Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - NASA Leaders on Getting Humans to Mars

Episode Date: May 17, 2017

The human journey to the Red Planet is long and hard, but Mat’s conversation with three NASA Associate Administrators at the Humans to Mars Summit was filled with cautious optimism.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're talking humans to Mars with leaders of NASA, 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. I spent last week at the Humans to Mars Summit in Washington, D.C., where I was joined on stage by the three NASA associate administrators most directly involved with our journey to Mars. We'll hear from them in minutes. The NASA rocket that will play a vital role in that journey is Bill Nye's topic this week. Bruce Betts will join us from the Planetary Defense Conference underway in Tokyo. First, we look to senior editor Emily Lakdawalla, who is always

looking at our solar system and beyond. Emily, pretty much focusing on one gorgeous image that you put up on May 8th at planetary.org in your blog. Tell us about this. Well, it's a beautiful image of a star-filled sky, an area of the sky close to the galactic center. So it's just absolutely filled with stars, except in the places close to the galactic center. So it's just absolutely filled with stars, except in the places where little dust clouds block our view of background stars. And then at the center, there's this brilliant light, this saturated point, very bright. And that's not a star at all. It's a planet. It's Saturn. Why don't we see the rings in this shot? Because we can see Titan off to the side, you pointed out to us.

Saturn is by far the brightest thing in this image. And in order to bring out the detail of all the other stars in the dust lanes in the photo, the astrophotographer Damien Peach had to do a long enough exposure to make all those stars visible, which means that the brightest thing, Saturn, gets just saturated. It's huge. It's brilliant. And so its brilliance overwhelms any ability to see its ring separately from the planet. Yeah. When I first looked at this, I thought, oh, that's the sun in the middle, right? No. No, we're looking the other way, Matt. It is gorgeous. And you use this image from Damien to sort of wistfully talk about the time that is not too far ahead of us. That's right. Usually when I post images by Damien Peach and other planetary astrophotographers,

they're to show details in planets. But a lot of those times, those images of the planets rival some of the things that we can get from spacecraft, particularly Hubble. But now that Cassini is coming to an end, we won't get this close-up view of Saturn anymore. Saturn will once again just be a wanderer in our sky as seen from Earth. We'll be able to see it with Earth-based telescopes only under favorable conditions when it's not too close to the sun. And it just sort of signifies for me the distance between us and the planet that is suddenly going to become more than a billion kilometers once the Cassini mission ends in September. A wanderer in the stars, just like we are. This really does

communicate that, and it is gorgeous. Thank you very much, Emily. Thank you, Matt. She's our senior editor. That's Emily Lakdawalla. Coming up next, Bill Nye, the science guy. He's our CEO. Bill, we heard in a NASA press conference just a few days ago that something is not going to happen with the SLS. Yes, the SLS will not do something. First of all, everybody, the SLS is the Space Launch System, which is an acronym that means big rocket. And this is a NASA rocket, not one of the commercial entities like Blue Origin or SpaceX. This is a rocket built by regular contractors hired by the U.S. government. It's going to be huge.

And so there was pressure. Well, let's just say people at NASA have stated plainly that they will not put humans on the very first flight of the Space Launch System Great Big Rocket. Now, everybody, this is quite reasonable to me. The Wright brothers flew around an airplane-sized kite with ropes from the ground before anybody got on board the kite with a motor and tried flying around. I mean, this is not a new idea. But apparently there was some pressure or some pointed inquiries about putting humans on a rocket big enough to go to Mars by 2020, which it might be noted as the next presidential election in the US. And the NASA

people said, no, we're going to make sure the thing works before we put humans aboard. And this is very reasonable to me. But just that this came up, there's one thing to have a can-do attitude. It's another thing to just not really grasp the problem that you're wrestling with. If I were the first astronaut aboard an SLS, I would prefer that the SLS had flown once at least. And by the way, changing the subject back finally to the Planetary Society, the subject back finally to the Planetary Society. The Planetary Society's LightSail 2 spacecraft, which I am very excited about, will not fly on the first SpaceX Falcon Heavy because they are required by aerospace rule or airplane rule to fly one first before they start selling tickets, even for a small spacecraft like our LightSail. So I hope that this discussion will lead to

a full-time administrator being hired at NASA, the world's largest space agency, so that things will move forward in an organized fashion rather than being directed from the outside by forces that may not fully understand the problems involved. But man, as a citizen of the world and a guy old enough to remember the Apollo program, I want to get these rockets flying, both the Space Launch System and the Falcon Heavy, these great big rockets that can carry very heavy payloads to low Earth orbit and beyond. So let's go, everybody. Do it in a disciplined fashion. Let's fly one first before we put people on board. And anybody who wants to follow the progress of SLS toward orbit and then off into deep space should be reading our colleague, Jason Davis, who blogs at planetary.org, of course. He's a first-rate journalist.

He really is. And that first launch has been pushed back to at least 2019. Bill comes up sooner than you think, everybody. When it comes to space, there's a heavy manufacturing of enormous things carrying a huge amount of energy that once you light them, you've got a great big controlled explosion on your hands. Yeah, let's let's be cautious. Let's be careful. Safety first. I can wait until they get it right. Bill, thank you so much.

That is Bill Nye, the science guy. He's the CEO of the Planetary Society. He's speaking to us today from an office, which is why the audio is not quite what it normally is. But thanks for doing it anyway, Bill. Thank you, Matt. Thanks for doing it anyway, Bill. Thank you, Matt.

The goal is to put men and women on the Red Planet by the mid-2030s. And it's an ambitious goal, perhaps even more ambitious than getting humans to the moon nearly 50 years ago. Certainly far more complex. Each year, the organization known as Explore Mars gathers leaders of this long, difficult, yet inspiring journey for the Humans to Mars Summit. I was there once again to host the multi-day webcast and to welcome a very distinguished panel of experts. They were NASA's Associate Administ for human exploration and operations, for science, and for space technology. You lucky podcast listeners will get to hear almost our entire conversation. But first, it was my honor to introduce a video offering special greetings to the summit attendees in Washington, D.C.

Hi, everybody. This is the Mission 5 crew here at the High Seas Habitat, wishing everybody good luck at this upcoming Humans to Mars Summit. At Ares! So that enthusiastic group of young people, they're about 100 days into a roughly 200-day stay on the mountaint, for the HI-SEAS Mission 5 Mars simulation, something that is partially funded by NASA and the University of Hawaii is behind. Who knows, from the look of it, one of those young people might be on a mission to the real thing in the 2030s. It looks like some of them might just be about the right age to command a mission like that. I'm going to hope that our three panelists are all mic'd up now and ready to join me on stage.

So let's bring them on out. William Gerstmeyer, Steve Jurczyk, and Thomas Zurbuchen. Hi guys. Please. So this is an extraordinarily short panel, and we're going to try and take as much of the time as we can to allow you folks to ask questions, as Artemis helps you to remember who all of us are. And while she does that, and I'm guessing we still have one person getting up.

He knew who he was. Musical chairs. I knew who Thomas was. I didn't know who I was. Thank you, Kirsten. Well, since he was kind enough to rearrange things properly, we'll start with Bill Gerstemeyer. He is NASA's associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Directorate, providing strategic direction for all aspects of the agency's crewed space exploration work. So we're talking ISS, International Space Station, development of that giant rocket. There's a 1-100th scale model of it

in the lobby. Maybe you saw it. If it had been a 10th scale, there wouldn't have been room for any of us in the lobby, I think. The Space Launch System, of course, the Orion spacecraft that SLS is preparing to carry far beyond low Earth orbit. He once served as manager of the ISS program. Gerst also provides strategic guidance and direction for the commercial crew and cargo programs and for NASA's journey to Mars, which is at the heart of what we'll be talking about all day for the next two and a half days. Among his many awards are two NASA exceptional service medals. Actually, his awards go on and on, most recently adding the National Space Society's

2017 Space Pioneer Award and the AIAA's 2017 Goddard Astronautics Award. If you look him up in the all-knowing, all-seeing Wikipedia, you will find this terrific photo of Bill in a wind tunnel with a model of the space transportation system. Most of us know what is the space shuttle. With his hand up on this metal model in the tunnel. That was 1978. So, been at this for a while. Let's go on to Thomas, Thomas Urbukin, with a PhD in physics from the University of Bern in Switzerland. Thomas is the associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Prior to joining the agency,

he was professor of space science and aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and the founding director of the Center for Entrepreneospace Engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and the founding director of the Center for Entrepreneurship in the College of Engineering. You'll find his name on more than 200 peer-reviewed articles. Dr. Zabrukhin has been involved with numerous science missions, including the spectacularly successful 18-year Ulysses Solar and Heliospheric Mission, the recently completed MESSENGER Mercury Orbiter Mission, and the Advanced Composition Explorer, our ACE Heliophysics Mission.

So, I'm guessing, Thomas, that the heat one has to take in Washington is no big deal for you. That's right. It's pretty low on the scale compared to what you get from the sun. Finally, and here he is all wired up and ready to go, is Steve Jurczyk, the Associate Administrator of the Space Technology Mission Directorate. He manages and executes the space technology programs for NASA,

focusing on exploration and science mission needs, while also working on the capabilities needed by the greater aerospace community and developing the nation's innovation economy. He came to the job after serving for a while as director of NASA's Langley Research Center, where more than 3,600 engineers and scientists work on some of our nation's most promising and challenging technologies and projects. He led the organization's technological programs. Those included the Mach 7 and 10 flights of the HyperX jet engine-powered vehicle, shuttle return to flight, and the flight test of the Orion launch abort system.

NASA has given him its Outstanding Leadership Medal and the Presidential Rank Award of Meritorious and Distinguished Executive. And he's a grad of the University of Virginia, so I'm obligated to say, go Cavaliers. Gentlemen, again, thanks for joining us on stage. We heard from your boss a few minutes ago. I've also heard, actually, Artemis told me backstage that he's been directed to get humans to Mars by November of 2020. You're working on that, I guess, right? No, you don't have to answer. Are we on track for humans to reach Mars by the 2030s? Again, I think you've seen from the beginning discussions and actually the report that was

written by humans to Mars, we're making real progress today. We have the SLS rocket in manufacture down in Michoud, which is a huge activity going on. We have the Orion capsule down in Florida getting ready for exploration mission number one, which is also well under development and real manufacturing, real work going on. And then even more importantly, we have crews on board the International Space Station,

which are really starting to help us understand what it's like to live in a sustained microgravity environment for a long period of time. And the other thing that's exciting about Station is we're able to grab some new tools. We'll be able to get some DNA sequencing material on board Station. We can now, instead of returning samples to the ground, we can actually look at how human DNA is actually potentially changing in the environment. We did it with the one-year mission with Scott Kelly, but that required us to return all these samples to the Earth. We're now getting the basic capability where we can look at some of that genetic changes

directly on space station. And I think that'll be a huge way to really advance our understanding of how the human can live in this sustained microgravity, high radiation environment that is going to be needed for Mars. So I look at all those things. We're making very substantial, sustained progress. What we need to do is not just keep the enthusiasm going, but we just need to keep moving forward and pull us all together, as we've described earlier today that this is a challenge that requires all of us and how do we all pull together and work together how do we use steve's science technology stuff how do we use what thomas is doing on mars today

with the robots what we plan for mars 2020 how do we pull all that together in advance even at a little bit quicker pace and that pulling to all together is something that your boss, Robert Lightfoot, talked about a few moments ago on stage. The integrated approach that you're all striving for, which I'm assuming is pretty essential to taking on a challenge like this. It's absolutely clear that

there's more science there than infrastructure that relates to future human presence. Therefore, for us to make the fastest progress possible We need to start interfacing with each other and take advantage of opportunities to go there. So Robert mentioned the Moxie instrument He could also have mentioned that deep space optical comm instrument that you know, and I want Steve to do You know chime in to some of these technologies,

we're actually all working together, the three of us, but get them to Mars now so we can take some of these, or in deep space now, so we can take some of these technologies off the checklist and really make progress towards having a full set of technologies. So when the time comes, we're ready with some of these enabling technologies, Steve. Yeah, that's absolutely right. So we in SpaceTek, we have kind of a system capability driven approach to what we're doing, the technologies that we're doing. And there are like

38 or so capabilities that we want, new capabilities or enhanced capabilities that we want to enable for both robotic missions and human spaceflight missions. And I think we've done a really good job. If you look at our technology demonstration missions of things like DeepSpaceAlpha.com, high-power solar electric repulsion, to fly those technologies, I think we're paying zero in launch costs, and we're leveraging other missions and systems that science and human exploration are flying. So we're not developing spacecraft. We're flying as hosted payloads or as part of a system on a future mission on a on

a spacecraft so I think we've been done a really nice job of a focusing on the technologies that are needed to for the capabilities that we need moving forward and then be integrating to try to demonstrate develop and demonstrate those technologies in the most efficient and effective way possible. And again, I look at what the robotic stuff that's going on Mars today, the fact that we have a radiation monitor device on the Curiosity rover, you see the cool images, but what I like to look at is look at the actual radiation environment on Mars. And it's pretty surprising when you actually look at the radiation data, you see the solar particle events, but the magnitude is not all that dramatic. The radiation environment actually on the surface of Mars is roughly equivalent to what

we see on board space stations. So that thin Mars atmosphere is really a surprise to us in the fact that it actually shields. But that's only possible because we have an instrument on the Curiosity rover that can actually provide essentially hourly radiation measurements from the surface of Mars. So that's really enabling. The other thing that you saw earlier today was knowing where water is on Mars

and where it is potentially below the surface. And the data that comes back from Mars Observer is really, really important data for us. So without the science mission director, we couldn't have any knowledge to understand what really challenges to push on. Then as Steve described, we're working a lot of exciting things. The electric propulsion will be very important because we talk about moving large masses to the vicinity of Mars to help with the human activities. That's going to be enabled by the 12.5 kilowatt thrusters that Steve and his group are putting together. SpaceX down in Florida, we have a rollout solar array that's on that next launch scheduled for June 1st.

That's going to go to the International Space Station, be deployed during the activity, during the SpaceX mission. We'll actually get data from that and understand how well the array works, how well it can be used. High-power solar energy is going to be really important for us for these missions, so that's a great way for us to team together. So we essentially, as Steve described, we can provide the ride, he provides the hardware, and then we all get the data that we can then use to inform ourselves of how we're going to meet these challenges required to put humans on Mars.

Steve, of those, and I think you said 38 different technologies we're looking toward, I hope none of them are showstoppers, but which ones make you the most anxious? Oh, most anxious. So, you know, I think landing on Mars, landing human class systems on Mars to support, to get crews safely to the surface and allow them to be productive, healthy and productive on the surface is going to be really challenging. So right now, Curiosity rover was about 900 kilograms, a little less than a metric ton of the surface. The ascent vehicle that for crewed missions is approximately 20 metric tons. So we've got about a 20X increase in mass to get to the surface of Mars, and that's assuming we can produce the fuel on the surface to fuel that ascent vehicle, because right, that 20-meter trunk is actually

dry, landing dry. What the Viking guys did was amazing. So, you know, landing two landers in 76, we still use the same supersonic parachute, the same plan form for the vehicle, the 70-degree sphere cone. We've innovated the terminal as and landing first airbags and now the sky crane, but we're coming to the end of that architecture and technology. About one metric ton, maybe one and a half metric tons is all we can do. So we have to invent new entry vehicles that may be larger blunt body vehicles to use atmospheric drag to slow down. We have to use, parachutes are not going to work, supersonic parachutes are not going to work. We have to use supersonic

retro-repulsion. We've only done subsonic retro-repulsion on Mars, so we have to fire engines at supersonic speeds. And then we're looking at autonomous landing and hazard avoidance technology so we can land safely and precisely. Right now, you know, we do simulations and we predict landing in like a 10-kilometer by 15-kilometer ellipse on the surface of Mars, but we want to get the precision to 100 meters. And so that's a real challenge also.

So landing there is definitely going to be a challenge. And then there's lots of the surface systems that are going to be challenging. For example, power. We don't think solar power is going to be viable on the surface, so we're developing small fission-based reactors, nuclear reactors, 10-kilowatt reactors, to be able to power the systems for crew, as well as the systems to produce, to do in-situ resource utilization,

like producing fuel, oxygen, etc. So that's going to also be a challenge and then the the thing that that's not a showstopper but we're going to have to manage from a risk standpoint is radiation protection for the crew during the long transit times we're working on propulsion to more rapidly allow more rapid transit to mars which will reduce the exposure to not only radiation but the micro gravity environment etc but absent that it's going to be a long trip. And shielding, particularly the high energy galactic cosmic rays is going to be very challenging. It's very difficult to shield from those using materials. And active shielding methods are way too massive and take way too much power. And so that's something we're going to have to manage with a storm shelter and

particularly other measures. And that's more of a risk management. It's not necessarily a showstopper, more of a risk management type approach. So for getting big things down to the surface, I assume you're going to keep watching very carefully and working with those folks at SpaceX and their Red Dragon project? Yeah, we do have a collaboration with SpaceX on Red Dragon where we're helping them with,

it's a no exchange of funds space act. We're helping them with our expertise in simulation and system engineering for entry, descent, and landing. And what we're getting back from SpaceX is the supersonic retro-repulsion data. They're planning on a totally propulsive descent down to the surface, and so that'll be great data to get back from SpaceX to feed into our

modeling and feed into our technology and systems moving forward. We actually did that on the Falcon 9. When they land the first stage, they fire the engines in the supersonic speed regime, and so we actually have an agreement with SpaceX for the first few stages that return to get that data from them. Thomas, I'm glad Viking came up because I still marvel at the amazing science those spacecraft were able to accomplish more than 40 years ago. Obviously, the robots keep getting better. They keep getting smarter. What do you hope robotic exploration is going to be able to do between now and the 2030s to help prepare us to get humans there? And really, by the 2030s, how much more will humans still be able to do?

So first of all, I mean, there's amazing science going on right now. I mean, Mars science is in the news on a regular basis, whether it's, you know, the Maven result that talked about argon loss out of the atmosphere. We know where the water went now. Exactly right. Where did the water go? We learned a lot about that has a much broader set of implications also for exoplanets, the function of the importance of a magnetic field, perhaps in some of these environments for the evolution of life. So it's issues like that.

It's also research from the ground where, course the rowers are going around and really realizing, you know, just from the beginning of Curiosity and even now, building blocks, kind of the energy sources, you know, reduced chemistry, all these parts that relate to a good environment for potential life in the past. For us, you know, the future is bright. There's a lot of topics that we want to do, including, of course, the Mars sample return, which is very much on the trajectory of, you know, the development that we want to do. We're going to learn how to come back, perhaps with less. You know, we don't need a whole human mass of sample to get back. So, you know,

on that trajectory, analyzing some of these samples, bringing them back to the best labs that we have to really look at them. It's absolutely clear, though, that research will have a paradigm-altering type of transition the moment humans are there, and it really will turn, for example, an investigation of life, you know,

to something that deeply involves humans and robots. I don't think the time for robots will ever disappear, you know, kind of. I mean, it really is critical to see these things in constant, and every discussion that we have does that, you know, both from the infrastructure support, but also really from research, you know, how do we figure out where to go, you know do I go around look around the corner over the hill and make sure that walking there is worth it Jerry Wasserberg you know the geologist from Caltech talked about you know how a rock from a given planetary environment can tell you a lot about the story of that environment of course as a geologist would say hey you

need to get an old rock. But other than that, that statement is true. You want to learn about life, you know, and the kind of really the ancient evolution of that life possibly when there was water on Mars. A lot of the research, a lot of the breakthroughs to that will happen just like on Earth, through research with people. And I really do feel that some of these paradigm-altering research topics that are there on Mars to

be discovered, you know, are going to happen once we're boots are on the ground and the scientists are there and can make judgment right there based on what they're seeing. You know, I also think that as Thomas described, it's really important we look for ways we can work together. Clearly Thomas wants to return a sample from Mars, but it doesn't need to be of the mass that we're going to do an ascent vehicle to come off Mars with humans. So it's some subscale between the two. So it's not the perfect answer from a human standpoint.

We'd rather demonstrate exactly what we're going to use for humans. But it can be a step in that direction if we can look at the right way to team with science to get a combination between the two. And then we'll inject the right technology from Steve to make it perfect. But it's a compromise between all three. It's not perfect for any one of the directorates. But the challenge is so demanding, it requires all of us to compromise a little bit off of our perfect solution and look for that synergy between us that advances the

bigger overarching goal which is moving humans towards Mars and that's going to be the challenge for our communities because we tend to look at these things still very much in our own lanes this isn't exactly perfect for human spaceflight this isn't perfect for science this isn't perfect for technology but is it perfect for the goal of moving humans to Mars? That should be the question we're answering, not the individual ones. And that'll take some compromise from our community and a different way of looking at the way we do business. But I think it's absolutely critical and will help us advance faster if we can do that. NASA Associate

Administrator William Gerstenmaier. He and fellow Associate Administrators Steven Jersic and Thomas Zurbuchen will be back in a minute with more of our great conversation at the 2017 Humans to Mars Summit. This is Planetary Radio. I'm Casey Dreyer, the Planetary Society's Director of Space Policy. In the last five years, our members have helped to achieve pretty much every single advocacy priority we've had. It's been amazing. NASA's planetary science budget is above one and a half billion again, and it's growing. We have new missions to Mars in 2020 and Europa. We've sent over 400,000 letters to Congress and the White House in order to achieve this. And your generosity has enabled us to grow this program

up to three full-time staff dedicated to space policy. But we have a new Congress, a new president, and soon a new NASA administrator. Decisions are being made right now that are going to impact the future of NASA for a generation, if not more. So we need your support now more than ever to build on the momentum we've created here. So please, join us. Invest in our advocacy program. Go to planetary.org slash advocacy. Thank you. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan, this week presenting nearly all of my Humans to Mars Summit panel in Washington, D.C. And what a panel. Three of the people who are leading the human Humans to Mars Summit panel in Washington, D.C. And what a panel. Three of the people who are leading the human journey to Mars.

William Gerstenmaier is NASA's Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations. Steven Jurczyk is Associate Administrator for Space Technology. And Thomas Zerbukin is the agency's Associate Administrator for Science. As that journey to Mars becomes better and better defined, do you see an increasing role for humans getting close, orbiting Mars, maybe stopping off at Phobos before going for the gold and putting them down on the surface? And that advantage, Thomas, of course, of being able to control the robots down there with only a second or two between you and them, rather than the long delay that we've got from Earth. I think there's a variety of architectures that we're thinking about that multiple people around the Earth are thinking about.

And I think what's really exciting to see is the kind of convergence of excitement and energy towards Mars from many different directions. You know, look at the 2020 launch window. I think last time I counted, we had six or seven launches, you know, with four potential wannabe landers, you know. And so what that shows is the excitement to that. It also shows that if you listen to everybody a little bit in detail, you realize that, hey, some people have some interest in to stop by in the neighborhood. So I think Phobos is a really interesting place, as is Deimos, is exciting too. What's interesting about it, for example, is by itself, you know,

don't underestimate moons. Sometimes they have the biggest kind of miracles underneath their surface and, you know, kind of they surprise you. But the other thing also is it's clear that these bodies exchange mass, you know, and so basically we look at the surface of Phobos, you know, and some of the areas are very likely are not too recent Mars pieces that came up and hit the surface, you know. There's a lot of research that says how hot did they get when they were ejected and, you know, it turns out that the temperature is not actually that enormously high. Kind of my gut feeling was, wow, this is boiling everything off in the neighborhood. And the short answer is of some of these, you know, much more sophisticated

analysis, oh, no, not all of it. So I think there's a lot of promise, and that's reflected, for example, in some missions our international partners are doing that we're excited to think about collaborating. And I don't think the way to think about that kind of exploration frontier is some kind of linear, along-a-line type of thing. It's a response. It's much more, I would say, entrepreneurial. It's like, this is the point in the sky we're going to, but we're not going to walk in to an architecture and everything, every step along the way, to the detriment of our own success.

So in other words, like who would have guessed where these companies are? You know, you mentioned SpaceX. There's others where these companies are today Right when ten years ago when a discussion on the stage like this happened right and so so for me is like okay if We're not partnering with some of these companies. We're really missing the boat half kind of an agile type of Architecture that is can really bring in kind of things we learn is important. It needs to be directed to the point in the sky we want to get to. So it's not like going God knows where. We want

to go to Mars, but really make sure that we can take advantage of things. So the kind of Phobos idea is a great idea, I think, that should be investigated as we go forward. Steve? Yeah, the way I like to think about it, I always use this sailing analogy with respect to strategy, right? We know where we're going to go, but we have no idea how the seas and winds are going to change and what equipment's going to break, et cetera, and we're going to have to adjust along the way. So that's kind of the analogy I like to use. But I think it's really important that as we learn more through science, as we learn more through developing and testing technologies, that'll feed back into architectures and

approaches that will enable some and make them more viable and maybe eliminate other systems and approaches in architecture. So I think it's really important that we continuously look for opportunities to collaborate and take advantage of new technologies and look at their performance and feed that back into what's thought of as possible. And obviously the science that we do and what we learn there has to feed in. And as we go along and learn more through the science and make more progress in technology, we'll tack differently or we'll replace equipment, et cetera, using the sailing analogy.

So I think that is absolutely what we have to do. It's going to take not only integration, but dedication and constancy of purpose over a fairly long period of time to be able to get there. And I think we've been at it for a little while, and we'll continue to move forward. But Steve and Thomas described as a very flexible architecture where you don't lock things in,

and it's clearly not linear the way Thomas described. So we'll go take a look and see what the government can do, where the government makes sense to put some basic infrastructure in place. If you look at the retro propulsion Red Dragon activity, that's enabled. SpaceX can do that only because we have the deep space network and we have the ability to do deep space navigation. And we, as a government, can provide that to anybody that wants to have that ability. So we built that key piece of infrastructure.

It would be very difficult for a private company to have 370 meter dishes located around the world to be the basis of the deep space network. That's just not the right thing for the private sector. That is the right thing for the government. Then if we make that available to anyone that wants to use that in creative ways that have some benefit back to us to understand about supersonic retro propulsion, that's really a great synergy. So we need to look for those things. Don't lock everything in, but the government should be building the right pieces of infrastructure that make sense, that then can be supportive of a broader private sector international community that want to go do these things. The other big thing that's really important is set some standards.

You know, the Deep Space Network has an interoperability standard, so all the international partners can communicate and they use that same network. All our data comes back from Mars through the Deep Space Network. That's almost everyone's data. So when Thomas talks about the six or seven missions in 2020, those will all be supported by the Deep Space Network. So that criticality of infrastructure that we need to be doing is really, really important, and it underpins these other things.

And it's not about who gets the headlines or who gets the credit. It's about how do we move forward together as a team. Also, we need to be careful we don't pick exactly the way we want to go to Mars. If the moons play a key role, that's a great thing to go do. If all of a sudden entry, descent, and landing starts moving farther forward, maybe we go towards the surface of Mars directly, and we don't have to do things with the moons. Maybe the moons will play a role in moving forward.

You know, as we discussed the Deep Space Gateway, we're now using our own moon, essentially as a staging point to go to Mars. Do the Mars moons or maybe a highly elliptical orbit around Mars, is that a better staging region for the vicinity of Mars than, say, a Mars orbit? Those are the things that we want universities, academia to start studying, start trading, and then help us build that basic framework. But the key thing is don't get locked into a linear monolithic mission after mission. Create an infrastructure that's resilient enough, feeds forward enough, there's not many dead ends on that you can just weave this network together that allows us to do this

huge challenge, which is put humans on Mars. And I love that concept of the deep space gateway. And then, okay, we got it right here. Let's move it on out. And three cheers for the DSN, as always. We've heard about the technological challenges. Your boss, the administrator, and others have also addressed the other sorts of challenges that are less under your control.

What's the bigger challenge, the technological or the public and political will? It's hard to separate the two, right? If we're managing to really show the excitement, show the opportunity, and also not kind of have a communication kind of structure that entirely comes from us. So in other words, there's others,

like people in the audience, and others are basically seeing value in going there for perhaps entirely different motivations than we see this as a much bigger likelihood of gaining support because there's multiple voices that kind of point in the same direction. So one of the big transitions, I would say, in the last decade is really that these voices are louder.

And so for me, I think that's going to help us in the long run. That's going to help us also in our kind of discussions with various stakeholders. It's going to help us basically say, hey, look, we are at the pivot point. Yeah, I think it gets back to the previous discussion about being flexible and learning and moving forward. I think we kind of get disconnected when we start to focus on the how or the who, right? I think that we tend to engage in maybe less than productive conversations when we talk about who and how. And the way I describe it is this is a tremendous challenge, a huge challenge, and we absolutely can do this. But the way I view it is it's all hands on deck, right?

It's to be able to do this, we need to take advantage of universities, companies, obviously NASA and other government agencies, and international partners. We ought to be using the best minds, the best ideas, wherever they are, in order to meet the goal that I think we're all lined up and agreed on. So I think that's kind of the locking down on a detailed plan in architecture and getting into the who and how, and I think we'll be just fine and we'll get there. And I think the other thing we need to look at too is, you know, we in this audience, I think we like to talk about the challenge side because we get excited about working that challenge. But I think we also got to think about what the benefits are of achieving those challenges

and what they mean to the society as a whole. You know, you get many questions as why are we moving humans to Mars? What does that have to do with our problems we face today? And I think we need to turn those challenges back into real things that we can show how they're providing benefit back to folks. I think it comes naturally to the younger generation. The younger generation sees a better future by us moving out and being explorers and doing these things. We don't often talk about that or we don't talk about understanding how we do a closed-loop life support system. That has

applications to us here on the earth as resources become more precious and we have to recycle water and we have to do other things and we provide water purification for for people in africa those are coming from space technology you know our whole view of the of the universe our place in the universe has really changed from apollo on how do you talk about those inspirational aspirational motivations that are really big we as engineer scientists and maybe folks focus more on the challenge side but we need to turn that around for the general population and describe to them what the benefits are of us attacking these challenges and trying to accomplish these and how these will have benefits for all of us here so

we got it we got to describe that other side and I don't think we as a community do a very good job of that, or we could do a better job of that. It's getting better and better. And I'm going to bet that, Steve, you and your people could point to every one of those 38 technologies and show us benefits for those of us who are going to be stuck down here on earth. So on the practical side. Absolutely. You are the choir. We're preaching to the choir. The choir needs to be preached to now and then. Here's somebody at a microphone. Hi.

Introduce yourself and let us hear your question. Hi, I'm Peter Alexander from Maine. And I was intrigued at the movie last night. I learned for the first time that the atmosphere of Mars is largely CO2. And what we're doing to our planet made me wonder if perhaps we've been there before. And in your analysis of where to put things, where to put landing craft down,

where to do with the exploration, as you were talking about earlier, have you considered where the oceans and bodies of water would be and where if there had been human or human-like settlements on Mars previously, wouldn't it be logical that they would be as they are on Earth, largely along the coasts of the former bodies of water? And I'm going to say the film that Peter is talking about, some of us got to see Pascal Lee's terrific Passage to Mars documentary last night. Absolutely wonderful documentary with a lot to say to those of us in the choir.

Yes, our progenitors, the ones who may have started on Mars. Thomas? So let me answer the first part of the question, which is, do we know where the bodies of water are? And the answer is yes. And so basically one of the big breakthroughs in the last decade also is really that we went from kind of a feeling, or perhaps 15 years I should take in this case, because that's how long it took, from, hey, a feeling that there used to be water to not only a very good agreement of where that water was, but also where it is today, where we would take advantage of resources. Tremendous certainty, you know, some of these resources have as much water in them as Lake Superior. For those of us

who lived in Michigan, you know, know that there's a lot. Signatures of, you know, people who might have lived there before. I mean, I would just say we haven't found any of those signatures. And we've looked, right? We have actually very high-resolution cameras. And, I mean, we keep looking to learn about science and learn about all of what is to learn about this planet. The one thing we know for sure is that intelligent life will be there once we land. As Ray Bradbury said, we are the Martians, or we should be.

Yeah, and you know, I think we've already had workshops, science and human exploration, to look at what the landing sites might be for human exploration. Process is progressing pretty rapidly. Exactly, using the research. And then technologically, we're looking at those landing sites seeing, OK, what are the challenges of landing there safely and operating the systems on the surface that we need for the crew to be healthy and productive.

And so that's already started, and it'll continue. I think also the CO2 atmosphere is intriguing. MOXIE is looking at the ability to pull oxygen out of the atmosphere. On board Space Station, we take the carbon dioxide that the crew generates, we combine that with the hydrogen that is made from electrolysis of water and the oxygen for the crews to breathe, and hydrogen is a waste gas. We combine that hydrogen with the CO2 that the crew generates, so we make more water, and we actually create methane.

So there's a nice cycle there. Methane is a propellant that can be used for for ascent vehicles, etc. So there's a nice advantage of using that CO2 atmosphere in a real way combined with some of the water on Mars to really refine some of those chemical processes. And you're exactly right. Some of those have huge benefits to us here on Earth, especially as we deal with the CO2 environment that we're potentially kicking up. How can we remove CO2 and change it into something that's more compatible with life? So tremendous areas of institute resource utilization. It's really, really intriguing.

And again, Mars will force us, because of the necessity to solve these hard engineering problems, it'll force us to get real-world solutions to these, which will have real benefits to us back here on Earth. Step by step. Got a question on this side. Hi, sir. Hi, I'm Tom Risen with Aerospace America. International partners and industry partners are mentioned as a key role in deep space infrastructure in reaching Mars. I'm wondering how you see China playing a role. I know former Administrator Charles Bolden made some outreach to China, some outreach. There's some security risks involved in sharing technology. But have you heard at NASA any continuation of this outreach, you know, discussions about how you could one day coordinate with China if you build some bridges there to

build a deep-sea infrastructure? Speaking of political rather than technological challenges. Again, we're prohibited from working with China on a bilateral relationship. So we work with them in a multilateral forum. They're members of all our international communities. We're well aware of what their activities are they're planning on. We're well aware of what their activities are they're planning on. They're well aware of what we're doing, and we can work with them in a multilateral manner where it makes sense. But in terms of bilateral relationships and one-on-one kind of discussions, we're currently prohibited by law from having those direct interactions.

But I think, again, this challenge is so huge. We'll figure out a way globally that we can work within the constraints we're given to figure out a way internationally to make these activities happen. And so what they're doing is exciting. What we see coming with their space station, some of their lunar activities, and even some of their Mars activities are intriguing. We need to look at that and see where it makes sense moving forward for us. Yeah, I saw they just successfully refueled robotically their space station.

So, you know, hats off. That's a pretty great accomplishment. And I think another key piece, when I describe standards, if we, you know, we've set the international docking standard, we were able to publish that to the web. So that's available to any country to go use. And if you build to that standard, you can dock spacecraft to other human spacecraft. We're going to set other standards in terms of life support systems pressure levels in terms of modules standards in terms of

bus architecture power systems etc then that's a great way it's not a mandatory standard it's a voluntary standard if people build to those standards then all of a sudden now we have inner compatibility we can move components from one country to another country into our architecture moving forward. So I think that's a really powerful way that we can stay out of the political debate by just publishing open standards that are voluntary, just much like Spectrum came about in the radio frequency world. We have interoperability standards today with all our deep space network.

Those kind of things make tremendous sense. As you want to bring a large community together you publish general ideas for those standards you get general consensus now you've got interoperability you can really build this flexible architecture we've been describing throughout the entire international community Thomas just as a scientist all of that must sound pretty good to you oh yeah I mean look I mean, look, I mean, in science, we have, during the Cold War, we have, during every one of those kind of political rifts between countries, collaborated. And kind of, I mean, organizations like COSPAR have been a platform for science discourse and, you know, by the way,

a platform which currently has a U.S. president, to really get science discourse going forward, even if there are political challenges. I think science really has been, over time, and so many of these things have been uniters, have been helping, over time, people to come together. And it's just like Bill describes, science is going forward because it's multilateral. People go to the same conferences often around the world, sometimes here, sometimes elsewhere, and it's continuing as we go forward. Hi, I'm Peter. So I'm wondering if you could talk more about the Mars sample return mission. I'm not really sold on it, So maybe if anyone up there could kind of try and sell me this mission, that'd be great. So let me just tell you how I see my job. I'm only good at some type

of science, not all science, right? So if I wrote public, you know, the 200 publications that I wrote or whatever you said, I forgot what the number is, but you know, like it's in one pretty narrow domain. So I'm not going to sit here and basically tell you, hey, in every science that we do at NASA, I'm the same kind of level of expert. See what we do for that to kind of make sure that when a person like me comes into a job like I'm in and what we make sure is that we're not immediately pivoting

towards what I know or towards what somebody else might know is in this job. What we do is we ask the national academies to kind of convene the best experts in a given field and give us the most compelling evidence and the most compelling recommendations for programs we should do. So the Mars sample return is the highest recommendation of the last planetary decadal. There's a midterm that's just kicking off right now. So we're really interested to see. Like what happens, of course, science moves forward, right?

So, I mean, my prediction will be, but I'll wait for the Academy, my prediction will be is that just like it was a high priority the last time, it's going to remain a high priority at this time. And the major reason really has to do with the ability of taking some of these samples and investigate them and the components with the tools that they need to be investigated. We just don't know how to land those tools. We don't know currently how to get the masses up there. But, you know, I'm not going to sit here and basically say,

as compared to all the other science topics, the point is I'm really following in this job the National Academies, and you should be glad I am, you know, because everybody, otherwise the programs will be far too narrow. You know, take the observation of, you know, the new observations of exoplanets that are out there. Well, they come because we're following this kind of advice, and all of a sudden these discoveries really do happen and we find exciting science kind of in areas we would have never guessed, like dwarfs. My name is Mike Dunn. I'm the director of Fourth Planet Logistics. We're the folks who are developing the lava tube research habitat facility in Iceland. But my question has

more to do with the last comments and discussions that you were covering. And that has to do with the public enthusiasm and support for journeys to Mars. What I'm interested in finding out is we've had people approach us, such as Nike, Adidas, North Face, folks like that, who are interested in getting involved and getting developing a relationship with any and all of the efforts that are going on relative to approaching Mars my question is really simple what within NASA or the government organizations are currently available that we can refer people to from that industry to help coordinate those kinds of efforts.

They're predominantly interested in developing shoes, gear, clothing, things of that nature. I mean, there's a couple activities we've been looking at, even for general clothing, other things on station. We have lots of other transactional authorities where we can get into pretty creative Space Act agreements with companies that are interested in doing things so again I think we stand very open for any of those groups to come in and talk to us they can come to us through a variety of ways we have requests for information where we're asking for specific components specific hardware but if they see some component or some technology they're working on that they think would have interest in NASA,

they can provide us an unsolicited proposal. They can provide us unsolicited information on that area and tell us how they want to team with us and work together to go do those things. So I think the agency is very, very open to do a whole variety of different things with different companies that are maybe not necessarily in the aerospace world today, but they definitely have application and have applicability for what we're trying to do. Let me give you a quick example. So we're doing a 3D printed habitat challenge in our Centennial Challenges program.

We're trying to use 3D printing technology, simulated regolith, water, and inorganic trash plastics to print the elements of a structure that you can then robotically or with people assemble into a habitat on another planet. Could be Moon, could be Mars. So we're partnered with Caterpillar, who's interested in the machinery. We're partnered with Bechtel, one of the world's largest engineering and construction companies, and Bradley University, who's actually managing the challenge for us. We have 28 teams that are going to bring their machines to Peoria, Illinois, in a few months from around the world,

and they get prize money for making certain milestones. So that's an example through at least the challenges program of using a unique approach to engage non-aerospace, non-traditional partners. I think that's working pretty well, and we'll see how the technology works out. And the other thing is, for me, NASA's space tech website, look up the principal technologists. I have a principal technologist for each technology area. Contact them because they will be the best person to start talking to

about your technology or your idea and steer you in the right direction to be able to submit a proposal or better formulate what you're trying to do. So it's really easy to get a hold of them, and they're my kind of front door to Space Tech. We're going to leave it there. I, for one, am really excited about my same-day Amazon Prime delivery on the moon, something to look forward to. We need to get going because there are many, many more sessions

over the next two and a half days. My boss, the science guy at the Planetary Society, likes to say that NASA is the best brand that the United States has. And if he's right, I think he is, then the three people sitting up here with me get a lot of the credit and much of the responsibility for maintaining that reputation as we reach out for the red planet. So gentlemen, thank you so much and keep it up. Thank you as well. So, gentlemen, thank you so much, and keep it up.

Thanks, Dave. Thank you as well. Much gratitude to Explore Mars CEO Chris Carberry, President Artemis Westenberg, and the entire Explore Mars Humans to Mars Summit crew for allowing me to moderate the NASA Associate Administrator Panel. You can learn more about the organization at exploremars.org. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Bruce Betts is the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, a job that sometimes takes him to exotic places.

You're in Japan. Welcome. I am indeed. I'm in Tokyo for the 2017 Planetary Defense Conference, Saving the World from Asteroids. And I wish I was with you, because I really enjoy that conference, as you know. What are you going to be doing there? I'm giving a talk a little later in the week about the Planetary Society five-step plan to preventing asteroid impact and suggesting it as a way to communicate succinctly about the asteroid threat. And then I have a poster paper about the Shoemaker-Neo grant program because

this week we are announcing a new call for proposals for the Shoemaker NEO grants. People can find out information at planetary.org slash NEO grants, Near Earth Object grants. That will be up later this week. That's great. All right. Let those so-called amateur astronomers and even professional ones help us save the world. As we speak, you've already been through one day of the conference, and it's going okay? Yeah, it's going very well. This is a neat conference because it really brings together experts in all aspects of the problem, finding, tracking, characterizing, deflection,

collaboration, coordination, education, and even disaster management and the like, as you know, because you were at the one two years ago in Italy. It's been going well. Always interesting stuff here. I'm also connecting with various Japanese entities, and we're doing a public talk on Saturday, so that should be fun with simultaneous translation of me into Japanese. Fantastic. I hope that'll be online where I can catch it someplace. It probably will. The entire conference is streamed online if you look up PDC 2017 Planetary. Have you had a look at the night sky while you're down there? No, it's been cloudy since I got here, but I have confidence that it still exists and

that I have some idea what's up there. For those who can see the night sky, we've got Jupiter in the evening sky dominating over in the east-southeast, looking super bright in the early evening. And then Saturn coming up now around 10 or 11 p.m., rising in the east. And Venus dominating the pre-dawn sky, looking super bright low in the east before dawn. We move on to this week in space history. Appropriately, we have a Japanese space program related to This Week in Space History. In 2010, ICAROS was launched, which became the first successful solar sail mission, something near and dear to our hearts at the Planetary Society.

Yeah, darn them. No, no. All kudos to JAXA for that very successful and very innovative solar sail. It was. Then also in 1969, Apollo 10 was launched. The one that got close, but not quite down to the surface of the moon. Yeah, but they were supposed to do that. Yeah.

Just to be clear, it was a dry run without the actual landing, but they took it down to within a few kilometers of the surface. All right, let's see how this next piece sounds over our poor connection from Japan. All right, we move on to random space fact. That was very good. Sounded a little like calling all monsters. Calling all monsters, calling all all cars calling all space fans of course we're talking about asteroids we're talking about near-earth asteroids mentioned

before the first one of those discovered was eros in 1898 which defines that it's within a certain distance of the earth's orbit but it was uh 1932 the discovery of the asteroid named Apollo that was the first discovery of an Earth-crossing orbit asteroid. Going on, well, 85 years. I think I got that exactly right, 85 years. And thousands discovered since then. Yeah, more power to the astronomical community for continuing to search those out. They are, and the search rate just increases.

But there are a lot more to find, which was, hey, the theme of day one. All right, we move on to the trivia contest and shift modes. I asked you, what are the names of the astrobots on Mars? Lego minifigure representations sent by the Planetary Society and the Lego Group to Mars on the landing platforms of Spirit and Opportunity.

How'd we do, Matt? This was such fun. Random.org selected a first-time winner, Dina Bigun. And I happen to know she's got it right because, of course, as you pointed out a couple of weeks ago, I interviewed the two astrobots. They are Biff Starling and Sandy Moondust, right? That is correct. Named out of a Planetary Society contest.

Dina says, I listened to the 2004 episode where the astrobots were mentioned. It was hilarious. She said, too bad I didn't know about planetary radio back then. I was in high school. Thank you for making us feel that much older, Dina. Yeah, but it was hilarious. Let's just focus on that part. You're right.

You're right. Concentrate on the compliment, Matt. Dina, congrats. You are going to get a Planetary Radio t-shirt and a 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account. Michael Severson, Hampstead, Maryland. This is all he had to say. Random space bots. Christopher Beck, he's in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Sandy must be a much better driver than Biff, who got Spirit stuck in the sand. After only 4.8 miles, Sandy has driven Opportunity nearly 28 and still going strong. Yeah, well, I think that was predictable from their personalities. Biff was a little wilder and more off-road, and Sandy was a little more focused and controlled. So it's probably not surprising. Biff's probably still trying to catch up to Sandy and kind of hotwire the nearby rocks.

Brian Mangold in Maricopa, Arizona. This is an interesting observation. He says, unfortunately, it appears we can no longer read their diaries because they had astrobot diaries, right? Yes, they did. He goes on to speculate, does this cover-up suggest that there have already been sacrificial one-way trips to Mars? I can neither confirm nor deny that.

A somewhat more uplifting comment from Rob Cohane in Worcester, Massachusetts. He says, now that my sons know there are Legos on Mars, I expect them to sign up for a manned or a human mission. And finally, from the Poet Laureate of Planetary Radio, Dave Fairchild, Moondust and Starling are astrobot travelers holding the case of a small DVD. They are exploring the planet we hunger for. They're in the place that we all want to be. From the Society, Sandy and Biff are attached to the rovers that landed on Mars. They are of Lego stuff made in the heart

of the vast supernovas that shatter the stars. Good work, Dave. We're ready to move on. There is a Japanese planetary mission on its way to an asteroid right now. In fact, a near-Earth asteroid. What near-Earth asteroid will the Hayabusa 2 mission visit and return samples from? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest.

You have until Wednesday, May 24th at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us the answer to this one. And you can also win a Planetary Radio t-shirt and a 200-point, that's worth a couple hundred bucks, Planetary Radio t-shirt and a 200-point, that's worth a couple hundred bucks, a 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account, the worldwide nonprofit network of telescopes that you can use to explore Mars or the rest of the cosmos. All right, everybody, go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about what clouds would look like when you're in Tokyo. Thank you, and good night. Sayonara. You haven't seen Godzilla yet, have you?

No, I have not. I did visit the Tokyo Tower, which they said has been destroyed by Godzilla 15 times. 15 times? Really? You'd think after the 6th or 7th that they'd decide maybe that's not a place to rebuild. Maybe, but they're very diligent. It is a magnificent tower. I hope to see it in person someday. That's Bruce, before he tears it down again, that's Bruce Betts, the

Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, who joins us every week, and this week from Tokyo for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its members, many of whom were at the Humans to Mars Summit.

Danielle Gunn is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. I'm Matt Kaplan. Clear skies.