It’s a day of random news, and we take a foray into bioscience as we look at the effects of spaceflight on mouse reproduction in between stories on new studies of interstellar comet Borisov’s gassy composition and SpaceX’s plans for Starship.

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The first color image of the comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov), which astronomers believe was born in another solar system, was captured by the Gemini North telescope at Hawaii’s Mauna Kea. Gemini North acquired four 60-second exposures in two color bands (red and green). The blue and red lines are stars moving in the background.
(Image: © Gemini Observatory/NSF/AURA/Travis Rector)

Comet Borisov

A is an image of sperm from male mice that spent 35 days in space. B are images of a mother mouse with babies, and on the right, just the babies. The sperm of male mice who spent 35 days in space was unharmed and produce healthy offspring when used in vitro. Image Credit: Matsamura et. al., 2019

The effects of spaceflight on mouse reproduction

Image Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX’s plans for Starship

Transcript

This is the Daily Space for today, Monday September 30, 2019

Most Mondays through Fridays, either I or my cohost Annie Wilson will be here bringing you a quick rundown of all that is new in space and astronomy. 

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Today’s news starts with our solar system’s current interstellar visitor, comet 2I/Borisov. This comet was first discovered in August and has an orbit consistent with an object originating outside our solar system, and in the coming months it is going to be making its way through our solar system, passing closest to our Sun in December. With this passage, we can expect a steady stream of news articles that use words like “for the first time” and we’re going to all need to read carefully to figure out if what we’re seeing is unique to this comet or are the first time we’ve studied something in an interstellar object. Let me see if I can explain this a little bit better with an example. Today a new article came out discussing how planetary scientists using the William Herschel Telescope have for the first time been able to analyze gas in a comet from another solar system. Ok, well, since this is our first interstellar comet to be detected near enough and active enough to have these kinds of detection made, that is kind of a given. The interesting part of this article isn’t that this is first, but rather, the interesting part is that this gas, Cyanogen, is a gas regularly seen in our solar system’s comets. This molecule is made of Carbon and Nitrogen, and it’s actually really cool to see that alien comets are made of the same stuff as locally made comets.

As a scientist, the thing I’m going to be looking for in stories about this comet are details on how this comet does and doesn’t match what we’re used to seeing. It would be amazing to find out that this comet is in someway radically different from what we’ve seen locally, but it would also be scientifically useful to learn that this comet is in no way different from what we see locally.

So – when you see “Scientists for the first time see” ask if this is someone stating the obvious – why yes, this is the first interstellar comet observed this well. And if they aren’t stating the obvious… while those “First time detected in a comet stories, those are the ones to get excited about.

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While this podcast is largely focused on space science and exploration, we do have a bioscience story for you today: A story about mice who have traveled to space and back, and gone on to reproduce. Japanese researchers have been studying the effects of time in space on the healthy reproduction of mice. 12 male mice spent 35 days on the International Space Station, with half of them experiencing the same microgravity as astronauts and the other half getting spun up to approximately Earth gravity. At the conclusion of their flight, spacefaring mice were observed to have a decrease in accessory gland weight, but there were no defects or genetic changes detected. Sperm from these mice, as well as from a set of control mice that stayed on Earth, were all used to fertilize eggs that were transferred into female mice. The resulting baby mice were the same in all three groups, and the result of this study is that short-term stays in outer space do not cause overt defects that affect male reproduction. Since astronauts have had healthy children after spaceflight, we new reproduction was possible, and this further shows that effects are minimal. It’s worth noting, sperm are constantly being created, the reproductive effects of space travel on male mice may be different from the effects on female mice, and further research on the effects of gender and duration of travel are needed.

In our final story of the day, we want to recommend you all take a moment after this episode to watch Elon Musk’s Saturday night presentation about SpaceX. While standing beside the new Starship spacecraft, Musk gushed about materials science, why SpaceX is using a steel outer construction, and his own periodic doubts that SpaceX will accomplish some of their goals along the way. This wasn’t the talk of an articulate businessman, this was the excited geeking out of an engineer who just wants to talk about thermal capacities of different materials and the ability to use pasta shaped glass to insulate spacecraft. 

In additional to Musk’s very enthusiastic and detailed materials science discussions, this presentation also shared that SpaceX hopes to see Starship undergoing its initial flights in the next few months and human flights in the next few years. As with all timelines, this seems remarkably ambitious, but it’s worth noting that SpaceX switched to this new Steel design less than a year ago and they have already been able to do a successful hop test with their scaled down Starhopper. Whether SpaceX is ontime or delayed, we will be here for you at the DailySpace, bringing you updates as they happen.

And that rounds out our show for today.

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Thank you all for listening. The Daily Space is produced by Susie Murph, and is a product of the Planetary Science Institute, a 501(c)3 non profit dedicated to exploring our Solar System and beyond. We are made possible through the generous contributions of people like you. If you would like to learn more, please check us out on patreon.com/cosmoquestx 

 I will now take your questions, and ask you to please at CosmoQuestX to help me find them in the chat. While you type them in, let me remind you that the Daily Space is a production of the Planetary Science Institute, and is hosted by myself and Annie Wilson. 

Last week we launched a new podcast edition of this show. If you want a 10 minute, chaos-free listen, click over to dailyspace.org and check it out. We are still working on getting it listed in podcast directories, but don’t worry, it will be there soon.

Each live episode of the Daily Space is archived on YouTube. If you miss an episode here on Twitch.tv, you can find it later on youtube.com/c/cosmoquest. These episodes are edited and produced by Susie Murph. 

We are here thanks to the generous contributions of people like you who allow us to pay our staff a living wage. Every bit, every sub, and every dollar committed on Patreon.com/cosmoquestx really helps. If you can’t give financially, we really do understand, and there are other ways you can help our programs. Right now, the best way you can help is to get the word out. Let you friends know, share our channel to your social media, or leave a recommendation. You never know what doors you are opening.

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