Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - It’s Not Just NASA: Space Agency Leaders at the Artemis 1 Launch Attempt

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

More than 100,000 came to the Kennedy Space Center hoping to see Artemis 1 head for the Moon on August 29. Among them were leaders of the European Space Agency (ESA), the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). They sat down with Mat Kaplan for conversations about the international collaboration behind the Artemis program, along with some of the other brilliant successes they have achieved. We also celebrate the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s speech that set the United States on course for the Moon. There’s a JWST T-shirt waiting for the winner of the new What’s Up space trivia contest. And there’s more to discover at https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2022-esa-dlr-asi-leadersSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The leaders of ESA and other space agencies, this week on Planetary Radio. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills. Because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others too. Welcome. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. And that was U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy on a blazingly hot Houston, Texas afternoon at Rice University.

The date was September 12, 1962. The date was September 12, 1962. Exactly 60 years later, an international coalition is attempting to send more humans to the moon. In this special episode, we'll talk with a series of international leaders who came to the Kennedy Space Center hoping to see the launch of Artemis I, the first big step into space that will realize this new goal. First, though, a bit more history. Hardly anyone alive has listened to the entirety of Kennedy's speech that day. It's a remarkable statement delivered by a young president who seemed to barely notice the heat, even as dignitaries behind him mopped their brows. We now know that Kennedy had expressed

serious doubts about setting the United States on course for the moon, but you'd never know it from his remarks. Here are the last four minutes of that stirring address delivered six decades ago. To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year's space budget is three times what it was in January 1961. And it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400,000,000 a year, a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for

cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures space expenditures will soon rise Samoa from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman, and child in the United States. For we have given this program a high national priority, even though I realize that this is, in some measure, an act of faith and vision. For we do not now know what benefits await us.

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food, and survival on an untried mission to an unknown celestial body and then return it safely to Earth,

re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that on the temperature of the sun, almost as hot as it is here today, and do all this, and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out, then we must be bold. I'm the one who's doing all the work, so we're just going to stay cool for a minute. However, I think we're going to do it. And I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the 60s.

It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the terms of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done, and it will be done before the end of this decade. And I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a man on the moon as part of a great national effort of the United States of America. Many years ago, the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said because it is there. Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there, and therefore as we set sail, we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

Thank you. John F. Kennedy at Rice University on the 12th of September, 1962. NASA was back at Rice on the 60th anniversary of the speech, with Administrator Bill Nelson leading the celebration. And what of Artemis I? Repair of the liquid hydrogen leak continues. As I speak, the next launch opportunity has moved from September 23rd to the 27th, with another window opening on October 2nd. You'll find other lunar news in the September 9 edition of the Downlink, the Planetary Society's free weekly newsletter, including word that

Donuri, South Korea's lunar orbiter, is healthy and on its way to the moon after using a solar slingshot to help it get there. Arrival is expected on December 16. You'll always find awe-inspiring images at planetary.org slash downlink, which this time include another stunner from the JWST, and a shot of the Sun's surface taken by the now-operational Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, the most powerful instrument of its kind by far. We also learned that a study of astronaut blood samples found higher rates of mutation in stem cells, demonstrating again that keeping humans healthy in space is full of challenges. You'll also see a shot I'm pretty proud of. It's the big KSC countdown clock that I photographed against a

gorgeous Florida sunrise. August 28th was the day before I caught that sunrise. You may have heard some of the conversations my colleagues and I had with special NASA guests on last week's show. I promised we'd be back with more, and we'll start with the Director General of the European Space Agency. Scientist-turned-Administrator Joseph Hochbacher sat down with me in the noisy dining room at the Kennedy Space Center, where interviews were underway all around us. Joseph, thank you very much. We are very honored to be able to speak with you as the leader of ESA. Thank you. The honor and the pleasure is all mine. I'm really so excited to be here and looking forward to what's happening tomorrow. A lot of it, I think, needs to focus on the international collaboration that this represents,

the Artemis Accords, but separately, the very close collaboration that ESA enjoys with NASA and has for so many years. No, it's true. We have an incredibly good and strong cooperation with NASA for many decades and this really spans many domains. Human exploration, of course, is one of them and throughout Artemis today, tomorrow and the next couple of weeks we will focus on that part. But also we have excellent cooperation on space science, but also Earth observation. We have a very good cooperation in Earth observation, for example, the contributions which the U.S. is also making to the Copernicus program, Sentinel-6, for example. I happened to be the director of Earth

observation at that time in ESA before the current job. And because of the strong U.S. contribution to that particular mission, it's the first time that we have named a satellite after an American space expert, Michael Freilich, who used to be the director of earth science in NASA, because he was not only a fantastic space expert, he was a personal friend of mine. When of course we heard about his personal illness, really very unfortunately he passed away just recently, I decided to name one of our flagship satellites after him. And we have named, or renamed, our Sentinel-6 satellite,

Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, in his honor, but also to underline the strong cooperation which we have with NASA on many domains, in Earth observation in this particular case, but also in many other domains. So yes, the partnership is excellent, is very strong, and I would like to say through Artemis it is lifted one more level up, which was also said by Administrator Nelson when he recently came to speak to my member states in June this year in the Netherlands, where I invited him to speak to the ESA Council, which brings together all the 22 member states of the European Space Agency.

And he gave an incredibly strong speech, very powerful, but also very eloquent to underline the good cooperation, the partnership we have. And he himself said, we are lifting now this partnership to the next level through the activities which we do. And I'm very humbled about these words of the NASA Administrator. I'm also very humbled by the trust NASA puts into ESA, in the participation of us in the Artemis mission in a very crucial element, the European Service Module. But also, I'm also proud. I'm also proud to be part of it and have the ESA logo on the SLS rocket. I think that's beautiful, and I have to say personally,

it really is nice to see that. I think that service module is certainly the most obvious representation within this mission and within the Artemis program of Europe's participation, of ESA's participation. The development of that service module, no small task. No small task, believe me, and like many things in space, it's a rather complex mission. You know that we are struggling, have been struggling for many years with a particular valve which has created some hiccups and also some headaches on our side. But it's really the complexity. There are 20,000 individual

pieces in the European Service Module coming from 10 different countries and from their industries and you can imagine what it means to bring all this together and make sure it works flawlessly and it all fits together as one piece that is providing all the functions that are required. So yes, it was quite a development work which we undertook but I think we it is fair to say that we are on a very good path. Bill Nelson and his key people have been in the facilities in Bremen just this summer and have been looking at the Airbus facilities producing the European service module and he really has been satisfied with

the results the way the work is done and also the progress which we are making. In fact, to the point that he was asking us whether we would be capable of delivering one European service module per year for future Artemis missions. And that's something on which we are working right now to have a cadence, almost serial production of these ESMs for all the Artemis missions to come. So yes, it has been a major challenge, a major effort. Very glad that we went through all this very positively. And now we are at the stage where we can say we are very confident to have this powering the Orion spacecraft capsule and bringing it back to Earth safely. And that's the job of the Europeans so I'm

very happy to be part of that. Turning from the collaboration between NASA and ESA, maybe focusing more internally on ESA. Are you familiar with the phrase herding cats? 22 different nations making up ESA. That has to present some substantial challenges, keeping everybody working toward a particular goal and even identifying those goals. That is my daily job.

And as you say, this is herding the cat. So actually, I quote again Bill Nelson, who was saying that, in fact, during his visit when he was in Europe, he was saying, Look, Joseph, for me, you are Merlin. You are a magician. What you need to do is every single day make sure that these 22 member states, plus a few other partners, are going in one direction and not running away in all different directions.

And that is no small task, quoting his words there. But let me say, yes, this is is a challenge but I'm really having fun in doing it it's a huge challenge it's not always easy to get Germany and France and Italy and the UK and Switzerland and Norway and Austria and Poland and many other countries in one in one direction but that's that's my job and I see it really as a challenge to do that. So how do we do that? Of course, what we always do, and this is the success of ESA, we are defining the space programs through different ways,

sometimes driven by inputs from scientists, where scientists tell us, space scientists, we need to explore whether there's life out there on one of the Jupiter or Saturn moons. And then we scratch our head and we think what can be done, what needs to be done in order to see whether there can be life out there or not. And we, of course, eventually define a mission. And you can imagine if you define something of that scale, this is huge. It's huge in terms of time scale, but also funding that is required. So my job will be to, apart from developing the first program proposal,

the proposal for a project, to then see whether this flies with the member states and whether they are having the willingness and the appetite to invest in it and make it happen. And that's exactly, I would say, my daily job, to define these programs, test with the member states whether this is in their interest. And there are many facets that give the answer to that. One is industrial, whether the country has an industrial interest in order to engage, but it's also societal, it's political, it's strategic.

There are many dimensions that are involved in this decision in one country and of course you have to then put all 22 countries together. And then what we do in ESA and European Space Agencies, we define these programs, we do it every three years at so-called ESA ministerial conferences. We put them on the table and then we invite member states to sign up to them and to fund them. And the challenging thing is that we are not funded by the member states just because they are a member.

We have only 20% of our budget that is contributed to the European Space Agency's budget because of membership, according to the size of the country. But the 80% of money we are getting through what we call optional programs. That means we define these programs and then we allow countries to either participate or not participate large or small in a certain project. And it's really up to them to define their participation. Which means that we may have a project where we have 10 countries participating or 22 countries participating. So this is completely variable and they can really choose out on their own.

Of course, this adds pressure on my side because I need to have attractive programs, otherwise they wouldn't sign up to it and we will not be able to get them off the ground. So yes, it's a lot of work we need to do to make sure that those programs we put on the table at the end get full funding in order to fully develop a satellite and fully fly it to space, not only 80% or 50% of it. We need the whole money in order to achieve that. So yes, it's complicated. I think it's true. But it's also fun doing the job.

When you were focused mostly on doing science of your own, did you envision that one day you would need to basically be a salesman? You are well informed that I am a scientist, yes. Actually I did enjoy a lot my science. As you know I come from a geoscience domain. I was studying meteorology and geophysics and I did enjoy analyzing satellite data and deriving information from radar images, from optical images, for agriculture, for forestry, for disaster management, for security, for climate change, many parameters we have been deriving from the satellite data. And yes, I enjoyed it. But of course, if you grow in your responsibility, you see also that you can also influence activities by

taking on responsibilities in a management position. That's what I'm having now. I'm having now a management position and of course my science is out the window. I mean, I'm not doing science anymore actively, but I need my science background to make good judgement, good decisions, to assess quickly whether this is a good idea or a bad idea. And yes, this experience and background, I think, is essential. Also in leadership, management leadership positions, to have good judgment and therefore decide whether a project makes sense or doesn't make sense. Of course, there are many opinions that flow into it,

but your own gut feeling is quite often a very important aspect of this as well. The Planetary Society, we do our best to celebrate the accomplishments of space agencies around the world. NASA obviously often is very prominent at the top of that list. But ESA has so much to be proud of. And I wonder if you'd like to talk about, you know, some of those successes. I mean, an immediate one that comes to mind for me is already back a few years, Rosetta. Yeah, we have actually a lot to talk about and sometimes my own people tell me, look, Joseph, it is not fair that when you talk space, even in Europe, everyone talks NASA and

nobody talks ESA. I feel also bad myself because that's my job. And I know that my people are doing an incredibly good work in engineering, in science, every single day. Yes, some of the achievements, you mentioned Rosetta. Rosetta was amazing. I mean, landing on a comet with a lander, the first time ever. I mean, this has not happened before and has really created also major headlines. But also other achievements which we have. Gaia, for example. Gaia is another space science mission.

Today, the majority of all scientific publications in space science are based on Gaia data, which is incredible. We have just released another data set, a release of the data set. Again, we have many Nobel Peace Prize winners doing their work based on our data. Of course, many times we do work with international partners, with NASA, with JAXA, with other international partners, and that also makes us, I think, strong that we have this good network with other international space agencies.

But also in Earth observation, Copernicus is a program which is, if I may say, the gold standard today in Earth observation. It's providing an operational service, operational data to people around the world for free, because this was one of the points I was really insisting that these data are free of charge for everyone at any place in the world and we provide data that you need for

agriculture, forestry, ship routing, weather forecasting, for disaster management from this fleet of Copernicus Sentinel satellites. So yes Galileo is another example where we do something very similar to GPS, a navigation system which is top standard, same quality as the GPS system and routinely used by actually in an iPhone or any other mobile phone you would have to receive as for both of them and they are both being there. So yes, there are many examples of achievements, discoveries, which sometimes you don't hear about. But I'm told by my people I should make a bigger effort to communicate more,

and I hope the Planetary Society helps me doing that. We'll keep doing our best. One last quick one. Are you hopeful that we will still someday see that ExoMars rover, the Rosalind Franklin rover, rolling across Mars? As Director General of the European Space Agency, I have to be hopeful and I will be hopeful. But I can also tell you that it is a difficult decision and a difficult undertaking. We need fresh investments to make. I'm actually preparing a proposal for my member states in November at the ESA ministerial

conference and then we will make the decisions. But yes, the science will still be unique also in a couple of years from today. Drilling into the surface two meters, analyzing this probe and seeing whether there might have been life down there two meters below the surface of Mars is still top science. Nobody else would have done it by then. So yes, from a science point of view, this is still a very important mission. We wish you the greatest of success with that mission. All of us want to see that drill go deep below the surface and see what it finds down there,

but also just across all of the work that ESA does. And thank you for the few minutes today. Thank you very much. It was a real pleasure, and I hope I have more opportunities. It's very important for me as well. Thank you. European Space Agency Director General Josef Aschbacher. The leaders of individual space agencies were also at the Cape for the next day's launch attempt.

The DLR is the German space agency. Anna Christmann, I'm the coordinator of space for the German government. My name is Walter Pelzer, I'm a member of the executive board of DLR and director general of the German space agency. It is an honor to be able to talk to the two of you who helped guide one of the world's most successful space agencies, the DLR, the German Space Agency. Thank you for taking a couple of minutes with us today. Sure, it's a pleasure. Thank you for having us. We are spending a lot of time talking to the

international partners, signatories to the Artemis Accords, but also, of course, participants in ESA, the European Space Agency. And I note that maybe since the most obvious example of that collaboration between ESA and NASA is out there on the pad now, the service module, and I understand the DLR had a very large portion of the responsibility for developing that very complicated system. Yes, that's true, but I wouldn't say DLR. It's a German industry and a German science community. So from this point of view, the German, let's say, share of the value chain is more than

50 percent. value chain is more than 50% and but there are 10 member states 10 ESA member states participating and Bremen is assembly lines assembly point where everybody from Europe supplies his contribution and we get together and we assemble the European service module we are very proud that this takes place in Bremen and this is the reason why the first service module is called Bremen. Which was something I did not know until just a couple of days ago, that it actually has, it is named for the town in which it is being assembled. We've also talked about what these partnerships represent

and I believe you were more on the policy side, right? What goes into creating a collaboration between nations or among nations, I should say? For us, international collaboration in space is very important and Artemis is a great example for that. I mean, how important is it that we are going to the Moon together now after 50 years again? But now Europe and Germany are part of this mission and that is something that is very important to us and we are very happy that there is a very trustful relationship between NASA and the US side and the European side. That is something we have learned over the last years in preparing this mission.

It was really a close and trustful partnership and that is something that we definitely want to also have in the future. The relationship that ESA has with NASA is on a different level, but then the Artemis Accords, which are the individual relationships which many nations have signed on to with NASA, that is done by individual nations. We've seen quite a few sign on recently. France, I think most recently, just a few sign on recently. France, I think most recently just in the last few days. Germany, not there yet.

We think space exploration is something that is relevant for the whole planet. So it should be a multilateral process to find rules how we do it together. But in this finding the joint rules, we see the Artemis Accords as one important part. And that is why we are now in really close debates also with NASA and the U.S. government and how we can be partner in this jointly searching for the joint rules for space exploration and how the Artemis Accords are part of that. So we are also in meetings here with NASA around the start of the first Artemis mission. So that is something that is for us very important to deepen the relationship from the American and the German side. And we see their accords as something that we will have to talk about very intensively in the next weeks.

I also think independently of the successes that the DLR has achieved for many, many decades in space, and in particular space exploration since we're the Planetary Society, so we tend to look at that side more. So many missions that you can point to, I think, with great pride. Are there standouts in your mind, Walter? As you said, there's a bunch of missions which are extraordinary. And I think our teams did great jobs to put them into practice. But I wouldn't grab one because you have also to keep in mind that, of course, there are some which comes up to your mind right away because especially when it comes to exploration,

it's very tempting to pick up the one which deals with Mars. Nevertheless, also others are very important because if you look at the performance that the teams put into practice, depend on the budget, depends on the time they had available. So from this point of view, I'm not able to pinpoint one mission or one project which is absolutely outstanding. From my point of view, what's outstanding is the commitment of our teams. The commitment that they are willing to go an extra mile to put it into practice, to let's say suffer, to make sure that at the end, even or especially when we work with international teams, that at the end having all obstacles in mind the mission will be a success and this is from my point of view this sense of

working that we are one team one DLR this is a statement we have this is the important topic and this is what I'm proud of that I'm allowed to work with these people together maybe I would add one project but of course it's right that we have many successful projects but one of that is also a collaboration with the US side is a satellite mission called grace and it is about measuring with gravity measurements how water is on yours developing and that is something that is very important for climate effects and one satellite mission that is also named several

times in the International Climate Report. And so I think these kind of missions also show how important space is for us on the planet Earth and to save our planet. And that is also a very important part for us, like exploration but also Earth observation and using it for fighting climate crisis. I am very glad you brought that up because I did want to ask you, as NASA plays an important role in climate and environmental research here in the United States and around the world,

what is the DLR's role on behalf of Germany and perhaps more broadly ESA when it comes to the tremendous challenges that we face, climate change in particular? I maybe start because we have a very high expertise in climate technologies in Germany and also in climate satellites. And so far, it's a priority also for the ESA. We have a ministerial meeting in November this year, and Earth observation and green space is definitely one of our top priorities. So we really want to bring our German and European expertise into the international collaboration. So it's very important for us.

We spoke about grace and when it comes to the topic, we need to discuss why it's important to do space. Grace is an excellent example because on the one hand side with space we can monitor excellent but GRACE has a capacity actually to avoid conflicts in the future because for the first time we are able to see how groundwater is developing and we can see where people live how groundwater is developing and we see where areas might exist where we are running into a conflict due to the fact of groundwater for example. So from this point of view if you ask what is the responsibility for example of the German Space Agency due to the fact that this kind of

mission is the only one globally, not ESA, not Russia, not China, nobody, except this cooperation between Germany and the US is taking place and we have to actually continue this mission. This is, from my point of view, one of the responsibilities when we are talking about responsibilities of the German Space Agency that this mission will be continued by 2026 and then we will hand it over to the European Space Agency because the next step is already planned that we have an even bigger mission like GRACE together with the US using more technology making it more powerful, this mission will take place within in the framework of ESA. And now we have to bridge actually the time until ESA is ready to take over. And this is the time where we as DLR want to manage with German scientists and German industry and JPL on the US side to reach the time from 2026 on.

It is an amazing mission just to think that we have this kind of sophistication in what can be done from orbit. I'm going to bring up one other mission because it's one we paid very close attention to at the Planetary Society, a tremendous success of now a few years ago. And I know you don't want to play favorites. I don't blame you. But Rosetta, which DLR made a tremendous contribution to. Yes, Rosetta is also a mission. And for quite some, we thought it's a failure.

We thought that because the landing took not place in the way we actually thought. And, well, it's kind of difficult to have pictures from a black stone in black circumstances. So the pictures are kind of hard. And the science we actually created over there is now helping us fighting fires. now helping us fighting fires because this technology developed by the Max Planck Institute actually boiled down to a camera which is able to detect forest fires. In eastern Germany we have a lot of these cameras which actually are done and produced by a small and medium-sized company based on this technology. So I'm not now talking about this exploration,

about this great thing to land on a comet. Actually, now I'm talking about that even these things where everybody thinks, why are humankind doing it? It helps us, does not help at all. No, actually we see technology coming right away out of this mission, tackling an issue, fires in our forest, which is now an everyday issue. And this technology, this mission, Rosella, is helping us to fight this issue. That is a wonderful angle on that mission, which stood on its own as a tremendous success.

Just the pure science that it did, but I had no idea. Just landing on a comet, just the landing itself, everything else, forget everything else. To be able to land a satellite on a comet, this is, from my point of view, a tremendous thing. And yeah, at the end, at the first place, we thought it was not successful, but it took some time until we found our piece of technology, and then it worked. I was talking to Joseph Aschbacher of ESA about the phrase that we use in this country, herding cats, and the 22 members of ESA, and how they are able to come together as a collaboration just among themselves to achieve the things

that ESA has achieved. We see it in the service module out there on that big rocket. An ongoing challenge though, right? In Europe we are really experts in complex collaboration and I think that is very important and it's part of our success and we know very well we want to be part of a very strong space ecosystem worldwide and in Europe we can achieve this by really working closely together so Iza for us is a very important actor and we are proud and happy to be a strong partner in that. Thank you very much. Here's hoping that

we all get to see that service module head for the moon as soon as tomorrow. And I look forward to enjoying it with you. Yeah, we are really excited. Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you for having us and thank you for these well-shaped questions. Joining me next was Giorgio Sococcia, president of ASI, the Italian Space Agency. You'll hear Giorgio mention his colleague, Simona Pirotta. Simona is project manager for Licea Cube, the tiny CubeSat that has now been released from DART, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft.

We'll save my conversation with Simona for next week's show, when we'll get a preview of DART's September 26 impact on asteroid Dimorphos. It'll come from the mission's coordination lead, Nancy Schaabo. Giorgio, thank you so much for joining us in our coverage of Artemis I here today. It has been wonderful to talk to so many of the international representatives of the other space agencies that are involved in this mission. Well, the beauty and the reason of happiness is indeed be part of this network of space agencies working together for a big project like the one that we are seeing here tomorrow. We'll talk initially a little bit more about Artemis I,

but there are so many other accomplishments of the Italian Space Agency, which I don't think have gotten the attention that they deserve in the United States. We do our best. Maybe one in particular that we should bring up is the secondary payload that is from an Italian company, Argomoon, that little CubeSat which will be accompanying the Orion capsule. Yes, Argomoon is the only European secondary payload that will fly on Artemis I. Of course, we are very proud of that.

To me, apart of being a very technological satellite with a lot of innovation on board, we are happy. I think as a symbolic value also because the contribution of Italy to exploration in general has been a route that goes back in time of many, many years. And this goes through collaboration

directly with NASA and, of many, many years. And this goes through collaboration directly with NASA and, of course, through the European Space Agency effort. So, in a way, the fact that we have the Argon Moon, I see it really as sort of a symbolic pinpoint of the role that Italy has had so far and will have in the future on space exploration. Italy is also a signatory on the Artemis Accords, isn't it? Correct. We were among the first ones, certainly among the first ones in Europe.

As a matter of fact, I recall I signed myself with Jim Bradstine a letter of intent already back in September 19, a few months after my start as president in ASI. And this was really to show immediately, as soon as possible, the fact that Italy was fully committed to the Artemis program. Are there other ways that you would like to highlight in which the Italian Space Agency is contributing to what we hope we're going to see tomorrow?

How much time you give me? Take your time. Okay, okay we start tomorrow of course as you know not only with Argun but with a major contribution to the European Service Module technologies and element among the major subsystem but the idea is to be really major players in the full Artemis program. We started back in 19 through ESA subscribing at the ministerial conference of ESA in 19 to be the major contributor to the lunar gateway, European contribution of lunar gateway. In fact European contribution of Lunar Gateway. In fact, Italy is the prime contractor of the IAB module, you know, the largest habitable module on Lunar Gateway and we are also big contributors to the ESPRIT module, you know, for

refueling and other things. So, in addition, our industry directly is the provider together with the American industry of the Halo logistic module. So a large part of the Lunar Gateway will have Italian contribution. Moving to the surface of the Moon, just two months ago in June, I have signed an agreement with Bill Nelson, with the administrator of NASA in Rome, he was visiting us in Rome, and we signed an agreement because we would like to contribute directly to NASA with one or even possibly more than one, I mean a series of scientific and logistic modules that we are in,

because they will be based a lot on the experience and the capacity that Italy developed for the International Space Station. We can actually provide those modules relatively soon, already in principle around 2026, 2027. 2026, 2027.

So this could be among the first bricks of the surface architecture of Artemis. We are ready to do it, we have the capability to do it, and of course it's a collaboration we want to bring. A possible other next step will be or could be again with the European Space Agency. We will discuss that at the upcoming ministerial conference in November of ESA, ESA ministerial conference. We are talking about a European lunar lander. It is a proposal from ESA, will be discussed, of course, there is a process to get to this, the approval of such a project. If that will become a reality, we know and we are sure that Italy again will be among the major participants

to this program. So as you see, con la NASA continuiamo a lavorare a base normale con la NASA per identificare altre opportunità per contribuire direttamente. Per esempio, abbiamo molto interesse nella navigazione e telecomunicazione infrastrutturali attorno al Sole. Possiamo fare questo, di nuovo, attraverso ISABAT, ma anche direttamente structures around the Moon. We can do this again through ESA but also directly with NASA if necessary. And of course science, provision of payload and the astronauts one day that we are preparing for the next big step. Much deeper involvement in fact than Artemis I, that I was aware of. But I also, as I said, want to talk about the other sorts of accomplishments that the Italian Space Agency has had, particularly in space exploration.

So many times as I have reported on missions like Cusini, as one example, it appears that your agency has, and Italy in general, Your agency has, and Italy in general, has had particular success in the contribution of radar and maybe infrared detectors as well, but particularly radar, I think. Yeah, radar is a technology where for sure Italy has an important footprint and a great capacity of contributing. We do it for Earth, for Earth observation. We successfully developed and we are developing the continuation of a constellation based on the radar technologies called Cosmos Skyman. It's a dual use constellation. But what we learned through this development was used also for scientific mission that will have use and will use the rather technology on other planets on Mars etc so it's really a discipline

where we have a strong expertise recognized at international level you mentioned infrared or I would say more hyper, which also has an aspect of infrared. We have launched not long ago, well, okay, already three years have passed, a satellite called PRISMA, which is a champion in the area of hyperspectral observation technology. And of course, the idea now is to develop other satellites based on this technology. It is very interesting because this type of technology allows not only to observe but also to understand the composition, for example, of the areas you are observing and this has an incredible value if you consider applications like monitoring of pollution, things like that.

There is another mission underway, primarily thought of as a NASA mission, the DART mission. And when I mentioned it to you because I wanted to bring up a traveling companion of DART, Licia Cube. Licia Cube. Licia Cube. You said that you had a colleague here that you wanted to bring out to join us. Yes, Simone, who is here, is the program manager of Leisure Cube. And the nice thing about Leisure Cube is that it is very well associated also to Argomoon,

what is flying on SLS, because they are both witnesses of something that will happen in space. And I'm sure Simone will have a lot to tell you about Leisure Cube and Argomoon as well. You've been very generous with your time. I have just one more question for you. As I note, there are astronauts behind you here talking with each other and it reminded me that I got to spend a little bit of time a few years ago with Samantha Cristoforetti and she was a guest on our program. You could not have a better ambassador in space representing Italy. You are exactly using the right word. She's an ambassador. I mean, every astronaut has this important role, really being ambassador, not only of space activities, but of a positive

approach to science, to STEM subjects, etc. It's an important role, I mean, reference for young generation. Of course having the only female European astronauts of Italian nationality is of course for us an extra reason to be proud of her and she's doing really fantastic job in promoting the space activities and and what space can do for to protect human being. As you know ESA is hopefully going to have several spots for European astronauts on future Artemis missions I assume that you would hope that one of those might be representing Italy. Well for sure.

The participation that I described before to the Artemis program that Italy is having and wants to have as a target also to create opportunities for astronauts of Italian nationality. There will be, as you said, opportunities around the Moon, on the Gateway and on the surface of the Moon. We are just at the beginning, but we want to have also Italian astronauts up there. It's part of the beautiful game we are playing nowadays. Well said. Thank you, Giorgio.

Best of success to you and Olivasi with tomorrow's launch. We hope it'll happen tomorrow, and particularly with that little CubeSat called ArgoMoon. Thank you, and best of success to all of us, to all humanity. We'll wrap up our visits with International Space Agency leadership by welcoming back David Parker. David is the Director of Human and Robotic Exploration

for ESA, the European Space Agency. Listen for the great question added by my Space Policy Edition colleague, Planetary Society Chief Advocate, Casey Dreyer. David Parker, it is delightful to talk to you once again. Welcome. Thank you. It's fantastic to be here. This is a historic moment, and I can't actually believe I'm here. It is certainly very appropriate that you are here as the Director of Human and Robotic Exploration for ESA. Long history in doing this kind of stuff. Talk to us about what this represents in terms of an international partnership. Well this is super important you know ESA has a very very long-standing relationship with NASA on so many different activities,

but this is maybe the summit of it. I'm a child of Apollo. I remember the Apollo moon landings as a very small child. To be able, as Europe, to be part of this dream of returning humans to the moon is quite emotional. It's the summit of all the collaboration we have in James Webb and the International Space Station and Mars Sample Return, all these different exciting programs. But sending humans into deep space, returning them to the moon,

because we plan to go further one day onto Mars, it's fantastic, isn't it? Of course. I'm also one of those who remembers Apollo, though I don't think I was quite as small as you. My colleague who's sitting with us, Ray Paletta, she's going to be talking with Tomas Pesquet in a few minutes. And this opportunity that that represents to not just have Europe participating in the mission, but to actually have members of the European community make the trip, that's also exciting.

Yeah, it's super exciting. We, of course, have built European service modules initially as an exchange for getting astronauts to fly to the International Space Station. So Toma, Pesce, all the other astronauts have already benefited from ESM-1, ESM-2, which is also here at the Cape, ESM-3 that's in manufacture. But ESMs-4 and 5 and then our contributions to the Lunar Gateway are contributions to the Artemis program, not to the space station program. And as a consequence, we've agreed with NASA back in 2019

that we would have three seats on Orion missions to deep space as and when we're ready to go. That's also a very big step forward for the European Astronaut Corps. So many experiences we built up at the International Space Station, but going to the Moon they become, instead of scientists and workers, real explorers. We missed the opportunity to get a photo of you and Thomas Zerbuken greeting each other once again. That happened moments before I turned on the recorder. We talked with Thomas, though, about the Artemis Accords, these bilateral agreements.

ESA is something outside of that, right? It's not a bilateral thing. Well, yeah, the Artemis Accords are government-to-government agreements. So certain countries sign up with the U.S. government into the Artemis Accords are government-to-government agreements. So certain countries sign up with the US government into the Artemis Accords. Of course, the ESA is an agency and it's a governmental organisation, so we could not sign on behalf of our governments. We are ruling powers, as it were, of the national space agencies and space authorities in the different countries. But of course, the Artemis Accords are non-binding expressions of how we would work in space as countries.

What we sign with NASA are binding legal agreements, which ESM is an example, what I referred to, participation in the Gateway. Those are solemn binding agreements where we promise to deliver in exchange for certain benefits. So they're part of the same overall constellation, if you like, it is a strange word, of different agreements that bind the spacefaring community together. And I don't know that you can actually speak as a representative of the UK, but we should mention that the UK is signed on to the Artemis Accords earlier.

One of so many countries, several countries in Europe signed early and some of, you know, countries like Australia joined early on, but then you have some of the new spacefaring countries as well. And they really reflect the implementation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. So they don't contain anything fundamentally new. What they reflect is, and therefore we're going to respect the treaty, and this is how we interpret the use of the treaty and the way we go forward. Because although they're called the Artemis Accords, they don't just refer to the moon exploration.

They refer to the way that we use space more generally in an era where it's more contested and more crowded, the use of space. I was woken up last night by another SpaceX launch going off the Starlink. So there are ever more satellites up there. We have to think about how we're using the space environment. It's not something that we want to mess around with, let's put it that way. Tens of thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit. Yeah, that's a concern, I guess, for another day. But let's turn to the robotic side of your title.

You mentioned in passing Mars sample return. I had told you just before we started that just a couple of weeks ago, we had Richard Cook, the sample return program manager at JPL on. And as you know, we now have what appears to be a plan for that long-awaited Holy Grail. And ESA still plays a very important part in this, but no Fetch Rover. Yeah, so the architecture has evolved. So if we cast our minds back to 2018, 2019, the original concept was based on a very large lander being built by JPL that would land not only the Mars Ascent vehicle, the sample transfer arm that we're doing at ESA,

but also the sample fetch rover that would scurry out, as I always used to say, at high speed to recover sample tubes that were maybe left in a cache on the surface of Mars. It was kind of an element of robustness in the architecture because Perseverance has always been designed to bring samples back to Mars ascent vehicle if necessary. But of course when the architecture was being developed, we didn't know whether Perseverance was going to land, we didn't know how effective it would be. And now we have another few years of experience

of you if you like not only perseverance on the surface but curiosity it's there for a decade now so in a kind of cost benefit analysis there was a view taken it was a challenge if you like for JPL to be able to build such a big lander to take everything to Mars in one go so they pulled out their slide rules and concluded it would be a little difficult to do that job it'd be better to do without the sample fetch rover but on the other hand to augment increase the robustness of the architecture by maybe taking one or two helicopters along and they are if you like the robustness element of the architecture the critical thing really is that our elements are under, and I keep saying this, are under

full development. They're not phase A, phase B or whatever. We are cutting computers that will be delivered later this year. Engines are under test for the Earth Return Orbiter. It's hard to scope what an extraordinary spacecraft that is. BepiColombo was a huge challenge for us with 17 kilowatts of solar electric propulsion, the most powerful deep space electric propulsion we've done. This is 40 kilowatts.

It'll be up to one newton of electric propulsion thrust, which is almost like the Holy Grail, to be able to go there. And it's staging. It has chemical propulsion. It stages at Mars. It's got to circle its way down to the low orbit to rendezvous and find the sample container in orbit, capture that and bring that back up, circle all the way back up, escape Mars orbit return.

I keep saying it's the first interplanetary cargo ship. It really is. It's a step towards what we need to do in the future. And Richard Cook also talked about the technical, the mechanical complications of that capture step that you mentioned, because it has to, well, it has to find the MAV, the return capsule, first of all, which will be no small task, as you said, but then to encapsulate it to get it safely back down to the surface here. Yeah, exactly. It's a kind of interplanetary pass-the-parcel game in which the question is, some of these people ask, why are we doing it, first of all? Why are we doing it? It's planetary protection. It's in order to ensure that the Earth doesn't contaminate any of the samples we're

interested in, but also, very much so, Mars does not contaminate Earth. So we take this, what at first sight may sound like a somewhat ambitious approach of having acquired all of these samples in a container, launched them into orbit, we throw it overboard from the Mars Ascent Vehicle in a tiny container, which is not much bigger than, well i guess you'd say a football i would say a rugby ball and then our spacecraft have to find it in orbit and so the cameras and the technology to do that is a super challenge just finding the ball and then pulling it in and as you say sealing it in such a way that there's no risk of contamination, all the way forward to the return vehicle hurtling into the Earth's atmosphere and landing hard somewhere in Utah, most likely.

So super challenging. I'm almost reluctant to bring it up because there is a certain tragic element to it. But the loss of the ExoMars rover, or indeed, is it a loss? Because I have read that discussions continue. It's very poignant I was saying to somebody on the bus out here this morning we would be go also from here going straight to Baikonur for 20th September which is the launch date of Rosalind Franklin rover all the spacecraft hardware is sitting in Turin the the rover inside the SENT module, all the rest of it, the whole

thing is there ready to go. So we have basically run in three months, four months, our industry ran what normally takes a year, a complete phase A study to come up with a concept for covering the mission, potential international cooperation from NASA to enable that to happen. So we know how we would do it. It's now a question for our ministers and some of them are here in this room who have to make the decision as to whether they want to recover this project. But I keep saying we want to go to a place on Mars that is just over four billion years old, probably a hydrated lake in the early era of planet Mars. It's an even older region

than where Perseverance is. So if you're going to go search for life that's a place you want to go to. We've been waiting four billion years. ExoMars has already taken us quite a few years but we may have to be patient to wait a few more for it to unveil its secrets. But I think technologically, scientifically it's still totally competitive. No, you've got to get drilled below the surface to get to regions which have not been affected by radiation that would destroy any organic chemicals, the things you're looking for. So that's where we want to go. It's that drill that I was most looking forward to. Yeah, I mean, it's a unique piece of technology, European technology, specifically Italian technology.

The drill is a marvel of engineering when you see it because it has all these separate units that kind of assemble themselves into this two-meter drill all autonomously, automatically. And of course the whole thing, you know, you have your drill at home that is maybe a one and a half kilowatt drill if you're drilling through your plaster. This has got all run off for 100 watts. And so the gearing and the systems to ensure that it can work and does work is a marvel in engineering by itself. And the internal mechanics of the analytical laboratory that takes the samples, crushes them, distributes them to all the different instruments is also a joy to behold. And then you realize the whole thing has been built in a class 10 facility.

That means ultra, ultra biologically clean. That's never been done by anybody anywhere else in the world. It's extraordinary. Let me bring this back to where we are today. Preparation for sending these humans from perhaps around the world back to the moon, and the partnership that are increasingly sophisticated robots like ExoMars and others, how they may have a partnership with those humans. It's something we asked Thomas about as well.

Yeah, I mean, I totally believe in it. It is this partnership of humans and robots. Robots are the, if you like, the eyes and the feel of the humans before we can send the humans. We've done a lot of work. We've demonstrated using the space station, robots controlled on the surface of the Earth, putting in the time delay and the communications glitches in order to demonstrate the feasibility of doing robots, delay and the communications glitches in order to demonstrate the feasibility of doing robots, using robots in perhaps on the moon, perhaps on Mars, in the more dangerous places where you wouldn't want to send humans to start off with. If we really want to go to shadowed craters, if we want to really search for the most interesting secrets that the moon has to reveal, we may not be able to send the humans in to start off with. It may just be too dangerous.

So the combination of humans and robots working together, robots also acting as the fetches and carriers to support the astronauts, that's absolutely part of my picture of the future of planetary exploration. So there are partnerships of every imaginable kind across all of this work. Yeah, partnerships, it's a cliched word, but it's really true. I mean, I see ESA has it in our DNA. It's 22 member states. I love working with colleagues again here, all the different nations of ESA,

all the different companies in Europe that have contributed to the 10 nations whose companies have contributed to the ten nations whose companies have contributed to the European Service Module. That's a partnership within Europe. It's the friendships we have built up working with people like Thomas, but also every level you say hi to the people arriving here at KSC. It's a very cool thing and I feel I've reached that stage, I remember the moon landings, that if there's a vision of the future, this international partnership is so important for the future of mankind. How has Artemis as a program and the partnership that ESA has provided, particularly with the

surface module and the potential opportunity to provide astronauts at the Gateway and to the lunar surface, how has that allowed you and others within ESA to secure support from your individual member nations and European public at large? That's a really great question. People often ask why isn't Europe doing more in space more generally and that's the big challenge that we have. People forget, you know, we may have the best Earth observation system in the world, the most accurate satellite navigation system in the world, all the rest of these things but the very visible elements are exploration and if you like the United States has a historical accident, has this huge program because of the Cold

War, because of the space race. You find many European countries and I'm often thinking about some of the smaller ones who very specifically say they like being part of the International Space Station and now they like being part of Artemis because of this international aspect, because they're contributing to something that's called soft power or a kind of form of diplomacy that is yes it is about countries working together. And the United States is a partner. We may be a very small country, but it is possible to work, to contribute on major civil projects with the United States.

So, yes, it has absolutely contributed to making the case within Europe. Obviously, we talked about some of the Russian consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But in that context, and also with kind of the, let's say, chilling of some of the relations with China and seeing some of the issues with global, maybe a retrenchment of, maybe a balkanization of exploration or global politics, do you see the symbolic aspect of human spaceflight resonating more strongly for that purpose? Is that either at the political or the public level, is it more important that you participate

in not just the practical aspect of space, situational awareness, earth, climate, science and navigation, but to pursue these more symbolic aspects as a necessary or valuable, the value of that increases now? Oh gosh, that's a super interesting question. It's kind of, if I was a a politician I'd be able to answer it. As a lowly civil servant

I have to be careful what I say. As a citizen of the world I'd like to believe that the pendulum will turn, the clock will turn and if we're going to do exploration of Mars that's such a huge challenge. We need all of the brains of the world working on it. There's so much of the moon to explore, so much of the universe to explore. I hope that it will be in partnership in different ways. We've always worked very well with our Russian partners. The cooperation on ExoMars at a working level was totally professional. We learned a lot from working with them. They learned a lot from working with us. So let's, you know, let's hope for a better world. That's all I can say. Well, let's hope that this particular partnership has much to celebrate by this time tomorrow.

I'm looking forward to it. I can barely wait. Thank you very much, David. It was great to talk to you. The European Space Agency's David Parker, closing out our series of conversations with leaders of just a few of the international agencies that are part of the Artemis program. I'm grateful to all of them for spending time with us at the Kennedy Space Center. Greetings, Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society. We need your help as we launch a new and exciting project. It's a new subscription-style program for kids.

We call it the Planetary Academy, and it's getting underway with a Kickstarter campaign. The Planetary Academy is a special learning and membership opportunity for kids ages 5 to 9. Young explorers will receive four adventure packs each year that have been developed by our experts. We're creating the first adventure packs right now. Academy members will learn all about our solar system through out-of-this-world activities and surprises, preparing them to blast off to exciting destinations. After this first successful year, we'll expand the Academy

to a full three-year program that explorers and their families can renew annually. Will you help us kickstart the Planetary Academy by backing our project? Visit planetary.org slash academy today to learn more and get behind this exciting new opportunity. That's planetary.org slash academy. Thanks! Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. We are here with the chief scientist of the Planetary Society. You know him. It's Bruce Batts. Welcome back. Hi, Matt. Why are we whispering?

Because if you want people to listen, whisper. I thought it was because your dogs are asleep. They are, but there doesn't seem to be any correlation with that. Hey, you want to hear about the night sky? I do, but first I want to say something about Venusian atmospheric penguins, because I was reminded by

a couple of listeners that we never posted any of the pictures that we got from quite a few of you. Thank you so much, everyone. We're not going to be able to do all of them. If you are listening elsewhere, go to this week's page at planetary.org slash radio to see some great examples of some of the artwork that we got.

Some of the prettiest came from AI machines. So I don't know if we'll use any of that, although one of them is awfully pretty. But I especially want to call attention to the one from Juliana, who's a very young person for us. Thank you, Juliana. Nice, nice work. Well, I just want to point out this is not our first. These aren't our first penguins.

We had the Mars microphone penguin on the failed Mars polar lander. We also had at least one very humorous entry into a contest we ran for Huygens long ago of a group of green penguins stealing the Huygens probe after it landed. I forgot that one. I'm going to have to look that up unless you

can steer me to it. That's great. I can help you find that. That was amusing. In the night sky, also very amusing. That's great. Yeah, I can help you find that. That was amusing. In the night sky, also very amusing, hilarious. Hilarious Jupiter is rising just after sunset in the east, and then it'll be up in the east looking super bright, and significantly above it is yellowish Saturn and Mars coming up in the late evening now, and we'll follow the others across the sky and look in reddish. Mars brightening significantly over the next couple months as it gets closer to Earth, and or Earth gets closer to Mars, depending on how you look at it.

And Jupiter will be at opposition, opposite side of the Earth from the sun on September 26. So then it'll really be rising at sunset and setting at sunrise. One might even say, by Jove. That's ridiculous. No, it's not. It's brilliant. Keep them coming, Matt. Keep them coming.

I'll do my best. I know you can't help it. Neither can I. On to this week in space history. Five years since the Cassini end of mission intentionally crashed into Saturn after an unbelievably magnificent mission. In 1965, Lost in Space premieres, which I mention every year for Matt's benefit. It was a special day for me, at least until Star Trek premiered a year later. It was a special day for me, at least until Star Trek premiered a year later and Lost in Space kind of faded from my pantheon of television sci-fi greats. Yeah, I wonder what the producers said.

Probably something like, danger, danger, losing Matt Kaplan, danger. Okay, on to random space fact. RSF, Will Robinson. So picture, I know you've swum in an Olympic-sized pool. Many times. The odd dimensions, at least in the U.S., of typically 25 yards by 50 meters to accommodate swimming of both kinds, short course and long course. Well, the reason that's relevant, there's a lot of liquid in an Olympic-sized pool,

wouldn't you say? Yeah, absolutely. You know what would overflow an Olympic-sized pool is if you took all of the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen from the SLS rocket and put them together, which isn't always advisable, that would overflow an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Wow, that's a lot of gas and oxygen. And I suppose if there were such a pool, you'd want to have a really good wetsuit to swim in it. I'm pretty sure you at least are going dry suit and possibly something more specialized.

I'm sure you at least are going dry suit and possibly something more specialized. Sometimes the pool I used to swim in on my YMCA AAU team, it was just about as cold as maybe not liquid hydrogen, but it was down there near liquid oxygen. I can assure you. Just blew through liquid nitrogen. That's not good. Let's move on, shall we, to the trivia contest where I once again ask you a question that seems so straightforward and wasn't. How many, I thought it was, how many JPL directors have there been since the Voyagers launched include acting directors? How did we do? I know how we did, Matt. Well, first of all, we got a very big response. Now, it's not shaping up to be as big as next week's response with your animals on Artemis.

But wait till you hear about that one. That is just still coming together. I mean, most people had one particular answer. Here, I'll read this to you. It's from Gene Lewin in Washington. The seven wonders of the world, seven days in the week, seven sisters in the evening skies, according to the Greeks. Voyagers both one and two traveling the seven heavens

have seen directors change at JPL. As of now, that count is seven. And that's what you thought we were looking for, right? That is. And if you go, for example, to the JPL list of directors, that's what you will find since Voyager's launched in 77. But there's a guy who's often left out. And it looked like maybe because he had a somewhat different status. status? So basically we'll take seven or eight as the correct answer because there was the General Charles Terhune, the JPL acting director in 82, who's listed on the JPL site, but for example,

not in the list on Wikipedia. And there is Larry James. Both of these generals are in his case, Lieutenant General retired from the Air Force. He was the interim director during this latest period between directors. So eight, if you count acting and interim directors, seven, if you count acting directors, six, if you don't count, five, four, three, two, one. So seven or eight, how do we do one? four three two one um so seven or eight how'd we do who won well it it happens that random.org selected somebody who came up with the number seven and that person get this rick rubio in nebraska long time listener uh he says he'll be sad when i'm no longer hosting but he's going to keep listening i recommend that very highly rick there'll be sad when I'm no longer hosting, but he's gonna keep listening. I recommend that very highly, Rick.

There'll be plenty of reason to continue. Rick won one time previously, 10 years and one month ago. That's a long time between wins. Congratulations, Rick. You got yourself a nice prize package. It's a copy of that beautiful new book, Voyager, Photographs from Humanity's Greatest Journey.

I'm not going to argue with that statement, by Jens Besmer and Joel Meter, published by Tenues. Tenues? Anyway, it's T-E, capital N-E-U-E-S, because I don't remember how to do it. But we're also throwing in a Planetary Society Voyager Neptune Encounter Medallion. Good on you, Rick. Congratulations.

Yes. And let's not wait another decade for this. I got more. Just a few. Christopher Mills in Virginia. Where would we be without JPL? Doing much less mighty things, probably. Laura Dodd in California, so many memories from the early days of the Voyagers.

I wish I'd pursued planetary science in grad school, but at least I can still enjoy the discoveries all our amazing planetary missions have made for us. And finally, from our poet laureate Dave Fairchild in Kansas, lucky seven is the number from the JPL. Lots of doctors served as leaders, generals as well. Dr. Murray was in charge when Voyagers took flight. Lori Leshens at the helm. She'll take us to new heights. Nice. Guess we're ready for another one. Approximately, and I underline the word approximately, how long from launch will it take Korea's

Donori mission to reach the moon? How long will it take Donori to reach the moon from when it launched in August of this year? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. Anybody who was paying attention during the opening of this week's show should have a fairly easy time with this one.

And you have until the 21st, that would be September 21st at 8 AM Pacific time. It's a Wednesday by the way. Yeah. you didn't know that. It was a news item in the downlink, so I went ahead and mentioned that. But that's okay. We can stick with it. It's okay. We should give benefit to those who listen to the shows. Yeah. Plus, you probably got it wrong. Thanks so much.

I'm kidding. I haven't heard it. I have faith in you and the downlink. Yeah, well, you're going to have faith in the downlink at least. That's because I review that. I haven't heard it. I have faith in you and the downlink. Yeah, well, you're going to have faith in the downlink at least. That's because I review that. I don't review you. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. All right, everybody, go out there, look up the night sky, and think about what dog or sheep you would fly on a spacecraft

if you had the option. Stuff Buddy, in this case. Go to planetary.org slash nothing, because all I'm going to say is thank you and good night. I have a little bit more to say. You know, it occurred to me that that range of JPL directors, from Bruce Murray to Lori Leshen, those bookends, you're well connected to both of those, aren't you? Leshen, those bookends. You're well connected to both of those, aren't you? Yeah, Bruce Murray was my PhD thesis advisor, and Lori Leshen and I were in the same class entering Caltech doing planetary type stuff. Do you need more evidence of why we're glad he's the chief scientist for the Planetary Society and that he joins us every week here on What's Up. I've had to turn down JPL director so many times.

Oops, I forgot to mention this week's prize, and it's a great one. Our friends at Chop Shop have a newly designed JWST t-shirt. You can check it out at chopshopstore.com, where you'll also find the Planetary Society merch store. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and is made possible by its members around the world. We want and need you wherever you are on planet Earth or beyond. Learn more at planetary.org.

Mark Hilverda and Ray Pauletta are our associate producers. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. Ad Astra.