Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Planetary Radio Live in London: The Moons Symphony

Episode Date: June 1, 2022

Host Mat Kaplan has returned from the UK and the recording of The Moons Symphony by the London Symphony Orchestra. You’ll hear excerpts from our Planetary Radio Live show celebrating this intersection of art and science with composer Amanda Lee Falkenberg and three distinguished planetary scientists. It was produced at Imperial College London before a live audience. Hear and discover more at https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2022-planetary-radio-live-moons-symphonySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Planetary Radio Live in London, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome, I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. I'm back from the United Kingdom where, in addition to walking about 30 miles, I witnessed the recordings of the Moon Symphony by world-renowned conductor Marin Alsop and the London Symphony Orchestra. You'll hear my conversation with maestra Alsop and Moon Symphony composer Amanda Lee Falkenberg. Amanda will then return for highlights of the show we did in front of an enthusiastic audience at Imperial College London. And you'll also hear excerpts from Amanda's magnificent composition.

All that and we'll still announce two winners of Bruce Bett's space trivia contest when we get to What's Up. The inside lander could sure use a housekeeping service or a convenient pass by a dust devil. Take a look at the dust coating one of its solar panels in the May 27 edition of the Downlink, our free weekly newsletter. It's no wonder the probe's days on Mars may be numbered. There's much more at planetary.org slash downlink, including a story about NASA's funding for further development of a cool new solar sail design. My wife and I flew to London right after the Humans to Mars summit in Washington, D.C. By the way, I'll feature H2M in next week's show. We barely had time to check into our hotel before we rushed to St. Luke's, the old church that the London Symphony Orchestra has beautifully renovated as its home.

The recording of the Moon Symphony was already underway. We and others sat high above the orchestra, afraid to move or make a sound as the music unfolded beneath us. It was quite a process, with each movement progressing a few measures at a time. Under the watchful eye of composer Amanda Lee Falkenberg, conductor Maren Alsop led the ensemble through all seven movements. Symphonic portraits of Io, Titan, Enceladus, Miranda, Ganymede, and our own moon. Later, after the musicians had been released for the day, I sat down with Amanda and Maren. My goodness, this was thrilling. Thank you so much to both of you for allowing me to witness this.

Thank you so much for coming over here, Matt, especially with your busy week. It's been extraordinary the day. And you're right, after living with an electronic score for five years, to have the life breathed into this music is speechless. It was interesting. I didn't know what my reaction was going to be,

and little did I realize I felt I had come home. Magic, absolute magic magic and a miracle. I mean, there's just been so many miracles surrounding this project and Maren even being involved in this project is a miracle and then to line up the diaries of LSO, the best orchestra on the planet, with the best conductor on the planet, you know, need I say more? And she's just finessed her brilliance into this day and it is going to be extraordinary, you know, once we hear the choir lay down with these incredible takes today. Extraordinary is the word for it. Watching this experience, watching you swing that baton and bring this together.

Why did you choose to take this on? You have your choice of orchestras and selections to record and perform. Well, as you very well know, Amanda is an incredibly convincing human being. And besides being extremely gifted and talented and a wonderful composer. And every obstacle that we came up against, the reason I was able to get involved really was because of COVID. I had no free time in my diary whatsoever. And then I read her email, you know, because I was killing time during COVID like everybody was. And I wrote back to her. I said, oh, what is this project? And that's how it got started. And then she came to Vienna and we sort of did a practice trial run with it, see how it went in Vienna and became fast friends. And, you know, and I have to say, you know, she also has this great advantage to having a husband who's

also my assistant conductor, who's really helped me with the whole project as well. So it's really a dream project. I was also struck by exactly that, the collaborative nature of what we saw. I mean, when you record a contemporary piece like this, do you frequently have the composer there to refer to? And we also had that voice of God, happens to be Amanda's husband, who was also helping you to make sure this was exactly right. Well, that's the great luxury, I think, and advantage of doing works by living composers. I mean, it's both the advantage and maybe sometimes the disadvantage, but they can be there and really be part of the process. But they can be there and really be part of the process.

But Paul's acting more as a producer, you know, saying what we need downstairs. He's listening and using his excellent ears to help in that way. And Amanda's up in the studio with me so that she can help in that. So I really have the best of all possible worlds, so to speak. What an ensemble. I mean, I couldn't see everyone, but I counted six percussionists, two harps. This is just amazing. And I guess it's what this piece calls for, right, Amanda? Well, we're talking about space. And isn't space pretty epic? And so we need- Space is big. Space is big. So you can't go sort of shortchanging your ensemble for trying to produce an epic piece like this.

You call on all forces to get the point across about these fascinating worlds and moons. And especially when you've got a moon like Io, which is the most volcanically active moon in the solar system, you've got to pull on all forces you can to get the message across. This is a representational piece. I mean, I think of other pieces like Claude Debussy's La Mer, the sea, even, you know, Beethoven, the pastoral, absolutely, the sixth. And of course, you can't avoid bringing up Gustav Holst, we're in his home nation, the planets. But the planets was more of a metaphysical thing, whereas this, if I'm right, Amanda, you were really attempting to capture the true nature of these moons. And I'm so much in a more advantageous situation than Holst was.

He didn't have the technology 100 years ago like I have access to and all these deep space missions that they're achieving and succeeding in getting data back. I'm sure if he was alive right now, he'd probably be doing this sort of thing. So I wanted to capitalise on the advancement of where we are with technology. And, you know, like I said, it's a situation where I came across the science and I just couldn't ignore it. And hence why I've employed the choir to sing the science. So this is very much what we call programmatic music, which talks about scenes and it's very unashamedly telling the story

as opposed to an abstract approach to composing where you allow the audience to come up with their own story and dialogue. This is very much science driven. So it's like the script to tell the story, which is the science. I'd hope you can expand on that. I mean, where a piece like this fits into the vast classical repertoire? Well, I think as you so astutely mentioned that, you know, the planets by Holst, it's probably one of the most popular classical pieces in the repertoire. And yet, it doesn't really represent the planets. It's more about the gods from whom the planets derive their names. And as you said, it's more of a metaphysical than a really science-based piece. I think something like this, the Moon

Symphony, has a very strong possibility to become part of the repertoire because it also reaches out across disciplines. And, you know, it's a piece that we could use in educating kids. We can go out to schools, you know, we can speak to scientists, we can speak to, I mean, I had lunch with an astronaut today. I was pretty excited. And I imagine that the way Amanda could build it out as a complete project for orchestras, it could be very fulfilling and also really establish the piece. Do you approach a symphony like this as you would any symphony? Or is there a different way to approach it because it represents things in the real world? No, I think I approach it the same way.

Every piece has a narrative, whether it's a literal narrative or an emotional narrative. And I have to find that narrative. This is easier in a way because the narrative is clear. But the challenges with this are very different because we have to keep a certain tempo so that we can put the chorus in later. It's a huge orchestra in a big space. And so we have the issues of delay. So, you know, it has its own kind of challenges. Amazing watching this come together. I mean, the quote that I do not want to use, because this is not in sausage in any way, but you don't want to see the sausage being made, you've definitely, I wish everyone listening could have watched this process as it came together piece by piece, measure by measure.

But I'm wondering, how do you do that when that major component of this symphony, the choral sections, are not available to you. I mean, how do you prepare it with those in mind? I think it's going to be phenomenal. And actually, it's going to work even better because we have the ability now to mix everything. You know, when you have everyone in one room and you're recording, say, 300 people at once, you can't get separation. So you can't really control things in the mix, as they call it. So I think that this is going to be even more effective and more successful. And I should mention, I'm not sure Amanda knows this, but the boy soloist is the son of the

principal bassoonist in the orchestra. And that's Leo, Amanda? Of course I knew this because I have a beautiful, there's a beautiful story built into that bassoon solo because when I found out that Leo, our boy soloist for the seventh movement, his father is a principal bassoonist. I went, you're kidding me because in that seventh movement, the bassoon, there's a little bassoon solo that hands off to the boy's solo. It's a father. See, that is freaky. That is freaky.

The project. I'm telling you. So it's like, here you go, son. I've set you up and now the stage is yours. But you know, Dan, his dad, was telling me that this is very special also for Leo because his voice is just about to change. So this is probably the last project he'll be able to sing as a boy soprano. So it's very emotional, yeah.

Do you feel about this ensemble the way we heard Amanda describing it? Obviously, it's world class. I think it's a great orchestra, certainly. You know, for me, it's a very personal experience because I first met them with my teacher, Leonard Bernstein, when he started the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo in Japan. And that was 1990 before anyone was born. I wish. And since then, I've had a relationship with this orchestra. And I stepped in in the mid 90s and from then on

I've been with the orchestra every year, every other year. So we have a long-standing history which is very, very, very wonderful. I've only had one experience where I worked with an orchestra on a performance. I got to, I had the tremendous honor of narrating The Lincoln Portrait by Copland. And it was the most terrifying thing I have ever done voluntarily in my life. What is the feeling as you go into this kind of a project? Is it the same every time? Is there some anxiousness? Or is it just the joy of being part of it? Maren, I'll start with you. Well, I think, I mean, I think for someone to be thrown into the deep end, you know, like just having to narrate suddenly, I think it could be quite terrifying.

But for us, you know, we do this as part of our daily lives. We do this as part of our daily lives, but that doesn't mean that there isn't some anxiety or excitement or nervousness, I think. I would call it more excitement. I don't feel particularly nervous. the situations that, you know, we've got the dream team basically dictating going forwards the tempos, the nuances, the characteristics, the sound, the quality, the excellence. And once we get this out there as a recording, it's going to be the benchmark of other orchestras and to emulate the type of brilliance that is coming from these days recording. And with Maren weaving her magic into all of this, that is what is just worth

you know really the perseverance and the pressure and just you know nailing it all because we know that this is going to be the classic standard moving forwards and I think that's what's really exciting and and we'll catch our breath at the end of all this yeah we will we will for sure but it's been it's been a wonderful journey and And I think especially today at the recording sessions, to have all of you scientists and explorers with us, it was very moving, not just for me, I think for the musicians, too. with a live audience is this intersection of art and science that share much more than I think a lot of people realize. I mean, is that something you recognize as well? Oh, absolutely. And I've been very involved with Brian Green in New York and the world science. It's just such an opportunity to really link our art forms. I mean, I really believe that science is an art form as well. And what we do is not only an art form, but also science, you know.

So there are lots and lots of crossovers, and each complements and amplifies the other. Well said. I cannot wait to hear the end product of this day, and I cannot wait to come back tomorrow and hear the remaining movements recorded in the Moon Symphony. Thank you both, Amanda and Maren. Well, thank you so much for getting yourself all over from the U.S. And thank you, Maren, for your absolute brilliance today. My pleasure. You're super.

To be continued. And yes, and thank you to the scientists as well and the astronaut for holding the floor for us and just living and breathing and holding their breath and being statues up there. They were great. They were great. Thanks. Thank you. Now it's 6 p.m. on Monday, May 23rd. I'm about to begin the first face-to-face Planetary Radio Live event since the beginning of the pandemic. Imperial College London had graciously offered to host us. Here are highlights from that more-than-two-hour celebration of the Moon Symphony. Want to hear it all, along with other bonus material? Visit this week's episode page at planetary.org slash radio.

Welcome to Planetary Radio Live in London. Oh my God, that was so good. We have a wonderful crowd in place in the Clore Lecture Theater at Imperial College London. I am Matt Kaplan, the host of Planetary Radio. I am thrilled to be here. In fact, I am thrilled to be anywhere in London in this wonderful city of yours. And as you will hear, it has been especially thrilling to be here over the weekend that we have just completed for reasons that will become obvious. It is the reason that all of us are here today,

all of the people you will meet on our spectacular panel tonight, and hopefully also responsible for you coming out as well as we hear about a marvelous new composition, a symphony you will all have available to you soon, now that it is in the process of being recorded. This is the first live face-to-face show we have been able to do since the beginning of the nastiness that has been underway the last two and a half years. So thank you for turning out for that as well. It is such a pleasure to once again be in front of an audience. Some of you know the fellow who's coming up next. He is our CEO, and he has a special message for us, which hopefully

you'll be able to hear. Greetings, Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society. Welcome. Tonight, I join you in celebrating the Moon's Symphony, which was composed by Amanda Lee Falkenberg when she was inspired by the science and beauty of the intriguing moons in our solar system. I look forward to hearing the recordings made over the last two days by the London Symphony Orchestra. Tonight we're joined by members of the orchestra, Ms. Falkenberg herself, the Planetary Society's own Matt Kaplan, several planetary scientists and at least one astronaut artist. They will take you to the intersection of art and science in the cosmos. As a very smart man once said, scientists are always artists. And who are we to argue with Albert Einstein, who along with changing the course of

history with these discoveries about the nature of the universe, was a remarkable violinist. Have a wonderful time tonight. Check out all we have to offer at planetary.org. And so now, take it away, Matt. Thank you, Bill. So one bit of unfortunate news, the only unfortunate news I hope I have for you this evening. Nicole Stott, who is in town, our astronaut artist, was around for the recording over the weekend. Let us know about three hours ago that she tested positive.

So she is not here to join us. She is devastated not to be able to join us tonight. We're going to try and present some of the material that she would have had for you, but to get us back on the happy side of the street, you've already heard her name. She is the reason why we are all here. Please welcome the composer of the Moon Symphony, Amanda Lee Falkenberg.

Amanda, come up. Woo! Woo! You have treated us to a spectacular weekend. I should say that this started a little over a year ago when I heard about this new symphony that had seven movements, each of them inspired by a moon in our solar system, from two people independently, Nicole Stott, the astronaut, and Linda Spilker, who we'll be meeting in a few minutes. And I thought, if those two like it, I better check this out. So we did an online radio interview.

I didn't meet Amanda in person until Saturday. It was delightful. And Amanda invited us to participate in upcoming events, including the recording session that just took place. So welcome and thank you for, I only wish that we could have shared that experience at St. Luke's with everyone here and everyone listening. That was spectacular, wasn't it? It was absolutely powerful, magical, and

you know, words cannot describe that experience. And this is where I'd love someone like Nicole Stop to be sitting here next to me because, you know, she has been up in space. She's seen our planet Earth united and whole, and she always says to me, you know, when we come back as astronauts, there's just no words to describe that overwhelming feeling. Well, that is how I felt yesterday, hearing the genius of this orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, birth the music of this symphony. And so I'm like, now I kind of know how she feels a little bit, actually.

So it was absolutely... I'm still processing, Matt, OK? So it's still processing, but it was incredible. And we should say it's not done. I mean, the symphony, the orchestra has done its part, but you're going to be where to complete this? Yeah, we've just come from Abbey Road Studios, the legendary, iconic Abbey Road Studios,

and that was my first ever introduction to that magical place. So yes, I have an update. We have had a very great day of progress. We've got through, we've birthed the first three moons. We've identified the most magnificent takes. And we are at Enceladus right now. I was just telling Linda. And it is sounding phenomenal. Absolutely

phenomenal. And I know we have a couple members and I just want to say thank you so much. Bravo and brava. Absolutely. Please stand up. Stand up. Take a bow. No? Yes. Wow. I mean we just have the dream

team involved. You know every aspect of this production from scientists to musicians to conductor to communicators, all of that has just, you know, it's just everything's just been miraculously manifested to... Oh, there I am, okay. There's who. Okay. This will come later. And I just, you know, it's just serendipity has been always at the center. This project's just kind of taken on a life of its own and kind of dictated events that I never foresaw at all. And I'm just going with the ride, Matt.

She's doing much, much more than that. You mentioned the conductor. You could not have done any better. Please. Oh, my goodness. Okay, so we literally have the most world-famous female conductor walking this planet, and I've only ever identified this incredible woman, Maren Olsop.

I don't know if many of you have ever seen her performance. In fact, she just performed at South Bank Centre, the Shostakovich, to a standing ovation. It was an incredible, powerful performance she gave. And equally, she gave that performance, as you saw, as you witnessed. It's a big work. This is like 47, 50 minutes of music.

And it's not for the faint-hearted to get up there. I mean, it packs a punch. And we were talking about some of the most volcanically active, you know, moons of our solar system. You can't have placid music for that kind of stuff, you know. So we put her through our paces a bit and I'm sure she slept very well last night. But she was absolute magic and the feedback that I've got

from musicians is just that, I mean, she's one with her musicians. I mean, if you're going to have equivalent to the Gene Kranz of Mission Control, that's our Marin Orsop. And she would have been with us tonight, but she jetted off to Vienna immediately after the recording session. If this evening has a theme other than the symphony itself, it is this intersection of art and science, which you also heard Bill and I talk about. This is also where I would have been bringing out Nicole Stott, who is, as you've heard, not just an astronaut who spent two long stays on the International Space Station,

but an artist, a working professional artist, and someone who is deeply committed to the welfare of humankind, which certainly includes the arts. How did you connect with Nicole? How did she become part of this? Gosh, I mean, she uses the word awesome a lot. I use the word serendipitous a lot, and we know that,

and we recognize that, but it truly was very serendipitous. I think just, if I may back up, when I'd shortlisted my moons, it was only ever going to be six, you see. And when I was in the middle of writing Moon Miranda, which was about the fourth moon I was composing, I remember just this uneasy feeling just creeping over me and couldn't put my finger on it. I remember saying to my husband, I don't know, something doesn't feel right about the structure of this symphony. And one day I was literally in my studio and really almost finished writing the music and then it was so intense what I was writing and I all of a sudden just felt like

I want to get out of here like and I just beamed myself back to earth I'm like whoa it's safe here like that was a bit scary hanging out there with Miranda and then then all of a sudden, I'm like, oh my goodness, I know what was missing. Earth moon, that's what is missing in this symphony. And I thought, what if we put the earth moon in this symphony and have us standing on its surface, looking down onto this incredible planet that does contain life. It's teeming with possibilities. It's a gift to us all to even exist. We've been traveling to these moons. There's no second genesis of life at the moment, they found. And it also, Miranda shows the violent, harsh edges of the solar system. I mean, we've got the Goldilocks zone here.

And so I felt that was the answer and it just became crystal clear to me. And then seven moons was born. And, of course, it's a very spiritual number. It's a very special number. And it just felt I found. So Miranda was very special to me because it helped me recognize that that was the final story that needed to be told. So we have four movements that we will be hearing excerpts from. The climactic one is the seventh movement, the one that is inspired by our own lovely moon, which if you dive into it a little bit, you may learn that is very likely responsible

for life on Earth. So we can be very grateful when we look up. Like so many of the people who have looked down on our beautiful pale blue dot from above, not a dot to them, but still a world without borders. They get to enjoy what is called the overview effect. I think I've come as close to experiencing it as anybody can here on Earth. Your music, I think, is going to help a lot more people get a sense of it. Well, I think if we're going to use the word overview effect, there's a name that we need to mention, of course, that's Frank White.

Absolutely. And his incredible contribution to the psychological, the spiritual aspect of that life-changing experience. And as Nicole, I mean, they're so grateful for what he's doing here to help communicate their experience and try and formulate words or concepts so all of us can try and understand what these privileged space crew have experienced and have more of a deeper profound appreciation for what they're trying to communicate. I love how Frank White said

we can't underestimate how this earthrise image is having a powerful, it's penetrating the arts and you know other mediums that we are yet to realise., the seventh movement of this symphony is absolutely my personal way of expressing that earth rise. See, that whole image I just actually had in my studio 24-7 when I was composing every inch of that music. That was my way of being a Frank White as a musician to try and communicate that experience that astronauts have. All right. I want to bring up now somebody who has been part of the Voyager mission, those emissaries to the stars, Voyager 1 and 2. Maybe not quite from the start of Voyager, but was part of Voyager,

left it to become the project scientist of the spectacular Cassini mission, which now has completed its mission of revelation at Saturn and is now back to being on the Voyager mission as well, the Deputy Project Scientist for Voyager. Please welcome from the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Linda Spilker. So Linda, I got all that right. I'm Voyager 2, still going strong. It's Voyager 1 maybe that's having a little difficulty right now? Yeah, Matt, Voyager 2 is going strong.

So is Voyager 1. We're still getting back good science and the pointing looks really good. But some of the engineering data for the attitude control system looks a little strange so we're trying to figure out what exactly is going on here's a spacecraft a pair of spacecraft that were designed to last four years to fly by Jupiter and Saturn and it's been almost 45 years ten times longer than their design lifetime every year we have four watts less power. We use the decay of plutonium to generate heat, and that runs the spacecraft.

And so every year we have to carefully agonize, what do we turn off? What's left to turn off? Tell me how the two of you connected over the Moon Symphony. Well, Amanda, you want to start with Bob Popperlotter reaching out to you? Yeah. So about three months into my research of Moon Europa, I kept coming across a particular

individual and I'm like, this guy looks really interesting to me. And I researched him and I'm, oh, he's at NASA JPL. And I'm like, oh, I'm just going to email him about my project. And so I did. I just said a simple project about my vision about these moons and how I would love it the world premiere and Royal Albert Hall just down the road I wanted to speak with someone to help me anchor this the science of these moons in accuracy and so it turns out he was lead scientist for the Europa Clipper mission and he wrote back to me about seven days later and agreed to Skype and so we chatted about the characteristics of Moon Europa and the mission and he was the characteristics of Moon Europa and

the mission and he was very interested in my project. He said, I think the scientists would be very interested in your symphony too, Amanda. I'm like, really? He said, oh yes. And he mentioned Linda Spilker and that's who connected us to the project. Hearing about the project, I was very excited to take the moons and actually put them together with music in a way that the public could relate to. And so I invited Amanda to come to one of our project science group meetings and talk a little bit about her symphony and play some of the music. And from then on, we've been communicating and working on the science for this particular symphony. Thank goodness. Linda is accompanied by her husband Tom Spilker who is as

experienced, stand up Tom, as experienced at JPL. Another very accomplished scientist and engineer because now he's figuring out how to build us a space station worthy of what you saw in 2001. I don't know about you, but I want to visit. Linda, address just very quickly how cameras not just have connected us to these missions by delivering these beautiful images, but to the science as well. Well, it's so incredible. These missions. When we go out, we were thinking, okay, the moons for these outer planets, they're going to look like our moon.

That's what we have for a model. They're going to be old and heavily cratered. And so we go out with Voyager, we get to the Jupiter system, the first moon, Callisto, is cratered. And then as we go closer and closer, our paradigm totally shifted. Look, no craters. This looks fractured.

Europa, it looks like an ice ball. What happened? And then, of course, Io with volcanoes. And so the journey continued. Each moon in the solar system has a unique personality, unique characteristics. You can look at a picture of a moon in the solar system and say, I know which moon that is.

And thank goodness, because otherwise, the symphony would have had one movement. We're going to get into the symphony now by introducing you to four of the moons and therefore four of the movements. And we'll mention the moons represented in the other movements in the symphony. But before we hear those excerpts, we do want to hear about the first of the moons in the first movement, the moon Io. Look at that horror of a moon. And to help us learn about it, one of the world's foremost experts on that moon and on volcanology in general. He is yet another representative of the wonderful Jet Propulsion Lab, But I think you may recognize his accent as making him a local here, or somewhat of a local.

Please welcome up, here he is, Europa Clipper Science Team member, also the author of that book you saw a few moments ago, Vulcanism on Io. Please welcome Ashley Davis. Thank you. So, Ashley, where does this little horror show of a moon rank in your list of favorite, your top ten? No.

This is my, actually it's my first and my second favorite moon. I got interested in volcanology right back in the days of Voyager when I was in high school when Voyager sent back the first images of these huge eruptions taking place on Io. I thought, well, that's interesting. That's unexpected. I was kind of an astronomy geek even back then. This was a revelation. It shook the world of planetary science.

It shook the world of science. At the same time, if you take a few months, there was a big eruption in America at Mount St. Helens. I thought, ooh, volcanoes. These sound interesting. I didn't have the patience to be a sedimentologist. So this is something a lot more immediate, a lot more interesting. Certainly more dynamic.

Certainly, very dynamic indeed. There are at least 250, this is what we knew in 2015, 250 erupting or recently erupting centers on Io. Io is the most volcanically active, one of the most dynamic bodies in the solar system, the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Since then, since 2015, we've found about another 40 or 50 new sites of volcanic activity, mostly

from ground-based telescopes equipped with adaptive optics. And what we're looking at are the styles of volcanic activity and using Io as a way of looking back into Earth's past and into the past histories of the terrestrial planets. Because the type of eruptions in Io, the styles of eruptions on Io, once helped shape the terrestrial planets and the moon. This was in their distant pasts. We see the remnants of these eruptions but now we can go to Io and see these happening right now. At the

same time we go to volcanoes on Earth, we study how volcanic eruptions behave on Earth and we apply that to understanding what's happening on Io. And this is one of the most important themes that we try to communicate to people at the Planetary Society. We study other worlds in part to learn about our own. Right. The surface of the Moon, the surface of Mars, Earth have these huge fields of lava. We don't really know a lot about how they were emplaced, but we can see eruptions of similar styles taking place on Io now. So Io is a great template for looking back into the past geological history of Earth and other places.

One of the glories of this is that just before Voyager 1 reached Io, some scientists in America published a paper which said that we've looked at the dynamics of the Jovian system. And we've looked at the fact that Io and Europa and Ganymede are locked into this orbital resonance. And we think that this could generate a lot of internal heating. So who knows that there might actually be some volcanoes there. It was the best timed paper in planetary science history, because just a few months later, those volcanoes were found on Io. And this just changed our understanding of how the whole solar system works. It changed our paradigm for where life could exist, not on Io,

but on some real estate quite close by to it. And it was just a game changer. And that's just one of the glorious, glorious legacies of Voyager. And when you mentioned this resonance to the orchestra yesterday, what struck me is resonance, the music of the spheres. I mean, Amanda, music. Absolutely. And I think, you know, I had the privilege of when I was invited to the Cassini scientists meeting, I had the opportunity to consult in situ with Dr. Ashley Davis on a volcanic world of Io. And basically what he's just described as the paradigm shift and all these important themes about orbital resonance. I'm like, right, this needs to go on the symphony.

And so initially I hadn't planned on putting moon io first but i've realized i sort of juggled things around and i went hang on this is a really good opportunity to set the stage for the concepts that are going to be applied with the other moons but to a lesser degree i mean so i think having io position first really does get across the idea of this gravitational tug-of-war that is just the most extreme runaway of tidal heating that doesn't exist on the other moons but there's a similar kinetic exchange and so I thought no by the way I think we just need to begin the symphony with a blast so why not we just choose Io to start this this galactic whatever symphony

tour so yeah so i felt like we need to put that first and to to really help get across this message it was a paradigm shift i mean all of a sudden the new goldilocks zone occurred away from the earth-centric planet earth and and i think these themes are really important when we start traveling beyond the asteroid belt because there's this is why this moon symphony exists, because there are fascinating worlds out there. Amanda, we are finally ready to hear the first of those excerpts, Io, the first movement.

I'd only heard this version, of course, until the weekend, and it sounded just fine. But then you hear it from a symphony orchestra. How was this created? So this was created... I mean, fortunately, technology in the music sector, this was using synthesised software to produce the sounds of an orchestra to emulate the ideas that I wanted to convey when the moment would arrive

when I'd have the real orchestra to play the music. And fortunately, the technology is fantastic. I think it does a really good job of communicating your ideas. Choir, not so much, but fortunately that's going to be changing next weekend. But yes, so you're hearing what we call a synthesised computer-generated version of a symphony orchestra. Deep seething, cold bleeding, lakes flowing, red blowing, Bolton waves, it's from the skates and ripped apart, it's fiery hot and captured. My remodeled, captured, pocketed The poor petri's love of salt waves

Can't force, force me to turn On my fortune with Tazlo Thank you. Celestia, top of the world, a natural yashiva, Or A venture Yes, you're wrong You're wrong Calamitous I am

I will Game Battle The Run Of The Things

So The Run Of The So The Run Of The Run Of The Run Of The Run Of The Run Of The Run Of The Run Of The Run Of The Run Of The Run Of The Run Of The South of the world, there's a place of great loss Savage star and pedophiles, errant umbrella clouds Of colossal heights, beautiful blue light Silicate lava dominates Aeolus fiery fields Ha! Terra Bloodstains, volcanoes red Thank you. So, wait till you hear it from the London Symphony Orchestra and from the choir that is in the process of being recorded at Abbey Road. I cannot wait.

We're going to go on to another moon. It's one that you've already heard mentioned. That's the Europa Clipper mission, which is under construction now. I hear it's going very well at JPL now. These things take time and sometimes a few extra dollars. But this is the mission that will fly out to Europa and hopefully be able to find some stuff to fly through emanating from that world. One of the reasons we're so curious, of course, about Europa is this possibility that it could be a place to find life. Whether it will be life like us or something completely different, no one knows.

We won't know until we go and sniff it out. To help us explore that, help us welcome Imperial College London's own Professor Mark Sefton. Mark, come on up. Mark, you are also on the Europa Clipper team, right? I am. I'm sat next to Ashley, and we're both sat together on the Europa Clipper mission, yeah. Did I get it right? I mean, Bob Pappalardo is not here for us to ask.

Are things coming along? Absolutely. Yep, of course. Absolutely, yeah. The bits are turning up at JPL, being bolted onto the spacecraft. The propulsion module was due to be delivered just last week. The spacecraft is coming together. Humans are not likely to go there anytime soon, right?

It's not a nice place to be a human, at least not on the surface. Mark, you're the astrobiologist among us. I think that's right. But the majority of our exploration of the solar system from an astrobiological point of view is really looking for evidence of life in any form. And life is most likely to be in microbial form. Microbes dominated the Earth through Earth history.

You know, we're just the last tick of the clock in the day of Earth's history. So, microbial life is what we, is the most we could possibly hope for. Probably not on the surface, right? Because that is made a very nasty place by Jupiter. Linda? Yes, the radiation coming from Jupiter is very intense. And so if you were on the surface of Europa,

it would be very dangerous for you as a human. You wouldn't last very long even in a space suit. But there's this thick layer of ice that's basically covering over that ocean underneath, and that's where we might find light. What are we looking at in this incredibly complex surface? Well, the same tidal forces that affect Io also affect Europa to a lesser extent. So there's a lot of stresses that build up in this ice shell which cracks. What we see here is the result of intersecting stress

fractures and stress patterns shattering the surface if you like of Europa. I mean other than it's a young surface, because there aren't that many impact craters. Impact craters dominate the surfaces of most other bodies in the solar system. Io doesn't have any impact craters at all because there's so much volcanism taking place which erases them faster than they, just as they're created.

On Europa, there are a few impact craters which point to a young surface. And this is why it's so intriguing to go there and so interesting to go there. The possibility that there is plume activity in areas where there's been recent resurfacing means that the radiation that's just been mentioned hasn't had a lot of time to degrade what's been brought to the surface. And so one of the things that Europa Clipper will do, one of the things that the instrument that Mark is working on will do,

will be to look for this new material and that will give us clues, or show us what's actually making up the crust and anything that might be coming through from the oceans. Looking for the chemical fingerprints of this material. So tough on the surface, but as Mark, as we heard Linda say, we now know. I mean, there really isn't much question left.

Is there that there is this warm, probably salty ocean that is protected by the ice? It's a radiation shield. Yeah, the subsurface environment is where we were most likely to have habitable conditions. We are ready to hear the second excerpt now from the second movement, Amanda. A subsurface environment is where we're most likely to have habitable conditions. We are ready to hear the second excerpt now from the second movement, Amanda. What struck you? What inspired you to create this movement about this moon? Well, it's interesting because Linda was talking about how they were sort of discussing whether they should have a camera on board in the Voyager spacecrafts.

Well, I think there's a compelling story about Dr Margaret Kilverson and the magnetometer, and you almost cannot talk about Moon Europa without mentioning that magnificent instrument which detected the subsurface salty ocean, which is critical for the idea of potential microbial life. This particular moon, and at least the lyrics, there's a lot of question marks

because there's a lot of questions that need to be answered and that's what this whole mission is devoted to, this flagship mission. Of course, that inspired me and the plume activity that's always been very compelling, it's Europa's subsurface trying to communicate to the scientists, being very, as I've said before, as opposed to Enceladus, which is gushing all this information,

free samples for spacecrafts to fly through, Europa's been a little bit cheeky and sort of like very tantalises the scientists a little bit more. So it's not as giving as beautiful Enceladus. And so I sort of play into the drama of that and also there's sort of a determinations element in atmosphere in the music because nasa's so keen for these answers to be solved and um so i wanted to sort of play into those themes without further ado here is just a portion of the second movement

of the moon symphony europa ¶¶ ¶¶ Muzica Europa! O © BF-WATCH TV 2021 ¶¶ Water to the south, it will go to the ocean, it's a earth, Europa, Europa. The sea, it's a great ocean, it's a earth, Europa. Water to the south, it will go to the ocean, it's a earth, Europa. What on earth do you hope? Is it oceans or salty space? I don't know, I noticed my foot starts tapping again, my head is bobbing, you should have seen me over the weekend with the rest of us just so inspired. We will only have time for samples of four movements tonight.

And if there's one I regret not bringing you, Titan, that big moon of Saturn, which is somewhat less mysterious than it used to be, largely thanks to your mission, Linda, the entire Cassini team. Tell us a little bit about this moon. Well, Cassini spent 13 years in orbit around Saturn. And this giant moon, Titan, it looks like a golden haze and shrouded world. We couldn't see through to the surface with Voyager. And so that motivated us to go back, carrying a Huygens probe, a probe provided by ESA, to parachute down to the surface of Titan

with cameras and instruments to really reveal for the first time what did that surface look like. Titan's about the size of the planet Mercury. We use it as a tour engine, so we flew by over 125 times very close to Titan. And what we found was a surprisingly Earth-like world. Here's a world where methane plays the role on Titan, that liquid water plays here on the Earth. Methane can form clouds.

It rains methane on Titan. It can freeze. And so it's just at that triple point, that right temperature, to be in all three states. And so when you look at the surface, of course, it's sculpted by the methane rain. At the North Pole, there are giant lakes and seas, not of water, but of liquid methane. Methane is the gas in your stove. And here it is. It's so cold.

It's actually a liquid. And you can see the tributaries and the rivers, channels flowing into this lake and sea. Also giant mountains, ice mountains. Ice is the rock of the outer solar system. And maybe we're getting with the liquid water, organics coming out as well. The Titan is just full of organic material. Dunes at the equator, particles form in the high up in the atmosphere. As methane is broken apart, you pick off one of the hydrogen molecules

and you can grow longer and longer chains of organics. And these can fall to the surface and form dunes. We landed in what appears to be a dry river bed. You can see rounded icy pebbles that methane has flowed through this dry riverbed rounding those icy pebbles. And so we landed softly on the surface. The Huygens probe sent the data to Cass, and all of these wonderful pictures came back. And in fact, when we reconstructed on the surface,

we could actually see the shadow of the parachute from Huygens fall to the surface. And so an intriguing world, huge thick atmosphere, mostly nitrogen, but lots and lots of organics. So we wonder, could you have life, very different from Earth life, in that liquid methane on the surface of Titan? So Mark, I'm going to go to you in a moment to talk about that possibility, and would it be life as we do not know it? And by the way, Huygens from the European Space Agency, a tremendous success by that agency that has

had so many wonderful missions. Mark, life as we would not know it, right? There are people looking into this. Yeah. One thing that's for certain, one of those raw material ingredients is certainly present, hydrocarbons. You know, Ashley's a volcanologist, and I spent my career studying organic matter. I wonder if we both died and went to heaven, you'd wake up on Io and I'd wake up on Titan.

But I mean, even at the most conservative thought about Titan, it represents a hydrocarbon rich world. It can tell us something about the chemical steps towards life. So astrobiology is not just about detecting life. It's about understanding how life could originate, has progressed, and then sometimes gone the full distance and actually generated a living organism. So to use a London Underground analogy, if life starts at Baker Street and needs to go all the way to the end of the line but gets off at St. Pancreas, we want to know why. the end of the line but gets off at pancreas, we want to know why. And so Titan may be an environment in which we can

look at the first chemical steps towards life, because we know the ingredients are present, and see how things have evolved. We could spend this entire evening talking just about this moon or any of the others that are covered by the seven movements. But, Linda, because your spacecraft revealed

it, what are we looking at here? This is the moon Enceladus. Enceladus is tiny compared to the other moons we've talked about. It's about one-tenth the size of Titan. It's about 500 kilometers in diameter. Could fit nicely across the UK. And it's a tiny world we expected to be completely frozen. And instead, Cassini found that those are the bluish features there. We nicknamed them tiger stripes. Out of those come hundreds of individual jets of material forming a giant plume. There's a global ocean underneath the surface of Enceladus.

What a surprise. A tiny moon should be frozen solid. And yet this tidal interaction, these resonances, also work at Enceladus. So this is calling for a mission to go back. We have a 10-year plan for NASA called the Decadal Survey. And the second of these big missions is a mission to go back to Enceladus with something called an Orbilander.

It would orbit Enceladus, make measurements, and then take the whole spacecraft down to the surface of Enceladus to make measurements, probably right there at the South Pole, close to one of these jets, and make measurements. In fact, you could imagine putting your hand out, putting out a sensor to collect those particles falling like snow, bringing it back in, and then doing the analysis.

And you aren't going at these high speeds. You've got these great, very sophisticated instruments. Who knows what we might find? Amanda, I think that your coining of the phrase free samples is going to be adopted by the entire scientific community now. This inspired the fourth movement in the Moon Symphony. A lot of what we've just been hearing about, right?

This possibility, this tantalizing possibility that we may just find that we're not alone. Yeah, exactly. And what I felt so much about this particular movement is the romance of these outer solar system moons. And not only partly because Enceladus happens to be part of a very beautiful planetary system called Saturn, of course, the most, the beauty pageant of the outer solar system,

the winner of that. But not only that, I mean, just how romantic if we could transport ourselves to the surface of Enceladus and see, you know, geysers on Earth can be breathtaking enough, but imagine standing on Enceladus with these geysers that are watery towers of fountains emulating tens of thousands of kilometres into the night sky, actually formed the E-ring of Enceladus, sorry, of Saturn. And if that wasn't breathtaking enough, you have Saturn in the backdrop accompanying this dreamy scene.

I think this is, to my point, this is not sci-fi, this is sci-fact. This is actual events happening in our outer solar system. And I think that's why, I think, so that's what I was really wanting to go after, the romance and the beauty of this experience. And that's what this movement explores. So let's hear just a portion of the fourth movement of the Moon Symphony. I am the king of the world. Thank you. ¶¶ Then said his frost and flame Orbiting his captain's rain Whispers from an icy shell Oh, she's deep with fiery swell The lofty towering sound

That thunders from the ground Encephalodos Encephalodos A towering sound that thunders from the ground And set the dust, and set the dust Thunder from a watery ground Froze amongst us all around Rose, and rose, rose, and rose, rose and rose, rose and rose, rose and rose Oh, gloops, Enceladus, icy frost and flame. Breathtaking music. Breathtaking music for a breathtaking world.

We go on now to two more moons. They represent the fifth and sixth movements in the Moon's Symphony. This strange little rock is called Miranda, which I assume you chose not because its name is similar to yours, but because it's, well, gentlemen, it's kind of a weirdo, isn't it? Ashley, I mean, just geologically, this is a strange place. It's a moon of Uranus. This was observed by Voyager on a flyby.

So we've only seen one half of it. It looks as if the moon is being smashed apart, and it just sort of smushed itself back together again. Some other internal process might have caused this, but there's really a lot about it we don't know. One of the mysteries of the outer solar system. It's interesting that this ties now into this decadal survey which has just been released. The highest priority from the science community is to send a new mission back to the outer solar system. It's about time, too, to go to Uranus and explore Uranus and explore the moons of Uranus

and include getting an image of the other side of this thing. We've only seen half of it, so it's really intriguing to know what the other half looks like. We should clarify the Decadal study survey with these recommendations made that do guide a lot of planetary science in the years to come, Decadal, 10 years, ends up being even more than that. The number one recommendation for a new mission is a Uranus orbiter. But the top recommendation is to get those samples back to Mars, which we've been working on for so many years. And that is quite a distraction

from exploring many other parts of the solar system. So we're hoping that NASA will be able to accomplish all of these things. I've talked to so many scientists who have been saying ice giants, we must visit the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, because not only are they fascinating in themselves, but they represent many of the worlds that we are seeing circling other stars right exoplanets that's right yeah absolutely yeah I'm hoping that you know we see planets in resonances and some of them okay some of them are probably volcanic we've seen planets which which might have magma oceans on the surface. We see planets in orbital resonances and you cannot help but think, what if there are volcanoes there?

And again, volcanism is a vital process in the evolution of planets. I think it's just a matter of time before we really start to nail down just how many of these worlds out there, these thousands of exoplanets that are being found are indeed actually volcanically active. And ice giants are interesting because so many of the exoplanets we've found fall in that size range, about the size of a Uranus or a Neptune. And so by studying these worlds in our own solar system, we're getting clues about what these other exoplanets might be like as well. And then the Uranus mission also is carrying a probe.

And that probe is to go into the atmosphere of the planet itself. And you'll start to make comparisons, the Galileo probe at Jupiter. Now you'll have a Uranus probe as well. Something to look forward to. It's many years off. But thank goodness it's now maybe coming into the pipeline. We are going to give this next moon very short shrift, which we shouldn't because it's a big moon, Ganymede, that Amanda turned into the sixth movement of the Moon Symphony. Well, Ganymede is the biggest moon in the solar system.

It is caught in the same resonance that drives activity on Io and likely within Europa. It almost certainly has an ocean underneath an icy crust. It has a magnetic field, which is very unusual for these moons and that tells us something about the interior structure and the interior composition. It also has a surface which has been torn apart in places and reformed. It's got a very interesting geomorphology, or morphology,

and there's a lot about it we don't know. And the interesting thing is, or the exciting thing is, that NASA is building Europa Clipper to go and study Europa. The European Space Agency is building a mission, right as we speak, called the Jupiter System IC satellite. It's called JUICE. JUICE. I can't remember.

I admit it, I can't remember what the acronym stands for. It's called JUICE. JUICE. I can't remember. I admit it. I can't remember what the acronym stands for. It's called JUICE. It's the IC, and it's going to be visiting. Jupiter IC, oh God. There we go. Let's not go there. It's called JUICE. And it's going to study Ganymede and Callisto,

the outermost of the four large Galilean satellites. There's going to be some overlap with Europa Clipper, which is great. It's going to be a overlap with Europa Clipper, which is great. It's going to be a really exciting time to be in planetary science. I can't wait for all this to happen. What intrigued you, Amanda? Why? There are so many other moons to choose from, too. Well, OK, so it's the biggest moon in the solar system.

That was a bit of a hands-down. But the magnetic field really intrigued me because the science that it's offering to scientists as a laboratory to learn more about other magnetic fields because it is embedded in Jupiter's own magnetosphere and these conditions protect it from the solar winds. But the second half, I wanted to just sort of change the format for this last of the science moons, if you like,

and pay tribute to our Galileo Galilei, the discoverer of all these Galilean moons back in 1610. So the second half is very celebratory, saluting him, the father of modern science, and his colossal discoveries back in 1610 with his handheld telescope. And wow, what if he lived in our times right now? So I wanted to give him justice and give him a voice in this move. So I wanted to give him justice and give him a voice in this move. I should say that if you go to the Moon Symphony website,

you can hear all seven of these synthesized versions of the movements. But when that recording comes out, and, fingers crossed, when it appears across the street at the Royal Albert Hall, being performed by the LSO or some other equally wonderful ensemble. Well I hope I can be there. Let's go on to the last moon, the seventh movement in the Moon Symphony. Do you recognize it? Who knows? Yell it out. Now no scientists allowed. Yes, Bill. That's our moon. That's right. This is the far side, not the dark side.

Correct people if they say that. It's the far side of the moon now being revealed to us, well, in part by the Chinese, but Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, American Orbiter, and many other spacecraft that are headed there if they're not already there. Gosh, I think, you know, Amanda, introduce us to this climactic seventh movement because we're ready to hear it. Yeah. So where's Nicole right now, really? I know. But it's, you know, it tells a very simple story.

It starts with a boy solo, which I would like to expand on a little later, which is the first time in the symphony that introduces the sound of a solo boy's voice which does two things it represents the fragility of earth and also the children of our future but soon the boy's solo is joined by full choir to represent that the children of this earth are not alone in these planetary plights and as a united species together we'll solve the problems together. So this synopsis is what is really the basis of this seventh moon and I do want to share something really beautiful that has happened again very serendipitously. The LSO's principal bassoonist happened to be the father

of the young boy solo, who is here tonight. And Leo Jemison will be our boy soloist for the seventh movement. His father is playing, has played, I can say in past tense, the bassoon part. And I think what just blew my mind when I heard this is that just before the boy solo, I don't know if the excerpt is going to do this tonight, but just before the boy's solo begins, there's this delicate little bassoon solo that sort of segues into the solo for the boy's voice. And, of course, it's his father playing that bassoon

and he's about to sing the solo on stage. And you can imagine that for a son that age and a father to be involved in a project like that. It's kind of, for me, I can imagine it's kind of rare. And yet here it is showing up in the Moon Symphony of all the times that it's ever going to have a story, a backstory. Well, this is the Moon Symphony. So he's here tonight, Leo Jemison. Leo, please take a bow.

Now, what we're about to hear, this is not Leo, right? But, recording tomorrow? No, next Saturday, the 4th of June, and Joshua Abrams was our original vocalist who sung three years ago and I should also point out that the vocals that you are hearing that was an experiment that happened through COVID we wanted to replace the synthesized choral samples so we hired 12 vocalists from the London Voices in lockdown to sing in their individual studios and then send them to us in Dubai to mix down and present some type of COVID choir I call it so it's not mixed as an ensemble because it was impossible during COVID but at least we could understand the libretto that way and so the two

soloists Daniel Cook who will be singing at Abbey Road Studios, is the tenor soloist. You'll hear he was our Jean Valjean here in London. And so these two artists, we recorded back in 2019. We will be having the full session with a 60-voice choir. And 12 of them, I've been told today, actually, Ben Parry, who's our conductor next weekend, those 12 COVID choir candidates will actually be part of the 60 voice ensemble. So there's a beautiful backstory just there.

And finally, we're united and whole again. So that's pretty much the story of the Seventh Movement. Luna beauty, serenity, the silence of time As we sail the dark for moon rays to fly Traveling so far away The heavens calling the night sky, when we saw the Christ, seeing her from this place, changed hearts and the human race. ¶¶ Who risked their life to give this view History birthed a new frame of us As we sail the dark, all moonways to climb

And hear from his side Lord, how he sighed Lord, how you inside When we saw the Christ Earth, you lighted the light Glory, the church lights What will the future hold? I don't know about the rest of you who were there yesterday at St. Luke's. I was in tears and got goosebumps again today and felt it. It's overpowering, simply beautiful and I just I have to say it

again you must hear it as performed by the London Symphony Orchestra as soon as it becomes available. Were you as thrilled as the rest of us? It was the moment obviously I was quite critical of the score and following all the detail but Marin also gave us quite a longer take with this moon and obviously we're working in little sections. There's a lot of material to get through and this moon is a little bit easier musically to pull off. The story's a little bit more simple and it's much more lyrical.

And there was a point where she just allowed the London Symphony Orchestra to play their hearts out and we had probably four minutes to the end where they just soared on their instruments. And I was told there wasn't a dry eye in the house. And I got quite emotional on stage with Nicole and yourself and Chris Bake. And I wrote something on social media today.

And my comment was they played as though they were on that surface of Earth, Moon, beaming that experience through musical vibration from their glorious gifts as artists back here on planet Earth. And I never thought that I would have that analogy, but that's what they gifted us yesterday. And I think that was just such a powerful moment in the whole experience of St Luke's and this musical recording.

So I was blown away. It was an absolutely stunning end to the sequence of movements. Right, and for me, Matt, almost I could picture the Earth there, like they would, it's this small, complete planet, as Nicole would say, and that sense of longing to take care of this planet. Very powerful. Mark, you were there. Yeah, I, very impactful emotionally.

I felt like I'd been beaten up with an emotional baseball bat by the end of it. But goosebumps upon goosebumps. To see the orchestra, one big human machine producing something so coordinated and harmonious and wonderful it's very very emotional it was overpowering for me I found it quite I think it's a good term taking us back to the theme of the evening which is this intersection of art and science which I hope you agree we have beautifully illustrated this evening. The line I came up with was, here it is, that great science inspires great art. Great art can be the highest expression

of scientific wonder. Am I off base, Amanda, or does that sound right to you? I think being a film composer and knowing the power of music to tell stories, the persuasive language of music to manipulate emotions, that is when I saw these moons and I instantly thought they need music, they need emotion. It's only when I started investigating them that I came across all this incredible science and that's when I thought, wow, there is an opportunity that cannot be missed here and that's when I thought, well, what about if I employ the forces of a choir to sing the science it's going to give it so much more outreach and meaning and and we'll be able to communicate more of its story and that's when it the music the project started to grow in size and scope I just thought wow this is so intriguing

to me and I'm a teacher at heart so I'm always wanting I'm so I'm very curious about life and learning and I just thought that here's an opportunity to team science up with stories with space but with the universal language of music which communicates to all of us and space is for all of us as well and science should also be that and funny enough Marin also music should be it for everyone. So it's just a really beautiful, global, collaborative spirit that just engages all these worlds that overlap. And to me, that is the essence of this experience.

That's the Moon Symphony. I have mentioned this before. I'm a big fan of Walt Whitman. I love Leaves of Grass. He wrote a poem in there called The Learning Astronomer. He was dead wrong. He basically is saying, oh, these astronomers, they're all about the numbers and analyzing and this and they don't feel the romance.

And Walt goes out and he looks up at the moon and the sky and he feels it. Well, he was wrong, right, Linda? Linda Zellmer Absolutely. Definitely the feeling coming through. Enceladus, of course, is one of my favorite movements. But actually being able to feel like I was there watching those rows and rows and rows of jets going off on Enceladus, those plumes. I appreciate the effort that Amanda took to get into the science of Io. to get into the science of IO, but regarding the intersection or the complementarity of art and science.

I looked into this, my wife helped me out with some background reading, and I was drawn to a quote from the artist Francois Gillot, who spent 10 years living with Pablo Picasso, and then married Jonas Salk, who created the polio vaccine. And she was asked, what is it like? You two are completely different.

And what she said was, even though we are in different fields, we have the same intrinsic drive, the drive to get into an equation with the unknown, to pull something known out of something unknown. And that just struck a chord with me. Because I think of the scientist waiting to see that new image coming back from a spacecraft. Which, as Mark said, and as Linda said, it changes the paradigm. It changes the book, because

hypotheses are disproved and new hypotheses form. I think of the composer with her hands poised above a keyboard, waiting to strike that first chord. I think it's the same mindset. I think it's the same thing. Well done, Ashley. Beautiful. Mark. Mark Sefton. I agree. So I- That's it. So I was lucky enough to see the orchestra yesterday. How the limits of what's possible musically was stretched, the attention to detail. It was like a research project. I think art is science and science is art.

Anybody who's a scientific researcher like me knows that you have to look at things with fresh eyes sometimes. You have to go and seek inspiration, come back and find new ways forward. That requires a creative mind. So I think we've got more in common than we have, than is different. And I think if people could recognize the similar approaches that science and art require, they'd see it's just one long continuum of activity. Linda? Well, in fact, I was going to add that the Moon Symphony, the project itself, is kind of like a space mission. You have

to pay attention to that detail and work so hard to finally have it come to fruition. Hearing the orchestra play that music. I'm afraid we're going to have to stop at this point. I do want to give Amanda the last word. What's next?

When are we going to be able to hear what was recorded yesterday and what is still being recorded at Abbey Road? So we have a trajectory, which is a digital release in October this year. And so we've got a small time frame to get all the elements and the record sorted, ready for that release. And I think we're going to be able to do it. And once that is available for digital download, we are already knitting together a plan for a world premiere and we're just trying to identify where on planet Earth that's going to take place.

I think part of the vision has always been the glorious Royal Albert Hall over there, partly because it looks like a moon. We don't know and we're just, you know, open and fluid and flexible about how that will manifest. But right now, I think I'm just really enjoying this phase of it, which is the recording. Having the scientists with me is more than dreamy. And of course, the London Symphony Orchestra, the best orchestra on the planet, as far as I'm concerned, you know what a luxury it is just to have us together after everything that

we've been through in the last two years. And I think more than ever, this symphony is basically the theme of Planet Earth the last two years, that we are together, united, and whole. And thank you for coming. What a wonderful place to end. Thank you, Amanda Lee Falkenberg. Thank you, Linda Spilker and Ashley Davis of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, not far from our headquarters at the Planetary Society in Pasadena.

And Mark Sefton of Imperial College London, thank you to you as well for joining us. And to Tom Spilker, who jumped in there at the end. Thank you, Tom. Many thanks also to Imperial College London, which has made this possible, this gathering. And again, thank you to all of you who came out here on a rainy night in London.

Ad astra, which means to the stars and to the moons as well. Thank you, everyone, and good night. Planetary Radio Live on the evening of Monday, May 23rd. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. We are back with a brand new What's Up. Bruce is virtually sitting across from me here and in this online session. It's good to see you again after a couple of weeks. Good to see you. Welcome back from your trip of fun and work and goodness. Work and pleasure, and even the work was a pleasure. So it was quite a couple of weeks.

Yeah, you're wild, man. As I told you before we went on the air, just hearing about your trip makes me tired. Yeah, I don't blame you. I'm still definitely jet lagged. So wake me up. Tell me about that beautiful sky. Pre-dawn is just going to be the focus of the planet party. It just continues.

They're wild and crazy. Jupiter and Mars did their close-up thing, but they are still close, and they're moving apart. So check out the pre-dawn east. Lowest down is super bright Venus. Well, you might pick up Mercury even farther to the lower left of Venus, but it'll get higher. Just wait. So mostly start with Venus in the lower left and then move up to the right and you'll see reddish Mars and then very close to it, bright Jupiter and farther up to the right is Saturn. And they're all just going to kind of spread out across the sky over the coming weeks and months. And it's good stuff. We move on to This Week in Space History, 1965,

first American spacewalk by Ed White. And 1968, three years later, unrelated except for, you know, heading to the moon, Surveyor 1, the first U.S. lunar soft lander, landed. And what a triumph that was when Surveyor 1 made it. The very first attempt by a surveyor to make a soft landing up there, especially after Ranger took, oh, I don't know, several tries before they got it right. But it made some nice small craters. Of course, Ranger was a high-speed impact design to do that anyway.

It just was supposed to function before then. Eventually, they got one working, and Surveyor Program was very successful, as was Lunar Orbiter. Random space fact, a random, random space fact. I'm just not done with that yet. So on Apollo 11, there was a small disk, kind of the size of a big coin, that Buzz Aldrin carried and was dropped onto the moon that contained goodwill messages, statements by Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and

Nixon, and messages of goodwill from leaders of a whole bunch of countries around the world. Also had leadership of Congress, NASA top management, all sorts of names that were shrunk down and put on there and still hanging out on the moon. Somehow I'd missed that until now. So there you go. We'll come back to that in a little bit. I didn't know that either. Yeah. Glad we're coming back to it too. We have a lot of trivia questions to get to. Yeah. The first of these is your answer to the question that we asked way back on May 11. We had to do this because I went out of town and last week was pre-taped, but we're ready now. What was that question? I like this one.

We asked you, why is there a depiction of a snake on the Perseverance rover? How'd we do, Matt? Big response to this one. I'll let the poet laureate of Planetary Radio, Dave Fairchild of Kansas, provide what he believes was the answer. Rod of Asclepius, etched on aluminum, traveled to Mars as an honor to those putting their personal health on the line in the fight against COVID when it first arose. There on the lander, the rod and the snake are supporting the Earth.

It's a virtual sign thanking the teams of our medical heroes who help us while putting themselves on the line. I had no idea this was also adorned perseverance. I didn't realize it either, and it's worthy of note, since obviously those people deserve our thanks and gratitude, and so it's kind of neat. Christopher Mills said, this was nice for me to learn about, since I'm a practicing ER doctor in Northern Virginia, fighting the pandemic for two years now, much appreciated, Perseverance. And then we also got a similar note from Kevin Nitka in New Jersey, also working in healthcare. Thank you to all of you out there who have been on the front lines

in dealing with this terrible disease. Yes, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Devin O'Rourke in Colorado, sending a snake to Mars, very much against planetary protection protocols. Yeah, I didn't look into how they resolved that. It's a two-dimensional snake, functionally. So I think that may be the exception. Marcel John Craigsman in the Netherlands,

he was actually kind of hoping it was the logo of the Python programming language, since it does run on ingenuity, but healthcare is good too, he says. No comment. Christopher Lowe, a bonus meaning of the snake is so that the Martians don't actually step on the rover. You know, apparently it sounds like a version of don't tread on me. Gene Lewin in Washington sent a poem, but I'm also impressed by the image that he sent. And it was a bumper sticker that Perseverance does not have on board. It says, how's my driving? And then it provides a 202 area code number.

I checked it. It happens to be one of NASA headquarters' main numbers. And you saw that on the rover? Yeah, just only in Gene's imagination. Oh, okay. And in the image that he faked. Finally, we did get this little quick ditty from Gregory Vanderslees in Quebec, Canada. A pandemic may have slowed our pace, but the perseverance of the human race is forever festooned on a rover in space.

Oh, another nice poem. You know, after all that, I should probably tell everyone who won. Why start now? First time winner, Peter. Whoops. I heard that. First time winner, Peter Edel in Germany, who said, yeah, it was commemorating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, paying tribute to the perseverance of healthcare workers. Congratulations, Peter. We're going to send you a copy of Totality, an eclipse guide in rhyme and science. A terrific book by Jeff Bennett, friend of the show that we have already talked about. All right, let's go on to the next one of these. This would be the question that you posed in the May 18 episode.

You're having me record these one after another over a short period of time. I was losing it by this point. So I asked you, continuing the animal theme, it turns out, what Messier object could have been named after a movie with Natalie Portman? How'd we do, Matt? I'm so very curious. There were some interesting answers to this. A lot of people made reference to her appearance in Thor,

the Phantom Galaxy, something like that. Or maybe it was her Star Wars stuff. I don't know. We got everything like that. But here is the answer I think you were looking for. In a poem from Gene Lewin, once again, Gene Lewin in Washington. I believe the answer does have wings and dark, but not a bat. No, it's not the wild duck. Lee Vollman starred in that. Searching the Messier object list, utilizing WikiP,

then a search for Natalie's movie with help from IMDb. I see a lobster. No wings there. Ghost fly, but Casper starred Ricci. In Star Wars 1, playing a queen, it could be the Phantom Galaxy, but focusing on feathered friends, it must be the Black Swan. I wonder, when she was on point, did she have Bill Nye's shoes on?

did she have Bill Nye's shoes on? Wow. Knows Bill Nye trivia. Yeah, our boss who has somewhat of a reputation as a dancer, even in reality television. He also holds a patent for a design of a ballet shoe, I believe. You know, you're right. I forgot about that. He's told me about that. He's quite the inventor. And I do remember he talked about pointe shoes, which

is an invention. I wish it had been around when my daughters were learning to go on pointe. We got other stuff. Rod Sandry in Australia, just like Paddington Bear, you have to kind of squint and tilt your head just right to imagine how most of these things in the sky, including the black swan, open cluster, is it, got its name? Indeed. And clearly, if you squint just right, obviously it looks like a black swan. That's all sarcasm. I agree. His point is well made. There are a few things that look like what they're supposed to, but most things were. I picture sleep-deprived

bored astronomers in the early days of astronomy at their telescopes. It's like, oh, whoa, black swan, man. They were either tired or something else was going on. You may remember that I said we would have a surprise prize for this contest. Oh, exciting. Harry Rau in Texas said, I hope the surprise prize is a dinner with Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. Dream on. No, but how about lunch on us and a tour of Planetary Society headquarters?

The problem here is that our winner would have to handle his own transportation and hotel. Since he's in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, which is 2,300 kilometers or 1,430 miles from Pasadena, I suppose we should also send a rubber asteroid to first-time winner Barry Olson. And we'll send it with a copy of Greg Brenica's book, Impact, How Rocks from Space Led to Life, Culture, and Donkey Kong, published by HarperCollins. Congratulations, Barry, another first-time winner up there in Alberta, who said, yeah, M18, Messier 18, the black swan open cluster in the constellation Sagittarius. Should we go on to new stuff? Please. Back to the Apollo 11 Goodwill messages disk. On that disk, left on the moon, according to NASA at the time,

that's my caveat to try to have this be less confusing. According to NASA at the time, messages from the leaders of how many countries other than the U.S. are included. How many countries' leaders other than the U.S. have messages on the Apollo 11 Goodwill messages disk? According to NASA at the time, go to planetary.org slash radio contest. And we're back to the usual deadline, giving you just a week, if you hear this right away. That would make it Wednesday, June 8th at 8 a.m. Pacific time. And because we have so much interest in those rubber asteroids, we'll go back.

We'll give one more of those away to the winner of this one. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and oh, please think about Matt Kaplan on point. Because it's entertaining me right now. Thank you, and good night. I did play Drosselmeyer twice, once for each of my daughters, because they had the leading roles in their very small kids' ballet companies. And so I had fun doing that. But yeah, you won't catch me on point. They had the leading roles in their very small kids' ballet companies. And so I had fun doing that. But, yeah, you won't catch me on point.

On point always, though, is the chief astronomer, the chief scientist, I should say, as well as an astronomer for the Planetary Society. No pas de deux there. It's Bruce Betts who joins us every week here for What's Up. pas de deux there. It's Bruce Betts who joins us every week here for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and is made possible by its harmonious

members. Come make music with us at planetary.org slash join. Marco Verda and Ray Paletta are our associate producers. Josh Doyle composed our theme which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. Ad Astra.