Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - New Mexico Space Adventure: Back to the First International Planetary Caves Workshop

Episode Date: November 28, 2011

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Our space adventure in the land of enchantment ends this week on Planetary Radio. 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Main engine start, zero. And liftoff of the Atlas V with Curiosity. Seeking clues to the planetary puzzle about life on Mars. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. And this week to both New Mexico and the Red Planet. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, with a cavern full of guests,

most of them participants in October's International Planetary Caves Workshop. But we'll start with Planetary Society Executive Director Bill Nye, who attended the November 26 launch of Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory rover. Then we'll hear how Emily Lakdawalla reacted to the outset of this ambitious mission. Bill, we catch you still in Florida, and as we speak, it was only yesterday that you were at the launch of Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory. Absolutely. It was spectacular. It was spectacular, Matt. It went off right at the moment, 10.02 Eastern time, shot straight up.

And these rockets, this is the Atlas V, you know, and this is the first time they put on four solid fuel boosters attached or strapped on to the outside. And the flame is longer than the 200-foot-something tall rocket, 60 meters, 70 meter tall rocket. And the thing just shoots up. You could see way, way up there, kind of go over the top as the sand goes, and you could see the boosters separate. It was really something. And this is a new beginning. I mean, we're sending this rover that is heavier, bigger than any other spacecraft to land on the surface of Mars, and we're going to have a look around August 5th or August 6th, depending what time zone you live in.

And now that I think of it, there'll be a little celebration of this, coinciding with this, in Pasadena that the Planetary Society is going to put on. That's right. We're going to have PlanetFest 2012. And we hope to expand it and have it at many science centers and observatories or planetariums, planetaria perhaps, around the world. It's very exciting. And this is a spacecraft that's taken things up the next logical step. It's got this laser to shoot rocks.

It's got a rock hammer and all these exotic astrobiological chemical experiments. It's really something. They delayed it 26 months. They, we, it, wanted to make sure we got everything just right. And, man, if the launch is any indication, it is right on track. Later in this very program, we're going to talk to the principal investigator for ChemCam, that ray gun on Mars, or at least we hope it will be on Mars, in August zapping rocks and telling us what they're made of.

And it could, dare I say it, Matt, change the world. Very well might indeed. Bill, thank you so much, and we'll see you back here in Pasadena. Thank you, Matt. Bill Nye is the executive director of the Planetary Society and the science and planetary guy who is out there not just watching but speaking to the gathered multitude there for the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory. So now we go from the take of somebody who was actually at the launch to Emily,

who was sitting at home, what, biting your nails or the moral equivalent of that? Basically, yeah. You know, it's kind of funny. My mouth went dry just a few minutes before the launch because so much was riding on the success of this rocket, this rocket just not blowing up on the launch pad. Just a couple weeks ago, the experience of Phobos Grunt having an apparently perfect launch and then something happened when it went into that circular parking orbit. And you know, Curiosity did exactly the same thing. So there's no such thing as fate and whatever, but I was still, you know, extremely nervous about that particular phase of the launch and I am so happy that it succeeded.

Speaking of which, you called this only the second tensest moment in this mission. Well, yes, of course. There is nothing quite as scary as those few minutes that it takes the spacecraft to transition from being this carefully rotating, very easy to manage spacecraft flying through space, get it through Mars's atmosphere and land it on the surface. Mars is actually the hardest thing to land on in the solar system because its atmosphere is so thin. It's just thick enough to present a problem for getting your spacecraft through it. But it's too thin to really effectively slow you down. So it's extremely difficult to get this thing down on the ground. And that's going to be a very scary time next August. Yeah, I and my my personal fear is one of the cables won't be cut from the the sky crane. I shouldn't even say that stuff out loud.

My personal fear is that, you know, the rover's wheels are its landing gear. And if you do something to those wheels as you land, then that's it for the mission being a rover. to those wheels as you land, then that's it for the mission being a rover. Let's look back 35 years, because you wrote an article on November 21st, last Wednesday, as we speak, comparing this mission to Viking. And I was kind of shocked to see how similar they are. You know, I started by comparing this rover to its predecessors, Sojourner and Spirit and Opportunity. And if you look at a photo of all three rovers, yeah, there's a huge difference in size, but they're basically all the same body plan. rovers, yeah, there's a huge difference in size, but they're basically all the same body plan.

They got six wheels. They got a rocker bogey suspension system. They got cameras and an arm and whatnot. Although Sojourner didn't have an arm, but it did have this cute little instrument that it could kind of flip down onto a rock. It was very cute. But Curiosity doesn't really compare in size to those things. It is so much larger.

And so I was wondering if this really was the extremely different thing that it looked like, or if there was anything like it that we had done in the past. Well, it turns out that if you go far enough in the past, you find a spacecraft that had a very similar mass, a very similar mass of instruments. And with science instruments, mass is a really good proxy for complexity of the mission. Viking took 91 kilograms of science instruments to the surface of Mars. Curiosity is taking 72. That's very close. And really, the major difference between Curiosity and Viking is just that Curiosity has wheels. So now I'm calling Curiosity Viking on wheels. I highly recommend that people take a look at this November

21st comparison between these two missions separated by 35 years. And they should take a look at a poster that absolutely fascinated me by our colleague Jason Davis tracing every mission, successful or otherwise, that has attempted or actually made it to Mars. Yeah, it's a really cool poster that summarizes the rather, let's say, challenged history of our attempts to enter orbit or land on Mars. It's a hard place to reach. As your daughter said, though, it's close if you go fast. That's right. Emily, thanks again. Thank you, Matt.

Emily Lactawala is the Science and Technology Coordinator for the Planetary Society and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. We will go back to New Mexico for the closeout of my adventures there. Some more interesting conversations in just a few moments. This is the fourth and last of the episodes devoted to my recent trek through beautiful New Mexico. First it was the mighty radio telescope called the Very Large Array. Then a climb high above the desert to the National Solar Observatory at Sunspot. Our coverage of the first International Planetary Caves workshop

began with a couple of exciting descents below the surface of our planet, and workshop convener Penny Boston was among my guests. You can hear these shows in the archives at planetary.org slash radio. You'll also find a link to a slideshow about my visit to Carlsbad Caverns. Timothy Titus of the U.S. Geological Survey was the other workshop convener. As we walked the steep path leading down into the main public cavern, I asked him how the meeting came together. I had done some fairly successful workshops for planetary dunes and thought it would be a good idea to try this for caves. So called up Penny

and we talked about it and she said, you know, Carlsbad just opened up a brand new building from the Institute. It would be really good to host it there. We'd be able to do a field trip to Carlsbad, as well as some of the other caves around the area. And I was like, okay, let's do it. And you've got a good group. Not just a pretty good-sized group, but so many different disciplines. Well, if you're going to do planetary cave research, you're going to have to have lots of different disciplines. You're going to have the biologists and the geologists, the engineers, the physicists. Caves are really an interdisciplinary science.

As we find not just evidence of caves, but real caves on Mars, on the moon, are you seeing more interest in this as we get out into the solar system? I'm not sure we're seeing more interest at the moment, but I think that as the news gets out to the public, I think that there will be a lot more interest from the public. I think your show will probably do quite a bit to, you know, publicize that, yes, there really are caves out there in the solar system, and they're not just here on Earth. Timothy Titus, co-convener of the first International Planetary Caves workshop. There were so many fascinating leaders, presenters, and attendees. James Ashley is with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Science Operations Center at Arizona State University.

He arrived with photographic proof of something many scientists have suspected for years. So what this represents is direct imaging of a cavern floor on another planetary surface, in other words, confirmation of a cave. First time ever? This one and one other that we have here represent the first time ever confirmation of cavern floor. Those images came from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter camera. There are lots of researchers who hope we'll have the same proof of caves on Mars before long. Between presentations, I studied the workshop posters on display in the lobby.

One of these featured a guy with a bulky backpack and what looked like an especially large metal detector. It was actually a terrestrial version of an instrument that is now on its way to Mars on the rover Curiosity. I didn't learn more until I ran into Roger Weans the next day. We were waiting for the bus to take us home from our adventure at Slaughter Canyon Cave. Roger had come to the workshop from the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is principal investigator for what I like to call the first ray gun on Mars. investigator for what I like to call the first ray gun on Mars. Give us the quick review of ChemCam for those people who aren't aware of the ridiculous awesomeness of this instrument.

So ChemCam is a laser instrument. You might say it looks a little like Star Wars. It's what sits inside of a little box on top of the mast of the Curiosity rover. And so there is a laser in there and a telescope. It looks like a four inch or a hundred millimeter diameter eye. The laser is shot out of that eye and focused down onto a small spot on rocks or soils up to about 25 feet or seven meters from the rover. Actually the laser beam itself invisible, but when it hits a rock or soil, it creates a little ball of plasma. I mean, it's a flash of light.

And with that zap, we also train, well, the telescope is looking at that, obviously, because it sent the light out, and the same telescope is used to collect some of the light from that flash and tell us what the composition is of whatever we just shot. So it's a spectroscope.

Yes, exactly it is. And it has three spectroscopes. What it is, is it has a long optical fiber from that telescope all the way down the mast and into the body of the rover, and there's where our three spectrometers are. Absolutely amazing. I've got to tell you, when I was in the clean room months ago with Bill Nye and Emily Lakdawalla, we made a lot of jokes about your big eye on top of that thing saying, don't point that at us. I don't doubt it, yeah. How long have you been working on this instrument? I was introduced to this technique in 1997.

We got our first NASA grant to develop it for Mars in 1998. And then we eventually got it accepted into this project, into the Curiosity rover in 2004, so you can figure that out. And you almost didn't make it. It was touch and go there for a while, not for science or engineering, but financial reasons. Yeah, there was a push to lower the costs on the Curiosity, and we were the ones who were in the spotlight there. But really, the ChemCam did not cost that much. It's one of the lower cost instruments to NASA, in part because we're a 50-50 partnership with France and the French Space Agency actually contributed the laser. The fun thing is we get to work with a binational team and go overseas every

once in a while and so on. You going to the launch? Certainly. I wouldn't miss that. And then, not that long, this summer, right, in August, I think, you get to try it on the surface of Mars, if all goes well. That's right, Matt. It takes about eight and a half months for Curiosity to get there, and then is the moment of truth when we actually get to find out if this thing lands safely. Best of luck to you and the rest of the Curiosity team, of course.

But, Roger, I hope we can talk again when you start blasting bits out of rocks on Mars. Oh, thanks so much, Matt. I'll look forward to that. Roger Weins, principal investigator for ChemCam, now on its way to the red planet. Coming up, a conversation with biologist and caver Diana Northup. This is Planetary Radio. I'm Sally Ride. After becoming the first American woman in space,

I dedicated myself to supporting space exploration and the education and inspiration of our youth. That's why I formed Sally Ride Science, and that's why I support the Planetary Society. The Society works with space agencies around the world and gets people directly involved with real space missions. It takes a lot to create exciting projects like the first solar sail, informative publications like an award-winning magazine, and many other outreach efforts like this radio show.

Help make space exploration and inspiration happen. Here's how you can join us. You can learn more about the Planetary Society at our website, planetary.org slash radio, or by calling 1-800-9-WORLDS. Planetary Radio listeners who aren't yet members can join and receive a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Members receive the internationally acclaimed Planetary Report magazine. That's planetary.org slash radio. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan, wrapping up my adventure in New Mexico with a few

more minutes at the first International Planetary Caves Workshop. Diana Northup fell in love with caving as a teenager in the mid-1960s. She eventually earned her Ph.D. in biology and has used that training to expand our knowledge of life in some of the most inhospitable spots on or under our planet. Now she's a visiting associate professor at the University of New Mexico and a professor emerita. This geomicrobiologist has never lost her love of caves and caving. By the way, real cavers don't much care for the term spelunking. We talked during a break from the many workshop presentations. I am one lucky science geek.

Yesterday in the caves, today some incredibly exciting science. One of the things, maybe the most exciting thing that I heard today is one of the tentative conclusions that you talked about when you gave a presentation a few minutes ago. And if I can paraphrase an old saying, it would be, you know, when life gets tough, the life gets diverse. Nice way to paraphrase it. I like that. May I steal it? Of course. I'd be honored. And this was actually a new conclusion out of listening this morning and seeing the slide that Mike Spilde put up also, because we're just getting to the point in caves where we have enough information to start testing things like this. But that was one of the things that occurred to me when I looked at some of what Mike was taking and doing with the sequences we have.

So, yeah, we go to places where you don't think there'd be any life, and there's all kinds of life. It never ceases to surprise me. Think of that toxic copper silicate deposit. You know, there's a lot of life that would find that really distasteful. But we have nine phyla of bacteria in there. How much more do we need to learn about biology in caves and hopefully caves on other planets? We have barely started.

And part of this is because for some reason cave science tends to lag behind. So we had our first study using molecular techniques where you can detect life that you can't grow in 1997 from caves that's not that long ago that was 14 years ago so we have a lot to learn and it's fairly expensive work so we are just scratching the surface we're just starting to get enough information to ask better questions. I wouldn't even say we really have answers yet. I heard over and over today, yes, that's really something we ought to look into if only we could get the funding and the time. Right. There are literally a handful, couple handfuls of labs in the world that do work on microbial communities in caves.

It's growing, and there are more every year. But there aren't that many people that do this kind of work. And you also have to answer the question that the park ranger asked. Why should we care? Why is this important work to do? And we've got a job to sell our research, to say this is important and here's why. Is it a tight-knit community? I mean, so many of you seem to be such good friends and you put your lives in each other's hands when you go down into some of

these spaces. That's a great way to look at it. Yes, it is a very tight-knit community. And like Penny and I have been doing this together since 1994, and we do put our lives in each other's hands. But actually more accurately, we put them in my husband's hands. Because when we're in the cave in Mexico with that incredibly dangerous, life-threatening hydrogen sulfide, Penny and I are just taken away by the microbiology and we are so involved at what we're doing and you know at some point my husband goes ladies it is time to get out of here you're getting stupid oh restarting okay that was penny right now. Once again, trying to save you.

Yes. From the danger as media producer. Yeah. I'm only slightly hazardous, actually. Mike Spilde was talking about this, the cave in Mexico that just is incredibly hot. I mean, I did the centigrade to Fahrenheit. Oh, did I act a mind? Yeah.

Yeah, it's a mind. And you've been down there, too? I mean, it sounds like he's been to hell and back, literally, because a mind? Yeah, it's a mind. And you've been down there too? I mean, it sounds like he's been to hell and back, literally, because the lowest level is hell, they call it. He has been to hell and back, but he only brings me samples. I haven't gotten to go yet. You mean you'd like to? I would love to go.

Oh, are you kidding? What is with you people? My goodness. These are deadly. They're not mundane. That's for sure. So to me, it's fascinating how life lives on the edge. Think about it. We're really boring.

We eat organic carbon. You know, you may think if you're a vegetarian and I'm a carnivore that we're very different. We're not. We eat carbon. These guys eat rock. They eat gases like hydrogen sulfide they they push the limits and what to us is extreme is normal to them so if you go to an environment like the niaca mine you can see how life makes a living where it's way too hot for humans to survive over time, where there's a lot less to eat of things we would consider good.

That's the attraction. How does life make a living in such a bizarre place? And, of course, what a lot of this workshop is about is finding analogs on Earth for what we, most of us, hope we may find someplace like Mars. That's absolutely true. So one of the reasons Penny and Mike and I work in lava caves and several of the researchers here is because we have good evidence, good photographs, that there are lava caves on

Mars. And Penny postulated all the way back in 1992 with some colleagues of hers, that if we find life on Mars, it's going to be in the subsurface in a protected environment from the harsh conditions of the surface. What we're now finding is that many of the things we see in caves that have been written off as just geology, please forgive me, geologists, are actually not just geology, please forgive me geologists, are actually not just geology. They're a wonderful combination of geology and biology.

I'm keeping you from some more exciting presentations in there. Thanks so much for stepping out for a moment and talking to us. You're welcome. This is fun. Geomicrobiologist Diana Northup at the first International Planetary Caves workshop in Carlsbad, New Mexico. My thanks to all the workshop organizers and participants, and especially to its sponsors, the U.S. Geological Survey, the University's Space Research Association, the Lunar and Planetary Institute,

the National Cave and Karst Research Institute, and the NASA Mars Program Office. Bruce Betts is up next. Day before Thanksgiving here at the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Actually everywhere in the United States, it's the day before Thanksgiving. So we're recording a little bit early. Keep that in mind as we talk about What's Up in the Night Sky with Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. But don't worry. I'll only talk about things that you can see when you're listening to

this. Even if it's five years from now, you can see it in your mind's eye. What's up? We've got total lunar eclipse coming up matt it's very exciting total lunar eclipse be there be there on december 10th the greatest eclipse is at 1432 ut unfortunately it's pre-dawn so i think i'm busy for us yeah now it will be visible total lunar eclipse visible from all of asia and australia and most of Europe, Africa, and North America, December 10th. Okay, well, that might be of great interest to a few of our listeners. Yeah, you can get details on the web. NASA has a nice site.

All the rest of the time, check out Venus. Below in the twilight in the west, it's that super bright star-like object. If you go all the way to the other side of the sky over in the east, you've got the second brightest planet, Jupiter. We've also got Saturn near Spica in Virgo in the pre-dawn. They're similar brightness, but Saturn's more yellowish, and Mars rising in the middle of the night, high overhead. We move on to this week in space history.

Kind of appropriate with Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity launching, we hope, this week in space history. Kind of appropriate with Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity launching, we hope, this week. Mars Pathfinder launched 15 years ago this week. And also appropriately 1964 this week. Mariner 4. The first successful

spacecraft to return images from the red planet. I sure hope that these are really good omens. This thing, I really want it to make it to Mars. I know I'm the only one who feels that way. Yes, yes, you are. There's no one else in the world who's interested. No, it's really cool, which is why we're going to come to it in

A Random Space Fact! You know, Halloween's over. I know, but I just can't get enough. There are too many scary voices to scare me, anyway. Curiosity, the rover, it has a ton of awesome instruments on it. Just in imaging alone, it has six engineering cameras and four science imaging systems. One of those includes two imagers. That's the Mastcam.

We also have ChemCam, which zaps rocks with lasers, but also includes a camera. First ray gun on Mars. Indeed. We're excited about that. Laser zapping rocks. Cool. Also a descent imager and also a hand lens simulating imager for those geologists out there does this look like a real i mean is there like a rubber hand that comes out with a little

magnifying glass yes there's a rubber hand they've got a loop as they call it and uh it sticks out and makes grumbly noises while whacking at the rock with a rock hammer. Rube Goldberg, eat your heart out. By the way, most of that is not true. Only the simulated hand part. All right, we move on to the trivia contest. We asked you, what is the brightest star in the constellation Aquila? How'd we do? Huge response.

I'm not sure why. I mean, we weren't offering any special prizes or anything, except, of course, that the special prizes or anything, except, of course, that the t-shirt is pretty special, as you regularly point out. But we did get a larger than usual response. Our winner, chosen by Random.org, as usual this week, Mark Wallace of Marion High School. He teaches astronomy, physics, and physical science there. That's in Marion, Illinois, no surprise. He came back with Altair, part of the Summer Triangle with Vega and Deneb. Yes, it is. I enjoy the Summer Triangle very much. He says, keep spreading the good word, by the way.

Spread, spread, spread. Thank you. We will try. We did get other entertaining responses. A couple of people who pointed out that circling Altair is the planet Altair IV, the former home of the Krell, who... Well, sure. But probably most significant because Anne Francis lived there. In fact, Ed Lupin down in San Diego said that if Anne Francis were actually on Altair 4, she would far outshine

the parent star, which I tend to agree with. You have to see her. Great outfits, too, in that movie, Forbidden Planet. Most significantly, the place where Robbie the Robot was built. Well, yeah. I mean, that's why I asked, probably. You've never seen the movie, have you?

No. Just beware of the movie, have you? No. Just beware of the monsters from the id. I already am. So anyway, let's go on to our next question. Easy for those of you who have been following Mars Science Laboratory. Where on Mars, what feature, where will Mars Science Laboratory's rover Curiosity land? Go to planetary.org slash radio, find out how to enter. And you have until Monday, December 5 to get us the answer to this one.

Monday, December 5 at 2 p.m. Pacific time. A Planetary Radio t-shirt is in store for our winner, but I think we'll also throw in this, which I haven't shown you. The Christmas Planet. And this is a book for kids with illustrations. And it is all about the solar system by Dave Dooling, who two weeks ago gave us the tour of the National Solar Observatory. He's the education and public outreach guy up there. So we'll throw in this nice book. It'll be a perfect Christmas present for somebody. That's very cool. All right, everybody, go out there, look out for the night sky,

and thinking about using a geologist's hand lens to look at your dinner. Thank you. Good night. That is some diet you're on if you need a magnifying glass. He's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us every week here for What's Up.

Outstanding author Dava Sobel returns to talk about a more perfect heaven, her new book about Copernicus. That's next time on Planetary Radio, which is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and made possible by a grant from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation and by the members of the Planetary Society. Clear skies.