Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Celebrating Carl Sagan and a New Solar Sail With Ann Druyan

Episode Date: November 9, 2009

Solar sailing returns with LightSail, announced on the 75th anniversary of Carl Sagan's birth.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Celebrating Carl Sagan with a solar sail, 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 of the Planetary Society with a special edition of our show. What better way to mark the 75th anniversary of Carl Sagan's birth than with the bold announcement of humankind's next attempt to sail the universe. On the afternoon of Monday, November 9, the Planetary Society came to Capitol Hill to reveal LightSail, a project that will sail a spacecraft on sunlight alone by the end of 2010. Here's Executive Director Lou Friedman.

We're back. We're going to merge the ultralight technology of nanosats with the ultra-large technology of solar sails with an audacious new program. The plan calls for not just one solar sail, but three progressively more ambitious missions. Though much smaller than the society's earlier Cosmos 1 spacecraft, LightSail 1 will nevertheless be able to accelerate faster in Earth orbit. 32 square meters of mylar will dwarf the CubeSat-based

modules at the center of the diamond-shaped sail. It'll look much like a giant kite. A relatively high 800-kilometer orbit will ready the spacecraft to be propelled by the small but constant pressure of photons streaming from our sun. There's much more about LightSail at Planetary.org, and we'll have more to say about this ambitious plan in future episodes of Planetary Radio. Just one of the leaders who came to Washington for the announcement was the founder and CEO of Cosmos Studios, Ann Druyan. The writer and producer partnered with Carl Sagan for 20 years, working on projects that included Cosmos, the most popular series ever to appear on American public television.

Ann has been our guest on Planetary Radio several times. We asked her to return to talk about the celebration of her late husband not only through the light sale program, but in the appearance of a wildly popular music video on YouTube. Here's just a taste of a glorious dawn. The sky calls to us if we do not destroy ourselves. The sky calls to us if we do not destroy ourselves. We will one day venture to the stars.

We've got a link to all of A Glorious Dawn at planetary.org slash radio. I was a little surprised to hear what Andrean had to say about the music video in our recent conversation. We also wanted her thoughts about the new solar sailing venture. The phone connection wasn't the best, but her enthusiasm and eloquence were easy to hear. And it is a great pleasure, as always, to bring you back to Planetary Radio. Thank you and congratulations on the 75th anniversary of Carl Sagan's birth. Thank you so much, Matt. I always enjoy speaking with you. It's a pleasure to be back. Trust me, it is mutual. We have lots to talk about, which is why when we originally said we would air this interview with you last week, it made great sense to hold off until this week because so much is happening.

Tell us a little bit about why you and some other folks are going to be in Washington, D.C. Well, I can't think of a better way to celebrate Carl's 75th birthday than by announcing with Lou Friedman and Jim Bell and other members, leaders of the Planetary Society, members, leaders of the Planetary Society, that we are about to announce the most ambitious program of space exploration ever mounted by a public interest organization. Of course, I'm talking about light sail and the great good fortune that's made it possible for us to return to the great adventure of solar sailing. I can't think of a more romantic way to move through the cosmos than catching the photons of light in a reflective sail to move at speeds far greater, some 10 times the fastest spacecraft

we've ever designed, the Voyagers, that travel at an awesome 38,000 miles per, but still, we can go much faster, and we must go much faster if we're ever going to explore those new worlds that we've recently discovered that circle other suns. So here is the Planetary Society leading the way. And what a wonderful place to do this. You're going to be on Capitol Hill? We'll be at the Hart Senate Office Building,

celebrating Carl's awesome, wonderful life and the great variety of achievements and gifts that his 62 years of living, his 62 trips around the sun, have given all of us. I'm on the receiving end of all kinds of input, which is telling me that Carl is more beloved today than ever before. And this is a worldwide phenomenon. And we'll be celebrating it with Neil Tyson, with Bill Nye, Jim Bell, perhaps some surprise guests as well. Well, we'll watch for that, and maybe we'll be able to feature all of this on the show later. I hope somebody's going to be recording it.

Speaking of celebrating Carl, and perhaps a new generation that is finding the same kind of awe in the universe that he expressed so well. I was a little nervous about talking to you about this tune that has become so popular on the Internet, A Glorious Dawn. But really, you've embraced it, and we played a little bit of it at the opening, and we're going to link to it, of course, from the planetary.org slash radio site. But tell me how you felt the first time you heard this. I was completely uplifted. It was so wonderful to see Carl in the episode in Cosmos where he tried to do his impression of the humpback whale song.

And to see him auto-tune to become the actual singer that he was in real life, he really did do a lot of singing. He was a complete music lover. He would have loved this. And I'm very glad that I didn't write one of those grumpy letters of copyright infringement to John Boswell, the extremely gifted mind and composer who created this. But instead, I spontaneously wrote him an email saying, Carl would have loved this. This is magnificent. You know, I've always said that science is a vision of nature and existence that is every bit as spiritual as any other devised by human beings.

The only problem is we didn't have any good music. And when I first heard this, I thought to myself, John Boswell has actually given us a kind of hymn to reality. And the fact that it is hip-hop style featuring Stephen Hawking makes it just that much more astonishing. You know, I had this fantasy that somebody really gifted, somebody who had some clout in the music world would come to me and want to make an actual single of this. And of course it happened. Just a week or two later, the wonderful Jack White, founder of the White Stripes and the Rock on Tours and the Dead Weather, really gifted musician, came to me and said, let's release this as single.

And so I'm very proud to say that there's going to be an exquisite single released today on Carl's birthday. And I'm told, I haven't seen the final version yet, today on Carl's birthday. And I'm told, I haven't seen the final version yet, but Jack and the people he worked with at Third Man Records, they are etching an exquisite copy of the Voyager Interstellar record cover with those magnificent scientific hieroglyphics into B-side. Oh, my. So it's going to be beautiful, and it'll be available starting today. Did you

have any idea that Jack White, this artist at the top of the recording industry, sort of shared the dream? I had no idea, but I received such a beautiful email message from him and from his producing colleague at Third Man Music saying that for years the Voyager record had been a source of wonder to them. They are big fans of Blind Willie Johnson. Of course, His Dark Was the Night is included on the record, and they said they could never get over the fact that we had done that. The other thing that I've been told by Jack is that they've been on this European tour, and they have a Sagan room in the tour bus. And after each concert, they go back to the Sagan room and they watch Cosmos. That's so great.

Yeah, and so it's their hope to finish all 13 hours before the tour is over. So we definitely felt like kindred spirits, and this has been a great experience. And, of course, it would be lovely just to see Jack White interested in this and to see a glorious Don appear on YouTube. But talk about being embraced. I don't know how many millions of times it's been viewed. I should have checked again before beginning our conversation. Well, I check every day because it's not just to see the 1.3 million and change people who've listened to it just in the last month. It's to read the 6,000

comments at the bottom because it's just so moving to see how Carl has this enduring power to inspire, you know, in the hearts and minds of people who weren't even really born, certainly not conscious, when we were doing Cosmos and Carl was doing many of the brilliant things that he did. So it's a great thrill to me. You know, one of them said yesterday, Andrea must be the luckiest person in the history of the world to have spent all that time with Carl Sagan. And I thought, you are so right. We'll hear more from Andrea about the celebration

of her late husband and collaborator Carl Sagan, including LightSail, when Planetary Radio continues. Carl Sagan, including LightSail, when Planetary Radio continues. I'm Sally Ride. After becoming the first American woman in space, I dedicated myself to supporting space exploration and the education and inspiration of our youth. That's why I formed Sally Ride Science, and that's why I support the Planetary Society. The Society works with space agencies around the world

and gets people directly involved with real space missions. It takes a lot to create exciting projects like the first solar sail, informative publications like an award-winning magazine, and many other outreach efforts like this radio show. Help make space exploration and inspiration happen. Here's how you can join us. You can learn more about the Planetary Society at our website, planetary.org slash radio, or by calling 1-800-9-WORLDS. Planetary Radio listeners who aren't yet members can join and receive a Planetary Radio t-shirt.

Members receive the internationally acclaimed Planetary Report magazine. That's planetary.org slash radio. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. My guest is writer and producer Ann Druyan. Ann is also the founder and CEO of Cosmos Studios. She collaborated for 20 years with her late husband Carl Sagan, a founder of the Planetary Society. This week would have included Carl's 75th birthday. Planetary Society, this week would have included Carl's 75th birthday. He and his legacy of science and wonder are being celebrated in many ways. Let's talk about other ways in which the legacy

lives on and maybe come back to the sail for a moment. I keep thinking of how this sailing theme, whether it was the ocean or the universe, was so much a part of Cosmos the series. it was the ocean or the universe, was so much a part of Cosmos the series. Yes, and in fact, we literally said in Cosmos, with Steve Soder, our co-writer, we ended one episode, we have lingered too long on the shores of the cosmic ocean. It's time to set sail for the stars. And that's what I was thinking when it became clear that we had the resources to mount this expedition, this Wright Brothers, Kitty Hawk-type enterprise of inventing and proving a new way of moving through the cosmos,

that we are serious at the Planetary Society. And at Cosmos Studios, my company, which has provided the principal support for the first 10 years of this project, we are really serious about giving our kids a future in which science and technology is used at its most wise and benign and forward-looking possible way. That's why I'm so thrilled, and I just think if Carl were alive, he would have been absolutely overcome at the notion that the Planetary Society is mounting its own space program,

let alone its own launch. Can you say something yet? I don't know that this is fully developed, but what your role and the role of Cosmos Studios will be in this new solar sailing effort? Well, I expect to help in every way I can, and I think there may be some very specific way, which, you know, at this point it's too early to announce, but I'm hoping if things go well that we'll have, you know, at this point it's too early to announce, but I'm hoping

if things go well that we'll have, you know, I'll have to come back, Matt. Yes, please. And announce a kind of specific way in which we'll be helping. I'll hold you to that. Anything else that you'd like to share about this 75th anniversary? about this 75th anniversary. Yes, I'd love to tell you that I have a new podcast, which is called At Home in the Cosmos with Annie Drian, and it's going to be premiering on Podjockey,

and we spent four days shooting it at my home in Ithaca, and it's hours and hours of stories about what it was like to make 20 trips around the sun with Carl Sagan and about some of the highlights of that experience and something about our family and kind of the personal drama that we experienced together. And you can count on us putting a link up at planetary.org slash radio, along with a link to Cosmos Studios and to the Solar Sail Project, of course. What about the series? Still going strong, isn't it?

The series is just absolutely, it is just off-scale. You know, when we were working on Cosmos back in the day, which would have been the late 70s, we had a kind of fantasy that it would have an enduring life, that it wouldn't be just something that people would see once and, you know, would live for a season or two, but that it would be a kind of, you know, one of the things we did when we were doing Cosmos was we avoided the cutting-edge, up-to-the-minute, latest, late-breaking science stories, because we wanted to create a kind of a history of how we found ourselves in space and time, how we established our coordinates as a species and reconstructed our past.

how we established our coordinates as a species and reconstructed our past. And our wildest dreams for cosmos have been so far exceeded. I'm really proud that it speaks to every generation of the last 30 years and really seems to have continuing power to influence and to excite and to awaken people to the beauty of nature. I think you really did create something timeless. And, you know, I told you just before we started this, in fact, when your call came in, I was looking through our library here at home and trying to count the books by Carl that we have.

And it's difficult because I'm not sure I'm looking at all the right sections. Demon Haunted World is in philosophy. Contact is in fiction. Pale blue dot is in science. More of the legacy. Yes, exactly. I think that's just the tiniest tip of the iceberg, in a way, of really some measure of how great Carl truly was. Because, of course, that doesn't include the dragons of Eden and Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and Comet and the 600 refereed scientific papers, countless popular articles.

I mean, the guy was just so in love with science and learning and teaching and discovering. and learning and teaching and discovering. I just think of him and I smile broadly. What a beautiful, happy, great life lived so brilliantly and so much to the benefit of all of us. Anne, once again, thank you so much for joining us and have a wonderful time in Washington and we look forward to working with you. Thank you so much, Matt.

I look forward to our with you. Thank you so much, Matt. I look forward to our next conversation. Me too. Ann Druyan, author, producer, purveyor of a sense of awe regarding the universe, all things great and small, that she shared for so many years with her late husband, Carl Sagan. She is the founder and CEO of Cosmos Studios, where the legacy very much lives on. And from time to time, she joins us here on Planetary Radio. We'll be joined by Bruce Betts for this week's edition of What's Up, after we check in with Emily. A still more glorious dawn awaits, not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise.

A morning filled with 400 billion suns. The rising of the Milky Way. A still more glorious dawn awaits. Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise. A morning filled with 400 billion suns. The rising of the Milky Way. The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. Recently, we've waded a little way up, and the water seems inviting. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has been studying a lot of meteorites. That made me wonder, why study meteorites on Mars

when we can study them in hand on Earth? How are Mars meteorites interesting? It's true that it's far easier to study meteorites on Earth than on Mars. Opportunity examines the meteorites it finds on Mars not to learn more about meteorites, but to learn more about Mars. The meteorites at Meridiani Planum have, in all likelihood, been sitting there for a very long time. During that time, they have interacted chemically and geologically with the surface and near-surface atmosphere,

so their current composition can tell us about chemical behavior on Mars. One of the meteorites, a metallic one named Block Island, has given us an important clue to Mars' past just by virtue of its large size. At the current thickness of Mars' atmosphere, a meteorite the size of Block Island would have disintegrated into much smaller fragments on impact with the Martian surface. So Block Island must have fallen at a time when Mars had a significantly thicker atmosphere that would have decelerated the meteorite, slowing its crash into the ground. Also, Opportunity's chemical analysis instruments observed varying composition across different parts of Block Island, which may indicate different states of alteration.

Since meteorites are a fairly well-studied class of objects, we know a lot about what the starting composition must have been, so the current chemical composition can provide important clues to the chemistry that has operated on the red planet since the meteorite fell. 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.

Dr. Bruce Betts is the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us, as always. Happy Sagan Day. Happy Sagan Day to you as well. Lots to talk about today. Let's start with, oh, the night sky. That's so traditional. You could mix things up.

Go with random space facts. Let's just shake people up. Ow, ow, ow, no. Ow, that could hurt. It hurts, doesn't it? All right, how about this? I'll do this week in space history first. What the heck?

You may have heard. Carl Sagan born this week, 75 years ago. In addition, a ton of other stuff happened during this week. Yeah, like in 1980, Voyager 1 flies past Saturn, giving us those beautiful pictures and other data and good stuff. In 1971, Mariner 9 becomes the first spacecraft to go into orbit around Mars. And over in the human program apollo 12 was launched in 1969 indeed a very big week and in 1988 the soviet space shuttle baran was launched for its one and only time uncrewed right it was just automated cool thing shame it

never flew again all right now let us i need to re-center myself with the night sky i really threw you there's so few things one can count on but planets in the night sky is one of them jupiter check it out brightest star-like object in the evening sky high in the west after sunset got in the pre-dawn, you can still probably catch Venus getting lower and lower over the coming weeks, low in the east, brightest star-like object out there. But Saturn getting easier and easier, higher and higher to see, high above Venus looking yellowish and much dimmer. And then Mars now rising in the middle of the night, or actually the late evening in the east looking reddish as it will have want to do and it's uh starting to get pretty bright and in fact we'll just keep brightening

up through the end of january when it has its opposition opposite side of the earth from the sun meaning closest point during this this little orbital dance so now you're going to go to random space fact because i want to remind you, you already did this week in Space History. Random Space Fact! See, the first part there was sort of a Tarzan thing going on, but then it just kind of finished as... I was trying to mix it up.

Okay. Because, you know, you want me to mix things up. It was compound. Okay. Enceladus, getting a lot of coverage right now. Moon of Saturn that Cassini is flying through its plume right around this time a couple times. Beautiful. I'm giving lots of reports on the Planetary Society website and her blog. You know, it's only 500 kilometers in diameter. That is why it is so, choose an

appropriate word, incredibly weird that it has these water ice geysers going on. One would expect it to be nice and cold and dead. Still a mystery, though people are making progress on it, trying to figure out what the heck is going on there. 500 kilometers, by the way, would easily fit between, say, LA and my hometown, Sacramento, or DC and Boston, or London and Frankfurt. This is what we're talking, small object and yet active around Saturn a billion miles out there. On to the trivia contest, there. On to the trivia contest. And we asked you about what is the density of comet Temple One, the comet that was visited by the Deep Impact spacecraft. And why don't you tell me how you did and what people got, and then I'll tell you my source. And we all agree within the error bars. Well, I never would have gotten this, but I'll tell you who did.

Ralph Bruder, who came up with the figures that a lot of people found. I don't remember where. I think someone said possibly the good old, you know, Wikipedia. He said about 670 kilograms per cubic meter, but that was within this enormous range of error of plus 470 or minus 330 kilograms. So, yee, that's quite a range, but you had a different number. Yeah, I would be surprised if that's still the error bars, but frankly, I didn't go check the science papers to be sure. This was prompted because when I went to an asteroid deflection workshop, I listened to the PI, Mike Ahern, of Deep Impact. Past guest on the show.

Probably should be a future guest. We can ask him in person. Absolutely. Let's do that. Get his updates. Really, they got a lot of good results. And one of them was the density of about, and I'm going to use CGS units, which make me happier. Because water density is one in those units.

And they have about, he presented about 0.4. But they certainly clearly have error bars. So that would be 400 in the units you gave in MKS. Nevertheless, we could still float this thing in a big enough bathtub. The whole point is it's really, really, really, really fluffy. And, in fact, they extrapolate from that to a porosity, and they get a porosity of about two-thirds, meaning that two-thirds of that comet is empty space. Wow.

Incredible. That's what I thought. Well, we'll have to have Mike Ahern back. But for the moment, we're going to tell Ralph Bruder congratulations. We're going to send out a Planetary Radio t-shirt to him in Billings, Montana. And let me just tell you, now, of course, the contest is closed, but next week we'll be talking about who won the Cosmos 1 jacket, the official Cosmos 1 solar sail team windbreaker. And I don't know if it's the windbreaker or the fact that it has to do with puppies.

But, boy, did we get a big response to this one. Well, let's test it by giving away another one. Why don't we? What a great idea. And ask something that has nothing to do with puppies. Go for it. In astronomical nomenclature, what does NGC stand for? NGC. It's used to name deep sky objects.

For example, NGC 3063. Go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to enter. You got until Monday, the 16th of November. Monday, November 16th at 2 p.m. Pacific time to get us that answer. And maybe you'll win a Cosmos One windbreaker. I don't suppose we have light sail windbreakers available yet. No.

I am pushing for temporary tattoos, but they're not ready. Why temporary? I'm up for it. Really? Right now? You and me? Right now? I'm ready to shock my daughters.

Two of us. Absolutely. Let's go down. I want that tat. Where will I find room? You and me, right now? I'm ready to shock my daughters. Two of us, absolutely. Let's go down. I want that tap. Where will I find room? And amongst all the others. I don't want to talk about that. All right, everybody.

Go out there, look up at the night sky. Don't think about that, but think about the amazing properties of electromagnetic radiation, sometimes known in some places as light. Thank you. Good night. He brings light to us every week here as part of What's Up. And by the way, we are also getting a great deal of light. People that we don't know.

I don't know any of these people giving us wonderful reviews in the iTunes store, where of course you can rate a program or review a program. I shouldn't say this because it'll jinx it, but we continue our record of only five-star reviews. The most recent from an M. Spalding. Thank you, M. Spalding. If we could afford an agent, you might be him or her. Thanks to all who have done that.

And are you sure they aren't your family? No, I'm relatively confident. He is Bruce Betts, and we already said all this, so we'll just say he joins us every week here for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California.

Keep looking up. Thank you.