JAXA’s Comet Mission: Unlocking the Origins of Life

<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
<v Speaker 1>with our soothing Bedtime Astronomy podcast. Each episode offers a
<v Speaker 1>gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
<v Speaker 1>unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
<v Speaker 1>of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
<v Speaker 1>slumber under the night sky.
<v Speaker 2>You know, for like two hundred years, astronomers were basically
<v Speaker 2>tracking a ghost.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, a literal ghost in the Solar System, right.
<v Speaker 2>So in eighteen nineteen, observers catalog this comment moving through
<v Speaker 2>the inner Solar System, and then it just vanished, completely gone.
<v Speaker 3>Just disappeared off the maps exactly.
<v Speaker 2>Generation after generation mapped the skies with you know, increasingly
<v Speaker 2>powerful telescopes. They were looking for the trajectory they had
<v Speaker 2>originally calculated.
<v Speaker 3>But nothing, nothing at all.
<v Speaker 2>But then when a robotic sky survey finally stumbled across
<v Speaker 2>it almost to two centuries later, scientists realized this wasn't just.
<v Speaker 3>Some lost rock, No, not even close.
<v Speaker 2>It was this deep frozen time capsule like holding the pristine,
<v Speaker 2>completely untampered chemical recipe for biological.
<v Speaker 3>Life, locked away since before the Earth even formed, which is.
<v Speaker 2>Just wild to think about. And now Japan Space Agency
<v Speaker 2>is building this incredibly complex, multi billion dollar spacecraft with
<v Speaker 2>one specific objective.
<v Speaker 3>To fly across the Solar System and catch that ghost, right.
<v Speaker 2>To intercept it, shoot a literal hole in it, and
<v Speaker 2>bring that recipe back. So let's unpack this because what
<v Speaker 2>if you could actually touch the exact ingredients that made
<v Speaker 2>will you?
<v Speaker 3>It is, without a doubt, the single most audacious mission
<v Speaker 3>profile currently on the drawing board in planetary science.
<v Speaker 2>I don't doubt that for a second.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, we are talking about the next generation's small
<v Speaker 3>body return mission. They call it ngsosrright, slated for the
<v Speaker 3>twenty thirties, and the objective is to secure a primordial
<v Speaker 3>sample from this specific object commet to a D nine
<v Speaker 3>p blampain.
<v Speaker 2>Blam pain. Okay, yeah, But to really.
<v Speaker 3>Grasp why this mission is so critical and why it's
<v Speaker 3>so hard, you have to look at the lineage of
<v Speaker 3>the agency that's actually attempting it. Jay edX right, the
<v Speaker 3>Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. They are just you know, taking
<v Speaker 3>a wild swing in the dark here.
<v Speaker 2>They've done this before.
<v Speaker 3>They have essentially written the modern textbook on small body
<v Speaker 3>exploration and they did it through extreme trial and.
<v Speaker 2>Error, right, because I think people look at their recent
<v Speaker 2>successes and just assume this is straightforward for them now,
<v Speaker 2>like it's routine.
<v Speaker 3>It is definitely not routine.
<v Speaker 2>No, because the original high boos emission in what two
<v Speaker 2>thousand and three, that was a harrowing experience. It wasn't
<v Speaker 2>some clean victory.
<v Speaker 3>It was a nail bier.
<v Speaker 2>They lost their reaction wheels right, the ion engines repeatedly
<v Speaker 2>degraded a solar flare, damaged the solar panels.
<v Speaker 3>It was basically one disaster after another.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and they barely managed to coax the spacecraft back
<v Speaker 2>to Earth after it essentially went rogue and lost communication
<v Speaker 2>for weeks. They were solving these catus strophic engineering failures
<v Speaker 2>in real time.
<v Speaker 3>But that crucible is exactly what forged their current expertise
<v Speaker 3>tryal by fire exactly. The original Hiabusa barely lamped home,
<v Speaker 3>but it did return microscopic grains from the asteroid to Idakawa.
<v Speaker 2>Which was a massive win.
<v Speaker 3>Huge and they learned from every single point of failure
<v Speaker 3>on that mission. So by the time they launched Hyabusa
<v Speaker 3>two to the asteroid.
<v Speaker 2>Reuti, they had fixed the glitches right.
<v Speaker 3>They had engineered redundancies for those specific kinetic and navigation issues.
<v Speaker 3>Hyabusa two executed its sampling touchdowns with absolute surgical perfection.
<v Speaker 2>It was flawless, And currently.
<v Speaker 3>They're finalizing the Martian Moon's Exploration Mission or MMX.
<v Speaker 2>The land on Phobos, right, got it.
<v Speaker 3>So they have systematically built the institutional knowledge required for
<v Speaker 3>microgravity navigation, autonomous hazard avoidance, and sample return mechanics.
<v Speaker 2>So NGSR is really the culmination of like three decades
<v Speaker 2>of learning how to interact with objects that have almost
<v Speaker 2>zero gravitational whole exactly.
<v Speaker 3>It's the ultimate test of everything they've learned.
<v Speaker 2>Which really sets up the sheer scale of the leap
<v Speaker 2>they're making now, because an asteroid is fundamentally different from.
<v Speaker 3>A comet, very different night and day.
<v Speaker 2>Navigating around a dead, rocky body is tough, But navigating
<v Speaker 2>around a body made of volatile ices that can just
<v Speaker 2>you know, suddenly start venting gas into space, that seems
<v Speaker 2>like a completely different paradigm of risk.
<v Speaker 3>Oh, it absolutely is.
<v Speaker 2>So before we look at the engineering of this heist,
<v Speaker 2>let's unpack the target itself. Because comic Blampagne's history reads
<v Speaker 2>like an astronomical detective story, it really does. Like, how
<v Speaker 2>does modern astronomy just lose a comet for two hundred years?
<v Speaker 3>Well, it basically comes down to a combination of nineteenth
<v Speaker 3>century observational limits and the brutal orbital mechanics of the
<v Speaker 3>Solar System.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, lay it out for me.
<v Speaker 3>So when Jean Jacques Blampagne discovered it in eighteen nineteen,
<v Speaker 3>the observational window was really short, and I mean the
<v Speaker 3>instruments were pretty rudimentary by today's standards, right.
<v Speaker 2>They were just using like basic optical tell exactly.
<v Speaker 3>So they calculated an orbit based on that brief arc
<v Speaker 3>of visibility. But out in the darkness, blam Pain's orbit
<v Speaker 3>took it perilously close to Jupiter ah.
<v Speaker 2>And Jupiter ruins everything.
<v Speaker 3>Jupiter is the gravitational bully of the Solar System. Its
<v Speaker 3>mass is so huge that its gravity well exerts profound perturbations.
<v Speaker 2>On small bodies, so it just yanked it off for us.
<v Speaker 3>Yep, a close pass can alter a commet's velocity, changing
<v Speaker 3>its orbital period and inclination entirely. So those eighteen nineteen
<v Speaker 3>calculations they became completely useless. Wow, astronomers were essentially looking
<v Speaker 3>at the wrong place at the wrong time for the
<v Speaker 3>better part of two centuries, and.
<v Speaker 2>Then when it finally did turn up again, they didn't
<v Speaker 2>even realize they had found it.
<v Speaker 3>They had no idea.
<v Speaker 2>That's hilarious.
<v Speaker 3>In two thousand and three, the Catalina Sky Survey, which
<v Speaker 3>is this automated system designed to hunt for Near Earth objects,
<v Speaker 3>they flagged a new body. Okay, they designated it two
<v Speaker 3>thousand and three WY twenty five, and they cataloged it
<v Speaker 3>as an Apollo class near Earth asteroid.
<v Speaker 2>Ought it was just a rock.
<v Speaker 3>Right to all the optical sensors. It presented as a
<v Speaker 3>completely inert rock. There was no coma.
<v Speaker 2>The coma is that fuzzy cloud, right, Yeah, that.
<v Speaker 3>Fuzzy cloud of gas and dust that forms when a
<v Speaker 3>comet's ice sublimates. And there was no tail either.
<v Speaker 2>It just looked like another dark, beaten up piece of
<v Speaker 2>rubble tumbling through the void exactly. But that raises a
<v Speaker 2>big mechanical question about comets, like if it was a
<v Speaker 2>comet in eighteen nineteen with enough activity to be seen
<v Speaker 2>by nineteenth century telescopes, how does it just you know,
<v Speaker 2>turn off? How does it masquerade as a dead rock?
<v Speaker 2>In two thousand and three, that's a great question.
<v Speaker 3>So commets undergo this process called crustal armoring.
<v Speaker 2>Crustal armoring.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, when a comet passes close to the sun, the
<v Speaker 3>volatile ice is near the surface sublimate.
<v Speaker 2>Meaning they transition directly from solid to gas. Right, They
<v Speaker 2>skip the liquid phase.
<v Speaker 3>Precisely, and as that gas escapes, it leaves behind the heavier,
<v Speaker 3>darker dust and organic molecule.
<v Speaker 2>That stuff that doesn't vaporize.
<v Speaker 3>Right, the restractory material. Over multiple orbits, this step builds up,
<v Speaker 3>creating an insulating, chorous crust on the surface.
<v Speaker 2>Oh I see, so it forms a shell exactly.
<v Speaker 3>This crust essentially chokes off the sublimation process. The device
<v Speaker 3>is still there, but it's buried under a thermal blanket.
<v Speaker 3>So the comet goes.
<v Speaker 2>Dormant until it doesn't because in twenty thirteen, this supposed
<v Speaker 2>asteroid completely blew its cover.
<v Speaker 3>It sure did. Ten years after its rediscovery two thousand
<v Speaker 3>and three, WY twenty five experienced this sudden, massive outburst.
<v Speaker 2>Just totally exploded.
<v Speaker 3>It rapidly ejected a vast cloud material and that definitively
<v Speaker 3>proved to contain deep seated volatiles. It wasn't an asteroid.
<v Speaker 2>So what did the astronomers do.
<v Speaker 3>Well, the orbital dynamicis went back to the data. They
<v Speaker 3>traced the trajectory backward, accounted for all those Jovian perturbations.
<v Speaker 2>We talked about Jupiter's bullying.
<v Speaker 3>And realized that this quote unquote asteroid and the lost
<v Speaker 3>comet of eighteen nineteen were the exact same object.
<v Speaker 2>That is wild, But why did it suddenly erupt in
<v Speaker 2>twenty thirteen If it had that crustal armor.
<v Speaker 3>The outburst likely happened because of a localized structural failure
<v Speaker 3>in that insulating crust. It allowed a thermal wave basically
<v Speaker 3>heat from the Sun to suddenly reach a pocket of
<v Speaker 3>pristine ice and boom, boom, it triggered rapid explosive sublimation.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, but honestly, that makes me really question the target
<v Speaker 2>selection here. How so, Well, if you have an object
<v Speaker 2>that is prone to sudden explosive venting, why would Jasay
<v Speaker 2>choose this specific comet for a multi billion dollar proximity mission.
<v Speaker 3>It sounds counterintuitive, right, Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>Flying a delicate spacecraft with enormous solar panels next to
<v Speaker 2>something that might suddenly act like an unguided geyser seems
<v Speaker 2>like an unnecessary risk.
<v Speaker 3>It's a fair point out of.
<v Speaker 2>All the comets we know about, why go to bland Pain.
<v Speaker 3>The irony here is that bland Pain was selected precisely
<v Speaker 3>because it is relatively safe.
<v Speaker 2>Safe.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it represents what mission planners consider a Goldilocks target.
<v Speaker 3>It occupies a very narrow, highly desirable operational window.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, walk me through that. What makes it a Goldilocks target?
<v Speaker 3>First, consider its physical demains. Land Pain is incredibly small.
<v Speaker 3>Current estimates put its radius at roughly one hundred and
<v Speaker 3>sixty meters.
<v Speaker 2>One hundred and sixty meters. That's what roughly the size
<v Speaker 2>of a large stadium exactly.
<v Speaker 3>And to put that into perspective, the escape velocity on
<v Speaker 3>a body that size is measured in centimeters per second.
<v Speaker 2>Centimeters per second.
<v Speaker 3>You could literally jump off it and achieve orbital velocity.
<v Speaker 3>You just float away into space.
<v Speaker 2>That it's terrifying, honestly it is.
<v Speaker 3>But that extreme microgravitational environment actually allows for extremely slow,
<v Speaker 3>deliberate maneuvering by the spacecraft.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, I get the gravity aspect, but what about the
<v Speaker 2>outburst risk? If it vented in twenty thirteen, couldn't it
<v Speaker 2>vent when the spacecraft is hovering a few meters away
<v Speaker 2>in twenty forty one.
<v Speaker 3>It's a calculated risk, absolutely, yeah, But you have to
<v Speaker 3>compare it. Bland Pain's overall volatile production rate is orders
<v Speaker 3>of magnitude lower than a highly active fresh comet like
<v Speaker 3>hailbop right or even sixty seven p churium off Garrisonenko.
<v Speaker 2>Which is the one the Resetta mission visitor correct.
<v Speaker 3>And an active comment like that is a chaotic, hostile environment.
<v Speaker 3>The outgassing creates unpredictable aerodynamic drag.
<v Speaker 2>It's like flying through a hurricane of ice.
<v Speaker 3>Basically, it pushes the spacecraft around, wreaking havoc on navigational thrusters.
<v Speaker 3>So bland Pain's dormancy, the very thing that hid it
<v Speaker 3>from US for two hundred years, is actually its greatest
<v Speaker 3>asset for a sample return.
<v Speaker 2>Mission because it's quiet exactly.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it has the pristine material locked deep inside, but
<v Speaker 3>the surface environment is quiet enough to allow US spacecraft
<v Speaker 3>to execute complex multi year proximity operations.
<v Speaker 2>Without constantly fighting gas jets. You got it, Okay, So
<v Speaker 2>they have this sleepy, stadium sized target, but Jaxa already
<v Speaker 2>has a pristine sample of a small body. They brought
<v Speaker 2>back material from the asteroid.
<v Speaker 3>Re you go they did.
<v Speaker 2>NASA just brought back material from Benu. We have pieces
<v Speaker 2>of asteroids and laboratories right now. We do so if
<v Speaker 2>bland pain is essentially hiding behind an asteroid like crust, anyway,
<v Speaker 2>why go through the immense technological leap of excavating a comet?
<v Speaker 2>What is the fundamental difference in the scientific yield between
<v Speaker 2>a rock from an asteroid and a frozen chunk of
<v Speaker 2>a comet.
<v Speaker 3>To really understand the difference in scientific value, you have
<v Speaker 3>to look at the distinct life cycles of these two
<v Speaker 3>types of bodies, and specifically the mechanisms of cosmic degradation.
<v Speaker 2>Cosmic degradation meaning how they get beaten up over time.
<v Speaker 3>Exactly, the asteroids we typically visit, like Ryugu or Binu,
<v Speaker 3>originate in the main asteroid belt. They have spent billions
<v Speaker 3>of years residing in the inner Solar.
<v Speaker 2>System, which is a rough neighborhood.
<v Speaker 3>It's an incredibly violent, high energy environment. Asteroids are subjected
<v Speaker 3>to a continuous process we call space weathering, which is.
<v Speaker 2>More than just getting hit by other rocks, right, It's
<v Speaker 2>like a chemical and thermal breakdown.
<v Speaker 3>Precisely, I mean the macroscopic impacts are obvious. They are
<v Speaker 3>battered by micrometeorites and that actually melts and vaporizes material
<v Speaker 3>on a microscoptic scale. It creates impact melt glass and
<v Speaker 3>nanophase iron particles that fundamentally alter the rock's optical and
<v Speaker 3>chemical proserperties.
<v Speaker 2>So they're physically changed by the impacts, yes, but.
<v Speaker 3>The microscopic degradation is even more insidious. They are constantly
<v Speaker 3>bombarded by the solar.
<v Speaker 2>Wind, which is what exactly.
<v Speaker 3>It's a stream of high energy protons and electrons from
<v Speaker 3>the Sun. This particle irradiation literally strips away lighter elements,
<v Speaker 3>It breaks complex molecular bonds and sputters material right off
<v Speaker 3>the surface.
<v Speaker 2>So they're just getting sand blasted by radiations.
<v Speaker 3>Sand blasted and irradiated. And remember they're tumbling, right, they're spinning,
<v Speaker 3>so they're constantly baking in the sun, getting superheated and
<v Speaker 3>then freezing in the shadow over and over.
<v Speaker 2>That sounds like it would destroy the rock entirely.
<v Speaker 3>It definitely causes damage. That thermal cycling induces mechanical fatigue,
<v Speaker 3>the rapid expansion and contraction microfracture of the rock over eons.
<v Speaker 2>It literally cracks it apart exactly.
<v Speaker 3>Furthermore, almost all near Earth asteroids are what we call
<v Speaker 3>rubble piles.
<v Speaker 2>Meaning they aren't solid chunks.
<v Speaker 3>Right, They are not solid monoliths. They are the reaccreted
<v Speaker 3>to of much larger parent bodies that were shattered in
<v Speaker 3>catastrophic collisions.
<v Speaker 2>Oh wow, so they're made of recycled parts.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, the material inside Ryugu was once subjected to extreme
<v Speaker 3>shock pressures and potentially even aqueous alteration meaning liquid water
<v Speaker 3>flowing inside the parent body before it was destroyed.
<v Speaker 2>So it's been processed, heavily processed.
<v Speaker 3>The primordial signature, the exact chemical state of the dust
<v Speaker 3>that existed before the Sun ignited, has been cooked, crushed, hydrated,
<v Speaker 3>and irradiated.
<v Speaker 2>So the evidence of the early Solar system is still
<v Speaker 2>in there somewhere, but it's been put through an astrophysical.
<v Speaker 3>Blender, a cosmic blender.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you can analyze the smoothie, but it's really hard
<v Speaker 2>to tell what the original fruit look like.
<v Speaker 3>That is the perfect way to put it, and that
<v Speaker 3>is the inherent limitation of asteroid samples. Comets, on the
<v Speaker 3>other hand, possess a completely different.
<v Speaker 2>Pedigree because of where they formed.
<v Speaker 3>Right, they formed in the extreme outer regions of the
<v Speaker 3>protoplanetary disc way out past the frost line in the
<v Speaker 3>Kuiper Belt or the Oort.
<v Speaker 2>Cloud far far away from the Sun.
<v Speaker 3>Far away. For the vast majority of the last four
<v Speaker 3>and a half billion years, bland Pain has been sitting
<v Speaker 3>in deep space at temperatures approaching absolute zero.
<v Speaker 2>So it's been perfectly preserved exactly.
<v Speaker 3>At those distances. Solar radiation is negligible, thermal cycling is
<v Speaker 3>practically non existent, collisions are incredibly rare.
<v Speaker 2>Earlier scientists used the analogy of finding a mammoth frozen
<v Speaker 2>in the Siberian permafrost, like an asteroid is a bone
<v Speaker 2>bleached in the desert sun for one thousand years, but
<v Speaker 2>a comet is the whole mammoth perfectly preserved in the ice.
<v Speaker 3>That's a great analogy.
<v Speaker 2>But wait, based on what you said earlier about crustal armoring,
<v Speaker 2>that analogy doesn't entirely hold up, does it.
<v Speaker 3>You're right to catch that.
<v Speaker 2>Because the surface of blam Pain isn't pristine ice. It's
<v Speaker 2>that baked outgassed crust you were talking about.
<v Speaker 3>The mammoth analogy is excellent for the interior, but you
<v Speaker 3>are absolutely right to push back on the surface application.
<v Speaker 3>The top few meters of a short period comet like
<v Speaker 3>bland Pain are heavily altered.
<v Speaker 2>So the outside is basically an asteroid anyway.
<v Speaker 3>Basically, the crust has been depleted of its highly volatile
<v Speaker 3>ices and processed by the Sun during its inner solar
<v Speaker 3>system transits. If JXA just scraped the surface of bland Pain,
<v Speaker 3>they would essentially be bringing back an asteroid.
<v Speaker 2>Sample, which defeats the whole purpose.
<v Speaker 3>Right, the scientific treasure the uncorrupted presolar material lies beneath
<v Speaker 3>that thermal blanket.
<v Speaker 2>Ah.
<v Speaker 3>Because that porous crust is a fantastic insulator. The heat
<v Speaker 3>from the Sun only penetrates a very short distance.
<v Speaker 2>So just below that processed exterior.
<v Speaker 3>The comet maintains its primordial deep freeze state.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, which perfectly sets up the two massive scientific goals
<v Speaker 2>of the NGSR mission.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, it does.
<v Speaker 2>Once they punch through that crust and access the deep
<v Speaker 2>freeze layer, what exactly are they looking for? Because the
<v Speaker 2>stated goal number one isn't just about categorizing different types
<v Speaker 2>of space.
<v Speaker 3>Ice, right, Oh, It's much bigger than that.
<v Speaker 2>It's about hunting for the precursors of biological life exactly.
<v Speaker 3>The search for life's chemical origins relies entirely on identifying intact,
<v Speaker 3>presolar organic compounds.
<v Speaker 2>So we're talking about complex molecules, right.
<v Speaker 3>We know from studying certain meteorites that fall to Earth,
<v Speaker 3>specifically carbonaceous chondrites like the famous Murchison meteorite, the complex
<v Speaker 3>organic chemistry definitely occurs in space.
<v Speaker 2>The Murchison meteorite, that's the one that landed in Australia, right.
<v Speaker 3>That's the one, and inside it we found dozens of
<v Speaker 3>different amino acids, which are the fundamental building blocks of proteins.
<v Speaker 2>But studying meteorites on Earth has a massive.
<v Speaker 3>Glaring flaw contamination.
<v Speaker 2>Right the absolute second a rock hits the ground, or
<v Speaker 2>even just passes through the atmosphere, it is contaminated by
<v Speaker 2>the biosphere immediately. I imagine it's a total nightmare for an
<v Speaker 2>analytical chemist to look at an amino acid on a
<v Speaker 2>rock that landed in a muddy field and try to
<v Speaker 2>definitively prove it wasn't just left there by some terrestrial microbe.
<v Speaker 3>The contamination hurdle is the absolute bane of cosmochemistry. Even
<v Speaker 3>with immediate recovery protocols, terrestrial water, atmospheric gases, and earthly
<v Speaker 3>organic molecules instantly begin interacting with the meteorite.
<v Speaker 2>It's unavoidable, it is, but beyond.
<v Speaker 3>That, meteorites are again fragments.
<v Speaker 2>Of asteroids, right back to the blender exactly.
<v Speaker 3>Their organic inventory has been subjected to that parent body processing.
<v Speaker 3>We discussed the heat, the water the impacts. NGSR aims
<v Speaker 3>to bypass both the parent body processing and the terrestrial
<v Speaker 3>contamination entirely.
<v Speaker 2>By extracting organics that have never experienced liquid water, never
<v Speaker 2>been heated beyond a few dozen degrees above absolute zero,
<v Speaker 2>and never ever touched a planetary atmosphere exactly.
<v Speaker 3>You see, The molecular clouds from which our solar system
<v Speaker 3>formed were rich in simple gases things like water, carbon, monoxide, methanol,
<v Speaker 3>and ammonia. In the frigid depths of space, these gases
<v Speaker 3>literally froze onto the surfaces of microscore opic silicate dust.
<v Speaker 2>Grains, so the dust had a tiny layer of ice.
<v Speaker 3>On it right forming what we call icy mantles, and
<v Speaker 3>laboratory simulations suggests that when these icy mantles are subjected
<v Speaker 3>to ambient cosmic rays or ultraviolet light, even at credibly
<v Speaker 3>low temperatures, they undergo complex chemical.
<v Speaker 2>Reactions, so the radiation actually drives the chemistry even when
<v Speaker 2>it's freezing cold.
<v Speaker 3>Exactly. It's called the Strecher synthesis. It forms complex organic molecules,
<v Speaker 3>including amino acids, right there on the ice.
<v Speaker 2>Wait, so the chemistry required to build biology doesn't need
<v Speaker 2>a warm planetary puddle, not at all. It can happen
<v Speaker 2>in the debt of space on a literal speck of dust.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, and NGSR is trying to find those exact specks
<v Speaker 3>of dust still wrapped in their original icy mantles.
<v Speaker 2>That is mind blowing.
<v Speaker 3>It gets better. There is a specific profound signature they
<v Speaker 3>are looking for regarding those amino acids.
<v Speaker 2>It's called chirality kyality.
<v Speaker 3>What is that many complex molecules exist in two distinct
<v Speaker 3>shapes that are exact mirror images of each other. Think
<v Speaker 3>of it much like your left and right hands.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so they look similar, but you can't stack them
<v Speaker 2>on top of each other perfectly exactly.
<v Speaker 3>They are chemically identical but structurally mirrored. This is chirality. Now,
<v Speaker 3>in non biological, purely chemical synthesis, like what happens in
<v Speaker 3>a lab, you almost always get a fifty to fifty
<v Speaker 3>mix of left handed and right handed.
<v Speaker 2>Molecules, it completely even split. But life on Earth doesn't
<v Speaker 2>do that, does it.
<v Speaker 3>No, terrestrial biology is strictly.
<v Speaker 2>Homocrl meaning it only uses one side.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, every single living organism on this planet, from bacteria
<v Speaker 3>to you and me, uses only left handed amino acids
<v Speaker 3>to build proteins and only right handed sugars in its DNA.
<v Speaker 2>That is bizarre. Do we know why.
<v Speaker 3>We don't entirely know why life chose one over the other.
<v Speaker 3>It's huge mystery. But here is the critical point. If
<v Speaker 3>NNGSR retrieves a pristine sample from deep inside bland pain
<v Speaker 3>and the mass spectrometers reveal an excess of left handed
<v Speaker 3>amino acids, oh.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, Yeah, it would mean the universe heavily weighted the
<v Speaker 2>dice before the Earth was even formed.
<v Speaker 3>Exactly.
<v Speaker 2>It would mean the specific left handed bias of all
<v Speaker 2>life on Earth wasn't just a random evolutionary coin flip
<v Speaker 2>in some primordial soup. The building blocks were delivered here
<v Speaker 2>already bias.
<v Speaker 3>It is a completely paradigm shifting concept.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, the recipe for biological life, down to the
<v Speaker 2>specific structural orientation of the molecules, is baked into the
<v Speaker 2>dark matter of comments.
<v Speaker 3>It connects our exact biological reality to the chemistry of
<v Speaker 3>stellar nurseries. It proves that the precursors for life are
<v Speaker 3>not rare, miraculous occurrences, but standard, ubiquitous products of cosmic evolution.
<v Speaker 2>Preserved perfectly in these icy time capsules exactly. Okay, that
<v Speaker 2>alone justifies the entire mission. I mean, that's nobel price stuff.
<v Speaker 2>But JAXA has a second, equally ambitious goal here, you do,
<v Speaker 2>because finding the ingredients for life is one thing. The
<v Speaker 2>other half of the mission is trying to solve one
<v Speaker 2>of the most stubborn mysteries in astrophysics, how planets form,
<v Speaker 2>right how the planet we are standing on actually manage
<v Speaker 2>to physically build itself because right now the math for
<v Speaker 2>planet formation has a massive glaring hole in it.
<v Speaker 3>It's called the accretion problem.
<v Speaker 2>The accretion problem. Okay, but break that down for us.
<v Speaker 3>Well, we have a solid model for the extremes of
<v Speaker 3>the timeline. We know the Solar System started as a
<v Speaker 3>protoplanetary disk, which is what exactly. It's a swirling mass
<v Speaker 3>of hydrogen and helium gas seated with microscopic dust grains.
<v Speaker 3>And we obviously know that today we have massive, solid planets.
<v Speaker 3>Clearly we're on one right now. The physical mechanisms that
<v Speaker 3>allow microscopic grains to stick together and grow into pebblicized
<v Speaker 3>objects are well understood. It's driven by simple intermolecular forces
<v Speaker 3>like Vanderwal's forces.
<v Speaker 2>Vanderwal's forces.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, Basically, when submicron grains bump into each other gently,
<v Speaker 3>they just stick.
<v Speaker 2>Like dust bunnies gathering under a bed.
<v Speaker 3>Perfect analogy.
<v Speaker 2>But dust bunnies don't grow into boulders. I mean, if
<v Speaker 2>you take two handfuls of sand and smash them together,
<v Speaker 2>they don't fuse into a bigger rock.
<v Speaker 3>No, they don't.
<v Speaker 2>They shatter or they just bounce off each other. So
<v Speaker 2>how do we get from a pebble to a kilometer
<v Speaker 2>sized asteroid which we call a planet tesimal?
<v Speaker 3>That is known as the meter sized barrier, and it's
<v Speaker 3>exacerbated by a physical phenomenon called gas drag gas drag. Yes,
<v Speaker 3>in the protoplanetary disc, the gas is supported by its
<v Speaker 3>own internal pressure. This means it orbits the Sun slightly
<v Speaker 3>slower than the velocity required by pure gravity.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so the gas is moving a bit sluggishly right.
<v Speaker 3>The solid dust and pebbles, however, don't feel that internal pressure.
<v Speaker 3>They want to orbit at the faster purely caplarian velocity.
<v Speaker 2>Oh I see, So the rocks are trying to speed
<v Speaker 2>around the Sun, but they're constantly plowing into this slower
<v Speaker 2>moving gas. Yes, they're constantly fighting a cosmic headwind.
<v Speaker 3>Exactly. That headwind creates aerodynamic drag. Now, for very tiny particles,
<v Speaker 3>they just sweep along with the gas, no problems. Sure,
<v Speaker 3>And for huge kilometer sized planetesimals, their mass is so
<v Speaker 3>great that the headwind barely affects.
<v Speaker 2>Them, like a semi truck driving through a breeze, exactly.
<v Speaker 3>But for objects right in the middle, roughly boulder or
<v Speaker 3>meter sized, the gas drag is catastrophic.
<v Speaker 2>Why what happens to them?
<v Speaker 3>It SAPs their orbital momentum incredibly fast. Theoretical models show
<v Speaker 3>that a meter sized boulder at the Earth's distance from
<v Speaker 3>the Sun would literally spiral inward and be completely incinerated
<v Speaker 3>by the Sun in less than one hundred years.
<v Speaker 2>One hundred years That is a blink of an eye
<v Speaker 2>in cosmic timescale.
<v Speaker 3>It's nothing.
<v Speaker 2>So the boulders should have all fallen into the Sun
<v Speaker 2>before they could ever clump together to form the Earth.
<v Speaker 3>That's the problem.
<v Speaker 2>Obviously they didn't. The Earth is here, so how did
<v Speaker 2>the dust cross that barrier?
<v Speaker 3>Astrophysicists have proposed theoretical mechanisms, and the most prominent one
<v Speaker 3>is called the streaming instability.
<v Speaker 2>Streaming instability, ye okay.
<v Speaker 3>This theory suggests that aerodynamic interactions between the gas and
<v Speaker 3>the dust caused the pebbles to spontaneously clump together into massive,
<v Speaker 3>dense swarms, huge clouds of pebbles, right, and these swarms
<v Speaker 3>would then become gravitationally bound and collapse under their own
<v Speaker 3>weight directly into kilometer sized planet tesimals.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, so they completely skip the boulder phase exactly.
<v Speaker 3>They bypass the meter sized barrier altogether.
<v Speaker 2>That is a brilliant mathematical workaround. But how do you
<v Speaker 2>actually prove it. You can't look at an asteroid to
<v Speaker 2>prove this, right, because, as we established earlier, asteroids are
<v Speaker 2>recycled rubble.
<v Speaker 3>Right, They've been crushed, so.
<v Speaker 2>The original internal structure is long gone.
<v Speaker 3>Exactly, asteroids have been smashed and compacted. The physical evidence
<v Speaker 3>of their initial formation is totally erased. But comets.
<v Speaker 2>Commets are different because.
<v Speaker 3>They reside in the low velocity, low collision environment. Of
<v Speaker 3>the outer Solar system, they might still retain their original
<v Speaker 3>internal architecture.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, I see where this is going.
<v Speaker 3>If the streaming instability theory is correct, and planet tesimals
<v Speaker 3>formed from the gentle gravitational collapse of pebble swarms, the
<v Speaker 3>resulting bodies should not be solid rock baby fluff. They
<v Speaker 3>should be incredibly poor as they should be fluffy aggregates
<v Speaker 3>full of empty space, where the pebbles didn't perfectly align, like.
<v Speaker 2>Packing a snowball really loosely. Yes, the ice crystals stick
<v Speaker 2>together at the contact points, but the vast majority of
<v Speaker 2>snowball's volume is actually just trapped air spot on, whereas
<v Speaker 2>an asteroid is like a snowball that's been squeezed so
<v Speaker 2>hard it turned into a solid, dense block of ice.
<v Speaker 3>The snowball analogy is perfect here, and NNGSR is going
<v Speaker 3>to test this theory by looking at the comet's macro porosity.
<v Speaker 2>Meaning how much empty space is inside it.
<v Speaker 3>Right, the spacecraft won't just look at the surface. It
<v Speaker 3>will deploy internal structure probes.
<v Speaker 2>Like giving the comet an ultrasound exactly.
<v Speaker 3>The lander will place seismometers on the surface, and the
<v Speaker 3>orbiter will use a bistatic radar.
<v Speaker 2>How does the radar help Radar.
<v Speaker 3>Waves penetrate ice, but they travel differently through empty space.
<v Speaker 3>By measuring the dielectric constant of the comet's interior, they
<v Speaker 3>can actually map the internal voids.
<v Speaker 2>And they are specifically looking for meter sized voids.
<v Speaker 3>Right. Yes, the absence of material is the evidence that.
<v Speaker 2>Is so cool if they map the inside of blam
<v Speaker 2>Pain and find it basically resembles a sponge full of
<v Speaker 2>empty pockets and pristine, uncompacted aggregates.
<v Speaker 3>That empty space is the fossil record of the streaming instability.
<v Speaker 2>It is the physical proof of the exact moment dustified
<v Speaker 2>the gas drag and built the foundation of the planets.
<v Speaker 3>It transforms astrophysics from computer simulations back into observational science.
<v Speaker 3>By analyzing the structural integrity and porosity of the comet,
<v Speaker 3>we finally bringe the gap in our understanding of how
<v Speaker 3>planets are constructed.
<v Speaker 2>Man, okay, So we have established a spectacular scientific mandate.
<v Speaker 2>We need deep frozen, presolar organic molecules to understand life,
<v Speaker 2>and we need to map the empty voids inside the
<v Speaker 2>ice to understand planetary physics.
<v Speaker 3>It's a toll order.
<v Speaker 2>To say the least. But now we have to transition
<v Speaker 2>from the theory to the execution, because knowing what you
<v Speaker 2>want to do and engineering a fourteen year robotic heist
<v Speaker 2>to actually pull it off across the Solar System are entirely.
<v Speaker 3>Different things, very different.
<v Speaker 2>Let's look at the playbook for NGSR. How do you
<v Speaker 2>actually get there? And more importantly, how do you excavate
<v Speaker 2>a comet without ruining it well?
<v Speaker 3>The mission architecture is entirely driven by the tyranny of
<v Speaker 3>the rocket equation and orbital.
<v Speaker 2>Mechanics, as always in spaceflight.
<v Speaker 3>Right, the launch is targeted for twenty thirty four, but
<v Speaker 3>because Blampagne's orbit is highly elliptical, you can't just shoot
<v Speaker 3>a straight line to it.
<v Speaker 2>You have to catch it.
<v Speaker 3>The spacecraft will likely utilize a series of planetary gravity
<v Speaker 3>assists to pump up its orbital energy. This cruise phase
<v Speaker 3>alone will take seven.
<v Speaker 2>Years, many years of just flying.
<v Speaker 3>Seven years, relying on highly efficient low thrust ion engines.
<v Speaker 2>And to manage this long haul, the spacecraft is actually
<v Speaker 2>split into two distinct vehicles. Correct.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, the primary architecture relies on the Deep Space Orbital
<v Speaker 3>Transfer Vehicle or DSOTV. Think of the DSOTV as the
<v Speaker 3>long haul freighter. It handles the power generation, the ion propulsion,
<v Speaker 3>and the high gain communications with Earth. It acts as
<v Speaker 3>the mothership. And the second part attached to the DSOTV
<v Speaker 3>is the dedicated sample return lander, which contains all the
<v Speaker 3>specialized instrumentation for proximity operations.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so they finally arrive at Blampainne in twenty forty one,
<v Speaker 2>seven years later, but they don't immediately dive in for
<v Speaker 2>a sample. Oh no, the mission timeline outlines a year
<v Speaker 2>and a half dedicated strictly to proximity operations.
<v Speaker 3>Nineteen months.
<v Speaker 2>They're just going to fly in formation with this one
<v Speaker 2>hundred and sixty meters rock for eighteen months.
<v Speaker 3>Why does it take a year and a half to
<v Speaker 3>map something the size of a stadium? I mean, you
<v Speaker 3>could walk around a stadium in ten minutes.
<v Speaker 2>Because navigating around a micro gravity irregularly shaped object is
<v Speaker 2>incredibly non intuitive. So the gravitational field of bland Pain
<v Speaker 2>isn't a smooth sphere. It's lumpy.
<v Speaker 3>Oh, because the mass isn't distributed evenly.
<v Speaker 2>Exactly, A spacecraft can't just enter a standard Caplearian orbit
<v Speaker 2>around it. The orbit will constantly perturb based on the
<v Speaker 2>mass distribution of the comet. It'll wobble all over the place. Right.
<v Speaker 3>They have to literally map the gravitational field by carefully
<v Speaker 3>tracking the spacecraft's minute trajectory deviations over months.
<v Speaker 2>That sounds incredibly tedious.
<v Speaker 3>It is. And simultaneously they employ a suite of remote
<v Speaker 3>sensing tools to understand the physical environment.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, the optical mapping makes sense. They use the optical
<v Speaker 2>navigation camera or ONC to get high resolution visual data
<v Speaker 2>and the light ar the laser altimeter that bounces light
<v Speaker 2>pulses off the surface to build a millimeter accurate three
<v Speaker 2>D topographical map.
<v Speaker 3>Right, because they need to find a flat spot devoid
<v Speaker 3>of massive boulders that could tip the lander.
<v Speaker 2>Right. But the third instrument, the thermal infrared camera or TRI.
<v Speaker 2>That one seems kind of counterintuitive to me.
<v Speaker 3>Why is that?
<v Speaker 2>Why are they spending months mapping the temperature of a
<v Speaker 2>frozen rock. It's all freezing, right, What does the temperature
<v Speaker 2>tell you about where to land? Ah?
<v Speaker 3>Thermal mapping is arguably the most crucial diagnostic tool for targeting.
<v Speaker 2>Really.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, TRI measures a p property called thermal inertia. Thermal inertia,
<v Speaker 3>it's the resistance of a material to changes in temperature.
<v Speaker 3>Imagine being on a beach on a hot day. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>if you touch a solid rock baking in the sun,
<v Speaker 3>it's hot and it stays hot long after the sun
<v Speaker 3>goes down.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Yeah, it holds the heat.
<v Speaker 3>But the fine sand it heats up quickly in the sun,
<v Speaker 3>but it cools down instantly when a shadow falls over it.
<v Speaker 2>Oh. I see, because solid rock conducts and stores heat efficiently,
<v Speaker 2>while porous dust or loose aggregates act as insulators.
<v Speaker 3>Exactly, by observing how different regions of bland pain heat
<v Speaker 3>up during the cometary day and cool down during the night,
<v Speaker 3>scientists can deduce the physical makeup of the surface without
<v Speaker 3>ever touching it.
<v Speaker 2>That's brilliant.
<v Speaker 3>Areas with high thermal inertia are likely solid compacted boulders
<v Speaker 3>or dense processed crust. Areas with very low thermal inertia
<v Speaker 3>are likely thick deposits of fine porous dust or highly
<v Speaker 3>insulated regions.
<v Speaker 2>So it's basically a treasure.
<v Speaker 3>Map, it is. Yeah, This tells the mission planners exactly
<v Speaker 3>where the crust is thinnest, where the material is easiest
<v Speaker 3>to excavate, and where the deepest most pristine ices are
<v Speaker 3>most accessible.
<v Speaker 2>Which brings us to the actual excavation.
<v Speaker 3>The main event.
<v Speaker 2>We discussed earlier that the mammoth analogy fails at the
<v Speaker 2>surface because the top layer of the comet is baked
<v Speaker 2>and depleted of volatiles. You can't just touch down, scrape
<v Speaker 2>the surface and leave, No.
<v Speaker 3>You'd get junk data.
<v Speaker 2>You have to dig. But you are in a microgravity
<v Speaker 2>environment where the escape velocity is measured in centimeters per second. Right,
<v Speaker 2>If you use a mechanical drill, the torque from the
<v Speaker 2>drill bit spinning will instantly send the entire spacecraft spinning
<v Speaker 2>wildly in the opposite direction.
<v Speaker 3>Basic physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
<v Speaker 2>You have no leverage. You can't brace yourself against the ground.
<v Speaker 2>So how do you dig a deep hole without pushing
<v Speaker 2>yourself completely off the comet?
<v Speaker 3>You don't use mechanics, use ballistics.
<v Speaker 2>Ballistics.
<v Speaker 3>JXA is employing a technology they pioneered and successfully tested
<v Speaker 3>on Hyabusa two. It's called a small carry on impactor
<v Speaker 3>or SCI. They are going to create an artificial crater
<v Speaker 3>using a shaped explosive charge.
<v Speaker 2>The logistics of this are absolutely terrified.
<v Speaker 3>It's incredibly risky.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, you have flown for seven years, map this
<v Speaker 2>thing for a year and a half, and now you
<v Speaker 2>are going to detonate high explosives next to your multi
<v Speaker 2>billion dollar spacecraft. Yes, break down the sequence of events
<v Speaker 2>for the SEI deployment. How does this not destroy the mission?
<v Speaker 3>It is an incredibly highly choreographed maneuver. The DSOTV descends
<v Speaker 3>to a precise altitude above the target zone. It deploys
<v Speaker 3>the SCI, which is basically a self contained module consisting
<v Speaker 3>of a conical explosive charge lined with a heavy copper disk.
<v Speaker 2>The copper disc right.
<v Speaker 3>And the moment the SCI is released, it is armed
<v Speaker 3>with a timer. Oh boy, at that exact second, the
<v Speaker 3>DSOTV must execute a rapid evasive burn.
<v Speaker 2>It has to run and hide.
<v Speaker 3>It literally must maneuver behind the curvature of the commet
<v Speaker 3>or reach a safe standoff distance before that timer hits here,
<v Speaker 3>because if it does it, the risk is profound. In microgravity,
<v Speaker 3>an explosion sends debris outward in a massive cone. There's
<v Speaker 3>no air resistance to slow it down. Even a millimeter
<v Speaker 3>sized grain of cometary rock hitting the spacecraft. Solar panels
<v Speaker 3>or optical lenses at high velocity could result in a
<v Speaker 3>catastrophic mission.
<v Speaker 2>Failure, So the spacecraft hides and the sci detonates. What
<v Speaker 2>happens mechanically during the explosion, It's not just a bomb
<v Speaker 2>going off on the surface, right.
<v Speaker 3>No, the explosive charge isn't touching the surface at all.
<v Speaker 3>When the high explosive detonates in space, the immense pressure
<v Speaker 3>wave focuses on that heavy copper disc. We mention right,
<v Speaker 3>the physics of the shaped charge, it's called the Monroe effect,
<v Speaker 3>causes the copper disk to plastically deform. Plastically deform, it
<v Speaker 3>actually inverts on itself, turning into a tear drop shaped
<v Speaker 3>kinetic penetrator, a copper bullet, a bullet moving it over
<v Speaker 3>two kilometers per second.
<v Speaker 2>Wow.
<v Speaker 3>This copper slug slams into the surface of the comet,
<v Speaker 3>excavating a massive crater, blowing away the processed crush and
<v Speaker 3>exposing the pristine, unweathered primordial ice in organics buried beneath.
<v Speaker 2>It's a surgical artillery strike exactly. So the spacecraft waits
<v Speaker 2>for the ejected curtain to settle, the dust clears, and
<v Speaker 2>then it navigates back over the newly formed crater right carefully.
<v Speaker 2>It descends, touches down for just a few seconds inside
<v Speaker 2>the fresh crater, fires a projectile into the exposed ice
<v Speaker 2>to kick up the material, catches the debris and the
<v Speaker 2>sample horn, and thrusts away.
<v Speaker 3>That is the collection sequence. Yes, broom, But securing the
<v Speaker 3>physical sample inside the capture mechanism is only the beginning
<v Speaker 3>of the most delicate phase of the.
<v Speaker 2>Entire mission, because now you have to get at home.
<v Speaker 3>Bringing an asteroid back to Earth is a matter of
<v Speaker 3>orbital mechanics and thermal protection during atmospheric reentry. Right, bringing
<v Speaker 3>a comet back to Earth, that is a fight against
<v Speaker 3>the fundamental chemistry of the sample itself. We encounter the
<v Speaker 3>volatile problem.
<v Speaker 2>Because the entire reason we went to the subsurface was
<v Speaker 2>to get these deep frozen ices and complex organics exactly.
<v Speaker 2>But the very definition of a volatile is that it
<v Speaker 2>wants to change state, it wants to sublimate.
<v Speaker 3>Right, these materials have existed near absolute zero for four
<v Speaker 3>and a half billion years. The absolute second they are disturbed,
<v Speaker 3>the second they're exposed to the vacuum of space without
<v Speaker 3>their insulating crust, or the second their temperature rises by
<v Speaker 3>even a few degrees inside the sample collection chamber, they
<v Speaker 3>begin to vaporize.
<v Speaker 2>It just boil away.
<v Speaker 3>The kinetic energy of the sampling mechanism alone could generate
<v Speaker 3>enough friction heat to sublimate the most delicate organic structures.
<v Speaker 2>It seems like a cruel paradox. You travel seven years
<v Speaker 2>to get a sample that will immediately try to destroy
<v Speaker 2>itself the moment you grab it.
<v Speaker 3>That's a massive challenge.
<v Speaker 2>If those complex molecules vaporize and vent out of the
<v Speaker 2>spacecraft during the seven year return trip, the primary scientific
<v Speaker 2>goal is completely lost. So how do you guarantee the
<v Speaker 2>science survives the journey?
<v Speaker 3>JXA solution is brilliant. They decided not to rely solely
<v Speaker 3>on the physical return. They are bringing a highly advanced
<v Speaker 3>analytical laboratory directly to the comet's surface.
<v Speaker 2>Oh I see.
<v Speaker 3>The lander is equipped with an instrument called the multoom
<v Speaker 3>FP multim it stands for Ultra small multi turn time
<v Speaker 3>of flight mass spectrometer. It is designed to perform in situ.
<v Speaker 2>Analysis, meaning right there on the spot, analyzing.
<v Speaker 3>The sample right there on the comet the absolute instant
<v Speaker 3>it is collected.
<v Speaker 2>Let's look closely at the amaltimense mess because taking a
<v Speaker 2>massive piece of laboratory equipment that usually takes up a
<v Speaker 2>whole bench in a university, and miniaturizing it to fit
<v Speaker 2>on a space robe is a massive engineering feat.
<v Speaker 3>It's incredible.
<v Speaker 2>How does a time of flight mass spectrometer actually map
<v Speaker 2>the chemistry of these sublimating gases.
<v Speaker 3>The principle relies on the fundamental relationship between mass and velocity.
<v Speaker 3>As the volatile gases sublimate from the freshly collected ice,
<v Speaker 3>the multimase mess ingests a tiny portion of that gas.
<v Speaker 2>Okay.
<v Speaker 3>It uses an electron beam to ionize the.
<v Speaker 2>Molecules, meaning it gives them an electrical charge.
<v Speaker 3>Exactly, it knocks off an electron to give them a
<v Speaker 3>positive electrical charge. Once they are charged, the instrument uses
<v Speaker 3>an electric field to accelerate the molecules down a.
<v Speaker 2>Flight tube, and because they are all pushed by the
<v Speaker 2>exact same electric force, the heavier molecules will accelerate slower
<v Speaker 2>and the lighter molecules will fly faster.
<v Speaker 3>Precisely, it's a RaSE. The detector at the end of
<v Speaker 3>the flight tube measures exactly how long it takes for
<v Speaker 3>each ion to arrive. That's its time of flight, hence
<v Speaker 3>the name. Right By measuring these arinal times with nanosecond precision,
<v Speaker 3>scientists can calculate the exact mass of every single molecule in.
<v Speaker 2>The gas, which tells them what it is.
<v Speaker 3>It allows them to identify water, vapor, carbon monoxide, complex
<v Speaker 3>amino acids, and crucial isotopic ratios.
<v Speaker 2>Isotopic ratios like deuterium to hydrogen.
<v Speaker 3>Rate is the DH ratio that is a.
<v Speaker 2>Huge part of understanding where Earth's water came from. We
<v Speaker 2>want to know if the water in our oceans matches
<v Speaker 2>the isotopic signature of cometary ice or asteroid ice exactly.
<v Speaker 3>The DH ratio is the fingerprint of water in the
<v Speaker 3>Solar system. By measuring these signatures in situ, Jaxa essentially
<v Speaker 3>creates an insurance policy.
<v Speaker 2>Because the data is already captured.
<v Speaker 3>Right Even if the physical sample completely degrades, sublimates, or
<v Speaker 3>heaven forbid, the return capsule burns up in earth atmosphere
<v Speaker 3>during the twenty forty eight return, the foundational scientific data
<v Speaker 3>is safe.
<v Speaker 2>The chemical inventory of the pristine comet is already digitized
<v Speaker 2>and beamed back to Earth exactly.
<v Speaker 3>We win no matter what.
<v Speaker 2>But they absolutely still want the physical rock. They didn't
<v Speaker 2>build a return capsule for nothing.
<v Speaker 3>Oh, absolutely, the physical sample is the ultimate price.
<v Speaker 2>So for the material that is captured, how do they
<v Speaker 2>physically secure it for the seven year trip home? You
<v Speaker 2>can't exactly put it in a ziploc bag.
<v Speaker 3>No, The preservation engineering is extreme. The moment the material
<v Speaker 3>enters the sample chamber, it is mechanically sealed.
<v Speaker 2>They're tight, vacuum tight.
<v Speaker 3>The system likely employs a form of passive cryogenetic cooling
<v Speaker 3>or deep space thermal radiators to keep the sample chamber
<v Speaker 3>permanently shadowed away from the sun right and as close
<v Speaker 3>to ambient deep space temperatures as possible. Is essentially freeze
<v Speaker 3>dried in a vacuum environment.
<v Speaker 2>Wow.
<v Speaker 3>This sealed sample return capsule is then secured inside the DSOTV,
<v Speaker 3>which fires its ion engines and begins the long, slow
<v Speaker 3>spiral back to Earth.
<v Speaker 2>So the timeline puts the return in twenty forty eight.
<v Speaker 3>Twenty forty eight, yes.
<v Speaker 2>And the re entry process is brutal. The capsule hits
<v Speaker 2>the Earth's atmosphere at interplanetary velocities, experiencing thousands of degrees
<v Speaker 2>of plasma heat on the heat shield. It's a fireball,
<v Speaker 2>but assuming the insulation holds and the parachutes deploy properly
<v Speaker 2>the capsule lands in the desert. But the mission isn't
<v Speaker 2>over when it hits the dirt, is it not even close?
<v Speaker 2>The contamination protocols for a cometary sample have to be
<v Speaker 2>infinitely stricter than those for an asteroid.
<v Speaker 3>They are unprecedented. I mean, with the REUU asteroid sample,
<v Speaker 3>they can handle the material in an incredibly clean nitrogen
<v Speaker 3>purged glove boxes at room temperature.
<v Speaker 2>Because it had already been baked by the sun anyway, right, But.
<v Speaker 3>A cometary sample cannot experience room temperature ever, it would
<v Speaker 3>ruin it. The moment the capsule is recovered in the desert,
<v Speaker 3>it will be transported in a thermally stabilized container to
<v Speaker 3>a custom built cryogenic curation facility. This is a clean
<v Speaker 3>room operating at deep freeze temperatures.
<v Speaker 2>So the scientists are working in hazmat suits just to
<v Speaker 2>protect themselves from the cold, but really the suits are
<v Speaker 2>to protect the alien ice from the scientists.
<v Speaker 3>Absolutely. A single human breath contains humidity and traits organics.
<v Speaker 3>A microscopic flake of human skin contains DNA and complex proteins.
<v Speaker 2>Which would totally ruin the amino acid experiment.
<v Speaker 3>It would overwrite the entire multi billion dollar sample, So
<v Speaker 3>the atmosphere in the curation chambers will be entirely purged
<v Speaker 3>of terrestrial oxygen and water vapor, replaced by ultrapure nitrogen
<v Speaker 3>or argone. Wow. The physical handling of the ice must
<v Speaker 3>be done with tools that don't transfer thermal energy. They
<v Speaker 3>have to maintain the environmental continuity of deep space right
<v Speaker 3>here on Earth.
<v Speaker 2>When you lay out the entire architecture from start to finish,
<v Speaker 2>the sheer scale of this endeavor is stacked.
<v Speaker 3>It really is.
<v Speaker 2>Launch in twenty thirty four, arrival in twenty forty one,
<v Speaker 2>eighteen months of orbital ballet, a ballistic excavation with a
<v Speaker 2>copper bullet, seven years of cryogenic transport, landing in twenty
<v Speaker 2>forty eight.
<v Speaker 3>It's a fourteen year continuous spaceflight operation.
<v Speaker 2>It is a multi generational scientific commitment. The engineers designing
<v Speaker 2>the MULTIMASPI or the SCA today will likely be retired
<v Speaker 2>when the capsule finally touches it down.
<v Speaker 3>Most likely.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, the graduate students who will be assigned to that
<v Speaker 2>cryogenic cleanroom to perform the isotopic analysis in twenty forty eight,
<v Speaker 2>they are literally in elementary school right now.
<v Speaker 3>It is the defining hallmark of deep space exploration. It
<v Speaker 3>requires a patience that spans generations, it really is, but
<v Speaker 3>the payoff, the payoff justifies the weight. If JXA successfully
<v Speaker 3>navigates the orbital mechanics, survives the microgravity excavation, and maintains
<v Speaker 3>the cryogenic chain of custody, they will provide humanity with
<v Speaker 3>our first uncorrupted physical look at the absolute on.
<v Speaker 2>Of our existence, which is just it's hard to even
<v Speaker 2>wrap your head around.
<v Speaker 3>We move beyond looking at the heavily processed debris of
<v Speaker 3>the Inner Solar System and finally touch the pristine foundational
<v Speaker 3>architecture of the universe.
<v Speaker 2>It bridges the gap between the monumental scale of astrophysics
<v Speaker 2>and the microscopic reality of our own biology. It proves
<v Speaker 2>that we are intimately tethered to the chemistry of the
<v Speaker 2>deep void.
<v Speaker 3>We are made of star stuff, as Sagan said exactly.
<v Speaker 2>And I want to leave you with a final thought
<v Speaker 2>to mull over today. The next time you walk into
<v Speaker 2>your kitchen and pour a glass of water, or step
<v Speaker 2>outside and take a deep breath of air, just look
<v Speaker 2>around at the completely mundane matter that makes up your world.
<v Speaker 3>Dull connected.
<v Speaker 2>Consider the physical reality that the original microscopic blueprints for
<v Speaker 2>all of it, the water molecules, the complex carbon structures,
<v Speaker 2>the very left handed amino acids that form your DNA,
<v Speaker 2>are right now, at this exact second, frozen perfectly inside
<v Speaker 2>a one hundred and sixty meters rock, just waiting quietly,
<v Speaker 2>floating in the dark abyss of space, waiting for us
<v Speaker 2>to finally come and find them,