Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - A Helicopter for Mars and a Major LightSail Announcement

Episode Date: July 31, 2019

It will be the first flying machine on another world. Mars Helicopter Project Manager MiMi Aung shares her plans. There’s big news about The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2! You’ll hear it from embedded reporter Jason Davis and from LightSail Program Manager Bruce Betts, along with Bruce’s regular What’s Up look at the night sky. Learn more about this week’s guests and topics at:  http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2019/0731-2019-mars-helicopter-lightsail-2-success.htmlLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A helicopter on Mars, and a very big announcement, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome, I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. Mimi Ong and her team at the Jet Propulsion Lab are putting the final touches on the first flying machine heading for the red planet. Actually, the first flying machine headed anywhere off Earth. Join me in minutes for a great conversation about this tiny, innovative example of exciting space technology. And speaking of tiny, innovative space tech, Jason Davis of the Planetary Society is here to share that big news. As you know, the Society's LightSail 2 CubeSat is in orbit and has deployed its 5.6 meter sail. The core mission team has been working to stabilize the spacecraft and iron out a few

remaining problems. Just getting LightSail up there and unfurling the sail were pretty impressive, but these didn't mean the mission was successful. Now, well. All right, Jason, I've teased everybody. What is the big news, which is becoming available only as this episode becomes available online and elsewhere? Yeah, you've got the hot off the press scoop here. Yeah, so today the LightSail team is announcing that they have successfully raised the spacecraft's orbit using nothing but solar sailing. So that is the entire is a demonstration of what? That solar sailing can work in orbit? Yeah, yeah. So the entire concept of this spacecraft, which now actually goes back to 2009, so 10 years ago this whole thing started, was to demonstrate that you could successfully control a solar sail in low Earth orbit, and specifically one that's deployed from a very small space in a CubeSat, and that you could use solar sailing to raise the orbit of the spacecraft.

And then the idea was that that technology could then go to the next step. Other spacecraft or other agencies or private organizations could use the technology and do more ambitious missions, essentially, and use it elsewhere. We launched about a month ago, actually a little more than a month ago at this point, deployed successfully, got the solar sail out last week. The team refined some of their orbit-raising maneuvers after a sail deployment. And then in the past few days, they have been able to measure a steady uptick in the spacecraft's apogee. That's the high point of its orbit. That is enough for them to say that, hey, this works.

It is successful and call it a success. Fantastic. Now, as of yesterday, because we haven't seen any new data, but as of yesterday, how much had the orbit actually been raised? At this point, as we are speaking, it is 1.7 kilometers. By the time this goes on air, I would expect it to be higher than that, maybe closer to two kilometers. Interestingly, as the apogee, the high point in LightSail's orbit rises, the perigee descends, which is a little disturbing.

the perigee descends, which is a little disturbing. Yeah, so when LightSail was designed back in 2009, and they started selecting the hardware components for it, CubeSats were still a relatively new technology. So the attitude control system that we're using for the spacecraft actually doesn't have a finite enough control over which way the sail is pointing to keep the orbit circular. Now, you could definitely do that, but light sails only capable of kind of either you're aimed at the sun or you're not aimed at the sun. What we do, we only raise the orbit on one side of the orbit.

And as the high point of light sails orbit goes up, that actually shifts the orbit so that the low point comes closer to the atmosphere. That means eventually we're going to start seeing a lot more atmospheric drag, and this orbit-raising portion of the mission should only last about one month. So that's what's ahead. We'll keep raising it for a while, and then we'll, what, just let it decay on its own? Yeah, it'll stay in orbit. The orbital models they have show that it will stay in orbit about a year. If we still have control over the spacecraft, we'll probably be looking at other things that they can do with it. Maybe definitely taking a lot more pictures. But yeah, that's part of the experiment. You know, this has never been done before. And they'll be seeing if their orbital models of about a year work out.

Who knows? We'll have to wait and see. But yay, exciting. We we got this far. knows. We'll have to wait and see. But yay, exciting. We got this far. Speaking of pictures, there are some spectacular images which people can see. Where? Where's the best place to go? Planetary.org. Actually, sail.planetary.org will take you to our main light sail page, and you can click images, and it'll take you straight into our image library, and you'll see all the latest stuff from the spacecraft. Really fantastic. Jason, thank you very much for this update. And you should, by the time people can hear this,

there should be a brand new blog from Jason available at planetary.org or sail.planetary.org. If people want to see light sail, do they have an opportunity to do that? How do they figure out when to look? Yeah. So if you use the sail.planetary.org link, there's also a link in there for our mission control dashboard that shows real data coming in from the spacecraft. That also shows where it is currently, and it does predictions based on where you're located for when you might be able to see the spacecraft. So definitely check that out.

And if you're in range of the spacecraft, take a look for it. It's amazing, Jason, after years and years of work. Thank you for everything you've done to help make this mission so accessible to the rest of us. And good luck to all of us as it continues. Yeah, thanks, Matt. It's been a fun ride. And good luck to all of us as it continues. Yeah, thanks, Matt.

It's been a fun ride. Jason Davis, he's our digital editor and the embedded reporter for the LightSail project. Following the progress, the success now of LightSail 2. It was just a couple of weeks ago that we talked with Zibby Turtle about Dragonfly, the very advanced rotorcraft that will fly through the skies of Saturn's moon Titan in the 2030s. We won't have to wait nearly that long to see a more modest but still very daring aircraft become the first to fly on another world. That world is Mars, and the aircraft is the Mars helicopter. Longtime JPL engineer Mimi Ong is the Mars helicopter project manager. Mimi, great to get you on the phone there at JPL. As I understand it, you've just come out of a

meeting about your mission, the Mars helicopter. It is delightful to talk to you about this pretty delightful flying machine that you want to send to Mars. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. I don't know if you've seen the comments on the YouTube video that you folks have posted about the mission. We'll link to it from this week's show page at planetary.org slash radio. There is this great animation that shows the Mars helicopter doing its stuff across the red planet, simulated of course. One of your

YouTube viewers made the comment that it looked to him like a Marsquito, which I thought was pretty cute. And not far off, less than two kilograms or about four pounds, it's a pretty small little device, isn't it? I mean, it may faintly resemble some drones and small robotic helicopters here on Earth, but I bet it's a lot tougher. A lot more has gone into this one. Yes, it's much tougher because the atmosphere at Mars is extremely thin compared to the air density at Earth. You know, it's less than one percent. So the vehicle has to be very light, you know, and of course be able to

spin very fast. So that's, I always say, you know, and of course be able to spin very fast. So that's, I always say, you know, if you're going to have a startup in a Mars helicopter, make it really light and make sure it can spin really fast. And more to the story, I guess, because you've got to deal with the temperature extremes, right? And what about the radiation environment? Did you have to take those into account? Yes, definitely the temperature plays a huge role. The Mars helicopter will be a standalone rotorcraft. Once we've been deployed on the ground, we'll be carried by the Mars 2020 rover to the surface of Mars.

And then once the rover deploys us on the ground, the helicopter never goes back to the rover again. It's going to be communicating wirelessly through what we call a base station via that wireless lifeline, so to speak. The helicopter will be receiving commands and sending data back and the rover will relay. So in that standalone mode, this helicopter has to be able to survive the cold temperatures at night. It has to also be able to keep its energy balance positive. So meaning it has to collect sun solar energy on a solar panel and store it in the batteries within and then use the energy for surviving the night as well as for flying. So yes, on top of being the first rotorcraft to fly autonomously on the surface of Mars in the very, very thin air,

answering that question, can we fly at Mars of doing this technology demonstration flight at Mars, the autonomous functions such as autonomous survival to cold nights and autonomous energy management and autonomous self-management of activities and being lightly, remotely operated from Earth. All that has to be built into that less than two kilogram limit. I understand that you tested in a big vacuum chamber. That's not surprising. But how did you simulate Mars's low gravity? Yes, very good question.

Basically, we built a system called the Gravity Offload System in the chamber, a 25-foot diameter space simulator chamber at JPL. And then we pump it down to near vacuum and fill it back with carbon dioxide to simulate Mars atmosphere to the right density. And then in the chamber, we have the very high top, maybe about 40 feet up, we put on a beam, a very significant beam. And then from there hung a gravity offload system that is an independent system that has constant torque control to be taking off the difference in the force difference between the Earth's gravity and Mars' gravity. So basically, we built a gravity offload system and provided a constant

offload to the helicopter, and that's attached to the helicopter. But the difference that is taking off is independent of what the helicopter is doing. Just developing that sounds like it must have been pretty impressive. I mean, as the helicopter was doing its stuff in the chamber, for this system to be able to respond quickly sounds pretty cool. You are right on. One of the things that happens when a team like ours, right, that's building something for the first time to do a first of a kind function on a distant planet, parallel to inventing the article itself, in our case, the Mars helicopter, we had to be in parallel inventing the test environment continuously from day one. And you've pointed out, for example, this gravity offload system, right? That's, we had to do that. That in fact came, you know, late in the game, even in the earlier days, you know, when we were saying, we're going to build this rotor system, right? That has to spin

2,300 to 2,900 RPMs. Even just the first thought of where do we go, right? We ended up going to the 25 foot chamber, but remember that's the answer we know now, right? When we started this, there was no such thing as a place to go test the Mars environment that's already been simulated from you. So yes, the invention started very early on when we were able to, you know, ready to test even the first piece, right, the rotor system. So yes, it's been a parallel invention. Parallel to Mars helicopter, how to test has been a parallel invention. You've got a lot of other technology packed into this little bitty package. I read that it has over 1,000 parts and that you included aerogel, which is that wonderful material that has such interesting properties.

How are you making use of aerogel? Oh, so the aerogel, it turned out, we considered it in the beginning, and it's to keep the helicopter fuselage warm, you know, the electronics warm. So I'm going to give you a long answer. It's okay. Yeah, the Martian nights get very cold, right? It gets down to like minus 90 degrees Celsius or so, you know, that level of coldness, right? So the electronics part and the battery that we carry in the helicopter in the part called the fuselage, you've seen pictures, it looks like the cube looking portion on the bottom. That temperature has to be maintained to the warmer temperatures that the circuit boards can take and that the

battery, we want to maintain the battery too. So what we do is then we put a fuselage skin around it. It's a special material that we developed that has to be wrapped around it and enclosed inside. We can put either aerogel, which is what we're going to put in in the beginning, but we were able to modify the design and saying just by the CO2, the carbon dioxide gas that's trapped, you know, between the battery and the circuit boards and the juice-lush skin, just the carbon dioxide gas itself was to serve sufficiently as insulation, thermal insulation. So as the design matured, we were able to do enough with just the carbon dioxide that will serve as insulation.

And I imagine even as light as aerogel is, you saved another few fractions of an ounce. Oh, absolutely. For us, we were counting every gram. So our chief engineer, chief engineer and basically the technical innovator of Mars helicopter, you know, Bob Bellerin, he was managing mass to the gram. And there were fabulous arguments with, like, certain, you know, subsystem leads trying to get a few grams out of him in the early days was brutal. Right? When you have, when you're hanging on to less than 2000 grams, right? And also, you want to put margin early on, right? Yeah, yeah. He was not letting go of even grams easily. How smart is this little helicopter?

I mean, is it going to fly autonomously once you tell it where you want it to go? Yes, it has to be smart. It has to be autonomous. It has to operate with very light instructions from Earth. We're too far away for anything else. Right, so it has to be a very small set of instructions. You know, at this time, get up and fly, you know, point A, B, C, right? Take images,

come back, land, and send telemetry data back to our base station. It's that level of instructions. Below that, parsing of such level instructions down to activity, right, all the way to spinning the rotors and, you know, controlling the servos and flying and then landing and following the instructions. All that has to be done autonomously by the computer on board. Which is pretty impressive, again, in such a small package. I know you're not carrying any instruments, but you know that a lot of us would never have forgiven any of you if you hadn't at least brought a camera. And I understand that the camera you've got is pretty good. Yes, we're carrying a small camera.

They'll take color images. And it's exciting because it will be the first pictures of Mars taken from an aerial vantage point. You know, the real primary focus, right, of this technology demonstration mission is to confirm our models of flight at Mars. Yeah. Confirming and then repeating the flight that we have proven, you know, that we've proven it works in our test chamber. But really executing that on the surface of Mars in situ, right, with the real environment, the real atmosphere, the real terrain, the real temperatures. Proving all of that and then doing further and further flights and verifying our models is the primary objective and data product that we're seeking. Then we'll move on to the next, you know, larger, next generation helicopters

for future more capable vehicles. So that's the primary objective. Secondary to that is that we are carrying this color camera and we'll be able to take images. And that will also be as exciting. But I have to emphasize, though, we are there to show how to fly. Sure. We have the how first.

I can't wait to see some of those images, especially looking back at Curiosity itself from some height. You know, we had Zibi Turtle on the show just a couple of weeks ago, I think, talking about Dragonfly. And one of the things that came up with Zibi was how excited she and her team are about the Mars helicopter, because it's a very different place from Titan, of course, but still this excitement of knowing that you are also sending a flying machine to another world. Have you had any thoughts about Dragonfly or contact with them? Yes, absolutely.

In fact, this last meeting I was in was a review that Mike Rikskevich was chairing. He's the director of APL's space division, space sector. director of APL's space division, right, space sector. Yeah, so we were just talking about that and saying, yes, we're very excited for Dragonfly. And, in fact, Mars helicopter will be the first flight in the atmosphere of any other planetary target outside of Earth. And we as human beings have never flown, right, a rotorcraft on another planet or planetary target.

While Mars helicopter is doing the first, it's extremely exciting that Dragonfly is going to be doing that too. So that to substantiate that we are inserting aerial dimension to our space exploration, because we do space exploration with examining planetary targets from orbit, right? And rovers on the surface, but we haven't utilized the aerial dimension. We're inserting the whole new dimension together. This would be great. Absolutely.

Okay, back to your mission. If everything goes well, how far and how high do you expect Mars helicopter to fly? We're going to fly at about 5-meter height. We will fly increasingly further, lateral flights. We'll be flying out of an experimental area, okay, like a 10 meter by 10 meter experimental area, we call it. So we take off from there and then we'll be landing back on there. And so we'll first do a hover flight and then we would repeat a lateral, a modest lateral flight, you know, going some meters, repeat a lateral, a modest lateral flight, you know, going some meters, possibly a couple of tenths of meters.

And then we'll go further and further out, up to 150 meters out and back. So about 300 meters round trip. I have a little drone that my daughters got me for one of my birthdays. And anybody who owns one of these little amateur guys, little toys, knows that you get a certain amount of flying time, and then you've got to plug it back in for quite a while. And, you know, fortunately, as you've said, you're bringing along a little solar panel

mounted right on top of the Mars helicopter. How many flights and how long do you expect to be able to fly on one of these little sojourns? And then how long before you might be ready to fly again? We plan to fly up to 90 seconds. We can recharge over one day, and then possibly, you know, two days. We can fly again close to the next day or in the next two days. Hey, here's something that just occurred to me. As you know, we learned with Spirit and Opportunity especially, those handy Martian

dust devils would come along now and then and clean off the solar panels and extended the life of the Mars Exploration Rovers. Do you bring along, in a sense, your own window wiper because you're going to blow the dust off? Yeah, no, we don't. Unfortunately, again, maybe future generation helicopters could, right? Remember, this is the first ever, and we were just trying to demonstrate feasibility. So, no, we don't have this fancy wiper. But, again, this is where I want to motivate the future generations, right? Yeah. You know, we're doing the Pathfinder, but there is so much room to advance the next more capable helicopters.

so much room to advance the next more capable helicopters. And it all involves, like you're saying, capability to wipe off dust, to be able to fly longer, further, all of those possible. But they take advancement in technologies like the battery-specific energy. That's a big metric. You know what I mean? The more capable a battery is, you'll be able to fly longer, further, right? Or light materials, computers, cameras, gyros, accelerometers with very high quality and low mass. You can see like how technology can significantly improve, you know, all of these metrics.

You know, one thing just now I didn't answer is, yes, in terms of how many flights you mentioned, And the answer is yes, in terms of how many flights you mentioned. Our plan, the baseline plan right now, is to fly up to five flights in a 30-day experiment window that's assigned for Mars helicopter. Do you foresee a day when maybe there will be something more like what they hope to do with Dragonfly, although, of course, it won't reach Titan until the 2030s, flying around on Mars. You know, they have an advantage. They've got that nice thick atmosphere where you have to deal with the 1%. But you obviously see a bright future for rotorcraft, other flying machines on the Red Planet. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, just like on Earth, we need the aerial dimension, right? It'll be very complementary, highly complementary to the rovers on the surface and spacecraft in orbit. Something

moving in the air, as you know, you will be able to do reconnaissance, you know, far ahead of rovers or human beings, right? When the human beings get to Mars exploring, you would want those sub-centimeter level high definition images before you send a rover or a human many kilometers ahead. So in terms of reconnaissance, you can also imagine getting access to places that we can't get to today, like sides of steep cliffs, deep inside deep volcanoes. There are places we simply can't get to by astronauts or rovers, right? But by being able to fly, it will get us to places that we can't get to today. Absolutely, I can see that.

That's so cool. I would just imagine flying down to the floor of the Valles Marineris or something like that. Very exciting. I read that you joined JPL 27 years ago. Since then, you've worked on a lot of projects, including the Deep Space Network. One of the JPL managers, I heard you say, who interviewed you for your first job there, he was talking about all the things that you might be involved with and what you had expertise with. And he said, apparently told you that you sounded like a

kid in a candy store. Do you still feel that way? Yes, yes. And I remember the moment when he said that, yes. The thing that excites me is making first-of-a-kind missions become real, right? It happened. That's the excitement, right? First-of-a-kind. And I'm passionate about increasingly autonomous capability we will develop to advance space exploration.

And I'm getting a chance to do that, you know, over these years that I've been here. So it's been extraordinary. And time has gone by really fast. It doesn't seem like it was that long ago. Who or what inspired you to become a STEM professional? Oh, wow. Well, I guess it comes all from my deep love of math. And my mother was a math PhD, so I probably got that from her.

And so I love math. That's from day to day what I like to do. And then on the side of just fascination with space, that's just, I think a lot of us have it, right? What's out there? Is there life out there? Are we alone? You know, what's in space, right? That mystery has just been in, you it has uh what do you call it like fascinated me

since i was a child so as you know you grow up and your life experience and education all that leads you to a point when time came to uh interview for jobs uh when i was finishing up my master's degree in uh electrical engineering, professor pointed out, hey, you know, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, you know, they had the Deep Space Network and I was specializing in communications and signal processing. That's just what I love to do. It was a perfect intersection of math and engineering and, you know, application. And then I remember the professor saying, hey, they have the Deep Space Network tracking these tiny, weak little signals coming from Deep Space. And so I remember

that. And so I definitely applied and made sure I got onto the interview through the process at the university and used up all my prioritization I could give as a student, got the interview. But from that first interview, it was just, it was a perfect match. I mean, I loved the interview. And then I was invited to come out here to JPL to interview. And that was just, I was just high, you know, it was just incredible because technically what I want to do, what I love to do and how it was going to be applied in space. And I think that's what that manager was reflecting, you know, when he said, you're like a kid

in the candy store. I'm like, oh, you're doing this. Oh, I can do that. You know, with my, what I like to do or like a kid in a candy store. I'm like, oh, you're doing this? Oh, I can do that? You know, with my, what I like to do or what I've learned, this is what I can do. So it's been like that ever since. And now you get to play with a Martian helicopter. I got just one more question for you. Do you and your team have a pet name for the Mars helicopter,

something you use internally that you're willing to share? Okay, I guess it's a moment of truth. All right, I guess I'm going to let it out. It's going to be interesting. We actually don't. We don't, but we do have a... I think I'm going to stay there. Oh, no, we came so close. Okay. Yeah, no, we don't have a pet name. All right. There is a funny clause that I'll going to stay there. Oh, no, we came so close. Okay. Yeah, no, we don't have a pet name. All right. There is a funny clause that I'll have to think about it. I'll have to call you back if I'm ready. All right. Well, we got a year now, almost exactly a year until the launch of the 2020 rover, and your Mars helicopter will be tucked away safely inside there. I hope that sometime between now and then,

as we get closer to launch, maybe you'll be able to share that with all of us out here who are looking forward to this mission with such enthusiasm. Mimi, thank you. It's been great talking with you. It's been great talking to you.

Thank you very much for inviting me. That's Mimi Ong. She is the project manager for the Mars helicopter headed to Mars a year from now on the 2020 rover arriving at the red planet after its seven minutes of terror in 2021. She's at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena, California. Time for What's Up and Getting Upper or higher on Planetary Radio, we are joined by the program manager for LightSail, LightSail 2 in this case, Bruce Betts. He's also the chief scientist of the Planetary Society. Congratulations, program manager, to you and the entire team. As we heard from Jason

at the top of the show, LightSail 2 is a success. Yay! Thank you, thank you, thank you. And thanks to all the team, especially the core team who's been working so hard the last few weeks, keeping her flying and fixing things. And then all the members and backers who made this mission possible. It's pretty darn exciting. And you're celebrating out of the country. You're not even here with us for this big occasion. It's true. I'm here virtually. No, I'm there virtually. the International Symposium on Solar Sailing, which is only held every two to three years, but happens to be now, a little bit before the show airs, I'll be announcing our glorious news

to the world and the world's experts on solar sailing who are here, except the ones back in the U.S. running LightSail 2. While they don't, your colleagues there in Aachen, they don't yet know about our declaration of success. They do know that we've been doing pretty well so far. I assume you've been getting some bats on the back. Yeah. And a lot of questions, of course, everyone interested in the thing that's actually up there sailing. A lot of people have put in a lot of work over a lot of years all around the world. It's impressively international, but all of it theoretical or upcoming or ground deployments, except, of course, for Icaros from the Japanese. And Jun Kawaguchi is here. And, hmm, light sail, too.

All right. Well, it's good to know there's an international community of solar sails that we are proud members of. Go on, tell us what's up in the night sky. Light sail two. episode and I'll get back to normal space stuff, but cut me some slack if you wouldn't mind. Kind of into it right now, this whole mission operations thing, solar sailing conference. So yes, LightSail 2 is up and there's a chance you may see it or not see it, as I guess you discussed earlier with Jason. But you can also more easily and more reliably see Jupiter rising in the east during the day. So it's actually up in the south and the southwest in the early evening, looking like the brightest star-like object.

Saturn is looking yellowish far to its left in the south. And the Perseid meteor shower peaks on the 12th and 13th of August. So we've got increased meteor activity several days before and after. That's the good news. The bad news is the moon will be almost full at the peak, which will limit the number of meteors visible this year. Still, on average, second best shower of the year. So if you can sneak around the moon or look a different direction, you got a chance. We move on to this week in space history. Let's see. It was 2019 that LightSail2 changed its orbit using controlled solar sailing for the first time in a small CubeSat-sized

vehicle. Oh yeah, other stuff happened. 1971, blah, blah, Apollo 15. No, sorry, Apollo 15. Apollo 15. No, sorry. Apollo 15. I'm sorry. I'm not showing proper reverence. They did cool stuff. They put a rover on the moon and drove a dune buggy on the moon for the first time this week in 1971.

And it's the 15th anniversary of the launch of the Messenger spacecraft that explored and orbited Mercury. We move on to Random Space Fact! LightSail 2 has been 10 years in the making. That's it. We started in 2008, 2009. That's it. It's not particularly random, but it's very good. Space Fact! Orderly Space Fact!

We'll get back to random ones soon i i promise i can't guarantee it'll be next week but but soon trivia why we necessarily go off the light sail bandwagon i asked you before being named eagle and columbia what were the Apollo 11 Lunar Module and Command Module named? How'd we do, Matt? Boy, you got me with this one. I had no idea. And most of our entrants, the ones who I think delivered what you were hoping for, they also, by and large, had no idea. the people who entered gave the sort of official designations of the lunar module, LM5, and the command module or command service module, CSM107. But I bet you were looking for what we got from Brian Hoffman in Idaho, Snowcone and Haystack? Yes, indeed. Snowcone, the command module, and Haystack, the lunar module, was used both in internal and external communications during mission planning, early mission planning, before someone said, hey, we need something more official. None of that goofy peanut stuff from Apollo 10, which was quite awesome, by the way.

Congratulations, Brian. I believe a first-time winner. Congratulations, Brian. I believe a first-time winner. You are going to receive a 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account, a Planetary Society kick asteroid, rubber asteroid, and that great book by Teasel Muir Harmony, very appropriate, Apollo to the Moon, a history in 50 objects, where she takes 50 objects that had something to do with getting to the moon in the Apollo program and wraps this grand story around them. And this is not too surprising because she is a curator and historian at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., so in a good position to do this kind of book. Anyway, enjoy it. I did when I went through it. Let's go on. I've got some other good stuff here from our poet laureate, Dave Fairchild. He didn't come up with the names you were looking for, but CSM-107 only seemed to thrive when teamed up with its buddy, whom it knew as LM5. But humans changed their names, and so Columbia was branded,

But humans changed their names, and so Columbia was branded. And let us all repeat with me, the Eagle now has landed. Devin Hubel, recent winner, I think, in North Carolina. Maybe it wouldn't have been such a great idea. Yeah, Tranquility Base here, the Haystack has landed. Nice. I mean, I'm thinking if they went for Snowcone and Haystack, they would have come up with some other name for spacecraft more of a cannon shell, actually, that was also launched from Florida and carried three men to the moon. He called it Columbiad, which I always thought was pretty cool.

We had a number of haiku in honor of Apollo 11. This one came from Sven Newhouse, your temporary neighbor there in Germany. Eagle on the moon, a giant leap for mankind. It's time to go back. And that's it. We're ready to go on. So I'm thinking, light sail two question. In the first high resolution image downlinked and released after sail deployment, it showed a mostly deployed sail. What is the most obvious strip of land in the picture? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. Good one.

And I think I know the answer. I've seen that beautiful photo. You have this time until the 7th. That would be Wednesday, August 7th at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us the answer. And win yourself a 200-point itelescope.net account, that international network of remote-operated telescopes that anybody can use with their cool interface.

It's worth a couple hundred bucks. Also, of course, a rubber asteroid. And let's throw in Voyager's greatest hits. It's a book. It's a book. It's a really cool book from Alexandra Sy, or C, I'm not sure. I apologize, Alexandra. The Epic Trek to Interstellar Space, marking pretty much the 42nd anniversary of the beginning of the missions of Voyager 1 and 2, as long as we're talking about history-making space exploration this week.

Anyway, we'll send you that book if you're the lucky one who makes it through random.org with the correct answer. With that, you're ready to, what, go to bed or start writing your presentation for tomorrow to make that big announcement? Oh, I should do that. Okay. Whatever. Anyway, hey, everybody, go out there, look up the night sky and think about schnitzel and knockwurst. I know I am. Thank you and good night.

I don't recommend that when it's late at night, but you enjoy tomorrow and bask in the glory, my friend. Congratulations again. Thank you. Thank you. That's Bruce Betts. He is the chief scientist of the Planetary Society and program manager for the entire LightSail program, including LightSail 2. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its triumphant members. Mary Liz Bender is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. I'm Matt Kaplan at Astro.