And I am deeply hoping I am able to see it and because I am me I fully expect to be clouded out. But I'm going to be clouded out. Yeah. But I'm excited to fly by of Artemis going past the moon. That is a current pretty much right now. Right now. Yeah exactly as we're recording are making it fly by of Earth and the whole thing is is being broadcast live. It's an exciting week.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if it feels like the space news is ramping up and ramping up but I think it's probably because we've got GWST just injecting a whole new enormous amount of space and astronomy news into this journey. So

last week we talked about the missions that we're saying goodbye to this week we're going to talk about some upcoming missions to say hello to some or brand new. Others are recycled. Now has health frozen over. That what's going on here.

Are we about to talk about things that are going to happen in the future. So I find myself more than willing to talk about missions that are out there moving in our solar system but

not yet either gotten to the object they're aiming for or or have have sent back science data. And yeah, I'm actually going to be willing to acknowledge some missions that almost launched and will be launching soon and then everyone is talking about that.

You know what you don't need just fight anymore. I'll take it. It's done sold. Let's do it. Whatever kitchen scraps I can scavenge here to share my enthusiasm for the future. I am 100% on board. So pick a mission. What do you want to talk about?

So I was rex. The mission we watched launch together. Exactly. This mission has a sweet spot in my heart, not just because it's a mission I got to work on but also because it's a mission that that almost flew into like literally flew itself into an asteroid.

And the more we learn about its its sample tag, the the sillier the entire situation is because gravity was so low when they went to calculate the force of friction on the mission as it plunged its sample arm into the asteroid by accident.

The friction was essentially zero and I just love the fact that they like plunged roughly half a meter into the asteroid discovering it was the consistency of a ball pit with essentially zero friction going in.

So what would that I mean what would be something with like zero friction going in so you're seeing like a ball pit like where they're being held together with almost no gravity and so as you push the the collector in the material just just shoves away very easily for it to be able to grab its sample.

So so the amount of frictional force and object experiences is a combination of the force between the object and the thing that is causing the friction so it's the normal force basically.

And the normal force is very very very low when a human beings force onto the object from gravity would be the equivalent of a sheet of paper on your hand on earth so you have a very low normal force and then.

That combination of low normal force and a not very high value of friction anyways just works out to essentially zero as it plunged into that ball pit of rocks that made out that Rubble pile asteroid and it's going to bring us it sample of rocks that it was basically shoved full of as it plunged into the object.

So as it plunged in September of 2023 and the mission has been approved to go on and I have to always look at how to say this it is it is becoming Osiris apex as it goes off to explore the asteroid a poffis and it should see a poffis in 2029.

So the poffis is a very interesting asteroid this is the one that astronomers had tagged as one of the most potentially hazardous asteroids that we knew of.

Why is a poffis such an interesting target for Osiris to do after it delivers its samples.

This is an asteroid that is fairly large which means that if it hit us it would be devastating and it's going to come between us and the geosynchronous satellites in a few years.

And that's a little bit too close for comfort and not only is it coming that close to earth but if it had passed through a gravitational sweet spot called the keyhole is what it got named if it had passed through this gravitational sweet spot it meant that it was going to come back and smack us directly in the farther out future but still within our lifetime assuming we don't get hit by a car or something.

Within our naturally expected lifetimes and they had run the maths and figured out that if that impact occurred it would occur in the Pacific Ocean and thus we were going to face essentially Lucifer's hammer kind of a future where water was sent cascading well up into cascadia and all of the rest of the Rockies and sweeping the Earth.

...