Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Looking Back: Jurrie van der Woude's 37 years at JPL

Episode Date: April 28, 2003

Looking Back: Jurrie van der Woude's 37 years at JPLLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is Planetary Radio. Hello again everyone, I'm Matt Kaplan. The history of robotic planetary and lunar exploration is short, barely 40 years. Yet those decades have been plenty of time to generate incredible stories of discovery. Our guest today was an observer and participant in almost all of this history. Yuri VanderWoog will share some of his first-hand stories in a special extended conversation, which you'll hear only here on the website. Bruce is back from Hawaii with what's up and a maritime trivia question. in a special extended conversation, which you'll hear only here on the website.

Bruce is back from Hawaii with what's up and a maritime trivia question. First, though, Emily tells us about two protective barriers all life on Earth can be thankful for. I'll be back in just a minute. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener observed that Earth's magnetic field maintains the Van Allen Belt and shields Earth life from dangerous solar radiation. But I know that the magnetic field sometimes collapses and reverses itself. What happens to life on Earth if the magnetic field collapses? reverses itself. What happens to life on Earth if the magnetic field collapses? The short answer is that Earth's atmosphere is far more important than its magnetic field in shielding the biosphere from

potentially significant radiation from the sun and cosmic rays. Most of the sun's radiation, which includes gamma rays, x-rays, UV invisible light, infrared, and radio emissions, are electromagnetic waves which are not affected by Earth's magnetic field. Most of the most hazardous solar radiation is absorbed by the upper atmosphere. In addition to this radiation, the sun also emits a flow of low-energy ionized gas called the solar wind, along with sporadic bursts of high-energy charged particles. Could these particles harm life on Earth in the absence of a magnetic field? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out.

The exploration of the solar system with planetary probes and the like may seem like it's been going on for a long, long time, but it really hasn't been that long. In fact, the pioneers in that work, in that research, most of them are still with us. And, of course, they include scientists and engineers, but there were lots and lots of people on these teams. And it took virtually every kind of skill and profession that you could imagine.

And in some cases, it took some pretty special personalities, people who had the ability to scrounge here and there. I think that's one of the ways our guest has described himself as a scrounger. But he did much more than that. Uri Vanderwoord is our guest. He spent 37 years between Caltech and JPL, the Jet Propulsion Lab, near where we're speaking now in Pasadena. Yuri, welcome, first of all, to Planetary Radio. Good morning, Matt. How are you? I'm very well, thank you, and very happy to have you and happy to meet you since I've been hearing

about you and your history for a long time, and that's why we're here, because you have in your head a lot of wonderful stories that we will barely have time to scratch the surface of about not just the early days of planetary exploration, specifically at JPL, but even up to, I mean, you just retired what, two years ago? Two years ago, 2001. And you're still following, in fact, we were talking before we turned on the recorder here about how you're still very excited about the Cassini mission, which will be coming to its climax in not too many months now.

Let's go back to the beginning. You said that at first you were at Caltech and you worked for, at that time, for Bruce Murray? That's correct. I came as an immigrant from Holland in 1962. A couple of weeks later, got a job at Caltech in the geological department grinding rocks. Really? Yes. And I came straight out of the Dutch Air Force. And the switch from a cockpit of a jet fighter to grinding rocks covered with oil was not too exciting.

No kidding. No, fortunately for me, I would say about eight, nine months later, I ran into a young scientist walking down the halls of the building there who said, hey, aren't you that pilot who works in the basement? And it turned out to be Bruce Murray. And since I was looking for a change of professions, he asked me if I knew anything about developing film. And, of course, I said yes.

Did you? Yes, I had some experience, but not to really sell myself for a job. I would have gone nowhere, anywhere else. But Bruce took it hook, line, and sinker. And fortunately for me. Fortunately for the space program, I would say. Maybe. There will be people that will debate that issue.

But anyhow, I started to work with what was called at the time the lunar lab. And that was at the very beginning of robotic exploration of the solar system. What year was this? Do you remember? 1963. Okay. The years of the Rangers, the beginning of the Rangers. Yeah, we'll talk more about Ranger in a moment.

And so I worked in the lunar lab, in a photo lab, in a sub-basement, one floor deeper underground than where I came from. And it was testing films, developing films, and looking at lenses and the resolution capabilities of those lenses. And then, of course, by that time at JPL, the activity took place. That's where the spacecraft were directed from. Now, was Dr. Murray already involved at JPL? Oh, yes.

Okay. Oh, yes, as a co-investigator or a principal investigator. Of course, we became more and deeper involved in the space business when the missions to Mars started in 1964 with Mariner 4. But the Rangers and the Surveyor films were the initial steps on how to go about it, how to get there, what do you do when you get there. Now, we'll probably provide some websites where people can learn more about these early missions because there are some good ones out there. But Ranger, of course, was this really pioneering lunar robotic mission

that was so state-of-the-art at the time and now sounds like, what's the big deal? They fired a rocket and it went off and hit the moon. Yeah, but you have to learn to crawl before you can walk. Yes, well put. And so Ranger, I mean, one of the most exciting things about it, I think, at the time and now, is that it had a camera. It had to take pictures before it smacked into the side of the moon.

It had a battery of cameras, as a matter of fact. Different focal lengths and different tasks, of course, for each of those cameras. And the last couple of minutes of their flights before impact in the lunar surface, the batteries were switched on and we got photographs back from, I think the first ones were not all that successful. Yeah, the first rangers, they hit and got no data or they missed. Yes, but six and seven were just grandly successful. And then, of course, for us at the lab,

and that's where Dr. Murray was deeply involved with, was going to Mars. Mars was the jewel in the crown at that moment, or in those years. And Mariner 4 was the first one with 21 negatives that were returned, 21 photographs. And Mariner 4 was a flyby. So that's all the time it had to take pictures was it got 21 images. That's correct. What was your job by that time? Were you dealing with those images?

I was dealing with the images in the following sense. Generally, when the photographs came back from a planet or the moon, there were specific areas of interest to the geologists that were studying these photographs or analyzing these photographs. And if they saw something specifically, but it was a little unclear in the total photograph, then what I did was generally with, in our lab, was take that specific point and concentrate on that and see how much enlargement it could stand before it fell apart. And this is all standard photography. Of course, this is decades before digital photography and image enhancement and so on.

Yes. It was the very, very beginning. And so, you know, what they did, for instance, was by means of the shadows from a crater wall, analyzed the slope of the craters, of the walls of the craters. You looked at ejecta that came out of the crater and was thrown over the surface of the moon. But then came Mars, of course, and that was much further away. Like I said before, we only got 21 photographs back.

And I think only two of those photographs were useful. It was negative number one, which showed the limb of the planet by which one could calculate the circumference or the diameter of the planet. calculate the circumference or the diameter of the planet. And negative number 11, which was one that clearly showed craters, which showed that Mars was more like the moon than Earth.

And this changed everything about our view of Mars, and I'm betting also our view of how important it was to send probes to the other planets, because there was so much that we had absolutely no idea of using even the biggest telescopes on Earth. There are, for instance, an old National Geographic magazine

where one of the scientists made a statement, if you were standing on the surface of Mars in a crater, you wouldn't even know that you were in a crater. You know, things like that. Statements were still made. And, of course, a couple of weeks later, we arrived at Mars with Mariner 4, and it turned out to be more like the moon than Earth.

And, you know, a lot of fun among the group. Believe it or not, we already have to take a break for a minute, but I want to talk about more of the missions that you were involved with over this 37-year career, and also the role that you played in relationship to the media, which, of course, had enormous interest in getting their hands on these images. You betcha. So we'll do that with our guest, Uri van der Woode, 37-year history at Caltech and JPL, dealing with images and many other parts of what has become really maybe the most important parts of the history of unmanned exploration of our solar system. Planetary Radio will continue in just a minute.

This is Buzz Aldrin. When I walked on the moon, I knew it was just the beginning of humankind's great adventure in the solar system. That's why I'm a member of the Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest group. The Planetary Society is helping to explore Mars. We're tracking near-Earth asteroids and comets. We sponsor the search for life on other worlds,

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at our exciting and informative website, PlanetarySociety.org. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Uri VanderWood is our guest. His career at JPL traced almost the entire history of that incredible facility, at least its history of involvement with robotic missions, which, of course, very much continues today. Yuri, we were talking about Mariner 4 and those two images out of 21

that made such a great difference to science. You had to deal with the media, who, of course, couldn't wait to get their hands on these images and put them in the newspaper, on television, and so on. You had a lot to do with that. Not in those days. No, not in those days. That came after I permanently went to JPL, and that was 1976.

So up until then, you were still officially at Caltech. I was officially at Caltech and was spending an awful lot of time during the missions at the Jet Propulsion Lab because that's where the action was. Well, you mentioned 76, and of course, the first thing I think of is Viking. No, what did I? Yeah, in 76, Viking, that is when I worked in the photo lab at the Jet Propulsion Lab because our group at Caltech, the old lunar lab, was disbanded because Dr. Murray became the director of the Jet Propulsion Lab. Right.

So we all moved to JPL permanently. At least you didn't have to go too far. No. No, and it was a place I knew very well by that time. In 1976, the year of Viking, also the year without a summer, the year of Viking, also the year without a summer, because the people in the photo lab worked 24 hours a day, 24-7, just to get that mass of photographs out.

And that is where I really started to get, for the first time, in touch with the press, the worldwide press. That career in the photo lab lasted only a couple of years. Vikings were still active at that time, but the pressure was off as far as dealing with the world. And of course, by that time, we knew an awful lot more about Mars as a planet, as an individual body in our family of planets around the sun than we did in 1964 when we went there for the first time with Mariner 4. Mariner 9 was actually the first spacecraft with still black and white cameras on board. We didn't have color capabilities in those days.

That went in orbit and mapped the whole planet. in those days, that went in orbit and mapped the whole planet. And based upon that data, the two Viking spacecraft landed in 1976. And so one spacecraft was always the step towards the next one. Yes. And so in 1976, I was at the Jet Propulsion Lab for Viking, and then moved after Viking, I moved to the public affairs office. Basically still in the same capacity of taking care of all the photographs, but now added to that handle, particularly the foreign press.

As a European, you speak, generally you speak a little bit more than one language. And so... So you were there by the time of Voyager? By the time of Voyager, absolutely. Which is like the grand tours of the solar system by two more incredible spacecraft. The journey of a lifetime. There is no other way to describe it. An incredible mission.

Two spacecraft that were so small and really at the beginning of the era of electronic development, like its computers were laughable by today's standards, of course, and still are in spite of the fact that even now in 2003, we're still in touch with two functioning Voyagers that were launched in 1977. Now on what is called the Voyager Interstellar Mission, I think. Interstellar Mission. Amazing. And, of course, there is one thing that I should add.

When I started to work in the Public Affairs Office, I had the advantage of knowing the science community that was involved with this type of work that we were doing at JPL. Because we had known each other through the missions. But next to being a principal investigator, let's say, for Dr. Murray, he was also a professor at Caltech. So we had students over the years whom you knew from the first day they walked into the school. And so now they become scientists in their own right. And so you're dealing basically more with family than with colleagues, you know. become, the family, the team that stands behind this massive metal and silicon and rocket fuel that people's lives get wrapped up in these

missions. To an almost unbelievable extent children are planned to fall between encounters. Pets are named after moons of Jupiter that were just discovered. All kinds of events take place. Marriages also end because people have to spend an awful lot of time. And I have never met a more dedicated group of people

than that were involved with these missions. And like I said before, it is not one mission. Yeah, people may be added to a science team, but the core of the team you had met in missions before, previous missions, and so you know each other so well. It's an incredible way of doing a job. Talk about what happened a few years after this, and something tragic happens, and it has the effects of that tragedy, the Challenger tragedy,

ripple out and change things that no one could have predicted. January 1986, we had just passed Uranus, and the world press was mostly still at JPL. On one monitor, the monitors that were hung up throughout the auditorium, on one monitor you could see the crescent of a receding Uranus, and on the other monitor next to it, we were watching the launch of Challenger, and then that horrible accident happened. Like I said, it was in January,

and we still had the whole year ahead of us. And for that year, there were plans. We had to launch three major projects. Galileo to orbit the system of Jupiter and her moons, Magellan to go to Venus and map the whole planet by radar through its perpetual cloud deck, and a mission to the sun, Ulysses, that we were doing together with the European Space Agency. that we were doing together with the European Space Agency. When that Challenger blew up or got destroyed in January,

I immediately thought, oh boy, we won't have any launches this year because they were all dependent on the space shuttle. And so after the initial shock and of course the sadness because I knew several of the people that were on board of the Challenger, you realize, you sit down and you realize what is going to happen now. Of course budgets, particularly my photo budget got cut as well because three major events were not going to happen that year. And so you have to start looking at how will I handle the world press. And one of the things was you could no longer distribute eight by ten photographs the way you had done before.

And I had a mailing list of about 600 entities, museums, of course, the press, television, the magazines, planetariums, museums, and so forth, and sometimes even very interested citizens, particularly children. But that went all out the window, and you have to start looking at what am I going to do now. So we made first of all, we looked at who do we have to send the images to,

and that was by law was the press, TV, and the print media. But all these museums and planetariums had to fall by the wayside. So you cannot do that. So I made the photographs available through a contractor at a cost. And, of course, that makes you the most unpopular kid in Dodge. And so that didn't work out too well. So we had to start looking at other possibilities. And of course, by that time, we had technologically advanced to the computer age. And ha, there was the solution to the problem. So we started to make plans to put everything online.

Now, one of my jobs during the Voyager era was out of the whole crop, the daily crop of photographs that were transmitted to Earth by the spacecraft, select five, six, sometimes if you really wanted to do it, eight photographs that were printed 600 times each of those selections. And those selections were always made, of course, it had to be the most fantastic photograph, but also contain the maximum load of science.

contain the maximum load of science. A sexy photograph is fantastic to see, but if it doesn't tell you anything, forget it. It was not a contender. So all these 8x10 photographs were selected out of a much larger load of pictures that came in over a 24-hour period. came in over a 24-hour period. And now, when the digital world opened up for us and we could put them online, we didn't have to make that selection anymore. You say, okay, we got 1,500 photographs in today, put them all online, and let the photo editor of whatever newspaper, the New York Times, the LA Times, make their own pick.

And you were the first really to do this. Jet Propulsion Lab was the first one to initiate that. To be perfectly honest, we got called together with a large group of people at the Air and Space Museum in Washington to make a decision on how to solve the problem of availability of images from JPL. the problem of availability of images from JPL. And Larry Soderblom, who is now at the USGS and was a student in our group at Caltech at the time, and I'd known him forever,

Larry and I, literally over a cup of coffee, came up with that plan to put him online. The biggest obstacle, of course, was to convince the scientists in the mission to release all that data digitally. But where anybody would be able to do anything they wanted with it. Yeah, sit and analyze a photograph because you get the same images. So for about a year or a year and a half, there was still that selection going on. And then after a much larger number than just the five, six that I could have printed were put online, they finally realized, hey, this is nonsense.

Let's put them all online. And we have never had any complaints. As a matter of fact, the system is the Planetary Photo Journal at JPL. From the beginning, got hit about 750 million times a month. It remains one of the most popular websites in the world. That effort is still there after all these years. It's incredible. And to think that this was happening in the late 80s,

the Internet was a baby, and the web basically didn't exist yet. That's correct. We are just about out of time. I'm sorry to hear that. Me too. You just retired two years ago. Yes. That had brought you into the beginning of this new era of another generation of young scientists at JPL.

One of them was just on last week, Matt Golombek was our guest. What do you think of this new crop of, you know, cheaper, better, faster? I think I got it wrong. But these excited, very knowledgeable young folks, comparatively young. Of course, I was still working in 1997 when Pathfinder and Sojourner landed on Mars. And that was the first mission, I think, that was done by what we called in our group the Nintendo Kids. And they really were Rob Manning and Brian Cooper

and Matt Gollenbeck and so forth. I don't think there was anyone over 35 at the time, and they're kids. And it was a very warm, fuzzy feeling to see how well it was done, how innovative it was. For one thing, the landing by itself, as a matter of fact, a little anecdote. There were in the landing phase, there were 60 single-point failure systems. If any of those 64 had gone wrong, we wouldn't have had a mission. No mission.

We wouldn't have been on the surface. There were these big airbags, these beach balls, in which the spacecraft was folded up and so forth. And I think the first bounce was something like 90 feet high, if I recall right. A colleague of mine from NASA headquarters, a fisherman like me, but he always fishes the Atlantic and Chesapeake Bay. I do the Pacific, had never been on tuna. 1997 was the year of the El Nino, and you could walk to Catalina Island on the tuna. And so I said, come on, I'll order tickets for Sunday.

Yeah, but we're landing on Friday evening. I said, forget it. It's not going to work. So I bought tickets, reserved places on a boat. And what happens? I bet you didn't get to go fishing. I didn't go fishing. And what happens?

I bet you didn't get to go fishing. I didn't go fishing. And to add insult to injury was not only did the bouncing balls work well, but the spacecraft ended up right side up with that little antenna sticking straight up. That was a little too much. I thought it was great. And now we're going to see that landing system again with the two Mars Exploration Rovers that will arrive at Mars next January. And maybe we can end where we started, that you're especially excited about Cassini

because this is a mission that you've been following for many, many years. Many years, yeah. I took photographs of the progress in constructing and putting the spacecraft together, its parts, and then eventually, finally, the total spacecraft. It was the biggest of the big boys, the last of the big missions. But it was put together by an incredible group of engineers. put together by an incredible group of engineers. We could talk for another three hours about Cassini alone,

and it hasn't even arrived yet. And I wish we could, but we are out of time. I want to thank you again for taking a few minutes coming down here and sitting in front of the microphone to share some stories. We will have to get more of these from you sometime in the future. You're welcome, Matt, and you know where to find me. Uri Vanderwoord has been our guest on this week's Planetary Radio, a 37-year history of planetary

exploration with Caltech and JPL. Planetary Radio will continue right after this. I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. If the Earth's magnetic field collapsed, would life on Earth be harmed by charged particles from the solar wind? We can see that these particles reach the upper atmosphere, where the Earth's magnetic field guides them into the polar aurorae, or northern lights. Thankfully, the magnetic field is not Earth's only protection against these potentially harmful particles.

In the absence of our magnetic field, the great majority of these particles would simply be absorbed into the atmosphere. Even the most energetic solar flares, which produce huge storms of charged particles, could barely reach the surface. So the Earth is safe, even without a magnetic field. But Mars and interplanetary space are a different story. An instrument aboard the Mars Odyssey spacecraft called MARIE measured the radiation environment as the spacecraft cruised from Earth to Mars, and found that human astronauts on a three-year mission to Mars would receive their lifetime safe dose of radiation in that short time.

This radiation could result in negative health effects later in their lives, including cancer, cataracts, and neurological disorders. Future missions to Mars will have to incorporate monitoring of and shielding against this potentially harmful radiation. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. Be sure to provide your name and how to pronounce it and tell us where you're from. And now, here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Okay, Bruce Betts, what do you say when somebody gets back from Hawaii?

Uh, bummer. Good. You are good. You really are good. Welcome back to What's Up. Why, thank you very much. I'm tickled pink to be here. How about we talk about what's up in the night sky? Please do. We've lost a planet, not like in our April Fool's show, but Mercury's lost in the sun. So we have four naked-eye planets.

We have two in the evening and two in the morning. Saturn, look in the evening, and you can look for it specifically on May 4th. It'll be to the upper left of the crescent moon. Jupiter is extremely bright, brightest thing in the evening sky. Venus is in the early morning, just before dawn. You'll see to the left of the crescent moon on April 28th. It's in the east, though, hard to miss on any morning. And Mars is considerably off to its right and getting quite bright and looking orangish-red about 60 degrees or more to the right of Venus.

Excellent. Okay, still lots to look at in the sky. What's up next? This week in space history, May 4, 1989, the Space Shuttle STS-30 mission was launched, carrying on board the Magellan spacecraft, which was released to begin its 10-month journey to Venus. launched, carrying on board the Magellan spacecraft, which was released to begin its 10-month journey to Venus. Magellan, as many of you know, is an extremely successful Venus radar mapping mission. Taking us to random space facts! From the Jupiter's facing side of the moon, Amalthea, Jupiter would fill up a huge chunk of the sky, equivalent to going from the horizon to about halfway above the horizon.

I would love to have that view someday. all those storms and clouds swirling around. What an amazing thing that must be. We're working on getting you there, Matt. Thank you very, very much. You're welcome. Well, I guess we're down to last week's trivia. Indeed, last week's trivia question was how many radioisotope heating units did the Pathfinder mission to Mars carry to keep electronics warm and toasty? And the answer, three of the so-called RHUs, all of them in its rover Sojourner, in the warm electronics box or web to keep the electronics warm during the very cold Martian night.

And we want to make it clear, folks, this was not, we repeat, not a trick question because Sojourner was part of the Pathfinder mission. And we had a winner, Bruce. Yay! Her name is Shirley Younger. Congratulations, Shirley, of, get this, Bala Sinwid. B-A-L-A space C-Y-N-W-Y-D, Pennsylvania. Bala Sinwid.

I know it well. Named after one of the lesser dwarves in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Really, I did not know that, even after meeting with the Hobbit. Oh, and you were doing that in Hawaii, weren't you? I was actually meeting with their distant relatives, the Menehune, the mythical little people of Hawaii, with their distant relatives, the many hoonie, the mythical little people of Hawaii who also, turns out, fascinated by planetary exploration and

regular listeners to Planetary Radio. They think you're fabulous. Oh, that's so wonderful, and we really want to thank all the little people. Bruce, we... It's because of the little people that we're where we are today. I shouldn't be going to...

Bruce, we're out of time. Zoom tight. How about we give a trivia contest question for the people for next week? I think that would be a wonderful idea. All right. This week we're going a little different direction, as I like to do once in a while. What type of ship is in the Planetary Society's logo? This is true both of our first logo as well as the one we've switched to in the last couple of years.

And not only do you need to give the ship, but also its nationality, its country of origin. And go to planetary.org, follow the links to Planetary Radio to find out how to enter. That's it, folks. The ship on our snazzy logo, the new version or the old version for that matter. And you must enter by Thursday at noon, Thursday of this week at noon. And who knows, you might be our next big winner. Bruce, we're out of time. All righty, look up in the night sky, people.

And once again, think about the wonder of a child as you stare at those stars and planets. Aw. Aw. Thank you and good night. Bruce Betts is the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us each week here with What's Up. Thanks for listening. Next week, a special conversation with Planetary Society Executive Director Lou Friedman.

Till then, we wish you a great week in the solar system.