Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - More Planetary Radio Live at the Aquarium of the Pacific: Oceans Everywhere

Episode Date: July 30, 2012

We return to the Aquarium for much more of our conversation about seas on Earth and seas on other worlds, featuring Dave Bader, Kevin Hand and Bill Nye. Emily Lakdawalla concludes her video tour of Curiosity's cameras and instruments.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Another dip in the solar system's oceans, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. We return to the Aquarium of the Pacific for much more of our conversation about the seas of Earth and the seas of other worlds. Last week, Emily Lakdawalla took us on a tour of the Mars Science Laboratory's cameras. This time, she'll cover the rest of Curiosity's science instruments. You can see the video at planetary.org.

We're back in Building 180 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory headquarters, the administration building, with our friend and weekly contributor, Emily Lakdawalla. Welcome back, Emily. Thank you, Matt. Now, last time you took us through 16 cameras on this baby, Curiosity. What are we doing this time? This week, we're looking at the in-situ instruments, the ones that are designed to analyze the rocks and minerals of Mars. These are the real reason that this rover was sent to the surface. So we'll start with the really big ones, the ones that explain why this rover is so big. They are the in situ instruments that we have to deliver tiny amounts of rock powder to and they do complicated chemical analyses. The first one of these is called SAM. SAM

stands for Sample Analysis at Mars. This is the instrument that's going to be able to detect light elements like carbon, for instance, and isotopes of carbon in the rock and soil samples that we get into it. Organics. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about organics, the kinds of materials necessary to build life. Now, I am not actually talking about detecting life on Mars. That is not what this rover is intended to do. The rover is intended to look for environments

where life might once have existed. It's all about habitability. Okay, what's next? What's next is CHEMIN. It is designed to do X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence. And these things, it's actually the very first instrument that can directly detect the chemical composition of minerals on Mars' surface. We've sent other instruments that can directly detect the chemical composition of minerals on Mars' surface.

We've sent other instruments that can detect elements and from which you can kind of deduce minerals, but this one really will specifically identify certain minerals on Mars. So geologists are really excited about having this instrument on Mars. Okay, so let's move on down over here. The next one, this one is called APXS, which stands for Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer, and there's been an instrument of this kind sent on pretty much every single landed mission to Mars. So this one, we're going to be able to compare the environment at Curiosity's landing site to the ones at past landing sites on Mars, and there's a long heritage there, a long

history. Most of the rest of the stuff at the end of this arm is designed to get samples into SAM and KEMEN. So the main thing that's going to be doing that is way over here. Looking back this way, yeah. So this is the drill. Now this is a percussive drill. They originally were thinking about putting a rock corer on this, but it's not a rock corer. It's a drill, and it goes bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, and it makes it. Like we'd see people on the street. That's right, just like a jackhammer, to make powdered samples of rocks on Mars.

And those powders get delivered into this over here, which is designed to prepare samples for delivery into Sam and Kemin. Now, in order to do that, the rover will do a funny thing. It does what's called rover tai chi. Because in order to get the powder samples through all the different sieves to get the right sizes sorted out, it has to bring up the hand, tilt it this way, turn it that way, turn it down, turn it up. And it's actually going to be quite funny. We'll have video of it caught by the mast cams up here at the top of the rover.

It's the Curiosity arm ballet. That's right. I can't wait to see those videos from Mars. All right. What next? So let's look over here at the mast. This here, poking out of the side of the mast, is part of the meteorological station. We're talking about the weather on Mars. This one will detect temperature, humidity, all kinds of stuff designed to understand what the weather is like at this spot on Mars. There's

really only been one other weather station recently, and that was the Phoenix lander that was at the North Pole, but Phoenix didn't last very long. This one is going to be on Mars for an awfully long time. It will get us some great weather data. Okay, so let's walk around the rover. And we get to RAD, which is an instrument that is actually not so much for studying the geology of Mars. It's actually designed to help future human exploration. It's designed to study the radiation environment, the kinds of things that might prove nasty for future human astronauts to Mars.

And this has been running even on the trip to Mars. That's right. And as our sun has actually been quite active then, it's detected quite a lot of radiation in the space between Earth and Mars. And we'll get a better understanding of what we need to deal with if we want to send humans up there.

Finally, let's walk around and get to the back of the rover. And this is DAN. It's actually inside the rover right here. DAN is designed to detect hydrogen in the subsurface of Mars. And that will tell us all about water. Now it's not necessarily water like liquid water flowing through the Martian subsoil. Most of it will be bound up in Martian minerals. But it's actually going to be operating as the rover drives along pretty much the whole time

and will get a nice profile of what's going on with hydrogen in the subsurface. It is an incredibly complex and powerful package of instruments. It is a much more sophisticated package of instruments that has ever been sent to Mars on, especially on a moving vehicle. It's somewhat similar in mass to what was on Viking, but you know Viking stood still. This thing is being carried all the way across Mars, and it is so much more than the massive instruments that was sent with little spirit and opportunity. And with any luck, we only have to wait until August 5th to see it all go into action.

And I've got to tell you, geologists are so excited about having this great machine on the surface of Mars. Emily, thank you for a great tour. Thank you, Matt. Emily Lakdawalla, the Science and Technology Coordinator for the Planetary Society, a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. Read the blog at planetary.org.

We hope you'll check out the video version of Emily's tour. It's at planetary.org in the multimedia section. Thanks again to Lauren Roberts of Harkin Creative for the great shooting and editing. We had such a great time at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California. That's where we recorded last week's Planetary Radio Live show. There was no way for us to include all of our panel discussion, so we're back with Dave Bader, the Aquarium's Director of Education, and Kevin Han, Deputy Chief Scientist

for Solar System Exploration at the Jet Propulsion Lab. You'll also hear from Planetary Society's CEO, Bill Nye the Science Guy. I've got a specific question about Europa. Other things that orbit Jupiter are exercised or stretched. Does Europa get exercised in this way? Yeah, so this is a great

point, Bill. One of the real shifts in our understanding of what it takes for a world to be habitable has come about in the past few decades, where in the early days of planetary science and the astronomy of the solar system, there was this concept of the habitable zone. That is that in order for a planet to be habitable, you have to be at just the right distance from your parent star such that liquid water could be stable on the surface. And there was this sort of Goldilocks scenario of Venus is too hot, Mars is too cold, Earth is just right. But with the Jovian system, with the moons of Jupiter and some of the moons of Saturn and even Neptune, there is this new type of habitable zone that's mediated, controlled by tidal energy

and the ability of a massive world like Jupiter. Jupiter is 318 times as massive as the Earth. And little Europa is about the size of our moon. And so as it goes around Jupiter, it's tugged and pulled like a ball of taffy. And that mechanical tidal pulling generates some heat that we think is in part responsible for helping maintain that liquid water ocean. This is H2O. How do we know it's liquid water? Okay, we got this new type of habitable zone mediated by tidal energy dissipation. How do we know that this ocean exists? There's a lot of complex physics in it, but I'd like to break it into three steps. First, we can look with telescopes and see that the surface is water ice.

Then with the Galileo spacecraft, this is a spacecraft that was in orbit around Jupiter back in the late 90s and the early part of the last decade. The Galileo spacecraft would fly by Europa. And if you remember back to Physics 101, gravity and the distribution of mass in a body will perturb something that is thrown past it or flies by it. And so NASA scientists were able to see how the Galileo spacecraft,

how its trajectory changed a little bit from what they were expecting, and that tells you about the interior mass distribution, about how Europa is differentiated. That data, stay with me, I know this is complicated, but the second step, so the second step, the gravity data tells you that the outer layer of Europa is material of density about one gram per cubic centimeter. That is water. But that data wasn't sufficient to tell us whether or not it's ice, solid-phase water, or liquid water.

The final piece of the puzzle, the third step, has to do with the magnetic field. And this, again, is beautiful physics. It's a little bit complicated, but I like to make the analogy to airport security. When you walk through the little doorway at an airport, you're walking through a time-varying magnetic field. And if you've got a piece of metal in your pocket, that time-varying magnetic field will give rise to what we call an induced

magnetic field in that piece of metal. That induced magnetic field can be detected by little sensors in that doorway. The ability of time-varying magnetic fields to give rise to induced magnetic fields, if you have a conductor present, is something that we know at airports, and it's the same physics that put the final piece of the puzzle together for Europa. When the Galileo spacecraft flew by Europa, the magnetometer, the fancy compass on board, detected an induced magnetic field that was created and changing in direct response to Jupiter's main field. And basically that magnetic field detection says, hey, there needs to be a conducting layer near the surface. hey, there needs to be a conducting layer near the surface.

Ice is not conducting enough, but salty liquid water, like our ocean here on Earth, has the right conductivity to explain the data that we collected from the Galileo spacecraft. Kevin, you started to touch on this, but maybe you can expand on how important the study of Earth seas has been to learning more about these off-world oceans that we haven't even touched yet. And you've done a fair amount of undersea research. I've had the wonderful opportunity to get to go to the bottom of our oceans and explore, in particular, these places called the hydrothermal vents,

these hot springs on the bottom of our ocean. And these have really revolutionized our understanding of habitable regions on our own world. Back when we were first sending out the early spacecraft to explore Mars and Venus and other worlds, our knowledge of biology here on Earth was pretty primitive. We did not... When I was a kid, you had to have sunlight.

There was no living thing without sunlight, right? Exactly. And then... It's not true anymore. Yeah, 1970... Probably wasn't true back then, but we didn't know it. Right. The past few decades for biology have been similar to what the early part of the 1900s

were to physics. We now have incredible techniques to understand the DNA of microbial ecosystems and our own genetic material, etc. 1976, the Viking spacecraft are on Mars. 1977, geologists are exploring these heat anomalies in our ocean, and they go down to figure out what's causing these heat anomalies. They're like, oh, it's just maybe some hot volcano rocks or something. They go down there, and they find these hot springs teeming with life many miles down where there's no sunlight,

where the pressure is so intense, where the chemistry they figured would not support life. And yet there is life thriving off what we call chemosynthesis, synthesizing the biological materials with the chemistry available instead of photosynthesis, where you're using photons from the sun to synthesize things. More of Planetary Radio Live at the Aquarium of the Pacific is a minute away. This is Planetary Radio. Bill Nye the Science Guy here. The next Mars rover, Curiosity, is about to land on Mars.

You can join the celebration. PlanetFest 2012 is Saturday and Sunday, August 4th and 5th at the Pasadena Center in California. I'll be there with dozens of special guests, spacecraft displays, a space art show, great activities for kids, Planetary Radio Live, and the landing on Sunday night. Kids 8 and under are free. You can learn more at planetfest.org. It's a planet fest. I'll see you there. Hi, this is Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society.

We've spent the last year creating an informative, exciting, and beautiful new website. Your place in space is now open for business. You'll find a whole new look with lots of images, great stories, my popular blog, and new blogs from my colleagues and expert guests. And as the world becomes more social, we are too, giving you the opportunity to join in through Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and much more. It's all at planetary.org. I hope you'll check it out.

Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. We begin our conversation about oceans, down here and out there, on last week's Planetary Radio Live episode. Here's the last section of that great panel discussion featuring Bill Nye the Science Guy, Aquarium of the Pacific Director of Education Dave Bader, and Deputy Chief Scientist for Solar System Exploration at JPL, Kevin Hand. How do these elements, exploration in particular, how does this fit into the overall mission of the aquarium?

Well, the mission of the aquarium is to instill a sense of wonder, respect, and stewardship for the Pacific Ocean, its inhabitants, and ecosystems. So everybody who comes here, we hope, gets that sense of wonder, awe. Same kind of thing that you might get from exploring space, learning these new things about Europa and the oceans that might be there, the life that might exist underneath it. We want that same experience here. But we also want to let people know that the ocean is much more than fish and dolphin and other things. It creates our weather. It mitigates our climate. It's important for a food source for so many people.

The ocean is much more than just those wonderful organisms that live there, and we try to connect people with those messages. Kevin, if we find an ecosystem, let's say, under that ice on Europa, or maybe not even all the way under the ice because now there's these stories about lakes that may have formed in the ice itself.

I would guess that that's going to be the kind of complex ecosystem we see in Earth's oceans. That's a great point, and it's something that connects back to exactly what was just said about... Hang in here just a minute. You guys are all talking like, oh, sure, if they got an ocean, there's going to be an ecosystem. On this other world orbiting Jupiter,

in the fastest rocket I can build, it takes me 10 years to get there. Oh, yeah, sure, go ahead. Well, but the... So the key aspect there, though, is that life is a process. And so in the same way that part of what we do at JPL and at NASA with regard to Earth system science is to understand the Earth as a system

and the processes that control everything from temperature, pressure, salinity to biological productivity. Coming back to this issue of what we've learned about life on earth and how that extends to our search for life elsewhere, it's nearly impossible to design a spacecraft or it's kind of a flawed idea to design a spacecraft that will just go and detect life. Life is binary. It's either there or it's not. But what we can do and much of what we do when we design missions is to design instrument packages and sensors that can assess habitability, that can make measurements that connect to the processes that we think are important for a world to be habitable. And part of that is

understanding the ocean chemistry, the pH, the temperature and pressure. Will this ocean on Europa map onto the conditions that we think help make our own ocean habitable? Dave Bader, as you hear about these missions, curiosity about to arrive at Mars, speculation, hope for a mission to Europa, to look for life there. You know, space research, planetary science missions, they're facing major funding challenges, something the Planetary Society is hoping to address or is addressing. Yet I know oceanographers and marine biologists who tell me they'd be thrilled to get a slightly larger fraction

of what gets spent on space science. What do you think of the balance there? Well, and, you know, at the same time as space exploration budgets are being cut, the ocean exploration, ocean research budgets are also being cut. There's enough resources for all of these things. You know, to say that we should have one or the other is just not the right question. We should have both. And both should be robustly funded for everything that comes out of

them, understanding our own planet and what's happening within it. The fact that we have 95% of our planet to discover, to explore, not even to research, but just to see for the first time. These things are resources that we should have just for the sake of being human and curious. Bill, space or ocean study? You have to have both. Don't make me come over there. These things are of a piece. As I claim that, to your point, exploration is part of being human. Exploration brings out the best in all of us. I will also claim that by investing in exploration, by investing in basic research, we will make discoveries that will improve the life of everyone. I mean, think about the discoveries that were made about plankton and viruses

and things that live in the sea that affected our ability to create vaccines and so on. You don't know what you're going to find, so you have to look. So if I were king of the forest, and I'm not, we would fund exploration at every turn. Here, here. That's worth some applause. Oh, sure. And I'll tell you, you'll get the money back. That's my claim.

We're almost out of time, but we do want to go to our audience here at the Aquarium of the Pacific to get some questions. Hi, please introduce yourself. Hi, my name is Emily. I work here in guest services at the Aquarium, and I've volunteered in education also. So you were able to get a ticket. Yes. Thankfully, I'm really excited.

Anyway, my question is, we've heard about a couple of really exciting space exploration projects coming up, like what's landing on Mars soon and the prospects of sending a ship out to Europa. Are there any big ocean exploration, I guess, activities that are coming up maybe in the foreseeable future that you know of? Yeah, NOAA has a wonderful resource. It's the Okeanos Explorer. It's a boat dedicated to ocean exploration. And that boat is, or at least was, scheduled to be out most of the year, constantly exploring our world ocean. The cool thing about that particular vessel

is it streams its information out to the world, out to the Internet, and you can actually go on to NOAA's website and check out what's happening with the Okeanos Explorer and see what's happening right now. Male Speaker 2 Hi, Miss. Female Speaker 3 Hi, my name is also Emily.

Male Speaker 2 Whoa. Female Speaker 3 As an educator, of course, my first thought is how do I teach this to my students, especially the feeling of exploration and the need to explore and creating future scientists and, I mean, what suggestions would you have for harboring that love of exploration and discovery in children? Dave Bader, get outside. Don't stay in the classroom. Don't stay at home. Just that. Allow kids to be kids.

Bill, you're something of an educator. Yeah. Well, I say to all teachers. What was it, I say to everybody, what was it about your favorite teacher that you liked? Everybody had a favorite teacher, I hope, maybe two or three. It was his or her passion. It's her passion, excitement about the material, about what you're trying to convey. And this is what people, at least for me and the professors I had,

I had Carl Sagan for astronomy, for example. I had this fantastic physics teacher, fantastic. You just want to grab people by the car. Don't you see? So we are a planet in the solar system. Do you get it? I mean, like, how did we get here? Where did we come from? Was there anybody else out there asking this? Come on, people. It's so exciting. And so I should pull back. But let your passion come through, and I guarantee you will get kids engaged. Hi, sir. Hi, my name's Leo. I'm local, and we're members here,

and my daughter enjoys the camp here, by the way. My question is, ice fishing on Europa is obviously going to be difficult through kilometers of ice. Do the scientists want to focus on ice, looking for microorganisms in the ice, since we have found microorganisms here in our ice caps in Antarctica? You want to take a really good heater for your little shack there out on the ice.

Exactly. And here again, we find interesting parallels with the Earth. Is there a Bass Pro Shop? It's pretty expensive. Just in case. Exactly, a warming huts. The Antarctic ice sheet is about four kilometers thick, and beneath Antarctica's ice sheet,

there are these subglacial lakes, the largest of which is called Lake Vostok. Our Russian colleagues have drilled a hole all the way down, and this coming winter, they're going to sample some of the water from Lake Vostok and see whether or not there is life in that trapped body of water down in Antarctica. And how long may have that water been isolated from the rest of us? It's a good question and there's debates about that but anywhere from there are rivers that have cycled that water through on a relatively short time scale of tens of thousands of years to a few millions of years.

So do you predict that there'll be something alive in that water? I, yeah, if there's anything that life on earth has taught me is that it is tenacious. Life finds a way. If it can get a little toehold, life will figure out a niche to occupy. And even if it's just a tiny amount of energy, chemical energy or photon energy from the sun, little microbes will eke out a living and just kick back. And, you know, they might not multiply rapidly. They might not grow large, but they will find a way to make a living. And let's hope that that's true all over the solar

system. Aquarium of the Pacific Director of Education Dave Bader, JPL's Deputy Chief Scientist for Solar System Exploration Kevin Hand, and Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye. We thank the Aquarium of the Pacific for hosting our panel discussion and the craziness that makes a Planetary Radio Live episode. With all that great stuff we've just run, we only have time for a quickie what's up with Bruce Batts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society. Hey. Hey.

Okay. In the evening sky, we've still got Saturn hanging out near similarly bright but much bluer Spica early evening in the west and Mars getting closer and closer to those two reddish Mars coming from the right and moving closer together over the next couple weeks keep an eye on that in the pre-dawn super bright Venus low to the horizon in the east and really bright Jupiter above Venus. And we'll have more cool stuff to tell you about next week coming up in mid-August. We move on to this week in space history. This week, appropriately enough, five years ago, Phoenix was launched towards Mars. Hmm.

That is very appropriate, isn't it? It is, speaking of which, random space. That. That was scary. Thank you. Thank you very much. His, speaking of which, Random Space Fact. That was scary. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mars Science Laboratory curiosity that you and I will be talking about this coming week in Planet Fest 2012. Be there.

Which is not a call to action. We just want to make sure that everyone knows he's just kidding. Though we would love to see you there. But if you'd like more information, you could go to planetfest.org. Yeah. Bruce, by the way, is the emcee for both days, both exciting days of PlanetFest. But he'll also join me Saturday afternoon, last event of the day on Saturday, about 345, for Planetary Radio Live on the stage at the Pasadena Center.

All right, some quick rundown of Curiosity compared to its previous brethren, Spacefacts. Curiosity is about twice as long and five times more massive than the Mars Exploration Rovers. And Curiosity's landing ellipse is 20 by 7 kilometers, whereas it was 160 by 15 kilometers for the mars exploration rovers that's the the active targeting landing system they're using on curiosity they can get a much smaller area that they can pretty well guarantee getting into that's quite a bullseye indeed all right we move on to the trivia contest and uh i'd asked you, who comprises International Space Station Expedition 32? People in space, right now, as we speak.

How'd we do, Matt? I'm going to run right into our winner, who I think he's a lucky guy, because I think this may be only the second time that he's entered. Not sure. Out of Edmond, Oklahoma, our winner is Tim Livingston. He'll be getting a Fisher space pen.

He gave us all six names. Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineers Joe Acaba, Sergei Revin, Sunita Williams. She's been up there a lot. Yuri Malachenko and Akihiko Hoshidi from JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency. So congratulations, Tim.

Very nice job with those names. I did my best. As far as I know. Thank you. Maybe we'll hear from them. Give us a call, folks. We'd love to hear from you while you're up there anyway. And here's the bad news. No contest this week. I know it's so sad. This is so rare. But with Planet Fest and a vacation that I'm going to take immediately afterward, don't worry, we'll still have brand new shows every week. It just isn't going to work out. So rest those pens and keyboard fingers, and we'll be back next week with a new contest and a Fisher Space Pen to give away. All right. I look forward to it, Matt.

And I look forward to Planet Fest. All right, everybody. Go out there. Look up at the night sky and think what kind of car you designed to drive on Mars. And I look forward to Planet Fest. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think what kind of car you'd design to drive on Mars. Thank you. Good night. I want a Carroll Shelby Mars Mustang. Maybe to be a Mars-tang.

He's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society, and he does join us every week here and next week at PlanetFest for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and made possible by a grant from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation, and by the members of the Planetary Society. Clear skies..