Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Astronomers Without Borders: Spreading the Wonder Worldwide

Episode Date: June 10, 2014

Astronomers Without Borders Founder and President Mike Simmons and his colleagues share the passion, beauty and joy of the night sky from Argentina to Zambia.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Planting the love of astronomy around the world, 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. Mike Simmons created Astronomers Without Borders just seven years ago. Now his little organization has coordinators in 45 nations, from Argentina to Zambia. Mike returns to our show this week with an update on AWB's projects and activities worldwide. The National Research Council is one of the national academies in the United States. Research Council is one of the national academies in the United States.

Last week it released Pathways to Exploration, Rationals and Approaches for a U.S. Program of Human Space Exploration. We'll have more on this topic next week, but Bill Nye has some initial thoughts in a couple of minutes. Another space celebrity will introduce this week's random space fact for Bruce Betts, we begin with a Mars exploration rover update from senior editor Emily Lakdawalla. Emily, is it fair to say that we're watching Opportunity drive even further into the Red Planet's past?

I think so. Opportunity is driving up a mountain in kind of a weird way. It actually means that the rover is driving farther into Martian history, learning about these clay minerals that are deposited on the rim of Endeavor. One of the reasons that you climb in order to go into the past is that you get impact craters that raise rock strata from their original positions deep below the surface. They get raised up in the forces of the impact. And so that's what Opportunity is exploring right now.

Sounds counterintuitive, but makes perfect sense when you explain it. Talk about how Opportunity is, in a sense, being guided by this aging instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is perhaps most famous for its high-rise camera and the sharp images you get from high-rise. You don't hear as often about the imaging spectrometer called CRISM, which stands for the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars. This instrument really, more than most, is what's changed our understanding of how Mars' water history and how different water chemistry happened at different periods in Martian history to make its climate quite different from time to time. And CRISM is the instrument that we've been using to spot these tiny, narrow exposures of clay-rich rocks from orbit.

And those rocks that have a lot of clay in them, clay is a mineral that forms in the presence of water, in the presence of pretty neutral pH water, the kind of water that you or I could drink. CRISM has spotted these exposures, and that's the reason that Opportunity drove 12 kilometers across Meridiani Planum to get to the rim of Endeavor Crater. How far back in Mars' history are we looking?

Well, we're looking back quite a long way. We're looking back to pretty much the first age of Mars. Mars, as we understand it today, thanks to imaging spectrometers like CRISM and also Omega on Mars Express, Mars in its distant past had abundant water at a neutral pH, a kind of climate that Earth-like life would like. And then over time it changed into one where there was a lot of acid rain. It was a much drier climate.

And you wind up with these sulfate rocks. And those are the kinds of rocks that Opportunity had been exploring up until she drove up to Endeavor Crater. These rocks that Opportunity is studying are older than most of the rocks that we have exposed anywhere on Earth. So we're really getting a good look at the most ancient history of Mars, and even by comparison to planet Earth. This is one of those magnum opus-like entries by Emily. You really got into this. And it is a good match, a good complement,

to a piece by our colleague, A.J. S. Rayl, who periodically gives very detailed updates. They go very well together, and they came out on the same day. You can find them as June 5th entries at planetary.org. Emily, as always, thanks very much. Thank you, Matt. She is the senior editor for the Planetary Society, our planetary evangelist, and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine.

Bill Nye is the CEO of the Planetary Society. Bill, I'm hoping that you will give us your thoughts about this very significant report that just came out of the National Research Council last week. Yes, it was about human spaceflight, the future of human spaceflight as driven by NASA. And it's roughly the thing that you hear, one hears all the time about human spaceflight. That is, everybody wants to go to Mars. People suggest that going to the moon might be better first. But if you read it not especially carefully, the problem is there isn't enough money. NASA cannot do the extraordinary things with regard to human spaceflight that it used to do unless it has more money to do it. And no one really has,

if I may, Matt, the guts to declare that we're really actually really going to Mars. There isn't a Cold War to drive that the way there once was. Let me say that as the CEO of the Planetary Society, we are going to continue to push for planetary exploration. Planetary exploration is an extraordinary value. It's what keeps NASA innovating. And then we will work the human spaceflight problem in the background. And that would be getting everybody to agree that really Mars is the next place for people. And we've got to commit enormous resources over less than 20 years. You can't just say it'll be 30 years from now. Nobody will get it done. If John Kennedy, President Kennedy, had said, we're going to do it in the next 40 years,

nothing would have happened. It was that he gave a deadline that was achievable. I always say deadlines are magic. A guy who is very well positioned to talk about this, I hope will be our guest on the show next week, John Logsdon. You mean John Logsdon, our beloved John Logsdon. He's on the board of directors of the Planetary Society, and I would say he really is probably the world's foremost authority on the history of space. And he has an excellent perspective on this,

and he will, I'll bet you, Matt, he will ask him about it. He will say, everybody thinks it's a good idea, but no one wants to commit to it, so it just remains an elusive dream. That is, sending humans to Mars to look for signs of water and life. That would change the course of human history. Bill, thanks so much.

Thank you, Matt. He is the CEO of the Planetary Society. Back in a couple of moments with Mike Simmons, the Cassini Mission's Linda Spilker. That was at the Starlight Festival in the mountains above Southern California. There were all sorts of good folks there, including the founder and president of an organization that is spreading the passion, beauty, and joy of astronomy throughout our lovely planet. I wasn't surprised to see Mike Simmons, where there were lots of telescopes and lots of excited people, young and old, lined up in front of them. His Astronomers Without Borders reproduces this scene wherever it is active.

As you'll hear, that includes many locations that may surprise you. I invited Mike to come back on Planetary Radio to provide an AWB update. He joined me via Skype from his home in another part of the mountains that surround Los Angeles. Mike, welcome back to Planetary Radio. Oh, it's a pleasure to be here again, Matt. It was really great to run into a couple of weekends ago as well. And boy, was that an encouraging and inspiring event to see all those people thrilled to be looking through telescopes. But then you see that all the time, don't you? Well, we do. And you know, you do sidewalk astronomy, you get the families, you get the kids, first timers, but not usually at these big events like this, the star parties and so on. And that's what I thought was really fantastic about this.

They had robots, they had the STEM zone for kids, and it was really a family event. And that's really unique, and it was huge. So it was really encouraging, absolutely. What were you doing up there with Astronomers Without Borders? Well, we had a program where we were bringing in people from around the world, amateur astronomers, some coming even from planetariums in their countries, which are rare in a lot of the developing countries. And we had Skype sessions with them, and we would bring them in and have them show us some pictures about what goes on there. In a couple of cases, they were actually involved in activities. And then we'd have a conversation with the people in the audience there.

Can you even guess at how many times you have seen faces light up, kids, adults, when they look through a telescope for the first time at something fantastic? Short answer is no. I can't estimate. It's astronomical. And you know what? We see this every time. And there are so many pictures. And it's such a pleasure. And that's why so many people do sidewalk astronomy, bringing astronomy to everybody, the kids, the adults, the adults turning to kids when they see these things for the first time. It's like living that all over

again. And I have to say, every time I look at Saturn and the moon and certain other objects, it's still a thrill for me. But seeing that happen with somebody else, you know, sometimes it's a life-changing event. It's really a thrill. I think that's true of me. I remember seeing Saturn for the first time through a little refractor, and it probably helped set me on the course I've been on. You were up there just having come off of the busiest month of the year for Astronomers Without Borders. Tell us about Global Astronomy Month in April. Well, Global Astronomy Month every April really has gotten to be a busy time. It's growing all the time. This is a follow-up to the 100 Hours of Astronomy Cornerstone

project that I led during the International Year of Astronomy in 2009. And we wanted to continue that excitement of bringing in the amateur astronomers and having them do things, both sidewalk astronomy, special events. We have online events. There's a growing, very popular astro arts program. We have hangouts or suggestions for people to observe together. And all of our observing is really done together. Even if people are halfway around the world from each other, they know that the others are observing and looking at the same things at the same time. Sometimes it's specifically for Saturn or Jupiter or the Moon, and they know telescopes are pointed at it all around the world as darkness sweeps around the world. So it's a very busy time. It's become insanely popular, and there's still more to do. It's still going to get bigger. When you say halfway around the world, you mean it. What are some of the nations that people might find somewhat unexpected where this activity is taking place, not just during April, but around the year? It's interesting that there are some countries that are particularly active in astronomy or

different kinds of astronomy that you might not expect. Our astropoetry program, which is an annual big contest during Global Astronomy Month, too. Romania is a hotbed of astropoetry. Brazil is very active. The one country that I go to, have gone to quite a bit, is Iran, and that is perhaps the most active country in astronomy that I know of. Unlike here in the U.S., it's almost entirely young people. People over 30 are unusual, and it's really dominated by women. It's very exciting. They have new ideas and lots of activities. They're very passionate about it, and a lot has to do with outreach as well. It is unexpected in some countries, but I have to tell you there's astronomy going on everywhere because I know

people doing it in Kabul, and I've seen it myself in Iraq. And it's nice that you mentioned Iran because I remember how pleasantly surprised I was the first time I got email to Planetary Radio from a listener there who obviously listens to the podcast. You've got a photo right on the homepage for Astronomers Without Borders, which, by the way, is astronomerswithoutborders.org. And it's this old fellow. You were telling me he's right there. He's in Iran. Well, he's in Iraq next door. Oh, in Iraq.

I'm sorry. But you know what? There's an interesting connection. Because he's in the northern Kurdish region. I was surprised when I was there to learn that the Kurdish culture, as well as the language, is very, very similar to Persian in Iran. So it's really much more Persian than it is Arab. That was a telescope that I took along with me when I first went to the northern section of Iraq. And there was a lot of equipment that was donated or sold very, very cheaply so that the club there could get a hold of a telescope.

donated or sold very, very cheaply so that the club there could get a hold of a telescope. It's something that people don't realize. There are no telescopes in many countries, none at all. And if there are some, they're usually not accessible to amateurs or to the public. And people say, well, they can order one online because they don't have stores, but they don't have credit cards and things that get mailed get stolen. There's just really no way to do it. So we have programs associated with that sort of thing as well. But in this case, this was an older gentleman who is a Kurd and wearing traditional Kurdish garb. But we have pictures like that from all over the world. And, you know, the thing is, that telescope there is a very common type of telescope here. That's a MEDA LX200.

And you see that all over the world. And after you've looked at enough of those pictures, you realize it's the same thing. The people are the same. They're doing the same thing. They're looking at the same things. The clothes change. The color of the skin changes. But otherwise, it's just remarkable, the similarities.

We're all doing the same thing, sharing the same sky. That's Mike Simmons, founder and president of Astronomers Without Borders. Mike and I will be back in a minute. This is Planetary Radio. Hi, this is Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society. We've spent the last year creating an informative, exciting, and beautiful new website. Your place in space is now open for business. You'll find a whole new look with lots of images,

great stories, my popular blog, and new blogs from my colleagues and expert guests. And as the world becomes more social, we are too, giving you the opportunity to join in through Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and much more. It's all at planetary.org. I hope you'll check it out. Your name carried to an asteroid! How cool is that?

You, your family, your friends, your cat, we're inviting everyone to travel along on NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu. All the details are at planetary.org slash b-e-n-n-u. You can submit your name and then print your beautiful certificate. That's planetary.org slash b-e-n-n-u. You can submit your name and then print your beautiful certificate. That's planetary.org slash Bennu. Planetary Society members, your name is already on the list. The Planetary Society, we're your place in space. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. This week we are catching up with Mike Simmons, founder and president of Astronomers Without Borders. Mike was telling us about just a handful of his travels across this planet, introducing men, women, and children to the wonders of the night sky.

He mentioned the enthusiasm for astronomy he has found in Iran, particularly from women. Sitting on the board of AWB is Anousheh Ansari, the first astronaut of Iranian descent. Many in the Third World might never have had the opportunity to look through a telescope without AWB. The organization's activities continue to expand. Mike and his colleagues are preparing a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo that will take him back to Africa. More about that in a moment.

But first, I want to come back to that poetry program that you mentioned. Is that part of this astral arts program that you were telling me about? It is part of the astral arts program. And the astral arts program in general brings artists who do space art, astronomy-related art, to the Astronomers Lab or his website to blog, to show their work. We also have hangouts that we do so people can see what they do and hear from them. And these are people that just, they're doing the same things in a way, it's just a different perspective. They're looking at it from a different angle. Astropoetry is something

similar. People expressing their feelings about astronomy, which is not something you get in every science, you know, but the inspiration of astronomy is very different. And they write poetry about their feelings about the sky in the same line as people like Robert Frost, who wrote some very famous stuff related to the sky. There's usually a blog of new astro poetry from various places, but that contest that takes place during Global Astronomy Month has dozens of countries participating, and we had over 200 entries in that in three categories this year. I'm going to bet that you are one of those who would love to change STEM to STEAM. In other words, adding to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, arts. Well, that's an interesting thing, and I've noticed that. I haven't really thought about it before.

There are certain things that just do go together naturally, and while the arts and the sciences might be completely separate in some way, there are times when the arts are just a different interpretation of science. There are different ways of looking at it, and I think astronomy is the perfect place to see that because most of the people involved in astronomy are not professionals. They don't have degrees in astronomy, but they're passionate about it. That's why there is art in it. So I don't know the ins and outs of adding the A in there, but some of these divisions, just like our geographic divisions between people who have such great similarities,

some of these divisions between different areas are kind of artificial as well. Tell me a little bit about this upcoming Indiegogo campaign, which, as we speak, is not quite underway, but will be soon. Well, yes, you caught us just a little bit before we got this going, but we are raising funds for this. Right now, there are two people who are the managers of the Telescopes to Tanzania program who are in Tanzania for a month. This is a program run by a couple of great people that's come under the Astronomers Without Borders umbrella, and they have done a lot of things in this country where they have trained teachers to teach science and brought some equipment, some small telescopes. This is a country where when you think about the teachers teaching science, they not only have no labs, they have no training. Some of the teachers

in rural areas have never used a computer before and they get some training on how to use a computer for astronomical software. Some of these places are off the grid, in fact, so computers are out. So this is not an unusual situation. There are quite a few developing countries where this is the place, and outside of cities, it's really most common. So this program has brought teachers together to train them. It goes to certain schools. It's provided a number of small telescopes. And right now they're working on a science center. This is a science and education center based in the north of Tanzania. There is a telescope that's being refurbished to go over there.

And it's in the first phase now, which is what they're working on now, to provide the infrastructure within Tanzania to be able to accomplish this. They have an office and they're hiring staff and so on. And the people involved, they're really passionate, enthusiastic, but everybody's got to make a living as well. The costs are very, very low compared to doing something here. The campaign is modest by comparison with something like that. Here right now, it's $14,000 that are needed to get this underway. And there is a page where people can donate if they want to, whether the Indiegogo campaign is going on or not. Yeah, and I assume that that's at astronomerswithoutborders.org as well.

That's right. And there are different projects on the front page, and click on Telescopes to Tanzania, and there is a donate button right there that we hope everybody will go and use. Let's talk about just one other thing that's underway in the minute or so that we've got left. You also have this program going on with Uingu, which Alan Stern has come on this program to talk about. How is AWB involved? We were one of the first organizations to be given a small grant by Uingu from the funds that they raised from the public. Now with their current campaign to name craters on Mars on the Uingu map, which as you know is going to be used by Mars One project going to Mars, they've given us a province of our own, which big companies will have to pay for, called Astronomers Without Borders. So there's a province, shows up on their map named after

Astronomers Without Borders. And we hope that people will name their craters within that province, whether it's for fun, official, however they want to do it. And we also get a percentage of the funds raised from that. So Uingo has been a fantastic partner, and we want to help them populate this map. Once again, the place to learn about all of this is astronomerswithoutborders.org. You can read about the projects. You can read more about Mike and the people that he works with who are spreading the good word and the good views of astronomy, the wonder of the sky, the night sky around the world, and very active here at home in the United States as well.

Mike, thank you so much for joining us again, and best of luck with all these efforts. Thanks very much, Matt. It's always a pleasure. Mike Simmons is the founder and the president of Astronomers Without Borders. It happens to be based here in California. You've still got pretty good dark skies up where you are, right? Oh, we're out in the mountains a little ways from the city. It's a little bit better than in the city. I can see the Milky Way on most good summer nights.

Man, I'd love to drop in some night, Mike. Oh, open invitation, Matt. I'll bring my own telescope. Anyway, he's Mike Simmons of Astronomers Without Borders. Let's talk to another astronomer who's stuck in the city lights. That's Bruce Betts, who can still tell us about what to look for in the night sky on What's Up. Got Bruce Betts here, the Director of Science and Technology, both, both together, S&T, for the Planetary Society. And that means it's time to hear about the night sky and do other fun stuff on What's Up. Welcome back.

Thank you. Good to be back. I'm glad, too. And we have a guest random space fact introducer that we'll get to in a moment. We'll save my voice. Evening sky. I know I keep mentioning it, but it's really cool. If you haven't checked out all the planets in the evening sky, Jupiter is getting pretty low, but still you can check it out soon after sunset over in the west. And then as you're kind of facing south, rotate your head up to the left and you'll see Mars looking reddish.

And farther to your left and you'll see Saturn looking kind of yellowish. And then in the pre-dawn, Venus also getting kind of low now but super bright. If you got a view to the horizon, you'll see it easily in the east in the pre-dawn. On to this week in space history. It was four years ago that Hayabusa, after a series of challenges that they overcame, returned the first asteroid samples to Earth. At least through humans bringing them here. Four years. That's hard to believe. It's still the little spacecraft that could.

It really is. They had some major issues that they worked through. All right, now I'm ready. I'm ready for the guests. Okay, here he comes. Hey, Bruce, it's Will Pomerantz. I'm Virgin Galactic. And I'd love it if you could hook us all up with a random space fact. Yeah, Will Pomerantz, vice president for special projects at Virgin Galactic,

hoping to launch a spaceship, too, with people, with the boss, Richard Branson, into space later this year. What do you got for him? When the Saturnian moon Titan was discovered in 1655 by Dutch astronomer, famous dude, Christian Huygens, he named it Saturni Luna, or Saturn's moon. So that was its name for a couple decades. Then someone started finding more, and they just gave them numbers. And eventually it got – they worked things out because it would have been a little confusing now with more than 60 known moons. It's Saturn.

It's like, hey, this is Saturn's moon, and this is Saturn's moon. Hi, I'm Saturn. This is my moon moon and my moon moon. That's right. And my brother. Oh, Bob Newhart, we love you. Indeed. All right, on to the trivia contest.

I asked you, what is the only spacecraft that ever flew approximately over the poles of the sun? How'd we do, Matt? Nice response. We're getting lots and lots of people entering nowadays. Cool. Our winner this time, if he got it right, that is, Stephen Coulter. It's been quite a while since I think he's won one. Stephen Coulter of Australia, so it's going to cost us the postage to send him the Little Bits space kit, that terrific kit of electronic components that you just sort of snap together with magnets. And this one was developed in cooperation with NASA, as we've mentioned in the past.

You can learn more about them at littlebits.cc. Stephen said the only spacecraft that flew approximately over the poles of the sun is the Ulysses, a joint NASA-ESA project, and that it got launched by a space shuttle, which I thought was pretty interesting. Very long mission, lasted until 2008, he says. That's seven years longer than Odysseus' return from the Trojan War took. Nice. So I take it from your laughter that he also got the answer right. He did indeed, Ulysses, because it turns out orbitally, it is not easy to do that plane change, inclination change, and get up over those poles.

They actually went out to Jupiter to use this gravitational tug to get them into that near polar giant orbit around the sun to give new insights, as it did, into what was going on with the part of the sun we can't particularly see. Yeah, unique mission. We also got this note from Mark Smith, who said that he understands that Ulysses had to turn off its radio during the gravity assist at Jupiter to avoid hearing the sirens on Callisto. Good one. Wow, all sorts of good mythology humor going on here. Yeah, and I will mention briefly, Dalton Long, also in Portland, Oregon, wanted us to do a shout-out to Pine Mountain Observatory,

but we don't do that kind of thing, Dalton, so sorry. Way to stick to youratory. But we don't do that kind of thing, Dalton. So sorry. Way to stick to your principles. You betcha. All right. Here's your next trivia question. What planet in our solar system has the most moons over 1,000 kilometers in diameter? And as a side note, how many does that planet have over 1, thousand kilometers diameter? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest to get us your entry. When do they need to get it in by, Matt?

And what are they competing for? We are going to give away a signed copy of Meteorite Hunting, How to Find Treasure from Space, from our friend Jeff Notkin, one of the meteorite men. from space from our friend Jeff Notkin, one of the meteorite men. It's a really fun book, and it's signed to, it says, Thank you for supporting Planetary Radio. That comes from Jeff, and we'll throw a T-shirt in as well. How's that? You need to get us these entries by the 17th. That'll be June 17th at 8 a.m. Pacific time, Tuesday the 17th.

Well, that was nice of Jeff. We appreciate that. All right, everybody, go out there, look up the night sky, and think about power drills and just help you out. Power tools, that's right. Father's Day coming up. Don't forget anybody. He's Bruce Betts, the director of science and technology for the Planetary Society,

who joins us each week here for What's Up. Join us next week for a conversation with space policy and history expert John Logsdon. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by the borderless members of the Society. Clear skies. Thank you.