Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Lakes on Titan and an International Lunar Decade

Episode Date: July 31, 2006

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An international lunar decade and water skiing on Titan, this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. Cassini has finally discovered the Titan Lake District. No, not water. Bodies of liquid methane or ethane as much as 75 kilometers wide on Saturn's big

moon. We'll talk about them with JPL's Rosalie Lopez. First, though, a quick debriefing with the Planetary Society's executive director Lou Friedman. Lou and Bill Nye the Science Guy have just returned from China. You'll hear about their trip and the Society's proposal for a decade of international study of our own moon.

And eventually, we'll pay another visit to Bruce Betts for this week's What's Up, including a new space trivia contest. As the first of you hear this week's show, space shuttle Atlantis may be slowly rolling out to the pad. The launch window opens August 27 for a mission to, where else, the International Space Station. This will be the first flight for Atlantis in nearly four years. Attention amateur astronomers, want to save the world? Then you'll want to get a Shoemaker Near-Earth Object Grant application. Past recipients have been awarded more than $150,000 by the Planetary Society.

The funds have enabled skywatchers to upgrade their equipment. The better to find those asteroids and comets whose orbits take them uncomfortably close to Earth. The deadline is October 18. Details are on the web at planetary.org. This is the time each week when I introduce Q&A with Emily Lakdawalla, and that's just what I'm going to do after letting you know about some news of a more personal nature. By the time you hear this, Emily may have become a mom. Not surprisingly, she has begun a few weeks of maternity leave from the Society. Till she returns, we'll carry on with some of her best Q&A segments from the past. We might have a couple of other surprises for you as well.

Here's this week's Golden Oldie sent with advanced congratulations and best wishes to Mom, Dad, and Baby Laktawalla. I'll be right back with Lou Friedman. Lakdawalla. I'll be right back with Lou Friedman. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, during the Apollo missions, they captured cool film footage of the Saturn rocket stage separations. How is this footage captured? Some of the favorite images from the Apollo missions are video of the separation of the first and second stages of the Saturn V rocket, followed by ignition of the second stage rockets. These amazing images show the curving blue marble of Earth in the background.

They were captured using 16mm motion cameras mounted on the forward end of the Saturn rocket's first stage. motion cameras mounted on the forward end of the Saturn rocket's first stage. The cameras operated for less than 30 seconds as the rocket stages separated 80 kilometers above the Atlantic Ocean. After recording, the cameras were ejected from the rocket. They were enclosed in waterproof aluminum capsules equipped with para-balloons that slowed their descent and kept them afloat once they splashed down. After they fell into the ocean, radio beacons and dye markers helped the Air Force to locate them. Nowadays, capturing film of rocket launches doesn't require such heroic efforts.

Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out more. It's hardly news when Lou Friedman gets on an airplane. As executive director of the Planetary Society, Lou is often on the road representing the Society's interests in space exploration worldwide. But this time, he was in the company of Bill Nye the Science Guy as he headed for a conference in Earth's most populous nation. While there, he presented a dramatic proposal for a cooperative study of our nearest neighbor in space, the moon. We spoke with him the day after his return to California. Lou, welcome back to both Planetary Radio and to the United States, to which you have

just returned from, what is it, your third trip to China? That's right. It is my third trip, Matt. What were you doing over there this time, and why was Bill Nye along? Well, as always, I try to have multiple reasons to go someplace, and I am glad to be home. But China was terrific, and there's a lot of energy out there in all aspects of their life, and especially in their burgeoning space program. I was there for three reasons.

One was the COSPAR meeting, the Committee on Space Research, as a large meeting of the world's space scientists which gather. Secondly, a meeting of the International Lunar Exploration Working Group, at which I presented at both of these meetings a concept that Wes Huntress and I have developed called the International Lunar Decade. And we're proposing an International Lunar Decade be established, both to help coordinate missions, a lot of different missions that are going to the moon, and also the world science interest in lunar activities, giving scientists a chance globally to participate.

And then the third reason I was over there is really to make contacts, additional contacts, follow-up contacts with Chinese space officials to look for cooperative relationships that the Planetary Society can pioneer as they now become a space-faring nation. We should mention Wes Huntress, President of the Society, Bill Nye, the Science Guy, Vice President of the Planetary Society. Of course, you're the executive director, as we mentioned. How was the reception over there, particularly to this concept from you and Wes, for an international lunar decade? It was very well received, and it was endorsed by the International Lunar Exploration Working Group, and I would say that we got a lot of positive comments on it.

One other aspect of the trip, which I need to tell you about, is Bill Nye was with me, and we had had some previous contacts with the Beijing Planetarium and arranged a public talk for him there, and Bill and I went down to the Planetarium and Bill gave a very nice talk, translated, of course, into Chinese. Lots of kids were present,

and there was a great interest. There are more similarities around the world than there are differences, if we can only capitalize on them. And I think popular outreach about space exploration in China is something that we can help foster. Are you telling me that Bill Nye's renown among young people extends to Chinese youth? Well, no, he was not known in that area. We had to sort of explain who he was.

But then I think as soon as Bill begins talking, people realize uh... who he is and what he's uh... what he's trying to do any he uh... got rapport with with the people very quickly tell us more about this uh... concept for the international lunar decade and and why this may be a particularly good time to suggest this well next year china and japan are uh are beginning moon exploration with their lunar orbiters. The following year, India and the United States plan to launch missions to the moon. I should have mentioned Europe has a mission there right now,

which is going to impact the moon on September 2nd. So moon exploration is beginning again. Furthermore, the United States wants to go there with humans, and now we hear that Russia may be going back to the moon as well. So there's a whole aspect of international participation by national agencies going to the moon, and there does need to be some effort. If this isn't all going to be duplicated, and if this is not going to all be disjointed, there does need to be an effort to coordinate it and to help facilitate communications, as well as to encourage scientists. Just like the International Geophysical

Year stimulated Antarctic research and actually led to the space age with Earth observations, International Polar Years have provided a great impetus to Earth observing satellites and to climate studies. We hope that the international lunar decade which might begin in 2007 and extend maybe even a little longer than a decade i said 2019 to hopefully get the next human landing on the moon but to have a uh this lunar decade might stimulate the scientific participation around the world in these missions and in the Earth-based studies that go along with them. How does suggesting something like this fit into the mission of the Planetary Society?

As you know, our job is to inspire the people of Earth to explore new worlds, and getting more people involved around the world is part of our mission. In fact, that's one of the things the Society can do uniquely uniquely because we don't feel we're a national organization beholden to any political government activity. We like to think of ourselves as a global organization working for people everywhere.

And I think this is something that we're free to do and also free to advocate in a different fora. The scientific organizations, the international professional organizations, the different fora, the scientific organizations, the international professional organizations, the UN Committee on Peaceful Use of Outer Space, and then the national space agencies, NASA, the European Space Agency, the Russian Space Agency, the Chinese Space Agency, et cetera.

Let's close with a little bit more about China now. Since you've been there three times, bit more about China now. Since you've been there three times, have you seen the space exploration efforts evolve over those trips to mainland China? Well, I'm just getting to know it, man. What I am getting to see is more and more young people involved in it and more and more impact it's having on society generally. You see newspaper articles about it. I saw a couple of public lectures held this time in which students were questioning why China was undertaking this program and what they wanted to get from it. So I do see not so much an evolution of space technology. That's normal.

In fact, there's almost a sense of deja vu about some of the things the Chinese are doing look like some of the things the Russians and Americans did when they were starting their space program. But what I do see is an evolution of the effect this is having in the wider part of society and the more attention it's getting. And I think one of the professors over there who was explaining to the students why China was doing this had the answer of S. It's just one of the things a country does is it has to develop.

And they have to do it themselves. At the same time, they have to do it in partnership on a world stage. So it's part of a developing nation's activity. And that's one of the things the moon does. It's a stepping stone into the solar system. It was that way for the United States and Russia. It's now that way for China, India, Japan, and I think other countries as well will be following. Just one other question, Lou.

You got any tips for getting over jet lag? Actually, Matt, it's one of the – my main way to get over jet lag is to come home and get one good night's sleep. That's all it ever takes me. I have it all the time when I'm traveling, but when I come home, I immediately recover. So I'm completely recovered. I'm envious. Well, thanks so much, Lou, for talking to us for a few minutes,

giving us this report. Thank you. Lou Friedman is the executive director of the Planetary Society. Don't go away. We're not done. Right after this break, we'll be back with Rosalie Lopez to talk about those lakes on Saturn's moon Titan. is helping to explore Mars. We're tracking near-Earth asteroids and comets. We sponsor the search for life on other worlds, and we're building the first-ever solar sail. We didn't just build it.

We attempted to put that first solar sail in orbit, and we're going to try again. You can read about all our exciting projects and get the latest space exploration news in-depth at the Society's exciting and informative website, planetary.org. You can also preview our full-color magazine, The Planetary Report. We'll be right back. Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Cassini has done it again. The big Saturn orbiter once more passed close to cloud-shrouded Titan, the moon visited by the Huygens lander.

This time, the radar instrument hit the jackpot. Lakes. Liquid lakes. Lots of them in Titan's northern hemisphere. Up till now, scientists had to settle for just one questionable image of a lake-like body down south. Before she left on maternity leave, Emily Laktawalla prepared a great article about this find. You'll find it at planetary.org, along with spectacular pictures. We thought we'd get a quick overview from our friend Rosalie Lopez of the Jet Propulsion Lab near Pasadena, California. The volcanologist is a group supervisor of geophysics and geosciences at the lab

and analyzes the radar images returned by Cassini. Rosalie, welcome back to Planetary Radio, and congratulations on this wonderful discovery that you and the radar team have made on Titan. Thank you so much. It's great to be back talking to you all, and we have some really exciting discoveries on Titan. We had our closest yet flyby of Titan at an altitude of 950 kilometers, and we flew over the north polar regions of Titan and finally found lakes on Titan. It was very exciting.

Not just one lake, but I guess whole systems of what appear to be lakes? Yes, we're calling it the Lake District of Titan. It's several lakes, several tens of kilometers wide. some several tens of kilometers wide. The largest may be as much as 75 kilometers across, maybe more. We don't see the whole of it. We find some smaller ones, maybe two, three kilometers. But as a whole, there seems to be dozens of lakes.

And on the next flyby, which is going to happen in October, we are going to go over part of this area again and, in fact, go further north, even closer to the North Pole. So we're going to see how far this lake district expands into the polar region. And I guess with that next opportunity, you've actually, because of this discovery, you've changed the plans for where Cassini's radar instrument will be looking? That's right. We always have the option of radar because it's a side-looking radar. We can look left or we can look right.

And we actually changed the look from the previous plan was at a lower latitude, but we got so excited by this discovery that we decided to look further north and see how far this lake system extends. So while Titan may challenge Minnesota for its title Land of 10,000 Lakes, probably the recreational activities in Minnesota are safe from Titan. Nobody's going to be doing water sports there. I don't think so. It's very, very cold. You certainly wouldn't catch me.

I think even Minnesota is too cold for me. And also the lakes, we think methane, liquid methane, or perhaps etane. So it would be very, very weird, not water sports, liquid sports. The places where you're finding these lakes, apparently there's some kind of depression. I guess there's even a possibility, it must be very exciting to a volcanologist, to think that these could be volcanic calderas? That's right, and that's what we are discussing a lot in the team at the moment. The depressions where you find at least some of these lakes

are morphologically very similar to calderas on Earth and calderas on other planets. So this is really exciting, and for me it's very exciting. I used to study lava lakes on Io. I still study them to some extent, and now it's methane lakes on Titan. So, you know, maybe my fate is to study weird lakes. I heard another. This is a brand-new term for me, and I'm surprised I'd never heard of it, that these could also be something called, I don't even know how to pronounce it,

but it's a Mars with an extra A. Yes, that's kind of like a volcanic feature on like soggy ground. There is a debate whether some of these volcanic features, if they are volcanic features, could have been formed by explosive volcanism, but the theoretical studies indicate that it would actually be hard to get big volcanic explosions on Titan because the atmospheric pressure actually inhibits that, and we don't think there's a lot of methane as volatile dissolved in the, quote, cryomagma. But we're still very much in the beginning of studying Titan and studying what the materials might be that are forming the lake, what the kind of cryomagma might be, and all the possibilities

that we might have. I don't know how to pronounce it either, but like methane aquifers, so methanifers maybe? Methanifers. Yeah, we're going to have to come up with a lot of new terms for Titan. That's always fun. I know that everybody was very hopeful that we would find exactly this kind of topography and lakes like this on Titan. All this may have surpassed anybody's hopes.

But it took quite a while. Why did it take a couple of years? I mean, people were even hoping that Huygens would land in one of these. Yes, it seems that Titan doesn't have as many lakes as we thought. In fact, in the old days, after Voyager, the idea was that Titan might even have oceans, because we need the methane in Titan's atmosphere is broken down by ultraviolet light. So something needs to be putting methane back into the atmosphere. And one easy way to do it is to have evaporation from lakes or oceans. So we were looking for the lakes, but had not found them yet. Now, it was also postulated that they would be at higher latitudes where it's colder.

And the imaging team found, in fact, one feature that really looks very much like a lake close to the South Pole. And now we found this whole load of them close to the North Pole. So it looks like the lakes are there, but it was not until we flew over the polar regions that we actually saw them. So you're very excited as you look forward to this next pass over Saturn's moon. That's right. Yes.

Come October, we're going to have more exciting radar data. Well, we'll look forward to talking to you again then. And you told me just before we started recording that, not surprisingly, you're dividing your attention between cryo features like this and your next book, Io After Galileo? That's right.

I'm just doing the proof this weekend. It is a research level book that summarizes all we know about Io after the Galileo mission. Okay, Rosalie. Well, good luck with that. And we do look forward to talking to you again soon.

Thanks for joining us once again on the show. Thank you so much. Rosalie Lopez is a volcanologist and group supervisor in geophysics and planetary geosciences at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And as you've heard, she analyzes the radar images of Titan returned by the Cassini spacecraft. She's also the author of the Volcano Adventure Guide and Volcanic Worlds, Exploring the Solar System's Volcanoes, both of which we've talked about on this show. We're going to do some exploring of the night sky with Bruce Betts in just a minute

after this return visit from Emily. Bruce Betts in just a minute after this return visit from Emily. I'm Emily Lakdawalla back with Q&A. How do we capture video from launching rockets? There is now a private company called Ecliptic Enterprises that is making a profitable business from putting cameras on launch vehicles. Ecliptic's rocket cams have been mounted to Delta IIs, IIIs, and IVs, to Atlas IIs, IIIs, and Vs, on Spaceship One, and on the Space Shuttle tank and solid rocket boosters.

The cameras are tiny, weighing less than 100 grams, and can radio color images and even sound directly back to Earth as the rocket lifts off, or they can store the data for later download. The information that these cameras return as a routine part of space launches will be of incalculable value in diagnosing the causes of launch vehicle mishaps. They will also give human watchers the vicarious thrill of soaring into space. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio

at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. It's time for What's Up with Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. He's going to tell us about the night sky and our interesting contest that we proposed two weeks ago, except that we didn't do it during the radio show, as we said last week.

It was a super special, tricky trivia contest. It was a double secret trivia contest. Exactly, it was a double secret. But people did find information on the website, so we do have some people. And we also will promise to give you a trivia question during the show. First, let's talk about the sky, the planets. As I've mentioned, they're running away. They're hiding these days.

But Jupiter is still lovely in the evening sky, brightest star-like object up there in the evening sky. You'll find it hanging out in the southwest in the early evening. And with a small telescope, as we mentioned, you can pick out some of Jupiter's moons. You can also, in the pre-dawn skies, still pick out Venus quite easily, though it is getting kind of low over there in the east. And Mercury, fleeting Mercury, will be popping up above that pre-dawn horizon in the east and actually snuggling up with Venus within the next couple weeks.

So over the first couple weeks of August, go out if you're up in the pre-dawn sky, and if you see Venus looking hugely bright, that thing just below it is Mercury. We also have the Perseid meteor shower peaking on August 12th, and it's fairly dispersed. So within a few days before or after that, the increased meteor activity is a bad year in terms of the moon. It's got a nearly full moon, so a bright sky. But still, it's traditionally the second best meteor shower of the year and has about 60 meteors per hour from a dark site if you didn't have the moon. But still, it can be fun. Go out there, stare up at the night sky and relax.

Look for streaks of light going across the sky. Some of them are going to be bright enough, right? Plenty bright enough to see, even with the moon out. Yes, definitely. If you're patient, then you'll still pick up, you know, 10, 20 an hour perhaps. And so really I'd plan it around a relaxing evening outside with good friends. This week in space history, 45 years ago this week, a great and monumental first in space. 45 years.

45 years. 1961, German Titov becomes the first person to sleep in space. And the first person to wake up with space head. Space hair. Space hair. Yeah. That's really important to us, the ability to sleep. So it's very, very cool.

Yes, both of us appreciate that very much. On to random Spurs. Bye. Oh, I like the little Circus Barker touch there. Oh, thank you very much. That wasn't it. Hey, and we don't have an exact date for this. Otherwise, I'd do it in This Week in Space History.

But in 28 B.C., those active and writing down kind of Chinese astronomers provided the first recorded observation of sunspots. Oh, I never heard of that one. Kind of cool, huh? Yeah, very cool. And cooler than the rest of the sun, too. Hence the reason they're dark. Okay, on to the trivia contest. We asked you, which planet has the lowest orbital eccentricity?

In other words, which has the most circular orbit? What a range of answers we got. Okay, the most ambitious but not a winner was Barbara. Barbara Bethard. Barbara thought that we were extending this to all known planets. Yeah, my mistake. I mean, you know, if she'd been randomly selected, we would have had to go along with her. But yeah, I kind of intended planets in the solar system. Yeah. There are those 150, 60 out there. Well, and I got that, and most of the listeners got that.

But Barbara really took that one step beyond. And, in fact, she came up with a bunch that have an eccentricity of zero, as far as we know. I don't know what our resolution is. Yeah, I'm not sure our data resolution, our precision would be sufficient to make them winners over our solar system. But still, I admire the effort. Yeah, I'll even mention him. She says HD 219449. But that's not nearly as dramatic as the actual answer, which most of our listeners got.

There was some disagreement about this. The winner this week, Mark Smith, not far from us, San Diego, California. He said, and that's from the information he said you'll probably never use because Mark is a first-time winner, although I think he has entered many times. He said it's Venus, less than, let's see, eccentricity of 0.007. Venus, very, very circular orbit. Congratulations, Mark. Congratulations.

And how about we give people another chance to win? They'd like that. They would? Okay. Well, in that case, it's time to play Where in the Solar System? Have we played that before? Not with that really cool title. Oh, okay.

But we've done it before. Okay, I want to play. I'm excited. Remember, we've had exciting things like, Where in the Solar System is Oryx Sulcus? Oh, yes, Oryx Sulcus. But we did done it before. Okay, I want to play. I'm excited. Remember, we've had exciting things like, where in the solar system is Oryx Sulcus? Oh, yes, Oryx Sulcus. But we did that one before. So now we are doing, where in the solar system, or as I like to say it, where in the solar system is Hydraotes Chaos? That's H-Y-D-R-A-O-T-E-S, Hydraotes Chaos. Where would you find that in our solar system?

Say it one or two more times. Hydraotes Chaos. Hydraotes Chaos. Hydraotes Chaos. That's enough. Thank you. Hydraotes Chaos. Take me to your leader.

And everybody go on to planetary.org slash radio and find out how to send your information to us and compete for the glorious Planetary Radio t-shirt. And you need to get that to us by Monday, August 7 at 2 p.m. Pacific time. That's because that's where we live. So do that and we'll make sure that you are eligible for this next chance to win a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Maybe, you know, we should be more open and do it at a different time, like 5 p.m. Eastern time. No, to heck with that. Come on. We're pretty

generous. We don't even tell them that they can only enter once. We will let them enter as many times as they like, even if they've won before. We're nice, aren't we? We are. Yeah, okay. Everybody go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about red. Thank you, and good night. Red.

Not my favorite color. Oh! Wrong answer. Blue. No, green! Sorry. Ah, well, this is not Monty Python. This is What's Up with the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society.

He's Bruce Betts. He's here every week for the aforementioned segment. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. We'll be back next week with another game of Cosmic Hide and Seek. We love hearing from you. Write to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. Have a great week, everyone. Thank you.