← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus Overview- The growing space junk problem.
00:25:33
Welcome to the T-Minus Overview Radio Show featuring conversations with experts from the space industry.
Loading summary
Transcript33 lines
- [00:02]
A
You're listening to the N2K space network. Happy holidays from all of us here at N2K Networks. We're taking some time off to spend with our families and we'll be sharing some of our radio programs and repeat episodes during this time for you to enjoy. We will resume our daily briefing on January 2nd. Happy New Year foreign.
- [00:30]
B
Architects and engineers. Simplify your identity management with Strata, Securely integrate non standard apps with any idp, apply modern MFA and ensure seamless failover during outages. Strata helps you avoid app refactoring and reduces legacy tech debt, making your identity systems more robust and efficient. Strata does it better and at a better price. Experience stress free identity management and join industry leaders in transforming their identity architecture with Strata. Visit Strata IO Cyberwire, share your identity Challenge and get a free set of AirPods Pro. Revolutionize your identity infrastructure. Now visit Strata IO CyberWire and our thanks to Strata for being a longtime friend and supporter of this podcast.
- [01:33]
A
Hi, I'm Maria Varmazes, host of the T Minus Space Daily Podcast, and you're listening to T minus overview.
- [01:42]
B
T minus 20 seconds.
- [01:45]
A
In this program, we'll feature some of the conversations from our daily podcast with the people who are forging the path in this new space era, from industry leaders, technology experts, and pioneers to educators, policymakers, researchers, and more. And today, we're revisiting the problem of space junk. It's an issue we've talked about a lot on this program, and for good reason. It's really important. And on today's program, we'll hear from the pioneers leading the way to resolve the issue of space debris, how to track it, and how to clean it up from orbit. The sky is falling is no longer just a line from Chicken Little. Space debris has landed most recently on a home in Florida, on trails in North Carolina, and on farmland in rural Canada. Just this year alone, we now have close to 10,000 satellites in low Earth orbit, and if the FAA report on potential space debris is anything to go by, we will be seeing more of these spacecraft crash back to Earth. So who's tracking it all? Surprisingly, most of the information comes from one source, and I spoke to astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, who describes himself as the orbital police.
- [03:33]
B
I'm Jonathan McDowell. I'm an astronomer at the center for Astrophysics, Harvard and Smithsonian, and for my day job I hunt for black holes and help with the running of the Chandra X Ray Observatory Space telescope. But I have another life in which I have for decades been chronicling the history of the space program and maintaining the Website with the list of all the rocket launchers and all the satellites and figuring out what they do and trying to provide an objective and global view of humanity's push into space, both with people and robots.
- [04:07]
A
Many people may also know you by your handle, planet 4589. That's when I. As soon as I see that handle anywhere in an article, I'm like, oh, I know who this is. How? My first question is, how do you do all this? You have in your bio, orbital police, and you are the source of information when all these different bits of debris were falling, like in Saskatchewan. And whatever I knew, I said, unless you have verified it, I don't know what it is. So how do you do all this?
- [04:38]
B
I depend very heavily, right, on the work of the US Space Force and other agencies and on amateur observers who collect orbital data. My special skill is in putting it all together and doing some math to interpret and tie the strands together. And so part of it is that I've been doing this for 50 years, since I was a teenager, when an obscure old satellite comes up. Oh, Cosmos 1408. Oh, I know that one. It's having the information sort of at my fingertips, having a mental map of all the stuff that goes on, having the math skills to do some relatively simple orbital mechanics to tie what people are saying to what's actually happening, and having about 100,000 lines of code, of C code that I use to kind of do various tasks and automate various tasks. And everything I do is optimized. So it takes me the minimal amount of time to deal with something because I do have another day job, right? So I've got it down to a fine art where 95% of everything is automated. And then I can go in and run a specialized program to kind of plot up, for example, the ground track of a reentering spacecraft over Canada and do that very quickly because I already have the code canned and I know what to do to make that plot. And so it's really all about. People make fun of my website because it's so nice.
- [06:16]
A
I love your website. No, unironically. I love it, though.
- [06:20]
B
I'm glad. Yeah. I think the younger generation, right, they're like, well, you're barely using css. I added that a few years ago. Before then, it was really 1994 type web stuff. But the thing is that a lot of it is generated by C code and updated. And so I can. Or on the Jonathan Space Report itself, it's actually a text file that I type in and as I type, it appears on the web. And so none of this intermediary and all of that is just making it really, really fast for me to get the content out there. If you want pretty. If you want pretty. My data is ccby. It's Creative Commons. You can copy the data and put a pretty interface on it to make yourself happy. But I don't have time to make it pretty. I optimize for gonna.
- [07:12]
A
And yeah, no, I was gonna say, I don't doubt it, because to me, it is. The sheer amount of information that you are putting out is. I'm not surprised it's automated. I would never imagine that was all manual. That would be, I think, impossible or just.
- [07:28]
B
Well, to be fair, the actual list of 60,000 satellites, each line there is.
- [07:32]
A
Typed by hand at some point.
- [07:35]
B
Yes, at some point since the 1980s when I was doing this. So. So it's not all of. There's a lot of manual, but. But it's kind of just what. What do I do and what do I not do? Yeah.
- [07:45]
A
So, yeah, I. I imagine you must have many anecdotes over the course of years of. Of how your information has proven helpful to people, not just randos like me going on Twitter and going, oh, what was that? I mean, you are cited all the time again, and this is not your day job. It's just amazing. Any. Any anecdotes come to mind? Because I'm just really curious.
- [08:06]
B
Well, for example, there was the time when the Space Command lost a European astronomy satellite for a few months, and they were putting out extrapolated positions for it. And then the asteroid observers found a new object in Earth orbit. Oh, this isn't an asteroid. We don't want this. And I figured out that it was actually this integral astronomy satellite, and it had made a maneuver. And Space Force hadn't noticed it made a maneuver. They were still looking for it in the old orbit and issuing data as if it were still in the old orbit. And so I was able to put the right people in touch with the right people and clear up the error. So there's a few like that. There's been a few cases where, again, things that were originally cataloged as asteroids and then they maneuvered, you know, give.
- [08:58]
A
Me more of that, too.
- [08:59]
B
Yeah, I was able to figure out which. Which lost spacecraft it actually was. So that's some of the stuff that's most fun. And then I get informal contacts from various bits of the government who go, yeah, we can't say it, but we use your stuff. So that's very gratifying and I think people like to be able to quote my open source stuff. Even if they have insider knowledge that they're not allowed to, they can at least quote me.
- [09:36]
A
So is space debris and the deorbiting thereof a new phenomenon? Well, absolutely not. I spoke to Dr. Anna Fisher about the first space debris deorbit mission and what she is now doing to help mitigate the problem of space junk.
- [09:57]
C
My name's Dr. Anna Fisher. I was a doctor in emergency medicine and was selected as a mission specialist astronaut in January of 1978. Had a wonderful career with NASA. I flew on space shuttle Discovery on mission STS51A, which was a mission to deploy two satellites and retrieve two satellites. And then I was going to be assigned to my second flight and the Challenger accident happened. I was about six weeks from my second flight and so had to make some decisions. Wound up taking a seven year leave of absence to stay home with my girls and then went back in 1996 and had a wonderful time being chief of the Space station branch at the very beginning as we were just starting to build the space station and figure out how to work with our international partners and how to operate it and then was going to get in line to go fly again. And then the Columbia accident happened. So I wound up working after that on the Orion spacecraft, which is our spacecraft that's going to take us back to the moon as part of the Artemis program. I retired in April of 2017 after 36 years at nine months and just had a really wonderful career with NASA. And now I no longer say I'm retired. I'm doing lots of other different things, a lot of speaking, a lot of other fun things. And then why I'm here today. I was asked to be on the board of advisors for KMI. So that's my life in a nutshell.
- [11:48]
A
My goodness. Dr. Fisher, thank you so much for joining me. It's such an honor to speak with you. Can you tell me a bit about your Discovery? I mean the mission that you, your mission just sounds absolutely incredible. I was alive during Discovery, but I don't remember it very well because I was quite young. So I would love to hear a bit about what I missed out on hearing about on the evening news.
- [12:11]
C
Well, it was a really exciting mission, particularly because In February of 1984 the two satellites that I'm going to talk about were deployed from an earlier shuttle mission and they were supposed to have another rocket take them to geosynchronous orbit, which is a much higher orbit than where the shuttle flies. The two satellites had been deployed and basically they were totally useless because they were in the wrong orbit because the rocket that was supposed to take them to a higher orbit failed. So that was February and in November we flew a shuttle mission to deploy two satellites and to also for the first time in history, try to retrie satellites and bring them back to Earth so they could be refurbished and launched again. It was actually the insurance underwriters, Lloyds of London and their subsidiaries that were the big drivers for the mission.
- [13:11]
A
Your mission often comes up when I talk to people about space debris nowadays of like we can't do that anymore. It seems amazing to almost to put it in modern like if you think about it nowadays, the idea that we actually sent people to retrieve satellites nowadays that would be like that blows people's minds. But it's just fascinating that, that we did that, that you did that. It's just incredible.
- [13:30]
C
Well, you know, NASA's a pretty amazing place to work. When challenged they can often find a solution for most anything. But we were really excited to have that mission because it did a lot of things that showed that we could retrieve these large objects, we could handle them, which I think laid some of the groundwork for building the space station later on. And it was just really neat because it was the only mission brought satellites back to Earth. There were several shuttle missions where astronauts went outside and performed a procedure to take a satellite because there was some problem with it, but then deployed it on that same mission. So it was the first time that anyone had ever than anything like that.
- [14:23]
A
Tell me a bit about what it was like to catch those satellites because I've read about it many, many times. But I mean I'm using catch very casually obviously. But please tell me about it because I'm just so fascinated by this.
- [14:35]
C
There are two moments that really really stick out. One is as we rendezvoused with the satellite. So now we're in position for me to go and grab the satellite. And the thing I remember most, the main difference from being in the Simulator 1, you're weightless of course, but was all the motion because the satellite was right next to the shuttle, right off the starboard side of the shuttle. The shuttle was maneuvering a little bit. My commander, Rick Hauk was maneuvering to station keep or flight formation with the satellite. And then the Earth is turning, the clouds are moving and I'm getting ready to move the arm. The overpowering memory that I had is all that motion. And I was really glad I was so well trained, because you really had to block all of that out of your mind and just prepare to do your task. We did encounter some difficulties. So we wound up having to change our plan a little bit, which involved me putting my crewmate, Joe Allen, in some foot restraints on the end of the arm. And then he wound up having to hold the satellite manually, which, you know, probably weighs like, a ton or so here on the ground. About the size of one of those, like, small school buses. So then I had to maneuver him, holding the satellite down into the payload bay. So it was. It was just so exciting, because not only were we doing something for the first time, but we did have a problem that we encountered, that we overcame, which is one of the reasons why having humans in space is so important. Because if it had just been planned with a robot or something, perhaps that wouldn't have been as successful at that time.
- [16:35]
A
Ma'am. That's amazing. That's absolutely incredible. I feel odd, sort of transitioning into the Kal Morris KMI news from this. But to me, it feels like a sort of natural segue, because, as I said, when KMI told me that you were on their advisory board, it just makes so much sense. Can you walk me through maybe how this all transpired? Because it must be an interesting story.
- [16:59]
C
Oh, yes, it is, actually. Interesting story. I speak at the Kennedy Space center, usually about twice a year or so. So I had a PowerPoint presentation that I was showing and talked about the retrieval and all of that and just what it's like to be in space. So after that, we go to one of the gift shops at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor center and sign autographs and take pictures with folks and who should come up. But Adam called, and he comes up and said he heard my talk. And they informed a company to try to look at the issue of space debris and how to tackle it. And could he give me a call and that perhaps would I consider being a part of kmi? And so I said, well, I'll certainly listen to what you have to say. And so we scheduled a meeting, and we talked about it, and it sounded like a good fit to be a part of their board of advisors. And I was very impressed with their dedication and their interest and how they had come to found their company. So I said, yes, I think I would like to try that. And I think I could perhaps help you out.
- [18:23]
A
Yeah, that is really fascinating. That's such a great way of meeting. I'm sort of trying to imagine what kind of conversations, like how you're guiding them. I mean, you have sort of the original perspective on space debris in a way. So I imagine you must have some really fascinating perspective as they are developing what they're working on.
- [18:41]
C
Well, it's very interesting because the board of advisors at this point is pretty much made up of people with financial backgrounds. And venture capital is the kind of things that you need when you're starting a new company. I was told they started KMI in 2019, and so they had not yet really found the right person to perhaps give them the more technical side of things and working with NASA and that sort of thing. So I think that's where I will be able to be very helpful both in what it's like to be up in space and how easy is it to do the things that they want to do. And then also just for the other day, for example, they have a prototype of their, I'll call it an end effector that they're going to use to capture debris that's going to fly on the iss, the International Space Station. And it's launching pretty soon in September of this year. And so we reviewed the procedures and I worked on Space station, was a CAPCOM for iss. So I'm quite familiar looking at their procedures. I helped develop the standards for how we do the procedures and things in my job as the lead of the Space Station branch in the astronaut office. So there's lots of different ways, plus just giving them advice on people to contact, things like that. So just the kind of things that you would do on a board of advisors. And I was just very impressed with all the people I've met so far, Their technical expertise, their enthusiasm, how they've gotten as far as they've gotten, because space debris is a really, really big problem. And it gets bigger just as time goes by. The space debris is growing exponentially. And it's something that we have discussed in our meetings. We have the association of Space Explorers that meets once a year. And I would say at about the last four of our meetings, there's always been a lot of talk around the problem of space debris. And we're trying to figure out how we can solve that. And so it's something that I was interested in before Adam contacted me. And so it's just like a perfect fit. It's something that I really believe in and I get to help them solve a very big problem that we're going to have to deal with in the future.
- [21:41]
A
Absolutely. KMI is a fantastic company. I've had the privilege of speaking with them several times and what they're doing is truly impressive. And certainly there are many companies and organizations, I should say, trying from many different angles and approaches to tackle the space debris problem, because it is very multifaceted. I'm curious, as you look at sort of the field of all these organizations trying to mitigate space debris, what fascinates you? And like, what. What excites you about what people are developing right now?
- [22:11]
C
It's just exciting to see young people who just graduated and they decided they wanted to get involved in space, so they researched it and came to the same conclusion that many of the astronauts have come to, that space debris is a growing problem and a problem that's growing exponentially. I don't know what all other areas they looked at, but I think they picked one that is really important and one that we're very concerned about. We're trying to tackle it a little differently from the association of Space Explorers. We really feel that we need to create an international organization, something like the faa, but for space. And right now, anyone can launch into space at any time, and there are no rules or regulations. And so there's nobody to say, okay, if you're going to launch the satellite, what is your plan for its end of life? And, you know, there are many ways they could try to handle that, but at the moment, there's no requirement for them to even have to do that. So from. From our association point of view, we're trying to tackle that, try to get the United nations to get a regulatory body. And then we also think it would be worthwhile to have an international astronaut office for all the astronauts around the world. And so that's another area that we're tackling. But in the meantime, it's really a pleasure to see that a group of very bright, talented engineers recognize this as a problem and are trying to find a solution at the same time finding. Creating a company of their own. So it's really I'm very fortunate that Adam just happened to hear my talk.
- [24:23]
A
A huge thank you to our guests, Jonathan McDowell and Dr. Anna Fisher. If you're interested in hearing more about the space industry, join me every day for T Minus Space Daily, available on all major podcast platforms. And you can find out more@spare.n2k.com we'd love to know what you think of the show. You can email us@spacen2k.com your feedback ensures we deliver the information that keeps you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. This episode was produced by Alice Carruth. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We are mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Ibin. Our executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrella is our president, Peter Kilpe is our publisher, and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. We will see you next time. T minus.