0:00

Now AstronomyCast

0:31

Episode 708 What

0:33

Goes Into Sample

0:36

Return Missions From

0:38

Asteroids and Comets?

0:57

Welcome to AstronomyCast, our weekly facts-based journey through the

0:59

cosmos, where we help you understand not only what

1:01

we know, but how we know what we know.

1:04

I'm Fraser Cain, I'm the publisher of University

1:06

With Me, as always, is Dr. Pamela Gay,

1:08

a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute

1:10

and the director of CosmoQuest. Hey,

1:13

Pamela, how are you doing? I am

1:15

doing well. I know

1:17

that many people enjoyed Super Bowl Sunday yesterday.

1:19

I am here to say I enjoyed

1:22

Superb Owl Sunday.

1:25

There were some science communicators that realized

1:27

that Super Bowl and Superb Owl as

1:29

a hashtag have the exact

1:32

same letters and took it

1:34

over and there are owls. And

1:37

I just want to say thank

1:40

you to whatever human started that

1:42

several years ago and has kept

1:44

it going. I

1:46

think that's Stephen Colbert. Really?

1:49

Yeah, I think so, if I recall

1:51

correctly. Because it's getting used by

1:54

science communicators to communicate science about

1:56

owls. Yep, I

1:58

think so. call that correctly.

2:02

The world needs more ninja science. So

2:06

I was having a chat

2:08

with one of my patrons today

2:10

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For me, Universe Today, the videos that I

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Today, it's a huge media

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and cosmiquest.org Perfect.

4:08

All right Last week

4:10

we talked about sample return missions from

4:12

the moon and Mars But scientists have

4:14

retrieved samples from other objects in the

4:17

solar system including comets and asteroids What

4:19

does it take to return a piece

4:21

of rock or dust from space and

4:24

what have we learned so far? all

4:27

right, so what missions

4:29

have been sent To

4:32

try to retrieve samples from things in

4:34

space that aren't the moon and

4:36

Mars So we

4:38

have the Genesis mission that returned

4:42

Particles from the Sun we have

4:44

the Stardust mission the returned particles from

4:46

a comet We have

4:48

high busa 1 & 2 that

4:51

returned very different amounts of asteroid

4:54

and then we of course have

4:57

Osiris Rex and I

5:01

Think I caught everything but everything I think

5:03

that yep Yeah, we can talk about the

5:05

substance in the works And I know you're just gonna have

5:07

to put your fingers in your ears and blah blah. I'm

5:09

not listening I will explain

5:11

the interesting sample return missions that are in

5:13

the works and whether or not they will

5:15

succeed or not All right. Well,

5:18

let's talk about Genesis first Genesis was

5:20

a mission that sort of flew into the radar of

5:23

What was that? so it

5:26

was one of the old school missions

5:28

that a Lot

5:30

of people just didn't really Realize

5:33

was happening. It started in 1997 with feasibility

5:35

studies it launched

5:39

back in 2001

5:41

it flew in this weird

5:43

loop-de-loop orbit and It

5:47

went beyond the Earth-Moon

5:49

environment to collect samples

5:51

of particles

5:54

from the Sun that hadn't been

5:56

affected by our environment magnetic

6:00

fields and everything else in the

6:02

Earth-Moon system. What kind of

6:04

particles can you expect from the Sun? Well,

6:07

this is kind of what they were looking to

6:09

figure out. So we know

6:12

that there is electrons

6:17

clearly, cosmic rays which are heavier

6:19

atoms, and so what

6:22

they were looking at is on this

6:25

array of various semiconductor grade

6:27

wafers, they were looking to

6:29

see how these high energy

6:31

particles, whatever they happened to

6:33

be made of, interacted

6:35

with each of these different systems.

6:39

The different

6:41

materials were designed to

6:44

basically capture what's the mass, what's

6:46

the mass, what is the energy,

6:49

and allow us to understand what's

6:52

going on out there. And when we

6:54

think about the solar wind, I mean before

6:57

Genesis, you

6:59

would try to measure the solar wind

7:02

in situ. You'd fly in space and

7:04

you'd detect the kinds of particles that

7:06

were around you. And you know, you're

7:08

getting ions. You're getting hydrogen

7:12

ions mostly, almost entirely, and then

7:14

you're getting a few ions of

7:16

other kinds of particles as well.

7:20

But actually be able to, sure,

7:22

but I mean electrons are very difficult particle to

7:25

capture compared to a hydrogen ion or some other

7:27

particle that you're getting.

7:31

But then be able to bring them

7:33

back, as you said, you're detecting the

7:35

energy, you're checking the mass, you're getting

7:37

a sense of just like the abundance

7:39

of these different kinds of particles, and

7:42

you can come bring them back and study them in the

7:44

lab with incredible precision.

7:47

Now retrieving these samples didn't go

7:50

exactly according to plan, did it?

7:52

Uh, no, there may have been

7:55

a bit of lithobraking involved. That's

7:58

my favorite term, lithobraking. where

8:00

you crash. I love that term.

8:04

The capsule, like

8:06

I said, this was kind of the

8:09

OG sample return. They were learning a

8:11

lot of things. Parachutes are hard. And

8:15

so they made a very tiny

8:17

crater. And

8:20

they did everything they

8:22

could, actually quite local to me.

8:24

So sample extraction took place at

8:26

the University of Washington, which is

8:28

in St. Louis. So it's

8:31

named after the president, just like

8:33

the state is and has nothing to do with the state. So

8:36

the samples were extracted at Washington

8:39

University. Some of the

8:41

hexagonal wafers that were used to

8:43

collect the samples broke,

8:46

you might say, crumbled. They had a bad

8:48

day, like thrown luggage except thrown from orbit.

8:52

But some of the wafers did

8:54

survive. And all of this is

8:56

now at the Johnson

8:58

Space Center curation center that we talked

9:00

about a lot in the last episode.

9:03

It's the same place that the asteroid

9:05

samples are kept, that the lunar samples

9:07

are kept. And within these

9:09

samples, they were able to

9:12

tease out noble gases, oxygen

9:14

isotopes, nitrogen isotopes, and

9:17

start to get a sense of some of

9:19

the other stuff that's coming from the sun.

9:22

Yeah, the original plan was it was

9:24

going to pop its parachute and hit the atmosphere.

9:27

And then they were going to grab it with

9:29

a helicopter and gently take it to a facility.

9:31

Parachute didn't deploy. It only

9:33

slowed down due to air resistance of

9:35

the atmosphere and then just crashed into

9:37

the desert. And like fortunately, it was

9:40

soft. And it's amazing how little science

9:42

they actually lost. I

9:45

guess learning that you don't need parachutes for this

9:47

kind of thing. But

9:50

parachutes are preferred. They are

9:52

preferred. They're not entirely necessary

9:55

when you're just dealing with

9:57

robotic spacecraft. So yeah, that's

9:59

it. It's an amazing thing. All

10:02

right, so let's move on

10:05

to stardust, which

10:07

was the first sample of a comet. Yes.

10:10

So here is where

10:12

we were introduced to a fabulous

10:14

substance called aerogel. This

10:17

is something that I swear every meeting

10:19

from like grad school

10:22

onwards that I attended, there

10:24

was someone with a block

10:26

of this stuff going, this,

10:28

this is what we're using. Have

10:31

you felt it? Have you felt aerogel?

10:33

I never have. What does it feel

10:35

like? It's sort of like

10:37

someone took bubbles from a bubble

10:40

bath and solidified them somehow. So

10:43

it has that same density

10:45

as bubbles from bubble bath.

10:47

Yeah. You can poke it like

10:50

Styrofoam. But

10:53

it breaks easily? It breaks

10:55

fairly easily. But the

10:58

idea is that dust

11:00

grains from the comet hit

11:02

it and are slowly

11:05

slowed down, but

11:08

slowed down fast enough. So you want to

11:10

slow them down slow enough that you don't

11:12

destroy them. Because if you slow things down

11:14

too fast, that's

11:16

how you break them. But it needed

11:19

to slow them down before the particles got

11:21

to the other side of the aerogel. Right,

11:23

yeah. And so it's low

11:27

enough density and breaks easily enough

11:30

that the dust grains going through

11:32

it get slowed down and

11:34

held onto and are undamaged

11:37

in the process. That's

11:39

amazing. So what was the plan with

11:42

the Stardust mission? Go

11:45

out, fly through the

11:47

tail of a comet, and

11:50

come home with the sample and drop it on

11:52

the planet. As

11:55

one wants to. And

11:57

then this is actually. One

12:01

of the first big fully online

12:03

citizen science projects came out of

12:06

this particular mission.

12:08

So Stardust went

12:10

out, it collected dust from

12:12

comet Veild 2. It

12:14

looks like the word wild, it's actually Veild. And

12:21

then they took images scanning

12:23

through the aerogel at

12:26

a variety of different focal lengths. So

12:29

they were able to see different depths

12:31

in focus in the images. And

12:34

so citizen scientists would sit

12:36

online scanning through these stacks

12:39

looking for the trails through the

12:41

aerogel that pointed to where the

12:44

dust grains are. And

12:46

like those pictures, if you get

12:48

a chance, like look up the pictures

12:51

from Stardust because they look like someone

12:53

dropped rocks into water and

12:55

you get these sort of like the bubbles that you

12:57

would see as the rock is

13:00

sort of plunging down into the water and

13:02

then it's just like someone, it's a freeze

13:04

frame of it stopped in the aerogel at

13:06

different depths. It's so cool.

13:10

And it was a hard project.

13:13

Like I failed to pass the

13:15

tutorial. It turns

13:17

out I do not have the

13:19

visual acuity to notice necessarily in

13:21

a field of gray. Yeah,

13:25

I failed at

13:28

a whole lot of successfulness.

13:32

And that's why now

13:34

you organize teams of people to

13:36

look for this stuff. I do better training.

13:38

Well, no, they had excellent training materials.

13:40

My eyeballs just failed. But

13:44

understanding that you're not always going

13:46

to succeed, that there are going to

13:48

be humans that are better at some tasks and

13:50

worse at others. And

13:52

most of all, learning that the

13:55

public is willing to help. This

13:57

team had a... huge

14:00

project going through all of

14:02

those sequences of images at

14:04

different vocal lengths was

14:08

going to take longer than they

14:10

necessarily wanted to

14:12

wait to find all of those dust

14:14

grains. So the

14:16

public was needed. And so what did

14:18

we learn about sampling a comet

14:20

like this? New

14:23

citizen scientists is

14:25

the most important thing in my brain.

14:27

I have to admit. Okay, so I mean

14:29

I can't answer this then. So I

14:32

mean one of

14:34

the big questions that astronomers had was was

14:36

where do these comets

14:39

form? How do they migrate around

14:41

the solar system? Do

14:45

they form close up to the Sun and

14:47

then migrate farther out into the solar system?

14:50

And what they found was that that

14:53

in Kuiper Belt objects anyway, I mean

14:55

we're not talking about stuff out in the York Club, but

14:57

in Kuiper Belt objects they probably formed

14:59

closer into the Sun in higher temperature

15:02

regions and then migrated

15:04

outward as the Sun settled

15:06

down as the planet started to form as things

15:09

got kicked out into this region outside the

15:12

giant planets. And so they really are

15:14

this archaeological

15:17

history of the

15:19

formation of the solar system. And

15:22

although we don't have any like

15:25

proper samples of a comet where someone actually goes

15:27

and digs a hole in the sample, takes a

15:30

core sample, brings it home, you're

15:32

getting these really interesting insights

15:34

into it. And this

15:36

will kind of stretch into our next conversation about

15:39

the asteroid ones because I think the theme that

15:41

has sort of

15:43

been in astronomy casts, we've been talking about this,

15:45

is that asteroids are more comet-like than we ever

15:48

thought. Yeah. And that

15:50

comets are more asteroid-like than we ever

15:52

thought. And so in fact the lessons

15:54

learned from sampling zestroids have a lot

15:56

to tell us about the inner solar

15:58

system. The early solar system as well

16:01

as what we learned from Comet.

16:03

All right, let's move into the

16:05

regime of asteroid sample return missions.

16:07

Who tried this crazy

16:09

thing first? Japan

16:12

with Hayabusa and Itokawa. Yeah.

16:16

Itokawa is a

16:20

cashew-shaped asteroid that has fairly smooth

16:23

areas, fairly rocky areas. It's got

16:25

a little bit of everything if

16:27

you're looking for geology. And

16:31

the goal was to bring back several

16:33

grams of material from the surface. Sample

16:37

collection did

16:40

not entirely go as one might

16:42

wish. Yeah. By

16:45

which I mean the mission

16:48

brought back less than

16:50

a single gram. If

16:53

you've ever cooked, you realize one

16:55

gram of flour is

17:00

what you kind of tap off your

17:02

spoon. Yeah,

17:04

it's a very small amount of

17:07

material. So the sample getting Hayabusa

17:09

just didn't

17:14

want to get its hands dirty. Well,

17:17

right. I mean, the thing that's interesting

17:19

about this was that really their entire

17:21

method of sample. I mean, they delivered

17:23

a mini rover. They tried to deliver

17:25

a mini rover. Minerva. That's the Minerva

17:27

that failed. And then they tried to

17:29

deploy their sample collection system.

17:33

And that failed. And they,

17:36

I'm trying to, imagine you

17:39

have a sample return capsule

17:41

that you're attempting to use

17:44

on your car. But

17:46

you did accidentally swipe your car

17:48

against the rock that you're

17:50

trying to sample. And then you bring the car home.

17:54

And you're like, wait a minute. So

17:56

they were able to recover some, as you

17:58

said, a tiny, tiny, tiny. fraction. But

18:00

like when you learn about

18:02

like maybe this is a story all on

18:05

its own or maybe I'll have to interview

18:07

somebody from behind the Hayabusa mission because that

18:09

first Hayabusa mission was

18:11

just failure after failure, problem after

18:13

problem with thrusters and with electrical

18:15

systems and with the sample collection

18:17

and the mini lander and all

18:19

of this stuff. And yet they

18:22

got it home and they got the samples

18:25

back down to earth. And it is just

18:27

one of the most incredible stories

18:30

of recovery when just everything

18:32

was going wrong and sort

18:34

of always I feel like

18:36

I have so

18:38

much respect for the Japanese Space Agency.

18:40

It's how clever and innovative they are

18:42

when they approach these kinds of problems.

18:45

One of the things I love about how

18:47

they do missions is we

18:51

are used to it either succeeded

18:53

or it failed completely. And they

18:55

actually grade their missions on a

18:58

point system like a prof. And

19:00

so this was very apparent

19:03

with their recent attempt

19:07

to land on the moon. It didn't

19:10

entirely succeed but they got points. And

19:13

the criteria that they

19:15

used to judge the success of

19:18

Hayabusa was what was

19:20

the ultimate result. So were they

19:22

able to operate their ion engines? Yes. Were

19:25

they able to operate them for more than

19:27

a thousand hours? Yes. Did it

19:29

go smoothly? No. But that wasn't part of the

19:31

grading system. It's like

19:33

when you're doing the homework. It might

19:35

accidentally take you nine hours to complete

19:37

a problem that should have taken five

19:39

minutes. But you got there eventually. But

19:42

they did science. They were

19:44

able to recover. They described as 1500

19:47

grains of material as you said, a

19:49

fraction of a gram. Like

19:52

how big a grain is. These things

19:54

are microscopic. Yet they were able in

19:56

the lab here on earth, they were

19:58

able to determine that they. are

20:01

similar in composition to meteorites that have been found

20:03

on Earth. They were able to measure the kinds

20:05

of constituents. They were able to determine that this

20:08

that this asteroid was once part of

20:10

a larger asteroid. And I think this

20:12

goes to that idea. You know, people

20:14

always say like, oh let's send a

20:17

spacecraft to Mars because we will like

20:20

why try to bring these samples back home

20:22

for ten billion dollars when you could just send

20:24

a spacecraft and study it there. Because the

20:27

things that human beings can do in the

20:29

lab here on Earth just

20:31

works whatever we

20:33

could send to another world. There

20:35

is real value in sample return

20:37

missions. Alright, let's move

20:39

on to, you know, Hayabusa 2,

20:41

the re-capturing.

20:45

So Hayabusa 2, I

20:48

love this mission because

20:50

Japan took everything

20:53

except for the kitchen sink

20:55

and dropped it on Ryu-Goo.

20:57

And this includes what isn't

21:00

officially called an anti-tank weapon

21:02

but was an anti-tank weapon.

21:05

They dropped flyers

21:08

that flitted and

21:10

bounced and everything

21:12

else. And then they managed

21:16

to grab this time a

21:18

much larger sample. They

21:21

were outdone by... Some other

21:26

mission which we're about to get to

21:28

shortly. Yes, yes. But Hayabusa 2, they

21:33

went through all

21:35

of these dropping, flipping, flying,

21:37

bombing. And then they

21:40

grabbed a sample in what

21:43

basically looks like a shop vac hose,

21:45

for lack of a better term, their

21:48

sample horn. And

21:51

again brought it back to Earth.

21:54

And it's how we've been

21:56

learning that this object

21:58

has water that it

22:00

has carbon that it

22:02

apparently has a bit of zesta

22:05

in it probably. This is a

22:09

asteroid that has seen things

22:12

and experienced things and got

22:15

crunched up a lot

22:18

and it's just

22:22

I don't know it brings me joy. So

22:24

I think some of the things that I find most

22:26

interesting with this is

22:28

how many amino acids

22:30

they've been finding in the sample. So there's been

22:32

a ton of papers that have been coming out

22:34

from the Hayabusa 2 science team like almost immediately

22:37

and you got this sort of rough here's what

22:39

it's made of here's what it was probably a

22:41

part of but they've been there's

22:43

been paper after paper talking about all of

22:45

this precursor element or molecules

22:48

for life. Most

22:50

of the amino acids that that are

22:52

in the human body you know there's

22:54

like the 20 basic amino acids most

22:56

of those been found in samples

22:59

of Ryugu as well as

23:01

dozens I think they're

23:03

like closing in on a hundred different amino

23:06

acids have been found in

23:08

these various samples and so it just shows

23:10

you that that may be one

23:12

of the real explanations for why life was able to

23:14

form so quickly on earth it's just that

23:16

the building blocks right

23:19

there that that space wants to make

23:21

the building blocks of life as quickly

23:24

as it can as soon as you have these elements

23:27

coming together in being a

23:29

radiative environment with various you

23:32

know the ability to make larger

23:34

and larger molecules chemistry just gets

23:37

at it and so it's

23:39

been it's been amazing and I think that

23:42

that idea that asteroids are more

23:44

comet like that that there's more volatile so there's

23:46

more stuff under the surface of the asteroids I

23:48

mean thanks to that anti-tank weapon we really got

23:50

a chance to see what's

23:53

below the crust of the asteroid

23:55

and it's a much more complex

23:58

rubble pile than I think anybody had

24:00

expected. Alright, let's

24:04

talk about the one that we watched the

24:06

rocket launch. We did.

24:08

We were actually together sitting the

24:11

side of the road next to a body

24:13

of water watching it happen off in the

24:15

distance on the causeway. So

24:17

this is the OSIRIS-REx mission and

24:20

it went over and above. So

24:22

Hayabusa brought back less than one

24:24

gram. Hayabusa 2

24:26

brought back five and

24:28

a half grams. OSIRIS-REx

24:33

wanted to bring back 60 grams. That was

24:35

the goal. The

24:37

excess covering the lid to

24:39

the sample container was

24:41

73 grams. Yeah. So

24:44

their excess material weighed

24:47

more than what they were hoping for for

24:49

their entire sample. Unfortunately

24:51

the asteroid tried to eat the

24:54

mission. So we're very grateful that we

24:56

were able to get that back. OSIRIS-REx

25:01

was a mission

25:04

that led to the most

25:06

delightful memes. So

25:09

Hayabusa 2 got to Riegu

25:11

shortly before OSIRIS-REx got to

25:14

Bennu. Riegu and

25:16

Bennu look very similar. They're

25:18

kind of like ten-sided

25:22

dye, vaguely shaped

25:24

asteroids and Riegu

25:27

is a bit bigger but

25:29

they're both rubble piles. One of

25:32

the first jokes was the

25:35

OSIRIS-REx mission was

25:37

able to see small

25:40

pebbles, probably an exaggeration

25:42

but overly large sized

25:45

dust grains getting

25:47

flung away from the surface of

25:49

Bennu and so the first joke

25:52

was that Bennu was throwing rocks at

25:54

OSIRIS-REx to warn it off after seeing

25:57

what happened to Riegu. The

26:00

mission then orbited and orbited and

26:02

orbited and tortured a

26:05

lot of citizen scientists I may have

26:07

been working with, with how

26:09

many rocks and boulders and

26:11

lack of clearly

26:13

cut craters covered at

26:15

surface. And when

26:18

the mission finally found a place, they

26:20

had to like completely change the mission

26:23

safety parameters because the goal

26:25

was to find something that was a large,

26:30

like not quite basketball court

26:33

size, but of that order,

26:36

clear space for the mission to go down, grab

26:38

a sample and bring the sample back up. And

26:41

they had to reduce the size they

26:44

were looking for to about four parking

26:46

spaces because there was nowhere

26:48

smooth on the surface of that

26:50

asteroid. Itokawa

26:53

had nice dusty areas that

26:55

were perfectly free

26:58

of debris and we

27:00

thought Bennu would have some of those. No,

27:02

no it didn't. And

27:05

like Hayabusa, it had basically

27:08

a vacuum cleaner arm, its

27:10

tag instrument that was

27:12

used to go down. And the plan was touch

27:15

the surface, roll the

27:17

system to get dirt

27:20

out, fire some nitrogen gas, blast

27:23

away from the surface and

27:26

all would be well with the universe and we

27:28

would get 60 grams or so,

27:30

hopefully. The reality

27:32

is it touched the

27:34

surface and kept going. Right,

27:37

buried its nose in the in

27:39

the asteroid. Yeah, Bennu's the

27:41

consistency of a ball pit and it

27:44

went down about 30 centimeters before it

27:46

fired the nitrogen gas

27:48

and spit

27:51

itself away from the object. And

27:55

the sample collection arm had, the sample

27:57

collection capsule brother had so much burnt leaves.

28:00

stuff hanging out flying out

28:02

flying away they had trouble

28:04

closing the capsule lid not

28:07

at all sorted there were some gymnastics

28:10

involved they were able

28:12

to weigh how much sample they had by

28:14

looking at the change in the moment of

28:18

inertia of the space craft and

28:22

then they brought it back to earth they I

28:26

haven't mentioned this earlier I'm going to mention it

28:29

now because it has to be acknowledged what all

28:31

of these teams have succeeded in doing is

28:34

throwing something at the earth

28:38

from a distance knowing

28:41

where on the earth it would hit

28:44

with the earth rotating and having an atmosphere

28:47

to deal with and

28:49

they were able to to

28:51

fling as as Osiris Rex

28:54

traveled past the earth as as stardust

28:59

flew past the earth both missions going

29:01

on to future missions their

29:04

capsules and they hit

29:06

with the Osiris Rex sample collection capsule

29:08

Utah the parachute did go off not

29:10

as they'd hoped but it did go

29:12

off everything was collected safe and sound

29:15

they scooped up the cap capsule took

29:18

it straight down to Johnson where the

29:20

lid refused to come off yes

29:23

yeah yeah and that part of the story

29:25

is so amazing that that you know when

29:27

you would be had all the tools in

29:29

the in the container

29:31

like they put into this hermetically sealed container and

29:33

then they were going to open it up and

29:35

start to to deal with all the samples because

29:37

you didn't want to let any get any contamination

29:40

in there and none of the tools that they

29:42

had in the chamber would let them open up

29:44

the lid that a couple of the of the

29:46

bolt had there was a well that's nurse yeah

29:48

and co-welded in space and so they had to

29:50

design a new tool made of

29:53

high-grade stainless steel 3d you

29:55

know print it or whatever they built it and then

29:57

they had to you know sterilize it get it in

29:59

into the box, then they could open up and

30:02

get access to the samples. So

30:04

how much did they find? So

30:07

here they were looking at over 270 grams. Wow.

30:12

And so everyone

30:14

is stupidly happy with this

30:16

because they were able to, before

30:19

they even got the sample capsule

30:21

open, send off some of the

30:23

excess material to be showcased at

30:25

the Smithsonian Museum. There

30:28

is material for putting in

30:30

museums. Yes. The

30:33

sample is getting divvied up among

30:35

the different partners. Japan is a

30:37

partner. We did a material swap

30:39

with them for, we have materials

30:41

from Ryugu. Canada has

30:44

some of the sample. It's

30:46

an international mission, and the rocks are

30:48

going to be shipped around the world over

30:51

time. By rocks, I mean grains of sand

30:53

and dust. And

30:55

right now, it's just too early. We

30:57

don't have the science yet. The capsule

31:00

container was only opened within

31:02

the last month of when we're recording this. January

31:04

10. It's now February 12. There's

31:08

a breaking story we're just working on right

31:10

now today that appears

31:12

that the samples

31:14

were in part of a

31:16

world that might have been water, have

31:19

water. Yeah. Yeah. It's

31:22

crazy. We're

31:27

at the wild guessing stage of how

31:29

this happened. Yeah. And

31:32

my favorite wild guess so

31:34

far is the Osiris

31:36

Rex flew all the way to another

31:39

world just to discover a pocket of

31:41

stuff that was thrown into space, either

31:44

during the dinosaur

31:46

killing, a chik-chik

31:48

lube impact, or something

31:50

else. And I don't think

31:52

we'll ever be able to isolate

31:55

it that fine-tuned. But

31:58

I mean, this could be a part of it. our

32:00

world for all we know. It's

32:03

wild. Yeah, and so it's, I mean, we will,

32:05

like once the science is in, we'll do another

32:08

episode just talking about the science of what's ours.

32:10

It'll be a whole episode all on its own.

32:12

Yeah, we're at wild speculation stage right now. I

32:14

just want to reiterate wild speculation stage. So here's

32:16

the part where you have to put your fingers

32:19

in your ears and you're not going to listen

32:21

to this Pamela where I'm going to talk about,

32:23

Pamela doesn't like to think about spacecraft that don't

32:25

exist yet. She only wants to talk about things

32:27

that have already happened. So the

32:30

Chinese are planning a mission in 2025. They're going

32:32

to do a sample return mission from

32:34

an asteroid. The Japanese have

32:36

their upcoming mission to Phobos, which launches

32:39

in 2026. And

32:41

that is going to be retrieving samples to

32:43

earth in 2031. And then there's like one

32:45

mission that

32:48

was planned. We got

32:50

the Titan Dragonfly mission, but when they chose the Titan

32:52

Dragonfly, there was one other mission that was in the

32:54

running for that. And that

32:56

was going to be a sample

32:58

return mission, probably from Rosetta.

33:03

So that would be like, this is the same

33:05

like 67P, the same

33:07

comet that the Rosetta mission went

33:09

to. And it would try to retrieve a sample

33:11

and bring it back home. And it didn't make

33:14

it. It was the Titan Dragonfly.

33:16

Who can blame the folks that

33:19

decided on which one they want, but a

33:22

proper cometary sample return mission

33:24

is now one

33:27

big missing piece of our sample

33:29

return. We've got cometary tail, but

33:31

we need like core samples and

33:34

things like that brought back from

33:36

another comet. And we're not going to

33:38

be getting a true core sample because like we,

33:41

that's a whole lot of math. We just

33:43

want like tiny core sample. The

33:45

equivalent of Osiris Rex, but gone

33:48

to a comet as opposed to an asteroid. Yeah. All right.

33:51

We, this is a long show, but thank you, and

33:55

thank you, Fraser. And thank you to all of

33:57

the patrons out there who make this show possible.

34:00

Without you, Rich wouldn't

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be able to rescue the mistakes I make,

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I'm not sure which.

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34:48

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34:59

Brown, Alexis, Felix Gute, Andrew Setz,

35:01

and Kim Barron. And if you

35:03

too would like me to probably

35:06

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35:08

sorry everyone. Please

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Thank you so much. Thanks everyone. And we'll see

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35:26

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