Field Notes: Nhulunbuy, Australia

01Captain's log.

02It seems like everything here is a deep hue of red.

03The iron in the soil and dirt really just coats everything.

04All the cars, you can tell who's new.

05Those cars are still white.

06People who've been here for a while have all been coated with a fine mist of red dust.

07Welcome back to another Field Notes episode of NASA's Curious Universe.

08NASA experts travel to some incredible places to learn more about our planet and the universe around us.

09Last summer, NASA science writer Miles Hatfield visited Nullinboy, Australia, to cover a sounding rocket launch from a brand new rocket range.

10You might remember sounding rockets from our Season 4 episode, Up and Away with Sounding Rockets.

11They're small, uncrewed rockets that shoot off to orbit on short journeys.

12They study everything from our own atmosphere to the stars.

13Less than an hour after taking off, they come parachuting back to Earth with payloads of data collected during their flights.

14Let's listen in with Miles as he prepares for and witnesses NASA's first rocket launch from this brand new Southern Hemisphere launch site, operated by Equatorial Launch Australia.

15Miles Hatfield I'm Miles Hatfield.

16I'm a science writer here at NASA.

17I write about heliophysics, which is the science of the Sun and the Sun's connections to everything around us in space.

18Nullinboy was this little mining town.

19There was one grocery store.

20It did not look like what I thought Australia would look like.

21It was cloudy and rained a lot.

22Nullinboy is at the northeastern tip of the Northern Territories in Australia, where the desert meets the sea.

23Nullinboy is not what you think of, or at least not what I think of when I think of Australia.

24It's much more like a tropical area.

25Nullinboy is at 12 degrees south latitude, which is one of the reasons that it's such a great site for a rocket range, because we're so close to the equator, which gives rockets that are launching into orbit a little bit of extra orbital velocity.

26Nullinboy is at the top of the sea.

27So we were there to film, but I was also there capturing audio for this show.

28And we were trying to really make sure we captured the full story of all the pieces that have to go right to get a rocket up into space.

29So I was thinking a lot about, like, how do I convey the feeling of this place in sound?

30You hear this sort of crunch of the pebbles beneath your feet.

31They look like Dippin' Dots.

32You know, the things that you'd get at, like, a carnival or you go to, like, Six Flags or something?

33That's what this place sounds like.

34This was the first launch from a commercial launch range outside of the United States for NASA.

35The key reason we were in Australia, or key feature of the location of this launch range, was that it was in the Southern Hemisphere.

36Half the stars in the sky you can't see from the Northern Hemisphere.

37If you want to do science that involves one of these stars, you have to launch from the Southern Hemisphere if you're going to do a soundy rocket launch.

38It's kind of in the middle of nowhere, the least populated part of Australia, the Northern Territories, which is great if you're going to be shooting things up into space and having them fall back down.

39We did a bunch of research in advance to just learn about the groups involved in this launch range.

40Aboriginal groups in Australia, especially in what they call the Top End, which is where we were, they pay so much attention to the stars and it's really integrated into what's called songlines.

41They are kind of like constellations, patterns of stars, but they're woven together in a story that people will sing.

42And this songlines actually serve as a mnemonic for traveling.

43They're like guideposts, they're like directions.

44When Europeans first came to Australia, they used Aboriginal groups as their guides, so they were following their paths.

45And those paths kind of stuck.

46So there's some big highways, routes that go across Australia that still map onto the songlines, sort of carved into the land now.

47The range was built on Gumach clan land.

48Gumach is one of the clans in the Yolnu nation.

49What we learned about is that the Gumachs are actually partners in this.

50Gumach Corporation are who cleared the land and built a lot of the facilities and they are the lease owners that Equatorial Launch Australia is paying for that land.

51If you've ever gone to like Kennedy or one of these like well-established launch ranges, you're going to look at this and you're going to be like, where am I?

52They basically set up a bunch of these little portable offices that are just sort of plopped down.

53They built a huge place that they called the PIF, the Payload Integration Facility.

54It's this giant barn-like thing with scaffolding and plastic covering.

55A couple hundred yards away is the actual launcher, which is concrete.

56Other than that, it was dirt and trees.

57It was really minimalistic.

58It was like, what do you need to launch a rocket?

59And that's what they put.

60So I was there for about three weeks.

61And luckily the night before I had to leave, early in the morning, they launched.

62This was the first launch from Equatorial Launch Australia.

63There was a lot of press.

64Remember, this is in the middle of nowhere in this tiny town that does not have a capacity for a hundred journalists to come out and cover the story.

65So they had set up this tent site far away at the edge of the range for all the press and VIPs.

66That's the sound of the VIP tour bus, which has just arrived.

67And the CEO of ELA, Equatorial Launch Australia, CEO of the range, leading the tour.

68It's carrying the U.S.

69Consul General.

70Everyone was there.

71We were setting up our cameras.

72And I was trying to pay attention to a couple different groups at the same time.

73There's the actual science team.

74Their main action doesn't happen until the rocket's already in the air.

75Prior to that, there's the wind waiting people, the range safety officer.

76There's the campaign manager.

77There's all these people running the operations that are getting the rocket ready to go.

78We're kind of bouncing around between these people, trying to make sure we're capturing everything that's happening.

79You want to capture the actual rocket launch.

80So you want to be outside seeing the launch.

81But then you, of course, want to see the scientists' reaction.

82You want to be following them as the data's coming in.

83But then there's also, right up before launch, the real excitement is in the offices where the people are actually controlling the launcher, which is separate from the science team.

84So you really kind of want to be in a bunch of different places at once.

85It's T minus two hours and the activity's starting to pick up.

86The whole range was pretty quiet about an hour ago, but now the VIPs are showing up and everyone's getting ready.

87The rocket's vertical.

88We're getting ready for launch.

89It's supposed to be the dry season.

90They planned the launch windows during the dry season.

91They expected it to be dry.

92That was not the case.

93Captain's log.

94Stuck in the car again because it's the third time it's rained for two minutes before stopping while we keep trying to set up the cameras.

95But it keeps raining.

96The weather was terrible.

97We had so many stop-starts because of the wind and the rain.

98That's the sound of it suddenly starting to pour at four minutes until launch.

99Go camera copies.

100Got to hold it three minutes.

101It would be like nothing.

102Looks like we're getting close.

103Get down to two minutes in the count.

104And then a huge rainstorm would open up.

105And it would just like flood everything.

106Three minutes later it would go away.

107And then we would start, okay, pick up the count again.

108Yeah, I'd say we might as well just get the cannon set up.

109And if we have to tear it down, for the rain we'd tear it down.

110But let's get it set up.

11130 seconds.

112Copy, 30.

113We're out there and we're watching and after many, many stops and starts, the count is clear.

114I got this great video of a range safety officer.

115She's the person who makes the final call about wind.

116So she's going to be the last person to say, stop, hold.

117And you can see her as the launch gets down to the count.

118Just before everyone else gets excited, she gets excited.

119And it's like, three, two.

120She's already like, yeah!

121And then you can see the rocket go off and everyone else is cheering.

122If you've seen videos of like the space shuttle, sort of this slow lift off, it's not a slow lift off of the Sony rocket.

123It's loud, it's fast.

124I tried to capture audio.

125It just sounds like you're breaking the camera.

126It just sounds...

127It's like if you're ripping something really thick, like thick paper, that's what it sounded like.

128As the rocket launches, different parts of it fall off.

129First, the first stage motor falls off.

130Then the second stage kicks in and it sticks with the payload, which is the scientific instrument part, all the way up into space.

131And then the end opens up so that the telescope can see.

132All that eventually falls back down.

133The nose cone separates.

134The payload has a parachute that comes out, so it falls back down.

135Hopefully gets a soft landing.

136Now in to see what the science team is looking at.

137After the launch, the main exciting thing that's happening is like the scientists rapidly seeing all the things that they're getting, watching the data come in.

138Everyone was super excited and watching the scientists' faces as the data was coming in.

139I interviewed one of the grad students afterwards.

140My name is Avir Uproy.

141I am a sixth year grad student from the University of Wisconsin.

142I asked him like, how are you feeling?

143How are you doing?

144How are you feeling?

145And I think he said, I've not been better in a long time.

146I have not been better in a while.

147Yeah?

148Yeah.

149Congratulations, man.

150I loved it.

151We hope to find something new.

152And we know I think we will.

153The whole flight from the launch rail to it falling back down is probably like a half an hour.

154They only get about five minutes of observing time once they're up above the atmosphere.

155But if everything goes right, that's plenty.

156So did the parachute just deploy or like what?

157How did...

158Yeah, the parachute's deployed.

159We're on the chute now.

160But we've lost all the team.

161So the whole thing's over pretty quick.

162Of course, then you have to go find the pieces of the rocket.

163And that can take a while.

164I was lucky enough to go out and help get the first stage for the first rocket that launched.

165And so we were hiking out through the bush.

166So right now we're hiking down the escarpment.

167Just on the other side of the launch pad.

168We are in search of the first stage.

169Which is supposedly not more than about a kilometer or so away from the launch range.

170But we gotta get through some pretty serious thicket before we get there.

171The thing that I think everybody on the internet knows about Australia is that everything there is trying to kill you.

172We had these ants.

173They're like green butt ants.

174That is totally not the scientifically correct term.

175But these ants that would crawl on us and they would bite.

176Oh yeah, me too.

177They were everywhere.

178And so we were out there just hiking around and you just hear us all.

179Oh!

180Luckily we were with some of the Dimaru rangers who really know the area and know the local wildlife.

181What is it called?

182Gondola.

183Gondola?

184Gondola.

185Gondola.

186Gondola.

187Cool.

188We almost stepped on a king brown snake.

189You know, you just have to watch where you're stepping.

190We're bushwhacking.

191We're getting out there and then we find the first stage and that stuff is pretty, like it's impaled in the ground.

192Wow, there it is.

193Oh, wow.

194What a silly place to be rocking that man.

195Ah!

196Hey!

197We had to have the helicopter drop off tools to dig it out.

198I think we're going to need a little bit more kit down here that I wasn't thinking.

199Crowbars, shovels, all that stuff, and the big net to put all that stuff back in.

200What about that, give me a big?

201That shovel and a private box of demo bags.

202And then the helicopter comes and takes it back.

203There he is.

204It was so fun.

205It was really fun.

206I definitely want to go back.

207There's so much more of the country to see and people were really friendly.

208I've been writing about soundy rockets pretty much since I started at NASA, which was the end of 2017.

209So I had written about it, but I didn't really understand what it was like.

210I had written about the science.

211I knew a lot about the different types of rockets.

212It's like, I'd done plenty of coverage on this, but man, it's different to be out there.

213To see the people that do the work.

214You get better stories.

215I'm a storyteller, right?

216I get to talk about the cool parts.

217So, any other field campaigns, sign me up.

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