Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Planetary Radio Live at Yuri’s Night—Under Space Shuttle Endeavour

Episode Date: April 15, 2014

Join the party as we celebrate the 53rd anniversary of humanity’s transition to spacefaring species with Yuri’s Night Executive Director Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides, Virgin Galactic CEO and Yuri’s Night co-founder George Whitesides, and astronaut Ron Garan, who heads Fragile Oasis.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's Yuri's Night on Planetary Radio. Welcome. All right, settle down. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, sitting beneath a spaceship called Endeavor. We're back at the California Science Center for the annual worldwide celebration of space. It's the 53rd anniversary of humanity's birth as a space faring species, something that happened as Yuri Gagarin rocketed into low Earth orbit on April 12, 1961. Stay with us as we talk with two of the founders of Yuri's Night and an astronaut who lived up there for months.

We'll begin with special greetings from someone who wishes he could have been with us here this evening. I don't think he needs any introduction. Hey, hey, Bill Nye the Planetary Guy here celebrating with you Yuri's Night, where Yuri Gagarin went around the Earth for the first time in just 90 minutes. He's coming down, and he had to jump out of his own space capsule to land safely on the Earth. A remarkable guy, a pilot, a hero, a guy who, dare I say it, changed the world. He went out there to make discoveries, and he had an adventure. You know why? Because he was exploring, just like you and me. Let's work together and change the worlds. Thank you.

That's my boss, the science guy. Now there's someone else who wishes she could have joined the party this evening. Emily Lakdawalla is the Planetary Society's senior editor and our planetary evangelist. Here's the latest of our weekly visits. Welcome back, Emily. Sorry that you couldn't join us right at Yuri's night, but you're still part of the celebration. Tell us about Kimberly, this very attractively enticingly named feature that Curiosity is visiting on Mars. It's actually the Kimberley. The definite article is an important part of its name. The geologists on the Curiosity mission identified this spot from orbit many months ago as being the most interesting looking spot on the route between Yellowknife Bay, which is where they did their first drilling experiments a year ago, and Murray Buttes, which is where they'll cross the basaltic sand dunes and get a lot closer to Mount Sharp.

And so they've been driving, like I said, for about a year and are ready to deploy the drill for really only the second time on the mission. As you were talking, I finally put on my 3D glasses. And this first image you have is quite remarkable, which happens to be the name of one of the features here, I think. Yes, I'm very proud of that, actually. So I started with a base map that was a high-rise image. That's the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It's a high-rise image of the Kimberley area on Mars, but it's actually a combination of two

high-rise images, which means it's in stereo. So if you have red-blue 3D glasses, you can see the landscape features pop out at you. And the Kimberley is this spot where there is some lighter colored rock that's cropping out of the ground, and it's got three buttes at its corners. It kind of reminds me of the positions of the holes in a bowling ball, except instead of a bowling ball, instead of holes, we've got hills, and they bound these outcrops of three different kinds of rock, at least, that Curiosity is exploring now. The team thinks they're mostly sandstones, which makes them a little bit less interesting

from the point of view of searching for remnants of organics on Mars. But the team also has said that they're not quite sure what makes all these sandstones look so different from each other. They think it may have to do with the minerals that are gluing the sands together, that there might be different minerals in each of the rocks. So they're going to go drill and check out the answer to that question. Before we bid you farewell, and you are already on the road, we should say, who is this Ken Herkenhoff, whose material you feature pretty prominently? Well, he's one of the many geologists on the Curiosity mission, and like many of the team members, he occupies a variety of roles. He sometimes chairs the Science Operations Working Group, or SOG, which is the team of scientists on any given day that decides what to do with the rover.

He's also the head at times of the Molly and Marty cameras, which are the cameras on the end of the arm and the one that points down to the bottom of the rover that images gravel on the ground. And so he's responsible for tactical planning. And he's a geologist who's very excited to see all of the beautiful images of rocks that are coming back from the mission. And he's blogging nearly every day at the United States Geological Survey website, which gives me great insight into what's going on in the mission. And I'm glad to share that with my readers. And Emily is blogging nearly every day at planetary.org. You can see this Curiosity update right there. It is an April 11 entry, quite an extensive one with beautiful images. Grab your 3D glasses first.

Emily, we won't be talking to you next week, but I look forward to having you as a guest on stage two weeks from now. That's when the show will air at the USA Science and Engineering Festival. It's going to be fun. Looking forward to it, Matt. She is our senior editor and planetary evangelist, Emily Lakawala of the Planetary Society. She's also a contributing editor for Sky and Telescope magazine. We're back on stage in the California Science Center's Samuel Ocean Pavilion, the temporary home of Endeavor, the space shuttle

that carried humans and their creations into space 25 times, including a service mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. I can't think of a better place to celebrate space on Yuri's Night. The party here is just getting started. We're going to talk to a few special guests before it really gets crazy here. And that will begin with the executive director of Yuri's Night. Loretta Hidalgo-Whitesides is a Caltech and Stanford-trained biologist who is a flight director for the Zero-G Corporation.

That means that she has experienced microgravity more than 700 times. I want to hear some astronaut top that. On the other hand, she's worked with Jim Cameron to explore the deepest reaches of our planet's oceans. Loretta is part of the Overview Institute and other organizations that are dedicated to our destiny across the universe. And she was there at the birth of Yuri's Night in 2001 and has shepherded the worldwide celebration ever since. Not surprisingly, she's here with us tonight. Please welcome Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides. Thank you, Matt.

My pleasure, as always. Another year, another worldwide party for space. What's going on tonight? Well, we're really excited because we have over 150 events all over the planet. All the continents have parties going on tonight? Well, we're really excited because we have over 150 events all over the planet. All the continents have parties going on. There is even a shrimp in space party going on in Europe. You have to make sure you order your shrimp tickets in advance so they have enough shrimp. It's really fun for me just to peruse through the website and see all the different crazy things that people are doing to celebrate. And I really was heartened this year to see how

many museums and planetariums were really starting to get involved now. And I really was heartened this year to see how many museums and planetariums were really starting to get involved now. In the beginning, we were very spunky and grassroots, and now sort of the institutions are starting to see this is a really important opportunity to reach out to the public. We have Chabot up in San Francisco and the California Academy of Arts.

San Francisco itself just has its own... Anyway, so it's been great. So there are big parties, like this one on this scale, but they're also small get-togethers. Oh, yeah. We say it only takes two people to make a Yuri's Night. So... Sometimes it really hurts to just be radio. Remind us of how this all got started.

I was working at Johnson Space Center, and I noticed on all the calendars there that it says April 12th is the anniversary of the space shuttle launch, and my birthday is April 12th. So I thought, oh, my God, that's amazing. How cool. I was born on a space day. I love it.

And then that was about the end. And my birthday is April 12th, so I thought, oh my God, that's amazing, how cool. I was born on a space day, I love it. And then that was about the end, it was in the 90s, and it was about the end of the Cold War. And the Soviet Union, or the former Soviet Union, had sent over an exhibit of all of their space memorabilia to Houston. And it was the first time it had ever left the country, you know, now that the wall had fallen. And I went to go see this exhibit, I'd always been really drawn to the Russian space program. And when I was going to that exhibit, it was called First in Space, it said that Gagarin flight was also on April 12th. And I was just stunned that it was 20. I just thought, this is too extraordinary.

It was meant to be. It's meant to be. It's cosmic. I remember showing up because I'd heard about this group of young people, kids, who were getting together at Caltech. We were young then, yes. Using an unused lab, if I remember correctly. And I came by and said, can I help? That was the core.

And some of those people have gone on to some pretty great things, including you, but some other folks like the guy you're married to. Yeah, and George, the co-creator. He's pretty awesome. What does it really mean to you? Obviously, it's very important to you personally, but is something for civilization? I like that we're empowering people to take space on for themselves. We give people direct access to space who wouldn't normally have it, and we empower people to go out and create space celebrations and to get the public excited about space on their own. We empower you to go out and create your own events

and you be the ones who are helping us spread this message of what space can do for humanity. We're going to move along because there's a whole bunch more program left to do this evening underneath the space shuttle, underneath Endeavor. But you'll stick around, I hope. Yeah, and thanks, Matt, to you, too. He did the webcast from the original Yuri's Night, 2001.

What a blast. It was amazing. Just one of the greatest experiences of my life. I still have this lovely Snoopy medallion that I was awarded by Loretta and George and the other founders to mark that evening. One of my proudest possessions. Loretta, I want to bring somebody else up here who I think you know reasonably well. I first met George Whitesides 13 years ago at that same grouping, a little in that lab at Caltech, he and that

ragtag group of college students that were planning this little party that went worldwide right from the start. It was the very first Yuri's Night celebration, as you've heard. It went worldwide right from the start. It was the very first Yuri's Night celebration, as you've heard. I kind of figured that he wouldn't stop there, and he didn't. He became the executive director of the National Space Society, then the NASA chief of staff, earning the agency's distinguished service medal. That's the highest award they give out. And now he's the CEO at Virgin Galactic,

whose SpaceShipTwo is this close to making its first flight all the way into space. And in case it wasn't already obvious along the way, he and Loretta got married. Help me welcome George Whitesides. white sides. So as I was doing research for this, George, and reading about Ron and reading about the overview effect and so much of what is behind all of this, I realized it became clear to me that there's this fiendish plot that you and your boss, Sir Richard Branson, have hatched to get a lot more men and women up into space just so that we'll take better care of our planet and each other. Yeah, I mean, you could say that, Matt. I do think that's really important.

I mean, I think the idea that we're going to have hundreds and eventually thousands and tens of thousands of people going up into space and looking down on our planet will have a really huge impact on how we view our planet and perceive our planet. And I think that that will be profound for our society. So I think it's, people talk about it as space tourism, but I think it's going to have a huge impact on planet Earth. And it will be much more than tourism, which I hope is something you'll talk about, some of the science that may also be done on vehicles like Spaceship Two. So actually, who works for Galactic or TSC here? Can you raise your hands or stand up for a second? We got a pretty good turnout here tonight, yeah?

These are the folks who are... TSC being the spaceship company. The spaceship company, so thanks guys. So they're the ones who are doing all the hard work. The spaceship company. Thanks, guys. So they're the ones who are doing all the hard work. They'll go up in suborbital trajectories,

and we'll be able to do all kinds of science, atmospheric research, astronomy, microgravity, biological sciences, physiological things. So I think we've already got a couple of NASA research flights, and I think that'll be a really exciting thing so that if we can be flying weekly or several times a week, you could just sort of show up with your experiment and fly, you know, the next day. And I think that that will change how people think about space science. And then there are those people who just want to get up there. How many do you have on the

waiting list now who have made their deposit? We have now about 700 people. Wow. Tell us the status. Yeah, so we're putting the interiors in, and we're basically making some mods to the vehicle, and then we'll do some test flights over the summer, go to space, and then we get ready to transfer down to New Mexico, and then we'll do Richard's flight before the end of the year.

Your test pilots have really nice things to say about how it flies. Yeah, they do. They say it's a really good vehicle. We've gotten it through the Mach 1 region, transonic, and it gets through that well now. We'll need to have a supersonic reentry, which is sort of one of the next major test points. Yeah, it's going to be an exciting summer.

Is there a thought that maybe your boss will make that flight in 2014? Oh, yeah, he's going to fly in 2014. Yeah. Okay. Excellent. It's extremely exciting. I mean, this really is world-changing. We look up at this big ship that we're sitting under in front of. I walk in here, it's the first time in a year I've been here. I was almost in tears looking at it again, and yet it was time for this to be retired. I think Spaceships 2 time is here, is beginning. Yeah, I think commercial spaceflight, broadly defined, it's a great time for that. Between all the different companies that are doing great stuff,

there's a lot of innovation in the sector. We have to have that innovation if we're going to drive into the solar system in a big way, because if space stays super expensive, it's going to stay this thing that we only do a little bit. And so we have to drive that cost down so we can do a lot of stuff in space.

And there are people here tonight who are trying to launch space cocktails. Have we talked about that already tonight? Where's the space cocktail guy? Is he around? We've had space shrimp and now space cocktails. I think they Where's the space cocktail guy? Is he around? We've had space shrimp and now space cocktails. I think they're launching

a space cocktail. Okay, so he's your space cocktail guy right there. There he is in the back. And appropriate Sam Coniglio. And there's a lot of innovation. That's what we need. We need humanity up in space,

not just... I mean, we love scientists. We love engineers. But we need the whole broad spectrum of humanity to go into space. And that's sort of what Yuri's Night is ultimately about, that we all can participate in space. Spaceship 2 is not the whole story at Virgin Galactic. Can you say something about Launcher 1 as well? Yeah, so we're building a small satellite launch vehicle that will take little sort of like refrigerator-sized satellites and down into space.

little sort of like refrigerator-sized satellites and down into space. And that will be great as well for people who are building these new small satellites, build something that's super cheap so you can get them up for a few million bucks. We've already tested the engines for that. We have a lot of work to do still, but we're making good progress on that. Do you see a continuum in your life from Yuri's Night to the first Yuri's Night to what you do for a living now? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think what Loretta and I have always wanted to do is

get the rest of us into space and allow everyone to participate in space. And that's why it's awesome to see so many different kinds of people here on our little LA space pilgrimage. It's just we want to bring humanity into space and that's what it's all about. Still got the honeymoon plans up there?

Still got the honeymoon plans. Maybe something else by the time we go up, but when you have a couple kids, I'm not sure you can call it honeymoon anymore. Plenty of seats in there, I think, right? Thank you, George, for stepping in and joining us up here. We've got one more person to bring up this evening, but before we do that, please help me thank George Whitesides for joining us here.

Former Air Force combat and test pilot Ron Guerin was born the year Yuri Gagarin made his pioneering flight into space. Fifty years later, almost on the anniversary of Gagarin's mission, Ron lifted off from Russia for the International Space Station, where he would live for half a year. He had already been up there three years before when he chalked up a bunch of extra vehicular or spacewalk hours, adding a huge new laboratory to the ISS. All told, he has chalked up 127 days above our planet, and of those, 27 hours outside in his spacesuit,

all of which fills me with envy. He has also created an organization that we'll be talking about called Fragile Oasis. Please welcome astronaut Ron Garrow. Thanks, man. My pleasure. Thank you for joining us. Is it kind of a kick to be sitting here under the sister of the ship that took you up to the ISS? Excuse me, your first flight. Well, no, I flew on Discovery, but I flew... The sister of Discovery. The sister, yeah. And so when I was on the space station for that six-month tour,

Endeavor and Atlantis came up to visit on their last flight. So I was telling George when I walked in the door, I got a little emotional, because this is the first time I've ever seen one of these displays. I haven't seen the one in Florida. I haven't seen the one in New York.

And so, you know, it was a little emotional for me walking in here. A little sad. Have you been in there? Did you go next door through the hatch and visit inside Endeavor when you were on? Oh, yeah. We had a meal. Ate a meal in space on Endeavor and did

a lot of work when those guys were docked. I am so in awe. I truly am. I want to... Well, I've got all three of you up here because George and Loretta are still here. I want to talk about the overview effect, a term coined, I think, by a friend to all of you guys, Frank White, who also founded the Overview Institute. Ron, because you're the only one up here, at least so far, who I may have experienced it, how would you define it?

Actually, next week at Harvard, or probably the day that this airs, on April 15th, we're having a third in a series of panel discussions at Harvard on the overview effect. And that's based on a book that Frank White wrote that basically explores this shift in perspective that one can get by looking at the planet for the first time in space. And you don't have to be in space to have that perspective. The book starts out, and he talks a great deal about, you know, that iconic Earthrise picture, you know, the first time that we saw the Earth from space. And, you know, a lot of the astronauts have commented, you know, we went to the moon to discover the moon, and in the process we discovered Earth. And I think it's a really interesting institute.

It's a really interesting discussion. It's a really interesting discussion about this change in worldview, this change of perspective that you can have from that experience. You haven't seen the Earth from the moon, but you did have an experience that I read about on your Fragile Oasis site, an organization, like I said, we'll talk about in a moment, that apparently was the turning point for you when you were extra vehicular, right? Yeah, there was a time on my first spaceflight where I was, it was the third EVA, the third spacewalk that we did. And in this particular spacewalk, I was on the end of the space station's robotic arm. And with me strapped to the arm, if you will, my toes are under these

toe clamps that held me on the end of the arm. The arm was flown through a maneuver we called the windshield wiper. So it took me across a big arc across the top of the space station and back. So at the top of this arc, I was 100 feet above the space station, looking down at this incredible accomplishment of humanity against the backdrop of our just indescribably beautiful Earth. And it really is a very, very moving experience. I want to read you a quote from your blog.

Seeing the Earth from this vantage point gave me a unique perspective, something I've come to call the orbital perspective, and at its core is the undeniable and sobering contradiction between the staggering beauty of our planet and the unfortunate realities of life on our planet for many of its inhabitants. It was kind of both high and low. Yeah, it was. It really is, that's the only way I could describe it, undeniable sobering contradiction.

It hits you like a ton of bricks and you're flooded with this emotion of seeing this incredibly indescribably beautiful sight, but you're also aware of what's behind that. And a good example of that is I took this really interesting picture one day. I took it of Libya and the Mediterranean, and it's just this beautiful, beautiful picture. The curvature of the Earth's in there. It's on a little angle. The sun looks great, and it's strikingly beautiful.

And then if you think about what's going on in that picture on the microscopic level, that picture was taken on the day that Tripoli fell. And so when you think about this beautiful picture and then you think about what was going on on the ground there during that time, it is a sobering contradiction. It really is. Did this lead to the creation of this organization, Fragile Oasis? No, Fragile Oasis was born out of a frustration I had on my first space flight. So here I was. We launched on Space Shuttle Discovery.

We were up there for two weeks, and I was really frustrated that I couldn't share the experience with anybody real time. I could take pictures. I could take video. But I wanted a way to bring people along on the mission, not just as spectators, but as fellow crewmates. There was no capability for social media in space at that time. We've since incorporated social media into the whole idea, but it really came about from this desire to share the mission, but also this desire to use this perspective we have of our planet to inspire people to go out and make a difference and to make the world a better place, and that's kind of the whole idea behind it. And so what does the organization do?

It's at fragileoasis.org. And what we do is we try and highlight those organizations, those efforts that are trying to make the world a better place. We're trying to provide a collaborative platform. You know, we didn't want to just go and say, hey, we've got this beautiful planet, make it better. So we're trying to provide a collaborative platform. We're going to work with URI's night. We're going to sign an MOU. And one of the things that we want to do with URI's night is to provide a way for organizations to measure their impact. We want to create impact dashboards so that you can see what the different organizations are doing.

And I'm going to talk a little bit about that in the presentation as well. I've got some slides on Fragile Oasis that we'll go into. Excellent. George, you've met a lot of astronauts. So have you, Loretta. Is this kind of a unifying attitude? Do you see this life-changing experience among the people that you've talked to? Yeah, certainly a lot of my friends and colleagues that I've spoken to over the years who've been in space, you know, I've always picked their brains about what their experience was like. And yeah, it's been great to hear their stories and their reflections on what it meant for them and the beauty

and the impact of that experience had on their life. And I just love that. I think Ron in particular has been amazing at communicating the experience of spaceflight. I mean, more than almost anyone I can think of, your work has been really incredible about sharing that in a deep way. And I just want to recognize you here.

That's why we wanted you here tonight, was because of all you've done in that. Marina, I can't wait to see your show. So thanks for doing that. Thank you. Thank you, guys. You know what? We're pretty much out of time,

and there's a lot left to do. I just am going to thank the Yuri's Night Organization and the California Science Center for their support this evening. Please join me in also thanking my guests, Loretta Hidalgo-Whitesides, George Whitesides, and Ron Guerin. Loretta, George, see you again next year. And I'll be right back with Bruce Betts and this week's edition of What's Up. Hey, hey, Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society, speaking to you from PlanetFest 2012, the celebration of the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity landing on the surface of Mars.

This is taking us our next steps in following the water and the search for life to understand those two deep questions. Where did we come from? And are we alone? This is the most exciting thing that people do. And together, we can advocate for planetary science and, dare I say it, change the worlds.

Your name carried to an asteroid. How cool is that? You, your family, your friends, your cat, we're inviting everyone to travel along on NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu. All the details are at planetary.org slash b-e-n-n-u. You can submit your name and then print your beautiful certificate. That's planetary.org slash b-e-n-n-u. You can submit your name and then print your beautiful certificate. That's planetary.org slash Bennu. Planetary Society members, your name is already on the list. The Planetary Society, we're your place in space. Indeed, here we are with Bruce Betts, the Director

of Projects for the Planetary Society. Yet another person who was unable to join us for Yuri's Night, but I can tell you we had a great time. It was a really cool party. If you don't mind a lot of noise and crowds. I do. Then wherever you were, you were in the right place. It was quiet and lonely and nice. Yeah, it was fun and exciting, but I have to admit, I left a little bit early. It was a sensory overload.

Well, I'm glad you had a good time. Thank you. Hey, if everyone else would like to have a good time, go out and look up at the night sky. How about that segment? Check out Mars while it's still really, really bright, rising in the east, and check out its old friend, dimmer, bluish Spica, the star, reddish, looking cool, that Mars thing. Same time you're looking at that, go ahead and check out Jupiter looking super bright, much brighter over far to your right, high in the sky in the south in the early evening. Saturn coming up a couple hours after Mars and then Venus dominating the east in the pre-dawn. A fabulous planet lineup. By the way, the tweets aredawn. A fabulous planet lineup.

By the way, the tweets are pouring in. They all say, hashtag great segue. Oh, cool. I'm glad you've instituted that new hashtag following live thing. So anyway, check out the planets. On to this week in space history. Apollo 13 returned safely in 1970 this week, and then Apollo 16, about two years later in 1972, launched for its journey off to the moon.

That was a big week. It was indeed. On to random space fact. Could you get the door lurch? What did he used to say? You rang. Well done. Jupiter is so massive that the very center of the sun-Jupiter system,

in other words, the point that both of them revolve about, is actually outside of the sun, even though Jupiter's 5 AU, 5 Earth-Sun distances away from the Sun. Now, it's not very far out. It's 1.068 solar radii from the Sun's center. But I still thought that was kind of impressive. That is. That's very, very impressive.

And I like that term, Barry Center. He was also a very low singing singer from the 70s and the 80s. Hi, you're back with Barry's Center. Now shut your mouth. Tapped. On to the trivia contest. We asked you, in what year does the next total lunar eclipse tetrad begin after the current 2014 one, a tetrad, as you'll recall,

being four total lunar eclipses in a row. And how do we do, Matt? Great responses. Some very, very thorough responses that I'll get to in a moment. But first, tell us if John Leindecker of Aurora, Colorado had it right, because Random.org wants him to win this week, wants him to win that new and improved Planetary Radio t-shirt. He said the next one starts in 2032. That is indeed correct. Yay, John, we're going to send a t-shirt. He said the next one starts in 2032. That is indeed correct. Yay, John, we're going to send a t-shirt to you. As soon as you tell us what size.

Tell us what size you want, people. We'll save valuable electrons, save some email going back and forth. We also heard from Bob Moeller, and Bob provided the specific dates, April 25 and October 18, 2032, April 14 and October 8, 2033. So any of you who missed marking that on your calendar because I went too fast, tough luck. This is really interesting from Ilya Schwartz, who analyzed tetrads across eons. Well, actually, just what do you call the thousand years? Eons are 10,000. Millennium, thank you. Millennia. He has a whole bunch of stuff here. But that this century, between 2001 and 2100, is tied with eight tetrads for most in a century between, get this, 2000 BCE and 3000 AD.

We live in a very fortunate century. We win. All right, just a couple more. We got the right answer as well from Wojciech Nawalek, who is in the Czech Republic, who said that, sure enough, it starts on April 25th, 2032. And, of course, Central Europe will be clouded on all four occasions. They have good forecasting. That is the prediction. And finally, we had a couple of people, including Edward Smith, who said, note that the lunar eclipse tetrad is not to be confused with the lunar eclipse tetris,

where you try to fit eclipses of different types together to form patterns and score points. Those occur much more often. Yeah. All right, now we're finally ready to move on. What was the dwarf planet Eris named after? So the trans-Neptunian object, most massive thing we know of in the outer, outer solar system, Eris. What was it named after? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest to get us your entry.

radio contest to get us your entry. And this time you have until Tuesday, April 22nd, the 22nd at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us your answer. And I think we're done. All right, everybody, go out there, look up in the night sky and think about taking it slow and easy. Thank you. Good night. He's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society, who joins us every week here for What's Up Smokin'. shows by Bill Nye, Emily Lakdawalla, and a very special Planetary Radio Live on Sunday afternoon.

And it's all free. You can visit usasciencefestival.org for more information. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by the members of the Planetary Society. Clear skies. Planetary Society, Clear Skies.