Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Planetfest ’21: To Mars and Back Again

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

The Planetary Society’s Planetfest ’21 celebrated Mars and the newest visitors to the Red Planet.  Mat Kaplan shares some of his Planetfest conversation with Andy Weir, author of The Martian. We also sit down with the leader of the United Arab Emirates’ Hope mission that entered Mars orbit a few days ago. Planetary Society contributing editor Andrew Jones provides an update on China’s Tianwen-1 spacecraft that arrived within hours of Hope.  We’ll also join preparations for the landing of NASA’s Mars 2020 rover Perseverance as we hear a media briefing from mission leaders. There’s more to discover at  https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/planetfest-andy-weir-omran-sharaf-andrew-jonesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A taste of PlanetFest, 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. PlanetFest 21, to Mars and back, was a huge success. It was our first PlanetFest since the Curiosity rover arrived at Mars in 2012 and the first one to go virtual. What it lacked in big crowds, it more than made up for in enthusiasm and terrific content. I've got a small but exciting sample for you on this week's show, which I'm working on mere hours after the close of PlanetFest on the evening of Sunday, February 14th. You'll hear Emirates Mars Mission Director Amran Sharaf,

China space program expert Andrew Jones, and our old friend Andy Weir, author of The Martian. We begin with a few inspiring moments from a NASA media briefing held on Tuesday, February 16th, just two days before the Mars 2020 rover Perseverance plunges through its seven minutes of terror to the surface of the red planet. If you hear this in time, I invite you to join Bill Nye's Perseverance landing party on Thursday, February 18th, beginning at 1130 a.m. Pacific. It's free and available to all at planetary.org. We told you last week that the United Arab Emirates Hope Orbiter had successfully reached Mars.

The current edition of The Downlink, our weekly newsletter, adds the arrival of China's Tianwen-1 orbiter and rover. As you'll hear from Andrew Jones, the rover is not expected to land till May. As you'll hear from Andrew Jones, the rover is not expected to land till May. NASA has announced that Firefly Aerospace will carry PlanetVac to the moon in 2023 on its Blue Ghost lander. NASA also announced that the Europa Clipper will ride a commercial rocket rather than the giant space launch system. Liftoff is now tentatively planned for October 2024. And the European Space Agency is looking for a few good astronauts.

The application window opens on March 31st. You can always find more at planetary.org. Want to join a live conversation about how we will meet the challenges of living elsewhere in the solar system. Humanity in Deep Space is a free virtual event on February 25th at 1030 a.m. Pacific. I'll join a first-rate panel for what I'm sure will be a fascinating discussion. You can learn more and register at humanityindeepspace.com. NASA has begun the public preparation for the landing of Perseverance. Lead speakers in the first of several media briefings were NASA Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zerbukhin and Perseverance Deputy Project Manager Jennifer Prosper.

Here are a few moments from that briefing. Well, thanks so much. I'm so excited to join the colleagues here from JPL as we count down to Mars. And we just recognize what an amazing journey this has been. And I want to thank at this time, the team for working so hard on this mission, and especially in the past year and adverse circumstances. And I want to recognize the many sacrifices

that the team had to do and really exhibited this true spirit of exploration that we always talk about. I just want to thank them for that. You know, Mars captivates our imagination and has been part of our dreams for many decades, and Perseverance builds on the long history of systematic, science-driven exploration of Mars that has been enabled by ever better technologies and systems. Right now, InSight is taking measurements of Mars quakes. Curiosity is focused on geological and the chemical evolution near Gale Crater. And two orbiters are out there, new in the last couple of weeks,

joining other orbits from NASA and other agencies, learning more about this planet. Our journey has been from following the water, to seeing whether this planet was habitable, to finding complex chemicals, and now we're at the advent of an entirely new phase, returning samples, an aspirational goal that has been with the science community for decades. It is novel technologies that have enabled those breakthroughs we benefit today, and it's novel novel technologies are enabling the next leaps of exploration, landing with more precision and safely. Learn how to make oxygen from CO2 out of the atmosphere and more. And a true extraterrestrial Wright brothers moment

with the ingenuity Mars helicopter riding at the belly of the rover right now as we demonstrate controlled flight in a different world. We could, in fact, not land in Jezero Crater if it wasn't for the technologies that are already added to this. Mars is hard, and we never take success for granted. And as we want to land on Mars, it's because it's, of course, important. And we'll do so with cameras on, so the entire world is inspired with us. And as we do new and tough things and demonstrate these new technologies. Because whether it's on the red planet or here at home on our blue marble, science can bring us together and create solutions to challenges that seem impossible at first.

And I'm really looking forward to turning it over to you, Jennifer, who is, of course, the Deputy Project Manager. Take it away, Jennifer. Thank you. Well, I am so excited to be here today. I can tell you that Perseverance is operating perfectly right now. All systems are go for landing. Last Friday night, we actually sent a command to the spacecraft. We call it the Do EDL command, Do Entry, Descent and Landing.

It makes it sound simple. It's not simple, but it enters a spacecraft into the timeline where it starts to do the entry, descent, and landing activities. So that was a very exciting event. The spacecraft is focused, the team is focused, and we are all ready to go for landing. Now I want to tell you a little bit more about where we're at. This is something that you can actually look at. It's called Eyes on the Solar System. And it tells you where different spacecraft are in the universe. And so we can tell you that Mars Perseverance is 125 million miles away from Earth, and we are only 370,000 miles from Mars. So we are getting there. The time it actually takes for a signal to go from Earth to Mars is 11 minutes. And so that's how we're communicating with the vehicle right now.

One of the things that we've been working towards is really making sure that the aim point we're targeted for at Mars, so we want to aim like on a dartboard, that the aim point is accurate. And we are headed exactly where we want to aim like on a dartboard, that the aim point is accurate. And we are headed exactly where we want to be for Mars. I think back to Sojourner, the very first rover we landed on Mars. Sojourner was about the size of a microwave oven, very small. And even though it's our oldest child, they're all kind of like additional children for me. It sort of behaved like a youngest child. It had a very free spirit and it was just a fun mission to drive around. And then you can see the Spirit and Opportunity rovers were the next evolution.

We built off of what Sojourner had done. Spirit and Opportunity actually could talk to Earth all by themselves. They still used solar panels, and they were these twins that explored all over Mars and outlived their lifetime by multiples of 10 and even 100. And they were just great rovers. And then we kind of took a pause and we really upgraded our systems. And you can see Curiosity down there in the lower left-hand part of this graphic. Curiosity, we went from solar panels to radioisotope power source. The wheels increased in size. We could traverse over much larger rocks and different terrains. We had a sky crane landing system instead of airbags. We really made a step up.

And then Perseverance, even though it looks a lot like Curiosity, is another technological step forward. And so in closing, the one final thing I want to talk about is it's not just about the rovers. And it's not about the individual people just about the rovers and it's not about the individual people who build the rovers. It's about all those individual people together, working together to make this mission work and all of these missions work. There are several dozen of us at JPL who've actually worked on all five of the rover missions, if you can believe it. I want to spend this moment to just thank the team for all of their work over the last almost decade to bring us to where we are today. The team isn't just a bunch of people who are all the same. It's

a bunch of different, uniquely skilled personnel who know very deeply all the technical things they need to know in order for all those things to come together into a very complex system like the ones that we land on Mars. So thank you to that team. And I will end by saying, both for landing day on Thursday and for the whole surface mission, I wish that team great success that they have worked so hard to obtain over the last many years. NASA's Thomas Zurbuchen and Perseverance rover Deputy Project Manager Jennifer Prosper in a media briefing on Tuesday, February 16th. We'll take a brief break and then return with Andrew Jones and Amran Sharath.

Please stay with us. Planetary Radio is made possible by the generous support of listeners like you. If you enjoy our show, if you believe in the mission of the Planetary Society, Advancing Space Exploration, I hope you will join us. We need 500 new members by March 5th to hit our goal. Your membership will power our core initiatives, exploring new worlds, finding life, and defending our planet from asteroids. Sign up today at planetary.org slash join2021 and you'll receive an official membership t-shirt featuring the lovely worlds of our solar system.

That's planetary.org slash join2021. Thanks. PlanetFest 21 included more than 20 virtual sessions covering everything from doing science on Mars to debunking bad science. I hope to share the closing hour with you in a future show. In it, I welcome back Jet Propulsion Lab Chief Engineer Rob Manning, who is always delightful. Actually, my colleagues are working right now on how we will make all of the great session videos available on demand. I'll let you know when this happens. I pre-recorded two PlanetFest sessions, which is why I'm able to

share them with you now. We'll hear Andy Weir in a few minutes. First, I'll welcome back to Planetary Radio, Emirates Mars Mission Director Amran Sharaf, and Planetary Society Contributing Editor Andrew Jones. As you'll hear, we talked less than a day after the EMM Hope spacecraft entered orbit above the Red Planet. Amran, congratulations on behalf of all of us who are watching this, all of us at the Planetary Society on the successful orbital insertion of Hope. Thank you, Matt. Thank you very much for your kind introduction and for your kind wishes also. It was an important day in the history of the UAE, also in the history of the region. Feels good to be at this point.

I bet it does, as it should. Andrew Jones is a contributing editor to the Planetary Society. He's a Finland-based journalist who covers international space developments, especially China's space program, because of course, not quite 24 hours after the success of Amran and his team with Hope, Tianwen-1 arrived in orbit around Mars,

and whose work is also seen regularly at space.com and Space News. You'll find him on Twitter where he is at AJ underscore Fi. Fi for Finland, Andrew? I think that was the case. It was a long time ago. Well, welcome to you as well. And of course, Andrew, you and I get to talk on a semi-regular basis on Planetary Radio. And we're going to come back to that in just moments, Andrew. I was watching last Tuesday when that pandemonium broke out among your team and others there in the UAE and around the world as you got the confirmation that Hope had successfully achieved orbit around the Red Planet.

I just want to say that the camera was on you periodically. You looked overwhelmed. You looked like you, maybe somebody should have found you a chair. How did that feel? A lot of people told me that, yeah, I didn't look quite, you know, some people couldn't read me. Some people look, say that I looked overwhelmed.

Some people looked, they said that you looked as if you were gonna bring in bad news. Some people were like, it was difficult to understand your facial expressions. To be honest, I was just focused on what needs to be done. The moment they actually did the announcement, I was still in shock, actually. I was confident before MOI. I was worried, very worried. I was stressed, at the same time proud, at the same time very confident

about the work that the team did. So that moment just hit me quite like as a surprise you know and even though I was prepared for it to make an announcement whether it's a success or not but I saw the seven years that passed like run in front of me in a second and and and it took me a couple of minutes just to realize that this is happening and maybe that's why i don't know to be honest why i was looking the way i was looking i guess the good thing is that the news was positive the news was good and we succeeded in reaching mars i thought that i saw all of that that that complex of of emotions and thoughts on your face i'm glad i wasn't reading too much in if that was your all of that, that complex of emotions and thoughts on your face. I'm glad I wasn't reading too much in, if that was your sense of it as well.

Tell us, what is the current status of the spacecraft? Is it healthy? The spacecraft is healthy about four hours. So right after insertion, we had a very quick look meeting in which we just make sure that the spacecraft is fine, the subsystems are working fine. Four hours after that, we had a very quick look meeting in which we just make sure that the spacecraft is fine, the subsystems are working fine. Four hours after that, we had a more detailed discussion about the whole system and subsystems and also about the trajectory that we entered in with and also the orbit that we ended up with.

And then around 8 a.m. the next day, which was about six hours after that meeting ended, we had that final meeting in which we assessed the orbit that we were in, the capture orbit, and it was as per our requirements. We also assessed the status of the spacecraft and basically the overall performance of the system and how well it did in the MOI process. We had to make a decision on whether we want to go ahead with a trajectory correction maneuver. The decision was a no-go, which is a good thing. And right after that we had another meeting to discuss officially transitioning from the Mars orbit insertion phase into the transition phase, basically transitioning to science. So the spacecraft

is sound, the spacecraft is fine, it's working well and we are starting our calibration process for these instruments and very soon and preparing for us transitioning into our science orbit in two months from now and hopefully less. So there will be another burn to achieve that science orbit and that's when we'll start to see the science data that so many of your colleagues on the science team are anticipating? Yes. So so basically two months from now, we should be in our science orbit and we start our science phase by September this year. We hope to release our science data, no restrictions.

And basically we have a special platform set up for that uh to give access to everyone around the world to our data all very good news andrew jones you've been very patient through all of this i hope you found this as interesting as i have i would love to hear any questions that you might have for amran as well. But of course, we also want to talk about that other big success last week. Welcome once again. Thanks. And first, Omran, congratulations. Many congratulations for the success.

Also that fascinating and very rich introduction to the mission and the background. That was wonderful. Thank you. So as we said, Andrew, not even 24 hours after the arrival of EMM, the Hope spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates, we saw Tiananmen arrive in orbit around China. I'll go to an image because this image in itself is worth talking about. It's an actual image of the spacecraft in flight. How did China achieve this? This was a bit of a surprise,

quite a surprise to be honest. I think this was taken in October, certainly released on October 1st. So it was China's, People's Republic of China's National Day. Many millions of kilometers from Earth, they detached a small kind of panel spacecraft which had a camera on both sides and as it was tumbling away from the spacecraft it took pictures and sent these to the spacecraft which were then transferred back home and decoded. So what we got to see in deep space was Tianwen-1 on its way. This was kind of an unprecedented image and quite a stunt to be honest. Also especially good to see because for the Hope mission we had a countdown, we had the Emirates mission website, we had the insight into the team which was great to follow. For the Tianwen-1 mission we didn't really have anything apart from radio silence from China. So we were kind of scrambling around looking for a web stream. There was something from China Central Television, but that was

via an app, which you can't, if you're outside of China, you can't even download sometimes, depending on your ecosystem and so on. So it was very hard to know what was going on. But at the same time, we had radio enthusiasts or radio operators who call themselves amateurs, but they are very, very skilled. And what they were doing was using a 20-meter dish in Bochum in Germany to actually pick up the signals. So we're able to work out where Tianwen-1 was, when we expected the breaking burn for the orbit insertion, and then when we could expect it to come back the other side of Mars and pick up the signal. From the Doppler shifts we're able to say, okay look this looks like, you know, everything's going well, and then a few minutes later we got the official news from China that Tianwen-1 was in the

intended orbit. Yeah, it's been very, very interesting to follow this mission in a number of ways and not quite so easily or as clearly as others. What a contrast with what the UAE's openness about the Hope mission, Amran. I mean, I was on the Chinese news, the Chinese space agency's news site yesterday, and more than 24 hours after orbital insertion, there was still not a press

release posted on that site. Andrew, we still know a fair amount about this spacecraft. In fact, we can tell quite a bit just from looking at this image. I mean, we're looking at really two spacecraft, right? There is the orbiter, which has now joined so many others in orbit above mars including hope but you can see that aeroshell which i assume uh has a rover inside it yeah absolutely so the the orbiter is in its um highly elliptical orbit right now over the next two or three months there will be a lowering of the orbit and observations of an area of utopia Planitia in preparation for the landing of a rover, which will be about 240 kilograms. So it's kind of comparable to Opportunity in Spirit. So you know, a serious

rover here. John Greenewald, China has crowded a lot onto this, this little rover. That's right. So we've got six instruments here with a range of science goals here, and there's another seven on the orbiter. I think the head of CNSA said yesterday that they're planning the landing in 100 days. So I don't know if he was just talking on the general level in around

about 100 days because the contractor said May to June would be be the landing so we're still we're still wondering when it'll be but um 100 days would be i think it was 21st of may yeah we've got quite quite a package of instruments here some that we haven't seen on mars before so for example there's a ground penetrating radar which will give fascinating insights into the subsurface. Perseverance is also bringing one along as well. To have two of these instruments working in different spots would allow not just new science data, but also some level of comparison. So that's going to be fascinating if both of these can make the landing. One thing that China's very interested in looking into here, if we focus on the radar, would be water ice.

The idea would be to get follow up detections of water ice made from Shared, which I think was on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and Marsis, which was on Mars Express from ESA. So to follow up on those readings, which suggest pockets of water and water ice in the subsurface, there's another radar on the orbiter. So that would give two different levels of insight and be able to back each other up in a sense. But one thing that was apparent in choosing the location, so this area of Utopia Planitia, so to the south of Viking 2, there are kind of polygonal land formations there which are theorized that you could have water running down below into pockets below the surface. So a team actually took a similar ground penetrating radar out into the Kaodang Basin in West China.

The idea was to do analog tests to see what they could pick up. So this team was saying that they were able to detect pockets of briny water. And of course, briny waters of great interest on Mars. So the idea is that they go there, find these pockets, and that would be one candidate for hosting extremophiles. So we're talking about possibilities for detecting an environment which could harbour life. And the other thing that was mentioned to me by one Chinese planetary scientist was that the detections of water ice, for example, would be very important for potential human missions in the future in terms of resources.

This is, of course, China's first interplanetary mission, but also very ambitious, and they have their eyes on some very intriguing science. Around 2028 or 2030, depending on which rockets they use and which launch window they can get ready for, what they are looking to do as a next step is a Mars sample return. Very few details available on this but it's in the science papers which have been published from senior officials from the Chinese space program. It's been mentioned in the space white papers which they release every five years and there should be another one coming at the end of this year so that would be good to get an update on this but yeah as you can see

going to Mars first time well first time independently with both an orbiter and a rover is very ambitious and then to go for a next step to a Mars sample return which is something that's never been done clearly China is looking to pick up the pace and do things which haven't been done in space before. So NASA and ESA are combining to work on their own concept, and that could launch as early as 2026, I think. But, yeah, I don't like to talk about space races because that's a tired analogy, but, I mean,

this could actually be one area in which you would have some level of competition, at least in terms of who can get samples from Mars and bring them back first, because that would quite simply be unprecedented and could be one of the biggest breakthroughs in science that we've had ever. breakthroughs in science that we've had ever. And I often call it the holy grail for Mars scientists, getting those samples back to laboratories on Earth, which have so much greater capability than anything that we can put on the surface of Mars on a robotic spacecraft or rover right now. And of course, Perseverance, as we're talking about through much of this weekend at Planet Fest,

is the first step in that NASA ESA plan to return samples. How interesting this is going to be, seeing who manages to do this. And of course, if they are both successful, even better. I really just want to thank both of you once again for contributing to our terrific programming this weekend. And thank you for sharing your expertise. I will ask if you have any final thoughts that you'd like to share. Andrew, we can start with you.

Well, I just want to say congratulations again. I look forward to following hope. And that really is a tremendous achievement. And I hope to see that it bears the fruit that you hope it brings. Well said. Amran, any final thoughts? Just I would like to congratulate China for their successful Mars orbit insertion. And also I would like to wish our colleagues and friends in the US successful arrival of Perseverance next week.

The whole team is looking forward for data and information from all missions that are arriving this year. And one message I would like to send to everyone and emphasize the importance of international collaboration. If it wasn't for international collaboration, we wouldn't be able to deliver the mission with the timeframe that we had and with the budget that we had.

And we have an example now of a mission that is orbiting Mars that was able to do that because of collaboration, because of transparency. And I highly encourage different players within the space community globally to reconsider approaches, to come up with new ways of doing things, not just in collaborating, but also when it comes to developing and delivering such missions. The simpler we make it, the easier we can include people. The more complicated we make it, the less inclusive these missions will be. Amran, thank you again as well. Congratulations again to you, the entire MM Hope team, and the people of the UAE,

and elsewhere, your partners at the University of Colorado, Arizona State University and elsewhere who have made this mission so successful so far. We look forward to getting those science results as hope reveals more about the Red Planet to all of us. Thank you. And Andrew, I look forward to talking to you more on Planetary Radio and especially to reading more about what you are able to learn about the Chinese space program as it continues its ambitious journey out across the solar system. Thanks a lot and look forward to talking to you. Thanks very much, Matt. Andy Weir didn't just write The Martian. He is a certified Mars fanatic, like yours truly. Welcoming Andy back for PlanetFest 21 was a no-brainer.

Here's just a portion of our conversation. By the way, Andy will return in April for a conversation about his new and excellent book, Project Hail Mary, available in the first week of May. Andy Weir, welcome to PlanetFest. We are so glad that you're able to join us, and I am so glad to be talking with you again. Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure to hang out with you, Matt. Thank you very much. I feel the same way. We're going back to Mars. Yeah, isn't it awesome? It is. You know, Mark Watney's not making the trip, but you know, two rovers, two orbiters. It's not bad, right? Not bad at all. What do you think about these missions? Oh, I'm against them.

No, obviously, I think they're incredible. It's so awesome. I'm looking forward to what Perseverance is up to. It's got some new tools, some new toys on board that Curiosity didn't have. Really hoping to see how that pans out. Really excited about the landing. I'll be on eggshells watching it. Super psyched. As will we all, man.

Mars is a planet populated entirely by robots. Yeah, well, until Mark gets there anyway, which I guess is still a little ways off. You follow space exploration and science pretty closely, don't you? Yeah, yeah, of course. Big hobby of mine. Always keeping track of what's going on. It's just something I'm really interested

in. Let's talk about the Martian. Okay. Something that made a whole lot more people interested in Mars. And I don't know, I hope NASA has sent you that big check. Well, I mean, Random House sent me that big check, so I'm doing fine. Don't worry about it. That's good. Yeah. I wouldn't hold my breath for the NASA one. So I'm going to read this because it's a loaded question. How does it feel to have written Martian science fiction that has earned its place next to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Kim Stanley Robinson. That is high praise indeed, and certainly an incredible body of authors to be considered alongside. It feels great, and of course, I think every writer gets

this, me especially, just imposter syndrome. Like, what am I doing here? So, I mean, I use that term earned. I and the millions of readers, to say nothing of the tens of millions who saw the movie. You're in that pantheon. Thank you so much. Yeah, I just, it feels great. I feel like I won the lottery, basically. I just kind of bungled into success and still don't know what I did right. So it feels good. don't know what I did right. So it feels good. Is there anything now? I mean, it's been a few years since you wrote the book. Is there anything you've changed? Is there anything you would update? Yeah. People think that, I think the general public at large doesn't realize how rapidly we learn things about Mars. The rovers, the scientific advancements that we're making all the time and learning more and more

about Mars. When I was born, people had no idea what Mars even looked like. Mariner hadn't gotten there yet. So they didn't even know it had craters. They thought they had no idea. So just during my lifetime, which is a little longer than I'd like to admit, but during my lifetime, we've learned so much about Mars. And since 2012, when I finished The Martian, we've had nine years, doesn't sound like much, but nine years of advancements on Mars knowledge. Many other things we've discovered about Mars since I wrote the book was first off, there's water all over the damn place. It's just everywhere. off, there's water all over the damn place. It's just everywhere. So in the book, you know, Mark Watney has to go through all these machinations to turn his leftover rocket fuel into usable water so he can grow his potatoes, when really the soil has every cubic meter of Martian soil has, or it's not soil, it's regolith, technically, if it's not from Earth, but I'm going to say dirt.

Every cubic meter of dirt on Mars has about 35 liters of water trapped as ice crystals in it. So if you filled your refrigerator with Martian dirt and then got all the water out of it by heating it up until it boiled away and distilling it off you would have 70 meters of water that's 35 two liter bottles full of water it's an enormous amount of water there was plenty of water mark didn't have to do anything to get at it although it's such a cool plot line i would have fabricated an excuse for him to get it um i would have said like okay we know that there's a lot of water around the foothills of mount sharp, where Curiosity is and did its tests. But I can say that Acidalia planitia is a desert, maybe. You know, we have climate zones on Earth. Mars could have climate zones. So until you send somebody to Acidalia planitia to test the soil, I can claim it's a desert. Other things that have changed,

Other things that have changed, we now know that the soil has a lot of perchlorates in it, which are poisonous-ish to humans. It's not like arsenic or cyanide that kills you immediately, but it's bad for you. Eating perchlorate-riddled food is kind of like smoking. It's got a good chance of eventually killing you. It's a health risk you don't want to take. However, perchlorates are water-soluble, and we found out there's plenty of water on Mars. So Mark, knowing this, could have easily rinsed the soil of all of its perchlorates by using excess water that he would gather from the environment. So I could have taken care of that problem.

Also, one of my biggest regrets on The Martian was that the very beginning of it, the sandstorm that causes all the problems, is one of the few real scientific inaccuracies in the book. And I knew it when I wrote it. I just decided to look the other way on reality there, just so I could have Mother Nature start the conflict. Since then, I and we and humanity has learned that Mars has lightning, active lightning. So I could have had a lightning strike hit something critical that caused an explosion that caused a cascade failure or something like that that led to the evacuation. So I could have had nature get the first punch in, but in a scientifically realistic way. The one other

thing I will point out, the area surrounding Ares III. So after the book came out, it was really popular. And then JPL took Mars Global Surveyor and pointed it at the Ares III landing site and took some high res photos. And then they posted them and said, this is what the site around Mark Watney looked like. And as you can see, it's nothing like described in the book and i'm like listen you check it but yeah now that i now that we have like high-risk photography on the aries 3 landing site i would probably use that um i was thinking what are they going to do sue you exactly i know But it was a huge honor to have like a billion dollars of satellite pointed at my silly fictional location on Mars. Well, it's a real location on Mars, but there's nothing there. And often I get asked, hey, can I ever go back and update the Martian for new information we have about Mars?

And I say, no, that would be an endless cycle. We are always learning new things about Mars. So I would never be not editing The Martian. It is what it is, a snapshot of our knowledge of Mars as of when it was written. Author and space science fan Andy Weir, speaking with me at PlanetFest 21, the Planetary Society's two-day celebration of Mars and the three spacecraft that have joined the robots already exploring the red planet on our behalf. I'll be here with Bruce and What's Up in seconds. Rubber asteroids are back. Time again for What's Up on Planetary Radio. We are joined by the chief

scientist of the Planetary Society, who also had a big role in our weekend of Planet Fest to Mars and back. I hope you had as good a time as I did. I had a good time. It was fun. It was Planet Festive. Yeah, I hope a lot of people out there listening to us were able to tune in. We are working on getting the live video sessions available on demand. There are a few people who will hear this before we know if Perseverance has made it down safely to the surface of Mars.

We'll be doing our landing party with Bill on Thursday the 18th. And for those of you who catch this show before that, you might want to catch us at planetary.org. Mars landing, always exciting one way or the other. What's up? You know, it's not up a bunch of planets. Take the time to rest, except for Mars in the evening, Southwest, South, you can see

reddish Mars, but all the other planets, they're chilling. Get psyched. They'll be back in a few weeks. In the meantime, check out Mars and check out the stars. So in the evening sky, we have Mars in the southwest. And if you look to the left, you'll find the reddish star Aldebaran, the brightest star in Taurus. And Aldebaran and Mars are very similar in brightness and color right now, looking like twinsies. LeBron and Mars are very similar in brightness and color right now,

looking like twinsies. And here's the thing. About halfway between them, just kind of a little above the line between the two of them, are the Pleiades, Pleiades star cluster, which look kind of like fuzziness. But if you pull out particularly some binoculars and look in that region, you'll see a cluster of little baby stars in a star nursery. They're so cute. I love the Pleiades.

I want to mention that little trick that I was taught a long time ago, where if there are some stars or any objects that are a little bit dim, look a little bit to the side of them. Yes. Because your eyes, what, more sensitive, right? When it's not right at the focus? Right in the center of our vision is stacked with cones, which are better with color and detail and light. And our rods, which are better at night vision, are concentrated more away from that center spot. So if you look where you want to look and

then look just a little off, your eyes may pick up dimmer objects because of the higher concentration of the more light-sensitive cones. Sorry, rods. It really does work. Give it a shot, folks. It's a fun trick. What else is going on? Well, we move on to this week in space history. 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. And 1996, NEAR spacecraft, the NEAR spacecraft launched, headed for the asteroid Eros. We move on to... I'll have to wind you up after we're done here. Matt, Mars, there's a lot of stuff there. There are eight working orbiters at Mars right now from seven space agencies.

That really is amazing. That's a flotilla. It is indeed. So we focus on the coolness of landers. Don't forget the awesome science and coolness of the, including epic poems. So sorry, but we need to evaluate longer. And so in a rare move, we're going to put off the announcement of the winners and discussion of the poetry until next week. Does that make sense? Is that what we're doing, Matt? It absolutely does. Sounds like you were as pleasantly surprised as I was. I was blown away. I didn't expect very many at all. We got over 30 poems

or poets out there who submitted their work. Some people, more than one of their works. A lot of them are just terrific. This is going to be a difficult choice, but we promise by next week, we will have our five winners, and among them, our grand prize winner. The five winners will all get PlanetFest 21 t-shirts. And then we're going to throw in, boy, I can't remember what it was for our grand prize winner. I got to look it up. I think it was one of the books we've been talking about recently. So there. Yeah, it's going to take longer too, because people put them in Old Norse and Ancient Greek and Latin. I mean, I know that's what epic poems are kind of famous for, but it makes it harder to judge.

You know, reading Beowulf is fun, but it's not something I want to do every day. Oh, actually, I do that every day. Oh, good. You know who's worse than Grendel, right? Grendel's mom. Oh, yeah. Not very likable.

No, no. Shall I move on to the new trivia question that doesn't involve poetry? Yeah. Listen carefully. How many and which space agencies had their first Mars orbiter reach Mars and operate in Mars orbit? How many and which space agencies had their first Mars orbiter, their first Mars orbiter attempt reach Mars and operate in Mars Orbit. How many in which space agencies have their first Mars orbiter, their first Mars orbiter attempt? Reach Mars and operate in Mars orbit.

Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. So all those who got it right on the first try, I get it. Well, sure, I could have said it that way, but I wanted something more complicated. Yeah, thank you. You have until the 24th. That's Wednesday, February 24 at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us the answer. We've had so many people asking, when are you going back to giving away rubber asteroids? Or excuse me, rubber asteroids. Well, the time has come. That's what will go to the winner of this new space trivia contest.

And yes, Bruce is excited. Yay! I think that's it. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about what you would name your Mars spacecraft. Thank you, and good night. He is Bruce Betts, the chief scientist of the Planetary Society, leading all of our efforts

in that range of things that the Society is up to, and he also joins us here every week for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and is made possible by its members. We need 500

new explorers to join them by March 5th. And we'll reward you with our new and beyond cool Society T-shirt. Visit planetary.org slash join2021 to sign up. Mark Hilbert is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. Add Ares.