Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Fighting for Space: Former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver

Episode Date: July 5, 2016

She has spent most of her life working toward a bright future for humanity in space, and Lori Garver has lost none of her passion. She visited the Planetary Society for a wide-ranging conversation with Mat Kaplan.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, 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. Many give Lori Garver much of the credit for opening the way to commercial success stories like SpaceX. We'll talk with her about that and much more on today's show. That gigantic rocket, the Space Launch System, took another step toward the sky with a test last week. Jason Davis was there, and he'll tell us about it. Bruce Betts will help me celebrate the 4th of July with a couple of space anniversaries on that date. We begin with a report from Senior Editor Emily Lakdawalla. She was looking toward a 4th of July extravaganza at Jupiter.

Emily, I think we'll be forgiven for talking Juno again, especially because the mission has already delivered some science. Yes, it has. In fact, all of the science instruments have been returning data as Juno approaches Jupiter. For a while, it was just taking data on the solar wind and, you know, interplanetary space. But Jupiter's magnetosphere is really enormous. And so many days out from orbit insertion, Juno has already been capturing good data, and they released a little bit of it yesterday. I heard it described as the biggest structure in the solar system.

Yes. Jupiter's magnetosphere just expands across a huge region of space. It's felt over an enormous area. What happened about 10 days before orbit insertion is that Juno crossed between the part of interplanetary space where the Sun is in charge to the part of interplanetary space where Jupiter is in charge. It crossed from feeling only the solar wind through this thing called the bow shock that separates Jupiter's magnetosphere from the influence of the solar wind. It's where the solar wind slows down from its incredibly high speeds to subsonic speeds, and it makes a big change in what the plasma waves instrument can sense. We have talked about the bow shock not in connection with Jupiter, but at the edge of the solar system where interstellar space begins, and this sounds pretty similar. Yes, it's very similar. It's the same thing. It's a magnetosphere with charged

particles extending outward in all directions, blowing up a bubble inside space, and the Jupiter bubble is inside the solar bubble, and who knows, maybe the galaxy makes another bubble. I'm not real sure. Maybe it's bubbles all the way down. I was watching the media conference, the media briefing, but you were there in person. And one of the highlights was some sound they played. That's right. So the sound that you're about to hear was recorded by the plasma waves instrument. And of course, it's not actually sound. It's variation in the frequency of this radio emission from Jupiter, which, of course, is how we broadcast sound over radio waves. So it's not completely silly to turn this kind of

instrument's data into sound. And what you'll hear is the much higher frequency sound of the solar wind giving way as Juno crosses the bow shock into lower frequency sound, lower frequency radio emission from the planet Jupiter. All right, so listen for that change. And sometimes it's not so bad to only be a radio show audio podcast. That's right. You know, the graph of this is quite a bit harder to interpret than the sonified version. So I think that graph of this is quite a bit harder to interpret than the sonified version. So I think that's kind of fun. We are going to be in the same place on Monday evening, which of course, by the time most people hear this show, we will know if Juno

was successfully inserted into Jupiter orbit. People should go into the blog, take a look at planetary.org and look at your detailed timeline. Anything to add to that? Just that I'll also have a blog post up soon telling you where to watch. So let's wish Juno good luck and go Juno. Go Juno indeed. Thank you so much, Emily. Look forward to seeing you on the 4th of July, and we'll talk again next week. See you then, Matt. She's our senior editor, the planetary evangelist for the Planetary Society and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. Bill isn't with us this week. Instead, a quick conversation with Jason Davis,

our colleague who has been monitoring some pretty critical testing of elements of the Space Launch System. Three, two, one, fire. That is the sound of a solid rocket booster test. I assume it was deafening. We can find out for sure because my colleague Jason Davis was there for the test. Jason, welcome back. Hey, Matt. Thanks for having me.

Tell us, how close were you to that Roman candle? So we were about two kilometers away, and I've already burned the metric conversion into my mind, so I'm not sure how many miles that is now. But yeah, close enough to where we saw the flash when the clock hit zero, and it was about six seconds before we got the sound from it. And it was pretty deafening. I've had the luck to go to a couple engine tests before, well, one engine test and then a few launches. It was up there. It was pretty loud. What does this mean for getting that big rocket, the Space Launch System, up into space? Sure. So as you probably know, or our listeners know, the Space Shuttle used this

same type of solid rocket booster. And for SLS, they've added an extra segment to it. So they basically just made it a little bit longer, gave it a little more propellant. Because they did that, they need to test fire it a couple times at the end of its temperature ranges. So they basically just made it a little bit longer, gave it a little more propellant. Because they did that, they need to test fire it a couple times at the end of its temperature ranges. So they do one at like 40 degrees, do one at like 90 degrees to simulate the variety of conditions it would get on the launch pad. This was the second test, the cool test, the 40 degree test. And now that this is out of the way, they're pretty much clear for starting to ship the actual pieces of the flight booster down to KSC. They already have some of them cast.

So they're really moving right along up there in Utah. All right. What else is coming up? Is there another test in store? Yeah. So this summer and fall, they'll be testing the core stage engines. And those, you probably remember, are the space shuttle main engines, the RS-25. There's one last we heard coming up in mid-July, and we'll cover that. That'll pave the way for a 2017 full test of the core stage with four shuttle main engines on the back of it

down at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. And Orion is being put through its pressure vessel testing right now down at KSC, the flight Orion. Had a chance to talk to a lot of NASA officials and they're pretty pleased with the pace of the program and they think they'll have this thing ready to go in 2018 as they've been promising. I was reading about these RS-25 shuttle engines and that's really what they are. Some of these are, shall we say, veterans. Yeah, they have been in space. In fact, I believe it's all but two of the first four sets have space heritage on them and have flown on shuttle missions. So they know their way around the block when it comes to lifting a lot of cargo into orbit.

But you can say they're pretty well proven, can't you? Yes, that's what NASA is thinking. proven, can't you? Yes. That's what NASA is thinking. All right. Well, much to look forward to even before that big launch in 2018. Jason, we'll keep checking in with you. Thanks very much for this update. Thank you, Matt. And if you want to check any of this out, you can look at Jason's blog. This latest post with the follow-up to this solid rocket booster test. He posted on June 28th. You'll find it at planetary.org, and we'll have a link to it on the show page that you can get to from planetary.org slash radio. Jason, of course, is our digital editor at the Planetary Society, covering human and commercial spaceflight, and our embedded

reporter with LightSail, and we'll be talking with him about that soon as well. Lori Garver has spent a lifetime in space without actually going there. Not yet, anyway. She's probably best known as NASA's Deputy Administrator under Charles Bolden from 2009 to 2013. But she spent decades building toward that job, working in other positions within the space agency, as Executive Director of the National Space Society, and advising presidential candidates and President-elect Barack Obama regarding space policy. Throughout it all, she has spoken with great passion, clarity, and sometimes with a little controversy about our destiny in the cosmos and how she believes we should achieve it.

Now she's general manager of the Airline Pilots Association. I would not be terribly surprised if she once again found herself working for NASA, perhaps with an offer of the top job. Next time. Lori, it's been a long time. You've been on the show, but it's been way too long. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. Thank you.

It is fabulous to be back, Matt. And especially to play host here in the studio at the headquarters, which is only about a block from where you were just on this panel led by my colleague Casey Dreyer. I had a great time on the panel. The Planetary Society sponsored this at Politicon. I didn't quite know what to expect, but being able to come out and see the Planetary Society new office and also be able to be at Charles Elachi's retirement party tonight is gonna just make it a trip down memory lane. And they are setting up for a real shindig. I was there yesterday at JPL, and I think it's going to be a heck of a party.

So have fun with that. Thanks. I'm sure it is. It's been even a couple months since they asked me to film some remarks for his video. So I'm really excited. I'm sure they are going to do it up right. It's been a good era there, and for space as well, which is something that we'll talk about, I think. I met you, I think it was before you were executive director for NSS, which,

now that I think of it as a position that does seem to lead to good things for people. I'm thinking of our friend George Whitesides. Did that help set you up for all the good work that you did after? Oh, no question. I mean, I always talk about my start with John Glenn's presidential committee, but honestly, I was there less than a year. It was because of that that I became employed by the National Space Institute first as the Secretary Bookkeeper Receptionist and just really got excited about the space program, went to grad school at night at GW in space policy while working my way up at the Space Institute

when we were merging with the L5 Society and they were looking for an executive director. They asked me to apply. And I was 27 years old and had been at the society like five years. And I just couldn't really imagine doing that. But because I was asked to take the position, I ended up staying another 10 years. That is really my pedagogy in space, is the National Space Society. I got to know the Planetary Society through that, worked very closely with them, always thought we should merge, frankly, but the boards were not interested, as is typical. And I only went to NASA when the head of NASA called me, as I was still NSS director, and said, would you please come? And I said, on a leave of absence. And that was just the first of your two tenures at NASA, right?

Yes. So that was Dan Goldman. And I went to NASA and did stay for five years, eventually becoming the head of the Space Policy Office at that time, which since that was a political position, I needed to leave when the Supreme Court decided that George Bush should be president. And I spent the next eight years working in aerospace as a consultant for a range of different clients on how to best fulfill our exploration programs, worked on the Cary campaign as a volunteer space policy advisor, did the same for Hillary. And then when Hillary got out of the race, she and her folks asked all of us to help support Obama as well, and was happy to do it. It's an interesting thing, this advising of presidential candidates. You were

a volunteer during that time. Formerly, candidates were much more comfortable with people speaking on their behalf. And I was asked to do that in a number of debates for candidates Clinton, Kerry, and Obama. People are doing that less so now. And so we don't really speak about who's advising who anymore, because there are, I think, lots of things assumed by who your advisors are. But back then, I was her space policy advisor, and it was a great life experience. If somebody came to you, the person who's going to become president in January of 2017, and said, Lori, I need your advice, just as you have advised others. From where we are now, what would you begin to tell them about what this nation

ought to be doing with space policy and space development? Well, I still feel very strongly that space policy is evolving and really needs to keep up with sort of what's happening technically with our private sector as well as geopolitically. So to me, we have a combination of things we need to focus on. I would really like to see us cooperate more fully, both with our private sector and with other international partners. We are not on an island. This is a very changed environment from the beginning of the space race. And, you know, government sectors just don't change as quickly as private sectors. And that's what's happened in space.

NASA is an absolute jewel of this nation and can be better utilized if we are partnering in new ways to get the very most from all of the investments we've made in the past. And those live lots of places, but not just at NASA. Do you take some personal pride in looking at how far the so-called commercial space sector has come in the last few years? Oh, I really don't take a lot of credit for that. There's just been so many people involved. But there are people who give you a good deal of credit. Well, I have said that I certainly get a lot of the blame for the problem,

so I guess I'll take some of the credit for the success. That's fair. And of course, I'm thrilled that it's working out because we've been on this path a long time. And when I worked for Dan Golden at NASA, he wanted to turn over the keys of the space shuttle and the space station to the private sector. And, frankly, we just had no one to give them to. And these programs were so expensive that no one was going to just accept the keys. The car was maybe free, but it took more than to buy one every year to maintain it. The fact that we've been through at least a dozen commercial space companies that didn't quite make it,

and we persevered, and now there are half a dozen who are making it, probably a dozen when you count and include everyone, that really is progress that you, while we worked for it for 20 years, even 10 years ago you couldn't have predicted it. I was going to ask you about Red Dragon, SpaceX, and those plans that Elon Musk is making for the red planet. I didn't know that you would speak so passionately about what they hope to do in this panel that we just watched.

It sounds like you are, to say the least, very supportive. Oh my gosh, of course. I think that I'm supportive of space activities that are advancing society, providing benefits to humanity, this nation, the planet, and I don't care if those are public or private. I feel like NASA should be embracing all of this excitement about space. I've spoken at campuses across the country these last number of years, and people are genuinely getting re-enthused about space, largely because of Elon, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin. And I was at a White House science fair. The winners had their displays set up in the East Room with the president walking around showing him. And one of the winners had a NASA sticker and a SpaceX sticker on her poster board where she's showing him. And I got emotional and tears in my eyes. And I came back to tell

the NASA team, we're the same. We're all inspiring the next generation. And they don't see a difference. So let's not be divisive. It's just not something that the broader public understands. So of course, I'm excited about Red Dragon. Do I think he's going to do it in, you know, the time frame, he says? Probably not. You know, lots of people have bet against Elon Musk, and he tends to do it, yes, maybe a couple years late, but I even argue usually manages to achieve the goals he sets with less delay than we've had at NASA. So you began to touch on this, but what should the mission of NASA be? I mean, what are you gonna tell that president-elect? I think we drive technology.

I think we absolutely set our gaze further. We cooperate with the private sector to go, in my view, back to the moon and onto Mars. I do believe that we have a not destination-driven but capability-driven program that has a lot of exciting destinations along the way. We came up with the asteroid mission really because SLS and Orion already existed. We had these vehicles that the Congress had said we had developed. We were spending $3 billion a year on them, and we had nowhere to go. We had no money for a moon lander, which had been the constellation program of record.

Of course, Mars was just too far out. So going to an asteroid was the only possible place you could state you were going to go within a realistic time frame. We understand. That's not a permanent destination for astronauts. It is something that we felt could utilize the assets of SLS Orion. But if you didn't have those programs, you wouldn't be doing that mission. That's Lori Garver, the former deputy administrator of NASA. She'll return after the break. This is Planetary Radio.

This is Robert Picardo. I've been a. This is Planetary Radio. achieve its goals for space exploration across our solar system and beyond. You can join me in this exciting quest. The journey starts at Planetary.org. I'll see you there. Do you know what your favorite presidential candidate thinks about space exploration? Hi, I'm Casey Dreyer, the Planetary Society's Director of Space Policy. You can learn that answer and what all the other candidates think at planetary.org slash election2016. You know what? We could use your help. If you find anything we've missed, you can let us know. It's all at planetary.org slash election2016. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. My guest is space activist and policy expert Lori Garver, who served as Deputy Administrator of NASA till 2013. Lori was in Pasadena for the Politicon gathering as well as the retirement party for Jet Propulsion Lab director, Charles Elachi. You said on stage that you think, whether it's the right thing to do or not, that we're going to go to the moon, back to the moon, before we go to Mars. I do. Again, my crystal ball is cloudy, but I believe it really makes a lot of sense to learn what we're doing on the moon. And I do think the private sector and other countries have more of an interest in that. And so if there are geopolitical purposes to go with China, having some European nations who want to play a greater role, that is

their interest. When you think about it, we're the only ones who've been. I mean, I was in China once speaking at the University of Beijing, and they said, you know, we're going to beat Americans to the moon. And I just, I had to keep myself from saying, sorry, you know, okay, so maybe the seventh mission. But, you know, we have a little bit of a been there, done that mentality in the United States, but six short treks to the moon does not, you know, space activity make. And we really, I believe, can learn a lot and have a great aspect of the space program be that you don't have to go on your way to Mars. And so I can envision, dare I say, Mars Direct program that would be for geopolitical purposes or something like Elon is wanting to do. It could happen first.

I just generally think, you know, like we have a space station first. You take the smaller steps, but it might not be the case. Somewhere out there, Bob Zubrin's heart just skipped a beat. China, should we be able to work more closely with them? Right now, we can't. I believe that we should be working with China in a way that, again, reinforces what we want out of our space program, but helps us have a future that is more peaceful, more productive with the Chinese. We live on a planet where there is no island. We are

all together. And we need to be working together, as we found was very helpful with the Russians. Are we there yet? Will that be something the next administration does? I don't know. But we ought to be allowed to be starting small. We ought to be allowed to have science dialogue, to have shared experiments on missions, to understand the goals of the other country. have shared experiments on missions to understand the goals of the other country. Things are more scary when they are unknown. All of this just bury your head in the sand approach, to me, is not our best path forward, and I think there could be value from cooperating.

You talked about a new and improved attitude toward space exploration, space development among the public sure seems to be there. But how about the political climate? What changes have you seen as you look back to maybe not even as far back as your NSS days, but from the beginnings of your involvement within NASA? Unfortunately, the political environment has gotten worse. I was always a big proponent of, you know, space is not partisan. This is a place we can all cooperate. There had been in the past some progress along those lines. Unfortunately, these last few years, along with the broader spectrum, while it's not

partisan, it is parochial. We have had individual members and Congress just be very destructive about, I think, the programs that would be making more progress. So that's been very difficult. I've had, as the deputy administrator appointed by the president, people I never know, didn't know anything about me, just will not even take a meeting because you're part of the administration. That did not happen. I guarantee you that George Lowe did not have that happening. You know, the deputy of NASA in the 60s, or Dryden. We just really need to find a way. It's one of the reasons I like the commercial program is if the political

system is going to sort of come to a halt like this, space program needs to transcend it. You know, we used to think that government was the way to assure a future, and the private sector was more risky. It's becoming the reverse. Our political system is, and I love that we have a peaceful democracy, but I sense a shift that is not going to be better for long-term planning of programs at NASA. And yet there are Congress people now who are total space geeks. We've had some of them on this radio show, which I guess is good and bad

because, you know, then you get things like writing in Europa Landers, writing it into legislation to say nothing of interstellar voyages. Good or a bad thing? I mean, it's good they're enthusiastic, isn't it? Of course. We've always had space geeks in Congress. I mean, I remember a freshman congressman, Newt Gingrich, was on the board of the L5 Society. Oh, I didn't know that. Yes. And just a huge proponent, just fabulous, fabulous proponent of space exploration. And

of course, I really believe administrations take the broader view and members of Congress tend to be more parochial. If you really are local, you know, they have to vote on their own jobs in their districts. But when you do have those members who genuinely support space, it's very helpful. I think you've got to look back a ways to see one of those. I mean, you can even argue that we never have. I mean, Lyndon Johnson is known as being for space, but he was for space in Texas. Yeah, that worked out pretty well for Houston. It absolutely did. If you and I are lucky enough to have this conversation again in 15 or 20 years, enough to have this conversation again in 15 or 20 years. What would you love to be able to say happened, you know, that took place over that ensuing period? Oh, I would love to see a genuine

resurgence of interest and activity in space. And I don't care who leads it. I would like to see people living and working permanently on the moon and people headed to, if not, at Mars. I would love to see us really doing the work on beyond Mars robotic activity. We should be able to have gone to Europa by then. We certainly should have amazing discoveries of the Webb Telescope and maybe that blue planet in the distance that we could start thinking about sending something to. Bill Nye and I had lunch and he said, well, we can agree. I know you like the moon maybe first, but we can agree Mars is the ultimate destination. I said, ah, no, Bill, we cannot. I believe we're going much further than Mars. You get to talk a lot nowadays about aviation because of your job.

You see parallels between the early days of aviation and where we are now. I do. I have really enjoyed being part of a commercial aviation industry that is a trillion and a half dollars and has its beginnings in with this country just over 100 years ago we were first flying and that within that time we have gone to the moon we have car car-sized rovers on Mars. These are incredible gains that came out of innovation. And I truly believe that space can use some lessons from early aviation to innovate and be relevant. So we started with barnstormers. We got to where we were delivering mail. And it was only later that people thought about going point to point for transportation. And now space, well, air first and space are utilized in so many ways for our military, for, you know, within our phone to say

where we are on the planet. Those advancements you really cannot foresee. So I would love to see space go the way of aviation and have it be an even bigger part of our economy, an even bigger inspiration for people to reach for. I think you had a shot once, came closer than most of us to getting a ticket for low Earth orbit. If somebody, Elon or someone else handed you one today, would you go? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. My Astro Mom venture was pretty unique in that I was working for a client who was paying to go to Space Station on a Soyuz. And we had negotiated a very low price for him because there was no competition for this seat. And if we didn't have a customer, they were going to only have a European astronaut and they only paid two or three million. So you

really just had to beat that price. And that client of mine decided he couldn't go for various personal reasons. They need to sell the seat. And I stepped up to get sponsors to try and take that position. I believe it really could have worked until my good friend Lance Bass had an agent who decided he should take that business model. And he never raised the money either. So I didn't really get very far. I did make it through the medical certification, took eight Gs on my 40th birthday. And that experience made me recognize that I am the kind of person who would take the personal risk to sort of advance the experience of space. So would I just accept a ticket?

Absolutely. Have I mortgaged my house to buy a Virgin Galactic ticket? I have not. But I truly believe that I will go to space in my life. And I am 55 years old. So of course, we're going to have that opportunity. I sure hope I get to join you. Thank you, Lori. Ad Astra. Ad Astra, Matt. Thank you. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio, sitting right across from me in the Planetary Society studios.

The luxurious studio is Bruce Batts, the Director of Science and Technology for the Society. Welcome. This is just a spa-level studio. It's nice, you know, it's cozy. It's not huge, but it's better than what we had before, which was nothing. And how are you, Matt? I've been better. I'm a little sleepy. This is legit. I sleep on one of those air beds, and it's a great bed. I love my bed. Three o'clock this morning, I wake up and it had deflated. My side of the bed had deflated. And so I was basically sleeping on a board. You might say I had lost life support. Thank you. Thank you for that. I appreciate it.

I was looking forward to doing that joke ever since about 3.15 this morning. You really, really were tired, weren't you? Let's talk about the sky, shall we? We've got Jupiter over in the west in the early evening, and you can check it out, looking like a super bright star, near the crescent moon, making lovely images on June 8th, and let me try July, on July 8th and July 9th. And we've also got, if you swing your head over a little ways, you can see Mars still looking bright over in the southwest in the early evening,

and Saturn looking yellowish a little bit farther towards the eastern horizon. We move on to this week in space history. Well, we have a bit of a big thing going on on July 4th this year. And in fact, there's precedent for it. Mars Pathfinder landed on July 4th, 1997. Deep Impact slammed into a comet on July 4th, 2005. All right, we move on and I hear you got something for us. I do indeed. And this little random space fact gift from the guest we heard from just a few moments ago. Hi, Bruce. This is Lori Garver. I am coming to you live from the Planetary Society headquarters in Pasadena, California. And I'm ready for your random space fact. Cool. Well, let's go on for a hopefully good fact, the area of Juno's solar panels. We've

talked about them before, and I try not to repeat, but I will mention that it's the first outer solar system mission to be solar powered. So it's got big solar panels. The area of its three solar panels combined is about twice the area of light sail, solar sail, the solar sail spacecraft. But Juno would actually make a terrible solar sail spacecraft because its mass is, the mass of the spacecraft alone is more than 300 times the mass of light sail. And in fact, just going into orbit, it will burn more than 100 times the mass of light sail in fuel. Bill Nye just called. He said lunch is on him. Yes, finally. Keeps having me pay. It seems so unfair. Oh, I'm just kidding. All right, we move on to the trivia contest. And I asked you,

what is the ratio of the mass of the Earth's moon to the mass of Pluto? So how much more massive is the Earth's moon than Pluto? How do we do? I have been sharing this ratio, as submitted by a whole bunch of our listeners, to folks here around the office. And like me, they were all surprised that the ratio is as big as it is. Now, this is not our winner, but I'm going to open this time with Dave Fairchild, our poet, our poet laureate of planetary radio. Here it goes. You take the mass of our dear moon in kilograms, of course, then measure that of Pluto, which was quite the tour de force.

Compare their mass by using math, and when the math is done, the common ratio of the two is 5.3 to 1. That is close enough. I'd give that to him. I come out with 5.6, but sure, I wouldn't be as poetic either. Well, somebody who's going to be very happy that you've said 5.6 is Jason Neal out of Boston, Massachusetts. He said 5.613 is the ratio of our moon to Pluto. Not only is he a first-time entrant in the contest,

he's a first-time listener, so he really hit the jackpot. Wow, that is a lucky listener. Congratulations, Jason. We are going to send you a Planetary Radio t-shirt, a rubber asteroid, I'll come back to that, and a 200-point itelescope.net account for that wonderful network of telescopes all over this planet,

northern and southern hemispheres. We got this from Corey Chapman, who is really stuck on rubber asteroids. He says, you got metallic, you got carbonaceous. Would you call a rubber one elastomaceous? I probably wouldn't, but I'm guessing there wouldn't be a rubber asteroid other than in the Planetary Society vault. Yes, that's true. And in our winner's hands very soon. Eric O'Day, Medford, Massachusetts, not too far from Boston. He says, wow, Pluto is that much smaller than the moon? Just imagine how far Alan Shepard could hit a golf ball.

That's true, although the gravity is even more complicated. But yes, yes, it would be a much longer trip, though. And this is not terribly relevant to the contest, but I did like this from Jenny King in Bailey, Colorado. As dear to me as Pluto is, I must admit I'm quite excited to hear your program discuss Juno's upcoming rendezvous with Jupiter. Peering through those clouds will be like gazing at Mount Olympus itself, only minus all the grumpy bearded deities. We think. That's what exploration is all about. All right.

So, yeah. So, moon, much bigger than Pluto and its friends in the outer solar system. And Pluto and its friends are much bigger than the asteroids. So just something to keep in mind. But unrelated to our next question, which we go back to Juno, what is the total power output of Juno? So those solar panels, what is the total power output of Juno at the distance of Jupiter? So much smaller, of course, than it would be at the distance of Jupiter. So much smaller, of course, than it would be at the distance of

Earth. Total power output of Juno approximately. Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. And if you watched the news conference last week about this, you got the answer there, but I'm sure you can find it. Just make sure you get it to us by Tuesday, July 12th at 8 a.m. Make sure you get it to us by Tuesday, July 12th at 8 a.m. Pacific time. And we'll do that prize package again. Your chance to win an elastomacious asteroid. You can't roll that. A Planetary Radio t-shirt and a 200-point itelescope.net account.

All right, everybody. Go out there, look up the night sky, and think about weasels. Thank you, and good night. Greek gods? If there are Greek gods on Jupiter, why not weasels? Space weasels. Thank you and good night. Greek gods? If there are Greek gods on Jupiter, why not weasels? Space weasels. Space weasels.

Weasels in space. That's Bruce Batts. He's the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society who joins us every week here for What's Up. I hope you'll join us next week as we look back on the July 4th arrival at Jupiter of the Juno spacecraft. There's a brand new space policy edition waiting for you at planetary.org slash radio and the other usual places. Casey Dreyer, Jason Callahan, and I talk about how science missions like Juno are chosen.

Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its politically savvy members. Closed Captioning by Dania Yamout