Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Planck Project Scientist Jan Tauber on a Mission Milestone

Episode Date: January 30, 2012

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Planck reaches a milestone 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. Jan Tauber is the project scientist for the European Space Agency's Planck mission. He'll take a few minutes to describe this most sensitive-ever look back at the birth pangs of our universe nearly 14 billion years ago. Bill Nye, the science and planetary guy, will tell us about his recent trip to Puerto Rico and our planet's biggest radio telescope dish. Later, Bruce Betts will serve up some ham as he tells us about the current night sky. Planetary Society blogger Emily Lott-Wall is ready to share her news of the solar system.

Emily, many things to pick from in the blog over the last few days. Some great contributions from some of our colleagues, including Amir Alexander, reviewing what looks like a really good new book about the wow signal, that great SETI result, never to be repeated, at least not yet. But there are a couple of pieces that you did. I'm going to look back more than a week, actually, for the first one, for this piece you titled, Is There Life on Venus? Hard to believe.

Yeah, there certainly isn't any life in the reprocessed Venera 13 images that a senior Russian researcher published a paper about a couple of weeks ago and generated a lot of buzz on the internet because he was asserting that these forms that he saw in Venera 13's images were a scorpion and a disc and a shell-like thing. And they were all signs that maybe possibly there was actually life in those Venera 13 images of Venus that were taken low these 30 years ago. You know, it sounds so crazy that it's not the kind of thing that I would usually spend my time on. But the guy is actually a very senior, rather important Russian planetary scientist. And so I did spend the time to read it and found out that it was just about as crazy as I thought, and really actually not worth my time.

But it is always fun, actually, to look back and see the Venera 13 images and what the Russians accomplished with all of their nine landings on Venus in the 70s and early 80s. So still a lot of respect due to them for that line of missions. Yeah, really the golden age of planetary exploration for the Soviets. Another story that really is kind of open-ended because you're looking for answers. Maybe some people out there would like to make some suggestions about this. Hydrology, humorology, I mean, it's a question of semantics, isn't it? Yeah, it actually arose because I was trying to classify past blog entries according to their subject. And one of the very interesting subjects is flowing fluids on other planets. And we have

water here, and Mars had water and might possibly have had carbon dioxide and trained dust flows. And then we've got Titan with its methane and ethane. And possibly, it's been suggested that on Pluto, liquid nitrogen could actually run in rivers, at least for some part of its year. So there's similar processes happening in all these planets. You'd think they'd create similar landforms with rivers and seas and rain and clouds and so on. But what's the name that you call it all? And actually, the consensus among the scientists when I asked this question was that you call it hydrology, even though hydro certainly means water. They still apply it to all of these other fluids. But I got some really great suggestions from readers. And I got to say, I still like humorology, which is not the kind of stuff that Bruce and I attempt to practice every

week, but humor as in the liquid sense. Yeah, humorology as in the humors of Hippocrates, you know, bile and black bile and blood and color that gave you your various moods. I thought it would be rather fun to resurrect that for planetary science. Well, you can take a look for yourself. It is a January 26 entry in the Planetary Society blog, and we are talking to our own doctor of blogology, the science and technology coordinator for the Planetary Society. Emily Lachtwal is also a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. Emily, I'll talk with you next week. Looking forward to it, Matt. Up next is Bill Nye, the science and planetary guy. Bill, welcome back from Puerto Rico, the world's largest

James Bond movie prop. Yes, exactly right. The Arecibo radio telescope. And for those of you who aren't familiar with this, this is a dish made of perforated aluminum, the same kind of material you might see behind the door of your, in the window of your microwave oven, lining a valley. And it was designed in 19, or proposed in 1958, completed in 1963. So it's in the old units of feet. It's a thousand feet across, lined up very, very carefully to within one and a half millimeters, plus or minus one and a half millimeters. Enormous thing. And for those of you who are into the mathematics of spheres, a parabola would have a single focus. Well, when you have a sphere like this, the focus is a line. So they have an antenna, which is this long stick. I mean, when I say long, the thing is 50 feet long and it's suspended over this whole bowl

from these three enormous towers. So if you ever saw it on Contact, the movie, or when, yeah, when James Bond is running there through, running around it in Goldeneye. Yes. And they filled it with water, supposedly. Yeah, it's astonishing. It's astonishing. So it's in a sinkhole in Puerto Rico, which has many, many limestone caves, and this is a collapsed cave. They wanted it also to be near the equator in the United States, and Puerto Rico is strictly in the United States. And so it is just a visionary thing. Anybody thought that this thing would work? And it works works amazingly well they have a klystron just like in your uh microwave oven except instead of being 30 watts it's a million and then they have another one that's twice that it is just amazing man it's amazing

i would love to see it sometime listen you were too far away from Florida, where a certain would-be presidential nominee was talking about space. Yeah, Newt Gingrich was promising to Florida, which is the space coast, that he would build a moon base. Of course, would be all for it. But the cost of such a thing is astonishing. You know, the space shuttle flights were a billion dollars each. You go building a moon base on the moon, you're building billions upon billions of dollars. And it's not clear that anybody wants it. When it comes to the moon, we've kind of been there four years ago. It's better characterized in many, in most ways than the bottom of the ocean. So he was telling people

what they wanted to hear. It's interesting that he brought it up. It's kind of cool. Raising space awareness, Matt. I suppose so. Bill, I think we're out of time. If you ever get a chance, everybody, visit Arecibo. It's what great governments do. They build something like that. It's remarkable. Thanks, Matt. I've got to fly. Bill Nye, the planetary guy. Bill Nye is the chief executive officer of the Planetary Society.

Back in just a moment to talk about the Planck mission, which has reached a milestone of sorts. The Planck spacecraft's high-frequency instrument has successfully completed its work. high-frequency instrument has successfully completed its work. But this European Space Agency mission is not yet ready to reveal what it has learned and is still learning about our universe. Jan Tauber hopes it will help answer some of the key questions in cosmology. Tauber is the Planck Project Scientist. He has worked all over the world, including a couple of years at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been with ESA for 20 years

and has been Planck's top scientist since the earliest days of the mission in 1996. I spoke with him at ESA's ESTEC facility in the Netherlands a few days ago. Dr. Talbot, it is a pleasure to talk with you today about this mission, which deserves much more attention, I think, than it has gotten, at least among the public in North America. Welcome to Planetary Radio. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be there. What is this milestone that you have just passed,

this major accomplishment in this mission that is still underway? It's a slightly sad milestone because it is really marking the demise of one of our two instruments on board, the satellite. Therefore, it marks quite a big change in the operation of our payload of our satellite. The thing that we celebrate, of course, is that the instrument has lived far longer than it was intended to originally, or required to originally. than it was intended to originally or required to originally. That means that it is giving us a lot more data than we had originally expected,

and since the data is very good to start with, we can hope to do big things with it. And this is the very simply titled HFI, the High Frequency Instrument, and you lost its function because of what has happened with several other spacecraft of this type. I guess you just ran out of your coolant. Yes. So this particular instrument is including some detectors, the devices that actually sense the radiation from the sky. Devices are called bolometers, and they have to be cooled to very, very low temperatures. In fact, it's quite amazing the temperature that these... I was amazed. Just ever so slightly, a fraction of a degree Kelvin above absolute zero.

That is correct. So, in fact, these detectors are probably the coldest objects that we know of, at least in our known space. Unfortunately, because they have to be cooled to such a low temperature, they do require a very complicated cooling chain. And this cooling chain that we have on board consists of several coolers, which are in series with each other, and which require each other to function. The last step in the chain, which is the one that in fact cools the detectors to their final temperature,

is working on a mixture of two isotopes of helium. What was exhausted was one of the two isotopes. So unfortunately, the cooler doesn't work anymore. The bolometers have warmed up and they don't provide us with the wonderful data that they have given us for over more than 30 months. Yes, and as you said, you were able to get twice as long a life out of this instrument as you expected. How did you manage that?

Well, I think obviously we carried a margin on board. But the wonderful thing is that the cooler has been extremely stable. As I said, it's a long chain of coolers, and it's quite a complex piece of technology. And we were foreseeing to have some interruptions once in a while to the operation of this chain. But, in fact, we haven't had any, and therefore we are very lucky to have been able to use all this time very efficiently. What is the condition of the other instrument on this spacecraft, the LFI, or low-frequency instrument? The other instrument is working perfectly.

It is, in fact, working at a slightly higher temperature than the one that we were just talking about. It works at a temperature of 20 degrees above absolute zero, which is also very, very low. It is not requiring such a long chain of coolers. And therefore, the coolers that support it are still operating well. And we foresee that they will continue to do so for probably most of this year. Planck is going to add to our knowledge of really many things about the universe, including

its origin. Does it follow in the footsteps? Does it follow the legacy of other spacecraft that have tried to map this ever so slight unevenness in the cosmic background radiation? Definitely. It is, you could call it the third generation satellite. So we had the first generation, which was the COBE satellite, satellite developed and operated by NASA, which made the first discovery of these small ripples in the sky. And that was followed by a second satellite developed and launched by NASA, which was called WMAP, which made a much more precise mapping of these ripples

that we call the cosmic microwave background. So Planck was designed more or less at the same time as WMAP, so I'm not sure I would say that it follows in its footsteps. It is a much more powerful machine, but WMAP has given us a lot of knowledge that we will certainly build and use in the analysis of the Planck data. But your spacecraft is able to go much further. How will it tell us more about

this earliest stage of our universe? Yes, this is an important question and one that is not so easy to answer. I mean, we combine a number of measurement properties that make the overall set of data much more large, first of all, and able to give us much more precision in the determination of the properties of the early universe. So basically, what we are going to do with all this data is to measure some of the basic constants that characterize the universe, things like the amount of different kinds of matter and energy that it contains, and the dynamics of the universe, so things like the expansion and so on. And we can do that with a lot more precision than WMAP could by itself. Part of it is due to the fact that we carry cool detectors,

so they are very much more sensitive than the ones that were carried on board WMAP. And part of it is due to the fact that we are sensitive to a very much larger range of frequencies or colors of radiation, if you like, that allows us to deal much more effectively with some unwanted sources of radiation which are disturbing the signal at some level that we want to measure. We'll continue our conversation with Planck Mission Project scientist Jan Tauber 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.

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The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. The Planck mission is still out there in deep space, gathering data that will help solve some of the biggest questions cosmologists and astronomers have about our universe. Project scientist Jan Tauber looks forward to sharing much more of that data. What is it that you and the international scientific community hope to learn from this much-improved data, which I guess may be released in about a year?

The first set of data will indeed be released in about a year, and then there will be a second set of data which will be released about one year later. Obviously, we hope to be able to learn a lot about cosmology with this data. learn a lot about cosmology with this data. And ultimately, what we want to do is narrow down the field of possible theories that would explain the origin of our universe. And we think we can do that with this mission. There is one particular thing that we are very much hoping that we can do, and that is to detect so-called primordial gravitational waves, because these

detection would give us a direct link to the idea of inflation. It would give us some evidence that inflation actually happened, which is something that would be very important conceptually, because although inflation is part of our current paradigm or current accepted understanding of the birth of the universe, it is really not being demonstrated that it actually took place, and that's something that we would very much like to do. Is it possible that Planck may also help us to better understand dark matter, this stuff that we can't see but seems to dominate the universe. Yes, in different ways.

I mean, obviously we can measure the amounts of dark matter that are in the universe very precisely with Planck. But we can also use other means, because Planck is also sensitive not only to the phenomena in the very early universe, but also to phenomena that took place later. For example, we can measure the properties of galaxy clusters quite accurately using a specific signature that they produce as they interact with the cosmic microwave background itself. And by measuring the properties of clusters, we can constrain also the properties of dark matter,

because these clusters, you know, dark matter also is in some way clustered around these optical objects that we can see today. Isn't this some of the data that has already been released about some of these very early galactic clusters? Yes, we did. In fact, about a year ago, we released what we call the Early Release Compact Source Catalog, which is basically a list of very compact sources that we find in our first-generation maps. So we took basically the first year of data that we acquired, we made maps, and then we detected bright, compact objects in these maps,

and we made a list of them, and we provided them to the community. And some of these objects are indeed clusters of galaxies. With only a small amount of time left, could you say something about the international nature of this mission? You were telling me before we started recording, there's quite a heavy involvement by NASA. It is. Well, it is a mission that is basically a mission of ESA, which is the European Space Agency, and which already by itself carries the contribution of many, most European countries. of many, most European countries. But we also have a collaboration with NASA, in fact, via our instrument teams.

The instruments that we carry on the satellite are provided by scientific institutes, which are led by European institutes, but they have made specific agreements with U.S. scientific institutes for provision of specific items. These U.S. institutes are funded by NASA. So NASA has been quite an important, I would say, contributor to the Planck mission. And you said you have some Canadian involvement as well. Yes, yes. Canada is also a member of the European Space Agency, so Canada is certainly a participant in many ways. Just one other question. Any hints at what we might look forward to when that next group of data is released roughly a year from now?

Well, in fact, this is, of course, the question that everybody has. Well, we have to ask. That I cannot say anything about. I'm afraid that I'll have to leave you in the dark until we actually publish the data, at least as far as the cosmological results are concerned. It is important, you know, that we are very sure about what we publish, and the signals that we are extracting are so faint that it's always a question of a lot of work and a lot of care to make sure that they are indeed correct.

And therefore, it is best, and it's our policy not to talk about these things until we are sure, and then we publish, and everybody can hear about them. Quite right. And actually, you answered exactly as I was hoping, by explaining why it's going to be a year to analyze all this data. But let us hope that a year from now, you are ready to throw some light into that darkness, reaching back nearly to the beginning of our universe. Jan, thank you so much for joining us on Planetary Radio. Jan, thank you so much for joining us on Planetary Radio It's been a pleasure

and I hope I can really give you some more definite answers about a year from now We will call this a preview of that conversation in about a year away I would love to talk with you again Jan Tauber is the project scientist for the Planck mission an effort primarily by the European Space Agency but as you heard with other involvement

we spoke to him at the ESA's ESTEC, or European Space Research and Technology Center in the Netherlands. We'll try to throw some light on the current night sky and have some other fun with our friend Bruce Betts when we come back with What's Up in a few moments. in a few moments. Back in Bruce Batt's office for this week's edition of What's Up? We'll take a look at the night sky and do all that other fun stuff that we do. Hi there. Hey there, hi there, ho there.

How you doing, Matt? I'm okay, I'm okay. It's been an eventful couple of weeks for reasons I won't go into, but good things happening here too. It's very busy around the office. Yes, buzz, buzz, buzz. Busy little interplanetary bees. Mirror bees, they must be. We'll check back with mirror bees in a few weeks.

Yes, that's one of our projects for those playing the home game. How about I tell you about the night sky? We've got Venus and Jupiter stunning, stunning, stunning in the evening sky over in the west. Venus super bright. Jupiter really bright up above it. Mars coming up in the late evening. And then Saturn coming up around midnight. And Mars is getting brighter and brighter.

It legitimately looks like a bright reddish star now, rising around 9 p.m. In the east, it will be headed towards its opposition on March 3rd. So big excitement there. So anyway, this week in space history, very dark in 2003 was the Columbia space shuttle disaster. In a much happier note, Apollo 14 landed on the moon during this week in 1971. And in 1961, the chimp Ham made his suborbital flight. Good old Ham went into a nice long retirement. Indeed, I think wrote novels eventually. Yeah, he used a pseudonym though.

And what was that? Bacon. I was so hoping you'd ask i walked right into that didn't i okay we move on to is that ham on re-entry? Yes. Yes, it was. Prior to becoming bacon. About 85... You really cracked me on that one. About 85% of the surface of Venus is covered by relatively smooth, low-lying volcanic flows of lava.

And much of the remaining 15% is high standing with huge volcanoes. I would build where there's a view. I'm sure you would. They're worth much, much more. Of course, if you look for the ocean view, you're going to be waiting a long time. We move on to the trivia contest, and I asked you, what was the largest spacecraft to ever reenter the Earth's atmosphere? How'd we do, Matt? What a variety of entries. Now, there are going to be some people who figured that

you were up to your old tricks because you didn't specify manned or that is human or unhuman. Ham was not on the largest. We did get a lot of people, a fair number of people, who came up with the biggest robotic spacecraft. But Bruce didn't specify. And the biggest thing to come back was Mir. Russian space station Mir was the largest spacecraft, which is what was asked for to come back into the Earth's atmosphere. And we got a variety of masses for Mir, but they were all around 135, 140 tons, something like that.

Our winner, Igor Popov. He is one in the past. I think it's been a good long while. He hails from Novokibyshevsk. I practice this, too. Novokibyshevsk in the Samara region of Russia. Congratulations, Igor. We're going to send you a Planetary Radio t-shirt.

I'm sure you would have read that more accurately had it been in the original Cyrillic. I'm sure I would have, yeah. We did get some other interesting ones. For example, Adrian Zyga, he was talking about the 20-kilometer-wide disks from Independence Day, the big flying saucers that got knocked down by the computer virus. I should have thought of that. But there were more. We had more than one person who said the Starship Enterprise back in the mid-'60s.

Well, sure, sure. That's another option. I've got to learn to be more specific. We entered the atmosphere. It did not come down onto the surface. Fortunate for everyone. Oh, that's another option. I've got to learn to be more specific. Re-entered the atmosphere, did not come down onto the surface. Fortunate for everyone. Oh, that's right. Actually, we can rule out the Independence Day once, because I did call for re-entry.

Oh, that's right. They weren't re-entering. They simply entered. Now, the Enterprise, I don't know. There, I think I'm in trouble. That's a judgment call. Now, the best one we got, though, was, oh, you know what? And I didn't write down who this was from. I apologize to that wonderful submitter. We'll have to come up with it and praise him later. But he said that the largest spacecraft to reenter,

and again, it has that reenter, enter controversy that you brought up, the Tunguska, quotation marks meteor. Nudge nudge. I can't comment on that. He knows all the secrets. No, it was a meteoroid. It's my story and I'm sticking to it. We move on for next time. One of the spacecraft out there doing work every day,

day in, day out, and people tend to forget about it, but a great workhorse, Venus Express. European Space Agency Venus Express has been in orbit for, gosh, six years or so. And here's your question. What is the approximate current orbital period around Venus of Venus Express? How long does it take Venus Express to go around Venus? Go to planetary.org slash radio, find out how to enter.

All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky and think about flowers. Thank you and good night. I got nothing, but you must have something. What could I have ended with? Always a rosy conversation with you, Bruce. Let's pedal on out of here. He's Matt Kaplan.

He's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us every week here for What's Up. I don't think I have the stamen for any more. Oh, I am wilting. Get your contest entry to us by Monday, February 6th at 2 p.m. Pacific time. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society and made possible by a grant from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation and by the members of the Planetary Society.

Clear skies. Thank you.