Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Observing Earth With Space Studies Board Chair Charles Kennel

Episode Date: July 28, 2008

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Space Studies Board Chair Charlie Kennel, this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier, and sometimes back home again. I'm Matt Kaplan, with the second installment of our special Earth Observation coverage, this time featuring the new chair of the United States Space Studies Board, Dr. Charles Kemmel. We'll ask him about threats to the future of our ability to monitor our own planet from space, why this is so important, and how other nations are getting involved. Bill Nye is thinking about other nations, too,

and he offers their space programs a word or two of encouragement in this week's commentary. Emily Lakdawalla gets to the molten core of the matter and how these roiling dynamos power planetary magnetic fields. Finally, Bruce Betts and I will go out in the midday sun to enjoy a what's-up look at the night sky. Magnetic fields and a particularly beautiful feature of the night sky have come together in an announcement by NASA. After thousands of years of human history, we finally know what powers the aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, or for you southerners, the aurora australis. The Themis constellation of satellites working with ground observers

has learned that the culprits are magnetic lines of force snapping like whips above the Earth's atmosphere. By the way, this Themis is not to be confused with the Themis instrument on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft. You can read the full story at planetary.org. A tip of the Planetary Radio Space Helmet goes to Gagarin of the Music Radio Service in Stockholm. He pointed us to a BBC story about the unveiling of a joint European-Russian human spacecraft design that may replace the aged but reliable Soyuz capsule.

We've got the link at planetary.org. There's more news from out there on Emily's blog, including the latest from the Phoenix lander, which had some trouble getting an ice sample to plop down into that waiting oven chamber. You'll find the blog at planetary.org. Bill is up next. I'll be right back with Charlie Kennel. Hey, hey, Bill Nye, the planetary guy here, vice president of Planetary Society. The last couple of weeks, people have expressed concern that the United States is falling behind in some sort of imagined space race. Well, my friends, if there were a space race, the United States pretty much won it. The United States sent people into space 50 years ago,

just as the former Soviet Union did, but the United States went on to land people on the moon. Well, now other countries, especially China and India, are planning to send humans into space. Countries like Brazil and Israel are developing their own space programs. This is not a bad thing. This is a matter of national pride. These countries have to do this. This is good for everybody. And let me say to my Chinese, Indian, Brazilian, Israeli, and other colleagues, if you get your space program revved up so you can send humans into space routinely, consider solving this problem. When astronauts, taikonauts, or cosmonauts are in space, they lose calcium in their bones because they're in weightless conditions, what NASA calls microgravity conditions. Maybe these new space explorers

in low Earth orbit could get around to making spacecraft that spin. And then people all over the world could send people into space on much longer space missions. Perhaps we could go to Mars and send geologists there and really look closely with our own eyes for signs of life. Oh, my friends, through international cooperation, we could change our world. Well, I'm Bill Nye the Planetary Guy. Thanks for listening to Planetary Radio. Planetary Radio. It was just a couple of weeks ago that we spoke with scientist Barian Moore of Climate Central.

We were marking the Planetary Society's addition of Earth observation to its mission. Dr. Moore described his recent trip to Capitol Hill in Washington with Bill Nye and others, including the Society's Executive Director, Lou Friedman. Dr. Charles Kennel was another of the very distinguished presenters in that group. He was recently named Chair of the Space Studies Board, part of the National Research Council, which is affiliated with the National Academy of Sciences. Charlie also served as Director of the famous Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where he remains Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science. And he served as guest editor of the current special Earth edition of the Society's magazine, The Planetary Report.

I called him at his La Jolla office to talk about the status of Earth-observing programs, especially in the U.S., and to ask about his new job with the Space Studies Board. Charlie Kennel, we are really honored to have you as our guest this week on Planetary Radio as we expand our coverage of Earth and observing the planet that we live on. You said recently, and said also in your piece that you co-wrote with Lou Friedman in the Planetary Report, that Earth observation from space has never been more important than it is now. Why? Well, it's because we have all reached the conclusion

that we are changing, that our great global civilization is changing the face of the planet that we live on, and it's creating changes that we need to understand. Satellites give us a global view. They give us the same view of every part of the Earth. And we are able to track how all the changes are occurring. It's very important.

Yeah, that's a very interesting point. The same view, basically, you know, one eye that sees all, rather than having to have lots of different instruments and networks of instruments on the ground. You've got it. The satellite instruments, the same instrument every place. And so the measurements and the way you compare the measurements about different countries, we have the same interpretation of the measurements. It's reliable. Earth observing is international. Many satellites from many different countries participate. Scientists from different countries are on many of the American satellites. We all analyze the data together. We build confidence in each other about our results. We go home. We convey that confidence to our decision makers. And after a while, we begin to develop a global view amongst all the people on the globe of what's happening to our globe. And so it's the public around the world, a public that can sometimes be quite suspicious no matter what country you're in.

Oh, sure. I mean, everybody has their own interests, their own point of view, but we're a global civilization. We're creating a global problem for ourselves. We're going to have to get ourselves out of it. And we start with developing a global point of view about the issues like climate change. I'm glad you mentioned climate change, because when you bring up Earth observation nowadays, it usually is within that framework. And so we'll come back to it. But we are talking about more than climate change, as we heard from Barry and Maura a couple of weeks ago. Well, yes. You know that human beings are tremendous civilization, and our economies are creating changes in every part of the Earth system,

in the oceans, in lakes and rivers and streams, in the atmosphere. And all of these programs and air pollution, we once thought they were local. But now we see actually that these issues have become global. Things that were normal, things that people normally do it in the course of their lives, because there's so many of us and because we're so active and because our economies have grown so much, things that were normal in the past and had a small impact now impact the entire globe. In spite of recent action by NASA that would appear to have de-emphasized the role of the Earth observation as part of the agency's mission. I mean, it seems ironic that so many NASA spacecraft have provided such important evidence

of climate change. Yeah, right now, right now, we're in the midst of a golden age of Earth observation. Back in 1990, the U.S. Congress, in the first George Bush administration, created something called the U.S. Global Change Research Program. And this research program, in turn, created NASA's Earth Observing System of Satellites, a radically new concept in which we would look at all parts of the Earth system simultaneously to see if we could diagnose the changes in the system, and particularly that in the climate, and integrate the results to see how the parts of the system connect to one another. And this job was subsequently split up amongst 23 satellites, large and small, and most of these were, in fact, the whole system has been launched now. They began to be launched in 1997. So now we've never had better information from space about the

Earth than we currently have. The problem is that for a variety of reasons, the plans to replace what is half the world capacity to observe the Earth. The plans to replace it have been on hold for quite some time, and there's going to be a delay, at best a delay, in the replacement of this wonderful observing capacity, and there's no guarantee that it will be replaced. NASA has the National Academy of Sciences recommended some 17 missions that needed to be flown over the next decade in order to recover some of our

Earth observing capacity. But there will be a delay. Observations will have to skip them for some period of time or other countries will make them. And it's a pretty serious circumstance. Only now, I think only the first three of those missions has been approved. You mentioned other countries, and I wonder if we can't look to the European Space Agency, the Japanese, the Russians. Yeah, the Europeans now have been working along for a good 10 years, and they've developed a comprehensive Earth-observing system of their own, not quite as big as ours and not quite as scientifically oriented, but it's a system that is oriented now about delivering

useful information about the changing climate, the changing forest cover, the changing oceans, deliver that useful information to decision-makers in Europe, and they forest cover, the changing oceans, deliver that useful information to decision makers in Europe. And they're well on the way to constructing an excellent system. Japan was a very big collaborator in the Earth observing system. They do very important work. And I expect that they will continue. The big question marks in my mind are the rising mega economies of China and India. Both of them have very active space programs. India, I know, has a significant Earth observing program. But right now, in my view, they're not sufficiently interconnected into a global point of view.

That's Charlie Kennel, chair of the Space Studies Board. He'll tell us more about international efforts to monitor our home planet in a minute. This is Planetary Radio. I'm Robert Picardo. I traveled across the galaxy as the doctor in Star Trek Voyager. Then I joined the Planetary Society to become part of the real adventure of space exploration. The Society fights for missions that unveil the secrets of the solar system. It searches for other intelligences in the universe,

and it built the first solar sail. It also shares the wonder through this radio show, its website, and other exciting projects that reach around the globe. I'm proud to be part of this greatest of all voyages, and I hope you'll consider joining 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. Our nearly 100,000 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. Charles Kennel is the new chair of the Space

Studies Board, part of the National Research Council in the U.S. He is a distinguished professor of atmospheric science and the former director of the UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography on the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla, California. It's a beautiful place to study our planet, but nothing like observing Earth from space. Charlie is concerned about NASA's reduced attention to this part of its mission, in spite of new international efforts. Now, what is very interesting is that in 2005, 73 nations signed an international agreement to create a global Earth-observing system of systems, in which the various national systems would be pieced together to try to share their information in a common pool about the changing Earth and convey that

information to decision makers. The U.S. was, I think, expected to play a dominant role in that, but at the present time, its role is certainly smaller than everybody, including myself, had hoped. What has gone wrong? I mean, why have we seen this de-emphasis? Is it just a matter of limited budgets? Part of it is a matter of limited budget. There's an incredible stress on NASA at the present time. NASA is going through a traumatic change that we all anticipated. We all knew one day the shuttle would have to be replaced. It's getting older. And so NASA is developing new launchers for the first time in 30 years, one to launch the astronauts into space, another to launch astronaut-related cargo into space. That's Those are the Ares vehicles, of course.

That's right, Ares I and Ares V, thank you. And the development of the lunar program that would depend on these are putting great stress on NASA's capacity, and Earth observations and other parts of NASA have taken it on the chin while NASA's going through this transition. I hope that they will restore their first priority back to Earth science as it once was, because I think the world needs it. And my hope is that as soon as NASA gets through this transition,

it will come back and support Earth observations the way it used to. How about observation of other planets? I mean, as we talk about this concern here, there certainly is value that we talk about regularly on this program in studying our solar system neighbors. Oh, absolutely. I mean, what could be more illuminating about human beings' place in space than to know that our two closest neighbors, closest to us in planetary size and location in the solar system, Venus and Mars, neither one has the capacity for advanced life. Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect, as Carl Sagan taught us. We ought to take that seriously.

600 degrees temperature on the surface of Venus. And Mars was too small to hold its atmosphere in water. And so just like the three bears, the Earth is just right. Let's keep it that way. Yeah, and that's our job, and that's the job of, you know, ever since we saw that first Apollo 8 picture of the beautiful Earth with the blue oceans and shining bright and blue and the dark immensity of space, we suddenly realized that's us. That's all of us. That's where we live. And that's all there is. And the planetary research that we've done throughout the solar system,

tremendously illuminating about how planets are formed and why, but it also taught us one other thing. There's no other place for advanced life in our solar system. This is it. We may find Earth-like planets around other stars, but the chances that we could communicate with them are very small. So we're alone in our solar system struggling to keep our beautiful Earth a viable place for life. Well, the message there is fairly obvious. I'd like to turn not an entire change of topic here, but take advantage

of the fact that you have been appointed the chair of the National Research Council's Space Studies Board. Tell us for a moment or two about what that board's job is. Well, you know, the Space Studies Board and NASA grew up together. In the late 1950s, as the space age was beginning, the U.S. government asked the National Academy of Sciences to form a committee to say what was in space, this new subject of space science. What kinds of things would people be doing? What kind of challenges were there to putting people in space? So the Academy formed the Space Science Board, as it was called at that time, and it actually

was up and operating before NASA's authorization was voted on by Congress. So for about a year, the Space Science Board was actually doing some of the work of NASA, deciding on who would get grants and advising the government in a very direct way about the conduct of the space science space program. Of course, NASA was created, and then all of those responsibilities transferred to the agency. both of these transferred to the agency. But the Space Science Board, now the Space Studies Board, has continued for the last 50 years to be the prime outside group that gives NASA structured advice about all its space programs, and especially space science.

Charlie, we are out of time. Thank you very much for joining us on Planetary Radio. Oh, it's been a real pleasure. Absolutely, on this out of time. Thank you very much for joining us on Planetary Radio. Oh, it's been a real pleasure. Absolutely, on this end as well. Charlie Kennel is Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, there on that beautiful piece of coastline next to the University of California, San Diego, where I have a couple of daughters, as a matter of fact, so I had to get that in. He was the founding director and is chairman of the International Advisory Board for the Environment and Sustainability Initiative

and is the former director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, of course, and as you heard, is the chair of the Space Studies Board for the National Research Council here in the United States. We're going to move on now to Emily. She's got something for us in this week's edition of Q&A, after which it'll be time to take a look at the night skies and see who's won the space trivia contest with Bruce Betts. We'll be right back.

Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, Why doesn't Venus have a magnetic field while Earth and Mercury do? Earth has a strong dipolar magnetic field with north and south poles that are somewhat close to but not the same as the rotational poles. This magnetic field is attributed to the presence of a dynamo in Earth's interior. Contrary to popular belief, the dynamo is not driven by Earth's rotation,

but instead by thermal convection inside the liquid outer core. As the inner core solidifies, a great deal of heat is released, which stirs the liquid outer core. a great deal of heat is released, which stirs the liquid outer core. In fact, the magnetic field is one piece of evidence in support of the notion that Earth has a liquid outer core. So the discovery of a dipolar magnetic field at Mercury means that world probably has a liquid outer core too, and that its core is still solidifying. By contrast, Venus has no detectable magnetic field at all.

So the core of Venus probably isn't solidifying right now. Maybe it's already all solid, or maybe there aren't the right conditions inside the planet for solidification to happen, or maybe the solidification isn't generating enough heat fast enough to cause convection and stirring of the core. What about the Moon and Mars? Neither has a magnetic field, so they're probably all solid or no longer solidifying. But there's good evidence that Mars had a magnetic field in the past, because some of its rocks are magnetized like the meteorites that have reached Earth from Mars. Sadly, we'll never get evidence of past magnetism from Venus rocks because it's been erased. It's so hot on the surface of Venus that no rocks there can preserve permanent magnetism. Got a question

about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Time once again for What's Up on Planetary Radio. I am joined by Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. We're in a lovely spot, thank goodness in the shade, in Alta Dina. Not surprisingly, a northern neighborhood of Pasadena? Yes, it's above the Dena. And, yes, a lovely outdoor location here. You know, there's a lot in the sky. I should probably start telling people about it.

Yeah, go ahead. We're under it right now, except that it's middle of the afternoon. Well, you know, if you're in the right place at the right time, you might see something up in the sky that's kind of astronomy related. Yes, that's right. Solar eclipse August 1st. You can see a partial solar eclipse from many parts of Europe and Asia.

Going to have to work hard to actually see the total solar eclipse, as our executive director is off trying to do. So if you missed that, and if you're not like us here in North America, you can check out a partial lunar eclipse on August 16th, visible from pretty much every continent in North America, you can check out a partial lunar eclipse on August 16th, visible from pretty much every continent except North America.

You can find more information following the link to the NASA eclipses page, which we'll provide at planetary.org slash radio. And for anyone, anywhere, you can check out the Perseid meteor shower, peaking on August 12th, but having increased meteors both before and after that by a few days. Go out, stare up the sky, look for old bright streaks going across the sky, maybe up to about 60 per hour from a dark site right around the peak. So a nice meteor shower, nice fun, relaxing thing to do. We also have planets up. Jupiter extremely bright, rising in the east after sunset, Extremely bright, rising in the east after sunset, around sunset, and setting in the west before dawn by a ways.

And then we've tough, but you can still see Mars and Saturn potentially low in the west shortly after sunset. Lovely. Nicely done. And the sirens are gone, too. Thank goodness. I was afraid I was going to really have to cut this short. Could you tell I was speeding up just in case? Yeah, that's why it was so succinct. It's hard to run with these ankle chains things. I didn't even think they used the balls anymore to hold you back, but they do. Do you have any bolt cutters? Just wondering.

All right, this week in space history, speaking of fast-driving vehicles, the first ever driving of a vehicle on the lunar surface. That's right. The lunar rover. And Apollo 15, 1971. I remember being so shocked as a kid that they brought a little dune buggy with them to the moon. That was just the cool. That was beyond cool.

Yeah, it's very cool. Well, I've lectured the kids. Unfortunately, the question I always get is they can't believe they left them there. Yeah, right. Not getting, you know, that whole cost of bringing the mass back, but still. Yeah, cool vehicles. On to Random Space Fact. Am I mistaken or was there a little bit of Astro Scooby action there? I don't think so.

We're talking latitudes. A goofy little thing on different planets. And pay attention. I'm going to be changing units here. Are you okay with that? I'm with you. All right. On Earth, nautical miles, one minute of latitude.

So 60 nautical miles for one degree of latitude. You with me so far? Yeah. I think I'm there. But I'm going too slowly. So we'll speed up. A statute mile being a little less, about 69 of those per degree latitude. But the 60, so about 60 miles for a degree of latitude on Earth. On Mars, about 60 kilometers for a degree of latitude.

How's that for a nice little memory device? That's great. That makes it so easy. But wait, don't order yet. On the moon, one degree of latitude, 30 kilometers. Still good, still clean. Yeah, that's all I got for you. That's good. There will be a quiz.

Speaking of quizzes. We call these random space facts for a reason. Speaking of quizzes, we asked you a trivia question to win a prize. On Mars, what is the name of the large volcano between Arcea Mons and Ascreas Mons? And I was holding it up just in case you needed to look at, to cheat and look at the names of those two volcanoes once again. But you didn't.

You never took your eyes off me, and I appreciate it. I'm flattered. Oh, thank you. I just can't take my eyes off of you. You want to know one, don't you? I do, and we should tell people the answer, which, by the way, is Pavonismons. It was Pat Foster who indeed had that very answer, Pavonismons, between those other two volcanoes on Mars. Pat, he says really, really nice things about the show, but he does not tell us where he is.

Didn't give his address, so we're going to have to hold off on sending you the poster, Pat, until you send that to us, and I'll get a hold of him. We'll see if we can find that out. He's a first-time winner, so we want to make sure he gets that Explorer's Guide to Mars poster. By the way, Olivier Lassaux, another regular listener, we're going to put up a link that he gave us. He had found this terrific animation that starts with Mauna Kea, I guess the biggest volcano on Earth, and gradually sort of drops Olympus Mons on top of it and makes it look like a little tiny bug.

Those Martian volcanoes are really, really big. Anyway, it's a great animation. We'll put it right up there at planetary.org slash radio. What do you got for next week? All right. Exploring the moon right now is the Japanese spacecraft Kaguya, formerly known as, still known as, Selene. It also has two subsatellites, satellites of, on their own, smaller spacecraft used to do things like making careful gravity mapping,

doing communications. Tell me, what are the names, and preferably the new cool names, you know, kind of like Kaguya, they did a renaming, they had nice boring names, the not boring names of the two subsatellites of Kaguya orbiting the moon. Right now, go to planetary.org slash radio, find out how to enter. You have until August 4th, Monday at 2 p.m. Pacific time, August 4th, to get us that answer. And thanks for entering. And thanks for joining me.

Oh, my pleasure. Hey, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about how do feathers get so light? Thank you, and good night. You know, they're a lot heavier on the moon, because I saw somebody drop one there, and wham, it went right down on the ground. I'm telling you, it put a dent in the regolith. He's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society.

He joins us every week for What's Up. Oh, the shame. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Have a great week. Thank you.