Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Boosters, Breakthroughs and Budgets: Canada and the US Look Toward Space

Episode Date: March 13, 2019

The last few days have seen developments that will shape the space exploration plans of Canada and the USA. The Planetary Society’s Kate Howells is a member of Canada’s Space Advisory Board. She reviews the nation’s new space policy. Planetary Society Chief Advocate Casey Dreier takes us through highlights of the just-released NASA budget proposal from the White House. He also looks back at the Day of Action that brought citizen space advocates to Capitol Hill. Bruce Betts smells the coffee on the International Space Station in What’s Up. We close with NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine’s passionate message for the Day of Action volunteers. Learn more about this week’s guests and topics at:  http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2019/03013-2019-howells-dreier-bridenstine.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The dollars and good sense of space in Canada and the USA, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome, I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. The White House has unveiled its proposed 2020 budget for the United States. One little corner of that budget, well under 1%, is set aside for NASA. The plan contains good and bad news, according to Planetary Society Chief Advocate Casey Dreyer. He'll provide a top-level overview, and he'll tell us about the Monday, March 4th Day of Action that put 100 citizen space advocates in the offices of their Washington representatives. Bruce Betts can smell the coffee on the International Space Station.

He'll share some of that goodness on this week's What's Up segment. And then a special treat just for you podcast listeners. We'll hear from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine as he spoke to the Day of Action volunteers. First, though, we'll travel north of the U.S. for a visit with the Society's Global Community Outreach Manager, Kate Howells. She talked with me from her home not far from Toronto, Ontario, in Canada. Kate, welcome back to Planetary Radio. It's a good time for us to talk. Kate, welcome back to Planetary Radio. It's a good time for us to talk. 60 years since the first Canadian satellite made Canada only the third nation to reach low Earth orbit, to go into space. And now all of this new work, new announcements by the Canadian government. Is this something of a renewal or a reaffirmation of Canada's plans for space exploration and space commercialization. Yes, it absolutely is. Canada's space program had been more or less coasting for a long time without any real strong direction from the government. And that had been taking its toll,

not knowing where we were going is difficult for any companies that want to invest in space in Canada, any young professionals who want to build their career in space in Canada. So these announcements of the budget and the strategy are really, really great for being able to plot the future of Canada's activities in space. I guess key to this, I mean, it's nice to have big plans, but if you don't back it with money, it doesn't mean much. And there is money behind this. Yeah, absolutely. And the Canadian government has been very good about not making pitches of things they want to do without being able to have the money to back those ideas up, which has been frustrating to an extent because we want to hear what the big plans are that they have in

mind, but they don't announce that until they have the money behind it. So even the space strategy that we've seen this past week is pretty general in terms of the detail. It doesn't really go into specifics because there are still budgetary asks to come to define exactly what is going to happen. But being able to get the big investment in place to support the next Canadarm on the Lunar Gateway, that's a humongous step forward. I have open in front of me this report that I guess summarizes all of this. It's Exploration, Imagination, Innovation, a New Space Strategy for Canada. And we can post a link to this from this week's show page at planetary.org slash radio. Is this a good place for people to start? Yes, absolutely.

It's a good summary of what the government has planned and what we can look forward to. There is still more information to come. The sort of details of the implementation of this strategy we're still awaiting, but that is a really great starting point for people to brush up on what Canada has up its sleeve for the years to come. And there is a lot of great stuff in here. Five major, it calls them activities, but I guess they're basically initiatives that Canada hopes to follow up on. And there are some things here I wasn't aware of, like Canada's contributions to the James Webb Space Telescope and much more. Yeah, Canada has had sort of a silent partner role in a lot of NASA missions, at least silent

from NASA's perspective. We make quite a lot of noise about it up here. But yeah, we have a long legacy of involvement in major ambitious science and exploration missions, but usually it's contributing a component rather than leading the way. And that's, I think, how we're going to continue to operate moving forward, just with the reality of the size of our population and the size of our budgets. But we are very proud of those contributions that we make. and the size of our budgets. But we are very proud of those contributions that we make.

As a leader of the Planetary Society's education and outreach efforts, you must be pretty happy to see the emphasis given in this report to using space to inspire, especially to inspire young people. Yeah, absolutely. And when the Space Advisory Board that I am a member of in Canada went and did public consultations with members of the space community throughout Canada a couple of years ago. One of the main recommendations that we came away from that with was that Canada needed to really up its involvement in STEM activities. So reaching out to kids and to students, using space as a way of inspiring

curiosity and a desire to learn. So that was one of our key recommendations to government. And we see that they have taken that recommendation and are running with it. So it is really good to see that. Personally, I'm all about science education, but also this is something that many, many people in the Canadian space community agree on. I'm so glad that you brought up the Space Advisory Board in Canada, because of course, you're a member of that. Can you tell us what's that about? What's your charge? So we were charged with developing, the first thing we were asked to do was develop a set of recommendations for government. And this actually, this process of consulting with the space community to develop those recommendations,

that happened before I joined the board. I was a late addition. Since then, our role has been to advise the government as it has been developing its space strategy. We've given them feedback on the strategy itself. We've given them feedback on where the space community stands, because this has been quite a long drawn out process as government has put together its plans. And so we've kind of been the liaisons between the broader space community and the government. And we've also given them advice on how to get political buy-in on their plans and public buy-in on these investments. Does support for this come right from the top, from the prime minister's office? The space advisory board was put together by the minister of innovation science and

economic development, Navdeep Bains. And he has been sort of the champion of the space program. It's in his portfolio, but it also is something that he personally really believes in. So part of what we've had to do was get the prime minister's office on board because they have obviously so many other things to worry about. Space isn't always front of mind. So it was part of our job was to advise Minister Baines on how the politics of space tend to work and how to avoid some of the sort of landmines that we know exist when trying to get political buy-in on space funding.

I guess it didn't hurt to have Bill Nye drop in for a visit that you were also part of. Absolutely. I mean, the Planetary Society has been involved in advocating for space funding in Canada for several years now. And one of our biggest moments of being able to do that was when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invited Bill Nye to speak at a public event celebrating a major investment in science that came in last year's federal budget. And so I tagged along with Bill and told him what exactly he needed to say to Trudeau to make sure that space came into that conversation. And they had a private sit-down chat before the public event where Bill really did advocate very well for space funding and the importance of that.

And from what I could tell, that seemed to have an impact on Prime Minister Trudeau. And I think that that may have been one of the factors that got us to this point of having this investment. Really, you know, in Canada, it does come down to the Prime Minister's office and the Minister of Finance's office getting on board. So I think that that was probably at least helpful, maybe influential. I'm sure it was. Kate, this is exciting stuff, a lot to look forward to. And thank you for joining us to talk about this and for your work advancing it. might come back around and challenge this investment. So the public of Canada really needs to continue to show its support for this kind of funding so the Planetary Society will continue to be active in that. And yeah, I'm looking forward to what's to come, though.

This is all very good news. That's Kate Howells, Global Community Outreach Manager. Global, stress on that word, for the Planetary Society. And she does that from her home, not far from Toronto. And we'll continue to do so, working on other initiatives for the Planetary Society as well. As you heard, also a member of the Space the monthly space policy editions of Planetary Radio, because there's been a lot in the news. Topping it, of course, is the president's budget

request. You have written about this in a terrific March 11 blog post that people can find at planetary.org. I don't think we'll be able to cover all of it, but this appears to be a real mixed bag. What has most piqued your interest in this proposal from the Trump White House? It was frustrating in a lot of ways, this budget, because there's a lot to like in there. Obviously, near and dear to my heart is money for a Mars sample return follow-on mission. So Mars 2020 is going to be launching in 2020 to go to Mars, be caching samples of the Martian surface. This budget actually has at least $100 million set aside to start building the Fetch rover that will grab those samples, launch them back up into space.

It's basically the next step of the Mars program for NASA that we've been waiting for for a long time. So that was very, very welcome to see. We also saw important investments. They're moving the Europa Clipper mission up to a 2023 launch date, which is great. I'd like to be alive when it gets to Europa personally. And that just helps the actuarial tables will kind of work in my favor that way. And then also, we see some real money being put towards the lunar initiatives, both with building this gateway station, orbiting the moon, advancing a lot of technology development for lunar initiatives, human and robotic. And that's important stuff too. So they're putting some real effort behind this.

Now, it's obviously not all good news, especially for, is this accurate, for fans of that big new rocket, the Space Launch System? Well, it's kind of good and bad news. They're cutting back spending, at least they're proposing to. We should be clear about this. This is the White House proposal. This sets the basic contours of the debate that we're going to have this year about NASA's budget for the fiscal year 2020.

And the White House is proposing to scale back spending on the SLS rocket, really focus on what they call the Block 1A and stop building this, what they call this exploration upper stage that would have given much more powerful lift capability to the lunar area and out beyond just distant parts of the solar system. SLS has been, as many people know, struggling, let's say, to stay on track and stay on budget. What you see the administration is saying, like, look, let's just build the launch ability

to launch anything, particularly the Orion space capsule to the moon, then we will deal with building this expanded capability later on. It seems unlikely that Congress will go along with this Congress has been very, let's say supportive of spending lots of money on SLS. So that's yet to be determined. But it's interesting to see this is basically you can think of this as them yoking the chain a little bit on this project and saying, we're watching you now and we're getting a little frustrated with the pace of things. construction of the space launch system around the country. Didn't he sort of back up exactly what you've just said, telling the head of that center, don't worry, we're going to take care of you? Yes. And that has been the case for a while now. So, I mean, it can be a little frustrating, you can see the parochial interest in the politics of this. It always comes down to, for critics of the SLS, what are you going to do with the 50,000 or so jobs in Alabama, Florida, Texas, and 47 other states of the country,

if this project goes away? You may not like what that implies about how government funding works, but it's a reality. So there's a ton of political support for this rocket. And functionally, me and the Planetary Society, I think I can speak for here, it just wants it to work. And we want it to work and be effective at what it does. And so this is not the worst decision here, I don't think, in terms of focusing on let's just getting it to launch, getting it to launch humans to the moon. And then we can worry about how it fits into this larger ecosystem of rockets and heavy lift rockets that are coming online. I want to encourage everybody once again to take a look at that March 11 blog post. It has this table. You titled it, here's a summary of what we know so far. And it

shows the 2019 budget, the one that is real now, the real budget, and this brand new PBR, President's Budget Request. And it's absolutely fascinating to look at the numbers here, some of which, hardly any change at all, some of which were funding disappears completely. WFIRST, the follow on to the James Webb Space Telescope, which actually gets a small increase in the president's recommendation, WFIRST is zeroed out. It's gone altogether, as is funding for STEM engagement. They really aren't big fans of educational efforts by NASA and the White House, are they? Yeah. Again, this is the frustrating aspect. These are all cuts that they proposed last year, and some of them even the year before. Congress resoundingly rejected those cuts both times,

and they haven't made any case to cut them again. They're just, here's the cut. Clearly, very likely Congress will restore these once it's all said and done. That's the frustrating part. We should mention the top line here of NASA, what they're requesting is 21 billion. Overall, that's about a half a billion dollar cut from what they got from Congress last year. In the context of the administration's proposals for non-defense discretionary government agencies, of which NASA is one of those, NASA does relatively well in that it was cut by only 2%. So, you know, you can place it in that context. But at the same time, if they had just put in that extra half a billion dollars,

even if they had kept it flat, you would have been able to sustain W- W First and your education program. And we wouldn't be talking about these negative things. We'd be saying how pretty strong of a budget this is. So this is where it becomes frustrating. It's a self-imposed negative messaging here that makes it frustrating. And people are going to have to work to restore these incredibly important science missions, educational efforts, and also a couple, we should note, of earth science missions, again, proposed to be canceled for, I think, the third year in a row. And so we have the ability here to do all of this. The Planetary Society is recommending a 5% increase to NASA over last year. And this is not just us, this is dozens of other organizations around the country saying a 5% is doable, it's reasonable. And once

you have that little bit of extra buffer, you can do these kind of great missions in science. You can do the education. You can do this new lunar initiative to send humans into deep space. All of this stuff is possible if you just grow slightly above inflation. Congress, I keep pointing out, since 2014 has on average increased NASA's budget by 4% per year. We can keep that trend going very easily. increase NASA's budget by 4% per year. We can keep that trend going very easily. What should we be watching for next as the budget moves toward reality? Well, the first thing is that this budget was only a top line number, so we don't know all the programmatic breakouts. So we'll have more detail of this budget coming out on March 18th. After that, Congress basically takes over. You're going to start seeing hearings in both the Senate

and the House, usually with the NASA administrator. They haul them up in front of a committee, ask them a bunch of questions, and then you start to see the appropriations bills being written, starting in the House, probably sometime in April or May. Things are a little wonky this year, because we have this overall issue with the amount of spending the government is allowed to have. There needs to be some deal struck on that first before we really know how much money these committees have to work with to fund things like NASA. It's also kind of a mess because this is a budget that is starting to bump now into the presidential election cycle coming up. So things are going to be highly politicized. It's going to be kind of a wild ride this year. But overall, let's say NASA could have been much worse, but we do need to do a lot of

work here. And this is why we have our petition online. This is why you can get involved because we need to keep NASA growing, make sure these missions actually happen. And this is also why you and a bunch of other space enthusiasts were on Capitol Hill barely a week ago as we speak. Tell us about the day of action. Yeah, these weren't just enthusiasts, Matt. These were advocates. We had about 100 members of the Planetary Society come from 25 states across the country, all coming together in Washington, D.C. with me and our chief of D.C. operations, Brendan Curry.

And we had about 130 meetings with members of Congress and their staff, all promoting exactly what I was just saying, 5% growth for NASA, importance of Mars sample return, the search for life, exploration. It was really fun. It was a lot of work putting this together. But it's always just so incredibly inspiring, honestly, to meet these dedicated members of the society. We had, I think, like a six-year-old grade school girl who wanted to be an astronaut, to folks who remember watching Apollo. We had such a range of people all there

united by their love of space exploration. And they came under their own dime. They took time off of work, and they were there to advocate for space. It was just it's why I do this job, honestly, is for moments like that, just to see that incredible dedication of our membership. It was just so great. But we got to spend a lot of time together. And this is something we'll be talking about next year as well. We'll do this annually. People always tend to have a great experience. It's a lot of work, but it's also really fun. Casey, your deep passion always comes through.

I guess there were some pretty passionate words from a leader of NASA. Yeah, we got a special briefing from the NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine, to our entire group on the morning before we went up to the Hill. He kind of gave us an overview of what NASA is doing and why NASA is so important. It was really great of him to spend that time with us and really inspiring to everybody there to see that this is a nonpartisan, big picture thing that this country can do, that everyone can be a part of. and big picture thing that this country can do that everyone can be a part of. Casey, the fight continues. Thank you for this update. We will talk again, certainly by April 5th,

which is the date of the next Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio. Look forward to that conversation as well. As always, Matt. That's Casey Dreyer, the chief advocate for the Planetary Society, doing what he does best. You can read, as we've said, much more about this in his March 11 blog post at planetary.org. We are ready to bring you this week's edition of What's Up on Planetary Radio. So the chief scientist of the Planetary Society, Bruce Betts, is here to tell us once again about the night sky

and so much more. Welcome back. Thank you. Good to be back. I have all kinds of funny responses for the contest this week, and we're going to throw in a little bit, one extra prize, along with the rubber asteroid when we get to the new contest. I had this note from Keith White in Ottawa, Ontario. He says, is there a special random.org that you use to select winning entries for the rubber Astroids? No, Keith, it's the same old random.org. And it's the same old night sky, isn't it? Well, yeah, but it's cool. So yeah, Mars

in the south in the early evening, but the party, as we've been talking about, is in the pre-dawn east, where there's a lovely lineup going from the horizon to the upper right. You've got super bright Venus, yellowish Saturn, bright Jupiter. And then if you keep going, you get the reddish star Antares in Scorpius, and then the moon will join the gang towards the end of the month and be hanging out near Jupiter on the 27th. We move on to this week in space history. 1958, Vanguard I launched. Vanguard I is still in orbit. It is the oldest spacecraft in orbit. It stopped working a long time ago, but it's still in orbit. Will be for another 100 or 200 years before the orbit degrades. I love that it's still up there.

Yeah, it's fun. 1980, sad day, although hidden from a lot of the world for a long time. Soviet rocket explosion killed 50 people on the launch pad. Including a lot of the leadership of their program, apparently, because they were out there just kind of hanging out at the rocket when it went boom. Yep, yep. In happy news,

2011, Messenger went into orbit around Mercury, the first ever orbiter at Mercury, and only one so far. All right, we move on to... I'm sorry. We move on to... Random Space Facts. We move on to, I'm sorry, we move on to random space fact.

Love those rolling R's. Astronauts on the space station have coffee cups designed specifically for microgravity. It's special shape takes advantage of surface tension of the coffee to facilitate drinking. It's kind of groovy. You know, I never thought about coffee on the ISS, but how could you possibly live up there for a year without coffee? Well, then you're going to be excited at the new trivia question. Oh, good. But on to the old trivia question. I asked you, where will the Hayabusa 2 sample return capsule land when it returns to Earth? How did we do, Matt? Let's let the poet laureate of Planetary Radio, Dave Fairchild, provide the answer. So JAXA's got a sample now from Hayabusa 2. They're going to bring it back

to Earth to science it for you. December 2020, it'll come back with a thunder and land itself at Woomera, the land we call Down Under. Nicely done. Thank you, Dave. Well, that's good news for Christopher Strauss, a first-time winner in Westchester, Ohio. It's on the Woomera test range in Australia, December of 2020, that Hayabusa's sample return capsule will come back down to Earth. So congratulations, Christopher. You have won yourself a, dare we say it, dare we roll it, a Planetary Society kick asteroid rubber asteroid and a 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account. Alan Briggs, Camberley in the UK, he said, it's an amazing mission, Hayabusa2. The total flight distance by the end of the mission is estimated to be about

five and a quarter billion kilometers or 3.275 billion miles. That is impressive. That's a long trip. Woomera. We got this from a whole bunch of people who found the translation of Woomera, which is an Aboriginal Australian word. It means it's a wooden spear throwing device. David Shanks says, hmm, an Aboriginal predecessor to rockets? How appropriate. Stephen Coulter in Woodville, Australia. How appropriate.

He reminds us that the Woomera test range was used by the British to test their rocket programs and was the launch location for Australia's first satellite on the 29th of November in 1967. It made Australia only the third nation to launch a satellite from its own territory. Cool fact. Finally, this from Jan-Erik Brintesen in Sweden, one of our many listeners in Scandinavia. Keeping in mind that it's going to be coming down in December of 2020, he says, I hope the capsule doesn't hit Santa Claus on the way down. I think it's really unlikely. Unless, you know, maybe Santa will be looking for it.

Maybe he wants that sample for himself. You know, that Santa, he's a taker. Take, take, take. Oh, and you're not getting a sample of anything in your stocking. Get on to this new contest that now I'm so intrigued by. Okay, it's a straightforward question, I think. What is the name of the espresso maker on the International Space Station? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest.

No doubt is some wonderful NASA acronym, right? I'm not going to comment. You're not going to comment. Okay. Well, I respect that. You need to get us your answer by March 20. That'd be Wednesday, March 20 at 8 a.m. Pacific time. And you will win a Planetary Society Kik Asteroid Rubber Asteroid, a 200-point itelescope.net account. That's that international network of telescopes. You can use your account to spy on stuff all over the universe. And I'm going to throw in this. It's a book that was given to me by Michael Wall, Dr. Michael Wall. He's a writer for space.com. And it's very entertaining. There

are a lot of books out there that sort of survey what's going on around the universe now. But not many of them come with hand-drawn cartoons, which I believe Michael himself did. I can't find a credit for anybody else anyway. The book is called Out There, a scientific guide to alien life, antimatter, and human space travel for the cosmically curious. And we're going to throw this in for whoever comes out ahead in that contest that Bruce just got started and

that we will close out in two weeks on this program. And we're ready to close out this edition of What's Up. All right, everybody, go out there, look up the night sky and think about never needing a reason, never needing a rhyme to step in time. Thank you and good night. Votes for women. Step in time. He's Bruce Betts, the chief scientist of the Planetary Society, and he joins us every week here for What's Up. We'll close with that special treat I promised you. As you heard from Casey Dreyer, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine paid a personal visit to the men and women from all over the U.S. who traveled to the nation's capital on March 4th. The audio isn't great, but I think you'll enjoy hearing a small portion of what he had to say.

Just since I've been the NASA administrator, 10 months now, we've discovered complex organic compounds on the surface of Mars. Think about what that means. They don't exist on the surface of Mars. Think about what that means. They don't exist on the moon. They exist on Mars and they exist on Earth. The building blocks for life exist on Mars. We know that the methane cycles are commensurate with the seasons of Mars. Doesn't guarantee life, increases the probability.

I'm stealing Thomas Zurbuchen's talking points right now, and he's right over there, so I'm doing it in front of you talking points right now, and he's right over there. So I'm doing it in front of you. Am I doing okay? Am I right? Okay. So, but it goes beyond that. We now know that there's liquid water 12 kilometers

under the surface of Mars. What does that mean? Well, we know on Earth everywhere there's liquid water, there's life. Again, I'm not guaranteeing there's life. NASA doesn't, until there's proof, we don't say that it's life. Again, I'm not guaranteeing there's life. NASA doesn't, until there's proof, we don't say that it's there. But the probability, friends, keeps going up. That's why we go to the moon. We have to prove the capability, prove the

technology, retire the risk, and ultimately take all of this to Mars with human expeditions. Now when we go to the moon and the word is sustainable, when I say sustainable, I don't mean that we're gonna have a village on the moon. Although that day may eventually come. That's not the policy objective right now. We wanna be able to go to the moon anytime we want to any part of the moon we want. We're talking about sustainable access.

That's an achievable objective and we need to get there as soon as we can. But we don't wanna get anchored on the moon. We want to take all of this, and we want to go to Mars. That's the horizon goal here. The glory of the moon is that it's a three-day journey home. And we've seen with Apollo 13, if something goes wrong on the way to the moon, you can still make it home safely.

When we go to Mars, as you all are aware, we're only aligned once every 26 months on the same side of the sun. We're going to get a lot more on board, starting with our partners from the International Space Station, the as an advantage, and we have the advantage of reusability, which didn't exist even 10 years ago, and commercial partners that are investing more of their own money for their own purposes. So all of that colludes to say we have the ability to achieve more now than ever before. But it doesn't mean that we don't need your support. And I am thrilled that you're here doing what you do. And Brendan and Casey, you guys have been friends for

a long time doing this work for your country and in fact for the world. And you guys are following the right crew here to get this done. People who understand how the Hill works, that are willing to work the Hill and make us, put us in a good position. I will say this in closing. When I first got nominated to be the NASA administrator, the president's budget request for NASA had gone up one billion dollars. That was a big increase, five percent increase, and it was, it was something that hadn't happened in a long time you guys probably know better than me but probably not in my adult lifetime if we had an increase that significant now from that Congress passed a bill even

before I became the NASA administrator increasing our budget not 1 billion dollars but 1.7 billion dollars that's's a big increase. Bipartisan support. I have said and I will continue to say this agency is apolitical. It is nonpartisan. The reason your value here is so important is you're talking to both sides of the aisle. The last thing we want is some kind of debate that becomes partisan about whether it's the moon or Mars. Friends, it is both. It is an all of the above strategy. We cannot get to Mars if we don't have the moon as a proving ground and we need to use it in order to get there so it isn't all of it and by the way the studies that I've seen have all indicated the fastest way

to get to Mars is using moon as a proving ground so my point is this talk to both sides of the aisle tell them the importance to the United States of America for developing this capability and the importance ultimately to the world again to the world peace let me say I could speak forever I know Thomas is waiting over here we are unique in the world the United States of America this is the one country that can put together a coalition of nations to sustain a return to the moon. This is us. This is who we are and it's what we do. And this is a piece of American soft power. It's diplomacy. It's leadership. It's the thing where the United States

and Russia can actually work together and cooperate regardless of the geopolitical problems that exist on the earth. We can cooperate in in space that's what space exploration is all about it's about thinking of ourselves differently than we think about ourselves here on earth and guess what that partnership goes back to 1975 the height of the Cold War the Apollo Soyuz program and then the Apollo-Soyuz program, and then the Shuttle-Mir program. Of course, when I went to Russia, they called it the Soyuz-Apollo program and the Mir shuttle program. But either way, bottom line is the two words are used in both programs,

and of course now we're on the International Space Station, and they're ready, willing, and able, I think, we're working on it, to join us with this return to the moon so this is really about American leadership and and I think our legislators on both sides of the aisle know that and make sure that that's a message that gets across as well what an amazing day I'm so glad that you guys are all here and I look forward to hearing the results from Casey and Brendan when when you guys are done here. And I look forward to hearing the results from Casey and Brendan when you guys are done with this important trip.

So thank you all so much. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine speaking on March 4th to the citizen space advocates gathered in Washington, D.C. for the Planetary Society's Day of Action. I want to thank my colleague Andrew Pauly for capturing that audio. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and is made possible by its fired-up members. Mary Liz Benders, our associate producer,

Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. I'm Matt Kaplan. Ad Astra.