John Chrysidis (6:08)

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Dr. Samantha Yamin (6:42)

Space used to feel like a vast, empty frontier, but today it's more like a bustling highway filled with thousands of satellites, bits of debris, and all sorts of objects zipping around at incredible speeds. Keeping track of everything up there is becoming one of the biggest challenges in science and technology and, and it's critical for our daily lives here on Earth. Curiosity senior producer Teresa Carey has more on this with Dr. John Krasidis, State University of New York Distinguished professor at the University at Buffalo's Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. In this episode, Teresa dives into why space domain awareness is more critical than ever. The real risks posed by space debris and what the future holds for managing the increasingly crowded skies above us.

Paige Desorbo (7:29)

Thank you so much for doing this interview, John. Space isn't just a vast, empty void anymore. It's kind of getting crowded up there. Thousands of satellites, bits of debris, who knows what else, and they're moving around at really fast speeds. So I want to talk about source. You're the principal investigator for project called Space Object Understanding and Reconnaissance of Complex Events, or SOURCE for short. And it's focused on detecting and tracking objects in orbit. So when we think about the number of satellites, they're increasing. Private companies are launching anything from Internet constellations to, I mean, who knows what's next, but it's getting crowded up there. I mean, SpaceX Starlink already has over 7,000 satellites in orbit, and Amazon just launched their first batch of satellites. How does SOURCE help us keep track of all these new arrivals? Will it be possible? Or is it going to always be a little bit of a wild west up there?

John Chrysidis (8:27)

Wild, wild yeah, Space is a wild, wild west. What we're really looking at, it's related to better tracking. It's important to understand that everything that's being tracked right now, the Air Force assumes, is a cannonball. And no object is really a cannonball, right?

Paige Desorbo (8:45)

Yeah.

John Chrysidis (8:46)

It's got solar panels.

Paige Desorbo (8:47)

And so, of course, but by assuming to be a cannonball, you're making an assumption about drag and its trajectory.

John Chrysidis (8:54)

Right. And obviously that's not correct. So we're trying to estimate shapes from unresolved imagery, just how the light is reflecting. So the idea is the better we know the shapes of these objects, the better we're able to model where they're going to go. And the better we can model where they're going to go, the better we can be able to get that probability of collision much more accurately.

Paige Desorbo (9:14)

So that brings me to a couple of questions that I have in mind. Before I became a science journalist, I was a sea captain. To me, the ocean is the closest I'll get to space. You're out there floating. There's nothing else out there when you're in the middle of the ocean. But like space, there aren't any roads on the ocean. And as sailors, we would navigate by buoys, charts, radar tools that help us avoid hazards and find our way. So space isn't organized like that yet. How do you see, or maybe create a sort of navigation system for satellites and debris in this wide open environment?

John Chrysidis (9:50)

All the satellites in low Earth orbit now use gps, so they have very accurately known. So we can actually navigate satellites pretty well. The problem is there's limited amount of thrust. So, example is geostationary orbit. We have satellites that are 22,000 miles away. And it's a very interesting orbit. The ones that go around in low Earth orbit a couple hundred miles up, like the space station, those go around every 90 minutes. And Arthur C. Clarke rediscovered this Geo orbit. It's 22,000 miles away. That orbital period is 24 hours, same exact as the Earth. So from our vantage point.

Paige Desorbo (10:24)

Yes. And those are the ones where, if I were to look up at the sky, it would be in the same place. It tracks along the same place on the Earth. You don't see them moving across the sky.

John Chrysidis (10:32)

That's why you can point your TV antenna dish to that location. Just keep it there.

Paige Desorbo (10:37)

Yeah.

John Chrysidis (10:37)

So that's another important orbit. There's disturbances that hit. There's no air molecules up there at 22,000 miles. But there's this thing called solid ration pressure. And it causes these small little Effects that we can't feel on Earth can have a big effect in space. Let's talk about gravity. The Earth at the equator actually bulges out, so there's more mass at the equator than at the poles. So the gravity at the poles is different than it is at the equator. Now, if you and I were to stand in the equator in the poles, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference. But that little effect causes these satellites to do really weird stuff. So they have their slot and they drift off that slot and they have to do orbital burns to get them. It's called station. Keep them, to keep them in that orbit that they were designed to stay in. But eventually you're going to run out of thrust, and that's the problem. Every satellite that has a thrusting capability, we require it to come back down and burn up through the atmosphere. If it's anything that's going to get through its dun over the Pacific Ocean, where there's nobody guaranteed that nothing's going to hurt anybody. And every satellite that does not have one, including ours, we're building one right here at the university. It's not going to have a thruster. We have to show. It used to be 25 years, but we now have to show through simulations detailed that it's going to come back within five years. That's a good thing. These are nice rules that we follow. Again, China and Russia don't follow these rules and they're by far the biggest offender in that sense.

Paige Desorbo (11:59)

So we hear a lot about space debris and the risk of a Kessler syndrome where debris creates more debris and there's like a runaway chain reaction. Are we really at risk of this or is this more science fiction? What's the worst case scenario?

John Chrysidis (12:13)

It's not science function. I think 50 to 75 years from now, if we don't do something, we're going to be in Castler Syndrome.

Paige Desorbo (12:20)

Wow.

John Chrysidis (12:22)

So when I give talks to middle school kids and younger, I tell them, unfortunately, I think your generation is going to have to solve this problem because.

Paige Desorbo (12:30)

Along with other problems, climate change, I.

John Chrysidis (12:33)

Think the space age started in 1957. Right. Eight years ago. Sounds like a long time. I was born in 67, so I know I'm old. But in the grand scheme of things, 68 years is not that long. Imagine where we'll be, what we're talking about right now. Imagine where we're going to be 68 years from now. I think. I think we're going to be very close to Kessler Syndrome. If not there, if we don't solve this problem.

Paige Desorbo (12:59)

There is a lot of buzz about cleaning up space junk. There's lasers, nets, even giant space vacuum cleaners. And honestly it reminds me a little bit of the struggle that we have with plastic pollution in our oceans. We keep inventing new ways to clean it up, but the trash keeps coming. So when it comes to space debris, are there any of these high tech cleanup ideas that actually are realistic? Or is it smarter to focus on tracking debris, better designing satellites so they don't become junk in the first place? I'd love to hear your take, especially since like with plastic it feels like the problem like you just described is only going to get bigger.

John Chrysidis (13:35)

So no matter what anybody tells you, there is no practical solution Right now, unfortunately, most of what you describe requires you to get close to an object. So Europeans are going to do one where they're going to pick up a satellite this year. So I'll give you an example. I live in Buffalo. I can drive my car to Washington D.C. and one tank of gas, get another tank and go somewhere else. You can't move around space that easily if you go through Newton's equations. So I'll give you an example. So let's say I go pick up a piece of space debris and I just want to do a little 10 degree change to go pick up another piece of space debris. If I go through Renou's equation, it's going to require 50% of my remaining fuel. So do I want to build a multimillion dollar satellite that at most maybe can take out one or two, maybe three pieces of debris? It's just not cost effective at the moment. Right. What I like to say is we need to buy time. The UN put guidelines out in 2010, there are no modern day treaties. Guideline four said do not create more space, you breed. Well, China in 2009 blew up one of its own satellites with a missile, caused 2,000 pieces of space debris. Most of that stuff's going to be up there for 100 years. Russia did this a few years ago too. India did much more controlled experiment. I'm just like, oh my gosh, we can't even follow this simple guideline of don't create more space debris. We know we can blow up satellites with missiles. Why are we doing this? So that's bothersome to me and my counterpart in China would agree with me. In Russia, unfortunately we're not the policymakers in. We need to get people to get and I get it. There's other problems that need to be solved. On the earth. But we can't continuously be pawning things off to our kids. And this is exactly what we're doing with this space junk.

Paige Desorbo (15:18)

Yeah, I like how you said that about pawning things off to our kids. The space junk, though, to me it feels so far removed from us that it almost doesn't matter. And yet at the same time, we're benefiting from those satellites and from all of that exploration all the time, every day, without even thinking about it.

John Chrysidis (15:38)

Yeah, I like to say there's good news in a bad way. So you mentioned, you mentioned earlier about climate change and there's people that deny climate change and all this stuff. The good news for us space drunk people, nobody is denying that this is going to be a problem someday. The main issue is that we haven't had that many incidences. Right. Talk about Iranian and cosm colliding in 2009. And there's been some close calls. The space station just recently moved away. It moves away about a year. Once a year. Doesn't sound like a lot. Again, it doesn't sound like a lot. But it, for people like me, it is a lot.

Paige Desorbo (16:15)

It moves and it's no longer in the place you anticipate it to be.

John Chrysidis (16:18)

Right. That's a big deal. Yes.

Paige Desorbo (16:20)

Okay.

John Chrysidis (16:21)

And so Musk is actually doing some really good things with Starlink. So they got some smart satellites. You talk about you're a captain on a ship, right? You're, you're moving that ship around. Satellites are not that easy. They don't, they don't have that anybody sitting on that.

Paige Desorbo (16:35)

They have a lot of momentum behind them.

John Chrysidis (16:37)

Command them from the ground. The big thing that Musk is doing is he's got some automated capabilities where that information is being put up there. If the chance is greater than one in a thousand, they'll automatically move out of the way.

Paige Desorbo (16:50)

Okay.

John Chrysidis (16:51)

Doing some neat stuff. Even though he's got 7200 satellites, he's doing some very good things. I think it's a good trade off. Obviously Starlink is important to get us Internet to places that people can't get it. And he's also recognized that there's this issue with space junk and he's trying to do something to that as well too. So I think it's a pretty good.

Paige Desorbo (17:11)

Okay, so I want to talk about AI or fully autonomous systems for a second to manage space debris. You just mentioned the Starlink satellites are kind of moving out of the way, dodging debris, kind of like a self driving car. But in what breakthroughs in AI or autonomy are you most excited about right now? And do you think these systems will really make space safer or maybe perhaps more risky?

John Chrysidis (17:35)

Yeah. So as part of our source work, we're doing this as well too. It's called intelligence on the edge. So you want satellites to be smart again, solving the problems and helping to solve problems in the moon will also solve problems closer to the Earth. Yeah, communicating with satellites to the moon is just takes too long. So we got to have smarts in these satellites. So what we're looking at is to put that intelligence on the satellite itself. Now is that going to happen in my lifetime where it's going to be fully automatic? Probably not. But we're going to see a lot more autonomy on satellites. We're going to be a lot more satellites that are going to get those smarts in the next 20 years for sure.

Paige Desorbo (18:14)

Having spent a lot of time at sea, I know firsthand how important international agreements are for keeping everyone safe, whether it's avoiding collisions or making sure ships follow the same basic rules. But in space, it sounds like we're still in the early days when it comes to having a sort of rules of the road. So do you think we're close to seeing true international space traffic management, something that we have for ships and planes here on Earth? But what would it actually take to get all the major players to agree on a shared. On shared rules? How would that work?

John Chrysidis (18:49)

Well, we have to first of all, talking to each other and this is above my pay grade. But the. We're not close, to be honest with you, and that is bothersome to me. Said US and our sister nations, we do follow rules to help slow down the growth of debris. But Russia and China are not. The UN is great. In 2010, they put out these guidelines. It's great, but they haven't turned into treaties yet. I think we need to start getting our leaders. I don't think. I know. We have to get our leaders starting to talking. And my counterpart in China, Russia, would be agreeing with me. By the way, the objects there are moving at 17,005 miles per hour. And a common question is why? Why are they going so fast? This goes back to actually Newton. This is how he discovered gravity. So I actually have. I take a picture from his book. He imagined a cannon on top of a very high mountain and shot a cannonball at a certain velocity and it hit the ground. Then he shot it a little faster, hit the ground further down. And he asked himself a really interesting question. He said, at what velocity do I have to fire this cannonball so it never hits the ground. That's 17,500 miles per hour. Anything slower than that, the Earth's gravity. And this is again how he discovered gravity. The Earth's gravity is going to pull it back in. So that's why you can't just get in an airplane and go into space. You need to achieve that velocity. You need those big rockets to get there. So you see astronauts floating in space. You should really not think of them as floating because they're not floating in space. What they're doing is falling at 17,500 mph but never hitting the ground. And then Einstein came along, told us where gravity came from. So I like to use Carlane analysis. If you have two objects in the same orbit, same Carl line, going to 17,005 miles per hour, not a problem. There's different kinds of orbits. So you can have one around the equator, for example, let's say 90 degree inclination is the other one going around the poles. Now you're at a T bone intersection. Imagine two objects going at 17,500 mph at a T bone intersection. How violent that collision is going to be. And that's the problem. They're very, when these objects collide, they're very violent. A lot of momentum. Momentum is mass times velocity, right? So I could have very low mass, high velocity. It's going to have a lot of momentum and yeah, that's going to cause a lot of debris fields when big objects collide. Iridium cosmos cause about 500 pieces of debris.

Paige Desorbo (21:19)

You know, it's. But the space is so huge. I mean, you even said when you want to return something to Earth, drop it in the middle of the Pacific because you're not going to hit anything. And yet I know there's hundreds of boats out in the middle of the Pacific right now as we're talking, but space is even so, so much bigger.

John Chrysidis (21:36)

And I think that's the, that's, that's part of the problem that people say space is big. I like to say, well, it's getting smaller every day, right. And there haven't been, there hasn't been any enough incidences where people said, hey, this is a wake up call. 2007 Iridium Cosmos gave us a wake up call to say we need to track this stuff better. We haven't anything to say. Yeah, we're going to be in Castro serum in three years. We need to solve this quickly. No, we're no way near that. But we all know it's going to be eventually a problem. And as I said, there's nothing out there that's feasible and we have to buy that time. So for me, what I'm doing my research a lot is how do we track these objects? Better. Better we can track these objects, the better we can predict the probability of collision, which can reduce the amount of collisions and buy us that time. Because today's science fiction is tomorrow's reality.

Paige Desorbo (22:31)

Mm. Even just a couple generations ago, if someone had said, we're gonna change the climate dramatically, we're gonna put thousands of objects in geosynchronous orbit, like they would say, that's not possible at science fiction. And yet here we've done it.

John Chrysidis (22:45)

Imagine what, where we're gonna be in 100 years from now.

Paige Desorbo (22:49)

Well, thank you so much for talking to me. This has been a very interesting conversation. I really appreciate it.

John Chrysidis (22:54)

My pleasure.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (22:59)

Recently, for the first time ever, humans have confirmed video footage of the Colossal Squid swimming in its natural environment. And much like the Colossal Squid, this news is huge. Using a remote operated submersible, the Schmidt Ocean Institute snapped the footage of a baby Colossal Squid in the deep waters off the coast of South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. I highly encourage you to go take a look at the footage on YouTube because it's so cute. The footage was independently confirmed by squid experts from around the globe. All of them and us got excited because we really don't know a lot about the Colossal Squid and they're almost impossible to find. This year actually marks the 100 year anniversary of the Colossal Squid first being named and identified after being discovered inside the belly of a sperm whale. Since then, there have been a few sightings and captures, but usually they're just fragments. A beak or a tentacle or an arm. A couple fishing boats over the years have captured footage of the squid, but only when brought to the surface of the water when they tried to eat the fish caught on the line. But we had never recorded them in their natural habitat till now. The fascination for Colossal Squid doesn't only come from their mystery. They're both predators and prey. In the deep ocean, which is one of the least explored areas on the planet, there's evidence that they're cannibals and they're massive. And when I say massive, I am really not exaggerating here. The baby caught on camera was only about a foot long, but fully grown, they're the largest invertebrate on Earth, growing to be roughly 36ft long. That's about half the length of a tennis court or the Height of a three story building. They have the biggest eye of any animal ever studied. About the size of a basketball. Fun or not so fun? Fact, Their eyes are also bioluminescent, almost like built in headlights to see in the dark. I would personally be terrified seeing a glowing eye in the middle of the dark ocean at night. No thanks. But it's still really cool because we so rarely get to see Colossal Squid in action, or even at all. Marine biologists have made a lot of hypotheses about their evolution and behavior. Sperm whales love to eat Colossal Squid and are able to dive deep enough to find them. So the squid's eyes seem to have evolved to see just far enough to be out of the whale's sonar range. Biologists also think that part of why we never see them is their ability to detect predators by sensing disturbances in the water column. Their habitat is thousands of feet deep, surrounding all corners of the Southern Ocean. So it makes sense that they're so hard to find. This sighting is a great step toward understanding the species better. And understanding them better can help us in protecting our deep sea habitats in a real way. If you listen to our episode where I talked about mining for diamonds, you'll know that deep sea mining practices are increasing in popularity. Footage like what the Schmidt team captured can help people advocate for better ecological decisions when it comes to disturbing the ocean floor. Though it was the first time we've ever seen a Colossal squid in its own environment, I'm really hoping it won't be the last. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us questions ASAP to get featured. Whether it's a question, a thought about something you saw on Social or even in the news, perhaps it's just something strange bouncing around in your brain. I want to hear all about it, so send it in. Until next time, stay curious for Warner Bros. Discovery. Curiosity Weekly is produced by the team at Wheelhouse DNA. The senior producer and editorial correspondent is Teresa Carey. The associate producer is Chiara Noni. Our audio engineer is Nick Karisimi. And head of Production for Wheelhouse DNA is Cassie Berman. And I'm Dr. Samantha Yuin. Thanks for listening. When people say science doesn't change lives, you know it changes lives. It's like pour it from as high as you can.

Paige Desorbo (27:05)

I'm no longer interested.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (27:07)

There's so many. The coffee culture is huge. Yeah, very hipster.

Paige Desorbo (27:12)

You're going to have people like this and it's going to be splashing everywhere.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (27:16)

Don't burn yourself.

Paige Desorbo (27:17)

I love it.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (27:19)

Yes, this is.

Paige Desorbo (27:20)

This is OG Curiosity So let's go for it. Hi, I'm Kristen Bell.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (27:31)

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Paige Desorbo (27:35)

Dax. Dax.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (27:37)

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John Chrysidis (27:37)

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Paige Desorbo (27:41)

A week to evaluate seat comfiness.

Dr. Samantha Yamin (27:43)

You say a week of terrain tests?

John Chrysidis (27:45)

Yeah. I can test the brake pad resistance at variable speeds.

Paige Desorbo (27:48)

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John Chrysidis (27:51)

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Paige Desorbo (27:53)

Oh the right.

John Chrysidis (27:54)

Still need to buy the car. Getting ahead of ourselves here.

Paige Desorbo (27:57)

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