Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Lou Friedman on the International Lunar Decade

Episode Date: March 19, 2007

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Lou Friedman on the International Lunar Decade, 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. It's not a race this time, at least not yet, but the target is the same as back in the 60s, and everyone is getting in on the action. China, Europe, India, Japan, Russia, and the United States are all planning robotic missions to the moon,

with the Americans and others also talking about men, and surely women this time in 10 years or so. Kind of seems like the decade of the moon, doesn't it? That's exactly what Planetary Society Executive Director Lou Friedman will join us to talk about in a couple of minutes. Later we'll check in with Bruce Betts for this week's What's Up. And Bruce will get some help from someone who will still be a teenager when people start leaving new footprints in the lunar dust, his son.

We've got Emily Lakdawalla's Q&A coming up, too. Wow, what a week for news of our solar system, beginning with word from the Martian South Pole. Europe's Mars Express orbiter used its ground-penetrating radar to peak more than two miles, or nearly four kilometers, beneath the red planet's frozen bottom. What it found has got to be good news for future colonists. Enough water to cover the entire surface of the planet to a depth of 36 feet, or more than 10 meters. And it's mostly pure H2O. Could it really have been just a few years ago that we were wondering if there was more than a trace of wet stuff up there? Hey, there may just be canals on

Mars someday. You can bet we'll want to have somebody on the show talking about this discovery very soon. In the meantime, you'll find a nice update on Mars Express at planetary.org. That's also where you can see more of the giant lakes discovered on Saturn's moon Titan. Some are bigger than the biggest of North America's Great Lakes. Of course, they're full of liquid ethane and methane, so you wannabe Titan colonists will have a tougher time than your Martian cousins. And you'll want to take a look at the last several days of Emily's blog. She features great first-hand reports from attendees at this year's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas. Enceladus, Europa, Io, Pluto, Charon, Jupiter, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter images that will

knock your eyes out. It's all there. Lastly, this harmonious story from NASA, which has adopted a name for the newest segment of the International Space Station. The agency took nominations from kids all over the U.S. The result was a tie. Six different schools came up with the winning name. And in case you haven't guessed, it's Harmony. The module previously known as Node 2 will be launched later this year. Here's Emily with a colorful Q&A. I'll be right back with

Lou Friedman. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, Spectroscopy allows us to see the elements and minerals in rocks from far away. If that's true, why do we need sample return missions? Planetary scientists can learn a lot about the materials present on the surface of a planet through the technique of spectroscopy. A spectrometer mounted on an orbiting spacecraft receives light from the surface and breaks that light up into dozens or even hundreds of individual light beams, each sampling a very narrow slice of the electromagnetic spectrum. The spectrometer

measures how much light is coming from the surface in each little slice. The result is a graph, also called a spectrum, which has characteristic peaks and troughs where certain minerals preferentially absorb, reflect, or emit light. For example, the major rock-forming minerals olivine and pyroxene produce a diagnostic dip in a spectrum at a wavelength of one micron. By comparing these orbital measurements to the spectra of minerals gathered in the laboratory, planetary scientists can develop maps of minerals across a whole planet. It was this technique that yielded the discovery

of hematite on the surface of Mars. If spectroscopy works so well to map minerals, why do we need to return samples from other planets to Earth to study here? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out. Lou Friedman checks in with us every now and then. The executive director of the Planetary Society has talked about everything from saving space science to the Society's solar sail. But this time he has been playing international diplomat.

Lou just returned from Vienna, where he attended a major meeting of the United Nations Agency that deals with space. It was another chance to talk about the International Lunar Decade, a proposal that would recognize the next ten years or so as a period of unprecedented global interest in the moon, with six different space agencies planning robotic missions and several kicking around plans to put people back on our satellite. Why a decade? Because the United States hopes to have astronauts duplicating Neil Armstrong's small step by about 2018. Lou Friedman sat down with us a few days ago at Planetary Society headquarters in Pasadena, California. Lou, you've been on the road again recently. That's nothing new, but what is somewhat new is why you've just come back,

or fairly recently come back from Vienna, and it is this new initiative that the Planetary Society is solidly behind and you're finding support elsewhere around the world. Yes, Matt, we're working on the International Lunar Decade, which is really capitalizing on the already existing interest around the world in lunar missions. China and Japan are launching missions this year in 2007, India and the United States in 2008. Of course, the Europeans just finished up SMART-1 last year, and Italy and Russia are now contemplating missions in addition to the others.

So we might have as many as six different nations in orbit around the moon in a few years. This is pretty unprecedented, this many entities, nations, or groups focusing on one planetary body, even though it's not a planet. Well, there's been 94 spacecraft to the moon already, so it's really not unprecedented in the sense, if you go back to the beginning of the space age, but you might ask why now and why so global. I think the answer is that when you strip away all of the rhetoric about the moon and what we're going to do with the moon and different people's view of it and everything like that, it really comes down to one, in my view, which is it's a stepping stone.

It's a stepping stone for humans to, again, go out of Earth orbit, begin to explore the solar system. NASA has said, and even an advocate of Mars like myself has to agree, that you can't go to Mars in a single jump. You need to develop the systems that will take you there and use engineering and science on the moon to prepare to go to Mars. Chris McKay puts it rather nicely in the current issue of the Planetary Report, where he says it's a small step leading us to a great leap out into the solar system. It's a very good way of putting it, and I think that's true.

So it's a stepping stone, literally, a stone to step on as we go out into the solar system, but it's also one figuratively, and that is in the sense for nations who have ambitions to become space-faring nations, the new space-faring nations, China and India, the emerging ones like Japan and European countries and their programs. As they become space-faring nations with grander and grander ambitions of what to do in space, the moon is the place that they first have to go. There's no other place to go. There's no other place to go. There's no other destination.

So the moon becomes their stepping stone to sort of a national identity in space. And I think that's great. I do want to mention that I was in Vienna, of course, for the – that's where the UN has the Outer Space Affairs Office and the meeting of the Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which is the UN entity that, for example, has the space treaties, has the law of outer space activities, and generally brings together all the nations of the world who are doing space activities.

It was quite impressive. There are some 80 nations in attendance and some 20 NGOs, like the Planetary Society. We are a nongovernmental organization with consultative status at the UN committee. They were meeting about an incredible range of subjects, but they were all space application subjects, looking at the Earth with an idea of observing the weather and the climate, land use changes, disaster management occupied about three days of the meeting because that's of critical importance to the nations around the world. A lot of Earth observation.

Mostly Earth observation and mostly space applications. I was the only person in two weeks that presented an exploration topic. And as I was sitting in these meetings, which I've got to tell you, they're somewhat bureaucratic and somewhat long, with a bit of a flavor of Madam Chairman, yes, the distinguished delegate from the country of, and it's very formal, and it has that flavor of somewhat ritualistic and at the same time a little ponderous for my taste. I'm so surprised. But still, as I sat there, I began wondering, well, I'm going to talk about the moon

and I'm going to talk about exploration and what are these people going to say? They're going to say, well, thank you and go to sleep probably. But I gave my talk and I was very impressed. As soon as I finished my talk, it was the only talk of the three days that I was there that got spontaneous applause. And it was because I ended up talking about, you folks are dealing with many practical questions.

I'm dealing with the inspiration for the future, that the idea of global participation in exploring the solar system is what inspires the whole next generation to care about the things that we're all working on. And people resonated with that. And I think that's the power that all of these lunar missions have. They may not be so important in the United States, frankly.

Lunar science is a subject that's well-matured. We have plenty of lunar scientists who are busy at work. We have tens of pounds of lunar rocks. Many of which have still never been checked out. Yeah, so going back to the moon is somewhat a step backwards for the United States. But around the world, this is going to inspire people again to work in a global community about exploring the solar system. And I think that's incredibly important, and it's an opportunity that I think the space-faring nations and those of us in the space program ought to capitalize on now.

This is not a new theme. It shouldn't have been new to these folks. I mean, Carl Sagan was saying that space exploration had these benefits for us many decades ago. You've been saying it for decades. Yeah, it's not a new theme, and nothing I said could be said to have, oh, gee, that's a new discovery. But I think it's something that we need to constantly be reminded of in the sense of why we do what we do,

because we are spending a lot of money. These are a lot of resources. India to do a moon mission, you could ask a thousand times in that country, why should India be spending its money doing a lunar mission? And for that matter, China. And the answer is because it's inspiring their whole country for a sense of national achievement of what they can be. When we return, Planetary Society Executive Director Lou Friedman

will tell us more about the International Lunar Decade. This is Planetary Radio. I'm Robert Picardo. I traveled across the galaxy as the doctor in Star Trek Voyager. Then I joined the Planetary Society to become part of the real adventure of space exploration. The Society fights for missions that unveil the secrets of the solar system. It searches for other intelligences in the universe, and it built the first solar sail. It also shares the wonder through this radio show, its website, and other exciting projects

that reach around the globe. I'm proud to be part of this greatest of all voyages, and I hope you'll consider joining us. You can learn more about the Planetary Society at our website, planetary.org slash radio, or by calling 1-800-9-WORLDS. Planetary Radio listeners who aren't yet members can join and receive a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Our nearly 100,000 members receive the internationally acclaimed Planetary Report magazine. That's planetary.org slash radio.

The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. Lou Friedman is with us this week. Lou is the executive director of the Planetary Society, which produces this show, of course. He's just back from the meeting of the United Nations Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in Vienna, where he talked about a proposal to declare international recognition of what promises to be the most intense period of lunar science and exploration in history. What is entirely new is this hook that you've come up with of the International Lunar Decade,

beginning, if it's adopted, this year with these first missions back to the moon, and ending, very auspiciously, we hope, with humans back up there. Yes. I mean, in fact, when I was at the United Nations building, they had a celebration of the formal opening of the International Heliophysical Year. Now, that's not getting a lot of press, but it's actually got about 70 nations participating. And heliophysics, if you think about it, means everything under the sun.

So it's a broad range of scientific disciplines. And these years, starting with the International Geophysical Year, which was the beginning of the space age, and going through such things as the International Halley Watch and the International Space Year and the International Polar Years, which we're also about to begin one, become magnets of scientific collaboration and places for people to share data and get research support in their national countries. They're somewhat artifacts, but they're a framework on which to build international scientific cooperation. So you got this nice round of applause.

What kind of reaction have you been getting from individual delegates, from other organizations? Well, we have support. We've been endorsed by the leading world space organization, Space Science Organization, COSPAR, the group of scientists that meet biannually for Committee on Space Research of the International Council of Scientific Unions. The International Astronautical Federation is cooperating with us. The space agencies are very positive.

NASA has been itself very positive in the discussions I've had with the various officials there. But now we're in that stage of everybody's sitting around the dance floor and the music is playing, but who's going to get up and get on the floor and who's going to ask who to dance? Because the question is who's going to implement it? Are you going to set up a program office? Are the space agencies going to do it as part of their lunar missions? Are they looking for an international organization to do it? And all of these things are somewhat ad hoc.

And I'd say right now it's an active subject of discussion, but the means of implementation and follow-up hasn't been decided upon yet. And I'm not interested in the Planetary Society becoming the lead organization in this. It's going to be primarily a scientific enterprise, and our role is the popular interest. But on the other hand, I want to cooperate with anyone who does it, and we're still talking about that. I would think that the Planetary Society, because of its somewhat unique position as a neutral body, one that has taken pains not to be specifically identified with any nation, might be a very good rallying point for something like this, because I'm sure

that any resistance to this is, you know, some number of parts inertia and some number of parts political. I really haven't found much resistance to it. There is a question of money. I mean, just imagine that you only want to distribute a brochure to 500,000 scientists in different nations and public members. I mean, that's already an expense, which is somewhat considerable, thousands and thousands of dollars, many thousands of dollars. And if you start getting into posters and worldwide communications of research papers and research grants for small science activities that are being investigated, you could run into a fair amount of money for this project. And so it's not something to be undertaken lightly. that are being investigated, you could run into a fair amount of money for this project.

And so it's not something to be undertaken lightly. If we do it, we'd have to have, obviously, other organizations to cooperate with us and a means of funding. On the other hand, if you look at the space agencies and what they're spending on lunar missions, you're up in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, you're up in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, you're up in the billions of dollars rather quickly. The Saline mission in Japan, the Chang'e mission in China, the U.S. Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, not to mention the steps that countries are beginning to take and the United States is beginning to take about human exploration missions. So there's going to be a lot of money going toward the moon.

And so therefore, probably it won't be too hard to finance this. Doesn't this concept, the International Lunar Decade, also offer some potential, I don't know about savings, but certainly some advantages in coordination between all of these missions that are set to head for the moon? That's a job for the space agencies. And in fact, they're having a meeting right now as we speak in Kyoto, Japan. And they hopefully are developing a framework to do just that kind of thing, not to prevent duplication. You always will have duplication on missions. And in fact, redundancy is something we encourage. But you want synergy, too.

You want to get each to feed on the other and build on each other so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and that you're not just reinventing the wheel each time. So hopefully the space agencies are addressing this topic, and to the extent that they could do it by recognizing the international lunar decade, I think would just boost the public interest in the whole subject, which is important to them. Nice framework. Yes.

So what are the next steps? Well, the next steps are, first of all, I'm anxious to hear about this Kyoto meeting and a follow-up meeting which is being planned in Italy in a couple of months and see if the space agencies are going to take the ball and run with it. Meanwhile, I'm continuing to talk to the IAF and COSPAR and to the UN Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space people about how we might either help develop that framework or encourage its organization. And we may end up putting together a funding proposal that would play a role in this.

I think what we're now, as I said, letting the music play and kind of figure out where the space agencies are. They're the big people in the tent. And then I think we'll follow on with whatever we can do on this. We'll have to check back with you for a status report in, well, hopefully not very long, since those next missions to the moon are not far off. Well, the Selene mission is launching in August. We had hoped the Chang'e mission was going to launch in just a few months, and it will. But apparently it is delayed until the second half of this year sometime, probably around October.

We can expect the moon missions, however, to begin this year. All right, Lou. We'll check back, just as I said, and looking forward to whether it's declared officially or not what is going to be the International Lunar Decade. Thank you, Matt. I'm glad to be here. Lou Friedman is the executive director of the Planetary Society. He joins us periodically to tell us about the agenda of the society

and some of the things that it is doing around our world and, for that matter, around other worlds. And we're going to hear about still more worlds when we join Bruce Betts for our regular What's Up visit right after this return visit from Emily. I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. If we can identify minerals on other planets through remote sensing, why do we need to bring samples back to Earth? One reason is that most solar system surfaces have been exposed to weather or space for billions of years, so they have been aged or weathered over time.

Spectroscopy can only measure what's right on the surface, but the minerals just a few millimeters down could be much different. But the main reason that we need samples is that mineralogy is only one of many studies that scientists would like to perform on space rocks. Consider the Stardust mission, which returned a mere 10 micrograms of material from Comet Tempel 1. A fraction

of that 10 micrograms has been split among almost 200 scientists, who are analyzing the samples with dozens of different techniques to answer questions about the age, composition, and history of the comet and the whole solar system. Just imagine what questions could be answered with

a few pebbles from Mars. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Time for What's Up with Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society. And for the first time, we're coming from your home. Welcome to my home, Matt.

Yeah. And everyone. Thank you. Thank you. And a lovely part of it. I'm surprised we could fit us all in here. No, I think we fit just fine. You can tell that boys live here.

And, in fact, one of them is going to join us. He is indeed. Yeah. Kevin is sitting on your lap. We'll hear from him in a couple of minutes. Okay, he'll contribute to the show. But first, why don't I tell people what's up in the night sky. We've got Venus, of course.

Can't miss it in the evening sky. Look over in the west. It's the extremely bright star-like object. We've also got Saturn in the evening sky up high. And if you're ever uncertain which of those star-like objects is Saturn, go out there on March 28th and the moon will be right near Saturn. Now in the middle of the night, Jupiter is rising in the east. And then in the pre-dawn, you've got Jupiter looking like a really bright star high up. And Mars over there, pretty low down in the southeast, looking kind of reddish.

And that's what our night sky looks like. Why don't you help me with getting this next segment started. Random Space Fact! Was that fact or thing, Kevin? I think it was fact, right? Maybe it should be a thing. Okay, random space thing. This was suggested by my other son.

The sun was created about 5 billion years ago by self-gravitational collapse of a bunch of dust and gas, eventually collecting so much that the pressure down deep was high enough in the center to start fusing hydrogen into helium in that wonderful nuclear fusion process that gives us a tan. Well, sun is a mess of incandescent gas, a giant nuclear furnace where hydrogen and helium are. Okay, I'm done. Okay, thanks. We'll move on to the trivia contest. And we asked you, what's the naming convention for Ionian volcanoes, volcanoes on Io? I forgot to have you pick a winner. Okay.

I have picked a winner. There it is. You grabbed the winner right out of the pile. Real time. Here we are. And guess who it is. I don't know. It's Steve Hunt.

Steve Hunt from Maryborough, Queensland, Australia. We have lots of fans from down under. Good on you, mate. In fact, I heard from one of them for the first time just last week, and he used all kinds of cool Australian colloquialisms. It was just great fun. But it wasn't, I don't think it was Steve, but Steve is our winner for this week. He said, fire, sun, thunder, volcano gods, and heroes.

And then a couple of other people also added blacksmiths, mythic blacksmiths. You really can't get enough mythic blacksmiths. No, really. How do you get a job like that? Well, yeah, I think there's a school for it. But, you know, those mythic horses in Pegasi, they need their hooves. They need their shoes. Shod, sh shoes. Shod.

Shoed. Shod. Shod is good. Okay. Go with Shod. Let's give him a trivia question to win a Fabulous Planetary Radio t-shirt. As Steve Hunt just did. Exactly.

Answer the following question. What two Gemini missions were in orbit at the same time? Oh, I should know this. I might know this. Don't tell us. I can't say because we're going to let people tell us. How do they enter? Go to planetary.org slash radio.

Find out how to enter and tell us what two Gemini missions were in orbit at the same time. All right. And you've got until the 26th, March 26th at 2 p.m. Pacific time to get us that answer. And we would just love to have you in the contest. And whether you're from Australia or not, maybe you'll win a Planetary Radio T-shirt next time around. Any announcements, any news we should know about? Well, there's news that might be interesting. You know, we're doing our Apophis Mission Design Competition

where we're asking people to design a mission to tag a potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroid so that we know better where it is, offering a $50,000 prize. And we've passed the date where we requested notices of intent. We've got 90 notices of intent for people planning to propose. That's incredible. Are they coming from, like from institutions, or individuals? It's really a combination. We've got individuals.

We've got university design classes. We have aerospace, and they're from all over the world. That's also what's very interesting. So they're many, many, many different countries. So this is just the notice of intent did not require the effort of a proposal. Proposals aren't due until late August. Anybody know when this is all supposed to wrap up? Well, we will decide within three months or so after that.

All right. And people can find more information if they're interested at planetary.org. Look for the Apophis Mission Design Competition. Apophis, of course, being the near-Earth object a few hundred meters wide that still has, although a small chance, a chance of hitting Earth in 2036. All right, everybody, go out there, look out in the night sky, and think about, think about, hey, Kevin, what should they think about? Stinky shoes.

Stinky shoes. Stinky shoes. All right. All right, All right. Got there. Think about Stinky Shoes. Thank you, and good night. I have some with me right now, as a matter of fact.

Oh, let's not think about them. Well, he's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society, and he joins us every week here for What's Up, and every now and then he's joined by one or more of his boys, and today it was Kevin. See you soon, Kevin. Bye-bye. Bye.

That was definite. Good job, dude. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Have a great week, everyone. Thank you.