Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Planetary Astronomer Franck Marchis

Episode Date: May 7, 2012

Based now at the SETI Institute’s Carl Sagan Center, Franck Marchis recently visited the Planetary Society for a conversation with host Mat Kaplan. He uses several of Earth’s most powerful telescopes to study what he calls multiple asteroid systems.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A visit with planetary astronomer Frank Marchese 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. A funny thing happened on the way to the National Air and Space Museum. We recorded a terrific show there during the USA Science and Engineering Festival. Sadly, we ran into technical problems that we're still working to resolve. But you will hear Bruce Betts and me with today's What's Up segment in front of an enthusiastic audience at the museum. I'll talk with Bill Nye in a couple

of minutes, but first we'll say hi to the Planetary Society's Science and Technology Coordinator, Emily Lakdawalla. Emily, so much to talk about in very little time this week, and it all comes from the brand new website, which is a terrific place to read the blog, or blogs, I should say. That's right. Now there are many, although you can still get to all of the blog entries by going to planetary.org slash blog, as you have always been able to do. And you'll see my blog entries as well as numerous other voices. And that's one of the greatest things about the new website is that it's so much easier to feature other people, such as Mark Raymond and Andy Chaikin. Andy Chaikin, who of course has been on this show for a while,

the famous author about great happenings in space exploration history. He has posted this terrific video that he produced, that he edited himself, about planetary science. He feels very strongly, as many of us do, that NASA's budget is a step in the wrong direction for planetary science. And he responded to that by producing this really quite lovely and inspiring video. And he brought it to me and said, you know, I think that if I post it on your site, that more eyes will see it. So will you take it? And I said, absolutely, yes.

So I'm delighted to feature the video on our site. How about these pictures that you posted from Cassini's recent flyby? Yeah, you know, these are stunning pictures, as usual, from Cassini. And I had a lot of fun putting together some pretty color views of one of Saturn's icy moons, Dione, poised in front of the yellow globe of Saturn. And these pictures, they're actually a little bit bittersweet because at the end of this month, Cassini is going to be doing a gravity assist flyby of Titan that's going to swing it up and out of the ring plane, which means that it will have far fewer encounters with

icy moons over the coming year or so. Our colleague AJS Rail has posted another update about the Mars Exploration Rovers. Yeah, and the main news this time, they are finally getting ready to drive. I can't wait to see Opportunity's wheels roving again. She is, after all, a rover, and that's what she needs to do. One last thing, and I think this is worth it as much for the great photo of you with your red and blue 3D glasses as for the image of a crater that if you put on your glasses, you can fall right into. Yeah, you can reach out and touch the boulders.

There's a guy named Nathaniel Burton Bradford who specializes in digging up data sets to make just amazing 3D views. And he did it again with this one. And this is on the moon. It's from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. It is, and it's of an unnamed crater. There are so many craters on the moon.

There are many without names, and some of the smaller ones are the most spectacularly pretty. Emily, thanks very much. Thank you, Matt. She is the Science and Technology Coordinator for the Planetary Society, and she is enjoying posting to the brand new website at planetary.org. Up next, Bill Nye. He's the CEO of the Planetary Society. We catch him in New York via Skype. But it was just a few days ago that a bunch of us were in Washington, D.C., Bill. Yes, for the USA Science and Engineering Festival. It was exciting. I mean, it's a celebration of math and science, getting young people, students,

especially in the Washington, D.C. area, to see what engineers and scientists do. And so at the Planetary Society, we had a booth, if I can use that term. People came and boy, there was a long line and I shook hands with as many people as I could. You really provided some quality time. And I think due to your presence and some other great special guests that we had, we had one of the most popular booths at the show, I think it's safe to say. You're going back there in just a couple of days as we speak, and hopefully you'll be just as popular. Yeah. So I'm going back to Capitol Hill to petition those who work for the representatives

in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Congress, petition those people to support planetary exploration, and by that we mean restore the $309 million line item in the NASA budget, which is dedicated to these extraordinary missions that make these extraordinary discoveries on other worlds. Cassini around Saturn, the Curiosity rover, which is going to Mars, and we want to continue Mars exploration because we may be just that close to finding signs of life, which would change the world. We're fighting the good fight, Matt. This is the kind of thing that great civilizations do, isn't it? Well said. Well said. Thank you. Well, Matt, I got to fly. Bill Nye, the planetary guy.

Flying down to Washington. And he'll join us again next week, perhaps with a little recap of this visit once again to Capitol Hill. He is Bill Nye, the CEO of the Planetary Society and the Science and Planetary Guy. For a relatively young astronomer, Frank Marchese has sure covered a lot of our solar system. He even hopes to be among the first to reveal the spectra of exoplanets, world-circling distant stars. But much of his work has been the study of asteroids with tiny moons of their own,

revealed by some of Earth's most advanced telescopes. Frank has also worked all over our planet, but he is now primarily found at the SETI Institute's Carl Sagan Center, where he is a principal investigator. He was in Pasadena a few weeks ago for meetings at the SETI Institute's Carl Sagan Center, where he is a principal investigator. He was in Pasadena a few weeks ago for meetings at the Jet Propulsion Lab. We were lucky enough to get him to stop by Planetary Society headquarters for a conversation. Frank, welcome to the Planetary Society. It's great to have you here as a guest on Planetary Radio.

Thanks for having me. What brings you down this way? I know you just came over from JPL. Well, I came here because JPL is a great place to be. I couldn't agree more. And I came here because I wanted to see my colleagues, talk to them about an idea of a space mission that I have in mind. And you were starting to tell me a bit about this mission before we begin recording. It has everything to do with this major interest you have in, well, you called it the diversity of objects in the main belt, but in particular, these asteroids that are little systems of their own. Yeah, we've been studying

these asteroids that I call multiple asteroid systems, in fact. They're not just one. They're multiple systems orbiting around the center of mass, orbiting around the large primary. The first one was discovered in 1993. That's IDA and Dactyl. Yes. The spacecraft Galileo, where it was crossing the main belt, basically. And then since then, we discovered a lot of them.

We know now 200 companions of asteroids. And some of these are trinary systems with three objects? Yes. We discovered the first one in 2005, that 87 Sylvia. It's a large 200-kilometer body primary with two tiny moons, seven kilometers approximately, called Remulus and Remus. And you were in on that discovery, right? Yeah.

Weren't you behind that? Yeah, we discovered them using adaptive optics at the VLT, and that was the leader of this project. We're going to come back to adaptive optics, which come up frequently on this program, but that's also something that you've been heavily involved with. Now, how do you go about discovering these? Do you see them directly, or is it occultation?

These are tiny objects quite far away. Well, there is various ways to discover them. And what I've been using so far mostly is adaptive optics, meaning that we use telescopes that correct the atmospheric turbulence from the ground. So we get an image like if the telescope was in space, just to simplify. So basically we get images with the Keck telescope, the VLT, the 8-meter class telescope. The very large telescope. Like if this telescope were in space, we are capable to detect the small companion, the tiny moon, nearby this asteroid. And you've begun to characterize some of these

objects as well, not just let us know that they're there, but determine their density? Yes. The idea of our research is not only to discover them, because now we know they exist, we know 200 of them, but also to be able to characterize them and to understand how they form and how they evolve, because they give us direct indication on the formation of the solar system on the terrestrial planet. We can estimate the density, and our grail now, our key project, is not only to estimate the density, but to be capable of estimating the internal structure of these bodies as well.

Why is it that they can teach us, these bodies, something about the origin of the entire solar system? Because we know that the terrestrial planet and the core of the giant planets formed from these bodies. These are remanent of the formation of the solar system. We basically like archaeologists in space. We are looking at what the remain of the formation, and these are those remain.

So looking at them, looking at the structure interior but also the surface and the way they involve we get information on how was the past how was the past of our solar system this is based on the thinking now uh that the asteroid belt resulted not from a planet that broke up but one that was never allowed to form, allowed, from what I've read, by Jupiter, its big neighbor. Yeah, that's correct. So the man belt is, in fact, most likely a snapshot of how was the past of our solar system, the beginning of the formation.

And we see diversity in this man belt. We see different bodies, different size, from a few meters up to 300, 1,000 kilometers. The largest one is one cirrus. The key question is really to understand the structure of this body, the color and their composition. And for this, we need to use ground-based telescopes, space missions as well. Are we now able to extrapolate, having found 200 of these multiple asteroid systems, that they are very common?

That's an interesting question. We think right now the idea is that 10 to 15 percent of near-Earth asteroids and inner man belt Hungarian asteroids, we call them, are binaries or extremely elongated. And we think that they form by interaction with the solar wind. That's what we call the Yorpe effect, which is basically an asteroid which is spin-up due to interaction with our solar wind. It's spin-up and split in two, forming two bodies. And what we see right now in the near-Earth asteroid population

and in the manned belt are these binary formed by this process. What I study mostly are not these kind of bodies. I study those which are made of a large component, 200 kilometers, and tiny moons. There are two formation ideas for this one. One is that they are formed by catastrophic disruption. They were, in fact, a larger body which has been destroyed during an impact, and large fragments formed the primary, and the tiny moonlets are, in fact,

the remnant of the swarm of fragments around the primary. The second scenario is that it's a large body which has been impacted by oblique impact and spin up, and the moon in this case is an infant of the primary. It's an ejector, basically, of the primary. More from planetary astronomer Frank Marchese 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,

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That's planetary.org slash radio. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. Planetary astronomer Frank Marchese is my guest. He is a principal investigator at the SETI Institute's Carl Sagan Center. We were talking before the break about his work on what he calls multiple asteroid systems, enabled by telescopes equipped with adaptive optics, those almost magical systems that allow ground-based scopes to perform as if they were high above Earth's atmosphere.

Have you also found evidence that some of these objects, not necessarily in the main belt, but I suppose it's possible, may have originated much farther out? We know binaries in a trans-Septic population as well. And in this case, the formation process is not the same. We don't think they form by collision. Maybe one population, this is a work by Mike Brown, so you know Mike Brown. Sure, right. Right up the street here. Yeah.

So you should maybe ask him. I'm sure he has a better idea than me on this topic. I've been interested mostly in Trojan asteroid because the Trojan asteroid, we think the result of the migration of the large planet. So when we study this Trojan asteroid, it's possible that in, we are studying the body which was in the outer part of the solar system

at the beginning of the life of our solar system, 3.8 billion years ago. You would like to collect more data if you had the chance, up close and personal. In fact, you were telling me that's partly why you were here at JPL, because you'd like to see a mission. Yeah, because now I think we are reaching the point where we have kind of a good understanding of the formation of this body.

We have theories which kind of fit the observations. But we have different ideas. I think it's time to take this research to another level and send spacecraft around these bodies. So one of the ideas we have is instead of sending multiple spacecraft in each body, to send one big mission which is going to visit various of these systems, different types of systems, the small one, the large one, two large binary systems.

So this would be a spacecraft, something like the Dawn mission, which obviously... It would be basically like a Dawn mission, yes. Which is invested and will be going to Ceres. Good luck with that. In the meantime, though, since we may not have that up-close and personal look for a while, how important is this development

of better ground-observing techniques using the kind of adaptive optics that you were describing? Well, with adaptive optics, we observe right now in the near infrared. What we would like to do in the future is to develop instruments which will be capable of observing invisible. So that's, I think, the next development of adaptive optics. The second step is to get at shorter wavelengths, see invisible as well.

The second development will be, of course, to build a larger telescope. And people will think we are dreaming, but we are not dreaming. The Europeans are doing it. They started the construction of the EELT, the European Extremely Large Telescope. After the VLT, they have to be the extremely large. The next one, I don't know what it's going to be but so the elt is basically a 40 meter telescope which is located in chile it will be located sorry in chile close to the vlt this instrument will be equipped as well with adaptive

optics so we have image quality like if we had a telescope a a 30-meter telescope in space. We're almost out of time, but there was an intriguing reference in the page that I read about you on the SETI Institute website, which we'll link to from the show page this week, which mentions some of the adaptive optic research that you're doing, possibly resulting in a system that will be able to directly observe exoplanets, planets circling other stars, and perhaps get their spectra, the spectra of their atmospheres. I can't think of anything much more exciting than that. I didn't want to talk about that. Sorry. It's right there in black and white though. It's a perfect conclusion. Adaptive optics have been extremely useful to image solar system bodies, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, asteroids, and so on.

Now we're taking it to another level as well with developing instruments dedicated to the search and the characterization of exoplanets. There are two competitive projects, as usual in astronomy. One is SPHERE, which is a European project by ESO. And the second one is GPI, Gemini Planet Imager, which is an instrument built in collaboration from various institutions, in California, in Canada, and somewhere else. That's the one you're working on? Yes, that's the one I'm working on.

So GPI, the PI is Bruce McIntosh. He's currently at UCSC at Livermore. We'll have his first slide at the end of 2012 if everything goes well. Wonderful. 2013, we should see a lot of images of spectra of exoplanets.

Exciting times ahead. Exciting time and clearly show that adaptive optics reach maturity, that now we can really start doing good science with this system. We know how to build them. We know how to use them in an efficient way. And this is thanks to these 15 years of development we had in California and Canada in particular. Good luck with your research.

I hope to see that mission that you would like to see the folks in the other direction here up the street perhaps pursue someday, Frank. Thank you very much for having me. Dr. Frank Marchese is a principal investigator at the Carl Sagan Center. That's at the SETI Institute. He's been up there since July of 2007, but he went full-time there not long ago, only about nine months ago, after being in the Department of Astronomy at UC Berkeley for many years. Now a special treat, direct from the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Bruce Betts and I sat down

in the museum's Moving Beyond Earth gallery for a few intimate minutes with 300 or so close friends. Listen for a cameo appearance by Emily Lakdawalla. All right, it's time for What's Up with my friend Bruce Betts, astronomer and Planetary Society Director of Projects. Welcome, Bruce. Thank you, Matt. Good to be here. So, this is that time of the show when we hear about what's up in the night sky.

Unfortunately, tonight in D.C., not much. It's overcast. True, but I'm pretty sure the planets and stars are still there. I hope so. Every other time this has happened to me, they've come out. There's always a first time, though. So what should we be seeing? Well, we should be seeing what you will see over the coming nights when you've got a clear sky is when you look over in the west, you'll see that super bright star-like object, which is Venus. And you can also check out Mars, high in the south, looking reddish, getting dimmer over

time. And over in the east, in the evening sky, you can check out Saturn, looking kind of yellowish coming up. And about five degrees to the right of Saturn, you will see the bright star Spica, which is bluer and whiter. Just because it wants to be. Because that's what the color in the crayon box said. Spica blue. Spica blue was always my favorite crayon.

Oh, yeah, that's good. And it's that time of the show where I'd like to get the help of our audience in yelling out the words Random Space Fact. Are you ready? One, two, three. Random Space Fact! I'm impressed. That was beautiful.

That was awesome. First try, that was awesome. Oh, man. Most people it takes a couple of takes. You guys are good. You have a Random Space Fact, don't you? I always have a Random Space Fact. But we also have one from somebody else.

Let's hear yours first. It has to do with one of the artifacts here in the museum, or multiple artifacts all connected together, which is the Apollo-Soyuz test project. And they've got backup versions of the modules out here connected. I always thought that was kind of cool. When Apollo and Soyuz got together in the mid-'70s, they had to deal with different pressures. The Americans were using about a third of an atmosphere in pressure of pure oxygen,

and the Soviets were using atmospheric pressure with a pretty normal mix of atmospheric gases. So that thing in between the two spacecrafts served not only as the locking docking mechanism, but it also served as a pressure airlock. They actually had to have an airlock just to go from one ship to another. It was the Cold War. Now by the way, ISS is using the one atmospheric pressure and a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen. So score one for the Soviets. Meh.

It just happens that we have found somebody in the audience who also has a random space fact for us. Rachel, stand up. Hi, thanks for helping us with the show tonight. What is your random space fact? Pluto is actually red. Pluto is actually red. Pluto is actually red. Correct, planetary geologist?

Pluto is definitely a red place, and Charon is not, which makes that double planet quite interesting. Pluto is reddish and also has variations across its surface with some areas redder than others. Nice work, Rachel. Can we give her a big hand for that random space fact? Thank you very much, Rachel, for helping us. We're going to go on to the trivia contest now. First thing we're going to do, because we're going to get to you guys in the live audience as well,

we're going to find out who won our trivia contest of a couple of weeks ago. What was that question, Bruce? What was that question, Matt? Something about, I don't know, frogs in orbit. No, that was the answer, Matt. The question it was not trivia jeopardy. We asked you, what were the first

because this is important, what were the first amphibians in space? Of course, now everyone knows the answer. I'm sorry. But give us more information. How did we do and tell us our winner? They were frogs, okay? We've ruined the suspense here. Frogs in space.

Tony Gray of Fayetteville, Arkansas got the answer correct this week and was chosen by Random.org. Congratulations, Tony. Now, normally we'd be sending Tony a Planetary Radio t-shirt, but remember, we had those Skype buddy packs. Very cool. Given to us by Skype, a couple of webcams, a couple of headsets, and an hour of international calling time. So, Tony, we're going to put that in the mail to you soon.

Congratulations. And, by the way, they were accompanied by animals you don't normally think of as accompanying frogs, guinea pigs. by animals you don't normally think of as accompanying frogs, guinea pigs. Which was daring because they're actually naturally predatory in the wild against each other. I was going to say they came back with some weird hybrid of a frog-guinea pig, but that's just... Anyway, yes, what was it, 1961? Frogs and guinea pigs. Amphibians go back really early. For next time, and in honor once again of being here in the Air and Space Museum. And one of the super cool artifacts is, of course, the Apollo 11 command module return

capsule. On launch of Apollo 11, who sat in the middle seat? Who did not get the window? Who sat in the middle seat on launch of Apollo 11? Go to planetary.org slash radio, find out how to enter. Okay, and you have until Monday, mate, at 2 p.m. to get us that answer, and you might win yourself a Planetary Radio t-shirt. All right, now the thing that everybody... Wait, I have to say, so you don't feel too sorry for them, it was an exit row. That's good. Okay, go on. Now we can turn it over to you guys. It's what you've been waiting for, our live space trivia contest. So put on your trivia caps.

We're going to throw the first question out there. Remember, raise your hand. Bruce, the first question. The first question, Matt. What was the first successful flyby of a planet? What spacecraft was the first to successfully fly by another planet? Let me be clear, besides Earth. What do we got out there?

This could be a tough one. We got somebody in the front row here. Hi, what's your name? Hi, Angela. What was it? Voyager. That is not correct. No.

Anybody else have a guess? It was before that. I can tell you that much right over here, sir. Mariner. I need more. Yeah. Which one? Oh, dear.

Mariner one. That is incorrect. Oh, okay. He's made it easy for somebody else. That hardly seems fair, does it? How about way in the back there? Mariner two? It was indeed Mariner two.

No. there? Mariner 2? It was indeed Mariner 2. Mariner 2, a U.S. spacecraft that flew by Venus. What is your name? Liam. Liam, we've got a Celestron pair of binoculars here for you. Congratulations. Alright, let's try it again. You got another one for us. Alright, we'll go from the

60s. We flash forward to just a few days ago. And this trivia question came to me from our Planetary Society volunteers here tonight. Gary Guthman. And it was what when Discovery, the space shuttle Discovery, was just flown up from Florida to

live at one of the National Air and Space Museum facilities. What was the call sign of the 747 space shuttle combination as it flew? We're back in the front here, yes. Pluto. I might need more. The call sign of the 747 carrier. I'm not as picky because there weren't other Plutos. The carrier aircraft

that carried Discovery. You know, if we don't see any hands, we'll just move on to another question. We'll get the answer from Bruce. Way in the back there. Oh, no, no. She changed her mind. She changed her mind. Close enough. Pluto 95. Pluto 95. We're going to give it to you. Here's a pair of Celestron binoculars.

We've got one more. You've got one more shot, folks. Here we go. I'm sorry, but this may be challenging. But I just can't get enough of this. So back to, we're going to talk Apollo-Soyuz. There were three astronauts, U.S. astronauts, two Soviet cosmonauts.

Name at least one of the astronauts and one of the cosmonauts from Apollo-Soyuz. So one astronaut, one cosmonaut, one Soviet, one American. At least. Yes, sir. Slayton. Yes.

And Orlovsky. No. Oh, but he's halfway there. Does anybody else have a guess? You know what? You came very close because you're the guy who said Mariner last time. That's good enough for a pair of binoculars. Let's give him a big hand.

Two half answers. Give us a whole answer. That's true. Yeah. Who were the Soviets? The Soviets were Alexei Leonov and Valery Kubasov. Kubasov, excuse me. And we had Tom Stafford and Vance Brand in addition to Deke Slayton.

Thank you. I'll talk to you again next week. All right, everybody. Go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about your favorite National Air and Space Museum artifact. Thank you, and good night. He's Bruce Betts, the Planetary Society's Director of Projects. He joins me each week here for What's Up.

That contest deadline is Monday, May 14. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California 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.