Polaris rocket launch. 870 miles above the earth.

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. Well, we let our minds wander on a Sunday morning with us. Today is Steve Kates, otherwise known as Doctor Sky, and Steve tell us how our minds are going to wander what’s going on up there?

0:15 Speaker 2 Well, John, let’s take it first. Good morning, Let’s take a journey to the outer area of lower Earth orbit the big space ex mission known as Polaris Dong. Now, this is an interesting mission, and it’s backed of course by Elon Musk. But this is a private mission to space.

0:30 What’s it all about. Well, obviously launched earlier in the part of last week, these four astronauts have gotten to a height above the Earth, higher than any astronaut since Apollo, eight hundred and seventy miles above the Earth. But the spacecraft is called Resilience. But this is where the news comes at. This is interesting. They’re actually going to go

0:49 through the lower Van Allen Belt, where people are always concerned about radiation that they’re going to do about six hundred miles above the Earth and test out new spacesuits for the future of traveling out in space and radiation.

1:02 But the best news, John, we saved it for now is they’re going to attempt a spacewalk when they’re out there in space with new space suit. Now, what’s so unusual about that? On this particular spacecraft, there’s no airlock.

1:14 So what they’re going to do is simply open the door while everybody on board has to wear their spacesuit and Isaacston and another of the female astronauts, they’re going to make a spacewalk. This is incredible because it hasn’t been done in quite a long time, never on a private mission. And if you go back in history, John

1:33 March of nineteen sixty five, the Russian Alexei Leonov, he did the first spacewalk. He was out there for twelve minutes. But guess what happened John, As he was out in space, his space suit inflated like the Staypuff marshmallow man, and he had a hard time crawling back into the spacecraft.

1:50 So the dangers of being out in space. This is going to be a very historic mission because very few people have walked in space. And I find this fascinating and I’m sure as we open our minds imagine doing that.

2:03 Speaker 1 That’s right, cool, that is cool. And eventually I remember our discussion about people going to Mars, that there’s so much radiation and they haven’t solved that problem yet. The amount of radiation they’re going to receive between the United States between the Earth and Mars is tremendous, and the space suits are not good enough to yet well.

2:33 Speaker 2 And hope they do come up with those solutions. But John, just going back on the historic side of spacewalks, The longest one was done by an American astronaut, Susan Hilmes. She was out in space for eight hours and fifty six minutes. That’s like as long as a workday plus some extra overtime. But here’s one that almost caused an

2:50 astronauts to die in space. And Italian astronaut Luca Harmatano did a spacewalk many many years ago, and what they had happened to him. His spacesuit helmet started to fill up with water and there was no way for him to get that water out of the spacesuit. He literally almost drowned in space, but lucky for him, another astronaut

3:12 helped him get back on board. So you can see the dangers of doing this. So what we’re saluting are the astronauts on board this very special mission, the SpaceX mission known as Polaris on and will always keep you posted.

3:25 Speaker 1 Where didn’t want to come from.

3:28 Speaker 2 Well, inside the spacesuit, you have an air conditioning system, and the problematic thing there was condensation somehow one of the tubes that flow through there which produces oxygen to the astronaut, there was a malfunction of that whole quote air conditioning system, and that of course started to build up a lot of water inside the gentleman’s helmet. So

3:50 that’s a very sad thing that we talk about when we talk about what could happen. So this is why this mission to me and probably many other space people that enjoy this isology. We have to of course get these things right. But that was a rare exception to the whole experience. You know, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, people may

4:08 not know this, also did a space walk back in nineteen sixty six, and another astronaut, Bruce McCandless, actually flew without a tether. See these astronauts are we talking about on the plarist dawn, they’re going to be tethered. You know, they have a little kind of a rope attached or a system attacked, so they don’t float away. But Bruce

4:27 in nineteen eighty four flew what’s called an MMU. It was like a self contained system where he had no tether. So there’s lots to explore, John. This technology just makes the old technology, as we move forward, be so much greater by leaps and bounds.

4:43 Speaker 1 Yeah, the mystery do we we talked about Leslie?

4:48 Speaker 2 Absolutely, John. The mystery was this, in real simple terms, when you have ocean waters coming together, let’s say Atlantic and Pacific, they seem to have some kind of a boundary, and why do they kind of fight each other. Well, the answer is simply this, there’s different levels of salt in these particular oceans. When we find out that get

5:05 a little of this, the Pacific Ocean has a lower salinity versus the Atlantic Ocean. So let’s take the example of moving down by the Drake Passage below South America. The simple answer is we find out there’s two levels of salt, and those two salts don’t necessarily quickly mix, so you’re going to see some sort of a wall

5:24 between the two. But here’s another fact that I just discovered, and I think it would be interesting for people on Sunday to know about of the five oceans on the Earth, which are the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, the Southern Ocean, and the Arctic Ocean. John, we’re finding out that the Arctic Ocean in the North area of the Earth naturally

5:43 as the lowest salinity of any of the oceans on the Earth. But what might what may be made that happen? Both geologists and scientists say that there’s a number of glaciers that add to the ability to make the water in the Arctic Ocean less salt like and have of course more melting water from glaciers and things like that

6:03 and rivers and streams. But that’s quite interesting. So the simple answer to cover that over is the fact that we now find out that this particular difference or boundary is caused by different levels of salt in the ocean waters.

6:16 And that’d be interesting to see, wouldn’t it, John Staming on that line, seeing it change where the two oceans don’t necessarily quickly mix.

6:24 Speaker 1 Absolutely, I mean I looked at it from thirty one thousand feet and it was just remarkable.

6:30 Speaker 3 Absolutely, And always remind everybody, yes anything else on a Sunday morning, Well, don’t I want to remind people always go to WABC radio dot com Doctor Sky experiences there and proud.

6:41 Speaker 2 But what are we talking about in the Live Sky. We remind people this another week from now, the most romantic and beautiful full moon in my opinion in others is the super full harvest moon that’ll be on the seventeenth, and there’ll also be a small lunary clips that people might see across the listening area of the Cat’s round Table.

6:59 So we’ll talk more about that next week to give people some definitive times. But it’s a great time, John. We’re only days away from the big change of the weather seasons and here in Arizona we can’t wait to put that in the history books where we’ve had over one hundred days of over one hundred degrees. So we’re

7:16 looking for cooler weather here and in other parts as we celebrate the fall season.

7:20 Speaker 1 Okay, thank you, Doctor Sky, and we’ll catch up again real soon.

7:25 Speaker 2 Have a great Sunday. Thank you,