Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Lou Friedman: The Rebirth of Russian Space Exploration?

Episode Date: November 1, 2010

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From Russia with rockets and Lou Friedman, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. The co-founder and former executive director of the Society returns from the Russian Federation with news of a renewed spirit of exploration in that vast country. Or is there? Lou will provide a bit of a light sail, solar sail update as well. The spacecraft formerly known as Deep Impact is about to encounter Comet Hartley 2

and Emily Lakdawalla is all over it. Our space blogger also geeked out at Woodstock, but that's another story. Bill Nye has been on a roll across America for science and space. This time he'll join us from, well, I'm not sure, but I hope you'll join Bruce Betts and me for an all-you-can-eat helping of planets, stars, and fish tacos. We've also got one more Wonders of the Solar System DVD set to give away in the Space Trivia Contest. A reminder, if all goes well,

you'll be sharing my adventure at the Kennedy Space Center next week, and if Discovery doesn't launch as planned, you'll still be sharing my adventure at KSC. I'll also be blogging at planetary.org and tweeting at PlanRad. Here is Ms. Laktawalla. Emily, let's start with an event that's going to happen in our solar system probably before some people hear the show this week that you've been covering all along,

including some new radar images of this comet, Hartley 2. That's right. Deep Impact is going to be flying past Hartley 2 very early in the morning, my time, on Thursday, November 4th. Hartley 2 will be the smallest comet that's ever been visited by a spacecraft, which is kind of a nice bookend to the previous small-body flyby we had, which was Rosetta's flyby of Lutetia, which was the largest asteroid ever visited by a spacecraft. So some interesting small-body encounters this year. And yeah, Arecibo just got images of it. Arecibo is a radio telescope. It broadcasts a radar signal and waits for the return and can figure out the shape of things from their echoes if they're

close enough. And Hartley 2 just passed close to by Earth. So Arecibo just got these fantastic images that show that the nucleus of the comet is much longer than it is wide. It's much longer than they previously thought, but it's also quite skinny, and it seems to have sort of a dumbbell shape. And I'm sure that you'll be reporting in the blog as that encounter takes place between the epoxy spacecraft and Hartley 2. Yeah, and in fact, online may be one of the only places you can learn about this encounter.

If the Discovery launch gets pushed back far enough, the space shuttle may step on this encounter. And you know how disturbed I am about that, since my plans call for me to leave shortly for Kennedy Space Center, and now this 24-hour delay in the shuttle launch. But I certainly hope it happens, and then I will be showing up in the blog for the first time. That would be awesome. I'm looking forward to that.

Yeah, me too. Pretty exciting, and doing some tweeting as well. You also last week had one of your regular monthly What's Up in the Solar System features, which is a great reference. Yeah, I realized that there's not really any one place where you can learn about everything that's going on in the solar system right now. And there's quite a lot. So about a year ago, I started doing these monthly updates on all of the robotic spacecraft exploring the solar system. The big things this month are, of course, the Hartley-2 flyby as well. There's China's Chang'e orbiter, which is now going down to 15 kilometers above the moon. And Cassini is very active and will be flying past Enceladus right at the end of the month.

All right, I'm going to throw just one curve at you because I loved this entry on the blog, even though it's not really space. Woodstock, you had a good time. I had a good time. This is an event I learned about from Twitter. It's basically, in brief, a festival of nerds. And it was the brainchild of Will Wheaton, who most listeners will probably know as the former child actor who once played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek The Next Generation.

But he's a very good writer. And he and one of the Mythbusters and a musical duo named Paul and Storm put together this variety show for nerds. It's really very enjoyable. And even a cameo appearance by Weird Al Yankovic. That's right. And I've been a fan of Weird Al since I was a little kid. So that was really exciting. All right.

Well, one more reason for me to be envious of you, Emily. Thanks so much once again. Thank you, Matt. Emily Lactewal is the Science and Technology Coordinator for the Planetary Society and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. I'll be right back with Lou Friedman after we hear from Bill Nye, who is at an airport somewhere in the United States of America. Hey, Bill Nye, the planetary guy here, executive director of the Planetary Society. And it's an exciting week in science education. I was in Kansas City at the National Science Teachers Association meeting, and last week

I was at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in the National Mall, and a few days before that, I shook hands with the President of the United States at the National Science Fair. Say what you will, but there's a big emphasis right now on science education and that is a fantastic thing. We've got problems around the world. We've got almost 7 billion people. We've got climate change and we need to continue to explore space. We need to know other worlds so that we can know this one. And like never before in my lifetime, the United States government has revved up on this.

And so we can, dare I say it, change the world. We can know our place in space and make it a better one. Well, I'll talk to you next week. I've got to fly. Bill Nye, the Planetary Guy. Sputnik, Gagarin, Spacewalk, Venera, robotic sample return from the moon. So many space firsts back in the Soviet era. Then it all stopped. But Lou Friedman has just returned from what is now the Russian Federation, and he is feeling cautiously hopeful. The former Planetary Society executive director has been over there many times, dating to well before Glasnost and Perestroika. It is a

country that is full of scientists and engineers who have suffered a long space exploration drought that just might be coming to an end. On top of firm plans for the Phobos sample return mission, there is talk of everything from lunar rovers to providing a lander for an international mission to Europa, Jupiter's moon that hides a water ocean under ice. I went to Lou's home for a full report. Lou, welcome back from Russia. I'm a little belated in offering that welcome, but just the same, that's our topic today. Well, I am recovered from the trip, but it's still fresh in my mind, Matt. I'm glad to be here. Tell us, what was this about?

Well, I went to Russia for two reasons. The primary reason was a conference they were having on solar system exploration. They called it the first Moscow symposium on solar system exploration. That's because they hoped to introduce a series more of them. exploration. That's because they hope to introduce a series more of them. Secondly, I was there to have some discussions with our colleagues about a possible launch of our light sail mission. And that caught me by surprise. So there is some thought, a renewed thought of putting our precious light sail on a Russian booster? Yes, there is, Matt. And I have to make this clear because not all Russian boosters are the same. And I make it very clear to my colleagues and friends that I would never fly

on that same Russian booster that we use for Cosmos 1 or even with the company that did it. I feel somewhat victimized by the way they handled that launch. But on the other hand, there are many good Russian launches. And we launch our astronauts and the cosmonauts launch to the space station on the Soyuz, quite reliable over the history of the whole space age. And we're talking to the Soyuz people about a possible launch on a Soyuz rocket, piggyback, of course, because we don't weigh as much as an astronaut. Sort of a mosquito on the back of the Soyuz. That's right. I think it's a long shot. We're still hoping for an American piggyback. The launch and the logistics will be a lot easier if we can do it here in the United States. But our opportunities are few and far between because we have some specific requirements to get our orbit high enough to get out of the atmosphere. And so basically we're going to have spacecraft will travel.

We're ready to launch, and we've talked to other countries. We'll talk to the Russians. But our prime hope is with NASA or another American agency for launching. All right, I'm going to use this opportunity to recommend that people follow a link from the show page or just find it at planetary.org to the video that you did about LightSail because I've gotten a lot of comments from listeners who really enjoyed

that little status report and they got to see the sail being folded. It's pretty fun. It is fun. It's fun to be there. It's fun to actually get your hands on the hardware. There is an update on the website. There's going to be more. We're in the active building stage right now. So by all means, go to the website,

follow its development. Our little four and a half kilogram spacecraft has thousands of parts, and each one of them now is coming into delivery and being handled very carefully. Back to Russia. You were also there, I think, to talk about what I've always known as the Phobos Grunt Mission, which I guess has a new, more marketable name. Well, it's called the Phobos Sample Return Mission, and abbreviated PHSRM, which doesn't pronounce into anything. But it's amusing that the director of the Space Research Institute, Lev Zelyony, actually, when he stood up and gave the presentation, gave me credit for starting to use the new name a little more than Phobos Grunt. He said, Lou Friedman told us that it didn't sound so nice in English.

And I don't really think that was the prime reason. I think describing it as a sample return mission is actually very important because that's very special. Only two have ever been done from a planetary surface by an automatic spacecraft. And this would be the third attempt. And so it's a very special kind of mission, and I hope everything goes well. It's a very special kind of mission, and I hope everything goes well. You've got a piece dated October 27 at Planetary.org that actually goes through a timeline, makes it feel like this is really pretty firm now for 2011, late 2011? Yeah, I think it's firm.

They have full funding. They have all the political support they need. They have the Chinese on board, so that gives them an international push, in addition to us, of course. But most importantly, they have a spacecraft. The spacecraft is all there. They're not weeding on any parts. There's no more uncertainties about deliveries. Every instrument is in, and all the spacecraft components are in. It's a question of assembly and test, and I don't want to minimize that. Those are

important, and things go wrong. American manufacturers have been known to drop spacecraft in a test facility, so there's all kinds of opportunity for things to go wrong. But basically, they're on schedule pretty firmly for an end of 2011 launch, and I believe they're going to make it. This is not exactly light sail. This is a big spacecraft. This is the other end. Gee, I'd love to get a picture someday of our spacecraft next to theirs. Yeah, this is a huge spacecraft.

First of all, it has many components. It's carrying a lot of propulsion because you not only have to carry the propulsion to get you into Mars orbit and do all those maneuvers to do a rendezvous with Phobos, then you've got to have all the propulsion to get off of Phobos and do your maneuvers to get out of Mars orbit and get back to Earth and re-enter Earth. It's got many spacecraft on it. It's got the propulsion module. It's got the main interplanetary spacecraft.

It's got the landing interplanetary spacecraft. It's got the landing unit for Phobos. It's got a sample return capsule. The capsule has to come back and enter Earth. So it's basically a lot of spacecraft all assembled together. It is a huge thing

and gotten so big now I think it's over 8 tons that they're going to go to the Zenit rocket, which is bigger than the Soyuz frigate, to carry everything, in addition, of course, to their 100-kilogram Chinese orbiter that's piggybacking on the mission. That's Lou Friedman, former executive director of the Planetary Society. We'll hear more about his trip to Russia when Planetary Radio

continues. I'm Sally Ride. After becoming the first American woman in space, I dedicated myself to supporting space exploration and the education and inspiration of our youth. That's why I formed Sally Ride Science, and that's why I support the Planetary Society. The Society works with space agencies around the world and gets people directly involved with real space missions. It takes a lot to create exciting projects like the first solar sail, informative publications like an award-winning magazine, and many other outreach efforts like this radio show. Help make space exploration and inspiration happen. Here's how you can join 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. 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. My guest, as he has been many times before, is Lou Friedman. The recently retired executive director of the Planetary Society just completed another trip to Russia, where he attended the first Moscow Symposium on Solar System Exploration.

where he attended the first Moscow Symposium on Solar System Exploration. Liu was mostly there to discuss the light sail, solar sail, and the Russian sample return mission, formerly known as Phobos Grunt. It will leave for Mars' moon late next year. That mission will also carry the Planetary Society's life module to the Martian neighborhood and, with luck, return it to Earth, along with some bits of Phobos itself. How much of Phobos do they hope to get back to this planet? Well, that's something to think about. It's eight tons of launch and 200 grams come back to the Earth. But you have just a little bit, as we learned in the lunar sample return, just have a little bit of material from Phobos.

It's going to make a big difference. A lot of people think that some of that material is actually Martian material that has gotten blown up there from impacts on Mars and volcanic eruptions on Mars in the past and may be collected on Phobos. Others think it's more primordial material from the origination of the origin of the planets when Phobos was formed. And in any case, it could also be a cometary and debris that gets there. And it's kind of a mysterious object, too. You measure its density, which is the mass divided by the volume, and you think it's carbonaceous.

You think it's full of maybe empty space and water and has a density near that of water. On the other hand, if you look at the spectra from the material from the first Russian Phobos mission, they got a number of successful measurements close up to the thing. It's not a carbonaceous, at least it doesn't appear to be. So what's inside of it? Unknown. And how to explain that density? So it's going to be a very interesting object to go up.

Sounds like a win no matter what. And then another little piece of that win comes back with our life module. Exactly. We're on board. We've piggybacked 90 grams of a little capsule that we've got inserted inside their sample return vehicle that's coming back. And in it we have 10 different types, 30 samples of microorganisms that will take a three-year round-trip journey in interplanetary space and do the first test of transpermia, the idea that life can move between the planets and the microorganisms can survive. And something else that's significant for me, I guess it's symbolic.

It doesn't, I don't know if it'll be more than symbolic, but it means a lot to me, which is we'll be the first to send life from Earth on a purposeful journey into the solar system. This is the first time it's ever been done. You know, I never thought of that. That's a moment to give one pause. We don't want to pause yet because we've only got maybe three minutes left. And you also wrote in, I think on October 20th, in your Lose View column, periodic column at planetary.org, that this trip, at least it appeared to give you

renewed optimism about Russia's plans to explore space. Well, let's call it cautious optimism. And it's very cautious because it would be wonderful to get the Russians back into the solar system. It would be to do planetary missions again. It's been a long time. The last successful one was in 1988, and it was only partially successful, their Phobos mission. They failed in 1996 with the Mars 96 mission, and they haven't done anything since. Their space science program has been suffering.

But now they have several things they're doing. They look realistic. They seem to have some financial support, and they certainly have the capability. So it would be a great addition to the solar system to have their vehicles back in there exploring other worlds. But it's cautious optimism, as I say. I think they have the capability, but I guess the real question is, do they have the will? Are they really going to make space science enough of a priority? Because it's hard,

as we know, and that remains to be a question, and I think it'll be approved on the FOBO sample return mission. I wouldn't say the mission has to succeed in order to make us believe in them. It's a tall order to make a sample return mission succeed, especially the country hasn't done a mission now in more than 10 years. But they have to get it launched, and it has to be a good spacecraft, and it has to at least partially succeed, has to get to Mars, has to do the orbit and start its mission. And if we're very lucky, it'll come back, and it'll have samples of Phobos and samples of us on our life module in there.

Just say a word about the planned mission where they are cooperating with India. Yeah, they have a lunar program, which I think is realistic. They're going to build two landers, one for themselves and one for the Indians, launch them in separate opportunities. The Lunar Glob mission will be their lander, and then a year later they would launch with the Indians and carry an Indian mini rover to the surface. And India has proved to be a serious player in lunar exploration, at least so far.

And so it would be great to have a Russian-Indian cooperative mission that would put a lander on the moon and a mini rover and have the Russians. If you notice, they're developing a line of expertise called landers. They can do a Phobos lander. They can do a lunar lander. They're studying a Europa lander to maybe work with the Europeans and the Americans on their Europa mission. And even have a new Venus lander in development now. They're the only ones who ever made that work.

That's right. So they have the capability, and it's a question now of just enough commitment and enough will to make it happen. That's pretty exciting. And we should say that that talk of a Europa lander, that's way down the line and pretty speculative, right? It's way out, but we're all working very hard to get the Europa mission that the United States and Europe are working on approved. And I can tell you from firsthand experience that the scientists on that mission would like nothing better than a lander.

So they would love to have the Russians one way or the other pull that off. That's a tall order. I think it's probably, we're probably dreaming, but that's what we do in the space business. And I'm going to stick with your cautious optimism, because I'd sure like to see that happen. Lou, that's it. We're out of time. Thanks so much. Out of time already, man? I'm just warming up. Can't we talk a little longer? I'll go read about it on planetary.org, and they'll continue to see your work there. Good, and I hope you invite me back. Lou Friedman is the former, the executive director

emeritus, I don't know what the title is actually now, for the Planetary Society. Of course one of the three founders of the society. Still very active particularly with the light sail project which we hope very soon will fly that little spacecraft on the power of sunlight alone. I'll be right back with this week's edition of What's Up. That means Bruce Betts will be dropping in in just a few moments. It is time for What's Up on Planetary Radio.

Here with Dr. Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. Where are we? You don't know? All I know is I just had a delicious taco lunch. We're at Señor Fish. Are we in Eagle Rock, or are we just off of Eagle Rock Boulevard? I would think we'd be in Highland Park. I just had some of the best tacos I think I've ever had.

Cool. They are really tasty. They were actually warm. So listen, now that we're here. Do you eat a lot of cold fish tacos? Not when I can help it. Okay, just checking. Any taco in a storm.

Now that we're here, tell us about the night sky. Well, you can look up and see the fish taco constellation in the evening sky. I wish. Yeah, totally. No, but you can check out super bright Venus. I'm sorry. You can check out Jupiter. You got me so flustered.

Check out Jupiter in the evening sky, high in the south, brightest star-like object up there. I just watched the International Space Station pass almost right in front of it last night. That's a local thing, that's why I can't tell you when you can see that, but there are various sites, including from NASA and heavens-above.com, where you can find out when the space station will pass over you. We also have in the pre-dawn sky Saturn. Low in the east, in the pre-dawn sky Saturn, low in the east in the pre-dawn, looking groovy. And Comet Hartley also in the pre-dawn Comet Hartley 2, although kind of tough

to see, but if you pull out a telescope or maybe binoculars, you might see it. Tough when the moon's up, but that'll be fading, so you can check it out. Find your chart online. Of course, we have the epoxy spacecraft encounter with Comet Hartley 2 on November 4th. We move on to this week in space history. It was this week in 1957 that the first creature in space, Laika,

on Sputnik 2. I don't know if the right word is celebrate, but we mark this occasion every year. We honor Laika. Yeah, we absolutely honor Laika. Yeah, yeah. So we're going to go on to the next segment. And have we got someone else to share the joy?

It's up to you, big guy. Really? Yeah. Go for it. At Señor Fish? Uh-huh. Can you do it in Spanish? You know, I should be able to.

Pacto espacio de randoma! That attracted some attention. Yeah. It wasn't very good because I was so concerned that I've, you know, butchered the Spanish language by making up words. That's all right. We'll get mail. Muchas gracias. Globular clusters. De nada. Exactly.

Sounds like something that was on the side of your plate. Clusters. De nada. Exactly. Sounds like something that was on the side of your plate. But in actuality, they are clusters, spherical collections of hundreds of thousands of stars that hang out around galaxies. The Milky Way has some. Very dense, especially at their centers.

They are gravitationally bound to each other, and they tend to hang out in the halo of the galaxy, so not down in the arms or even the central bulge. Mostly old stars, and this is in contrast to open clusters, which are looser collections inside the plane of the galaxy, typically. Cool. Thank you. Thanks for taking us out there a bunch of light years. We went out there. We're going to go back out there. But first, we're going to delve back into the solar system with trivia contest. We asked you, where in the solar system

can you find features called arachnoids? How'd we do? We got a surprisingly small number of responses referring to the discovery of the spiders from Mars by a fellow named Major Tom. Which, you know, ties to spiders, but they're not referred to as arachnoids. No, they are not. Now, a whole bunch of people did refer to them as being found on the planet Venus. In fact, we had about double the normal response this time, near record response, probably because we're giving away such a cool prize.

And stay tuned because we're going to do it again. Go ahead. Where are these things? And what the heck are they? Well, they appear in radar images. They were named because they look like spider webs, basically. They were named because they look like spider webs, basically. And their radar features showing these reflections off of cracks and things, very complex-looking features, can be up to 200 kilometers in size. About 30 of these features on the surface of Venus. There you go.

And I know we had some interesting comments about them. We did. Oiven Winther sent us an image, which does not look like a radar image, but I suppose it must be. That photo of one of these arachnoids implicates a well-known Marvel superhero in their creation. But thank you, Oiven.

He looks so comfortable in it. Of course, he would have been 100 kilometers in height, but still. William Nowak, he said that he doesn't know much about them. Next time he meets a woman, he's going to ask her about them, because you know that's where they're from. Venus? Yeah.

Women. They're from Venus. Women. Guy got it. Moving on. Okay. But our winner was Stephen Krasocki. Stephen, congratulations.

He did let us know that arachnoids are only found on the planet Venus, at least the arachnoids we were looking for. So Stephen is going to get that three DVD set of Wonders of the Solar System, which we're going to give away again in next week's answer, and we have one more set. So we can do that

for the new random, excuse me, for the new trivia question that you're about to lay on us. All right. Globular clusters. How many does the Milky Way have? How many globular, or more specifically, how many globular clusters have been discovered associated with the Milky Way? Now, I will acknowledge this is tricky because it depends on how you name them.

Some can be tied to other little things. So we're looking for an approximate answer. Get close because there's not a clear agreement on the exact number, but ballpark it for us. Go to planetary.org slash radio, find out how to enter. And get us that entry by Monday, 2 p.m., November 8th. Monday, November 8th at 2 p.m. All right, we're done. All right, everybody go out there, look up at the night sky, and of course, think about fish tacos.

Thank you, and good night. Hasta la vista. He's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society, and he joins us every week, sometimes from nice restaurants, for What's Up. As we put the finishing touches on this week's show, Space Shuttle Discovery's launch has been pushed to Wednesday, November 3rd at 3.52 p.m. Eastern Time. But we all know how these things go. No matter what happens, I'm headed to the Kennedy Space Center with high hopes of seeing my first launch. Let's hope I have one

to talk to you about next week. In the meantime, I'll be blogging at Planetary.org and tweeting from PlanRad. Godspeed, Discovery. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and made possible in part by a grant from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation. Clear skies. Thank you.