Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - African Eyes Look to the Cosmos

Episode Date: March 4, 2020

One people, one sky. That motto belongs to Astronomers Without Borders. Its founder and retired leader, Mike Simmons, recently brought a guest to Planetary Society headquarters. Olayinka Fagbemiro is with the Nigerian space agency and also heads Astronomers Without Borders in her nation. Emily Lakdawalla tells us about four exciting planetary science missions that are currently competing for selection by NASA. Bruce Betts tells us about the search for 100 earths as he also asks us to find a citizen of Middle Earth in space. Learn more and enter the contest at https://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2020/0304-2020-fagbemiro-simmons-awb-nigeria.htmlSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Turning young African eyes toward the cosmos, 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. Mike Simmons stopped by the other day. The founder and just-retired leader of Astronomers Without Borders brought along a very special guest. He'll introduce us to Olayinka Fagbimiro of the Nigerian Space Agency. Olayinka is also National Coordinator for Astronomers Without Borders Nigeria.

Together, they'll tell us that the night sky unites all of humanity. Four new missions have made it to the next step in the long road towards selection by NASA. Emily Lakdawalla will introduce them to us. And Bruce Betts brings back his favorite game, Where in the Solar System, with a tip of the Hobbit's hat to Middle Earth. It's almost here. The new expanded version of the Downlink will premiere on Friday, March 6th. You'll see it at planetary.org slash downlink, which is also where you can be one of the downlink will premiere on Friday, March 6th. You'll see it at planetary.org slash downlink, which is also where you can be one of the first to sign up for the newsletter. Here's a sampling of the space headlines Jason Davis collected for the most recent edition.

The largest unnamed world in our solar neighborhood now has an official moniker. It's Gonggong, named after a Chinese water god. Gonggong may be a bit larger than Pluto's companion, Charon. The body's discoverers asked the Planetary Society to help with the public selection process. Gonggong won by a two-to-one margin, and the name has been accepted by the International Astronomical Union. JPL engineers are making more aggressive attempts

to get the InSight lander's probe, known as the mole, to get a grip. The instrument is still stuck at the surface of Mars. Now the spacecraft's scoop will press on the mole as it attempts to hammer itself deeper. Meanwhile, scientists have published results of the first 10 months of data from InSight's seismometer. It found 174 Mars quakes. More than 20 of these had magnitudes of greater than 3, which I can tell you, growing up in L.A., is enough to shake you up.

More to come, no doubt. The Juno mission has achieved one of its major goals by determining that water makes up about one quarter of one percent of Jupiter's atmosphere. That's three times as much as Galileo's atmospheric probe found when it plunged into the giant world back in 1995. Scientists have long suspected that the probe was simply unlucky enough to enter an unusually dry spot. And NASA has acknowledged that the first liftoff of the Space Launch System, that giant rocket at the core of the agency's Artemis program, will be delayed to sometime in 2021. NASA still says it can return humans to the moon's surface by 2024. Emily Lakdawalla is the Planetary Society's solar system specialist. Emily, great to get you

back on to talk about these four brand new Discovery Program candidates. Could this be the year that Venus finally gets a little more love? It could be. I mean, Venus has been visited by a couple of missions, but not by NASA for an awfully long time. In fact, it's so long ago, it was before I was even a graduate student. I was working on Magellan data for my grad program. And that's the last time NASA got any up close and personal data. So I'm so excited to see two Venus missions in this discovery down selection. And I think the community is really, really hoping that one of them will get picked. Remind us, first of all, where are these Discovery missions in the entire spectrum of NASA's planetary science missions?

Well, Discovery is the lowest cost program of NASA missions. There's three basic classes of NASA missions. There's Discovery, New Frontiers, and Flagship. Discovery missions cost around $500 million. New Frontiers are about a billion, and then Flagship are like $2 billion and up. They're supposed to fly the most often. They're supposed to push the envelope in one way or another, either with the type of instrument that they're using, a type of measurement they're trying to perform, the way they operate,

the kind of propulsion they use. One of those things, it's designed to be rapidly developed missions that help NASA prove new technologies that they could later go on to use on some of their bigger missions. Insight on Mars is one of these, right? Insight is one of those. It's not the best example, actually, because of the way that that year's selection worked. But there have been some really spectacular missions that tested really new stuff, like Dawn going to Ceres and Vesta. We had Messenger at Mercury, which is a fabulous mission. There's a huge number. The Discovery program has really been quite successful over time.

The hope is that they'll actually be able to pick two out of the four. They'll pick at least one, but people really are pulling for two. And they did pick two in the last round, right? Those two asteroid missions? That's right. There's Lucy and Psyche. Lucy is a mission that's going to explore a bunch of centaurs and Trojans. These are rather distant small bodies. They tend to be, they orbit around Jupiter's distance from the sun. And so it'd be the first kind of mission to go to multiple objects like that. And then Psyche is a really fun one. It goes to an all metal asteroid. So those will be very cool. And I think because both of those are

asteroid missions, people were not surprised that the four missions down selected in this round, not one of them is proposed for an asteroid. I can't wait for Psyche in particular, because it's going to be so interesting to finally see one of those metal monsters up close. But take us through these four candidates that are still competing in this round. Well, we'll talk about the Venus missions first, since you mentioned those already. There's two. One's called Da Vinci Plus, and the other one's called Veritas. Both of them were actually in the final round, the last discovery selection that wound up with two asteroid missions, which is one of the reasons I think that people are really fairly sure that at least

one of these will go forward. They're quite different missions. Da Vinci is one that will penetrate the atmosphere. It's studying the qualities of the atmosphere on the way down. It's basically an atmospheric probe. It will take cameras as it's descending, but it's not designed to last a long time. The VERITAS mission is a radar mission, which is in a way like Magellan, but it's specifically focused on topography, which I can tell you as a person who studied Venus once, it is so necessary. The modern kind of renaissance of Mars exploration began with Mars Global Surveyor, which got the first really good topographic map of Mars that formed the basis of all the rest of the Mars orbital work that's been done for the following 25 years. This mission stands a chance to do the same thing, to develop the topographic map that

will be the basis of everything we do on Venus for decades. So as you can probably tell, I'm a little bit biased. I love my Venus radar. I think topography is so necessary. And I've known Sue Schmecker, who's the principal investigator for a long time, ever since I was a grad student. And I would dearly love to see her be in charge of a mission like this. She's lovely. Now, what about the other two? They're going much further out. Yeah. So the other two missions are pretty exciting. They're outer planets missions. And one of them has been proposed before, and that's Io Volcano Observer, which is exactly what it says on the tin. It's a spacecraft that's designed to orbit Jupiter and observe the

volcanoes on Io. It's designed to try to figure out how all the massive tidal forces that are operating in orbit around Jupiter, between Jupiter tugging on Io and Europa and Ganymede also, how that generates the heat that's coming out of Io's interior, just how much heat is coming out of it, and try to understand better what the volcanism is doing on Jupiter's innermost and very volcanic moon. Can we assume that it would also have a camera on board so that we could get really up close to those magnificent volcanoes? It absolutely would. There's no question. As I've

said before, as Juno, it would be a crime to go to Jupiter and not have a camera on board. This one I'm sure would have a nice infrared camera, near infrared, because Io's volcanoes are so hot that you can map them by their heat alone. And so you would be studying at both in like regular visual images and also in infrared wavelengths where they'd be illuminated by their own heat. So you'd be able to image them both in day and at night to see the heat that's coming out of the volcanoes. I would only add that it seems like a crime to go anywhere without a camera. All right. How about this last one, the fourth and the one that will be going the furthest if it's funded? That's right. So Trident is a flyby of Triton,

which is the largest moon of Neptune, the only actually big moon of Neptune and likely a captured Kuiper belt object. It's even larger than Pluto and is otherwise very Pluto-like in its composition and characteristics. It also orbits Neptune backwards. So it's probably a captured object. It probably didn't start out its existence there. We know that it has active geysers. It's just an opportunity to go by, map it, look for changes that have happened since Voyager 2 flew past, try to understand the particles and the environment around it. And Voyager 2, as cool as the flyby of the Neptune system was, it was a spacecraft that was really not designed to operate and get great pictures and things so far from the sun. So this would be the first really good flyby of Triton. Plus, they'd also obviously get some good close-up views of Neptune. They'd fly past some small

bodies along the way, probably, and do some great science the way that New Horizons is doing science and small bodies in the outer solar system. And it has the distinction of being the only one in the list that doesn't have an acronym for its name. I don't know if they get points for that or not. How soon might we be hearing the decision from NASA as to which of these, hopefully two of them at least, will be headed for space? Well, first, the four teams are being given some time to do some further work to try to nail down the costs and the challenges involved in the mission. They can spend a little money trying to develop some of the necessary technologies forward a little bit. And then they will give big reports to NASA about their progress. NASA will visit them and see how

well prepared they are to actually operate a mission. And then they'll make a down selection in 2021. I don't know exactly when it will be yet, and we don't know how many it will be yet. It will be at least one, could be two, and who knows? I guess as long as we're being optimistic, we can hope for three. Probably not going to happen, but it would be nice. All right. Well, we'll hope for quality and quantity in this round of the Discovery Program. One more question. How soon after they are chosen might we actually see some of these head toward their destinations? Well, it doesn't take all that. It shouldn't take all that long to develop a Discovery mission.

Usually it's just somewhere around four or five years to launch. And then, of course, how long it takes to get data depends upon how long a cruise they have. It's very quick to get to Venus. So we could be, as you know, maybe five months after launch. You'll be at Venus and already set up and starting to acquire preliminary data. But getting to other places like orbiting Jupiter and flying past Neptune take a long time.

When you do planetary science, especially if you're an outer planetary scientist, you need to be really patient and be willing to accept the fact that you might be starting a project and launching it and then handing it over to a former graduate student to operate once it's in flight. Emily, I'm glad to still be playing the long game

with you here in planetary science. Lots to look forward to. And I'm sure we'll talk again soon. Thanks very much. You're welcome, Matt. That's our solar system specialist, Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society. Mike Simmons discovered

our universal fascination with the sky when he started sharing astronomical wonders decades ago. It led him to found Astronomers Without Borders, or AWB, where their motto is One People, One Sky. There is hardly a portion of our planet that Mike has not visited, encouraging scientific

wonder and curiosity wherever he goes. Olayinka Fagbemiro is a kindred spirit. She is Assistant Chief Scientific Officer for Planning, Policy, and Research at the National Space Research and Development Agency in Nigeria. She also leads the agency's Space Education Outreach Unit, so it's easy to see why Olayinka would also embrace the AWB mission. She has had remarkable success as AWB's National Coordinator in Nigeria. In addition, she serves as the public

relations and education officer for the African Astronomical Society. Mike called the other day to ask if he could bring Ole Yinka to the Planetary Society's Pasadena headquarters, as she continued an astronomy-focused tour of California and the United States. We were thrilled to oblige, especially because I couldn't wait to share Mike and Ole Yinka's stories with you. Mike Simmons, always a pleasure to talk to you on Planetary Radio, and it is great to see you here. You've never been to this headquarters for the Planetary Society before. No, this is the first time in this particular building. I was at the original one, which is a great old Pasadena house. I miss it. Oh, yeah. And the other one, short term, this is the first time I've stopped

by here. Well, I'm glad you made it. And I'm especially glad because you brought the special guest who is sitting next to you right now. Would you please introduce her? Well, this is Oleinka Fagbemiro from Nigeria. And Oleinka works with a space agency there. But of more interest to me is that she created and runs Astronomers Without Borders Nigeria, does fantastic things in the country to introduce astronomy and science to some very special people. So it's wonderful to have her here visiting us for the first time. people. So it's wonderful to have her here visiting us for the first time. I suspect that most of our audience will know that you were Astronomers Without Borders. For many years, you founded the organization. Yes. And you've moved on. You're doing other exciting things now.

Obviously, that had to do with why you crossed paths. But how did you end up meeting each other and get to know each other? Olienka reminded me just the other day that actually we met at a conference. And I meet a lot of people. I hear from people in other countries all the time. And I always write back because you never know. She was somebody who went back inspired by the idea and created something really incredible. And it's great to be able to do that as a part of Astronomers Without Borders, but really people are doing outreach and education in astronomy and STEM fields all around the world. And to be able to give somebody some inspiration to do it as a part of the network of people around the world is fantastic. Olajinka, welcome to the

Planetary Society. I look like you enjoyed the tour. Yes, thank you so much. It's a pleasure being here, and I'm particularly excited to be at this space. I love the tour that you have, an amazing space, and I'm glad to be here. Thank you. We like it very much, and I'm glad that you've had a good time as we showed you around. You got a nice introduction to light sail from Bruce Betts, our chief scientist. Yeah, it's really great because that's the first time hearing about this particular project, and I think it's amazing.

I would definitely go back home and share with my network and see what more we can learn and inspire little kids about that. I think it would be a great topic to discuss. Absolutely. Well, we hope so anyway. I certainly agree with you. It was only two or three days ago that Mike let me know that you were in town and he wondered if you'd be able to stop by. And of course, we love visitors. I was intrigued immediately because he talked about your role with Astronomers Without Borders in Nigeria. But he also said that you have a day job. You work with, is it the... The Nigerian Space Agency? Yes, yes. Tell me about that. When I left university in the year 2004, I started a job with the Nigerian Space Agency in year 2007 as an outreach and education officer for space education. I've been there ever since and

along the line I got involved in some other projects and Astro Mars Without Borders like universal awareness and it been awesome, like having a day job and then having the time to do this other very important work. I think it's a great thing for me because I get the chance to inspire little ones. We're trying to raise the next generation of space scientists and STEM guys in Africa. I also am the public and education officer for African Astronomical Society.

What I do in Nigeria, I do by extension across Africa. African Astronomical Society is an organization with a very big reach to African countries. I think about 40 plus African countries are part of AFAS. One of the major things we're trying to do is first to create awareness about astronomy across Africa. Astronomy is not really so much developed in Africa as it is in the US or Europe. So one of the major work we're trying to do

is to create the awareness, get many young people involved in astronomy. We're trying to see a way of getting more people in the career part of astronomy and also to use astronomy as a means of teaching STEM, science, technology, engineering, mathematics across Africa. These are some of the many things that we do as AFRAS. My guess is that your day job with the Nigerian Space Agency

probably keeps you pretty busy. Are they happy to have you involved with all these other activities like AWB? Yes, they have. And I think I've got the very good support in the Nigerian Space Agency because Nigeria is a pretty big country with a population of almost 200 million people and young people almost 30 to 40 percent of this population so this space agency is happy to have as many extra hands as possible in reaching out to to this large population of young people and because my role in the Nigerian space agency is pretty much like an extension of what I do with AWB, Space Education Outreach. I personally head the Space Education Outreach of the agency.

And also we have this new space museum. We have a lot of young kids coming around almost on a daily basis, which I coordinate as well. So it's almost like there are no demarcations between what I do as Nigerian Space Agency and what I do as AWB. That's great. Is that space museum? Is that the one you showed us the video of a little bit that was in a refugee camp, or is that separate? No, that was a project of AWP. It was a project about having a national hub for kids in the internally displaced people's camp. So in Nigeria, because of the problem of the insurgency that we've got going on around the northern part of Nigeria.

Boko Haram. Boko Haram, yes. So we have a lot of displaced people from across the region affected by the insurgency. So we have, of course, people with young children in these camps. A few years back, we thought these kids should also have a feel of what space and astronomy and all those funds could be. So we started a project of establishing an astronomy hub for these IDP guys. And with the support of the Office of Astronomy for Development in Cape Town, Office of Astronomy for Development in Cape Town, we were able to have the first one,

which was a project that was targeted at these young kids who are mostly out of school. And then we also had to bring in some counselors because we needed them to, because many of these guys are traumatized. Many of them were displaced from their homes. Many of them have one or both parents killed due to the insurgency. And so they are basically not in the right frame of mind to even learn. So we had to bring in some counselors, and we went ahead and made this solar-powered astronomy hub, which has smart TVs and internet connectivity with a lot of materials and videos.

It's a beautiful little facility from what I could see in the video. Yeah, it is. It is small, but it's also very effective because we have some people managing the project. And what we do is because we have a lot of kids in this camp, we have almost 300 young people. So we've been able to look for a way to make all of them at least once in a week have access to this hub. Yeah, so we have like a timetable of, okay, so you're going maybe everywhere next day or every Monday. And use the computer, use the smart TV, you know, just have fun. We have a lot of posters on astronomy and it's been cool. I'll be back in moments with Ola Yinka, Fagbimiro of Astronomers

Without Borders Nigeria and AWB founder Mike Simmons. Hi, I'm Yale astronomer Deborah Fisher. I've spent the last 20 years of my professional life searching for other worlds. Now I've taken on the 100 Earths project. We want to discover 100 Earth-sized exoplanets circling nearby stars. It won't be easy. With your help, the Planetary Society will fund a key component of an exquisitely precise spectrometer. You can learn more and join the search at planetary.org slash 100 Earths. Thanks. Welcome back to Planetary Radio.

How many children are among the displaced in Nigeria? Do you know roughly? Maybe not the displaced, but the latest UNICEF statistics says there are 13.2 million out-of-school kids in Nigeria. Out of school? Yes. So that means these are children within the age of being in either elementary or high school who are not. So basically, they are on the streets. They are just not in school.

Not good. Yeah, 13.2 million of them. Mike, you have been all over the world. Many of the places you go, troubled areas. Many of them, I suspect, with other displaced people, as we've heard described in Nigeria. Have you seen some commonality among particularly young people, kids, when you come in and show up with telescopes and start talking about the sky that's over all of us? Well, I don't necessarily take telescopes with me, except on

the occasions when I can bring something to the people there that somebody has paid for, and there's a way to transport it. But I've seen children all around the world. They are so much alike, no matter where they are. I've gotten some good pictures of different races in the same place, you know, like in northeastern Iran. The children really, I think, are always looking for the same things, just as us grownups are, but they haven't been affected yet by the things that happen in the environment. They're still looking for that wonder. They're still looking to discover things. They're really, children are born scientists. Yes, yes. And that's a common thread throughout.

Olenka, I see you're nodding very emphatically as Mike has been describing this. Is this what you see for these children who have had very difficult lives. Yeah, it's really amazing because I remember the first time we went to the IDP camp and then we met with this. The first time we went actually was when Mike sent her some solar glasses for 2013. There was this partial eclipse we experienced in Nigeria. And while we were busy distributing the the glasses to different schools and different communities I figured that these guys in this camp they also should have a few so we took some there and it was amazing because you know they they were so

excited they they looked through the the glasses, looked at the eclipse, and it was amazing. So when there was this chance to have this learning hub, astronomy hub, built for this camp, and then we went back. A few of the kids came, and they could recognize

themselves from three, four years back, and they're still in the camp. You know, it was depressing for me because, like, I thought the camp was supposed to be like a stopgap. You know, like you're displaced, and then you're there for a limited period of time until you get, you know, re- This is true in so many refugee camps. They become permanent settlements. Yeah.

So when we went there with our telescopes, it was amazing. Like looking through their eyes, even despite the situations they have, it was really a moment for them to forget about the predicaments they are in as refugees in their home countries. They were very excited. And, of course, they all were seeing the telescopes for the first time. So the excitement was so much, and it was really a good feeling for us as a team because, you know, you have kids who are usually sad as a team because you know you have kids who usually sad because many of them are missing their parents who have either been killed or separated from them you know and then coming

together looking through the telescopes and then sharing the excitement with us it was really wonderful i think like mike said kids all over world, I think they are just the same, irrespective of the level of comfort or background that they have. It's just amazing. Who works with you on this? Do you have a lot of volunteers who have some science training, or are there people also who are also new to astronomy? I have a team of young and enthusiastic scientists and engineers, some of who work with the Nigerian Space Agency,

some who work with other organizations, some are teachers, some are lecturers in the universities. So these guys, we share the same passion about popularizing astronomy in Nigeria. So these guys are selfless. They give their best 110% to seeing that this works. And also I have this other network of volunteers, and they come around to say, you know what, anytime you have a project, we want to be a part so with these people when we have any programs like when we have this IDP camp project we just inform them to say you know guys we

have this project and they showed up of course many of them don't have background in astronomy or science or engineering. But we have a way of carrying them along because, you know, we have a train-the-trainer kind of arrangement where, okay, we're going to be doing this tomorrow or in a few hours. So if you guys come together, let's tell you what is expected, how you could be of help to the kids. We do the same thing with our volunteers for the Planetary Society. Some of them are amateur astronomers. Many of them aren't. They just are excited to be able to share this.

Yeah, so that's how it works. I have these core people who are always there for every project. They write proposals, get us some of these grants that we use for this project. And then we have these other volunteers who are only coming on voluntary basis when we have any projects. Are very many of your volunteers women? Yes. Young women, girls? Yes.

In fact, some of the projects we've had to hand in, in fact, it's an ongoing project at AWB Nigeria. It's a girls camp. There are more female children out of school than the boys. Yeah, because of certain reasons, religious, socio-political, cultural, and a lot. Well, sometimes you sit just out of fear as well. Yeah. Because the parents might be afraid to let their daughter go to school where they might be vulnerable to the kidnapping. Yes, that's why we have more of these girls in the high DP camps, especially the ones that have been displaced from the northeastern part of Nigeria.

The parents, they don't want them to go to school so that they don't get kidnapped by the insurgents and all of that. So you see them just roaming the streets or being involved in child labor and all of those kind of things. So I have a number of women on this team. And what we try to do is we want them to be inspired. For example, when I'm speaking to a group of young girls, I tell them, look at these guys. I let them introduce themselves. This person is an engineer.

This person is a lawyer. This person is a scientist. So you also can be like one of us. Great role models. We want to be role models to them. And I think it's working because it's not unusual after any of our programs you have kids coming to you to say, you know what, I didn't want to go to school before. I thought, you know, like, I don't want to.

But now seeing you guys, I think I'm going to. I think I changed my mind. I want to be like you when I grow up, and it's always very great to hear such from them. Mike, you have seen young people coming to programs like this for many, many years. They're not all in situations where even maybe some of the most motivated among them might have a chance to go into a STEM career. But I'm sure some of them do. I mean, what do you see? Do you see some of these people first as kids and then see them again later and see how it's affected their lives?

I don't know that I see the same ones decades apart. I can't follow them like that. I don't know that I see the same ones decades apart. I can't follow them like that. But there's so many instances of things where 40 years ago I was running the telescope at Griffith Observatory and someone came in and said, you know, looking through this telescope is what got me into a science career. He didn't go into astronomy. It didn't matter. It's what got him interested.

There are others I've seen that with a little encouragement, all they need to continue and chase their dreams. I do have contact with people all over the world all the time. And I know that most will not be able to become an astronomer or something else. And, you know, most people that go into astronomy to begin with end up in some other field anyway. I'm one of them. Yeah. Well, me too. I mean, in a way, it's not... You're much closer to the real thing than I am. Closer to the real thing,

but not what I did for a career. So things change. But the important thing is that astronomy is something that is universal. It's in every culture, all through history, everyone's interested. It's in every culture all through history. Everyone's interested. So it really is the gateway. It's the gateway drug to STEM careers. And when you get interested, if you want to go into biology or chemistry or physics or anything else, including cultural things, social things, astronomy is connected to every one of them. It is a way of presenting something like what Olenka does in Nigeria. They can't go around with a chem lab or a physics lab. Not everybody would be interested,

necessarily, but looking through the telescope, and when we talk about kids, I'll tell you there's no age limit on that. Most people never look through a telescope, and 80-year-old people look through a telescope for the first time, and the reaction is the same. It's one of the things we've talked about before, and I see this all the time when I bring my telescope out. It's almost shocking to me still, but there are so many people who have never enjoyed the sky, had those photons come right through a lens from Saturn or the moon,

since those are the two that everybody gets a chance to look at first and finds the most exciting, frequently anyway, Jupiter with its own Galilean moons. Yeah, same experience. You get to see this all the time too. Yeah, it's really, it's even, I think, worse in Nigeria because we don't have as much people doing astronomy outreach as you probably have in the U.S. So an average child in Nigeria has never seen a telescope. And so when we go for public outreach, because, okay, so we have a number of outreach we do.

Okay, so we have a number of outreach we do. We have outreach we do with schools where we carry our telescopes. And then myself and my team, we go to schools and talk to kids and let them look at the telescopes. Sometimes we go to public places, maybe like a shopping mall, car park. In front of a pizza parlor. Yeah, we had one. And then you set up the telescope and you see hard dots. Seeing the telescope for the first time in their lives and the reaction is always surprisingly like, wow.

You know, so we have that a lot. In Nigeria, we have this peculiar challenge of astronomy not being in the curriculum of elementary or high school in Nigeria. So you don't have a course or a subject, astronomy, being taught in school. So that is always a challenge because

so how are we supposed to know about astronomy if we don't get to be taught in school? And so this is how we come in. We let them know, okay, you know what? You can still enjoy the wonders of astronomy. And also at AWB Nigeria, we have the teacher's training program that we do for science teachers. Oh, that's great. Yes, so one of the things we focus on is to let them know that, okay, even though you guys are – you teach physics or chemistry or mathematics or whatever science subject you teach, we try to bring out astronomy from each of these classes.

Just like Mike said, astronomy is in all of those. It's in all of them. It's across STEM. In geography, in physics. So we let them know that you can use whatever subject is your teaching. You can find a way of bringing out the astronomy. You did something else which caught my eye immediately when I looked at the Nigerian AWB website, which we will put a link up to the website on the episode page that people can find at planetary.org slash radio when they hear this show.

You did Yuri's Night, which I was very happy to see because I'm one of the founders of Yuri's Night, something I'm very proud of. Wow, that's great. Thank you. Okay, so yes, we had Yuri's Night and it was really, really exciting. Actually, we had more than one event to celebrate Yuri's Night. We had the daytime event and then later in the evening, we came out with our telescopes and we had people coming around to look through the telescope. And, of course, we told them about Yuri's, because I think most people know about Yuri Gagarin. I hope so. I'm not sure, but I hope so. Well, maybe not many people.

I think, for example, in Nigeria, I remember when I was a kid, we heard about the first man in space. It was something that they told us at that time. And of course, because there was no one to follow up on those things. So many people ended up not even remembering who he was and what he did. So that Yuri's night provided the opportunity to let people know, once again, who Yuri Gagarin was and, you know, the significance of human space exploration and all of that. And, of course, it was an opportunity to look to the telescopes again. And it's always exciting when you bring out your telescope because there are always people who have seen the tele-schools for the first time.

Yeah, it's universal. I hope that the people who attended Yuri Yuri's Night celebrations knew that that was happening all over the world. Yes, we will let them know that this is a global event and that every 12th of April, you know, we celebrate this all over the world. And so we're planning the one for 2020 already. Excellent. Because, yeah, people are looking forward to it. So when are we going to have U.S. Niger Games?

Okay, just wait. Just comes once a year. Yeah. Let me ask you about one other project. And I don't know how much you had to do with this, but I saw it on the AWB site for Nigeria. had to do with this, but I saw it on the AWB site for Nigeria. And that was a chance that some students had to send some seeds into the stratosphere, not into space, not yet anyway, but at least up above most of the atmosphere. Did you work on that? Yeah, yes. So we had the opportunity of working with Asgard Project, Asgard Project in Brussels in Belgium.

They've done it for a couple of years before I got involved. And then he says, this would be a great opportunity to bring, because they've never had any African team in the project. And I said, yeah, that sounds really cool. yeah, that sounds really cool. Like we have, I have a lot of people that work with me who would be able to come up with projects that students could do and fly to the hedge of space. And so we started. But of course, we needed the funds

to bring the kids to Brussels. Fortunately for us, we got the support of the Nigerian Hami. They have a school, the Nigerian Hami runs a school. And so we got the funds to take students from that school for the project. And it was really a life-changing event for them because the project basically was we had some samples of Nigerian seed crops. Quite a variety.

A variety. And then we launched on the stratospheric balloon to the hedge of space, and we brought them back. And the idea was to complete the experiment. We had to plant the ones from the hedge of space and the one that didn't go. We wanted the kids to see the difference. Like, okay, so how differently would this work?

And then, you know, it was a great opportunity for us. And during the project, we were also able, the kids met with Dick Fermat, he's a famous Belgian astronaut. You know, it was the first time they were seeing an astronaut. So that was also a high point of the program. And I think we're also looking forward to this year's ASGARD. I hope that at some point they can send these young people, the SEADs, into space. I mean, maybe they'll be able to get them on a suborbital flight or even better yet, up to the International Space Station, where there are a lot of major companies that are

doing the same thing. We look forward to that. We really look forward to that. Before we end, I want to hear about your trip here, because Mike told me you're not on official business. You paid your way to come over. What brought you to America? Why are you here? Actually, we've wanted to do this for a long time because of what I do in Nigeria with Astronomers Without Borders. And so when I thought coming here would afford me the opportunity of meeting people like you have, Mike has taken me to so many places. Like, I've been really greatly inspired, you know, going to Montrose Observatory, the group team, you know. We went also to the California Science Center and all of that. Stood underneath the space shuttle, I'm told.

Yeah, yeah. Endeavor. Yeah. So when we tried to look for funds, we couldn't really, because that's one of the major challenges we face working in Africa and Nigeria. Mostly you don't have to get funds and grants to do major projects or travel. So I said, okay, fine, you know what, I can plan towards this for a year. I could put in some personal savings with the help of a few friends.

I was able to make my way here. That's great. Right above us here, if you go out to the parking lot, you'll see Mount Wilson. And you were up there enjoying the view, I know, which has two, count them, two of what were at the time the largest telescopes in the world. Yes, I was taking a tour of the 60-inch and the 100-inch telescope. It was like the best thing I've seen in recent time. You know, it's really very, very inspiring for me. You know, it's really very, very inspiring for me. I think that is the more reason I knew I had to be here because going back home, you know, I'm going back with a lot of knowledge, a lot of experience, a lot of things that would really improve on what I do back home. Of course, I look forward to having an opportunity to let some of my team members also come around to visit and see the spaces.

And when I talk to kids, sometimes, you know, I show them pictures of things I had not seen myself. You know, I just told them, okay, this is how this is. But now, you know, with all these things. It's different when you've been there. It's different, yes. So now I'm telling them like a first-hand experience of what transpired. I think it will really go a long way too. When do you head home?

Tomorrow I'll be off to Seattle to attend the AAAS meeting, the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting. And after that, I head back to Abuja. I am so glad that you were able to make it here as part of this trip across the United States, North America. And it really has been an honor to have you here in our studio and to tell us about this experience. The pleasure is mine.

Thank you so much for having me here. You're very welcome. And thanks so much for the opportunity. Mike, same to you. Always a pleasure. You must be, pride may be the wrong word because she achieved this on her own, but to be able to work with people like Ola Yinka

around the world has to make you feel pretty good. It's incomprehensible to me, really, that I got to a place where I have this kind of opportunity. Starting Astronomers Without Borders seemed like a good idea, but it's really always been the people in the community that made things really happen. All the Inca is an inspiration, really. I'm the lazy one. I get to just talk to people, and they go out and do all the work. I'm kind of like the Huck Finn of astronomy. I think I've called you Johnny Astro Seed or something like that in the past. Well, you know, but it takes a village.

It really does. And it just happens to be a place where that village doesn't have any borders. happens to be a place where that village doesn't have any borders. Sitting here looking right now at a portrait of Carl Sagan, one of the founders of the Planetary Society, who was one of the first people to really popularize the idea that we're all in this together. We're on this little pale blue dot, as he called it from the Voyager picture. And when we look out

into the sky and we see the same things and we have the same sense of wonder, the same sense of awe, and the same sense of belonging to something much bigger, and we can bring that feeling to Earth and realize that we're all crew members on Spaceship Earth, as Buckminster Fuller called it, and that we really have so much more in common than all these little details that separate us. One people, one sky, right? Exactly. Olienko, have you had any impression that he has ever been lazy in his life? No way.

Like mine, it's a great support for it. You know, when Mike tells the story, I'm like, okay, maybe. I remember meeting Mike in 2039. He said, okay, you can do that. I said, okay, fine. And then I go back to Nigeria, and then I started AWB Nigeria. But every step of the way Mike was there supporting 110%

guiding us on what we needed to do at the time and encouraging every step I took and I think that really made me want to do more because each time we had a program then we did something

Mike would be like wow this is amazing I would be like, wow, this is amazing. I would be like, okay. It's really amazing to have, you know, Mike all through the way, you know, helping all along and being the inspiration that really got us going. I think it's great. I hope that you will continue to inspire each other and many other people, not just in Nigeria but around the world. We need more of you. Thank you both very much. And enjoy.

Have a good, safe trip home and a wonderful time when you return to Nigeria. Thank you very much. And Mike will talk again. Oh, I hope so. Time once again for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Here is the chief scientist of the Planetary Society. That's Bruce Batts, who has his hand in a lot of things going on at the Society, including a brand new campaign to support the search for not just one, not just two, not three Earths, but a hundred Earths. Welcome.

Thank you. Yes, we're working with Deborah Fisher, exoplanet hunter extraordinaire, and her team, including she's at Yale and Joe Lama at, well, you talked to them last week at Lowell Observatory. And we're doing a campaign to help support the replacement of a super high-tech fiber optic component, basically a photonic crystal fiber. So you can get more details on this cool effort to try to find 100 Earth-like planets, or at least Earth-sized planets around other nearby stars, you can go to planetary.org slash 100 Earths, the numeral 100 followed by Earths, and learn more. If you are listening to this on the radio and you missed the, I'm not sure if I left it in there or not, because of course the radio version of the show is generally shorter, but it's in the podcast version if you want to hear

more about the 100 Earths Project from Debra and Joe, because as Bruce said, they were on just last week. What's up in the night sky? How many Earths have you found? One. You can look down at any given time and you will find one Earth and only 99 to go. Still in the habitable zone, too, at least for the time being. It is. It is. We've got a bunch of other planets. I'm kind of repetitive, but, you know, that's the way the sky works. In the evening sky, Venus just looking stunning over there in the west in the early evening, super bright star-like object. And in

the morning sky, we got a lineup of planets that are going to be shifting positions in the coming weeks. Right now, we've got Mars looking reddish in the highest right position. This is over to the east in the pre-dawn, and then bright Jupiter to its lower left and yellowish Saturn to its lower left. And then on March 18th, we'll have the crescent moon hanging out and it'll be glorious. And then the planets will all dance over the next coming week. So check that out if you're a pre-dawn kind of person, look over in the east. You know, I just remember tomorrow I have to get up before Don to interview Ann Druyan, who with, if all goes well, will be my guest talking about the new season of Cosmos that premieres on the 9th, March 9th. So maybe I'll duck outside first.

Hopefully I won't lock myself out prior to having to interview her on the phone. You should just put a key in your pajamas just in case. I don't think they have pockets. Duct tape it to your forehead. Good idea. That never fails. And on that brilliant note, let's move on to this week in space history. It was 2006 that Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter went into

orbit around Mars, and it's still working with its amazing high-resolution camera and other science instruments. 2015, Ceres Dawn went into orbit around Ceres in 2015. That's great. And only after it had orbited Vesta and then departed, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit two objects in our solar system.

Random math fact. I can't help it. It's just I'm so thrilled by that mission. No, it's amazing. We'll also, I'm sure, warm the heart of our regular listener, Mark Raymond, who had two jobs leading that mission. One for Vesta, one for Ceres. No, not really.

No. All right. We move on to space fact. Oh, my goodness. You really need a nap. I do. At its average distance, you could fit more than 6,000 Earths side by side between Earth and Mars. Is that all?

Yeah. It's Mars, so it varies considerably, but that's an average distance. But yeah, only a few more than 6,000 Earths side by side. Now, we're hoping that Deborah and Joe find 100 of those that we can stick side by side, but we're going to have a more advanced campaign in the future to find the other 5,900. All right, we already got one. All right, we already got one. All right, on to the trivia contest.

We asked you, what ranger mission imaged Mare Tranquillidades, the Sea of Tranquility, before slamming into the surface as intended? How'd we do, Matt? It was a huge response. Not a lot of fun comments, but a few, a few. We always get a good number, and I will share some of those right after you tell us the answer. Ranger 8, Ranger 8, the second successful Ranger that returned images of Mario Tranquilidades. Tell us amusing things. Well, first I'll tell you that our winner, first time winner, Fernando Nagal in Lisbon, Portugal. Another one from across the pond.

He said, sure, it was Ranger 8. He added, listening to the Planetary Radio podcast is always time well spent, informative and entertaining. Thank you and keep it up. Add Astra. Oh, that's nice. Thank you, Fernando. And thank you to all of you who add keep it up. Add Astra. Oh, that's nice. Thank you, Fernando. And thank you to all of you who add notes like that. There are so many that we don't mention on the air because we're so not conceited.

We really do appreciate it. And I do try to answer almost all of them in email. Fernando has won a copy of that great book by Paul Davies that we talked about just two weeks ago, The Demon and the Machine, How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life. And we will throw in a Planetary Society rubber asteroid. And now I can read you some of the fun stuff. Well, Robert Laporta in Connecticut. And this goes with the next one. The last picture was taken 0.09 seconds, nine hundredths of a second before impact.

And so how far above the moon was that? Well, if he's right, Vladimir Bogdanov in British Columbia said that was at an altitude of one and a half meters. Seems unlikely they would have been able to return the picture. I'm guessing that, yeah, I'm guessing maybe it was taken a fraction before that. And then maybe, I don't know how long it took Ranger to transmit its pictures. You know, we were all so new at this.

We'll look into this. Solomon Jones in Wisconsin. He said, so cool that we make so much NASA data free and accessible to all. Unbelievable that these amazing Ranger 8 images are from an unmanned vehicle in 1965. That is a long time ago. Yeah, it was impressive. Pavel Kamesha in Minsk, Belarus. He said six out of the nine Ranger missions failed, so the odds of guessing the right answer were one in three.

As long as you knew the three that succeeded. Finally, our poet laureate, Dave Fairchild in Kansas. NASA sent Rangers to check out the moon, but accidents commonly struck. The first six they sent all had big accidents, the shoot and hope bad kind of luck. But finally, seven would make it to heaven, and Ranger 8 struck up the band by filming detritus in tranquilitatis. It showed where Apollo might land. Impressive rhyming. Thank you again, Dave. We're ready for another one of these all right it's time again i i can't wait any longer it's time for where in the solar system wow wait a minute wait a minute that's brilliant where in the you're so pleased with yourself i love it

where in the solar system is there a feature named bilbo bilbo b-i-l-b-o as in bilbo baggins but just bilbo where in the solar system is there a feature named bilbo i'm just having fun saying bilbo. I'm sorry. Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. Is there also one named Frodo and Sam? No. I don't know why. Well, I didn't actually

search for Sam. There may be a Sam. It's probably not a Samwise. I'll look. Extra points if you tell us where Samwise and Frodo currently reside somewhere around the solar system. You have until the 11th. That'll be March 11 at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us the answer this time. And we'll send you a Planetary Society rubber asteroid and a Planetary Radio t-shirt from chopshopstore.com.

That's where the Planetary Society store is, and you can check out all our cool stuff. We're done. All right, everybody, go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about if you were to go there and back again, where would you like to go there and back again? Thank you, and good night. Second star on the right, straight on toward morning.

He's Bruce Betts, the chief scientist of the Planetary Society, who joins us here in Neverland every week for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its wide-eyed members throughout the

world. Join us as we look up and beyond by visiting planetary.org slash membership. Mark Hilverdes, our associate producer, Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser at Astro.