Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Phoenix is on its way to Mars

Episode Date: August 6, 2007

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A phoenix has begun its journey to Mars, 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. Principal Investigator Peter Smith gave us a preview last week. Now his lander is well past the moon, winging its way to the red planet. We'll talk with my colleague Amir Alexander, who was at the Kennedy Space Center just before the August 4 launch.

Then we'll hear from John Lomberg, creator of the Visions of Mars DVD, a library of all things Martian that will land with Phoenix next May. Maybe your name is part of the cargo. It was a busy week in space exploration. The countdown for Shuttle Endeavour's next mission had gotten underway before we put this show to bed. NASA has targeted the launch for the evening of Wednesday, August 8. You've probably heard that Barbara Morgan is a member of the STS-118 crew.

Ms. Morgan is the teacher who served as Krista McAuliffe's backup back in 1986. That was the ill-fated last mission of Shuttle Challenger. Now she finally gets her chance to become the first educator astronaut on this trip to the International Space Station. NASA Associate Administrator Alan Stern held a science briefing last week. He and others provided updates on several missions, including Cassini. The Saturn orbiter is expected to do something amazing in March of 2008. Well, actually, just one more item on its long list of amazing accomplishments, the probe may fly just 30 kilometers above Saturn's moon Enceladus, right through a plume of water that is geysering out of the little globe. That should be quite a show. Time to check

in with Emily Laktawalla. Her Q&A this week expands on one of the Phoenix topics we covered with Peter Smith. I'll be back with Amir Alexander and John Lomberg in just about a minute. Oh, and Bruce Betts is headed our way with a new What's Up

and a Planetary Radio T-shirt for this week's Space Trivia Contest winner. Here's Emily. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, Phoenix is landing on rockets. Won't the rockets modify the area on Mars that Phoenix is going to study?

Phoenix is traveling a long way in order to perform very careful analyses of Martian materials, so how its landing rockets change the surface at its landing site is a big issue for the science team. The rockets are powered with hydrazine, which is a simple chemical compound made of two nitrogen atoms and six hydrogen atoms. The rocket-assisted landing could change the landing site in several ways. The blasts from the rockets may dig craters into the surface and pile dust elsewhere. There will also be unburned hydrazine fuel sprayed all over the landing site. And although the mission's engineers did what they could to make the hydrazine fuel as pure as

possible, there are also small amounts of contaminants, which could include some organic materials. It could be a big mess. So what is the mission going to do about it? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out. T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, main engine start, 2, 1, 0, and liftoff of the Delta II rocket with Phoenix, a distant science outpost ceasing clues of the evolution at the polar region of Mars. Last we checked, the Phoenix lander was in great shape and well on its way to the north polar region of Mars. Emily's blog has nearly minute-by-minute coverage of the launch, including some dramatic pictures.

You can see it at planetary.org. Writer and editor Amir Alexander is another of my Planetary Society colleagues. When we spoke a few days ago, he had just returned from several days of launch activities in Florida. Hey, Amir, welcome home after a grueling set of flights, I guess, to get you back here from the Kennedy Space Center. Thank you, Matt. It's good to be back. Yeah, I had my own flight adventures getting back home, and Phoenix is now on its own adventure off to Mars.

Yes, good segue. and Phoenix is now on its own adventure off to Mars. Yes, good segue. You got to go to a science briefing, I guess, on Thursday at the Kennedy Center. Tell us a little bit about that. Oh, it was very exciting being there. It was really a pulsating place. You know, it was just two days before launch. First, we had a little press conference from the people responsible for getting Phoenix off the ground and landing safely,

and that was interesting in itself. And then that was followed up by a science briefing by Peter Smith and his team from the University of Arizona and other places. I learned some things about what it takes to get a spacecraft off the ground, especially a spacecraft like Phoenix, landing it safely on Mars. One of the things that they're particularly worried on, I found, was landing it in a safe place that is free of rocks and with slopes that will allow it to both stand firmly on the ground and spread its large solar panels. And in order to accomplish that, they really, they really studied things very, very carefully there. I saw on Emily's blog this morning that I guess they have somewhat of a better idea now that it has launched of the sort of landing ellipse.

I guess it will make it easier for them to pick one of those good spots. Yeah, even as it is, they had a much, much better and closer study of the landing area for Phoenix than they've ever had before because they had high-rise images from MRO. They've never had anything like that before. I mean, they used to basically do modeling of what the surface might look like, how many rocks and what the slopes would be, but now they can actually look at the rocks. And they compiled a database of 5 million rocks in that area, just to know where things are and to try and avoid them. I love that, a database of 5 million Mars rocks in one little square of Mars.

Yeah, that is pretty amazing. Did you get to talk to Peter or hear from him during the conference? Sounds like you did. Yeah, I talked with him a little bit. And also, of course, I heard what he had to say at the conference. What I love about Peter, he has this larger view of the place of Phoenix and the large story of exploration, both of Earth and of the solar system. He mentioned how in Earth exploration, the poles were like the last places that were really explored. Oh, yeah.

In the early 20th century, all the tropical areas, all the blank spots on the map were already covered, with the exception of the pole. They were just the last thing that were left out. Then in 1909, Piri in the North Pole, and 1911, Amundsen and Scott in the South Pole, they finally reached those areas as well. And the same is true of Mars. I mean, we've had five landings and several rovers since Viking in 1976, but they were all really in what would be the equivalent of the tropical region,

the equatorial regions of Mars, and Phoenix is the first one to actually go to the poles and see what's up there. You had one other major task on Friday, Friday, August 3rd, and that was a separate press conference put on by the Planetary Society. That's right. That was devoted exclusively to our own project, Visions of Mars, which I think is a very, very inspiring project. It is a collection of stories and messages to the messages from Earth to the future.

They were put together by John Lomberg back in the 1990s. Yeah, we're going to have John on in just a couple of moments after we finish speaking with you. Terrific. He can tell you the history of this project much better than I do because he was there and he did it all. Who attended that press conference? There was Kim Stanley Robinson. He was on the phone from his home in Davis, California, and he is one of the authors that is represented in this collection. He spoke of what it means to him. And we had a good press attendance there.

People were very, very interested and very curious about this project. I think it was great to get the word out for what I think is a very, very inspiring project. It must kill you that you missed the launch by a matter of hours because of the delay. Yeah, that was a real shame. It was actually as I was boarding the plane going off to Florida, I got a call from Guy Webster from JPL telling me that everything, including the press conference, has been moved by one day, and because of family obligation I couldn't stay that extra day.

So that's a real shame, but I hope there will be other chances. Well, hopefully we'll have another chance in May with an even more exciting event when that spacecraft touches down, soft touchdown on Mars. Exactly, and I think we'll go all over the Phoenix and the science mission and visions of Mars when it's actually landing time. And I would like to add that in the calibration images that will come down in the first hours after landing, the Phoenix DVD with visions of Mars on it will be visible. So we'll actually see our project on Mars.

Excellent. Thank you very much for the update, Amir. Thanks, Matt. Great talking to you. And welcome home. I hope you're getting some rest. Thank you very much for the update, Amir. Thanks, Matt. Great talking to you. And welcome home. I hope you're getting some rest. Thank you. Amir Alexander, Dr. Amir Alexander, is a staff member and staff writer for the Planetary Society, just returned from the Kennedy Space Center, where he attended the science briefing you heard him talk about,

and the briefing talking about Visions of Mars, the mini-DVD put together by the Planetary Society. We'll be back in just a minute or so with the creator of that DVD, John LD put together by the Planetary Society. We'll be back in just a minute or so with the creator of that DVD, John Lomberg. This is Planetary Radio. Hey, hey, Bill Nye the Science Guy here. I hope you're enjoying Planetary Radio. We put a lot of work into this show and all our other great Planetary Society projects. I've been a member since the disco era. Now I'm the Society's Vice President. And you may well ask, why do we go to all this trouble? Simple. We believe in the PB&J, the passion, beauty, and joy

of space exploration. You probably do too, or you wouldn't be listening. Of course, you can do more than just listen. You can become part of the action, helping us fly solar sails, discover new planets, and search for extraterrestrial intelligence and life elsewhere in the universe. Here's how to find out more. 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. We really can't capture all of what John Lomberg is or does in a 30-second introduction. You're better off taking a look at his website, johnlomberg.com. That's j-o-n-l-o-M-B-E-R-G dot com.

We'll put the link up at planetary.org slash radio as well. What you'll find is a distinguished record of accomplishment in the arts that includes some of the most fascinating space-related projects over the last three and a half decades. We could talk to him about any of these, but it's the Visions of Mars DVD that has just set sail on the Phoenix Lander. You'll find much more about this red planet library at planetary.org, but we wanted to go to its creator for an overview. We reached John at his home in

the Hawaiian Islands. Aloha, John. Must be very exciting to know that Visions of Mars is once again about to leave for the Red Planet. Well, it was 12 years ago and more that I started working on this for the Planetary Society. We had a previous attempt on a Russian spacecraft, which was unsuccessful, so it's a terrific second chance on the appropriately named Phoenix mission that we get to fly Visions of Mars again. We, of course, want to refer people to the Planetary Society website, where they can read much more about Visions of Mars. They can even see the table of contents for what is on this amazing little mini-DVD. But we'll also provide the link to your website.

And just a word or two about your career, which is, if anything, more amazing than this disc. And I have to admit, I envy you. If nothing else, your close relationship, your collaboration for many years with Carl Sagan. Carl and I worked together from 1972 until his death in 1996, almost 25 years, and had just a wonderful professional and personal relationship. We had really good chemistry, and I could do things that he couldn't do that he needed to do for the things he wanted to do, especially the visual aspect of his books and his television programs.

And I count myself to be very fortunate to have worked with such an amazing man. Cosmos, Contact, the Voyager disk. I was very surprised to read that you designed the 10,000, well, the hope for 10,000-year duration warning for the nuclear waste facility for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That was a project done for the Department of Energy by Sandia Labs, another very interesting project in long-term and very deep communication to an unknown audience, which I guess is the common quality of the Voyager record, the nuclear waste marker, and visions of Mars.

You're speaking to an audience about which you know very, very little. In the case of visions of Mars, we assume they're human and we assume they're on Mars. But how long they've been there, how they got there, what their culture is like, we have no way of knowing. And that made it a challenge to try to shape the voluminous contents of the disk in a way that we hoped would be understandable. What was the genesis of this project 12 years ago? Lou Friedman thought it up. He knew that Isaac Asimov was dying and felt that a perfect tribute

to Asimov and some of the other science fiction greats was to send their work to Mars on the premise that if it wasn't for dreams like theirs, we may not have had the inspiration and the desire to go to Mars. Lou talked to Carl about it. Carl thought it was a good idea. And then they asked me to step in in the role of, I guess, project manager. And it just grew and grew and grew. For people who want to know more about how the thing was created, they've just put the introduction that I wrote up on the website. So people can read that along with Carl's forward and lose afterward.

Talk a little bit about the contents of this disc. I was so pleased to see a number of the items collected on this Martian library, as you've called it, as Peter Smith, the Phoenix principal investigator, called it last week on this radio program. I'll tell you one thing that was really heartwarming to see. Little Nemo in Slumberland, Windsor McKay. That's right. You know, for four centuries and for all over the world, people have thought about Mars. Mars the planet.

Mars the other world. The man from Mars is sort of part of our vocabulary. Mars is everybody's favorite planet. And the planet that, if humans can make a go of it anywhere in the solar system, it will be there. And the range of materials about Mars, of course, everybody thinks of the war of the worlds and the science fiction stories. But it's just amazing how, in cartoons, Marvin Martian from Warner Brothers, Bugs Bunny's nemesis, or, as you say, the beautiful comic strips of Winsor McCay, Little Nemo in Slumberland. So the range of materials and the difference in the styles and the outlook and the cultures of the author,

but all linked by this fascination with Mars. So lots of artwork, also lots of text. Yes, we have over 80 individual pieces, including many novels, as counts as one piece, as I say, from all over the world, from four centuries, and I think something like 25 different nations are represented. And radio programs, I'm happy to say, as a big fan of the golden era. And, of course, the Orson Welles version of The War of the Worlds. Absolutely. At the time we made Visions of Mars, we were limited into how much we could store, and we couldn't get any films.

But audio takes a lot less room and has the virtue of always being associated with Mars. Tesla, Marconi, and Edison all believed that there was life on Mars that might be communicating with us using radio as the medium. Actually, one of the pieces on Visions of Mars talks about those early radio days, and then Orson Welles' famous radio broadcast really linked radio with Mars forever. So it seemed a nice other part of content to add. Are there additional special messages on the disc? We asked four people from our time to record a message for whoever finds this on Mars in the future. Three men and a woman, Carl Sagan, Lou Friedman, and Arthur C. Clarke, and then Judith Merrill, whose name might not be as familiar as the rest, but who for a long time was a great name in science fiction, both as a writer and as an editor.

She knew them all, she edited them all, and she acted as our senior editor to select among all the many possible pieces of Martian science fiction. Well, we will once again remind listeners that they can visit planetary.org if they'd like more information about visions of Mars. John, I don't know of another human being, or at least another living human being, who has made so many contributions to works that were intended to far outlive any of us. Really, they stretch out what you're hoping for is a future history that is longer than the record of human history in the past. Well, it's awesome to think that our days will

be looked back on as perhaps the golden age of space exploration, or at least the dawn of space exploration, and that some of the projects that we've done now, I think, will last in human history. There's only one time that you land on Mars first, so we'll always remember the Viking landing. And it's just very exciting, of course, to think that something that you worked on may be pondered over by somebody on Mars centuries or millennia from now.

It certainly is, and of course, along with all of these great works, are 250,000 names, the members of the Planetary Society and thousands of additional individuals who submitted their names and are on that mini-DVD, which hopefully is on its way to Mars. John, thank you so much for joining us for a few minutes on Planetary Radio, and I look forward to talking with you again, perhaps when Phoenix sets down on that northern plane on the planet Mars.

Well, thank you, Matt. John Lomberg is the internationally renowned artist and producer and longtime collaborator of Carl Sagan, who put together the Visions of Mars mini-DVD, which is now on the Phoenix spacecraft, awaiting its trip to the red planet. We will be right back with Bruce Betts and a trip to the night sky in this week's edition of What's Up. That's after a return visit by Emily.

I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. How will the Phoenix science team cope with the fact that the landing site will be sprayed with hydrazine from its high-powered landing rockets? Basically, all they can do is to simulate the landing on Earth and study it carefully, so that they can recognize what features on the actual Mars landing site were made by the spacecraft and not by Mars. For example, one team of researchers is blasting a simulated dusty Mars surface with high-pressure nitrogen inside a vacuum chamber in order to determine how soil will be moved around at the landing site. The vacuum chamber accurately simulates Martian surface atmospheric pressure,

but it can't simulate Martian gravity, which is only 38% of Earth's. Without an anti-gravity device, the best thing that engineers stuck on Earth can do is to use a simulated Mars soil that has only 38% the density of actual Mars soil, so that the simulated rockets can lift the stuff as easily on Earth as they would do on Mars. That's why they're simulating Mars soil with crushed walnut shells. So far, the engineers have found that it would be better for Phoenix to come to a landing by drifting laterally across the site rather than straight down. That way, instead of blasting deep holes in the ground,

they'd just build small sand ripples that would be conveniently located to Phoenix's robotic arm. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society, joins us to tell us about the night sky.

And later on, we'll give away another Planetary Radio t-shirt. Perseid meteor shower. Yeah. Making on the evenings of like August 12th, August 13th. Really groovy this year because it's a new moon, so it'll be a very dark sky. Again, as we said, except for places like here. But even so, even places like here in Southern California, even if you don't drive up into the mountains, you should be able to see some if you're patient. Meteor watching is about patience. And going outside and staring up at the sky. The

meteors will start going in the mid evening. And in fact, you might even get long trails in the early evening ones. You'll probably get more meteors and after midnight, as the earth is charging ahead, you know, maybe 60 an hour, a hundred an hour from a dark site, which means you can pick up a few even from a not-so-dark site. So go out, and again, it's kind of a broad peak, so that's the good news. If you don't go out the 12th or the 13th, try the 11th or the 14th, you'll still see increased meteor activity from the Perseids, and kind of fun. Good. I'm looking forward to it. All right. We also, of course, have the total lunar eclipse coming up at our next full moon and that

will occur on august 27th or 28th depending on what time zone you're in and it will be visible from throughout most of eastern asia australia and the americas apologize for taking extra excitement for that been a while since we've seen a total lunar eclipse you can find more information about that on the web nasa has a nice eclipse website, among others, and that'll be good. There's partial solar eclipse for a very small number of those listening on September 11th, visible for most of Central and Southern South America. And you can also find information there on NASA's website, which, if you're writing things down, is searth.gsfc.nasa.gov slash

eclipse. Boy, we'll put that up on the website. We'll put it up here. Oh, I wasn't even done. I've got another 40 words. Oh, no, I'm kidding. That was it. We also, of course, have nice planets up there, although we're a little short on them right now. But Venus, gosh, tough, low sunset, maybe might see it off in the west. Jupiter, though, dominating the evening sky. Can't miss it. Brightest star-like object up there. I'll be off there in the south in the early evening for those in the northern hemisphere

and the north and those in the southern hemisphere. Speaking of the southern hemisphere, I should mention the Perseids are a little tough for our southern hemisphere listeners because the place they appear to radiate from, called the Radiant, which is in Perseus, hence the name, is always very low or below the horizon for much of the Southern Hemisphere. But you still can see those earth grazers, those long, cool ones that cross the sky. So hopefully that'll work out for everyone. They can be spectacular, too. I've seen a few. They are. Those are the most spectacular ones. They leave that trail of plasma for everyone. They can be spectacular too. I've seen they are. Those are the most spectacular. Leave that trail of plasma or something. Oh, it's so

cool. The glowing trail. And sometimes you can even get colors in the trail from yellows to greens. Yeah. Yeah. And if you don't just push on your eyes, push on your eyeballs and let go and you'll see the colors anyway. That is brilliant. Don't try this at home. In fact, you probably don't even have to go outside. Look, meteors. Go on to this week in space history. 1961, a date we always like to commemorate. German Titov becomes the first person to sleep in space. That is a milestone you and I can get behind. Exactly. Right there. And then five years later, Lunar Orbiter 1. You know, I think I stutter more on this show than I do on my regular life. It's a radio thing. Oh, it is?

Okay. Lunar Orbiter 1 was launched, the first in the Lunar Orbiter series, which were the robotic orbiter precursors to Apollo from the U.S. that imaged the moon looking for landing sites. So that was 1966. On to Random Space Fact! Back to the Perseids. More information about the Perseids there from comet Swift-Tuttle.

So Swift-Tuttle goes by every 130 years, goes out to around past Pluto, comes back in, crosses Earth's orbit, leaves a bunch of crud in its orbit as it's going by. And that's the crud that we run into at this time of year. All right, let us move on to the trivia contest. We asked you last time around, name all spacecraft that successfully returned images from the surface of Venus. Yeah, well, two weeks ago we asked them that. But you're right. It's time to come up with the answer for that. Nitpicker.

Go ahead. How did we do? Lots of great responses. Everybody got it right. Our winner is somebody I thought had won before. Maybe it's just that I've corresponded with him a lot because he says such nice things about planetary radio. Past life experience? No, i don't

think so although it's possible carlos castanon who was worried that i wouldn't be able to pronounce his last name correctly but i grew up in southern california carlos is in madrid madrid spain and he responded with venera 9 10 13 and 14 is he correct correct? A wise one. He is indeed correct. Those were the only spacecraft to have survived on the surface of Venus to return images from the surface, which was the requirement of this week's, this two week's trivia contest. Then we're going to send Carlos a large Planetary Radio t-shirt. Off to Madrid. Mm-hmm.

All right, we got a new one for you. What is the only moon in the solar system our solar system known to generate its own intrinsic magnetic field and so this is not count ones that have induced fields uh some of jupiter's moons that have salt water down deep and it generates an induced field we want one that's actually generating it from an internal core. By itself. Okay.

Which one? Only one known. Go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to enter. And when do they need to get those in by, Matt? August 13. Monday at 2 p.m. Pacific, August 13 to get in on this edition of the trivia contest.

We're out of time. Go out there. Look up in the night sky, and think about big spoons. Thank you. Good night. That was my kid's idea. Big spoons, really? I solicit input from them on that part of the show periodically.

All right. Sadly, most of the time it comes from me. I'll tell you, I missed having a small spoon, little wooden spoons they give you with the malts at Dodger Stadium, but I didn't get a malt the other day missed having a small spoon, little wooden spoons they give you with the malts at Dodger Stadium, but I didn't get a malt the other day when I didn't see Barry Bonds equal the Babe Ruth's record. What I hate is that you get all that great malt flavor, and then that last bite you're trying to scrape off the spoon, and the last flavor in your mouth is wood. Oh, but that's part of the charm. You probably just didn't start soon enough. You've got to suck on the wooden

spoon. Yeah. Bruce Bet suck on the wooden spoon. Bruce Betts is the director of projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us every week here for culinary excitement and what's up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Have a great week, everyone. Thank you.