Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Return to DPS With Lucy McFadden and Carolyn Crow

Episode Date: October 25, 2010

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Back to DPS, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. Lucy McFadden chased down a meteor turned meteorite in the Sudan. Her former student, Carolyn Crowe, is just getting her career as a space rock person underway. I talked with both of them at the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences meeting a couple of weeks ago. And you'll hear these fascinating conversations today.

Emily Lakdawalla reports on the just as fascinating revelations about water and much more at the North Pole of the Moon. Just be careful where you step, since you might sink right down into the fluff. Bill Nye reports from the mall in Washington, D.C., where he was one of the most popular attractions at the USA Science and Engineering Festival. We'll wrap up with our usual guide to the night sky, courtesy of Bruce Betts. And we've got another copy of Wonders of the Solar System to give away in the new Space Trivia Contest. Here's a program note.

If all goes well in two weeks, you'll hear our special report on the last countdown for space shuttle Discovery. I'm already excited. It will be my first ever in-person experience of any launch, unless you count a couple of Estes model rockets a few decades ago. Remember the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite? Its lunar smackdown was just over a year ago, but Emily Lakdawalla reported big news just last week. Emily, let's start with some exciting news from the LCROSS mission. Looks like there's quite a bit of water up there at the pole of the moon. That's right, and this is a result that we've heard before from LCROSS. They talked about it just a month after they crashed into the moon in October 2009. But this week saw the first peer

reviewed publications about that mission. So it's the first time that this result has appeared in print and has gotten the blessing of other scientists to say that, yes, this is probably true. But water wasn't the whole story. There's actually more stuff there besides water. And some of it, things like sulfur dioxide, they require even lower temperatures than water does to remain solid at the poles of the moon for a very long time. So it's actually a more complicated story about just how cold this place has been for how long. And I saw one discussion of the surface there as fluffy. Fluffy is a word that some scientists use to describe surfaces in the solar system. It happens when you have volatile materials moving

around as gases and then freezing as ices in places where there isn't a whole lot of gravity, or as it turns out in places like on the moon, where there just isn't a whole lot of evolution happening to the landscape over time. And they build up these fairy castle structures that have a lot of pore space inside, which makes it a very fluffy surface. We know it's a fluffy surface on the moon because of the way the LCROSS impactor crashed into the moon, and it took a very long time for any stuff to blast back out. That means that the impactor spent a lot of time just compressing the material in front of it before it came back out of the crater. And what would happen if you landed a spacecraft or an astronaut on that surface? Well, it's hard to say because we don't know how deep it goes. But if it goes deep enough,

it could swallow your spacecraft or your astronaut if you're not careful. This is all pretty exciting, too, especially after the somewhat disappointing night that we had when we were all expecting to see a huge plume. I remember that night very well, as I'm sure you do. And it's kind of sad because it's one of those things where they just didn't prepare the public for the right thing. The mission turned out to be an incredible success. They targeted exactly the spot that they wanted to hit. They got some fantastic results. But because they hadn't warned people of the possibility that nobody might see a plume,

people's expectations were too high and they were very disappointed. So people feel like the mission was a failure, even though it was really quite a great success. Well, it's good to set the record straight. Something else that you and I were both excited about, I think a lot of people are excited about, is CuriosityCam. That's right. This is something that one of the outreach people at JPL has been working on for a long time. I want to tip my hat to Veronica McGregor and thank her for making this possible. It's a webcam that's focused on the high bay where they're assembling the Curiosity rover. Actually, they assemble it and disassemble it repeatedly as they do tests on it. But it's live and there's even a chat room where there sometimes are

engineers and other people on the mission who are there to answer questions. And I think that chat room makes it all the more wonderful. Last time I was there, there were a thousand people watching the video and about a hundred participating in the chat room. It was pretty exciting. And for those who missed it, there was a cute moment that you've captured on the blog. One of those workers in a white suit, white clean room suit, doing a little robot dance. That's right. That happened a few weeks ago when they were doing the testing of the rover. But I figure I'd throw it up there on the blog for the people who didn't get to see the camera live. Lots more we could talk about, Emily, but we're out of time, so we'll catch you again next week. All right, see you, Matt. Emily Lactewal is the Science and Technology

Coordinator for the Planetary Society and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope Magazine. She joins us every week right here on Planetary Radio, as does Bill Nye. Hey, hey, Bill Nye, the planetary guy here, executive director of the Planetary Society. And I'm in Washington, D.C., right by the National Mall and the Planetary Society has a big booth there. And in the last two days, we have been promoting our light sail project and trying to get members

to join the Planetary Society, new members. I guess I've met thousands of people. It's been a lot of fun. There's all kinds of science and engineering booths from various corporations up and down the National Mall, and we're there, can I say, holding our own. We're having a great time. We have a model of the solar sail spacecraft.

We're showing people, especially young people, kids, how it works, how it will work. Talk today, I did a little outdoor lecture We're showing people, especially young people, kids, how it works, how it will work. Talk today, I did a little outdoor lecture about the nature of relativity and the momentum of photons and the passion, beauty, and joy, the P, B, and J, of space exploration. Because space exploration really brings out the best in us. Everyone here at the National Mall has been taking laps through all the various tents, the booths, and through the National Air and Space Museum, which is the most popular museum in the world, more popular than the Louvre in France. And everyone realizes the value of a space program,

the inspirational nature of exploring space. So we are a big part of that. And it's very exciting. So this solar sail spacecraft, LightSail 1, is being supported by the personal donations of individuals. So we're taking their pictures, getting their signatures, and we'll put them on a ceramic disc that will fly along with LightSail 1. Very exciting. Space exploration is going in a new direction. Faster, better, cheaper, smaller, lower power, and more inspirational. Well, everybody, let's change the world. I've got to fly. Bill Nye, the Planetary Guy. We promised we'd return with more of the conversations we enjoyed

at this year's meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences, or DPS. We had a great time wandering the halls of the Pasadena Convention Center a couple of weeks ago. They were crowded with scientists eager to hear the latest research results from their colleagues around the world. The students in attendance may have been even more enthusiastic. We'll talk with one of them after the break. But first, a conversation with a planetary scientist I've wanted as a planetary radio guest for years, and not just because of a unique adventure she had in Africa. Hello, Matt. I'm Lucy McFadden.

I'm a planetary scientist and chief of higher education at Goddard Space Flight Center. And it was before you got to Goddard that you had a little adventure in North Africa? Yes. I had the opportunity in December of 2009 to attend a workshop at University of Khartoum in Sudan and then to go on a four-day field trip, which in Sudan actually took 10 days, to search for fragments of the asteroid 2008 TC3 in the Nubian Desert of northern Sudan.

Talk a little bit about this asteroid-turned-meteorite, because it attracted a lot of attention even on its arrival to this planet. Oh, absolutely. It was an asteroid discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey. Scientists at Jet Propulsion Laboratory determined its orbit, and to their surprise, they found that it was on a collision course with Earth 20 hours after the asteroid was discovered. Then the chase began. Absolutely.

Boy, what do you do? How do you find it? And this is really Peter Jeniskin's story, who contacted his astronomical colleagues in Jordan, who put him in touch with Maui Shaddad in Khartoum at University of Khartoum. And then they went out and talked to people, and they found, with the projected orbit onto the planet, they found where they thought it landed, and it was near a train station. How convenient.

Yes. And so then they went out and looked, and students, they brought students with them, and the first time they looked, they only found a few fragments. I went on the fourth expedition, and then we knew where the path was, we knew where to look, and we knew that there were more fragments out there. So again, I went with 50 students, physics, chemistry, and geology students

from University of Khartoum, and we combed the desert along the path of the asteroid. And we found hundreds of fragments. There is so much more to this story, which explains why it's gotten a great deal of media coverage. Because in addition to the science element, there is the political and cultural, because Sudan and the United States are not exactly on speaking terms. That's right. I mean, this is a great opportunity to engage the students and scientists of Sudan in unraveling an important scientific study. The Sudanese have this meteorite, it is their meteorite, and they are eager to engage with us to study this meteorite.

The trouble is, it's very difficult for Sudanese students to travel to the United States. They have to go to Cairo to get a visa. And then to get here and to engage with NASA scientists also takes a lot of time. It's not impossible, but it's time consuming. So we want to work to invite, we're extending invitations to the students, but then funding that effort and making it happen is a logistical challenge. But it's very important scientifically, and the State Department has an initiative to engage with predominantly Muslim countries. And here we have a scientific project that is perfect for this engagement.

So this effort sounds like it's underway right now to try and get these young scientists here. This effort sounds like it's underway right now to try and get these young scientists here. Yes, but it's in the planning stages, and we have to plan it and figure out how to do it. We have interested students who I understand are able to bring the samples here, and we will work with us to interpret and study these meteorites. The interesting thing about this asteroid was that it was very diverse. It was made of fragments of different types. So the studies that have gone on so far are only with a few of the pieces that we found. The other hundreds of them probably hold unanticipated secrets.

So we want to get all of them cataloged and studied. unanticipated secrets. So we want to get all of them cataloged and studied. This asteroid actually had some unique qualities in this sort of aggregate way that it appears to have been formed? Yes, yes. There are meteorite types like this asteroid, but it contained different textures and fragments. So it was a conglomerate of pieces. And we can clearly see that in the fragments that we've seen. They have similar chemistry, but their textures are different. And there are also other meteorite types embedded in this asteroid. So it is very, not only is it the only, the first astronomical asteroid that has been seen to hit Earth and recovered, studied both as an astronomical object and as a meteorite.

It's an unusual meteorite, too. So it's telling us about proto-primitive bodies in the asteroid belt and giving us a first-hand look. It's an asteroid sample return mission. That's great. Your enthusiasm is obvious. Did you see this same kind of excitement and enthusiasm from the scientists and students in the Sudan? Oh, absolutely. I mean, the students were thrilled.

They were thrilled to participate. The sense of discovery, when you're walking along the desert and you see something standing there, sitting there, that's different than everything else, and you realize that it's a piece of something that just fell from the sky a few weeks or a year ago, that's pretty exciting. Now, they are also very good students. They are serious students, but their focus is not on meteorites or cosmochemistry. Their focus is on petroleum geology and on physics. They study nuclear physics, they study cosmology, but they just don't happen to have anyone who studies meteorites there in Khartoum. So it's important. Here's a great opportunity for us to engage and develop international collaborations because science is an international endeavor.

You sound like you feel very fortunate to have been able to make the trip. Oh, yes. It was terrific because my NASA colleagues were not allowed to go because of our political relations with Sudan. And I made an assessment, a risk assessment of whether I should go.

And I have four criteria. I don't know if I should go into them, but I decided that I could go. And because I was at the time a University of Maryland employee, I was allowed to go and no one stopped me. Good thing you weren't at Goddard quite yet. Absolutely. That's right. The timing was perfect because my Goddard colleagues wanted to go. The NASA colleagues ended up giving their talks at the workshop via telephone. So they did contribute remotely

and they wanted to be there in person, but they did not get country clearance to travel as federal employees. Let's hope that your friends that you made there do get that chance to come here and continue the study with you. Absolutely. I'm working on it. I had one of them visit me this summer. She's now studying in Canada, and she was able to get a visa to come to the United States and see her family. I'm continuing to be in contact with her and encouraging her to work with meteorologists at the University of Calgary. So she will be developing some studies, and she'll become both a petroleum geologist and a cosmochemist. Lucy, thanks so much. It's been fun talking with you.

Okay, great. Thank you, Matt. That was Lucy McFadden of the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA's facility in Greenbelt, Maryland. She spent many years as a planetary scientist at the University of Maryland. That's where she was mentor to a young planetary scientist in the making. We'll meet Carolyn Crow when Planetary Radio continues in a minute. I'm Robert Picardo. I traveled across the galaxy as the doctor in Star Trek Voyager. Then I joined the Planetary Society to become part of the real adventure of space exploration.

The Society fights for missions that unveil the secrets of the solar system. It searches for other intelligences in the universe, and it built the first solar sail. other intelligences in the universe, and it built the first solar sail. It also shares the wonder through this radio show, its website, and other exciting projects that reach around the globe. I'm proud to be part of this greatest of all voyages, and I hope you'll consider joining us. You can learn more about the Planetary Society at our website, planetary.org slash radio, or by calling 1-800-9-WORLDS. Planetary Radio listeners who aren't yet members can join and receive a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Our nearly 100,000 members receive the internationally acclaimed Planetary Report magazine.

That's planetary.org slash radio. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. How many of the attendees at the recent DPS meeting were undergraduate and graduate students? I don't know the percentage, but it must be up there. DPS is the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences. Its 42nd annual gathering concluded just a few weeks ago. Many of those students had to settle for listening to more senior attendees present their work, but a lucky few

stood on meeting room stages punching through PowerPoint slides. They had become integral contributors to research conducted by mentors, like our first guest today, Lucy McFadden. Here's one of those students. So I'm Carolyn Crow. I'm a first-year grad student at UCLA. The reason that it says both Maryland and UCLA on my name tag is because I did my undergraduate at the University of Maryland, and I started working with Lucy McFadden my senior year, and I decided to stay on for a year and a half, extra two years, to finish the research

that we were doing, which I presented on today. And then now I just started this year at UCLA, working with Kevin McKeegan on something slightly different, doing cosmochemistry. We'll come back to that, but Lucy said, Carolyn, that we ought to, we had to catch you, her former student, obviously a proud mentor there. But you've only just made this switch. I mean, now that you're a grad student, you've got students of your own, at least as a TA at UCLA. Yes, I do. It's fun.

I love teaching. So I definitely know that I would like to be a professor. But it's great when they're just so challenging, you know, because a lot of times I end up teaching non-science students, and so trying to explain these concepts or complex concepts to people that don't even know how to do a ratio is difficult and challenging and fun, and you have to be creative and it allows that creative side to come out. Have you been to DPS before or conferences like this? Yes, I was at DPS last year in Puerto Rico.

I also presented there on the same research. So tell us about your presentation here. So I presented on the work that I've been doing for the past few years, and we just submitted to APJ, and submitted to APJ. And what's that? That's the Astrophysical Journal. So I have resubmitted just two weeks ago, so I'll be coming back again. So what we did, it was in support of the Epoxy mission, which is a continuation of the Deep Impact mission that smashed the probe into Comet Tempel 1.

Actually, it's the subject of our space trivia contest this week, and we've talked about epoxy and deep impact prior to that in the past, so that's near and dear to our hearts. Yeah, so everyone thinks of epoxy and looking at transits of extrasolar planets, but we actually took some images of the Earth and the Moon and Mars to characterize these planets as they would be seen as extrasolar planets. So what we did for our research is we looked at the colors of these planets, and we also went back into previous literature and pulled out full-disc photometry and spectra,

and looked at the colors of all the planets in our solar system as a baseline for characterizing extrasolar planets because with the next generation of telescopes like the James Webb Telescope Terrestrial Planet Finder, we will soon be able to take direct detection and visible images of possibly Earth-like planets sometime soon. So fingers crossed. Yeah, yeah. So we need an analog to compare this new data set to. So we start with what we know. Exactly. And so we found some really interesting things. So first we characterized all the planets. And then our second goal was to determine the best filters for picking out Earth.

And so we determined that using three filters, we can separate Earth from all the other planets. And the major component there is Rayleigh scattering, because Earth's atmosphere is dominated by Rayleigh scattering, makes it really blue. And although the oceans do contribute a little bit to the blue color, looking through these filters, Earth is incredibly blue and sticks out entirely from all these other planets. So we can start picking up on little things like methane and ammonia absorption. We can see those just with a few filters. So it's amazing that such a basic tool, looking at colors,

that we can use this for extrasolar planets. Now you say you've moved on to this field with such an intriguing title, cosmochemistry? Cosmochemistry, yes. A lot of times people ask me if that means I study makeup or if I'm studying how to make the perfect cosmopolitan, which I think would be a fun job too. That's like the question that we get about getting to work with astrologers. Yes, it's quite interesting. So anyways, I've moved on. I just started about five weeks ago at UCLA working with Kevin McKeegan, and I will be studying cosmochemistry,

which is in general terms studying space rocks. And I'm really interested in meteorites. And what we do is we look at the isotopic compositions in meteorites or my first project will be looking at lunar zircons and you can date the ages that the minerals forms and you can also look at different compositions to learn about how they formed and where they came from. Sounds like you're enjoying this new career that you've chosen. Yes, it's tons of fun. It's a little bit of work getting used to the new vocabulary and, you know, even though the fields are very closely related, it's, you know, I only

took one chemistry class in undergrad, so I'm having to play a little bit of catch-up, but it's fascinating, so I don't mind. It's also just an exciting time to be a part of all of this. Yeah, yeah, when, you know yeah. Sometimes I joke around and say I left Maryland at the worst time because Epoxy and Dawn, which were two of the missions that I worked on, are having these two major mission

events coming up soon. But luckily they're still in the area, so I'm going to see if I can sneak my way into JPL and contribute to the celebration when we get our images back. But, yeah, it's exciting. It's a lot of fun. Good luck with that, getting back into JPL and staying aware of those missions,

but also just with everything that you've got ahead of you in this career. And thanks for going into it, too. We need more folks like you. Yeah, thank you. That's Carolyn Crow, fresh out of the University of Maryland, where she conducted research under our first guest today, Dr. Lucy McFadden. Carolyn is now a first-year graduate student at UCLA. What's Up is moments away. Got Bruce Betts on the relatively lousy telephone line,

but we're still going to deliver what's up to your radio or your iPod or whatever you're listening to us on. He is the director of projects for the Planetary Society. How are you doing, Guy? Doing pretty well. Busy. How are you doing? I'm okay, too. Tell us about the night sky. All right. Evening sky. Jupiter dominating, really bright star-like object.

Up in the south, high in the south in the early evening. Check that out. You also, in the pre-dawn, can see Saturn. And it's in the east, in the pre-dawn. And you may be able to see Comet Hartley 2, a fuzzy blob in the pre-dawn, but check for a finder chart before you go hunting. You'll probably need binoculars unless you're in a really dark site. Even so, you may need binoculars.

But epoxy spacecraft will not need, well, they sort of have binoculars, they have telescopes. They'll be encountering it on November 4th, having their close flyby of Comet Hartley 2. So that'll be cool. On to this week in space history. In 1975, Venera 10 landed on the surface of Venus. It's hot there, you know. I've heard that. This is another, and it's a good thing, too, with this phone line, where you won't have to strain your vocal cords for us to get a random space fact introduction. Oh, thank goodness. Do we have someone to help? Yeah.

You know who's going to help? It's actually an entire sixth-grade science class, sixth grade science class, the third of three of those that Christopher Midden teaches at Unity Point School in Carbondale, Illinois. Here they are. And they seem to have an even better time with Random Space Fact than we do. Well, I'm glad. That's very good. Thank you. Thank you to them for saving my voice. And I'll go ahead and give you that random space fact, which is that the New Horizons spacecraft has just passed its halfway point in time. It was launched about four and three-quarter years ago,

and it will do its close flyby of the Pluto system in about four and three-quarter years from now. All right. On to the trivia contest. We asked you, in the spirit of DPS, Division of Planetary Sciences meeting, where is the next one? Where is the 2011 DPS meeting going to be held? How'd we do, Matt? Lots and lots of entries. The fellow, though, who's going to win a T-shirt this time around is Jean-Marc Fortin. And he says to pronounce it that way, although it would certainly be appropriate to use the French pronunciation. Jean-Marc Fortin said that the next meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society will be in Nantes, France, in the port city of Nantes. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly.

So, Jean-Marc, we're going to send you a shirt all the way out there in Strawberry Hills, New South Wales, Australia. Well, congratulations. And what are we giving away with this next question I'm about to give? We have another copy, a three-DVD set of Wonders of the Solar System, this great BBC series presented by Professor Brian Cox. So the next couple of weeks, that's what our prize will be. Okay, good.

To compete for that, answer the following question. Assuming things go well, what will be the next spacecraft to visit the Jupiter system? The next spacecraft to visit the Jovian system? Go to planetary.org slash radio, find out how to enter. And you have until 2 p.m. on Monday, November 1, to get us that answer. You know that we have our eighth anniversary coming up, and I have not planned anything special. We're gonna, we gotta do something. We do. All right, we'll our eighth anniversary coming up, and I have not planned anything special. We've got to do something. We do.

All right, we'll think about that. Okay, we'll think about it. In the meantime... Everybody go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about plaid. Thank you, and good night. I don't know why I find that so funny. Plaid's just funny. Just in and of itself, you're right.

Those crazy boys in Plaid. He's Bruce Batts. I don't think I've seen him in Plaid. He joins us every week here for What's Up. Lou Friedman just returned from Russia. He'll give us a report on that country's space exploration plans next week. And in two weeks, the last launch of space shuttle Discovery. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California,

and made possible in part by a grant from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation. Clear skies. Thank you.