Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Going to Sea to Sail Through Space: Orion Ocean Recovery Testing

Episode Date: January 31, 2018

Join Mat Kaplan on a visit to Naval Base San Diego and the USS Anchorage, the amphibious ship that has just completed a round of Orion spacecraft recovery testing and practice.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Going to sea to sail through space, 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. This is a fun one. I'll take you down to the home port of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Naval Base San Diego, where the Navy is working with NASA to prepare for the ocean recovery of Orion, the spacecraft that may carry astronauts to the Moon and Mars. We'll go on board the USS Anchorage, talk with the head of NASA's recovery team and astronaut Stephen Bowen, and with the commanding officer of the Anchorage. Bruce Betts will be along later

with What's Up. To begin, we welcome back the Planetary Society's digital editor, Jason Davis. Jason, welcome back once again. You posted on January 25th at Planetary.org this new piece called Creating a Guidebook for Earth's Hypothetical Twin, which is not so much about, is there life out there on some Earth-like planet in the Goldilocks zone, but how we're going to detect that life from the enormous distance that we're working from. And you talk to at least one great astronomer. I guess she told you, among other things, that really it's not enough to be an astronomer. You're going to have to be kind of a geologist, a chemist, a biologist, and maybe even a climatologist. Yeah, you really need to have a complete picture of what life was like here on Earth over our history. And to realize that humans have only been on Earth for just kind of a fraction of that.

realize that humans have only been on Earth for just kind of a fraction of that. Well, a medium fraction, a sizable fraction of that, but certainly not the entire time that we've had life here on Earth. And you really need all of these different sciences to pull together a picture of what Earth was like and what you would see if you look through a telescope at us in these different points in history. And then extrapolate from that on how when we start looking at these exoplanets that are Earth-sized, what we are going to see and how to interpret that. I had this mistaken impression, as maybe others do, that maybe we'll find this perfect little blue dot that looks just like us, has mostly nitrogen in the atmosphere and some oxygen and some carbon dioxide,

and we'll say, hey, that looks just like Earth. Congratulations, everyone. High fives. We found Earth 2.0. The scientist I spoke with, Sarah Rugenheimer, she told me, no, you kind of have to, that's a little Earth-centric to think of it that way. Because for most of Earth's history, carbon dioxide was the dominant gas. And it was certainly the dominant gas while there was life here on Earth. So it really gives the scientists something to think about as they get ready to start getting these first results back from exoplanets when these new telescopes go online.

You have a great graph that illustrates the balance of these gases, carbon dioxide, methane, and oxygen, across what we know to be Earth's $4 a half billion dollar, dollar, four and a half billion year history. We'll get into dollars later when we talk about building expensive new telescopes. And it really is pretty fascinating. Is this something that you got from the astronomers? It was a combination of the astronomers telling me about this information, and they showed me a much more technical version of this with a lot more gases in it. And then they pointed me to a Scientific American article that had a graph

that was kind of like this. So I had our own Merck Boyan recreate that graph. We also put a link back to the Scientific American paper to give them all due credit for the neat concept and the way they presented it. Yeah, so I had never seen a graph that was quite like this showing the dominant gases in Earth's atmosphere over time. And it's really staggering to look at that and say, wow, for most of Earth's history, humans would not want to be here. It's not a friendly place for us until relatively recently. And that has to do with early Earth just having so much carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, which for all we know could be the same scenario on Earth-like planets elsewhere. Yeah, I'm going to be sure to send a thank you card to those single-celled

creatures on our planet that figured out photosynthesis. Yes. And made it all possible. Thanks, guys. Yes. So we're beginning to figure out how we're going to recognize a planet that might have life, at least as we know it. How far are we now from having the instruments that are going to give us the data? The first big chance will be 2019, and that's James Webb hoping it still launches in 2019, all goes well, and it gets up and running.

It's going to be able to at least look at a couple of these earth size exoplanets. The reason it can't look at all of them. And I put this to one of the scientists. I was like, so as soon as James Webb gets up there, we're going to look at, you know, all 30 that we know of. And she's like, well, not exactly. Um, and, and that's mainly because even with these next generation telescopes like James Webb, it's still very hard to directly look at exoplanets next to their bright stars, especially some of these red dwarf stars. And that's what the majority of the stars that we know of that have exoplanets are. And red dwarfs, when they have Earth-like exoplanets,

the planets tend to be in very close to the star, which makes them even harder to see. Nevertheless, James Webb should be able to look at a couple of them and characterize them. So we're only a few years away from getting some of these preliminary results. And then after that, some of our ground-based telescopes coming online, like the mid-20s, there's the very large telescope that the Europeans have. And then if the 30-meter telescope gets built, whether that be Hawaii or an alternate location, it might be able to pick up some of these as well. That's reason enough for me to retain my incurable optimism that we're not far from discovering Earth 2.0. Almost. Jason, thanks so much once again.

Thanks, Matt. That's his piece posted to planetary.org on January 25th of this year. Jason Davis is the Planetary Society's digital editor and our embedded reporter with the LightSail project. Good morning again, ladies and gentlemen. Lieutenant Laura Price, public affairs officer for Expeditionary Strike Group 3. Thank you for coming out this morning. U.S. Navy has a long-standing partnership with NASA, so we're excited you could be here today to share in some of that and learn about what NASA and USS Anchorage LPD-23, which you

see behind me, did while at sea the last 10 days. That was the start of the media briefing that welcomed us to Naval Base San Diego. There wasn't just a huge amphibious ship a few meters from us. Even closer was a mock-up, a test article, simulating NASA's Orion capsule, the spaceship that may one day carry humans into deep space. There is nothing simple about human spaceflight. Learning how to recover a spacecraft that has splashed down in the Pacific Ocean is no small feat. Or maybe I should say learning again. The Navy and NASA had it pretty well figured out by the time of the Apollo program, but that last happened decades ago, and Orion is a very different ship, even if it shares that proven capsule look. And the recovery ships have also evolved over those years. The USS Anchorage and its sister ships are pretty special. Here's one of its

officers giving us a tour of the huge open well at the ship's stern. Operators attached that winch to the capsule and then towed it around and landed it right here. This is all underwater, so this can go 6 to 8 feet. Over the last week, we were about 6 feet deep in here. And as I said earlier, the line went all the way out and around. We attached it to the capsule and we just towed it right back in. And there's a little cradle here. And then we deballasted and came back on dry land here.

Obviously, this ship wasn't built to handle spacecraft. What would normally be coming in here? So the greatest comparison would be an LCU, a landing craft unit. The only difference is that it comes under its own power. So whereas we have a winch to tow the capsule in, the LCU would come in on its own power. We would ballast up to 8 feet at the sill over there, and we would just drive under in.

We would throw lines down, and instead of using llamas, we would just drive under in. We would throw lines down. And instead of using llamas, we would just have line handlers come in, and they would guide the LCU in the center of the well deck, and then we would deep mouse, and we would just sit flat on the deck right here. My name is Melissa Jones. I'm the NASA recovery director. I lead the team that will ultimately recover the capsule as it splashes off the coast of the Pacific Ocean.

So I feel pretty lucky because I'm close to home. I live down this way, even though we're based in Pasadena. And to be able to, you know, go 10 minutes away and see what we're standing next to right now, this test article, and talk to folks like you. First of all, tell us about this object. So this is a mock-up capsule. We call it the boiler plate test article, and it's to simulate the Orion capsule. It has the most important similarities.

It's about the same weight. It's got a very similar center of gravity, but most importantly it has these flight attach points here, which we call toe cleats. And so when we do testing on how to recover the capsule, we use the same attach points that they have on the Orion flight vehicle. You know what else I love? Are these painted on or decals that show where the thrusters are going to be? Yeah, so we try to practice tests like you fly. And so even though they are simulated, if we put them in the proper locations, like for instance, this thruster right here is right underneath the hatch. And so when we do our hazard evaluation and the guys are mocking up that, how that works, we want them to know where those locations will actually be at. So they don't step

on one. They can, yeah, right. They can, I mean, if they screw up here, it won't count. They just scratch the paint. Right, right. Absolutely. And we also, these thrusters, we do what we call, quote-unquote, sniff checks with probes to make sure that they're not leaking ammonia or hydrazine. And so this helps them figure out where they'll do those hazard assessments at. Hydrazine, nasty stuff. Yes, yes it is. What is the actual process? Tell us how this has worked so far in the test and how it will work with the actual Orion

capsule. For the testing, we load all of this stuff on the ship in the well deck. And then we flood the well deck, which is in the back of the ship. It's like a giant swimming pool. We're looking at this now. It's a huge opening at the back of the anchorage, the ship we're standing a few feet away from. Yes. So they're called landing platform dock lpd class ships they put the stern gate down in the back and basically the whole back end floods like a like a big swimming pool and we have this attached to lines it becomes live basically it floats up and so now it's moving in the well deck and we attach a boat to the to the back of the capsule that's outside of the well deck, and it pulls the capsule out. And basically we call it deploying nets. And then what we do is we practice attaching the lines quickly and safely as we can,

trying to perfect our process and our timing because when crew is on board, we want to get them out as quickly as possible. We have a two-hour requirement to get them out. We're trying to validate that requirement, but as quickly as we can get them out because when you come back from a microgravity environment, they don't typically feel very well. So we're trying to be quick with our processes and perfect them to the point where we can assure that we are able to get the astronauts out in a timely fashion so that they get to medical as quickly as possible. And I'm thinking in the case of Orion, eventually you may be taking people out who've just made a one-year trip back from Mars. Yes, that is the goal. So we have two recovery methods. We wanted to have flexibility knowing that they're

probably not going to feel very well. So we test open water hardware. What I mean by that is there's a big floating stabilization collar that we inflate and we put around the capsule. It allows us to get to the crew faster. So if they're not feeling well and they want to get out in the open water, that allows for the divers to have a stable platform to stand on, to open the hatch and pull the astronauts out. And then they will either be airlifted by a helicopter to the ship or put in a small boat, and they'll be taken to the ship. You made reference to something called the front porch. Yes, so the front porch is actually a very cool piece of hardware.

It floats and it attaches to the stabilization collar, very cool piece of hardware. It floats and it attaches to the stabilization collar and it is quite large and it allows four astronauts to lay flat on their back. So it's very, very large and have medical assessments done. And so we will practice with that and train with that in the event that we need to use it for recovery. But a great benefit of the front porch is that in the event that there's an abort, if we land somewhere we don't expect to land, and there are not forces there to get to them quickly, the front porch allows them to get out of the capsule into a safe environment. It's got a protective screen around it for the environment, and so that they can have more room to move around and be outside of the capsule until rescue forces arrive.

Contrast this process that you've been talking about with what happened nearly 50 years ago now with Apollo. Yeah. So there are some fundamental differences between the two capsules. The Orion capsule is larger, and it's designed for deep space. Apollo was not. Apollo had a lifting ring that allowed for lifting with a crane in a dynamic ocean environment onto an aircraft carrier.

Orion does not have that same lifting structure at the top, but they do have these tow cleats which allow for very high loads during recovery. So that's why we don't lift the capsule and we pull it into the well deck. That's a big change. But some of the other things, like placing that flotation collar around the capsule, and we pull it into the well deck. That's a big change. But some of the other things, like placing that flotation collar around the capsule, I mean, what you're talking about may be more advanced, but the principle's the same, isn't it? That is correct. It is the same. That was for open water recovery for the Apollo astronauts as well. I mean, it's a very different

capsule, but you look at it and you think, boy, that's something that worked pretty well years ago. Yes. Yes, it did. The benefit of a capsule design allows the hazards of the rocket to be underneath it, and it allows the capsule to be a safe environment for the crew. The space shuttle design did not separate those two hazards like a capsule design does. And so I think that's why we've gone back to a capsule atop all of the flame, the smoke and fire that comes from the rockets. And there's also, on the Orion capsule, there's something called a launch abort system

that allows it to be pulled away from any kind of failure from underneath. And that's another safety mechanism that we have on board the integrated vehicle. Just as there was on Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. And it's been tested and worked pretty well, right? Absolutely. Where do you hope to be when the first Orion capsule comes back with people inside? Well, I hope as the NASA recovery director that I am on the flight deck watching it all happen. Have you ever spent time on a Navy ship before getting involved, before getting this job? No, sir, I haven't. Actually, I've been on the Navy ship twice. I've had two tests. It's not like anything I've ever experienced before. My dad and my uncles and both my grandfathers were in the Navy,

so they have, but I had never experienced it. It's quite interesting. So go Navy. Go Navy. And go NASA. And go NASA, absolutely. Thank you, Melissa. So go Navy. Go Navy. And go NASA. And go NASA, absolutely. Thank you, Melissa. Anytime. Melissa Jones, NASA Recovery Director for the Exploration Ground Systems Landing and Recovery Team. When we return, we'll meet the captain of the USS Anchorage and talk with the astronaut who was at sea for the just-completed URT, or Underway Recovery Test. This is Planetary Radio. Hi, this is Casey Dreyer, the Director of Space Policy here at the Planetary Society.

And I wanted to let you know that right now, Congress is debating the future of NASA's budget. The House has proposed to increase NASA's budget and also increase planetary science in 2018. The Senate, however, has proposed to cut both. You can make your voice heard right now. We've made it easy to learn more if you go to planetary.org slash petition 2017. Thank you. You can share your passion for space exploration by giving someone a gift membership to the Planetary Society this holiday season or any time of year. Your friend or loved one would join us as we nurture new and exciting science,

advocate for space, and educate the world. The gift of space starts at planetary.org forward slash give space. That's planetary.org forward slash give space. Because, come on, it's space. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan, taking you back to naval base San Diego, home of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet, where NASA is working with the Navy to prepare for the ocean recovery of the Orion spacecraft.

We'll meet astronaut Stephen Bowen soon. First, though, here's the commanding officer of the USS Anchorage, Captain Dennis Jacko. Good morning. I'd like to thank Melissa Jones, Captain Bowen, and the NASA team for giving us this opportunity. The close teamwork, preparation led to the successful execution of URT-6. It's been months in planning. The Navy-NASA relationship has gone even further back, myself personally, six years now. I happened to be captain on USS New Orleans when they did the first ship checks, and now I am incredibly happy to be here now actually executing the mission. The LPD-17 San Antonio class, of which Anchorage is in that class. Fantastic ship. It's one of the best built,

best designed ships the Navy has. And despite the fact that it's designed for amphibious assault, transporting Marines and getting them there to their objectives, it is actually very uniquely suited to the NASA mission. As you can see behind me, it's got the well deck that the Space Castle will come into. It also has a very robust medical facilities, including two operating rooms to support astronauts when they come back, embarked aviation capabilities, so we can bring our own helicopters that as the later missions become more complex, that's going to be part of the package, as well as carrying multiple small boats. If you see the videos, there's probably about six, seven boats that are involved in recovery. 800 racks, places for people to sleep, as well as about 25,000 square feet of vehicle

space to embark all that gear required for the URT mission. Captain Jaco later took over our tour of the Anchorage, shepherding us throughout his impressive ship. Well, when we're doing the NASA testing, this is exclusive for NASA. Obviously, it's very high visibility and very sensitive. But we do have small boat operations, which is part of the NASA testing. We put what are called CRICs, which are Combat Rigid Rubber Rating Craft, out on the stern gate, which you walk across, actually put them on there, lower it down, and that's how we launch those craft we probably have total uh probably maybe about 120 people involved both in the boats as well as in the well deck up on the bridge driving the ship but you can't forget about the engineers down below and everybody else that uh keeps that ship running to

be able to facilitate that recovery uh so we come right off of the flight deck come through here and you're already in medicals we have two operating, and this is the triage area where you bring casualties in. We even have a morgue, as necessary, right behind you here. This is actually, you're going to feel as you go through the ship, there's double doors. That's an overpressurization system that keeps, in a chemical warfare environment, keeps the chemicals out. So you get good air inside that comes in through filters. Overpressurization pushes clean air out, doesn't let bad air in. This is part of it. So if you have a casualty that's been slimed, has been hit by a chemical weapon, you bring that litter on the other side,

put them inside, that is a decontamination booth, and then you bring them inside the skin of the ship where he doesn't contaminate everybody else. I should have asked the NASA representative this, but even in Apollo days, there were concerns about protecting us on Earth from whatever might have been brought back from the moon, when the concerns will be even greater on Mars, which Orion may come back from someday. Is that something the Navy's talking about? I do not have, we haven't discussed any of that.

It's a few years in the future. I don't want to mislead you. I am not hiding anything. No problem. When you started your Navy career, Captain, did you imagine that you'd someday be helping us learn how to take spacecraft? Get back in? No. Specifically that, no. But when you're on an amphibious ship like this, you do a wide range of missions, and you bring all kinds of things into the well deck and to different missions. It's not just putting Marines onto the beach.

We do what's called DISC operations, which is Defense Supportive Civil Authorities. It's essentially like disaster relief. So starting out as a naval officer, you don't think that you're going to do these missions, but the amphibious ships really are jacks of all trades. We do all sorts of missions, great capability, everything from medical to the flight decks, obviously the well decks, which is pretty unique among the world's navies. How do you and the crew feel about being involved in a project like this, working with NASA? The crew really appreciates the historic nature of working with NASA.

It means a lot to them. Like I said, a space capsule with an American flag on it, American astronauts with NASA patches on their uniforms, means everything keeping America at the forefront of space exploration. That long history with the Navy going back to the Mercury days, that you guys are definitely in that line. Oh, absolutely. And it's a great tradition.

And, you know, if NASA needs the space capsule to come down at sea, obviously the Navy has a very unique capability to facilitate recovery. Thanks, Captain. Thank you. Captain Dennis Jaco, commanding officer of the USS Anchorage. Also aboard the Anchorage for the Orion's Underway Recovery Test, or URT No. 4, was a retired Navy captain and former submariner.

Stephen Bowen went from plumbing the depths of the ocean to flying high above our planet on three shuttle missions. He logged over 47 hours on spacewalks during seven different EVAs. Captain Bowen represented the interests of the astronauts who will one day fly on Orion beyond low-Earth orbit, far beyond. I love your Mach 25 patch. Thank you, so do I. This will go faster on the way back, so we've got to calculate that sometime. At 25,000 miles an hour, it'll be coming into the atmosphere a little bit faster than we did on the shuttle. Down to 300 miles an hour. You've got to depend on that heat shield.

The heat shield's really important. You know, one of the great things about the shuttle is you'd be sitting there on entry, and you could watch the plasma shooting over, as mission specialists do, you'd watch the plasma shooting over that upper window, and then the front window's actually kind of glow orange as you're coming through the plasma. And then it clears up. You get to see a little closer to the Earth. But everything's moving a lot faster than it was, you know, seemingly, get to see a little closer to the Earth, but everything's moving a lot faster than it was seemingly because you're a little

closer to it. And yeah, this will be a similar experience looking out those windows. If those windows are all looking up, we won't be looking at a runway. I'm going to ask you the question that you guys get asked all the time about going from shuttle to Orion and the legacy this has. I mean, clearly, it's a descendant of Apollo, although it's a much more advanced capsule. Just talk about that contract. Well, you know, the big difference is the mission. This capsule, only a very, very brief period of time is it leaving or entering the Earth's atmosphere. So the key design here

is to make this thing survivable in deep space, potentially years and years in deep space. Trips to Mars. Yeah, potentially trips to Mars. As the mission evolves and they get longer and longer, this is going to be essentially a rescue capability. We'll be attached to some habitat in which we'll live. So you can imagine four people trapped in this thing for long periods of time.

At some point, they'll let us go someplace else, so a habitat module will be really vital for those long trips. But this will be your ride home, and so it's got to be safe, it's got to be reliable, and it's a ride home if something goes wrong on any of those transits as well. It's a really, really important capability. It's very different to the shuttle. You know, the shuttle was low earth orbit, designed to carry things to space and bring things home. This is a totally different mission. I'm also thinking of the legacy that this has, which all of you talked about during the opening comments here. Going back to Mercury, ocean recovery, do you feel a connection with all those pioneers, those guys who used to wear these flight suits? Yeah, I have been around long enough to have met a few of them through the years and having the opportunity to talk to some of the people.

You know, actually, Walt Cunningham came by the office a few months ago. I had a chance to talk to him about ocean recovery to better understand what they think. You know, you get a different flavor when you get to talk to somebody that's been through it, and he may be more willing to talk about things to fellow astronauts sometimes too. So it was a great opportunity to learn. Yeah, and that legacy, you feel it with all the programs all the way back. talk about things to fellow astronauts sometimes too. So it was a great opportunity to learn. Yeah, and that legacy, you feel it with all the programs all the way back. We've had a pretty good, in the office, you know, you kind of have this generational thing.

It's very much like any continuous operating thing. You have people that have been there a long time and, you know, sort of the people turning over. Unfortunately, I may be one of the people, the older people now, but I don't want to say that after 17 years. But, you know, we get to carry that legacy on. It's a really important thing. And being able to reach back and touch and understand it really helps a lot. Speaking of legacy, you talked about the significance of this day that we're talking, this week, in the history of human spaceflight for the United States. And I just wonder how that hits home with you as well.

Oh, every year it hits home. Now, I was three years old for, actually not quite three years old for Apollo 1, but for Challenger, I was a senior at the Naval Academy. And, you know, seeing the impact of the loss of Challenger on the nation was eye-opening. Tremendous impact. The Naval Academy lost a graduate in that. And then Columbia, I was already in the office. I knew the Columbia crew.

You know, I have often said that if you could have taken the seven best people in the office and just great human beings to work with and deal with. They were right after all seven of them. It was just a tremendous loss. Really hit home for those of us that were there. And then extending that beyond to the NASA family at large and then the community and then the nation. and then the nation. I think sometimes we lose sight of how important exploration and research in our space program really is to the country because we get focused on the details and not on the larger relevance of it. Unfortunately, this is one of those weeks when you have that

opportunity to reflect on it before you get wrapped up in work and getting this vehicle off the ground. Do you think any of those heroes regretted the choice they made? Oh, absolutely not. You know, that's the risk you take when you get on the vehicle. I always get that question from students, actually from adults too. So were you afraid when you launched? And I say, no, not as you think of it. Because once you've got yourself strapped in there you're on the vehicle you've had years of studying and understanding that the engineering

capabilities you know the risks you've already accepted that so that decision is made what you're truly really afraid of is your own personal uh ability to meet the demands so they spend a year training you to do something. Now you actually have to go do it. So that trepidation, that questioning of oneself is really what you feel on the launch pad. And then when you actually are able to execute it, it's like anything that's difficult to do. We make things look so easy for people sometimes,

but if there's anything that really needs to be understood is if you work really hard at something and you actually accomplish it, there is no better feeling in the world. And so the training that we get, it's miraculous to allow me, you know, I grew up carrying buckets of cement for my dad laying tile and, you know, I go out and do spacewalks. It's a miracle. Yeah, working hard is a great thing, and the results, it's worth it, every moment of it. Hoping to get a ride on Orion? Oh, well, I'll take a ride on anything. You know, I'm in the office. I've worked Space Station for a long time, worked Shuttle.

And, you know, just to be in the office, just to have the ability to work on any of these programs from the astronaut perspective is such a unique opportunity. And, you know, I feel like I've won the lottery every time somebody asks me about that. Sure feels that way to me. Thank you, Captain. Thank you very much. Veteran astronaut Stephen Bowen talking with me at Naval Base San Diego on California's Pacific Coast, where, before long, men and women will return to land from journeys into deep space.

I want to thank NASA, the U.S. Navy, and the officers and sailors aboard the USS Anchorage for sharing their stories with us. Bruce is next. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. I am in the studio at Planetary Society headquarters in Pasadena, California, with the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, Bruce Betts. Welcome. Hey, Matt. Good to be here together in person with you.

It's always better. It's always better face-to-face this way. It makes for better radio and podcasts. And I shouldn't be welcoming you. You're here much more than me. Welcome, Matt. This is our building. You live here sometimes, but not often. I've even slept here a couple of times. We won't go into that. We don't really want to know about that.

If I did sleep here tonight, what would I see? What you'd want to do is wake up before dawn and look over in the east. Anywhere from a couple hours to when dawn starts to break, there's a cool lineup of planets. You've got from the upper right to the lower left, as you're looking at the eastern horizon, you've got really bright Jupiter, and then reddish Mars, and then Saturn, yellowish. And just to make it even more interesting, Mars will be moving from closer to Jupiter to closer to Saturn over this week or two. And passing by the reddish star Antares in Scorpius. Antares is actually a little bit brighter, so don't confuse the two.

But wait, don't order yet. the two. But wait, don't order yet. The moon will join the planets in Antares on February 7th through the 11th. It'll go from upper right to lower left over a few days, looking quite lovely. So check it out. I always like it when you don't just talk planets, but planets in relationship to the other stuff that's out there, because we need to pay some attention to stars. that's out there because we need to pay some attention to stars. If you look just the upper left of Matt's head, you're right, we do. I should pay more attention to stars. They're just so hot and gaseous.

And we're the Planetary Society. Exactly. But you want a star, I'll give you a star. On February 15th, there is a partial solar eclipse if you happen to be in Chile, Argentina, or Antarctica. I won't be, but... Well, maybe next time. All right, we move on to this week in space history. It was 60 years ago that Explorer 1 launched the first U.S. satellite. You know, I just saw that NASA's going to do a little celebration.

Certainly warranted. I mean, it wasn't the start of the space age, because the other guys we're going to talk about beat us to that. But it was still so significant. Great story behind that spacecraft. It really was, and it was the third successful flight, the first successful U.S. flight. The Navy tried a Vanguard launch before that that did not succeed. And they put it together so very quickly at JPL and mated it with a rocket. We should find that great photo of Vodafone Braun and other guys. Is it Van Allen? Or I forget who else holding up a model or a backup copy of the satellite, it's really fun. Yeah, I believe it's Van Allen and Pickering. Yeah, and it was back in the days when you could hold a satellite.

And now we've come full circle with CubeSats and things like LightSail. You can hold them again. We should recreate that with the LightSail. My thinking exactly. Oh, we're getting the engineering model out. Okay, who do you want to be? Now, we'll go over it later. We'll show everyone the picture. It'll be great. Alright, also this

week, 1971, Apollo 14 landed and, of course, did wonderful and great science, but I know you like it every year when I point out also the first golf balls hit on the moon. And I usually say, four! Four! Four! Alright, we move on to... Also, the first golf balls hit on the moon. And I usually say, four. Four. All right, we move on to our random space fact.

I like the beat. It's a cha-cha. It is, feeling cha-cha. All right, we'll do Explorer 1. The total mass of the satellite was 13.4 kilograms, so about 31 pounds on Earth, of which 8 kilograms, or about 18 pounds, were instrumentation. It carried science instrumentation on board to measure things, including leading to the discovery of the Van Allen belts. In comparison, the mass of Sputnik 1 was about 84 kilograms, or 184 pounds. All right, we move on to the trivia contest.

And I asked you, what was the first in-space docking of two unmanned, so robotic, spacecraft? How did we do? Well, this one was a good one to enter. The odds were good because we had fewer entries than usual. I don't know what scared people off. And there were a couple of people who came up with what we believe were incorrect answers, but interesting. Among those who came up with the one we were looking for, or you were looking for anyway, was Neil Ashleman. Neil Ashleman, far as I know, a first-time winner, though a longtime listener to the show in Davenport,

Iowa. For you Music Man fans out there, I know you're one. I am indeed. My son was the Music Man. Dubuque, Des Moines, Davenport, Marshalltown, Ames. I forget. Anyway, it's in the song. Go look it up. My other son helped sing the song, and I know you did too.

I did in high school. Okay. Neil says that the answer was the first docking of two unmanned spacecraft was the rendezvous of the Soviet Cosmos 186 and 188, one day shy of Halloween, October 30, 1967. That is correct. All right. Neil, congrats. You've won yourself a beautiful Planetary Society t-shirt from Chop Shop, where there's a Planetary Society store. You can check it out at chopshopstore.com and a 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account. in Charlottesville, Virginia, home of the Cavaliers. That was a year and a half after Gemini 8, that earlier human-driven rendezvous.

Yeah, yeah, and pretty impressive to me that they were able to do a robotic rendezvous and dock. Also from Virginia, Kevin, you know what, I missed the pronunciation, Cowger, he said the first hard docking was Cosmos 212 and 213, but I didn't get a date on that or anything. I probably should have skipped it. But I do know Mel Powell in Sherman Oaks, California, who said, hmm, Cosmos 186 and 188, what did Cosmos 187 do to be left out of the party? Said something offensive, I'm sure.

Maybe he was kicked out of the Communist Party. Maybe that's the party that Mel's talking about. Probably. All right. We're ready to go on. Back to our friend Explorer 1. What type of rocket launched the first U.S. satellite, Explorer 1? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. I love these ones that I know the answer to,

but of course I won't reveal it. You have until the 7th, February 7th at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us the answer and win yourself a Planetary Radio t-shirt and a 200-point itelescope.net

account. That's that worldwide network of telescopes operated robotically, remotely, by you and other people who have these accounts, by the iTelescope folks who do all this on a nonprofit basis. And you can donate that account to a local school, an astronomy club, or just use it yourself. Maybe you'll, I don't know, discover an exoplanet. Don't count on that. But you can do something really cool.

Just don't count on that. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about how many spherical objects are currently around you because there are a lot of them around us in the studio right now. Thank you, and good night. Yeah, there really are. We have a lot of spheres and a surprisingly large number of cubes as

well. Dude, it's so geometric. That's Bruce Betts. He is the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society and he 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

its seaworthy members. Daniel Gunn is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. Have you thought about giving us a rating or review in Apple Podcasts or iTunes? I'm Matt Kaplan. Clear skies.