Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Moon Rocks, Martian Meteorites and More at the NASA Astromaterials Lab

Episode Date: November 10, 2003

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This is Planetary Radio. Welcome back, everyone. I'm Matt Kaplan, attempting to get over a cold this week. Thirty years ago, the moon became about a half-ton slimmer. Unlike lost socks in the dryer, we know exactly where that precious lunar material went. This week on Planetary Radio, a visit with the curator of astro-materials for NASA. And Bruce Betts has another trivia contest for us, along with his weekly look around the solar system. First, let's join Emily for some mountain climbing and mountain naming on Venus. I'll be right back. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, I noticed on a map

of Venus that the highest point on Venus is in a mountain range called Maxwell Montes. I also noticed that this point has no name. To me, that's like having a map named the Himalayas without giving a name to Mount Everest. Why no name? The Maxwell Montes, or Maxwell Mountains, represent the highest point on Venus

with heights of up to 11 kilometers, over 35,000 feet, above the average elevation on Venus. The mountain range is named for the Scottish physicist who first proposed the existence of electromagnetic radiation, James Clerk Maxwell, in recognition of the vital role played by radio and radar techniques in studying the cloud-shrouded surface of Venus. Incidentally, Maxwell-Montes is one of only three features on Venus whose names predate the decision by the International Astronomical Union Working Group to commemorate only female personages on that planet.

The others are two more high elevation areas known simply as Alpha and Beta. As the plural term Montes implies, the Maxwell feature comprises a range of mountains somewhat similar to the Tibetan Plateau and Himalayas on Earth, so you might expect that individual mountain peaks in Maxwell-Montes would be named as they are in the Himalayas. Why don't they have their own names? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out.

Dr. Carlton C. Allen is the curator of astromaterials at the Johnson Space Center. That makes him the protector of moon rocks, Martian meteorites, and a facility full of other interplanetary flotsam and jetsam. With a Ph.D. in planetary sciences, he has researched how Martian soil forms, how volcanoes and ice interact on Mars and on Earth, how to get oxygen out of lunar material, and how bacteria manage to thrive in extreme environments. Not surprisingly, he and his team are also working out how to protect the samples that will someday be returned from Mars,

as well as how to protect us from those samples. He spoke to me from his office in Houston last week. Dr. Allen, thanks for joining us today. My pleasure. Is there any other facility on the face of the Earth that does what your lab does? No, we are unique. We are the folks that preserve, protect, and distribute NASA's collection of material from outer space, and we are very much the only ones that are doing it, certainly on this scale, anywhere in the world. And the lab got its start back in Apollo days for what must be fairly obvious reasons.

start back in Apollo days for what must be fairly obvious reasons. Right. The six successful Apollo missions brought back nearly 400 kilograms of lunar rock and soil. And it was realized immediately that these were very special and, in fact, very unique samples for science. in fact, very unique samples for science. We had to have a way to keep them pristine, pure, keep them safe and secure. Now that 400 or so kilograms, which for the non-metrically oriented among us is about a half a ton, bits of it have ended up going all over the world. That's right. Our main customer here is the worldwide planetary science research community. And we have, and in fact, continue to send parts of the lunar sample collection

to researchers literally all over the world. So you haven't, I'm sure the interest was greatest immediately after and during the time of the Apollo missions, but you continue to get a lot of requests for this material? Certainly, the great majority of the work was done during the decade after Apollo, basically during the 70s. But we have a steady level of requests for the material. This year we will send between 300 and 400 individual pieces of lunar rock and soil to maybe 30, 40 different investigators around the world. I want to mention that your website is very impressive, and as we always do, we'll put the web address, the URL,

on the page where this program can be heard on the Planetary Society website, planetary.org. But one of the things that I found fascinating there was the virtual tour of the lunar sample lab. Has that lab changed much in the last more than 30 years? The lab was actually dedicated in the late 70s, about a decade after Apollo, and is essentially unchanged since then. The system was very well designed initially and keeps the samples pristine enough that they continue to be of great value to science, continue to be of great value to science, and so we have not changed either our procedures or the laboratory itself since that time. And you go to amazing measures to preserve those samples and keep them isolated.

I saw probably what may be the world's most interesting bandsaw. most interesting bandsaw. Our rock saw, which only cuts lunar rocks, was actually modeled after the sort of bandsaws that are used in commercial meatpacking establishments. But it's a stainless steel blade with diamonds embedded on the cutting side. We cut the samples dry, and the samples are fed very slowly, carefully by hand through the bandsaw, and we cut moon rocks with it. And it is inside one of these glove boxes. Is that still the term?

It's inside a nitrogen-filled glove box. All the things that we do with the samples are done in very dry, extremely pure nitrogen gas, which is nonreactive and just doesn't change anything about the samples. Now, those glove boxes are obviously still very much in use, and you're also preparing the lab for future samples that will be returned, and we're going to talk about that after we take a break in a few minutes. But I saw one that had a robotic arm in it. Yes, we are looking toward the future as our samples get smaller, as we look toward perhaps collecting samples that have to be kept very cold,

or we look toward collecting samples that may be inherently hazardous, and we're experimenting with how useful robotics would be in the kind of work that we do in preparing samples for researchers, and also how clean we can operate with a robot in a glove box. Another page, I am sure we will put this web address up on the site, leads to the top ten Apollo scientific discoveries about the moon, which, knowing that you are, as we said in the introduction, also a planetary scientist, I found that fascinating, and sort of a David Letterman approach to moon samples.

And number one, at the top of the list, the moon is not a primordial object, which there was a fascinating story behind, and that this was certainly not something that was known prior to these samples being returned and studied. That's correct. We didn't know at the time of Apollo what the moon was, where it had come from, what its history was. Having the samples and all the rest of the things that we learned about the moon over the decades after Apollo, we discovered that the moon really almost certainly came from the Earth. really, almost certainly came from the Earth.

That early in Earth's history, a large object, large meaning about the size of the planet Mars, apparently smashed into the Earth and broke off great chunks of the crust and the upper mantle of the Earth. This material went into orbit around Earth and very soon came together under its own gravity, forming what we now see as the Moon. So the Moon really is a child of Earth through a very violent process. This is a topic that has come up in the past on this show, as has at least one of the other types of material that you keep very safe at the Astro Materials facility,

and those are the Antarctic meteorites, some of which we are fairly confident have come from the red planet, Mars. You have what may be the most controversial rock of all time, I believe, ALH 84001? Yes, we do. ALH 84001 is a piece of Mars. It was knocked off Mars millions of years ago by a meteorite impact. It flew through space between the planets in its own orbit around the sun and eventually encountered the Earth and landed in Antarctica. It's one of five meteorites that have been picked up in Antarctica that have been traced back to Mars through their chemistry and is one that has generated a lot of interest ever since a group from NASA and Stanford published a paper suggesting that there were features

inside this meteorite that could have been the remains of ancient Martian microorganisms. Now those researchers, were they able to get a piece of ALH 84001 from you, or did they come to your lab to study it? Just like anybody, any researcher can request pieces of any of our extraterrestrial material. Their requests are judged by a science review panel, and if they're approved, then we supply pieces of the requested sample to those investigators. The team that did the paper in question did, in fact, have an approved request, and they did the work in laboratories both here in Houston and at Stanford University. And there's a question that is still not entirely resolved from what I've read,

but has certainly been facilitated by the work that's being done by your lab. I would like to take a break, a quick one, and then come back and talk more about what's going on there at the Johnson Space Center with ASTRA materials, and in particular, how you're preparing for sample missions that, in fact, you're going to be very busy with, I assume, next year. And if that's okay, we'll just take a quick break and be right back. Sounds good. Our guest is Dr. Carlton Allen.

He is the curator of astromaterials at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Back right after this. 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.

And we're building the first-ever solar sail. life on other worlds, and we're building the first ever solar sail. You can learn about these adventures and exciting new discoveries from space exploration in the Planetary Report. The Planetary Report is the Society's full-color magazine. It's just one of many member benefits.

You can learn more by calling 1-877-PLANETS. That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387. And you can catch up on space exploration news and developments at our exciting and informative website, planetarysociety.org. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. Our guest this week is Dr. Carlton Allen.

He is the curator of astral materials at the Johnson Space Center. He and his staff operate a lab like none other in the world. And it is a lab that I take it continues to evolve, Dr. Allen. We mentioned before the break that you have a couple of missions coming up next year, 2004. I'm sure you have people very busy there. We are. We are looking in September of 2004 at the return to Earth of the Genesis spacecraft that's currently sitting out a million miles from our planet,

collecting particles from the solar wind, individual atoms of the solar atmosphere. Two years after that, in 2006, the Stardust mission is going to be returning to Earth. Stardust will be collecting samples from very near the head of a comet, and that will be our first specific sample of comet material. I'm obviously over-anxious for the return of Stardust. I knew that it was right at the beginning of 2004 that it is going to do that fly-through, but that you're going to have to wait a couple of years to get your hands on that material. That's right.

Stardust comes back in very early 2006. How have things changed since the Apollo days? What will happen with these samples returned by Genesis and by Stardust, if all goes well, that maybe the folks back in the 70s could only have wished they could have done? Well, we have completely different kinds of samples to deal with. with with Genesis we we are dealing with individual atoms implanted in the surface of very clean collector materials and they're going to be studied by scientists with with ultra precise analytical equipment that has and we we have to keep them so clean that we don't have contamination

from anything clear across the periodic table. So we built the cleanest, clean laboratory in the entire NASA system just to take the Genesis spacecraft apart and support that analysis. With Stardust, we will have tiny microscopic bits of comet that are embedded in a mesh of very pure silicon material called aerogel, and we have to understand how to cut this material apart and separate out these little particles that can only be seen through a microscope. So it's different technology than dealing with hundreds of kilograms of moon rock.

Now, with Stardust and the material it returns, since I assume you're expecting or hoping to get back some organic material, does that present any special challenges? Organics in Stardust is going to be tricky. We have to operate in a very clean environment. We're building a special clean room to work with the Stardust samples, and we're going to have to be very restrictive on what kinds of materials come in contact with the collectors so that we minimize organic contamination and we understand very well any level of contamination that we

might introduce. Let's move on to what may be the ultimate, or at least in current practical terms, the ultimate sample return mission. And we still don't know exactly when it's going to happen, unless you've heard something I haven't, and that would be the return of samples from Mars, return of samples from Mars, which you're already planning for. Oh, yes. We are looking ahead at least a decade to sometime probably 10, 12 years from now to sample return mission from Mars, probably from a place that has been preselected on Mars that might have strong evidence of either ancient Martian life or the organic chemistry that might have led to possibility of life on Mars.

So we have to treat these samples when they come back as if they might have bits of unknown life in them. And basically the first thing we have to do is assess whether they have any evidence of life or whether there is any evidence of chemistry that could be hazardous to the terrestrial biosphere. So with the Mars samples, we have to lock them up in a very secure biosafety lab and do the first testing on them before we can even think about doing the kind of long-term curation that we do for the moon rocks. Has there been any consideration regarding what I suppose wouldn't be too surprising if there were people at the time who said these are too dangerous, they really shouldn't

come back to the surface, they should be analyzed at the space station or some other facility on orbit. Do you have any qualms about that? come back to the surface. They should be analyzed at the space station or some other facility on orbit. Do you have any qualms about that? That has been suggested a number of times. And in fact, there's a study going on right now about it. Some people have some real serious qualms about using the space station as a proxy for bringing things back to Earth. The argument is that the space station really is part of the biosphere. Astronauts will come and go up there, and the space station itself will eventually come back to Earth,

just as all orbiting satellites do, probably in burning and breaking up and landing in the ocean, as did the Russian Mir. So you can't relax any of the planetary protection requirements by working with the Mars samples on space station rather than working with them on Earth. Fascinating. We are nearly at the end of our time, and I do want to remind folks that they can visit your website. Correct me if I have an incorrect address here, but what I show is curator.jsc.nasa.gov?

That's correct, and we would love to have you visit. Excellent. I certainly hope to make it there in person someday. I was telling you before we started recording that I'm amazed that I've never made it to Houston and never made it to the Johnson Space Center. I look forward to getting a tour someday. But in the meantime, we will also post that URL that will take people directly to the virtual tour of your lunar sample lab. I certainly encourage our listeners to take a look at the website. It really is quite fascinating. And we'll go into areas that we haven't had time to talk about, like the long-duration exposure facility,

which the materials returned from there, I guess, are also at your facility. Yes, they are. Dr. Allen, thanks very much for joining us on Planetary Radio. I look forward to talking to you again, perhaps sometime after Genesis has brought its material back to Earth, and certainly after Stardust gets back in a couple of years. We'd love to talk with you then, and I think we'll have some really exciting stories to share. Dr. Carlton Allen is the curator of astromaterials at the Johnson Space Center. He is charged with taking good care of stuff that comes from out there around our solar system.

And I'll be back with Bruce Betts right after this from Emily. I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. The reason that names have not yet been assigned to specific peaks in Venus' tallest mountain range, Maxwell-Montes, is that the mapping of this area is not judged to be sufficiently reliable to be sure of the true local topography. This may surprise people who have seen the amazingly sharp images from the Magellan mission. Magellan used radar to peer through Venus's thick atmosphere and map features on the surface of Venus as small as 100 meters across over 98% of the surface. In a technique known as synthetic aperture radar, chirping radar signals were

bounced off the surface of the planet by the moving spacecraft, and then the spacecraft listened for the echo. By studying the timing, strength, and Doppler shift of the echoes, scientists could construct radar images of the surface and map the surface topography. Unfortunately, this technique runs into problems when the topography is steep, as it is in Maxwell-Montes. Scientists can be sure that there are steep slopes present, but can't be sure exactly where those steep slopes are, and consequently, we can't yet say where the tallest point on Venus is, much less give it a name. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now, here's Matt with more Planetary Radio.

We're back with Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. We weren't going to be on the phone this week, but he and I were so sick when we were actually ready to record this in person that we had to hold off and recover for a couple of days. And you're well on the road to recovery, aren't you? I am. Antibiotics are good things. Yeah.

By the way, we're physically sick. Just to clarify. Yes, that's correct. The rest of us, sadly, as people are, I'm sure we'll learn in the next few minutes, there has been no improvement. What do you have for us this week? Oh, that there are antibiotics

for such things. Well, this is a cozy week for planets. There are three planets is a cozy week for planets. There are three planets at least cozying up to something else in the sky. Of course, they're not actually near these things, but they look like it from where we're looking. On Monday night, the day of the airing of this, November 10th, Venus is passing closest to the bright star and Terry's the heart of Scorpius. Red and Terry's the red giant. These are, the heart of Scorpius. Red Antares, the red giant, the so-called beating heart of Scorpius.

The two objects are about four degrees apart, and Venus is visible 30 to 45 minutes after sunset, basically, in the southwest. So it is very challenging to see. You need a clear view to the horizon, and to see Antares, it's even lower. You really need a clear view, ideally being in the equivalent of the southern U.S. or down under. On Tuesday, November 11th, our friend Mars, still fading but still bright, passes about a degree beneath the fourth magnitude star, Lambda, in the constellation Aquarius. Now, this isn't very exciting, but you can make a fun event for you and your friends this week.

Go out, check out Mars relative to these stars night after night using some binoculars. And you'll see that Mars is actually moving pretty quickly relative to those fixed stars right at this point because of the things going on in orbit. And Saturn, finally, is near the moon on both Wednesday and Thursday, November 12th and 13th. And that'll be a lot easier to see than Mars' little friend, because it's a big friend, the moon. Excellent. Wow, I still am sick. Okay, so I should mention the Leonid meteor shower starts up towards the end of this week, a little bit on Sunday night,

but will be peaking early next week. We'll talk about it more on next Monday. It's not supposed to be as spectacular as it has been in recent years. This week in space history, on November 13, 1971, the Mariner 9 spacecraft became the first spacecraft to go into orbit around Mars. And when it first arrived, Mars was in the midst of a global dust storm, basically obscuring the surface. But as the dust cleared,

Mariner 9 provided the first complete photographic spacecraft mapping of the surface of Mars and revolutionized our understanding of the planet. What do you think of that? I'm impressed. I'm trying not to talk because I'm not doing that very well. All right. So much for the witty banter.

On to Random Space Facts! The moon, the Earth's moon, your friend and mine, actually appears much brighter than the sun at gamma-ray wavelengths, at least as seen from the Earth-orbiting Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory. Kind of funky. That's why it's a random space fact. On to our trivia card. Wait a minute, Not so fast.

Why would the moon be brighter in the gamma ray range than the sun? Because it's giddy with excitement. As are we. Okay, go on. It's not where the sun's radiation is peaking. You have these things going on with the happy little molecules and atoms. Anyway, if you really are curious, we'll put out a follow-up paper on it. I think you may have to do that because I'm really curious.

All right. All right. But for this week. Now we can go on. Trivia contest. Yeah. Last week, what spacecraft is on its way to the moon right now. What did people say?

They all got it right. We had a lot of entries. Wow, they're really smart. Well, yeah, they are smart ones, believe me. And so is smart one on its way to the moon. And you had said that this would be a fairly easy one for people. It's nice to, you know, throw people one of those now and then, and we did. And we had a lot of entries from all over the place.

I do want to remind folks that you've got to get them to us by Thursday at about noon Pacific time so that we can put them into the great trivia winner randomizer. Yes, it's such a complicated program that it takes days to run. Well, it's those vacuum tubes. Someday we have to replace it with something more recent. Anyway, we did come up with a winner. As far as I could tell, I thought that this was somebody who had won in the past, but I have no record of it, as it turns out.

David Glazer of Berkeley, California, won. His correct answer was the one randomly chosen, and he did say Smart One. But Bruce, he also pointed out that he realized that Smart One is going to take about the same amount of time to get to the moon as it would if you were driving a car at highway speeds. He says, I think this so-called advanced ion propulsion engine is nothing more than a V8 taken out of an old Chevy. Or, since it's a European mission, it's probably a diesel engine taken out of an old Peugeot. The secret to new spacecraft propulsion technology. Got to admit, David, that's pretty amazing gas mileage, though. It's true. It doesn't have to stop nearly as often as those cars would.

So David is going to be the winner of the big prize this week, a Planetary Society calendar, a big, beautiful calendar, and that will be headed out to him. What have you got for us next time? For this coming week, it's been a long time since we really tried to focus people on what's important in the world, and that's the Planetary Society. So I'm going to ask you, what architects designed Planetary Society headquarters? What a great departure that is.

Famous local architects. Now, are people going to be able to find this someplace, some popular website? Last week, I threw them a bone. This week, let's give him a challenge. I actually doubt it's going to be a huge challenge, but there it is. Okay. You probably, I didn't check, but I would not be surprised. I would think it would be on our website somewhere.

Well, I will say no more. Okay, neither will I. No more. Then that's it, I guess, unless you have anything else to apprise yourself. Nah. Nah. Okay. I do want to encourage people to go out there and look up at the night sky and think about meat. Thank you, and good night.

Yeah, I need to have some dinner. That was Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society, with another meaty installment of What's Up. We'll be back next week with much more from planet Earth and its neighbors. I hope you'll join us.