Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - A Big Test for LightSail 2

Episode Date: May 24, 2016

The Planetary Society’s solar sail spacecraft was in the middle of a critical test as we spoke with the Society’s Bruce Betts and Jason Davis.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey there, pod people. It's Matt with a very, very brief announcement. Mostly a thank you. You know, the podcast world's getting very competitive. Thank you so much for helping to keep us at the top of our genre, anyway. If you look for us under space or space exploration, that kind of stuff, we do pretty well, thanks to you folks. We do pretty well, thanks to you folks. Can you help a little bit more? Wherever you listen to us, iTunes, wherever, SoundCloud, please post a rating, put up a review. It makes a big difference. If you have the time, and it only takes a few moments, please help us out that way.

We don't really ask for much else. Well, we could, and we might, but we're not. Anyway, thank you so much for listening. Special report today on light sail passing a big test. I can tell you now that it did pass its day in the life test that you'll be hearing about from Bruce Betts and Jason Davis. A few things left to work on, but it looks like we're still in good shape for launch on that Falcon Heavy some months from now. Here's the show. A big test for a small solar sail, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. As I say these words, LightSail 2 has just completed an end-to-end rehearsal for its history-making mission high above Earth as soon as late this year. The Planetary Society's Bruce Betts and Jason Davis were there for the test, and we'll get their report right after we spend a few minutes with Senior Editor Emily Lakdawalla. Emily, we could be talking about your excellent update on Akatsuki beginning to return science from Venus. It's a May 19th entry in the blog at planetary.org. But I've got a bee in my bonnet, and I wanted to talk to you about something that I know you tweeted about. And it was this image from Hubble, the Hubble Space Telescope of Mars,

which some called, including a certain anchor person on CBS, perhaps the most vivid image ever of the red planet. I don't think so. Well, it's a subjective judgment. You know, let everybody have their opinion. I thought it was a very nice photo of Mars. I thought they processed it a bit heavier than I might have. I found its limb too sharp against the sky and the clouds are too bright, but whatever. It's all subjective taste. It's a beautiful new Hubble image. And it's the first image that Hubble has taken for quite a long time. There's no denying it's gorgeous. It's very pretty, but it kind of ignores all the spacecraft

that we have out there, some of which have taken, I think, even better images of the whole planet to say nothing of showing us that world in detail. You know, there's a spacecraft there that can take images of the whole planet that are really quite stunning. And those are the ones from the Mars orbiter mission from India, although we haven't seen very many whole planet images from that orbiter. And then, of course, there are the images from the surface, which are really hard to beat. One cool piece of news that I learned this week is that the other camera that can take whole planet images, the Venus Monitoring Camera on Mars Express, has recently been promoted to a full science instrument. The scientists realized that this engineering camera was giving them photos of the beautiful atmospheric hazes on Mars that they could actually use for science.

Well, there you go. I wonder if something similar might not happen with JunoCam. Oh, JunoCam is definitely going to be used for science at Jupiter, no question. Let's switch gears to something that made its way across Southern California, or at least the west side of Los Angeles, your stamping grounds. Did you follow the external tank, ET? I did. The external tank made its way from Marina del Rey on the coast of LA all the way to Exposition Park on Saturday.

And it was just a great civic event. There were people coming out everywhere, all ages, kids, adults, everyone just lining the streets to watch this unusual scene, this enormous orange tank sliding slowly through the streets. There are astronauts walking alongside it, meeting and greeting all the kids. It was just, it was a great moment for Los Angeles. Certainly says something about the general public's excitement about space, doesn't it? I mean, it's just a big orange tank.

It is just a big orange gas tank, but it's a pretty impressive one. And I'm real glad that it's joined Endeavor here and we'll be able to see the shuttle displayed upright with its tank and its external rockets. Thank you, Emily, for this slightly out of the ordinary conversation. Thank you, Matt. She's our senior editor, the planetary evangelist for the Planetary Society, a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine as well. That's Emily Lakdawalla. A big day. In fact, it's underway even as I speak for LightSail, specifically LightSail 2.

We're going to get a special report on that next. The launch vehicle is ready to launch. Wow! Yes! Yes! Wow! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Wow! Yes! Yes! Yes! Go light sail! Yes!

Go light sail! Go light sail! You heard a lot of voices in that compressed clip. Yeah, going to space! Go, LightSail! You heard a lot of voices in that compressed clip, but the most enthusiastic belonged to the CEO of the Planetary Society, Bill Nye the Science Guy. We were all feeling it as we sat in the central Florida sun, a safe distance from the Atlas V rocket that was carrying LightSail 1 into orbit. That was almost exactly one year ago.

As you may know, the little CubeSat struggled, but eventually achieved all of its objectives. Those objectives did not include solar sailing. It simply wasn't high enough for the ever-so-gentle pressure of the sun's light to overcome the tiny yet significant resistance of our planet's tenuous atmosphere, even 350 kilometers up. LightSail 2 will fly twice as high. That sister spacecraft went through a comprehensive test on Monday, May 23rd. This day-in-the-life, or DITL, rehearsal happened at California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo. Bill Nye was there, and so were Planetary Society digital editor Jason Davis and the Society's Director of Science and Technology, Bruce Betts. Gentlemen, thanks for taking a couple of minutes.

It's a crazy day up there, I know, so we're especially grateful that you can spend some time with us on Planetary Radio. Matt, are we done yet? That's Bruce Betts, of course. Hey, I hear you actually have a console. You're important. I just set my laptop up at the end of the line, and so it looks like I'm important. No, I get to say go a couple times. It's very exciting. Oh, that's great. And you did it right. You said go. You didn't say go.

So far so good. It moved forward and I got an official report from Dave Spencer, the project manager, at the appropriate time. He looks pretty official up here, Matt. Pretty soon I think NASA's going to be recruiting him for some bigger missions. I don't know. Are you wearing a headset for this? I put

one on even though it wasn't connected to anything. All right. Well, speaking of reports, how's it going? You're not all the way through the test yet, right? No. So far this morning, we've done testing in a clean room, basically simulating the beginning of the mission from when it's first deployed from the PROX-1 spacecraft and starts communication, deploys its antenna. We establish transmissions, and they actually are transmitting from the spacecraft and receiving using the actual ground station here at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, just like in the mission,

and then did the solar panel deployments. And then this afternoon, we will do a sail deployment, if all goes well, on a giant table. So Jason, I actually saw some of this underway, the spacecraft in the foreground and some people sitting behind what looked like sheets of plastic as the light sail did its thing. Tell us what we were looking at there. Yeah, that particular shot, I think I was inside the clean room proper, which is where if you want to go in, you have to wear coats, booties, gloves, a hat, and for me, a beard cover, so you don't get any dust or particles around the sensitive electronics of the spacecraft.

I was in there with Alex Diaz, one of our lead systems engineers. That particular shot was probably looking at the spacecraft back out through the team, which is on console. They're sitting in a row there on a bunch of laptops and on the headsets watching through the operations phase. So I already said, so far so good. But you tell me, have there been any anomalies, as space people like to put it? Yes, but we've accomplished what we wanted,

which is test things and learn what doesn't work the way we expect. Fortunately, things have worked well, but there was some glitchiness with the batteries where only one battery out of eight was being used for a while, and then it came up to all eight. But we need to dig into that issue. That's the main issue. Everything else has gone very well. And again, you don't want to have issues, but now's the time to expose them.

That's why we do testing. Jason, you also mentioned that telemetry that Bruce talked about that's actually being picked up by the ground station as if the spacecraft was on orbit. That was working okay? No glitches, all the right zeros and ones? Yeah, the team has been checking through the data and they're able to see the health and status of the spacecraft just as if it was on orbit. The only difference is right now it's transmitting from an adjacent building, whereas we'll be a few hundred kilometers above the Earth's surface the next time that this happens. It's really neat. They have a radio receiver tuned to the same frequency as light sail, so it makes a little burst of audible

static every time the spacecraft beacons. So you know it's talking to us and being received. But so far so good. Everything looks like the communications are all flowing normally the way that they should. I've mentioned that you're at that beautiful central California coast campus, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, but I hear a little bit of activity in the background there. Where are you exactly and what's going on right now? Where are you exactly and what's going on right now? We are in, we commandeered an office near the clean room.

And I forget his name that is sitting right behind us so patiently while we talk to you. So, yeah, there's a lot of students out in the hallway also milling around waiting to see Bill Nye. Not surprising. I thought they were waiting for me. Yeah, yeah, Bruce, I'm sure they are. You just keep thinking that. What's happening right now? It's the lunch break, right? Yeah, and I can hear Bruce's stomach rumbling.

But it does that all the time. Yeah, sorry about that. It is, but basically they are shutting the power down and buttoning things up on the spacecraft. and buttoning things up on the spacecraft. And then during the lunch hour, it will be moved to an adjacent building and in the right place in preparation for using the big giant table to extend the four booms

and deploy the sails on the table in this afternoon's test. Let's make absolutely clear, this is the actual spacecraft. This is the one that's going to be on top of that Falcon Heavy, right? This is the actual spacecraft. This is the one that's going to be on top of that Falcon Heavy, right? This is the one. So how big is the team there?

How many people are involved in this test? And is it the same group that will be working more or less around the clock when the mission is actually underway? To answer your second question first, everything about this is simulating the mission as much as possible within the constraints we have. So the entire spacecraft team and operations team featuring people from Georgia Tech, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Ecliptic Enterprises, Boreal Space are all here and involved. I would guess there are 15 to 20 people. They're more recruited to help with the deployment test this afternoon, more Cal Poly students. Who's in charge? Who's

calling the shots? I am. As Alexander Haig said, I'm in charge. There's some good political history for you. No, really, at some level. But in terms of the practical running of the test, it's the project manager, Dave Spencer, from George Tech, and then he reports to me as the program manager for the Planetary Society. And then Ricky Munakata from Ecliptic Enterprises is the spacecraft lead, and we have all sorts of other people here. But Dave Spencer is the one actually running the tests and coordinating everything. All right, how about your roles?

I mean, what are you actually doing at that console with your disconnected headset? Trying to look busy so when Jason takes pictures it looks like I do something. Partly I really am just looking over the shoulders of people and monitoring things. But I'm also kind of the last step of approval before the more significant events. So just powering up the spacecraft, starting the test, this afternoon's sail deployment. I know it's terrifying, but I'm the final check to approve what's going forward. And then I also am trying to be being tied in to what's going on intimately through my disconnected headsets. I'm also the interface to the rest of the Planetary Society as well as

the outward public facing side. How about you, Jason? Well, we have a lot of media here, so there's been some helping with our director of communications, Aaron, aligning all of that and making sure everybody knows what's going on and what phase of the test we're at and when they can come in and take pictures and do video. take pictures and do video. And then there's also taking pictures for us, getting ready to write up a report or an article afterwards that will come out and kind of describe the whole end-to-end process. And this is a really important time for me because the more pictures and video I take now of the spacecraft itself and the operations that are going on in the clean room, the easier it will be for me to explain things when it's on orbit and we're trying to describe what it looks like when the panels come open, for instance. So that means I get to go into the clean room and take some cool shots of these critical parts of the mission phase. We have, I think, a small army of

GoPro cameras at this point that will be recording sail deployment. So I envy your position, of course, as the embedded reporter in this project. But tell us now, what happens after this? Assuming nothing is too anomalous over the rest of this day in the life test, what comes next between now and launch? So assuming things go well today, then it will have first of all, there'll be a lot of intense scrutiny of this test and reviewing what happened, what didn't work and focus on those things. Assuming things remain mostly fine and nominal, the next big exercise will be sort of a part two of the day in the life test which will be a Utah state using a special facilities they have there to test the attitude determination and control system so

things that detect the where the spacecraft is what orientation it's in testing and calibrating magnetic field sensors and gyros and sun sensors and that like. That'll be early in June. And then it'll come back to California and will once again be basically tested end-to-end with everything except a sail deployment to make sure everything's good. And then it'll be sealed up, packed up, and by about mid-July will be delivered to Georgia Tech to integrate into their Prox-1 spacecraft, which this time we fly inside another spacecraft until we get deployed. So that's the nominal schedule.

And obviously, if anything is too serious, that glitches, then we'll take time to fix it and retest. You're reminding us, as you describe all this, that even for a little spacecraft like this, space is hard and spacecraft are really complicated. They are. Space is hard. So even with your small spacecraft, particularly when you're doing exotic things like trying to deploy a solar sail and then control it, that's the real difference to the light sail 2 compared to light sail 1, is we're flying to a higher altitude, getting above more of the atmosphere, and we'll actually try to demonstrate controlled solar sailing and change the orbit. And so there's just a, there's a lot of stuff. And of course, the obvious thing to

remind people is that you can't go up there and fix something. So you have to have it work. And the way to do that is build well and then test like you're going to fly and keep testing. Jason, what is the current outlook for launch on that second Falcon Heavy? So as we all know, SpaceX lost a rocket a while back, a Falcon 9, on the way to orbit, and that kind of pushed their schedule off kilter a little bit. Falcon 9 on the way to orbit, and that kind of pushed their schedule off kilter a little bit. And because of that, the Falcon Heavy, the inaugural flight of it, which may have some kind of test payload or just a big hunk of mass, that's been pushed to the right a little bit. So they're currently targeting that for later this fall. And then depending on how that flight goes, they'll regroup and prepare for the first operational flight, which is going to be for the U.S. Air Force.

And that's where we are one of those secondary payloads. So we don't have a launch date yet, but it's probably safe to say it's going to be in 2017 sometime. Sounds like it could easily slip into that next year. So for a good while, it sounds like LightSail may just be biding its time. So for a good while, it sounds like LightSail may just be biding its time. Yeah, it may just be sitting inside Prox One, waiting to get all buttoned up inside the Falcon Heavy when it's ready to go. All right, guys, when do you, Bruce, have to put your fake headset back on and things get started again there? Really soon. First of all, we have actually the most important exercise of the day, which is lunch.

First of all, we have actually the most important exercise of the day, which is lunch. And then I will put my fake headset back on and proudly appear to be doing something. Well, I know how dangerous it is to get between you and a meal, but I'm hoping you can stick around for a few extra minutes for our regular edition of What's Up. Ben Jason, it's great to get you back on the show as well. And I'm sure we will talk again before the launch of LightSail 2. Sounds good, Matt. Thanks as always.

Thank you both, guys. And Bruce, don't go away. We've been talking with Jason Davis, digital editor for the Planetary Society. And as you can tell, our embedded reporter in the LightSail project. He covers all kinds of stuff for us. Human spaceflight, commercial spaceflight. And Jason, nice work following that giant rusty tank around town, too. Yes, I'm a rusty fuel tank follower expert at this point. You can check all that out at Jason Davis. That's his Twitter handle, where he did follow the

external tank on its route toward the California Science Center just last week. And of course, Bruce, you can find it at Random Space Fact. And Random Space Fact is that series of videos he does for the Planetary Society as well. And what else? Oh, yeah. He'll be on What's Up with me in just a couple of moments. We'll be right back. This is Robert Picardo. I've been a member of the Planetary Society since my Star Trek Voyager days.

You may have even heard me on several episodes of Planetary Radio. Now I'm proud to be the newest member of the Board of Directors. I'll be able to do even more to help the Society achieve its goals for space exploration across our solar system and beyond. You can join me in this exciting quest. The journey starts at planetary.org. I'll see you there. Do you know what your favorite presidential candidate thinks about space exploration? Hi, I'm Casey Dreyer, the Planetary Society's Director of Space Policy.

You can learn that answer and what all the other candidates think at planetary.org slash election2016. You know what? We could use your help. If you find anything we've missed, you can let us know. It's all at planetary.org slash election2016. Thank you. Time for What's Up. As promised on Planetary Radio, we are not joined by, but we continue to visit with the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, also the Program Manager for LightSail, LightSail 2,

which is why we're talking to him still at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where they are in the middle of that test. Hey, Bruce, tell us what's up in the night sky. Mars. Focus on Mars. Mars in the evening, sky rising in the east right around sunset and be up all night long and looking as bright as it's been in 11 or more years. It will be closest to Earth on May 30th, and then will start to dim fairly rapidly over the month or two following that.

You can also see Saturn not that far away, now much dimmer than Mars and yellowish. And it's also near Scorpius's red star, which is also much dimmer than Mars right now, even though it's a bright star and reddish. But yeah, Mars, check it out. That's the thing. All right, we move on to this week in space history. It was 2008 that Phoenix landed successfully on Mars. Eight years ago? Eight years ago? I just, it's going way, way too fast. Yeah, it really is.

I did a double take. Like, wait, that must be wrong. I almost stopped you to say, is that right? But yeah, of course it's right. Speaking of misperception of time for no apparent reason, we move on to random space fact. That's pretty subdued. You didn't want to scare the other people there on your light sail. They might have dropped it, right?

It's true. And I want to thank the person who we've just completely taken over his office. It's Ryan Nugent. Hey, guys. Ryan, there's a Planetary Radio t-shirt in it for you. Thank you. No, there's not. Yes, there is.

All right, all right. Yes, there is. That's far more responsible than I am. Get on with it. Who's got a fact for us? All right, we've got our special guest, random space fact guy, Jason Davis, who has saved me since my brain has gone to mush.

He will deliver a random space fact hello Jason hello Bruce and hello Matt here is your random space fact light sails transmitter is only about one watt strong which is on the order of a cell phone nice your random space fact nice work I even though I interrupted your your nice closing your dramatic clothes very well done Jason I applaud you Thank You Jason you've saved us thank you saved us all excellent random excellent RSF we move on to the trivia contest and we asked you how much approximately how much more massive is Sirius a serious being the brightest star in the sky, and that's a binary, so Sirius A is the bright part of the binary.

How much more massive than the sun is Sirius A? How'd we do, Matt? Huge response. We left it, as always, to random.org to decide who would be this week's winner, and it chose Ryan Henson of Odessa, Texas. I believe a first-time winner. Bruce, he said that the Massive Sirius is approximately twice that of our sun. He actually gave it 4.018 times 10 to the 30th kilograms, with the sun a little bit less than half of that. Did he get it right?

018 or 017? Oh, I have 018. I'm kidding. Yes, I was just looking for about twice the mass of the sun. Excellent. He wins. Well, congratulations, Ryan, who also said, thank you for reigniting the passion I felt for everything space that I had as a kid. Ryan, we're going to send you one of those Planetary Radio t-shirts, Planetary Society Rubber Asteroid,

and a 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account. And by the way, we are hearing from people among the Matt Minter who loves that we are rolling our R's when we mention Rubber Asteroid. That's great.

Rubber biscuit. You can look it up. It'll be on IMDb. Okay, we got a few other nice things here. Mike Andrisco from DeMott, Indiana, listening for several years, but first time writing into the show. He mentions that Sirius, he got the mass right about double the sun, but 25 times as luminous, as bright, which I think is fascinating. That's a hot star, isn't it? That's a hot star. So we also got this from Hudson Ansley in Bloomfield, New Jersey, who did a little math

for us. He says, so if Rigel were as close as Sirius and we average the brightness estimates, it would be, if I have calculated correctly, he says, 8,000 times brighter than Sirius, about a quarter as bright as the full moon. Now, I haven't checked his math, but his basic approach there, his basic truth, that some stars may look dimmer to us, but they actually could be a lot brighter than they appear. Yeah, I haven't checked the math either, but yes, indeed, obviously a star's brightness, the apparent brightness that we see is a combination of its absolute brightness combined with its distance from where we are. So there are super large, super bright stars that are farther away. Whether it gets to be that much brighter, I'm not sure.

I haven't done the math. But yeah, the concept is valid. Several people also wrote to us about Sirius's place in fiction. And this came from Mark Little in Ireland. He mentions it coming up in Egyptian and Freemason culture, but his favorite reference is to a Disney movie. Geppetto prays to the brightest star in the sky, a blue star. And, of course, the result is a blue glowing fairy comes and gives him Pinocchio, a real live boy. Yeah, I can't tell you the number of times that's happened to me.

I like this one too. Nathan Hunter in Portland, Oregon. He says the Tolkien's elves in The Lord of the Rings called Sirius Heluwin, and that it was also, of course, home, or a planet near it, to the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation in the Hitchhiker's Guide books, a particularly inept, horrible, horrible company that I think they said would be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes. Anyway, that's Sirius Cybernetics. Don't buy any robots from them. Michael Bamberg in Birmingham, Alabama. His son's middle name is Sirius because his wife and he are backyard astronomers. And then

are you ready for a little ditty from our friend Dave Fairchild in Shawnee, Kansas? Oh, yes. The brightest of stars in our heavenly dome is double the mass of our sun. As one of the stars on the flag of Brazil, this dog is a Sirius one.

Wow. Thanks again, Dave. We are ready to move on to the next contest. Simple one because there are only two possible answers. So you got a 50-50 chance for a change. Which direction does the great red spot of Jupiter spin clockwise or counterclockwise? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. Get us your entry. Wow. Okay. And you'll need to get that to us by the 31st of May. That would be Tuesday, May 31st at 8 a.m.

Pacific time. And we have three more keys. In other words, three more copies of that really cool Mars-based game, Offworld Trading Company that Bruce has endorsed. It's new, beautiful, it's engaging, it's an economic strategy game on Mars. And so we'll give away three of those to three people who guess right with this zero and one binary question. One of those three will be our grand prize winner, which means that he or she will also

get a 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account. And with that, I think we're done. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about what star you would name your child after. Thank you, and good night. All right, he is Bruce Betts. He is the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society.

But today, especially today, he's the program manager for LightSail, the LightSail project from the Planetary Society, which is why he's up at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with Jason Davis, who contributed that random space fact this week. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. Thanks. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California,

and is made possible by its high-flying members. Josh Doyle created our theme music. I'm Matt Kaplan. Clear skies.