Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Dr. Bell Goes to Washington

Episode Date: September 16, 2014

Planetary Scientist Jim Bell of Arizona State University joined other experts in front of the US House of Representatives Space Committee on September 10th. Get his report this week.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dr. Bell goes to Washington this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. Planetary scientist Jim Bell testified before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Space last week. We'll get his report. Bill Nye says the 2020 Mars rover must put sample collection and caching first. And Bruce Betts will introduce us to the little people on a moon of Uranus. Emily Lakdawalla is first into the pool with intriguing news from the Mars Science Laboratory up there on the Red Planet.

All right, Emily, here is the question you're apparently getting from everybody, and now you can have it from me. Has Curiosity reached Mount Sharp or not? Well, it depends on what your definition of Mount Sharp is, which doesn't seem like it should be that complicated. I mean, it's a mountain, right? We're looking at the mountain. Have we gotten to the mountain? And the answer is no, we have not gotten to the spot where the mountain slope changes from the plains. But that's never really what the Curiosity Science team meant when they talked about getting to Mount Sharp. Gale Crater to explore, which were these very ancient rocks, many of which contain clays and sulfates that record this long history of the climate and environment inside Gale Crater on Mars. And Curiosity has finally reached the very first of those layers in an area called Pahrump Hills, which is located still kind of far away from the topographic Mount Sharp, but it's where

Curiosity was driving to, and they're really excited to start examining and drilling in this area. For anybody who's not aware of it, Pahrump is a crazy tiny little town in the California desert out in the Mojave, so maybe a very appropriate name. You do expect us to see some drilling very soon now? I strongly expect that we'll see some drilling. They tried to drill in an area

called Bonanza King that was supposed to be some rocks that they think were similar to these Pahrump Hills rocks. That didn't work out. So I think that they'll be all the more keen on drilling at these rocks, which they have already said are noticeably different from any rocks that they've seen elsewhere on Mars. They have a very high silica content, which is something that's often associated with liquid water, but not necessarily. So they'll be very curious to find out what's going on with these rocks. You have all sorts of great resources, terrific images, including one people can slide a line back and forth and look at a little map that you've created. Does it look like there will be more or less smooth sailing now for Curiosity?

It's a different style of driving now that they're down inside these valleys. I don't think anything is ever smooth sailing when you're talking about a robot driving across Mars. I think that it's going to be more science rich. So it might not be the easiest driving, but they won't have to go nearly as far from one science stop to the next. So it should be there should be a lot more to explore now. It is a September 13 entry in the blog at planetary.org. That would be Emily's blog. Highly recommended. Really fascinating stuff. Thank you for that, Emily, and for joining us once again. Thank you, Matt. She's the senior editor for the Planetary Society, our planetary evangelist, and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. And she will be joining us,

more or less live, at least live for the webcast, this coming Sunday, the 21st. If you're hearing this during the first week, this show becomes available. That'll be for our 6 p.m. Pacific celebration as MAVEN goes into orbit around Mars. You can check it out at planetary.org as one of our major events. Up next is another guy who'll be joining us remotely via FaceTime, I think, and that's the CEO of the Planetary Society, Bill Nye. Bill, the story I think we're going to talk about is in the September 8th issue of Space News, and it's more about the 2020 rover and what is at least supposed to be its primary function. For those of you just joining us,

the rover means a thing going to Mars, a spacecraft that's going to land on Mars. And what all these guys want, and by guys, men and women who work on Mars, they all want samples of the Martian regolith, the surface, the soil. Very, very complicated business to land on Mars successfully, to dig into the soil on Mars successfully from billions of kilometers away, and then they want to cache it. C-A-C-H-E, French word, to store. A subsequent mission would land there and get the cache and go into Martian orbit, and then a mission after that would bring those cached samples back to Earth.

This is all cool. But what I want everybody to think about what's at stake here, if we found evidence of life on another world, it would change this world. So I want everybody to realize what we're ultimately looking for is something that's a sign of life. And so I just hope that while we're working on all the instruments we're going to put on this rover in 2020, we also have in mind that we're going to try to land accurately enough in a place interesting enough where it's likely that we'll find evidence of life. That's what I just keep harping on. I love the geologists. My father was a rock hound, okay, with the rock hammers knocking rocks open. Keep in mind that we're

looking for signs of life. Where are you really going to go to do that? And Bill, I suppose we will hear by the end of the year from NASA how that caching, the first of those three missions to return bits of Mars to Earth, exactly how that's going to work in 2020. Thanks, man. I'll now step down off the soapbox. Thank you. Don't do that. That's why you're here. He's Bill Nye, the science guy, the CEO of the Planetary Society, who joins us almost every week to talk about this stuff. Up next, I think it's his boss, the president of the Planetary Society, Mars scientist, planetary scientist, Jim Bell, who is fresh from a hearing before Congress. You've heard me call him the Ansel Adams of Mars, and I'm going to keep calling him that. Professor Jim Bell of Arizona State University is the best-selling author of Postcards from Mars and other books.

This leader of the planetary science community was called to Capitol Hill on September 10th to share the joy of exploration and his concern about the troubled budget for future missions throughout our solar system. Also appearing before the House Subcommittee on Space were Jim Green, Director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, Mark Sykes, CEO and Director of the Planetary Science Institute, Phil Christensen, also of Arizona State, and Joanne Grabinowitz, former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Space Law. The questions went well beyond space science, as Jim explained to me in a Skype conversation a few days ago.

Jim, thanks so much for joining us on what is no doubt a very busy day there at Arizona State. Also for doing this so soon after your return from Washington, D.C., and that hearing. Great to be on Planetary Radio all the time, Matt. I love it. Love your show. Love the Planetary Society. You prepare to be on all the time? We'll bring you on all the time. Be careful what you say. Let's do it. Here's a little something from your opening statement, which you made on behalf of the Planetary Society in large part. You call planetary science and solar system exploration a crown jewel. I doubt that you'll get any disagreement from our audience, but really, what did you mean by that? Well, look, NASA is a spectacular agency with all kinds of things going on.

And when we look at sort of the last decade, especially the last 15 years or so of, you know, what have been the big successes in NASA scientifically, what have been the things that have excited the public, you know, kids and their teachers. And that's the Planetary Science Program. That's the robotic exploration of our solar system. And we are in a just a spectacular golden age of exploration. It's not to take anything away from the human program, the space station, Hubble Space Telescope, and others, those are great things. But I think the crown jewel, the number one draw, the greatest hits have come from robotic exploration of the solar system. The stuff that brings big cheering crowds into Times Square. Absolutely. Absolutely.

And I love this quote you used, worlds that are begging for exploration. The more we look out there, Matt, the deeper we see, the farther we rove. It just becomes clear that it's an incredibly diverse and interesting and exciting solar system that we live in. We're learning so much about our own planet by studying terrestrial planets like the Earth, by studying the atmospheres of giant planets and how they circulate and energy moves around, by studying small bodies and how they've affected our own planet through impacts. There's just so much to do. Everybody's just chomping at the bit. Let's do it. Let's do more. And the challenge to that, you and most of the other witnesses in this distinguished group that

appeared before the Space Committee said that the challenges really are not going to be technical. That's generally true. I mean, of course, there's always technological advances that are helping us be more efficient and travel better through the solar system. Our solar sail mission is an example. But we've been doing this for a couple of decades now really well, and we've got a lot of the basics down. And so the limitation really is resources. It's funding and national will. That's really become a fundamental limitation in how much we can explore. You used a pretty strong word, crisis, and applied that to at least the outlook for funding of future planetary science missions. Do you stand by that? Absolutely. As I mentioned earlier, this is this golden age of planetary exploration that we're

in. All these active missions, all these incredible discoveries and results, it's all happening right now. And so it seems like the entire enterprise is really healthy. And it's really an illusion because what's happening now was enabled a decade ago. It was enabled by very healthy funding levels from Congress, from the administration, going back a decade. That's when most of the money is spent to design and build and launch spacecraft. You know, sometimes 80%, 90% of emissions costs can be back then when it was being built. And so those healthy budgets from the early 2000s at that sort of average $1.5 billion level that we talked about in the hearing, that's what's responsible for what we're seeing today.

Now, since then, that funding level has been going down, down, down. And as the chart in my testimony showed, that was something that was put together by our own Casey Dreyer, as that chart shows, the number of missions and development is going down. The number of launches is going down. And what that means is that there is this cliff coming up in the next few years, starting around 2016, 2017, when a lot of the missions that are going on now will have wound down and there won't be anything to replace them.

There won't have been missions in the pipeline to replace them. And so we're going to see a big gap in exploration of our solar system, especially the outer solar system. Except for New Horizons, we don't have anything going out there. To restart that process, that's great. We need the healthy budgets to do that, but we're still going to have that gap that we have to get through, even if the budgets come back. So there is a crisis coming. And we'll include that chart that you mentioned on the show page that people can reach from planetary.org slash radio, along to a link of the video of the hearing if you want to sit through the entire hour and 43 minutes as I did just last night. It's actually pretty interesting. You

weren't the only person, of course, among these witnesses who expressed this concern about consistent funding, adequate funding. Here's what Mark Sykes had to say. He's the head of the Planetary Science Institute, or PSI. He was asked by a committee member to name the other things that NASA does that seem to be given higher priority than planetary science. I don't know, everything? Well, I would just say that it has other priorities. I think it ranks other activities within the agency higher, and that's how it chooses to allocate the resources.

We might not agree with that. Congress certainly doesn't agree with that, but it's the hand that we're dealt with. That's Mark Sykes, who was sitting right next to Jim Bell at that congressional hearing just a few days ago. Jim Green was there, too. He's the head of NASA's Planetary Science Division. You know, I noticed that Jim Green devoted almost all of his introductory statement to the status of missions that are currently underway, and then two more that are firmly in the pipeline. What was he missing? Jim is just like the rest of us concerned about

the future. But it's uncertain what's going to happen because, you know, he's a government employee and he effectively works for the administration as part of the upper NASA leadership. And so he has to wait to see what gets proposed by the president and office management budget and then what Congress does to it, whether they accept it or increase it, because he can't really put a program together to predict the future very well without knowing what his budget profile was going to look like. I was also surprised that Jim didn't show any pictures. Jim usually shows up to meetings with all kinds of cool pictures of what's going on in the solar system. So I was really, really happy that Casey Dreyer helped me put some

pictures together that I could show. And you could just see in the body language of the members of Congress, you could see the sort of the tone change and those pictures flash up of the Cassini image of Saturn and the part of the selfie from Curiosity or the image of a near-Earth asteroid and little stars in their eyes. These people are on the space committee for a reason, because they love space. I'm really glad that, you know, the society could help to, you know, feed some of that enthusiasm by showing off some great pictures. It was really clear. And you got a couple of thank yous for those as well. I mean, after all, you know, they may be members of Congress, but they're human. They react the same way as the rest of us. They are. And it was impressive. It's impressive that

the support for planetary exploration and space exploration in general is very bipartisan. We had a great turnout on the subcommittee on both the Republican and Democratic side. And we could see from the table we were sitting at, we could see the banter between the members of Congress. They clearly like each other. They enjoy serving on this committee. It's not a partisan kind of committee. It's something that really is good for the country. Planetary scientist and president of the Planetary Society, Jim Bell. More in a minute. This is Planetary Radio. Hi, this is Casey Dreyer, director of advocacy at the Planetary Society.

We're busy building something new, something unprecedented, a real grassroots constituency for space. We want to empower and engage the public like never before. If you're interested, you can go to planetary.org slash SOS to learn how you can become a space advocate. That's planetary.org slash SOS. Save our science. Thank you. Save our science. Thank you. Your name carried to an asteroid. How cool is that? You, your family, your friends, your cat, we're inviting everyone to travel along on NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu.

All the details are at planetary.org slash b-e-n-n-u. You can submit your name and then print your beautiful certificate. That's planetary.org slash b-e-n-n-u. You can submit your name and then print your beautiful certificate. That's planetary.org slash Bennu. Planetary Society members, your name is already on the list. The Planetary Society, we're your place in space. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. Jim Bell has returned, but this time he's as much policy wonk as planetary scientist. The Arizona State University professor, who is also president of the Planetary Society, just appeared with other leaders before the Space Subcommittee in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Jim and his colleagues had lots of praise for recent truly bipartisan action by Congress to restore and protect funding for solar system exploration, which must have been a refreshing change for members of the committee. There was one other thing that got a lot of praise from pretty much everybody among the witnesses, and that was the decadal survey, which we've talked with Bill Nye about, we've talked with Casey about. Could you remind us of what that is and why it's so important? Yeah, so every 10 years, all of the major parts of NASA, including the Planetary Science Division,

go through a survey that is made possible with the help of the National Academy of Sciences of the most important science questions and missions to focus on. The most recent one came out in 2011. There were more than 1,600 professional planetary scientists that contributed to it, and it was all these opinions and town hall meetings and special workshops were distilled down to this several hundred page report that outlines the science-driven future the community wants to see for NASA over the next decade that we've just started. Those documents like that become sort of the Bible for planning, for strategic planning. Congress is part of the audience that requests these kinds of surveys.

And so they look to them and they look to NASA and they say, you know, are you guys doing what the world's experts think that we should be doing in space exploration? So if NASA can say, yes, we're following the decadal survey, then Congress has some validation that, in fact, we're on the right path from a science perspective. So those of us in the community, most of us believe in that document and that consensus of what are the most important things to do. My colleague Phil Christensen, who was also on the panel, was the leader of the Mars chapter of the decadal survey. And so he talked about how, for example, it's really important that the Mars 2020 rover have that sample caching capability because that's what's called for in the decadal.

It can't just be another spirit, another opportunity, another curiosity. It has to be a step up. It has to do that sample caching and be the first part of sample return. That's what was ranked highest in the decadal. So it's really important that we have a consensus as a community. It's really important to Congress that NASA follows that consensus. The committee members asked about a number of other issues. Plutonium-238 was certainly an important one that came up that we won't have time to talk about here that we have on previous Planetary Radio episodes.

This so-called Asteroids Act actually made it into the title of the hearing. And it's a pretty clever acronym that somebody came up with there within the Beltway. The American Space Technology for Exploring Resource Opportunities in Deep Space Act, asteroids. for Exploring Resource Opportunities in Deep Space Act, asteroids. And the ARM mission, so-called, asteroid retrieval mission, also came up. It sounded like you were expressing the Planetary Society's sort of cautious, middle-ground approach to both asteroids and this concept of asteroid mining. We have been taking a cautious approach. On the asteroid retrieval mission, we, like many other organizations, recognize the potential of

developing the infrastructure needed to get astronauts back beyond low Earth orbit, out into lunar space and beyond. We recognize the potential in developing the crew vehicles and developing the capabilities to explore asteroids and the science potential of collecting asteroid samples all those all that potential is there the problem is and many other organizations have said this too we haven't seen the detailed plan that the technical plan or the cost especially just has not been worked out in in adequate detail. And there are folks within NASA who are working on that, and everybody's hoping that they'll present that publicly and we'll know.

And so we're just kind of on standby, you know, thinking that in concept, it sounds kind of cool, but can it really be pulled off with the available budget? And then the more recent one, the asteroids bill that's in the house right now, there, that's a tough issue to have an opinion on because what it requires is a legal expertise and expertise and knowledge of international treaties like the Space Act of 1960 in which the U.S. is a signatory. And so it's kind of interesting that the lawyer who was there. That was Joanne Grabinowitz? Grabinowitz, that's right.

She sounded kind of skeptical. I think had some advice for Congress about how to frame this kind of a thing. I mean, the issue has to be addressed. Property rights or mineral rights or resource rights, that's going to have to be addressed if companies are going to get into this business for real because their stockholders, their investors are not going to want to invest in those companies unless they think they can have a run on their investment. Predicting what's going to happen in Washington might actually be even harder than predicting the next big discovery on Mars. But what was your sense of the outlook? I was very encouraged that they even had the hearing about this topic because

it is not a political hot button topic. The Congress is very busy right now. They've only got a few weeks where they're in session and then they're all heading off to deal with the elections. They've only got a few weeks where they're in session, and then they're all heading off to deal with the elections. And yet they took the time to talk about this issue, to get some advice from the society and other organizations about the importance of planetary science for education, for scientific advancement, for inspiring our country and our world. And to me, that is just very, it's uplifting. You know, we like to complain about Congress, but sitting there with a group of our elected representatives, seeing them light up when you see pictures from space, seeing them ask thoughtful questions, just absolutely delightful. The best possible thing you can imagine for your government. And I was thrilled by the whole process. Thank you, Jim. And I want to congratulate you on the new camera that you're going to be sending to Mars in about, what, six years?

We'll need to talk about that sometime soon. Let's do that, absolutely. And the Society is a big part of that effort. That's Jim Bell. He is the president of the Planetary Society, who represented the Society and himself and many other fans of planetary science and solar system exploration, on the 10th of September in front of the Space Subcommittee on Capitol Hill, part of the Science, Space and Technology Committee in the House of Representatives. Jim is, as you may also know, Professor of Earth and Space Science Exploration at Arizona State University. I ensure it's time for Bruce Betts and this week's edition of What's Up with leprechauns, little leprechaun marshmallows.

Yeah, we just thought we'd try something new. They're magically delicious, as you said a couple of weeks ago, but that's coming later. What's up in the night sky? In the evening sky, you can watch Mars, Saturn, and the red star Antares do a bit of a dance over the coming days and weeks. They're in the southwest in the early evening and all of similar brightness. Saturn is looking yellowish, but what's kind of interesting is Mars, which is moving closer and closer night after night to Antares, is similar in brightness. Antares is a red giant star, Mars being, you know, the red planet. If you're hanging out in the same part of the sky, check it out.

Watch them move. It's cool. Well, watch Mars and Saturn move. Yeah. Relative to Antares. In the pre-dawn sky, check out Jupiter looking super bright over in the east. And on September 20th, in the pre-dawn sky, you can see the moon hanging out near Jupiter looking lovely. Speaking of lovely, we move on to this week in space history.

And this week, Matt, it is, of course, 1965. Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! The premiere of Lost in Space. The heart on the heels of the anniversary of the Star Trek premiere. Back to real planet stuff. 1970, Luna 16, the Soviet Luna 16 lands on the moon. It would become the first robotic sample return from the moon and the third overall set of samples to come back, in its case returning 101 grams. Real cool stuff happening in space.

On to random space fact. I wasn't sure you'd get the engine started there. That hurts sometimes. Speaking of samples, fragments of an Apollo 17 collected moon rock were distributed to 135 heads of state and to each of the 50 U.S. states. They were referred to as Goodwill moon rocks and were presented on a plaque with the flag of the recipient that was also flown on Apollo 17. Yeah, I heard some of those heads of state took their moon rocks along with them when they left office. Well, sure. On to the trivia

contest. I asked you, where in the solar system is Leprechaun Ballas? How'd we do, man? Ron Brown from Florham Park, New Jersey. Ron, who is a regular entrant in the contest, proving that persistence pays off. If he got it right, he says that Leprechaun Valis is on Ariel, or Ariel, which is it? Moon of Uranus. Oh, take your pick. Whatever makes you feel good. Uranus is Moon Ariel. That's where Leprechaun Valis is. Ron, we're going to send you that Planetary Radio

t-shirt that you can wear proudly there in Florham Park. This from Mark Schindler of Honolulu, Hawaii. He was talking about the images that were snapped of Ariel as Voyager flew by and of Leprechaun Valis and that there appeared to be

small boulders there but these turned out to be photographic artifacts. They were, in fact, sham rocks. That's good. That's almost worth a shirt all on its own, Mark. Congratulations. Sham rocks. Speaking of rocks, you ready for the new question? Of course. What country's Goodwill Moon Rock was stolen but returned in 2003 after it was recovered by a U.S. sting operation?

Go to planetary.org slash radio contest to get us your entry. Wow. I'm going to enter this one. That's fascinating. We've had this discussion before. Oh, yeah. Well, you have until Tuesday, the 23rd of September at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us this answer. And the prize, once again, will be a Planetary Radio t-shirt.

We've got some of the good prizes not far out there. Stuff that you'll want to stay tuned for. All right, everybody far out there, stuff that you'll want to stay tuned for. All right, everybody go out there, look up the night sky, and think about noses and all the good things they do for us. Thank you. Good night. If noses are good and more of a nose is better, then I'm the luckiest guy on Earth. He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, who joins us every week here for What's Up.

Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by the sometimes wonkish members of the Society. In a good way. Clear skies. Thank you.