Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Columbia Experiment Recovered!

Episode Date: May 5, 2003

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This is Planetary Radio. Hello everyone, I'm Matt Kaplan. Space Shuttle Columbia carried scores of scientific experiments. When tragedy struck, it was assumed those experiments were lost, Space Shuttle Columbia carried scores of scientific experiments. When tragedy struck, it was assumed those experiments were lost, along with the heroes that accompanied them high above the Earth. Now it appears the impossible may have happened. We'll talk with Lou Friedman of the Planetary Society and David Warmflash, co-principal investigator for one of those experiments.

They are at the Kennedy Space Center, and they have quite a tale to tell. Later, we'll talk with Bruce Betts about what's up. First, though, here's an encore presentation of Q&A with Emily. I'll be back in just a minute. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, I heard that it actually rains diamonds on Neptune. Is that true? How?

We asked Laura Benedetti, who published the Diamonds on Neptune story in Science magazine, to answer the question. Yes, it's probably true that diamonds rained on Neptune at least early in its history and possibly still today. The atmospheres of both Uranus and Neptune contain methane, a simple molecule containing carbon. The conditions deep inside these planets are extreme, with very high pressures due to the weight of overlying material

and very high temperatures left over from the gravitational energy of planetary formation. In laboratory experiments simulating these extreme conditions, methane becomes unstable and breaks down, and pure carbon is formed as diamond. If the same reaction occurs in the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune, the resulting diamonds would drop like rain or hail, or maybe like grains of sand sinking to the ocean floor. What other weird environments exist in our solar system?

Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out. We are not quite live, but almost so, talking with Lou Friedman, and he is at Cape Canaveral. Lou, where are you exactly? Well, we're on the Kennedy Space Center at the Operations and Checkout Building, or the ONC building, as it's called. And what is happening with the gobs experiment well it's a uh... remarkable piece of news that we got uh... several weeks ago uh... that the uh... experiment uh... that we sponsored on the columbia flight uh... shuttle columbia flight uh... was recovered and uh... indeed uh... we're here today uh... with the science team

uh... and including uh... david warm flash uh Aaron Schenker from Israel to recover the experiment. It was recovered from shuttle debris. It was, of course, taken care of by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. They have allowed the experimenters now to recover their experiments from their samples from the experiment box. So we're here at the ONC building, and as I speak, there's one team that's pulling the block out of the box that it was carried on the shuttle with, and another team of scientists who are ready to try and pull their samples out of that block itself. scientists who are ready to try and pull their samples out of that block itself.

And I take it that although the carrier for the experiment appeared to be in reasonably good shape, there is some damage to the interior? Well, as we look at the box that it was carried in, it's integral. It's certainly a whole box. It's got a lot of heat damage. It's integral. It's certainly a whole box. It's got a lot of heat damage, and so we didn't know, and we don't know exactly what the conditions are inside the experiment. But as they opened the box, which took a lot of work because it wasn't all aligned.

There had been some damage from the impact as well as from the heat. But as they opened the box, it did look like the things inside of it were, again, whole, which is the good news, but clearly had been shifted and damaged, and there was some bending of the metal, and that's why it's not quite very easy to open up the box. And whereas we hoped, Matt, to be able to give you a complete report today on what we found in the experiment. We can't do that yet because we literally are in the process right now of just trying to figure out what has survived inside the experiment. Now, we should mention that as we speak, it's Monday afternoon where you are in Florida. And really, this has all just happened, what, over the last couple of hours? That's right. Work began this morning at about 9 o'clock when the person from the ITA company,

who is responsible for this commercial payload, Gobs was included as part of a commercial payload on the experiment. He went over and recovered, got the shuttle experiment itself from the people who were taking charge of the shuttle debris, brought it over to the laboratory here at the ONC building. Could you maybe review for us this rather, I mean, really nearly miraculous recovery of this experiment? We will, in a few minutes, talk to Dr. David Wormflash, who we've spoken to a couple of previous times on the program. He is one of the principal investigators. But maybe, Lou, if you could take us through

how it was that the investigators and the Society learned that this experiment might be recovered. Well, it is a remarkable story. First of all, we thank Dr. Wormflash for actually bringing it to the Planetary Society's attention and then having us sponsor the experiment. And the particular thing that intrigued us, too,

was enabling students for peace participation to bring a Palestinian and Israeli student onto the experiment team and be part of the analysis. And they now get basically a chance to do that experiment, whereas they thought that all was lost. And I can tell you those students are overjoyed at this opportunity. It's a bittersweet opportunity, of course, because nothing will erase the tragedy of Columbia. It was quite by chance that several of the people involved, including ITA people and also Dr. Shanker, noticed that this experiment survived when they were looking at pictures of debris.

And through the efforts of many people, including both Warm Flash and Shanker and ITA, they made inquiries to the accident board to get permission to recover this experiment, and that permission resulted in basically arrangements being made about a week ago. Come down here. You can have your experiment. We'll give it to you. This kind of a result, this kind of a recovery, is, as far as I know, unprecedented, A result, this kind of a recovery is, as far as I know, unprecedented,

although we have heard about another experiment that may also have been recovered from the shuttle Columbia. That's right. There was an experiment with actually living worms on them that turned out to have been recovered, and also those experimenters got their science back this week as well. So it is miraculous. It's a very, very small part of the whole story of Columbia, of course. But the work of science and space exploration goes on through many triumphs and many tragedies. And this has been true in history. This is one tiny little story in the whole scheme of science.

in history. This is one tiny little story in the whole scheme of science, but for those people involved now, it is one that is as graphical as any of the other major triumphs and tragedies. I wonder if you've thought about the meaning of this, the fact that there may be some tangible research results from that mission which is otherwise ended as such a disaster. Well, that's true, of course, Matt, but I can tell you I think that was a statement you could from that mission which has otherwise ended as such a disaster. Well, that's true, of course, Matt. But I can tell you I think that was a statement you could have made even independent of this experiment or any recovered experiment. The course of space exploration and the course of scientific inquiry goes on. You learn from your errors and problems and mistakes and accidents

as you learn from results and knowledge and discoveries. So I think the statement that we recover something when all otherwise is lost could be made in either case. Lou, in a couple of minutes, we'll take a break and then we'll come back and talk with Dr. David Warmflash. But I want to give you a chance, even though you're not ready to talk about the results of it yet, to at least mention a workshop that the Planetary Society co-sponsored with a couple of other very prestigious agencies, which is actually looking at what follows the Columbia disaster. Well, Planetary Society is devoted to the future of human space exploration,

and in particular, human exploration beyond Earth orbit. We've been stuck in Earth orbit for some 20 years. It's time to be looking to send humans on real exploratory ventures. And that's basically the whole rationale for why the public supports a space program. So the Planetary Society, joined with the Association of Space Explorers and the American Astronautical Society in sponsoring a workshop on the future of human space transportation for such exploration. And we will have results that I think will be maybe a little controversial,

but they'll be with one objective that everyone will agree in mind, and that is our determination that human exploration beyond Earth orbit should be revitalized and continue, and if anything, encouraged. All right, Lou, we'll watch for the results of that workshop, which just took place barely a week ago, at the Planetary Society website, planetary.org, and perhaps we'll get an update here on Planetary Radio. As promised, after we take a quick break, we're going to let you put David Warmflash on the phone, one of the principal investigators in the GOBS experiment,

and we'll let you go back to maybe helping to pry the experiment out of its container. I've got to go get my hammer and chisel and start pounding on that box. Thanks very much. Thank you. And, yeah, do talk to Dr. Warmflash about the GOBS experiment and, indeed, about the science that they're looking forward to doing on this. Will do. Thank you very much, Lou.

Lou Friedman is the executive director of the Planetary Society. Planetary Radio will continue right after this. This is Buzz Aldrin. Planetary Radio will continue right after this. 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. You can learn about these adventures and exciting new discoveries from space exploration in The Planetary Report. The Planetary Report is the Society's full-color magazine. It's just one of many member benefits.

You can learn more by calling 1-877-PLANETS. That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387. And you can catch up on space exploration news and developments at our exciting and informative website, PlanetarySociety.org. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Dr. David Warmflash, one of the co-principal investigators in the GOBS experiment, joins us on the phone now. David, this is your third appearance on the show, a bit happier than your last one, I think. Well, the last one, as I remember, was just the day after the crash or the day of the crash, something like that.

The day after, I believe. The only way you could go from that is up. And, in fact, you have. Oh, yeah. Congratulations to you and the team on what I said as I was talking to Lou is really not much short of a miraculous recovery of your experiment, what we hope will still have the results that you can recover from the GOBS experiment. Can you tell us a little bit, just review for us, what GOBS is all about?

Well, GOBS stands for growth of bacterial biofilms on surfaces during spaceflight. Now, what do we mean by surfaces? We're talking about little tiny chips of basalt rock material, which is the same type of material that makes up the kind of meteorites that have traveled from Mars to Earth. Now, a biofilm is an arrangement in biology wherein you have different species of bacteria living together side by side and kind of growing on a surface like that

and sort of sharing nutrients and forming kind of a matrix outside the cells, which they share as well, kind of like the stuff that forms on your teeth when you don't brush them enough and plaque builds up. Plaque is a biofilm. But the advantage of that in astrobiology, or if we're taking over the possibility of life transferring from planet to planet in meteorites, is it actually can protect the organisms and maybe help them to survive the harsh conditions of space.

What we wanted to see in this shuttle experiment was to check one condition, that's the condition of weightlessness, just to see if weightlessness makes a difference in terms of the bacteria ability to form biofilms on this basalt material, the material of the meteorite. What is it that gives you hope that the results have not been spoiled by the heat, by the impact that the experiment carrier have undergone? Well, we have to look at what factors could spoil the results. And we don't know yet.

I want to emphasize we don't know if they're spoiled or not. We might very well find that as we open up this device to look at the wells themselves. as we open up this device to look at the wells themselves. The wells are the little holes in which the reagents and the little rock materials were put before the flight. Now, what could complicate the results? The first thing that could complicate it is if our control samples are confused with the samples that are exposed to the bacteria. In the space flight, some of the samples are exposed to the bacteria.

In space flight, some of the samples were exposed to the bacteria cultures, but for comparison, we had some which were not exposed to bacteria and were just exposed to the nutrient solution in which we had these bacteria cultures just to make sure that we're not seeing just a buildup of that when we look with the electron microscope. Now, if some of the little rock chips, which are designated being a certain well, if they ended up mixed with rocks, let's say control rail rocks and bacteria-exposed rocks, end up in the same wells because part of the device was shifted over, so things from some wells ended up in wells where they're not supposed to be, then you wouldn't have a way to tell those apart.

But as far as we can see so far, on one of the two blocks that was removed, there was no shifting, so there would not have been transfer material. On the other, it slid over but only about halfway, blocks that was removed, there was no shifting, so there would not have been transfer material. On the other, it slid over but only about halfway, and we have to see if that allowed for these things, which are about a millimeter across, to move into the wrong well from the one in which they're supposed to be. That's the, for us, for our experiment, that's the most serious complication. There are some other small ones, but that's the major one. Sounds like you're encouraged.

Yes, but there are some others, as I mentioned. Near the edges, near the sides and near the front and the back of the long way, it looks like there might be some melting of a little bit of plastic material. Now, the wells are not made out of plastic. They're made out of something called deldron, which is like Teflon, so it can survive a high temperature. But there's some plastic material from the outside that might have interfered with wells that are near the end. But we're spread out through a lot of wells, so it might, in the end, have to do with seeing out of the 20 or 25 wells

that we have distributed between controls and bacteria-exposed samples if we get enough of each one so that we can really get some useful data out of it. I think there's a good chance we'll get some of them recovered. I certainly hope so. Where are these wells, where are these samples headed? You mentioned an electron microscope, so obviously to a lab. Chris Wells, where are these samples headed? You mentioned an electron microscope, so obviously to a lab.

Yeah, what will happen is, provided we get that out between today and tomorrow, actually I have very little small test tubes, and we'll transfer the little solid materials into the test tubes with a little bit of the preservative that's in there with them just to make sure nothing else grows on them in the meantime so we know we're not looking for something that grew on Earth. And then those will go with us back to Houston, actually a little diversion to San Antonio for the Aerospace Medicine Conference where we're going directly after that.

And then we will, over the next few weeks, they'll be examined with Dr. David McKay of the NASA Johnson Space Center Astrobiology Institute with a process called scanning electron microscopy, which is a type of electron microscopy that gives you a three-dimensional picture. And we'll just basically take the pictures, and then we'll analyze them together with the whole team in Tel Aviv. And we'll do that with the two students, Yuval Landau, who's a student in Tel Aviv University, and Tariq Adwan, who is a student in Pennsylvania, but he's from Bethlehem in the West Bank,

and we'll bring him into Israel. And everybody on the science team, Aaron Shanker and I and two students, will go through and we'll analyze the electron micrographs and we'll begin to see if we have anything, if weightlessness makes a difference in the biofilm formation. That's all if we get enough of these samples recovered. David, I'm glad you brought up the two students who have been such an important part of this experiment.

Have you been in touch with them? Yeah, I've been in touch with both of them over the last week. I found they're very excited about the prospect of getting something out of this whole tragedy. about the prospect of getting something out of this whole tragedy. We all know that this is kind of a bittersweet outcome, as Lou mentioned just now. On the other hand, the accidents already happened. The astronauts are gone. We're mourning them.

We can't go back in time. But one of the things that the astronauts emphasized was their interest in the science. This was a science mission, and that they felt a part of the science. So in a way, for those of us involved in the science, our relationship with the astronauts was, this was one of the focal points of that relationship. So in that aspect of their lives, and it is just one aspect, but that is sort of maybe a way for them to live on, that something to which they contributed can go on and contribute to human society and the advancement of human knowledge in that way. And in that way, I think that they will live forever. David, we'll have to call it quits there. I want to wish you the best of luck, continuing luck, with this amazing turn of events.

And again, we will follow the progress with the recovery of the GOBS experiment at the Planetary Society website, planetary.org. And I suspect we'll probably have you back again before too long, I hope, here on Planetary Radio. We'll be very happy to come back, especially if we do get some results. David Warmflash is a co-principal investigator on the GODS experiment. He is at the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida, with Lou Friedman of the Planetary Society, in the process of freeing this experiment from its container

which survived the crash of the Space Shuttle Columbia. Planetary Radio will continue in just a moment. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. Diamond rainfall on Uranus and Neptune is just one example of an environment in our solar system that could never exist on Earth. There are plenty of other strange places in the solar system. Our sister planet Venus' carbon dioxide atmosphere is so thick that it behaves more like the ocean than the sky. If you were able to stand the crushing pressure on the surface of Venus, you wouldn't be able to see far through the dense air,

and you'd feel the constant gentle push of fluid currents. The largest moon in the solar system, Titan, is a world unto itself with a thick atmosphere that probably hides oceans of liquid methane or ethane. If you could stand on Jupiter's moon Io, you would witness constant fire fountains of volcanic eruptions. The lava, ejected directly into the cold vacuum of space, would quickly quench into rounded glass droplets and rain back onto the surface. And because Io is tidally locked with Jupiter,

the enormous planet would always appear to sit in the same place in the sky, a giant striped ball 40 times wider than the moon appears in our sky. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org, and you may hear it answered by a leading space scientist or expert. Be sure to provide your name and how to pronounce it, and tell us where you're from. And now, here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Bruce Betts is here with What's Up.

Bruce, what mysterious and romantic locale do we find you in this week? Well, this week I'm talking to you excitedly from my home. Oh, that is romantic and mysterious indeed. So what's up? And let's keep it that way. What's up? We've got our four planets, Saturn and Jupiter in the evening sky, Jupiter being the really easy one to spot in the evening, brightest thing in the sky. Venus is low just before sunrise, but extremely bright in the east, and Mars you'll find in

the southeast around dawn, looking orangish-reddish in the sky. We also, for some of you with the right equipment, can view Mercury this week on May 7th. There is a transit, what is called a transit of Mercury, where Mercury crosses between us and the sun, and so it transits across the face of the sun. This is visible only with telescopes with the proper solar filter, but if you have that, you can do this. Otherwise, it's a dangerous thing to do. And you can look for any of the details of times and things like that.

I won't go into. You can find on many sites, including skyandtelescope.com. But the other interesting piece is basically it's great if you live in half the world, including Europe and Asia, Australia. It's really not visible from the Americas particularly, except a little bit from the northeast, say the northeast U.S. and eastern Canada. So that would appear as a spot through the telescope going across the disk of the sun. These things don't happen too often. We also have something else this week, yet another in my continuing reports on Lamo meteor showers.

We've got the Eta Aquarids. And if you're in the northern hemisphere, I would just ignore them. If you're in the southern hemisphere, you might see something decent, a couple dozen or more meteors. And this would be on May 5th and 6th, the night of May 5th and 6th, the Eta Aquarius. Now, the interesting thing about these meteors is that this meteor shower is from stuff left from Halley's Comet. It's in the orbit of Halley's Comet. The Earth crossed Halley's Comet's orbit twice a year. So it's just a trail of crud out there, and this is one half of that crud.

This is half of the crud. We'll get back to the other half a little later in the show. On to this week in space history. May 5, 1961, really big day for the American space program. Alan Shepard made a suborbital flight above the Freedom 7 Mercury spacecraft to become the first American in space. Which leads us to random space fact. A space shuttle and its boosters, ready for launch,

are the same height as the Statue of Liberty, but weigh almost three times as much. Wow. Since the Statue of Liberty is hollow, I'm one of those people who's climbed around inside it, and the space shuttle is not hollow. This takes us on to our trivia contest. Let's start with where we were last week. Last week's question, what type of ship is in the Planetary Society's logo, including nationality? How did we do on this, Matt?

Well, we and the audience did pretty well. Everyone got it right, except for one person who said it looked like a Spanish galleon, and this happened to be a guy who wrote to us from Spain. So I'm not saying there was any bias there, but everybody else got it right, and the correct answer is... A Dutch caravel. Now, how would people have found that? Well, the cleanest way would be to look

on our website, and it's discussed. But, if you are into ships of the sailing eras of the 16th, 17th centuries or so, then you would recognize it as a caravel based upon its structure and number of sails and such.

The Dutch part would be a little tougher to figure out, and we have been told before it does look a little like a Spanish caravel, however, not a Spanish galleon. But it is deemed to be a Dutch caravel from the original discussion of what the logo of the Planetary Society should be. Well, our winner, chosen randomly from all the correct answers, is Wanda Banks.

Wanda Banks of Southern Pines, North Carolina. Congratulations. You'll be getting this week's prize. And, Bruce, I'm not sure it's going to be a Carl Sagan Memorial Station T-shirt anymore because we're about out of them. It might be a Mars 3D poster. Well, I've got a couple of pencils in my office if that doesn't work. Well, we'll throw them in.

They can go into the middle of the poster tube if we have to, I guess. Okay, but there always will be a prize for the winner. Speaking of which, this coming week, answer the following question to win the mystery prize. What is the other meteor shower that is also

Halley's Comet Crud? The Earth passes through Halley's Comet's orbit twice a year. Once is the Eta Aquarids that are happening right now. There is another meteor shower later in the year. What is its name? Go to planetary.org, follow the links to Planetary Radio, and let us know what you think.

Commentary Crud. I think this is more merchandise the Society will be able to sell in little vials. Get the answer right, and who knows? Maybe you'll get some commentary crud. Bruce Betts is with us every week with What's Up. Bruce, we will speak to you again next time, and you'll have much more for us in this feature we call What's Up. We will indeed, and remember, look up in the night sky

and think about commentary crud. With that, I say thank you and goodbye. and remember, look up in the night sky and think about cometary crud. With that, I say thank you and goodbye. Bruce Betts is the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. That's it for this week's Planetary Radio. Let us know what you think of the show. Our email address is planetaryradio, all one word, at planetary.org.

See you next time.