Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - NASA Administrator James Bridenstine Returns

Episode Date: April 15, 2020

We talk with NASA’s leader about how the agency is meeting the challenge of the pandemic. He looks forward to the future with confidence as he offers updates on projects including the Perseverance Mars rover, the Artemis Moon program, and the effort to send U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station on U.S. commercial crew vehicles. Planetary Society Chief Advocate Casey Dreier marks the 50th anniversary of Apollo 13 and introduces us to his remarkable new planetary exploration budget dataset. What’s Up also celebrate the “successful failure” of Apollo 13 as Bruce Betts tours the night sky and presents a new space trivia contest. Learn and explore more at https://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2020/0415-2020-nasa-admin-james-bridenstine.htmlSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

NASA Administrator James Bridenstine returns 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. NASA in the time of COVID-19. The leader of the United States Space Agency will share with us how it is meeting the challenge of the pandemic and looking forward toward what he still sees as a bright future across the expanse. You'll only hear this conversation on Planetary Radio. We'll look back at Apollo 13 with Planetary Society Chief Advocate Casey Dreyer.

Casey will also introduce us to his Planetary Exploration Budget Dataset. We'll close, as always, with an examination of the night sky, courtesy of Bruce Betts. Bruce will reveal the performers of the first concert in space and much more. All of that is ahead right after this week's glance through the Downlink, the Planetary Society's gift of resources that will fuel your interplanetary journey for the next seven days. Don't miss its shot of Saturn's rings taken through the thick atmosphere of Titan by the Cassini spacecraft. Comet 2I Borisov, an interstellar visitor that was detected passing through our solar system last year, has apparently split into two pieces. Researchers made the discovery using the Hubble Space Telescope. Bruce will have

more comet news during What's Up. NASA has closed the application period for its latest round of would-be astronauts. More than 12,000 people applied from every U.S. state, the District of Columbia, and four U.S. territories. The lucky few will be announced in roughly a year. The European-Japanese BepiColombo spacecraft flew by Earth on April 9th, using our planet's gravity to swing towards the inner solar system. To reach Mercury, the spacecraft has to perform one flyby of Earth, two flybys of Venus, and six flybys of Mercury itself before settling into orbit in 2025. And there are once again six humans aboard the International Space Station, though not for long.

You'll hear about the ones coming home in my conversation with the NASA administrator. That's just a fraction of what you'll find in the downlink. It's at planetary.org slash downlink, where you can also sign up to have it delivered free each week. Casey Dreyer is the Planetary Society's chief advocate and senior space policy advisor. Casey, we get to mark one major, major anniversary and then talk about this remarkable research that you've done, which also comes up in the recent conversation we had as part of the Space Policy Edition.

But let's start with Apollo 13, that wonderful failure that became a marvelous success. A successful failure, in other words. Yes, it's the 50th anniversary of that mission happening as we're recording this. We have a bunch of new resources on planetary.org. It's right up on our homepage this week. Dived into the history of that mission, summarized some major events, obviously, in it, and went into a nice technical but readable, I think, explanation of what exactly went wrong to cause the explosion that crippled that mission. So it's worth remembering kind of the high point of what NASA was able to do in the face of adversity, and hopefully a little metaphor for how humanity is facing its current adversity right now, that we can really band together and figure out some really

hard things on the fly when we need to. What a great point. And I just want to give an extra boost to that technical explanation that you mentioned of what went wrong. I mean, I knew a little bit about what happened, the tank that exploded, but it was really quite a revelation reading what you were able to learn as you dug into these documents. So thank you for that. Highly recommended at planetary.org. Also highly recommended. Talk about digging into, give us a little thumbnail description of this marvelous budget research you've done. Well, I'm doing this project that I'm going to talk about. I did it for me. And I just assumed there were other number nerds out there who also really, really want to know how much Mariner 10 cost back in the day. Why not? Yes. So this is new. We just released this last

week. I'm really proud of this work. It's the Planetary Exploration Budget Dataset. It is the most comprehensive accounting of NASA's expenditures on robotic planetary science missions in its entire history. That means starting in 1960, going through now 2020 and projections into 2024 of every single planetary science mission, how much NASA spent per year, how much NASA requested, how much the White House requested per year. In the 20th century, we have how much Congress mandated for various programs where they made those mandates. So it's this incredible way you can compare not just the total amount reported spending, but the annual spending, where it went, how fast it went. And then you can really do very fine and improved adjustments for inflation that way.

You can compare the differences between the White House proposals and the congressional proposals, what NASA actually spent. You really start to see in these long-term trends really pop out because we're the Planetary Society, we're a nonprofit, and because we work for you, our members, we made all of this research and all of this data free to anybody, anywhere who wants to dive in deep and help me discover new trends and insights into the history of planetary exploration at NASA. It's not just, I mean, you talked about individual budget for missions like Mariner 10, but it's the overall trends that I find especially fascinating as different destinations around the solar system sort of

jockey for first place in terms of the funding that they receive from year to year. And there's so much more as you dig into this. I mean, I told you before, I think there are going to be a lot of space historians and policy experts who are going to owe you a beer at least. Thanks will suffice, but I'll take whatever people want. Well, there are two things. So first, I want to emphasize, you can find this right now at planetary.org slash space advocate. I have a lot longer discussion of methods and some details and nuances and so forth in it. But it's also, I see this as a version 1.0.

I'm really asking for anybody who really wants to help me dive into the details here. We have areas where there's not a lot of public reporting. That's particularly for extended mission operations. A lot of stuff early in NASA's reporting history, you know, as things were changing in the early 60s very rapidly. If people have insight or ideas or suggestions or even just corrections into this data set, please email me. I want the community's help. I want our members' help to continually improve this data set to make it that academic reference quality source. All right, there's your invitation to get involved from the chief advocate for the Planetary Society, our senior space policy advisor. He has provided more

proof of that with this recent work. Thank you and congratulations, Casey. We'll talk again soon. Stay safe. Thanks, Matt. And I can't wait to listen to the interview with NASA Administrator Bridenstine. I am just as excited about this as all of your listeners. James Bridenstine went straight from Congress to leadership of Earth's largest space agency almost exactly two years ago. What a two years it has been. NASA was shaken up last year when the Trump administration announced that humans would return to the moon and soon, that humans would return to the moon, and soon, very soon. No one suspected that, barely a year later,

the agency would be caught up in the greatest health challenge our planet has faced in a century. Through it all, the administrator has retained his unbridled enthusiasm for what NASA can accomplish. That characteristic enthusiasm was obvious when he joined me from his home on April 13th for this second exclusive Planetary Radio conversation. Administrator Bridenstine, thank you so much for returning to Planetary Radio. We are honored to have you back, especially at a time when I'm sure things are even busier than usual there at NASA. Welcome. Well, thank you. It is busier than usual for sure. It's also challenging. We are all working from home right now, at least most of us are, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. But we do have some mission essential functions

that are going forward, and I'm happy to talk about those. But I will just tell you, I am very, very proud of all of the work that this little agency is doing in these trying times, especially when kids are out of school and everybody is at home and spouses are both, in some cases, working from home at the same time. And yet we're still producing. It's quite impressive to watch this agency work. I wanted to ask you about that specifically, but before that, I hope that you and yours were all doing well in the midst of this. We are. I've got a wife, three kids, and a mother-in-law that all live under my roof here, and everybody is healthy.

We are staying home for the most part. My wife this morning went to the grocery store to get some food, but as it is, she sits in the car and they bring the food out. So I think we're all good for now and doing everything we can to stay healthy. And I just want to encourage everybody who's listening to do the same, because if each one of us is healthy, it's good for all of us. So thank you for all the good work being done out there. Strange times. Back to that wonderful, very innovative workforce that you've got.

I mean, what are a couple of examples of how NASA is stepping up to help with the response to the pandemic? So there's a couple of things. We have a lot of supercomputing capacity that we are making available to the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House. That supercomputing capacity will be used by the FDA and Health and Human Services and others to ultimately look for treatments and make available remedies for coronavirus as remedies become available. We have amazing biologists throughout

the agency that we are making available to the federal response. And at the same time, we look at organizations like NASA JPL. They're actually working hard, no kidding, producing technology that could be used to save lives. We're talking about ventilators. So there's a lot of good work being done at the agency. We're working on how do we take the PPE, the personal protective equipment, and how do we sterilize it so we can reuse it rather than just discarding it? And that would, of course, make more PPE available to more people. We have a lot of unique technologies. We launched kind of an online brainstorming session just the other day where we asked all of our NASA employees to consider what it is that they do and how it could be helpful

in the national response to coronavirus. And as you know, NASA has some amazingly brilliant employees. We've received 200 and some responses at this point. These responses have been commented on by the NASA workforce thousands of times, thousands of responses as far as comments go. And then we're going to prioritize and make them available to the different agencies, FEMA, et cetera, that are working on the response. So I think it's important to note that NASA has been and NASA will continue to be doing everything that it can to be a part of the solution to this very challenging time. What's the status of the agency itself overall? I mean, we know a lot of centers are still at what you call stage four. A couple more, I think, at stage three, including Kennedy Space Center, which has got to get a bunch of rockets up into space. Yeah. So when you're at stage three, that means that the center is on mandatory telework other than the mission essential functions. And then those

functions will continue to go forward. The two big mission essential functions, and then those functions will continue to go forward. The two big mission essential functions that we have as an agency right now are commercial crew. So that's the effort to launch American astronauts on American rockets for the first time since the retirement of the space shuttles back in 2011. That's an essential function, really, for one reason. We have to make sure that we have access to the International Space Station, which is a $100 billion investment by the American taxpayer. Commercial Crew is our assured access to this massive investment by the American taxpayer. So that mission is going forward. And then we have another mission that we're very excited about, Mars Perseverance.

It used to be called Mars 2020, but we renamed it Perseverance because it is such a unique time, and we as an agency are persevering, and all of America and the world, in fact, we're all persevering. And that's why we think this is a great name for this little robot that's going to Mars. But that's mission essential for one reason, and that is that we have a very limited launch window to go to Mars. And if we miss that launch window, it will cost us upwards of $500 million over the course of two years, if not wreck the mission altogether, which we do not want to have happen. So we want to make sure that we hit this launch window. And that's what we're working on. So in stage three, everybody works from home, except for those that have to be on site for doing the labor that's necessary to get these missions ready to

go. And so certain people are going to work. They're going to work with as many precautions as we can attain. We're spreading the people apart just physically from one person to another. We're trying to make sure there's at least six feet. We're putting people on different shifts so they're not at work at the same time, and then using PPE when and where appropriate. So we're doing all of the things to mitigate the risk. We have an ambitious goal to make sure that if you're working on one of these mission essential functions, we want you to be safer at work than you would be if you were staying at home. So that's what we're shooting for day in and day out. And it's also true, and this is very

important. The NASA workforce, look, if there's anybody in the NASA workforce that doesn't feel comfortable doing what they're doing, we want them to say so, and we want them to feel free to do something else. We want to help them, in fact, do something else. We don't want anybody to do anything that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe. Our employees are the number one highest part of the agency, and we want everybody to feel safe in this very unique moment in time. And so we're giving people a lot of latitude so that they feel safe, and there will be no judgment on them at all. We want people to feel safe and feel free to say that, hey, we don't think we should be doing these activities, if in fact they don't feel they should be doing those activities. You know, I just saw exactly that in a message that you sent to the NASA workforce.

And it didn't occur to me until now. A few months ago, I was lucky enough to be in the high bay at JPL with Perseverance, wearing a bunny suit, of course. And I was thinking, my goodness, those people, the ones who are still wearing bunny suits around Perseverance now that it's at the Kennedy Space Center. That was to protect the spacecraft. Now they're protecting each other. That's right. That's right. It is unique. We do have as an agency, we have PPE that we use, as you mentioned, to protect our spacecraft. We've been asked by a number of agencies if we could use that for medical purposes.

It's not exactly the same, and it might not be the most effective. To the extent we can supply PPE that would be helpful to the medical community, we do. But I think in many cases, our PPE is very different than the medical community's PPE. More of my conversation with NASA Administrator James Bridenstine is a minute away. It's not all rocket science, of course, only the best parts. And that includes rocket science wine from the Caldwell Vineyard. See what I did there? Okay, maybe not my most creative moment, but Caldwell is offering you an opportunity to shine. The submission deadline for the Rocket Science

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I look forward to seeing your winning contribution on the back of the bottle. Cheers and Ad Astra. It's no secret that work on some other missions and projects is either on hold or has been cut back because of the pandemic, including, sadly, the James Webb Space Telescope. But I wonder about the long-term effects, not so much of the virus itself, but about the unprecedented fiscal measures that Congress and the administration have taken to shore up the U.S. economy and jobs. Do you worry about what this may mean for NASA in the coming years? I worry about what it means for the nation. I'm not going to lie about that. We're talking about injecting trillions of dollars of liquidity, zero interest rates, just lots and lots of money that is basically newly created.

And so I think there's a risk of inflation down the road, and that concerns me. But I will say that, I mean, I think, you know, what are the options that are in front of us? I mean, we can't let the economy go into, you know, another Great Depression. So I think people are doing the right things. It's just a terribly unfortunate circumstance. The other big challenge for NASA, and I get this question a lot, is what does this mean to the NASA budget?

People have this sense that because we just passed a $2.2 trillion stimulus package, that means that NASA's budget is going to get cut. And I will say, I don't think that is the case at all. In fact, I think it's just the opposite. When the Congress makes a decision to stimulate the economy, they're doing it for a reason. But basically what happens is when the private sector quits spending, the government sector comes in and says, okay, we're going to continue to make sure that the economy is stimulated, basically to smooth out the business cycle where the economy would have normally gone down. Now it can stay smooth. That's the intent anyway, whether or not it works. It's a mixed bag when you look at

past precedent. But I think the idea is sound. And I think that at this point, because the government has made a determination that they need to spend money, I think it's just the opposite. I think NASA is actually, we're going to have a good budget. And in fact, I saw that the president is pushing forward on an infrastructure bill. And NASA, we're going to play in that infrastructure bill because we are part of the American infrastructure. Each of these are signals, number one, that the US government is going to continue to spend money and NASA is an area where that money is going to be spent. But we also have to think about, because the government is doing this, there's long-term

implications that might not be what everybody is hoping for. I'm talking about the future that would include inflation if it's not handled correctly. And I do think that there's going to be, I mean, make no mistake, there's going to be good decisions in the future after this pandemic is passed and they can unwind a lot of the activities that they have brought forward. So, I mean, there is concern there from a government-wide perspective, and that does, in fact, affect NASA in the long term. But I think in the immediate term, when we think about budgets, I think NASA is as strong as it's ever been. Our budget request right now is the highest budget request in the history of the agency. We're currently at about $21 billion, and we're going up to $25.2 billion

in our budget request. So that's a big increase. And we have bipartisan support in Congress. So I think we're in good shape. You've got, it occurs to me, a lot of former colleagues in Congress where you represented Oklahoma for five years. I imagine those relationships are more valuable than ever now. Very much so. And I will tell you, I'm thrilled that we have the bipartisan support that we have. You know, one of the things I want to do while a lot of members are at home is I want to do town halls with members of Congress in their districts virtually, you know, whether it's a telephone town hall or even a virtual town hall using people could go online and we could talk face to face.

I just want to make sure that we are staying engaged with our members of Congress on both sides of the aisle in both the House and the Senate, letting them know that NASA is continuing to do stunning things that are going to benefit the nation. And what we do is not, it's not about this year or next year. We're doing things that are multi-decadal and, in fact, multi-generational in nature. And we have to have the long-term vision from both parties. And right now, we need it more than ever. Before we turn to the moon, return to the moon and Artemis, I'm thinking, you remind me of how it was only about a year ago, talking about science and exploration, Remind me of how it was only about a year ago, talking about science and exploration,

that you were able to assure a lot of us who care a lot about those that, don't worry, we're going to make sure that those are protected. That, of course, was before the world turned upside down. And are you still feeling confident about NASA's ability to put resources toward things that a lot of our listeners are sure looking forward to. Europa Clipper, Dragonfly down the line, and Perseverance, of course, the first phase in that long dreamt of goal of Mars sample return, which is there's a lot left to do in that direction. How do you feel now? No, I would assure your listeners that some of those missions are not what we have deemed as mission essential.

And so they're on pause right now. But I would also say that they are critically important missions that will go forward when we get past the pandemic. And I do believe we will get past the pandemic. And we want to see those missions be successful as much as everybody else does. I know there's a lot of your listeners that have been working on these missions a long time. Dragonfly, I'm telling you, I am so excited about Dragonfly. You and us both. Yeah. Mars Perseverance, I'm excited about because it's

going to have the world's first interplanetary helicopter. Oh, yeah. planets that we're learning about. This morning, I had a brief. We just discovered another Earth sized planet that is orbiting the star that's pretty similar to our star. And it's orbiting that star at about the same distance the Earth is orbiting from our star. The similarities are striking. And so these things are so exciting. The Planetary Society and NASA, we've got to make sure that we're not losing sight of these, you know, kind of exploration moments that are so important. I said we go to the moon. Let's do that. Let's go back to the moon. Artemis, very ambitious program from the start. You know, that target of 2024 can't be helped by the presence of a pandemic. And, you know, if you could start by talking about where we are with Orion, that spaceship, and that big rocket, the Space Launch System. So Orion is now fully tested. It's ready to go. We feel really, really confident in Orion. I will say the SLS rocket right now is kind of in a holding pattern.

We had an outbreak of coronavirus down in New Orleans and Stennis, which is where the SLS rocket, the first one, is being tested. And so we moved very quickly to stage four. We talked about stage three, which is mandatory telework plus mission essential functions can go forward. Stage four is basically we're shutting everything down unless it's critical infrastructure necessary for the safety of lives. That's a tough spot to be in for SLS. I will also say that I think we're still on track for 2021 for Artemis 1. Artemis 1 is going to be launched on the first SLS, which is currently at Stennis undergoing the green run, although that has now been put on hold. Let's pretend for a second that this coronavirus goes on for a number of more months, which we're all hopeful that it does not. But if it does, and it pushes that first SLS launch into 2022, if that were to happen, we would need to be prepared to look at how that affects the second launch of SLS or what we call Artemis II.

At this point, those two missions are operating very independently of the other. Artemis I, if it slides, it doesn't bump up and start pushing back Artemis II. And as long as that's the case, we could actually slip Artemis I if necessary. You know, you can only slip for so long though. Eventually it's going to impinge on Artemis II. We're not there yet. And I think we're quite a ways from being there, but it is absolutely true that this could have an effect if this goes on too long. Yeah. Well, getting humans back there, putting, as you've said, the first woman and the next man on the moon, that's just part of what's going on. Of course, a lot of us at

the Planetary Society were happy to learn a few days ago that the small aerospace company, Masten Space Systems, has joined others in the Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, program. We work with Mastin and Honeybee Robotics to fund and test what we call Planet Vac. Yeah. Of course, you have those other giants of the industry involved, but there are these smaller companies. I just read this morning that Intuitive Machines has announced an October 2021 launch. At least they intend to get their mission off. on October, 2021 launch, uh, at least they intend to, to get their mission off. Yeah. Could you talk about the role of these, these, uh, smaller companies as, as part of, you know, what seems to

be a pretty comprehensive program, uh, of regarding our, our own natural satellite up there, the moon. Yeah. Right. So I think, you know, we're, we're trying to take shots on goal. That's what this is all about. We've got to do two things. We need to get access to the moon. We need to get there soon. The sooner we can get there, the better. And we're going to be able to do that with basically commercial landers that are going to carry NASA payloads to the surface of the moon. And we're going to characterize the regolith. We're going to do experiments and we're going to see what works and what doesn't work. And we're going to go with commercial providers. This program, the Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program, this was my first initiative as the NASA administrator. If we wanted to go fast to go to the moon and carry NASA

experiments and NASA payloads. And yes, we now have three companies. Masten is the most recent one. And we're very proud of what they've been able to put together. But yes, we want to take a shot on goal as early as next year and see if we can make it happen. But it's also true that when you have these kind of competitions, we now have three companies that are going to be taking a shot on goal within the next two years. So I think we're in a good spot. And remember, what we're doing is we're taking the knowledge that we're getting from these missions, and we're applying it to our eventual lunar lander for humans. So whether it's technology that we need to have developed or it's experiments that we need to have done, we need to characterize the

regolith. How is the water embedded in the regolith? What is the best way to separate the water ice from the regolith, extract it, melt it? I think these are very important concepts that we need to learn before we get the first humans there on the South Pole. I should say the first humans since 1972. So these are very, we're very excited about these missions. And I think they're going to be groundbreaking. It would be unfair if we didn't also mention Astrobotics, that other great relatively small company that has the third of those contracts. It's fascinating to see all three of these now

in this, I won't call it a race, but in this effort to head back to the moon. I hope you got a couple more minutes here. I've just got a couple more and I know your time is limited. Thank you. I want to go back to commercial crew. As we speak, two Americans, Andrew Morgan, Jessica Meyer, are about to come home from the International Space Station. Are you hoping could they be among the last to do this in a Soyuz capsule? Oh, no, not at all. No, we want the partnership to go forward. Even though we have our own access to the International Space Station, it becomes a partnership. The goal is that our partners would launch with us and we would launch with our partners.

We would want to launch our crews with some of our cosmonaut partners. And then when Soyuz launches, we would want to see Americans on those Soyuz launches as well. Remember, the International Space Station really has two major parts. One half of it is the U.S. segment and the other half of it is the Russian segment. So we want to make sure that our crew and their crew are always present on the International Space Station. And so that requires us to continue to collaborate, not just at the ISS, but also getting to and from the ISS. If only Americans launch on American rockets and only Russians launch on Russian rockets, we're going to end up in a situation where the ISS is crewed

exclusively by Americans or exclusively by Russians at certain points in time. So we want to make sure that the partnership goes forward, but we also want to make sure that it's not a dependency, that we do have our own access and that the partnership remains strong. That makes me think of what seems to be increased international interest in the Artemis program. Back to that for a second. Am I right about that? And is that encouraging? Very much so. So right now, you know, we have had strong support from the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency, and the Japanese Space Agency. And when we talk about the European Space Agency, we're talking about 11 countries. That's a tough nut to crack just politically within their own ranks.

It's already been established that they're going to be part of what we call Gateway, which is basically a space station in orbit around the moon that will give us more access to more parts of the moon than ever before, not just the equatorial region, which is where we went during Apollo, but also we want to be able to get to the poles of the moon, which is where most of the water ice is. Gateway enables us to do that. Gateway enables us to have sustainability so that our human landers can go back and forth over and over again. They don't get thrown away. That drives down costs. It increases access.

So it's really about more access to more parts of the moon. It's about sustainability, reusability, and also developing the capabilities to go to Mars. That's what the Gateway is all about. the capabilities to go to Mars. That's what the Gateway is all about. And our international partners, we have developed really an amazing relationship on the International Space Station. We want to take all of that capability and use it for the Gateway. So we are very excited about the partners that are going to be with us on the Gateway. Some have already stepped up, others have not yet, But we're certainly working with them so that when the time is right, they'll be able to on-ramp and be part of the international

effort to sustainably go to the moon. You just made me think of something else that I hadn't thought about. You referred almost nonchalantly to the water at the poles of the moon, which, of course, it wasn't that many years ago. We wondered if it was actually there in those, in those shadowed areas. And now it's like, okay, we know it's there. We're going to go check it out. We're going to go taste it. Not just there, but hundreds of millions of tons of it. So much so we don't know how much there is, but it's a lot. And so yes, it's, it's life support. It's air to breathe. It's water to drink. It's hydrogen and oxygen, which is rocket fuel. Look, there's other things on the moon we don't

know about right now. We think about all the asteroids that have impacted the Earth, these, quote, rare Earth metals that we know exist all over the Earth in very trace amounts, very important, very precious metals. But the earth has a very thick atmosphere. Because of that, most of the asteroids never make it to earth. But guess what? They hit the moon, which is why it's so pot marked. There could be trillions of dollars of platinum group metals on the moon. We don't know. The only way we're going to know is if we get there and get underground and start figuring out what might be where. But I'm just saying there's great opportunity out there that I think

that we need to start being more aware of and exploring. Well, this, of course, brings up that question, which has risen again lately about who has the rights to those resources on the moon and elsewhere around the solar system. What do you think is the current status of that? I know, you know, not everybody is entirely in agreement. So, you know, I was in the House of Representatives when this debate was going on on the science committee, and we passed a bill that ultimately made sure that if you discover and extract the resources on the moon or another celestial body, that you own those resources. If you apply your sweat, your equity, your investment into extracting those resources, you would own those resources. It doesn't mean that you have appropriated the moon for national sovereignty, which of course would be a violation of the Outer

Space Treaty, but certainly you can have the resources. So we look at other areas where this applies. We look at, for example, the ocean. People can extract resources from the ocean, whether you're fishing or extracting energy. You don't own the ocean. The ocean is international. Nobody owns the ocean. But if you apply your effort and your investment to extracting resources, then you can own those resources. And I think that that same model should apply to the moon. When we put that into a bill in the House of Representatives, it got bipartisan support in the House, it got bipartisan support in the Senate, and it was signed into law by President Obama. So I think it's a pretty well-established international norm that I think applies to space resources as much as it applies to ocean resources.

Here's one from left field. I don't know how much time you get to watch television, but are you a fan either of the books or the television series The Expanse? I am not familiar. Well, it talks about a future. It talks about a lot of stuff. But it is a future in which the resources of the solar system are being used commercially on a huge, huge scale, including harvesting asteroids for their water and other resources. And our audience knows that I recommend it highly.

Anyway, it's an interesting vision of where you might just be headed. We will look out for that for sure. I'll watch it or read it or we'll look out for it. I got just one more for you. With so many challenges ahead and so much promise, what do you hope to see from the citizen fans of space exploration and development, like the listeners to this show and, of course, members of the Planetary Society? To be active. It's not by accident that we're exploring space. The Apollo program, everything was driven by national security in those days, the great power competition between the Soviet Union and the United States. Since then, our efforts have not been driven by competition, but by cooperation. And we need to make sure that we have groups like the Planetary Society,

always engaged, always interested. Get your friends involved. Grow the base of the community that is necessary to support space exploration and the science and the discovery that goes along with it. I cannot tell you how important it is. You know, I used to be in Congress myself. People come to the Hill. They talk about the great things that are being done and how important it is. But then they show members of Congress, here's what's happening in your district. And all of a sudden, eyes open up and people say, wow, we need to make sure that continues. So I think groups like the Planetary Society are important. I know that you do great work.

I saw it firsthand when I was on the Hill. I know that you do great work. I saw it firsthand when I was on the Hill. And I used the literature that the Planetary Society created in my arguments when I was in the House. And so I think it's an important function. It's part of our unique nation where we get to petition our leaders for these activities. And I think we should take advantage of it. Well, thank you for that.

And I will pass that along to our colleagues, of course. Thank you also for coming back to Planetary Radio and for your leadership at this difficult, but like I said, still very promising time. I mean, you know, the moon, Mars, the solar system, the rest of the universe, they're not going anywhere. I guess they'll wait for us as we deal with this virus. Best of luck as you continue to lead the agency in this difficult time. Well, thank you so much, Matt. It's always an honor. NASA Administrator James Bridenstine. Stay with us for Bruce and a new space trivia contest drawn from the administrator's personal history. Hi, this is Kate from the Planetary Society.

How does space spark your creativity? We want to hear from you. Whether you make cosmic art, take photos through a telescope, write haikus about the planets, or invent space games for your family, really any creative activity that's space-related, we invite you to share it with us. You can add your work to our collection by emailing it to us at connect at planetary.org. That's connect at planetary.org. Thanks. Time for what's up on Planetary Radio. Here's the chief scientist of the Planetary Society, also author and now reader of his own works. You can find super cool space facts, which we've talked about on this show,

actually gave away on audible at audible.com. So, so there, that must've been a fun experience. It was, it was a little minor dream come true being a audible obsessed, an audio book obsessed. I actually be asked to record my own audio book was, was really,

was super cool. How appropriate. I used to work for Audible right when it started a long, long time ago, I was a freelance book recorder and did other stuff for them. It was, it was fun. So it's something else we have in common. Yeah. I know what else we have in common. The night sky. Oh, good one. we do love that night sky and it is pretty it's pretty with planets and the evening sky of course super bright venus still

hanging out over there in the west and you can see on or around april 20th you can look at between the bright stars of Aldebaran in Taurus and Capella in Auriga. It makes kind of a nice line. Venus is, of course, much brighter than the others, but it's fun to look for. And then in the pre-dawn east, you still have a lineup going from upper right to lower left of bright Jupiter and yellowish Saturn and reddish Mars. And they're looking quite lovely in the pre-dawn. We've mentioned and people were excited about Comet Atlas. Well, it's she's breaking up. She's breaking.

Glad I knew you'd get my 70s TV reference. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, it may get bright in May. It's still possible, but there are at least a couple observers that have noticed it seeming to break up as not totally unexpected. And there's another comet teasing out there, so I'll keep you posted if any of these actually become bright. We move on to this week in

space history. It was a big week in the early 70s, except for fashion. In 1970, Apollo 13, after a wee bit of trouble, successfully landed back on Earth. We've got a very nice page on that on our website, a new page about Apollo 13. And then in 1971, the Soviets launched Salyut 1, the first ever space station. And in 72, Apollo 16 successfully landed on the moon. We move on to random space fact. Crazy. So last week, we passed the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin making the first flight into space. And a lot of you probably know this space fact, but I just am sharing it for those who don't, because I find it amazing. The spacecraft Vostok 1 was not designed to land a human safely on Earth. So as per plan, Gagarin parachuted to the ground separately from his capsule after ejecting at about 7 kilometers, 23,000 feet altitude.

What makes it more intriguing is the Soviets lied and made him lie to say he landed in the capsule. And they didn't admit that he parachuted until 1971, several years later. until 1971, several years later. And a little tidbit, by the way, the FAI, the Fédération Aeronautique Internationale, who handles spaceflight records, the rules of the time required landing in the spacecraft to be considered the first spaceflight. But they later gave him a special award. Nicely done with the French, by the way. Sorry, just if I, yeah, I don't know. I remember learning about that. What an awful chance they took with his life. I mean, what if he had been unconscious?

Nobody had ever done this before, other than animals. He could easily have been unconscious and, you know, not been able to get out of that tiny little ball he was in and jump off, jump clear. To me, it actually makes the whole flight even more courageous on his part to have to do that. Absolutely. And by the way, everybody, yurisnight.net, I think is where you can go. You can see the five-hour virtual party that just took place as we speak last weekend. A lot of great people participated. I watched a good piece of it. Our boss, the CEO, Bill Nye, was there. Hopefully it'll be back out amongst people here in LA under Space Shuttle Endeavor by next year. Okay, the contest. All right, I asked you, what mission played the first

musical instruments in space? How do we do, Matt? Here is the answer from our poet laureate. He's back, Dave Fairchild, in Kansas. It was almost Christmas in December 65, probably a year or two before Bruce was alive, when Gemini, that's six, took flight with Stafford and Shura, who played the tune of Jingle Bells, a blues harp, space hurrah. You have to work a little bit to get it to rhyme with Wally's name. They had bells, I'm told, up there as well, right? They did indeed. They had a harmonica and bells brought aboard by Wally Schirra and along with Tom Stafford aboard Gemini 6A. Here's another winner I'm delighted to see. It has been over four and a half years since he last won. Our faithful listener Mark Little in Northern Ireland,

he actually visited our headquarters not terribly long ago with his family. He was on vacation in California. He says Jingle Bells was played by an eight-note honer, Little Lady Harmonica, now on display with a dental floss and Velcro tether at the Smithsonian. Isn't that great? Yes. Hey, Mark, congrats. If you want it, you get Bruce and me on any kind of brief recording, voice recording that you want to greet your telephone callers on your smartphone or whatever. We don't care. Here's more. Esam Beglu in Ontario. I've seen the instruments sitting in the Smithsonian. Too bad they weren't being played at the time. He says, though my favorite

instrument has always been the ISS-made didgeridoo that Don Pettit played on ISS Expedition 31. Very cool. Joseph Poutre in New Jersey. In one of several articles about this subject, astronaut Ellen Ochoa reported she placed her feet in loops while playing the flute on the ISS. Does that mean they were flute loops? Oh, man, no. I'm hungry. Ola Franzen of Sweden.

I had never heard of this person before. Apparently, a quite famous French performer known as Lepetoman. Lepetoman. He was a professional flatulist. Oh, my. Think about it. Now I'd rather know. And that if this is the case and it's defined as a musical instrument, then Yuri may have been the first to play music in space.

I'm going to go with no. Lastly, another poem from Gene Lewin in Washington State. Back in December of 65, aboard Gemini 6A, Tom Stafford and Wally Schirra reported sighting a sleigh. North to south, this UFO traversed with a pilot, lively and quick. Ground control just shook their heads. They knew of Wally's schtick. And a familiar tune was then played on a harp of Hohner fame, and jiggle bells were also heard affirming that song's name. Thanks. Oh, that's the end. He just goes on to say, thanks for all you do.

I look forward to Wednesdays. I've had time to do much more research during this time of sequester and escape into the expanse of space. Thank you, Gene. All right. You just talked to someone. Let's have a question about him. In what kind of aircraft did NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine fly combat missions off the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. So cool. You have until the 22nd. That'll be April 22nd,

Wednesday at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us this answer. It won't be hard to find, will it? And if you win, if you're chosenbyrandom.org, Bruce and me will record for you. If you like, we won't force it on you. We promise. All right, everybody, go out there, look up the night sky and think about your favorite fruity flavored cereal. Thank you. Good night. That's Bruce Betts. He's our six million dollar man marked up for inflation. We can rebuild him, you know.

He joins us every week here for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and is made possible by its members whose voices are heard

at NASA and across the world. Raise your voice at planetary.org slash membership. Mark Hilverde is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. Be safe, everyone, at ASkell.