Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Joy Crisp is On Her Way to Mars

Episode Date: June 16, 2003

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This is Planetary Radio. It made it! Our Spirit is on its way to Mars. Spirit, the Mars Exploration Rover, that is. And with luck, Spirit will soon be followed by opportunity. And no one's happier about that than Joy Crisp. Welcome back, everyone. I'm Matt Kaplan. Dr. Crisp is the MER Project Scientist at JPL. She joins us on today's Planetary Radio.

Bruce Betts will be here with another trivia contest and an update on his friend Biff Starling, the astrobot. Before all that, Emily wants us to know where all the Martian air has gotten off to. I'll be back in a minute. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, what happened to Mars' ancient atmosphere? Most, but not all, scientists agree that during Mars' early history, the atmosphere was much thicker than it is today.

scientists agree that during Mars' early history, the atmosphere was much thicker than it is today. This argument is commonly based on the observation of dry riverbeds on the oldest Martian terrain. At some point, water ran freely on the Martian surface, but today the low atmospheric pressure precludes the possibility. Where did all that gas go? One possible place is the rocks themselves. Carbon dioxide can dissolve in water and combine with metal ions to form carbonate minerals. This is what happened to Earth's original supply of carbon dioxide, which is now locked into huge deposits of carbonate rocks such as limestone. But many scientists believe that the primordial atmosphere managed to escape Mars entirely. Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out how.

We know you won't be too surprised to hear a lot of talk on this program about the Mars Exploration Rovers over the next few months. Of course, one of them started its journey to the Red Planet just a few days ago. Dr. Joy Crisp has an especially large interest in these amazing machines and the work she hopes that they'll begin in January of 2004. She is the MER Project Scientist at JPL, which means she is responsible for much more than her PhD in geology might indicate. Joy, welcome to Planetary Radio. Thank you. How does it feel to be on your way to Mars?

Great. It's just one rover right now, but this is a great start. You were not at the Cape, I don't think. Were you watching from JPL? I was watching from JPL. I was at the Cape and returned the day before, unfortunately. And we should clarify that this is a JPL mission. JPL has the sort of mission control center for this, so that's conveniently located for you.

Yes. And you are, I think I got it right, the project scientist. Correct. Now, we recently had Stephen Squires of Cornell on the show. Of course, he and his team were responsible for putting together the scientific instrument package on the two rovers, which, of course, now are named Spirit and Opportunity. But this is a JPL mission. How does the project scientist fit into this arrangement?

They need a scientist here at JPL keeping close tabs on what the engineers are doing and making sure that the project manager, who is here at JPL, is getting science advice right on site, making sure that the science team is going to have all the support they need and everything in the mission that they'll need to carry out a good investigation. So you facilitate for the science team? You're a go-between between them and the engineers that keep everything working? Yes, and I also report to higher level management here at JPL and to NASA headquarters to keep them informed and, you know, basically looking out to

make sure that the science is the best it can be. Now, if you don't mind my asking, who's your boss? Who do you work for on this project? I report directly to higher levels at headquarters and here at JPL, depending on what the issues are. But basically, I'm an advisor to the project manager. So we both are reporting to higher management levels here at JPL for flight projects. And then depending on the issue, I might have to report to NASA headquarters. Sounds like a little bit of a complicated org chart there, like you might have several lines going away from the box with your name in it.

Yeah, I mean, that's how real org charts actually turn out. Yeah, real organizations, I think, especially, no matter how clean they look on paper. How long have you been part of the project? Since the very beginning, and I mean very beginning. When we came up with, I think there were five people at the beginning that put together a concept, and I was part of that group. So that was about April of 2000. I'm very curious about that. How does something like this get started and then get accepted for the major funding that it takes to get these literally off the ground?

Well, every mission is different. Normally, there are announcements of opportunity to propose a mission, and then you put in a proposal and compete against other proposals. and then you put in a proposal and compete against other proposals. This mission was very different, and it was basically a concept that was conceived here and then presented to NASA headquarters. They selected the payload of Steve Squires, which had already gone through a competition,

and they approved the project selection. It was kind of out of the blue and a very different way of getting selected as a mission. Now, of course, JPL has, I think it's safe to say, a glorious history in exploration of the solar system, including the only other successful rover to date. I hear you have a model of it in your office. Well, I don't have a physical model of it in my office.

I have CAD drawings and things like that. Are you saying, oh, the Sojourner? Yeah, I was thinking of some. Yes, I have a Mattel Hot Wheels version of that sitting on my desk. Are you kidding? There is a Hot Wheels version of Sojourner? Yes, it's very cute. The antenna goes up and down, and the wheels articulate like they do on the real thing.

Okay, I know what I want for my birthday, I think. Well, you say that you've got CAD drawings and so on. Were you involved in that very successful mission as well? Yes, I was on the Mars Pathfinder mission. There I was the assistant rover scientist, and I was also involved in one of the instruments that was on the Sojourner rover. Let's talk a little bit about this rover, frequently mentioned as being quite a bit larger than Sojourner.

Sojourner, I think I heard someone describe that it was the size of a bread box, whereas these guys are the size of a golf cart. Yes. Sojourner was only 32 centimeters tall, and this one's 157 centimeters. That's about five feet off the ground at its highest point on the mass, so they are much larger. And much more capable. Yes, they can go further. They're carrying a lot more instruments and cameras on board. There's one particular tool on here, which I think has never been seen before in space. Could you tell us about the RAT?

think has never been seen before in space. Could you tell us about the RAT? Well, that's the rock abrasion tool. And that came about because of the frustration that we experienced on the Sojourner rover, where we found that a lot of the rocks were covered by dust. And when we tried to make chemical measurements of the rocks, we got a mixture of dust and rock chemistry. And it was hard to untangle that dust signature from the rocks and understand how the rocks were formed. So being a geologist, you know, we do like to crack rocks open with rock hammers, and we went to the engineers, and they said that the best tool would be, rather than a rock hammer, some kind of grinder that would get into the insides of the rocks.

would be, rather than a rock hammer, some kind of grinder that would get into the insides of the rocks. So it's actually capable of putting a fair amount of pressure on the rock that it has approached, and you want to get a better look at the interior of, and then it grinds away with these diamond tips. Yes, it has little spinning wheels that have diamonds impregnated into them, and they spin around at high speed and grind it into dust, push the dust out of the way and leave a very clean 4.5 centimeter spot on the rock. You mentioned not being able to go up there with a rock hammer. I asked Stephen Squires, another geologist, about this.

I said, would you trade it all for a few days up there with a hammer and a shovel? And he said what I bet you would say. Maybe not. Oh, really? I like virtual geology. It's a long trip and, you know, fraught with danger, and I actually prefer doing the robotic-style geology when it comes to Mars. Is this the most advanced mission in terms of geology that you've ever seen?

Oh, yeah, yeah. This is the first chance to ever do field geology away from the Earth, true field geology. You mentioned that we have one spacecraft already on its way, another hopefully to be launched within a couple of weeks. They're going to two very different locations. We've talked about that with Matt Golombek and other people, but I wonder if maybe after we take a break, we could talk a little bit with you about those landing sites,

why they were chosen not just from the geologic viewpoint, but also for what we could be relatively confident the landers would actually survive. Sure. All right. We will take a break then. This is Dr. Joy Crisp, our special guest on this week's Planetary Radio. She is the MER, that is Mars Exploration Rover Project Scientist at JPL, and we'll continue the conversation right after this.

This is Buzz Aldrin. When I walked on the moon, I knew it was just the beginning of humankind's great adventure in the solar system. That's why I'm a member of the Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest group. The Planetary Society is helping to explore Mars. We're tracking near-Earth asteroids and comets. We sponsor the search for life on other worlds, and we're building the first-ever solar sail. You can learn about these adventures and exciting new discoveries from space exploration in The Planetary Report.

The Planetary Report is the Society's full-color magazine. It's just one of many member benefits. You can learn more by calling 1-877-PLANETS. That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387. And you can catch up on space exploration news and developments at our exciting and informative website, planetarysociety.org. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Planetary Radio is back. Our special guest this week, Dr. Joy Crisp. She is the MER Project Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Just missed getting to watch the first of the rovers take off last week. You said you had to leave a day before the Tuesday launch. Yeah, yeah, it was a shame. That's too bad, but you did get to watch it there at JPL. Yes. Let's talk about where that rover is headed, and for that matter, it's sister craft. We have talked with some people like Stephen Squires and Matt Golombek about why these sites were chosen. It had to be more than just where they would find good geology,

right? Oh, yeah. They had to be safe sites as well. So we had a lot of requirements on ensuring the safety of these landed systems, and then we poured over orbital remote sensing data sets to make sure that the sites were going to meet these criteria. In spite of the fact that these are judged to be safe enough for the rovers that will use, in fact, the Pathfinder Sojourner way of landing, that exciting way of bouncing across the Martian surface, there actually are pretty good geological candidates. Yes, they're very good. And Meridiani was our top choice anyway.

So it was both rated high in science and in safety. We really lucked out in being able to get our, actually we picked our top two science sites in the end you are still of course very much a geologist in addition to your duties as project scientist so i'm i'm sure you're looking forward to the data that will be coming back how much of a role as a geologist do you get to play in the mission well as much as I can muster, basically I have to make decisions while things are happening on what needs to get done, okay, to make the science return of the mission the best. If things are going smoothly, I can actually participate with the science team and analyze

the data, interpret the results, and be in there in the trenches. However, if there are issues that demand my attention, that's more important. And we have a lot of science team members, so I might have to do other things. So just play it by ear. And there will probably be a lot of outreach activities for me to do too. And I do want to talk about that because I know you've had a lot of involvement with educational activities, outreach activities. But before we get to that, just as a hypothetical, let's say that the science team sees a rock they really want to get over to, but the engineers, the drivers, so to speak, of the rover take a look and they say, I don't know about that one.

How does that get resolved? about that one. How does that get resolved? Well, there's tactical processes in the day-to-day decision-making where there are people, there's a chain of command, and a mission manager can make a ruling on that day and say, sorry, you know, I've listened to what the scientists say and the engineers say, and I rule on the side of the engineers, for instance. Now, if it's longer term and the scientists still want to get to that rock in the next few days, they can bump that up to higher levels. And so issues like that could come to my attention and to the project manager's attention. It can even go so high as to go to NASA headquarters if necessary. Now, we don't want every little day-to-day thing to go that high, but if the scientists are sufficiently frustrated or the engineers are frustrated,

we can bump these things to higher levels. But if it's anything like Pathfinder, good consensuses were reached amongst the scientists, and they listened to the engineers, and they didn't want to put the rover at risk either. So it'll probably work out pretty well. Everybody is, when you get down to it, on the same team. Yeah. Let's talk about the education side, the outreach side. That has, in the last couple of decades, I think, become a much more important part of what happens at JPL and, in fact, across NASA. Yes, it's very important. We devote a significant amount of our time to get the message out,

like I'm doing right now, and to share the excitement with the public. And we'll have to provide on our website. We always provide some links to the mission. We'll probably provide one to where I know there's a good little biography of you. And so people who are not listening to this on the website, you might want to go to planetary.org, find the page where this program is archived, and you'll see some other very relevant links there. While we're on the subject of education, from what I read, you did not start out as a geologist. Sounded like you might end up being a mathematician at one point.

Yeah, I really liked math and solving numerical puzzles and equations. That was where I started out. What pulled you over to rocks? Well, I was trying to figure out as time went on, what am I going to do for a career in math? And I was looking for a science to apply the math in. And I tried physics and chemistry and a lot of other things and finally tried geology just on a whim. I'll try this out. And I took that in my second year as

an undergraduate and really liked it. And as time went by, I got more and more interested in geology and less interested in math. You know, kept the math as a good tool, but moved over and got my degree in geology. And I know you did a couple of postdoc years at UCLA. When did you end up at JPL? That was 1987. So you're a veteran there.

Oh, yeah. It must be an exciting place to go to work. It's very exciting, yeah, to be here where you can start from a concept. And just think of it. This thing started in April of 2000, the concept for this mission, and here we are. We've just launched one. That's pretty phenomenal. You're a geologist, but there are a lot of geologists

who are not going to be put in this position of project scientist. It obviously requires a number of other skills and some pretty broad knowledge. Yeah, it requires people skills, number one. Working with a lot of different kinds of people, engineers, scientists here, scientists all over the world that are on the team. And then management skills and keeping track of project issues like budgets and schedules and a lot of complexity, a lot of documentation to wade through

and keep your eye out for things that are important to science. Do you still have that jar of candy by your office door? Yes, I do. That's so I can attract, like, honey, get the engineers to stop by, and I'll look and see who's coming in to get some candy and say, aha, I have a question for you. Get their attention and answer whatever questions I happen to have for them. Good trick.

So what happens now, between now and those six minutes when the first of the rovers reaches Mars and goes directly down to the surface? Well, yeah, we got off with a very good start. So we still will have corrections, trajectory correction maneuvers, but the first one won't have to be as big as we thought, so that's good. What we're doing as the spacecraft are going to Mars is going to be practicing operations

for the landed mission, also improving the software that we will use to analyze the data that come back and build up the commands for the rover. And it's pretty complex. We have nine surface operations tests ahead of us, and they'll involve some of them part of the science team and some of them the full science team.

One even has two rovers in our test beds at the same time, just to test that out. So not much vacation time between now and January. No, not at all. Where will you be on January 4th, the expected landing date? Well, I'll be here but I don't know exactly where at JPL, but somewhere here. We may be watching you here on the Planetary Society website or at PlanetFest, which will be going down up the street in the city of Pasadena. And, of course, we'll be following everything that happens with the Mars Exploration Rovers

and wishing you enormous success. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much for joining us. Our guest has been Dr. Joy Crisp, a geologist and also the MER Project Scientist at JPL, where they are now anxiously awaiting the arrival of the first of those rovers at the Red Planet. Back with Bruce Betts in just a moment. I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A about what happened to Mars' atmosphere. Much of Mars' gas may have escaped the planet for good. Atmospheric escape of gases happens all the time from the terrestrial planets and moons

under the influence of the solar wind, but at a fairly low rate. A more effective means of escape is asteroid impacts. Repeated impacts of asteroids early in its history could possibly have driven off a volume of gas equal to 100 times the present volume of Mars' atmosphere. What evidence is there for this atmospheric escape today? A vital clue is the relative amounts of the isotopes of the gases that we can measure today. The isotopes of a given element have the same number of protons and electrons, but different numbers of neutrons. Additional neutrons increase the mass of an atom without changing its chemical properties. Ordinary hydrogen has one proton and no neutrons, and thus

has only half the mass of heavy hydrogen, which has one proton and one neutron. Heavy hydrogen, also known as deuterium, does not escape from Mars as readily as light hydrogen, so escape of hydrogen from Mars's atmosphere should leave behind lots more deuterium than you would expect. In fact, we find that deuterium is about six times more abundant on Mars than on Earth, indicating that a large amount of hydrogen has escaped from Mars forever, leaving the present planet dry and without much atmosphere. Got a question about the universe?

Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. Be sure to provide your name and how to pronounce it and tell us where you're from. And now, here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Time for What's Up. Bruce, I hear Biff is on his way. Biff is indeed on his way. Successful launch of the MER spacecraft Spirit, launching on the 10th with Astrobot Biff Starling on board,

the first astrobot in space. Well, I'm sure glad he could talk to us before the launch took place, and I think we'll hear from him again. We will, and I have talked to him, and he's doing well. I should tell you I'm talking to you from planetary child care.

We take care of children from throughout the solar system. A lot of people don't realize, and probably are better off not realizing, that the Planetary child care. We take care of children from throughout the solar system. A lot of people don't realize, and probably are better off not realizing, that the Planetary Society sometimes has almost as many children and infants as it does adult staff members, which is part of its charm, frankly. And many of the adult staff members act like children and infants. So anyway, that's another story for another time. We'll come back. Let's talk a little bit more about Biff later on in the show.

Yeah, let's do that. We'll give an update. Let me tell you what's up in the sky. We've got our friend's planet, Jupiter, now getting kind of low in the evening sky, looking in the west, brightest thing you'll see in the morning sky, Mars dominating, very bright, reddish, orangish in the southeast. If you have a very clear view to the horizon, you can see Mercury and Venus looking almost on top of each other

in their apparent alignment on the 20th and look very low on the horizon on the east-northeast. We've got piles of Legos. Yes, that's Legos in the background. I apologize. This week in space history, anniversaries during this week of the first flight of a woman in space and the first flight of an American woman in space,

happening 20 years apart. 1963, Valentina Tereshkova, and 1983, Sally Ride. Random space fact. Let me try that again. Random space fact! Much better. Thank you.

Our audience would have been disappointed. I know. I'm sorry. I get distracted. But I am enthusiastic, and this time I'm telling you about densities. I know that sounds boring, but listen to this. Saturn, its density is so low, it's less than water, which people like to phrase if you had the biggest bathtub in the universe, Saturn would float. So Saturn is sort of the dumb and dumberer planet.

It's not dense. It is not dense. Sorry. It's the smarter planet. It's not dense. It's the least dense of all the planets. Speaking of smarts, trivia contest. Oh, boy.

Biff Starling gave us our trivia question last week from high atop the Delta II rocket on which he launched a couple days later, and he asked us how tall is a Delta II 7925 rocket to the nearest meter. How did we do with answers, Matt? We did pretty well, and so did our entrants, as they usually do. And I want to mention that Biff was kind enough to stop playing Space Invaders to offer the trivia question last week. Our randomly chosen winner for this week is another of our regulars. It is Jordi Forteza Berndt, and he is in Spain, Il Valer, Spain, and he also had the correct

answer. The height of the Delta II rocket upon which Biff sat while we were speaking last week was 40 meters. Congratulations. Good answer. Good deal. We've got more trivia for this week. This week your trivia question is as follows. What was the first successful soft lander on the moon?

The touchdown gently on the moon service. The first soft lander on the moon. As we've mentioned before, you can find some things like this on the Planetary Society's website. A little tip for you radio listeners, especially in the Learning Center this time around, first soft lander on the Moon. To answer this question, go to planetary.org, follow the links to Planetary Radio. Now, Biff Starling and Sandy Moondust will launch in two weeks on board the MER-B Opportunity spacecraft. You can read about their escapades on our website at planetary.org under astrobots or following redrovergoestomars.org slash astrobots,

and they will be corresponding with each other in their own wacky way to teach you about the mission but also have fun. And that will do it for this week's installment of What's Up. Bruce will be back next week, and as we said, hopefully soon with another audio visit from Biff. In the meantime, check out those diaries. Exactly. Hey, everybody, say goodbye. Bye.

Thank you. Good night. Bruce Betts, the director of projects, and first-grade father. Look up in the night sky and think about cute kids. And isn't it appropriate that the ice cream truck is also passing by outside? You better get out there with your boys. All right, we will. Thanks. Bruce Betts is the director of projects for the Planetary Society,

and he joins us each week with this feature called What's Up. That'll do it for this week's Planetary Radio. By the way, our series is a it for this week's Planetary Radio. By the way, our series is a copyrighted production of the Planetary Society, but feel free to share it with your friends. Have a great week, everyone.