Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - NASA’s New Planetary Defense Office

Episode Date: February 2, 2016

Lindley Johnson has just been named NASA's first Planetary Defense Officer. He's joined on this week's PlanRad by astronomer Kelly Fast, the new manager of the Near Earth Object Observation Program.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

He's the Planetary Defense Officer, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. NASA's Lindley Johnson has a new title and a new office to go with it, the Planetary Defense Coordination Office. And he has astronomer Kelly Fast as the new program manager for the Near-Earth Object Observation Program. We have both on this week's show, along with Emily Lakdawalla, Bill Nye the Planetary Guy, and of course, Bruce Betts with an ISS above to give away.

Bruce isn't the only one with a What's Up this week. Our senior editor reviews what's up with missions around the solar system. Emily, we don't have time for everything here, but give us an overview of your overview of solar system exploration in the coming month. Well, it's another incredibly active month in solar system exploration. We've got 20 plus spacecraft observing various targets across the solar system and cruising to future destinations. There is a diagram as well that I've seen you publish before, and it gets updated every month. Tell us about this.

Yeah, this is made by an amateur named Olaf Frohn. He looks all across the solar system, figures out where all the spacecraft are and all of their destinations are, because you've got to remember everything's a moving target in the solar system. are and all of their destinations are, because you've got to remember everything's a moving target in the solar system. And it's just amazing to look at these little green names all over the place and see how many spacecraft are at Mars. There are seven of them. See how many are orbiting Earth, studying things across the solar system. It's actually quite a lot of work to keep track of what all of our spacecraft are doing. And it's nice to look at, too. You've got, I think for the first time, a contribution from one of our colleagues.

Yeah, I've asked Jason Davis to start keeping track of what's happening in human and private and commercial spaceflight and in order that we can have a chance to actually watch some launches live. Almost none of these are planetary launches, but it's still, it's fun to watch a Falcon 9 launch regardless of whether it's launching something to the space station or launching something just to Earth orbit. So he's got a list of what's launching off of Earth this month. And of course, you've got highlights from all over the place. We only have time for one or two of them. One in particular that I was hoping to talk to you about anyway

is this beautiful new flyover of Ceres. Yeah, Dawn is now in its very lowest orbit around Ceres. It's capturing images from quite a low elevation, although the point of this low altitude for Dawn is actually not for imaging. It's for determining the elemental composition of the surface. But it does afford us some really beautiful images of strange craters and bright features. And they've assembled a bunch of images together from the higher orbit into this beautiful animation of Ceres.

What else would you like to call attention to? We've got time for maybe one more. Well, I'd like to call attention to our oldest Mars orbiter. That's Odyssey. Odyssey's been there since 2002 and has just shifted into a very different orbit. It usually orbits over the sunlit surface of Mars in the afternoon, but it's been shifting its orbit since Curiosity landed and now sees sunlit surface of Mars very early in the morning. So Odyssey's images should be showing us ground fog and other cool things that are only visible in the Martian morning. I'm really looking forward to the data that they get this year. There is so much more here in Emily's February 2016 edition of What's Up in the Solar System. It's a January 29 entry in the blog that you can find at planetary.org. Thanks so much, Emily. Thank you, Matt. She is our senior editor, the planetary evangelist for the Planetary Society, and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. Next, Bill Nye on the very last thing that Emily called attention to in her February review,

and that's the Voyager mission. The mission didn't reach a milestone, but its project scientist did last week. Ed Stone, he's been in charge of that thing for 38 years or something. He turned 80, probably. He sure did, just last week. Way to go, man. So, Matt, I was in Carl Sagan's class in the spring of 1977. I'm not joking.

Oh, wow. He asked us what music, what rock and roll songs, specifically to put on the record, right? Yeah. I have discussed this story with other people, and I stand by it. Carl Sagan said, well, should we put on Roll Over Beethoven by Chuck Berry? No, sir, really. Johnny B. Goode. Roll Over Beethoven.

I know you're into classical music, Professor, but that song is not really about classical music as such. Anyway, that's what ended up, Johnny Be Good ended up on the record. There were a couple hundred of us rooting for it. And it was very cool. I mean, it's unforgettable for me. So I remember when it was launched, the year I was graduated from engineering school, both of them. So you sort of take it for granted. Oh, here's a picture of Uranus. Here's a picture of Neptune. Here's some close-up pictures of the weather on Jupiter. It's amazing. And as amazing as any of that, we're still talking to them. Yes, I was at the JPL center of the universe. You know, this area where they have a plaque on the floor? Yeah,

they call it the center of the universe. And all the spacecraft are displayed by abbreviation, by acronym, VGR, VGR1, VGR2, Voyager. And the first column, you know, for most of them, the first column is so many weeks, then hours, minutes, seconds. Well, the Voyagers are years, 38 years. And the plutonium is still putting out enough electricity for us to what's the round trip talk time it's over a day or two days yeah it's like a day and a half i think it's getting close to 38 hours 38 hours and it's 38 years of space travel that's amazing space exploration brings out the best in us we celebrate it and we learn more about the cosmos and our place within it. I mean, the Voyager missions are extraordinary. They're very reasonably priced. So let's mount another one. Let's do the next deep space mission. Here, here. Okay, just a very quick plug for a friend of yours. And he is the reason why you are in the far north of California. Oh, yes. We're doing a StarTalk radio podcast, and we do it in

front of an audience at California's Humboldt State University. And this is a show that Neil deGrasse Tyson often hosts, but when it's on the West Coast, I often end up guest hosting. And tonight we'll be talking about earthquakes. The geology here on the California coast is spectacular in that it's young. It's relatively young. And so you can see where the Pacific plate is subducting under the North American plate in this area that's called Cascadia. And everybody expects an earthquake any moment. So stand by, or it's going to be a good show. Enjoy the beautiful country while you're up there. Thank you, Matt. Let's change the world. That's him, Bill Nye, the CEO of the Planetary

Society, and he joins us most weeks here. In just a moment, we will talk to, get this, the Planetary Defense Officer. His new title, that's Lindley Johnson, and Kelly Fast, who works for him in the new Planetary Defense Coordination Office at NASA. Do you know why the dinosaurs died? Because they didn't have a space program, that's why. More precisely, they didn't have a planetary defense program to find, track, and characterize asteroids and comets that cross the path of our home planet. And they didn't have a way to deflect the NEO,

or near-Earth object, that wiped them out. We humans are doing much better, but we have a long ways to go. Lindley Johnson of NASA headquarters last joined us as we covered the 2015 Planetary Defense Conference in Italy. He doesn't so much have a new job as he has a new title and a new office. One of his first hires was accomplished astronomer Kelly Fast. They were in Southern California last week for a meeting of SBag, the Small Body Assessment Group, which reviews our efforts to learn about solar system objects that are smaller than planets all the way down to dust particles. I met with them just after the close of the meeting. Lindley Johnson, welcome back to Planetary Radio. And Kelly Fast, very good to have you on for the

first time. I hope this is just the first of several visits. Great to have both of you. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. It's good to be back. Lindley, I've had the Planetary Protection Officer on this program a couple of times, and I never failed to tell that person what a great title they have. But now I think I may have to reconsider. Planetary Defense Officer. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I like to tease Cassie, the Planetary Protection Officer, that she may take care of the small, squishy stuff, but I take care of the big, hard stuff. Yes, and thank you for that. Kelly, this guy next to you, he's been hunting these rocks since his Air Force career. You, on the other hand, you've studied planetary atmospheres, places like Mars and Titan and Jupiter. You're still with the MAVEN mission? Yes. I thought so.

You've actually helped lead science observation activity all across the solar system. How do you get from that? What brought you to this job? What attracted you? That's a good question. How did I fall into this, especially being an atmospheres person? I guess just in coming to headquarters, because I was at Goddard Space Flight Center, and then I came on detail to headquarters to handle

a lot of the programs that I was already involved with as a researcher, planetary astronomy, planetary atmospheres. I was a user of the Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii, and now I'm at headquarters handling it. And just over time, also as the NEO program developed, as we coordinated work, I just somehow started taking on more and more and certainly have a great deal of humility about working with the people who handle the rocks. Since I come from atmospheres, my first observing one was Shoemaker-Levy 9. So I don't care so much about the comet, but what it did to the atmosphere. And so now I have a great deal of respect for the other side

of things. I saw that you did research on bodies entering the Jovian atmosphere, right? Right. I was very interested in what it did. It was an opportunity to, when something goes splash and it brings up material from the lower atmosphere into the upper atmosphere, we could study that. That was great. I never thought that years down the road I'd be actually working with the actual impactors. That's a natural progression. Some may know that the NEO program at NASA stemmed out of the Planetary Astronomy Program. It started off in 1998. It was just part of the planetary astronomy program

and didn't separate out as a separate endeavor until about 2002, 2004. In fact, Lindley used to run that program before my predecessor, and he actually awarded me my first grant. And so it's just kind of funny how things come full circle like this. I'll say. You were headed into, with that response, exactly where I wanted to go, to talk a little bit about, encapsulate the evolution of the near-Earth object search over just the last few years, because it's been a pretty rapid area of change and improvement. rapid area of change and improvement. We have developed a much better understanding of what our near-Earth neighbors are in the solar system, the near-Earth asteroids and comets. And that has also been stimulated by the advances in technology on our telescope systems of the CCD devices so that images are digitized and you can use a lot of computer manipulation

to pull out dimmer and dimmer objects in those images. That's what allows us to be able to discover these small bodies that are in our vicinity in the solar system and get them into our catalogs, understand their orbits, and determine whether they're going to be an impact hazard to us in the future. So the technology obviously has come a long ways, but so has the interest in this from the federal government. I mean, the funding alone, you're looking at a much better environment than just a few years ago, right? That's right. Our budget has increased tenfold over the last five to six years, but that has come with a better understanding of the leadership on what the hazard is and what could happen to us if we're not adequately prepared for a potential disaster like this

that will inevitably occur sometime in the future. Our hope is that it's hundreds of years off, but we don't know that right now because we don't have a good firm handle on the catalog of everything that's out there. Yeah, certainly the Chelyabinsk experience brought this home for a lot more people. Certainly, certainly events like that, of course, bring it to the forefront of the news and everybody sees what we're dealing with, whereas it wouldn't be something that they would think of because it's out in space, nobody ever sees it. How does this new office, the PDCO, fit into all of this? Well, the Planetary Defense Coordination Office has been an idea that's actually been around for quite a while, that there needed to be an office that was looking across certainly the NASA efforts in this area,

but also efforts across the U.S. government agencies. Capabilities to detect and observe these objects are not just NASA facilities, NASA-owned facilities. As a matter of fact, most of the assets we use, NASA doesn't own them, but facilities that are owned and operated by the National Science Foundation, for instance, like Arecibo Observatory, and in the future, the Large Phenoptic Survey Telescope. Assets that are owned by the Department of Defense, particularly the Air Force and DARPA space surveillance, can also be utilized. And when we start talking about what are we going to do about something that is on an impact trajectory to ensure it doesn't create a bad day for us all. It takes capabilities that

reside in places like the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, and certainly to handle an actual impact of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA. I'm glad you mentioned the National Science Foundation because there is a quote here from Nigel Sharp, who's their program director in the Division of Astronomical Sciences. He said that the NSF welcomes the increased visibility afforded to this critical activity, and they look forward to continuing the fruitful collaboration across the agencies to bring all of our resources, ground-based and space-based, to the study of this important problem. So this is really multidisciplinary and multi-agency, isn't it? Yes, it really is.

That's where the expertise lies, and that's why the Planetary Defense Coordination Office will be hosted by the Planetary Science Division at NASA headquarters and reporting up through the Science mission directorate to the administrator. This is applied science, basically. When somebody finds that rock with our name on it, FEMA's going to want to be very much involved. Yes, and our association with FEMA actually goes back to 2010 when the Office of Science and Technology Policy put together a memo at the request of Congress

of what would be the roles and responsibilities for dealing with the NEO hazard and dealing with an impact threat. We've had an ongoing interchange with them since then. We've conducted a couple of impact emergency response exercises to help inform their leadership about what the nature of this hazard was and what the effects might be should there be an impact. So they would have a better idea of how they should utilize and modify their emergency response plans to be able to handle a disaster like this. It's a challenge for them because, quite frankly, even what we would consider the impact of a relatively small object, a 40 to 50 meter size object in a metropolitan area would cause devastation to a level that they've never had to handle. And something they don't like to hear are uncertainties

that scientists like to put on measurements and predictions, and they want to know, tell me where and tell me when. And so it's a struggle, too, to try to give them the information that they would need or to try to get inside a scientist's mind. That can be tough. Well, and not just where and when, but how much damage it's going to do, right? Because it depends on what kind of rock is it and what angle is it coming in at? There are a lot of variables to be dealt with.

Have to kind of give them a range of it could be this bad or it could be that bad, depending on what we ultimately are dealing with. or it could be that bad depending on what we ultimately are dealing with. But to support some of that planning, that's another aspect that the Planetary Defense Coordination Office handles and oversees is studies on such things, like if an object were a certain size and coming in at a certain angle into the atmosphere, would it burn up on the way in?

Would it reach the ground? What would the damage be? And so in order to inform some of that planning, this office is also overseeing some of that research. And that research, isn't our ability now to build models to give us a better idea of what these different kinds of impacts might do to us, isn't that much more sophisticated than it used to be, Kelly? Well, certainly as computers have become faster and faster, it's possible to run all these different cases that you might want to try. And it is very complicated when you think about all the different possibilities, different sizes, different composition densities of objects,

how they might actually enter the atmosphere, something like Chelyabinsk, as opposed to something that would come all the way to the ground. It is very complicated, but the capabilities, I guess, keep getting better and better. That's where the Department of Energy and the national labs have entered in to help us out with some of the most sophisticated computer code, computer systems to run those codes, most sophisticated computer code, computer systems to run those codes to better understand not only the effects of an impact, but also helping us with a better understanding of what might be effective mitigation techniques. One of the mitigation techniques we think might be the most mature and would be what we would look to maybe first if we had to divert an asteroid, would be a kinetic impactor. And so understanding the effects that a spacecraft of a certain size

and velocity would have on a small asteroid can be researched and analyzed by the same types of computer code. And it is very good to know that this work is underway. But long before the mitigation is needed, I mean, the first step, right, is finding these guys. What's the current status of this search? How many of the ones that we really need to worry about have been found? Our current catalog stands at a little over 13,500. Our current catalog stands at a little over 13,500, certainly 15,000 by the end of this year because we're finding about 1,500 of these near-Earth objects every year. Now, with our current direction from Congress and the legislative language that we've been given, we're trying to find all the objects, near-Earth objects,

down to 140 meters in size, kind of taking this in chunks. We started to try to find all those one kilometer and larger in size. You found most of those have been found. Yeah, our current estimate against the projected population is we're about 92%, 93% have been found found. Not that. And those are the ones that wipe out all your dinosaurs. Right. Well, yeah, certainly. I mean, those would have global effects and impacts of such as that would have global effects. And so that's why we certainly tried to find those first. But certainly, at least it helps that those are easier to find and keep track of. Yeah. I mean, I was going to get to that. Doesn't it become more difficult as they get smaller?

I mean, now you're saying 140 meters, so people can think of like a football field and a half, American football. Also, depending on what they're made of, it might be a very dark object. So if it's small and dark, that makes it that much more difficult to find. It's a difficult problem, and there are more and more of those smaller objects. find, it's a difficult problem. And there are more and more of those smaller objects. If you look at our current completion rate against the various sizes, it drops off pretty rapidly once we get below a kilometer in size, because the assets that we've been using over the last decade doing a very good job of finding the one kilometer and larger objects. But we really need more capable systems, bigger glass on the ground or

space-based capabilities to be more effective about finding these smaller objects down to 100 meters in size because although there was maybe about a thousand one kilometer and larger objects to be found. There's something like 25,000 to 26,000 if we go down to 140 meters in size, of which we've only found about 7,000 so far after almost 17 years of concentrated search. And we're finding about 500 a year now, but with 18,000 left to go, 25,000 minus 7,000 we found, we've got about 18,000 to go at 500 a year. It's going to be three decades or more before we would find them at the current rate. So that's why we really need to improve our capabilities in that area. NASA's planetary defense officer Lindley Johnson and astronomer Kelly Fast will be back in that area. NASA's Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson

and astronomer Kelly Fast will be back in a minute. This is Planetary Radio. This is Robert Picardo. I've been a member of the Planetary Society since my Star Trek Voyager days. You may have even heard me on several episodes of Planetary Radio. Now I'm proud to be the newest member of the Board of Directors. I'll be able to do even more to help the society achieve its goals for space exploration across our solar system and beyond. You can join me in this exciting quest. The journey starts at planetary.org. I'll see you there. Hey, hey, Bill Nye here. I'd like to introduce you to Merk Boyan. Hello. He's been making all those fabulous videos,

which hundreds of thousands of you have been watching. That's right. We're going to put all the videos in one place, Merk. Is that right? Planetary TV. So I can watch them on my television? No. So wait a minute.

Planetary TV's not on TV? That's the best thing about it. They're all going to be online. You can watch them anytime you want. Where do I watch Planetary TV then, Merck? Well, you can watch it all at planetary.org slash TV. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. We're talking about big space rocks and the steadily improving effort to find them, figure out if they are a threat to all we hold dear, and then figure out what to do about that threat. Lindley Johnson of NASA heads the new Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

Astronomer Kelly Fast works for him as program manager for the Near-Earth Object Observation Program. Kelly, just briefly, how are we able to put a rough upper limit on the number of these objects? Is that just a function of how much more we're learning about them? Well, it comes from statistical modeling based on what has been found and where it's been found. There are modeling efforts that come up with that estimate. It is an estimate, but it's something to use as a way of measuring progress toward the goal,

but it's based on a statistical analysis of what has already been found. Kelly, you largely come out of the world of infrared astronomy. Why is infrared so important in this kind of search? Right, something could be large and dark, or something could be small and bright, and in the visible, they might look the same when you put them far away at the same distance. visible, they might look the same when you put them far away at the same distance. But when you go to the infrared, when you're essentially measuring the heat from the object, you can get an idea of the size. And that's really important for understanding the hazard. And so you can do this much more effectively in the infrared. What are the new tools that you wish we could put in place? I mean, I know we have at least one space-based telescope, NEOWISE.

We've talked with Amy Meinzer on this program about that. And I know there are proposals to put more things up in space, one of them from Amy. If you had an unlimited budget, what would you want to be able to accelerate, not just finding these objects, but characterizing them and figuring out what their path is? Oh, yes. Every program manager's dream. Well, first of all, I would say that there's no one single system that is going to do all this work for us. It takes a team of different systems looking at things in different ways to fill out the entire slate of the population. There was a National Research Council study also back in 2009

that published in 2010 that looked at what would be the more optimal capabilities that would be needed. And essentially the recommendation that came out of that is having a combination of both a large ground-based system that is looking in the visible and doing work from the ground, complemented with a space-based capability that had 24-7 access, could see in areas that you can't see from the ground because a ground-based telescope can run a look at night and away from the sun, whereas a space-based capability can get closer to the sun and see objects that are either leading the Earth in its orbit or following the Earth in its orbit that then become close approachers. And particularly in the infrared because of what Kelly has already said,

plus, frankly, these objects, they stand out against the background of stars better in the infrared. And you had mentioned other aspects of it, like that covers the detection and hopefully enough characterization of the orbits to understand their paths, but then there's the continued follow-up by maybe other ground and space-based assets to understand then,, but then there's the continued follow-up by maybe other ground and space-based assets to understand, okay, what are they made of? Go do some spectroscopy so at least you know what the object is and also fill that information out for what is in the catalog.

Yeah, it really takes a different kind of telescope to do the characterization part of things, a more traditional type of telescope, than it does for the detection, where you need a telescope that can not only look deep and see dim objects, but also can look very wide and cover a lot of sky over a given period of time. Lindley, you have colleagues, opposite numbers around the world. Lindley, you have colleagues, opposite numbers, around the world. Do you see a greater level of cooperation and collaboration among the nations of the world recognizing this problem? Well, yes. We've certainly been working with our European Space Agency, European space-capable nations, for a number of years.

for a number of years. They have had capabilities very similar to ours, both in the detection area, ground-based meter class, ground-based telescopes, like in the Canary Islands, and also the orbital computation capabilities. NEO, Dynamic Sight, NEODodesk system runs programs for precise orbit determination, very similar to the capabilities we have here at JPL for doing that. And in fact, whenever there's an object of interest, we compare results. We would like to have additional

checks and balances like that from other countries, and we're in discussions with those kinds of things. But the international cooperation in this area really got going with the United Nations and the Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. We started a working group effort that actually goes all the way back to 1999, their interest in Unispace 3, but it wasn't really until 2007 that they really got rolling on this particular item and set up the NEO working group for the member states of the committee. And the membership now is in the 70, some 70 nations are members of the Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. The sort of international cooperation that you've been talking about is very useful, very important to this. Yes, it absolutely is.

For no other reason than if the day comes that we do find an object that's on an impact trajectory, that the international community already understands who's working with who to learn the most about the object. And there's already a group that has laid the groundwork for determining what's the best thing to do to try to deflect it. So it's not just this mad scramble of everybody reaching for rockets and shooting off whatever they can get their hands on. There's been some actual thought put into it, and it will be total chaos on the day that we find the comet that's going to hit us. Let's say that a good-sized asteroid, a city killer or bigger, has been detected,

and it's been determined that there's a significant chance, at least 1% or 2%, that this rock and our planet may meet up. What happens next? What's the process? The first indication that we might have an object that we have to deal with will be determined by the Minor Planet Center, and that's where all the observations from around the world come into to be either correlated with known objects or it's determined that this is a new object and we need to understand its orbit better, get more observations on it. The community, myself, and a few others will get an alert just as soon as the computer systems at

the Minor Planet Center pick up on something that shows it's going to be a close approach to Earth. It's not some guy sitting at a computer screen and comes running into the room. It's actually a very automated process. It's the computers themselves that first alert us. But we need to go through a period of collecting observations and really making sure we know what orbit this object is on before we go, you know, screaming to the world until we know when we found it. So that was what I was talking about a little bit before with the kind of comparison of results that take place between the Minor Planet Center, Center on NEO Studies out

here at JPL, and our European and Japanese and Russian colleagues as well. That's just good science. Reproducible results, right? Yeah, exactly. It's the same thought. But once we do have what we called valid and verified information that we do have an object that we need to be concerned with, then that information is taken up through our management at NASA headquarters. We have a very short chain of command from the Planetary Defense Coordination Office up to the administrators. There's only like two people in between us, and I've already told them if they are in their offices, I need to tell them about this. I'm going to the next step to the administrator,

and then the administrator will inform the White House, most likely through the Office of Science and Technology Policy, because that is where the president's science advisor is, that folks would understand this kind of event. Now, we're in a race because all this information is out on the Internet. Nothing is hidden. It's hard to keep a secret nowadays. Yeah, it's hard to keep a secret nowadays.

And we wouldn't even try on this. So people are going to see the data. There are a lot of folks out there that are continuously monitoring what we're doing because every time an interesting object pops up, we start getting questions before we've ever said anything about it. So we're being raised to get that information up. at the Planetary Defense Coordination Office is to provide the most accurate and most dependable information, the best information available to leadership and decision makers. Once the White House has been informed, then we have other folks to be informed, certainly through the interagencies, all the folks that we've talked about before that are involved with us. The congressional notification will take place also through our Legislative Affairs Office. Then if it's going to be

something that could affect U.S. territories, we would use the existing emergency notification system that the FEMA has. We don't need to set up a special process because that already exists through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. And if it's going to be an impact in international territory, international waters, then the Department of State works to inform the nations that might be affected. Kelly, I wonder, do you feel like me? I mean, is it reassuring to hear that this much thought has been put into the process? And the kind of expansion of the NEO effort that we kind of opened this conversation with. Oh, absolutely.

I keep saying that people shouldn't lose sleep over this. There is a low likelihood, and there are many other things that people need to worry about. And there are many other things that people need to worry about. But at least to be watching, to be looking, to be planning, I mean, that's very reassuring. And to see how the whole effort has evolved over time and come to this point and the procedures are falling into place, the lines of communication, continuing to improve the survey efforts and follow-up and such, looking at mitigation possibilities. I mean, people should just be reassured that, you know, yes, this is being addressed, you know, to the best of our capabilities, and hopefully those capabilities will continue to grow over time and be where they need to be when the time, you know, God forbid, actually comes that we have to deal with something like this.

I find it very reassuring and very humbling to be a part of it and very exciting to be a part of it. And I don't want to put you in the spot of being the spokesperson for the entire astronomical community or science community, but do you have an idea of how other astronomers in particular feel about this threat and the work that's being done on it. Well, I think certainly those who are involved, like in the Near Earth Object Observations Program and astronomers in other countries who are part of the search and the follow-up, I mean, there's got to be a certain amount of pride in watching those numbers go up, you know, what we do know about. And it can be a little daunting knowing what we don't know about. But I think there's a certain amount of pride there. And certainly for the whole science community, because it's kind of fun to see. It's wonderful to do science and there's so much out there to

know, but it's kind of cool to be part of where science meets everyday life and to really try to make a difference. But that's part of the point too, right? It's not just cool to be part of where science meets everyday life and to really try to make a difference. But that's part of the point, too, right? It's not just that we may save the world. There's good science being done. Absolutely, yes. I mean, there's so much to learn about the solar system and what has taken place over time. We see all these near-Earth objects, things that are coming close to Earth's orbit.

How did they get there? Trace them back to the main belt, trying to understand their evolution over time. So there's so much science that comes out of this too, and just naturally comes out of it. So yes, it's a two-for-one special. Let me close with this for selfish reasons, if nothing else. And that is about the role of the so-called NGOs, the non-governmental organizations around the world. Of course, I'm with one of those, full disclosure, the Planetary Society, and we are making planetary defense an even bigger priority within our mission. How important is the role of the NGOs, Lindley? Well, it's quite important. In our institutions,

Lindley? Well, it's quite important. Our institutions, NGOs like the Planetary Society, that have helped us inform the public of the existence of this hazard, but also set it in the right context, Kelly said, not something you need to lay awake at night worrying about. Definitely not as passionate as I am about this area, I don't believe it's the most important thing that the U.S. government should be doing by any means. But it is in that priority list somewhere. of the taxpayers' precious tax dollars, that we have sufficient funding to attack this in a logical manner. There are people that say, oh, we should be spending billions of dollars on this. I don't believe that for a moment. It doesn't take that. It's not worth that much effort because a significant impact might happen once in a century.

But we don't know when that day is of the century right now, and so a dedicated effort at the right level, and we may still be a little below that level in funding right now. It would be nice to be at a level of funding where we could undertake some of these space-based capabilities, to be at a level of funding where we could undertake some of these space-based capabilities, both in survey characterization and in demonstrating a few techniques when the time comes that we need them. But the NGOs are very important to help inform the public of the true nature of this hazard, where it fits in everything that we need to be concerned with. Kelly, anything to add? Oh, just ditto to that. As you know, there's so much misinformation out there or people taking

things out of context or blowing out of proportion. And so just continuing to get the word out and helping people to understand the science behind all of this. They shouldn't worry because we're on the watch here. Well, one more thought of it, too, and Planetary Society is very active in this, and that not only do near-Earth objects, near-Earth asteroids, pose a hazard to us, but they also pose an opportunity for exploration of our solar system. They are our closest neighbors, often closer than the moon. Sometimes closer than we'd like, yeah. But it can be handy when your destinations come to you.

Yes, that's right. Exactly right. And so, you know, they will be destinations for exploration. And I look at them as stepping stones into the solar system. I like the sound of that. And I like the sound of this conversation. Thank you again, both of you, for joining us here and also for the work that you do. And since this is something that we're going to continue to report on, I look forward to talking to both of you again. All right. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Matt. both of you again. All right, thank you. Thank you very much, Matt. Kelly Fast is the program manager for NEO, that is Near Earth Object Observation Program, within this new office called the PDCO, the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, that is headed by Lindley Johnson, who we've spoken to before, but the first time under his new title as Planetary Defense Officer. We've got Bruce on the Skype line. That's Bruce Betts, the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society. He is ready to tell us what's up in the night sky. He's also ready to begin a new class at Cal State Dominguez.

You're getting started with that soon, right? I am indeed. In fact, Tuesday, February 2nd, I am starting my Introduction to Planetary Science and Astronomy class at California State University, Dominguez Hills. You can check out the details if you want to watch online, either live or recorded. You can get information at planetary.org slash Betts Class, B-E-T-T-S Class. And most important, if you just want to tune in, it's free. It's free. It is indeed. And you're welcome to join in and watch. If you watch live, you can even submit questions. It's great fun. And I think I'll be dropping in for a guest appearance as I have

in the past. Tell us what's up in the night sky. The highlight is, of course, planets across the morning sky. So in the predawn sky, you can catch all five of the naked eye planets. Mercury's gotten easier now, but will be dropping soon. So going across from the east, we've got low in the east in the predawn Mercury to very bright bright Venus to Saturn to Mars to Jupiter all the way practically on the other side of the sky. And the moon will be moving through some of those. So on February 6th, there will be a beautiful crescent moon with Mercury and Venus. We move on to this week in space history.

history. 1971, Apollo 14 successfully landed on the moon, which also means it was the first and last time golf balls were hit on the moon. That's right. That Alan Shepard miles and miles long driver. So he claimed. And now we move on to something else, but we've got something fun to introduce it. We've been hearing from Bambi Lynn. Yes, that's her real name. She's in a couple of bands. One of them is the Possum Kingdom Ramblers, a sort of bluegrass band based in Georgia. They sent us several Random Space Fact intros. Here's one of them. I say random, you say space fact, random space fact, random space fact. Take that, people who said I was being too down and stoic in my random space fact intros. And by the way, Bambi, who's a fan of the show, is also a member.

I think she's the organizer of an astronomy club in her area. So multi-talented. That's great. And it saves my voice. And so here's one hopefully befitting the lovely introduction. Neutron stars, weird, weird creatures. Neutron stars have a radius of only about 11 kilometers, so about 7 miles. But they have a mass about twice that of the sun. So shove the entire mass of the sun between you and your next door neighbor town.

And ooh, ooh, they spin, which I think is just about to come up in the contest. They are spinny. Some of them are spinnier than others. We move on to the trivia contest. And I asked you on the Pioneer spacecraft plaques that the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 carry with them leaving the solar system. Earth's position is shown relative to 14 what? How did we do, Matt? I know we did great. Wow, boy, did we, because I'm pretty sure this is why anyway.

So many people wanted to get their hands on that ISS above unit, that very cool piece of electronics that works on its own or hooked up to a monitor. Much more fun when you hook it up to a television or a computer monitor that tells you when the International Space Station is going to be passing by. It came from our friend Liam Kennedy. We have one at the office, and it's very distracting. It's a lot of fun to keep an eye on. I think that it has been won by Lou McConkie. Lou McConkie in Whitman, Massachusetts,

who said that those 14 objects are pulsars. They are indeed. They are pulsars, rapidly spinning neutron stars, giving off radiation in a regular way. And so by showing the pulsar and the timing, you can identify where we are in the galaxy. Congratulations, Lou McConkie. We're going to put an ISS Above in the mail to you.

And you can check these out, of course, at I believe it's issabove.com. And we'll put a link on the show page. For anybody who pays attention to planetary.org, the answer was also in a recent blog by Jack Rosenthal. And there was even a hint on last week's show from Roseanne DiStefano, who talked a little bit about pulsars and using them as a GPS system, as she proposed in the paper that she was a lead author for, for life in globular clusters. We got a note about that as well from, guess who, Mark Raymond, regular guest of the program. He was on a couple of weeks ago. He, of course, is the chief engineer for the Dawn mission, now returning beautiful images and science from Ceres.

Mark was reluctant to enter, but I told him you should. And so, yeah, he said, absolutely, pulsars, and they might provide a sort of galactic GPS system for future interstellar travelers. And he added, if I ever undertake such a journey using pulsars for navigation, I would be proud to do so wearing a Planetary Radio t-shirt. He says he'll continue to listen to us if our broadcast reaches far enough. So we've really got to push that initiative to get planetary radio transmitted by the Arecibo dish. I'd be scared.

We might anger aliens that would come and seek retributions. Really. Dana Barrett, who's in Haifa, Israel, she sent this. Wikipedia states that the data for one of the pulsars is misleading. We heard this from some other people, too. Dana says, which may be why the aliens turned left at Albuquerque. Martin Hajofsky in Houston, Texas, he says, I think the most interesting thing about the plaque is at the bottom, Hujovsky in Houston, Texas. He says, I think the most interesting thing about the plaque is at the bottom, where it clearly shows a pioneer making the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs,

which means the Millennium Falcon is a lot slower than I thought. We got a message in binary from Nicholas Nicopolis in York, the United Kingdom. Put it through a translator. It says, take me to your leader. I was hoping you just did it by hand. No. There are translators all over the Internet for binary. It's amazing what you can find out there on the interweb. What is this Internet you speak of? Oh, you'll have to check it out.

I'll show it to you someday. Okay. Jeff Sosby, Sacramento, California. Yay! He received this message from the aliens. Dear Earth, we received your plaque. We accept the invitation to visit. We assume there will be tasty snacks and refreshing drinks.

See you soon. Did it say that? Did the plaque offer that? Yeah, drop in. You know, that's the old Twilight Zone joke about to serve man, which we don't even need to finish. People can tell we got a lot of funny stuff. And so you online listeners, you're the lucky ones who get to hear all of this. Here's another.

This one from Mark Wilson in San Diego, California. They were originally going to use the phrase second star to the right and straight on till morning, but later determined that it might be perceived as somewhat vague. Well, possibly a copyright infringement, but maybe it was expired by then. I don't think it has, actually. Finally, this from Dave Fairchild in Shawnee, Kansas. He sent us a poem. Carl Sagan made a plaque for Pioneer to carry. He drew lots of lines and dashes, all of them binary.

They would point to 14 objects relative to humans. They are pulsars, not just stars, of which there are a billion. Oh, my. So thank you, Dave. Thank you, everybody. And all the other folks that we don't have time to read, though, we're ready to move on. All right. For next time, in Earth days, how long is a Pluto day?

And because they're synchronously locked, that also means how long is a Charon day? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. You've got until the 9th. That would be February 9th at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us this answer. And you will receive one of the last sets of year-in-space calendars that we'll give out. You can check those out, the desk and wall calendars at yearinspace.com. And another iTelescope account, 200 point or roughly 200 US dollar account from that worldwide network of telescopes and the coveted Planetary Radio t-shirt. All right, everybody, go out there,

look up at the night sky and think about the importance of lip balm. Thank you. Good night. When I was a little kid, I wondered why people wanted to bomb lips. They're so dangerous. That's Bruce Betts. He's the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, who joins us every week here for What's Up. Save the lips. That's good.

Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its watchful members. Danielle Gunn is our associate producer. Josh Doyle created the theme music. I'm Matt Kaplan. Clear, neo-free skies.