Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Author and Four-Time Shuttle Astronaut Tom Jones

Episode Date: August 8, 2005

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Four-time shuttle astronaut Tom Jones, this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. The brakes are on, here I go. I'm grasping it, and I'm pulling, it. The brakes are on. Here I go. Okay, I'm grasping it and I'm pulling. It's coming out very easily. Very nice. Okay, that was a pound and a half of force. That was astronaut Steven Robinson easily plucking out the filler material between tiles on the underside of shuttle Discovery. No forceps, no hacksaw, just a gloved hand. And the second strip of offending material was just as easy to deal with.

Okay, that came out very easily, probably even less force. It looks like this big patient is cured. Copy that. NASA later decided that the remaining concern, a puffed-up blanket of material near the shuttle's nose, would not be a problem as Discovery screamed earthward on Monday morning. As we go to broadcast, the return to flight mission is just hours from its return to Terra Firma, with two chances for an early morning landing at the Kennedy Space Center, followed by two more

at Edwards Air Force Base in California. You might think from some reports that this mission was about no more than a repair job. Far from it. Essentially, everything else on board worked exactly as it should, and Discovery met all its objectives at the International Space Station. Tom Jones was watching along with many of us as the first shuttle in two and a half years circled the Earth. This planetary scientist lived in space for almost two months, spread across four shuttle missions. We'll get his take on the return to flight, and we'll talk about the Complete Idiot's Guide to NASA, the comprehensive book Tom co-authored with Michael Benson.

Bruce Betts will be along with our What's Up Guide to the Night Sky, and finally, another chance to make us laugh in the new trivia contest. All that, and Emily, who always makes a deep impact on us. I'll be right back. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, Did Deep Impact have any effect on the trajectory or speed of Temple 1? Deep Impact made a big flash on comet Tempel 1,

but it had no detectable effect on the comet's trajectory. The comet's orbit usually takes it to within 220 million kilometers of the Sun. The impact changed that distance by 10 meters. The comet's path around the Sun takes five and a half years to complete. The impact changed that timing by a fraction of a second. Neither of these changes is detectable from the Earth. Although Tempel 1 is classified as a near-Earth object, it posed no impact threat to the Earth before the mission,

and the mission didn't change that. It would, of course, be nice if humans could do something to change the course of a comet. We'll want to have that capability if we ever find a comet heading straight for us. What will it take to deflect a potentially hazardous comet or asteroid? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out. Astronauts are typically among the most accomplished of our fellow humans. Tom Jones may stand out out even in this crowd. After graduating from the Air Force Academy, he piloted B-52s for a living.

Returning to school, he earned a doctorate in planetary science and along the way helped develop intelligence gathering systems for the CIA. He would most certainly agree that the star entries on his resume are his four trips into orbit, including three spacewalks on the last mission. Now retired from NASA, he spends much of his time writing books and magazine articles at his home in Virginia, and that's where we found him.

Tom, thanks for joining us on Planetary Radio this week. It's a pleasure to talk to you. You know, I only wish that the publisher, Alpha, had been able to get me your last book a little bit sooner Oh, it's a pleasure to talk to you. missions that have taken place, the many roles of NASA. I mean, you've packed a lot into this book, as your colleague Story Musgrave mentions right up front. I was very happy with the way it turned out. My co-author Michael Benson and I worked very hard on cramming as much info about the space agency into this book.

And it's a really breezy, easy-to-access book that gives even space novices a chance to delve into some of the history of NASA and then really learn what it's like on the inside of the astronaut core and what it's like to actually ride the shuttle and visit the space station. It certainly benefits from that personal experience of yours, those 53 days that you've spent in space on four separate shuttle missions. I said to our friend Bruce Betts, I said, wow, that must put you right up there with any astronaut or cosmonaut, for that matter, short of those who get to spend time on the International Space Station.

I was very lucky in that I flew during the 1990s and up to 2001, and that was when the shuttle was really hitting its stride. It was a relatively small astronaut course, so I got four opportunities in a little over ten years, and that's extraordinary for most of the history of the human spaceflight program. And I was very privileged to get to do that. And because of the place that I was in the space shuttle program, the opportunities to fly kept coming about on average every two or three years. It is an amazing record and quite a record on those missions that you made as well.

What do you think were the highlights among those four? Well, the first two were missions to planet Earth with the Space Radar Laboratory. And as a scientist, I was able to work with a payload that was scanning the surface of the Earth with an imaging radar. So it was right up my alley academically. But the great thing for a crew member was that we were at a very low altitude, about at the original John Glenn altitude of about 110 miles. And during the course of 11 days, we got a chance to look at the Earth from the cockpit of the space shuttle as we operated the radar around the clock and look at the planet in such detail that it was extraordinary. Even for a space rookie like me who didn't really know what to expect, I was really impressed by the detail

that we could see. And our workplace every day was under the top windows in the space shuttle cabin. And so it was hard to tear yourself away from the windows to actually get the work done on the radar system. And it was really a privilege to see our home from space for a total of about three weeks on those two missions. You brought to this, even as a novice, your unique training, a PhD in planetary science. It was a great asset on those two flights. Remote sensing was my academic specialty, and in terms of my research work, it was looking

at asteroids with telescopes and spectrometers. Looking for water, right? Looking for water on the asteroids. But the same techniques of remote sensing were applied, in this this case using radar to scanning the surface of the Earth. So we were looking at the forests, the agricultural lands, glaciers and snowpack, snowfields around the planet to assess water content, the hard rock geology of volcanoes and earthquake faults, and right down to esoteric quantities like the soil moisture content in farming areas around the globe. And so the radar was a great tool scanning all of the across-the-Earth sciences that we could apply.

And the space shuttle was a great platform to carry that space radar lab. You had even more adventures in your next two missions. Well, the third one was a scientific flight as well, but it was not Earth-related. It was looking out into the galaxy. We had a one-meter ultraviolet telescope on board a satellite called Shuttle Pallet Satellite. And the last mission was a trip to the International Space Station to do some construction work. And you got out and about. Well, I'd always dreamed of doing a spacewalk.

That's what a lot of astronauts think is the pinnacle of the space experience, especially for the mission specialists who run the robot arm and do the EVAs, the spacewalks, and run the scientific payloads. And to actually get to go outside in your own personal spacecraft and then work productively for hours at a time is really a huge challenge but also a real thrill to step outside and work in a vacuum. And so on the fourth flight, I got to do three spacewalks on the space station. And that was a terrifically rewarding job because I got to help put in place the Destiny Laboratory,

the U.S. scientific research lab up there, to bolt that in place in general terms, and then help activate it and bring it to life was really a really rewarding job. I sit involuntarily shaking my head in amazement and envy. Going back to the book, I remember you talking about some of the early attempts, and I guess Ed White, the first American to do an EVA, and how difficult that proved to be for him and almost disastrous, I guess. I suppose things have improved a little bit since then, spacesuits and so on. I think the safety is a lot better than they were in the early Gemini days

when Ed White and his colleagues were really just exploring the idea of doing a spacewalk and actually surviving it was an accomplishment in and of itself. Of course, the Russians were doing the same thing as both countries raced to the moon in the 60s. And of course, that led to the very successful Apollo moonwalks, where we had people exploring another planet, another world for the first time in a spacesuit. And now I don't get to do anything as just amazing as the Apollo astronauts did. But to work in orbit in free fall in a spacesuit is quite a different animal than those moonwalks were. At least if you dropped your hammer, you knew where it went on the moon. If you dropped your hammer in orbit, it's liable to drift off.

So the tether protocol, the procedures for making sure that things don't get away from you and that your body doesn't get away from you up there is really an amazing work challenge. And you have to put your mind and your body into synchrony and harmony in a way that you seldom do on the ground. And it was really a great physical and mental challenge to go and do those. Our guest is Tom Jones, Dr. Thomas Jones, planetary scientist, author, pilot, former NASA astronaut, talking so far about his own four experiences in space, totaling 53 days on the space shuttle.

When we come back, we're going to leave time to talk a little bit more about your book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to NASA, and also your upcoming book, which you just let me know, is going to be titled Skywalking. It comes out, I guess, next year. And maybe a little bit about return to flight. But I know you have some thoughts about that. So if you don't mind, we'll pick up again in a minute. Sure.

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 life on other worlds. And we're building the first ever solar sail. We didn't just build it.

We attempted to put that first solar sail in orbit. And we're going to try again. You can read about all our exciting projects and get the latest space exploration news in depth at the Society's exciting and informative website, planetary.org. You can also preview our full-color magazine, The Planetary Report. It's just one of our many member benefits. Want to learn more?

Call us at 1-877-PLANETS. That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. S3HRDNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRNRN go into any major bookstore and is still very much available online as well. One of the things, Tom, that I love about the book is the personal experience that you have brought to it, not just your experience in becoming an astronaut, but experiences with your colleagues. I was reading in the chapter about the loss of Challenger. There are these little sidebars, Dr. Jones' corner, and you talk about the personal influence For these little sidebars, Dr. Jones' corner,

can you talk about the personal influence that Dick Scobie, the commander of Challenger on that ill-fated flight, that he had on your life? Well, I'm really glad I got to meet him because as a graduate student at the University of Arizona, I was studying planetary science and trying to work out my dissertation and very uncertain about where I was going with this career. And Scobie, who was a graduate of the University of Arizona as well, came back to give a talk about a year before Challenger and discussed his technical work in the astronaut office. But we had a chance at a reception afterwards to chat for a few minutes,

and he was very positive about the chances for someone who was enthusiastic about spaceflight to get involved on the astronaut side. And he encouraged me to persist with sending applications to NASA and to get started on that as soon as I finished my degree. And that kind of spur was something that I remembered as I applied over the following years. It was awful to know someone who was aboard that shuttle. But his message came through over the next couple of years as I kept getting turned down by NASA. And the third time I applied, I finally got an interview and was lucky enough to be hired.

And I don't want to minimize his contribution. I think that little poke that he gave me was something that helped inspire me. The book is full of these interesting tributes and behind-the-scenes looks at many of the major players, ranging from James Van Allen to Neil Armstrong. In your section about the Gemini missions, you talk about the heroic job of piloting that Neil Armstrong did when he lost control of his Gemini spacecraft and managed to avoid a disaster. I was only about 10 or 11 when that was going on, and I remember following that mission in the classroom on television. The teachers would stop classes and bring in a TV that a parent had brought in, and we'd watch the coverage live.

And that was a very dicey flight where a stuck thruster nearly rolled their spacecraft out of control, and the crew very nearly lost consciousness and would have been lost. But Armstrong and Dave Scott, his co-pilot, managed to use a backup thruster system, get the spacecraft under control. They had to come home very early and actually come down in the Pacific Ocean in a secondary recovery area. But they got back on the ground and I think Armstrong's piloting reputation from that flight did a lot to make people think they'd made the right choice when they put him in command of the first moon landing mission. You cover so much ground that I shouldn't have any criticism, but if I have any at all, it's that the unmanned missions, I think, I wish that they had gotten a little bit more

room in this book that tries to do so much. I think that we tried to do a salute and an overview of NASA's successes in planetary exploration, and I'm particularly sensitive to that with my background. But we thought that the publisher's needs were to tell the human spaceflight story first, and then we tried to put that in the context of the other planetary efforts that NASA is mounting. I think in the last five years, particularly in the direction of Mars and the small bodies like asteroids and comets,

NASA has been spectacularly successful with its robotic program. Now we're here in 2005, jumping off with machines and people in a joint effort to spread ourselves across the solar system and answer some fundamental questions. It's that partnership between the brain of human beings and the machines that can extend our reach that's going to be the key to that success. And again, I don't want to be too critical because you have crammed a lot in here. Chapters on, so you want to be an astronaut.

Chapters on all the different NASA labs and how you can visit them. It's really a pretty amazing directory, as Dory Musgrave said. Let's get into that future, that path that has been laid out by the administration and NASA, the moon, Mars and beyond. And this comes up, of course, as I said, as we are waiting with bated breath for a second return to flight by the space shuttle, which very possibly, by the time people hear this, will have happened, and we pray will have happened successfully.

Any thoughts about this return to flight and the post-shuttle period? Well, this first mission that Discovery is going to fly is really an important step for NASA and the country because it's not only the return of the shuttle to flight after the Columbia accident with the engineering and management changes that have been required, but it's also the first step on a path that we think will lead humans and their machines out into the solar system for the first time in 35 years, since we left the moon behind at the end of Apollo. So it's a shuttle mission, to be sure, but it's the first one in a limited series of shuttle missions that should end around 2010, when the space station's construction is substantially complete.

And then we move on to a new spacecraft. And NASA has to show that this shuttle program is back on its feet to show that they've got the institutional maturity to handle something as challenging and daunting as putting people back on the moon and cruising to the nearby asteroids and then eventually trying to bring Mars within our grasp. So this is a really essential step in light of the congressional and administration scrutiny that NASA gets. And I guess you would like to see humans visit a near-Earth object even prior to going to Mars. Yeah, there are great reasons to do so.

If we get back on the moon and there are resources there, terrific. And we'll learn a lot about operating on another world by being on the surface of the moon. But it may be barren of practically recoverable resources. And then we're going to have a long gap before our capabilities can reach Mars. So I think the great compromise stepping stone, and it's an advantageous avenue to pursue, is to reach out a few million miles to the near-Earth asteroids where we might have an astronaut crew on a mission for six months, round trip. That's well within our experience based on the space station. And yet we would bring a totally new surface of a solar system body into our grasp. We visited the moon. We've

never been on an asteroid in terms of the complex field research that we can accomplish there with people and machines working together. And we would not only get some ancient material from the birth of the solar system, but we'd also get a glimpse into some very practically recoverable resources like water, which could really reduce the cost of operating and staying in the solar system for a century to come. Tom, we're just about out of time. Let's take the last few seconds to let you tell us about the next book coming up, Skywalking. Skywalking is a much more personal look at spaceflight than The Idiot's Guide.

What I loved about Skywalking is I got the chance to tell my adventures in space in a very personal way, four missions, the last to the International Space Station with the first expedition crew up there. And you learn all about what it's like to be selected as an astronaut, what goes through your mind when you're sitting on the launch pad, what your family experiences when they're letting you go to fly in space, and then how do you readapt to Earth when your space flights are over and you have to find the next challenge in your life. Tom, we'll leave it at that.

Well, we should let you mention when the publication date of Skywalking is expected. February 2006, and you can certainly preorder it now. And I hope in the next few months to be out speaking about that book and trying to get it off to a good launch. Coming out from Smithsonian Harper Publishing. That's right. Thanks very much for taking these minutes to talk with us today. And I've got to ask one other question. If you suddenly got a call from Johnson Space Center

saying, gee, you know, we have this NEO mission coming up and we're looking for a planetary scientist who wants to go knock some rocks apart on an asteroid, what would be your response? I probably, in that dream, I would get a permission slip from home, and then I'd be on board. I still dream about spaceflight, and I would love to visit an asteroid, of course. Thank you, Tom, very much for joining us. Thanks for inviting me. Tom Jones, Dr. Tom Jones, planetary scientist, former NASA astronaut with 53 days logged, including three spacewalks on the space shuttle. We're going to be back with Bruce Batson. What's up? And that'll be right after this return visit. A little bit more Q&A from Emily.

I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. What will it take to deflect a comet or asteroid that's on a collision course with the Earth? The first idea that occurred to people was that we could launch a nuke into space and blow it up. There are two main problems with this proposal. One is physical. Asteroids and comets may be loosely agglomerated piles of rubble. Such an object would transmit the force of an explosion through its interior very poorly, making it very difficult to blow up.

The explosion could even make the disaster worse by spreading one object out into a wide spray of independently hazardous objects, causing not one but many calamities across the Earth. The other problem is cultural and political. Few people want to see governments develop the new capability to deliver enormous nuclear munitions into space. The real answer to impact hazards lies in a combination of early detection and deflection.

Through careful searches, scans of the entire sky at high sensitivity, we can give ourselves decades to deal with a hazard. In that time, we can launch a spacecraft that will dock with the asteroid and, through years of thrust, slowly change the orbit from one that crosses the Earth to one that just misses. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio.

Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. We are joined by Dr. Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society and genuine planetary scientist. What's up there, Bruce? Nothing. No, there's good stuff. There's good stuff. Go for the easy planets. But first, let me mention

those listening to the show early on will be able to still see the Perseid meteor shower, which is peaking on August 12th. And we'll still have an increased number of meteors for a few days after that. But the closer you can get out to the 12th, the better. Go out, stare up at the night sky,

and if around the peak, you may get about one meteor per minute in a dark site looking like a bright streak going across the sky. Now, those of you who missed it, you know, who got out there after the 12th, here's my somewhat acceptable solution. Go outside and push on your eyes

with your eyelids closed and then open them really fast, and you kind of get the same effect. Well, and people never have to go out and look at meteors. They may. They'll just sit inside. By the way, the opinions expressed by Matt Kaplan are not those. Anyone else?

And not medically sound. No, not medically sound. Don't try this at home. I'm not sure it's astronomically sound, but maybe. We'll think about it. Anyway, meteor shower, increased meteors, Don't try this at home. I'm not sure it's astronomically sound, but maybe. We'll think about it. Anyway, meteor shower, increased meteors, Perseids, good stuff. Also, if you're out in the early evening, by the way, the meteor showers are better to observe after midnight. Speaking of before midnight, if you go out in the early evening, you'll see two really bright star-like objects off there in the west.

The lower one is Venus. The higher one is Jupiter. And they will be getting closer and closer in the sky until September 1st when they'll be very, very close in the west. The lower one is Venus. The higher one is Jupiter. And they will be getting closer and closer in the sky until September 1st, when they'll be very, very close in the sky. Mars is rising around midnight in the east, looking orangish, getting brighter and brighter, looking like a very bright star right now.

I saw it in the early morning the other day. On to this week in space history. It was 15 years ago that the Magellan spacecraft entered orbit around Venus in 1990 and gave us a whole new understanding of the planet Venus with its radar mapping mission that mapped the surface using radar to penetrate the Venusian clouds. Some wonderful, wonderful images reconstructed from those radar images. You would think that we had cameras flying around above the surface and not having to deal with those clouds.

Really cool stuff. Very cool stuff. Challenging to interpret, being radar. But very cool stuff that taught us a lot about Venus. On to random space fact! Averaged over its entire surface, Enceladus is the brightest large object in the solar system. Is that right? Yes, it's very smart, very intelligent.

What? That didn't come out in a conversation with Linda Spilker last week, I guess. No, but you can, from last week's Mindray Radio, if you haven't heard it, learn about the fascinating discovery with Enceladus that it seems to have water vapor coming out of its south polar region, which is completely unexpected and very, very intriguing to have a small world like that appear to be geologically active. And that's got a lot of people scratching their heads and trying to figure out what the heck is going on.

I guess we should mention that people can hear last week's show. They can hear every episode of Planetary Radio in the archives at planetary.org. Indeedy-dee-dee-doo. On to the trivia contest. Now, we asked you, what is the third largest asteroid? Who is our randomly selected winner? Matt, who will win that fabulous Planetary Radio T-shirt?

Brandon. Brandon Hyman, who points out, now people had to listen to the show two weeks ago to be able to get this. Brandon likes squid, even if I don't. You threw squid at me two weeks ago. I guess you have to explain it. Anyway, Brandon said Vesta, which was the answer we got from everybody.

Way to go, people. Yeah, Vesta, a series being the biggest. Way to squid. Brandon's going to be getting a big bucket of squid. No, I think we're going to send him a T-shirt instead. So a Planetary Radio T-shirt we're going to put in the mail to you really soon, Brandon. How can people get their own T-shirt this week? Well, this week, we haven't done this in a while, so I'm kind of excited.

We're going to do a humor-based contest rather than a fact-based contest. Please, please send us your entries. We love them. NASA, as you may be aware, is starting the development of a replacement vehicle for shuttle, which hopefully will have more capability or lead to vehicles that have capability to go beyond low Earth orbit. It is being called the Crew Exploration Vehicle, or the CEV. Excuse me. A little boring name, but okay.

Somebody ought to do something about that. Someone really should do something about that. If you were king of NASA naming, what would you name the first Crew Exploration Vehicle? Send us your answer. Go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how. Send us your answer. Go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to email us your answer. Answers will be judged based upon how much they make us laugh. That's exactly right.

And the winner, then, of the laughable ones, there will be a random selection of who will win the squid T-shirt. Yeah. Squid. I really don't like squid. No, we're going to give you a Planetary Radio t-shirt, but only if you make us laugh a lot and if you get that entry into us by Monday, August 15, at 2 p.m. Pacific time. Monday the 15th at 2 p.m. Pacific. Make us laugh.

All right. I think that's about it. So everybody go out there, look up in the night sky. And I know it's kind of cliche, but think about what it would be like to be a squid. Thank you. Good night. Okay. We have a recurring theme here from Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society. What are they called? Are they arthropods, anthropods, invertebrates? Nevermind. Squid. He joins us every week here for What's Up. We'll be back in a week.

In the meantime, you can find space exploration news on the web at planetary.org. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Did you know we're on about 30 public radio stations now? Most of them are listed on the website. But we also want to welcome our new listeners at WHIL in Mobile, Alabama. And how about WRTE in Chicago? And KAWC in Yuma? And WMSS in Middletown, Pennsylvania?

And, well, we'll have to get to all of you someday. Thanks for listening, and have a great week!