Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Have We Found Evidence of Life on Venus?

Episode Date: September 16, 2020

An international team has detected phosphine gas in the clouds above Venus. Naturally-produced phosphine on Earth is created by anaerobic bacteria. We’ll listen to portions of the media briefing at which this result was announced. Then we’ll get perspective on the find from the Planetary Society’s Casey Dreier. Astrophysicist and Venus atmosphere expert Javier Peralta will share his reaction and a big find of his own on our nearest planetary neighbor. Links and more are at https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/0916-2020-venus-phosphine-discovery-casey-dreierSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There is a chance that we have detected some kind of living organisms in the clouds of Venus. And there was yet another exciting discovery on Venus that we'll explore 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. In a few moments, I'll share with you highlights of the September 14 media briefing that came from the Royal Astronomical Society. As space fans, you've probably heard the news. A gas that on Earth is only produced naturally by living organisms has apparently been found in the clouds above Venus.

We'll follow these excerpts with our own Casey Dreyer, who has written a brilliant article putting this finding in context. Then we'll welcome back astrophysicist and Venusian atmospheric expert, Javier Peralta. Javier is also excited about this discovery, but he led research that has revealed another amazing feature on Venus. Yeah, all that, and we'll still have this week's What's Up to look forward to. How can there be rust on the moon? Good question, but it has been found there. That's the lead story in the September 11 edition of The Downlink, the Planetary Society's weekly newsletter. You can also read about

engineers finishing their work to reshape and resurface the big mirror for NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the one previously known as WFIRST. And there's a terrific accomplishment by China's Chang'e 3 lander. It is still returning data from the moon seven years after its arrival. Scientists just published new findings about the layers of rock the probe is sitting on. As always, there's much more waiting for you at planetary.org. There was so much buzz in the days leading up to that RAS briefing on Monday the 14th. Some of our space journalism colleagues who had been tipped off could barely contain themselves. The big announcement did not disappoint. I've selected a few clips from the virtual gathering, beginning with one from the leader of the international team

that has made this discovery. Here is astronomer, planetary scientist, and professor at Cardiff University, Jane Greaves. So what have we done? We're here to tell you we have detected a rare gas called phosphine in the atmosphere of our neighbor planet Venus. And the reason for our excitement is that phosphine gas on Earth is made by microorganisms that live in oxygen-free environments. And so there is a chance that we have detected some kind of living organisms in the clouds of Venus. So, yeah, I really am talking about Venus. As you probably know, the surface conditions there today are really hostile. The temperature is enough to melt our landers, for example. But it's thought that much earlier in Venus history, the surface was much cooler and wetter and life could possibly have originated.

But conditions turn very hostile. And there is a longstanding theory that some of the smallest forms of life, these microorganisms, might have been able to evolve upwards into the high clouds. So conditions there are certainly not nice. They're extremely acidic and it's very windy. They're extremely acidic and it's very windy. But on the other hand, if you're talking about 50 to 60 kilometres up, then the pressure is much like it is at the surface of the Earth. And the temperature is quite nice, maybe up to about 30 centigrade or 85 degrees Fahrenheit. So it's been hypothesised that this is a living habitat today. So I originated a project in 2016 to see if we could look, deliberately look for phosphine as a possible signature of living organisms in the high clouds of Venus.

So we started with the James Clark Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii, which is operated by the East Asia Observatory, and the UK is a long term member of the other partners there. partners there. We also then went on to use the ALMA network of telescopes down in Chile that's operated by Europe, North America, Japan and other partners. So what are we looking for? So Venus is a natural source of radio waves. So the wavelengths we're looking at are approximately one millimetre and the radio waves originate kind of in the middle cloud layer. So if you've got a phosphine molecule above that, it can absorb that radio light and take some of it away. And that actually happens at a really specific wavelength, which is to do with essentially the quantum rotation of the molecule. So they like to take that particular wavelength of radio light

and remove it from the spectrum of Venus. So what we get is not an image as you might like or hope, we just get a graph. So if there was no phosphine there, but you spread the radio light out by wavelength, you'd get a flat red line here. But if you've got the phosphine present as it's very specific wavelength,

which is 1.123 millimeters, the phosphine molecules will have removed the radio light. And so you'll see a dip. The signal strength will go down at exactly that point. And so our colleague Hideo Sagawa from Kyoto Sangeo University in Japan has done the calculations which tell us for a certain number of phosphine molecules how deep this dip will be. Okay, so to cut to the chase, we have detected the phosphine, and this is the data from the telescopes. The first one we got is the discovery spectrum from the James

Glamax telescope in 2017. You can see this dip in the middle. And then we were able to turn the full power of the many ALMA telescopes onto this in 2019, two years later, and we got a more detailed view of the planet's spectrum. And then you can also again see we have recovered this V-shaped dip at the right wavelength. So given we did this with two completely independent observatories, what we can say is with very high confidence, we have detected the phosphine on Venus. And this is very exciting and was really quite unexpected. Well, my colleague Paul Rimmer at Cambridge University in the UK then used his atmospheric models and he tried what would happen

if you put a source of phosphine in this computer simulated atmosphere and let the chemistry of Venus work away at it. And he found that the original idea was probably not crazy. So the organisms wouldn't actually need to be super efficient. They could be reducing phosphine at about 10% of the peak efficiency we see for real organisms known on Earth. And that would make the 20 parts per billion we see. Jane Greaves of Cardiff University, leader of the international team. Jane was followed by William Baines of MIT. He took us through the many other ways phosphine might have been generated that have nothing to do with life. The conclusion? None of these other pathways could explain the amount of gas that has been found.

William then introduced past Planetary Radio guest Sarah Seeger, his colleague at MIT. We are not claiming we have found life on Venus. We are claiming a confident detection of phosphine gas, whose existence is a mystery. And I just want to reiterate what William said, that phosphine can be produced by some processes on Venus, but only in such incredibly tiny amounts. It's not enough to explain our observation. So we're left with this other exciting, enticing possibility that perhaps there is some kind of life in Venus's clouds. On Earth, phosphine is only associated with life, either bacteria and oxygen-free environments, or as produced by humans. So you should know that phosphine exists in Jupiter's and Saturn's

atmosphere, because those atmospheres are dominated by hydrogen gas and also importantly have the right temperatures and pressures lower down to create phosphine. We have to continue. We'd like to see our phosphine measurement confirmed at other wavelengths. Some team members have or are proposing to observe phosphine in the infrared with ground-based observatories, though that will be challenging because of the weak spectral features of phosphine in the infrared. We hope our work will motivate space missions that go to Venus and directly measure gases in the atmosphere. People have speculated on life in the Venus atmosphere for decades, for over 50 years

actually, starting with Carl Sagan. And perhaps life originated when Venus was cooler with liquid water oceans. But as Venus heated up and underwent its catastrophic runaway greenhouse, the oceans evaporated and the surface became so hot that any life would have been killed. But life in the clouds, assuming life had been able to migrate to the clouds and live there, that life would have been killed. But life in the clouds, assuming life had been able to migrate to the clouds and live there, that life would have survived. By the way, Earth has life in the clouds. Bacteria are upswept from the surface, and they live freely floating in the clouds or in liquid water droplets. And life stays up there only for about a week or so. Sometimes it's

transported across continents before being rained back down. Now, Earth's clouds don't last very long, but on Venus, the clouds are permanent. They cover the entire planet, and they are very big in vertical extent. We argue that any life on Venus, like bacteria-type particles, would have to reside inside the protective hydrosulfuric acid, even though the acid itself is incredibly harsh. As humans, we have wondered about life beyond Earth for thousands of years. We now know that nearly all stars have planets, and astronomers have found thousands of exoplanets

orbiting nearby stars. We know that rocky planets are common. A generation of astronomers is now working to enable future telescopes, observations, and theory to be able to find signs of life on exoplanets far away by looking for gases in the atmosphere that don't belong. Our team has also studied phosphine gas, but it's very different than the Venus case because we would need a lot of observation time or a lot more phosphine or both. In our solar system, you know, closer to home in our solar system, there are a growing number of bodies of astrobiological interest for the search for life.

We have NASA's Perseverance rover on its way to Mars to search for signs of ancient life. Jupiter's icy moon Europa is one of our best targets because of its liquid water oceans beneath its icy shell. Saturn's moon Enceladus, like Europa, has water geysers that people imagine sending a spacecraft to to fly through and look for organics. Saturn's moon Titan is actually even more interesting with liquid. Liquid is needed for all life as we know it. The Titan has liquid hydrocarbon lakes of ethane and methane. Now we have, by our phosphine gas discovery, we have raised Venus higher up on that ladder of interesting targets.

And we hope that our discovery motivates focused space missions to go to Venus to look for other gases, more gases, signs of life, and even life itself. Reporters were then given the chance to ask questions of the scientists. Mine won't surprise anyone who is familiar with the Planetary Society. Congratulations on, first of all, this marvelous discovery. This question is really for any of you, or all of you. You talked about how you hope that this result will increase the interest in returning a mission to Venus. What sort of mission would you like to see that would be best

capable of investigating further this layer of the atmosphere where this activity may be taking place? Well, as you may know, there has been a lot of mission planning and mission thinking for many years, actually. And right now there are two missions under the NASA Discovery class. They're under a phase A competition right now. So we'd like to see really any kind of mission go back to Venus, something that's capable of measuring gases in the atmosphere, something that has a so-called mass spectrometer that can identify like larger complex molecules that could only be associated with life. We have a long list of things we'd like actually, perhaps ultimately we could send a microscope. This is tougher actually, because cells are spherical and, or they may be confounded with hazes and other aerosols and atmospheric particles. So it's like the missions that are being planned, but focused on signs of life detection and life detection itself. Just to add to that, I think it is very exciting.

Japan have got an orbiter at the moment. India have plans to launch one. Europe has longer term plans. We're really hoping somebody or maybe, you know, private space industry, somebody might take this up. We're really hoping somebody or maybe, you know, private space industry, somebody might take this up. Would you like to see a balloon, as has been proposed in the past, that might actually reach into this layer of the atmosphere? A balloon is certainly the best way. And the Vega balloons did just that.

They were they lasted a couple of days. They were, you know, tens of kilograms, low tens of kilograms. And that's the kind of thing we'd like to see happen again. Perhaps a super version of those that instead of lasting two days could last weeks, months, even a couple of years. Astronomer Sarah Seeger of MIT. For additional context, we turn to my Planetary Society colleague, Casey Dreyer. Casey is the Society's Chief Advocate and Senior Space Policy Advisor, but he's also as big a space geek as any of us. Casey, thanks for jumping in on this literally at the last moment. Also for very quickly turning out this terrific article, Did Scientists Just Find Life on Venus? Here's how to interpret the phosphine discovery, which was published on our site on September 14th,

just minutes, moments after the announcement was made. Before we get into your analysis, your thoughtful consideration of this, do you agree that this is something we can be excited about? Matt, you know, there's occasionally every now and then times where my old grizzled space advocate heart goes a flutter at new information that reminds me in a sense of, you know, why we do this, why we explore space, why we look outwards, because you just don't know what you're going to find sometimes. You know, our boss, Bill, talks about the joy of discovery.

I don't think, and I hope, maybe I hope that the case, that no scientist isn't feeling a little joy today at the idea, the possibility that we may have discovered something completely profound. This is the first step in a longer process. This is a data point in the support of a hypothesis, but it's not the end all and be all of this. But it's okay to be excited about that. That's why we do this. So yes, it's an exciting announcement today. And you were the one who pointed me to the tweet from Jim Bridenstine, the administrator of NASA.

Life on Venus? The discovery of phosphine, a byproduct of anaerobic biology, is the most significant development yet in building the case for life off Earth. About 10 years ago, NASA discovered microbial life at 120,000 feet in Earth's upper atmosphere. It's time to prioritize Venus. That last sentence is maybe the most significant to me. Do you agree that this strengthens the argument for more missions? It absolutely does. I was thinking today, this could be a very similar moment to the ALH 84001 meteorite that had hints, again, similar to this, hints of Martian life that turned out to be

disputed and not accepted. But we got the last 25 years of Mars exploration at NASA, kind of from that discovery. In a similar way, when they discovered plumes of Europa that a spacecraft could fly through to help answer the life question there, that helped push the Europa Clipper over the edge. And this is the exact type of moment where a new discovery helps push a potential mission into reality. And there are two missions right now being considered under the small program line in planetary science, Da Vinci and Veritas, that wouldn't necessarily answer this question, but maybe they could be adapted to do so. The Discovery program line was designed to be responsive to new discoveries. And yes, I think one of the biggest results from this,

regardless of the outcome of this claim, is seeing a renewed push to further understand and characterize our nearest neighbor to Earth. Nevertheless, in the words of distinguished co-founder of the Planetary Society, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And you lay out some of what needs to happen next, beginning with we need independent confirmation. That's right. And I wrote this article for people like me, I think most of us who are not professional scientists, who maybe have some scientific background or just like to follow science, how do we evaluate claims like this if we're not in the field? And there's a number of things that we can do, you know, just in general, when big claims like this are made to kind of evaluate the claim, how seriously to take it, and then again, where do we kind of stand and what needs

to happen next? And so, yes, scientific process, if this is a real signal, then an independent team with a different type of equipment looking for the same signal should see it, right? That's the first thing that needs to happen. That'll be the first, I'm certain, this number of applications are being made to telescopes around the world right now. And if they see that too, using their own methods for data analysis and modeling to verify that signal, that needs to happen in order to say this is a real thing and not some quirk of the model that they're using or a subtle flaw in their data analysis. So again, independent verification, that's a key process of science and that'll be

happening here in the next few months to years. And that's a key process of science. And that'll be happening here in the next few months to years. And to be fair, you mentioned it's right in the paper published by these scientists. There may be other explanations or maybe they made an error of some kind. Then you make the point, just as was made with ALH 84001, biosignatures do not equal life. That's true. And again, this is the only things that we know for sure. And to really clarify this, the claims made by the scientists in this paper are that we

think we have detected a phosphine signature in the atmosphere of Venus and that we cannot explain it through the natural processes as we understand them now on Venus. That's the only claims being made here, right? So that leaves us with a potential couple of outcomes. One, as we've already talked about, maybe there is a biological source of this chemical. Or, as they point out, maybe there is another type of chemical reaction in this complex system of Venus's atmosphere that produces phosphine. And we just don't understand Venus that well. Most other planets outside of Earth have not been explored that much, even Mars.

We have very simplified models just because we do not have that much data. not have that much data. They also even pose another one, which is there could be another chemical that is unknown to us or some combination of chemicals that gives off a signal that's very similar to that of phosphine in this detection arena of submillimeter astronomy. And it would be almost like a mimic signal. And they would be getting confused at the scales they're looking at and see it as phosphine instead of something else. That's less likely, but it's still a possibility, and there are ways that they can do more observations to try to eliminate these other explanations. And that is the process of science. Now we get to work as a society,

as a scientific society, to test this hypothesis from a number of different ways. scientific society to test this hypothesis from a number of different ways. And even the discovery of some other mechanism creating this phosphine or something that mimics it will still be a terrific product of good science. Casey, great job. Thank you for joining this important discussion. I join you in that excitement as well. But be careful what you read online, everybody. And something you should listen to online is the most recent Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio, Casey's conversation with Scott Pace, the day-to-day leader of the National Space Council here in the United States, which is a great conversation, Casey. I'll say it again. Thank you again for doing this today too. Oh, happy to talk about this, Matt. This is a privilege to be able to focus on this as the news in the world today. This is what I would prefer to

be talking about and thinking about every day. It's like, oh no, another biosignature detection. Let's talk, let's unpack this. That's Casey Dreyer, the Planetary Society's chief advocate and senior space policy advisor. There's much more waiting for you on this week's show page at planetary.org slash radio, including a link to that complete briefing that originated from the Royal Astronomical Society. When we return, I'll talk with Venusian atmospheric expert Javier Peralta. Here's a message from a company that is helping us bring you Planetary Radio. I shared with you a few weeks ago that I was given access to the master class library of nearly 90 courses from some of our planet's most interesting people and best teachers. I just started Chris Hadfield's space exploration class.

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If it sounds like I highly recommend you check out Masterclass, you're right. Get unlimited access to every Masterclass, and as a Planetary Radio listener, you get 15% off an annual membership. Go to masterclass.com slash planet. That's masterclass.com slash planet for 15% off Masterclass. Welcome back to our extended coverage of the big news from Earth's solar system twin, Venus. Javier Peralta last joined us in November of 2019. That was shortly after he penned a terrific article in the September Equinox edition of the Planetary Report.

He shared what we are learning about Second Rock's amazing and still mysterious atmosphere, especially from the Japanese space agency's Akatsuki. Javier is still a member of the orbiter's science team, but he is back home in Spain after serving several years in Japan. I'm embarrassed to admit that I had some trouble with my microphone during our conversation, but I think you'll manage. Let's talk about your paper, first of all, which was published last May, actually, in the Geophysical Research Letters of the American Geophysical

Union. And it's titled A Long-Lived Sharp Disruption on the Lower Clouds of Venus. Really, though, what's wonderful about this is when you see the movies and you see this feature that looks like a line going across Venus, or at least in the atmosphere of Venus. It's really a pretty amazing thing to look at, and apparently it's been there for many, many years? Yes, that was a surprise, but everything depends on the point of view, because when we first studied for several years the atmosphere of Venus with Venus Express, our spacecraft had a polar orbit. We observed very well the polar region, the southern hemisphere, part of the polar region of the north.

But when the spacecraft passed over the equator, the velocity was very fast and we didn't have proper observations for watching what was happening at lower latitudes. have proper observations for watching what was happening at lower latitudes. The surprise was when we found this structure, this pattern in the clouds moving so fast, faster than the winds, that the winds of the super rotation are already fast on Venus. The other surprise came when we decided to check in the past, in past observations of the lower clouds in the mid of the 80s, when they discovered these spectral windows for observing these deeper clouds, and we observed that this structure was there. And then we go through other observations, other years, and it was still there.

So it was a surprise because we have missed something that seems to have been present on Venus several decades. It is a striking thing to see. I am looking at the video in one of the articles that covered this fine, and you are the lead author of this paper. I think I neglected to say that. It just looks like something, I mean, it reminds me of those things that we have seen on Jupiter, like the Great Red Spot,

which seems so persistent and so dramatic in their appearance on the planet. I mean, this is not a roughly circular red spot. It's a long line. But what in the world could account for something like this being so persistent in this atmosphere, which is incredibly dynamic? Yeah, we had a lot of problems for interpreting this phenomenon. We don't know what we were observing. One of the main hypotheses is that we have discovered a new type of wave,

what we call a Kelvin wave, moving into the West faster than the winds. But in the paper, we leave a clear idea that it is open to new interpretations. It was difficult to interpret this phenomenon because we cannot have a proper insight about how this structure is affecting other physical parameters of the atmosphere. What we see is that it is disturbing strongly the clouds, the deeper clouds of Venus. But the effect of these two bands of the clouds is not clear in terms of how it affects, for example, the aerosols, the temperature, the atmospheric density. We suspect this structure is separating two big regions of the clouds. One on the east side that is much denser and it blocks the thermal emission from the surface. And on the other side, on the west side, it is less dense clouds, more transparent,

that allows to pass more heat from below. We also know that in some way it is stimulating some kind of instabilities in the atmosphere. Because of this disruption, we see associated formation of, for example, vortices. That was also a big surprise to find on Venus. Yes, I think I can see some of those vortices in this animation that I'm watching. And we'll try to put this on this week's show page as well at planetary.org slash radio.

How deep into Venus's atmosphere, or maybe I should say how high above the surface, is this feature? It is between 48 kilometers and let's say 55 kilometers for the lower clouds. On Venus, we have three levels of clouds, three different layers. The lower clouds, the middle clouds, and the upper clouds. What we know also, thanks to Akatsuki, is that sometimes we can see this structure also moving in the middle clouds

that are located about 10 kilometers above these lower clouds. This feature crosses into that range of the Venusian atmosphere where the phosphine has been found. I'll come back to that. You mentioned super rotation, which is the reference to the fact that Venus's clouds, its atmosphere is rotating faster than the planet is. Is this feature that you found possibly related to that super rotation? Is it somehow responsible for it? It depends on what we are observing, of course. In case that this structure, for example, is a wave,

it might help to explain a new way of feeding the super rotation from the deep atmosphere upwards. There was a recent paper also published in a date close to ours in science with Akatsuki results. It was a paper by Takeshi Horinuchi. He examined the role of the solar tides to excite and to keep the super rotation of Venus. to excite and to keep the super rotation of Venus. In this case, we are talking about the source of energy for the motion of the atmosphere that depends on the heating of the sun over the upper clouds. So we are talking about the source of excitation

for the super rotation that happens in the upper clouds and maybe a part in the middle clouds, but not coming from the deep atmosphere, okay, or from the surface. For us, the lower clouds has been a big mystery because what we observe in the lower clouds did not correspond to what we observe on the upper clouds. For example, the lack of big waves, of giant waves. We observe also with Akatsuki for the first time

stationary waves that were created on the surface by interaction of the slope winds. Waves that came from the surface and then manifest in the upper clouds. But curiously, when we observe these lower clouds on the night side, we don't observe this stationary wave, but it's really streaking and really weird. For a long time, we didn't find big waves or we didn't find the waves that were propagating from below to the upper clouds in this intervening level of the atmosphere. We still don't understand why. So for us, it's a big surprise to find what can be a wave manifesting in these lower clouds for the first time. The idea that this is very

interesting for explaining the super rotation has to be with one of the discoveries of the Pioneer Venus mission in the 80s, where some of the probes went into the atmosphere falling onto the surface. They were measuring the winds and in the Pioneer Venus measurements due to these entry probes, they had the chance of measuring in situ the winds of Venus, and they discovered that most of the angular momentum, most of the energy of this super rotation is stored not in the clouds, but very deep in the atmosphere at about 20 kilometers. In this range of 20 kilometers above the surface is where we have the major density of angular momentum in the atmosphere. the major density of angular momentum of the atmosphere. According to our simulations, what we are observing, this discontinuity, seems to be a wave that is generating in that level and then coming up to the clouds and then dissipating before arriving at the upper clouds

and then transporting this energy from the deep atmosphere to the upper clouds. Fascinating. And point out that we still have a great deal to learn about Venus and the sky above it, above its surface. Let me turn now to this announcement this morning from this international team, this discovery of the phosphine, which we've already heard a little bit about. I'm just curious, you've read a little bit about this as well. I'm just curious, you've read a little bit about this as well, what do you think of this find of phosphine, which just happens to be in this middle layer of clouds at Venus? This is fascinating because we have very long time discussions on whether there is life on Venus or not. Some of our colleagues have the hypothesis that the reason why we cannot explain the real nature of the unknown absorber, you know that on Venus,

on the upper clouds, we observe some markings in ultraviolet wavelengths, something that is absorbing the ultraviolet solar radiation. And we don't know, for decades, we have not known what is the absorber that is... I remember, yeah. We talked about this previously and it's one of those mysteries. Yeah, so some of the hypotheses for this absorber were bacteria.

I remember one of our colleagues, Sanjay Limay, also published a paper a couple of years ago revising the idea that some of the bacteria that can be studied here on the Earth have the property precisely to absorb in ultraviolet wavelengths. And why not? Maybe we have bacteria floating on the clouds. At the time, of course, it's a kind of challenging hypothesis, difficult to confirm. But now we found this really, really exciting work today, this morning. We are really excited because even though this cannot be yet considered definitive confirmation

of life yet, but it opens the door again for trying to find out if there are bacterias afloat within the clouds of Venus. And I am pretty sure that because of this work now many people are going to try to make new observations, revising data from the spacecraft, mainly because for example from Venus Express we have short data where we have some infrared sun absorption bands from the phosphine. I'm pretty sure that this discovery is going to stimulate a lot of work, additional works to try to confirm this result, because it could be amazing to discover that the life in our solar system was precisely in the place where we didn't expect at all. That's so true. I'm going to bet also that just as we heard

from the scientists involved in this newest research, that you also see this as an even better argument or an additional argument for more missions to Venus, more planetary science missions. Yeah, there are some colleagues of mine that are working with Mars. They are telling, oh, you are making this up because you want to steal missions from Mars to Venus. Of course, I have the hopes that this will stimulate to send new spacecraft to Venus to make new observations. And of course, ground-based observations, that will be the first step, of course.

And I think I read somewhere that the original authors of this paper, they wanted to try also some additional independent observation with SOFIA. They didn't have the chance. Somebody else will have, I guess. But now is the time, of course, to try to look at Venus and try to confirm this amazing or promising result. SOFIA, of course, that wonderful infrared telescope mounted in the 747 airplane that we've actually flown on and covered that as part of this show. So we still have a lot to learn, but this certainly has been exciting news,

both your own research and what we learned just this morning. I am really excited also because the Indian mission that will be launched, hopefully maybe in three or four years, I don't know when, they might include in their scientific goals the confirmation about the phosphine discovery. Excellent. Gosh, I sure hope that they can include that, instruments that will help them study that further. Javier, thank you again. As I said, what a wonderful coincidence

that we were already going to be talking today. Congratulations on your own work, and thank you for adding to this exciting news that we learned about just this morning. Oh, thanks to you. Yeah, I am really excited. I want to read more about this paper and you can imagine how light on we are now in the scientific community of studying Venus. And that is exactly how we would like it to be at the Planetary Society. Thanks again. Thank you so much. Astrophysicist and member of the Akatsuki Venus Orbiter Science Team, Javier Peralta. Bruce Betts and What's Up are next.

Perseverance is on its way to Mars. Bill Nye the planetary guy here. I'll be watching when this new Mars rover arrives at the Red Planet on 18 February 2021. Would you and a friend like to join me? We'll put you up in a four-star hotel, enjoy a great Visit omaze.com slash bill to enter and support the Planetary Society. That's omaze.com slash bill. I look forward to welcoming you as we return to Mars. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. This is... I'm distracted because I'm looking at pictures. We're doing live video as we do What's Up for the first time. I'm saying that even though I don't

plan to share this with all of you but we're testing a new version of our software of choice Zencaster and it's a beta and it offers video and I'm going to be using this for some other stuff. Watch me sneeze. Wait, you're going to sneeze? Yeah. Was that cool? Oh, that was outstanding. It's all smoky over here. Oh yeah, you are smack dab

in the middle of the smoke zone near Pasadena, aren't you? I am so sorry about that. The air here has improved quite a bit, but I hear it's not great by you. No, it is not. I mean, it could be worse, but it's pretty nasty. I hope that improves very soon. Let's look to the sky that you may not be able to see very well through the smoke. Can you tell the rest of us what's up? Hi. If you don't have a bunch of smoke, then there are planets that are very easy to see. We've got Jupiter and Saturn still in the evening sky in the south, looking super bright. Jupiter in particular, Saturn dimmer, but still looking bright over to Jupiter's left. And the big star for the next few weeks is Mars coming up in the early evening in the east, approaching its closest approach to Earth this time around,

which will be on October 6th. It will be at opposition or opposite side of the Earth from the Sun on October 13th. So it's bright. It's almost as bright as Jupiter right now. It will get as bright as Jupiter as it comes to closest approach, and it's a spectacular evening sight in the east and then moving over to the south. In the pre-dawn Venus still just looking Venus-y all super bright and over in the east in the pre-dawn. Mars not to be confused with an actual star. Please continue. Mars no it's a planet. I know stuff. On to this week in space history. It was 2014 that the NASA spacecraft MAVEN went into orbit around Mars, studying its atmosphere, particularly upper outer atmosphere,

and it's still working and partying in Mars orbit. Another long-lived one up there. Mars orb, orb, orb, orb, orbit. Another long-lived one up there. We move on to random space facts. Oh, the video really magnifies the magnificence of that. The glory. So a short one here today. It's all Venus-y. The surface gravity of Venus is about 91% the surface gravity of Earth. So if you're looking to drop some weight without

dropping mass, it's not the ideal place. But if you're looking to just take a little off, you know, you might consider Venus surface instead of liposuction, although you will get cooked. So never mind. Bad idea. I've noticed that when you burn stuff, it gets a lot lighter. That's true. You would be a desiccated version of yourself. Yummy. Okay. Let's move on to the trivia contest. And I ask you what was the only spacecraft to launch with solar system escape velocity? So when it launched, it had enough velocity that it would leave the solar system and never come back unless aliens brought it back in a Star Trek movie. How'd we do, Matt? I'm just still thinking of V'ger, I guess.

We got a huge response to this, surprisingly large, and that's always very gratifying. And thank you to all of you who talked about how much you're enjoying the show and your little comment field in the entry form. I'm going to let Dave Fairchild, the Poet Laureate, answer this for us. He has his usual rhyming response, but it ends with something really clever. When New Horizons was launched from the pad, it flew on an Atlas V ship, a common core booster. They strapped on some more to give it the gravity slip. It sped by the moon in nine hours or so. Its rocket fuel totally burned.

Velocity set for a solar escape and leaving the sun in its stern. Oh. That one's for you, I guess, Alan. We'll have to tip him off. Yeah, New Horizons, right? New Horizons, indeed. Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2 also with solar system escape velocity but were not launched with that. They picked up extra

velocity from gravity assist as did New Horizons but less so and so they're all heading away but only New Horizons flew away without requiring any gravity assist. You never come back unless aliens build a giant

robotic structure to send. Spoiler alert. Never mind. I love that movie. Here's our winner. And this is pretty cool. Long-time listener, friend of the show, past guest on the show, but a first-time listener as chosen by Random.org.

It's John Cowart in Florida. John, who is a leader of the now successful commercial crew program at NASA. He has moved to the human spaceflight program at Aerospace Corporation. He manages the human spaceflight program. And now, I'm sure this will be his crowning glory, the thing he will be most proud of in his life. He has won the contest and will receive Sarah Stewart Johnson's wonderful book, Sirens of Mars, which I still recommend very highly. It's quite a wonderful tribute to the red planet, the one that's a star, but not a real star. He said, yeah, it's New Horizons, 36,000 miles per hour relative to Earth.

He said, yeah, it's New Horizons, 36,000 miles per hour relative to Earth, but sun escape velocity, 94,175 miles per hour, with apologies to listeners who prefer km per second. When New Horizons left Earth, it's popular relative velocity of 67,108, you get 103,108 miles per hour. He adds apologies to orbital mechanics enthusiasts and Newtonian physicists everywhere for my gross approximating. Congrats, John. Yeah, no, it makes an important point that it only has the true escape philosophy from the solar system by taking advantage of leaping out with Earth's velocity around the sun. Several entrants, including Laura Dodd, mentioned the Parker Solar Probe has become the fastest spacecraft, but Laura knew it didn't start out the fastest, which is what you were looking for, of course. I also want to make a note that it's fastest

because it's headed in being pulled in by the gravity of the sun and not being slowed down by the gravity of the sun as, I mean, it is during part of its orbit, but not way out. All these spacecraft just keep getting slowed down more and more as they're moving away from us. So I got more. Eson Beglu in Ontario likes these speedy spacecraft, but he prefers planetary radio's waves traveling at the speed of light every Wednesday.

That's a really good point. Mark Dunning in Florida. New Horizons continues to deliver. He found footage of the launch. And with those five strap-on solid rocket boosters, he said that thing all but leapt off the pad. Ian Gilroy, Australia. At that speed, I could get from Sydney to Pasadena in under 15 minutes.

Put the coffee on, Matt. You can try our wonderful coffee machine that the boss, Bill Nye, mentioned last week. But you won't have much company, I'm afraid. and I mentioned last week, but you won't have much company, I'm afraid. Stephanie Delgado in Arizona, 14 years and more of passion, beauty, and joy and inspiration for the entire planet. Thank you, New Horizons. It was launched in 2006, early 2006. Finally, another poem, which I think you're a big fan of the TV show Psych, right? Oh, yeah. One of my favorites. Yep. I don't blame you because it's a great premise. I've watched a couple of episodes.

Don't know why I never became a regular with it, but I know you are. So this from Gene Lewin. A hasty exit from planet Earth, a launch that set a pace, achieving escape velocity to the far reaches of space. Heading for a planet, the then New Horizons stayed its course, arriving to find that its destination now was classified an icy dwarf. But Burton Guster utilizes this Kuiper Belt Malign. Have you heard about Pluto as his go-to pickup line? Heard about Pluto?

That's messed up. So it's real? Oh, yeah. I mean, yes. I mean, it's a TV yeah i mean yes i mean it's a tv show but yes it's that's an ongoing joke with gus we are ready to move on who is the only man that has a feature on venus named after him That's it. Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. I'm going to guess Bruce Batts. If there were justice in the world. Well, actually, I'm kind of glad because you pretty much have to be dead to have a feature named after you.

So I'm willing to wait. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Wait a long time. You've got until the 23rd, September 23rd at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us the answer to this one. And it has proven very popular, not surprising, as it has been in the past. So, we

offer our winner, once again, a Planetary Radio Kick Asteroid Rubber Asteroid. It can be yours. Got to enter, though, to win. And we're done. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about what I'm seeing.

Matt Kaplan on video. Thank you, and good night. Yeah, my Planetary Society Eclipse t-shirt. I didn't think anybody'd see this. What have you got? I got a light steel, too. I think the shirt muffled your voice there. Must be good insulator. I got a light steel, too. He's the chief scientist for the Planetary Society. I think the shirt muffled your voice there. Must be good insulator.

He's the chief scientist for the Planetary Society and the LightSail program manager. 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 members who can't wait to find life elsewhere in the universe. You can join our quest at planetary.org slash membership. Mark Hilverde is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. Ad Astra.