Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - JWST is ready for launch and amazing science

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

The James Webb Space Telescope will begin its mission of discovery as soon as Dec. 24. René Doyon, Heidi Hammel and Mike McElwain join us for a conversation about what it may reveal from our solar system to the edge of the universe. Doyon is principal investigator for the telescope’s NIRISS imaging spectrograph, Hammel is vice president for science at the Association of University for Research in Astronomy (AURA) and McElwain of the Goddard Space Flight Center is the JWST Observatory project scientist. What do chief scientist Bruce Betts and a horse have in common? Find out in the What’s Up space trivia contest. There’s always more to explore at https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2021-jwst-pre-launch-rene-doyon-heidi-hammel-mike-mcelwainSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The James Webb Space Telescope is ready for launch and the universe, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome, I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. After 20 years of development, the JWST is days away from the beginning of what scientists around the world hope will be a mission of discovery that rivals or surpasses the Hubble Space Telescope. Three key members of the telescope team will take us through what it may reveal. René Doyon, Heidi Hamel, and Michael McElwain will also explain why major advances in science can require major investments. Bruce Betts asked you what mythical creature he is. We'll go beyond the man and the myth when we answer his question during What's Up. Bruce will also tell you where to find Comet Leonard if you hurry and you're lucky.

There's a beautiful image of the recently discovered visitor from the Oort cloud at the top of the December 10 edition of the down lake. You can also read about the total solar eclipse on December 4th that was mostly visible only from Antarctica. It shows up as a dark spot over the South Pole in a satellite image at planetary.org slash down lake. Heard about the Moon Hut? China's U-22 rover spotted it on the far side. We're hoping for a less fuzzy view of what's probably just a boulder. Remember, extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence. I have a couple of other suggestions for you. First, there's our terrific new video about night sky photography. This lazy amateur astronomer enjoyed it immensely, and I learned a lot.

It features Planetary Society member Ossie James. The video and accompanying article can be found at planetary.org, which is where you can also read an interview with the woman who hired me at the Society more than 20 years ago. Charlene Anderson was the first person brought in by our founders in 1980, the first editor of our magazine, The Planetary Report, and our associate director. It's wonderful to hear from her again. The history of what would become the James Webb Space Telescope goes back to at least 1989. Now, nearly 23 years later, the giant infrared eye is about to begin its work.

As we publish this week's PlanRad, the telescope is on top of the European Space Agency's Ariane 5 rocket that will send it to L2, a so-called Lagrange point, at which the gravity of the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon are almost perfectly balanced. L2 is nearly four times as distant from Earth as the Moon is, making it essentially unreachable should anything go wrong, and there is plenty that could go wrong. But our guests are among those who are confident it will unfold like a beautiful origami flower, revealing its six-and-a-half-meter segmented mirror made of gold-plated beryllium, and the massive five-layer sunshield that will keep the telescope cool enough to detect the most distant objects in the universe. Four intricate and powerful instruments will stare at the light collected by the mirror.

The principal investigator for one of these is René Doyon, director of the Montmégane Antique Observatory and the Institute for Research on Exoplanets at the University of Montreal, where he is a professor of physics. Joining René and me a few days ago was Heidi Hamel, Vice President for Science at Aura, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. Aura is the non-profit consortium that manages and operates astronomical facilities, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the JWST,

through its Space Telescope Science Institute. Heidi is also vice president of the Planetary Society Board of Directors. Michael McElwain of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center completes our trio. Mike is the JWST Observatory Project Scientist. Heidi, Rene, Mike, welcome to Planetary Radio on this auspicious day. Well, it's not happening today, but we are within days of this absolutely marvelous event that is going to take place, something that I know you and a lot of us out here have been waiting for for many years, the launch of the JWST. Thank you for joining us. Mike,

I'm going to start with you. What's the current status of the telescope? And we're speaking a few days before this program will be published and available across the web and on radio. Great. Thanks, Matt. It's a pleasure to be here. We're planning for launch on December 22nd. planning for launch on December 22nd. That's at 12.20 p.m. UTC, 7.20 a.m. in the morning Eastern Standard Time where I'm located, or 4.20 a.m. Pacific. Everything's looking great for launch. Webb has completed all of its tests. We've integrated with a payload adapter system that goes on top of the Ariane 5 launch vehicle. And we filled our propellant tanks. We actually use two different types of propellant. We moved to the final assembly building a few days ago. We're doing the final assembly with Ariane 5 launch vehicle.

We'll do that lift on Saturday, December 11th. And we will do the final fairing integration and encapsulation. And then we actually have a mission dress rehearsal. So the team will assemble at the launch site and at the mission operations center. We will carry out a dress rehearsal. We'll test not only the personnel and the systems, but we'll do the communications and the data flows between the various nodes that participate in commissioning between the launch site, the mission operations center at the Space Telescope Science in commissioning, between the launch site, the Mission Operations Center at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland,

and the Deep Space Network. Thursday and Friday of next week, we will prepare the launcher for moving out to the pad on Monday, and then we'll have final health checks before our December 22nd launch. So by the time some people hear this, maybe that launch will already have taken place. But at this point, it's still anticipation. I'm excited. I wonder about you folks. Excited, apprehensive, hopeful, confident. How does this feel, Heidi? All the feels, Matt. With every emotion all wrapped up into one swirl.

Anticipation, you know, we've been working on this project for decades, some of us literally decades, and we are just so excited but nervous to putting our precious telescope on a big rocket and sending it into space. You know, rocket science is hard. I think mostly just a state of anticipation.

We are just waiting now, waiting for all the last steps to occur. Renee, we're going to talk about your very important role in this mission, in this telescope. But I ask you the same question, knowing that your instrument is about to reach into space as part of this telescope. How do you feel? Yeah, it's just like Heidi, I'm just absolutely thrilled. And I'm really pinching myself because I've been on this project for 20 years. You know, you sort of get used to this thing, you know, taking some time, but now this is it. We are days away from launch. I'm just absolutely excited. And Mike, are you going to be at the launch site in French Guiana? Actually, I will be at the Mission Operations Center shortly after launch.

We get control of the observatory in space at the Mission Operations Center. So that's when we'll actually start doing the commanding. We'll start the commissioning process. And the first 12 and a half hours are very intense. We get communications with the telescope. We're tracking its orbit, how it released from the Ariane 5. And we actually have to carry out a mid-course correction. That is an initial burn that puts us out at our orbit in L2.

The timing of that burn is actually very important because it's costly in terms of propellant if we make a late burn. And so everyone will be working very hard at the first 12 and a half hours, then we can relax a little bit, we have an additional burn to make, and then we'll start our deployment sequence. I just wanted to add for the listeners that the Mission Operations Center is hosted at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, on the campus of Johns Hopkins University. And the launch itself, of course, is taking place from the spaceport in French Guiana, because we are launching on an Ariane 5 rocket provided by the European Space Agency. So we're not launching at Cape Canaveral or Kennedy, any of the usual NASA spaces. I will also, like Mike, be in Baltimore near the mission ops. Although unlike Mike, I'm not going to be allowed into mission ops.

I'll just be outside with the VIPs and the reporters and the other folks who are just hanger on. I'm not going to be in mission ops. Wringing your hands, no doubt. are just hanger on. I'm not going to be in mission up. Wringing your hands, no doubt. This, of course, is an example, and we will have more, including why Renee is here. This is evidence of the international nature of this mission, of this telescope. But I'll come back to that. Mike, how long are we going to have to wait until this instrument sees first light and it begins to do the science that we're all looking

forward to? Yeah, so it takes about 30 days in order to do all the deployments. That actually happens more quickly. That's in about the first 14 days, we do 50 major deployments, and then we start cooling down. And so we actually need to wait for the science instruments to reach their operational telescopes because we use them in order to do the alignment of the telescope. And so those instruments will be cool enough to start observations around 30 days into the mission. Amazing. As cold as space will be, that the requirement of doing, you know, the science that is going to be required of this infrared telescope, It's still going to take 30 days for you to reach that point. Heidi, I'll start with you for this one. Does this telescope have the potential to shock and amaze us

the way the Hubble Space Telescope has for so many years? There's no doubt that the data we're going to get from James Webb Space Telescope will indeed amaze us. I'm not sure about the word shock. That's perhaps not a word I would use. But the capabilities that we have designed for this telescope are revolutionary. The sensitivity that we will have, the spatial resolution at the mid-infrared wavelengths, All of these have been designed to push us into new frontiers of astrophysics that have simply not been available to the telescopes that we currently have on the ground and in space. And for the listeners who mostly like the beautiful pictures

of Hubble, we will have equally beautiful pictures coming from the James Webb Space Telescope as well, in addition to all the amazing science that's going to happen. Here's a question that I'm sure all of you have heard time and time again. Are there ways to compare the Hubble and this new space telescope, just in terms of making it clear how much more powerful this instrument is, at least at what it's designed to do. Well, I can jump in on this. I mean, we're talking about two orders of magnitudes in terms of sensitive improvement compared to Hubble.

And basically because Webb is much bigger, of course, it's 6.5 meter in diameter compared to 2.4 meter. And the other thing too is that, you know, even though Hubble was with time a greater instrument to do a little bit of infrared, it's not really optimized. You know, Hubble's going around the Earth every 90 minutes, and it's not in a very stable environment. But Webb is going to be sent 1.5 million kilometers away and always in the shadow, a very cold environment. And that's what we want to do, very sensitive and precise infrared astronomy. So that's what we want to do very sensitive and precise infrared astronomy so that's the major difference and if we talk about a sensitivity improvement at the mid infrared

you know long order of 5 to 28 microns the only thing we could compare with was a spitzer an 85 centimeter now you're talking about a sensitive improvement of you know a million that's a huge improvement things that was a very faint star for Speeder are saturating our detector with James Webb. So it's an incredible improvement. as well by ground-based telescopes. And I include in this, of course, the new class of gigantic instruments that are going to be seeing first light in the next few years. The challenge with ground-based telescopes is that they are on the ground. Between them and outer space is Earth's atmosphere. Earth's atmosphere absorbs certain wavelengths of light. The molecules in our atmosphere, the water molecules, carbon dioxide molecules, et cetera, they absorb light and that light can never reach our ground-based telescopes. For example, to observe in these mid-infrared

wavelengths that we are so interested in with James Webb Space Telescope, we have to go to space to observe them. There are a few windows, we call them windows, where some of this mid-infrared light can make it to the surface. But also, mid-infrared light is heat. It's warmth. And our Earth and our telescopes on Earth are warm. And so the warmth of our telescopes overwhelms the warmth from these distant galaxies and stars. And so the only way to make these observations is to put our telescope not only up in space above the Earth's atmosphere, but very far from the Earth with a big sun shield that's shading the telescope from Earth and the moon and the sun. By shading our telescope, we can keep it super cold and detect this light from the distant

universe. So I don't care how big your ground-based telescope is, give me a 30-meter telescope. I'd love that, but it can't do the science that Webb is being designed to do. I want to hear from each of you what you hope the JWST may reveal to us about the cosmos. I mean, ranging from worlds that are relatively nearby to galaxies that stretch back to the beginning of the universe. I was trained as an extraglattic astronomer. My PhD was in spectroscopy, interacting and colliding galaxies. So that's one thing that's very close to my heart in finding the very first galaxies that lit up, you know, we think a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, that would be a fantastic discovery. And all four science instruments on board were designed to do just that. But in 1995, my life changed. That was the

very first discovery of an exoplanet. And at that time, we started to dream of actually taking pictures of them. And we managed to do that 10 years later. And in fact, one of my quests is to basically detect an atmosphere of an exoplanet that has water on it. That's the big step. You know, we have more than 4,000 exoplanets discovered so far, a handful of them in the so-called habitable zone.

You know, this region is not too close, not too far from the star where we can hope to detect liquid water on a surface. And we have the targets. And those were discovered only a few years ago. And the Webb instruments will be capable of detecting the atmospheres. That's a key stepping stone

towards detecting biosignatures, molecular pathogens. I don't want to say that Webb will do this. Nature would have to be very generous to do that with Webb. But it's clear that Webb will make a giant step in that direction. So that's the two things I'd like to see, first light and water in the temperate planet. Mike? Yeah, I'd like to echo what Rene was saying. I'd also like to add for the listeners that Rene was

also the first person to directly detect an exoplanet. He did that with a ground-based telescope, and it was a huge discovery for which he's received multiple awards. Like Rene, I think the early universe observations we've never been able to see there before, that was the primary motivation for building Webb initially, to go beyond the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomers, even in the mid-1990s, knew that we needed the Large Infrared Space Telescope. Astronomers even in the mid-1990s knew that we needed a large infrared space

telescope to observe the early universe because of the cosmological redshift. We will be able to do that, and that's one of the first sets of observations that will be carried out in our Cycle 1 science program. We will look and see what the first luminous objects are and what they look like and how those objects then evolved into the current universe that we have today. So that's super exciting. I'm also very excited about exoplanets. I study exoplanets myself. There's so much discovery.

As Rene was saying, back in 1995, the first exoplanet was discovered orbiting a sun-like star. We now know of over 4,000 exoplanets orbiting other stars. Those are outside our solar system. Webb will really be in a position to characterize these exoplanets in a way that we've never had before with these infrared capabilities. Oftentimes, while there are many key molecules and elements in the atmospheres in the infrared, so we can study their compositions and get insight into their formation mechanisms. And it's just going to be a transformative new capability for exoplanets. Heidi, I want to hear from you too, but I got to boast for a moment, one of the highlights in my

career here doing planetary radio was the conversation I had with Michel Mayor, the gentleman who was part of that discovery of the first exoplanet circling. Well, a regular star, not a pulsar in that case. Heidi, what are you looking forward to? Well, you know, everything that Renee and Mike have said already, first light in the universe, first galaxies, maybe the first stars, exoplanet characterization, the evolution of galaxies over cosmic time. That's all really exciting. I'm a planetary astronomer. And one of the things that's amazing about great observatories with

capital G, capital O, great observatories like Hubble and Webb is that they don't just do one thing. So in addition to the great science that you just heard Renee and Mike talk about, Webb will also be able to study objects within our own solar system. That's why I signed on to this telescope two decades ago. There was some science I really wanted to do, and I needed this telescope. So characterizing the surfaces of Kuiper belt objects, not only Pluto, but even smaller ones. Many dozens of Kuiper belt objects will be characterized with Webb. I'm interested in the upper atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune. They have fabulous molecular signatures in the mid-infrared that Webb will be exquisitely sensitive to.

So we will learn about the dynamics in the upper atmospheres. We will be studying Jupiter, even though it's really bright. It's going to be a challenge to observe bright objects like Jupiter and Saturn with a telescope that's designed to observe the faintest galaxies in the universe. But we have our ways, tricks and ways of doing that. Maybe we'll figure out finally what the chromophores are on Jupiter, making the redness of the Great Red Spot. I could go on. There is just such a wealth of wonderful science that will be coming from James Webb Space Telescope. It's truly going to be rewriting the textbooks in many, many different fields of astronomy and astrophysics. Rene, I know that you have to leave us a little bit earlier than your colleagues. So

I want to ask you about your baby, the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph, N-I-R-I-S-S. How do you pronounce that? Werograph, NIRISS. How do you pronounce that? We will call it NIRISS. NIRISS, okay. It sounds like a remarkably powerful and versatile instrument. Yeah, so NIRISS is an instrument that, well, let me give you a brief overview of the instruments on board

where we have NIRCAM, the machine that will take images, and also that's the machine that will align the telescope. That's a workhorse capability. We have the NIRSpec, the European base in the US built a multi-object spectrograph. So that's the machine to do spectroscopy. Astronomers like images, but we need also spectra. So we need to be able to disperse light. And that information gives us key information about the chemical composition

of the objects and also the speed, distance. And in the Wavelength Range, we have MIRI that will do both imaging and spectroscopy at the longer wavelength. Now, NIRIS is an instrument very similar to NIRCAM, but simpler, that will be used mostly for spectroscopy capability. And in fact, that's an instrument that came a bit late in the game. It was not planned from the get-go, and it was formally accepted in 2011. We designed NIRISS to do one thing. Well, I talked about exoplanet atmospheres. We have an observing mode inside NIRISS that is specifically designed to look at exoplanet atmospheres on bright stars. And in fact, we will devote almost half of our guaranteed time observations to look at a wide range of exoplanet atmosphere. That's one thing.

The other aspect of NIRIS is that we have a mode that can do slit-less spectroscopy, which is unlike NIRSPEC that takes little slit to isolate the object that you want. And that's the most accurate way of doing it. But NIRSPEC can observe more than maybe 200 objects at the same time. Whereas for some objects like galaxy clusters that we'll look at, we can take thousands of objects in one shot. So it's very complimentary. So we hope that NIRS will be able to find high-rich of galaxies, very distant galaxies, and then tell NIRSpec, look, point you slid here. That's a very high-rich of candidate. Finally, not least, on the back of NIRIS, we have the fine-gallon sensor,

which is not a scientific camera, but nonetheless, absolutely crucial. That camera is actually designed to make sure that every time when any information, NIRCAM, NIRSPEC, MIRI, we make sure that we correct

the vibration of the telescope, right? This big structure will vibrate along. So what we do is the camera, we pick up a star in a field of view, and we measure its position 16 times per second. And then we send that signal to a steering mirror about the size of a foot roughly. And that way we keep the image very, very crisp. Just to give you an idea of how accurate

this camera has to operate, we can detect a movement, the thickness of a human hair at one kilometer. Or if you want, you know, you are Matt in Washington and you're blinking at me and I can see that from New York City. It is that accurate that this camera has to operate. So to me, every time I'll see a beautiful image from Webb,

well, I think of this woman at Honeywell who did the software to do the guiding system. It's an incredible machine. What you have just described, Nearest, FGS, these are the two major contributions to the telescope from Canada. You, of course, at the University of Montreal and other facilities there. I want to come back to the international collaborative nature of this project, which this is such a good example of. Heidi? It truly is. I mean, Hubble, of course, was be a strong international collaboration between NASA,

the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency. And you heard from Rene, the crucial contributions from Canada, our fine guidance system, the things that we're going to use to actually track on our objects. It's absolutely crucial. And of course, the launch vehicle is a European contribution, as well as the NIRSPEC instrument. This is going to be the very high resolution spectrometer being contributed by ESA. It's going to have a really interesting mode where it uses tiny little micro shutters, tiny little micro shutters, allowing us to isolate different parts of the sky on which we can get our spectroscopy. It's really been a wonderful experience to be a part of this international collaboration, meeting with Rene at our meetings over the years, whether they're in Canada or in various places in Europe or in the United States. It's been a really wonderful experience to work with all of our international partners

together to make a global contribution. It's wonderful. Thank you, René. Thank you. Well, Mirin is also another another example that was more than, I believe, 14 countries in Europe to actually make this instrument, but using the U.S. detectors. So it's very nice collaborations all across the board. Mike? Yeah, I'd like to add that not only did we partner with the Europeans and the Canadians, but the data that we'll receive from James Webb will be archived at the Space Telescope Science Institute and made publicly available to anyone in the world. And so astronomers from all over the world will be able to analyze this data and make discoveries. The proposal process itself can be made from anyone

in the world as well. And so the Cycle 1 call for proposals had applications from over 44 different countries participated. And so it's very much a global effort. And the science discovery that we'll make will have a global reach. Rene, I know we've reached the time when you're going to have to leave us, but I got one other question for you. Interesting also to hear that, Niris, you called it a late addition to the project 10 years ago,

going on 11 years ago. How did it feel? Do you remember that moment when you learned that this instrument, for which you are principal investigator, would be a part of? Oh, yeah. Look, this is my moment to me. I mean, there's been many moments for James Webb, of course, but for me, that was that date. I remember vividly June 9th, 2011, when the Science Working Group approved our plan to reconfigure the previous instrument into NIRIS. That was such a big moment for me. Very exciting.

Thank you for taking the time that you could this last half hour or so with us. We'll continue with Mike and Heidi, but we better let you get on to your other commitment. Thanks so much. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. And just three words, Go Web Go. Bye-bye. Go Web Go. Thanks so much. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. And just three words, Go Web Go. Bye-bye. Go Web Go. I love it. Thank you, Renee. A very brief break now before I return with our three guests and much more about the JWST. Hi, everybody. It's Bill. 2021 has brought

so many thrilling advances in space exploration. Because of you, the Planetary Society has had a big impact on key missions, like the Perseverance landing on Mars, including the microphone we've championed for years. Our extended LightSail 2 mission is helping NASA prepare three solar sail projects of its own. Now it's time to make 2022 even more successful. We've captured the world's attention, but there's so much more work to be done. When you invest in the Planetary Fund today, your donation will be matched up to $100,000 thanks to a generous member. Every dollar you give will go twice as far as we explore the worlds of our solar system and beyond, defend Earth from the impact of an asteroid or comet, and find life beyond Earth by making the search a space exploration

priority. Will you help us launch into a new year? Please donate today. Visit planetary.org slash planetary fund. Thank you for your generous support. Mike, you have been deeply involved with all of these international collaborators, as well as the people putting this telescope together. Now, I said up front, we're focusing on the science in this conversation because we covered a lot of the engineering when I visited the JWST last summer out here in Southern California. But still, I hope you can say something about what it was like, what it has been like to pull together a project of this magnitude with so many different elements and so many different contributors. Yeah. I mean, I like to say that this is a major accomplishment for humanity that we can

build a telescope that enables us to see, you know, the first luminous objects in the universe, the very first objects that were formed after the Big Bang. And this is just such an amazing accomplishment. When we set out on this path, we didn't have many of the technologies that we needed to do that. And so the engineers took our science requirements that the team had put together and transitioned them into engineering requirements and built this beautiful space telescope. You know, if you look at a picture of the James Webb Space Telescope, it doesn't look anything like you might expect for a space telescope. For one, the telescope is actually unbaffled.

So it's just out in deep space. And that was a different design, somewhat of an innovation in that we have an orbit at L2 that's about a million miles from Earth, four times the distance of the moon. And we're able to keep that telescope in the shade for the entire mission. At any one time, we can look at about 40% of the sky. And as we orbit around the earth, we can observe anywhere in the sky. But there were just many technological advances, new detectors, new sunshield materials, new structures that can operate at the cryogenic temperatures. Of course, all the testing that went into determining that we had the right design and workmanship of the flight system was tremendous as well.

We needed to have components from all over the world come together and assemble them and test them. We did major tests at the Goddard Space Flight Center of the telescope itself and flew that down to the Johnson Space Center where we did a 100-day cryogenic test. Hurricane Harvey happened to hit Houston right in the middle of that test, so that was unexpected, but we dealt with that, and the team continued to carry on the test, even in those extreme weather conditions. And then we moved the telescope out to Northrop Grumman, where it met up with the Sunshield and the spacecraft bus and did those final integrations and tests. And so it's been a tremendous effort, a lot of dedication and perseverance from the team. And everyone's

just super excited to be where we are and to start this mission in space. Heidi, with the long history of the development of this telescope, and with things having gone pretty well in the last few years, it would maybe be easy for some people to forget a more troubled time when there were big questions about whether this telescope would be completed, whether it would receive the funding that it would need to reach this day. Those must have been tough times. There were some tough times. I remember 2011 when the funding for James Webb Space Telescope was zeroed out of the federal budget. That was a bit of a downer. We had to work very hard. And there was actually a groundswell of support for this telescope, not only from astronomers,

but from the public, people who had loved Hubble and wanted to see the next great observatory launch. And they put together a coalition called Save JWST. And that helped, I think. And it also helped that we took a very serious look at where we were in the project and how we had gotten to the state we were. And NASA committed to finishing within a specific budget envelope and stuck with that. But there were definitely over the last, you know, more than 20 years, some dark moments. Rene recounted the story of a positive moment where we added his instrument. And that was a wonderful time for the science working group. where we added his instrument. And that was a wonderful time for the science working group.

I also remember the science working group meeting where we had to decide to de-scope our mirror aperture from eight meters down to six and a half meters. That was not such a happy decision. I mean, I'm happy with six and a half. We debated the science capabilities of six and a half meters, assessed whether or not we could still achieve the core science goals that we needed to do. And the answer was yes, you know, we would have to integrate a little longer because we don't have such a large telescope, but we could still do the science with six and a half meters. When asked, can we go down to four meters again? At that point, the science working group drew a half meters. When asked, can we go down to four meters again? At that point, the science working group drew a line in the sand and said, actually, no, we can't. We can't do the science that we've laid out with that size of a telescope. We must have

this size of a telescope. And I think that's important because a lot of people ask me, why do we need to build such a big telescope? Why don't we just build lots of little telescopes? Because you can't do the science. The answer is physics. Physics prohibits you from doing certain kinds of measurements unless you have a large enough aperture to collect the amount of light that you need. to collect the amount of light that you need. And certain kinds of observations absolutely require these larger apertures like we will have with the James Webb Space Telescope.

So, yeah, there were definitely dark times and there were wonderful times. That's the nature of building a very large complex space telescope. You know, people remember with Hubble, the initial trouble that it had on orbit, where the mirror was found to be the wrong shape, but exactly the wrong shape so we could correct it. But people don't remember that there were decades of trials and tribulations with Hubble before it got to the launch pad. They forgot about that once it was fixed and working fabulously.

And now 30 years later, it's like the iconic best science instrument ever created by humanity. They forget about the decades of hard work. I'm hoping with James Webb Space Telescope that once we get up at L2 and start sending science back, people will forget about all the challenges and dark times that we've had getting to this point and just focus on the amazing capabilities that this telescope is going to bring to us. You have brought me back to the discussion that you had not long ago with my colleague, Casey Dreyer, on the December Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio, where we talked, or you talked with Casey, about how science drives the design

of the instruments that will be necessary to accomplish that science. Yeah, that's right. And Mike talked about that. We don't start off by saying, And Mike talked about that. You know, we don't start off by saying, let's build a big telescope. What will it help us do? We actually say, what is the key science question that we want to answer? And then what tool do we need to answer that question? So as both Renee and Mike were talking about, we laid out this question decades ago. We laid out this question decades ago.

Can we detect the first light that emerged in our universe after the Big Bang, whether it is the first history of the formation and evolution of our universe to where we are today. You got to start at the beginning. You need the baby pictures. Hubble's given us the high school yearbook. And Webb is the tool that we need to get to that level of science to the very beginning of the universe. Plus, it'll do all this other great science as well, including my favorite science in the solar system. Who doesn't love a great baby picture? Mike? I think an interesting thing for a mission like Webb that's taken 25 years to develop is that the science does march on. The landscape shifts and the questions that we're asking evolve. and our new capabilities that the questions we're able to answer today are even more compelling than the ones that were being asked back in 1995 when this whole project got started. Yeah, like the questions that we were talking about earlier, can we characterize the atmospheres of planets around other stars? We didn't even have the planets cataloged at that point. We

kind of assumed they were out there somewhere. But in the decades since we began talking about this, we've sent out other spacecraft and used other telescopes to catalog thousands of stars that have planetary systems now. And now, with the launch of Webb, we will have the tool we need to do planetary atmospheric characterization of those stars. So like Mike said, this is really a testament to the power of building a cutting edge facility that, you know, even if it takes a long time to get it to launch pad, it's so powerful that there are still many questions that require its capabilities. I think what else is really

exciting and what we're anticipating is that the discoveries, maybe the most exciting discoveries we'll make with web will be for questions that we don't even know to ask right now. And so we just have this enormous improvement in capability where we've previously been blind, and we'll make all sorts of new discoveries. So everyone just can't wait and just super excited. And hasn't that always been the case when a new instrument with new capabilities becomes available? Speaking of making it available, Mike, what's the demand for time for those precious minutes and hours on this telescope, which is still sitting in a high bay in French Guiana as we speak. The science program that we'll execute has a few different categories in it. So we have guaranteed time observations for people like Rene and Heidi that have been

with the project from the very beginning. And so they get to carry out the first demonstrations, first observations with the observatory to carry out the first demonstrations, first observations with the observatory and really understand the science performance, characterize how to do the observations and what science is capable. But we also have a large guest observer program. So those are observations that can be made from the community. And for that time, we had over a thousand proposals submitted for review. Those proposals can be on any science topic. And we have review panels. Something that's interesting about the proposal review process or the entire proposal process is that nowadays,

not only are the reviewers anonymous, which has always been the case. But the proposers themselves are also anonymous. And so it's a double-blind process. So really, it's just the science being evaluated on its own merits. Who has the best science? What are the most compelling arguments that you can make? And of those, we've selected a little over a year of observations covering the main science themes of Webb, the early universe, galaxies across time, stars and star formation, and other worlds. Those

observations will be made throughout the Cycle 1 program, and the data will be made then available through the archives. Heidi, I was going to bring up that new selection process because it was one of the most fascinating parts of the conversation that you had with Casey recently on the Space Policy Edition. It has led to already a real change in achieving, well, I'll call it equality among people who want to use these instruments, opportunity and equality, right? That's right. This dual anonymous process that Mike described, where even the people reviewing the proposals do not know who the people are who are proposing to do that science, has allowed cohorts of people who in the past may not have gotten time for reasons that we, you know, are probably rooted in innate human bias.

The people from smaller universities, people from broader geographic distributions than just the main coasts in the United States, countries in Europe where people don't have sort of a more traditional base of astronomy, all of those people now have a much greater chance of success based only on their science, only on the science, not on who they are or where they're from or who they went to grad school with. We have noticed a marked change in the distribution of who is getting time on the telescope. It's a broader category of people who've never, for Hubble, we have 30 years of experience and 30 years of records. And for Hubble, where we've applied this dual anonymous review process,

we have noticed a large increase in the number of first-time proposers. This is people who haven't used the telescope in the past, and they have gotten time through this new process. So new voices are coming to the table now. And we expect that to hold true for Webb as well, that we will have a more meritocratous process. So it's a great thing to see that happen. So interesting to see advances being made, not just in the technology that enables this kind of science, but in the human practices that drive the science that may be delivered by instruments like this.

Both of you, very busy people, as if dealing with this project wasn't enough. Of course, Heidi, you at Aura, with responsibility for so many instruments, ground-based and up there in the sky through the Space Telescope Science Institute. Mike, I think of some of the other work that I read that you're doing. We won't be able to talk about all of it, but I wonder if you could tell us about one project in particular that you call Pisces, the Prototype Imaging Spectrograph for Coronagraphic Exoplanet Studies. Are we talking here maybe about a spectrograph that will possibly someday do an even better job of revealing what's in the

atmospheres of these worlds circling other stars? Yeah, so one of NASA's big questions that we're trying to answer is, are we alone? Unfortunately, Webb does not have that capability. There's a new mission that was recommended recently by the National Academies, building upon Webb, actually, and potentially in some of the technologies that we've developed for Webb. It may end up being another segmented telescope that looks quite a bit like Webb. But that future mission is actually setting out to discover Earth-like planets and look for biosignatures, so look for signs of life. Those observations are extremely challenging. It requires large space telescopes, also coronagraphs. So the observation itself is very difficult. The star is very bright. Your planet is very close to the star, an Earth-like

planet, very close to the star. And its contrast is very high, 10 billion times fainter than the star. In order to make those observations, we need to advance a whole set of additional technologies that have been in the works for quite some time. Pisces is a demonstration, the science camera, it's an integral field spectrograph, so we can take a spectrum at every point in the image plane. And that's the ideal instrument to make these observations of Earth-like planets and study their atmospheres and reflected light and look for these signs of life. That was a project that I led about a decade ago, and we delivered that out to a test bed

from the Goddard Space Flight Center and built that instrument, delivered it to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where it's integrated with their high-contrast imaging testbed. And there's an assembly of different technologies for chronographic observations there. And Pisces is now doing high-contrast observations. So the beat goes on. Heidi, yesterday I watched a terrific webinar inspired by the JWST. It came from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. the JWST. It came from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. It featured Tiesel Muir Harmony and Bhavya Lal, both past guests on this show, talking with University of Alberta historian Robert Smith. And Professor Smith largely talked about what I think he called mega science projects, which would certainly include this new telescope, though there are many other examples, some successful, some not. this new telescope, though there are many other examples, some successful, some not.

They have a longer history than I thought. Is this what the future is in big science? I mean, major, even revolutionary advances, are they going to require these kinds of long-term and large investments? I watched that seminar too. It was absolutely terrific. And, you know, science takes place at many scales. There is great science that can be done on small scales, excellent science that can be done on medium scales, and there is some science that requires large scales. It isn't that you can only do big projects or small projects. What all of our decadal surveys have said, they have stressed that if you have a balance of different kinds of science projects, small, medium, and large, that is the most robust way to advance our fields. And so there are definitely projects that require extremely large facilities. If we want to clearly characterize the atmospheres of dozens of Earth-like planets around sun-like stars and hope to find the

signatures of life as we know it on them, we need the big telescope that we talked about in that previous episode that our astrophysics decadal survey said we need. If you wanted to find the Higgs boson, you needed to have, you know, a very large collider, whether it was the US super collider or the large Hadron collider at CERN, you know, that's a political choice, whether or not a country or a group of countries decides to push boundaries. One of the premises that Robert Smith articulated so clearly is that for nations to build the truly cutting edge in and how you have to consider these things to be international partnerships. That was a crucial takeaway from his talk. Big projects have more than just the science driving them. I wrote a little paper about this for the planetary community. And one of our takeaway messages is that if your

project costs more than a billion dollars, science is necessary, but not sufficient. You must take into account all of these other aspects, whether they are the international collaborations, the political considerations of the countries that are funding you, the industry support that you require to build this new technology. All of those factors are all part and parcel of doing large cutting edge projects. I'm an American. I believe that our country, the United States of America, can be truly world leaders in space astrophysics and planetary exploration. I also believe that there's great power in international collaboration for these projects. James Webb Space Telescope is a beautiful example of this U.S. leadership,

but crucially dependent on the contributions from the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. So I think these big projects are things we need to do them if we want to truly advance the field. That doesn't mean we don't do small projects as well. We need to do it all within a balanced portfolio of small, medium, and large projects. Mike, I watched you nodding during that response from Heidi. I don't think you have to deal quite as deeply with the political elements in a project like this, but I just wonder if you also have thoughts about why it is important for enlightened cultures, great societies, if you will, to continue to make investments like the one that has been made in the James Webb Space Telescope.

James Webb will make observations that are just so far beyond what the other capabilities could be on the ground or in space, what we've had historically. And that discovery space is just so important for really understanding the big questions that we're after. How did we get here? What space is really telling us? Many of the objects Webb will observe have been discovered using smaller telescopes,

smaller assets, but to really study them and characterize them, you need a facility, an observatory like Webb. And so Webb will provide the key infrared observations that complement ultraviolet and visible wavelength observations of Hubble, for example, and Webb will have the sensitivity to make observations that we cannot make in any other way. And so to really take a big step forward, you need a large space telescope. You need that mega science facility. Heidi, is a project like this evidence that a

society is a great society? I'm going to paraphrase Senator Barbara Mikulski. She talks about this very topic. And what she said about Hubble is that a good society can build something like the Hubble Space Telescope. But think that there are probably other societies that can build amazing things. To do that, to build amazing things and have it completely open and free to all, anyone can apply to use the James Webb Space Telescope. If their science is robust, the observations will be taken, that data will be in an archive available to all. I think it is a sign of a great society that we do this kind of science and share it with all of humanity. That is how we as a species progress and grow. And so I think there is value in doing great projects, mega projects,

particularly if you share that knowledge with all of humanity. And I think that's a fine place for us to wrap up this conversation. I also hope that you both know and Renee knows and everyone on the team, how all of us at the Planetary Society, all of our members feel. And I suspect everybody listening to this show right now, we cannot wait for that first light from this instrument that may just show us also the first light ever in our universe. Thank you both very much for being part of this. And clear skies. Thank you. It's been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you very much. Want to learn more about the James Webb Space Telescope? Check out the great resources on this week's episode page at planetary.org slash radio.

You'll also find a link to my monthly newsletter. The December edition has just been published. monthly newsletter. The December edition has just been published. It is time for, well, a holiday edition of What's Up with Bruce Betts. He is the chief scientist of the Planetary Society and he's back to tell us about the night sky, which you can't see right now. Well, it's daytime, but also because we're having a big rainstorm in Southern California. Nevertheless, happy holidays. Happy holidays. Happy holidays. Happy holidays.

May the spacecraft keep flying. Happy holidays to you. All right, enough of that. Let's go on to the night sky. Matt, still super cool planets over there in the West, but get them, get them soon, get them fast. They're going away in the next very few weeks, but right now, low in the West, you can still check out super bright Venus to its upper left, yellowish Saturn to its upper left, bright, bright Jupiter, all looking super cool right now. and we've got not nearly as bright

Comet Leonard Comet Leonard is in the evening sky but really low below Venus you're in better shape if you're southern hemisphere it'll be higher up but it's I theoretically you can see it from a dark site with just your eyes, but I would suggest binoculars and a dark site. Get a finder chart online. I heard it was kind of a bust. I mean, that it may actually be busting up, that it let people down. Yeah, that's the thing about comets.

Can't predict their behavior very well. There's a joke in there somewhere, but I don't know what it is. All right, moving on. On to this week in space history. It was this week that Apollo 8 launched to head off to the moon with humans to go around the moon for the first time. Heck of a mission.

We move on to randoms. No. We move on to random space fact, random space fact. No, there's more, isn't there? May the facts keep on coming and the randomness feel new. Oh, that's wonderful. Happy holidays to you.

That's terrific. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I'm here twice on Sundays. Try the steak. Cleaning up our act and taking it on the road, everybody. Matt and Bruce road trip. Road picture. That's what we are. Oh, road picture.

Matt and Bruce road picture. Yeah. You're going to be Bang or Bob. I think I'll be Bob. I got to play the straight man and I have to have a much better voice than I do. We'll work on it. We're absconding with the fact. Absconding?

Anyway, Uranus's moon, Miranda, weird looking place, has claimed the highest cliff in the solar system. Thought to be possibly as high as 20 kilometers or about 66,000 feet. Verona Rupes. And by the way, I'm sure you're asking, what's Earth's biggest cliff? I am. Well, it's a lot less than that. Mount Thor on Canada's Baffin Island at 1.25 kilometers or 4,100 feet. On from the cliffs and on to the mythical creatures.

In our trivia contest, I said, I am a mythical creature. What am I? I'll give you a hint. I'm also a category of small body objects that orbit between Jupiter and Neptune. What am I? Boy, did people love responding to this and the fact that you said, what am I? Boy, did people love responding to this and the fact that you said, what am I? As you will hear in moments, let me tell you who I believe is the winner first. In fact, I'm sure it's the winner. And what's interesting about this is that he did win once before,

but it has been over five and a half years and he regularly enters the contest. So congratulations, Marcel Jan Kriegsman. I hope I'm saying that correctly, in the Netherlands. Marcel Jan? He earned it. Congratulations. He said, you're a centaur, Bruce. I am indeed a centaur, and I don't know why I talk like this. Really? I would think centaurs would have deep voices like this. Well, that's the horse end. My horse end has a very deep voice.

Okay. Well, Marcel, you are going to receive a Planetary Society kick asteroid, rubber asteroid for your trouble. Thank you so much for being a part of this and for hanging in there with us. I got other great stuff. Well, here's one from Gene Lewin in Washington, one of our poets. Between Jupiter and Neptune roam ambiguities of myth. Unstable orbits are temperament in varying size and width. Some like comets with a tail.

Some like asteroidsets with a tail, some like asteroids, more rocky. Named for the centaur of Grecian lore, a horse with a built-in jockey. Wow, rocky and jockey, very nicely done. Nice rhyme. I bet that one hasn't been made very often. Darren Ritchie in Washington, also in Washington, he says that these centaur asteroids, also known as future Jovian snacks. Some of them, yeah, some of them. Mark Little in Northern Ireland, there are more discovered centaurs in space, nearly 250, than in all of Greek mythology, just 82. Science grows from the seeds of our imagination, says Mark. Well done. Well said. Hari Rao in Texas, I've often wondered about the lower back pain of most centaurs. Can you

imagine standing upright while the lower half is running at one horsepower? No, it's not easy. Mel Powell in California. I wanted to be a centaur when I grow up, but my parents made me go to law school. What a disappointment. I love this one. Jewel, this is like my favorite, Jewel Cry in Texas. You know, Bruce could be a centaur and thanks to radio, we would never know. And for the record, I've only seen Bruce on screen from the shoulders up. All I'm saying is that there's a non-zero possibility.

He's got some extra legs. We should move on. I, I, we should move on. Don't you want to give that a, like a, I can't do it well enough.

There were several versions of this. Oh, that's good. There were several versions of this, We should move on. Don't you want to give that a like a, I can't do it well enough. There were several versions of this. Oh, that's good. There were several versions of this, but Jerry Robinette probably said it best. Jerry's in Ohio. Bruce is a centaur? Well, that might explain some things. Or was he just horsing around?

Yeah. Finally, from our poet laureate, Dave Fairchild in Kansas, a mythical beast is the centaur, half horse and the other half man, a zodiac sign called the archer, and Greece is where all this began. The centaurs that orbit by Neptune are comet and half asteroid. The first one discovered was Chiron, planetesimals out in Void. Nice work, everybody. Thank you very much. What do you got? Who do we have to thank for suggesting the planet name Uranus? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. You have until the 22nd. That's Wednesday, December 22nd at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us the answer. And here's something new for you.

second at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us the answer. And here's something new for you. We got at headquarters, apparently, a whole pile of International Space Station 2022 calendars. So we will send the winner of this contest one of those. Good luck to all of you. Although only one of you is going to win. So sorry about that. I think we're done. All right, everybody, go out there, look up the night sky, and think about what your personal barcode would look like. Thank you, and good night. Well, that's a horse of a different color. And that's a different movie, too.

That's Bruce Betts, the chief scientist of the Planetary Society, who joins us every week here for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its farsighted members. You don't need a telescope to find our membership page. It's planetary.org slash join. Mark Hilverda and Jason Davis are our associate producers. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser at Astra.