Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Lunar Smackdown! Special LCROSS Impact Coverage

Episode Date: October 12, 2009

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It's all about LCROSS and even kids are joining the search for water on the moon 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 of the Planetary Society. It's slightly past 4.30 in the morning, Friday, October 9, at the NASA Ames Research Center in California. The huge LCROSS Centaur rocket stage has just smacked into Cabeas Crater at the Moon's south pole. Another spacecraft is following just four minutes behind. Here is its last minute of life, the most critical moments in the mission. Stand by for shepherding spacecraft impact.

The very last seconds of the shepherding spacecraft trajectory as it approaches the lunar surface. We are seeing very small craters within the crater. We confirm a thermal signature of the crater. Our cameras, over. Copy, science. We just received... Flight shepherding spacecraft impact.

Stations report LOS. The ground stations at Goldstone just reported... Last track at 1135.35.054 seconds. The shepherding spacecraft has hit the surface of the moon, and this marks the end of the LCROSS flight mission. That was the end for the LCROSS, or Lunar Crater Observing Satellite Spacecraft, but only the beginning of what they would reveal to all of us back here on Earth. Two hours later, reporters take their seats in front of the LCROSS scientists and engineers.

Like hundreds of thousands of space fans around the world, these reporters wonder if something has gone terribly wrong. After all, models had predicted a huge plume of debris from the Centaur impact, but none had been seen. Did this mean no water had been detected in the permanently shadowed portion of Cabeus Crater? Something had been seen at the impact point, but what? A reporter from the Reuters news agency pressed LCROSS principal investigator Anthony Colaprete. If you can see a, what did you say, a sulfur flash? Does that? Sodium. Sodium flash. Can't you see if there's a hydrogen oxygen flash as well? Yes, we can. Great. Was there? I have not looked yet.

Oh, come on. I have not. I spent the last hour making those images I showed you. We have the spectra, we have the flash data, and you can bet that's the first place I'm going after this is to go back and look at the spectra itself. We have not honestly looked at the spectra themselves except to do a quality check on the radiance figures I showed.

It's just that I think aside from the ejecta cloud, that's the thing we're all wondering. Can you just call your buddies who are probably looking at the data right now and let us know? I can, but I think they're all in the audience, actually, right now. So we just got to sit back and be careful. We don't want to, life is full of surprises. We want to be careful, not make a false negative or a false positive claim. I'm excited we saw variations in the spectra

because that means we saw something and it was not just blackness. And so the information's there. We just need to get to it. Do you think you'll know later this afternoon, then, whether there's water or ice? I very may. I probably will, but I'm not going to tell you. And so we have a consensus amongst team members. HST data is just coming down now. They're looking at OH emissions.

LAMP on LRO is looking, multiple orbits. We're going to take our time and build up a case for water in the ejecta if it's there, or a case against it if it's not there. And then understand, if we're seeing variations, what do these variations mean? We've got to understand that before we say anything, honestly. I'm thrilled that not only us saw variations. That's a very good sign. And the spectra. The spectra is where the science is at. It's where the information is contained. So that's our most highest priority data set. So I'm glad we got that.

We are going to work on this feverishly, as you might expect, and we're going to keep everyone impressed as it goes forward. Was Colaprete simply being a good scientist? Sure, but you couldn't blame the reporters for pushing him to be a bit less cagey. I knew someone else who had been following the mission very closely. My colleague Emily Lakdawalla, originator of the Planetary Society blog, had also been up all night. I got her on a Skype connection just minutes after the end of the post-impact press conference. Emily, as we heard from the mission team, it's awfully early to be saying anything about this, much as we in the media might want to hear immediate and well-reasoned scientific results. What's your impression at this point?

Well, I think that the great news that we got from the press briefing this morning was that the spectrometers on the LCROSS Shepard spacecraft not only recorded data, but they definitely recorded an impression of the impact flash. So buried in that impact flash data should be the information they were looking for about whether or not there was water in the material on the moon that the Centaur upper stage of the rocket crashed into. So they should have the data that they need, which is absolutely great news, but they're not going to be able to tell us much about that data right away. need, which is absolutely great news, but they're not going to be able to tell us much about that data right away. I don't blame the reporters at Ames for kind of pushing the principal investigator there, Tony, to, you know, reveal what he may suspect about this spectroscopic data. He did seem to be a little bit cagey, don't you think? I think so. He basically said, I think the press

asked, did you see any water in their data, or would you see any water in the next two hours? Should you be able to figure that out? And Colipri basically said that if I saw it, I'm not going to tell you, which wasn't really a very good way of phrasing the response. He went on to say that he wanted to wait to get consensus from the rest of the scientific team on what they saw, which is a good answer. from the rest of the scientific team on what they saw, which is a good answer. And you do want to wait until you've had confirmation from other instruments, from other sources, and make sure the team is all on the same page. But I don't think it helped the way he phrased it to the press. I was out in the desert with over 100 kids and parents and teachers,

and really we were looking for what I think everybody was looking for, which would have been that nice deep impact style plume. Yeah, everybody was looking for a flash. And clearly the scientists' models indicated that they predicted that there should be a flash and a plume that would be visible even in 10 or 12-inch telescopes. And there wasn't a plume even visible in the 200-inch Palomar telescope. So I think that was a big surprise to everybody. And unfortunately, I think it'll be a negative surprise to the members of the general public who were expecting to see a deep impact style plume.

But, you know, it's interesting you bring up deep impact because that plume was much brighter and dustier than they predicted, and it lasted a lot longer than they predicted, which is kind of the other end of the spectrum. So I think that these two simulated, you know, experimental craters in space just go to show how little we really understand impact cratering and how important it is to do experiments like this. And they did talk a little bit about that during the press conference, but the general mood, and I think this was maybe a little

frustrating to some of the reporters, the general mood was extremely positive, and I think a lot of that is because this optimism about the spectroscopic data. Well, clearly, the scientists got the data that they wanted, so they have every reason to be happy. Unfortunately, it just didn't produce the public splash that would have produced the nice images for newspapers and broadcast TV. So what is your impression of where we go from here? Days, weeks, months? They talked about maybe big announcements, one would hope, at the AGU conference in December. Well, I think in the very short term that what we have to look forward to is all the data coming down from orbiters. As of this morning's press briefing, there was no data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter or Hubble or Odin or ICONOS or GOI or any of the other big orbiting assets that were observing the impact. So hopefully we'll see some interesting news from those over

the next days. And in the next weeks to months, we should see scientific results beginning to trickle out from this experiment. A long night, Emily. I'm sure you are looking to get some rest, and so we'll let you go and talk to you again soon. All right. Talk to you soon, Matt. That was Emily Lakdawalla, the Planetary Society's Science and Technology Coordinator, speaking to me less than three hours after the impact of the two LCROSS spacecraft on the Moon. The very latest news on the mission can be found in her blog at planetary.org, including images of the impacts caught by the Diviner instrument on the Lunar Reconnaissance

Orbiter. I'll tell you where I was during the Lunar Smackdown in the second half of our LCROSS Impact Show. First, though, we'll check in with Bill Nye, the science and planetary guy. Bill reminds us that some of the most exciting science happens when theory turns out not to match reality. Hey, hey, Bill Nye, the planetary guy here, vice president of the Planetary Society. I'll start this week with a story from one of our founders, Bruce Murray, along with Carl Sagan and Lou Friedman, founded the Planetary Society. But in 1961, Dr. Murray said, you know, it's very reasonable that there's ice on the south pole of the moon where the craters are especially deep and the sunlight grazing angle is especially shallow,

that the chemical bond between the water and the rock would be such that ice would persist there, presumably for millions of years. And I remember him in a meeting making a disparaging comment about a colleague. He said, that guy's no geologist. He's a geochemist. I remember thinking, wow, Bruce, that's quite a distinction. Well, apparently the geologists were proven not especially right and the geochemists not especially on target either. Because we smashed a Centaur rocket booster into the moon and a few moments later we flew through what we hoped would be this big dust cloud, this plume of dust, that would carry lunar moon-bearing rocky water. And we would then know that there's water on the moon for sure. Well, it didn't work that way. The plume wasn't especially visible. The instruments flew through it and there wasn't really that compelling evidence of water yet. Now, as the data are

analyzed over the next few weeks or months, perhaps you'll find a lot of water. But I just want to remind everybody, it's possible that the moon really is desolate and really is dry. And we really don't need to go back there with humans and plan to build a big moon base and drink moon water. It's possible that there's a little bit of water, but not nearly as much as many had hoped. So Dr. Murray may or may not prove correct. but in the meantime, it's another cool example. We had a model, a mathematical model. We predicted what the chemistry of the moon would be like, or the geochemistry, and it's a little bit different than we expected. Not a spectacular show you could see with just a 30 centimeter or one foot across

telescope, but we're going to learn something in the next few months. So let's moon on. I've got to fly, Bill Nye the Planetary Guy. How did a bunch of school kids in the California desert become important contributors to the LCROSS mission? I'll tell you when Planetary Radio continues in a minute. 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. Our special coverage of the Lunar Crater Observing Satellite Mission now takes us to Southern California's high desert, about 350 miles southeast of the NASA Ames Center and LCROSS Mission Control.

Friday, September 9th, it was cold as I pulled up to the Lewis Center for Educational Research. Not surprising, since it was 3.30 in the morning, an excited crowd of lunar lunatics was already gathering for live coverage of the double impact, inside the nearby technology building, middle and high school kids sat at impressive consoles, looking up at an array of giant flat screens and projected images. They would soon be joined by even younger children. It was a big night for the center and especially for its Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope, or GAVRT project. The first person I talked to was Rick Piercy, a former

kindergarten teacher who is the founder, president, and CEO of the Lewis Center. Set the scene for us here, this facility, and maybe an idea of what these young people who have been following this mission all along, what they'll be doing this evening leading up to impact, which is, as we speak, only about 45 minutes away. Yeah, it's coming on close.

These third, fourth, and fifth graders have been in moon camp all week, and so they're coming in to observe the actual impact here in Mission Control. Mission Control here at our school is about a 3,000-square-foot facility, in a lot of ways models NASA's Mission Control. Mission Control here at our school is about a 3,000 square foot facility in a lot of ways models NASA's Mission Control. And actually, as you see, LCROSS's Mission Control comes up. I think ours looks a whole lot better. But this area, because the other antennas over at Goldstone did not have enough time, Northrop Grumman and NASA Ames came to us and asked if we would do the tracking. And so two hours out of every 70 hours was tracked by NASA out at Goldstone on other antennas.

The rest of the time, 68 hours of each pass, was tracked by students around the world through this Mission Control Center. So as Northrop Grumman said, we're going back to the moon, and this time we're taking the kids with us. I love that line. That's wonderful. But this is far from your first experience with a NASA mission, you and the young people that you give such a wonderful opportunity to here. Well, we do. We run several radio telescopes now for NASA. And here at our school, the students are, in fact, we have 71 third, fourth, and fifth graders here that have spent the night getting ready for this and spent three, four days this week in moon camp.

So it's been fun. But we have schools that we've trained teachers in 37 states, 14 countries and three U.S. territories. And now, in fact, Puerto Rico is coming on today as well as some of the other schools. So we allow children to run these big radio telescopes and explore space. And we've done a lot of projects with NASA. Rick Piercy, president and CEO of the Lewis Center for Educational Research in Apple Valley, California. Shortly after our conversation, the younger kids began filing into the control room. We all waited and watched the NASA TV feed from the LCROSS spacecraft and mission control at Ames up north.

Here's the last minute or so of the mission once again, but this time from the viewpoint of the young people. or so of the mission once again, but this time from the viewpoint of the young people. Listen carefully and you'll hear them applaud not just the impact of the Shepardine spacecraft, but mentioned by NASA of their own contribution. ...has hit the surface of the moon and this marks the end of the LCROSS flight mission. Boy, is it girl. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It hit. It's no longer sending any signals. So did you hear him say that the tracking station at Goldstone confirms? Yeah. That's a tracking station at Goldstone. That's correct. So boys and girls, every one of you here, who are part of that track and stick to the Goldstone, that NASA TV just said, confirmed. I wish there was time to let you hear from many of the students

who participated in the LCROSS mission with their giant radio telescope. I'll let Alicia Scarberry speak for them. I got to go to the launch in Florida, and today we got to see LCROSS hit, and it was amazing. Now you just graduated. Yes, I just graduated from the Lewis Center. So you can look back on this now. What kind of experience was it? I mean, this just seems like maybe the coolest school in the world.

It was life-changing. I never thought that I could be a part of a NASA mission. It was amazing. It was wonderful. GAVR is a great program. And you see the little kids, they're just so inspired to be scientists. It's amazing. Did you get to work with the younger kids?

Yes, I did. Every day I got to be a GAVR intern, and we got to help with the little kids, and they just love it. They go crazy for it. They think it's just the greatest thing in the world. So you were there essentially at the beginning. You were there at the launch. How did it feel to be here for the big finish? It was very exciting because you got to see the NASA scientists put so much heart into it and you get to see now how it just is, it's accomplished and it's so great. And like, I can see that they're going to be so happy because

when it first launched, they were crying happy. And now I bet you they're just so happy just to see it hit and just all the work. It's great. You look pretty happy, too. I am very happy. I am. I'm excited. And it's 3 in the morning, so you know this is really happy. It's actually almost 5 in the morning. Okay, it was 3 in the morning.

Yes, but yes, I'm very excited for this. It's great. You said it's life-changing, or life-changing for you. What do you mean? Because I never even knew anything about this. You always think that NASA, there's like no way you can be a part of it. But it's really easy to be a part of. You just got to get involved. It's great.

You did have an especially good opportunity here. But you're right. I mean, there are ways for young people and people of every age. Yeah. And now Gavirt, you can just get involved. Any teacher can go online and look up Gavirt and they can be a part of it. It's great. How do you think this may change your own future, your personal future, where you may end up? I hope to continue with NASA. That would be great. I really do. That is very cool. All right. Well, you don't look like you're sleepy at all. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Great talking to you. Great talking to you, too. Thank you. Alicia Scarberry, recent graduate from the Lewis Center for Educational Research in California's high desert. Can you guess who has our last report on the LCROSS mission? report on the LCROSS mission. Finishing off our special coverage of LCROSS, the impact of the LCROSS spacecraft, both of them this week, we

visit with Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. He had his own venue to watch the impact from. Where the heck are you? And welcome. I don't really know where I am. I am somewhere east of Palomar. I'm in Warner Springs Ranch. That's where I am.

Sounds like a lovely place. Unfortunately, I saw about an hour and a half of it last night. Mostly with my eyes closed. An hour and a half this morning, mostly with my eyes closed. I'm sure it is, but it seems a little fuzzy right now. And what were you doing in between? In between, I was up at Palomar at the 200-inch telescope in the control room doing commentary with the BBC Sky at Night show while astronomers from Caltech were using their unbelievably spiffy adaptive optics on the unbelievably spiffy 60-year-old

telescope and just creating amazing images of the moon. Now, when you were up there as an astronomer, the adaptive optics were not in place yet? That is correct. Adaptive optics was just something people determined appeared, but no one was doing it particularly. It was just a theory. It started up elsewhere, and now they've used it in recent years to do really high-quality work again at the 200- inch, despite the fact that there are other bigger telescopes now. Well, you know how much I love that place. So listen, with that once upon a time biggest telescope in the world, any sign of the elusive plume? No, there was a significant lack of plumage.

Not just a lack of plumage, there was no visible plumage. They were looking at near infraredinfrared 2.1 microns. Just a gorgeous image. It's online in Emily's blog and on the Palomar website. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Any spectroscopic data from there? No. They were just doing imaging. And perhaps, well, maybe at the end of the show, I'll share with you. I'm so wont to quote classic poetry. I'll do that at the end of the show.

Something to look forward to. All right. Tell us about the night sky other than no plumage on the moon. You can see the moon if you look up in the night sky. We saw beautiful stuff outside, I should say. They also had brought up some amateur astronomers out there to attempt to see the plume. Obviously did not, but had a good time. And it got me out in the pre-dawn. In the pre-dawn, it's just hopping. Got to have that really low to the eastern horizon view, but we did.

There's Venus, and below it Saturn and Mercury. Mercury's going away pretty darn quickly, but Saturn's going to keep getting higher. Venus will hang out for a little bit as the really bright object. In the evening sky, you can check out Jupiter, high in the sky, brightest star-like object in the evening. So you can really see the night sky up here. It turns out they should put an observatory up here. Yeah, I'll send a note. Thanks.

On to, what are we going on to? Random sleepy facts. Thanks. On to, what are we going on to? Random sleepy facts. No. Random space facts. Wake up, wake up, wake up. Come on, wake up. I'm sure you heard some of these, but I'm just going to spew facts about LCROSS at you. 2,000 kilogram upper stage, 700 kilogram shepherding spacecraft, both slammed into the moon, 2.5 kilometers per second, an angle of about 75 degrees, much, much higher than previous impacts of dying spacecraft like Lunar Prospector and Smart One. The resulting impact crater, which they offhand said

they thought was similar to what they thought it would be, from the Centaur, 28 meters in diameter by 5 meters deep, and the baby spacecraft, 18 meters in diameter, 3.5 meters deep. A plethora of random space facts about our chosen topic for the day. It's true. It's true. And now, let's go on to the trivia contest. And we asked you a topic about none other than LCROSS. I'm sure you've heard the answer by now, but for those who entered the contest,

what was the crater targeted by the LCROSS spacecraft in this? I'm not sure what you got, Matt, but I think we would, due to the timing, have to take either the previous choice or the revised NASA choice that happened within the last two weeks.

You are so right, oh, Stargazer 1. It just happens that you asked your question almost exactly as the mission team was moving to a different crater. I sensed the disturbance in the force. So we would have accepted either Cabeus or Cabeus A, or the one that it actually did impact in, Kabeas, the granddaddy of the Kabeas family, I suppose. And it was Stephen Coulter, first-time winner. And by the way, we had more entries, I think, than we have ever gotten before for this one. I don't know why, but there you go.

for this one. I don't know why, but there you go. Stephen Coulter of Woodville, South Australia, who said indeed, in fact, he got in right after the change and did provide Cabeas. By the way, I've got to tell you about a couple of others after I tell you that Stephen is going to get the second set

of those Blu-ray discs, the first season of the universe that we were giving away, that show on the History Channel that you are a part of. This one I kind of liked because, you know, if LCROSS can be a kind of tortured acronym, why not Cabeas? And so we did get an acronym for Cabeas from our friend Tom Hendricks, a regular listener. Here it is. Can a big explosion unearth some H2O? Cabeas H2O.

And, of course, you know that Cabeas was named after Niccolo Cabeo, and we had several listeners let us know about this, a 17th century astronomer, physicist, philosopher. According to Philippe in France, I think I got that name right, he says that, interestingly, Cabeello was a bit of a hydraulic engineer. He was involved in moving a river. And so it turns out that, you know, moving water around is very appropriate for this crater. How tremendously appropriate.

If there is water. All right. And one final trivia in the land of, well, related to LCROSS. Final trivia in the land of, well, related to LCROSS. Before the two LCROSS spacecraft objects hit the moon, what was the previous spacecraft to hit the moon? And, because that might be too easy, what was the first spacecraft to hit the moon?

I want both of them. First spacecraft to hit the moon and the one right before LCROSS. Centaur does not count. Okay, go to planetary.org slash radio, find out how to enter. And you have, can you guess, until Monday, October 19th at 2 p.m. Pacific time. Monday the 19th at 2 p.m. Pacific time to get us that answer, and you will win a Planetary Radio t-shirt and an Oceanside Photo and Telescope Rewards card. Okay, we're done. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky,

and think about giant telescopes and people with British accents. Thank you, and oh, please, good night. Now, didn't you have something special for us? Oh, you're so good that you remembered. Yes, it's so frequent, as regular listeners know, that I quote classic poetry. Well, or not, T.S. Eliot once said, the spacecraft died not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Thank you, and good night. He's Bruce Betts. Did I say this already? The director of projects for the Planetary Society. I need more sleep. You need more sleep. Try not to do it on the freeway, which is where I tried to take a nap on the way back from the desert.

Yeah, that's bad. And we'll hear from him again next week on What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Keep looking up. Thank you.