Satellite Showdown

How do satellites work? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice explore CubeSats, space lasers, and the ecology of low Earth orbit with VP of Raytheon, Sandy Brown, and associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics, Kerri Cahoy.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. And I got with me Chuck Nice, as usual. My co-host. Chuck, how you doing, man? Hey Neil, what's happening? All right, we got a tasty episode today. Oh my gosh. All right, okay. It's data from space. All right. Coming down to Earth, going in. Okay. Back to space. Okay. How's it happen? Who's doing it? Why are we doing it? I'm sorry to say, that's every episode we do. Okay. That is true.

• 0:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're bringing the universe down to Earth. Yes, that is what we do. That's what you said. But we get a lot of inquiries about CubeSats and nano satellites and all of these things. Yes. And we figured it's time to go to the source, or at least one of the more important sources of the world, of who's been obtaining data and how they do it. And let's just get right to it. We're gonna, we're gonna talk to one of the vice presidents of Raytheon Technology, Sandra Brown. Sweet. Totally. Sandra Brown, welcome to StarTalk.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Thank you. It's so nice to be here, Neil and Chuck.

• 1:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent, excellent. So you're vice president of what for Raytheon?

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Right. I am vice president of a mission area called Digital Emission Solutions, which is a part of our larger space and command and control business. So essentially, we develop space-based sensors, ground systems, precision navigation and timing, processing, data sense-making, multi-domain, tactical and strategic command and control. We also do a little environmental and climate sensors, earth observation, missile warning and defense structures.

• 1:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. So nothing gets by you, basically?

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Nothing gets by us.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  We've got it all locked down.

• 1:57Chuck Nice?

  Here's what I just heard is that space is a business right now. That's what I just heard.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Space is a big business.

• 2:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it is true. When people typically think of space, they think of NASA.

• 2:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you look at NASA's budget, which is small as a fraction of our GDP compared with the Apollo era.

• 2:17Chuck Nice?

  Pennies.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's small.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so a whole lot of stuff is happening in space.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when we refer to space in this context, Sandy, is it almost entirely either low Earth orbit or just between here and the moon? Is that correct?

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Between here and the moon. Right.

• 2:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what kind of projects are you working on now?

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Well, specifically in my area, we have a lot of extremely cool stuff, and that's a technical term. We're building the next generation of ground systems. We're supporting the critical weather and earth observation instruments. And of course, laying the foundation for commanding and controlling satellites.

• 2:55Chuck Nice?

  Can you tell me what ground systems are? I'm not, you said that, but I don't know what that is.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Systems on the ground. Duh.

• 3:03Chuck Nice?

  You're like, Chuck, there are systems in the air and there are systems above the air. We call that space. And then you got the stuff on the ground. Okay.

• 3:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the ground systems. All right.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Right. So when you're talking about satellite command and control, you're really talking about four things. You're talking about an operation center. You're talking about a ground station. You're talking about the ground network and you're talking about the satellite. And that's how the ground station allows you to actually communicate with that satellite via the operation center.

• 3:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so these are, these are radio microwave dishes or something, right?

• 3:37Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 3:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're basically telescopes.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  They're basically telescopes.

• 3:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what role did you play with JWST? Because that's been all the news, right? And delightfully so. I mean, I'd love it when our stuff, when my people, you know, make headlines, you know? It's like, those are my people out there. I feel good. It means that there's a genuine curiosity in the public.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 4:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What extent have you helped to serve that?

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Well, have you seen the images released from Jupiter? I mean, I don't need to be a world renowned astrophysicist to understand how incredible capturing those images are to science. It's so exciting for me to see every new image created and captured by James Webb. For our part, Raytheon Intelligence in Space installed the Webb's ground control system at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. So the ground, yeah, so the ground system primarily responsible for maintaining the health and safety of the observatory and supports the command and control of the telescope. So essentially, our software receives the observation data and transfers information to the system that is accessible to astronomers and other scientists.

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So at the risk of stating the obvious, Sandy, in principle, NASA could have done all of this from scratch.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But when they look at the landscape of space technologies that are out there, they say, well, we want to talk to our telescope, who does it best? And then they shop around and there's Raytheon. And so then you then install your ops and probably your people are there too, right?

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To help this out.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:11Chuck Nice?

  However, I will, I will say that from a business model, it doesn't make sense just to do this for NASA. So the other applications have to be there. And what would those be? So you're looking at these, you know?

• 5:25Speaker 01

  The building blocks. I mean, we have the people that have been doing, you know, the programming, systems engineering, the integration for a very long time. So we use those building blocks specific to support our customers' requirements. So we're not ever having to start from scratch. Specific to the James Webb, our software, you know, we reused where we could. But that software is used to rebuild the images that we, that we receive from the James Webb. We program the coding languages necessary to take those ones and zeros and make them images for our human eyes to see. So we're reusing a lot of the, you know, the optical technologies that we've already developed, a lot of, you know, reuse from other programs.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  And we just really customize it to fit the need of the James Webb.

• 6:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And again, at the risk of stating the obvious, but it's, I mean, it's a historical thing.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 6:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've written at length about this, but I want to hear it from the horse's mouth. Isn't it true that, I mean, a big part of Raytheon's portfolio is defense systems?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 6:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you also have scientists and the engineering that supports science, leading another kind of communications or data frontier, and they each feed each other in a kind of a two-way street. Isn't that correct?

• 6:42Speaker 01

  That's absolutely correct.

• 6:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay.

• 6:45Chuck Nice?

  So I heard you say a lot about code, code, code, code.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Code, code, code.

• 6:50Chuck Nice?

  Code, code, code, code, code. So that with all of what you do, which a lot of it, irrespective of if it's defense or not,

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:00Chuck Nice?

  is sensitive, what are you guys, are you also working in like hardening cybersecurity?

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Absolutely, right.

• 7:09Chuck Nice?

  Because I would think that would be very important.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  It's extremely important, right? And it's

• 7:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely.

• 7:17Chuck Nice?

  I tend to like understatement.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  No, I appreciate that, Chuck. No, it's extremely important. It's built into every product that we build. It's a part, just a part of our design process. It's not something that we add on as an extra layer. We really, you know, start our, every development project starts with cyber in mind. So we can deliver that solution to our customers to ensure that they have uninterrupted services, you know, and we can deter when we need to deter.

• 7:46Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 7:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but can you protect yourself against an asteroid? I bet you can't.

• 7:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I bet you can't.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  That I look to you to help me to do that.

• 7:54Chuck Nice?

  Hey, what's your code, what's your code for that, Sandy?

• 7:59Speaker 01

  I call Neil. Hey, Neil, tell me the prediction. When are we gonna get hit?

• 8:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got it. So you want me to prevent the asteroid from even entering?

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I want to provide you the data from space so you can interpret it and provide us the answers of when that thing's gonna hit and where.

• 8:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, or deflect it so that it never hits.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Correct, absolutely.

• 8:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I got a question. Okay, in LEO, low Earth orbit, the satellites, you can watch them move across the sky. So if I'm using them for like internet or something that I would want or expect to be stable.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What happens when that is gone past my horizon? There must be some system of handoffs from one satellite to another, and you must have a bajillion of them so that I always have a few over my head, is that correct?

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 8:46Chuck Nice?

  Or do you just get a message on your screen that says, "Hey, see you tomorrow at 3"?

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 8:53Chuck Nice?

  "See you tomorrow at 3!"

• 8:57Speaker 01

  You have a great number to get the consistency of service, absolutely.

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and a great number, can you quantify that? Is like hundreds, is it thousands?

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Thousands of these small sat's performing, you know, different capabilities and sharing data in order to make sure that you have that coverage.

• 9:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, you all took another one of my words. Now you're taking the word constellation, because you call these satellites constellations. It's like, no, I'm not giving you that word. You took it away and I...

• 9:26Chuck Nice?

  Too late, too late. You can't get it back.

• 9:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can't get that one back.

• 9:30Chuck Nice?

  So let me ask you this.

• 9:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do they make interesting shapes? Are they Greek mythology? No, they're just a train of satellites moving in and out.

• 9:38Chuck Nice?

  However, Sandy, in your defense, in your defense...

• 9:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Raytheon doesn't need anyone in their defense, okay? They are their own defense system.

• 9:48Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but that's kind of cool. Chuck Nice defends Raytheon.

• 9:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, go, go Chuck.

• 9:51Chuck Nice?

  What? He's the defense system for Raytheon. Oh my God. Anyway, no. So when you look at a constellation, no one sees the pictures that are drawn anyway.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's true.

• 10:03Chuck Nice?

  Except astrophysicists, they're the only ones that could look right. I don't, yeah, I don't see a crab.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  And we have a whole business that does nothing but launch these satellites into the orbits as well.

• 10:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so now are you worried about how crowded it's getting? What is the future ecology of space launches?

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's a topic that we often discuss with our customers. There's, you know, with the proliferation of space, the space debris, the space junk. We have to be very cognizant of what that could mean if we have collisions in space for especially our, you know, our higher capability satellites. We have sensors on those satellites to make sure that we can steer clear of one another. That's important that we, you know, right now we do develop those sensors to make sure that we have the situational awareness of where they are.

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, just a point. You're in orbit moving five miles per second. What do you mean steer clear? You can actually navigate these things while they're in orbit?

• 11:08Speaker 01

  We absolutely do. We absolutely can.

• 11:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now that. Oh, my gosh. So if you can navigate, that means they each have a reserve of fuel that presumably would eventually run out.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  It does. They do. Right. And then we are not able to move them anymore. But we're looking at technologies, you know, like solar or actually the ability to refuel satellites as well. They are on board with a very limited amount of fuel, absolutely.

• 11:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when will there be enough satellites in orbit?

• 11:38Speaker 01

  You know, our customers say N plus one.

• 11:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Okay. That continues to infinity, by the way, for those who want to know how that works mathematically. Whatever the N is, give me one more.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Yep, there's constant evolution of technology and, you know, we have to do, you know, just as you do on the ground, we do modernization, we do replacement activities. So, you know, we want to make sure that we keep up with current threats so we can, again, deter and defend.

• 12:08Chuck Nice?

  So what do you do about collecting your outdated materials?

• 12:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, that's right. Because I don't use a computer from three years ago, right? Because it doesn't have the capabilities I want. Yet you surely have satellites that are three years old. So how do you deal with the obsolescence, given the fast-moving frontier of electronics?

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Right now, we don't have a cleanup crew for space. So they either burn in, burn into the atmosphere, or they stay up there. And again, that's what we refer to as space junk.

• 12:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so LEO, you can burn up eventually. But Middle Earth, the dragon keeps them, correct?

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Right, the dragon keeps them for now.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what is the split, would you say? I don't need to get all into your ledgers. But what is your split between the private use of space and the government use of space? Because presumably, obviously, you serve both communities.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  We are predominantly government. We are predominantly defense.

• 13:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  But one influences the other, obviously. So we utilize and we leverage commercial technologies to serve our defense customers.

• 13:22Chuck Nice?

  Oh, so what about space war? Because you're looking at all this information now that is just sitting above us in low Earth orbit. What is to say, like, okay, I'm somebody else. I'm like, I'll just capture a few of your satellites, your little CubeSats, and I'll get all that proprietary information for myself?

• 13:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's kind of what Space Force is for also, I would think, right? Protecting assets, either government assets or business assets. But what else would you want your military to do?

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Well, and that's why we build in cybersecurity measures from the beginning of every design.

• 13:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Sandy, what is your academic profile that landed you where you are today?

• 14:04Speaker 01

  You know, I have a business degree with a minor in information systems. Um, but you know, as a ten year old girl, I had my Commodore sixty four computer. Um, with my black and white television set, you know, keying in the Hello World. Uh, program when I was, you know, again, when I was really young and so that technology kind of, um. My interest in technology, you know, has grown throughout the years.

• 14:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that was your technology baptism, right? Right.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  That was my baptism, right? Exactly. Waiting every month for that, you know, coding magazine to come. So I could translate the magazine set into my little Commodore sixty four. Um, and I just followed the evolution, you know, of technology in space.

• 14:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And let me remind people that the sixty four and Commodore sixty four is sixty four K.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 14:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sixty four K. And that was like, yeah, I'm badass.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  And that's all I wanted for Christmas, you know, so that that eventually led me on my career path.

• 15:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep, yep, yep. And you know, lately I've been hearing the word systems referred to. Uh, and I think, uh, because so many different bits and pieces have to cooperate. Uh, in technology is a whole new kind of engineer that I think. Uh, at least when I was a kid, there wasn't much discussion about, but now it's everywhere. Just comment on systems engineering and what that means for in your job and just for the, for the role of the company.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. It's just, it's a broader field. I mean, you have to understand how the, the different parts and pieces fit together. Uh, to form the whole, you, you know, it's desirable to have a background in some, you know, coding. So you understand how the program, uh, and, and hits the bus and how that. Is all, you know, put together again to develop a product. And it's not just, you know, you can't be stovepipe in your disciplines anymore. You really have to have that broader view of hardware, software. And again, the systems to build the system of systems as well.

• 16:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gotcha. I mean, isn't that just what an iPhone is, right? An iPhone has GPS, it has touchscreen, it has computers, it's got music, it's got, uh, it's so it's a system of systems, really.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  It's a system of system.

• 16:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And maybe we, so I'm just impressed by that because it used to be, I have this one thing that does this one thing, right?

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:25Chuck Nice?

  And then I hook it to another thing that does another thing and then they do the thing together.

• 16:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's the beginnings of it. Right. Right. That's very, very.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  And at Raytheon Intelligence in Space, we actually are building a framework very similar to an ICA to take data from space and different space vehicles and be able to put applications on a layer and be able to manipulate data and take the data from space that we are receiving and deliver weather, to deliver missile warning, missile defense, deliver GPS coordinates.

• 17:02Chuck Nice?

  The real question is, how, how good is the camera?

• 17:05Speaker 01

  How good is the camera? I'll have to get back to that. Actually, in our environment, no cameras are allowed.

• 17:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay, wow. So here's, here's something. You guys are known pretty much for, you know, drones and that's everybody's, like Raytheon, the first thing that pops into your head, you know, pilotless vehicles, I mean aircraft. What do you do in all this stuff that would touch people's lives that they don't even know? That's a good question.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, every morning when you pick up your cellphone and you look at the weather, we have a role in that. When you turn on your map application and want to go to the grocery store and want to avoid traffic, we have a part in that navigation and timing. So, and we're making that blue dot on your screen more accurate because we are modernizing the GPS ground stations.

• 18:04Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 18:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, okay.

• 18:06Chuck Nice?

  Listen, that's, that's very, you're, you're very integral to a lot of people's daily lives then.

• 18:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right. So, wake up any more and say-

• 18:15Speaker 01

  In ways, again, in ways that people don't even imagine, you know, Raytheon Intelligence in Space kind of showing up.

• 18:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Sandy, it's been a delight to have you and to get such deep representation in such an important company in this world that's taking us into the future and keeping us safe while we do so. So, thanks for being a guest on StarTalk.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 18:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. All right, Chuck, we're not done here. Okay. We've got Keri Kahoy coming up, who's going to tell us more about what it is to make these satellites and what they do and why and what the future of it will be when StarTalk continues.

• 19:03Chuck Nice?

  From the James Webb Space Telescope, to next-generation GPS ground control, to global climate monitoring, Raytheon Intelligence and Space is engineering solutions that make our lives on Earth better, smarter, safer, and more connected. Everyday space is changing, and every day, Raytheon Intelligence and Space teams push the edges of discovery to help drive that change for customers around the world from the ground up. If you're enjoying this episode and want to learn more about how Raytheon Intelligence and Space is advancing space solutions, make sure to head over to www.raytheonintelligenceandspace.com.

• 19:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk, all about satellites. Who's launching them? Who's designing them? What are they doing? How many are there? Do we need more? Do we need less? All of this is what this show is about. And for the next two segments, we're going to have someone where that is her life, Professor Keri Kahoy. Keri, welcome to StarTalk.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

• 20:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent, excellent. So you're Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. For those who are not academic fluent, it's the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And I also have more in your resume here. Co-director of MIT's Small Satellite Center, okay? And you're a leader in MIT's STAR Lab. That's one of those fancy acronyms, Space Telecommunications Astronomy and Radiation Laboratory, STAR Lab. And you used to be a NASA research scientist. So you are the right person for these two segments, for us to get into what's going on.

• 20:55Chuck Nice?

  So let me ask, let me ask you this before we get into it. When are you going to do something with your life?

• 21:02Speaker 03

  You know.

• 21:06Speaker 03

  I have these, I have these questions myself.

• 21:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, tell us the difference between aeronautics and astronautics.

• 21:16Speaker 03

  So, one is about flying planes and the other is about flying spacecraft. So, air and space is the major difference.

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you're really into satellites, what do you care about aeronautics?

• 21:28Speaker 03

  How low do you want to fly?

• 21:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 21:32Chuck Nice?

  Mic drop. Look at that. Somebody doing a rap battle right now.

• 21:42Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that's great, though.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  And where do you want to land? And what do you have to go through for entry, descent, and landing? They're connected. You have to go through one to get to the other.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, so tell me about the STAR Lab. Because the R stands for radiation in there, too.

• 21:55Speaker 03

  It does.

• 21:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People are spooked by the word radiation. But you have space telecommunications, astronomy, and radiation. So what does the STAR Lab do?

• 22:02Speaker 03

  So, we test new technologies in space using small platforms like CubeSats or Nanosatellites. And we also support projects for government and industry partners to have larger missions, like large space telescopes. We'll do some of the analyses that they need to make their missions happen or answer questions that they're having a hard time with or with like a new approach to or a problem they need to solve.

• 22:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so that acronym STAR, that's, it's a catch basin for everybody who needs you because you do all those different things.

• 22:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, there, there are some things that we specialize in a little bit more than others. But there's a lot of different disciplines that you need to be successful in space.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and what about, you know what's missing here? And maybe you can repurpose the T in STAR. How about thermodynamics?

• 22:49Speaker 03

  It is a big challenge, yeah.

• 22:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could you go from room temperature on Earth's surface to space cold? And then, like, you're facing the sun and then you're hot again. I mean, the, your stuff has to work in a wide variety of temperatures. Do you have those testing centers as well? Those testing platforms?

• 23:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. One of the key tests for a satellite is to make sure that the heaters turn on when they're supposed to. So you have these chambers where you try to get the temperatures low enough using liquid nitrogen, or if you have to get really cold, liquid helium or something like that to get those temperatures cold and trigger your sensors to turn on heaters to keep your satellite alive. Mostly, mostly the batteries need to stay happy. Batteries hate being cold.

• 23:32Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 23:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. While they're operating, they hate to be cold. Because when I grew up, you kept batteries in the refrigerator.

• 23:38Chuck Nice?

  In the refrigerator, remember that?

• 23:39Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 23:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To preserve them.

• 23:41Speaker 03

  To preserve them.

• 23:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what I learned? I was up in Alaska. My wife was raised in Alaska, and there's friends and relatives still up there. We were using some flashlight, and the batteries went dead. And, and one of these, like, bear wrestling, mountain, you know?

• 24:00Chuck Nice?

  Persons.

• 24:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Persons. So, I got this. And he takes the batteries out, and he rubs them in his hands, rolling them back and forth. Does this for about 90 seconds. We put the batteries back in the flashlight. It worked again. It was like magic.

• 24:14Chuck Nice?

  What, what, what Neil didn't know is, he was an alien.

• 24:18Speaker 03

  Used an EMT to recharge them.

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, yes, exactly. No, wait, he didn't tell me that. So, so, why, why are satellites small? Because I remember in the day, in my day, satellites were at least as big as a person, possibly the size of a car. Why is, why is, what's the rush to make them all little?

• 24:42Speaker 03

  Well, I like satellites of any size. And I started off, like you're saying, satellites the size of a Greyhound bus, and they have little ladders that we crawl up to, like, work on the panels in there. So, some satellites have staircases and ladders. But, the, the, making them small helps because the idea is, you can get more of them on orbit, and that helps you-

• 25:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In a single launch.

• 25:06Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I have mixed feelings about that. Because if you go on a single launch, you're stuck in a single orbit plane. And then you have this, like, string of satellites, and it doesn't get all the orbit planes you want. So you-

• 25:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I hate it when that happens.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  I hate it when that happens.

• 25:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, you haven't been stuck in the same orbital plane?

• 25:23Chuck Nice?

  Let me tell you, if I had a dime for every moment of sleep I've lost over a single launch sat cubes, I would be, ugh. I'd actually be very well refreshed.

• 25:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's going on? Because we've all seen these YouTube videos of the deployed

• 25:42Speaker 03

  Hundreds.

• 25:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  satellites from a single mission, and they're all just lined up there like a train.

• 25:46Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 25:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 25:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One following another. And so you value different orbital trajectories.

• 25:53Speaker 03

  I do. I like different orbit planes because then I don't have to wait for the same guys to sweep around the Earth and precess around. Then I have multiple of them that can cover different places at the same time or close to the same time. And I don't have to wait for them to swing around.

• 26:10Chuck Nice?

  Did you ever consider using something, you know, Bill Nye some time ago, Neil, was on the show and did the thing about the light sail? Because he was, along with his organization, was launching a light sail.

• 26:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, that was the Planetary Society.

• 26:24Chuck Nice?

  Thank you, the Planetary Society.

• 26:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This would be using light pressure, deploy a huge sail, a very highly reflective sail, using the pressure from light to alter your orbit to something new. So now I guess you could also use fuel, but light sails, you get to do that for free. So what kind of, what kind of, what stuff goes on in your labs along those lines?

• 26:46Speaker 03

  So we generally don't work too hard at maneuvering them, although we do have a a small satellite that's on Space Station right now that's about to be deployed that's going to test a electro-spray propulsion system on a CubeSat. But for the most part, those systems are pretty intricate, but very necessary. And the smaller they are, especially some of the electro-space systems, they can't really move you very far sometimes. Or if they can, it takes a long time. So that's kind of the trade. Either you're small and you don't go very far. It might take a long time for you to change your orbit parameters.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  Or you need these big satellites, which most people think of satellites and they don't realize.

• 27:34Speaker 03

  What's in the middle? But it's kind of like a Boston cream filled donut where the center is just a fuel tank. Most satellites have this giant spherical fuel tank in the middle, the big ones, because they need to maneuver and then they just slap some boards around the outside with electronics on them.

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I never knew, I never thought about that. So it's crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside.

• 28:00Speaker 03

  It's slushy on the, slushy.

• 28:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Slushy on the inside.

• 28:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what kind of fuel is it? Is it like hydrazine or?

• 28:07Speaker 03

  Yep, there's monopropellants and hydrazine that they use.

• 28:11Chuck Nice?

  What's hydrazine, please?

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did we have to explain it to you, Chuck?

• 28:15Chuck Nice?

  Yes, you do!

• 28:18Chuck Nice?

  Two space professionals sitting here. So yeah, what kind of propulsion are you using? What is that? What do you got there?

• 28:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like Chuck, stay with it, okay?

• 28:28Chuck Nice?

  Is that the warp core there?

• 28:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Slow down for you.

• 28:31Chuck Nice?

  Hell yeah. What's hydrazine though?

• 28:33Speaker 03

  It's a compound that's very reactive and volatile and reacts to heat. So you basically combust it and then you use the heat and pressure generated by it to create a force to move you.

• 28:47Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 28:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's highly reliable. I mean, they used it throughout Apollo. And it doesn't require weird ignition to make it.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  Right. But they do make you keep it in a bunker or something like that.

• 29:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's pretty nasty stuff.

• 29:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is nasty stuff if it does what you don't want it to do.

• 29:08Chuck Nice?

  I got you.

• 29:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's otherwise highly reliable. So do you focus on, so far we've only talked about the hardware. Do you focus on any broader scientific agricultural environmental goals as you think about your satellites?

• 29:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we do focus on enabling people to communicate. So we do optical technology for laser communication to help people talk to each other from anywhere securely and safely.

• 29:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By using like optical lasers?

• 29:40Speaker 03

  Using lasers.

• 29:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but if there's a cloud in the way, then?

• 29:43Speaker 03

  That is the problem.

• 29:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What good is that? Oh, okay.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's why you need the relays.

• 29:49Chuck Nice?

  You're not doing yourself, not doing yourself a very good service here, Carrie.

• 29:55Chuck Nice?

  You're just like, "Guys, I'd love to talk to you, but it's a little cloudy out."

• 30:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Just to be clear, because radio waves move through clouds.

• 30:03Speaker 03

  Radios do.

• 30:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Visible light does not.

• 30:05Speaker 03

  They still get attenuated, and the shorter the wavelengths get, the worse the clouds treat them.

• 30:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 30:11Speaker 03

  But, um, but...

• 30:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I gotta tell Chuck why. Wait, Chuck. The shorter the wavelengths get, you used to get into microwaves. And, and clouds are made of what?

• 30:20Chuck Nice?

  Uh, water droplets.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Water, water droplets, okay, water vapor. And so, so water and microwaves have a very long history together.

• 30:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 30:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and that's how you get microwave ovens. So, uh, the fact that you have that interaction enables microwave ovens to begin with. So, exactly. So you need a wavelength that passes over the water droplets, so that as though the water droplets aren't there. Okay, so go on.

• 30:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it needs to be longer than that. But we, we are working on making these terminals very small, and so you can put a lot of them up and relay the lasers around the weather systems, and also making ground stations that are small and portable, so you can have a bunch of them on the ground, so that you can receive the data that's been sent around the weather.

• 31:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so basically it's a, a, an interconnected network, but you break it up all over the place. That's cool.

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but wait a minute, so why can't it still go to a centralized network, and then you get it by cellphone carrier or something?

• 31:14Speaker 03

  You could. You, you could definitely treat it that way, too, and...

• 31:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you're gonna make me carry a whole big radio receiver dish with me where I go. Don't, don't do that. Don't.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  Well, you know, some, some people have security needs and don't want anybody else to look at their data.

• 31:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now it comes out.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  And it's not only the guys you think about. Some of it is these high-frequency traders, and they don't want you to know about their data either. So...

• 31:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 31:38Chuck Nice?

  Well, that makes sense, right?

• 31:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So, Carrie, are you thinking about the cost of these things? So a number I've always heard for NASA was $10,000 a pound to put something in low Earth orbit. Update me on that number for what it is you do.

• 31:53Speaker 03

  So CubeSats right now, if I were going to try to put a 10-pound CubeSat into orbit would be about $200,000. So it's within a factor of a couple, I think, of where you are.

• 32:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As we say in my world, it's within a factor of pi.

• 32:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:11Chuck Nice?

  So. How do we do it? Volume?

• 32:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so right now it's $20,000 a pound, what you're saying? If I did the math correct.

• 32:20Speaker 03

  Yes, which is 10,000 a kilogram-ish, I guess, so.

• 32:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, okay. So that's the same ballpark?

• 32:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so that hasn't changed much over the years.

• 32:29Chuck Nice?

  But is that because of gas prices and inflation? Is that what's going on here? Gas prices, inflation, just screwing up everything, right?

• 32:39Speaker 03

  The big launch vehicles costs are coming down, though. It used to be well over $100 million, sometimes closer to 150, 200 million to launch a rocket. And with the reusability that companies like SpaceX are really making possible now, that cost is coming down significantly.

• 32:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you flew to Europe in a 747, and then they shoved it off the cliff, and then brought out a new one every time, that flight would be really costly to you.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  It would add up.

• 33:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, because everybody's on payroll, right? So if I can launch five times instead of once, the total salary that everyone earned is the same, but I now got five satellites out of it instead of one. So all these things scale in ways that drop the price.

• 33:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, and that's a really important point, too. A lot of people don't realize that the cost of sending things to space is mostly the people time to put it together and run it. So it's a really good point.

• 33:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, interesting. Right, right, right.

• 33:34Chuck Nice?

  And let me just say, if you have disposable 747s, you are a baller, okay?

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you take up a lot of room when you fly. All right, we gotta take a quick break. When we come back, Kerry, rumor has it that you have some interest and care for Exoplanets. And I want to get further into that when we return. Startalk, segment three, all about satellites.

• 34:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk, Segment 3, all about satellites. And I've got Keri Kahoy here, who's on the faculty at MIT. And she's one of their systems engineers studying... Should I call you a systems engineer? Satellite engineer, that's what you're called.

• 34:41Speaker 03

  A little of both.

• 34:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 34:42Speaker 03

  A little of both.

• 34:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A little of both, or a lot of both, probably, actually. Yeah.

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I'm told that... Little Birdie told me that you also have an interest in the detection of exoplanets. And we know that JWST is going to help blow that open. But not so much detecting them, as much as observing them, once we know they're there. So, how do you plug into that turning wheel right now?

• 35:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, so JWST has some great tools for characterizing exoplanets onboard, mostly by looking at exoplanets and their transits and different things like that in different colors. And learning from the difference in the colors that are observed, a little bit more about the properties of the atmosphere. I'm interested in looking at star systems and seeing if there are planets around them and how many there are, and also characterizing their atmospheres by looking at the colors and their relative strengths. And the technology you need to do that very effectively for Earth-like planets means that you have to have something onboard the satellite

• 35:50Speaker 03

  that can block out the starlight in the middle so you can kind of see around it where you think the habitable planets would be.

• 35:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, this is the firefly and the searchlight problem.

• 35:59Speaker 03

  There is that analogy, yeah.

• 36:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. If you're trying to detect the firefly and you're looking at one of these Hollywood searchlights, it's going to be really hard, if not impossible, unless you figure out a way to blot out the searchlight. And so, this is also one of your big challenges.

• 36:14Speaker 03

  Right, and I also can't assume that the firefly glows by itself.

• 36:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 36:19Speaker 03

  It's even harder.

• 36:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  So, I need to see the light that's bouncing off the firefly when it's not blinking.

• 36:27Speaker 03

  Come to tell me more about it.

• 36:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're doing this in addition to your satellite work. See, I'm going to repeat Chuck's earlier comment. You know, really, this is all you've done in your life?

• 36:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 36:39Speaker 03

  Big slacker.

• 36:41Chuck Nice?

  Here's what I'm saying. Stop making us all look so bad.

• 36:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  It takes so many different types of people to make anything happen. And I'm glad to be in a place where there is such a variety of people with so many different talents to throw at these things because we need them all.

• 37:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  MIT is geek central. So you're in arm's reach of anybody who knows anything that you need to know to make stuff happen.

• 37:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. I think of MIT as like the Hogwarts of technology.

• 37:17Speaker 03

  I want some of those moving sirkuses then.

• 37:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Animated paintings, yes, yes. That's totally what you want.

• 37:26Chuck Nice?

  So if you could take everything that you know, what is the one advancement that you would bring to satellite technology that would change everything?

• 37:41Speaker 03

  Do I have to only take one? I want two things.

• 37:43Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 37:44Speaker 03

  I want the satellite equivalent of space wifi.

• 37:48Chuck Nice?

  Oh, snap.

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice.

• 37:50Speaker 03

  So that's one thing I want. And then I want the satellite equivalent of gas stations.

• 37:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Filling stations in orbit, on orbit.

• 37:58Speaker 03

  So those are the two things I want.

• 38:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we need that for space travel in general. Otherwise, you know, we're stuck with the rocket equation. We did a whole, Chuck, I think we did an explainer on the rocket equation.

• 38:08Chuck Nice?

  We did.

• 38:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And even Artemis, you know, is 35 stories tall and it's basically all fuel.

• 38:17Chuck Nice?

  All fuel.

• 38:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Basically, you need the fuel to burn, to carry the fuel that you haven't burned yet, that you're going to burn to carry the fuel you haven't burned yet. So, right, if you have filling stations, that's a game changer.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 38:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, yeah, but Carrie, you have to refill the filling stations.

• 38:32Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, you do have to refill the filling stations somehow as well.

• 38:36Chuck Nice?

  Well, this has become a bigger problem than I thought, even when you just...

• 38:43Chuck Nice?

  This just keeps getting worse.

• 38:44Speaker 03

  We're gonna have to look at these asteroids and, you know, Lagrange points and trying to figure out how to put stations on them and get to and from these things with enough fuel and, you know, very efficient systems and or make sense, make ways to use solar energy if possible for propulsion.

• 39:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, or come up with a different fuel, right?

• 39:07Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you're still a fuel, I mean, you need a whole new thing.

• 39:12Chuck Nice?

  That's what I mean, but when I say different.

• 39:14Speaker 03

  Source of energy.

• 39:15Chuck Nice?

  I mean, source of.

• 39:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, thank you.

• 39:18Chuck Nice?

  I said, yeah, I was very inarticulate.

• 39:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we don't need, we don't mean ethanol versus, you know, gasoline versus whatever. We're talking warp drives, Captain. That's what I really want to do there. So we've mentioned this before, which I think many people don't know, engineering has two terminal degrees. One of them is the undergraduate degree, plenty of working people with a terminal undergraduate degrees and a masters. You're back in a university as an engineer. Does that mean you got a PhD?

• 39:52Speaker 03

  It does, it does. I did get a PhD. I didn't know that I was gonna do that, honestly, until probably my senior year of undergrad.

• 40:00Chuck Nice?

  Wow, just, just won't stop with the humble brag.

• 40:02Speaker 03

  No, it's true.

• 40:03Chuck Nice?

  Just can't, can't let it go, can we, Carrie?

• 40:06Speaker 03

  I have no idea.

• 40:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah, I got a PhD, you know, I didn't even know I was gonna do it. Yeah, I woke up one day.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  I'm that foolish, I'm telling you.

• 40:17Chuck Nice?

  By the way, I don't even know how this happened. I tripped going up the stairs and I would, well, there you have it, a Nobel Prize. How'd that happen? How the hell did that even happen?

• 40:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I think, no, but here's the, the reason why there, there's so few engineers with a PhD is because if you get a PhD and you work in a university, you get paid way less than you'd otherwise get paid in industry.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  It's a big problem.

• 40:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a, it's an issue.

• 40:47Chuck Nice?

  It's a big problem.

• 40:49Speaker 03

  Freedom salary, freedom salary.

• 40:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, do you want? Do you want to, you know, you want to work for the man, as they say, or do you want to be you be your own boss? And and as an academic, I mean, I cherish the academic life because I can say what I want and do what I want and go where I want. So it's but you need both, right? Because somebody's got to get the job done at the end of the day on budget,

• 41:11Speaker 03

  Very much so.

• 41:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  for a customer. And and the free thinkers are on another part of this. And without the free thinkers, there wouldn't be anything for the businesses to to jump on. I mean, we need you guys. So

• 41:22Speaker 03

  You know, I I agree, though, that industry is very important. And it's you need people with those types of infrastructures and resources to make it happen. With Raytheon, for example, they just recently, not too long, maybe a couple of years ago, bought a small satellite company called Blue Canyon that, you know, I built payloads and integrated payloads on and operated them on orbit. So you need you need sometimes you want to take your university project and your research and put it on something that someone's already built and send it up.

• 41:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And who's got pockets deep enough to do interesting things with it?

• 41:53Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 41:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For sure. All right, guys, we got it. We got to end it here. Kerry, it's been a delight to chat with you. And it's good to know that you exist in this world, thinking about these problems down on Earth that end up in space. And maybe if you if you make some if you invent some new kind of satellite, tell us first and we'll get you

• 42:12Speaker 03

  I will. I'm so grateful that you guys are here to help communicate these concepts and do such a good job of making it fun. So appreciate it very much.

• 42:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, look, I think the universe is a hilarious place. That's why.

• 42:22Speaker 03

  Really, it is.

• 42:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we're gonna we're gonna end it there. Chuck, always good to have you. All right, Kerry, do we find you on social media? You have a do you have a

• 42:32Speaker 03

  I do have a Twitter MIT Star Lab.

• 42:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  And not not a personal Twitter so much, but my lab keeps me busy.

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, good. So we can keep track of your lab there. Yeah, very good. Very good. And Chuck, you're still a Chuck Nice comic. We'll find you. Thank you, sir. Yes, I am. Find you on your social media handles. All right. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. You've been listening to, possibly even watching, StarTalk. As always, keep looking up.