Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - At Spacefest VI With Apollo Astronaut Gene Cernan and a Host of Proud Space Geeks

Episode Date: May 27, 2014

Planetary Radio visited Spacefest in Pasadena to talk with planetary scientist and space artist Dan Durda, Marc Rayman of the Dawn asteroid mission, and a guy who calls himself the Space Cowboy. We also eavesdrop on Apollo 17 Commander Gene Cernan and his lifelong fan, Griffith Observatory Curator Laura Danly.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Gene Cernan, Laura Danley, Dan Derda, and Mark Raymond, this week on Planetary Radio at SpaceFest. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. It's the annual gathering of space travelers, space scientists, space artists, space vendors, and space geeks like yours truly. We'll visit this year's Space Fest in Pasadena. Bill Nye wants to share a statement on NASA's plan to redirect and visit an asteroid. Later, Bruce Betts will take his lumps for the meteor shower that wasn't, and he'll help me give away another little bit space kit on What's Up.

Senior editor Emily Lakdwala is just the first of today's great conversations. Emily, a couple of new blog entries to talk about here. Maybe we can deal with the first one pretty quickly, and this is an opportunity to get a nice view of our home planet. Yeah, it's something called the High Definition Earth Viewing Experiment, which consists of four high-def video cameras bolted to the outside of the space station that automatically switch between them and that's the nitty-gritty of it, but the cool thing is it's high-def video from

space all the time. You can check it out. Pretty amazing. Of course, the cameras do spend half the time orbiting Earth in the dark, just as you and I do, so it's not always the case that you can actually see Earth when you go check out this video. But when you do, it's just mesmerizing to sit there and watch the Earth spin below you. So I checked it out a couple of moments ago. And even though it was a gray screen, which means that they weren't transmitting at that moment, there were 3,600 people watching a gray screen. Well, I suspect that a lot of people have it tuned as a screensaver.

You know, they just keep it on their computers all the time because when it's showing, man, is it stunning. Can't blame them one bit. Let's talk about some other stunning images. A new blog entry that you've done about stuff we're looking down on at Mars. You know, we have a number of spacecraft in orbit at Mars, each with cameras that have different capabilities. And there's a, at the top of this blog post is an image from a color camera called the High Resolution Stereo Camera from Mars Express. It's a European mission. The ironic thing is it's actually one of the lower resolution cameras

that's currently in orbit, but it produces the other end of low resolution is the fact that you get a very wide swath, and there's a beautiful image that covers all of Gale Crater, and which I have now used to colorize some slightly higher image that covers all of Gale Crater, and which I have now used to colorize some slightly higher resolution context camera images of Gale Crater to give us a beautiful regional color map of the area that Curiosity is exploring down there. And so you cut from that to some truly high resolution images, and you were able to make use of that color data, right?

That's right. Although this is not the same color data that I'm using. There's yet another camera in orbit at Mars is called HiRISE, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. There's a very recent image that they took of Curiosity having just parked at the north end of the Kimberley. You can see beautiful detail on the rover and the rover tracks leading behind it, but it was monochrome. But thankfully, there were other images taken of the same area with HiRISE, so at the same resolution, that did have color data. So I was able to take that color data and essentially paint the color into the other more recent image of Curiosity, and you have a beautiful color view of Curiosity

at the Kimberly outcrop within Gale Crater. I think I could even see where Curiosity did a little victory spin at one point. People think those are donuts, but that's just the way that Curiosity turns in place. It does look like she's been burning donuts all over Mars. The same for opportunity and spirit. Yeah, sure. Thanks, Emily.

This has been fun. Thank you, Matt. She's the senior editor and our planetary evangelist and a contributing editor for Sky and Telescope magazine. That's Emily Lakdawalla. We'll be back at Space Fest

in just a moment after we hear from Bill Nye, the CEO of the Planetary Society. Bill, lots going on as always, including this new statement from the Planetary Society on a NASA mission that lots of people have been talking about. Yes, our statement on the asteroid redirect mission, the ARM. And, you know, people expected us to make a statement. the arm. And, you know, people expected us to make a statement. Bill Gerstenmaier from NASA, the head of human space exploration, kind of asked us, have you got a statement? And we, yeah, we do. And we strongly support it as long as its cost is fully estimated. This is to say we have strong conditional support to get all political on you. And the reason is we don't

want the thing to go over budget and drag down every other program that NASA does. We want a full independent cost assessment and technical evaluation, a CATE. If that's not done, our fear is it'll just run over costs, not exactly like the James Webb Space Telescope, but something akin to that, where things just start to get one and a half times twice as expensive and everybody starts pointing fingers. And it's got a potential to be a great mission and a potential to be an albatross around NASA's neck. You don't want that. We're excited about it, and it's the use of the Space Launch System, this big rocket that Congress specified.

And, Matt, between you and me, wait, there's listeners. Between us, we would like to see the Space Launch System also used for missions to the outer planets, and to Europa, the moon of Jupiter, which has these geysers of seawater shooting into space. You just have to fly through the plume of the geysers, and who knows, maybe you'd find evidence of life. But anyway, by planning for that, then the Space Launch System's cost will come down, which would be really good for everybody if it's planned for more than just one use. So we have conditional support of the Asteroid Redirect Mission. That big rocket, the SLS, will get us out to those outer planets a heck of a lot faster.

Oh, yeah, really extraordinary, like four years instead of six, three years instead of six. There's great potential. And then if you could really make use of this Orion space capsule, really develop a new so-called very large ion electric propulsion, solar electric propulsion powered by sun's rays to make electricity to shoot ions out the back of the rocket motor, it would be really a potentially cool thing.

But if its cost is underestimated, we're going to be back where we started with everybody pointing figures and, may I say, arms akimbo. We'll see. We'll see. Stay tuned. Thanks, Bill. Thank you, Matt. He's the CEO of the Planetary Society. Bill Nye the Science Guy. We're going to head for Space Fest in Pasadena

with all kinds of cool people in just a moment. It was the sixth Space Fest that visited Pasadena, California in early May of this year, but this was the first time Kim and Sally Poore of NovaSpace brought their annual celebration to Southern California. NovaSpace, brought their annual celebration to Southern California. Hundreds of fans turned up to meet and dine with astronauts, bid on space memorabilia, peruse and purchase beautiful space art, and hear from the scientists, engineers, and explorers who are opening up the final frontier. Check out some great pics on the Planetary Society's Flickr site. We've got the album link on the show page at planetary.org slash radio. One of the first people I ran into at Space Fest

was Mark Raymond of JPL. You regulars will remember him as chief engineer and mission director for the Dawn spacecraft that is closing in right now on Ceres, the solar system's largest asteroid. That's after orbiting and investigating the number two space rock, Vesta. Mark wrote his 100th Dawn Journal blog a few days ago.

We've got a link to it as well. I asked Mark to join me at the Planetary Society booth on the busy exhibit floor. Mark, good to see you again. Thanks, Matt. It's good to see you, too. I hear you got a standing ovation a few minutes ago. It seemed that people enjoyed my presentation on Dawn. That was very gratifying. I love talking about it. Well, you've got a great spacecraft, but I also know that you deliver a great presentation.

Well, I'll tell you, I've been enthusiastic about space since I was four years old, and I think a lot of what people like is my enthusiasm, and they feel some of that too. I mean, after all, as I discuss in the presentations, these are missions that everybody participates in, and I think that's a large part of what people feel in the talk. Space geeks like us, I think we're in good company here. I have a feeling most of these people got started when they were about four years old. I think that's probably right. Have you done one of these before?

SpaceFest? Yeah. This is my third. I love it. Why? Why do you like coming to these things and hanging out with the fans? I like it for several reasons. One is these are my people, as are many of the people who are listening to this, right? We're all inspired and captivated and enthusiastic about the exploration of the cosmos. That's something that binds us all together. It's something we share. I think that's something very powerful. And I like seeing the vendors here.

I like the space art. Of course, I like seeing the astronauts. I like hearing the talks about all kinds of topics having to do with the exploration of space. It's great. I bet if you weren't speaking here, if you weren't one of the VIPs, you might be here anyway. I would. I love this stuff.

We can't let you go without getting an update on the spacecraft. Dawn is doing very well. We will get into orbit around Dwarf Planet Ceres in late March or early April of 2015, so less than a year to go. in February of 2015 we will start taking pictures of it and by the middle of that month we'll already have pictures better than the best we have from the Hubble Space Telescope and so it will really be exciting to see this fuzzy little

blob of light that astronomers have been looking at for over 200 years start to come into sharper focus and reveal whatever the secrets are that this dwarf planet has had since the dawn of the solar system. Well, speaking of those secrets, I know that there has been some speculation and maybe some evidence recently that Ceres may have a lot in common

with some other bodies out there, in other words, water. That's right. The European Space Agency spacecraft Herschel Space Observatory, which is a wonderful astronomical facility, observed water vapor around Ceres. That was announced just a few months ago, and possible explanations for it are either ice on the surface of Ceres sublimating directly into space, that is, it's like evaporating into space, or cryovolcanism. If you think of that word cryo, cold, volcanism. So it's not volcanoes of lava, like on Earth or Jupiter's moon Io, but rather volcanoes of water. And what the actual explanation is, is not known,

but it's exciting to have this discovery with Dawn on its way. And so next year we will be looking to see what we can add to understanding this mystery. I think it's really going to be neat. Yeah, yeah. If only we had a spacecraft going there to investigate that water vapor. Oh, yeah, it would be neat. And what do you know? We do.

What great timing. I am keeping you from the VIP luncheon here. I better let you go. I know Seth Shostak timing i am keeping you from the uh the vip luncheon here i better let you go i know seth show stack was just looking for you but thank you for stopping off for a couple of minutes and we'll have you back on the show that would be great it's my pleasure i always love talking to you and love planetary radio likewise mark and i i'm going to tell people once again if you haven't seen mark conduct the tour of his home, go to the Planetary Society YouTube page. It is great fun. And it was fun having you film that tour.

As you could tell, I had a good time. We both did. Thanks, Matt. You bet. Thanks, Mark. Mark Raymond of the Dawn Mission. The SpaceFest Art Gallery is a visual feast. It features the work of Earth's greatest space artists. One of them is planetary scientist Dan Derda of the Southwest Research Institute's Space Studies Department. As we talked in front of the work he had on display,

Dan gave me more proof that some of the biggest space fans are the men and women who are helping us explore the final frontier. This is the remarkable thing about SpaceFest, right? Meeting any one of the Apollo astronauts at any given time is the remarkable thing about SpaceFest, right? Meeting any one of the Apollo astronauts at any given time is a remarkable event. And you come to SpaceFest and they're all here at the same time. And there's a group dynamic when you can watch

you know, you can watch Al Bean and Dick Gordon kind of get back together, right? Two best buds who went to the moon together kind of a thing, right? So there's that dynamic, I think, that's just absolutely unique. And so, Dan Durde, you mentioned this because across from us is Buzz Aldrin saying hi to his other buddies that he knows from the past. Where else are you going to see something like that but at Space Fest?

So you get to come here on several levels, I would think, because you're a fan, right? I'm a fan. I'm a scientist. It's a very eclectic meeting, right? So as a planetary scientist, I get to hang out with friends like Bill Hartman and talk science, as I just was this morning. But Bill and I were sitting at the artists' table together as space artists. It's a really eclectic group and I really enjoy this sort of family reunion feel. I've been to every one of the space fests. For us as space artists in the IAAA, International Association of Astronomical Artists, it's like a family reunion. It really is. It's like a little mini workshop.

Talk about this beautiful work that we're standing in front of. I told you I wanted to ask you about this one. I don't know. It looks like Grand Canyon except greener. You're very close. I've titled this one the Green Canyon of Dreams, and it's actually based on a view not of the Grand Canyon but very near the Grand Canyon. It's the canyon of the Little Colorado that leads into the Grand Canyon. This is a scene based on a stop that we made during one of our recent space art workshops, and I was so taken with the scene, I went back a couple months later

and spent all day photographing, waiting for the perfect light, and then reworked it digitally into a more green scene. You know, you're walking through some alien jungle and you come out into a clearing and there's this glorious landscape. That's sort of what I was after. I was going to say, these plants don't look like they're of anywhere around here. They are complete digital creations. They are very Avatar-esque sort of alien plants I created in my 3D software.

Beautiful stuff. It's really gorgeous. You were one of these guys. You mentioned Bill Hartman, and there were others. Who, I don't know, which is dominant, left or right brain, or do they take turns? You know, we often hear that sort of, I think it's a false dichotomy, right? Left brain, right brain, the creative versus the technical. Science is a verb, right? It's not a noun.

It's this process by which we discover the way the world works around us, and it's an incredibly creative process. And so it's exactly the same as that creative process in art. So I see no dichotomy. I think being an artist and a scientist at the same time is a completely natural thing. So I can see what you're doing with art. What's happening on the science side nowadays? Oh, great fun.

We're getting ready for our suborbital flights. I'm going to fly in space in the next couple of years and do regolith experiments. I couldn't help noticing that you have a Lynx pin. I have a Lynx pin and my Virgin Galactic wings as well. I'm really fortunate enough to be able to be looking forward to multiple commercial space flights in the next coming years. Two flights with XCOR Aerospace, a flight with Virgin Galactic. All three of those

flights will be research flights. We're going to be on board to do planetary science research. I'm certainly looking forward to that great view as well. I can't deny it. I didn't recognize the VG pin. I should have, since there's the unmistakable woman who's on the nose of most of the aircraft. That is Richard Branson's mother, Eve, and that is the logo. She was one of the early flight attendants in the early days of commercial aviation, very much involved in early aviation. And so Richard christened the carrier aircraft for Spaceship Two. He christened that aircraft Eve.

And the logo across the front is a stylized version of his mother. It's a beautiful piece of artwork. I never heard that story. And yet I've talked to George Whitesides about some of this stuff. We were at Yuri's night, and he was a guest. And we talked about some of the science that will be done on these suborbital flights. But not much detail. I mean, what's the nature of what you're going to be doing on both of these spacecraft? Specifically me, I will be interested in utilizing the microgravity capability of these vehicles

to do the research that I'm interested in in looking at the geology on the surfaces of little asteroids. You know, we know how rocks and gravel and things work on the Earth. In 1G, we grew up as a species intuiting how geology works that way. But we have no intuition for how geology works on these little objects where the gravity is, you know, a tenth or a hundred thousandth of a G. And so I'm going to be taking advantage of those conditions for these vehicles. But more than just that kind of research, I think generally the suborbital vehicles are going to offer very much more frequent

and very much cheaper access to space for space scientists. To get into the field the way oceanographers have gone to the bottom of the ocean to do their research for decades, the way geologists have gone to the field for centuries to do their research. A lot more scientists being able to do something in a microgravity environment than are ever probably going to get their experiment up on the ISS.

Absolutely. I mean, I love the ISS. There are great opportunities for research there as well, but the suborbital environment offers a different niche to take advantage of at literally bargain basement prices compared to getting something on the space station. The kind of research you might do on these vehicles, you can think of it as maybe training wheels for getting ready for a more sophisticated, expensive space station experiment. What better way to make sure that experiment is going to work the way you want it to and make prime use of that valuable time on the station

than practicing it and getting it working on a suborbital flight. Need I add that I am incredibly envious because you get to go along with the experiments? That's the whole point, right? Putting the scientist in the loop, and you know what? I cannot deny it's just going to be a heck of a lot of fun. And it starts soon. I'm hoping by next Space Fest I can talk about what that experience is going to be like. That is so cool.

After you do this, I've got to talk with you and maybe some of the other people who are also going to be conducting some of this work. I know Alan Stern is also headed in that direction. And about a dozen other of my colleagues in various fields, not just planetary science, fluid science, human physiology, the life sciences. The vehicles are going to offer great opportunities there, too. All right. It's a date. Right after that first suborbital flight, I want to get you back on Planetary Radio. You bet. I'll be looking forward to it. I should let you get back here to selling some art, which is once again gorgeous. Thanks, Dan.

You bet. Thanks a lot. Planetary scientist, explorer, and artist Dan Durda at SpaceFest in Pasadena. After the break, Apollo 17 Commander Gene Cernan meets a distinguished fan. 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 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 sharing with you some of the fun of SpaceFest 6, the annual gathering of space people, including many Apollo astronauts. We'll eavesdrop on Gene Cernan in a moment, but I want to note that SpaceFest is as much for kids as it is for aged space nuts like me, and there are characters in abundance, including a fellow who calls himself the Space Cowboy. He lives next to Vandenberg Air Force Base on the central California coast, where he watches rockets lift off from his living room window. When I found him, the cowboy was sharing his

impressive knowledge of our solar system and the universe with a few of the younger Space Fest visitors. So what brings you down here? Space. Space is the place. I've only met 10 out of 12 people that walked on the moon. That's a shame. Yeah, Irwin first and then Shepard next, but I almost got to Shepard. So people who can't see your hat, which is the whole audience, got the shepherd buddy all right so people who can't see your hat which is the whole audience would i find some of their signatures on on your hat well each hat has to have at least two moon walkers to activate it i have a bunch of these hats by the way i just wore this one special in memory of bill dana who just passed away the rocket man he sure did yeah he was amazing so

that's why i'm wearing this hat today. But you have the first commercial astronaut, Mike Melville. Let's see, Richard Gordon's on here. Gordo passed, Gordon Fullerton, so we're celebrating his life also today. Dave Scott, there's Dave, first guy to drive on another world. And there's Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon. Obviously, you love this stuff. Yes, sir. And you share it with people. What do you do?

I'm an edutainer. I'm a professional space cowboy. I'm a brain farmer. What I do is I go into your 100 billion neurons and I activate those neurons. I get those neurons very excited to where they get amped up and they want to go the extra mile beyond the stars. That's the space cowboy. I want to share one more conversation with you. It's very special. And I want to thank Laura Danley and Apollo 17 Commander Gene Cernan for allowing me to record it. As you'll hear, Laura is the very accomplished

curator of the beloved Griffith Observatory here in Southern California. All right, Miss Griffith Observatory. Hi, my name's Laura. Laura. Laura, so nice to meet you. This all came about because when Matt saw me standing in line, I said I'm about to fulfill a childhood dream. So he said, oh, I want to catch that, because really I must say two things. One is the photo of you on the moon all covered in dust

is maybe my favorite space photo of all. Yeah, where we look like coal miners, right? Yes, and the look in your eyes. And, I mean, the closest I've ever been to being on the moon is gazing into your face in that photograph. And I thank you for that. It's absolutely beautiful. That photograph gets a lot of comments. You know, I get people sending me their photograph and wanting me to sign it. Because it's interesting.

People don't know what it's like up there and how we were living. I look at it myself. I say, was that pretty? Me, but it literally looked like I just walked out of a coal mine. And it looked like you were having the time of your life. We were having the time of our life. You've got to enjoy those kind of things. And you're at Griffith.

I am. I'm the curator at Griffith Observatory. I'm an astrophysicist. I got my Ph.D. in astrophysics and was with NASA, the Hubble Project, for about 10 years, and then moved into education. So I should have said that from the outside. All that inspiration actually led to a real life.

Education, that's one of the biggest freebies of the space program. It's inspire young dreamers to do what they didn't think they were capable of doing. Because I've always said the dreamers of the day are the doers of tomorrow. Dream the impossible and then go out and make it happen. And how can you argue with me? No, how can you argue with me? No, how can you argue with me? I went to the moon, and to most people that's still impossible. And so that's what it's really all about. And we've got to find a new and exciting acronym for STEM.

Science, technology, engineering. We had a conversation the other night. I hate that term. Science, technology, engineering, math. How boring does that sound? Well, it's really the basis of everything we're capable of doing. But we've got to find a more upbeat acronym for what we're talking about. Because you say STEM to a kid, oh my God, put a mathematics book in front of me. That's baloney. We've got to find, I'm involved with a couple, several kids organizations

and probably the most important one to me is the National Fund Academy at the Naval Museum Foundation of Pensacola. And we use aviation and space as a hook. You get a kid's attention, make learning fun, you can teach them anything. Aviation is the hook. We're teaching them vector analysis, leadership, decision making, math, weather. We give them all kinds. It's a massive, immersed STEM program and they don't know it. That's the point I'm making. They're having fun. They learn some things along the way. That's the point I'm making. They're having fun there. They don't know.

Learn some things along the way. If you add art and do steam. Pardon? If you add art to STEM and make it steam. Let me tell you. Let me put it this way. Going to the moon was not simply a technological experience. I've always said two different space programs.

Earth orbit is one, and when you go to the moon, things change. Not only technologically different, it's philosophically different, and it's spiritually different. Now, you can put those under the word art if you want to, but, you know, it's different, and you've got to cope with all those things. And you come back, and what do people want to know? How does it feel? What did you think? Were you're feeling close to the god because the technology of apollo is obsolete and lonson's been overshadowed by time today's technology is obsolete monday morning there's a better broader word than art for what i'm saying philosophy spirituality and these kind of things that never changes yeah in people you know that a broader humanity, because it is the human dream,

which is why, again, the photograph is so powerful. How do you define a dream? An imagination or whatever? I mean, that's art in a way. That's philosophy. Did you think you'd go to the moon when you were a child, or did you dream of going to the moon when you were a child? Ma'am, I'm older than water, okay? I'm older than water. There was no space program.

They were still fighting World War II when I grew up. And I know World War II is something in history you'd think you remember. But, no, there was no space program. I was in the Navy. My dream was to fly airplanes off aircraft carriers like those guys did in the Pacific. And that's all I wanted to do. And, you know, did that, made two cruises. Five years later, I was ready to get out of the Navy. And the Navy says, we want to send you to Marne or Carmel for more education. And I said, what the hell? I didn't know I could still fly.

And it was at that time, 1961, that Alan Shepard flew. And I was asked, how would I like to do that someday? My answer was, by the time I get good enough, by the time I meet the requirements, there won't be anything left to do. All the pioneering will be over. It's another message for kids. Don't ever count yourself out because you never know. And a message for the rest of us, too.

Get going, get doing, you know, because no reason to wait. Astrophysicist and Griffith Observatory curator Laura Danley and one of her lifelong heroes, Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan, the last man to leave his footprints on the moon. You can check out some pics of them and all the other great shots of SpaceFest 6 that we've collected in a Planetary Society Flickr album. We thank everyone we talked to at SpaceFest 6 and especially Kim and Sally Poore of NovaSpace,

the parents of this annual celebration. Bruce Betts and What's Up are next. It's time for Bruce Betts and this week's edition of What's Up on Planetary Radio, and we catch him by Skype. I hope you're doing well up there, Guy, and I hope you're ready to tell us about the night sky. And, oh, I'm not going to say anything at all about that total bust of a meteor shower. Okay.

I warned everyone it could be really lame or really spectacular. And it was really lame. It was really lame. I don't think I warned myself enough. You know, that's why I've become such a pessimist, because every time I get that little bit of optimism. A few people saw some meteors from really dark sites, a few that trace back to the one-time meteor shower. But here's the good news. That was the best it will ever be. I say good riddance.

But you know what? We couldn't pronounce your name anyway. But I walked out on a golf course at midnight, stood out there for 40 minutes, and admired the beautiful sky that you're about to tell us about. So the golf course owners called the police and they hauled you away? Yes. No, here's some really consistent stuff in the sky. We actually have Mercury popping up, although that's the least consistent because

it's really low down. So you need a clear view to the horizon in the west soon after sunset. Mercury over there. Also over in the west, Jupiter looking quite bright as always. Mars in the south, bright reddish. And then Saturn farther towards the east. All of this in the evening sky. So you get four planets. You can trace a line between them, see the evidence of the flat nature of the orbits of the planets in our solar system. If that's not enough for you, wake up in the pre-dawn or stay up in the pre-dawn and see Venus looking super bright over in the east. This week in space history, it was 1971

that the first ever Mars orbiter was launched. Mariner 9 revolutionized our view of Mars. Once the dust storm cleared, it was going on when they first got there. And on to Random Space Fact! Frankie Valli making a special guest appearance here on Planetary Radio. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's hard to think of a surface gravity for the sun because, you know, it'd be kind of painful and hot and there's only kind of sort of surface depending on how you view it. But with some semi-conventional definition of what surface is,

the surface gravity on the sun, 28G, 28 times the Earth's surface gravity. Not as much as I would have expected. No, it's so darn big and it's on average fairly low density despite having an enormous density down at the center. Fascinating. Good one. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, thank you. Okay, on to the trivia contest. And I asked you, who is the only Apollo astronaut who successfully became a U.S. senator? How'd we do? Well, we got it both ways. We got the senator who became an astronaut, Jake Garn. We got John Glenn, who was a senator and an astronaut, but not an Apollo astronaut.

But most people did get it. Our winner, chosen from a really big field this time. Excellent. Chosen by Random.org, Stanley Furtig. Stanley Furtig of Brooklyn, New York. You got a problem with that? He said, it's Harrison Jack Schmidt. He said, this one is too easy.

He was the last man to walk on the moon at present, Apollo 17, and a senator from New Mexico. I actually think he was the second to the last man to walk on the moon. I think that was Gene Cernan. Yeah. Yeah. He was the last two that were down there together. You know, here's what else Stanley said. Oh, by the way, we're going to send Stanley a Planetary Radio t-shirt.

He said, love Planetary Radio. Look forward each week to listening to it on my neutrino detector commute to work via the New York City subway. Ah, yes. I assume he just walks around with tons and tons of liquid water looking for the occasional blue flash of light. That's right. And a photo multiplier, too. I got to read you this one, too. Dan Price, the man who defeated Schmidt in his reelection campaign, used the slogan, what on earth has he done for you lately?

Oh, I know. Cold, cold as space. Anyway. I know, I know. Cold. Cold as space. Oh. Anyway, thank you, Dan. And Stanley, the shirt will be on its way. But this time, we're going to send not a shirt to somebody, but those folks at LittleBits, LittleBits.cc, with those really cool kits, they sent us another space kit developed in cooperation with NASA.

They have a bunch of these. They got a synth kit as well that they partnered with Korg on, not the Klingon, but the company that makes keyboards and synthesizers. This is the space kit again, though. And so that's what people are going to play for this week if they are chosen by Random.org and have the answer to Bruce's question that you're about to hear right now. I'm sorry, Matt. I have to interrupt. They have a Sith kit? Like dark lords that oppose Jedi? No, not Sith.

No, no. Synth. Synth as in synthesizer. That would explain why they're partnering with that company. Okay. I see where you're going now. You do not understand the ways of the Synth. No, I don't.

But I'm glad some people do. Your trivia question. What is the only spacecraft that ever flew approximately over the poles of the sun? Only spacecraft to fly approximately over the poles of the sun. Go to planetary.org slash radio contest and get us your entry. By Tuesday, June 3rd at 8 a.m. Pacific time. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky and think about your signature and what happened to it.

Thank you and good night. My signature? You wouldn't have to ask if you'd seen my handwriting. He's Bruce Betts, the director of science and technology for the Planetary Society, who joins us each week here on What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by those space geeks who are members of the Society. Clear skies.