Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Kathryn Sullivan, Space Dentistry and More at the International Space Development Conference

Episode Date: June 20, 2018

Freeman Dyson wasn’t the only space star at the ISDC.  Mat talks with former astronaut and NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan, leaders of the Cassini mission, innovative students and an expert on dental care in space.  Keep flossing!  Planetary Society Director of Space Policy Casey Dreier has the latest budget info from Washington and tells us about Space Policy Directive-3. Bruce and Mat have picked the name for the supermassive black hole that lurks at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.  Who has won?  Learn more about all our topics this week:   http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2018/0620-2018-isdc.htmlLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Catherine Sullivan and much more from the ISDC, including Dentistry in Space, 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. We'll talk with former astronaut and head of NOAA, Catherine Sullivan, get an update on science that is still coming from the Cassini mission, meet kids from Texas who are designing award-winning space stations, and learn why humans on their way to Mars will be wise to keep flossing. Stick around to hear the choice Bruce Betts and I have made for naming the humongous black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

Emily Lackawalla won't join us this week, but you can catch her with Bill Nye and Robert Picardo on this week's installment of the Intel AI Interplanetary Challenge. It's on the Planetary Society Facebook page and elsewhere. Let's go instead to the Society's Director of Space Policy, Casey Dreyer. Casey, space policy never rests. Even since you wrote this blog post, NASA's 2019 Budget Takes Shape, and it is available, of course, at planetary.org. You posted it on June 15th.

There's been news even since then, but let's start with the budget here just as a way to, oh, let's say, tease listeners toward reading this great piece. We've had action now by both the House of Representatives and the US Senate. The Senate just took action last week. And what they've both done is essentially passed the draft bills for NASA, among other federal agencies, that would fund the space agency in 2019. The committees have approved them, but neither the Senate nor the full House has voted on these bills. But that's not unusual at this point in the process. They're actually pretty on time, really, considering the past few years. And it

really generally lays out what we will expect to see by the time the final legislation passes. The early drafts here of NASA legislation tend to be quite predictive of what the final bill will be. But we do right now have two. We have Senate and House, and they differ in some important ways. And there's good news and bad news, and you lay some of this out in the post. Absolutely. And we should just say the good news is that both the Senate and the House want to give NASA more money relative to last year and relative to what the White House proposed for 2019. The Senate gives a little less than the House would give, but they're both around $21.4 billion, which is a really good budget for NASA. It continues the trend going up. It's basically the Senate would

give a 3% increase to NASA relative to 2018, and the House would give a 4% increase to NASA relative to 2018. That's a great position to be beginning this final compromise bill discussion on how much more to give. But again, both the Senate and the House, they will apply that extra money in different ways. The big difference really is the Planetary Science Division, something that obviously we have followed for years now at the Planetary Society. The House wants to give planetary science at NASA $2.8 billion. That is a beautiful number, a really good number, historically good number. And the Senate would give $2.2 billion.

So there's roughly a $500 million end change difference between the Senate proposal and the House proposal. We have a new petition at planetary.org slash space advocate. If you want to write your members of Congress, if you live in the United States, and tell them to take the House proposal for planetary science. That extra money would go into Europa. It really helps missions with Mars. It really just keeps the entire process of planetary exploration,

keeps the rebuilding going for the next generation of missions that we will see in 2020. It's a very important budget, and we would love to see the House number be in that final compromise bill later this year. Now is the time to write, and we've made it easy for you online. Many more details, as we said in that June 15th blog post that Casey has put at planetary.org. In the few seconds we've got left, Casey, space policy directive three. Are we trying to avoid traffic accidents in low Earth orbit? Generally, yes. It's a good meaty policy issue.

It's not big headline grabbing kind of stuff, but very important not to get hit with stuff flying at 17,000 miles an hour in space. The big takeaway there is that they would move a lot of traffic management and cataloging away from the Department of Defense and give it to the Department of Commerce. And there's a lot more details in there. It basically, again, like Space Policy Directive 2, kicks off a bunch of analyses and regulatory efforts that will take years to pay off. So this is just the beginning of this longer process. But basically, it's good that we're taking a big picture view of what traffic is going to look like in space, because we don't want a gravity-like situation happening anytime

on our watch. Casey, I look forward very much to talking to you and Jason Callahan when we hit the first Friday in July. And we'll talk about all of these topics, of course, and maybe a little bit of Space Force. We should bit of Space Force. We should probably address Space Force. There's a lot to disassemble there. But I'd say listeners take away, again, this is years away from happening, requires congressional action.

Nothing is changing anytime soon. Just a lot of studies are about to happen. I don't envy the bureaucrats in the Pentagon right now. They have a huge headache now on their hands to try to look this through. Yeah, surprise. That's Casey Dreyer. He is the director of space policy for the Planetary Society. Of course, we hear him monthly in the space policy edition of Planetary Radio.

Casey, thanks again. As always, Matt. Each spring, the National Space Society produces the International Space Development Conference, or ISDC. The 2018 meeting landed near Los Angeles a few weeks ago. Many of you have told me how much you enjoyed last week's conversation with Freeman Dyson. Professor Dyson was in town for the conference, and he was joined by space leaders and fans from around the world. I was there to present an award to JPL and the Voyager team for its outstanding achievements, but it also presented a terrific opportunity to talk with other attendees, including Catherine Sullivan. Catherine became a NASA astronaut in the first class to include women. Over three shuttle missions

and 535 hours in space, she became the first American woman to take a spacewalk, and she was payload commander on her last trip. She'd go on to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. It was the study of our beautiful planet from Earth orbit that dominated her ISDC banquet presentation immediately after receiving the NSS's Space Pioneer Award. She talked with me as the great evening was coming to a close. Catherine, you know I'd like to spend an hour with you, but the hour is late. Terrific presentation, first of all. Thanks very much. Quite fun to be with this group and really a touching honor for them to give me one of their Space Pioneer Awards. This is one of those times when I am really sorry that radio and audio podcasts don't come with

pictures because your images from space were absolutely spectacular. You're clearly a believer in the overview effect. Yeah, I actually was never that much of a believer in the book of that title. But vantage point, you know, perspective. It's really been since we had the spacefaring capability to step back from this planet of ours that we gained the kind of understanding of it that we now make such use of in our everyday lives in the simplest form being the weather forecast that we may look at just to decide about an umbrella or whether to cancel the Little League game. But we also all know that

that kind of full Earth perspective has given us the ability to start to understand how the system of systems that makes our planet run, how does that actually all link together, and to get a really quantitative and rigorous understanding of it so that we can translate it into useful information that we weave into some more important decisions, like who are we going to evacuate as this hurricane comes towards shore or if you're running a large business from a transcontinental retail outfit to an agronomic concern or an airline. What's the weather going to do to me today? How do I optimize my business? How do I protect the revenue and the employment? How do

I look out for hazards that are coming my way? Every one of those images was gorgeous, but there was one that I found especially awe-inspiring, not just because it was beautiful in itself, but because of what it represented of what we humans have accomplished from space looking back at our planet. Do you know the one I'm talking about? It was the globe, the Earth was stationary, but rotating around it were all these terrific visualizations. Sure, that's actually one of my favorites. I call it the rotating orange, right? And it's the Earth rotating around with different orange slice type segments in it, each one of which just shows a small portion of one of the sorts of global

understandings that we now are able to produce. And again, satellites in the space perspective play a tremendous role in that, but satellites are not magic. Satellites don't do this on their own. It's the global measurements from satellites melded with the deep understanding about earth system processes and the care that engineers and and instrument scientists have spent over years to understand how different instruments how do they see and what do they see that combination of work plus oh by the way supercomputers is what lets us now take all of the light a satellite can measure and turn it into an almost instantaneous map of global sea surface temperature, or an almost instantaneous map of soil moisture across the world, or an almost instantaneous map of precipitatable water in the atmosphere, or of

aerosols in the atmosphere. So the ability to see the Earth as a whole, to essentially take a snapshot of it, and then the accumulated knowledge and research that lets us translate the satellite radiances into things that matter to how we live on Earth or to the health of our atmosphere or to the viability of our ocean. That's, as of 1973. That's a very recent capability. We're babies when it comes to taking the pulse of the planet in that way, and we're even more babies in terms of learning how to incorporate that in useful ways into our daily life. And there's one other perspective I would put on that just to sharpen the point.

We are the first generation of human beings ever in the history of life on this planet. I'll say that again. We are the first generation of human beings ever in the history of life on this planet to have the capability to look at and monitor and understand our planet in this way. capability to look at and monitor and understand our planet in this way. That to me is the most precious bequest of the space age. Do we need to do more? We absolutely need to do more. Starting with we need to sustain the suite of eyes on earth that we currently have. To make a daily weather forecast takes billions of measurements that can't be any more than about six hours old. So this is never going to be a big data problem where as long as you measured it once and you have a bunch of data in a database, you can just query the database again, reprocess it again,

and you get tomorrow's weather forecast. This planet is too dynamic for that. If we really want to make use of this kind of environmental intelligence, if we want to have the heads up on hazards and the refinement of our business and economic models that we have today because we've got this information starting to infuse into our world, then we have to sustain the monitoring. You know, your doctor took your pulse when you were in his office last week. And if you start getting sick now, he's not going to make any good diagnosis by going back to the pulse he wrote down when you were in there last week. You need the vital signs from the organism at the moment. We need the vital signs from the planet at the moment to understand this Earth that we live on.

Nice metaphor. this Earth that we live on. Nice metaphor. I was very glad to hear you acknowledge someone who was a regular contributor to Planetary Radio in its early days, who is being honored, was honored, on the very day that we're speaking with the posted stamp. Could you say something about your friend and colleague, Sally Ride? So Sally Ride was one of my five classmates when we all joined NASA in 1978, the first six women to enter the U.S. Astronaut Corps. And today, of course, the U.S. Postal Service has just put out a commemorative stamp with a drawing version of one of the snapshots of her that has been around for quite some time. So I told a story today about one of the minor pranks that Sally

and I played in our young astronaut days. I have recently had on the show Nicole Stott, Samantha Cristoforetti. It's a new generation. I don't even know if it's a second generation, maybe it's a third generation of women who happen to be astronauts, or is it astronauts who happen to be women. How do you feel about these women who have pretty much literally followed in your footsteps? Oh, I just love watching what all the gals in the program, and the guys, I mean, what the astronaut corps of all countries is doing in space today, and the steps, the progress. It's incremental, and I wish it was faster, and I wish we were back on the moon

and maybe even leaving boot prints on Mars. But there is an energy there. There is a spirit there. There are still tremendously talented, passionate people working and living in space and pressing to move the frontier further. Yeah, I think I feel like John Glenn felt when he met me. John, one time when we were together in Ohio, came out to present me, to introduce me to the community of Columbus, Ohio, where I was just moving.

And of course, this is John Glenn, his hometown. And I'm this new kid that's been hired to come to town and run the science museum. And John got up on that stage and said, basically, let me tell you how jealous I am of this woman, and remarked that I had more spaceflight time before I ate my first meal in orbit than he had in his entire career. And I was delighted to see him, some years later, get to up that number. And I think I feel kind of the same about the Nicoles and the

Peggy Whitsons and others. I love seeing the 100-day patch on their flight suits. I kind of wish I'd have been around when it was possible to get a 100-day patch. But, you know, John wished he'd been around when you could get even a one-day patch. So I've long thought if you're doing something worthwhile and you have the good fortune to make a new mark, whether it's a speed record and a race or whatever it might be, if you really care about the pursuit you're in, as proud as you are of that mark you made, you should hope it doesn't take too long to be erased. At least you got your Mach 25 badge.

Yeah, I'm good with that. You had at the bottom of some of your slides, I think I have the word right, astronaut, scientist. Scientist, astronaut explorer is a tagline I have used to describe myself for quite some time. And you've been much more than that. Administrator, I think, would be in there as well. But is it explorer? Cry ads are better than. Yeah, there's something about comic and other timing in that.

But is it Explorer that you most like to be known as? I mean, you deferred to Buzz Aldrin, who was in the room tonight. Explorer is the longest, earliest recognized and longest running identity statement for me. Catherine, it's a pleasure.

I hope to spend that hour with you sometime soon. I'll look forward to it, Matt. 9090, you want to hear Catherine Sullivan's story about Sally Ride. It's coming, but you'll have to wait for it. The National Space Society also had an award for the team behind the Cassini mission to Saturn. Representing the mission were Trina Ray, the Cassini science planning and sequencing deputy, who is also the Titan Orbiter science team co-chair, and Scott Edgington, deputy project scientist for Cassini. I'm always delighted to hear more about Cassini. We are all so proud. I know you said you were at that great Caltech celebration we did, right? we did, right? Oh yes. I mean, at the end of the mission there was kind of a blur of events, but

some of them really do stick out and the Caltech event is one that definitely sticks out. And it was a very emotional evening that evening. We were all either at the lab or at Caltech, being with literally a thousand of your colleagues watching the end of this mission. literally a thousand of your colleagues watching the end of this mission. And you know it's been a remarkable mission, 13 years of exploration of the Saturn system, very tear-jerking moment to see it end. So I don't know when the audience will hear this, but just less than a week ago, I was in D.C. at the National Air and Space Museum talking to Ellen Stofan. I talked to her about how much I love that museum, and she said, you're trying to make me cry again like I did for End of Mission for Cassini.

And I said, no, no, no, that was Cassini that made you cry because I was standing with her in front of those big outdoor screens at Caltech. And it was such a great moment of pride for what you folks and the rest of the team have accomplished. Well, 13 years, seeing all the remarkable science, all the discoveries that Cassini has done, it's just an amazing mission. But what makes it even more amazing is our colleagues and friends that we've met over the years and just being together and for that one last time just so emotional. The fact that the Cassini ended was such an exciting ending to the mission. It was just out in a blaze of glory and to be able to bring

the whole family together, the people that you've known and worked with for years, decades in fact, made this exciting scientific ending of the mission also an exciting personal experience as well. And it's a blessing to have been part of it. And it ain't over yet. You were just saying there's lots and lots of science that you can't tell me about yet. Yes. The last year we had all this great science up close observing the planets and the

rings, detecting magnetic fields, gravitational fields. Well, all that work, the scientists have had nine months to work on that data and analyze it. And that's being put out there for publication. So in about a month and a half, maybe, we'll be seeing a whole lot of new science out there. And it's going to be just amazing what we're going to be showing to the public. People couldn't see your enthusiasm as he was talking about that upcoming science. Well, I have to say that I've gotten a couple of previews from some of the scientists. And I know that the scientific results that they're about to publish are going to be really fascinating, and you guys are going to look forward to them. Your audience is going to love to hear about them.

All right, we're going to bring back Linda Spilker. She couldn't make it today, unfortunately, but we'll have her back for one of her regular visits, and we'll get at least somewhat caught up. But people can go to the website too. Yeah, saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. Yep, saturn.jpl.nasa.gov is still live and they still load things up all the time. Thank you, folks. You're welcome. Tina Ray and Scott Edgington of the Cassini mission at the International Space Development Conference.

The ISDC was also home to a brilliant display of space art provided by members of the International Association of Astronautical Artists. And there were other exhibits, including a big trailer carrying an impressive assembly of pipes, cryogenic tanks, valves, monitoring equipment, and more. It was accompanied by members of the SEDS chapter at the University of California, San Diego. SEDS chapter at the University of California, San Diego. SEDS is Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, and it has chapters at many universities. My name is Dennis Wren, and I'm the project manager for Colossus, the rocket engine test stand. My name is Lily Wang, and I'm a structure team member on Colossus.

My name is Maxwell Kelly, and I was also a structure team member on Colossus. So we are literally standing over your trailer hitch here and behind us, this is Colossus? Yeah, that's Colossus. As you can see, we built a rocket engine test stand into an 18 feet utility trailer, full sized. So what is the plan? How is this going to be used? Basically, it's to build a foundation for student groups to be able to test the rocket engines on. We want to give students a place that they can build their ideas and put their engines to use, because that's a big challenge that a lot of places face, is they build these engines, they have these great ideas,

but they have no way to test them, and they need to build their own engine test stands. But with ours, we can drive it out to wherever they need it and give them a test. That's pretty cool. So you'll take this out into the Mojave or wherever? Our test stand will be driven out to the Mojave to RRS, and we have a concrete pad and some bunkers that we'll be testing in.

So I was just out there on Friday for a test of a massed-in-space system, Zodiac system, with a planet vac on one of the feet. Thought I won't explain right now. This looks very sophisticated. I mean, what all does this provide? Colossus is designed to, you know, provide dual cryogenic capabilities to deliver, you know, a mix of two cryogenic propellants. You mean like liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen?

Not necessarily liquid hydrogen. It's kind of out of range, but liquid methane for sure. Right. So, yeah, you know, anything from room temperature to that, to that you know one fuel one oxidizer each on each side uh and we can handle up to 1350 psi of press pressure on the tanks and we can structurally our our structures is up to 5000 sound for you know any engine that can provide that much uh that can generate that much thrust i assume it has not supported a launch yet, or excuse me, an engine test. Our first hot fire will be tested on one of our own in-house engines, Ignis 2,

and it's scheduled for June 8th, hopefully. Is this all being done independent of your coursework, of your studies? Absolutely, yeah. We're a 100% undergraduate student-run group, and this is not really related to any of our coursework at all. We do it because we love space, and we enjoy making things happen with our own hands. Thank you very much, guys. Impressive piece of hardware that you have here, and best of luck this summer with that first test firing.

And go Tritons! Thank you. Go Tritons! Thank you! Thank you. Thank you. Three of the members of the SEDS chapter at UC San Diego with their mobile rocket engine static test fire stand, Colossus. They and I were at the International Space Development Conference. The ISDC hosted scores of presentation sessions

and hundreds of presenters on every imaginable space-related topic. One was delivered by Linda Dow from International Space University. The intriguing title? Dental Health Care in Space. Did you see the Tom Hanks movie Cast Away? I actually have not. What is that one about? Well, that's where he's stuck on a desert island by himself. No one knows he's there. He's there for some number of years. And maybe the biggest challenge he faces is that he's got a bad tooth. Oh, yes. Yes. So actually, there have been real cases where astronauts have had a tooth infection in space and the pain was so severe, they didn't even know what to do. So in 1987, I believe,

Yuri Romanenko, he had a severe toothache. And no one, because at that time, we didn't even know what to do. So in 1987, I believe, Yuri Romanenko, he had a severe toothache. And because at that time we didn't have any measures to deal with dental concerns in space, he had to deal with that toothache for another week or so before he was brought back down to Earth. But that severely hindered his mission success, like all the projects and experiments that he had to perform up in space. his mission success, like all the projects and experiments that he had to perform up in space. So let's say six people who got excellent health care before they left on their mission, but they're going to be gone for two years on the way to Mars, dealing with microgravity and minimal gravity on Mars.

What's the likelihood that somebody's going to run into some kind of serious dental problem? Well, if you look at the rates of dental issues in space right now, they might be maybe for dental care, 0.4 of a dental care event per person per year. So, a 40% chance each year? Yes, each year. Just 0.4 of an event. So, that's not even one event per person per year. But if you think about as missions are becoming longer, maybe to Mars or even beyond to other planetary missions, if we're thinking about asteroid missions as becoming longer, maybe to Mars or even beyond to other planetary missions, if we're thinking about asteroid missions as well, we have to consider multiple year missions. So that rate increases considerably over time. And astronauts don't have the best dental hygiene in space. They have to swallow their own toothpaste. So all the bacteria and food particles, they're

swallowing that back into their body. It's not disappearing from them and by other means. So even if most of us haven't thought about this, obviously you are and other people are because you presented a lot of good research on how serious the problem is, but also how we might deal with it. Start with toothpaste. Yeah. So in the past, there have been ingestible toothpaste created by a company that worked with NASA. And NASA used this commercial toothpaste in the past, there have been ingestible toothpaste created by a company that worked with NASA. And NASA used this commercial toothpaste in the past, but now they have their own type of toothpaste that you can just swallow. The commercial toothpaste we find off the shelf, we can actually swallow that to a certain degree. Because the astronauts are not spending a lot of time in space, it's not toxic to their bodies. a lot of time in space, it's not toxic to their bodies.

There's a new type of product where the toothpaste comes in sort of a pouch, and you can pop the toothpaste pouch into your mouth, brush your teeth, and then the packet itself just fully dissolves, and it's called Pop-It. And it's still being in the works right now. Contracts are being signed with space agencies to have that going up soon. How about food? Is that going to play a big part in protecting astronauts' teeth? Yeah, so food plays a large role. And when we consider dental health care, we have to consider what type of food they're eating. For example, saliva has a very strong protective property against dental cavities. If you're eating foods that are chewy, that are rigid,

such as dried fruits, I mean, in one sense, it's great because it's inducing saliva formation to protect against dental erosion and cavity formation. But on the other end, dried fruits have a lot of exposed sugars that can increase your cavity formation. So how do you balance that? We can't really have a lot of dried fruits in space, sorry, fresh fruits in space right now. And so we have to dry it. We have to manipulate the food items. But when we manipulate the food

items, we have to consider, are we exposing any sugars that will be even worse for our teeth? And will that increase the rate of oral diseases as longer missions persist in space? Okay, so let's assume that our astronauts headed for Mars, they're eating right, they're brushing and flossing twice a day, and somebody still gets a terrible, terrible problem with their teeth. What are you going to do? You can't turn around. No, the only treatments we have in space are temporary. We don't have any definitive treatments such as going to a dentist, getting a proper x-ray, getting that diagnosed and fixing it. Instead, astronauts have to determine where their pain is and they can use a really cool

numbing technique where they would numb parts of the mouth at a time and figure out do you still feel pain or do you don't feel pain. And that's how they isolate where the pain is from there. They can use diagnostic equipment such as a transillumination device. This uses light in between the teeth to look for cavities or any crevices within the teeth that are causing food particles to get trapped. Or they can use a 3D scanning device just to check around the mouth as similar to an x-ray. But obviously people are thinking beyond this because you, one of your slides, you showed 3D printed dental instruments. Yes. In fact, there have been Mars analog missions

where we've tested out 3D instrument, 3D printed dental instruments, and we tested them in filling in cavities, on fake teeth, and it all worked out perfectly. So you can have a 3D scanner scan your mouth for any problems, send that data down to Earth where dentists can evaluate the data, and then if any problems arise, they can send the information back up into space. If you need an extra crown, for example, the dentist on Earth can have that 3D printed, send the data of the file into space with the 3D printer up in space in the habitat. They can 3D print their own crown and, you know, have a crew medical officer implant it back into the tooth. So that is new technology, new procedures right there. Before I let you go, you said that you're working with the students who are here at ISTC.

And there are a lot of students here. Yeah. So we have over 350 students, not including the teachers and chaperones with them. And they are part of the space settlement design competition, where they are designing different space settlements, sharing that data with posters and oral presentations. And it's amazing because they're coming from all around the world. We have a lot of students from Romania, India, China, America, Canada. All of these people are interacting with space professionals and experts and they get this unique experience to learn from each other and have this unique global experience.

Well, it is the International Space Development Conference. Yes. I'm going to go check out those posters. Thank you again very much. Absolutely fascinating, and I'll keep flossing. All right. Thank you so much for having me, Matt. Thank you.

Most of our colony will reside on 100% gravity, which is basically the average amount of gravity on Earth. For regulating the temperatures, we will be using probes that retract out into space, collecting heat and coolness. They collect the temperatures and regulate the temperatures in the space colony using water banks that either consist of heat or cold water. This is how we will regulate our temperatures. That was part of my personal tour of a space station designed by young people, very young people. They were among those 350 students from around the world mentioned by Linda Dow.

I soon found the adult mentor for two teams from Texas. So my name is Mirza Faisan. I'm an aerospace scientist by profession. I've been an innovator myself. I have around 11 innovations and patents to my name. I'm actually teaching this life cycle of innovation process to the kids and the kids actually do a real life innovation. In fact, the kids who are here right now, they have two patentable innovations in this competition as well. So this is exactly it. That's what I heard. Yeah, that's pretty impressive. There are two teams. Now you've got one team right here that apparently took the grand prize, took first place. Yeah, so they got first place in grade 7th and under category, first place.

And one of the interesting innovations they have done is a rocket-less launch system to launch the supplies from Earth to the space colony. system to launch the supplies from Earth to the space colony. Standing with you is the woman who actually grabbed me, pulled me into this yesterday, and I'm very glad you did. Introduce yourself. My name is Samina Karmali, and my son participated in the Ames Space Settlement Contest. You told me you have two children in this. Yeah, my daughter is in third grade, and she's napping upstairs.

They won honorable mention, and I believe we might have some of the youngest kids who participated in this contest because we actually have a third grader who participated on our team. Then we have a bunch of fifth graders and then we have an eighth grader and they all work together in Google Hangouts every month and sometimes every week they would get together to dream up their ideas together. So they are learning much more than just a space, just for a competition. They are learning innovation. They are learning how to manage a project. They are learning how to work in a real-life corporate environment. So they have a lot in common, the projects they did.

Everybody's from Texas, both groups. But also, everyone is Muslim. Yes, everyone is Muslim. We thank Almighty for that. There's a lot of stories about media, about what Muslims do and what they don't do. We just want to tell the world this is also what we do. I think this goes a long ways toward demonstrating the truth of that because we all know how much of a Muslim representation there is in science and engineering.

Oh, I'm excited that you know that. In fact, that is one of my vision is to get the golden Islamic period, you know, the golden Islamic period from 800 to 1100 AD, where we have been designing, developing everything. Science, mathematics, astronomy. Mathematics, astronomy, you know it all. So we want to actually revive that as well. We want to have a Basim Nifarnas from these.

We want to have Al-Khwarizmi from these people. That's what we want to do, yes. Does this make any of you want to have a career in aerospace or other related areas? Yeah. the related areas? Yeah, this gave me like a chance to like better think about stuff and like more solve like world problems and like stuff like that. What I wanted to be was a psychologist. It showed me that I had more interest out of that area. Thank you very much. Congratulations on your wins. Thank you so much, Matt. Thank you so much for having us. Okay, you've waited long enough. Here's that story Catherine Sullivan told during her dinner presentation at the 2018 ISDC.

I'm grateful to the National Space Society for allowing me to be part of this year's gathering. You can read about their plans for the 2019 conference at nss.org. We're being trotted around to everywhere in the universe, both to learn a bit about NASA and how it works and all of its stakeholders, and frankly, so that NASA can show off its 35 newest shiny toys. And one of the stops on this tour was, of course, the Kennedy Space Center. And one of the evening events was a reception and dinner at the home in Cocoa Beach of Al Newharth, the founder of USA Today.

This is a legend here. I see heads going up and down. I'm temporarily gone blank on the funky name for the place. It was something like the Monkey House or the Banana House or something like that. So we're being trooped into this compound on Cocoa Beach to spend the evening with him and his wife. And we're on a line. There's a

little bit of a receiving line, Mrs. Newhart. I'm just about to go up the two steps, and I see Sally, Sally Ride, flying down the steps out the other way. And I grab her and say, if I got to do this, you got to do this, and shove her into line in front of me. And so in we go. And spur of the moment, because someone had already joked that no one can tell any of the six women astronauts apart, spur of the moment, Sally and I decide, let's see if we can do this. And so I go in and say hello to Mrs. Newharth as Sally Ride,

and life is good. And then I go next to Al, and he's pumping my hand and saying, oh, Sally Ride, I would love to get you out on that tennis court and see what you could do. And at exactly the same time, Mrs. Newharth is shaking Sally's hand and saying, oh, Kathy Sullivan, it's so nice to Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Bruce Betts is the chief scientist for the Planetary Society. He's also in charge of coming up with all of the space trivia and other things that we throw at you for the quiz, the weekly quiz. And we have a terrific one that we're going to finish up today, but many other wonderful things to get from Bruce first. Welcome

back. Thank you, Matt. Yes, we have much wonder, much wonder. It's full of wonder. So we've got planets, Matt, and I get excited about them every week and I know it's redundant, but my gosh, there's Venus low in the West in the early evening. It's not even that low. And Jupiter over, turn around, it's looking super bright there. We got Saturn coming up around the end of the evening, or I'm sorry, the twilight, the end of sunset. And then Mars getting brighter. Mars is now officially brighter than the brightest star in the sky. Yay. It is approaching the brightness of Jupiter.

It'll get there by the end of July when it said its closest approach, the best closest approach since 2003. Don't miss it. Go big red. And I've got a bonus for you, a big asteroid. Vesta is actually visible with just your eyes if you were in a dark site right now. You're going to want to pull out a finder chart. So look up Vesta or go to your favorite astronomy website. But it's in Sagittarius and it is magnitude 5.3. But you should be able to

check it out with binoculars and a finder chart also. So check out Vesta while you're hanging with all the planets. That is so cool. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. Do it. Do it. We move on to this week in space history was 2004. Spaceship one became the first private flight to space.

I was standing on the tarmac. All right. We move on to. I don't know. Okay, so my grandson's favorite person in the world, I think after his mother and father, is Elmo. And that was a reasonable Elmo. This is the fact, la la la la, random space fact. I got mad. My job is done. All right. To maintain the orbit of the International Space Station requires about 7.5 metric tons of fuel each year. The orbital boosts are necessary because the atmospheric drag is sufficient, even in what we call space, to degrade the orbit.

Very impressive. I had no idea it would take that much fuel. I think provided by little boosts from Soyuz, right? Soyuz spacecraft? They use International Space Station main engines. They'll also use Soyuz and even cargo craft to help with the boosty boosts. That's the technical term, boosty boosts. All right. So we have a fun, a fun question, trivia question for you, which was, what would you call the super massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy? We're looking for humor, interest, anything that the judges deem a worthy thing to judge upon.

Who are the judges again? You and me. Right. Okay. So how'd we do, man? Wow. It's been a while since we've done one of these special contests of yours. And we had a number of people who said, how come you don't do these more often? Well, all right, we'll put that in Bruce's ear. In fact, we just have. But a much bigger response than we have ever had to one of these. I guess it just captured your imagination. Of course, we will submit our winners, because we have multiple winners, too, to the International Astronomical Union.

And as they always do, they accept without question the names that we come up with for objects in the sky. Yes. Yes. Not. No, we did. We had a huge response. A lot of people who just came up with names of their wife or a friend or something. So we got Earl. We got Steve.

We got Fred. We got Faye. We also got Chuck Norris. Tough guy, Black Hole. Yeah, yeah, very tough. We got Peanut. We got Lights End. We got, and I like this a lot, it's not a winner, but the very first one that we got in said it should be Bruce. Yes. Yeah, probably shouldn't allow that. But yeah, I think I'm going to submit it to the IAU. And that came, by the way, from Bob

Klain, whose name I think I've just mispronounced. He said, okay, I'm sure it's not original, but I will go to the, quote, Matt, unquote, over this. So he worked me in as well. He's really covering his, hedging his bets here. I just realized it may not be a compliment having super massive black hole named after you. No, I think it is absolutely everything that you want it to be. We got some other funny stuff. Oh, here's one that we, of course,

speaking of sucking up, this one wins the sucking up prize. Planet Vac Pro. Yay! That came from Torsten zimmer in germany who actually had several excellent suggestions for us speaking of sucking it up we've gone with two winners because we you and i agreed on this we're going to give one for humor value and one because it's just dignified enough that maybe the IAU would go for it. You want to describe the humorous one here?

Yes, it is a wonderful acronym. The Singularity Unwinding Circling Kinetically Trapped Ultra Heated Particles, better known as suck it up. From Dave Fairchild, of all people, our poet laureate. He's the one who came up with the suck it up. From Dave Fairchild, of all people, our poet laureate. He's the one who came up with the suck it up. So, Dave, it just happens that I can spare a second little chip of melted concrete, concrete turned to glass, by the Masten Space Systems Zodiac rocket during the test of PlanetVac. Bruce, you want to pick up with the winner for a dignified name that the IAU might accept? It figures you'd stick me with the unpronounceable word.

Yes, the... You noticed that. He nicely gave pronunciation, though. Erisikthon, Erisikthon, named after an entity from Greek mythology who was cursed with insatiable hunger such that anything he ate just made him hungrier. And she said, that sounds like a good description of a black hole to me. Erisikthon. So Gretchen Wright in New York, New York, you are the winner in our dignified category, and you will also get that chip of that melted concrete.

And we're going to send Gretchen and Dave Fairchild 200-point itelescope.net accounts from itelescope.net, that worldwide nonprofit network of telescopes. I don't think they'll mind us giving away two of these this week. They're pretty nice guys. So congratulations to both of you. Well, if you're willing to give away two pieces of melted concrete, I mean, of course. But they're so cool. They really are cool looking. I'm keeping the best one for myself.

Yeah, of course. I shouldn't have said that on air, should I? No, probably not. All right, we move on to another boring contest without creativity. Well, I'm sure you'll still find a way to be creative. What is the approximate altitude range above the surface of the Earth of the International Space Station? Altitude? ISS? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest.

And it's going to be approximate, but give me an approximate range of altitudes. Do you care whether that's in kilometers, miles, or are some of those really unique entertaining units that our listeners sometimes come up with? I would say give the answer in kilometers and or miles, as well as any entertaining units you use. Entertaining units, not required. You need to get us those units, any units not required. You need to get us those units, whatever type they are, by the 27th. That would be Wednesday, June 27th at 8 a.m. Pacific time so that you can get in on this one and you will win yourself a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Be the envy of your neighborhood and perhaps the galaxy along with a 200-point itelescope.net account. We're done. All right, everybody, go out there and look up the night sky and think if you were the leader of a resycton or suck it up,

what would be your first order of business? Thank you and good night. My first order of business would be not being spaghettified. He's Bruce Betts. He is the chief scientist for the Planetary Society who joins us every week here for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in 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 international members.

Mary Liz Bender is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. I'm Matt Kaplan, Ad Astra.