Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Another Benefit of Space Science? Shuttle Experiment Offers Glimmer of Hope in the Mideast

Episode Date: January 20, 2003

Another Benefit of Space Science? Shuttle Experiment Offers Glimmer of Hope in the MideastLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is Planetary Radio. show. I'm Matt Kaplan. One is a Palestinian from Bethlehem studying biology in the U.S. The other is an Israeli medical student. What they have in common turns out to be much more than the experiment that is currently high above the Earth on the space shuttle Columbia. We'll meet them in a minute. Later today, it's monkeys, moons, math, and madness on what's up with Bruce Betts. To say nothing of our space trivia contest results and this week's question. First up, though, here's Emily to tell us about dinosaurs blasted into space, sort of. I'll be right back. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers.

A listener from Laguna Beach, California asked, Could the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs have sent earthly debris, soil microbes, and dinosaur guts out into the solar system? We asked Dr. Jay Moulash, a planetary geophysicist at the University of Arizona, to answer this excellent question. He explained that the impact, known as the K-T impact, blasted debris over the entire Earth. Most of this debris was melt droplets and individual little mineral crystals, but a few rock fragments and even pieces of the asteroid have been found tens of thousands of kilometers from ground zero. Therefore, it's quite plausible that some material was also blasted entirely free of Earth.

The discovery of Martian and moon meteorites in Antarctica makes it clear that impacts can eject material from planets. But could there really be dinosaur guts in space from the KT impact? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out. The space shuttle Columbia lifted off from Kennedy Space Center once again on Thursday, January 16. On it is a biology experiment that only takes up a tiny amount of room on the spacecraft. Yet that experiment may have significance far beyond its small size. Thank you. Thank you. I have to find out if I pronounced that correctly. It's in Dallas, Pennsylvania, but that's not his home. David and Tariq, welcome to Planetary Radio. Thank you.

Let's start by talking about this little bit of science which you and your colleagues call GOBS, G-O-B-B-B-S. David, you must have had fun coming up with that acronym. What does it stand for? Well, it stands for growth of bacterial biofilms on surfaces during space flight. But actually, I can't take credit for coming up with that. That was the Planetary Society who helped come up with that acronym. And I would like to thank the Planetary Society for funding this experiment and helping us to put this program together. As you know, it's not only a scientific experiment, but it was also part of a special

program to bring students into space science and specifically into space life sciences. My understanding is that this all came together very quickly when you learned that there would be space on this Columbia mission? Yeah, that is correct. Actually, I had already been involved in three other experiments. Well, I was supposed to be in three other experiments, but for some reason they ended up being only two other experiments, and they involved the Israeli Aerospace Medical Institute,

which is directed by Eran Shankar. And he's a colleague of mine going way back since I was a medical student at Tel Aviv University, Sackler School of Medicine. And those do not relate specifically to astrobiology, but they do relate to space medicine. Then we had an opportunity for a fourth experiment. We thought, why not a student experiment? And why not some kind of an outreach project? And because of the Israel connection, it just seemed natural to try to use it to bring people together

who usually don't work together, and we thought, why not Israeli students and Palestinian students? And so what happened was that you did get two distinguished students to join this experiment, and they're actually listed as, what, co-investigators. Yeah, and they are. And that, of course, includes Tariq Adwan, who's on the phone with us as well. Tariq, first of all, did I get the name of your college right? It's College Misericordia. Okay, I was pretty close then.

Tariq, how did you become involved with this experiment, which, as we speak, is circling the earth? Well, it started by a phone call from a family friend of mine who teaches at Monmouth University, Dr. Saliba Sarsar, who gave me a phone call and told me about the program and gave me the phone number

of Dr. David Wormflash. And so as soon as I got the number, I called Dr. Wormflash. And so as soon as I got the number, I called Dr. Wormflash, and I asked for the official announcement and the application for it. And as soon as I got it, I read the official announcement and kind of studied what criteria I should match

in my proposal. And within 10 days, I submitted my proposal and submitted my application. And luckily, I was selected. Well, you must have made a pretty good presentation because you were one of the two students chosen. We should mention that the other student is Yuval Landau, who is a medical student at Tel Aviv University. Now, he is also in Florida, was there for last Thursday's launch with the two of you.

The only reason he's not with us is logistical, basically due to the Jewish Sabbath. We're doing this interview on Saturday, the Saturday following the launch. And we may still get a couple of comments from him, but we would not want people to think that, Tariq, you and Yuval are not getting along. We're getting along, actually, very well. And we became really very good friends. And he's a very brilliant medicine student. And we're really having a good time here. And what an exciting opportunity. I mean, and a very rare opportunity as well for a couple of students

to actually be a part of this experiment that is now orbiting the Earth on Columbia. It is a very rare experience for me as a biology student. I'm always looking for opportunities to get involved in research, and there's nothing more interesting than peace and science and space. So this has been a great opportunity for me, and hopefully we're demonstrating a good example for collaborative work between an Israeli and a Palestinian working on the same

experiment that shows that science goes beyond our political differences and religious differences. I'm hoping that more opportunities of this type will

come and more Israeli and Palestinian students get the chance to get involved in such and I'm hoping that more opportunities of this type will come and more Israeli and Palestinian students get the chance to get involved in such experiments and experiences. David Wormflash, my guess is that you've gotten a lot out of this element of this experiment as well. Oh, definitely. In fact, it's not only a – I don't think it's supposed to be a learning experience for the students only. I also am Jewish, and I think that working with Tariq, as well as Yuval, has been a pleasure so far. We're really only at the beginning of this experiment. Most of what happens during a spaceflight experiment happens during the flight.

We're working on ground controls in parallel to what's going on in space. That's why we're still here at the Kennedy Space Center. In fact, you had tried to call me earlier, and I was still in the laboratory checking on something. And then a lot of stuff goes on on the POTS flight analysis. And, by the way, that reminds me that I just hadn't finished crediting everybody who's contributed to this. Yeah, let's go through some of the other individuals and organizations. Yeah, the most important one that I would like to thank is ITA.

That's the Instrument Technology Associates. The director of that is John Casanto, and they have been wonderful throughout this whole endeavor. The way that you put experiments on a shuttle is they often go through these commercial organizations, and ITA is one of go through these commercial organizations, and ITA is one of the groups that does this, and they have these cohorts of experiments, and they have a special apparatus.

They actually have a couple of different kinds, and they give you various parameters, and then you sort of adapt an experiment to that so that it'll make it as user-friendly to the astronauts as it possibly can be, so that they basically have to have a schedule and your experiment is supposed to be activated on a certain day, let's say day zero of the flight after they get into orbit, and then they have a schedule of when to deactivate the experiment. I see. How about other organizations?

And one in particular I know that I think some of our audience may have heard of called Seeds of Peace. They were also involved in the development of this, and they helped in the early stages of thinking of ideas, and they even had lists of students who had participated in another program that they had while they were in high school, and the students now were in college, and some of them even pretty advanced in college. And they had suggested a few potential applicants. We're going to take a quick break. We still have not really explained what this experiment is,

and Tariq, maybe we'll turn to you for that when we come back from the break. So please do stay with us. My guests are David Wormflash, Dr. David Wormflash of NASA at the Johnson Space Center, and Tariq Adwan, co-investigator on this project, which is on the space shuttle Columbia. And we'll have more from Planetary Radio in just a moment. This is Buzz Aldrin. When I walked on the moon, I knew it was just the beginning of humankind's great adventure in the solar system. That's why I'm a member of the Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest group.

The Planetary Society is helping to explore Mars. We're tracking near-Earth asteroids and comets. We sponsor the search for full-color magazine. It's just one of many member benefits. You can learn more by calling 1-877-PLANETS. That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387. And you can catch up on space exploration news and developments at our exciting and informative website, PlanetarySociety.org.

The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. We're back with Planetary Radio. Matt Kaplan here. I'm talking with Dr. David Wormflash and Tarika Adwan, a student and co-investigator on the GOBS experiment, which is up on Space Shuttle Columbia, as we speak. And I do want to mention, David, I said that you're with NASA. You are currently at the

Johnson Space Center, but actually working with something called, I think you said, the National Astrobiology Institute? That's right. That's a special program, and I'm one of its guinea pigs. Let's talk about this experiment. Tariq, let me turn to you. Can you give us a little thumbnail description of what GOBS is all about? Because I think it's a really fascinating question that you're investigating. The experiment is designed as an attempt to gain a better understanding of life's ability to survive under conditions of weightlessness. And, of course, this would bring us more understanding about or try to obtain evidences to support the panspermia hypothesis, which suggests that forms of life travel throughout the universe.

Panspermia, a very exciting concept currently in science. Also involving, oh, such things as the famous Mars meteorite, ALH 84001, and the thought that these objects might have carried life to Earth or perhaps from Earth to Mars. Actually, David McKay is overseeing this experiment. So, Tariq, how does the experiment go about showing whether or not it is possible, or at least more plausible, that panspermia might have taken place in the past? The way this hypothesis suggests is that especially a meteorite from Mars could have at some point landed on Earth and brought with it forms of life.

What we're trying to do is simply a reverse process. Meaning we're taking bacteria and we're culturing it in tubes, small tubes, and putting it along with media and with inorganic mineral crystals and sending it to space. And we're trying to study what type of biofilm would form in space and compare that biofilm with a control experiment on Earth. And see, compare that to results using a scanning electron microscope and see what results we get. And I should point out that the inorganic material that we're sending is very similar in structure to that of not only the Allen Hills 84001 meteorite, but also several other

Mars meteorites. Those are meteorites that have been identified as having been from Mars. And Tariq, when you mention the biofilm, what exactly does that refer to? Well, a biofilm is a thin layer of microbial cells that can form on surfaces in a moist environment. Biofilm may consist of several microbial species living side by side, sharing metabolites. So again, the idea is to determine whether it is possible for these different species of bacteria forming a so-called biofilm, which might actually protect them from the rather nasty environment of space long enough that perhaps they might make it intact to planet Earth.

Exactly. In fact, studies over the last few years are showing that it's fairly likely meteorites or other chunks of rocks could be catapulted frequently between Mars and Earth. And the way that the orbital mechanics work and all of that makes it more likely that it would be from Mars to Earth rather than the other way around. I see. For that reason, panspermia has sort of come to new light lately. Now, we only have a couple of minutes left. I take it that the Columbia mission will continue until just about the beginning of February. Then, how soon after that might we get the

results of this experiment? Tariq, are you able to answer that? As soon as we have access to the material, to the experiment. The experiment is going to be fixed, as Dr. Wormflusch mentioned, as soon as the shuttle is getting ready to go back to Earth. And when you say fixed, you mean the biological activity will be stopped by the astronauts? A special agent will be added by the astronauts, a fixin and glutaraldehyde, and that basically will preserve everything. And if there are biofilms on these substances, then they'll be preserved

and they'll be ready to do the electron microscopy on them and compare them with the ones that were done in parallel on the ground. So I take it that results, which I'm sure we will either talk about here on Planetary Radio or will be available on the Planetary Society's website, planetary.org, will probably be available before too long. Very likely. Speaking of the Planetary Society, tell us how the Planetary Society got involved in this experiment. That was through Andrean, who suggested that I talk with Lou Friedman, the executive director of the Planetary Society.

I've been trying to develop some outreach projects over the last few years, and Annie has been really, really great in giving all sorts of advice. I happen to mention this idea to her. What we were calling it at the time, we were coming up with all these different names before GOBS, but it always involved using students both from Israel and Palestine working together, and I just thought this might be great for the Planetary Society. And then Lou Friedman happened to be in Houston at the Coast Bar meeting, which was a few months ago.

And so I sat down and I talked with Lou and with Bruce Betts. We eventually found a way to do this. And the rest is, I guess you could say, history in the making. I hope it will be. Bruce Betts, we eventually found a way to do this. And the rest is, I guess you could say, history in the making. I hope it will be. Gentlemen, that's about all the time we have for this part of our conversation. I hope that we will be able to hear and that you, too, will have those results very soon. Tariq, I guess you have to go back to your studies.

You've been staying pretty much in your hotel room there in Florida. So good luck with those. Are you coming up on finals or something? We're actually starting. We're in the beginning of the semester, the spring semester. But I've skipped a week of school, so I'm trying to read ahead in an attempt to be able to catch up on my studies when I go back to my college. I take it that your professors think this was a pretty good excuse for playing hooky, being away from school.

Absolutely. They're all excited about it, and they're all looking forward to hearing the updates. Tariq, we'll wish you luck with all of your studies, and wish both of you luck with this experiment, GOBS, currently circling the Earth on the space shuttle Columbia. Thank you very much. Thank you. Before we leave this topic, we wanted to include the other

student co-investigator in this experiment, GOBS, and we have reached him in Israel near Tel Aviv. Yuval Landau is on the phone. Yuval, thank you for joining us. Thank you about the interview. David Rompflesch and Dr. Ranschenkar and Dr. David Rompflesch, who are the principal investigators, wanted the two students to be co-investigators in this experiment.

They were looking for an Israeli and a Palestinian student to be a participant in this astrobiology experiment. Tariq, as you have already known, comes from Musa Ricordia College, and I come from Tel Aviv University, Sackler School of Medicine, the MD-PhD Excellence Program for medical students, of course. PhD excellence program for medical students, of course. And we are supposed to take part in the different stages of this experiment, decisions in the beginning of this experiment about the amount of bacteria that should be on the chambers and something like that. And after the shuttle will land successfully,

we should analyze the results by scanning electron microscope. I take it that you and Tariq will be co-authors on any paper that results from this experiment. Yes, this is the tool. Tariq said that the two of you made a very good team. Yes, yes. Tariq is, as I've already said to other journalists, that while I was working with Tariq, my colleague, I saw that he's a brilliant biology student and also a nice guy. And we both demonstrate that science and scientific research

extend beyond any political debate. And our main goal is the same, to make the world a better place to live in. This is the scientific research goal. Nicely said. And guess what? Tariq used almost the same words to describe you. Ah, okay. Well, we will wish you great success with this experiment, and we will look forward to getting the results.

Okay, we are looking forward to the results either, and hopefully they will be significant results. Thank you very much for taking a few moments there in Israel. We will let you get back to the evening there, and look forward to hearing from you when those results come in here on Planetary Radio. Okay, I'll be happy to tell you. Thank you, Yuval. Thank you, Matt. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A about whether microbes were sent to space in the KT impact. When asteroids collide with the Earth at speeds of several kilometers per second,

the shock of the impact can create tremendous heat and pressures. But in a process called spallation, solid rock can be ejected at very high speed but with little heating or shock damage. Spallation happens when the shock wave created by the collision reflects from the ground surface near the impact site. Therefore, material located right at the ground surface can be ejected from the Earth while staying intact. Based on research that Dr. Malosh performed, it seems very probable that microbes could survive this experience. As for

dinosaur guts, they might indeed have graced the moons of the solar system if the KT impact had occurred on land. However, the actual strike appears to have been in a shallow sea, which means that the KT impact probably blasted out mostly seawater and whatever was living in the upper ocean. So instead of vacuum-dried dinosaur parts, future astronauts should probably be looking for broken ammonite shells in space. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org, and you may hear it answered by a leading space scientist or expert. Be sure to provide your name and how to pronounce it, and tell us where you're from. And now, here's Matt with more Planetary Radio.

Time for What's Up with Bruce Betts, the Planetary Society Director of Projects. Bruce, welcome back. Thank you very much. What have you got for us? We've got planets in the sky once again. It's a good place for them. It is. It's much safer for those of us on Earth.

We've got Saturn in the evening. I can see where this one's going to go, but you go right ahead. Okay. Saturn in the – I'll try to be serious. Saturn in the evening will be up, you know, in the sky, as it often is. And if you look at it, actually, all kidding aside, it's a great time to look at Saturn. It's the closest approach for the year, near it,

and a good spacing of the rings. If you have a chance to look in a small telescope, it rises and is up basically by early evening. If you look in the east, it'll be about halfway up in the sky. If you look by late evening, 10, 11 p.m., it's almost straight overhead. It's above Orion, for those of you who recognize Orion, the typical way the constellation's laid out, brightest in the sky.

I've been looking at it through my new telescope. It's really cool. So your wife let you get the new telescope? Yeah, I did, but we're not here to talk about me. Okay, so anyway, Jupiter rises around dusk, around sunset, and is extremely bright, much brighter than anything else in the sky at that time. And you'll see it almost straight overhead at midnight and in the east in the early evening.

And then for the early risers or late going to betters, 4 a.m. is the approximate rise time for Venus in the east, extremely bright, and Mars to the right of it a little ways and getting farther and farther apart as time goes on and much, much dimmer and a little bit reddish. That's our planet update for what's up in the sky this week. Okay, what are we going to next? This week in space history, and we're headed down the primate road we enjoy so very much. January 21, 1960, the U.S. launched a Mercury capsule on a suborbital flight

carrying a rhesus monkey named Miss Sam. Miss Sam. Miss Sam followed up on the launch not that long before, which I'm sure you were going to ask about, of a monkey named Sam. Yeah, I thought it's Sam. Now, I remember Sam. I don't remember Miss Sam. Well, you know, the creative rocket engineer is not that creative with names.

Were they actually – I always throw you a curveball once per segment, right? Were these two monkeys acquainted, I mean, formally or adjoining cages maybe? I hear what you're saying. And, yes, but not until after the program. They met in their adjoining cages and then retired to a little place in Boca and had raised a lovely family of rhesus monkeys. Of course, like they'd raised chimps. So anyway.

I had to ask. Maybe we should move on. Please. To random space fact. Okay, we're going to do the echo this time. Okay, your random space fact for this week. The Earth's moon has only about 180th the mass of Earth. 180th?

He asked? He asks, being stunned by the profundity of it all. Because the moon, therefore what, must be much less dense than the Earth as well? Because it's not 180th of the size of Earth, is it? There are two things going on. We've got, yes, it is much less dense, and that's because, to get into a much longer discussion, because the current theory for where the moon came from

is the upper part of the Earth. After the Earth was hit by a Mars-sized object early in its history, but after the iron had gone to the center, so the stuff you spewed off that reformed into the moon was the less dense material towards the top. The other factor is that the mass of something goes as the volume, which goes as the cube of the radius, for those of you following along in your math books out there.

Not just the square, but the cube. Not just the square, but the cube. I was asleep that day in physics class. Well, what else have we got? We've got at least one more exciting thing. We do, which is we've got our trivia contest. Oh, boy. We have our first winners.

Let me tell you about the question. Let's step back a moment. What is the primary constituent of both the Venusian and Martian atmosphere? Well, Bruce, we had a whole bunch of respondents, and of those, about 80% got the answer correct. And I am very happy to say, first of all, that the answer is carbon dioxide. Excellent. And you had said that we'd start with a fairly easy one, and I think that qualified as a reasonably easy first time out for our trivia contest. Shall I reveal the winner?

Please do. contest. Shall I reveal the winner? Please do. Randomly chosen from among all of our correct answers, our winner is Arnie Abrahamson. Arnie Abrahamson of San Juan Capistrano, California, right down the road from us, really. We're a little embarrassed. We kind of wished that it had been, oh, maybe the entry from Mexico or the one from Massachusetts or one of the others from someplace far away. But Arnie, you are our winner. You will be taking home that Planetary Society T-shirt, and it will be in the mail to you shortly. Thank you very much for entering.

Let's get to next week's contest. We only have a few seconds left. The contest for next week, here's your question. How long is a day on Venus? In other words, the amount of time it takes Venus to rotate once. Please, I'll give you a bit of a hint that you're going to give the answer in days would be most convenient, Earth days, and to round off to the nearest Earth day. So how long is the Venus day in Earth days?

I can't say like Venusian days because the answer would be one. One. Yes, it would be one. And that would be kind of a silly contest, now wouldn't it, Matt? That's why I do the contest questions and you host the show. Let's keep it that way. Go to our, the Planetary Society's website, planetary.org, follow the links to Planetary Radio, and then from there you'll find how you can enter our contest. And you have until, we'll give you

until Thursday of this week, that would be, let's see, the 23rd of January. And then we will once again pick a single correct answer from all of the respondents who have the right answer. Once again, the question is, how long is the Venusian Day expressed in Earth days? That lucky winner is going to get a prize from the Planetary Society. The Planetary Society Mars Pathfinder

Carl Sagan Memorial Station T-shirt, as Arnie Abramson will get shortly from us. Thank you very much, Bruce. That's it for Planetary Radio. Join us again next Monday at 5.30 p.m. Pacific on KUCI and at KUCI.org. Or take a listen anytime at Planetary.org, where all of our shows are always available. Have a great week, everyone.