Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Doing Science on the Moon: The Lunar Science Institute

Episode Date: February 2, 2009

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Doing science on the moon, this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. The Lunar Science Institute has chosen its first partners for investigation of our planet's only natural satellite. We'll talk once again with the Interim Director of the Institute, David Morrison, about this diverse group of scientists. David will also tell us about Ask an Astrobiologist, your chance to question him about life beyond Earth and other space-worthy topics.

Biodiesel-powered rockets? You'll hear about them when Bill Nye the Science and Planetary Guy salutes everyone who wants to get into space, including plans by China and India to reach the moon. Emily Laktawalla looks to the future of Spirit and Opportunity, the Mars Exploration Rovers, and Bruce Betts will join me for our own pre-game show, where the prize is so much more than a big gold ring. Speaking of Spirit and Opportunity, my colleague A.J.S. Rayl has posted another of her extensive mission reviews at Planetary.org. It marks the fifth anniversary of the rovers on the Red Planet

and includes the official celebration at the Jet Propulsion Lab. Remember Dawn? That spacecraft is still headed toward its encounter with the solar system's two biggest asteroids. And a swing-by of Mars is just a few days away. asteroids. And a swing-by of Mars is just a few days away. Guest blogger and project system engineer Mark Raymond has filed a new mission report in Emily's blog, also at Planetary.org. Here's Bill. Hey, hey, Bill Nye the Planetary Guy here. Some news this week. Mike Griffin, who's leaving NASA, is saying that China will send a mission around the moon in 2016. And along with that, India says by the year 2020. Now, these two numbers, 2016, 2020, if you're a

young person, they sound like they're a long way off. If you're a man of a certain age, such as myself, they're coming right up. Now, my friends, this is exciting. There are certain people who still are anxious about other countries flying in space. The concern being that other countries will have the ultimate high ground and there'll be some military advantage to going into space. But no, no, my friends. The more people who are involved in space exploration, the better space exploration will be for everyone. Here is hoping China does have a successful mission to the moon. The Indian Space Organization does get its rockets sophisticated enough and its space program advanced enough to send people into orbit. This would be exciting. It would mean that humankind continues to reach out.

Instead of stagnating, the other countries will be able to have technology that will advance technology for everyone in the world because they're not going to build rockets the way they were built 40 or 50 years ago. They'll be built with modern materials. In fact, there's another story this week where a California rocket company is going to launch a rocket using biodiesel. Now, biodiesel fuel is made from plants, not from digging up fossil stuff left in the ground from millions of years ago. There'll be new ways to explore space with more and more new people trying it. It's an exciting time, everybody. Keep looking up.

I've got to fly. Bill Nye, the planetary guy. David Morrison came to the Lunar Science Institute with a long list of accomplishments and awards for his previous research and leadership. The new so-called Virtual Institute is charged by NASA with supporting collaborative research, providing scientific and technical perspectives, developing a lunar science community, and encouraging education and public outreach. a lunar science community and encouraging education and public outreach. David was already senior scientist for NASA's Astrobiology Institute when he was asked to become the interim director of the LSI. He continues in both positions, aided by the fact that both institutes are based at the

Ames Research Center in Northern California. That's where I got him on the phone a few days ago. David, welcome back to Planetary Radio. It's a pleasure to be here. Congratulations. You have your first seven partners there at the Science Institute. The last time we talked last August, you had a stack of, what, 33 proposals to go through? That's right. And yes, we did go through them all in great detail. And came up with a very diverse group.

Very interesting, the different types of institutions that are represented. I tell you, they must be especially glad at the University of Colorado Boulder because they picked up a couple of these. They picked up a couple, and the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder was also selected. So there's definitely a center of gravity the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder was also selected. So there's definitely a center of gravity now for our institute in Boulder. Something about the Southwest and terrains like the moon. I don't know what it is, but that's something we have to explore someday with people like Alan Stern. Tell us about some of the programs, and I'm kind of hoping you

can start with one that came from Carly Peters, who's a past guest on this program. Yes, indeed. I also would like to mention that in addition to the seven U.S. teams that were competitively selected, we also have three international teams now. And we will continue to add those since they don't cost us any money, and it will greatly strengthen our program to have the international participation. I remember when we talked last time, at least one of those groups was based in Canada.

Yes, we have the Canadian team, a Korean team, and a United Kingdom team. And they've all really just started to crank up in parallel with the American teams so that we'll have an even bigger representation in terms of the broad spectrum of lunar science. Well, I'm going to start saying ten partners rather than seven. How about that one from Carly Peters at Brown University? That is a very impressive group. It's not just Carly Peters at Brown and her colleagues there, but it also includes Maria Zuber at MIT and her colleagues. So it gives us a very strong window into the missions. Sometimes people think of the Lunar Science Institute as primarily focused on human

exploration. And of course, we will try to support that. But we also are in an era when there's a lot of spacecraft, robotic spacecraft, going to the moon. Carly is a co-I on the instrument on the Indian Chandrayaan mission. And Maria is the PI of the GRAIL mission that NASA will be launching in about four years to study the gravity field of the moon in great detail. So they bring in traditional lunar scientists, but with a handle on the most recent instruments and kinds of data that are going to be coming back in great volume for the whole scientific community to work on. That's a great title, too. The Moon is Cornerstone to the Terrestrial Planets, the Formative Years.

I kept thinking of the Wonder years as I read that. Right. I wouldn't want you to play favorites, but can you pick out two or three more of these just to give us an idea of the variety of partners that you've picked up? I can, and I want to remind you that we're treating lunar science in a broader perspective than has perhaps been true in the past. It includes not just studies of the moon, but has perhaps been true in the past. It includes

not just studies of the moon, but on the moon and from the moon. When we talk about studies of the moon, the more traditional planetary sciences, it's an interesting combination of David Crane's investigation at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, with also JSC Johnson folks involved, Houston, with also JSC Johnson folks involved, and the one from the Southwest Research Institute by Bill Botke, because they both approach the issues of the formation and bombardment history of the moon, but from different perspectives. Botke's team is largely scientists with background in asteroid studies, so he is going to be studying the population of objects and its variation over time so that you can understand what the cratering history has been. And David Crane's group at the Lunar and Planetary Institute is geochemists who will be looking at the record from lunar samples

and trying to use that to decipher the early bombardment history of the moon. So here's two separate teams with separate approaches looking at similar problems, and I'm sure there will be ample collaborations between them. I was very intrigued last year and am still by this idea of science done from the moon. That's right. And one of the teams that's especially focused on that is the one by Jack Burns, one of the two current University of Colorado teams, called Exploring the Cosmos from the Moon. And they are looking at the kinds of astronomy we could do. We're no longer thinking in terms of building telescopes on the moon, because the fact is orbiting telescopes like the Hubble do beautifully. But using the moon as a platform for radio

astronomy, the possibility of getting antennas on the far side or in orbit around the moon, his team is just going to look at a whole spectrum of possibilities of doing astronomy from the moon. You know, we've gotten through four of these now. Maybe you'll have time to mention the other three. Ben Busey at Johns Hopkins University is a focus study that's very important. That is the potential of the lunar poles, where there's some evidence of hydrogen and therefore probably of water ice, where we have permanently shadowed craters, which of course are hard to study because you can't see into them. But his team will be looking at those processes, whether there's permanently shadowed craters that are

cold, can serve as a cold trap so that cometary gases and volatiles, for instance, might settle there. This is not just a science issue. As you know, this is an exploration issue because we're thinking in terms of the lunar poles as the place that the first lunar base will be set up, and the ability to tap into water ice, if it's there, could be crucial for the long-term sustainability of a human colony on the moon. Yeah, one less item that you have to bring from home, and perhaps the most important item, considering what you can get out of water. Yes, you can drink it, you can wash with it, you can breathe the oxygen,

you can make rocket fuel out of it. It could be an extremely important resource. We think there is water ice there. We have no idea if it's practical to use it. If it makes up just a few tenths of a percent and it's mixed in with the lunar soil, it might not be worth it. If it's concentrated in, say, 10% or 20% puddles of ice, then it would be very worthwhile. I'll be back with David Morrison of the Lunar Science Institute when Planetary Radio continues. Hey, hey, Bill Nye the Science Guy here.

I hope you're enjoying Planetary Radio. We put a lot of work into this show and all our other great Planetary Society projects. I've been a member since the disco era. Now I'm the Society's Vice President. And you may well ask, why do we go to all this trouble? Simple. We believe in the PB&J, the passion, beauty, and joy of space exploration. You probably do, too, or you wouldn't be listening.

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The Lunar Science Institute just chose its first seven U.S. research partners. They joined three international partners in a coordinated effort to explore our closest neighbor in the solar system and think about how the moon might be the right place to learn about the rest of the universe. David Morrison is the interim director of the LSI. He's already told us about several of his new partners. Let's move on. What other projects have we not mentioned so far? We haven't mentioned William Farrell at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center or Mihaly Haranyi from the University of Colorado. They are both, although they approach it in different ways, they are both studying this question of dust and dust transport. We know from Apollo that the dust got in everything.

Astronauts ended up breathing it. It's not easy stuff to work with. And so they're going to look at the science, how the dust is produced, how it's transported by electrostatics, for instance, how you can deal with it if you're going to have extensive operations, either robotic or human, on the moon. This strikes me as a good example of where lunar science is hopefully going to prepare us someday for a human trip to Mars, where they face some of the same challenges with dust. That's right. Although the Martian dust is probably quite different because there is an atmosphere to interact with. Dust in the absence of an atmosphere,

the little grains of dust are really little shards of glass that have been produced and ground up by the meteor impacts on the moon. And they're something we don't have much experience with on Earth. We think the Martian dust may be a little more like what we deal with in a dust storm here in the Southwest. Yeah, still nasty stuff, though. Absolutely. You're not done here.

I read on your website, and we will provide a link to your website from ours at planetary.org slash radio, where people can learn much more about the Institute. But I guess you look forward in a couple of years to taking even more proposals? That's exactly right, although I have to say in fairness that NASA develops budgets just one year at a time, and our ability to do that will depend on the budget situation two years from now. But our objective is to have a solicitation and selection every two years and maybe reach an equilibrium of as many as a dozen teams so we can add new talent. Some of the old teams then will rotate off in subsequent

opportunities. Some will repropose and stay with it. But it needs to be dynamic. It needs to involve more than just these teams, great as they are. We need to try to bring some focus to the whole broad lunar community in the U.S. and internationally to give them a home that they can look to for information and coordination and meetings and workshops and so on. Much sooner than that, can you tell us a little bit about how you plan to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing? We are just now planning it. The main thing to say is that there will be events here at Ames Research Center at the Lunar Science Institute for the public,

and they will be coordinated with our second Lunar Science Forum, Lunar Science Conference, which is held that same week. So we hope to have some really dynamite speakers here and entice them by the fact that we're not only asking them for the celebration, but also for participating in the science conference over the next three days. I know that you actually have two jobs, at least two jobs, up there at Ames. You're still a senior scientist with NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and I've read that the Lunar Science Institute was modeled to a degree on the Astrobiology Institute, which has been a great success for a number of years. Are there other areas in which you sort of cross over there, if not in terms of mission or investigation, at least in approach?

The example of the Astrobiology Institute is the one we're following. Undoubtedly, we'll diverge as our community has its own ideas. But right now, the idea of selecting teams that are multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary with a PI, they're having a conference every year, monthly meetings of the PIs, setting up programs for graduate students and postdocs. All of those are using the good ideas that the Astrobiology Institute pioneered.

It's only been 10 months that Lunar Science Institute has been in existence. Seems like you're moving along pretty quickly. We're very pleased. We've had wonderful support from NASA headquarters. We had a terrific response from the community. We think that this is going to be a success, and lunar science is going to rise in its role in planetary science and in science generally.

Of course, partly this is motivated by the future of human exploration on the moon, but that's not going to happen for another 10 years or more. And we have a lot to do between now and then with all the spacecraft, robot spacecraft that are going to the moon, orbiters, landers. It should be a lot of fun. And amidst all this, you still find time to support something that is one of the most fascinating interactive efforts, I think, on the Web, at least in this field. I saw even this morning, it looks like, you responded to somebody who threw a question at you in your Ask an Astrobiologist page. Yes, that's fun. And by the way, we're imitating that at the Lunar Institute now, only we're going to call

ours Ask a Lunatic. I love it. That's great. But the Ask an Astrobiologist, there are more than 1,200 answers posted now, and they can come in at several a day. Many of them are really good scientific questions to understand life in the universe. Lately, even more are about pseudoscience. I'm just almost overwhelmed with people asking about UFOs and this supposed but non-existent planet Nibiru and polar shifts and magnetic anomalies and all this stuff. It's very sobering to realize how much scary, totally incorrect stuff is out on the web, how many people are lying or using the web to make money, and in the process,

scaring a whole lot of people. I mean, I've had teenagers, for instance, say, I just heard about this, and I couldn't sleep last night, and I've been crying, and I don't want my life to end in four years. It's a shame that this sort of thing is out there displacing the real, legitimate, exciting science. Well, then, all the more reason to be grateful to you and people like you, Phil Plait comes to mind, for providing this kind of service when you've got at least one other big job to do.

David, we're out of time. I want to thank you very much, and maybe we can check back with you as we all begin to celebrate the 40th anniversary of humans on the moon. That's a great idea. David Morrison has been our guest. He is still the interim director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute, a senior scientist, as we said, at the NASA Astrobiology Institute,

also located at the Ames Research Center up there in Northern California. We're going to provide, you know what, I'll give the URL right now. It's lunarscience.nasa.gov. But we'll have that and the link to Ask an Astrobiologist at our site, planetary.org slash radio. We'll be right back with this week's edition of What's Up after we hear from Emily. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, what's the long-term plan or destination for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers? Both of the Mars Exploration rovers have now been operating on Mars for more than five

years, and they're still doing excellent science, but they're doing it at two extremely different landing sites that have resulted in utterly different personalities to their missions. Opportunity has always been the charmed one. Landing practically within arm's reach of bedrock, she spent the five years alternating long drives across the generally easy terrain of Meridiani Planum, with long periods spent at impact craters that obligingly dug beautiful cross-sections into the lovely layered rocks beneath her wheels. She's recently embarked on her longest drive yet, striking for a huge crater called Endeavour, 12 kilometers to the south-southwest.

It may take a couple of years to get there, but she'll stop at regular intervals along the way to gather measurements on convenient rocks. Spirit, on the other hand, has had to work much harder. She spent her youth hiking up and down mountains, but for the last three Earth years she's been handicapped by a stuck right front wheel, severely limiting her mobility. She's also farther south of the equator than Opportunity, so her activities are hampered by the season. Right now, it's late spring, and Spirit is able to be active again,

as the sun is high enough overhead that Spirit's dusty solar panels can provide enough juice for her to work. She's currently heading around to the southern side of the volcanic edifice named Home Plate to study two mounds called Von Braun and Goddard, which might be more vents like Home Plate, or might be something else entirely. We won't know until she gets there. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. On the eve of the big game, in fact, just, I don't know, an hour or two before the big game, and we have to call it the big game because if you say the Super Bowl, the NFL will sue your pants off. Here we are with Bruce Betts, ready for another

edition of What's Up in the Night Sky? Because I know you're going to be watching that game in just a few moments. Yeah, I had to stop my warm-ups to record here, so I'm going to try to stay loose while we're recording. You got all the food laid out? No, that's what I was warming up before, you know, going out to get it. Now, Bill Nye told me that he's pulling for Arizona in spite of all reports to the contrary. So I don't know if you want to play favorites. Do you have somebody in mind? I don't have a strong favorite this year. I'm kind of rooting the Arizona for just the wild underdog kind of thing.

But my team's long since gone. Well, of course, everybody will know by the time they hear this who reigns supreme. But tell us who reigns supreme in the night sky. Venus. Venus, my friend. The Venus planeteers are ruling the sky as the incredibly bright star-like object over there in the west after sunset. The only other easy thing to look at besides the moon up there right now in planet moon land is Saturn, which

is rising in the early to mid evening in Leo. It's looking like a bright star, kind of yellowish. For those pre-dawn people, we've got a bunch of stuff coming up, but really low on the horizon in two or three weeks. We've got a whole plethora of planets poking their heads up, and I'll let you know more about that next week. On to this week in space history. 35 years ago, the first gravity flyby, planetary gravity flyby, was done with Mercury 10 using Venus's gravity assist to get over to Mercury. Now that's how we get just about every place except, I guess, Mars. That's why it was a significant event. All sorts of other stuff.

We also had Apollo 14 landing on the moon and the, of course, famous Alan Shepard golf ball shot occurring in 1971. occurring in 1971. And 25 years ago, in 1984, Bruce McCandless makes the first untethered spacewalk in the famous picture of him just floating out there with the jetpack. On to random space fact! Go team. Raw. Speaking of untethered up there in space and space shuttle and stuff, space shuttle, we think of as way up there, but it's a couple hundred miles, a few hundred kilometers. Not that high in terms of trying to communicate to ground stations,

so space shuttle as well as various other spacecraft and space station regularly communicate to the ground through a series of satellites called TDRS, the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, some of which, many of which were deployed by the space shuttle. They send the signal up to a higher orbit, and then the signal comes back down to the few ground tracking stations on the surface. I remember when the first one of those went up. I thought that was a pretty cool thing. A network of satellites to talk to other people in space.

Yeah, I think it's kind of a cool concept. Speaking of cool concepts, let's go on to the trivia. And we ask you something that, of course, all of our listeners should know on the tip of their tongues. What were the names of the intrepid, what are the names of the intrepid astrobots, the Lego minifigure representations that flew to Mars on both Spirit and Opportunity and are up there right now. Flew on a DVD provided by the Planetary Society with four million names of people interested in going to the surface, and they carried out their own adventures. We ask you their names to make sure everyone keeps them in mind. How'd we do, Matt?

A lot of people remember these two characters, the Astrobots, who used to appear on this radio show before they must have joined the union or something. They couldn't come on anymore. If we can get enough money together, I'm sure we can probably get them on. That's right. Underwriters out there, feel free to send your checks. Yeah, you could direct it to Biff Starling and Sandy Moondust on the radio fund, I suppose, because that's who they are. Those are the astrobots as submitted by many people, including Kent Radek, Kent of Kenmore, Washington, who said that if he was not at work, he could have included the decoded messages from the two Planetary Society disks. So congratulations. Yes, indeed. We also had secret messages encoded, one of them in a fairly easy code, one in one that was really impressive and brought out.

You find out that there are some really hardcore code-breaking hobbyists out there in the world. Congratulations to him. Let's go on to the next contest, which is perhaps a little more mundane, a little closer to Earth. Apollo 9. Apollo 9, which tested out things like the lunar module for the first time in space in Earth orbit. What was the name of the Apollo 9 command module? Go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to enter. They've got to get it to us by the 9th of February, 2009, Monday, Feb. 9, at 2 p.m. Pacific time.

And they'll get, what, a year in space calendar? Monday, Feb. 9, at 2 p.m. Pacific time. And they'll get what, a year in space calendar? Yes, they will. A year in space calendar. Really cool desk calendar. You can also find out other ways to get it on our website and at planetary.org slash radio. We'll give another one of those away for the randomly selected correct answer winner.

And how about an OPT, that is Oceanside Photo and Telescope Rewards Card. You'll find OPT yourself at optcorp.com. I guess we're done. All right, everybody, go out there. Look up in the night sky and think about the funniest named fish you can think of. Thank you and good night. Okay.

He's the big fish in this pond. Bruce Betts is the Director of of projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us every week here for What's Up. Join us next time as we dive into the ocean of Europa. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Have a great week. Редактор субтитров А.Семкин Корректор А.Егорова