Mars research is threatened by NASA's budget.

0:00 Speaker 1 What is today is Steve Kates, otherwise known as Doctor Sky, and he entertains us every Sunday morning when now what we look up in the skies? What do we see? And it really, you know, has our mind going, Steve Kates?

0:18 What’s going on right now?

0:21 Speaker 2 Well, good morning and happy Sunday morning to you and listeners. John, we begin with a story that we’ve talked about, but an update the Voyager one spacecraft. How about this It resumes sending good data? Well, John, five months ago, Voyager one was sending back garbled data, as I reported here on the Cats Round Table, at fifteen billion miles from

0:40 the Earth. Well, the problem, John, was found in what they called the FDS Flight Data Subsystem. That’s a computer which packages data which sends it back to the Earth. What’s what’s the story on that? A chip in that FDS was the problem. So they resent the entire code again, communicate with the spacecraft in little pieces to put it

1:03 on another part of the chip. Well, guess what, Apparently it worked. I’m amazed, and I’m sure you and the listeners are. That’s something fifteen billion miles away, which signal takes twenty three hours to at least get there. That’s incredible.

1:18 I mean, at least we know now that the spacecraft is somewhat healthy more than it was. Amazing.

1:24 Speaker 1 Wow, And how did the if the chip was bad, how did they divert it was your backup chip?

1:33 Speaker 2 No, John, Apparently what they did they know how to sector the chip. So apparently they resent. In other words, they kind of wash out the old data and then they decided to put it into another portion of that tiny little chip. Well, to me, that sounds like just a miracle. And I guess these space scientists thought to

1:50 be at least appauled.

1:51 Speaker 1 So Voyager is not dead. Voyagers knowing his information.

1:56 Speaker 2 It’s given us information. But here’s the most amazing part, John, this is something I haven’t reported before. The signal when it gets to the Earth is less than what we call an ato wat. What the heck is that? That’s a billionth of a billionth of a wat from a twelve dish, a twelve foot dish that’s on the spacecraft

2:14 and it sends data back and forth at twenty three point I mean two point three gigahertz and another frequency at eight point four gigahertz. But even that founding a little off the record and a little bit bizarre. How can you pick up a signal that’s tiny from a giant radio telescope? That to me is most incredible.

2:34 Speaker 1 And it is incredible.

2:36 Speaker 2 So here we go, John, there’s some more things to talk about Mars, as you and I.

2:40 Speaker 1 Like to talk about it. I always like to talk about Mars. I think something. We’re going to find something up there on one of these days, I hope so.

2:47 Speaker 2 But here’s the latest data on something. The Mars Sample Return Mission is over budget. Well, the Perseverance Rover is collecting these Martian rock soil samples and storing them in these tubes for a potential Your mission called the Sample Return mission. But what would it do. It would be an orbiter sent to go to Mars, a lander and

3:07 it’s drone to pick up these little tubes and send them back to the Earth. That sounds like science fiction. But the budget, it’s over budget. It’s about ten billion dollars. So the mission may or already have been canceled. But John, the little little craft that you like to talk about in me too is the Ingenuity helicopter. We know it

3:25 won’t fly anymore, but it’s still sending back images on the sand of the sand and sending back weather data. So the story of Mars gets more interesting every week.

3:39 Speaker 1 Wow. Any any future missions, any future missions from Mars by any of the bios or any countries.

3:48 Speaker 2 Well, the Japanese are going to send a mission. I think we reported this many months ago, but here’s an update. There is a pobost that’s one of the satellites. They’re going to either look at, you know, taking more pictures of it, or maybe scoop up some samples of it.

4:00 As you and I talk, Those moons are extremely weird, which leads us to the mystery of the week. John, here’s another one that’s bizarre. Here’s the question, what’s the interior of the moonlight? And scientists, with new data, how about this tell us that the Moon has a semi solid core that’s about one hundred and sixty miles in

4:20 diameter for its radius I should say radius, and it has an outer fluid core that’s about two hundred and twenty five mile radius. But the Moon still continues to give off moon quakes. We knew this from the Apollo mission.

4:34 But here’s the problem with the moon. It’s not hollow, it’s not made the cheese. Of course that’s a joke. But anyway, the Moon lost its magnetic field about three point two billion years ago. And the strangest part is many people now believe the Moon was formed by a Mars like sized object that hit the Earth called THEA

4:53 and out of that big bubble of plasma, you know, magma material, it helped to form what we call the Moon itself. So the moon mystery continues. Obviously, this is a fascinating story that the Moon is still somewhat active.

5:08 And I found that to be fascinating, don’t you.

5:11 Speaker 1 That is fascinating. I mean I remember the movie when the Moon was hollow.

5:16 Speaker 2 I mean that was a good movie, absolutely great, great special effects for that. Yeah. But John and the Sky we talk about we wrap it up here. We always talk to live sky and the moon of course just passed this beautiful full moon called the full Pink Moon, in honor, of course, of the celebration of the past overseason. But we look in

5:36 the sky and we find out that the planet Jupiter is easy to see if you just look into the west just after sunset. It sits there, shining brightly, and over half a billion miles away. Telescopes reveal the beautiful satellites.

5:49 At least four are the main ones, and you can learn so much more, as we always say, proudly go to the Doctor Sky Experience where, of course WABC Radio dot com the great information John, as you the listeners know.

6:01 Thank you for the compliments from astronomy, space, aviation, and weather, and then it can course stories from American exceptionalism as we need that. Don’t you think we need Superman at a time like this.

6:12 Speaker 1 IC definitely do. Thank you so much, Steve Kats, have a great rest of the weekend and we’ll catch up with you again real soon.

6:19 Speaker 2 Thank you, John,