Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - A Tiny Explorer Called Twinkle

Episode Date: December 1, 2015

A small but talented UK team is building Twinkle, a small spacecraft with a big mission—exploring the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tasting the air of distant worlds with Twinkle, 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. Twinkle is the tiny satellite that will attempt to analyze the atmospheres of 100 exoplanets, worlds circling other stars. We'll talk with its project manager. Bill Nye will also drop by, and Bruce Betts is waiting in the wings with another What's Up look at the night sky,

along with a new space trivia contest. You're about to hear an extended conversation with senior editor Emily Lakdawalla. Her reviews of new children's books about space and science have arrived just in time for Enlightened Holiday Shopping. You'll find them in Emily's November 24th blog entry at planetary.org. I asked her how she comes up with her recommendations. One of my goals this year was to find new book series about the planets for my children's public school library.

I had gone in there earlier this year and helped the librarian cull some old and outdated books, but they needed replacement, especially ones on Mars and Mercury because we've had so much mission activity there. So I requested a lot of nonfiction series from publishers, and I found a few criteria to be useful. Obviously, there shouldn't be any major factual errors, but I wanted there to be things that would grab kids' attention, like wow facts about planets, and not just the same ones we've always heard about. I wanted to make sure that they discussed some recent science, that they mentioned that there was active exploration happening of all these places. But in addition to facts, I also really want books to represent the fact that we don't know everything

about the planets, that the reason we have to keep exploring is that there are lots of questions that we don't have the answer to. And I think that's important both because it tells kids about what the process of science is and what it's for. And also, I want to hold out the option for them that, hey, there's things that you can grow up and answer. And so, I had most of these in the back of my mind. I also wanted to make sure that the pictures grow up and answer. And so I had most of these in the back of my mind. I also wanted to make sure that the pictures were good and that the exploration sections mentioned up-to-date missions as well as not just NASA missions but foreign missions. And this was a lot of criteria. And, you know, they're short books.

They can't manage to hit everything. But I found two series that did very well, one by the publisher Capstone and the other by Scholastic. I've always found Capstone books to be really excellent. And I guess you found a couple of new books in this series from DK as well that you liked. That's right. So DK is a series, it's a publisher that does a lot of these very picture-heavy, factual books. Kids absolutely love them. Unfortunately, their titles for younger children are pretty out of date.

I got new copies and they've been updated here and there, but there's a lot of really old stuff in there. But they have a couple of new titles that are intended just for a general audience, one called Space with an exclamation point, and the other just The Planets. And they're both really good. They'll make an excellent addition to any kid's library or public library. Let's briefly mention a couple of other books. And you have these divided up by roughly by age group. And one of these I know is in your group of books for early readers, four to seven year olds. Tell us about Odd Duck. This is such an adorable book. It looks like a

very simple picture book when you open it up. And it doesn't seem like it's going to be too heavy. It has these funny looking ducks as its main characters. But inside it is this story about very different people making friendships over a shared interest, in this case, astronomy. And then there's this story arc that takes you through this kind of painful self-discovery that all of us nerds have when we realize that other people think we're a little weird and that you can, there's shame in that, but then there's also the pleasure of discovering other nerds who share your weird interests. And it's a very heavy topic for a very apparently light book. There's something in it for people of every age. Yeah, some people deal with this by going into radio. We look a little bit

at the older group here, and you note that these books for 12 to adult, some of them are going to be quite good for people of any age. And this is one that the emotions always rise up when I see her picture. It's about Sally Ride, a former regular on this show. Yes, this book is amazing. It feels like sitting next to somebody on the couch looking with them at a photo album and just telling happy stories of a dearly departed loved one. And that's what we have here. It's a autobiography of Sally Ride written by Tam O'Shaughnessy, her partner. And just the pictures are wonderful.

The stories are heartwarming. Sally is so inspiring. And you don't just get the positive stuff. You also get the challenges that she faced. I really identified with the fact that she just couldn't make herself work very hard at anything until she discovered her passion, which was being an astronaut. And so I thought that was really cool. So this is an excellent book, again, for all ages. And then, of course, she went on to helping especially girls, but all young people to appreciate science and books about science with Sally Ride Science. It's a great legacy. Let's go on to an

opportunity for listeners, something we've never done before. And that is a chance to win one of the books that you've recommended. Tell us about this new work from one of my heroes, Randall Monroe. Well, Randall Monroe is a web cartoonist. He posted a comic a while ago called U.S. Space Team Upgoer 5. And it was a description of how the Saturn V rocket worked using only the 10 hundred most common words in the English language. And a thousand is not one of the thousand most common words in the English language. So he's very limited with his words. entire book that's sort of like David Macaulay's How It Works, except that he explains various devices from the International Space Station to lithium ion batteries using only those thousand

most common words. Sometimes it's exceedingly painful. Sometimes it's a little difficult to understand because he's gone for funny instead of easy to understand. But most of the time, it's actually a really good explanation of how these various things work using very simple language. And I periodically help Randall out with information on space missions and space exploration. And so he kindly sent me a copy of his book. And I have a copy of it in front of me here. It is a copy signed by Randall Munroe. And we're going to give it away to somebody who is a fan of Emily in the What's Up segment. going to give it away to somebody who is a fan of Emily in the What's Up segment.

All you have to do, you don't even have to answer a trivia question, is write to us at the usual address. We don't have anything set up on the web for this, but you'll need to write to planetaryradio at planetary.org. That's planetaryradio at planetary.org. And we will use random.org as we do every week on what's up to figure out who's going to win this copy of thing explainer complicated stuff in simple words from the genius randall monroe i tweeted how do you nominate somebody for a macarthur genius grant because he would absolutely be my my current nominee em, you're right up there on

the list too. I think you should get one as well. Thanks very much. Thank you, Matt. She is our senior editor, the planetary evangelist for the Planetary Society and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. Up next is the CEO, Bill Nye, the science guy. Bill, just a minute to check in with you today. What's on your plate? We passed a law. You can mine asteroids now. But the great thing about this is, first of all, people, there is a mechanism in place, a legal mechanism, for those people who think they can go to asteroids and make money to do so, to be prospectors. But the big thing for me is if people are looking to mine asteroids, they're going to find asteroids.

And that's the big deal. To keep the Earth from getting hit with an asteroid, the first thing is to find them. So this is part of a – this motivates a larger effort for me and for the Planetary Society. This is the law that was just signed off by President Obama. I think it had things that made some of the other commercial space people happy. It makes them happy. But it's a really hard thing to bring metal back from an asteroid. But the longest journey begins with a single rocket impulse, Matt.

I got to fly, Bill Nye the Planetary Guy. He is the CEO of the Planetary Society, Bill Nye the Science and Planetary Guy. Back in a moment to hear about Twinkle, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Planet, coming up. Hi, I'm Andy Weir, author of The Martian. Do you know how my character, Mark Watney, will make it to Mars someday? He'll get there because people like you and me, and organizations like the Planetary Society,

never stop fighting to advance space exploration and science. The challenges have rarely been greater than they are right now. You can learn what the Society is doing, how you can help at Planetary.org. Mark and I will thank you for taking steps to ensure humanity's bright future across the solar system and beyond. Hey, hey, Bill Nye here. I'd like to introduce you to Mark Boyan. Hello. He's been making all those fabulous videos

which hundreds of thousands of you have been watching. That's right. We're going to put all the videos in one place, Merk, is that right? Planetary TV. So I can watch them on my television? No. So wait a minute, Planetary TV's not on TV? That's the best thing about it. They're all going to be online. You can watch them anytime you want. Where do I watch Planetary TV then, Merck? Well, you can watch it all at planetary.org slash TV. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. I talked with so many interesting people during my week in Houston, Texas, largely at the first SpaceCom Expo. One of the stops at the conference was the Innovate UK Pavilion on the exhibit floor.

That's UK as in United Kingdom. Marcel Ticini of University College London had flown in to share his excitement about Twinkle, an innovative little spacecraft with an ambitious mission. Twinkle is based on a standardized, well-proven line of satellites from Surrey Satellite Technology. It will carry a unique telescope now in development. Marcel serves as project manager. He's an astrophysicist with expertise in exoplanet spectroscopy and spacecraft engineering. The Twinkle team is drawn from a broad consortium of UK institutions that have found support and seed money in high places. We have an amazing opportunity where the British government is supporting

small organizations and small companies that could have potentially a high impact globally. They are bringing us here to the U.S. and get us to meet people who could be of interest for us, whether it is potential customers or potential investors in our various projects. I was particularly interested in talking to you because I have read up on Twinkle. Introduce us to Twinkle. Twinkle is a small satellite that we're putting together to do observations of extrasolar planets. In particular, we want to understand the atmospheres

of these extrasolar planets. These extrasolar planets are planets which have been discovered orbiting stars other than our own, and they are orbiting stars which are quite far away from us. Until 20 years ago, we didn't know about any of these planets, but then over the last few years, we've been seeing more and more discoveries, and now we know about 2,000 of these planets. So we have talked about the Kepler mission many times on this program

and even more times about extrasolar planets in particular, but Twinkle is not designed to discover more of them, is it? That's correct. We are very curious about all the planets that have been found so far. We know these planets are there. We know roughly how big they are, how heavy they are, how close they are to their star, but that's about it. Now, we can derive some information about these planets, but what we've been seeing so far is quite exciting. All these planets are either very large, very hot hot or very different from the planets that we have in our solar system the way they are positioned to in terms of distance to their star is also different to what we have in our solar system so this makes us wonder why are these planets as they are whether

is there a weather on this planet is there anything interesting about these planets that we don't know for now so we know that the next step in the process of understanding these exoplanets is actually to analyze their atmospheres, because the atmospheres will hold clues about how these planets have evolved, what kind of chemical composition is in their atmospheres. This is reflecting the history of the planets, but also its interaction with any other objects in its own solar system. So we are very curious to understand what the atmospheres of

these planets are made of, because this will really allow us to understand what is going on in these other solar systems. So I am still left wide-eyed by the fact that we now have discovered well over a thousand extrasolar planets, that we have instruments capable of doing that. So now I'm floored that we are already at the point, if Twinkle does what it's supposed to, to not just discover them, but characterize their atmospheres. And you do this how? There's something very neat about the way these measurements are done. About half of the planets that have been discovered so far, and mainly thanks to Kepler, these planets

are actually orbiting their stars in a plane that is aligned with our line of sight. And this just happens to be the way it is. We see these planets going in front of their star and they eclipse their star for a moment before disappearing. And likewise, just before going behind their star, you can see them a little bit, just before they disappear behind the star and then again reappearing afterwards. And when that happens, these planets are emitting thermally and are also reflecting light from the star. Now, in both of these situations, when a planet goes in front of the star and just before disappearing and after reappearing,

if there is an atmosphere around these planets, then the small amount of light will be filtered by the atmosphere. And by actually analyzing the light that comes from these stars that it passes through the atmospheres, and then looking at the star when the planet is not in front of it. We do a differential measurement between those two signals, and we establish what is missing. But the difference between the starlight and the difference that takes place when you are peering basically through the atmospheres of these exoplanets. That has to be tiny, infinitesimal.

It is extremely small indeed. We're talking about the surface coverage of a big planet going in front of its star is about 1%. And now we're looking at a small percentage of that 1% indeed. That is why we need to design an instrument that is carefully tailored to be able to do these fine measurements, because what we're looking at is a bright star in the sky and we need to make sure that these tiny variations that happen because of the atmosphere of the planet going in front of it

are recorded on that very bright signal. So we are making sure that the instrument that we're designing as part of Twinkle is able to observe these stars with enough accuracy and precision over the time frame that it takes for the planet to travel in front of the star. So the other amazing thing about this is that, after all, you're not JPL, you're not a major space agency, and yet you are able to put together this instrument and build a spacecraft that is capable of this work.

I find that mind-boggling. That's a very legitimate question, and in reality we don't come without some background for doing this activity. There are two key aspects of our project where we are building on heritage that is present in the UK community. Number one, when it comes to the satellite platform itself,

the structure that's going to go into space, we are working very closely with Sary Satellite Technology Limited in the UK, and they are the world leaders when it comes to small satellites, which are built usually for commercial customers doing Earth observations. And so they work on our philosophy where instruments and satellites are designed within three years and built to a very fixed budget. And what we are doing is we're applying the same philosophy of using off-the-shelf components where possible

and using a commercially available platform to design a satellite on a very rapid timescale and at a low cost. When it comes to the technical instrument that goes inside it, that's going to be doing the scientific measurements, we are working very closely with a network of universities with whom we worked before with other projects for the European Space Agency, for instance. So the team that is designing the instrument that goes into Twinkle actually has quite a lot of heritage in designing instruments in infrared spectroscopy in general, but also in particular, for example, in science.

And what will happen with the data that comes back from Twinkle? This kind of collaboration that you're talking about with other universities, isn't that also a part of this mission? It is. So because we're working outside the framework of a major space agency we have the opportunity of designing this the way we want to do it. What we are working on here for the the data policy coming out of Twinkl is dependent on where the funding is coming from. So we are working together with companies in the UK and the government in the UK to see if there is a possibility of securing funding for the project nationally. But at the same time, we're also putting forward a commercial aspect to this project. And this is where we've had to be a bit innovative on top of

the technical and scientific ambitions that we have. We have set up a company, which is called Blue Sky Space Limited, that is actually our commercial branch. And our commercial branch does something very simple. We offer access time, essentially time on the telescope, to scientists worldwide who might want to purchase a certain number of orbits or a certain amount of time on the satellite to do their observations. So they will be able to redirect the satellite to look at stars or transiting exoplanets that they might choose to study? We are currently discussing our strategy when it comes to what final product we're offering,

but certainly the options which are on the table are either a managed schedule where people have access to a guaranteed amount of time for a particular object that they want to see, or whether it is they have full control over where the satellite is pointing at, of course, depending on what the capabilities of the spacecraft are. What is the status of Twinkle now? And if everything goes well, when would you hope it will be up in orbit for first light? So at the moment, we are completing our technical study, sort of a phase A study for the mission that will be complete by the end of this year.

And this has been a fully funded activity. And we're very pleased that it's on track and this will be done on time. Following which, we are starting a three-year campaign until launch. And we are working on finalizing the arrangements for securing the funding required to build the hardware components for the spacecraft. You now have a company, Blue Skies Space Limited, as you said. Is this a one-shot company? Or do you have plans beyond Twinkle for what Blue

Sky Space might be up to? So, of course, this depends on the success of Twinkle, but the idea that we have indeed is that if this is a model that can be replicated, there is no reason why we should stop with just one satellite like Twinkle. We see that we are opening potentially a new way of funding satellites, which are, of course, not to the same capabilities as some of the very large and complex facilities that are being put together by international and major space agencies. But we see that many science cases could actually operate on a smaller, more modest spacecraft.

And we think that there is an opportunity of actually increasing the rate at which science can be done by providing a regular supply of lower-cost satellites to a global community of scientists. So most of the commercial applications for satellites that we have heard about at this conference have been looking the other way. They've been looking down toward the surface of the Earth. You seem to be sort of pioneers in the approach you're taking and looking outward.

In a certain sense, yes. We know that some of the ground telescopes, for instance, employ this model of offering access to their facilities for paying for time, essentially. That is certainly a model. For a spacecraft, this is not really done. And we've had to come up with this model because, as I was saying earlier, we don't have a framework to pay for such a low-cost mission on such a short timescale at this point.

And so we are hopefully enabling a system where any scientist, regardless of where this person is located, can simply pay a certain amount of dollars for a certain amount of time on the facility and get the science data that they need to progress in their careers. Let's close with the science. What sorts of gases will Twinkle ideally be able to detect in the atmospheres of these incredibly distant planets? It's a very good question. The technical instrument that we're putting into Twinkle will be covering a reasonably wide wavelength range. So this will be going from about 0.5 microns in the visible to about 5 microns in the near infrared. With this wavelength

coverage, we are able to look at quite a large number of species that we expect to see in these atmospheres. Now, I have to say expect because we don't know for sure what's going to be in these planets, but some of the molecules that I can list, for instance, are methane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, water, and all kinds of hydrocarbons as well. How about oxygen? Oxygen, unfortunately, is a tricky one. The signature that oxygen would have is not something that we would be able to observe with Twinkle at this point. Nevertheless, the potential is to add enormously to our body of knowledge about these other worlds.

That is correct. Right now, we know about our solar system. We know about the planets in the solar system. But it's very interesting for us to understand whether we're unique. Is our solar system the way it is for a particular reason? We won't be able to tell until we start looking at a large number of other planets. And we really want to build up our understanding and knowledge of what planets in general look like and whether we are the norm or whether we are the weirdos.

Marcel, I hope we can talk again no later than after Twinkle is above our heads, beginning to examine these other planets and tell us much more about them. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I look forward to that. Marcel Ticeni, project manager for Twinkle at the Spacecom Expo in Houston. What's Up is next. It's time for What's Up on Planetary Radio, which means, of course, that we are joined by the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society.

That is Dr. Bruce Betts, and he is on the line now to tell us about the night sky and much, much more. Welcome back. Thank you. We've got that beautiful line of planets in the pre-dawn east going from top to bottom, Jupiter, Mars, Venus. Venus being the brightest. Mars the dimmest. And on December 4th through the 8th, the crescent moon will be moving through them from Jupiter down to Venus.

It'll be cool. It'll be pretty. Then we move on to this week in space history. It was 1998 that the Zarya and Unity modules were connected, forming the core of what would become the International Space Station. Yay! Keep the enthusiasm up, Matt. Speaking of which, Random Space Fact! Kind of lighthearted.

19 moons in the solar system are large enough to be gravitationally spherical shape. Self-gravity pulling them into ball-shaped, rounded, and thus would be considered planets or dwarf planets if they were in a direct orbit around the sun. After a very full Thanksgiving holiday, I was very close to that gravitational limit myself. I'm glad you like that. Well, happy Thanksgiving. Thank you. Thank you. I'm all on the road to recovery. On to the trivia contest. And I asked you, what were Pete Conrad's first words

spoken on the lunar surface during Apollo 12, the second human mission to land on the moon? How'd we do, Matt? This is so interesting because it caught you and I both by surprise. Now, you had found and knew, as I knew, the famous words that he was justifiably famous for saying as he stepped onto the moon. And that is what we got from our, I believe, winner this week, That is what we got from our, I believe, winner this week, Clem Unger. Clemens, but his mates, he says, call him Clem down there in Australia. He said that Pete Conrad's words were, Whoopee, man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me.

Indeed, that's the ones I was familiar with, Pete Conrad being shorter than Neil Armstrong. To be precise, 1.69 meters or 5 foot 6 and a half. So, see, it gives hope to short guys like me. We can walk on the moon. We'd like to send you there, Matt. I'm ready, as long as I have a return trip like Pete. So, Clem, congratulations. You won a Planetary Radio t-shirt and you're the first winner of the new 2016 Year in Space,

not just the wall calendar, not the desk calendar, but both. And those are, they really are beautiful. They just got acknowledged, I think, by Forbes magazine as a really cool thing to own. You can learn more about them at yearandspace.com. The other answer that we got from quite a few people that we would have accepted, one of those people was Jenny King in Bailey, Colorado. She said it was when he stepped on the lunar soil that he said this other line, and that was, ooh, is that soft and queasy.

Pete Conrad had a way with words. So the line that we were more familiar with, apparently, was when he stepped onto the footpad of the lunar module. I have to add this also from Jenny. She says, love you guys more than Martian-grown poop-tatoes. Thank you. I think. I know, I felt the same way. We also got this from Norman Kassoon in Banbury, Oxfordshire, UK.

I was there last spring. He said that multiple sources said that Pete Conrad's first words on the moon, the ones that we're most familiar with, came from a bet he had with the very famous journalist Oriana Falaci, who believed that NASA would script those first few words. Falaci was supposed to pay him $500, but Conrad said he never got the money. All right. I just have one more. All right. I just have one more. Inspired by all of this, Jim Bell, and COO, Jennifer Vaughn. But also around the same time, I asked my sons, and we came up with a few. Let's see what I can remember.

There was, you should have gone before we left. There's Houston, did you pack a space suit? And then the one that cracked me up, my son said, because it's just, it's so random, which you know I love. I thought they'd be taller. I love it. You congratulate them for me and for Jason. All right, I will. I'm glad we were ready for you.

We've given him some very good choices. So Jason, be sure and phone home when you get there, and make sure you call us first. All right, what do you got for next time? So the first moons discovered by people, of course, the Earth's moon, and then the four big Galilean satellites of Jupiter, then big Titan around Saturn, adds up to six. What was the seventh moon in the solar system to be discovered?

The seventh moon in the solar system to be discovered, go to planetary.org slash radio contest. You have this time until Tuesday, December 8th, the 8th at 8 a.m. Pacific time. Until Tuesday, December 8th, the 8th at 8 a.m. Pacific time. To get us the answer, you might win yourself a year in space desk and wall calendar set, along with a lovely Planetary Radio t-shirt. And with that, I believe we're done for another week. Yay! All right, everybody.

Go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about fedoras. Thank you, and good night. That's Bruce Betts putting a lid on it. He's the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, who joins us every week here for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its twinkling members. Danielle Gunn is our associate producer.

Josh Doyle created the theme music. I'm Matt Kaplan. Clear skies.