Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - JPL and England Wave at Saturn

Episode Date: July 22, 2013

Hundreds came out on the JPL mall on Friday, July 19th to salute the Cassini spacecraft as it captured a rare image of Earth from the outer solar system. Among them were the mission Deputy Project Scientist, Scott Edgington, and the Cassini Program Manager, Earl Maize.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Did you catch the wave at Saturn? We will, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, back from vacation along with our whole gang. You'll hear from Emily and Bill in a few moments. Then we'll go to the Jet Propulsion Lab, home of the Cassini mission, where hundreds of people came out in the hot summer sun to be part of a virtual selfie snapped by the 900 million mile distant spacecraft.

We'll also hear from the leader of a group that waved at the ringed planet from the English countryside. We'll also hear from the leader of a group that waved at the ringed planet from the English countryside. I forgot to ask senior editor and planetary evangelist Emily Lakdawalla if she saluted Saturn. Emily, what is planetary geomorphology? Well, it's a study of the shapes of the landscape and what they tell you about the history of a place. Geomorphology is, of course, extensively studied on Earth, but thanks to planetary missions, we can study it on other planets as well. The piece was written originally by a geomorphologist named Joe Levy for other geomorphologists. And so there's quite a bit of vocabulary in there that you may have heard before.

For instance, I'm sure you're familiar with the term permafrost. But when you say permafrost to a geomorphologist, there's a huge amount of context that comes in about what that means about the environment. And so I had to supply a little bit of that context that would ordinarily be at the tip of the tongue of any other self-respecting geomorphologist, just to help people understand why it's important that permafrost is actually not quite as perma as its name implies. It melts a little bit every year on Earth, and apparently it also does on Mars. And Levi was making the argument in this blog post

that there are features on Mars that are called recurring slope lineae, which is abbreviated RSL, but I hate abbreviations, so I wrote out recurring slope lineae every single time. He made the argument that these are very similar to features called water tracks that are found in the dry valleys of the Antarctic. And these images that show Mars, same spot on Mars at a couple of different points during the Martian year, seem to be pretty dramatic. They definitely are. There are certainly changes that happen year to year in several different kinds of environments on Mars. And one of those most common year to year changes is the formation of these dark tracks on hill slopes. There are competing arguments, but I think that the case that this does represent

a tiny trickle of a little bit of water that happens seasonally in these tiny spots on Mars is a pretty good one. And, you know, hopefully we'll get to ground truth at some day. All right, let's talk about Pluto, because you're going to be spending some of the rest of this week talking about Pluto with a lot of other people. And you just had a piece about some official names out there as well. And you just had a piece about some official names out there as well. That's right. The fourth and fifth discovered moons of Pluto now have official names. They're Kerberos and Hydra. So in the order out from Pluto, you have Pluto, Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. And New Horizons will be getting pictures of them all.

I'll be hearing about those plans this week at a meeting in Maryland that's designed to take stock of what we understand about Pluto before New Horizons gets there next summer. Well, Emily's piece about planetary geomorphology, where you can see these great shots of both Earth and Mars, is a July 18 entry. And it was just, what, three days before that that she wrote about these official new names out there in the growing Plutonian system. And I guess there's one other piece, this one by Ralph Lorenz, which Star Wars fans might want to take a look at as well. They definitely should. He's studying dunes on many other worlds, and to do that, you study dunes on Earth as well. And what cooler dunes are there to study than the Barchan Dunes

in the Tunisian desert, which is right where they filmed Star Wars? And there they are, out there with the evaporators. Emily, thanks so much. You're welcome, Matt. She is the senior editor for the Planetary Society and our Planetary Evangelist, also a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. Bill Nye, the CEO of the Planetary Society. He's up next.

Bill, is it fair to say that NASA got called on the carpet up there in the Capitol? I guess so, yeah. Congressman Schiff, who represents Caltech, and used to have Jet Propulsion Lab in his district, just expressed his deep concern that NASA was using, how to say, not technicalities, but administrative authority in what he felt was an inappropriate way to redirect funds away from planetary science. As we say all the time, Matt, planetary science is what NASA does best. So let's not cut that budget. It was very nice of Congressman Schiff to take a stance.

May I throw you a curve? Because we didn't talk, you told me about this, but I didn't say I was going to ask you about it. You apparently found a lot of planetary science fans and science fans at Comic-Con. Yeah, so I went to Comic-Con. I did. I went for the day, managed to get into Neil deGrasse Tyson and Ann Drian and Brandon Braga's talk, their panel, about the remake, the reintroduction, the new version of Cosmos, Carl Sagan's Cosmos. And people were just crazy for Neil. They just loved Neil. And, you know, Anne is so well-spoken.

She's so thoughtful and moving. How to say? Inspiring. She leaves me breathless when she speaks. Exactly. And Brandon just had this technical insight about how they're making the series different and better or appropriate to the modern time than anyone was able to do in 1980. So somebody from the Planetary Society introduced herself and asked a question, said, I'm from the Planetary Society. The place went crazy. Then Neil introduced me. I was sitting in the front row with Neil's sister. It was very cool.

And then when I stood up, the people just went wild. You know, here's Neil and Bill Nye and it was really gratifying. It's exciting, Matt, because the people who come to Comic-Con, although they have this fantasy storytelling arc or motivation, they are scientifically literate and they're celebrating science. They're celebrating people who embrace science. They're celebrating the scientific method and the inherent optimism

that comes when you know your place among the stars, your place in the cosmos, what I like to call your place in space, it fills you with joy to know that we, this humble species, are part of this enormous whole. And so it was very gratifying to hear the crowd, if I may go wild, over public science educators. It was a great thing. And once again, the Planetary Society pushes these ideas, which really originated for us with Carl Sagan back in the late 1970s and 1980. And may it be so forevermore. Thank you, Bill. It's an honor to speak with you once again.

Oh, no, man. It is I who must thank you. Let's change the world. He is the CEO of the Planetary Society, Bill Nye, the science guy. This is not a rose parade. Please wave properly. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, 4, 3, 2, 1. That was just the beginning of a 15-minute exposure captured by Cassini, which was orbiting Saturn nearly 1.5 billion kilometers away. The resulting image mosaic may take a while to process,

but there's every reason to suspect that it will include a single pixel, a pale blue dot, that includes all the billions and billions of us here on Earth. The Cassini team invited the world to figuratively join in by waving at the spacecraft. Here in California, we began just before 2.30 in the afternoon. The crowd included four-year-old Michael Robert Thalen. What did you say to Cassini? Hi, Cassini, Daddy. Were you thinking of your dad when you were waving?

Ah. Was it fun to come here today to JPL where Daddy works and be part of this? Yeah. What would you like to see of Saturn most? I would like to go to school with one of my friends, named Riley, when he grows up, and be an astronaut and go up in the air to Saturn. I'll tell him where to go.

That's a great idea. You can be the navigator. Also out on the JPL Mall, and just as enthusiastic, were Cassini Deputy Project Scientist Scott Edgington and Program Manager Earl Mays. Gentlemen, did you get your waves in? Yes, yes I did. We certainly did. Many of them. All shapes and sizes. How did this event come about? Whose idea was this? The navigators are given a set of instructions. Basically, this is the science goals we want to meet. Once they have those goals, they could start planning these time periods.

They basically got a request to observe Saturn and the rings at high phase, and that's when the sun is behind Saturn and the rings in Saturn are lit up due to the glare from small particles in the system. We've been interested in getting that view again. We took that view in 2006, and now we're repeating it. I'm going to show you my business card now,

because I'll never get the opportunity to show it off during the radio show again. There's the front of the card. There's the back. Oh, awesome. Yes, the 2006 image. That's right. That's the 2006. So that was seven years ago. And this is because the boss, Bill Nye, said, oh, we need cool cards and you guys can pick your own photos.

So there's the earlier version of your own pale blue dot. Yes. It's not just capturing Earth, although that's a glorious thing to do, I think. There's really good science to be done from the backside or the dark side of Saturn, right? Yes. You know, as I was coming into work today, I was driving out of my driveway, and the windshield I'm thinking is clear, and then I turned into the sun. And all this dust and little tiny specks on the windshield just flared up.

That's the perspective we have with Cassini. So I call this the dirty windshield effect. So you see all the tiny little dust particles light up because they love to scatter in the forward direction. From that, we could learn about the size of the particles, how many there are, and how they're moving around in the system. Talk about what it took to get a picture like this, you know, reorienting the spacecraft. I mean, this spacecraft, she's an old lady.

She's been out there a long time now, and you're still steering her around and grabbing. I just read about the Titan pass that was just made, what, a week ago or something? And she's still doing amazing tricks. Oh, the spacecraft's fantastic, absolutely. The thing, you know, we are running out of propellant, and we're trying to manage that very carefully so that we have enough to finish. But other than a few small problems and one instrument we've lost, the spacecraft has just been rock solid and will continue to function.

So really the tricky part is not, we're very careful in how we manage the resources on the spacecraft, but it's just, like Scott said, getting the trajectory to line up properly. You've got to find a place where the sun is at a good angle to the rings and where Cassini is at a good angle to the rings and Saturn is between us. So we can get this very high phase and forward scattered observations. And we might add that not only are we getting some amazing science, seeing the extent of these rings the way we've never been able to see them any other way,

in 2016 and 2017, we're actually going to go back into the ring plane. And so this is going to tell us hopefully a little bit more about what's really there and just how safe that's going to be and where the manageable areas are. So our final dance will be very close to the surface, and this will tell us a lot about that as well. So there's some exciting, really, four years left in this mission, assuming that everything goes well. Yes, and I'm sure they will be.

We have a well-built spacecraft. It's amazing how well it's doing. And we have four years planned of planning ahead of us. We're in the phase where we're planning the last six months of this mission. What are the science goals we're going to achieve? Right now we're at a high level discussing amongst ourselves and scientists from around the world what the goals during that last six months will be. Things like studying Saturn's gravity field, studying the magnetic field,

study the ring particles that are actually between the planet and the rings themselves. So there's bound to be stuff there, and we're excited to learn what kind of stuff there is there. Sometimes I'm more worried about not the spacecraft, but the money that's needed here for you guys to continue to do your jobs. At one point, when we talked to Linda Spilker, it sounded like that was somewhat in jeopardy. Are things looking better now? I think they're looking better. We're starting to see some momentum come back towards the planetary sciences.

That's really what we need. There's a lot of exciting science all over the solar system and looking beyond. And planetary sciences really does need to get its fair share. Looks like the momentum is shifting for us. Doesn't hurt to put on a little party like this all over the world. What do you think of the reaction here today? Of course, this is a somewhat biased crowd. Oh, this is awesome. Seeing all the people out here celebrating. I mean, many of these people don't even work for Cassini, but they work for Mars or they work Oh, this is awesome. Seeing all the people out here celebrating. I mean, many of these people don't even work for Cassini,

but they work for Mars or they work for some Earth-based mission. But they're out here celebrating with us. All that excitement is there. We have people down at the San Diego Comic-Con waving at Saturn. Just amazing. We have people in England observing Saturn right now because it's night there and they could actually train their telescopes at this time to take images of the planet and I'm sure we're going to see more of them as the day progresses. We're going to be talking to some of those British observers as a part

of the show right after we finish this conversation. So I'm looking forward to how it looked there where it's already nighttime and they were actually looking up at the ringed planet. Give us an idea of what's just immediately ahead in the next two, three months. We have plenty of Saturn observations coming up, plenty of ring observations. What we're doing now, we're in what we call a very highly

inclined orbit and that's what's given us this unique opportunity. We're way out of the orbit plane. Our next series of Titan flybys are going to start to space out. They're going to be less and less frequent and starting to flatten us back out. We're going to go back into an equatorial set of orbits for the next year and a half. Then we're going to start to bend it back up again, using Titan always, to be highly inclined. That's when we begin the so-called Fring and proximal orbits. We start to skirt in very close to the edge of the rings, one last Titan flyby, and we dip inside the rings completely. So that will be kind of the long-term choreography.

We have a lot of IC satellites. We're doing a lot of auroral observations. Actually, the ICs are going to be a little bit tame for the next year or so, and then we pick those back up. Actually, the icees are going to be a little bit tame for the next year or so, and then we pick those back up. And rings, atmosphere, and fields and particles always. Yeah, fields and particles all the time.

24-7 for them. Gentlemen, I look forward to many more celebrations leading right up to that very last farewell in 2017. It's been a pleasure to not only talk with you today, but to join this party at the home of Cassini. Thanks so much. Glad you could make it. Thank you. Cassini Deputy Project Scientist Scott Edgington and Program Manager Earl Mays. In a minute, we'll travel to Britain's Cumbria for another wave at Saturn. This is Planetary Radio. Hey, hey, Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society, speaking to you from PlanetFest 2012,

the celebration of the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity landing on the surface of Mars. This is taking us our next steps in following the water and the search for life, to understand those two deep questions. Where did we come from, and are we alone? This is the most exciting thing that people do. And together, we can advocate for planetary science and, dare I say it, change the worlds. Hi, this is Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society. We've spent the last year creating an informative, exciting, and beautiful new website.

Your place in space is now open for business. You'll find a whole new look with lots of images, great stories, my popular blog, and new blogs from my colleagues and expert guests. And as the world becomes more social, we are too, giving you the opportunity to join in through Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and much more. It's all at planetary.org. I hope you'll check it out. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. We're looking back at last Friday's celebration of planetary science when people all over the world came out to wave at Saturn. They did so as the Cassini spacecraft looked back at our pale blue dot from behind the dark side of the ring beauty.

By the way, we have video from JPL's crowd doing just that. If you go to planetary.org slash radio to this week's show page. In Britain, it was well into the evening, and Saturn was clearly visible over the heads of a group that had ventured into the Cumbrian countryside. Stuart Atkinson led that party. He blogs for the Planetary Society now and then, and writes lovely poetry about the wonders of the universe.

Stuart, very good of you to join us on Planetary Radio for this report on your little party there for Saturn in Britain's outback. Give us the story of this get-together. We had a Saturn watch up at Kendall Castle. Kendall is an old town in the north of England, very historic, very famous for its history. Kendall Castle is an 800-year-old medieval castle ruin. It was the ancestral home of Catherine Parr, who was Henry VIII's sixth and final wife.

Yes. So it was a lovely place for her. I mean, why wouldn't you do a Saturn watch at an old medieval castle? It's just a no-brainer, really. But, I mean, practically, it's got a lovely view of the sky above the lights of the old great town of Kendall, and at the moon above the castle, Saturn like a little golden secret in the sky,

and a crowd of maybe 120 people looking at the Saturn and the moon through telescopes. It was a fantastic night. No kidding, 120 people. That's nearly the crowd that we got at JPL. How did you get so many people to turn out for this? They really must have been excited. Our society is very active in Kendall. We're often doing moon watches, eclipse watches.

We've got local support from the newspapers and the radio and the TV. We're a very active society. And also, it's a very big scientific place, Kendall. We've got Arthur Eddington, who was born here, the astronomer. He helped Einstein's relativity theories. So we're well known for doing astronomy events in Kendall.

Word goes out, and through the local BBC stations and the local newspapers, we got some very good publicity. So tell me, did everyone just come out, wave once, and run away, or were there other items on the agenda? Well, we started at 9 o'clock. Local sunset was half past nine, so from 9 o'clock we were showing people the moon. Lovely, almost full moon above the castle ruins.

It's a spectacular sight, really pretty. And then when the sun set at half past nine, we started looking for Saturn. On Saturn, about 10 o'clock, because the sky was still quite bright. So people saw the moon first, and then Saturn, and then at half past 10, we all stopped and waved like idiots

at this part of the sky, waving at Saturn. But no, people hung around, and the stage was quite on. I didn't get home until almost half past 11. People just would not go home. But no, we hung around in this stage for quite a long time. I didn't get home until almost half past 11. People just would not go home. But no, we had a fantastic night. People just stopped and asked questions. I showed a meet-and-greet to people.

Lots of kids there, oom-ing and a-ing at Saturn. The classic, oh, it really has got rings. We heard that a lot last night, which is just a magical evening, really. Lovely Cumbrian summer's evening, just that lavender sky, orange sunset, and this castle glowing in the sunset. Just a beautiful night. And good science as well, people seeing Saturn and seeing the moon's crest and talking

about Apollo, about Cassini, about Mars, which is a wonderful night, really. After that description, I think you really deserve a pat on the back from the local visitors' council. You've made me quite envious even though I had a wonderful time at JPL. Of course, all of us on

this side of Third Rock can also envy you for actually being able to see Saturn as the wave was taking place. I'm trying to imagine if it could have gone any better and I just can't think how it could have gone better. Really, really good, mate. Lots of photos to do. And JPL used our photos on their Ustream coverage, which was a great honour.

Glad to be a part of that. Sounds absolutely lovely. I really am quite envious and would love to join you out there some night, some day. Has this not inspired one of your astral poems yet? It'll be in the works. I've got to get some sleep first. Because I've been working quite hard on publicity for this, doing lots of other things as well. But at the moment, just basking in this wonderful outreach

glow of showing people Saturn and a wonderful, wonderful night. Stuart, thank you so much for joining us on what is an early morning there in the UK and congratulations on this very successful event. Thank you very much. And if you would like to learn more about Stuart Atkinson and all of the things he does

which are well worth learning about, Google Cumbrian Sky or look up Stuart Atkinson and you can check out his work with his blog and maybe some of those poems which we've used on this program. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio.

Here's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society, ready to tell us about the night sky and maybe some doggies. Welcome back. Thank you. So I have something for you from JPL, but because we're talking by Skype, you know, it's really not fun unless I actually hand it to you, Sue. I hope you can wait until next week. Oh, I don't think I really have a choice. No, not really. All right.

Trust me, it's worth the wait. Well, whether you like planets after sunset or planets before sunrise, it's just a party. There are planets everywhere, every time. Just shortly after sunset, still Venus looking like that super bright star-like object over there in the west. Saturn up in the south looking yellowish, but the pre-dawn has just recently become quite the party. It's got super bright Jupiter. This is all low in the east. You want to look low, low in the east. Super bright Jupiter. Near it is reddish Mars, and they're doing a little dance, moving relative to each other from night to night. Below them, look for Mercury,

even lower down to the horizon, looking fairly bright, whitish, much dimmer than Jupiter. And that's the party in planet land. Well, I'll mention one other thing. Looking a little ahead, August 4th, in case three planets wasn't enough in the pre-dawn east, you can also find the moon hanging out with the three planets. Speaking of Saturn, were you out there giving it a wave while I was at JPL doing the same with a bunch of people? No, I wasn't, but I'm glad you represented it

and that everyone's excited about Cassini at Saturn, because I am excited about Cassini at Saturn. I'm not as excited about trying to wave for a picture where I'll be a tiniest, tiniest, tiniest fraction of one pixel. Yeah, as I described it, a sub, sub, sub-pixel resolution wave. Mark Raymond went even further. You know our friend Mark from the Dawn mission, now headed to Ceres? He actually found the research that indicated that probably not one photon from my head and upturned face made it to Saturn for that photo. Thank you for that depressing news, Mark. But thank you.

It was still, I still enjoyed being out there. Did you have fun with the group anyway? I did. We had a blast. Check out the video that I'm going to be posting along with the show. And where can I find a link to that, Matt? Oh, all of it's at planetary.org slash radio, where this week's show page is. We move on to this week in space history.

show pages we move on to this week in space history in 1971 apollo 15 was launched uh successfully went to the moon and gave us our first uh first vehicle for humans to drive around on the moon uh two years later the same week 1973 sky lab 3 launched on its 59 day mission which was a pretty darn long mission at the time. On to random space fact. Operatic. The satellites in the Saturnian system are a bit of a mix of all sorts of things, most of them kind of related. So you got your Greco-Roman titans, descendants of the titans, Roman god of the Titans, Roman god of the beginning. And then you got your giants from Greco-Roman, but wait, from also other mythologies, Gallic, Inuit, and Norse. And here's what I really

love is that those last three types of giants identify three different orbital inclination groups. And so you get some Norse giants for one kind and Gallic for another and Inuit for yet another. It's just good to know there is some thought behind all this. Oh, there's thought. It's kind of funny thought sometimes, but there's definitely a lot of thought. We move on to trivia questions. Speaking of animals, sort of, kind of, sort of, and not really. My question for all of you is, besides Pluto, name at least one fictional dog from things like published books, comics, cartoons, TV, or movies that shares its name with a solar system object. Theoretically, not one on Earth. How'd we do, Matt?

I'm curious. Got a huge response to this. Much bigger than I would have expected to this one. They want that T-shirt, that new Planetary Radio T-shirt, I guess. A lot of people, the vast majority of people, came up with Kerberos or Cerberos, sort of in honor of that new moon out at Pluto, that dog who guards the gate of Hades. Not exactly what we were looking for from popular media, television and movies, though I think that Cerberus has appeared in one or two of those. Oh, yeah. Three-headed dog, you can't get enough. But we also got some very, very appropriate and entertaining answers. Our winner this week, chosen by Random.org, Corey Chapman. He's from Ogden, Utah, and here's his response. Really good one.

He says, I can think of quite a few. Copernicus was Dr. Brown's dog in Back to the Future. And then he mentions Apollo and Zeus, both asteroids, were dogs on Magnum P.I. That's true. I've been watching Magnum P.I. on Netflix. It's been enjoying the Apollo and Zeus. Used to be my favorite show. We got an interesting answer from both Bob Biscaglia and Richard Mask. They both said there was a dog on

the TV show Full House named Comet. And I'll give you one more. Did anyone say Oberon from the Iron Druid Chronicles? No, nobody did. No, the most obscure that I got was this one from Ron Brown. Ferdinand, Moon of Uranus, and the evil pet dog of Aunt Fig in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Wow. Well, nice. All excellent dogs. Well done. Oh, wait.

I got one more. You're going to love this one. Kevin Bradley. Kevin came up with Kerberos as well. But then he said, or did you mean the asteroid 1815? Wait for it. Beethoven, which is why the asteroid belt is such a mess. Lovable scamp.

Congratulations, everybody. These are just great, great entries. But we'll go back to something a little more conventional for next time. What two solar system bodies did the Vega missions, so Vega 1 and Vega 2, what two solar system bodies did they each explore? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest and give us your entry. When do they need to get that in by, Matt? They need to get it to us by Monday, the 29th of July at 2 p.m. Pacific time.

All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky and think about your favorite dog bark. Thank you and good night. I don't know if it's my favorite bark, but I do thank the dogs next door for not interrupting us as we record this edition of What's Up with Bruce Betts. Planetary Radio is made possible by a grant from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation and by the members of the Planetary Society. Clear skies with big waves, everyone. Thank you.