Getting Samples From Enceladus Is Harder Than You Think 

I have never had a favorite journalist. I do now! I love the ad/music free podcast too 🎉

Thank you for not being a fake space channel. You describe and have interesting videos that are easy for me to understand.

Prof Mark is a great guest.

The 'Hardigrade' should be a grading system for how hardy stuff is when caught at orbital speeds. 1 Hardigrade is 50% survivability at approximately 1 km/s (precise: 825 meters per second / 1,845 miles per hour).

A mission to Enceladus is such an exciting prospect!

I really enjoyed this! Thank you, Prof. Burchell. I love tardigrades and Enceladus is my obsession. A perfect combination!

Super fun and informative interview. One of my favorite guests by far.

I find this channel completely fascinating. The million dollar question is, why are there so few people viewing

I love how much thought goes into that kind of missions. It goes so much further than I would ever think about. Makes me appreciate it even more.

I lost it when Fraser said this about tardigrades 🤣 “I think we’re just fortunate that they are so small otherwise we might have a problem”

Never even considered these questions. Thanks for sharing!

Describing the things he's slammed into walls at hypersonic speeds: "Yeah, we've fired all sorts of things at hypersonic speeds. We've done grains, we've done bacteria, we've done seeds, we've done grad students..."

This interview is great! so much detail and makes me excited for what's coming in the future.

This should be priority number one. It would give a answers to so many questions..

Cool interview! Thank you both.

Great interview, Fraser! You should bring back Professor Burchell for a future interview.

Fascinating to get his perspective, great episode!

Awesome job Mr. Cain. Very informative and great presentation of the information. The video was nice to see what appears to be raw video data of Enceladus and its accompanying satellites and such. Well done Sir.

Great work guys. What came to mind when hearing about this speed issue was the clever design of the air intakes on the super sonic airliner Concorde. These were designed to take in super sonic air flow and slow it to speeds that the engines could cope with. Maybe a similar design could be used to minimise the impact speed of the collectors.

Great show! Thanks

Fun of it were to be deposition based. Dingle dangle a cable with an array of deposition collectors. Maybe play with charge on the various plates to concentrate different materials. Think like dusty fan blades, crystallization, electroplating etc.

_"You launched tardigrades...with a gun?"_ Is probably one of the most inadvertently hilarious questions ever asked. 🤣

Based on some rough calculations, returning samples from Enceladus requires ~6000 m/s, minus your flyby speed, of delta-v. A jupiter flyby might also save ~600 m/s.

@professor Mark Burchell, we not only have Lego in California, we have Legoland, California

Can you please interview this man again ASAP? About anything. Talk about wheat toast vs sour dough. Seriously, I could listen to this mans voice forever. I dont me to poo poo the topic either. I am super excited about our watery, icy moons and hope we get there sooner than later to find out whats going on. But also, what a voice! Great interview!

The mission closest to my heart! Let's make it low-speed collection and sample-return. Seemingly unrelated, I also liked the discussion around 'loitering' spacecraft. But it may be related. How about this: Simple small cheap spacecraft that can loiter all around the solar system with the ability to accept sample containers and launch them back to Earth. Then it's one less thing to worry about when designing future sample probes. Just get your samples to one of these sample shuttles and you're done!

This was good

Could the sample collector spin like a weather vane, lowering the impact velocity? Could this make a significant difference or would it not lower the velocity enough?

what an interesting man. awesome

Excellent lecture, Professor Mark Burchell.

Enter long-term orbit around Enceladus with a pair of satellites equipped for laser spectroscopy. Get all the info on compounds liberated over time without all the messy handling.

Thank you for this talk it was very exciting. The Kessler issue could we use electro statics to redirect small particles ? If we could slow or slingshot the particles into a stream toward the atmosphere we can clean a huge area rather quickly?

Damn, I was thinking this was a Hell Divers 2 video lol... Glad it ended up being Fraser though!

I like this video its interestyng

Great question. Maybe a probe that scans contents merely passing through and not collected. At what capability can we gather all spectrums of data quickly without interacting with the collector.

Hello Dr. Burchell, I'm from People for the Ethical Treatment of Tardigrades... 😂😂

I would say it's easier than you think. Wherever it is, design a lander that can get close and walk the rest of the way. Then stick its tongue & nose into those plumes, maybe put it in a bucket and bring it back? Don't catch stuff at Mach 36. Land there and catch it at 300 km/h. There is at least one briny version of tardigrade here on Earth. They live everywhere, mostly, here on Earth. We really need a sample return mission for just about every moon in the solar system. Just don't drink it when it gets back! "Waters of Mars" was a dramatized documentary. Space junk cleanup should be our top space priority, rather than launching new stuff.

I was trying to find this to show a mate the tardegrade impactor test that is

I keep on commenting on NASA pages that we should focus more on studying Enceladus, not Titan. They probably know it already but I don't want them to send Dragonfly to Titan just yet because we have no comprehensive and clear maps of Titan's surface so Dragonfly might end up just hitting a boulder and get derailed

Excellent interview, a lot of interesting stuff. Never mind catching a space whale, better watch out for Enceladian Tardigrades!!

Could the velocity of the sample be used to perform some sort of mass spectroscopy ?

So basically 2 problems. Collecting the fragments without destroying them, and bringing them back for analysis without the risk of contamination. Analyse it in space. Or land a lander by the eruptions and do analysis on the ground. Should be super cool and interesting. It can stay behind and do its job until it runs out of power and just send us images via an orbiter.

Would it be possible to collect the water ice and somehow process it into a fuel an ion engine could use? - so you could essentially refuel at Enceladus and visit other parts of the system.

Now, I work in a warehouse, not in the aerospace industry, but I understand that wings generate lift by using surface curvature to manipulate the velocity and pressure differential between the top and bottom of a wing. How difficult could it be to design a series of wing-like louvers in a collector to slow down the effective collection velocity without slowing down the spacecraft velocity?

Would love to hear his thoughts on sending probes to other solar systems at a fraction of the speed of light and how the space dust impacts will effect them

Use multiple methods at once including a small mobile lander that will launch a sample back up to the orbiting mothership. Use aerogels to collect samples that will suffer much reduced impact effects and remain far less altered after collection by cushioning the impact. Then launch a small return craft form the mothership after samples are all transferred into it, for a return to earth using an ion drive engine.

Can Aerogel be used?

What about using a collector filled with aerogel to collect samples at higher speed? I think you need a larger faster nuclear powered ship to drop rovers, probes and collect samples from anything along the way you can line up. You have a lot of power to transmit data back to earth at higher baud rates. It could be a reuseable vessel. First try could be to the Jovian system. You could plan to build copies of the same ships for Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Plutonian systems to reduce costs.

Enceladus isn't the only place with water plumes, right? Triton also has cryovolcanos spewing water high up.

Rotovator orbitor with long cables and scoops attached rotating to the orbitor direction to make the downward scoop pass dwell time relatively slower than the orbital speed, thus getting sub km/s scoops of plume material.

Can we leverage the already funded Titan octo-copter to get a small cheap flyby or sample return probe of Enceladus? I mean the titan onto-copter is already going to the Saturn system so you have a vehicle capable of performing the delta-v already to be captured by Saturn with all the necessary high bandwidth communications and, most importantly, power (from the RTG). Also, it has a mass spectrometer on board which could be used for in-situ characterization of any samples! So, first the combined Titan/Enceladus mission enters the Saturn system. Then, before the onto-copter is dropped on Titan, you use Titan for gravity assist, and have some flybys of Enceladus. On the Enceladus probe there is a funnel that redirects the flakes/grains onto an impact target. Maybe it'll be like the Stardust comet sample return (aerogel) or perhaps it'll have additional means of slowing down the sample before impact (a very thin plastic bag of inert gas? A very high speed centrifuge or "wind vane" as someone else mentioned?). With more time, perhaps a more exotic means could be developed to decelerate the sample (reverse ion engine with magnetic deceleration?). The mass spectrometer would verify that good samples were obtained thus indicating if more flybys are needed. It also gives some immediate science return. This relies on the octo-copter's high bandwidth comm. and power to coordinate and process the data. After this sample collection campaign is finished, the onto-copter is dropped off at Titan. Now the Enceladus probe uses a (relatively) small amount of propellant to use Titan as a gravity assist to begin the long fall to the inner solar system (using Jupiter as well). This return probe will just have a small antennae and some smallish solar panels (with battery!) to provide the bare minimum of comm. and power at Saturn distance (no science return, just very intermittent navigation whenever the battery has been trickle charged). If a certain amount of planetary protection risk is acceptable, it can do a direct, high-delta V re-entry to earth. (Talk to the Varda people about keeping biological samples isolated! :). Otherwise some sort of recovery in space (high speed rendezvous by small ion powered space tug?) would be necessary. (I'm assuming it's too risky to use aerobraking to get it into orbit). Since it probably wouldn't be back till around 2040 there would be plenty of time to develop the tech. The bonus is you wouldn't need to carry a heavy heat shield. Or if you're willing to wait, maybe you could use (a lot) of creative gravity assists to get it into earth space. Or instead, the mass of the return propulsion, heat shield and solar panels, could instead be used for a suite of scientific instruments for analysis at Enceladus (electron microscope? metabolic/dna detection?). This would require that the Titan onto-copter drop off be delayed because it'll need its power and comm. systems but that's better than bringing another set all the way from earth!

I think the Orbilander is just that, both a orbiter and a lander in one. They did a trade off study and that returned the most science for the money. I think it would do a year or two in orbit and then land, so the detection instruments and RTG get reused.

Like. How can we test for life on or near Enceladus remotely?

question: Is there any material that can be sprayed in low orbit and that sticks to debris pieces to make them heavier, thus forcing them to descend until they burn up in the atmosphere? Can't we throw a couple of tons of rubber or some sticky material that eventually causes the debris pieces to burn up in the atmosphere?

Perhaps a Solar Sail Mission of some kind?

I think this gives a perfect opportunity to point out 1 of the differences between NASA and cooperate aerospace. NASA has no need to worry about ROI "Return on Investment". Corporations are not known to publicly share all the work / science / inventions learned from the process of doing a task. Just think how much NASSA would have to of charged scientists and other nations for the returned moon samples that would allow them to study and how much those scientist's would need too charge others to look over and use the science they performed. Causing a never ending cycle of -- Science is expensive --

We need to fund the Enceladus League of the NHL. LET'S GOOOOO!

I never once assumed we would be trying to get samples of actual life, I thought we would be looking for signs of it! Such an interesting subject but I was not expecting one of the authors of the study! A friend of mine (who is not a scientist) heard about it and asked why? I couldn't give a moral explanation and apparently that's why people distrust scientists 😅 I love astrology and I love biology but the answers we got from that study didn't give us any groundbreaking or insightful information. I'm very surprised it was recent and got ethical approval. It might have lost us more support than it was worth!

Tardigrades.... I'm in.

at first i thought, wow that´s rude he never asked for the name of his book once. then the next few interviews and that same rudeness consisted ^^ although you can of course do both, i must say how refreshing it is to hear scientist just talk about their science rather than promote their latest book. these interviews are really the meat of the channel for me.

Fraser, if I ever get one of those interdimensional crafts we have been seeing on the news, or figure out reactionless drive systems... You and I will go back to Enceladus and grab whatever samples you want.

22:35 if you make it to Enceladus: no, you cannot go to Ganymede as well.

Can a tardigrade hitch a ride on a probe to Enceladus and survive in the atmosphere and then multiply? ✴

Has it been proven that Enceladus is sharting out liquid water and not just ice sublimation ?

I hope we get these fantastic price drops in launch costs so we could send heavy probes everywhere at every launch window

If a lander just collects the material that falls back to the surface wouldn't that introduce a selection bias ?

I would really worry about the lander concept. How do you prevent the lander from contaminating the Enceladus ocean? Enceledus has a smooth surface because it is continuously resurfaced. There must be a continuous exchange of material between the surface and the interior. Which means if you leave anything on the surface, eventually it will find its way to the interior. Even if that is a slow process that takes 1000 years, the surface of Enceladus is about -200C. I imagine that could preserve any stowaway bacteria for a very long time. Yes, they do try to sterilize probes as much as possible. But unless you can put your entire spacecraft in an oven and bake it for days, there's no way to really sterilize a compact object like that completely. That's why they used Cassini's last fuel to fly it into Saturn, rather than using that last deltaV to do more science. They sterilized Cassini as best they could, but they were still worried about the possibility of it eventually contaminating Titan or Enceladus. Ideally we would sterilize our probes by launching them and then bake them once they reach orbit. But we really can't do that without damaging delicate electronics and sensors. So instead we have to sterilize probes by meticulously wiping down every exterior and interior surface. And that can never be a perfectly effective process.

Fascinating topic. Dr. Burchell is clearly a brilliant and articulate chap....but c'mon professor, "Do you guys use legos out in California?" Ouch!! 😂

lets breed bigger tardigrades!

50:09 Mission Sienfeld: The interstellar mission to nowhere

thank you....

YaaaaaaaaaawwwwwW Stuff is hard

If we find out there is a thriving ecosystem there would be have the wisdom to leave it alone in order to avoid cross-contamination? Would we just sample the content of the plumes or would we dare to-breech the icy shell, whatever the consequences might be for the pristine biosphere within? 🤔

How about a collector made of hard metal that spirals in on itself. Particles will then hit on an angle and slow down as they slide in around the spiral. Like a worm snail shell.

It can be a Combination of Both Worlds: a Lander but not touching down and an Orbiter but not staying in Orbit? An Orbital Diver.. It Could plunge from Orbit doing steady dives with Lowest possible Speed, bottom Altitude of 100-80Km to the Surface + Collecting Upper Orbit Partcles Up to a 1000Km. With an RTG and Ion Engine and Slow Steady Burn Carefully planned, you can have Samples from both Worlds. Ofcourse thats just a Genetal idea. Hope that helps

🔹 Consider using a SpaceX StarShip and Starlink Pez Dispenser vessel. 🔹 One vessel that splits into 3+ spacecraft, using mass changes to reduce velocities: 1) primary delivery vessel as a Saturn orbiter and higher speed communications relay, 2) creative gravity assisted deceleration around Enceladus and other moons as backup sampler and intermediate communications vessel, and 3) properly inserting various lander samplers & low speed orbit samplers. - if the Pez Dispenser model, launch a couple Starlink sized form factors to Saturn’s Lagrange Trojans.

A sample return from Saturn, how long would it take?

How long ago did Andromeda start moving towards the Milky Way? At that time how far away was it from us?

00:01:31 The waterbear? Knowing those little buggers, I am worried about the collector. by the way, can the chicken gun guys (testing wind screens) graduate UP to get this job?

I can't wait for a return mission. #SpaceWhales

I just had another ridiculous idea. If you are in space, the vessel can be any shape, right? What if it is bowl-shaped? If you then pump a chemically-inert gas into the bowl and are traveling at a velocity sufficient to keep that gas from escaping over the edges, you could use a gas net to trap particles.

Tardigrades survived impacts of up to 1km/s. But how fast did grad students survive impacts?

I presented MS Copilot with a question about Celestial Mechanics. It returned this answer: "Indeed, your analogy captures an essential concept in celestial mechanics. While predicting exact intersections is challenging, it is physically possible for Earth’s orbit to intersect a previous position of Saturn, albeit over vast timescales." So, if the previous answer from Copilot is indeed true, the Earth could theoretically intersect the orbit of any number Planets and Moons in our Solar System. I think orbital mechanics makes the predictions of such intersections possible. If there were appropriate "Collectors" in Earth orbit, it might be possible for them to collect samples ejected from a target Planet or Moon at an earlier date. The "background interference" of material from the other Planets or Moons would have to be subtracted from the Target, but various forms of "background interference" are removed all the time from Data in Scientific collections. The question I have is, would there be enough Particles/Molecules, etc. to make a large enough sample collected from the Target to be meaningful? 🤷‍♀

It's interesting how Europa's cracks are brown and reddish but the ones on Enceladus seems to look "cleaner". I wonder if one day we discover that the staining on Europa has something to do with life but the ones on Enceladus are completely sterile.

So there is no way to know how old one of this tardis is? If they were frozen and revived. Could be 1 year or 1000 years?

Lander. It can be the whole spacecraft as the gravity well isn't so high. Do in situ analysis like the Mars missions do with lab on the lander/rover. Microscopes, spectrographic analysis. Plus no worry about infecting earth with any alien microbes with the return sample mission ideas.

We only need a lander with a drilling rig with abilities to launch a submersible on a long cable to send live images of Aquaphibians and Mermaids. Shouldnt cost much. 😂

ok how about a combo mission a small flyby probe with aerogel for a free return mission dropped off some time before an orbiter that gets caught by Jupiter and eventually into a slow flybys of Enceladus , a small Micro rover maybe smaller that Sojourner with an airbag landing system current technology is much smaller , less energy hungry, lighter and have far greater computing powers than Cassini and Sojourner so a combo system might be doable

Back to Engeladaus? When were we there?

Not to throw cold water on the subject, but I have a hard time seeing how life, especially complex life, can develop on deep ocean worlds. Thermal vents are proposed as an energy source and a place for complex organics to develop. But, the heat will produce unbounded currents that will whisk any reaction products away. Creation of life requires a number of somewhat unlikely chemical reactions. Either you build up a huge concentration of intermediate reaction products all over the ocean or you somehow pin them down in one place so they can build up. The latter is possible if there are some minerals that can hold on to a variety of those intermediate products, or maybe a porous mineral will do. Assume you can build microbes. Assume thermal vents provide all the energy needed. Ät the bottom of that deep ocean, you lack anything like the widespread energy sources that cover every meter of Earth's surface and which have powered life and driven evolution for billions of years. If populations remain small, evolution is slow. So, one celled microbes may exist, maybe even small mulicellular organisms, though I doubt it. Someone, please prove me wrong.

Those poor tardigrades 😂😂

Sample return or don't go. Having access to samples is almost immeasurably l better than any other ?'s you will get from in situ analysis. I would much rather they committed to much simpler scientific instruments and get samples back than not. There have been numerous successful returns from comets and asteroids now so it's definitely not untested would just need to really push the limits for engineering to get it done quickly, some brute force rockets would help.

I think it would be pretty hard. I suppose it would be even harder than that.

If Tardigrades were bigger, their cell structure would also be different and they wouldnt be so able to survive things that would kill other species.

Send little more than a 3-D printer out to interstellar space so that after the decades it takes to get there, you can have the latest technology aboard rather than only legacy technology.

So all we have to do to fix Mars is push Enceladus into and orbit around Mars ( yeah impossible hard to engineer ), then use the plumes to spray Mars with water to seed the atmosphere with water ( it would prob be solid by then as no tidal forces so the water would be solid by the time Enceladus reached Mars, so you would have to blow chunks off it ) and cause rain of ice blocks on Mars !!! ( so we end up having a planet with reasonable gravity with lots of water for fuel and human consumption )

I thought the title said "Getting Samples From Enchiladas."

Prof Burchell mentions NASA & ESA regularly, but increasingly India will come into that frame based on their recent record - opening up further opportunities.

i don't like sacrificing Tratigrades like this, its just not humane

Amazing interview, really enjoyed it. Starship could be a game changer as far as mass to orbit and the potential to refuel in Earth orbit for a powered outer plant mission. Whole new designs could be considered when 100 tones + are a possibility. I don't know if anyone has crowdfunded a big mission before. I am certain a mission of this importance would attract a worldwide funding stream from the public and matched funded donations from the big space nations working together on instruments and propulsion could get a series of big projects going. Why should something as humanity changing like finding life be so dependent on the American taxpayer and NASA (awesome that they are)? 10 dollars a month everyone?