Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - A Sacred Place: The National Air and Space Museum with Ellen Stofan

Episode Date: May 30, 2018

Planetary geologist Ellen Stofan has just become Director of the most popular museum in the United States.  The NASM protects and shares the greatest collection of space and aviation treasures on Earth. Mat Kaplan talks with the former NASA Chief Scientist about her new job and how the museum serves to inspire and inform millions each year.  Senior editor Emily Lakdawalla prepares us for an exciting encounter between Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft and asteroid Ryugu.  Harry Potter fans, rejoice!  Bruce Betts corrects his correction of an astronomical observation by Harry and his classmates. We also offer another signed copy of Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto. Learn more about this week’s topics and see images here:  http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2018/0530-ellen-stofan-nasm.htmlLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At the National Air and Space Museum with Ellen Stofan, 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. We last talked with Ellen as Cassini plunged to its triumphant finish at Saturn. Now she has become director of the greatest aviation and space museum on Earth, the second most popular museum on the planet after the Louvre in Paris. Join us for a wonderful conversation right across from the spirit of St. Louis. Okay, fans of Harry Potter and Venus, Bruce Betts will be here soon to set the record straight

and will offer another signed copy of Chasing New Horizons. Let's get off to a great start with the Planetary Society's senior editor, Emily Lakdawalla. Emily, you've published a nice piece in the blog at planetary.org, how to keep up with Hayabusa 2, because I guess things are heating up, although there's still plenty of time to get ready for this spacecraft's encounter with an asteroid. Even it is moving pretty slowly, just kind of creeping up on its target. Yeah, Hayabusa 2 is an ion engine powered mission. Ion engines are much more efficient than traditional chemical thrusters, but they have very low thrust. So it's not our usual thought of how a space mission works, where there's a big rocket firing and then a long coast and then a big rocket firing to arrive into orbit. Instead, it's been firing its rockets, its little ion engines for a very long time, first trying to match orbits and now trying to slow down into basically match precisely the speed and direction of the motion of asteroid Ryugu.

It's now, I just checked, 14,000 kilometers away from the asteroid, which is really close. But it's going to take another week to get up to about 2,500 kilometers, from which point it'll be able to begin surveying the asteroid from a great distance. It'll still look like a dot. This asteroid is really tiny, but we're getting ready to actually approach and see what this asteroid looks like for the first time. What else is ahead of us? How soon will Hayabusa 2 really get close? Well, it's going to spend the rest of 2018 doing its survey of the asteroid. It has to go descend in a series of descending orbits, first to see what the shape is, to get a general idea, then get closer and closer, and finally do a very low orbit in order to detect the gravity field, which is what it needs in order to be able to actually set down onto the surface of the asteroid, which they hope to do before the end of 2018.

It's really a pretty quick mission. It's really a pretty quick mission. They'll have probably three opportunities to put down onto the surface of the asteroid and try to collect a sample. And they plan to leave at the end of next year. While it is a Japanese spacecraft, you mentioned-built lander built by the same group who built the Philae lander for Rosetta. And then there are three, what they call micro rovers, Minerva rovers, but none of these things is a wheeled rover. The gravity is way too small for that. Instead, what you have is a box with a little rotating mass inside that can kind of, when they swing it up, they can sort of pop the box off the surface and it tumbles around and lands again. It's a really strange environment and I'm really looking forward to it. I have a little wind-up toy that works kind of that way.

Basically, yes. Even in Earth's gravity field. One of the happy factors in covering this mission is that at least you say that JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency, is providing much more English language outreach than they have in the past. Yeah, it's a really big help. You know, I kind of hate having to rely on a country to supply information in my language in order to follow them. But Google Translate only gets you so far with Japanese text. And they've recently hired an astrophysicist named Elizabeth Tasker, who is now spending half her time doing English language outreach for Hayabusa2. And it has really helped to get more information out about this mission. And I hope to see them continue to do that with their future missions.

Emily, I guess it's a safe bet that you will continue to provide coverage of this mission as it closes in. We'll check back with you and people, of course, can keep an eye on planetary.org. Absolutely. I look forward to covering this exciting, sporty little mission to a teeny asteroid. Sporty. That's Emily Lakdawalla, our senior editor at the Planetary Society, continuing coverage of not just Hayabusa 2, but lots and lots of what's going on in planetary science around the solar system and beyond at planetary.org.

Geologist and planetary scientist Ellen Stofan has had a hand in many missions of exploration around our solar system. She served as a much-admired chief scientist at NASA. I last talked with her an hour and a half before sunrise on September 15 of last year. We were standing on the lawn at the California Institute of Technology. at the California Institute of Technology. It was a profoundly emotional moment as the 20-year Cassini mission ended with the great spacecraft plunging into the ring planet. Her life has taken a profound turn since then.

Ellen now directs the most popular museum in the United States, protector of the finest collection of airplanes, rockets, spacecraft, and related items on our planet. I was in Washington for the Humans to Mars conference, but I stayed an extra day so that I could visit with Ellen at her new professional home. Ellen, it is a great pleasure to welcome you back to Planetary Radio in your new job and in your new, I think of this as a sacred place. You know, it really is.

And Matt, you're trying to make me cry again, aren't you? Because the last time you interviewed me, you made me, you know, was that the Cassini? I didn't make you cry. Cassini made you cry. Okay, Cassini made me cry, and I'm not going to cry this time. But, you know, this is a sacred place. I mean, here we are. We're standing just yards away from the Wright Flyer.

We're standing next to the Spirit of St. Louis. Viking is just below us down in the corner. We have the most amazing artifacts in the world documenting humans' need to defy gravity and leave the surface of this planet. And as we speak, thousands of people, most of them young people, streaming into this place, which is really what it's all about right yeah it really is you know our our vision here is to inspire the next generation of explorers and innovators and I think we do just that and I tell you you know in the two weeks that I've been here watching kids stream into this place and if you stand near the front door and you watch them come in and look up and they

say wow or oh my god you just look at their faces full of wonder when they see this stuff. This place inspires people. Now you're putting me in tears. And we had plenty of company on that day for the end of mission for Cassini, of course, who were doing the same thing. As we speak, it's not even two weeks that you've been director, still on the learning curve, I imagine. Yeah, you know, it's obviously it's the director, still on the learning curve, I imagine. Yeah, you know, obviously it's the typical, you know, drinking from a fire hose. You know, this is an amazing museum, trying to get hold of the collections. I had a tour last week out at our facility by Dulles, the Udvar-Hazy Museum, where we have amazing things like Discovery and SR-71.

And, you know, we have so many aircraft in them, Discovery and SR-71. And, you know, we have so many aircraft in them and each one has an American story of innovation, of entrepreneurship. Each of those aircraft, because it's in our museum, has broken a record, done something amazing. And there's just no end of the stories in this place. Allison, from your public information area here, was just telling me, I mean, I knew it was over 8 million people visiting the museum and only, that's with quotes, maybe a million or so, a little bit more going out there to that absolutely spectacular facility near the airport. As someone who's been there only once, unfortunately, I got to say that people visiting here on the mall really take the time.

Yeah, you know, that facility is incredibly amazing. I had a taxi driver tell me the other day, he's like, that facility is better than the downtown mall. I'm not going to pick favorites among my two children, you know. But the fact that we have Discovery out there, the fact that we have so many amazing and historical aircraft, like the Enola Gay out at Udvar-Hazy, I really urge people to visit both because both facilities are incredible. And as we move into the revitalization and transformation of our downtown building, which will never close, we really urge people to see both because we have such a rich collection out there.

I want to come back to what's going to be happening here on the Mall because that starts this summer, I've heard. But I'll get back to that in a moment. You're the first woman to direct this place. I'll note that you are one of the three women who has served as chief scientist for NASA. Does this show progress? Are you seeing this as you, I think, saw it in your old job? You know, I'd like to say these things don't matter. I'd love that we, I would love for us to be in a position where we don't have to talk about the fact that I'm the first woman director. Someday, but not yet. Someday, but not yet. And so when I look at the crowds coming into this museum and I see young women coming into the museum, if I can be inspiring even one of them to say,

I can be the next great aviator, I can be director of a museum, I can be chief scientist of NASA, because they say women do these things. That is important to me. You know, I told you that while I was waiting down at the security desk, there was this display case devoted to Sally Ride with some wonderful memorabilia. Talk about a pioneer. You know, she's an incredible pioneer. And again, you're trying to make me cry today. This is going to be, this is going to be, I'm right with you. This is going to be this ongoing thing. You know, I'm so honored that we can, in this museum, tell all the stories,

tell the story of Sally Ride. We have an electronic display downstairs that is constantly showing the picture of Katherine Johnson. When we can be honoring these incredibly important women who broke barriers, you know, from all the way back, Amelia Earhart before that, to Sally Ride, who is such a personally just amazingly wonderful person. There's so many stories to tell. It was Ellen Ochoa's birthday yesterday, the first Hispanic woman in space. We need to tell all these stories. We need to inspire every kid to say, someone who looks like me did these great things. I can do them too. So maybe you've just answered my next question, and that is, what are the most important things this museum can accomplish? Again, we are the most important things this museum can accomplish?

Again, we hold the most important collection of artifacts that show how humans wanted to defy gravity and get off the surface of this planet. And so to me, we can educate the public, how do you do that? Why does a plane go up in the air? How does that actually happen? You know, so we want to get people to understand the basics of flight. We want to tell the stories of World War I and World War II aviators back when you could almost look the person in the eye that you were at war with. Look at the era we're going into now where we're increasingly relying on drone aircraft. We are in this amazing pace of technological change in this world. I want people to come into this museum, look at our artifacts,

and really help give them context for the present and inspire them for the future. We need that next generation of STEM professionals, and this is a place to inspire them, make them think, make them question, make them learn, and make them go, wow. Our audience, of course, knows you primarily as a planetary scientist, a space scientist. I've always been interested in aviation. My grandfather, you know, I grew up in Ohio, and my grandfather used to fly a plane back in the 1920s, and he would tell me stories when I was growing up about taking off and, you know,

landing in a cornfield during a storm. You know, These really independent, amazing stories that certainly can't happen anymore. My dad flew a small airplane and we would fly down and go have breakfast in the morning. I'd love to listen to air traffic control whenever I used to fly in United and they don't let us do that anymore. So to me, aviation has always, again, been part of this broader story of human entrepreneurship, innovation. And that, to me, it's in the aviation story. It's in the space story.

It's a very similar theme. Ohio, there's a good piece of that here as well. Where's the Wright Flyer from where we're standing? The Wright Flyer is just in back of us, back in the gallery. We're obviously incredibly honored to have that airplane. And, you know, when people, the curators have been telling me, and it is actually, I've witnessed it. You go in there and there's kind of a reverential hush in there.

It's actually, people realize I am in the presence of history. And, you know, that's what we can do in this museum is people who are actually able to make it here. We make history come alive. We make something that they learn about in a textbook, all of a sudden, they can actually see it in front of them. That being said, there are millions of people who never make it to our museum. And so one of the things we're working on is how do we improve that experience for a museum without walls? How do we let everybody come and appreciate and access our artifacts, but even more importantly, the inspiring stories behind those artifacts?

I'm going to bet that a lot of our audience doesn't realize that this is also a center for historical research. That is obviously a big part of the mission as well. It is. We have an amazing staff of curators that I've been getting to know over the last few weeks from aviation history, the airplanes, the people who flew them to the whole space exploration, the story of our astronauts, the story of how the space program came about and how it's evolved over time, looking at where is the space program going with our move into commercial space flight. So we have an amazing staff at this museum who is doing incredible scholarly research. Yesterday, or two days ago, I was out at our Udvar-Hazy Center, our facility by Dulles,

where we're restoring a World War II airplane called Flakbait that is the only surviving plane to have shot down as many German aircraft as it did during the war. plane to have shot down as many other as many german aircraft as it did during the war and we are literally inventing new techniques in how to restore uh really important artifacts and and so not only are we doing scholarly research we're actually doing materials research uh how do you you know restoration research and of course near and dear to my heart we do have a group of planetary scientists here uh doing cool stuff like understanding the geology of Mars and Venus. You know, the time we did Planetary Radio Live here some years ago, we featured a couple of those curators, and they were, as you might imagine, terrific guests.

You also put out one of the best magazines, not just having to do with aviation or technology or science. It's just a great magazine. Yeah, we're really proud of Air and Space. I mean, it's a great publication. I think it tells great stories. And again, you know, it's not just the artifacts here, it's the stories. And so Air and Space is an important vehicle to get those stories out. And I really want to meet people where they are.

And some people can come here and visit our museums in person. Some like to visit our website. We have an app. And other people say, you know, I really like a good old magazine to sit down and have a cup of coffee and read a magazine. And Air and Space is a wonderful example of a quality publication. You can't beat the writing or the images. It really is. It's one of my favorites.

You said that there are big changes coming here to this huge facility on the Mall beginning this summer, right? That's right. Well, we're really going to get, the public will start seeing the effects of it in the fall, but to be honest with you, the planning and some of the execution has already begun. This building was built in the early 1970s, and it's got some big issues. The stone on the outside of the building is warped. It's cracking. It's no longer viable. It's letting moisture into the building. Our heating and cooling systems were designed in the 1970s to accommodate about a million visitors a year. We're getting 8 million visitors a year. And so the building just needs a complete redo. complete redo. Now that's a huge opportunity for us to look at our galleries, all of our exhibits, and say, you know, let's modernize them. What stories aren't we telling? What artifacts do we have either out at Oudvarhazy or in storage that we can bring out and give people some new stories? So we're going to transform the museum while the renovation is taking place. This is going to take seven years. The museum will never, never close except on Christmas Day.

So I want to reassure people who think we might be closing. We won't be. We'll be open. We'll do half the museum. That will be closed. The other half will be open. Then we'll swap around and do the other half. That's why it's going to take seven years. You already said you don't want to play favorites between the two locations of the museum. How about in the collection? I mean, I don't want to want to get you in trouble with anybody.

But I mean, I read that we're right across from one of your favorites. Yeah, you know, obviously, I love some of our aircraft and the spirit of St. Louis, you know, to me that we're standing right by here is definitely one of my favorites. You know, the story of Lindbergh, his accomplishments. And again, to me, it's just this great example of the American spirit, this innovation, wanting to be the first, wanting to push boundaries. And to me, it's this long story from the Wright brothers out to the present day that I think is exemplified by so many of the artifacts in our collection, but certainly that one. Just out of sight here, I mean, behind a lunar module that is very much in sight, and it looks like a Mercury capsule over there, Viking is down there. That's right.

We have a model of the Viking lander down there, and obviously that's near and dear to my heart. My dad was responsible for the Titan Centaur rocket that launched both the Vikings. I went to the launches and it was at those launches where I heard this guy named Carl Sagan talking about why we were wanted to go to Mars, the search for life on Mars. And at that point, I already knew I wanted to be a geologist, but I heard about Viking and I said, you know what? I want to be a planetary geologist, and that's what I did. So let's talk about that previous career of yours, although I'm sure you still consider it. I'm going. Okay, all right. Sorry about that. The guy who headed planetary science at NASA for what seemed like, oh, let's say forever,

has now taken your old job of chief scientist. Have you had any advice for Jim Green? You know, yeah, of course I've chatted with Jim extensively. And, you know, his spirit, his enthusiasm for not just planetary science, but for all the science that NASA does, from astrophysics to heliophysics to the important work we do studying the most important planet in the universe, Earth, you know, Jim's going to step right up and really, I think, help to engage the public in NASA's mission of understanding the Earth and the context that it fits in in our broader universe.

You know, I'm primarily in town for the just-completed Humans to Mars Summit, which we will also have featured on the show. Getting to talk to you is just a happy bonus. There's a lot going on. InSight on its way to Mars. You're a geologist. It has to make you feel pretty good. Yeah, you know, I'm extremely excited about InSight.

You know, I have a lot of friends who work on the mission, and I was really glad, I think, with everyone else, even though no one could actually see it when it was launching in the fog. But I think we were all excited to see that it's on its way and it's healthy and doing well. Every time we have a planetary spacecraft, every time we push back boundaries, it's incredibly exciting. And I was sorry to miss the Humans to Mars Summit this week, because obviously that's a subject that's near and dear to my heart, of moving humans beyond Earth, out to the moon, and then onto Mars.

Incredibly important. The kids coming into this museum, they're the Mars generation. This is the generation that's going to walk on Mars. And I hope that the first girl to walk on Mars is someone who's coming in the door this morning. Wow. Wouldn't that be a great thing to hear about somewhere down the line in your professional life? There's so much more going on. 2020 rover ExoMars coming together. Europa Clipper also being put together for that launch in the 2020s. How do you feel about our progress around the solar system? You know, I'm impatient. You know, it's really frustrating when we're so close to this issue of really resolving this question about, is there life beyond Earth?

And the fact that we know where to go, we know what to measure. We have these amazing targets. 2020 is important. Clipper is important. We need to get back to Enceladus. We need to get to Titan. Even my good friend David Grinspoon talking about potential for life in the clouds of Venus. You know, I'm not sure how much I'm on board with that.

But, you know, all of these targets, it's a rich environment. And over the next 10 to 20 years, we're going to really make such progress on this question of, you know, are we alone? And I'm not even mentioning the cool things that the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which just got launched, TESS, James Webb coming up. The next 20 years are going to be a revolution in planetary science, and planetary science writ large, including planets beyond our own solar system. It's exciting. Come to the Air and Space Museum to put it into context. Still want to see that boat floating on the seas of Titan?

Of course I do. Our proposal that I worked on with Lockheed Martin in the Applied Physics Lab and with my good friends like Jonathan Neen and Ralph Lorenz to actually get down on one of those seas on Titan and really figure out what are the limits of life in our solar system. But I'm also really excited to be involved with Zippy Turtle's mission Dragonfly to send a quadcopter to Titan. Right now it's a proposal into NASA.

It's a really cool mission, and we're pretty excited about it. You know, Titan, again, to me is this incredibly interesting target. You know, it's not the follow the water story. It's more of what is the nature of life and what are the limits of life. Does it really require water? Could it be something different? And so Titan's a target to go push on that question. I volunteered to run that drone on Titan if they need somebody to stand there with the remote control.

Yeah, I think we might pass on that offer, but thank you. Back to this place. How do you feel when you walk around here? You know, I love to come down both when there are no people here and when there are people here. And just look at this place. Again, look at the expressions on the faces of people. Listen to the questions that they're asking and look at how they're being inspired. And I can't tell you from the time I got this job, and people would come up to me and say, you know, I went to that museum when I was 14 years old, and it was the most inspiring thing I'd ever, I can't tell you how many people have come and said that to me.

You know, we've inspired multiple generations of people, and not all of whom have become scientists or in a STEM career. But it's, again, to me, it's something fundamental and positive about the human spirit, about American innovation and entrepreneurship. And we tell that story in a way that I think inspires everybody. It's the really positive aspects of our human character. And we tell that. And you have personal history here. Does it feel a little bit like returning home? You know, it really does. So I was an intern here after my sophomore year in college. I worked here

all summer, and then I came back after Christmas, and I had intended to come back the following summer, but they actually, I got offered an internship out at JPL. So I went out there instead, but I loved this place. And at that point, I would come in every morning and think, I am the luckiest person on earth to be working in this museum. And I will say, I never thought I would come back as director. So it's an incredible honor. And I pinch myself every day. My last question.

You talked about walking these halls in the evening when nobody else is around. You're the boss, right? I mean, who's to say that you can't, like, you know, go up to the command module for Apollo 11 and sit down in Neil's seat, maybe with a friendly journalist? You know, my kids ask that same question, and my daughters are convinced

that if we have a sleepover here, that that night at the museum thing is really true, and I keep telling them no. Caring for our artifacts is, of course, top priority. Congratulations on the new job, Ellen. I look forward to many more happy visits here, and I am delighted for you and for everybody who visits this place. Thank you very much, and please come back during our revitalization and we can give you updates. Planetary scientist and director of the National

Air and Space Museum, Ellen Stofan. Time again for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Bruce Betts is the chief scientist for the Planetary Society who joins us each week to tell us what's up in the night sky and sometimes to take back things he said. Take back. We've had so many people, well, no, not that many, maybe five or six or seven, who very politely said, I really think Venus is sometimes visible after 11 p.m. in the night sky, and you've done your homework. Yes, the homework I should

have done before. This is one of those, one of my most embarrassing moments in all our years on radio, getting nailed. I committed the sin of a person who lives at lower latitudes where Venus never comes up around that time of night, and I foolishly embraced that. But I had said that in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry is said to have seen Venus sometime soon after 11 p.m., and I said that's impossible because we can never see Venus during the middle hours of the night. Oops. That's impossible because we can never see Venus during the middle hours of the night. Oops. Turns out if you're at a higher latitude like Scotland, England, and several people from higher latitudes contacted us, you can see it. Now, it turns out, first of all, in way more detail than you want.

In the book, it was likely after midnight by the time this happened, but it was likely British summertime, the equivalent of American daylight savings time. So it's still around 11. So the bottom line is that sometimes it only happens every few years, but it happens to be happening right now. You can, if you're at a higher latitude, see Venus with the sun setting late, and then you can see Venus after 11, or even sometimes after midnight. So all of you at those far latitudes who've been frightened of that new light in the sky, never fear. Bruce has acted to set your mind at ease. No, seriously, it's a good thing you did. I don't think it's all that embarrassing. I think it was an easy mistake to make, but you've corrected it. So good on you.

All right. Thank you. As you'll see shortly, I'm trying to get my courage for the next random space fact. But first, Venus. Venus. Let's talk about Venus because it turns out you can see it for a couple hours after sunset, including after 11 p.m. and more northerly latitudes. Venus is doing kind of a cool thing low in the west shortly after sunset or kind of shortly.

It's moving towards Gemini or Gemini is moving towards it, depending on how you look at it. And that means Castor and Pollux. So by June 11th, they'll be lined up quite nicely with Castor, Pollux, and Venus looking much brighter than that. We got over in the east in the early evening, super bright Jupiter. We now have Saturn coming up in the east shortly after sunset, looking much dimmer than the others. And then Mars getting brighter and brighter over the coming weeks. Mars is rapidly

approaching the brightness of the brightest star in the sky. Serious, it will be coming up around midnight-ish now, depending on your location, and it's going to be good as it approaches opposition over the next few weeks. We'll keep you posted. One other thing, you can note the Moon near Saturn on June 1st and near Mars on June 3rd. Great. This week in space history, it's been 15 years since Mars Express launched, the European Space Agency Mars Exploring Orbiter, and it's still going. There are some nice celebrations of that anniversary online with images,

in fact, even a movie, a crater flyover based on Mars Express data. On to random space fact? No need to be tentative. All right, watch what I'm doing. In Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix, the students say they see Orion in June near midnight during their astronomy exam. But it is not possible to see Orion then, unless our listeners tell me I'm wrong. Orion is approximately on the other side of the sun from Earth at that time of year. Okay, folks, have at him. If you live on Mars,

probably can see Orion. It should look pretty much the same from there. Didn't take their astronomy exam on Mars. We don't know where Hogwarts is, but I'm pretty sure it's not on Mars. Good point. Excellent point. Oh, maybe it is. I don't know anymore. All right. On to the trivia question.

I asked you, who was the first person to orbit the moon alone in his spacecraft? How did we do? Let's call this one Bruce's Revenge. More than for the first time ever. Ever. And that may have been the first time that had to retract a random space fact too. But for the first time ever, more than half of those of you who entered got the answer wrong. I'm just going to go ahead and say that because I knew what the right answer was.

And so did Joshua Lyon. Joshua Lyon, first time winner in Howell, Michigan, said John Young was the first man to orbit the moon alone. He did so in late May 1969 in his spacecraft, Charlie Brown. Part of which mission, Bruce? Apollo 10. Apollo 10. That's right, folks. Not Michael Collins. The first guy to do it on his own. The amazing John Young. More about him in a moment. Joshua, congratulations.

He says, you almost tricked me with this one as I immediately blurted out loud, Michael Collins, before remembering. Apollo 10. And then he adds, keep up the amazing work. We'll try. Joshua won himself a Planetary Radio t-shirt from chopshopstore.com. That's where the Planetary Society sub store is. And a 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account from that worldwide nonprofit network of telescopes. We heard from John Cowart of NASA.

He's working on the commercial crew program, past guest and friend of the show. Georgia Tech graduate John Young said, I suspect that John might be an alumnus of there as well. From Ken Votapka in Orlando, Florida, that's where the John Young Parkway is, named after that guy. And Dustin Floum in Alexandria, Virginia, he says, a sharp naval aviator was John Young, John Watts Young. Go Navy, beat Army, he adds. Some other interesting facts about John Young, who, of course, we lost not long ago this year. He was the first Group 2 astronaut in space. He was first to double rendezvous in space, first commander of the Space Shuttle, commander of the first Space Lab module launch, and first to launch into space seven times, if you count his launch from the moon, which is still the record, tied with only two other people, even though a lot of people don't count that launch from the moon.

Get this, he was also the first to eat a corned beef sandwich in space on Gemini 3. About time he got to the important facts. Yeah. Anyway, that's John Young. May he rest in peace. His legacy is safe forever, I would say. You have something for us for next time? I do. And we're going to move on to the legacy of another naval aviator astronaut. I thought we should take some time to remember Alan Bean, who passed away, the astronaut and space artist sharing his views of things. Hopefully we'll we'll talk about Alan some more in a couple of weeks when we give the answer to this. On which space missions did Alan Bean fly? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. Okay, shouldn't be too difficult for you

folks to figure out. You need to do so and get your entry to us by Wednesday, June 6th at 8 a.m. Pacific time, and that'll be your shot at winning another copy of Chasing New Horizons, Inside the Epic First, Mission to Pluto, that great book by Alan Stern and David Grinspoon that we talked about with them on the show. It's available from Picador, and you can get yourself a signed copy, signed by both authors, including, that is, the principal investigator for the New Horizons mission, along with that 200-point itelescope.net account. All right, everybody, go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about how past mistakes do not mean you'll make future mistakes.

I mean, you probably will, but it doesn't mean you will. Thank you, and good night. Don't forget, your mileage may vary. He's Bruce Betts, the chief scientist of the Planetary Society. You know, science is a self-correcting practice. He does that with us regularly here on What's Up. This is a listener-correcting process. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California,

and is made possible by its historic 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.