The Unexpected Space Center: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science
The Planetary Society
4.8 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 11 September 2019
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This US research center has been part of more than 200 space missions, but it’s not a NASA facility! The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico gave the Voyager spacecraft their power sources, is building nuclear generators for future Martians, and accidentally invented the field of High Energy Astrophysics. That’s just some of what we’ll learn from Lab historian Alan Carr and longtime Lab astrophysicist Ed Fenimore. The Planetary Society’s Jason Davis has the latest news about India’s lunar lander, while Bruce Betts and Mat Kaplan go where no acronym has gone before. Learn more about this week’s guests and topics at: http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2019/0911-2019-carr-fenimore-los-alamos.html
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Exciting Space Exploration from a surprising source this week on planetary radio. |
| 0:07.0 | Welcome, I'm Matt Kaplan of the the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our |
| 0:15.8 | solar system and beyond. |
| 0:18.2 | The Los Alamos National Laboratory may not be the first place that comes to mind when you think about space, |
| 0:24.6 | yet this Center for Nuclear Research and Development has had a hand in more than 200 missions. |
| 0:30.8 | Join me for an eye-opening conversation with two long-time members of its staff. |
| 0:36.0 | I'm looking forward to telling planetary society chief scientist Bruce Betts that I finally got a good look at Jupiter. That'll happen in this week's What's Up segment, along with all the |
| 0:46.1 | other usual hijinks, we begin with last week's attempt by India to |
| 0:50.8 | become only the fourth nation to soft land a spacecraft on the moon. |
| 0:55.9 | Jason Davis is the Planetary Society's digital editor. |
| 0:59.8 | Jason, welcome as always. |
| 1:01.5 | Thank you for the updates on the Chandrian two mission. |
| 1:06.2 | Your last one on our website as we speak anyway on September 6th. |
| 1:11.3 | And there has been at least one development since then that the rover may have been found? |
| 1:15.8 | Yeah, the Indian Space Agency's Chandry into orbiter, so just as a quick recap, both spacecraft launched from Earth is one combined unit and then separated in lunar orbit. |
| 1:29.0 | The lander carrying the rover went on down to the surface and the orbiter is still going |
| 1:33.8 | strong about a hundred kilometers above the moon surface. Anyway that orbiter |
| 1:38.2 | has all kinds of different scientific instruments on it including a good imaging |
| 1:41.8 | system and they have seen at least it's a little unclear |
| 1:46.0 | whether what kind of image it was whether it was an infrared image or a visible |
| 1:51.2 | light image but they have seen or spotted the lander on the surface. |
| 1:56.0 | Haven't said much about what kind of shape it's in, is it in one piece, or what exactly happened to it. They are trying to contact it and listening for it from Earth, but so far no communications with that lander. |
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