Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Planetary Radio Live! We See Thee Rise: The Canadian Space Program

Episode Date: October 7, 2014

We welcomed 1,600 Canadian space enthusiasts to the University of Toronto for our October 1st celebration of Canada in space! Join Mat Kaplan and Bill Nye with their guests, Canadian space writer Elizabeth Howell, University of Western Ontario planetary scientist Gordon “Oz” Osinski, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Bruce Betts appeared via Skype to lead a rousing Random Space Fact cheer on What’s Up.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey Canadians, this Planetary Radio is for you! A special treat this week as we take you to our celebration on October 1, 2014. We called it, We See Thee Rise, words taken from the Canadian National Anthem for reasons that will be obvious in seconds. Some of the early audio is a bit distorted, but there's no distorting the enthusiasm of our audience that evening. From the University of Toronto in beautiful Ontario, this is Planetary Radio Live. And that's all the time we have for this evening, Bill. I'm sorry we didn't get to introduce you. No, welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society,

here with about 1,700 Canadians who can't wait to celebrate their nation's accomplishments in space. In a few moments, in a few moments, we'll meet Canadian space program expert, writer Elizabeth Howell, University of Western Ontario planetary scientist, Gordon Ozosinski, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut, Jeremy Hansen. Before that happens, please provide a warm Toronto welcome for the Chief Executive Officer of the Planetary Society, my boss, Bill Nye the Science Guy. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. Hello, Canada.

All right. Bill, you just finished a presentation here that was, I'd say, well-received. I know that you do this now and then, even when you're not in Canada, when you pull out your wallet and you show people something. Yes, yes. In my wallet, my listeners all over the world, I carry my Canadian $5 bill, which features the International Space Station, and I think that's Jeremy right there. Not yet, but maybe someday. In his space suit. There he is.

Walking. It is a remarkable thing. $5 Canadian. For the U.S. listeners especially, just understand that the Canadian $5 bill, every time you use money, you're reminded of the pride in space exploration. Canada participates in so many space missions by making these wonderful instruments and providing us with these terrific athletes, brilliant guys who become astronauts. But it's a celebration of what really brings out the best in us,

and that's exploring space, advancing space science and exploration. So it's something I hope our Canadian listeners and viewers are very proud of. One Canadian who is very proud of her nation's accomplishments in space is space writer Elizabeth Howell. She has been across much of the world reporting on space exploration and development. You can regularly find her work at Universe Today, Space.com, the Space Exploration Network, Live Science, and elsewhere. I asked Elizabeth to tell us about a recent experience in Utah that went well beyond simply writing. I was at the Mars Desert Research Station earlier this year,

which is a Mars Society facility, to simulate Mars exploration as closely as possible. So you have a bunch of people who are sitting inside of a habitat for a couple of weeks, doing science experiments, working with each other, sleeping in the same quarters. And, you know, it gets a little tense sometimes because you've got a bunch of people in a little crowded space. And even when you're sitting in a car for a couple of days on a road trip, you would sort of understand the feelings. So it's a lot of trying to work together and making sure that we get each other's personalities all in alignment to get a bunch of science done. And I had a great time.

It was a lot of fun. Did everybody survive? So far, yes. This kind of stuff seems to prove something I know is very important to you, that you don't need to leave Canada, go south of the border, or to Europe to have a life devoted to space. Exactly. I mean, I travel to Utah, obviously, but I live here in Canada, and I do my science writing from Ottawa, which is about five hours here from Toronto for those who don't know. And I made a commitment early in my lifetime to try and stay as close as I could to Canada

because I just feel that our space program is a wonderful thing and it doesn't get enough publicity. And the best way that I could really serve that was by being right here in Canada and trying to promote it from here. Gordon Osinski also joined us. Most people just call him Oz. He has spent many years revealing the secrets of impact craters here on Earth and across the solar system.

Oz holds a chair in planetary geology at the University of Western Ontario and is deputy director of the Center for Planetary Science and Exploration, director of the Canadian Lunar Research Network, and chair of the Planetary Sciences Division of the Geological Association of Canada. His accomplishments in the field have made him the Canadian Space Agency's go-to geologist when they want an astronaut to learn about rocks. His personal website kind of says it all. What's the URL?

Spacerocks.ca. Spacerocks.ca. Please welcome once again Oz. Oz Osinski. Thank you. Oz, one thing that I left out there is that you've also been moving into research in this other field called astrobiology that kind of attempts to imagine life as we don't yet know it. Yeah, absolutely. And little did I know that 15 years ago when I came to Canada to start my PhD in this area that I'd get into astrobiology.

when I came to Canada to start my PhD in this area that I get into astrobiology. But a lot of my research and that of others is showing that actually impact events after they occur are actually beneficial for life. Maybe even life originated in a crater on Earth or on another planet such as Mars. One of the great things about planetary science is the new and interesting directions that your research takes you. science is the new and interesting directions that your research takes you. What are the conditions in an asteroid impact crater that life would, if I may, dig? So one of the interesting things is the location where many people think life originated on Earth is in so-called hydrothermal

systems. So you think of Yellowstone National Park, Iceland, where hot springs and geysers. And so for a long time, we've been thinking of these volcanically active regions on Earth. But it turns out impact craters, if you have any H2O, it could be liquid or frozen on a planetary object. If you whack that with a big hunk of rock, as you showed earlier, you heat up the target, and you can create these hydrothermal systems too. And so we're seeing evidence for that on Mars now from orbit, and so my goal actually is to send a rover into a crater somewhere on Mars to look for signs of this.

The Canadian Space Agency provided a terrific video profile of our final panelists that evening. Here's how it ends. There's just nothing mundane about being an astronaut. There's always something new going on, always new tasks and new classes to take, new courses, refining skills like robotics and spacewalking skills. I've been learning Russian the entire time I've been there. I travel routinely back to Canada. I speak and meet with many Canadians across the country. I travel to other countries. It's always fascinating and interesting and that's one of those things if I never actually get to fly in space, just

having done this job as an astronaut will have absolutely been worth it. So Space Geeks, please welcome Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome. Thanks. That's a great introduction.

I've got to ask, not from what we saw on screen, but because of what you were doing up until, what, about two weeks ago, have you got all the water out of your ears? Yes, absolutely. You know, if you hadn't heard, I had this tremendous opportunity to live under the Atlantic Ocean for a week. And I can't say enough about living in a tin can under the ocean. It's an incredible experience and a real privilege. Jeremy is talking about Aquarius, the world's only undersea research station, where he was part of the NEMO-19 crew. NEMO stands for NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations.

I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Abyss. It's like there's a hole in the floor of this habitat, and the air pressure keeps the water out. It's like the upside-down cup, like a beaver lodge. And then you swim up into it, and you're inside there. Now you're committed to staying on the ocean floor because you're saturated with nitrogen. So if you go to the surface, you die.

That's bad. And so you live under the ocean, and it's like you belong there. And I just saw amazing things. Over the course of a week, our dinner table has a huge porthole where fish come by and they look at you and you look at them. And it's like two reverse aquariums. It's an amazing experience. And at the beginning of the week, you see the big stuff. And seven days later, you're seeing smaller stuff. You're noticing the smaller aspects of the marine life and the ocean. It's incredible. And then it's over. Seven days and you're like, man, this sucks. I've got to go. There's so much more to see. And an incredible place. But why we're really there is we're practicing going to space, going on space missions. So for me it's an analog for

getting ready to go live on the International Space Station. It's a similar schedule. But we're also looking at things like dealing with communications delays. So we know we go to Mars, we're going to have a significant communications delay. So we simulated five minutes each way. And how do we effectively explore, do a traverse where, you know, someone like Oz is sitting here watching what we're doing, and we pass up the most important rock, the Genesis Rock. And he's like, oh, I told him to get the Genesis Rock. And so then it's five minutes to get to Oz, and immediately he realizes I missed the most important scientific discovery of humankind.

And then five minutes after that, I get the message, but I'm already half a kilometer away. So what are the best communication systems, and how do we set up those traverses to effectively get input from Earth? We're just going through those practical exercises. It would be kind of silly to go all the way to Mars but not have practiced it. Elizabeth Howell brought along several images of Canadian successes in space that have not received the recognition they have earned. All right, this next one, I think it must have snuck in,

because this is the one that everybody knows about. The Canadarm. Canadarm 2, actually. Isn't it pretty? Look at it. Look at it. It's cool. It's an arm, it's a robot arm in space. How do we say that? From the goal line to midfield? It's a big old thing. We want a cannon arm to appear on the show, but it's recovering from a case of carpal tunnel.

He sends his regards. Did you? Just thought of that. Thank you very much. It's not like you didn't find that joke on the web. This technology represents some very cool stuff that's happening here on Earth. Exactly. Well, Canadarm2, everybody knows that it's out there helping astronauts,

helping fix the International Space Station, picking up the Dragon spacecraft whenever it comes in, really, really high-profile stuff like that. But it turns out that the same technology can be used here on Earth. And so a couple of examples of that are the image-guided autonomous robot, which is supposed to be helping find breast cancer tumors just through automatically looking through things. And the other one is called NeuroArm, which can also look for tumors. And it's just amazing, because when you think about it, we've got the space technology. It was developed for space.

But it turns out that it actually can help people here on Earth. And that really does speak to what we can't predict about the space program, the uses that it could be useful for. I then turn to Oz Osinski for a few examples of space science that is being conducted in Canada. There is a lot of fantastic planetary science done in Canada and space science that really isn't well known. Talking about exoplanets, this is an exoplanet, a planet that is outside our solar system,

and Canadians were some of the first to discover these. Now, big telescopes and things are finding hundreds of these now, but it was Canadians that really pioneered this. I have a colleague at Western who dated the oldest solids in the solar system. So that was a Canadian who did that. We have pioneers in astrobiology. We tend to do things in cold places in Canada, though,

so instead of looking for things in hot springs like in Yellowstone National Park, folks from McGill actually go up to the Arctic, and we have McGill people here. Fantastic. I asked Jeremy Hansen to say more about the education and outreach portion of his job as a Canadian astronaut. We feel like we have a gem, like something that's so important for humanity, the spirit of exploration, the spirit of constant learning, of leaving our planet to understand more about how we got here, what's going on, we've just scratched the surface. And so if we don't share it, if we can't share that message with people,

then what's the point? The whole point is to share it. And so Chris Hadfield, what a great example. Excuse me. What a great example. But there's a huge team behind Chris, and there always is a huge team behind the astronauts who go to space. They're always in the spotlight, but there's a huge team of people

that are just as passionate as Chris Hadfield and the rest of us for sharing this message. And a little antidote, I went to an air show right after Chris landed, and there's, I mean, how many people would be at an air show? Like 20,000 people at this air show. And I was standing up on a high tower doing an interview with the announcer, just a quick interview, and then all of a sudden he asked, he's like, how many people in this crowd have seen a picture of our planet from space that Chris took? And I couldn't see a body without a

hand in the air. And that is significant. Because before Chris's mission, people used to ask me, I thought the space program was over. What is it you do? Because they knew the space shuttle had retired and they thought that was the end. And so it's really important that Canadians know we have a program, we have the ability to, you have the ability to work in the space industry, to maybe explore space or be a part of that. And that's significant for Canadian youth to know. Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. He and our other panelists will be back with more from our big night for Canadian space.

This is Planetary Radio. Hi, this is Casey Dreyer, Director of Advocacy at the Planetary Society. We're busy building something new, something unprecedented, a real grassroots constituency for space. We want to empower and engage the public like never before. If you're interested, engage the public like never before. If you're interested, you can go to planetary.org slash SOS to learn how you can become a space advocate. That's planetary.org slash SOS. Save our science. Thank you. Hi, this is Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society. We've spent the last year creating an informative, exciting, and beautiful new website. Your place in space is now open for business. You'll find a whole new look with lots

of images, great stories, my popular blog, and new blogs from my colleagues and expert guests. And as the world becomes more social, we are too, giving you the opportunity to join in through Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and much more. It's all at planetary.org. I hope you'll check it out. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan, this week with excerpts from our amazing evening in Toronto on October 1st. The complete title?

We See the Rise, the Canadian space program, today and tomorrow. On stage with me at the University of Toronto were Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye, Canadian space writer Elizabeth Howell, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, and University of Western Ontario planetary scientist Gordon Ozosinski. We've talked in recent weeks about the Mars Orbiter Mission, or MOM. This success has very special meaning for Oz. This is a mission by India. So India sent a spacecraft. I mean, it actually duly deserves a huge round of applause because two things. Not only was India the first country ever to successfully send its first spacecraft to Mars,

but they did it for changing rupees to dollars for about $74 million. That is about the tenth the price of what Maven cost. But full disclosure... Full disclosure, we can... It's not clear how they accounted everybody's salary. That may not have been included. But still, let's say they're off even by a factor of 10. It's still a bargain mission.

Absolutely. And to me, being based here in Canada, we often don't need to talk about the Canadian Space Agency's budget tonight, but it's not big. But when we see a country like India being able to do this and send a spacecraft not just around low Earth orbit, but to Mars for that amount of money, I think that, I mean, Canadians, we can do this. And we should be doing it. And it's been a while since Canada's thought about this.

I wanted to hear from all three of our panelists what they'd like to see Canada doing more of in space. Elizabeth Howell was first to respond. More of what we're doing. I think that we should be broadcasting more widely the accomplishments that we have. We should be proud of what we do, because we're a small community, we're very tight-knit, and we're mighty, and I'm very proud of that. Same question for you, Oz.

What would you like to see this nation doing more of in space? I mean, I think following off from the last talk about the Indian mission, I mean, really the crux of any planetary scientist's career would be to have an instrument or a mission go. And I'd like to see Canada keep on contributing instruments to mission, but to me a flagship mission beyond low Earth orbit, because we've done that with RadarSat, we've shown that we can do that, but Canada sending and leading a mission to Mars, to an asteroid,

or to the moon would just be fantastic in my mind. Jeremy, I would ask you the same question, but I just think that I know the answer already, and that is get you up there. I thought you were going to say that I'd give you a media line. I think there's something I'd like to convey to you about that, something you should know from an insider point of view. I have significant optimism about where Canada is going with respect to space. We have really strong leadership. I've never seen such a

solid plan. We're getting direction from government. And when I look forward at the innovation and the capabilities, I'm filled with optimism. I see everything pointing in the right direction. And so what's important for Canadians to know is if you wouldn't want to base your decisions about your future career options on the past or even the present day, the 20s are going to be nothing like what you see. The potential and the capability of Canada, the foundation that we're building right now under the leadership of General Walt Vintinchuk is significant and very promising. And so expect big things. Before saying goodbye to our panelists, we brought on stage the Planetary Society's

new National Coordinator for Canada. Montreal-based Kate Howells had helped to produce our great evening in Toronto. More importantly, she's also leading the Society's efforts to get more Canadians involved in their space program and in space exploration worldwide. The response she got when she asked for help was very gratifying and even entertaining. I mean, there's this stereotype of Canadians being friendly, but I mean, this was unreal. And then we went to our members and we said, you know, what can we do to be relevant in your community? What kind of things do you want to see the Planetary Society doing? And I was blown away by how many people stepped forward as volunteers.

And it's really been this combination of our partners and our volunteers that have gotten us to where we are here, where we've filled up Convocation Hall and we've got this amazing panel and we've got all kinds of partners involved in this whole process and volunteers running around taking care of all the details of putting something like this together. And we even had sort of volunteer input on naming the event. The title We See the Rise came from putting out a call to the public on, you know, what should an event like this be called? And I'm going to ask you, Bill, to tell us some of the other

excellent suggestions that we have. These are names that you all did not select. Space, Canada's hat. It's not bad. For the U.S. viewers, Canada is the United States' hat. Hilarious. Then another apparently rejected title, Space, Canada 2, Bigger, Colder, Emptier.

And my favorite, my favorite, in space, no one can hear you apologize. We ended the panel discussion with a chance to hear from each of our special guests about the work they have underway. Here's how I put the question to Elizabeth Howell. What are you writing about that our audience can look forward to in the next few weeks or months? The International Astronautical Congress, which Bill mentioned a few minutes ago, I've been there immersed in everything from aliens to planets to space launch systems, and it's just

been so exciting. So I'm actually hoping later this week there will be a story on Universe Today about aliens, so keep your eyes out for that. Oz, where in the world is your research taking you next? Well, actually Jeremy and I were just talking about this beforehand. We're hoping to head back to Victoria Island in the

Canadian Arctic to keep exploring these remote, amazing places on Earth. And, Jeremy, what do we do to help get you that ride? Do we write to NASA and say, he's a good guy. Let him go. No, I already told you, I'm in good hands.

I'm a very privileged individual to be working for the Canadian Space Agency. I do amazing training events. This life is incredible. And then someday, somebody's going to come into my office or more likely phone me and say, hey, it's go time, and it's your turn to fly in space, and that's pretty incredible. He's going to get a ride, people. So we have reached the end of our time with this truly outstanding panel

but it's not the end of the show it's late here on a Wednesday night but if you stick around you might win a Planetary Radio t-shirt as we go into our regular What's Up segment Bill, any closing words? Well, thank you so much for coming, everybody. And for those of you listening on the radio, it really is extraordinary as somebody from the U.S.

to come to Canada and see the passion for space exploration. It's inspiring. And I really appreciate you guys all including us in this big, fun radio broadcast. Bill Nye, helping me thank Canadian space writer and expert Elizabeth Howell, University of Western Ontario planetary scientist Gordon Ozosinski, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. There was still one thing left to do before we could end our evening at the University of Toronto. So I need an extra special big welcome

for the Director of Science and Technology at the Planetary Society, Dr. Bruce Betts. Hey, Bruce, welcome to Toronto. Hey, thanks. It's good to be here or there. Thank you for the warm welcome. We've got a total lunar eclipse coming up, thanks. It's good to be here or there. Thank you for the warm welcome. We've got a total lunar eclipse coming up, Matt. Total lunar eclipse on October 8th in the morning. So visible from most of North America, including where you are, including where I am. And the partial eclipse will begin at 2.15 a.m. Pacific time. That's 9.15 UT.

And then maximum eclipse will be about an hour, hour and 20 minutes later. So go out and check that out. And then looking a little farther ahead, on October 23rd, we've got a partial solar eclipse also visible for most of North America. I'd say the total lunar eclipse

is also visible from Eastern of North America. I say the total lunar eclipse is also visible from eastern Asia, eastern Australia and throughout the Pacific region as well. We've also got our planets hanging out in the night sky. So we've got in the evening sky, southwest, you can check out Saturn, though it's getting lower and lower. And we've got Mars still hanging out near the reddish star Antares and they both look a similar red. Mars is the one higher in the sky. And then in the pre-dawn east, Jupiter is dominating, looking super bright. Moving on to this week in space history. It was this week in 1959, Luna 3 returned the first images of the far side of the moon, our first look at the far side of the moon. So one, two, three.

We're in space! Awesome. That was very nice. Canada Arm 2, you may have heard of this. It's the large robotic arm on the International Space Station. It is 17.6 meters when fully extended, has seven motorized joints, and a mass of 1,800 kilograms. They make good arms up there, don't they? All right, we can go into the contest.

Let's talk about the contest for the folks at home. So we asked you, how many Mars orbiters has NASA launched, and how many of those successfully achieved Mars orbit. How'd we do, Matt? Real well. And this was a tough one because it took a little research by people. So we got more diversity of answers than usual. But I believe that our winner was Katie Greenberg

of Cape May Courthouse, New Jersey, who said that NASA has attempted to send 10 orbiters to the red planet and that of these, seven were successful. That is correct. Excellent. Well, Katie, congratulations. All right, so Katie is going to get her Planetary Radio t-shirt. I do want to mention listener Torsten Zimmer in Germany.

He added this penetrating observation. This 7 out of 10 means that NASA has a much higher success rate with Mars orbiters than Hollywood has with Mars movies. Let's go on and come up with a question for folks at home. For the folks at home, so don't yell out the answer if you're in the crowd. Who was the first Canadian to visit the International Space Station? Visit the International Space Station. As a side note, this person has a master's from the University of Toronto. Go to planetary.org slash radio contest to get your entry in. And in case you're wondering, the deadline for this latest contest is Tuesday, October 14th at 8 a.m. Pacific time.

We want to thank the dedicated staff at the University of Toronto that hosted us in Convocation Hall for this celebration of Canada in space. The complete webcast of the event, including a terrific performance by Ottawa-based band Dreamworld, is either available now or will be very soon at planetary.org. Back next week with exoplanet hunter Deborah Fisher. Good night, everyone, and clear skies! applause Thank you.