Space Force launches spy satellite.

0:00 Speaker 1 What is today is Steve Kates, otherwise known as Doctor Sky and he’s with us every Sunday morning to tell us when we look up in the sky, what can we dream about? What? What are we going to see?

0:11 And Steve Kates, Welcome to Sunday morning. I’m drinking my cup of coffee. Give us what’s going on?

0:20 Speaker 2 Well, Good morning, John, and good morning to all your listeners here on the Cats Roundtable. You know, one of the new branches of the United States Military many people may know, is the US Space Force. It was called the US that is, the Air Force Space Command before it became naturally today what we call officially the US

0:39 Space Force. But this goes back on December twentieth of twenty nineteen when sixteen thousand military and civilians were moved over to this incredible organization. But John, just a little bit of history about this and some things people may not know. Here’s the latest on the Space Force. They actually have a theme song, as you would imagine, like

1:00 the other branches.

1:01 Speaker 1 We exclusively played it on WABC about two weeks ago when we had General Taishing I believe tyshirt, yes, and it’s beautiful. Tell audience what it sounds like and maybe we’ll replay it again on later on.

1:23 Speaker 2 Absolutely and their motto is simply in Latin semper supra, which means always above. And here the words John of the actual song dedicated to the Space Force, And here we go when I quote we’re the mighty watchful eye guardians beyond the blue, the invisible frontline war fighters, brave and true. Then we move on boldly reaching into space.

1:45 There’s no limit to our sky, standing guard both night and day. Where the Space Force come on high. That’s an interesting, amazing organization, and you’re gonna hear so much about it. But John, in the practical sense, we’re finding out that the US Space Force is actually going to soon launch a series of constellation satellites out to that

2:06 geosynchronous place, meaning twenty two thousand miles above the Earth. The project is called Silent Barker. What is it. It’s a series of constellation of satellites, as I said, to actually track and file and monitor Chinese and Russian satellites which could damage or disable orbiting satellites. We know from the National Reconnaissance Office that China has some satellites, one

2:30 called an SJ twenty one, which is a counter satellite which could pull other satellites out of orbit, and something else called a Sidion seventeen that has a robotic arm that maybe could do some nefarious things, not just blaming them.

2:46 Speaker 1 But we saw that in the last Chinese movie, didn’t we absolutely?

2:51 Speaker 2 And this is interesting now the Space Force interesting projects silent barker in other words, like a dog that goes silent, but then and the power of that dog, of course is manifested right inside the dog. But in this case satellites, John, they’re out there to keep a watchful lie just in case anything might not go right as far as the assets,

3:13 because you and I both know we have so many billions of dollars of important reconnaissance satellites, other communications satellites, So it’s good to hear that.

3:23 Speaker 1 Absolutely. And when I was on with the General of Taishitt, John Taischert I believe his name was, he said that the purpose of space for us, because not everybody knows, is to monitor what’s going on in out of space to make sure that you know, our whole system is GPS, that the Chinese or Russians or whoever our enemy is

3:52 at the time, doesn’t knock out our satellites and knock out our GPS systems.

3:58 Speaker 2 Well, you’re so right. And one of the main things Thames here obviously their mission is to protect us and allied interest in space. And you say it so well, and I’m sure the General says it better, knowing so much more than we both know. But John, we move on always to something called the mystery of the week.

4:14 And I’ve been talking with you and the listeners about detection of water in the Solar System, more prominent than we’ve probably thought. But how about this in one of Saturn’s satellites, a satellite called Hyperion. It’s the largest non round satellite. In other words, it’s shaped like a potato, and it has all these cracks on it. Well, what’s

4:34 so important about this one hundred and sixty three mile by one hundred and thirty seven mile moon. Well, it actually sends out static electric charges. And we know back in about two thousand and five, the Cassini spacecraft that was doing so much science around Saturn was actually hit by a two hundred volt shock, John from twelve hundred

4:55 miles away. So now we have satellites not only have water potentially or water oceans, But here’s this strange potato shaped object. It’s the obviously the most non round object of satellites in the Solar System. So figure we don’t know why this particular satellite gives off electrical charges. Many more things that we’ll have to discover on future space mission.

5:18 Isn’t that incredible? Just to hear.

5:20 Speaker 1 That that is incredible? In our discussion last week about water being found almost every place is incredible. There’s so many things that we have to learn, and I hope we learn it while we’re still here. And the other discussion we hadn’t I really really believe in it that people got a little bit of what the twenty third

5:45 and twenty fourth century may be like from a star truck. And I mean it’s a little bit crazy, but it might be some truth in.

5:55 Speaker 2 That, absolutely, John. And the biggest thing we talk about in quantum physics right now is the concept of quantum entanglement. Sounds hard enough to pronounce, but it allegedly talks about and somewhat has been proven by scientists and physicists that they say, nothing can go faster than the speed of light.

6:12 But in this particular case, there is this concept called quantum entanglement where if you had, let’s say, a light switch on one side of the galaxy one hundred and fifty thousand to two hundred thousand light years across, that not necessarily would have to take that long at the speed of light to travel. But John, in the simplest

6:28 way I can explain it and open our minds this morning, as we always do, is that that would be instantaneous. So you’re so right the things that Gene Roddenberry talked about so long ago, and those great writers that put this great science fiction team program onto television. You’re right.

6:45 But in wrapping it up, we talk about the live sky. What can people actually see, John is getting good. That beautiful strawberry moon that we had last Sunday, it now fades. We find out that we get a last quarter moon on the tenth. That happened, of course, but if you look into the northwest, Venus now glides through This is

7:03 a binocular event through the beautiful star cluster called the Beehive star cluster. So you’ll see this bright Venus in a binocular and you’ll see the assemblance of stars. Venus is walk less than about sixty million miles away the star cluster. John is about five hundred light years away.

7:19 And as we move toward that beautiful time of the year, the June solstice, the summer solstice on the twenty first, we’ll have so much more to say every Sunday here on the Cats Roundtay. Well then we always recommend what always remember to keep their eyes to the skies. Check us out great content as people tell us here at

7:35 WABC radio dot com with the Doctor Sky Experience. Always a privilegent honor John.

7:40 Speaker 1 Thank you so much, Steve Katson, thank you for enhancing our minds on the Sunday morning because we have time to look up in the sky on Sunday night or Saturday night. And thank you so

7:53 Speaker 2 Much my pleasure, John, thank you for having me