Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Celebrating Sputnik With Louis Friedman in Moscow

Episode Date: October 8, 2007

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. Celebrating 50 years of the space age in Moscow, 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. Everything changed on October 4, 1957. That's when the Soviet Union put the first man-made object in Earth orbit.

Sputnik 1 frightened the West, but it also inspired one of the greatest and fastest scientific advances in human history. Less than 12 years later, men walked on the moon. Less than 12 years later, men walked on the moon. This week we'll go to Moscow, where Planetary Society Executive Director Lou Friedman helped to celebrate this milestone. He'll tell us that it wasn't marked with quite the fanfare you might have expected. We'll also find out from Emily Lakdawalla how we know certain rocks came to us all the way from Mars. Bruce Betts will test my skill as a sound effects person as he helps us explore the current night sky, and I'll close this week's show with my personal reflection on Sputnik's legacy.

You might think by now that we'd have learned everything there is to know about the universe, but no! And our space headlines have the proof. Just 424 light-years from home is a star not so different from our sun, except that at just 10 million years of age, it's quite a baby. Around that star, in the middle of its so-called habitable zone, is a giant ring of warm dust. The scientists who found that ring with the Spitzer Space Telescope say the dust might someday become a planet about the size of Mars.

Let's hope we're still around when that happens. In the meantime, check out the story at planetary.org. Space shuttle Discovery has returned to launch pad 39A. NASA is readying the ship for an October 23 launch. NASA is also looking for America's next top model. Model of spacesuit, that is. The agency has invited proposals from companies that want to provide the next generation of fashionable astronaut outdoor wear, suitable for the International Space Station or a stroll on the moon. Vest is optional. Helmet is not. I'll be right back with Lou Friedman from Moscow.

Here's Emily. Optional. Helmet is not. I'll be right back with Lou Friedman from Moscow. Here's Emily. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, how do we know that Mars meteorites are from Mars? Once it's been established that a rock found on Earth actually came from space, and how they do that is a topic for another show, the first question that a scientist asks of a meteorite is where and how it formed. From the beginning, a small group of space rocks stood out as being quite different from typical iron-nickel or stony meteorites.

These are igneous rocks, which means they crystallized from a rock melt. When scientists analyzed them for radioactive isotopes, they found that the rocks had solidified geologically recently. Two groups of rocks, known as nacklites and chassignites, are about 1.3 billion years old. A third group, called the shergetites, is much younger, only 165 million years old. 34 of these youthful shergetites, Naclites, and Chassignites have been found, and they are referred to as SNCs, or SNICs

for short. For SNICs to be so young means they must have come from a planet-sized body, not a little asteroid, because only planets have been partially molten so recently. But how do we know it's Mars? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out.

The first artificial Earth satellite in the world has now been created. This first satellite was today successfully launched in the USSR. That was Radio Moscow announcing to the world that the Soviet Union had begun both the space age and the space race. It was an accomplishment that would change nations and countless lives. Author and aerospace engineer Homer Hickam told us how it changed him on last week's show. The same was true for Lou Friedman. He decided on that day to devote his life to space exploration. The decision led him to the Jet Propulsion Lab near Pasadena, California, where he would work on many projects and missions. Later, he would create the Planetary Society with Bruce Murray and Carl Sagan. As executive director of the Society, Lou has made many trips to Moscow, often in his capacity as head of the Cosmos Solar Sail Project.

He was there again last week, and it was on October 4, the 50th anniversary of Sputnik 1's launch, that we talked about the legacy of that little metal ball. So, Lou, you are on the scene. Tell us about the celebration in the place where it all started. you are on the scene. Tell us about the celebration in the place where it all started. Well, I got to tell you, Matt, it's nice to be here in Russia. This is the first week of October. It's 24 years ago was my first trip to Russia, also during this first week of October. Then it was snowing, and this week it has been glorious and sunny and warm. Well, a good time to celebrate, but has the celebration been everything you were hoping? Oh, I'm very disappointed in the celebration, to tell you the truth. The Space Research Institute, the science group here, is doing their very, very best to make this a meaningful celebration. They have a wonderful exhibition.

They are talking about great reviews of the science. They have a nice symposium. But everything is two levels down from what it should be. There's no attention at this on the government level. There's no attention to this even much at the Russian Academy of Sciences level. Just today there was a pomp and circumstance ceremony with trumpets and drums and dancers and a few speeches, but it was all very, very sad because there's no sense of exploration and a total missing of some of the great achievements in space exploration that have been done. Some right here, the first encounter with Halley's Comet, the first landing

on another planet and getting a view of the surface of Venus, the first balloon in the Venus atmosphere, not to mention, of course, what they achieved in the man program for so many years, and the first space station, in addition to, of course, the first satellite and the first lunar landing and the first manned flight. But there's a sense of sadness to it all because it's basically old men reminiscing as opposed to capturing the spirit and sense of exploration and the significance of what these achievements can mean. I find this just short of shocking. I thought that this would be essentially a national holiday in Russia.

It sounds like it may be getting more positive attention here. Yeah, I think I saw a minute-and-a a half news clip on it this morning in Russian news. I don't get the sense that it's a national holiday. I find that even in the outside of the immediate circle of people who are involved, there's not a lot of attention to this. Now, we know that young people and the sense of society has turned to a million other diversions. We know that space isn't on the national agenda. But achievement and the idea of motivating a generation of educational achievements, scientific achievements, and of what the technical accomplishment was that led to the whole, not to mention, of course, the political significance of having a peaceful Cold War instead of a hot war.

It's just, I find it very disappointing, like I said. Well, I guess then you're at least in the best possible place with some of the people who, well, I wonder, are there some people there? Yeah. I don't want to be gloomy, Matt. I'm just, you know, because I have participated in some wonderful meetings over here with the scientists. There was a good symposium with nice reviews of what the space science results are and

the missions. Some of the new mission results came in. Mars Express is showing some dramatic new information about Phobos. The Russians are talking about their Phobos grunt mission, which the Planetary Society is part of. There is, in my small circle, a lot of very good things happening, and I'm pleased to be working over here on real projects like our Phobos life experiment, like our solar sail activity, which we've had some meetings on and have some work that we are planning that I think members will be very interested in.

And we've even discussed the possibility for flying another Mars microphone. So there is a sense of activity and good things that participate. My complaint is not about the science side of it, but is more about the whole social and governmental side, which I think has been disappointing. It's just yesterday that NASA put out a press release announcing that two of their spacecraft, two NASA spacecraft, will carry Russian science instruments.

Yeah, I was there for the signing ceremony of that. It was held at the American ambassador's home, and we had a nice reception, and they signed the Russian space agency head, Perminov, and American NASA administrator, Mike Griffin, signed a statement. I felt great about it because I was there at the start of it. This was started when Dan Golden was administrator and the Planetary Society actually brought Igor Mitrofanov's experiment and that of Slava Lincoln to fly on the Mars polar lander. Unfortunately, that spacecraft failed, but basically this space science agreement, the whole thing started for that 1999 mission, and it's been enormously productive because Mitrofanov's instrument has been

great in helping unravel the mystery of water on Mars, and now it and a derivative of it are going to fly on a future Mars mission and on a lunar mission. Yeah, we should say those missions are the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and then the very impressive Mars Science Laboratory that's being prepared for launch. That's right. And you know that planet, I'm sure your listeners will know that Planetary Society is involved trying to keep the Mars science payload from being diminished. We'll hear a bit more from Planetary Society Executive Director Lou Friedman in Moscow after a break. This is Planetary Radio.

Hey, hey, Bill Nye the Science Guy here. I hope you're is Planetary Radio. Hey, hey, Bill Nye the Science Guy here. I hope you're enjoying Planetary Radio. We put a lot of work into this show and all our other great Planetary Society projects. I've been a member since the disco era. Now I'm the Society's Vice President. And you may well ask, why do we go to all this trouble? Simple. We believe in the PB&J, the passion, beauty, and joy of space exploration.

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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. Our guest is the Planetary Society's longtime executive director, Lou Friedman. Lou was in Moscow on October 4th, the 50th anniversary of Sputnik 1's launch. More precisely, we found him at IKI, the Space Research Institute, where many of the Soviet Union's accomplishments in space

originated. Like thousands of other space scientists and engineers, Lou's course in life was also set by the mission that astonished the world in 1957. Lou, before we let you go, because the celebrations, at least there at IKI, are still underway, tell us about your own experience. There were so many scientists and engineers who really were inspired to go on to the careers that they built because of that beeping in the sky in 1957. Last week, we had Homer Hickam on, and that led directly to Rocket Boys and the experiences that were documented in the film October Sky. Did you have any similar experience? Well, it's nice of you to ask me, Matt. Yes,

I was profoundly influenced by it. I feel a little guilty now after criticizing some of the old guys sitting around reminiscing. I will now reminisce and say that I was a student at the University of Wisconsin when Sputnik was launched. I was just a freshman, and I immediately signed up for the very first space science course that was ever taught in an American university by Werner Sumi, a wonderful pioneering space scientist who contributed a lot to the atmospheric studies of the planets. Sumi taught a space science course. I never forget him walking into class on the first day because we were in awe of space. And he said, you know, us space scientists get up in the morning, our wives yell at us, we put our pants on one leg at a time. We're just normal people.

And that isn't the only thing I learned in this course, but it was my first exposure to space, and I made my determination then to make that my career. It was the cutting edge. And I think more importantly, it needs to be understood that it motivated a lot of students. We had the National Defense Education Act passed so that people could go into these careers, and the idea was that it was important to keep American youth educated in science and technology, and isn't that a lesson for today? And don't you wish that maybe the Russians or some other country would shock us again so that we would emphasize this importance of scientific

literacy, of education, of getting involved in things that have great achievements and great legacies. Well, amen to that. One more question, and I will throw you a curve with this, but you're along. You've been a baseball fan longer than you've been a space fan, I think, so you should be ready for this. What would you like to see, and what do you think humanity is capable for the next 50 years of the space age? Now, wait a minute. What does this have to do with baseball?

It's a curve. It's a curve to do with baseball? It's a curve. It's a curve. Oh, you did throw me a curve. Well, I was glad the Major League playoffs begin today. I'm missing them over here in Russia. And that's actually the most annoying part of the trip. Well, if you want to say something nice about the Yankees, we'll save a second for that, too.

No, I'll keep that for another comment. But I think for the next 50 years, to me, and I emphasize this over and over again, you can't predict results. We couldn't have predicted results. We've had the universe, the solar system, the planets will continue to surprise us. What I think is exciting is that we continue the adventure. And so what I wish for the next 50 years is to have lots of adventures and lots of discoveries. I expect them on Mars. Maybe we'll get lucky and get them on Europa or on an asteroid.

Maybe we'll have adventures in the solar sail development leading to interstellar flight. I can't predict what they'll all be, and if I did, I'd end up getting them all wrong. But what I think is important is that the sense of exploration, of having adventure that's inspiring and having discoveries which teach us things about ourselves, our universe, and our own planet. We have enormous problems with understanding what's going on on Earth and what changes and what the effects of those changes will be on mankind, space is contributing a lot to that. And if we keep this sense of discovery and adventure, we'll have a better world. Thanks, Lou, and happy anniversary.

Well, thank you, and happy anniversary to all who are inspired about space exploration. Lou Friedman is the executive director of the Planetary Society. He is in Russia, where it got started 50 years ago, this very day as we speak, October 4, 1957, the launch of Sputnik 1. He's there not just to celebrate, though, but to help build, to continue that legacy. We will return with a bit of our own legacy.

That'll be Bruce Betts with this week's edition of What's Up right after this visit. Return visit by Emily. I'm Emily Lakdawalla back with Q&A. How do we know that the SNCC meteorites came from Mars? We know they came from a rocky world with at least some recent geologic activity, so they have to be from Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mars, or Io. Mercury is out because the powerful gravity of the nearby Sun prevents any impact ejecta from getting out to Earth. Io can be eliminated for the same reason, because Jupiter's gravity is too

strong. Rocks from Earth and the Moon can be launched by impacts and return to Earth as meteorites, but Earth and Moon rocks have diagnostic proportions of three radioactive isotopes of oxygen. The SNCC meteorites have a totally different oxygen makeup. That leaves Venus and Mars. There is a small possibility that rocks from Venus could land on Earth, but Venus's thick atmosphere and closer position to the Sun makes it much harder to get rocks off the ground and out to Earth's orbit, making Mars more likely.

And a smoking gun has been found in a couple of SNCC meteorites in the form of tiny gas bubbles trapped inside volcanic glass. This gas was found to have the same composition as Mars's atmosphere as measured by the Viking landers. And since these couple of SNICs have the same oxygen isotope composition as all the other SNICs, we can deduce that all the SNICs are Martian rocks. 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. Here he is, Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society. And I'm thinking he's going to tell us about the night sky. Wow, you're like psychic or something. Yeah, isn't it? I'm good at that. Five years of doing this. How could you have ever known that? What can I say? It's a gift.

Speaking of gifts, we have the gift of beautiful objects in the sky. Come out and see them. Jupiter in the evening, brightest star-like object over in the west, going to be dropping lower and lower over coming weeks. So get Jupiter out of your system pretty soon. If you want a challenge, shortly after sunset, look below Jupiter. Not at the sun, but pull out some binoculars after the sun sets. And look for Mercury.

Mercury is having kind of a lame apparition. But it is out there. And in fact, I'll go ahead and point out that, gosh, in the sky, it's really close to the moon on October 12. Of course, you'll be hard pressed to see that. Things you can see very easily Mars coming up in the late evening in the east looking like that reddish star like object that it looks like and will be high in the pre dawn and in the pre dawn, look to the east and see Venus looking like the brightest star-like object, just dominating the sky over there in Leo. It's also not that far off from Regulus. But if you look below Venus, you'll check out Saturn,

also looking like a bright star but not nearly as bright. And Saturn and Venus are going to snuggle up on October 15th. They're going gonna be getting within almost as close as one degree apart in the sky staxo planets staxo planets and uh and snuggle planets and if you want even more planets pull out some binoculars pull out a telescope go check out uranus and neptune they're both up in the evening sky you're gonna want to go find a find your chart out there on the web to do such things. But they're out there, and Uranus being just beyond visible,

or maybe if it's really, really dark and you have really, really good eyesight, you might see it. But it's never going to happen for me. Yeah, so go with the binoculars or the telescope. But they're well placed in the evening sky, early evening. Check them out if you can. Let us go on. Speaking of good eyesight, let's go on to this week in space history. Someone who had very good eyesight, presumably Chuck Yeager,

broke the sound barrier 60 years ago this week. Hey. Good, huh? That's very nice. Have you been practicing? Oh, yeah. Yeah, for years now. Can you do sound effects for the rest of the show?

Yeah, you just have to, you know, give me a clue. Give me a hint. What do you want? Want the space shuttle? Sure. Oh, very nice. That's what we hear. Double shockwave.

Yeah, yeah. That's what we hear when it goes into Edwards Air Force Base. Rattles the windows in my office. Yep. I scared you there, too, didn't I? I was a little spooked. I'm having a little trouble recovering. Okay.

Okay. Random space Fact! Ooh, a little spooked is right. Halloween getting closer. Trying to sound like one of those really annoying devices that have the motion sensors. You walk by and they make those annoying noises. I hate them. We have one.

And I hate it every time I come home, reach the front door, I want to throw the thing across the street. I hate them. Every time I come home, reach the front door, I want to throw the thing across the street. I hate them. Well, speaking of throwing things, not across the street, but across the solar system, Dawn spacecraft successfully launched, yay, is headed out, and it will be the first, it is the first planetary mission ever to attempt to orbit around two celestial bodies, not including Earth, and headed to the asteroid's Vesta, where it will try to orbit there,

and then head off to the asteroid Ceres, this enabled by its ion propulsion that's fuel efficient and allows them to do this. It also will have a Mars flyby on the way. Yeah, and I had no idea that there was a Mars flyby involved. You know, you really can't get enough of Mars flybys. No. Some kind of flyby.

So you'll get that little gravitational assist effect helping them out on their way out to Vesta in August of 2011. We'll talk to them again soon. We'll talk to somebody with that wonderful mission. February 2015. It's a very neat mission. Let's go on to the trivia contest. Oh, yeah.

You might be in trouble with a few people on this one. Hopefully they'll forgive me. I gave you all the information you needed, as Ellery Queen used to say. You did indeed. It wasn't a trick. But it was trickier than usual. We asked you what is the name of NASA's planet hunting mission planned to launch within the next couple years and selected in the Discovery Program? And the answer being Kepler. Kepler scheduled to launch in February 2009.

And what did people think of that? Well, most people got Kepler, but a few, an otherwise very responsible few, said Planet Quest Sim or just Sim, the space interferometry mission. Although I guess it's just now Planet Quest Sim. But see, that has never been a discovery mission. So Kepler was the correct answer. Indeed. Also, it's not launching in a couple of years, although I guess there are websites that say

such things. Yeah, they need to be updated, I guess. I think that's what's going on. But you know what? We did get plenty of people, as I said, who said Kepler. One of them was Vince Adams of DeKalb, Illinois. Vince, congratulations. Your correct answer, just won you a Planetary Radio t-shirt.

Congratulations. Kepler, a neat mission. Could discover literally thousands of extrasolar planets and perhaps as many as 50 or so Earth-size extrasolar planets, watching them by measuring this tiny drop in light as they cross in front of their parent stars. Watching them as they watch back at us. And Kepler the man.

The myth, the legend. Nancy Atkinson. Johannes. You've got to hear this. Nancy did have the answer right, but your name didn't come up, Nancy, this time. Keep trying. But she did give us this from Kepler. It was Kepler who said, but who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited?

Sounds like something a pirate would say. If they be inhabited. Arr. But get this. Here's another quote. Now, she did paraphrase a little bit here, but it is another Kepler quote. The diversity of the phenomena of planetary radio is so great, and the treasures hidden in planetary radio so rich, Wow. He said that?

Yeah. Cool. Now, I said she paraphrased a little bit. But not the part about planetary radio. Heck no. Oh, okay. New contest. Dawn, as I mentioned, will be the first spacecraft to orbit two other worlds besides the Earth.

What was the first spacecraft to do flybys, science flybys in this case, of two other worlds besides the Earth? Should be considerably more straightforward. May have even asked it before, but it's a good fact to know. So go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to send us your intro when you're typing it in on your keyboard. Typing it on their keyboard. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click.

I don't know. What do you want? I'm not in that union. Look, a dog. Woof. Oh, gosh. When do they need to get that in by, Fido? By October 15.

That would be Monday at 2 p.m. Pacific time, October 15. We'd love to give you a Planetary Radio t-shirt. We would indeed. And Matt will do the sound effect of Planetary Radio t-shirts arriving in the mail. The mail's here! Yay! All right, everybody, go out there, look out for the night sky,

and think about the joys of exponential notation. Thank you, and good night. That's Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. More cubed than squared brings us What's Up every week here on Planetary Radio. That's it.

That's the sound that emanated from a polished ball of metal circling the Earth in October of 1957. I was three years old. I wouldn't begin to feel the thrill of the final frontier until I was about seven, as Yuri Gagarin, John Glenn, and their colleagues started going where only machines had gone before. As you may have guessed, that thrill has never abated, but the world has changed, hasn't it? There are still many of us who are true believers, zealots even, and we sometimes find it hard to fathom why there are so many more of our fellow passengers on Spaceship Earth

who have moved on to other concerns and joys. One of the remaining true believers is Neil deGrasse Tyson, head of the Hayden Planetarium in New York and president of the Planetary Society. Neil has also wondered where everyone went after the first two or four humans walked on the moon. He looked back at history and saw that there are just three reasons societies have now and then managed to sustain an extended period of exploration—for profit, for advantage over a perceived enemy, or for the greater glory of—and you get to fill in the blank. We may spout on about the human need to explore, to

expand our knowledge, to answer the eternal why, but our friends, lovers, and countrymen are moved by other incentives. So what will it take? A new space race, maybe? But this time it might be a for-profit as much as national prestige. Whether it's mining helium-3, building solar power satellites, or paying your bill at an orbiting Hilton, the money will come. But what of the edge? That leading or bleeding edge of what we know, where all the real excitement is? It looks like that one is up to you and me, the true believers. So keep the faith, cherish the dream, and find your way to help make it happen. And keep your eyes on the stars. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California.

Have a great week. Thank you.