Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Cosmos 1: Solar Sail Special Report

Episode Date: June 27, 2005

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Thank you. to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. Is Cosmos One a failure? We'll get answers from Project Director Lou Friedman and others on the solar sail team, including more of Emily Lakdawalla's solar sail diary. We'll also hear how that team is already looking to the future. And Bruce Betts will once again reveal what's up with the solar system and his latest trivia contest. Before we get to our special Cosmos One coverage,

here's a look at other space news. There's no question about the success of Mars Express. The European Space Agency's orbiter has now completed deployment of all three giant booms or antennas, with a total length of more than 150 feet. Testing of the ground-penetrating radar instrument has begun, with the first look beneath the surface of the red planet scheduled for the 4th of July. More details at planetary.org. NASA will be sharing some final considerations regarding

the readiness of Space Shuttle Discovery. The agency has scheduled a press conference and is expected to announce the official launch date, which is likely to be in mid to late July. Meanwhile, Discovery sits on Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in final preparation for return to flight. And all systems are go for Deep Impact to live up to its name. Many of Earth's biggest telescopes will be pointed at Comet Tempel 1 on July 3rd or 4th, depending on your time zone. They'll be watching for the flash of light that will indicate an explosively successful collision.

Tune in to next week's show for a special report. Anticipated launch in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, launch. We have nominal launch. So he's calling that we have the nominal launch. One moment, Moscow, this is Pasadena, please listen. We are waiting for a message from Severomorsk. Severomorsk is the Russian naval base that will send confirmation that there was a launch or was not. You hear the voice of the Russian translator in Moscow.

It's the female voice we heard. What should be happening now is a rocket burn. The first stage is already probably separated if there was a nominal launch. The Volna rocket burn occurs for a period of approximately six minutes with three stages. Then there will be a long coasting phase of several minutes before the kick motor, the effect of fourth stage. Bruce Betts, acting as mission commentator for the Cosmos 1 launch on Tuesday, June 21, 2005. He spoke to a mass of television cameras, reporters,

and special guests packed into the headquarters of the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, all silent, all listening to the telephone connection to Mission Operations Moscow, where Project Director Lou Friedman and others were also listening for confirmation that the nominal or scheduled liftoff from a Russian Navy submarine had actually taken place. In terms of tracking and communication with the spacecraft, the first tracking station that will pick it up is a portable tracking station in Kamchatka, also known as... I don't know if you heard that.

The flight is normal. The first stage is separated. Ah, great. Well, I didn't hear that. Please just look at it. Relay. Okay, good. Now, the announcement was that the launch was normal,

and so we assume a relatively normal launch time. The rocket still should be burning. So very positive news, to say the least. Sadly, this would be the last entirely positive news. It quickly became apparent that something had gone wrong, though no one knew what. As Project Operations Assistant, Emily Lakdawalla was sitting in the Pasadena counterpart to Mission Operations Moscow, anxiously waiting for updates. Launch plus three hours. While it was exciting to hear that the launch happened, we at POP haven't celebrated yet.

We're waiting for the first signal to be detected. There was sort of a detection at Petropavlovsk, but it was weak and noisy. And then there was no detection at Maduro. Also, there was some data that was received from the launch vehicle about 200 or 250 seconds after the launch. After that, there may have been something wrong with the launch vehicle or some ambiguity in the data. But what that ambiguity is, we don't understand, because the only information on it came via cell phone from the Navy at Severomorsk. No one here or in Moscow has seen what that data looks like. But what we're most concerned about is that Strategic Command hasn't seen the spacecraft. That is really bad news. The data is noisy, and we just don't know where our spacecraft is. Sorry, everybody,

I wish I had more info to share with you. I'll return as soon as I have something to say. But more information would arrive at an excruciatingly slow rate. Despite the lack I'll return as soon as I have something to say. Ann Druyan, head of project underwriter Cosmos Studios, and widow of Planetary Society founder Carl Sagan. Ann spoke as project director Lou Friedman listened from Moscow. You know, obviously there's some unknown aspects to this, and we'll look forward to getting the information. What I like about science and engineering is that it's straightforward and honest. Whatever we discover from this mission, if it's not a success, we'll still learn from it. You know, the way to the stars is hard.

Ad Astra Per Aspera, through hard work. I feel just as inspired and just as committed, and I know I speak for Joe Firmage and Kent Gibson at Cosmos Studios, just as committed, and I know I speak for Joe Firmage and Kent Gibson at Cosmos Studios, that we are open to new dreams and to try again to realize this dream. And we'll do everything we can to make that happen. The honor of working with everyone at the Planetary Society and the trust, confidence, the commitment of its 80,000 members is inspiring. And we should really keep on keeping on.

So go to planetary.org, join us, help us. Go to solar sail.org and see what we have there. And we'll see you guys another day. I just want to add, I just want to disagree with one word you used, and that's straightforward. Right now there's nothing straightforward in this data. Right, but when we do know it, we just say it as it really is. Yes, no, I know exactly what you meant.

And I've got to remind everybody that, in a sense, we've made some extra heroic efforts with these portable stations to get that tracking, and we're using a somewhat marginal pass over the first tracking station over the ground network at Banska Vasa in Moscow. But by no means have they made any conclusions at this point, and I don't think we should. Launch plus nine hours. We have a live spacecraft, we think.

We got spacecraft telemetry data from Kamchatka. We feel reasonably confident that what we saw was real signal. And in going back through the Majuro data, Viktor Krasanovich reported this afternoon that we now think we got about 10 seconds of data from that pass. And that 10 seconds of data is consistent enough with the stuff from Kamchatka that we're pretty sure that Viktor saw something that originated from Cosmos 1. Panskaves also reportedly saw some similar kind of data with similar kinds of patterns. So what this means is that we are probably in orbit, but it's not the orbit that we thought it was. So now we search. If we're in the wrong orbit,

it could take days to find Cosmos 1. Where to look? Odds are, if there was a problem with the launch vehicle, the launch vehicle more likely underperformed than overperformed. That means our orbit is more likely elliptical than circular and also lower, and therefore faster than we expect. If it underperformed too much, we could be dipping dangerously low in the atmosphere, which could make us spiral down to Earth. Without knowing where the spacecraft is, it becomes harder and harder to find as we go out from the launch date. But we won't stop looking. I'll let you know what we find out. The media representatives would trickle out over the launch date, but we won't stop looking. I'll let you know what we find out. The media representatives would trickle out over the next few hours, many having filed stories with open endings. Around the world, anxious fans of the mission were coming directly to the source

for updates. Over the course of that week, the Planetary Society website would receive well over 30 million hits. The next day, a much smaller group would gather to assess the project and begin to consider next steps. Bill Nye the Science Guy arrived a few minutes late, carrying a styrofoam cooler full of champagne and sparkling cider. The vice president of the Planetary Society then proposed a toast. Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking. No, I just thanks everybody for your very hard work.

I mean, we didn't, we did all we could here. And I think everybody feels that it's time to try Cosmos 2. Don't we feel that way? I mean, we could pull it off. So here's to Cosmos 2. Cheers. Oh, I think to Lou Fried 2. To Lou Friedman. To Lou Friedman.

And yet, the story of Cosmos 1 is still not complete. An exclusive conversation with Project Director Lou Friedman when Planetary Radio continues in one minute. This is Buzz Aldrin. When I walked on the moon, I knew it was just the beginning of humankind's great adventure in the solar system. That's why I'm a member of in one minute. 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. We go now to the man at the center of the Cosmos 1 project. Lou Friedman literally of the Cosmos One project. Lou Friedman literally wrote the book on solar sailing. The executive director of the Planetary Society had only been back in the United States for a few hours when he joined us. Lou, welcome back.

Thank you, Matt. It's good to be back. I wish it was with happier circumstances, but I am glad to be back. It was with happier circumstances, but I am glad to be back. I wanted to start with some of the reactions that were pouring in while you were in Moscow and continue to pour in an amazing number of email messages and other correspondence with the Planetary Society, many of them expressing really heartfelt condolences, but a fair number of congratulatory messages as well. Are both appropriate? I think both are appropriate. In fact, I think the congratulatory messages in some ways might be more appropriate because really what they're congratulating us and the whole team for is effort.

You know, you can never succeed if you don't try. And so the trying is the first part of it. And I think everybody appreciates that we did. And this is part of the space business. We've known that for many years. There's been no ventures in space that haven't been accompanied by some failures along the line in their development or in their predecessors or in ways we do things. It's true in the big programs. It's true in the human spaceflight program. And it's true in the robotic program. And it's true in the human spaceflight program, and it's true in the robotic program, and it's true in the little technology ventures that we sometimes start out on. So I'm very proud.

I'm very proud of our team. I'm proud of what we accomplished. I wish our launch had gone well. To lose something on the launch vehicle really hurts. Somebody once said, you don't get a chance yourself to fail. You don't even get up there to make the trial yourself. But I'm very proud of what we did accomplish on this mission. And we're going to try again. We're at the headquarters of the Planetary Society recording this in what became the press room during launch.

And I don't know that there's ever been so many people in this room, certainly never so much media coverage. As the day progressed, there was more and more concern being expressed about you personally because this project has been such a big part of your life. It certainly has been a big part of my life, and the idea of really accomplishing the first solar sail flight was something I wanted to do very much. But let's not be confused. As one of my friends said to me as we were having a late night reminiscence about the whole experience we're still alive it's about us we're going on and we're going to do great things these efforts are just part of our professional activity and if you're in the space business to think you're always going to succeed right away with the first thing you do it's it's just not

going to happen this is my third experience i've got to tell you away with the first thing you do. It's just not going to happen. This is my third experience, I've got to tell you, Matt, with a Russian launch failure, which also is weighing on me somewhat heavily. The Mars 96 mission, the Planetary Society had a CD on it. We felt like we were part of the mission. I went and watched the launch, and the launch failed. And then, of course, we had the two Volna launches that did not succeed. That was the test mission, and now, of course, the actual Cosmos 1 spacecraft. Exactly.

So the stereotype of Russian launch vehicles being the one thing they do very well didn't work out in our case, and it is a big disappointment in that regard. And as I said, in other regards, I'm hoping that we recover well and go on to do bigger and better things. Now, we're talking as if this story is complete or nearly so. We'll mention that we're recording this on Saturday the 25th, but really the story you were telling me before we started the recorder may not be over. Well, the story may not be over. In fact, we have some data that indicates a signal from the

spacecraft was received. And in fact, we have even more than just a little bit of data. We have it at three different tracking stations, and we're working hard to try and analyze it. It's very noisy. It's very weak. It's rather uncertain. So it's going to take a fair amount of analysis, and I don't want to say that we can have anything definitive about it yet until basically the team in Russia and the team in the United States that are working together on it can come to a consensus. Hopefully, maybe by the time your listeners are listening to this talk, we'll have something

up on our website. Russian Space Agency version is that the entire vehicle, all the rocket and the spacecraft never separated and went down together in the Barents Sea. And I don't know enough to say that we can contradict that yet. But if indeed our spacecraft did make it to orbit, as this data would indicate, that would, of course, be a very exciting result to us. It would make us feel a little better that we had at least produced that in this project. What else could have produced this data? Well, it's data, but it's data with a high or I should say a low signal to noise. So it could be all noise. It could be radio frequency interference.

It could be ghosts that are basically in the signals of radio. Your signal here on your radio show is nice. It's really clean and you work hard at it. High signal to noise. But if you were up there in orbit and working in some of the conditions where these receivers were in stations and now you're in the wrong orbit and you've got a spacecraft that's going to be underperforming because it's in a low orbit that may be buffeted by the atmosphere, you could have all kinds of spurious things that could be happening that may or may not be from the spacecraft. And so if it's from the spacecraft, that has to really be correlated to events very carefully.

And if it isn't, then we need to see if we can analyze it and tell where it came from. Well, that makes this next question rather unfair since the story, the last chapter has not been written on Cosmos One yet. Where does the Planetary Society and its many partners, where do they go now? Well, you talked about the public response. It was extremely gratifying. The public interest in this as an effort is something that I think is already a success story for us at the Planetary Society. is something that I think is already a success story for us at the Planetary Society. The notion that a private group can contribute something,

seed and inspire space exploration, I think has been done. And in that sense, we succeeded already. So we're not going to give up. We're going to go from here. A lot of people write me and say, what's happening with Cosmos 2? What are we going to do about Cosmos 2? Well, first of all, if we do something else, it may not be called Cosmos 2. You heard that quote from Bill Nye when he toasted the next day. That's right. Bill mentioned that.

Bill's enthusiasm is certainly undaunted. But my enthusiasm is undaunted, too. We're going to go from here. We're going to investigate whether or not we can do another solar sailing mission, whether we should do it differently or whether we should do it the same. We've certainly invested a lot in a very good spacecraft, what we think is a very good spacecraft, and a very good team. We don't want to just throw that out.

So we're going to try very hard to see if we can get sponsors and contributors like we did in Cosmos 1. I must say that Andrea at Cosmos Studios is extremely supportive. She's ready to go, and to the best of her ability, I think she'll be on board for anything we try in the future. There's only one thing I can tell you for sure, Matt. We're not going to do it on a Volna launch vehicle. I think we've had it on that particular launch vehicle.

We don't feel good about not only the fact that it didn't make it. That's almost understandable or livable with in terms of the space business. But in the whole way that has been approached to the previous failures that they had, it's not just this failure, it's the previous one we had on our program, and it's the one they had with the European Space Agency on their program in between our test flight and this one. So I don't think there's much chance we're going to do an honor volume again. We could spend another 15, 20 minutes, half an hour talking about other launch options.

But you know what? I know we're going to have other segments about solar sails in the future on this radio program, and so maybe we'll leave it for that. We can title that show, There's No Such Thing as a Free Launch. Well, you're certainly proving that you have come back in good spirits. I have, Matt. There's no way not to be in bad spirits. And it's kind of interesting because I did expect to be bummed out and depressed.

I did put a lot into this, and I was in the few times that I actually thought, well, you know, maybe it won't work. What's going to happen to me? I thought I'd be much more depressed. What's going to happen to me? I thought I'd be much more depressed. But as we've certainly worked on the details of this idea that maybe there's a spacecraft signal in orbit, and now as we work to try to understand what went wrong in the launch phase, to thinking about the future, to looking at all the support that the staff of the Planetary Society,

the members of the Planetary Society, our sponsor, Cosmos Studios, and so many of our donors have given to this. I'd be crazy to be depressed. I'm glad you feel that way. And so I'm going to finish with my own congratulations and leave it at that. And we'll look forward to hearing more as the real story of Cosmos 1 continues to unfold and the Planetary Society and its partners move forward with this beautiful concept of a sail in space. Well, thank you, Matt, and thank you for all you've done for the Society in helping us be part of the solar sail team. My pleasure.

Lou Friedman is the executive director of the Planetary Society and the project director for Cosmos 1 and the ongoing effort to put the first solar sail in orbit above the Earth. We're going to be back with Bruce Betts and what's up, but let's check back in with Emily one more time for her solar sail diary. Launch plus one day. So it's looking more and more certain that our space mission may be a failure. As with many failed missions before us, it was the launch that got us. This is frustrating, because if we did fail, we failed before we ever got to try the new technology we were attempting to pioneer.

Where would that leave us? The fact is that we still built the world's first solar sail spacecraft, and we attempted to launch it. That in itself is an achievement, though of course we wanted to achieve more. When I say we here, I'm not just talking about the Cosmos One project team. I'm talking about everybody who made this mission attempt possible. That includes our sponsors and the thousands of Planetary Society members who gave what they could to support us. All day long yesterday, the email from our members kept pouring in. Not only were the messages uniformly positive, wishing us luck, but in fact they became more and more positive as the day went on.

I'm proud and happy to have been able to help make our members and well-wishers a part of this space exploration experience. You know what that means? Maybe our spacecraft did fail, but even so, the mission didn't as far as I'm concerned. The Planetary Society's mission is, in part, to inspire the public, and it seems we may have done that. I'm proud of that, and I hope we get a chance to do it again. This is Emily Lakdawalla,

Project Operations Assistant for the Cosmos 1 mission. Time for What's Up on this special edition of Planetary Radio. So, we are joined by Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. And as you may have heard, if you heard the earlier part of this show, our moderator, explainer extraordinaire during the Cosmos 1 mission. In fact, in this room, which was, as we said in the conversation with Lou, was packed, man. This was a very crowded facility, and we learned that the air conditioning wasn't quite up to it. We did. We did. But the press were, fortunately, and we had a lot of press coverage and a lot of great comments from people about the mission. So whatever happens, I think we're quite happy with the fact that lots of people know about solar sailing now and are getting psyched on space exploration, and that's really what we're about.

What's up, Bruce? Well, still got some good planets in the evening sky. If you look shortly after sunset in low in the west, you can see Venus looking like the brightest star-like object, with Mercury just nuzzling it for the next couple of weeks. The last week of June, first week of July, extremely close to Venus, much dimmer, but still looking like a bright star. We had Saturn nuzzling with them that I've watched in the last couple of days. I don't know if you have as well, Matt. I'll take that as a no.

So anyway, but Saturn still, you might see it down below them. It's sinking very rapidly this last week of June, first week of July. You can also see Jupiter nearly overhead. I'm looking like the second brightest star-like object. And in the predawn sky, you can see Mars looking kind of reddish in the east. Jupiter in the evening, right? Yes, I'm sorry, Jupiter in the evening. Because I did take out the telescope in the evening and look at Jupiter, and it was great. I saw the bands. It was terrific.

Nice. Did you see some moons? I did, yeah. Two were really close. Go out there, people. Look at that. Look at that. Just a small telescope, even stable binoculars. You can see little points of light that look like the moons. Moving right along, this week in space history, 20 years ago, the European Space Agency launched a probe to study Halley's Comet. We'll come back to that in the trivia contest,

but it allows me to mention that NASA has a probe about to reach Comet Tempel 1, which, with a good amateur telescope, you can actually look for in the night sky. There are various sites on the web that will tell you how to do that. It is not a naked eye object. They do expect it may brighten after being slammed with an 800-pound ball of copper, which will occur on July 3rd or 4th, depending on your time zone. And we've got an event. If you're in the Pasadena or Southern California area or want to come play with us,

come out and watch it live with us on a giant screen. You can find out more about C bash at planetary.org i know we're calling a comet bash but i liked your your term comet smackdown be there moving right along on to random space fight the cosmos one solar spacecraft weighed only about 220 pounds and a mass of about 100 kilograms, basically the size of a large male human. A good-sized guy, but very small spacecraft. Very small spacecraft, so it makes it easier to push it with light. Trivia contest?

Please. It turns out the trivia contest was rather confusing. My fault. Sorry. What I was looking for is that in stars, when you fuse different elements together, like hydrogen fuses with hydrogen to make helium, releases huge amounts of energy. That's how hydrogen bombs and the interior of our sun works. Well, you can keep fusing elements, but up until a point, and then past that mass, you have elements that when you fuse them, you actually, it takes energy instead of releasing energy. So I asked, what is this happy little end product that big stars produce?

And it's iron. But I kind of acted like we were looking for the elements right before iron that you would fuse and get energy out. So we will take either iron or manganese or any other logical answer. We mixed them all up in a pile and did our random selection. And who won? Well, as it happens, our winners this week submitted manganese. And they didn't actually send us a piece of manganese. That would have been so cool. No, we could have had some fusion. Karen and Ben Howard. Karen and Ben said,

our answer is manganese with only one less proton than iron. Manganese is the heaviest element that gives off energy infusion. We'll be listening to the show to see if we're correct. Hey, Karen and Ben, you out there? You won. We're going to send you a solar sail poster right to your home in Camaray, Australia. Hey, to win your solar sail poster, go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to answer this question.

And I'm going to ask an easier one so we don't have that challenge next time, which was, what was the name of the spacecraft that the European Space Agency sent to Halley's Comet? Tell us, please. Oh, please. But be sure to get that entry to us by, it's the 4th of July, July 4th, Monday at 2 p.m. Pacific time if you want to make sure that your entry is counted in this newest space trivia contest. Part of Planetary Radio each week, part of What's Up. I think we're done. All right, everybody go out there and look up in the night sky and think about optimism.

Thank you and good night. How very appropriate. A nice note for us to end What's Up on and even a nice note to end Planetary Radio on. He's the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society, Dr. Bruce Betts. Yet another special show next week as we cover Deep Impact's violent rendezvous with Comet Tempel 1.

I hope you'll join us. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Keep the faith, everyone.