Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Nancy Atkinson’s Incredible Stories from Space

Episode Date: March 29, 2017

The longtime editor of outstanding online space news source Universe Today has just written about nine robotic missions of exploration in "Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello again, podcast listeners. It's Matt with another of those special messages. Again, thank you to all of you who are reviewing this program or rating it wherever you happen to listen to the show. hashtag tripod. If you're on social media, and I'll bet you are, would you, if you don't mind promoting this show a little bit, put it out there with hashtag tripod, T-R-Y-P-O-D. It still is getting a lot of great podcasts out in front of a lot of people who weren't aware of them. So if you have a moment, next time you're online, Twitter, Facebook, you choose, we would very much appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening. And here's this week's show. Incredible stories from space and from Nancy Atkinson, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society,

with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. You may know her from her great work at Universe Today, but Nancy has now gone behind the scenes with nine of our favorite robotic space exploration missions with her new book. We'll talk space geek with her in minutes. There are not words adequate to describe the supermassive black hole that has been violently expelled from a distant galaxy, but Bill Nye and I will try. What did Agent K reveal to Agent J? Agent B for Bruce will tell all in What's Up. We begin with Planetary Society digital editor Jason Davis. Jason, I have to admit I was a little bit disturbed when I heard that NASA is considering something that sounds inherently risky.

But you reminded me in your March 23rd blog post that there's some precedent for this. Tell us what's going on. NASA suddenly announced last month that they were considering putting astronauts on the first SLS Orion flight, which is supposed to happen at the end of next year, but that would almost certainly be pushed if they made this change. They're indicating this came from the transition team that came in from the Trump administration and, you know, kind of looks over how things are at NASA and, you know, ultimately makes recommendations before the new NASA administrator comes in. Yeah, as you pointed out, there is some precedent for this, although it definitely sounds risky when you first hear about it. And that would be the first space shuttle launch in 1981. John Young, Bob Crippen, got aboard the space shuttle. It had never flown.

They climbed aboard, went on a test flight, and luckily, everything went well. Yes, thank goodness. And you mentioned that there's some reason to believe that this may be less risky than that test of what was then a system that was entirely new. Yeah, it would almost certainly be less risky than that. First of all, the shuttle itself, as we know now, wasn't the safest vehicle, right? We lost two of them in disasters that were caused by things that arguably NASA knew about since the beginning of the program. First of all, there are a lot more abort modes for SLS and Orion. They have the traditional escape tower on top of the rocket that will pull the capsule away at the first sign of trouble. The capsule itself is protected during

launch, whereas the space shuttle had its belly just exposed right there during the ride to orbit. So inherently, the vehicle is a little bit safer. And also, SLS is really based on a lot of heritage technologies. The boosters are the same. They're actually pretty much shuttle boosters with an extra propellant segment on them. They're flying using shuttle engines that have actually already flown in space. And the core stage is really just kind of an external fuel tank from the shuttle program. The big variable is the upper stage. And that was going to be a variable no matter what, because NASA is switching upper stages between the first and second flight. But it still doesn't excuse the fact that this is the first time all of this will be kind of put together on the pad at the same time and flown.

So, you know, it's making some people nervous, and it'll be interesting to see how this study turns out. I'm somewhat reassured by all of that. but why consider this when the plan was to make that first flight of SLS unmanned? Yeah, so that's what we don't know. Most sources I spoke to for this article kind of coalesced around two theories. Number one, right now there is no chance really of any NASA astronauts going back beyond low Earth orbit during Trump's first term. If NASA did this, they would potentially be able to do it during the first term in 2019. So obviously, presidents love big, high visibility moments like this, and Trump would certainly love to take credit for this and say, hey, look what NASA did.

This is an embodiment of the greatness he's always talking about for America. And then there's a second theory that coalesces around the fact that NASA may be still a little bit nervous about the commercial crew competitors, SpaceX and Boeing, and then you've got Blue Origin coming in here, and they may be wanting to accelerate that a little bit. There's also kind of a third, more pragmatic reason. Hey, if you can fly sooner, why not? But it certainly doesn't seem like NASA would have put this plan forward on their own. It really seems like this was coming from the administration. Wow. Politics perhaps over science and engineering,

but we'll wait and see. I mean, this is not a decision that's been made yet, and I know you'll continue to follow it, Jason. Thanks for bringing us up to date. Yeah, thank you, Matt. That's Jason Davis, digital editor for the Planetary Society. Bill Nye, the CEO of the Society, is next. Bill, a truly cosmic story to talk about, and one that I find very inspiring. The huge black hole that's roaming the galaxy. Not our galaxy, thank goodness. No, no, the universe. I misspoke. The cosmos, yes. Gobbling up stars.

We laugh. It just indicates. So a couple of things about this story. The energy of 100 million supernovas. That seems like a lot. And then it's supposed to have slurped up a billion stars? Give or take. That seems like a lot.

Both of those seem big. And this thing was detected by a consortium of researchers around the world, like the Hubble Space Telescope people in Europe working together trying to understand this light that seemed to be bent around a quasar. They're pretty satisfied it's this super massive black hole, which then can create the beloved mythical gravity waves. One more confirmation of the theory of relativity. It's amazing. It's amazing, amazing, amazing. And it just makes me wonder, Matt, just in the biggest picture, what else don't we know? Are people going to look back at this maybe even in 10 years, let alone 150 years, and just say, look, well, they were doing some pretty good work, but they kind of missed the big point. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised.

Or those guys back then, you know, they made that discovery and it's still true. I just wonder, you know, it was only 100 years ago people discovered relativity. Just think what's next for black holes and dark energy and dark matter. It's just amazing what's going on with this consortium of scientists working together to correlate their observations, to try to explain their observations. Amazing. Yeah, it is a great testament to the wonders of science and big science, too. I mean, Chandra Observatory, Sloan Sky Survey, and soon the ALMA Array, which we visited on this show some time ago.

Science is cool. Oh, it's amazing. And so this is what we say about astronomy, especially. It is humbling as you realize that you're just this insignificant speck in the universe, but it's empowering because you can understand it all. It's fantastic. We are part of this larger scheme of creation. It's just amazing. Every day, it's amazing. I feel the wonder. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Matt. Let's change the world.

Yeah, he's the CEO of the Planetary Society, Bill Nye, the science guy. Nancy Atkinson has spent the last 13 years bringing Space Happy fans the latest news about astronomy, planetary science, space exploration, and more. The editor of Universe Today has now found a new way to share her love of robotic space exploration and the science revealed as she introduces us to the equally passionate leaders of nine missions. Her new book is called Incredible Stories from Space, a behind-the-scenes look at the missions changing our view of the cosmos, published by Page Street. She joined me a few days ago via Skype to talk about these exciting stories and much more. Nancy, welcome to Planetary Radio,

and congratulations on the publication of this terrific book, a behind-the-scenes look at the missions changing our view of the cosmos. They are incredible stories from space. Thanks so much for inviting me on, Matt. I have been a longtime listener and fan of Planetary Radio, so it is a true honor to be your guest. As I have been a fan of your work and your colleagues at Universe Today and elsewhere. You know, I think I told you months ago when we first started to talk about having you back on the show. I think I said if Planetary Radio became a book, I'd want it to read like this.

A balance of exciting science, space-worthy technology, and a lot about the hearts and minds of the explorers, the men and women who create it all. Yeah, I did want to talk about the technology and the science and the exciting discoveries that are being made. But really, what I wanted to do was to talk about the people behind the missions, because even though these are all robotic spacecraft, uncrewed missions as they're called now, there are still a lot of people involved. And behind every robot is a lot of human effort. Just to be able to talk to all of these amazing people who do things that have never

been done before to make these missions possible, it was just such a fun experience to sit across the table from them and talk to them face to face, see the emotion on their faces as they're telling me about certain parts of the mission or discoveries that are being made. So it was a wonderful experience personally just to be able to write this book. It's that personal contact that is my favorite part of doing this radio show. I just feel so fortunate to be able to have these conversations. I know exactly what you mean. A lot of time in the past in my work writing for Universe Today, I do a lot of work just from home and interview people over the phone or Skype. But being able to talk to them face to face was really eye-opening, I guess, and just to see the passion and the dedication that they have for the work

that they do and how that plays out into how successful these missions have been. By the way, just a pet peeve, that term uncrewed missions, it's almost as if I want to call human missions crude robotic missions. call human missions crude robotic missions. Right. I kind of agree with you. I like the human versus robotic missions. And yeah, I'll agree with you on that one. It's a balance we're looking for, right? I mean, there's a place for both. Yeah, I agree. You already had and still have a first rate forum for writing about missions like this. I think you've already started to explain

why you wanted to do this in the form of a book, but do you have any more to say about that? Well, I really didn't have writing a book on my radar, even though I think every writer and journalist wants to write a book at some point in their career. I was just too busy covering the daily news at Universe Today. You know, there's so much going on

in space exploration and astronomy, just trying to keep up with it. But back in the fall of 2015, I got a call from a publishing company, Page Street Publishing. They had an idea for a book about NASA's robotic missions and wondered if I'd be interested in writing it. Well, jeepers, that's not a call you get every day of your life. And so I definitely took advantage of the opportunity and kind of rearranged the work that I was doing at University Today. My entire career has been writing online. Writing online, you have the opportunity to write about the latest things, update articles. Heaven forbid, if you make a

mistake, you can go back in and correct it. But once you write a book, there it is. In my head, I know that what this book does is to just capture a snapshot in time of all these great missions. But in my heart, I hope that what this book does is create a lasting legacy to these incredible missions and their discoveries and all the things that we've learned. And also a legacy to the wonderful and incredible people behind the missions. It was just a lot of fun. Well, I'm sure glad you did it. I already mentioned in my introduction that you really focus in on nine distinct missions, although there are other missions, you know, both current and future that come up in the book. If you were forced to, could you pick up a favorite among these?

That is a really hard question, Matt, and you're not the first person to ask it, so I have been thinking about this, but it's hard to answer because writing this book, I had the chance to kind of delve into each of these missions and get to know the people. And so they each kind of have a special place in my heart for different reasons. The New Horizons mission, when I talked to Alan Stern and Hal Weaver and Alice Bowman, it was just six months after the Pluto flyby. So all of the details and the emotion that they felt from that flyby were still very close to the surface. Plus, they were still just getting some of the data back and the pictures back. So they were very excited about all the information and the pictures they were getting back.

They were just getting ready to write some of their papers and present some of their findings. So that was fun. The Solar Dynamics Observatory, which is a mission that doesn't get a lot of news coverage, I guess, but it does have a little kind of special place in my heart because I was at the launch of the mission from Kennedy Space Center back in 2010. Actually, when I went to Goddard Space Flight Center to do the interviews for the book, It was actually six years to the day from the launch when I was there. So they had put together a kind of SDO's greatest hits video compilation, and they had that running in the background while we were doing our interviews.

But it was fun to reconnect with those scientists that I had the chance to stand right next to as their spacecraft was launching. A lot of fun things about each of the missions. I guess I was very gratified to be able to talk to some of the top people for all of the missions, you know, the principal investigators, the head engineers or project managers for these missions. But for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, I had the chance to talk to some of the kind of behind the scenes people. I talked to a group of engineers that work with the HiRISE camera. And just to learn the nuts and bolts of operating this camera, you know, how do you create the code to send a command to the spacecraft to take a picture at a certain time, at a certain angle, with a certain filter, for a certain length of time at this bandwidth,

you know, how do you do that? And it was really fun to learn about those things or to navigate a spacecraft. That, to me, is one of the most fascinating things of having a mission going through the solar system is figuring out where you are, where to send it to, and have it work so perfectly that you can capture a picture of an avalanche on Mars. That's amazing. These are some of my favorite highlights from the book as well. And it does a good job, particularly in this conversation, about that spy camera orbiting Mars, HiRISE,

which I'm going to come back to in a few minutes, of how difficult this is. It's not just, you know, point and shoot. There is so much more to making anything happen, even what may seem mundane on all of these missions. Right. It was really fun to be able to go to the Space Telescope Science Institute, where they run the Hubble Space Telescope,

where the history is just oozing out of the walls there. And it's just a great place. You know, I talked to some of the people who have been with the mission before it launched, since before it launched. So you're talking about Hubble now? Yes, Hubble. Yes. All of the details of, you know, how they had to create a star catalog bigger than anything that had ever been done before. And back then, things were still on glass plates. So they had to scan these glass plates and try to make one of the first digital catalogs. And wow, you know, you're, again, doing things that have never been done before

and trying to figure out how to do things. It's probably trial and error to have a mission be that successful for this long. It's a testament to the people. You bet. I'm so glad you brought up SDO, that solar observing mission. Anybody who reads this book probably is excited about space in general. But if your interest in space exploration is largely out of self-interest, this may be the most important mission in the book. Yeah, exactly.

We're learning so much about our sun. There's a lot that we don't know really about how it operates. The potential for, you know, solar flares, coronal mass ejections, things that could potentially harm our planet. You mentioned a close call that the Earth had, and we know much more about these things now because of missions like SDO. Right. You know, being able to have basically have a video camera focused on the sun, all this data coming back, there's just so much more that we're learning about our sun that is so important to life on Earth. Of course, now we're so dependent on our satellite technology and electronics, and the sun can have bad effects on that when it has a little temper tantrum. So NASA is actually working with power companies

and satellite companies to figure out what they can do. You know, you do have a little bit of warning when you've got this solar event taking place. So, you know, you can actually turn things off and try to preserve the electronics that are pretty sensitive to all this. Yeah, it may be about preserving a good part of what we know as civilization nowadays to be able to prepare for, be ready for one of these huge flares when it's coming right at us. Right. We're able now to answer questions

that we didn't even know we should be asking. I think that's what the wonderful things are about these missions. Yeah. And science itself. Spectacular images in this chapter, looking at our sun. But there really are terrific images throughout the book. A good candidate for the strangest image in the book, I think you'll know the one I'm talking about. You described it as kind of looking like lines of trees on Mars. To me, they look more like cilia, or if you'll pardon the expression, nose hairs. Forgive me for that. You know what I'm talking about, right? Yes, yes, exactly. So strange. Yeah, yeah. I have for years called the high-rise camera my favorite instrument

in the entirety of space exploration, just because of the incredible images that it takes of Mars. You look at it and you say, yeah, what is that? I just think that that's a wonderful mission, and it's been going now for 10 years, over 10 years. Just an amazing mission. I was really gratified to be able to share so many pictures in the book. There's over 240 different images in the book. And I think it's really hard to do a good job of explaining space exploration without being able to share. Tell me about it. I do a radio show. Right, exactly. I was very excited to be able to put full color images throughout the book. That was the fun part about working with this publisher. And they use good quality paper, so the color really comes out really well. interpretations by people who like to see what they wish they could see on places like Mars, you must get this kind of email all the time as well, right? How do you respond when someone

says to you, well, yeah, of course that's a face on Mars, and look over there, there's his toothbrush and his refrigerator, or a whole city. We all face these kinds of questions that go well beyond what the responsible scientists see in those images. Yeah, it's a balancing act of trying to explain things, you know, in a way that people can understand and to try to explain the science and to guide them along of, you know, maybe looking at it at a different way. So it's a difficult task to try to change somebody's mind who maybe has their mind pretty made up about this is what I'm seeing and this is what it's got to be. It's not going to stop.

But we do our part. My conversation with Nancy Atkinson, author of incredible stories from space, will continue in a minute. This is Planetary Radio. Where did we come from? Are we alone in the cosmos? These are the questions at the core of our existence. And the secrets of the universe are out there, waiting to be discovered. But to find them, we have to go into space. We have to explore. This endeavor unites us.

Space exploration truly brings out the best in us. Encouraging people from all walks of life to work together, to achieve a common goal, to know the cosmos and our place within it. This is why the Planetary Society exists. Our mission is to give you the power to advance space science and exploration. With your support, we sponsor innovative space technologies, inspire curious minds, and advocate for our future in space. We are the Planetary Society. Join us. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan.

We love to bring you conversations with the scientists, engineers, and other leaders who are taking us to the final frontier. It's not just because they have great science to talk about, but because their enthusiasm and fascination are so very contagious. Nancy Atkinson shares that bug in her new book, Incredible Stories from Space, a behind-the-scenes look at the missions changing our view of the cosmos. Each of nine spectacular robotic missions gets a chapter. What did you find in common among these missions? I mean, it's a pretty diverse group of missions. What do they share and what about the people behind them? Did you find factors in common there as well? Well, as I said before, the passion and

dedication was really kind of an overarching theme for everyone in the book. I talked to 37 NASA scientists and engineers and every single interview was just absolutely a joy. They were actually so happy to be able to share their inside, behind the scenes stories that they don't get to share that often. It was just so much fun. I know I've said that several times that it was just so much fun. But it's true. Yes, it was very true. A lot of the technology is similar in a lot of the missions. Some instruments are on multiple missions, so you've got that. But still, I think it does come back to the people.

There are some unique personalities out there. I've got to say Alan Stern is just a no-nonsense guy and larger-than-life guy and very fun to talk to, very straightforward. He'll give you a straight answer every time. Another person that was really fun to interview was Helmut Jenckner with the Hubble Space Telescope mission. He's been with the mission for, well, since before it launched. He's originally from Austria, so he sounds just like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he's just the warmest, funniest guy and could tell you stories about the early days and everything that the Hubble mission has

had to overcome. Just so many great stories and things that people were very willing to share about their personal life and how they came to be scientists or engineers, what motivated them, their kind of hopes and dreams for the future of not only their careers, but their missions. Some of them are sadly coming to a close soon. And so that was some of the things that we had to discuss too. How about you? What brought you to this business? Oh dear, that's kind of a long story, but I'm of that age where I remember watching the Apollo missions to the moon with my family sitting in front of the TV glued to the television set. So I think that was a very early on thing that drew me into the wonders of space exploration. And I certainly remember always being intrigued by, you know,

in my weekly reader, seeing the images coming back from the early planetary missions and the Voyager missions. So that kind of interest in space exploration was always there. However, I wasn't all that great in math and science, and I always wanted to be a writer. Life happens. And I was actually a teacher at a science museum, Science Museum of Minnesota. And we had access to a space shuttle, a one-third actual size inflatable space shuttle. And I brought it to schools. I did programs with students and

sometimes the parents would come in and the parents would be so amazed. And they said, wow, I didn't even know we had these kind of missions going on. And I got to thinking, well, how could I reach a wider audience of all the amazing things that are going on in space exploration? That's when I started to think about writing, and that's kind of how it all started. And just by luck and happenstance, I got hooked up with Fraser Cain at Universe today and have been with them since 2004.

Would you talk a little bit about your boss and friend, Fraser Cain, who is a pretty amazing guy? And I will admit for the first time on this show that for a long time, I thought Fraser Cain had to be a pseudonym. No, that's his real name. And it's interesting, Matt, so the day that we are recording this today is the 18th birthday of Universe Today. No kidding.

So, yeah, 18 years ago, Fraser sat down at his kitchen table and started blogging. And I've been trying to dig into if Universe Today is the longest running space and astronomy news website. I'm, you know, it started in 1999. So it's been around for a long time. Yeah, it's an honor to have to be associated with Fraser and to have had the opportunity to share my passion for space exploration and astronomy. Universe Today is a tremendous resource. Just today, this morning, there's an article by one of your colleagues about Curiosity and those wheels rolling over that nasty surface of Mars and seeing some more substantial damage to one of those wheels for the first time.

And there, of course, is a beautiful image of this worrisome wheel. Yeah, so that was very interesting to be able to talk to Ashwin Vasavada about how the rover is doing and what the potential is for its longevity. And he's the project scientist for the Curiosity mission, right? Yeah, they've learned how to try and drive a little bit differently. I think the terrain on Mars had a little bit pointier, sharper rocks than what they were expecting. They have been finding these gashes and tears in the wheels, and now it is continuing to degrade. They still think that there's enough integrity left in the wheels to keep going, to start getting farther up on Mount Sharp and continue on as long as they go. I know,

you know, with the Opportunity rover, they had problems with the wheels, and they figured out how to work around it and to get the most out. And of course, Opportunity is still the Energizer bunny of Mars rovers, that rover that just keeps going. So we can only hope and knock on wood that the Curiosity rover has the same luck. Well, the resourcefulness shown by these teams is legendary. I really was only using that as a hook to talking about what a great resource Universe Today is. It really is a pretty amazing effort, and you have a lot of people contributing to it now. We're very lucky to have a lot of great writers. Some of them come and go and come back again. And Fraser's just a wonderful person to work with, very supportive of any ideas you have or things you would like changed or tweaked on the website.

So he's been a great mentor and friend and boss to me. And I owe a lot of anything that I've been able to do. It's always been associated with the universe today. So I give a lot of anything that I've been able to do. It's always been associated with the universe today. So I give a lot of credit and thanks to Fraser. How about the sister organization known as CosmoQuest? Can you tell us a little bit about that and what it's up to? Sure. Pamela Gay, Dr. Pamela Gay, who works with Fraser a lot on AstronomyCast, started CosmoQuest as a way to engage people to do citizen science projects.

And so they've got a lot of fun projects that you can do. You can do various things like look for craters on Mars or on the moon and other fun projects where you can actually work with real data coming in from the spacecraft to help the scientists make discoveries. So that is very exciting. They also have some classes you can take, online classes, with really wonderful teachers, well-qualified people who can tell you and teach you about the wonders of our universe. You, Pamela, my colleague Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society,

far more of my colleagues at the Planetary Society are women than men. You know, we talk about on this show periodically about what appears to be the growing role of women in planetary science and elsewhere in space exploration. Do you see this trend as well? I do, and I think it's a lot of fun. I have to say, in my career, I have never felt discriminated against or that nobody was taking me seriously. So I'm very thankful for that because I do know that that does happen. Sadly, yes. Yes, sadly. In journalism and in science, social media, of course, is the way that you get connected with a lot of people.

But it's fun to be able to connect with people who understand what the things that you have gone through and who maybe you can be a mentor to them and help them to to expand their career or to to get through an issue or a problem. So it's been a lot of it's been a lot of fun. Is it your impression that this whole broad community of space geeks that you and I are part of and the other people that we've just talked about, that it is growing or evolving? I mean, what are your impressions? I think it's always growing and evolving. It's always fun to see new people coming on and to see their enthusiasm for what they see and

their perspective. My perspective has always been certainly space geek, space nerd of always being amazed and marveling at these wonderful and marvelous new findings from faraway places. With the current political climate, you've got to bring in a little bit of, you know, a different perspective of how you can analyze these things. And I admit, I'm not the best at trying to pick apart a budget or all of that. So I know the Planetary Society does a great job of figuring all those things out and mapping those things out very well for the people who are interested in really learning about how space exploration works as far as being part of a, you know, a government operation. Well, from the policy standpoint, well,

I'll pass those thoughts along to my colleagues like Casey Dreyer. Back to the book. You close the book, a couple of chapters. Second to the last, you look ahead at missions, some of which are underway, some of which are still to come. I think of like the James Webb Space Telescope that we're all keeping our fingers crossed for. What are you most looking forward to, both missions and events in the coming years? Well, I agree that James Webb Space Telescope is really one of the most anticipated missions ever. It's been a long time in coming. That's going to be really exciting to see how that mission operates.

I know it's going to operate much like the Hubble Space Telescope in that scientists from around the world will be able to submit proposals and to be able to use it for how they see fit or to, you know, to look at the hot topics or if something, you know, something crops up that needs to be looked at. That'll be a fun thing to follow as far as how they operate the mission. I'm really excited about the OSIRIS-REx mission. Going to an asteroid is fun, and the sample return aspect is just a really exciting opportunity for us to learn a lot about these bodies, and in particular that one, which is a potentially hazardous asteroid. And I think it'll be interesting to learn about gravity tugs

and how we can actually maybe alter the trajectory of an asteroid. So I think that's a fun mission because that's been talked about for so long, of how we could maybe deflect an asteroid that has the potential of impacting Earth. This will be an actual test. And that is so cool. That's how we feel about Osiris-Rex as well. I just got one more big question for you about the book. In your epilogue, you try to answer a question that we all get asked all the time. And you do a pretty good job of it. I'd like you to recap that here. The question is, why explore space?

For me, it's always been about our curiosity and wanting to go to that next horizon or over that next hill to see what's out there. A lot of people tend to think of how much money is being spent on space exploration. But as many people have said, NASA doesn't just pack millions of dollars into a rocket and blast it into space. All that money is spent here on Earth. All of that half percent of the federal budget. Yeah. So it's providing jobs for people in all sorts of different industries and, of course, providing very smart people the opportunity to use their talents for the betterment of humanity. I said earlier, we're able to answer

questions that earlier we didn't even know we should ask. Well, that's kind of what space exploration is, bringing us to places and opening our eyes to things that we didn't even know about before. So there are a lot of benefits that we get from space exploration, the technology and the exploration, the technology and the advances in science and medical equipment and all the things that we use every day in our life, things that make our life better. But there's still that intangible of being able to explore and expand our horizons and feed our curiosity. And I think that's really what space exploration does the best. What our boss, the science guy, says is the PB&J, the passion, beauty, and joy

of exploring space and science. Nancy, thank you so much for this. Where are you going to be on August 21st for the Great American Eclipse? Well, I'm still trying to map out my exact location. I've got a few different options in mind, so probably somewhere in Illinois. I will be at Southern Illinois University myself with our friend. I know Pamela Gay is also going to be visiting there. I'm going to be the emcee in the stadium at the university, so I look forward to seeing Pamela there, and I would be delighted if you had the chance to join us for that big event as well. It's sure going to be exciting.

Yeah, that would be wonderful. I might crash your party there. Well, you and me and 10,000 other people, and that's just in the stadium. Thank you for this great book, and thank you for a terrific conversation, Nancy, and best of luck with all of this. Thank you so much, Matt. Nancy, and best of luck with all of this. Thank you so much, Matt. We've been talking to Nancy Atkinson, the editor and writer for Universe Today,

and such a big part of this community that follows what's going on in space exploration. She has written incredible stories from space, a behind-the-scenes look at the missions changing our view of the cosmos. You can get it from Page Street Publishing Company and all the usual sources, of course. And we'll put up some links, including links to Universe Today and CosmoQuest, and where you can get the book on the show page that you can find at planetary.org slash radio. Bruce Batts is the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society.

He's here for another round of What's Up in the Night Sky and all the other fun stuff that we do. Welcome back. Thank you, Matt. So, how's it looking up there? Well, Mercury is the object du jour. Anyway, Mercury, which is a tough one to see, is doing its best apparition of the year. It is up in the early, early evening, shortly after sunset. Look for it hanging out low in the west. So sun direction, look for Mercury.

We've also got our favorites hanging out, Jupiter over in the east in the early evening looking super bright, Mars also in the west up above Mercury looking dim and reddish, and Saturn coming up in the wee hours of the morning in the east. You made a great impression with all those references to Venus over the last, what, couple of months. A lot of people who were very happy to go out or regretted that it was cloudy and they couldn't see it. Yeah, it's pretty much left the evening sky. It'll be up in the morning sky in another couple weeks.

Well, even now if you're really crazed and looking carefully with things like binoculars. But it'll get easy in the pre-dawn east in a couple weeks. All right, this week in space history, it was 1974 that we first got our up-close view of Mercury. It was the first Mariner 10 flyby of Mercury this week in 1974. Speaking of that innermost planet. Speaking of it. So go get your view of Mercury.

Random Space Fact! Scary. And today we're talking about the scary object known as quasars or quasi-stellar objects. A quasar is an active galactic nucleus of very high luminosity. In other words, they're really bright, far, really, really far away typically. We now know that a quasar consists, quasars are supermassive black holes surrounded by an orbiting accretion disk of gas. So as the gas and the accretion disk falls into the black hole, bad things happen. It gets excited, and out comes various radiation, including at radio wavelengths, but also at other wavelengths.

But here's the amazing thing. The most powerful quasars have luminosity, so brightness, thousands of times brighter than a large galaxy like the Milky Way. Wow. Thousands of times brighter. And so appropriate because you haven't heard it yet, but Bill and I talked about this supermassive black hole that has been tossed out of the center of a galaxy. There's big stuff going on out there. There is indeed. All right, we move on to the trivia contest and we delved into the land of entertainment and movies. I said, where was one of Agent J's teachers from in Men in Black? How'd we do, man?

This is such fun. Almost everybody figured this out and a few people noticed something interesting, which I will get to. Random.org chose a first-time winner, Royal Snotterly in Ketchikan, Alaska. In response to Agent J saying that he always thought one of his teachers was from Venus, Agent K said, Mrs. Edelson, Jupiter. Well, actually one of the moons. That is correct. actually one of the moons. That is correct.

This really, well, first I'll tell you that Royal has won our usual prize package, although it's a prize package that's going to be shifting slightly soon. Planetary Radio t-shirts we got plenty of, but we are running out of Planetary Society rubber asteroids. So I'm not sure. There may at least be a pause, if not a total cessation in the Society rubber asteroids. So I'm not sure. There may at least be a pause, if not a total cessation in the distribution of asteroids. So you want to get in on this next contest. Could be the last one for a while.

Also, a 200-point itelescope.net account, that worldwide nonprofit network of telescopes that Royal will now be able to use to look at stuff like Mercury if he wants to. Just watch out for the sun over there. Our audience being who they are, a lot of them had to nominate which moon of Jupiter they thought Mrs. Edelson was probably from. We got Io, we got Ganymede. The most votes came for Europa, which is, I guess, why we were told in 2010 never to go there. It's full of bad teachers, I guess. Some weird ones, like Carpo. I'd never

even heard of Carpo. It sounds like one of the Marx Brothers. I think it was. My favorite, though, from Martin Hajoski in Houston, Texas, whom we hear from all the time. He said, wait, wait, does this mean that my ninth grade math teacher, Mr. Callistoson, was from... Oh, it all makes sense now. Well, now we all know where they came from, folks. Let's see where this next question takes us. It will take us out into space. What is the optically brightest quasar as seen from Earth?

So at optical visible wavelengths, what is the brightest quasar as seen from Earth? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. Wow, these objects are just wonderful. You have until the 5th of April, April 5 at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us the answer to this one, and you will get a Planetary Radio t-shirt, a 200-point itelescope.net account. We're going to throw in a copy of the book we talked about today with Nancy

Atkinson of Universe Today, Incredible Stories from Space, a behind-the-scenes look at the missions changing our view of the cosmos, and a Planetary Society rubber asteroid, maybe the last one for a while. That's it. All right, everybody, go out there, look up the night sky, and think about what your favorite shade of red is. Mine is red. Thank you, and good night. My favorite shade of red is cobalt blue. That's just wrong. You know what? I forgot to mention something. I told you I had a funny thing to bring up regarding this Men in Black, where Mrs. Edelson was from. We had several listeners who had freeze-framed that scene in the movie. And if you look at a computer display, it does not say a moon of Jupiter. It says, one person said Urveg.

Several other people said Brevig, B-R-E-V-I-G. So either the aliens have other names for the moons of Jupiter, or there was a little continuity problem in the movie. Interesting, Eric Brevig was the visual effects supervisor for Industrial Light and Magic

on Men in Black. So a little Easter egg there for you to watch next time you see Men in Black. Maybe a little Easter egg there for you to watch next time you see Men in Black. Maybe it's just the name of the underground city they come from. Maybe so. It's a city on Europa. I like that.

You know, they're going to come out with a fourth movie just for you, Men in Red. Yay! Now we're done. He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, who joins us every week here for What's Up.

Want to hear the sounds of space in a beautifully produced podcast? Check out the March 21st episode of 20,000 Hertz on iTunes or SoundCloud. We've also got a link on this week's Planetary Radio show page. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its tuneful members. Daniel Gunners, our associate producer, Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. I'm Matt Kaplan. Clear skies.