This Week in Space 146 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
 

00:00 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Coming up on this episode of this Week in Space. We're going to talk with Dr El Sayed Talat of the University Space Research Association. We've got space in the name, so you know we love it and you know you want to be there, so don't miss it. Tune in.

00:14 - TWiT.tv (Announcement)
Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is TWiT.

00:22 - Rod Pyle (Host)
This is this Week in Space, episode number 146, recorded on January 31st 2025. All the way with the USRA. Hello and welcome to another episode of this Week in Space, the All the Way with the USRA edition.

00:37 - Tariq Malik (Host)
USRA, usra.

00:41 - Rod Pyle (Host)
We'll get you another letter for your Letterman's jacket for USRA. I am Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief of Bad-Aster Magazine, and I'm joined to my warm and fuzzy glee by my friend Tarek Malek, editor-in-chief at the one the only, Spacecom. Hello, partner, yes.

00:57 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Hey, hey, rod, I'm so excited to be here. You said we were going to be talking about universities and I am wearing my USC Letterman's jacket. Like I said, I would last episode to celebrate. Right, we're going to just talk about our rivalries. Is that what we're talking about today?

01:11 - Rod Pyle (Host)
There is no rivalry. I went to Stanford, which is an actual university, not a place for spoiled children to buy their degrees. Wow, oh dear.

01:19 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Wow, this week I was teeing you up for our guest. But thanks for the spike in the eye, ryan, sorry.

01:27 - Rod Pyle (Host)
This week we'll be speaking with Dr El-Sayed Talat, who is the new president and CEO of the University Space Research Association, which is a group we're talking about. It's funny, I didn't know much about them until a few years ago when Soraya I guess she's an administrative executive associate something reached out to me and started telling me about the work they were doing. I thought, wow, this is great. So we started carrying articles about them in the magazine and so forth, and they're huge in the university and space industry research world, putting those people together along with NASA. So they're a really cool outfit and we're going to learn more about that shortly. But first we need to ask you to not forget to do us a solid and make sure to like, subscribe and do the other cool podcast things, because we need your love. We need your love. Alright, you have my love Rod.

02:20 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You have my love, you know Ew. And now, don't make it weird.

02:27 - Rod Pyle (Host)
We'll repair our traditionally tragically unfunny humor segment with this joke from I hope I pronounced this right John Kostraus, who's a physics student. Hey, tarek, yes, rod. What did the astronaut say to her lover? What did the astronaut say to her lover Are you approaching?

02:50 - Tariq Malik (Host)
apogee, or have you fallen for me yet?

02:51 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I love it. That's an orbit joke. I'll take that one Now. I've heard that some people want to blow themselves into the asteroid belt when it's joke time in this show. But you can help by sending your best, worst or most indifferent space joke to twist at twittv, Because unless we've used it at least once, sometimes a couple of times, I keep them all and I put them in a roster and we do scroll through them and we give you on-air credit Although if you don't want credit, you could tell me that and it's a lot of fun, All right, so let's go to some headlines.

03:24 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Headlines Headline news. It's a lot of fun, all right, so let's go to some headlines.

03:29 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Headlines. Headline news man anthony is on it with the push buttons, isn't it?

03:35 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I tell you I was, I was going to try to lip sync it, but I it's. She says headline news, but like earlier than when I think it's going to come, and then I, I miss it, like entirely so I'll send you the file so you can listen to it I'll practice I'll rehearse so from spacecom, as most of our stories are.

03:50 - Rod Pyle (Host)
we have an errant asteroid sighting that's right, we're gonna lead with that one.

03:54 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's the one that we're gonna lead one. Oh, wait, wait. Yes, we got a couple of asteroids, that's right, yeah yeah, yeah that's right, it's the asteroid. That wasn't actually. Uh, and this, this, this is actually a story that came up at the American Astronomical Society. I was walking through the what do you call it? Like that place with all the booths, the event space, anyway.

04:19
I was walking through that the exhibitors yeah, the exhibit hall and astronomer Jonathan McDowell pulled me aside the space tracker of Jonathan's space report, also at Harvard-Smithsonian and he's like hey, did you know about the asteroid that just got deleted? And I was like no, john, tell me more. And he told me this wild story about how astronomers found an asteroid earlier this year, just at the turn of the year, and it turned out that it was not an asteroid at all. Like the next day they realized that it was Elon Musk's Tesla from the Falcon Heavy launch in 2018. Because it's still up there, they launched it, it's orbiting the sun, right and so they had to delete it.

05:03
And the Minor Planet Center, the group that announces the new discoveries, that gives them their names and all that stuff, had to actually issue a retraction to delete the entry, delete the asteroid from the records, because it is not an asteroid at all. And Jonathan actually talked about this at AAS during a panel called Dark Skies, and it was one of a couple to talk about just the issues that astronomers are facing in this more modern spaceflight era. And he told me on the phone this week that it's actually something that is not very uncommon. Nasa's old WMAP space telescope space observatory at L2, was miscategorized as an asteroid many times during its mission life, because astronomers would be looking out there, you know, on the night side of Earth, and it was at L2, a million miles away, opposite side of the sun, and they would think it was an asteroid until it fired its thrusters and started moving. And then they're like oh, we got to go back.

06:03 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So at the time Although Avi Loeb would be very excited about that if it turned out, it really was an asteroid that was firing thrusters.

06:11 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So at the time it wasn't like a huge problem, but it was just something that was an annoyance. But we are in a new era now. Spacex launched 134 Falcon missions last year alone more than most countries do, and a lot of these countries, or a lot of these companies and some countries some of the new players are just throwing their upper stages out into the cosmos rather than having them re-enter, because it's easier to do it that way and they're getting lost out there until we rediscover them years later and we think that there's something else. Now, why is this important and not just you know a funny story about Elon Musk's car in space? Well, because these astronomers are trying to get an accurate picture of the solar system, of where stuff is, of where these asteroids are and, more importantly, where these near-Earth asteroids are. Because we need to know where they are, so that we can need to know if some of them are a problem or a threat that we're going to have to deal with, if it's going to come smack us in the face. You know, a decade plus down the line, having an inaccurate census of that is going to be an issue. Uh, and similarly uh, as more and more of these companies become more active in space. There's a whole space transparency, not about who's responsible for what you know.

07:19
Jonathan told me, if you know, on earth we have to file flight plans to fly from city to city. So why would you not have to file a flight plan if you're going to another planet, for example in space? Why not? It's pretty basic. So they'd like to have a database set up for that. And there are other companies, like Astroforge, which actually came up from some of our readers in the comments while we're recording this video, who have tried to keep things on the DL right Because of proprietary information. Astroforge is a space mining company that wants to mine an asteroid, reap all those juicy metals that it has and make a profit somehow and for a long time, because they're launching a mission next month. As we're recording this, but weeks away from us recording this, they are launching a mission to said asteroid. They weren't telling people where this Odin spacecraft was going to go, because they didn't want their competitors to know, don't want claim jumpers out there, exactly right. But that's an issue because if astronomers don't know that there's a spacecraft out there going to an asteroid, they're going to think that those spacecraft that they find could be another asteroid, mistake it for something else, and then you have this inaccurate picture again about what's actually out there, and so that's a really big issue.

08:35
The American Astronomical Society released a statement last September of which Jonathan was part of the subcommittee that did it calling for more transparency from these companies and these government agencies as they get more active in space. And it seems to have had an effect, because this week, as we're recording this, astroforge announced what asteroid they were in fact going to go to, and the CEO there said in part it was because they wanted to calm some people down. They saw the pushback from the scientific community and they wanted to identify it, and it's called actually, what is it? It's called 22OB5. It's a 100-meter-plus M asteroid M-class asteroid, pardon me and they're hoping that people might look at it, share data with them, and then they'll get more information about it as they get ready to fly there.

09:29
So it seemed Jonathan called that kind of a big victory for space transparency. So that's great that that's happened, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot more of these companies flying. So it is an issue, not just a funny story, and I just thought we would. I'd like to highlight that for our top story today.

09:45 - Rod Pyle (Host)
All right. Well, now that you've been chewing scenery for about 17 minutes, why don't you pick the next story?

09:54 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Because we're probably going to run out of time. All right, well, let's pick one that you grabbed. Then you know, you picked the SpaceX and their last dragon from Mike Sheets over at CNBC.

10:04 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It sounds like a kid's movie, doesn't it? The Last Dragon?

10:07
I know right, I saw that and I thought oh so they're building their last, they're completing their fifth Crew Dragon capsule. I don't think this includes the cargo Dragon capsules, dragon 1. Because they can fly so many times, I guess they figure this will last them until Starship comes online, which we hope is not too distant future. At this point, the five dragons are rated to each fly five times. In theory, which would be 25 flights, but they are talking about trying to rate them if NASA agrees for 15 flights, which kind of puts them up in space shuttle territory in terms of visibility yeah, that's astonishing then discovery.

10:48 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Discovery flew like 25, 27 times, something like that.

10:51 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I don't remember a lot, yeah, yeah, but still this is and you know I mean kudos to nasa this is a lot simpler than a space shuttle. It's smaller, it's less complex, it doesn't have to fly through the atmosphere and come in for a landing and all that kind of stuff. But still, you know, for a private company which has not been doing it that long less than 10 years in terms of crewed flights, way less than 10 years, yeah.

11:18 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I find this story very interesting because it feels like a sea change or a turning point in like the whole commercial crewed flight operations like a sea change or a turning point in like the whole commercial crewed flight operations.

11:31
We've had this whole buildup over the last 10 plus years to first of all build a spacecraft and then to fly them, get them operational, which they are now. I think we can all agree to the point where they're reflying them over and over again. And now here we are at a point where they're going to say you know what, we have enough. We have our stable of ships. We think that they're dependable. We don't need to build more multimillion dollar ships for now, which, of course, is what NASA did at the end of the 80s, or those at 90, whatever, when Endeavour finally rolled out. And then that was it for 30 years. 20 years, that was it. That's all we had. And now SpaceX seems to be at that turning point too. Or they're going to pull something else and have a whole other vehicle Starship. You know which? They're going to say we don't need more.

12:15
Oh you fanboy we can launch. Are we going to talk about that? I guess we're going to now, but anyway, I just thought it was very, very interesting. Plus, this was from linkedin. This is a newsletter that michael sheets writes. I'm gonna have to make sure that I subscribe to this, so yeah, it's a good newsletter.

12:31 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Uh, I just get the teasers for it. Um, I guess we really can't close this off without you talking about the 200 foot wide asteroid that's going to come wipe out downtown los angeles no, or is it not even a decade seven?

12:43 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Or is it Not even a decade seven years? No, no, it's got like a 1.3% chance.

12:49
That's right, a non-zero, like it's 99% not going to hit us. But this was announced this week. Actually, this is from spacecom. This is a story that my colleague, rob Lee, wrote. But there is an asteroid, a near-Earth asteroid, called what is the name of this asteroid? I didn't pull that, oh, 2024 YR4. Yr me, you know, is what I'm wondering right now. But it may make a close approach to the Earth in eight years and it's between 40 and 100 meters wide, according to the scientists that we spoke with oh, so this number we had was an average.

13:27
Well, yeah, yeah, it's about that's the range. Right, that's like the range.

13:33 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So wait, if it's got a 1.3% estimated chance and obviously they're going to refine that as they keep observing it how does it equate to 1 in 83 chance? I'm a little confused here.

13:45 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You know, I asked Rob the same question.

13:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It's a math thing.

13:49 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I think that 1 in 83 is 1.2%. Chance is what that is, and NASA actually put out a statement a very short one about earlier this week. You know, to try to remind people not to get too carried away. You know they said it was more than 1% chance of hitting, but that means it's a 99% chance that it's not going to hit and that people shouldn't like freak out. In fact, heidi Hamel over at the Planetary Society, they have a really great rundown about this asteroid and she just reminds everyone you've got more chance getting hit by a car than getting hit by this asteroid.

14:31 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Having been hit by cars four or five times in my life, that's not terribly comforting.

14:36 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I just realized that you and I are in the same boat with that, because I've been hit three, four times. Four times too.

14:42 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Did you ever have a complete rollover?

14:45 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No.

14:45 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Those are exciting, no, no.

14:48 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I almost drove off into the LA River, though, because I spun out on the freeway, so yeah, and I went through all that trouble to spread that oil and it just didn't work. Oh no, it was a giant traffic cone the size of a person, lying in the front of the road at 3 in the morning.

15:03 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Oh, we used to call those plastic pedestrians. We'd go out and run them down late at night because I was very young. Don't get any ideas, I was a teenager.

15:12 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So that was you that was throwing them on the 710 freeway on the way in the morning. Oh my God.

15:16 - Rod Pyle (Host)
They were stupid enough to give us driver's licenses at the age of 16. What did they expect?

15:22 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Oh, this is fun. Speaking of that, congratulations to my daughter, zadie. She passed her driver's ed test today. Also this week, it's our 20th anniversary for my wife and I for our wedding anniversary.

15:33 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's exciting. Any other you want to tell us about your gallstones or anything? Oh boy, this is our news section.

15:43 - Tariq Malik (Host)
This is news that's important to me everybody.

15:45 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Let's see, do I have anything? No, my life is so plain and ordinary. Well, I lost five pounds, but that's all right.

15:51 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Hey, that's great, well done. Hey, where's the thing, anthony? Come on, where's the horn? There we go.

15:59 - Rod Pyle (Host)
What do they call those things? Anyway, I'm sorry we're burning too much time here. Good, is there anything else we want to cover, or did we hit our mark?

16:08 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I think that's enough for now.

16:09 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I think that's enough for now, okay, so let's we're going to go to a quick break here and we'll be back with Dr El-Said Talat and we'll talk about the USRA, which is going to be a very cool conversation. He's an interesting guy, so don't go anywhere. That's an order. Welcome back everyone. And we're here now with Dr El-Said Talat and his history, talking about the University Space Research Association, and this is a group that I've been aware of for a number of years thanks to a woman named Soraya who works there. That's been been very good to me and provided me a lot of material over the years. And, elsa, how long have you been the chief of the organization? Now? This is day five.

17:04
Day five.

17:05 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
Wow, it's been fantastic. I'm very excited and enthusiastic about heading up and helping them, and also very excited to talk to you guys.

17:19 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, that's great, and I'm really excited for you in this new position and I've admired this organization for a long time, which has its origins back starting the same year as the Apollo 11 landing and largely in service of the Apollo program. But I was going through your website earlier this week and I'm literally stunned at how much territory you folks cover with the USRA. I mean, it's just amazing how many things you're involved with. So maybe you could talk about the organization a bit, if you would.

17:50 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, as you said, it was started in 1969 to really buy NASA and the National Academies for Science and Engineering and Mathematics orastatic, excuse me and really to bring researchers from universities to work on NASA projects and NASA problems, particularly the lunar samples at the time, and it's grown into many areas of innovation and discovery that it's done, including a lot of workforce development that USRA has done over the years and continues to do.

18:34 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And for you, I'm curious what brought you to space in general, because, of course, this isn't your first rodeo. You were I believe you were the director of the Office of Space Weather Observations right at NOAA most recently, but you know you have a long history with space. What brought you to space in particular? Was there something when you were a kid that hooked you when you were young, or was it something you found later on while studying something completely different?

19:03 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
Just about everything in space hooked me when I was a kid. I wanted to do anything above the ground, anything flying, anything orbiting, anything exploring out into the solar system. I mean, certainly I remember getting National Geographic's the old ones, the gold ones and seeing all the Voyager pictures and the different times it's visited the different planets and just being amazed by the discovery that was going on. So I wanted to always work in space and thankfully I've gotten the opportunity, both from kind of building instrumentation to look up with satellites flying through, and also doing a lot of different science projects that address different aspects of space. And what attracted me to USRA is the breadth, as you said, of everything that it does. It really does heliophysics, astrophysics and earth science, as well as space nuclear propulsion Very, very cool Something that's preparing for the future and really new breaking things with AI and ML and different techniques that are being developed in some of our institutions here, and then also very cool things with International Space Station and low gravity science International Space Station and low gravity science.

20:52
And what's really what I really was excited to come here for is to is that breadth there and also the kind of that cross fertilization that you can have in such a, such an organization, so so where you know, traditionally we've seen science being done kind of in a siloed fashion. Where you know, traditionally we've seen science being done kind of in a siloed fashion where you know you have your astrophysics and then you have your earth science and you have your data analytics, for instance With USRA. What we have going and what I'd like to see grow is kind of that cross-collaboration across these disciplines and using the techniques that each discipline has and seeing if it applies other ways, and then using the new techniques we have for artificial intelligence, machine learning, and applying them across USRA.

21:43 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You know, it took me much too long to realize, when you said AI and ML, that ML was machine learning. So I think that I've learned nothing from these machines, right? No, they're learning from us.

21:57
Was there. My most direct next question was going to be what was it about USRA that really grabbed you? But you kind of touched on that, but I'm curious, just kind of touched on that, but I'm curious just kind of, given your, your background with well, most recently with space weather, but with that that space hook is, is there like one specific section that that you really gravitate to the most, like when you're on lunch break this week, uh, uh, settling in, uh, you know which division do you kind of go and hang out with to see all the cool blips and beeps that are going on on the computers behind them? Absolutely not. No favorites. Like a good parent, like a good parent.

22:35 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
All of them are very, very interesting and they're all interesting in unique ways. I'm learning something new. I've been here for five days, but I'm learning something new every day about each different activity that we do. You know, for instance, I did not know that USRA has been in the artificial intelligence business since the 1980s for using AI for deep space exploration were done by USRA in collaboration with others, and then just more recently I mean it's not just historical, but more recently they've implemented AI in how air traffic control happens. I know this is a very, very sad, sad day for us in this area, but they've demonstrated that in Houston for efficiency and coordination of planes using AI and ML in that application.

23:42 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, that's a real down to earth type of applications there too. That's right Right.

23:47 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
And so. So I mean I think I think we have examples of that across all, all of our disciplines, where you have the the Institute in uh uh in in Huntsville that's doing heliophysics work, and you mentioned space weather, which has applications towards national security and space situation awareness that not only our industry needs but our national security partners also need that understanding. And then the Earth from Space Institute, where it's mapping all the greenhouse gases that are being emitted, because we really have to understand our environment, and so these applications are not just cutting-edge science but they have real-world impacts that we can use now.

24:41 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So you said something before that that caught. Caught me, because I'm a nuclear propulsion fanatic.

24:48
I don't understand it as well as I should, but I am excited about it. I was a big fan of the NERVA program, from what little I knew about it when I was young. But what is your involvement? Because that really does seem to be. You know, we look at what SpaceX is doing a Starship and think, well, great, you know, we can make it to Mars in six-ish months maybe, but nuclear propulsion really seems to be the holy grail, at least for the near term. What's your involvement there?

25:16 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
So we have the Center for Space Nuclear Research out in Idaho Falls. That really is an incubation hub for not only workforce development in terms of internships and scholars, but it's also new partnerships with industry, academia, to advance space nuclear propulsion. And that's one of the things I'm learning about right now that I'm very excited about because I really do see this as key to our exploration future, both from a commercial standpoint but also from a scientific standpoint. Understanding and developing that technology is going to really be a game changer when we go out into the solar system, and that's where we're building that capacity out in Idaho and it's it's a very exciting development. We have just broke ground on a or we're developing. We just built a new facility to to provide space for for these innovative projects and activities there.

26:26 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So I'll assume that's a conventional fission reactor heating up fuels for high ISP, as opposed to another one of my favorites, which is Project Orion nuclear pulse propulsion.

26:40 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
I will have to get back to you on that. I don't know enough about that. To answer that correctly. Project Orion was a little about that, to answer that correctly.

26:46 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Project Orion was a little bit on the science fiction side. It was a design that ejected small nuclear warheads out the back of the spacecraft. But I mean it's Freeman Dyson and a bunch of other people with General Atomics, so it apparently would work. But you know, launching it's a little nasty. We're going to pause here for a quick break and we'll be right back, so stand by.

27:07 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, you know it's 2025, which is a new year for us. I know that we're kind of just rounding out the first month of the year, but we're at the start of a year, You're at your start at your tenure at USRA and I'm curious kind of what you see on the horizon for, maybe for this year or just overall, as either like the biggest challenge facing the group or your scientists overall this year that you're hoping to achieve, or maybe like the big project that you want to have that notch in your belt for by the end of the year.

27:54 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
Well, I think we have a lot of different activities that we have going across the organization. Each has its own different milestones, et cetera. But I'm looking forward to some of the discoveries we're making coming out. We just had a recent paper, for instance, that went out about looking for water on the moon and, uh, and, and how, how, strategies to, how to bring that, bring that back, um, so, so, when we're talking about how this applies to, to future exploration, these are the type of studies that that are going ongoing right now.

28:39
But I I I think it all starts in my mind with, with the, the workforce development efforts that we have. That's a big part of our efforts here and it's a very important effort. Part of my life was spent in the mission development business, right, and so we talked about lifecycle, mission development business, right, and so we talked about life cycle, the life cycle for reviews of developing a mission, et cetera, from formulation to end of mission, right. What I think of when I think of USRA, I think of we do the whole life cycle for science. We start with internships and scholars and postdocs to really grow that workforce being at NASA, noaa and even when I was at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratories, we didn't have enough pipeline of engineers and scientists for the work we wanted to do, and so, as a nation, our ideas are necessarily very grand and we need to develop that workforce to tackle it, particularly with the explosion that we've had now in the space commerce and space industry, and so the need for this is only going to grow, it's not going to dissipate.

30:17 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I have a perfect pivot because and this is something that really struck me when I was reading more about the usra uh, you know, the name university is in your title and you have 113 university affiliations at least that's what was last posted, which includes canada, four in europe, two in israel, one in australia, one in new zealand, one in hong kong, two in korea, two in Israel, one in Australia, one in New Zealand, one in Hong Kong, two in Korea and two in the United Kingdom. Can you talk a little bit about how these collaborations?

30:51 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
came about and what the effect of them is. Yeah Well, that's a big, important part of what we do, and we actually have 121 now, wow. And what a consortium means for us. First of all, it's who really that we respond to. So this council of institutions selects a board of trustees that selects the leadership of USRA. So we really respond to this council of institutions, and what we provide for the universities is not only a networking function so that they can have colloquia and fora to talk about space research, but we also provide advocacy for their interests in space research, for different aspects in terms of, for instance, science funding or different things that they want to see facilitated or expedited, like ITAR issues, these international technology exchange issues. So those types of things is what USRA has historically done, and so that consortium helps us not only pick the things that we're going to focus on, but also the things that are important to the academic community and therefore important and also important to our stakeholders in the government, like NASA, national Science Foundation, et cetera.

32:29 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You know, I think people kind of underestimate the challenges of ITAR. I've only really gotten tangled up in it twice, not in a way like I did something wrong, but uh well we know you're always trying to get those secrets, rod.

32:41 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's it. No, he's always trying to get secrets from me all the time, but I never tell. I mean one was.

32:47 - Rod Pyle (Host)
one was a book I did with jpl, which had to go through itar clearance, which was a jaw-dropping experience, and the other was a conference I was at where I was being, um how should I put it? I was being befriended by a couple of Chinese folks who had an awful lot of questions. Then, when I cause, I was writing a book that included the news about the Chinese space program in it. I started asking them questions and their English ability faded very quickly and, uh, I realized I had been mined a little bit. And so a NASA person there said you know, you might want to be a little more. Yeah, ok, even though I wasn't officially employed.

33:23
It was you, yeah, it was me. I leaked the plans for Project.

33:27 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Orion to China, boost lifts, sink spaceships, rod.

33:30 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Anyway, I'm sorry, tarek, you had a question.

33:43 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, you know, it sounds like an ambitious slate, I'll say, of not just science ambition but of coordination and cat wrangling, because I can imagine that scientists alone, when you put them in a room together, are hard to matter, but the 120 plus institutions and with all of these different subject lines, must be really difficult. So I'm just curious, because you touched on it a bit, about some of the organization, how USRA keeps that science flowing, and then I have a follow-up just about how it all gets paid for in a minute. So how is it structured in a way that all of the agencies, all of these affiliations can contribute to the overall mission of advancing space science overall?

34:21 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
Well, like I said, they they help advise us through. We have different councils within this council of institutions and we have different working groups, like working groups excuse me, like the space, a space nuclear working group that would. That sets up that we're setting up to talk about the universities that are very interested in practices and how to foster innovation in that realm. And then in general, like I said, they help us identify areas of advocacy needed. And we talk about ITAR. We helped reform, kind of the change, category 15, which made it less burdensome for professors to teach space science abroad, for instance. So that's how kind of the interaction works. But we also have we touch upon these universities in our research and in the activities we do, not just through the internship and postdoc programs but in our research at the different institutes that we have, research at the different institutes that we have often and almost always have a collaboration with a nearby university Got it Got it.

35:46 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So there isn't an official USRA science handler, a science wrangler, to herd those cats like not right now. Right, maybe that's like something that you might find as the new chief, that you might need, right To keep folks up.

35:57 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
That sounds good. You know my whole career it's, it's, it's, it's been about collaboration and the power of collaboration, and so so it's, it's, it's something that you know with. It may seem a little bit chaotic and Brownian motion here and there, but we're, we're by making the right connections and making the right uh, uh, um, uh, relationships. Uh, you can, you can get, accelerate, uh, can be a force multiplier of getting results so so like you were all basically researching the future.

36:31 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So I'm very curious because you are a non-profit how this all gets paid for. I mean, is it all through contributions? Is it, uh, through through federal agencies? Because we know that that's kind of being looked at right now by the new administration. There was a lot of chaos this week, but it seems like it's working itself out. So how do you kind of fund everything to keep those projects going so most?

36:53 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
of our funding comes from NASA and it is through, comes from NASA and it is through. Most of it is through competitively sourced contracts, cooperative agreements, grants, et cetera. We also have funding from the Department of Defense through the Office of the Air Force, office of Scientific Research, and some from the Department of Energy as well, but the bulk of it comes from NASA.

37:29 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So my next question we're going to take a quick break, but then I want to talk a little bit about the range of scientific investigation you covered because, as I mentioned, it was pretty jaw-dropping. So, everybody, stand by, we'll be right back when I go on the USRI website and we just saw a second ago people watch the video stream and you pull down those little circles with the different areas. It just kept going and going and going and going and there's some stuff that's tangentially space-oriented and then many things that are directly. There's AI, there's quantum computing, which we're not hearing as much about that these days because AI has kind of stomped it out of the news, but there's a lot of amazing stuff. So is USRA's role primarily to connect institutions, both professional and educational, in their efforts on these things, or how does that work?

38:25 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
Certainly that's part of what we do, but also what we do is is advance those areas. So when we're talking about astrophysics, for instance, we're part of a CubeSat that's going to make measurements of gamma ray bursts. We also have a project that's going to provide data to the whole astrophysics community over different time domains and all across the electromagnetic spectrum For for the, for the low gravity science that we do, the microgravity science that we do. It's it's enabling some some research that's happening, but also actually developing different projects that are going to fly on the space station, and so we have a mixture of both. Like I was starting to say, we do it from the whole life cycle from the beginning and then really exploiting the data when it gets to us, whether it's Earth imaging data, astrophysics data, heliophysics data, or using the data in innovative ways with AI, ml, for instance.

39:55 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So I have a follow up, Tarek, if you'll indulge me. Oh, go ahead. Of course, I'm going to ask you one of those awful look-in-the-crystal-ball questions. So we're all scratching our heads over AI, especially with DeepSeek. The news that came out of there, which was apparently a little embellished, but it still was pretty arresting Five years AI, quantum computing, maybe the two of them combined. Do you have any thoughts on that?

40:23 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
I'm very excited for the future of it. I think it's always a little uncertain how a new tool is going to be used. We have precedents, at least in my lifetime, with the internet, cell phones, uh, etc. Um, but uh, you know the the uh. It's gonna help us accelerate our, our, our progress and particularly our scientific progress, uh. So. So I think what we, um, we're just starting to scratch the surface of how we can apply this to different problems that we've had across the board from a scientific standpoint, from lost languages, for instance this outside USRA's purview, but also something I think would be very exciting if it was applied to, would be very exciting if it was applied to. And then, within our efforts, how we're going to apply that to the space weather, for instance, and other areas of where we have a large data set that we can mine and understand, and advancing our kind of the basic principles, taking the first principles into predictive capability.

41:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Very well said, and I occasionally reflect on being the old man in the room. I occasionally reflect on the pace of technological advancement, thinking back when I was young and there was no such thing as portable music and all the shots of the moon landings during Apollo were done with a 16 millimeter camera that you didn't see anything from until they got back and some poor, nervous technician had to actually dip it in a bunch of chemicals for us to see the pictures. And if he messed up, that was the end of it. Okay, tarek, I'm sorry, your turn.

42:17 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I like how you said that you're the old man in the room and out of all three of us, alzaid is the only one that doesn't have a gray beard. So our guest, no, you know. Speaking of tools, I was one of my favorite, I guess, institutions or parts that I had grown up with as a kid. I was surprised when I began working at spacecom was overseen by USRA, which was, of course, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico I guess the late Arecibo one now and it was an icon for astronomy that I think a lot of people. If you aren't familiar listeners and viewers, it's where Ellie goes to find the alien signal in contact right.

43:03
And as an organization, as folks that are really heavily invested in such a tool, but one that has had been in use for a long time. I'm curious what Arecibo meant to know, meant to USRA, and what dealing with that law is. Just because you know, through age and whatnot, things get old and then they fall apart, and that's kind of what we saw there. You know what that was like and what the future might bring for future instruments, that kind of thing.

43:37 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
USRA's involvement in Arecibo is a little bit before my time, but I can tell you as a researcher in my past career, arecibo was a big part of what we were doing, not only from an astronomy standpoint but also from a upper atmosphere, ionosphere, looking at the ionosphere, looking at the thermosphere standpoint, and it was a huge kind of observatory from that standpoint that gave us observations that were only available in a few places around the world, and so it was a great loss across several disciplines and nature as it was, the hurricane knocked it out. But those type of facilities are often where Scientists can train, but it also is some things can only be done from the ground, that can't, they can only be done from a large facility like that on the ground, that can't be done, for instance, from space, and so so there is a need for for those type of facilities for different aspects of of upper atmosphere or science, and and then and then of course, astronomy as well.

45:09 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, I have hopes for Arecibo 2. This time it's personal, honestly. Just something bigger that can reclaim the record right from China's fast, so that we can find those discoveries a lot faster, all right, and you know, we still have many more James Bond movies too, that's right?

45:24 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yes, tarek, you need to get over Arecibo.

45:27 - Tariq Malik (Host)
They filmed Goldeneye there, right, wasn't it, goldeneye?

45:31 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Down Boy down down. Two other areas that I found really fascinating and I'd certainly like to invite you to talk about any areas of emerging research you're involved with that you're fascinated with, but two that I thought fascinated is the right word. They're really urgently important for space infrastructure is space power systems and cryogenic propellant management, both of which have been tough nuts to crack. So space power systems you know we we've got these stadium-sized solar arrays now out in the deep solar system, because I guess we don't have enough plutonium to make the RTGs the way we used to. So that's certainly something that's hopefully emerging. And then the propellant management. Could you touch on those?

46:15 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
Very lightly, I would say, in the sense that I do think this is why we need to do the research and development on our space nuclear systems in a sustainable and safe fashion for exploration, not only deep space exploration, where there's an obvious need for it, but even just commercial, long-term exploration. So where you have to worry about eclipses, you don't have to worry about, like you said, cryogenic systems that need a lot of power, and so that's why I'm very, very excited about the Center for Space Nuclear Research.

47:13 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You know I was curious. You know we talked a bit about funding earlier and kind of how you know you mentioned your funding comes from NASA, you know, and there's a lot of questions right now that are going on. You know, obviously NASA is going to get a new budget, hopefully in the next couple of months, and then discussions with the administration about, I guess, fund and grant freezing. But there's other issues, I think, that really affect USRA's mission. As I understand it and I know we were talking a bit about this with Shariah earlier about the impact that immigration or diversity or workforce structures might be, how you're preparing, or if you can even prepare for a lot of those challenges, given such an international and a widespread reach with the different organizations that are all part of USRA.

48:08 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
Yeah, you know, as you mentioned, we have international universities as part of our consortium and, you know, kind of that exchange of ideas is important to any research that's done, whether it's space research or other research. Our programs are in workforce development, have some visa, some visa holders, um uh uh, that we that we're training again as part of that pipeline of of researchers that we can use as a nation, um uh we. We of course will follow uh, uh, all applicable laws and direction, uh that we get from that our main stakeholder, but others as well, department of Defense included. So I don't see us having any danger of not being able to do the research that we want to do.

49:20 - Rod Pyle (Host)
All right, we're going to run to one more break and then I want to talk about the part that I really got excited about, which is the university side and the opportunities for students. So stand by, we'll be right back. I guess I keep saying this is the part that really excites me, so I'm excited about a lot of it. He likes everything. He likes everything.

49:40
It's a cool organization, you know, and there aren't many, if any, others like it. So can you talk a little bit about how you engage with universities? I mean, you've kind of touched on you know how you wire them together with with professional organizations and NASA and so forth. But if I'm a student and I'm looking at USRA through my institution, whether I'm undergrad or graduate, what are some of the opportunities, programs, involvements that you would have?

50:08 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
We have quite a few that and if I start listing them I will certainly forget some, so I would recommend that people go to our website, which is shown right there usraedu. But in general we have programs with the Space Force and the Air Force for internships that are tackling problems with Air Force Research Laboratory personnel. We also have scholars programs with the Department of Defense as well, and then we have internships. You've talked about the. I think we've talked about the Lunar Planetary.

50:55 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Institute, which is which we did not.

50:57 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
OK, that is the the part of very early on in the history of USRA.

51:03
That was established to share research and to basically innovate research and invigorate research around the lunar samples, and that and that was what that's been a been a part of USRA for decades now, and it has internship programs that have been ongoing for a long time. In fact, when I was, when I was at a conference a couple weeks ago, a few people came up to me and said I was a USRA intern and that's what got me in the space field, and I was like this is like well, I should have gotten their written permission. It's like I want to use this as an example. Absolutely, I lost stock, absolutely. So it's really been a very wide-reaching program, not only for planetary science. In fact, the person who talked to me did not end up doing planetary science, but was still in the space field because of that internship. They didn't go the scientist route, but they went another route, and so I think, like I said, we have a lot of different opportunities. Please come to the website usreedu.

52:33 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I think internships are very important. That's how I became part of spacecom and it's been 20 years plus and now I get big, the big poobah. So I think that they're very important.

52:43 - Rod Pyle (Host)
No, no, excuse me, I'm the big poobah.

52:47 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
You're the grand poobah, he's the big poobah, grand poobah, sorry.

52:50 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You can read better than I can, so I want to talk about you a little bit more for a moment. Did I read this right that you have 60 journal papers and have contributed to 400 conference papers relating to atmospheric and space sciences?

53:03 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
I've been around for a while.

53:05 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, yes, not as long as I have, but I think I've been in one journal. I mean, this is astonishing. How do you keep that pace up?

53:15 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
That was in the beginning of my career.

53:18
I was, I was a research scientist and, uh, I was lucky enough to um, uh, um, be part of different projects, um, and, and you know, I I always start my career.

53:32
I like to work on different things, a portfolio of different, different, different things earth science, planetary science, which I I'm very much in love with, and then heliophysics, which is the science of space, weather, so the sun, solar physics, et cetera. And so that's what I did early on and that helped prepare me for when I went to more programmatic roles, uh, at, uh, at nasa, and then more development roles, uh, and programmatic and development roles at noaa, and then uh, um, and, like I said, usra kind of combines all of that uh into one, one organization. Uh, it's, it's very exciting from all from, and when I was at apl, I I had a lot of interns and a postdoc, etc. So so, uh, um, this is this, this combines it all into one organization, and so, uh, and, across many different disciplines yeah, I think that we kind of hinted at it, See Tarek that's what modesty looks like, okay.

54:39 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Just so you know. No no, I was born to shine Rod.

54:44 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So your mother keeps telling you Sorry, go ahead.

54:47 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No, I was going to say, you know, we kind of hinted about this earlier when we were talking, but I don't think that we explicitly went into detail. But I mean, you have your Master's of Science in Atmospheric, oceanic and Space Science from the University of Michigan, phd right in Atmospheric and Space Science from there too, and then you're at John Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab by the way, that's a really cool place just in general For 15 years where, like you mentioned, you were section supervisor right for Earth and planetary atmospheres and then all the way up to chief scientist of the heliophysics division at NASA. We should have really led with that in the beginning, earlier, you're right.

55:27
I feel like we buried the lead on your pedigrees there, but I'm just curious how you got into. You know how that path has really informed your role, or what you see the role of science and space exploration as part of science. You know in both. You know the importance of that to both, like our society today and maybe just because it is the USRA and I'm being liberal with the US there part of that to the, to NASA and to the country as well.

56:04 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
I mean, space research has been the source of so much innovation and discovery, not only discovered from a scientific and kind of intellectual curiosity point of view, but it's also been, you know how. How are we able now to have this booming commercial space industry? It's because of the research we did, both engineering development that we did, sponsored by the government, for deep space exploration, et cetera, space exploration, et cetera, as well as understanding our space environment such that we can go out with somewhat of confidence and with the systems that are protected enough that we can do kind of all this commercial activity. And then, and it's also so important to you know, understanding, uh, not only looking out and in astrophysics and and and uh, space physics, but looking down at earth. That's what we're really. We really uh, uh, uh, uh had a, a, a huge step function and capability enhancement by the weather satellites go up, for instance, and now there's commercial weather satellites and commercial data. But you know it was that big jump for our capabilities from a predictability standpoint by having those observations there.

57:33
And so it all starts with, you know, kind of intellectual curiosity that has these applications that come very soon, frankly, that the research to operations cycle is happening a lot faster now than it did in the past and research operations to commercialization really that's what's happening these days to commercialization really that's what's happening these days. And so, as I mentioned, you know, looking at different spectra for astrophysical phenomena is applicable to looking at different spectra for solar phenomena, applicable to looking at different spectra for planetary, and then looking at using those techniques for different, different uh, sensing that we might, might do with the earth, might do of uh, terrestrial, uh, uh, terrestrial aspects like vegetation, uh, for instance. So all these techniques, you can be almost have, as I do have a lot of fun agnostically, being agnostic to discipline, but saying, okay, what can I do with this technology and what can I do with this technique? And so it would be. It's a lot of not only innovation, but it's a lot of fun, I believe.

58:55 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, that's great. I did have one extra question and I apologize.

58:59
It's a little bit off topic, but it lends to your strengths, Elzade, and that is you were at NOAA, you worked in space, whether you were chief scientist for heliophysics and we're in the middle of solar maximum, or at least at the start of it, when the sun is at its peak. There were two big M flares just today alone and I'm just curious, as a scientist, what you think that people should know about, both the promise of understanding the sun and its space weather, as well as the risks to the technology that we use, the astronauts that are in space, that we need to keep that study going, Because I think most people they think of the sun and its weather as, hey, it's a northern lights machine to get us some pretty lights in the sky and it's a little bit different and more important than that.

59:53 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
It absolutely is. I mean, the space weather happens all the time. We just see the beautiful manifestations of it, the aurora but it's a largely invisible phenomenon, so sometimes it's hard to communicate that this is just as dangerous as a hurricane or just as dangerous as a tornado. You don't see it necessarily. You don't see it necessarily, but it has the potential of these large explosions off the sun, has a potential for damaging our power grids, affecting our civil aviation, irradiating our astronauts and pilots, et cetera, and then disrupting our communications and navigation systems. So it always has that potential and, uh, um, we have these very large storms that could happen and we've been lucky so far that we haven't had one hit earth or for a long time. Now we had some.

01:00:51
If you remember, last year there was some very beautiful aurora, uh, that were going on, um, and that was a very, that was a large storm, but it wasn't, as it wasn't the super storm that we're worried about. But what also people don't see is the observing system and the research that we've done and setting up the observing system and the modeling and the forecasts and warnings help protect us from the effects of these storms so we can sit back and watch the aurora. So when I was at NOAA, I would say that if we do our jobs right, you don't notice anything about space weather other than beautiful aurora, because we can warn the industry to take mitigative action. We can warn, you know, airlines do divert their flights away from polar regions when there's a huge geomagnetic storm, and power grids do take mitigative action with loading et cetera, so that there is not disruption to your power. And then we're still learning about the effects and because we're more and more dependent on our technological infrastructure.

01:02:05
So this last storm it was during peak planting season and farmers couldn't plant the crops. They use the sophisticated GNSS Global Navigation Systems to plant their crops now, and so when that was disrupted they lost that valuable crop planting time. There was one article that said that could have been up to a half a billion dollars worth of loss there, and so we need that research to understand the environment better. Space research, not only for space weather, but also space research in itself, is key to kind of our you're talking about china but uh, just in our international, uh technological advantage, uh that we we we've had and want to maintain uh in the united states, and it's also very key with space weather, terrestrial weather, very key to our national security, uh, and understanding that. So so we want to understand. And then, looking long term, we need to understand and then, looking long-term, we need to understand the environment for sustainability. You know things have been rapidly evolving and we need to understand how that's going to develop, just from our sustainability as a nation and species going forward.

01:03:36 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's good that space research is in the name at USRA, then You've got it covered.

01:03:41 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, it's good to know we'll have a warning before the next Carrington event, before the telegraphs blow up, that's right. So I guess my closing question is if you have advice and I know you're just getting settled in there but just an overarching advice for young people looking to get in these fields, because they can now. I mean, when I was young you either worked for a defense contractor or NASA or you just did something else, and there's so many opportunities now and it seems like USRA is able to help channel people in positive directions.

01:04:14 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
My advice is get in it, get in on the ground floor. It is not only important work, but it is a lot of fun. Discovery is one of the most fun things to do and every kid knows it, and you can continue that as an adult. But you'll also see how your work affects not only the body of science that goes forward but really has real-world applications that help society here, and so I'd say absolutely this is a great time to get in. We have more capabilities than we've ever had before. This is the golden age of scientific observations and it's also the golden age, you know, kind of the new frontier, I would say, of space commerce and space exploration. So this is space research is only going to take off.

01:05:18 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That is a great message, and we hear things similar to that from time to time, but I don't think I've ever heard them said with such obvious passion, and it's really clear that you love your work and that's just great. So so kudos to you, and I want to thank everybody for joining us for episode 146 of this week in space called all the way with the USRA. Dr Talat, is there anywhere besides the usraedu website? We should be tracking the cool stuff you're involved with.

01:05:48 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
Go to there first, and then it'll take you to all of our different activities and sites.

01:05:55 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Great Tarek, where can we stalk you these days?

01:05:58 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, you can find me. Thank you so much for joining us. You can join me at spacecom, as always. We've got two rocket launches this weekend as we're recording this episode, which is very exciting, including a JAXA H3 rocket, and on the Twitters or I guess, X and BlueSky at Tarek, Jay Malek. And this weekend, if you play Fortnite, you can join me with OG Season 2. We're one step closer to an astronaut season. I'm very, very excited and I'll see you there at SpaceTron Plays on YouTube.

01:06:26 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I honestly do try to take it seriously when you say those things. And, of course, you can find me at pilebookscom, where I will soon be lodging my 21st book, or at astromagazinecom. And, please remember, you can always drop us a line at twist, at tweet, twittv that's T W I S at twittv. We answer every single email and we love getting your messages, new episodes, this podcast published every Friday on your favorite pod catcher. So make sure to subscribe to your friends and give us good reviews and you know, the usual thumbs up or five stuffed bunnies or whatever they've got. And finally, don't forget, we're counting on you to join club twit in 2025. Besides supporting twit, you'll help keep us on the air we think that's a good thing and bringing you great guests and horrid space jokes.

01:07:15
And you can get all the great programming with video streams and no commercials on the twit network, as well as some extras are only found there, and it's just seven dollars a month. I ask you all, what else can you get for seven dollars a month? That's as much fun as this. Nothing. There you go. Okay, you answered the question and it helps keep the warm electrons flowing to you from our florid minds. So, oh and last thing, you can follow the TwitTech Podcast Network at Twit on Twitter and on Facebook and Twittv on Instagram and I guess I ought to say, at Twit on X.

01:07:51 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I was going to say something, but I didn't want to cut it.

01:07:53 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I'm too old to change. So thank you, it's been a real pleasure having you today. You're a wonderful guest and I wish you all the best at the USRA, and I think this will be another golden age for them.

01:08:07 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
So thank you very much. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

01:08:13 - Tariq Malik (Host)
If you, enjoyed your time here. Then the next discovery could use the name Rod, tarek or Tarek Rod. I think Tarek Rod is better, but I don't know if you've got any pull. You know, let those scientists know. We let the scientists decide.

01:08:28 - Dr. Elsayed Talaat (Guest)
I'm not going to tell them what the name is.

01:08:30 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Darn, thank you. Thanks so much. I almost got a tardigrade named after me up in the Arctic from my time up there with Pascal Lee, but unfortunately it turned out there weren't any tardigrades in the sample, so all I got to be named after me was a little spot of algae. All right, sorry, we didn't really need to talk about that. Thanks everyone, and we'll see you next week.