Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Pathways To Exploration: John Logsdon Analyzes the Human Spaceflight Report

Episode Date: June 17, 2014

The National Research Council released its long-awaited report June 4th. Distinguished space policy analyst John Logsdon returns to Planetary Radio with his take on this latest attempt to determine the proper role of humans in space.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Do humans have a place in space? 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. The National Research Council here in the United States has had its say. Pathways to Exploration is the long-awaited report that looks at the role of men and women in space. It is not a walk in the park. Neither is it a ringing endorsement of NASA's current plans.

We'll talk with distinguished space historian and policy expert John Logsdon about this document and its fallout. A galaxy named after a hat? That's the space trivia contest that has generated more entries than any we've had in a long time. The answer is coming up on this week's edition of What's Up with Bruce Betts. First, though, our usual opening salvo from Bill Nye the Science Guy, who has good news for the New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond, and from the Planetary Society's senior editor, Emily Lakdawalla. Emily, I've just read your updates on three missions that are getting pretty close to their targets.

Which of these would you like to start with? Well, let's start with the two Mars-bound missions. You know, it's kind of funny how these things can be real quiet for a real long time, and all of a sudden, a whole bunch of mission updates pop into the news all at once. We have two spacecraft on their way to Mars. One is the NASA spacecraft named MAVEN, which is on its way to study the upper atmosphere of Mars. And the other is India's Mars Orbiter Mission, which is their first spacecraft to ever leave Earth's environment. So that one's really exciting.

first spacecraft to ever leave Earth's environment. So that one's really exciting. Every kilometer that Mars Orbiter mission passes beyond Earth's orbit is farther than India has ever been into space before. So they had a fairly exciting moment. They had their first deep space trajectory correction maneuver, which was a very tiny rocket burn just to keep them on course. And now both spacecraft are less than 100 days from Mars. And you also showed some early science work, at least some calibration work by MAVEN. That's right. And this is a good reminder that the cruise period is not a very quiet period for scientists. They are working like mad to get their instruments and their software and their procedures ready for their orbital mission. This update included the first data from Mars, or of Mars, I should say, of MAVEN's imaging ultraviolet spectrograph.

The plot that I show doesn't really contain any useful information in it. It just shows that the instrument is working great, and I'm sure they're very excited to actually be able to apply it at Mars. Let's move over to Rosetta, closing in on that comet. What's the news there? Well, Rosetta has had to do a number of rocket burns in order to do its final rendezvous with the comet. Entering orbit at a comet is a real challenge because a comet doesn't have any gravity to speak of. So one of the reasons that Rosetta's had such a long cruise is that they had to do all the work with the spacecraft to precisely match the shape, size, and speed of the orbit of the spacecraft with the comet. And so these are their very last maneuvers to finally match the precise velocity of the spacecraft with the comet. And so these are their very last maneuvers to finally match the precise velocity of the spacecraft with the comet.

They had a series of biweekly burns to do and they have now completed their two very largest ones. So it really is the home stretch for Rosetta right now. And maybe if we're lucky this week or next week, we'll finally see the first image of the comet from Rosetta that resolves the comet, the nucleus itself, as more than a single pixel. I don't know. It's always kind of hard to know when we're going to get pictures out of the European Space Agency, but my hopes are up that we'll finally see it. All right. Well, I hope they serve themselves and the rest of the world by releasing those

early, and I'm sure that you will include them in the blog. Thanks so much, Emily. Thank you, Matt. Our senior editor and the planetary evangelist for the Planetary Society is also a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. That's Emily Lakdawalla. Bill, there's good news for the New Horizons mission this week, and I suppose also for all of us who are curious about that mysterious zone called the Kuiper Belt. Yeah, so this is out beyond the former planet, now first Plutoid. Pluto, the New Horizons mission, was launched in 2006. I went down to Cape Canaveral for it.

Fastest rocket anybody's ever shot anywhere. And it went out past the moon in nine hours. It got a gravity assist from Jupiter. And nine years later, next summer, 2015, on the 14th of July, it'll fly by Pluto. next summer, 2015, on the 14th of July, it'll fly by Pluto. So since the inception of this mission way back, people wanted to see an object after Pluto, you know, not waste the cameras in this long trip, see something else. They couldn't find one. The weather on the ground was too bad. Telescopes around the world couldn't find one. So people talked carefully about it and applied for more orbits of the Hubble Space Telescope. So they're going to have 40 more orbits of the Hubble Space Telescope, which goes around the Earth about every 90 minutes.

So you get things are perfect. You have 45 minutes of viewing. And they're going to try to find another object. And I got to say, just intuitively, it seems like they will. I mean, that is such an amazing telescope. And apparently, you know, Mike Brown and his colleagues have found so many other icy bodies out beyond Pluto that I'll bet they find something. And it's just a cool thing to get another set of images from another object. It's all about the primordial solar system, Matt, which for me is about where did we come from? How did we all get

here? And this spacecraft is going to help answer those questions. Really good stuff. And I sure hope that they come up with something that they can point New Horizons at once it gets past Pluto and Charon. Thank you for bringing it to our attention, Bill. Thank you, Matt. He is the CEO of the Planetary Society, Bill Nye, the science guy. Coming up in just a few moments is John Logsdon, a board member of the Planetary Society, perhaps the world's foremost space policy expert. He'll be talking about the National Research Council report that Bill and I talked about on this program last week, that report looking toward the future of human spaceflight. The National Research Council in the United States is one of four national academies that

include the National Academy of Sciences. The NRC was tasked with looking at what humans should be doing in space, not our robots, women and men themselves. That report was issued on June 4th of this year. Pathways to Exploration, Rationals and Approaches for a U.S. Program of Human Space Exploration is the work of more than 50 committee members, panelists, and NRC staff. It is a sobering document that has generated reactions from throughout the space community. One very interested member of that community is Dr. John Logsdon. No one has earned more respect as an analyst of space policy or as a historian of space exploration and development. John is Professor Emeritus of

Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, where he headed the Space Policy Institute. He is the author of John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon, and the soon-to-be-published After Apollo, Richard Nixon and the American Space Program. John, thanks so much for returning to Planetary Radio. Glad to be back with you. Let's talk about this report from the National Research Council. Does it get us any closer to putting boots, human boots, on Mars? Frankly, I don't think so.

I think it really lays out the fact that if we're going to do that, things have got to change. Depends on your optimism or pessimism of whether things will change. It's rather frank in saying unless things change in terms of political will and financial support, we're on a path that will never lead to Mars. You told me something interesting just before we started recording. You said that I might be, like many other reporters you've talked to, missing what may be the primary point made by this report. I think that's the case.

First, you have to go back and say, where did this report come from? It came from the requirement in the 2010 authorization bill from Senate staff people and really from their boss, Senator Rockefeller, who said, why are we doing this anyway? What is the rationale for human space exploration? And that's where the report started was examining the rationale. Now, when NASA actually contracted for the report, they added the task of how do we do it? But that was an additional task. Really, the fundamental one is why do we do it? All right, so you've got, there are four chapters in the report. Chapter one is a summary of the other three. Chapter two talks about rationales. Chapter three talks about public and stakeholder opinion. And then chapter four lays out a set of pathways that could lead to Mars. Two and three say under current circumstances,

you're not going to be able to do what Chapter 4 recommends, that there is no compelling rationale for undertaking human exploration, and that there is no public demand in the general public and even in close-in stakeholders for spending a fair amount of money on human exploration. I mean, it's not a message that Planetary Society members want to hear, but it's kind of the advocacy is talking to itself is one of the messages I take away. Yeah, it may be that space journalists like myself, it's just a little bit too depressing

to take up that subject. But you certainly haven't shied away from it. Joel Achenbach in the Washington Post a few days ago wrote a pretty good piece about this, and he quoted you at the end. I want to know if he got the quote right. He said that everybody talks about raising the budget. Maybe we should be talking about lowering our ambitions. Did he get you right? He did. I mean, the issue is this report recommends it really sneaks in in one little paragraph, a recommendation that 5% a year increase, 2.5% above inflation would be a nice thing to have if you're going to do this. Well,

what are the odds of 5% a year increases in the NASA budget in any foreseeable future. I think they're virtually zero. This is just the latest in a long series of reports that have said NASA is trying to do too much with too little money. The answer is always increase the budget. Nobody says, well, maybe we're not going to be able to do what we would like to do. And I know you've contributed to some of those previous reports, that this is just the latest in that long line that you mentioned. Is this, therefore, a hopeless effort? Or do you think humans are someday going to find a way to, not just technologically, but

to pay for getting some man or woman or several of them to Mars? Yeah, I think there's hope. But I think the hope lies not in public demand. Public demand has to support. But really, the thing that can make this happen or that will be the only way to make it happen is leadership, is some leading personality. And in our system, that probably means the president, to say this is a goal that I'm committed to, that I'm going to use my political resources to advance,

that I'm going to seek partnerships with the other leading countries of the world, and not just say it, but do it. The thing that's different between every president since John Kennedy and John Kennedy is he not only talked the talk, he walked the walk. He said, go to the moon before the decade is out. Then the NASA budget went up 89 percent the first year and 105 percent the second year. When Mr. Bush Sr., Mr. Bush Jr. and Mr. Obama all have said, let's go places. They haven't put any money behind it.

And that's the big difference. Well, nobody knows more about how JFK made this happen, since you are the author of John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon. But it was a different era. Can you see a time when a president would be able to make such a bold statement and get Congress and the American people to back it up? Do we need another space race to push this? I think we do need some good geopolitical reason to do it, whether it's leadership, being the leader in a coalition

of nations headed towards exploration or even partnership between governments and the private sector. But I think some perception of threat, which is what motivated Kennedy, or at least a really important opportunity serving broader national interests has to be linked to this. Just getting up and saying, human's destiny is in the stars, and then our first step should be getting to Mars won't do it. Let's go back to the report and perhaps pretend that we'll go back to ignoring that chapter that says it's probably not going to happen without some of the sort of major changes

that you've just discussed. It does talk about 10 major areas of development that each of which basically has to be conquered before we could consider sending delicate humans out to the red planet. Do you see any of those 10 as the most important, the most challenging, perhaps? There were a list of three, I think, that the committee identified as the most pressing technical issues to be solved. One of them was entry, descent, and landing of large objects on the surface of Mars. One was radiation protection. And frankly, I'm kind of blanking on the third. But clearly, I think if we're going to send, particularly under public sponsorship, people on long voyages, they have to stay healthy.

So worrying about crew health, crew safety, protection from radiation, maybe you'd send people like me, you know, old folks. Don't have to worry about childbearing or other impacts of cancers or radiation. Now, John, if you get to go, I get to go. Well, that's fine. Okay. As long as they have good wine. How about the asteroid redirect concept, which is the panel, the NRC panel, does address. They're a little bit lukewarm on it,

but it's still embraced by NASA and the Obama administration. Does it make sense, or is it really a dead end on the way to Mars? Well, I don't think it's a dead end. You know, there's a wide range of opinion on the asteroid redirect mission, I'll call it ARM. I think it's probably the most interesting thing we can do under current budget conditions. It doesn't take a big increase in budget to go out and develop a solar electric system to go out and find and capture an asteroid. Once we launch the space launch system in Orion spacecraft, they have to go somewhere. And going to a retrograde lunar orbit and working with an asteroid seems to me to be,

you know, it's the best of all possible worlds, I guess, to quote Candide. It's not perfect, but we're not ready to go to, as the report says, an asteroid in its native orbit, which means where it is, rather than being redirected. We're certainly not ready to go to the moons of Mars or to the Martian surface. How about the moon? If there's anything that surpasses the controversy over an asteroid redirect mission, it would be return to the moon, which is also addressed in the report. Yeah, the report points out quite correctly that other countries of the world that think

about space exploration have the moon in their sights as the first target for humans to go someplace else. Now, Mr. Obama says, been there, done that. There are lots of other places to go. I'm a person that happens to think that going back to the moon would be an important step in, first of all, building the international coalition that's necessary to go to Mars. So of the pathways that are set out in this report, the one that includes the surface of the moon, I think, to me, is the preferable one.

By the way, have you seen NASA's reaction, the statement that they put out regarding the report? I've seen the reports of the statement. I've seen the statement itself. But, you know, they say, well, we're doing that. We're pioneering. We're getting ready to go to Mars. So the report just reinforces what we're already doing. That's kind of happy talk, particularly given the criticism of the report of the developing capabilities without a schedule and without defined goals where you're headed. Space policy expert John Logsdon on the National Research Council's recently released Pathways to Exploration. Our conversation continues in a minute. This is Planetary Radio.

Hi, this is Casey Dreyer, Director of Advocacy at the Planetary Society. We're busy building something new, something unprecedented, a real grassroots constituency for space. We want to empower and engage the public like never before. If you're interested, you can go to planetary.org slash SOS to learn how you can become a space advocate. That's planetary.org slash SOS. Save our science. Thank you. Your name carried to an asteroid.

How cool is that? Your name carried to an asteroid! How cool is that? You, your family, your friends, your cat, we're inviting everyone to travel along on NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu. All the details are at planetary.org slash b-e-n-n-u. You can submit your name and then print your beautiful certificate. That's planetary.org slash Bennu. Planetary Society members, your name is already on the list. The Planetary Society, we're your place in space. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. We're talking space policy this week with George Washington University Professor

Emeritus John Logsdon. Our specific topic is the just-released report on human space exploration issued by the National Research Council. John told us before the break that the outlook for a human mission to Mars is not good, even though the report sees this goal as the only one that is truly worthy of the enormous cost of human exploration. You have served on NRC bodies and other similar groups that have generated reports like this. I bet you know a lot of the folks that contributed to this one. What do you think of what they put together? I mean, was it, in a sense, the best of all possible reports, given the situation we're in?

Well, I think it was a more diverse group than is normal for this kind of report. That was done on purpose. And there were more people without deep backgrounds in space than normal. My understanding, and this was a 20-month effort, involved some very senior people, and then there were two panels formed, one the technical panel, one on public opinion, that went out and did a lot of work on their own. Again, I go back to chapters two and three, I think reflect the work of the main committee. And chapter four reflects the work of the technical group that, you know, you give a

bunch of techies how's the best way to get to Mars, and they're going to come up with lots of ingenious ideas and pretty diagrams and all the stuff that people will see if they take a look at the report, which can be downloaded for free. So I think chapters two and three are the frankest assessment of where we're at, the most realistic assessment of where we're at that had been published ever. That had been published ever. And Chapter 4 ignores it and says, if we could overcome what Chapter 2 and 3 tell us is the situation, here is the way to go. Kind of what I asked you to do about five minutes ago. If we don't go to Mars, does it make sense for humans to do anything in space? I mean, ignoring deep space, are there things that we are or should continue to do or start doing on the International Space Station?

Well, first of all, we're still testing the hypothesis on the space station. It's kind of academic jargon. And the premise of the space station is that there are useful things to do in a multipurpose laboratory operating in a microgravity environment. The research only started now three years ago, less than three years ago, when the station was completed. It's not going as fast as I think the advocates would hope. There is this queue of people with their experiments getting ready to go up to the station, and there are lots of reasons for that. I think we need a good six, eight, ten years to test the hypothesis that there is useful research to be done in that environment. And the stakeholder survey that was part of this report said, focus on LEO for the time being, because that's where the first payoffs are going to come.

LEO, Low Earth Orbit, of course. I'm sorry, yeah. Yeah, and we have... It's a Vulcan acronym. And I'm betting most of our audience knew that. And we've talked to some of those researchers fairly recently on this program. It does seem to be promising, at least the preliminary results. Let me go back to that, the bold vision of JFK. If a latter day JFK were to set a goal,

getting us to Mars the way JFK did for the moon, do you think in terms of what this would cost that it would necessarily have to be an international effort? I think so. I don't think that any one nation is the political will to allocate the resources necessary to do this. And I've phrased that pretty carefully. I mean, countries are rich enough to do this if they choose to, but I don't see any reason that any one country would choose to finance this on its own. But if we had the will, you think the U.S. could still pull something like this off on its own? Sure. We spend more on our space program than the rest of the world combined. We still have the base of technology to develop the systems that are required. We have entry, descent, and landing technology, see, Curiosity on Mars that no other

country possesses. We are building a heavy lift vehicle. No other country is. Maybe we're even building two with Falcon 9 Heavy. So the U.S. has the technical capability to make a major, if not a total contribution to a Mars mission. But there's no reason it should be a unilateral thing. It really should be a coalition of people seeing going to Mars as part of what's exciting about being human. I am glad that you brought up those Saturn V class rockets that are under development, because I've got a question that's slightly off topic for you. What do you think of the suggestion that the huge space launch system, which does not seem to have a whole lot of mission at the moment now regarding humans, that it might also be used to speed robotic spacecraft toward the outer solar system?

Well, sure. If we were willing to pay the price of a high-quality, large robotic flagship mission like to Europa, the SLS is the launch system that we should use. But the SLS is going to cost over a billion dollars a pop to launch. And you want to have a very valuable spacecraft on top of it if you're going to spend that much money on launch. So you're talking about a $2 billion, $3 billion spacecraft, a robotic spacecraft, something like Pasini-Huygens would cost in today's terms. You can talk about those kind of missions, and they're kind of intermediate between what we're likely to do and the idea of humans to Mars.

It's going to take a big jump in political will, even to do those large-class robotic missions. John, we're just about out of time. I want to give you a chance to tell us why you are in Montreal. Well, I'm on the faculty of an entity called International Space University, ISU, which was founded in a first summer program in 1987. So this is the 27th time that they've offered a summer program. They call it the Space Studies Program in various locations around the world.

We have 132 participants from 31 different countries that come together for nine weeks to work on space topics and to begin the networking that will lead wonderful places in their professional career. And then there's an 11-month master's program based in Strasbourg, France, which is where the headquarters of ISU is located. I know I don't need to tell you that there are a heck of a lot of men and women who are now leaders or becoming leaders of various space efforts in the United States and elsewhere around the world who are graduates of that program. It's been quite successful, hasn't it? Well, that's been the goal is to change, to have some influence on the coming now, after 27 years, two generations of leaders in the space field. John, they're lucky to have you once again. And we are lucky to have had you back on Planetary

Radio. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. John Logsdon is a space historian and policy expert. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. That's where he directed the Space Policy Institute. In 2010, he published the award-winning John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon, the book we mentioned a few moments ago. And in early 2015, if all goes well, you'll be able to read his new work, After Apollo, Richard Nixon and the American Space Program. It'll be coming from Paul Grave McMillan. He held the highly prestigious Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History

at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, which, by coincidence, is the last place we talked to him on this program when we were doing Planetary Radio Live there a couple of years ago. John is a former member of the NASA Advisory Council and its Exploration Committee and served as a member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. And Dr. Logsdon is a longtime member of the Planetary Society's Board of Directors and the former chair of its Board of Advisors. We're going to be right back with a look at the night sky this week. And for that, we will talk with Dr. Bruce Betts. John Logsdon is a space historian and

policy expert. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. That's where he directed the Space Policy Institute. In 2010, he published the award-winning John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon, the book we mentioned a few moments ago. And in early 2015, if all goes well, you'll be able to read his new work, After Apollo, Richard Nixon and the American Space Program. It'll be coming from Paul Grave Macmillan. He held the highly prestigious Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, which, by coincidence, is the last place we talked to him on this program when we were doing Planetary Radio Live there a couple of years ago. John is a former member of the NASA Advisory

Council and its Exploration Committee and served as a member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. And Dr. Logsdon is a longtime member of the Planetary Society's Board of Directors and the former chair of its Board of Advisors. We're going to be right back with a look at the night sky this week. And for that, we will talk with Dr. Bruce Betts. Wrapping up this week of Planetary Radio, as always, is Bruce Betts, the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, who will talk to us about the night sky and reveal the answer to one of the most popular trivia questions in many, many, many months. Really? Yeah, it's true. I guess hats are popular. I guess they're in again, many, many months. Yeah, it's true. I guess hats are popular.

I guess they're in again, you know. Welcome back. Oh, thank you very much. So go out there, Matt. Go see all those planets up in the evening sky. We got Jupiter low in the west shortly after sunset. Working your way across the south, you come to Mars, looking reddish, gradually dimming over the weeks and months, and then go farther to your left, more towards the east, and you'll see

Saturn looking yellowish. And in the pre-dawn, you can still catch Venus, but it's getting really low, but it's super bright if you can see it low in the pre-dawn east. On to this week in space history. In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the only, sorry, became the first woman to fly in space, but also remains the only solo flight of a woman. And 20 years later, in 1983, Sally Ride became the first American female in space. On to random Random Space Fact. Very laid back there. You know, maybe you didn't, but now you do know that more than 40 missions have been attempted to the planet Venus. Of course, many of them successful, including one there right now on Venus Express.

You're kidding me. That's 40 missions? I never would have guessed that many. That's why I brought it in as a random space fact. Man. Because indeed, hard to appreciate. A random and surprising space fact. Well, thank you very much for that.

You're welcome. We move on to the trivia contest, and the apparently popular contest was to name a galaxy that is named after a hat. And what'd they tell us, Matt? It was tremendously popular. I mean, truly more entries than we've had in a long time. And it apparently is a favorite sky object,

a favorite galaxy of many, many, many people out there. It was submitted by Amy Jernstad, first-time winner in Woodstock, Illinois. News to me that there's a Woodstock in Illinois. She said that the answer is the Sombrero Galaxy. It is indeed the Sombrero Galaxy due to its shape looking kind of like a sombrero and the type of music that we hear when pointing radio telescopes at it. It comes from

there that's the Harabe Tapatio that's interesting that they I had this music 28 million years ago all right so it's a Messier 104 I guess I don't know how to translate that into Spanish I'm'm afraid. Maybe you do. M-A-1-0-4-0. Yeah, somehow I don't think so. But I can say... Ciento Cuatro. Okay, that's better. I should mention that we're going to send Amy a copy of Jeffrey Bennett's Max Goes to the Space Station, that terrific new New Kids book that has beautiful illustrations. Jeffrey is also using it

to provide some benefit to Storytime from Space, that nonprofit which is working with astronauts on the International Space Station to have storytime, basically, for kids. And we'll have a link to that once again on the show page at planetary.org. Now, I want to tell you about Joseph Murray.

He pointed out how far away the Sombrero Galaxy is and how big it is. He said, because of that, I would not suggest that anyone attempt to do the Mexican hat dance on Cinco de Mayo around the galaxy as it would take many Cinco de centuries to finish it. Yeah, I guess. As I said, there's so many people who said that they're fond of the Sombrero Galaxy. Nathan Hunter said that he always associates it with the song Hovering Sombrero by They Might Be Giants,

which I would now play a clip from, but I'm afraid that They Might Be Giants would come and step on me because we don't have the rights to do that. And'll just finish with this i had no idea james miller in australia pointed out that there is a character in dc comics named vartox he is a friend of superman's they've had a lot of adventures together yes i confirm this ladies and gentlemen and he comes from the Sombrero Hat Galaxy. Nice. So there you have it.

There you hat it. And that's off the top of my head. Oh, I see what you did there. We are going to send out a T-shirt as well, by the way, and I think that's what the prize will be for this week as well. What's your question? When did Venus Express enter orbit around Venus? Which it's still doing.

When did it enter orbit? Go to planetary.org slash radiocontest. Get us your entry. You have until the 24th. September 24th, that's a Tuesday at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us this one. And we will send you a Planetary Radio t-shirt. What the heck?

We've got some extra copies. We will also send you Jeffrey Bennett's Max Goes to the Space Station. So how's that? Another nice prize package. And we're done. Nice prize package. All right, everybody. Go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about flying.

Thank you, and good night. Do you remember in World War I the American squadron of planes called the Hat in the Ring Squadron? Yes, I do. A flying. Very nice tying of hats to flying. Thank you, and it only took me moments. He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, who joins us each week here on What's Up.

Next week, we'll visit the first Earth-sized exoplanet that is the right distance from its star to support life. My guest will be Elisa Quintana, leader of the team that discovered Kepler-186f. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by the men and women who are members of the Society. Clear skies.