Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Countdown to DART: Will We Move an Asteroid?

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

We are less than a week from the DART spacecraft’s impact on asteroid moonlet Dimorphos as this episode is published. Mission Coordination Lead Nancy Chabot gives us a status update and a preview of what to expect during the September 26 encounter. Watching the smackdown from a few kilometers away will be LICIACube. Simone Pirrotta, program manager for the Italian Space Agency’s little cubesat, tells us about his high hopes. We’ll also visit NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab to hear the exciting announcement of organics discovered and collected by the Perseverance rover on Mars. All this and a new What’s Up space trivia contest. There’s more to discover at https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2022-dart-impact-preview-nancy-chabotSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Counting down as DART nears its destiny, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft will meet its spectacular doom on September 26, when it slams into asteroid Dimorphos. With less than a week to go, we'll check in again with DART Coordination Lead Nancy Schaubo. We'll also meet the Program Manager for Lechia Cube, the tiny Italian CubeSat that will attempt to capture images of the impact and its aftermath. And in moments, we'll hear highlights of a September 19 briefing at NASA's Jet Propulsion

Lab that announced exciting finds by Perseverance, the Mars 2020 rover. As it rolls across the red planet, we inch closer to evidence of past life up there. Turns out the Artemis I Orion capsule has a lot more passengers than I knew about. We'll explain when Bruce and I answer the latest space trivia quiz. I'm in Tucson, Arizona, as this week's show is published. NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts Program, that's NIAC, has once again invited me to host the live webcast of its annual symposium. It's something I love doing. I get to spend two and a half days talking with

engineers, scientists and other space nerds who've come up with scores of fascinating projects. Solar sails, buildings grown from fungi, finding Earth-like worlds, novel ways to defend our planet, and kilometer-wide structures in space launched by a single rocket. So many more. It's heaven for this techno geek. You can catch the live stream

on the NIAC website. We've got the link on this week's episode page at planetary.org slash radio, or you can simply search for 2022 NIAC Symposium. On to that JPL media briefing. Past Planetary Radio guest Ken Farley is the project scientist for Perseverance. He spoke after we heard from JPL director Lori Leshin

and NASA Associate Administrator Thomas Zurbuchen. By the way, we learned last week that Dr. Zurbuchen will be retiring from NASA soon. All of us at the Planetary Society are grateful for his outstanding leadership of the Science Mission Directorate, and we wish him well. Here's Ken Farley with an update on the rover and some terrific news. So I'm happy to say that we have made excellent progress towards achieving the goals that I just laid out. We've also managed to piece together quite a detailed history of Jezero Crater, a history that is surprising. It's not exactly what we expected. In the first year of the mission,

we undertook what we called the Crater Flo floor campaign. That's on the southeast part of this traverse. This was exploring the crater floor, the rocks that are below the delta. And what we found is not what we expected to find. Many of us expected to find out there in the middle of this crater that once held a lake, we expected to find sedimentary rocks deposited in that lake. And instead, what we found is igneous rocks, rocks that were crystallized from a melt. So that suggests a history that is more complicated

than we expected. This crater not only held a lake at one point, but prior to that, likely prior to it, it also had active volcanism and possibly even a lava lake filling that crater. So there's some complexity there that we hadn't actually expected. And we acquired some excellent samples of those igneous rocks.

And this is an example of why diversity is important. Those igneous rocks will tell us a lot about the early history of a rocky planet, Mars. And in addition, one of the key things that an igneous rock returned to Earth will allow us to do is for the first time put a quantitative age on the surface of Mars. This is something that we just infer indirectly at present.

So it'll be very important to get quantitative estimates of age on returned igneous rocks. After we finished the crater floor campaign, we drove very quickly in that arc around to where the rover is today at the delta front. So the delta front is a scarp cliff about 40 meters high. You can see that we have driven back and forth studying this place. It's a really interesting place and the reason it's interesting is that the delta is a place where the sedimentary layers

deposited in that lake are exposed in cross-section. So rather than just driving around on top of those sedimentary layers, we can actually drive up and see them one by one. This is from the area that you're going to hear a lot about. It's called Hogwalla Flat, and you can see two of those sedimentary layers. The area in the background, the cliff forming layer, that's a sandstone. And then in the material in the foreground that is lighter toned, that's a sandstone. And then in the material in the foreground that is lighter toned, that's a mudstone. So these are sedimentary layers deposited in the lake that we have spent

a considerable amount of time on. This specific area has probably the highest scientific value for exploration of the entire mission. This is the site that brought us to Jezero Crater. This is the place where we have the best chance to explore these ancient sedimentary rocks deposited in the lake. And what you're going to hear is that we have discovered rocks that were deposited in a potentially habitable environment in that lake,

and we have been seeking potential biosignatures. I want to be very careful to define potential biosignature. This is something we've discussed a lot on the science team, and I want to make sure everybody understands the concept of potential biosignature. A potential biosignature is something that may have been produced by life, but also could have been produced in the absence of life. The key point about a potential biosignature is it compels further investigation to draw a conclusion. This is the way science works. We don't always know the answer. We have hypotheses. And the rocks that we have been investigating on the Delta have the highest concentration of organic matter that we have yet found on the mission.

And of course, organic molecules are the building blocks of life. So this is all very interesting in that we have rocks that were deposited in a habitable environment in a lake which carry organic matter. We don't yet know the significance of these findings. These rocks are exactly the kind of rocks we came to investigate, both with the rover and its scientific instruments, and also to bring back to Earth so that they can be studied in terrestrial laboratories. So time will tell what is in these rocks. So overall, I want to emphasize that the mission is proceeding extremely well. We are making very good progress at understanding the geologic history,

finding some surprises in the history of the crater, good progress at understanding the geologic history, finding some surprises in the history of the crater, and we are also making good progress in collecting this suite of samples for the Mars sample return effort. And what you're going to hear is that the suite of samples that we have collected so far is sufficiently good that we are now considering them, putting down a subset of them on the surface of Mars as a target for the future missions to pick up and bring back to Earth. Project scientist Ken Farley. To dig a little deeper, if you'll pardon the expression, let's hear from JPL's Sunanda Sharma. Sunanda works with Perseverance's SHERLOCK instrument.

That's the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals. And organics, as you heard from Ken, are commonly called the building blocks of life. All life as we know it is made up of organics. But importantly, organic matter can also be made up by processes that are chemical and they're not related to life. So for instance, through water-rock interactions. And it's also found in interstellar dust. By putting together the image and the spectral information it collects,

Sherlock can map where organics and minerals are in a rock, which tells us more about how the organic matter was formed, transported, preserved, or concentrated. Organics tend to form clumps. We've seen this on Earth and in Martian meteorites, and unless you can map, you miss some of that key information. This is the first instrument of its kind that's operating on Mars, and it gives us very important information from rocks as they are found in place to support the selection of samples for the return to Earth. In Wildcat Ridge, we detected signals

that we think are from a class of organic matter called aromatics, which are stable molecules that are made up of carbon and hydrogen and sometimes other elements with ring structures. These signals were present at nearly every single point in every scan. They are also some of the brightest that we've seen thus far on the mission, and they're about seven times brighter than what we saw at Thornton Gap, which is an abrasion patch on Skinner Ridge. The organic signals are also most strongly correlated to a mineral called sulfate that we saw on the rock. This correlation suggests that when the lake was evaporating, both sulfates and organics were deposited, preserved, and concentrated in this area. So while the detection of this class of

organics alone does not mean that life was definitively there, this set of observations does start to look like some things that we've seen here on Earth. So on Earth, sulfate deposits are known to preserve organics and can harbor signs of life, which are called biosignatures. This makes these samples and this set of observations some of the most intriguing that we've done so far in the mission, and it fulfills some of the excitement that the team had when we were approaching the Delta front.

To put it simply, if this is a treasure hunt for potential signs of life on another planet, organic matter is a clue, and we're getting stronger and stronger clues as we're moving through our Delta campaign. I personally find these results so moving because it feels like we're in the right place with the right tools at a very pivotal moment. Mars 2020 is giving us a better understanding than we've ever had of the Martian surface to select samples for return. And then Mars sample return stands maybe the best chance ever of answering a very profound question, are we alone in the universe?

There was much more in the briefing than we have time to share, but I can't resist including my question for the panel. Like most reporters, I was on the phone. You'll hear Ken Farley mention SAM on Perseverance's sister, Curiosity. You'll hear Ken Farley mention SAM on Perseverance's sister, Curiosity. SAM is the powerful sample analysis at Mars laboratory built into that other rover. It was replaced on Perseverance by the complex robotic systems that manage collected samples. Hi, everyone. Congratulations on the collection of these very exciting samples.

Part of my question has already been answered, but I'm still curious. As we wait for them to return to Earth, do you ever wish, and I'm certainly not suggesting this would be possible, that Curiosity could drive over to Jezero and add its capabilities? I imagine that has to run through some of your minds. Go for it. Yeah, if only rovers could drive that far.

Yeah, well, I guess the one thing that I would pick up on is something that Sunanda said, and I'll just say it a little bit differently. You have two very different kinds of capabilities for characterizing both the chemical composition and the organic composition in the rocks. There's the Sherlock instrument, which makes a map. It is not as sensitive as the SAM instrument on Curiosity.

This is a wonderful combination that you could bring together where the Sherlock instrument could provide spatial resolution and really detailed mapping, and then we could take advantage of the kinds of capabilities that exist on SAM to penetrate deeper and get not only lower detection limits for the kinds of capabilities that exist on SAM to penetrate deeper and get not only lower detection limits for certain kinds of molecules, but we could actually learn a little bit more about which molecules are present. So that's the thing that I would do if I could bring the two rovers together. Yeah, I completely agree.

That would be what I would want to do as well, so we could get a couple of different views, because that's what I would do on Earth. When we bring these samples back to Earth, if and when that happens, that's what I would do. I would put together the capabilities that Sam has on Curiosity and the things that we could do with Sherlock, but at much higher spatial resolution, as David was saying, and figure out what's going on in these rocks. So that would be my top dream, too. Sunanda Sharma and Ken Farley at a NASA JPL media briefing

about the latest news from the Perseverance rover on Mars. On to DART and our latest visit with planetary scientist Nancy Schiavo. As I said, Nancy is the coordination lead for the DART mission. She's also deeply involved with the Japanese Space Agency's Martian Moons Explorer mission and the joint European Space Agency-Japanese Space Agency BepiColombo mission to Mercury. Nancy is a fellow of the Meteorical Society and will become that group's president next year. Incidentally, she got her bachelor's from Rice University 32 years after John F. Kennedy delivered his moon speech there, the one we heard a bit of last week.

She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Arizona, where I am attending the NIAC symposium. Nancy, welcome back to Planetary Radio. Oh, my gosh. I have the DART website open just so that I can refer to the countdown timer, open just so that I can refer to the countdown timer, which is now telling me there are 11 days, five hours, 54 minutes and 32 seconds before the great smackdown. Pretty darn exciting. Yeah, it really is. Definitely, it's exciting. We are counting down the days here at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab where I I am right now, and be like, oh, who's counting? And it's like, yeah, we're counting.

And of course, by the time people hear this show, which is several days from now, you'll be even closer. You'll be, well, it'll be less than a week. I know that in addition to what your team will be doing, that there'll be a lot of people gathered at the Applied Physics Lab. My boss, the science guy, is going to be there as you count down those final seconds. I wish I could be there like I was for the New Horizons encounter with Arrokoth. Can you believe that was nearly four years ago?

And you and I were, even back then, talking about what was to come with DART. Yeah, it's so exciting that we're going from something that we've been talking about for so long and that the team here at APL, you know, built this spacecraft during a global pandemic, have been working on this project for years, and we're days away from this big event. Very happy that, you know, NASA is going to share this with the world in real time as this event happens, and that we can host that at APL, and that it's going to be broadcast live on the internet and on NASA TV worldwide. I am expecting a gigantic audience, and we'll talk a little bit later about other ways for people to

participate in that. What is the current status? How is the spacecraft doing? The spacecraft for DART is doing wonderfully. Everything is nominal, which is a lovely word in space science and any sort of mission operations. And so things are going really well and everything is on track for September 26th at 7.14 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, which is when the impact occurs. Leachia Cube, which was just deployed this last weekend. And that's fabulous. And so we're really happy to have that milestone reached. Sometimes when I say everything's going nominal, it might seem like, oh, we're not really doing anything. Oh, no, I wouldn't stress also. The team is very busy.

This sort of 10-month cruise period that we're coming up to the end to, there's been over 200,000 images taken to help really understand the spacecraft, characterize how it operates in space, calibrate that camera and be ready for this big event. And so mission operations in particular at APL is still very busy getting ready for this event. But everything is on track and we are counting down the days. Just a note to the audience. You're going to hear a little difference in the audio quality from Nancy, because we ran into some technical difficulties. She has now switched to her phone and to a very appropriate location. Where are you now, Nancy, at APL? I'm in the Science Operations Center. We refer to this as the SOC. This is where a lot of the people on the science team get together,

where we'll be doing the data analysis and looking at those first images and the models and figuring out where the DART spacecraft hit, what this all means for planetary defense. So right now it was conveniently empty, so I could take this call in here, but it's not going to be that case for very much longer. No, I bet it won't. All right, well, let's pick up. I saw an image of Didymos taken by your spacecraft, by DART. I suspect that that was not an easy image to get from, I think it was 20 million miles or was it kilometers away? How did that happen? Yeah, so we've always been trying to use the camera on board called Draco,

the Didymos for Coddus. It's and asteroid camera for optical navigation. It's similar to the camera that flew on the New Horizons mission that took spectacular images of Pluto. And so it's a really capable design for a camera, you know, built here at APL by the team and everything. But, you know, still Didymos and Dimorphos are far away and they're pretty small and not very bright. We always expected to try to have our first detection about a month out, so about 30 days out. But really, the camera is working so well, we were able to detect it even earlier than that. And it's just a little point of light, but seeing that little point of light that is DART's destiny in the camera and knowing that everything's in sight and in its sights is really exciting. That point of light, I guess a tiny portion of that point of light is contributed by your target Dimorphos, but you can't, you can't pick these two apart yet, can you?

Oh, no, you absolutely cannot separate Dynamos from Dimorphos in any of these images. And in fact, that's one of the main challenges of the DART mission is targeting such a small spacecraft in space at high speed when you've never seen that asteroid before. And even with this amazing Draco telescopic camera that we have on board the spacecraft, we won't be able to distinguish Dynamos from Dimorphos until within the last hour of the mission. And this is going to be a very tense and very exciting time because this has to be done autonomously. And the spacecraft analyzes the images on boards, identifies which ones did it most, which ones demorphos, sees demorphos first the first time, and adjust the

thrusters to ensure that you stay on an intercept course with demorphos. And that's all done autonomously with this system that's called SmartNav that was developed by the team here at APL trying to solve this problem of how do you hit a small asteroid in space at high speed when you've never seen it before. It's a really capable algorithm, but it's also one of the main challenges and one of the main technologies that we need to develop for planetary defense and that we're testing out with this mission. What an adventure. At this point, with still days to go, is the spacecraft still under control from Earth? And are there more trajectory corrections ahead under the control of mere human beings? Us mere human beings do have control of the spacecraft here in the Mission

Operations Center at APL. And yeah, and there's images being taken every day still, looking at the DITIMO system, taking images of stars for optical navigation. This activity will continue for the next days. The autonomous portion will take over at four hours out. So until then, still very much operating the spacecraft sort of on normal behavior. But four hours out is when the smart nav system kicks in. Wow. What can we expect to see during those last four hours or the last hour? You're coming in really fast to something that's really small. So even four hours out, it's sort of just still a single point of light. But it's within that last hour that it's really going to get exciting. And that's one of the big things will be within the last hour, closer to the

top of the hour than the bottom, most likely. That's when it'll separate into two dots of light, one that's slightly bigger than another one. And you'll see demorphos. But then after that, you'll see that it starts to get larger and larger in the field of veal. The camera, the images are coming back to Earth one per second. They're the same images that the autonomous system on board SmartNav is using, but they're also transmitted back to Earth real time. There's no transmitting back to Earth after the collision. So very important to get those images down when they happen. And those images will come back one per second. And very slowly, you'll see zooming in on Dimorphos, zooming in

on Dimorphos. And it's really within the last two minutes that you can start to see what this asteroid that we've never seen before looks like. What does Dimorphos look like? And it will start to see out the shape will be the first thing. And then you'll start to see the geologic features on it. Dimorphos will fill the whole entire image, fill up the view. You'll be like basically zooming in, crashing right into that surface, seeing things that are down to tens of centimeters in size. So things that you could like hold in your hand practically. Good Lord. You are far from being old enough to remember this,

but I was a little kid. I remember the Ranger spacecraft approaching the moon and taking pictures on their way in. And then of course, being blown to smithereens. It sounds like you're part of that legacy. I think it's going to be very similar to that. And I think, you course, being blown to smithereens. It sounds like you're part of that legacy. I think it's going to be very similar to that. And I think, you know, that's when you look at those, sometimes people are like, well, you know, well, you really know anything the night of. And I'm like, oh, I think it's going to be a pretty spectacular and definitive way for the final moments of the DART spacecraft, you know, to see this surface of this body that you're seeing for the first time zooming in on you.

So it is very much like those early lunar exploration days. This is all a great lead-in to where I want to go next with this. You already talked about the successful release of Lichia Cube that Italian space agency or OSCE Cube sat. And I think I told you that I'll be sharing a brief conversation that I had a couple of weeks ago at Kennedy Space Center with the program manager for Leachia Cube, Simona Perota. What are your hopes for what that little companion spacecraft will be able to do? Oh, we're so delighted that Leachia Cube is flying now independently of DART.

I was going to say as part of DART, but they literally are not part of the DART spacecraft anymore. Part of the overall mission and our overall team obviously um for this combined project uh leachia cube is gonna bear direct witness to dart's collision um they are going to be capturing images of dart's collision they make their closest flyby three minutes later and capture the effects that happen the ejecta the pulverized rocky material that's thrown off during DART's high-speed collision, how that evolves, what that looks like. Leachacube stores all their data on board, and then they'll send it back in the days and weeks and months that follow. And so it's going to be great to see all of that come. I mean, Leachacube already is quite an accomplishment.

You know, I think everybody in Italy in particular should be very proud of operating this spacecraft in deep space for Italy for the first time. I remember also looking back again a few years, the last time we smacked something into a small body, Deep Impact, which we were actually covering live, had an audience with us, kind of like what you're going to be doing at APL on the 26th. There was a camera that was able to observe that, but there was this huge flash and so much debris, it really wasn't possible to see much.

You folks have got to have considered this since you don't have much else as a precedent to study. Oh, absolutely. We learned so much from that mission. Leachate Cube, when they do their imaging, their closest approach distance will be about 50 kilometers away. And so they really will be a nice, safe distance such that they'll be able to watch the plume evolve as you see from there.

So it should fit nicely into their field of view. And so I don't think that will just be so much ejecta that the whole frame is filled with it or anything like that. And so we'll be able to get out the shape and the dimensions of how the ejecta evolves, which will be very exciting. But also, I think what's interesting is that Leachia Cube needs to be safe because they store all their data on board, right? And so this is sort of a compromise as well, because they have to make it through this whole thing and capture it and then send the data back afterwards. So it's a good compromise. Certainly, we've learned a lot from the missions that have come before us, but a small asteroid crashing something like this so fast into a small asteroid is also going to be new. And so we're looking forward to unexpected things. Where will you be when this climactic moment comes? I'll be here at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab along with a lot of the team watching the whole moment unfold.

You know, living in the moment, enjoying this accomplishment that we've been leading up to for years. I think I'll take a moment to be there and enjoy that. But then we're going to get to work. You know, over here on the science side, this is also in some ways just the start, right? We've been waiting to not just execute this test, but to analyze it and to see what it means. And that's where a lot of us on the science team and on the science side will appreciate what an accomplishment it is and what a challenge it is to autonomously hit a small asteroid in space that you've never seen before.

But I guarantee people on the team also are going to start pointing at those images right away and pointing like, where did DART hit? What does that feature look like? And it's going to be so exciting for the weeks even afterwards. This is such an important point. It's exactly where I was going to go because people may be thinking, wow, you know, you spend years working on a mission like this. And there are all those other missions like, I don't know, Cassini, the Mars rovers, Voyager that go on for years and yours ends in an instant.

But it's not at all the end of the mission. There's so much more to be done. I mean, and a lot of observation that will be done, what, by some of Earth's most powerful telescopes to see if you were able to nudge this rock? Yeah, I think right now we're really focused on talking about the DART spacecraft and Leachia Cube because those are the first immediate things that happen. But we want to know how much we deflected this asteroid. And we're not going to learn that from DART. The DART spacecraft is going to take those spectacular images as it comes in, and then that's it. Litia Cube just does a flyby as well. So it's going to witness the collision and capture that in the ejecta, but then it won't stay around. So instead, the telescopes here on the Earth are going to have to make that measurement, which is great,

because they're really good at doing this. They discovered that system decades ago, and they've been watching it over the years. It takes 11 hours and 55 minutes to do one orbit around right now for Dimorphos to go around Didymos. It's exciting, actually, that telescopes around the world have embraced the unique experiment that is DART. We've got telescopes across the country here in the United States and across the world. In fact, on all seven continents, even seven space that are going to be turning their gaze towards the Didymos system to see if there's any brightening during do ejecta, see how that ejecta evolves over the days after DART's impact. And then also

to measure this period change, which is one of the fundamental measurements that we need to make in order to see how much we deflected demorphos around didymos. Simply thrilling, not just in itself, but for what it represents as humanity learns, maybe, how to protect itself from the next big rock that actually has our name on it that's coming our way. Let's tell people how they can also participate by watching and maybe even joining in with friends and family to do this. Yeah, we definitely are encouraging people to tune in because this is going to be accessible on the internet and on NASA TV, NASA YouTube, and a whole variety of channels. And we've put some resources up on the website, on the DART

website, dart.jhu.edu, and you can host a watch party. So there's some ideas for decorations or games or all sorts of videos that you can play and really tune in and invite everybody to be a part of this historic moment and to watch it as it happens. You can bet that I will be one of those virtual participants. I'll just say again, Nancy, I wish I could be there with you at JHU APL, but I know Bill and I will represent the Planetary Society well. Best of success with this incredibly exciting effort.

I hope you're able to get some rest between now and the time that we see this spacecraft meet its destiny at Dimorphos. Oh, yeah, thanks. It is an exciting time, but I'll try to get some sleep as will the team. We're all very busy, but also just really excited that after years and years, this moment is finally upon us. Thanks, Nancy. Thank you. Go Dart and go Leachia Cube. You may have heard last week's interview at the Kennedy Space Center with Italian Space Agency President Giorgio Sococcia. When we come back, I'll share a special

portion of that conversation that I saved for this week. Greetings, Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society. We need your help as we launch a new and exciting project. It's a new subscription-style program for kids. We call it the Planetary Academy, and it's getting underway with a Kickstarter campaign. The Planetary Academy is a special learning and membership opportunity for kids ages 5 to 9. Young explorers will receive four adventure packs each year that have been developed by our experts. We're creating the first adventure packs right now. Academy members will learn all about our solar system through out-of-this-world activities and surprises, preparing them to blast off to exciting destinations.

After this first successful year, we'll expand the Academy to a full three-year program that explorers and their families can renew annually. Will you help us kickstart the Planetary Academy by backing our project? Visit planetary.org slash academy today to learn more and get behind this exciting new opportunity. That's planetary.org slash academy. Thanks. Welcome back. Here's that small portion of my conversation with Italian Space Agency President Giorgio Saccoccia that I decided to keep for this week's show. I think you'll understand why in a few moments. You said that you had a colleague here that you wanted to bring out to join us.

Yes, Simone, who is here, is the program manager of Leisure Cube. And the nice thing of Leisure Cube is that it's very well associated also to Argomoon, what is flying on SLS, because they are both witnesses of something that will happen in space.

And I'm sure Simone will have a lot to tell you about Leisure Cube and Argomoon as well. Welcome. Thank you. My name is Simone Pirrotta, I'm the project manager of Licea Cube. Yeah, we are opening this new season of interplanetary CubeSat. We have started mentioning that Argomoon and Licea Cube will be the first European CubeSat operating in deep space. Argo Moon is near deep space but LiceCube will be very far, it will be a DART companion and it will be released in two weeks from DART to collect the very important pictures of the impact effect on the Demos surface.

They have in common a general architecture, they have the same size like 6U CubeSat with the similar architecture and a couple of optical payloads. And what is very attractive on their design is that they are capable to identify targets and to keep it pointing during these very challenging flybys. You're probably aware that Leech-I-Cube will pass through the DART impact with a very high relative velocity. So the capability of maintaining the pointing during this approaching phase is very crucial.

And this is what we are working on together with our colleagues of APL and NASA. And it will be capable to identify the impact, then possibly the crater on the surface, but for sure the plume of material that will be released, which is very interesting for the confirmation of the energy that is transferred to the target, and also to give scientific information about the composition of the asteroid and some other important features of this interesting celestial body. Perhaps it's obvious DART will not be able to observe its own impact. It will be in tiny pieces. Even if it could, it wouldn't be able to report on them.

So many of us are looking forward to getting those results back from the ChiaQ. We know. We know so that we have very frequent meetings with APL and NASA colleagues because we are preparing the phase of the release and the analysis, very tempestive and quick analysis of the images and the release, both for the outreach purposes but also for the scientific side. As I mentioned we will be able to identify the impact app and impact to also capture images of the not observed side of the asteroid you know because DART is, it has already identified, it has already

identified the asteroid at this point in towards, but it can see just one side. Yeah, it's just a pixel or two still, right? It will stay that way until it's very close, just before impact. Yeah, it will, the Draco camera on board of DART will be able to image DART in the very last part of the approaching phase, while LELICIA will maneuver in order to be a little bit out of the plane, so we'll have a good illumination of the Sun in order to imaging the plume ejecta and also the not visible side of the dimorphos. This will allow a very interesting reconstruction of the shape of the asteroid which is part of the unknown information which will

contribute to. We wish you the greatest of success. This is such an exciting mission between these two spacecraft. We cannot wait for I think it's September 26th? Right, right. We will be released 15 days before the impact. September 26th, the impact will happen. And in a couple of days, we will be able to provide the scientific community and all the people interested with very, we hope, fascinating images of this event. Thank you very much. I'm glad that Giorgio brought you out.

I'm very happy, too. And we are excited for Argo Moon that will be launched tomorrow. Hopefully it will be a testing of the similar technologies that we have on board. I'm also deputy project manager for Argo Moon, so that's why I'm here. And if it will result in a good success, we will have much more confidence in Lice Cube's performances. Also a pioneering effort from Italy and the Italian Space Agency. Giorgio, I want to go back to you for a moment, if I can. Because of what this represents, I was in Italy, specifically for SCATI in 2015 for the Planetary Defense Conference.

In fact, we did a live show in front of an audience at the headquarters of ASI. Italy has had tremendous involvement in the effort to protect Earth from near-Earth asteroids, comets, and so on. It's a big concern of ours at the Planetary Society. I guess you could say that Litia Cube is a portion of that effort. Can you say something else about why Italy is treating this as such a high priority? Well, it's part of the approach of using space and considering space as part of the sustainable future of our planet. We need to protect not only the planet but also the environment of the planet, around the planet. So we need the instruments, we

need the right approach to preserve the surface of the planet for what can arrive from space, natural or artificially generated. For this reason yes, I agree with you, certainly Leech Club and ART are part of this overall scenario, but there are other important instruments that need to be developed. I can mention one where Italy is particularly involved, which is a special type of telescope, specifically designed and developed to monitor near-Earth objects. It's called the Fly High.

It's a composite lens telescope that we have developed through the European Space Agency in the first prototype, say, and intention is to develop a number of recurrents that will be deployed in different parts of the Earth to contribute to the monitoring of our environment. I repeat, it's something that we can't avoid to do because it's not only a question to go to space, but to do it in a sustainable and careful way and also to protect our Earth from what happened up there.

Italian Space Agency President Giorgio Sococcia and Licea Cube Program Manager Simona Perotta. We'll check in again with Nancy Schaubo soon after the DART spacecraft impacts Dimorphos. It's worth repeating, go DART. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. So here's the chief scientist of the planetary society bruce betts has joined us once again i welcome you and uh you know as i mentioned at the top of the show i am uh out of

town as people hear this show if they hear it early on i'm at the nyack symposium hosting the webcast and i note to you uh there are at least two, I thought there were more, there are at least two presentations from NIAC fellows about solar or light sales, not our light sale, but light sales in general. And I thought that was very encouraging. And I bet we, the society, maybe you in particular, have something to do with this renewed interest. I think less me in particular, although I have presented to some of this renewed interest? I think, less me in particular,

although I have presented to some of the people who are talking, our mission, I mean, it's part of what LightSail 2 was, or LightSail program, the goal was to elevate the visibility and prove the viability of solar sailing, particularly in small spacecraft. And I'm excited that I think we've done it. We've got multiple NASA missions that are ready to go, including one on the pad right now with the SLS and NEOSCOUT. More in the future.

And people thinking wild and crazy thoughts like the ones being presented at NIAC of future unusual possibilities of using physics and creative ways. And we're still planning to talk to Les Johnson. He's the leader of that NeoScout project. We're just delaying it, hopefully until the SLS actually takes off and that CubeSat gets to unfurl its sale. Fingers crossed for that. What's up there? I look at Jupiter. Jupiter on September 26th is at opposition. So it's on the opposite side of the earth from the sun. Percentage-wise, it doesn't vary that much over the year, but it is about the brightest it gets, which is really, really bright, brighter than any star except the sun. And it will rise around sunset and set around sunrise.

And when you see it off in the east in the early evening, if you look higher above it a ways, you'll see a yellowish, much dimmer, but still bright star that is actually Saturn. And Mars coming up now in the late evening, and it will be getting brighter and brighter as it approaches its opposition that'll be a few weeks away does Jupiter ever appear brighter than Venus in our sky no okay they they both are particularly Venus because of where it is. And we also see different phases in Venus.

So its brightness varies, but it's always brighter than Jupiter, which also varies. Sorry, Jupiter. I tried. Well, it's Jupiter's fault for being out at 5 AU instead of closer. Although gravitationally, I'm glad that it's not closer. Yeah, I'm just fine with that. Okay. All right.

We're good. We're satisfied with the solar system position. So let's go on to this week in space history. 1846. It's a biggie. Neptune was discovered in this week by Johann Gottfried Gall, G-A-L-L-E, based upon predictions by Le Verrier. My French is even worse.

You know, kind of big. It's planet. I don't know if they knew that. And for you, Matt, three weeks in a row I've had something for you. I don't know if you're a big fan or not. 60 years ago, the Jetsons premiered. So 62. Yeah, right.

Oh, yeah. Accurate portrayal of space and more importantly, robot dogs that sound like Scooby would sound years later. His boy Elroy. I was a huge fan. I was a bigger fan of the Jetsons than the Flintstones

for obvious reasons. I mean, they had cool, they had flying cars and lived up in the sky it was amazing yeah and the trip to the moon was basically you could go there to buy your groceries I think yeah that's not actually realistic but well I gotta say this there was a great one where like the building superintendent is excited he wants to show george this amazing machine he's been working on it's an old car it's a car with big fins because after all 1962 and it just belches all kinds of smoke and smog and it's like george is disgusted and you know runs away and i thought oh my wouldn't

that be wonderful 60 years later we'll find that episode for you. Yeah. Thank you. So it's time to move on to random space. Daughter, Judy, random space fact. Yeah, it was better. So you've been hearing about dart mission.

Here's a little random space fact for you. That's not so random because it's about dart mission. Dimorphos has about 10 million times the mass of the DART spacecraft that will slam into it. But it will slam into it at over 6 kilometers per second, giving it a significant amount of momentum and energy to make a bit of a change in it. I was impressed

by that. Me too. This is going to be so spectacular. I just love by that. Me too. This is going to be so spectacular. I just love this. Well, yeah. I mean, slamming things into other things at high speed. Arr, arr, arr, arr, arr. I know, I know. Reminds me of toys I had in childhood. Welcome to Matt's Childhood Memories

Show. Really? We should do a whole episode sometime. I'll suggest that as an interview after you retire from being the host. Okay, I need to move on. On to a happy subject. I asked you to name a dog and a sheep flying on Artemis I. How do we do? Here is a poem from Margaret Cross. I assume in Florida. You'll hear why in a moment. Aboard the SLS, two critters want to play, a canine friend of NASA and a sheep from ESA. Snoopy is the beagle, he'll be flying like a comet. And beside him, Willie Sean, friend of Wallace and Gromit.

Like them, I long for launch day. Perhaps next they'll send a gator. I give tours out here at KSC, a NASA communicator. Good work, Margaret. Nice. And correct. Snoopy and Sean the sheep. Congratulations to everybody who got it right. As I said last week, huge response. Everybody, I think, who submitted got it right right and what a fun one uh people loved this here's the winner first time winner in fact i think she's a early listener as well how would

i say has not been listening long diane berzan in new jersey uh who said yeah snoopy and sean of course sean the sheep she adds i discovered discovered planetary radio podcast last year. I've been listening faithfully to each new podcast. binge listening from your first ever show and finally up to the year 2011. Enjoying the old with the new. Well, that means you can you can enjoy Bruce and me. She probably meant the guests, but whatever. I think so.

Diane, congratulations. You have won our Artemis I Prize Extravaganza. It's an Artemis baseball cap, a mission pin, a really nice mission pin, a rubber Orion capsule, and my press pass lanyard, which I'm sure will be useful for many things uh around the kitchen comes complete with matt sweat probably considering it was worn in central florida florida coast timothy myers in california pavel kamesha and belarus proving the great minds think alike wherever they are they both submitted one giant leap for lamb kind barry olsen in alberta uh so no cats what's wrong with cats on second thought cat litter may be a problem in zero g it ain't just the litter bar Yeah, don't want to meet a cat floating around in zero-g.

But I will, I should remind people, these are stuffed animals. Zero-gravity indicators, right? Snoopy, at least, will be performing a critical function, which is, okay, not critical, but looks cool, showing on camera when they get in microgravity as opposed to not. Robert Laporta in Connecticut reminds us that Snoopy has been flying since Apollo 10. That was the Snoopy command module. We also heard from a bunch of people about the time that Snoopy spent on the space shuttle. I think it was STS-30, I think.

Joe Calaputre New Jersey Sparky would be proud and Wallace and grommet can give pointers on where to land Sparky was Charles Schultz's nickname you know the father of peanuts of course and therefore Snoopy and and Wallace and grommet I'm did you see the one where they go to the moon? I think because Wallace loves cheese. Exactly. And the moon, cheese. Yeah. It lacks realism, but it's very entertaining. That at least is a joke.

I'm disturbed when they throw the ball up and it doesn't come back down. It's made of flubber. made a flubber. PlanRad Poet Laureate David Fairchild surprised me with word that one of Sparky's pen nibs is also going to fly on Artemis I. By the way, I highly recommend the Charles

Schultz Peanuts Museum and Ice Skating Rink in Santa Rosa, California. It's a fun place. Oh my gosh, that's amazing. You knew about this? No. Charles Sparky was a huge ice hockey fan. He used to love to play ice hockey. I would love that.

And, yeah, Snoopy's been doing space for a long time. He's also the representative of safety. They give out Snoopy pins for people who demonstrate a particular safety in their mission. And maybe they'll fly your headphone someday. I'd like that. I'd rather they take me, and I'll leave my headphones behind. Related to that, though, Gene Lewin in Washington informed us that the Girl Scout space science badges that are on board will go to a bunch of lucky Girl Scouts.

And here's a poem from Jean that mentions other passengers. A Shropshire lamb by name of Sean on Artemis he'll ride along. With Snoopy, once a World War ace, we'll travel to the realm of space. Traveling in Lego style, two crewmates join named Kate and Kyle. And phantoms from the DLR, Passenger Helga and Zohar, together this eclectic troop in a distant retrograded loop. Nice. Way to work in retrograded. Yeah, and the Phantoms, of course, those are the two mannequins. And did you know that there are little Lego minifigures on Artemis One inside the Orion capsule? They stole another idea from the Planetary Society.

Yeah. No, I knew that. They've been getting around since they flew in two-dimensional form with us on Mars Exploration Rovers on our DVD that we flew with NASA. But they also were hanging out at Jupiter on Juno. They've got some Lego minifigures on there as well. Oh, I didn't know that. I got only one more.

Paul Bergel in New York. The only countdown I'm not looking forward to ending is the countdown to Matt's retirement. Since the mission was scrubbed, maybe we can convince NASA to throw in a Lego planetary radio announcer figurine. That would be a fitting send-off. Well, once again, that's fine with me, Paul. Thank you. But I'd rather go myself. Yeah, probably easier to get. Yeah, okay. We'll work

on that, Matt. I hear there's no life support provided in Artemis I as Orion Capsule. So maybe I should reconsider. Yeah, you probably should wait on Artemis I. Maybe you'll... Anyway, but a map minifigure is a lovely idea. We had minifigures produced for the Mars Explosion Rovers through our partnership with Lego. Named them through a contest. Biff Starling and Sandy Moondust. I can see just Matt Kaplan being the next in line. I'd be happy to join that group. You got a new one for us? I do. I do. And this is a throwback to Deep Impact, which slammed something in at high speed, but to a comet.

What is the approximate diameter of the crater that Deep Impact made when it impacted Comet Temple 1? So it's approximate, but a little tip for those hearing it on the radio, there's a later spacecraft that flew by that got the best estimate. Use that. Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. Very cool. You have until the 28th. That would be September 28th, a Wednesday, at 8 a.m. Pacific time. How about this? Because we had a lot of 8 a.m. Pacific time. How about this?

Because we had a lot of interest in this when I mentioned it. One of those Voyager Neptune Encounter medallions that the Planetary Society had made, struck, I guess is the right term, will go to the winner. Are you going to sweat on it? No. Makes it more valuable. Yeah, sure it does. Yeah, a little DNA. We're done. Can you get to sweat on it? No. Makes it more valuable. Yeah, sure it does. Yeah, a little DNA. We're done. Can you get us out of here?

This has been extraordinarily long, but I had a good time. I did as well, and maybe you'll actually trim it up a little bit. All right, everybody, go out there, look in the night sky, and think about what you would name the asteroid that you slammed a spacecraft

into. Thank you and good night. We're all about rastro. Rastro! Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and is made possible by its impactful members. You can add to our momentum at planetary.org slash join. Marco Verda and Ray Paletto, our associate producers. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. Ad Astra.