SpaceX lands lucrative Nasa contract to destroy ISS ...Tech & Science Daily podcast

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SpaceX has landed a lucrative Nasa contract to destroy the International Space Station after 2030.

The ISS was launched in orbit between the late 1990s and early 2000s, and it’s been known for a while that it’s now reaching the end of its life cycle.

But what will replace it? Tech & Science Daily spoke to Jake Foster, astronomer at Royal Observatory Greenwich. He’s been explaining why the ISS has to be deorbited, and what's happening next.

Could buildings mimic trees to improve air quality in our cities and reverse the effects of climate change?

Well yes according to one of the world’s top architects, with a concept called Urban Sequoia.

Kent Jackson is design partner at Skidmore Owings and Merrill’s London office and are behind the proposals.

SOM is the company behind Dubai’s 828-metre high Burj Khalifa, the Canary Wharf masterplan, and One World Trade Center in New York.

Kent tells us why sustainable construction is an important fix for the climate crisis, reveals his message to our future Prime Minister and explains what they should be actioning if they win the 2024 election.

An asteroid said to be ‘the size of Mount Everest’ is set to skim past Earth on Thursday and will be quickly followed by another smaller one on Saturday.

The big one is a whopping 2,310 metres wide and bigger than 99% of all other known near-Earth objects.

And the rest

A new satellite image is helping shed light on how ice and snow in clouds turns into rain, and Xbox 360 classic Dead Rising is back with a "Deluxe Remaster," but nobody's sure how to feel about the protagonist’s new look...

You can listen to the episode in the player above, find us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s a fully automated transcript of today’s episode:

Hi, I'm Rachelle Abbott and this is the Standard’s Tech and Science Daily podcast.

Coming up, the asteroid set to skim past earth today.

Now, let's get into it.

SpaceX has landed a lucrative NASA contract to destroy the International Space Station after 2030.

SpaceX will essentially develop a method to safely de-orbit the space station.

So, it will essentially involve pushing or pulling it back down towards the Earth's atmosphere where it can safely burn up in the atmosphere over the ocean.

This sort of thing has happened before with the Russian MIR space station, which was safely de-orbited in 2001.

That's Jake Foster, astronomer at Royal Observatory Greenwich.

He's been explaining why the ISS has to be de-orbited.

It's wear and tear.

Over the course of now a 26 year lifespan so far, the ISS has had to make do with a lot of different issues.

For example, the solar panels that power the space station have now been damaged to some extent by cosmic radiation coming towards it from outer space.

The ISS was launched in orbit between the late 1990s and early 2000s. And it's been known for a while that it's now reaching the end of its life cycle.

Structural damage that's been reported to the docking hatch that spacecraft use to connect with the space station and even reports of microscopic leaks in one of the modules.

And that's not unexpected and it's not a case of poor engineering.

This is just the kind of thing you have to expect when you have a space station the size of a football pitch barreling around the earth at about seven kilometres per second over the course of 26 years.

The ISS remains a blueprint for international science, exploration and cooperation in space with over 3,300 experiments conducted in microgravity.

The US, Japan, Canada and member nations of the European Space Agency have committed to operating the station through to 2030.

Russia, despite geopolitical tensions with the West, has said it would continue space station operations through at least 2028.

So that's the plan for ISS, but what will replace it? Jake has been telling us everything we know so far.

NASA has its eyes firmly on the moon at the moment.

So rather than NASA creating a replacement space station, in fact, they've got their eyes locked on a lunar gateway, essentially a space station in orbit around the moon that will provide safe passage to astronauts that are traveling to the moon over the next few decades.

And as well as that, NASA are looking to build a permanent lunar base on the surface of the moon.

And eventually with the idea of sending astronauts to Mars over to the red planet.

But there are plans for commercial space companies to build space stations of their own.

Companies like Axiom Space, Blue Origin and even Boeing have plans or collaborations in the works to build their own space stations.

Next, could buildings mimic trees to improve air quality in our cities and reverse the effects of climate change?

Well, yes, according to one of the world's top architects with a concept called Urban Sequoia.

The Sequoia is the largest tree on our planet.

They're suffering at the moment as the climate changes.

They're mainly in Northern California.

We really came across this idea that we noticed our profession not moving fast enough to solve some of our problems we face day to day and where we really look at the impact of climate change.

And so Urban Sequoia became this idea of if we could get buildings to act more like trees, we thought we would take on a research project that would be probably one of the hardest typologies you could get in the construction industry, which are tall buildings.

So something over 40 stories.

That's Kent Jackson, Design Partner at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill's London office.

SOM is the company behind Dubai's 828 meter high Burj Khalifa, the Canary Wharf Master Plan and One World Trade Center in New York.

Currently the building industry generates nearly 40% of all global carbon emissions.

Urban Sequoia is a concept that proposes that buildings could be designed to capture carbon, purifying the air and rejuvenating the environment.

In tall buildings, you have this phenomenon of stack effect where low air pressure comes into the building and then rises up through it.

And it was always something that you wanted to keep from happening into a building.

But we decided to reverse that trend and think about if we could harness and bring the air into the building, into the centre of the building, and actually let the high velocity of air movement come through the building in this stack effect.

We could use direct air capture to capture the carbon.

And what's really interesting about that is that by after five years of this building, we would be in a carbon negative situation and it would only continue to capture carbon from the Earth's atmosphere as it was over its lifespan.

Kent's also got some important messages for our future Prime Minister.

Our future PM needs to act.

We have been far too complacent in the construction industry.

It is one of the biggest violators when it comes to carbon usage.

You're bringing ecologists to the table. You're bringing politicians to the table. You're bringing, if need be, insurance companies to the table, contractors, as well as the design team, the developer and the owner and the client to all come together and talk about issues that not everyone's going to be experts over, but in a shared environment.

And I would encourage the PM to definitely find ways in which the construction industry could deal with innovation and some of the risks that are associated with innovation.

They believe if every city around the world applied concepts like this, then the built environment could remove up to 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere every year.

Let's go to the ads.

Coming up, the classic Xbox 360 game, Dead Rising, is back with a controversial makeover.

To stay up to date with all the latest tech and science news, just hit follow during the break.

Welcome back.

An asteroid said to be the size of Mount Everest is set to skim past Earth today, and will be quickly followed by another smaller one on Saturday.

The big one is a whopping 2,310 meters wide, and bigger than 99% of all other known near Earth objects.

It's been compared in size to Mount Everest, but to be honest, that's being very generous, as the world's tallest peak is almost nine kilometres high.

So it's thought the comparison is based on the width of the summit instead.

Today, the space rock will pass by Earth 4 million miles away, but on Saturday, the smaller one will come a lot closer, less than the distance between our planet and the moon.

Next, a new satellite image is helping shed light on how ice and snow and clouds turns into rain.

Scientists said the image taken by EarthCare, a joint mission between Europe and Japan, offers a unique glimpse into the internal structure of clouds.

Experts were able to identify distinct layers within the clouds, with ice crystals and snowflakes suspended at the top, some of which are falling slowly below.

The researchers say they found a clear boundary at an altitude of around 5,000 meters, where the ice and snow is melting.

It's thought the findings will help our understanding of how fast rain and snow falls, which could help improve weather and climate predictions.

And finally, the classic zombie game Dead Rising is back with a "Deluxe Remaster," but fans aren't really sure how to feel about some of the new changes.

The remaster was announced in a teaser trailer which shows off the title's brand new look, which includes a noticeably different appearance for the much loved character, Frank West.

And it sounds like the original voice actor, TJ Roloto, hasn't reprised his role.

As a result, fans on social media have been voicing their outrage with one user on X saying, “You know, I love Dead Rising, but what the hell did they do to Frank?”

There's no release date confirmed yet, but the official X account has teased there will be more information soon.

You're up to date.

Come back at 4 p.m. for The Standard podcast for the latest news and analysis.

Tech and Science Daily will be back tomorrow at 1 p.m.

See you then.