Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Phil Christensen Wants Your Help Imaging Mars

Episode Date: June 22, 2009

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Hello again, space fans. Matt Kaplan here with a very quick message this time. Just wanted once again to thank those of you who have responded to our plea for support. Those of you who are helping to save Planetary Radio, it really does come down to that. Thank you so much for those of you who've responded by going to planetary.org slash radio and clicking on that link that allows you to support the show without having to become a Planetary Society member. It really does mean a lot to us. Those of you who have not yet responded, well, we know some of you simply can't and some of you simply won't. Okay, not a problem. We still hope you enjoy listening to the podcast. But if you do have it within you and also within your wallet or purse to help us out, we sure could use it.

It really may help us. It really may prevent this radio show from going the way of, oh, I don't know, Beetlejuice, the supernova, if it is a supernova, which we'll be talking about briefly during today's show, during the What's Up segment. That's it. We'll leave it at that. Thank you so much once again for listening, and especially to those of you who've been able to help us out. Take your best shot of Mars this week on Planetary Radio. This week on Planetary Radio.

Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. You may have seen Mars through a telescope, you may even have photographed it. But how would you like to help pick a spot on the Red Planet for imaging by an orbiting spacecraft? We'll talk about this brand new program with Bill Christensen, principal investigator for the Themis camera on the Odyssey orbiter. And speaking of power to the people, Bill Nye has birthday wishes for the SETI at Home project, celebrating 10 years of letting you join the search for extraterrestrial intelligence

that was initially funded by the Planetary Society. And then there's our weekly What's Up Jaunt Around the Night Sky with astronomer and planetary scientist Bruce Betts, including the Space Trivia Contest. Minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Main engine ignition and liftoff of the Atlas V rocket with LRO-LCROSS, America's first step of a lasting return to the moon. I never get tired of countdowns. That one sent the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite on their way to the moon.

But you probably knew that. The June 19 liftoff received a good deal of media attention. I think I know why. Call it the deep impact effect. The only thing better than a rollicking, cataclysmic collision in space is two collisions. And that's what LCROSS and the Centaur upper stage of its booster will provide in October of this year. Scientists hope the big bang at the moon's pole generated by the Centaur will vaporize the water ice many suspect is hiding there.

It's that wet stuff LCROSS may detect before it meets its own doom a few minutes later. Meanwhile, LRO will be skimming just a few miles above the lunar surface, revealing unprecedented detail about that cratered wonderland. We'll have more on these missions soon, but you can read about them in the Planetary Society blog right now. It's at planetary.org. You've probably also heard that Space Shuttle Endeavour didn't make it off the ground last week.

The mission to the International Space Station has been delayed till July because of a recurring hydrogen leak. Exoplanets. The galaxy is lousy with them. One team of astronomers now claims to have found one outside our galaxy. It's next door in Andromeda. Meanwhile, yet another technique for finding these distant worlds has had its first success. That story is also at planetary.org. Here's Bill. Hey, Bill Nye, the planetary guy here,

vice president of the Planetary Society. And this week is the 10th anniversary of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence at home, SETI at home. Now, what's everybody talking about these days? What are the kids talking about? They're talking about their cloud computing, their distributed computing. Well, SETI at home was the first global scale distributed computing thing anybody ever did. We had billions and billions of bits of data from the Arecibo radio observatory that may contain a signal from another civilization in some distant part of the universe. But there were so many data, you couldn't figure it out. So what people did, they wrote software to send a chunk of data to your computer, and your computer would cha-chunk on that chunk and look for a signal. It's still going on.

There's still over 200,000 computers searching the skies looking for a signal from some civilization we can only imagine. I mean, your computer might be the one that solves this problem, that finds the signal. And you would do it, in a way, for free. we can only imagine. I mean, your computer might be the one that solves this problem, that finds the signal. And you would do it in a way for free. It's the cosmic lottery. And the winner will benefit all of humankind. It's an astonishing idea, and it's 10 years old. Who knows what the future holds as our computing ability gets better? And you can say, well, 10 years is a long time to be looking without finding anything. Well, that's true to a point, but how long have people been on the earth? It depends how you count, but maybe a million years. So this is a hundred

thousandth of human existence, which may be radically changed in a heartbeat with somebody's personal computer. Oh, it's exciting. Happy anniversary, SETI at home. This is Bill Nye the Planetary Guy. Here's hoping you change the world. Phil Christensen has been exploring Mars for years. Now he wants to let you in on the action. Phil is a Regents Professor of Geological Sciences at Arizona State University's Tempe campus. That's where he also directs the Mars Space Flight Facility.

We've talked to him before about his Themis instrument on the Mars Odyssey orbiter, part of the fleet of spacecraft circling Mars. Themis is the thermal emission imaging system. You might guess, quite correctly too, that it's an infrared camera, but it's more than that. And while it may not have just become your personal point-and-shoot above the red planet, a new program pioneered by Phil comes pretty close. I talked to Dr. Christensen a few days ago via Skype.

Phil, welcome back to the program. How is Themis doing, and how's the spacecraft? How's Mars Odyssey? Everything's going great, knock on wood. The spacecraft is doing extremely well. It's behaving well. All systems are go. And the Themis, the camera, even though it's been there for seven years, it's still performing extremely well.

And just recently, we changed the orbit. We had been in an orbit that was right at about 6 p.m. So we're an infrared instrument. We're looking at the ground, and it's really cold on Mars at 6 p.m. So for the last four or five years, our data have been good, but they haven't been nearly as good as they could. About a month ago, we changed the orbit. We're now at about 3.30 p.m., and the data are looking much, much better. Now explain why that time is significant, and I think it has to do with the nature of

Odyssey's orbit. That's right. Way back when Odyssey was dreamed up, the gamma-ray spectrometer was the primary instrument that was slated to go on this orbiter. That instrument works best at a orbit that's right on the terminator. It has a radiative cooler that wants to see cold space, not see the sun. And so the mission was designed to really be optimized for the gamma-ray spectrometer. Themis was actually an add-on to that mission, and so we've been doing the best we can, but we couldn't really drive the orbit, drive the mission, because it was gamma-ray focused. We're an infrared camera,'t really drive the orbit, drive the mission because it was gamma ray focused.

We're an infrared camera, and the warmer the surface, the better the data look. And so we've been at this late local time with a very cold surface collecting good data, useful data. We've been chugging along doing our thing. But now, after seven years, we convinced NASA and the project to move the orbit. And in my mind, we've sort of now entered the Themis phase of the Odyssey mission. And I'm hoping we'll have another seven years here collecting really spectacular new Themis infrared data. So your time has come. It has. It's been a long time. We've been waiting patiently. But we're ready to rock and roll. I think we're going to get some really exciting new data out of this thing.

And by way of segue, maybe the time for members of the public, your fans out there, has also come. Of course, Themis has been returning all kinds of terrific data, as has Odyssey, along with its sister spacecraft circling the planet there. But I read recently about these two new programs, which are very much outward-looking programs. I wonder if you could start by telling us a little bit about this one, that it looks like it's going to give regular folks like me a chance to help decide exactly where on Mars Odyssey should be examining. That's right. That's exactly what we want to do. You know, we come to work every day and we get to explore Mars.

We get to take pictures of places no humans have seen before. Even from the beginning, we've tried to share that sense of adventure, that sense of exploration with the public. But up until now, it's been we take the images, we'll put them on a website, you get to look at them, but it was still the science team making the decisions. We're deep enough into the mission, we've been doing this long enough, that I was able to convince NASA to actually open this up a little bit and let the public make suggestions or at least give us ideas on where we might be

imaging. You know, I think that's important. There are a lot of people out there who have looked at a lot of Mars data, you know, amateur astronomers, if you will, and amateur planetary scientists who have some good ideas. And so we really wanted to create a program that shared this sense of excitement and adventure with people so that, you know, we weren't the only ones having all the fun. You know, this comment you've made about what so-called amateurs have been able to contribute, this is something that was made so clear by my colleague, Emily Lakdawalla, who is one of those. And so many of them also look at her blog. And they really have been able to do some tremendous science. But it's not that you're going to require anybody to have

particular expertise on the red planet, I guess. No, that's not it. It's not it at all. And when I was in high school, I was interested in space and thought, wow, wouldn't it be cool to be able to take a picture of Mars? There's a lot of people who, you know, you don't need a PhD in Mars science to be interested, to have ideas, to look at images, to, you know, say, hey, that's cool. I wonder what that is. So it really is trying to give people who are interested the opportunity. You don't have to be an expert. We did have a little negotiating to do with NASA. So the way it works now is we're still taking the images, we look at the suggestions that come in, and then we'll take some of those ideas and factor them in. One of the things that we'd like to take

the next step in the future is literally dedicate some small number of images to truly a voting process by the public that if enough people pick this spot in any given week we'll take that picture regardless of what the science team thinks or you know so it it truly is a the public took that picture as opposed to giving scientists some suggestions. So we'd like to take it even that one step further. This would be the planetary science version of American Idol. Exactly. You know, you get to vote for your favorite place.

And we're trying to make it pretty easy. We show a week's worth of orbits. This is where the spacecraft is going to be. Let people know on our website, hey, don't bother to take a picture here. The sun's not up. But other than that, you kind of go in, pick a spot, click on it, send us a message and say, hey guys, take a picture of this. And yeah, we do hope that enough people get interested that it becomes a bit of a competition where people are voting with

their fingers on their clicker saying, hey, no, this is the most interesting place for this week's picture. That's Phil Christensen, principal investigator for the Themis camera on the Mars Odyssey orbiter. He'll share more opportunities with you after a quick break. This is Planetary Radio. Hi, I'm Lou Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society. You've made Planetary Radio one of our most successful programs. Our valued listeners depend on it for weekly space related news, entertainment, and inspiration. However, today's economy is forcing the society to make tough choices. As a result, the future of Planetary Radio is now on the line. Planetary

Radio urgently needs your financial support to continue. We know this program is important to you, so we're asking you to make a donation dedicated to keeping Planetary Radio alive. Please visit our webpage at planetary.org slash radio. Tax-deductible donations of $50 or more will be rewarded with a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Our listeners are a thoughtful and committed team. I trust you will help sustain Planetary Radio t-shirt. Our listeners are a thoughtful and committed team. I trust you will help sustain Planetary Radio so we can continue to explore new worlds. Please extend your lifeline of support at planetary.org slash radio and thank you. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. Phil Christensen wants to loan you his camera.

It just happens to be circling Mars. Phil heads Arizona State University's Mars Spaceflight Facility and is the principal investigator for the Themis instrument on the Mars Odyssey orbiter. And Themis is, though you've described it as an infrared instrument, and it certainly does that very well, it also works at visual wavelengths. That's correct, and that's what we're doing with this program. We're using the visible camera. It has about a factor of five better spatial resolution. The resolution is about 15 meters per pixel, nothing like the spectacular high-rise images,

but on the other hand, we get to take a lot more of them. Yeah, we're going to let people take the highest resolution visible images that we have, and those are stunning. I mean, they're really gorgeous pictures. The other thing that we've decided to do is if you do guess right and pick the place we're going to guess, or if you win the vote and we take your spot, we're actually going to email whoever suggested those places, we're going to email them the pictures as soon as we get it down on the ground, which is literally a few days after it's taken. So again, that's an incentive to be one of the first humans to ever see this place on the surface of Mars.

How do people get in on this? What should they do? Well, they should go to our website. I've got it right here, and we will also put it up at planetary.org slash radio. But here it is. It's simply suggest.mars.asu.edu So, suggest.mars.asu.edu and the instructions are right there.

And we're trying to carry this one step further a couple of the fantastic programmers who used to work for me now work for google and they've been the guys who have been building google mars and helping with google earth and some of the other cool google tools they're in the process of actually adding a button right in google earth that lets you go straight to this website to make it even easier for people to basically log in, sign up, send us a suggestion. We do ask for people's emails, and that's simply so that we can email you back and say, hey, you won. So that's about it. It's pretty simple.

And in fact, it's not just these two programmers. You've really done this very much in collaboration with Google. That's right. The bad news, I lost a couple of the brightest guys I've ever had here working for me. The good news is they've stayed in touch. And so we've really developed a good working relationship with Google. I try not to hold any grudges here for losing these guys. But in all seriousness, we do have a really good relationship, and they've gone on to be doing some very exciting things. And, of course, anybody out there who has not played with Google Earth up to version 5 now, you're really missing out. It is an incredible tool. used by the folks at the conference I attended last week, which we covered on last week's show, as one of the most accessible, probably the most accessible and the most popular of

the GIS, or Geographic Information System tools, that's available to anybody and for free, and there are hundreds and hundreds of applications available. Absolutely. And while we're on the topic, you have yet another one done as part of this collaboration called Live from Mars. Yes, exactly the same concept. Again, we're trying to let people

experience what's going on. One of my frustrations all my life has been that planetary exploration tends to be a little distant. You know, you read about it in magazines, you see it on websites, it's in books, it's on documentaries. But I want to see what picture was taken yesterday.

I want to see what Mars looks like right now. I don't want to have to wait a year until the book comes out. So that's what we've done. We've worked with the Google guys and set it up so that literally every day our images live from that day go on to the Google Earth site. And you can see them the same time we do.

And who knows? I always joke with students that, hey, if you take a picture of an erupting volcano, I get all the credit. But in all seriousness, hey, you know, look at it. Who knows? Maybe you'll see something that we've missed. Bringing planetary science to the people, actually, is what this seems to be about. And there certainly is, looping back to where we started, lots of good science still coming from this instrument and from Odyssey. Absolutely. And we've taken so many images, we haven't looked at them all. We really are looking to the non-specialists to look over these images and

help us find stuff. There's fantastic science that's already on the shelf. There's fantastic images still to come. I hate to say it, but we're just beginning to scratch the surface in really understanding the data we've gotten from Odyssey. to scratch the surface and really understanding the data we've gotten from Odyssey. Surface of the red planet, I suppose. What's the outlook? Are you guys going for that record set by the Mars Global Surveyor? We are.

I was involved with Global Surveyor. It has a wonderful sweet spot in my heart, but it lasted a decade and did a fantastic job. Again, indications are that from an engineering point of view, Odyssey is doing well, and it would be fun to set that record and just have a spacecraft that just goes on and on and on. Phil, we hope that that's exactly what comes to pass and that lots of folks out there give a try, either helping you guys to pick out spots to take a look at on the surface of Mars or simply being among the first to see those images as they come back from the Themis instrument as it continues to circle high above the red planet.

Yep. We're hoping to hear from a lot of your listeners and other people. We really, truly want to make this a public activity. Phil, thanks very much. It's great to have you back on the show. Real pleasure. Phil Christensen is a Regents Professor of Geological Sciences in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University. He is also, as you've probably figured out, sort of the father of Themis. That's the thermal emission imaging system.

sort of the father of Themis, that's the thermal emission imaging system, Themis on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft, seven years circling the red planet. He's principal investigator for that. He also, at ASU, directs the Mars spaceflight facility at the Tempe, Arizona campus. We're going to be right back with Bruce Betts for this week's edition of What's Up. It is time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Sitting with Bruce Betts across the dining room table here. We are ready to talk about the night sky. He's the director of

projects for the Planetary Society. Behind him, playing quietly with their Nintendo DSs, are his boys. Happy Father's Day, first of all. Why, thank you very much. Good to be there. Yeah. Good to be fathering. It's a good place to be.

I agree. Had a nice time with my girls. Happy Father's Day to you as well. Thank you. I was fishing. I'm glad you celebrated. Gosh, sorry. I was still working on a joke that i missed from something you said

earlier sorry about that all right well if you think about laugh well no yeah okay well good hey what's up in the night sky go ahead and tell us well if you no no wait that's wrong you tell us what's up in the night my bad nice try we've got in the evening sky saturn looking uh lovely and it's typical i'm a bright, but not a really bright star. But oh, by the way, I'm not really a star at all on the planet. Looking kind of yellowish in Leo in the early evening. You can check it out over in the west. Always great with a telescope because you can actually see those rings, even a small telescope.

One of the most profound first observing memories I have. Yeah, me too. Pre-dawn sky. We've got Jupiter outrageously bright in the south-southeast in the pre-dawn. And even more outrageously bright Venus. Fairly low, but easy to see these days in the east. Mars snuggling up right near it. It's the little reddish thing that's much dimmer.

Mars will keep getting brighter over the coming months. On to this week in space history this one i know you'll enjoy in 1675 the royal greenwich observatory was founded and time began because that's where time begins is that was that the big bang i don't know what they were counting before that. The Big Brit? Yeah. There was no time. Time stood still. Yes, indeed. And thank goodness, because we really needed a zero launch to.

Absolutely. Exactly. And also in 1997, a little more recently, near the spacecraft, flew by the asteroid Matilda on the way to its rendezvous with Eros, where it orbited and eventually strangely landed. Yeah, oddly enough. Since it was an orbiter, but they got it to successfully land eventually on Eros. Not part of the original plan, right? Correct. Crazed people keep these things in the back of their mind.

But no, it was very much an orbiter looking like an orbiter. And they didn't think they had much chance of it living when it reached surface, but it did. And it turns out this really, not only some, you know, cool up close pictures, but even more important for things like gravity magnetometers, things that detect fields, that it's important to get up close and personal. Nice.

Nicely done. Good job. On to... Oh, God, so much pressure after last time. If you didn't hear Bruce's performance last week, I suggest you tune in. Several of you actually did want to congratulate him. All right, we'll be downhill from there. On to Random Space! Just kind of lost it in the middle there.

Oh, well. The pressure. Just broke. Just broke into pieces. Hey, the Spitzer Space Telescope up there has been making amazing infrared observations, discovering the universe over the last few years. It's been publicly out there.

They're shifting into their warm mission mode because being an infrared telescope, they cool their detectors. They've had them cooled around 1.5 kelvins. So 1.5 degrees above absolute zero. Now they've run out of coolant. And so they talk about the warm mission. I'm thinking, okay, I wasn't thinking room temperature.

But I was surprised the warm mission, the detectors, they're still at 25 to 30 kelvins. No wonder they can keep doing science with some of their instruments. That's hot. Yeah. The land of crazed infrared detectors. It's hot. But their warm mission is cold by any normal human standard. Everything's relative.

But they're going to be able to keep working with some of their detectors, even at that scorchingly hot temperature, although not with some of the others. On to trivia contest. We asked you, what are the two brightest stars in the constellation Orion? How'd we do, Matt? Some disagreement here because we didn't specify apparent or absolute. I mean, we just thought everybody would think, well, yeah, brightest from our viewpoint, right? Apparent magnitude. Well, that's certainly what I'd go with.

Absolute magnitude is a system where if you were to fix distance from these objects, then how bright would they be? So it kind of compares the true absolute brightness. But not what we see in the sky, which is what I meant. But I'll let it go. Yeah, you people are sticklers. As it happens, we'd have accepted either one because we didn't specify. But you know what? Random.org took care of it for us and it came out exactly as hoped for. Andrew Boyle. Andrew Boyle of Orlando, Florida, who I think it's been a couple of years since he won,

a little bit more than a couple of years, said Beetlejuice, the correct spelling of that, not like the character in the movie. In fact, he laments that they changed the spelling to Beetlejuice from the spelling of the star. But yes, Andrew of Orlando, Florida said Rigel and Betelgeuse. Other people did point out that, you know, it may not actually be Betelgeuse anymore because Betelgeuse may be gone. I guess it was about to go curse bluey. Well, we never know.

It's in that red giant phase, and there have been reports that there's some contraction that may have occurred. Now, remember from your previous random space facts, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, however you want to pronounce it, the question is, is it as big as the orbit of Mars or the orbit of Jupiter? I mean, it's huge, enormous. It's so big. It's a way but totally huge super giant. Now, somebody did say, I forget who, that its waistline has already been reduced by 15%.

Well, that's the thing. That's why I wonder if something groovy is going to happen and we're moving towards end of star time. So that would be the reference. So if you were, you know, at absolute magnitude different distance, maybe it would matter. But for us, you look up there in the sky, it's still partying. So we're going to send Andrew, what else? A Planetary Radio t-shirt. We should talk about that.

I think it's time to move on. We're going to see if we can get past t-shirts. But they're so cool. Well, I love them, but we've been giving them away for so long. It just seems like maybe people, you know, write to us if you'd like to see something else. Pants would be nice. I'd hate to think where the logo would be, but... All right, no pants.

Well, I mean, not no pants. Never mind. Let's go on to the next trivia contest, shall we? I can't have plan rad pants. I won't wear them at all. Yeah, let's go on. Oh, but we also will if he wants it, send Andrew an Oceanside Photo and Telescope rewards card. So there you go.

Now move on. Oh, thank goodness. Congratulations to LRO and LCROSS, successfully launched and headed off to orbit the moon. What was the year of the first successful lunar orbiter? That's your trivia contest. What was the year of the first successful lunar orbiter? Go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to enter.

I'm not even sure who sent it up. You've got until the 29th. That would be June 29th at 2 p.m. Pacific time to get us that answer. Go out there. Look up at the night sky and think about Tom Petty. Tom Petty. Now, I have no problem thinking about Tom Petty. Do you want to explain why we should think about Tom Petty?

My son suggested it. He's got a fascination not with Tom Petty, but with saying Tom Petty in amusing, entertaining ways. Tom Petty! He does better than I do. He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us every week here

for What's Up. Thank you, Matt Kaplan. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Have a great week.