Japanese Hakuto lunar lander lost contact. The Spring skies.

0:00 Speaker 1 What is today is Steve Kates, otherwise known as Doctor Sky, and he’s here to tell us what’s going on in space, what’s going on on the Moon, and other nifty things. Steve Kates give us a Sunday morning, give us a briefing.

0:17 Speaker 2 Well, good morning, John, Good to be with you and your listeners. Here we find out if we look at the space industry, it’s actually pretty popular and obviously can be a big money maker. According to many sources, the whole space industry now is worth about four hundred and sixty four billion dollars, but it could explode to one

0:34 trillion dollars by twenty forty because of all the missions that are going up there. I wish we had so much more time to talk about them. But to put this in encapsulated form, Google’s Lunar X Prize, what was that?

0:46 That was something that Google was going to pay twenty million dollars to a private company that would place a lander on the surface of the Moon. A little rover would come out and travel send back images and data to win the prize. But we find out that very close to that something was happening with the Japanese John

1:04 a little Japanese spacecraft called hakkuto are. Hakuto in Japanese means white rabbit because in that mythology they believe there’s a white rabbit running around on the Moon. But sadly they actually lost contact with this. This was all exciting, it was all live stream and if it did land out of it was going to come a little rover

1:24 called Rashid built by the Arabs in Dubai because on the surface of the Moon a day is fourteen Earth days long. But John, it’s so sad that for a little spacecraft that could apparently didn’t. So that’s an interesting story, don’t you think.

1:40 Speaker 1 No, I mean, what do you think happened?

1:43 Speaker 2 Well? I think two theories. One is that the engines ran out of fuel. That’s one possibility because you got one six gravity there the little thing would come down not like it would on the Earth and just smash the pieces. Or that it came too hard and that they didn’t have a way to shut down the power.

2:00 This but amazing that, you know, Google a long time ago came up with this X prize and it’s interesting to see. My dream would be this send one of those little spacecraft. I think you would agree back to the Apollo eleven landing site. And let’s put to rest any concerns that anybody might have that we never went

2:16 to the moon, because you would see this amazing lunar, the lower descent module sitting on the moon, whatever materials lying around there. The flag apparently fell over, but you would see that. But imagine that in four K or eight K video. Wouldn’t that be amazing to see that?

2:33 Speaker 1 Well, I mean the other day somebody hit me with that rumor again that we really didn’t go to the moon.

2:41 Speaker 2 I know, John, it’s incredible because I always respond back in a very positive way, is how do you think we got eight hundred and forty plus pounds of rocks from the moon back? They just didn’t arrive by FedEx or ups And you know, there’s a lot more serious ways to talk about it. But this is interesting too, John.

2:58 We always talk about the mystery of the week, and this one goes right back to Starbase with SpaceX and everybody by now has at least seen this video of this rocket that’s tumbling and then you see the thing go off and explode or ground control pushes the button to destroy it. But here’s the real scoop that we’re

3:13 finding out. So much damage happened by that launch stand as the rocket was lighting. I remember the most powerful rocket in the world to date, those thirty three Raptor engines. Apparently people miles away were saying they could hear it in their heads, shaking their head. You know, the vibration and sound was off the charts. But what happened in

3:31 the short way is that chunks of concrete probably got blown back up into some of those engines and obviously canceled out some of the thirty three, but it sent a debris field and actually started a fire.

3:43 Speaker 1 Mean it happened whilst taking off.

3:46 Speaker 2 Yes, absolutely, and it’s so incredible. Imagine the power of that rocket, you know, sixteen million pounds of thrust. Again, apparently they didn’t have one of those water traps where they actually kind of bait the sound and flood the thing like they do with the big SLS’s and the space shuttles. But the point is the beaches along there

4:04 were pulverized with so much dust and debris. Windows were shattered. So the FAA is grounded until further investigation. But the good news is the rocket does work, but unfortunately for the environmental side. On the ground, there’s a lot of problems with that, but still they’re counting it as a success because even Elon must set it’s like throwing a

4:25 big bunch of grenades up into the air. You never know when they’re gonna pop or blow. But that’s an amazing story. So the bottom lineeshne more damage.

4:33 Speaker 1 Yeah, Steve Kates, I think they’re full of crap. I mean there’s thirty three engines. Thirty three engines. Something to go wrong is more possible with thirty three engines.

4:44 Speaker 2 Oh you’vet I mean it’s amazing. This whole Raptor cluster has never been they’ve tested, they say, on the ground, but with the power that’s coming out of this liquid oxygen and liquid methane, you know, it’s something they have to They have to rebuild this whole thing on the safety concerns inside. But again, John, we’ll never really know

5:01 all the details on that, but I just wanted to pass that on from what the media is talking about and what apparently people experience down in that area in Boca Chica, you know, right off the Gulf of Mexico there.

5:13 So we’ll have to see what happens with the next star a starship launch, I should say, with the next heavy booster. But there’s so many things to talk about on the positive side. As we took it the live sky and as we end here on our last Sunday morning in April, the May sky’s John are full of

5:28 some beauty and some majesty, and I like to talk about it here. We have another of the beautiful full moons coming up, and that is on the fifth and the morning of the sixth May sixth, that is the beautiful full flower moon. And at this time I hear John, we can see so many earth based satellites. I watched

5:42 them here in Arizona all the time. People across the country and the world. The space station lights up big and bright like Venus, which is in the west at sunset, and you can see the Chinese space station called Tiangong.

5:54 And that website is Heaven’s Dash above dot com for people who want to see it. But it’s an amazing time, love Spring, John, and all across your listening area and this radio show, people are out hopefully getting out to want expand their minds, look at things in the sky and take advantage of our beautiful season. As we move

6:11 deeper into spring. It’s an amazing time.

6:14 Speaker 1 Have we heard anything from Mars or anything like that.

6:17 Speaker 2 Yes, we actually have their One of the spacecraft that was put up and orbiting around Mars has gotten a very interesting view of one of the two Martian moons, the little tiny one called Demos, and it shows this very strange topography on this surface. You know, many people, like we’ve talked about before, have even speculated that those

6:36 two objects don’t fit the equation for being natural satellites, and that even in you know, maybe in the near future, if we go to Phobost with the probe and they’re going to do that, that there might be a lot of porosity or that the hollowness of that particular satellite, one of them may be more so Phobost than Damos.

6:53 But this little Islamic satellite from law by the Arab names, they actually have imaged this Demos’s one of the strangest thing in the world. There’s no other moons I like that in the entire Solar System. We always thought that our Earth moon, which it’s true it has a little bit of a hollow pocket area on the surface. But

7:12 this is really interesting and people can view all those images that are coming through. It’s just amazing the technology. So Damos and Phobos, two very strange moons of Mars. Phobos will eventually crash, as will Damos. You know, thousands, maybe even I don’t know, a half a million years in the future into Mars. But they sure get you

7:30 wondering where the heck did they come from?

7:33 Speaker 1 I understood. Well, Steve Kates, dotor Sky, thank you for filling in all the American people. You make us think a little extra on Sunday morning and we’ll catch up again real soon.

7:46 Speaker 2 Well, thank you. Go to WABC radio dot com for the doctor Sky experience, and as always, John, thank you so much for having me as part of the team. Appreciate it. God bless